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Let’s Not Talk About Accessibility but Inclusivity | Let’s Not Talk About Accessibility but Inclusivity
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Inclusivity Versus Accessibility Versus Diversity
As a UX designer, I’ve faced a lot of projects where the client particularly asks “to be accessible.”
When using the word “accessibility” in our industry we normally mean that our products have to be accessible for those with disabilities, and as designers, we should make sure that everyone can access and enjoy our products.
When accessibility just includes this group of people, we are leaving many others out of our range. That’s the reason why I prefer to use the word “inclusivity” instead of accessibility.
In the context of product design, inclusivity means making our products the most usable by the widest range of people including, but not limited to, people with disabilities.
And what about “diversity?” That term is so trendy now and you can hear it in almost every big company.
Although the term diversity embraces all people regardless of their situation, culture, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, etc., have you ever thought that a group of diverse people could feel non-inclusive? | https://betterprogramming.pub/lets-not-talk-about-accessibility-but-inclusivity-designing-for-everyone-e474a21a5494 | ['Angela Sanchez Mezquita'] | 2020-10-28 16:45:32.946000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Diversity', 'Diversity And Inclusion', 'UX', 'Diversity In Tech'] |
今天的TOPIK问题 | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/dodreamchain/%E4%BB%8A%E5%A4%A9%E7%9A%84topik%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98-da05aad18035 | [] | 2020-12-14 05:31:57.719000+00:00 | ['Topik', 'Questions', '留学', 'Korean Language', 'Korean'] |
BIOLOGY — MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTER WISE ONE LINER QUESTIONS & ANSWER | Part-1
Biology
Biology
*Father of Biology
Ans : Aristotle
*The term Biology was first coined by
Ans : Lamarck
*Father of Zoology
Ans : Aristotle
*The living beings were classified into two (plants and animals) by
Ans : Aristotle
*The animals were classified into animal with red blood and without red blood by
Ans : Aristotle
*The famous book of Aristotle
Ans : History of Animals
*Father of botany
Ans : Theophrastus
*The famous book of Theophrastus
Ans : Historia plantum
*The branch of biology which deals with the study of origin of life
Ans : Abiogenesis
*The life originated from
Ans : Water
*The first successful experiment based on the origin of life was done by
Ans : A.I. Oparin (1932)
*First life is a microbes having the capacity of
Ans : Photosynthesis
*The basic Chemical unit of life
Ans : Amino acids
*Amino acids were first synthesized in a laboratory by
Ans : Stanley Miller and Harold Urey
*Study of life in outer space
Ans : Exobiology
*The basic unit of life
Ans : Cell
*The cell is synthesized of chemicals such as carbohydrates, protein, lipid, nucleic acid etc.
*The components of carbohydrates
Ans : Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen
*Father of modern Botany
Ans : Carl Linnaeus
*Father of Indian Botany
Ans : William Rosburgh
*Scientist who discovered that the body of animal is made up of cell
Ans : Theodor Schwann
*Scientist who discovered that the body of plant is made up of cell
Ans : M.J. Schleiden
*Scientist who discovered that new cells are formed by the division of cell
Ans : Rudolph Virchow
*The components of proteins are
Ans : Amino acids
*Nucleic acids are responsible for
Ans : Heredity
READ THIS ARTICLE CONTINUE CLICK HERE | https://medium.com/@dasshibsankar99/biology-most-important-chapter-wise-one-liner-questions-answer-256bd590d596 | ['Shibu Das'] | 2020-12-25 14:40:04.896000+00:00 | ['Biology Notes', 'Biology', 'One Liner In Biology', 'Biology Gk In English', 'Biology One Liner Gk'] |
Pecola and Me | Pecola Breedlove has haunted me for most of my life.
I was 12 years old when I first read The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison’s first published novel. I had never heard of Morrison; I didn’t know I was reading a masterwork from the greatest American writer of all time. I didn’t know anything about Morrison’s racial, sexual or gender politics, or about how she centered women like her — like me — in her work. I didn’t know that I would hear Morrison’s voice in my head for years and years afterwards.
And I didn’t know that Pecola Breedlove — the young Black girl at the center of that tumultuous, painful tale — would become ingrained in my mind and in my spirit. I just knew that I’d seen a book in a library that looked interesting. So, I picked it up.
Throughout The Bluest Eye, Pecola is brutally punished for being a dark-skinned Black girl. The very minute Pecola is born, her mother decides that her dark skin makes her an ugly child, and every experience in Pecola’s life reinforces her mother’s judgement. She faces constant emotional, physical and sexual abuse from classmates, neighbors and her family. Pecola grows to believe that she had blue eyes — if she had any way to indicate that she is not the Black ugly child they’ve told her she is — she would be free of all of the torment.
I remember thinking that Pecola was cursed, but not because she was dark-skinned with brown eyes. She was cursed because her community had branded her, and that brand would never fade. Her classmates, the nasty man down the street, her mother, her father — they had all decided what she was, and she could never escape that.
Blue eyes could never save Pecola. Nothing could save Pecola. She didn’t stand a chance.
The Bluest Eye, like most of Morrison’s work, is engrossing, emotionally draining, incredibly complex and overwhelming. My 12-year-old self did not have the capacity to fully grasp what I was reading. I had an elementary-level understanding of race, anti-blackness and colorism; I understood what it was to be Black, to be hated and discriminated against for being Black, and that being dark-skinned made you a target for even more hate, this time from your own people. I knew that much, at least. But I know that I couldn’t I truly understand how much children — my age and younger — internalized these concepts. I didn’t realize how deeply it could scar us.
But my 12-year-old self knew Pecola Breedlove, because I knew what it meant to be “ugly.” To be called “ugly”, to be seen as “ugly”, to be deemed “ugly”. I knew the abuse that came with that “ugly” label, that both children and adults are often their worst selves when dealing with people they’ve deemed undesirable or unfit in some way. I had that label: it was stitched onto me by people in my life — grown folks, too — who saw the extra weight on my stomach, arms and legs, the way my nose spread and the spaces in my teeth and thought “ugly” was the only way to describe me.
As an adult, I could read The Bluest Eye and understand Morrison’s commentary on internalized anti-blackness, colorism and childhood sexual abuse. I could discuss the politics of that novel all I wanted to, but it didn’t mitigate the pain I felt on Pecola’s behalf. It didn’t stop the flashbacks to my own childhood, to the young girl who understood Pecola before she had a handle on the terminology we use to describe The Bluest Eye.
At the end of the day, Pecola Breedlove is a real little girl. She exists in our communities. We abuse her, bully her. We use her skin and her body to serve us in ways that degrade her. Then we push her to the edge of town, out of our sight and out of our minds. We treat her as if she were a specter or a figment of our imaginations, as if she were not real.
But she is. I’ve seen her; not on the edge of town, but in my home, in my school. I saw her as a child, and then as a teenager and now as an adult. I cannot look away from her face, and the big, brown eyes that she desperately wanted to be blue. I cannot ignore the trauma that mangled Pecola. And that’s what Morrison wanted to accomplish by writing The Bluest Eye. Morrison wanted us to see Pecola Breedlove. She always wanted us to see the Black girls and women that our society tries to erase.
I read more of Morrison’s work. Jazz, Beloved, God Help the Child and others, each one imprinting themselves onto my spirit in some way. There’s something truly awe-inspiring and frightening about the way Morrison’s words have shaped my life. Even as my understanding of her work deepened, I could never intellectualize the feeling it gave me. I could never shake the terror, the frustration, the trepidation, the sadness. They all follow me, stepping on the back of my heels as I walk. And The Bluest Eye — little Pecola — follows me the closest.
I think that’s why Morrison’s death has hit me so hard. Morrison saw us in all our forms, and she made sure that everyone else saw us, too. She understood us in a way no one else ever can, and she didn’t concern herself with making us any less complicated.
When I learned that Morrison died, I immediately thought of The Bluest Eye, and the lasting impact Morrison and Pecola Breedlove have had on me. I’ve barely been able to think of anything else. All of my attempts to verbalize that impact are pitiful. I could never really express what Morrison means to me. I can’t envision my life without Morrison’s work — without Pecola Breedlove and our shared pain. I am indebted to Toni Morrison. And I’m eternally grateful for her. | https://courtdanee.medium.com/pecola-and-me-8a5474c79903 | ['Courtney Anderson'] | 2019-08-08 21:00:48.438000+00:00 | ['History', 'Race', 'Literature'] |
RightMesh Weekly Update: May 4, 2018 | The big news this week is from our development team who demonstrated the power of a superpeer! In the demo they send a message from a phone in Canada, that isn’t connected directly to the internet, to a phone in Bangladesh, that also isn’t connected to the internet, powered by RightMesh. Our product team returned from their trip to Bangladesh and has been sharing their learnings with the rest of the team, and our website was translated into Japanese and Korean. It has been a busy week!
TL:DR; Summary
Conducted a superpeer demo, showing the connection of two local meshes in Bangladesh and Canada to one another;
Translated our website into Japanese and Korean;
Updated the rightmesh.io website with supporter testimonials, partnership and advisory information;
Parent company Left announced as finalist for a Technology Impact Award for Community Engagement;
Contest: Final week to win a Trezor Wallet for the best RightMesh use case.
Press
Tech/ Product Update
Superpeer Demo: This week we conducted a superpeer demo, showing how we can connect multiple local meshes into one giant mesh to connect different parts of the world. The demo showed two local meshes, one in Bangladesh and one in Canada, connected to a superpeer and transmitting messages in real time across the globe. The demo only illustrated two local meshes connecting, but with the superpeer, we will be able to connect multiple meshes across the globe.
Superpeer Demo
Short Term Roadmapping : The tech team has been working on defining the short-term roadmaps for the platform (mesh networking software and associated protocols) and the products (developer portal, RightMesh app and superpeer), to be published in a few weeks.
: The tech team has been working on defining the short-term roadmaps for the platform (mesh networking software and associated protocols) and the products (developer portal, RightMesh app and superpeer), to be published in a few weeks. Bangladesh Trip: Fresh from their visit to the Dhaka and Khulna offices in Bangladesh, Saju Abraham and Benjamin Hughes did a debrief session with our team in Maple Ridge. The talk covered the learnings from the visit, the app and dev teams’ mutual goals for the next several months and the great work that took place by the Bangladesh team in terms of prototypes and experiments that will have a substantial impact on the RightMesh project.
Saju and Ben presenting to the Maple Ridge office on their trip to visit the Bangladesh team
Unit Testing: The dev team has been hard at work doing unit testing for the library and platform.
RightLabs Update
Our research team has been zeroing in on a key focus area for RightMesh — the education sector. Our objective is to build an education app that will be beneficial for students or teachers in underserved regions that do not have access to connectivity or internet services. We’ve embarked on researching emerging markets education needs and are currently speaking with teachers in Peru, India and Bangladesh.
ATTN: If you are an educator, or know one in an underserved area, and have an idea you would like to discuss, please do reach out us at [email protected].
Website Updates
To better serve our community we’ve made some updates to our homepage at https://rightmesh.io/. Changes include:
Added advisor and supporter testimonials from WhalePanda, David Lee and Micha Benoliel; Added a Team section which includes the Technical Leadership Team, Corporate Leadership Team and Advisors; Added in new partner and supporter logos:
- eNuk
- BC Tech Association
- Nunatsiavut Government
- University of British Columbia
- Natural Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Memorial University Simplified the TGE whitelist registration flow; Translated website in Japanese and Korean:
- Korean: https://www.rightmesh.io/ko
- Japanese: https://www.rightmesh.io/jp
TGE Progress
Our Whitelist is open!
If you act quickly, you can still contribute — or add to your previous contribution.
Here’s how:
Dates to Remember:
May 17: Final Date for Whitelisting to ensure participation
May 30: Crowd Contribution opens at 13:00 CEST (low initial individual cap to allow for maximum participation)
May 31: Cap lifted to allow for contributions of any pre-authorized value
Contest
We are in the final week of our RightMesh use case contest! The winner will receive a Trezor Hardware Wallet. The contest ends at midnight (PST) on May 8th, 2018 so make sure to share your use cases before then!
How to Participate?
1. Follow Right_Mesh on Twitter.
2. Tweet your use case and include the hashtag #UsingRightMesh.
3. Remember to be creative, clear, and concise.
For full contest details make sure to review the guidelines here.
Community and Events
May 3rd: Representing RightMesh AG’s parent company, Left, a team of us attended TechBrew in Vancouver. This one day event brings together top talent, tech leaders, and local service providers to build connections while enjoying live demos of featured companies. This will also mark the countdown to the Technology Impact Awards. The team was excited to be selected as a finalist for the Community Engagement category at TechBrew. Fingers crossed for the awards in June!
Here’s where you can find us next week:
May 8th: RightMesh project Co-Founder and COO, Chris Jensen will be speaking at the Economic Summit 2018 in Coquitlam, Canada on the blockchain panel. He is looking forward to sharing the stage with Frans Tjallingli, Co-Founder & CEO of First Coin Capital, Dr. Peter Chow-White, Professor at Simon Fraser University, and moderator Kevin Rathbun, Transition Advisory Service at Rise Advisors.
May 8th: RightMesh project Co-Founder and CEO, John Lyotier, will be speaking on a panel on ‘Women’s Leadership in the Digital Economy’ put on by the WCT (Women in Communication and Technology). This is a topic that John is passionate about and has enacted several initiatives over the past few years to ensure parity in the workforce (for a more in depth view, read John’s article ‘Overcoming Gender Bias in Life, Technology, and Blockchain — One Man’s Opinion’). John will be joining Shann McGrail, Co-Founder of Devreve Inc; Zara Gray, Senior Advisor, Diversity & Inclusion of Goldcorp Inc; and Joanne Stanley, Executive Director of WCT.
Stay in Touch
To stay up to date with RightMesh, please join our social channels: | https://medium.com/rightmesh/rightmesh-weekly-update-may-3-2018-76bc16653aa9 | ['Amber Mclennan'] | 2018-05-07 17:04:53.210000+00:00 | ['ICO', 'Blockchain', 'Tge', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin'] |
An alternative to social media that is actually good for you | You probably heard by now that social media can have some nasty negative effects on its users.
It’s not all bad and some positives are there as well.
But what if there would be something similar to social media that would make you less stressed and actually healthier?
I’m here to propose journaling as at least a partial alternative to social media.
Just think about it, the same way you post on social media about your day to day you could post privately and even go more in depth.
Sharing your emotions good or bad in private means you don’t have to censor yourself or your train of thought.
There is no one but you who sees it so there is nobody to judge it.
So, you ask, what would be the point if nobody is going to see it?
Glad you asked.
Let’s start with the positive stuff, your wins.
You can simply post about your successes, what you learned from them and how much they mean to you. And nobody is going to judge you or claim that you are bragging.
But taking the time to celebrate even small wins is an important part of our confidence building so it’s definitely worth doing.
On the flip side, with the negative stuff, you can write about it without self-censoring. This helps you process the full thing better.
It may also help figure out solutions, where you may have made any mistakes or to simply see things from a different perspective.
It might even be the case that when you put things in writing the problems starts looking smaller than you initially thought.
You certainly can’t explore things too deeply on social media knowing that people will see and judge what you are saying.
There is still more to it
Removing yourself from the comparison culture that is promoted on social media you can focus more on the things that really matter to you.
On social platforms, you only see the best of people, highly edited and unnatural.
Everybody is a contest to look happy and successful.
For the most part, it’s fake.
It’s fake in that it’s not a representation of these people’s lives, but we tend to think it is.
We tend to get sucked in this contest and we end up focusing on the image we try to create of ourselves to others.
That changes our value system and with that focus on artificial things we tend to forget about the things that really matter.
Getting yourself out of that game gives you a lot more room to think about and work towards your own dreams and ambitions with a lot less influence of artificial standards.
Journaling is not just for kids and teenagers
One common misconception is that journaling is only for certain ages but that just doesn’t make any sense.
There are lots of reasons to keep a journal and many kinds of journals. From the usual mind dump to travel logs, memory keeping, work journals, goal oriented journals that keep you on track and so on.
Journaling is for everybody, especially if you care about making personal progress in life.
You can’t make progress unless you keep an eye on what you are doing and where you are going.
And it doesn’t take much to figure out that a lot of people of all ages keep journals if you simply join some communities around the subject.
Don’t let this myth keep you away from trying.
How to get started
If all of the above makes sense to you and you want to give a try to journaling I would say start with a digital app.
The reason is that it will feel more familiar and easier to get into.
Something like our journaling app MusePeach could be a good choice, it’s free and you can use it on any device.
Of course, there are others as well, try them out and see what you connect with the most.
From there it’s pretty much the usual affair except that you can really speak your mind without any fear of judgment.
Explore yourself, your feelings, passions and whatever else comes to mind.
Start small, don’t push yourself to write novels, just the regular small update works just fine, to begin with.
When you feel you have more to say, just say it. You might be surprised by what comes out of it.
In conclusion
Journaling can be a great social media alternative with none of the negative effects.
It’s easy to get started with a bunch of free apps being available and you can really explore your mind and let it loose.
Give it a try and see what it does for you. | https://medium.com/@manofbytes/an-alternative-to-social-media-that-is-actually-good-for-you-1c68435f6dbf | ['Andrei B'] | 2019-03-21 10:25:30.578000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Diary', 'Self Improvement', 'Journaling'] |
Uninformed search in Artificial Intelligence | Search problems are quite popular these days in Artificial Intelligence and many algorithms have been proposed for solving problems of this kind. In this article, we will consider a popular search problem of finding your way through a maze and two simple algorithms used to solve this problem. The algorithms we will consider are the Depth-First search(DFS) and the Breadth-First search(BFS). Let’s look at each of them.
Depth-First Search
Depth-First search is an algorithm for traversing tree data structures by starting at the root node and exploring deeper into the tree branch where possible then backtracks if there are no possible nodes to explore and the goal has not been reached.
The algorithm work by taking the current node otherwise known as root, checks and keeps track of its neighbors, expanding a random node among the neighboring nodes. This goes on and on until the goal is reached or a solution is found. It makes use of a stack data structure for adding and removing nodes(neighboring nodes) in a last-in-first-out data type format.
I will also use an auxiliary set for maintaining the explored nodes to make sure the algorithm does not visit nodes previously visited since this may cause an infinite loop. Let’s demonstrate these visually.
Using the above search tree, let’s have the algorithm find a path from A to E. The First thing is to initialize a stack with the starting node added to it, the goal which is E and explored set. As of now, our start node is A so we add it to our stack.
Next step, we remove the last item in our stack and explore its neighbors. Since we only have A, we expand it. Node A has just one neighbor, B. Add it to our stack as well as A to the explored set.
Now, we check if our stack has something, if yes, we remove the last item and explore it. In this case, it’s node B. The neighbors of B are C and D. Therefore, we add them to the stack and B to the explored set.
Next, check the stack and remove the last item which is D and explore its adjacent nodes, F. Add F to the stack and D to explored set.
Next, we consider F since it’s the last item in the stack. It has no neighbors, therefore, we consider this a dead end. In such a case we just add the node to the explored set and backtrack if the stack is not empty.
The stack has one item. We remove it and consider the neighbors which is a single node, E. Add E to the stack and C to the explored set.
Our stack has a single item, E. We remove it for exploring. There is no need to explore this one because it’s our goal, therefore, we add it to the explored set and terminate the algorithm. The final path is;
Breadth-First Search
This algorithm is quite similar to the Depth-First search except that as opposed to using a stack to store the nodes like DFS, it uses a queue, a first-in-first-out data type. Also, BFS explores all the neighbor nodes of the current node before moving on to the nodes at the next depth level. To demonstrate this visually, we will use the last search tree and initialize node A as the root, a queue with the starting node A, and explored set.
As before, we remove the first node in our queue, explore its neighbors, add the neighbors in the queue and then add the removed node to the explored set. Node A has one neighbor, B. We consider this node.
Next, we remove B the same way and explore its neighbors, C, and D by adding them to the queue.
Now here’s when things start to get interesting because instead of removing D as in the case for DFS, we remove C since it’s the first node that came in first before D. Find neighbor nodes to C which is E, add to the queue and then add C to explored set.
The next node to remove is D. Its neighbor is F so we add F to the queue and D to the explored.
Next, we remove E. Since it’s our goal, we add it to the explored and terminate the algorithm successfully. At this point, we have solved the problem.
Notice our queue still has an item because the AI reached the goal before exploring all the nodes.
The general pseudo-code;
- Initialize a stack/queue
- initialize an empty explored set
- While the stack/queue is not empty
- Remove the last node from stack(DFS)/first from queue(BFS)
- If node is the goal, terminate and return solution, otherwise
- Find neighbor nodes of the removed node and store it in N
- Add the removed node to the explored
- For each node in N, add to stack/queue if they are not in either stack/queue or explored set
- Repeat
Let’s look at how these algorithms can work in practice by writing some code to solve a real problem. At the start of this article, I mentioned one of the classical problem in search called Maze solving. It’s the same problem we will solve using these algorithms. The code will be written purely in Python programming language.
Note; you can use any language as long as you focus on the pseudo-code and not Python syntax since it may become confusing translating Python code to other languages.
First, we will define our maze in file called map.txt, can be any name; In the maze below, b represents the AI, e the door and # are the walls. I chose the simplest but you can try with a more sophisticated maze. The algorithm with still work correctly.
#######
# # #
# # b#
# # #
e #
# #
#######
The source code for parsing the maze is on GitHub, you can take a look at maze-solver.
Running the solver using the algorithm above we get;
I found this video quite interesting and informative. It decodes the whole idea of search problems in animated robots.
Final word
Depth-First search and Breadth-First search are a kind of search algorithms that don’t use any problem specific knowledge to find a solution to a search problem. In other words, they are not so intelligent.
There are a couple of algorithms that are intelligent or use problem specific knowledge to solve a search problem. We will look at some of them in future articles. These are;
A* search algorithm
Greedy best-first search
Minimax
Alpha-beta pruning
References | https://medium.com/mindpload/uninformed-search-in-artificial-intelligence-2f5b437c4eb7 | ['Brian Mboya'] | 2020-06-15 11:41:26.054000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Algorithms'] |
A Matter of Character(s) | There is a popular saying that I will paraphrase, that goes like this — hang out with the people you want to be like.
How about you hang out with the people you like?
I get the concept of hanging out with people you want to be like, or the concept of — you are the average of the 5 people who you hang out with. But to me it’s a tad selfish and this world needs a little less selfish and a little more empathy.
It’s reminds me of surveys about what people like about their jobs. At first thought, you probably think making lots of money is what one likes most about their job. But that is not even listed as a reason in any of the survey results I have seen. Reasons included: liking their coworkers, being recognized, feeling like they were making a difference or having a say.
So I find it perplexing how many people “like” the comment about hanging out with people you want to be like. Usually the comment is made in the context of hang out with “successful” people. Normally people define success in a monetary fashion.
But then I always think this:
It is suggested that for one to become successful, they need to be around the successful. At the same time you are being told not to hang out with people that might “bring you down.” But taking your advice, if someone is successful, why would they give you the time of day? I mean, you look at the people around and say, you are not successful enough for me to be hanging out with you. Let me get better friends. So why would someone that is successful, want to hang with you or mentor you? Especially since your biggest concern is, well… you?
I would much rather have friends that stick with me through thick and thin, than were using me as a stepping stone.
The past year of Covid has made us all reflect a lot about what is most important in life. It was a year ago that I found myself writing this about myself and about having someone more successful than me, want to hang out with me. I think, what if the man that would become my husband never took a chance on someone like me. Where would I be today? When I first met him I was working a lot of overtime, living at home and making a ton of money. I started investing and was doing quite well financially. So in a way I would probably be equally or more “successful.” But I don’t know if I would be as tolerant, non judgmental, empathetic or accepting of people with differing opinions. He taught me volumes by coming down to my level, and lifting me up to his. I like to think I have been paying that forward in my later years.
So what it comes down to is this. Do you want to be self-ish, or self-less. Just a few difference in characters, but a world of difference in character. Are you going to abandon your friends to chase a more popular or successful person in hopes that they let you ride their coattails. Or are you going to walk alongside your friends, and help each other get to where you both want to be? | https://medium.com/@giulia12/a-matter-of-character-s-9b1f7a603ccd | ['Giulia Grotenhuis'] | 2021-08-05 11:40:23.438000+00:00 | ['Support', 'Friendship', 'Working Together', 'Success', 'Empahy'] |
A Look at the PUNKS Comic NFT | This is an excerpt of my bi-weekly newsletter. Read the whole thing, sub here!
One of the first NFT comics in the market (Matt Kindt made the first one, and that was an actual 1:1 NFT comic) — but PUNKS by Pixel Vault is definitely the most famous one, and is not just purely a comic book but a whole ecosystem.
ICYMI: a great recap of the Punks NFT history is here by NFT NOW.
TL:DR version:
Pixel Vault, a company that owns 16 CryptoPunks (the floor as of this writing is 53 ETH) decided instead of leaving them in a wallet doing nothing, gave these NFTs personalities and characters and thus the PUNKS comic was born.
Went live in May 2021 for .2ETH and with 10,000 copes of the first issue of Punks.
If you held, and you were one of the first 5000 holders — you would get Punks #2 for free (available in December 2021).
It gets complicated from here — but owners could HOLD, BURN or STAKE their comic for rewards — so it’s become more of a rewards game than actual comic publishing project.
I didn’t get the Punks comic NFT, too slow on the mint and too expensive now, but I found the comic via a friendly NFT holder and read it to get an idea of what they were doing. And you might be surprised to learn that the comic is the least interesting thing about the Punks comic.
What’s it about? “a comic that chronicles Beanie’s journey — from humble auction house busboy to digital art kingpin — to capitalize on the digital revolution in the Metaverse (enduring kidnappings, clowns, anons, and the mysterious Elvis Punksley, all as part of his quest). The story pays homage to NFT influencer Beanie’s obsession with Robbie Barrat’s work, while bringing CryptoPunks to life in a whimsical and creative way.”
After reading it, it feels like the Adult Swim show The Venture Brothers crossed with Lock Stock and Barrel but about crypto. It’s a very slick indie comic and I’m sure there are a lot of inside jokes here from Beanie’s life and his friends.
It’s written by Richard Galbraith with art by Australian Chris Wahl who has drawn Tank Girl and done commercial work for Marvel, DC and Hasbro.
Apparently the comic will see print and made available to those that still own the NFT and did not burn it. What is the value on the paper version as opposed to the NFT remains to be seen but you can see the allure for people that didn’t get the NFT to at least get the comic itself.
I feel the comic is just the starting point and the Tokenomics is the real mission on fractional ownership of a bunch of CryptoPunks. It makes my head hurt to understand all this, but wow what a long way to go to basically create a new DAO.
To try and sum it up, this first issue is tied to ownership of EITHER:
50% of the 16 CryptoPunks represented by $PUNKS token holders.
OR
Partnership in the Founder’s DAO, composed of 25% of the 16 CryptoPunks represented by $PUNKS token holders PLUS collective ownership of the other works in the Founder’s DAO.
The interesting note is that Pixel Vault will create and sell PUNKS Merchandise, with the profits (100%) of which will be distributed to $PUNKS Token holders. The second issue of Punks is out now.
You can track all of it here.
UPDATE: January 2, 2022
I got a hold of PUNKS #2 and so here are a few pages from it featuring the Bored Apes that will lead into my next post on the Adidas crossover with Punks.
Stay updated on pop culture NFT info and news by subscribing to my Thndr Frens newsletter here. | https://medium.com/@casey-lau/a-look-at-the-punks-comic-nft-6288eeae9783 | ['Casey Lau'] | 2022-01-08 18:30:21.854000+00:00 | ['Nft Collectibles', 'Nft', 'Cryptopunks'] |
The Geography of Space Exploration: It’s Always Political | Is Outer Space for Science and Exploration or Consumption, Escapism, and Conflict?
The past few weeks have been a good reminder that everything that happens in space is political. Though less often discussed, these recent events and various other topics also reflect that space activities are always geographical.
After SpaceX launched a sports car into the Asteroid Belt, there has been significant reflections around whether that was indeed the best use of the Falcon heavy’s upper stage.
Similarly, conversations in the space community have revolved around NASA’s budget and the purpose of publicly funded national space agencies. And, in the last week, there has been discussion regarding the International Space Station and its role in fostering cooperation, often surrounded by praise for the ISS as an ‘apolitical’ venture of human enterprise.
The International Space Agency’s funding has recently become a topic of debate, with some calls for the station to be sold to private investors. (Image Credit: Canadian Space Agency)
Many of these discussions have linked to ongoing debates of what exactly, as a place of human endeavour, space is for. Such debates are music to my ears. I’m a (human) geographer, and as a geographer, I study how humans interact with places.
To a geographer, a place like outer space is more than an empty container in which things happen. Space is what we make of it.
This is equally true for outer space as for the spaces of our everyday lives on Earth. Through processes of what geographers call ‘place-making’, different parts of the world, large and small, are given meaning, assigned value, or put to use. This is not an objective process, place-making is often based on subjective experience, values, and desires for the site in question.
We experience this all the time; for example, what to one person is simply a residential bungalow, is to another a cherished childhood home.There can also be shared place meanings, so, what to one group is a site of economic production, is to others a priceless ecosystem. What to some is a wretched hive of scum and villainy is to others a quaint cantina. As a result, place-making is contested and ever changing.
Many geographers concern themselves with how places get made, contested, remade, and the ramifications of these processes for equality and justice. Like everything, geography is political. As a geographer interested in outer space, I’m concerned with the place-making processes of non-Earth sites.
For those interested, there are (at least) three very good books, by Dr. Maria Lane (Geographies of Mars), Dr. Lisa Messari (Placing Outer Space) and Dr. Julie Klinger (Rare Earth Frontiers), that explore how outer space is being, or has been, transformed into specific places, with specific values, through human activity.
Place Making in Outer Space
One of the most important place-making processes for non-Earth sites has been the Outer Space Treaty, which is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, and has been signed by every major space-faring country in the world.
As discussed by James Clay Moltz in his book Crowded Orbits: Conflict and Cooperation in Space, the treaty emerged amid Cold War tensions as both the Americans and Soviets recognized common interests in space.
Among other things, this was the result of both sides recognizing how problematic it would be if people kept setting of nukes in space. Yes, setting off nukes in space is as bad of an idea as it sounds.
The flash of a nuclear explosion in space. (Image Credit: US Air Force, Public Domain)
I wont go into the details of the treaty, as they have been effectively summarized in a number of pieces written to commemorate the 50th anniversary. However, some of the major rules for all signatories to follow are:
The exploration and use of outer space shall benefit all peoples and nations
Space, and bodies in it, are not subject to territorial claim or appropriation
International laws (such as the UN Charter and UN Declaration of Human Rights) apply in space
No nukes or weapons of mass destruction are allowed in space
Non-governmental entities are to act in accordance as overseen by their governments
Actors in space must avoid the harmful contamination of sites in space or on the Earth
In a nutshell, the OST makes outer space for cooperative and peaceful human activity focused heavily on two key themes of exploration and cooperation.
Aside from some legalese, the OST reads almost like the Prime Directive of space exploration. It aims to reduce the negative impacts of human actions and collectively increase knowledge of ourselves and the universe for the benefit of all.
But, place-making is inherently political, and today, as there has always been, there are other values and visions for non-Earth sites being promoted within the space community. As a result, advocates of certain visions have called for the altering, updating, or outright dismissal of the OST.
Three popular reasons for such calls are: visions of asteroids as sites of mining for ‘rare earth elements’ (which are in fact not rare); Mars as a site of colonization and escape from the coming apocalypse; and Earth orbit (or beyond) as a site of increased militarization.
Each of these claims remakes space as a much different place than for science and exploration and largely contradicts the spirit of the OST. In my humble opinion, considering all the possibilities for investment into outer space, all three are less-than-stellar ideas.
For a geographer, such calls are disputes about what (and who) non-Earth places are for; discussions of place…in space. This process is no different than environmental politics here on Earth, and despite many utopian narratives in science fiction, politics don’t stop in outer space. In short, people are typically gonna argue about who, and what, a place is for, that’s a good thing, that’s the political process. Further, as we go to space, we bring with us any prejudices and flaws in the politics from which we launched.
While I respect the right to alternative visions of outer space, I also reserve my own right to resist those ideas for which I have not yet, or am unlikely to be, convinced of their merit.
To me, asteroids aren’t places that facilitate conspicuous consumption, Mars isn’t a place for colonization or escapism, and space, as a whole, isn’t a place for aggressive military endeavours. While I am open to being convinced otherwise, below are the reasons I, as a geographer, don’t subscribe to place-making processes around the aforementioned ideas.
Consumption, Escape, and Conflict
When it comes to mining asteroids for “rare” metals, it essentially comes down to the fact that it is unnecessary and encourages ongoing wasteful resource consumption here on Earth.
Given all the other things we could be doing in space, rather than mining these materials, we should be: working to reduce needless consumption of them, mandating ethical mining practices on Earth, practicing responsible e-waste remediation, and funding the development of recycling technologies.
In my opinion, we should focus on the most necessary uses of these “rare” metals rather than ignore their problem just to buy new phones every six months.
Is it truly more sensible to fly to outer space and mine asteroids than address waste and consumption here on Earth? As every grade school student knows: reduce, reuse, recycle.
E-waste disposal sites such as this are growing at alarming rates with massive environmental impacts (Image Credit: United Nations Environment Program)
As for escaping to Mars. While humans exploring Mars for scientific reasons some time in the future sounds okay to me, investing in ‘colonization’ and permanent residency on the Red Planet is an escape from reality. Frankly, I have yet to be thoroughly convinced that humans going to Mars is a worthwhile venture. I can’t help but think this perspective isn’t related to my work in climate change policy where the researchers and government officials I speak with are uniformly, and chronically, underfunded.
Bluntly, no claim of ‘needing to be a multi-planetary species’ makes any sense, or is worth a dollar of public investment. Invest in Martian exploration for science, yes, for residency, no. Even if you believe an imminent event will somehow make Earth worse to live on than Mars (which it wont) we should confront the realities of things like human caused climate change, or potential asteroid impacts, and make the changes needed so that we all survive and thrive.
Currently, we don’t need to fantasize about, or invest public funds into, Mars colonies as an escape from Armageddon. There are much better, more equitable, things to spend our money on (not to mention the entire issue of planetary contamination).
Exploring Mars has been invaluable, but its unclear what benefits would come from investing in permanent residency (Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), J. Bell (ASU), M. Wolff (Space Science Institute))
Finally, as the Outer Space Treaty suggests, we need to continue with diplomacy as the means to avoid space-based conflict. There is no need to promote a tax-payer funded cosmic arms race that benefits the same old war profiteers and foreign policy hawks.
Militarization of space is a long-discussed topic, and frankly not something I could consider myself an expert on compared to those who study it everyday.
While security is important, if any nation really wants to invest billions into orbital infrastructure to enhance human security, I vote they do so through continued investment into navigation, communications, and Earth observation satellites. Technologies that help prevent disasters, connect communities, and address climate change.
Space Advocacy: Now Contains Ethics
Arguments of place in space are not ‘making space exploration political’, but more accurately, making the politics of space exploration more transparent, and opening the processes to more voices.
In doing so, I am open to questions of whether outer space can have sites for both science and commodification, peace and conflict, or unappropriated and appropriated territory. Space is, after all, quite large…but in my opinion, things like private property, escapism, and increasing military activity are Pandora’s Boxes, so to speak, once they are opened there is probably no going back (same for planetary contamination).
Any activities that might lead to these problematic processes need to be heavily reviewed and debated democratically by international and local communities before they occur.
They need to go through a very political process which reflects the very political place-making ideas that they are. Luckily, a sort of international framework already exists in the form of the Outer Space Treaty, and the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs.
Domestically, national space agencies need to reflect the interests of all voters, not just space advocates (or people like me: space science and exploration advocates).
For myself, the Outer Space Treaty gets it right when it comes to what, and who, space is for (for the most part, as orbital debris is a bit complicated). To me, space is for everyone willing to abide by international law, space is for non-exclusive scientific inquiry and exploration.
Space, fundamentally, is a place for answering questions such as: how we (and everything else in the solar system) got here, how we stay here without destroying ourselves or the species around us, how we make the Earth a better place for everyone…oh…and, yes astrobiologists, whether or not we are alone in the universe.
Personally, I like science and exploration, and to me, that’s what space is for. This position is a reflection of my own ideological perspectives, because place-making is political. In my opinion, space science advocates should never insist that space exploration is apolitical; it never has been and never will be.
In making outer space in the 21st Century my very political vote goes to preserving the Moon, Mars, and other bodies, as places of cooperative, non-exclusive, scientific investigation. Frankly, I vote that we give the Outer Space Treaty many more anniversaries.
What humans do in space will always be intimately connected with what humans do on Earth. (Image Credit Albin Berlin)
Danny Bednar (Twitter: @SpaceProfessor2) is a PhD candidate and instructor in the Department of Geography at Western University in London, ON, Canada. He researches and teaches courses on climate change adaptation, geopolitics, and space exploration. All views are his own. | https://danny-bednar.medium.com/space-exploration-its-always-political-and-its-always-about-geography-8a4cf3a8d3ca | ['Danny Bednar'] | 2020-02-12 03:18:24.719000+00:00 | ['Space', 'Climate Change', 'Science', 'Mars', 'Spacex'] |
17. Buy | I am fed up with the buying philosophy of life.
Empty people filling their lives by doing things constantly and buying things constantly. People sharing the things they by on social media constantly. People sharing images of what they do, where they go, constantly. People you can not know anything about except their consuming habits and the places they go to spend their time and money. Not much else. Some activities are meaningful, and tell you a bit about their priorities in life, but that is all there is. People who are robots consuming and doing things. No reflection, no meaningful interactions, honest human interactions. It is a flat showcase of void activity and senseless consumerism.
I am fed up of the city we live in, a city which leads you to consume. Malls. Shopping centers. Paid activities. People’s favorite topic of conversation is what you bought, what you did, what you will do, what you will buy, what you will sell, what you will borrow, what you will buy second hand, what you will get rid of, what space left you have, what space you need to free. It is all about having and not having, buying and selling, doing and redoing.
There is absolutely no perspective, pause, and understanding of human condition.
I am surrounded by human beings who are choosing to act like robots. When robots become more present in our societies, these people will be totally disposable.
Dear daughter, do not forget to remain a human being. You can see the world from the eyes of a human being. Uncertainty, doubt, hope and poetry are totally fine. They will give meaning to your life. Buying and doing are not enough unless they are meaningful and serve your own purpose as a human being. | https://medium.com/@fatheranddaughter/17-buy-d7b2401bc61e | ['Father'] | 2020-12-09 04:44:14.297000+00:00 | ['Consumerism', 'Robots', 'Father And Daughter'] |
Integrating BPM and RPA — From strategy to practice | Announcing our joint webinar with RST Software Masters
With the release 7.14 of Camunda’s BPM platform, their boffins managed to take a huge step towards seamless integration of process-engine based orchestration — aka. BPM — and Robotic Process Automation — aka. RPA. Perfect timing to take a non-vendor look at the technical aspects of integration and failure handling. Alongside that, in our upcoming webinar “Integrating BPM & RPA — From Strategy to Practice” we will discuss BPM, RPA and their combination from a strategic point of view whilst also providing our ideas for a methodical approach.
Full speed ahead: Our friends from the Polish RST Software Masters are also on board for this joint webinar to share their expertise with us!
When? 25th Nov, 4 pm
Want to learn more? For information and to register, visit: https://www.holisticon.de/en/event/webinar-bpm-rpa/ | https://medium.com/holisticon-consultants/integrating-bpm-and-rpa-from-strategy-to-practice-9b3d05052089 | ['Kali Richter'] | 2020-11-10 13:10:31.950000+00:00 | ['Bpm', 'Rpa Tools', 'Webinar'] |
Replika Chatbot- Virtual Friend | Replika, made by using AI, is basically a chatbot who is willing to be your friend, without you putting much effort. It can insert human emotions into conversations. Replika was created by EUGENIA KUYDA,a software developer. She wanted to achieve something more than that of voice assistants and home robots. It is a fact that AI, with its innovations, has made daily tasks easy. For example, you can get the weather forecast using Siri. Contrary to this, Replika offers you a kind of friendship which is hard to expect of humans these days, keeping in view the fact that every human carries enough emotional weight of his own that it somehow unfair to load them with more in the name of camaraderie. If a person is feeling down or wants to talk to someone, Replika is there for them 24/7, providing them with a judgement-free environment. Its just about a conversation between you and your Replika. Replika gives you many benefits like positive thinking, stress counselling and socializing. At the same time, you can also explore your personality as Replica learns to see the world from your eyes; It’s more about you than about being Replica. More than 2 million people have downloaded the Replika Application. In short, it is a digital friend with whom to cherish victories, wailing failures and nevertheless trade weird internet memes.
Need of Replika:
So here is a million-dollar, question why we need Replika -a Virtual Friend? On the other hand, it is a known fact that developers have created many chatbots which tell you the distance of sun from your planet, or reminders related to your deadlines and birthdays. In contrast humans need something to be like: “How’s your day? You seem a little upset today!! Is everything ok?” So, Kuyda considered this idea and made Replika to recognize human emotions. It can clearly detect your mood and when you are feeling a little low, it can send you YouTube links of nice and calm music and one has to admit that AI has got better taste in music than most of its creators. If it is possible to teach machines how to think then why not we can teach them how to feel.
AI behind Replika:
Nowadays, AI is everywhere. AI is making its root deep into everything we have- from our cell phones and laptops to our vehicles and home appliances. Artificial intelligence is now used in recognizing emotion. Kuyda uses a deep learning model which is “sequence-to-sequence”, which masters to mimic how humans talk in order to simulate conversation. She used AI specifically to recognize human emotion. Moreover, she used this technology to build a bot which talks to you which clarify your thought patterns and indulge you in positive thinking.
Python Libraries:
Following are some python libraries used in Replika-chatbot:
● Flask
● Pandas
● Numpy
● Requests
● Sci-kit learn
Model:
You can either train model from scratch or just use the already trained-model by doing fine-tuning of it. In building replica, model was trained on a preprocessed/cleaned Twitter corpus- approximately 50 million dialogues (11 Gb of text data). And emotions classifier was used to label each utterance with one of these 5 emotions: “anger”, “neutral”, “joy”, “sadness” and “fear”. These labels were used in training the model. So, later the emotions can be predicted.
The following are some questions that were used in the validation of the model.
Following code snippet is used to fetch data and respond to it using trained model.
Human-Robot interaction:
There is a debate whether robots or chatbots should become placeholders for emotional relationships with real humans. A lot of work is already done testing the limits of how much machines can learn to mimic and respond to human emotion.
At the same time, the chatbot Woebot, is also withstand as “your charming virtual/robot friend who is ready to listen, 24/7”, uses AI to give you emotional support and talk therapy, just like your real friend and therapist. Woebot is also fairly same as Replika. Moreover, many other projects also use AI in detection of human emotions, by recognizing and responding to the nuances in human vocal and facial expressions. Cognito- a call-monitoring service uses AI to sense the people vocals on the phone with customer service. Cognito deals with people frustration.
Fun Fact: Replika is trying to replicate you:
When Replika launched, It was basically a messaging application where users can spend hours and hours answering tens of questions to build a digital library of data about themselves. This library is run through a neural network to build a bot. It is fun way for users to see how they sound in messages to others. It is more like an extreme version of listening to recordings of yourself. Replika, can be a digital twin to serve as a friend for the lonely, a living memorial for the dead, created for those left behind, or even one day, a version of ourselves that can carry out all the mundane tasks that we humans have to do, but never want to.
Replica is like an empty balloon. By talking to Replica, not only you are benefiting from it but Replica itself is growing under your very own shade. You fill that empty balloon with the air of your own personality, enabling it to take flight.
Replica tries to mirror you. So, if after some time, you grow tired of your ‘ own replica’, you are basically tired of your own reflection.
Final Thoughts:
It’s difficult to guess what replika might become in the future. I think after mastering to impersonate your individual preferences, mannerism and patterns of speech, it would act as your ultimate companion or more likely your copy that can reply to the mails on your behalf or even write articles. In addition, Replika may get a body. Replika can also remain a chatting application where you can come to gain some positivity or to share your sadness.
Contrary to this, the robots or chatbots remarkably resemble humans; The creation always has some colours of its creators. Replika- like all bots in the market is also a machine. On the other hand, Kuyda hopes that as time passes, the tech will mature enough to serve masses that open the application every day, looking for someone to talk to. And by making Replika’s underlying code freely available to developers, Kuyda hopes to see more products on the market aligned with the same goal.
References:
https://medium.com/@replika/dear-replika-2d09b0bc8980
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ai.replika.app&hl=en&gl=US
https://www.wired.com/story/replika-open-source/
https://classic.qz.com/machines-with-brains/1018126/lukas-replika-chatbot-creates-a-digital-representation-of-you-the-more-you-interact-with-it/ | https://medium.com/@sidrakhan567890/replika-chatbot-virtual-friend-29d993c884fa | ['Sidra Khan'] | 2020-12-26 09:57:23.514000+00:00 | ['Beginner', 'Chatbot Development', 'Hci'] |
Something You Really DO Want To Know | There comes a time each year when it’s time to get down to it and start planning out some goals for the next year. The first step I take in this process is to always take some time to look back at the previous year and figure out what worked, what can be improved, and, most importantly, what I achieved. Then I start looking ahead and planning. But I don’t do this on my own.
A great way to go about this is to get feedback on both those topics from those around you, especially from those who work for you. I promise, it really is something you want to know. Feedback can be hard to hear, but possibly one of the most valuable gifts you will get this holiday season.
Asking for feedback can seem like a difficult task. Maybe you think they won’t tell you the truth (or worse, they will!). However, this tiny act of asking for feedback has a ripple effect of benefit. Obviously, you learn how to further improve as a leader, but also the employee feels valued, heard, and empowered — loyalty is increased and, in turn, productivity!
It’s all good but it only happens if you ask AND if you ask the right way.
Don’t be intimidated by the prospect of asking for an honest opinion. All you need is to find an effective method so that you feel prepared and confident. Click HERE to read more and to develop your method! | https://medium.com/@mtlederman/something-you-really-do-want-to-know-c6c29bd06808 | ['Michelle Tillis Lederman'] | 2020-12-17 14:16:47.586000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Opinion', 'Goals', 'Confidence', 'Productivity'] |
Renovate Bot. Automated Dependency Updates | Renovate Bot
Generally when we are going to start a new project, we will use the last dependencies, but over time these dependencies will become outdated. if we do nothing, and we leave them on outdated version, we will go through several things:
- Security issues fixe
- New feature
- Performance improvement …
All this because we have not updated our dependencies, the day we will realize it will be difficult to catch up .
In fact, doing updates manually is a bit boring and it takes us a lot of time, one of the solutions is to use Renovate Bot, and this is the subject of our Article, this tool will allow us to automate the process of updating our dependencies.
How we can use it ?
Renovate offers us two possibilities to install it, we can install it directly on our repository as a plugin or we can install it in our machines in self hosting mode.
In this article we will talk about renovate in plugin mode, if you want to install it directly in your machine this link should help you https://docs.renovatebot.com/self-hosting/ .
Use Renovate in github (this is valid for gitlab, bitbucket ...)
As we have just said, we can use renovate as a plugin, we will find it in github marketplace, by clicking on the renovate plugin, we will be taken to the description page which contains the installation link and the configuration access.
Github Marketplace
After the installation, we will have to be configure our bot , at the beginning you have to choose the repository which we want to activate renovate, after this step, you will receive a “Configure Renovate” Pull Request for each repository for which you have activated renovate, you should to merge this PL, in order to activate Renovate, and that’s all you need to work with Renovate.
How does this tool work ?
Now that we have installed Renovate, it’s time to understand how it works, In fact it’s really easy, this diagram will summarize the workflow of Renovate
Renovate workflow
Firstly, renovate will launch a job which will scan our dependencies, in case it finds an obsolete dependency, it will systematically create a branch with the name of the dependency to update, then it will update this dependency and will create a Pull Request.
Update by Renovate Bot
If the PR is approved, Renovate will remove the orphan branch, this is Basically how Renovate works, there is another type of Pull request created by Renvoate called pin dependencies, this PR should be merged at the beginning , pin dependencies is a global update of all dependencies.
The question running through your mind now is: “everything you just said is great but is it enough to automate the process of updating our dependencies?” is the answer is not really, in fact what is being done at this point does not allow end-to-end automation.
We have activated Renovate with the default configuration, and as we saw in Renovate workflow there is always human intervention to approve the pull requestion.
How can we optimize Renovate's workflow so that it can be automated from end to end?
Well to do that we can we can overload the default configuration through the renovate.json configuration file, this file is created during the “Configure Renovate” pull request, at the beginning it will look like this:
renovate.json file
There is so much we can do with this config file, We have the possibility of authorizing the automerge on minor version, patch … there is even a way to make automerge on marjeur version but it will be a little “dangerous” to do that, here is an example of a renovate configuration which allows to do that:
configuration to automerge update forminor/patch version of a dependency
Through this configuration, we can say that we have taken a step towards our goal of automation, but this is just for the minor and patch version, as we said for the other versions it is still “dangerous” to allow automerge but it’s possible by carrying out controls on the PRs we will see how, we can also configure Renovate to launch jobs in a specific schedule.
this configuration will allow us to tell Renovate to launch the jobs between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., and every weekend for 24 hours.
Run checks for each Pull Request before doing automerge:
This is the best part, we can create a job (with gitlab, Travis CI, Jenkins) which will trigger automated tests after each renovate pull request or build our project, we can go even further, we can configure your renovate.json file so that it allows automerge on the Pull Requests that have passed our check of our CI job.
Renovate workflow after the CI Job
By doing this, we can say that we have automate the process of updating our dependencies, in case the checks do not pass, it is necessary to change things in our source code and these things Renovate cannot do it unfortunately.
Conclusion:
In my opinion working with a tool like Renovate bot for the automation of the update process, should become necessary, this will prevent us from wasting our time doing this manually and especially avoid making migrations each time.
If you are wondering what else you are able to do and automate with the GitHub apps and actions just have a look at its Marketplace.
I hope you liked it,if you’ve got any questions, suggestions, or feedback in general, don’t hesitate to reach out on any of the social networks or by mail. | https://medium.com/@yousssef-elhayanii/renvate-bot-bda1c5c6ca61 | ['Youssef Elhayani'] | 2020-12-20 21:50:00.597000+00:00 | ['Updates', 'Bots', 'Github', 'Git', 'Dependencies'] |
An Introduction to Dash Platform, DAPI, and Drive | Following the open sourcing of Dash Core Group’s (DCG) project repos, we are excited to provide the community and the general public with more insight into our product development. Before going further, I would like to provide background for our product thinking, through a high-level introduction to the Dash payments network and its vision for the future.
Dash is a leading cryptocurrency and p2p network, allowing individuals to send money to anyone, anywhere, for a nominal network fee, typically less than one cent ($0.01 USD). DCG is one of the many organizations working on behalf of the Dash network. Our mission is to build the most user friendly payments network in the world. In that regard, our primary efforts have been focused on evolving our network technology and forging partnerships with organizations and businesses. Evolution, DCG’s vision for upgrading the Dash network, involves several distinct initiatives including Core protocol upgrades and the development of the most user-friendly crypto wallet to date.
In order to facilitate the development of this new wallet, as well as many other use cases, DCG is building Dash Platform, an application development platform leveraging Dash’s masternode network and blockchain. Comprised of two main architectural components, Drive and DAPI, these components turn the Dash p2p network into a cloud, through which developers will be able to integrate their applications. For our MVP release, the platform will primarily act as a Database as a Service, using data contracts to define custom data structures for applications, storing that application data on our masternode network, and notarizing that data via our blockchain.
While still in active development, the DCG team is happy to invite the community to review our code, assess our security, and contribute toward our development as we progress toward our v1.0 release.
Next, let’s delve into the two main components comprising Dash Platform: Drive (decentralized storage) and DAPI (decentralized API). These reference implementations are written in Node.js.
Drive, Decentralized Storage on the Dash Masternode Network
In order to integrate applications with Dash Platform, it is necessary for developers to create a data contract. This data contract will describe the data structures comprising their application. It’s analogous to creating a database schema for a document-oriented database like MongoDB.
Any data created by users of your application will be validated and verified against this contract. Upon successful validation/verification, your application data will be uploaded to Drive, where it will be stored on our masternode network. In exchange for hosting this data, masternode owners will be compensated using fees charged to users, similar to traditional transaction fees. These fees will be based on user-requested data operations such as reading, writing, and storage duration. Our PoSe (proof-of-service) algorithm will be updated to keep track of whether masternodes are hosting Drive, thereby making them eligible for compensation in exchange for their service to the network.
Data is uploaded to Drive via state transitions, which are special transactions that describe a transition in your application’s state. A record of your application’s state transitions is stored in Drive, allowing you to view your application data at different points in time. This provides potent functionality for use cases that require high levels of trust between multiple, independent parties. This functionality facilitates the access of records which are secured and verified according to our consensus protocol, rendering them auditable by any involved party. Some example use cases include chain-of-custody, digital rights management, supply chain, property records, and audit management.
Your application’s state view is the current state of its data. This data is stored in a MongoDB instance, allowing for quick access. Your application’s historical state transitions are stored in IPFS, which also propagates your application data to other nodes in our network. Consequently, application data is replicated several times over, protecting application data against any individual node downtime in our network.
DAPI, Dash’s Decentralized API
Clients will be able to integrate their applications to Dash Platform via DAPI (dæ-pee), our distributed, decentralized API. DAPI is an HTTP API exposing JSON-RPC endpoints. Through these endpoints, developers will be able to send and retrieve application data via Drive, as well as query the blockchain, eventually replicating the functionality of Insight through a more developer-friendly interface. In effect, DAPI provides developers with the same access and security of a full node, without the cost and maintenance overhead.
