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A Beginner’s Guide to Intentional Work with Psychedelics | I get a lot of inquiries from people who are new to psychedelics and are interested in some form of intentional work with psychedelics but don’t know how to go about it.
The key word here is “intentional.” Intentional work with psychedelics is very different than recreational use. It is motivated by a desire for healing, learning, growth, or transformation of some kind. Having a sincere intention and a commitment to working with psychedelics in a purposeful way to address this intention makes a huge difference in how the psychedelic substance works with you.
Some have read Michael Pollan’s new book, How to Change Your Mind, and it piqued their interest in having a meaningful psychedelic experience. Others have heard about the healing benefits of plant medicines, such as ayahuasca, for things like depression and trauma but don’t know what their options are.
This article examines the 3 most common types of intentional work with psychedelics and looks at some of the benefits and challenges of each approach.
1. Psychedelic Therapy
There are currently two different categories of psychedelic-assisted therapy available: sessions provided by underground therapists operating outside of the law and psychedelic-assisted therapy provided legally within the purview of a clinical trial.
Above-board or legal psychedelic-assisted therapy currently only exist in the United States as part of FDA-approved clinical trials, although there are others being conducted in the UK and Europe as well. As such, they must adhere to a specific treatment protocol that is approved by the FDA for that specific trial. The basic protocol for how a psychedelic-assisted therapy session is conducted is very similar regardless of whether it is an MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD trial or a psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for depression trial. The whole point is to make it reproducible and these trials are mainly being built on the backs of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies’ psychedelic-assisted therapy training models and research protocols. It is a protocol-based treatment that adheres to the protocols defined in the treatment manual. These manuals are a matter of public record so you can actually read them to get an understanding of how the format works.
That being said there are considerable differences in how the preparatory and follow-up therapy sessions are conducted. These are based in traditional psychotherapeutic models of change and are designed to address the specific diagnosis that is the basis for the research study (e.g. addiction, anxiety, depression, or PTSD). Depending on the study and the mental health issue being addressed, they may use different psychotherapy interventions and include more or less sessions.
Finding a Clinical Trial
If you want to experience psychedelic-assisted therapy you can either find an underground psychedelic therapist in your area or you can participate in an FDA-approved clinical trial. The entire database of active FDA clinical trials can be found at: https://clinicaltrials.gov and a simple keyword search for MDMA or psilocybin will bring up every active psychedelics study in the USA and also tell you which are actively recruiting participants. The limitations of this are that you need to live near a study site, meet the trial diagnostic criteria (e.g. have diagnosable PTSD) and participate in a fairly lengthy intake process, which can take weeks just to determine if you are admitted to the study and the study itself can take 12–16 weeks. This obviously limits who can participate in these studies quite significantly, which is why so many people are seeking out the underground therapist route.
Expanded Access
MAPS recently applied to the FDA for approval of an expanded access protocol that would allow them to provide MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD to people that meet the clinical trial criteria but for which there are no spaces available in the trial. This could potentially massively increase access to MDMA-assisted psychotherapy but would only apply for those that have a bonafide diagnosis of PTSD. While a movement in the right direction, obviously this provides access to a very limited population.
And while the legal FDA-approved clinical trials don’t charge anything because they are conducting research, there is no telling what a for-profit company like Compass Pathways, whose main investor actively promotes the importance of creating monopolies, will eventually charge for access to their FDA-approved supply of psilocybin. Looking at Ketamine treatment for depression as a reference, I expect it will be in the thousands of dollars.
Underground Therapy
The other group of people providing psychedelic-assisted therapy are underground therapists operating outside the law. These types of therapists are hard to find as they tend to maintain a high degree of anonymity due to the legal risks they are taking and only work with people who are referred to them by a trusted source (note: please do not ask me for referrals to underground therapists, as I am not able to provide these.) Many of them are clustered in the larger metro regions (i.e. New York, SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, etc.) and are hard to find if you live in a smaller city or a rural area. This makes gaining access to an underground psychedelic therapist really difficult for most people.
Because these therapists are operating outside of a licensure or regulatory framework, there is no oversight and no barrier to entry. Literally anyone with access to illegal drugs and a sofa in their basement can offer “psychedelic therapy.” They don’t need training, they don’t need to actually be therapists. And there are many unqualified people like that operating. Therefore it is important to be very careful when working with an underground therapist and to critically assess their background, training, and supervision. Remember, this is someone that you are going to be opening your psyche to and that is a very vulnerable state to be in with someone. You want to make sure they have impeccable integrity and are highly skilled at working with whatever may come up in a psychedelic session.
Finally, underground psychedelics therapists aren’t cheap either. $1,500 to $2,000 for the initial preparatory session, the psychedelic session and the follow-up session is not unheard of. This cost compensates the therapist for the extensive time involved in providing psychedelic therapy as well as the risks they are taking in working outside the law but it also makes it unaffordable to the vast majority of people.
2. Plant Medicine Ceremony
A plant medicine ceremony is a completely different ball-game altogether. There is a wide diversity in terms of ceremonial styles but they mostly adhere to 3 common features that make them quite different to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and western psychotherapeutic models.
Ceremonial Framework
The first and most fundamental difference is that the framework is ceremonial. This means that the experience is held within a framework of spiritual rituals and beliefs. Some of the rituals and conventions found in plant medicine ceremonies include: defining the ceremonial space as sacred, cleansing the space being used for sacred work, invocation of spiritual protections, and the calling of the spirits of the plant medicine and other helping spirits such as deities or ancestors.
Not all ceremonies operate this way but these are common elements found in traditional plant medicine ceremonies in settings as diverse as the Sierra Mazateca, the Peruvian Amazon and the deserts of North America. More importantly, these are some of the elements of plant medicine ceremony that you will typically find in new-age or neo-shamanic “western” ceremonies, even if they are incorporated in a perfunctory manner.
A key feature here is that of spirit. These are spirit ceremonies and by definition have trappings of spirituality. One is not required to believe in spirits or have a spiritual inclination but it is a contextual element that will be present in some form or another. A plant medicine ceremony generally involves engaging with psychedelics in an overtly spiritual setting.
Group Experience
Second a ceremony is typically in a group setting, meaning that several participants ingest the plant medicine together. This is one of the key features of a psychedelic ceremonial experience. It is not always the case but it is the most common format that you will find. Going through an intensive experience with a psychedelic or plant medicine in a group setting creates a very different kind of experience. What the other ceremony participants go through will affect your experience in some way. If held well by the facilitators, this can be a very positive and beneficial experience. However, if poorly managed, it can result in a lot of commingling of people’s personal issues and energies that can lead to confusion as well as delusion.
There is also a deep bonding that occurs during ceremony that enables people to have an experience of true community, sometimes for the first time in their lives. The “we’re all in it together” nature of the ceremonial experience can be quite profound on its own, whether or not one is ingesting psycho-active substances, which is why it is a feature of many spiritual and religious traditions. And in plant medicine circles that meet regularly (e.g. one weekend a month) this can open the doorway to being part of a genuine ongoing spiritual community. That is not something that psychedelic-assisted therapy generally offers.
Actively Guided
Thirdly, plant medicine ceremonies are guided and directed affairs. There are no headphones and no eye masks. The individual’s experience is guided to a greater or lesser degree by the facilitators of the ceremony. This can be as lightly guided as someone playing soothing medicine bowls or gentle guitar songs in the background creating the sonic backdrop of the ceremony experience to something as involved as a full-blown shamanic ceremony where the shaman is directing the ceremony via the medicine songs that guide the medicine spirits to do specific types of work and actions and is doing active healing rituals on some or all of the participants using tools such as medicine songs, tobacco smoke, leaf rattles, perfumes, or plant herbs. In these formats, the facilitator is a major factor in the experience which means that the facilitator’s integrity, experience, and skill level are of vital importance.
Preparation & Integration
One final difference is that plant medicine ceremonies typically do not include individual preparatory or integration sessions as you would find in psychedelic-assisted therapy. Sometimes facilitators will hold pre-ceremony meetings that serve to prepare the participants for the upcoming ceremony and/or sharing circles after a ceremony to help participants process and share their experience. And some shamans will meet with or be available to meet with each ceremony participant prior to ceremony to hear about their complaints and identify how to address them. That is more commonly found in traditional shamanic healing settings and not something typically found in the US. Either way, the preparation and integration support is vastly different than having several one-on-one psychotherapy sessions with a therapist to identify the issues to be addressed in a psychedelic-assisted therapy session.
Plant Medicine Ceremony Availability
Plant medicine ceremonies are held around the US in informal underground settings year-round. Most major cities have multiple ayahuasca circles that meet on a monthly basis and accept new participants by referral. Similar to underground therapists, it can be challenging to find these if you are not connected to alternative health or spirituality communities or live far from a major metropolitan area. And all the caveats for underground therapists apply here as well (i.e. variability of skill and experience of the facilitator, lack of oversight or regulation, low barrier to entry, etc.)
There are also above-board plant medicines retreats held in settings where it is legal (eg Peru, Brazil, Costa Rica) and being led by highly trained facilitators . The most obvious option here is working with a reputable ayahuasca retreat center in the Peruvian Amazon, where it is not only legal but there is a very old tradition of working with ayahuasca for healing purposes (Full disclosure: I used to work at an ayahuasca retreat center in Peru). These week-long retreats are more expensive and involve foreign travel and time off of work. However, they also offer the opportunity to work much more deeply with these medicines under the guidance and direction of bonafide masters of the medicine. As in any other format, it is important to do your research in terms of what retreat center to work with.
3. Solo or Private Intentional Psychedelic Trip
The third category of intentional psychedelic experience is one where you are consuming a psychedelic privately for an intentional purpose either alone or with a sitter. Some people choose this route because they’re unable to find a practitioner to facilitate an experience or because they are comfortable experimenting with psychedelics on their own. The main features of this approach are that you are unassisted and do not have the support, guidance, or direction of a trained professional with a lot of experience handling the wide variety of experiences that occur. The settings for these tend to be people’s personal homes or a naturalistic setting. Sometimes these are done as part of a group experience (i.e. a group hike where everyone takes psilocybin mushrooms together) but group experiences tend to make it harder to do deep work since you are regularly being pulled out of your private experience into interactions with others.
True intentional work often involves an inward journey which means that this kind of solo work is typically done with an eye mask, headphones, and a pre-curated playlist of appropriate music to create the desired experience, similar to a psychedelic-assisted therapy session. Some people prefer this route because it offers them freedom and autonomy in their work with psychedelics and offers the flexibility of working with psychedelics in whatever manner one choses. And having a trusted and sober friend sit with them during the experience provides a sense of safety that allows people to relax into the psychedelic experience.
Challenges of Solo Work
However, there are a lot of challenges with working on one’s own with psychedelics. One of them is getting access to high quality psychedelic materials. Not everyone has those kinds of connections or is able to easily get their hands on psychedelics. And the quality of the material or substance is variable and unknown and appropriate dosing can be very tricky. People sometimes consume too little to enter a visionary state at all or consume so much that they end-up having a frightening and overwhelming experience. And without anyone to guide them through it, an overwhelming state can be traumatic.
I work with many people who come to see me after having a really negative, terrifying, or challenging experience doing solo work with psychedelics. As such I am well acquainted with the shadow side of psychedelics. And while for many people working with psychedelics intentionally on their own will be fine, for others it can lead to psychological harm that they will then need help to address. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to know ahead of time which camp someone will fall in to. However I do find that if you are looking for healing a particular issue or trauma in your life, it is definitely best to work with a professional guide of one form or another.
If one is going to attempt the solo route, going very slowly and very gradually is a safer approach that can reduce the risk of some of the potential harms. Having a sober friend that is familiar with psychedelics sit with you is also an important safety precaution.
Furthermore, I have found that continuous long-term experimentation with psychedelics outside of a community framework that supports it has the potential to de-stabilize an individual’s psyche and that this holds true even in traditional ceremonial work and settings. If you’re not working very hard at integrating these experiences over time it can lead you to feel disconnected from the rest of the world that isn’t on this journey with you. Returning home (or finding your new home) is an important part of any journey and integration is really the “coming home” stage. Going on an extended psychedelic journey can lead one to become really disconnected from ordinary daily life and can make the eventual inevitable coming home much harder.
Conclusion
Working with psychedelics intentionally can be incredibly life changing and transformative when handled responsibly. In the proper hands, its healing, consciousness-expanding, and spiritual growth potential are light-years ahead of recreational uses of psychedelics. And while there is no one right or wrong way to go about it, there certainly are best practices as well as contra-indications for each of these 3 approaches built on years of exploration and experimentation by countless people over generations. Which ever approach you choose, I would recommend studying-up on the best practices of that approach to the extent possible.
And one universal best practice is to work actively and conscientiously to prepare for and integrate a psychedelic or plant medicine experience. This includes reflecting on what it is you really want to address using this substance and making time to process and work with whatever came-up during the experience, either on your own, as part of a psychedelic integration group, or with the help of an experienced professional. | https://medium.com/@atheberge/a-beginners-guide-to-intentional-work-with-psychedelics-66cc9bc55ff9 | ['Alex Theberge'] | 2019-04-25 18:55:43.199000+00:00 | ['Ayahuasca', 'Personal Development', 'Healing From Trauma', 'Plant Medicine', 'Psychedelics'] |
It’s Time To Really Give Black Americans Equal Rights | I’ll say up front that I’m no lawyer and don’t have the right words for what I’m demanding. I’m saying that, specifically for Black people, more specifically for Black men, it’s time to go to extraordinary lengths to redress the injuries done over the past few CENTURIES to Black slaves and their descendants.
I can’t think of any other demographic group that has suffered like the Black Americans or Native Americans. I’ve been paying attention for more than 30 years, waiting for, well, today actually. With all the disruption of this presidential changeover, we may as well get these new, improved civil rights built into the system that Biden and Harris are building right now. Even if they notice, they should be supportive of equal rights, right? I’m sure they will notice and be supportive, but they are also buried in work. We’ll be needing help. Universities and law schools come to mind.
I wish I knew more about what I’m asking for. But it’s a complicated mess. The marginalization of Black men specifically has put them in a position of being near non-citizens. Criminal histories, disrupted social lives, for now I don’t see who could help sort it except for other Black citizens. Which is what a jury of your peers is meant to be!
Habeas corpus is important too. Not my strongest point, but it means that a jury of your peers may want to “take custody” of you, rather than leave you in a cold, distant prison or jail. If you’re imprisoned for a violent crime, then you’ll just be trading cells. At least until your peers decide what should be done. It’s complicated and it isn’t. It should work fine once it’s up and running. The big difference: not being forced in front of an all-white jury. Whew.
This complexity is why I’m advocating the changes, but cannot be precise about how it’s to be done. It’s just that as the U.S. rebuilds, this can be built in. It’s not a competition, it’s more an incorporation. I’ve been waiting for this moment for decades. | https://medium.com/@fredscottermlich/its-time-to-really-give-black-americans-equal-rights-eac3a21676a8 | ['Fred Ermlich'] | 2020-12-01 04:36:07.398000+00:00 | ['Black America', 'Equal Rights', 'Habeas Corpus', 'Never Fear', 'Civil Rights'] |
The Annual Report of Winery DTC Vendor landscape summarizing all the channges and innovations from the prior year. | Four years ago, Rob McMillan asked me to build a chart with all the DTC vendors, to coincide with the annual SVB Report. The first report was an interesting challenge and became a labor of love. With few exceptions — and aside from the format improvements from Erica Gomez — the changes over the subsequent years have been minor.
That was my expectation for 2020. Every year I write a theme for the year and 2020’s was “Digital Transformation (Why and How to Start — NOW)”, which I presented in March in London, at the inaugural One Step Beyond conference. Little did I know that would be the last time I traveled or saw other humans — or how prescient and necessary that presentation was. We had the confluence of the global pandemic and terrible fires, along with an American society divided by ideological and political differences, coupled with disinformation machines running on overdrive. While Rob and I had warned about the limitations of the tasting room model as the primary driver for DTC, and even though we’ve seen the fallout from previous fires, earthquakes and blackouts, we could never have imagined a Black Swan event like 2020.
While there is no doubt the tasting room is an effective customer acquisition tool, it’s also the least efficient and the least scalable. My entire professional life, I’ve been imploring the industry to use digital, especially e-commerce. Then came 2020, an extinction level event for small/medium wineries, because tasting rooms were closed (or fractionally open) and restaurants were closed and no longer buying wine. Every winery then clamored to get incredibly competitive placements with a finite set of retailers and etailers. As a result,we had no choice but to lean into the online channel.
There can be no good words about the COVID-19 pandemic but, if we were to try to glean a small bit of positivity, it’s that people woke up to the necessity of digital. While there were plenty of successes, many wineries experienced whiplash, as years of unpaid technical, operational, and knowledge debt collided with the unprecedented challenges of running an online business. It should come as no surprise that those who had any sort of infrastructure and internal resources were infinitely more successful than those who barely invested in the channel; of particular note are Wente and Trinchero, who already employed digital stars Justin Noland and Kellie Burke. I had a friend in NY who wanted me to point him in the direction of wineries with great wine, who were using digital to succeed. Candidly, it was a painful exercise because so many brands had challenging or inadequate checkout experiences. I took screenshots of some of these brands and others to show you what I mean. The goal isn’t to judge or humiliate them, but just to give you a view of the many different shopping experiences out there.
Last year also saw Constellation acquire its first digitally native vertical brand (DNVB) with Gary Vaynerchuk’s Empathy Wines. It was a smart decision for a myriad of reasons, not least because it catapulted Constellation’s digital thinking into the future, while acquiring a talented team (Jon Troutman, Nate Scherotter) and a thoughtful brand built at a perfect online entry price/structure. It assists with an ongoing premiumization of their portfolio, after divesting their lower-priced brands to Gallo.
Passive vs active sales
While the statistics show good gains in e-commerce (and telemarketing) aka “off-premise DTC” sales, the reality is the majority of winery sales were passive. Wineries did an amazing job increasing their email marketing (although it was primarily promotional), while also adapting pricing and shipping. They also created new value exchanges, like CSA boxes, video tastings, and more. Wineries also saw an influx of sales from new customers, especially from those who loved the brand and wanted to support it. While I say the sales were passive, wineries did do a better job of communicating with and servicing their current customers, and also managed an influx of sales from brand loyalists that normally bought the wines via other channels. That being said, very few wineries invested in programs and infrastructure to attract new customers (active sales). This will be a challenge going forward. The good news and the bad news is that no one has a perfect formula – — and what works for one winery cannot easily be translated to another winery.
The move from passive sales to active sales also requires a complete shift in understanding the economics of DTC. We no longer can view the channel as getting the majority of the suggested retail price. Instead, we need to carve out our customer acquisition costs (CAC) ( as well as customer retention costs (CRC). For active sales, a good CAC to LTV ratio is needed, preferably 1:3 (or much higher). This means looking at what percentage of gross profit is allocated to CAC and CRC, and finding new ways for accounting teams to measure success.
The move to e-commerce was rapid and stunning:
Source — Silicon Valley Bank
And by the end of the year e-commerce moved from a paltry average of 3% of the total sales to a burgeoning 10% of sales, with lots of room to grow to match other industry averages.
Source — Silicon Valley Bank
The industry’s journey into e-commerce has just begun and, by looking at other industries, the great news is that we still have a lot of room to grow.
Evolution of the Wine Club
These new measurements also need to extend to our clubs (aka subscriptions). While clubs were the vanguard of the subscription economy, they have remained virtually unchanged since their inception. But the subscription economy is alive and thriving across many industries.
It’s why the wine industry should really look at other industries, to understand their economic models and see how they manage their customers journeys, particularly how they reduce churn.
Source — Tyler Sloat — CFO — Zoura
Again, it forces us to re-evaluate and re-imagine wine clubs and make them something different, to attract and retain customers from outside of a 90-mile radius.
How are we building wine club subscriptions to convert customers that never visit our winery? What is the key value proposition that inspires them to subscribe? These are some of the fun and fascinating problems wineries need to discover going forward.
Local Addiction
It’s clear from working with winery data that there’s a problem. To show you, here are three DTC state sales maps for 2020 (small, medium, and large) — shown here with permission.
Despite minor differences, you can see a striking similarity between the three maps; they are all over-reliant on California customers. And, when you look closer, you’ll see a strikingly similar pattern among them, despite their size differences. They are all highly dependent on local customers and enotourism from Los Angeles. We’ve jokingly referred to this as a winery’s CA addiction. Because we have such a large, affluent population that can easily travel to wine country, wineries have become overly dependent on these two major communities for their customers.
The overdependence on proximity is not just a California winery phenomenon. If you map Oregon, Washington, and Virginia wineries or even those of other states, you’ll see that almost all of them depend on customers within a 90-mile radius, or within state boundaries. Yet wineries now need to extend beyond their local regions to sell wine to customers at home. Breaking this local addiction will generate greater financial sustainability.
Investment
If wineries are to be sustainable into the future, there is going to have to be some serious investment. If the benefits of the digital channels are to be realized, there has to be a revamp of established systems, a rebuild of antiquated processes, and an investment in our people, from employees to external professionals — particularly e-commerce.
Source — JB Wood — CEO— TSIA
Unfortunately, this multi-dimensional digital debt — encompassing technical knowledge, processes, and infrastructure — has compounded over the last two decades, because online was one of the least important channels for wineries. Paying down this debt will be no small task and the more we ignore it, the larger it grows until, someday, it’s beyond our ability to pay down. The investment in people, particularly in improving their understanding of, and aptitude with, digital, is more important than ever.
Source — Carlos Oliveira — Morphis Tech — https://www.morphis-insights.com/technical-debt/
So how do we make the change? It’s not about new tools or technologies.
It starts with a cultural change and understanding the importance of the channel. After 2020, I can’t imagine there’s a winery out there that doesn’t recognize that we need to use new and scalable ways to create and maintain relationships with customers when they are not in wine country. Currently digital is the best tool for this task. Joe Fattorini wrote an excellent primer on making this transition, that’s well worth reading.
As I’ve said for three years straight, the industry needs to consolidate. Fewer but better e-commerce vendors would result in more focused R&D to ensure the industry keeps pace with the ever changing, online landscape. If you are having trouble deciding on a vendor, here’s a good guide to help you choose.
One word of caution: while we need to learn new tools and methods of operations from each other, we need to avoid being copycats. For example, when the first shelter-in-place (SIP) order arrived, a few wineries with high E.Q. (emotional quotient) took the initiative to call their customers, not to make a sale, but to check in and ask them how they were doing. Within weeks there were dozens of wineries emulating this amazing service. So what started as a beautiful outreach campaign became a customer annoyance — and the sincerity of the later wineries rang hollow.
And can we talk about Zoom? Prior to COVID, we heard a lot from wineries about how they were going to “take their tasting room on the road.” They used Pix Analytic’s mapping features to analyze key clusters of customers, to target destinations. But it wasn’t a few wineries building this strategy, it was almost every winery we encountered. It was the flavor du jour and suddenly everybody was doing it.
How does this relate to Zoom? Video conferencing has been around for some time with plenty of great video conferencing tools prior to Zoom, but very few wineries used them. One of the earlier adopters, Jason Moore of Modus Operandi, started doing virtual tastings in late 2019. He was extolling the virtues to wineries who largely ignored him. After SIP, there was a mad dash for Zoom tastings. Jason did over 499 Zoom tastings to 614 people in 2020. Before we knew it, every winery was doing some version of Zoom/virtual tastings with varied success. Robert Joseph even wrote a provocative article about the plethora of terrible versions that emerged during COVID: Amber LeBeau, my favorite B2B wine blogger, wrote a primer for wineries looking to enter the “virtual tasting arena”.
Throughout multiple virtual conferences and the SVB webinar, many people have asked if Zoom/virtual tastings are here to stay. The answer is “yes”, but such tastings are not the endpoint. They will, like all things, be a continuation of our industry’s desire to reach customers when they are not in wine country. They speak to the new reality that our industry requires new ways to connect with customers in their homes, both to the customers that have visited our wineries, but also to the larger group that have never traveled to wine country. But equally important, we need to get past the copycat or “fast follower” culture of the industry. When everyone is doing the exact same thing, there is no differentiation and the efficacy of the tactic diminishes as more people enter the arena.
Data
And 2020 was the year that data finally became important to the majority of the industry. Obviously, as the artist formerly known as Emetry (now a division of Pix called Pix Analytics), we believe in data with all our hearts. Data is, after all, the natural byproduct of digital efforts. Yet all too often the wine industry tries to bypass the complexity and ends up frustrated and unsatisfied with the recommendations of experts. That is made worse by too many fakers pretending they can build insights to help you find under served customers within your database or by sharing false correlations that don’t yield results. And while we love benchmarking tools, the need to understand your own customers should take precedence over knowing those of your neighbors.
The maturation of data metrics and analytics is going to be a key growth trend in 2021 for wineries, because the need for a better understanding of customers has never been more vital. No wonder I’m constantly asked to recommend DTC analysts or CRM managers. As data becomes more important, so does its continual maintenance and enrichment.
False prophets
Whenever new technologies or channels emerge, a plethora of consultants come out of the woodwork claiming to have the answers. There are two things to remember. First, digital is a huge category and one consultant/expert can’t possibly know it all. Wine online is still uncharted territory and there is not one example of meteoric growth by a single wine brand. Even if there was a complete all-star out there, their formula could not be easily translated across price points, regions, or brands. No one has all the answers. Not me, not Andrew Kamphuis, not Gary Vaynerchuk, not anyone. We may have expertise in the channel, but no-one has figured out a repeatable formula. There are a few experts out there, but beware of false prophets.
Vendors Paying it Forward
The pandemic was simultaneously sudden and slow. Some wineries took radical steps to lay off large swathes of employees, while others, like Wente, went the extra distance to keep their staff employed as long as possible. A group of wine professionals, plus Emetry, put together a list that became our most read blog of 2020 for ways to utilize tasting room staff during SIP.
While advice is nice, actions speak louder than words. Wine industry vendors, knowing that our customers were facing an extinction level event, leaned into our community to help. By no means is this an authoritative list but here are some key stories:
Commerce7 — The culture of Andrew and Zach Kamphuis has always been customer centric. When COVID overwhelmed the industry they immediately offered financial relief in the form of “don’t pay us if you can’t”, they helped wineries process emails and clubs and set up stores, and within a week of SIP launched the Commerce7 Now program, which is a free platform setup, 2% of transaction fees, and lets a winery launch a site within two hours of signing up.
5Forests — Polly Hammond and Robert Joseph launched The Real Business of Wine with many of the industry’s best professionals to share best practices, expert opinions, and challenges.
OpenTable — OpenTable entered the wine industry to add a much needed vehicle to bring customers to tasting rooms that will be amazing after the pandemic ends. But to help the industry they extended “free OpenTable for wineries” several times, each time there was a new lockdown. Currently, it’s free to wineries through to March 31, 2021. Wineries also get software and marketing for free and then from April 1 onward, it’s just a month to month agreement.
Also, they added a “carousel” on the diner search so consumers can find wine tasting experiences just as quickly and easily as they can search for restaurants.
VingDirect — Lindsay Kana and Tammy Boatright built a free online class as part of their curriculum. They also led key round tables with wineries to share ideas, successes, and challenges to help weather the storm.
The artist formerly known as Emetry (now Pix Analytics) — We donated our analytics software to 10 wineries for free and worked as hard as we could to enable them to use data. Our team helped build campaigns, data sets, and more.
Avalara — created a COVID webinar to educate wineries on all the changes, relief, and other measures that were put in place as a result of the pandemic.
Me personally — I spent weekends and nights working for free for four wineries, to help them with digital transformation (with variable success). Of the four I worked with, here were the themes of three of them. Overall, the greatest barrier to success was the lack of staff; e-commerce and DTC expertise in wine is now one of the most competitive categories in the industry.
I’m sure there are other examples of vendors going the extra distance to help wineries. If you’re a vendor that gave back, please comment below.
Leadership and collaboration
2020 also was a year that we saw, for the first time in a long time, meaningful collaboration across vendors. Without question, Commerce7 led the charge; they established an app marketplace and added 45 integrated partners. They also consulted with many of their partners to create true solutions, versus just integrations. Andrew’s spirit of full transparency shines through on their documentation site where they added over 200 updates to their system, including innovations around subscription clubs, estimated delivery dates (upfront), Pix Analytics, and personalization tools. They clearly lead all other wine e-commerce platforms in feature development and R&D.
A collaboration we were intimately involved with was the advanced marketing automation program built by 5Forests to leverage data insights to increase sales, called New Day. They started with Pix Analytics data as a collaboration but the program was built to work with other smart data sources.
5Forests also collaborated with Commerce7 to build an industrial WordPress integration to ensure wineries have the best SEO and seamless experiences between the CMS and e-commerce journey.
WineShipping and Commerce7 listened to customer pain points and built an estimated delivery date into their integration so that consumers could better understand when their wine would be delivered.
TreeFrog Digital built multiple widgets to help bridge the gap between Commerce7 and Help Scout, Shippo, and the antiquated AMS system.
Bloom a software, design, and creative services firm has developed a wine specific ecommerce solution for wineries on the Shopify platform and was catapulted into the industry spotlight as the platform powering Empathy. Empathy, now a Constellation brand and led by Jon Troutman, is definitely pushing them to innovate.
Avalara, under Jeff Carroll’s leadership, has evolved into a strong competitor to Sovos. We’ve seen advancements in their API’s, their ecommerce integrations, and their partnership with the Wine Institute to power the rules portal for all.
This year we also added new categories led by innovation: SMS, DTC packaging, and Discovery Platforms.
SMS has been an underutilized and underserved communication tool for wineries. Vimbibe was built by Highway29 Creative as a secondary offering and it will be interesting to see if it scales to the needs of the industry.
We were particularly excited to see new packaging built for branded DTC unboxing and simultaneously meant to lower shipping waste from Citadel Casing.
DTC Wine Packaging
Sharing is Caring
The culture of sharing, passed down to us from Robert Mondavi, permeates our culture and is one of the magical things about the wine industry. Last year saw the greatest knowledge sharing yet in the industry and there are key reports that every winery should add to their annual reading list.
Yet there’s no question that SVB’s annual report is the keystone of the industry. Every year, they work tirelessly to identify the key macro trends that influence our industry for the year to come. If you are a winery, please, please take the time to fill out their survey. They also are redesigning the DTC version of the report for 2021 and I look forward to the transformation.
take the time to fill out their survey. They also are redesigning the DTC version of the report for 2021 and I look forward to the transformation. For years the Shipcompliant report has illuminated the compliance landscape and some macro shipping trends.
Last year Wine Glass Marketing shared the macro results of email marketing for their clients. If you want to understand email behavior, read it.
Jason Haas has always been a great leader, sharing insights into the successes and challenges of his business. This year he shared a helpful guide for wineries trying to establish their DTC go-to market strategy.
The Digital Blend Awards
For the last three years, the number one question wineries have had after reading this post has been: “What softwares/companies should we put together?” While we’ve shown an *example* technology stack, we are not in the business of recommending vendors with this report although we know that wineries are looking for examples of successful technology stacks. So taking a cue from “The Stackies” we’re partnering with a few key companies this year to host the Digital Blend Awards in August. In essence, wineries can submit a visualization of their DTC software stack to help guide other wineries on successful implementation to model. We’ll announce details and the prize in the coming months but since we are emulating the Stackies, take a look to see how their awards work.
Emetry Analytics is now Pix Analytics — FREE ANALYTICS FOR ALL WINERIES AND WINE RETAILERS
Emetry has changed our name (we inherited that strange moniker) and has added a major focus to our business beyond customer insight software. But we fundamentally believe in data, segmentation, and customer insights for increased sales and retention. In fact, we believe in retention more than ever and hope that wineries build better methodologies to ensure they have long term, healthy relationships with their customers. And our analytics offering, which we’ve developed over two years, and which we will continue to enhance and improve, is now Pix Analytics. Even more importantly, we believe in data and retention so much that we are giving away our Pix Analytics Lite to any winery or retailer using Shopify (Bloom), WineDirect, or Vinsuite. We’ll also be adding VineSpring in 2021. If you want more information or to turn on the software, just email me directly.
Not to leave out Commerce7, who have invested heavily in their customers and who have licensed Pix Analytics Pro for ALL OF THEIR CUSTOMERS. This enhanced version gives key benefits to maximize the data in both systems for marketing automation, improved insights, and prioritized customer service.
Pix
I’d like to introduce you to Pix. Our vision has grown beyond just data analytics and it’s our goal to unlock wine online for consumers and wine sellers. Too many wine platforms have focused on inserting themselves between wineries’ and retailers’ DTC businesses. There is still, however, a very important need for a consumer app/site that helps consumers at the point of purchase. We are building that wine discovery platform.
We are in closed Beta through April. If you are a winery that wants to be listed and have access to a whole new group of wine buyers, please email us.
We’d also love for you to be a beta tester since we know that winery people also drink a lot of good wine. Sign up at Pix.wine.
The Golden Age of Wine Online
The genie is out of the bottle and investments from wineries, platforms, vendors and infrastructure, coupled with changing consumer behaviors, means that online wine sales are now a real thing and have tremendous potential. We are entering a new era of hope and light from the darkness of 2020. I, for one, am beyond elated to see wineries move online and witness the benefits it will bring to our industry and wine community. | https://medium.com/@pmabray/the-2021-dtc-vendor-flywheel-43810dcf5475 | ['Paul Mabray'] | 2021-05-24 22:54:33.168000+00:00 | ['Ecommerce', 'Wine', 'Dtc', 'Wine Industry'] |
What Makes a Great Remote Company? The RemoteRated Factors | We built RemoteRated.com to be totally focused on the factors that make or break a remote company. While no rating system can be exhaustive, we feel confident that with a few key facets accounted for that our ratings can provide a coherent and insightful sense of a company’s remote health and competence. At the very least, it’s a good start!
So what exactly does it mean to be “RemoteRated?” What criteria do we believe matters, and why? We’re sharing this today to help others think about their own strengths and weaknesses, and to hear from the remote work community — what did we miss? What do you disagree with? We want to hear from you!
Our assessment is pretty simple, we provide equal weight to leadership, transparency, career-opportunity, and benefits.
Remote Leadership: Managing people is hard, managing and leading them from afar is even trickier. This criteria invites raters to consider: How engaged and effective are management? How supported do remote workers feel? How clearly are goals and objectives defined and managed? Is work-life balance considered?
Managing people is hard, managing and leading them from afar is even trickier. This criteria invites raters to consider: How engaged and effective are management? How supported do remote workers feel? How clearly are goals and objectives defined and managed? Is work-life balance considered? Remote Transparency: Transparency around objectives, decision-making, strategy, and issues are all critical for teams to function with efficiency and trust. This criteria invites raters to consider: Are decisions communicated clearly and in a timely manner? Does the company use clear metrics/objectives to establish goals and direction?
Transparency around objectives, decision-making, strategy, and issues are all critical for teams to function with efficiency and trust. This criteria invites raters to consider: Are decisions communicated clearly and in a timely manner? Does the company use clear metrics/objectives to establish goals and direction? Remote Career Opportunity: Growing a career means different things to different people, but broadly involves title upgrades, promotions, raises, increases in responsibility, skill development, and visibility. This criteria asks raters to think about: Can people grow their skills and expertise working for this company? Is talent recognized and rewarded? Does the company hire and promote from within?
Growing a career means different things to different people, but broadly involves title upgrades, promotions, raises, increases in responsibility, skill development, and visibility. This criteria asks raters to think about: Can people grow their skills and expertise working for this company? Is talent recognized and rewarded? Does the company hire and promote from within? Remote Benefits: The challenges and needs of remote employees are different than traditional office employees, and great companies recognize this fact. This criteria focuses on considerations like: Does the company provide support to set up home offices? Are things like internet or phone bills subsidized or covered? Do team members get support to learn or travel for work?
The challenges and needs of remote employees are different than traditional office employees, and great companies recognize this fact. This criteria focuses on considerations like: Does the company provide support to set up home offices? Are things like internet or phone bills subsidized or covered? Do team members get support to learn or travel for work? Remote Policies: We know that it’s valuable to see what exactly a company offers as far as policies, support, and benefits are concerned, so RemoteRated.com lays them out in clear terms.
We know that it’s valuable to see what exactly a company offers as far as policies, support, and benefits are concerned, so RemoteRated.com lays them out in clear terms. Remote Stack: We wanted to capture and share the tools and products that companies are leveraging to work. We think this is important for two reasons: 1) We want to help people learn from best practices and trends, 2) We know that in some cases, tech-stack and tool-set mismatch can be a source of stress, so we want to drive transparency to prevent this from being an issue.
We would love for you to add your rating to a company on RemoteRated! If the company isn’t already there, create the company profile in just a few short minutes (we’ll give you a Starbucks gift card to say thanks!) | https://medium.com/@remoterated/what-makes-a-great-remote-company-the-remoterated-factors-4d5c2f7b0a57 | [] | 2021-03-09 19:38:31.853000+00:00 | ['Best Practices', 'Remote Learning', 'Digital Nomads', 'Remote Work', 'Remote Working'] |
How to Shop With a Newborn Without the Overwhelm. | I heard horrible stories about mothers sent away from shops by angry clients because the baby was insistently crying. I knew someone that stopped shopping altogether because of the nasty looks she would get every time she pushed the pram inside the local store.
It is shocking and inexcusable.
I have never been sent away, but I did have to deal with the ‘judgy’ looks and the mean comments; they hurt so much, especially in the very beginning. I loved my baby wholeheartedly, but I had no idea how to make her stop crying; those people made me feel unworthy as a mother. Let me rephrase that, those people didn’t do anything to me, I felt unworthy as a mother.
I knew babies cry, but I had no idea how much; Luna could scream for 8 hours a day, it was nerve-wracking and heart wrenching at the same time, and it didn’t allow much space to do tears-free activities.
Shopping did bring so much fear and anxiety; I remember dreading the queue at the counter to the point I would break a sweat whenever I noticed Luna’s little feet moving underneath the blanket. I needed a solution, and pronto.
I felt so ashamed, and I thought it was just me. I had to listen to Brenee Brown podcast a couple of times until her message stuck with me: I had to embrace the un-coolness of it all.
“It’s about the willingness to be imperfect, to be vulnerable. It’s about the courage to wake up in the morning and acknowledge that no matter what gets done and what doesn’t get done, that I’m enough and that I’m worthy of love, belonging, and joy. Those are irreducible needs for humans(Brown, B 2017)”.
I had to let go of control; I couldn’t switch on/off my daughter’s emotion, but I could choose to be there for her while making life easier for myself.
And this is what I have learned:
Order online. This is the best thing I have done since giving birth to my little love: doing my shopping online. As I discussed before, I don’t particularly like shopping, as I take a long time to sass out new products, and I end up leaving the supermarkets without the items I really need. The same goes for clothes shopping. I hate trying items on or having a caring sales assistant asking me what I’m after. And those fitting rooms are always so gloomy and tiny.
I didn’t trust the online thing in the beginning, and now I swear by it.
Go the weekend to the farmers market. Although I don’t particularly like to shop, I really do enjoy spending time at the farmers market; I feel like I’m contributing to the all ‘km zero, slow food movement’; moreover, I shop organic, I support the local farmers, and I normally enjoy a cup of warm chai while Luna runs free between one stall and the other. It’s fun, it creates community, and most of the time (if you go for what’s in season), it is cheap.
Shop when the baby is asleep. I used to dread shopping when Luna was awake; feed-poop-cry alert. Every time I stepped inside a supermarket, she automatically started crying for some reason. I’m sure the drop in temperature and the bright lights didn’t help, but a leisurely stroll would quickly turn into a rushing nightmare. On top of it, people felt really free to chip in with their thoughts “she is crying because she is cold, hungry, overdressed, underdressed” “Why is she crying?” and the best one “Can you make her stop?”.
I wish I had the correct answer for all those questions, but the reality is that I felt ashamed, judged, and I just wanted to leave the shop as soon as I could.
I then started shopping when she was asleep, and the process became so much easier.
At the moment I’m still buying online, but if I have to go to the shop last minute and she cries, I let her express her needs; and if someone is bothered by it, I make sure to follow them until the constant screaming oblige them to leave the store bags free. Sweet, old, revenge.
Go when both bellies are fed. Going to the store hungry is dangerous for a ravenous breastfeeding mother, as much it is for a starving toddler in desperate need of a snack. Fed the baby and yourself and then do the shopping; you will save so much money because of it, and you will end up buying only the items you need, without the unnecessary “junk”.
Prepare a list. When I was single I used to enjoy roaming around the isles of a supermarket looking for the latest products and dreaming about possible recipes. My little bubba has quickly changed that careless mentality. Now, whenever I have to shop, I make a list and stick to it. That’s when shopping online works really well, as most websites allow you to replicate the most recent shopping list. That little trick saves me a good half an hour of my precious playing-with-Luna time. On top of it, you don’t have to trust your sweet baby brain.
Say thank you. And this rule applies to any other moment throughout the day. If someone makes comments about your baby, the way he/she is dressed, the tears, the giggling…whatever! Just thank them, smile and walk away. Mama, you have no time to deal with people that aren’t keen to support you. You are going through a lot already, so put your earplugs on and wear a t-shirt that says “Good vibes only”
Smile back at other mamas. It doesn’t matter how old your child is, and what challenges you are going through; every other parent has experienced more or less the same. Although they look like they have everything figured it out, smile at the others mamas (and papas). It’s a nice way of saying “Yep, I get it, you are nailing it, and it’s going to be SO fine”. | https://medium.com/postpartum-motherhood-and-mental-sanity/how-to-shop-with-a-newborn-without-the-overwhelm-7eba82fc1bc0 | ['Claudia Vidor'] | 2019-05-25 21:31:00.988000+00:00 | ['Postnatal', 'Newborn', 'Toddlers', 'Motherhood', 'Parenting'] |
This Life-Long Journey | My personal growth began at an early age (although I do not know the exact age I was when it began) with the rejection of racism and bigotry that dwelled so openly in my family. Their hatred toward ‘others’ made no sense to me. At that time, I just knew it was wrong and ugly and I wanted no part of it. It continued all through grade school and high school as I embraced those who were shunned for their disabilities, race, sexual orientation, and ‘weirdness’. I didn’t join cliques because I was developing an all-inclusive mindset and many of the school cliques were exclusive — if you aren’t just like us, then you have no worth. I had purposefully put myself in the ‘others’ column and would remain there my entire life.
I began to measure my personal growth by placing myself in other people’s shoes. If I could gain understanding, compassion and empathy for them, then I knew I had grown in some small measure. If I couldn’t understand them, I would work on how to still send them love while holding firm to my personal beliefs of inclusivity. This allowed me to continue to grow. Sometimes, my growth would stagnate as I wrestled with my emotions toward those I couldn’t understand.
This has been my challenge these past five years as I have witnessed people pledging fealty to a narcissistic conman. I understand Trump’s behavior since I’ve studied narcissism for nearly twenty years now. I also understand his racism, bigotry and misogyny because of the home I grew up in. What I have not been able to understand is how his followers cannot see past his ‘charm and charisma’ and continue to support him. It has been a struggle to not put them in their own ‘others’ column. I want to believe their is goodness inside everyone, even if they project hatred and ugliness on the outside. It has only been through the practice of Hoʻoponopono that have I been able to spread love to them.
“Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.” – Jean Vanier
My growth didn’t take a giant leap forward until I realized that although I could easily see flaws in others, I hadn’t really paid much attention to my own flaws and weaknesses. It wasn’t that I thought I had none. On the contrary, I knew I had many and wanted to avoid working on them. Instead, I would just try to be a better version of myself each day. This would prove more difficult as my mental health began to wane in my early thirties. I now had to deal with my own ‘shit’ in order to survive the deep depression that was becoming all consuming and this has been an ongoing process for nearly twenty-five years.
These days, I measure my personal growth by how I react to stressful situations, how I allow my own and other people’s negativity to affect me, how well I deal with my own laziness and procrastination, and how well my personal mindset of the world around me changes and grows. If I can react from a place of love, light and peace, then I know I’ve grown. If I can keep from getting anxious or frustrated at my own procrastination, then I’ve grown. And if I can remain positive about the world around me instead of letting negativity consume me, then I’ve grown.
I realize this journey of personal growth is never-ending. For every few steps forward I make, I know sometimes I will take a few backwards. It’s a daily process and life-long learning tool. And it is worth it to be a better person, to be kind and courteous, and to be loving and giving.
© 2020 Lori Carlson. All Rights Reserved. | https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/this-life-long-journey-a3adcdf7e7e4 | ['Ravyne Hawke'] | 2020-12-15 07:31:32.864000+00:00 | ['Prompt', 'Self Improvement', 'Personal Growth', 'Essay', 'Writing'] |
Introducing Dcrypt | The world’s first desktop platform for trading and managing crypto investments
Investing in the crypto asset space is very much a fragmented and cumbersome endeavor. Trading requires managing multiple exchange tabs, while a lack of data transparency makes tracking performance statistics next to impossible.
As avid crypto investors, we wanted immediate, direct access to the most fundamental aspects of our portfolio, but we found that the requisite tools were either siloed or nonexistent.
Our solution is Dcrypt, a comprehensive desktop platform where investors can trade cryptos, manage their portfolio, and research the market in one unified experience. | https://medium.com/dcryptinc/introducing-dcrypt-718fa48451a6 | ['Patrick Depippo'] | 2018-01-24 18:18:35.730000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Trading', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Exception Handling in Python | What is Exception and Exception Handling ?
Suppose you are travelling from your house to office but in the midway your car get punctured hence your car will stop this scenario is called Exception.Now Mechanic will come and repair your car and you will reach office and process of repairing the puncture is known as exception handling.
How dangerous is it not to use Exception Handling ?
In 1996 flight 501 resulted into Catastrophic Explosion and hundreds of people were killed,because the airline company has avoided exception handling policy of aborting computation on arithmetic error.
why programmer should use Exception Handling ?
i.> Without Exception Handling :- Let you have written a code and there is some runtime error in code then that error will not allow kernel to operate next set of code.
ii.> With Exception Handling:- Again there is some runtime error in code but with the help of Exception handling kernel can operate next set of code(avoiding code with some error).
How we can write it in Python ?
In Python except block comes with try block;
# syntax of code looks like
try:
#write the code you think is disasterous
#......................
#......................
Except Exception as e:
print(e) #it will print the kind of error present in code
If there will be any error in code then except block will be executed and if there will be no any error in code then try block will be executed.
#Take teo variable a,b print(a/b) run the code till both the value
#will be taken integer otherwise print the exception while True:
try:
a=int(input())
b=int(input())
c=a/b
print(c)
break
except:
print("Invalid input")
continue [out]>> 12
akhil
Invalid input
Anand
Invalid input
12
10
1.2
Can we use multiple Except block within single try block ?
yes we can use multiple except block within try block.These except block would be in hierarchy.
#using multiple except block within single try block try:
a=int(input())
print(a/0)
except IOError:
print("This is an i/0 error")
except ValueError:
print("You have taken Invalid Error")
except ZeroDivisionError:
print("Error occured because variable is divided by Zero") [out]>> 12
Error occured because variable is divided by Zero
Can we use nested try ->Except block ?
yes , we can use nested try ->except statement but with certain observation.let if outer try block will fail it will go directly to the outer except block. If we want want to run inner try -> except statement then it is compulsory to be no error in outer try block code.
#nested try except try:
a=int(input())
b=int(input())
c=a/b
print(c)
try:
d=int(input())
print(d*2)
except:
print("You have taken invalid input")
except:
print("You should again check your input") [out]>> #when outer try statement fails
12
Akhil
You should again check your input
#when outer try statement run and inner try statement fails
12
2
6.0
Akhi
You have taken invalid input
Explain try -> except -> else -> finally
Else statement will be executed only when try statement will execute sucessfully.And finally statement has no such criteria if we will take finally ststement it will execute with every execution.
try:
a=int(input())
b=int(input())
c=a/b
print(c)
except:
print("You have given invalid credentials")
else:
print("it will be excuted when try block will execute")
finally:
print("It will execute every time") [out]>> #when try block will be executed sucessfully
34
12
2.8333333333333335
else will be excuted when try block will execute
finally will execute every time
#when try block will not be executed sucessfully
12
Akhil
You have given invalid credentials
finally will execute every time
can we create own exception ?
Yes we can create own exception which is known as custom exception.This can be done with the help and inheritance property.
#creating my own exception
#let's create any number divisible by 1 will give OneDivisionError class OneDivisionError(Exception):
pass
try:
a=int(input())
b=int(input())
c=a/b
print(c)
if b==1:
raise OneDivisionError
except OneDivisionError:
print("This is User created exception") [out]>> 12
1
12.0
This is User created exception
Note:-Exception Handling doesn’t work with syntactical errors.i.e:-it will not work with indentation error.Exception Handling majorly works on run time error.
References:-
iNeuron,stackoverflow | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/exception-handling-in-python-881a4fec70c3 | ['Akhil Anand'] | 2020-08-06 12:12:28.097000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Exception Handling', 'Python Programming', 'Python3'] |
Vuex 4 — Dynamic Module Registration and Logging | Photo by Antonio Grosz on Unsplash
Vuex 4 is in beta and it’s subject to change.
Vuex is a popular state management library for Vue.
Vuex 4 is the version that’s made to work with Vue 3.
In this article, we’ll look at how to use Vuex 4 with Vue 3.
Dynamic Module Registration
We can register modules after the store it’s created with the store.registerModule method.
For example, we can write:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue@next"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/dist/vuex.global.js"></script>
<title>App</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="app">
<button @click="increment">increment</button>
<p>{{doubleCount}}</p>
</div>
<script>
const moduleA = {
state: () => ({
count: 0
}),
mutations: {
increment(state) {
state.count++;
}
},
getters: {
doubleCount(state) {
return state.count * 2;
}
}
}; const store = new Vuex.Store({}); store.registerModule("moduleA", moduleA);
const app = Vue.createApp({
methods: {
...Vuex.mapMutations(["increment"])
},
computed: {
...Vuex.mapGetters(["doubleCount"])
}
});
app.use(store);
app.mount("#app");
</script>
</body>
</html>
We called the store.registerModule method with our module name and object to register the module.
Then we can use it in our components like any other module.
Plugins
We can create and use plugins in our store.
To do this, we just create a function that takes the store parameter and do something with it in the function
For example, we can write:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue@next"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/dist/vuex.global.js"></script>
<title>App</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="app">
<button @click="increment">increment</button>
<p>{{doubleCount}}</p>
</div>
<script>
const myPlugin = (store) => {
store.subscribe((mutation, state) => {
console.log(state);
});
}; const store = new Vuex.Store({
state: () => ({
count: 0
}),
mutations: {
increment(state) {
state.count++;
}
},
getters: {
doubleCount(state) {
return state.count * 2;
}
},
plugins: [myPlugin]
}); const app = Vue.createApp({
methods: {
...Vuex.mapMutations(["increment"])
},
computed: {
...Vuex.mapGetters(["doubleCount"])
}
});
app.use(store);
app.mount("#app");
</script>
</body>
</html>
We called subscribe with a callback that has the mutation and state parameters.
mutation has the data of the mutation being committed.
state has the current state of the store.
Built-in Logger Plugin
A logged plugin is provided by Vuex 4.
To use it, we call the createLogger function.
For example, we can write:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue@next"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/dist/vuex.global.js"></script>
<title>App</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="app">
<button @click="increment">increment</button>
<p>{{doubleCount}}</p>
</div>
<script>
const store = new Vuex.Store({
state: () => ({
count: 0
}),
mutations: {
increment(state) {
state.count++;
}
},
getters: {
doubleCount(state) {
return state.count * 2;
}
},
plugins: [Vuex.createLogger()]
}); const app = Vue.createApp({
methods: {
...Vuex.mapMutations(["increment"])
},
computed: {
...Vuex.mapGetters(["doubleCount"])
}
});
app.use(store);
app.mount("#app");
</script>
</body>
</html>
to use it.
We called the Vuex.createLogger method to return the logged plugin, which we pass into the plugins array.
The method takes an object with some properties which we can use as options.
They are various filters.
For example, we can write:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue@next"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/dist/vuex.global.js"></script>
<title>App</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="app">
<button @click="increment">increment</button>
<p>{{doubleCount}}</p>
</div>
<script>
const store = new Vuex.Store({
state: () => ({
count: 0
}),
mutations: {
increment(state) {
state.count++;
}
},
getters: {
doubleCount(state) {
return state.count * 2;
}
},
plugins: [
Vuex.createLogger({
collapsed: false,
filter(mutation, stateBefore, stateAfter) {
return mutation.type !== "foo";
},
actionFilter(action, state) {
return action.type !== "foo";
},
transformer(state) {
return state.subTree;
},
mutationTransformer(mutation) {
return mutation.type;
},
actionTransformer(action) {
return action.type;
},
logActions: true,
logMutations: true,
logger: console
})
]
}); const app = Vue.createApp({
methods: {
...Vuex.mapMutations(["increment"])
},
computed: {
...Vuex.mapGetters(["doubleCount"])
}
});
app.use(store);
app.mount("#app");
</script>
</body>
</html>
to set the actions.
filter lets us filter the mutation or state to log.
actionFilter lets us filter actions by action or state properties.
transformer lets us transform the log output.
mutationTransformer lets us transform mutations log output.
actionTransformer lets us transform our actions log output.
logActions is a boolean to let us log actions if it’s true .
logMutations lets us log mutations if it’s true .
logger lets us set the logger we want to use to do the logging.
Conclusion
We can register Vuex 4 store modules dynamically.
Also, Vuex 4 comes with its own logger. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/vuex-4-dynamic-module-registration-and-logging-60db113a5bb3 | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2020-12-27 18:35:44.405000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Programming', 'Software Development', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript'] |
Best Web Designers in Hyderabad 9866468486 | Business Website Features below
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Writing Home page content & taking approval from client
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We will show total website design to client then we will finishing changes in site then we will host the site.. | https://medium.com/@sateeshv/best-web-designer-in-hyderabad-9866468486-best-web-design-agency-in-hyderabad-d0075b78ecc5 | ['Skumar Vunukonda'] | 2020-12-21 11:09:03.925000+00:00 | ['Website Design', 'Websitedesign Hyderabad', 'Webdesign Hyderabad', 'Web Design', 'Web Development'] |
Welcome Back Darkness | SPIRITUALITY
We’re old friends now.
Photo by Alexander McFeron on Unsplash
Darkness… my beloved friend. Most, if not all things, begin their life in darkness; seeds, humans, mushroom, animals and on. My life often chooses to be reborn within and along side Darkness. The great tragedy is not that Darkness comes, it is that we are never taught how to make it our friend. How to welcome it, honor it and even nurture it.
I think of Darkness now as a soul friend, my Anam Cara, that shows up at my house every once and a while for a visit. When she comes I drop everything for her. We stay up all night talking and then nap during the day. We eat lots of food together. We indulge in memories of laughter and tears. I get out my best china, linens and whiskey for her. I draw her long, hot baths and we take walks. We listen to music and I share my writing with her. I ask others to welcome her too, and give us time. I also leave her be now and again. We both need our space.
Sometimes I’m pissed at her because she shows up unannounced, with a bunch of bags, and I have to make room quickly. It’s rude, but she inevitably reminds me that I was the one who extended an open invitation. I ultimately forgive her no matter how demanding she was because she brings me such beautiful, one of a kind gifts. She never leaves me unchanged. She always leaves me stronger; more focused on myself, reacquainted with the value of rest, contemplation and solitude. When she leaves I shed some tears, wish her well, shower her with thank you kisses and say, ‘come back anytime.’
© Kathryn A. Dickel | https://medium.com/pollinate-ritual/welcome-back-darkness-2f71190c7fe9 | ['Kathryn Dickel'] | 2020-12-30 22:30:06.658000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Self Care', 'Self', 'Depression', 'Mental Health'] |
5 Reasons To Quit That Dream Job That Became A Nightmare | 1. IT’S A NIGHTMARE!
Sometimes we really need things spelt out for us. We kind of do this dance in our heads thinking that it isn’t as bad as we think it is and we should be thankful for what we have. Don’t get me wrong, we MUST practise gratitude but we also MUST practice being honest with ourselves.
The fact is you likely wouldn’t be reading this if you loved your job. You wouldn’t have clicked the title above if you were truly content and fulfilled within the position you’re currently in. The moment we can find honesty within ourselves and admit things to ourselves that we wholeheartedly know to be true is the moment we really begin living and living on our own terms.
So, reason number 1 to leave that shitty job… it’s shitty.
2. You’re Standing In Someone Else’s Opportunity
I know it tends to be hard to think about other people when we’re so caught up in our own mental messes caused by the very things we’re doing to ourselves BUT it remains to be true that we are actually in a good position, however, the position is for someone else.
When I was working as a Student Success Coach at a local community college, I had a strong realization one morning when I was ironing my khakis:
I’m voluntarily taking myself to slaughter.
It hit me very hard at that moment that there wasn’t anyone holding a gun to my head and forcing me to go to this job that I hated. I was doing it to myself. Within a few weeks of that epiphany, I quit the job and was on my way from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to live in my dream city of Los Angeles, California.
If you’ve ever read The Alchemist there’s a quote that says, “…when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” And that is exactly what happens when we act regardless of our fear. Things will fall into place that you never realized even had to fall into place.
A short time after leaving that job someone else filled the position and it worked as a springboard for him to move into an executive director role within the school.
When you get out of your way, you will also get out of someone else’s way.
3. There Is Something So Much Bigger And Better Waiting For You
You’re always told that the grass isn’t greener on the other side. But I’m here to tell you that when the grass you’re currently standing on is shit-brown, then the grass is definitely greener on the other side.
If you’re dreading coming to work tomorrow and you haven’t even finished today’s workday then that’s when you have to make a decision. The decision to stay and bring on self-inflicted misery or the decision to leave and step into that great void of unknown.
There will always be fear associated with the latter decision but at the same time, there will be this needle-point size of peace in your heart that lets you know you’re making the right move. There is something better waiting for you and that something is a you that’s brave and in control of your own life. Along with that brave new-you comes better career choices and the beautiful freedom to make your life your own.
After a short time in California — and 700 applications later — I secured full-time work at the University of Southern California. Current admissions scandals aside, at the time this was an experience of me going from working in a small community college to working at one of the most prestigious universities in the country. A university I thought I’d only experience through the movies it was mentioned in.
This is the result of taking flight regardless of fear.
4. It’s Actually Taking A Toll On Your Health
There is something to be said about seeking peace in this life. My bachelor’s degree is in Biology and I’m going to call on some of that right now.
When we consistently experience stress, there is — not surprising — a stress hormone that’s released called cortisol. The reason for this is rooted in the evolutionary make-up of our bodies. When our bodies sense stress signals on the outside, the same signals are sent on the inside that essentially says it’s time to get the hell out of here.
Now there may not be a saber-toothed tiger staring us down but rather a micro-managing boss — biologically, the effect on our body is the same. If my telling you that I have a degree in this stuff is not enough, have a look at this article by the Mayo Clinic. They’re pretty reliable.
Some of the side-effects of having this overabundance of cortisol levels are high blood pressure (hypertension), increased heart rates (tachycardia), anxiety, depression, and basically just hating your life.
So, if you’d like to hate your life less and lower that BP, walk away from the origin of your angst.
5. You Deserve To Live A Life You Want To Live
This is a big one because for some reason we are all really prone to thinking we deserve way less or nothing good at all. Maybe just reading that headline made you a bit uncomfortable. It kind of made me uncomfortable to write because I’m human and experience the same doubts that you do. But I’ve been practicing for a long time telling myself that I do deserve good things in life. I do deserve to enjoy the work I do. I do deserve to feel that I’m living a meaningful life. I do deserve to love the life I’m living. And you deserve it too.
It’s not easy to get to this thought process as we are naturally negative in our thinking. “Oh, that’s for someone else… I could never do that… Well, he had more resources than me… She’s prettier than me…”
All of that negative self-talk usually happens without our even noticing it. When we actively practice saying things like — “I deserve this… I can’t wait to be in that place… I am good enough to do this.” — it shines a light on those false thoughts we have about ourselves and ultimately destroys them. Here’s the thing though, at first it sounds foolish. At first we don’t actually believe what we’re saying to ourselves but with more and more practice and speaking truth over those lies we will begin to see ourselves as we should… Capable of anything.
You’re capable of anything.
You’re especially capable of walking away from something bad to find something very good. | https://medium.com/illumination/5-reasons-to-quit-that-dream-job-that-became-a-nightmare-494ec93a14db | ['Mark Craven'] | 2020-12-15 14:22:37.210000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Life Lessons', 'Self Improvement', 'Leadership', 'Self Help'] |
Vulnerability : A 2020 Theme. As we approach the end of what for so… | As we approach the end of what for so many of us has been a year to remember, I can’t help but to think that the collective experience of 2020 has been “Vulnerability”.
