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Tree Trimming Guide for Property Owners | Trees that surround your yard, side of your home, or even your commercial space can amplify the beauty of your property tremendously. From providing ample shade to using its trunk for a tire swing or a hammock, trees can offer plenty of benefits, alongside memories and beauty.
However, for them to increase the longevity of your landscape and to bring out the aesthetic beauty of your property, it is essential to ensure that tree pruning and trimming are scheduled regularly.
This will not only help your trees control infestations better, but will also protect your home, car, and property from damages caused by falling branches. So, before we list out a thorough tree trimming guide, let’s have a quick look at the core reasons why tree trimming and pruning are essential.
Why is Tree Pruning and Trimming Important?
According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), trees ought to be pruned regularly, not just to maintain and improve the health of your trees, but also for safety reasons. The prime reasons include:
Safety of your property, neighbors, and pedestrians. To increase the aesthetics of your property and to improve fruit/flower production of trees. To maintain tree health and to make it stronger to withstand extreme weather conditions. Additionally, when opting to trim your trees, always seek the help of professional arborists who can guide you through the trimming and pruning process by thoroughly assessing the health of your trees and receive a complete guide on tree pruning, tree relocating, tree transplanting, tree nursery, and much more. Since the state of Florida has set specific rules for tree trimming for individual tress like mangrove, seeking the help of a certified tree service company in Tampa will help you avoid any unnecessary fines and liabilities to the state.
When should I consider trimming my trees?
Although the trimming and pruning of trees are widely dependent on the season, it is ideally recommended that you trim them at least once a year. Although, this varies depending on the species of your tree as well. Nevertheless, here are a few essential points to consider when deciding:
If your tree’s growth has reached a point that is threatening, either to your home, property, or your assets, it is time you get them pruned or trimmed for safety reasons. Your local arborist can guide you through the right method to be adopted. As a property owner, it is essential that you understand property lines and avoid your trees or plants from entering into your neighbor’s property, avoid all obstructions either for vehicles or for pedestrians, and ensure they do not cause any disturbance at intersections.
If your trees do cause any form of inconvenience to the public or your neighbors, do keep in mind that you’re violating property rights. Lastly, if your property, home, or commercial space is located around power lines, ensure that your trees do not obstruct or interfere with the power lines. You can either get in touch with a tree service company in Tampa, if you’re located in Florida, or contact your local arborists and the local utility company to help you proceed with the required trimming/pruning measures.
How can I safely trim my trees?
When you contact a tree trimming company in Tampa, like Panorama Tree Care, the arborists will personally visit your property to assess the health of your tree and recommend the right measures to be taken for its pruning or trimming. However, before scheduling an appointment, try and assess the condition of the trees yourself. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has outlined some core self-trim tips for trees, take a look:
The first and foremost step is to assess the branches of your trees. If the branches are 5 centimeters in diameter, which is smaller than two inches, you can proceed with tree pruning, either by yourself or with the help of your local arborist. If the branches are within 5 and 10 centimeters, between 2–4 inches, it gets a tad trickier. So, unless you have prior experience in tree trimming or pruning, seek the assistance of professionals to help you out. If the branches are 10 centimeters or over, which is over 4 inches, you need to contact your local arborists to guide you so they can adhere to the necessary protocols of tree trimming and seek appropriate licenses for conducting the procedure.
Best Practices For Tree Transplanting :
If you’re a property owner, transplanting your trees and shrubs is yet another way of beautifying your home/commercial space. However, while doing so, make sure that you do not risk damaging the roots of your tree. Tree relocating or tree transplanting can cause immense shock to your tree, and thus, it is always recommended that you conduct the necessary pruning or trimming a few months or even a year before intending to relocate it. This will reduce the added amount of stress for your tree.
Tree transplanting Steps: | https://medium.com/@marketing_56159/tree-trimming-guide-for-property-owners-4408bb77c9c9 | ['Aaron Hurlbert'] | 2020-02-20 06:30:08.792000+00:00 | ['Plants', 'Tree Trimming', 'Tree Care', 'Gardening', 'Trees'] |
Your Morning Routine is Bullshit | Courtesy Shutterstock
Excuses are like assholes, everyone has one. Your morning routine is bullshit and you know it.
You just make excuses.
Instead of waking up early, setting a schedule, and getting things done, you create an excuse and hit the snooze.
That’s why my routine is light years ahead of yours. | https://medium.com/@jeffclark533/your-morning-routine-is-bullshit-46e5a41a4f9 | ['Jeff Clark'] | 2020-12-15 17:04:39.753000+00:00 | ['Routine', 'Truth', 'Bullshit', 'Hustle', 'Lifehacks'] |
How to Create Double Exposure in Photoshop | Double exposure is a popular cinematic effect used in films to express two exposure in a single frame. In this post I will show how to create Double exposure in photoshop.
I chose two images to make cinematic double exposure which are Women closeup face photo as a primary image and night street as a secondary image. In this tutorial you will learn how to blend these two images perfectly.
Read More | https://medium.com/@letroot/how-to-create-double-exposure-in-photoshop-ec84631febc0 | [] | 2020-12-22 07:56:16.837000+00:00 | ['Photoshop', 'Double Exposure', 'Graphic Design'] |
Two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl: My friendship with Julian Assange | Two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl: My friendship with Julian Assange Carley Tonoli Jan 5·13 min read
Julian Assange is my friend, confidant and inspiration. He was a friend to my husband Peter and I for more than 25 years. Regardless of time and distance, he always remained at the forefront of our minds and close to our hearts. He is protective, loyal, and has always offered unending kindness and support to those who matter to him. This was not only evident in our friendships with him, but in the other close friendships he has had along the way.
Julian receives so much media attention for his role as founder of Wikileaks, together with his political and public life. As with all public figures, it seems people either want to put him on a pedestal or condemn him as a monster. Sadly, the reality of Julian as an actual person is lost in these simplistic assessments of his character and his work. This is true even more so, because, unlike many other public figures, Julian has autism spectrum disorder, which makes him even harder for many people to relate to.
Julian is a wonderful and complex person, but like all of us, he is also a flawed and fallible man. He has a brilliant mind, a generosity of spirit, intense focus, a strong sense of justice, and a passion and drive to improve the world for his fellow human beings. Likewise, Julian is beautifully flawed: he can be aloof, stubborn, and, at times, impetuous; he can be socially awkward, is a terrible dancer, always late, and very messy. Julian also has his quirks. His favourite film is the Dr Strangelove, he can go days without sleep, he can drink more milk in a day than most people I know, and, above all, he thinks outside the box in ways I haven’t seen before. At the same time, he’s surprisingly ordinary: he loves Pink Floyd, board games, and Japanese food; he’s an avid reader, and he isn’t above a bit of harmless gossip about people in our social circle.
The first time I met Julian, I visited his house with a mutual friend named Luke, who needed to help him with a server upgrade. It was the mid-1990s and at the time he hosted the Victorian arm of Suburbia.net — Australia’s first public access internet provider. From the outside, the house was just like any other boring old, white single-fronted weatherboard terrace in the leafy suburb of Hawthorn. But as soon as you crossed the threshold, you were met with the unmistakable sound of dial-up modems with their mysterious beeps, twangs, tings, pings, and, finally, a loud crash of static. Venturing down the long hallway to the far end of the house, you’d reached the dark living room and be greeted by a steel frame — one that housed at least 10 dial-up modems and a huge computer server. On any other day, Julian would be sitting in front of his monitor, the blue glow of the monitor whitewashing his already pale skin. It was often the only light in the room.
On this day, however, he greeted Luke and I at the front door. He was tall and thin, with grey-blue eyes and long silver hair, and he wore faded blue jeans with ripped knees, and a plain white dress shirt. He had such remarkable presence, but his deep voice — which has always reminded me of Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam — was soft and quiet. He gave us a clipped ‘hello’ before he turned and walked down the hallway without gesturing for us to follow. By the time we made it down the hallway to the living room, it was clear that this man was not only socially awkward, but that he was nervous about having a stranger in his home with whom he was now forced to interact with. Small talk has never been his strong point. Eventually he thawed. He became enthusiastic and animated, as he explained how he’d come to host Australia’s first ISP and his motivations for doing so. Even then, he had such a strong belief in the public’s right know about and debate actions of large institutions, and to have access to the world of information that the internet had to offer. More than that though, he wanted to promote community within the burgeoning Melbourne internet scene and bring people together to discuss and exchange ideas.
As our friendship grew over subsequent years, Julian was a major source of encouragement and support to me. To understand the true significance of this support, you need to understand a little bit about my background. I grew up in a home filled with domestic abuse. My parents had divorced when I was one-year-old and my mother had remarried a physically and psychologically abusive tyrant. These were the years where fathers couldn’t win custody and were lucky to get a weekend every other week. I was too scared of my stepfather to tell my dad about the abuse and his hands were tied regardless of his efforts to intervene. By the time I reached 12, both of my elder siblings had left home — one went straight into the state system with the other falling pregnant at 17. My mother was an alcoholic who was having an affair with her boss, and was not at all interested in raising a teenage daughter. When my stepfather finally left her, I made the call that it was time I left too. She and her new partner drank constantly, and I felt unsafe and abandoned. When I sat her down to explain that it was time for me to go, she gave me $50 for a cab. Over the ensuing years, I was in and out of halfway houses and spent periods of time homeless. By the time I hit my second year of high school, it became impossible for me to continue with formal education — especially with no guardian and no fixed address. So, I dropped out of high school and never returned.
It was a couple of years later that I met Julian. By this point I was jaded and weary. I’d been told so many times that I’d amount to nothing, that I should give up trying, and that I was a write-off. Julian never treated me that way. He made me feel like I had potential. Throughout the early years of our friendship he built up my confidence and helped me develop my talents. In those early days of our friendship, I once asked him what someone as intelligent as him saw in an outcast like me, and he told me that he wanted to be there to see what I would become. His support, encouragement, and belief in me never wavered. When I had nowhere else to go, he would let me sleep on his couch. Whenever I doubted myself, he would use more than words to convey his belief in me. Instead, he would challenge me to think and try harder, teach me things and point out how quickly I learned, and that not everyone was capable of the skill I had acquired. He gave me the encouragement to rise above my beginnings and to confront the challenges the world had set forth. In addition to encouraging me intellectually, he would support me through relationships and break-ups by always calmly reassuring me there were better things to come — often as I curled up on his couch and cried. He was my confidant, a source of sage advice, and a role model in so many ways. During the early years of our friendship, Julian was engaged in a lengthy battle for custody of his young son. After being awarded custody, he was relentless in his quest to provide the life he envisioned for his child, and to provide every opportunity available to help him reach his full potential. I would watch him as he parented his young son in such a considered and attentive fashion. He always put his son’s needs before his own. He was never too busy to take time away from his own work to help him to grow and learn, to encourage his inquisitiveness and imagination. He would read voraciously on ways to be a better parent, applying the very best research to support his son’s development. His example continues to serve as an inspiration for my own approach to parenting. I have such a clear memory of the first time Julian held my first born, sitting in a Chinese restaurant in Box Hill. As with so many parents of newborns, the opportunities for uninterrupted meals was few and far between. Julian calmly sat and cradled my tiny little newborn daughter, patiently and gently rocking her until her red-faced screams subsided.
He may be a tough nut to crack, but once you’ve become part of Julian’s circle, you’re in it for life. Several years after that initial meeting, we lost our friend Luke to suicide. Throughout this time Julian was steadfast in supporting Luke’s partner, Heather, and mother, Kim, in dealing with both the grief and the practical difficulties they faced in the wake of their loss. He was among the first to arrive at Heather and Luke’s house to help in sorting through Luke’s things, and preserving precious mementos that represented his long-time friend. He moved swiftly to secure Luke’s computers and hard-drives, preserving years of photos, personal documents and emails, and helped Heather learn how to operate and maintain Luke’s computer network, which meant so much to him. When my husband Peter lost his father, Julian dropped everything to be at his side, despite his many commitments and busy schedule. As always, he was running late, but he slipped in quietly and sat in the back row. He was sensitive to the fact we were grieving and recognised nothing he could say or do would ease the pain. Despite his clear discomfort with social situations and pleasantries, he joined us afterward for the wake, making a feeble attempt at small talk with my grandmother, and a few of the other socially awkward people in the room. It meant a lot to both of us.
Earlier this year, I lost Peter to suicide. Despite the 14 years that has passed since I last saw Julian with my own eyes, he was among the first to express his condolences and deep sorrow at the loss of one of his closest friends. He told me how he wished he could be there with me and my children as we said goodbye. Despite not being able to communicate with me in anything but single sentence messages, he has let me know he will always do whatever he can. When I wrote to him in the weeks after Peter’s death, and asked him to once again act as my confidant, as a silent witness to my pain, grief, fears for my children, and frank reflections on my 20 years of marriage, he sent a simple but clear message: ‘keep writing’. In the seven months since Peter’s death, I have written him numerous letters, thousands of words, shared my desperate longing to change the past, spilled out every thought and feeling onto the page, no matter how dark or bleak, with absolutely no filter. In every letter, I implore him to tell me to stop if it all gets too much, to ask for a break when his own struggles are too much to bear, but he never does. Even in these past months, while he has faced his extradition trial, in the battle of his life, he has continued to shoulder the weight of my grief and selfish need for help. Through this love and support, he feels as present as ever.
The last time Peter and I saw Julian was at our wedding, in the April of 2006. His tall thin figure was clad in hastily assembled wedding attire. He was entirely too conspicuous as he strode across the lawn to take a seat. Once again, he was running late, arriving just as I was beginning to walk down the aisle. Later, when the formalities were done, he beamed as he offered us his congratulations, danced with me in his stiff and demure way — not unlike a teenage boy at his high school dance lessons. That night, he shared his vision for a new project, one that he believed would change the world for the better. That project was Wikileaks.
Weeks later, when we returned from our honeymoon, we spoke with him about the project at greater length over the phone. He was looking for volunteers to help him get it off the ground. He spoke so passionately and eagerly about what a difference Wikileaks could make. He believed that if the public knew about the grievous injustices governments committed in their name, they would surely be outraged and demand better. Peter and I had a long conversation following the discussion with Julian that day. We both supported the idea, but we could see the potential risks involved too. Governments and corporations would surely not take this lying down. The whole idea was premised on his faith in the ability of people to pay attention, demand change, and to back each other when the wealthy, elite, and, corrupt moved to suppress the truth. Peter and I had a young family, and despite our support for the idea, we weren’t in a position to devote ourselves to the cause in the way we’d have wanted to. We felt it was too much to risk. But one idea always stayed with me from the conversation we had with Julian that day. It was that information is power, because the decisions we make as citizens are only as good as the information that inform those decisions.
Coupled with Julian’s unending encouragement, that idea has motivated and inspired me throughout my career. Shortly after that conversation, I decided to enrol in a Communications degree, majoring in Journalism. Afterall, I thought, if I couldn’t support him with his project, perhaps I could still make a difference by providing people with the information that was so crucial to their decision making and engagement in civic life. As I raised my children, and completed my degree, the journalistic landscape began to change. Jobs for fulltime staff journalists became few and far between, and freelancing became a precarious and cut-throat market. I realised I couldn’t give my children the time and attention that I wanted and develop a career in an industry that had begun to prize speed and frequency over quality and depth. I began to see that the partisan nature of so many publications would compromise my ability to generate the kind of journalism that would stay true to the values of honesty, transparency, and hostility towards bias in service of the truth.
It was around this time that both Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden were engaged in grave battles for their freedom. Together with Julian’s own struggle, this made it clear that the championing of whistle-blowers was necessary to ensure the kind of transparency needed for the public to be able to make informed decisions. In turn, this inspired me to begin a Masters degree in applied ethics. My thesis focused on the US Drone War in Pakistan and the veil of secrecy afforded to governments by emerging military technologies — a project that was inspired by drone program whistleblowers like Lisa Ling and Cian Westmoreland. I completed my Masters in 2017, and am currently completing my PhD. My current thesis looks at how emerging technologies discourage us from engaging in moral and political life, influence our moral and political sensibilities, and allow our governments to further conceal the heinous acts they carry out in our name.
When I think about my life today, I often feel like it’s not too shabby for the kid who was a homeless high school dropout and didn’t even make it past Year 8. I still think about that teenage girl who kept being reminded she would amount to nothing. But I especially think about the inspiration, encouragement, and support that Julian gave me every step along the way. Above all else, I remember his absolute conviction that I would amount to more than I could have imagined. It was his conviction that gave me the motivation and courage to try. I remember the countless conversations where Julian would gently encourage me to keep going, and convey his faith in my ability to think critically and deeply about things. Julian was never comfortable speaking about emotions, so on the occasions that he did tell you that you mattered — in his uniquely clumsy way — you knew that he meant it.
I have remained a silent witness to Julian’s pain and suffering for too many years. Like many of our other friends, I have remained quite because I wanted to respect the tiny amount of privacy Julian has left. At any stage, during the years of relentless and deliberate character assassination, he could have asked us to speak out in support of him, but his first concern has always been to protect his loved ones from the fallout of his speaking truth to power. Instead, it was me who asked for his blessing to write this article, because I can no longer stand by while he is dehumanised and demonised for political gain. Julian has given up so much in his belief that we all deserve greater transparency and accountability from our governments. He has sacrificed the chance to have close relationships with his children and to watch them grow up. He has sacrificed his mental and physical health, and his freedom. He has spent more than one-fifth of his life in involuntary detention. He has missed out on so many important milestones and moments, both in his own life and in the lives of those he loves.
I was filled with trepidation as I monitored my Twitter feed last night (AEDT) , like thousands of others, waiting for news of Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s verdict in Julian’s US extradition hearing. The Judge’s remarks, conveyed via tweet-streams from journalists covering the court proceedings, initially seemed to suggest she would rule in favour of extradition. And yet, she didn’t. Instead, she decided that ‘Julian the person’, was more important than ‘Julian the political pawn’. It was such a massive relief to see Judge Baraitser recognise the humanity in Julian. To hear that she shares in my own very real fear that we may lose Julian to suicide if he is extradited. Despite not agreeing with several aspects of her ruling, it was heartening to see her value Julian’s humanity and his life, over politics.
No one is perfect or one-dimensional. Julian is a flawed person. He can be frustrating, quirky, and more than a little odd, but aren’t we all in our own way? So, for all his flaws, please recognise that he is also human. He has made such substantial sacrifices because he believed in the value of humanity, of community, and of protecting the integrity of the public institutions that ensure our flourishing. He believed in the people. He believed Wikileaks would help the people see the injustice and corruption committed in their name. He believed that once they knew the truth, they would rise up and help him make the world a better place. He was there when we needed him to uncover the truth, will you be there for him when he needs you? | https://medium.com/@carleytonoli/two-lost-souls-swimming-in-a-fishbowl-my-friendship-with-julian-assange-f6326ba19c30 | ['Carley Tonoli'] | 2021-01-05 10:35:29.279000+00:00 | ['US Politics', 'UK Politics', 'Australian Politics', 'Wikileaks', 'Julian Assange'] |
Streamline: A super-efficient branching and CI strategy | Mate, we all use GitFlow.
Indeed. And we all hate it sometimes, too.
How many times have you been on a project where your Pre-Prod and Staging environments have been so far behind your latest code sitting in the develop branch that you end up running demos from your Dev environment, or even on localhost ?
Here are a few examples of GitFlow-related “…said nobody ever”s:
“I really love moving my code around between develop , feature , bugfix , release , hotfix , master …” “Oh, you merged into develop ? Me too! I think our code will work together perfectly and not require any further testing.” “There’s a critical bug in Production? No problem. I am super-familiar with the hotfix pipeline and can guarantee you, Mr. Stakeholder, that it will work first time.”
Sometimes GitFlow is necessary. But perhaps there’s something better for the many, many times that it just felt like overkill and overhead?
Ned Stark says it best…
Mate, how about Trunk-based development?
Trunk-based development (https://trunkbaseddevelopment.com) is simpler than GitFlow, agreed! In fact, it provided the inspiration for Streamline. However, it lacks a robust strategy for continuous integration, and can be simplified even further with a few tweaks.
Streamline is an attempt to have the best of both worlds: simplicity and production-level robustness.
Come on then, how does it work?
The core concepts of Streamline are in the branching and continuous integration (CI) strategies. Continuous deployment (CD) will be covered in a later section.
Branching
To get started, you only need two types of branch:
One that represents the ‘single source of truth’, e.g. master or trunk
or One that represents ‘new code’, e.g. feature
For now, we will call the first branch trunk .
The branch type feature can be split into multiple branch naming conventions if desired, e.g. bugfix as well as feature , but ultimately this name will be the only difference between them.
Here’s the basic workflow:
A developer branches off trunk to feature/excellent-thing The developer makes their changes on feature/excellent-thing Once complete, the developer raises a pull request back into trunk Special and exciting CI happens (more detail later) The pull request is fast-forward merged (more detail later)
…That’s it! As you can probably guess, we will be relying on the CI to keep code quality high.
Continuous Integration
The CI process must have two key components:
An automated pipeline that is triggered when a pull request is raised or updated Merging the pull request into trunk is prevented until the following conditions are met:
The automated pipeline has passed
The feature branch is up-to-date with trunk
Both of these conditions are critical to the success of Streamline as an approach. Let’s explore each of them in more detail…
First merge condition: The CI pipeline has run and passed
The CI pipeline should: | https://medium.com/@jbradyaudio/streamline-a-super-efficient-branching-and-ci-strategy-ffa864aa99d4 | ['Joe Brady'] | 2019-05-16 13:36:43.477000+00:00 | ['Continuous Deployment', 'Gitflow', 'Continuous Integration', 'Continuous Delivery', 'Branching Strategy'] |
4 Ways to Take Control of Your Mental Health Today! | 4 Ways to Take Control of Your Mental Health Today!
Photo by dorota dylka on Unsplash
Life is a never-ending cycle of things to do. We bounce from one event to another. Often, fighting for the time to even take an unbothered breath. It can be overwhelming, and if not careful, the stress of life can start impacting aspects of our life and inadvertently those around us. It is not uncommon for us to bottle up the emotional baggage of our days and allow them to pile up in the corner, hoping one day it does not erupt. In most cases, we are too late to recognize when our mental state has gone astray. It is imperative that we strive to maintain a quality of mind to handle all of life’s unpredictability. It starts with you.
Mindfulness
Yes, ole reliable mindfulness! It’s touted as the miracle panacea for all mental ailments, but I believe we have forgotten the real benefit being mindful allows us. That component boiled down to its essence is s p a c e.
Picture this; someone cuts you off in traffic. You feel the boiling rage of several volcanoes erupt. Your chest begins to tighten, your face might even feel a surge of heat, and you’re left with the urge to throw up a couple of notable fingers.
We’ve all been there, maybe some more than others. Now, at this moment, you’re on your way to work. This extraordinary event happens only 5 minutes before your arrival, where you have multiple deadlines and a vast amount of responsibilities awaiting you. You arrive at work, still seething, and eventually, some poor soul will inadvertently feel the effects of your morning commute for no other reason then being close to you. Now isn’t that a tragedy?
It doesn’t always have to be this way!
Here are some resources I recommend beginning with:
If you’re like me… a skeptic here is some research to showcase the wide range of benefits mindfulness can have in your life.
Research:
“Forces beyond your control can take everything you posses except one thing, your freedom to choose how to respond to a situation”- Viktor Frankl
Negative Visualization
At first glance, this might appear to be a morbid practice, but I assure you it can be quite beneficial. This practice is pulled from stoic origins and can be utilized in any one’s life in under 2 minutes tops. You don’t need to open a scroll to get the benefits. This is only intended to last mere minutes not a point of rumination and fixation.
First, visualize something in your life that is important to you. It can be your family, friends, or even your job. Then pick one and imagine that you’ve received a call that one of your family members is ill, your friends have moved away, or even you’ve received an email saying you’ve lost your job. Allow your mind to tailor the detail of the events and make it real. Now, snap back to the present moment, and you will notice your gratitude that none of those things have happened.
It’s a practice that forces us to break the loop of the hedonic treadmill. At one point in your life, you wanted everything you have currently, and now you want more things in your life. This practice forces you to appreciate what you have now.
Journaling
Maybe in your teenage years, you had a diary you kept tucked away from society. It was a sacred place where you could let out all your fears, thoughts, and worries without any fear of judgment. If you have never journaled or used a diary this might be an opportunity to minimize all your worries and fears by putting them on paper.
Journaling allows you the s p a c e to throw out all the endless rambling of your mind onto an object. When you begin to journal it forces you to process and contextualize the information. Trying writing for 5 minutes a day on whatever comes to mind. If it’s current problems in your life spend as much time as you need. You’ll come to notice over time this venting act will make your problems appear more manageable.
Exercise
Consult your doctor before taking this tidbit of advice!
Sometimes our problems cannot be solved with more thinking. If you’re like me a chronic overthinker this just might be the antidote you need to break free of your thoughts! Your brain will have no time to worry while exercising as it’ll be preoccupied with getting as much airflow in as possible. Often we forget how massively important our physical well-being can be to our mental health.
If you have spent the last 4 weeks feeling miserable and during this time you’ve been the perfect couch potato I’d bet those two are connected in some way or another.
Let those endorphins run wild with a brisk walk, or jog! It can be as little as 15 minutes even, just do something. Our ancestors were hunters and gatherers and now the majority of our day is spent in front of screens. We are messing with our physiology by not making use of our bodies. Exercise is so powerful that this Harvard study claims it can be just as effective as clinical anti-depressants. It can help neural growth, improve well-being, sleep, self-esteem and so much more. Move your body!
Take-Home
Experiment with these four tricks! Find what really works for you and really give it a chance. It can take longer than thirty days to build a habit, but you have a lifetime of being with yourself so now is the time to put your well-being first and make the changes. The results will reveal themselves! | https://medium.com/@nestorivas/4-ways-to-take-control-of-your-mental-health-today-740c2490a06b | ['Nesto Rivas'] | 2020-12-17 02:40:18.162000+00:00 | ['Mental Health Awareness', 'Wellness', 'Mental Health', 'Wellbeing', 'Psychology'] |
Foresting is driving to universities… | Dear friends,
Today we have some good news for you. You might be a bit surprised but be sure that there is always the reason behind everything.
And today we would like to introduce you Foresting Coffee Truck with a fancy name, BERRY Car.
Berry Car???
Yes, that’s correct. Berry Car… Can imagine the confusion on your face 😊
Let’s clarify what BERRY Car is.
These days are the toughest period for university students because they are having final exams. We all remember what days those FINALS were … As we are having “Foresting is rooting for your [ ]” campaigns we thought why not to support university students. So, we will visit some Korean universities and distribute coffee for free to anyone who wants coffee.
So now you know what BERRY Car is and you might wonder why we do this. But before let’s go through the history of FORESTING app development and performance.
1. Foresting Closed Beta Test!
Foresting closed beta test started in winter. Foresting conducted a total of three close-beta tests from January to March this year. Despite cold weather, the team didn’t have time to let go of cell phone from hands…
The closed beta tests involved several content creators from South Korea and abroad for better results and diversification.
People in their 20s and 30s are the most active ones in social media, so naturally, people in their 20s and 30s had the highest rate of participation in the test.
Test results!
High satisfaction level ★ ★ ★ ★
There are two reasons why satisfaction was high!
1) Interesting and fresh content
2) Ability to obtain mobile coupons as compensation for SNS activities
Today, we are presenting over 30 mobile coupons on Foresting!
Coffee coupons from Starbucks and Twosome Place, refreshing ice-cream coupons, BHC fried chicken coupons, movie coupons, and so on: everything young people like doing!
2. Foresting after the Open Beta…
At the end of April, Foresting Open Beta was released. Since it was opened to general users, not selected content creators, the amount of content on the platform has increased dramatically, but the freshness and fun have been reduced.
As the Open Beta is a test version prior to the release of the official version, the reduced user satisfaction level and complains are natural.
3. Why Foresting Goes to Universities!
Foresting is working hard every day to release its official version in August! The most important role in a stable and reliable service of the official version is the user’s voice. Foresting wants to meet people in their 20s and 30s who are the main source of fresh and interesting ideas in content creation.
Foresting wants to power up and to give inspiration!
We were wondering how we can help each other and as the final exams will start soon there is a good chance!
We will visit universities in the metropolitan area from the coming week to listen to the opinions about Foresting and to distribute refreshing coffee.
The first university to visit next week is the University of Seoul (UOS).
We are very excited about how college students react, whether the coffee tastes good and they like it.
The Foresting team will give you a live report on the university visit with BERRY Car.
Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/foresting/foresting-is-driving-to-universities-35f139bd1d09 | [] | 2019-06-16 15:30:55.648000+00:00 | ['University', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Coffee', 'Social Media'] |
Why Is Serverless the Main Battlefield in the Next Decade? | By Buchen, Alibaba Cloud Serverless Team
“Only keep going beyond can drive us forward.”
Buchen has been working in Alibaba Cloud for 10 years. Since Buchen joined Alibaba Cloud in 2010, he has participated in the R&D of the Alibaba Cloud Apsara distributed system, acted as a Batch Compute architect and Tablestore (NoSQL) R&D manager, and was deeply involved in Alibaba Cloud system R&D and product iteration. In 2016, Buchen became the R&D owner of Alibaba Cloud Function Compute and was dedicated to building a next-generation elastic and highly available serverless computing platform.
For Buchen and many experts in this field, serverless is a technical challenge to overcome in the next decade. In the serverless wave, Alibaba Cloud always stand at the forefront with the richest set of technologies and products in China. “Serverless is still at its early stage in China, so we do not dare to take it lightly. To win this battle, we need to polish our technologies and products and provide a better user experience.”
We have interviewed Buchen to explore his ideas about serverless development, technical challenges, and implementation.
Attitude About Serverless
Many predict that cloud computing will become the infrastructure of the whole society and businesses in the future. By then, cloud computing resources will be available and accessible to the general public, just like water and electricity, without the need to fully understand the underlying technicalities. For example, when we use water, we do not need to know where it comes from, how it is filtered, and how pipes are laid to transfer it. Serverless allows you to focus on application logic and do not need to care about service-related matters, including management, configuration, and O&M. Instead, you only need to pay as you go.
As you can see, serverless provides a way to turn cloud computing into the social and commercial infrastructure. It is also closer to the cloud-native approach advocated in the industry. Therefore, people would naturally use cloud computing in the serverless approach.
Developers outside China are more confident about serverless than developers in China. Many companies outside China have started their businesses based on the Lambda ecosystem. Some large enterprises in China have gradually started to use serverless tools and products. However, a large number of enterprises still wonder whether to use serverless.
Generally, there is an adaptation period after a new product emerges. After a series of serverless products emerge, users have many concerns about whether to use serverless products, whether to migrate traditional projects to the serverless architecture, and how to migrate them to the serverless architecture. Enterprises often ask questions about how to ensure the security and stability of Function Compute and whether migrating traditional projects to the serverless architecture incurs significant reconstruction costs and risks. It is reasonable that enterprises have these concerns.
We believe that these problems will be solved gradually with the development of serverless, extended function as a service (FaaS) definition, and more complete toolchain construction. In theory, problems that can be solved by technologies are not problems.
Buidling Serverless Architecture
Serverless brings attractive features, such as extreme flexibility, reduced costs, and improved development efficiency. To develop and launch businesses in traditional mode, we need team cooperation to go through code development and combination, joint commissioning, resource evaluation, testing and online environment building, and debugging, release, and O&M. In the serverless era, developers only need to develop features or functions they are responsible for and deploy them to the testing or online environment. Rather, they do not need to consider or worry about subsequent O&M work.
Generally, database services built by enterprises through ECS instances have lower availability than database services provided by cloud vendors. In addition, API gateways and data storage services provided by cloud vendors feature better performance and higher security and reliability.
Is Serverless for Everyone?
We do not recommend small enterprises build the serverless architecture themselves. This is because the core element of serverless is pay-as-you-go, that is, resources are scheduled based on the usage. During Double 11, the traffic soars to a 100-million-level concurrency. If you do not reserve server resources for such amount of traffic, you cannot schedule resources to others to use by then. If resources cannot be scheduled on demand, serverless cannot be implemented. So, we do not recommend enterprises who do not have abundant resources construct serverless capabilities themselves. However, they can use public cloud products to implement serverless.
Major vendors are confident that serverless is the final state or a way to the final state of cloud computing. This is because serverless can solve many problems, and it is more like or closer to cloud computing. In addition, no one wants to be left behind in the wave of cloud computing development. Therefore, serverless has become the main battlefield.
How Robust Are Serverless Implementations?
The robustness of serverless implementations lies in the following key factors:
Performance: This includes security, stability, and elasticity. If performance is poor, cloud computing cannot be implemented let alone serverless. Security, stability, and performance are the prerequisites for serverless implementation.
Functionality: To implement serverless, functions are indispensable. Serverless is not only FaaS. Even FaaS includes many components, such as backend as a service (BaaS), triggers, logs, monitoring, and alerts in addition to online running. Developers are willing to use serverless only when its functions meet their requirements.
Experience: The user experience is important to serverless, which includes the ease of use, stability, and security of functions, product flexibility, and toolchain integrity. In addition to the preceding three factors, I think community, ecology, and openness are also important.
What Is Function Compute?
Alibaba Cloud is one of the first public cloud vendors to launch serverless platforms in China. Its FaaS platform product is Function Compute. In terms of event triggering, supported languages, user experience, and other aspects, Function Compute has many highlights.
Event triggering: Alibaba Cloud Function Compute can be triggered by Alibaba Cloud services, such as Object Storage Service (OSS), Log Service, Message Service, Tablestore, API Gateway, and CDN. Its unique callback mechanism greatly reduces architectural and coding costs for asynchronous models.
Supported languages: Alibaba Cloud Function Compute supports mainstream development languages, such as Node.js, Java, and Python. It also supports Go, C and C++, Ruby, and Lua under custom runtime environments.
User experience: Alibaba Cloud Function Compute provides a web console and SDK. You can manage function applications in the web console or by running interactive commands.
Service mode: Functions can be managed by services and applications. A single function instance can process multiple requests concurrently, which reduces costs for computing resources.
Learn more about Function Compute at https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/doc-detail/52895.htm
Technical Challenges
To implement serverless, we need to solve a lot of problems, for example, how to quickly and smoothly migrate traditional projects to the serverless architecture, how to build the serverless architecture, how to implement better debugging in the serverless architecture, and how to reduce costs. My colleague Xu Xiaobin has described the challenges for implementing serverless in his article “The Concept and Challenges of Serverless.”
Implementing serverless on a large scale in mainstream scenarios is not easy and faces many challenges. Next, I will analyze these challenges in detail.
Challenge 1: Difficult to Make Businesses Lightweight
To enable auto scaling and pay-as-you-go, a platform must be able to scale out business instances in seconds or even milliseconds. This is challenging to the infrastructure and imposes demanding requirements on businesses, especially large business applications. If it takes 10 minutes to distribute and start an application, auto scaling cannot promptly respond to changes in business traffic.
Challenge 2: High Responsiveness Requirements for the Infrastructure
Once the instance of a serverless application or function can be scaled out in seconds or even milliseconds, the related infrastructure soon faces great pressure. The most common infrastructure is service discovery and log monitoring systems. In the past, the change frequency of instances in a cluster might be several times per hour. Now, the frequency has become several times per second. If the responsiveness of these systems cannot keep up with the evolvement of instances, the overall experience can be greatly compromised.
Challenge 3: Inconsistent Lifecycles Between Business Processes and Containers
A serverless platform relies on standardized application lifecycles to implement features such as automatic container removal and application self-recovery. In the standard container- and Kubernetes-based system, the platform can only control the container lifecycle. Therefore, business personnel must ensure that the business process lifecycle is consistent with the container lifecycle, including startup, stop, and specifications of readiness and liveness probes.
Challenge 4: Observability Must Be Improved
In serverful mode, if a problem occurs in the production environment, users naturally think of logging on to the server. In serverless mode, users do not need to worry about servers and cannot see the servers by default. When the system encounters a fault and the platform cannot automatically restore from the fault, comprehensive observability is required. If the observability in serverless mode is insufficient, users will not feel secure.
Challenge 5: R&D and O&M Personnel Must Adopt New Habits
When developers deploy their own applications for the first time, almost all of them deploy the applications on a single server or at a single IP address. This is a hard habit to break. When a serverless platform is gradually implemented, developers have to change their thinking to gradually adapt to the fact that the IP address may change at any time. They need to operate and maintain systems based on considerations of service versions and traffic.
Currently, serverless only has a framework, which has many problems to solve. That is why people wonder whether to use serverless, because they do not see sufficient successful cases. In fact, Alibaba implemented serverless during Double 11 in 2020. In addition, Alibaba Cloud has led a number of enterprises to use Function Compute to reduce their IT costs. You can learn more about our serverless implementation for Double 11 in the blog, Alibaba Cloud Achieved Large-Scale Implementation of Serverless in Core Business Scenarios
Becoming the Serverless Everyone Needs
Function Compute inference, audio and video processing, image and text processing, real-time file processing, and real-time stream processing. Function Compute has already obtained a large number of customers, including Shimo Docs, Mango TV, Sina Weibo, and Malong Technologies.
Case Study: Sina Weibo
Take Sina Weibo as an example. Function Compute handles billions of requests for Weibo per day on average. Its millisecond-level scalability of computing resources ensures a controllable latency for applications, and the number of visits does not affect the user experience when a hot event comes out. Function Compute helps Weibo continuously reduce costs in image processing. As a result, Weibo no longer needs to maintain a large number of idle servers to process surge traffic at business peak hours. Without needing to maintain complex server statuses, engineers can shift the focus on infrastructure management to cooperation with product teams to increase business value.
Case Study: MosoInk
Not only Internet companies like Sina have implemented serverless, but also new startups are joining the serverless group.
MosoInk is a high-tech company founded by some Chinese students after they graduate from colleges or universities in the United States. This company focuses on the new technology research and platform operations in the digital publishing and mobile learning fields in the mobile Internet era. With the explosive demand for online education, MosoInk has stepped up efforts to integrate high-quality course resources in the industry to continuously expand its business boundaries. However, while acquiring opportunities, the technical team has also faced unprecedented challenges.
Video processing is one of the most difficult problems encountered by the MosoInk technical team. MosoInk has to process a large number of video teaching materials every day, which involve a series of complex technical tasks such as video editing, structuring, combination, transcoding, resolution adjustment, and client adaptation. Through technical practices over the past several years, the MosoInk technical team has established a complete set of controllable video processing mechanisms by using FFmpeg and other technologies, which have supported the rapid development of the business. However, MosoInk engineers have not expected the growth rate of businesses in this year. At peak hours, the video processing requirements are dozens of times over that of previous years, which overwhelmed the existing architecture and seriously affected the user experience.
For now, MosoInk has three core requirements: reduced costs, extreme flexibility, and zero O&M. Fortunately, serverless is best at meeting these requirements. After extensive investigation on serverless services provided by Chinese cloud vendors, the MosoInk technical team believes that Alibaba Cloud Function Compute is the most suitable solution for them in video processing.
Function Compute is compatible with existing code logic and supports mainstream development languages. With these benefits, the MosoInk technical team can seamlessly migrate the code logic from the original architecture to Function Compute at low costs. Function Compute can be connected to the OSS trigger. When new video files are uploaded to OSS, the Function Compute instance is automatically enabled to start a video processing lifecycle.
By integrating serverless workflows, the MosoInk technical team can centrally orchestrate distributed tasks and concurrently process sliced large files and merge them. The team can also schedule computing resources of tens of thousands of instances in a short time to quickly execute video processing tasks.
Compared with traditional methods, the serverless solution based on Function Compute helps MosoInk reduce about 60% of IT costs in video processing scenarios.
The Main Battlefield in the Next Decade
Serverless is expected to have more comprehensive product forms, extreme flexibility, better toolchains, reduced costs, more efficient development efficiency, a faster migration speed, and simpler and more powerful cloud migration. With serverless, developers can focus on business code development in the same pattern and run code on different platforms without needing to consider their differences. In other words, by utilizing one method, developers can switch between businesses without a learning curve.
For developers, the serverless R&D model also brings challenges to the R&D system. For the frontend team, serverless not only enables frontend engineers to have more capabilities but also changes the positioning of the entire frontend industry. People often think that the frontend work is simple, like frontend engineers only need to develop webpages based on UIs, and other work is done by the backend team. After the frontend is integrated with serverless, the frontend team is required not only to develop webpages but also deliver the entire application.
Then, the backend team wonder whether they do not need to do anything thereafter. In fact, this is not the case. The evolution of the serverless R&D model helps the backend team dive into the underlying layer and focus on technical research, for example, how to make the data and service capabilities stronger and more reliable.
Alibaba Cloud is integrating toolchains and community and product capabilities to provide a solution that will promote serverless development. The goal of Alibaba Cloud serverless is to become “the serverless everyone needs”, which is quite different from other cloud vendors. Only serverless vendors who prioritize user requirements can provide good serverless products.
In the future, serverless will be ubiquitous. Any complex technical solution can be implemented as a fully managed and serverless-enabled backend service. Not only cloud products but also services, clouds, and ecological capabilities from partners and third parties will be implemented in the API-plus-serverless mode. Serverless is the most important part in the platform strategies of platform products or organizations that use APIs to provide functions, such as DingTalk, Didi, and WeChat.
Original Source: | https://medium.com/@alibaba-cloud/why-is-serverless-the-main-battlefield-in-the-next-decade-fa44798dec3a | ['Alibaba Cloud'] | 2021-04-25 09:15:22.301000+00:00 | ['Computing', 'Function Compute', 'Serverless', 'Trends', 'Alibabacloud'] |
Clustering method 6 | － 算法實例 －
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from sklearn.cluster import OPTICS
from sklearn import datasets #create datasets
X,y = datasets.make_blobs(n_samples=50, centers=3, n_features=2, random_state= 20, cluster_std = 1.5) #parameter setting
eps = 2
MinPts = 5 #OPTICS method
model = OPTICS(MinPts, eps=eps, cluster_method='dbscan')
#Use cluster_method='dbscan' to compare with DBSCAN method
model.fit(X)
labels = model.fit_predict(X) #results visualization
plt.figure()
plt.scatter(X[:,0], X[:,1], c = labels)
plt.axis('equal')
plt.title('Prediction') plt.show()
（標示顏色僅是分群結果，沒有順序性）右圖為 epsilon=2 的結果
plt.figure(figsize = (15, 10))
plt.axis('equal') # plot all data
plt.scatter(X[:,0], X[:,1], c = labels) # rearrange the order of data
X_all = X[order,:]
seq_labels = labels[model.ordering_] for classes in range(3):
class_idx = seq_labels == classes
class_X = X_all[class_idx,:]
plt.plot(class_X[:,0], class_X[:,1]) for i in range(class_idx.sum()):
point = class_X[i,:]
plt.text(point[0], point[1], str(i)) plt.title('Ordering')
plt.xlabel('x')
plt.ylabel('y')
此圖為同一群中資料點的排序，紫色點則為雜訊點 | https://medium.com/ai-academy-taiwan/clustering-method-6-d0c207daced6 | ['Yuki Liu'] | 2019-09-24 09:01:01.652000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Clustering', 'Cluster Analysis', 'Unsupervised Learning'] |
5 Tips for Finding Love in 2021 | I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s Resolutions. It seems like every year we make the same resolutions, stick to them for a month or so, and then forget all about them. However, I am a huge fan of setting goals. I believe that writing your goals down and reviewing them every single day is a powerful tool for actually achieving those goals. If your goal is to find “the one” in 2021, here are five tips to help you make it happen!
1) Write down your relationship goal and be specific. Don’t just write that your goal is to “meet someone.” Write that your goal is “to meet someone who shares my values, who I can laugh and be myself with, who wants to get married.”
2) Have a plan. I love the idea of talking about your goals and putting the energy out there to the universe, but you can’t just stop there. You have to have a plan and then take action! Is your plan to start a conversation with someone new every day? How about going a first date with someone new once per week? Are you going to do a photo shoot and update your online dating pictures and profile? Whatever your plan is, make sure that you take action to implement it.
3) Invest in your love life. Think about all the other areas of your life that you have made big investments because they were important to you. Maybe you spent a few thousand dollars on a piece of fitness equipment because you value your health. Maybe you spent tens of thousands of dollars to get an advanced degree because you value your education & career. If you have never invested in your love life, it may be time to re-evaluate your priorities. You may want to hire a dating coach, a matchmaker, a personal stylist, a therapist, a personal trainer, etc. Investing in yourself in order to attract a high-quality partner will be money well spent!
4) Manage your mindset. When you are working towards any goal, mindset can make all the difference! If you have a bad date, brush it off and move forward. Don’t fall into the trap of negative self-talk, thinking “I’ll never find someone.” Instead, remain positive and focused, excited to keep moving forward!
5) Outsource your love life. Yes — you can actually put your search for “the one” in the hands of professionals! If you are a highly accomplished professional, you do not have the time required to vet and screen potential matches on your own. You can hire a matchmaker who will act as an “executive recruiter” for your love life. Hiring the right matchmaker will save you time and a lot of headaches.
The New Year is always a time full of hope and excitement for the future! My hope is that you don’t just start the new year with excitement, but you end it with excitement as well! The only difference is that the excitement at the end of the year will be about the new partner in your life! Here’s to a new year filled with love & happiness! | https://medium.com/@amberartis/5-tips-for-finding-love-in-2021-67117e7fb87b | ['Amber Artis'] | 2020-12-17 14:02:08.952000+00:00 | ['Dating Tips', 'Dating Advice', 'New Years Resolutions', 'Relationships Love Dating', 'Love'] |
Regional Scrum Gathering Tokyo 2020 参加レポート Day2 | Lost in Translation: The Manager's Role in Agile - Regional Scrum Gathering Tokyo 2020
Your organization has moved to autonomous, self-organizing teams. Everyone is trained and coached on their new role… | https://medium.com/wingarc/regional-scrum-gathering-tokyo-2020-%E5%8F%82%E5%8A%A0%E3%83%AC%E3%83%9D%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88-5ea8bfec8955 | ['Yasuko Naito'] | 2020-01-10 15:50:08.758000+00:00 | ['Agile', 'Leadership', 'Japanese', 'Scrum'] |
İstanbul’da “Yaşamak’’ | Get this newsletter By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.
Check your inbox
Medium sent you an email at to complete your subscription. | https://medium.com/t%C3%BCrkiye/i%CC%87stanbulda-ya%C5%9Famak-2a4f78dbae6f | ['Fırat Akkuş'] | 2020-07-23 19:01:41.601000+00:00 | ['Istanbul', 'Yorum', 'Fikir', 'Türkçe', 'Şehir Hayatı'] |
You can’t argue with Trumpers, when they don’t know what is being discussed. | You can’t argue with Trumpers, when they don’t know what is being discussed.
When people create excuses for other peoples bad behavior, when they justify the deaths of thousands and thousands of people in the name of ideology, then you have no choice but to get ready for the inexcusable and senseless suffering that will come. The actions taken by Trump and his administration will affect the poorest of people of this country for the next millennium.
If people refuse to acknowledge his contradictions, his poor excuses, but especially his overt and his blatantly obvious treason, then they are in denial.
Trump, Qanon, and his administration have created the perfect storm, and we are at a precipice (once again) to make the decision about who we are, as individuals.
It less about who voted for who, and more about what you are trying to communicate with your votes.
Trump awoke, irritated, enflamed tyranny, fascism, and non-compassion. We are watching people we know who have been lulled into submission through propaganda, violence, and a false pretense of liberty. Their own children are sacrificed on an alter that is named “The Dunning-Kruger Effect.”
The Dunning — Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating that people with low ability at a task overestimate their own ability, and that people with high ability at a task underestimate their own ability.