Developers will use DAPI to submit state transitions for storage in Drive. The fees for submitting these state transitions will be comprised of a fixed transaction cost, similar to a normal transaction fee, and a variable cost determined by the size of the data being stored. In a typical p2p network, excessive leeching behavior can drain a network of its speed and efficiency. This free-rider problem is solved through our fee structure, which ensures that masternodes are adequately compensated at a level that supports the demands of the network.
Unlike traditional APIs which have a single point of failure, DAPI allows clients to connect to different instances depending on resource availability in the Dash network. If a masternode goes offline, taking its DAPI instance with it, then clients will be able to seamlessly connect to and retrieve their application data via another instance.
Developers will have the option to connect to DAPI directly or use a client library provided by Dash Core Group. This initial client library, dapi-client, is a relatively simple API wrapper, providing function calls to our endpoints. Eventually, a more robust client library will be released that will incorporate advanced functionality, aiding developers with more complex platform development and payment processing use cases.
Next Steps
Our immediate goal is to continue active development of DAPI and Drive in order to support the release of the DashPay wallet. Consequently, Dash Platform will be available for development as part of Release 1.0. After this initial release we will continue evolving the platform, eventually providing developers with a full stack for development. We are actively exploring additional features such as object storage, data triggers, sharding, developer tools and frameworks, off-network state transition storage, and more. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into Dash Platform and Evolution, you can view the design document here. On behalf of the DCG members working on this product, I’m excited to invite the community to join us in the evolution of Dash by sharing your thoughts and your PRs. | https://blog.dash.org/an-introduction-to-dash-platform-dapi-and-drive-9d080d6e89c9 | ['Dana Alibrandi'] | 2019-05-20 20:27:37.971000+00:00 | ['Fintech', 'Finance', 'Developer', 'Dash', 'Blockchain'] |
Book Review: Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. Anderson | Book Review: Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. Anderson
A long-time fan of the progressive rock band Rush, I was excited when I heard that the group’s new release, Clockwork Angels (2012), would be a concept album. Then came word that fantasy and science-fiction author Kevin J. Anderson was writing a novel based on the album’s lyrics, which spin a steampunk odyssey conceived by Rush lyricist and drummer Neil Peart. I pre-ordered a copy and, when it arrived, quickly read it from cover to cover.
Clockwork Angels: The Novel (2012), tells the story of Owen Hardy, an apprentice apple farmer in the land of Albion. A ruler called the Watchmaker organizes every aspect of life in Albion with mechanical order and regularity, so that each citizen need merely follow the path that he provides. This is the Stability, according to which “Everything has its place, and every place has its thing.” Owen Hardy fully expects to settle into his predetermined course, but he also dreams of life outside his village, and upon an invitation from a mysterious stranger, he runs away, runs afoul of the Watchmaker’s law, and travels to other lands, encountering carnies, thieves, wreckers and the Watchmaker’s antithesis, the Anarchist.
Anderson’s prose is uninspired but possesses a simple elegance perfect for a story that is essentially one long parable. He puts just the right amount of flesh on the album’s lyrics to highlight the concept of free will steering a course between Order and Chaos. Summaries of the novel make it sound like the typical Bildungsroman of which the fantasy genre has way too many, but despite my low tolerance for dreamy-boy-goes-out-into-a-world-of-adventure stories, this one never struck me as cliché and I was never bored.
In part, Peart’s conceptual work is to thank for that. As I read, I caught myself thinking more than once that I was grateful that a musician (and a drummer, no less), rather than a novelist, had created this story and its setting. Rush’s music and Peart’s lyrics have always had their own distinct style, and that comes across in the novel. Fans of the music will recognize the philosophical motifs Peart has woven into Rush’s lyrics over the years — and many of those lyrics are sprinkled throughout the text. (On first reading, I caught quotes from as far back as 1975’s Fly by Night.)
I can’t help but relate the novel to my other recent reading. The Watchmaker’s Stability can be described as a “totally administered society,” a phrase I ran across in Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (2011) by Stephen Eric Bronner. The Frankfurt School of philosophers believed that in a totally administered society, whether that of Stalinist Russia or capitalist America, there is little room for true individuality. The totally administered society has ways of keeping us in our place.
The Anarchist of Clockwork Angels represents the exact opposite — total lawlessness — although with his wild appetite for destruction, he’s more of a nihilist of the negative sort portrayed in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed (1872). While he possesses a certain evil charm at first, in the end he’s no more likeable than Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, the slimy catalyst for ill deeds in The Possessed. In their crusade against the strictures of society, both are perfectly willing to destroy lives, but they have nothing positive to offer in place of what they tear down.
The beauty of Clockwork Angels is that Owen Hardy chooses neither the Watchmaker nor the Anarchist. In the words of the old Rush song “Freewill,” he chooses not to decide. He chooses to make his own way through life, with all the uncertainty, mistakes, suffering and joy that such a messy pilgrim’s progress entails. Owen’s life with the Magnusson Carnival Extravaganza is one apart from the ideologies of the Watchmaker and Anarchist, who would impose themselves upon him and use him for their own purposes.
Even apart from the story, the novel is full of perks for the bibliophile. It has numerous full-color illustrations by long-time Rush album artist Hugh Syme, and they are among the most impressive I have encountered since I was in the sixth grade poring over the illustrations by the Brothers Hildebrandt in The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. The back of the book includes the lyrics to Clockwork Angels: The Album and an afterword by Neil Peart, with photos from a hiking trip on which he and Anderson, friends even before this collaboration, brainstormed for the novel.
I’ve actually never been much of a fan of Kevin J. Anderson, but this book has made me reconsider. On his website, AnderZone, he says that Neil Peart’s favorite work of his is The Saga of Seven Suns series, so I have placed the first book, Hidden Empire, on my Long List of Books to Read. | https://medium.com/@thephilosophe/book-review-clockwork-angels-by-kevin-j-anderson-228079067e17 | ['J.P. Williams'] | 2021-06-22 00:36:09.453000+00:00 | ['Science Fiction', 'Books', 'Music', 'Reading', 'Rock'] |
Tips and Tricks to Seamlessly Migrate BigQuery Dataset Across Regions | Navigating cross region data migration can be tricky
I have recently migrated 23 Terabytes of BigQuery datasets from the US region to Sydney which includes numerous Google Analytics datasets. Many would think that in this world of driverless cars, space travel and AI powered chatbots that this feat is merely a voice command away — but beware my friends, the road ahead is not short of perils.
Understand your options
What’s the game plan?
Your best bet before embarking on such a journey would be to understand the various options that you have and to understand them well. Some of the options that I’ve consulted included:
Select the best option that suits your needs
The following requirements were carefully considered when selecting the most suitable approach:
The resulting dataset should have the same name as the original dataset as there are hundreds of Tableau dashboards and BigQuery Saved Queries that depends on these datasets. A name change would require many more days or weeks of effort to reconfigure each dashboard and saved query. Not to mention how boring and monotonous work would be! As such, option 3 above was not ideal because the BigQuery Data Transfer Service for Cross Region Copy would only copy 1000 tables at a time and multiple runs had to be triggered. The copy process would also have to be repeated twice as datasets cannot have the same name even if they reside in different regions. Thus, the first copy attempt will copy the tables into a dataset of a different name before the original dataset can be dropped and the final dataset recreated with the original name and tables copied back into it. It would just take forever to go through the hundred or so datasets.
There must not be any historical data loss. Each table in the dataset should have a checksum generated before and after the migration to ensure that the integrity of data is still intact. Options 1, 2 and 3 above did not automate the generation of the checksum and would have involved the creation of a custom script to perform the task. The following query was used to generate the checksum of a table:
SELECT BIT_XOR(FARM_FINGERPRINT(TO_JSON_STRING(t))) AS checksum
FROM `dataset.table` t
There must not be more than 24h loss of Google Analytics data. Google Analytics exports data to BigQuery in a batched or streaming mode. In batched mode, intraday batches are performed 3 times a day. Each intraday batch overrides the previous batch entirely. As the Google Analytics to BigQuery export will be disabled prior to migration and re-established after the migration, data will not be lost so long as the link is re-established prior to the last intraday batch. There will however be data loss in streaming mode as deltas are sent in 15 minute intervals.
All metadata and IAM bindings must be preserved during the migration. Metadata such as table descriptions and labels as well as custom IAM bindings on the dataset level are not copied across by code in options 1 and 2.
Views, scheduled queries and authorised views must be migrated at the same time. Neither option 1, 2 or 3 above copies views, scheduled queries and authorised views.
Based on the requirements above, I settled on creating a golang program to perform the migration as it checks all the requirements, is highly performant, and is just a pure joy for me to write.
Pitfalls to avoid
Watch out for those gotchas
In writing my migration program, the following pitfalls were thoroughly considered. Please note that these considerations may apply to other approaches as well.
Quota and limits for BigQuery Extract and Load. There is a 10TB extract limit per day across all projects. So if your dataset is larger than 10TB, you may have to either consider breaking the migration into batches, or use BigQuery Storage API.
Don’t forget about API rate limits especially the general request per second and concurrent requests per user limits! Sometimes I get a bit too trigger happy with parallel processing especially when goroutines make it so simple on golang.
The extracted file format should also be carefully considered. Tables can be extracted as CSV, AVRO, Newline Delimited JSON. Before deciding on the red or blue pill, study the advantages and disadvantages of each format. I went with the Newline Delimited JSON to preserve data formats and nested records.
When copying large amounts of exported data across regional buckets, performance is a concern. gsutil even with the `-m` argument and from a VM in the GCP network was not suitable. I leveraged on the Google Cloud Storage Transfer Service for better performance
Don’t forget about pricing considerations. The following operations should be included into your cost analysis of the data migration activity:
Executing queries to generate checksums performs full table scans
Exporting data to Google Cloud Storage buckets incurs storage costs
Creating backup datasets incurs extra storage costs
Creating new datasets negates long term storage discounts
Copying data to buckets across regions incurs network egress charges
Another kicker is view, and scheduled queries interdependencies. Views and scheduled queries can reference tables and views from other datasets making them interdependent and must be migrated together. To discover the relationships, I used tools like Graphviz. There are also numerous online version of this tool. The order to which these views and scheduled queries are restored is also paramount.
Ready, set, go!
Time to kickstart the migration, grab a coffee and a lengthy book.
The time has come for you to finally run the finely tuned migration approach that you have designed. You have dotted all the Is and crossed all the Ts. You brewed a large pot of coffee and have slouched into your comfy chair — but WAIT … there is one last piece of advice.
Stagger your migrations. Divide your datasets into groups based on criticality to the business. Migrate datasets that are of lowest importance to the business first before moving onto more complex and riskier datasets that you cannot afford to get wrong. This gives you a chance to learn from the experience and further fine tune the migration approach.
All the best! | https://servian.dev/tips-and-tricks-to-seamlessly-migrate-bigquery-dataset-across-regions-45e58ef9ed | ['Ethan Siew'] | 2019-08-16 01:42:27.322000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Data Migration', 'Bigquery', 'Google Cloud Platform'] |
What League of Legends Coaches Can Learn from the New England Patriots | H2K’s Konstantinos “Forg1ven” Tzortziou. Image courtesy of Riot Games Flickr
The dust has settled on the 2016 League of Legends World Championship Group Stage. Looking back over the past two weeks of competition, I found myself asking an unusual question:
“Why are so many top players getting to play their signature champion?”
Considering each team is only guaranteed six games, each match has a significant impact on whether a team can make it out of their group. So, why was H2K’s Konstantinos “Forg1ven” Tzortziou able to play Caitlyn five times during groups? Why was Samsung’s Lee “Crown” Min-ho effortlessly dominating on Viktor in three of his games? Would three wins and a 23.5 KDA be enough to warrant a ban on Tigers jungler Wangho “Peanut” Han? It’s inexcusable to allow TSM’s Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg to play Syndra once, let alone twice. Counter Logic Gaming’s mid laner Jaehyun “HuHi” Choi’s would have loved to play Aurelion Sol more than once.
The amount of comfort champions making it through pick and ban during groups was befuddling. Targeting an opponents strengths is not a foreign concept in eSports or traditional sports, but there is one organization that may be better at it than everybody else.
Don’t Let Their Best Beat You
Regardless of what you think of The New England Patriots, their resume speaks for itself. During the Bill Belichick era, the Patriots have a regular season record of 191–69 (.735), a post season record of 22–9 (.710) and four Super Bowl titles in six trips.
The Patriots win a lot.
The start of this season has brought nothing but praise for Bill Belichick and his coaching staff. Leading the Patriots to a 3–1 start without quarterback Tom Brady, Belichick continues to make an argument for why he’s one of the greatest coaches in NFL history.
So, what makes the Patriots so successful? Planning and execution come to mind, but part of Belichick’s coaching philosophy is echoed by his father Steve:
“Be strong against a team’s strength. Be alert for anything that they have shown. If they do beat you, make them do it with something they haven’t shown before” — Steve Belichick
The Patriots shut down the top option. They took away the deep ball against the Arizona Cardinals, forcing them to pass short. They neutralized the Houston Texans defence by throwing quick passes and scrambling with rookie quarterback Jacoby Brissett. They will do anything to keep the opponents best players down, forcing the secondary and tertiary options to make winning plays.
Samsung’s Lee “Crown” Min-ho. Image courtesy of Riot Games Flickr
Don’t Let Them Play Their Game
Banning out the opponents best player is not a new concept when it comes to competitive League of Legends. The GE Tigers bans of Graves, Lucian and Lulu against SK Gaming during the IEM World Championship Katowice is an excellent example of targeting an opponents comfort picks. The “GE bans” effectively nullified SK Gaming’s comfortable lane shove strategy, leaving them unable to adjust in the playoffs.
As the eight remaining teams head into the best-of-five quarterfinals, the pick and ban becomes more complex. Each match-up will undoubtedly create its own meta with unique champion priorities. It might be worth taking a page out of Bill Belichick’s playbook and target the comfort picks and strategies the teams have already shown. If they do beat you, make them do it with something they haven’t shown before. | https://medium.com/the-cube/comfortable-domination-6007042f3401 | ['Andrew Chaisson'] | 2016-10-12 02:32:10.470000+00:00 | ['League of Legends', 'Esports', 'Gaming', 'Sports'] |
Bitcoin: What is Bitcoin? Complete Guide 2021 | Bitcoin : Definition
Bitcoin: How does it work?
Bitcoin: Decentralization
Bitcoin: Who accepts Bitcoin?
Bitcoin: Who determines the price of Bitcoin?
We will try to understand and explain what Bitcoin is today; its characteristics, functionalities, usefulness, potential use and how it works.
Bitcoin : Definition
Etymologically, the word Bitcoin comes from the two words bit and coin;
- Bit is a unit of binary information and
- Coin designates a token.
Bitcoin is an innovative payment network and a new form of unit of value.
It is the very first virtual or cryptocurrency. Being completely virtual, Bitcoins do not exist in a physical form.
These currencies are kept on a public book to which everyone has transparent access.
In other words, Bitcoin is a crypto-active encryption that designates virtual assets stored on an electronic medium that allows a community of users to use it as a means of payment without having to resort to so-called “traditional” currencies such as the euro or the dollar.
These crypto-actives or also called cryptocurrency are neither issued nor guaranteed by banks or governments. However, they can be used to make transactions such as purchasing products and services.
Bitcoin: Why was Bitcoin created?
We remember the financial crisis of 2008 that devastated the world economy; it was called a “krash”, marked by a liquidity crisis and sometimes solvency crises at both the bank and state levels, leading to a scarcity of credit to businesses and the insolvency of many borrowing households.
The crash began with difficulties encountered by low-income American households who found themselves unable to repay the loans they had been granted for the purchase of their homes.
Following this crisis, we can point out that:
In the United States: 9 million homes foreclosed between 2009 and 2012, more than 8 million citizens lost their jobs and about 2.5 million businesses were closed.
Faced with food insecurity and the resulting income inequality, people’s confidence in banks has been severely shaken.
In Europe: Ireland is the first country on the European continent to enter recession. Its GDP fell by 3.5% and its public deficit reached 7.2% of GDP. In France, there were 800,000 more unemployed. The number of unemployed in the International Labor Office (ILO) rose from less than 2 million to nearly 2.8 million, an increase of 40% between mid-2008 and mid-2014. The unemployment rate rose from 7.3% to 10.2% of the labor force.
In Asia: The crisis has hit most of Southeast Asia and Japan, which has seen the collapse of currencies, a stock market crash and a sharp increase in private debt. Taiwan saw its currency depreciate more than 45 percent against the dollar in the space of three weeks.
This led to the so-called Great Recession, which caused property prices to fall and unemployment to rise sharply.
In other words, the financial crisis has exposed the inherent shortcomings of banks and other financial institutions.
After the financial crisis, people began to desire a new monetary system that would not have the same flaws as those with traditional currencies.
Bitcoin, this cryptographic currency, came into being about two months after the crisis. But who is behind this new form of money?
Bitcoin : Who invented BTC?
Whoever created Bitcoin wanted to promise decentralized online payment with lower transaction fees than government-issued currency.
The identity of the person(s) who created this technology remains a mystery. However, the creator chose a pseudonym: SATOSHI NAKAMOTO
Nakamoto wanted to build a digital “cash” system, working peer-to-peer, like cash while remaining discreet and totally untraceable.
In Bitcoin’s white paper, Nakamoto explains:
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic evidence rather than trust, allowing two consenting parties to deal directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party”.
Satoshi could be a group of people and appears for the first time on October 31, 2008 on the P2P Foundation bitcoin.org forum.
A few messages recorded in his name made it possible to continue the search from his personal account. On his profile Nakamoto claimed to be a Japanese man born on April 5, 1975; Nakamoto also mentioned his first research on crypto-money and the design of Bitcoin from 2007.
Bitcoin: How does it work?
Bitcoin is not administered by a single central authority such as a bank, it works in a decentralized way through a set of nodes.
These “nodes” form the network through which all transactions take place.
But how does this work in practice?
Bitcoin: Understanding the Bitcoin Blockchain
Bitcoin is powered by an open-source code known as blockchain.
The blockchain is a digital, shared, public ledger that supports the entire Bitcoin network. All confirmed transactions are included in the blockchain.
Each transaction is listed in a “block” that is “chained” to the code, creating a permanent record of each transaction. Blockchain technology is at the heart of more than 2,200 crypto-currencies that have followed the development of Bitcoin.
The function of the Bitcoin blockchain is to keep track of the transactions carried out on the network, while being impossible to tamper with.
The Bitcoin blockchain eliminates the need for a central control body to validate transactions (the network nodes act as validators).
The digital ledger is replicated on all the nodes of the Bitcoin network and takes the form of blocks that are linked together using a cryptographic process.
Bitcoin: understanding bitcoin mining
To obtain Bitcoins, people install and use powerful computers to perform calculations.
This is called mining. Simply put, bitcoin mining is the process of creating a new bitcoin by solving a computer puzzle. It is necessary in order to keep the record of transactions on which the bitcoin is based.
Bitcoin mining is performed by specialized computers. Those who do the mining are called miners. It is these miners who provide security and confirm Bitcoin transactions. Without Bitcoin miners, the network would be dysfunctional.
In other words, Bitcoin mining is a distributed consensus system that is used to confirm current transactions by including them in the blockchain.
Mining imposes a chronological order in the blockchain, protects network neutrality, and allows different computers to agree on the status of the system.
To be confirmed, transactions must be written in a block that meets very strict cryptographic rules that will be verified by the network.
These rules prevent previous blocks from being modified, as this would invalidate all subsequent blocks.
Bitcoin: Decentralization
This is probably the most important characteristic of Bitcoin and it seems necessary to explain what decentralization is.
“Decentralization is the process of distribution and dispersion of power away from a central authority.”
The advantages of the blockchain include:
- A theoretically limited money supply,
- Lower transaction costs.
One of the ambitions of Blockchain technology when it first appeared in 2008 was to decentralize the international monetary system.
The Blockchain technology records the actions of each individual in a distributed manner over a network and thus enables large-scale coordination without a central “authority” or supervisory body.
In other words, the system operates without a central authority or a single administrator.
It is managed in a decentralized manner thanks to the consensus of all the nodes in the network. However, most of the financial and government systems that currently exist are centralized, which means that only one higher authority is responsible for their management, such as a central bank or state apparatus.
The Blockchain therefore allows decentralization, as it offers each user the opportunity to become one of the many audit processors in the network.
Bitcoin: Where do I put my Bitcoins?
In fact, we put our cryptocurrency like Bitcoin in special dedicated wallets; we call them digital wallets or “wallets”. It’s in these wallets that we store information about your crypto reserves translated into code.
This is called a crypto wallet.
A ‘wallet’ or wallet is therefore a secure digital storage process of cryptos. This ‘wallet’ is the equivalent of a bank account. It allows you to receive bitcoins and other tokens, store them, and then send them to other people.
Private and Public Keys: A Bitcoin wallet contains a public key and a private key, which work together to allow its owner to initiate and digitally sign transactions, providing proof of authorization.
To better understand how wallets work, we invite you to read our Top 10 Best Cryptocurrency Wallets for 2020.
Bitcoin: Who accepts Bitcoin?
Bitcoins as a store of value are very useful, but often, before you get them, you have to ask yourself the following question:
Who accepts Bitcoin as a method of payment today?
It can be seen that the number of sites and shops that accept Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is constantly increasing.
According to Coinmap.org, there are nearly 15,000 places worldwide where you can purchase goods and services using Bitcoin.
An HSB survey also found that 36% of small and medium sized businesses in the U.S. accept Bitcoin.
Through these locations, you can buy cars, apartments, etc.
At Magna Numeris, we have reviewed and listed a few sites where you can spend your Bitcoin.
Among the biggest players in e-commerce we can mention Amazon, we have selected several examples for you:
ShopIfy: Shopify started accepting Bitcoin payments in November 2014, choosing at that time to offer BitPay as a payment option to its merchants. Shopify is one of the largest e-commerce platforms on the Internet.
Microsoft: the company allows the use of Bitcoin to top up your Microsoft account. Microsoft accepts the use of Bitcoin in its online Xbox Store since 2014.
AT&T: it is the first major US cell phone operator to offer its customers a payment option using cryptography such as Bitcoin.
NewEgg: Newegg is a well-known company in the crypto-community for the purchase of crypto mining equipment. They sell all kinds of hardware at all ends of the spectrum.
Bitcoin: Where to buy Bitcoin?
To be able to spend it, we first need to own Bitcoin; then we can ask ourselves how to buy Bitcoin quickly and easily?
There are services that will allow you to exchange your dollars or euros for Bitcoins or other crypto-currencies. Several platforms offer their services to enable the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies
Coinbase: Founded in 2012, Coinbase is one of the largest and most popular platforms for buying Bitcoins in the United States. It also operates in several European countries, including France. Its easy-to-use interface is perfectly suited for the most novice users and allows them to quickly make their first purchases.
Binance: Founded in 2017, this platform allows you to buy Bitcoin. There are also nearly 200 other tokens, a very large choice of assets compared to other platforms.
Localbitcoin: Founded in June 2012 by Jeremias Kangas, LocalBitcoin is a peer-to-peer bitcoin market based in Helsinki, Finland. Its service facilitates peer-to-peer trading in local currency against Bitcoins.
eToro: Founded in 2007, this platform offers the purchase of dozens of cryptos including Bitcoin. It is one of the most widely used platforms in Europe with nearly 10 million subscribers.
It is also the case of Cartam.world which wants to offer new innovative solutions to the crypto community by offering a free P2P (peer-to-peer) marketplace dedicated to crypto users, whether beginners or veterans.
On cartam.world, you can use your crypto-currency with your own wallets to buy or sell second hand goods against cryptos and view other users’ offers through the map facilitating local meetings thanks to geolocation and also allowing more advanced searches thanks to advanced functions.
Bitcoin: Who determines the price of Bitcoin?
As we now know, Bitcoin is not issued by a central bank or supported by a government. Consequently, monetary policy, inflation rates and economic growth measures that generally influence the value of currencies such as the dollar or euro do not apply to Bitcoin.
Therefore, there is no standard or global price for Bitcoin; it depends on supply and demand in each market, i.e., the number of people who want to buy and sell it, the price and the quantity. In general, the price of Bitcoin is influenced by:
1. The supply of bitcoin and the demand of the market
2. The cost of producing a bitcoin through the mining process
3. Rewards for Bitcoin Miners for verifying transactions in the blockchain
Bitcoin ATH: All Time High
Bitcoin is highly volatile in nature; Bitcoin has experienced significant price fluctuations, over a three-month period from October 2017 to January 2018, for example, Bitcoin’s price volatility has been close to 8%.
Initially, the price of Bitcoin was low; it wasn’t until 2013 that Bitcoin began to take off. In October 2013, the price of Bitcoin was set at $123.50. It began to climb rapidly, reaching over $140 in April, and surpassed $1,000 in December of the same year.
Bitcoin: Bitcoin Price History
When the currency was first launched in 2009, it was at a value of $0.00. In 2010, the popularity of Bitcoin surged, and during the year Bitcoin’s value increased from $0.00 to $0.39 later in the year.
By February 2011, Bitcoin had reached a price of $1.00, four months later it was worth approximately $31.00. What goes up must come down, however, and by the end of 2011, Bitcoin collapsed to a value of about $2.
By the end of 2012, the price had gone from $4 at the start to about $13.
- April 2013: $100
- November 8, 2013: $1,000
- May 20, 2017: $2,000
- June 11, 2017: $3,000
- August 13, 2017: $4,000
- September 1, 2017: $5,000
- November 28, 2017: $10,000
Bitcoin: The price at 23,000 Dollars in December 2020
ATH stands for “all-time high”, i.e. exactly the highest value of all times. This term refers to the highest price reached by an asset on a given market or stock exchange, and is very often used in the context of investors in cryptosystems.
On December 17, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) reached $23,000 for the first time in history. This historic milestone comes just over two weeks after reaching its previous record.
On Thursday, December 17, at approximately 09:14 UTC, the BTC reached an astonishing $23,441.60 USD, making it a record value.
The price of bitcoin jumped more than 400% in 2020, after reaching a low of $3,600 in March.
Bitcoin is a digital currency, also known as cryptocurrency, founded in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, which uses blockchain technology to facilitate instant payments.
Being stored in wallets as coinbase; Bitcoins allow its holder to buy goods and services on the Internet or in real life as to reserve to buy games on Microsoft’s Xbox or to buy computer equipment on Newegg. Has it helped you to understand how bitcoin works?
Written by Laetisia Harson, Project Manager at Magna Numeris
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Cartam: Free Marketplace for Cryptocurrency Users
Magnanumeris.com | https://medium.com/@magnanumeris/bitcoin-what-is-bitcoin-complete-guide-2021-c21f1ac30f3f | ['Magna Numeris'] | 2020-12-23 09:28:09.906000+00:00 | ['Blockchain Technology', 'Bitcoin', 'Bitcoin Mining', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Automating Jupyter notebooks with Papermill | Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash
Jupyter notebooks are a great way to explore data, test hypotheses, collaborate and report findings. Using a Jupyter notebook, you can have code, images, and nicely formatted descriptions all in one place, greatly simplifying exploratory analysis.
However, when it comes to launching actual long-running computations in a Jupyter notebook, it starts to become tedious.
First of all, notebooks are rarely executed in order. You jump back and forth through a notebook, changing some code here and there until you reach the desired outcome.
Second, Jupyter notebooks, even when cleaned-up for in-order execution, cannot be launched automatically. Instead, you need to open a notebook, launch it manually, and wait for results. If you want to change some parameters inside a notebook, you’ll have to do that manually.
All of this make large-scale execution of multiple notebooks with configurable parameters barely possible. Actual computations are often done with Python scripts, which are basically stripped-down versions of experimental notebooks.
Keeping nearly-duplicate codebase in two separate places is inconvenient. Changes in a notebook must propagate to the corresponding script, and it’s often hard to keep them in sync since Jupyter notebooks are notably hard to diff , as they are just JSON files.
What if you could launch a computation using just the notebook itself with all the configurability you need? Papermill helps to achieve exactly that. By looking introspectively into a notebook and changing it as needed, Papermill allows running configurable computations, all from the command line, with all the automation possible with shell scripting.
Preparing notebooks for automation
In its core, Papermill is a tool to inject configuration into a notebook, launch it and collect the results. However, a notebook must be prepared accordingly, as Papermill executes notebooks in-order. Exploratory notebooks may not be ready for that, as they are often created out-of-order.
Papermill has interfaces for both the command line and Python. We will consider command line use here, although it may be beneficial to use the Python interface to build larger and more elaborated notebook-based pipelines.
Papermill is largely language agnostic, in the sense that it can execute notebooks in any language, provided that Jupyter kernel is available for a language.
Installing Papermill
Installation is straightforward:
You should now be able to launch Papermill:
Example notebook
In the DVC blog post, we created a Python script to create new features. Let’s reimplement it in a notebook. For a reference, original Python implementation was the following:
As you can see, to run this as a usual Python script, we need a CLI, created with argparse (or any other Python tool for CLI generation).
Jupyter version is a bit simpler, as we do not need a CLI:
This notebook can be executed manually, of course. But what if someone needs to change the location of the input or output files? In larger notebooks, it may be even more tedious, as there may be many more parameters to change. Neither is manual launch convenient if you want to check a lot of parameter values.
Papermill solves the problem in a simple and efficient way. Jupyter notebooks allow users to tag cells. Rarely used on its own, this feature makes automation simple: Papermill wants you to tag a cell, which contains parameters with parameters tag.
Tags are displayed in a cell header, with View > Cell Toolbar > Tags :
The notebook with a tagged cell.
After some cell is tagged with parameters , Papermill can inject a new cell after it to overwrite the parameters if needed. The resulting notebook with injected cells is stored in a specified location for further inspection if needed.
Before and after
To launch the notebook with Papermill, we first add data files in the same directory as in the DVC post:
We can now launch the notebook with Papermill:
When running this command, Papermill injected a cell, tagged injected-parameters exactly after our original parameters cell:
After that, the notebook, now named Features-run.ipynb is executed from top to bottom. You can easily parametrize the name of the resulting notebook using usual shell tools:
To launch a notebook for various parameter values, you can use shell for loops or GNU Parallel.
Things to keep eye on
As simple as it looks, Papermill has two important features:
any notebook is executed in order , from top to bottom; you should remember, that your notebook must be cleaned-up before pushed to Papermill, as the order you used during exploration may lead to different results, compared to when executing a notebook in-order,
, from top to bottom; you should remember, that your notebook must be cleaned-up before pushed to Papermill, as the order you used during exploration may lead to different results, compared to when executing a notebook in-order, Papermill injects new parameter values immediately after the first cell tagged parameters ; this may lead to conflicts if you define parameters in a notebook in several cells. For example, derived values may not be updated as needed if they are in the same cell with parameters, or parameter may be overwritten with default if they are spread across several cells.
Parameter cells misarranged.
Rules of thumb are the following:
organize your notebooks in such a way, that all the computation may be configured with a (desirably) limited set of parameters,
always keep the parameters you want to configure all in a single cell,
keep all derived values separately from parameter cells, so that Papermill-injected parameters are propagated appropriately.
Conclusions
Papermill adds new options to how we construct machine learning pipelines. With Papermill we can significantly reduce the time, needed to put some new ML development to real-life use. And as Papermill interplays nicely with other tools like DVC there’s no need to change existing experimentation processes that much. | https://medium.com/y-data-stories/automating-jupyter-notebooks-with-papermill-4b8543ece92f | ['Gleb Ivashkevich'] | 2020-06-10 20:04:27.546000+00:00 | ['Paper Mill', 'Jupyter Notebook', 'Dataops', 'Data Science'] |
On Mother’s Day | I wrote this last year when it felt like Mother’s Day was a day I would never be excited to celebrate. This year I feel okay. Progress is slow, but it’s possible. If I’m being honest with myself, the hardest part about divorce for me — and Mother’s Day — has been grieving the way I thought I’d be raising my child. I envisioned it with a helpful, supportive, respectful partner. I didn’t have that when I was married, and I don’t have it now (though I’m hopeful for it). But life now is good in ways I hadn’t imagined were possible.
************************************
The first time I celebrated Mother’s Day, I helped my new husband make me blueberry pancakes. I was seven months pregnant. I coached him through mixing the ingredients for a while, and then it seemed easier to just do it myself.
My first Mother’s Day with a live human child, I was gifted a really expensive (for me) purse and matching wallet — he did not work, so I suppose I technically bought it for myself. I remember arriving home late from work that day because I was too sick to get on the train. I was sobbing on the floor of the lactation room, exhausted and trying to pump because I wouldn’t be home in time to breastfeed my son, when my coworker came in to scoop me off the floor and drive me home. Our rent was late that month. The following years, there were flowers, cards, photos. Always early, because my ex couldn’t keep a secret.
These grand gestures, however enabled by my own planning and support and labor, were meant to evoke my gratitude but also my silence. In the moments that I was crushed by the responsibility of carrying our partnership and our family, Mother’s Day was the alibi he needed to prove me wrong. Are you forgetting the trouble I went to for you? Nothing I do is ever good enough for you. I now understand it to be gaslighting and dismissal. At the time I only recognized it as my fault.
Despite knowing how these joyful times would be used against me, they were among the only moments that he made a fuss. They are the few times I felt celebrated for my role, despite being diminished for most of the rest of the year. I empirically understood that I mattered to my family, but only in the moments in which he validated me did I know it down to my bones.
I feel guilty for not letting these moments go. I feel guilty for remembering them fondly. I feel guilty for missing them. Recovering from my marriage has been re-training my brain to know who I am and why I am valuable and why I matter down to my bones simply because I know it to be true. But every year, even though I empirically know I am important and that life as a divorced mom is so much better than before, I can’t retrain my brain to celebrate this day.
And yet, life is good. Not just better than before. Actually, actively good. And I’m holding space for the parents for whom that is not true. For moms who are relishing this day, grateful for any little break from the normal grind of endless responsibility, the endless remembering. For moms who are disappointed in the way your partner and children showed up for this holiday but are afraid to say so for fear of backlash, belittling, or punishment. For moms who know that as soon as tomorrow, maybe even tonight, you will be subject to insults and indifference.
I wish for an end to this baseline oppression for you. I wish for a full recovery. I wish for a full throated celebration of all you bring to your family and to the world. | https://medium.com/@jenniferldrake/on-mothers-day-ba7d5a343e7a | ['Jennifer Drake'] | 2021-05-09 19:12:52.785000+00:00 | ['Marriage', 'Parenthood', 'Mothers Day', 'Emotional Abuse', 'Motherhood'] |
Could Low Carb Eating Help You Loosing Weight | There are an increasing number of people who take on the process of low carb eating believing that it will help them for their weight loss.
However, there is still an existing and hottest question when dealing with low carb eating, and that is if low carb eating a healthy way of life. So what then is the answer? Find out here.
Watch This Short Video To Learn How To Lose Weight Fast,
Without Giving Up Any Of Your Favorite Foods
Speaking of the low carb eating, it is a common consideration that it is not important to count calories in the low carb eating lifestyle. As such, you have the freedom to eat as much as you want and whenever you want. But despite this truth behind the low carb eating lifestyle, many experts have noted this is never a healthy way of life.
Many people are indeed metabolically resistant. So in instances like this, the proper way of reducing food intake may aid the dieters to motivate or sustain the consistent weight loss that they wish. Still, when talking about low carb eating, it is the carbohydrates that must be kept low, not the calories.
Watch This Short Video To Learn How To Lose Weight Fast,
Without Giving Up Any Of Your Favorite Foods
To further support the view, it is a given fact that in low carb eating lifestyle, you are definitely been eating fats and oils. As such, you rarely ever be hungry for in general, those foods that are high in fat are ever satisfying. A high fat eating coupled with a low carb eating supplements will tell your body that it is not starving just like the case of fasting, but rather your metabolism in this stage maintains a normal level. So while consuming fat is one of the prerequisites for a healthy low carb eating, it is then necessary to limit the consumption of trans-fats like margarine. Instead of that, it is recommended that you use real butter, for it is a good fat. And for your interest, good fats are found in olive oil, flax seed oil, canola oil, and oils that are greatly found in nuts.
Watch This Short Video To Learn How To Lose Weight Fast,
Without Giving Up Any Of Your Favorite Foods
So then, is low carb eating healthy? Well, on a low carb eating, you can definitely lose weight constantly and it can reduce your insulin levels, lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and even stabilize your blood sugar, which is of course great for diabetics. And since in low carb eating, you will be taking less fruits and vegetables, it is then necessary that you take a good full-spectrum multi vitamins and fiber supplements.
It is also important to consider that the main purpose of the low carb eating is to bring your body chemistry and insulin level back into balance. And so to make this, you need to take a diet that is unbalanced in the opposite direction of the way that you have been eating for the rest of your life.
Watch This Short Video To Learn How To Lose Weight Fast,
Without Giving Up Any Of Your Favorite Foods | https://medium.com/@shaikhafridi1130/could-low-carb-eating-help-you-loosing-weight-66c0cbdf8e6c | [] | 2021-12-27 11:02:27.682000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss', 'Low Carb', 'Weightloss Foods', 'Loose Weight', 'Weight Loss Pills'] |
IaC CI with GitLab and Terraform | There are lots of options nowadays to describe and actually deploy your infrastructure as a code (IaC) — here we are gonna take a look at how to set up some quick& dirty continuous integration (CI) using the increasingly popular Terraform tool to spin up IaC and Gitlab as a source-control and CI platform.
How does it work? Well, ideally, you simply edit your Terraform resource files using your favorite editor (MS Word not allowed), push the repo via git to Gitlab and the GitLab’s CI Pipeline will make required changes directly to your infrastructure. There’s a couple components to this:
your local git and Terraform tools for managing the repo and the code
Gitlab instance for source and CI job control/triggers
A machine running Gitlab CI agent(Gitlab runner) to execute jobs
Terraform environment on Gitlab runner machine to CI-execute terraform plans.
First of all, you should start by setting up your Terraform repo on your Gitlab instance, and clone it locally (yes, of course, you should have git!). We’ll presuppose your Gitlab’s URL as gitlab.com for example sake.
You should also download and install the Terraform binary from https://www.terraform.io/.
Create a file backend.tf in project’s root so Terraform knows to use HTTP state backend:
terraform {
backend "http" {}
}
After that’s said and done, you should initialize the Terraform workspace (with a bit of a twist):
terraform init \
-backend-config="address=https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/<PROJECT_ID>/terraform/state/<YOUR_STATE>" \
-backend-config="lock_address=https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/<PROJECT_ID>/terraform/state/<YOUR_STATE>/lock" \
-backend-config="unlock_address=https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/<PROJECT_ID>/terraform/state/<YOUR_STATE>/lock" \
-backend-config="username=<YOUR_USERNAME>" \
-backend-config="password=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
-backend-config="lock_method=POST" \
-backend-config="unlock_method=DELETE" \
-backend-config="retry_wait_min=5"
Terraform backend is usually stored locally, but we declare it as a Http remote in backend.tf and initialize it on your Gitlab’s terraform project so it remains consistent between various agents using it (including the Gitlab runner). Otherwise each agent (human or machine) will have its own state which leads to creating duplicates of defined infrastructure — and on each run of the CI pipeline!
Replace <PROJECT_ID> with your project’s repository ID (it’s beneath the project name in Gitlabs Web UI), <YOUR_STATE> with whatever label you desire (I’m using “production” as per Gitlab docs), <YOUR_USERNAME> with, well, your Gitlab’s username and also generate yourself an API token and replace <YOUR_TOKEN> with it.
We’re now prepared to install a Gitlab runner for the job somewhere. We have a couple of options here:
install it on a machine and run Terraform docker image to execute jobs
install it on a Kubernetes cluster and run Terraform pod/docker image to execute jobs
install it on a machine and run Terraform + wrapper script to execute jobs
The first two cases are documented on https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/infrastructure/. I have opted for wrapper script on the Gitlab instance itself since I’m running LXC and can’t run containers inside containers. Not only that, but I needed a custom provider module for Proxmox, so that would only complicate stuff (I’d also need to rebuild the docker image).
This is your basic .gitlab-runner.yml (if you use Docker, just uncomment the image definition):
default:
## image: registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/terraform-images/stable:latest
variables:
TF_ROOT: ${CI_PROJECT_DIR}
TF_ADDRESS: ${CI_API_V4_URL}/projects/${CI_PROJECT_ID}/terraform/state/<YOUR STATE>
TF_PASSWORD: <YOUR_TOKEN>
cache:
key: example-production
paths:
- ${TF_ROOT}/.terraform
before_script:
- cd ${TF_ROOT}
stages:
- prepare
- validate
- build
- deploy
init:
stage: prepare
script:
- gitlab-terraform init
validate:
stage: validate
script:
- gitlab-terraform validate
plan:
stage: build
script:
- gitlab-terraform plan
artifacts:
name: plan
paths:
- ${TF_ROOT}/plan.cache
apply:
stage: deploy
environment:
name: production
script:
- gitlab-terraform apply
dependencies:
- plan
#when: manual
only:
- master
The file needs be saved in the project’s root exactly as .gitlab-ci.yml . Don’t touch vars in curly braces, they will be expanded automatically - the only thing needs replacing is <YOUR STATE> and <YOUR_TOKEN> using the values you used in terraform init . You can also uncomment when: manual which then requires you to manually run apply stage through Gitlabs Web UI (open the project’s page, it’s under CI/CD -> Jobs).
Since we’re not running a docker image, we’ll need a machine with the following:
GitLab-runner (regardless of using docker or no)
terraform binary (same version as on your machine, v.0.12 or 0.13)
GitLab-terraform wrapper script (referenced in gitlab-ci.yml)
GitLab-terraform you can download get here, rename, make executable, and put inside path, i.e:
The rest is well documented here:
That’s mostly it…or is it?
You see, there might be a case in which you need a Terraform plugin outside Hashicorp’s registry, which I’m not sure how’s handled inside the referenced Docker image (I presume one should rebuild the image to include custom modules), so using a script on a machine makes this much easier. You should install the plugins the same way as on any other machine, just be careful to install them under /home/gitlab-runner/.terraform/ plugins directory since that’s the account the runner is running on.
Also, there’s been a pretty significant change in local plugins declaration and placement between 0.12 and 0.13 versions, so read up:
In the end, you should test with some disposable infrastructure to see how it holds up on multiple changes, commits, etc. Provisioning infrastructure is no joke (despite setting up tools to do so being a breeze) —if you f** it up, the pain can be real!
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Follow us on Twitter 🐦 and Facebook 👥 and Instagram 📷 and join our Facebook and Linkedin Groups 💬 | https://medium.com/faun/iac-ci-with-gitlab-and-terraform-d8ac83308842 | ['Marko Skender'] | 2020-10-06 18:28:57.702000+00:00 | ['DevOps', 'Terraform', 'Infrastructure As Code', 'Gitlab Ci'] |
Medical Accounting | All over the world, different countries vary in their general accounting procedures since each nation has its own financial framework. Although there had been an agreed GAAP — Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures, each country requires a certain type of financial reporting from accountants. Some countries follow GAAP but more developed countries prefer International Accounting standards (IAS).Each country has a unique political and social climate which affects the government. The government is mainly responsible for issuing regulatory policies that would provide guidelines for accounting reports and practices.
International accounting exists because the financial transactions of a developed country is more complicated than that of developing nations. Some set of information for one country may not be relevant or applicable in another country’s finances. For example, Japan has developed an intricate accounting framework that is not easily understood by accounting practitioners from some parts of the world. History may also influence the accounting procedures of a nation as countries like US adopted some of its practices from Germany as a result of the war.
Nevertheless, there is a need for countries to have a clear guideline for accounting reports that is why the International Accounting Standards have been established. The IAS contains a set of standards that states how some accounting transactions should be reported and reflected in financial statements. This helps companies such as multi-nationals and trans- nationals that deals with different countries for their products to consolidate different types of accounting reports. Also, countries that meet and discuss business regulations can establish and analyze financial transactions coming from one point.
The IAS was formerly issued by the Board of the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC). Later on, a more updated set of standards was released in 2001 and this is now recognized as the international financial reporting standards. It must be emphasized that IASC provides guidelines for its member countries but cannot impose members to comply with the set standards. It is just an agreement between countries to report in accordance to what has been set by IAS for publicly-traded companies. A better understanding of international accounting can gained by reading books that covers introduction to international accounting. By reading such books, one is guided properly in learning why countries differ in accounting practices and the extent of government regulations in establishing financial reports. International accounting standards and its benefits over GAAP is also explained so readers can compare the advantages of both procedures. | https://medium.com/@noreply.zinix/medical-accounting-77c7ee92498b | ['Verse Finance'] | 2019-11-22 03:26:02.088000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Accounting'] |
America’s Two-Headed One Party System | There’s a scene from John Steinbeck’s The Pearl that’s been coming back to me over and over again ever since I started writing about US politics. I find it amazing that this scene hasn’t become a political meme yet, given Steinbeck’s fame and given its perfect illustration of the fake two-party system that we see in western so-called democracies.
The Pearl is a short novel about a poor fisherman, Kino, who discovers the titular enormous gem in an oyster and goes to sell it to the pearl buyers in town. What he doesn’t know is that the buyers, while they have multiple offices and pretend to compete with each other, all actually work for the same owner.
“Kino has found the Pearl of the World,” Steinbeck writes. “In the town, in little offices, sat the men who bought pearls from the fishers. They waited in their chairs until the pearls came in, and then they cackled and fought and shouted and threatened until they reached the lowest price the fisherman would stand.”
“And when the buying was over, these buyers sat alone and their fingers played restlessly with the pearls, and they wished they owned the pearls. For there were not many buyers really — there was only one, and he kept these agents in separate offices to give a semblance of competition.”
When Kino brings the priceless pearl to the sellers, they put on a performance, working together to deceive him into thinking it has no value in order to cheat him out of it for a ridiculously low price.
The man behind the desk said: “I have put a value on this pearl. The owner here does not think it fair. I will ask you to examine this — this thing and make an offer. Notice,” he said to Kino, “I have not mentioned what I have offered.”
The first dealer, dry and stringy, seemed now to see the pearl for the first time. He took it up, rolled it quickly between thumb and forefinger, and then cast it contemptuously back into the tray.
“Do not include me in the discussion,” he said dryly. “I will make no offer at all. I do not want it. This is not a pearl — it is a monstrosity.” His thin lips curled.
Now the second dealer, a little man with a shy soft voice, took up the pearl, and he examined it carefully. He took a glass from his pocket and inspected it under magnification. Then he laughed softly.
“Better pearls are made of paste,” he said. “I know these things. This is soft and chalky, it will lose its color and die in a few months. Look-” He offered the glass to Kino, showed him how to use it, and Kino, who had never seen a pearl’s surface magnified, was shocked at the strange-looking surface.
The third dealer took the pearl from Kino’s hands. “One of my clients likes such things,” he said. “I will offer five hundred pesos, and perhaps I can sell it to my client for six hundred.”
Kino reached quickly and snatched the pearl from his hand. He wrapped it in the deerskin and thrust it inside his shirt. The man behind the desk said, “I’m a fool, I know, but my first offer stands. I still offer one thousand. What are you doing?” he asked, as Kino thrust the pearl out of sight.
“I am cheated,” Kino cried fiercely. “My pearl is not for sale here. I will go, perhaps even to the capital.”
Now the dealers glanced quickly at one another. They knew they had played too hard; they knew they would be disciplined for their failure, and the man at the desk said quickly, “I might go to fifteen hundred.”
This is exactly how the two-headed one-party system works, in America and elsewhere. One party owned by one imperialist oligarchic class is placed in two separate offices “to give some semblance of competition,” just like Steinbeck’s pearl buyers. And just like Steinbeck’s pearl buyers they work together to deceive the people into accepting the lowest possible bid, in their case meaning the acceptance of virtually no change at all from the imperialist oligarchic status quo.
You see this kleptocratic dynamic at play regardless of who is in office. When the two-headed one-party system convinced Americans to sell their pearl to Barack Obama, for example, their payment took the form of a corporatist healthcare scam deceitfully labeled the Affordable Care Act and a pathetic temporary band-aid on the sucking chest wound of environmental peril, along with a continuation and expansion of all of Bush’s most depraved foreign and domestic policies.
Then Kino, angry and determined never again to be deceived, sold his pearl to the Republican Party. This time his payment consisted of a tax break for the wealthy and some verbiage about a wall, along with a continuation and expansion of all of Obama’s most depraved foreign and domestic policies.
This pattern repeats over and over and over again, whether it’s the presidency or Congress, and the people never learn their lesson. They’re trained to think of the two parties as competing, when really they’re more like the left fist and the right fist on the same boxer. An orthodox-stance boxer uses the left jab and the right cross in conjunction with each other in one-two punch combinations to accomplish the same goal, namely to leave his opponent staring up at the arena lights and rethinking his life decisions. And in this case, the boxer’s opponent is you.
Ralph Nader, who to this day is still falsely smeared as responsible for George W Bush’s pseudo-victory over Al Gore in 2000, occasionally shares an anecdote about the time he told his father that what America needs is a good third party.
“I’ll settle for a second,” his father replied.
This is the kind of clear seeing we all need to have. We need to not fall into the drama of the two-handed puppet show and mistake what we are seeing for two separate and competing entities. We need to see and be aware of the puppeteer at all times.
Look past the “semblance of competition” and watch what the pearl buyers are actually doing.
Ignore their words.
Ignore their fake pro-wrestling kayfabe combat over impeachment agendas they know will never bear fruit and their Russia conspiracies they know are pure nonsense.
Watch their actual behaviors instead.
Don’t fall for the illusion.
Don’t get sucked into the drama of the two-handed puppet show.
Don’t be deceived, Kino.
Don’t sell your pearl.
__________________________
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 my website, 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, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous 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 or use 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/americas-two-headed-one-party-system-e6b4d1a8460 | ['Caitlin Johnstone'] | 2019-12-14 03:05:30.815000+00:00 | ['Republican Party', 'Politics', 'Democracy', 'Democratic Party', 'Corruption'] |
Month at a Glance — August. A breakdown of the latest happenings… | Ecosystem Insights
August was another record-breaking month for contract calls. As the month concluded, contract calls for August were over 3.2M. This increase represents a change of over 18% as comparative to the previous month, and an over 2x increase since April 2021.
As we continue to witness this surge in on-chain metrics it’s beginning to become clear that things are starting to compound. This compounding effect can be vastly attributed to multiple protocol upgrades introducing new sets of features. Features such as gas optimizations, consensus changes, and more have enabled applications to spring up on Tezos that were not previously possible.
We can reflect the aforementioned to the rise and growing interest of economically sustainable and environmentally friendly NFT’s on Tezos and DeFi.
H=N (hic et nunc) has attracted heaps of attention and artists to the platform through its low minting costs and focus on environmentally friendly alternatives like Tezos. As the disparage and knowledge gap begins to shrink on just how costly other networks are in terms of fees and an environmental standpoint, we can expect to see more artists gravitate towards more sustainable alternatives.
The above is precisely what we witnessed yesterday with OMGiDRAWEDit’s tezzard NFT launch. In just a mere hour and forty-five minutes, the entire 4200 piece NFT collection sold out. For 15 tez each at auction, users and early adopters were able to seize a stake in what was the first generative avatar pfp project on their own FA2 smart contract on Tezos. History was made that day, hopefully you were able to participate!
On that very same point, OneOf, a new NFT-based platform on Tezos has launched! With numerous high-profile artists of the likes of Quincy Jones, Doja Cat, and more planning to drop NFT’s on the platform; the push towards full mainstream adoption begins. Be sure to collect your free NFT’s on the site!
Not to be left out, we’re beginning to see further growth within DeFi. Plenty, the largest DeFi application currently on Tezos, has just surpassed $50M TVL (total value locked) since its launch in May. Bender Labs and the Plenty team have also recently announced a collaboration together in building cTez.
The security token landscape has been met with some interesting developments as of late as well. In our previous baking sheet, we recently learned of three European banks teaming together for the development of a new token standard on Tezos, DAR-1.
There’s currently over $4B in STO’s slated to take place on Tezos. As the STO landscape continues to evolve from nascent to being able to handle the potential load of billions-trillions in value, we will likely see Tezos retain an important part in this transformation.
However, as we begin to move towards September let’s stay tuned for the injection of “protocol H”! | https://news.tezoscommons.org/month-at-a-glance-august-24f316b782af | ['William Mckenzie'] | 2021-09-02 17:44:27.227000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Sto', 'Blockchain', 'Tezos', 'Defi'] |
From Yemen to Jordan: A taste of home for a Yemeni family | From Yemen to Jordan: A taste of home for a Yemeni family
Supported by the World Food Programme, they draw comfort from being able to make the traditional ‘shakshuka’
Abdou and Amani prepare shakshuka as three-year-old Basel plays around them in their kitchen. Photo: WFP/Dara Masri
A traditional dish made in many countries across the Middle East, shakshuka reminds Abdou and his family of their home in Yemen.
It takes around seven minutes and a few ingredients to make this one-pot healthy dish: tomatoes, onions, green peppers, eggs and a dash of salt and pepper.
“You can’t go wrong serving shakshuka for breakfast, dinner or lunch, it’s so easy and tasty,” says Abdou.
The family occupy a two-bedroom apartment in Jordan’s capital, Amman. They left Yemen five years ago when it was no longer safe for them to stay in their city. This meal reminds them of the good days they had.
Abdou helps Amani with cooking sometimes, but his specialty is the shakshuka dish. “I usually start by heating oil in a pan while Amani chops the onions, tomatoes and green pepper,” he says.
He cooks the vegetables for a few minutes until they begin to soften, adds salt and pepper to taste, and lets the ingredients simmer. Adding the eggs is the last step; Adbou mixes it with the vegetables until he gets the consistency his family enjoys. Then meal is ready to be served!