The covid-19 pandemic’s impact has been insidious and felt in so many parts of our daily lives. It has brought to the forefront concerns about our health, the health of loved ones, finances, domestic life and careers. Some countries shut down whilst others remained defiantly “normal” mimicing the variety of individual choice. I don’t need to explain it to you, you’ve experienced it and continue to.
With racial tension and misinformation trying to out do their cousin covid, it’s no surprise we feel fatigued. It’s been a mental and emotional rollercoaster; we have felt raw, exposed and dare I say it again, vulnerable.
I’ll be presumptious and say that most of us have a complex relationship with vulnerability, I certainly do. Interestingly (to me at least) it’s not because I believe vulnerability is disempowering; it’s not that it’s uncomfortable to share my pain, my embarrassment, or suffering. Its the opposite in my case, I am uncomfortable displaying the fullness of my hopes, my dreams, my joy, love and excitement. I have a tendency to mute these things, perhaps its a fear of failure, a fear they won’t be everlasting, who knows, I’m sure my therapist and I will get to the bottom of it soon!
With so much uncertainty laying ahead of us, with us experiencing distrust in our politicians, healthcare and all the other smarty pants, how is your vulnerability showing up? How are you engaging with it? Is it holding you back or motivating you? In March of this year I threw my hands up and sat on my vision for several months but as happens when we practice awareness, when we tap into a higher state of consciousness, we gain clarity. I’m confronting my resistance to vulnerability, this full moon I surrendered to my worthiness to be vulnerable and simultaneously empowered, I implore you all to do the same.
"Vulnerability is the only authentic state. Being vulnerable means being open, for wounding, but also for pleasure. Being open to the wounds of life means also being open to the bounty and beauty. Don’t mask or deny your vulnerability: it is your greatest asset. Be vulnerable: quake and shake in your boots with it. the new goodness that is coming to you, in the form of people, situations, and things can only come to you when you are vulnerable, i.e. open.” — Stephen Russell
Over the next few weeks I want to introduce you to some amazing healers and coaches, first up will be my beautiful soul sister Aine Zyon, the creator of Spinning Chakras, I wont spill all the tea now, go find her on instagram.
Stay blessed. | https://medium.com/@thisiskikelomo/vulnerability-a-2020-theme-b23a7ec15deb | ['Kimberly Fagbenle'] | 2020-12-02 10:05:22.413000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Vulnerability', '2020'] |
Gabriel the Archangel Throughout Salvation History | Saint Gabriel is most well-known by Christians as the angel who announced the coming births of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ in the first chapter of Luke. Yet he has a number of other scriptural and traditional appearances, as well. He is considered to be among the order of archangels, alongside Raphael and Michael. Though there exist many angels and heavenly spirits, these three archangels comprise three of only five angels named in the Bible (the other two being the demon Abaddon/Apollyon and Satan himself). Though Catholics tend to hold Saint Michael in the highest esteem and are often most devoted to him among the angels, Gabriel is arguably the most important of the three named archangels due to his mission’s continuous closeness to our Lord.
Angel or Archangel?
First of all, what is an archangel? The Church traditionally considers there to be a whole hierarchy of heavenly spirits, with archangels and angels occupying the “lower” end of the hierarchy. “Angel” means “messenger,” and so an “archangel” is a “chief messenger.” Saint Gregory the Great explained this in the sixth century:
Angels are called those who announce things of lesser importance, Archangels those who announce the most high. This is why it was not an Angel, but the Archangel Gabriel whom God sent to the Virgin Mary. In such a ministry, indeed, it was fitting that the greatest of the angels should come and announce the greatest news. — Homily 34, Pope St. Gregory I
It is noteworthy that Gabriel (along with Raphael) is never actually referred to as an archangel in the canonical Scriptures; only Michael is given that title in the Bible with certainty. Gabriel is only referred to as an angel in the text. However, it is reasonable to assume that Gabriel holds this distinction as well. Firstly, as Saint Gregory says above, if an archangel is one who delivers particularly important messages, then what angel is more worthy of the title than he who announced the Incarnation of Christ Himself?
Secondly, Raphael appears to hold a particular significance among angels, a significance apparently shared by Gabriel. Raphael calls himself “one of the seven, who stand before the Lord” (Tobit 12:15, DRA). Gabriel later refers to himself with similar language, saying to Zechariah, “I am Gabriel, who stand before God” (Luke 1:19, DRA). It seems that Gabriel is also one of these seven “important” angels Raphael speaks of.
Thirdly, a connection between Scripture and liturgy implies that the Church’s Tradition has long considered Gabriel and Michael to be in the same rank in the hierarchy. Gabriel is said to be “standing on the right side of the altar of incense” (Luke 1:11). Curiously, the same language is used for Michael instead of Gabriel in the traditional Offertory prayers of the Mass:
Through the intercession of Blessed Michael the Archangel, standing at the right hand of the altar of incense, and of all His elect may the Lord vouchsafe to bless this incense and to receive it in the odor of sweetness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. — Missale Romanum, 1962
If Michael is known through Scripture to be an archangel, and occupies the same “position” as Gabriel, then it makes sense that Gabriel would also be considered an archangel.
Gabriel’s Messages to Daniel
The first named appearance of Gabriel in the Scriptures is in the book of the Prophet Daniel. In chapter eight, Daniel receives a vision of a rampaging ram being destroyed by a one-horned goat. The goat’s horn was then replaced by four horns, one longer than the others, which knocked many of the stars from the sky and took away the continual burnt sacrificial offering from before the Prince of the heavenly host. The angel Gabriel was then sent to Daniel to interpret this vision:
“Understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end… As for the ram which you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. And the he-goat is the king of Greece; and the great horn between his eyes is the first king. As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power. And at the latter end of their rule, when the transgressors have reached their full measure, a king of bold countenance, one who understands riddles, shall arise. His power shall be great, and he shall cause fearful destruction, and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people of the saints. By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall magnify himself. Without warning he shall destroy many; and he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes; but, by no human hand, he shall be broken.” — Daniel 8:17, 20–25 (RSV-CE)
Gabriel’s interpretation of Daniel’s vision reads like a prophecy both of upcoming historical events (the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great and its aftermath) and of the apocalypse (“the time of the end,” the casting down of the stars as in Revelation 12, etc.).
Gabriel returns in the following chapter to deliver a prophecy of Jerusalem’s desolation and, fittingly, of the coming of the Messiah:
“Seventy weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off, and shall have nothing; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war; desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week; and for half of the week he shall cause sacrifice and offering to cease; and upon the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.” — Daniel 9:24–27 (RSV-CE)
Gabriel Announces the Immaculate Conception
The Protoevangelium of James is not considered canonical, inerrant scripture. Nevertheless, a good deal of its content was adopted as Catholic tradition, including the names of Mary’s parents (Saints Joachim and Anna) and the Presentation of the child Mary at the Temple (which is celebrated as a feast day on November 21). So although it is considered apocrypha and not an apostolic text, much of its narrative is held in high esteem by the Church. In the Protoevangelium, Joachim and Anna pray for a child in their old age. Unnamed angels are sent to respond to their prayers:
And, behold, an angel of the Lord stood by, saying: “Anna, Anna, the Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth; and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.” And Anna said: As the Lord my God lives, if I beget either male or female, I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God; and it shall minister to Him in holy things all the days of its life.” And, behold, two angels came, saying to her: “Behold, Joachim your husband is coming with his flocks. For an angel of the Lord went down to him, saying: ‘Joachim, Joachim, the Lord God has heard your prayer. Go down hence; for, behold, your wife Anna shall conceive.’” — Protoevangelium of James
There is a tradition that the primary messenger among these angels was Gabriel himself. For example, a version of events similar to the one in the Protoevangelium appears in the seventeenth century private revelations to Venerable Mary of Ágreda:
The holy archangel Gabriel humbled himself before the throne of the most blessed Trinity, adoring and revering the divine Majesty in the manner which befits these most pure and spiritual substances. From the throne an intellectual voice proceeded, saying: “Gabriel, enlighten, vivify and console Joachim and Anne, our servants, and tell them, that their prayers have come to our presence and their petitions are heard in clemency. Promise them, that by the favor of our right hand they will receive the Fruit of benediction, and that Anne shall conceive a Daughter, to whom We give the name of MARY.” — Sister Mary of Jesus of Ágreda, Mystical City of God, Vol. 1, Chapter XIII, trans. Fiscar Marison
Gabriel Foretells the Births of John and Jesus
Gabriel’s next named appearances in the Bible are both in Luke 1 (previously discussed in more detail here). He is sent first to the priest Zechariah to tell him that his wife Elizabeth will, despite her lifelong infertility, conceive a child who will be the Messiah’s forerunner. When Zechariah expresses doubt, he is struck mute at Gabriel’s word until the child, John the Baptist, is born. Some months later in the same chapter, Gabriel most famously appears to the young Mary to announce her virginal conception of the Son of God by the overshadowing of His Holy Spirit.
After realizing his betrothed has become pregnant, an unnamed angel comes to Saint Joseph in a dream:
[A]n angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” — Matthew 1:20–21 (RSV-CE)
As in the Protoevangelium, there is a tradition that the unnamed angel is in fact Gabriel:
Yet though Joseph think on these things, let not Mary the daughter of David be troubled; as the word of the Prophet brought pardon to David, so the Angel of the Saviour delivers Mary. Behold, again appears Gabriel the bridesman of this Virgin; as it follows, “Behold the Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph.” — Pseudo-Augustine
Although the Bible itself does not confirm the identity of this angel, is it not fitting that the archangel who has at least thrice foretold the coming of Christ (first to Daniel, second to Zechariah in relation to the Messiah’s forerunner John, and third to Christ’s own mother) should be the same angel who entrusts the coming Christ to His foster father Joseph?
“The Annunciation” by Fra Angelico
Other Possible Appearances
An old Divine Office hymn for the feast of Saint Gabriel from the Dominican Breviary, called “O robur Domini”, sings of Gabriel’s various scriptural appearances. Two verses in particular preserve yet more traditions that identify unnamed angels with Gabriel.
One verse claims that Gabriel is the angel who announces the birth of Christ to the shepherds near Bethlehem in Luke 2:8–14:
Good shepherds of the night / Heard angel voices sing, / As thou [Gabriel] didst come in light / Tidings of joy to bring / For them and all the earth: / That God, the King of might, / Hath taken form by human birth. — “O robur Domini”, translation from The Hymns of the Dominican Missal and Breviary, ed. Aquinas Byrnes, O.P.
Another verse identifies Gabriel as the angel who strengthened our Lord before His Passion during His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane in Luke 22:43:
To Christ, when in His prayer / Great pain turned sweat to blood, / Thou didst bring strength to bear / God’s anger in full flood / Let loose upon His Son — / The Son He would not spare / Until the Holy Will was done. — “O robur Domini”, translation from The Hymns of the Dominican Missal and Breviary, ed. Aquinas Byrnes, O.P.
Gregory Palamas, a fourteenth century post-schism saint of the Orthodox Church, preserves a tradition that the “angel of the Lord [who] descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it,” whose “appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow,” (Matthew 28:2–3) who announced Christ’s Resurrection “was, after all, that same angel of the Annunciation, Gabriel” (Homily of Gregory Palamas For the Sunday of The Myrrhbearing Women).
(There is some controversy over how Catholics should view Gregory Palamas. On one hand, he was canonized by the Orthodox, not the Catholics, after the Schism; and some of his theology is controversial to say the least from the western point of view. On the other hand, he is still liturgically commemorated by some Eastern Catholics, and Saint John Paul II held him in some esteem. Regardless of this Orthodox saint’s status in Catholicism, he did not inherit this view of Gabriel as the angel of the Resurrection from nowhere.)
Gabriel’s Horn
Saint Paul the Apostle teaches that Christ’s Second Coming will be announced by an archangel and a trumpet:
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. — 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 (RSV-CE)
Nowhere in Scripture indicates who the trumpeting archangel is. Yet it should come as no surprise by now that at some point a tradition arose that just as Gabriel announced Christ’s First Coming, he will be assigned to ring out His Second Coming. In 1375, the “proto-Protestant” John Wycliffe implied that Gabriel would be the trumpeting archangel in a turn of phrase:
And men must needs see here, that their priest bindeth man above earth, when he bindeth man after God, and not for the flesh, nor for covetousness. And so this pope should teach men that he bindeth thus above earth, and neither in the earth, nor under the earth, but according to the keys above. But this will he never teach, before that Gabriel blows his horn. — John Wycliffe, De Ecclesiae Dominio
(Regardless Wycliffe’s heretical views, he lived in the thoroughly Catholic context of fourteenth century England. As with Gregory Palamas, his mention here of Gabriel is really unrelated to his non-Catholic views, but rather indicative of a tradition he likely inherited rather than pulled from thin air.)
Interestingly, all the way across Europe in Armenia, evidence of belief that Gabriel is the archangel of 1 Thessalonians can be found in a manuscript illustration from 1455, showing an image of him trumpeting as the dead rise:
“Dining in Paradise and the Resurrection of the Dead” (Walters MS W.543, fol. 14r)
The fact that an identical tradition existed in fourteenth century Catholic England (preserved by Wycliffe) and in a fifteenth century Armenian Orthodox monastery (preserved in the manuscript illustration) seems to indicate some currently unknown common source of this tradition from a previous date. This is reasonably strong evidence that Gabriel is indeed Paul’s archangel.
Conclusion
God created Gabriel, alongside all other angels and heavenly spirits, before He created time and space. Gabriel’s mission was to announce the coming of the Messiah, a mission he would begin carrying out centuries before Christ’s birth, most notably in his messages to the prophet Daniel. In preparation for the Incarnation, he foretold the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin to her parents. Later, he promised Zechariah that he would have a son, John the Baptist, who would be given the similar job of being the Messiah’s forerunner and preparing the Jewish people for Jesus’ life and preaching. Soon thereafter, Gabriel told the Blessed Virgin that she would miraculously conceive the Son of God and give birth to Him, and also encouraged Saint Joseph to be Jesus’ foster father. After Jesus’ Nativity, he revealed the world-changing event to humble shepherds. Due to his close connection to Christ’s coming, it was fitting that he was there to comfort and strengthen Him before His Passion. Then, just as He first announced Christ’s birth, he became the first to announce His Resurrection. Finally, how suitable it is that Gabriel will also be the one to announce Christ’s Second Coming, just as he did the First.
As Christians, we have a common apostolic mission to preach Christ and Him crucified and risen to the world. We should pray often for Saint Gabriel the Archangel’s help and intercession in this mission, which follows from his. His name signifies “Strength of God;” through his prayers may we be strong in our faith and prepared for our Lord’s return.
Gabriel is celebrated alongside Michael and Raphael on the Solemnity of St Michael and All Archangels on September 29.
He is celebrated on his own feast day in the Extraordinary Form on March 24, the eve of the Annunciation. | https://medium.com/catholicism-coffee/gabriel-the-archangel-throughout-salvation-history-catholicismcoffee-c056fc802f8b | ['Joe Calabrese'] | 2020-12-16 09:59:34.756000+00:00 | ['Christianity', 'Christmas', 'Religion', 'Saint', 'Catholic'] |
The Power of Your Thoughts, Feelings, and Imagination | The Power of Your Thoughts, Feelings, and Imagination
This is one of my new favorite quotes! It’s written on the inside of my new mug that is in this picture! :)
Your thoughts, feelings, and imagination have so much power. They all have the power to contribute to the way you see the world and the way the world reacts to you in return.
The quote, by Buddha, at the top of this article, is a perfect visual of this phenomenon. Therefore, in order to explain what this means, the best way I can, I will break it down by using the sentences in the quote.
“What you think, you become.”
Your thoughts are the most powerful of the three, in my opinion. Thoughts are like food for your mind. Your thoughts nourish the mind. If you think more positive thoughts, you will have a better outlook on life and more confidence in your abilities. If you think more negative thoughts, your outlook will be more pessimistic or victim-like and you will have low confidence in your abilities.
Furthermore, what you tell yourself (self-talk) will reflect how you see yourself, others, and the world. The energy around your thoughts gets released into the world around you. You can only go as far as your thoughts go.
This is similar to limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are false beliefs that prevent us from achieving our goals and dreams, whether that be something small or big. An example of a limiting belief would be, “no one will ever love me” or “I could never start my own business”.
When you allow these types of thoughts to build up, you begin projecting them onto the world. The only way to turn these negative thoughts around is to get to the root of them. This may involve asking yourself questions like, “why am I thinking this? Is it true? What am I afraid of? Have I tried it? What is the deeper issue causing this thought?”
Then when you have discovered where the thought is coming from you can work on changing your perspective around them. For example, “no one has loved me yet” or “I haven’t been able to start my own business yet”.
It is important to catch your negative thoughts while they are happening so you can flip the script at the moment. You will become the person your thoughts say you are so work on being kinder to yourself so you can be a kinder person.
“What you feel, you attract.”
This is similar to the law of attraction in philosophy. The law of attraction is the belief that positive and negative thoughts/feelings will bring positive or negative experiences into a person’s life.
Everything is energy and energy mirrors each other. You are the source of your own energy meaning that what you feel can be picked up by other people and your environment around you. This is why you may be able to feel when your significant other or a close friend is sad, they elicit a specific type of energy that we pick up on.
If you feel sad or angry in your life or feel this towards the world you will attract that energy from your environment. Therefore, the only way to break the cycle is again, work on understanding where it is coming from and then change your perspective.
“What you imagine, you create.”
This ties into what I said about the thoughts and feelings. For example, if you imagine your dream career but don’t believe you can do the work to get there, then you won’t. If you feel like the world is out to get you and nothing good will happen to you, then your dream career definitely won’t either.
Everything is connected, like what I said about our energy. Just imagining it won’t create it. You have to believe you can and feel like it is possible in order to create it.
To understand how to get from where you are now to where you want to be, you need to imagine it so you can have a better understanding of the steps you need to take. That way whenever you find yourself in a new project, relationship, etc. you can see if it lines up with your goals to check if you are staying on or off track.
This also goes for more short term things such as how a project will look or how a conversation will go. It’s not to say that it will go exactly as imagined, but by putting that energy out there it is more likely to be mirrored back to you in some form. However, you also have to release any attachments to what you imagine so that you aren’t disappointed if it doesn’t go the way you imagined it would. | https://medium.com/@skylarrae/the-power-of-your-thoughts-feelings-and-imagination-6bc76947b0cb | ['Skylar Rae'] | 2020-12-21 19:02:56.684000+00:00 | ['Law Of Attraction', 'Thoughts', 'Buddha', 'Mental Health', 'Perspective'] |
7 Holiday Marketing Ideas for Flower Shops | With the 2021 holiday season quickly approaching, it’s time to prepare a flower shop marketing plan to capture your share of local holiday spending. Capitalizing on major holidays like Christmas and Hanukkah — which are responsible for about 25% of annual cut flowers sold — is key to maximizing your shop’s revenue, but there are countless other moments over the next few months to take into account. From Thanksgiving to high school formals, any gathering this season can benefit from festive flowers and greenery.
While holidays are important for flower shop sales every year, they could bring in more sales than usual in 2021. Supply chain shortages are expected to make devices and other gifts hard to find, turning locally bought flowers and houseplants into the perfect gift choice this December. To get you started, we’ve assembled a list of florist marketing ideas for the upcoming holiday season and several other timely events to take into consideration.
Holiday celebrations to consider in your flower shop marketing plan
Major December holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza tend to steal the spotlight, but there are plenty of other occasions that bring families and friends together during the final few weeks of the year, including:
Thanksgiving : A delicious Thanksgiving meal isn’t complete without a beautiful tablescape. Warm fall colors — like orange, yellow, and red — are dependable choices for a Thanksgiving arrangement, but softer colors like sage and terracotta can evoke a modern feel and pique customers’ interests. Pair blooms like roses, lilies, or mums with eucalyptus or feather leaf acacia to achieve this gentle palette.
: A delicious Thanksgiving meal isn’t complete without a beautiful tablescape. Warm fall colors — like orange, yellow, and red — are dependable choices for a Thanksgiving arrangement, but softer colors like sage and terracotta can evoke a modern feel and pique customers’ interests. Pair blooms like roses, lilies, or mums with eucalyptus or feather leaf acacia to achieve this gentle palette. New Years: New Years is best celebrated with sparkling colors, so make a few arrangements that shine, complete with glitter and metallic elements. You can also market these as a great gift to bring the host of a New Years party in lieu of champagne.
New Years is best celebrated with sparkling colors, so make a few arrangements that shine, complete with glitter and metallic elements. You can also market these as a great gift to bring the host of a New Years party in lieu of champagne. School performances: December brings a slew of school performances across all age levels, from elementary school concerts to high school band, choir, and theatre shows. Families will need bouquets to give to their young artists, and schools will need decorations for their stages and hallways.
December brings a slew of school performances across all age levels, from elementary school concerts to high school band, choir, and theatre shows. Families will need bouquets to give to their young artists, and schools will need decorations for their stages and hallways. School formals: School dances are often scheduled around the holidays, creating a great opportunity to market corsages and boutonnieres to the parents of middle school and high school students.
School dances are often scheduled around the holidays, creating a great opportunity to market corsages and boutonnieres to the parents of middle school and high school students. Office parties: Corporate holiday parties will be on the rise this year now that more workers have returned to the office. With in-person holiday parties comes the opportunity for branded arrangements made with company colors, as well as more traditional party decor, like garlands, poinsettias, and table centerpieces.
Corporate holiday parties will be on the rise this year now that more workers have returned to the office. With in-person holiday parties comes the opportunity for branded arrangements made with company colors, as well as more traditional party decor, like garlands, poinsettias, and table centerpieces. Engagements: According to WeddingWire’s 2020 Newlywed Report, December takes the cake for engagements, with 19% of couples surveyed proposing or being proposed to during this month. Consider partnering with local jewelers to give discounts on floral arrangements to customers buying wedding rings. When they plan on popping the question, they’ll remember to reach out for flowers to complement their engagement photos or to set the scene of their big day.
Reminding customers how flowers can brighten up these seasonal events is a smart way to boost revenue, but the list of florist marketing opportunities doesn’t stop there. There are plenty of occasions that call for a little holiday cheer, making it the perfect time to get creative with the marketing ideas below.
Florist marketing ideas and tactics this holiday season
Now that you know when customers may need your services this holiday season, what else can you do to catch their attention and distinguish yourself from the competition? We’ve assembled a list of seven marketing tips to help you boost flower sales and grow your customer base over the next few weeks.
1. Design an eye-catching storefront display
A floral shop staple, creating a beautiful window display is the perfect way to get the attention of new and repeat customers. In addition to drawing eyes to your shop, a window display shows off your team’s tremendous talent. Consider rotating a few different displays over the holidays to keep things looking fresh, from a menorah display complete with shades of blue and white to red poinsettias and a mini Christmas tree later in the month.
A window display also poses a chance to have fun with your work and get people talking. Traditional colors are always appropriate, but unexpected ones can catch passersby’s eyes in a sea of reds and greens. Swap reds for whites for a snowy floralscape, or add seasonal produce like oranges and pomegranates for a warm, rustic feel.
2. Boost your shop’s web presence
Between 2014 and 2019, online flower shops grew by 11%. As more and more consumers look to the web for their next bouquet or floral arrangement, a strong online presence is key to expanding your business.
How can you improve your website’s SEO to reach more prospective customers online? Starting a blog, for one, can be a great way to capture leads and get people on your website. By blogging about topics you know best, like seasonal blooms or what arrangements work best for different events, you can establish your expertise on the web and capture Google searches.
While you’re at it, don’t forget to optimize your business’s Google Maps listing. Take some time to make sure your storefront’s information is up to date and your pictures are flattering, so customers can easily find your website and offerings.
3. Launch a social media campaign
Social media is an important way to reach customers in today’s digital age, and allows you to express your fun and creative side. Because floral arrangements lend themselves beautifully to fun videos and gorgeous photo shoots, establishing a presence on visual-heavy platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest allows you to showcase your work to its full potential.
While these apps can generate plenty of leads, it’s also good practice to have a presence on Yelp, an important avenue for you to connect with customers by responding to their reviews of your business. A Facebook page is also helpful, as it creates a way for customers to tag you in their arrangements for their friends and family to see.
4. Tap into DoorDash florist marketing tools
If you’re looking to connect with the modern consumer, DoorDash’s tools for flower shop marketing are another helpful solution. DoorDash’s Ads & Promotions feature, in particular, can help you reach local customers through sponsored ads on the DoorDash platform as they search for gifts this holiday season.
By placing your shop at the top of related search results in the DoorDash app or on the DoorDash homepage, Ads & Promotions gives your business a boost in visibility. Better yet, you’ll only pay for confirmed orders placed, and businesses that use promotions see up to a 20% increase in DoorDash sales.
5. Host a workshop or event
According to Momentum Worldwide, 76% of global consumers prefer to spend money on experiences rather than material goods. There’s no better way to cater to their interests than by offering an experience of your own. Classes or events, for example, are a popular and lucrative way to expose more potential customers to your business while spreading some holiday cheer.
First, decide on what type of event you’d like to host. Some customers may enjoy learning how to build a festive wreath for their door or a beautiful floral arrangement to give away as a gift, while others may prefer a flower-filled gathering for a picture with Santa and sipping some hot cocoa.
In addition to getting visitors into your store to see your products, workshops and events can be a conversation starter. Encourage attendees to mention your events to coworkers, family, and friends with referral-based promotions or by asking them to tag your company with their wreaths and arrangements on social media, spreading the word about your brand just in time for peak holiday shopping season. You can also offer coupons so that customers can give the experience of attending one of your workshops as a gift — another reliable gifting idea with supply chain delays on the horizon.
If you don’t have time to arrange a class, remember that you can strengthen customers’ in-store shopping experience through simple customer service tactics, like learning peoples’ names and remembering them next time they come in. Be friendly and create a welcoming atmosphere that will encourage people in your community to stop by.
6. Offer promotions and discounts
Looking for a timeless florist marketing idea? With 88% of consumers using coupons in 2020, promotions and discounts remain a mainstay for many business owners. Creating time-sensitive promotions can generate a sense of urgency that some customers need to pick up their holiday flowers and cross items off their to-do lists.
To start, decide what your promotion is going to be and how you’re going to get the word out. Buy-one, get-one corsage deals, holiday discount coupons, and free upgrades on qualifying purchases, like reusable vases or jars with a bouquet purchase, are all enticing options. The possibilities are seemingly endless, as are the ways to inform customers of them. If you have a loyalty program or listserv of prior customers, you can send the coupons to their emails. If not, advertise them on social media or leave paper flyers at other businesses around town.
7. Partner with local businesses and organizations
Reaching out to local businesses and brainstorming ways to work together is a smart tactic for reaching more members of your community. Is there an event you can organize, or one that’s already been scheduled by your town? From holiday markets to Small Business Saturday events, community-wide gatherings are the perfect opportunity to share your customer base and connect with patrons of other local businesses.
Events beyond the business community also pose an opportunity to expand your reach. Providing flowers for the parade in town, for instance, or helping to decorate the tree in the park for an annual lighting ceremony, puts your work in front of a large audience and can get your talents noticed.
The holidays also bring a number of charitable events, which you can contribute to by donating your floral arrangements, time, or other resources. You’ll tap into new customer bases and, as an extra perk, receive an automatic mood booster for doing a good deed.
Capture new business this holiday season
Your floral arrangements have the potential to bring even more cheer into customers’ lives this holiday season, and better marketing means more people can enjoy your beautiful work. By signing up with DoorDash flower delivery, you can reach new customers seeking same-day flower and plant delivery in your area.
Searching for more florists marketing ideas and tips on growing your florist business? Explore top flower delivery trends on our blog for more inspiration. | https://medium.com/@sparkybill8/7-holiday-marketing-ideas-for-flower-shops-84bf280ef57e | ['Sparky Bill'] | 2021-12-20 12:05:12.748000+00:00 | ['Flowers Online', 'Buisness', 'Flowers', 'Flower Delivery'] |
Get Prepared for College and Beyond…for Free | Get Prepared for College and Beyond…for Free
In a video produced by KENS5, Admit Guru was featured as a free resource for high schoolers looking to get ahead. When asked about the goal of the non-profit, Sravya Vishnubhatla responded, “It aims to make education accessible to everyone, everywhere.”
Ricardo Rosales revealed that through their tutoring, their students have been able to raise their scores by 15%. Additionally, many testimonials were previewed within the video.
One student stated,
“I’m really thankful for this program, since I know that I would not have done this exam prep as extensively if I did not have this program holding me accountable.”
Another student echoed these remarks, claiming,
“It was very helpful for me to recall some concepts that I’d forgotten or that I never knew. It also helped me identify my areas of weakness.”
Ricardo Rosales is from San Antonio himself, so he was able to connect with the news station about giving back locally to his community.
Thank you again, KENS5 for the feature!
To keep up to date with Admit Guru™, check out our website and sign up for our newsletter. | https://medium.com/the-college-admit-guru/get-prepared-for-college-and-beyond-for-free-2e66ade84c33 | ['Admit Guru'] | 2020-12-09 05:30:48.090000+00:00 | ['Headlines', 'College Prep', 'High School', 'News', 'College'] |
Education Ecosystem Community Competition : Win a Tesla | The Education Ecosystem is running an internal community competition where community members can participate and win prizes. First prize is a brand new Tesla Model 3 for one lucky ICO contributor and there are plenty of other prizes to be won.
1st Prize : Tesla Model 3
2nd Prize: 50,000 LEDU tokens
3rd Prize: 50 Nano Ledger S Hardware wallets
4th Prize: LEDU cups, tote bags, etc.
1st Prize: Tesla Model 3
Participation requirements:
i) You must be an ICO contributor.
ii) You must be a member of one of our Telegram group chats:
English group chat: https://t.me/ledu_token
Chinese group chat:https://t.me/liveedu_chinese
iii) You must NOT have sold more than 20% of your ICO purchased tokens.
If you contributed either in the pre-sale or main sale, your email address which is registered on the dashboard will be used as your unique ID in the drawing. Each contributor will be awarded one point by default, but they can carry out certain activities to gain more points and increase their chances of winning the car: “Proof of Care for Binance and Huobi Community Voting”.
One point means one vote. For each additional point you will get your name added again to the drawing. You can get as many points as you want. NO LIMIT.
If you invite a friend to join the Telegram chat that has a Binance account and that person votes for LEDU token in the community voting round you will get two points.
For Huobi you will get one point.
Points are only awarded after the invited friends show proof that they voted.
Click here to register.
2nd Prize: 50,000 LEDU Tokens
If you qualify for the 1st prize you automatically qualify for the 2nd prize.
Requirements:
i) Follower of our Twitter account https://twitter.com/ledu_tokens
or
ii) Member of one of our Telegram group chats:
English group chat: https://t.me/ledu_token
Chinese group chat: https://t.me/liveedu_chinese
iii) You must NOT have sold more than 20% of your ICO purchased tokens.
Click here to register.
3rd Prize: 50 Ledger Nano S Wallets
Requirements:
i) Creative “Proof of Care”: Show the Education Ecosystem your proof of care in any creative way can you think of. The best 30 ideas will be voted on by the community in our Telegram chat.
ii) Add the LinkedIn URL and email of your friends who you think are suitable for the open Education Ecosystem jobs and live in the target locations.
iii) Recommend project creator friends who you think would create great projects for one of the eight topics.
One Ledger Nano S Wallet per winner.
Click here to register.
4th Prize: LEDU cups, tote bags, etc.
Requirements:
i) Member of one of our Telegram group chats:
English group chat: https://t.me/ledu_token
Chinese group chat: https://t.me/liveedu_chinese
Click here to register.
Conditions
An individual is limited to only one prize. If you win two prizes you will be awarded the higher tier prize only.
If it is discovered that you cheated you will be disqualified. If you were identified as a scammer in the ICO, you are automatically disqualified.
Get LEDU Coins
Get LEDU coins now on Exrates, BitForex, Livecoin, Mercatox and IDEX or join the LEDU OTC Trading program for large purchases. Read more about LEDU coins on their project page and ask any questions you might have in their Telegram group chat. | https://medium.com/ledu-tokens/education-ecosystem-tesla-competition-37a95363ab9 | ['Dr. Michael J. Garbade'] | 2018-10-03 17:10:41.321000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'ICO', 'Ethereum', 'Education'] |
Working as a software engineer on an internal product Vs a customer-facing one in E-commerce companies | Working on software systems is usually a complex process if not a complicated one. In this post, I am going to highlight the key differences between working for internal software and customer-facing applications with examples related to E-commerce. I have worked with both internal products and customer-facing applications in the past 8 and a half years. Without further ado, let’s get started.
Why e-commerce examples?
E-commerce has been around for decades now. I have worked for fashion e-commerce companies for the past 8 years now on 2 continents. Unsurprisingly, due to COVID-19, many brick and mortar businesses have been forced to jump on the e-commerce bandwagon. This has created many new opportunities. Smaller companies could live with services like Shopify or one of its competitors like Wix. This would result in no or minimal software development.
Businesses with an appetite for in-house software development can even start with something like woo-commerce, Magento, Odoo, or similar. But, at a scale of millions of customers, cookie-cutter generic solutions might not be the best fit.
Either it is too much work to get things customized well or hammering the screw is not a path you want to choose for your business. Therefore, having custom-built solutions that can scale well with business demands is crucial for commercial success.
Assumptions
Having worked for fashion e-commerce companies with lots of internal systems, I assume that many e-commerce companies work the same way.
Examples and experience will be based on physical products especially related to fashion.
I had written about working as a software engineer for a dev shop/agency vs a product company in the past, it should be a good read too. Let’s look at what are internal products and customer-facing applications.
What is an internal product?
Simply put, an internal product is a product used only by the employees of a company. In the case of e-commerce, any software system that is used to do back-office operations will qualify as an internal product.
Some of the examples of internal products include order management system, picking and/or packing applications. software systems to book parcels with couriers, software to manage returns, etc are also internal applications.
What you see from the outside world as a customer is just the tip of the iceberg. There will be many software systems used internally by e-commerce companies to make your purchase experience better.
Even before a product (SKU) is visible on the catalog pages, it would have passed through multiple internal systems. For instance, it would be uniquely identifiable on the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. If there is a buying software in place, that SKU would be visible and accessible there too.
In case there is a production and/or studio management system, that same SKU will exist there as well for the imagery and text contents of the product.
After the purchase, there will be a suite of internal applications to make sure the product reaches the customer easily. From systems that send the order to the EPR, software that talks with couriers to even systems that track customer’s returns.
There will be a web of internal products not directly visible to the end customer. On the other hand, there will be some software systems that are available for use to end customers, let’s learn what they are.
What is a customer-facing application?
Any application used by the end customer can be referred to as a customer-facing application. First and foremost, the website customers use to browse through the catalog and buy is an important customer-facing application.
Another must-have customer-facing application these days are native mobile apps that serve a similar purpose as the website. By now, it is clear anyone browsing or buying from the e-commerce website is a customer or lead for the website.
Depending on how the e-commerce company breaks down its software services there can be many customer-facing applications.
For instance, the wishlist can be a standalone application on its own. The cart can be another application that works in tandem with the other related customer-facing parts. The catalog can be a big independent application on its own with the search capabilities inside it. Checkout, the money earner can also be another software application.
Any application the end customer has direct access to qualifies as a customer-facing application. Ranging from the catalog page to the return page used by the customer to request a return.
Customer-facing applications will work closely with internal applications to provide superior service to the end customer.
Time to be informed of the difference between working as a software engineer on these two sides of the spectrum.
The differences in working on internal applications vs customer-facing ones
Now let’s dig more into the differences between working as a software engineer on internal applications and customer-facing ones.
Fewer performance and scalability considerations for internal applications
As software engineers, we always have to be conscious of the performance impact of our architecture and code decisions. These performance impacts have a higher value for customer-facing applications compared to internal ones. An internal application being 100 milliseconds slower won’t have a big impact. On the other hand, if say the checkout is 100 milliseconds slower, that would be a big concern.
Of course, this in no way promotes writing poor performing code for internal applications. Still, even if you would want to do the refactoring of code, performance upgrades in 1–2 weeks from now it will not hurt the business much.
Another aspect is the load the application will receive. For internal products, it will be predictable as the number of users or usage patterns will be clear. For an open to the whole world customer-facing application, you could potentially get millions of users in a day. This means those millisecond/microsecond optimizations will need some careful consideration for customer-facing applications compared to internal products.
Similarly, the scalability of the application also comes into play at this point. Customer-facing applications will be provisioned more resources to make it more scalable as the load is difficult to predict. Usually, internal applications run on much fewer resources as they don’t get hit millions of times a day.
Customer-facing applications are more security sensitive
Depending on your customer base, a customer-facing application can be accessed by anyone in the world. Conversely, an internal product’s users are limited. Because of this, access to the application can be behind a VPN/firewall or even allowed a group of IPs. With all of this network-level filtering in place, the application-level security can be a bit relaxed for internal products.
On the other hand, as a software engineer, you will have to be on your toes for customer-facing applications. Even though the attack vector may be similar but the people who could try to attack is a lot more.
This is where knowledge of OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities will come in very handy for you.
Security is everyone’s responsibility. In no means or form, I am suggesting to write less secure code for internal applications. The only thing is the cost and blast radius of a security breach of an internal product will be lesser than a customer-facing one. This is surely subject to people’s intentions if an employee does a security breach on a customer database from an internal product that is a completely different scenario to process.
Minimal use of feature flags, A/B testing, and gradual rollouts on internal applications
As per my experience, I have never seen an internal application being A/B tested. The reason is simple: you can just go to the user and have a chat to come to a better decision. As the users are limited and within the same organization you can even ask the user to use a certain browser or software. Once, we deployed a go executable on like 10 photographers’ Mac to be able to upload images to S3 much faster. There was no need for an A/B test there. Another reason not to do A/B testing for internal products is the limited scale which will result in skewed results due to low volumes.
There is a similar situation for using feature flags. It will be needed now and then but not all the time. I have also rarely witnessed gradual rollout like 1% of the users for the first week, then 5% next week and slowly going to 100% on internal products.
On the contrary, for customer-facing applications especially for e-commerce A/B testing is like an agreed norm. Many times one user will see the checkout button “green” but another sure will see it “blue”.
Similarly, feature flags are used a lot more for customer-facing applications. In my own experience, when I first added PayPal to our website back in 2012 it was only available for 2 emails initially, then it went live for all company emails. Only after a couple of days of testing, we released it to everyone.
I share a similar experience with gradual rollouts on customer-facing applications. One instance I remember is we changed our payment gateway. After a lot of rigorous testing on staging, the first time it was released to production was for just 1% of the customers. Gradually next week it came to 5%. After some fixes, it went to 10, and to reach 100% it took about a month or so.
In terms of measuring impact, internal products are easier. Internal products work on one of these two objectives. Either enable to do a thing or optimize (like speed) of something by X%. On the other hand, customer products have multiple complex metrics. The metrics can range from NPS, conversion rate to return rate, etc. While one metric is improved another metric might be hampered along the way.
Customer-facing applications get more UX love
Customers are the money payers and they should “enjoy” using our websites and mobile apps. Contrastingly, employees who use the internal product, it is part of their jobs. Internal products are built to make their lives easier so the UX love is somewhat missing on them.
This certainly does not equate to that all internal products must lack the UX factor. I am just sharing my personal experience from the past 8–9 years of working in e-commerce. Once we built an internal application that was built on bootstrap. I am not saying bootstrap CSS is bad in any way.
My point here is that in that project we didn’t even have a dedicated UX person for designs. The frontend engineers pieced together the app and it was ready to go. Of course, it made the user’s life much easier and their work much faster. Still, some UX love would have been the cherry on the cake.
On the flip side, customer products usually have a dedicated UX person. This person does research, thinks through how the customer will use this new feature. S/he probably even interviews some customers to get the feedback and make that app/feature a UX gem. Making that button round or square is a decision. Showing the message on top or beside the product is another factor. I won’t be wrong if I say customer-facing applications get much more UX attention and work than internal products and honestly it is deserved too.
Another reason internal products don’t get much of the UX love is “personas”. While customer-facing apps cater to different personas with varied needs, internal products have usually one persona trying to get their job done.
Conclusion
The main thing to comprehend is both internal products and customer-facing applications make the overall customer experience better. Don’t focus on only one part, having one of the best checkout experiences but delivering the item after 30 days does not make sense.
Strengthen both sides of the coin. Internal products and customer-facing applications are like two wheels of a chariot. If one fails the chariot can only go in circles leading to nowhere. I hope as a software engineer, you get to work on amazing products on both sides with world-class software engineering practices in place. | https://medium.com/quick-code/working-as-a-software-engineer-on-internal-product-vs-a-customer-facing-one-in-e-commerce-companies-644d70e4438d | ['Geshan Manandhar'] | 2020-11-23 17:03:04.681000+00:00 | ['Ecommerce Web Development', 'Ecommerce', 'Software Development', 'Web Development', 'Software Engineering'] |
Baby Sleeping Miracle | This is the quickest… simplest… scientifically validated way of solving the sleeping problems of your infant… once and for all.
Let’s look at what you’re going to find in “Baby Sleep Miracle”:
1. Why do you never feed or rock your child to sleep and what to do instead?
2. The secret of refilling the Love Tank of your child and keeping him out of the breakdown lane for good
3. How to relieve the built-up anxiety of your child in 5 minutes flat
4. Even if he’s cranky and clingy and everything else has failed, the 7-steps to put any child to sleep
5. The shocking trick of the California Institute of Technology to raise your child’s secret sleep hormone to doze-off levels-100% drug-free and healthy at any age
6. And much, much more!
TIPS and TRICKS
#1 to Get Your Baby to Sleep
Now that you know what not to do, let me give you some advice that will help your baby sleep instantly. The first tip here is: Laugh together. No, it’s not a joke or some strange therapy. Contrary to the key reason your child does not sleep, Laugher is your most strong ally: Stress You see, for your baby, the world is a scary place. Most things he does not understand and therefore anxiety and stress build up throughout his day. And it keeps him awake or triggers horrific nightmares when it’s time to sleep. It’s no wonder he wakes up weeping! The psychologist Dr. Laura Markham calls it the “Emotional Backpack” of the infant. And nothing can help them alleviate stress more easily than a good laugh.
Later in this presentation, I’ll share the best ways to make your child laugh.
This trick was put to the test by Roberta Edwards and here’s what she wrote to me: “Mary-Ann, you really know what you’re talking about with that tension relief! My 14-months-old used to wake up 6 to 7 times before midnight. But now that he gets his giggles in he sleeps up to 9 hours straight. It’s truly a miracle. You’re the best!”
https://rb.gy/9ur1ua
#2 to Get Your Baby to Sleep
The second tip is about a common mistake that I was guilty of. It’s about getting your kid to go to bed late,
You’d think he would be tired of making it simpler for you. But you couldn’t be more wrong
And if your child is up longer than he should, stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol flush his body.
And right before bedtime, they keep him going like a double espresso, sabotaging all efforts to put him to sleep. Let it never come so far!
Your child’s ideal bedtime depends on his age and I’ll tell you all the specifics in a bit.
#3 to Get Your Baby to Sleep
But let’s talk about tip #3 first. And several of my peers, when I tell them about it, laugh at me. It is totally counter-intuitive, since And still, it’s completely real, absolutely true. Not in a peaceful setting, but in a noisy one, your child falls asleep the fastest. It sounds unbelievable, I know… but hear me out. Since I am not making up for this. It is a scientific fact that has been proved in a little-known analysis carried out by the Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in London
https://rb.gy/9ur1ua
Now, bear in mind that Dr. Daniel Moran and his colleagues are not just talking about some noise here. It’s a special noise, and if you play it with your little one, he’ll feel comfortable and happy and almost immediately fall asleep. Maureen Simons explains the reaction of her baby this way:
“My five-month-old Tammy was so clingy and needy that we never thought she would sleep without holding and rocking her to sleep. But it was as if someone had turned a switch when we put your miracle sounds on. All of a sudden, within minutes, Tammy was giggling and calming down, and she even fell asleep shortly after. If I had not seen it through my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. Hey, thank you. Hey, thank you. Thank you!”
I would like to acknowledge that my article include so affiliate link from Click bank.
https://rb.gy/9ur1ua | https://medium.com/@babymiracle/baby-sleeping-miracle-24359cb9162e | ['Tuli Erasmus'] | 2021-02-12 12:23:55.025000+00:00 | ['Baby Sleep Routine', 'Baby', 'Baby Sleep Training', 'Baby Care', 'Baby Sleep Miracle'] |
Dating Tips During Lockdown for all Zodiacs! | Yes, we know this is difficult for everyone who is in a relationship or has recently started dating someone and now couples have to spend time apart owing to the recent global pandemic. This can be a testing time for many couples as long distance can break the routine for many, and most of us may not even know what all needs to be done to keep the spark and interest alive amidst isolation.
It’s all about perspectives, folks. You can view this lockdown as a chance to do all things creative together and a chance to discover a lot about your partner and your place in their life. Here’s what based on your zodiac sign you need to do to make most out of this lockdown.
1. Aries: You need to keep your temper in check, the summers can be pretty bad already for your temper to fly off the handle. But then again, distance can only make it worse for your partner to understand.
As Aries are people who love to keep fit, you can try different workout routines with your partner — couples who are not living together can work out or meditate through Facetime or video calls. Not only will you use up your energy in a right away, but you also get to calm down. It’s a win-win for you.
2. Taurus: Taurus enjoys a good hustle as well as leisure — basically a balance of both. So Taurians, make sure that during quarantine, you don’t invest all time in just work alone. Find ways or enjoy a dinner date together, cook together, invest your time in doing things you both like. You love caring and pampering your lover, so quarantine shouldn’t stop you from this either.
3. Gemini: You need to keep a check on your fickle mind, as your mind is a constant wanderer and appearing indifferent or distant during quarantine is not a healthy sign. Gemini has no problem when it comes to charming someone with their words. So use it to your advantage to build a strong relationship.
Communicate and learn together. Geminis enjoy all things that add to their knowledge. Find a good documentary or topic of common interest that you can research or watch together.
4. Cancerians: Keep your emotions and mood swings under check. While your straightforward nature is noticed by your partner, but too many mood swings can dampen the relation and can be mentally exhausting.
Rather find ways to do romantic things and tell him/her about your ideas, dreams and encourage them to do the same.
5. Leo: Leos can utilize this isolation period to show their caring and creative side to their partners. Given the fact that Leos have a lot of affection to give, you can create a very fulfilling bond with their partners.
Reassuring them during the pandemic is an added bonus. Find fun ways to participate in activities like Online Pictionary, Ludo, Mobile Games together.
6. Virgo: Virgos tend to get overly critical and competitive. While it’s a good thing to be productive during lockdown, make sure that you are not leaving your partner out. All work and no romance, can make this relation a dull one.
You need to find a healthy balance between your work and dating life during quarantine, if couples are in lockdown together — cook together, share ideas with each other. For the Virgos in isolation without their partners, you need to make time for calls, and let romance bud.
7. Libra: Libras are somewhere similar to Gemini, being an air sign as well. Libras can be pretty serious and doting when in love, so put it out for your partner. Don’t let your mind wander quite often that you miss out on showing affection, or speaking sweet nothings to your lover.
8. Scorpio: Scorpios are very passionate in relationships, but the distance can speed up their overthinking. So, take a breath and give a break to your jealous and possessive side. Now is not good time for it to spill it all over. Rather, focus on all your amazing traits of caring and a giver. Be there for your partner and try to open up, rather than being all secretive of your feelings. Introspect.
9. Sagittarius: Quarantine has hit Sagittarius the hardest as they love their independence and freedom. Don’t let negative thoughts cloud your judgement that you end up leaving a bad taste in the relationship. Rather, plan all things that you would do with your partner once the lockdown is lifted. Focus on what you may be missing out.
10. Capricorn: For Capricorns, if you do not focus on your negative outlook, then there can be trouble in paradise. While you love spending time with your partner, suddenly with all the free time, the demand for attention can be too much for you.
But remember, this is a pandemic and if your partner wants reassurance every now and then, understand their perspective as well.
11. Aquarius: While Aquarius love their alone time and cherish it, they also are mature in handling their relationships. There is not much to worry about for Aquarius, except the fact that you need to make time for your partner and hear them out, instead of returning to your shell.
12. Pisces: They are inborn healers and full of compassion. Quarantine is a good time for them to tell their partners how much they mean to them. Pisces always finds ways to cheer up their partner and putting out sweet and caring gestures.
They know how to find a perfect balance — they are neither too possessive or controlling — so they can really build a strong bond during the lockdown. They are considerate about their partner’s choice and space. Nobody loves like a Piscean does. | https://medium.com/@meraastro.com/dating-tips-during-lockdown-for-all-zodiacs-57e09af28d8d | ['Mera Astro'] | 2020-04-23 06:36:23.396000+00:00 | ['Relationships Love Dating', 'Covid 19', 'Love', 'Dating Advice', 'Dating'] |
Team Building Retreat | Team Building Retreat
Taking a horse to the pond is easy, but making it drink water is a challenge!
‘Taking a horse to the pond is easy, but making it drink water is a challenge!’ — goes an old adage in English. The challenge of ‘making the horse drink water’ was what was looming large on the horizon for XXXXXX!
The year 2009 marked the beginning of a new era for XXXXXXX! ‘Three Ones’ policy of the Government of India for ‘Halting and reversing the spread of HIV’, the face of XXX for the XXXXX, has added multiple dimensions to the HIV Prevention programs, challenging XXXXXXX and its resource pool to shed its ‘Frog in the well’ attitude that the Phase I was, and adapt to the new vistas that opened out — a change in the thinking and mindset was the need of the hour!
With this in mind, XXXXXX Management came up with the idea of team-building exercises to rejuvenate the team and to ‘open up their minds’ to the emerging challenges, in short — to make the proverbial horse drink water!
Retreat
What better place to rejuvenate and recharge than the snowclad mountains, frozen lakes, Nathula Pass, and the Yaks that Gangtok, the mountainous region of Sikkim offered!
The 5-day retreat cum team-building exercises to Gangtok took off with a precursor of a conference call with Mr. XXXXXXX.
Gangtok, the capital city of Sikkim is an urbanized town with the vibrant Sikkimese culture showing prominently in every nook and corner of the city and in every household… but with very little greenery to offer, Gangtok more than compensated for the concrete jungle that it appeared to be by having the juxtaposed snowclad mountains and Tsomgo Lake, the perpetually frozen lake with yaks lazying around in the vicinity and the Nathula Pass — the Indo China Border on the horizon! Truly rejuvenating!!
The crux of the Retreat was the Team Building exercise that came out of the ‘Magic hat’ that the HR Team from XXXXXXXX turned out to be!
Photo Scavenging
The warmup exercise, ‘Photo Scavenging’ truly helped to warm up the proceedings for the day; the physical part of the exercise was the warming part, huffing and puffing up the hilly roads to capture the Sikkimese culture in the camera and to create an interesting story, hinting at equating it to the project XXXXXXXX. The exercise was interspersed with a mix of comical things like putting on the reverse gear (Role reversal) or trying your hand at uniformity (like-mindedness and teamwork) and so on, which could help to generate ideas to relate to the Project!
The teams came up with interesting names for themselves integrating the Sikkimese parlance — ‘Moafai’ meaning self-propelled, the embodiment of XXXXXXX, ‘Rumtek’ — the largest Buddhist Monastery in Sikkim and ‘Khukra’!!
Warmed up and recharged, the teams became ready for the day, rearing to go!
Team Building
The team exercises started with splitting the larger team into 5 smaller functional teams, viz. program, M & E, Clinics, Technical Support (CB, Advocacy and Communications), and Transition. The teams were asked to work out on the following themes and make a group presentation to the larger gathering:
1. What we did right and what we could have done better in Phase I
2. Changing roles in Phase II — ‘Buckets’ of work under different thematic areas
3. Way forward — new challenges and opportunities
4. Transition to the government
… and added some critical elements that can be explored:
· Skills and capacities and attitudinal change that the team requires to come to terms with the changing roles in Phase II
· Time management and prioritization
· Functional barriers
The teams generated ‘Buckets’ of work, albeit half full, in the time allotted, which was much less than what was needed!
This was followed by a short exposition on S.M.A.R.T. goals by XXXXXXX and the teams were asked to work out at least one goal as a part of this exercise.
1. Specific — Goals should specify what they want to achieve.
2. Measurable — You should be able to measure whether your goals
3. Achievable — Are the goals you set, achievable and attainable?
4. Realistic — Can you realistically achieve the goals with the resources you have?
5. Time — When do you want to achieve the set goals?
Different members presented a semblance of goals that needed to be further improved! These were the efforts that tried to work out solutions to make the horse drink water! | https://medium.com/@lnproddutoor/team-building-retreat-46735b9e91a3 | [] | 2020-12-16 10:14:00.237000+00:00 | ['Team Building', 'Travelogue', 'Activities And Events', 'Retreats', 'Mountainous'] |
Want Success? Ask the Chinese Bamboo Tree | This story will change your life!
The Chinese bamboo tree is one of the phenomenal wonders of nature. This tree, when planted as a tiny seed, spends a whopping five years in the ground before breaking through the surface of the earth.
What's more, the Chinese bamboo tree seed needs a lot of nurturing during those five years it spends underground. The planted seed must be fertilized, watered, and must receive sunlight all through its required five years of limbo in the soil. Absolutely incredulous, right?
Now, here’s what even more shocking. After five years of seeming impotence, the Chinese bamboo tree eventually germinates and grows to an astonishing 90 feet in six weeks! That’s about 11 stories high and about 30 strides! What an incredible, incredible creation!
Priceless Lessons to Take Away from This Story
The Fact That You Do Not See Immediate Results Does Not Mean the Plan—Your Dream Isn’t Working
The Chinese bamboo tree teaches us patience. It teaches us that some things take time, especially things meant to bring immense returns and great satisfaction in life, like a wonderful career and a loving relationship.
It teaches us that although we might not get immediate results while pursuing our goals, we must believe that if we stick to the fundamental course of action, eventually our efforts would pay off.
What You Become in The Process Is Far More Important Than the Outcome
Pause for a minute and think. Did the bamboo tree develop the ability to grow 90 feet in the first six weeks of germination or, did it develop that ability—its root— in the five years it spent underground?
You see, all the struggles, hardship, pain, commitment, rejection, and difficulties we face while pursuing our dreams are necessary to shape us and prepare us for the greatness that is to come.
Just like gold needs to be melted to be refined and valuable, so must we accept adversity and challenges to make us grow and become valuable.
You must understand that what we become in the process is much more important than the outcome.
The mental fortitude, the discipline, the courage, the healthy thought process, the quality relationships we acquire and enjoy when we achieve success are all by-products of success.
In essence, if you were to, cheat the budding process, you'd become successful alright, but you'd be a sad and lonely wealthy person with a restless mind and a disorganized life.
A person without enough discipline to control wealth and without character to keep the company of quality people and enjoy the fulfillment of great relationships.
You Must Defend Your Dream
I want you to imagine the farmer who plants a Chinese bamboo tree, watering and fertilizing the ground for a year without any inkling of progress.
Imagine the neighbors, other farmers, asking questions, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, you’ve been at it for over a year and still have nothing to show for it?”
Some people may make more heart-wrenching and derisive remarks, "That thing will never work, stop fooling yourself and go do something else, you idiot!"
Many times these sought of things happen. Negative feedback from friends, family, and even so-called experts.
But, you must understand that once the universe places a dream in your heart, it is your responsibility to nurture and protect that dream.
It is you who is given the dream to implement. it is you who sees it, others don’t see it. So what others think about your dream is none of your business, they are entitled to their opinions as you're entitled to yours.
Never, ever let their destructive comments stop you. Other people’s opinion of you doesn’t have to be your reality.
Forge on. Keep going. The fact that you’re building a bridge to cross a river on your path to greatness may look like you’re not moving, yet building that bridge is a major step in getting to your destination of greatness.
Your dream is valid. Protect your dream and in time it would blossom just like the Chinese bamboo tree.
Have you experienced trying moments when you did something others thought was completely stupid, only for it to become successful?
I’d like to hear your story. Share them with me in the comment section. | https://medium.com/@damdeyz/want-success-ask-the-chinese-bamboo-tree-98c3460662d | ['Omoyele Damilola'] | 2021-07-06 10:45:45.305000+00:00 | ['Motivational Quotes', 'Inspirational Stories', 'Inspiration', 'Chinese Bamboo Tree', 'Motivational'] |
Transactions in Redis Cluster (Multi Nodes) | Redis also supports transactions not same as SQL databases. In Redis, transactions consist of a block of commands placed between MULTI and EXEC.
and Commands in connections are not get executed instead of this they get Queued and when EXEC get executed all changes applied to Redis.
Let’s see with some of the examples.
In the above example, we have started block with MULTI and then we are setting values of key tutorials as Redis. Let’s check that key is present in Redis
No, it's not. Now we execute command EXEC.
Now we check
Yay!! it's working. As we have seen the command(set tutorials Redis) which are between MULTI AND EXEC are executed in a transaction.
When an EXEC is encountered, they are all applied in a single unit.
Key Points of transaction in Redis:
All the commands in a transaction are serialized and executed sequentially
It also guarantees that the commands are executed as a single isolated operation.
Redis transactions are also atomic.
Redis does not support rollback. If some of the commands fail in the transaction but all other commands which are successful are applied.
Discarding the command queue:
If you want to abort the transaction don’t want to commit the transaction you can use discard this will not execute any commands and connection states will back to normal
127.0.0.1:6379> MULTI OK 127.0.0.1:6379> SET tutorial redis QUEUED 127.0.0.1:6379> GET tutorial QUEUED 127.0.0.1:6379> DISCARD 127.0.0.1:6379> Keys * (empty list or set)
Watch command for Optimistic Locking:
we can use the watch command to detect any changes done by other clients. in case any changes are done on the key for which watch command is issued then transaction gets rolled back and EXEC command returns null response.
It provides CAS (compare and swap ) kind of behavior.
Let’s see some example.
Clients1 executed these commands.
127.0.0.1:6379>WATCH tutorials OK 127.0.0.1:6379>MULTI OK 127.0.0.1:6379>SET tutorials redis-test // key get updated QUEUED 127.0.0.1:6379>EXEC (nil)
At the same time, Client2 updated the value before it was committed by client1 then it will get rollback.
127.0.0.1:6379>SET tutorials redis-test-client2 //key get updated
Now let's see the value of key tutorials.
127.0.0.1:6379>GET tutorials redis-test-client2
We have seen how transactions work in Redis. Let’s discuss about the transaction in Redis Cluster.
Transactions in Redis Cluster:
If transactions are done in a standalone server or all the keys are present in the same node then it can be achieved. This option allows for fully-featured transactions. The client is required to keep track of the node the transaction is executed while the transaction is in progress. The client needs to set a transactional flag and on the very first command containing a key, the MULTI command needs to be issued, right before the first command within the transaction.
In a distributed environment when the keys which are required to get updated are present in different nodes in this case once the transaction is executed, When the key is requested from a particular node and the node is not yet part of the transaction, a MULTI command is issued to join the node to the transaction. In this case, the individual transaction does not know that the value of the keys is updated in different node because node, where the transaction is done other node is aware of this. So this cause problem in multi sharded environment.
Thanks
PS: If you like these articles please claps and share it, It motivates to write more articles. | https://medium.com/@sauravomar01/transactions-in-redis-cluster-muti-nodes-721da4919f66 | ['Saurav Omar'] | 2019-06-06 17:50:48.898000+00:00 | ['Distributed Systems', 'Sharding', 'Transactions', 'Redis Cluster', 'Redis'] |
How to deal with loneliness when you are an introvert | How many times have you felt lonely in the past year? Like, you had no one to speak your heart to or all your friendships are superficial?
If you are an introvert, it is likely that you feel this way more often than others. Research suggests that introverts are more likely to struggle with loneliness than non-introverts.
Introverts need solitude and peace to recharge themselves. This makes it harder for them to create and sustain social connections.
If you are an introvert facing loneliness, you can make things better by trusting these principles:
1. Personal Talk is beneficial
If you believe that no one is interested in your personal information, it is not true. It is a crucial gateway to find common ground and build rapport.
You don’t need to share deep family secrets but sharing common personal tidbits is a good way to break the ice.
Harvard Business Review says that business executives who chat about their personal lives in meetings have a 90% success rate in making deals. Moreover, their deals are 18% more beneficial to both parties.