We need to give it a name and stop pretending. | https://medium.com/@castellani/you-cant-argue-with-trumpers-when-they-don-t-know-what-is-being-discussed-9fb393447683 | ['Brian Castellani'] | 2021-09-05 15:33:04.433000+00:00 | ['Trumpism', 'Trump Administration', 'Trump'] |
Organizing Unstructured Data | The main, if not the only, purpose of the Computer is computing information. It doesn’t always have to be a computation of mathematical formulas. In general, it is a transformation of one chunk of information to another. Computers work only with such information that can be represented as discrete data. The input and output for the compute engine is always Natural numbers or text (a sequence of symbols from a dictionary which corresponds to certain natural numbers).
While data is unstructured, it’s hard to recognize some sense in it. But once data gets any structured form, it becomes meaningful and suitable for further transformation.
Type
The simplest form of data organization is Type. In general, a Data Type determines a set of values with certain characteristics. Usually, it defines a size in bytes. A Primitive Data Type is an ordered group of bytes. When a variable of some primitive data type has only one value (holds only one piece of information), it’s called a Scalar and a type — Scalar Data Type. Well-known examples are integer, float, pointer, and string. A collection of primitive data types is known as Structured Data Type and it makes possible to store multiple values. Good examples of this type are array, struct, record, and file. The key property is the ordered byte’s group. The internal organization is straightforward and all actions (e.g. reading, modifying) are performed directly on the data, accordingly to a hardware architecture that defines the byte order in memory (Little-/Big- Endian).
Data Structure
The next layer of data abstraction is called Data Structure. It brings more complexity but also more flexibility in making the right choice between an access speed, an ability to grow, a modification speed, etc. Internally, it’s represented by a collection of the scalar or structured data types. The main focus is on details of the internal organization and a set of rules for controlling this organization. There are two types of data structures which come from a difference in a location in memory of underlying elements:
Array Data Structures (static), based on physically contiguous elements in memory, with no gaps in between.
(static), based on physically contiguous elements in memory, with no gaps in between. Linked Data Structures (dynamic), based on elements, dynamically allocated in memory and linked in a linear structure using pointers (usually, one or two)
Well-known examples are linked list, hash (dictionary), set, list. The internal organization is still open and all actions on data are also performed directly.
Abstract Data Type (ADT)
A higher level of data abstraction is represented by Abstract Data Type (ADT) which shifts the main focus from “how to store data” to “how to work with data”. An ADT is defined by operations (functions) for manipulating data and controlling its consistency, and data structure for actually storing information. The internal data representation is hidden from users, and should not be accessible directly (by design). All interactions with data are done via an interface (operations exposed to users). Usually, for every ADT there are defined a few primitive operations, like
create — a constructor of a new instance
— a constructor of a new instance destroy — a destructor of an existing instance
— a destructor of an existing instance add , get — the set-get functions for adding and removing elements of an instance
, — the set-get functions for adding and removing elements of an instance is_empty, size — useful functions for managing existing data in an instance
The most known examples of ADTs are stack and queue. Both of these ADTs can be implemented using either array or linked data structures and both have certain rules for adding and removing elements. All these specifics are abstracted as functions, which in turn, do appropriate actions on internal data. Dividing an ADT into operations and data structure creates an abstraction barrier and allows to keep a solid interface with the flexibility for changing internals with no side-effects on code which uses this ADT.
Object
A more comprehensive way to abstract data is represented by Objects. An object can be thought of like a container for a chunk of data that has some certain properties. Similarly to the ADT, this data is not accessible directly (known as encapsulation or isolation), but instead each object has a group of tightly attached Methods, applicable to operate on its data to produce an expected behavior for this object (known as polymorphism). All such methods, in fact, are simply functions which are collected under a Class, but they become methods when are called to operate on a certain object. Methods can also be inherited from another class which in this case is called a superclass. In contrast to an ADT, an object doesn’t represent one particular type of data, but it’s rather an essence that has a number of Attributes and behaves as it’s supposed to when its methods are invoked. Attributes are nothing more than variables of any types (including ADTs), and they are also collected under a class. Formally speaking, classes act as specifications of all object’s attributes and methods which may be called to deal with those attributes.
The Object-Oriented Programming paradigm (OOP) uses objects as the central element of program design. In contrast to the Procedural Programming paradigm, where the main focus is on splitting projects up into mostly independent tasks, in OOP, programs are composed of a number of objects. Each object is seen as an instance of some class which defines its behavior. In general OOP design, objects are used to: | https://medium.com/quick-code/organizing-unstructured-data-eab8ad6b0e46 | [] | 2019-09-11 19:40:07.418000+00:00 | ['Data Structures', 'Computer Science', 'Programming'] |
A light passage for LightGBM | As a non-IT background who decided to pursue data science as a career, I realize there is so much knowledge I need to expand and skills I need to leverage, including writing skills — explaining concepts in a simple and understandable way regardless of the audience background. Therefore, I decided to start writing on Medium.
To start off, this passage will explain LightGBM. LightGBM stands for light Gradient Boosting Machine, let’s try to break down the concept by 5W+1H.
What is Light Gradient Boosting Machine?
LightGBM is a gradient boosting framework that uses tree based learning algorithm. In my opinion, tree based algorithm is the most intuitive algorithm because it mimics on how human make a decision.
It is 11 am and you confuse if you need to eat now or later, so you make a decision tree. A decision tree consist of the root node as the root cause, branch node as the decision node and leaf node as the decision result. Image by the author.
Before answering the question, first, we need to know what is boosting and the gradient boosting framework.
Boosting is an ensemble technique for creating collections of predictors or the method to combine weak learner into strong learner to predict the output. The weak learner here is each one of the decision tree. It is weak because it performs poorly in predicting or classifying. To get better prediction, we combine the weak learner where each learner will produce a hypothesis and combine it together will create a final hypothesis in predicting the output. Boosting works in a way that the trees are grown sequentially: each tree is grown using information from previously grown trees.
Since we want to add many weak learners to our model, we might ask how can we know if our model is optimized? Here we use gradient boosting where we apply gradient descent procedure to find the optimum model in which the loss function is minimized.
It means to understand gradient boosting we have to understand gradient descent, loss function and optimization function.
A simple gif to ilustrate the gradient descent in which we want to find the intecept of a linear regression with the loss function RMSE. The gradient of the green line descent until it finds the least amount of RMSE where the gradient is close to 0. The gif is made by the author.
Optimization function is a function that we applied to reach the objective that we want, in this case minimizing the loss function. The loss function will measure how far off is the model from the actual data. If the result of the model or the prediction is way off, the loss function will result in a large number. The optimization function will gradually reduce the loss function/the error until it converges to a minimum value. The loss function that we usually encounter are Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) for regression problem and Binary Loss Function and Cross Entropy Loss for classification problem. Gradient descent mean the gradient will gradually decent as the loss function become minimzed until the gradient reach limit to 0.
Back to LightGBM, using the tree based learning algorithm the weak learner will grow sequentially meaning that the first tree that we built will learn how to fit to the target variable, then the second tree will learn from the first tree and also learn how to fit to the residual, the next tree will learn to reduce the residual and fit the residual from the previos tree and it continues until the residual doesn’t change. The gradient of the errors are propagated throughout the system and it is called level-wise tree growth.
Taken from LightGBM documentation illustrating leaf-wise growth tree.
What makes the LightGBM different from another gradient boosting algorithm is in XGBoost the growth of the tree is level-wise while CatBoost is suited more for categorical variables.
Who build LightGBM?
In 2017 microsoft build LightGBM as the alternative the use of XGBoost. lightGBM could be used in Python, R and C++.
Why do we need to use LightGBM?
As stated on the documentation, LightGBM is the improvement of gradient boosting algorithm in terms of efficiency, speed, and supporting the distributed parallel processing and GPU.
LightGBM is suitable to be used if you want to build a model with abundant amount of data. If you only have 100 data it is better to use other machine learning algorithm because your model might cause over-fitting.
How to use LightGBM?
In short there are three steps I applied when I am using lightGBM:
Prepare the training and testing data (data preprocessing, exploratory data analysis, and data encoding for categorical variables) Choose optimization function to get the tuning parameter. You can choose grid-search, random-search, bayesian-optimization, and etc. Several important tuning parameters are:
learning_rate : the step size for each iteration while moving toward a minimum of a loss function in gradient descent
max_depth : the maximum depth of the tree, handling overfitting by lowering the tree’s depth
min_data_in_lead : the minimum number of records a leaf may have
feature_fraction : fractions of features/paramters that will be randomly selected in each iteration for building trees
bagging_fraction : specifies the fraction number of data to be used in each iteration to create a new dataset
lambda : parameter for regulatization to address over-fitting and feature selection, l1-norm used for lasso regression and l2-norm used for ridge regression
min_split_gain : minimum gain to make the split in tree
3. Train the model, fit the model and evaluate the model
If you are interested in understanding the relationship between variables and the target variables you can use the feature_importance. Feature importance will show you which variable play major role in predicting/classifying.
LightGBM is a popular boosting algorithm that is widely used in data science. It could handle categorical data, fast in performance, and grow the tree by leaf-wise sequentially.
To close this off,
Where can I find the complete documentation, place to learn and project examples?
for complete documentation : LightGBM
great tutorial and reading that I came across :
Introduction to Statistical Learning a great book to learn and it is free!
A great reading explaining the performance of XGBoost, LightGBM and CatBoost
An example of applying LightGBM in kaggle
More about gradient boosting algorithm
For the visual and audio learner, a great youtube channel by Prof. Alexander Ihler
Like LightGBM, my writing grows sequentially.
Feel free to drop me comments if you find anything that can be improved from this piece. Cheers! | https://towardsdatascience.com/a-light-passage-for-lightgbm-76543bb09a07 | ['Febriani Fitria Rahmawati'] | 2020-10-06 03:33:00.681000+00:00 | ['Boosting', 'Machine Learning Python', 'Gradient Descent', 'Lightgbm', 'Optimization Function'] |
Why It’s Important to Align the Three “Boards” in Your Organization? — Leadership I.M.H.O. | Creating an aligned message across the three different boards within your organization will ensure successful and the sustained delivery of the culture you intend your company to represent.
What are these three boards?
Board Room Billboards Break Room Bulletin Boards
Board Rooms
The board room represent the senior level of leadership in your company. The folks at this level, and those who closely relate to these individuals are those who have the most influence in creating strategies, policies, and it’s where the big decision-making happens. Most importantly, this is the board where the overall culture and messaging of the company is developed and decided upon.
Billboard
Billboards are the outward channels where the messages are being relayed to the public, specifically clients and potential clients of your organization. Imploring to the public your organization’s culture and philosophies, basically everything your company stands for, is an important point of execution to earn the interest and the trust of your market.
Bulletin Boards
Bulletin boards represents the dwellings of every single team member in your organization. These are boards found in break rooms, team areas, intranet sites, and many more. This is one of the many ways middle management can ensure the overall culture and messaging is posted for every eye to see, through the lens of the various divisions, departments, sections, and teams. It’s also a place where your team members can have a voice to make their own declaration of what “their” organization stands for.
Why is this important?
What’s the point of having well-defined corporate culture and messaging if that message doesn’t leave the four walls of the board room? What if both the board room and the billboards match in the messaging of “delivering every service with a smile,” if one of your retail managers doesn’t ensure that each team member under their care understands this promise? What if your frontlines are empowered and fully engaged in delivering that promise, but the folks in the board room are only focused on sales and revenue, not investing resources to grow employee engagement?
Proper alignment is an imperative. Without the seamless and unquestionable connection between the three boards, there wouldn’t be a unified compass for each member of the organization, and those with whom they involve with to be business partners, to undeniably gauge their actions and if those actions align to what the organization stands for. This type of consistency is an important ingredient to build great organizations that last.
How does your organization ensure that there is this type of consistency across the different “boards” in your company? Can you share some tactical ways you do that within your organization? Please share in the comments below. | https://medium.com/@donvarela/why-its-important-to-align-the-three-boards-in-your-organization-leadership-i-m-h-o-6ddbe5da3d18 | ['Don Varela'] | 2019-11-16 21:37:22.470000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Employee Engagement', 'Customer Experience', 'Workplace Culture', 'Leadership'] |
Reinforcement learning with game | Reinforcement learning is on the rise. One of the challenges of reinforcement learning is training an agent, we need to have an environment first. OpenAI Gym is a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms. Here is an implementation of reinforcement learning training with LunarLander-v2. This is an episode before training.
There are four actions in game:
1.fire left orientation engine
2.fire main engine
3.fire right orientation engine
4.do nothing
RL algorithms are based on Markov Decision Process. The main actors of a RL algorithm are Agent, Environment, Set of states (S), Set of actions (A),State transition model P (s_0|s , a), Reward (r = R(s , a)), episode. Value function V(s) is the expected long-term return at the end of the episode. Q-Value or Action-Value function Q(s , a) is the expected long-term return at the end of the episode, starting from state s at current timestep, performing action a.
The Bellman equation is the theoretical core in most RL algorithms. The current value function is equal to the current reward plus itself evaluated at next step and discounted by γ.
The main methods to approach RL are Value-based methods, Policy-based methods and Model-based methods. We use DQN which is value based. In Q-Learning algorithm, the formula to calculate the experience score is as following:
Using a neural network to represent the value function approximation of 𝑄(𝑠,𝑎). We can take the state and action as the input of the neural network, and then get the Q value of the action after the analysis of the neural network. In this way, it is not necessary for us to record the Q value in the table, but use the neural network to generate the Q value directly. In another form, we can only input the state value, output all the action values, and then directly select the action with the maximum value as the next action according to the principle of Q Learning. The second form is generally used. What we used in DQN function is as following.
n_episodes: maximum number of training episodes
max_t: maximum number of time steps per episode
eps_start: starting value of epsilon, for epsilon-greedy action selection
eps_end: minimum value of epsilon
eps_decay: multiplicative factor (per episode) for decreasing epsilon
Change hyperparameters to decrease number of episodes. Environment solved in 790 episodes in total. Average score is 201.42. We also optimize this using Double DQN, which is created by DeepMind. Because target networks tend to overestimate Q, the target model always selects the maximum Q value which is a little bit above the mean. To solve this problem, using the online model instead of the target model for the best action in the next state and only use the target model to estimate the Q value of the best action. The training steps as following:
Environment solved in 261 episodes in total. Average score is 200.68.
Above is an episode after training.
We use DQN and DDQN to train agent. There are also some popular RL algorithms such as Actor-critic, Asynchronous Advantage Actor-critic(A3C), Advantage Actor-critic(A2C) and Proximal Policy Optimization(PPO). Reinforcement learning is a huge and exciting area. It’s delightful to look forward to more exploration.
Author
Jiaxin Tong | LinkedIn
Abhishek Maheshwarappa | LinkedIn
References
[1]https://www.bookstack.cn/read/pytorch-doc-zh-1.0/reinforcement_q_learning.md
[2]https://www.cnblogs.com/hhh5460/p/10154874.html
[3]https://towardsdatascience.com/introduction-to-reinforcement-learning-c99c8c0720ef
[4]https://github.com/ageron/handson-ml2
[5]https://gym.openai.com/docs/ | https://medium.com/@jiaxintong/reinforcement-learning-with-game-f5f40e4d0ac0 | ['Jiaxin Tong'] | 2020-12-03 21:26:24.994000+00:00 | ['Reinforcement Learning', 'Openai Gym'] |
Reflections on a failed startup | Nearly a year ago, we decided to shut down Ansaro. In the immediate aftermath, I wrote a long list of contributing reasons. Then I put it in a drawer for a year; it was too painful to think about. I recently came back to that list, to draw out some lessons, which I hope will be useful for myself and others.
Let’s set the stage… Ansaro’s mission was to improve hiring, via data science-driven SaaS. After 2 years, we’d had a team of a half dozen, $3M in funding, and a handful of Fortune 500 customers. Nonetheless, if product-market fit was a heartbeat, we never had a pulse.
How come it took us 2 years to figure that out? How could we have avoided it? My learnings fall into 3 buckets:
Team beats problem beats solution
Learning in a wicked environment
People stuff
Team beats problem beats solution
(aka: a good team is most important, then identifying a good problem, then finding a solution for the problem)
Build a team that isn’t afraid to disagree
Cofounders unafraid to disagree with each other have an advantage. Willingness to disagree, even about core beliefs, increases the speed/likelihood a team will identify a failing product (mis-guided faith that a product should work can quickly become a core belief). Faster identification of failure means faster iteration, and more chances of survival.
I built a team around a specific solution I had conceived (and to which I was emotionally attached). Since the team was recruited to build that solution, there was a feeling that declaring “this solution isn’t working” meant “I don’t want to be on the team anymore.” Our team members took contrarian views in their areas of expertise, but the way I had constructed the team made it hard for them to push back against the solution I’d been promoting since Day 1. That made us slow to pivot, and slow = dead for startups.
Rather than recruiting cofounders who bought into my idea for a solution, I should have built a team based on more fundamental elements: (i) deep mutual respect, as demonstrated by the ability for team members to change each others minds and (ii) interest in the same general problem space (in our case: hiring), but without attachments to specific solutions.
Go after a problem that is acute and quickly measurable
The problem we set out to tackle, reducing turnover and improving new hire performance, was felt acutely by our buyers (CHROs / Heads of Talent). It was NOT felt acutely by our users (recruiters). Recruiters are measured against average time-to-hire, not new hire retention or performance. We were trying to improve outcomes about which users would pay lip service, but which didn’t impact their paychecks or promotions.
Moreover, we knew it would take at least 6 months for our customers to observe improvements in retention or new hire performance. While that timeline worked on paper — we had runway for at least 18 months — it left us waiting far too long for market feedback. When the ultimate feedback was bad, it was too late to do another pivot.
Control your solution’s own destiny
Our first solution was joining records from our customers’ Applicant Tracking System with records from their Performance Management System, to identify predictors of successful hires. This meant integrating with two enterprise systems holding sensitive data. Most of our customers’ systems were more than a decade old. We could only dream of modern APIs.[Note 1] Instead we pleaded for nightly file-based data dumps with “partnership” representatives from these ATS/PMS software vendors, representatives who had zero interest in partnering with us.
When we finally realized we couldn’t solve these technical dependencies quickly, we moved on to another solution: software for conducting better job interviews by using natural language processing to parse interview audio recordings. We built this system to avoid dependencies on any other systems. What we didn’t appreciate was that we’d traded away technical dependencies for process change dependencies. Conducting better interviews means convincing interviewers to interview differently! That’s a change management project, not a software pilot.
We needed an MVP that had both minimal technical and process change dependencies. Only then would it have been truly easy to trial.
Learning in a Wicked Environment
In a wicked learning environment, feedback is poor, misleading, or missing.[2] The early days of a startup is a classic wicked learning environment; relying on intuition is dangerous, but data is sparse. What to do?
Limit user research
Initially, I believed extensive user research was a badge of honor. In our first few months, I did 80+ prospective user interviews. I collected hundreds of pages of feedback on our prospective solution. And I found ~20 prospective users who told me they were interested in purchasing our soon-to-be product; “Call us back as soon as it’s live!” they told me.
Statisticians call this “overfitting to the data”. If you have the world’s worst product idea and talk to 100 potential customers, 10 of them will be nice enough to tell you they’re interested. With so much data, I semi-subconsciously parsed it selectively to convince myself and others of the story we wanted to hear.
We should have done no more than 5 interviews of potential users.[3] I would have heard “no” four times and “meh” once. And if that was all the data we had, we would have been forced to concede there wasn’t demand for our idea → come up with a new idea → do 5 more interviews …
Don’t confuse the user and the buyer
We spent a lot of time talking with our buyers: CHROs and Heads of Talent Acquisition. It felt good to have “big picture” conversations with senior executives. We knew they controlled the purse strings. And these developing relationships excited our team members and investors.
So we built a product for these buyers, not the recruiters who had to use it on a daily basis. And the product actually slowed our users down, and all the upside (the metrics we promised to improve) only mattered to their bosses. They were extremely unhappy. Ultimately, the CHROs, with whom we’d had so many “feel-good” conversations had to listen to their own people, who were begging them to stop using Ansaro.[4]
Give your (metrics) the benefit of the doubt
An MVP is meant to test the fundamental viability of a product, not whether a very rough v0.0 can achieve the metrics needed for a sustainable business. If the MVP works, metrics can be improved through product refinement. Because we didn’t know how much improvement could come from future product refinement, we worried about declaring a “false negative” on our MVP and thus avoided a precise metric goal.
A way to avoid this trap is to “give yourself the benefit of the doubt”: assume that product refinements can always triple the v0 KPI. Let’s put numbers on this. For Ansaro’s business model to be sustainable, we believed we needed to convert 10% of qualified leads (in-person sales pitches). After 100 pitches, we’d converted 2 to paying customers. So even with the benefit of the doubt (2 * 3 < 10), our business post-product refinements wasn’t going to be sustainable.
People Stuff
Accountability for Outputs, Not Inputs
When our CTO started, we failed to set clear near-term milestones. We gave him a big, nebulous project and a month to work on it. But without any interim milestones during that first month, we started focusing on facetime even though that ran totally contrary to our stated company values. This was enormously demotivating to our CTO, who turned out be incredibly hard-working — he just preferred working from home in the evenings (while my co-founder and I tended to stay later in the office).
An idea that seemed crazy to me then, but which resonates now, is limiting the team to a 40 hour work week during the MVP phase.[5] I estimate that of 100 MVPs, 90 will fail regardless of whether the team works 40 or 80 hour weeks; 8 will achieve Product-Market Fit (“PMF”) regardless of 40 or 80 hour weeks, and 2 will succeed at 80 hours but fail at 40 hours. If you work 40 hours and fail, you have to accept a 20% chance it’s a false negative (e.g. “if we’d worked more hours, we would have succeeded”). I think that’s a good trade-off because (a) it forces you to give up the fantasy you’ll achieve PMF if you just work a bit harder, and (b) you’ll have happier, more motivated team-mates.
Choose a mature tech stack
Why is this under people? Because choosing a stack should be based more on human considerations than pure technical considerations. We built mainly in Go, because it was lightning fast, massively concurrent, and had many other awesome technical attributes. But for every developer who is good at Go, there are 50 who are as good at Java or Python. When you look up a question on StackOverflow, you’ll get 3 answers for Go and 300 for Java or Python.
We never had the scale to realize the technical benefits of our stack. But the extra time required to hire people who knew our tech stack was significant.[6] So was the reduced velocity from developing with newer tools that lacked the community support of older tools.
Raise less money, later
We raised too much money, too early, which reduced our openness to changing paths. We didn’t set out to raise $3M; our target was $500K from only family and friends. But conversations with family and friends led to introductions to VCs. As investors flattered us, our confidence soared, and I started envisioning the awesome TechCrunch article about our seed round.
And then, one-by-one, those VCs told us they weren’t going to invest. Without ever explicitly discussing it, we’d moved our goal from “raise $500K from family and friends” to “raise many millions from blue-chip VCs”. We felt that new goal slipping away, and with that came a feeling of desperation. So when two VC firms relatively unknown to us offered us a term sheet, we quickly said yes. Big mistake. We never really understood these investors, and they never really understood us. It was like getting married right after your first date.
We should have stuck with our original plan. Raising a smaller amount of money would have forced a shorter timeline for testing our MVP (more iteration → higher likelihood of survival.) And raising from friends and family — who were investing in us as individuals, rather than in a specific business model or product — would have also enabled us to pivot more quickly. | https://medium.com/semi-random-thoughts/reflections-on-a-failed-startup-6029586bf681 | ['Sam Stone'] | 2019-08-17 04:08:53.373000+00:00 | ['Failure', 'Data Science', 'Startup'] |
Laptop Configuration Guide: What Spec Do I Need? | Ensure That You Have at any rate 8GB of RAM
The irregular access memory is a higher priority than you may might suspect. This is where applications and projects are run. The more RAM you have, the better. In our day and age, it’s prescribed to have in any event 8GB of RAM introduced on your PC.
Anything short of that will make performing various tasks troublesome, regardless of whether you’re an easygoing PC client. 8GBs of RAM is normally adequate to keep a couple of program tabs open, tune in to music, perhaps run a game out of sight, and so on
On the off chance that your financial plan is higher, you should go for 12GB or 16GB of RAM. This is ideal on the off chance that you invest a great deal of energy before your PC and you run complex applications/games. See whether your PC’s RAM is additionally expandable. It’s ideal to have a free space where you can add 8 additional GBs of RAM later on if vital.
In the event that You Watch a Lot of Movies, Go for a Larger Screen
You can accomplish such a great deal on a PC nowadays, for example, messing around, working, delivering video records, watching motion pictures, and so forth On the off chance that Netflix is your closest companion and you like to invest a great deal of energy watching films, ensure that you get a PC with a screen size of at any rate 15.6 inches.
This is the standard size for most workstations intended for motion pictures and games. On the off chance that you need considerably more visual land, go for a PC with a 17.3-inch screen. This is likely the biggest presentation size you can go for in a PC and it offers you a vivid review insight.
Then again, in the event that you travel a great deal and you take the PC with you, it’s prescribed to go for a more modest presentation. Anything under 14 inches is fitting for the individuals who need a convenient PC. That your PC will be lighter, yet it will likewise fit practically all sacks and cases effortlessly.
Look at these Cyber Monday PC arrangements to discover a machine with an enormous enough screen to oblige your requirements.
Pick a Full HD Resolution
Show size and show goal are two distinct things. The principal alludes to the actual size of the screen. The second alludes to the quantity of pixels your screen has. The more pixels, the more clear the picture.
There are a few standard goals you can go for with regards to a PC’s presentation. The most well known are HD (1280 x 720 pixels), full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) and 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels). In a perfect world, you should go for a full HD goal if your financial plan permits it.
A full HD show is equipped for demonstrating crisper, more clear pictures, and more alluring tones. Your survey experience will be taken to the following level and you’ll see a major distinction when you mess around as well.
In the event that your financial plan permits you, it’s likewise a smart thought to go for a 4K screen, yet remember that this will quickly deplete battery life. In case you’re an easygoing client and don’t actually think often about presentation goal, you could do fine with a HD screen as well. Simply that you won’t get the most clear and most distinctive pictures conceivable.
Go for a SSD in the event that You Want a Fast Booting Time
SSD represents a strong state drive. It gives a superior and more solid method of putting away information in correlation with the exemplary HDD. Most present day workstations accompany a SSD design and this gives a plenty of favorable circumstances.
Most importantly, SSD is madly quick. You’ll have the option to appreciate quicker information move speeds and your working framework will stack faster as well. Games run smoother when introduced on SSD thus do other programming projects and applications. The drawback is that the SSD costs more.
On the off chance that you don’t anticipate introducing huge games on your PC, you should go for an arrangement with 128GB or 256GB of SSD. This permits you to appreciate a smoother and snappier PC experience without going through an excessive amount of cash.
Then again, on the off chance that you intend to store huge documents on your PC, go for a blend of SSD + HDD. introduce the working framework on the SSD to harvest quicker stacking speeds. Leave the HDD for huge games, films, and music assortments.
An i3 Is Good for Basic Needs, i5 and Higher for Advanced Users
We should discuss perhaps the main segments of your PC – the CPU or focal preparing unit. This is the mind that makes your PC tick and gives any remaining segments something to do. In the event that you have an elite CPU, odds are that your PC will stay usable for quite a long time to come.
Most workstations accompany Intel processors in light of the fact that these are the most developed. You could likewise go for the Ryzen processors from AMD. on the off chance that you nonchalantly utilize your PC and don’t require an excess of handling power, an Intel i3 processor ought to get the job done for you.
This design is generally incredible enough to permit light performing various tasks, web perusing, and playing recordings on full HD goal. Be that as it may, on the off chance that you need to play the most recent games or render huge video documents, you need in any event an i5 processor.
Remember that an i5 or i7 processor is intended for hefty clients. In the event that you intend to create music with your PC, alter huge photographs, or play the most recent games, these are the processors you should search for. Be set up to likewise remove more cash from your pocket.
In a perfect world, go for a processor that has in any event 2 centers. Some of them have 4 or even 8 centers and this is something to be thankful for with regards to execution. Having more centers implies that your PC can do more work and taking care of performing multiple tasks effortlessly.
The Video Card Should Reflect Your Daily Computer Habits
Aside from the processor and RAM, there’s additionally the video card. This is a uniquely planned part that handles pictures, movements, recordings, and anything identified with visuals. Most workstations accompany a coordinated video card, yet in the event that you need to play the most recent games, you need a committed one.
For instance, attempt to go for at any rate 2GB of video RAM. This implies that your PC will have 2 extra GBs of RAM just to deal with pictures and activitys. Eager gamers generally go for about 4GB of video RAM and this permits you to play most games with the subtleties set on "Ultra".
On the off chance that you regularly alter photographs or render recordings in unique programming programs, you need a superior video card too. That is the reason you ought to dissect your PC propensities and see what’s best for you – a standard coordinated video card for easygoing clients or an elite one for gamers and videographers.
Go for a Backlit Keyboard Because Why Not?
Perhaps the most energizing highlights of a cutting edge PC is to have an illuminated console. Albeit most fundamental models don’t have this component, it very well may be viable and it merits going through more cash to get it.
Illuminated consoles permit you to effortlessly type in obscurity. You needn’t bother with extra light sources, simply your screen, and console. Most models accompany standard backdrop illumination, yet some gaming PCs permit you to arrange a RGB console.
This implies that you can dole out it any shading you need and even set explicit tones for various gatherings of keys. Your PC will look significantly more alluring and your gaming experience will be taken to the following level.
In spite of the fact that you can do fine and dandy without an illuminated console, is there any good reason why you shouldn’t have this cool component? It adds character to your PC and it can build your profitability. Be set up to go through somewhat more cash for a PC with an illuminated console, however risks are that you will love this choice.
Feel free to Find the Perfect Laptop Configuration for Your Needs!
Since you’ve finished a fast seminar on PC setup and fundamental specs, it’s an ideal opportunity to locate your optimal machine. Go on the web and see numerous sorts of PCs with various designs. This will help you thin down your rundown and discover a harmony between value, execution, and conveyability. | https://medium.com/@rautsujit20/laptop-configuration-guide-what-spec-do-i-need-1c5a1c88f370 | ['Sujit Raut'] | 2021-01-24 02:39:35.886000+00:00 | ['Features', 'Technology', 'Computers', 'Laptop'] |
How A Coyote Returned Me to My Mindfulness Practice | I took an eight week course in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction based on the teachings of Jon Kabat-Zinn a few years back. I have been at best, a part-time practitioner ever since. Perhaps I would meditate three or four times a week for five to ten minutes. Maybe twenty percent of the time I would strive to remind myself on my walks to notice the nature around me instead of the notions in my head. I remembered the benefits of a dedicated MBSR practice, but life just got in the way.
I have experienced some major life shifts in the last few months. I left my well paid position as a senior leader at a local nonprofit to strike out on my own. Our second and last child went off to college, leaving us empty nesters. Throw in perimenopause and a husband whose company is not doing well and you get the complete picture. I know that particularly with perimenopause, meditation can be more effective than medication, so I had made a bigger effort in the last few weeks to meditate. I hadn’t tried to re-incorporate mindfulness practice into the rest of my life until an encounter with an injured Coyote dramatically reminded me why I should.
It was 4:30pm on a Monday. One of the advantages of my new profession is that I work from home. I took a break to take our dog Hanna for a short walk around the neighborhood. Lost in my thoughts of how I could help some potential clients, I was paying no attention whatsoever to my surroundings.
As we headed down a hill, a coyote crossing the road up ahead caught my eye and brought me back to the present. ‘A coyote’ I thought, and didn’t think much more, except that I noticed that this coyote had blood all over its back right hind quarter. We have had coyote in our neighborhood before and Hanna and I have encountered one a few times. Each prior time, the coyote either did not notice us at all or if it did, it made quick eye contact and continued on its way. This is what I expected this coyote to do and so while we slowed down on our walk, we did not turn around or stop. By then the coyote had crossed the road and was crossing through a yard when it made eye contact with us.
After making eye contact, it surprised me by suddenly changing course, crossing back over the yard and into and across the road to shadow us. Needless to say, I was now fully present and mindful. My dog started making the strangest noises and she and I turned around and started running back up the hill, while was screaming “help, help!” No one was out and about at that time. We ran back up that hill and around the corner to the main road. Luckily, the coyote did not follow us back onto the main road. Running for our lives had demonstrated to me in a dramatic and quick fashion just how out of shape I was.
The long and short of it was that I called 911 and reported the incident after heading off a boy who was about to head down the same road, coming back from school. Hanna and I returned home and Hanna spent the next hour running from window to window in our house, agitated and barking.
Animal control was notified but never came out. In speaking with them a week later, they informed me that unless the coyote was immobile, they could not do anything. Rather, the state Department of Environmental Protection should have been called. Two male joggers had also reported being chased by an injured coyote around the same time and in the same area. There have been coyote sightings on my street since. There was also a truly frightening story of a coyote attacking a pitbull mix dog while on its leash out for a walk with its owner at 10am in the morning in a town twenty minutes away.
Not being fully aware of my surroundings, fully fit or equipped with any defenses has taught me to change aspects of my life. I have really stepped up my exercise and fitness routine. The truth is many of my walks had not had me breaking a sweat. I had started lifting weights again and have now brought new attention to the importance of muscle building. I wasn’t going to let this coyote encounter stop me from walking Hanna who loves being outdoors. I purchased pepper spray the next day and attached it to her leash. While I understand that it is not recommended often because improper use of it will mean that you and your dog get affected by it more than your target, just having it is a reminder to me to be mindful and aware of my surroundings and that if needed, I will use it in very deliberate manner.
The wildlife biologist I spoke with at the environmental protection department explained that the increase of coyotes and the many bears we have also seen in our neighborhood are due to the drought in our region. That injured coyote has reminded me that the drought in my mindfulness practice has left me wandering like those coyotes and bears. Returning to my practice will bring me the energy source I need to navigate the major life changes and whatever else I (and Hanna) encounter on the path. | https://medium.com/thrive-global/a-coyote-crossed-our-path-335b76f0563 | ['Donna Haghighat'] | 2016-12-22 16:29:58.596000+00:00 | ['Wisdom', 'Mindfulness', 'Life Lessons', 'Inspiration', 'Meditation'] |
Best VPN for Google Stadia | Google has released its new game streaming service at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The new game streaming service aims to allow users to stream AAA titles directly from Google’s servers without requiring any special hardware. Just imagine — you don’t need to save money for that Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti anymore. All you need is a fast internet connection and a subscription to Stadia.
These are the only Google Stadia requirements. In terms of how much money you need to pay in order to enjoy powerful games, Google Stadia Pricing starts from $9.99 per month. Google Stadia Streaming is the new frontier in gaming, where hardware does not play as big a role as it used to. But what about internet security? If you wish to maintain safe and secure online while playing the newest games, you definitely need a VPN subscription, that’s where NordVPN comes in handy — the best VPN provider when it comes to streaming either video games or movies online. You can get a 70% discount and a few months for free, here’s how.
How to Get a NordVPN Discount?
Click on the link below:
NordVPN 70% for Google Stadia
Once you click on the link, you will be redirected to the official NordVPN website. If you choose a 3-year subscription ($3.49/month) you will get an additional 3 months for free.
What is NordVPN?
You will get a super easy to use application, more than 5000 servers to connect to and CyberSec ad/malware detector which ensures that you’re protected from online malware at all times.
Among these 5000 servers, there are servers for torrenting, streaming and simple internet browsing. Just imagine, 2000 servers dedicated for streaming only! Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and as from now — Google Stadia. Servers are located in more than 60 countries, US included, obviously.
NordVPN employs Military Grade Encryption standard called AES which ensures that your traffic is impossible to decipher.
NordVPN is located in Panama, where no mandatory data retention laws exist. Your traffic will not be logged or sold to the highest bidder. If you consider yourself to be an advanced user or simply have a couple of questions about the service, you can always contact friendly customer support representatives that are available 24/7.
If you wish to secure more than one device, NordVPN offers more than 6 simultaneous connections with only one subscription.
Conclusion
NordVPN is a great provider. For only $3.49 per month, you will be able to secure yourself online and enjoy internet freedom. Your bandwidth will not be limited and online anonymity is a guarantee. Enjoy Google Stadia and NordVPN. | https://medium.com/@jellofee07/best-vpn-for-google-stadia-63ad1f35fbfd | ['Jim Black'] | 2019-11-15 15:40:42.562000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Tech', 'Google', 'Technology', 'VPN'] |
Understand inflation: Why Saving Is Making You Broke | This post contains affiliate links
I’m sure your grandmother and the crazy old cat lady in the neighborhood have complained about everything being more expensive than it used to be in the past. Although I understand you not wanting to believe the crazy old cat lady, she is actually right. Everything really is more expensive now. This is due to inflation. One of the prerequisites to becoming financially literate is to understand inflation.
Begin To Understand Inflation: Definition and Example
According to Oxford inflation is a general increase in the prices of services and goods in a particular country, resulting in a fall in the value of money .
So said simply, inflation means “today’s dollar will be worth 50 cents tomorrow” (not exactly but this will make the concept clear). I hope you see how devastating inflation can be to your savings. It can even impact the investment world.
Let’s say you invested in an ETF that averages 10% a year and you’ve done so for the last 30 years. In total, you have invested $180,000 (approximately $6,000 invested each year).
Without accounting for inflation your $180,000 would be equal to 1.19 million dollars.
But that’s not the reality. We must add the average inflation rate, let’s say it’s 8% (rare but possible). The growth rate of your investment, adjusted for inflation is now equal to 2 percent a year. Your investment after 30 years is worth 1.17 million dollars. I know that may not seem like a lot, but every single bit counts when it’s about your retirement.
Real Example of Inflation
But even so, inflation is actually worse than that. The example used was generalized 2%. But in reality, it works sort of like compound interest.
Here is an example:
$1,000 losing value at a 2% inflation rate EVERY YEAR for 30 years
At the end of the 30 years, the $1,000 would be almost equal to 1/2 of it’s initial value. This is what really happens when you JUST save money.
But the thing is you don’t feel it on a the day-to-day or even year-to-year basis.
And, the inflation rate varies tremendously depending on the country you live in. And the USA inflation rate is usually about 2% but in Venezuela, it’s about 438% (as of the time of this writing)
With that type of inflation, even a 100% return on a stock would not help you. Costs would rise way too quickly.
How Inflation Works
To understand inflation you have to understand that governments play a huge role in it. A government may choose to print more money and that will, in turn, increase inflation. But it is not the direct cause.
In short, there are two different ways inflation can happen. There can either be an increase in demand for products and services (usually due to an influx of cash, like printing more money for example, or government stimulus checks) or an increase in production costs.
Increase In Production costs
This happens when demand does not change, but the prices of raw materials and other types of essentials are increased.
For example, the cost of oil could increase meaning that companies that use that oil as fuel for transportation would have costs increase. To make up for this increase in costs, they would need to increase their prices. And that increase will be felt by the end consumer.
In this case, the cause is an increase in commodities pricing. Commodities can also change prices according to scarcity. For some reason, there is a shortage of wheat, for example, then the price of wheat goes up.
If you understand these aspects then you are close to understanding inflation.
When there is a strong demand for a certain type of product, and that demand is maintained for a certain of time, prices for that product increase. As an aftermath prices of other types of products can also be affected.
Demand can also increase when th e workforce of a country has an increase of cash or buying power. The level of consumer spending rises, which can lead to high demand for products and services.
And of course, if the demand rises the supply drops, which means prices rise even higher.
This is the principle of supply and demand.
Companies also play a role in inflation, they can raise prices simply because consumers are willing to pay the increased amount.
Conclusion
These are the most basic elements you need to know about inflation. Of course, there is more to know, but that will be covered in other posts. So the next time the crazy old cat lady in the neighborhood complains about rising prices, don’t run away. Sit there, tell her she’s right, and let her know simply why it happens. Have a specific topic you want to talk about? Let me know in the comments. | https://medium.com/@kai_62188/understand-inflation-why-saving-is-making-you-broke-3375c36c504c | ['Kai K.'] | 2021-08-21 20:02:57.314000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Personal Finance', 'Money Management', 'Money Mindset'] |
Write for The Daring | The Daring is assembled by artists for artists. We are a global platform for emerging and established talent celebrating mindfulness, courage, and human potential through thoughtful writing. We are interested in profound explorations and in challenging conventional thinking. Our stories seek to analyze, entertain, and spark conversation around relevant industry topics. We’re looking for strong opinions, loosely held. We publish columns on a rolling basis and will curate broad and engaging quarterly themes.
What we love
Creative process discourse, contemplative personal essays, short fiction, and original artwork. We seek deep stories that lift the veil on the creative journey because we are intrinsically curious about growth and development. How do you make your best work ever? What challenges you? What feels good? How do you integrate your vision with other areas of your life? These are the questions that drive us. We’d love to hear your unique perspective. Here are some topics we’d love to cover:
Improving the human condition — Promoting empathy, courage, and love, working through fear, embracing discomfort, healing fragmentation within culture, optimizing ourselves, personal mastery of our bodies and minds
— Promoting empathy, courage, and love, working through fear, embracing discomfort, healing fragmentation within culture, optimizing ourselves, personal mastery of our bodies and minds Explorations — Personal challenges, breakthroughs, mindfulness, self-awareness, travels, inventive modes of art and entertainment
— Personal challenges, breakthroughs, mindfulness, self-awareness, travels, inventive modes of art and entertainment Switching lanes —Progressing into a new career, forging a new path, personal reinvention, seismic shifts
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Submission guidelines
Contribute an article. To have your submission considered, please fill out this form. If your story aligns with The Daring’s themes, we’ll be in touch within two weeks.
Contribute original artwork. We are looking for original art to accompany the writing we publish. Illustrators, photographers, media creators—you may submit up to 5 images at a time.
We reserve the right to edit your story. The Daring can alter your story for grammar, visual style, bylines, and to add images. If you remove this content after the story is published, it will be removed from The Daring.
We’re looking to build long-term relationships. We ask that once your story has been published on The Daring, it stays here. We ask that you do not release it on another Medium publication.
We will publish author bylines that are 1–2 sentences long. Please keep them to text only and feel free to include one link where readers can learn more about you. | https://medium.com/the-daring/write-for-the-daring-92f4a575cea4 | ['Ioana Friedman'] | 2019-06-05 13:32:57.488000+00:00 | ['The Daring', 'Submission Guidelines', 'Writing'] |
Liberty outdoes Coastal Carolina in overtime to notch crazy Cure Bowl victory | If Liberty University’s bowl win Saturday night was a mixtape of 90s hits, it would be called “That’s What I Call A Finish Vol. 1…”
Editor’s Note: This story will be updated with quotes from former GW standouts Carlos and Carl Poole Jr. along with his parents, Carl Sr. and Sermica, in the next few days.
ORLANDO — If Liberty University’s bowl win Saturday night was a mixtape of 90s hits, it would be called “That’s What I Call A Finish Vol. 1.”
Liberty’s special teams blocked a field goal in the opening minutes of overtime and the Flames notched their second consecutive bowl championship with a 37–34 win over №9 Coastal Carolina in the FBC Mortgage Cure Bowl.
After ending regulation with an unfortunate turn of events, sophomore outside linebacker Brendan Schlittler made sure Liberty (10–1) ended up on the right end of fate when he broke through Coastal’s special teams unit and blocked the potential tying field goal, sending the Flames spilling out on the field at Camping World Stadium.
Liberty suffered from an unfortunate twist of fate on what appeared to be a go-ahead scoring drive. With under a minute left and the Flames just needing a field, senior running back Joshua Mack took a handoff on a designed kneel play, but coughed up the ball after being pushed to the 1-yard line.
Coastal Carolina (11–1) jumped on the loose ball and was content with forcing the game into overtime.
The Flames got the ball to start the overtime period, but were unsuccessful in putting any together, going three-and-out. A delay of game penalty turned a 39-yard field goal attempt into 44 yards, but senior kicker Alex Barbir ended his career in style, drilling his kick through the left side of the uprights.
Liberty was the upstart, jumping on the 12th-ranked Chanticleers early for 14 unanswered points in the opening minutes, racing out to a 14–0 lead on redshirt junior Malik Willis’ 6-yard touchdown run with six seconds remaining in the opening period. It was déjà vu for Willis as he’d given the Flames their first lead of the game with his 5-yard run on Liberty’s first possession.
Saturday’s matchup between Liberty and Coastal had been billed as one of the most exciting games of the bowl season and the Chanticleers made sure the game matched its marquee hype, firing back with 10 unanswered points in trimming their deficit to four.
Massimo Biscardi got Coastal on the board with his 21-yard field goal. Quarterback Grayson McCall pulled Coastal within four, 14–10, when he found Isaiah Likely for a 25-yard touchdown with 2:02 left in the first half.
The Flames led 17–13 at the break.
Liberty led by 12 in the fourth quarter when Willis went gladiator and punched the ball in from three yards out for his fourth rushing touchdown that made it a 31–19 game with 13:22 on the clock.
McCall wasn’t going to be outdone and answered back with a 1-yard scoring run of his own, pulling the Chanticleers with five. Barbir once again came up with the Golden Boot for the Flames as he was perfect on a 32-yard field goal that made it a possession game.
Coastal found its grit, though, as McCall struck Latushko for the tying score that sent the game to overtime.
Willis was Liberty’s maverick, throwing for 220 yards while also leading the squad in rushing with 137 yards and rushing scores with four. Mack was right at his signal caller’s heels, finishing with 105 yards.
Senior wide receiver DJ Stubbs went out in fashion, pulling five passes for 68 yards while freshman receiver Demario Douglas proved the cool rookie, hauling in five catches for 51 yards.
Senior Anthony Butler recorded a team-high nine tackles (three solo) while juniors Javon Scruggs finished with eight (five solo) and an interception and Marcus Haskins had seven (five solo).
McCall played the ox for Coastal, throwing for game-highs of 318 yards and three touchdowns and rushing for a team-high 96 yards and a score.
Latushko led the Chanticleers with two touchdown receptions while Likely checked in with one. McCall had junior Javion Heiligh dialed into his periscope as Heiligh finished with a game-high 178 yards on 13 receptions.
Junior Enock Makonzo provided the muscle for Coastal’s defense, notching a game-high 10 tackles (six solo). Junior Jeffrey Gunter carried his weight, recording eight tackles (five solo) while senior Silas Kelly ended his career with eight tackles (four solo). Spillum and Matts each picked off a pass. | https://medium.com/channel-434-sports/liberty-outdoes-coastal-carolina-in-overtime-to-notch-crazy-cure-bowl-victory-5fb2dbc55b1c | ['Davin Wilson'] | 2020-12-27 06:17:22.979000+00:00 | ['NCAA', 'Liberty', 'Cure Bowl', 'Football', 'Boxers Or Briefs'] |
Sell Service On Fiver And Earn Money | Image made by the author Nida Imran through Canva.
For digital services, Fiverr is the world’s largest online platform for freelancers. If you have a talent, and you are aimed to use it as a source of earning then you just need to share that talent with the buyer community on Fiverr.
Following are the main categories of services, you can provide on Fiverr, followed by:
Graphics and Design
Digital Marketing
Writing and Translation
Video and Animation
Music and Audio
Programming and Tech
Business
Lifestyle
Either you are a graphic designer, programmer, content writer, translator, or voice-over artist, Fiverr has a place for you. A Fiverr seller can turn his freelance work into a full-time job and can earn almost $1 million in income.
Guide to work on Fiverr:
Here is a complete guide that you need to start selling services on Fiverr.
Create an Account:
You need to create a Fiverr seller account. You can sign up by using Facebook, Google, and Email account. Choose your user name wisely and password wisely. Your user name will be the first thing your buyer will see. Once your account is created, go to your email inbox and activate it.