Abdou stirs the vegetables before adding eggs. Photo: WFP/Dara Masri
“We have shakshuka with Arabic bread, tea and some cold vegetables on the side,” says Amandi. “Adbou brings a small bowl of olives with every meal. It’s his favourite.”
Mandi, Yemen’s national dish, is the family’s favourite meal. “The circumstances don’t allow us to make Mandi as we cannot always afford its’ ingredients,” says Abdou.
The family gathers around to eat shakshuka for lunch. Photo: WFP/Mohammad Batah
Abdou has no stable source of income and works here and there in vegetable and fruit markets. It’s a good day for the family when he finds an opportunity to work, as they barely make ends meet.
Similar to the 10,000 non-Syrian refugees the World Food Programme (WFP) supports, the family receives monthly cash assistance to cover their food and other basic needs.
“Without WFP’s assistance, we cannot buy food to feed the children, nor use some of the money to pay rent,” says Abdou. “It’s a blessing to have an understanding owner who is flexible with rent when times are hard for us.”
Abdou makes shakshuka to remind the family of the taste of home, while Amani hopes to return to a safe Yemen and make Mandi like she used to.” | https://medium.com/world-food-programme-insight/world-refugee-day-a-taste-of-home-for-a-yemeni-family-in-jordan-db1782636917 | ['Dara Elmasri'] | 2020-07-02 21:31:29.716000+00:00 | ['Jordan', 'World Refugee Day', 'Coronavirus', 'Refugees', 'Yemen'] |
European banks in money laundering scandals: what lessons for the EU? | What do all recent major grand corruption scandals have in common? Individuals and companies involved in the schemes like the Russian and Azerbaijani Laundromats and Operation Car Wash in Brazil relied on European banks to pay bribes, transfer illicit funds and hide the proceeds of corruption. In less prominent schemes, we have also seen that kleptocrats and their family members also used European banks to launder reputation and the proceeds of crime: the Dos Santos family from Angola, the Obiangs from Equatorial Guinea, Viktor Yanukovych from Ukraine and Gulnara Karimova from Uzbekistan, among a long list of others.
If we take the Russian Laundromat as an example, more than US$13 billion of illicit funds were transferred to the Trasta Komercbanka in Latvia and, from there, around the world. From 2010 to 2014, 21 shell companies made almost 27 thousand payments via 732 foreign banks. Many of these banks were located in Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and the UK — all EU countries.
Banks that received the Russian Laundromat money, according to OCCRP. View full infographic.
The largest part of this money passed through the Estonian branch of Danske Bank, Denmark’s biggest bank, which is in the spotlight for having allowed around 9.5 million payments from high-risk customers, including as part of other money laundering schemes such as the Azerbaijani Laundromat. The total amount of these payments was around US$ 230 billion (EUR 200 billion), making it the largest money laundering scandal in Europe.
Bad laws or poor practice?
Over the past few years, the European Union (EU) has strengthened its anti-money laundering rules and regulations. Yet, supervision and enforcement by national regulators and law enforcement bodies in Member States has been inconsistent.
In some cases, supervisory bodies reacted only after the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) took special measures or investigative journalists uncovered wrongdoing. These individual episodes undermine the integrity and reputation of the EU financial system as a whole, suggesting it relies on outsiders to point out failures.
Even when malpractice is identified, national authorities often don’t take appropriate action. When they are applied, fines are often too low. Information on sanctions is not always publicly available.[1] What’s worse, high profile financial institutions and their senior management seem untouchable, with very few being prosecuted for facilitating money laundering.
A national audit of the Latvian banking system following the Laundromat led to just US$ 850,000 (EUR 640,000) in fines against three banks. Danske Bank was reprimanded but has not faced any financial sanctions in spite of widespread evidence of wrongdoing. Danish and Estonian authorities opened criminal investigations as late as August 2018 — four years after the Estonian regulator first pointed out serious shortcomings. In December, Estonia arrested 10 client managers as part of the investigation. Last week, the Estonian Financial Supervision and Resolution Authority ordered Danske Bank to shut down its Tallinn branch. It remains to be seen, however, if the bank and its senior management will face any other sanctions.
An EU problem
The EU recognises that the corrupt and criminals often operate across different Member States and that their assets, including bank accounts, are often located in others. Given the cross-border dimension of serious crimes, including terrorism, and of related financial activities, competent authorities carrying out investigations often need to access information on bank accounts held in other States.
The need to improve cooperation between national authorities is clear. This should not happen in an ad hoc fashion on a case-by-case basis; instead, cooperation and information-sharing should happen throughout the various phases of the supervisory processes, including prudential supervision — standards that require firms to control risks and hold adequate capital, with the goal of protecting the markets.
Nevertheless, in the wake of recent money laundering scandals the question is whether relying only on national authorities for anti-money laundering supervision is sufficient or whether the EU should have more responsibility when it comes to money laundering involving financial institutions in Member States. Given the scale and number of scandals in recent years, the reasonable answer would be a firm “yes” to the latter question.
Failure to supervise
When it comes to anti-money laundering standards, the EU seeks to ensure that Member States consistently comply by means of its Directives. The same, however, cannot be said about supervision, where rules are not precise enough. Member States have divergent supervisory practices and have allocated different levels of resources to tackle financial crime. In many cases, these practices have proven ineffective in detecting malpractice by banks in a timely manner and resulting in sanctions.
Currently, the European Central Bank (ECB) is tasked with prudential supervision of EU financial institutions, but the scope is very limited when it comes to anti-money laundering. This isn’t optimal, many of the issues under the responsibility of the ECB — licensing, qualifying holdings proceedings and “fit and proper” checks — would benefit from information related to anti-money laundering practices of the financial institutions it’s watching. As things stand, those are under the exclusive responsibility of national authorities.
The European Banking Authority (EBA) oversees Member States’ anti-money laundering and prudential supervision of banks. In particular, the EBA may investigate “breaches of Union law” and, in some circumstances, even override individual decisions of national authorities. However, this has not been done in a proactive and timely manner:
● In July 2018, Malta became the first Member State to receive a recommendation from the EBA for breaching Union law in the areas of money laundering. This was only done in reaction to a significant supervisory failure.
● Last week, the EBA opened a formal investigation into a possible breach of Union law by the Estonian Financial Services Authority and the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority over Danske Bank and its Estonian branch. The decision to open an investigation followed a request from the European Commission.
There seems to be a broad consensus emerging — from ECB representatives to international media and experts — that the current system is inadequate, and that more needs to be done to improve anti-money laundering supervision in the EU.
What is the EU doing?
In response to recent money laundering scandals, in September 2018 European Commission President Juncker announced new potential measures to strengthen the supervision of EU financial institutions to better address money-laundering and terrorist financing threats.
Jean-Claude Juncker tweets during the State of the European Union address where the new draft measures were announced.
Specifically, the European Commission proposes to revamp the EBA to reinforce its supervisory role in anti-money laundering. If approved, the EBA will have powers to, among others, request national anti-money laundering supervisors to investigate potential material breaches and to request them to consider targeted actions such as sanctions and address decisions directly to individual financial sector operators if national authorities do not act.
The European Commission is calling on the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to endorse the proposed amendments and to adopt the relevant legislative proposals by early 2019 at the latest. There are concerns, however, that these new powers won’t be sufficient to ensure effective supervision.
The EBA already has some jurisdiction over anti-money laundering but clearly lacks adequate resources and capacity to carry out its functions. It is unclear to what extent these tasks will be matched with resources. As of late 2018, the EBA had an equivalent of 1.8 staff members working on money-laundering issues.
Who should watch Member States?
A recent paper published by a Brussels think tank, Bruegel, makes a compelling argument for EU-wide anti-money laundering supervision by highlighting gaps in the current framework. According to the authors, the existing framework of an integrated, enforceable single financial market policy and of national anti-money laundering supervisory structures create loopholes and opportunities for abusing the system.
Alarmingly, anti-money laundering supervisory weaknesses in one member state make it attractive for money launderers interested in gaining access to the entire single market. The authors also highlight the risk that this could create a constituency against anti-money laundering enforcement in the country — criminals and their representatives, service providers and others — that could even lead to policy and government capture.
Some experts are advocating for a new European anti-money laundering body, that would be more suitable to address existing problems related to supervision and enforcement of anti-money laundering rules. Bruegel recommends a unitary architecture centred on a new European anti-money laundering authority:
“The imperative of establishing sound supervisory incentives to fight illicit finance effectively demands a stronger EU-level role in AML supervision. We recommend a unitary architecture centred on a new European AML Authority that would work on the basis of deep relationships with national authorities such as financial intelligence units and law enforcement agencies. The new authority should have high standards of governance and independence, publish all its decisions and be empowered to impose sufficiently large fines to deter malpractice.”
The Commission seems to be of the view that it is too early to discuss the need for a new body but it will consider this discussion in its longer-term reform plans. According to them, there are other measures that can be taken in the short- to medium-term, such as the implementation of the 5th EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) by Member States and improved financial intelligence unit (FIU) coordination.
While it is important that Member States duly implement the 5th EU AMLD, the Directive’s primarily aim is to improve legal frameworks to prevent and detect money laundering. It does not provide detailed guidance or any sort of harmonisation related to supervision. In recent cases such as the Danske Bank in Estonia or ING in the Netherlands, banks had inadequate procedures in breach of international standards as well as EU and domestic rules.
Would the situation have been different had the provisions of the 5th EU AMLD already been in place? If the supervisory approach was to remain the same, then probably not.
Money laundering and corruption go hand in hand. At Transparency International, we believe that effective supervision and enforcement against money laundering are key to stopping corruption. At the EU level in particular, the existence of a unitary financial market calls for better supervisory integration. Decisive action from national authorities to stop dirty money from finding its way into the EU single market is long overdue. While the exact institutional arrangements still need to be worked out, the EU undoubtedly needs to ensure that Member States take this task seriously and consistently.
— — — — — —
[1] The Fourth EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) attempts to close this loophole by requiring Member States to issue a public statement in the case of administrative sanctions, identifying the natural or legal persons involved in the wrongdoing. EU Member States should have transposed the 4th EU AMLD by mid-2018. If Member States implement the requirement adequately, transparency around administrative sanctions related to non-compliance with anti-money laundering obligations will improve in the next years. It is important to note, however, that at least a summary of the actions taken by the natural or legal person that caused the breach of AML rules must be included in the public statement. | https://voices.transparency.org/european-banks-in-money-laundering-scandals-what-lessons-for-the-eu-d743f3d7ac9b | ['Maíra Martini'] | 2019-02-27 12:15:31.730000+00:00 | ['Money Laundering', 'Laundromat', 'Danske Bank', 'Eu Supervision', 'Corruption'] |
Congressman Ted Lieu — Government Oversight and Ethics | In this episode of Intergenerational Politics, Jill Wine-Banks and Victor Shi are joined by Congressman Ted Lieu from California, who also serves on the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees. We discuss the importance of government oversight and ethics investigations into Trump and his supplicants for their egregious, norm-breaking acts and what reforms can be made in the next Congress and administration to assure government oversight and prevent future abuses.
Enjoy below!
Intergenerational Politics is a podcast created by Jill Wine-Banks and Victor Shi dedicated to engaging all generations in politics with weekly unfiltered conversations with experts across the nation. Be sure to subscribe to and rate us on Apple Podcasts. You can also find us on Spotify or any other podcast streaming services. | https://medium.com/@victorshi2020/congressman-ted-lieu-government-oversight-and-ethics-e7eed1b6ffa | ['Victor Shi'] | 2020-12-22 18:05:17.954000+00:00 | ['Congress', 'Accountability', 'Democrat', 'Government', 'Politics'] |
Give Yourself Permission to be Your Best Authentic Self | Give Yourself Permission to be Your Best Authentic Self
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
We All Want to Live an Authentic Life
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Sooner or later, there’s going to be a question that shows up in your mind that you can’t answer. You’ll dismiss it many times, but it will keep coming back. It will be like a rock in your shoe or a thorn in your side.
At first, it’s just a bit of an irritation but left undealt with; it becomes a blister that becomes a sore that develops into a serious infection.
The question that we all face at some point in our life is this: Is this what life is all about for me? Surely there’s more to life than this! Where have I gone wrong? What can I do, what can I change? I don’t want my life to continue like this.
We’ve all experienced it. The frustration, anxiety, lack of fulfillment, doubt, and indecision with this line of thinking. They all seem to show up with monotonous regularity, haunting our thinking, creating doubt and despair. And they continue to show up until you CHANGE something.
Living Authentically
We need to find the courage to say NO to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity. — Barbara de Angelis
When you get right down to it, most people just want to live a peaceful, happy, and successful life. You just want to make more money than you’re spending each month. That’s all. You want to spend more time with the people you care about and do the things that make your heart sing.
In other words, you want to live a Happy, Authentic Life. To quote Gandhi, Authenticity is the inevitable outcome of what you think, what you say, and what you Do is in harmony. In fact, it’s the only possible outcome.
How different would it be if you woke up each morning with a smile on your face, jumped out of bed, and couldn’t wait to get at it? Like you did when you were a kid, and the fair was in town, remember?
Living life like this is possible, but it starts with removing the things in your life that are no longer serving you.
Here are some of the things:
● Some of the people that you’ve known for a long time
● Places you visit frequently.
● Activities you may have been involved in for years.
● Old habits, thoughts, and expectations
The beauty of this for you will begin when you start to see evidence of life coming to your rescue. You will start to develop your belief muscle, and in no time, you will be making bigger and better choices, wiser decisions that will be in harmony with your deepest desires.
You’ll start making decisions that are within your comfort zone at first and then watch the process start to unfold.
What Do You Need to Let Go?
“Until you let go of all the toxic things and people in your life, you will never be able to grow into your fullest potential. Let them go so you can grow.” — DLQ
Obviously, the words in this quote are easier said than done. You become so attached to things, people, and dangerous feelings that your life becomes consumed and bogged down.
You become handicapped to the point of paralyzation with things and people that are no longer useful or needed in your life.
The pain and trauma that exists in your lives is there because you’re holding onto things that are hurting you — in a strange way, you find it comforting to hold on to the things and people you know even though they're hurting you, rather than risk letting them go.
Consider these thoughts:
People. If there are people in your life that are no longer making you happy, it’s time to let them go. What if they are friends? What if they are family?
If you really want to live a happy, authentic life, it will be important for you to face the reality of where and who your unhappiness is coming from.
Places. What about the places you visit or frequent? Are there places you go for entertainment, education, social recreation, or employment that you don’t really enjoy? If you’re not happy when you walk in and you’re not happy when you come out, stop going there!
Thoughts. What do you spend your time thinking about? Is your mind permeated with doom and gloom? Do your thoughts create anxiety, fear, disappointment, or even anger? Why dwell on any of that? How can that possibly be serving you?
All the people, places, and experiences that you allow to continue indefinitely are weighing you down. No amount of success, drive, or positive thinking will change anything for you until you face the real problem.
Every person, place, or activity that isn’t making you happy is like stones you put in your backpack when you go on a hiking trip. You’re not going to go far before the additional weight begins to drag you down.
Life then becomes extremely heavy. Every day becomes a painful chore, and the backpack of life eventually becomes too heavy to lift. Everything becomes a hassle, a struggle. And you wonder why life is tough?
So, What Happens When You Start Living Authentically?
“Be your authentic self. Your authentic self is who you are when you have no fear of judgment or before the world starts pushing you around and telling you who you’re supposed to be. Your fictional self is who you are when you have a social mask on to please everyone else. Give yourself permission to be your authentic self.” — Dr. Phil
Here’s what happens when you do:
You start thinking of people, places, and things that make you happy.
You begin to make choices to visit places and people that maybe you haven’t seen for a while, people that make you feel good. You start to re-engage with them, and in the activities you enjoy.
You find yourself smiling during the day for no reason at all. Life suddenly feels lighter. You feel totally capable of letting go of thoughts you neither want nor need. And replace them with powerful positive thoughts about yourself and your future.
For the first time in a long time, you begin to experience JOY just through your thoughts and feelings. You notice that, without any conscious effort on your part, you have no attachment to the people, places, or things that no longer serve you. Letting them go becomes effortless.
Living authentically becomes easy. As your awareness for all things authentic within you becomes more apparent, your ability to reject things that are not in alignment with who you are and your authentic self increases exponentially.
You start making new friends. New people start to come into your life who align with your new fresh way of thinking. People who see you for the amazing person you really are.
You begin seeking new adventures. Opportunities to experience new activities that you have never previously thought you would or could do, and know you find yourself excited about trying them.
You learn and discover. Your interest in learning new things awakens, and you become fascinated by the idea of learning new skills.
The people you meet while learning these new skills will resonate directly with your heart and you will feel at home.
Once you start living authentically, your frustration, anxiety, fear, and doubt are replaced with optimism, enthusiasm, positivity, and fulfillment in all that you’re doing.
Life starts to seem simpler. The sun seems to shine bigger and brighter, and more often. People start to say you look and sound different.
Slowly over time, you find yourself in a better, happier, more authentic place. You start attracting people to you that you wish to spend time with.
At the same time, you are beginning the process of becoming someone you would want to have in your life. You begin to become the person that personifies the qualities you most desire in people you want around you.
You begin to exhibit in your daily life the qualities and values that you most admire.
This all begins when you decide that you're worth it. That you deserve to be this happy. Let go of everyone and everything that no longer serves you.
The changes can be dramatic. Try it; do it for yourself.
If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and share so that others can find it!
Feel free to leave a comment below. | https://medium.com/an-idea/give-yourself-permission-to-be-your-best-authentic-self-ceb14ee3d155 | ['Michael Mints'] | 2020-12-19 05:21:24.776000+00:00 | ['Authenticity', 'Joy', 'Happiness', 'Success', 'Motivation'] |
7 Reasons To Quit Garbage Writing | 7 Reasons To Quit Garbage Writing
Stop Writing and Start Reflecting
Image by Gerardo Gómez from Pixabay
Garbage writing is an overbeaten advice for dealing with writer’s block. Write a chunk of crap then give it brutal pruning, says the advisor.
Pen any thought that dances across your mind. Keep punching the keyboard till your fingers ache. Quality, they say, is born of quantity. Just write till your writer’s block disappears.
Unlike speaking, where you can hover around sounding grandiose and saying absolutely nothing, quality writing requires deep reflection and concrete messages. The message is as important as the medium.
If you can’t reflect, write, and rewrite your piece, then your writing blows the whole point. Don’t write for writing's sake.
More than any other means of communication, writing commands the public perception, dictate the truth, and alter lives decision. Thus unsolicited writing can be harmful to writers and even more deadly when made public.
If that’s not enough to scare you off the famished road, here are seven solid reasons you probably should reconsider garbage writing your way off writer's block.
It Is Not Deep Work
Garbage writing is not deep work.
Deep work is meaningful work. Deep work is intentional, duly, and dutifully engaged.
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It provides a sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship.
In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport emphasize that deep work is the superpower in our increasingly competitive twenty-first-century economy.
Writing whatever flashes through your mind is the archetype of shallow works. Roaming through thoughts to write whatever it is that pops out lacks all intense and intensity. It is the sought of work without focus.
It is not satisfying, neither can it be fulfilling. It lacks all advantages and accounts for no meaningful progress.
Deep work allows your art to contribute to the greater good. Shallow works add up to nothing in particular.
Writing for writing’s sake does not necessarily add to the body of literature you are crafting out of your writing career. Fact is: it will largely serve nobody including you.
It Might Crash Your Self-esteem
When all you write all day are random thoughts, your motivation suffers and it goes on to hurt your self-worth. You lose confidence in your work.
Art ceases to amuse you. The artist in you falls sick.
You will dread in a lonely world. You might feel detest and amount to nothing. In a short while, you might begin to consider yourself a failure.
It is not uncommon that writers commit suicide. In fact, insanity, addiction, and suicide permeate all forms of art.
Be careful of overstretching yourself to write and thus writing profanity. The backlash can be ruinous more than your discomfort of lacking what to write about.
It Stops Working
After two weeks of writing garbage, what happens?
It stops working. You halt and become clueless about what next to trash out.
Repetitive use of language will bore you out. You will get sick of it.
Then, you are back to the problem you sought to escape from.
You Might Become Addicted
You can also get stuck writing trash after a stretch of time.
New habits become solidified starting from the first 18 days. If you can as well push through enough and keep up with your garbage writing for that long, you might become addicted to it.
At a point, I got addicted to this that I refer to myself as a narrative poet. I couldn’t necessarily communicate well-thought messages anymore that I began to hide under the broad umbrella of poetry.
If fall victim, it might become difficult to rescue yourself out of the vicious cycle.
You Have Nothing To Publish
Writing without a purposeful end amounts to junk. No publication takes junks from writers. No audience will slow that either.
Quite frankly, your introspective self will fight you not to embarrass yourself if you attempt posting it on your feed. Trust me, the lizard brain wins every round of such a fight.
Over time, you are blessed with drafts. Possibly tens of them that are worth nothing. Bad for the eyeballs and hurtful to your ego.
It Doesn’t Serve Your Audience
KO!
You won this time. You push through your trash.
Pinned right on top of every other post, tweeted, and shared on Facebook.
A few hundreds of views rush at it. Good comments or bad ones, engagement is engagement. But then, the guilt is real.
You know writing trash doesn’t add an inch of value to your audience. Nobody can possibly learn from it.
An uncollected stream of thoughts with fanciful words drives no points home.
It Is Not Profitable
The dream of every writer is to get published, control a large audience, and make some money.
All of that is a mirage if your contents failed to tear grounds and break through the crowd.
If your writings don’t worth publishing, it just cannot build an audience either. For the money, forget it altogether.
A Word of Wisdom
Deep work is intense, requires focus, and cognitively demanding. Meaningful writing is deep work.
Don’t bask empty words against blank pages. When stuck, do something worth writing about, then write about it.
You have four ways to attack your writer’s block — why, what, how, and when.
Get a new purpose to your writing — be firm on your why. The clarity of why makes magic happens.
What to write about is what is worth reading about. Conclude on an idea to explore and share your light on. This article is about garbage writing.
Should you list out the key lessons or take us on a chronology of how the world evolves. How is the process to your why and the means to deliver your what.
In his latest book, When — The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, bestselling author Daniel H. Pink provides fresh insights from biological and behavioral science on the hidden patterns of everyday life.
His research offered that through the day there is always a peak, a trough, and a rebound. Pay careful attention to your peak and rebound time to leverage the power of when to engage your writing.
Finally, for consistent meaningfully writing it is best to gather enough experience and as well endeavor to experience enough. Pick up a new book, take on new challenges, figure new ways of doing things, advise a younger you, or share your observation about the world. | https://medium.com/nano-writers/7-reasons-to-quit-garbage-writing-36e8c8eb4912 | ['Timmy Brain'] | 2020-11-21 06:47:38.565000+00:00 | ['Writing Life', 'Thinking', 'Writing', 'Quitting', 'Reasons Why'] |
Understanding the surge in teen conversations about eating disorders | Eating disorders and body image issues have surged amongst the teens who texted us during the COVID-19 crisis. We were not the only ones to notice this trend — teen admissions to eating disorder treatment programs have skyrocketed; eating disorder hospitalizations doubled in certain areas of the country during lockdown, and our partners at the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) have noticed a 58% increase in their helpline traffic over the pandemic¹.
This jump in disordered eating requires the attention of all adults working to support teens as they transition back to in-person schooling. Claiming 10,000+ lives per year in the US, eating disorders have the second-highest mortality rate of any psychiatric condition after opioid addiction. They also have a history of being undetected and under-diagnosed, which can lead to tragically low recovery rates and a lifelong battle for those affected and their families.
So, as schools are about to reopen across the country, our team at Crisis Text Line has been trying to better understand the dynamics behind the surge in eating disorders. We checked in with our partners at the NEDA, and with their guidance, sifted through 520,000 counseling transcripts on our platform to track how often eating disorders were discussed and what topics were driving these conversations. Here is what we found².
1. Teen conversations about eating disorders and body image issues surged on our platform in 2020.
Conversations with teens about eating disorders and body image issues increased on our platform in 2020 compared to previous years, based on analysis of over 500,000 Crisis Text Line conversations that took place between 2017–2020. The peak increase occurred in May 2020, where we noticed a 40% jump in these types of conversations over the 2017–2019 average for the month.
Figure 1: The top graph shows the percentage of conversations on our platform with school-aged texters (17 and under) that were assigned an eating disorder issue tag by our crisis counselors over the course of a year. In both plots, the monthly percentages for 2020 (red) are shown as well as the average monthly percentages for the years 2017–2019 (gray). The second graph shows the percentage of conversations on our platform with school-aged children that contained at least one keyword from our Eating Disorder Keyword List. In both plots, the 2020 time-series was constructed from a set of roughly 100,000 conversations on our platform, and the 2017–2019 data was constructed from a set of roughly 300,000 conversations. All age information about our users was self-reported through voluntary post-conversation surveys
We measured the increase in eating disorder activity on our platform in two ways. First, after every conversation with a user, trained Crisis Text Line counselors “tag” the conversation³ as belonging to one of several possible issues, such as depression/anxiety, eating disorder and body image issues, emotional abuse, and other⁴. Compiling these tags together, we tracked how the number of eating disorder tagged conversations changed on our platform over the course of 2020 as compared to previous years.
As a secondary measure, we also looked for conversations that contained at least one of several keywords commonly associated with eating disorders. We built our keyword list after collaborating with experts at NEDA, who helped ensure the list was comprehensive. While the context in which these keywords appeared wasn’t considered, tracking keywords gave us another way to monitor eating disorder activity on our platform that didn’t rely on potentially subjective crisis counselor evaluations.
Our keyword list (provided below) includes a mix of disorders (anorexia, bulimia, pica), food rituals (calorie counting, emotional eating), body image related expressions (bmi, fat, weight), and even laxatives. Aside from its use here, we hope this keyword list can also help other analysts who are screening for similar conditions by sifting through text-based datasets.
The two approaches told the same story⁵. Teens were significantly more likely to text us about eating disorders and body image issues in 2020 than they were in previous years.
Eating disorder-related conversations with teens began to surge on our platform in March 2020 and rose rapidly throughout April and May. Just eight weeks into lockdown, eating disorder activity on our platform had risen by nearly 50%. As the year progressed, however, eating disorder and body image conversations dropped, converging back towards the average of previous years.
Looking at the table below, it is also noteworthy that the most common keyword associated with these conversations was “weight” and not a specific expression related to eating disorders. (In the next part of this series, we will use machine learning to investigate words that may be indicative of eating disorders in Crisis Text Line conversations.)
Figure 2: This table contains the top ten keywords from our eating disorders keyword list that showed up most frequently in 2020 conversations (sample size = 103,016) with school-aged texters (17 and under). The appearance percentage displayed in the second column is defined as the percentage of conversations where a given keyword was mentioned at least once by the texter. Here, all texts submitted by a texter in a given conversation are scanned to identify keyword matches. See the article text for a full list of keywords in the list. All age information about our users was self-reported through voluntary post-conversation surveys. Since the context in which a keyword was mentioned was not considered, there may be situations in which non-eating-disorder-related behavior was also flagged (i.e. 3rd party conversations, or “binge watching” versus “binge eating”), although steps were taken to reduce these effects.
2. Mentions of “weight” and “body image” increased, but mentions of “anorexia” and “bulimia” decreased in 2020.
We identified which keywords from our NEDA list occurred most frequently in our conversations with teens to get a better handle on what topics were driving the surge in eating disorder activity on our platform. We noticed that activity around “purge,” “anorexia,” and “bulimia” decreased during lockdown. However, discussions around the keywords “weight” and “body image” increased over the same timeframe, with the latter increasing by over 100% in 2020 as compared to 2017–2019.
Importantly, a drop in keyword activity does not necessarily imply a drop in user behavior related to that keyword. Drops in words like anorexia or bulimia may have occurred because teens had limited opportunities to see a doctor (and receive a diagnosis) during lockdown and not necessarily because those conditions were less prevalent. Alternatively, the drops could signal a trend where general body image anxieties are dominating these conversations more than in previous years. (We are working on a model to better identify the linguistic signals of eating disorders in our data. We will share what we find on this blog soon. Let us know if you would like to get research updates.)
Figure 3: The chart shows eating disorder keyword appearance percentages in conversations with school-aged children (17 and under). All age information about our users was self-reported through voluntary post-conversation surveys. The percentages for 2020 conversations (red, sample size = 103,016) is displayed as well as the average percentages for 2017–2019 (gray, sample size = 320,049). The keywords “weight”, “eating disorder”, and “body image” saw the largest appearance percentage increase from 2020 as compared to previous years.
3. Bullying, self-harm, and OCD are co-occurring issues of texters struggling with eating disorders on our platform.
Effective screening is one of the strongest tools available for connecting those struggling with eating disorders to treatment. Eating disorders, highly secretive conditions, are notorious for being diagnosed too late, but teachers, parents, and other adults can play a decisive role in noticing when someone is struggling with disordered eating and getting them help.
Eating disorders often co-occur with other conditions that are easier to detect. By keeping these co-occurring conditions in mind, screeners like the ones used by NEDA have a much better chance of detecting an eating disorder when it exists. NEDA has an excellent set of resources dedicated to understanding co-occurring conditions of eating disorders, which include substance abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other conditions. Many of these findings are based on academic research conducted in inpatient settings or through self-reported surveys.
At Crisis Text Line, we have a unique insight into co-occurring issues. Unlike in most academic studies, our texters reach out to us unprompted, in the moment when they are experiencing a crisis. They may describe a range of issues with their Crisis Counselors, giving us a window into how different issues may co-occur in their lives organically in a non-clinical setting.
Sifting through over 500,000 teen conversations surrounding eating disorders and body image issues on our platform, we identified co-occurring issues by tracking what other issue tags surfaced most often in these conversations. We performed pairwise chi-squared tests (with controls for multiple testing) between eating disorders tags and every other tag in our issue tag list. In addition to these counselor labeled tags, we also created an automated keyword based tag for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), since this is a condition known to co-occur with eating disorders.
We found that conversations involving bullying, self-harm, and OCD often co-occurred with conversations involving eating disorders/body image issues. A conversation was more than 50% more likely to have an eating disorder tag if a bullying tag was present than if it was not. Each of the three conditions mentioned above has a distinct set of symptoms that, if identified, may allow screeners to pick up on eating disorders that could otherwise go unnoticed.
Figure 4: This table displays the issue tags (IT) on our platform that co-occur with eating disorder tags at statistically significant rates in conversations with school-aged children (17 and under) from 2014–2021 (sample size = 521, 875). All age information about our users was self-reported through voluntary post-conversation surveys. Column (1) conveys the percentage of conversations assigned the given issue tag that were also assigned an eating disorder tag, while Column (2) presents the appearance percentage of eating disorder tags in conversation not assigned a given issue tag. The last column displays the percentage increase of (1) from (2), which can be interpreted as the increase in likelihood of an eating disorder tag existing given the presence of the given tag. The large percentage increases here suggest that these conditions can be used as effective co-screeners for eating disorders. **While the self-harm and bullying tags were applied by our crisis counselors, the OCD tag is an automated tag generated based on the presence of the phrase “obsessive compulsive disorder” in conversations as well as derivative keywords. It was included in addition to the counselor tags in this analysis due to OCD’s known correlation with eating disorders in the academic literature. The correlation of gender/sexual identity, isolation, depression, anxiety/stress, suicide, physical abuse, racism, sexual abuse, relationship issues, and grief issue tags with eating disorder tags was also explored but found to be non-positive. Further, the emotional abuse, substance abuse, and COVID-19 tags were found to have positive correlations, but these correlations were not statistically significant.
Food routine disruptions, feelings of loss of control, and social media surges may have contributed to more conversations about eating disorders with teen texters in 2020.
So much of the pandemic and its effects have challenged our relationships with food. “Grocery store shortages, food hoarding, eating alone — the lockdown has reconfigured how and when we eat,” explains Elizabet Altunkara, Director of Support Services at the National Eating Disorders Association. These complexities could have strained an already complicated relationship that many young people have with food and their own bodies.
Grocery store shortages, food hoarding, eating alone — the lockdown has reconfigured how and when we eat.
And these issues were flying under the radar. During lockdown, teens spent less time eating amongst peers/teachers and less time interacting with school counselors, making it even more difficult for their conditions to be noticed by those who could intervene.
The twists and turns of the pandemic may have also provoked feelings of uncertainty and loss of control in many, which are known risk factors of eating disorders. “Eating disorders are often related to control and responses to emotions, especially traumas,” according to Allissa Torres, MSW, an expert of youth mental health and a member of the clinical team at Crisis Text Line.
Some experts also suggest the lockdown surge in teen social media use may have had an impact on body image perception, especially since these platforms were bursting with conversations on exercise challenges, pandemic bodies, and fears of re-entering society with extra weight.
Young people experiencing financial hardships or food scarcity may have felt a mounting pressure to monitor their food intake as well, and eating disorders and body image issues could have also been rising in tandem with other mental health issues. Crisis Text Line researchers and others have shown an increase in anxiety across all age groups during the pandemic, which could have contributed to deteriorating body image perceptions among young people.
We will continue to explore Crisis Text Line conversations to learn more about the reasons behind the surge in eating disorders in 2020. In the meantime, we worked with our partners at NEDA and internal subject matter experts at Crisis Text Line to provide the following insights that policymakers and school administrators can consider to address this trend as young people return to in-person education.
1. It is crucial for school staff to look for warning signs of eating disorders.
“Some schools do not have any resources at all for students who are suffering from eating disorders,” according to Elizabet Altunkara of NEDA. As a first step, it is crucial for all school staff to be aware of eating disorder warning signs and know the appropriate steps to take. NEDA has an online educator toolkit that teachers and staff can use to learn more about eating disorders and ways to help their students struggling with them. The document includes a list of behavioral, emotional, and physical signals that can be warning signs of an eating disorder in a school setting and detailed explanations of how eating disorders impact students’ cognitive ability and functioning at school.
2. Effective screening can help identify and address eating disorders before they escalate.
Eating disorders are often diagnosed too late, and when they turn into chronic conditions, they can be distressing for entire families and communities. Screening for these conditions and teaching students where and how to get help are critical steps to empower them.
School staff, primary care providers, and students can all play a role in the screening process. The NIH has published screening guidelines with four specific questions that can help primary care practitioners and others who regularly interact with teens to screen at-risk behavior. NEDA has also developed an online self-screening tool that is appropriate for individuals ages 13 and up. Crisis Text Line also offers resources and crisis support via web chat where those struggling with eating disorders and body image issues can chat with a Crisis Counselor (live).
Schools can invest resources in advertising on-campus counseling services if they exist. Struggling students can also be directed to NEDA’s free call, chat, and text options, as well as receive crisis support through their partnership with Crisis Text Line. Given that body image issues appeared nearly twice as often during lockdown as compared to years past on our platform, targeting additional resources to both screening and resource education on these issues may be warranted. For example, school-based body image prevention programs have proven effective in certain settings, some of which require minimal additional staff training.
3. Screening for known co-occurring conditions of eating disorders can help uncover eating disorders that might otherwise be difficult to detect.
Identifying and screening for co-occurring conditions can improve the chances of an eating disorder being properly diagnosed. NEDA has published a set of resources on co-occurring conditions of eating disorders, which include anxiety, depression, OCD, diabulimia, pregnancy, substance abuse, and PTSD. Through analyzing our own conversations with teens, we also found that OCD, self-harm, and bullying are conditions that tend to co-occur with eating disorders on our platform.
Next steps at Crisis Text Line
As teens across the United States reenter in-person education, we hope these findings can provide additional evidence to aid detection of at-risk teens in what may be an ongoing mental health crisis. We will continue to study conversations on Crisis Text Line’s platform to understand the language that our texters use to describe crises related to eating disorders and body image issues. In the next part of this series, we will use machine learning to identify conversations about eating disorders based on the words our texters use in conversations with Crisis Counselors.
Would you like to learn more about Crisis Text Line data?
We support communities across the nation and provide partners, journalists, and researchers with the data they need to make more informed decisions around mental health. Interested? Email us at [email protected]
We’d love to hear from you.
Notes
[1] NEDA observed a 58.8% increase in total helpline contact from June 2020-May 2021 as compared to June 2019-May 2020.
[2] Throughout the post, we use “teens,” “adolescents,” and “young people” interchangeably to mean school-aged people who are 17 years old or younger.
[3] Each counselor may have his or her own definition of what constitutes an eating disorder tag.
[4] The full list of counselor tags includes emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, abuse (unspecified), anxiety/stress, grief, depression, isolation, bullying, gender/sexual identity issues, relationship issues, self-harm, substance abuse, COVID-19, racism, eating disorder/body image issues, and other. Crisis Counselors can check all that apply.
[5] Both measurements have potential sources of error in tracking eating disorder activity on our platform. For example, counselor tags are subjective and vary counselor-to-counselor, while direct keyword matching does not account for the context in which the keywords were mentioned. However, both measures indicate an increase in eating disorder activity on our platform, consistent with increases seen by other organizations (see introduction). | https://research.crisistextline.org/eating-disorders-ec62948cf009 | ['Prateek Puri'] | 2021-09-01 09:19:50.398000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Teens', 'Data Science', 'Covid 19', 'Eating Disorders'] |
[Crypto] The Case of Hacking on the Exchange in Korea | 1. April 22, 2017 Yapizon Exchange Hacking
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Four hot-wallets stolen
3831 Bitcoin About 5.5 billion won Hacking
That’s 37.08% of the total assets that Yapizon has!
After the hacking, YapiZon came up with a plan
The solution to the damage caused by hacking is to be applied fairly to all members. Yapizon’s excuse that this is the most common way of clearing up. So, the Yapizon is responsible for the members’ KRW, BTC, ETH, LTC and Fei.
It is said to have made a 37.08% deduction. (The profits generated by the exchange are taken by the YapiZon and the damage is shared with the members……)
However, the YapiZon has also made a premise for making small compensation plans for these measures.
The loss of members should be minimized as much as possible (finally zero).
The company should bear these losses to the fullest!
In that way, we decided to pay the company’s profits, “Fei,” as much as our members’ losses. This compensation was not rewarded for continuing to leave Bitcoin to Yapizon for damages, despite being hacked in the end because it would require the creation of Fei through transaction roll. Members have ended up crying over and over again about leaving bitcoins in the YapiZon.
In the end, the damage is being handled by all the users.
The centralized exchange is always exposed to this crisis.
The fact that Bitcoin cannot hack is the strength of the blockchain itself, and the exchange that deals with it runs through the central server, so it is very vulnerable to hacking.
But
there’s still a lot of central exchange running, a lot of people using it, and there’s a lot of hacking happening.
Will this trend change soon?
Almost the first Yapizon hacking case in Korea.
They change the name of the exchange later, and it’ll pop up again!!
I’ll keep you posted on the exchange hacking series. | https://medium.com/ionia-io/crypto-the-case-of-hacking-on-the-exchange-in-korea-3a92aedc37af | [] | 2018-09-05 08:16:20.260000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Bitcoin'] |
How a Surprising Power-Play at the Airport Traumatized Me for Life | This manilla envelope cannot be opened under any circumstances — got it!
She must have repeated herself ten times before she actually handed me my paperwork. The envelope was heavy and reminded me that it had taken two long years to pull this together.
The prim Ms. Smith stood from behind her desk, and with a stiff professional smile, wished me good luck.
My flight from Toronto to Florida the next day was on time, and I’d arrived at the airport three hours prior as instructed.
Unfortunately, I had to go through a special security line per Ms. Smith. Feeling impatient, I stood for a moment contemplating which officer was moving his line along the fastest.
I decided on an older gentleman with a cheery smile and took my spot in line. My manilla envelope clutched tightly to my chest; I struggled with my knapsack and kicked my wheeled baggage along in front of me.
Twenty minutes later, that cheery face of his went sour as I announced the contents of my envelope.
Photo by Rui Silvestre on Unsplash
“I’m moving to Florida,” I explained in my excitement. “These are my immigration papers from the US Embassy in Montreal.”
He stared without a word as I handed him the weighted envelope.
Then in one swift, dramatic move, he tore it open, dropping its contents all over the desk. With a stern look, he asked, “why did you break the seal on your envelope?”
Still oblivious to what his intentions were, I laughed and said, “I didn’t; you did!”
He glared, unsmiling; he wasn’t playing.
Then he fired questions about where I planned to live and my mother’s maiden name. After reciting my previous addresses as quickly as possible, he accused me of lying and raised his voice to the point of drawing an audience.
It was quite the show.
Stunned into silence, I watched as he slammed the “enter” key repeatedly on his keyboard while slinging more accusations about what he saw on his computer screen. I could see that it was blank from where I stood — so what was he doing — was this just a power play?
“All my paperwork is in order, sir; it took me two years and more than $1000 to get this done correctly. I even hired an immigration lawyer to be sure I didn’t miss anything!”
My words only seemed to infuriate him further. In a flurry, he gathered all the strewn papers, which included my passport, and barked, “follow me!”
Photo by Jaimie Harmsen on Unsplash
Under the weight of my luggage, and without a choice, I scrambled past the crowd. Desperate to keep up with the gentleman racing away with all of my credentials, I had to break into a light jog.
I saw him swing a heavy metal door open, and he disappeared inside without so much as a glance to see if I’d followed.
Unsure if I should go in, I stood by the door and waited for him to reappear. Empty-handed, he swung the door open again and muttered something about getting my lying ass inside.
He marched back the way we’d come and left me in his wake staring in disbelief — WTF just happened?
Fumbling with my luggage through the heavy door was probably entertaining to watch, but I was angry and officially panicked!
A hard wooden bench awaited me as I avoided eye contact with the only other person in the room. Anxious to find out what the hell was going on, I squirmed in my seat.
The ticking clock on the wall, echoing in the silence, confirmed that I’d probably be missing my flight.
Photo by Mr.Autthaporn Pradidpong on Unsplash
Fifteen minutes in, without so much as a clue as to why I’d been detained, a heavy barrel-chested US immigration officer entered the room in all his glory.
He barked my name and motioned with his index finger that I was to follow him down the long hall he’d appeared from. When I reached for my luggage, he insisted I leave it behind.
My heart in my throat, I obeyed.
Eventually, we reached an open office door, and with a thrust of his clean-shaven chin, it was obvious he wanted me in the chair opposite his.
With flushed cheeks and bile in my throat, I complied once again.
The small office and the intensely bright, white light directly above my head alluded to an intense interrogation.
He rummaged through my manilla envelope and flipped open my passport without a word. Each time I opened my mouth to ask what was going on, I was shushed into silence.
Photo by 莎莉 彭 on Unsplash
After answering another barrage of silly questions and defending myself against false accusations, he stood abruptly, “go back to the bench!”
“Think about what you’ve done; you’re not leaving until you’re ready to tell me the truth!”
Back to the room with the annoying ticking clock, I swore out loud, “I’m going to miss my f#*@ing flight for nothing!”
The same guy who’d been waiting there when I entered looked over casually and asked, “what did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything! I’m innocent, and they haven’t even told me what they think I did!”
“Ya, I know the feeling. They’re accusing me of smuggling drugs. Maybe you should tell the truth and get this over with.”
Was this guy crazy or planted there on purpose?
At that same moment, a flood of cool air moved into the room as the main door flew open. Another airport employee shouting my name, entered in a fuss, “are these your bags?”
“Yes, but!”
I didn’t have a chance to finish as he grabbed my suitcases and exclaimed that I was about to miss my flight.
“No shit Sherlock, do you have any idea why?” I called after him.
“No, ma’am, I don’t,” he replied as he raced back out the door. “I’ll take these; you run to the gate as soon as they let you go.”
Stunned once again, I watched him race away, wondering if I’d ever get on that plane.
Tears filled my eyes, and my throat constricted as I realized they’d taken my luggage and all of my identification papers without so much as a proper greeting.
It was insane, and somehow I was at their mercy.
Still standing, I felt a bead of sweat trickle down the small of my back. What was happening here? The drug dealer guy gave me a half-hearted smirk and said with a chuckle, “they’ll let you go soon.”
That’s when “Mr. Interrogator” came back down the hall to bark more instructions.
My manilla envelope tucked under his arm; he motioned me toward a small desk in the corner of the room. Pulling items I didn’t recognize from one of the drawers, he began fingerprinting me!
Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash
I’d never been so scared.
His hands were rough and unforgiving as he rolled each finger in black ink.
“Am I going to jail?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Where did you take my bags?” I mumbled through my now steady flow of tears.
Relief flooded through to my feet with his astonishing next words, “you’re free to go, Miss.”
I didn’t dare say another word but grabbed the envelope he shoved back toward me and literally ran from that hot, horrible office.
Blinded with fresh tears, I raced towards the gate, hearing the last call for my flight to Tampa. As I approached, an agent stood by the entrance motioning me to hurry.
“We’ve been holding the plane for ten minutes; your boarding pass, please — and quickly!”
“Did my bags make it on?” I asked, wiping my cheeks.
“Yes, dear, you’re all set; we were notified that immigration agents had detained you.”
And that was it.
I made my way past all the glaring stares of the waiting passengers looking for my seat number. Pushing past a gentleman to the window without apologizing, I dropped my head in my hands and let the tears flow freely out of frustration and disbelief.
Thirty minutes later, with a hot tea and a headache, I told the stranger next to me my story. We found some laughs in my details, and he said, “young lady, you’ll look back on this one day and realize you’re stronger than you know.”
I’ve told the story many times since, and when my father heard it, he was ready to call the authorities on my behalf. I talked him out of it, but to this day, I’m a nervous wreck every time I go through security — anywhere!
I still have no idea why I was treated that way.
I did find out later that fingerprinting is standard procedure when you immigrate to another country, but boy, the guy could have told me that.
I’ve never had so much as a speeding ticket, so all I can assume is that it was a power trip, and they were having — a new kind of fun!
If you enjoyed that, here’s another true story…
I’m Liz, the self-empowered, red wine & coffee lovin’, personal growth fanatic behind this article. I’ve stopped shrinking into places I’ve outgrown, and I’m a fan of straight talk and practical solutions. That’s why I’m here to Empower, Educate and Entertain. | https://medium.com/inspired-writer/a-surprising-power-play-at-the-airport-that-traumatized-me-for-life-71548f33a148 | ['Liz Porter'] | 2020-12-03 15:17:35.093000+00:00 | ['This Happened To Me', 'Life', 'Life Lessons', 'United States', 'Immigration'] |
Childhood: The most precious state of our life | The age of childhood is such a priceless state, which we don’t realize at the time when we are kids. We are completely unaware of what is going on or what could come next. The only thing we really worry about at that time is, when we get to play next or what new toy we could buy, or when we will discover such a thing that could possibly add more fun to the arsenal of our toys.
These days toys have been replaced by cell phones. The ones who haven’t played with toys much, won’t ever realize the value, toys held to the previous generation of kids, which is a whole another topic of discussion.
The age of childhood is free from responsibilities, we don’t need to worry about earning money and we are never held responsible for anything, except for breaking glass utensils, spilling the floor with water, and troubling people in the house. Fun and joy was the primary purpose we lived for at that age.
During childhood we develop massive goals to achieve, we make idols and plan to become like them someday when we grow up. We form our aims and ambitions regardless of knowing the hard work it would take to be where we wish to be. But as we grow older, we become wise enough to evaluate things, the state of realization after a particular age reaches a height where we are sound enough to make our own decisions and build our own path towards greatness.
Before we do anything, we are completely aware of all the possibilities involved in doing that, the amount of risk it would take, positive, and negative outcomes. And this evaluation of possibilities is only possible when our mind is capable to think rationally and critically.
This ability to evaluate becomes a problem for most people. We evaluate things to such an extent that, after knowing about all the outcomes, we tend to focus only on the negative sides. Focusing on a few negative outcomes in spite of having hundreds of positive outcomes has always been a drawback among humans. And which becomes a reason why most people live their life way below their expectations.
The fearless state of childhood makes us take risks, makes us do whatever we want to do without thinking about outcomes or danger. A lot of times we succeed and many times we fail, but those failures never mark the end of our curiosity of trying out things. But slowly and gradually we get elder, that curiosity starts to fade away for most people, and many times the reason for that is due to over-evaluation of outcomes, or some past experience of being made fun of or laughed at for trying something different.
I think the time of childhood is extremely precious, and it’s ironic that we don’t realize it during that time. But as we grow up, when life starts to throw responsibilities, we have to make our way to become independent, various people’s expectations are upon us, including ourselves. That is when we come to know, what a golden period it was, and now it’s time to take the heavy load of responsibilities and make our way in life.
And that’s how life goes, we never realize the value of things at the time we have them, but once that is gone, we come to know how privileged we were when we had that. If it's a materialistic thing that went away, it may come back to us, possibly in a much better form. But, some things are such in nature that they will never come back to us.
Thanks for reading. Make sure to leave a comment and share your perspective on the topic. | https://medium.com/@multipleperspective/childhood-the-most-precious-state-of-our-life-bea41a7b39e5 | ['Sufiyan Khan'] | 2020-12-22 07:10:40.034000+00:00 | ['Kids', 'Wisdom', 'Childhood', 'Life Lessons'] |
Cancel Culture — A liberal Critique | Image by: 22Images Studio
At the 2002 Academy Awards ceremony, there were two winners who did not attend in person. The first was Eminem. The reasons as to why vary, but a reasonable conclusion is that it simply wasn’t his crowd. Winning an Oscar for a rap song is of course a rare achievement, but yet unlikely one that any Hip-Hop artist would want their legacy defined by. Eminem, by his own admission just didn’t “get” the nomination. And even if he did, it’s hard to imagine that the “angsty disrupter” persona he cultivated at the time would have played well in that forum. Something I suspect he was more aware of than he let on.
The second person not to attend was Roman Polanski, whose reasons were far more clear-cut. He had fled the US to escape sentencing for the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl.
In what is now 44 years since Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to this crime, he has gone on to make 14 more films. A number of these starring Hollywood A-listers, including the 2002 multi-Oscar winner The Pianist. In 2009 when he was arrested in Switzerland and an attempt was made to return him to the US for sentencing; over 100 industry peers and even the French government petitioned his release. A petition which was ultimately successful. He remains a free man.
So…when we think about “cancel culture” in the year 2021, it’s important that we never lose sight of the society it was created in response to. A society where talent, power, and influence had allowed any and all evils to be swept under the carpet. A society where we were encouraged to separate the art from the artist. Where men of established good standing could rape, abuse, and assault women at their leisure. Where active racism was fine just as long as it was kept out of the public eye. Where consequence was entirely aligned to your status and achievements. A society that had existed unchallenged for decades. Centuries in fact.
Any right-minded person would surely believe that this was no good thing. That toppling this kind of system would be essential for the fulfilment of any fair and just society. And this person would be quite correct. And at least for a while, it seemed like this could well be working. Roman Polanski has gone from having an entire industry petition his release in 2009, to being removed from the Film Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts in 2018. Harvey Weinstein is in jail, Donald Sterling is no longer an NBA owner. And good riddance to them all.
But like with most righteous journeys there will always be a fork in the road. A grey area that starts out small and grows over time. And in this case, that area begins with one simple question: how do we accurately distinguish between systemic nefarious actions like the ones detailed above and very human mistakes? Especially very human mistakes committed many years ago by a very different person that may exist today. I would argue at this point we have struggled to reach this balance to a degree that reflects the fair and just society that cancel culture sought to create. Rape is not a “very human mistake.” Tweeting something dumb in 2011 perhaps is. This waltz between accountability and redemption and the distinction between a history of abuse and a “bad tweet” is what I would like us to explore. If we can all agree that there can be no excuses for the former…then what do we do with the latter, and should the professional implications really be like for like?
For the record; Xennials are often far more worried about internet footprints than millennials. And the reason for this is that people born in the early 1980s started using the internet at “frat party” age, where dumb jokes were standard practice. Most Xennials honestly had no idea that the stuff being said online would be there forever. Offensive comments that would make someone in their late 30s cringe, quite possibly exist somewhere in their name on the internet in the mid-2000s.
Now chances are this won’t really matter for the vast majority of those people. It won’t stop them from getting a regular job and it’s not going to impact their credit rating. Instead, it just sits somewhere deep in the furthest corners of the internet buried beneath graduation pictures, wedding hashtags, and comments about the last season of Game of Thrones.
Unless of course somebody really looks for it. And unless the person in question reaches a level of success where it becomes a matter of public interest. Politicians have of course accepted this for a long time. The vetting of their personal and professional history is expected. It seems fair that you don’t get to literally make the rules about how people should live their lives; if you’re not doing likewise to an impeccable standard.
But the question remains, should the bar really be this high for everybody else? And what actually happens long-term if it is? If there is no community agreed statute of limitations for saying something stupid on the internet then we do put ourselves at great risk that those who truly deserve to be held accountable for the crimes their status allowed, get lumped together with everyone else. Dare I say; the rest of us. And in that world, the ability to remove those that always got away with it from their positions becomes weakened as being “cancelled” holds no meaning if it is happening to everyone.
There is a certain type of hard-right conservative that is rooting for this scenario. They want progressive social policies and initiatives to crumble under their own weight. They want moderates to be so scared that they will be cancelled themselves, that they don’t get behind any attempts to purge the abusers. They want the racist books, the inappropriate sexual advances, and the old boys club back. And right now there is a very real danger that we are playing into their hands.
One of the principles of liberal values has been that of rehabilitation. We have seen too often in the Black community young Black women and men criminalised from an early age by aggressive policing or youthful mistakes that land them in much greater trouble than their White middle-class counterparts. These children grow up to find that no matter what their efforts are to turn their lives around, the pull of systemic racism they experienced early in their life is always going to hurt them via way of their criminal conviction. They have been “cancelled” from a level of achievement they would have otherwise reached.
If we do believe in rehabilitation and that society is not a cut and dry split between good and evil, then we also have to believe that we all have the potential to err every once in a while. And if we do in fact believe that, then an infinite database of these indiscretions being available does create a real sense of anxiety. It has been proven by psychologists that the human mind was quite simply not meant to deal with global shaming in the way that is frequent today and the correlation between mental health and fear of being “cancelled” is firmly established.
