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The Billionaire Who Secretly Gave Away All His Money | Who gives $7.5 billion away after earning it? And why?
Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash
“I don’t dislike money, but there’s only so much money you can use” — Chuck Feeney
Chuck Feeney is one of the most successful businessmen in the USA, if not the world, with him being one of the pioneers of modern-day Duty-Free shopping. He started with one shop in Hawaii in 1960, and by 1980 his fortune had amassed to over $8 billion dollars. For Feeney, money and fortune was a by-product of success, not the goal, and he had focused on working hard to build a business and a brand that offered travellers access to cheaper goods.
What if you don’t need money?
Often called the ‘secret billionaire,’ Chuck Feeney often felt guilty for having too much money, so in 1982 he set up Atlantic Philanthropies. After discussing his plan in detail with his wife, they decided to keep only what the family needed and transferred the rest of his wealth to the foundation, with the aim of giving it all away anonymously.
Feeney gave to universities in both Ireland and Northern Ireland, to healthcare, education, human rights, and even Obamacare. But he never told anyone else what to do with their money.
Chuck believed if you earned it, you could choose how to spend it, but he still inspired other billionaires, most notably Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, to start giving their wealth away too. Bill Gates once said, “Chuck Feeney is a remarkable role model and the ultimate example of giving while living.”
Bill and Melinda Gates were so inspired by Feeney’s actions that this led them to create The Giving Pledge, a signatory campaign that encourages the wealthiest people in the world to contribute a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. The signatories include many of the wealthiest individuals in the world, and the list of signatories has become a who’s who of responsible billionaires. Currently, the pledge has over 200 signatories from 23 countries, with over $600 billion + to be donated to philanthropic causes.
“It is logical for a U.S. person to give their money away while they are alive, as the government will take it from you when you die in taxes” — Chuck Feeney
The goal is to run out of money
In early September 2020, Chuck Feeney achieved his foundation’s goal of giving away all his money. Atlantic Philanthropies finally ran out of funds, but Feeney couldn’t be happier, saying that seeing the results of his donations made it all worthwhile.
Chuck Feeney has helped millions of people with his generosity and strategic investments. He has touched so many lives both directly and indirectly, and even readers will have benefitted from his donations to health research, innovation, equality, and education.
If you had $7 billion dollars, what world problems would you fix in the world? What are the things that you would love to change? And even if you are not a millionaire or a billionaire, what could you do today to help that cause? Some of the world’s problems need money; others need people’s time and energy. | https://themakingofamillionaire.com/the-billionaire-who-secretly-gave-away-all-his-money-497a1fde6a1c | ['Laura Is Writing....'] | 2021-08-09 13:02:19.858000+00:00 | ['Millionaire Mindset', 'Giving', 'Money', 'Billionaires', 'Happiness'] |
Lugozzi Kid’s 4 LEDs 8 Colors Changing with USB Cable and Battery 360 Degree Rotary Color Fantasy Space Star Projector lamp for Birthday Gift Plastic Glass Rotating Mini Projector lamp for Kid’s Room | — — — BUY on AMAZON — — —
his is a new popular cosmos Star Projector lamp, it can help you put the universe back home,fill your room with stars and moonlight, so that you feel as if you were laying under the stars! Give your baby a piece of the sky changes color, without need for hard to find the field,enjoy the colorful starry light with your kids and let them close to the starry sky, helping to develop their talent and creativity.
8 Dreamy Color Modes: 4 pieces of LED beads with warm yellow,blue,red,green and muli-color that provide 8 unique modes of light operation.Rotating its base without any noise, there will be different colorful space, find the constellation that you belong to it.
The night light is ideal for a baby’s or kid’s bedroom and for decorating weddings, birthdays, and other parties. It’s a great romantic night lamp and decorative light. The Relaxing Sky Starlight Projector Pot is an innovative light that projects star light and moonlight around a room, thereby transforming the room into a relaxing sky-like environment at night. It gives your kids comfort and a feeling of relaxation at night while allowing you to enjoy a romantic moment with your partner. How to Use the Star Projector Night Light? Button A — Warm white light on/off switch.twice press to turn it off. Button B — Lighting effect toggle (press B repeatedly until it switches off). Button C — Rotation on/off switch. Specifications: Name: Rotatable Star Projector Night Light Modes: Night Light or Star Projector Styles: 3 colors, 8 adjustable projection effects Product Size: 4.7 * 4.7 * 5.3 inches Product Weight: 0.6 lbs Material: ABS Power Supply Mode: 4 * AAA Batteries or USB connection Package included: 1 * Night Light Star Projector | https://medium.com/@tnakrani1/lugozzi-kids-4-leds-8-colors-changing-with-usb-cable-and-battery-360-degree-rotary-color-fantasy-b341b70caecd | ['Tushar Nakrani'] | 2021-03-09 08:31:41.691000+00:00 | ['Gifts', 'Children', 'Nightlightreview', 'Birthday'] |
Walkability in Helsinki: Survey Design and Results Report | The city of Helsinki has set an ambitious aim to be the most functional city in the world. One core dimension of this vision is improving walkability in the city center.