2. Don’t insist on Perfection
Making friends is a slow process of trial and error. Give it time. If you have stringent eligibility criteria to call someone a friend, relax it a little. A new acquaintance will not be your best friend instantly but having someone to talk to will make you feel better.
Conversing with only one or two individuals will alleviate the feelings of loneliness. In the process, you may very well end up bonding with a stranger.
3. Stay in touch with old friends with phone calls rather than texts
Texting does not nearly express as much emotion as phone calls. Ideally, face to face conversation is the best but we live in a busy world. So, try to make time for voice/Skype calls with old friends.
4. Seek fellow enthusiasts by joining clubs or meetups
You don’t need to change yourself or pretend to be someone else to make better friends. Find people with common interests. ‘Putting yourself out there’ may seem overwhelming but if it is within your comfort zone, it is doable.
5. Invite people over for dinner or to watch sports/TV shows
You can take the first step by inviting your potential friends instead of waiting for their invitations. This gives you more control over how many and how long.
Last but not least, social media is a useful tool but do not make it your only way of social connections. Actual conversations are far more stimulating than virtual ones. And sometimes, all you need is just being among people and listening to them.
Invest time in yourself and your mental well-being to avoid loneliness.
What tools and methods do you use to deal with loneliness? Please share in the comments section below. | https://medium.com/afwp/how-to-deal-with-loneliness-when-you-are-an-introvert-d5b6e561a44b | ['Lifelong Learner'] | 2019-07-05 11:31:01.088000+00:00 | ['Loneliness', 'Mental Health', 'Friendship', 'Introvert'] |
Don’t Set Goals, Set Experiments | Everyone knows by now that there is a high statistical chance of failing their New Year’s resolutions.
There are 3 ways we can respond to this stat:
Convince ourselves that we’re different and aim to be a part of the 20% that do succeed. Take it to heart and omit New Year’s resolutions from our vocabulary. Take the time to figure out why, and find a better way to approach your own success.
If we follow route #3, a better way to put ourselves in the best position to succeed might be to set experiments instead of goals.
Matt D’Avella, a highly accomplished filmmaker with over 3 million YouTube subscribers, did exactly that in 2019: He did a 30-day habit experiment each month to see what worked and what didn’t. He assigned one habit to each month of the year and worked hard to do that one habit every day for 30 days. After each month he completely dropped that habit to focus on the next one.
One of the biggest reasons that people fail their resolutions is that they set goals that aren’t actually for themselves but are based on other people’s lives.
There’s so much advice out there and so many people telling us about the habits that have changed their lives, but these habits aren’t one-size-fits-all. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/dont-set-goals-set-experiments-31bfca768c8e | ['Christian Pow'] | 2020-12-22 02:32:36.075000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Self', 'Education', 'Habit Building', 'Life Lessons'] |
Terraform static code analysis with tfsec and Jenkins | Photo: perforce.com
Hello All !! Welcome once again to my next story on static code analysis for terraform files using “Tfsec”.
What is Static Code Analysis?
It is the process where the source code is examined before it is run to capture bugs by analyzing them against a set of rules defined by the organization. This type of analysis reduces vulnerabilities because of a weak code. This analysis can be done manually but doing it automated with help of tools avoid the weakness getting escape from the scrutiny.
In today’s DevOps practice, infrastructure as a code plays a crucial part. Development teams who work in agile find it difficult if infrastructure provisioning happens in the traditional way taking weeks to get the required VM and other resources in place. To help them get going without delay, teams write their infrastructure as a code like VMware templates, ARM templates, CFT and Terraform templates. One of the most often used tool is Terraform which is more flexible with multiple clouds. Because of this flexibility, it is widely used for various clouds like Azure, AWS, GCP, VMware and etc.
Terraform manages infrastructure with the help of templates which are written in the language HCL which is the DSL language used for terraform. Since this is not a common programming language, the common static code analysis tools like SonarQube can’t examine the code and there is a challenge prevails for Terraform developers to examine the code.
So, what is the solution?
There are tools available specifically for Terraform templates in the open source community. They are tfsec, terraform-compliance, terraform-lint and etc. Out of these tools, tfsec is considered prominent and reliable with some predefined checks for Azure, AWS and GCP and also some General checks like sensitive data within a template.
Features of tfsec as given in their documentation, tfsec/tfsec: 🔒🌍 Security scanner for your Terraform code (github.com)
Checks for sensitive data inclusion across all providers
Checks for violations of AWS, Azure and GCP security best practice recommendations
Scans modules (currently only local modules are supported)
Evaluates expressions as well as literal values
Evaluates Terraform functions e.g. concat()
This tool is primarily designed to use in CI pipeline and it fits well. For this reason, it returns a non-zero exit code if a potential problem is detected and also the format for output can be any of json, csv, checkstyle, junit and sarif which can create test-results dashboard in popular CI tools.
“tfsec” scans a given directory and if directory is not specified, it scans the current working directory. Additionally, tfsec also scans values from the variable files (.tfvars) using the attribute --tfvars-file terraform.tfvars. Also tfsec can be integrated with github to scan the repository and generate github alerts.
Adding to the existing checks for each cloud providers, we can also write a custom check either in a JSON or YAML file and it can be saved as “_tfchecks.json” or “-tfchecks.yaml” and save it in a directory. The custom checks can be called during execution using --custom-check-dir.
Disable Checks
The checks can also be disabled by simply adding the -e attribute as below
tfsec . -e GEN001,GCP001,GCP002
Read further about tfsec and its custom checks in the following pages
tfsec/tfsec: 🔒🌍 Security scanner for your Terraform code (github.com)
Home | tfsec
Installation
Windows
choco install tfsec
Linux
#Run these commands as non-root user.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install linuxbrew-wrapper
#Add /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin to the PATH
brew install tfsec
In Action
Let’s see a working example of tfsec. In our scenario, we are using Jenkins pipeline and Github as CI and repository. Developers work in a “Developer” branch and when they commit any code, the pipeline triggers and it runs tfsec on the Terraform template. When there are no vulnerabilities found in the code, the branch is merged into main but if any vulnerability is found, the test case fails and it terminates the pipeline. Below is the Terraform code with a vulnerable network security group which has a rule that allows all network traffic on port 22.
resource "azurerm_network_security_rule" "rule22" { direction = "Inbound" source_address_prefix = "0.0.0.0/0" network_security_group_name = var.nsgName access = "Allow" priority = 100 destination_address_prefix = "*" destination_port_range = "22" protocol = "TCP" }
The pipeline code for jenkins is below
pipeline{ agent { kubernetes { yamlFile 'agentpod.yml' } } stages{ stage("Test Terraform files"){ steps{ echo "========Executing Test case for Terraform files=======" container('tfsec'){ dir('terraform') { sh "echo \$(pwd)" sh "tfsec -f junit > tfsec_test.xml" } } } post{ always{ echo "========always========" dir('terraform') { junit checksName: 'Terraform security checks', testResults: "tfsec_test.xml" } } success{ echo "Terraform test case passed" } failure{ echo "Terraform test case failed" } } } stage("Commit to Main"){ steps{ echo "====++++executing Deploy Terraform++++====" container('tfsec'){ sh "git checkout main" sh "git merge developer" withCredentials([usernamePassword(credentialsId: 'jenkinspasswordgit', passwordVariable: 'git_password', usernameVariable: 'git_user')]){ sh "git push http://$git_user:[email protected]/rajagopalanrg/iaas" sh "git tag $BUILD_NUMBER" } } } post{ always{ echo "====++++always++++====" } success{ echo "====++++Deploy Terraform executed successfully++++====" } failure{ echo "====++++Deploy Terraform execution failed++++====" } } } } }
The tfsec finds the vulnerability with the code and it fails the test case
Let’s change the template to deny all incoming traffic on port 22.
resource "azurerm_network_security_rule" "rule22" { direction = "Inbound" source_address_prefix = "0.0.0.0/0" network_security_group_name = var.nsgName access = "Deny" priority = 100 destination_address_prefix = "*" destination_port_range = "22" protocol = "TCP" }
Re-run the pipeline and the CI passes. The “developer” branch is merged to the “main” branch.
I also like to give example of a custom check. Save the below text in a json file as describe above and include it with tfsec command.
{
"checks": [
{
"code": "CUS001",
"description": "Custom check to ensure the CostCentre tag is applied to EC2 instances",
"requiredTypes": [
"resource"
],
"requiredLabels": [
"azurerm_network_security_rule"
],
"severity": "ERROR",
"matchSpec": {
"name": "tags",
"action": "contains",
"value": "CostCentre"
},
"errorMessage": "The required CostCentre tag was missing"
}
]
}
Thanks for reading!!
For training and consultation on Terraform/Pulumi/Kubernetes/Azure, drop an email to [email protected] | https://medium.com/cloudlego/static-code-analysis-for-terraform-with-tfsec-afff5a1b040 | ['Raja Gopal'] | 2020-12-18 05:28:34.784000+00:00 | ['Static Code Analysis', 'Terraform'] |
10 Tips for Transitioning Careers Quickly | I found my calling when 30 under 30 was a tiny speck in my rear view mirror. On the one hand it was a celebration to have finally figured out what I wanted, and I was excited to embrace it. On the other, feelings of self-doubt started creeping in as I reflected on having already had a career (or three, but who’s counting).
It was frightening to think I’d stumbled upon my passion too late, and I was discouraged by what I thought might be a long, arduous road to my new career goals. The good news is it wasn’t nearly as long [of] a road as I’d anticipated. My business, now in its fourth year, has taught me it’s never too late to pursue your dream. If you’re considering a career transition but fear your moment has passed, believe me, the possibility exists to find yourself at the helm of your purpose. And way faster than you may think. –Magalie René-Hayes
1. Give yourself credit for what you’ve already accomplished: Even if you’ve never done a single thing in life that relates to your newfound passion, you have been successful, and you can do it again. Challenge yourself to jot down a few achievements of which you are particularly proud, and remind yourself that you accomplished those things back then so you can surely learn to do this now.
2. Believe in the power of the shortcut: Not all shortcuts are taken by cheaters who want to avoid hard work. Know who else takes shortcuts? Smart people. If there’s a quicker path that leads to the same outcome, take it as long as it’s ethical. There’s no rule that [says] success and achievement have to take a lot of time. It requires passion and determination, and you’ve got both of those in spades.
3. There’s honor in mastery: Credibility, respect and confidence are at their peak when one truly understands and masters a craft. The value you’ll bring to clients and the income you’ll be able to demand are worth the long hours and hard work.
Image above: Magalie hangs some finishing touches in a Virginian client’s home. Magalie says her personal style “leans towards clean lines and sophistication with an appreciation for color and joyful touches.”
4. Don’t wait for mastery in order to begin: If you wait until you feel you’ve truly mastered your craft you may never begin. There’s always room to improve further, but the trick is simply to start. Take those first steps and push the boundaries of fear to apply your knowledge. The lessons you’ll learn while practicing your passion will go far in helping you master it. Learn by doing. Master by repeating.
5. Just say, “Yes!” and the universe will send help: When luck smiles down on you, embrace it. Don’t turn away an incredible opportunity because you don’t have enough experience. Take a chance and say “Yes!” even if you don’t feel quite ready. You’ve discovered your purpose. Don’t wait another minute to go for it. You’ll find — or hunt down — help along the way.
6. Perfection isn’t possible: Seeking perfection in your results can cause you to quit too soon. Instead, find the value in what you create regardless of what the results look like. Rather than reaching for perfection, strive to beat your personal best consistently.
7. Embrace unconventional ways to learn: In our modern, technologically-advanced society, there are as many ways to learn online as there are offline. Try these routes for mastering your career goals:
Take online courses on YouTube, Lynda, Udemy, Coursera, Skillshare, etc.
Schedule informational interviews
Join or create a Facebook group
Attend industry meet-ups
Attend conferences, workshops, seminars and presentations
Join industry associations and follow experts in your field
Hire a friend or acquaintance to give you private lessons
Image above: An eclectic cottage Magalie put together in West Hollywood, CA.
8. Get clear: Do whatever it takes to get centered and calm enough to hear your inner voice — whether that means meditating, taking up an exercise routine or starting a morning ritual like journaling. Listen to your intuition and work out any tempestuous feelings to get clear on your purpose and set your daily intention.
9. Time is a construct: Reframe [time] from something akin to a ticking bomb to something that supports you. Use the mantra “Freedom is Where My Feet Are,” to quiet the imaginary clock and bring you back to what you are creating in the now.
10. Trust yourself: Steps worth taking rarely feel safe, but risks are often necessary to live a life of passion. When you consider how short life can be, you realize there’s nothing to fear but the regret of not having tried. The biggest lesson of all is to trust yourself and go for it.
Originally published on https://www.designsponge.com/2017/02/10-tips-for-transitioning-careers-quickly.html. | https://medium.com/@magalierene/10-tips-for-transitioning-careers-quickly-f85fe045a6ea | ['Magalie René'] | 2019-06-17 19:18:04.991000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Just Start', 'Life Lessons', 'Careers', 'Trust'] |
How to Support Your Depressed Spouse | How to Support Your Depressed Spouse
What To Do When Your Partner Is Not At Their Best
My partner has been depressed for months now. He is struggling to find a job that he finds fulfilling and he has fallen into a daily rut, which is pretty toxic. He has stopped working out, he is drinking each evening and is not taking care of himself.
It has become very frustrating to deal with and honestly, I feel like I am living with a slopy roommate or a child. I am tired of cleaning up after him and desperately trying to get him to do anything around the house.
We are fighting on an almost daily basis and I am really struggling to remember the good parts of this relationship. I know that we committed to being together through the good times and the bad time, but it is so tough. I feel like I do not know who I am living with anymore because this is not the person I married.
My partner is toxic to be around and he is either treating me like his personal punching bag or completely ignoring me. I am tired of his passive-aggressive comments and sullen attitude. How long is long enough to say that I tried? How long am I suppose to stay in this situation before I can say that I have done enough? When is enough, enough?
Sincerely,
Tired, frustrated, alone and desperate
Relationships are extremely complicated and anyone who says that their relationship is great all of the time and that them and their partner never fight is lying or hiding something much more complicated.
When your partner is depressed the first thing you can do is educate yourself on depression.
Learn what is appropriate support for your partner. Understand the difference between supportive practices and enabling practices. Make sure you instilling a sense of safety for your partner to speak with you about their concerns and ensure that you are able to help them effectively.
Depression is a very serious illness and must be treated as such.
Understanding how to support someone effectively through a difficult time is essential, but it is also critical to understand the warning signs of suicide and what to look out for.
Seek out a mental health professional, for yourself, so that you have the support you need through this difficult time.
Yes, your partner is the one who is struggling, but do not discount your own feelings and struggles dealing with a partner who is depressed. Having a certified therapist scheduled to meet with regularly can be a really safe place for you. It is also really useful for you to have someone to listen to your problems and concerns at this point in your life too. Your partner is probably so absorbed in their own problems that they are not checking in on you and how you are doing.
Seek out couples counselling to deal with communication issues.
You mentioned that you feel like you are your husband’s punching bag and that needs to stop immediately. You should not be victimized and hurt by your partner, it is simply unacceptable. Schedule some couple’s counselling so that you two can address your concerns in a safe space with an unbiased third party present. Couple’s counselling can be a lifesaver during a difficult time in a relationship because sometimes the biggest issue is that when we are stressed we are not able to hear one another properly, if at all.
Make a healthy living environment at home and help your partner to be more healthy.
You mentioned that your spouse has stopped exercising, eating well and is drinking too much. All of these actions are common, but not healthy actions individuals tend to partake in when they are in a depressive state. Help your partner out by creating a healthy home. Buy healthy groceries, cook meals at home, try to work out together and do activities in the evening which do not revolve around alcohol or sitting in front of the television. Go for walks, listen to a podcast together, cook together, play Scrabble or whatever it is you two enjoy.
Help your partner by creating small, daily steps for self-improvement.
This is an area I fail at regularly because I tend to take over and want to control the entire situation. Doing too much too soon will not help anyone. Help your partner to create three goals for each day, one for their physical well-being, one for their professional goals and one to improve their emotional state.
In the beginning, the goals can be super small, for example, going for a walk, applying for one job a day and eating a healthy dinner. Make sure the goals are attainable and not overwhelming for your partner, and be there to support them through it. Hold them accountable, but do not hover over them, give them some space to breathe. If they are not successful at attaining their goals each day, do not be hard on them. Remember that they are probably being really hard on themselves right now, so they do not need additional hardship from others.
Remember the good times you have shared.
When someone is going through a difficult time it can be so easy to see everything as dark and dreary. It is vital to remember the good times of your relationship. Stop focusing on the negative and remember that your partner is simply going through a bad season. Think of this situation as a season, and seasons change regularly. By understanding that this is a challenge that your relationship is going through and something which could arguably make you much stronger, in the long run, it might be easier to deal with.
Write out your frustrations, so that you do not speak them.
Writing or journaling your thoughts, frustrations, fears, and concerns can be really healthy. Having a mental dump at the end of the day can be exactly what you need in order to have a restful night and also avoid a potentially stressful, negative conversation with your partner. Your partner is not in a place where they can support you right now, so dumping your difficulties on them is not going to do anything helpful for anyone.
Have a safe person to talk to about your issues.
It can be easy to become completely enthralled with your partner’s issues, but you must make sure to take care of yourself. If you let your own self-care slip you will not be of any use to your spouse. You might feel like you simply do not have the time to take care of yourself, but do not undervalue the importance of having someone checking in on you. Letting a friend or trusted family member know what is going on is vital. You will need them and them checking in on you can be a great buoy to stop you from getting completely absorbed in the ocean of your partner’s issues. | https://amanlitt.medium.com/helping-your-depressed-spouse-2ccf118b080a | [] | 2019-12-04 23:18:21.943000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Relationships', 'Support', 'Mental Health', 'Relationships Love Dating'] |
Third Gender in Tamil Cinema | I have wanted to pen this article for a long time but was not sure if I would be able to do justice to such a sensitive topic. But believing in my nature and previous articles, I decided to chug along. As with all topics portrayed in cinema and viewed in society, we have changed and modernized to good measure. The debate is if we have progressed enough, the answer shall always be negative, but nevertheless, it is always a work in progress. Having watched many English movies, I know for a fact, that there are many trans people working in Hollywood, but enough roles as trans characters on screen.
Zombies, Aliens, Superheroes, Shady villains, mutants, werewolves have all been cast in mainstream movies, but no single trans character has been done to date.
Tamil Cinema has been progressive from the start, from casting darker people as heroes, dusky complexioned women as heroines, when other movies were double thinking of doing such acts. Our portrayal of transgender people has been bad, but one good thing has been the screen presence and mention of them in movies. I still remember how a naive myself asked my friend, why is 9 such a funny number, and why are trans people called that way? He said 9 when reversed gives 6, I said 8 when reversed also gives 8, then he corrected me saying, 9 reversal gives two identities, hence the coinage. We have moved on a lot ever since, and I have matured well ever since.
Transgender people are people whose gender identity is different from the gender they were thought to be at birth. Medically speaking, there are people who are born male but identify themselves as the female sex later in life and vice versa. There are non-binary people who are neither male nor female, and there are various identities and terms accorded to them. Now, all these people have been clubbed under the acronym LGBT-which stands for Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender. All gender non-conforming type persons being given a common identity helps in rallying for their causes and societal acceptance.
Goundamani of his many comedies-Copyright-Pyramid
Tamil movies have always ridiculed them in movie scenes, they have never been given any serious characters. They have always been called doubles and various names and used up as props in comedy scenes, and we all have laughed along with it. Education grew, maturity slowly prevailed, and we have had good roles for them, and sensitive portrayal of such people in reel life. TK used Vijay Sethupathi as a transwoman in Super Deluxe, and what an audacious role it was, here was a person born as a male, married, had a kid but chose to become female. The confused kid of his would be unable to relate if he has to call his dad-dad or mom. Beautifully explained in one line was, God sometimes changes the right and left slippers, and such people are born. We had Prakash Raj essay the role, and Jayam Ravi act in Aadhi Bagavan.
Director Myskin made sure to cast them in crucial pilot roles in his movies like Nandalala, Onayum Aatukuttiyum. These characters chose to be themselves and were important in steering the movie forward. Aruvi was another such movie, where the lead female role had a transgender friend, which was lauded critically and commercially. The ghost franchisee Kanchana also had such character in Sarathkumar and now remade Laxmi Bomb with Akshay Kumar essaying this role. When you have mainstream actors doing such a role with sensitivity, common people, and more importantly young mind approach with care and compassion.
We have come a long way from non-portrayal to ridiculing them in movie scenes to the sensitive portrayal of such characters in movies. Movies are always a reflection of society, and often society reflects from movies as well. When we have decent characterization, such good habits tend to fall back into the minds of society as well. When the English language, chose to name it as trans sexual, meaning on or to the other side, giving more weightage to their confusion and trying to castigate them only as male or female.
The Tamil language chose to name them as the third gender, what a beautiful way to denote them as another gender. We have no right to try slotting them in male or female boxes, biologically or emotionally they are another type, and they have earned the right to be the third gender. | https://medium.com/@balajinandakumar/third-gender-in-tamil-cinema-5bf82e61fa6 | ['Balaji Vellore Nandakumar'] | 2020-10-18 15:49:13.472000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Transgender', 'Tamil Cinema', 'Third Gender', 'LGBT'] |
‘Submit to your husbands’: Women told to endure domestic violence in the name of God | Image: Rocco Fazzari
‘Submit to your husbands’: Women told to endure domestic violence in the name of God
Research shows the men most likely to abuse their wives are evangelical Christians who attend church sporadically. Church leaders say they abhor abuse of any kind. But advocates say the church is not just failing to sufficiently address domestic violence, it’s both enabling and concealing it.
By Julia Baird with Hayley Gleeson
The culprits were obvious: it was the menopause or the devil.
Who else could be blamed, Peter screamed at his wife in nightly tirades, for her alleged insubordination, for her stupidity, her lack of sexual pliability, her refusal to join him on the ‘Tornado’ ride at a Queensland waterpark, her annoying friendship with a woman he called “Ratface”? For her sheer, complete failure as a woman?
The abuse went on, day and night, as Sally bore a child, worked morning shifts at the local hospital and stayed up late pumping breast milk for her baby.
She was deeply exhausted, depleted and worn.
The night before Sally finally left her husband and the townhouse they lived in on Sydney’s northern beaches he told her she was also failing her spiritual duties.
“Your problem is you won’t obey me. The Bible says you must obey me and you refuse,” he yelled. “You are a failure as a wife, as a Christian, as a mother. You are an insubordinate piece of s**t.”
Sally, an executive assistant who had just turned 44, stared at him, worrying about whether her neighbours — or her sleeping daughter — could hear his roars through the thin walls.
She knew what had “flicked his switch”: the simple act of coming down to say goodnight, which he interpreted as a lack of willingness to have sex.
Peter then opened his Bible and read out some verses:
“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour.”
Ephesians 5: 22–23
Next was:
“Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man; rather, she is to remain silent.”
1 Timothy 2: 11–12
For years, Sally had believed that God wanted her to submit to her husband, and she did her best, bending to his will and working to pay the bills, despite the pain she was in.
But on this night, she was done. The next morning, she packed up her bags, grabbed some clothes for her daughter and left, taking the little girl with her.
She left everything else behind.
Religion and domestic violence: the missing link
When we speak of domestic violence, and the cultural factors that foment it, one crucial element missing from the discussion has been religion.
While it is generally agreed that inequality between the sexes can foster and cultivate environments where men seek to control or abuse women, in Australia there has been very little public debate about how this might impact people in male-led congregations and religious communities, especially those where women are told to be silent and submit to male authority.
In other countries, like the United States and United Kingdom, there has been extensive analysis. So why is Australia so behind on this issue?
Image: Rocco Fazzari
In the past couple of years, concern has been growing amongst those working with survivors of domestic violence about the role the Christian church of all denominations can either consciously or inadvertently play in allowing abusive men to continue abusing their wives.
The questions are these: do abused women in church communities face challenges women outside them do not?
Do perpetrators ever claim church teachings on male control excuse their abuse, or tell victims they must stay?
Why have there been so few sermons on domestic violence? Why do so many women report that their ministers tell them to stay in violent marriages?
Is the stigma surrounding divorce still too great, and unforgiving? Is this also a problem for the men who are abused by their wives — a minority but nonetheless an important group?
And if the church is meant to be a place of refuge for the vulnerable, why is it that the victims are the ones who leave churches while the perpetrators remain?
Is it true — as one Anglican bishop has claimed — that there are striking similarities to the church’s failure to protect children from abuse, and that this next generation’s reckoning will be about the failure in their ranks to protect women from domestic violence?
A 12-month ABC News investigation involving dozens of interviews with survivors of domestic violence, counsellors, priests, psychologists and researchers from a range of Christian denominations — including Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Pentecostal and Presbyterian — has discovered the answers to these questions will stun those who believe the church should protect the abused, not the abusers.
‘I felt that I was almost being raped’
Sally met Peter when she was in her mid-30s, and had been praying for a husband. She wasn’t instantly attracted to him but was charmed by the deluge of flowers and love letters he sent. She grew to believe she was meant to be with him.
She overlooked the fact that she had to buy her own engagement ring and agreed to marry him not long after their meeting.
Peter’s personality changed on the first day of their honeymoon, when he yelled at her for sleeping in, and made plans to go fishing for days without her.
Her bible study leader told her later that she looked like the saddest bride he had ever seen.
Image: Rocco Fazzari
The abuse quickly escalated as Peter drank, gambled and demanded sex every second night, usually after having yelled at her for hours.
She later wrote in a statement prepared for court: “If I refused, he would become incandescent with rage. It was easier to give in than argue. Those nights I felt that I was almost being raped.”
Once he forced her to have sex just three weeks after giving birth.
Sally found little comfort in her Pentecostal church, which she had turned to repeatedly. Counsellors there simply advised her to forgive him. She also told her pastor her story, but no one followed it up.
The violence mounted until one day her husband threw their three-year-old daughter across the room after the toddler accidentally bumped his leg.
When she left Peter, Sally also left her church parish, feeling isolated and unwanted as a single mother.
Ten years later, she is still shattered. She wishes she had heard just one sermon on domestic violence, or had one supportive ear.
The Christian men more likely to assault their wives
The fact that domestic violence occurs in church communities is well established. Queensland academic Dr Lynne Baker’s 2010 book, Counselling Christian Women on How to Deal with Domestic Violence, cites a study of Anglican, Catholic and Uniting churches in Brisbane that found 22 per cent of perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse go to church regularly.
But American research provides one important insight: men who attend church less often are most likely to abuse their wives. (Regular church attenders are slightly less likely to commit acts of intimate partner violence.)
Those who are often on the periphery, in other words, who sometimes float between parishes, or sit in the back pews. For these men, the rate of abuse committed is alarmingly high.
As theology professor Steven Tracy wrote in 2008:
“It is widely accepted by abuse experts (and validated by numerous studies) that evangelical men who sporadically attend church are more likely than men of any other religious group (and more likely than secular men) to assault their wives.”
Some attribute these findings to the conservative denominations and churches that preach and model male control, with male-only priesthoods and inviolate teachings on male authority.
Adelaide’s Anglican Assistant Bishop Tim Harris says, “it is well recognised that males (usually) seeking to justify abuse will be drawn to misinterpretations [of the Bible] to attempt to legitimise abhorrent attitudes.”
Stressing that his diocese “strongly rejected” any teachings on male superiority, he told ABC News: “This has been a particular concern for those coming out of evangelical and fundamentalist backgrounds.”
In Australia, it is widely accepted that gender inequality is a contributing factor to violence against women.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies probed this question and concluded: “The vital element to consider is the gender norms and beliefs surrounding male dominance and male superiority, created by power hierarchies that accord men greater status.”
This is confirmed by global research. A study published in the Lancet in 2015 analysed data from 66 surveys across 44 countries, covering the experiences of almost half a million women.
It found that the greatest predictor of partner violence was “environments that support male control”, especially “norms related to male authority over female behaviour”.
Image: Rocco Fazzari
The past two decades of research has also shown women in religious communities are less likely to leave violent marriages, more likely to believe that the abuser will change, less inclined to access community resources and more likely to believe it is their fault; that they have failed as wives as they were not able to stop the abuse.
A culture of victim blaming or shaming can cause women to exit the church entirely. The most common story in the dozens heard by ABC News is that when marriages break, the men stay and the women leave.
The CEO of Safe Steps Family Violence Centre, Annette Gillespie, says that in 20 years of working with victims of domestic violence, she found it was “extremely common” that women will be “encouraged by the church to stay in an abusive relationship”.
“I know that for many women the experience of violence was worsened by the lack of support people turned to in the church,” she said.
“Often people say it is the guilt of going against the church teaching that leads them to stay in relationships well beyond a time they should leave because they are trying to please the church as well as please their partners … they often feel they will have to choose between leaving religion or violence.
“So when they leave a relationship, they leave a church.”
Women in faith communities where divorce is shunned, and shameful, often feel trapped in abusive marriages.
In a submission to the Royal Commission on Family Violence, one Victorian woman wrote that five different ministers had told her to remain with a violent husband.
A church counsellor told her: “Be gentle with him, he’s trying to be a man.”
This is particularly true in the Catholic Church, where divorce is forbidden, as will be explored in greater detail in an upcoming instalment of this series.
If pastors prevaricate, or fumble, it could be too late. New research finds women in the church usually only go to their pastors when partners do something so violent they fear they will die.
After 25-year-old old Wubanchi Asefaw was told by her church leaders to return to her husband in early 2014, he stabbed her to death in their western Sydney home shortly afterwards.
The abuse of the Bible
Unlike the Quran, there are no verses in the Bible that may be read as overtly condoning domestic abuse.
To the contrary, it is made clear that God hates violence and relationships must be driven by selflessness, grace and love.
There is no mainstream theologian in Australia who would suggest that a church should be anything but a sanctuary, or that a Christian relationship be marked by anything but love.
But church counsellors and survivors of family violence report that many abusive men, like Sally’s husband, rely on twisted — or literalist — interpretation of Bible verses to excuse their abuse.
Baker, whose 2010 book on counselling abused Christian women sprang from years of doctoral research, writes: “biblical principles and scriptures may be used by the perpetrator as a point of authority to condone his actions, or perhaps to ‘prove’ to the victim that she is not fulfilling her marital obligations.”
Abusive men commonly refer to several different parts of the Bible.
First are the verses — cited by Sally’s husband Peter, above — telling women to submit to their husbands and male authority, under the doctrine known as male headship.
Second are verses that say God hates divorce.
And third are those in 1 Peter that tell women to submit to husbands in a very particular way, as they follow instructions to slaves to submit to even “harsh masters”.
But Denis Fitzgerald, executive director at Catholic Social Services Victoria, says it is crucial for the Bible to be read in light of the culture it was produced in.
“Biblical literalism is not an acceptable approach and part of the teaching role with the bishops is to help the priests and the people to see that texts can’t be taken out of context — you have to look at the broader intent and message of the scriptures,” he says.
And Simon Smart, the Executive Director of the Centre for Public Christianity points to “what [Croatian theologian] Miroslav Volf describes as the difference between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ religion — where thin religion is stripped of its moral content and used as a weapon for goals completely unrelated to the faith.”
The doctrine of male headship: What does it mean?
The doctrine that is most commonly, and controversially cited by abusers is male headship, where a husband is to be the head of the wife in marriage and the wife is to submit, and men are to be head of the church.
What submission means takes many different forms. At its extreme edge, it is complete subservience.
In the 1970s and 1980s, literature coming out of the United States suggested it meant putting up with every possible harm.
According to Elizabeth Hanford Rice in her book Me? Obey Him?, this even included physical violence and child abuse.
Three female authors — Dorothy McGuire, Carol Lewis and Alvena Blatchley — even praised a woman for staying with a man who tried to murder her.
Correct interpretations of scripture are debated in ways not dissimilar to those in the Quran; there is disagreement over translation, hermeneutics, exegesis, the relevance of the culture in which it was written, the then-radical attitudes of acceptance Christ expressed towards women and the role of women in the early church.
These debates hit peak expression in the latter half of the 20th century as most mainstream Christian denominations moved to ordain women to the priesthood, to equal positions to men.
Image: Rocco Fazzari
Today, those churches in Australia that do not have women priests include the Catholic, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches, and the influential Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church.
Some of these groups have responded to the expansion of women’s role elsewhere by restricting it further in their own ranks.
Today, it is clear proponents of headship intend to teach a form of self-sacrificial love — for a man to be head of his wife like Christ is head of the church, and to sacrifice himself to his wife in the same way.
But there remains some confusion about what submission actually means.
In 2009, prominent American evangelical pastor John Piper, a frequent visitor to Sydney, was asked, “What should a wife’s submission to her husband look like if he’s an abuser?”
His response was that if he was “simply hurting her”, then she should “endure verbal abuse for a season”, and “endure perhaps being smacked one night”, before seeking “help from the church”.
Almost four years later, he issued a “clarifying statement” in which he called on men in the church to discipline abusers, and uphold “a beautiful vision” of marriage where men lead with gentleness.
Another influential pastor James Dobson has in the past advised women to bait their abusive husbands to goad them into behaving badly, which he believed would shock them into realising they had a problem and agree to counselling.
In 2013, American pastor Steven J Cole concluded in a sermon that “a wife may need to submit to some abuse”.
“The difficult question is,” he writes, “how much? My view is that a wife must submit to verbal and emotional abuse, but if the husband begins to harm her physically, she needs to call civil or church authorities.
“Although physical abuse is not a biblical basis for divorce, I would counsel separation in some cases to protect the wife while the husband gets his temper under control.
“But even in such situations, a Christian wife must not provoke her husband to anger and she must display a gentle spirit.”
In 2016, American evangelist Kirk Cameron told the Christian Post: “Wives are to honour and respect and follow their husband’s lead, not to tell their husband how he ought to be a better husband.
“When each person gets their part right, regardless of how their spouse is treating them, there is hope for real change in their marriage.”
Time and again in evangelical literature, marital success is predicated on female submission; it is the basis on which women are judged or praised.
In Sydney, as recently as 2015, David Ould, the rector of Glenquarie Anglican Church — also active in the conservative Anglican Church League — asked if it might be “a Godly wise choice” for women to stay with abusive husbands given the Bible teaching in 1 Peter 3, telling wives to submit to their husbands.
These verses follow on from those in 1 Peter 2 that tell slaves to submit to masters — even those who are harsh, or, in other words, physically violent.
Ould, who now works to protect women in his parish and region from domestic violence, later clarified his comments.
He told ABC News his central message was: “I would understand how women would read that passage and choose to stay, but I myself would be urging them to get out and work out what it means from a safe position.”
Male headship ‘providing the wiring’ for abuse
Today, a growing number of counsellors, psychologists and welfare workers are reporting that abusers cite the idea of male headship to sanction violence.
Anglican counsellor from Charles Sturt University Nicola Lock, who has been working with domestic violence cases for 25 years, says the use of headship theology in spousal abuse is “very common”.
“Anecdotally, teaching of headship has been seen to be contributing to the problem of domestic violence, both in encouraging abusive male partners, and preventing female partners from challenging abusive behaviours, or leaving an abusive relationship,” Lock said.
As Dr Johanna Harris Tyler, a lecturer at the University of Exeter in the UK who was brought up in Sydney Anglicanism, argues: “While male headship may not necessarily trip the switch of abuse, it can provide the wiring.”
This is a particularly sensitive point in the Sydney Anglican Church, which is known for its robust advocacy of male headship.
Any suggestion of its abuse usually evokes vehement rebuke and defence from senior clergy. Ministers who uphold headship say their teachings are just being confused with patriarchy, and twisted by those who abuse power.
Those who uphold “egalitarian” views of marriage in this diocese report being sidelined, overlooked for jobs and ostracised.
Some told ABC News they could not publicly state that they believed in equal relationships between men and women, for they would lose their jobs.
And as domestic violence advocate Barbara Roberts points out, in conservative churches women are often taught that desire to overthrow male authority is a sign of sin — thereby making feminism innately wrong.
In other words, if male authority and leadership is from God, any challenge to that is from women’s sinful natures — or the devil.
Image: Rocco Fazzari
Kara Hartley is the Archdeacon for Women in the Diocese of Sydney and deputy chair of a taskforce looking into church responses to domestic violence.
She stresses there is nothing whatsoever in the Bible to condone abuse, and that men and women just have different roles.
“The responsibility of men is to lovingly, sacrificially care for their wife, and a wife to submit to his care, his leadership, his loving sacrifice to her,” Hartley told ABC News.
“Now, for many they’ll say that’s submission, and therefore headship, [which] creates an imbalance in the marriage. But actually when they’re put together, a woman’s voluntary … willing submission to her husband, in his loving sacrificial care of her, there’s a beautiful picture there.”
Sydney Anglican Archbishop Dr Glenn Davies agrees, telling ABC News “submission is never coercive, it’s always voluntary, so the wife offers herself in that relationship.
“It becomes dangerous where in a marriage the husband over-reaches and manipulates the woman … it’s not submission that’s gone wrong, it’s the husband that’s gone wrong.”
It is important to understand, he says, that “there is no way in which we countenance domestic violence in any form be it spiritual, emotional or physical, in our church, we are absolutely opposed to that”.
“It’s not the teaching, it’s the distortion of the teaching which is the problem, I don’t believe teaching the Bible produces violence in domestic situations.”
But it would be wrong to portray this simply as an issue in Sydney.
The difficulties with the interpretation of headship spreads across denominations.
In February 2016, Catholic bishop Vincent Long cautioned that literal interpretations of the Bible “provide the basis for systematic oppression or structural discrimination of women and lead communities — even church communities — to protecting perpetrators of domestic violence while simultaneously heaping shame and scorn upon its victims”.
Others point the finger at all-male leadership.
Sydney psychologist Kylie Pidgeon, who also works with perpetrators and survivors of family violence, wrote in a recent paper that women are more vulnerable in churches where only men lead:
“[Men] occupy the positions of greater power and public influence in a church and hold the offices charged with major decision-making and general oversight of the spiritual health of the congregation. Women usually fill ‘support’ roles, such as teaching kids’ church, reading the Bible, or preparing morning tea. While the intentions of men in positions of leadership are often good; to exercise their authority with love and care, and while a male-led structure by no means guarantees that women will be abused, it is apparent that patriarchal structures place women at greater risk of abuse.”
By failing to pastor women, or encourage them to lead or speak, Pidgeon says, male leadership may unwittingly be “giving ‘silent permission’ to male congregation members to similarly rule over and neglect their wives”.
In churches where women are not allowed to speak or preach, they may also worry that they will not be believed.
Erica Hamence, assistant minister at the Anglican St Barnabas Broadway in Sydney, wrote recently that in male-led churches, “women have as much room to speak as the male leaders allow. That’s a profoundly vulnerable position to be in, and one which I suspect some male ministers are not always able to empathise with.
“If a woman suffering abuse wasn’t completely confident that she would be believed, that the particular nature of the abuse would be understood, and that she would be supported by her church’s leader, she would most likely continue to suffer alone.”
How do all-male hierarchies respond?
Almost all-male hierarchies are common in many conservative congregations across denominations — Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican and Pentecostal — as are poor responses from pastors.
Susan, a student and mother, went to a Pentecostal Church in Adelaide for most of the 23 years of her married life.
She describes her marriage as akin to a horror story. She was “repeatedly raped” by her husband and was continually unnerved by strange incidents that kept happening to her children in her absence.
Bruises appeared, faces were bloodied, weak excuses were given. One day her husband was rebuking his daughter for wearing a revealing top when “she ran and hit the wall” and lost a tooth.
On another day, he pushed Susan out of the car and left her on the side of the road.
Image: Rocco Fazzari
A psychologist attached to her church told her divorce was not an option. The pastor’s wife told her to separate but not divorce as her husband could change.
It was not until she came across the website, Cry for Justice: Awakening the Evangelical Church to Domestic Violence and Abuse in its Midst, run by Roberts, that she realised it might be possible to divorce her husband.
When she left him, she left her congregation too.
“It was really, really hard to leave the church as I had been there 20 years,” Susan told ABC News.
“Eventually the pastor said, ‘why don’t you just leave, I can’t keep you safe because he is still here’.”
Her ex followed her to her next church, and tracked down the pastor who told her — after meeting him for coffee once — that her ex was a great guy: “I can see why you married him!”
“Fortunately,” she says, “the church I am at now is not very strong on headship, and has a modern attitude to divorce. They won’t stand up on stage and say, like they did at the church I attended with my ex-husband, that women should submit and God doesn’t want you to divorce.”
In Susan’s Pentecostal church, the Assemblies of God, only 4 per cent of pastors were female in 2013, and the national executive board was all male.
And, problematically, Pentecostal women are often taught that part of being female is yielding.
Prominent preacher Bobbie Houston told a Hillsong conference in 2008: “[Women are] big, we can step back from an argument. Someone has to step down, to leave a space for God to work, and God put it in feminine DNA to do that.”
As documented by Meredith Fraser, female submission is touted in Pentecostalism as a cure-all for marital problems: If women pray, are deferential and submit, there will be hope. The culture of self-sacrifice can be so strong it lends itself to “a certain masochism”.
Many Pentecostal women are advised to separate, but never divorce or remarry. They also report being told by their pastors to go home and make love to husbands who torment and terrify them.
Sex is touted as an answer for many marital maladies.
Momentum for change is building
In the past three years, alarm bells have begun to ring about the role religion may play in fostering, or concealing abuse.
There have been two substantial inquiries into domestic violence in Australia in recent years. Both have identified religion as a significant, under-reported problem.
In 2014, the Queensland Government appointed then governor-general Quentin Bryce chair of the Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence.
The report, Not Now, Not Ever, tabled in February 2015, pointed to the “challenge” of religious leaders:
“Disturbingly, a number of submissions and individuals reported to the taskforce that the leaders of faith in their particular community would not engage in helping victims or condemn perpetrators of domestic and family violence. These leaders of faith did not see it as the role of the religious gathering to ‘lecture’ about what happens in the privacy of a home … The taskforce challenges leaders of all faiths and religions to take a leadership role in fostering and encouraging respectful relationships in their community, and to teach their communities and congregations that coercive control and violence are never acceptable.”
In the same month, the Victorian Government established the Royal Commission into Family Violence following a series of family violence-related deaths in the state, most notably that of Luke Batty, who was killed by his father in 2014.
It sought to identify the most effective ways to address domestic violence, hold perpetrators accountable, and support victims.
The commission received 968 public submissions and tabled its report in March 2016, which made 227 recommendations. This commission, too, noted as a “challenge” faith leaders who were “predominantly or exclusively men”.
For many women who sought help from a faith leader, the commission reported, “the response was inadequate … some faith leaders were uninformed and ill-equipped to respond to such disclosures, ‘often the advice given wasn’t helpful because the faith leader didn’t know what kind of advice to give’.”
Examples cited were of religious leaders telling women that their partner’s abuse was their fault, or that they should stay in “intolerable” situations.
These responses, with some religious attitudes and practices, the commission found, “risk exposing victims to further and sustained abuse by family members”.
In its final report, the commission recommended faith communities examine the ways they respond to domestic violence and whether these practices may deter victims or condone perpetrators.
In other words, whether they conceal, not reveal, abuse.
Within the church, more and more concerned people have begun to recognise the magnitude and seriousness of the problem in their midst, and agitate for change.
Leaders who were previously ignorant or defensive have begun to work to understand the issues; some have been horrified, or at least sobered, to discover the extent of abuse in their midst.
How are churches responding?
A survey of the major Christian churches in Australia has revealed many have developed — or are in the process of developing — formal protocols and resources for preventing and responding to domestic violence in their communities.
Some also require clergy and parish staff to undertake specific domestic violence training, usually run by external providers — though this is often voluntary.
Several churches also reported using guidebooks that advise clergy and pastoral workers on how to recognise and respond to domestic violence and abuse.
Image: Rocco Fazzari
One resource, cited by the Lutheran Church and several Anglican and Catholic dioceses, highlights “unequal power relations between men and women” as a root cause of abuse, and specifically calls out the use of scripture as justification for control and abuse as a form of domestic violence.
A progressive group called Common Grace is also working to build a coalition of Christians prepared to speak up about domestic violence.
As Bishop Richard Condie of the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania said:
“The scriptural teaching about male headship in the home would be distorted if it were used to justify control, superiority or violence against women … I encourage my clergy to continue to … speak openly about family violence and domestic abuse in their church communities. We need to be prepared to challenge such behaviours — it cannot be excused or justified.”
And, motivated largely by the Royal Commission, Catholic Social Services Victoria in February distributed a domestic violence “resource kit” to parishes.
It includes a statement from the Bishops of Victoria, who condemn domestic violence and call on Catholic Church communities to do more to prevent it — 25 years after their counterparts in America did the same.
“As pastoral leaders in Victoria,” the Bishops say, “we reject a reading of scripture that condones domestic violence. A correct reading of scripture leads to an understanding of the equal dignity of men and women and to relationships based on mutuality and love”.
‘The vast majority of churches are naive’
But critics dismiss these efforts as slow-grinding, insufficiently resourced, too narrow in scope and fundamentally impeded by a lack of female leaders.
Taboos remain intact, the subject is still shrouded with shame, and efforts stymied by misinformation.
Roberts, who was in an abusive marriage for six years, now co-leads the website A Cry For Justice, where victims of domestic abuse can find support and resources and Christian men and women can learn about this issue from a biblical perspective.
She has corresponded with hundreds of thousands of church-going survivors of abuse — with more than a million visitors to her site in the past five years — and says overall, “a few churches are making efforts to tackle it but their efforts are not nearly meeting the need”.
And scarcely any churches are taking action at the coalface to tackle the problem.
“Most churches think they deal well with it when a particular case is reported to them,” Roberts says.
“But the vast majority of churches are naive about the dynamics of domestic abuse, the mentality of abusers, and the tactics abusers use to manipulate and resist having to take responsibility for their bad conduct.”
As for domestic violence experts outside the church, Roberts says, “many churches are wary of [them] because they assume they are all infected with the virus of feminism”.
It should be noted that a small number of churches contacted by ABC News either did not respond to repeated requests, or declined to comment on how they were addressing domestic violence, including the Catholic Archdioceses of Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart and Darwin and the Anglican Church of Southern Queensland in Brisbane.
‘I am a wreck of a person now’
What is clear from the women interviewed by ABC News is that they do not resent the church — they urgently seek its reform.
Louise, a mother of five children living in Brisbane, says she is desperate the “church’s participation in domestic violence be exposed”.
She split from her husband, Bill, 14 years ago, and is still suffering trauma. Bill was her first boyfriend. He charmed her utterly and they married quickly.
Then, from the moment of the marriage, he lost interest in her and frequently erupted in “awful fits of rage”. He pinned her up against walls, raped her and controlled her movements.
She was not allowed out on her own, even to do the shopping. For two and a half hours every morning and every night he yelled at her.
Every time she got pregnant, it got worse.
“I was sure my husband was going to kill me,” she says.
Image: Rocco Fazzari
Throughout his tirades, Bill hurled Bible verses at Louise, telling her to obey him, and accusing her of being Hosea’s wife — a prostitute.
She longed to kill herself, and one day walked down to the local railway line to throw herself under a train. She had not read the timetable, though, and while she was waiting, her daughter ran from her house and found her.
Turning to look at her daughter, she realised she could not leave her children alone with their father.
Finally, when she was pregnant with her fourth child, she told her pastor what was happening. “I actually got down on my knees and begged, I was so desperate,” she says.
The pastor then arranged for someone to interview her 12-year-old daughter to see if Louise was telling the truth. They concluded that Bill just had a bad temper.
When a pastor from their Pentecostal church came to visit, he did not make it past the front door.
“My ex stood up with that look of madness in his face and the pastor ran off with his tail between his legs,” Louise says.
Even this did not trigger alarm bells. The attitude of the church, she says, was “cold and callous. Really, really cold”.
The next person who came to their house was a Christian lawyer from the church who told her bluntly: “God doesn’t like divorce.”
Today, more than a decade after her marriage ended, Louise is still shattered.
“I am a wreck of a person now, I don’t function very well, I don’t see a soul, I don’t have a life. I had been isolated for so long, I don’t know how to live a proper life.”
Sometimes she gets up on a Sunday morning and gets dressed for church, but just sits on the end of her bed.
“I am a bit too scared of pastors, of people,” she says.
“We just wanted to do God’s will and do what it says in the Bible, and submit to whatever authority. I did believe in female submission — it is meant to be submission to love. It is meant to be a relationship of protection and love.”
The path forwards
What is required is substantial cultural change, of the scale that was required for the church to take sexual abuse of children seriously, says retired Bishop John Harrower of Tasmania.
As far back as 2004, he wrote a piece pointing out the parallels between the mistakes the church made over the abuse of children with those they have made over the abuse of women.
The first response of the church was to not hear, to not believe it was happening, he wrote. The second was to treat abuse as “a one-off moral failure”, which saw perpetrators moved from state to state, parish to parish, without being punished for their crimes.
Another mistake was to think simply having a quiet word to the abuser and giving advice to the victim to forgive will solve anything, to fail to consult counsellors — and, surely, police.
“We have been tempted”, he wrote, “to collude with offenders that their behaviour is nothing more than a matter of private morality”.
“If the church colludes in this sleight of hand, it can find itself, as it did in the matter of sexual abuse of children,” he wrote, “ignoring the fact that these matters are criminal behaviours; and that they have very real long-term consequences for the victims”.
What has been lacking in church communities, counsellors say, as it also is in the broader society, is first, an understanding of the psychology of violent men, and a recognition of how unlikely is it that they can change.
The main problem, Roberts says, is that churches are too easily hoodwinked by the charm and manipulation of abusers:
“Jesus told his followers they needed to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, but most churches are not wise about the mentality and tactics of evildoers, nor are they aware of how evildoers masquerade as believers in the church. The abuser typically has a Dr Jekyll persona that depicts him (or occasionally her) as a wonderful and godly man, so that no-one would suspect the truth … If the victim reports the abuse to church leaders, the abuser is skilled at shifting blame, evading accountability, and pretending repentance and reformation. The vast majority of church leaders aren’t discerning enough to detect these tactics of abusers for what they are: lies [and] often advise the victim to remain with or return to the abuser.”
Second, is an understanding of what domestic violence is.
A theme common to all of the interviews ABC News conducted with survivors of intimate partner violence was that they did not know what it was they were suffering until they saw a website, or pamphlet, outlining the nature of domestic violence.
This is especially the case for those who were abused not physically but sexually, financially, emotionally and verbally.
Almost every single woman who had experienced abuse in her marriage told ABC News her husband had raped her.
What has also been lacking, according to Anglican Isabella Young, who left her first marriage because of her Christian husband’s violence and abuse, and is now actively trying to force the church to take domestic violence seriously by authoring a book on the subject, is a clear indication that abuse is grounds for divorce — not just in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of God.
She says: “Confusion still evident among a sizeable proportion of clergy and in published Sydney Anglican Church documents on this issue causes much pain and confusion among abuse victims.”
Archbishop of Sydney Glenn Davies says divorce should be avoided, but that if a woman could prove that her husband had “ignored and overturned his commitment to Christ as a Christian man”, divorce could be acceptable.
Abusive clergy moved to different parishes
As was the case with clergy who abused children, clergy who abuse their wives have also been encouraged — or allowed — to move from state to state.
Tabitha, now 59 and living in Sydney, was married to an Anglican clergyman who emotionally, financially and sexually abused her for decades, and who was moved to another part of the country when exposed.
Image: Rocco Fazzari
He controlled the music she listened to, the books she read, the wine she drank.
He demanded to know where she was at all times and she was not allowed to use an ATM or drink lemonade without his permission.
He threatened divorce if she cut her hair and constantly accused her of cheating on him. He was angered by the way she put the cereal container in the cupboard, and so wrote on it in firm black letters: “THIS WAY TABITHA”.
He was the parish priest. Tabitha’s self esteem was steamrollered.
For years she dreamed of leaving, but it was not until he told her, out on a walk one day, that if she did not comply with a “depraved” list of sexual demands, he would divorce her. She refused.
She sought the success of local bishops without luck; they refused to believe he had behaved badly. Her husband moved to another state, to head up another parish.
Today, Tabitha has rebuilt her life, is working and is finally debt free after enduring a financially crippling divorce.
Her two children are almost grown. But she suffers from depression, has no savings and will need to leave Sydney once she retires because she can’t afford the rent.
She is lonely, and struggles with feelings of failure. She watches a lot of Netflix.
Sitting at a conference table in her office, sipping tea, a gently spoken Tabitha told ABC News: “Even in the darkest days, I never felt that God had deserted me, only the church.
“In one of the very few major arguments I had with my ex after the split, when he was throwing scripture up at me, I remember yelling at him that this was not God-based or scripturally supported and that God was crying buckets over what he was doing, and how dare he bring God into this situation when it wasn’t his fault.”
Names have been changed to protect those in this piece who have survived domestic violence.
This is the second instalment of an ABC News investigation into domestic violence and religion. You can read part one in the series — on domestic violence and Islam — here.
Family and domestic violence support services | https://medium.com/abc-news-australia/submit-to-your-husbands-women-told-to-endure-domestic-violence-in-the-name-of-god-b0f96f4386b4 | ['Abc News'] | 2017-07-31 04:37:01.898000+00:00 | ['Christianity', 'Domestic Violence', 'Church', 'Women', 'Religion'] |
Mileage Matters: Episode 21 | In this episode of Mileage Matters, we talk about the current conundrum small business owners face when it comes to health insurance coverage. We consider how to use artificial learning to our advantage and discuss the progress of augmented reality games and applications.
We compared cultural parallels made between the music industry and the start up world in reference to the HBO series The Defiant Ones. We also touched on Facebook’s ventures into real estate and discussed how companies used to be a provide-all for their employees.
Listen in below as we openly discuss the best opportunities of the week. We’ll see you next Friday.
Mileage Matters is recorded live at the start of every Drive Capital Partner meeting. We kick off our week with a discussion of the things that caught our attention over the past seven days. We’re going to begin sharing these musings in the form of a short podcast. Our goal is to give entrepreneurs a glimpse into how we think about the markets we cover (and more). We’d love to hear from you, and learn what’s catching your attention these days too. Let us know what you think on Twitter or drop us a line. | https://medium.com/performance-matters/mileage-matters-episode-21-8c04557542ff | ['Drive Capital'] | 2017-07-24 15:34:53.030000+00:00 | ['Augmented Reality'] |
Living — and Working — the Liberal Arts | A fellow trustee for whom I have great respect responded to my recent column about the value of the liberal arts. I had argued that the liberal arts teach college students how to think by training them how to write, articulate, apply quantitative methods, use technology, and work in a collaborative setting. I questioned: “Would you rather hire a liberal arts-trained engineer who possessed these qualities or one who was simply narrowly trained as an engineer?”
My colleague suggested that what she found in her own professional experience was something different. She observed in her work setting that many liberal arts graduates did not fully display these skills and qualities and were often less serious students for whom college was more of a good time than a life-changing intellectual awakening. I suspect that her views are shared by many employers.
Who’s to Blame When Graduates Fail to Meet Employer Standards?
Let’s assume that my colleague’s observation is true. It may even be a source of the frustration of many employers — some of whom seek certificate training to bring employee competencies closer to the needs of their workforce.
But the overriding question is: Who is responsible for this outcome? Why do some liberal arts majors — who should be the best prepared for the workforce — fail to meet employer’s standards for hire?
Some of the blame rests with the recent graduates.
There is a time when the “light bulb” turns on in all of us.
It may also be that the basic education that they received before college did not train them for the rigors of college life.
Some employees may simply be lazy, less interested in their work, or set other priorities higher than work.
A few may not fully understand the expectations that a job places on an employee.
Generational Differences in Employment Attitudes, Expectations
There may also be some differences in how each generation responds to employment. A former student, who visited me several years after his graduation, explained that he was a better manager than his boss and wanted to tell his employer how to run the shop. Internally, I was both amused and horrified.
My advice was simple: “Be the first in and the last out. Learn your craft. Profit from your mistakes and those of your colleagues. But always remember why you were hired for this job.”
Reluctantly, he agreed that perhaps he should approach employment differently.
The Liberal Arts as Intellectual Foundation for Education and Life
There is a current underneath the friendly banter my colleague and I had over the inherent value of a liberal arts education. It reflects a fundamental concern that is less about students and more about the quality and comprehensiveness of the education that they receive. The question that arises is about how colleges teach the liberal arts. And more seriously, how successful are they at it?
For most colleges — and especially at private and public four-year colleges — the liberal arts are the foundation of the intellectual grounding against which the college is measured.
Colleges may be known for some specialties and even particular majors but most stake their reputation on the breadth and depth of the education they provide. The quality of their institution relies, in part, upon how well they convey their message.
It’s the basis, for example, for the “residential liberal arts college.” This term conjures up a bucolic environment where exceptional faculty working with well-qualified students embody the best in a liberal arts tradition.
But the cold reality is that many liberal arts colleges step on their lead. They fail to differentiate how their education program fully engages students.
Some self-described comprehensive colleges rely on the reputation of their majors, emphasizing the quality of economics, psychology, or engineering. It makes it difficult to see how the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Further, it clouds the answers to why students in history, geology, or music should attend since the college makes no effort to illuminate the strengths of these majors.
That’s the source of the problem. How does a prospective English or accounting major differentiate quality between College A and College B?
Best Colleges Train Narrowly by Discipline, Broadly by Intent
One answer is, of course, that they should look at factors like the reputation of the faculty and post-graduate outcomes. But a more substantive approach should be for each prospective student to ask: “how will I be trained to think broadly?”
The colleges that integrate a comprehensive curriculum that trains both narrowly by discipline and broadly by intent prepare graduates best to enter the job market.
There is a wave of mergers, acquisitions, and closures slowly building across American higher education. It may not always be those that are the best endowed who will survive.
It is likely that higher education institutions that differentiate who they are and how they contribute will be agile enough to find a path forward.
How? Lead with the liberal arts. | https://medium.com/academic-innovators/liberal-arts-employment-5904b8fe85de | ['Brian C. Mitchell'] | 2018-09-10 15:13:51.793000+00:00 | ['Education', 'College', 'Liberal Arts', 'Higher Education'] |
How to get organic spotify promotion for your new music release | How to get organic spotify promotion for your new music release
Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash
After reading many messages from indie artists, it’s been brought to my attention that finding a Spotify promotion that is organic and not fake bot driven is near impossible today.
I have to admit that I’ve searched on Google and all the usual places and done the research just out of curiosity and have found nothing.
But some good news is that I work with a Press team and radio station that have had great success with this.
I’ve worked with the AVA Live radio team on driving Spotify traffic strategy development for over 10 years in driving Spotify Results.
What makes a difference in results?
On average, it does depend on the song as some reach 30k in a week, some reach 100k in 4 weeks and just keep growing, others take a lot longer and some just never take flight.
Even if your fans like a song, that’s not the deciding factor but it does help to see positive feedback like replays in the first week, requests for more music, and conversations around a single in that first month of release.
These are things I watch out for when I’m working on a promotional strategy for any new single.
* NOTE: I discuss strategy on Youtube weekly live.. Subscribe and turn on the bell for notifications to join me for those discussions.
Timing comes into play along with quality of music, genre and theme.
With so many factors involved, there are no guarantees other than we are committed to not giving up and we report all the details with you to constantly adjust the strategy in hopes of reaching that first 100k goal.
Do trends influence results?
Creating music that rides on music trends is a good strategy but isn’t a necessity. It’s just one strategy that works for DJ creators, electronic music producers and pop artists competing against artists in the top 5.
See those artists listed here:
Jax Daily December 2020 Music Issue | Best Music and Podcasts of the year
How can I get more Spotify plays?
If you prioritize Spotify results, you can work in depth with a press team in getting your spotify page traffic, I suggest doing a package that is focused on that goal only.
Defining one clear call to action with your team is essential in achieving the best results any one single can achieve.
When I work on the promotion of a spotify single, all traffic is designed to get you on a Spotify driven top 20 charts to measure how your music is doing in contrast to others in your area.
We have charts for Hiphop, Rock, Songwriters and electronic music..
The 2nd initiative is in building Music Brand Awareness.
That means we roll out content based on letting people know about an artist with a new single while focusing on message and the most important factors that validate that artist within a genre or niche group.
The final step is to make the artist memorable..
We create an evergreen content strategy targeted at making the artist memorable. This is customized for each individual of course as no two artists are alike.
So if you think your current music promotion team is hitting on these marks effectively, then awesome.. I want to know who they are so we can join forces but so far.. all I see are hundreds of websites pushing fake plays.