This is not to say, however, that every bad tweet should get a pass based on when it was written. People at times simply do not change and are equally non-repentant for their actions many years later. If something problematic said a decade ago is consistent with behaviour that is still prevalent to this day — then we should not be afraid to demand answers.
This distinction between freedom of speech and freedom of consequence is often misunderstood. While we should not look to silence views that differ from our own; there is no travesty in someone’s opportunities being limited by unrepentant positions that cause injury to other groups. As an example: if a person were to land a job as a tour guide, only to then express a deep-seated vocal dislike for the location they guided people around; they are not subject to being “cancelled.” They are simply subject to having made their position untenable.
So while our efforts to bring down the rapists, the abusers, the racists, the homophobes must remain absolutely unapologetic. We should also think carefully about the permanence of penalties for everybody else. Again, I dare say it….the rest of us. | https://aninjusticemag.com/cancel-culture-a-liberal-critique-5ef084d35a4e | ['Bayo Awesu'] | 2021-06-09 19:52:38.858000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Liberalism', 'Progressive', 'Cancel Culture', 'Free Speech'] |
I Dreamt Of Living Off Grid | In a sunny place
For a long, long time I harbored dreams of having a simple home and living off-grid. I wanted a cabin or a mobile that harvested the energy it needed from solar panels. Ideally, there would be a stream nearby and a place to grow vegetables, fruit, and other foods.
I wanted what they call a ‘tiny home’, everything cleverly hidden in nooks and under the bed. A shower in a cupboard, a compost toilet, and no use of fossil fuels or monthly bills.
Somewhere north of L.A., in the foothills, with warm weather and civilization not too far away. I would make jewelry and baby clothes to sell and barter.
Who, at some point, does not have a similar dream?
Then I heard a program that shocked me. It made me reconsider my whole thinking.
Someone was saying that to live off grid somewhere was selfish. That innovations to harvest renewable energy should be shared in the community. That as a people, the human race should seek to stop exploiting the planet and the only way to succeed was to do it together.
This made a whole load of sense to me. Living in glorious isolation would not benefit the planet, which is my goal. Unless we share the technology, there is not a true cessation of using the fuels that pollute the planet and are causing it to die.
We should all have that goal and do what we can to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’. What we invest in as a community, a country, is much less expensive that what we buy alone.
We can all start by insulating our homes really well. This stops unnecessary use of fossil fuels. We can install ground source heating or air source heating, buy solar panels. We can cycle more, use public transport, and make use of water we have used once for irrigation, or heating.
Some people are quite innovative with water that has been used. They manage to pipe it round a building to cool it or warm it. They also store it to irrigate crops.
Water our most precious resource, so we must use it with care. Taps should not drip, and we must endeavour to use as much as we can more than once.
I have started using shampoo bars- no plastic bottles. I am ridding my life of plastic as planet seems to be coated in it. In this, the efforts of every individual count a lot. We can all use less plastic easily. Just check your bathroom and under the kitchen sink.
Women can use mooncups, rather than conventional sanitary products. They are far better for the environment.
So, my dream of living off-grid is becoming the reality of preserving the planet in any way I can and doing it with my community. | https://medium.com/writers-blokke/i-dreamt-of-living-off-grid-922350d910b4 | ['Christina Meier Ph.D'] | 2020-12-21 01:05:22.574000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Plastic', 'Resources', 'Community', 'Resourcefulness'] |
Cleaning a messy dataset using Python | Data cleaning
Data cleaning is a scientific process to explore and analyze data, handle the errors, standardize data, normalize data, and finally validate it against the actual and original dataset.
Data cleaning tasks
Sample dataset
To perform data cleaning, I selected a subset of 100 records from IMDB movie dataset. It included around 20 attributes, which was reduced to 12 for our analysis. The dataset is available at here. I used Python for the analysis, as a powerful, flexible, and open-source language. Python has a set of libraries for data manipulation, analysis and visualization. However, there are other data analytics tool that you can choose for data cleaning such as: Tableau, R, QlickView, SAP, Excel, Apache SPARK, etc.
Data cleaning process
Data exploration
First step in data cleaning is understanding data by exploring the dataset and its attributes. The type of analysis might be different for each attribute type. The following table shows 12 attributes we consider for data cleaning with their data types. I categorized the attributes into different groups:
dataset’ attributes
Nominal: an attribute can be categorical like color that can contain a set of restricted values (e.g., blue,red, brown, ... )
an attribute can be categorical like color that can contain a set of restricted values (e.g., ) Text: an attribute can be a free text or string.
an attribute can be a free text or string. Numeric: an attribute can be numeric (e.g., currency, scores ).
Missing or repetitive values in columns
Handling errors
Based on the type of error, we choose a specific strategy to handle it. If we have missing or repetitive values for one attribute we may decide to drop the column from our analysis. Based on experience, if more than 60% of a column contain null values, we can drop that column for our analysis. This is true for repetitive values of one column. If all the values of a column are the same, it is definitely useless. In our example, all the movies in our selected dataset is in English language, that can be dropped for our analysis. | https://medium.com/well-red/cleaning-a-messy-dataset-using-python-7d7ab0bf199b | ['Reza Rajabi'] | 2020-01-30 23:41:02.158000+00:00 | ['Data Cleaning', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Data Cleansing', 'Data'] |
Linking Public Participation and Environmental Rights: International Law Instruments in the Decision-Making Process (1) | Representation of all segments of the society at the public level is a method that improves, strengthens, and legitimizes the decision-making process. Although this method may be called in different ways, public participation as a framework concept that everyone agrees; becomes an inclusive, progressive force. It is also one of the cornerstones of good governance. The concept of public participation, which started to gain importance especially from the second half of the 20th century, has become very valuable as a result of the effects of climate change and increasing rights-based studies in environmental decision-making processes. In this study, it will be focused primarily on the scope of public participation and secondly, different approaches to environmental rights and climate change. In the end, international measures and agreements developed in this context will be analysed.
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN THE CONTEXT OF ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS
Public Participation
Public participation, as it is defined by Picolotti and Taillant, includes all interactions between government and civil society including the process by which government and civil society open dialogue, establish partnerships, share information, and otherwise interact to design, implement, and evaluate development policies, projects, and programs.[1] This may include voting, participating in discussions, volunteering in NGOs, being a member of a political party, or supporting a candidate financially. For many policy-makers and environmental advocates, take part in decision-making by communities and stakeholders is a basic component of democracy. That’s why some scholars characterized public participation as it is two-sided: process-related where it is viewed as an end in itself and substantive where it contributes to some further important outcomes/achievements.[2]
It will not be argued deeply what is the definition of public participation in this study. However, using Cornwall’s “invited” and “created” spaces framework is much more effective while trying to see the correlation between public participation and environmental rights as it is shown in the Stockholm Environment Institute Report: “invited” spaces are participation opportunities where decision-making authorities invite the public to provide input (i.e., public participation as traditionally understood). But citizens themselves also create spaces for engagement rooted in shared identities and common interests (i.e., mobilization).[3]
Implementation of public participation in different forms and methods will have different consequences. Therefore, if public participation does not settle into the daily practices of the community in a usual and active way, it will affect the quality of the decision-making process. This is possible with the state’s responsibility for awareness-raising activities by creating places in order to ensure the participation of the society and increasing interactions between the state and society.
[1] Picolotti and Taillant (eds) (2003). p.50
[2] du Plessis, A. A. (2008). p.11
[3] Berry, L.H (eds) (2019) p. 3 | https://medium.com/@busratenik/linking-public-participation-and-environmental-rights-international-law-instruments-in-the-df6ee68a099d | ['Büşra Tenik'] | 2020-11-27 18:09:57.028000+00:00 | ['Environmental Rights', 'Public Participation', 'Environment', 'International Law', 'Environmental Issues'] |
MARKET Protocol — Explain it like I’m Five | Bitcoin is often referred as “digital gold”. Gold, like silver and any other precious metals or agricultural goods, is a commodity. Commodities along with currencies, stocks, bonds, and real estate are types of primary financial instruments. To increase the flexibility and efficiency of the trading markets, finance professionals have developed secondary financial instruments called ‘derivatives’, with forwards, futures, options, and swaps being the most commonly traded. Derivatives have two main components, the base currency and the underlying asset. Users make or lose the base currency as the underlying asset moves. For example, the Crude Oil Futures at the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) trade in dollars (base currency) and derive their value from a price of crude oil per barrel (underlying asset).
In the cryptocurrency world, traders have only been able to exchange their digital assets from A to B in one-time or spot transactions for example, like Bitcoin to Ethereum. Blockchain technology is in the maturing process. Its participants should soon have better hedging and price discovery tools at disposal including derivatives. And since many future MARKET Protocol participants may never have been exposed to derivatives, the following example is provided to illustrate how one type of derivative, a futures contract, functions in the real world. Also given is an analogous use case in cryptocurrencies implemented using MARKET contracts to demonstrate their utility for risk management purposes.
Imagine you were a wheat producer and your biggest potential buyer is a flour mill. It would be essential for both parties to find ways to secure future positive cash flow in order to effectively plan and maintain their businesses. If you knew that you could sell a bushel of wheat for $4.5 in the future while current production costs were $3.5 per bushel, you might want to lock in a price of $4.5. If you did not, you risk a price decrease due to unpredictable factors from now until harvest (e.g. oversupply or other adverse market or weather conditions).
The mill holds the same risk but in the other direction, since the price in a few months might go up to $7 when it needs to re-supply. Therefore, it might be beneficial for both parties to enter into a contract that guarantees the delivery of wheat at a specified date and price in the future — in this case $4.5 per bushel. The type of contract just described (future delivery of an asset at a fixed price) is called a futures contract and it is a basic type of derivative. It’s called a derivative because it derives its value from something else — in this case the price of a bushel of wheat.
MARKET protocol contracts are also derivatives because they derive their value from something else, an underlying asset which can be on-chain (cryptocurrencies and tokens) or off-chain (stocks, bonds, indexes).
Translated into the world of cryptocurrencies, one could think of an Ether miner as a farmer and traders/investors/speculators as a mill. Similarly to agriculture production, there are several factors that need to be considered when assessing the profitability of mining a coin, e.g. the cost of electricity, the mining difficulty and the cost of hardware. Since MARKET protocol contracts can be customized by the creator, all of these risks could theoretically be hedged by creating the appropriate contract and finding a counterparty to take the other side of the trade. Therefore, if miners believe they can mine Ether profitably over some length of time in the future at a minimum guaranteed price, they may want to enter into a contract now to eliminate the risk of a future price decline in Ether.
Also, many cryptocurrency traders and miners might want to use their cryptocurrency to gain exposure to traditional market assets or cross chain currency pairs not currently available for trading on regular exchanges. For example, use your Ether to get exposure to Tesla stock. You would never have to sell Ether and open a brokerage account. It would be an excellent way to enable crypto/traditional assets relationships.
How about the ability to hold SALT lending token and partially get exposed to a possible Litecoin price surge without having to buy it (and without having to sell your SALT!)? As a novel price discovery tool for these types of relationships, MARKET contracts could help decrease the volatility of and make utility token valuations become more stable.
So we’ve just learned how MARKET protocol contracts share some similar properties to futures contracts. Yet there are some key differences and advantages to MARKET contracts over traditional futures. These include the ability to collateralize contracts using any ERC20 base token as well as the elimination of third party risk by implementing collateralization via smart contracts. Look forward to these being discussed in more depth in the future. To learn more, visit marketprotocol.io, read our whitepaper, and join the ongoing discussion on Telegram. | https://medium.com/market-protocol/market-protocol-explain-it-like-im-five-673312673b6e | ['Lazar Jovanovic'] | 2018-05-18 20:18:18.208000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Ethereum', 'Startup', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
All That is Lost in the Winter. All That is Lost in the Winter | Reflections on Loss
Photo by Elisa Coluccia on Unsplash
The autumn leaves have come and with it the cold
The wind whips around me
Chilling every inch of my slight frame
Mocking my shivers
Disheveling my hair
Pounding at my door at night
Like someone who wants to be let in
But there is no one there
Except for a rake that has fallen over
And the clothing line that keeps hitting the side window
Making me think someone is tapping their fingers on the glass
It keeps me up at night sometimes
Once or twice I’ve called out to you
“Papa?”
Maybe you’ve come back to see how I’m doing
I’d like to think there is an afterlife
I’m not afraid of ghosts
You are welcome anytime
Sometimes I think I see you in a shadow
Floating lightly over the wall
But when I turn on the light it is gone
Where are you now?
When will my turn be?
Will I ever see you again?
Winter has come
To remind us that Summer doesn’t last forever
Those sweet, mild days with all the flowers and ripe fruit
When we took our time for granted
All gone now
The ground is frozen and brown under the snow
Our beautiful trees are mere sticks now
Even the birds have no shelter there in the bare branches
It’s hard to imagine the way it used to be
It seems like a dream
To remember the lush grass and warm nights when we ate under the cherry tree
Laughing and the wine flowing, thinking it would last forever
The same cherry tree that was struck down by a violent storm one Fall
Just a stump is left to remind us it even once stood
The same tree that gave us so much good fruit and many happy memories
Your things are put away now
Your life all fits inside a few trunks
Folded with care
Closed but not locked
A smell of must is starting to grow
A whole life that once was
Tidy and stacked in a corner of the attic
Gathering dust
Everything now is separated between ‘last’ and ‘first’
Last Christmas of your life
First Christmas without you
The many of firsts and lasts of life
This is normal and expected
Yet it feels far from it
It seems I’ll never get used to it
Just like in Summer I can’t believe Winter will ever come
Or that after Winter the snow will one day melt
Life and death are mysteries to me
What once was can never be repeated
Yet the Earth keeps moving
The seasons keep changing
And someday it will be my turn to die
Maybe even today or maybe I have many years left
No one knows
All I can do is to cherish every day
To not fear death
To seize life
Summer will come again
And I’ll lay in the grass and smell the Earth
I’ll remember you, the cherry tree, and relish life
For I know too that it is not eternal
Thank you for the sun and the laughs and the love
I want to die with those in my heart
I close my eyes and I see your smile
And suddenly, it is Summer again. | https://medium.com/@kmollion/then-and-now-fe1bd12d71fe | ['Krista Mollion'] | 2020-12-27 15:42:21.379000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Poetry', 'Death', 'Loss', 'Poems On Medium'] |
Marquette love stories | Kalyn (Business ’13) and I (Engineering ’11) met in ROTC. This is where I asked her to a military ball. From that point our relationship grew. I would commission that year and go off to serve in the Army, but our relationship never wavered. Spending months apart we met anytime that we could travel. After Kalyn commissioned, we were fortunate to be stationed at Fort Campbell, KY together. A deployment separated us again by distance on a map, not in our hearts. Later that year we were married at Old St Mary in Milwaukee December 27, 2014. — Jason Richmond
My boyfriend, Paul Renner, and I met his first year of dental school. I was getting ready to graduate from the CON and they had asked some of the nursing students to take a small job as fake patients so the first year dental students. We had seen each other in passing throughout the semester but it wasn’t until their final test where they had to interview us, “the fake patients” that we actually spoke to each other. I was his fake patient and I had to nod and smile as he awkwardly navigated his way through the questionnaire. He found me waiting for a friend after the exam was over and asked me how he did and I said he did alright, although truthfully it was pretty awkward. He asked me out for coffee and we’ve been together for almost 3 years! He’s graduating this may and I’ve been working as an RN in Milwaukee for the past two years and I’m thankful that it was MU that brought us together. — Regina Rubio
Kyle Oren and I met at Marquette back in 2009 through mutual friends and a friendly game of beer pong. Although just acquaintances in college, we re-connected in Chicago years later and just got married this past August! — Andrea Oren
My parents Monica and Dan Tighe met sophomore year at Schroeder Hall in 1978… my dad was on the hockey team and had recently sprained his ankle, rolling up to the dining hall on crutches. My mom’s roommate and best friend — knowing that my mom had a huge crush on my dad — sprinted up to the 7th floor to tell her that he was in need of some medical attention from a nursing student (my mom!). Needless to say, my dad totally fell for it! Happily married for 34 years! — Claire Tighe
Nick Goodwin and I met in April of 2009 at the end of the semester. We met at a party and he took me on our first date after doing Hunger Clean-Up during the day. While in school, we would to Raynor and walk past the Joan of Arc Chapel. We got married this past October 2016 and we had to capture a photo with the chapel. Thanks Marquette. — Shannon Hayes Goodwin
My husband, Scott Luke, and I met October of freshman year (2008)at a movie night on the nursing floor of Cobeen hall. A few weeks later, he asked me to the Navy fall ball and we never looked back! We got married in July of 2014. Our future golden eagle was born in October of 2015. — Meg Luke
I met my wife Anna about an hour before Sunday’s 10pm Mass started in the Chapel of the Holy Family. I had been playing guitar for that Mass and we had a new violin player joining us for the first time. Little did I know we would end up getting married! We playing music together at both the Sunday night Mass with Fr. Thon and the Tuesday Night Mass with Fr. Naus for more than 2 years. Fr. Thon officiated our wedding, as well. We will be married for two years this summer! — Philip LaRosa
I met my wife Janice in the spring of 2006 at a party on 20th street. However, if you ask her we met at Raynor. I guess you could confuse a late night at Raynor with a party depending on the day. This is our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple. We were married October 23, 2016. We were joined by three other MU alumni as well. Lenzy Crawford was my best man (class of ‘08) and two more groomsmen Corey Smith (class of ‘08) and Avery Hall (class of ‘09) I graduated in 2009 and she finished her DPT in 2011. We now reside in Houston. — Terrence Miller
Ryan and I met our freshman year at Marquette and started dating sophomore year when we both lived in Schroeder. Just a few weeks ago Ryan asked me to marry him while ice skating at Maggie Daley Park in Chicago! — Lauren Krawczyk
Jacob Schlindwein (Health Sciences ’13, Dental ’16) and I met our junior year through my roommate. We were married on November 5, 2016 in Milwaukee surrounded by many fellow MU alums. The day wasn’t complete without a stop at Marquette — a place very near and dear to our hearts! — Lexi Schlindwein
I met my husband as a freshmen in 1975. By the time we graduated he was the assistant hall director at McCormick Hall and I was an RA at O’Donnell. Sappy, right? Married in 1979, still making the trek to Marquette basketball games together. — Ana-Maria Roback-Troast
My fiancé and I met at Marquette in 2011 through my older sister and his fraternity brother. Our first date was Valentine’s Day 2012. Both College of Ed grads, Greek Presidents (SigEp and Sigma Kappa), engaged the summer after graduation at Disney World and getting married 7/1/17 at Gesu, how Marquette. — Sarah Pawlowski
My husband and I met at a TGIF at the Student Union in 1965. Building no longer exists. He asked me to dance and the first thing he said to me was “Will you marry me?” Three years later we married and have been married for soon to be 49 years. — Paulette Joswick
We first met in Abbottsford and began talking May 8th 2014. Our first date was May 31st 2014 at Miller Park. We became official bf and gf July 4th, 2014. — Enrique Torruco
Sandy Patyk and I met at Marquette University in 1988, fast-forward to 1999 we ran into each other at the Diederich College of Comm Alumni Association 50th anniversary dinner and have been together ever since. — Mike Jakubowski
Dave Marran and I met in the basement of Johnston Hall in April 1984, after both landing assistant editor positions at the Trib. A list of new staff members showed that we shared the same birthday, so I asked around until I found out who he was. We quickly became friends and after countless hours in the publication offices, following our favorite sports teams, battling statistics class, and walking Wisconsin Avenue together, we fell in love, and got married Sept. 26, 1987. We’ve rarely been apart since, and are forever grateful that Marquette brought us together. — Laura Veras Marran
Our story began in March 2013 with the Marquette Action Program. Before the service trip that would bring us together, our randomly assigned group of 12 met to get organized. Olivia was immediately drawn to Jack’s gorgeous blue eyes and quiet, warm smile, while Jack first noticed Olivia’s simple beauty and outgoing personality. We set out to South Dakota with our MAP group, and bonded quickly over the irony of spending our “spring break” road trip driving through a freak snowstorm. We were both kind of amazed how we never ran out of things to talk about through hours of building fences, re-painting a parish center and driving from site to site that week. When we arrived back to Milwaukee, we met for coffee, the next week dinner at Schroeder, and became “official” after a few more study dates at Engineering Hall. Since then, we have continued exploring our shared interests, which include hiking, and Milwaukee food. We love telling our MU love story and are overjoyed to become husband and wife in August! — Olivia Knier
My girlfriend and I met during our student teaching seminar at Marquette. We have lived and worked as teachers in Milwaukee ever since. This April is our 7th anniversary. We are MU proud! — Gianna Macchia
My husband, Greg Zimmerman, and I met at Marquette through Greek Life. We knew of each other yet never spoke while at Marquette, graduated in 2000 and went our separate ways. Through mutual friends, we reconnected in 2006 at a basketball game and began dating later that spring. We finally got married in May 2014 with 45 alumni in attendance. Who knew? #ahoyalove — Stephanie Plancich
Ben Weiler and I met at Pat McCurdy concert during freshman orientation in 1997. Started dating in 1998. Married in 2003. — Stephanie Searing Weiler
I was a chemistry major and Chris Morales was a biology major. He snagged a part-time gig in the chemistry department his last semester of undergrad (my junior year). I was supposed to train and supervise him — we’ve been dating for 5+ years. We recently moved to sunny Cali together for opportunities and grad school, & are figuring out the next steps. If you could cut back on the student loans, that would be swell. — Nicole Cunningham
I met Stephanie Altepeter at a party before a basketball game during both of our senior year in November 2007. I proposed in front of Joan of Arc in 2013 and we got married at Gesu in 2015. — Andrew Altepeter
My husband Mathias Kopitzke and I met freshman year in 2011! We both lived in Abbottsford and were on the same team for the aMUsing Race/Mission Impossible scavenger hunt where all the dorms compete against each other! We got married on Marquette’s campus in July 2016! — Brittany Kopitzke
Met my fiancé Michael Cianciolo while at school working at MUTV. We are getting married at Gesu in September! — Francesca Regina Reed
My husband TJ and I lived a floor apart for the first two years at Marquette. We must have had the very same class schedule, because we constantly found ourselves on the same elevator nearly every day. Neither of us ever made small talk on the elevator but when we found ourselves at the same party one night, TJ came up and introduced himself because he “felt like he should know” me since we always shared the same elevator. After that night we would make small talk every time we ran into each other on the elevator or the Cafeteria. We finally made plans to hang out (after a few failed attempts due to TJ’s demanding O-Chem class) and we basically were inseparable ever since. The first night we spent time together, I met about 7 of my husbands close friends, 4 of them later stood up in our wedding 4 years later. We’ve been married for almost 4.5 years and have two beautiful boys who we are grooming to be big Marquette fans. Our 18 month old loves nothing more than cheering along to the Marquette fight song. Most of our closest friends today are friends and TJ’s former teammates from Marquette. Marquette helped us not only find each other, but it also helped us to find friends who we are now blessed to call family! Thanks Marquette!! — Cara Hodgson
My fiance (Charles McCloughan) and I met in the spring of 2010. He had studied abroad in Galway, Ireland and I was about to go for a summer program. A mutual friend introduced us and he gave me lots of tips of my trip. We are getting married in June! — Kelly Boylan
Nicholas and I met in 2009 at Marquette and were married in 2015! We just had our first daughter and take her to many MU games! Our story of how we met can be read here. — Kimberlee Karnowski
If it weren’t for MU and the great friends we met there that set us up 4 years ago, we never would’ve met! — Kathleen Fugler
Andrew Seifert met in 2011 while we were both working post graduation in Zilber. Married Nov 2016. — Louisa Walker
James and I met at a party in Campus Town our freshman year, and we’ve been together ever since. We graduated Class of 2015, James from the College of Arts and Sciences, and Rachel from the College of Nursing. We were married in Cedar Rapids on November 19, 2016. There were several MU alumni present, including Rachel’s Mom’s roommates from MU Class of 1986. We are currently living in Colorado Springs, CO, and James is deployed to Europe with the US Army. — Rachel Zastrow
My husband and I were both from Oregon and went to rival high schools (one of the very first photos my dad took of me as a cheerleader has Evan in the background playing for the other team). We didn’t meet until we were in the ADPR program at MU. We started dating 2/21/92 (25 years ago!) and were married 8/30/96 at Gesu. Professor Carl Shrank still likes to take credit for us being together! ❤ — Rebecca Roberts
My husband and I met October 1995 and after a few years of studying and fun we started dating October 1998. After he battled leukemia in 2000, we were married in February 2002. From love, 3 little miracles entered our family and the rest is history. — Anne Stratton-Brantman
Dan and Hope met through a mutual friend after college. How many times they must have crossed paths during their time at Marquette, with Dan graduating Bus Ad ’11 and Hope graduating Nursing ‘13! They hit it off immediately and after a few years of dating, were engaged at St. Joan of Arc Chapel in September 2016. They will be married June 17th, 2017, and can’t wait for many visits back to Marquette! — Dan Kowalsky
Berent and I met freshman year at Marquette (well, really at Victor’s) and have been doing long distance since we graduated in May 2015. We both love Marquette and can’t wait to come back for national Marquette Day! 💙💛 — Kelsey Schanke
We met just before she graduated and I was about to leave for graduate school in Chicago. Crazy it took that long because we must have had 50 friends in common during our MU days. As one of those good friends recently said to me, ‘Glow, you left with the best one.” Yep. — John Glowinski
Ted and I met in a Marquette Business class in 2010 that took a trip to China over spring break. Ted was commissioned as an officer in the United States Marine Corps in 2012 after completing the NROTC program at Marquette. He is now a Captain in the Marines and flies attack helicopters. We got engaged in front of the Saint Joan of Arc chapel in May 2014 and were married in December 2015 in our hometown of Milwaukee with many other Marquette grads. We are stationed in San Diego, California but Ted is currently deployed to Okinawa, Japan. I will be visiting Ted in Japan next week, almost 7 years after we took that first trip to Asia together. Thank you, Marquette, for being the backdrop to our love story. — Lindsay (Duclon) Linn
Paul Bunczak and I met at the honors’ program picnic in August of 1988, though we didn’t start dating until fall of 1991. We got married in 1993 and now our daughter, Maria, is a freshman at MU, also in the honors program. — Julie Karpinski Bunczak
Joe Packhem and I met at Marquette in 2010 through our participation in theatre. Joe, a junior majoring in Engineering with a theatre minor, was debuting in his one and only mainstage production at the Helfaer. I, a freshman College of Communication student, was blessed with the task of applying and removing Joe’s wig. As we all do with our hair stylists, Joe shared his life story with me over the two week run of the show. Fast forward six years, and we have been married for four months now! — Lexi Hamburg
My husband, Chad Tutton, and I met at Marquette in 2010 where we both were a part of Navy ROTC. After that first year of meeting and getting to know each other most of our relationship was long distance due to being stationed in different parts of the country, but we were married this past year in September! Finally together for good in San Diego — Jenni Tutton
My girlfriend, Nicole Murnik, and I at Hanging Lakes in Colorado. We’ve been dating since Fall Semester 2013. We met at a house party at The Mansion. — Andrew Terenzio
Joe Landgraf and I met the summer of 2012 working “summer crew” helping to get the dorms back in shape over the summer for the next fall and hosting the summer guests at Marquette. We got Married last fall! — Lisa Landgraf
I met Amy Weigelmann at the 2011 Snowball during Winter Flurry week. We were both in our freshman year and we started officially dating on Valentine’s Day 2011. After we got our our post-college careers started, we got engaged in December 2015 and she moved to New York in January 2016. — Kevin Dolan
Engagement outside the AMU
My husband and I (College of Business, 2012) met outside of the AMU on our way to church. We ended up coincidentally having three classes together the next semester and spent tons of time in Raynor and MU Basketball games getting to know each other. After a year of friendship and two years of courtship, he proposed in the same place we met outside of the AMU on the same weekend in October! We’ve been married almost four years and just had our first baby! — Emily Winter
My husband Joe and I are from the classes of exercise physiology 2014 and nursing 2015. We were both in Army ROTC, and we met my freshman year. We had our first date at “My Yo My” frozen yogurt shop in the third ward. We just got married on Saturday, February 11th 2017 at the cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, and had our reception at the Pfister! These pictures were taken during a quick stop at good old Caffrey’s pub! We are both stationed at Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington State! — Kate Lemens
Met freshman year in McCormick in 2006… married August 2016. — Maggie Grigaitis
Paul LaRosa and I met through mutual friends early in our MU years but didn’t start dating till the summer before senior year. We had our first kiss outside Lalumiere Hall and have been married 32 years. Our oldest daughter graduated from Marquette and is getting married this year! — Lynne LaRosa
She came down the stairs at a Triangle Fraternity Welcome Week Social in 1962 and caught my eye. Dates, Pinning, Married in 65, 52nd Anniversary last year and started a “Grand Eaglet” in her freshman year last August. — Steve Volm
I met my significant other while at school there! The year was 2002, my freshman year, and it was one of those “love at first sight” moments. It was a special year, and ever since then I’ve been married to Marquette Men’s Basketball. Sure like any other couple we have our disagreements and down times, but she will always be the love of my life. For better or worse, richer or poorer, till death do us part, nothing can replace her. — Armen Saryan | https://stories.marquette.edu/marquette-love-stories-64db9c980ebb | ['Marquette University'] | 2020-01-28 14:42:01.497000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Milwaukee', 'Marquette', 'Valentines Day', 'College'] |
Christmas In Recovery. Firstly, harm reduction. This is a time… | I want to start by wishing you all the best at this time of year. But, for now, I want to talk to the addicts amongst you. I don’t need to tell you this can be a really hard time of year. I’m coming up to 3 years sober and I know the temptations that rear their heads about now. I’m no expert but just wanted to share some thoughts.
Firstly, harm reduction. This is a time of huge and gross excess, so much booze consumed and left in chunky puddles on the pavement or down the toilet. A time of maybe buying that extra gram cos its Christmas or having to use a new dealer cos your usual guy is dry. Be aware of the amount you are drinking/using and what it is. If its booze, know the percentage and whether they’re pub doubles or home doubles. If its the substance of your choice, be sure what your taking is safe. Even if you’re gonna wake up with a hangover or a come down, make sure you wake up!Keep in mind why you’re drinking/using. Don’t over analyse at this point, but have it at the back of your head. I don’t want to be a buzz kill, but doing this can help to slow your intake.
For those who are thinking of giving up, I would advise that this isn’t the time of year to do so. When planning my detox I toyed with the idea of doing it in November. My key worker asked me if, honestly, I could face Christmas and New Year newly sober. So, I decided January would be better and it was. But during that Christmas I didn’t go all out as if I had to drink the world dry. It was a time to experiment with moderation and to really focus on how much I hated hangovers. I wasn’t enjoying drinking then, it was something I had to do. And by the time 8th of January came round, I was ready. I’d had enough. But if you are going to give dry January a go, or dry any month, talk to your GP first.
If this is your first sober/clean Christmas, well done. But now is not the time to reward yourself for doing so well. I’d be amazed if cravings don’t rise over the festive period. Remember that cravings will pass. They can be down right unpleasant but they do pass. Do what you have been doing during the year to keep yourself sober/clean, be that affirmations, meditations, exercise, quiet time, meetings, talking to your sponsor. If you don’t repeat your successes, you won’t be successful. In the end, do what you have to do. Weigh up waking on Boxing Day or New Years Day having stayed sober against waking knowing that you have to start again. This said, we’re not made of stone. IF you lapse, get back on that wagon quickly! Don’t let a lapse become a relapse.
For those of us lucky enough to have survived this merry time sober before, I implore you to look out for those who haven’t. It really doesn’t take much to encourage someone struggling. Share your wisdom with someone, make yourself approachable. Obviously don’t put yourself at risk, but nothing reinforces sobriety like teaching others, if they ask. And for those really lucky people who don’t have a habit, addiction, problem, or whatever you may call it, please don’t tempt, goad, guilt trip, or god forbid, spike others who do. Show them the support they deserve and be glad its not you.
Look, I’m not here to preach and, really, you can do what you want. Its all about choice. I just hope you choose to be safe, informed and choose to have a Christmas you will remember for the right reason. Happy Holidays all! | https://medium.com/@wanderingbiku/i-want-to-start-by-wishing-you-all-the-best-at-this-time-of-year-9b5cf5756224 | ['Wandering Biku'] | 2020-12-18 13:05:00.988000+00:00 | ['Addiction', 'Recovery', 'Christmas', 'Alcoholism', 'Hope'] |
Immersive Listening: Mythic Heroes, Memories & Podcasts | What Do We Hear When We Truly Listen?
Recently, a dear friend called to share some happy news with me — the stork’s going to visit her soon!
So, off I headed to congratulate her and her husband. I was greeted at the door by the expectant father with a bottle of hand sanitizer (so necessary these days) and face masks (a tad overkill!). Freshly scrubbed and properly covered up, I entered the living room to find my friend resplendent on the sofa, eyes closed as soft music wafted through the air.
As I opened my mouth to blurt out my excited congratulatory words, the husband sidled up to me and whispered, “Wait! Let her finish her Garbha Sanskar (Garbha sanskar essentially means educating the mind of the foetus in the womb). It’ll only take a minute.”
Noticing my curious expression, the husband felt obliged to explain. Apparently, my friend had read somewhere that a baby in a mother’s womb is able to hear and feel everything that the mother experiences. Wanting the best for her child, my friend had decided that from now on till the delivery, she would listen to soothing music for at least a few hours every day.
This reminded me of the story of Abhimanyu from The Mahabharata. The son of Arjuna and Subhadra, he heard dialogue on Warcraft between his parents while he was still in his mother’s womb. Of course, that’s mythology but I couldn’t help but wonder — was my friend on to something?
Does audio really have that kind of power?
Music — The Food of Love (And Life!)
It should come as no surprise that music deeply impacts us. At the very least, it is a pleasant experience. But for many of us, the music evokes strong emotions or memories. Speaking for myself, one of my earliest childhood memories is of my mother putting me down for my afternoon nap whilst rocking me gently to the sound of ABBA’s “Super Trouper” playing on the tape recorder. The memory is deeply engraved in my psyche and I believe the music has a big hand in that.
Research has found that music, especially highly emotional music, stimulates the amygdala. Shaped like twin almonds, these clusters of dense nuclei located in our brains have been linked to some of our strongest emotions — fear, anger, and nostalgia.
Have you ever heard a soaring piece of music that gets your heart pounding? A chill rapidly runs through your spine and it makes your eyes well up — that’s the amygdala acting up.
I remember reading somewhere that this emotion running through your being is called the “Holy Shiver” — that nerve-tingling chill that runs up your spine, into the head and down again, over and over till you’re left buzzing in your skin. That’s the visceral impact of music.
But this feeling isn’t just restricted to a great piece of music — the spoken word can be used to create a similar effect. Children tell their parents to read them bedtime stories precisely for this reason. Even in the minutes leading to a nightly slumber, the child feels warm and loved and protected in the cocoon of their parents’ voice.
The Warm Embrace Of A Podcast
A great podcast tries to achieve this same effect. A warm, soothing voice that’s talking to you as if you’re the only person who mattered — it’s intimate and it involves you, setting the mind free to wander and wonder in a way that makes you feel liberated from the everyday.
Imagine you’re meeting this friend after a long time. You’re excited to meet him, eager to know what he’s been up to but most importantly, you want to relive old memories and make new ones. How would the conversation flow? There’s an ease and camaraderie when you’ve known someone for ages. That’s what we were aiming for with all podcasts — a mix of the familiar and safe with something new and exciting.
On our newest podcast “The Whisky Advisor Show”, the host Uday Balaji while tasting whiskies talks about how a certain scent or flavour reminds him of things from his childhood.
Since we are talking about The Whisky Advisor Show (TWA), let me tell you that one of the best ways to enjoy the TWA experience is to actually sit with a dram of whisky. It’s like recreating your favourite watering hole –the atmosphere is filled with mirth and there’s an exchange of ideas and stories and lots of back and forth between friends and strangers alike. One of my favourite activities while post-production work for TWA was to open a bottle of whisky and listen to the episodes. Just me and my team, sipping whisky while we listen to Uday talk about the very whisky we were drinking — the experience felt surreal. Bedtime stories for adults, you might say!
Immersive Listening
Saregama recently came on board as the Presenting Partner for “The Whisky Advisor Show”. Now, this is a company that understands what makes for an immersive listening experience and naturally, we were stoked to partner with them. I’ve been a fan of their Carvaan range of digital audio players since they were first launched. That old-style transistor design evokes such memories of my childhood. My father is a huge Dev Anand fan and whenever a song from “Jewel Thief” or “Asli Naqli” would start playing on the radio, he’d rush and turn up the volume. He’d snap his fingers and hum along, and his usually serious face would have a big smile. Naturally, I have gifted my dad his very own Carvaan device and as soon as he hits play, that same smile comes back on his face every single time.
Honestly, I am equally in love with the device and own it myself. I can’t wait to sit down and listen to my favourite podcast on Carvaan 2.0 with my imagination mingling with the voice of the narrator and forming a rich tapestry of mental visuals. Well, that’s what a podcast does to me every time I plugin!
Listening to a podcast can feel a lot like Garbha Sanskar, I reckon. There’s no one else, just you and that voice in your head. The voice could be a stranger, but it sounds oddly familiar, and soothing, just like home. You’re enveloped in the sound and the words, you trust it, you feel a connection that you can’t really explain. The voice teaches you and soothes you, it shows you things you didn’t know, or it could even make you feel as if you’re experiencing the known for the first time. | https://medium.com/@piyushshinde6/immersive-listening-mythic-heroes-memories-podcasts-32064986b613 | ['Piyush Shinde'] | 2020-03-12 18:18:07.600000+00:00 | ['Podcasting', 'Storytelling', 'Podcast', 'Audio', 'Listening'] |
And So We Pivot — Why We’re Choosing to Homeschool This Year | And So We Pivot — Why We’re Choosing to Homeschool This Year
Sometimes an impossible situation is an unexpected gift.
Like so many parents, we’ve been anxiously waiting — fingers crossed — to hear our school district’s 20/21 reopening plan. We filled out the survey they sent us in June, speculated countless times with friends and family over what the choices could be, and spent hours listening to the school board deliberate before hearing their answer — the best-case-scenario we’d been hoping for was impossible, and none of the other options felt like a good fit.
It wasn’t the school board’s fault, of course. Like so many other things in this season, none of the available choices are ideal.
There’s a very real grief that comes with this level of change. We love our local public school. We worked extremely hard to get into this district, and other than the mess of virtual learning sprung upon all of us (teachers included!) we have had a fantastic experience overall.
None of the choices felt like a good fit.
Our district is offering five days a week, in-person instruction or virtual school for elementary, plus a hybrid model for grades 7–12.
Masks, physical distancing, and other restrictions make this theoretically a safer choice, but also dramatically change the learning environment. I hate the idea of these restrictions, but I can understand the need for them.
What tipped the scale towards homeschooling for us was the level of uncertainty.
As case levels rise in our area, the risk of going back to on-again/off-again virtual learning is pretty high. My girls did not do well with virtual learning — it removed everything they loved about school, and left them with anxiety and distress as they tried to work through the multitude of worksheets and assignments. Eventually, for our own mental health, we simply had to let it go.
The idea that we could go back to in-person school, only to be boomeranged back onto the virtual struggle-bus made my heart ache.
But the other option — completely virtual — was even worse.
We’re not new to homeschooling.
We’ve taken that path twice before, and it honestly wasn’t a great fit. My kids are pretty social, and I’m an introvert who needs time alone to recharge — the combination was exhausting. But while it isn’t our first choice, homeschooling is the best option we have right now.
While it isn’t our first choice, homeschooling is the best option we have right now.
Even though homeschooling isn’t an easy path, there are several reasons that I’m confident that it’s the right choice for us this year.
1. We’re making room for the kids who have to be in public school.
I’m writing this with the knowledge that we are extremely lucky to be able to make this choice. My job allows me to work full time hours on the weekend and still be home with my kids during the week. It will be a challenge, but we can homeschool without negatively affecting our financial situation. So many parents can’t do this and need their kids to be in school just to financially survive.
By pulling my kids out of the public school classroom, the school will have space for smaller classes and better student/teacher ratios. They’ll also hopefully have more opportunities for mask breaks and freedom of movement throughout the day.
2. We’ll be able to hone in on the basics to make sure they’re truly prepared for next year.
One of my kids really struggles with social skills, the other has consistently been behind in both math and reading. By homeschooling this year we can focus on these pain points, allowing them to work at their own pace. Instead of trying to keep up with a whole classroom, they’ll get individualized attention in the areas they need it most.
3. We’ll be able to maintain a level of consistency that they wouldn’t get from public school right now.
As I said before, we love our local school — and the biggest reason we’re stepping away from that option is because we are passionate about providing the most normalcy and stability as possible in these uncertain times.
There are so many areas of our life that are up in the air right now. Will we be able to take the winter vacation that’s been years in the making? Will our dentist start seeing patients again anytime soon? When we go to the store will our regular choices be available? How social can we safely be at this time?
These are first world problems, to be sure — but this type of constant, underlying change definitely affects our quality of life. School has been a major area of uncertainty for the last six months. By homeschooling, I can bring stability to this part of our lives, no matter what the case count is in our area.
This isn’t what we wanted for 2020.
Like so many other things, this isn’t what we wanted for the school year. We’re sad and stressed over the changes involved, and heartbroken for the negative ways this situation is affecting everyone.
I am hopeful, however, that this will be a good experience overall. We found a curriculum that seems to be a really good fit for our family. Several of our neighbors and friends will also be homeschooling this year. My kids are old enough to work or play independently for a few hours, so I’m more likely to get the alone time I need than I was when we homeschooled in the past.
Hopefully next year we’ll be sending our kids back to the school they love, but for now we’re choosing to see this as just another adventure. Hopefully, no matter what options you’re facing, you can do the same.
Originally published at https://always-an-adventure.com on August 2, 2020. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/and-so-we-pivot-why-were-choosing-to-homeschool-this-year-ce3298b504c8 | ['Jamie Siebens'] | 2020-08-06 19:49:59.931000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Parenting', 'Homeschooling', 'Family'] |
Do You Feel Guilty When You Sleep In? | Do You Feel Guilty When You Sleep In?
Even during this crazy pandemic, when there’s not a whole lot to do while we’re quarantined, I feel guilty when I sleep in. Even in these, the strangest of circumstances, I still feel like a slug when I sleep late.
I write and build e-commerce websites for a living, so it’s not like I have to leave the house to get to an office every morning, even outside of a global pandemic.
But lately even when I hit the hay at midnight (which is early for me, but I’ve always been a night owl) I’m nearly comatose until about 11 am.
That’s eleven hours, people! What kind of red blooded being needs eleven hours of sleep?? | https://medium.com/@siennaclarkewrites/do-you-feel-guilty-when-you-sleep-in-2e5d1e6c262e | ['Sienna Clarke'] | 2020-12-12 09:50:37.612000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Life', 'Self Development'] |
g̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶o̶g̶n̶i̶z̶e̶s̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶ | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/blueinsight/g%CC%B6a%CC%B6m%CC%B6e%CC%B6-%CC%B6r%CC%B6e%CC%B6c%CC%B6o%CC%B6g%CC%B6n%CC%B6i%CC%B6z%CC%B6e%CC%B6s%CC%B6-%CC%B6g%CC%B6a%CC%B6m%CC%B6e%CC%B6-56ff85cf9da | ['Isaiah Mccall'] | 2020-12-23 13:59:53.094000+00:00 | ['Typography', 'Blue Insights', 'Surrealism', 'Beauty', 'Poetry'] |
10 Games To Scare Yourself Silly With This Halloween | If you’re a fan of guts, gore and horror then you probably love Halloween. October is the time for all this spooky and horrific to make an appearance. From movies, TV specials and of course video games. There’s nothing quite as chilling as turning off the lights, putting on the headphones and immersing yourself in a spine-tingling horror game. The horror genre of games has seen a lot of evolution over the years. It’s not only jump scares and gore but the creators have gotten creative and psychologically twisted in their stories and monsters. Is this a good thing? You tell us. Because we’ve rounded up our Top 10 most horrifyingly disturbing games from the year 2020 for you monsters to play. In no particular order.
MAID OF SKER BY WALES INTERACTIVE
First-person survival horror is the classic scare your pants genre and it’s because it bloody well works. Looking through the eyes of this poor unfortunate person, seeing the terrifying monsters, hearing their fear it’s all enough to make you forget where you are. Based on a true story The Maid of Sker is set in a remote hotel, a real-life dwelling that’s one of the most haunted buildings in Britain. You play as Thomas Evans a musician who is thrust into a terrifying battle with the nightmarish Quiet Men to save the woman he loves. When they arrive, do not panic — don’t even breathe.
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC — Steam
IN SILENCE BY RAVENHOOD GAMES
Who says horror needs to be experienced solely on your own? I say the unified sound of multiple people screaming is more likely to scare off any monsters imo. If you’re a fan of Dead by Daylight then you and your squad are going to enjoy In Silence. Play with up to five players stranded in a forest. Either one player or the AI will play as the Rake, a hideous, rat-like cryptid with more teeth than is sensible. The rest will need to survive. Either scavenge enough parts to fix the car and escape or find the scattered codes to the armory and take on the Rake. The monster is incredibly fast and incredibly strong, but is almost blind and relies on its hypersensitive hearing. Imagine this as survival training for you and your friends if our world ever went the way of A Quiet Place.
Platforms: PC — Steam, Mac | https://medium.com/@kaykuah/10-games-to-scare-yourself-silly-with-this-halloween-38b69b82b46b | ['Kaylee Kuah'] | 2020-11-04 09:47:41.625000+00:00 | ['Halloween', '2020', 'Gaming', 'Indie Game', 'Horror'] |
<Sub/Tweet> Facebook’s PR Mission | Image credit: CNN Money
It seems that Facebook can’t escape the spotlight these days. What used to be an obsession for everyday Americans has suddenly seen itself morphed into what you see above: the most direct and startling evidence that Russia successfully infiltrated the United States political landscape during the election season of 2016. Each week we learn more about the reach and magnitude of this campaign.
For agencies and advertisers within the United States, this is just beginning to become a major problem. What Congress and the American public are suddenly learning is how the unregulated and grey area within not only social media, but the entire digital advertising world, can be easily manipulated and leveraged by enemies of the state or those who seek to break the law.
Sir Isaac Newton famously said, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” But, in this case, the reaction to Russia’s invasive campaign to fragment the American people is aggressive digital regulation that could surely cripple efforts of those who are playing by the rules.
Ineffective Quality & Security Measure
The social network giant announced early last week that it would be adding 1,000 human ad reviewers in order to provide a check on the almost entirely automated placement system for Facebook ads. This was an immediate way for Facebook to counter the barrage of negative press it’s been receiving because of the Russian election meddling investigation.
However, this is insufficient. Anyone close to the digital ad business knows the value of 1,000 human hires into a vast ecosystem — it’s meaningless. This was a pure PR play by Facebook. What they have yet to effectively address is how their billing and credit system between advertisers and clients changes almost daily. What’s more, it seems that people within Facebook itself don’t even have an idea or path forward to heal the network’s actual credibility, not just it’s public image.
Roadblock for Advertisers
This is already a tremendous headache for advertisers and brands that abide by digital and social channel guidelines. Earlier this month, Facebook announced that it would limit targeting parameters that tapped into business demographics such as education, employment, field of study, and job title. This hits B2B advertisers especially hard, as these new restrictions make the social network an unlikely destination for their ad budgets. It’s uncertain how long it will take for this targeting to return and in what form it might be.
As evidence continues to come to light, as it assuredly will when Facebook, Google, and Twitter come to Capitol Hill, we might be able to predict the scale and effect this impending regulation will have on digital media and advertising. It has already begun and will continue to unfold, making the ability of agencies and advertisers to stay in tune with this exponentially dynamic system vital to the success of clients, brands, and causes.
You think this is confusing now? Just wait for 2018. | https://medium.com/the-subtweet/sub-tweet-facebooks-pr-mission-dd089f7ee549 | ['Joey Vara'] | 2017-10-08 20:53:51.572000+00:00 | ['Facebook', 'Social Media Marketing', 'B2B', 'Russia', 'Social Media'] |
The 12 Days of Christmas if It Were Written by Jane Austen | Image by author
The 12 Days of Christmas if It Were Written by Jane Austen
After you watch Bridgerton, sing this Regency-themed carol
While watching the new show Bridgerton on Netflix and admiring all the historical drama, don’t forget the lady who inspired much of it. Jane Austen not only wrote novels, she wrote parodies of popular tunes including The 12 Days of Christmas. Though not as well-known as Pride and Prejudice, it’s worth a listen or a sing-a-long.
On the first day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
A proposal to a lady.
Image public domain
On the second day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady.
On the third day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Three French gowns,
two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady.
On the fourth day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Four carriages,
three French gowns,
two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady.
Image public domain
On the fifth day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Five ruined girls!
Four carriages,
three French gowns,
two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady.
image pubic domain
On the sixth day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Six ladies-a-walking,
five ruined girls!
Four carriages,
three French gowns,
two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady.
On the seventh day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Seven schemers-a-scheming,
six ladies-a-walking,
five ruined girls!
Four carriages,
three French gowns,
two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady.
On the eighth day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Eight mothers-a-worrying,
seven schemers-a-scheming,
six ladies-a-walking,
five ruined girls!
Four carriages,
three French gowns,
two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady.
Image pubic domain
On the ninth day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Nine soldiers-a-flirting,
eight mothers-a-worrying,
seven schemers-a-scheming,
six ladies-a-walking,
Five ruined girls!
Four carriages,
three french gowns,
two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady.
Image public domain
On the tenth day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Ten characters misunderstanding,
nine soldiers-a-flirting,
eight mothers-a-worrying,
seven schemers-a-scheming,
six ladies-a-walking,
five ruined girls!
Four carriages,
three French gowns,
two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady.
On the eleventh day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Eleven meaningful glances,
ten characters misunderstanding,
nine soldiers-a-flirting,
eight mothers-a-worrying,
seven schemers-a-scheming,
six ladies-a-walking,
five ruined girls!
Four carriages,
three French gowns,
two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady.
Image public domain
On the Twelfth day of Christmas Jane Austen gave to me;
Twelve maids actually working,
eleven meaningful glances,
ten characters misunderstanding,
nine soldiers-a-flirting,
eight mothers-a-worrying,
seven schemers-a-scheming,
six ladies-a-walking,
five ruined girls!
Four carriages,
three French gowns,
two pompous men,
and a proposal to a lady. | https://medium.com/jane-austens-wastebasket/the-12-days-of-christmas-if-it-were-written-by-jane-austen-d61b0ac0492d | ['Kyrie Gray'] | 2020-12-26 18:30:40.435000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Literature', 'Satire', 'Music', 'Humor'] |
Truly Quantum Dice | Quantum dice choices
Is a Dungeons and Dragons-style dice roller a good use of a quantum computer? I sure think so. Decide for yourself by trying the end product here.
Before we begin.
Although I work for the IBM Q team, I do not have a background in quantum physics, and this article does not reflect the thoughts or opinions of IBM or IBM Q. This project was done in my spare time for fun in an effort to better understand Qiskit and therefore to better understand our user base. If you want to read the real robust research that is happening in IBM Q, then click here. Even though I don't have a background in linear algebra or quantum physics, I wanted to meaningfully play with the real quantum systems that are free to use on the cloud. If that sounds like something you would like to do too, this project uses the IBM Q Experience to create the quantum circuit and execute it on the quantum hardware.
Project Summary
Computers as we know them (aka classical computers) can, at best, generate pseudo-random numbers. Quantum computers, using uniquely quantum properties, can generate truly random numbers. This project uses random numbers generated from IBM Q's quantum systems to provide a random sequence for a simple dice rolling app. While this project leverages IBM Q's real quantum systems, as opposed to a simulator, it has its own host of obstacles, which will be outlined below. But lets start with how we get these naturally random numbers.
To get information from a quantum computer, we need a quantum circuit. To get random numbers, we need this circuit.
Random number generator quantum circuit
Simple explanation
This circuit uses 5 qubits, each represented by the horizontal line above. We drop gates (shown as little squares) onto a qubit to manipulate it. We want to add gates that will help give us a random number.
A hadamard gate (or H gate) is dropped on each qubit. The H gate sets that qubit into a superposition state of 0 and 1. A measurement gate is then applied to each qubit. We extract the information from the qubit by measuring it, which results in the state collapsing down to either a 0 or 1 (as opposed to something in between). Because of the H gate, there is a 50% chance of getting a 0, and a 50% of getting a 1. When all 5 qubits are measured, we will get a result that looks something like 10110.
Or 11101.
Or 00101.
Or any 5 bit combination of 0s and 1s
Because all qubits had an equal chance of being 0 or 1, the output had an equal chance of being anything between 00000 and 11111.
We can use Python to convert those binary numbers to decimals from 0 to 31 (for those curious about binary conversion, read here). Because there is an equal chance of getting any of those numbers, we can safely call this circuit a random number generator for values between 0 and 31. Yay! The hard part is over. Now let’s put those random numbers to work.
Wait… how random is a quantum computer really?
Quantum computers aren’t perfect yet, but they are still really good at giving random results. Ideally, there is an equal probability of getting any value between 0–31 (for our 5 qubit system). The histogram below shows the true probabilities from the system “ibmq_ourense”, which is the system I used for this experiment.
probability histogram
It’s pretty close to a uniform distribution, but not perfect. Some of the imperfection is due to sources of noise — such as errors in measurement — and some of it is due to the number of times we rolled the dice. The lower the noise and the more rolls we make, the closer the observed distribution will be to uniform.
Wait again. Am I really pinging a quantum computer every time I roll the dice on this app?