To start a dialogue with residents about the vision, Helsinki decided to open a survey for asking how people perceived the current state of walkability in the city center and where it could be developed. Their idea was to provide an effortless way for citizens to get involved in the planning process already early on.
We were hired to co-create a Maptionnaire survey with Helsinki’s planning experts, and, after the data collection phase, compile a report of the results.
The project was launched with a workshop for designing the contents of the survey together with a group of architects, city planners, participation coordinators, and mobility researchers working for the city. Once their diverse wishes were combined, the survey included questions about e.g. the everyday movements of pedestrians, people’s wishes for improvements, and the plans the city already had underway.
Picture 1: The respondents were asked to draw their everyday routes on a map. They could also mark places along their routes that they find unpleasant as well as the highlights of the routes or places that make them stop.
Picture 2: The city’s existing plans for improving the pedestrian experience were highlighted on the map as clickable objects that included information and feedback requests about them.
“Besides receiving information about the highlights or unpleasantries of people’s walking routes, we also consider the areas with no markings at all valuable for the project.” — Anu Hämäläinen, Participation Planner, City of Helsinki
Ultimately, the survey attracted 1600 respondents to mark over 8700 routes and places on the map. The results have provided the city with useful information about the diversity of pedestrian routes and the reasons why people choose to walk along certain routes.
900 responses were related to routes that need improvement in people’s opinion. The planners found that as a positive surprise. Most suggestions were related to reducing car traffic in the city center and increasing the safety of cross-walks.
The survey’s results will serve as the foundation for Helsinki’s walkability development program. So far, the results have been used as background information in a study about the possibilities of building an underground collector street, in a study on the enlargement of the pedestrian areas in the city center, as well as in the visioning work for the city center.
1) walking instead of taking some other form of transportation
2) recreational walks
“The map-based survey supported the citizens’ possibilities to show their everyday routes well. It was possible to answer in three languages and via mobile devices. In addition, the user experience was effortless and inspirational. We believe the survey helped us reach quite a few of those citizens who wouldn’t have joined the public meetings and workshops that we organized.
The map survey was set up quickly and Maptionnaire’s consulting expertise in formulating the questions and taking care of the analysis was a big help for us. Resources-wise, we feel that a co-designed survey was a very efficient way to collect information from a large crowd within a short period of time.” — Anu Hämäläinen, Participation Planner, City of Helsinki
The banner picture was taken by Tapio Haaja in front of the main railway station in Helsinki | https://medium.com/@Maptionnaire/walkability-in-helsinki-survey-design-and-results-report-bc52d242494e | [] | 2019-03-09 09:12:43.086000+00:00 | ['Walkability Study', 'Urban Planning', 'Community Engagement', 'Public Participation'] |
“Don’t be sad” is the Most Useless Comforting Words Ever | You know it but you still say it.
“Don’t be Sad”
“Be happy, day still goes on”
“Don’t cry”
“It will be Alright”
“Things will Get Better”
“Tomorrow is a new day”
“I know how you feel”
STOP! It is not like I don’t know about these but the truth is, I’m. sad. right. now.
These responses all sound caring but they do not mean a thing. Just a bunch of reflexive responses you gave when you hear someone’s sad. What can I possibly get after hearing your “Don’t be sad” comment? I’m sad because I feel stuck. I feel stuck because I’m not inspired by things around, by my way of thinking. I’m locking myself out in a room. There’s no stimulation, no solution, no suggestion, no sign of support, no sign of love, not even a trace of any comment related with that specific incident that makes me sad. There’s no key. You can only say there’s empathy and it’s what I need the least. You thought I’m out of breath opening windows for me but all I want to is to escape the room.
Optimism is not what I need. Not right now. I know tomorrow is another day but I don’t want today. I don’t want the rest of the day. Yes I’d really love to skip the day and go to tomorrow directly. But does that mean the problem is not here now? My sadness still follows me for the rest of my day even though the sun still rises at 6am. There’s really no meaning to the quote “tomorrow is another day” until you are at the end of today. You are literally at the dawn waiting for tomorrow to start over AFTER the sorrow. THEN it is meaningful when you say this quote – tomorrow is another day! You can do better! It will be alright!
So what should you do when someone is sad? Well, I’m not saying that you are responsible for my sadness that you need to cheer me up. But if I’m someone that you care, there’s really not much you can and should do. No words needed. JUST A BIG LONG HUG. A hug is worth a thousand words. Or I’ll tell you what not to do. Do not say any of the combinations of the useless words above. He/she will thank you at the bottom of heart. | https://medium.com/@jenscherdashian/dont-be-sad-is-the-most-useless-comforting-words-ever-6b35a4ba439 | [] | 2020-12-25 17:01:15.193000+00:00 | ['Personal', 'Psychology', 'Inspiration', 'Emotions'] |
What Tarot Cards are telling you about January 2021? (Dec 28, 2020– Jan 3, 2021) | Hey There, I am back after a long time giving you the weekly Tarot dose! 2020 is behind us, and it is time to kickstart the new year. This post will talk about how January 2021 is looking like.
But what is a Tarot Card Reading? — If you are familiar with Tarot Cards and how they work, you may skip this section.