Here’s how to come work with the AVA Live Radio Press Team:
Good luck with your music promotions and never give up!!
Jacqueline Jax
Music Publicist, Radio host and journalist.
MORE music promotion articles: | https://medium.com/@jacquelinejax/how-to-get-organic-spotify-promotion-for-your-new-music-release-6bde2ecc590e | ['Jacqueline Jax'] | 2020-12-10 19:22:59.546000+00:00 | ['Spotify', 'Marketing', 'Social Media', 'Technology', 'Music'] |
What is Gravity?!? Pt. 1. | A bit of context: I am a 14-year-old trying to find out how some of the things around me in this world works. I have no experience in this field other than high school physics. This is a series of blog posts where I write about all the topics that I come across while trying to figure out how gravity works.
I’ve always been told that gravity is a force by which the earth pulls objects toward its surface. I was never satisfied with this definition for the following reasons:
For the past 9 years, all I’ve ever been told about gravity in school is this definition, calculations of gravitational force, and that an apple fell on Sir Isaac Newton’s head.
The textbooks never had any information on how the force works or why this force works.
So I decided that I was going to find out what gravity is and how it works.
This is the 1st Part of the Topic “What is Gravity?” where I talk about how gravity works in space between objects in space
The first thing I found out is that this was already done. Gravity had already been figured out by Albert Einstein.
So here’s what I found out after doing some research :
We, humans, are very small creatures on this planet. The only dimensions we can access are Length, Depth, and Height but it turns out that there exists a fourth dimension in the universe.
This dimension is called Spacetime. Einstein found out that the two closely related parts of reality could be joined if the speed of light was constant. This is a vast topic that I am researching currently. I will be writing on all the topics related to spacetime later in the blog.
For now, in this blog post, I am going to try and help you to visualize Gravity that is experienced by objects in space.
Space-time is like a huge trampoline in space on which all of the objects in space move around.
So on this trampoline are objects with different masses that create curves on it. Like in the image above.
Now when there are many objects on this trampoline, like in space (due to Entropy), many curves are formed on the trampoline (Spacetime).
This results in the formation of very steep slopes around the bodies having large masses. So the bodies with less mass, move along the slope towards the heavier body. Hopefully, this image could help you visualize this concept
.
This is how bodies of greater mass in space attract bodies of lesser mass.
Hope this helped!
Interesting Links | https://medium.com/@edwinsanish/what-is-gravity-pt-1-b52d861463a2 | ['Edwin Sanish'] | 2020-12-19 05:15:01.674000+00:00 | ['What Is Gravity', 'Physics'] |
Crypto Airdrops Aug 14 | Crypto Airdrops Aug 14
One new token drop and one new opportunity✌️
Fetch.ai token DAILY prize pool on Bitfinex
Between 12–17 August 2020
To promote the new launch of Fetch.ai token (FET), Bitfinex opens a daily prize pool of 50 000 FET to traders who deposit FET tokens into their wallets. FET tokens get rewarded to users on the first-come first-served basis.
🚀 more here
Opportunity: Negative Fees on Vaultoro
Since 22nd of July 2020
The gold trading platform Vaultoro is now offering negative fees for market makers. The rebate is 0.05% at any traded volume, however it only applies to crypto markets there — not to gold markets. At least the gold fees got cut back to pre-COVID levels on Vaultoro.
🚀 more here | https://medium.com/cryptolounge/crypto-airdrops-1058faec7701 | ['Atnet', 'Airdrops', 'Trading'] | 2020-08-14 07:31:33.731000+00:00 | ['Bitfinex', 'Vaultoro', 'Crypto Airdrop', 'Airdrop'] |
I Reached 1,000 Followers on Medium, Now What? | SATIRE
I Reached 1,000 Followers on Medium, Now What?
Quite the come up for a kid who didn’t do too well in high school English class
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
It was late 2019 when I pulled up to this platform we call “Medium” when it’s actually incredibly large.
I thought to myself, man, there are some writers who had to have been here for years to get to where they are, right? Wrong.
There are some one-hit wonders or some swing-writers who can drop an amazing story that gets thousands of views like a piece of cake.
I was not one of those “viral” writers.
Nope. Instead, I had to earn every single follower by staying consistent, transparent, and as motivational as I could be.
Without the enthusiastic spirit that my mom blessed me with, I wouldn’t have made it to my first one-thousand followers.
Followers aren’t everything to me, but they definitely help establish some credibility — which I’d rather have than none at all.
People view your profile and your writing differently when you’ve got 1,000 followers or more!
You can’t argue with me on this.
Whether you’re sitting in between 0–500 followers or riding out with 25k+ followers, we’re all on the same journey.
We all type with the same 26 letters in the alphabet on the same “QWERTY” keyboards. Everyone has the same opportunity to reach their milestones.
Excuses only lead you to feel crabbier rather than happier.
My English teachers and professors must be rolling around in their beds, wondering how the heck I made it into Medium’s 1,000 followers club. They must think I hacked the servers or hired some bots to auto-follow.
That’s not what happened, though. I earned my reads and follows fair and square. You don’t have to be an English major to make your mark. Everyone has a chance.
Please do me a favor and check out some of my stories to help me reach 2k, then 3k, and then 5k. I’m just kidding. Medium is a slow and steady race where we’ve got to take everything one day at a time.
I’m grateful for this moment.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. | https://medium.com/muddyum/i-reached-1-000-followers-on-medium-now-what-608700e05e7e | ['Jordan Mendiola'] | 2020-09-24 15:37:41.678000+00:00 | ['Map', 'Satire', 'Advice', 'Humor', 'This Happened To Me'] |
Your Guide to Writing (Almost) Everything | Readers love to read about writing. Stories like “How to Write 10,000 Words a Week” and “Power Up Your Language to Revolutionize Your Freelance Life” consistently attract thousands of readers to Forge, Medium’s in-house self-improvement publication, and have prompted us to develop a key pillar of Forge’s mission: that one of the most important ways you can improve yourself is by getting better at expressing yourself.
No project is more emblematic of this goal than “How to Write Anything,” a collection of stories on how to write — the principles and mechanics of the process — but also about how to write now, when every single one of us writes (and reads) constantly. As we said in the introduction to this collection: “You tweet. You email. You Slack. You text. Multiple times a day, you look at a blank screen and you fill it with words — your own words written in your own style for an audience you hope to persuade, amuse, inform.”
Because there’s no screen more ripe for self-expression than a blank Medium screen, one of the stories in “How to Write Anything” offers Medium-specific guidance from Darius Foroux, one of Medium’s most popular writers.
Here’s Foroux’s advice about writing for a Medium audience in “How to Write an Article Millions of People Will Read”:
Pick a single reader Take that reader on a specific journey Choose one or two authors you love, and practice writing like them Have a trademark Embrace feedback
While the four other stories in this collection primarily address more specific types of writing, we think they’re really about certain principles you can apply to all of your work.
Drew Magary’s story about how to Tweet is about being focused on the reader even when you’re writing about yourself.
Kara Cutruzzula’s story on how to write a follow-up email is really about the art of persuasion.
Julia Pugachevsky’s story on creating a great dating profile is really about how to tell the story of your life. Or maybe a story of your life. It’s about crafting any kind of personal narrative.
Chuck Thompson’s story about writing digital obituaries is about the importance of specificity and detail in your work — evocative nuances that readers will feel in their hearts, not just their minds.
This collection is about how to write anything, no matter who you are or in what format your writing appears, but we think it’s especially useful for the format you’re employing right now: the medium of Medium. | https://medium.com/creators-hub/your-guide-to-writing-almost-everything-71d83a2f4e7a | ['Ross Mccammon'] | 2020-10-23 22:07:46.912000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Writing', 'Productivity'] |
When I Say | This story was made by a 12 year old girl, and the purpose of this is to not hate on people, its to spread awareness on the perspective of the word for a young girl, and how we should change that perspective for the better.
When I say I hate men, I’m not talking about your grandpa who was in the war, I’m not talking about your uncle who is in the hospital, I’m not talking about your supportive dad,I’m talking about the men who drug young girls.I’m talking about the men who abuse their wife's. I’m talking about the men who think no girls are funny. I’m talking about the men who comment badly on your weight.I’m talking about the men who say women can’t be leaders. I’m talking about the men who think no means keep on asking. I’m talking about the men who say “well have you been kicked in the nuts”.I’m talking about the men who think they should have an opinion on a woman’s uterus.I’m talking about the men who say it must be your time of months when you’re moody.I’m talking about the men who say she was asking for it, look at what she was wearing.I’m talking about the men who cat call girls half their age thinking they will like it.I’m talking about the men who do not support women but say they do because they have a mom. I’m talking about the men who think they are good enough to touch a woman without her consent.I’m talking about the teen boys who say homofobic, racist, sexist things and call it dark humor. I’m talking about the men who think makeup is trying too hard but no makeup is not trying at all. I’m talking about the men who send a girl a random pic of his junk for fun, like she would like it.I’m talking about the men who when they leaked a photo of a girl, they say she should have not taken it.I’m talking about the men who say makeup is false advertising, like we are pretty characters in their life.I’m talking about the men who think men who sleep with 50 girls are awesome, but women who sleep with 5 men are hoes .I’m talking about the men that make girls scared to walk by themselves after sunset, gripping their keys in one hand and the self defence kit she spent all her money on in her other hand. And I’m not saying men don’t have it hard, but most women have it harder.
And I hate society, but I’m not talking about your family,I’m talking about the society that has a racist dress code. And I hate the society that is fine with men’s nipples but not girls.I’m talking about the society who say “it’s just part of being a girl”. I’m talking about the society who made it so women have to shave to be accepted.I’m talking about the society that thinks it’s women’s job to teach men about sexism.I’m talking about the society that blames a man r*ping a woman on her wearing red underwear.I’m talking about the society that it’s fine with men m*st*rb*ting, but if a woman does it she is too young or is weird.I’m talking about the society that makes women pay more for no reason, and yet still pays them less for their hard work . I’m talking about the society who is fine with women’s boobs in p*rn but not when they see a baby breastfeeding in public.I’m talking about the society that teach women how not to get r*ped and how to be safe instead of teaching men not to do that.I’m talking about the society who believes a man if they say a woman’s a hoe, but question a woman who says a man is a r*pist. I’m talking about the society that made birth control for women even though they can only get pregnant once every 9 months, and a man can get 2430 women pregnant every nine months.But this society did start to make birth control for men, but they stopped because the side effects were too bad- bloating, gaining weight, mood swings. Like have you seen the side effects for women.I’m talking about the society that designed everything for men, don’t believe me, women are 47% more likely to get injured in a car accident because the safety gear was designed for men. 238.And I’m talking about the society and men that made a 12 year old right this, so more people would be aware of our f*cked up world. I’m talking about a society we are stuck in for our whole life, and the only way it will change is by us. | https://medium.com/@briberube07/when-i-say-fc95437ab203 | ['Briana Berube'] | 2020-12-18 03:57:38.671000+00:00 | ['World', 'Kids', 'Wright', 'Society', 'Men'] |
Promise Of Impatience | Promise Of Impatience
impatience tries to convince me
that there is a point of no-pain
somewhere in the future
that if only I rushed towards it
I could be there now
in that pain-free zone
also, impatience tries to convince me
that there is a point of no-pain
somewhere out there right now
and that if only
I drop and shift away
from the present activity
I could access that space
of painlessness
but what impatience
never wants me to see
is that there is no way
I could escape ‘pain’
if it is there;
and that impatience itself
is sustaining the pain
when I have moments of clarity
I am naturally at ease
with pain or discomfort
in this very moment as it is;
and no tricks are needed
I am somewhat impatiently writing this poem in a habitual mode although I cannot deny that each moment of the day will unfold anyway and it will most probably include me in all those moments, good or bad, right or wrong, with or without impatience. :)
One needs tricks when they do not examine the truth of their experience. | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/promise-of-impatience-a280f07617d4 | ['Pretheesh Presannan'] | 2020-09-25 15:45:13.685000+00:00 | ['Self Inquiry', 'Poetry', 'Habits', 'Impatience', 'Spiritual Secrets'] |
Juggle for Zoom | Juggle for Zoom
My Role: UX Designer | Duration: 1.5 Week | Project Status: Concept
This year has been full of change and most of us have learned to adapt to the circumstances. We all began to heavily rely on technology to be able to speak, see, work and even be taught in remote settings. Accessibility to video-calling, messaging, screen-sharing and more became the norm, and being able to use them throughout different platforms and devices is incredibly important for us to continue our everyday life. In continuation, we will be exploring, discovering, and designing ways to improve the remote experience, specifically during video-conferencing.
Scope of Work
Explore and discover a solution within a mobile app that will support the remote experience.
Research/Discovery
The team began with an internal brainstorm, discussing the topics and ideas that first come to mind when we think about video-calls. Shortly after, we formulated our initial Hypothesis, Assumptions, and Problem Statement, which would be proved right or wrong during the research phase. With these crafted, we came up with a series of questions/discussion guide that was utilized to conduct a series of interviews. During these interviews we retrieved physical data, ranging from the application itself to the frustrations of the user.
Problem Space Statement
Hypothesis:
Mobile users need a video-chatting app that easily launches and links to their contacts, so they can connect/engage more quickly with the other person.
Initial Problem Statement:
How might we improve the convenience of the home page (of the app) to facilitate overall ease of use within the platform?
Goal/Methodology
Goal:
Understand convenience and usage of video-chatting platforms & what problems arise while they use the app.
Time/Duration:
Conducted Interviews with 5 users of varying backgrounds | Average length: 10 minutes.
Outcomes:
Learned about the app itself as well as user frustrations/needs.
Synthesis » Affinity Mapping
The interviews began to clarify our assumptions and support the hypothesis and as they continued other problems became prominent. We found out that Zoom in the most utilized application whether its for work or fun. The idea of connectivity as well as accessibility within an individual app became important. The ultimate idea would be to merge all the apps into one space, however in this space, we decided to better one aspect of the Zoom app. We decided to implement a multi-tasking feature, where you can video and chat simultaneously.
Once the interviews concluded, the data was synthesized, using a method called affinity mapping. This grouping method displayed similarities, overlapping themes, and insights that guided us during the creation of the ideal user named, Oliver.
Findings + Themes + Insights + Takeaways
In order to retrieve the specific insights and organize the user interview research gathered, we leveraged affinity mapping. This is where we converge all the data into similar groupings.
Users enjoy having multiple features within the platform.
having multiple features within the platform. Users want multi-tasking capabilities.
multi-tasking capabilities. Users know that they will be talking to many people at a time and enjoy when things go smoothly.
that they will be talking to many people at a time and enjoy when things go smoothly. Users wants to easily connect to the call with as little steps possible.
to easily connect to the call with as little steps possible. Users enjoy calls with no interruptions in order to increase productivity.
Persona
Once groupings where made, this helped us find similarities, overlapping themes, insights and other important information that became part of our fictional user, we call this the persona. From now on, this persona, will be referred to throughout the design process.
From now on, this persona, will be referred to throughout the design process. With Oliver in mind, we took a look back at our problem statement and synthesized data to find out if that was the ultimate problem that needed to be solved. We found out that it wasn’t and therefore revisited the initial problem statement. The statement was rephrased in order to encompass the true needs of the user and launch the design phase.
Revised Problem Statement
INSIGHT: Users are working remotely and want multiple features within their video-call, whether those features are for fun or for work.
PERSONA: Who is the intended audience? Could also be an archetype.
PROBLEM: As the work from home order continues in the US, workers have adapted to the remote environment by using video-conferencing tools. As a result, Oliver finds himself using several different platforms to perform different calls to achieve what is needed without disrupting his video feed.
GOAL: How might we provide users with an embedded messaging tool that will allow them to multi-task and not disrupt their video feed?
RESEARCH » DESIGN
I need features to have a productive call. » Embedded a split screen in order to access multi-tasking feature.
DESIGN PHASE — Meet Juggle!
Design Studio: Sketching + Concepting
Low-fidelity Screens
With the revised insights, challenges and ultimate goal, the preliminary design stage began. We started by sketching a few iterations to ultimately arrive to what we believe is a great solution for the user, being able to access chat while still viewing the video feed. These sketches were refined to a low-fidelity wireframe and prototyped and used for the first round of Usability Testing. Use LINK on following page to view low-fidelity wireframe on FIGMA.
Findings + Themes + Insights + Takeaways
After testing the prototype on five different potential users (all who use ZOOM for work, but not necessarily on their phone), the users ultimately mentioned that the interface was slightly difficult to use. They ultimately understood the task, and even though 2 out of the 5 failed, they all believed that if it was touch-screen they would have been more successful or ultimately would have know to swipe.
Regardless of that hiccup, users want more than one way to access the chat, need to have more text, hierarchy, and color, and want to be able to directly click and see the chat. One user particularly mentioned, “imagine if you had a ZOOM with 50+ people… I don’t want to have to swipe through multiple pages to get to the chat.” All in all, the user likes the concept but wants multiple ways of accessing with the fewest steps possible.
Users want several ways of accessing the chat.
several ways of accessing the chat. Users need to be able to click the “message bubble” and sent straight to the chat.
Mid-fidelity Screens
With the new insights that the Usability Test provided, we were able to take a look back at our initial prototype and improve the overall design and flow of the new feature. We found out that the user went straight to clicking the “message bubble” (instead of swiping), therefore the bubble will now be clickable for them in addition to the swipe approach. Additionally, the user pointed out that it would be useful to have more than one way to access the chat, therefore we added a new screen obtainable through the “more” button. Now, if they click “more” it will mimic the Zoom screen with an additional button that will say “quick chat”. Below please find a LINK to the mid-fidelity wireframes.
Findings + Themes + Insights + Takeaways
After testing the new prototype on a new group of potential users, the results in comparison to the first, completely change. All the users were able to successfully accomplish the task, regardless of how many clicks it took them to get there. Providing multiple ways of access was the ultimate recipe for success, because as we found out during this round of testing, some accessed it directly through the “message bubble” and others went through the “more” screen. All in all, users found it easy to find the messaging tool that will allow them to multi-task and not disrupt their video feed.
INSIGHT: Users used and like both ways of accessing the chat. Users found the task clear and enjoy the feature.
Final Recommendations
WRITTEN BY
Clara Perez | https://medium.com/@claraperez1020/juggle-for-zoom-cd1df513dbe2 | ['Clara Perez'] | 2020-12-27 01:00:51.052000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'UX Research', 'Uxdi'] |
Technology, Innovation and Modern War — Class 17 — Organizational Design — Safi Bahcall | This was our next -to-last class. While this class focused on the impact new technology and operational concepts and modern war, we thought it was important to have our students understand the organizational and cognitive barriers that make adopting new technologies difficult. Our guest speaker was Safi Bahcall,author of Loonshots.
The pre-class assignment was to watch Safi’s video about Loonshots.
In addition to our speaker, today was presentation prep day for our students’ final papers. We met with all the teams and reviewed their final summaries. (A description of their final assignment follows the summary of Safi’s presentation.)
I’ve extracted and paraphrased a few of Safi’s key insights and urge you to read the entire transcript here and watch his video.
—
Invention versus Innovation
As I’ve been sitting in the back of the class for the last couple of months, I’ve seen great speakers on strategy, on technology, on invention. I’m using the word invention deliberately — not innovation — because invention and innovation are different things. That point is at the heart of the problem with innovation inside so many organizations.
Invention is having an idea. For example, in the 1920s, when Robert Goddard showed that we could propel metal tubes by exploding liquid fuel inside them, he invented jet propulsion. That was a great invention. It didn’t become an innovation until it was developed and deployed at scale. In the case of jet propulsion, it wasn’t the U.S. that innovated. It was Nazi Germany with the V1 and the V2 missiles, and the Messerschmitt 262, the first jet aircraft.
So what’s at the core of the problem for national security organizations? What’s stopping them from innovating faster and better? It’s not strategy. The 2018 National Defense Strategy explained very clearly and effectively what needs to get done. It’s not technology. The military has 76 innovation labs. It’s not leadership. Leaders across every service are pounding the table about innovation.
Organization Design
The military has three of the four pieces of the puzzle you need: strategy, access to technology, leadership. The fourth, however, is missing. And that’s organization design. Good teams will kill great ideas, no matter how smart the strategy, how enticing the technology, or how much leaders insist on innovation. Why that’s the case is a longer story, which I’ve written about, but the bottom line is that we need to design our organizations to solve that problem — the adoption problem. If we don’t do that, we will lose.
I’ll give you an example. For close to 60 years, IBM dominated the IT industry. The industry was known as IBM and the Seven Dwarfs because IBM’s competitors were so far behind. If there was a superpower in any industry, it was IBM in IT. There were a couple of little competitors in the 80s, who didn’t seem like much. A little company in Seattle called Microsoft. When they did their first partnership with IBM, they had just 32 employees. There was another little company in Santa Clara called Intel. They were running out of cash. Little competitors that IBM disregarded.
Does the story of a superpower ignoring distant threats from seemingly weak competitors sound familiar from the class discussions on China? For IBM, strategy was not the problem. Invention was not the problem. Just like the DOD, IBM has tons of innovation labs. Many widely used technologies originated at IBM. Leadership was not the problem. IBM has been pounding the table about innovation for years. But if you look at IBM today, it’s 1/10th the value of Microsoft, it’s half the value of Intel. Strategy, technology, leadership — those were fine. But good teams kept killing great ideas. That’s the adoption problem.
So what can we do? There are some ways. They’re not obvious. They’re not what you read about in glossy magazines. They have nothing to do with fuzzy words like culture.
It’s About Creating The Structure for Adoption
It’s about structure. How do you create the right structure that helps with adoption? One of the things I found very encouraging over the last couple years in speaking with leadership in military or intelligence is their curiosity about what’s happening in the private sector, outside their usual sandbox.
When I sat down with Admiral Selby, we talked about Google. Google, at the time, was overhauling the back end of their search engine. They built their search engine 20 years ago. And they needed to fix the guts of it because it was out of date. Not unlike big legacy systems in the military. Google was getting that job done in blocks of six months. Selby pointed out that nothing like that could get done in the military in six months. It might take six years, if not 60 years. So how does Google get it done in six months? And what can the military learn from that?
We don’t have time to get into all the details we discussed, but I’ll give you a flavor.
Five Patterns that Impede Adoption
I’ll start with five patterns I’ve observed across the service branches, and what we might do about them.
The first is a preference for big versus small. Many of your previous speakers have talked about that. Bigger jets, bigger engines, bigger ships, as opposed to the small changes that can make an enormous difference. The second is a preference for product over strategy. A preference for things that you can touch — ships, guns, planes. As opposed to new strategies that are less obvious, less glamorous, but can make an enormous difference. For example, the tank was invented in the mid-1910s. And it was used in World War I. But it wasn’t the tank as a technology, by itself, that allowed Nazi Germany to take over Western Europe in a matter of weeks. It was their strategy, the Blitz. Focusing on technology alone, getting caught up in the shiny glamour of it and neglecting the less glamorous strategies on how to deploy those technologies creatively, is a common trap. Not just in the military, but also in Silicon Valley, where it dooms otherwise successful companies. The third is a focus on technology as opposed to transfer. In other words, a large investment in acquiring sexy new technology. With much less energy and attention on identifying and navigating the internal barriers to adoption. Assuming that good ideas and technologies will win the day, by themselves, and neglecting the often-hidden sources of internal resistance, agendas, misaligned incentives, legacy stakes. You can spend billions on great technology, on dozens of innovation labs, but if you don’t put energy and creativity into winning those internal battles, the technologies will die. The fourth is a focus on prototyping as opposed to pretotyping. Pretotyping is about what to do beforethe minimum viable product. How to test hypotheses incredibly fast. In one day for $100. Doing it well bakes into the system a preference for hypotheses rather than opinions; fast experiments rather than big plans; and testing ideas and strategies, not just products and technologies. And the fifth pattern is a focus on minimizing as opposed to maximizing risks. By which I mean maximizing the intelligent risk-taking you need to discover important breakthroughs. I see this all the time in mission-driven, as opposed to profit-driven, organizations. When lives are at stake, there’s an enormous focus on reducing risk. In the military, you don’t want a lot of risk in your parachutes, or in your nuclear silos. But if you want to discover a new technology before your competitor, you want risk. You want to fail. A lot. If you only try things that don’t fail then you won’t discover the truly important breakthroughs, the ones where everyone gave up because they didn’t think it could be done. And who will discover them? Your adversary, who is taking those risks, who is working through the nine failures to get to then 10th iteration, the one that works. And you’ll see that 10th iteration when it’s too late, when it’s a bullet coming at your head.
Three Solutions
I’m not going to talk about reforming the acquisition process, which many of your class speakers have mentioned and does need to get done. Doing that is like turning an aircraft carrier. It’s incredibly slow, because of all the stakeholders. I’m going to talk about some things that are easier to do. More like a surgical strike.
1 is measurement. If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. Conversely, the things you measure well, with easily understood and visible metrics, tend to improve without much extra push. So how you do that with innovation? Follow the money is the bottom line. But the fact that we aren’t doing that at all is a real problem. I remember speaking with someone senior at the Joint Chiefs of Staff who said, “We have no tangible way of knowing how we’re doing on innovation across the service branches. Absolutely no idea.” If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. 2, rewards. A quote from a major in the Air Force, “You get promoted in the Air Force by not screwing up. Trying something new means risking failure, scaring people around you, and therefore risking advancement. Do what the guy did before you and train those below you to do what you do.” A widespread mindset in the DoD is that the №1 priority is don’t get fired. What are the implications of that mindset? How much risk will people take? I mean among the people that you want to be taking intelligent risks, the ones that you want to discover new technologies and strategies before your adversaries do? Do you want the №1 priority in the minds of those people to be how do I play it safe? The need for a “special forces” for innovation. Not another innovation lab but standing up a new functional combatant command of program champions who can identify the internal barriers to adopting new technologies, come up with solutions, and get the job done. With representatives from each of the service branches. A joint surgical strike on innovation, rather than a disconnected massive attack.
There’s a widespread failure to understand that being a good inventor and a good champion are vastly different skill sets. The idea of radar was discovered by a pair of scientists in the Naval Research Labs 18 years before World War II started. They were great inventors, but lousy champions. The idea sat there for a decade until a naval officer named Deak Parsons discovered it, went around to every bureau chief, pounded the table on why it mattered, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, until he got them to cough up a check for $5,000 to fund the project. Robert Goddard was another great inventor, lousy champion. It’s because there was no good champion for that idea here in the U.S. that the Nazis — who got the idea from Goddard’s papers — developed missiles and jet aircraft first.
You heard in an earlier class from General Shanahan about a bullheaded Colonel named Drew Cukor who pounded the table to stand up Project Maven and JAIC to bring AI to the military. Cukor is the most recent in a long line of internal champions, like Deak Parsons or Vannevar Bush, or Schreiver with ICBMs, or Moffett with aircraft carriers, or Rickover with the nuclear Navy. They were all great champions. Not inventors.
What we need is a new functional combatant command to attract, train, and deploy great champions. To develop the next generation of Drew Cukors or Deak Parsons or Bernard Schrievers, rather than hoping and praying that maybe we’ll get lucky and another disrupter will come along in time and modernize the military. We no longer have that luxury. We cannot afford to start our conflicts with yesterday’s technology and hope that we will catch up. Not in the era of data and algorithms. Chris Brose was quoting was John McCain when he said, “Hope is not a strategy.”
We need a separate command for the same reason that we need cyber or special operations as a separate command. The problem is endemic to all the service branches, not specific to just one. And there’s a unique skill set that needs to be developed. Good champions need to be mediators, buffers between technologists and soldiers. They need to be bilingual, to speak the language of each side fluently. They need to understand product market fit: why some ideas will get traction, others won’t. They need to identify hidden organizational barriers and come up with solutions. They need to understand horizontal influence: how to influence people over whom they have no direct authority. All of those are special skills, with best practices and useful lessons to be learned from years of examples across the different branches. Yet no such training exists today.
Google does it. Microsoft does it. They’ve understood the importance of having a special forces unit for innovation champions and have done it well. They create a career ladder to retain people in the role, to build experience and skill, to convey prestige and respect. They keep the role neutral, like Switzerland, neither on the research side, nor on the operation side, but in between, like a mediator needs to be.
If you create a joint special forces for innovation Sherpas, for program champions, you not only gain the ability to innovate faster and better as an organization. You improve your ability to attract, retain, and motivate talent. When I put out that War on the Rocks article, I got emails from very impressive people, with an entrepreneurial bent, who had left the military, but clearly wanted to contribute. They said, “If that division was there, sign me up.” You put a purple rope around it, you make that command hard to get into, you make it as cool as SOCOM.
Read the transcript of Safi’s entire talk and watch the video below.
If you can’t see the video click here. | https://medium.com/@sgblank/technology-innovation-and-modern-war-class-17-organizational-design-safi-bahcall-7ee825bccf7c | ['Steve Blank'] | 2020-12-21 16:07:46.013000+00:00 | ['Defense', 'Teaching', 'Military', 'Higher Education', 'National Security'] |
20/20 vision | Weeks ago, while I was clearing my bookshelves of trinkets I amassed after simply chucking things here and there, my eyes spotted my stack of journals, neatly placed on one quiet corner. I tried ignoring the pile because my cleaning would turn into a trip down memory lane if I opened even one notebook.
But I couldn’t resist. Minutes later, I found myself flipping the cover of my light blue journal. It didn’t take long for the nostalgia to kick in. The first page already had me yearning for a time that feels so long ago now. On top, it read, “I’m so excited for 2020,” sprawled in lazy handwriting. In the journal entry, I wrote about my plans for the year, like finally witnessing the view at the peak of Mt. Pulag, going on a summer trip with my friends, and getting my first tattoo — things that I know for a fact won’t happen any time soon.
2020 looked like a promising number for me. There was something about the number 20 repeating itself that made it sound so special. I even read a quote somewhere that said 2020 is the year we’re going to see things with unprecedented clarity. They called it the “20/20 vision.” Needless to say, it was a brilliant pun.
I also turned 20 last December, so I thought there was some sentimentality behind my age being nearly the same number as the new year. I took it as the universe’s way of telling me that this year is going to be mine.
But unlike seven months ago when wonder for the year ahead consumed me, hopelessness has become second nature to me now. In the world’s current dismal state, thinking about the future has almost become futile.
It’s funny how we stylized this year as “20/20 vision” because we sure didn’t see any of this coming.
Last January 30, the Philippines recorded its first COVID-19 case. We called it 2019-nCoV at the time. Back then, it was easy to attach a name to a number, so they released each new patient’s details for the public’s information: their age, their place of residence, the hospital they were in, and their travel history.
But then, we hit 100, and identifying every case became cumbersome. Then, we reached 500. Then, 1,000. 5,000. 10,000. 20,000. Then, we began recording 2,000 cases per day. On August 10, we tallied the highest single-day spike in infections: 6,958 — a number that used to only represent our total.
As of writing, we’ve long breached the 200,000-mark.
On March 16, we put selected areas in the country under enhanced community quarantine. Back then, the 30-day lockdown seemed too much. What were we going to do cooped up in our homes for a whole month? I thought it would only take two months tops to contain the virus (and, obviously, I was wrong). I imagined we would do what the likes of South Korea did in combatting the pandemic — and with more urgency and aggression because we had the lead time and a model to follow. But that didn’t happen. And while our neighbors were already effectuating a travel ban to delay the entry of the virus in their territories, the Philippines kept dismissing the need for it.
“We haven’t reached that level of contamination yet,” they said.
Now, here we are, in quarantine for more than half a year. We’re still nowhere near flattening the curve. I’m no statistician, but the graphs don’t look flat to me. Our sum of cases is blowing up on the daily. Our hospitals are approaching full capacity. Our medical health workers are growing tired. Our economy is collapsing. Businesses are closing down. Employees are losing their jobs. Filipinos are starving. People are dying. And in spite of all that, high-ranking officials still have the audacity to tell us that “we’re winning.” No, we are not winning. We are far from winning.
Today, we don’t bother finding out where the cases are coming from anymore. What’s more important now is whether the virus has arrived in our towns or barangays or not yet. Because at the rate this has all been going, it’s only a matter of time before the virus starts creeping into our workplaces, our neighborhoods, and — God forbid — our homes. Heck, it has already happened to many of us.
It’s obvious that a cure is the only way to end this. But how long we have to wait is anybody’s guess.
The other day, someone asked me how I’m doing with the goals I set for myself. Frankly, I don’t care about my postponed or canceled plans anymore. At this point, I only have one plan left, and that is to survive today. And the next day. And the next. With my sanity intact. And with the hope that the following day becomes the day that the virus is no more. That we will go back to when there was no pandemic, where social distancing was a foreign concept, and face masks weren’t part of our everyday lives.
My plans can wait. I have to put them on hold if I want to get out of this alive. But I would be lying if I said I’m not hanging on to the belief that what I wrote in my journal will come true one day. That we can resume the lives we had to put on pause. And I say this with no intention of sounding pseudo-positive.
So, until then, we have no other choice but to tread on. Even when the end of all this is nowhere in sight. | https://medium.com/@patriciarvr/20-20-vision-a029d4fdaba | ['Patricia Rivera'] | 2020-09-16 13:33:32.611000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Covid 19', 'Philippines', 'Coronavirus'] |
How To Stop Dogs Biting Fast! [Free Working Guide 2021 | How To Stop Dogs Biting Fast
hi, Today’s Posts is How To Stop Dogs Biting Fast, dogs biting is an inevitable part of having a puppy But it can also be one of the most frustrating and painful Flurry is just under four months old now and he’s going through a pretty significant puppy biting stage At the Windscreen yeah, I don’t need to windscreen anyway. Today, we’ll show you how to teach your puppy to stop biting you
Yeah, Retriever Dog is the right dog for this Post, and trust me if you’ve got a puppy
Pick up a copy of my Ebook too for the complete guide to raising the perfect dog
Understand that I strongly discourage the use of training collars like choke prong and electric collars that’s because those types of collars are
Specifically designed to train with pain and that does nothing to promote a bond between a person and a dog
That’s the single most important factor when teaching any dog
but have you ever heard that when your puppy is biting you like this that you should say ouch and walk away from
them ouch
And we can definitely say [that] now what we thought that
this was a bit of a shallow way to
Address this because you’re addressing the symptom of the biting and not the cause of your dog’s desire to interact with you
There are two main reasons that Dogs [puppies] bite like this because they’re teething or because they’re trying to engage the world
This is how they grab things if your puppy is teething you’ll definitely want to make sure they have
Regular access to safe chew toys of lots of different textures now
it’s going to take a few weeks to really resolve puppy biting and dogs can be really nippy until they’re about five months old or
Even longer if it goes unchecked you must commit to being very patient with them right now you and your dog don’t yet have
Really Crystal clear communication together and every interaction you have with them needs to be focused on building that communication <<<Click Here Download Free Ebook Guide>>>
Addressing puppy biting is one of the best opportunities to do that in addition to the exercises
I’m about to cover make sure you have a strong focus on desensitizing
your dog to being touched firmly by a person. I think he’s enjoying the massage
So the more they’re used to this the less likely they are to nip at you
You know I’ve even heard some dog trainers recommend biting your dog back
So they know how it feels, but those are really silly ways to teach it on if your puppy play bites really excessively
Then you’ve probably got a high-energy dog
If that’s the case then exercise early in the morning and throughout the day is mandatory if you want relief Sooner rather than later
Chances are if you’ve got a puppy biter on your hands
You’re probably getting pretty good at predicting when they’re about to be bitey for example in Flurry’s case
It’s all the time simply hoping for the best and reacting negatively when your puppy bites
You are not going to resolve this efficiently fast success comes when you’re one step ahead of your dog now
I know you can do this you’re a person there a dog most of you are smarter than your dog
I hope first let’s talk about how you need to get good at using a toy to curb puppy biting
Since I know that flurry is likely to bite me when I go to greet him
I want to be one step ahead of him by having a toy. I know he likes already with me
He likes that snake so look this is okay to bite my flesh is not
So we want to continually divert our dog’s attention
To the toy the thing that is acceptable to bite over time your dog is going to start to realize alright
So there are some things I’m allowed to buy some other things
I’m not just they’re not born knowing this so you have to take the time to teach [them]
Read a Free Ebook <<<Click Here Download Free Ebook Guide>>>
it’s not reasonable to expect a dog to just be calm all the time your goal should be to get them to release energy and
Play when we asked them to rather than waiting for them to ask out on their own
So now let’s talk about how to use treats to curb puppy biting
i mean your dog has to know the proper conduct when encountering a person remember when your dog is biting
You like we’ve been seeing flurry do they’re just trying to engage [you]
we just have [to] show them and teach them that we prefer a different kind of engagement a more civilized form of
Engagement since I know that flurry is very likely to start biting me when I engage him I’ve got to be one step ahead of
Him so I’ve got a treat right here now
We’ve done some basic training with him and he knows how to sit and a couple of other things
I’m going to encourage him to sit for a treat like that. It’s worth noting that many puppy biters
Don’t know how to take a treat gently and they really bite your hands while trying to get that treat
So if that’s your dog just simply treat them open palm
It’s a good idea to have treats easily accessible at all times if you’ve got a new dog
Let’s take all of that exuberant energy and turn it into learning power now right off the bat when you’re using treats
That’s likely to subdue your dog’s desire to bite
Just because they get in
Food mode when a dog is in the mood to eat they tend to be a little less bitey since I know flurry is
Likely to bite. I’m going to ask him to sit
Nice work. Now, you might be wondering “hey, am I rewarding my dog for biting in this situation?”
No, you’re not, because we asked him to sit first
There ya go, good job bud. So ideally you asked your dog to do something else. Maybe it’s “sit”. Maybe it’s “lie down”.
Maybe it’s “come”. That’s a good rollover buddy, and reward for the thing you DO like. so you can see by training like [this]
We’re satisfying his urge to want to interact with us and our desire to have a well-behaved dog at the same time. <<<Click Here Download Free Ebook Guide>>>
teaches your dog to respond to you, rather than simply behaving impulsively. This is why it’s important to make a great effort to understand
why your dog is acting a certain way rather than simply focusing on correcting unwanted behaviors after they occur.
Imagine it if you were really consistent about asking your dog to sit every time you greeted them a
thousand times in a row. Your dog would quickly get into the habit of sitting to greet you
instead of biting you. How great would that be?
Use both of these approaches that we’ve gone over so far and use them often when encountering any dog going through the puppy biting phase.
Now, when you notice
instances of licking where your puppy used to bite, you’ll know you’re on the right track!
And you should notice that becomes a bit more frequent with time.
Puppy biting can take anywhere between a couple of days and a couple of months with extreme biters
so it’s really important to keep your expectations in line.
So what do you do if you’re just hanging out in your caught off guard by the puppy biting? Well, number-one,
promptly initiate one of the training sessions that we did today
Exercise Your dog or place them in a boring environment for a few minutes until they calm down a bit
Parents of young kids, understand that it’s your responsibility to teach your puppy not to bite, not your kids
But you can make it <<<Click Here Download Free Ebook Guide>>> | https://medium.com/@geniusworks2020/how-to-stop-dogs-biting-fast-free-working-guide-2021-f9f51d08ad46 | [] | 2020-12-26 15:58:47.459000+00:00 | ['Dog Training', 'Dog Behaviour Training', 'Dog Bites', 'Dogs Care', 'Dogs'] |
The 4 Pillars of Personal Brand That Help You Make 6 Figures A Month | The 4 Pillars of Personal Brand That Help You Make 6 Figures A Month Unique Designz Mar 17, 2019·3 min read
If you want to generate 6 figures per month with your business, it’s really not that difficult.
Over the past 12 years of being in business, I’ve realized that with the proper mentorship, structure and discipline, to go from $40k-$50k per month to $100k+ per month isn’t about making these gargantuan moves.
It’s about making subtle shifts in focus.
Here’s the problem.
A lot of the personal brand clients I work with are trying to figure all of this out on their own.
They’re spending 5 hours contemplating whether or not they should put 2 rather 3 call to action buttons on their funnel lol, rather than focusing on the real issues inside their business which I call “needle movers.”
One of my Brand Accelerator clients recently said to me the other day, “There was NO WAY I was going to do all that preparation and strategy work you walked me through on my own… I would have continued to focus on all the stupid sh*t and would have wasted weeks if not months, trying to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. What we did in 6 hours would have taken me 6 MONTHS!”
Do you want to continue to spin your wheels and pussy foot around with scaling your business to the next level or do you want to work side by side with someone who’s already doing it and have them guide to that goal in half the time and help you execute it all out for you?
What option do you think is going to bring you better results?
It took me about 8 years to figure this out and I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to take that long.
I look back now and say, “Damn, If I had just gotten out of my own damn way and gotten that guidance sooner, God knows where I’d be right now with my business?! Lol”
For the record, I don’t regret not taking action sooner.
I’m grateful because now I have a story to tell and now can help you save 8 years of your life and get you to where you want to be in 8 weeks instead!
I get it though…
As entrepreneurs we think we can do it all on our own.
We say to ourselves, “I got this!!”
Then we go to sit down and actually try to execute and we become paralyzed.
We don’t have any structure…
We don’t have any framework to work off of…
We have now foundation to build upon…
It’s like trying to build a house with no architectural plans.
It’s like jumping into your car and not having a freaking clue as to where you’re driving to.
Without a well designed destination or blueprint, you don’t have a shot in hell to making it to the 6 figure per month mark with your business.
However, there is a solution…
There’s a few pillars to that solution….
Tenacity…
Structure…
Guidance…
Discipline…
Just to name a few…
If you have these 3 things in place, you’re going to make it to the 6 figure per month mark and you’re going to do it faster then you think…
If you had enough of trying to figure out how to scale your business all on your own and you’re ready to make that jump to the next level, then I’d have you check out the Brand Accelerator program.
Here’s the link: https://uniquedesignz.net/brand-accelerator/
Talk soon!
– The Doc
Henry K “The Brand Doctor”www.uniquedesignz.net
Follow Me On Instagram
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Connect On LinkedIn
Subscribe To My Youtube Channel | https://medium.com/@uniquedesignz2019/the-4-pillars-of-personal-brand-that-help-you-make-6-figures-a-month-89b211c58a8a | ['Unique Designz'] | 2019-03-17 11:12:45.816000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Branding', 'Brand Doctor', 'Personal Branding'] |
Deploy a Production Django App With Elastic Beanstalk (Part 2) | Setting up S3 — Static and Media Storage
Up to this point, we have a working Django app deployed on Elastic Beanstalk Amazon Linux 2. Congratulations! However, we still need to set up S3 so the site shows styles and we can upload images — which would be nice, considering it’s an image of the day app!
Create a group and user
First things first: We need to create an IAM user with programmatic access so our application can access the S3 bucket we’re creating next. Best practice here is to create a group with the appropriate policies attached and add a new user to the group. Note: I highly recommend creating a new user for the application’s S3 access. Using an admin user opens all kinds of security risks.
In the AWS services search bar, look for IAM. Navigate to IAM → Groups → Create New Group. Set the group name to something like “S3FullAccess” and go to the next step. Here, search for “S3” and select AmazonS3FullAccess . Click on the next step and create the group.
Now, we’ll navigate to “Users” and add a new user. Name the user whatever you want, I’ll go with “iotd-s3-access” and select “Programmatic Access.”
Click to permissions and add this user to the group we created. Click through and create the user.
After the user is created, you will get a success notification and be able to save the Access key ID and Secret access key. Important: if you don’t save these credentials here, you will not be able to see them again. You will have to delete this user and create a new one to get credentials again.
Download the .csv file with the credentials in it and head back over to the iotd project settings file. Add two new settings at the end of iotd/settings.py — we’re not going to add the keys, but instead references to them:
if 'AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID' in os.environ:
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = os.environ['AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID']
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = os.environ['AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY']
Committing the actual keys in your settings file is a dangerous idea. It poses a security vulnerability if anyone were to gain access to your project’s code (GitHub or otherwise). Instead of keeping them in the settings file, we’re going to add them as environment variables and pull them into the settings file securely. Docs here.
Create a bucket
Before we get into environment variables, navigate to S3, and create a new bucket. Make sure to turn off the block public access. We’ll need the images stored here to be public to show them in the API and have access to them later on. Name your bucket whatever you want. I usually recommend enabling versioning, but this is optional. Click “Create Bucket” and we’re all set. | https://medium.com/better-programming/production-django-elastic-beanstalk-part2-4501caf7d8fb | ['Zack Petersen'] | 2020-12-15 16:49:55.854000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Database', 'AWS', 'Django', 'Programming'] |
The Real Reason Writers Love to Write | The Real Reason Writers Love to Write
It Allows Us the Control Life Doesn’t
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
I am 47 years old, a teacher, and a fledgling writer. Two months ago, my husband lost his six-digit job. My son is 17, a senior in high school, and my daughter is twelve going on 25 [if you know what I mean].
I am, to most people, a woman who touches things and they turn to gold. But that fact, like the story, is a myth. I am a perfectionistic, borderline OCD [ as determined by my therapist] female, officially diagnosed with panic disorder [which you can imagine goes nicely right now with the fact that my 50 thousand dollar job is supposed to currently support my family of four].
These two months have been undoubtedly one of the most emotionally trying times of my entire life. Actually, the last couple of years have been increasingly hard for a number of other reasons, even before the job loss.
These problems have brought on frequent insomnia so here I am, at 3:30 unable to sleep. However, tonight [or this morning] the sleeplessness has been a blessing, brought out a revelation.
Why?
Because in this moment, I figured out exactly what writing does for me. And it's more than those poetical notions of pent-up creative juices that must be freed from their enslavement to celebrate emancipation on the page.
It’s hope. Possibility. Escape. And, I must admit, control.
It’s being able to do things that life won’t always allow me to do. Maybe you too seek the craft for those same reasons. Let me explain.
There’s a back button. And the option of endless editing.
Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
Ten years ago, I could run a 7-minute mile. Pretty impressive for a 37-year-old female. But back then, I worked out four to five days a week, running 5 miles at a time.
In the following ten years, however, biology waged war on me. My lovers, Estrogen and Progesterone, turned their backs on me, seeking out younger women to make happy. Without them as allies, my body is a battleground. So is my brain and heart.
I eat the same, work out as hard as I can, but those former lovers gave me strength, prowess, a sense of emotional stability. Now that they are no longer taking an active role in my life, things have went downhill.
I still run, but I cannot go as fast or as long as I could. I still run, but the five-o -clock mornings that used to find me energetic and sprightly as I laced up my running shoes, now find me sluggish and unwilling. I must drag myself to the gym like I drag my grouchy 12-year-old out to catch the bus in the wee hours of the morning.
It’s demeaning. And defeating. And hard to accept. But age never goes back, it only moves forward, ruthlessly, irrefutably.
Our life’s mistakes are the same. Words spoken in anger. Actions taken in haste or pain. Where friendships were severed or opportunities were lost. Once things are done, they cannot be erased. Perhaps they can be mended, repaired, but things will never be as perfect as they were before those words were said or those deeds were done.
There is, quite simply, no “back” button to make life the way it used to be.
But there is for writing.
Whenever we don’t like what we have typed onto the page, we can go back. Delete. Start afresh. Create something better. Reverse time. We do not have to be chained to irreversible words or thoughts or actions. Each moment we have the option to rewind, to perfect. Even, if some cases, after we have hit the “publish” button.
If only life was the same.
There is always our favorite key “escape” and a variety of fonts to make life look pretty.
Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash
As I stated previously, right now is pretty much an emotional hell for me.
My husband has been putting out applications like a dying man looking for a new kidney, but no bites so far. We have a small reserve right now, but every day that amount dwindles, and every day my corresponding fears increase.
If you know anything about anxiety and depression, you know that it is a cruel master, not only wounding you at the infection site but oozing outward, pus seeping into each area of your life, making everything more difficult.
Take, for instance, my new school year. It started last week. After twenty-three years of teaching, you would think that it would be easy. And it usually is. But anxiety clouds everything-your cognition, your memory, your ability to rationalize and self-soothe. And so, with these heavy burdens on my family’s shoulders, even routine tasks become monumental. And hard. But they must be done.
Because right now, I am my family’s only breadwinner.
This is part of the reason I embrace writing so much. In the two months since his job was lost, I have put out over 100 articles. Yes, for the love of writing. But also for the pennies and extra dollars that can make my family’s life just a bit easier right now. And even this creative outlet has turned a bit poisonous, for it has become less about fun and more about survival.
But such is life. There are trials and tribulations, journeys of dark forests and scary roads we must each walk through to get to the other side. There is no escape from this cruel truth of life.
But thankfully, for writers, we always have that beautiful escape key. We can “exit full screen” and hide from the reality of the page for a while. We can “minimize” and forget about our current writing dilemma or the words that just won’t come. We can shrink the text, make things pretty with a pleasing font, or add beautiful images to pull our focus from the painful words written or the harsh realities we know we must lay down on the page.
Unfortunately, life has no such reprieves. The text and screen surround us, blindingly visual and thunderously loud. No escape key in sight.
Bottom Line:
Photo by hannah grace on Unsplash
Writers are like fine wines. The more they age, the better they get. This is not always true with life or people. But, no matter. The page is still there for us. Plain. Beautiful. Willing to accept our pain as we vomit the ugly truth on the screen, and then, with the swipe of a mouse or the touch of a key, hide it, erase it, or save it for a day when we can bear to look at it again, to face the truth about times we can never return to or mistakes we can never erase.
If only life was the same.
If only. | https://medium.com/1-one-infinity/the-real-reason-writers-love-to-write-6185fa27868e | ['Dawn Bevier'] | 2019-09-19 10:18:14.238000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Writers On Writing', 'Writers Life', 'Mental Health', 'Writing'] |
10 Steps To Look Younger | The secret of the youth has been searched since long time ago. Many researchers have done some experiments to find ways to slow down the aging process.
There are some techniques which have been implemented, but the most important things for us to do are being consistent in implementing healthy lifestyle and eating habits.
We can’t stop the natural change, but we can still look younger if we want to work hard to slow down the aging process.
Therefore, I’m going to help you with 10 easy steps to make you look younger:
Detox — It’s important to start detoxification, getting rid of toxin from our body. Our body metabolism has done that process, but in everyday life we are exposed to so many chemical hazards from air, food and environment. Fasting or just consuming fruits and vegetables are ways to detoxify our body.
Sleep — Having enough sleep at least 6–8 hours a day will make our skin healthier. Having a good sleep is also important because growth hormone is working during that time. It renews the old cell of our body, include the skin cell. Our skin will look fresh and young if we have enough sleep.
Food — Eating healthy and safe food everyday will make our body fit, slim and also look younger. Try to eat more fish instead of red meat. Fiber food, vegetables, fruits, and supplements are important food to consume. Drink less coffee and other caffeine beverages.
Exercise — Through routine exercise, we will feel happier, energetic, and confident. It also increases our bone density and muscle which can make our body look 15–20 years younger. Beside aerobic, walking, and swimming, goes also to the gym to do lifting exercise.
Relax — By trying to be relaxed, our face will look younger. Stress and worries appear on our face. If we can manage our stress and feel at peace, our face will look younger and attractive.
Be Positive — A positive mind and affirmation we said can bring positive life to us. Negative thought tend to bring failure and make us look older and unattractive. Meditation is one way to make positive thoughts.
Medical Check-up — Just like a car, our body also needs attention and care so it can work well everyday. Having routine medical checkups during our healthy time is important to recognize diseases as soon as possible.
Active Life — Always try to be active during your life. Activities can increase health; and if you are in your elder age, your memory will increase too.
Social Life — Happy social life can increases our spirit, bring peaceful mind, and make us feel and look younger. Communication with our friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, and others can bring happiness to us.
Performance — Start to look at our performance. Is our body weight ideal for us? If not, try to fix that to the best ideal weight. Also look to the skin, hair, nail and teeth. Those are important as they will show our age. Looks good and feels good will increase our performance. | https://medium.com/@dailylifeinternational12/10-steps-to-look-younger-c24446d06f86 | [] | 2021-07-06 14:28:37.636000+00:00 | ['Healthcare', 'Fitness Tips', 'Fitness', 'Health', 'Healthy Lifestyle'] |
ISO803, Emerging Into the Rap Scene! | ISO803 — Lose It
ISO803, a rapper who started making music seriously 3 years ago while being in college, is emerging into the rap scene. Inspired by artists such as; Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean, and Childish Gambino, he was always into woke music and liked to study it, and really understand the music.
How he started rapping was with freestyle battles he had with a few of his friends and he realized he had a knack for rapping. He says that he always loved music but what made him start making his own music was when he heard hits like “Look At Me” by XXXTENTACION and when he also realized how conscious rappers like J.Cole and Kendrick Lamar can still manage to go mainstream.
He says he sees himself as the CEO/Project Manager of a large company one day. He also knows that there is a chance his music career can take off as well, he says that the possibilities are endless, which is true. His biggest goal at the moment is to get at least 3,000 streams per week on all platforms for now. But he says eventually he wants to turn that 3,000 into a 30K, then a 300K, etc.
Go check ISO803 out, his most recent song that he published is called “Lose it” produced by AndreOnBeat. It is currently out on all platforms.
@iso803_music | https://medium.com/@ontherise/iso803-emerging-into-the-rap-scene-e4f3b60c3d55 | [] | 2020-12-13 07:04:16.588000+00:00 | ['Hip Hop', 'Artist', 'Rap', 'Rapper', 'Music'] |
How to Get Started on your First Sketch Document | Opening up a new project in Sketch (or any creatively oriented program for that matter) can be intimidating, especially for the first time. Opening up your very first project for UX/UI can be terrifying. Well here are a couple pointers to get you started.
When you first open up Sketch, the interface can be intimidating, especially if you’re new to design, but don’t fear. Sketch’s interface is actually very easy to grasp quickly.
Once the blank document is created, you can zoom in and out on the workspace infinitely, allowing you to create as many iterations of your design as needed and keep them all together, or far apart depending on your organization style.
The easiest way to begin is to use the keyboard shortcut A for Artboard and drag it out to your desired size. As this can be adjusted later, don’t worry too much about specific sizes. The keyboard shortcuts for shapes (R for rectangle, U for a rounded rectangle, O for Oval, L for line and T for text) would be the next logical step. Depending on where you want to start, you can use these shortcuts to quickly formulate your first shapes and get your design up quickly. The shapes all operate on a click and drag mechanic to get you to your desired size, similar to most design softwares.
If keyboard shortcuts are not your thing yet (learn them soon, they will change your life) the insert menu will be your friend. There you can insert the same shapes I’ve described above as well as use the pencil tool (P on keyboard shortcuts) and insert images and other artboards.
That should be enough to get you started. I must admit that I myself am not completely well versed in all the ins and outs of Sketch yet, but I do know how to start your first document and begin your first designs. As I learn how to do more things I will be sure to pass along tips and tricks.
Happy Sketching! | https://medium.com/@emilyshaindlin/how-to-get-started-on-your-first-sketch-document-a7cbab2c6ea3 | ['Emily Shaindlin'] | 2020-12-09 00:17:49.264000+00:00 | ['Flatiron School', 'UI Design', 'Tips And Tricks'] |
How to Make Mapo Tofu | First, assemble your ingredients. Chinese cooking is fast and doesn’t wait for the unprepared. There’s the soft tofu of course, which should be cubed. You have green onions, oil, optional meat and veggies, and pre-packaged sauce.
I stop to think about whether this can be considered an authentic recipe if I didn’t make it from scratch. I’m not even sure exactly what goes into making a mapo tofu sauce. I know that the brand I’m using, with the bright red, flat box and green label, is the one I’ve always used. Did my mother use it? I can picture her standing at the marble kitchen counter opening the packet with kitchen shears, but I could be wrong.
Next, you grab the wok and turn the heat up to high.
I need to keep it from sliding off the uneven burners in my tiny Manhattan apartment. It should be easier to keep clean with a space this small, but it seems like a losing battle. I gave up on keeping my home neat when I was fourteen years old, trying to bury my body in the tan Berber carpet of my bedroom as my father threw my desk chair against the wall by my head. In the space of a whimper, I was out the front door. I can still feel the jagged rocks of the ditch I climbed over when I ran through the neighborhood, panting softly that he was going to kill me please help oh please help he’s going to kill me.
Add about a tablespoon of cooking oil, vegetable or olive oil work best. Chop about two tablespoons of green onion, white ends first without the roots, and add it into the hot oil.
Mommy would make eggs for dinner at least three times a week. She loves eggs, but Daddy doesn’t. He was born on a communist work-farm on the border of Mongolia and didn’t have an egg until he was seventeen. He jokes with her that she does this just to piss him off. His voice is laughing through the shushing sounds of Mandarin. One day, he isn’t joking and the eggs end up in the trash. So does the pretty curved plate, and the plate snaps against the bottom of the garbage can.
When you can smell the green onions release their oils, add in the cubed tofu. If you’re adding ground meat, add that before the tofu and cook halfway. Then carefully stir the tofu so the pieces are not broken up too much.
In my great-aunt’s house, I remember yelling: my parents screaming at each other while I pretended to nap on the mustard chintz couch in the living room. Guo Ma, what I called this great-aunt I had met only a month before when we stepped off the plane from China, must not have been home. She would not have accepted this type of behavior, and especially not in front of a three year-old. The next day, my mother sat alone with me in the breakfast nook. The sun shone brightly on the sunflower tablecloth and I stared at her clasped hands on the tabletop. I only understood Mandarin then. “If we were divorced, would you rather live with Baba or me?” I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know how.
After the tofu has cooked for about five minutes, add in the sauce. Turn the heat down to medium-high and stir the sauce so that the tofu is coated. It will appear too thick but the liquid from the tofu will thin it out.
I’m too full, I know that I’m too full. Mommy has made bone soup and chives with beansprouts. I love this meal and I took too much, so now it’s sitting in my bowl. They break the silence by asking why I’m not eating. I say that I’m too full. Daddy tells me I’m greedy. Mommy says I waste food. They won’t let me get up from the table, and I’m scared. The fear hurts in my stomach and makes it harder to pick up the spoon, but I have to. They only let me stop when I’m throwing up rice and soup back into my bowl.
Once your sauce is boiling, add additional vegetables or mushrooms as desired. Peas or carrots can add texture, whereas small mushrooms are a good replacement protein for the meat. Be sure to chop any added ingredients finely.
My mother has a large butcher’s knife in a drawer. It has a bamboo handle and a wide square blade with a stamp imprinted in the steel. She uses it to chop through tough things, and the thwack against the wooden cutting board is as sharp as the knife. I told my father I was an American now and that I didn’t have to do everything he told me to. He got up from the dining table, grabbed her knife out of its drawer, and held it against my wrist. It happened so quickly that I couldn’t move, so he pressed the edge into the soft flesh of my inner arm. “In this house, my house, it is China. I can do whatever I want to you. You’re mine and no one could stop me from killing you if I wanted to. Call the police. Call whoever you want. You’re nothing. They won’t stop me.”
When the mapo tofu has been simmering for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, you can turn off the heat. Add a few more chopped green onions for garnish and scent. Serve with a side of white rice.
My first memory is walking across the floor of our first family apartment in Yangzhou. It has electricity but no running water and no flooring. I tripped on the ground carrying my little rice bowl. The thin, weak porcelain shatters and the rice is mixed in with the dirt. When I look up at my mother, she is crying. There’s no more rice to eat.
That’s it. You’ve made mapo tofu. | https://medium.com/@can-cui/how-to-make-mapo-tofu-e8b171d55ca9 | ['Candace Cui'] | 2021-07-02 03:03:49.015000+00:00 | ['Trauma', 'Abuse', 'Recipe', 'Asian American', 'Memoir'] |
The CCFV’s request for climate risks disclosure in Mexico | July 20th, 2020
This week I am going to briefly discuss the request to public issuers regarding their disclosure of climate risks that was published by the Green Finance Advisory Council (CCFV for its acronym in Spanish) in Mexico.
But first, who is the CCFV in Mexico? According to Mexico’s Central Bank (Banxico), the CCFV is a an organism which represents the segment in Mexico’s financial sector which wants to promote both funding for projects and investment in assets which generate positive environmental impacts. It was created voluntarily in 2016 and to date it is presided by Afore XXI Banorte and Afore SURA. It has alliances with institutions as the BMV, BIVA, PRI, among others. Within its members, there are sectoral associations (like AMAFORE), insurance companies, investment banks, investment funds, retail banks, development banks, and even public issuers.
With this in mind, and to better understand the initiative I want to discuss, I had a conversation with Irving Vázquez, Head of ESG Integration in Afore SURA and coordinator of the CCFV’s working group focused on “Definitions and Taxonomies”, and who supported this request from its early stages.
Where did you get the idea to make this request to public companies?