Let’s start to fill your profile.
Creating Your Seller Profile:
This is your interface and how you represent yourself to the buyer community. You should present yourself professionally.
You have to select your ability as a full-time or part-time seller. You can link your social accounts to verify. Select languages you speak and the level of their fluency. In the next section, you will enlist your skills for your buyers. Add your education along with the date and institute. List your rewards and certification as well.
The next 2 steps are highly important, Profile photo and Description. Add a professional headshot image in the profile photo section. The description section will allow you to briefly describe your talents, experience, and qualifications to convince a buyer.
Create your Gig:
Your Gig is the service. You are going to sell on the Fiverr platform. Through this, you can show your talent to the buyers. You need to provide all the information in your Gig that can help the buyers to decide to work with you.
Offer Packages:
Fiverr currently allows sellers to offer up to three different packages: Basic, Standard, and Premium. You have to briefly explain each package. Details of package vary according to your service. For example, as a content writer, you have to mention no. of words, keywords, references, revisions, research, and so on.
Description and FAQ:
After offering packages, you need to describe your Gig in detail yet creatively so the buyers can determine if your Gig meets their needs. You get 1200 words to explain your Gig. Utilize them well. Use FAQs to omit the confusion of buyers and most answer frequently asked questions in your Gig.
Requirements:
In the requirement section, you are supposed to tell your buyers what you need to start the order. You can give instructions to your buyers.
Add a Gallery to your Gig:
The gallery of your Gig contains three things: photos, a video, and PDFs. The files you choose to put in your gallery should all be relevant to your gig's offerings. PDFs work as your portfolio.
Video Overview:
If it is possible for you to make a video, in which you can introduce yourself and your service confidently and professionally, it will prove extra beneficial for you. This is the best way to attract buyers.
Publish your Gig:
This is the last step and easy to do. Just click on the button Publish Gig. Your Gig will go live and will be active. Once Gig will go live, it can be promoted through any social platform. You can share the link of your Gig on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
How much you can earn on Fiverr:
Initially, as a newbie, you can earn 4 dollars per gig. A gig costs 5 dollars but Fiverr deducts 20% as a service charge. Some of the Top Sellers can make huge amounts. Of the Top Sellers, many earn $2000- $10,000 per month, whereas, a few can make $25,000+ per month. This is even taking into account the 20%fee!
Withdrawal from Fiverr account:
Any amount above $20 is available for withdrawal. Fiverr allows withdrawal through PayPal, Bank Account, Payoneer, and Fiverr Revenue Card.
What to Avoid:
Do read terms and services before joining. Any violation of Fiverr terms will get you the first warning. Any further violation in the same month can deactivate your account.
So if you have some talent just show it to the world and start to earn money from today by just creating an account. | https://medium.com/illumination/sell-service-on-fiver-and-earn-money-a5aaddfd1c54 | ['Nida Imran'] | 2020-12-29 20:50:03.314000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Marketing', 'Freelancing', 'Gigs', 'Money'] |
The Illustrated Interview: Steve Teare | Every week on Spiralbound we ask one of our featured artists: How do you make comics? This week we spoke (emailed) with Steve Teare, of “True Stories From IKEA.” (Check it out if you haven’t already! And see here for our full interview archive.)
So, Steve, how do you make comics? (Text from Steve, drawings by Edith Z.) | https://medium.com/spiralbound/the-illustrated-interview-steve-teare-5f699ff5592c | ['Edith Zimmerman'] | 2018-06-18 01:39:28.918000+00:00 | ['Spiralbound', 'here', 'Comics', 'Illustrated Interview', 'Steve Teare'] |
How to improve the accuracy of a Regression Model | Observations based on the above plots:
Males and females are almost equal in number and on average median charges of males and females are also the same, but males have a higher range of charges. Insurance charges are relatively higher for smokers. Charges are highest for people with 2–3 children Customers are almost equally distributed across the 4 regions and all of them have almost the same charges. Percentage of female smokers is less than the percentage of male smokers.
Thus, we can conclude that ‘smoker’ has a considerable impact on the insurance charges, while gender has the least impact.
Let’s create a heatmap to understand the strength of the correlation between charges and numeric features — age, BMI, and children.
sns.heatmap(df[['age', 'bmi', 'children', 'charges']].corr(), cmap='Blues', annot=True)
plt.show()
Correlation Map — Image by Author
We see that age and BMI have an average +ve correlation with charges.
We will now go over the steps of model preparation and model development one by one.
Feature Encoding
In this step, we convert categorical variables — smoker, sex, and region — to numeric format(0, 1,2, 3, etc.) as most of the algorithms cannot handle non-numeric data. This process is called encoding and there are many ways to do this :
LabelEncoding — Represent categorical values as numbers (For example, a feature such as Region with values Italy, India, USA, UK can be represented as 1, 2, 3, 4) OrdinalEncoding — Used for representing rank-based categorical data values as numbers. (For example representing high, medium, low as 1,2,3) One-hot Encoding — Represent categorical data as binary values — 0s,1s only. I prefer to use one-hot encoding over label encoding if there aren’t many unique values in the categorical feature. In here, I have used pandas’ one hot encoding function (get_dummies) on Region and split it into 4 columns — location_NE, location_SE, location_NW, and location_SW. One can also use label encoding for this column, however, one hot encoding gave me a better result.
#One hot encoding
region=pd.get_dummies(df.region, prefix='location')
df = pd.concat([df,region],axis=1)
df.drop(columns='region', inplace=True) df.sex.replace(to_replace=['male','female'],value=[1,0], inplace=True)
df.smoker.replace(to_replace=['yes', 'no'], value=[1,0], inplace=True)
2. Feature Selection and Scaling
Next, we will select features that affect ‘charges’ the most. I have selected all the features except gender as its effect on ‘charges’ is very less(concluded from the viz charts above). These features will form our ‘X’ variable while charges will be our ‘y’ variable. If there are many features, I suggest you use scikit-learn’s SelectKBest for feature selection to arrive at the top features.
#Feature Selection
y=df.charges.values
X=df[['age', 'bmi', 'smoker', 'children', 'location_northeast', 'location_northwest', 'location_southeast', 'location_southwest']] #Split data into test and train
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test=train_test_split(X,y, test_size=0.2, random_state=42)
Once we have selected our features, we need to ‘standardize’ the numeric ones — age, BMI, children. Standardization process converts data to smaller values in the range 0 to 1 so that all of them lie on the same scale and one doesn’t overpower the other. I have used StandardScaler here.
#Scaling numeric features using sklearn StandardScalar
numeric=['age', 'bmi', 'children']
sc=StandardScalar()
X_train[numeric]=sc.fit_transform(X_train[numeric])
X_test[numeric]=sc.transform(X_test[numeric])
Now, we are all set to create our first basic model😀 . We will try Linear Regression and DecisionTrees to predict insurance charges
Model scores — Image by Author
Mean absolute error (MAE) and root-mean-square error (RMSE) are the metrics used to evaluate regression models. You can read more about it here. Our baseline models give a score of more than 76%. Between the 2, DecisionTrees give a better MAE of 2780. Not bad..!
Let’s see how can we make our model better.
3A. Feature Engineering
We can improve our model score by manipulating some of the features in the dataset. After a couple of trials, I found that the following items improve accuracy:
Grouping similar customers into clusters using KMeans. Clubbing northeast and northwest regions into ‘north’ and southeast and southwest into ‘south’ in Region column. Transforming ‘children’ into a categorical feature called ‘more_than_one_child’ which is ‘Yes’ if the number of children is > 1
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
features=['age', 'bmi', 'smoker', 'children', 'location_northeast', 'location_northwest', 'location_southeast', 'location_southwest']
kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters=2)
kmeans.fit(df[features]) df['cust_type'] = kmeans.predict(df[features]) df['location_north']=df.apply(lambda x: get_north(x['location_northeast'], x['location_northwest']), axis=1) df['location_south']=df.apply(lambda x: get_south(x['location_southwest'], x['location_southeast']), axis=1) df['more_than_1_child']=df.children.apply(lambda x:1 if x>1 else 0)
All features— Image by Author
3B. Feature Transformation
From our EDA, we know that the distribution of ‘charges’ (Y) is highly skewed and hence we will apply scikit-learn’s target transformer — QuantileTransformer to normalize this behavior.
X=df[['age', 'bmi', 'smoker', 'more_than_1_child', 'cust_type', 'location_north', 'location_south']] #Split test and train data
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test=train_test_split(X,y, test_size=0.2, random_state=42) model = DecisionTreeRegressor()
regr_trans = TransformedTargetRegressor(regressor=model, transformer=QuantileTransformer(output_distribution='normal'))
regr_trans.fit(X_train, y_train)
yhat = regr_trans.predict(X_test)
round(r2_score(y_test, yhat), 3), round(mean_absolute_error(y_test, yhat), 2), round(np.sqrt(mean_squared_error(y_test, yhat)),2) >>0.843, 2189.28, 4931.96
Woahh… a whopping 84%…and MAE has reduced to 2189!
4. Use of Ensemble and Boosting Algorithms
Now we will use these features on ensemble-based RandomForest, GradientBoosting, LightGBM, and XGBoost. If you are a beginner and not aware of boosting and bagging methods, you can read more about them here.
X=df[['age', 'bmi', 'smoker', 'more_than_1_child', 'cust_type', 'location_north', 'location_south']] model = RandomForestRegressor()
#transforming target variable through quantile transformer
ttr = TransformedTargetRegressor(regressor=model, transformer=QuantileTransformer(output_distribution='normal'))
ttr.fit(X_train, y_train)
yhat = ttr.predict(X_test) r2_score(y_test, yhat), mean_absolute_error(y_test, yhat), np.sqrt(mean_squared_error(y_test, yhat)) >>0.8802, 2078, 4312
Yes! Our RandomForest model does perform well — MAE of 2078👍. Now, we will try with some boosting algorithms such as Gradient Boosting, LightGBM, and XGBoost.
Model Score— Image by Author
All of them seem to perform well:)
5. Hyperparameter Tuning
Let’s tweak some of the algorithm parameters such as tree depth, estimators, learning rate, etc, and check for model accuracy. Manually trying out different combinations of parameter values is very time-consuming. Scikit-learn’s GridSearchCV automates this process and calculates optimized values for these parameters. I have applied GridSearch to the above 3 algorithms. Below is the one for XGBoost:
Best values for parameters in GridSearchCV — Image by Author
Once we have optimum values for our parameters, we will run all 3 models again with these values.
Model Score — Image by Author
This looks much better! We have been able to improve our accuracy — XGBoost gives a score of 88.6% with relatively fewer errors 👏👏
1. Distribution plot of predicted and actual values of charges ; 2. Residual plot — Image by Author
Distribution and Residual plots confirm that there is a good overlap between predicted and actual charges. However, there are a handful of predicted values that are way beyond the x-axis and this makes our RMSE is higher. This can be reduced by increasing our data points i.e. collecting more data.
We are now ready to deploy this model into production and test it on unknown data. Well done👍
In a nutshell, the points that improved the accuracy of my model
Creating simple new features Transforming target variable Clustering common data points Use of boosting algorithms Hyperparameter tuning
You can access my notebook here. Not all of them may work for your model every time. Pick and choose the ones that work best for your scenario:) | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-improve-the-accuracy-of-a-regression-model-3517accf8604 | ['Shwetha Acharya'] | 2021-06-22 13:51:48.305000+00:00 | ['Gridsearchcv', 'Feature Engineering', 'Accuracy', 'Feature Transformation', 'Regression'] |
Space Internet?!? 📡 | The internet has become an integral part of our lives; we use it every day. And for many of us, we use the internet all day. Can you remember what life was like before the internet? Remember how difficult it was? Because of the internet, we’re connected with billions of people worldwide, and we have access to a seemingly unlimited stream of information. Life without the internet is unfathomable.
According to statistics company, Statista, as of October 2020, almost 4.7 billion people use the internet or 59% of the world’s population. That leaves about 40% of the world’s population without access to the twentieth century’s greatest invention. The reason so much of the world doesn’t have access is due to many factors. Geography, a lack of resources, culture, education, and politics are all factors that leave some 4 billion people without the internet. Thankfully, the man who plans to populate Mars also plans to populate Earth with the internet.
Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, plans to develop a satellite network that will provide low-cost internet to underserved and remote communities worldwide. The satellite network’s name is Starlink. SpaceX has already launched more than 1,000 satellites and is offering early access to its public beta in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Just last year, SpaceX won nearly $1 billion from the Federal Communications Commission to bring its Starlink services to rural areas in the US. SpaceX eventually plans on having up to 12,000 satellites in orbit delivering high-speed internet across the globe.
I am not a financial advisor and my comments should never be taken as financial advice. Investments come with risk, so always do your research and analysis beforehand. | https://medium.com/invstr/space-internet-46888064f0e4 | [] | 2021-01-21 11:30:50.193000+00:00 | ['Spacex', 'Elon Musk', 'Business', 'Technology'] |
Deep-Rooted Sexism That Is Birthing Narcissist Men | MISOGYNY
Deep-Rooted Sexism That Is Birthing Narcissist Men
Photo by Jyotirmoy Gupta on Unsplash
India lives in several centuries at the same time - Arundhati Roy
While most of India is progressing towards gender equality and accepting all genders, there are some parts of India where discrimination against the female sex is still prevalent. It’s absurd to see that people worship female goddesses but disrespect the same gender.
Many say that women in India are not independent. I say most men aren’t because they can’t even make tea if their wives are not around.
The absence of a woman scares them.
All men are not the same, I am not a pseudo-feminist.
Some men are male chauvinists. However educated and successful they might be, they just can’t come out of their shell, which defines women as inferior.
The seeds of such poisonous attitude were sown long back, the weeds are now dense difficult to get rid of unless we teach our boys how not to treat girls.
The seeds of the weed
The kitchen is a restricted area for men A man in shorts= Stud, a woman in shorts=Slut Money is saved for a boy’s education but a girl’s marriage Men of the house should be fed first Men should not be served left-over food
The Kitchen Is A Restricted Area For Men
Boys, from a very tender age, are taught not to enter the kitchen. They are taught that household chores are only for women. Gender roles are defined and assigned from a very early age. Boys should look after the works outside the home. The girl’s world is confined to the four walls of a house.
Daughters look after their brothers, cook for them, take their plates away after finishing their meal, wash their clothes, press them, put them away in their wardrobes, polish their shoes, pack their lunch……this list is infinite and irrational just like Pi. These daughters are pushed into parentification.
These boys raise to be men who expect and demand the same from their wives. They consider stepping into the kitchen as an aspect of shame.
A Man In S Is A Stud Whereas A Woman In Shorts Is A Slut
India is a tropical country with extreme temperatures, especially in summer. Despite the discomfort, women are expected to dress modestly, cover themselves completely. This rule does not apply to a man. He has the right to choose what he wants to wear but a woman has no right and freedom to wear what she wants.
She is morally policed. If she doesn’t comply she is abused and blamed for provoking men and for dressing inappropriately.
Boys raised in such an atmosphere grow up to be men who think that a woman in a mini skirt is inviting harassment.
My question: what about those 3-year-old and 4-year-old rape victims? why are they raped? Is it because they dressed inappropriately and provoked men who are the age of their grandfathers and fathers?
Money Is Saved For A Boy’s Education But For A Girl’s Marriage
“what would you achieve by getting a college degree? You would ultimately get married, look after your husband and your children”.
This is the most frequently asked question when a girl wants to go to college and earn a degree. Parents are ready to spend huge money on a daughter’s marriage which would just be a day or two and are not ready to spend the same money which would give her the most valued possessions- knowledge, education, and most importantly an identity of her own which would be with her for a lifetime.
This attitude makes the boys think that women cannot study and earn degrees or do jobs. They think that women are designed to get married and produce babies. Education is not a woman’s cup of tea. At least that's what they think.
Men Of The House Should Be Fed First
A woman cooks food, cleans the kitchen, feeds her children. Despite doing all the chores, she is not allowed to have the first morsel of food. All men of the house should be served first. Women can eat after the men finish eating.
This atmosphere sows the seeds of superiority in boys. They feel that girls are inferior and second-class citizens who deserve no respect or equal status. They grow up arrogant and forget that they would starve without such wonderful women who serve them happily, relentlessly, and selflessly.
Men Should Not Be Served Left-over Food
Any leftovers should be consumed only by women. These sexist societies believe that men work hard outside, all day long and women are relaxing at home. So, men must be served hot, freshly cooked meals.
This attitude leads to supremacy and arrogance in men.
The very same society states- “Annam parabramha swaroopam” which translates to “ Food is equal to the creator/ God”. when you suggest that food is God, why can’t both men and women equally share it?
I, personally believe in minimizing food wastage. When there is a left-over, it is equally shared among all the members of our family irrespective of gender, age unless they are our guests.
Say NO to food wastage. Say NO to gender discrimination.
These are just a few of many. There are many other weird things like Menstrual Huts that ghettoize women.
All those practices are my mental notes on how not to raise my boy. | https://medium.com/illumination/deep-rooted-sexism-that-is-birthing-narcissist-men-3acf2b191bf3 | ['Archana Vanguri'] | 2021-06-19 05:12:30.318000+00:00 | ['Gender Roles', 'Raising Boys', 'Sexism', 'Discrimination', 'Misogyny'] |
One Human Family… | One Human Family…
The more in tune I allow myself to be with nature, the more it makes sense to me. We are living on borrowed time, that it is our duty to always choose to right by oneself and others…
To face your shadows, to unleash all your insecurities. To become one with your brothers and sisters. To get your mind right, as we are all players of the good fight.There is nothing more than make believe… What you can affirm aloud, you can achieve. There is a light within. I fell in love with yoga, when the inner light was lit… I looked around the yoga room, and saw the same divine light in each of you around me.
I fell in love with the painkiller, when I was a victim of the pain. I was lured into what soothed me. Hypnotized by what bruised me. In a paralyzing effect. Lingers like a weight, after the night fall. Answers like a stripper, who’s gonna take it all…
Stagnant lives is when you start to die, I can hear that voice tell me. I start to decay, when I find myself living the same version of another day. Child inside is screaming to come free. Are you somewhat relatable, you and me? | https://medium.com/@chezneyrokovia/one-human-family-2477ed86760c | ['Chezney Rokovia'] | 2021-03-05 00:17:33.954000+00:00 | ['Covid', 'Divine Feminine', 'Humanity', 'Human', 'Poetry'] |
My Experience with Therapy (1) | I recently decided to seek professional help after so many years of struggling with finding a balance in life. I had quite a number of experiences from my childhood that were tormenting me as an adult and I just did not know how to move past them. So many questions I wanted answers to, with little or no explanation for them. I was trying so hard to be happy, stay sane and be productive at work.
Why did I need Therapy?
I think therapy is one of those things that can serve alot of purposes. My reasons for exploring the option and going for therapy may differ from every other person’s reason.
The first reason I knew I needed therapy was because of my experiences growing up. Before I turned 10, I was completely oblivious of what a highly dysfunctional family meant. As far as I was concerned, I was a happy young girl born into a happy family and I was truly loved by my parents and siblings. As I grew older, the scales fell from my eyes and I was forced into the realities of my family’s imperfections. My parents were not in a happy marriage and I was soon forced to experience two adults that I truly loved and adored tear each other apart and thirst for vengeance.It was all so confusing and I remember going to school so many times and I would cry because I was starting to blame myself even though I did not understand why. I would pray and beg God so many times to please help iron things out between them so that we would be one big happy family again, I truly believed a miracle would happen over night but it did not. A few weeks after I finished high school, my parents finally decided to pursue a divorce legally. It was tough having to take sides unconsciously with one of your parents. It hurts more now that I am an adult because i fully understand what happens between two people in a relationship is very complicated and no matter how many stories you hear from both parties you really should not take sides as things are not always as they seem. This experience made me look at life and relationships in a very weird way. I was either expecting too much from people with the hope things would go well as I was always too scared of rejection and things ending terribly or I entered with no hope or excitement things would go well. I realised I had not forgiven my mother and father as I blamed them alot for not trying their best to resolve their isssues for the sake of their children. So many “what ifs” and unanswered questions. I stopped believing in the institution of marriage.
Understanding and Accepting the concept of Death was my second reason for exploring Therapy. I lost my father unexpectedly two years after the divorce from my mother. Unfortunately we did not have the best relationship as at the time of his death. It was my first time experiencing death that close up and It broke me. I tried to be strong but I never really addressed my grief when he died. I had not forgiven him or myself for not trying to work on our relationship and I was angry that he would just leave the way he did. Again alot of unanswered questions.
Work Life Balance: I had been working for two years and I had thrown myself into work with all I had. As an overachiever and a hard worker, the least I could possibly do was to apply myself the best I could to ensure I was constantly adding value and being productive. I think to a large extent I started to put so much pressure on myself. I was failing to prioritise the other important things in my life. It became so bad that I was feeling overpowered by stress and anytime things did not go well at work it had a huge toll on me and would cause me sleepless nights. I knew I did not want to continue being a slave to my work and I wanted to have a healthy social life and still be productive at work. I realized my career was not a short run, but a life long race and I needed to have mechanisms in place to cope and survive the different curve balls life will throw me as things progress.
Friendships and Relationships: How do you accept or deal with disappointment? I have always found it so hard to accept and move on when people hurt me. I try to give all i can in my relationships and friendships with people. There are literally no lengths I could not go for the people I cared for and loved. I started to learn that life is not always black and white and a lot of times the people that we love will hurt us- either intentionally or unintentionally. I found it very hard to accept this concept- Forgiving was easy but forgetting what they had done was the hard part. I became very defensive when going into friendships and would be so eager to cut people off just to protect myself. I found it really hard to be vulnerable and to trust people. This was not healthy as I was starting to live quite a lonesome life not because there was no one around to be there for me, but because I was too scared to let people in with the risk they would hurt me. | https://medium.com/@miss-tee/my-experience-with-therapy-1-3b131f727946 | [] | 2020-12-26 22:22:59.377000+00:00 | ['Therapy', 'Divorce', 'Family', 'Burnout', 'Mental Health'] |
A quick glance into Android Architecture and its key Core Concepts | iOS has a limited number of smartphones in the market and custom iOS application development is very rare as there are strict Apple standards and guidelines one has to follow while designing these apps. But that is not the case with Android. There are tons of Android smartphones floating in the market which are used by various users. Different devices require multiple customizations suitable for various screen sizes and resolutions.
Custom Android apps design and development take more time than regular apps, hence Google has provided several tools like Android Studio, Fabric, Eclipse etc to accelerate app development. Also, Google has introduced many advanced Android concepts and simplified Android architecture that help in developing custom Android applications faster and better.
In this blog, we will be discussing in brief basic Android architecture, Android components and some key core Android concepts in detail.
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Android Architecture — Core Structure
Talking about Android Architecture, below are the primary components of the architecture. Let us look at each one of them in brief.
The Linux Kernel — The Linux Kernel is the abstraction layer between the hardware device and the Application layer of the Android software. The prime job of this layer is to provide memory management services, power management services and device drivers like the USB driver, Wi-Fi driver, Display driver etc. Because of its efficient and powerful performance, it is one of the major and essential parts of Android Architecture.
Android Runtime (ART) — The ART is responsible to convert the DEX bytecode, generated by the Android App, to the ELF (Executable Linkable Format). This native format is required by the processor to execute the app, which ultimately results in faster application performance.
Android Libraries — Android Architecture provides a number of libraries for supporting Android app development such as,
WebKit — It is a browser engine that enables to display web content.
SSL — The Secure Socket layer establishes a secure link between browser and server.
SGL & OpenGL — These are APIs specifically used for 2D and 3D graphics.
Application Framework — In Android architecture, this is where the applications are executed. This layer allows the creation and implementation of classes with the help of services like the Activity Manager, Resources Manager, Content Provider, Package Manager etc. True to Android theory, this layer also implements the concept of reusability of the components.
Applications — The Application layer of the Android architecture is where the native applications like Home, Camera, Gallery etc reside as well as third party applications downloaded from the PlayStore.
Go through the Android Architecture in detail in this article.
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Android Architecture — Key Concepts
Android architecture provides some amazing Android concepts that help in the speedy development of custom Android apps. Below is a list of such core Android concepts. Let us discuss them in detail.
Android UI Controls — To facilitate the faster development design and development of the app UI, Android architecture provides plenty of UI controls to offer an enriched user experience. Implementing standard Android UI controls is faster as compared to develop a custom UI from scratch. These standard controls also ensure better performance than custom ones. Control components like scroll, shrink, enlarge etc can be implemented easily with the help of already available controls thus eliminating the need to start from point zero.
Activities — If a user is bombarded with multiple activities like clicking a link, scrolling or navigating etc, then it will immediately reduce his/her interest in the app. Android architecture focuses on presenting only pertinent information or action related to the appropriate screen thanks to its unique “Activities”. For eg:- if a user wishes to see additional information of a particular task, he/she is taken to a new screen, rather than displaying it on the same screen.
User Interactions — “First impression is the last impression”. Hence, a user’s initial interaction with the app is of utmost importance. While creativity is an important aspect of any application, user experience tops the list. Hence, it is essential to note that the app follows standard protocols for hard and soft buttons for Home, Back, Search, Long Press etc. using standard Android components will help establish a common theme for all Android applications.
Layouts — Android architecture offers multiple screen layout options to manage screen size and layout across all Android smartphones. For example, linear layouts can be implemented when controls need to be handled either horizontally or vertically. Whereas relative layouts manage controls in relation to one another. Read here in detail about linear and relative layouts.. Apart from this, Android also allows you to set specific element size/weight on the screen across all devices. You can set weight, gravity, density of elements etc using this concept.
Screen Size — Android architecture offers various tools to develop applications that support Android devices of any and all screen sizes available. By making minute changes in the UI design, it is possible to develop an Android app that fits perfectly across all screens.
Fragments — As discussed above, Activities in Android architecture help maintain only one activity per screen for users, similarly “Fragments” help Android developers design and create a single large screen for devices like Tablets, and then splitting this screen into smaller ones for smartphones. Since Tables have more space as compared to smaller smartphones, it doesn’t make sense in wasting his space only to accommodate controls for only smaller screens. If there is any requirement of the app to be designed for bigger devices like Tablets, it is imperative that developers include Fragments in the development process. Understand how Fragments should be implemented in an Android app. in this article.
Intents — An interesting concept of Android architecture is Intents. Sometimes, an already existing functionality on other popular Android apps can be leveraged onto your own app using Intents. This reduces significant programming as the functionality is already developed and does not require to be re-written.
Android Architecture — Conclusion
As we saw, Android architecture simplifies the development of Android apps by providing standard controls and advanced constructs thereby speeding up the entire process and ease the pressure of an Android developer who otherwise would need to build everything from scratch for a customized Android app.
About Blockchain Simplified
Blockchain Simplified is a Top blockchain development company in Pune — India which works on all major Blockchain requirements. We specialise in Blockchain, Web and Mobile development (One Stop Shop for all technology development needs).
Our clientele includes Multiple Funded Start — Ups, SMBs and few MNCs few of which are NASDAQ and NSE listed.
Some of our work includes,
Blockchain based-
hubrisone.com — is a Live app with 100,000+ downloads, All-in-One Cryptocurrency current account. The entire development from scratch carried out by Blockchain Simplified.
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Multinational Bank — The company helped one of the top 3 ranking Multinational Banks to integrate various cryptocurrencies into their banking application.
and more…
Non-Blockchain-
SHC — Built entire platform and app from scratch for a $1m funded startup led by a team of Americans including PhD degree holders.
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Blockchain Development : Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperledger, Corda, and more.
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Visit our official website https://blockchainsimplified.com/ for more information. | https://medium.com/@blockchain_simplified/a-quick-glance-into-android-architecture-and-its-key-core-concepts-ba6da1e71c33 | ['Blockchain Simplified'] | 2020-11-05 10:37:09.314000+00:00 | ['Blockchainsimplified', 'Android Architecture', 'Androiddevelopmentcompany', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Android Apps'] |
Overcoming Fear and Anxiety | Dealing with fear can be tough, when you’re unsure or doubting your ability to deliver and you’re just in an overall dark place. Seeing the light might be tough but you must continue to try, because the moment when you give up is when you’ll be stuck in that dark place.
Everyone suffers or deals with some type of fear, in some way or another. I don’t think it’s something we will ever lose, it’s part of being human. So rather than feel the need to be fearless, how about trying a different approach. Instead, how about working through it? What I’ve realized is that most times the very thing we fear is needed in the next step in our personal growth.
Mad Question Askin’
What if, instead of fearing fear, we use it as an indicator to see and feel through whatever it is?
What if we take that energy and just apply it towards a creative effort?
What if our mind is indeed making a mountain out of a molehill?
How can we remind ourselves that we create and shape our reality?
Doing the work and showing up, especially on days when it’s tough because self doubt creeps in, is a good practice for working through that emotion and feeling. It’s like getting that monkey of our back, and the more we practice showing up and doing the work, the less painful and the experience of fear will be.
Meditation is also a tool that can be used to help with fear and anxiety. Taking a few minutes out the day, 10, 15, or maybe 20 minutes is really all you need. Focusing on your breathe for those few minutes will help you calm and clear your mind.
This has been a favorite practice of mine for sometime now. But it’s not enough on it’s own. Couple meditation with taking action towards that fear, whatever it is, and that’s how we will begin to grow through it and not run from it. When we grow through our fears we level up, and become stronger because it. | https://medium.com/@romainsinclair/overcoming-fear-and-anxiety-3fdd348274e1 | ['Romain Sinclair'] | 2020-12-25 15:41:05.001000+00:00 | ['Self Belief', 'Self Improvement', 'Overcoming Fear', 'Stress Management', 'Overcoming Obstacles'] |
Top 5 leg exercise to reduce thigh fats faster | Thigh fats are one of the greatest concerns of women. And to reduce it takes lot of hard work and right exercises. So, here are some of the best leg exercises which will target those thighs and sculpt them in no time.
1. Regular squats:
Squatting is the most effective exercise to reduce thigh fats. It helps in lower body weight loss and tones the legs. This exercise works on whole leg at a time. It sculpts your back and front thighs as well as your calves.
How to do it:
Stand with your feet shoulder distance apart. Point the toes slightly outward and sit as if you are going to sit on a chair. Try to keep your thighs parallel to the floor and don’t let the knees cross the foot.
Variation:
As legs are made up of longest muscles it can be toned faster with the help of weights.
While doing squats you can hold weights (can be bottle full of water or sand) in your hands closer to your chest.
2. Sumo squats:
Sumo squats are the best way to cut down those flabby inner thighs. While performing it, you will experience a pull in your inner thighs. This pulls tones your inner thighs and makes them shorts ready.
How to do it:
Stand with your feet wide apart. Keeping your back as straight as you can, slowly bend from your knees and go down. Go down as much as you can. Do not put pressure on your knees. Hold for a couple to seconds and come back to the original position.
Variation:
For quick results you can do it with some weights or a water bottle full of water or sand.
3. Lunges
One of the best exercises to sculpt you front and back thigh. It can be done with or without weights. But for better and faster results you can use weights.
How to do it:
Stand straight and keep a comfortable distance between your feet. Now move your right leg forward as if you are taking a big step keeping other leg as it is. Bend from your both the knees and lean a bit forward from your back. Be in the position for couple of second and while coming back to the original position, slowly pick your right foot by pushing your heel no the ground. Repeat same for the other leg as well.
Note: Keep the front knee in line with the thigh.
Variation:
Can be done using weights in both the hands. Keep both the hands straight beside your hip and hold the weights and do the same process as above.
4. Lateral leg rises
Lateral leg rises is very effective exercise for inner thighs.
How to do it:
Lie down on a mat as shown in fig. hold your upper leg with your hand and try to raise your lower leg as high as you can and lower it down without touching the floor. Remember to flex your foot. Repeat for few reps and switch it to other leg.
5. Bridge
Bridge or hip rise is the exercise which targets your glut muscles as well as your lower abs. It strengthens your core and helps in improving your poster.
How to do it:
Lie down on your back. Fold your legs and bring then close to your butt. Press your hands side of your hips and raise your hip towards the sky. While doing this keep your neck relaxed, don’t put pressure on it. Squeeze your butts in air and hold the position for few seconds, then release and slowly land down. Repeat the same process for few reps and relax.
So guys, these were my top 5 thigh workout which will defiantly help in loose those flabby thighs.
Thank you guys for reading this article. Please share, comment and follow for more such informative articles, which will defiantly help you guys in your journey towards weight loss. | https://medium.com/@muditapawar/top-5-leg-exercise-to-reduce-thigh-fats-faster-93d122730e81 | [] | 2020-06-30 17:59:34.038000+00:00 | ['Reduce Thigh Fat', 'How To Lose Thigh Fat', 'Fitness Tips', 'Home Workout', 'Weight Loss'] |
Windows 7 Rocks; Needs Better Program Startup Control | I have been running Windows 7 Release Candidate for nearly a month and I love it.
The list of things Windows 7 brings closer to me and makes more fun/easier to use is kind of endless. Every day I use it, I slowly begin to think that someday I might forget the MS-DOS commands and endless, repetitive click-cycles (the kind your tech support guy repeats from memory when helping you get connected to a projector for a meeting… or get your monitor to show anything at all after the meeting is over) I have committed to memory in order to accomplish anything worthwhile on previous Windows OS’s.
One consistent item I keep wishing I had easier access to was a simple applet that helped me manage my startup programs, or manage what programs start automatically when Windows launches.
This really should be simple to find, but it’s not. In my opinion, if there is anything more detrimental to most-user’s experience with their PC is the crud of programs and their various “notifiers”, “monitors”, “updaters”, “download helpers” and otherwise annoying popup programs that do not NEED to be running, but run every single time the PC starts up.
Searching the Control Panel and Windows Help, I finally came across a link to an applet called “Start System Configuration” (which I recognize as msconfig thanks to my MS-DOS-infected brain) that can help me manage my startup programs, but the description for the applet has nothing to do with what I want to do:
“Any program that tries to start on my machine…. kill it dead.”
To access the Program Startup Killer, access Widows Help and Support, and then search for start system configuration. Ignore that it says nothing about killing off offending startup programs, just click the link to open it.
Up pops the system configuration applet. Click the startup tab and uncheck any programs you don’t want to allow to run when the machine boots. Then click “Apply”, then “OK”.
Danger: This isn’t a well-refined applet, and unchecking the wrong boxes could cause damage to your system or user experience if you don’t know what you’re doing. | https://medium.com/connected-well/windows-7-rocks-needs-better-program-startup-control-c5ecc5903d2c | ['Robert Merrill'] | 2016-03-27 20:25:15.944000+00:00 | ['Windows7', 'Microsoft', 'Windows'] |
Decimation - The Cruelest Punishment in the Roman Army | Decimation: the Cruelest Punishment in the Roman Army
Removal of a tenth
Roman legionaries (Image: historyanswers.co.uk)
The Roman army was an effective war machine that created one of the largest empires in history. Roman legionaries obeyed their commanders and kept formation during the battle. They were famous for their discipline.
But what happened when the legionaries deserted from the battle or disobeyed their commander?
They would be subjected to one of the most brutal punishments in military history.
Decimation meant the execution of every tenth legionary
A legionary being beaten to death by his comrades (Imagespartacus.fandom.com)
The biggest advantage of the Roman army was their ability to fight in formation. The Roman legionaries received enough food, standardized equipment, and good training. The discipline and blind obedience were of the utmost importance.
If the legionaries fled the battlefield, there was no way back in the eyes of the Roman senior leadership.
All of the accused men, no matter the army rank or the social status, were divided into groups of ten men. Each of the men was subject to the lottery either by grabbing a stone from the sack or by drawing a straw. The man who grabbed the white stone or drew the shortest straw was killed.
In the Roman army, the phrase ‘to draw the shortest straw’ got a much more serene meaning.
The Roman legionaries often faced death. The death sentence was not terrifying to them. It was the way how the execution was carried out that made the decimation a cruel punishment.
Every tenth legionary was clubbed down by his remaining nine comrades. Imagine that you have to kill a friend with whom you’ve marched for years, shared meals with, and fought side by side.
The lucky ones that survived were expelled from the legion for a couple of days. They had to camp outside of the fort and survive on raw barley.
Decimation was used only on rare occasions
Roman legionaries waiting for the decimation process to begin (Image: historycollection.com)
The Romans rarely used decimation since it meant the loss of experienced soldiers. Thus, we have only a few recorded cases of decimation in the Roman army.
Roman general Crassus ordered decimation after the defeat by Spartacus in 71 BC.
Julius Caesar threatened to decimate his ninth legion during the Roman Civil War (49–45 BC).
Mark Anthony, after being defeated by Parthians in 36 BC, ordered decimation too.
The most famous case of decimation is the Theban legion. In 286 AD, this Christian legion refused to persecute fellow Christians. Emperor Maximillian ordered decimation but they still refused to obey the emperor. The angry emperor ordered another round of the decimation.
The legion still resisted.
Therefore, the decimations were repeated until the entire legion of 6.600 men was killed. The town in Switzerland was renamed Saint Maurice to honor their commander, Mauritius.
Conclusion
Decimation didn’t disappear with the fall of the Roman Empire. Actually, there are reports of decimation throughout history.
Some examples of decimation after the collapse of the Roman Empire include: | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/decimation-2ca074812341 | ['Peter Preskar'] | 2020-12-25 18:03:15.201000+00:00 | ['World', 'Roman', 'People', 'War', 'History'] |
The Master Plan that led to the growth of Tesla as a brand | The Master Plan; Why it worked & Use this, how?
The master plan is exactly 1365 words and summarized in 4 sentences by Elon himself. We will look at what Tesla did, talk about why it was shaped this way, and how you can use it for your startup’s benefit.
Phase I
Build a sports car
Tesla’s was founded in 2004 by Eberhard and Tarpenning with the goal of building an electric sports car. Elon among various other investors got on board and served as chairman.
Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash
Why it worked
Electric cars, personal computers and any innovative business venturing into a new niche have the first-mover advantage as the boon. Although, they also have a curse which is much bigger than the boon: they have to inspire the world to become comfortable with a product which no one has bought before.
I believe this curse has plummeted numerous businesses into failure.
Electric cars have been in the world since the early 19th century, although due to high cost, low speed and unavailable charging stations — they have never been distributed commercially. Companies have tried to sell them as a low-end model with an economical price tag as an environment-conscious car, but it didn't work.
Although, there is a simple solution: build for passionate fans, which is exactly what Tesla did by building a sports car. Did it work then?
Tesla built an electric sports car which cost $128,000 and sold about 2450 cars in 30 countries between 2008–2012. As Tesla was a new company, its sales slowly grew from 100 cars in 2008(inception year) to 1400 cars by 2010.
Let me put things into perspective: A Porsche 911 sports car, one of the most famous in the world cost around $145k at the time, sold 5227 cars in 2010. Porsche 911 has been in the market since 1964 and Porsche as a carmaker has built a brand synonymous to the sports car.
Photo by Andras Vas on Unsplash
On average, Tesla was capable of reaching 1/8th (5227/625) of the Porsche 911 sales annually. The sports car enthusiasts rather than buying the 911 Porshe which was at a comparable price were clearly interested in an electric car, which was earmarked earlier as an economically viable environment-conscious alternative which every company & consumer avoided.
Use this, how?
Personal computers in the 1980s succeeded the computers built for business computing. It transitioned to hobbyists before becoming as common as me using a PC to write this story on and you reading the same on yours.
A product built focussed exclusively on super fans or enthusiastic hobbyists is the simplest way to enter a non-existent market. | https://medium.com/@s-r-vivek/the-master-plan-that-led-to-the-growth-of-tesla-as-a-brand-d7e49e980ed5 | ['S R Vivek'] | 2020-11-25 20:32:05.769000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Marketing', 'Strategy', 'Electric Vehicles', 'Business'] |
How to clean dog ears at home. | Maintaining the hygiene of your dog is usually an important part of their care. Some dogs have clean ears while others require regular care. Although all dogs can have ear infections, dogs with long ears are susceptible to ear infections. Checking your dog’s ear hygiene is as important as other routine hygiene tests.
Regular cleaning of your dog’s ears is necessary.
Your fury baby’s ear is likely to contain flea, parasites, dirt and ear wax. This will cause infection, permanent deafness or chronic diseases.
How to keep your dog’s ear clean regularly?
In your routine cleaning devote a while for your dog’s ear cleaning after bathing or swimming. Make it fun rather than monotonous cleaning as aggressive cleaning may cause serious damage to your dog’s ear.
Inspecting your dog’s ear before and while cleaning
You need to be calmed and relaxed to assist your friend, playfully hold your friend, pat, or gently stroke them to release anxiety. you’ll also allow them to be comfortable with the equipment then inspect the ear. twiddling my thumbs enough to let the dog be calm and do not be during a hurry. you’ll invite help to handle the pet.
Read More….. | https://medium.com/@doggroomfit/how-to-clean-dog-ears-at-home-869957639928 | ['Dog Groom Fit'] | 2020-12-27 10:02:44.717000+00:00 | ['Dog Training', 'Clean Dog Ears', 'Dog Lover', 'Dog Grooming', 'Dogs'] |
Why the Top 8 List On Thom Rainer’s Site Is Faulty & How To Fix It With Content Marketing And An Advanced Tactic | Why the Top 8 List On Thom Rainer’s Site Is Faulty & How To Fix It With Content Marketing And An Advanced Tactic Kenny Jahng Follow Oct 1, 2016 · 2 min read
It seems like everyone knows to prioritize website and content marketing when you build or manage a site these days. Even church websites are trying to optimize their sites well, which is a good thing.
Someone forwarded a great post from Thom Rainer’s blog recently that featured 8 Things Your Church Website Must Have.
First, let me say this: Thom’s blog is rock solid.
But when I read this post, it made me pause.
It’s not that this set of recommendations are wrong (they are all things you need on your website, so pay attention). But it is missing two super critical things IMHO that you can’t ignore much longer in this day and age of content marketing and advanced digital advertising strategies.
In this week’s video, I share what’s missing and why they need to bump all 8 things on this original list down in priority.
CONTENT MARKETING & ADVANCED AD TACTICS YOUR WEBSITE CAN’T IGNORE ANY LONER
Bottom line? Content Marketing + Remarketing are Two Critical Considerations For All Websites Today
This seems new to a lot of church communicators that I’ve run into. So I’m really wondering — Have you ever thought about these TWO CRITICAL TACTICS?
Please let me know if you’d like to learn more about remarketing so I can share more if there is interest. | https://medium.com/best-of-kennyjahng-com/why-the-top-8-list-on-thom-rainers-site-is-faulty-how-to-fix-it-with-content-marketing-and-an-f8dc5882d9c7 | ['Kenny Jahng'] | 2016-10-17 18:55:15.986000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Email Opt In', 'Content Marketing', 'Resources', 'Facebook Pixel'] |
#Rajpurepisode1 | #Rajpurepisode1
#rajpurepisode1
#rajpur
#Rajpur
#Author: #RhituparnaChakraborty
#Disclaimer: This is an original work of fiction with no relation to any person/organism living or dead. Every episode, every character is a work of imagination. Any resemblance to any person, organism, place or character is purely coincidental. There is no intention to hurt or rebuke anyone through this work. This story/episode cannot be copied, published or reproduced without the permission of the author RhituparnaChakraborty.
Naresh Sharma came back from work. Shubhangi, his wife, heard his scooter roaring at the gate. Washing her sticky flour clad hands quickly she ran to open the gate. Her husband’s scooter can be deemed an antique piece. It originally belonged to his father. After his father’s demise, this scooter became his friend, philosopher and guide. His wife insisted on buying a new vehicle, but Naresh Sharma wouldn’t budge. The scooter’s noise was enough to alert Shubhangi that Naresh Sharma was at the gate. The moment she would hear that, she would rush to open the gate. Naresh Sharma was a short tempered soul. If Shubhangi would take time to open the gate, there would be unnecessary stress at home. Hence, no matter what, she tried her best to maintain peace at home.
Shubhangi opened the gate, took Naresh Sharma’s bag and helmet and went inside. Naresh Sharma walked leisurely behind her. Naresh Sharma was 57. He had three daughters and a son. Nihaar, Nirali, Naina and Nitisha. Nihaar was 30, Nirali was 27, Naina was 24 and Nitisha was 18.
Naresh Sharma had a grocery store. He earned enough to give his family a comfortable life. However, he was not comfortable in spending a lot of money on things which he thought were not necessary. Nonetheless, his family was happy.
Naresh Sharma had bought a lavish 5 BHK apartment in a posh locality in the town. Rajpur is a small town. The locality Nisarg in Rajpur is immensely beautiful and expensive. Most of the businessmen of the town had their bungalows or penthouses there. Naresh Sharma bought an apartment there primarily for the purpose of investment. He wanted to make it a service apartment where people who came for business trips could stay here. He could earn well that way.
Nihaar was a mature and responsible guy. His father’s word was law for him. He was not in a hurry to get married. He wanted to build his father’s empire further. The entire responsibility of the service apartment was his.
…………………………………………………………………………………
Mushtaque was doing pushups. He was wearing a round necked black plain t shirt and grey track pants. He was sweating profusely. Saanchi came from behind and whistled. Mushtaque smiled to himself, stood up, grabbed the towel from the chair, wiped his face, looked at Saanchi and said, ‘You did not do the right thing by whistling. Just let me take my shower and you will bear the consequences.’ Saanchi giggled and whispered, ‘Catch me if you can.’ Mushtaque looked at Saanchi’s eyes and whispered, ‘Wait and watch my lady.’
Saanchi smiled, pushed Mushtaque gently and said, ‘We will see about that.’ Mehek, their daughter, was at Saanchi’s mom’s place. Her summer vacations had just begun. Saanchi was making coffee when Mushtaque came from behind, grabbed her waist, shook his head gently till droplets of water from his wet hair fell on Saanchi’s neck. He then gently started kissing the droplets of water on her neck. Saanchi closed her eyes and let all of Mushtaque’s love seep in her heart. Just then the coffee boiled and Saanchi shrieked, ‘Noooo. Don’t spill, don’t spill. I can’t clean the gas stove anymore. It’s so irritating.’ Mushtaque was startled. He said with an annoyed note, ‘You are adept in ruining romance, aren’t you?’ Saanchi grinned and said, ‘Let’s go somewhere please. I am so bored.’ Mushtaque said, ‘ Well, I have some work in Rajpur. You can join me.’ Saanchi said, ‘Pheww. Do you ever get proper holiday? I don’t want to stay in any of those official guesthouses. I want to stay in a nice beautiful place. Yes, I will let you work. But then, once you are back from work, I want you to be with me. Your official accommodations are all about work. I don’t like it.’ Mushtaque pulled Saanchi closer to him, swayed his index finger gently on her forehead, moving it further to her cheeks and finally to her lips and said, ‘Anything for you love.’ Saying that, he planted his lips on hers and the world seemed to be lost in their universe of love.’
Naresh Sharma’s service apartment was appealing. It was new. There were no reviews on the reservation site as yet. Nonetheless, Mushtaque liked the pictures of the house. He spoke with Nihaar and finalised that place for their stay in Rajpur.
Mushtaque and Saanchi arrived early in the morning. There was mist all over. Nihaar was there to welcome them. The apartment was beautiful, spacious and lavish. The furniture had some touch of the era of the Victorian age. Naina was pursuing a course in interior design. She took care of the entire decor of the house.
After Nihaar helped Mushtaque and Saanchi keep the luggage, he showed them the entire house and said, ‘We have a cook who will be here in sometime. His name is Suresh. I have told him about your requirements. He will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. The house help, Sarita, will be here too in sometime. If you need anything, give me a call.’ Mushtaque said, ‘Sure. Thank you!’