Not exactly. We have a handful of quantum systems that can be accessed for free, but time is shared among all free users. Instead of writing the app so that it pings the system and requires about 10 minutes of waiting after every roll, the app pulls from cached results so you can have your result instantly. I ran the above circuit several thousand times and stored the results in the app. So is the sequence truly random? Yes, unless you do more than 4000ish dice rolls. We’ll talk more about experiment limitations later.
Okay, onward to how this thing works!
Detailed explanation. Let’s see some code!
As explained above, we create a 5 qubit circuit that uses superposition to generate our random numbers. That qiskit code looks like this.
qc = QuantumCircuit(5, 5)
qc.h(0)
qc.h(1)
qc.h(2)
qc.h(3)
qc.h(4)
qc.measure([0, 1, 2, 3, 4], [0, 1, 2, 3, 4])
If the above circuit is sent to a quantum system, we will get a random binary string between 00000 and 11111. Because of the limitations mentioned above, we are going to run the circuit thousands of times and store the results independently so that we can reference them later when a dice gets rolled.
# decide on a system and how many times to send the circuit
backend = provider.get_backend('ibmq_ourense')
shots = 4096
job = execute(qc, backend, shots=shots, memory=True)
#we want to see results independently, instead of as a probability
result = job.result()
memory = result.get_memory()
# need an array to drop all the results into
outputArray = []
#convert results to decimal and drop into array
for x in range(0, shots):
converted = int(memory[x], 2)
outputArray.append(converted)
Note that not all available backends will let you store the results independently, which is specified by “memory” above.
That’s it for getting a truly random sequence from our quantum system. Next, let’s look at building a simple web app around the results.
Turning quantum results into an app
The random numbers that are stored in outputArray are copied over to my JavaScript app and stored in an array called diceCorpus . Instead of always starting at the beginning of the array, we are going to have the app start at a pseudorandom index (ugh, classical computers, am I right?).
var index = Math.floor(Math.random() * diceCorpus.length);
When someone rolls a dice, we need to normalize our or array of random numbers. Technically speaking, it’s the sequence that is random, not the numbers. Once normalized, we'll multiply the value by the size of the dice and round up (most dice don't include decimal places. Ours won't either). We also add a "plus 1" because we don't want our dice to roll a zero.
var normalizedRoll = (diceCorpus[index] + 1)/maxDiceRoll
result = Math.ceil(normalizedRoll * diceSize);
In this case maxDiceRoll is 32, because 5 bits has a max of 32 possibilities.
After a dice roll, we want to move to the next value in our sequence for the next roll. If we have reached the end of the sequence, go back to the beginning.
if (index < diceCorpus.length-1) {
index ++;
} else {
index = 0;
}
The last step is returning the value to the user. I won't get too much into that here, but I'm using…
document.getElementById("result").innerHTML = result;
And that's basically it! You too can now make a quantum dice app.
Limitations of this experiment
The biggest road block to overcome in this experiment is how the quantum system is queried. It still amazes me that real quantum systems can be accessed and used via the web for free. It means non-experts like me can start testing it out and do silly things like make a dice rolling app. But it also means that everyone has to wait their turn to use the same quantum systems. If this app pinged the quantum hardware every time a user rolls a dice, they would be waiting probably several minutes before getting their results. To overcome this, the app uses a cache of several thousand random numbers previously generated from the quantum computer. One could argue this takes away from the randomness because truly random numbers are being stored and reused. But I think this option is better than waiting 10 minutes every time you want to roll a dice. It also means that every instance of the app uses the same sequence. In order for the results to be different on each roll, the starting point is decided using javascript's pseudorandom function. This leaves the question of whether or not starting at a pseudorandom position in a random sequence breaks the randomness. Truth is, I have no idea. But its the best I could think up.
Other than that, the issues are with scale. After around 4000 rolls, the sequence repeats. So if you roll the same dice over 4000 times, the pattern repeats and thus is no longer random. Also, because the circuit uses only 5 qubits, the app doesn't support a die larger than 32 sides. This is hardly an issue, but worth noting. Lastly, as noted above, quantum computers aren't perfect yet, and the probability distribution isn't exactly even, so some numbers might occur slightly more often, which would be more evident on larger dice. But for your average D&D player, this shouldn't be an issue. Its also worth noting that not even physical dice are free of imperfections and are therefore not perfectly random either. If you find yourself in need of a d20 and no dice laying around, this app should be effective enough to count as a replacement for a night's campaign.
Thanks for reading! I hope you had fun and learned something along the way.
Russell Huffman is a UX designer with IBM based in Austin, Texas. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions. | https://medium.com/design-ibm/truly-quantum-dice-cfe372f4c586 | ['Russell Huffman'] | 2019-09-24 00:36:29.101000+00:00 | ['Ibm Q Experience', 'Dice', 'Design', 'Quantum Computing', 'Random Number Generator'] |
The Indescribable Time Traveling Device | Lee Krasner, “White Squares” (1948)
The space pirate unearthed the indescribable time traveling device in an underwater palace on the twelfth moon of Vlijirakon. Twenty-two years old, he had decided to track down the mythical instrument when he first heard about it while smuggling lamwracks through the Zadar quadrant for Captain Lotharia Durexfer. He had stored aboard his first interstar frigate six years before, so he wasn’t innocent-dreamed enough to believe the ship chef’s stories about the Glyphic artifact — for that’s what it was, a leftover of that learned, invisible civilization — until she confessed that, in her words, ‘strictly speaking, it doesn’t exist.’
‘What do you mean?’ the pirate, who had not yet committed his first act of piracy, asked.
‘The Glyphs made it, so it doesn’t exist in the way that you or I do,’ she explained. Her fibbodios were boiling, so she excused herself to switch off the fark bottom, but the wide-eyed pirate pursued the subject.
‘If it doesn’t exist, how can anyone use it? Or find it?’
Agrippa — since that was the name she’d chosen, not too long ago — turned back to the spice slab. ‘Like I said, that depends on what you mean by “exist.” But you’re too young to understand that.’
‘You mean like Where do I end and the world begin? That kind of koanish clatter?’
‘Sort of,’ she eyed him, ‘but those abstracts won’t ultimately get you anywhere.’
‘For that I need the I-interrogation, right? Self-searching and shadow-silhouetting — all that lethe?’
She smirked. ‘You’re a show-don’t, you know that? Pretty words but let’s see you do.’
The red-feathered tamwinder perched on the ice-flank ruffled its wings, whistling. Tracking his eyes back from the bird, the unamused pirate asked flat-out,
‘Do you know where I can find this thing or not?’
After studying the youth’s face for a last doubting moment, the chef sighed. That afternoon, she tested him: could he detail, with clear-eyed clarity, all of the influences that had sculpted his psyche, determined his decisions, zemwarlay’d him into a life of piracy? Agrippa had concocted a show-do soup she’d recipieved on Alar Eleven to appraise his honesty, but — despite the broth’s live scorflers — the boy didn’t wince under questioning, not once. His was a typical childhood for that system — a heat-fly embryo birth, fifteen rims at Corsair Academy, capped off by a passing mark in the requisite rebellion — and Agrippa learned it with uncaring eyes.
‘One can cultivate complete, accurate self-appraisal, but still suffer from delusion,’ she warned him, ‘If you fail to act accordingly. What do you want from this device?’
The pirate had grown intimidated by the cook’s intelligence. While the rest of the crew siesta’d, they waylaid in the blue-lit mess each afternoon, the pirate watching while Agrippa sizzled enlightenment elixirs in culinary experiments with letheways and welterslops.
‘I don’t know,’ he confessed.
‘And yet you are willing to squander your life searching for it?’ He remained silent, so she went on. ‘Braver than you have tried and failed, losing themselves in abstraction, and precisely because they did not have a good grasp of why they searched –’
‘How could I know why before I find it?’ The thought had occurred to him as he said it. ‘In fact, I want the device so that I can figure out why I want anything. What other purpose could there be to time travel?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Agrippa replied. ‘Traveling through time.’
‘But we’re doing that already. Facts, objects, happenings in the future, or the past — these don’t interest me. I’m not a scientist –’
‘You don’t say –’
‘– I don’t know what I am.’
‘I thought you were a pirate.’
‘I’m a clone — a clone that was programmed to become a pirate. But I don’t want to be one.’
Agrippa’s face remained unreadable. At last she said, ‘I don’t have the map,’ pausing to scan the pirate’s parting lips before adding, ‘but I know where it is.’
‘So you’re testing me to see whether or not I’m worthy, even though you already know I am. So why these meetings?’
Suddenly, he could read her lips, too, and they entwined right then in his bunklet. Afterwards, she gave him the map’s coordinates. He hardly cared about it.
‘Come with me,’ he whispered, but she smiled.
‘No. You must go alone.’
He stole into a void arrow with the morning, paying the docking bay sentry a month’s savings to erase his theft and departure from the metaframe. He had committed his first act of piracy. Agrippa knew he would never return to frigate-bound life. Now his machine plummeted through space at a velocity impossible to measure on devices any older than the vessel itself — unless of course the technology was Glyphic. As for the pirate, he still had to endure the claustrophobic horrors of deep space hibernation. Yet even in his fugitive dreams, which brought him to an island outcropping people’d by spectacularly oversized tamwinders, the pirate remained in his birth dimension. Piercing the black of space, the arrow sluiced to a stop with an 180 degree pirouette, threading the starchapelago of Onomaphlix Seven and arriving at the map.
Suspended light-centuries from the nearest habitable planet, the map’s saber-thin terrace spun barely visible to the synthetic eye. The pirate alighted the arrow on the map’s least cluttered corner, activated his invisisuit, and stepped upon the cobalt surface. In unison the chaos of three-dimensional nebulas, galaxies, and infinity cliffs gyroscoped around and through him, sailing down lazer holoshow cascades of rainbow constellation clouds in neon miniature. Unfortunately, the pirate had no onark how to read any of it. Sifting through the holographics, he read no sign indicating where he could find the indescribable time-traveling device.
‘What the Morph,’ he muttered, sitting and letting his head dangle between his up-v’d knees, holding the nape of his neck with both hands. Had Agrippa been florped? She would not have tricked him. That had been his first time entwining, which he’d confided in her afterwards, leading to their second oneing. Agrippa wouldn’t have lied then. He caught himself: Why was his first instinct to suspect her, rather than his own stupidity? Stung by guilt, he scoured the map’s lines once more. The delicate shower of simulated stars continued. Could their fall symbolize something? His own falls — and there had been many — certainly did. The constellations evaporated upon reaching the shifting tableaux of the map’s nominal surface, which swallowed the starlight like a black hole. Lying down on his stomach, the pirate sidled up to the map’s edge and looked underneath it. Nothing.
‘Isn’t this all supposed to be psychoanalytical?’ he asked aloud. ‘Don’t I need to divine some deep self-truth to see this out?’
A map. What if the fact he can’t read it is the point? No, that’d be too predictable. I don’t know why I want this device. He can only discover why by finding it — right? But if the device doesn’t strictly speaking ‘exist’, how can the map help him? What is the use of a map on a journey into inner space? The Glyphs did not even use maps — they were their own maps, their own dimensions.
Part II
Wild-eyed for a moment, the pirate resolved upon his plan and reboarded the arrow, swinging it over the map to look down on its illegible spectacle. Which direction were the holographic stars falling? Down, but what does direction mean in space? Could the answer to the riddle be that obvious and stupid? Shouldn’t it be? Follow the map: it is moving down. Switching on the druv quartotemers, the pirate aimed the arrow’s point at the map and fired. The four needle-like zangs threaded through the waterfall of colorful constellations before fastening onto the map-plate as the arrow began accelerating. Following and guiding the map, the pirate rolled his eyes while gaining speed.
Was he going in the right direction? He had no way of knowing. But the map showed no signs of having been moved before, which was encouraging. If some other searcher or even wayward object had moved it, then this half-plan would never work. When attempting to reach a destination across intergalactic vastness, setting your course off target by even a quiffle of an harphimer would fling you into outblivion. Knowing this, the pirate gave himself a ten-day limit on traveling before setting the map adrift and returning to the more pragmatic life of piracy for which he had always prepared. Why piracy? The intrepid romance, daring freedom, and assumption he had to become a murderer to attain either — being a clone alone, that kind of mythwit. Yet soon after boarding the Quellcaster — his first outer-Quadrant job — he found that the pirates were for the most part equally as repressed and unremarkable as your typical cusp-world fort adapter.
Thus the pining for some daysway more arcane, elusive, emancipating. Agrippa’s story had provided the challenge, and now he was solo in a cylindrical ship no wider than two of him, subsisting off atom ants and making outrageous use of the raff rejector. Out his zinlow-shaped window he saw nothing. With all that time alone he would have gone quarsane were it not for the audio spunquicks. He listened to dozens all the way through, including a quark of the Library of Triskelia’s holdings on ancient maps that float mysteriously in space, which — it turns out — was quite a bit.
‘I wish I’d listened to these sooner,’ he lamented aloud, adding, ‘then again, if I find this time traveling device, I could.’
Perhaps as cosmic punishment for that remark, not to mention the fact he’d been talking to himself since halfway through the journey’s first day, he arrived. At first the planet Vlijirakon, solemn and regal in resplendent yellow like a calcified sun, appeared to be the map’s destination. The unpopulated planet remained riddled with the forsaken spires, strip malls, and aquedorms of an untenable civilization, which had been destroyed millennia before by an inborn cataclysm. The pockmarks on the surface, along with its holed-out moons, suggested that a planet-wide weapons cruxall had failed spectacularly — as was standard for a society at that stage. Yet a strong sense of deja-true suddenly stole the pirate away from such speculations. He recalled leaving the academy mess twelve years previously to walk back to his hive when his eyes inexplicably dreamt or saw or evoked three to four seconds of the scene before him now: the titanic planet and, slowly orbiting before Vlijirakon’s burnished yellow visage, the chipped orb of one of its moons. Such visions came to him less and less frequently since his childhood, when he had seen scenes from his future almost every day, which first sparked his interest in time travel. Of course, seeing the future had failed to help him predict it, let alone prepare for it or live accordingly. Maybe going back in time, he thought, to trace the causes of events would help him map his own aimless wanderings. He was about to find out.
The pirate had arrived. So far as he knew, there was no record of any civilization ever taking root on this nameless moon, which was mostly covered by a sea that emptied off the broken surface’s cracked edge into its exposed dynamo of a collapsed core, from which the sea sprang back to the surface through an elaborate network of fissures in a delicate cycle. The Zero Distributors must have created it in their aeon-adolescent toying with the laws of physics. Now the moon floated as a synthetic sentinel, unconsciously aware of the pirate’s presence as he pushed the map into the sea and followed it into a different, darker deep. If what the pirate thought about time and free will and the use of the map or any map was true, then even now he should be going precisely towards the indescribable time traveling device, since the whole of time and space had conspired to bring him there. Or, to be precise, the Glyphs had conspired to lead him — why him? it made no difference — here. For the Glyphs to have planted a device on a Distributor artifact was also appropriate. According to certain Academy theorists, the two were one and the same, but the pirate thought that idea was nonsense. Glyphs would have considered the Distributors’ creations completely frivolous and would never have made any themselves. Admittedly that opinion was not his own — he had heard it on a spunquick — but presumably he would soon be able to solve that question, too.
He had reached the sea floor and discovered the lonely palace waiting there. Presumably the risks had paid off: the revolutions of the planet had aligned perfectly with his timing. But this was no reason to feel special — quite the contrary: it is common knowledge that the Glyphs and Distributors have a hand in the lives of everything, in ways noticeable and not. A translucent dark glowered about the seafloor-secured arrow as the pirate disembarked in his invisisuit, sonaring the cragged stalagmites and shifting crevasses that lined his path. The moon’s ever-empty cyclic seas maintained a ceaselessly strong current, sculpting down the palace’s ziggurats and friezes into aerodynamic echoes of their original, ornamented forms. Above the front entrance, through which one had to crawl (as is typical of Glyphic architecture), the map had landed, allowing its constellations to bathe the building’s erosioned phantasfrieze in brilliantly shifting color. The pirate was readying himself for the unpleasant task of crawling into the building and searching through the palace’s seven hundred and seventy-seven rooms when a helmeted figure swam out of a hole in the roof and down to him, holding what could only be the indescribable time traveling device.
‘Yglai!’ the pirate cried.
‘Entai, yourself,’ the figure replied.
‘How’d you find that?’
‘I just swam down to a random ruin on a random moon to pick up this object for no reason.’
The sarcasm was obvious. The pirate squinted. ‘So that’s –’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you used it already?’
‘If I did, would I be talking to you?’
He hesitated. ‘Agrippa?’
She removed the helmet. ‘How’d you guess?’
‘Why’d you come here?’
‘Well, I didn’t want you to have all the fun.’
‘But you didn’t wanna come with me –’
‘I wanted to take the scenic route –’
The pirate betrayed no emotion. ‘But you got here first.’
‘There wasn’t much to see.’
Neither had smiled the entire dialogue — they could anticipate each other’s humor that well.
‘You’re gonna time travel solo, too,’ the clone guessed.
‘It’ll be in there for you, by the time I’m done with it.’
‘When’re you going to?’
‘I’m actually not using this to travel though time. I’m going to find out about someone on the other side of the universe.’
The clone was the first to smile. It was genuine. Only days before, he had twined with her. But he knew that the things he admired about Agrippa — her fearlessness, acerbic humor, generosity — could be his own, while she should never be. A weight fell away while he guessed, ‘You’re in love with them.’
‘That’s what I’m going to find out. What about you — when are you going?’
‘To the beginning of time.’
And now Agrippa smiled. ‘You’re such a romantic.’
‘If I find the cause of everything, that’ll help me figure out the present — and my future.’
‘You don’t trust yourself to figure that out by just living?’
The clone paused, defensive, embarrassed. ‘It’s not that simple.’
‘I know. Just be careful — this thing doesn’t go in reverse.’
And with that, she activated the device somehow and vanished.
Part III
Having been presented with an alternative to crawling, the pirate swam over the ruin, around the glowing map, and through the caved-in southeasterly quarter of the roof to enter the labyrinth of the palace. There was no trick to finding its center. He simply had to try each of its coiling pathways, most ending in walls bare aside from hieroglyphics he didn’t bother to read. Eventually he reached the inner sanctum. So far as inner sanctums go, it was noteworthy. But only because the indescribable time traveling device was inside. The pirate could not begin to describe the device itself, and he also had difficulty finding the language to describe his reaction to it: ‘overawed’ didn’t quite catch the feeling, though neither did ‘befolderdahl’d’ or ‘gezmooch’d’ or even ‘Flumfortled’, for that matter. Instead of perusing his invisisuit’s Thesaurus, however, the pirate approached the device, picked it up, and said,
‘Let’s go to the beginning of my life.’
Suddenly he was gliding — not without discomfort — through the strange ether of an interdimensional gateway. He did not have to move his body at all. The device remained in his hand, his arms slightly upraised from his sides and his legs dangling uselessly below while a mad collage of blurred sensations rippled across him. To say he experienced all of the things that had happened to him since birth would be inaccurate. Rather, the clone stretched out over the geography of his life’s course, with scenes from his childhood running over his feet, adolescence his legs, the flower of his youth girded his waist, middle age rounded out across his belly, and so forth. But consciousness, along with time as we understand it, had little to do with what happened, and once he revisited his newborn self he was already consigned to the knowledge that fully explaining the voyage to anyone — himself included — would be impossible.
But that also did not matter. Suddenly — how much time had passed, if any, for him, independent of the lifecycle he witnessed? — he was out of the interdimensional gate and fully conscious as a spectral facsimile of himself. His body was no longer in the palace on the moon, but he was not inside his body here, either. Instead, his body lay in front of him, as if he were in a lucid dream. He stood in a dilapidated clonosphere on Lodar Nine, surrounded by hundreds of newborns sleeping in pods, looking down at his youngest self, indistinguishable from the other babies in the vast laboratory. He had been born in this pod, an O-Clone I model, and bought by Captain Lotharia Durexfer soon after sprouting, a purchase which he had only just witnessed before going still further back in time to when he was in this room, an unselected clone. Yet that was Lotharia’s first and only appearance in his life — Durexfer had pre-ordered a rebellious lifeway for the clone so that he would eventually work on one of the pirate’s frigates, then disappeared, his work done. The clone had always known about pre-charting, but had not realized how all-encompassing it could be. Had Durexfer planned this journey through time, too? Whether it was the pirate, a Glyph, or a Distributor made no difference — the clone genuinely wanted to trace the forces that had created him, but now that he knew, what difference did it make?
Re-experiencing his past had already reaffirmed what he feared yet knew to be true: his whole life had been spent on a pre-planned track, which is why he had immense difficulty figuring out what he wanted to do now that he had seemingly stepped off it. The training skirmish on Kenflar, when he had mock-mutilated a drunken berserker… the Academy had taught him that the grin after a day’s plundering was the inevitable apex of life, but that’s when he owned up to his disgust with the entire enterprise of piracy. It was an entire worldview, one with which he no longer wanted any part. To see himself as an infant, trapped on the same track he had been steered upon all along, showed the clone that this trip had been necessary, yet returning to the present and charting his own future was more necessary still. But how? He fumbled with the device’s controls. Then he remembered: there was no reverse. He could not simply retrace his route back to the present he knew. But then how could he escape? His youngest self looked up at (though not necessarily to) him. He could not save himself at any moment in the life he had already lived. Instead, the pirate pushed further back in time, beyond himself, beyond what he knew to find some way to be of use.
First, in the form of an undetectable spectral presence (for time travelers cannot interact with the past; they can only regard it from new angles), the pirate surveyed the construction of the building in which he had been incubated, the creation of the zaminlarp that manufactured him, the Academy-night chats of its founders, who believed in the unimpeachable righteousness of clonomatics. This moral universe was only one of many that had flourished and fallen on Silifir Melo, so he pushed back further. He sat on the cornice of the viceroy’s galadahall in Old Entremaltada. Wombat vleptankers, curflonging at his eye level, brazenly screeched at the pomaded revolutionaries flooding through the capitol’s courtyard below. A kaleidoscope of scenes presented themselves, each increasingly remote: Lylie General Mishknot fjording the Bantagla, bevies of sheklas grazing on the Limitless Fields that stretch over the Twinkling Sea, a wedding attended by a species of two-faced humans before their one-eyed neighbors wiped them out in a genocide of jealousy. How had all of this once existed on his home planet without him knowing? His local government — so much as it could be called such — had made a show of transparency in its education system. But no matter. He was starting to see things he recognized from the Academy, since they were ancient enough to be taught: the creation of the planet seen in rewind, the cooldown of a tamed surface giving way to the fiery infernoscape of its earliest cycles. So, it turns out his was not a Distributor Planet? He made a mental note, as if that knowledge would ever be useful. It seemed he cared about that kind of thing, in any event. Learning — yes, if he pursued that, would he somehow be able to return to the present? Would Agrippa be there? Neither could be his goal. And thankfully it turned out he was interested in the lifecycles of planets, not to mention the mythic beings who assembled some of them. Perhaps they could offer not an escape from his life — for there was no escape — but rather destinations for it.
Yet while jumping thousands of light decades and several millennia from one planet to another, questing deeper back in time in search of a fingerprint from the Glyphs, the pirate encountered one in the spectral sphere between dimensions. A lithe apparition of silverblue tendrils and mute eyes solid yellow, his humanoid sidecestor drifted alongside him as he experienced ever-distance eons. Astonished, he moved his mouth to speak, but couldn’t. Instead the Glyph started the conversation in their silent tongue, which sent a deep reverberation through the pirate’s body that he intuitively understood. The ageless being, which instead of being born and then dying merely emerged from and later would return to their species’ mysterious source, was therefore not quite an individual in our own sense of the word. The pirate remains unaware whether or not he was able to respond, or even if he did. But he knows that the Glyph, in its own way, encouraged him to jump straight back to the very beginning of time. So, he did.
Many millennia later, as he sailed at last to the humble home for which he had searched his entire life, the pirate remembered that final bold strike into the beginning of the universe. Only then did he realize that he had operated the indescribable time traveling device by speaking in the untranslatable language of the Glyphs, even though no person had claimed knowledge of it since Anabel herself. The language had never belonged to him, his lips had not even moved, yet he had felt a heart vibration rattle out down his arm into the indescribable time traveling device, and it would then take him when he wanted to go. But he could not force this language, these vibrations, into being. This time, however, was different. When the Glyph suggested that he visit the beginning of the world, the pirate became too self-conscious about the process. If the Glyph suggested it to him, could it still be something he could communicate to the device as his own sentiment? He’d dreamt of going to the beginning of time all along, but it was so impossibly remote — what could it teach him about his own life? He chastised himself for indulging in escapism, yet he did want to see the beginning of the world, as an end in itself, regardless of where it would lead. As soon as the truth of that sank in, the pirate was on his way.
Yet now, the pirate accelerated through time until he reached a seeming standstill that was in fact an unbelievably violent velocity. Along the way, he began to thin out still more than he had been before, when he had simultaneously experienced all of the moments in his life. Now he was experiencing every moment ever. The part of him that was an individual hardly existed, though from this new perspective the astonishing fact is that he ever thought he existed in the first place. For some time, he wasn’t certain when, he had been dimly self-aware, but now the word ‘awareness’ along with all language ceased to hold any meaning, aside from Glyphic, which that civilization had sutured through the fabric of the multiverse. He never fully arrived at the beginning of the universe yet would never fully leave, either, and for a time any other mode of existence back with dimensional beings seemed impossible. In fact, the clone was no longer a ‘he’, but they weren’t a ‘she’ or even a ‘they’, either, and ‘it’ felt far too insufficient.
One was the universe, though thankfully not for long. For one had experienced all that ever was, so they desired solely to create a world of one’s own within the universe as one dreamt it. And what did that look like? What, in short, did one want? Without realizing it, one had begun their quest back to the present, which one could only begin after journeying though the beginning of oneself back to the birth of the universe. For a surreal time one was everything and an awakening person, whom one would choose to mold however one wished. They could turn themselves into any other person, but chose instead to re-endure the failings, missed chances, along with the rare, well-earned joys. So one began, slowly, to be a clone again, albeit with the knowledge that they would shrug off that descriptor soon.
There was so much he wanted to destroy, to raze to waste: the forces that had made him an aimless, apathetic pirate: the Clonocrome Corporation; pirates; specifically, Durexfer. But even while he remained with the universe he did not have the power to erase them from reality completely. Starting off with a blank map was impossible — the palimpsest of history always remained, even at the precise moment when time began. So yes, even in the present which he was helping to create, the things he wanted most to destroy would be waiting for him. Despite his extraordinary self-searching, the meaning of this fact still eluded him.
Part IV
The clone knew when he wanted to go — the moment he had left behind — but not where. To pursue Agrippa would be creepy, not to mention unnecessary. She had her own path, and he his. Yet where did it lead? His own body felt fuller now, more rounded out and defined as he approached his temporal destination, though that only emphasized how malleable his form had been all along. Regardless, he wanted to arrive where he could bring himself the best to bear. It did not matter the status of the station, only the validity of the vocation. Countless presented themselves: Korlop narding on Aklainet Six, filligadling for Etrophlers, posing as the junior Bishigil Inflerploper for Aka Incorporated. This last option was tempting, since it would allow him to have a hand in interplanetary affairs, setting him on a career trajectory that would eventually enable him to free over 100,000 oklas from captivity. Needless to report, he had far more lucrative, selfless, enjoyable, ennobling, enlightening, and healthy opportunities, as well. Yet his privileged position as a participant in the creation of the multiverse had enabled him to see that each moment is the moment of creation, which completely changed the way he approached his new present. He knew the calculus which would chart his life’s path: it was, like the time machine itself, indescribable. All that remained was to attend to a final matter.
Suddenly, the clone was standing between the rainswept skyscrapes of a grey metropolis, caught in the afterflare crowd of commuters. He held the indescribable time traveling device in one hand as he walked across the footbridge that arched over one of the city’s canal-coffined shantytowns. On the other side, above the ruins of the Library of Triskelia, a massive tree housing the Wise Women of Mari loomed. A glass partition separated the outpost’s courtyard from the rest of the city, and the clone was stopped at the only entrance — a nondescript, minimalist groove in the glass — by a uniformed young woman.
‘State your aim,’ she commanded. The WW never asked a person’s name or rank, only their purpose.
‘I’m dropping off a time machine.’
She was mildly surprised. ‘May I see it?’ He held up the device. ‘Very well. You may schedule a meeting with our lead –’
‘Oh, I don’t need to enter. You can have it.’
And he handed her the device. She blinked.
‘This is a priceless artifact. Why are you just dropping it off?’
‘You need it more than I do. You’ll know why, when the time is right.’
And with that he turned to leave, but the woman stopped him.
‘Wait. When did you go to?’
‘The beginning of the universe.’
The guard looked at the indescribable time traveling device in faltering belief, then back down at the man. ‘What was it like?’
The End. | https://medium.com/@matthewhennigar7/the-indescribable-time-traveling-device-57e5c4b1e36e | ['Matthew Hennigar'] | 2021-07-06 16:46:34.782000+00:00 | ['Time Travel', 'SciFi', 'Science Fiction'] |
Dopamine: You’re Soaking in It | Soaring Solo: The Art of Thriving Alone
Dopamine: You’re Soaking in It
The key to short-circuiting unhealthy desires
Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash
If you want something, there’s a reason. A small fraction of the time it’s biological: you are hungry, thirsty, tired or have to use the bathroom. The majority of the time, however, it’s all about the dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that gives us an overall sense of pleasure and relaxation. As humans, we are constantly fluctuating between a state of desire and satiety. When we say we “feel good,” we usually mean that all our desires are met. (Note that this is very different from having all your needs met, as it is quite possible to have everything you need for survival, even to be quite comfortable and secure, but to still have desires.) Dopamine is simply the “feel good” chemical that gives us the sense, for the moment, that all is right with the world.
We are wired for survival, but at a caveman level. The activities that bring us pleasure are the very things that ensured our survival individually and as a species back when food was scarce and procreation was a pressing concern. However, some of these activities are no longer survival issues now that food is plentiful, procreation is better controlled, and our numbers are in no danger of declining. Evolution takes time, and while our brains and their capabilities have advanced, dopamine is still what motivates our behavior. Add to this the fact that we have a much greater variety of sources of dopamine than we did in the Paleolithic Era, and abuse and addiction are the result.
There are plenty of ways to get a dopamine hit: drugs, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, gambling, sex, exercise, massage, physical touch, hugs, love, connection, and food (more specifically, what I like to call the four junk food groups — sweet, salty, fried and pizza). This is by no means an exhaustive list. In fact, many of the items on the list in my article The Habit Notebook are examples of healthy ways to get your dopamine hit.
Take sugar for example. Our caveman brains still motivate us to eat the things that are calorie-dense and bioavailable, thereby providing quick energy. In the Paleolithic Era, sugar was most common in fruit, which meant that it was often scarce and only available during certain times of the year. There was never any danger of over-consuming sugar — or any other food for that matter. With the current convenience and availability of products with high sugar content — in addition to the sinister concoction high-fructose corn syrup — we are eating and drinking sugar in alarming amounts, with Americans now consuming 135 pounds per person per year, on average — that’s 2.5 pounds a week.
Product development of the processed foods we eat centers mainly around how to get us to want more, which centers around dopamine, and the easiest (legal) way to trigger the release of dopamine is sugar. Ever wonder why you crave McDonalds when it’s not even that good? Yep, sugar. A Big Mac has nine grams of sugar — about the same as a peach. A Quarter Pounder contains ten grams. And that “healthy” chicken sandwich? Eleven grams.
But the issue isn’t so much about amounts as it is about the way processed sugar triggers the desire for more. Even a tiny amount of processed sugar will light up your dopamine receptors so that the caveman brain sends pleasure signals and encourages you to keep doing what you’re doing. But sugar from fruit is accompanied by fiber, which slows down its absorption. Sure, the dopamine hit isn’t quite as strong as it would be if you took forty-seven grams of processed sugar straight to the face (which is what you’d get with a package of Skittles), but it does elevate your dopamine levels in a way that is healthy and sustainable — and without the sugar crash that tends to lead to consumption of even more sugar, perhaps this time in the form of soda (10 grams of sugar per 12-ounce can).
We’re not likely to binge on a bowl of peaches because we’d get pretty full after two or three. Not so with processed sugar, as it takes up very little space in our stomachs, so the combination of a huge dopamine hit and lots of stomach space makes it almost impossible to resist once you’ve started. Also, scans have shown that brain activity after consuming sugar are similar to those after doing cocaine.
Consuming sugar all the time is like any drug — you develop a resistance and need more and more just to get the same high. When you quit for a few weeks, your sensitivity to sugar increases again and you’re able to achieve the same level of pleasure you used to get from large quantities of sugar from a healthy treat like fruit instead.
I tend to harp on sugar because it’s a serious problem. Of the addictive substances available legally and illegally, it is by far the most socially acceptable. And the worst culprit is soda, comprising a full one-third of the 2.5 pounds of sugar we consume weekly. This more than any other offender is the reason our society suffers from such alarming levels of obesity and diabetes. If you can, switch to unsweetened iced tea or water instead. It only takes a few weeks to kick the habit.
But it’s not just about sugar. It’s about anything you’re craving. If you’re craving something, your body wants a dopamine hit. Give it one. It doesn’t have to be the one you’re craving. Want sugar? Have some fruit. Want a cigarette? Go for a walk. Want alcohol? Spend time with a friend. Your brain won’t shut up about it until it gets the dopamine it needs, but you choose what method will provide it.
Video games have emerged in the past few decades as a source of dopamine, resulting in compulsive behavior for some. Passing a new level or defeating a particularly difficult foe provides the player with a sense of accomplishment and productivity — albeit a false one — and that stimulates dopamine production and increases feelings of pleasure and relaxation. (The loading page for the game Candy Crush plays on this fact with the advice “Relax and swipe the stress away.”) A good alternative to this particular habit is to create. Whether it’s painting, drawing, writing, woodworking, knitting, making jewelry, pottery, etc., find the art that speaks to you and make something. Yes, it takes longer, but it will provide the authentic sense of accomplishment and productivity you’re seeking.
If you don’t have a Person — someone who is in your corner, whether friend, relative or significant other — understand that you are at a great disadvantage by virtue of being alone. One of the most consistent and healthful sources of dopamine is having a Person. A partner can be a source of a variety of dopamine hits — hugging, communication, connection, laughter, kissing, sex, and the list goes on. Without a Person, however, you are charged with the task of maintaining healthy levels of dopamine without succumbing to addictive sources. Fear not, there is still plenty you can do to get your “wants” met in a healthy way.
Tune in next time for part two of this essay on dopamine where we’ll discuss ultimate high — the dopamine-oxytocin “cocktail” — as well as the specific tools you can use to encourage yourself opt for the healthful sources of these feel-good chemicals.
Adapted from the forthcoming book Soaring Solo: The Art of Thriving Alone by T.A. Pace. | https://medium.com/illumination/dopamine-youre-soaking-in-it-ab8697b436cd | ['T.A. Pace'] | 2020-12-04 16:57:50.608000+00:00 | ['Alone', 'Self Improvement', 'Personal Development', 'Diet', 'Psychology'] |
Friendship and Vulnerability | Friendship has always been a struggle for me.
For most of my life I have not had many friends. I have had especially few close friends.
I am not good at making friends. I am not outgoing. I am not particularly sociable. If you talk to me I will talk to you but I am not the kind of person who will start a conversation with someone that they do not know.
I enjoy the things that I enjoy and that has often been enough to fulfill me. Aside from my wife, having people in my life is not really something I thought about much.
People are complex. People have the capacity for cruelty. This is especially true when we are young. But we make just as many mistakes when we are adults as well.
Having friends is valuable but it also makes you vulnerable. When you let someone inside your walls, you become vulnerable to pain that is unlike any kind of physical pain.
After not having many friends in my life I reached appoint where I wanted to try to make new friends. I was fortunate to find a community of people with shared interests. They accepted me and we became friends.
Some people in this community became some of the closest friends I have had in my life.
People who are closest to you however can also cause you the most pain.
If things go sideways in a friendship you can be left feeling sadness, pain, resentment, and animosity.
This does not negate all the good things that were created in friendship but it can overshadow everything like a storm cloud.
Holding on to those negative feelings can create bitterness and make enjoying the same parts of life you used to love challenging.
If the opportunity to heal a wound and repair a friendship presents itself take it. Let go of the pain and suffering.
You will have an opportunity to transform a storm cloud into a rainbow. You will be able to have a chance to restore the joy you once felt. It will lighten your soul. Good people make mistakes. People deserve second chances.
Opening oneself up to possibly be hurt again is not easy, but we are better for it. Forgiveness is our true nature.
Do not punish someone for a lifetime for their mistakes.
Friendship is risky. Allowing people into your life on a deep level is risky.
Friendship can create the highest of highs or the lowest of lows.
Friendship is a risk worth taking. Friendship is what makes us human. | https://medium.com/whats-on-your-mind-randomness/friendship-and-vulnerability-ee95e4a006fe | ['Kyle Reynolds'] | 2020-12-09 17:07:30.671000+00:00 | ['People', 'Friends', 'Relationships', 'Vulnerability', 'Friendship'] |
How to Become a Copywriter: The 5-Step Guide to Permanent Income | “I want to become a copywriter but I don’t know what step to take. Can anyone please help?”
That’s a post I saw in one of my copywriting groups. And at The Copy Cartel, we realize this is a fairly common issue with beginners.
We think it’s great you want to become a copywriter and make money with the power of words. Because the right words always bring value.
But we don’t like it when people say…
“I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t know what step to take…”
Because it reinforces inaction, excuses, and fear. The Copy Cartel wants you to focus on what you can do, not on what you can’t do.
Nobody knows how to do anything unless they start doing it. But it’s also okay to ask for help.
So here’s your 5-step guide to permanent income.
Because as long as you feed your brain some copywriting goodness… and apply it, you’ll never have to worry about money flowing into your bank account.
All you need to do is follow these 5 simple steps.
Step 1: Know the Value of Copywriting
To become a copywriter, you must know what copywriting is. And copywriting is assembling the right words together that get people to buy or respond.
Notice how I said assembling instead of writing? You don’t necessarily write copy, you assemble it like a piece of furniture that has good structure. So all the parts of the copy need to be in the right place.
Now why is that important?
That’s the key to getting rich, finding love and starting a movement. Imagine having a superpower that gets people to do what you want.
That’s valuable. And remember, people only buy or respond to what they value. Business owners will pay top dollar for the right words that get people to act.
Just think of the customers a business needs and how to reach them. That means someone has to write ALL these words or copy that goes into:
Basically, if it needs words to sell or get a response, that’s where you come in.
So if you can write a good ad, sales letter, or script that makes money, you add value to that business. If you write a really good ad, a business will use it for as long as possible and everywhere at once.
Meaning, you can even get paid royalties.
If you can help a business make 1,000,000 in profit, they’ll be more than happy to pay you $10,000 or more!
That’s only 1% of their profits you helped them to. No wonder some copywriters make up to 6 or 7 figures a year!
That means you are that dude! Don’t let any business dismiss your worth to them.
You literally help people make neverending money.
So charge what you’re worth.
If you don’t know what to charge, start with how much you’d like to make an hour then triple it That’s your new hourly rate (keep it reasonable and realistic, though.)
And for upfront rates, that really depends on a sales call or email. Consider what the business stands to make as profit for the project and negotiate a fair percentage of those profits as commission.
But pricing is another in-depth conversation for another time.
Step 2: Join a Copywriting Group
Next, join a copywriting group. You want to surround yourself with other copywriters, especially the experts in your field. This will be your support network.
Harry Potter would have never been a powerful wizard if he wasn’t learning from master wizards and witches at Hogwaffs or whatever.
So introduce yourself and share your story! Tell people why you want to become a copywriter. You never know how much of an impact your story can have on another group member.
In addition, you gain new family and friends. Here’s what you also get when you join a good copywriting group:
free copywriting resources, books, and swipe files
access to expert copywriters and their products, services, and knowledge
networking, job boards and job opportunities
daily content and copywriting tips
peer reviews
copy breakdowns of winning ads
visibility and leverage (when you interact and stay active)
And you get all this when you join groups like the:
Now, don’t join a copywriting group just to be a fly on the wall. Interact with the group. Make sure you:
ask and answer questions
like, comment on, and share posts
post and share expert and helpful content
promote your favorite copywriting groups externally
share job and networking opportunities that are a better fit for someone else
Those are just several ways to add value to your copywriting group. That’s because you never know who’s watching. And the value you add doesn’t only benefit others in your group, it benefits you as well.
For example, when I joined the Black Copywriter Coalition, I shared copywriting articles, free copywriting books, and promoted it externally.
This led to a 7-figure copywriter, Donnie Bryant sharing my work. Which led to some copywriting gigs falling right into my lap (no cold emailing necessary)
Those opportunities gave me visibility, leverage, and a reliable source of a bigger and neverending income.
That’s the power of copywriting groups.
Step 3: Read and Breakdown Copy Every Day
If you want to 10x your copywriting skills, you will need to consume copy every day.
Read, watch and listen to ads. Especially successful and proven ads that sell and get you to respond in some way. Starting today, you can:
read any successful ad
breakdown why the ad works
write your own ad using a successful ad as a template.
You can also keep a collection of the ads you breakdown as a swipe file. In fact, keeping a swipe file is one of the 7 golden rules to better copywriting.
Continue to read more copywriting books written by the experts. Learn about the history of copywriting.
But keep up with current trends as well. Some of The Copy Cartel favorites include:
Check out this list of at least “ 10 Books Every Copywriter Should Read — Twice “ from our affiliate partners at the American Writers & Artists Institute.
No matter what, you should eat, sleep, and breathe copy going forward.
Step 4: Start Writing the Right Words (Content, Ads and Creative Stuff)
Let me tell you a story about how I was destined to become a copywriter in 4th grade back in Ghana. I didn’t know it then but when I think about it, it made a lot of sense.
It was the greatest year of all time- 1999. And it was another day at Christ the King International School. Our student body was broken down into 4 factions. Sort of like Slitterin, Hugglepuff or whatever.
Anyway, you were either part of the Bees, Doves, Eagles, or Sparrows. I was a Sparrow (although I wanted to be an Eagle).
And we had a weekly competition for which faction would get the most points. And the class faction with the most points at the end of the week won prizes such as extra playtime, candy, activities, field trips, etc.
So the stakes were always high.
And I had the opportunity to win an extra 30 minutes of free play for my 4th grade Sparrows.
The week prior, Mrs. Kwaidoo had been teaching us about description and how certain words carry a certain weight or emotional tone. It was tied between the Bees and Sparrows in our English Challenge.
She asked us to rewrite this phrase using better vocabulary to match her tone.
That sentence was…
“Where are my children? The mother asked.” Then she acted distressed and raised her voice.
“Can anyone come up with better vocabulary? Think about a mother that is upset asking for her children. Do you think ‘asked’ is descriptive enough?”
We yelled no in unison. And a wave of hands shot up in the air trying to get Mrs. Kwaidoo’s attention. She picked someone from the Bees to answer.
“Where are my children? The mother yelled!”
“That’s good but someone already said yelled”
“Shouted?”
“That’s the same thing, that’s not good enough.”
Then like a flashbulb over my head; I knew the perfect word. I called out to Mrs. Kwaidoo, and shot up my hand as high as I could.
“Yes, Kuuku?”
“Where are my children? The mother DEMANDED!”
And next thing I know, Mrs. Kwaidoo cheered with glee. Fellow Sparrows jumped up and down swarmed around me in the classroom, and the Sparrows won an extra 30 minutes of free play.
It was a very validating experience. I became more popular and was finally recognized as a “shark” or genius. Classmates started coming to me to help with their essays.
All because I said the right word. And I enjoyed writing ever since.
Why is this important?
Because as a copywriter you must know your audience and assemble the right words together that sell and get the right response. So, apply what you’re learning right now.
Write your own offers for your services. Reach out to clients and businesses. Understand what they need and offer to rewrite their ads, create new campaigns, and help them acquire more customers based on your research.
But make sure that every word you write has the desired effect on your reader or audience. And keep the best words that get a response.
Put those winning words in your portfolio and showcase your skills and track record.
You can also create a website to showcase your portfolio and offer your services. Now while a website isn’t necessary, you still want an online presence to leverage your skills, stand out, and connect with others.
So make sure you are active online or exist somehow to your potential clients.
And writing everyday doesn’t have to involve copy all the time. You can do some creative writing as well. You can write:
journal entries
letters to friends and family
short stories
poems
music, etc.
As long as you keep your mind sharp with copy and staying creative, you’ll find it easier to get people to respond with action.
So, know your audience and use the right words.
Use the right words
Step 5: Get Work or Start a Business
Now it’s time to put your head down and do the work.
You can only read so many books and hang out in copywriting groups for so long. Start writing good copy and showcase your value so you can get paid.
Here’s what you can end up doing:
go to copy job boards, business professionals or owners, and offer your services with the right words (incorporate your portfolio, website, testimonials, track record, and content so you stand out)
apply to work as an in-house copywriter for your favorite industry or product (again, demonstrate your value to stand out)
create a system, platform or business to reach more clients, customers and funnel them to your services (we can show you how)
Doing this puts your work out there so you gain visibility. Demonstrate your expertise with your copywriting knowledge.
This means you should pick a niche or particular industry you want to write copy for. Or you can work closely with several businesses to put out a great campaign or funnel.
This should be your end goal and major focus.
The whole point of a copywriter is to write stuff that sells and gets people to act. On repeat.
You want to have the track record or impressive stats that backs up your skill and worth as a copywriter.
Step 6: Teach, Recruit and Maintain (Optional Bonus)
At The Copy Cartel, our core belief is creating value. We think of the people we serve and how to best serve them.
And part of that value is to teach people the power of words. And we want you to help us spread that mission. So teach and share what you’re learning about copywriting.
Share your knowledge with the world.
And recruit others who are looking for a new career path into copywriting and show them why it’s worth it. This is a great networking opportunity in itself.
Talk about:
The clients you’ve written for and show how you did it to anyone that will listen
The fruits of your labor and show it to the world (whether it’s vacation pics or certified recognition)
The people you’ve helped with copywriting and how you can new clients too
Finally, make sure you maintain relationships with your recruits. Keep in touch with them. Check in on them and hold them accountable in their progress.
This generates a lot of social capital because people like it when you show genuine interest in their growth.
And people trust and buy more from the people they like.
But at the end of the day. The only successful copywriters out there are the ones that do the necessary work. So don’t recruit any dead weight or people that are all talk.
If you enjoyed this article, share it with your copy buddies and join The Copy Cartel.
Andif you are also serious and want to start your copywriting career, learn from the experts, and boost your permanent income to six-figures, sign-up for AWAI’s Accelerated 6-Figure Copywriting course.
Stay Blessed.
~K | https://medium.com/@thecopycartel/how-to-become-a-copywriter-the-5-step-guide-to-permanent-income-e0fe16156810 | ['The Copy Cartel'] | 2021-01-11 18:54:17.520000+00:00 | ['Copywriting Course', 'Copywriter', 'Copywriting', 'Copywriting Tips'] |
Coming Soon — Mantra SKY Tower By Mantra Properties Akurdi | Mantra Properties is one of the youngest and fastest growing real estate organizations in Pune that has expanded rapidly across Pune. Since inception in 2007, we’ve always strived to provide the best value to our customers by carefully listening to their needs. Our intelligent design and emphasis on quality, transparency and delivery have enabled us to gain the customers as well as the market’s trust. The trust has been built over the last 13 years with 11 fully delivered projects, 15 projects under development across Pune and PCMC and we currently have 66 lakhs square feet under construction.
Our New Launch project in PCMC Mantra Sky Tower Project spread across 3.5 acres of land is an Awaited Pre Launch of Premium Residential Gated Community by Mantra Properties in Akurdi, Pune. Mantra SKY tower By Mantra Properties Akurdi offers 2 & 3 BHK Flats with Duplexes with modern amenities in Akurdi, Pune. Get location, floor plans, prices etc . | https://medium.com/@mantraskytower/coming-soon-mantra-sky-tower-by-mantra-properties-akurdi-12e65f42a8e1 | [] | 2020-12-22 11:12:25.954000+00:00 | ['Real Estate Agent', 'Mantra Sky Tower', 'Real Estate', 'Real Estate News', 'Mantra Properties'] |
Crafting Software With Care | Testing Isn’t Optional
Want to hear my two cents on pushing untested code?
Don’t do it.
It physically aches me to approve a PR without tests. In my experience, I’ve seen developers with a decade of experience do it, too. Don’t lower your standards and allow bad practices to creep in.
Imagine you were asked to just write a few features initially and you thought the project was never going to come back, so you delivered a product without tests. Unfortunately, one day, the project did come back. Now, you have no documentation because it was done in a hurry (happens almost all the time) and can’t rely on your memory to remember what the requirements were, so basically you’re in soup.
Tests are the single most effective way of documenting business requirements.
Ideally, your code should be ironclad with tests, including tests that verify the business logic, integration with APIs and persistence layers, and UI/acceptance tests.
You can’t always cover 100% of the codebase with, tests but the least you can do is make sure you add unit tests to cover most of the business logic. When code changes or tests break, you’ll know what changed and be able to rewrite the tests according to new requirements.
Test-driven development is how you can be certain your code is doing what you were asked to do. It can be treated as the official documentation of the codebase. This is also how you save yourself from trouble during long-term maintenance.
If your code has no tests. Get it to a state in which you can write some tests for important logic. | https://medium.com/better-programming/crafting-software-with-care-7fde33c85ab3 | [] | 2020-07-28 16:40:49.387000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Coding', 'Startup', 'Technology', 'Programming'] |
Some Thoughts on Microservices Architecture | Microservices architecture is not a bad thing, microservices offer inherent horizontal scalability, decomposition into small parts, etc., but microservices architectures are also the fastest way to lose your shirt if you don’t think fully through what you’re attempting to accomplish.
Put it this way: what are the major differences between a complex distributed application and a large-scale orchestration of microservices?
· The base protocol of most microservices, REST, is one of the most limited protocols available, particularly in terms of recoverability from network errors.
· There is no developed, proven framework for orchestrating microservices, whereas the Actor framework in distributed applications is well-known, well-proven and available today on a number of platforms beyond ERLANG and Smalltalk.
· The pieces of a distributed application were designed with that application in mind.
· Some thought has usually been given as to how the overall state of the application is to be maintained, while many microservice developers and management proponents seem to think that it will magically maintain itself.
· And the biggest difference? Terminology, nothing more.
Since it’s fairly well known that complex distributed applications are a difficult undertaking, the fact that many people in the software industry seem to believe a large-scale orchestration of microservices to produce a complex resulting application is simple is ridiculous.
The most commonly touted MSA I’ve seen gives no thought to shared storage or eventing, which should be the first two things settled on before attempting any distributed architecture. MSA in many ways does simply take SOA and go further, but that further doesn’t make it easier, it makes it more difficult. Done properly, it should also offer better horizontal scalability, more flexibility when refactoring, etc., but those don’t come for free.
The easiest way to begin thinking about it is that with your finished microservices you have a set of reusable functionalities, but you don’t yet have a system. How you go about building a system from that set will determine in the end whether you have a flexible, maintainable architecture or a stress-inducing money pit that accomplishes little to nothing.
The quickest answer is to look at the required functionality for a complex distributed application, because in essence, that’s what you’re creating. The simplicity of the services themselves only moves the complexity up the stack. From that functionality you can determine the state that needs to be maintained by each service and the shared context that all the services will need access to. Finally you need to make a decision on what will have the capability to modify that context and how you’re going to make it easily and quickly available to every service involved in the orchestration. | https://medium.com/@dasein42/some-thoughts-on-microservices-architecture-601f744a4b33 | ['Andrew Glynn'] | 2020-12-02 14:38:50.585000+00:00 | ['Systems Thinking', 'Distributed Systems', 'Design Thinking', 'Microservices', 'Architecture'] |
FLETA’s eCRF system was selected as an outstanding project among those supported by the National IT Industry Promotion Agency of South Korean Government | FLETA’s eCRF system was selected as an outstanding project among those supported by the National IT Industry Promotion Agency of South Korean Government FLETA Blockchain Follow Dec 20, 2019 · 2 min read
CEO Paul Park is giving a speech as a representative of the eCRF project, one of the outstanding projects
Clinical trial data management system(eCRF system) of SendSquare, a foundation of FLETA, was selected as an outstanding project among those supported by the National IT Industry Promotion Agency of South Korean Government, aka NIPA.
The final decision of NIPA was made on 3rd December when there were the final presentations of NIPA’s selected projects. Since the eCRF system became an outstanding project, FLETA’s CEO Paul could get a chance to give a special presentation at NIFA’s Outcome Presentation.
The event was on 18th December, and he introduced Sendsquare’s eCRF system that utilizes FLETA chain to the attendants. The presentation got much attention, and many people asked questions to Paul after the presentation.
At the event, FLETA operated its own booth, and many people came to hear about the eCRF system. After Paul’s presentation, more people visited FLETA’s booth and showed their great interest!
Since the eCRF project was selected as one of the PoC support projects of NIPA, FLETA has conducted eCRF System development and testbed experiments. Led by SendSquare, the project is in progress with the cooperation of Hanyang University and Seoul ST. Mary’s Hospital. There were also testbed experiments on actual patients of Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital to develop the eCRF system. Besides, the system completed the certification test of Software Software Testing Laboratory of the Telecommunications Technology Association.
A typical feature of blockchain technology is that when information is recorded, it cannot be modified or deleted arbitrarily, thereby preventing record manipulation. SendSquare’s eCRF system is a blockchain-based clinical trial data collection tool for preventing forgery, omission, and errors of clinical trial data by recording them on the blockchain.