If you are not familiar with them, they are a deck of 78 cards that can provide you with guidance on the present & future. (Read my previous post to know more about tarot card readings)
Pick your Card — Take a deep breath and focus on what you want to achieve in the first month of 2021. Pick a card (i.e. 1, 2, 3) you are most drawn to, as per the image below in your mind and read the result corresponding to the card number you picked.
If you chose Card 1- the month of January would be about healing and rejuvenating yourself. Set aside a couple of hours every week to relax, do something creative or do something you are really passionate about. You may also get some alone time-it would be wise to use this time to think about all things/issues/problems you have either been avoiding or didn’t have enough time for earlier. It’s important to acknowledge these issues so that you can start the healing process. One small step towards healing will take you a long way forward.
If you chose Card 2- the month of January would be about connections. A perfect time to get in touch with your friends/family and build new relationships as well. So, reach out to people you’ve lost touch with-give them a quick call. Express gratitude for having all the amazing people around you, all those who have helped, loved and supported you. So, cherish the emotional bonds that you share in your community and extended circle.
If you chose Card 3-the month of January would be about taking things easy. It’s good to take responsibilities over your shoulders but please only carry the load that you can sustain in the long run. If you feel you are overworking (this could be either at home or at work), please don’t burden yourself. It would be an excellent time to unload yourself- divide and share duties. Remember, you can afford to take a break -you just need to start delegating work and not do everything independently. We all need and deserve to relax.
I would love to know what resonates with you, please comment below. Have a wonderful week ahead
How did I do? — As I said, this reading is done for the collective & it only gives you the guidance for this week, i.e. Dec 28, 2020, to Jan 3 2021. It may or may not resonate, but please do let me know in the comments.
Who am I? — I am a scientist by profession & a Tarot Cards Reader on the side. I run an Instagram and Facebook page by the name of Tarot Unleashed, offering free weekly pick-a-card readings & paid counselling services.
Disclaimer — Under certain jurisdictions, I am required to inform you, i.e. “the querent”, that this general reading is for entertainment purposes only & is subject to interpretation. It does not replace medical, legal, business, financial and professional advice. No legal liability is assumed by me or “Tarot Unleashed” or the “Medium Platform” for any actions or decisions taken by you as a result of your generalized tarot reading. You are now in notice thereof. I do not offer Tarot Readings to anyone under 18 years of age. By accepting this reading, you confirm that you are 18 years of age or over. Public dispersal of this content is prohibited. Copyright ©️2020 Ishani Khurana
That’s it for this week- Catch you later! | https://medium.com/@tarot-unleashed-ishani/what-tarot-cards-are-telling-you-about-january-2021-dec-28-2020-jan-3-2021-1f26e785fa1d | [] | 2021-12-28 00:00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Life Coaching', 'Tarot Reading', 'Tarot', 'New Year'] |
Send Email With Django Using Gmail SMTP | SMTP Introduction
First of all, let’s start with a brief intro about SMTP. SMTP, an abbreviation for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a standard protocol that is being used for sending emails, one of killer application that brought internet to the spotlight. It mainly uses TLS (Transfer Layer Security) or SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) as its security protocol and port 587 as its standard port, according to RFC 2476 in 1999. SSL and TLS, with the later is the recent one, are a way for web client and web server to authenticate each other, either by adding SSL certificate in SSL, or adding encryption algorithm and separation of handshake and record protocol in TLS. To send an email, SMTP server must recognize and communicate with each other by exchanging command and responses between themselves. This is commonly referred as “SMTP conversation”. Feeling stuffed with this whole lot of definition? Well, let’s move on to the next part and we will talking about how SMTP works. In short, this is how SMTP works:
User writes a piece of email for a target email, an example of this will be [email protected] User send this email. In turn, it will send email from your email client/webmail, such as outlook and Gmail, to outbound server. Outbound server will authenticate it first, before agreeing to send an email to recipient’s target Server will determine which SMTP server they must connect by querying recipient’s domain Outbound server and receiving server will introduce each other and begin SMTP conversation between themselves. Email will be stored in SMTP server and will be accessed by recipient, either by receiving it in email client, either through POP3 or IMAP protocol, or accessing it directly from webmail.
Setup Gmail SMTP
Now, we’re done with theories, let’s move on into practical part of this writing. To send an email, you must specify your SMTP server first. There are many SMTP services out there, such as Mailgun and Amazon SES. However, for this tutorial I will use Gmail SMTP server. Gmail SMTP server setup is not as hard as others, and it is free, a blessing for us, developers who just want to test things out :D.
First, you need to allow less secure apps option first in your google account. Sending email through SMTP in Gmail use password, without any secure sign in technology that Google not allowed by default. However, we can turn it on by accessing this link. However, due to this safety reasons, I usually move on to another approach, which is by enabling 2-step authentication. To do that, you can go to your google account settings > security > 2 step auth. Selecting those will guide you to setup your 2 step auth. After doing those required steps, your 2 step authentication setting will look like this.
2 Step Authentication Result
Our next step will be setting up our application password. To do that, we have to navigate through our google account settings, and went with this navigation: Account > Security > Application Password. There, a menu about application password should appear, and you can set up your application password for your application or device. Because we want to send our email with Django in this tutorial, we will create our application password based on app, and give it our custom name (for this example I will give it my web’s application name). Google will create an application password for you, and you need to COPY IT RIGHT AWAY. That is because an application password will only be showed upon its creation with no way of retaining it later. You have to create new application password if you forget it. Your application password menu will looks like this.