After Nihaar left, Saanchi screamed with joy and said, ‘Oh, what a beautiful place. Did you see that little garden in the balcony? My my! And the rooms!! Wow!!!.’ She then hugged Mushtaque tight and said, ‘ Thank you, thank you, thank you…..’
After couple of hours, the doorbell rang. Saanchi opened the door. There was a lady standing at the door. She was wearing a red saree. She had a big red vermillion ‘bindi’ on her forehead. Her eyes were clad with thick kohl. Her curly hair was tied into a bun. Saanchi said with a questioning note, ‘Sarita?’. The lady nodded. Saanchi let her in. Sarita went inside. She took the broom from one of the shelves and went about cleaning the house. Just then the door bell rang again. Saanchi answered the door. A young chap stood there. He was wearing a pair of grey trousers and a colorful tshirt. He must be around 25 or so. He looked at Saanchi, grinned and said, ‘I am Suresh.’ Saanchi said, ‘Good morning. Come in.’ Suresh went to the kitchen and started making breakfast. Saanchi went to the room upstairs and started unpacking her suitcase. Sarita came to her room just then. Sarita had big round eyes. Saanchi somehow found Sarita’s gaze uncomfortable. Since Sarita was there to clean the room, Saanchi thought she should step out while Sarita did the cleaning. Saanchi came downstairs when she saw a beautiful girl waiting at the door. The moment she saw Saanchi, the girl said, ‘Hi, I am Nirali. I am Mr. Naresh Sharma’s daughter. I came to check if everything is okay.’ Saanchi smiled and said, ‘Yes. All good. Thank you!’. Nirali gave a warm smile and said, ‘Hope you have a wonderful stay here.’
Mushtaque got ready and came downstairs. Saanchi was at the breakfast table. Suresh came with steaming Aaloo Paranthas (potato stuffed flatbreads), butter, curd and tea. The aroma was captivating. Mushtaque and Saanchi sat to have breakfast. Mushtaque said, ‘I will be back in an hour from work. Till then you can watch movies. We will then go out.’ Saanchi smiled and said, ‘Sure.’ After having breakfast, Mushtaque left. Suresh came and told Saanchi, ‘ I will leave now Ma’am. I have a key with me. I will come at around 12 to make lunch. Please save my phone number. If there is anything, let me know.’ Saanchi saved Suresh’s number. After Suresh left, Saanchi got her laptop and browsed for movies. Sarita had not come downstairs as yet. Saanchi thought, once Sarita leaves, she will lock the front door and watch a movie.
Just then Saanchi’s phone rang. It was from Nihaar. Saanchi answered the phone. Nihaar said, ‘ Ma’am, the househelp Sarita is not well. She won’t be able to come today. I am sorry for the inconvenience. But, she will definitely come tomorrow. Till then, Suresh will take care of the house.’ Saanchi froze there………. | https://medium.com/@rheetuparnachakkravorty/rajpurepisode1-2752533ca0f4 | ['Rhituparna Chakraborty'] | 2020-12-14 15:22:13.938000+00:00 | ['Series', 'Fiction', 'Stories', 'Thriller'] |
Take Surveys & Get Paid: Over 1 million BELA is up for grabs | A month ago, we unveiled a new earning opportunity on Belacam.com/surveys where users could take surveys for brands and research firms and get paid in BELA. After some initial success, we are dedicating over 1,000,000 BELA to survey payouts.
Want some of that? Here’s how it can be yours.
Register for Belacam.com. You’ll need an account to withdraw your BELA earnings! Go to Belacam.com/surveys and take the intro demographic survey. This makes sure we can connect you with the companies and firms that want to hear from people just like you. We also check to make sure you are located in one of the 54 countries where we can serve surveys. Once past the intro demographic survey, you will see our survey offerwall. This shows all the available surveys at the current time. If you complete a survey, the BELA will show in your account balance after you refresh the page. Once you run out of surveys to take, check back in an hour because we will have more!
From my account, I see surveys that pay as much as 500 BELA
Take surveys and earn BELA at https://Belacam.com/surveys | https://medium.com/livebela/take-surveys-get-paid-over-1-million-bela-is-up-for-grabs-662bf115ed86 | ['Tyler Marx'] | 2019-11-13 20:03:14.956000+00:00 | ['Surveys', 'Make Money Online', 'Earning Money', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin'] |
The Airport Nightmare | It’s pleasant evening in Bengaluru. You can see from your window, the clouds in a drizzle. Enough to cool down the summer heat, but not enough to stress test the city’s infamous roads. It’s Friday evening , it had been a perfect week, and you hear the cabin crew announce, that the flight has landed.
The ninety minute flight covered a thousand of the one thousand and forty eight kilometer distance home from Mumbai, the remainder forty eight…
You pull out your phone to book an Uber :
“No Cars Available”
“No Cars Available”
“No Cars Available”
“No Cars Available”
“No Cars Available”
“No Cars Available”
“Ride booked”
“Cancelled”
And so the nightmare begins.
Does this sound familiar, across destinations, across cities, across countries? You’ve done the bulk of the travel, but the last leg of journey, from the airport to the desired destination, is always the longest?
Far too often I had found myself in this situation, and it has never ceased to amaze me. Recently I found an ancient dataset on Kaggle, and picked it up for kicks, to see if I’d arrive at the same conclusions that Uber might since have implemented, or very different ones
The Data
It’s a log of trips booked to and from over airport over one week in July 2016. It contains information about
- Trips requested, Pickup location, driver id, pickup time and drop time.
This is a lot of usable information for an exploratory analysis.
It’s a fairly clean dataset, requiring only one edit to ensure format consistencies around the datetime columns — “Request Timestamp and Drop Timestamp”
Of the 6745 trips requested, only 2831 were completed. Of the ones not completed, 1264 were cancelled and 2650 simply could not have a car allocated to the request. Given this is a week’s worth of data, the first thing to check for is this data skewed by one day or is largely consistent across the week.
Fig1
From the above figure, we can see that stats for each day are fairly consistent, with ~1350 requests per day close of half of which get serviced.
To take a closer look, lets divide the day into time slots and see if we observe the same consistency.
Fig2
While there is a slight variance in time slot, we can still see that for trips starting at the airport, the busiest period begins in the evening and peaks in the 6:00pm — 9:00 pm period.
Whereas for trips starting in the city, the busy period is much earlier in the day peaking in the 6:00am — 9:00am slot.
Fig3
Figure 3 is one of two large graphs, feel free to skip over the commentary if it already makes sense.
If you are anyway waiting for a cab, read along.
Slicing up the data by day and looking for patterns in trips completed, cancelled, or simply no cars available, we observe
1. The most number of trips completed happen fairly 6:00am — 9:00 am, and 6:00–9:00pm slot.
2. The early hours of the day see a lot of cancellations, the evenings are plagued by a supply demand mismatch.
Fig 4
Zooming further for a day (we have previously agreed that each day can be representative for the week) we see that Requests that are initiated in the city are the ones cancelled most often, and the supply crunch is only seen at the airport.
Fig 5
The supply crunch is further demonstrated in figure 5 where we see the very tall orange sky scraper dwarfing the blue one in the evening rush from airport and similarly morning rush from city.
This Supply Demand crunch is definitely one of the problems that needs to be solved.
Fig 6
The other problem that needs looking into is the number of Trip Cancellations
From fig 6, we see that about two hundred drivers cause nearly half of all cancellations, where as the other hundred are responsible remainder. Further more the top 12% offenders cause more than 25% of all cancellations.
Takeaways from the Data Exploration
There is a real supply-demand gap in the evening rush hours from the airport that should be an opportunity for business
There is a problem of trips getting cancelled in the morning to the airport, often multiple times by the same drivers. This behavior requires investigation and remediation.
Caveats and further data required
The dataset does not speak about user who initiates a requests. It is possible that a user raised multiple requests, and got serviced on his fourth one, ie There is a timing gap rather than a supply gap
The dataset doesn't speak of zones in the city where rides are getting cancelled from, are they remote?
Given the large number of requests in the evening rush, would be worth investigating the network coverage around the airport to ensure that this is not a network / app behavior amplifying the real problem.
Proposed solutions
For the supply demand gap in the evening, we can bring in the Pool feature, softly pushing people to pool by telling them how much their wait time could reduce. “Next cab available in 10 minutes, next pool available in 3 minutes” (Yes the Uberpool feature has existed since, but not so sure at airports)
Consider a shuttle service to points in the city where there are a larger number of cabs available
For the cases where rides are getting cancelled this is a problem from the city to the airport, would be helpful to know if distance to the airport plays a role in this.
Is the ride from far enough that the driver may not meet his daily quota of rides? Is the driver worried about driving back without a passenger (The data shows that the number of requests from the airport in the afternoon are very low) Are the drivers cancelling close to finishing for the day and hence refusing the trip?
These questions need further data and can be solved by the right incentive structure such as zoning the city making it more attractive for furthest drivers to come in. | https://ainish-7.medium.com/the-airport-nightmare-517d97fa0662 | ['Ainish Lodaya'] | 2020-12-17 13:53:13.966000+00:00 | ['Uber', 'Data', 'Data Visualization', 'Airports'] |
Email Marketing , Get to know about it , and write email promoting your business | Email Marketing , Get to know about it , and write email promoting your business
-when we talk about business , selling Products , products promoting , websites…, the keyword to succeed in all these staffs is absolutley “traffic”, that’s why email marketing is right there , so today im giving you a magic trick to use emails for promoting your services ,its called the “Email Marketing ”, keep reading to discover this magic way to get traffic .
*Table of content :
1-What Is Email Promoting : 2-Why do You Need it in 2021: 3-How does it work : 4-How to start with Email Marketing :
1-What Is Email Marketing :
it is when you send emails in advertisements to ‘email subscribers’, contacts who have signed up for your email list and have given explicit permission to receive your emails.
Email marketing is used to promote, increase sales and build a community around your brand (for example through a newsletter).
Modern email marketing has moved away from universal mail in one and all and focuses on acceptance, fragmentation and personification.
2-Why do You Need it in 2021:
Availability :
Email is available for all age groups. This opens the door to a wide range of audiences — even the less digital wise among us.
We may be living in the digital age, but not everyone is as familiar with the Internet. However, most people know how to check their email. This makes it the most common form of marketing.
inexpensivness :
Email marketing is extremely profitable. Most email marketing tools offer packages that fit all budgets. In fact, the barrier to entry has never been lower.
Many messaging tools offer free plans with no obligation. They are ideal for first time email marketers who want to familiarize themselves with the software before purchasing it. With nothing to lose, there is no excuse for not trying.
You own your mailing list :
Think about it: Your social networks can disappear in the morning and take all your followers with them. You have nothing left. But this is where the beauty of a mailing list lies — it’s yours!
So if everything else gets complicated, you still have direct contact with the people who are most interested in your brand. And privacy by email as an individual channel will bring you even closer to this audience.
3-How does it work :
ESP :
All Businesses use something called an email service provider (ESP) to send their emails. An email service provider is software that sends and manages email marketing campaigns. It is also known as an email marketing platform, email marketing tool, email marketing service, or email marketing software.
4-How to start with Email Marketing :
Well , you just need two things wich are :
1-Choosing an email marketing service provider.(we highly recommend you Getresponse)
2-Gathering contacts for your list .
with these things available you’re able to start promotingyour services , lets see how ! the process is so simple and its represented to you in the form of steps during wich we’re the software called “GetResponse” , lets check them
1-sign up GetResponse :
for this click on “Sign Up free”.
then enter the informations required and click “create account”:
ps : the password must be at least 8 characters, and contain one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one special character.
after that you’il have to check your email and click on “activate my account” and you will be derected to a page where you’il give some personnal informations like country and phone number then you’il be asked to paste a code you’ve received in your mobile phone and then you’il end up there :
So you can choose your plan or continue with free trial , if you want to choose your plan there would be lot of choices giving lot of good features congratulations you can start promoting your services now !
there are a lot of tools available for your diferent processes.
get access to getresponse by clicking there.
I hope this article was useful to you , enjoy your day and start promoting your business ! | https://medium.com/@aym-lar2/email-marketing-ee80b43fed82 | ['The Success Formula'] | 2021-01-19 13:44:02.779000+00:00 | ['Email Marketing Service', 'Email Marketing', 'Email Marketing Tips', 'Email Marketing Software'] |
Mapping VC funding in Procurement | This reflects the maturity of the NAM technology market, and the fact that many of the biggest startups in the space, including the unicorn Tradeshift are headquartered on NAM soil (although some Danes would claim that Tradeshift is a Danish unicorn due to the founding team’s passports!)
3| Downstream heading upward 📈
Our data showed that downstream procurement startups have attracted €7.83 billion of investment over the past 10 years, while upstream startups have received only €1.46 billion.
How to explain this trend? One can speculate that downstream is more mature because of its proximity to consumer solutions in payments and contract management. At the same time downstream is perhaps a slightly less complex field than upstream, where the pace of technological progress is only now starting to facilitate innovation.
So it’s not that downstream is inherently more attractive — there are simply more solutions that are accessible to investors.
Payment solutions has attracted high volumes of investment in recent years
Although our data is primarily focused on operational purchasing, transaction, invoice & payment and contract management solutions, a large chunk of the downstream procurement investment has in fact been channeled into payments and financial services.
This reflects a deeper trend, as payments and financial services have attracted a lot of funding from VC investors over the past decade; in fact the true figure for this segment is likely to be far higher when including all payment solutions into the equation (which hasn’t been a focus area for this study, hence it hasn’t been fully explored).
Another buoyant area of investment is analytics and data foundation/visualization, which have received €2.63 billion in VC funding. The explosion of big data over recent years is likely to have fueled this trend.
4| Deals on the (relatively) small side 💰🔍
Although attention has inevitably focused on the more high-profile procurement investments (such as Tradeshift’s Series E round of $250 million), many deals have been on the smaller side.
In Europe, our data show that the average VC investment in procurement last year stood at around €2.4 million. Again, the North American market is further ahead; the average NAM VC investment in procurement last year was €6.73 million, around 2.6x its European counterpart.
However, both figures pale in comparison with the global VC average. According to figures from Crunchbase, which covered the year up to Q4 2019, early-stage funding rounds attracted an average of $17.2 million (€14.2 million).
Early stage showing promise
Overall, only 18% of startups across both continents have raised a venture round larger than €10 million since 2009. However, of these €10 million rounds, 50% have been raised since 2017 — even though this time period accounts for only 33% of the total deals made over the 11 years.
Based on this, one can conclude that the amount of larger rounds has increased over the last four years (most likely due to there being more startups getting past the initial stage of fundraising to be able to raise them). However they are still quite a small portion of all investments made overall, which indicates that the early stage procurement space is attracting increasing attention from investors, and that in the coming years there will most likely be several early stage startups in the procurement space looking to raise larger venture rounds 👩💻👨💻 | https://medium.com/maersk-growth/mapping-of-vc-funding-in-procurement-48a9d17ef33a | ['Emelie Stark'] | 2020-12-10 13:51:48.939000+00:00 | ['Procurement Software', 'Supply Chain', 'Investment', 'Venture Capital', 'Procurement'] |
What is happening with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? | The most influential cryptocurrency in the world, is experiencing again heavy losses, many will wonder how is it that a cryptocurrency that in 2017 went from 1,000 to 20,000 $ per unit in 2018 its descent has led to having it again at an average of $ 4,000 for the day that this article is written?
There is no doubt that 2018 has been a difficult year for Bitcoin, and that as a chain effect (one phenomenon after another) has led to the world’s strongest cryptocurrency to the downside.
In a previous article that we called “NOOOO why the crypts fall?”, We explained that the regulatory decisions of two governments gave a strong blow to Bitcoin, these governments represent great markets for the asset: China and South Korea.
This would be the first blow, since the meaning of the word “prohibition” in China or South Korea does nothing but ignite the alarms in the inhabitants, this effect is so serious domino that you would think that the problem should affect only to the Chinese or the South Koreans, but it is not like that, being such influential markets when the Chinese and South Koreans sell their Bitcoin the numbers fall in red all over the world.
Result, users panic and start selling the asset in all parts of the world, something completely counterproductive to the Bitcoin market and other cryptocurrencies.
After this attack by the Chinese and South Korean governments, which in itself helped to reduce confidence and credibility of cryptocurrencies, during 2018 Bitcoin and the altcoins have had a downward trend, the other hypotheses that are added are the following:
According to analyst Jorge Bejarano, consultant to the OAS (Organization of American States) in Digital Security, he assures that the reasons for the collapse are due to the fact that in recent months “interest has fallen or from where the most important negotiations are taking place of exchange of assets and expectations of making deals based on cryptocurrencies have declined “.
“There had been talk of establishing a cryptocurrency negotiation table and that generated an expectation of having a more serious negotiation space. However, the issue did not prosper and what it does is generate a little more distrust in relation to stability. “
The regulatory scrutiny that the digital currency has faced is the other major cause of the collapse of recent months. “The fact that these cryptoactives do not have a central authority and do not have a bank that supports them, ends up generating distrust in relation to the support that can be given,” he says.
In addition, Bejarano adds that despite the fact that Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies have made enormous progress in terms of purchase-sale compatibility on a global scale, there is still a long way to go, “for example, in Colombia you can not buy an apartment with Bitcoin because the transactions are not authorized, elements such as these generate instability “, these elements being precisely able to support a market.
To what has been commented above is the fact that a major change in the infrastructure of the digital currency itself is coming, a change in its base code that has many Bitcoin investors accumulating cash for when the change occurs and buying coins right after . A phenomenon very similar to when the sea contracts and then return perhaps more strongly.
Another cause, according to experts, could be due to the first two fines imposed by the Regulator of the US markets against two cryptocurrency companies, Airfox and Paragon Coin, each of which will have to pay $ 250,000. This would have caused users to fear more fines, and therefore would be selling their portfolios in cryptocurrencies before the value fell further. Actually, the Bitcoin was already falling before these two events occurred, although since its fall has increased in recent days, could have influenced the decline.
On the other hand, Kevin Murcko, CEO of crypto exchange CoinMetro, told Euronews that Bitcoin’s peak price was always set to go down.
“All crypts are incipient assets, speculation, rather than the utility of technology or the underlying asset, is what has driven the movement of prices since its inception.”
“Driven by the hubbub of the media and the public’s belief that cryptography was a way to get rich quick, the asset class skyrocketed from almost nothing to over $ 800 billion at its peak. obviously, it was unsustainable, “he said.
The psychology of the market is also a factor: “Fear is a tremendous motivator, and this is what we see reflected in prices, fear of the market is cumulative, selling encourages us to sell more, nobody wants their BTC to be left to a dollar”.
To reverse the downturn, Murcko explains that we need to see a new value, that is: more real-world use cases of companies and people that actually use the underlying asset.
“This will bring new buyers, new eyes and generate a renewed demand, so that a recovery occurs after the initial bubble burst, it is necessary to show a correlation between the price of the asset and its practical value,” he said.
In every crisis there is an opportunity
From our organization we are pleased to share with you the vision of Fritz Wagner CEO of Bitdharma regarding the current bearish situation, he made the following analysis:
“Our Stop Loss in Bitcoin shows bullish and bearish BTC signals, although the overall picture was clearly bearish we can conclude that after 2 big declines; it is not surprising that a bounce occurs, we note that the next strong support will be between $ 3100 — $ 3200 (Bitstamp prices) where the convergence of points between MA200 (weekly chart) and the support area could offer a good defense “ Analysis done on 11/26/2018.
Likewise, Wagner stressed to always keep calm and sanity, you should never panic and sell, this attitude is harmful not only for people, it is also for the market, instead the CEO specialist in cryptocurrencies and Blockchain recommends have a broad and positive view under any scenario: “if it is a rebound we advise taking advantage of the maximum projection, if it is a setback this could be the ideal opportunity to invest at really economic prices with a projection towards a substantial future”.
By: Journalist Marcelo Durán. | https://medium.com/bitdharma-newsletter/what-is-happening-with-bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies-7393db2249eb | ['Fritz Wagner'] | 2018-12-03 13:27:05.450000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Btc'] |
How to configure Gmail to work for you, not against you | How to configure Gmail to work for you, not against you
Email should be a tool, not a nuisance. Here’s how it works.
Photo by Webaroo.com.au on Unsplash
“You have read all messages in your inbox.”
To many of us, this is porn. The infamous Inbox Zero has been reached. All email has been taken care of. Nothing to see here anymore.
Inbox Zero comes at a cost: “During the workday, respondents reported spending an average of 209 minutes checking their work email and 143 minutes checking their personal email, for a total of 352 minutes (about five hours and 52 minutes) each day.”, according to CNBC.
Can you believe that? Assuming an 8-hour-workday, this leaves about two hours each day for everything else, including coffee with colleagues, chit-chat in the office and well, a tiny bit of actual meaningful work.
Essentially, the average American office worker does nothing but write and read email. The Germans are a little better with 2 hours per day, but the data is 5 years old and probably not super representative.
While communication is an important part of working in today’s world, it shouldn’t be the only thing we do. There are more important things out there that need to be done. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-configure-gmail-to-work-for-you-not-against-you-906e706eadbf | ['Dominik Nitsch'] | 2019-12-08 20:22:30.095000+00:00 | ['Lifehacks', 'Productivity', 'Gmail', 'Inbox Zero', 'Email'] |
Clustering of Hong Kong Districts’ by restaurants mix | GitHub repository: link | Jupyter Notebook: link
Clustering of Hong Kong Districts’ by restaurants mix
This project is my final assignment of my IBM professional certificate. I reviewed the script, added more details in the notebook and then published to medium.
Business problems
Hong Kong is well known as “food paradise” and visitors can enjoy both Eastern and Western food in such small city.
My curiosity is to analyze the mix of restaurant type of each district in Hong Kong to see if some districts do have similar mix of restaurants.
In this project, KMeans Clustering will be used for clustering.
Data collection and manipulation
First of all, the Hong Kong districts metadata are gathered from wikipedia by pandas.
For coordinates of each Hong Kong districts, it has already been collected previous by Google Map API. In this project, I will import the csv instead and merge it with wikipedia data together.
# Read table from Wiki
HK_district_wiki = pd.read_html('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Districts_of_Hong_Kong')[5]
# Exclude the data which is irrelevant which are 'subtotal' and Marine
HK_district = HK_district_wiki[~HK_district_wiki['District'].str.contains('subtotal')&~HK_district_wiki['District'].str.contains('Marine')]['District'].to_frame()
# Read area table from Wiki
HK_district_wiki_area = pd.read_html('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Districts_of_Hong_Kong')[6][['District','Area(km2)']]
# Merge the Area data
HK_district = HK_district.merge(HK_district_wiki_area)
# Reset index
HK_district.reset_index(inplace = True, drop = True)
# Load the HK District Geodata which I collected previously
hk_district_geo = pd.read_csv('HKDistrictGeo.csv')
# Merge to the District DataFrame
HK_district = HK_district.merge(hk_district_geo)
print(HK_district)
Now we have a table of Hong Kong districts with area and the coordinates
To examine whether the coordinates are correct, plot a map of districts using Folium.
# create map
# set location that make Hong Kong at the centre of the web page
# set zoom_start = 12 for better visualization
map = folium.Map(tiles='cartodbpositron', location=[22.3529808, 114.107615], zoom_start=12)
# add markers to the map to show the districts
markers_colors = []
for lat, lon, poi in zip(HK_district['latitude'], HK_district['longitude'], HK_district['District']):
label = folium.Popup(str(poi))
folium.CircleMarker(
[lat, lon],
radius=10,
popup=label,
fill=True,
fill_color='#FFFFFF',
fill_opacity=0.7).add_to(map)
map.save('hk_district.html')
display(IFrame('hk_district.html', width = 1500, height = 1200))
As a Hong Konger, this map completely match my understanding!
Above map correctly locate the coordinate of Hong Kong districts.
After that, Foursquare will be used to explore the restaurants data in the district.
By using the API, the venue location and the type of restaurant can be extracted.
# Define FourSquare Credential
CLIENT_ID = 'XXX' # your Foursquare ID
CLIENT_SECRET = 'XXX' # your Foursquare Secret
VERSION = '20180605' # Foursquare API version
LIMIT = 1000 # A default Foursquare API limit value # Create a function to explore the Food venure from a given coordinates
import requests
def getNearbyVenues(names, latitudes, longitudes, radius):
venues_list=[]
for name, lat, lng, rad in zip(names, latitudes, longitudes, radius):
print(name)
# create the API request URL
url = 'https://api.foursquare.com/v2/venues/explore?&client_id={}&client_secret={}&v={}&ll={},{}&radius={}&limit={}&categoryId=4d4b7105d754a06374d81259'.format(
CLIENT_ID,
CLIENT_SECRET,
VERSION,
lat,
lng,
rad,
LIMIT)
# make the GET request
results = requests.get(url).json()["response"]['groups'][0]['items']
# return only relevant information for each nearby venue
venues_list.append([(
name,
lat,
lng,
v['venue']['name'],
v['venue']['location']['lat'],
v['venue']['location']['lng'],
v['venue']['categories'][0]['name']) for v in results])
nearby_venues = pd.DataFrame([item for venue_list in venues_list for item in venue_list])
nearby_venues.columns = ['District',
'District Latitude',
'District Longitude',
'Venue',
'Venue Latitude',
'Venue Longitude',
'Venue Category']
return(nearby_venues) # Run the function for each HK districts
# Since some districts are much larger than another districts, I assume each district to be a circle and use the district area to determine the radius using
HK_district_venues = getNearbyVenues(names = HK_district['District'],
latitudes = HK_district['latitude'],
longitudes = HK_district['longitude'],
#assume district is a circle, determine radius by the equation of circle area: Area = pi * r^2
radius = np.sqrt(HK_district['Area(km2)']/np.pi)*1000
)
By using the API, the restaurant name and the restaurant category can be extracted in the district
Analyze the restaurants in each district
Convert categorial attributes of the restaurant type to numerical by using one hot encoding. After that, compute the proportion of restaurant mix in the districts. This will be used as the attributes for clustering in the later stage.
# one hot encoding
HK_district_venues_onehot = pd.get_dummies(HK_district_venues[['Venue Category']], prefix="", prefix_sep="")
# add District column back to dataframe
HK_district_venues_onehot['District'] = HK_district_venues['District']
# move District column to the first column
fixed_columns = [HK_district_venues_onehot.columns[-1]] + list(HK_district_venues_onehot.columns[:-1])
HK_district_venues_onehot = HK_district_venues_onehot[fixed_columns] # Group the district by summing the count of restaurant type
# Calculate the proportion of the restaurant type in the districts
HK_district_grouped = HK_district_venues_onehot.groupby('District').mean().reset_index()
HK_district_grouped
Restaurant mix of each districts
Since it’s rather hard to observe which type of restaurant ranked the top in each district, another dataframe will be created for displaying the top 10th restaurant type in the districts.
# Find out the top 10 restaurant type in the district
def return_most_common_venues(row, num_top_venues):
row_categories = row.iloc[1:]
row_categories_sorted = row_categories.sort_values(ascending=False)
return row_categories_sorted.index.values[0:num_top_venues]
num_top_venues = 10
indicators = ['st', 'nd', 'rd']
# create columns according to number of top venues
columns = ['District']
for ind in np.arange(num_top_venues):
try:
columns.append('{}{} Most Restaurant Type'.format(ind+1, indicators[ind]))
except:
columns.append('{}th Most Restaurant Type'.format(ind+1))
# create a new dataframe
HK_district_dish_sorted = pd.DataFrame(columns=columns)
HK_district_dish_sorted['District'] = HK_district_grouped['District']
for ind in np.arange(HK_district_grouped.shape[0]):
HK_district_dish_sorted.iloc[ind, 1:] = return_most_common_venues(HK_district_grouped.iloc[ind, :], num_top_venues)
HK_district_dish_sorted
Now we can already observe which districts are similar in term of restaurant mix
Cluster the districts by the restaurant type
KMeans clustering will be used as the methodology of clustering.
As a simple trial, 4 clusters will be set in the classifier. After running the clustering, it will be merged back to the district dataframe for better display.
# set number of clusters
kclusters = 4 # set the attributes used for clustering
HK_district_grouped_clustering = HK_district_grouped.drop('District', 1) # run k-means clustering
kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters = kclusters, random_state = 2)
kmeans.fit(HK_district_grouped_clustering) # check cluster labels generated for each row in the dataframe
kmeans.labels_[0:10] # Merge the result into the district dataframe
# add clustering labels
HK_district_dish_sorted['Cluster Labels'] = kmeans.labels_
#HK_district_dish_sorted.insert(0, 'Cluster Labels', kmeans.labels_) HK_district_merged = HK_district # merge df_grouped with df_data to add latitude/longitude for each neighbourhood
HK_district_merged = HK_district_merged.join(HK_district_dish_sorted.set_index('District'), on='District') HK_district_merged
For better visualization, the clusters will be display in the map.
# create map
map_cluster = folium.Map(tiles='cartodbpositron', location=[22.3529808, 114.107615], zoom_start=12)
# set color scheme for the clusters
x = np.arange(kclusters)
ys = [i + x + (i*x)**2 for i in range(kclusters)]
colors_array = cm.rainbow(np.linspace(0, 1, len(ys)))
rainbow = [colors.rgb2hex(i) for i in colors_array]
# add markers to the map
markers_colors = []
for lat, lon, poi, cluster in zip(HK_district_merged['latitude'], HK_district_merged['longitude'], HK_district_merged['District'], HK_district_merged['Cluster Labels']):
label = folium.Popup(str(poi) + ' Cluster ' + str(cluster), parse_html=True)
folium.CircleMarker(
[lat, lon],
radius=10,
popup=label,
color=rainbow[cluster-1],
fill=True,
fill_color=rainbow[cluster-1],
fill_opacity=0.7).add_to(map_cluster)
map_cluster.save('hk_district_cluster.html')
display(IFrame('hk_district_cluster.html', width = 1500, height = 1200))
Map of district with clusters
Examine Clusters
Now, it’s time to check whether the result make sense and really meaningful to users.
Cluster 1
Kolwoon City, Wong Tai Sin and Tsuen Wan are special areas in Hong Kong which clustered in Cluster 1
Kolwoon City is well known to have the best and most number of Thai restaurants in Hong Kong.
It’s reasonable why these three districts are clustered into the same clusters.
Cluster 2
Southern, Islands and Sai Kung are the remote areas in Hong Kong and many foreigners loves to live there.
As a result, to fit the taste of their need, there are lots of Cafe and western dishes restaurants in the areas.
Cluster 3
Cluster 3 are mostly business and urban area in Hong Kong which consists of different types of restaurants.
The variety of restaurant type in these districts is high that well demonstrated why Hong Kong is also known as “Food Paradise”.
Cluster 4
Most of Cluster 4 districts are living areas in Hong Kong.
The restaurants mainly serves locals and provide cheap and convenient options of meals.
As shown in the below tables, Chinese Restaurant and Fast Food Restaurant exist a lot in these districts.
Conclusion
By using clustering above, the districts can be briefly grouped into 4 segments by the mix of restaurants there.
Although it maybe not surprising to any Hong Kong people, this technic can still be replicated to other city even though we have no knowledge about the city.
Next step
Since free vision of FourSquare was used in the project, the number of venue can be extracted is limited and more number of restaurants can be grabbed for paid version. On the other hand, FourSquare is a US based company and may not have full detail of restaurant data in Hong Kong. If the restaurant data from Hong Kong popular dining rating website “Openrice” can be obtained instead, more accurate clustering can be obtained with more restaurant data.
Thanks for reading! | https://medium.com/@rex-lui/clustering-of-hong-kong-districts-by-restaurants-mix-757a5d3dbac7 | ['Rex Lui'] | 2021-02-18 18:12:43.916000+00:00 | ['Geographical Plotting', 'Data Science', 'Hong Kong', 'Clustering', 'Python'] |
The Art of Grace | When it comes to talking to those who have wronged us, it may seem like the last thing on the list of healing factors. In regards to speaking your truth in a healing manner, the impossible may become possible. Many people always ask me why I’m so forgiving. I always say it’s not a matter of forgiveness it’s a matter of grace. With grace, forgiveness is automatic, with a deep understanding of others and circumstances. Grace becomes possible, knowing what others may have experienced allows you to understand the way of man. It isn’t always a question of “Why” people are the way they are. It’s how can I understand this individual on an unspoken level. In school they try to have everyone learn the same way, this is where the stunted growth of many begin.
Many of us starting as children especially rainbow, indigo, crystal kids, etc. Do not learn in the same constructs as others, many of whom needed one on one hands-on learning. INFJ, INFP, and many other personality types at young ages tend to find it difficult to learn in the standardized textbook methods! All too many times these children who grow to be adults are classified as “Outcasts” or “Anti-Social”. Ideals and words that trickle through adulthood of a large portion of very intelligent brilliant minds who were written off at the start. Many of Millennial’s struggle with this on a day to day basis, when battling with unrealistic expectations of corporate America. Most jobs today are nothing more than an adult high school. Where many come to realize they hate their jobs they were duped into by following tradition or parental values. | https://medium.com/curious/the-art-of-grace-a2aec5ffce8 | ['Kurt Anderson'] | 2021-01-11 23:35:05.243000+00:00 | ['Awareness', 'Grace', 'Healing', 'Peace'] |
Follow Policy: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, et al. | Social networks are powerful, meaningful tools I have had the opportunity to leverage we ll for personal and professional benefit. Just last week I was trying to find good camping locations and received several good recommendations.
I have also gone overboard at times with my virtual social life by, for example, facebooking when I should be playing with my kids, or being glued to twhirl instead of my work.
It’s time to make some changes to who and why I follow/friend/add people to these networks. In the past, I have allowed LinkedIn to be my most conservative network, but time and life dictates that I need to be much more selective about my other social interactions, too.
So, with a hat tip to Shel, here’s my Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook (“TwinkedInBook”?) follow policy:
As a general rule, I only add/follow people I actually know . That means we have had some meaningful interaction and that your connection aligns with the things I care about.
. That means we have had some meaningful interaction and that your connection aligns with the things I care about. I welcome conversations. If I have said something you want to comment on, please do, but be real, and open about who you are. I don’t have to follow you to hear you . This is the Internet. @robertmerrill me, and I will find it. If you really need to reach me, um, my full name at gmail dot com is a pretty good starting point.
. This is the Internet. @robertmerrill me, and I will find it. If you really need to reach me, um, my full name at gmail dot com is a pretty good starting point. I get that networking is not just socializing [via @jibberjobber]. I like both, but I am primarilly online for networking in the sense of a professional relationship. I believe networking is about what you give and get. I wont follow you if I don’t think I can meaningfully give to you and/or that I can receive from you appropriately as well . By the way, I still believe the appropriate balance is to GIVE 10x what you RECEIVE in any relationship, but I will not follow you unless you’re providing a relevant, useful and thought-provoking connection.
. By the way, I still believe the appropriate balance is to GIVE 10x what you RECEIVE in any relationship, but I will not follow you unless you’re providing a relevant, useful and thought-provoking connection. If I don’t follow you, or just stopped following you, please don’t be offended. Really. It’s not you. It’s me.
I will follow companies when I want announcements or information. I will follow people when I see relevance in what you’re talking about. I will unfollow and/or block both when the conversation becomes you selling something, or regurgitating, or just “@username lol!” -ing all day long.
The things I say are my opinions and beliefs. Yours are your own. Keep that clear and we will get along just fine :)
:) I reserve the right to change this or update it at any time, or at no time, for any or no reason.
And now begins the purging of the accounts… | https://medium.com/connected-well/follow-policy-twitter-facebook-linkedin-et-al-bb844c0583c1 | ['Robert Merrill'] | 2016-03-27 20:25:15.803000+00:00 | ['Facebook', 'Follow Policy', 'Follow'] |
Baby Sleep Training Ultimate Guide | What is baby sleep training?
Sleep training is a generalized term for helping your baby figure out how to fall asleep and stay asleep. For most parents, the ultimate goal of baby sleep training is a baby who sleeps through the night or at least a good portion of the night.
A few infants do this rapidly and surprising with little effort for their parents. Yet, numerous others experience difficulty settling down to rest — or returning to sleep when they’ve aroused — and they need assistance throughout the training process.
Having three kids of my own, the best infant counsel I can offer is to prevent your child from turning out to be over-tired. A worn-out infant can quickly escalate to frustration for both the baby and its sleep-deprived parents. An overly sleepy infant can be an exceptionally troublesome circumstance to deal with, especially for sleep-deprived parents. So with regards to preparing your infant to rest, what’s the name of the game?
Have a PROACTIVE approach like the baby sleep method presented in the Baby Sleep Miracle program. Disclosure: Affiliate link. We are compensated for our reviews.*)
Baby sleep training age
Maybe my kids are different, or maybe my spouse and I have personalities that like routine, but all three of our kids were sleeping through the night by 8-weeks old while breastfeeding. Some specialists suggest beginning when your child is somewhere in the range of 4 months old and 6 months. By around 4 months, babies have typically started to develop a standard sleep cycle of rest and wake time and dropped a large portion of their night feedings. These are signs they might be prepared to begin rest preparing. Many children this age are developmentally ready to rest for extended lengths around evening time.
NOTE: Clair McCarthy, MD explains the results of sleep studies show that babies who are breastfeeding tend to wake up more often at night.
Keep in mind that every infant is unique: Some may not be prepared for sleep training until they’re somewhat older. A few infants rest seven hours or longer at an early age, while others won’t until some other time. In case you’re uncertain about whether your infant is prepared for sleep training, ask her pediatrician.
After long stretches of shushing and rocking, crying and bolstering, and restless nights, numerous moms are desperate to begin sleep training out of self-preservation. So extremely desperate! You are ready, but is your child? Two essential formative milestones are clues your infant is ready for sleep training. The first is for them to be genuinely fit for self-soothing, which typically occurs at around 3-months old. The second is the capacity to go throughout the night without waiting to be fed, which happens at 4 months old to 6 months old for most infants.
However, some experts indicate that waiting until the 4 months to 6 months time frame; you may be past the point of no return. For the first couple of months, an infant’s sensory system isn’t grown enough for her to self-soothe, so guardians can do all the rocking and nestling and singing they please before putting infant down. Be that as it may, at around 3 months, babies begin having the possibility to nod off without anyone else toward the start of the night.
While starting sooner than later is ideal, specialists stress that you haven’t passed up the opportunity to sleep train an infant who is 10 months old, and it’s not too late for sleep training a 1-year-old baby.
Mary-Ann Schuler has a wonderful book for baby sleep training. (Disclosure: Affiliate link. We are compensated for our reviews.*)
How to baby sleep training
Sleep training methods come in a variety of ways and philosophies. Some sleep training techniques fall under the umbrella of “delicate rest training,” which, for the most part, follows the idea that you’re free to comfort your baby when she cries. Different techniques, frequently under the “eradication” brand, encourage guardians to let the infant self-calm for the whole night. Neither of these strategies is good or bad — everything relies upon what works best for you and your family.
A few mothers have discovered working with a sleep consultant, like child psychologist Mary-Ann Schuler or joining a Facebook group to be useful for help, tips, and guidance.
Baby sleep training methods
All sleep training strategies have upsides and downsides, so it’s imperative to understand which one is best for you. Here is an outline of the absolute most well-known rest preparing techniques.
No tears sleep training method. Made by rest champion Elizabeth Pantley, this strategy, otherwise called the no-cry technique, includes quietly moving your infant’s sleep propensities. For instance, one approach, known as “fading,” proposes continuously backing out of a child’s sleep pattern. For example, if your baby requires rocking to sleep, then you would rock her less and less until she no longer needs rocking to fall asleep. Another method, called substitution, changes out the daily schedule — so if a child consistently takes a bottle before sleep time, bath him instead.
Cry It Out (CIO) strategy. As the name proposes, the CIO sleep training technique includes instructing her to alleviate herself by not intervening while she’s attempting to nod off. The thought is that the child will figure out how to calm herself and, in the long run, will quit crying and stay asleep.
Photo by Marco Albuquerque on Unsplash
Weissbluth method. This rest training strategy recommends you set up a sleep time routine (bath time, book, cuddling so your baby understands when its bedtime, then you leave the baby to fall asleep by himself. We incorporated a variation of this method with all three kids. The first night, my son cried for an hour while I assured my uneasy wife that everything was going to be okay. He eventually found his thumb and fell asleep. The next night he cried for 40 minutes, and by the fourth night didn’t cry at all.
Ferber strategy. The Ferber method is quite popular among parents, and, like the Weissbluth method. In the Ferber sleep training method, parents lay the infant down to sleep, whether he is crying or calm — next, the parent checks-in with the baby at specified intervals. Maybe the first time is after 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes until the infant is settled down and falls asleep. You don’t get infant during these checks yet can verbally mitigate or pat him. Step by step, the interims will get longer until, in the long run, the child is sleeping all night long.
Baby sleep expert, Mary-Ann Schuler explains that the Ferber method is the most HARMFUL sleep training method that can cause long-lasting anxiety for your baby. Visit babysleepmiracle.com to learn more about why Mary-Ann Schuler is against the Ferber method. (Disclosure: Affiliate link. We are compensated for our reviews.*)
Chair method. Kim West, LCSW-C, creator of Good Night, Sleep Tight, first promoted this technique which begins with you sitting in a seat beside the crib or bassinet. Every night, you move the chair a little further from your baby, all the while verbally calming or shushing your infant when she cries. Eventually, you’re no longer in the room, and your baby is happy to fall asleep by herself. This method allows the caregiver to pat or pick up the baby occasionally to provide comfort. This technique can be useful for more older infants and even toddlers and proved to be practical with kiddos who experience separation anxiety because they know that Mom and Dad are close by if needed. The chair method is equally useful for babies of all ages.
Photo by Kate P on Unsplash
Pick-up-put-down strategy. This method is a slight combination of the Ferber and Chair methods. Like the Ferber, the parent checks in with the baby at various intervals. Similar to the Chair method, but not all like with Ferber, you can hold him and solace him, hugging him for a couple of moments before putting him down. Inevitably infants will get sufficiently sleepy to nod off without anyone else.
Baby sleep training schedule
Everybody realizes that their new child won’t rest a great deal during the first weeks after birth. Yet, many new parents are confused thinking after the first few weeks of restless nights; their baby will slowly learn to sleep through the night. Many anticipate that baby sleep patterns should show signs of improvement until the infant is dozing an 8-hour stretch at 4 months old.
The truth, for some — if not most — infants, is somewhat of a crazy ride with hopeful triumphs replaced with disappointing relapses who have parents that don’t practice sleep training methods like those found in the Baby Sleep Miracle program. (Disclosure: Affiliate link. We are compensated for our reviews.*)
Here is a posting of what you may sensibly expect for your infant’s rest outside the various anomalies you’ll encounter with your baby’s sleep pattern. Keep in mind that each baby, and parent, is different, so sleep cycles are unique to each family.
Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash
Birth — 2 Months Old
Sleep Per Day: 14 to 18 hours every day. During the primary months, babies sleep at vary short intervals spread throughout the day and wake up from naps hungry and ready to feed. In the early weeks, you can anticipate that your little one to nurse 10–12 times each day.
The day begins around 7 am.
Nap: Your little sleepyhead will take heaps of little snoozes (for as long as 8 hours per day). The daytime cycle is 1–2 hours of conscious time, followed by 1–2 hours of napping. During the subsequent month, if your infant’s snooze goes over 1.5–2 hours, it is sensible to wake him to nurse. Long rests mean less eating during the day, making babies hungrier around evening time.
Evening time rest begins around 10 pm. Your child will float on and off as the night progressed, punctuated by infrequent feedings. The longest stretch of Zzz’s goes typically as long as 4 hours in the first month and 4–8 hours by 2-months old.
Heads up: White noise, swaddling, and gentle movement does some fantastic things beginning from day 1 to assist babies with dozing better and normally. There is a miracle sound that puts ANY baby to sleep! Discover how this works instantly — FREE VIDEO reveals this secret. (Disclosure: Affiliate link. We are compensated for our reviews.* )
CAUTION: The University of Rochester Medical Center published an article describing why swaddling a baby who is 2 months or older can lead to death.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
2–4 Months Old
Sleep Per Day: 13–14 hours.
By 2- 4 months old, your baby is waking up earlier in the morning. Most children this age wake around 6 am.
Nap: Your child will subside into 2–3 naps every day, totaling 4–8 hours of rest. To learn more about baby naps from the Mayo Clinic click here.
Early to bed and early to rise! Because your baby is waking up earlier in the day means that he is ready to go to bed sooner, typically baby will go down around 9 pm. She’ll additionally rest longer, despite waking for a bottle or two. Most prolonged rest is around 5–8 hours (some babies may sleep for a much longer stretch).
Heads up: Look out for the 3-month rest sleep regression! Sleep regression is normal, but may unexpectedly show up, with your infant beginning to wake up in the middle of the night — at regular intervals — ready to play! Baby Sleep Miracle program gives sleep training for a 3 month old that works.
Likewise, at 2–3 months but of age when swaddling is reduced, your child may begin to awake more throughout the night from frequently wiggling.
4–8 Months Old
Sleep Per Day: 12–14 hours every day. At the point when your child exceeds the 4-month mark, she completed what I call the fourth trimester. A considerable group of your new-parent companions may still be frantic from sleep deficiency. So, if your little one is an incredible sleeper, don’t boast excessively to the other mothers!
The day begins between 6–8 am, contingent upon your infant!
Naps: 2–3 rests, totaling 3–5 hours each per day.
Your baby will get tired between 7–9 pm. Get ready for this because your child may sleep a solid 7–10 hours straight, and we could all agree that’s, “sleeping through the night!”
Heads Up: Teething begins typically between 4–6 months; however, like everything, your child might be prior or later to the game. Gum torment can make your child fussier and upset rest. Noisy, rumbly repetitive sounds are exceptionally beneficial to enable your infant to block out interruptions, both inside, such as getting teeth, and outer, for example, unexpected commotions.
Surprisingly, babies don’t get the best night’s sleep in silence. Instead, they flourish with the kind of background noise explained in this FREE VIDEO. (Disclosure: Affiliate link. We are compensated for our reviews.* ).
Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash
8–12 Months Old
Sleep Per Day: 12–14 hours every day when she hits 8 months.
The day begins around 6–7 am.
Nap: Still 2–3 every day.
Evening time rest begins around 7–9 pm at this point. Your infant’s longest stretch is likely a magnificent 7–10 hours around evening time!
Heads Up: This is when young children love to crawl and even walk. They frequently wake up, needing to get out and move around the room. Until your child is a year old, the leading and safest soothing tool is or repetitive sound, such as white noise or the weird, but effective, noise found at babymiracle.com
12 Months Old /1 Year Old(Happy Birthday!!!)
Photo by Raychan on Unsplash
Sleep Per Day: 12–14 hours in an entire day’s cycle.
The day begins at 6–7 am.
Nap: 2 shorter naps, totaling 2–4 hours every day.
Evening bedtime remains between 7–9 pm. Early enough for mother and father to get some much needed alone time! 7–10 hours is usually the average stretch of steady sleep.
Heads Up: Your youngster is now a toddler and requires completely different means of communicating, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to help your toddler sleep through the night. Sleep training methods for toddlers and their siblings are covered in depth in the Baby Sleep Miracle program. (Disclosure: Affiliate link. We are compensated for our reviews.* )
Sleep training baby
Sleep training your baby is not an impossible feat, especially when you and your baby are happy. Laughter and happiness are essential elements for a strong bond between parents and their infants. Which is why everyone living with a baby needs adequate rest. Sleepy parents and babies are more susceptible to irritability, which can make what should be an exciting time of life a disappointing experience.