From the need to have more information for our ESG integration processes, as well as to urge companies in which we invest to adopt a strategy that mitigates climate change as well as incorporate risks and opportunities that come from it. As an AFORE (pension fund), this is a fundamental topic for our investment processes as it is our responsibility to consider all the associated risks in our investments.
Why do it under the CCFV?
Trying to solve the problem, the first couple of questions were how do we reach companies? And what should we be asking? There is no consensus on the best methodology globally, but as we dug deeper we saw that SASB and TCFD would be better than other standards for our investment decisions. Through the CCFV we have a great platform to build a consensus and invite investors to join the initiative. We believe this makes sense for all and we need to form a united front so that companies realize that reporting ESG information is important to their investors and the best way to do it is to use international standards.
What comes next after making this public request?
We are in the process of talking to different institutional investors associations so that they can distribute this request to their members and the members who want to join the movement can sign it. We already have several insurance companies and investment funds on board, and we hope to see this list grow bigger over the coming days. Ideally, we would like to have the biggest number of signatories possible by July 30th and then organize a virtual event where we can formally announce this institutional investor front to the financial market. Afterwards we will signatories to really commit to permeate these notions to their investment and risks teams and keep it front and center during their meetings with public companies. Otherwise it will be difficult to achieve a real change.
Anything else you would like to add?
This request is focused on climate change, but the international reporting standards which we are asking companies to adhere to also consider social and corporate governance factors, which should be considered in their sustainability strategy. Furthermore, in the request we speak about the minimal characteristics for ESG information which is disclosed by issuers such as consistency and comparability, reliability (that information is audited or verified by an independent party), temporality (that ESG information covers the same periods that the financial information and that both are disclosed at the same time), balance (publish both risks and achievements, not only achievements), and that information is quantifiable or that both risks and opportunities are measured in monetary terms as much as possible.
It will be interesting to the see the reaction from both investors with exposure to Mexican public companies and the companies themselves to this initiative. I have always believed that investors are the best lever to generate a real change in companies given the power they have in the funding process. Hopefully this effort leads to more companies having better disclosure and with it a better chance for investors to measure both risks and opportunities of ESG factors, especially now that there are new dedicated ESG active funds in Mexico.
I hope you found this useful. As usual, if there is anything we can help you with, please reach out.
Best,
Marimar
Partner, Miranda ESG | https://medium.com/@marimartorreblanca/the-ccfvs-request-for-climate-risks-disclosure-in-mexico-64de596632b3 | ['Marimar Torreblanca'] | 2020-12-08 15:11:42.600000+00:00 | ['Consulting', 'Climate Risk', 'Esg Investing', 'Esg', 'Finance'] |
7 Most Common VPN Protocols Explained | A VPN Protocol is the collection of processes, which VPN service uses to make you secure virtually. There are numerous sorts of VPN protocols to practice; each protocol has its own benefits. Before knowing each protocol, must to be inform about what are the fundamentals of VPN.
Encryption
You should know that messages are passing through the Internet in the form of data packets. If data packets just put concisely, then it is easy to read by snoop or hackers. All data packets you want to make private and secure, then you have to converted into deciphers.
Through encryption, a VPN encrypts the whole of your data packets, then entrenches, compresses and send them. According to the encryption process, the only VPN server can decrypt or encrypts your data packets. By this method, if hackers will crack your data packet from the tunnel but unfortunately, they will not break or read the encrypted data.
VPN Tunnel
VPN Tunnel is an object to keep secure your messages to transfer from side to side between your device and the VPN server.
These data packets contain information they are carrying and extra data like protocol such as HTTP or HTTPS, even the device and website IP Address as well.
Unfortunately, if you do not use a VPN, the communications between your device and the website will not be private and secure. Even, IP address of your device and website will be visible, which means you will compromise with online privacy.
VPN Protocols
Now the time is to know about different VPN protocols with their pros and cons and secondly, you have to know that which protocol is fit for your need. Let start with world famous and most popular VPN protocol, OpenVPN.
OpenVPN
OpenVPN is an open source VPN protocol, which is develop by Open Source Software. OpenVPN is a free and alternate protocol of the SSTP, which is own by Microsoft. The major benefit of OpenVPN from other than is absolutely, free and it compatible with number of operating systems such as Windows, Mac, and Linux and it is well suited with some IP phones as well.
One thing is similar in both OpenVPN and SSTP, which is OpenSSL encryption level that surpasses of L2TP because of that reason it works on Layer 2 and Layer 3 as well. OpenVPN has also a number of features like transporting Ethernet frames, NETBIOS functionality, and IPX packets.
As compare to PPTP, OpenVPN can run on any port. It can also operates on both network protocol like UDP and TCP, which means the system administrator, will not block it. Furthermore, OpenVPN is relatively steady and fast, even when the connection is drop, but your online privacy and security will upheld.
PPTP
The PPTP is consider the most popular and common VPN protocol. One of the reasons that it be likely to a most popular because it supported on mostly devices. Different firewalls are identifying PPTP including ISA Server, Cisco PIX, and Sonic Wall. Furthermore, various type of people refer to use PPTP because it is easy to set up and offer fastest speed.
PPTP uses 128-bit key encryption for data security that is why it consider as a weaker protocol as compare to other in terms of security. Beforehand, PPTP has also agonized by different weaknesses like clear-text authentication and this is the main reason that people can avoid to use PPTP for confidential business information.
If you are using it where you just need a good speed like online streaming except data security, then PPTP is a good option. You have to know that a common issue with PPTP is connection stability. When you are surfing a website as an anonymous and unfortunately, your VPN connection is drop, you cannot imagine that your real IP address and your location will be expose with no warning. You should also know that a network administrator could obstruct the PPTP ports easily.
L2TP
The L2TP is also known as Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol and Microsoft and Cisco developed it, with the aim of instituting a VPN protocol for high-level security. Because L2TP used in combination with the IPSec protocol, which provides strong security than PPTP. IPSec is offering an improved security because of its uses more secure encryption algorithms as well as it needs a pre-shared key for more security. For encryption, it uses 168-bit keys with double authentication, and 3 DES encryption algorithm. Therefore, L2TP offers greater security to stop hackers from conceding a system and this is why it is slower in speed as compare t PPTP.
One of the major advantage of L2TP protocol is that available on different devices and operating systems such as Windows and Mac. You can also use it on numerous tablets and smart devices without any additional software.
IKEV2
The IKEv2 is also called as Internet Key Exchange version 2 protocol. Two great company develops it such as Microsoft and Cisco. It is a latest version of IKEv1 but it is not broadly supported. It was create for mobiles and smart devices to sustain the VPN connection when you are switching your internet connection from Wi-Fi to mobile network.
IKEv2 integrated with IPSec to encrypt the whole communications and secure your personal data. Another good reason to choose is speed that it is one of the fastest VPN protocols for mobile devices. Therefore, when you are looking a good protocol with fastest speeds, online security and also stability then IKEv2 is a good option.
SSTP
The SSTP is known as secure socket tunneling protocol, which is a best protocol to setback VPN blocking. It can use a TCP 443 port, which is usually use by most websites. Microsoft develops it and it is compatible with Windows only and have a built in way out for government peeping.
SSL
SSL is a protocol, which works through your web browser. When you open a website URL that starts with HTTPS:// instead of HTTP://, which means you are visiting the site through SSL protocol. The major variance between SSL and other VPN protocols is it works automatically on your browser without having an additional software. It is also compatible with every operating system and devices.
WireGuard
WireGuard is also free and open-source that presently works in the kernel of Linux. The good thing of this protocol is design with small number of lines of codes, which make it simple to maintain, east to configure, and using stouter encryption algorithms to make secure user data from prying eyes.
On the other side, WireGuard is still under development and not any VPN provider offering it yet. Another bad thing is that the existing design needs the VPN service to keep log of IP address of each users, which is against the no log policy. | https://medium.com/@jessicabrobert/7-most-common-vpn-protocols-explained-b2537c145f00 | ['Jessica Robert'] | 2020-07-21 12:23:21.050000+00:00 | ['Vpn Protocol', 'Openvpn', 'Wireguard', 'Pptp', 'VPN'] |
Thoughts on Social Equity in Mass Media | I recently spoke with a reporter about the history of white supremacy in my hometown. For the purpose of this narrative, we’ll call him Steven. Steven’s assignment was to investigate the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado, and he asked me how the decline of their activities had led to a more socially equitable community in Denver. My short answer was that it hadn’t. The lack of burning crosses in the front yards of Black families hadn’t shifted the considerable imbalance of wealth and social power caused by centuries of white supremacy. Black people in Colorado today face many of the same prejudices, systematic abuses of power, and experiences of othering that they did in the early 1920s.
The more we talked, the more questions Steven had. Although a seasoned journalist, he could not fathom the idea that marginalized racial groups still suffer the same social disparities that they did one hundred years ago. This ignorance is indicative of a much larger problem in our media today and is a direct result of the lack of diverse representation in mass media leadership and coverage.
Mass media have traditionally omitted or neglected marginalized voices, and that omission has influenced American perceptions in ways that hinder our country’s social and political progress. Due to intense gatekeeping by those in charge, our national narrative emphasizes one particular point of view – that of white, cisgender males – at the expense of all the rest. However, those who wish to foster change, and artists in particular, have the tools to drastically disrupt this narrative. Arts and culture, when deployed in mass media, have the capacity to inspire democratic engagement and encourage society to find unorthodox ways to approach and solve contemporary problems.
Film, television, radio, social media apps, podcasts, YouTube, and e-games – these platforms define popular culture and articulate our social experience, yet the current media narrative of our reality is severely limited and thus lacks credibility. When experiences other than those of white, cisgender males are acknowledged, they are often shown by way of offensive stereotypes. This portrayal impedes the audience’s ability to make sense of challenging, complex ideas related to social issues. The work of media leaders who support these stereotypes becomes canon; this canonized ignorance permeates our culture; and we are then conditioned to accept that narrow, oppressive narrative as truth.
Even media leaders who value the decolonization of the media often tell incomplete stories of marginalization. They ignore the necessary context of systems of oppression because they frankly do not understand the language of oppressed groups. They cannot identify the diminutive effects of systematic oppression and cannot draw correlations between the large splashes of macro-oppressive concepts and the droplets of anti-Blackness and misogyny that affect the everyday lives of marginalized people. The erasure of these stories, either by malicious intent or ignorance, leaves a gap in consumers’ understanding of our culture, or what poststructuralists (or postmodernists) call the grand narrative.
Marginalized social groups and their experiences are not deviations from the model and should not be relegated to mere special interest stories. Just as white, cisgender maleness is not the defining criterion of humanity, any deviation from this archetype is not an aberrant, inconsequential other. Humanity’s current genetic diversity derives from thousands of years of recombining dominant and recessive gene alleles through reproduction. Thus, it is mathematically impossible for the earliest humans to have expressed phenotypically recessive alleles – those that are contemporarily valued as whiteness.
The exclusive focus on whiteness in the media affects how we perceive not only our culture, but our political landscape as well. Any truly democratic republic depends on public accessibility to information. Despite the seemingly innate accessibility of the internet, mainstream media companies increasingly exert control over that access. Today’s citizens receive a schema of society from media leaders who establish the relative importance of any piece of information through its breadth, or lack, of representation. When these leaders fail to cover crucial information regarding social issues, these issues are then othered in public consciousness and become inconsequential in democratic decision-making processes.
The celebrated art critic Clement Greenberg theorized the phenomenon of confronting the other in his analysis of the valuation of abstract art versus representational art: “We cannot yet see far enough around the art of our own day; that the real and fundamental source of the dissatisfaction we may feel with abstract painting lies in the not uncommon problems offered by a new ‘language’” (Greenberg 1961, 136). In other words, the discomfort we may feel when we’re exposed to new ideas and perspectives is the discomfort of frustrated ignorance. Relief from this discomfort will not be obtained by ignoring the truths communicated by the new language, but instead by acknowledging them. The public cannot democratically seek solutions for problems from which they are shielded. By “public,” I specifically mean the cisgender, white audience that wrongly purports to be the base of American society. By “shielded,” I mean privileged in a way that prevents this public from confronting these problems.
The pervasive influence of mass media gives artists a powerful means for inspiring systemic change by providing opportunities for people from isolated backgrounds to experience varying perspectives and thereby deepen their individual understandings of reality. Art is a societal enzyme that can synthesize diverse narratives of reality into truth. It inspires imagination and creates fresh meaning for old philosophies. The way to inspire change and drive progress is to accurately reflect complex social perspectives through our creative work. The persistent bias in our media must be ground zero in the fight for social equity. Only then will we be able to advance an anti-racist, anti-sexist social structure.
For historical context on how this might be accomplished, let’s take a look at the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ’70s, inspired by global reverberations of revolution in Africa, Asia, and South America and the deaths of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Patrice Lumumba. The 1970s saw the pinnacle of the mobilization of art in Black politics, and that decade produced some of the most progressive music, art, drama, and poetry of the time, laying a foundation for modern spoken-word poetry, rap, and hip-hop. This movement placed Black voices center stage, propelled by the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement.
Many of the visual artists associated with the Black Arts Movement were Abstract Expressionists, but their work was generally ignored by white proponents of AbEx painting. Even Clement Greenberg asserted that their work was too autobiographical in nature to be considered (Tate, n.d.). For Greenberg, any interest in representation or identifiable content invalidated the pursuit of true art. By this logic, the self-expressions of identity and liberation often found in Black art would invalidate the creator’s right to call the work “art” at all. As Greenberg’s narrow definition demonstrates, white, cisgender media leaders and artists have historically failed to address concepts found outside of their own community because they view their own experiences – and their own artwork – as the norm. Concepts that are antithetical to this white supremacist perspective fall to the wayside or – worse – become targets for ignorant condemnation as “too political.”
All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS. . . . Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political [make their art] political by saying, ‘We love the status quo. . . . We’ve just dirtied the word ‘politics,’ made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something. . . . That all started in the period of state art, when you had the communists and fascists running around doing this poster stuff, and the reaction was ‘No, no, no; there’s only aesthetics.’ My point is that it has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I’m not interested in art that is not in the world. And it’s not just the narrative, it’s not just the story; it’s the language and the structure and what’s going on behind it. Anybody can make up a story.
Artists have the power and the responsibility to use media platforms to politically engage the public. Engagement with the arts invites people from different communities to share a single experience, even if they have drastically different worldviews and backgrounds. The empathy and understanding that can be generated from this shared experience can, in turn, motivate civic involvement. In the United Kingdom, the Arts and Humanities Research Council launched the Cultural Value Project to study the level and meaning of participation in community arts work. In their 2016 report, the Council found:
Participation in arts and culture may produce engaged citizens, promoting not only civic behaviours such as voting and volunteering, but also helping articulate alternatives to current assumptions and fuel a broader political imagination. All are fundamental to the effectiveness of democratic political and social systems. Arts and cultural engagement help minority groups to find a voice and express their identity. They can engage people in thinking about climate change when used not didactically but as a basis for reflection and debate (Crossick & Kaszynska 2016, 7).
The artists surveyed in these studies were active in health, education, criminal justice, youth, and community work, and they viewed their artistry as having equal value to their civic practices (60–63). Indeed, in many cases, their civic practices directly informed their artistic practices, creating an inseparable cycle of service, creation, and influence.
In a very real sense, the arts provide us with the vehicle we need for social change. We have the means at our disposal, but we must confront our history as well as our present, recognizing that the stories we have constructed have omitted the voices of many. We must take it upon ourselves to reach out and create spaces in our practices for all voices to be heard, to put an end to gatekeeping and expand the one-sided narrative. As my interview with Steven demonstrates, we must continue to speak harsh truths. Only when America confronts the inequities inherent in our stories and our systems, will we finally be ready to become a truly equitable society. | https://medium.com/@bryanneelaine/originally-published-here-in-volume-2-of-the-tilt-west-journal-art-community-t-lt-west-aca3a40f6a14 | ['Bryanne E. Mitchell'] | 2020-12-04 04:52:36+00:00 | ['Art', 'Civil Rights', 'Media Criticism', 'Civics', 'Community'] |
Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site | As an Website designer, you need to layout your web sites to present your site visitors the best ease of use, the fine influence and maximum essential of all a welcoming revel in. It does not remember in case you had the best product with in side the entire world — in case your internet site is poorly accomplished you might not be capable of promote even one replica of it due to the fact site visitors might be pushed off your Website via way of means of the awful layout. When I’m speaking approximately a “top layout”, I’m now no longer handiest speaking approximately an excellent graphical layout. A expert net layout might be capable of factor out that there are numerous additives which make contributions to an excellent internet site layout — accessibility layout, interface or format layout, consumer revel in layout and of direction the maximum straightforward, that is image layout. Hence, I actually have highlighted a few functions of the worst net designs I’ve come across.
Hopefully, you may be capable of evaluate that in opposition to your very own web page as a tick list and if whatever for your web page suits the criteria, you need to understand it is excessive time to take critical action!
Background track Unless you’re going for walks a website which promotes a band, a CD or whatever associated with track, I might virtually propose you to live far from placing looping history track onto your web page. It would possibly sound first-rate to you at first, however believe in case you ran a large web page with masses of pages and every time a traveler browses to every other web page for your web page, the history track begins off evolved gambling again. If I have been your traveler, I’d simply flip off my audio system or go away your web page. Moreover, they simply upload to the site visitors burden whilst viewing your web page — customers on dial up connections will ought to wait longer simply to view your web page because it is supposed to be viewed. Extra large/small textual content size As I said, there may be extra to net layout than in basic terms graphics — consumer accessibility is one large a part of it too! You need to layout the textual content for your web page to be legible and moderately sized to allow your site visitors to study it with out straining their eyes. No remember how top the content material of your website or your income replica is, if it is illegible you might not be promoting whatever! Popup home windows Popup home windows are so blatantly used to show classified ads that during my mind, 90% of popup home windows aren’t really well worth my interest so I simply near them on intuition on every occasion every one manages to by skip via my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many customers out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine in case you had a totally essential message to carry and also you positioned it in a popup window that receives killed maximum of the time it seems on a traveler's screen. Your internet site loses its feature immediately! In concluding this article, permit me remind you that as a webmaster your activity is to ensure your internet site does what it is intended to do effectively.
Don’t permit a few minor errors prevent your web page from functioning optimally!
This article is presented by: IGLOBAL IMPACT ITES PVT LTD (Website Development Company) | https://medium.com/@iglobalimpact2021/web-design-elements-you-should-avoid-having-on-your-site-97f00c49b994 | ['Iglobal Impact Ites Pvt Ltd'] | 2021-06-17 21:15:19.497000+00:00 | ['Website Designing', 'Website Design', 'Website Development', 'Web Development'] |
Love messages in hindi|Love shayari in hindi -Best love sms for gf bf | Hello guys my name is Shiv Sanga from india | https://medium.com/@sangas751/love-messages-in-hindi-love-shayari-in-hindi-best-love-sms-for-gf-bf-44b26b8d6cd3 | ['Hindi Messages'] | 2020-12-27 09:58:59.533000+00:00 | ['Shayari For Love', 'Quotes', 'Shayari In Hindi', 'Sms', 'Love'] |
It’s Always Satirical in Philadelphia: An Analysis of Gender Portrayals in The FX Hit Series | American television sitcoms often portray their characters in a way that aligns with the gender stereotypes that have always been present within media and everyday life. The modern sitcom, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, approaches gender in a unique way, by relying on satire and dark humor to portray its characters ridiculously with the intention to critique social norms. This show is another friend-group-based sitcom but challenges typical characterizations by using over-the-top offensive humor and a satirical approach to issues such as sexism, racism, and many more. The show follows a group of loud, narcissistic friends that own a bar together in Philadelphia. They refer to themselves as “the gang.” The group includes Charlie, Frank, Mac, Dennis, and Dee. Dennis and Dee are twin siblings, and Dee is also the only main female character in the show. The characters are all seriously problematic and oblivious to their absurd character flaws and bigotry. Gender roles are highlighted in every episode, and this show “does not negate these stereotypes, but overemphasizes them in a satirical light in order to challenge them” (Text Talk: Masculinity in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia displays how satire as a comedic tool in media can explode gender stereotypes, but walks a fine line because the viewer may perceive the humor as unironic reinforcements of oppressive patriarchal norms.
In order to understand that the TV show is indeed satire, it is important to examine the creator of the show and their background. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia was created circa 2005 by one of the show’s main actors, Rob McElhenney. The very first pilot episode was filmed with a budget of under $100 and a cheap video camera. Rob McElhenney was a struggling actor in Los Angeles that decided to create a show that is a friend-based sitcom aimed at being the opposite of the famous TV show Friends. In an interview on Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show, McElhenney explains that instead of a show where all the main characters are always there to support each other, he wanted it to be a show where all of the characters are bad people and are never there for each other. This unique idea helped turn his show into the huge success that it is today. Rob McElhenney is a straight, white, cisgender male, but his show tackles a plethora of issues including but not limited to sexism, transphobia, homophobia, and racism, using satire. McElhenney grew up with his mother and her female partner, as well as two gay brothers, making him a “minority” in his household as a straight person. His character, Mac, is gay in the show and struggles with coming out as gay until several seasons into the show. Mac grew up in the Christian religion and before coming out he repeatedly says he thinks homosexuality is a “sin,” which is part of why he struggles to come to terms with this part of his identity. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia works as a unique and effective show through “disrupting the classic sitcom formula, creating unlikable characters, using low-budget/gonzo-esque cinematography, and mirroring current events with a unique twist” (Kimmel, 2017, p. 2). The show thrives off of shocking the viewers and twisting social issues in each taboo episode released.
Every episode portrays gender in a certain way that is outlandishly problematic by overemphasizing gender stereotypes to the point where the characters engaging in this oppressive behavior are viewed as a big joke. The show’s environment is set up so that the audience can be a third-party viewer to all of the ridiculous sexist behavior in the show and find the characters to be totally non-relatable to themselves. This sets the show up to have the ability to explode gender stereotypes by using over-the-top satirical comedy while viewers watch the degenerate characters continuously fail to be decent people. Analyzing every episode of the show would take a long time, but two of the episodes that particularly address gender-related issues in a way that explodes stereotypes are Charlie Has Cancer (2005), and A Woman’s Right to Chop (2019).
In the season 1 episode 4 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, called Charlie Has Cancer, a transgender woman character is introduced, named Carmen. The episode starts out with Charlie telling the gang that he has cancer (we later find out he actually does not), and so Dennis and Mac look for a girl for Charlie to sleep with to make him feel better. While they are in their bar, Mac spots a woman playing pool and goes over to talk to her. He reports back to Dennis that he’s found a girl for Charlie, and Dennis says “that’s a tranny” and points out the “unmistakable bulge of a large penis” in her jeans. This upsets Mac and he goes back over to Carmen to accuse her of lying to him, but then she compliments Mac’s muscles and he doesn’t seem to care anymore. This scene is emphasizing Dennis and Mac being transphobic and disrespectful but then flips the situation on its head when Mac takes Carmen’s compliments and is obviously extremely attracted to her even after acting upset by the fact that she is transgender and still has male genitalia. The scene points out the irony and contradictory behavior of the character Mac and makes transphobic men look nonsensical and like they don’t even know what they are talking about, which helps explode gender stereotypes regarding trans people by making transphobia seem riddled by nonsense and blind hatred. Later in the episode, Dennis is shocked when he walks into Mac’s apartment and sees him sitting with Carmen. Mac looks ashamed, and explains to Dennis that she is getting her penis removed soon. This scene again emphasizes that Mac acts transphobic but ironically is actually very attracted to and interested in the person he is being oppressive toward, which takes away the credibility of transphobic behavior and gives power back to the transgender character, Carmen. The whole episode works as a critique of transphobia because it makes the transphobic people the joke of the episode by making them look like dumb spewers of nonsense and contradiction. It overemphasizes Mac and Dennis as indecent human beings who blindly insult a trans individual but still think she is attractive. They try to strip away her credibility as a woman but it backfires and more-so strips away their credibility and paints them as uneducated white males with bigoted beliefs.
Another episode that stood out to me, as an overemphasis of sexism in a way that attempts to explode gender stereotypes, is A Woman’s Right to Chop, which is season 14 episode 9 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. This episode explodes gender stereotypes by portraying sexist males in a humorously negative light, while also posing a risk of reinforcing these stereotypes if the audience is unaware that it is satire. The first scene of the episode shows the men of the gang watching two random women in their bar who have really short haircuts. Charlie, Frank, Mac and Dennis proceed to express their disgust at the short haircuts. The scene then goes on to Dee asking them why they even care and then telling them that “traditional roles are ridiculous.” She then says that she can have a baby and abandon it because she has a right to do what she wants. The men then scold her, saying a woman abandoning her child is awful. This scene uses irony to emphasize how warped the men’s view of gender roles is, as they completely contradict their own behavior in past episodes where they immediately abandoned babies that they thought were theirs. As they continue discussing the women’s haircuts, Dennis says “it’s one thing for, like, a 60-year-old art critic to do it, but, I mean, these are young, sexually viable women making themselves no longer sexually attractive to me, and that upsets the natural balance of things.” This statement holds so much sexism to it, that it makes the audience see Dennis as nothing more than the absurdly misogynistic white male that he is, and associate this kind of statement with someone of his nature.
The scene then cuts to Charlie and Mac at the vet because their dog, Poppins, is sick, and they find out it is pregnant even though they thought it was a male dog. They can’t comprehend that the dog is not male, so they say to the veterinarian: “I can’t believe that Poppins is gonna be a father.” She corrects them and says: “A mother.” The two men then start getting upset at the doctor when she asks them if they understand gender. Mac says to her: “We don’t really do gender at our bar anymore. Gender’s so old-school.” This line is deliberately contradicting their behavior in the previous scene, where the men were being extremely gender stereotypical towards the women with short haircuts. This scene contributes to the explosion of sexist behavior by displaying the male characters’ obliviously contradicting behavior and portraying them as “stupid” and “nonsensical” for not grasping that they indeed do conform to gender stereotypical ideas at their bar even though they claim not to. When the doctor tells them that Poppins will die if she gives birth to the puppies, Mac tells her that she has to kill the babies. Charlie calls out Mac, saying, “I thought you were pro-life?” and Mac responds with, “Yeah, but this is different. This affects me.” This is yet another comedic approach to the issue of sexism and women’s rights, portraying Mac as a contradictory nonsensical male who selfishly only approves of abortion if it affects himself.
Dee then takes it upon herself to prove to the men that they cannot control women’s bodies by planning to get a short haircut herself. She announces to the men that she is getting a short haircut too, and they all start protesting in disgust. Ironically, Frank is shouting at Dee about how gross she will be if she gets a short haircut, while he is repeatedly belching and farting and eating cat food. This scene explodes sexism by displaying how men are critical of women while not being critical of their own behavior. Dennis (who is Dee’s twin brother) also contributes his piece, saying, “her hair is just as much mine as it is hers. I have every right to stop her from killing it.” This is another joke poking fun at the ridiculousness of men thinking they have the right to decide whether a woman gets an abortion even though it is her body. At the end of the episode, Dee gets the short haircut and the men come to the realization that they’re “never gonna be able to stop women from changing their bodies.” They even go as far to say that they honestly don’t really care. Mac says they only acted like they cared because its a “guy thing” and they are “used to being in charge.”
Analyzing the show through a critical lens, it is apparent that there are many layers to what the It’s Always Sunny writers are trying to accomplish through their comedy. The question is how effective their use of satire is in exploding gender stereotypes and making meaningful commentary while walking the fine line that satire walks. I read another scholar’s work regarding the topic of satire within It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which was a seventy-page examination of the show written by Katharine Clara Kimmel for her senior thesis at Georgetown University. She analyzes how it is a necessity that the show’s writers keep up-to-date on the most pressing and mainstream issues in America in order to have a steady stream of material for the show. She investigates why It’s Always Sunny is “able to remain successful despite its outlandish take on sensitive themes that would ordinarily scare away an audience” (Kimmel, 2017, p. 8). Kimmel states that one reason the show “might not receive copious amounts of backlash could be due to the fact that the main characters are not relatable to the viewers” (p. 26). This statement is in agreement with what I have gathered from my own analysis, which is that the characters are simply too over-the-top politically incorrect to be relatable to the average viewer, making it more apparent that they are intended to be caricatures.
Kimmel also analyzes the idea of satire “crossing the line” and how to define what that means. She points out that this idea is “interesting because it can carry a different meaning depending on the person you ask. To some, ‘crossing the line’ could mean the use of expletive language, vulgar themes, or racist/sexist/rape humor” (Kimmel, 2017, p. 25). Of course, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia can check off the boxes for all of the above. If they do cross the line, then why are they so successful? Possibly because of the fact, again, that the inappropriate behavior is so overemphasized that the viewers know it is working against the inequalities being portrayed in the show. This brings me to the next important point drawn from Kimmel’s analysis, which is that “with a majority of the episodes referencing cultural and social events, the fan base has to have a certain amount of cultural awareness in order to understand the nuances and why the episodes are satirical and not serious” (Kimmel, 2017, p. 55). I think this is the key to answering whether the show explodes or reinforces gender stereotypes. It can do both, depending on who the audience is.
It can be argued that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia explodes gender stereotypes and sexism with its satirical style of comedy and overemphasis on women’s subordination to men, but this show also risks reinforcing all of the stereotypes it is making fun of if the audience is unaware that what they are watching was intended by the writers to be a critique.
Works Cited/Bibliography
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Transcript. (2019, November 21). Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/
Kimmel, K. C. (2017). THE GANG’S IN A THESIS: AN EXAMINATION OF AMERICAN TELEVISION’S DARK HORSE SITCOM “IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA” (Bachelor’s thesis, Georgetown University) (pp. 1–70). Georgetown University.
McElhenney, R. (Writer), & Chatmon, P. (Director). (2019, November 20). A Woman’s Right to Chop [Television series episode]. In McElhenney, Rob. (Creator). It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. FX Productions.
McElhenney, R. (Writer), & McElhenney, R. (Director). (2005, August 23). Charlie Has Cancer [Television series episode]. In McElhenney, Rob. (Creator). It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. FX Productions.
Text Talk: Masculinity. (n.d.). Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://alwayssexistinphiladelphia.weebly.com/text-talk-masculinity.html
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2020). Rob McElhenney: How “Always Sunny” Landed Danny DeVito As Co-Star. Retrieved December 4, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UytuyWBXlwc | https://medium.com/@gillianmoore/its-always-satirical-in-philadelphia-98d1109a8b44 | ['Gillian Moore'] | 2020-12-13 01:44:58.573000+00:00 | ['TV Series', 'Its Always Sunny', 'Entertainment', 'Gender Equality', 'Analysis'] |
StaFi rToken Whitepaper | Abstract
Proof of Stake (PoS) has become one of the mainstream consensus algorithms. Since 2012, with the combined efforts of different researchers and teams, many technical problems have been solved, such as Nothing at Stake, Long Range Attack, etc. By 2018, the PoS consensus algorithm gradually matured. In June of the same year, PoS (PoS-like) projects represented by EOS and Tezos, began to go live, marking the beginning of a new generation of PoS consensus-driven technologies. Over the next two years of development, PoS has ushered in a golden development period. In 2020, representatives of new public chains like Polkadot, Near, Solana, and Celo all adopted PoS as their consensus algorithm of choice.
The data from StakingRewards shows that there are 151 staking projects in which a total worth 15 billion USD of assets are staked now. In fact, there are actually far more than 157 projects that have adopted the PoS consensus mechanism, and the total worth of staked assets easily exceeds 40 billion USD if you include those converted from ETH 2.0 to PoS.
Therefore, as PoS grows, the task of helping validators unleash the liquidity of staking assets while ensuring the security of the original chain remains. The rToken solution proposed by StaFi is a solution to the above problem. With rTokens, billions of dollars of staked assets can circulate without the need to unstake. It solves the liquidity dilemma of staking, and increases the willingness of both crypto enthusiasts and blockchain developers to participate in PoS consensus.
We believe and work to see StaFi become the standard for the solution of the liquidity of staking assets, empowering hundreds of PoS projects, and liberating assets. rToken’s solution will first be implemented on three main public chains: ETH 2.0, Polkadot and Cosmos. It will not only provide liquidity solutions, namely rETH, rDOT, and rATOM, for the above three public chains, but will also provide the standardized protocol of rToken for all PoS projects that have been developed on these networks.
In addition to providing rToken staking liquidity solutions for PoS projects, StaFi will also develop cross-chain bridge services that help the circulation of hundreds of rTokens in the Ethereum, Polkadot, and Cosmos ecosystems. For example, the rToken in the Polkadot ecosystem can ‘cross’ its chain to the Ethereum ecosystem to be traded or lent in DEXs, and vice versa.
2.Introduction
2.1. The Definition of rToken
rToken is a redeemable token for the staked assets issued by StaFi protocol that can be traded, lent, or borrowed in a variety of venues. Whenever a user stakes a native token through the relevant Staking Contract, a certain amount of rTokens will be issued per amount of the native tokens staked in the Staking Contract and the real-time exchange rate for the rToken. The exchange rate for the rToken will gradually increase, as staking rewards for that native token accumulate, and so will the amount of native tokens that can be redeemed.
2.2 Rights represented by rToken
rToken represents the rights to redeem the native staked assets at any time and obtain the corresponding staking income. Next to that, rToken holders also have the right to continue participating in on-chain governance on the original chain.
2.3 How to obtain rToken
There are two main methods to obtain rToken:
1) Stake native tokens through StaFi’s Staking Contract: rTokens will be minted and sent to your designated wallet address according to the amount of the native tokens you Stake(Qs) and the exchange rate of rToken (Cr);
2) Obtain rToken on Uniswap or other exchanges:
All rTokens can be traded and exchanged for native tokens per market exchange rates on decentralized exchanges or centralized exchanges that support rTokens.
2.4 Why rToken
The liquidity issue of staked assets has been the driving force for our development of rToken solutions. For most Proof-of-Stake projects, staked assets are subject to a certain lock up period or require a lengthy unbonding period during which the user neither has access to his asset nor is he eligible to receive staking rewards. For example, the redemption period for Cosmos is 21 days, Polkadot 28 days, and StaFi 14 days.
As a result, User’s ability to trade out of an asset position is limited, especially in anticipation of an adverse market movement, because the user cannot place orders to sell while the asset is being staked.
However, through StaFi’s solution, a user can now obtain a corresponding amount of rToken when he stakes, and enjoy the flexibility and discretion to redeem the native staked assets any time while still enjoying staking income. More importantly, rTokens can be circulated and traded freely, thus allowing rToken holders to hedge against exposure without the need to worry about unlocking periods.
StaFi tackles the following issues for users through rToken services:
1) There is no need to worry about the liquidity of Staked assets（liquidity of rTokens is an extra question and will be addressed later）.
2) There is no need to wait for the long redemption period as before. Users can immediately exchange at the current rToken/Token exchange rates on the markets.
3) The StaFi Staking Contract Pool will automatically capture those Original Validators with the highest rate of return on the chain for Staking, which can optimize users’ staking yield.
5) The current NPOS Staking mechanism adopted by the StaFi mainnet is hard to be understood for an ordinary Staker, especially with regard to consensus mechanism, the maximum number of nominators that a validator can have, the determinants of Reward, how to claim reward, how to choose the best validators, and so on. However, with the introduction of rFIS, FIS stakers can participate in FIS Staking with just one-click.
StaFi tackles the following issues for PoS projects through rToken services:
1) Through rToken, the users’ willingness to stake is greatly encouraged. This will further increase the staking ratio of PoS projects and enhance the security of the original chains.
2) No matter how many assets are locked in the StaFi Staking Contract, the security of the original chain will not be hampered, since those assets are distributed to a host of Original Validators.
3) StaFi will not encroach on the validators on the original chain, as StaFi does not engage in the validation of the original chain. This further allows us to build in cooperation with existing ecosystems and validators in the spirit of open-source DeFi development, instead of cannibalising their business and traction.
2.5 rToken classification
StaFi classifies rToken into four categories:
1) rETH: the rToken for Ethereum 2.0 Staking after it goes live.
2) rTokens for Polkadot: rFIS, rDOT, rKSM and rTokens for other Substrate based projects.
3) rToken for the Cosmos ecosystem: rATOM, rKAVA, etc.
4) Others, such as rXTZ, rEOS, etc.
We will develop rETH, rFIS, and rDOT as the first priority, and gradually expand to other assets and establish the standards of rToken protocol together with selected partners. Speaking of, do reach out to us to learn more and jointly develop solutions for your communities!
2.6 The standards of rToken protocol
After developing and supporting 5 rTokens: rFIS, rETH, rDOT, rKSM, and rATOM, StaFi will accelerate the development of the standards of rToken protocol for different public chains by supporting various PoS projects and their developer communities to help them develop their own rTokens through the toolkits we provide. It is StaFi’s mission and vision to emancipate the liquidity for all staked assets of PoS projects.
3.Business architecture
3.1 Introduction of different parties
3.1.1 Stakers
The ‘Stakers’ in the context of rToken business only refers to the participants of Native Token Staking. Using the Stake function provided by StaFi, they can participate in Staking with just one click, without any need to study the PoS consensus mechanism of the original chain or the rules about claiming Staking Rewards.
Staking through StaFi will also offer you access to liquidity solutions, and the flexibility regarding the amount of tokens for staking,
Take Ethereum 2.0 Staking as an example. The amount of user’s staked tokens must be 32ETH or more, however with StaFi’s rToken solution, users can stake whatever amount they are comfortable with, be it 0.01 ETH or 10,000 ETH.
3.1.2 Original Validators
3.1.2.1 Definition
In the business structure of rToken, Original Validators refers to the original chain validators who have joined the Staking Contract program. In order to avoid the threat posed by the staking of assets in the StaFi Staking Contract (SC) to the verification security of the original chain, StaFi will not run any nodes on the original chain. At the same time, tokens deposited by users in the SC will only be distributed to Original Validators.
3.1.2. Validator nomination rules
StaFi will establish an intelligent rating system that quantitatively scores the performance of each Original Validator that joins rToken Staking Contract program. Funds will be allocated automatically by the smart contract per ranking of the Original Validators, and good performing OVs will have an edge over inferior performing OVs.
The main rating criteria are:
1) Background of node operator
2) Times and duration of disconnection
3) Historical Slashes
4) The amount of Staked FIS tokens
In order to realize the vision of “All for one, one for all”, StaFi will also issue FIS tokens as a reward for those validators who choose to support the rToken business and join the Staking Contract program. The amount will be based on their scores.
Staking Contract itself will implement an automatic staking strategy and stake tokens to the most appropriate Original Validators per expected rate of return provided by different Original Validators, the size of Staked tokens, Commissions, Slash history, and other factors. However, due to differences in the staking mechanism of a variety of blockchains, the automatic staking strategy may also be different.
rFIS
Since StaFi adopts NPoS consensus, the staking income obtained by each elected node is relatively equal without any correlation with the number of Staked FIS. In addition, the nominators (stakers) of the elected nodes will share the proceeds of Staking by the proportion of votes. That means if one elected node has more Staked FIS than another, stakers will enjoy higher RoR if they choose to Stake the later.
Therefore, the rFIS Staking Contract will automatically execute the following nomination strategy:
1) Nominations are executed in every Era(6H).
2) OVs are selected whose commission is set less than or equal to R, which will be set at 10% in the beginning.
3)Nominations of the picked OVs are sorted from low to high, and the first number N OVs are chosen to nominate (number N will set at 10 in the beginning).
Note: Both R and N are governance parameters and will be slightly adjusted according to the market situation and product development.
rDOT
The choice made to the selection of Original Validators for rDOT will be similar to that of rFIS, as the two projects both adopt NPoS mechanisms. And in terms of validator nomination rules, their solutions are also very similar.
rETH
In rETH, Original Validators specifically refer to Ethereum 2.0 validators who have joined the StaFi Ethereum 2.0 Staking Contract program.To register as a validator of the StaFi Contract Pool in the rETH product, one must run the node through the Onboarding tool provided by StaFi, pay a quantity of N ETH as a margin, and deposit it in the Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Contract together with the Staker’s assets.
Every time a user deposits greater than or equal to 32 ETH, Original Validators can apply to establish and operate a new node. The platform will rank the original Validators by their historical scores, and those with higher scores will have an edge.
3.1.3 Special StaFi Validator
Security has always been a top priority in our thought process and we have been exploring various ways to ensure the security of users’ staked assets. In summary, the following will be adopted to comprehensively ensure fund safety in a decentralized manner:
1) The private keys of the Staking Contract will be comprehensively managed by the StaFi Special Validators (SSV) on the StaFi chain using multi-party secure computing (MPC) and multi-signatures. StaFi will adopt the MPC scheme to form 21 fragments of the private key to the Staking Contract Pool, which will be distributed to 21 validators in the SSV Group on the StaFi chain. 16 of the 21 SSVs are needed to fully recover the private key, and then control the operational authority of the Staking Contract deployed.
2) Staking Contract is not subject to a single point of failure given it is managed by a group of 21 unspecified SSV, which will be rotated frequently. Although the security of Staking Contract can be greatly improved under this mechanism, we still need to consider the possibility of SSV collusion. Thus, to further protect against potential collusion, a certain amount of FIS (StaFi native token) will need to be staked by SSV in the StaFi Vault, and the overall amount of FIS staking by 21 SSVs should be greater than the value of staked Native Token in the Staking Contract Pool. If collusion really happens, the system will punish the culprits by confiscating SSV’s Staked FIS and use them to repay users.
Please refer to the StaFi white paper for details on SSV election, multi-signature, and penalties: https://docs-cn.stafi.io/yan-zheng-ren-validator/te-shu-yan-zheng-ren-ssv
3.2 Technical architecture
The technical architecture of rToken contains six key components, including: 1) communications between the original chain and the StaFi chain; 2) Staking Contract deployment; 3) SSV verification; 4) rToken exchange rate; 5) user Staking income settlement; 6) validator income settlement. The detailed workflow diagram is shown below:
For rETH, since Ethereum 2.0 Staking is currently in Phase 0, wherein the transfer function is not available, and no delegation relationship exists between the validator and the staker, the technical architecture of rETH is different from that of a standard rToken.
1) The top layer is for user fund management and settlement. Users participate in Staking through the Staking Contract deployed on Ethereum 1.0. The system will mint and send back rETH based on the amount of ETH Staked and the current exchange rate. The system will also be responsible for the clearance and settlement of funds deposited and redeemed by users.
2) The middle layer is for distribution and settlement of staking funds. StaFi will deploy Staking Pools based on the amount of funds locked in SC. StaFi will deposit 32 ETH in each Staking Pool, and stake to the Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Contract after matching validators;
3) The bottom layer is for management and monitoring of Ethereum 2.0 nodes (Original Validators). StaFi will provide Original Validators with a set of standardized onboarding tools. Validators can use this tool to operate the Ethereum 2.0 node client. At the same time, this tool will also monitor the events of the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain on a live basis, including but not limited to, node operation status, the issuance of staking proceeds, the time and number of disconnections, the occurrence of Slash, and the validator drop-offs.
Figure: rETH workflow
4.The Exchange Rate of rToken
4.1 Calculation method
The rToken exchange rate (Ci) is positively correlated to the Staking income, which is mainly composed of the total amount of Native Token staked in the SC (Qstk), the total amount of redeemed Native Token (Qred), the amount of staking rewards (Qrew), the amount of slash (Qslh), the amount of Penalty (Qpey), and the commission ratio (Rcom), as well as the total amount of rToken issued (M), and the total amount of rToken destroyed (N). The formula is as follows:
4.2 Exchange rate update frequency
The rToken exchange rate will be updated and announced by the system based on the Staking Reward Claim status on the original chain and the occurrence of Slash.
rFIS: every 6 hours;
rDOT: every 6 hours;
rETH: once an hour;
4.3 Slash
When participating in Staking, the slashing problem is hard to ignore. Slashing refers to the deduction of staked assets due to disconnection or malicious behavior of validator nodes. To cope with this challenge and further ensure staker interests, the following will be implemented:
1) Staking Contract will assess original validators’ historical track record and only elect to match staking funds with original validators who haven’t been slashed before.
2) Staking funds will be matched with multiple Original Validators in order to diversify risk and avoid single point of failure. Therefore, even if a certain Original Validator is Slashed (which is highly unlikely), it will not have a major impact on the staking funds pool.
Besides, OVs will be required to commit additional deposits as collaterals, which varies projects to projects given their differences in Slash penalties. And whenever a slash occurs the relevant deposit will be deducted to cover the loss from stakers. This is especially the case in Ethereum 2.0 staking, where the user’s principal could be deducted by as much as 50% in extreme situations.
To register as a validator of the StaFi Contract Pool in the rETH product, one must run the node through the Onboarding tool provided by StaFi, pay a quantity of N ETH as a margin, and deposit it in the Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Contract together with the Staker’s assets. This is to ensure that the user assets are not affected when the node is Slashed, and the Slash loss that occurs will be compensated by the margin.
Therefore, the total amount of margin (Pi) that a node operator needs to deposit is determined by the N value defined in the current network and the total number of running nodes (Mv):
As for the value of N, it is determined by the operation of the ETH2.0 network, the historical performance of the node operator, the number of nodes, and some other factors. Taking into account the Slash rules of ETH 2.0, the value of N will be between 4ETH and 16ETH and the default of N will be set as 8ETH.
Since the redemption function of ETH2.0 will not be supported until Phase 2 goes live, the validators will not be able to charge Commission for a long period of time to make up for the operating cost. In order to encourage validators to join the StaFi rETH solution, we will support Original Validators to apply for liquidity from StaFi at that time.
Suppose that the node operator Bob runs several (X) nodes, and the number of ETH Staked for each node is N. As Bob lacks liquidity funds in the short term, Bob can sell the Staked ETH to StaFi at the current FIS/ETH exchange rate to obtain FIS (either ERC 20 FIS or StaFi Mainnet FIS). Bob can obtain liquid assets by selling FIS out.
The maximum amount of ETH that Bob can sell (S) is:
In the future, we will roll out insurance products to prevent the validator from slashing for each rToken solution in cooperation with DeFi insurance projects. Even if Slash occurs, the validator and users’ losses will be insured.
4.4 Reward Claim Mechanisms
As each PoS project has its own rules for claiming rewards, StaFi will ensure that users’ Staking Rewards can be obtained in a timely manner per relevant project rules.
rFIS
StaFi network will calculate the reward for all validators every Era (6 hours). However, the nominators (stakers) and validators will not receive rewards unless they manually claim the rewards. If the Rewards have not been claimed for 84Era (21days), they will be destroyed.
Within 21 days, as long as a validator or a Staker Claim rewards, the system will automatically issue rewards for all Stakers. In order for Stakers to receive Staking Reward in a timely manner, StaFi Staking Contract will utilize smart contracts to Claim rewards regularly on a periodic basis, such as every 6 hours.
If any one of the following two situations occurs, StaFi will update the exchange rate of rToken:
1) Other Stakers manually claimed the rewards, which causes StaFi Staking Contract to receive the Staking Reward before the next scheduled automatic Claim.
2) The automatic Claim is triggered (every 6 hours), and the Staking Contract receives Staking Rewards.
rDOT
Polkadot network will calculate the reward for all validators every Era (24 hours). However, similar to StaFi, the nominators (Stakers) and validators will not receive rewards unless they claim the rewards. If the Rewards have not been claimed for 84Era (84 days), they will be destroyed.
Within 84 days, as long as a validator or a Staker Claim rewards, the system will automatically issue rewards for all Stakers. In order for Stakers to receive Staking Reward in a timely manner, StaFi Staking Contract will utilize smart contracts to Claim rewards regularly on a periodic basis, such as every 24 hours.
If any of the following two situations occurs, StaFi will update the exchange rate of rToken:
1) Other Stakers manually claimed the rewards, which causes StaFi Staking Contract to receive the Staking Reward before the next scheduled automatic Claim;
2) The automatic Claim is triggered(every 6 hours), and Staking Contract receives Staking Rewards.
rETH
According to the current official documents about Ethereum 2.0 released by the Ethereum Foundation, staking rewards are issued on beacon chain every 6.5 minutes, yet they cannot be directly claimed, nor transferred until further notice. Thus, reward claiming will not be an option on StaFi either until more information is made available.
Therefore, StaFi is currently not taking into consideration the effect of reward Claim function in Ethereum 2.0 network when calculating the exchange rate.
4.5 rToken/Token market price and rToken exchange rate
The exchange rate of rToken represents the price relationship between rToken and the Native Token in the StaFi Staking Contract. For example, if the current rToken/Token exchange rate is 2, then the rToken holder can redeem 2 Native Tokens from the StaFi Staking Contract by burning 1 rToken.
The exchange rate of rToken sets the foundation for the rToken/Token price on the secondary market. Since rToken/Token can be traded 24/7 and price could potentially be affected by market fluctuation, short-term rToken/Token market prices and Token exchange rates may not be consistent. In an efficient market, however, once the rToken/Token market price is inconsistent with the rToken exchange rate, the price discrepancy is likely to be picked up and filled very quickly.
5.rToken Use Cases
5.1 Summary
StaFi believes that delivering an interest-bearing rToken service is only the first step. The liquidity dilemma of staked assets will not be fully resolved if rToken cannot be freely traded, exchanged or utilized in other financial applications. Therefore, StaFi will strive to create comprehensive use cases such as DEX, lending, and synthetic assets for rTokens.
1) For example, StaFi will be dedicated to developing cross-chain bridge services, bringing rToken into the Ethereum ecosystem, and at the same time, enable rETH to be utilized in Cosmos (Tendermint) compatible blockchains. We aim to do so with the help of other ecosystem giants like xDai, 1inch, and developers who are interested in joining our mission.
2) Besides, StaFi will also aims to cooperate with DEXs, lending protocols, and synthetic asset platforms in the Ethereum ecosystem, so that non-ETH rTokens such as rFIS, rDOT, rKSM, rATOM, etc. can be traded in exchanges such as Uniswap. Users could also be able to utilize their rTokens in liquidity mining programs or simply as collaterals on such as Aave.
5.2 Cross-chain Bridge(rBridge)
rToken will realize interoperability through the cross-chain Bridge function developed by StaFi. For example, rFIS on the StaFi chain can be converted to rFIS on the Polkadot chain through rBridge, so that the holders of rFIS can have access to the DeFi applications built on Polkadot. This means that rETH could also potentially be converted to its counterparts for Cosmos, so that its holders could also access the service built on Cosmos.
5.3 Secondary markets
rToken holders can not only redeem native tokens from the StaFi Staking Contract, but also sell rTokens on a variety of venues with rToken/Token, rToken/ETH, and rToken/USDT pairs. We have previously announced collaboration with BitMax as one of the user-choices among CEXes and will strive to add more partners and liquidity providers, including dedicated liquidity programs for all users.
The platform on which rTokens traded can be a decentralized exchange on the original chain or another as long as rBridge is supported. Meanwhile, StaFi will implement liquidity incentive programs in order to promote liquidity for rTokens on DEXs.
Besides, StaFi will cooperate with centralized exchanges to list rToken/Token, rToken/USDT, and other pairs to further enhance the circulation and liquidity conditions of rTokens.
6.Economics
6.1 Mint rToken
In order to encourage adoption of rToken solution, StaFi will not charge any fees for Mint.
6.2 Commission
StaFi and Original Validators will in total charge 20% of the net income of the rFIS Staking Contract as commission. The Commission ratio of OV will be dynamically adjusted according to the number of validators in the StaFi Staking Contract.
At the beginning, OV’s Commission rate is temporarily set at 10%. Original Validators will receive 10% of the net income of rFIS Staking contracts as Commission.
6.3 Burn rToken
When users want to redeem FIS, they only need to apply for redemption from StaFi’s Staking Dashboard. Soon afterwards, they will obtain their FIS tokens. The redemption process is mainly divided into two steps:
Step 1: Submit the number of rFIS for redemption, with the maximum number being the total number of rFIS one holds.
Step 2: After your submission is confirmed, the system will burn the corresponding amount of rFIS, and calculate the quantity of FIS to be redeemed per the current exchange rate. Thereafter, the system will deduct a service charge and Commission fee and send the remaining tokens to the user’s designated wallet address.
The redemption fee for rFIS (Feered) is determined by the number of rTokens that the user applies for redemption (M), the current rToken/Token exchange rate (Rc), and the redemption rate (Rr):
The redemption fee (Rr) is set to be 0.2% initially.
7.Income Distribution Plan
7.1. Revenue Generation
The revenue of rToken business mainly comes from:
1) The earnings from rToken business, such as the Commission or the transaction fee charged for redemption. These incomes are in the form of the native tokens of various PoS projects, such as ETH, DOT, KSM, FIS and so on.
2) The Commission charged for rBridge services, and the earnings are in the same token as above.
7.2 Income Distribution Plan
As a DeFi protocol widely supported by the community, we will be distributing the earnings back to our supported through the following ways:
1) 70% will be given back to FIS token holders, in the form of buyback & burning, or sharing with token holders.
2) 20% will be deposited in the StaFi Treasury to support the further development and promotion of the StaFi project and rTokens.
3) 10% will be allocated to the StaFi team.
We aim to evolve into a proper DAO with long-term incentive both for developers and liquidity providers. As such, we have long been convinced that a variation of a smart treasury model nicely explained by Placeholder is the way to go.
8.Governance
In the initial stage of rToken business, the core team of StaFi will shoulder the responsibility of governance. That is because products such as rBridge, rToken, and Staking Derivatives have not yet been fully developed. Meanwhile, community autonomy rules have not been clearly defined yet either. StaFi believes that at this stage, it is unwise to blindly pursue a fully decentralized governance.
When StaFi’s core products are relatively mature and the community autonomy rules are clearly defined, StaFi will gradually delegate the decision-making on rToken-related issues to the community, achieving on-chain governance. At that time, community members are more likely to be familiar with the StaFi DAO governance process and have clearer judgments on products and businesses. In the future, StaFi will virtually be an assistant of the community on decision-making, only responsible for the implementation of some ideas. We believe that this will be a perfect relationship between the community and the team and a good foundation for the full autonomy of StaFi. This is the ultimate goal of StaFi which, we believe, is not very far away.
At that time, FIS holders can put forth on-chain proposals that cover the following aspects and submit them to the community for vote:
1) Product planning. For example, design a rToken for a PoS project, or whether to add or reduce a certain application scenario for a rToken.
2) Adjustment of critical parameters. For example, adjust the redemption rate, Commission rate, Mint rate, and other important system parameters.
3) Treasury expenditure plan. For example, applying for funding for rToken development tools, or for staking derivatives research, and so on.
4) Others. Such as FIS token inflation rate, revenue distribution, dividends & repurchase plan, etc.
9.The Relations between rToken and StaFi chain
9.1 The security mechanism of Staking Contract
The private key management of the rToken Staking Contract will be implemented by the SSV validator on the StaFi chain using MPC+ multi-signature, thereby realizing the decentralization and a high-security level of Staking Contract.
9.2 Initial issuance of rToken assets
The initial issuance of each rToken asset will be on the StaFi chain, so a myriad of rTokens will be issued and stored on the StaFi chain. The rToken assets on the StaFi chain will be interoperable with different public chains through the ETH bridge, Polkadot bridge, or Cosmos bridge, circulating in different DeFi ecosystems.
10.The Value Capture of FIS
The rToken business model, as we believe, will provide a variety of value capture mechanisms for FIS to support its economic dominance on the market:
1) The Native Tokens locked in the Staking Contract will become one of the value supports of FIS tokens, especially due to the fact that the FIS mortgaged by SSV are actually higher than that of Native Tokens in the pool.
2) 70% of the income in the rToken solution is used to give back to FIS token holders, in the form of repurchase & burn or dividends.
3) In the future, rToken will interact with Ethereum, Polkadot, and Cosmos ecosystems through cross-chain bridges, and 70% of the revenue from this business will also be used to repurchase and burn FIS.
4) Original Validators can Stake FIS tokens to increase their credibility, thereby enjoying the priority of the allocation of funds.
11.Prospects
It is StaFi’s vision to provide liquidity solutions to staked assets with the adoption of rToken and to further create liquidity and utility for those, like making it a collateral. In addition, rToken as an interest-earning asset can also be used as the underlying asset of various index funds, futures, and other derivative products in the digital asset world. Currently, however, StaFi must focus on creating rTokens for some key PoS projects. It is not necessary for us to build a proprietary DEX, lending, or other products immediately. Instead, we can cooperate with reliable partners and grow together.
In the future, StaFi will explore the idea of a self-built DEX and a lending platform, since there may be a host of rTokens circulating in the crypto field, 50–100 or even more. This provides impetus to the possibility of StaFi building a DEX and a lending platform.
11.1 DEX
With a variety of rTokens minted in the future, StaFi will consider establishing a DEX specialized for their trading. The DEX will adopt an AMM or a better market maker model to provide benefits to users who provide liquidity — reducing slippage and creating a more robust environment for users. With such a DEX in place, all rTokens that observe StaFi’s rToken protocol standard could be traded freely.
In addition to a DEX, StaFi may also launch a rToken lending platform. If so, all rTokens that are created with the StaFi’s rToken protocol — would use that platform to yield more interest. They would also be used as collateral to lend Native Tokens or other assets with better liquidity, such as ETH and USDT. This is a long-term goal for us.
11.2 Derivatives based on rToken
When a large number of rTokens can freely circulate, StaFi will explore more possibilities based on the interest-bearing attributes of rToken, especially rToken derivatives. For example, StaFi can cooperate with Synthetix. rTokens could act as the underlying assets of index funds, and various rToken-based Index products can be designed.
As a use case, a cooperation with Nexus Mutual may bring together insurance products based on the rToken Slash scenario for validators. In the event of slashing, the validators’ loss would be insured. These are just two examples. In fact, the rToken-based derivatives could be extensively versatile in usage. StaFi will always have an open mind towards derivatives and welcome like-minded developers and partners to join us.
11.3 Release the liquidity of all Staked assets
When StaFi realizes that all Staked assets of PoS projects can circulate freely, we will also consider how to set free the liquidity of any Staked assets, such as a Staked token of a dApp in ETH, or the secondary market circulation of locked assets in loans. StaFi is considering the following design for this issue.
About StaFi Protocol
StaFi is the first DeFi protocol unlocking liquidity of staked assets. Users can stake PoS tokens through StaFi and receive rTokens in return, which are available for trading, while still earning staking rewards. FIS is the native token on StaFi Chain. FIS is required to provide security to the network by staking, pay for transaction fees on the StaFi chain, and mint & redeem rTokens.
Website: www.stafi.io
Twitter:@Stafi_Protocol
Telegram Chat: https://t.me/stafi_protocol
Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/stafi_ann
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/jB77etn
Forum：https://commonwealth.im/stafi | https://medium.com/stafi/stafi-rtoken-whitepaper-officially-released-ef77747345a0 | [] | 2021-01-20 01:58:48.720000+00:00 | ['Derivatives', 'Staking', 'Airdrop', 'Defi', 'Proof Of Stake'] |
SOLVED: Brother Printer Printing Blank Pages — Brother Printer UK | Is your Printer saying no to print pages for you? This may be the issue with anyone as we had heard many complaints about the Brother Printer Printing Blank Pages.
In this article, we are going to cover possible solutions for you so that your Brother printer will start working like before.
Steps to Solve Brother Printer Printing Blank Pages Issue:
Most people forget to refill the ink in the cartridge and that is why the printer stops printing pages. Make sure that you have enough ink to print a page. Try to switch off your computer and printer for 2 to 3 minutes and then try again. Check whether the problem is in your printer or in your driver. For that, you have to print a copy of a document from the printer. If it is printing well then you need to reinstall your Brother printer driver.
Other important reasons for Brother Printer Printing Blank Pages Issue
Cartridge Issue: No matter whether it’s a Brother printer or not but the cartridge issue is one of the most common reasons behind printing blank pages. You should be so sure that all the ink labels in your printer is totally up to the mark. If not, refill them immediately for perfect printing. In case they are totally filled then try to reconnect the cartridge. Communication Issue: Whenever there is a Brother Printer offline issue, we all start imaging that our printer needs replacement but many times the issue is with the communication. What you can do is to reconnect your router or put your router near the printer. Hardware Issue: After following the above steps correctly, you find that your printer is still not working then my friend it’s an issue with the hardware. Maybe your print head or your cartridge needs to be replaced.
Above we have discussed cartridge issue let’s know something about print head. What happens is after some time print head stops proper working as they get clogged. Almost every good printer has this feature to clean them automatically but, you can also check them manually by taking out the print head of the printer.
Hopefully, you may resolve the problem with the help of the above methods but if your printer is still not printing black then you can try one more technique.