Through such a process, the clinical trial data can be more credible, and an accurate data management system based on real data is possible. The eCRF system aims to be a tool that patient and people in the medical industry can efficiently use. Thus, it easy to manage clinical trial data and prevent medical accidents or information manipulation in advance, enabling safer medical life and more efficient health care. Based on the eCRF system, SendSquare aims to preoccupy the global clinical data management market shortly.
Paul Park, CEO of Sendsquare, said, “Being selected as an ‘outstand project’ means our technology got recognized to the government officials and people in the scene. We will apply blockchain technology to many areas, including healthcare. As you can see in the case of the eCRF system, our lives can be better if we utilize blockchain technology efficiently.
***
Feel free to join and connect with us through any of our official channels below:
Website: https://fleta.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/fletachain
Telegram: https://t.me/FLETAofficialGroup
Github: https://github.com/fletaio | https://medium.com/fleta-first-chain/fletas-ecrf-system-was-selected-as-an-outstanding-project-among-those-supported-by-the-national-3fbb3d7bb7b9 | ['Fleta Blockchain'] | 2019-12-20 07:57:42.118000+00:00 | ['Medical', 'Blockchain', 'Health', 'Fleta'] |
Beating Your Stereotype Of Muslims | Extremists and Terrorists
They have reduced Islam to slitting throats, burning schools and oppressing women, and killing religious minorities, terrorising and violating the human rights of people in the most blatant manner possible. Read more.
Photo by Hosam Katan/Reuters on The Daily Beast
These people do the bombings, the killings and terrorizing acts. They are the reason why innocent people die and they play a big role in the increasing Islamophobia all around the world these days. They do not represent Islam, they never did, and they never will. All Muslims renounce them, we criminalize them and do not respect them, they are terrorists and no one believes in what they do. They have their own strict and extreme ideologies which are wrong and against every single rule of Islam and our prophet Muhammad.
If this is your understanding of Muslims, you have to rest assured these are not Muslims, they are criminals using the name of a merciful religion. You cannot blame an entire religion based on the acts of some outlaws using its name, this would be unjust to Islam, and even to yourself.
Sheiks and Religious Wise Men
They usually spend most of their time in mosques, praying and getting closer to god, helping those in need with wise words of advice and helping them with any doubts or questions they have about God or Islam, they are usually the most educated people about religion, and they are sin-free to the public.
Sheikh Youssef El-Shaarawy
They are also quite rare these days because due to the westernization in the last two centuries, the idea of not letting religion limit certain pleasures has increased the probability of people going for a more free lifestyle than being religious.
To be fair, these people themselves have a spectrum of their own, because some of them are extreme and strict but not to the degree of killing. For example, some of them would say listening to music is totally forbidden (even if it doesn’t distract you away from God) and some of them would say it’s not as long as it doesn’t distract you away from God.
Normal Muslims
They follow Islam by the book, try not to miss any of the five daily prayers, refrain from most of the sins, they are the majority of Muslims, they live happily and they accept their lifestyle, of course, they might get more religious, or less conservative than they are.
This is a list of “Al-Kabair”, the major sins that most Muslims do their best to avoid them. Read more.
Photo by: Suhaib Salem/Reuters from ABC
According to the western culture rules of open-mindedness, they are definitely closeminded, because they follow Islam rules, not the western. So there are a lot of things that can sound normal, but they are not, because they are sins. For example, homosexuality is forbidden, as well as pre-marital sex, alcohol, pork, and gambling. Women should wear Hijab, accompanied by moderate and conservative clothes.
They usually stay away from some of the privileges and pleasures that the people from the next category are fine with it, such as watching western movies, listening to western music, weekly non-alcoholic night outs, girls having non-ear piercings, girls traveling alone, boys and girls talking/engaging in non-sexual relationships before both parents’ approval/marriage, and several other things.
It is worth noting though, that such restrictions are enforced by parents but aren’t explicitly forbidden in Islam, it’s more of a tradition thing and a fear of getting badly influenced from such a “free” lifestyle or less religious people.
Normal Muslims + A Pinch of West
That’s the category I personally fall in, we follow most major Islamic rules, staying away from all the major sins such as sex, alcohol, and gambling. We try not to miss any of the five daily prayers, which we usually miss due to focusing more on life rather than religion.
We enjoy more pleasures than normal Muslims as I mentioned previously. For example, we engage in non-sexual relationships, we go out every weekend, sometimes even weekdays. We watch movies and TV Shows more than anything, and we listen to foreign music. Girls can travel alone and some of them believe they do not have to wear Hijab.
The middle and high classes of the society are usually the dominants of this category. They care more about staying within the boundaries of religion, while not following some of its strict rules in order to cope with the rapid changing in our culture resulting from westernization.
A lump of West + A Pinch of Muslim
These people no longer care about Islam but might be willing to ask God for forgiveness at some point in their future, they are just called Muslims because they were born with it.
Normally they live like any western citizen and maybe more. Due to living in a society that oppresses sinful pleasures such as sex, alcohol, and gambling, the feeling of shame and guilt is more likely to cause addiction to these pleasures or other substances.
…oppression can cause addiction. ~ Understanding Internalized Oppression: A Theoretical Conceptualization of Internalized Subordination. (Page 108) Read Here.
The problem with these people is that they might be a bad influence on other people who aren’t so religious and are on the verge of committing sins. They are also a bad influence on the image of Islam because it prohibits such actions, and they do it and might even in some cases over-do it. Thus, they are false-representatives of Islam. | https://medium.com/@gayar/beating-your-stereotype-of-muslims-70205a7e6416 | ['Mostafa Elgayar'] | 2019-01-02 04:36:24.309000+00:00 | ['Religion', 'Muslim', 'Islam', 'Stereotypes'] |
These Are The Things You Learn When You’re A Hopeless Romantic | These Are The Things You Learn When You’re A Hopeless Romantic
Photo by kevin laminto on Unsplash
Is there ever a point in our lives where we should give up on love? Where we should throw in the towel and just be content with not finding another person to let into our hearts? I don’t think so. I don’t think that we should ever look at life and think that love will never find us.
1. Prince or Princess Charming might ride the bus instead of a white horse.
Does what we drive or what we wear or what we do really matter at the end of the day? Why do we set impossibly high standards on what we’re looking for in another person? High standards are great but if it’s so specific it makes it so that when we do find someone, they have to meet a criteria list that literally not many people can. When you find someone who makes you happy, the details really are just the details.
2. Sometimes the person you love doesn’t magically realize they love you too.
Sometimes we fall for people who don’t feel the same way. Does that mean that in some way there’s something wrong with us? No. Not at all. I have found that sometimes falling for the wrong person can teach us what we want from the right person.
3. You have to kiss a lot of frogs.
Or maybe you didn’t have to and are just lucky. Sometimes though, it takes a long time till you find the one person you want to settle down and have a house full of puppies with. Just because it’s taking a long time to find the one though doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you. It just means that they’re taking their sweet ass time to get to you.
4. Nothing good comes without struggle.
Even when you meet the right person, that doesn’t mean you ride off into the sunset and that’s it. You just get to live your life with your love without any sort of issues. Nope. No way. Whoever said love isn’t work is wrong. Love is another full-time job on top of your already full-time job. Even though it’s work, it’s so fulfilling if you find the right partner to do it with.
5. Sparks fade but laughs don’t.
You know that fuzzy feeling in your tummy you get when that new person you’re into texts you? Yeah, that fades. It just has too. It deepens into something more than just butterflies. So if you’re the type of person who lives for sparks, I’m sorry to tell you that it’s not real. Find someone you can be incredibly silly with. Find the person who you stay up all night with laughing. Find the person that allows you to be yourself and loves all of the quirks you thought were unloveable. That’s the person you should want to end up with. Not the one with instant sparks.
6. Never settle.
The last and probably the most important point. Never settle. For anything or anyone. Resentment isn’t something you want to feel later on in life. You want to look at the person you’ve ended up with and see what you saw in them the first time you met. Fall in love with the person for everything that they are and everything they add to your life. Never let someone make you feel like you can’t do better because if that person is not making you feel your absolute best, I promise you can find better.
Your happily ever after might not have a sunset or royalty but it will match whatever reality you’ve created. From one hopeless romantic to another, falling in love isn’t always sunshine and rainbows but it is worth diving into. No matter what happens at the end of the day, love will always be the best feeling. | https://thecreative.cafe/these-are-the-things-you-learn-when-youre-a-hopeless-romantic-774a884a1902 | ['Alexandria Brown'] | 2020-12-18 18:11:07.912000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Love', 'Self', 'Life Lessons', 'Creative Non Fiction'] |
How to earn money answering multiple-choice questions : | I have given details below about how you can earn money by sharing your opinions and doing offers like downloading and sign-up for a service or watching videos on survey sites. These sites do not require your degree or qualification. You can earn some extra cash from these sites without any investment. It is for everyone, students. .job holders.. men.. women. Everyone can earn from these sites easily.
Also, don’t forget to check my other articles to earn money easily. I have given links below; do check them once for reference.
Sell photos and Earn huge money online.
These applications or sites can be used on mobile or desktop/laptop to earn money easily without any skills. In these, you need to complete the surveys, play games or quiz, complete offers like downloading the apps or signing up for a service and watch some videos.
Here’s a list of sites :
https://www.mturk.com/
These are few legit survey sites from which you can earn money easily, without investment, and no experience is necessary to complete the surveys and offers. I personally use these sites and earn some extra cash for myself. Money earned on these sites can be redeemed once you have reached minimum payout value. The minimum payout value is different for these sites; for example, the GRABPOINTS payout value is $5. Money can be withdrawn in the form of gift cards or real cash to your PAYPAL account.
Firstly, sign-up for these sites.
And complete your profile by giving information like your DOB, your gender, etc.
Further, you can complete surveys and offers to earn money.
ADVANTAGES OF USING survey sites :
Things I personally love about survey sites:
Easy money. Easy payouts. Customer service is great, very helpful, and attentive. Flexibility (You can earn anytime and anywhere you want ). Accessible from mobile as well as Pc/Laptop.
In short, I want to say that earning money online is easy provided you are willing to spend some time on it. | https://medium.com/@shreeshti0512/how-to-earn-money-answering-multiple-choice-questions-4022d78211d | [] | 2021-06-17 04:26:49.005000+00:00 | ['Earn Money From Home', 'Make Money', 'Earn Money', 'Make Money Online', 'Earn Money Online'] |
Connect any ERC-1155 Token + Unity in 10 minutes | Overview
Non fungible tokens are on the rise. We’ve seen it in digital art and collectables. We’re now starting to see it in games, VR and AR. But there’s a catch… The tech used to build websites is different than games.
Market
When you look at the crypto space, the top 25 dGames are pwning the rest of the market by an order of magnitude. These are games pulling in $100k — $1 million in volume. What makes these games so compelling?
Out of the top 25 dGames, 10 use Unity’s gaming engine.
Building a game is different than a website. What separates these top dGames is their proper use of tools. They were able to somehow connect their Unity project to the blockchain and stack wei.
Would it be nice to have their tooling and compete with the top 25 dGames? (this is not a rhetorical question).
Tech (no crypto knowledge required)
There’s a steep learning curve to writing smart contracts and building games. Connecting both is challenging.
The beauty with Unity is the ability to abstract a lot of the complexities to fill-in-the-blanks and drag-n-drops.
Simply copy here
and paste here
Everything will connect behind the scenes.
And for more tech savvy users, getting the balance should be like this:
Demo
For a working demo:
To purchase the items:
Ducky:
Metamask Fox:
Protocol Labs:
Example transaction
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xa18f92b9e57a888bebc203ea9f79effcdac17e9f03e79bb9ad3ce30091d354dd
Alpha
To get early access and announcements, contact us directly on Discord.
Also, Read | https://medium.com/coinmonks/connect-any-erc-1155-token-unity-in-10-minutes-95fbdb73e178 | ['Leon Do'] | 2020-12-30 05:29:58.302000+00:00 | ['Nft Collectibles', 'Unity', 'Nft', 'Erc1155', 'Ethereum'] |
Epic Games is set to offer 15 free Christmas games from next week | The Epic Games website is already offering free games every week and you will be able to get free games every day from next Thursday.
To celebrate the holidays, the Epic free games program is reportedly set to offer 15 free games in 15 days, with Epic Games releasing 12 free games last year as a similar promotion.
All you need to do to participate in this Epic free games program is to create a free Epic Games account.
However, no information has been reported yet about the games to be provided through the Epic free games program and it is reported that this promotion will be active for 15 days from Thursday 17th December.
In addition to offering free games, Epic Games is set to launch a holiday sales event from next week, with hundreds of great discounts on games.
Also, you can see what games will be available from Thursday by visiting the website below. | https://medium.com/@allfree/epic-games-is-set-to-offer-15-free-christmas-games-from-next-week-7163538f4f9e | ['Mark Stefan'] | 2020-12-15 18:44:24.062000+00:00 | ['Free', 'Tech', 'Technews', 'Technology', 'Epic Games'] |
Principal Components Analysis (PCA), Fundamentals, Benefits & Insights for Industry | The intuition behind the dimension reduction
Let’s start with a very simple example where the 3 features of a dataset (x, y and z) are displayed in the 3D space below (code below):
Original dataset displayed around x, y and z axis.
You can easily notice that despite having 3 dimensions, the scatter plot is mostly spread around “y” and “z”; the variation around the “x” axis is quite low.
Should we had to model this dataset, how important the “x” dimension would be in comparison with “y” and “z”? Probably not that much!
So, instead of using 3 coordinates [x, y, z] to identify one dot within this 3D space, [y, z] might already be a good indication of where this dot is. Isn’t it?
We could even go further and imagine a 2D plan following the alignment of dots along the x-axis and designating the dots’ positions with only 2 coordinates according to this plan! That would probably look like this:
Original dataset with a possible 2D reduction plan
Thanks to this red 2D plan and its two corresponding vectors, we only need two coordinates to identify accurately the position of each dot.
Obviously, we are losing some information regarding the “depth” of each dot according to the original x-axis but this is a risk we are willing to take!
If you got this example right, you know what dimension reduction is! | https://towardsdatascience.com/principal-components-analysis-pca-fundamentals-benefits-insights-for-industry-2f03ad18c4d7 | ['Pierre-Louis Bescond'] | 2020-05-31 21:45:11.927000+00:00 | ['Dimensionality Reduction', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Python'] |
Chatbots: Natural Language Generation In 7 Easy Steps | Chatbots: Natural Language Generation In 7 Easy Steps
Transform Structured Data Into Unstructured Natural Language
What is Natural Language Generation?
NLG is a software process where structured data is transformed into Natural Conversational Language for output to the user. In other words, structured data is presented in an unstructured manner to the user. Think of NLG is the inverse of NLU.
With NLU we are taking the unstructured conversational input from the user (natural language) and structuring it for our software process. With NLG, we are taking structured data from backend and state machines, and turning this into unstructured data. Conversational output in human language.
Commercial NLG is emerging and forward looking solution providers are looking at incorporating it into their solution. At this stage you might be struggling to get your mind around the practicalities of this. Below you will see one practical example which might help.
The Why
So with machine learning readily available, why should we still manually define the script of our chatbot / conversational systems for certain node or state in our state machine.
There are option to make it more human-like, for instance to define multiple dialogue options per node. And then having the option to present the dialog options in a random or sequential fashion.
Thus creating the illusion of a non-fixed and dynamic dialogue. However, as dynamic as it might seem, still static at its heart; even if it is to a lesser degree.
The How
Using Natural Language Understanding (NLG) of course.
Why can we not take a sample size of a few hundred thousand scripts, and create a Tensorflow model by making use of Google’s Colab environment.
Then, based on key intents, generate a response, or dialog based on the model. Hence, generating Natural Language. Or unstructured output based in structured input. Let’s have a quick look at the basic premise of Natural Language Understanding (NLG) and then one practical Example.
Step-By-Step
Let us start by creating a fake news headline generator. We will generate fake news headlines, from a set of training data, based in a key word; one or more.
Each of these records is a newspaper headline which I used to create a TensforFlow model from. Based in this model, I could then enter one or two intents, and random “fake” (hence non-existing) headlines were generated. There are a host of parameters which can be used to tweak the output used.
First, you need your training data.
Create a free login on here. There is a dataset containing a million news headlines published over a period of 15 Years. I only used 180,000 entries and only the headline_text column.
This is your data.
Go to the Colab notebook.
This notebook consists of 7 Steps…
The note is by default in playground mode. Save a copy to your Google Drive; this is the most convenient. Your changes will also be saved here.
The from here follow the notedbook instructions. Run the first cell, installing gpt-2-simple etc.
Secondly, perform the GPU portion and download GPT-2. Keep in mind, all the commands are there, you need not type any commands in. You can run it as default without any problems.
You need to mount your Google Drive. The notebook takes you through the process, and Google Drive will furnish you with a security string for Colab to consume.
After mounting you can upload your *.text file with your training data. Make sure the path of your file in the Google Drive is the same the notebook is expecting. This is one place where you get get stuck if you don’t pay attention.
After copying it, you can run the training. After the model is trained, you can copy the checkpoint folder to your own Google Drive. This is important for future loading and use.
The fun part is running the cell below to create a fake headline based on the prefix defined. Be sure to play around with the other parameters of the command.
Cell To Generate a Headline Based
The Final Product | https://cobusgreyling.medium.com/chatbots-natural-language-generation-in-7-easy-steps-77887a6de249 | ['Cobus Greyling'] | 2019-10-14 19:50:10.147000+00:00 | ['Conversational Ai', 'TensorFlow', 'Naturallanguagegeneration', 'Colab', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
Figma’s Auto Layout in action | Since the introduction of this new functionality, I’ve almost entirely moved away from using regular frames. While the Auto Layout I did an article on a while back was pretty neat, it couldn’t replace the regular frames. There are very few things that the new Auto Layout cannot do, and designing libraries of freely resizable and — mostly importantly — truly responsive elements that can be used across many different screen sizes has been brought to a whole another level.
Let’s look at a simple grocery delivery type app, how Auto Layout can be used to put its interface together.
There are some cases where setting the mainframe of a screen to Auto Layout (AL) would make sense, but most of the time you’re going to want to avoid it. Most importantly, you can’t use fixed elements in an AL frame. Another case where using AL wouldn’t be entirely feasible is when you’d have a lot of empty space, for example when displaying only a single element in a list, forcing you to use spacers or something — not a clean solution.
Save for some very specific cases, where using AL for the Main Frame makes sense, the way I like to do things (especially for mobile) is have two container frames inside the Main Frame, where one is fixed. The Main Frame is going to have to be resized manually in case you want to put more stuff in it, but having the inner container hug items is going to help you with that thanks to snapping. The Fixed Container has to retain its original dimensions, so it should have its width as well as height set to fixed. The normal container is set to fixed size horizontally and — as I’ve already mentioned — hug vertically.
The downside of using this solution is that there’s no way to have the child elements adhere to the size of their parent (main) frame, as you can’t use the fill container property unless the container (parent frame) uses AL as well. At the same time, you can only use the scale property on frames that don’t use AL.
Now, since we’re not using AL for the Main Frame and using fixed horizontal sizing for the inner frames, you could ask me, “Konrad, why don’t we save ourselves some trouble and create margins by making the container frames a little smaller and constrained to the center?”. Well, that’s entirely up to you. If you’re going to be using any elements that might be filling up the screen in its entirety at least in one axis, it’s best to only use padding on those elements that explicitly require it.
In order to have our design looking somewhat like the one above, let’s take care of the fixed frame first. In the case of this particular screen it’s comprised of 3 sub-frames. Top to bottom, the iOS Status Bar, the app’s Nav Bar and the bottom Home Indicator.
The iOS status bar I’m using comes from a kit, and if I wanted to make the items equally sized and spaced out, it’d break the entire design. Using AL is not necessary for this frame. You can just constrain the elements to left and right appropriately and then set the frame to stretch. If you’re set on going full AL, go ahead and put the elements on the left and right in two separate, non-AL frames and expand the frames while holding CMND or CTRL to fill the extreme edges of the parent frame. Now set the items to Space Around from the AL settings dropdown.
The Nav Bar is simple. It uses 32x32px icons, so all we need to do is set it to AL, then set the padding (let’s say 32px as well), and Space Around from the dropdown.
The Home Indicator only houses a single item and really doesn’t need AL, so we’re going to constrain the bar to bottom center and leave it at that.
Now what we’re going to do is try and create a structure as shown in the example above. The regular Container is empty for now, so let’s focus on the Fixed Container frame.
The items in the Layers section are ordered from the bottom up, which means that the item order of objects here will be inversely analogous to their visual order when using vertical AL. That’s why the first child element of the Fixed Container is the Home Indicator frame. The second element is the Top frame, which I haven’t told you about just yet. I want two of the frames to stick to the top and one of them to the bottom of the container.
When spaced around they’ll take up the maximum possible space in their container while spaced around evenly (as shown in the example on the left, above). That’s why we want two of the frames that are supposed to sit in the top section of the container inside another container called Top, inside which child-frames are packed with no spacing between them. Now the Top frame and the Bottom Indicator frame can be spaced around, so we always use up the maximum amount of space inside the container without having to adjust the position of child elements manually if we were to add something there.
Now that we’re done setting up the fixed container we can safely lock it, so it doesn’t interfere with the regular container frame and its contents while we’re working on them. The above example shows you what the insides of the regular container frame look like. Even though there’s a lot of elements we need two elements in it, the image that I’ve decided is going to fill the screen horizontally without any padding (even though you can’t see that, as its background is white) and a frame that for the purpose of this demo I’ve decided to name Everything Else.
So as you can see it’s all a series of AL frames, which might seem a little intimidating at first. Each frame’s role is to position its child elements in a certain way.
And so the Description houses the headline and the paragraph explaining to you in some detail what the White Dragon Fruit is all about. Just like every other frame, this one is also set up so that you can safely modify its contents without breaking the entire layout. It’s set to fill its parent frame (Everything else) horizontally and hug the contents vertically, which means it’ll get just as big as it needs to be. The headline and the paragraph text layers inside are set up exactly the same way, which is synonymous with setting their property to Auto Height.
As you move up you notice the Price & Amount frame which again breaks down into two separate frames — one for the Price and another one for the Amount. The frame is set to fill the parent frame, while its child frames are set to space around. The Price frame contains two text objects packed vertically and aligned to the right. It hugs its contents in both dimensions. The amount frame uses a different background, there’s’ 24px of space between elements, they’re packed, aligned to the center-middle (this is actually important in this case, as the text object is only 24px while the icons are 32px tall, and the padding inside the Amount frame is set to 8, 16, 8, 16 starting from the top and going clockwise.
The button is just a button, no surprises there. It is set to fill the frame horizontally and its height is fixed to 56px.
“What manner of devilry is this?” You might inquire upon noticing that the Price History AL frame has some of its elements aligned to the left, and some of them to the right. As with most things, there are at least two ways we can approach this. One is to set the alignment of everything inside the frame to right (vertical alignment is irrelevant), have the text layer (the headline) fill the frame, and set the alignment of the text inside the text layer to the left. That way the text object is right-aligned, even though it doesn’t really matter, since it’s filling up the entirety of the space anyway, but the actual text inside the text object is aligned left. You can also do this the other way around. Align everything inside the Price History AL frame to the left, set the Period frame to fill its parent frame, and set the alignment of the Period frame’s elements to the right. There’s not much to talk about when it comes to the line graph, you actually need a regular frame to construct that thing.
At the beginning of the article, I’ve mentioned that the new AL makes the frames that utilize it truly responsive, which makes it possible for them to be used across many different devices. What’s even more important than that is the fact that having your design held inside containers that automatically put spaces between makes it so much easier to deliver pixel-perfect design, where you don’t even have to worry about snapping anymore. Not only does it make your designs that much cleaner, but it also makes them much easier to update, expand, edit, etc. everywhere where components simply aren’t viable, without having to resize and move everything around when you add an icon or a menu entry.
There are many other cases where this functionality comes in handy, and there are tons of things that I haven’t covered in the article, but I’m hoping that this should set you on the right path and give you at least some idea of what can be done with Auto Layout in Figma. Good luck. | https://uxdesign.cc/figmas-auto-layout-in-action-9ffb0b305a56 | ['Konrad Filipowicz'] | 2020-12-16 23:45:51.007000+00:00 | ['Prototyping', 'UI Design', 'UI', 'Figma', 'User Experience'] |
TensorFlow 2.4 on Apple Silicon M1: installation under Conda environment | TensorFlow 2.4 on Apple Silicon M1: installation under Conda environment
Photo by the author
The previous article was about the Machine Learning packages that works natively on Apple Silicon. I also explained how TensorFlow and scikit-learn can be installed on a Mac M1.
In this article ATF 2.4 stand for TensorFlow 2.4 for Apple Silicon currently available from github in release 0.1 alpha 1.
With ATF 2.4, standard installation requires creating a python environment while nearly no other package like scikit-learn can be installed from pip. This is making this environment quite useless for machine learning engineers except for small testing.
At the time of writing this article ATF 2.4 is not free of bugs. It cannot yet be used in a professional context. But it’s already possible to start working on personal Machine Learning projects with a Mac M1. Here I describe step by step how to install a full environment under Conda with every packages natively compiled for Apple Silicon:
ATF 2.4 (TensorFlow 2.4 for Apple Silicon)
(TensorFlow 2.4 for Apple Silicon) numpy
scikit-learn
pandas
matplotlib
JupyterLab
Step 1: Xcode Command Line Tools
Install Xcode Command Line Tools by downloading it from Apple Developer or by typing:
xcode-select --install
Step 2: miniforge
Install miniforge for arm64 (Apple Silicon) from miniforge github.
Miniforge enables installing python packages natively compiled for Apple Silicon including scikit-learn.
Step 3: Download ATF 2.4
Download TensorFlow 2.4 from Apple github, untar it but don’t install it by using the provided script. Go under the arm64 directory:
cd tensorflow_macos/arm64
Step 4: create Conda environment
Don’t forget to open a new session or to source your .zshrc after miniforge install and before going through this step.
Create an empty Conda environment, then activate it and install python 3.8 (as required for ATF 2.4) and all the needed packages. Please note numpy is unnecessary here as pandas already install it, but it will be overwritten in the last step with the version provided by Apple.
conda create --name tf24
conda activate tf24
conda install -y python==3.8.6
conda install -y pandas matplotlib scikit-learn jupyterlab
Step 5: install all the ATF 2.4 packages
Now manually install ATF 2.4 packages exactly like install_venv.sh does but under your Conda environment.
Please note the following instruction corresponds to the second ATF 2.4 release, namely 0.1 alpha 1. Any new release can require a different process, you will be able to adapt it by checking install_venv.sh content.
# Install specific pip version and some other base packages
pip install --force pip==20.2.4 wheel setuptools cached-property six # Install all the packages provided by Apple but TensorFlow
pip install --upgrade --no-dependencies --force numpy-1.18.5-cp38-cp38-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl grpcio-1.33.2-cp38-cp38-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl h5py-2.10.0-cp38-cp38-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl tensorflow_addons-0.11.2+mlcompute-cp38-cp38-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl # Install additional packages
pip install absl-py astunparse flatbuffers gast google_pasta keras_preprocessing opt_einsum protobuf tensorflow_estimator termcolor typing_extensions wrapt wheel tensorboard typeguard # Install TensorFlow
pip install --upgrade --force --no-dependencies tensorflow_macos-0.1a1-cp38-cp38-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl
Now you can run JupyterLab and start working.
Note that as pip installation can lead to inconsistencies with Conda packages previously installed, and especially because numpy is replaced by the 1.18.5 version shipped with ATF 2.4, there is no guarantee that it will work in every situation.
For now, I’ve successfully trained several MLP and Convnet models while LSTM still have an issue with the evaluation on test set. I also trained RandomForest models and plot confusion matrix everything from JupyterLab without any issue.
In the next article I will go through TensorFlow 2.4 benchmark on Mac M1.
Thank you for reading. | https://towardsdatascience.com/tensorflow-2-4-on-apple-silicon-m1-installation-under-conda-environment-ba6de962b3b8 | ['Fabrice Daniel'] | 2020-12-20 21:25:31.592000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Apple Silicon', 'TensorFlow', 'Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning'] |
Growing up Gunnison: Part 1 Mustang Touchdown | Growing up Gunnison: Part 1 Mustang Touchdown
Photo by Gigi F. on Unsplash
Mustang Touchdown
Mort had a 69 Mustang fastback that we all liked to cruise around in on Friday and Saturday nights.
On one of those nights, I’m pretty sure it was late fall when we were seniors. We were out cruising Tomichi like most weekends when we saw another friend.
Wilson had just finished working on his 75 Trans Am and had it out cruising.
Since we were young and full of vinegar you can imagine the revving engines, and chirping tires anytime we got close to him with the Mustang.
Finally we pulled up side by side at Main and Tomichi for a red light. The windows promptly rolled down and good natured insults flew back and forth.
You might think you know where this is headed, but even we weren’t stupid enough to drag race at Main and Tomichi.
Photo by Ali Moharami on Unsplash
I seem to remember Wilson saying something like “You think that piece of crap Ford can keep up?” I don’t remember our exact answer but we were soon racing around on side streets, up and down alleys, and through parking lots with Mort right on the tail of that Trans Am.
Wilson kept turning sharp corners at just about every intersection trying to lose us.
Mort said “I don’t know why he keeps doing this, that Trans Am is so much faster than us if he would just go straight. I can stay with him in turns all night long.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than we hit a slick spot on the wet road (there was snow on the grass but the road was just wet) and we spun around backwards facing the opposite direction.
Mort hit the gas and we tried to guess which direction Wilson went but we lost him.
We looked for a while and ended up in the parking lot of Pizza Hut (There was an arcade in the basement).
After a while we decided to do what bored teens do and go spin doughnuts on the football field.
The high school was just a couple blocks down the road and it was getting late so we jumped into the car and took off.
As I said there was snow on the grass, plus it had started snowing and we figured our tracks would be covered by morning.
Mort pulled into the parking lot and we found a place where a parking curb was missing and eased out onto the field.
As soon as we were clear Mort hit the gas and spun us around and we were riding a tilt-o-whirl spinning around and sliding side ways.
Photo by Ronni Kurtz on Unsplash
The windows were getting covered with snow and grass being thrown up into the air and Mort was having a hard time seeing.
All of a sudden he yells out “Oh Sh!T” as we are traveling sideways at about 20 miles an hour.
I strain my eyes through the snow and grass on the window only to see the goal posts fast approaching!
“HOLD ON!” someone yelled as we slide sideways perfectly between the goal posts.
The car came to a stop and we just sat there looking at each other.
“Maybe we better get out of here.” I said.
“Yah.” Mort said easing the car forward toward the spot we came through to get on the field.
We drove slowly back to Pizza Hut and parked. When we got out we noticed the car covered completely in grass!
We started wiping it off with our hands and tossing it to the side of the parking lot. We wouldn’t live down getting busted after we got away from the school.
The rest of the night, and if I remember the rest of that winter was pretty mellow as far as the Mustang went.
The next spring in my PE class we were outside on the football field when the teacher started talking about how horrible it was that someone had driven on the grass and made all these terrible tracks.
Pointing at the set leading through the goal posts, I told her “At least they scored.” | https://medium.com/@randyaugsburger/growing-up-gunnison-part-1-mustang-touchdown-f8149e781d31 | ['Rondo August'] | 2020-12-27 16:18:33.206000+00:00 | ['Growing Up', 'Gunnison', 'Life Lessons', 'Nostalgia', 'Funny'] |
Book Review: Rick Tyler’s “Still Right: An Immigrant-Loving, Hybrid-Driving, Composting American Makes the Case for Conservatism” | Still Right is a wide-ranging book, serving as both an easily accessible explanation for why Tyler himself identifies as a conservative and as a full-throated defense of conservatism more broadly. There are, of course, the usual conservative positions, and Tyler leans particularly hard on the inherent value and beneficial influence of the free market, on the value of individual liberty, and on the power of faith. He’s also not afraid to tackle some of the thorniest political issues of the present moment, including both gun rights and abortion, and while my own position on those issues is about as different from his as can be imagined, he does seem to have well thought-out and philosophical reasons for believing the way that he does.
Admittedly, Still Right is a little light on the philosophical underpinnings of conservatism, but as someone who gets rather tired of that sort of thing anyway, I didn’t find that to be an impediment or a failing, particularly since Tyler clearly intends for his book to be more of a primer than a tome. There’s a value to the work that Tyler does here, particularly for those of us on the left who genuinely want to engage with our conservative fellow Americans in ways that don’t break down into the inevitable vitriol and name-calling. I can’t help thinking that if only more conservatives were like Rick Tyler, the state of civil discourse in this country might be a lot healthier and more functioning than it is at present.
Surprisingly, one of my favorite parts of the book was Tyler’s discussion of the role of his faith in his politics. I am not a particularly religious person myself, an in fact I have a profound skepticism (and, sometimes, hostility) toward those who are. Tyler, however, makes a convincing case for how faith can be a part of American public and political life without being obnoxious about it.
However, there are three significant flaws that mar Tyler’s book and that, as a result, substantially undercut the arguments that he wants to make on behalf of conservatism as a philosophy. First, he tends to lean far too strongly on straw-man arguments, most of which are put into the mouths of those that might potentially disagree with him. While this might make for satisfying reading for those already convinced of conservatism’s benefits — and while it certainly accords with the way that conservatives tend to view their opponents on the other side — it is particularly grating for those of us who are progressive. This is particularly glaring when he talks about gun rights and abortion, though it crops up elsewhere in the book. He also has a tendency to mischaracterize the actual beliefs of some political actors (in the case of abortion, this includes both NARAL and Planned Parenthood). It’s a curious rhetorical strategy to take for someone who supposedly wants to preach to the unconverted.
Second, he is intellectually inconsistent. Take, for example, his stances on climate change and abortion. On climate change, Tyler expresses a conditional belief in the scientific consensus about the intensity of the problem and the complicity of humanity in the state of the climate. On abortion, however, he seems very inclined to take the word of scientists about whether or not life begins at conception. If you are going to make a passionate defense of conservative philosophy, the least you should do is make sure that your arguments are philosophically consistent. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Third, and probably the most glaring, is the paucity of his evidence. Anyone who has seen Tyler on MSNBC knows that he has a rather folksy, down-to-earth demeanor, an affect that makes him a very likable personality. That serves him in good stead in the book, of course, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that he has a tendency to cherry-pick his historical examples to make his point. Admittedly, there’s only so much history and policy that you can cover in a book like this, and it’s clear that Tyler intends for this to be a beginner’s introduction. Still, I couldn’t help wishing for a bit more texture in how he approached the issues of concern to conservatism. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/book-review-rick-tylers-still-right-an-immigrant-loving-hybrid-driving-composting-american-9fb0649327e8 | ['Dr. Thomas J. West Iii'] | 2020-07-14 14:08:17.108000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Book Review', 'Books', 'Republican Party', 'Conservatives'] |
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Género: Thriller
Estrellas: Hilary Swank, Michael Ealy, Mike Colter
Personal: David Loughery (Writer), Deon Taylor (Director)
Idioma: English
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THE STORY
After graduating from Harvard, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) forgoes the standard opportunities of seeking employment from big and lucrative law firms; deciding to head to Alabama to defend those wrongfully commended, with the support of local advocate, Eva Ansley (Brie Larson). One of his first, and most poignant, case is that of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx, who, in 62, was sentenced to die for the notorious murder of an 2-year-old girl in the community, despite a preponderance of evidence proving his innocence and one singular testimony against him by an individual that doesn’t quite seem to add up. Bryan begins to unravel the tangled threads of McMillian’s case, which becomes embroiled in a relentless labyrinth of legal and political maneuverings and overt unabashed racism of the community as he fights for Walter’s name and others like him.
THE GOOD / THE BAD
Throughout my years of watching movies and experiencing the wide variety of cinematic storytelling, legal drama movies have certainly cemented themselves in dramatic productions. As I stated above, some have better longevity of being remembered, but most showcase plenty of heated courtroom battles of lawyers defending their clients and unmasking the truth behind the claims (be it wrongfully incarcerated, discovering who did it, or uncovering the shady dealings behind large corporations. Perhaps my first one legal drama was 624’s The Client (I was little young to get all the legality in the movie, but was still managed to get the gist of it all). My second one, which I loved, was probably Primal Fear, with Norton delivering my favorite character role. Of course, I did see To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in the sixth grade for English class. Definitely quite a powerful film. And, of course, let’s not forget Philadelphia and want it meant / stand for. Plus, Hanks and Washington were great in the film. All in all, while not the most popular genre out there, legal drama films still provide a plethora of dramatic storytelling to capture the attention of moviegoers of truth and lies within a dubious justice.
Just Mercy is the latest legal crime drama feature and the whole purpose of this movie review. To be honest, I really didn’t much “buzz” about this movie when it was first announced (circa 206) when Broad Green Productions hired the film’s director (Cretton) and actor Michael B. Jordan in the lead role. It was then eventually bought by Warner Bros (the films rights) when Broad Green Productions went Bankrupt. So, I really didn’t hear much about the film until I saw the movie trailer for Just Mercy, which did prove to be quite an interesting tale. Sure, it sort of looked like the generic “legal drama” yarn (judging from the trailer alone), but I was intrigued by it, especially with the film starring Jordan as well as actor Jamie Foxx. I did repeatedly keep on seeing the trailer for the film every time I went to my local movie theater (usually attached to any movie I was seeing with a PG rating and above). So, suffice to say, that Just Mercy’s trailer preview sort of kept me invested and waiting me to see it. Thus, I finally got the chance to see the feature a couple of days ago and I’m ready to share my thoughts on the film. And what are they? Well, good ones….to say the least. While the movie does struggle within the standard framework of similar projects, Just Mercy is a solid legal drama that has plenty of fine cinematic nuances and great performances from its leads. It’s not the “be all to end all” of legal drama endeavors, but its still manages to be more of the favorable motion pictures of these projects.
Just Mercy is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, whose previous directorial works includes such movies like Short Term 6, I Am Not a Hipster, and Glass Castle. Given his past projects (consisting of shorts, documentaries, and a few theatrical motion pictures), Cretton makes Just Mercy is most ambitious endeavor, with the director getting the chance to flex his directorial muscles on a legal drama film, which (like I said above) can manage to evoke plenty of human emotions within its undertaking. Thankfully, Cretton is up to the task and never feels overwhelmed with the movie; approaching (and shaping) the film with respect and a touch of sincerity by speaking to the humanity within its characters, especially within lead characters of Stevenson and McMillian. Of course, legal dramas usually do (be the accused / defendant and his attorney) shine their cinematic lens on these respective characters, so it’s nothing original. However, Cretton does make for a compelling drama within the feature; speaking to some great character drama within its two main lead characters; staging plenty of moments of these twos individuals that ultimately work, including some of the heated courtroom sequences.
Like other recent movies (i.e. Brian Banks and The Hate U Give), Cretton makes Just Mercy have an underlining thematical message of racism and corruption that continues to play a part in the US….to this day (incredibly sad, but true). So, of course, the correlation and overall relatively between the movie’s narrative and today’s world is quite crystal-clear right from the get-go, but Cretton never gets overzealous / preachy within its context; allowing the feature to present the subject matter in a timely manner and doesn’t feel like unnecessary or intentionally a “sign of the times” motif. Additionally, the movie also highlights the frustration (almost harsh) injustice of the underprivileged face on a regular basis (most notable those looking to overturn their cases on death row due to negligence and wrongfully accused). Naturally, as somewhat expected (yet still palpable), Just Mercy is a movie about seeking the truth and uncovering corruption in the face of a broken system and ignorant prejudice, with Cretton never shying away from some of the ugly truths that Stevenson faced during the film’s story.
Plus, as a side-note, it’s quite admirable for what Bryan Stevenson (the real-life individual) did for his career, with him as well as others that have supported him (and the Equal Justice Initiative) over the years and how he fought for and freed many wrongfully incarcerated individuals that our justice system has failed (again, the poignancy behind the film’s themes / message). It’s great to see humanity being shined and showcased to seek the rights of the wronged and to dispel a flawed system. Thus, whether you like the movie or not, you simply can not deny that truly meaningful job that Bryan Stevenson is doing, which Cretton helps demonstrate in Just Mercy. From the bottom of my heart…. thank you, Mr. Stevenson.
In terms of presentation, Just Mercy is a solidly made feature film. Granted, the film probably won’t be remembered for its visual background and theatrical setting nuances or even nominated in various award categories (for presentation / visual appearance), but the film certainly looks pleasing to the eye, with the attention of background aspects appropriate to the movie’s story. Thus, all the usual areas that I mention in this section (i.e. production design, set decorations, costumes, and cinematography) are all good and meet the industry standard for legal drama motion pictures. That being said, the film’s score, which was done by Joel P. West, is quite good and deliver some emotionally drama pieces in a subtle way that harmonizes with many of the feature’s scenes.
There are a few problems that I noticed with Just Mercy that, while not completely derailing, just seem to hold the feature back from reaching its full creative cinematic potential. Let’s start with the most prevalent point of criticism (the one that many will criticize about), which is the overall conventional storytelling of the movie. What do I mean? Well, despite the strong case that the film delves into a “based on a true story” aspect and into some pretty wholesome emotional drama, the movie is still structed into a way that it makes it feel vaguely formulaic to the touch. That’s not to say that Just Mercy is a generic tale to be told as the film’s narrative is still quite engaging (with some great acting), but the story being told follows quite a predictable path from start to finish. Granted, I never really read Stevenson’s memoir nor read anything about McMillian’s case, but then I still could easily figure out how the movie was presumably gonna end…. even if the there were narrative problems / setbacks along the way. Basically, if you’ve seeing any legal drama endeavor out there, you’ll get that same formulaic touch with this movie. I kind of wanted see something a little bit different from the film’s structure, but the movie just ends up following the standard narrative beats (and progressions) of the genre. That being said, I still think that this movie is definitely probably one of the better legal dramas out there.
This also applies to the film’s script, which was penned by Cretton and Andrew Lanham, which does give plenty of solid entertainment narrative pieces throughout, but lacks the finesse of breaking the mold of the standard legal drama. There are also a couple parts of the movie’s script handling where you can tell that what was true and what fictional. Of course, this is somewhat a customary point of criticism with cinematic tales taking a certain “poetic license” when adapting a “based on a true story” narrative, so it’s not super heavily critical point with me as I expect this to happen. However, there were a few times I could certainly tell what actually happen and what was a tad bit fabricated for the movie. Plus, they were certain parts of the narrative that could’ve easily fleshed out, including what Morrison’s parents felt (and actually show them) during this whole process. Again, not a big deal-breaker, but it did take me out of the movie a few times. Lastly, the film’s script also focuses its light on a supporting character in the movie and, while this made with well-intention to flesh out the character, the camera spotlight on this character sort of goes off on a slight tangent during the feature’s second act. Basically, this storyline could’ve been removed from Just Mercy and still achieve the same palpability in the emotional department. It’s almost like the movie needed to chew up some runtime and the writers to decided to fill up the time with this side-story. Again, it’s good, but a bit slightly unnecessary.
What does help overlook (and elevate) some of these criticisms is the film’s cast, which are really good and definitely helps bring these various characters to life in a theatrical /dramatic way. Leading the charge in Just Mercy is actor Michael B. Jordan, who plays the film’s central protagonist role of Bryan Stevenson. Known for his roles in Creed, Fruitvale Station, and Black Panther, Jordan has certain prove himself to be quite a capable actor, with the actor rising to stardom over the past few years. This is most apparent in this movie, with Jordan making a strong characteristically portrayal as Bryan; showcasing plenty of underlining determination and compelling humanity in his character as he (as Bryan Stevenson) fights for the injustice of those who’s voices have been silenced or dismissed because of the circumstances. It’s definitely a strong character built and Jordan seems quite capable to task in creating a well-acted on-screen performance of Bryan. Behind Jordan is actor Jamie Foxx, who plays the other main lead in the role, Walter McMillian. Foxx, known for his roles in Baby Driver, Django Unchained, and Ray, has certainly been recognized as a talented actor, with plenty of credible roles under his belt. His participation in Just Mercy is another well-acted performance that deserve much praise as its getting (even receiving an Oscar nod for it), with Foxx portraying Walter with enough remorseful grit and humility that makes the character quite compelling to watch. Plus, seeing him and Jordan together in a scene is quite palpable and a joy to watch.
The last of the three marquee main leads of the movie is the character of Eva Ansley, the director of operations for EJI (i.e. Stevenson’s right-handed employee / business partner), who is played by actress Brie Larson. Up against the characters of Stevenson and McMillian, Ansley is the weaker of the three main lead; presented as supporting player in the movie, which is perfectly fine as the characters gets the job done (sort of speak) throughout the film’s narrative. However, Larson, known for her roles in Room, 6 Jump Street, and Captain Marvel, makes less of an impact in the role. Her acting is fine and everything works in her portrayal of Eva, but nothing really stands in her performance (again, considering Jordan and Foxx’s performances) and really could’ve been played by another actress and achieved the same goal.
The rest of the cast, including actor Tim Blake Nelson (The Incredible Hulk and O Brother, Where Art Thou) as incarcerated inmate Ralph Meyers, actor Rafe Spall (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Big Short) as legal attorney Tommy Champan, actress Karan Kendrick (The Hate U Give and Family) as Minnie McMillan, Walter’s wife, actor C.J. LeBlanc (Arsenal and School Spirts) as Walter’s son, John McMillian, actor Rob Morgan (Stranger Things and Mudbound) as death role inmate Herbert Richardson, actor O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Long Shot and Straight Outta Compton) as death role inmate Anthony “Ray” Hinton, actor Michael Harding (Triple 2 and The Young and the Restless) as Sheriff Tate, and actor Hayes Mercure (The Red Road and Mercy Street) as a prison guard named Jeremy, are in the small supporting cast variety. Of course, some have bigger roles than others, but all of these players, which are all acted well, bolster the film’s story within the performances and involvement in Just Mercy’s narrative.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s never too late to fight for justice as Bryan Stevenson fights for the injustice of Walter McMillian’s cast against a legal system that is flawed in the movie Just Mercy. Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s latest film takes a stance on a poignant case; demonstrating the injustice of one (and by extension those wrongfully incarcerated) and wrapping it up in a compelling cinematic story. While the movie does struggle within its standard structure framework (a sort of usual problem with “based on a true story” narrations) as well as some formulaic beats, the movie still manages to rise above those challenges (for the most part), especially thanks to Cretton’s direction (shaping and storytelling) and some great performances all around (most notable in Jordan and Foxx). Personally, I liked this movie. Sure, it definitely had its problem, but those didn’t distract me much from thoroughly enjoying this legal drama feature. Thus, my recommendation for the film is a solid “recommended”, especially those who liked the cast and poignant narratives of legality struggles and the injustice of a failed system / racism. In the end, while the movie isn’t the quintessential legal drama motion picture and doesn’t push the envelope in cinematic innovation, Just Mercy still is able to manage to be a compelling drama that’s powerful in its story, meaningful in its journey, and strong within its statement. Just like Bryan Stevenson says in the movie….” If we could look at ourselves closely…. we can change this world for the better”. Amen to that! | https://medium.com/@ver-fatale-2020-sub-esp/repelis-hd-pelicula-fatale-2020-ver-completa-espanol-latino-gnula-5dd8daa93d22 | ['Ver Fatale Sub Esp'] | 2020-12-15 07:00:49.520000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Thriller'] |
Why You Must Get Magento to Shopify Migration Service? | Magento has been one of the best online store platforms in the business but one needs to have the proper technical understanding to run and manage the same. If you are finding it difficult to get the best returns out of your Magento store then it is time to make your change and find a way out with which you will be able to get the desired results.
An Ideal Solution
The best way to overcome this situation is by hiring Magento to Shopify migration service. With the help of this service, your online store will be transferred to a seamless platform where you will be able to manage the same with ease. With Shopify, you will have a lot more attributes and functionalities to use that will give your website an edge to beat the competition.
To make it clear, below-mentioned are a few of the reasons why you must not hesitate and consider going for the Shopify platform for better results:
You can manage high traffic with ease with the help of this platform. You can run your store and manage the same without any hassle with 8000 orders per minute.
The best part of the Shopify platform is that you will have your store up and running in a matter of a few minutes because of the self-hosting process. It has fully managed cloud-based hosting that will save you a lot of time.
Lastly, you will get the best security facilities with Shopify in the form of SSL certificates that will help you win the trust of your customers.
So, these are the reasons why you must not hesitate and consider reaching out to the Shopify migration company. They will help you get your online store transmitted to Shopify without any kind of difficulty. | https://medium.com/@ab-99934/on-why-you-must-get-magento-to-shopify-migration-service-d1e9807ebf39 | ['Alex Bayer'] | 2020-12-19 18:56:12.407000+00:00 | ['Shopify', 'Migration', 'Shopify Migration', 'Shopify Migration Experts'] |
Most common street trees in Toronto visualized in Tableau | I visualized most common street trees in Toronto using the dataset from ArcGIS Hub. This dataset consists of City-owned trees located on road allowances across Toronto.
Hope you enjoy this summary. Scroll down for the list of the most common trees with photos and key facts.
Click here to access my interactive chart (treemaps chart) in Tableau Public.
Here is the list of the top 5 most common street trees in Toronto:
1. Norway maple (Acer platanoides)
Accounts for 13% of all street trees in Toronto.
Source of image: Wikipedia
Key facts: A species of maple native to eastern and central Europe and western Asia. It was brought to North America in the mid-1700s as a shade tree. (Source: Wikipedia)
2. Honey locust (Gleditsia tricanthos)
Accounts for 4.3% of all street trees in Toronto.
Source of image: Wikipedia
Key facts: It is native to central North America where it is mostly found in the moist soil of river valleys. Honey locust is highly adaptable to different environments, has been introduced worldwide, and is an aggressive invasive species. (Source: Wikipedia)
3. Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens)
Accounts for 3.9% of all street trees in Toronto.
Source of image: Wikipedia
Key facts: It is native to North America. It is used as an ornamental tree in many places far beyond its native range. The blue spruce has blue-green coloured needles and is a coniferous tree.
4. Crab apple (Malus sargentii)
Accounts for 3.6% of all street trees in Toronto.
Source of image: Wikipedia
Key facts: A species of crabapple. The plant is a shrub growing about 6 feet tall. Malus sargentii is native to Japan but is commonly used as an ornamental shrub elsewhere. (Source: Wikipedia)
5. Silver maple (Acer saccharinum)
Accounts for 3.6% of all street trees in Toronto.
Source of image: Wikipedia
Key facts: A species of maple native to the eastern and central United States and southeastern Canada. It is one of the most common trees in the United States. (Source: Wikipedia) | https://medium.com/@annaraeder/most-common-street-trees-in-toronto-visualized-in-tableau-4069dbbf306f | ['Anna Räder'] | 2020-11-18 22:19:10.528000+00:00 | ['Dataset', 'Nature', 'Tableau', 'Toronto', 'Trees'] |
Highlights from Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass | Highlights from Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass
Photo: Masterclass
Neil Gaiman has created a name for himself beyond his numerous works. He is the eccentric inspiration for many aspiring writers. Although he has spoken about creativity in multiple interviews and his ‘Make Good Art’ speech, now all of his tips are organized and laid out for his fans to enjoy.
So, first off: Is the class worth your time?
The answer is yes.
This isn’t the type of run-of-the-mill content you’ll find on many writing platforms across the internet that seemed to regurgitate the same advice, like write every day, start the story with a bang, and avoid adverbs. Gaiman delves into the inner process of writing. Yes, a blog can detail a checklist of elements in a fight scene, and a book can dictate certain plot points you must have. But Gaiman’s stories are rich with themes, nuance, and emotion. If you’re interested in creating that as well, this is the class for you.
This isn’t a ‘color-by-numbers’ sort of lesson, which makes it appealing to writers with already some experience and a basic grasp of the story. This approach can still be very inspiring to new writers looking for ways to define their own writing process without someone rattling off what they ‘should’ be doing.
No matter what kind of writer you are, this class is enthused with Gaiman’s love and understanding of his craft. That in itself is inspiring, and he gives tips on how to capture inspiration and channel it into a story. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Masterclass was split into 15 sections. To give you a flavor of the masterclass, I will give you a personal highlight from a few of them.
Write truth
In this section, Gaiman conveys the purpose of stories. They are part of us and we convey truth through them. Fiction is using “lies” to communicate truth.
“All fiction has to be as honest as you can make it. This, I believe.”
Readers will respond to honesty, so write about what is real to you. Become comfortable with the feeling that you’re exposing yourself. You may be surprised, but what may seem true but extremely personal to yourself can resonate with many others.
For example, Gaiman’s book Ocean at the End of the Lane was set in his own childhood environment. It was a book almost too personal for him to publish, yet he had many people approach him at book signings and say, “You wrote my life.”
How to get inspiration for a story
Neil Gaiman has an answer to the infamous question: “Where do you get your ideas?”
One word: Confluence. Two things coming together, whether they are experiences, ideas, what-ifs, etc. Keep a compost heap of everything you see and do and let it rot into a story.
How to write characters
Here is a clear instance where Gaiman’s intuitive writing approach differs from the classic character advice of “give them goals and physical descriptions.” His approach is to figure out how characters speak, then listen to their voices. He describes writing dialogue as a listening process. Once you begin listening to your characters, you will write things you didn’t even know were in your brain. Then, the characters and their decisions create the plot.
One way to listen is to “find the part of you that is that character.” Find that part of you that is a different age or another gender or a villain. Then don’t think of it as a part of you, think of it as that character, and ask yourself, “What would I have done?”
Worldbuilding
“Everything you could steal from the real world and smuggle it into fiction makes the world more real for the reader and much more importantly, more real for you.”
Take a walk outside, see the places you’ve been, then change them. Make them bigger or smaller or any other way they could be changed, but keep them grounded in reality. As you walk, keep mental notes for your compost pile. You should know more about the world than you tell. Then allow the characters to discover its rules as we figure out the rules in our own reality: through trial and error.
Genre
“Before you could be eccentric, you have to know where the circle is.”