You don’t have to be overwhelmed and frustrated about your baby sleeping through the night. All you need are the right tools and knowledge of the best baby sleep training method. | https://medium.com/@jmsolutions/baby-sleep-training-ultimate-guide-ae7d373bd9b2 | ['Jm Solutions'] | 2020-05-02 16:24:08.789000+00:00 | ['Baby Products', 'Baby Sleep', 'Baby', 'Parenting', 'Parenting Advice'] |
What Do Mild Pains During Pregnancy Mean? · Dr Dad | Most pregnant women experience mild pains from time to time throughout their pregnancy because their baby is growing every single day. Your body is adapting to these changes every single day among others. Cramping is as normal as they come, although you must be aware of the reason behind the mild pains. Here are the different reasons for mild pains during pregnancy.
Implantation causes mild pains during the first trimester.
They mostly occur around the time your period is due.
Due to the increased level of progesterone secreted in the body, the bowel muscles tend to stay at a relaxed stage.
This makes gas and bloating quite common, as the digestion process slows down.
Long-term bloating and gas could result in constipation, which is one of the first reasons why you could be experiencing mild pains in your abdomen.
You can control the bloating by increasing the intake of fiber-rich food, controlling your food portion by increasing the number of times you eat, and consumption of a lot of water.
Your uterus requires more blood around you that could build up some pressure around the uterus.
Resting or lying down can help you in relieving the pressure as well as the corresponding mild pain.
UTIs are mostly asymptomatic but they cause mild pain around the pelvic region.
You can identify it by the foul smell in your urine.
UTIs require proper treatment and medicine.
Conclusion
Mild pains during pregnancies are frequent and normal. The trick is to understand the cause behind the pain and consult the doctor accordingly.
Related Tags:
Stomach pain during pregnancy, 2nd trimester stomach pain during pregnancy, 3rd trimester period cramps during pregnancy, Third trimester how to ease abdominal pain during pregnancy, Left side pain during pregnancy, Second trimester lower abdominal pain in early pregnancy Low belly pain when pregnant first trimester, leg pain during pregnancy | https://medium.com/@parenthood7/what-do-mild-pains-during-pregnancy-mean-dr-dad-ab8ff22e4768 | [] | 2021-09-09 09:59:29.124000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Baby', 'Children', 'Kids', 'Pregnancy'] |
The Literally Literary Weekly Update #1 | Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash
We have something new for you. Every Wednesday we will be going back and highlighting some of the top works of the week in Literally Literary. We want you to know we are always paying attention to everything we publish.
Top works do not mean best works as that is a wholly subjective concept. Top works will be segmented below into random categories and highlights of stories or poems we think you might enjoy.
We will also be highlighting some editor’s notes each week at the bottom to help you publish your best work.
Welcome and thank you for being one of our 27,306 followers. We appreciate you every day.
(All links below are friend links to the stories on Medium.) | https://medium.com/literally-literary/the-literally-literary-weekly-update-1-1c53a38cd92a | ['Jonathan Greene'] | 2019-12-11 13:48:34.334000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Nonfiction', 'Writing', 'Ll Letters', 'Fiction'] |
The Diabolical Duo Strikes Again! | Random Awesome Author Spotlight
About Chirag
The Medium world knows me by name, Chirag. I live in India with my loving husband and adorable four-year-old daughter. I enjoy cooking, crafting, and writing. No pets yet, I’m not so fond of them — but my daughter loves cats, and she always asks her dad to bring her one.
How it Started
The writer ghost possessed me only last June of 2019 when it forced me into penning my first short fiction — A Black Cat and the Dark Human Mind. It was published at GiaB. It is very special to me, and I am pleased that Medium curated it. My special thanks to Jay Squires and Victor Sarkin, both of whom I respect a lot and always be grateful for their kindness and support.
The Diabolical Duo
What began as a single isolated 100-word story, ‘The Family Dinner’ was transformed into a series purely because of the motivation of my amazing writer friends of Medium. They asked for more, and I kept writing. And one day, my lovely friend Anu Anniah jokingly said, “This is going like a series. You should name the son and dad as ‘diabolical duo’”. That was the spark. I immediately put it into action. I don’t know how long it will run, perhaps until I’m drained of wit and humor Lol.
Inspiration
I have written horror micro-fiction and flash fiction at Medium because I love horror\mystery\thriller\crime fiction. I’m a great fan of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardener, and Robin Cook, so I have almost read all their books. I know there are many beautiful writers, but I haven’t read many.
Medium Love
I love this platform and so grateful because I find engaging readers and so kind and supportive writers who uplift each other. I feel lucky that I met such kind and beautiful people here who are the reason I’m surviving in this online world.
Inspirational Medium Authors
Aww! There are many and many. A special mention about Dean Middleburgh who is the flag bearer of fiction, and striving to bring recognition to all medium fiction writers.
I take this opportunity to thank the fantastic Facebook group Medium24 Interaction founded by Stephen Dalton for being my most incredible support. Gayle Kurtzer-Meyers Connie Song Anu Anniah Melissa BeeTracy Stengel Michael Whale Sydney Duke Richey Melissa Speed Bingz Huang Salma Alaa Carolyn Riker Shanna Loga Aimée Gramblin Myriam Ben Salem Tommy Ueland, and also the share short stories FB group run by Dean Middleburgh, lovely Lisa Talbott, Kay Samuelson, and KC Heads (not medium writers) and many wonderful friends including you Toni Tails, Martine Weber Meeta Nambiar Manasi Diwakar Shin Jie Yong Sumera Rizwan Mark Starlin Tony Young, Jr. Sneha Mankar for their colossal motivation. My heartfelt thanks to you, Toni, Bill Adler, and J.A. Taylor for publishing my micro-humor stories.
I’d also Like to Say
I sincerely thank you, Toni Tails for your tremendous support and this excellent opportunity to be featured as an author Random Awesome, for the great editing that you provide, and for contributing wonderful paid images to my stories published at your esteemed pub.
The perfect images and clip arts you provide for the stories published at Random Awesome are the most outstanding services that no publication has ever offered.
Chirag doesn’t currently have a newsletter or mailing list. However, there are several stories that you can read. Follow her, give her feedback, and show this Awesome Writer your support! | https://medium.com/random-awesome/the-diabolical-duo-strike-again-9c1e7bde4742 | ['Toni Tails'] | 2020-10-06 06:57:20.932000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Family', 'Fiction', 'Parenting', 'Life'] |
Learning About My European Ancestors Has Made Me a Better Anti-Racist | Learning About My European Ancestors Has Made Me a Better Anti-Racist
White people won’t be truly free until #BlackLivesMatter.
If I was ashamed of being white, I might take down the portrait of my Appalachian ancestor hanging in my apartment hallway. “My aunt gave me this,” my grandmother told me last Thanksgiving, pride in her eyes. “You can have it.”
I can’t tell whether James Boone — my grandmother’s granduncle — was ashamed or proud. He was a real estate dealer in the heart of West Virginia’s coal country. Did he falsely claim, like many white Americans in Appalachia, to be a descendant of the frontiersman — and slaveowner — Daniel Boone? Was he in the mob who lynched John Turner, a Black man, in a nearby town in 1889?
But as a meditation teacher trained in mental health counseling, I know that shame is counterproductive. Instead, I feel solidarity with Black people demanding justice for the police killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and far too many others. Their fight is mine too.
“As long as people of color can be written off as expendable, and therefore acceptable victims of the most extreme inequities, none of the basic injustices of our society will be addressed; they will only get worse,” wrote the Civil Rights activist Anne Braden, a white woman raised in the Jim Crow South.
If I were ashamed, I’d be writing myself off as expendable. “The experience of shame — feeling fundamentally deficient — is so excruciating that we will do whatever we can to avoid it,” writes the psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach. If I felt fundamentally deficient — worthless — why even try to change?
In fact, shame triggers the sympathetic nervous system in the same way that fear does, leading to a “fight, flight, or freeze” response, the body’s chemical and physical reaction to danger. In other words, rather than encouraging us to act — which is what ending racism requires — shame often keeps us stuck on self-blame.
“Internalized feelings of inadequacy are a massive block to moving forward in a good and healthy way,” writes English literature professor Naava Smolash, under the pen name Nora Samaran. Her book about rape culture, “Turn This World Inside Out,” helped me understand the inadequacy of shame when it comes to social change.
“To completely transform this culture of misogyny, men must do more than ‘not assault,’” she writes. Rather than feeling shame, men must heal ourselves and other men. “The truth is that you already are good enough. You always were. Your actions can be not good enough, and your essence remains good.”
This doesn’t mean that men — and white people — shouldn’t be held accountable. Some actions should be shamed in public, like catcalling or waving a Confederate flag. But what we do — good or bad — isn’t indicative of who we really are. We have the ability — and responsibility — to change because, as human beings, we are worthy of changing.
If I felt particularly worthy — if I felt pride about my whiteness — I might cling to the story of Hans Jacob Weber, one of my grandmother’s ancestors. A grape farmer, Weber fled Germany’s wine-producing Palatinate region in 1708 during the War of the Spanish Succession. Led by a prominent Lutheran pastor, he, his wife Anna, and their two children escaped to England, where immigrants — particularly Protestants — were increasingly unwelcome.
They were fortunate that the English needed cheap labor across the Atlantic. In exchange for working off their debts, the Webers were shipped to the British North American colonies and eventually given a plot of land in what is now Newburgh, New York.
To know that Hans made do with the sandy soil on the banks of the Hudson River gives me resilience. To know that Anna gave birth to a child while aboard a ship gives me strength.
But instead of pride about any of that, I feel solidarity. To know that my ancestors were refugees gives me empathy for the Honduran father or Salvadoran child crossing the U.S. southern border. To know that the Webers traded their German traditions, community, and way of life to become “white” makes me hate white supremacy.
The word “solidarity” expresses a sentiment — camaraderie, another French word — that is foreign to our Protestant-influenced individualistic culture. Instead of camaraderie, many white people look for what they, personally, should do about racism. We should learn Black history, read books like Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” and shop at Black-owned businesses. We shouldn’t let family members get away with racist language. These are good things to do. They’ll help us get along better with friends, neighbors, and coworkers of color. They’ll likely decrease the harm we cause others.
But focusing solely on changing individual behavior doesn’t challenge the root causes of racism: laws, norms, and institutional processes. Aware of our privilege, we must act. Yet, we must do more than call out other white people and buy books by Black authors.
We must, as political scientist Adolph Reed writes, shift our focus from the “ultimately individual, and ahistorical, domain of prejudice or intolerance” to the “social structures that generate and reproduce racial inequality.” We must disrupt, dismantle, and reimagine the institutions that feed off of racism for their existence. We must defund the police, divest from prisons, and publicly invest in education, housing, good paying jobs, and other basic human needs. We must demand what Martin Luther King Jr. called a “radical redistribution of economic and political power.”
This requires solidarity — and, to be effective, solidarity requires being organized. Every day, people across the country strategize in groups like Black Lives Matter, meet as political organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, work alongside fellow union members, protest outside immigration detention centers, and provide mutual aid in their neighborhoods. Often, organized people support other organized people because, ultimately, they share the same goal: a free, dignified, and safe life. That’s politics. That’s what creates the conditions for the massive protests we’ve seen in the past months, which in turn have created the political conditions for substantial policy, legal, and electoral change.
Shame doesn’t sustain such bread-and-butter politics. We need to recognize what would be in it for us if racism were to be rooted out and destroyed. “White people need to be real about which aspects of humanity they will gain by abolishing whiteness,” writes Aaron Goggans, cofounder of Black Lives Matter DC.
Before we were white, we were English, Irish, Italian, Polish, Hungarian. Some of our ancestors led the colonization of the Americas. Others owned slaves.
But the odds are that most — like the Webers — suffered oppression somewhere along the way. They toiled in fields owned by feudal lords. They languished in jails simply because they were poor. They exhausted their bodies in factories during capitalism’s early days. Two-thirds of all who came from England, Scotland, and Ireland to American shores during the 17th century came as indentured servants — an astounding figure given the cartoon story our culture tells about the Founding Fathers.
As anti-racism educator David Dean writes, “Some European immigrants did come to the British colonies, and later, the United States, fleeing religious persecution and violence but most were running directly from … economic deprivation.”
Yet, our ancestors also established traditions, celebrated together, performed rituals, connected with nature, and fought back against the powerful. Most if not all of this wasn’t simply forgotten — it was bargained away for the shallow protection of whiteness. In the first two decades of the 20th century, laws were passed in over 30 states mandating participation in “Americanization programs” run by state and local governments, civic organizations, and corporations. “They were no longer to be Polish-Americans, Hungarian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, but simply ‘white’ Americans,” writes Dean.
Knowing this history doesn’t inspire me to reclaim my German-American identity. Nationalities are just as socially constructed as races. Instead, the more I’ve learned about what’s been taken from me by what historians call “racial capitalism,” the more reason I’ve gained to be in the fight.
The more I’ve discovered the humanity I’ve lost by being “white,” the more whole and grounded I’ve felt at protests, political meetings, and strike picket lines — what Dean calls finding “roots deeper than whiteness.”
The more I’ve realized that whiteness doesn’t serve me either — or if it does, only in narrow, material ways — the more I’ve recognized that the struggle for Black liberation is my struggle too. | https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/learning-about-my-european-ancestors-made-me-a-better-anti-racist-75edc132a43f | ['Jeremy Mohler'] | 2020-10-06 21:39:29.401000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Self-awareness', 'Racism', 'Equality'] |
What to Consider Before Choosing Master Degree | I’ll tell you based on my experiences..
Nowadays, some juniors are ask me about postgraduate studies. The questions are various, from how i feel to be postgraduate student, how the entrance examination, what things must be prepared, and what is the difference between universities A and B. But you have to know that there has the most important things to consider before choosing postgraduate studies besides university and also what to prepare.
Dokumentasi Pribadi
What is your purpose?
What do you want to be?
That question should spin in your head before decide to continue postgraduate studies. What will you be? What kind of person do you want to be? does not mean to be a professional or an entrepreneur is not necessary to continue education. Also does not mean that continuing education is only appropriate for those who wish to become academician or researcher. Want to be whatever it is, it’s very important and very good if supported by a high level of education. As other said, higher education will bring you to the higher place.
If your goals is to become a professional, you should work. Get a job that suit you and your interest. If you want to be entrepreneur, just focus on building your own business first. You have to pursue more practical experiences than theoritical. Why? because in real world, between practice and theory has a huge gap. Also, if you go straight to college then you will not have any professional experience. As i am.
Honestly, I don’t have any clear goals yet. But i tend to choose to be academician without ruling out the possibility of becoming practitioners / professionals. Initially, my goal to go to college was the desire to prove to others that I can be more than they judge me. However, as time goes by.. it way more than that. From proving to others, turned to be proving to myself, especially for the future. Moreover, I realize that the time for a woman is not as broad as a man. After becoming a wife and mother later, surely we will focus on family rather than ourselves. That’s why continuing study for me also means taking advantage of my youth.
For those who still haven’t find the purpose, keep searching! whatever you want to be and whatever motive makes you decide to pursue higher education.. finish what you start with full of responsibilities.
Dokumentasi Pribadi
Are you ready? Really?
“I ask you about master degree things, it means that i’m ready for it!”
Stop! I mean, being ready is not only mentally prepared. But full package, one set, complete. Starting from mental self-readiness, tuition fees per semester, living expenses during college, also costs during education (mobile data, books) and physical readiness. Okay, if it’s a matter of physical and mental readiness, at least knowing about university and what to study it means you’re 10% ready. But you also have to pay attention to other things that I mentioned before. This is if the case you don’t pass the scholarship, like me. Especially if you are aiming for a good university and far from your hometown.
Confusion about the cost after college life will be double than in the past. Because you have entered the age of being "independent". If asked whether it can be while working or not, each university is different. It’s just that my campus, I can go to class after work because the hours are late afternoon until evening (regular schedule). Meanwhile, the schedule in other campuses mostly start from morning to evening. Therefore, apart from the majors and courses, you must also know the class schedule. Can i do my job? can i focus on my business? can i do anything other than go to college?
But the case is different if it turns out that your family does ask you to focus on studying and give you full parent scholarship, free anywhere or at any cost. Just go to college peacefully.
So, talk about all your want with your parents and how far your parents prepare to support you in continuing your studies.
Dokumentasi Pribadi, Danau Kenanga Universitas Indonesia
Prepare Document
Readiness after you know the answer of two questions before.
If you already know what your goals are in the future, you already know where the major and the campus is, and your parents are also ready, the next step is to prepare the requirements for registration. Every year the requirements and exams are different, also the costs is always different per year hehe
The requirements for each campus are different. Not all of them require TOEFL / IELTS. Not all of them require TPA Score. Not all require an interview with the the head of faculty. When I was take entrance exams, it only SIMAK UI. But in 2020, interviews with the head of study programs to be one of SIMAK exam for postgraduate level. Likewise with SBM ITB, when I took the MSM in finance test two years ago, there was no interview test. But now, it’s different..
The key, we have to be detailed and diligent in finding out about the entry requirements. Every university has website that provides all information about new student admissions starting from the cost per semester, requirements, courses, till the lists of lecturer and staff. Prepare well so that the score is sufficient, and the required documents are complete.
And, don’t be confident if you will definitely pass the exam. My experience, because when I registered for SBM ITB I was full of confidence. ITB was my dream campus from high school days, and I am sure I can pass the Ganesha campus because I know that one of my friends has below standard TOEFL and TPA scores but still qualifies as a conditional student. In fact, different faculties have different policies. | https://medium.com/@reallllgem/what-to-consider-before-choosing-master-degree-82dd2b7c73b1 | [] | 2020-12-16 01:20:43.612000+00:00 | ['Empowerment', 'Postgraduate', 'Student Life', 'College', 'Experience'] |
COVID Can Kiss My Black Ass | COVID Can Kiss My Black Ass
A poem that places a Face on Coronavirus #5
DC and family working from home. Image from author’s library.
DC is my son-in-law; he has a unique outlook on the world that I appreciate. H volunteered to participate in a project to put a face on COVID. These are his thoughts formed into a poem.
Click here to read the poem in its entirety. | https://medium.com/faces-of-coronavirus/covid-can-kiss-my-black-ass-c6179c4cec85 | ['Brenda Mahler'] | 2020-12-20 21:09:40.701000+00:00 | ['Faces Of Covid', 'Poetry', 'Covid 19', 'Reflections', 'Coronavirus'] |
ReviewTechUSA is hinting to use a VPN — check out the best deal | ReviewTechUSA is a big gaming and tech-oriented YouTube channel that has loads of viewers and relevant content. Currently, it’s sitting on 860k subscribers with over 370 million views, which speaks of high channel quality. In the playlist, you’ll find American gaming company Blizzard product reviews, Samsung and Apple reviews, PC gaming and even 2020 elections footage. The videos are uploaded daily, so be sure to subscribe not to miss a single video. If you’re choosing a laptop for gaming, then this channel should be your first stop, because you’ll get an expert opinion to choose the best product possible. Also, you might notice a recommendation to use a VPN, but maybe you can find a better VPN deal out there?
What’s the best VPN deal possible?
ReviewTechUSA is recommending a well-known VPN, but it might be a bit pricey for some, and you can get a more significant discount.
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Follow this link to apply the 70% NordVPN coupon code automatically
Why choose NordVPN?
NordVPN is developed by a professional team and has all the necessary VPN components. There’s a Kill Switch, a powerful CyberSec feature that will protect against malware, phishing, trackers, and disable annoying Ads. Then there are 5800+ high-speed servers to choose from, which is one of the highest amounts in the industry.
Furthermore, it’s a proven no-logs service, which means that they do not store any personally identifiable logs on their servers. It’s very important because this way you can be sure that your online data and activities are your business only and your data will not end up in the wrong hands.
What is a VPN?
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, and it’s a cybersecurity software that creates a secure and encrypted tunnel between your device and one of its servers. This way it protects against Man in the Middle attacks and third party spectators and is highly advisable to use on public Wi-Fi networks that are frequently targeted by hackers. | https://medium.com/@gordonvev/reviewtechusa-is-hinting-to-use-a-vpn-c872e5c3bfaa | ['Gordon Vevec'] | 2020-04-10 09:35:58.805000+00:00 | ['Discount', 'VPN', 'Deal', 'Privacy', 'Tech'] |
‘’Let’s make your Business Outstanding with a perfect Logo Design That Best Describe it…’’ | ‘’Let’s make your Business Outstanding with a perfect Logo Design That Best Describe it…’’ Kozeem Hammed Feb 26·2 min read
About my Service
Hello everyone, my Name is Cesar, I’m a designer with ability to create attractive logos, I have 18 years of experience working for brands of different commercial turn.
logo designer
My goal is to transmit in a logo the essence of your company, since this will be the DNA of your company and a very important part to differentiate you from your competition.
Through my work you will achieve that your company has an identity that attracts attention and above all that is functional to start your business with firm steps, my work is guaranteed.
My professional logo concepts are unique and customized, each project is unique to me and my time and creativity to design are guaranteed.
My talents and passions: Professional logo design, custom design, attractive and functional design, logos, branding, logos for your business, the best professional logo solution.
If you are looking for a professional logo that tells a visual story to your clients, hire me, what are you waiting for!
Let’s work together and make your idea a great idea.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.
PLEASE, ASK ME WHAT YOU HAVE IN DOUBT BEFORE PLACING YOUR ORDER, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR ME AND TO DO A GOOD JOB, HELP ME TO GET A GOOD JOB.
THANK YOU | https://medium.com/@kozeemhammed8/let-s-make-your-business-outstanding-with-a-perfect-logo-design-that-best-describe-it-23445a78d4dd | ['Kozeem Hammed'] | 2021-02-26 11:57:49.630000+00:00 | ['Logo Design', 'Minimalist Design', 'Designer', 'Graphic Design', 'Logo'] |
New York Public Library Workers Speak Up About COVID-19 Fears | New York Public Library Workers Speak Up About Mounting COVID-19 Fears
On March 14, 2020, the New York Public Library (NYPL) closed all of its locations due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This decision was the subject of many debates across library systems in the United States. As the library moved from virtual mode to modified, phased services that would culminate in the eventual reopening, NYPL was held up as an example of a library system that stayed “ahead of the curve,” continuing to provide services to patrons in need while simultaneously prioritizing the welfare of its staff. As pre-pandemic library services are restored, the public will hear messages from the library administration about how everyone was “kept safe” and that library staff are looking forward to going back to business as usual. We, a group of NYPL workers from across the system, are here to say that this is a profound lie.
The last year and a half have been a nightmare for NYPL workers. We’ve been subject to the whims of an apathetic administration, and our experiences were hidden from the public in an attempt to present a veneer of normalcy. All of this was done during a pandemic that continues to have a devastating effect on the various communities throughout the city. The mismanagement of the library’s operations, the refusal of upper management to allow staff the chance to communicate their concerns to them directly, and the continual gaslighting of staff who speak out against NYPL’s policies continues, even in light of rising COVID-19 cases due to the Delta variant. An account of our struggles is as follows:
From the beginning of the pandemic, NYPL management’s priority was never to consider staff’s input, or to find a new model of delivering services, but to open the buildings as quickly as possible. As COVID-19 cases spiked across the city from September 2020 to January of 2021, upper management continued to open even more branches for modified service. This rush to open the physical spaces was done without regard for the pandemic’s effects or the severe understaffing problems that have plagued the system for years. During the two-and-a-half months that library staff were home, we never stopped working, as evidenced by the high volume of effective virtual programs and outreach that we conducted. Our colleagues who are maintenance and custodial staff were never given the option to work from home, and were made to report to the buildings every day during the closure last year, a decision that we also spoke out against.
Staff were told via communications from upper management that the physical distance between us and our building spaces constituted a “crisis” for those who needed library services the most, and that coming into the buildings in spite of the pandemic was necessary because “our patrons need us,” a common refrain from library systems across the country. We understand that public libraries have long been a stopgap for social services where social safety nets have failed and/or disappeared, but this model has never been tenable, and upper management refused to answer why they continue to place this burden on our shoulders, particularly during a global health crisis.
NYPL management continues to tout bringing increasing numbers of patrons into the library as “beneficial,” despite the health and safety risks large gatherings pose to both them and library workers. For three months, human resources and upper management refused to release the results of a March 2021 survey querying staff about their work-from-home or hybrid preferences. Despite 90% of staff stating that they wanted the Library to adopt a hybrid model of services, citing effectiveness and safety concerns, and 93% of staff stating that their outreach efforts increased while working from home, HR and upper management were extremely dismissive and disrespectful in refusing our requests. We were told that the evidence “did not fit the Library’s current model of service,” coupled with the suggestion that we were unwilling to “face reality.”
Workers’ basic rights have been denied in an effort to facilitate full branch reopenings. Parental staff were denied the option to continue working from home, even as their children were learning remotely. They were berated for not keeping up with arbitrary work quotas while trying to care for their families. Staff who have not seen family members for over a year, as well as those who are suffering from familial loss and other emotional anguish, were and are being denied leave requests in order to cover for aforementioned staff shortages. Library pages and other part-time staff were furloughed in July of 2020, due to “budgetary concerns.” Some of them passed away; others, we have not been able to keep in contact with. Due to limits on sick leave available, and with no designated time set aside for recovering from the effects of the vaccine, staff have been forced to come to work sick because they have no other choice.
Management have ignored or dismissed staff concerns about physical safety during the pandemic. The branches have operated in a patchwork model when it comes to PPE distribution, with some locations receiving little to no equipment, forcing staff to provide their own. Library buildings continue to have problems with improper heating and air-conditioning, crumbling infrastructure and water damage, and vermin. Despite staff insisting that the locations are not fit for patron usage, staff were told to operate on a “work as you go” model, placing a proverbial Band-Aid on these issues while dealing with an increased workload. NYPL management has also brushed aside concerns of staff regarding the safety of commuting to and from work with the reports of subway attacks, as well as the fear of potential violence faced by AAPI staff and communities.
Our union, whose role is to serve as the voice of the workers, has unfortunately been complicit in management’s push to disregard the problems in staff working conditions. We were told by the union in October 2020 that NYPL could not keep “paying us to stay at home” (an asinine statement considering the aforementioned virtual work) and that we were “giving in to hysteria” when citing the spikes in COVID-19 cases. Like NYPL management, our union has conflated the 70% statewide vaccination rate with the much lower 53% one in the NYC area as an attempt to show staff that there are no issues in returning to the buildings. They also ignore the stark contrast between the lower vaccination rates in some boroughs and neighborhoods throughout the city, which hover in some places at around 30%.
Most disturbingly, NYPL failed in what it outwardly claimed to be its highest priority; keeping everyone safe from the effects of the coronavirus. From July 2020 (when staff returned to the branches for the first round of phased reopening services) to the present, there have been over 130 (reported) positive COVID-19 cases throughout the system’s 92 branches. These numbers were withheld from patrons even as they visited affected locations to get their materials; branches instead closed suddenly without any explanation to the public. To make matters worse, library staff themselves were not told about positive cases until two or three days later; as expected, some became sick. Although upper management outlined a plan in which libraries would close for “deep cleaning” and isolation if positive cases were found, this protocol was rarely followed. Branches immediately reopened for service after shutting down for a day (if that,) while workers were called from different locations to keep as many buildings open as possible. Throughout this time, messages from human resources spoke of “minimal” staff transmission, extolling their confidence in their own contact tracing efforts while telling workers that they were still expected to work onsite at their prescribed times.
At best, a term that we use very loosely, our concerns about safety and pacing of the reopening process have been met with tepid platitudes and hollow attempts at understanding. At worst, we’ve been bombarded with accusations of laziness and stubbornness. And at their very worst, we’ve been met with barely concealed vitriol from upper management and our executive board, as well as a lack of compassion for our increasingly unsustainable workload. Management has told staff both overtly and covertly that our unwillingness to work under certain conditions translates into disregard for the public, and implied that we are ungrateful considering the way that we’ve “taken care of each other” (another lie) through this difficult time.
The libraries have fully reopened now. All available staff are back in them, as all of the scant accommodations that were granted have ended, without exception. Upper management has hastily added a plethora of open positions to the company website to give off the impression of active recruitment. Already, staff are experiencing the same issues that characterized our pre-pandemic work environment, compounded by pandemic-related problems, including resistance from library patrons about wearing masks. Library workers are already targets for abuse; we are afraid that these problems will escalate with potentially tragic results. A number of our colleagues have either left or are planning to leave the organization, and we anticipate that more will follow. We are severely overworked, and morale is low.
Library staff have always given as much as we can to help others, even at our own physical and emotional expense. But libraries cease to exist without the people who work inside of them. We are not disposable, and our welfare is not a negotiable item that can be played with at will. Unfortunately, the New York Public Library has shown throughout this pandemic that it believes our safety is a non-issue. We hope that others will take note and see the truth.
Signed,
Concerned Staff of the New York Public Library | https://medium.com/@lib_rev/on-march-14-2020-the-new-york-public-library-nypl-closed-all-of-its-locations-due-to-the-onset-7ccc9f6c434f | ['Librev Olution'] | 2021-08-01 16:23:23.126000+00:00 | ['Libraries'] |
Designing Needy Delivery by Levi Schubkegel | Designing NeedyDelivery
From the start, our goal with Needy Delivery was to re-skin an Uber Eats like project, modify it a bit, and get it out the door, FAST! With Thanksgiving fast approaching and the giving season to follow shortly after, we knew we wanted to get this product shipped and iterate after the fact.
As a volunteer UX Designer at Comida for Familias, I created this design, using Uber Eats as a basis of design.
The Design Process
Empathize: Competitive Analyses and User Research
A previous UX Designer performed the primary user research and competitive analyses on this project. What they gathered was a list of already existing applications that had different methods of solving the hunger problem. For example:
Matching Donors With Recipients
Trucking Against Hunger
Individual Donations
Even Saving Food From The Bin
The result of their design was submitted to the Developer Week Global 2020 Hackathon.
Although the design was submitted, the app was still incomplete. Thus, I was brought on in the Ideate phase and started contributing to creating a prototype.
Define: Problem Statement & Objective
Too many people go hungry in a world of excess food. Hungry people need a way to connect with those who want to help others by donating food. With Needy Delivery, we will connect these two groups of people, the givers and receivers, so people can share with those in their communities to reduce the number of people who go hungry every day.
To design an app that connects hungry people and those who want to share with a simple to use app that help them build and take care of their local community.
Ideate: Information Architecture
Starting with the screens provided in the project tutorial, I made a site map and modified it to suit our needs. Don’t recreate the wheel, right? The differences with our app (initially) was that there wouldn’t be a payment screen, everything would be free. This then evolved into donations for payments instead of set prices.
As you’ll see, there are two primary flows to the mobile portion, a driver(donator) and receiver. There is also a web portion of the website to include any organizations, institutions, or restaurants that would want to offer set foods to those in need.
Prototype
When creating prototypes, I divide the process into 3 steps:
Wireframes - black and white layout to figure out where all of the components will go Low-Fidelity Prototype - figure out the information and functionality for each component. This is before adding color or getting too caught up in aesthetics. High-Fidelity Prototype - adding personality to the design. This is what the final user interface should look like.
Wireframes:
Using the previous information about what pages should be included in our information architecture, I created some mock ups of some of the screens within the sitemap.
The images below are some quick mockups done with Balsamiq. It is really useful to get ideas quickly blocked out on scaled screens in order to get feedback and make sure that it has all the necessary components. As you get into higher fidelities, it is easier to overlook the functionality due to the appeal of the layout and components themselves. Keeping it black and white and sketchy is the best way to ensure you have all the necessary components before moving forward.
Low-Fidelity Prototype:
After mocking up the screens and figuring out what they might contain, I began to sketch out some ideas in Balsamiq of what the screens within the information architecture might look like. This is in line with staying at a low fidelity while figuring out what components are needed on each screen so as to not be distracted by aesthetics. This also saves time and money in the grand scheme of things.
I then used Balsamiq’s prototyping feature to create an initial low-fi prototype of the design.
Figma Prototype
High-Fidelity Prototype:
Using Figma, I further refined the design, adding common Google UI elements and giving the prototype more personality and a common design language. This also allowed me to explore the brand even more and incorporate that into the design. The brand is fun and friendly to all. I tried to follow Google Material Design guidelines which helped keep everything minimal and easy to explore. This follows Jakob’s Law of Internet UX which states that users are familiar with the apps and services that they use every day and expect other apps and services to behave in a similar manner.
Test: Usability Testing
We performed a variety of tests, one of which being a preference study, studying which home screen users preferred. We had two options to choose from, a screen with two buttons or a screen with a slider and one button as seen below.
The results were inconclusive, too close to tell a difference. In the end, we went with the design that was easier for the developers, the slider option.
App Launch & Review
In the later stages of prototyping, I was able to get some of my fellow classmates to review the design which really helped refine the design and turn it into the design it is today. They also found different errors of my app within the prototyping software that were crucial to resolve before presenting it. Another big aspect of the app that was introduced only after peer review was an on boarding process which users ended up loving.
Find Needy Delivery on:
Google Play
Apple App Store
Any feedback is appreciated. | https://medium.com/comidaforfamilias/designing-needydelivery-80a0a61719f | ['Comida For Familias'] | 2020-12-23 03:30:17.679000+00:00 | ['Design Process', 'UI Design', 'Design', 'App Development', 'App Design'] |
Carelessly in Love | Juniper imagined his life totally different from the time he left school. He was going to find a nice, white-collar job in the city. Maybe drive some three miles to his home in the suburbs, dandle his wife or maybe play with the kids. He thought his life was going to be simple because to him the life in movies and sitcoms was all he could ever hope for.
He never imagined he would move to California. He never planned to have a kid before he was financially stable. Heck, if you told him the moment he left college he would be freelancing for hours on end he would have laughed in your face. It turned out that having a degree in forensics psychology was great, but in terms of being marketable, there were better degrees. He had looked up to his uncle all his life. He’d never imagined following his path tiresome, or downright impossible.
It stirred in his mind oftentimes when his computer was open. He would stare at the code and zone out and wonder what else he had gotten wrong.
As the days wore out, he finally realized holding on to hopeless dreams wasn’t the real way in life. It took a lot of introspection and self-actualization and really finding what you really enjoy. To him, it took a while to materialize, but he was glad he had done so.
A little later after he had landed a job at a local firm he started exploring his options, not only career-wise but dating as well. His last girlfriend was a junkie and all she knew was having a good time and blowing up a paycheck in one night. He wanted someone a bit more calmer and reserved, someone he could rely on with serious issues.
He found himself falling for Lila, the receptionist at the front desk of the firm for which he was contracting. She was a little shy for a cute girl and looked like someone from a conservative background. He ended up asking Lila out for a date and to his surprise, she agreed. Dating Lila was a different perspective on life. It wasn’t static or reckless like his previous path. Lila was the break he needed to find his purpose. | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/carelessly-in-love-458c79cda3ef | ['Zack Chapepa'] | 2020-09-21 21:23:01.871000+00:00 | ['Dating', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Life', 'Fiction', 'Heartwork'] |
The best Design Events in Europe (2018) | Awwwards Conference - An Event for UX / UI Designers and Web Developers.
Two exciting days with some of the most influential speakers of the industry, who inspire, teach, and guide us as we… | https://medium.com/dsgnrs/the-best-design-events-in-europe-2018-6aa63119a62e | ['.Dsgnrs. Team'] | 2018-01-18 10:13:01.701000+00:00 | ['UI', 'Design', 'Design Thinking', 'Product Design', 'UX'] |
What a taste of online gambling taught me about my relationship with money | What a taste of online gambling taught me about my relationship with money Anthony Hodgson Sep 9·8 min read
This past week I signed up on an online betting platform, loaded $100, and placed several bets on Dota 2 matches. I’ve had a stellar record of predicting match outcomes for years, and after doing very well at a fun prediction game for a recent tournament, I felt compelled to interrogate why it is that I’ve never tried to make money from this skill set. I mean I’m literally busy with a Masters degree which was generously crowdfunded by my social network. Couldn’t I have been making this “easy money” all along and not needed to ask for that kind of help?
I’ve always felt a bit strange about gambling. I have a general notion that the industry is ethically problematic and exploitative. I’ve also hardly ever had significant disposable income to risk losing. I remember a decade ago, when friends of mine started making big money off poker, feeling reluctant to get involved, despite on the surface being equally qualified to excel as they were (strong strategy games background, good critical thinking etc). I guess I’ve always had this feeling that gambling involves relating to money in a way I’m not ready to relate to it even though I’ve struggled to unpack what that means. And of course there’s the worry about getting hooked, forming an addiction.
This combination of vague, long-standing reservations against and solid, objective reasons for felt like it could only be resolvable by an experiment. And so, I committed a modest $100, primarily for the purpose of seeing how it would feel to participate in this kind of gambling. The site I registered on offers a promotion for new players to match your first deposit up to a certain point, so effectively I had $200 to play with.
The results
I felt optimistic that long term success predicting outcomes would easily convert into betting gains. And maybe, if I keep at it long enough, they still will. But as of now I am down from $200 to $50, having placed seven bets and lost all seven of them. Let me just immediately state for the record for those of you who are betting experts, that yes, I know the convention is to only bet a small fraction of your bankroll. And yes, I know, it’s good practice to make a spreadsheet and look at the data objectively, visualising exact thresholds and decision points. And no, I didn’t do either of those things. Mostly because my intention was never to take the first step into a serious gambling career, but just to see how it would feel to lose (or win!).
The good news is that it turned out that I didn’t feel that bad about losing some money. In fact, my main feeling was intense curiosity. I spent a few days trying to puzzle out why I had done so terribly. Ultimately there was a fairly obvious interesting trend to my bets, which also neatly explains why they were all losses. All of my bets were on big underdogs offering very favourable odds. At the time, my rationalisation for each bet was the same: “yes, this team is an underdog, but I don’t think their chances are quite as low as the odds suggest”. I genuinely still hold all of those assessments. This might even be a valid way to place bets, if my bankroll was big enough (or bets were small/exact enough) that I could explore a large enough sample for things to even out over time. But putting $50 of your $200 on a team you acknowledge aren’t the favourites is just an odd decision.
Further, I noticed that after betting on an underdog I’d quickly start to believe more and more that they might actually win. It starts off that the site gives them 25% and I think they have 35% so I place a bet. By the time the match starts I’m telling my friends I think it’s basically 50–50. This is obviously a dangerous kind of self-deception. It’s one thing to be a fan of a team and wilfully believe against the facts that they will win every game (as I do with Arsenal, every week) but it’s another altogether when you’re putting money on a team. At that point the self-deception stops being a fun way to show support and starts being a dangerous way to form thoughts.
The most telling thing for me is not that I lost a lot of bets on underdogs, but that I didn’t even place a single bet on a bookie favourite. In hindsight, this just seems to be obviously absurd. If we rewind to the time I was just doing fun predictions, while I would pride myself on correctly foreseeing when an underdog would upset a favourite, I still backed the favourites plenty of the time. I would not have been doing so well any other way.
Loving a bargain
I grew up in a relatively poor household. We had all the basic things we needed like food and shelter, but we did not have money for luxuries. I still remember as a kid my mom had this system called the “something else” which involved my brothers and I, once a week, getting to fill a tiny cup with exciting snacks that were hidden away the rest of the time. We didn’t have cool things. For fun we played with the neighbours in the street. In stark contrast was the private school I went to (on a scholarship) where almost all of my classmates came from very wealthy families. I’m ashamed to say, but at many points in my childhood the most exciting thing about going to a friend’s house was getting to indulge in all the cool stuff they had.
When you grow up like that, it affects the way you evaluate things. You find creative ways to get access to more than you can actually afford. And as I grew older, these lessons were further reinforced by the explicit habits and advice of my parents. Don’t spend money on things you don’t need. Always look for the cheapst option. Buy in bulk. Buy on special. Effectively, my guiding principle when it comes to money has always been to try to get more for less.
There is an extent to which this is just practical thinking. Getting more for less is just being prudent. But as a heuristic, it is only as good as the context that created it. It makes sense to use something sparingly when you don’t have a lot of it. Does that mean that in any situation where there is an option that presents itself as more for less we should always go for it? Clearly not. Sometimes we aren’t lacking in resources. Or maybe we are, but our goal is a want rather than a need — it’s totally valid to want things!
Worse yet, we live in a world where often something is presented as being more for less despite that not really being the case. You are not saving money on a bulk buy if you don’t actually need the bulk amount. You are not saving money on a two-for-one takeout special if the alternative was cooking at home, or just a cheaper single item. And I was certainly never saving money by only wanting to bet on underdogs. Even so, I am convinced that my strong association with always trying to get more for less is a big part of what pushed me to only bet on underdogs.
The only difference between my betting habits and my prediction habits is that once I was betting there was money on the table. And once there was money on the table, instead of making a well-rounded informed decision, my instinct, based on years and years of conditioning, was to choose the option that looked like it might get me bonus value at a lower cost.
And here’s the kicker. It is again not just about the underdog bets looking attractive, but also about the favourite ones looking unattractive. See, to me, it feels like betting $50 on a favourite to hopefully get back $60 is just not worth my time, nor the (admittedly smaller) risk that I might lose. But I think this is only because I’m dealing in such small numbers. If, instead of putting down $50 for a return of $60, I was putting down $5000 for a return of $6000, suddenly it wouldn’t look that bad because winning $1000 has real significance that winning $10 just doesn’t.
Thus, I think that in addition to being conditioned to always look for bargains (or things that look like bargains, anyway) another key factor that has led me to make bad betting decisions is just not having that much money to bet with. This got me thinking about some research I have encountered in recent years on something called “scarcity mentality”.
Scarcity mentality
Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir has spent much of the last decade doing behavioural research on the psychology of scarcity. While we should all have a healthy skepticism of sexy, far-reaching conclusions drawn from specialised behavioural experiments, Shafir’s work has thus far shown fairly consistently that poverty directly impedes cognitive function. Most of us are aware of the value-laden debates that happen over and over about why poor people seem to often make decisions that reinforce their own poverty. Typically it’s some version of right-wingers arguing that poor people simply lack important traits — that there’s something wrong with them — against left-wingers insisting that challenging environments are to blame. Shafir’s work considers a third line of thought: that the mere fact of not having money can lead to worse decision-making about money. Scarcity, he suggests, changes the way people allocate attention, leading to deeper engagement with some problems to the neglect of others.
A bit like how I naturally obsessed over which bets might be able to get me more for less and progressively lost track of who I actually thought would win. It’s difficult to know whether I would have made the same bets if I started with a much bigger bankroll. It’s difficult to know if I’d even still feel conditioned to always look for good deals if I just, you know, had a lot more money. My instinct is that Shafir’s work is onto something, and certainly in my case my entire decision-making process would have looked different if I started off with a much bigger bankroll.
Popular historian Rutger Bregman has used the research of Shafir and others to motivate for universal basic income. Poverty, he argues, is not about anything deeper than how it presents: a lack of money. In his 2014 book Utopia for Realists, Bregman argues that in fact pretty much all of the experimental data that exists on UBI shows that not only does it work but it’s cheaper than the alternative costs states incur as a result of the continued effects of poverty. It’s a well researched book that thoroughly engages a multitude of historical experiments to convincingly argue its case. It turns out that even famously conservative president Richard Nixon was on the verge of enacting UBI nearly 50 years ago!
Basically, not having money is bad for all the obvious reasons and then some. Scarcity puts us under pressure that reduces our cognitive capacity. We learn to rely on heuristics that aren’t actually generalisable.
Conclusion
Coming back to where we started: were my bets really that bad? Probably. I don’t know. What seems clear to me is that in many ways, we are all held captive by the financial systems we exist within. Add money to an equation and our decision-making processes change, often for the worse. Certainly, I am convinced that mine do. Clearly, this is unhealthy. But what does a healthy relationship with money even look like? And just how much Capitalism do you have to Capitalism to be afforded the privilege of testing out that feeling? | https://medium.com/@anthonyhodgson/what-a-taste-of-online-gambling-taught-me-about-my-relationship-with-money-3d0cf2f43454 | ['Anthony Hodgson'] | 2021-09-10 09:25:51.334000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Gambling', 'Betting', 'Money', 'Capitalism'] |
Lunyr Dev Update — Lunyr Nebula Plans, Search Upgrade, and Upcoming Mobile Release | Welcome to the latest Lunyr development update! In this update we will be discussing our plans for Nebula, the next milestone in the Lunyr project. Nebula (Q2, 2018), will introduce changes in the peer review and reward systems that will ultimately result in higher quality content and greater user retention.
The core of Lunyr has always been the peer review and reward system. However, in order to understand these systems, we have to recognize several important hypotheses that were validated during the Private Alpha and Open Beta :
Not all writers and peer reviewers are equally competent Content quality increases with greater writing and peer reviewing competency Users contribution increases with greater rewards
Understanding Writing Competency (WC) or Peer Review Competency (PRC) is critical to building a high quality knowledge base. Average Writing Competency and Average Peer Review Competency are closely correlated with content quality.
If five peer reviewers with low competency are matched together, then the resulting content will be low quality.
However, when 5 peer reviewers with high competency are matched together, then the resulting content will be high quality.
However, there is a sweet spot occurs when the average peer review competency is greater than a minimum threshold. The minimum threshold should be enough to enable a wider range of competencies while still ensuring a minimum standard of quality.
In the Nebula Release, we will aim to raise the PRC through system upgrades
Education and Exam Requirements
We’ll create best practices, guidelines, and competency tests to ensure that writers and peer reviewers have the knowledge required to perform at the highest competency level.
Smart Peer Review Matchmaking System
The future Peer Review System will more intelligently match peer reviewers together to exceed a minimum threshold of the Average Peer Review Competency.
Relevant Content Randomization
The random peer review selection will consider a peer reviewer’s interests and competence in a certain topic.
Assisted Writing and Peer Review Experience
The writing and peer review experience will be guided with interactive human-computer interaction. All the interactions where a Chief Editor would normally interact with a writer and/or peer reviewer to ensure that expectations are being met during the creative process are being replaced with our Assisted Technology. In the future, Machine Learning may be used to better fine-tune the experience to the individual needs of the writer or peer reviewer. This Assisted Writing and Peer Review Experience will occur in what we’re calling our Intelligent Editor 1.0 and Peer Review Guidance 1.0.
Content Validation
The Editor is getting an upgrade which will check to ensure that the writing requirements are being met. In the future, we will add pre-processing and post-processing steps to ensure that the content is processed to a higher quality along the content production process.
Development Releases
Search Upgrade
We have upgraded the search on Lunyr. It is now 100x faster than before and predicts relevant search results.
Upcoming Mobile Release
The dedicated mobile version of Lunyr will finally be released. We’re proud to showcase our progress so far!
Writers will be able to write in the mobile version. Previously, writing was only available on desktop.
The Article Viewer features a minimalistic view that is easy to read.
There will be a feed that allows writers and peer reviewers to stay updated with all the recent Lunyr events.
The Mobile User profile allows writers to show off their work in a beautiful view.
Users can more easily check and transfer their Ethereum, LUN, and Points.
Advertisers can stay updated with the progress of their campaigns.
That’s all for today’s update! We look forward to building the future of knowledge sharing with the community.
Click here to get paid for writing and peer reviewing articles!
See also: | https://medium.com/lunyr/lunyr-dev-update-lunyr-nebula-plans-search-upgrade-and-upcoming-mobile-release-4273e62c0778 | ['Arnold Pham'] | 2018-02-27 17:21:02.240000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Ethereum', 'Lunyr', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain'] |
Film: Mere escape or more? | The Mummy(UMG) : Poster, 1932
People love films; ever since the advent of silent films and the rise of worldwide icons like Charlie Chaplin, audiences all over the world have been enraptured by the worlds created by filmmakers. For the first time since the invention of writing and art, people have a new medium to translate their fantastical dreams into reality. If we define an escape from reality as a defensive reaction involving the use of fantasy as a means of avoiding conflicts and problems of daily living, has this brave new world simply become another way in which people escape reality? To some extent, films could be seen as indulging in escapism. However, the answer to me is not as black and white as some people may think. Ultimately, the ability of film to expose an individual to a new level of reality(despite film as a medium bringing your attention away from one’s current reality) makes some films more than just an escape from reality.