Try to copy a page from the printer, if it can do so then there is the issue with your printer setting. For the same, you have to reboot the printer pool setting. If again you are fighting with the same problem then you have to reinstall your printer from your computer. And you will find that the Brother printer Printing Blank Pages issue is resolved.
If you’re unable to fix any issue about your brother printer then don’t get worried. Just grab your phone and dial Brother Printer UK helpline number: USA/Canada: +1–888–480–0288 & UK: +44–800–041–8324. | https://medium.com/@mathersmarshall728/brother-printer-printing-blank-pages-brother-printer-uk-f4d61aaca23d | ['Brother Printer Uk'] | 2020-03-17 10:03:06.026000+00:00 | ['Printers', 'Tech', 'Internet', 'Technology', 'Computers'] |
How Using an Outline Can Improve Your Writing | Keeps Your Thoughts Organized
The most obvious benefit of an outline is that it organizes your thoughts. You can improve the logic and flow in your writing by writing down the main ideas you want to cover first.
Sometimes this process even helps you come up with new ideas you may not have considered while writing. While typing out the broad concepts, you can easily generate new ideas you might not have otherwise.
Saves a lot of Time
An outline is a roadmap for you to follow that makes it easier to write quickly. You don’t waste time thinking about what to tackle next or what order is best because you have already decided on that.
As I alluded to in the introduction, it also saves you time editing. You don’t have to make major changes moving a paragraph from the end of the piece to the start. Reformatting and adding in sentences to fix it requires more effort than just having it flow logically from the start.
Provides a Framework to Get Started
When I have difficulty writing, especially for a client, I start with an outline. First, writing the outline is still an important part of the process, so I consider it to be time well spent. Then, once I’ve done that I find it a lot easier to write the rest.
Outlines are a great way to cure writer's block. If you don't use them and often struggle to get started, then I’d encourage you to try this next time you’re staring at a pencil on your desk hoping the article will start writing itself.
Makes a Long Piece Less Intimidating
My outlines helped me through my university career immensely. When I had a word count or page requirement for a class, breaking it down into manageable pieces helped me because it made writing less daunting.
In my Creative Writing degree at UBC, I had to write 10-page stories every other week. At the same time, I also had Psychology classes where I had to write 10-page research papers. Now, those kinds of requirements don’t scare me at all, but back then it sure did.
Using an outline lets you break it down into small chunks that you can easily tackle. For the research paper, I could write just a page or two on whatever section I needed to do next. For short stories, I could write three pages of one scene, then 3 more pages of the next scene. | https://medium.com/work-today/how-using-an-outline-can-improve-your-writing-c0d4b0551ba3 | ['Victoria A. Fraser'] | 2020-12-07 22:21:11.182000+00:00 | ['Freelancing', 'Writing', 'Advice', 'Organization', 'Writing Tips'] |
Strategies of docker images optimization | Background
Docker, an enterprise container platform is developers’ favourite due to its flexibility and ease-of-use. It makes it generally easy to create, deploy, and run applications inside of containers. With containers, you can gather applications and their core necessities and dependencies into a single package and turn it into a Docker image and replicate. Docker images are built from Dockerfiles, where you define what the image should look like, as well as the operating system and commands.
However, large Docker images lengthen the time it takes to build and share images between clusters and cloud providers. When creating applications, it’s therefore worth optimizing Docker Images and Dockerfiles to help teams share smaller images, improve performance, and debug problems. A lot of verified images available on Docker Hub are already optimized, so it is always a good idea to use ready-made images wherever possible. If you still need to create an image of your own, you should consider several ways of optimization it for production.
Task description
As a part of a larger project, we were asked to propose ways to optimize Docker images for improving performance. There are several strategies to decrease the size of Docker images to optimize for production. In this research project we tried to explore different possibilities that would yield the best boost of performance with less effort.
Our approach
By optimization of Docker images, we mean two general strategies:
reducing the time of image building to speed up the CI/CD flow;
reducing the image size to speed up the image pull operations and cut costs of storing build artifacts.
Therefore, we proceeded along these two directions, trying to improve the overall performance. But first we need some tools to measure how effective is our process and to find bottlenecks.
Inspection techniques
Docker image size inspection
You can review your Docker image creation history layer by layer and see the size of each layer. This will allow you to focus on the most significant parts to achieve the biggest reduction in size.
Command:
$ docker image history img_name
Example output:
IMAGE CREATED CREATED BY SIZE b91d4548528d 34 seconds ago /bin/sh -c apt-get install -y python3 python… 140MB f5b439869a1b 2 minutes ago /bin/sh -c apt-get install -y wget 7.42MB 9667e45447f6 About an hour ago /bin/sh -c apt-get update 27.1MB a2a15febcdf3 3 weeks ago /bin/sh -c #(nop) CMD [“/bin/bash”] 0B <missing> 3 weeks ago /bin/sh -c mkdir -p /run/systemd && echo ‘do… 7B <missing> 3 weeks ago /bin/sh -c set -xe && echo ‘#!/bin/sh’ > /… 745B <missing> 3 weeks ago /bin/sh -c [ -z “$(apt-get indextargets)” ] 987kB <missing> 3 weeks ago /bin/sh -c #(nop) ADD file:c477cb0e95c56b51e… 63.2MB
Docker build time inspection
When it comes to measuring timings of Dockerfile steps, the most expensive steps are COPY/ADD and RUN. Duration of COPY and ADD commands cannot be reviewed(unless you are going to manually start and stop timers), but it corresponds to the layer size, so just check the layers size using docker history and try to optimize it.
As for RUN, it is possible to slightly modify a command inside to include a call to `time` command, that would output how long did it take
RUN time apt-get update
But it requires many changes into Dockerfile and looks poorly, especially for commands combined with &&
Fortunately, there’s a way to do that with a simple external tool called gnomon.
Install NodeJS with NPM and do the following
sudo npm i -g gnomon docker build | gnomon
And the output will show you how long did either step take:
… 0.0001s Step 34/52 : FROM node:10.16.3-jessie as node_build 0.0000s — -> 6d56aa91a3db 0.1997s Step 35/52 : WORKDIR /tmp/ 0.1999s — -> Running in 4ed6107e5f41 …
Clean build vs Repetitive builds
One of the most interesting pieces of information you can gather is how your build process perform when you run it for the first time and when you run it several times in a row with minimal changes to source code or with no changes at all.
In an ideal world consequent builds should be blazingly fast and use as many cached layers as possible. In case when no changes were introduced it’s better to avoid running docker build. This can be achieved by external build tools with support for up-to-date checks, like Gradle. And in case of small minor changes it would be great to have additional volumes be proportionally small.
It’s not always possible or it might require too much efforts, so you should decide how important is it for you, which changes do you expect to happen often and what’s going to stay unchanged, what is the overhead for each build and whether this overhead is acceptable.
And now let’s think of the ways to reduce build time and storage overheads.
Reducing the image size
Base image with a smaller footprint
It is always wise to choose a lightweight alternative for an image. In many cases, they can be found on existing platforms: the Canonical, for example, announced the launch of the Minimal Ubuntu, the smallest Ubuntu base image. It is over 50% smaller than a standard Ubuntu server image, and boots up to 40% faster. The new Ubuntu 18.04 LTS image from DockerHub is now the new Minimal Ubuntu 18.04 image.
FROM ubuntu:14.04 # 188 MB FROM ubuntu:18.04 # 64.2MB
There are even more lightweight alternatives for Ubuntu, for example the Alpine Linux:
FROM alpine:3 # 5.58MB
However, you need to check if you depend on Ubuntu-specific packages or libc implementation (Alpine Linux uses musl instead of glibc). See the comparison table.
Cleanup commands
Another useful strategy to reduce the size of the image is to add cleanup commands to apt-get install commands. For example, the commands below clean temporary apt files left after the package installation:
RUN apt-get install -y && \
unzip \
wget && \
rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* && \
apt-get purge --auto-remove && \
apt-get clean
If your toolkit does not provide tools for cleaning up, you can use the rm command to manually remove obsolete files.
Cleanup commands need to appear in the RUN instruction that creates temporary files/garbage. Each RUN command creates a new layer in the filesystem, so subsequent cleanups do not affect previous layers.
Static builds of libraries
It is well-known that static builds usually reduce time and space, so it is useful to look for a static build for C libraries you rely on.
Static build:
tar xf ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz && \
mv ./ffmpeg-git-20190902-amd64-static/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg && \
rm -rfd ./ffmpeg-git-20190902-amd64-static && \
rm -f ./ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz # 74.9MB RUN wget -q https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/builds/ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz && \tar xf ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz && \mv ./ffmpeg-git-20190902-amd64-static/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg && \rm -rfd ./ffmpeg-git-20190902-amd64-static && \rm -f ./ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz # 74.9MB
Dynamic build:
RUN apt-get install -y ffmpeg # 270MB
Only necessary dependencies
The system usually comes up with recommended settings and dependencies that can be tempting to accept. However, many dependencies are redundant, making the image unnecessarily heavy. It is a good practice to use the --no-install-recommends flag for the apt-get install command to avoid installing “recommended” but unnecessary dependencies. If you do need some of the recommended dependencies, it’s always possible to install them by hand.
RUN apt-get install -y python3-dev # 144MB RUN apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y python3-dev # 138MB
No pip caching
As a rule, a cache directory speeds up installing by caching some commonly used files. However, with Docker images, we usually install all requirements once, which makes the cache directory redundant. To avoid creating the cache directory, you can use the --no-cache-dir flag for the pip install command, reducing the size of the resulting image.
RUN pip3 install flask # 4.55MB RUN pip3 install --no-cache-dir flask # 3.84MB
Multi-stage builds
A multi-stage build is a new feature requiring Docker 17.05 or higher. With multi-stage builds, you can use multiple FROM statements in your Dockerfile. Each FROM instruction can use a different base, and each begins a new stage of the build. You can selectively copy artifacts from one stage to another, leaving behind everything you don’t want in the final image.
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y wget unzip
RUN wget -q
tar xf ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz && \
mv ./ffmpeg-git-20190902-amd64-static/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg && \
rm -rfd ./ffmpeg-git-20190902-amd64-static && \
rm -f ./ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz
FROM ubuntu:18.04 AS builderRUN apt-get updateRUN apt-get install -y wget unzipRUN wget -q https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/builds/ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz && \tar xf ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz && \mv ./ffmpeg-git-20190902-amd64-static/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg && \rm -rfd ./ffmpeg-git-20190902-amd64-static && \rm -f ./ffmpeg-git-amd64-static.tar.xz FROM ubuntu:18.04
COPY -- from=builder /usr/bin/ffmpeg /usr/bin/ffmpeg
# The builder image itself will not affect the final image size
# the final image size will be increased only to /usr/bin/ffmpeg file’s size
Intermediate images cleanup
Although builder stage image size will not affect the final image size, it still will consume disk space of your build agent machine. The most straightforward way is to call
docker image prune
But this will also remove all other dangling images, which might be needed for some purposes. So here’s a more safe approach to remove intermediate images: add a label to all the intermediate images and then prune only images with that label.
FROM ubuntu:18.04 AS builder
LABEL my_project_builder=true docker image prune --filter label=my_project_builder=true
Use incremental layers
Multi-stage builds are powerful instrument, but the final stage always implies COPY commands from intermediate stages to the final image and those file sets can be quite big. In case you have a huge project, you might want to avoid creating a full-sized layer, and instead take the previous image and append only few files that have changed.
Unfortunately, COPY command always creates a layer of the same size as the copied fileset, no matter if all files match. Thus, the way to implement incremental layers would be to introduce one more intermediate stage based on a previous image. To make a diff layer, rsync can be used.
FROM my_project:latest AS diff_stage
LABEL my_project_builder=true
RUN cp /opt/my_project /opt/my_project_base COPY -- from=builder /opt/my_project /opt/my_project
RUN patch.sh /opt/my_project /opt/my_project_base /opt/my_project_diff FROM my_project:latest
LABEL my_project_builder=true
RUN cp /opt/my_project /opt/my_project_base COPY --from=builder /opt/my_project /opt/my_project
RUN patch.sh /opt/my_project /opt/my_project_base /opt/my_project_diff
Where patch.sh is the following
#!/bin/bash rm -rf $3 mkdir -p $3 pushd $1 IFS=’ ‘ for file in `rsync -rn --out-format=”%f” ./ $2`; do [ -d “$file” ] || cp -- parents -t $3 “$file” done popd
For the first time you will have to initialize my_project:latest image, by tagging base image with the corresponding target tag
docker tag ubuntu:18.04 my_project:latest
And do this every time you want to reset layers and start incrementing from scratch.This is important if you are not going to store old builds forever, cause hundreds of patches might ones consume more than ten full images.
Also, in the code above we implied rsync is included into the builder’s base image to avoid spending extra time for installing it on every build. The next section is going to present several more ways to save the build time.
Reducing the build time
Common base image
The most obvious solution to reduce build time is to extract common packets and commands from several projects into a common base image. For example, we can use the same image for all projects based on the Ubuntu/Python3 and dependent on unzip and wget packages.
A common base image:
FROM ubuntu:18.04
RUN apt-get update && \
apt-get install python3-pip python3-dev python3-setuptools unzip wget
A specific image:
RUN wget
CMD [“python3”, “your_app.py”] FROM your-docker-baseRUN wget www.some.file CMD [“python3”, “your_app.py”]
.dockerignore
To prevent copying unnecessary files from the host, you can use a .dockerignore file that contains all temporary created local files/directories like .git, .idea, local virtualenvs, etc..
Smarter layer caching
Docker uses caching for filesystem layers, where in most cases each line in the Dockerfile produces a new layer. As there are layers that are more likely to be changed than others, it is useful to reorder all commands according to the probability of changes in the ascending order. This technique saves you time by rebuilding only the layers that have been changed, so that you can copy source files when you need them.
Unordered command sequence:
FROM ubuntu:18.04
RUN apt-get update
COPY your_source_files /opt/project/your_source_files
RUN apt-get install -y -- no-install-recommends python3
Ordered command sequence:
FROM ubuntu:18.04
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y -- no-install-recommends python3
COPY your_source_files /opt/project/your_source_files
Dependencies Caching
Sometimes, one of the most time consuming steps for the big projects is dependencies downloading. It is inevitable to perform at least once, but consequent builds should use cache. Surely, layer caching could help in this case — just separate dependencies downloading step and actual build:
COPY project/package.json ./package.json RUN npm i
COPY project/ ./ RUN npm run build
However, the resolution will anyway happen once you increment any minor version. So if slow resolution is a problem to you, here’s one more approach.
Most dependencies resolution systems like NPM, PIP and Maven support local cache to speedup consequent resolution. In the previous section we wrote how to avoid leaking of pip cache to the final image. But together with incremental layers approach it is possible to save it inside an intermediate image. Setup an image with rsync, add label like `stage=deps` and prevent that intermediate image from being removed by cleanup
docker images -- filter label=my_project_builder=true -- filter label=stage=deps -- filter dangling=true -- format {{.ID}} | xargs -i docker tag {} my_project/deps
Then let builder stage depend on my_project/deps image, perform build and copy compiled files to the final image.
Value added
Such intelligent implementation of optimization strategies allowed us to reduce the Docker image size by over 50% giving significant increase in speed of image building and sharing.
Feel free to share your best practices of writing better Dockerfiles in comments below. | https://medium.com/sciforce/strategies-of-docker-images-optimization-2ca9cc5719b6 | [] | 2020-01-06 15:13:30.384000+00:00 | ['Continuous Integration', 'Programming', 'Continuous Delivery', 'Docker', 'DevOps'] |
Friends On Medium | Friends On Medium
Thanks for your help and example
Photo by Simon Hattinga Verschure on Unsplash
Although I have not personally met anyone on Medium, there are some people on the platform that I can consider as friends. They have responded to me, and I have responded to them. They have been kind and encouraging. They have made me feel good, and they make this experience worthwhile.
The editors who have published my stories have been nice. Sometimes they clap after they have published a story. Sometimes they make a nice comment. Sometimes they offer advice. Those are encouraging and helpful.
There was one very negative person whose writing I read a few times. It seemed that she had some of the same views as I do, but then I found that she puts a derogatory spin on things. I have decided not to read any more of her work. She is the only one I have found like that.
Thanks to all the writers on Medium who spend hours writing and sharing ideas and experiences. Thanks to the editors who publish the many articles and stories. Thanks to Medium for providing this platform. It is interesting and informative. Hopefully, it will be around for a long, long time.
Thanks for the friends I have “met” on Medium. Your friendship and kindness have enriched my life and many lives. Even though it is unlikely that anyone will meet other writers on Medium in person, it is nice to virtually meet new people who share your views — or not.
There is so much good material to read on Medium from the thousands of writers who participate. It’s too bad we don’t have enough time to read more of your work.
Good luck and success to everyone who writes and reads on Medium. | https://medium.com/illumination/friends-on-medium-97c1a028e973 | ['Floyd Mori'] | 2020-12-14 21:11:52.823000+00:00 | ['Medium', 'Friends', 'Gratitude', 'Writing', 'Reading'] |
Growing Self Organizing Maps (GSOM) | GSOM Algorithm
1. Initialization Phase
In this particular phase algorithm initializes the weight vectors of the starting nodes with random numbers. Generally GSOM algorithm initiates with 4 nodes which provides the autonomy to grow in a direction which they wanted to since all four of them are boundary nodes.
A numeric variable H_err is initialized to “0” at initialization. Spread factor (SF) has to be specified in this phase. And also the algorithm tends to calculate the growth threshold (GT) for the given data set according to the specified requirements. GT will act as a threshold value for initiating node generation.
Fig.2. Initial GSOM(A)
Initialization phase summary: - Initialize the weight vectors of the starting nodes (usually four) with random numbers between 0 and 1. - Determine Spread Factor (SF) - Calculate the growth threshold(GT) for the data set with (D) dimension and the spread factor (SF) which is already defined, using the formula GT = -D x ln(SF)
2. Growing Phase
We now feed the input to the network in this phase. Initially, similar to SOM (Competition Phase) algorithm, GSOM too determines the closest weight vector to the input vector as the winner (or BMU-Best Matching Unit), based on Euclidean distance. GSOM can be considered as the2D representation of the input space where input space is partitioned by weight vectors(W_i) as Voronoi regions(V_i) and each Voronoi region is represented by one neuron(i).
Fig.3. Voronoi Diagram — Photo by Charles Francis in Quora
“Voronoi diagram is a partition of a plane into regions close to each of a given set of objects. In the simplest case, these objects are just finitely many points in the plane. For each seed there is a corresponding region consisting of all points of the plane closer to that seed than to any other.” [3].
Cooperation and Adaptation phase of SOM follows where weight updation occurs only in BMU and the neighborhood of the winner. In GSOM the starting neighborhood is chosen smaller when compared to SOM.
When the total error (difference between the weight vector of a particular node and the input weight vector) of the node is lesser than the growth threshold(GT); i.e. if , H_err < GT then algorithm does not allow to grow new nodes. But when the total error of the node is greater than the growth threshold(GT); i.e. H_err >GT
Generate new nodes in a boundary node. And new nodes are generated on all free neighboring positions since computational cost of figuring out the best exact position for the new node is higher.
“A boundary node is one that has at least one of its immediate neighboring positions free of a node”[1]. In GSOM which defines that every node can have maximum of 4 immediate neighbors, refers to boundary node as a node where there is the availability of adding 3 more neighbours or can move in any of three remaining directions.
After generating the new nodes, it is essential to update the weights. There are four possible ways(See Fig 4. )
Fig.4. Weight updation in GSOM new nodes by Damminda et al.
When on one of its sides, New node has two old nodes in the consecutive manner (Fig. 4(a))
=> if W2 > W1 => W_new = W1-(W2 - W1)
=> if W1 > W2 => W_new = W1+(W1-W2)
2. When the new node is placed in between two older nodes (Fig. 4(b))
=> W_new = (W1+W2)/2
3. When the new node has only one direct neighbor which is an older node (Fig. 4(c))
=> if W2 > W1 => W_new = W1-(W2 -W1)
=> if W1 > W2 => W_new = W1+(W1-W2)
4. When the nodes are isolated due to nodes being removed after aging and generated new node has only one neighboring older node
=> W_new = (r_1 + r_2) /2 ; r_1, r_2 lower and upper values of the range of the weight vector of the only one neighbouring node.
Growing Phase Summary : - Winner node/neuron is chosen based on the closest proximity of input vectors to that of neuron. - The difference between the winner vector and the input vector of a particular input is accumulated as error value for that neuron(i). - If the error that is contributed by a particular weight vector is highly contributing to the accumulated error, it will be decided to generate a new neuron since the higher contribution of error refers that the winner neuron is not the best representer of input vector. - New nodes will be created to grow from a boundary node . Weight upation occurs for new nodes.
3. Smoothing Phase
The growing phase stops when there are less number of new nodes being created and smoothing phase begins there itself. In this Smoothing phase, algorithm reduces the learning rate and fix a small starting neighborhood. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/growing-self-organizing-maps-gsom-9ccf038de87b | ['Vivek Vinushanth Christopher'] | 2020-12-11 14:18:11.217000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Unsupervised Learning', 'Data Science', 'Clustering', 'Data Visualization'] |
“I Humanity One” — core values | Our Core Values:
We are purpose-driven community of like-minded people.
We bring you the future: unconditional progress and sustainable development.
We implemented frontier technologies and modern science: meritocracy, decentralized autonomous organization, social lifts and new age of education.
We give you full freedom of self-expression and safety, your data are closed, encrypted and you own your data.
We unite people across the world: international, multi-languages and borderless.
Join to “I Humanity One” : www.ihumanity.one | https://medium.com/@ihumanityone/i-humanity-one-core-values-61ff4b20d667 | [] | 2020-12-18 10:59:19.418000+00:00 | ['Community', 'Startup', 'Purpose', 'Socialimapct', 'Deeptech'] |
How Presenters Hook Crowds With Cialdini’s 6 Principles | How Presenters Hook Crowds With Cialdini’s 6 Principles
Are you being sold the 10x dream? Find out by learning about the psychology of convincing large groups of people
Photo by Kaleb Nimz on Unsplash
I sat in the auditorium aghast at what I was hearing. Beside me, my friend was pumped. Not just pumped, he was super-charged.
We had arrived together at the Big Event™ and were eager to see some of the bigger names in entrepreneurship in action. I had won two free tickets and was curious to see what went on at this type of conference.
We were five speakers deep when I sensed trouble. The first few didn’t manage to excite the crowds, but this new speaker was different. He was enigmatic. He had the patter to convince you to sell your own mother for a quick profit.
Being broke, I didn’t have the cash to invest and wasn’t buying into the promise. My friend, however, was being drawn in.
I turned and gasped as I watched my mate’s eyes glaze over with dollar signs. He was fully invested. The adrenaline had begun to pump through him and beads of sweat were congealing on his shirt. He was becoming red as his neck muscles grew taut and the vein on his forehead throbbed in time with the over-enthusiastic clapping.
“ARE YOU READY?!” shouted the host. “WHO WANTS TO BECOME A MULTIMILLIONAIRE?!” he enthused.
The crowd screamed back at him. My friend resembled one of those 60’s teens weeping at the sight of the Beatles as they tore their panties off in the vain hope that Johnny would catch them.
We looked at each other. His grin was manic.
“I’M IN! OH. MY. GOD. I’M SO FUCKING IN!” He was intense. Wired.
Behind me, a random suited man stood up and screamed, “ME!” and raced to the back of the hall. Everybody was shouting in caps lock. Every spoken sentence was an exclamation to the glory of money and how many dollars they would all make.
More and more people jumped up and raced to the back. Literally fighting each other to be there first.
“Sign up now!” Mr. Evangelical continued. “Save thousands! This course is the biggest investment you’ll make in your life!”
My mate began to rise. I reached out and grabbed him.
“What’cha doing?” I hissed. There was no need to whisper. The room was charged, as the mob swayed in time to the loud, repetitive beats of cash tills played at high volume.
“I want to invest! I’m going to be rich!” he said, fueled by the rush of a promise.
“Just calm down. We haven’t even got to the main speaker.” I appealed to his logical side. “There may well be a better offer.” He stared back, then looked over his shoulder at the stampede. Pens glinting in the harsh light. Arms were raised and waving as the crowd jostled to be the next super-entrepreneur.
He sat down agreeing with my logic, desperately fighting the urge not to miss the unmissable opportunity of a lifetime. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/how-presenters-hook-crowds-with-cialdinis-6-principles-93cbdc81d312 | ['Reuben Salsa'] | 2020-03-10 16:32:04.781000+00:00 | ['Persuasion', 'Sales', 'Marketing', 'Influencer Marketing', 'Ideas'] |
PewDiePie is offering NordVPN discount — what’s in it? | Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, known as PewDiePie on YouTube, is one of the most influential content creators online. He kickstarted his career by making “let’s play” videos and the first huge success was “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” playthrough. A horror classics from Frictional games.
He joined the YouTube community in 2010, and by 2012 July he had over one million subscribers. His content now varies from gameplays to hilarious reactions to weird stuff online or gaming conferences. For example, on his latest video he recorded his reaction to Minecon Q&A session, which had some seriously funny stuff going on. Some people call him controversial, some crazy, most call him hilarious, but one thing is for sure, — that PewDiePie is honest about everything he does. That’s why I took notice when he recommended NordVPN and provided his fans with a discount.
How to apply PewDiePie NordVPN discount?
It only takes one step, simply click on the link below:
Using PewDiePie discount, you will get NordVPN at 75% OFF and will be able to enjoy safe and anonymous browsing for the whole 3 years.
There’s no need to apply anything manually, just follow the link and choose the payment method and you’re good to go.
What do you get with this discount?
You will get NordVPN for just $2.99/MO or $107.55 in total for a 3-year plan. Their services are considered top-notch and have dominated the VPN market for quite some time now, so it’s a great chance to get a renowned service for an affordable price. Being a NordVPN user myself I can say they are continually adding new features, so over upcoming years, you can expect to see significant improvements happening.
Why trust PewDiePie?
As I mentioned before, he is very open about his personality, and that’s what rocketed him to fame — being a massive part of an online community for nearly a decade he was subjected to a few hacking scares himself and made videos about the vulnerabilities of online privacy. So his recommendation comes with the first-hand experience. Right now he sits at 95million subscribers and 21 billion views, which speaks that he successfully built up trust and his recommendations don’t come empty.
Also, he’s not the only famous YouTuber to recommend NordVPN, you can check Alux or Dude Perfect YT channels that as well recommend this service.
Why choose NordVPN?
PewDiePie kicks off by mentioning Article 13, an EU new copyrights directive that will complicate content spreading and accessibility online by a long shot. Fortunately, VPN is exactly what you’re looking for in order to bypass geographical restrictions, so no more “this video is not available in your country” if you have NordVPN turned on.
He as well mentions public wi-fi security issues and nasty hackers, in both cases a VPN will significantly improve your safety by encrypting your traffic. Furthermore, it’s a user-friendly App, to quote PewDiePie “it’s nice, simple, easy, and smooth”, mobile friendly too. Below you will find several more NordVPN advantages:
NordVPN offers 5200+ high-speed servers in 60 countries meaning you will never run out of available IP addresses;
It uses military-grade Advanced Encryption Standard so you can be sure that hackers will have a tough time if they want to spy on you;
CyberSec feature is a powerful tool that will protect against phishing/trackers/malware, and works as an AdBlock too!
You can enable doubleVPN to route your traffic through two different NordVPN servers making it almost impossible to track you online;
They have been audited by an independent cybersecurity professionals PricewaterhouseCoopers AG to prove they keep no-logs;
Talking about no logs, they’re based in Panama so there are no data retention laws, and nobody can demand NordVPN to start logging.
And that’s only the major advantages. NordVPN has a 30d. money-back guarantee so try it for yourself. I for one fell in love with the App, and the more I read about security threats nowadays, the more I understand I made a smart decision to invest in privacy protection. | https://medium.com/@collsmith30/pewdiepie-is-offering-nordvpn-discount-whats-in-it-6cb5adbab8e | ['Collin Smith'] | 2019-05-09 12:19:43.392000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Discount', 'PewDiePie', 'Privacy', 'VPN'] |
Why You Should Reach Out And Touch Someone This Winter | Remember those phones, business owners? Graphic by Annalise Art via Pixabay.
If you’re of a certain age (ahem) you might remember the old AT&T ads that urged us all to reach out and touch someone. Long-distance, because those kinds of calls cost more in the days of landlines. (Due to COVID-19, in 2020 we still need to keep the touches at a distance.)
A big part of life for humans is connection with other humans. Even introverts need a few relationships. We might not need bonds with as many people as extroverts typically do to be happy, but very few people are genuinely happy living as hermits.
And it’s especially important for business owners (yes, even introverts, hi!) to connect with other entrepreneurs. They don’t have to be in your industry, though that’s helpful too. But in any field you’ll find people who are struggling with the same things that you are. Things that your family or friends who don’t own businesses don’t get.
“It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.” — Yogi Berra
Ways for business owners to connect
Originally our ancestors bonded with each other through physical proximity. In a village of 150 people, you know everyone and everyone knows you. Because that’s how we evolved, human to human or face to face physical meetings are the best way to develop relationships. That’s most satisfying to our savannah brains.
The next best way to truly connect is to use the phone, as in actually calling someone (not texting). For a very long time, this was how people who weren’t physically near each other communicated and caught up with each other.
While talking over the phone isn’t as rich a method of communication as meeting in person, you can hear the other person’s tone of voice and hear other cues that help you get the meaning. You can usually tell when someone’s being sarcastic, or making a joke. Which is not the case with texting and emailing.
Younger people tend to text instead of calling people. Those of us who grew up with landlines but adapted to smartphones use both. Now get off my lawn, whippersnapper.
For example, I don’t want to have a full discussion or conversation with someone over text. I’ll call (or Zoom) for that. But if I just have some information to impart but don’t need a whole convo about it, texting is very convenient. Like if I’m telling my friend I’ve arrived at the restaurant or made it home after visiting them.
There are two issues with texting/emailing/being on social media to connect. Or basically anything that requires the use of your fingers instead of your voice.
1. Most communication is nonverbal
The words we use only convey about 10–25% of the message we’re sending. All the rest is through things like body language, gestures, facial expressions, tone and volume of voice, etc.
When people can only read the words, they’re missing a lot, if not most, of the message.
I’ve been in trouble more than once for making jokes or trying to be humorous over email. The recipient didn’t get the joke, or didn’t realize I meant to be funny. (It’s true that in person I try to stay deadpan for the delivery of the joke, but at some point people can tell by looking at my face that I’m kidding. Usually.)
All that nuance is lost when people can read the words only.
2. Being online means you’re distracted
You’ve read me yammering on about disabling notifications and being productive by reducing distractions and turning your cellphone off while trying to do deep work. But true connection also requires that you’re actually paying attention to the person you’re trying to develop a bond with.
You need to be listening to understand and not to react(active listening), and for that you must concentrate.
But if you’re emailing/texting/on social media, you’re online. Getting notifications and ads and all kinds of other things which prevent you from being fully in the moment with the other person. And that prevents you from truly connecting with them.
The 21st century brought us Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms. You might not be seeing people in person, but you can hear them talk and see their faces so you are getting more of the message.
It’s definitely a better solution than texting/emailing/social media! Because it’s so new science isn’t sure if it’s as good as being physically present with someone. At least in terms of the happy feel-good chemicals we get when connecting with someone in person.
Connection and COVID-19
The coronavirus pandemic has been awful for a lot of people, including entrepreneurs. Especially here in the US with a total lack of leadership that resulted in an unacceptably high body count. Even so, there have been some silver linings.
People are able to connect more. Particularly if the pandemic helped them avoid spending so much time in the rat race. Not to mention the lack of commute also means that more time is available for business owners to chat and catch up.
A colleague I hadn’t spoken to in a while called me up, and it was great to talk to her again! We didn’t talk about anything earth-shattering. (Nor did we talk about politics.) We just caught up and found out what the other person’s been up to over the past few months
I got to catch up with my grandmother, aunts and uncles, cousins, and their kids and pets because of COVID-19. My grandma’s nursing home had stopped allowing visits for obvious reasons.
Instead, you could schedule a Zoom call with your loved one. We had several of these virtual visits this year. Which was good, because COVID eventually did reach the nursing home and my grandmother died of it at age 98. (I’m convinced she otherwise would have lived to 100+.)
Connection with other business people
Family and friends are important to stay in touch with, but so are colleagues from inside and outside your industry. Networking even while you have a job is always a good idea. If for no other reason than having people to reach out to if you end up losing your job, as so many did with the pandemic.
Other business owners are great to have in your squad, because they get it. They know what it’s like to miss an important personal event because you needed to get something crucial done in your business. How it feels to lose a client. Or how tiring running your own show can be, no matter how much you love it!
They can also recommend good people to assist you, like bookkeepers or business lawyers they work with. Other entrepreneurs can let you know what software they’re using to automate certain processes, or about their experiences in a certain market or channel.
Naturally, being a smart businessperson, of course you return the favor for others. But you’ve got people around you who know what you’re going through.
Having raving fans for your products and services never hurts, and the more of those you can find to spread the word the better! A personal cheerleader or two is great as well. People who support you and your venture, even if they’re not entrepreneurs themselves, will keep you going when you hit the inevitable obstacles.
How to reach out
Now you know you should connect with someone, preferably over the phone or Zoom since in-person is too risky in the time of COVID! Unless, like me, you live in Southern California or somewhere else you’re comfortable staying outside and social distancing.
Conversing with others isn’t about trying to make the sale. Though it may lead to more sales down the road. It’s about reconnecting with those you haven’t spoken to in a while, or making stronger bonds with people you might not know well.
Go through your CRM (Rolodex for the older readers) and look at all the people you haven’t spoken to in a while. Call one up! Or invite them to a Zoom.
Search your social media for people that seem interesting, or are potential clients or referrals. Schedule a “virtual coffee” date to get to know them. You can chat over videoconference and see and hear each other.
Ask them questions and be your real self. Pay attention to what the other person’s saying. Not your phone, notifications, emails, or anything else. When you don’t know something, admit it! Yes, even if you’re building a business relationship.
Happy connecting! Io Saturnalia!
Want to improve your connection with potential clients on your website? I have a FREE guide to content tips and *trix* to attract your ideal client, so click here to nab yours. | https://medium.com/@squareofj72/why-you-should-reach-out-and-touch-someone-this-winter-46bb46a993af | ['Jennifer Jank'] | 2020-12-22 15:58:41.999000+00:00 | ['Connection', 'Entrepreneur', 'Business Owner', 'Conversations', 'Network'] |
Developing National Cybersecurity Strategies | Developing National Cybersecurity Strategies
Security, which is among the primary needs of human in the hierarchy of needs defined by Maslow, will continue to maintain its place as long as human being exists. Today, people demand security not just for themselves but for their data as well since it too valuable.
A lot of data and information are generated and shared over the Internet, and a variety of social media platforms participate. In the dataistic world view, human experience is able to produce data that can be put together to pay tribute to data streams. For data specialists, data and algorithms are infused with superior tools to process data and find meaning.
Security, which is among the primary needs of human in the hierarchy of needs defined by Maslow, will continue to maintain its place as long as human being exists. Today, people demand security not just for themselves but for their data as well since it too valuable.
It is seen that the threats arising in cyberspace are difficult to eliminate with the ability of individual struggle, the society must fight against this threat with all its actors. Civil organizations, academia, public institutions, and organizations, national and international structures have to take part in the matter. Although many countries have established organizations or created legal regulations according to their internal dynamics in order to determine these studies, international criteria have now been set for their defense capabilities against threats.
International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Model
One of the classification studies is the Global Cyber Security Index by International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which makes regional and global cybersecurity rankings by evaluating many issues such as legal regulations, strategies, standards, cybersecurity awareness studies, and training of countries. (GCI). The Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) is a trusted reference that measures the commitment of countries to cybersecurity at a global level — to raise awareness of the importance and different dimensions of the issue. As cybersecurity has a broad field of application, cutting across many industries and various sectors, each country’s level of development or engagement is assessed along five pillars,
I. Legal Measures,
II. Technical Measures,
III. Organizational Measures,
IV. Capacity Building,
V. Cooperation
As the governance understanding, abilities, and needs of countries change, the processes related to cybersecurity strategies also change. ITU determines how a country will determine its strategy, how it will implement it, and the methods to be followed are determined under the stages.
Phase 0: On purpose or not big and critical data leaks within the scope of national security can lead to the emergence of a cybersecurity strategy. In such cases, national development plans and national security strategies can support the initiation of the cybersecurity process. Strategies consider cyberspace as an environment of great importance in matters such as the national economy and security. As a result, it may require national strategies to take measures against the threats that may arise in cyberspace and to provide security for its citizens. Regardless of the reason for the emergence of the national cybersecurity strategy, it is recommended that all actors be included in the strategy formulation in coordination.
Phase 1: It is the responsibility of the administration to lead the creation of the cybersecurity strategy. The administration can get the support of other actors, emphasizing the benefits of working together. While each country is free to take its own approach, it is recommended that governments cooperate with other actors in setting the agenda and in the work. The agreed strategy reaches a level for national and international joint work.
Phase 2: In this process, the National Cyber Security Strategy is announced. The duties and responsibilities of the organizations and main actors assigned in national cybersecurity are stated.
Phase 3: The vision regarding cybersecurity activities to be implemented within the scope of the national cybersecurity strategy is presented.
Phase 4: In this process, organizations authorized for coordination by state authorities work with other stakeholders and critical infrastructure organizations to put into effective action plans on a sectoral basis.
Phase 5: The authorized cybersecurity organization follows the implementation of the national strategy. This organization evaluates the efficiency of the strategy.
ITU has defined the duties of the national cybersecurity organization.
· Determining national cybersecurity strategies,
· Identifying the primary national cybersecurity initiatives,
· Coordination of cybersecurity actions at the national level,
· Identifying stakeholders and public-private sector linkages to assess cybersecurity issues,
· Ensuring cooperation with local and international organizations gathering around the same purpose,
· Ensuring the implementation of international criteria for cybersecurity,
· Certification of services and actors providing services in information and communication infrastructures,
· Conducting, developing, and managing social identity system activities.
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) Model
The main task of ENISA is to ensure the security of the information society in Europe, based on the interests of individuals, consumers, businesses, and public institutions.
ENISA recommends the National Cyber Security Strategy (NCSS) life cycle in order to be able to control the execution of national cybersecurity strategies through stages and to monitor the continuous improvement.
Phase 1: Designing and Developing a Strategy
Strategy planning and development activities should be carried out under the authority and coordination of the National Cyber Security Authority. In this phase following is steps need to be taken.
· Determining of vision, scope, goals, and priorities
· Determining and implementing of risk analysis approach
· Gathering existing policies, regulations, and capabilities
· Establishing an open management structure
· Identifying stakeholders and making agreements
· Establishing reliable information-sharing mechanisms
Phase 2: Implementation of the Strategy
In this phase following is steps need to be taken.
· Development of national cyber action plans
· Protection of critical information infrastructure
· Regulation of cybersecurity exercises
· Establishing fundamental security measures
· Establishing incident reporting mechanisms
· Increasing cybersecurity awareness
· Supporting education and training programs
· Establishing incident response teams
· Struggle against cybercrime
· Developing international cooperation
· Establishing a public-private partnership
· Establishing a security balance between privacy and data protection
· Improving cooperation between public institutions
· Supporting R&D studies on cybersecurity
· Encouraging the private sector to invest in security measures.
Phase 3: Evaluation of the Strategy
This phase identifies the elements required for evaluating and adjusting strategies. During the evaluation phase, it focuses on determining how much of the intended actions have been implemented by making a comparison according to the set goals. In this phase following is steps need to be taken.
· An independent auditor should be determined to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy.
· The roles and responsibilities of the independent authority should be strengthened
· Stakeholders should be encouraged to participate in the evaluation process.
· Besides the strategy, individual responsibilities should also be evaluated.
· A quantitative and qualitative approach should be followed, with emphasis on impacts and consequences.
· Stakeholders’ views should be taken into account
· Consider the opinions of external and affected users.
· Each activity should be evaluated according to the action plan accepted at the beginning.
· A data collection scheme should be established to collect relevant data within the scope of evaluating the strategy and action plan.
· Lessons learned good practices and bad practices should be determined
· Prepare an analytical evaluation report explaining the results achieved and the expectations of the next evaluation.
· Benchmarking studies should be conducted to compare the strategies of different states.
Cited Sources
· https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Cybersecurity/Pages/global-cybersecurity-index.aspx
· https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/national-cyber-security-strategies | https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/developing-national-cybersecurity-strategies-a8eacb1c8f1a | ['Ensar Seker'] | 2020-11-12 10:09:02.716000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Cyber Strategy', 'National Security'] |
The Importance of Communication as a Youth Soccer Coach | Despite wanting the best for their kids, soccer parents don’t always have time to thoroughly research the hundreds of soccer clubs and programs in their area. Hearing about a good coach or program from a trusted friend can save a lot of time in that process. ENDALGO recently conducted a study and learned that the majority of parents (63.9%) hear about their child’s youth soccer club/program through friends or family. What this information tells us is that having a good relationship with your players parents is one of your best marketing tools!
So what’s the best way to cultivate a good relationship with soccer parents? One big way you can do this is by prioritizing clear and consistent communication. According to the study, 80% of soccer parents are in contact with their child’s coaches at least once a week.
ENDALGO: Soccer Team Management
Regular communication is undeniably important to parents, but having 15+ emails, texts, and messages every week can be hard to stay on top of. When flooded with messages from parents, remember the importance of good relationships.
Coaches that use ENDALGO to manage their teams have access to the in-app messaging features — taking away the need to switch between texts, emails, or other messaging platforms. You can send out individual messages to parents or send a mass message that goes to everyone on your team. Click here to learn more about the ways ENDALGO can help carry the weight that comes with being a youth soccer coach.
ENDALGO: Soccer Community Platform
Check out ENDALGO — Soccer Community Platform | https://medium.com/@endalgo/the-importance-of-communication-as-a-youth-soccer-coach-aaec19c82d61 | ['Endalgo', 'Soccer Community Platform'] | 2020-12-11 20:07:16.877000+00:00 | ['Youth Soccer', 'Youth Sports', 'Soccer', 'Youth', 'Soccer News'] |
Why Tradier powered Tradehawk has grown to stand apart from other legacy options trading platforms | TradeHawk is one of the more widely used options trading platforms today and used by some of the most active options traders. Built on innovative cloud-based technology, Tradehawk offers an intuitive stock and options trading experience that was designed by professional traders. TradeHawk stands as a robust alternative to TD Ameritrade’s Thinkorswim, Interactive Brokers, Tastyworks and Fidelity. Its efficient, user friendly front-end provides retail options traders with an edge, allowing them to stay on top of current market trends and investing opportunities.
TradeHawk is an dynamic, customizable platform with an engaging educational interface for options traders. Through Tradier Brokerage TradeHawk users get unlimited, commission-free equity and options trading. *
This powerful combination of comprehensive trading services combined with unlimited, commission-free trading* has accelerated the growth and adoption of the platform. TradeHawk subscribers have saved thousands of dollars in monthly commissions while enjoying a holistic trading experience. TradeHawk offers order entry, order management, risk analysis, simulation, alerts, advanced and conditional orders, charting, portfolio management, spread logs and many other robust features.
The inspiration behind the platform, Kevin “Lex” Luthringshausen says, “We at TradeHawk have a simple mission to provide the best technology, trading experience and value for our traders. We have a very compelling product in the market and our growth proves that.”
Here are some of the reasons why traders are leaving other platforms and moving to Tradehawk
1) Unlimited commission-free stock and options trading*. No more per contract fees, minimums, or ticket charges.
2) Paper Trading to learn and explore the functionality of the system.
3) Room Chat to follow your favorite Educator.
4) Easy one-click trading from multiple templates including signals posted in Room Chat.
5) Create simple and complex exit strategies with conditional triggers.
6) Track your strategies effectively. Our Strategy Tracker separates your spreads into custom, user-defined “buckets” for analysis.
7) Implied and Historical Volatility studies.
8) Large ecosystem of Traders, Educators and Mentors.
9) Intuitive implementation of advanced and conditional orders.
10) Perform real-time risk analysis on options, spreads, strategies, and entire positions.
*Single Listed Index Options are subject to a $0.35/contract fee in addition to any other charges for exchange, OCC, and regulatory fees. See Fee Schedule for more details.
Brokerage services provided by Tradier Brokerage Member FINRA/SIPC
Download Tradehawk at https://tradier.com/products/tradehawk. Start your FREE trial today! | https://medium.com/@sales_95932/why-tradier-powered-tradehawk-has-grown-to-stand-apart-from-other-legacy-options-trading-platforms-4697f4274fa6 | ['Tradier Content'] | 2020-05-15 13:38:55.990000+00:00 | ['Trade Commission', 'Advanced Trading Tool', 'Options Trading', 'Charts', 'Td Ameritrade'] |
Lessons learned through coaching UX/UI designers | Are you having a hard time finding a UX job in 2020 or almost 2021!? I hope that this can help. It’s time to look back at the most useful things I’ve learned during the last four years of mentoring and coaching other designers.
I‘ve coached different designers both on a personal level and in groups. Whether you are looking to shift your career to UX/UI or are looking to get a job in this field, here you will see the options you have to achieve that goal.
Mentoring vs Coaching
Mentoring vs Coaching what is the difference?
In simple terms:
Mentoring — Result-driven, yet it has a more holistic approach, targeting deeper thoughts with usually long-term goals. Such as becoming a design leader.
Coaching — Result-driven, traditionally more often targeting shorter-term goals, such as getting a job or setting up a portfolio.
→ This of course doesn't mean that mentoring and coaching can’t happen simultaneously or overlap in some areas.
Designer groups — Who is this for?
Designers intend to have different coaching needs based on their goals, generally, I have coached the following design groups.
Career Shifters
01. Career shifters
Definition : people shifting from one career e.g. accounting to UX/UI design.
: people shifting from one career e.g. accounting to UX/UI design. Usual motivation/questions: a previous passion for design, frustration with current career, an increase in salary, finding a junior design job asap, understanding what a UX/UI designer’s day looks like and questions like do I need a design degree?.
Junior Design Graduates
02. “Junior” Design graduates
Definition: designers that recently graduated from a university or college.
designers that recently graduated from a university or college. Usual motivation/questions: breaking the “ you need experience as a junior, but no one is offering the experience for a junior”, getting a career started, creating a great portfolio with no real cases, understanding what recruiters are looking for.
03. Graphic, visual and motion designers
Definition: designers in another discipline other than UX/UI.
designers in another discipline other than UX/UI. Usual motivation/questions: understanding if UX/UI is really that different, how to shift into UX/UI, do I have transferable skills and shifting from a graphic/visual to a UX portfolio.
What it takes to learn design
Do I need a design degree? Is amongst the first questions I get asked. The answer is always: it depends. I will explain why you might or might not need it. Lisa Angela explained the problem in design education here amazingly. We constantly hear about the greatest entrepreneurs and designers like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and countless others that are dropouts. Mostly out of context and without providing what they did instead.
Nonetheless, it’s fortunately 100% possible to make it being a dropout, but not always. I believe that it takes one of the following three things to learn design.
Self-study
For 30y+ career shifters and graphic/visual/motion designers
Disciplined self-study — If you have a job, you need to self-study, read and design every evening and weekend. That is a huge sacrifice if you ask me, but that is what it takes. If you don’t have a job, treat UX learning as your job, that means 8 hours of learning, designing and reading every day — that will fast track your career.
But, how quickly can I learn design doing it full-time? That depends on where you came from. Did you come from a graphic design background? Perhaps 3–6 months would suffice. Are you coming from an accounting background? 12–24 months is more realistic. These are arbitrary numbers based on my experience with other career shifters. Remember that motivation is not discipline. Ask your self if you are willing to commit to such drastic change and are you the type of person that can self-discipline without the need for accountability? If yes, go for it! You can definitely do it!
⚠️ → With disciplined self-study, there is no guarantee that you will be hired, unless you have a great portfolio that is attractive to recruiters and designers alike! Even then, you are up against some steep competition with younger and qualified designers.
Design Degree
For 20–30-year-old career shifters
Design degree — Are you in your 20s? Is it free or cheap to obtain a design degree? Then, yes do it! That is still one of the best ways to get an education. This way you don’t have to defend why you don’t need a design degree to be a great designer. This way you will have greater career opportunities, especially when it comes down to older school companies. This does not mean that all design degrees are useful or up to date with the industry, in fact, most of them aren’t. Nonetheless, most recruiters put a degree as a condition.
⚠️ → You still need a kick-ass portfolio that exceeds “course work” and preferably contains real-life work examples. Ideally, this is done during studies, alternatively, see who you can help around you. Friends or family with small companies — even if it’s for a lower fee?
Coaching or Mentoring
For all designers from all levels
Coaching — Find a design coach or mentor. Easier said then done. It’s quite important to mention that 100% of the information you will be receiving from the mentor, you can find online and in books for free. However, this will provide you with the deepest insights into other aspects. Not all mentors are created equally, study who you want as a mentor. A mentor can introduce you to the correct people and send you in the right direction. They can greatly shorten the path to success.
Most importantly, a mentor holds you accountable for design and learning tasks and provides you with the motivation needed to continue. It could be that your mentor sets up a kanban board with a structured to-do list for you. Coaching/Mentoring can last anywhere from two weeks to years.
⚠️ Though a coach or a mentor can provide you with a strategy, training, and perhaps introduce you to the correct people, all the work still needs to be done by you. Don’t expect them to write your bio on your behalf. You are the brand, only you can sell your self!
Cut out the buzzing noise
Focus on the basics — Designers need to cut through the Buzz noise.
Just like every other industry, the design industry is buzzing with upcoming trends and jargon, that seems to make or break, where in reality it’s not important to focus on as of now. It’s important to stay current and knowledgeable about the changes, yet it’s more important to focus on the basics.
If Design was a building, the basic design fundamentals would the foundation and design trends would be the upgraded light switches. In simpler terms, here is what you should focus on in the following order:
Design — Design thinking, creative problem-solving. Read every design book you can lay your hands on. Visual research — Get inspired, train your eyes to understand good design. Typography — If people can’t read it, it’s art, not design. Layout Composition — Direct the users where to look at, and what to do. Colour — Good luck :) Interactions — How should a user get form point A to Point B? Design Sytems — Understand how to build them, and how to work with them. User Research — Designers can be intuitive, but never accurate until you’ve conducted research Public Speaking — You need confidence, as a UX/UI there is no escaping this Workshop Facilitation — There is no escaping this either :)
Highlight your weaknesses
Understand and highlight your weakness upfront
Never hide your weakness, it’s very apparent. Instead, highlight it and speak about how you’ve overcome it. If you haven’t overcome your weakness yet, talk about the steps you are taking to compensate for it.
Example weakness 01
If you don’t have a degree, state that upfront, instead, do mention all the other things that you do have!
Example weakness 02
If you haven’t done any user research before, talk about it, and mention what kind of research you have done in the past. Think about transferable skills from a previous career(s).
Example weakness 03
If you haven’t worked in a particular industry such as UX/UI for financial services, mention that upfront, instead, talk about your other expertise that might be beneficial to that employer or client.
Why should I?
Isn’t easier to undermine and not talk about your weakness, instead focus on your strength? Not exactly, it’s quite simple, if you acknowledge your weakness upfront, your client or future employer doesn’t have that point as leverage to use against you. In my case, I’ve lived n Finland for the past 6 years. Yet, my Finnish sucks! That’s something I’m not proud of, however, it’s amongst the first things that I mention. Then I try to talk about what I’m doing to improve (not enough), and what I have to compensate for it.
Find a mentor
Where to find a design mentor?
That is a tough question and rather dependent on where you live. Ideally, you know someone that you look up to and they want to mentor you. That would be quite unlikely however and a match made in heaven. Luckily there are many other alternatives. For example, I had a business coach, Keir McLaren all the way in LA, whilst living I was living in Helsinki.
ADPLIST is one of the websites that offers mentors for free. It’s, however, safe to say that most mentors that offer their services for free, won’t have the time to give repeated 1-on-1 sessions, but sometimes that is all you need.
Springboard, General Assembly, Career Foundry UX Bootcamps that can catapult you years ahead.
Designed is another website that offers mentors in design around the world.
LinkedIn if you see a designer that you admire, you can simply connect and ask! I contacted Keir McLaren after seeing that he coached Chris Do. It was an instant match. In fact, that has inspired me to coach others!
Behance/Dribble/Instagram. Again, if you see a designer or a mentor that you admire, simply send them a DM/PM!
Hit me up :) I can’t promise that we will be the right fit, but I promise to try to send you in the right direction. If we are a right fit, then 🎉🎉🎉
🙏 Thank you!
Thanks for making it till the end of this, now that you are here, I would love to connect with you. You can find me on LinkedIn or follow me on Instagram. | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/lessons-learned-through-mentoring-ux-designers-86729b06a31f | ['Anmar Matrood'] | 2020-12-28 11:17:01.650000+00:00 | ['Career', 'Design', 'UX', 'Product Design', 'Coaching'] |
Still confused by Steem, Steem Power and Steem Dollars— Read this | A simple example to understand the STEEM, Steem Power (SP) and Steem Blockchain Dollars (SBD)
Think of Steem-Blockchain as a gold mine. Steemit as a tool to mine this gold. And users use this tool for mining.
The mine produces a fixed amount of gold every day. In the world of Steemit, we call this gold ‘STEEM’. The Steem (gold) is traded by the people in the market (online cryptocurrency exchanges). They buy it on a speculative price and keep it (hold) with them to sell later when the prices go up. Why the prices will ever go up? Because the Steem has many use cases; it is useful and scarce.
The value of Steem is exactly the amount at which people are trading it in the market. The trust of the buyers and holders (the one who own Steem) gives it a price on the exchange.
SP and SBD
The Blockchain algorithm (program) produces SP and SBD in correlation with the Steem generated every day.
The SP and SBD are derivatives of the Steem (Gold). Just like ornaments and gold coins are two different derivatives of gold with a different purpose. The role of SP and SBD in the Steem Blockchain makes the whole system function.
Remember: The Steem comes first out of the Steem-Blockchain which is traded in the market. Then Steem-Blockchain produces SP and SBD which has some use cases on the Steemit (same use case of SP & SBD on other Steem Blockchain based platforms). | https://medium.com/hapramp/still-confused-by-steem-steem-power-and-steem-dollars-read-this-220ace402bcb | ['Rajat Dangi'] | 2019-02-02 06:32:05.263000+00:00 | ['Steemit', 'Steem Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Hapramp', 'Blockchain'] |
Recovering Equitably and Addressing Top Challenges: My Proposed Budget for San Francisco | Recovering Equitably and Addressing Top Challenges: My Proposed Budget for San Francisco
How I am proposing to allocate City resources for the next two fiscal years London Breed Jun 1·8 min read
San Francisco is on the road to recovery. Our vaccination rates are among the highest in the country, we have the lowest COVID-19 hospitalizations we’ve had since the beginning of this pandemic, and this year, our City budget is healthier too. Earlier today, I announced my budget proposal for the City and County of San Francisco at Willie ‘Woo Woo’ Wong playground in the heart of Chinatown. I was joined today by City officials and community members, and it was great to have this opportunity to come together in-person to talk about our plans for investing in the future of San Francisco.
Mayor London Breed announcing her proposed budget for the next two years at Willie ‘Woo Woo’ Wong playground in San Francisco’s Chinatown
In early March 2020, I stood in Chinatown alongside fellow City leaders and members of the business community to announce a series of steps we were taking in response to the novel coronavirus. At the time, we didn’t know just how bad things would get, and just how much our residents and entire economy would suffer. Last year, our budget process was pushed back due to the pandemic, and we were facing dramatic budget deficits. But thanks to San Franciscans’ efforts to protect one another, the COVID-19 vaccine, and real support from our federal government, here we are nearly 15 months later and in a much better place.
We’ve been able to close our budget deficit, and are making historic investments that meet the critical needs of our city, while also maintaining financial responsibility and ensuring our future financial resiliency. I believe we can move forward an economic recovery that is equitable and sustainable, so that San Francisco emerges from this pandemic stronger than ever.
A Balanced Budget
The proposed budget that I am introducing is our roadmap to economic recovery. It will guide our efforts as we emerge from this pandemic and work to build back to become even more equitable and resilient than before. We’ll continue our long-term goals to build a stronger, more resilient San Francisco — and make progress on our efforts to create a San Francisco for all.
My budget proposal includes important new investments to support an equitable economic recovery, continue our COVID-19 response, ensure public safety, provide behavioral health care, prevent homelessness and transition people into services and housing, create more housing, and support children, youth and their families.
Below is an overview of some of the new investments for our priority areas in the budget. You can read the full budget proposal for Fiscal Years (FY) 2021–22 and 2022–23 here.
Mayor Breed announcing the Women and Families First Initiative to provide workforce training for women and childcare tuition credits for 800 more children in San Francisco
Driving a Sustained and Equitable Economic Recovery and Continuing City’s COVID-19 Response
My proposed budget includes around $477 million over the two years for various initiatives to drive and accelerate the City’s economic recovery, while also supporting the City’s COVID-19 response. Major recovery initiatives include Community Ambassadors and events and activities to enliven San Francisco’s downtown, backfilling the loss of hotel tax revenue for the arts, addressing student learning loss, the Women and Families First Initiative, incentivizing the return of conventions at the Moscone Center, a new Trans Basic Income pilot program, and continuing the JobsNow workforce program and Working Families Credit.
Mayor Breed in Union Square, announcing her plan to add more community ambassadors and activations downtown, to support the city’s economic recovery
Of this total, about $384 million will be spent to continue the City’s COVID-19 shelter response, food security programs, vaccination efforts, testing operations, and the COVID-19 Command Center. Funding will also support community-based COVID-19 recovery programming, specifically targeting resources to populations disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. This funding includes small business support, economic relief, workforce development funds, and various arts, cultural, and recreational programming.
Disaster Service Workers have stepped up to support food banks throughout San Francisco
Making Historic Investments in Homelessness and Housing
The proposed budget includes significant investments to address homelessness in San Francisco and expand the work started through our Homelessness Recovery Plan to create 6,000 placements for people experiencing homelessness.
Mayor Breed with members of the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team
In total, the budget leverages over $1 billion over the next two years in local, state, and federal resources to add 4,000 new housing placements, prevent homelessness and eviction for over 7,000 households, support additional safe parking sites, and fund the continuation of a new 40-bed emergency shelter for families. All of these investments are in addition to prior commitments. This funding will enable the City to cap all Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) rents in our PSH portfolio at 30% of a tenant’s income.
Expanding Mental Health and Substance Use Support
We’re continuing our commitment to helping people with behavioral health and substance use issues. My proposed budget contains $300 million in new investments for behavioral health services. Included in the budget is funding to prevent overdoses through medication assisted treatment, a drug sobering site, and expanded naloxone distribution. The budget also includes funding to support new and existing Street Response Teams, including the Street Crisis Response Team, Street Wellness Response Team, and Street Overdose Response Team.
One of San Francisco’s Street Crisis Response Teams, which has been responding to 911 and 311 calls to help people experiencing a behavioral health crisis on the city’s streets
This investment will help fund our long-term plan to add 340 more treatment beds (on top of the over 2,000 we have now), provide case management and care coordination for people receiving services, and expand services at the City’s Behavioral Health Access Center. This investment will also provide targeted services for transgender and Transitional Age Youth clients, and increase services for clients in shelters and Permanent Supportive Housing.
Investing in Public Safety, Victims’ Services, and Justice Innovations
My proposed budget includes over $65 million over the two years to prevent violence, support victims, continue the City’s investments in alternative responses to non-criminal activity, and create an Office of Justice Innovation to oversee, implement and work with the community to expand this critical work. The budget includes expanded violence prevention programming and funding for victims’ rights, including targeted investments to support community-based violence prevention and intervention work, and to San Francisco’s Asian and Pacific Islander community. The proposed budget includes funding to maintain police staffing levels, including funding for new academy classes and staffing to support compliance with SB 1421 as part of the City’s efforts to increase accountability and implement the 272 recommendations from the Department of Justice.
Mayor Breed announcing the expansion of the Street Violence Intervention Program and the Senior Escort program in Chinatown
To strengthen the City’s non-law enforcement response to non-criminal activity, my proposed budget includes new funding for our Street Response Teams and to support call diversion. Additionally, the budget includes funding to replace Sheriff’s deputies at public health sites with trained health care professionals and community members.
Supporting Children, Youth, and Their Families
I am proposing $144 million to lay the groundwork for early learning and universal preschool in San Francisco. This includes funding for childcare subsidies, workforce compensation for childcare providers, child health and wellbeing, and Family Resource Centers.