Application Password Menu
Finally, we have finished configuring our Gmail account. Now, let’s move to the next part and learn how to send it with django!
Sending Email With Django
Django functionality also include sending emails. To do that, Django use smtplib module that is provided by Python. There are several ways to implement email sending in Django:
Use light thin wrapper function that Django provide such as send_mail(), send_mass_mail(), and mail_admins() Create a class that extends EmailMessage class, or use EmailMessage class instead.
In most basic cases, sending an email with wrapper function is sufficient, however, you will need EmailMessage class if you want to use advanced features such as BCC’ed recipients, file attachments, or multi-part email. Django docs recommend use of EmailMessage class to embrace object-oriented design further. However, I will use wrapper function instead for this tutorial. This is mainly due to wrapper function is sufficient enough for my use case and there aren’t many differences between them in sending email beside advanced features that EmailMessage provided, so I think that our learning curve will not take an extreme upper trajectory.
To send an email with send_mail function, there are several things that you need to do first:
1. Setup your email configuration in your project’s settings.py. There are 10 configurations that you can add to configure your email configuration. Email_Backend specify which backend that you will be using to send your email. By default, SMTP backend will be used and this is the one you must use in production environment. To specify which SMTP server you will use, you can add EMAIL_HOST variable in your settings.py. EMAIL_HOST_USER and EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD will be used to authenticate to the SMTP server, while selecting email security protocol can be done with EMAIL_USE_TLS and EMAIL_USE_SSL configuration. Optionall, you can also add timeout, ssl_keyfile, and ssl_certfile by specifying EMAIL_TIMEOUT, EMAIL_SSL_KEYFILE, and EMAIL_SSL_CERTFILE respectively. An example of email configuration should look like this.
# Email setup EMAIL_BACKEND = "django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend"
EMAIL_HOST = "smtp.gmail.com"
EMAIL_HOST_USER = os.environ.get("EMAIL_HOST_USER")
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = os.environ.get("EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD")
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
2. To send an email, with send_mail() function, you should import it first from django.core.mail module. There are 6 arguments needed, assuming that you follow my settings above. These arguments in sequence are subject, message, recipient_list, fail_silently, and html_message. Subject, message, and recipient_list are self-explanatory. Meanwhile, fail_silently is a configuration to raise SMTPException when an error occurs. If you have HTML template that you want to use for your message, you can use specify it in html_message, instead of message. An example of send_mail function should look like this.
Example of send_mail usage
Now, you have learnt how to send an email with Django. However, most of the time, especially when you were using REST API, this will not be enough. Why? My reasoning will be explained in the next part.
Asynchronous Task, Celery & Redis
Previous tutorial that I have shown you has one major problem. It run synchronously! Huh..? So what effect does it have when we run it synchronously? Well, as we all know Django is a web framework, in which they need to communicate with its client’s browser upon request. However, most of client’s browser has timeout mechanism that determine whether a request is successful or not. Sending an email synchronously took a long time and most of the time, you will encounter timeout error in your client browser, due to your request still being processed in web server. My personal solution for this, will be asynchronous task. Asynchronous allow your program to run and return its result request to your web’s browser while run task, in this case send_mail function separately. Doing this will avoid timeout error due to send_mail and even help you handle error that occurs in sending email. To enable asynchronous task, our infrastructure should look like this.
As we have seen above, we need to add message brokers and celery workers to our infrastructure. Message broker is a software for applications/ systems/ services to communicate with each other. By using this, we can assign tasks that need to be done from Django to our message brokers. Our workers will queue its task, run it when they haven’t got a job, and return its result to our database. We can see similarity in producer customer problem here, although worker act as producer and consumer at the same time.
For this writing, I will use Celery as my worker, and Redis for our message broker. Our first step will be installing celery and Redis first. To install celery and redis, we need to run this command in our command line.
pip install celery
docker run -d -p 6379:6379 redis # Use this if you use docker
pip install redis
If you did not use docker, you can install it directly through your system by reading this tutorial for Linux, or this for Windows.
Next, you should specify Celery and Redis configuration in Django settings. There are several configuration that you can add in Django. However, I will only add this configuration in my settings.py
REDIS_DEFAULT = "redis://localhost:6379/0"
CELERY_BROKER_TRANSPORT_OPTIONS = {"visibility_timeout": 3600}
BROKER_URL = os.environ.get("REDIS_URL", REDIS_DEFAULT)
CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND = os.environ.get("REDIS_URL", REDIS_DEFAULT)
REDIS_DEFAULT is where our redis url is, while BROKER_URL specify where our broker’s url located. Optionally, we can add transport options with CELERY_BROKER_TRANSPORT_OPTIONS, and write our workers result to url that is specified in CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND.