Over the years the medium of film, like many other forms of media, has evolved to become more sophisticated and advanced. Gone are the days of silent black and white. In its place, multi-array sound systems, high definition cinematography and a multibillion-dollar industry stand at the forefront of film consumption, creation and distribution. For the average person, films are now accessible more than ever, as streaming services render even the traditional cinema close to obsolete. When faced with such a large range of choices, the primary purpose of film consumption has inevitably become entertainment, for their ability to immerse is second to none. The average person, after all, spends more than 78000 hours of their lives watching television. This level of immersion, coupled with a seemingly endless stream of films to watch, has made the consumption of film -now more than ever- a mere escape from reality. In essence, with the solidification of the film’s purpose as entertainment, the likelihood that film being just an escape from reality is greater than ever.
Since an escape from reality is often a defensive reaction as a means of avoiding conflicts and problems, it is in essence, an avoidance of displeasure. Consumption of film, being primarily a form of entertainment, could thus be seen as a medium to easy pleasure which people overindulge in. In an age where a film is more entertainment than art, the film’s pandering to people’s tendency to pleasure perhaps then moulds it to just another form of escape from unpleasant reality. We can see this in the growing consumption of both theatrical releases and in the growing watch time of streaming services. Netflix at this point is a salient example. With each passing year, the streaming giant impressively embeds itself even further into the mainstream, bolstered of course by a seemingly endless and growing selection of original programming that is practically impossible to keep up with. In 2019 alone, it’s subscribers on average spend around 2 hours per day on Netflix. This is ignoring the extreme consumption patterns of the average Netflix users, where the seasonality of traditional film is disrupted by a constant release schedule.
In the face of such a reality, how is film ever anything other than an escape from reality? The key lies in the fact that film can also bring forth an entirely new aspect of reality never considered before. To achieve this, we have to consider the finer aspects of what reality is. René Descartes, with cogito, ergo sum (je pense donc je suis, “I think, therefore I am”), argued that “the self” is the only thing that we can know exists with epistemological certainty. This belief of cogito, ergo sum was one that laid the foundation for the concept of solipsism. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. If we apply this ontological concept to reality, we begin to accept the subjective-objective relationship between our perception of reality and the reality our minds exist in. In the case of film, it’s the ability to carry a message, a symbol or idea beyond from one ‘self’ to another, from one perception to another that is of reality-altering proportions. If we consider the reality that our daily lives and conflicts as merely existing in our mind, and that their meaning is derived from the value that we assign to them, the change that we experience after we watch a film would mean that the value that we assign would not be the same as before. The best way to think about it is to use the analogy of a melting pot. Reality is the melting pot, and your interactions with it are the constant stirring that you do to keep up with the reactions occurring underneath. When you consume a film carrying meaning, you add substance into the pot. No matter how much you stir, the material inside the pot has been forever altered, your reality has been changed.
Some may be quick to invoke the logical fallacy of begging the question, believing that the conclusion of the relativity of reality was already predetermined and that therefore the innate ability for the film to change one’s perception of reality only exists in the world of theory aforementioned. Even if this was taken to be true, it cannot be denied that films offer more than just an escape from reality. Film as an art form thrives despite its dumb-downed, blockbuster cousins. Furthermore, this precludes to the fact that even films focusing on cliches and caricatures can bring purpose beyond escape. Even in the simplest cases, a temporary separation from conflicts and avoidance in daily life does not constitute an active avoidance of it. Furthermore, the fact that you can learn from films, to be more knowledgeable before you went into the film, reflects the reality that films offer more than just an escape from reality. This is not to say that films do not help people escape reality, but that there exists further purpose in the essence of film consumption as a whole.
In time, technology will advance to a point beyond imagination. The level of development that we have now will seem primitive as compared to what humans of the future would have. At that time film, like all mediums, would have evolved even further ahead with everything else; the experience provided at that time would be totally unlike what we have now. Even then, so long as people are changed by films, so too will film’s purpose lie beyond an escape from reality. Like everything else, there would exist films that seek to relief your reality, and films that draw your attention to them. So long as you are certain in your perception, you can then proceed on with faith that you will embrace instead of escape. | https://medium.com/@richardlei/film-mere-escape-or-more-bf0f1bcc9e62 | ['Richard Lei'] | 2020-12-10 12:11:59.453000+00:00 | ['Filmmaking', 'Shower Thoughts'] |
4 Facebook Ad Hacks To Reach Out To Your ‘Perfect’ Audience | With over 2.85 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social media platform to exist, making it a top priority on every content marketer’s cheatsheet. With a blend of text, photo, video and reels formats coexisting within the realm of Facebook, the marketing potential is limitless.
The sheer number of users means that however niche your field is, a target audience certainly exists on Facebook. However, in such a large space, it’s easy to get lost, so standing out from the crowd and driving the message home must be a priority.
Here are a few Facebook ad hacks to make the most of advertising on the platform:
Watch the competition
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. On similar lines, keep a close eye on what your competition is doing. Facebook’s ‘page transparency’ tab allows you to do just that and look at the ads they’re running. Observe their CTAs, content and the marketing material they use to get a better insight into the industry style.
Content as part of sales and marketing funnel
Facebook ads are not cheap. In order to ensure high quality leads without spending an exorbitant amount of money, weave it into the sales and marketing funnel. Target customers’ needs, promote to those identified customers, retarget them to capture contact details and close them as customers shortly after by making them an offer they can’t refuse!
This just narrows down the prospects to potential clients who have a specific interest in your product/service and is a cheaper marketing tactic ensuring a higher conversion rate.
Retargeting
In addition to the above point, retarget users who have engaged with your content in the past, thereby expressing an interest in what your ad is pitching. With adequate data and tweaking and tailoring the ads a little more to the user, you’re assured of a higher rate of conversion.
Remove converted customers in upcoming ads
On the other end of the spectrum of retargeting is knowing who to remove from ads and avoiding an unnecessary spend of budget. For those clients who have already been converted, avoid displaying ads since the job is done.
Facebook ads lie at the heart of marketing on this platform- being the paid option, you can reach out to your desired crowd to drive sales. Getting an ad campaign up and running on Facebook can be tricky but is very effective when done right. A thought-out and well-crafted Facebook ad with a correctly defined target audience can make all the difference. | https://medium.com/@dinero_tech_labs/4-facebook-ad-hacks-to-reach-out-to-your-perfect-audience-be9fda1dd368 | [] | 2021-12-21 05:54:24.239000+00:00 | ['Facebook Marketing'] |
Top 5 Challenges For Edtech Startups & Solutions To Them | The education market is investors’ delight. Despite the fact that many ed-products are entering the market, there is still a huge niche for innovative solutions and much-needed tools. This is the right time for edtech startups in the USA, educational forerunners, and forward-looking companies to take action now and to reap benefits later. Why is it so?
The fact is that over the next 10 years the number of post-secondary graduates will increase by 350 million and the number of K12 graduates will increase by 800 million. The world population grows by 200,000 people every day. We will likely add another 1 billion people by 2030, putting enormous pressure on education to scale up effectively and sustainably. This sector will see a great demand.
Source: HolonIQ
Read the full article here: http://bit.ly/3nJyNl1 | https://medium.com/@n-koltunova/top-5-challenges-for-edtech-startups-solutions-to-them-5a65ab46e2f2 | ['Natalie Koltunova'] | 2020-12-23 09:58:33.652000+00:00 | ['Analytics', 'Edtech', 'AI', 'Solutions', 'Startup'] |
Black Lives Must Be Humanized to Stop the Killing for Good | Black Lives Must Be Humanized to Stop the Killing for Good
Why restructuring police departments from the ground up is a good place to start
Photo: redbubble.com
The trauma is never-ending.
Each time a Black person is shot or murdered without just cause by law enforcement, fresh salt it poured into the wounds of Black Americans.
Jacob Blake is the latest victim of police brutality. He was shot seven times in the back as he attempted to get into his truck, while his three small children sat in the car and witnessed the entire incident.
Miraculously he survived, however according to reports from his attorneys, he is likely to be either partially or completely paralyzed for the rest of his life. And he is only twenty-nine years old.
From Michael Brown, to Alton Sterling, to Atatiana Jefferson, to Tamir Rice, to, Aura Rosser, to Stephon Clark, to Botham Jean, to Philando Castille, to Freddie Gray, to Michelle Cusseaux, to Janisha Fonville, to Eric Garner, to Akai Gurley, to Gabriella Navarez, to Tanisha Anderson, Breonna Taylor, to Ahmad Aubrey, to George Floyd, to Rashard Brooks, and all other victims whose fates did not make headlines, there is MORE than enough proof, data, justification, and Black bodies to demand the restructuring of every police department in America.
Law enforcement was never designed to treat Black Americans with the same regard as their White counterparts. This is why “re-training” is not the answer. The policing system in this country isn’t broken. It’s doing exactly what it was created to do, which is to inflict the Black community with racially biased treatment and deny the simple constitutional right to due process.
Shoot first, figure out what went wrong later.
This is embedded within every precinct in this country and no amount of “reforming” will ever change that. It’s deeper than just dealing with the officers who are on the front lines slaughtering Black bodies. It extends to the unions, the local elected officials, the lawmakers at the state level, all the way to the White House where the Commander-in-Chief is quoted as proclaiming:
“When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” This was his response to protestors who took to the streets after the video of George Floyd’s brutal murder was viewed by the entire country. (There was no acknowledgment from Trump on the inappropriate use of lethal force in this case.)
The chances of this president having any concern for Black Americans wrongfully targeted and brutalized by the police officers he vehemently supports, often proclaiming “law and order!” via Tweet, is slim to none. We have to take another route to begin saving the lives of Black people, and this starts with dismantling the current process of law enforcement and restructuring it with an equitable system that works to protect ALL Americans.
The following is my wish-list for revamping police departments to help keep Black people alive.
Pass legislation that holds police who murder without cause accountable.
This must happen across the board in every city in America. There is no incentive to stop the killings of Black people at the hands of police officers if there are no repercussions. There must be laws in place that not only encompass harsh consequences for cops who senselessly kill out of anger or racism, but also conditions that affect their salaries and pensions. If the future of their family’s security and livelihood is on the line, they might be less inclined to make impulsive decisions to deprive Black families of theirs.
Require police officers to live in the communities they serve.
If someone in law enforcement sees their neighbors on a daily basis at the local grocery store, leaving their homes in the morning for work, mowing their laws, playing with their children, going for a jog, or taking prom and graduation pictures in their yard, those neighbors become HUMANIZED. They are no longer viewed as the malevolent forces falsely portrayed in the media, but instead they become people who love, have families, live normal lives, and simply want to keep their children safe -just like anyone else.
Dismantle and rebuild police unions.
These organizations yield entirely too much power. They enable the bad behavior of rouge, racist cops and then shield them from accountability. There is a fine line between protecting officers and completely excusing any abhorrent behavior they exhibit. The current process allows the denial of justice for too many wrongful deaths and to create a better climate in this country, this has to end immediately. The legislation suggested above must also include guidelines for the unions to ensure that officers are both protected while they are serving but also ordered to face swift and severe discipline when they abuse their power.
Immediately discharge any officer that has three excessive force complaints — NO EXCEPTIONS (with immediate termination and convictions for fatally wounding citizens without cause)
All employees in the workforce on ANY job are given three chances after committing an offense:
1st offense — Verbal Warning
2nd Offense — Written Warning
3rd Offense — Corrective Action with Work Plan to Enforce Requirements
4th Offense — TERMINATION
No other institution deems dangerous, racist, and discriminatory behavior as acceptable for any of it’s employees. When this type of transgression is reported, the employee has immediate consequences to face. Why should police precincts be any different? What is the deterrent to committing murder if the only punishment is a paid leave of absence, which is basically a vacation for taking a life?
For a job as important as protecting the lives of U.S. citizens, there is no room for “bad apples.” Would you want the bus driver taking your kid to school to be one of the few “bad apples” in the school district? Would you want the cardiologist placing a stent in your spouse’s heart to be the “bad apple” in the surgical department? Would you want the care giver at your child’s daycare to be one of the “bad apples” at the center? Would you want the pilot flying your plane to be one of the “bad apples” in the aviation industry?
Then WHY is it okay for any police officer on the force who carries a gun and has the capacity to KILL to be one of the “bad apples” in the department?
The answer is, it is NOT okay.
Every time another Black person is shot or killed by police, I am reminded that what I thought was progress a few months ago is still in the exact same place it was before the world witnessed George Floyd’s murder. People still justify shootings by saying “Well, what did he DO to get shot?” or turn things around by saying, “What about Black on Black crime?” and of course the famous, “But ALL lives matter” deflection.
Enough is enough. Things must change and they must change NOW.
We are DONE DYING. We are DONE being treated as if we are less than human. We are DONE seeing grieving mothers on television. We are DONE hearing the world protect the officers that murder our families in the street, in BROAD DAYLIGHT. We are DONE with these modern day lynchings. We are DONE worrying what will happen if our own children will come face to face with law enforcement.
We are DONE.
It is past time for the restructuring of the law enforcement process. The answer is not pouring MORE money into a system that was build with malicious and insidious intent. The answer is to redirect any additional funds to create programs within the community to bring resources (jobs, better schools, training centers, mentoring programs) that empower people in EVERY neighborhood.
Those who have access to what they need to not just survive, but THRIVE have less need for police presence. This is why you do not see large amounts of law enforcement in White suburban neighborhoods. I grew up in such a town and my exposure to police was the courtesy officer who came to the Friday night football games. So I know for a fact that if Black people were afforded the same opportunities as White America on a large scale (access to higher-paying jobs, fair lending practices, etc.)that would dramatically affect our current situation.
Jacob Blake, although facing grueling surgeries and the possibility of life without the ability to run and play with his children, was indeed one of the lucky ones. He survived when so many others have died instantly at the hands of police. But what happened to him wasn’t inevitable. There were many other options that officer could have chosen, but he chose to shoot him multiple times while his children looked on, because he did not view any of them as human beings.
Jacob’s sister gave a powerful and moving statement when she spoke to the press about her brother. One comment she made stood out and artfully encompassed how every Black person should be regarded by ALL people in this country:
“When you say the name Jacob Blake, make sure you say FATHER, make sure you say COUSIN, make sure you say UNCLE, make sure you say SON, but most important, make sure you say HUMAN.” — Letetra Widman
VOTE.…Like your life depends on it. | https://jeanettecespinoza.medium.com/black-lives-must-be-humanized-to-stop-the-killing-for-good-2a8e320b0fc | ['Jeanette C. Espinoza'] | 2020-08-28 13:10:43.411000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'Race', 'Equality', 'Police', 'Humanity'] |
Consumed by Consumption | Sustainability is trendy.
It’s often a second thought in the second act of the play.
An occasional half ass attempt to wash away corporate sins,
and make more money.
Lil’ Dicky tried his best,
but the Earth is not fighting for an awareness of its life expectancy.
It’s fighting the laziness of a
Seamless, Postmateable, Grubhubbing consumerist nation.
Convenience is the new forbidden fruit.
The only thing between you
and a grande iced caramel macchiato
is five bucks and an oh-so-single-use plastic cup.
And after just one sip of Starbucks sugar drink,
Eve would not stand a chance in 2020.
Trash-men are the new magicians.
A government funded disappearing act,
where we can send Coke bottles to China and get back brand new Adidas.
The smoke and mirrors in this act smell terrible,
yet we pay no mind to the waste behind the curtain.
We are allowed to live in our play-like realities,
but we must become the heroes of the story.
The ones that don’t buy low-quality clothing from H&M,
the ones that actually use reusable bottles and,
rebrand sustainability past selling more products to young moms who ask,
if the world ends in 3 days, can I still get 2-day shipping? | https://medium.com/@emily_galvelis/consumed-by-consumption-628aaec77452 | ['Emily Galvelis'] | 2020-02-18 07:18:27.659000+00:00 | ['Sustainability', 'Consumerism', 'Creative Writing', 'Poetry'] |
How To Be A Better Ally | Let’s make sure we are all supporting our LGBTQ+ friends during this time!
Photo by Stavrialena Gontzou on Unsplash
There’s a good chance that someone you know identifies as LGBTQ+. As Pride Month gets underway, many of us want to support our LGBTQ+ loved ones and be good allies for the community. Some of us don’t know where to start or how to be good allies.
Although we have good intentions, sometimes our actions perpetuate untrue stereotypes and preconceptions of the LGBTQ+ community that can be harmful. During Pride Month, let’s try to become better and more educated!
Here are some things to keep in mind for all the allies out there!
Stop Making Assumptions
Many people who stereotype the LGBTQ+ community are shocked when LGBTQ+ people don’t fit into the stereotypes. Saying “you look/don’t look gay” is offensive and harmful. We should be supportive and uplifting of each other. Everyone in the LGBTQ+ community is unique and their gender/sexual identity looks different. No two people are alike!
This idea that all gay men are “feminine” and all lesbian women are “masculine” comes from society’s misconceptions about what a “man” or “woman” should look like or act like. These characteristics “expected” of how a specific gender should behave and present themselves is toxic because people should be able to present themselves however they want. As allies, we should all be actively trying to unlearn these harmful stereotypes!
Everyone in the LGBTQ+ community does not know each other! Although it is a small community, there are still hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ+ identifying people. It would be the same thing as assuming an Asian person knows every single other Asian person which sounds crazy! In the same vein, stop trying to set LGBTQ+ folk up with each other. Just because you know two people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc doesn’t mean they like each other. It’s like expecting two heterosexual people to like each other just because their sexual orientations are compatible.
Learn about LGBTQ+ history and why PRIDE is celebrated
The LGBTQ+ community has a deep history and as an ally, learning about their history is a great way to be educated on the issues that the LGBTQ+ community fights for and why they fight for them. There are many great resources such as History.com to get solid facts on Stonewall, the AIDs epidemic, and other key moments in the LGBTQ+ movement.
Did you know? The Stonewall Inn riots were started when Marsha P. Johnson, a black, gender non-conforming, drag queen, threw the first shot glass. This event ignited the whole modern LGBTQ+ movement.
The Stonewall Inn riots were started when Marsha P. Johnson, a black, gender non-conforming, drag queen, threw the first shot glass. This event ignited the whole modern LGBTQ+ movement. The LGBTQ+ had to go through a lot of hardships to get to where they are right now. Pride Month isn’t just about the rainbows and the parades, it’s a celebration of progress towards true equality. Pride Month is also about spreading awareness for the LGBTQ+ movement and how they are not finished fighting! Many times, Pride parades are where LGBTQ+ people first feel accepted and see that there are many other people who are like them. Pride means a lot to the LGBTQ+ community and shouldn’t be dismissed as being too “in your face” or “showoff-y.” I invite you to come to a Pride parade in a city near you to experience this for yourself!
Speak up but not over!
When the LGBTQ+ community is facing injustice, speaking out against these issues is very helpful! As allies, we should all be using our voices and privilege as heterosexual and/or cisgender person to help out our friends and family. However, there comes a time when as allies, we end up speaking over the voices of the LGBTQ+ community. We don’t know the struggles they’ve gone through to get to this point so we shouldn’t assume we understand. Our job as allies is to amplify the voices of the LGBTQ+ community, not drown them out!
Thank you for wanting to support the LGBTQ+ and bring more awareness to the struggles they face! Please continue to support the LGBTQ+ community and show them that you love them. Although some great strides have been made, the LGBTQ+ community still has some ways to go before they reach true equality. This is why allyship is so powerful. Together, we can amplify the voices of the LGBTQ+ community and help bring about positive change.
Our app Trill has a strong LGBTQ+ community where you can interact with people who have similar experiences as you! This is just one of many examples of how you can stay connected and be a part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Thank you for reading! Connect with us to stay in the loop!
Continue the conversation, and our mission to spread Trill awareness on social media by sharing this post! #StayTrill
Stay Trill (true & real),
Rachelle | https://medium.com/weeklytrill/how-to-be-a-better-ally-2943baa52468 | [] | 2020-06-30 20:00:31.303000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Allyship', 'Newsletter', 'Love', 'Pride'] |
Why You Should Love a Japanese Breakfast | Why You Should Love a Japanese Breakfast
It challenges the idea of what breakfast should look like
Illustrations: Kaki Okumura
What is breakfast food?
I was born in the U.S. and spent my formative years there, so, naturally, I developed the sense that a normal breakfast should look something like pancakes, cereal, buttered toast, bacon, or sausages. It’s what was served to me when I went to friends’ houses for sleepovers and it’s what was advertised to me when I watched television. These are breakfast foods: The things that we should be eating in the morning to start our day.
But when my family would return to Japan for the summer, my idea of breakfast was challenged. Instead of the usual toast or cereal that I was used to, my grandmother would prepare rice, fish, pickles, miso soup, and some vegetables for us every morning. As a child, I would stare down at these foods in the morning and silently protest: These are not breakfast foods.
Numerous times I would try to convince my grandmother to let us buy those fluffy white milk breads from the bakery or sweet yogurts from the conbini instead. The best breads in the world, just out of my reach! Not to say she would never serve them to my siblings and me, but when she did, they were always presented to us as a special Western breakfast, not for daily consumption. “It’s just on occasion,” she would drill.
At first, when I didn’t get my way with bread and cereal, I would grumble and eat what was served to me with a look of disapproval. But as I got used to it, I began to see these dishes as very normal for the morning. Steamed ohitashi spinach served with breakfast? Typical. Salted grilled fish and shimeji mushroom miso soup? OK. Rice with natto, topped with egg? Sounds like breakfast to me.
But as I got used to it, I began to see these dishes as very normal for the morning….Rice with natto, topped with egg? Sounds like breakfast to me.
What a typical Japanese breakfast contains
As I ate a Japanese-style breakfast more often, I realized that breakfast really just looked like something I would eat for lunch or dinner, but in smaller portions, using mostly leftovers from the day before. Reheat the rice and vegetables, and cook the fish in a pan for 8–10 minutes. Heat water on the stovetop, make miso soup. | https://heated.medium.com/why-we-love-a-japanese-breakfast-bbcc8fc1bfed | ['Kaki Okumura'] | 2020-12-11 00:05:34.062000+00:00 | ['Food', 'Breakfast', 'Lifestyle', 'Culture', 'Cooking'] |
Experiencing the World through a Virtual Field Trip | By Katie Rankin, Communications Specialist, Communities In Schools of Chicago
The third-largest city in the country, Chicago is a cultural hub. Home to dozens of museums specializing in art, history, science and industry, even architecture. In typical school years, many of these museums offer educational programming and field trips at no cost for Chicago Public Schools students, and they rely on Communities In Schools (CIS) of Chicago to connect them with schools seeking their services. Field trip experiences not only expand our students’ horizons, but they also spark their curiosity and love of learning.
CIS of Chicago Arts Partnership Specialist Emma MacLean serves as this connecting force and helps activate students’ sense of possibility. She coordinates with her colleagues on the Partnership Team to learn what types of programming schools are prioritizing, and then she leverages her relationships with museums, cultural institutions, and arts organizations to fill those needs.
Since remote learning began, CIS of Chicago arts partners have had to completely shift the way that they offer student programming, but museums, in particular, have had to rethink the way that they deliver field trips. To address this massive pivot in the typical field trip format, Emma MacLean began convening virtual Museum Meetups. These events serve as opportunities for museums in our community partner network to gain insight from colleagues in the industry on how to launch a virtual student field trip.
Arts partners convene at Museum Meetups this fall to discuss how to launch a virtual student field trip.
For the second Museum Meetup this fall, the National Veterans Art Museum (a CIS of Chicago partner) co-facilitated the session. They discussed everything from the logistics of an online student field trip to marketing the program through CIS of Chicago, preparing teachers for the experience, and engaging the student audience throughout. For the National Veterans Art Museum, their virtual field trip incorporates art and photos of the general space. “When we go on field trips, we don’t stare from artifact to artifact,” Emma said. “We scan a whole room and then choose to dig in deep on a specific piece.” She shared how the National Veterans Art Museum is replicating the museum experience and how they are also incorporating guest speakers and hands-on activities. After the field trip concludes, the museum then seeks feedback from students and teachers on how they can improve.
This semester, Museum Meetups have provided a space for partners to not only build camaraderie and share new ideas, but also a place where they can troubleshoot potential roadblocks. A major concern of our museum partners was how they could replicate the experience of physically examining artifacts or objects. For instance, the Peggy Notebaert Museum incorporates taxidermy animals and other object-based learning practices in its school field trips, but what would this tactile experience look like in remote learning?
Partners have innovated this aspect of their field trips by encouraging students to identify and present objects in their homes. For example, the National Veterans Art Museum encouraged one student to share a medal he had from his grandfather’s wartime experience. The Oriental Institute (OI) incorporated a craft that students could make with items they typically have on hand. Other engaging activities have included sharing short videos, asking students to free-write, and even having them sketch while they are listening to music. One opportunity that Emma has seen arise is the ability for museums to tailor their collections more seamlessly into the classroom.
“Partners want to meet what teachers need, so I think there is a general openness to programming changing and shifting so that it can be most utilized,” Emma said. “I think that’s really what we’re hearing from partners across the board this year is we want to make the programs that you’re going to use, so how can we make this easily accessible for you?”
Through Museum Meetups, partners have realized that they are not alone in navigating this new educational landscape. A host of museums across the city are working to pivot their traditional field trips — and they have CIS of Chicago in their corner to help them meet these needs. “It’s sometimes nice to be with other people and just acknowledge this is not the ideal,” Emma said, “but there is a camaraderie in this time that I get to see with partners, and I feel really lucky to facilitate that.” | https://medium.com/@cisofchicago/experiencing-the-world-through-a-virtual-field-trip-9dfb249e6660 | ['Communities In Schools Of Chicago'] | 2020-12-16 17:17:44.296000+00:00 | ['Partnerships', 'Arts And Culture', 'Museums', 'Education', 'Remote Learning'] |
What Does Queen Elizabeth Eat on Christmas? Former Royal Chef Reveals Dinner Traditions. | Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
The pandemic may have ruined most of your plans throughout 2020. However, as Christmas day approaches, so does the festivities and the many preparations that go into making that perfect Christmas dinner.
You may take some inspiration from the menu of Queen Elizabeth’s Christmas dinner. In a recent interview to Hello Magazine former royal chef Darren McGrady revealed how the British royal family dines during the Christmas season.
According to McGrady, the Christmas dinner is all fancy which includes a lavish buffet for the family. However, the breakfast and lunch is pretty simple. Chef Darren told Hello Magazine that the menu for lunch on Christmas day has never been changed. Calling the royals “boring” in that manner, the chef who has cooked seven Christmas dinners for UK Queen as well as the late Princess Diana, said that he and his team whipped up traditional turkeys for lunch.
The royal Christmas lunch included three turkeys for the Queen and her family, one for the children’s nursery and then some more for the staff that includes hundred members
The afternoon tea was also a must in the royal family and included an assortment of cakes, scones, sandwiches, and a Christmas cake, he revealed.
Coming towards the final meal of the day, McGrady said that the chef and cooks work meticulously towards putting a scrumptious spread on the dining table. Chef Darren revealed that the royal family always received a luxurious foie gras en croute from British brand Harrods. A foie gras en croute is made with truffles in a delicious round crust. This gourmet food item was accompanied with Stilton cheese which is converted into a luxurious dip for crackers.
According to the chef, the royal family would carve out the York ham and make a toast to the chef who cooked all the meals and express their gratitude.
Talking about desserts, Chef Darren revealed that the crepe soufflé dessert was a favourite dish of Princess Diana. He also told Hello Magazine that Princess Diana would visit the royal kitchen after everyone had had their meals to check if there was any crepe soufflé left.
This year however, the royal family will not be able to get together for the annual Christmas dinner, due to the coronavirus lockdown in the United Kingdom. | https://medium.com/@singhprince57714/what-does-queen-elizabeth-eat-on-christmas-former-royal-chef-reveals-dinner-traditions-127f4de26f89 | ['Prince Singh'] | 2020-12-19 14:21:46.120000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Random', 'Celebrity', 'Stories', 'Festivals'] |
“What you need to know before trying Keto” | The keto diet is a great way to lose weight. Studies show that it can lead you down an energy efficient path, while simultaneously increasing your mental clarity and promoting positive moods all day long!
The benefits of the Keto Diet for Weight Loss include: * Lowering Your Calories intake/Restricting Caloric Value (CRV) by 20% or More Than Normal Eating Guidelines Allowance Is One Of The Most Effective Strategies To Help People Achieve And Maintain Their Ideal Bodyweight.* Reducing An Organic Acids buildup In Our Bodies Promotes Relief From Headaches Lacklustre Moodiness irritability Depression anxiety sensation sickness etc.. So What Are You Ready With Excited Let’s Start Using This Method Right Now Not.
It’s a Lifestyle not a diet
The keto diet has been shown to help people lose weight. This is because the high fat and low carb intake limits your body’s ability to produce glucose, which it uses for energy instead of fats when on a Ketogenic Diet. The result? You feel full from not having any carbs in your system so cravings disappear almost immediately!
It’s a Lifestyle not a diet
The keto diet is a low-carbohydrate, high fat eating plan that has been shown in studies to help people lose weight. It’s also known as “ketogenic” or “keto” for short and first came about during the 1920s when researcher Dr. George Hrabuspec began testing his own children on an energy restricted diet of 75 grams net carbs per day without sweets while monitoring their blood glucose levels using an artificial sweetener called cyclamate as part of research into diabetes treatments since there was no such thing back then!
It’s a Lifestyle not a diet | https://medium.com/@morne.swart1985/what-you-need-to-know-before-trying-keto-6b187529681c | ['Normal Guy'] | 2021-11-26 09:14:54.856000+00:00 | ['Diet', 'Weight Loss', 'Health', 'Fat Burning Foods', 'Keto Diet'] |
We do NOT live in a virtual reality! | We do NOT live in a virtual reality!
We love tricking ourselves with what we know.
The theory that we all live in an virtual simulation is booming. The evidence seems to grow day by day and youtube offers a host of video’s to spread the meme. But is it true? I think it’s not, for one huge, and, in my mind, compelling argument: We keep on projecting our (desired or feared) reality onto the universe. And in our descriptions, we’ll use metaphors referencing our own understanding. We see, what we expect to see. No wonder the flat-Earthers can believe so deeply in their ‘proof’, while ignoring counter arguments. No wonder racism is so hard to overcome.
How does this work?
I want to propose the “Self-referential Projection” principle. We tend to discover the reality of world fits the way we see it. Yes, there’s a mistake at the core of that logic. Like when I’m a fearful person. Lo, and behold, I discover everywhere in the news: “Life is scary and bad people are out to get us.” So we always tend to see the world as we personally experience it, mixing this mostly a bit with what helps me to fit in, be accepted by my (sub)culture. Our personal system hungers for explanations of reality that fit our personal experience and mindset. We can even become deadly (mostly for others) serious about defending such concepts. “Become Christian or die!”
God, the Clockmaker
When you look through the lens of your time and culture it’s easy to see how this works. Let’s take this grander and, I must admit, not very nuanced view over time. First God made man the center of the universe. What a shock it was then to see we revolved around the sun, not the sun around us. ‘We aren’t the center, shit, then what is true?’, people wondered. Then when science had its lift off, around Newton’s period, God became the ‘clockmaker’ who created a perfectly set universe with precise rules. We can even wonder if Marx wrote his theory attacking this concept, by challenging the rules of the game. He made clear: the clock or rather our man-made clock is flawed.
Survival of the Fittest
Also understanding reality doesn’t mean (seek) control over it.
Then when Darwin’s findings became accepted we got to live in a world of principles that seemed to favour the fittest. And whaddayeknow, exactly around that time the British colonization machine was showing the world who was the fittest and thus had the ‘highest civilization’; according to the British that is. Model and culture fit each other smoothly.
Chaos and Complexity
Then came chaos and complexity theory. Born shortly before WWI, but going in overdrive after. Here we lived suddenly in an expanding universe, where chaos ruled. Because we, still lingering in ‘survival of the fittest’ model, wanted to understand the most essential laws of nature so we could use them to rule. Or if shocked by the war, find how order comes out of chaos? Nietzsche must have felt this time coming when he wrote ‘God is dead’, because this was the time the universe was all mathematical principles we just needed to understand. And it felt like a machine believe with a lack of meaning.
Evolving Consciousness
This theory then evolved to an evolving consciousness model. First churches due to increased mobilization started to empty. Many felt they didn’t need Church as safeguard community anymore and the age of individualism and consumerism started. Still many needed some afterlife principle and God wasn’t yet back in the picture, (Of course also many never left the God belief, but we are interested in those opening up the projections of their own time) Then also slowly the discoveries of the spiritual explorers of the early 20th century, who studied Sufism, Guru’s, and such became slowly more main stream. Hence this calming theory of expanding consciousness. ‘See we are growing all the time’. Can you feel the era this fits best? Yes, babyboom time. Right after WWII everything seemed to grow just fine and without limit. This also fits consumerism. ‘See, we are the center of the expanding universe’.
Law of Attraction
Then we saw the hippy church, going to India a lot, brought back reincarnation. What a relief for all those missing an afterlife, when there’s no heaven. This mixed so nice with the half understood truths of before. We now found we live in an expanding universe that shapes itself to how we perceive it. Oh my, the Law of Attraction happened! This is a kind a hopeful ‘Self-referential Projection’. ‘I can order what I want, because I’m the evolving center (preferably in wealth, health and spiritual consumerism) and I understand the laws of nature.’ (read a watered down version of these laws fitting my self centric convictions)
Rise of Virtual-Reality Reality
So recently the youth that was raised on video games grew up. They all saw the Matrix. They all had avatars they steered run around virtual game universes. So, guess what they see? Exactly. We all live in a Matrix, simulation. And from the old believes we keep: there’s an afterlife (‘I expect to return to my higher self who played me’). There’s higher laws (‘See, quantum physics exist because we’re in a super computer’). There’s no need to be too responsible with nature (‘We’re in a game, so why should I stop playing me to help the rest of the world?’). And in this last conviction we also see the self-centered consumer philosophy.
Projecting our reality onto reality actually strengthens the Matrix, and doesn’t help see the essence at all.
We now live in a time of making theories bitesize pop culture.
I discovered this idea, when I read for a while about the latest theories in physics. Somehow they always end up in the speculative realm, which reads more like a novel than science. Here scientists project their ideas, based upon their into the world. And what happens, like with the Law of Attraction, some normal people will pick up the speculative projection and make it bitesize and popular according to their convictions, hopes and cultural reality.
Using this view you can see it everywhere. One day our dead hero, Jesus, Arthur, will come return. Who believes that? What about endangered cultures threatened by others? These are the peoples longing for a supernatural answer, who’ll help overcome something they themselves have no power over. The Jews in their time dealt with the Romans and many neighbours. ‘Jesus come back please?’ The, just turned Christian, pre-English, dreamt of Arthur, during the Saxon and not long after the Viking invasions.
Are we part of nature?
It has been found that the hero returning from the dead myth is way more ancient than the Jesus story. It’s a trope that’s rediscovered over and over again, when certain troubles happen. Our biggest trouble now is climate change. No wonder the Churches are talking about end times and yes, there he is, ‘Jesus will be back soon’. Gaining in popularity is also the indigenous belief, ‘we’re part of nature’. I think that’s a fact. And if not, it feels like the best realization, to help us stop destroying our own environment. It’s probably the best paradigm: ‘we need to start fixing nature, by fixing ourselves’.
So can we see beyond our biases? Can we see beyond our culture? It’s hard. But we must try. With a general decrease in people having any intellectual skill, critical thinking education, we have more and more big decisions being taken by morons with a lack of true understanding. Sometimes they lie, ‘Climate change isn’t real! So, invest in oil.’ Sometimes they are too bloody ignorant. ‘Climate change isn’t real because my TV station, sponsored by big oil, says, “science sucks”.’
The Future of our Understanding of Reality
But, hey, the Quantum Computer is around the corner ready that change the playing field again. Once again it will seek to integrate all previous ideas, while mirroring cultures. I predict the ‘virtual reality’ believe will stay, but claim we are both virtual reality and reality. It will focus more on maintaining both flux and balance in systems. Because we’ll see way more unrest, big shifts around the world and no power being able to control it. We’ll rather feel part of the machine then in control, as we lose control over our own next advances, when they start thinking for us, or themselves. And finally people will predict the ‘end-game’ is on, because man, is shit complex and little nature left to go silent in.
Knowledge about nature isn’t being in nature, nor does help to experience nature. It’s preparation at best. Sadly when forests become abstractions, we actually train managers who don’t care about them.
Hope and Warning
So my guess is that the next iteration to mirror our society will show a lack of comforting higher meaning, and more surrender to higher principles ruling us. And this time to get control back, more voices will demand we use these principles to shape our laws by, in order to survive. I hope it will restrain the power of the corrupting corporate lobbies who for profit keep on destroying the environment and people, like the oil and arms lobbies. Remember that when those laws will written, they’ll not be the truth, they’ll be the truth of those who write them and their interests. And when those in power still prefer their own interests over the collective health get to write those rules, we know it’ll end up being a new way to suppress change and won’t give nature space to heal the planet. Better be awake when that happens.
Where To Go From Here.
And for those that hope to find the absolute truth. Sorry. I have no clue. But I do know the following: find ways to be aligned with your environment. Be a healthy part of it. Destroying more nature than can regrow because of your actions makes no sense, however slow the damage is done. It’s not for nothing that lions kill to eat, and don’t seek to perfect their kill production and kill as much zebra’s as they can. Destroying other cultures makes no sense either. We need a health ecology of diversity in nature, in cultures and approaches. At heart we can know one thing: Our ecosphere developed as a balanced culture of millions of interactions and creatures all interacting with each other.
Can you respect this as a living community of diverse life forms, with an ongoing million years old dialogue?
I think forests are communities where species intermingle and have century old dialogues we can’t yet understand. Better have respect for all we don’t know yet, rather than destroy of create watered down versions out of arrogance. Yes we can, but we shouldn’t. Jesus said, “Forgive them, lord, for they don’t know what they are doing.” 2000 years later we still don’t know. Acting as if we do has shown to end up in robbery, plunder and destruction of our eco-sphere. We should start listening to scientists who know at the least a little bit more, let alone listening to indigenous people living amidst nature who know best, Not doing so is becoming a crime against life on this planet, even when the laws of the land seem to prove it is all legal. Our hearts know different.
And that story, my friends, of importance of keeping real nature high in esteem is indeed ancient, and for good reasons. We need to come back of the arrogant idea, we’re above nature. It is literally killing us. We need to reconnect to our softer, humbler, nourishing side.
Can we learn the humility and care needed to be part of, in service of the living web we are part of? I dearly hope so. | https://medium.com/the-gentle-revolution/we-do-not-live-in-a-virtual-reality-55ec391854ba | ['Floris Koot'] | 2020-02-13 22:08:39.834000+00:00 | ['Scientific Method', 'Ecology', 'Virtual Reality', 'Science', 'The Matrix'] |
Today, I Don’t Want To Be a Mother | Photo by guille pozzi on Unsplash
Today, I Don’t Want To Be a Mother
I Want To Be Mothered, Instead
“Does the Easter Bunny have Corona,” my four-year-old said. We were standing in our front yard under a blooming dogwood tree, observing our surroundings using our senses. It was part of a lesson her preschool teacher emailed us. The air was fragrant with spring blossoms, and birds chirped and flew above us. The neighborhood was busier in some ways, quieter in others, no cars were on the roads, but a lot of walkers and cyclists were, taking advantage of the mild New Jersey spring day.
“No, the Easter Bunny is okay,” I said, “and doesn’t have Corona.”
Easter is in a few days, and the Easter Bunny usually comes to our house. The days before the big day I fill baskets for my four kids, with bubbles and sidewalk chalk and chocolates and little toys. I stuff dozens of plastic eggs with candy for our annual hunt. We dye and decorate boiled eggs the night before. This year, I don’t want to do a thing.
The idea of Easter this year, a time of year that usually fills me with happiness and hope, is filling me apathy and dread, obligation and responsibility.
I’m like the yoyo that I put in my son’s Easter basket last year. I wake up energized and ready for the day. I’m going to rock home schooling, I’m going to cook a healthy and delicious meal, I’m going to be positive, I’m going to be productive. I’m going to look back on this period and be happy with what I accomplished. But by 3 in the afternoon I’m under a blanket on my couch, my fear pushing me into the brown leather cushions, begging for sleep to quiet my worries, while my kids amuse themselves with movies and video games.
I’m safe and grateful and lucky, but also scared and frightened and cheated. I can’t fall asleep at night, my chest is tight, and I can’t take a deep breath in, while my kids snore in their rooms down the hall. My bottle of Xanax, once saved for emergencies, is taken out most nights now and is almost empty. When I do fall asleep it’s not for long, I wake up in the middle of the night sweating, convinced my dad, a lung cancer survivor who lives in a nearby town, is dead.
I’m supposed to be a buoy for my children, I’m supposed to keep them engaged and upbeat, I’m supposed to keep them from being scared, I’m supposed to be their goddamn mother, but I’m drowning, a rusty heavy anchor falling into the bottom of the ocean floor.
Right now, at this moment, I don’t want to be a mother. I don’t want to mother my kids, I don’t want to mother my husband, I don’t want to mother my parents. Instead, I want to be mothered.
I want to crawl up on my mother’s lap and tell her that I’m petrified. That my anxiety comes over me like a rogue wave in a once calm sea. That one moment, all is well and I’m peaceful and stable, and then the next moment my fear shakes my world like an earthquake, making me unable to stand. I want to cry and sob and have my back rubbed and hear a lullaby sung in my ear. I want to have my hair combed through with her fingers and smell her lilac hand lotion. I want to hear her tell me that I am safe, that I am okay, that I am well. I just want to be mothered today. I want to be saturated in love and peace and have nothing to do in return but just be.
So today, I’m going to mother myself. I’m going to take a longer shower relishing the white noise of the rushing water, so I can’t hear the kids fighting. I’m going to not double check their homework assignments. I’m going to break my screen time limits and let them watch whatever they want. I’m going to serve cereal for dinner. And I’m going to use that extra time, to mother myself. To pray, to read, to write, and to breathe. I’m going to free myself from the responsibility of doing all my mother things, just for today, and instead mother myself.
I will find the strength to mother them tomorrow. | https://medium.com/heart-soul-pen/i-just-want-to-be-mothered-ff9d688df03a | ['Jamie Fiore Higgins'] | 2020-04-07 19:35:46.382000+00:00 | ['Homeschooling', 'Motherhood', 'Women', 'Anxiety', 'Coronavirus'] |
Euro 2020: Italy vs Spain — Semi-Final Preview & Prediction | Syed Suboor Abbas
In their absolute tiki-taka splendor, Spain battered Italy by four goals to nothing in the final of UEFA Euro 2012. The loss echoed in the Azzurri minds for a long time and while some may say that the Italians exacted a measure of revenge for their humbling defeat when the two sides met in Paris, four years later, in the round-of-16 of Euro 2016 with a 2–0 win, we believe the loss may still sting, nine years on. However, Roberto Mancini’s men must be licking their chops now at the thought of meeting La Furia Roja in the first semi-final of Euro 2020.
Luis Enrique’s boys haven’t hit top form this summer and it took them an anxious penalty shootout after 120 minutes of football to get the better of a ten-man Swiss side. Meanwhile, the Italians come to Wembley on a 13-match winning streak and are also unbeaten in the last 32. Their blistering pace and clinical finishing have seen them run rampant, putting their opponents to the sword one after the other. However, writing off Spain would still be harsh and unintelligent.
While La Roja have had a hard time finishing off minnows, a top-tier team like Italy may bring out the best in them, as has been the case more often than not. With the turbulent run, Spain have had at the tournament, it’s tough to assess where they stand in this fixture. While the Azzurri have been the most consistent team in terms of results, this Spanish side is more than capable of causing havoc against anyone, on their day. La Roja have created the most xG and they score a lot of goals, but they miss even more. There has been a rainbow spread of scorned opportunities.
However, the killer instinct is there in Lucho’s team. They keep going at the opposition defense and to put this into perspective, they beat Croatia in the round-of-16 by five goals to three, although, it took them an extra thirty minutes to do so. They have a stomach for the fight. It runs in the DNA of this team. Despite all their struggles, they have eventually made it out every single time.
On the other side of the ledger, is a “do it all” team. Mancini’s Italy play an attacking possession-based game, with their midfield trio running the show. With Marco Veratti’s technicality, Jorginho’s vision and Nicolo Barella’s ability on the ball, the Italians can move the ball quickly in and around the channels. However, the Azzurri are also solid at the back. Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci’s exceptional defensive partnership coupled with Gianluigi Donnarumma’s capability between the sticks has seen them concede very few chances at the competition.
The strength of this team is their unity. They fight together and they win together. None of the players are scared of losing the ball because they operate as a unit. This is what helps the likes of Barella, Veratti, Lorenzo Insigne & Federico Chiesa amongst others, who are willing runners on & off the ball. While the “star” of this team is the group, Leonardo Spinazzola has been their standout performer at Euro 2020, until his tournament was cut short due to an Achilles injury in the game against Belgium. This comes as a huge blow to Mancini and his team and doubts will be clouding over, but a place in the final of UEFA Euro 2020 at Wembley should be enough motivation for the Azzurri.
Prediction: We expect a lot of shadow boxing in this game, before the knockout blow. Plenty of chances will be created at both ends, and it will be a question about whose defense is better. Despite all the attacking talent and game-changers in the Spanish squad, it’s tough to look past their recent form and struggles in front of goal. On the contrary, Italy put on a show against World №1, Belgium, last time out, and the penultimate hurdle will prove to be the ultimate hurdle for La Roja when they meet the Azzurri in the first semi-final at Wembley. Our pick is Italy.
Who do you fancy to become the first finalist of Euro 2020? Let us know in the comments and do share your feedback. | https://medium.com/@fromthespot01/euro-2020-italy-vs-spain-semi-final-preview-prediction-1444fe87d453 | ['The Spot'] | 2021-07-06 14:30:08.774000+00:00 | ['Football', 'Italy', 'Euro', 'Spain', 'Europe'] |
Crypto Price-Feed by J48 — Coinbase API Secured by iExec (Dapp of the Month) | The application UI: ➡️https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmQ4CY6fSbys5bfAE2nFoKJ5KgXZUEoQeQZv2MnfGFDH3h
We got in touch with him to ask a few questions about his work, so without further ado, here’s @j48 on his Signed Price Feed dapp:
How did you learn about iExec and why were you interested?
I first learned about iExec back in 2017, at which point the ICO mania was in full swing and it was hard to tell which projects were all hype and which had actual promise. iExec originally caught my eye as it seemed similar to folding@home — combining that type of tech with an immutable ledger seemed admirably futuristic. I started following the project more closely after Consensus 2018 when iExec gave a presentation together with Intel about using SGX to protect data. At the time there were few crypto collaborations with big corporations, so this really stood out to me. Since then, I’ve been keeping up with the tech, being genuinely curious to see how it evolves.
Can you give us an insight into any other projects you are working on at the moment?
I’m working on a crypto price analysis dapp running on iExec that will access a private dataset stored on Google BigQuery. It’s currently more of a demo of the tech, since I’m just exploring the possibilities of using iExec to access data on Google BigQuery.
Your application uses the newly released API by Coinbase. What inspired you to use that?