San Francisco students getting help with their school work at one of our Community Hubs
The proposed budget also maintains our existing investments in children and youth, invests significant new funding to address learning loss, funds mental health for SFUSD students, and supports our Opportunities for All initiative.
Supporting Long-Term Economic Justice Strategies
My proposed budget continues the City’s $60 million annual investment in the Dream Keeper Initiative, which we launched to reinvest in services and programs that support San Francisco’s Black and African American Community. The proposed budget also includes funding to waive additional fees and fines paid to the City by San Francisco residents. Additionally, the budget supports the City’s efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion and ensure citywide coordination of equity work. My proposed budget invests in the sustainability of the City’s nonprofit partners with $76.4 million for a cost of doing business increase.
Mayor Breed with the graduates of the CityEMT program, which is a paid training program funded by the City
Investing in Capital Projects and Affordable Housing
I am proposing significant investments in capital and one-time projects, which will create jobs and spur economic recovery. The proposed budget provides $50.6 million to support affordable housing developments in San Francisco.
Mayor Breed and community members celebrating the opening of the George Christopher playground in Diamond Heights
The proposed budget includes $208 million for projects from the City’s Capital Plan, including street and parks infrastructure improvements, an expansion of fiber to affordable housing, and community facility improvements. The proposed budget also includes funding to replace aging equipment in the Fire and Police departments, as well as funding to purchase a site for an LGBT Cultural Museum.
San Francisco’s Fire Station 16 was replaced in 2019 with funding from Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response bond. The proposed budget includes funding to replace aging equipment in the Fire and Police departments.
Ensuring Financial Resilience
The two-year budget makes the above significant investments in a way that is financially responsible. By utilizing funding from the American Rescue Plan and other one-time sources, we are able to maintain our reserves. This allows us to preserve our Rainy Day Reserve for future uncertainty and risk. To hedge against future risk and uncertainty, the proposed budget creates two new reserves that will help to manage unforeseen costs due to potential FEMA reimbursement disallowances and to manage future budget shortfalls.
Next Steps
Through the end of June, the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Appropriations Committee will hold public hearings on this proposed budget, and will make recommendations to the full Board. In July, the budget is heard and voted on by the full Board of Supervisors and will return to me for my approval, typically by August 1st. | https://medium.com/@londonbreed/recovering-equitably-and-addressing-top-challenges-my-proposed-budget-for-san-francisco-a4560ff7180b | ['London Breed'] | 2021-06-01 21:37:54.758000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Economic Recovery', 'Homelessness', 'Budget', 'San Francisco'] |
This is why smartphone specs don’t matter as much as you think | If you’re thinking of buying a new smartphone, you have that in common with 1,5 billion other consumers this year. For the environment, this is bad news. Not only does smartphone production contribute to massive CO2 emissions, it also leads to the fastest growing waste stream worldwide: E-waste — So it’s worth considering if it’s really necessary to buy a new phone.
The first thing that many people are drawn to is the specs of the phone. That is the camera, chipset, memory, operating system; the list goes on. ‘Good’ specs justify the price range from low end to high end and also are selling points — why, after all, would you buy a phone, if it didn’t add anything to what you already have?
Here is the catch. There is a reason why marketing campaigns now zoom in on details like the number of cameras on a smartphone (why do you need 4?). Most users are not benefitting from the incremental changes that are made every year anymore and increasingly, big companies struggle to distinguish themselves from each other. Over the last years, there has been a trend towards convergence of technology. Even mid-range devices now provide far more CPU power and memory than most users will need. The same goes for cameras or any other part of the phone. For the job that the majority of people actually buy smartphones for — almost all of them are now good enough for it. Taking pictures, using apps, making phone calls and navigation, all of it is possible, in a very smooth way, even on a low-end phone.
But this convergence goes deeper than just making phones that provide very similar quality. They are also almost identical when you look at the technology behind their functions. There are only a handful of players that supply practically the entire market. Let’s look at two examples.
Most chipsets that are used in smartphones today are produced by one single company, Qualcomm. That is either directly or through licensing. The chipset of the phone will determine almost anything that a phone can do. You could argue a smartphone is actually a portable chipset with a case and sensors on it. It’s not just that the chipsets on most phones are sufficient in power to run the device smoothly; it is also that the chipsets are identical. Arguably they are sold in different ‘flavors’ with different CPU power, but in the end, you get the same technology with the same limitations and strengths.
The same goes for software. Google’s Android will now run on almost any device, with iPhones being the exception. The different versions of Android are almost identical on new phones. At the moment, that is Android 9. You get slightly adapted versions of it, but in the end, the technology is the same. It will look the same, you have the same functions and access to apps and even the differences between different versions of Android is relatively neglectable.
Creating needs rather than serving them
The trend behind the scenes of this industry seems counter-intuitive: The more smartphones have become similar, the more we are told that they are different — and this is still working for tech giants. Tech-sites are rigorously comparing and ranking data on differences, for which you need specialized knowledge to be able to describe to what extent the effects it produces are exactly ‘different’. There is now fierce competition on cameras, for instance, where you still have some differences between brands. It may be my own inability to pay attention to the tiny details that are being advertised, but I cannot describe in any language that is available to me why this matters so much. To me, they look very much the same.
Shown here is a camera comparison between three different mid-range devices. Only one of them is hailed to “produce magic”. Can you tell which one is which?
We are being directed to pay attention to incremental changes while the use-value of smartphones is very similar. A lot of what is sold as a material benefit is actually just psychological. Specs are not the guiding factor you’d want them to be.
Rather than obsessing about the minor details that still distinguish smartphones, it would be more honest to say that most smartphones are now identical. Steve-Jobs-style product releases try to hide the elephant in the room: there is almost no innovation taking place at the technological level. The smartphone in 2019 is pretty much the same as it was 2018 and it will be the same in 2020. That’s a good thing. It means that, If you have a smartphone and it works, you’re probably well off ignoring all the talk about specs and innovation for a while and hold on to it. | https://medium.com/fairphone/this-is-why-smartphone-specs-dont-matter-as-much-as-you-think-4ad2cf3c7507 | ['Fabian Hühne'] | 2020-02-17 16:05:54.536000+00:00 | ['Smartphones', 'Consumerism', 'Marketing', 'Technology', 'Innovation'] |
You’re Still Underestimating the Power of The South | America’s 2020 general election placed Georgia and its hardworking organizers center stage. The prevailing question on everyone’s mind: how did Georgia, a state in the country’s deep south, turn blue? To really unpack the answer to this question, all eyes turned to the state’s preeminent organizers. Stacey Abrams, Latosha Brown and Helen Butler are the big names representing the organizers throughout the state who developed a largely Black woman-led multi-issue coalition. And they started well before the rest of the country had even begun to think about the 2020 election.
But even as their work is being put on display, there is still a disconnect in what many take away from this critical work. Rather than adopting new organizing methods that take its cues from those on the ground and actually based in the state, there is still a mad dash to plant seeds in Georgia where organizers are already tending to a fruitful garden.
On the one hand, we see a lack of understanding of Georgia, and the greater South’s, commitment to community organizing. But, as we look further, there is an even more pervasive message, Georgia’s people power has been and continues to be underestimated.
Georgia’s civil rights history is well documented. The state’s foremost figures like Dr. Martin Luther King, John Lewis and Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery all had a significant hand in the passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But this civil rights history is not a thing of the past. It is Georgia’s present and future too.
Georgians have been running at full speed in the marathon of voting rights for decades, passing the baton to each new generation and picking up right where they left off. However, now we see those not versed in this history running in from the sidelines and causing fumbles when they should simply be asking if the runners need water as they continue to cheer them on.
What we see now, as we head to the state’s January 5 runoff, is a whirlwind of outside help lacking any clear direction. Outsiders continue to pour money into a deluge of canned text messages, reminders to vote and unsolicited absentee ballot forms. These soulless tactics are being met with memes at best, and at worst, are contributing to misinformation that can be weaponized in the wrong hands.
Contrast this with the thoughtful approach of those Georgians working on the ground. The 2018 gubernatorial election spotlighted the state’s widespread voter suppression, and organizers sought to understand the resources needed in communities across the state. The result is a deeply engaged electorate. Their understanding of the electoral process runs deep thanks to organizers’ commitment to shifting the focus from simple voter turnout to holistic voter education.
A holistic commitment to voter education centers on a deep understanding of the ins and outs of each individual community. This knowledge comes from being a member of the communities you seek to impact. Taking the time to understand a community enables us to understand a community’s needs while uplifting and amplifying the voice of that community. This is the key to developing action plans and promoting involvement. This is what Georgia’s organizers understand.
Classism and racism are at play for those who don’t understand these community dynamics. The South’s history as home to poor communities, Black communities and other disenfranchised groups has created the myth that through a lack of knowledge and care, voter suppression has prevailed. Instead, it must be understood that despite all of this, voter encouragement prevails through the power of community organizing.
Voter turnout in the state reached just under 5 million. Black voter turnout increased by over 500,000 from 2018. Asian voter turnout reached an all-time high in the state as numbers increased by 141% from 2016. Georgia voters know what’s at stake. They know how to make their voices heard and understand the growing power they possess.
Voter suppression in Georgia is the result of the growing political power of long disenfranchised voices. Black voters, poor voters, those who have the most to lose are not the voters who need to be pressured to turnout. They do not need to be harassed with text messages, misguided letters and postcards from those out of state trying to have a say in Georgia’s elections. It’s insulting to think that Georgia’s voters need these constant reminders and guidance on how to exercise their rights.
It’s one thing to say you respect the work of those on the ground in Georgia and the Black women leading them. It is an entirely different thing to demonstrate your respect through action and a dedication to following their lead. Understand, Georgia is the example. It is the blueprint for progress thanks to its commitment to amplifying the diverse voices leading the charge.
I am not here to gatekeep or stop anyone from lending a helping hand. But what I am doing is demanding the respect of voting rights organizers in Georgia and the state’s powerful electorate. I am demanding that their voices, causes, and calls to action be amplified, not drowned out in a choir of confusion. I am demanding funding for these groups and more intentional dedication to supporting Georgia’s voters and voting rights organizers. | https://medium.com/@carlisanjohnson/youre-still-underestimating-the-power-of-the-south-a5fb08a85cc7 | ['Carlisa N. Johnson'] | 2020-12-05 20:14:04.911000+00:00 | ['Raphael Warnock', 'Democratic Party', 'Georgia Elections', 'Jon Ossoff', 'Stacey Abrams'] |
Infrastructure: When Politics and Economics Align | Back in 2016, national polling conducted by Gallup, found that 75% of those surveyed agreed with the idea of spending more “federal money to improve infrastructure, including roads, buildings and waterways.” Then in January 2017, just before President Trump’s inauguration, Gallup asked Americans how important it was that the administration keep each of 12 policy commitments made during his presidential campaign. Infrastructure was at the top of the list. In March 2017, Gallup again asked Americans about their agreement with a $1 trillion infrastructure proposal. The high-value assigned to the plan made essentially no difference; 76% agreed with the idea. And a Monmouth University survey, conducted in April 2018, found that 62% of Americans believe the federal government is not spending enough on “transportation infrastructure, including roads and bridges.”
So, considering that the American public doesn’t seem to have an issue with the level of spending, the next step would be to attempt to quantify what the “right level” of investment would be to shorten the nation’s economic recovery. Analysis by S&P Global in May 2020, when the US was at the peak of its national shutdown, looked at two economic scenarios — one with an infrastructure investment and one without (baseline). Their analysis found that, if the U.S. invested $2.1 trillion into public infrastructure spending over a 10-year horizon, it could create 2.3 million jobs by 2024 as the work is being completed, helping those millions of unemployed workers displaced by COVID-19. But, the productivity boost from the infrastructure investment, if done wisely, could add as much as $5.7 trillion to the U.S. over the next decade. The estimated potential real GDP growth over the next 10 years would be lifted to 2.2% from 1.7%.
S&P’s analysis determined that the productivity boost from infrastructure investment would likely re-right the post-virus expansion’s course. In the baseline “no investment” forecast, S&P found that there would be no productivity gains from pre-pandemic levels. But, in their “investment” scenario, the productivity gains would help steepen the slope of the economic (re)expansion path, closer to the pre-crisis growth. They modeled that it would take only four quarters to return to pre-crisis GDP levels instead of seven without that spending and that this investment would provide both a short-term boost to the economy and create desperately needed jobs over the long run.
However, all of this requires legislators to take action to pass spending bills that authorize funding for this work. And, while elected officials at all levels have introduced a number of competing bills, the country still doesn’t have a comprehensive infrastructure plan that sets out national priorities, special authorizations, and regulatory frameworks that facilitate the investment. In fact, as of the time of this article, many of the country’s infrastructure operators have seen such sharp declines in operating revenue, that any injection of “stimulus” would actually be “relief” funding to partially fill the budgetary gaps left as a result.
In 2020, House Democrats unveiled a five-year, $494 billion surface transportation dubbed the Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation, or “INVEST in America Act”. The act would provide $411 billion in contract authority out of the Highway Trust Fund and would provide critical transportation funding for counties, as owners of 45 percent of all public roads, 38 percent of the National Bridge Inventory and direct supporters of 78 percent of the nation’s public transit systems. Passing a bill with this level of commitment would be a strong start to tackling the multitrillion dollar investment needed. But, it would still be a long way from a proper national infrastructure plan.
Unlike most policy initiatives these days, support for a federal infrastructure program is high among Republicans, Democrats, and economists. Rarely do we see this type of political consensus. The government should take action on the things that they do actually agree on and help the nation and the region move forward. | https://medium.com/@chrisvillari/infrastructure-when-politics-and-economics-align-e14068fb705c | ['Chris Villari'] | 2020-12-27 01:28:53.569000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Leadership', 'Economics', 'Infrastructure', 'Construction'] |
India vs Australia Test Matches played until Dec 2020. | Australia cricket captain Tim Paine (R) and India cricket captain Virat Kohli (L) pose with the Border Gavaskar trophy. Photo by PETER PARKS.(FreepressJournal)
The test contest between India and Australia is always a fan feast with many records and events. One of the most interesting series played by these nations which attained notoriety owing to poor umpiring decisions and poor sportsman from the hosting nation is Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2008. Earlier in 2001 Very Very Stylish Lakshman’s 281 against Australia at Eden Gardens which bagged the Greatest Indian Test Innings award in a survey conducted by Wisden Asia Cricket magazine still remains special to the cricket fans.
Let’s look at a few stats and plots of all the matches played before India and Australia take on each other for the 99th time in Test cricket on 17.Dec.2020. The long rivalry continues and now it’s time for us to visualize analyze using python libraries and Data Science.
Match Results Head to Head Aus vs Ind in 98 matches
Results of Matches contested Ind vs Aus
India’s overseas performance has been not so great and in Australia it is not an exception. Historically, India have won only 7 Tests in Australia, of which, 2 came in 2018–19 series (IND won 2–1 out of 4 Tests). Whereas Australia have won 29 of them, and drew 12 of them.
India’s performance in Australia
Senior players — Highest matches
Sachin Tendulkar is the senior most player who has played in most number of matches contested b/w Ind and Aus. He is followed by Ricky Ponting. Among the active players , Ishant sharma is the senior player.
Senior players in terms of matches
Generally if a player gets out with out scoring any runs is said to be duck out. For batsman it is an embarrassment ,however if we see the top players with duck outs in the encounters between Aus vs India ,batsmen have been saved from disconcertment. This is because the list of players with most ducks features mostly bowlers.
Players with most ducks
Scoring a double hundred in any format is a great achievement to a cricketer. Let’s see the players with highest score more than 200.
Highest Score by Players
Michael Clarke is the only player to score a triple hundred. The next highest score is 281 by VVS Laxman. The only wicket keeper batsman featuring in the list is MS Dhoni.
Master blaster Sachin Tendulkar has hit highest number of centuries among all the players who played in Aus vs India matches. Among the current players only Kohli and Steve Smith have hit 7 centuries each and Pujara scored 5 centuries.\
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The list is again topped by Sachin. Among the active Indian players the list features KL Rhaul, Pujara,Rahane.
The analysis features mostly on batsmen ability of Indian and Australian cricket team. This work is done using python libraries pandas, matplotlib, seaborn etc. using jovian.ml platform .Hope you enjoy it. | https://medium.com/@mathabetha/india-vs-australia-test-matches-played-until-dec-2020-c49c2e963299 | [] | 2020-12-17 12:53:26.935000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Australia', 'Cricket', 'India', 'Data Science'] |
Sad Shayari | Latest Sad Status | Top Sad Shayari | Love Shayari,Sad Shayari
खुश है तू हमे याद ना करके
हस रही है तू हमसे बात ना करके
ये हसी तेरे होटो से कभी ना जाये
खुदा करे तू मेरी मोत पर भी मुस्कराये
Khush he tu hume yaad na karke.
Has rahi he tu humse baat na karke.
Ye hasi tere hoto se kabhi na jaye.
Khuda kare tu meri maut pe bi muskuraye
Image by- Pixabay
वक्त गुजर जाता है कहानी बनकर
याद रह जाती है सिर्फ निशानी बनकर
हम तो हमेशा दिल के करीब रहेंगे
कभी मोसम तो कभी आखो का पानी भरकर
Waqt gujar jata h kahani bankar.
Yaad rah jati h sirf nishani bankar.
Hum to humesh dil ke karib rahenge.
Kabhi mosam to kabhi aakho ka pani bankar
जिसके नसीब मे हों ज़माने की ठोकरें,
उस बदनसीब से ना सहारों की बात कर।
Jiske Naseeb Mein Hon Zamane Ki Thhokarein,
Uss BadNaseeb Se Na Sahaaron Ki Baat Kar.
Bahut Tadpaate Hain
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Imperial Beach officials say the real border crisis in San Diego is cross-border pollution | SAN DIEGO — Undocumented immigration has recently been a popular topic in the media nationwide, but city officials in Imperial Beach are concerned about a different type of entry at the border: sewage.
The San Diego-Mexico border is one of the most prominent examples of the issue of “cross-border pollution.” The Tijuana River is a body of water that flows from Mexico, into Imperial Beach, CA, carrying pollution from one country into another.
“When you involve two countries sharing one problem, it can get complicated,” said Paloma Aguirre, coastal and marine director of Wildcoast, a non-profit organization that works to conserve coastal and marine ecosystems along the San Diego international border.
Sedimentation basins and trash booms have been set up in Goat Canyon, in Border Field State Park, and they cost $1.8 million dollars annually to be maintained and cleaned. Education Coordinator for the Tijuana River National Estuary and Research Reserve, Anne Marie Tipton, explains how these basins work and says cross-border pollution is a “$400 million-dollar problem.”
A Worsening Problem:
In Feb. 2017, a sewage pipe in Tijuana broke, causing more than 200 million gallons of sewage to flow into the U.S., reaching as far as Coronado. While this did cause excess pollution to enter U.S. waterways, Imperial Beach Environmental and Natural Resources Director Chris Helmer said it was not much more than what is usually entering the country.
“It got people’s attention and kind of pissed a lot of people off when it was clearly a problem and no one was doing anything about it,” he said. “In reality, there’s constantly sewer breaks happening in the city.”
Trash piles up in the trash booms in Goat Canyon in Border Field State Park on May 3. The trash booms cost the state $1.8 million annually, according to Education Coordinator for the Tijuana National Estuary and Research Reserve, Anne Marie Tipton.
One of the reasons this issue has worsened over the past years, according to Aguirre, is that the city of Tijuana, Mexico has been rapidly expanding, but the infrastructure has not expanded to match it.
“The services that are in need, like trash collection services or illegal dumping enforcement, are not quite on par with the needs of the city,” she said.
Aguirre said Wildcoast does advocacy work in Mexico to help get funding for these infrastructure programs, but due to ongoing elections in Baja, Mexico, the priority of this issue to the Mexican government is unclear.
“You can’t compel a different country to do something,” she said. “So while we continue to do that advocacy work, we also work to compel our federal government on the U.S. side.”
In addition to challenges working with the Mexican government, Aguirre said there have been challenges receiving funding from the U.S. government for this issue because the Trump administration has focused their attention primarily on border security for illegal immigration. | https://medium.com/@ambernelson_35085/imperial-beach-officials-say-the-real-border-crisis-in-san-diego-is-cross-border-pollution-f564aaea9666 | ['Amber Nelson'] | 2019-05-11 02:51:46.639000+00:00 | ['Sewage', 'Cross Border', 'San Diego', 'Pollution', 'Tijuana'] |
If You’re Overwhelmed With Too Many #1 Priorities, Ask Yourself This Question | The world is full of possibilities, and you want to do it all.
You want to take that course, start that project, read that book, learn that skill, all while making time for your day job, hobbies, spiritual practice, friends and family-and all in the next month or two.
It always happens in cycles: you get excited about a bunch of (genuinely interesting!) things, and you fill your schedule to the brim. Some people can make it all work, so why wouldn’t you?
At first it feels exciting, but eventually it gets overwhelming.
You know you need to prioritize, but everything seems so important that you don’t know what to drop. And then the worst happens: you get so obsessed about choosing the right thing and taking the most effective step possible that you end up .
So you procrastinate. Then, as time goes by and deadlines approach, you are forced to choose the urgent over the important. You feel disappointed with your results, and you lack clarity and focus on what to do next. Inevitably, you always end up asking yourself: Why do I keep choosing the wrong things? Why didn’t I start things earlier? How can I plan better next time?
The answer: ask yourself a different question.
The Question You Need To Ask Yourself
A few years ago when I quit my job and decided to change my life, I had a long list of things I wanted to do: start a Youtube channel about relationships, work as a live performing artist, start my own blog, find remote freelance gigs, become a life coach, learn meditation and yoga and travel the world and many other things.
As surprising as it may seem, I started by doing most of those things, all at the same time.
Obviously, that didn’t go very well.
I quickly became overwhelmed. I never had time to relax; I felt guilt and FOMO whenever I worked on one thing because that meant neglecting something else; I felt that my life lacked coherence and focus, and instead everything seemed like a messy collage of activities and habits that didn’t make sense together and instead of fulfilling me only scattered my energy, attention, and happiness.
And that’s when it hit me: I had to look beyond the surface.
When we get too busy or lack clarity or focus, our first instinct is to try and find new systems and solutions. We try that new productivity software, we read a new book, we change our to-do lists and goal setting strategies, but we forget to look at the most important component: our very human needs that made us want those things in the first place.
So I simply asked myself:
“What do I really need?”
What was behind my drive to pursue all those dreams, tasks, projects, and habits? What holes was I trying to fill in my heart and soul? What was the purpose of all that?
When we were babies, we were very aware of our own needs: we cried when we needed food or love or sleep, and we laughed when we were covered for fun, intimacy, or contentment. As we grew older, things got more complex as we discovered needs such as appreciation, learning, personal growth, or emotional closeness. But the truth is, as human beings, we still function in the exact same way: we can’t be happy if our needs aren’t met (and our needs are usually much simpler than we think ).
As I shifted my thinking from “what should I do” to “what do I need”, things started becoming clearer.
Every task or project or possibility had a very strong, deeply rooted reason to be on my mind or in my calendar-I just had never thought to look at it before.
Gradually, I came to understand that I didn’t necessarily have to keep my Youtube channel (which I didn’t enjoy so much anymore), or spend so much time doing freelance work just to pay the bills. As long as I met my need to be seen and appreciated, to be creative, to have fun, to have a positive impact in the world and to sustain myself financially while being free to travel, I would be happy with pretty much any professional occupation. It turned out that starting a blog was the answer.
I invite you to make a list of all the tasks, habits, and projects in your life (present, future, or just hypothetical), and then ask yourself: “What are the needs that make me want to do those things in the first place?”
You might realize that your strong desire to keep taking different courses comes from a deep need for learning and discovery. And you can : so why is it that you feel overwhelmed with so much “knowledge”? You might want to balance your need to learn with your need for creativity. Or maybe you just don’t feel stimulated enough by the things you’re studying, and you need a change. Or you might realize that the only reason you’re studying is because you just don’t know what else to do and your real need is to find purpose and meaning.
In the process of discovering your needs, you might also find some hard truths. For example, you might realize that you took a job offer just to please your parents, or that you’re pursuing certain goals in a desperate attempt to become someone that you’re not. In those cases, keep asking until you find the source: why do I worry so much about what others think? Why do I struggle to accept myself? In what other ways can I bring my parents happiness? How can I heal this relationship?
Another question you can ask yourself is: “What other needs do I have that I am not currently meeting?”
To answer this question, it might help to look at moments or interactions in your life when you feel unhappy or less than proud of your behavior (such as procrastination, conflict with others, or feeling confused).
You can be surprised by the answers. Think of needs you don’t usually consider: do you have enough personal space? Accomplishment in your work? Time to rest? Time to play? Authenticity in your relationships? Sexual expression? Opportunities to practice compassion? Safety and stability?
Now, take into account that no matter how many needs you find, your time is limited. This is why you need to prioritize. The question to ask here is: “How can I optimize my actions so that each of them meets as many of my needs as possible?”
For example, consider meeting your friends for a walk instead of a coffee place so that you can meet your need for companionship and physical movement at the same time. Find an occupation that satiates your curious and creative nature while providing you the financial stability you need. Leave your mark in the world in a way that is both fun, fulfilling, challenging, and helpful to others.
Gaining Perspective
When you have enough clarity around your needs-what’s been missing, why you choose the things you choose, and why you get overwhelmed-then it might be time to consider new options.
Just to liberate yourself from all the ideas you were stuck with before, leave them aside for a moment. Instead, ask yourself: “What are the craziest things I could do to meet my needs?”
For example, I often consider possibilities such as leaving everything behind and learning meditation in a cave in the Thai jungle, give away everything I own, start a new business from scratch, shave my head, or stop everything I’m doing and just write a novel. More often than not they stay in my imagination, but considering them helps me broaden my perspective, and once in a while there is a great idea among them that I actually follow.
That’s me when I shaved my head a few years ago.
Sometimes, all we need is a bit of perspective.
Sometimes, in order to understand what to do next or what to let go of, you just need to look from a higher point of view so you can see the whole path. If you don’t reflect on your deepest needs and consider them when you make decisions, it’s very unlikely that you will ever be happy or satisfied.
It’s okay to not know what to do. It’s okay to be confused and overwhelmed. That, too, is a sign of a need unmet. When it happens to me, it’s usually a cry for stillness and clarity, and in order to meet it I love taking time to be in silence. I go to the forest on my own, sit by the ocean, or simply look out the window. Very often, this is enough-that’s how simple it gets when you identify the right needs.
Perhaps, if you find yourself needing clarity and stillness right now, this might be a good next step for you too. Spend a moment on your own, maybe in nature, without social media, without distractions or external stimuli. Maybe you take your journal with you. Maybe use it to get in touch with your deep, real, human needs.
Printable Journaling Template to uncover your needs + define next steps
If you want, visit the original version of this article to download a fill-in printable with all the questions in this article plus a few extra ones that will help you reflect and better understand your needs and, therefore, make better decisions and regain the clarity you’ve been craving. | https://silviabastos.medium.com/if-youre-overwhelmed-with-too-many-1-priorities-ask-yourself-this-question-dbb8da3a892 | ['Sílvia Bastos'] | 2020-04-25 11:19:54.905000+00:00 | ['Prioritization', 'Productivity', 'Journaling', 'Procrastination', 'Mindfulness'] |
Adding User-Interactivity to AWS QuickSight Dashboards | Filter
filter data fields
A filter allows you to remove unwanted data in a field provided with a condition. It will only allow that data which satisfies the condition or vice versa.
You could add one or more filters to a visual, or create a filter and apply it to all visuals or maybe specifically choose certain visuals; it all depends on the use-case. I recommend exercising all the above options to better understand them.
Filters are applicable at a dataset level. So, any visual using that dataset will be affected.
Let’s create a filter for the Population by Year visual to the year field.
Select visual & open filter
This will open the Applied filters window for selected visual. It shows the list of all filters applied for that visual.
Let’s add a filter and choose the Year field.
Adding a filter for year field
You would see different settings under it, like Filter type, Use parameters, Exclude nulls, etc. For each filter type, the settings would change accordingly, I recommend you to exercise all options and choose your best fit.
Edit filter properties
In the above example, the year is a field of type date. So, the range is the best fit for it. We shall set a range for the date, in the above case (2012 — 2015) using Start date and End date fields in the Edit filter settings window.
Apply filter properties
Once filter properties are applied, only the data that is in the given range is visualized. This can be seen in the above image.
Filters can be of different forms based on the datatype of the field chosen. For instance, in the case of date datatype, it is a range, it might be different for a string or number.
Scope of a filter
We could choose to apply a filter to all visuals or specifically choose certain visuals. | https://medium.com/zenofai/adding-user-interactivity-to-aws-quicksight-dashboards-3e7a0461ec61 | ['Engineering Zenofai'] | 2019-11-06 11:52:52.045000+00:00 | ['AWS', 'Big Data Analytics', 'Data Visualization', 'Big Data', 'Cloud Computing'] |
Raise Finance IDO Tiers Explained | Option 2 — RF-Karma support mechanism (RF- Karma)
Most Eastern religions believe that karma denotes the cycle of cause and effect — wherein every action affects the person at some point in the future. Karma also applies to your thoughts, your words, and the instructions you give other people. The RF-Karma Support Mechanism works on more or less the same principles.
The RF-Karma Support Mechanism is another way for participants to gain access to the IDO allocations, and participants here will have the opportunity to earn Karma points by staking or swapping previous tokens in exchange for IDO access. Only tokens launched by the Raise FInance team will be eligible, and this is another strong step towards boosting interest and demand for our projects. Our Raise Finance analysts conduct a detailed analysis of previously issued tokens on a periodic basis, and based on the current situation of the project, they will select tokens for the RF-Karma Support Mechanism.
How do I Earn RF-Karma Points
There are numerous ways for you to be able to earn RF-Karma points, and these have been discussed below:
Staking a specific token on Raise Finance: For every asset that you lock and stake on the RF platform, 2% is converted into RF-Karma points. This is issued once a week in the form of weekly karma and expires every month.
For every asset that you lock and stake on the RF platform, 2% is converted into RF-Karma points. This is issued once a week in the form of weekly karma and expires every month. Trading a specific token on Raise Finance: For every asset that you trade through Raise Finance, 2% is converted to RF-Karma points. This is issued once a week in the form of weekly karma and expires every month.
For every asset that you trade through Raise Finance, 2% is converted to RF-Karma points. This is issued once a week in the form of weekly karma and expires every month. Successfully submitting projects to Raise finance hackathons: For every successful project that you submit, you will earn 100 RF-Karma points that expire after 14 weeks.
*The specific conditions around the conversion may vary from project to project.
The top 250 wallets in each case that have the most RF-Karma points will gain access to IDO allocations.
The top 150 wallets from this will be part of Pool 1 and will share 70% of the total share.
The top 100 wallets from this will be part of Pool 2 and will share 30% of the total share.
Example
For example, if a Project ABC manages to raise a total of $200,000.
According to the pool weight distribution, the amount allocated to the RF-Karma Support Mechanism is
Total raise * 0.20 (PW)= 40 000$
Therefore, each pool gets allocated funds as follows:
Pool 1 = 40,000$ * 0.70 = 28 000$
Pool 2 = 40,000$ * 0.30 = 12 000$
Pool 1 and Pool 2 participants will get a guaranteed allocation proportionally depending on the earned points. | https://medium.com/@raisefinance/raise-finance-ido-tiers-explained-aff14185e328 | ['Raise Finance'] | 2022-01-09 20:58:33.608000+00:00 | ['Metaverse', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Launchpad', 'Matic Network', 'Avalanche'] |
A Man’s Constant Struggle To Remain Joyful | I am nobody in front of Kabir Das to give commentry on his couplets, only thing here I will try is to explain how a man tries to implement this couplet in his own life by various means consciously or compulsively. To become happy and joyful, a man always wants to dissolve (or forget) himself into something or someone he is devoted to. He can be involved and devoted to something only when he considers it larger than his own identity and that happens only when he loves that thing. Having hard time understanding what I am saying, let’s talk in terms of some examples below —
For a cricketer, this joy comes when he is on the field playing with full involvement and he even forgets himself when he hits the ball.
For a dancer, this joy comes when he is devoted to dancing sequence so much that he starts enjoying and celebrating every move, in this process he forgets who he is, he kind of dissolves his ego.
For a God/Deity/Guru worshipper, this joy manifests when he is so much engrossed in his prayer or meditation that he forgets even the meditator (himself) who is meditating.
For a terrorist, his joy is in the act of spreading his ideology, he is so much devoted to the extremist philosophy that he will do anything to protect it. It is just that he has been misguided to protect a cause which does need any protection. A terrorist is even willing to die for what he believes in.
For a ngo worker, his biggest motivation or passion or joy is when he works for the society, because he loves to devote his time for a cause which eliminates people’s suffering.
Some are devoted to process of hoarding money and possessions, so money is biggest motivator for them to have more joy. They dissolve into those activities which make more money for them.
A mother is so much devoted to her children that wellbeing of her child matters more than her own wellbeing. Only real joy for her is when her child is feeling happy.
For a traveller, this joy manifests when he dissolves himself into the mountains or nature or any beautiful sight.
A yogi who is devoted to freedom or moksha wants to dissolve his whole ego or individuality in the process of attaining nirvana.
When a man falls in love, it means his ego is falling, he is forgetting himself and that dissolution of him is making him joyful.
This happened to me once when I was studying for my engineering entrance examinations. Two girls who were twins used to come to my coaching center, both were identical and out of those two girls I was particularly attracted to one of them. The first time I saw her, I immediately fell for her. It was a love which was a kind of submissive in nature, like you bow down to her, like you are devoted to her, like when you think about her, its just her, her and only her, nothing matters in life at that time and at that moment you forget everything including any concern for yourself and that’s the joy I am talking about. I got so much connected to her in my mind that after few months she contacted me online, I don’t know how but she was like a mirror who was just reflecting the same feelings towards me which I had for her and then our love story began. But after sometime I had to make various excuses to leave her because I was very much socially anxious. That’s a long story. But I still love that feeling, I loved her like a devotee/worshipper loves her goddess. There is no lust or desire or give n take or anything like that, it is pure submission or devotion to something which you consider higher than your own ego or self. I had the same experiences with travelling, whenever I got a chance I just travelled and travelled not with any purpose to see anything particular but just exploration of some unknown. Mountains, nature and greenery had always intrigued me, these things had always been a kind of trigger for me, thinking about those I would just forget myself and go into the trance mode by dissolving my worries into these massive wonders of mother earth. People thought I was a lonely soul who always travelled solo. When I resigned from my corporate job, first thing I did was to fly off to Maharashtra for a solo expedition to see the Western ghats, indescribable experience that was. Some travelled for Instagram, some travelled for FB check-ins, some travelled to complete their bucket list, some travelled to add one more spot in their travel diary, some travelled because everybody around them was doing the same so they had FOMO, maybe I was only one stupid there who travelled to be with those massive mountains, rivers and trees.
So basically to forget himself a man can devote to various other things also like drugs, alcohal, terrorism, sex, masturbation, travel, reading, earning money, party, food, social media, Internet or just gossiping. All these mediums are just a way to forget oneself or for some people it is just a way to avoid oneself. Only those people avoid themselves who can never remain alone with themselves, so they have found one of these ways to keep themselves busy or distracted in order to forget themselves.
Okay let’s talk about it in some technical terms . I have segregated human’s activity into two parts —
Conscious activity — Activity which you choose because it results in wellbeing of yours or everyone around you or it just results in the wellbeing of everyone around you excluding you. This activity is done with by placing the concern for everyone above your own life. Compulsive activity — Activity which is good for you and bad for other’s wellbeing or activity which is bad for you as well as others. Activity to which you are addicted to and your mind has no control over it.
When your nature is compulsive, you have zero sensitivity towards other life forms around you. So a man with no sensitivity forcefully tries to forget himself with compulsive habits, a man with super sensitivity and conscious mind can never think of being devoted to something which can harm other life, when I say other life, it includes humans, nature, earth, plants and animals.
That’s why some of the above activites are looked upto and some of these are looked down upon in society. Why we look down on terrorism is because a terrorist has lost the sensitivity of other people’s lives, for him only his philosophy, his dogmas matters. A terrorist act can only protect the people of his religion, it does not include people of all faiths. Act that he does can only satisfy his ego and it is done without any concern for the society at large. But why do we applaud a social worker because he is sensitive to the world’s suffering, a real social activist places society’s wellbeing above his own. A real social activist does not work for a particular catse, religion, gender etc. Both terrorist and social worker are feeling joyful in their job, the only difference is that one is fullfilling the demands of his ego and identity (religion, caste, race) while the other one is fullfilling the demands of society. One has a very narrow vision while other has a very vast plan.
I think a man who hoards the money and valuables just for some momentary pleasures, a man who only fights for the people’s rights of his own identity (caste, creed, race, nation or religion), a man who is attached only to his family and hate his neighbors, a man who overeats without any concern for the poor people, a man who keeps producing his children without any concern for population control are also a kind of terrorist at some level in my eyes.
A man has always been in constant struggle and dilemma how to find true happiness and joy so he constantly tries to engage himself in new things and people but none of these things bring permanent happiness because that action performed is not inclusive, it is either a selfish act or a compulsive act.
So it is my request that next time before doing any thing please keep in mind whether your action benefits the life of everyone around you, if it doesn’t benefit them atleast it shouldn’t harm them.
Only when your actions can give something back to the life and society around you, your act will bring a kind of joy in you which is not a momentary pleasure that you get from sex or hoarding things, it is a permanent joy that stays with you forever.
Please read below posts too that I wrote earlier to understand my message in a better way. 🙏 | https://medium.com/@ppasrija2/a-mans-constant-struggle-to-remain-joyful-bb99098e5419 | ['Shiva Shambhu'] | 2020-12-28 14:22:59.687000+00:00 | ['Social Service', 'Happiness', 'Spiritual', 'Compulsive Habits', 'Consciousness'] |
I Can’t Wait to be an Empty Nester | Blog
I Can’t Wait to be an Empty Nester
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels
28 days 17 hours 35 minutes and 26 seconds.
That is how many days until December 31. That is how many days until my youngest child turns 18. I can’t wait and I feel guilty as hell.
I long to be an empty nester.
I’m frustrated with my son, again. Seems like I’ve been more frustrated with him the last two years than in the entirety of his life before. We have definitely had rough patches. He has attempted suicide numerous times. He has cut his arm so many times it looks like a cheese grater. He has smoked pot, gotten drunk, and tripped on cough medicine. Each time, he has done these things he has gotten sick. Not with the pot. Pot just makes his depression worse.
We have a mental hospital an hour’s drive away. The first time he went, after some back and forth with the social worker, he asked to stay there. This happened only after I went mama bear on the social worker telling her she couldn’t force him to stay. Not with his parents right there. Not when he hadn’t come in an ambulance. It had been a week since he overdosed.
He finally admitted he wanted to stay. We said ok, of course, if this is what you want. The social worker assured us (after I apologized) my son would get the help he needed as an inpatient. My husband and I were actually a little relieved. We hadn’t slept or eaten much in the preceding week. We thought we would be able to rest up and get strong enough to face the emotionally challenging times ahead. We were wrong.
Our son was home in two and a half days.
I learned this hospital is an acute care facility. Meaning they get people stable and get them out as quickly as possible. So, all of that fuss was really for nothing.
The fuss continued at home as I scrambled to get him state insurance, as I made appointment after appointment. Psychiatric doctors, psychiatric social workers, psychologists for him, psychologists for the family, psychologists for me.
The meds prescribed were just beginning to work when he decided he would rather smoke pot and drink than take medication. Weed and alcohol have an immediate and unmistakable effect. Psychotropic medication can take four to six weeks to work. It is understandable to me that so many people want to feel better right now.
His psychiatrist told him she wouldn’t prescribe medication if he tested positive for illegal substances. We live in Texas. Everything is illegal here, except shooting someone on your own property. Knowing he was going to test dirty, he simply stopped taking his meds. When we found vodka and weed in his room, he ran away.
He came home three weeks later.
We continued in this vein for months. More drug-induced sickness. More suicide attempts. More hospitalizations.
Finally, we got him into a long term facility. It was mostly a rehab that also prescribed psychotropic meds. He felt he didn’t belong there, but stayed the entire month, and attended their groups and meetings.
He seems to have turned a corner. He wants to feel better, and he acknowledges medication will help him. He is working with his psychiatris, his social worker, and his therapist.
Now, instead of huge worries, I get to have regular mother of a teen worries. I’m grateful for that. Still, I am parenting a teen. A teen who uses all the laundry soap, who eats everything including food I bought specifically with a meal in mind. I know better than to do meal planning in this family. I can’t seem to break the habit.
Photo by 42 North on Pexels
He leaves hair in the shower drain and bums my cigarettes. He can’t seem to figure out his bedroom light switch also goes down. He sleeps most of the day away and wanders through the house at night eating. His bedroom is a smelly obstacle course of computer monitors and dirty clothes. He either isolates completely or won’t give me a moment’s reprieve.
Normal teenager.
He is moving to Washington state to attend a computer college. It is a technical school. One of those for-profit deals. I worry he won’t be able to transfer his credit if he wants to continue his education.
His birth mother lives in Seattle. He will be living with her to save on housing expenses. This terrifies me. She is an alcoholic and a meth user. I worry how my son will get his medication. His mother isn’t known for her ability to follow through with paperwork.
My oldest daughter also lives in Washington. Near Seattle. I’m hoping they can spend time getting to know one another on equal footing. She is almost twice his age at 32.
I have all of these worries. But if I’m honest with myself, I am counting the seconds to his 18th birthday. I can’t wait to be an empty nester.
28 days, 16 hours, 36 minutes, 23 seconds. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/i-cant-wait-to-be-an-empty-nester-788aa57dfeff | ['Jonica Bradley'] | 2020-12-02 14:17:32.796000+00:00 | ['Memoir', 'Parenting', 'The Bad Influence', 'Depression', 'Jonica Bradley'] |
Pollution vs. Capitalism- The Movie Villain vs. The Actual Villain | Paper straws are not the only way we can seamlessly help the planet.
www.pluggedin.com
Global warming is real. Whether or not paper straws will save the planet however, is still up for debate. The 21st century has led to a lot of great discoveries- the internet, foundation shades for black skin and, Instagram (I’ll let you decide that one). One of the hottest topics nowadays is sustainability/ global warming/ pollution/ environmentalism. Well do I have news for you, Capitalism is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous than pollution. Now wait, before you think I’m a fanatic environmentalist that hates shopping, let’s explore the effects that capitalism has on the society and why it needs to be curbed before we can fully tackle environmental sustainability.
What is Capitalism?
Google says it’s an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. AKA the more you buy, the more the economy grows so incessant buying of products and services is highly encouraged by ‘the powers that be’.
Economic Ballooning is Driven by Capitalism
In the age of social media influencers and celebrity ‘stan’ culture, there has been an even greater shift towards fast fashion, flexing and buying the latest brand-influencer collab highlighter palette. Last year alone, the US e-commerce market saw 3–4 trillion in spending. Trillion. A growth of about 15% from the year before. Now you can argue that this has to do with increased population and education (and ultimately spending power). However population growth in the US was 0.6% and the number of bachelor degrees was the same in 2018 and 2019. So what’s the truth?
www.psychologytoday.com
EVEN DURING A PANDEMIC, money spent on goods and services went up. That is to say, capitalism can’t even be stopped by a global disease. Pollution on the other hand went down, with places like Venice in Italy seeing beautiful restoration of their water bodies.
The Guardian, 2020
Pollution vs Capitalism
Pollution gets a bad reputation. Every company is heavily scrutinised if they’re not green or trying to ‘ go green’. Countries like the UK are aiming to have zero emissions by 2050. To be fair, pollution is killing wildlife, raising the earth’s temperature and causing deterioration of health. However, capitalism is likely a catalyst of pollution, and the way in which and frequency of how we spend needs to be taken into account in battling pollution and environmental degradation. Here are some (not all) ways that capitalism contributes to pollution:
Social Media
www.fellows.co.uk
We all know by now that fast fashion isn’t sustainable and that £200 steaks are a result of animal-rearing which in itself is bad for the environment (no, I’m not vegan). So why do people still do it? With the rise of social media and the selling of our data to harmfully capitalist-driven entities, you are reminded everyday that you are not good enough unless you can afford the new Jacqemus (google the pronunciation) bag or if you travel in anything less than an ensemble of LV luggage. Let’s not forget the copious amounts of over-the-counter skincare products that do absolutely nothing. The power we give social media personalities on not only what we buy, but how much stuff we buy, is something that the business magnates of the world have heavily, wait for it,…
www.digitalspy.com
capitalised on.
The continuous ads and stealing of our data in order to sell you the exact pair of crocs (yeah, not for me either) you were just on the phone to your mum about, has led to personalised ‘you-need-this-NOW’ marketing. Not only does this encourage harmful manufacturing processes like mining, and paying factory workers in developing countries lower than living wage, the mental effect it has on us is that we must buy to be accepted and respected.
There is also the issue of travelling for that instagram feed with the warm and inviting aesthetic. Travelling is great, the inspiration and clarity of mind that comes with visiting the old town of Croatia or petting the alpacas in Peru is unmatched.
blog.bannersnack.com
However, travelling internationally 20 times a year because that’s the only way to fill your instafeed continuously and thus make it in the influencer world, is excessive, considering planes can emit up to 100g of CO2 per hour (depending on the size and capacity of the plane that’s filled). Average international flights of 3–4 hours, means 300–400g of CO2 per flight per day, with thousands of flights happening around the world constantly. Hotels’ energy usages also go up and the propensity for polluting water bodies through sports and other things. Increasing that CO2 emissions profile just to ‘fit in’ is why capitalism is the mothership of excessive pollution.
Cheap….. Stuff
offspring.lifehacker.com
Have you ever seen a pair of shoes with largely varying prices in two different stores? After buying the cheaper one, which is what most of us (myself included) usually do, we then discover why the other store was selling it at a much higher price. Cheap items that can only get used once or twice before losing their function or structure or colour in the wash, increase demand and thus supply of cheap items. Splurging on items of the same type or make but of higher value, usually leads to a longer utility lifespan of items and allows for less incessant buying. A lot of designer items are also hand-made and so do not use machinery in their crafting, also reducing the emission of toxic substances during production. The prices of these luxury items also highlight how crazy it looks to spend someone’s annual salary on one earring and thus have the mental effect of not buying excessively (in some people, we can’t save everybody).
Professional Profiles
www.flexjobs.com
Pre-pandemic, LinkedIn was bursting at its digital seams with people taking long haul journeys to attend conferences where they meet people that they would never talk to again, but at least they got to increase their LinkedIn profile? Virtual conferencing is one of the one of the many environmentally-friendly things that covid has provided us. I mean, people travelling for 12 hours each way for a ‘Climate Conference’ evidently didn’t sit right with Mr. Covid. Increase in bike-to-work schemes have also helped to reduce the number of cars on the road and trains used to get to work.
Old (Environmentally-Destructive) Habits Die Hard
Oil & Gas won’t just….. go away. Renewables, hydrogen, nuclear energy, vehicle-to-grid charging from electric vehicles, etc, have still not reached the point where they can compete with energy produced from crude oil, in terms of pricing and supply capacity. Big O&G players know this so they are riding the environmentally-destructive oil train until the wheels fall off, or you know, global warming goes too far for us to control it. People who don’t believe the EV revolution is going to happen are still buying fuel cars, and automakers are still selling to them. Contrary to what grandiose statements made in favour of UN SDG-7 by OECD countries might have you believe, there is still a lot of money being pumped into oil & gas firms (now ‘energy’ corps). The fact is, as our consumption increases due to the aforementioned reasons, production and manufacturing must increase to meet demand, and therefore more energy is needed, in a capacity range much higher than clean energy is able to cater to currently. So oil & gas, pollution and oil spills it is until clean energy technology can catch up.
To conclude, it is up to us to make sure some level of social responsibility is applied to how frequently we spend and what we spend on. Enjoying your hard-earned money should be a balance between buying what you really want and thinking about the consequences of your buying on the global ecosystem. | https://medium.com/@elephantecafe/pollution-vs-capitalism-the-movie-villain-vs-the-actual-villain-1db41c47c9e6 | [] | 2020-12-08 23:07:10.410000+00:00 | ['Environmental Impact', 'Capitalism', 'Energy', 'Global Warming', 'Social Media'] |
Leonardian (LEON) — A blockchain based all-in-one marketplace for software and services | Brief Project overview.
Leonardian has a great vision in front of them.
After they have determined that the current marketplaces offering software and freelance services can be developed into a product that will serve to a greater extent the service providers and the customers, they started developing such a platform.
Some of the solutions will be a greatly decreased fee, instant payments, quality assurance conducted by an AI and seperately a person, while also having a safenet and unbiased algorithms for displaying the sellers.
With a token economic that rewards holders and an interesting funds and tokens distribution system, the team is embarking on a quest to provide a better service in an expanding market with the help of blockchain and years of experience.
The ICO start on the 11th of June and the end is the 6th of August 2018.
The token of the platform is called LEON, and the current cost of 1 is 0.37$ with a Hard Cap of 20 million USD.
It will follow an interesting model of conduct — the Dutch Auction model.
Link to the website of Leonardian — leonardian.com
You can read our extensive overview of Leonardian on our website cryptohydra.com
If you have not created an account on the biggest cryptocurrency exchange you can do it here binance.com This is a safe link, verified by us, going direclty to the exchange, as there are many phishing sites, please be aware and careful. Also note that the exchanges close registrations for an undetermined timespan when they get overwhelmed, so even if you do not intend on trading now, someday you might decide to and not have the opportunity.
Here are also verified links to good emerging exchanges: bibox.com, kucoin.com, huobi.com
And the biggest fiat currency to crypto gateway coinbase.com, where you can get a 10$ bonus following this link. | https://medium.com/cryptohydra/leonardian-leon-a-blockchain-based-all-in-one-marketplace-for-software-and-services-1d2afd297299 | ['Stefan Ivanoff'] | 2018-06-11 15:50:12.288000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Lightning Network', 'Smart Contracts'] |
Why you need anger to create fulfilling relationships | Step 1. Learn how to feel anger: Investigate for yourself if it is ok to feel or not. Why not? Who told you? Try it out to be angry for no reason. Scream and hit a cushion. Try to be angry for a reason. What is it that you don’t want? What are you angry about? For me this was a long and pretty random process that started in mosh pits at heavy-metal concerts, where I didn’t even realize I was expressing anger. It was paused while being a non-violent yogi and meditator and continued in Osho inspired therapy groups, where I learned to express anger and somehow use it to say no and set boundaries. There it stopped until I heard the word „Rage Club“ that was magically attracting me and made me start participating in one, just one day later. This opened a new world to me, summing up my previous experience and complementing it with new distinctions, especially that I can also use anger to say yes and to create.
Step 2. Learn how to use your anger and use it to come back to yourself. Start to take back your center, stay centered and in your own energetic bubble. Take back your authority. Learn to be yourself to be able to connect to other people from where you are, without energetically merging with the other person, sacrificing the I for the we. These are all big concepts, each deserving an own article (you can read the linked websites instead). Basically it is about using anger to draw back your energy from others to yourself, getting a sense for your boundaries, also physically and energetically. I’m just starting to do this, so the stories I can share are very limited. One experience I made was that while I was energetically being too focussed on a women I felt confused and cranky (like being needy and not getting this neediness fulfilled). Once I used my anger to pull my energy back to myself I was able to clearly feel my feelings again. In that case it was sadness, helping me to let go.
Step 3. Dare to use your anger with the person you love. Here, the stories of why it is not ok to feel and express anger come in especially strongly. At least for me. My old story is that if I am angry (let alone express it) I will scare away the person I love and love will disappear. And as so many people see anger as a bad thing, it could actually happen that somebody get triggered and leaves. This seems the appropriate point to bring in the distinction about feelings and emotions: Feelings happen in the moment and are a normal reaction to what you experience. Emotions are old unexpressed feelings from the past that get touched (triggered) by similar situations in the present and lead you to react to the past instead to that what is actually happening. For feelings to be constructive forces in relationships make sure you use feelings, not emotions. This also includes becoming conscious of your emotions so you can put them aside and use them for healing the past wounds (preferably in a healing setting and not in your relationship). The experience I’ve made using the feeling of anger was always transformational. I showed what I did not like and ask for what I wanted instead which created something new. Also I have noticed that I am often very grateful for receiving somebody’s conscious anger, because the reveal themselves and also very often it contained very useful information about myself that helped me to grow.
Step 4. Use your anger to make proposals about what you want. That is the next step out of being reactive to being proactive and therefore creative. It is more about finding and communication what you want to create and invite your partner, friend or colleagues to be part of it. Right now I am experimenting to make at least two proposals a day. I need anger for this, because it’s a very clear and direct way of communicating that my conditioning about being nice is not so keen on. Instead of saying to somebody: „well, maybe we could have dinner sometimes“ I say: „I propose to meet for dinner tomorrow at 7 in Jacob’s restaurant. Are you in?“ It requires the other to make a decision. He or she might feel something about it. I might get a no and I might feel something about this, too. Anger helps me to move with clarity anyway. | https://medium.com/@oliverarnold_62582/why-you-need-anger-to-create-fulfilling-relationships-a79ff14651b0 | ['Oliver Arnold'] | 2021-08-20 19:57:05.382000+00:00 | ['Anger', 'Relationships', 'Conscious Feelings'] |
Step by Step Instructions To Fund Home Upgrades Without Equity | Step by Step Instructions To Fund Home Upgrades Without Equity Cohenmiriam Mar 4·3 min read
Home value credits are perhaps the most ideal approaches to finance significant home improvement projects. You can get a low-financing cost by getting against the value in your home, and you can deduct the interest that you pay on the advance from your government charges.
Nonetheless, you probably won’t have sufficient value on the grounds that the estimation of your home has declined since the time you got it. On the off chance that you purchased your home close to the real estate market decline in 2008, or on the off chance that you had a little up-front installment, you may, in any case, be in the present circumstance. Are there home improvement credits with no value prerequisites?
On the off chance that you need more value in your home for a home value advance or credit extension, you should consider utilizing home improvement loans with no equity. Home improvement advances are typically a preferred alternative over utilizing Mastercards for home upgrades, and you don’t have to have value in your home to qualify.
Reasons you should consider home improvement advances with no value:
No Value Necessity: A home improvement loan depends on factors like your pay and record of loan repayment instead of the measure of value you have in your home. Thus, you don’t have to have any value whatsoever in your home to get an advance for your home enhancements.
Bigger Advanced Sums: A few borrowers will be unable to get an individual advance for more than around $5,000. Borrowers with higher earnings and amazing credit, in any case, could possibly get up to $100,000 with an individual advance.
Unstable Assets: Most close-to-home credits are unstable advances. The financing cost is higher since there isn’t property filling in as a guarantee, however, you don’t need to stress over losing your home in the event that you can’t make your credit installment.
Online Application: You can apply face to face at your neighborhood bank office for individual credit, yet you can likewise finish the application cycle on the web. There are even online credit moneylenders that offer exceptionally serious loan costs.
What’s more, the application interaction for an individual credit is significantly less intricate contrasted with the application cycle for a home value advance.
Conceivable Following Day Financing: Getting the cash from your own advance ought not to take more than three to five days. That is significantly quicker than hanging tight for the assets from a home value credit, which is uplifting news in the event that you are prepared to begin on your home enhancements.
Low-Financing costs: The loan fees on close-to-home advances are not as low as the financing costs on home value advances and credit extensions. The explanation that moneylenders can offer such low-financing costs on home value credits is that the security significantly diminishes their danger of misfortune.
An assortment of Term Length Alternatives for Reimbursement: Individual credit reimbursement choices differ by bank. A few loan specialists just offer generally short reimbursement terms of three to five years.
You can in any case get a credit to fund your home enhancements regardless of whether you don’t have value in your home. The way toward getting an individual advance can be generally brisk and simple contrasted with a home value credit extension.
When would it be advisable for you to utilize value to pay for a redesign?
Home value can be a minimal effort asset for redesigns. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of each financing alternative and contrasting them can help you discover one that best accommodates your spending plan.
Borrowers who use value to pay for a redesign can discount the interest on their duties and decrease the expense of getting. However, these advances are gotten by your home, which the loan specialist can seize on the off chance that you can’t reimburse.
Long reimbursement terms on home value advances and credit extensions can make regularly scheduled installments more reasonable and give you the alternative to take care of the advance early.
Home value advances have fixed rates, while a home value credit extension has a variable rate. | https://medium.com/@cohenmiriam477/step-by-step-instructions-to-fund-home-upgrades-without-equity-cdbaa6231be6 | [] | 2021-03-04 10:28:37.090000+00:00 | ['No Equity', 'Personal Loans', 'Renovation Loans', 'Home Improvements', 'No Equity Home Loans'] |
Antipodean Quarantine Quadrille | Gripped, ripped, tripped
isolated together alone
pacing the radius of a home
become a fortress, a jail
locked in or blocked out
Holding tight to tiny lights
glimmers of hope at hand
a hungry interloper demands
the highest price for
callous, hapless, unbalanced
Insubordination
© Aspen Blue 2020 | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/antipodean-quarantine-quadrille-db5b83196fe1 | ['Aspen Blue'] | 2020-12-18 11:22:18.623000+00:00 | ['Quadrille', 'Challenge', 'Isolation', 'Lockdown', 'Poetry'] |
100% renewables: ‘wishful thinking’ or an imperative goal? | In this essay, I was provoked to respond to Stan Cox’s widely-shared article “100 Percent Wishful Thinking: The Green-Energy Cornucopia”, in which he argues that a transition to 100% renewable energy is neither technically feasible, nor desirable.
It is my contention, in contrast, that a 100 percent global renewable energy transition is, indeed, technically possible in a short time frame (20 to 30 years) with a capacity to supply the same level or even more energy to civilization, than the present infrastructure dominated by fossil fuels.
However, this outcome is unlikely in our present economic context:
Insight 1: This renewable energy transition is not likely to bear fruition within the constraints of market capitalism as we know it. Further, a process forward for global demilitarization is a necessary condition to prevent climate catastrophe with its requirement of near future decarbonization of energy supplies. Axiom 1: Not only is the Pentagon is the world’s single, biggest insitutional consumer of fossil fuels, but global military expenditures now approach $2 trillion per year.
Cox denies the feasibility of a 100% renewable energy transition, basing his views on very problematic critiques focusing largely on the technical aspects of the Jacobson group studies. Those studies led by Mark Jacobson of Stanford University recently provoked controversy when their work received peer-reviewed criticisms from a scientific paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — the same esteemed forum which published Jacobson’s original work.
I agree with Cox in his skepticism with regard to the achievability of a robust global 100% renewable transition unfolding in the next few decades — but only if fossil capital and its military protectors continue to have a powerful role in determining climate and energy policy especially in the U.S.
The Military Industrial (Fossil Fuel Nuclear State Terror and Surveillance) Complex (“MIC” for short) is the main obstacle to making this rapid shift to 100% renewable energy possible. As I have long argued in my papers, and most recently in Schwartzman (2016), the MIC’s perpetual wars driven by a neo-imperial agenda, fuelling the vicious cycle of conflict between state terror and its non-state terrorist antagonists, is perhaps the most fundamental obstacle to constructive action on climate change.
Hence, a path towards the dissolution of the MIC is essential for the world to have any remaining chance to keep warming below the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal by 2100, coupled with bringing down the atmospheric carbon dioxide level below 350 ppm.
A Global Green New Deal is such a path (Schwartzman, 2011), as argued by Felix FitzRoy in his outstanding contribution to this symposium “How the renewable energy transition could usher in an economic revolution”.
In this vein, the underlying structural obstacle to transition is the presently existing political economy of neoliberal capitalism, and not the alleged technical problems cited by Cox — which are misleadingly used as ammunition against the feasibility of the imperative need to facilitate a rapid 100% global renewable wind/solar energy transition.
This transition would of course include the radical phase-out of fossil fuels starting in the very near future, starting with those with the highest greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint, namely coal, natural gas (methane leakage to the atmosphere) and non-conventional petroleum (e.g. tar sands).
Axiom 2. A global renewable energy supply with greater capacity than now will be needed to confront the threat of dangerous climate change, as well as to eliminate the energy poverty now afflicting most of humanity.
Cox says that “at least in affluent countries, it would be better simply to transform society so that it operates on far less end-use energy while assuring sufficiency for all. That would bring a 100%-renewable energy system within closer reach and avoid the outrageous technological feats and gambles required by high-energy dogma. It would also have the advantage of being possible.”