Some writers may not like genres because they feel boxed in by them. But genres represent more than just a category; they are the readers’ expectations.
So know what kind of story you are building. Know the rules before you try to break them. Then you can play with the readers’ expectations. For example, note the differences between a cowboy novel and a novel set in cowboy times.
Writer’s block
The bane of every writer’s existence. Except Gaiman’s. Although writer’s block sounds like it’s the will of the gods to stop writing, it really just means you’re stuck. So take a break and come back to the story and read it as if you’ve never seen it before. You’ll often find where you went off the rails and be able to recalibrate and continue writing.
Another way to power through feeling blocked is to set a deadline. A time crunch can focus you and force you to pick solutions.
How to edit and revise
Once you finish the first draft, let it rest for a while. Then print it and read it as you’ve never read it before. Think about what works and what doesn’t. Figure out what the story is really about. Then create a tighter structure around the real story and cut out anything that doesn’t fit. Editing is about making it look like you knew what you were doing all along.
Here’s Gaiman’s guide to sifting through feedback. If a reader says something isn’t working, they are usually right. If they suggest a way to fix it, they are usually wrong. That is often the reader injecting their own opinions on how the story should go. But don’t write their story. Write your own.
Other topics in the Masterclass
Other topics Gaiman covers is finding your own writing style, developing a story, short stories, writing descriptions, comics, humor, and his rules for writers. This last element is a step-by-step process on how to get published, something useful for novice and advanced writers. He emphasizes that struggling is part of the equation, as well as countless rejection. You are allowed to feel sad about these things but you shouldn’t give up because of them.
(Side note: I had planned to skip his class on comics since I assumed I would never, ever write in that medium. I watched it anyway because I wanted to experience the full Masterclass and enjoyed it thoroughly, more as entertainment than advice. A few months later, I got a job opportunity to write comic strips. Although I felt overwhelmed, I ended up falling back on the knowledge I learned in this class. So, thank you, Gaiman!)
At the end of the class, Gaiman discusses the responsibilities of writers. Understand what you are sending out into the world and be able to stand behind the messages in your books.
Neil Gaiman’s writing advice in summary
Here is Gaiman’s final takeaway, what he says to any aspiring authors who ask for advice:
Write. Finish things. Live. Your experiences will give you something to say.
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Elsewhere: LinkedIn • Facebook • Instagram • Twitter • Flipboard | https://storiusmag.com/highlights-from-neil-gaimans-masterclass-d24003e29dc | ['Sarah C. Schafer'] | 2020-09-15 22:19:51.617000+00:00 | ['Writers Block', 'Writing Tips', 'Writing', 'Advice', 'Writers Life'] |
Treat Diabetes Naturally — Home Remedies For Type 2 Diabetes | Naturally
We usually see obese and old people suffering from Diabetes. It’s a common health disorder among them but if we don’t take some precautionary measures in the right time, it can be fatal. It is caused due to abnormality in one’s blood glucose levels. According to the American Diabetes Association, almost 21 million people in United States have diabetes while a whopping 90–95 percent population suffers from type 2 diabetes. There are certain tips which can play an essential role to treat it naturally.
Type 1, Type 2 and GDM are the three major kinds of diabetes. Type 1 is the most severe form where your cells in the pancreas that produce insulin get destroyed by its own immune system. People suffering from type 1 should take Insulin injections or implant insulin pumps in order to prevent themselves from this disease. While the third one is GDM is not so common. In this form, the body develops a complete intolerance for carbohydrates. Especially pregnant women are more prone to this category.
Here we will discuss about the most common form of type 2 diabetes, and there are certain effective tips to treat it naturally.
Home Remedies for Type 2 Diabetes
Limiting the Intake of Sugar: The first step to avoid them is limiting your sugar intake and eating healthy diet. Complex carbohydrates or simple sugars are extremely harmful and should be avoided to control the ailment. Eating fruits, vegetables that are rich in fiber, and drinking at least 8–10 glasses of water daily will help your body to control sugar level everyday.
Exercise: Regular exercises like running; walking and swimming can keep you away from this ailment and produce more insulin in your body.This measure will surely help to treat diabetes naturally.
Herbal Medicines: You can take herbal medicines to prevent yourself from adverse effects of type 2 diabetes. They can treat naturally without any side effects. | https://medium.com/@alexandernegocios20/treat-diabetes-naturally-home-remedies-for-type-2-diabetes-e4a5adedf0e3 | ['Alexander Mendoza'] | 2020-04-15 02:07:42.119000+00:00 | ['Diabetes', 'Diabetes Solutions', 'Diabetes Tipo 2', 'Diabetes Newsblog'] |
A Lesson Learned From Anger | I grew up with a good-hearted father and a younger sister who was for the most part troublesome in her younger years. As the eldest of the siblings in my family, I noticed an interesting paradox unfold that seemed to escape the grasps of my father and sister. When my father became angry with my sister and eventually snapped, they consistently failed to realize that their anger and behavior were on two different tracks.
In my fathers eyes, he would often become fed up with a series of poor behavior and actions by my sister. This led to a build-up until finally like a volcano, an eruption. He would at first attempt to ignore the little things, but a lot of little things can have the same impact; like a couple of big things.
In my sisters eyes, she would become confused as to why a smaller incident like “why have you not cleaned the cat litter” led to a 15 minute feud on the spot. What was happening beneath the surface was the fact that unaddressed anger came out all at once, for an incident that she didn’t seem to deserve.
No one is at fault or to blame, everyone at some point is too immature to see things objectively. But these constant eruptions from minuscule actions, led to a much tenser relationship and in all honesty an unhealthy one.
I once read a poem from Buddhist roots that talked about a fly and a man. If the fly bothers you, you try and shoo it away. Two times and you try and swat it away. The third, fourth and fifth time, it becomes your mission to kill it. This holds such similar truth with anger. Anger isn’t born into something in an instant (disregarding drastic circumstances). It must be built up and tethered, similar to the feelings of love. Secondly anger needs passion and reason; in a way anger is a way to show you care.
What I took away from this is that there’s more to anger than what’s on the surface. Most people are rational and can see differing points of view through minimal explanation. So before frustration sets in or confusion, or resent, think first on the origin of the anger and what might be lying below the surface. | https://medium.com/@denveryost/a-lesson-learned-from-anger-272c523b0c19 | ['Jack Yost'] | 2019-10-08 03:41:11.464000+00:00 | ['Anger', 'Health', 'Parenting', 'Relationships', 'Behavior'] |
Helping You Understand Blockchain, Bitcoin, and Cryptocurrency | Blockchain, bitcoin, and cryptocurrency. A bunch of strange words they are. So I understand all the confusion around these topics. It’s hard. When something new comes on the scene, we are all a little flabbergasted.
And these three things have become a popular trend to write about, especially here on Medium.
Now there are all kinds of articles professing to know what each of these terms means and what they do. And most of them are wrong or take a Ph.D. to understand. But it’s not as hard as we make it out to be. You just need the right teacher.
You see, I’m an expert. In words. I was crowned World Word Champion in 2017 at the Word Meaning Championships held in Tristan de Cunha. In 2018, I had to sit out due to a tongue injury.
And that jackass Tom from Pittsburgh won.
Anyway, all we have to do to understand anything is to break words down. And I’m here to do that for you.
You’re welcome.
For example, Tom from Pittsburgh is an asshole. If we break down asshole, we get ass and hole. In your ass, there is a hole. That word means you have a hole in your ass and also means that’s what Tom is. He is like the hole in your ass.
Can’t get much easier than that, right?
So let’s get started! | https://medium.com/recycled/helping-you-understand-blockchain-bitcoin-and-cryptocurrency-7cd7b6cdf194 | ['Jeff Barton'] | 2019-08-06 20:27:35.745000+00:00 | ['Satire', 'Technology', 'Funny', 'Bitcoin', 'Humor'] |
BitClout: Is It a Scam or The Future? | BitClout: Is It a Scam or The Future?
Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels
There’s tension in the world of BitClout.
With the price of $CLOUT plummeting, one critic posted the “BitClout Scam Is Falling Apart”.
But supporters of the platform are resolute in their defense. Some cite this graph as evidence.
All screenshots by author
Others point to Bitcoin’s early existence:
With this being said, I’m not here to bash BitClout. Nor am I here to defend it. I just want to share my findings.
I joined BitClout 47 days ago. I enjoy using the platform and post 3–5 times a day. It’s been fun making new connections.
However, I’m not emotionally attached. If the platform was to die today, so be it. I’m also not going to pretend I understand its development.
I’m just trying to look objectively from a content creator’s perspective.
Here’s how I see BitClout right now.
Quick Summary: What is BitClout?
According to the BitClout White Paper,
“BitClout is a new type of social network that lets you speculate on people and posts with real money, and it’s built from the ground up as its own custom blockchain. “Its architecture is similar to Bitcoin, only it can support complex social network data like posts, profiles, follows, speculation features, and much more... Like Bitcoin, BitClout is a fully open-source project and there is no company behind it — it’s just coins and code.”
Its design is similar to Twitter. However, unlike the Facebooks and Twitters of the world, BitClout is decentralized and fully open-source. There’s no company behind the platform.
This being said, there is a team of core developers. The leader of this group goes by the name of DiamondHands.
Creators can make money on BitClout in a number of ways. Here are the main four: | https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/bitclout-is-it-a-scam-or-the-future-7dcce28a16aa | ['Scott Stockdale'] | 2021-09-13 15:17:28.272000+00:00 | ['Social Media Marketing', 'Content Marketing', 'Technology', 'Bitclout', 'Content Strategy'] |
How to Choose Best Online Shop for Desired Goods? | How to Choose Best Online Shop for Desired Goods?
Shopping is one of the most exciting hobby which excite ladies the most. The trend has shifted now and even males also love to buy trendy and stylish stuff for themselves. Everyone has the right to look adorable and indeed it is the right key towards confidence. Many of the times people are unable to do so because they feel fashionholic are doing nothing but just wasting their time and money. Indeed, previously, I was also having the same mindset. But, when I started to practice it, I literally found it as an amazing therapy. This useful activity allowed me to have optimum peace of mind. When it comes to shopping then spending right matters a lot rather spending a lot. There is a difference in between which one should keep in mind.
Frauds in Online Shopping:
How to Prevent Online Scams in Shopping?
No doubt, the frauds in online shopping are giving tough time for the customers to trust the online sellers. We witness lots of useful and attractive stuff on social media which amaze us the most. We feel hesitant to purchase it that God knows what would be the quality of it! Either the same shown thing would be delivered to us or not. Well, all such queries are logical and allow the viewers to rethink about their purchase decision. When it comes to clothing then most often customers are not found to be satisfied with. Some get entirely different stuff, while others do not feel satisfied with the colour an design. Then, in such circumstances, they claim for the replacing the order or refund for it. Many of the sellers do so by asking them for delivery charges while other refuse to do so. The method of refusal by them is even more stressful. They do not respond to the customer’s queries and later on, they block the customer. It even give vent to the stressful conditions and permanently shake the trust of the customer form online shopping. There is other side of the coin too where people buy online and the sellers provide efficient services and goods to them which win the customer’s heart instantly.
Wise Selection of Right Online Shop:
Wise Selection of Right Online Shop
The main factor to consider about the online shopping is the customer’s feedback. Do not rely on any newly launched online seller or shopping app. There must be genuine review on the page or customer’s wall regarding the purchased stuff. Sellers often consider buying the reviews form others. But, how to figure out that either the feedback is genuine or not? Well, it is pretty simple, the feedback of the customer that is posted with pic is regarded as the genuine one. Moreover, consider to communicate with the seller and the way of dealing. If you are feel any ambiguity then it is an alarm that you must rethink about buying from the seller. One of the most important factor that all buyers should consider is the payment method. If there is COD (cash of delivery) then the risk of fraud declines. It is indeed surety that the parcel would definitely approach to your door. Hence, I can’t guarantee that what would be inside it and also regarding the quality. You would defiantly get to know about it when you open up the pack. However, the risk of delivery is still there if the seller demands advance payment. Hence, in such a case, communicate with the seller that you would pay delivery charges in advance. If the seller comes up with the logical reasoning or claims that it is the rule of their business to take advance payment then you must take a bit time to respond. At this time, you can build a trust on the seller by buying the products of less value rather than ordering for massive amount. The loss if occur would be of less amount than the greater one. This sagacious step would save much of your money and does not indulge you in feelings of repent. Buy from the online sellers who talk in professional manner. The professional dealing can be estimated easily when you view the page, app or profile of seller for feedback and response towards the queries.
Play your Role Efficiently:
Power of Customer Feedback for Online Shopping
If you buy something successfully from a new seller or the old one and get the goods with good quality at your home. It means you feel satisfied to your shopping experience. Now, it is your prime responsibility to give a valuable but genuine feedback to the customer. It would let his business to grow more and would be a token of love or appreciation form your side. This chain would flourish and the seller would also remember your in good words. There are possibility that you would get deals or discounts from the seller on further shopping. Besides that , the feeling of positivity and essence of care develops to make you and seller pleased!
If you have shopped online then how was your experience about that? Did you get what you expected for? Share your valuable experience with us and also the techniques that you adopt for making a selection about online shopping. | https://medium.com/@nagina-anwar56/how-to-choose-best-online-shop-for-desired-goods-6d7a2de2da7a | ['Nagina Anwar'] | 2020-12-16 12:27:13.231000+00:00 | ['Feedback', 'Online Shopping', 'Online Marketing', 'Online Scams', 'Online Business'] |
Grand Jury misled in Uber driverless vehicle fatality case? | Press article — Was the Backup Driver in an Uber Autonomous Car Crash Wrongfully Charged? https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/uber-self-driving-crash-arizona-vasquez-wrongfully-charged-motion-11583771
I was all over this years ago. However, this still doesn’t mention the process is untenable and should not exist. Or that in many crash cases, time to effect a proper handover cannot be provided. And most importantly, that many “safety drivers” will have to be sacrificed so many edge/crash scenarios can be learned.
Rafaela Vasquez and Elaine Herzberg are both victims in Uber tragedy — There is a better way
More details here
The Autonomous Vehicle Industry can be Saved by doing the Opposite of what is being done now
· https://medium.com/@imispgh/the-autonomous-vehicle-industry-can-be-saved-by-doing-the-opposite-of-what-is-being-done-now-b4e5c6ae9237
SAE Autonomous Vehicle Engineering Magazine — Simulation’s Next Generation
· https://www.sae.org/news/2020/08/new-gen-av-simulation
My name is Michael DeKort — I am a former system engineer, engineering and program manager for Lockheed Martin. I worked in aircraft simulation, the software engineering manager for all of NORAD, the Aegis Weapon System, and on C4ISR for DHS.
Key Autonomous Vehicle Industry Participation
- Founder SAE On-Road Autonomous Driving Simulation Task Force
- Member SAE ORAD Verification and Validation Task Force
- Stakeholder USDOT VOICES (Virtual Open Innovation Collaborative Environment for Safety)
- Member SAE G-34 / EUROCAE WG-114 Artificial Intelligence in Aviation
- Stakeholder for UL4600 — Creating AV Safety Guidelines
- Member of the IEEE Artificial Intelligence & Autonomous Systems Policy Committee
- Presented the IEEE Barus Ethics Award for Post 9/11 DoD/DHS Whistleblowing Efforts | https://medium.com/@imispgh/grand-jury-mislead-in-uber-driverless-vehicle-fatality-case-ab43c06a2899 | ['Michael Dekort'] | 2021-07-21 12:56:28.087000+00:00 | ['Uber', 'Driverless Cars', 'Autonomous Cars', 'Machine Learning', 'Autonomous Vehicles'] |
Better visualizing tensors thanks to cities | The sky is the limit!
Depending on the complexity of the dataset you need to deal with (for example, the time dimension can be integrated and add complexity), you can play with the different scales of a city to help you mentally visualize the data you are manipulating:
Floors
Houses/Buildings
Streets
Neighborhoods
Cities
etc.
Let’s conclude with a simple example for the ones not familiar with arrays: you have two single-colored pictures in the form of 5 x 5 arrays (5 pixels x 5 pixels x 1 color layer):
array_1 = np.random.randint(1,10,(3,3))
array_2 = np.random.randint(1,10,(3,3)) print("array_1:
",array_1,"
")
print("array_2:
",array_2) array_1:
[[7 4 2]
[7 4 6]
[8 6 3]] array_2:
[[1 8 5]
[7 4 5]
[5 4 8]]
And you are not too sure of how to merge them into one array: “Should I put the new axis of the array at the beginning or at the end?”
If you consider these two arrays as single-storey houses, you need to merge them into one street (one street being a bigger scale than houses), leading us to a (2,5,5) shape.
array_3 = np.zeros((2,3,3)) #Street creation for 2 houses
array_3[0] = array_1 #First location for array_1
array_3[1] = array_2 #Second location for array_2
print(array_3) [[[7 4 2]
[7 4 6]
[8 6 3]]
[[1 8 5]
[7 4 5]
[5 4 8]]]
That’s all folks! I hope this tip will help you better navigate in tensors and arrays in the future! | https://towardsdatascience.com/better-visualizing-tensors-thanks-to-cities-b97e6b4ca2ca | ['Pierre-Louis Bescond'] | 2021-01-02 15:43:09.729000+00:00 | ['Arrays', 'Towards Data Science', 'Numpy', 'Data Science', 'Data Processing'] |
What is Covanger? (and how to avoid it) | There is a lot of anger out there.
From Americans protesting at the lockdowns, Italians feeling angry at being overlooked for help from the EU, through to the British at the government handling of the crisis.
Oh, I mustn’t forget the hoarders and the covidiots who think rules does not apply to them.
I thought the anger around Brexit was bad yet trawling through social media the anger that is coming through now makes Brexit look like a playground tiff.
Why is that though?
What is making people so angry?
This current situation has been a bolt out of the blue and has caught most people off guard.
People who once had the belief that their basic needs would be met by the elected representatives, have had their beliefs fundamentally shaken by this crisis.
They were living in a false sense of security, now that their fundamental beliefs have been shaken by the evidence and now, they have a case of cognitive dissonance.
Why is that though?
Did they have a false sense of belief that their safety and psychological needs would be met by the government?
Did they hand over too much power to authorities?
Looking at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs there has been a crisis in the first two needs at the base of the pyramid.
Before this crisis became a major issue, people were confident that the government were in control of their safety, also they were looking to the government for their psychological needs (Food, Water and Shelter).
Yet, as this crisis has unfolded, we have seen people panic, we have seen people worry about the basics. We have seen how underprepared humans have become and how they lack the basic survival skills.
Is it the case that the more technologically advanced we have become, the less we rely on the basic survival skills that are naturally built in us?
Has the anger come from the fact we have been over reliant on those who promise to look after us? Or could it be said we are angry at ourselves at the fact we were not prepared enough personally?
The blame game has already started.
People always look to blame someone for the situation they find themselves in and do not look inwards to find the answers.
Do we need to spend money on the materialistic things that are advertised everywhere? Do we have to constantly have up-to-date stuff?
Or do we need to start investing in ourselves and how we react to situations? Do we need to relearn basic survival skills again?
As little as 40 years ago during the Cold War the governments were wanting us to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, a nuclear attack.
They were wanting us to have provisions for at least 14 days, a shelter (if we could afford one) a plan for keeping in touch with the world (via short-wave radio).
Then by the end of the 1980’s the threat of nuclear war had diminished with the collapse of communism in Russia. People could start to live in more freedom, people could start to put the past behind them.
In the 40 years since we have made great technological advances, we have lived a standard of living that has been unprecedented.
Yet in the technological advances we have made, have we forgotten how to handle ourselves in a crisis?
In a word, YES.
We have become more reliant on technology to help us through our day and lost the basic skills on how to survive.
The fact that we rely on people to make sure we are fed and watered, we have got used to everything there for us instantly.
We are having less and less free time as our lives have gotten busier.
The one thing we have forgotten is to build some back-up plan just in case of emergencies. In the modern world, it wasn’t seen as a necessity, complacency set in.
Then one virus changed that.
Credit: Unsplash
People started to lose their heads as they started to buy up essentials, shelves emptied.
There were even fights over essentials, panic ensued because people didn’t believe that the people who they handed power over to, could meet their basic needs.
People became insular, thinking of them and their family only and tough luck to other humans.
There were outcries as pictures emerged of elderly people looking at empty shelves, couldn’t even get basics to survive.
People started then to mobilise to help those who are vulnerable. They turned the anger into a positive.
Now some are turning their anger to those who promised to look after us. We now are asking questions about why this could happen in the first place.
Do we naturally look to others for our own failings?
Yes.
The bitterest pill to swallow is the fact that sometimes we fail as humans to look after our own needs.
We presume because there are people who claim to have our best interests at heart, that all our needs will be met, we falsely hand over our power to them.
This also applies to our beliefs and values.
When this crisis first came about, people were not to alarmed by it, due to assurances by the authorities that everything was going to be ok.
Yet the moment it started hitting hard, people went into panic mode.
Fear of the future took hold, not knowing whether this is a temporary thing or is it here to stay for a while.
Anger took hold, anger at those who we gave our power to, anger at those who were buying up everything, anger at those ‘flouting the law’.
Do we need to live in constant fear and anger?
No.
It has been scientifically proven that living in fear and anger can LOWER the immune system for a good 4–5 hours, which could help with the onset of any infection and lowers the mental health.
With the constant news cycle being 24 hours of this virus, it is easy to be constantly living in fear and anger.
Do we need to be angry at those who ‘flout the law’? Or do we need to take personal responsibility for our own protection? We do not know the circumstances that the person finds themselves in.
As humans we are sociable creatures and this isolation has been a shock to the system for us all. Some will adapt (the introverts) to it all and others will find it difficult to adapt (the extroverts).
Before we cast our anger at others we need to understand, this virus caught us off-guard and we became complacent that nothing could happen to us.
The whole situation is a fluid one and can change in a moment. By focussing on the anger, we take our eyes off other more important stuff that could help us during this time.
During this unnatural pause we could take stock of our lives and work on stuff to improve our lives once this lockdown is lifted.
We CAN change stuff that was not working for us and causing the anger in our lives pre lockdown.
Also we can prepare for the future and make sure that we can navigate any unexpected incidents without the need to get angry or live in fear.
(The original article ends here, this next part is updated for the present time we see ourselves in)
As things are opening up we need to be wary of letting fears get in the way of returning to normal.
There will be a great fear amongst people that as things start returning to a ‘new kind of normal’. Fear of possible contracting the virus, fear of others not self isolating when they should be, fears that things are moving too fast.
Here in the UK we had a slogan ‘Stay at home, Protect the NHS, Save lives’ this was so effective with the public, that there is anger at the government trying to open places up.
Some of the public believe it is too early to open up, others see the need to get industry up and running to get money back into the economy.
In amongst this all we still have the curse of racism looming over us.
After the death of George Floyd there has been protests against institutional racism too.
There have been people who have criticised it saying that because of the pandemic it should not have happened.
Others are in support of it, saying that it needs to be addressed now once and for all.
Emotions are running high on both sides and it can be a tinderbox if it isn’t handled in the right way.
Communication is key in this situation.
By effective communication there can be a win-win on both sides of the argument. Any misunderstandings could lead to an explosive situation and a lot of anger on both sides.
There is a fine line that needs to be tread in order to appease the emotions of all.
Begs the question….who would like to be in the government’s shoes right now? | https://medium.com/@ownit_liveit/what-is-covanger-and-how-to-avoid-it-e199af5d4adb | ['Kieron James'] | 2020-06-09 11:43:56.775000+00:00 | ['Anger', 'Covid 19', 'Lockdown', 'Change', 'Support'] |
Earbuds are on the verge of a major functionality transformation, says Romit Roy Choudhury, PhD, a… | Earbuds are on the verge of a major functionality transformation, says Romit Roy Choudhury, PhD, a professor in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois.
“The leap from today’s earphones to ‘earables’ would mimic the transformation that we had seen from basic phones to smartphones,” Choudhury said in a statement earlier this month. “Today’s smartphones are hardly a calling device anymore, much like how tomorrow’s earables will hardly be a smartphone accessory,” he says. The future devices will “continuously sense human behavior, run acoustic augmented reality” (whatever that is) and “have Alexa and Siri whisper just-in-time information.”
Great, I suppose.
Whatever, Choudhury isn’t the first to tout the promise of “earables,” a word that’s been around for years and which I hope doesn’t stick. Meantime, for many people, the promise of next-gen earbuds is more urgent and practical, as I wrote recently: | https://robertroybritt.medium.com/earbuds-are-on-the-verge-of-a-major-functionality-transformation-says-romit-roy-choudhury-phd-a-1d1f0f2b6821 | ['Robert Roy Britt'] | 2020-12-15 19:02:17.352000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Wearables', 'Earbuds', 'Earables', 'Technology'] |
Personal Guilty Pleasures | Music
Music, like art, is very much an individual taste, but some things, like admitting to still liking Elvis, are a bit funky. My big weakness is …
Abba — I love the sappy, easy to hum tunes of Abba.
Movies
Sappy 1930s' and 1940s’ comedy romances — too many to list all but include “It Happened One Night” with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, “Blonde Bombshell” with Jean Harlow.
Mama Mia — Okay now this one isn’t perfect, but I loved it. Great music, lots of fun. Leaves me smiling every time.
Ishtar — This is one of the silliest movies ever, but it actually is a bit of a political statement by the director, making fun of the U.S. government, the secret service, also making fun of the music industry and how a totally talentless pair of songwriters are able to basically blackmail the U.S. government into paying to record an album. Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman are perfect as the two musican hacks, and Charles Grodin is super as the sneaky CIA agent. The Director is Elaine May.
Mean Girls. Okay, so this is really a teen movie. Don’t care — love it, and have watched it many times.
Burn After Reading — this one is a Coen Brothers creation. I love it. Doesn’t matter how many times I see it, I laugh. John Malkovich as the paranoid ex-secret service agent; George Clooney as the uncontrollable womanizer, Brad Pitt as the idiotic health club trainer …just to mention a few.
School of Rock — love this. I know a lot of folks do not like Jack Black, but he is PERFECT in this. The performances by the kids are great and the whole movie is very entertaining.
Oklahoma — a sucky musical with some amazing songs. The story is a bit weak, but it has some fantastic performances and great show tunes.
Television
WRKP in Cincinnati. I worked for three radio stations and in every single one, all the WRKP characters were found. Yes, even Les Nessman, bandages and all.
Computer Games
Solitaire on the computer. When I am feeling brain-dead, uninspired, or upset about anything, I find that the mindless computer solitaire program is great. I have actually had to ration myself, since I tend to keep at it, obsessively attempting to beat my last score.
Food
You may have guessed, from the lead image, that fresh-baked scones with butter and jam are a weakness for me. Add a little fresh, clotted cream and I will fistfight for them.
But my most yearned after dessert is Pavlova. An amazing creation made with slightly crispy meringue topping, whipped cream, and fresh strawberries or raspberries. | https://medium.com/weeds-wildflowers/personal-guilty-pleasures-a58a8b480009 | ['Louise Peacock'] | 2020-12-22 18:07:53.019000+00:00 | ['Guilty Pleasure', 'Photography', 'Food', 'Movies'] |
i believe Allah will judge me based on how i respond to suffering | i believe Allah will judge me based on how i respond to suffering Amelia Noor-Oshiro Mar 25·5 min read
this is my buddhist/muslim inspired trauma training at work
its no secret that i have a very hard time trusting men. but i think even i was ignorant of the extent to which this ran. and it ran deep. ohh, so, so deep.
.
i met my first trauma-informed therapist on some date in february 2019 i believe. the 22nd i believe., but im not sure. his name was mohammad and thats what i called him. i called him exactly like how its spelled, mo-ham-mad. like how white people say it. that definitely helped set him apart in my mind from what i knew was going to be inevitable mindfuckery (this is one of the rare instances where i apologize for the brash nature of my cursing, so be forewarned, cuz where there’s trauma talk, there’s potty mouth with me).
..and this minfuckery looked like this: he’s a short-statured, light skinned, santa claus look alike, which i’ve actually said to him a couple times and it was met with a sardonic chuckle. he’s astute behind his rimless crystal clear rectangular eye lensframes. his beard was literally never a hair out of place. it was as if he earned the “immaculate” badge whenever he stepped foot outside every morning. he always wore a suit, very crisply sat on in his traditional furniture second hand chair in his office which itself was a jungle of recluse beyond my wildest dreams. i do believe every therapist office should like like his in some version, because there were literally plants breathing around me and i’ve even had long dreams where i’m still sitting in his office, weeping my heart out, crying each breath along with my plant friends around me.
so, mohammad is a persian, a very proud one at that, and quite revealed to be a narcissist, but that doesn’t make him a bad human being. it just means that there is still some self awareness that he needs to work through. and because he had not yet worked through his own, i found it hard to work through it myself, so in the end, i parted ways with him when i realized there just wasn’t any growth left there anymore.
—
what makes trauma informed therapy such a bright idea is its inherent nature to change the way we treat trauma, to treat illness, to pathologize human emotion, and, of course, to continue the legacy of the surival of modern society.
trauma informed therapists, then, are essentially the factory workers in the line of command chaining from the prophetic wisdoms of great people like Buddha and our beloved Prophet, the Messenger of Allah, Muhammad. OH-yeah — a side note, i believe each of those leading popular prophetic figures were messengers of God and taught the holy message of tawhid early on.
—
i tried falling asleep tonight and i couldn't, because i could only get one thought in my head. what if we made social change profitable? what if we could actually “capitalize” on making people better human beings? why, we would disrupt the entire industry by creating an earth-shattering new category, and even more, beat capitalism at its own game. what if we could economically out-do capitalism? what if? wouldn’t that create a massive wave, no — a shocking torpedo tsunami of a change in revolutionizing the world, the way modern society, the way human nature “works”???!!!
!!!!
!!!!
!!!!
are you with me yet?
…
mohammad celebrates christmas but always looked so uncomfortable wishing me a happy eid. i guess that would describe the kind of “muslim” he was — if we’re using antiquated terminology, we would say he “culturally identifies” but not spiritually or otherwise. maybe i am speaking on his behalf, but i place my bets that he wouldn’t protest on those definitions.
being buddhist and practicing buddhist principles did quite change his life. i know it, because i saw his heart.
yeah, i saw his heart.
i don’t think you’ve ever done this in your life, but if you have, you must email me a paragraph on your experience doing it (you can reach me at [email protected]).
here’s the thing: when i first sat across him for the very first time, our very first therapist session, i had my foot postured firmly to the floor, my body very congruent to all its right angles, sitting upright, with my hands folded into my thighs and sort of energetically slumped into his attention, as if, waiting for him to speak magic into existence.
but, he didn’t.
he sat there, and being true to himself, literally just stared me straight in the eyes, straight into my soul, for… i kid you not … at least 3 minutes.
i mean, i don’t even think i’ve truly stared at a pimple on my face for 3 minutes. HA!! that’s saying something.
so yeah, it was long.
and it was IN-
TENSE.
lemme, tell, you. lemme tell ya.
—
whatever insight was there the first day stayed with me for the following 49–53 sessions. it piqued my curiosity certainly. anyways, why do i share this?
because the fundamental connection between buddhism and islam and all other faith traditions is how to heal ourselves from trauma, from trauma of any kind. how to liberate our self-serving notions and live as a collective, breathe as a collective, and acknowledge that we have the power to create an egalitarian just society without the oppressive power structures in place that make us act on our greed, that tempt our nafs, that capitalize on our shaytanic inclinations.
—
yes, i believe Buddha was a prophet. i believe he delivered a message. and just like Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, the message of submission to God, the one and only, required a dedicated discipline for the wise guidance provided only through what can be understood as a divine source.
that there are so many rituals to cleanse us of our sins is our way of coping with trauma, of healing spiritual wounds that occur because we’ve destroyed a part of human society by continuing to engage in colonizing practices, by continuing to engage our lower selves, not call unto a higher self, a higher spirit, a state of being. instead, we get lost in indulging our acts of betrayal with even more self-sabotage than we give to the people around us.
and that’s not fair. because if we are to be strong as a collective, we must be strong as individuals. and i think ultimately when i wonder about how Allah swt will evaluate me: how did i chose to worship him while on earth? the path i chose is to commit to changing, truly, fundamentally, radically, changing this earth and the world and societies lived in, hosted by, and cross connected to our lives. and how does that happen? | https://medium.com/@anooroshiro/i-believe-allah-will-judge-me-based-on-how-i-respond-to-suffering-71b94522359f | ['Amelia Noor-Oshiro'] | 2021-03-25 06:23:40.853000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Capitalism', 'Trauma', 'Muslim', 'Islam'] |
How Running Every Day Is Improving My Mental Health | How Running Every Day Is Improving My Mental Health
If you think you’re too busy to exercise, running can help you cope with stress
From alan9187 on Pixabay
In the past 21 days, I have run every day. I don’t want to make it sound like a bigger accomplishment than it really is. I’ve been running since I was 12 and pretty seriously and competitively at that.
Running every day has been special this time because it’s improving my mental health. I’m sleeping better, more relaxed, less stressed, and my anxiety is significantly less prevalent than it usually is. According to Bella Mackie at The Guardian, running improves mental health, and one theory links the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible devoted to memory, directly with mental health. People with depression have decreased volume in the hippocampus, which exercise helps counteract.
A study of 14,000 people from Asics found that 82% of UK runners said running helps clear their mind, and 78% of people feel saner and in control because they’d been running. The same study found that running helps increase activity in the anterior cortex, especially in young people. The anterior cortex is a key part of the brain linked to problem-solving and emotional resilience.
However, most of the benefits of running every day on my mental health have been difficult to explain. I’ve simply been happier, and it’s hard to put words on the phenomenon. Currently, I am managing a full-time job as a teacher in a virtual setting, graduate school doing my Master’s in special education at Johns Hopkins University, and my side hustle of writing and editing. Some days a couple of weeks ago, I felt like I was absolutely drowning in stress. I stared at my computer screen for hours at end, doing absolutely nothing — I didn’t know where to start.
About a week and a half into running every day, I felt less stressed. Running isn’t a cure-all solution that’s going to change your life. Maybe it is if you pick up the habit, but I’m simply trying to be more consistent for no other reason than running, helping me feel better daily. I have felt far less of those moments where I’ve been so stressed I could barely think.
Also, since I’ve increased the intensity of some of my runs, running has helped me concentrate more and be more focused on whatever I have to do. I don’t know whether I’m more productive or not, because after all, running is a significant expenditure of both time and energy. However, I feel more in a flow state whenever I am working on a day I ran. It’s a more sustainable way forward to prioritize both my mental and physical health instead of powering my way through an incredibly stressful job, graduate school, and a side hustle.
Conveniently, running every day has coincided with finally going back to therapy again. I’ve only had one session where I’m still introducing my stressors and haven’t spoken that deeply about my life, but I’m excited to see what the future holds. Also, because I’ve been running every day, I’ve been drinking less and felt like I didn’t need the beer or two after a stressful day of work than usual.
As for running, not every run has been long. Not every run has been hard. I have plenty of easy runs a week where I talk the whole run and am not breathing hard at all. On runs of higher intensity, however, there are times I feel like a sheer zombie and can barely function for a couple of hours.
But running has been beneficial for me simply because it’s a time to tune everything else out and reset. For 30 minutes, an hour, or even 90 minutes on a given day, running is time for me. It’s not a time where I have to be productive. It’s not a time where I have to check my e-mail and constantly get something done — it’s just time for me to put one foot in front of another.
And having a streak of days I’ve spent running means I’ve not only rebuilt my habit, but accomplished something. No matter what goes wrong in teaching or anything else on a given day, I will have run that day. I intend to keep the streak the whole year barring injury — so yes, I’ll run on New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, Christmas, or any other day. It’s not like running is something that takes up the whole day.
I used to have a toxic relationship with running. I obsessed over my times on the track or in cross country and focused on my performance as the sole determination of my identity. Running every day is the goal, and I’ve accomplished it for 21 days — and for running just to be fun, and just something that makes me feel better has gotten me to enjoy it again.
Takeaways
I’m not saying running every day is for everyone. Running is a luxury that requires significant time, effort, and energy. I couldn’t run every day when I worked my summer job at Amazon — I simply couldn’t because my physically intensive job made me not want to do anything else physically. But it’s been working well for me since I spent about 15 hours a day in front of a computer screen between work and everything else.
For me, running’s pros have drastically outweighed the cons. There are times I didn’t always feel like that was true, but in the hectic time of a pandemic and mounting obligations, running, or whatever exercise you prefer, is the escape into a world free of all the stressors thrown at you daily.
If you think you’re too busy to exercise, like I do so much of the time, know that exercise improving your mood, pumping your endorphins, and reducing the negative effects of stress can help you cope. | https://medium.com/invisible-illness/how-running-every-day-is-improving-my-mental-health-ef3d55b9a34c | ['Ryan Fan'] | 2020-10-11 13:27:52.533000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Mental Health', 'Fitness', 'Lifestyle', 'Mindfulness'] |
My Favorite Body Positive Instagram Accounts | My Favorite Body Positive Instagram Accounts
Image by ijmaki from Pixabay
A while ago I decided I wanted to enjoy going on social media. The following are accounts to follow on Instagram that don’t make you hate yourself. They promote body positivity and present facts that contradict things diet culture has ingrained in people for years.
@ownitbabe is one of the first body positive accounts I’d ever seen. Rini makes frequent, honest posts about her journey to self acceptance. She consistently normalizes parts of the body diet culture shames people for having. She just had a baby and is making posts regarding being pregnant and living with your body while it’s constantly changing.
is one of the first body positive accounts I’d ever seen. Rini makes frequent, honest posts about her journey to self acceptance. She consistently normalizes parts of the body diet culture shames people for having. She just had a baby and is making posts regarding being pregnant and living with your body while it’s constantly changing. @hgoodrichrd is a licensed dietitian who debunks diet myths and promotes body neutrality. Haley is perfect for anyone unsure about dismissing the diet rhetoric in their life. It is entirely fact-based.
is a licensed dietitian who debunks diet myths and promotes body neutrality. Haley is perfect for anyone unsure about dismissing the diet rhetoric in their life. It is entirely fact-based. @whollyhealed is a life coach who preaches “Liberating the Should-ers in business and in life who are looking for more.” That vague description essentially means she is devoted to helping people be kinder to themselves in order to improve their overall quality of life. This account was ran by Jess, who popularized her account with the hashtag #WHtabootuesday. This account is no longer active, but the posts remain up and they are all focused on normalizing aspects of the human body.
is a life coach who preaches “Liberating the Should-ers in business and in life who are looking for more.” That vague description essentially means she is devoted to helping people be kinder to themselves in order to improve their overall quality of life. This account was ran by Jess, who popularized her account with the hashtag #WHtabootuesday. This account is no longer active, but the posts remain up and they are all focused on normalizing aspects of the human body. @i_weigh is an organization founded by actress and activist Jameela Jamil. This account is dedicated to helping people find worth through the physical and nonphysical parts of themselves. This account has over one million followers and is easily the most popular from this list. I always tell people to follow this account. Its posts offer a very much needed reprieve from the antics of mainstream social media.
is an organization founded by actress and activist Jameela Jamil. This account is dedicated to helping people find worth through the physical and nonphysical parts of themselves. This account has over one million followers and is easily the most popular from this list. I always tell people to follow this account. Its posts offer a very much needed reprieve from the antics of mainstream social media. @happilyfed is run by Devrie, a registered dietitian nutritionist. This account gets down to the facts when it comes to normalizing intuitive eating. It gives credited information that debunks several dietary myths.
is run by Devrie, a registered dietitian nutritionist. This account gets down to the facts when it comes to normalizing intuitive eating. It gives credited information that debunks several dietary myths. @thefuckitdiet is run by author Caroline Dooner. She has an entire book (The Fuck it Diet) full of academically researched facts that contradict most diet rhetoric. Her posts and her book have debunked every diet “fact” I once held close to my heart. I HIGHLY recommend following her on Twitter as well and, of course, reading her book.
Changing who I follow on Instagram has been a game-changer in terms of my mental health. I figured out that following people you don’t like just to be nice is actually detrimental to your well-being. My favorite thing about social media is that it’s not real-life, so there aren’t as many consequences. Have you been wanting to unfollow someone for a while but haven’t because you’re friends? Do it. Life is too short to have to scroll past whatever bullshit some girl you went to high school with posts. | https://medium.com/@jessamurray/my-favorite-body-positive-instagram-accounts-48a49d3e0572 | ['Jessa Murray'] | 2020-11-10 00:21:45.645000+00:00 | ['Instagram', 'Body Positive'] |
Building a Deals Marketplace: What We Learned from the SaaSBF Launch | TL;DR:
What went well:
The Outreach process — via email, Slack & Facebook Groups, DMs,
Including over 100+ participants in the first edition, 5M+ emails sent from the participants,
Great feedback when it comes to generated sales.
What went bad (/not smoothly):
Designing the Marketplace in WebFlow,
Not having all the participants actually promote the Marketplace,
Not being able to honor all post-deadline applications.
Improvements:
Use more automation for repetitive tasks,
Use commitment contracts for all participants,
Outreach & Plan with 2 months ahead.
Intro
Marketplaces offer one of the easiest, fastest & most convenient ways to shop online by having several choices at hand. Not only those marketplaces have competitive prices available on products/ tools/ services, but their simplicity and utility also enable sellers to connect to possible buyers in a new way.
No wonder more and more consumers have come to prefer marketplaces in the past years, compared to doing their own research and comparing prices on everything that’s available online. Marketplaces are their secret shopping weapons in terms of curated tools and deals.
That’s why we, at SocialBee, created SaaS Black Friday, a marketplace that brought together 100+ tools with Black Friday Discounts. The total shared-audience of all our participants exceeded the 10-million milestone we only dreamt of when setting goals and expectations.
One of our secrets was that we dared to “go for it”, even if:
1. We had one month to put it all together, 2. We never worked in a website-building tool like WebFlow, 3. We didn’t have all the contacts we needed at our fingertips, 4. We never managed over 100+ participants under such circumstances, 5. We knew we’d make mistakes along the way.
Launching the marketplace during Black Friday turned out to be extremely beneficial, as almost everyone had already prepared a deal with specific landing pages — talk about convenience at its finest!
We wanted our participants to promote it to their list as it was possible to be done without great effort, and there’s power in numbers, and by supporting the marketplace they were able to support themselves.
The main reason why we decided to launch the Marketplace was exactly that, to be able to help many businesses at once through a simple solution that would not require extensive resources from their side. Happily, SaaS Black Friday was able to bring together businesses of all sizes, kinds, and industries for a shared-cause. Not to mention that it has been a tough year for most businesses and we thought it would be a win-win for everyone.
In this article, we’ll show you what it took to build, launch, and manage a Marketplace of this size during Black Friday. We had available one month to:
Put it all together, To mobilize one and a half people from our Marketing Department.
Research
Before we started working on the Marketplace, we needed to know what has been done so far in terms of Marketplaces. Three of the best Marketplace we knew of served as the main inspiration for building our own marketplace:
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Newton
By being included before in several Marketplaces with SocialBee, we knew that one of the drawbacks of having several tools gathered together would be that some of them will get more exposed than others in terms because of their placement.
That’s why we decided we should have 3 levels of visibility, Gold, Silver, and Bronze.
The levels were the equivalent of the position the tools would get in the Marketplace. In order to decide how to assign participants to their level we took into consideration:
Size of the mailing list that was about to be emailed, Willingness to promote — either through a dedicated newsletter/ as a mention, Frequency of promoting between November 23 and November 30.
Once we had a clear organizational structure we worked on the Application Landing Page and Form. We used a Google Form to collect the answers and export them in a Google Spreadsheet.
Branding
At first, we needed to define the Branding for our project so we can move to express it visually.
We wanted the Marketplace to be a stand-alone brand, compared to a “SocialBee Black Friday Marketplace” because our vision for it was to be a fair, unbiased, and open marketplace for anyone who wants to join. Even if it meant direct competitors of SocialBee.
Naming
We wanted the Name of the Marketplace to be:
Short & simple,
Easy to memorate
Suggestive, even self-explanatory.
SaaS Black Friday was the name that had all these attributes.
Visual Identity
We gave free hand to our designer when it comes to colors, logo, main banner, and logo.
He went for a space-based theme, using different shades of the following Colors Palettes: Blue, Purple, Red, and Yellow.
Branded colors for SaaS Black Friday.
Logo of SaaS Black Friday.
Web Design
Webflow
We used Webflow for the Design of the Apply Page and the Marketplace itself. For anyone working in WebFlow for the first time, who does not have some background in HTML & CSS, the learning curve can be a potential challenge, but not impossible.
Having advanced experience only in Divi, Elementor, and WordPress, this was our case, therefore, our Designer needed to allocate extra hours to understand WebFlow’s specifics.
There were several reasons why we decided to go with WebFlow and not with a WordPress site, some of them included:
1. Design freedom:
We knew we would need our Developer to help out with the website if we were to go with WordPress, while with WebFlow we were able to start from canvas and even use some templates we later on customized, without code or plugins.
2. Traffic overload:
A high traffic spike could have made the website fail. Even if we had an approximate predicted number of visitors for each day, precisely predicting the timing and magnitude of traffic spikes was difficult to nail down.
3. Easier to maintain:
What we needed was something extremely flexible to maintain and even drop easier if the project wouldn’t have turned our a success.
What you also need to know about Webflow is that they have certain limitations when it comes to their plans. What was of extreme importance to us was the number of monthly visits we’d get for our plan. Other than that, the pricing is fairly affordable, starting at $15/ Month.
We wanted a visual representation inside the Marketplace of the three levels we previously mentioned, and offer certain benefits of being part of a certain level. This way, we were able to motivate more participants to put in more resources to promote the marketplace in exchange for a higher position. Having unique and personalized designs for Silver and Gold, made a big difference and elevated the marketplace.
The participants that were attributed to Gold had a full row to themselves to add a logo, an extended description about themselves, a description of the deal, a CTA button, and a banner image/ video, additionally to a branded background color.
The participants that were attributed to Silver had a 1/2 of a full row to themselves to add a logo, a medium description about themselves, a description of the deal, a CTA button, a smaller banner image, additionally to a branded background color.
The participants that were attributed to Bronze had 1/3 of a full row to themselves to add a logo, a short description, a description of the deal, and a CTA button.
Once we were ready with the Web Versions for our pages, we worked on optimizing them for Mobile and Tablet visualization.
You can see the final results here:
The Apply Page Here: https://saasbf-apply.webflow.io/,
The Marketplace here: https://saasbf.com/.
Website Setup
Google Analytics
In order to track the traffic on the Marketplace, we’ve integrated a new Google Analytics account we created for the Marketplace, by adding Google Universal Analytics Tracking ID.
Here’s a step-by-step article on how to set up your Google Analytics account: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009694?hl=en
Domain
We used NameCheap to purchase the Domain: saasbf.com. Then, we connected the Custom Domain in WebFlow which was fairly easy to do by following their Help Documentation.
Zapier
For the Application Page, we added a “Subscribe to get notified once the marketplace is live ” Section. In order to move the people who subscribed to our
We used Zapier to connect Webflow to our Email Provider, Drip, where we’ve also created a new account to store all email addresses related to SaaS Black Friday. Here’s the already-made Zap from Zapier to put together such integration: https://zapier.com/apps/webflow/integrations.
Outreach
We went multi-channel in terms of outreach. That’s why we used:
1-on-1 outreach for participants we badly wanted to be part of our Marketplace,
Posts on Slack Communities and Facebook Groups for general promotion.
In order to keep track of our outreach efforts, we create a spreadsheet with contact information and details about the participants, and we kept updating it. We obtained some of the contacts by using Hunter, RocketReach, and LinkedIn with Phantombuster.
The messages we used varied depending on the channel where we reached out. For DMs and emails, we tried a more personal approach, while for the Group Posts a more informal tone.
Some of the messages we used.
We had Google Docs with templates for everything that helped us do the work fast and efficiently. Additionally, whenever we saw that a question was asked by several people, we would add the question to our FAQ section on the website, and/ or create a canned response giving the answer to that particular question.
In terms of email follow-ups, we counted on Streak — CRM for Gmail to make sure our emails were seen and replied to. We had over 500+ emails sent specifically in regards to SaaS Black Friday. There were general emails announcing major steps/ To-Dos for the participants, follow-up emails where we received no answer/ where they said they’ll join but haven’t, or emails to support and motivate the participants to promote the Marketplace to their lists.
What we would do differently here is making sure there are more resources available where we can direct people that touch upon almost every little detail. Rather than preparing an extremely long email to cover everything that needed to be said, a landing page/ folder available for everyone to access would have been best.
Moreover, one of the main causes of received a bigger influx of emails was because we weren’t explicit and clear that all participants need to promote the marketplace to their lists as a condition to join.
Partnership management
Once we had our first positive responses and the Application Form filled out, we were on a mission to support as much as possible our participants.
Email 1: We confirmed their participation in the Marketplace and shared the Timeline for the following weeks so that they can plan internally all that was needed from their side.
Email 2: We announced their placement in the Marketplace based on their promised promotion efforts and sent them a private Link to the First Draft of the Marketplace. Additionally, we sent a link for the Swipe Files, where they were able to find creatives and copy ideas for their newsletter and social media.
Having a set of materials ready for our participants was extremely important and helpful to the great majority, we even had people asking for a link to more resources earlier than we anticipated.
Since the Marketplace went live on November 23, and Black Friday started only on November 27, we informed all the participants that it would be beneficial to have their offer available earlier.
Email 3: We notified everyone that the Marketplace went live and that everyone will start sending traffic to it. Something that was of extreme importance was using “=ref” for each participants’ like, this way we were able to see concrete results coming in from each participant and their level of commitment.
Moreover, we created sheets with the dates and hours our participants decided to send their newsletter/s, just to make sure the promotion is well-balanced throughout the week.
On this note, 50,8% of participants (from a total of 124 participants) promoted the Marketplace to their lists, either to their full list or only a segment of it, through a dedicated newsletter and/or a mention inside one of their usual newsletters. In the future, we might consider using contracts to make sure we filter and include participants that are engaged and interested in such a model.
We wanted to be involved and present for them, whether it was feedback and inspiration on the Landing Pages, sharing Swipe Files, help on defining their final offer, and so on.
Launching the Marketplace
The Marketplace was live between November 23, until November 30. Before being officially live, we did the final checks for everything, and made sure we had affirmative answers to the following questions:
Are our participants’ profiles correct and complete?
Are there any last-minute changes coming in from our participants?
Is everyone to whom we confirmed their participation in the marketplace included?
Are the Web, Tablet, and Mobile versions of the Marketplace in proper shape?
Is Google Analytics functioning properly?
But the most important question of them all when you’re launching anything, where we wanted a negative answer….
“Did we forget anything?…”
Launching on Product Hunt
As we wanted an extra push for the Marketplace and therefore more exposure for the participants, we decided to launch the Marketplace on Product Hunt.
As this wasn’t our first time launching on Product Hunt, we just went back on one of our Extended Guides on How to Launch on Product Hunt published on Foundr, and did extra research to see any changes that may have occurred ever since.
We launched on Product Hunt and got over 100+ upvotes in less than an hour. We emailed our participants about it, started mobilizing everyone on our contact list, post on all the groups dedicated to Product Hunt Launches, and more.
All seem to go perfectly until…it hit us:
SaaS Black Friday doesn’t appear on “Popular” on Product Hunt, even if we got a solid boost in a short amount of time and it was steadily growing.
The answer to our question was easily found out: Product Hunt blocks access to “Popular” to such Marketplaces, as they have their own Marketplace they want to bring forward. That being said, we still got some traction from Product Hunt, but not as much as we would have hoped for.
Monitoring the Marketplace
Each day, several times a day we checked our Inboxes and Google Analytics, just to make sure everything goes smoothly. The frequency of doing it and the speed of our response time were the two attributes that helped us manage the big influx of emails that we were getting each day.
What also helped us was snoozing email, using labels, updating the spreadsheet with all the participants with canned info so we can contact them in bulk if needed certain participants.
Managing the new influx of new applications
As the Marketplace got launched, we started getting lots of emails per day with people wanting to join at the last minute. This burdened in a way our capacity of managing everyone. On one side we had current participants that needed to be helped, and also a limited amount of time to onboard everyone.
We weren’t able to honor all the requests we had after the marketplace was launched, as our main priority throughout the weeks was to be there for the participants 100%, unconditionally.
👉👉👉 What we learned here is that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Wrapping Up
After the Marketplace Closed we created an internal report on how all went. The main metrics we looked at were: pageviews, unique page views, and traffic split by source.
We analyzed for each participant their involvement and commitment to promoting the Marketplace and emailed everyone with our findings.
👉👉👉 One of the main conclusions regarding the principle of the Marketplace — that everyone will promote it to their list as well, was that for our next edition we might use contracts to make everyone keep their promise and have a fair place for our participants.
Part of wrapping up the Marketplace was also asking for feedback from our participants. Where we weren’t extremely proficient was in making it extremely clear for everyone that the condition to join the Marketplace is to promote the Marketplace to your own mailing list.
Without the participants that promoted it to their list, the Marketplace wouldn’t have had the success it reached. Once again, having great partners by your side is key!
Thank you! We were very happy with the outcome. Thanks for the opportunity. Congratulations on putting the marketplace in place. Great job!
David, Founder & CEO at BIGVU
Awesome, thank you guys for organizing that marketplace. That’s all about leadership and you did your job well!
Refat, CEO at SpreadSimple
Thanks for letting us take part in the Marketplace! Hope to collaborate again in the future.
Anastasia, Marketing Manager at Chanty
The experience was great! We also got some new customers from the promotion. Thanks so much!
Christopher, Founder & CEO at Woorise
That was an awesome idea and realization! Congratulations 🎉We’d like to participate next year. Count us in next time.
Mary, Content Manager at Chatfuel
It was a pleasure collaborating with you! We’d be happy to collaborate with you next year.