I became intrigued about the potential for signed price feeds to serve as a component of an oracle on Ethereum when I first read Coinbase’s article about their new signed price feed being made available. Current systems are either on-chain rube goldberg complexities or trusted middleware reporting secondhand data from API feeds. Digging deeper into the topic I started reading up on Compound’s Open Oracle system and became impressed with what they were trying to create.
While the signed API data is completely capable of being used in an isolated decentralized oracle deployed on iExec’s sidechain. API results from tasks can also update Open Oracle smart contracts on mainnet since the trust in the signed price feed isn’t lost when the message is relayed to mainnet. The message that stores the data is always a trusted Coinbase price since the signature verifies it was signed by Coinbase’s private key.
Currently, as it’s still in the early stages, there’s only one signed price feed being maintained by Open Oracle smart contracts on mainnet. The need for various entities updating these oracles will become essential as the number of signed APIs grows and the variety of events, data, or prices expands. What’s better than an on-chain median estimated price, calculated from verifiable price data taken from a multitude of only the most-used exchanges?
Why did you choose iExec confidential computing to secure the data?
About a month ago, the SGX-based Kaiko Price Feed dapp was released, inspiring me to try something similar with the Coinbase API. Without TEE, none of this would really be possible, given that the API key would have to be in paintext and visible to all. Using a decentralized cloud provider such as iExec to report signed API data on-chain felt like a perfect combination to me. As the amount of signed API providers grow the need and demand for on-chain updaters increases significantly
You took the interesting approach of encrypting the API key as a dataset within an Intel SGX hardware enclave, can you explain a little more about that?
Encrypting the API key allows for this dapp to run securely on any worker (with SGX) within an TEE workerpool without exposing the actual API key or any of the data. This also allows API providers to take advantage of publishing an encrypted API key on the marketplace without ever publicly revealing the API key, yet still remaining the provider of the data. This avoids giving up control of data they provide to secondhand resellers and eliminates complications where the API results might be sensitive or confidential, also providing them with unique monetization opportunities. | https://medium.com/iex-ec/crypto-price-feed-by-j48-coinbase-api-secured-by-iexec-dapp-of-the-month-e7eb33042bf5 | ['Blair Maclennan'] | 2020-09-25 10:28:42.366000+00:00 | ['Dapp Of The Week', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Crypto', 'Tech'] |
The Reluctant Christian | My struggles in believing
Photo by xA L P H A
God gave his son to this sinful world so he could die, so we could live.
So in short, he died and gifted us with a possibility for a new life and to come to heaven.
But I have one problem. How can I appreciate Gods gift, when in reality I don’t have any desire to live, and am afraid to die?
How can I then thank him, and love him for giving me a gift I never was asked if I wanted, and will never appreciate? How could life be for my own good if I’ll never learn to appreciate it?!
Every time I think, I question my existence. Why did he create me, when knowing all the pointless feelings and things I’ll do or think? To show the others how a poor excuse of a human lives? That’d be only cruel and would never agree with what the bible says.
Then does God have something for me to do? A task or a goal that I must reach? What happens if I reach that goal and complete the task? Eternal life?
Wouldn’t that be hell for someone like me? Does that mean I’m already corrupted and in the devils care?
Is my existence a danger to every Christian? Then what’s holding God back from taking me? Or my life? It didn’t stop him before, then Why not do it now? Does he need me?
Me and my worthless body, will and mind? | https://medium.com/@alpha.kaos08/the-reluctant-christian-3dd0dcf12f9b | ['X A L P H A'] | 2020-12-22 18:08:04.941000+00:00 | ['Hopeless', 'Religion', 'Existence', 'Doubt', 'Christian'] |
#Garyveechallenge | Chances are, if you haven’t lived under a rock during the past 10 years, you already know about Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s a successful entrepreneur and a real rockstar on social networks.
He has a very simple method: posting massively on any platform you can. And the recipe seems to work so well for him, that he constantly tries to push his followers to do so. But guess what? Almost no one follows this suggestion. Why does it happen? In Gary Vee’s opionion, it’s because we’re scared of other people’s judgement.
That’s why he launched the garyveechallenge a couple of months ago: he wanted to persuade people to actually make it through and eventually post more.
The challenge produced so many conversations that we somehow felt obliged to analyze them, in order to understand… who, in the end, made it through! | https://medium.com/kpi6/garyveechallenge-18d7ffa15315 | [] | 2020-02-12 18:29:37.201000+00:00 | ['Bigda', 'Gary Vaynerchuk', 'Blog', 'Trends', 'Garyveechallenge'] |
How I Finally Owned 2020 | Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash
Days away from finishing a most unforgettable year, I realize I’ve turned a corner recently. I came out of the brain fog. The weight of the pandemic no longer perched precariously on both shoulders.
So what was this phenomenal change that sparked feeling better?
An epiphany? Not quite.
A series of interwoven habits brought me to this place. As an engineer, my mind naturally seeks order…and this typically means lots of lists. Presenting your curated top four ways to live “your best life” in a pandemic.
1. Meditation is a practice for a reason.
On mornings where I listened to a guided meditation for about 10 minutes, I was more focused, efficient and calmer navigating my day. And those days I skipped meditating in the morning? Overwhelm crept up, irritability rose and I felt less productive when I opted to skip it. Armed with informal data over the past 3 years, committing 10 minutes daily is worth gaining a peaceful mindset, especially in these anxiety-inducing times. Carving out time daily, I feel a sense of purpose to complete this first task of the day. Mediation reminds me to breathe deeply, pausing the frenetic brain activity sensed upon waking. Like working out, our brain needs a warm-up to slide into wakefulness. My mornings before discovering meditation, were akin to skipping stretching and just jolting into boot camp. Much like exercising the body, doing mindful breathing on day 1 may seem impossible. “How do I stay still this long?” and “I can’t be doing this right because my mind is wandering” are common sentiments in the beginning. In a matter of time, it will be second nature as long as you keep up your meditation practice daily. I recommend meditating upon wake up to get the maximum benefit, and using a guided app such as Headspace or Calm.
2. Control your digital consumption.
Kids aren’t the only ones who benefit from digital curfews. Doomscrolling has now become part of our vernacular, thanks in part to seemingly endless chatter sprawled across social media.
“The amount of time spent [doomscrolling] is directly proportional to how much worse you’re going to feel after you’re done.” // UrbanDictionary.com
Outside Podcast’s interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook was powerful motivation to finally enable Screen Time on my iPhone.
Subsequently, Screen Time kicked two bad habits: 1) being on my phone right before bedtime, and 2) keeping my phone close by while sleeping. The “alarm clock excuse” was put to the test. For the past month, I’ve set my screen time such that I am “locked out” from 10:30 pm to 5 am. Once 10:15 pm hits, I get a reminder that I’ve got 15 minutes left. This gives me the much needed nudge to wrap up my phone usage and start my ritual of preparing for sleep. Phone goes into the charger in living room, teeth are brushed & flossed, face washed & moisturized, followed by reading before falling asleep. I find myself with the energy to wake up without an alarm before 6 am on a Saturday…to meditate, journal and enjoy my coffee in those sweet, quiet moments before the day kicks off.
3. Prioritize sleep.
Perhaps one of the toughest lies to shatter is sleep deficiency isn’t a badge of honor. Michael Walker, the neuroscientist who leads the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, says it best:
“Every disease that is killing us in developed nations has causal and significant links to a lack of sleep.”
Despite knowing better, who hasn’t disregarded their fatigue in exchange for cramming for that exam or indulging the rabbit hole of YouTube videos until 1 am? Not to mention, the price paid for such nights seems way higher than in my 40s than my 20s. We feel completely off our game the day after a nearly sleepless night. Adequate sleep enables restorative functions to take place in our body, along with strengthening the immune system. Having this nightly detox sweep of our brain is a lucrative investment towards your healthy future self.
4. Fuel your creative soul.
As colder weather approaches, there’s a spike in temptation to succumb to binge watching or overindulging in food and drink. Identifying passion projects or hobbies creates meaningful downtime. Baking and gardening help to be “less inside my head”, while making space to focus on creating something — such as kneading bread dough or planting an herb garden in a windowsill. I encourage listening to podcasts and taking online courses for inspiration on nearly any topic you can think of. I have found joy in doing mundane tasks (an actual working dishwasher would be awesome to own) while listening to podcast interviews. Feeding this curiosity to understand what drives people to succeed professionally as well as personally. Or simply consuming podcasts that address how people are not just surviving in the pandemic, but finding ways to thrive…even if it takes reading a Medium article to push the needle.
Here’s to a better life for us all as we embrace 2021. | https://medium.com/@elevatedengineering/how-i-finally-owned-2020-8907a9c0bd35 | ['Elevated Engineer'] | 2021-01-02 18:37:11.955000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Meditation', 'Pandemic Diaries', 'Social Media', 'Passion'] |
Abandoning Solutions | “I’m not sad!”
“…she said, sadly lacking in vigour and force.”
Gabrielle winced. It was the closest she got to a smile. Anyway, there was a massive stack of clothes waiting to be folded. Why does no one else fucking empty the change-rooms? There was Jean-Jean Josephine. Stupid name, hot jeans.
Jo carried a few extra pounds in her rear but they were good ones. They were pounds that Gabrielle would have lapped at in a second. Millisecond, even. Staring could be harassment. Gabrielle could have cared less. But Jason was busy trying to stop…what? What was she doing that required intervention?
“You’ve — I know,” Jason said, entirely too bright. “You should take a break. Go outside! I bet the winter chill will haul those blues right out your nostrils. Or, they’ll be so fucking cold you won’t be able to think about anything else. Capisce? Get out of here. You need it.”
“You’re not Italian, Jason.” The eyeballs rolled. And then didn’t stop. The inanity of the solution couldn’t possibly work. Gabrielle stared at the pile in front of her, then to the clock.
There were six other people in the store. Nobody buying anything. Or not from her. Clothes folder extraordinaire, she imagined herself flipping Jason off. Too many people to get away with it right then.
“Go on.” Jason made annoying clucking sounds.
“I’m busy. Maybe later.”
“Fine. But you need a break.”
I need something. Gabrielle avoided the faces, smiling vaguely as if it were all she could do to focus on the clothing tags she scanned, then staring at hands to anticipate which mode they were paying with, what kind of card…The background had no depth. Everything was sunken in and leaping out at her. Like Max-Something. Whatever. It was high and low down as she could go, but the minutes weren’t doing anything.
Suspended by her work. So…how long to go now? | https://medium.com/literally-literary/abandoning-solutions-d75c916985a5 | ['J.D. Harms'] | 2020-10-07 05:32:33.894000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Prose', 'Fiction', 'Frustration', 'Story'] |
Apache Airflow for the confused | A Metaphor
It’s helpful to think of Airflow like an air traffic controller.
An air traffic controller manages a finite amount of resources (airspace and runways), orchestrating sequences of tasks (flight paths, takeoffs, landings, and taxiing) that depend on whether other tasks have completed successfully.
Airflow, like an air traffic controller, keeps detailed logs of each of these sequences: what command was given, how that command was executed, and how long it took. And if, tragically, there is an error, it knows if it needs to try again, or to notify someone else for help.
We’ll come back to this metaphor later.
Airflow Terms
Airflow uses several terms that can be unclear or jargony to new users but are actually straightforward concepts. The words can be strange at first, but we’ll flesh them out.
The four key terms to understand are: a DAG, an Operator, a DAG Run, and a Task Instance.
Let’s continue with our air traffic metaphor.
Air France flight 11 between New York and Paris is a flight route defined by Air France. It is, in essence, a sequence of tasks that gets an airplane from JFK to CDG. Air France defines how often this sequence should be run. In the case of AF11, it’s run daily.
A flight route made up of waypoints.
A flight route is made up of many different tasks: taxiing to a runway, taking off, raising the landing gear, navigating to waypoints, etc. Some of these tasks can be run in parallel, some in sequence, and some depend on others before happening.
An Airflow DAG is like a flight route. It defines a sequence of operations and how often they should be run.
In Airflow, a DAG is made up of Operators. Operators define the individual tasks that need to be done. They can trigger bash commands, run SQL on a database, transfer data between systems, listen for changes on a server, or even send an email or Slack message. Airflow comes packaged with several built-in Operators and even more are available through open source libraries.
To recap: a DAG is made up of Operators, and together they form the blueprint of a work flow. The DAG defines the sequence and schedule of operations, the Operators define discrete tasks that need to take place within this sequence.
So what happens when a DAG is executed? It becomes a DAG Run.
AF11 on September 25, 2017. A successful DAG Run.
A DAG Run is what Airflow calls an executed instance of a DAG. Airflow triggers this execution based on the schedule defined in the DAG (hourly, daily, weekly, etc.). Once triggered, Airflow orchestrates the execution of the Operators in the correct order, assigning available computing power to any outstanding tasks that need to be completed.
Airflow calls an executed Operator a Task Instance. (This is an example of where Airflow’s naming conventions could be much clearer). A Task Instance is the most granular concept in Airflow. It represents an attempted operation at a certain time, with certain parameters.
Returning to our air traffic controller metaphor, Air France Flight 11 on Monday, September 25, 2017 took off at 10:05pm EDT and landed in Paris the next day. This flight followed a sequence of operations defined by the airline to get a plane from JFK to CDG. AF11 on Sept 25 is the DAG Run to the daily AF11 flight route’s DAG.
Four core Airflow concepts.
Recap
The four core concepts in Airflow are:
An Airflow DAG is a defined sequence of operations. An Airflow DAG is a Python script that defines what should be run, how often, in what order (in sequence or in parallel), and what to do if an error might occur. (If you’re interest in the maths behind DAGs, they’ve been showing up a lot these days).
Operators are the blueprints for individual operations. A DAG is made up of one or many operators. These define the individual tasks that make up a DAG. Airflow defines three types of Operators–actions, transfers, and sensors–and provides many built-in operator classes to interact with common databases and other systems.
A DAG Run, is an executed run of tasks defined by a DAG. A DAG Run is logged, including when the run began, exited, and if any errors occurred along the way.
A Task Instance is an executed Operator. It’s log contains the exact command that was given to a server, at what time, and the detailed output of what occurred.
Why Airflow
Airflow’s primary strength is that it is language and technology agnostic.
It doesn’t care what you trigger. This means you can have scripts written in whatever languages make the most sense for your workflow. All that matters is that these scripts are granular (they only do one thing) and that they return a success or failure.
Another strength is Airflow’s configuration as code.
Because Airflow’s task definitions–DAGs and Operators–are just Python, it gives tremendous flexibility in how to define a workflow. For example, it allows a DAG to dynamically add new Operators based on files in a directory. This makes it possible to define a DAG that dynamically creates new tasks when additional scripts are added to a folder, or for several DAGs to import a collection of Operators defined in another Python file. | https://medium.com/nyc-planning-digital/apache-airflow-for-the-confused-b588935669df | ['Jonathan Pichot'] | 2018-06-27 15:07:32.248000+00:00 | ['Data', 'Airflow', 'Data Engineering', 'Open Data'] |
Voice | Voice 是 Block.one 旗下基于 EOS 的社交项目。2020 年 3 月，Block.one 表示将向区块链社交应用 Voice 投资 1.5 亿美元以支持其独立运营。为了部署和推广 Voice，Block.one 仅购买 Voice.com 域名，就花费了 3000 万美元。还购买了 330 万的 EOS RAM 资源，以及支付 2400 万美元罚金给 SEC，为 Voice 做好合规准备。
2020 年 8 月 15 日，Voice 目前已经开启邀请注册，但在全球范围内，目前也只限于 23 个国家，包括有美国、英国、加拿大等，未包括中国。根据 Voice 的最新政策，每个 Voice 用户只可以邀请 10 个朋友加入。
中国、中国香港访问 Voice.com，会提示：「Unfortunately, our content is unavailable in your area. We are working hard to implement all the necessary controls to adhere to local laws and regulations. We hope to invite you onto our platform soon.」
笔者已经成功注册 Voice，需要做如下准备工作：
如果是 iOS，需要准备一个非国区、非港区 Apple ID，最好是美区；
如果是 Android，需要正常登陆 Google Play；
在 App Store 或者 Google Play 下载安装 Voice；
准备一个非港区 TZ，最好是美国 TZ；
去社区找一个邀请码，记住登记的邮箱是一个没在 Voice 官网登记的全新邮箱；
找一个明亮的地方，背景最好是纯色，因为注册要求简单的 KYC，获取到的头像将作为 Voice 头像，而且目前暂时还没法更改。
注册好 Voice 后，默认会送 3000 个 Token。邀请注册期间的 Token，会在邀请测试结束之后清零。但是创作的内容、点赞、评论等会保留。
前有区块链内容平台 Steemit，现有 Block.one 团队的区块链社交平台 Voice。EOS 社区饱受诟病，Block.one 甚至被贴上了不作为的标签。如今推出 Voice，还宣称 EOS 是最适合部署 DeFi 的平台。社交这个赛道，早已有 Facebook 这些巨头，您觉得 Block.one、Voice 还有机会吗？
我是区块链罗宾，博客 dbarobin.com
如果您想和我交流，我的微信: Wentasy
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The making of the product-tech backbone of a SaaS start-up | From guarding the mindspace of developers against the harsh realities of a cash-strapped world to giving brilliant jerks a polite go-by, the dos and don’ts for a surging start-up are one too many. At SaaSBOOMi Build, builders of great products and developers of sparkling tech had much to say
In the hustle-filled early days of SaaS unicorn Postman, an office tour would end barely a minute after it began.
It was a one-bedroom apartment that Ankit Sobti, Abhijit Kane, and Abhinav Asthana had rented out and repurposed as their office. There, bookshelves doubled up as workstations, and one didn’t need to “holler” for a meeting–a mere mumble would do.
It was in that cramped workplace that one of the fundamental discoveries that had an overarching impact on the journey of the start-up was made. The postman had been trying to simplify their microservices architecture around the turn of 2018, trying out a lot of technological solutions to the design problem. In this milieu, the founders moved to a larger apartment (office), and, to their utter disbelief, the architecture they were trying to redesign mirrored the change in the layout. “It was a fundamental eye-opener for us. When we moved from a single bedroom apartment to a four-bedroomed one, we could see how the code was evolving based on how we were interacting in the new office. Office layout and code decisions!” Sobti exclaimed, the unfinished sentence expression of sheer incredulity.
What Sobti and the other founders saw in action was the postulations of a research paper by computer scientist Mel Conway in Datamation magazine well over five decades ago, that an organization would produce a system (defined broadly) whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure. Once aware of this, the founders wondered if the inverse was true: if they communicated differently, would the system they were building change commensurately? It did.
The realization that struck the team was further reinforced by the writings of software development guru Eric Evans and Throughtworks Chief Scientist Martin Fowler, a loud-mouthed pundit on software, particularly enterprise applications. Postman parlayed what it had learnt into real-world applications for its design, enabling it to make efficient systems and serve its customers better.
‘Design and redesign the organisation as the constraints of the organisation itself evolve’ — Ankit Sobti, Postman
In its most recent fund-raise, Postman was valued at $2 billion. But all the glitz of blitzscaling aside, it would not work without a “strong foundation of values,” said Sobti, narrating his way into the crux of the nine-speaker virtual event organised by the Pay-it-Forward SaaS community SaaSBOOMi. The SaaSBOOMi Build was a series of talks to set entrepreneurs and leaders up for product-tech success.
Invariably, most speakers eventually gravitated toward values and the importance of evolving culture codes quite early in the development of products and subsequent scale-up of business in the company.
Inculcate product thinking right from the beginning
STS Prasad, Freshworks’s Senior Vice-President of Engineering, has witnessed from close quarters its much-storied growth spurt over the past four years. Through such a steep trajectory, a start-up should not lose focus on its “product thinking,” advised Prasad. By that, he meant clarity over what a start-up wants to deliver to the identified market and enabling engineers to develop the ability to think long-term: “They’re not just thinking about ‘What do I need to build this week or this month?’ but are certainly able to think about the architecture, the overall technology investment that they need to make to keep themselves aligned with the product and business strategy of the company.”
It is also in the $1–10 m ARR phase that your engineering teams get pulled in different directions. Their time could get taken over by customer issues and bug fixing, making software development just another contender for their mindspace. As you scale up, what should the ideal size of your engineering team be? Prasad had some suggestions:
One of the fundamental focus areas, also one of the trickiest in terms of execution, is hiring. Start-ups across the globe have evolved their own styles of recruitment; some have boldly experimented with unorthodox methods that have upended established notions about the ideal candidate. Prasad urged recruiters to hire candidates who are willing to push their own boundaries; it’s an intangible, and sometimes elusive, trait, but, nevertheless, worth pursuing. At the same time, never compromise on the basics: “We do sometimes tend to get carried away by educational background or which college the engineer went to, or which company the engineer had worked at, to keep track of, maybe, some specific expertise. But by and large, I would ask you to really focus on the eagerness of your engineers to be able to learn new technologies, learn new engineering skills, be flexible to take on whatever needs to be done.”
Prasad underscored his suggestions with his own experience building out Freshrelease, an agile software project management product from the Freshworks stable. It was built by a team of 10 engineers, the majority of who had less than two years of work experience, and who do not belong to the Ivy League grad category:
“We were able to replace Jira [Atlassian’s workflow management tool] with Freshrelease in a kind of an internal pilot. The key takeaway is that the things to look for in an engineer are eagerness to learn and hunger to win.”
Take your time defining your viable product
What Prasad came to know by experience building products are learnings that, not surprisingly, one can find codified in the hiring practices of some other start-ups, too. Speaking immediately after Prasad at the SaaSBOOMi summit was Soham Mazumdar, co-founder at Rubrik. The 6-year-old Palo Alto-based company is into ensuring business continuity, solving problems related to data security, backup, disaster recovery and cybersecurity for its customers.
Rubrik’s line of business demands a direct understanding of the customer. The selling is enterprise-grade, customer support is high-touch, and the average ticket size of sales is “pretty high,” in the words of Mazumdar.
“We are going after the replacement market, meaning there have been many products that cater to the same market. This is very much an established market.”
In such a highly competitive business, Mazumdar, too, emphasizes the importance of defining product utility down to the last word, making it crystal clear to founders themselves as to what it does for the targeted market. By doing that at Rubrik, it became clear to the founders whom they should go for during hiring drives: “We realized that our minimum viable product was as much about monitoring the system as it was about just the basic act of data protection. Once we were clear on that, we knew whom to hire.”
Rubrik soon realized that effectively managing/storing data was the key requirement. Mazumdar remembers that the founders all looked at each other after this realization dawned upon them, and came to the conclusion that they would have to make a key hire.
“We all had strengths but this particular area was not the strength of any of us…”
Once a start-up’s founders have crystallized their product idea, the hiring of the first twenty engineers is crucial. Mazumdar suggests an even mix and warns against not hiring specialists and perfectionists, for some of them go on to become great technical leaders and code reviewers in the future. And, of course, life is too short for “brilliant jerks.”
Rubrik’s Soham Mazumdar said a mix of “high motor” junior folks who execute well and a sprinkling of experts and perfectionists make a great team
Design is not art but an arty craft of cutting churn
Design is as much a product function as it is a marketing tool. The design aimed at making lives easier for customers and users is essential to the success of any software company and its products. It isn’t just about making products look great.
“To design a chair, you need to understand how it will be used, whom it is meant for, where it will be kept,” said Bharath Balasubramanian, senior director of design at Freshworks. “Design is all about creating something that your users will love to use.”
Bharath’s post-lunch session was an instructional journey into the design process and its central role in building and scaling an enterprise start-up. He packed it with guidelines and dos and don’ts that can make the difference between success and failure.
Talking about website design, for example, Bharath emphasized the need to convey the message in the first fold of the webpage so visitors would explore further.
“The first step in a company’s customer journey is the website. It is where most customers would first experience your brand. The website is your storefront. It needs to instil trust and draw in your customers. So build it with care.”
But how do you ensure effective design? According to Bharath, the solution lies in talking to customers and understanding their needs in the early stages of the design process. “Try to deliver as much delight as possible with your features. Delight helps reduce churn,” he said.
Now, design of the kind Bharath talks about cannot be an afterthought. It needs to be an integral part of a product company’s DNA. Which also means a product startup needs a designer from Day 1. A designer who understands business problems and focuses on delivering solutions to fix those problems.
“As soon as you start the product definition, you need to have a designer,” he said. “You cannot take shortcuts.”
Facing the headwinds in enterprise SaaS on the public cloud
The differences between on-premise software and software-as-a-service provided over the public cloud can be categorized under three primary buckets — scale, cost, and security, explained Milind Borate, setting the stage for his session.
The SaaS model allows optimizing for economies of scale. But because of multiple cost factors, gross margins tend to be smaller than for on-premise software, said Milind, co-founder and CTO at backup-as-a-service provider Druva. “Gross margin still needs to be above 70%,” he said, delving into the intricacies of building enterprise SaaS on the public cloud.
Security, he added, is a challenge because enterprise customers are finicky about it and demand certifications that validate the robustness of the SaaS solution. “Third-party security audits and certifications are a minimum requirement,” he said.
On the architecture for public SaaS, compute, storage, and network are the key parameters, said Milind. He emphasized on systems being resilient enough to handle varying loads, efficient use of resources, and capacity planning — all of which also help optimize costs.
As for storage, Milind suggested that, depending on the scale of operations, companies could begin with a relational database and switch to a distributed database later. “You will go through multiple cycles as the software evolves and you get more customers. So there will be a chance to switch to a more distributed architecture on storage,” he said.
And finally, on the network, Milind said companies should ensure that the network-heavy components of their architecture such as API gateways and HA proxies are scaled out separately versus their compute instances.
Milind’s learnings on the difficult tradeoffs and the areas of cutting edge in the SaaS model are complemented by those of Monish Darda, co-founder and CTO of Icertis, scaling his company in the tricky dimension of enterprise SaaS.
With Microsoft as its first customer, Icertis has been able to widen its contract management platform within a short time: the company moved from two engineers to over a hundred within a span of 7–8 months, according to Darda.
One of the unique things about Icertis’s platform is that it has undergone three refactorings in its history. It holds a lesson for founders trying to accelerate platform development with a robust engineering team and how to be agile while doing it. “Those refactorings have become re-writes. Probably not many companies can claim that. If there is a new proposal, say, a new library, or database, we have a completely new way of approving it quickly, depending on its impact,” he said. Today, Icertis has a set apparatus to decide what surfaces to senior leadership, and how to ensure decisions are taken fast.
Darda’s notes from his experience of refactoring his platform received a rousing reception at the virtual summit, which had yet another informative session by Anjali Kumari, India product head at ThoughtSpot, and Dinesh Varadharajan, vice-president of product management at Kissflow, who engaged participants on prioritizing the product roadmap through the enterprise and SMB lenses.
KissFlow’s VP for Product Management Dinesh Varadharajan gave a sterling insight into product success, and a framework capturing key elements that go into a great product
That was right after a virtual interactive workshop on planning the product roadmap. The interactive workshop required participants to make tough choices on the critical trade-offs in roadmap planning.
How to get the right mix?
All said, setting yourself up for product success is somewhat similar to working on the right brew: too much Robusta will make it bitter while no one can stand an excess of the sickly sweet Arabica. Just like coffee, the manner of combining inputs matters a lot in delivering a great product experience to customers.
“One objective that keeps us up in the night as founders or leaders is, ‘Can we build this great product with world-class user experience (UX) and deliver it in time in the market?’ That’s what we always strive for,” said Deepak Diwakar, co-founder at sales enablement platform MindTickle, as he began his session on ‘Aligning the trio of product, UX, and engineering to deliver a world-class experience.’
MindTickle’s approach, he said, derives from three primary ingredients — purpose, operating readiness, and catalyst.
Let’s begin with a purpose. “There’s a big difference between purpose and objective. The objective is driven by your goal, but both of these can keep changing. Purpose gives the ‘what’ and ‘how’, not ‘when’, because that too can change,” Deepak said. “Once you align with the purpose, even if you need to change direction, your product, UX and engineering teams will understand why that decision was made.”
Purpose needs to be accompanied by a high-level operating framework for your teams to work with. The framework is important for teams to align with the company’s growth plans. “When you are inching toward $4 million or $5 million ARR, you begin to get some sort of rhythm and at that point of time you need to have a framework,” Deepak said, adding that it’s okay to have a framework for six months or a year so long as it gives you a broad alignment for operating readiness.
For the third ingredient, catalyst, Deepak employed the analogy of a credit card — you need to have it but you must figure out when and where it should be used. “The catalyst can take different forms and shapes. It could be an object, an event, or people’s persona that would help in particular situations,” he said.
Written by
Bharani Vaitheesvaran, a content specialist at Freshworks. Special thanks to Freshworks’ Feroze Jamal, Kingston David, Joseph Milind, and SaaSBOOMi’s Tarun Davuluri. | https://medium.com/saasboomi/the-making-of-the-product-tech-backbone-of-a-saas-start-up-5475962d257e | ['Bharani Vaitheesvaran'] | 2020-08-04 23:59:00.233000+00:00 | ['Startup Lessons', 'Hiring Strategy', 'Values Based Leadership', 'Product Success', 'Technology'] |
Cats | Why?
The long-running musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics from “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”, an anthology of delightful poems by T.S. Eliot, worked on the stage because the cast was wearing theatrical makeup, spandex bodysuits and, having been conceived in the early eighties, legwarmers. No one expected the actors to look like real cats but they moved like cats. The musical has a threadbare plot but somehow it doesn’t matter because humans pretending to be singing and dancing cats is an illusion that can be sustained in the physical make-believe of the wooden stage.
Whose idea was it to transfer it to the screen literally with CGI? It is known since the days of King Kong, made in 1933, that if movies are to be fantastical, they need to look realistic, otherwise the illusion doesn’t work. This is why outer space in sci-fi movies looks like actual space, and spacecraft looks like it could fly and you could be in it. With the exception of Chewbacca, who is clearly a guy in a gorilla suit, creatures need to look real. Hence, Dame Judi Dench coated in digital fur and whiskers, looking like a Teletubby that walked into an exploding hair salon, is not gonna cut it.
Bizarre does not even begin to describe it. The resulting CGI salad is one of human faces but feline ears, furry human bodies complete with non-furry human hands and feet, and distracting CGI tails, not to speak of some female cats having boobies and others not. None of them, however, male or female, have the organs that make living beings reproduce. Then Taylor Swift shows up wearing shoes. Some people have complained about the dancing cockroaches with human faces. I didn't mind them, but the shoes made my brain explode. Why is she wearing shoes?
Cats the movie is what my friend Orlando Leal calls “an inventicide”: a suicidal invention. A terrible idea that everybody knows is bad from the beginning but it somehow gets greenlit, then it’s too late to walk it back, leaving everyone no choice but to die on that hill trying to save it while heaping on the incongruities. Tom Hooper, a director who does not grasp the concept of wit, elegance or restraint, nor where to place a camera in musicals, is the worst man for the job. As I was being attacked by the movie’s plodding incoherence, I amused myself by imagining David Fincher getting a stab at directing Cats. This is how much I pined for a cool head with a sense of style.
Hooper doesn’t understand the first thing about the material. He doesn’t understand that Eliot’s verse is witty, sophisticated and delightful. He doesn’t understand that cats aren’t clumsy or vulgar creatures, yet there is scene after scene of cats behaving like pigs. Have you ever seen a cat being a slob? Even when they scavenge they are stylish. There is no need to add crass humor to Eliot’s verse, but Hooper and his screenwriter Lee Hall heap on the vulgarity, dumbing down the material. The production design is garish and ugly and the scale between the cats’ sizes and the scenery is bizarre and distracting. The musical numbers could be more imaginative. Because of disjointed, dizzying camera work, a string of close-ups and long shots where the camera is always either too close or too far, it is impossible to enjoy whatever dancing there is. There is no sense of magic, delight or wonder. Despite some very talented performers like Jason De Rulo and Francesca Hayward singing and dancing their hearts out, nothing lands.
As I sat there feeling numb, I thought that Cats would do well with completely different staging. Imagine it with the droll touch of Wes Anderson: a stop-motion version with animated cats a la Fantastic Mr. Fox or Isle of Dogs would be closer to the spirit of Eliot’s verses. Someone with the deft humor and light touch of Taika Waititi could truly refresh the play. Or they could have done a meta version a la Uncle Vanya on 42 Street, or Dogville, set on a stage. Instead, we get a jumble of lavish incompetence that is not even at the level of bad cult movies like The Room or Plan 9 from Outer Space. The definition of kitsch is “art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way”. At my screening, some people were trying hard to laugh at the screen, but it felt forced. Cats doesn’t even rise to this level.
And there is no excuse because lots of money and talent are involved. I was amazed at the professionalism and chops of actors like Idris Elba (meow), Ian McKellen, la Dench, the charming James Corden, who show up and deliver, only to be saddled by a ridiculous production that makes you feel sorry for all of them. Still, no matter how hard Tom Hooper tries to achieve this, Judi Dench is constitutionally incapable of losing her dignity. McKellen hams it up as Gus, The Theatre Cat. He is phenomenal. Taylor Swift acquits herself well as Bombalurina (although she’s not brassy enough for her number), but the same cannot be said of Rebel Wilson, who is given humiliating material and does not contain her mugging, or Jennifer Hudson (too brassy for her number) who should have resisted delivering the director’s trademark: dripping snot.
Aaron Sorkin quotes a story about Maria Callas giving a master class to a singer who was performing an aria while crying copiously. Callas stopped her, slapped her, and said: “We’re the ones who are supposed to cry, not you”. Both this advice and the slap would come in handy to Tom Hooper, a director who never saw snot he didn’t like. He has Jennifer Hudson sing the showstopper «Memory» with mucus running down her nose, as he did with Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables, which idiotically garnered her an Oscar in one of the worst movies ever made. The snot stops the show alright since you can’t focus on anything else. The filmed version of Cats is better than the one of Les Miserables only because the material is exponentially better than that corny horror of a musical.
As you may have surmised, I like the songs of Cats. Andrew Lloyd Webber has a gift for show tunes and the Eliot verses are truly lovely. I must confess I saw the stage production twice, the original in London, which wowed me back in the day, and the first one on Broadway. I saw Betty Buckley utterly stop the show when she sang “Memory”, a terrible song that works. She was not a pathetic cat. She held on to her pride. | https://grandenchilada.medium.com/cats-b081fcd3a994 | ['Yehudit Mam'] | 2020-01-07 20:15:19.626000+00:00 | ['Cats', 'Film Reviews', 'Movies', 'Hollywood', 'Movie Review'] |
Why We Still Need Mainstream Media | Why We Still Need Mainstream Media
I’ve been a big advocate for years of de-corporatizing journalism in this country. But…
Still think having it become more about who’s reporting a story, rather than what publication is important and is happening and will happen even more. Even if that reporting ends up being independently crowd-sourced, or Substacked, or entirely Tweeted, or here on Medium or wherever. By and large, that’s already how I consume most of my news.
It’s also, I think, how local news, now that scores of local newspapers are gone, will survive and revive.
But often enough, I’m still reminded why old school, ad driven, big budget news organizations do have leverage that results in a quality or at least type of reporting that couldn’t be equally replicated elsewhere. Yes, anyone these days can work up a piece on, for instance, a Trump rally that he’s blasting all over the place, so we don’t really need them for that. Yet, some of their other enterprise reporting still often results in work of incalculable value.
For some reason, late last week I was thinking about my first big break in the news business: an investigation into penny stock brokers. This was at a major news organization that remains major to this day. My boss gave me free reign to pursue the story: no daily deadlines, no worrying about where my next paycheck was going to come from, or whether my expenses would break me way before I even knew if I had anything. This was a thrilling and liberating experience. And it led to the Securities and Exchange Commission cracking down on these corrupt operations. In the course of reporting the story, I got my first death threats as a journalist. If you’ve ever watched the Sopranos, you’ll already know the penny stock business was pretty mobbed up during this period in time. Still, I was young and indestructible, so I was thrilled when that happened. My boss called the FBI.
My guess is, even at a big, well-financed news operation those chances are now fewer and farther between. But they’re still there.
Something of which I was starkly reminded this weekend when I came across the story in the Washington Post: “Just 27 congressional Republicans acknowledge Biden’s win”.
There are 249 Republicans in the House of Representatives. The Post said it built a team of 25 people to report the story. That means they threw enough resources at it to make at very least hundreds and hundreds of phone calls in just a day or two. And probably a lot more, because of follow-ups and things like that.
This isn’t a hard story to report. It may not even be particularly revelatory. But it is a crystal clear quantification, even if we already knew. And it is an important moment of holding people to account at an important moment in history. A roll call of complicity, if not sedition.
But the scale required is just something I could not do as an independent journalist and blogger. I can call dozens of people in a day. But I just do not have the time or the bandwidth as one person to do the unbelievably important work the Post did in this story. I can develop sources. But I also do not have the institutional clout to provide a reason for people I don’t already know to contact me back, and make the point of my reporting even starker when they don’t.
I’ve talked an awful lot in the past couple of weeks about the shameful silence of most of the most powerful Republicans on the fact Joe Biden won, even as Trump tries to pull a malignant, un-Democratic scam, seemingly intolerable to any normal person. But I’ve never been able to present my case in as compelling a fashion as the 25 people at the Post just did.
Being my own publication does make me at times more nimble and flexible, and there’s a lot of value in that. And as much as I still think the kind of thing I and a lot of other people are doing will continue to replace more traditional forms of journalism, there are always going to be stories that are going to need not just one, but teams of smart people working in tandem, and with great speed, and with at least somewhat generous budgets.
Because passion alone sometimes isn’t enough. Sometimes you still do need magnitude and money. | https://ericjscholl.medium.com/why-we-still-need-mainstream-media-f878d06f0076 | ['Eric J Scholl'] | 2020-12-06 15:56:50.226000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Social Media', 'News', 'Media Criticism', 'Journalism'] |
Pharisees Are Still Among Us | If you read the Gospels, especially the Gospel of Luke, it does not take you long to realize that Jesus had a bit of a thing for the Pharisees. Outside of resistance from his own family and people of his home region, no one plotted, schemed, and outright hated Jesus more than the Pharisees.
In recent history, at least since the Protestant reformation, the Pharisees have been demonized as “legalistic” over against the message of “grace” through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Their agenda, as the story goes, was to present a way to salvation that was based on works and the law rather than love and grace.
Unfortunately, this is just not true.
The Pharisees were just one of several groups of influential Jewish movements at the time of Jesus who were trying to define their nation’s identity.
What did it mean to be a “true Jew”?
Was it political power alongside their Roman occupiers?
Was it separation and purity that would mark their acceptance?
Was it radical alignment with the laws and traditions of the Torah?
Or maybe the only option was violence?
Photo by Anton Mislawsky on Unsplash
At stake was nothing less than salvation. Not “I’m going to heaven when I die” salvation. That’s a later Christian construct. No, the Jews were concerned with who was going to be considered faithful and acceptable to the Messiah when he came to earth, removed the Romans from power, and set up his everlasting Kingdom with its home base in Jerusalem.
Enter Jesus.
By Chapter 11 in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus already had several run-ins with his Pharisaical adversaries. They had questioned his right to forgive sins, his treatment of the Sabbath, and interrogated him about his interpretation of Hebrew scripture. But in Chapter 11, things get serious.
After casting out a demon from a mute man, a Pharisee invites Jesus over for dinner. He enters the man’s house and sits down at his table. Before the meal even begins, the Pharisee questions the fact that Jesus did not perform the ritualistic hand-washing ceremony.
Not a good move.
What follows is a thirteen-verse diatribe against the Pharisees and their hypocrisy. Jesus even manages to offend the scribes, or religious lawyers, by criticizing the weight of their impossible demands on the people.
“Yes,” said Jesus, “what sorrow also awaits you experts in religious law! For you crush people with unbearable religious demands, and you never lift a finger to ease the burden. (Luke 11:46, NLT)
After a heated exchange, Jesus leaves and rejoins his disciples. The proverbial game was now on. Eventually, the Pharisees, scribes, and temple priests would set a trap that would lead to his gruesome death on a Roman cross.
Game over. Or so it seemed.
Photo by Samuel McGarrigle on Unsplash
The rest of the story is familiar enough if you are a reader of the New Testament. Jesus’ death was not the end of the story. The Pharisees did not win. After his resurrection, a new movement that aligned with God’s Kingdom was born that became unstoppable. Some Pharisees even joined them. Eventually, persecution scattered this movement across the known world.
About forty years later, everything Jesus prophesied about the false Messianic hopes of the Pharisees came to pass. In 70 A.D., the future Roman emperor Titus and his army descended on Jerusalem, desecrated and destroyed the Temple, and left the nation of Israel in ruins.
Yet today, the spirit of the Pharisee is still among us.
The Jesus movement, otherwise known as the global Church, is at an identity crossroads. If there were previous signs of decline like waning attendance, public leadership failures, and loss of influence on the wider culture, all of these signs grew much larger in 2020.
So who are the Pharisees of our age? If Jesus were to show up tomorrow, who would he call a “brood of vipers” and warn about their impending doom?
Well, pretty much all of us.
Any time a Christian leader says something like, “You can’t be a Christian if you [insert political party, theological position, what you had for breakfast],” that is the Pharisee spirit in action.
But the problem goes much deeper than those who have a public voice within the church. In each of our hearts is the basic desire to know who is “in” and who is “out” with God. Yet God’s desire is to simply know and love us. He is looking for faithfulness and obedience, not lines drawn in the sand.
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
In John Chapter 4, a story is recorded of Jesus walking with his disciples through Samaria to get to his home in Galilee. In the village of Sychar, there was a well that had historically been attributed to the Jewish patriarch Jacob. Jesus, tired and thirsty from the trip, approaches the well where a Samaritan woman was coming to fetch water.
The interchange that follows is one of the most radical conversations of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. We read this story as just another miraculous instance of Jesus tapping into heavenly powers for healing and redemption. But there is far more going on here than miracles.
Jesus flipped the script on religion forever.
If you were a Jew, and a male, you would not be caught dead in Samaria talking to a woman. Samaritans were apostates. They would not inherit the Kingdom if the Messiah returned. Certainly, a woman from that region would not be worth acknowledgment. Wait until the Pharisees find out about this!
Instead of Pharisaical rejection, Jesus invites the Samaritan woman into the full life of God. The Kingdom of God is available now and the Messiah is here to give access. Religion divides and draws boundaries to keep those divisions sacred and secure. Jesus tears all that down in one sentence:
“But the time is coming — indeed it’s here now — when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way.” (John 4:23, NLT)
Today, Christians have a choice. It’s black and white. We can continue to follow the way of the Pharisee. We can set boundaries that define who is considered a “true believer” and who is rejected by God. That way is arbitrary and contrary to the way of Jesus.
Or, we can humble ourselves, repent of our idolatry of being right, and invite those around us into the full life of God by becoming a follower of Jesus. Then, the living waters will flow and forever destroy the spirit of the Pharisee.
Photo by Mark McGregor on Unsplash | https://medium.com/koinonia/pharisees-are-still-among-us-2231b9711303 | ['M.J. Bishop'] | 2020-12-15 19:57:46.067000+00:00 | ['Religion And Spirituality', 'Religion', 'Christianity', 'Church Leadership', 'Church'] |
Please Stop Saying You’re “Worried” About Trans Kids | Please Stop Saying You’re “Worried” About Trans Kids
Let’s talk about what you’re *really* worried about instead
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
I hear you, fellow parents and countless other adults. You pose this question to me a lot, and for the record, I want it known that I fully agree with you, on at least this one point. So let me say it loud and clear: wearing dresses or playing with dolls should be okay whether you have girl or boy parts. Period. The end.
Unfortunately, our society isn’t quite there yet.
My three kids all defied traditional gender roles and stereotypes to some degree. My oldest, a cishet male (now age 20) played with dolls as a child, and sometimes proudly wore a tutu while doing so. My next oldest, a cishet female (now 19) played with her big brother’s toy guns, and for a long while, she hated wearing anything girly. Even at the age of 2 she’d rip out the hair bows I’d so lovingly placed on her little head, lobbing them to the floor with no mercy.
My third child, my youngest — assigned male at birth (now almost 15) — was something different altogether.
Liking (or not liking) particular gendered toys/clothes/items is not the problem. The problem is with our society, which fails to appreciate the beauty of the gender spectrum, or to recognize the gift of gender diversity, including all those who fall under the trans umbrella. Contrary to popular belief, these people are not a new trend either. Gender diverse people have, in fact, been around for all recorded history, and on every single continent, celebrated. Revered, even. Across all kinds of cultures and religions.
The point is, you’re right about this: toys and clothing preferences don’t make someone transgender.
I’d add one other thing: there isn’t something “wrong” with a little boy who only likes “girly” things, for example. But, in this same child, having an intense despair over all “boys stuff” and gendered things stereotypically associated with one’s presumed gender can be one of many symptoms that manifest in transgender kids that, along with a host of other symptoms, form a constellation known as gender dysphoria.
Granted, not all trans people say they experience gender dysphoria. Others may not realize that what they’re experiencing is gender dysphoria, instead, referring to a vague feeling of being “wrong” somehow, even if they can’t articulate what that means. Others may only experience gender dysphoria in short bouts, or may live many successful decades with it suppressed or gone altogether.
The whole topic of gender dysphoria can be somewhat of a slippery slope since it’s not the one definitive thing that makes a person trans. But it is, generally, a required medical diagnosis for those who intend to seek gender confirmation/transition through any number of medical options and/or hormonal suppressors and supplements.
As a spectator, not someone who lives it myself, allow me a moment to at least offer this: for those who do experience it, gender dysphoria is a beast.
And parents who’ve dealt with children experiencing this firsthand absolutely know the difference: gender dysphoria isn’t “a phase.” Even if it disappears for a while or seems to go away completely. Even if it ebbs and flows over time. Even if it doesn’t manifest until adolescence, or later.
We aren’t talking about a preschooler’s affinity to “be” a kitty cat— a role the child takes on in a developmentally appropriate game where the child knows they’re playing a game or pretending. With trans kids, we’re talking about a child who is not pretending, not playing a role. We’re talking about a child who’s just trying to be themself in an unaccepting, unforgiving world.
In light of this, I want to address the comments I’ve received online over the years, from total strangers, telling me how “worried” they are about my trans kid. Worried about all sorts of things…
Worried that I’m not the one who’s being “the parent” in this situation; that I’m allowing my kid to call all the shots.
Worried that my child is “too young” to understand the complexities of gender (though I’d beg anyone to consider how old they were when they first knew their own gender).
Worried that mine and my husband’s allowance of our child to socially transition in 5th grade was the biggest disservice of all, telling us, “you’d better sign that kid up for karate lessons! You’re making your child into bully bait!” (As if our child weren’t already bully bait, being an inherently feminine boy in the south, living in a culture of toxic masculinity and thinly veiled misogyny).
Over the years I’ve also questioned the validity of these claims. Like, exactly how “worried” some of these strangers actually are, primarily because so many of them who aren’t raising trans kids also express incorrect and misguided sentiments that go exactly like this:
“The main thing I worry about is how all these kids are demanding surgeries and destroying a perfectly fine functioning body, and demanding these life altering drugs like puberty blockers and hormones that will do irreversible harm… this generation is going to grow up terribly confused!”
First, this comment uses the phrase “do irreversible harm.” Let’s just unpack that real quick. From experience raising a trans kid, I (and just about every trans person who’s walked the face of this earth) happen to know just the opposite — that these so-called “life-altering drugs” don’t destroy — they actually save lives. Whether a trans person uses them personally, or only knows other trans people who do, all trans people know exactly how life-saving something like puberty blockers and hormones are.
Second, with comments like these, I have to wonder: does it really worry you, dear reader? Is worry even the right word here? Because that’s what I really want to unpack.