Our next step will be creating our celery app and loaded it when Django start. To achieve this, first, you need to create celery.py in your project module and create an app there, like this.
import os
from celery import Celery os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "kum_backend.settings")
app = Celery("kum_backend")
app.config_from_object("django.conf:settings", namespace="CELERY")
app.autodiscover_tasks()
Setting our django environment default is needed to save our time from passing our settings module to the celery program. While creating app instance is done by initializing Celery class. We can specify our location of celery settings in app.config_from_object(), and autodiscover_tasks will help us in determining which task celery can run. Then, we need to make sure that our celery app is loaded when django started. For that, in our __init__.py, we need to import our app.
from .celery import app as celery_app
__all__ = ('celery_app',)
Next, I will follow celery name convention and specify our tasks in app’s directory with the name of tasks.py. To tell celery that this function is a task that celery needs to run, we can add @app.task decorator above our function.
Inside of tasks.py
I add logger for debug purposes, you can just exempt it if you feel that you did not need it. I also add autoretry_for argument in my @app.task decorator. autoretry_for will instruct our celery worker to repeat this task if they met certain error, in this case SMTPException error. And… voila! You have implement email sending asynchronously. | https://medium.com/@muhfathurh/send-email-with-django-using-gmail-smtp-b7461c4dfd83 | [] | 2021-06-08 01:09:06.919000+00:00 | ['Celery', 'Asynchronous', 'Django', 'Redis'] |
C++ Inheritance | Inheritance is a major component of C++’s Object-oriented programming. It enables us to generate a new (derived) class from an existing one. Inheritance refers to a class’s capacity to derive features and traits from another class. One of the most significant features of Object-Oriented Programming is inheritance.
Inheritance in C++: The following syntax must be used to create a sub-class that is inherited from the base class.
class subclass_name : access_mode base_class_name
{
//body of subclass
};
Subclass name is the name of the subclass, and access mode is the mode in which you wish to inherit this subclass, such as public, private, and so on. Where base-class is the name of a previously specified class and access-specifier is one of public, protected, or private. It is private by default if the access specifier is not used.
A C++ class can inherit members from multiple classes, and the extended syntax is as follows:
class derived-class: access baseA, access baseB....
Inheritance is the capacity of a class to inherit all of the characteristics of another class, as the name suggests.
It is one of the most important aspects of C++ object-oriented programming.
Single Inheritance:
A class can only inherit from one other class in single inheritance. i.e. only one base class inherits one subclass.
Class B just extends Class A in the diagram above. A is a superclass, while a subclass is a subclass.
// C++ program to explain
// Single inheritance
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
// base class class Vehicle {
public: Vehicle(){
cout << “This is a Vehicle” << endl;
}
};
// sub class derived from two base classes class Car:
public Vehicle{
};
// main function
int main()
{
// creating object of sub class will
// invoke the constructor of base classes
Car obj;
return 0;
}
Output: This is a vehicle
Multiple Inheritance:
Multiple Inheritance is a C++ feature that allows a class to inherit from multiple classes. i.e. one subclass inherits from multiple base classes
Class C, as shown in the diagram, extends both Class A and Class B.
// C++ program to explain
// multiple inheritance
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
// first base class
class Vehicle
{
public: Vehicle()
{
cout << “This is a Vehicle” << endl;
}
};
// second base class
class FourWheeler {
public:
FourWheeler() {
cout << “This is a 4 wheeler Vehicle” << endl;
}
};
// sub class derived from two base classes
class Car: public Vehicle, public FourWheeler {
};
// main function
int main() {
// creating object of sub class will
// invoke the constructor of base classes
Car obj;
return 0;
}
Output: This is a Vehicle This is a 4 wheeler Vehicle
Multilevel Inheritance:
A derived class is formed in this type of inheritance.
Class C is a subclass of B, while B is a subclass of Class A, as illustrated in the diagram.
// C++ program to implement
// Multilevel Inheritance
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
// base class
class Vehicle {
public: Vehicle(){
cout << “This is a Vehicle” << endl;
}
};
class fourWheeler: public Vehicle {
public: fourWheeler()
{
cout<<”Objects with 4 wheels are vehicles”<<endl;
}
};
// sub class derived from two base classes class Car:
public fourWheeler{
public: car()
{
cout<<”Car has 4 Wheels”<<endl;
}
};
// main function int main()
{
//creating object of sub class will
//invoke the constructor of base classes
Car obj;
return 0;
}
output: This is a Vehicle Objects with 4 wheels are vehicles Car has 4 Wheel
Hierarchical Inheritance:
More than one sub-class is inherited from a single base class in this sort of inheritance. i.e. from a single base class, multiple derived classes are produced.
Class B, C, and D all inherit the same class A, as seen in the example above.
// C++ program to implement
// Hierarchical Inheritance
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
// base class
class Vehicle
{
public: Vehicle()
{
cout << “This is a Vehicle” << endl;
}
};
// first sub class
class Car: public Vehicle
{
};
// second sub class
class Bus: public Vehicle
{
};
// main function int main()
{
// creating object of subclass will
// invoke the constructor of base class
Car obj1;
Bus obj2;
return 0;
}
Output:
This is a Vehicle
This is a Vehicle
Hybrid Inheritance:
Hybrid inheritance is created by merging multiple inheritance types.
Eg: Combining Hierarchical Inheritance and Multiple Inheritance.
As shown in the example above, all of Class A’s public and protected members are inherited into Class D, first via Class B and then via Class C.