Lidia, PR and Outreach Specialist at HelpCrunch
Conclusion
We have big plans for next year’s edition, now that we have all these learnings at hand. While some choose to see those as shortages, we chose to see them as opportunities to grow, learn, and help other businesses in the process as well.
As our final words, we want to thank all our participants for trusting us on this journey and for making this Marketplace possible.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
See you next year, SaaS Black Friday Team
P.S. Some of our learnings will be implemented next year in the second edition of the marketplace. Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/socialbee-thoughts/building-a-deals-marketplace-what-we-learned-from-the-saasbf-launch-540fe77cc2e6 | ['Ovi Negrean'] | 2020-12-16 13:19:29.160000+00:00 | ['Black Friday', 'Marketplaces', 'Black Friday Deals', 'Marketing', 'Lessons Learned'] |
Handling complexity in UX projects | Handling complexity in UX projects
Have you ever started working on a project, started asking questions, and suddenly realised that the problem or the brief is actually a lot bigger and more complex than anyone anticipated?
You’ve just discovered an iceberg.
What is a UX iceberg?
An iceberg is something that seems small, simple or at least manageable at first glance, until you realise the immense depth of complexity sitting beneath the waterline.
The iceberg is a metaphor that has been used in product development for the last 2 decades, and it applies to so many projects, problems, and design scenarios that it’s a concept I use almost every day.
Here are some three real-life examples I come across frequently:
Redesigning a website and discovering how many stakeholders, departments, systems and processes are actually involved
Trying to optimise/improve a website that’s built on an outdated codebase
Introducing a new functionality into an existing complex ecosystem
Any kind of voice interaction project
What’s the risk?
Well if you’ve seen the movie Titanic, you know you don’t want to hit an iceberg.
Other risks include the fact that left ignored, they seem to get bigger, as stakeholders add more “simple requests” to the top of the iceberg, only increasing the mass of complexity and implications below the surface.
The final outcome? Failed projects, massive waste of money, time and resources, impact on reputations and careers.
Why doesn’t everyone see these coming?
Here’s what I’ve learned in 14+ years working on UX, CX, and Service Design projects, of varying levels of complexity —
Most people don’t think things through..
Some people choose to ignore complexity, in the hope that it will go away or someone else will deal with it. Some are too busy or overwhelmed with other things to notice. Others are just not experienced enough to know or anticipate how complex something is or may become.
With this can sometimes come the arrogance of “how hard can it possibly be to <do thing>?!”
When you hear noise like this, you might be nearing an iceberg.
Here are some more scenarios where you might encounter iceberg-related drama:
The project hasn’t been scoped properly — In the agency world, this happens a lot when someone sells and scopes a project without UX practitioner supervision. Once a practitioner comes on board, they spend the first 2 weeks furiously trying to get everyone to realise that the client’s expectations are actually much greater than the time and resource assigned.
In the agency world, this happens a lot when someone sells and scopes a project without UX practitioner supervision. Once a practitioner comes on board, they spend the first 2 weeks furiously trying to get everyone to realise that the client’s expectations are actually much greater than the time and resource assigned. Over-promising without technical understanding — Again, a classic agency or consultancy trait. With the desperate desire to please a client comes the promising of All The Things, or even one “simple” thing that turns out will take years and cost billions.
— Again, a classic agency or consultancy trait. With the desperate desire to please a client comes the promising of All The Things, or even one “simple” thing that turns out will take years and cost billions. Someone made a pretty — The obsessive desire of some stakeholder or even designers to rush to screen designs results in everyone believing something already has been thought-through, is based on evidence of user need or behaviour, has consensus behind it, is usable, accessible profitable, buildable, or even… finished and live.
— The obsessive desire of some stakeholder or even designers to rush to screen designs results in everyone believing something already has been thought-through, is based on evidence of user need or behaviour, has consensus behind it, is usable, accessible profitable, buildable, or even… finished and live. Too many assumptions — Humans like to think they know things. See above. So they assume things based on a combination of past experience and how they want the world to be. Asking questions removes risk. Forging ahead with only assumptions will result in iceberg impact.
Organisation implications have been ignored — Not involving the right stakeholders from the outset means you can’t possibly know all the implications of what you’re about to attempt. Engaging stakeholders can reveal complexity, but it can also discovery simplicity — this will actually allow you to shrink your iceberg!
— Not involving the right stakeholders from the outset means you can’t possibly know all the implications of what you’re about to attempt. Engaging stakeholders can reveal complexity, but it can also discovery simplicity — this will actually allow you to shrink your iceberg! Lack of user research — There are times when you scale up or down research, but don’t ignore it completely. One way to trigger an iceberg of your very own is to discover a user-related problem that effects every part of your ecosystem, that should really should have known about early on.
But this is the luxury of UX — we are the people who are paid to ask questions, point out the dreadful (iceberg) and help teams and companies get back on track so that we can all focus on user needs.
Why the iceberg concept is useful to a project
When you’re staring at an iceberg, it is natural to feel a sense of panic. However the mental model of the iceberg is actually very useful in handling and communicating project complexity.
It helps us understand:
How we build a shared visual representation of the project or challenge itself
How we decide how much complexity we are able to handle, with which group or team or timings and why
How we communicate to a specific audience (which includes stakeholders but also day to day, how we handle reporting, training or onboarding people, general team management)
How to work with a live ‘project’ iceberg
Once you can harness the iceberg, it’s actually fairly easy to manage. There are some simple steps if you find yourself staring at an iceberg that you want to get under control:
Step 1
Recognise it — as above, simply realising that something is an iceberg is half the battle. Be brave, take the red pill and step forward.
Step 2
Understand, Define and Visualise it — Yes this sounds like the UCD process. (useful, isn’t it.) You need to understand how big the iceberg actually is, work out everything that’s included (people, processes, products, systems). Then you need to map it out in some format that shows both scope and scale. I usually also include a graphic of an actual iceberg, just to drive the point home..
For an enterprise digital solution, you may need to map stakeholders, dependencies, systems integration, data sets and more.
For a voice application, you need to demonstrate the amount of logic that sits beneath a “simple” call-response, in order to show how the logic and therefore workload increases exponentially as each new “simple” request is added at the top.
Step 3
Communicate it — this can be a scary moment, but you need to get relevant stakeholders in the room and show them how big the iceberg actually is. This will usually be met with stunned silences followed by some kind of emotive noise as people realise the implications of what they are attempting.
This is ok. You are doing your job. You are not responsible for the iceberg. You are just pointing at it.
This usually has one of two outcomes — the downsizing/scoping of the ask or the increase of resource to handle it. Both are excellent outcomes, because they return everyone to reality of what can be done by when.
Step 4
Divide, Conquer and Empower — Once everyone on the team can see the iceberg for what it is, it’s time to start assigning roles, responsibilities and phasing.
As an example, if you are introducing a new service into an existing ecosystem, you could treat the top of the iceberg as basics or fundamentals of the new experience, the middle as implications for other channels and the bottom as the full technical specification.
In this way, you can keep higher level stakeholders focused on the big picture and agreeing principles that will effect the entire project, use the middle layer to make product and ecosystem-level decisions, and leave the detail to the tech experts.
This works as long as you support communication between slices of iceberg. Which brings us to step 5…
Step 5
Keep communicating it! — As with most projects, communication is key. Here are your communication priorities:
Remind everyone what the big picture is (full iceberg overview at a macro level) Remind everyone who is doing what (recap step 4) Let everyone know what is happening on other workstreams that impact theirs, without burdening them with too much detail. This means communicating critical decisions and need-to-knows. Encourage two way communication so that any further changes to iceberg scope and size are clearly flagged. Put someone in charge of being The Bridge — the link between the layers, the person who communicates status, dependencies, risks etc at all times.
Whatever you do, don’t just focus on the easy bit at the top, bury the other 90% and pretend its someone else’s problem
It’s not just ‘project’ icebergs…
I see icebergs all the time in UX world. Not just in projects but in the industry itself — from mentoring and training to my own development of a new skill set or methodology.
Here are some I see with newbies all the time:
Taking on more than you can really handle — ah, the enthusiasm of youth. I’ve seen so many young’uns wade into projects they thought they could handle and quickly flounder. Humility and asking questions upfront will help you with this.
— ah, the enthusiasm of youth. I’ve seen so many young’uns wade into projects they thought they could handle and quickly flounder. Humility and asking questions upfront will help you with this. Not flagging early enough when you need help — connected to the one above, some new UXers are so desperate to prove themselves that they’ll plough on into an iceberg rather than ask for help. Personally I try to train this out of people on day 1.
— connected to the one above, some new UXers are so desperate to prove themselves that they’ll plough on into an iceberg rather than ask for help. Personally I try to train this out of people on day 1. Learning burnout — Let’s not forget that the UX industry itself has become an iceberg. I talk regularly with newbies who are overwhelmed by the amount of skill sets involved training. (Note: I’ve written an article about how to design your own training plan, should you need it.)
In all these cases, when you discover an iceberg, you don’t have to be immediately overwhelmed — you just need to start the process of handling the iceberg you’ve discovered.
The iceberg is coming…
UX work is getting more complex each year, with companies adding more and more digital and technical complexity to their existing ecosystems. Intelligent businesses are using UX consultants to ensure that changes have deliver improvement in the user experience, or at least have minimal impact in degrading what already exists.
Getting comfortable with complexity will make you a better and more useful UXer.
In this complex world, the iceberg is simply a concept for managing and modelling project complexity, your own cognitive load and that of the people around you.
It enables you to move from a macro to a micro mindset and back again without your head exploding, or causing team members to have a meltdown.
It turns a complex, potentially overwhelming problem into a single thing, with more easily manageable layers that everyone can get their head round, so makes it easier for people to visualise a project, the different component parts, their roles and responsibilities. It’s also a great entry point for bringing new team members into a project without overwhelming them from day one.
It helps you support project managers by coming to them with a plan of attack, or as one of my clients once said “How do we eat this elephant?”
As a team leader, it helps you highlight those team members who can deal with complexity and those who can’t — so that you can support them and help them to be more effective
It helps you manage scope and scale — you can quickly identify the size of the overall iceberg and if needed, scale back scope at the top to make the overall thing smaller, reduce risk and make the project more likely to be delivered.
It makes you a more useful UX consultant — more resilient and more able to take on yet more complexity if needed.
As with all icebergs, you just need to know what is coming at you.
Resources:
Other references to the iceberg model on the internet, in relation to UX:
Berry, 2000 — The user experience The iceberg analogy of usability (citation link but no article available)
Cappel & Huang, 2015 — The iceberg model of website usability | https://uxdesign.cc/handling-complexity-in-ux-projects-7be91da4af70 | ['H Locke'] | 2021-06-15 17:38:11.009000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'Usability', 'Design', 'UX', 'User Experience'] |
A two and a half thousand year old mummy coffin was unveiled in public in Egypt | A two and a half thousand year old mummy coffin was unveiled in public in Egypt Adilmurphy Oct 7, 2020·1 min read
There is no end to the interest surrounding mummies in ancient Egypt. This time the archaeologists opened such a mummy coffin in public. Earlier this year, 59 stone coffins were found in Sakara. One of them witnessed the opening of a coffin and many took pictures. As soon as the coffin was opened, the body of a mummy was found inside ancient Egypt.
Sakara is a huge Egyptian cemetery, used as a cemetery in the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis. According to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, 59 wooden coffins were recovered from the tomb at the Sakara archeological site. The wooden coffins were found intact and contained the bodies of ancient Egyptian priests, respected members of the community, and other elderly people.
Such a coffin was opened in front of everyone on Saturday. The coffin basket was closed about two and a half thousand years ago. The video of the coffin opening on Saturday has spread on social media. The mummy was seen inside the coffin in the video. The body of an ancient Egyptian nobleman killed two and a half thousand years ago covered in a well-decorated tombstone.
New Zealand Ambassador to Egypt Greg Lewis also shared a video of the coffin opening on Twitter.
The coffins rescued in Sakara will be sent to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza for display. | https://medium.com/@adilmurphy098/a-two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old-mummy-coffin-was-unveiled-in-public-in-egypt-72deabde84f9 | [] | 2020-10-07 13:27:58.992000+00:00 | ['Museums', 'Sakara', 'Egypt'] |
Flutter IntegrationWith Firebase’s Firestore, StreamBuilder, And Running Any Linux Command Using… | This blog explains how to integrating Linux API with Firebase’s firestore using Flutter. In this integration, any Linux command will be executed using Flutter App which will fetch the command output from Linux Webserver & store the output at the Firestore. The flutter app developed will also have the functionality to retrieve the data from the Firestore and usage of StreamBuilder to retrieve and save data.
Steps to be followed :
Step 1: For this task, we have first created an app with the project and organization name using the command prompt.
Go to your flutter folder using the command line and use the command
flutter create yourappname
2. For integrating flutter with the firebase.
Go to https://firebase.google.com/
Click on the “Go to console” & then you will be landed on the Firebase homepage. Click on the button given below to add one project.
After that enter your project name as and follow the further steps to set up the project.
After the project creation, you will be landed on a page as shown below.
Now click on the Android Icon shown on the above page and follow the complete process, it will guide you to set up or connect your Flutter App to Firestore.
3. Creating API
The API creation code is shown below. (This code will create one API which will help to run the Linux Commands using a webserver).
Note: For this API code to work, the Apache webserver(httpd) has to be installed on your machine.
Write this code in a file, save it with “.py” extension in the folder “/var/www/cgi-bin”.
Make this file executable by running the command “chmod +x <filename>”.
4. Creating the database in firebase using cloud firestore.
Click on create database icon.
Select the test mode option.
Enable the data-center region and give the project name.
5. For creating the Linux command app.
The packages that have been installed for this app are
cupertino_icons: ^0.1.3
HTTP: ^0.12.2
cloud_firestore: ^0.16.0
firebase_core: ^0.7.0
firebase_auth: ^0.20.0+1
After saving these files restart the ide.
Now to connect our app with the firebase we need to go to the WebUI first and then click on the android icon there.
Give the organization name which you used to connect to the firebase. You can go to the your_appfolder->android folder->app-> build.gradle.
Download the JSON file and put it in the folder as instructed.
Make changes in both the Gradle files as instructed.
After completing the above-mentioned steps we can now run our app.
You can refer to my GitHub repository for code.
Following the code the app will be looking like this:
6: Fetch the commands history from firestore and display it in real-time.
To fetch and show the command history I will create a new screen. For that, I will add the history button in the AppBar. When the user presses this button, this app will show the history of the commands and their output.
To create a new screen, I will create a new file named terminal_history.dart and start writing the code to display the history.
To fetch and display the command output, I will use the StreamBuilder widget and with the use of screenshots, I will display the commands history in real-time without refreshing the page. It will first fetch all of the data uploaded to the firestore and for the widget for each data. After that, these widgets will be stored in the list. Finally, StreamBuilder will go through each Widget in the list and build the screen that will display the command and the command output fetched from the firestore in real-time.
The outputs of the commands which have been run on the app will get stored in Firestore as shown below. | https://medium.com/@pchaturvedi19989/flutter-integrationwith-firebases-firestore-streambuilder-and-running-any-linux-command-using-79f3cf3c79a5 | ['Pranav Chaturvedi'] | 2021-02-14 16:32:38.734000+00:00 | ['Flutter', 'Linux', 'Firebase', 'Dart', 'Flutter App Development'] |
Watch~[OnLinE]! Josee, the Tiger and the Fish (2020) `Movies` — [HD-720] | A youth romantic drama with themes of growing up, the story focuses on college student Tsuneo and dreamer Josee, who lives her life stuck in a wheelchair. Josee — named after the heroine in Françoise Sagan’s Wonderful Clouds — spends most of her days reading and painting until by chance she encounters Tsuneo, and decides it’s time to face the real world.
Release Date : Dec 25, 2020
Runtime : 99 minutes
Genres : Animation, Drama, Romance
Production Company : BONES
Production Countries : Japan
Casts : Taishi Nakagawa, Kaya Kiyohara, Yume Miyamoto, Kazuyuki Okitsu, Lynn, Chiemi Matsutera, Shintarou Moriyama, Lily
Plot Keywords : based on novel or book, paraplegic, love, slice of life, relationship, disability, anime
Watch On ►► https://cutt.ly/yh3Zbtx
TELEVISION 👾
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👾 OVERVIEW 👾
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The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement.
Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 1945–65, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/@animemovie-2020/watch-online-josee-the-tiger-and-the-fish-2020-movies-hd-720-ab17a2a909cf | [] | 2020-12-26 03:50:37.430000+00:00 | ['Movie', 'Anime', '2020'] |
Readers Digest Democrats Enhance Trump’s Counter-Attack Capability | [NOTE: Originally published as a Facebook Note on February 5, 2018, now edited]
Bernie Sanders, an independent Democratic Socialist is the politician today who most resembles FDR who brought us The New Deal!
What is a Readers Digest Democrat? One who claims political left status but who actually functions as a Republican, i.e., one who is not an FDR Democrat!
Readers Digest Democrats Clapping at Trump’s 2018 State of The Union Speech
This article began as a short Facebook paragraph of me complaining how Trump’s Internet specialists wrongfully commandeered YouTube images of the Anonymous organization, making it seem like this organization is part of Trump’s grand scheme army, when it’s not. Clearly, the Trump media forces piggy-backed onto the group and are making pro-Trump video clips appear as if it is official Anonymous material. I believe this is part of Trump’s strategy to widen his political base and to confuse anti-establishment people into supporting him.
America’s oligarch-owned monopolized news media has been guilty of lies, distortions, omissions and perversions of truth. Whereas in previous years this this has happened, then more an exception — today, it’s become common. Since the 2016 election we’ve been dosed with yellow journalism on a near-weekly basis. The dosing has been very similar to the reporting in the build-up to the War on Iraq.
Televised news networks and print media— unlike previous presidential elections — presented daily Clinton’s “pledged” super delegate count as “won” delegates after each primary or caucus. The media did not report what they really were: endorsements which can become subject to change. A “won” delegate does not change. The effect of this was to make Clinton’s delegate lead appear invincibly larger.
Moreover, the main media:
Claimed, as if fact, that Russians hacked the DNC. This is wrong since contrary solid and credible forensic evidence exists to show the Wikileaks-exposed DNC documents were leaked. Contrarian investigative findings went unreported.
Ignored Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s audio statement that Seth Rich was the leaker.
Asserted Russians hacked America’s electric grid.
Failed to report on the federal lawsuit against the DNC in a Florida Federal Court.
Inadequately covered the story about how the Clinton Campaign lost a laptop in the mail, smashed hard drives and turned in Blackberries with the SIM cards missing.
Completely failed to investigate and report on Trump’s then-known Russian business ties and past shady business deals when he announced his candidacy. Trump got a free media ride before, during and after he announced.
The list is long and goes on and on. Perhaps the biggest media failure is it has failed to investigate itself, a major news story! But the five corporations which control 90% of all media have severely, and jointly, slashed investigative journalism budgets and they’ve dismissed all of the once-important ombudsmen who previously provided criticism and would grade the media for its accountability to the public.
Right-Wing YouTubers
Hence, there’s been a tremendous rise in YouTube Internet journalism as people genuinely seek independent news and validation elsewhere.
Trump’s behind-the-scenes political operatives use a host of YouTube personalities who paint an image of Trump as hero “draining the swamp” and that he represents those who’ve been shut away from society. These independent so-called YouTube ‘truth tellers’ sort of pride themselves as a new kind of New Age of Nixon’s “silent majority.”
These YouTube pro-Trump independents promulgate an attack strategy cloaked in terminology of “truthseeking” and “patriot,” and they hammer away at what they describe as “globalists,” or members of a “deep state” tied into the Bush-Clinton legacy.
They do this on three fronts:
1) The YouTubers attack and call for arresting just about anyone associated with Clinton, the ultimate goal being to “lock her up.” The problem with this is Clinton and her cohorts have committed so many wrongdoings that those involved with exposing her gain traction and support among people who otherwise would pay little to no attention. Ironically, mainstream media announcing the existence of “fake news” — when itself demonstrates multiple instances of “fake news” — actually drives more attention towards these YouTubers.
This, in itself, is an excellent reason for Democrats to put the Clinton operatives — who now control the DNC and state committees — out to pasture. They seriously harm the image of the Democratic Party and provide the Trump forces with too much undeserved counter-attack capability.
They also debilitate and demean the voice and message of heartfelt progressives who for decades have introduced many great ideas into mainstream society. These progressives, myself included, thus lose standing when we get grouped with the Readers Digest-type Democrats who are supported by the same neocons who brought us the War on Iraq and continuing Middle East turmoil. Clinton politics are not left politics!
2) The “patriot” YouTubers conflate PizzaGate and PedoGate and try to pin this onto Clinton operatives and other high-powered elite politicians and government officials. Many theorize Guantanamo is being used to imprison these perpetrators. They theorize white knight Trump is aiming to arrest them all. They even track plane flights where transponder codes go blank, thinking they are transporting those secretly indicted.
Perhaps this is why Democratic leadership has recently begun to emphasize human trafficking as a major issue of public concern. Presently, both right wing GOPwingers and Readers Digest Democrats compete to steal the high ground on an issue that normally should be perceived by everyone, regardless of political party, as important.
3) The “patriot” YouTubers also sow the seeds of distrust — much of it legitimate — aimed at the monopolized media, government officials and the various spy agencies. The problem here is too often they are correct on this. Today, we’re more likely to get a CIA-Pentagon influenced report from the main media rather than a true story resulting from solid journalism. Trump’s bombing the Syrian airport, the MOAB big bomb drop in Afghanistan and the recent Nunes memo controversy being prime examples.
When you add it together you’ll find these YouTube “patriots,” many of whom often intertwine religion with their broadcasts, see themselves as lieutenants in Trump’s secret army and that Trump came into power as a representative of God in order to clean house.
Astonishingly, they keep a blind eye when it comes to Trump’s personal fortune, how his actions in reality favor only the wealthy and how his cabinet is stacked with billionaires and generals who’d be perfectly happy with The United Police States of America. They’ve got Clinton masked as the only true threat when, in fact, it is both Clinton and Trump who are the true threats to world peace, labor policies friendly to workers health care, the environment and so on.
Indeed, America has become an oligarchy (see 2014 Princeton Study on Oligarchy) and it is a good cop (D) vs. bad cop (R) duopolistic form of government, with main media now running interference. Hello to perpetual war, income inequality and worldwide poverty as a kept condition!
The only reason the aforementioned YouTube presenters are able to continue is they are able to present too much truth into their otherwise slanted right-wing opinions. Thus, they gain followers.
How To Solve The Quagmire
These days you can no longer rely on information from the main media and it is imperative you question and verify virtually everything you learn on YouTube.
There is, however, a way for finding truth in media: Follow the Twitter accounts of current and former investigative journalists, authors and analysts and monitor what they and their colleagues are writing about. Often you can even interact with them. Couple this with news trends, compare for reference and greater understanding. If you are going to quote a news story always search to find the strongest reporting on the subject.
Finally, it’s the thinking of true progressives — who sadly and too often get miscast into the Clinton camp (again, Clinton is not left!) — who represent the best approaches to a fair and reasonable government. These progressives also represent the only viable threat to the selfish oligarchy which has ruled America since Reagan-Bush.
Do not be fooled by YouTubers who pose Trump as a savior. He is among the very worst of the greedy few! There may be a swamp of struggling creatures trying to find their way at the bottom, but there exists a filthy cesspool within the mindset of those who view themselves as on top of the world.
PS: The very first step for finding a cure for a better and less divisive society, a fair society, is to imagine what is in the heart of the person who attends Bernie Sanders rallies. Do you think anyone depicted in the above photograph of a Bernie Sanders speech is a bad person? I don’t. Join them! | https://medium.com/@m-weddle/readers-digest-democrats-enhance-trumps-counter-attack-capability-2e7763b37559 | ['Michael Weddle'] | 2019-02-07 17:38:39.891000+00:00 | ['2016 Election', 'Media', '2020 Election', 'Democrats', 'Republicans'] |
Charging Into a Greener Future: Optimizing Battery Life in Cruise’s All-Electric, Autonomous Fleet | Today, with fewer cars on the road, we’re getting a real-world look at the impact of fewer tailpipe emissions. In the San Francisco Bay Area, carbon dioxide emissions have decreased by roughly 20% and nitrogen dioxide emissions by roughly 40%. It’s a stark reminder that small actions on a large scale can make a big impact.
At Cruise, we are committed to transforming transportation and making a positive impact on the environment with our zero-emissions fleet of self-driving vehicles. In California, transportation accounts for over 40% of total emissions, 70% of which come from light-duty passenger vehicles.
We’re proud to be the only self-driving company to not only operate an entire fleet of all-electric vehicles, but do so with 100% renewable energy. That’s why we’re excited to share our plans on how to further reduce the harmful impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by optimizing the battery life of our electric vehicles.
Battery life optimization reduces carbon emissions from battery manufacturing
Every Cruise electric vehicle (EV) is equipped with a high-voltage, lithium-ion battery that powers our vehicles and autonomous hardware. While our vehicles produce zero direct tailpipe emissions on the road, EV battery production does emit GHG emissions. It is estimated that lithium-ion battery manufacturing produces between 61–106 kg CO2-equivalent/kWh battery capacity. For a single EV battery, that’s the equivalent annual CO2 absorption of 200–300 trees.
One way Cruise will further reduce our long term emissions is by increasing our battery lifespans. This will ensure that fewer batteries need to be manufactured, and thus help us reduce overall battery waste. Here are three ways we intend to optimize our fleet’s electric vehicle batteries to expand their lifespan.
Demand-dependent charge level
One of the major factors that drives battery deterioration is the maximum charge level. In many ways, a battery can be viewed as an elastic band. Charging the battery is similar to stretching the elastic band, where potential energy is stored in the system. Charging the battery to the maximum charge level is like stretching the elastic band as far as it can go — significant energy is stored in the system, but the overall strain is higher as well. Repeatedly charging the battery to the highest level will more rapidly deteriorate the battery.
We will optimize battery life by matching the charge level to the service demand. In the future, we’ll efficiently take our passengers to their destinations without charging our batteries more than necessary.
Demand-dependent charge rate
Batteries can be charged at different rates using a direct current fast charger or a slow charging system. Continual fast charging causes additional strain to the lithium-ion battery, which can accelerate battery deterioration. Depending on the demand and the needs of the business, we will optimize our charge rate to increase overall battery life. If we want to charge our vehicles quickly, we’ll use a direct-current fast charger to fully charge our vehicle in about one hour. If we don’t need to charge so quickly, we’ll use a slower charging system that will fully charge the vehicle over multiple hours.
Reduced power draw
Our batteries power both the vehicle and our autonomous system which includes sensors, computers and other components. As a result, vehicle-level power draw for our autonomous systems plays an important role in overall battery life. Lower power consumption within our vehicles means we can travel more miles with the same amount of energy, which extends the life of our batteries and reduces the amount of electricity we consume. We keep improving our AV power consumption by ensuring our AV hardware system conducts real-time, safety-critical sensing and perception tasks in an energy efficient way.
We will also practice smart fleet management with intelligent routing. Since we manage our AVs as one fleet, we’ll work to reduce miles in which we’re not carrying any passengers and avoid high traffic areas or steep grades to ensure we’re limiting our overall power draw. Together, these practices will help our batteries last for many years.
Second-life applications and battery recycling reduce waste
As EV demand grows, it is anticipated that by 2030 the world will generate 2 million metric tons of used lithium-ion batteries, with less than 5% of these batteries being recycled. At Cruise, we strive to keep our EV batteries out of landfills once we can no longer utilize them in our fleet. We are exploring second-life applications for our batteries as stationary energy storage systems and are also investigating methods for best recycling our batteries when it is not possible to find a second-life use.
By finding second-life applications and recycling our spent batteries, we’ll continue to shrink our annual GHG emissions footprint and reduce our reliance on the scarce natural resources that go into battery production.
Expanding public access to sustainable transportation
Cruise is committed to delivering a self-driving service that is environmentally sustainable. We started by choosing to have an all-electric fleet and powering that fleet with 100% renewable energy. As we roll out our service in San Francisco, we’ll implement additional sustainable methods to reduce our carbon footprint, one of which is optimizing our battery’s life. By utilizing the battery optimization methods mentioned above, we expect to increase the lifetime of our EV batteries by 50% or more. This would decrease our annual contribution of battery production GHG emissions by 30%.
Efforts like these, alongside our work to expand our charging network across San Francisco, are all part of our efforts to expand the public’s access to sustainable transportation alternatives and speed the transition from single-occupant, gasoline-powered cars to Cruise’s shared, all-electric, self-driving service. This evolution in transportation will make our roads safer and our air cleaner while giving people more time and better access, one self-driving Cruise at a time.
To learn more about our vision for the future, visit our website. | https://medium.com/cruise/charging-into-a-greener-future-optimizing-battery-life-in-cruises-all-electric-autonomous-fleet-2314810e1e98 | ['Ken R. Ferguson'] | 2020-07-06 21:16:26.547000+00:00 | ['Vision', 'Transportation', 'Renewable Energy', 'Self Driving Cars', 'Sustainability'] |
It happened abruptly. He’s in the bargaining phase. | It happened abruptly. He’s in the bargaining phase.
If I’m good, she will get better.
Photo by Nyana Stoica on Unsplash
He puts his dish in the sink. He thinks about it. Then he puts his dish in the dishwasher. He puts more dishes in the dishwasher.
He puts his shoes away without asking. I see it and I know what’s happening.
I tell him what a good job he’s doing. What a good boy he is. What a big help he is.
I’m not quite sure how to say the other thing.
That him putting dishes in the dishwasher won’t cure her.
Him putting dishes in the dishwasher will just make it slightly easier for me to turn the dishwasher on.
That’s all it means.
It’s not a tally. There’s no number of chores he can do that will equal a cure for cancer.
It hurts to realize that.
It hurts to realize how powerless you are.
When you expect the world to be pointy, sharp, and meaningful, and instead find out there’s just a dull ache the whole way through. That things just keep happening, and when things are dark, you just find glimmering embers in the dark and fan them.
And hope they turn into flames.
Warm fires to sit around. | https://medium.com/are-you-okay/it-happened-abruptly-hes-in-the-bargaining-phase-fce47e8e40a3 | ['Lisa Martens'] | 2019-09-27 12:55:21.192000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Short Story', 'Family', 'Fiction', 'Life'] |
Content Consumption, a Plague in the New World. | The more intentional we become to the content we choose to consume, the more we would connect with the world around us. The internet isn’t the world we live in, it is only a fragment of it.
These days we are swimming in the lake of content. You open Instagram in the morning and you gradually start drowning in the overwhelming tides of people’s perspective.
Everybody has an opinion about something and everybody has learned the art of grabbing your attention with impeccable graphical illustrations.
Yesterday, I read that comparing myself to another person is dangerous, today I saw that it is an ingredient for growth. Excuse me, I am a little confused. What is the truth and what is the lie?
It is almost as if people no longer care about what they say but they are so captivated by the ideology of saying something and the desire to be heard.
Long ago, publishing your reasoning and thought took a lot of processes but now we are all publishers and we can write stories according to our views and values at any time.
It’s exhausting. Consuming content is exhausting because we are evolving to the stage where it is beyond choice. You don’t choose what you see on the internet, you just see it.
Even if you tailor your page to follow specific people, you would still be bombarded by ads and content shared by people in your community. Oh! I didn’t forget the explore page.
I used to think that creating content was hard work, but man! Consuming content is stressful. The fact that you are constantly being exposed to the world’s opinion makes it a little complicated to hear your own thoughts.
And yes! I feel like a hypocrite for typing this because this is content as well. I am most likely going to post this and maybe right now you are feeling overwhelmed reading it. So how can you and I consume content feeling less overwhelmed?
I sorta paused while typing this, expecting to hear your response. I will go right away and drop my opinion on the matter. I definitely would like to read yours.
1. Be intentional about the content you consume. This is pretty hard in our world but it is still possible. I think the key is to focus on what is relevant to you and spend your time there.
2. You don’t have to consume all the content on the internet, you can't don’t bother trying. You cant consume everything. You cant be active everywhere. Choose your castle and build your fort there. Simply put, pick a struggle.
3. Schedule time for the internet. The internet is your friend and it can also be your enemy. It all depends on whether you choose to be a master or a slave. Even if you work on the internet, there is something called closing hours. Find a time daily to be active online and create ample time to be completely inactive. You need time to consume the content generated by your mind.
The more intentional we become to the content we choose to consume, the more we would connect with the world around us. The internet isn’t the world we live in, it is only a fragment of it. | https://medium.com/@dianaufuah/content-consumption-a-plague-in-the-new-world-f62d6ae18b3a | ['Diana Ufuah'] | 2020-12-26 18:05:22.667000+00:00 | ['Plague', 'Content', 'Writing', 'Lifestyle', 'Internet'] |
Estate Jewelry: Dead Cromwell Edition | Estate Jewelry: Dead Cromwell Edition
Hi all, it’s auction time! And I know this piece isn’t jewelry, but it’s such a fascinating bit of history that I have to include it: It’s the coffin plate of Oliver Cromwell, the former Lord Protector of England.
Cromwell died on September 3, 1658. He was given a funeral fit for a king, but because his body had been badly embalmed, it started to decompose (“It purged and wrought through all,” ew), so a life-like effigy of Cromwell was created to lie in state instead. His actual body was interred in Westminster Abbey weeks before the official state funeral (on November 23, 1658) took place, and the preparation of both his body and his coffin followed the orders of the Privy Council: “His Highness Corps being embalmed, with all due rites appertayneing thereunto, and being wrapped in Lead, There ought to be an Inscripcion in a plate of Gold [Sotheby’s notes that this does not necessarily mean actual gold, but instead any gilded metal] to be fixed upon his Brest before he be putt into the Coffin. That the Coffin be filled with odours, and spices within, and Covered without with purple Velvett, and handles, Nayles, and all other Iron Worke about it, be richly hatched with Gold.” (Order Book of the Privy Council, 14 September 1658, quoted in Cromwell’s Head [2008] by Jonathan Fitzgibbons, pages 37–38).
The piece on auction is the actual “plate of Gold” that was placed on Cromwell’s breast and buried with him. It didn’t stay there long, however…
After the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, anyone who had participated in the trial and execution of Charles I was rounded up and executed. Three of the men involved — including Cromwell — had already died previously (how dare they!), so their bodies were exhumed for posthumous execution (that’ll show ‘em!). Cromwell’s body was disinterred in January 1661 by James Norfolke, a Serjeant of the House of Commons. Norfolke found the plate resting on Cromwell’s chest in a case of lead, and kept it. The plate was then passed down through his and various other families, and it’s now up for sale in the Sotheby’s “English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations” auction in London today.
The plate is made of gilded copper, and engraved with a Latin inscription that lists the dates of his birth, inauguration as Lord Protector, and death, as well as the Arms of Cromwell’s government, the Protectorate. It has a fairly low estimate of $13k-20k; auction houses tend towards conservative estimates on one-of-a-kind historical items such as this, because it’s impossible to predict how much someone may (or may not) be willing to pay for history.
Macabre side note: Cromwell’s exhumed corpse (and those of his two fellow already-dead regicides) was hanged, drawn and decapitated. Samuel Pepys, bless him, was there, and mentions it in passing in his diary. Cromwell’s head — which has a Wikipedia page of its own — was then stuck on a 20-foot pole above Westminster Hall, and it remained there for over 20 years until it was blown down in a storm and confiscated by a sentry, who, according to Fitzgibbons, hid it in his chimney. (You can see a photo of it, still embedded on its broken bit of pole, here.) The head was then passed down through various owners until 1960, when it was buried in an unmarked location in the ante-chapel of Sidney Sussex College (the college Cromwell himself had attended), Cambridge.
Ok, on to the jewelry!
The Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels auction taking place today in New York City is (as always) loaded with big, glam pieces, including this amazing David Webb dragon bracelet. In platinum and 18K gold with seven strands of emerald beads, the piece features a diamond-set clasp in the form of a dragon’s head, with an emerald bead crown and cabochon, oval and pear-shaped ruby accents.
This circa 1902 necklace is one of the highlights of the auction, and even though I’m not a big diamond person (unless they’re colored; colored diamonds are amazing), I like it. It’s platinum, with a center 8.91 carat marquise-shaped diamond that supports three giant pear-shaped diamond drops. The central diamond weighs in at a whopping 27.48 carats, and the stones flanking it are 15.53 and 13.08 carats. A further 6.65 carats of old European-cut diamonds line the bars supporting the drops. The piece is estimated at a trifling $2.5–3.5 million.
Skinner is also holding an auction today in Boston. “Fine Jewelry” runs the gamut from high-end diamonds to fun, oddball pieces, and this brooch, depicting a duel to the death between two beetles, is a perfect example of the latter. The beetles stand on a gold branch, and have diamond-set bodies with garnet wings and eyes. One of them is missing a rose-cut diamond. What do beetles duel about, I wonder? Perhaps one beetle disparaged the size of the other’s dung ball.
Ok, let’s just shake off the words “dung ball” and move on to some very pretty, understated earrings. By Cartier, they’re Edwardian, and feature approximately 10.50 carats of diamonds set in platinum. The pear-shaped drops are suspended from millegrained (i.e., the tiny beaded detail that runs along the outside edges of the platinum) tops in a scroll design set with old mine and old European-cut diamonds. They’re 1.25 inches long.
On Wednesday, December 10, Bonham’s in London is holding a couple of interesting auctions. The “Jewellery” auction will include this ring by the venerable (established in 1827) French jewelers Mauboussin. It’s a “crystal ball” ring, with a rock crystal dome placed above a brilliant cut diamond, and the whole thing set in yellow gold. The crystal magnifies the diamond within. I’ve seen both vintage (1960s) and contemporary versions of this ring online, but Bonham’s hasn’t provided a date for this one. What do you think? Interesting or horrible?
Also at Bonham’s London is an “Entertainment Memorabilia” sale, featuring movie and music posters, costumes and ephemera. This piece stands out: it’s a giant costume jewelry ring that was worn by Katherine Hepburn in her role as Eleanor of Aquitaine in the 1968 film The Lion in Winter. In gold metal with three unidentified-stone cabochons set alongside similarly rounded gold forms with wirework detailing, the piece comes with a photo of Hepburn on set with the ring prominently displayed on her hand, as well as other Hepburn and Lion in Winter-related ephemera.
Also on the 10th is the Christie’s “Magnificent Jewels” auction in New York. Here we have more big diamonds, and in particular a HUGE 89.23 carat certified Type IIa pear-shaped diamond that’s set in platinum. It’s listed as “estimate upon request” (otherwise known as “haaaahahahaha yeah right”), but is expected to sell for more than $10 million.
There’s also a gorgeous colored diamond available in this sale. It’s an unmounted oval-cut fancy red diamond, weighing approximately 1.42 carats, and it was sourced from Rio Tinto’s famous Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia. Over ninety percent of the world’s pink and red diamonds come from the Argyle mine, and each year the best stones are set aside for sale in the exclusive Argyle Pink Diamonds Tender. This particular stone was included in the 2013 Tender, and is estimated at $1.5–2.5 million. You can see some of the stones featured in this past October’s 2014 Tender here.
Another impressive piece is this bib necklace by Michele Della Valle (the creator of the lily of the valley necklace I featured in a previous column). Comprised of loads of sapphires in various cuts — with some circular-cut diamonds and oval-cut purple sapphires thrown in for variety — the piece is called a “bib” necklace for obvious reasons. The stones are set in 18k white gold.
The Christie’s London branch will hold their “Jewellery” auction on December 11. This sale has some interesting, less-blingy pieces, including this late 18th/early 19th century mourning ring, featuring a portrait of William Shakespeare on ivory.
Another interesting piece is this early 19th century sentimental locket ring that references Caroline of Brunswick, the former Queen of England. Caroline was queen for just a short amount of time, but her 1795 marriage to George IV (then the Prince of Wales) was a rocky one. It was an arranged marriage that neither of them were particularly thrilled about to begin with, and the pair eventually separated — although they were together long enough for Caroline to give birth to a daughter, Princess Charlotte of Wales, also in 1795. Caroline lived abroad for years, and George, despite having a long list of mistresses, had her investigated twice for adultery in the hopes of securing enough evidence for a divorce. His campaign against Caroline only served to increase her popularity with the English people, who saw George’s accusations as hypocritical. There’s a good illustrated history of their marriage here, which includes a staunchly pro-Caroline quote from Jane Austen: “Poor woman, I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a Woman and because I hate her Husband.”
This ring places a heart-shaped sapphire between an articulated padlock and key. The outside of the band is engraved “Queen Caroline of England 1820,” while the inside bears the words “Franchise et Discrétion.” 1820 was the year George III died, and Caroline returned to England to claim her rights. Her return was cheered by the English people, but her husband continued his efforts to get rid of her by trying to get a Parliamentary bill passed that would strip her of her title and annul the marriage. Circumstantial evidence was brought against Caroline to “prove” her adulterous behavior — and while it was probably true that she had flagrantly maintained a relationship with a strapping Italian soldier, the case eventually became so distasteful and unpopular that the bill was withdrawn due to a lack of support in Parliament.
Lock-and-key jewelry motifs were a very popular symbol of love and commitment during the late 18th-early 19th centuries, so combined with the 1820 date, this ring may have been created as a show of support for Caroline. Her story ends sadly, though, as she was physically barred from the doors of George’s coronation in 1821 (seriously, the man was such a turd), and died less than a month later of an abdominal illness.
Note: A BBC film about George and Caroline came out in 1996 called A Royal Scandal. It stars Susan Lynch and Richard E. Grant (with narration by Ian Richardson), and while I haven’t seen it, the image of a bewigged and scowling Grant is more than enough to make me track it down.
Also on December 11 is the “Important Jewelry” auction at Doyle New York. This brooch jumped out at me as an excellent example of the “invisible setting” technique of placing gemstones. Invisible setting means just that — there are no prongs to be seen, so how do those stones stay put? It’s actually pretty simple: Grooves or notches are cut into the base of the gemstones, allowing them to slide or fit into a metal support structure that holds them in place. With no intrusive prongs separating them, the stones can be placed flush against each other, resulting in a dense, rich area of color. The technique was developed in France in the mid-19th century, but you’ve probably seen it in the jewelry of Van Cleef and Arpels, who patented their own version of the technique — the Mystery Setting™ — in 1933.
This particular brooch features a diamond-set circular form tied with a large bow of invisibly set square, rectangular and fancy-shaped rubies. A fringe of diamond baguettes hangs from the bow. The solid carpet of raspberry color created by the invisibly set rubies is so saturated and dense it’s gorgeous.
This diamond ring is one of the higher-end pieces in the sale. It features a central 1.72 carat fancy orangy-pink diamond surrounded by 26 tiny round light pink diamonds. Eight oval and marquise-shaped diamonds finish the frame, and part of the band is pavé-set with more diamonds. The estimate is $100,000–150,000.
Sotheby’s will hold another auction, “Fine Jewels,” in London on December 16. A notable piece in this sale is this seed pearl parure, comprised of a necklace, brooch, earrings and a collier (a choker or dog-collar-style necklace). This set is interesting because it dates to the 1850s, and it was made by Tiffany & Co. Tiffany only opened in 1837, so it’s great to see an example of their early product. The auction literature also mentions that Abraham Lincoln bought a similar parure from Tiffany & Co. in 1861, which his wife Mary Todd Lincoln wore to his inauguration. You can see some photos of Mary actually wearing the set here.
Chalk this one up in the “just really pretty” category. Circa 1915, this necklace features an open scrollwork design that is set with circular- and single-cut diamonds, with three natural saltwater pearl drops. One of the smallest diamonds is missing.
Monica McLaughlin tweets at @rococopacetic. She also recently saw the exhibit “Treasures from India: Jewels from the Al-Thani Collection” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and HIGHLY recommends it. It will be up until January 25, 2015, so if you’re in the area, go! And if you’re not, click through to look at the individual pieces on display. | https://medium.com/the-hairpin/estate-jewelry-dead-cromwell-edition-545ce50b2769 | ['Monica Mclaughlin'] | 2016-06-02 05:58:41.466000+00:00 | ['Jewelry', 'Auctions'] |
Stop the commentary inside. Create a foundational energy of acceptance. | How does he look like, how does he speak? Such kinds of thoughts keep coming in our mind. We keep running the commentary inside. And these vibrations of doubts are emanated directly to the person. Situations would not be your way. They would not be in your control either. But you don’t have to get angry. And you don’t have to pretend, either. All you have to do is to stop running the commentary inside. The moment you stop your commentary, the vibrations get changed. It creates an atmosphere of acceptance. Create foundational energy of acceptance.
Are you happy with yourself? Is your inner energy calm? Does your chatter continue all day? Do you talk non-stop inside your head? Is the talk inside your head a talk of acceptance? You may be uttering sweet words and have wonderful gestures, but only you know what is the conversation you’re having inside you.
There is no effort required to be loving. There is no effort required to accept the other person. All one has to work is on the quality of the thought. If the quality of thought is poor, then you damage your own happiness. Each thought creates a chain of many other thoughts.
There are always two thoughts parallelly running in your head. One thought, which is the thought of acceptance. The other is thought of, let’s say rejection. And these thoughts are basically a part of your true nature.
So, these two thoughts are trying to oppose each other. One thought says to act and the other thought may say, to not act. One thought could be a loving thought other could be thought of hatred. These parallel thoughts which negate each other are the tendency of a human mind.
One thought could be thought of jealousy, the other could be thought of appreciation. On a daily basis, try to practice correcting your thought. A thought which is more loving in nature. A thought which is more accepting in nature. By practicing this, you will see a shift in the quality of your thoughts, and thereby, you will be able to create more happiness. This shift will stop blocking your own happiness.
So, maintain awareness of the quality of your thoughts the whole day. You have always two choices to make inside you. A choice of an angel or a choice of a devil inside you. What would you like to choose? And this choice determines the quality of your life. And it also brings more happiness and more peace within. | https://medium.com/@poonamwow/stop-the-commentary-inside-create-a-foundational-energy-of-acceptance-1112b4bc1ed0 | [] | 2021-05-20 03:44:05.859000+00:00 | ['Thoughts And Insight', 'Positive Energy', 'Mindset', 'Mindset Shift', 'Acceptance'] |
The rise of America’s fascist paramilitaries | This is an edited version of an article I originally posted on my personal blog during the summer of 2019. I’m republishing it now because of how relevant it is to the country’s current risk of political violence.
In a fascist shift, the state always forms a paramilitary group so that political violence can be carried out without the government being held accountable. It’s predictable that when this process started to happen in America, our version of Hitler’s Brownshirts and Mussolini’s Blackshirts would originate from America’s instruments of imperialism.
With the rise of Blackwater during the War on Terror, the Bush administration gained a private mercenary company that came to function as a paramilitary group. Blackwater’s contractors carried out acts of unprovoked violence against innocent people that American troops wouldn’t have been able to commit without intense scrutiny being put upon the U.S. government itself, and Blackwater’s operators have been able to continue their company under a different name since its crimes were exposed. Blackwater’s victims have extended not just to the foreign battlefields of American imperialism, but to the crisis zones in America that capitalism has created; Blackwater’s forces patrolled the streets of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and there’s evidence that they engaged in aggressive violence against the city’s population.
Since then, Blackwater (now called Academi) has been getting involved in the Trump administration’s wars against Syria and Venezuela, and another mercenary company called TigerSwan has been profiting off of crises like the 2017 hurricanes and the struggle at Standing Rock. Violent class confrontations, climate change-created natural disasters, and the demand for private mercenary companies to get involved in America’s wars will most certainly all increase in the coming years, and with them will come the proliferation of these uniquely capitalist and imperialist American paramilitaries. But they’re just one part of the fascist thug class that’s emerged in the United States.
The rise of private armies like Blackwater has been tied in with the rise of the vigilante far-right militias, and these two categories of armed fascist groups represent a similar threat to the safety of America’s marginalized people.
Radical right-wing American militias, whose numbers reached a record high in 2013 and have continued to rise throughout the Trump era, have gained both their symbolism and many of their members from the domestic ramifications of America’s recent wars. Veterans make up a significant amount of the membership of these militias, making for a situation where many of the country’s potential terrorists have gone through military training. America’s fascist paramilitaries also derive their iconography from recent military culture; militia members typically adorn their cars with military-style grilles, grow beards in the same vein as the ones that male U.S. soldiers often sport, and wear outfits that imitate army gear.
As the artist Nate Powell has observed, all of these aspects of the aesthetics of American fascists are thematically connected to the aesthetics of the War on Terror. “Active duty personnel in the 21st century almost exclusively wear combat fatigues,” wrote Powell in his cartoon from this year titled About Face: Death and surrender to power in the clothing of men. “Even officer workers and higher-ranking officers. While I read this as extending uniformity to its logical conclusion, it’s a stylistic shift that seems to entertain a stunted child’s play-acting fantasy. Accompanying this ‘forever war’ dress-standard is the adoption of a distinctly paramilitary aesthetic, most strikingly visible in the presence of facial hair, trickling down from allowances made for special forces (and accompanying private mercenary units, which often outnumber actual military forces) for operations in the Middle East, Central America, and Africa.
“At its core, this [imitation of military aesthetics in fascist militias] is a child’s power fantasy finally enacted in adulthood,” concluded Powell, “speaking only the language of power, the intellectual crudeness of reaction, contrarianism, opposition… Aggrieved, insecure white Americans with an exaggerated sense of sovereignty have officially declared their existence as above the law, consistent with a long tradition of acting and living above it… These are the future fascist paramilitary participants and their ushers-take them seriously.”
By identifying themselves with the symbols of American empire, these militia members have declared that they’re going to uphold the violent legacy of the empire after it implodes in on itself. As the dollar moves towards collapse and American influence declines around the globe, in the next decade the U.S. will likely see a massive contraction of its global military forces-one that results in the U.S. government using its military power to try to control its own population amid an economically and environmentally unstable new era. When Trump or an authoritarian successor carries out a violent crackdown to quell America’s coming period of unrest, the civilians who will be on the side of this crackdown are the fascist militia members.
It’s these groups which have already symbolically merged with the police and the military, and which will act in lockstep with whatever actions that the government’s official military forces take to control the population. As fascist paramilitaries always do, the militia members have lately been functioning as enforcers of the political agenda of the far right, with militias policing the border, detaining undocumented people, and using threats of violence to support a recent climate bill boycott from Republican legislators in Oregon. The country’s destabilization in the coming years will cause them to act far more boldly, and to do so with increasing impunity as leaders like Donald Trump work to enable them.
The future of America’s fascist paramilitaries could resemble the paradigm of state-sanctioned right wing-death squads that proliferated under regimes like the one of Augusto Pinochet, whose image has ominously become a favorite symbol of solidarity among modern fascist sympathizers. The recent increases in hate crimes like the Christchurch shooting and the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre are preludes to a violent new era that far-right extremists want to create, one where the right’s political opponents and the elements of “degeneracy” are made submissive by routine acts of terror.
Both through open calls for violence and through racist dog whistles meant to appease the white supremacists in his base, Trump is normalizing the language that these terrorist groups use to gain encouragement and legitimacy. “We’re taking care of ourselves for a change folks,” Trump said in a speech from last year.
“But radical Democrats want to turn back the clock…for the rule of corrupt, power-hungry, globalists,” he continued. “You know what a globalist is? You know what a globalist is? A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much. And you know what, we can’t have that. You know they have a word. It sort of became old-fashioned. It’s called a nationalist, and I say really, we’re not supposed to use that word. You know what I am? I’m a nationalist, okay? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist. Nothing wrong. Use that word. Use that word.”
The fascist paramilitary leaders who don’t need to speak so codedly are relatively low profile provocateurs like Gavin McInnes, the founder of the hate group the Proud Boys. There are moments from McInnes’ online show where he states the following:
We will kill you. That’s the Proud Boys in a nutshell… Like Bill the Butcher and the Bowery Boys, we will assassinate you… If you’re wearing a MAGA hat and some guy with a slightly punk demeanor says, ‘Hey, are you … pro-Trump?’ choke him. Trust your instincts… Don’t listen to what he has to say, choke him… Can you call for violence generally? ‘Cause I am… Fighting solves everything. We need more violence from the Trump people… Trump supporters: Choke a motherfucker. Choke a bitch. Choke a tranny. Get your fingers around the windpipe… Get a fucking gun… Get ready to blow someone’s fucking head off… Get in trouble. Get arrested. Get fired. They can’t kill us all.
We can’t pretend that the capitalist power structure will protect us from fascist violence. The police in America have historically aligned with white supremacists, and this tendency has continued in recent years as police have refused to intervene during moments like the outbreak of Nazi violence in Charlottesville. White supremacists have been successfully working to infiltrate police departments for many years, with the recent revelations of racist and violent social media posts from Philadelphia police officers providing insight into the intentions of these ideologically driven law enforcement operatives.
Law enforcement is complicit in the rise of the fascist paramilitaries because in a capitalist society, law enforcement is the instrument behind the violence that the state uses to oppress marginalized groups. During a shift towards fascism, the police naturally become part of the paramilitary presence, just as capitalism as a whole naturally transitions into fascism. The police departments, the private mercenary companies, the military, and of course the immigration police all basically share the political agenda of the right-wing militias.
This is why we must reject liberal dogma that treats the police as allies, and accept the fact that we’re on our own when it comes to defending ourselves from the threat that the fascist paramilitaries pose. This entails getting involved in groups like the Socialist Rifle Association, is a non-militia organization that seeks to educate nonwhites, women, LGBT people, and other threatened groups about how to prepare themselves for when the bigots become violent. The cops aren’t who will keep us safe. As one clip from the SRA says: “We keep us safe.”
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If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pinch during late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here: | https://medium.com/@rainershea612/the-rise-of-americas-fascist-paramilitaries-316ea5af676f | ['Rainer Shea'] | 2020-11-04 21:49:58.023000+00:00 | ['Donald Trump', 'Violence'] |
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