This position is further described as the need for “a regulated, low-energy economy”.
This goal is similar to what has been championed by others, namely Ted Trainer of the Simplicity Institute whose views I have critiqued (Schwartzman, 2014a, b) and Derrick Jensen, both arguing that the world must radically reduce its consumption of energy.
Cox quotes Loftus et al. (2015) saying “They concluded that it would be ‘premature and highly risky to ‘bet the planet’’ on the achievement of scenarios like those [e.g., Jacobson group’s 100 percent renewable plan]”.
Actually, it would be their alternative — a shift to a low-energy global economy — which would be a suicidal choice for humanity. Such a transition would condemn most of the world to a future of energy poverty even worse than at present, and forgo the chance of creating the clean energy capacity to bring the atmospheric carbon dioxide level down below 350 ppm (it is now 400 ppm).
As apparently first demonstrated by Vaclav Smil, there is a robust relationship between energy consumption per person and life expectancy (see graph on solarUtopia.org) with most of the world’s population below the world standard high life expectancy.
What Cox advocates is limiting greenhouse warming “sufficiently to allow communities around the world who are currently impoverished and oppressed to improve their lives; that access to food, water, shelter, safety, culture, nature, and other necessities becomes sufficient for all [italics added]”.
But unless sufficient global renewable energy capacity is created, above the present level corresponding to 18 trillion watts, most of humanity (of those who will survive ongoing dangerous climate change) will have to settle for less than what the privileged elites in the global North get — the best education, nutrition and health care.
In contrast, I have argued for the following imperative: every child born on our planet has the right to the state-of-the- science life expectancy now shared by a few countries in the global North, not simply a “satisfactory” quality of life.
How attainable, though, is this goal?
The rough minimum level of energy consumption necessary for the current highest life expectancy countries (e.g., Spain, Italy, Portugal) is 3.5 kilowatt/person, with energy wasteful United States at 9.2 kilowatt/person.
3.5 kilowatt/person as a global average captures the impact of regional climate on energy consumption, especially for air conditioning in warm climates facing even more warming.
As the global climate warms, the energy demand for the global South, where most of humanity lives, is expected to increase, outweighing a decrease from lower heating needs in high latitudes of the global North.
Of course, the US and other energy wasteful countries of the global North need to reduce their energy consumption with significant improvements in quality of life.
But it is often forgotten that those countries with the highest life expectancy are already close to the minimum, and will also benefit from a shift to wind/solar power.
Within the near future context for energy transition, confronting the ever-mounting threat of catastrophic climate change, the following challenges point to the need for a significantly higher global energy supply than now — even taking into account higher efficiencies possible in a wind/solar energy transition.
More energy is needed in the coming decades
Incremental energy will be required for the following new challenges facing humanity:
1) Climate mitigation by carbon sequestration from the atmosphere into the soil and crust to bring down the atmospheric carbon dioxide level below the safe level of 350 ppm and maintaining it below this level (the atmospheric carbon dioxide level is now 400 ppm).
2) The clean-up of the biosphere, notably toxic metals and other chemical and radioactive waste from the nuclear weapons, energy, and chemical industries — a heritage of its long-term assault from the MIC, and other industrial wastes such as plastic particles in the ocean, threatening its ecosystems.
3) The repair and expansion of physical infrastructure such as electrified rail, and the creation of green cities globally,
4) Adaptation to ongoing climate change, especially by the global South with its disproportionate impacts, even if warming could be kept to below 1.5 deg C.
All three imperatives will require very significant energy supplies from future wind/solar power, incremental to present uses.
Carbon sequestration from the atmosphere, how?
Carbon sequestration from the atmosphere will require a very ambitious program involving a combination of technologies, including the transformation of agriculture to agroecologies, as well reacting carbon dioxide and water with mafic rocks and crust to produce carbonates (note, this is not ‘clean coal’, i.e., carbon capture and storage (CCS) with continued use of fossil fuels); estimates for the energy needed for this mode of sequestration from the atmosphere alone correspond to a rough minimum of 4 trillion watts of power capacity.
This sequestration program will be imperative for the rest of this century and beyond because approximately half of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions go into the ocean and biota, which continuously re-equilibrate with the atmosphere.
So how much energy is needed ?
We can anticipate significant improvements in energy efficiency but because of growing global population and new energy needs, especially for climate mitigation and adaptation, the optimal global energy consumption with 100% renewable supplies will correspond to a power level likely approaching on the order of 25 trillion watts.
We should recognize the invaluable contribution of the Jacobson research group in their demonstration of the technical feasibility of a 100% global renewable energy transition which would result in a very significant reduction in premature deaths from fossil fuel-derived air pollution.
Nevertheless, the Jacobson group’s modeling for 2050 still projects effective energy poverty for much of humanity, e.g., with India ending up with 0.64 kilowatt/person (Jacobson et al., 2017).
Their projection for 2050 is 11.84 trillion watts of end use power globally.
In reality, though, global consumption would likely need to approach about twice this level to meet the full challenges of energy poverty and additional energy for humanity’s challenges in the 21st century.
Our own modeling demonstrates that a rapid global wind/solar transition is achievable in some 20 years using current technologies — we used a conservative estimate of a composite wind/solar energy return/energy invested ratio (Footnote 3) — which will only improve on the way to completion while eliminating energy poverty, particularly in the global South, and generating the capacity for carbon sequestration from the atmosphere into the soil and crust (Schwartzman and Schwartzman, 2011).
Further as previous energy transitions, such as human/plant power to coal, this transition must draw on energy resources now available (85% of global consumption from fossil fuels), but the required energy for this path would correspond to a total input of just a few percent of current fossil fuel consumption used per year until fossil fuel consumption is eliminated.
This transition is possible because as renewable energy capacity exponentially increases, it eventually becomes capable of making more of itself, finally terminating the use of fossil fuel energy. If this transition starts in the near future, the goal of keeping below 1.5 deg C warming could be realized.
Axiom 3. Recycling and industrial ecologies powered by wind/solar power should greatly reduce the need for mining.
Recycling rates of the rare earth metals, including neodymium used in wind turbines, is currently very low, less than 1% (Reck and Graedel, 2012).
Increasing these rates, as well as implementing alternative technologies, could greatly reduce mining for these and other metals used in modern technologies. Hence we can we anticipate a transition to post-extractivist future, parallel to the wind/solar transition.
Insight 2. In a democratic socially managed global renewable energy transition, the negative impacts to ecosystems will be far lower than what is now documented from fossil fuel and nuclear power development.
As far as the citations of critique of the 100% renewable path, especially of the most comprehensive study (Jacobson et al., 2017), I invite the reader to check out the Jacobson group’s detailed rebuttals of critiques such as Clack et al., at the Stanford website.
The 139 countries study (Jacobson et al., 2017) provides in-depth simulations that contradict the allegations in papers cited by Cox.
I will only address a few of these highly misleading claims here.
Cox says “countless entire ecosystems across the Earth’s surface will have been sacrificed to generate more electricity… if we are to halt our degradation and destruction of the Earth’s natural ecosystems, it will be necessary to declare large areas off-limits to the energy sector.”
Yet this is incorrect. Jacobson et al. (2017) indicate in their 139 countries paper, by 2050 target date, the land footprint plus spacing area required (in addition to existing installations as of 2015) is 1.2% of these countries’ land area, with most devoted to onshore wind power.
Jacobson et al. (2015) conclude from their U.S. modeling:
“The new footprint over land required will be ~0.42% of U.S. land. The spacing area between wind turbines, which can be used for multiple purposes, will be ~1.6% of U.S. land….Table 2 indicates that the total new land footprint required for the plans, averaged over the U.S. is ~0.42% of U.S. land area, mostly for solar PV power plants (rooftop solar does not take up new land). This does not account for the decrease in footprint from eliminating the current energy infrastructure, which includes the footprint for mining, transporting, and refining fossil fuels and uranium and for growing, transporting, and refining biofuels” (p. 2097).
In contrast, what is the land area of ecosystems already impacted by fossil fuel use, e.g., in the U.S., which would be the prime candidate for restoration in a transition to 100% renewables?
Allred et al.’s (2015) estimates that 3 million hectares of ecosystems (0.4% of U.S. land area, excluding California and Alaska) has been lost from oil/gas development in Central North America (U.S. and Canada) since 2000.
This figure does not include land losses associated with nearly 300,000 miles of natural gas pipeline across the lower 48 States, nor from fossil fuel power plants/fossil fuel refineries, nor from oil and gas land use east of the Great Plains, nor from the mining of uranium etc.
Thus, we can conclude that a global wind/solar transition if implemented in a robust environmental/ecological/health protection regime driven by bottom-up societal management and control, would actually impact less land than the present legacy and infrastructure of fossil fuels/nuclear power.
Cox claims that if implemented, a high-energy 100 percent renewable world “would leave in place today’s great distortions in access to energy and other resources…[while] The American economy would carry on uninterrupted with its overproduction, overconsumption, and inequality, while billions of people in poorer regions and countries would not get the access to energy that’s required for a minimally good quality of life.”
If by some stretch of the imagination, a market-driven reproduction of green capital actually delivers a 100 percent renewable infrastructure within the constraints of the MIC, then such a projection is plausible.
But given the role of the MIC, human and nature destroyer, only if this obstacle is overcome in time can a prevention program to avoid climate catastrophe be implemented, with a process of global solarization, demilitarization, and transformation of agriculture to agroecologies.
This process could facilitate an emergent global movement of cooperation, with the “other world that is still possible” emerging with bottom-up participatory management of society. I submit this scenario would simultaneously open up the best prospect of global ecosocialist transition.
In other words, radical changes in both the political and physical economies are imperative to prevent climate catastrophe, and the changes in the former are the necessary conditions for the latter.
All is contingent on the growing strength of multi-dimensional, transnational class struggle, on the convergence of movements for climate, energy, environmental justice and for peace and demilitarization.
Footnotes
1. Please note that the Institute for Policy Research & Development (http://iprd.org.uk/) first hosted our 2011 study, “A Solar Transition is Possible”, which is also available on our own website (http://solarutopia.org/) as a pdf with corrections, as well as more recent material.
2. Posted at: http://www.greensocialthought.org/content/100-percent-wishful-thinking-green-energy-cornucopia and at http://climateandcapitalism.com/2017/09/15/the-green-energy-cornucopia-is-100-percent-wishful-thinking/).
3. We assumed an EROEI (energy return over energy invested) ratio of 20. This ratio has increased for all three technologies, namely photovoltaics, concentrated solar power and wind turbines (especially offshore) and further increases, including revolutionary developments in thin-film photovoltaics and high altitude collection of wind power are very plausible in the coming decade. A very useful critique of arguments for low wind/solar EROEI ratios compared to that of fossil fuels (e.g., Charles Hall) is available at this blog: http://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com/2015/05/six-errors-in-eroei-calculations.html.
References cited
Allred, B.W., et al. (2015). Ecosystem services lost to oil and gas in North America, Science, 348 (6233), 401–402.
Jacobson, M.Z., et al. (2015). 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States, Energy Environ. Sci., 8, 2093–2117.
Jacobson, M.Z., et al. (2017). 100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight (WWS) All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World, Joule, in press.
Loftus, P.J., et al., (2015) A critical review of global decarbonization scenarios: what do they tell us about feasibility? WIREs Clim Change, 6, 93–112.
Reck, B.K. and Graedel, T.E. (2012). Challenges in Metal Recycling, Science, 337, 690–695.
Schwartzman, D. (2011). Green New Deal: An Ecosocialist Perspective, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 22 (3), 49–56.
Schwartzman, D. (2014a). Ted Trainer and the simpler Way: a somewhat less sympathetic critique, Capitalism Nature Socialism 25 (2), 112–117.
Schwartzman, D. (2014b). My Response to Trainer, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 25 (4), 109–115.
Schwartzman, D. (2016). ‘Beyond eco-catastrophism: the conditions for solar communism’, in Panitch, L. and Albo, G. (eds.), Socialist Register 2017, Monthly Review Press, New York, pp.143–160.
Schwartzman, P. and Schwartzman, D. (2011). A Solar Transition is Possible, Institute for Policy Research and Development, Posted at: http://iprd.org.uk/, corrected pdf at: http://solarutopia.org/. | https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/100-renewables-wishful-thinking-or-an-imperative-goal-9879a8947d1b | ['David Schwartzman'] | 2017-10-24 10:23:31.973000+00:00 | ['Environment', 'Renewable Energy', 'Energy', 'Solar Energy', 'Climate Change'] |
Age Is The Weirdest Insult | A cucumber calling a pickle green.
Photo by Ben Neale on Unsplash
Age is weird. I have a theory it’s just one more thing we’ve been trained to care about so that we’ll spend money, either in celebration or in fear. Capitalism is very good at taking normal things that happen to everybody and turning them into reasons to either party or panic. Age is the perfect example of this structure on a continuum, and I write this for those of us in the space where the dial points to freaking out. There’s a change that happens, an uncomfortable switcheroo, when you move into a world where when people ask your age, it’s always followed by, “if you don’t mind me asking.” Why, bitch, would I mind?
We’ve been trained to “mind.” Trained to feel shame for the number of birthdays we’ve had, as if having fewer was an option. The balm against that shame is of course to “look” younger than whatever the person in front of you thinks your actual age should manifest as visually. We’ve been trained to use our outward appearance to defend our actual age, lest we become the subject of an awkward moment where someone doesn’t want to be overtly insulting by acknowledging that we look like the age we literally are. “Don’t worry, it’s fine that I’m 40, I look 31!” Whew, that was a close one, didn’t want to make someone uncomfortable, least of all me, the person who was just asked her age, a trait she’s been societally groomed to be ashamed of. We absorb the shame, and comfort the outside world, by trying to trick all parties involved. I am far more interested in the truth. It’s cheaper.
The insulting moments that surround age aren’t always person-to-person. (Thanksgiving dinner table notwithstanding.) The cues are more subtle, more passive, and they train us to accept that after a certain age, we are over. Not once or twice, but over decades. We absorb it like the porous little sponges we are. Remember to hide your pores, ladies, they’re unsightly. Who appears in the ads fed to us, who do marketers cast to be their “face?” Look a the stories we tell, the movies and television, the individuals we hold up and shine light on. Look at how we present women deemed a desirable focal point, versus how we present stories about women over a certain age and therefore have to make the story itself about her “certain” age.
I wont bore you with a deep dive into the beauty industry’s swindling of the female population as a collective into thinking age is a thing you can some how preserve or reverse, you can probably take a spin around your own medicine cabinets for that—I can certainly look in mine. What I’d rather talk about is shame. The assignation of shame to the most natural, passive thing we do: getting older. It’s these insults, both direct and passive, that impose that shame, and that imposition is absolutely baffling to me, because…you know, biology.
The shame itself comes from a permeating preference for youth, as if youth are prepared enough to know what to do with all that preference. After we pass the point of preference, we’re communicated to and observed as something less, something unwanted, something that is no longer worthy of the caveat-free attention, affection, and focus given to the young. There’s an invisibility to aging that feels particularly cold. We shouldn’t have to demand acknowledgment or attention, or justify the fact that we still exist. Those same societally bestowed feelings should just show up the way they did in our twenties, when we were just accepted as preferred. But for those of us past the preference point, our own age, rather suddenly, not only becomes something we have to justify, but also becomes something we can be insulted for. How…and I can’t stress this enough…the fuck?
If we’re going to make age something for women to worry about, can we at least build our case on solid arguments? We don’t. We built it on the weirdest things possible, when you really think about it. We use the most senseless foundations to squeeze a square life into a round hole, and then we remark at the discomfort we feel in constantly trying to fit. I take three main issues with the logic applied:
The window is tiny. The time in between “too young” and “too old” is quite narrow, when you get down to brass tacks and marketing slideshow presentations. It’s basically between the ages of legal adult and 29. Eleven years. You have eleven years where the world won’t give you shit about how old you are, but on the whole you’re gonna live for about 49 more years after that. So we get to spend 18 years wishing we were older, 11 years not giving our age a second thought because the world is showering us with acceptance and preference, and 49 more trying to preserve and tuck and reformat ourselves into an age that’s less than what we actually are. I’m sorry but that’s far too much of my life to spend fighting nature, who as we know, always wins. We are not rare flowers who only bloom for 20 minutes on the second equinox of a leap year, our beauteous petals unfolding for but a moment. We are the constant, the vines, the wisteria dripping from a house whose market value has increased as a result. If I have to live a human earth life for roughly 80 years you bet your ass I’m going to feel like a valid member of society for far more than fucking 11 of them. Like we have a choice? I love it when age is communicated to women like it’s our fault. Like we’ve somehow done something wrong by not dying at the stroke of midnight on our 30th birthday, sparing the world the inevitability of our decay. We know we’re an imposition, we’ll just leave. My age is not an accident, I’m not going to apologize for it like I’ve spilled a coffee. It’s a thing that I do not control and not for nothing, do not mind. There’s nothing weirder than being insulted for something you yourself don’t see as a flaw. “Ew, gross, you’re…your age.” Yes I am, Stacy, thank you for demonstrating your grasp of the very basic facts at hand. By the way, that sour face you’re making will give you wrinkles, which brings me to my last point… It’s coming for you, too. The only other option is death, so absent an early exit, all the fears and disgust and dread assigned to getting older, whatever “older” happens to mean to each individual, it’s all coming for you, baby. So why not just get rid of the fear and disgust and dread instead? “Ugh, look at that old person, I’m so glad I’m not that old person.” Dude, yet. Maybe if we improved our opinions and feelings around age, we’d both make ourselves less afraid to age, and improve the societal messaging those who don’t have a “2” in front of their age receive. You know, two birds.
I think we should stop trying to fit into a world that celebrates youth no matter what age we happen to be (via creams potions and wardrobes and mortgages and behavior deemed appropriate), and start trying to build a world that celebrates and values every age for the inherent value in each age that exists, and in the fact that there’s no actual prescribed “way to be” regardless of the number of times we’ve been around the sun. Basically, I think we can all do whatever the fuck we want.
In my world, “you look good for your age” becomes “you look good.” “You look so young” isn’t uttered, because it isn’t seen as the ultimate praise any longer. “You look old” said in a negative tone merits you a kick in the teeth. We stop the valuation of human beings by how much they resemble a version of themselves that only existed for a decade or so, and start celebrating all of their decades as being a collection of valuable, celebratable life experiences. You think you know how to celebrate a birthday? Pshhttt….you’ve only had 22 of them. That’s not nearly enough practice.
I think at least part of the way we get to a world where no one feels societally shamed by their age is by acknowledging for ourselves that our own ages are not only valid, but good. And I’m not going to list all the good things we acquire with age, I’m not going to defend something we are as if it needs defending. Accept it or not, age is true. You can waste time and energy trying to beat it if you want, but I’d rather do something that has a point. I think if we can silence the illogical, weird insults of a culture that only thinks you’re likable or attractive when you’re 25, and stop defending ourselves for the crime of living past that age, we might be able to affect some real change.
Have you ever caught yourself defending your own youthfulness to someone? Or at least defending it to them in your head while you’re in the shower? Have you ever felt the need to stand up for yourself when the only topic on the table is your age? I bet you have. If you’ve ever responded, “how old do you think I am?” you have. That’s a defense. A real answer is…42. That’s it. No further window dressing of the response required in order to put all parties present at ease even though they’re the ones who asked the fucking question. No comforting response complimenting your appearance is necessary from them either. This dance can end, the strange tango between how old you are and how old people think you are and how old people think you’re allowed to be before you diminish in value.
It’ll feel weird at first, encouraging this change down it’s wobbly baby bird path, but we’ll get there. Here’s a quick reference, if you feel yourself confused or shy about refuting any shame the world is trying to impose upon you just because you’ve existed for three decades or more:
You don’t have to let someone else make you feel worse about your age while at THE SAME TIME trying to make THEM feel better about your age. You’re 47, and they’re a dick. There’s a difference.
Don’t make them feel better by trying to appear younger or reiterating how young you feel, force them to make you feel right on time. Because you are, because there’s literally no other way you can be. We can’t go back, we can’t skip ahead, so why do we assign shameful traits to something that has only one way to exist? Like we don’t have enough other shit to worry about? In this economy?
Your age isn’t happening to anyone else. Your age is also a natural thing that’s happening. Those are two logical sentences in a row. They have nothing to do with fear-monger marketing or the corporate drive to acquire 50-year lifelong customers by telling them their gray hair is ugly so you’d better buy our hair dye. The logical qualities of age far outweigh the illogical ideas of why we should feel bad about it. And maybe I’m finally old enough to know the difference.
____________
Shani Silver is a humor essayist and podcaster based in Brooklyn who writes on Medium, frequently. | https://medium.com/atta-girl/age-is-the-weirdest-insult-a534f05a6d46 | ['Shani Silver'] | 2020-10-25 13:47:20.762000+00:00 | ['Age', 'Self', 'Advice', 'Culture', 'Women'] |
Why I Work In Crypto | I am a partner in a start-up hedge fund, which launched earlier this year. This amounts to a risky endeavor in the best of circumstances. After all, over ten percent of hedge funds fail every year — and the average fund life expectancy throughout the industry is about five years.¹
Now consider that this new fund was set up exclusively to trade digital assets (many people use the term ‘cryptocurrency’; we prefer the former term since the full spectrum of ‘crypto’ includes many use-cases beyond what we consider to be currencies, such as utility tokens, securities, or stores of value).
Why, you may rightly ask, is it worth your valuable time to read about my decision to enter a new field that respected media outlets routinely dismiss as a scam, and some of the world’s most successful investors mock as “the biggest bubble in human history”² and/or “rat poison squared”³?
The answer, if I may so humbly suggest, is that my journey of discovery over the past six years might help you to better understand the significance of what is now happening within this emerging asset class. Every day I talk to people who are becoming aware of the asymmetric opportunities within the market for digital assets, and want to learn more. If you have not yet begun your journey “down the rabbit hole” of crypto, then I believe you will find some useful perspective here.
A generally accurate depiction of sensations felt while navigating Crypto Twitter.
First, the bad news…
In the interests of presenting an objective point of view, let’s begin with some harsh facts.
Most digital asset funds (like mine) trade cryptoassets exclusively. This is an asset class that is less than a decade old, and in which the vast majority of professional investors have no exposure. In fact, surveys indicate that the percentage of American retail investors who have ever owned these assets is in the low single digits⁴.
Liquidity and market stability are problematic, even for the largest digital assets like Bitcoin. Annualized volatility exceeds 50 percent and we are currently arising from the depths of a 70 percent drawdown — which played out over a period of less than six months.
Did I mention that this asset class carries a market capitalization of just US$ 230 billion? Compare that to the corporate bond market (US$ 9 trillion) or U.S. equities (US$ 30 trillion). In fact, the 75 largest institutional asset managers EACH control more capital than exists in the entirety of my “tiny” patch.⁵
As long as I’m covering all of the negatives, I should also point out that my partner and I formerly worked in prestigious jobs at two of Wall Street’s biggest banks. Now, instead of writing this from a Canary Wharf or Park Avenue trading floor, we’re set up in a two-room office, just above a restaurant, with barely tolerable air-conditioning.
By now I presume that you’re experiencing a sensation that hovers somewhere between pity and head-shaking “WHAT is he thinking?” disbelief.
But now that we’ve covered the downside risks, let me explain why an otherwise clear-headed guy on the wrong side of forty would choose to make this his life’s work.
The Discovery
Let’s take this story back to the beginning — that’s in late 2012, which is ancient history in crypto parlance.
I don’t exactly remember when I first heard about Bitcoin, or from whom. At the time, I was working for a hedge fund that invested in frontier and emerging markets. I spent a lot of time in countries that had endured multiple financial crises, or whose citizens had been driven to penury through inflation and capital controls. Most of the emerging markets investors that I know have developed a strong libertarian streak over time — a natural reaction to seeing entire nations impoverished by flagrant government corruption and incompetence.
Naturally, when I stumbled across Bitcoin I quickly became intrigued. Here was a financial system that made capital controls largely irrelevant. Anyone could cross a border with their assets, carrying nothing more than a twelve-word passphrase to access their online wallet once they reached a safe destination.
If you’re reading this in Los Angeles or London then that probably doesn’t sound like an important feature. If, on the other hand, you live in Caracas or Nicosia or Shanghai then you know that it’s a truly revolutionary way to protect your family’s assets and possibly their well-being.
Suddenly, the act of sending money to anyone, anywhere, was as easy as sending an email. This new technology was superior to our global banking system — which has run on the antiquated SWIFT network since 1973 — in every conceivable way.
In order to grasp the degree of Bitcoin’s superiority, consider the following:
How much easier it is for you to communicate with friends and family via Whatsapp or Facetime — let alone email — than if you were to write a letter, apply a stamp, and drop it into your nearest postbox?
Next, review the chart below, which compares US population growth to the volume of first-class mail delivery in the 21st century. Note that, even as the population has expanded over 15 percent, US Postal Service mail volumes have declined by over 43 percent in the same timeframe.
Finally, replace ‘mail delivery’ with ‘core banking revenue’ and you will begin to understand the impact that digital assets will have on the world’s mega-banks over the next two decades.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau (2018); U.S. Postal Service (2018)
Over the next few months I read every relevant article I could find. No one in my professional or personal network had ever heard of Bitcoin, or any other digital assets. My increasingly excited attempts to describe the intricacies of Bitcoin mining were met with glassy-eyed stares and raised eyebrows. When I finally found a business acquaintance who was familiar with Bitcoin, he advised me to stay away from it.
Down the Rabbit Hole
I finally bought my first Bitcoins in June 2013. I paid US$ 85 each. A few weeks later I was introduced to someone who bought 1,000 BTC for $5 each in 2011. I often wonder where he is today.
I wish that I could tell you that I still owned those Bitcoins. However by the end of that year BTC had skyrocketed to US$ 1,000 and the temptation to take profit was too high for anyone with half a brain to resist. I kept enough BTC in the market to cover my cost basis, and sold the rest.
Amidst the ten-fold increase in Bitcoin prices that year, a real mania began to set in around the world. CNBC anchors began talking about crypto. Time Magazine published a cover story about it. Government functionaries appeared on cable news and engaged in finger-wagging lectures about the evils of anonymous currency. (The irony of the almighty dollar’s undisputed role as the ultimate anonymous currency, and preferred payment method for the likes of Pablo Escobar, was clearly lost on them.)
Inevitably, as with all market bubbles, crypto prices crashed in January 2014. Bitcoin dropped from its highs above $1,000 and sank to as low as $200, and it would not achieve a new market high for another three years. Most of the market’s late entrants — those who bought Bitcoin in the final, frenetic run-up to $1,000 — lost as much as 80% of their investment and left in disgust. Most media outlets dismissed Bitcoin as a fad, or a scam. “Respectable” financial institutions forbade their employees from owning crypto-assets, citing legal and regulatory risks.
For the next three years, crypto was a relatively quiet place to be. The media largely forgot about Bitcoin, as did the general public. Trading volumes on the largest crypto exchanges evaporated. The world moved on. After all, the S&P was in the midst of an epic rally, Greece was imploding, and Silicon Valley was churning out ‘unicorns’ at a breathtaking rate. Who had time for Bitcoin?
Why Is This Relevant?
Let’s return to the present day.
I have witnessed two full ‘boom-and-bust’ crypto market cycles now — first in 2013–2014, and more recently in 2017–2018. This is one more cycle than most people in this space, though not as many as the true early adopters.
From my perspective, the parallels between these cycles are unmistakable:
In each instance the early adopters realized enormous gains and were followed by a tidal wave of speculative money that drove the market to previously unthinkable new heights.
The relatively festival-like nature of that 2013 Singapore convention was eclipsed by the scale of mega-events and movements like Puerto Rico’s ‘Crypto Utopia’ in 2017.
The mania intensified until prices reached unsustainable levels, and profits evaporated as quickly as they appeared.
The frenetic market of December 2017 was followed by the equally momentous collapse of January 2018.
Late entrants lost as much as 80% of their initial investment in January 2014 — and in January 2018.
Just another day on Reddit.
At the same time, new projects raised tremendous amounts of capital in each cycle. The success of most projects that launched in 2013 was eclipsed by the frenzy of 2017’s ICO market. Ultimately most of the 2013 projects languished or failed; a few survived and are valued in the billions of dollars today. The ongoing shakeout of today’s ICO projects will be equally painful. A few winners will emerge from the ashes and be catapulted to new heights when the next bull market cycle, inevitably, begins.
It is this cycle of creative destruction that makes the market for digital assets an irresistible place to work. The innovative nature of the best crypto projects is what differentiates this asset class from simple speculative pursuits. I have never encountered anything as fascinating, or as fast-paced, as the innovation taking place in today’s leading crypto projects.
The projects that are being built in this space today are going to change our world forever, in ways that we cannot yet comprehend. Data storage, supply chain management, trade finance, law — these are just an off-the-cuff sampling of the industries that will be disrupted and, in some cases, destroyed by emerging crypto technology. Companies like Hashgraph, Tezos and Zilliqa, among others, are building new technologies and processes that will vastly improve today’s blockchains, or may even render the entire blockchain concept obsolete.
So What’s Next?
At this point, a cynical reader (and I hope that’s you, at least when reading investment newsletters!) might say that this all sounds interesting and promising, but why in the heck would anyone put their money into such an early-stage and speculative technology — let alone build a career around it?
After all, a common critique of crypto-assets is that they are simply speculative vehicles with no real utility. Recently the Economist devoted an entire section to cryptoassets, which was largely a hit piece with a central premise that crypto is ‘a failed nine-year old technology’ that ‘is in search of a problem to solve’.⁶
I categorically disagree.
Bitcoin, the leading crypto-asset, has the ultimate use-case.
As a store of value and means of exchange, it is superior to any currency or monetary unit that mankind has ever created.
Bitcoin has not yet reached its tenth birthday, and its security, transferability, and resistance to political manipulation are already better than any product currently on offer within our existing global financial system. To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from the vastly under-rated film War Dogs, “anyone who disagrees with this statement is either in on the racket, or stupid.”
At the same time, companies and projects are being built right now that are technologically superior even to Bitcoin. The use-cases coming on line right now are staggering.
Final Thought
In the early days of my journey into crypto, I would go to Bitcoin meet-ups at dodgy pubs in London’s East End, where the smartest people I have ever met were on stage and in the crowd. These weren’t fraudsters, or dreamers. They are brilliant people who remember what it was like, ten years ago this month, to be on the brink of global financial disaster and decided that there had to be a better way for our financial system to operate.
And then they began to build it.
These people are now building the future of our financial markets. And I’m excited to be along for the ride.
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I work at Kosmos Capital Management, which actively trades the emergent class of digital assets. Follow me on Twitter @kvirgil
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DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this column is intended as investment advice and you definitely should not interpret it as such. Don’t rely on my advice, or for that matter anyone else’s advice, when making investment decisions. Doing your own research is the key to success in any market.
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Endnotes
1 New Yorker, August 2014. John Lanchester, “Money Talks”.
2 This gem courtesy of Nouriel Roubini in May 2018, who as Dan Morehead of Pantera Capital points out has foreseen twelve of the past two financial crises. He also helpfully referred to Bitcoin as “bullsh-t” and its investors as “suckers”.
3 Courtesy of Charlie Munger, who offered this candid observation — also in May 2018. In his opinion, buying Bitcoin is akin to “trading turds”. No insight was offered into how crypto’s success might ultimately impact his massive investments in American Express, Bank of America and Wells Fargo — over US$ 56 billion as of Berkshire Hathaway’s latest 13-F filing.
4 Blockchain Capital Survey, November 2017. survey.blockchain.capital
5 Willis Towers Watson survey, October 2017. “The World’s 500 Largest Asset Managers”
6 The Economist, Technology Quarterly August 30, 2018. “What To Make of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains.”
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +368,052 people.
Subscribe to receive our top stories here. | https://medium.com/swlh/why-i-work-in-crypto-ae922de774a9 | ['Kevin Virgil'] | 2018-09-12 16:23:09.459000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Trading', 'Tech', 'Finance'] |
Using Tableau with DynamoDB: How to Build a Real-Time SQL Dashboard on NoSQL Data | In this blog, we examine DynamoDB reporting and analytics, which can be challenging given the lack of SQL and the difficulty running analytical queries in DynamoDB. We will demonstrate how you can build an interactive dashboard with Tableau, using SQL on data from DynamoDB, in a series of easy steps, with no ETL involved.
DynamoDB is a widely popular transactional primary data store. It is built to handle unstructured data models and massive scales. DynamoDB is often used for organization’s most critical business data, and as such there is value in being able to visualize and dig deeper into this data.
Tableau, also widely popular, is a tool for building live, interactive charts and dashboards. In this blog post, we will walk through an example of using Tableau to visualize data in DynamoDB.
DynamoDB works well out-of-the-box for simple lookups by the primary key. For lookups by a different attribute, DynamoDB allows creating a local or global secondary index. However, for even more complex access patterns like filtering on nested or multiple fields, sorting, and aggregations-types of queries that commonly power dashboards-DynamoDB alone is not sufficient. This blog post evaluates a few approaches to bridge this gap.
In this post, we will create an example business dashboard in Tableau on data in DynamoDB, using Rockset as the SQL intelligence layer in between, and JDBC to connect Tableau and Rockset.
The Data
For this example, I’ve combined sample data from Airbnb and mock data from Mockaroo to generate realistic records of users with listings, bookings, and reviews for a hypothetical home rental marketplace. (All names and emails are fake.) The mock data and scripts are available on Github.
The data model is typical for a DynamoDB use case-here’s an example item:
A few things to note:
In our data, sometimes the review field will be missing (if the user did not leave a review).
field will be missing (if the user did not leave a review). The bookings and listings arrays may be empty, or arbitrarily long!
and arrays may be empty, or arbitrarily long! The user field is denormalized and duplicated within a booking, but also exists separately as its own item.
We start with a DynamoDB table called rental_data loaded with 21,964 such records:
Connecting Tableau to DynamoDB
Let’s see this data into Tableau!
We’ll need accounts for Tableau Desktop and Rockset. I also assume we’ve already set up credentials to access our DynamoDB table.
First, we need to download the Rockset JDBC driver from Maven and place it in ~/Library/Tableau/Drivers for Mac or C:\Program Files\Tableau\Drivers for Windows.
Next, let’s create an API key in Rockset that Tableau will use for authenticating requests:
In Tableau, we connect to Rockset by choosing “Other Databases (JDBC)” and filling the fields, with our API key as the password:
Finally, back in Rockset, we just create a new collection directly from the DynamoDB table:
We see the new collection reflected as a table in Tableau:
Users Table
Our DynamoDB table has some fields of type Map and List, whereas Tableau expects a relational model where it can do joins on flat tables. To resolve this, we’ll compose SQL queries in the Rockset Console that reshapes the data as desired, and add these as custom SQL data sources in Tableau.
First, let’s just get a list of all the users on our rental platform:
In Tableau, we drag “New Custom SQL” to the top section, paste this query (without the LIMIT clause), and rename the result to Users:
Looks good! Now, let’s repeat this process to also pull out listings and bookings into their own tables.
Listings Table
Note that in the original table, each row (user) has an array of listing items. We want to pull out these arrays and concatenate them such that each item itself becomes a row. To do so, we can use the UNNEST function:
Now, let’s select the fields we want to have in our listings table:
And we paste this as custom SQL in Tableau to get our Listings table:
Bookings Table
Let’s create one more data source for our Bookings table with another UNNEST query:
Chart 1: Listings Overview
Let’s get a high level view of the listings around the world on our platform. With a few drag-and-drops, we use the city/country to place the listings on a map, sized by booking count and colored by cancellation policy.
Looks like we have a lot of listings in Europe, South America, and East Asia.
Chart 2: Listings Leaderboard
Let’s try to find out more about the listings pulling in the most revenue. We’ll build a leaderboard with the following information:
labeled by listing ID and email of host
and total revenue as the sum of cost across all bookings (sorted from highest to lowest)
as the sum of cost across all bookings (sorted from highest to lowest) colored by year it was listed
it was listed details about title, description, and number of beds shown on hover
Note that to accomplish this, we have to combine information across all three of our tables, but we can do so directly in Tableau.
Chart 3: Rating by Length
Next, suppose we want to know what kind of users our platform is pleasing the most. Let’s look at the average rating for each of the different lengths of bookings.
User Dashboard on Real-Time Data
Let’s throw all these charts together in a dashboard:
You may notice the ratings by length are roughly the same between length of stay-and that’s because the mock data was generated for each length from the same rating distribution!
To illustrate that this dashboard gets updated in real time on the live DynamoDB source, we’ll add one record to try and noticeably skew some of the charts.
Let’s say I decide to sign up for this platform and list my own bedroom in San Francisco, listed for $44 a night. Then, I book my own room 444 times and give it a rating of 4 each time. This Python code snippet generates that record and adds it to DynamoDB:
Sure enough, we just have to refresh our dashboard in Tableau and we can see the difference immediately!
Summary
In this blog post, we walked through creating an interactive dashboard in Tableau that monitors core business data stored in DynamoDB. We used Rockset as the SQL intelligence layer between DynamoDB and Tableau. The steps we followed were: | https://medium.com/rocksetcloud/using-tableau-with-dynamodb-how-to-build-a-real-time-sql-dashboard-on-nosql-data-cfbc0ff4f2f0 | ['Vahid Fazel-Rezai'] | 2019-09-18 21:52:56.759000+00:00 | ['Dashboard', 'Tableau', 'Sql', 'Dynamodb', 'Real Time Analytics'] |
Microtraction: 2018 in Review | It’s been over 18 months since our official launch in July 2017 and our goal still remains the same — to be the most accessible and preferred source of pre-seed funding for remarkable African technology entrepreneurs.
Microtraction started out as a hypothesis and 2018 afforded us the time to test out our key assumptions. Without a shadow of a doubt, credit goes to our founders — they and their exceptional teams, work tirelessly to keep growing and building their companies that solve important problems. We would also like to thank our team, mentors and advisors, it’s been great working with talented and remarkable groups of people.
2018 By The Numbers
We saw over 500 companies via inbound (applications) and outbound (outreach, referrals, partnerships etc.).
companies via inbound (applications) and outbound (outreach, referrals, partnerships etc.). We invested in 8 companies bringing the total number of founders backed to 18.
bringing the total number of founders backed to Our portfolio comprises of 4 fintech startups, 1 healthtech, 1 Saas, 1 crypto, and 1 edtech.
fintech startups, healthtech, Saas, crypto, and edtech. 38% of our portfolio companies have a female member on the founding team while 17% of the founders we have funded are female.
of our portfolio companies have a female member on the founding team while of the founders we have funded are female. 5 of our portfolio companies got into Y Combinator. 2 in YC Summer 18 and 3 in YC Winter 19 batches.
of our portfolio companies got into Y Combinator. in YC Summer 18 and in YC Winter 19 batches. 100% of our portfolio companies have raised follow-on funding and have raised in aggregate over $3M within 12 months of us investing.
of our portfolio companies have raised follow-on funding and have raised in aggregate over within 12 months of us investing. Currently, 88% of our companies are worth more than $2M and our companies have a combined valuation of over $28M.
MT Companies
We are proud to have partnered with these 8 companies. They have all made significant progress from the time we invested. We, however, know that there is still a lot of growth ahead of them. If you are an investor or potential partner, please feel free to reach out to us and we will be happy to make introductions to them.
Applications & Outreach
Most applications came from Nigerian teams. However, there were a few from Ghana, Zambia, and Mauritius. Most of the companies that applied to us found us via Google, while a few others were referred from other entities or individuals in the ecosystem. Prominent sector categories from the applications and outreach included marketplaces, consumer, and financial services.
Diversity and Inclusion
Less than 10% of the companies we came across had female founders. We remain committed to understanding and addressing the barriers that prevent more women from starting startups and applying for funding. We are happy to be working alongside exceptional female founders within our portfolio and we want to work with more. There is still a very long way to go. We, however, want to source feedback from the African startup ecosystem on how we can solve this challenge. Please email [email protected], tweet or DM us your suggestions, we would love to hear from you.
Partnerships
We partnered with the African Capital Alliance Foundation (ACAF) the foundation arm of African Capital Alliance (the Private Equity fund manager overseeing ~$1bn). The foundation is committed to donating up to $100k via leading VCs /Incubators /Accelerators to the most promising tech startups in Nigeria who are creating breakthrough solutions that can positively impact the lives of the Nigerian population.
Looking Into The Future
2018 flew by very fast, and whilst we are incredibly grateful and excited about what we’ve been able to achieve, we are not under any illusions that we are just getting started and there’s still so much to do. Getting into Y Combinator or fundraising from later stage funds isn’t the benchmark for success. Helping our founders build fast-growing companies that tackle and solve real problems across Africa is. Making it easier for high-quality entrepreneurs to start and scale companies is what we deeply care about.
With 2019 now underway, we are more excited with the key objectives of the company and the things we want to achieve by the end of the year.
Thanks to everyone who has supported us thus far.
Let’s #BuildTheFuture together!
With love from the Microtraction team.
Special thanks to Sam Omojewho, for helping with the infographics and everyone that worked on the portfolio/pipeline data analysis. | https://opentraction.com/microtraction-2018-in-review-85f6e198bfb7 | [] | 2019-03-04 22:33:30.029000+00:00 | ['Africa', 'Startup', 'Venture Capital', 'Microtraction', 'Year In Review'] |
Ground Control to Major Elon | Ground Control to Major Elon
A Bowie-inspired mannequin circles the sun in a rocket-mounted Tesla. Photo by SpaceX.
‘The longer I live,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, “the more I am inclined to believe that this earth is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.”
And now, more than a century later, Elon Musk is aiming to return the favor.
Yesterday, the billionaire eccentric’s SpaceX program launched its 100th Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, another step in Musk’s mission to send one million people on commercial flights to Mars by the year 2050.
Meanwhile, “Starman,” the Bowie-inspired mannequin that’s strapped into a rocket-mounted Tesla Roadster, is celebrating its two-year anniversary by continuing to orbit the sun while listening to the song “Space Oddity” on infinite repeat.
Musk’s mission is to send one million people on commercial flights to Mars by the year 2050.
Bowie, who was even better at branding than Musk, released “Space Oddity” in 1969, one year after Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and one week before the first man set foot on the moon.
The song introduces Bowie’s character Major Tom, an astronaut who’s losing contact with ground control as his capsule drifts aimlessly into deep space:
“Though I’ve passed one hundred thousand miles
I’m feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much
She knows.” | https://medium.com/@bill4man/ground-control-to-major-elon-73e7f3996c81 | ['Bill Forman'] | 2020-12-07 13:36:01.303000+00:00 | ['Space', 'Spacex', 'Music', 'Elon Musk', 'David Bowie'] |
Haiku – Left Only | Local poet/writer. ‘There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.’ E. Hemingway. All ©️DMM | https://medium.com/@shoreditchpoet/haiku-left-only-26cc3f2503f6 | [] | 2020-12-20 20:47:44.209000+00:00 | ['Happiness In Life', 'Paris', 'Haiku', 'Joy', 'Mental Health'] |
The Wrong Way to Describe a “Nice Guy” | [Disclaimer: I don’t necessarily consider myself “A Nice Guy.” I just get called one enough to have some opinions on the phenomenon].
The Wrong Way to Describe a “Nice Guy” is an Exclusionary List. For example:
A “Nice Guy” Is Not: Abusive, Insensitive, Judgemental, manipulative, power-hungry, incapable of admitting he’s wrong, etc.
This is because a “Nice Guy” is MORE than just a welcome change from our past failed or “toxic” relationship.
-A “Nice Guy” is Someone with a unique personality and views on love that embraces you in a way that ultimately helps you become a better person. Any Romantic Partner or successful relationship allows both parties to support each other and sustain a level of contentment or build upon it over time.
— However, a BIG Problem I find is that many people Use the “Nice Guy” label as a Method of Control: And in doing so, it is often a Method of Self-Sabotage.
Following this issue from the beginning, You Might Think: “Well, let’s just Change the ‘Exclusionary List’ to One that Includes What Nice Guys Actually DO. So the list might go as follows:
A “Nice Guy” Is Nurturing, Sensitive, Open Minded, Respects a unique personality, and freedom to make one’s own choices. Finally, a Nice Guy can admit when he’s wrong: but These Words are Followed By Actions to Change Behaviors that he’s admitted Are Wrong.
— Well, YOU MIGHT THINK: NICE, WE’VE GOT IT NOW…But Nope. We Don’t Have Anything Yet.
What else could be missing? Well, as I said, a BIG problem I find is in the IMPLEMENTATION and even ENFORCEMENT of Even the Best “Nice Guy” outlooks. And Before you ask: YES, I have Seen it Over and Over Again; Many have an idea of a “Nice Guy” in their Heads And figuratively Beat Their Partners (Or Potential Partners) Over the Head with it.
In the beginning, I mentioned how an Exclusionary List is one of the worst ways to describe a Nice Guy. And I also mentioned how Past Failed or “toxic” Relationships are often the cause of these outlooks. Through Our Fears or Expectations, conditional demands are created that can damage relationships.
A “Nice Guy” would: open the door for me, make me coffee, get the newspaper, visit my mom, tip the waiter better, smile more in pictures, agree with me more often, tell me that I’m beautiful, be able to cook, remember the day we met, carry heavy things, support my business ventures, be friends with all of my best friends, always be available on Friday Night, prioritize my phone calls over everyone else and he should make a move on me when I think it’s the best time for him to do it.
This List Starts to Leave “Nice Guy” territory, in my opinion. I stopped the list because I thought it was long enough, but it could probably Go On For Much Longer. None of these Conditions are Necessarily “Bad,” but when we Pile them UP, we’re Sabatoging ourselves.
To Give a Better Explanation, I’ll Add Some Personal Examples:
Let’s start with “always be available on Friday Night, prioritize my phone calls over everyone else, and he should make a move when I think it’s the best time for him to do it.” These are all conditions that have been either outright or indirectly placed upon me.
I told a friend I was romantically interested in that Friday was “Writing Day.” At the time, I was Available Every Day Except this one. I could Answer the phone, but my answer would come slower, or it would have to wait until the next day. I chose Friday for Writing Day because, As a spiritual Nerd and someone who Doesn’t Like to Drink or Go to parties that revolve around alcohol, I Was Alone on Most Fridays for the Past 16 Years. I decided the Quiet I used to feel So Lonely About would be the Perfect Time to Create Chapters of my Fantasy web-novel to Entertain other people and allow them to feel less lonely.
— I’m pretty sure you could guess what happened. The friend I’m romantically interested in wants to talk on Friday, and She’s actually not the only one. My closest friend is a Repeat offender in this category, and in addition, I had told my Mom I’d call her back, as she wanted to talk with me about “paint swatches.”
I’m Not Sure if there is a “Right” Thing to Do, but these were my choices:
Since my closest friend was a repeat offender, I sent him an audio message telling him so, as diplomatically as I could. He had requested I do several things for him ON That Day, so it wasn’t just “hi, how are you doing,” type of stuff.
My Mom had called first, and I’d Already Told her that I’d call her back later that night. So when my romantic interest left me a message, I explained to her that, though I wasn’t happy about it, I still had to listen to my mom talk about interior decorating before I could think of contacting her.
And…when I finally contacted my romantic interest: there was no response. I found myself exhausted weekly, trying to be what she wanted while still standing up for who I wanted to be. I finally realized that I’d encountered many women with unrealistic expectations in MOST of my life who don’t even consider my unique point of view. And GET THIS: ALL OF THEM INITIALLY SAID I WAS “A NICE GUY.” YOU Might Find this an Unimpressive Detail, But it’s More about the Way “Nice Guy” WAS used as a Method of Control.
That Brings Us to “he should make a move when I think it’s the best time for him to do it.” I received a message on Okaycupid when I was in my mid-20’s, and my profile stated that I want to be friends first before moving towards a romantic relationship. Yet, after we met for dinner, she continually got mad when I didn’t “make a move” on her in a stereotypical way. Her words were that I was “trying to be a nice guy.”
At this point, I was very annoyed. Who’s trying to be What-now? First of All, I Often Tell People I’m NOT always a “Nice Guy,” in fact, I Dislike the Label and Often Find it More Restricting Than it’s Worth. Many men are “trying to be a nice guy,” and Frankly, I find them Very cute, in a platonic way. They Will and Do make better Parters than Me because they Make a Herculean effort to be what their partners want them to be. But the Problem with These Relationships is that They eventually Suck the Life out of us. Our individuality diminishes, and our self-expression is replaced by someone else’s version of what a “Nice Guy” should be.
So, in conclusion: please temper your expectations of what a “Nice Guy” should be. I know we can’t say, “I’m looking for a man to bend to my will,” because that’s creepy, but it’s basically what some women want when they say “Nice Guy.” It’s also part of why I’m not too fond of this label, among many others. | https://medium.com/@danjcuzzo/the-wrong-way-to-describe-a-nice-guy-d9a87155850 | ['Dan Cuzzo'] | 2021-07-07 11:16:47.828000+00:00 | ['Relationships Love Dating', 'Relationship Advice', 'Expectations', 'Relationships', 'Nice Guys'] |
Nothing to Lose, Everything to Prove | By Hannah Gillihan
With Less than thirty seconds on the clock, we were tied 42–42 with Anglican International School, but it was their ball. Our team was exhausted, just barely pushing out a jog as we spread across the court. The clock was ticking down.
Fifteen…Fourteen…Thirteen.
Anglican International took a quick shot, hoping for a winning basket. They missed. “Go! Go! Go!” yelled my coaches. With the energy from what felt like my fourth “second-wind,” I jumped up as high as I could, arms swinging, hands grasping for the basketball. I glanced up at the clock.
Ten…Nine…Eight.
My teammates sprinted as fast as they could down the court as soon as they saw the ball in my hands, ready for me to throw them the ball. I called out to our point guard, Razan, and with one sweeping motion the ball had gone from my hands, to the half-court line, to the free throw line.
Five…Four…Three…Two…
Razan shot up as fast as she could for a layup with two seconds left on the clock. Time felt like it came to a brief halt in those last few seconds. Everyone’s hands were in the air, mouths were wide open, people were jumping — and I could feel my pulse through my chest as I watched the ball shoot up to the center of the backboard.
One.
The scoreboard changed. 44–42. My exhaustion immediately turned into celebration as my teammates all ran to each other screaming. “The Jerusalem High School Yellow Jackets have officially won their first ever Israeli National Championship,” said the announcer over the speakers. Tears filled my eyes, probably because of the adrenaline, as my teammates and I huddled together for a picture with our medals and trophy. Nothing in my life so far had felt as good as that last win.
Sure, this was just a high school basketball game — but it didn’t feel like just any basketball game.
Just over a year and a half earlier, during the spring of 2011, my parents came into my room and delivered the news that we would be moving from Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, to a tiny neighborhood in Jerusalem, Israel — basically the other side of the planet. I started panicking at the thought of just moving to a different country without warning and leaving behind all of my friends. Just a few weeks later, in May, we hopped aboard our flights with our entire lives stuffed into two suit cases each, trying to prepare ourselves for the next four years.
My first day at my new school, Jerusalem High School, was a few months later in early August. By that point, I had become accustomed to the language barrier and knew the city pretty well — but I didn’t know anyone my age and I was terrified at the thought of making new friends at school. It is always difficult being the new kid, but being the new kid at a Palestinian High School in Jerusalem, as a blonde haired, English speaking, American girl was petrifying. I felt like I didn’t have anything in common with any of my soon-to-be-classmates, so there was no way I was going to make any friends.
But I did have something in common with them — a love for sports.
I made one friend, Ilin Jabara, almost immediately, and she and I quickly became inseparable. We were in the same 6thgrade class, so we spent all day, every day together. Before school, during lunch, and after school, she and I could usually be found on the soccer field, kicking the ball around with the boys in our grade. We weren’t good at soccer at all, but we were some angsty 12-year-olds with heart and something to prove, so we showed up and played anyway.
However, there was one sport we were pretty good at — basketball.
Ilin and I kept to ourselves for the most part, outside of playing soccer and throwing the basketball around with everyone at school, until the end of our 6th grade year. We were told that our school would be getting a new gym over the summer, so that the following August, we could have our P.E. classes somewhere other than the blacktop, and the basketball team could have a real place to practice. To me and Ilin, that gym meant that we would finally have a real basketball court to finally play on too.
August of 2012 finally rolls around, and she and I were in 7th grade. At JHS, “high school” technically started that year, and we were intermingled with everyone from 7th graders to seniors. We were excited because in 7th grade, we were also allowed to start playing on sports teams, and the new gym had just been finished. Bright red bleacher seats lined the back of the gym, a freshly painted basketball court glistened under the fluorescent lights above, and a huge yellow jacket mural on the back wall filled the room with some school spirit. “This is literally the perfect place for us to play, no more running around outside in the heat with the boys,” Ilin said that with that first glimpse of the gym.
Until we found out a few weeks later from our P.E. teacher that there was not a women’s basketball team we could play on, and never had been.
Shocked by his response, we decided to take it upon ourselves to try to convince enough of the girls in our grade and the grades above us to be on the team. Every day, Ilin and I would bombard our female acquaintances with a convincing reason that they should agree to be on the team.
“You won’t even have to play in games if you don’t want to, you just have to sit on the bench and cheer us on!” “We just need enough girls to qualify.” “The boys might think you’re really cool for being on the team!” Whatever it took to get the girls to say yes. Eventually, we had 13 girls, enough to qualify for the upcoming conferences — now we just had to teach them how to play.
As soon we had enough girls committed to practicing and going to games, I asked my mom and another teacher at school, Jonathan Borden, if they would be our coaches. They agreed with almost no hesitation. Ilin and I were ecstatic, because this meant that we were finally able to play on a real basketball team.
I hardly knew the girls that showed up to that first practice in the new gym and still didn’t really have any other friends besides Ilin, so I was really nervous to see the dynamics of the team. But all of these girls had even the slightest inkling of wanting to play, so I hoped that it would turn out alright.
Our practices were grueling — I realize now, that the things we said to convince those girls to play were mostly lies, because they did not just sit idle on the bench just so we could qualify. We practiced for two hours every day after school for months in preparation, because we had a lot of catching up to do. We were going to be playing against girls anywhere from 12 to 18, who had probably been playing for quite a while.
“I remember we did basic dribbling and passing drills for weeks until all of us were comfortable enough to start shooting and going up and down the court. We learned the rules, the plays, the positions — pretty much everything, from the ground up,” said Ilin.
Former teammate Sama Issa said, “I guess it made us so much more of a better team though, being together like that every day, because we were just focused on having fun. We never fought over dumb mistakes, we weren’t angry when we did something wrong — we all just showed up to have fun. If we won, great! If not, who cares! We didn’t really have anything to lose.”
And come our first game, we secured our first win. And then our next win…and another…and another…until the Israeli National Championship game.
“For the first time ever, our girls team came home as the 2012 Israeli National Champions! Our team was young, but their devotion and heart are what made this a successful year. With hard work and continued dedication, there will be no stopping these ladies. GO LADY JACKETS!” said coach Jonathan Borden, in JHS’s 2012–2013 yearbook.
“I don’t think we ever expected you guys to win, or even be very good when it came to a real game,” said Heather Gillihan, my mother and assistant coach to the team. “I don’t even think you guys expected it. We were just expecting you guys to learn how to play the game and create bonds with each other that season. But you guys showed up every day, went through highs and lows together, and really became a loving little family.”
She’s right. We weren’t expecting to be good, it just kind of happened. We all just upheld our commitment to each other to show up and practice, and the bonds started forming. As soon as we started to trust each other, we improved drastically, and our relationships with each other ended up going so far beyond the sport.
“All of us, on the bench or not, were hopped up on that adrenaline rush, and it would just keep us pushing during the games. We would just gas each other up from the sidelines and on the court, yelling inside jokes and ridiculous statements to keep the energy up. You could be angry and crying one moment, and laughing like an idiot the next — we never let the spirits get too low, because we all cared more about each other than the game I think,” said Ilin.
Former teammate and point guard Razan Sbeih recalled her buzzer winning shot in that final game, saying that the win “wasn’t because of the skill or even the hard work. It was mostly because of the love and support we all had for each other as teammates. There really wasn’t an “I” in team at all, because we all lifted each other up every single step of the way and had each other’s backs throughout our whole journey.”
One.
That last second buzzer-beater shot of our final game was a culmination of months of hard work, dedication and pure love, from 13 young girls who just wanted play basketball. We were underdogs, and by some miracle, found ourselves National Champions in our first-ever season. We made history together and left behind a legacy that everyone at school talked about for years after, and that no one could compete with.
So, no, it wasn’t just any high school basketball game.
Everyone knows that sports bring people together like no other, and that is exactly what it did for me. I went from an anxious 12-year-old, with only one friend in a new country, to having a 13-member family of girls who would do absolutely anything for me. I found my place in that foreign world of the Middle East, through basketball. That championship game was the grand finale to one of the most pivotal experiences of my life, right beside my newfound best friends. | https://medium.com/@hannahgillihan/nothing-to-lose-everything-to-prove-3e2956119285 | ['Hannah Gillihan'] | 2021-07-06 18:26:19.762000+00:00 | ['Coming Of Age', 'Israel', 'Personal Narrative', 'Palestine', 'Basketball'] |
Crossed Legs | Cross my legs and hope to die,
Raspberries and grey-blue eyes
Tangled in you until tomorrow
Yours are minutes I’ll borrow
Tied with troubles
No business in the rubble
Fake the feeling
Even though for me, wheeling
Projecting and pretending
You would be sending
Your well wishes
And cigarette-stained kisses
Another visit, but I’m naive
Imagining one you’ll never leave
So light my name
Like flowers, tame
And resume your single-cylinder
Life, while I review new contenders | https://medium.com/lit-up/crossed-legs-cb60afb17110 | ['Stephanie Jackson'] | 2020-07-18 15:44:27.117000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Life Lessons', 'Poem', 'Breakups', 'Poetry'] |
Disney+ pulls a Netflix, hikes its subscription price | Mega media conglomerate Disney just unloaded a truckload of new Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar movies and TV shows that are headed for Disney+, including vehicles for everyone from Loki and the Winter Soldier to Lando and Obi Wan Kenobi. Also coming to Disney+: a price hike.
Following in the footsteps of Netflix, which raised the prices of its standard and premium subscription plans a little more than a month ago, Disney says that it will boost the monthly price for its wildly successful Disney+ subscription service starting next year.
Beginning on March 26, the monthly price for a Disney+ subscription will be $7.99, up $1 from its current $6.99 monthly rate. At the same time, the annual rate for Disney+ will rise from $69.99 to $79.99, while a bundle that includes Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu with ads will increase from $12.99 a month to $13.99/month.
[ Further reading: Amazon Prime Video vs Hulu vs Netflix ]Alongside the news of the Disney+ price hike comes word that the service has nabbed a whopping 86.8 million subscribers since launching a mere year ago, an eye-popping figure by any standard. No wonder Disney feels comfortable about upping Disney+’s subscription price.
Disney announced the price hike at its annual investors presentation on Thursday, but not before promoting a parade of new movies and TV shows, many of which will (surprise!) debut on Disney+.
Among the notables are Ahsoka, a live-action show based on the popular Star Wars: The Clone Wars character; Rangers of the New Republic, a Mandalorian spin-off; Obi-Wan Kenobi, an eagerly awaited Star Wars show starring none other than Ewan McGregor; Lando, about the further adventures of Han’s old buddy; The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, a six-episode series centered around the two Marvel heroes; Loki, another Marvel spinoff starring the God of Mischief himself; and Hawkeye, starring Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld. I’m not even mentioning all the shows coming from Walt Disney Studios and Pixar.
Besides the news of all the TV shows coming to Disney+, it’s also notable what isn’t heading straight to the streaming service. Black Widow, Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings, and Eternals, three of Disney’s upcoming cinematic tentpoles, are still slated to debut exclusively in theaters next year.
That means Disney isn’t following the lead of Warner Bros., which rocked Hollywood with its bombshell announcement last week that it would open all its 2021 movies in theaters and on HBO Max at the same time due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
That said, Raya and the Last Dragon from Walt Disney Animation Studios will debut both in theaters and on Disney+, with the movie set to be another $30 “Premier Access” title (same as Mulan) when it arrives this coming spring.
Also heading straight to Disney+ will be Pinocchio, starring Tom Hanks and directed by Robert Zemeckis, and Peter Pan and Wendy, starring Jude Law. Both of those movies are still in production.
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/@carolyn56260499/disney-pulls-a-netflix-hikes-its-subscription-price-8c1479bb9998 | [] | 2020-12-21 04:57:54.546000+00:00 | ['Consumer', 'Deals', 'Internet'] |
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