// C++ program for Hybrid Inheritance
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
// base class
class Vehicle
{
public:
Vehicle()
{
cout << “This is a Vehicle” << endl;
}
};
//base class
class Fare
{
public: Fare()
{
cout<<”Fare of Vehicle
”;
}
};
// first sub class
class Car:
public Vehicle
{
};
// second sub class
class Bus: public Vehicle, public Fare { };
// main function int main()
{
// creating object of sub class will
// invoke the constructor of base class
Bus obj2;
return 0;
}
Output:
This is a Vehicle
Fare of Vehicle
The virtual base class in C++
When multiple inheritances are employed, virtual base classes are used to avoid numerous “instances” of a given class from appearing in an inheritance hierarchy.
A special case of hybrid inheritance: Multipath inheritance:
A derived class with two base classes and these two base classes have one common base class is called multipath inheritance. An ambiguity can arrise in this type of inheritance
Consider the following program:
// C++ program demonstrating ambiguity in Multipath Inheritance
#include<iostream.h>
#include<conio.h>
class ClassA
{
public: int a;};
class ClassB :
public ClassA {
public: int b;
};
class ClassC : public ClassA
{
public: int c;
};
class ClassD :
public ClassB,
public ClassC { public: int d; };
void main() {
ClassD obj;
//obj.a = 10;
//Statement 1,
Error
//obj.a = 100;
//Statement 2,
Error obj.ClassB::a = 10;
//Statement 3 obj.ClassC::a = 100;
//Statement 4 obj.b = 20;
obj.c = 30;
obj.d = 40;
cout<< “
A from ClassB :
“<< obj.ClassB::a;
cout<< “
A from ClassC :
“<< obj.ClassC::a; cout<< “
B : “<< obj.b;
cout<< “
C : “<< obj.c;
cout<< “
D : “<< obj.d;
}
Output:
A from ClassB : 10
A from ClassC : 100
B : 20
C : 30
D : 40 | https://medium.com/@coztiga/c-inheritance-321e624199c6 | ['Navneeth Menon'] | 2021-07-06 17:20:23.853000+00:00 | ['Cpp', 'Inheritance', 'C Programming'] |
Week 16 NFL DFS Picks: Best value players, sleepers for DraftKings, FanDuel daily fantasy football lineups | As the 2020 NFL regular season roars towards the finish line, so, too, do the majority of fantasy football redraft leagues. If you made the championship round, congratulations! If not, there’s always next year, and for now, there’s always DFS sites like DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo. These sites allow you to construct a brand-new roster each time, acquiring players at different salaries and keeping your team under a hard cap.
Week 16 NFL DFS Picks
In order to achieve DFS success, you must pinpoint under-the-radar value plays and sleepers so you can afford weekly studs in other roster slots. That’s where RotoQL comes in — we provide detailed rankings of each NFL players’ DFS prices, values, stat projections, floors, and ceilings. I then compile a detailed list of our favorite under-the-radar value players, and we provide it to you free of charge via this weekly column. If you checked in last week, you would have benefited greatly from our advice to make the following DFS roster picks (all Week 15 prices and fantasy points via DraftKings):
QB Jalen Hurts ($5,900): 40.8 fantasy points
QB Philip Rivers ($5,900): 17
RB D’Andre Swift ($6,400): 23.2
RB JK Dobbins ($5,900): 15.1
WR Brandon Aiyuk ($6,300): 22.3
WR: T.Y. Hilton ($5,500): 11.1
Arizona D/ST ($2,900): 10
These players (and Arizona’s D) all vastly outperformed their price tiers, with some even leading their positions for the week. By finding such great values at modest costs, DFS managers afforded themselves studs like Derrick Henry and Calvin Ridley in other roster spots.
You can read Week 16 previews and fantasy prediction articles 24/7 on BetQL, find out which side the pros are betting on their NFL expert picks dashboard, follow all the NFL public betting data, and build DraftKings lineups on RotoQL.
Let’s break down our top Week 16 DFS value plays, and you can get an idea of why 100,000 DFS players trust RotoQL to build lineups. We constantly monitor pricing and provide the most up-to-date insight and analysis to maximize your lineup success. Optimize, find value plays, and increase your chances of cashing today!
NFL DFS Picks Week 16: QB sleepers, values
Coach Doug Pederson probably secretly wishes he had turned to Hurts earlier this season, as the rookie phenom has been explosive in his two starts for Philly. He posted 23.3 fantasy points in Week 14 against the Saints and a whopping 40.8 in Arizona last week. Now he gets a dome game in Dallas against one of the more disappointing defenses of 2020. RotoQL projects Hurts to score 21.8 fantasy points against the Cowboys this weekend with a 40.8-point ceiling. Fire the rookie up with confidence.
Mayfield has morphed into a sensational playmaker this season. Six days after nearly leading the Browns over the Ravens on Monday Night Football with 366 total yards and three scores, the third-year QB went 27-of-32 for 297 yards and two TDs against a good Giants defense in a 20–6 spanking. After Pittsburgh choked against the Bengals on Monday, the AFC North is very much in play for the Browns. Expect a huge statistical game for Mayfield against the lowly Jets, who rank 30th in fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks and have allowed three passing TDs per game over the past three weeks.