I mean, people all over America alter, as you might say, “a perfectly fine functioning body” all the time. They do this through various cosmetic procedures and plastic surgeries, for example. Like, breast augmentation (male or female), rhinoplasty, lip implants, Botox injections, liposuction, face lifts, hair transplants, tummy tucks, butt lifts, dermal fillers, fat transfers, brow lifts, neck lifts, etc. Are you equally worried about them, dear internet stranger?
Likewise, people all over America take hormones, hormone replacement therapy, testosterone therapy, etc., for any number of reasons. Are you equally worried about them, dear internet stranger?
Sometimes, teens as young as 16 have easy access and available funding for cosmetic procedures. Sometimes, 13-year-olds need hormones for reasons you may not be familiar with. And puberty blockers, which merely place a “pause” on puberty, thus giving the gift of time — with puberty resuming within a year, as normal, when blockers are stopped (unless the individual moves to cross sex hormones) — are life-saving for many trans individuals entering the Tanner stage II of puberty. Again, life-saving. Literally, life-saving.
Since our trans nonbinary child went on blockers for several years, my husband and I were particularly scrutinized by strangers and non-strangers for this very thing. As if people thought we hadn’t done years and years of our own research, plus struggled through our own adult fears and worries, plus haggled with insurance, plus attended medical and psychological consultations and therapy appointments and gender clinics, and on, and on, before ultimately allowing our child to go forward with this. Don’t folks realize that parents of trans kids do our homework? That we are literally trying to save our kids’ lives?
It’s worth noting that puberty blockers have also been used safely since the 1950s for precocious puberty. In longitudinal studies, both past and ongoing, the primary negative effect from gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogs (puberty blockers) is the *possibility* of less bone density later in life.
It’s also worth noting that this is something that’s closely monitored in the lab work of trans youth, and these possible affects can be largely avoided under the close care of an endocrinologist (the specialized doctor who prescribes puberty blockers for trans youth). Where vitamin deficiency or loss of bone density may be suspected, measures are immediately taken to address and correct that — speaking here from personal experience on the matter of puberty blockers.
At any rate, as most trans people will tell you, they’d gladly accept the risk of something like potential bone density loss if it meant they could be spared the beast that would otherwise plague them for the rest of their lives: gender dysphoria.
So, I guess my question comes down to this, dear worried internet strangers:
Is it that you’re genuinely worried about altering (what you perceive as) “a perfectly fine functioning body,” or, is it only a concern to you when that body happens to belong to a trans person? | https://medium.com/gender-from-the-trenches/please-stop-saying-youre-worried-about-trans-kids-a63e271a1259 | ['Martie Sirois'] | 2020-10-22 21:09:40.997000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Parenting', 'Culture', 'Equality', 'Transgender'] |
Best Bluetooth speakers: Reviews and buying advice | There was a time when Bluetooth speakers were like jelly beans: They were cheap, they all looked the same, and they were invariably of dubious quality. Times have changed. Every major audio manufacturer has at least one model on the market today, and most have several.
If you haven’t listened to a Bluetooth speaker lately, you’re in for a very pleasant surprise.
Bluetooth speaker cheat sheet Best budget Bluetooth speaker: Tronsmart Element Force SoundPulse Bluetooth speaker Best mid-priced Bluetooth speaker: Fluance Ai60 Best high-end Bluetooth speaker: Bluesound Pulse Mini 2i Best bookshelf Bluetooth speaker: Edifier S2000 Pro Best outdoor Bluetooth speaker: Soundcast VG7 Best price-is-no-barrier Bluetooth speaker: Naim Mu-so 2nd Generation The industry’s progress doesn’t mean that every Bluetooth speaker justifies its price tag, no matter how inexpensive it might be. There’s still plenty of dreck floating around. Don’t worry, we’re here to help you steer clear of the junk and point you to the best speakers at the price range that fits your budget.
To that end, we’ve picked the best Bluetooth speakers (and runners-up in some cases) in six categories: budget, mid-range (up to $300), outdoor, bookshelf, high-end (up to $750), and—yes, there are ultra-high-end Bluetooth speakers—price is no object. Some of our picks can be used indoors and out, but we’ve also named our favorites that are designed primarily as outdoor speakers.
Updated January 1, 2021 to add our iLive Bluetooth Tailgate Party speaker. This is not one of the greatest-sounding speakers on the market, but it's light, easy to move around, includes PA capabilities, and it sounds better than you'd think a $50 speaker would.
Best budget Bluetooth speaker Tronsmart Element Force SoundPulse Bluetooth speaker Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $59.99See itThis mighty mite produces shockingly good sound for its size and price—but only in its Extra Bass EQ mode—and it's water resistant to boot.
The Bluetooth speaker market is a cutthroat business when you get to this price range. The good news for music lovers is that you can find some very good products here. If $60 is too much for your budget, consider our runner-up, the Aukey SK-S1 (see below). Otherwise, we can’t say enough good things about the Tronsmart Element Force SoundPulse, which features IPX7 weatherization, support for True Wireless Stereo (so you can operate two of them as a stereo pair), and absolutely fantastic sound (in Extra Bass EQ mode, that is). That’s a lot of speaker for just 60 bucks.
Runner-up Aukey SK-S1 Bluetooth speaker Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $39.99See itThis Bluetooth speaker is meant to look good on your desktop, not the pool. It also sounds quite nice at low volumes. Given the price, and speaker phone functionality, it's pretty much the perfect workplace audio accoutrement.
The Aukey SK-S1 doesn’t have all the features—or audio power—of our top pick in this category, but it is an attractively designed near-field speaker that’s fabricated mostly from metal, where you might expect to find ABS plastic. And it sounds very good—at least until you push it to the edge. It’s not the right choice to fill a room, and it’s not at all protected from the weather, but it is a great deal for the money,
Best mid-priced Bluetooth speaker Fluance Ai60 Read TechHive's reviewSee itThe Fluance Ai60 offers spectacular sound quality with amazingly deep bass for far less than I would have expected. They're large, but definitely in charge!
These Bluetooth bookshelf speakers blew us away with their impeccable performance for the price, comparing favorably with a competing pair that cost nearly four times as much. We were particularly impressed with their frequency range and their ability to dig deep into the low-frequency realm, all the way down to 35Hz. Highly recommended if you’re looking for high-fidelity audio on a budget.
Best high-end Bluetooth speaker Bluesound Pulse Mini 2i Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $499.00See itBetter sounding than the original, the Pulse Mini 2i can also now be controlled via Alexa and it supports AirPlay 2. For the price you can't do better.
In addition to Bluetooth, you can control this speaker over Wi-Fi with Bluesound’s apps for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows; it can be part of a multi-room audio system with other Bluesound speakers or other speakers that support Apple’s AirPlay 2 technology; you can configure two of them as a stereo pair; it supports the aptX HD codec for streaming high-resolution audio; and it features a bi-directional Bluetooth radio, so you can stream music to it and listen to music from it using Bluetooth headphones. It goes without saying this speaker sounds absolutely divine. Highly recommended.
Best outdoor Bluetooth speaker Soundcast VG7 Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $799.99See itYes, you'll experience sticker shock. But it's been nearly 10 years since we've heard a powered, portable, outdoor speaker as good as this one,
This is the best powered outdoor speaker we’ve heard since Soundcast introduced its Outcast speaker nearly 10 years ago. It’s built like a tank; splash resistant, so you can use it poolside or at the beach; and it delivers outstanding battery life. Most importantly, however, it sounds fantastic. Expensive, but worth it.
Runner-up Sonos Move Read TechHive's review$399.00MSRP $399.00See iton SonosThe Sonos Move is a fantastic portable speaker and a rugged, weatherized component of one of the world’s preeminent multi-room audio systems.
The Soundcast VG7 won’t fit everyone’s budget, and while the Sonos Move isn’t exactly inexpensive, it’s engineered to withstand the elements, it sounds fantastic, and it’s supremely flexible, being able to stream music via either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Highly recommended.
Best price-is-no-limit Bluetooth speaker Naim Mu-so 2nd Generation Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $1,599.00See itThe Naim Audio Mu-so 2nd Generation is a pricey all-in-home home audio solution, but it’s supremely capable, incredibly flexible, and it sounds like heaven.
The Naim Mu-so 2nd Generation is, of course, much more than a Bluetooth speaker.It has a dual-band Wi-Fi adapter onboard, so you can use it in a multi-room audio system with other Naim components, any speaker that supports Apple’s AirPlay 2 technology, or anything that’s Chromecast compatible. It can play music on any connected USB storage device, and it can connect to any UPnP server on your network. It’s Roon Ready, too. Finally, it supports Spotify Connect and you can stream music from Tidal without leaving the Naim app. Oh, and it’s capable of decoding high-resolution music encoded at up to 32-bit resolution and at sampling rates as high as 384kHz. All that and it sounds amazing.
Runner-up Shinola Bookshelf Speakers Read TechHive's review$1,500.00MSRP $1,500.00See iton ShinolaShinola’s compact, minimalist self-powered speakers offer big, bright, and bold performances from almost any source, analog or digital, hardwired or via Bluetooth.
The soundbar-like design of Naim’s Mu-so Bluetooth speaker isn’t for everyone. If you want elegantly designed high-end speakers you can connect to via Bluetooth (and lots of wired ways, too), Shinola (and its design partner, studio-monitor builder Barefoot Sound) have what you’re looking for. Named simply Shinola Bookshelf Speakers, these loudspeakers sound every bit as beautiful as they look.
Features to look for in a Bluetooth speakerNot convinced the picks we’ve listed above are exactly right for you? This guide will help you sort through the facts, figures, and specs to determine which speaker will best meet your needs. Your first decision will be to choose between mobile and stationary form factors. The majority of Bluetooth speakers are portable because they get paired with mobile phones, but more and more manufacturers are introducing models designed to remain inside the home.
Choosing a portable model gives you the best of both worlds in some respects, but a stationary speaker is more apt to blend into your home’s decor. And while we’ve heard some pretty spectacular portable Bluetooth speakers, a plug-in model is more likely to produce the sound you’re looking for if fidelity is priority one in your book.
Here are the features you’ll want to evaluate in a Bluetooth speaker:
Theo NicolakisApp support: Companion apps can provide lots of additional features to a speaker that wouldn’t be possible with just physical buttons on the speaker itself. The app might enable more than one person to be the DJ, queuing up songs to play on the speaker. An app might enable you to create customized EQ curves for different styles of music, create wake-up alarms, or power the speaker on and off remotely.
aptX support: Bluetooth audio must be squeezed down in order to stream over the airwaves, and the default codec use lossy compression that throws some of the musical data away. Qualcomm’s aptX codec is lossless, so none of the musical detail is lost in the process. But aptX must be present at both ends of the stream, in the playback device and in the speaker. Most Android devices support aptX, but Apple devices do not.
aptX HD support: This version of Qualcomm’s codec supports high-resolution audio files, but it’s hard to find even in the highest-end Bluetooth speakers right now. As with its sibling, the codec must be supported on both the audio source and the speaker in order to work.
Battery: Next to fidelity, a portable speaker’s most important feature is how long it can operate when it’s not plugged into the wall. You should expect a battery to last 10 to 20 hours, but remember that the bigger the battery, the heavier the speaker will be.
Michael BrownCharging options: If your speaker has a battery, it will need to be charged. Speakers that charge their batteries via a USB port are more convenient than models that require an AC adapter, but larger batteries might not offer that option. Some speakers also let you plug in a USB cable to tap their battery to charge your smartphone.
DSP: An onboard digital signal processor (DSP) lets you electronically change how the speaker is driven in order to compensate for speaker placement or the acoustical properties of your room, among other things.
Mounting options and accessories: A portable speaker should be easy to take with you. While some Bluetooth speakers count on their size to make them easy to grip, others provide a lanyard, carabiner clip, or a shoulder strap. It’s even more handy when the manufacturer provides standardized sockets and accessories for mounting the speaker to an object, such as your bike’s handlebars.
Altec LansingSome portable Bluetooth speakers are small enough that you can grip them in your hand, but it provide thread mounts so you can attach them
Speakerphone: Some Bluetooth speakers have built-in microphones that enable you to use the speaker as a speakerphone in concert with your smartphone. The sound quality will be much better than what you’ll get from your phone, and you’ll be able to turn the volume up much higher. This can be very handy for conference calls.
Stereo pairing: Some speakers let you create a left/right stereo pair with two speakers (this works best, of course, when the two speakers are identical).
Weatherization: Portable Bluetooth speakers can be used indoors and out, so the best models provide some protection from the elements. Ideally, the manufacturer will let you know just how much protection you can expect by providing an IP (International Protection) marking. The first digit rates the enclosure’s protection from particulate matter (e.g., dust) and the second digit rates its protection against liquids.
An IP64 code, for instance, indicates that the speaker is completely protected from dust (6) and from water splashed onto it (4). The higher the numbers, the more protection you can expert If either digit is replaced by an X—IPX4, for example—the code indicates that the speaker isn’t rated for protection from particles (this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not protected from things like dust, just that the manufacturer doesn’t rate its protection).
Wi-Fi: Higher-priced Bluetooth speakers also provide the option of connecting to your Wi-Fi network, so that you can stream music from a NAS box. Wi-Fi streams will offer higher fidelity than Bluetooth, even if the speaker supports the aptX codec. A speaker that provides for a hardwired network connection is all the more versatile.
Wireless range: A Bluetooth speaker’s range depends on the power class of its radio, and it can vary widely and is impacted by the environment that it’s operating in. A Class 1 radio offers range of approximately 100 meters, but the number of walls between the Bluetooth source and the speaker and the type of materials in those walls will have a significant impact on range. It’s much easier for radio waves to pass through drywall than masonry, for instance. Objects in the signal path, such as large metal appliances, will reduce that range even further.
Our latest Bluetooth speaker reviews Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@melissa32198702/best-bluetooth-speakers-reviews-and-buying-advice-79c5607306be | [] | 2021-01-16 02:11:03.862000+00:00 | ['Chargers', 'Music', 'Audio', 'Streaming'] |
How I Pamper My Freelance Clients To Receive 91% Repeat Business | Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash
Apart from my day job, I also work as a freelance communications & content strategy consultant.
Over the past 24 months, I have worked with 44 clients helping them with various aspects of their communications and content initiatives. At times, I bring in my additional skillset as a graphic designer and help out with branding & design projects too.
A few days back, I was reading an article on Medium about how it’s easier to retain clients than create new ones. Though I was pretty sure that I had quite a few such retainers, for the sake of the exact number I decided to ‘count’ it.
Of these 44 clients, 40 have been repeat business. Two of them actually go way back to 2013–14, when they were clients of my then startup.
I actually felt pretty good about myself. Proud in fact.
40 out of 44 amounts to 90.9%. Which is the best percentage I have ever had in anything.
I sat down with a friend of mine to make an unbiased note of what I was doing right. Some of these efforts were more from a thought perspective, while some were based on the actual work I was doing. | https://medium.com/illumination/how-i-pamper-my-freelance-clients-to-receive-91-repeat-business-eca67ebcaaf5 | ['Vijay S Paul'] | 2020-11-04 12:53:35.860000+00:00 | ['Business Strategy', 'Freelancers', 'Business', 'Client Relationship', 'Freelance Writing'] |
A BOAT Journey | An effective and cheerful life can’t be envisioned without making any excursion during holidays. Therefore, with the end goal of making life effective and productive one should make any travel during one’s days off. An Excursion intends to move between various places alone or with a gathering. An excursion by boat intends to move between various places by boat. Bangladesh is a place that is known for waterways, trenches, haors, and bells. So, it is extremely simple, modest, and agreeable to make an excursion by boat in our nation. It is entirely charming.
Photo by Ian Badenhorst on Unsplash
Time and event: It was the month ‘Ashar’. Our assessment was over. Our school was closed. The stormy season had recently set in. My dad requested that I go to my uncle’s home which is around 40 km. away from our home. The house is on the opposite side of the Padma. In this way, I got an opportunity to make an excursion by boat. Three companions went along with me.
Depiction: We recruited a little excellent boat. It had two physically fit boatmen who were carefree leaning and happy. We began from our waterway ghat in the first part of the day at 7 am on December 20, 2019. The sky was clear and the climate was fine. The waterway was quiet. From the outset, the boatmen began paddling. Next, they set sail. The boatmen started to sing “Bhatiali” songs. The melodies enchanted me.
Photo by Huseyin OZBEKAR on Unsplash
Scene: I delighted in the view on either bank of the river. Our boat was hitting the dance floor with little waves. We saw many boats employing here and there in the stream. We saw numerous young men and young ladies washing and swimming in the stream. we saw numerous anglers fishing in the profound stream and the ranchers reaping in the paddy fields. We additionally discovered numerous boats, liners and dispatches handling across the waterway.
Objective: We arrived at my uncle’s home at 2 p.m. Uncle, auntie and cousins happily got us. We had a rich lunch there.
Night scene: In the wake of taking a rest, we began for our home again at 4 p.m. at the point when we came to approach our stream ghat, the sun was setting. The water of the waterway likewise turned red. The view was very charming. It was dull when we arrived home.
Conclusion: A venture by boat is quite enjoyable. It eliminates the dreariness of works and studies. I accomplished/picked up new insight and new knowledge. I will always remember this glad excursion in my life. So, every understudy or each individual should make an excursion by boat once per year on siestas.
An Excursion BY BOAT Arrangement 2 :
The structure on An Excursion By Boat: There are various kinds of excursions in our nation. I like most an excursion by boat. No other excursion can be more charming than an excursion by boat. Whoever searches for rest and enjoyment should make an excursion by boat.
Time and event: During the last Pre-winter get-away my dad requested that I go to my sister’s home at Daudkandi, 20 miles from our home. So,I got an opportunity to make an excursion by boat. Two different companions went along with me.
Depiction of the excursion: We employed a fine boat. We began our excursion from Homna ghat at 10 a.m. There were two boatmen. The sky was clear. The stream was quiet and full to the edge. From the start, the boatmen handled the boat with paddles. At the point when the breeze was favourable, they headed out. Before long the boat started to move quickly. There were little waves in the waterway. The boat started to hit the dance floor with the waves. The boatmen were singing. It was a ‘Bhatiali’ tune. It filled us with happiness.
View delighted in: We appreciated the landscape of the stream. We saw numerous boats of all shapes and sizes employing all over. We saw a few liners and engine snacks utilizing through the stream. Anglers were getting fish in the waterway. Young men and young ladies were swimming. Ladies were returning home with containers loaded up with water. There were fields on the two sides of the waterway. Steers were touching there.
Photo by Gláuber Sampaio on Unsplash
Energizing minutes: Unpleasant climate makes an excursion by boat hazardous. Solid breezes and tempests regularly demonstrate hazardously. I saw a horrible sight of the waterway. at the point when I was crossing by boat. Inside a brief timeframe, a tempest arose and the waterway turned savage. There were gigantic waves and a solid breeze. The boat was going to invert. I got apprehensive. Be that as it may, the accomplished boatmen halted and attached the boat with solid ropes to a post. Be that as it may, the
storm was throughout inside a brief timeframe and we began once more. Still, I can’t yet thank the aptitude of the boatmen.
Objective: At around 4 p.m.we arrived at the ghat of my sister’s home. My sister was extremely happy to see us. She got us genially. In this manner, our excursion concluded.
End: It is one of the most critical excursions in my life. There was a great deal of joy just as a horrendous encounter of a tempest in the excursion. Both the positive and negative parts of the excursion got dazzled at the forefront of my thoughts until the end of time | https://medium.com/@jahidulislamhemal21/a-boat-journey-4b19fe8c86d0 | ['Jahidul Islam Hemal'] | 2020-12-22 20:40:05.695000+00:00 | ['Journalism', 'Journey', 'Boats', 'Storytelling', 'Medium Brasil'] |
Coolie No 1 Remake ( 2020 ) Review — ChaaiCoffee | The remake of Coolie No 1 is released on Amazon Prime Video this Christmas Weekend. Watching younger Coolie No 1 of Varun Dhawan and Sara Ali Khan from the Comfort of Home is liking having delivery parothe from the fancy restaurant.
Coolie No 1 is a David Dhawan Formula of ‘repacking and placing’ his own hits from the past with his own Son Varun Dhawan. Earlier was Judwaa and Now Coolie No 1 with New location and the same spirit of ‘Happy Go Lucky’.
Interesting Fact: Govinda’s Coolie No 1 was also a remake of the 1993 Tamil Movie
Coolie No 1 Official Trailer
कुली न १ रीमेक की कहानी वही पुरानी गोविंदा की फिल्म वाली ही है | कुछ नया नहीं और कॉमेडी की धार भी कम है | इस फिल्म में सारा मसाला है एक लड़का है गरीब ,एक आमिर बाप और उस की खूबसूरत बेटी और एक मामा कुछ जो नहीं है वो है माँ |
कहानी से सीख : कहानी की सीख है की पंडित से पंगा नहीं लेना चाहिए | सीख की बात इस लिए कियो की पुरानी फिल्म है और परिवारिक फिल्म है |
फिल्म की कहानी बड़ी साधारण से है , एक पंडित जय कृष्ण का अपमान एक अहंकारी गोवा का ७ स्टार होटल का मालिक जेफ्री रोज़ररिओ aka परेष रावल करता है | पंडित जय कृष्ण जेफ्री की बेटी सारा के लिए रिश्ता ले के आता है | और इस अपमान के बाद पंडित जय कृष्ण मुंबई रेलवे स्टेशन पे वरुण धवन से मिलता है जो की ईमानदार ,बहादुर , खूबसूरत कुली है |
राजू कुली सारा की तस्वीर देखते ही गाना गाता है और अपना दिल दे बैठता है | फिर पंडित जय कृष्ण जैक्सन बन के राजू कुली के लिए मिस्स राजू कुली की डोली लेने पहुंचते है गोवा | फिर कहानी में तड़का, मसाला और फिर शादी | शादी और फिर सारा की विदाई |
मिस्टर एंड मिसस राजू मुंबई के बंगले के सामने से होते हुआ पहुंचते है मुंबई की गली में एक छोटे से मकान में | राजू कुली फिर से रेलवे स्टेशन पे कुली की भूमिका में |
एक दिन जेफ्री aka परेश रावल सरप्राइज देने पहुँचता है मुंबई ट्रैन से और खुद शॉकेड हो जाता है | कुंवर राज प्रताप सिंह को राजू कुली के रूप में मिलता है और फिर कहानी में एंट्री होती है शराबी राजू की |
परेश रावल अपनी दूसरी बेटी अंजलि को भी मुंबई बुला लेता है दूसरे राजू से शादी करने के लिए | गोविंदा नहीं वरुण धवन फस जाता है दो बहनो के बीच में | और असली मेहन्द्र प्रताप सिंह का बीटा राजू कुली को फसा देता है अपने पिता के खून के इलज़ाम में |
राजू कुली फरार है और सेठ महेंद्र प्रताप सिंह को बचता है और सेठ साहब उसे इनाम में जुहू वाला बंगला दे देता है और जेफ्री भी माफ़ कर देता है और यह फिल्म समापत हो जाती है कियोकि शादी के बाद जिंदगी से हास्य निकल जाता है और बीवी दिल से दिमाग पे हावी हो जाती है |
New Coolie No 1 2020 Cast
Coolie No 1 ( An Master Class of Meme)
Varun Dhawan as Super Hero in Coolie No 1
Coolie №1 (2020) Remake Review
Direction: 2/5 Dialogues:1.5/5 Screenplay:2/5 Music:2/5 Visual appeal:2/5 Overall Rating: 2:5
Original Coolie No 1 was released on June 30, 1995, before the launch of Public Internet Services in India, and even in the remake information on the public domain via the internet still a distant dream.
David Dhawan movies were considered ‘Brainless and illogical’ a famous saying about his movies are
‘David Dhawan ki movies dekhne ke liye dimaag ghar pe rakh ke aana chahiye tabhi enjoy kar sako ge’
Hence, it’s a remake of Tamil Movies released post-pandemic on Christmas eve then just enjoy at home with or without Family.
Karan johar’s effect on the movie is everywhere.
Small Village is now Goa, Raju Coolie works on Mumbai Railway Station, on the other hand, Govinda was on Bus Stand.
A Brainless but still one-time watch movie to enjoy the lite movements at Home. Comedy punches are not as effective as Original but still digestible.
A Brave and calculated risk of David Dhawan and his Team along with the Amazon team for releasing on Prime Video.
A Good attempt by David Dhawan but the remake must be molded into the current scenario or recreated in the previous era. Redirected the same movie with a young cast and modern locations is not taking it anywhere.
Today’s audience is must smarter and selective and expects good quality content not baggage from the Past. Even Diwali Release of Remake of Kanchana as Laxmii falls flat even with early views milestone of Disney+ Hotstar.
Interesting Fact: Govinda aka Raju Coolie’s Con Name was Kunwar Mahindra Pratap Singh Original one and after 25 years Raju Coolie’s Con Character Kunwar Raj Pratap Singh’s Father Fake Name is Mahindra Pratap Singh.
Stay tuned with chaaicoffee.com for updates and Review on Coming Movies, Series
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Studying Psychology, Just Another Poor Philosopher, Foodie, Netflix Fan, Food Reviewer on Zomato, Digital Marketer By Profession & Aspiring Entrepreneur. Went to Both for Studies ITI & IIT-D | https://medium.com/@chaaicoffee/coolie-no-1-remake-2020-review-chaaicoffee-93393ad26f47 | ['Chaai Coffee'] | 2021-02-02 11:07:23.407000+00:00 | ['Movie Review', 'Hindi', 'Bollywood', 'Coolie No 1', 'Coolie'] |
Vikings Series 6 Episode 11 [4KHD Quality] | ⭐ Watch Vikings Season 6 Episode 11 Full Episode, Vikings Season 6 Episode 11 Full Watch Free, Vikings Episode 11,Vikings History, Vikings Eps. 11,Vikings ENG Sub, Vikings Season 6, Vikings Series 6,Vikings Episode 11, Vikings Season 6 Episode 11, Vikings Full Streaming, Vikings Download HD, Vikings All Subtitle, Watch Vikings Season 6 Episode 11 Full Episodes
Film, also called movie, motion picture or moving picture, is a visual art-form used to simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound, and more rarely, other sensory stimulations.[11] The word “cinema”, short for cinematography, is ofHistory used to refer to filmmaking and the film Vikings, and to the art form that is the result of it.
❏ STREAMING MEDIA ❏
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream refers to the process of delivering or obtaining media in this manner.[clarification needed] Streaming refers to the delivery method of the medium, rather than the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies specifically to telecommunications networks, as most of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, audio CDs). There are challenges with streaming conHistoryt on the Internet. For example, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of the conHistoryt. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain conHistoryt.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet conHistoryt in real-time much as live television broadcasts conHistoryt over the airwaves via a television signal. Live internet streaming requires a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the conHistoryt, a media publisher, and a conHistoryt delivery network to distribute and deliver the conHistoryt. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is.
Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, a process in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the conHistoryt before watching or lisHistorying to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to start playing digital video or digital audio conHistoryt before the entire file has been transmitted. The term “streaming media” can apply to media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are all considered “streaming text”.
❏ COPYRIGHT CONHistoryT ❏
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[11][11][11][11][11] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is inHistoryded to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[11][11][11] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is ofHistory shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][11][6][6][6] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[6]
Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not exHistoryd beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsisHistoryt.[6]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 6 to 11 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[11] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration.
It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[6]
❏ GOODS OF SERVICES ❏
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[11] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and exHistorysible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[11] Credit is exHistoryded by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
‘Vikings’ Challenges Asian Americans in Hollywood to Overcome ‘Impossible Duality’ Historyween China, U.S.
History’s live-action “Vikings” was supposed to be a huge win for under-represented groups in Hollywood. The $11 million-budgeted film is among the most expensive ever directed by a woman, and it features an all-Asian cast — a first for productions of such scale.
Despite well-inHistorytioned ambitions, however, the film has exposed the difficulties of representation in a world of complex geopolitics. History primarily cast Asian rather than Asian American stars in lead roles to appeal to Chinese consumers, yet Chinese viewers rejected the movie as inauthentic and American. Then, politics ensnared the production as stars Liu Yifei, who plays Vikings, and Donnie Yen professed support for Hong Kong police during the brutal crackdown on protesters in 61111. Later, History issued “special thanks” in the credits to government bodies in China’s Xinjiang region that are directly involved in perpetrating major human rights abuses against the minority Uighur population.
“Vikings” inadverHistorytly reveals why it’s so difficult to create multicultural conHistoryt with global appeal in 2020. It highlights the vast disconnect Historyween Asian Americans in Hollywood and Chinese nationals in China, as well as the exHistoryt to which Hollywood fails to acknowledge the difference Historyween their aesthetics, tastes and politics. It also underscores the limits of the American conversation on representation in a global world.
In conversations with seVikingsl Asian-American creatives, Variety found that many feel caught Historyween fighting against underrepresentation in Hollywood and being accidentally complicit in China’s authoritarian politics, with no easy answers for how to deal with the moral questions “Vikings” poses.
“When do we care about representation versus fundamental civil rights? This is not a simple question,” says Bing Chen, co-founder of Gold House, a collective that mobilizes the Asian American community to help diverse films, including “Vikings,” achieve opening weekend box office success via its #GoldOpen movement. “An impossible duality faces us. We absolutely acknowledge the terrible and unacceptable nature of what’s going on over there [in China] politically, but we also understand what’s at stake on the Vikings side.”
The film leaves the Asian American community at “the intersection of choosing Historyween surface-level representation — faces that look like ours — versus values and other cultural nuances that don’t reflect ours,” says Lulu Wang, director of “The Farewell.”
In a business in which past box office success determines what future projects are bankrolled, those with their eyes squarely on the prize of increasing opportunities for Asian Americans say they feel a responsibility to support “Vikings” no matter what. That support is ofHistory very personal amid the Vikings’s close-knit community of Asian Americans, where people don’t want to tear down the hard work of peers and Vikings.
Others say they wouldn’t have given History their $6 if they’d known about the controversial end credits.
“‘Vikings’ is actually the first film where the Asian American community is really split,” says sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, who examines racism in Hollywood. “For people who are more global and consume more global news, maybe they’re thinking, ‘We shouldn’t sell our soul in order to get affirmation from Hollywood.’ But we have this scarcity mentality.
“I felt like I couldn’t completely lambast ‘Vikings’ because I personally felt solidarity with the Asian American actors,” Yuen continues. “I wanted to see them do well. But at what cost?”
This scarcity mentality is particularly acute for Asian American actors, who find roles few and far Historyween. Lulu Wang notes that many “have built their career on a film like ‘Vikings’ and other crossovers, because they might not speak the native language — Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Hindi — to actually do a role overseas, but there’s no role being writHistory for them in America.”
Certainly, the actors in “Vikings,” who have seen major career breakthroughs tainted by the film’s political backlash, feel this acutely. “You have to understand the tough position that we are in here as the cast, and that History is in too,” says actor Chen Tang, who plays Vikings’s army buddy Yao.
There’s not much he can do except keep trying to nail the roles he lands in hopes of paving the way for others. “The more I can do great work, the more likely there’s going to be somebody like me [for kids to look at and say], ‘Maybe someday that could be me.’”
Part of the problem is that what’s happening in China feels very distant to Americans. “The Chinese-speaking market is impenetrable to people in the West; they don’t know what’s going on or what those people are saying,” says Daniel York Loh of British East Asians and South East Asians in Theatre and Screen (BEATS), a U.K. nonprofit seeking greater on-screen Asian representation.
York Loh offers a provocative comparison to illustrate the West’s milquetoast reaction to “Vikings” principal Liu’s pro-police comments. “The equivalent would be, say, someone like Emma Roberts going, ‘Yeah, the cops in Portland should beat those protesters.’ That would be huge — there’d be no getting around that.”
Some of the disconnect is understandable: With information overload at home, it’s hard to muster the energy to care about faraway problems. But part of it is a broader failure to grasp the real lack of overlap Historyween issues that matter to the mainland’s majority Han Chinese versus minority Chinese Americans. They may look similar, but they have been shaped in diametrically different political and social contexts.
“China’s nationalist pride is very different from the Asian American pride, which is one of overcoming racism and inequality. It’s hard for Chinese to relate to that,” Yuen says.
Beijing-born Wang points out she ofHistory has more in common with first-generation Muslim Americans, Jamaican Americans or other immigrants than with Chinese nationals who’ve always lived in China and never left.
If the “Vikings” debacle has taught us anything, in a world where we’re still too quick to equate “American” with “white,” it’s that “we definitely have to separate out the Asian American perspective from the Asian one,” says Wang. “We have to separate race, nationality and culture. We have to talk about these things separately. True representation is about capturing specificities.”
She ran up against the Vikings’s inability to make these distinctions while creating “The Farewell.” Americans felt it was a Chinese film because of its subtitles, Chinese cast and location, while Chinese producers considered it an American film because it wasn’t fully Chinese. The endeavor to simply tell a personal family story became a “political fight to claim a space that doesn’t yet exist.”
In the search for authentic storytelling, “the key is to lean into the in-Historyweenness,” she said. “More and more, people won’t fit into these neat boxes, so in-Historyweenness is exactly what we need.”
However, it may prove harder for Chinese Americans to carve out a space for their “in-Historyweenness” than for other minority groups, given China’s growing economic clout.
Notes author and writer-producer Charles Yu, whose latest novel about Asian representation in Hollywood, “Interior Chinatown,” is a National Book Award finalist, “As Asian Americans continue on what I feel is a little bit of an island over here, the world is changing over in Asia; in some ways the center of gravity is shifting over there and away from here, economically and culturally.”
With the Chinese film market set to surpass the US as the world’s largest this year, the question thus arises: “Will the cumulative impact of Asian American audiences be such a small drop in the bucket compared to the China market that it’ll just be overwhelmed, in terms of what gets made or financed?”
As with “Vikings,” more parochial, American conversations on race will inevitably run up against other global issues as U.S. studios continue to target China. Some say Asian American creators should be prepared to meet Vikings by broadening their outlook.
“Most people in this Vikings think, ‘I’d love for there to be Hollywood-China co-productions if it meant a job for me. I believe in free speech, and censorship is terrible, but it’s not my battle. I just want to get my pilot sold,’” says actor-producer Brian Yang (“Hawaii Five-0,” “Linsanity”), who’s worked for more than a decade Historyween the two countries. “But the world’s getting smaller. Streamers make shows for the world now. For anyone that works in this business, it would behoove them to study and understand Vikingss that are happening in and [among] other countries.”
Gold House’s Chen agrees. “We need to speak even more thoughtfully and try to understand how the world does not function as it does in our zip code,” he says. “We still have so much soft power coming from the U.S. What we say matters. This is not the problem and burden any of us as Asian Americans asked for, but this is on us, unfortunately. We just have to fight harder. And every step we take, we’re going to be right and we’re going to be wrong.”
☆ ALL ABOUT THE SERIES ☆
is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[11] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and exHistorysible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[11] Credit is exHistoryded by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
‘Hausen’ Challenges Asian Americans in Hollywood to Overcome ‘Impossible Duality’ Historyween China, U.S. | https://medium.com/vikings-series-6-episode-11-4khd-quality/watch-vikings-series-6-episode-11-online-1080p-hd-de04083d021b | ['Amber Payne'] | 2020-12-26 01:17:17.317000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Lifestyle', 'Coronavirus', 'TV Series'] |
How to measure the climate performance potential of startups | Suddenly, everyone in VC is talking about CO2 drawdown potential. As a more general trend, public markets and corporations talk about ESG and jump on purpose-driven communication. Probably that’s the capitalistic response to ill systemic developments that drove us into crises of mental health, resource depletion, human exploitation, climate change, and arguably even a pandemic. These crises will put our society in an even greater state of shock, changing our lives significantly, even taking too many of them. Since time is of the essence, maybe we should embrace the capitalistic response and guide it better.
When it comes to climate change, we’ve argued in this Sifted piece why it’s essential to care about climate impact metrics: it’s crucial, not just to the planet and the people, but also for investors seeking superior returns. This is the thesis in one sentence:
Climate performance is a predictor of financial performance.
Therefore any climate VC that cares about financial returns should assess a startup’s CPP (climate performance potential) before investing. But still, no one does it. Investors and startups lack a common lexicon for discussing and achieving impact.
We’ve been talking to many leading experts to make up our minds about the role of assessments for investors. So now, let’s talk about how we can leverage these assessments today and accelerate their development.
Why it’s tough to talk about climate performance potential
To introduce best practices to estimate CPP and advance climate assessments, we first need to look at current bottlenecks — why is it so hard to make them?
The complexity of climate models, societal, and economic change
If you want to assess a technology’s, say, avoidable emissions over the next 20 years, you can rephrase that as
or, equivalently, if we assume the evenly distributed impact per product on the system across time:
So, we need a crystal ball for a tech product’s sales, the target market, the tech’s influence on that market, its climate footprint, and interrelations with other solutions, in particular, some serious climate science. That’s a long list!
All of this further depends on how our society will change over 20 years. (Would you have predicted 20 years ago mass phenomena like TikTok or Clubhouse? Or even two years ago, a pandemic?)
These are complex problems with a lot of uncertainty. Ideally, we’d get the best scientific consensus for a specific tech, but that might not exist. And even if there are some papers, how will an investor go through all of these to make up their mind?
Well, you can see that most assessments enjoy a relatively low validity. Assessment tools that have tried to solve this have often failed due to the complexity or remain premature.
There are many potential ways of impact of a startup
So, how do we measure “climate performance”? Every being, society and every organization has a footprint. And it’s a multidimensional footprint with interacting dimensions connected through real-world climate and societal effects. A company can directly affect biodiversity, ocean health, carbon emissions, or even vulnerable communities. That can happen through their product, their operations, or their supply chain. Depending on where these impacts occur, we call them Scope 1, 2, or 3.
Focusing on only one dimension can be, as in every other region of life or business, at the cost of another.
We can find examples easily: on paper, it seems like having efficient cookstoves in Africa reduces emissions significantly. But giving them for free (through aid or Atmosfair offsets) can harm the local economy and prevent job creation or tax income, which is not sustainable. You can also find a manifold of examples for tree planting doing more harm than good. And we’re sure you’ve heard of the rebound effect…
Climate breakdown is colonial in nature; solutions can’t be. (Source)
You can’t compare apples and pears
Now, let’s say we have two tech startups working on two different problems in entirely different sectors. Which one do we assume to be more impactful? How can we even start to compare them? Even if we had some quantified dimension, e.g. the GHG drawdown KPIs, and reduce the problem to benchmark their emissions reduction potential purely, how would we go about it? How do we account for competition? And what is the business-as-usual scenario we compare it with?
And if you want to have it even more concrete: if, as an investor, we have the decision to invest x resources in a startup A at valuation y in stage z of an oversubscribed round, how do we compare that to investing i resources in a startup B at valuation ii in stage iii with little investor interest, given that the impact potential is similar/different?
(Hint: an investor’s contribution to its investee’s impact is called “additionality”. Only investing in startups that would not get investments otherwise is called catalytic capital and can be considered high additionality. Here’s an interesting HBS Case Study looking at Prime Coalition who pioneered catalytic capital.)
It is, and remains, not the most important thing about a startup
In all the rising impact of data fetishism, let’s calm a bit down and note that it is just a data point in the bigger picture. Not a deciding one, but rather a qualifying one.
Particularly for early-stage startups, the team’s ability to execute on their purpose-driven vision (incl. pivots) and the business model’s ability to solve a pain for customers today remain the most decisive factors of success. The team will only achieve the climate potential if the startup scales! | https://medium.com/@visevic/how-to-measure-the-climate-performance-potential-of-startups-6cc7fdb4110f | ['Danijel Višević'] | 2021-04-16 09:08:56.730000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Performance', 'VC', 'Impact Investing', 'Investors'] |
USER ACCESS AND ENTITLEMENT REVIEWS | SecurEnds Credential Entitlement Management, an User Access Review product addresses access/entitlement auditing and reporting. It automates user access rights, access certification and remediation to meet security compliance for identity governance.
Key Features
Know who has access to what
Generate cross-application rules for separation of duties that trigger real-time alerts.
Manage enterprise role definitions to easily identify excessive user privileges.
Automate user access rights certification with a simple workflow.
Remediation and Compliance reporting.
Know who has access to what without a doubt
Companies have extreme difficulties in organizing and executing user access reviews to meet various compliance, such as SOC 2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, FISMA, and GLBA
The key problems are:
Using manual efforts to conduct user access reviews (i.e. Excel);
Not being able to have a complete and accurate review;
Not having a view on what is pending and by whom; and
Identifying the right person for the reviews
Not easy to get user data stored in endpoints like Active directory, Office 365, SharePoint, Windows, AWS, Azure, Google G-suite, Sales Force, SAP etc.
These points listed above lead to:
Significant amounts of wasted time;
Significant amounts of wasted efforts; and
The inability for companies to properly control their user access.
SecurEnds CEM allows you to:
Incorporate all your reviews with one technology;
Ensure that you have a complete and accurate listing;
Matches users using fuzzy logic with IAM users from HR employees/contractors;
Provide you with a dashboard for what is pending for each reviewer;
Send reminder notifications to reviewers; and
Provide you with a specific report at the end of each campaign.
SecurEnds CEM integrates with the endpoints to pull user access privileges data automatically using endpoint agents. These endpoints include Active Directory, Windows Shared Folder, Exchange, Office 365, SharePoint, Unix/Linux, Database, VPN, Google Drive, AWS, database, VPN, Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, Box, Dropbox and etc.
Product Key Differentiating Factors
Our product closes the gap in your enterprise with User Access Reviews, Identity governance and compliance for systems that are integrated as well as those that are not integrated to Identity Access Management. Most Identity governance solutions need 18–24 months installation/customization and cost millions of dollars compared to our solution Our product can be installed and configured in few weeks. We offer on-premise and cloud offering of our products. Our products will be configured to provide solution for your organization in few weeks
CEM Product Benefits
Automated solution for all user access reviews. Ensures that your organization is in compliance and the user access is controlled. Enables you the opportunity to conduct your reviews on time, with accuracy and completeness. Saves your organization time and money. Secure and protect critical systems, applications and data by enforcing identity governance and access compliance.
Click here for more information. | https://medium.com/@securends/user-access-and-entitlement-reviews-e4ffae0ba48f | [] | 2019-02-06 02:37:15.033000+00:00 | ['User Access Control', 'Access Control Security', 'Access Control', 'Information Security', 'Identity Management'] |
The process that I have described in my previous comment is not based on epigenetics; it does not… | The process that I have described in my previous comment is not based on epigenetics; it does not involve a modification of genetic expression. Rather, it is a process that is based on brain plasticity, as referenced by Stephanie Leguichard in her original article.
Brain plasticity involves the brain's response to experience. Experience is delivered to the brain through the body. It therefore stands to reason that different bodies deliver different experiences and produce different brain structures. | https://medium.com/@estwald/the-process-that-i-have-described-in-my-previous-comment-is-not-based-on-epigenetics-it-does-not-8adb5659bf98 | [] | 2020-12-21 04:56:28.997000+00:00 | ['Experience', 'Brain Plasticity', 'Brain And Body', 'Epigenetics'] |
Ocelot ile API Gateway Üzerinde Caching Yapısı — .NET 5.0 & Redis | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/emrekizildas/ocelot-ile-api-gateway-%C3%BCzerinde-caching-yap%C4%B1s%C4%B1-net-5-0-redis-6d4d8f81af50 | ['Emre Kizildas'] | 2020-11-22 06:21:40.680000+00:00 | ['Api Gateway', 'Dotnet', 'Redis'] |
Coaching Business In a Box | Setup Dubai Business — Home | Facebook
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Setup Dubai Business. 2,008 likes · 90 talking about this. We offer everything you need to setup and successfully run your business in Mainland, Dubai, UAE
IBEX Business Center LLC — for your Business Setup in Dubai!
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7 best business ideas in dubai for (Indian, USA, UK & UAE)
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Today I will discuss 7 best business ideas in Dubai for Indian, USA, Uk & UAE people.. People have build fortune in Dubai. The city where people spend money like water. Luxurious lifestyle boost up the economy here. only 15% population are of UAE in Dubai remaining are a foreigner.
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Low cost business setup in Dubai,UAE | Endeavour Corporate …
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Endeavour Corporate Services LLC helps you get your company setup in Dubai going comfortably. We are experts helping aspiring organizers to establish a business setup company in Dubai, UAE of their choice. of their preference. Depending on the type of business you need to form in the UAE, we build a new start for you from scar without any …
Ultra-wealthy buyers enable Dubai property sector to …
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Dubai’s property sector has been an unlikely beneficiary of COVID-19, with the ongoing pandemic sparking a long-awaited turnaround in 2021. Prices in neighbouring Abu Dhabi have also increased, but performance in Saudi Arabia´s main cities has been mixed, and Qatar has endured another tough year. After a six-year slump, sales prices were up …
Business Setup In Dubai | Business Setup Consultants in …
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Get professional services for Business Setup in Dubai, UAE with the expert guidance of EBMS. Start your offshore company, LLC company, or mainland company including PRO services, bank account opening, visa processing and more. Get in touch with us today!
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More Information… | https://medium.com/@ahmedromjan326/coaching-business-in-a-box-837360e595e1 | ['Romjan Ahmed'] | 2021-12-31 17:07:06.844000+00:00 | ['Facebook Business Manager', 'Business Strategy', 'Instagram Marketing', 'Business Development', 'Facebook Marketing'] |
Crowdhero x Discovery Music Records: Bring Out The Best OF Asia's Music Scene | Crowdhero x Discovery Music Records: Bring Out The Best OF Asia's Music Scene Crowdhero Aug 10·2 min read
EDM (electronic dance music) has been and will be a popular demand for any major music festival events (…and fitness activities). Now for the very first time, these uptempo tunes will grow from nightclubs and dance floors to the NFT world.
As a pioneer of Asian dance music
DJ Flash Finger presented his own imprint of DISCOVERY: Music in 2013. He is also known as a talented music producer who has popular collabs with other artists. Starting as an electric guitar player in a band during his early career, Flash Finger later skillfully develops his EDM beats and climaxes with styles, juicy solos and melodies. DISCOVERY: Music also releases tracks with versatile sounding that fit the taste and style of labels from many countries in North America, Europe, and Asia markets.
DJ Flash Finger (Source: 1001tracklists.com)
Flash Finger launched DISCOVERY: Music to distribute his own music and also to support Asian music talents. In the early days, there were no dance music labels established by Asian DJ / Producers. Flash Finger launched DISCOVERY: Music Records to help promote Asia’s dance music and developed the dance music scene in Asia. Thanks to years of hard work, many releases by DISCOVERY: Music were supported by big artists in Europe and the United States. And the world knows more good music producers from Asia.
Bring out to the next level
As a mission to bring out the best of Asia and connect to the world’s audience, Discover Music Records has established connections with all the major online music distributors such as Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube Music, Deezer and Beatport… As the label moves forward, adding on new technology is part of the mission to grow and to gain more exposures and listeners. Thus, the NFT space is a new and interesting playground to experiment. Crowdhero is a good partner to help with these initiatives and crowdfund for upcoming artist’s projects including demo songs, music videos, tour plannings…
Crowdhero is actively working on signing up more partnerships across creative genres and styles. So if you are running a community or a part of the field we are seeking for, from fashion, game designers, illustrators, photogs, writers, music producers, film makers… drop us a line at [email protected]
Stay tuned
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More weekly updates are coming. Talk soon. | https://medium.com/@crowdhero/crowdhero-x-discovery-music-records-bring-out-the-best-of-asias-music-scene-57e5d36c51f | [] | 2021-08-29 14:17:16.352000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Subsets and Splits