Clearly the Bears should have kept Trubisky under center the whole season, as he’s now 5–2 as a starter in 2020. He may not be the future in Chicago but he’s definitely the present, and there’s no better gift to a QB than a sunny late-December meeting with the Jaguars. Jacksonville serves up the second-most fantasy points to QBs and has surrendered five passing TDs in the past two games.
Week 16 NFL DFS Picks: Best value players, sleepers for DraftKings, FanDuel daily fantasy football lineups | https://medium.com/@arif-ahmed497/week-16-nfl-dfs-picks-best-value-players-sleepers-for-draftkings-fanduel-daily-fantasy-football-d12eb8694269 | ['Arif Ahmed'] | 2020-12-23 08:14:46.241000+00:00 | ['DraftKings', 'NFL'] |
Community Zero: A Relational Account of the Ethics of Sanitary Cordon | China Daily / Reuters
The recently enforced “sanitary cordons,” vis-à-vis the novel coronavirus strain, surrounding some Italian and Chinese regions have brought the ethics of disease containment to the fore. Sanitary cordons are physical or effective barriers intended to enforce “community quarantines” (Cetron, Martin, & Julius Landwirth, 2) to insulate a community from infection or, more commonly, contain an infection within a community. In either case, I consider the “cordoned community” to be whichever group is unable to traverse the cordon on suspicion of infection. Insofar as living among an uninfected population is non-rival and non-excludable, a relative absence of communicable diseases may be thought of as a “public good,” the cost for which is disproportionately accrued by cordoned communities. In particular, they may face stigmatization by association with a disease; they may experience poorer conditions than their counterparts with freedom of movement; they may incur the brunt of the frustrations and economic costs of controlling disease spread; and healthy members of diseased cordoned communities may be placed at a greater risk of disease contraction. Historically, sanitary cordons have unduly targeted marginalized communities (Tognotti, 254) and have been employed to suppress the spread of subversive ideas and expand state power (Tognotti, 254). In light of these possible pitfalls, the ethics of community quarantines must be understood through a relational lens and by reference to four key relational principles.
In contemporary bioethics, community quarantines are often justified on the grounds that they prevent harm to the surrounding populace and protect precious healthcare resources to better serve the cordoned community. These justifications, such as those advanced by bioethicist Ross Upschur and philosopher John Stuart Mills, are often steeped in the liberal ethical tradition and couched in the jargon of personal liberty, autonomy, and externalities. Historically, though, liberalism has been more hostile to state-issued quarantines. In the years following the French Revolution, quarantines of communities infected with smallpox sparked numerous popular uprisings in England, France, Italy, and other European states on the grounds that they betrayed enlightenment ideals (Tognotti, 256). Contemporary liberal justifications seem, therefore, an uneasy and paradoxical compromise between foundational liberal principles and the public health.
On the other hand, “relational” approaches to public health ethics understands individuals, not as wholly autonomous agents, but as constructed by and inextricably linked to their communities (Baylis, 202). These approaches offer powerful insights into the communal aspects of quarantine and into communal vulnerability to domination, humiliation and stigmatization by privileged public health decisionmakers. The relational account of the ethics of community quarantines begins with an understanding of individuals as members of communities.
Most fundamentally, cordoned individuals are residents of the same geographic region, but this trait may intersect with other socially and epidemiologically salient characteristics such as class, age, ethnicity, disability, population density, and homelessness. History is rife with examples of quarantines being used explicitly to further disadvantage marginalized communities. Dark-Age sanitary cordons often explicitly prevented Jews, minorities, and lepers from entering (Tognotti, 254) and 19th-century Neapolitan health officials disproportionately restricted the movements of prostitutes and the homeless (Tognotti, 256) to name a couple.
Contemporary liberal theory opposes discriminatory interventions because they denigrate the individual by emphasizing his or her group. This framing is reductive for an ethics of community quarantines because, even in the absence of explicitly unequal quarantine interventions, quarantines may implicitly inflict harm on a particular group. For example, elderly people or those living with disabilities may require medication that is harder to receive within the confines of a community quarantine. Relational theory readily identifies this as an example of a marginalized community experiencing a disadvantage where a dogmatically individualistic mindset may view these as parallel, but discrete cases of individual misfortune.
Relational theory also emphasizes the group membership of those erecting sanitary cordons. Historically, this authority has been afforded to dominant groups, even in cases where the dominant group was not a majority in the location. For example, sanitary cordons throughout Panama were erected by the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on pretenses of mitigating harm to Panamanians from syphilis and gonorrhea. Rather than reducing harm, cordoning efforts served more to protect U.S. soldiers from disease, to justify tighter control of Panama, to protect mainland Americans who worried diseases could spread from Panama to the States (as it already had from India to Britain), to reinforce conceptions of Panamanian women as unclean and promiscuous, and to justify the incarceration of suspected Panamanian sex workers (Ahuja, 20). Such examples underscore the dynamics of domination and submission that exist between those erecting a cordon and those excluded by it. Although these policies were justified at the time by reference to a Millian ethical imperative to reduce harm, contemporary liberal scholars would of course cringe in shocked opposition at its implementation. Within the context of a relational ethical framework, however, such an implementation seems increasingly predictable.
I outline four principles, informed by a relational ethic, which prima facie justify the establishment of sanitary cordon: the unharm principle, representativity, reciprocity, and the least restrictive means principle. These principles are meant as relational counterpoints to Upshur’s influential four principles justifying quarantine: the harm principle, transparency, reciprocity, and the least-restrictive means principle.
The unharm principle dictates that sanitary cordons should not reinforce systemic disadvantage and domination however feasible. In particular, this principle implies that domestic stakeholders, rather than outside authorities, should regulate their own quarantines so as to prevent an occupier/occupied dynamic. Representativity mandates particular influence be afforded to the communities most vulnerable to an infectious disease outbreak and to the consequences of a quarantine. Proactive efforts must be undertaken to place representatives of communities disadvantaged socially or vulnerable epidemiologically in positions to understand the nature of the outbreak and decide matters related to the sanitary cordons. This principle is meant to ensure that quarantines are scientifically warranted and to ensure accommodations for quarantined people are responsive to the special vulnerabilities of cordoned sub-communities.
Traditional bioethicist Ross Upshur conceptualizes reciprocity as the obligation to assist cordoned persons in dealing with their confinement through measures such as providing them with “adequate food and shelter” and workplace accommodations. In this framing, public health officials are empowered to pay back quarantined communities “at cost” by ensuring their most basic necessities are met while they are quarantined. A broader, relational definition of reciprocity must insist further that reciprocity be understood within the broader discourse of the population’s obligations to the community prior to an outbreak. To be specific, the right of a city to quarantine its homeless community should go hand in hand with the city’s obligation to tend to the everyday medical concerns of the homeless community, such as substance use, mental health, and malnutrition. Moreover, reciprocity cannot be narrowly understood in terms of so-called “distributive justice,” a conception of justice which places emphasis on individuals’ burdens and benefits. Reciprocity must further encompass a fair dispensation of social benefits such as respect and opportunities within the conceptual framework of “social justice” (Baylis, 202). Similarly, traditional conceptions of the least-restrictive means principle must be reinterpreted through a relational lens and within the broader context of pre-outbreak public health. Insofar as disease outbreaks may be prevented in impoverished communities by access to routine public health measures, such as improved sanitation or anti-smoking efforts, the least-restrictive means principle should be hardest to satisfy among these underserved populations.
Relational frameworks provide unique insights, beyond those of traditional liberal frameworks, into the ethics of sanitary cordons. In particular, they provide a framework for understanding who is empowered to enforce quarantines on whom, ask how conceptions of obligations to the public in an outbreak confers rights in the absence of one, and provide insights into the effects of quarantines on communities (as distinct from individuals). In evaluating the ethics of a particular quarantine, four key principles, rooted in relational theory, must be considered: the unharm principle, representativity, reciprocity, and the least restrictive means principle. | https://medium.com/@george-botros/community-zero-a-relational-account-of-the-ethics-of-sanitary-cordon-57ca70ad8731 | ['George Botros'] | 2021-09-02 19:03:12.600000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Italy', 'Coronavirus', 'China'] |
The Counter-Intuitive Fact File | This is the beginning of series I call the Counter-Intuitive Fact File. Often we are misled — by our friends on social media, the media elites, or even by our own assumptions. I have found that often with a bit of research, the truth I find reminds me of the old adage that appearances can be misleading.
A common theme in all of the factoids I share will be that the world is not the dystopian nightmare that we’re often led to believe it is. Nor is it headed on a downhill slide toward such a state. I was inspired to make these lists by reading Steven Pinker’s book, Enlightenment Now in which he includes over 70 graphs as to how the world has improved since the Enlightenment in the 18th Century. It is an incredible book that I highly recommend. But if you want the short version, then I also recommend his Ted Talk on Youtube.
Thanks for reading, and if you know of any other facts, please feel free to let me know.
The United States has the highest survival rates for most cancers (the exception here is childhood Leukemia), and cancer mortality in the US is steadily decreasing Source: https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/concord-2.htm
2. Since 1990, the number of people living in extreme poverty throughout the world has decreased significantly. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
3. Since the early 1990s, violent crime in the United States has fallensignificantly. FBI statistics say by 51%. Department of Justice say by 71%.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/17/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/
4. Men, on average, make more money per year than women. That gap, however, closes almost completely when controlling for skill level, experience, and job choice.
Source: https://www.payscale.com/gender-lifetime-earnings-gap
5. Since the 1990s, wages for non-supervisory employees have been increasing consistently in the US. This was following a sharp decline after the 1970s.
Source: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/06/are-wages-rising-or-flat/
6. From 2006 to 2018, rates of incarceration for African Americans have fallen significantly — approximately, by one third. Rates have fallen for whites, and hispanics as well, to a lesser extent.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/black-imprisonment-rate-in-the-u-s-has-fallen-by-a-third-since-2006/
7. During the industrial revolution, wages rose consistently, and significantly in the UK.
Source: Wood, George H. 1909. “Real Wages and the Standard of Comfort since 1850,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 72: 91–103.
8. In the United States, the average share of income spent on food is has decreased since the 1960s.
9. Since 2009, the average cost of solar electricity in North America has declined significantly
10. Harmful Emissions have declined in the US by 74% since the 1970s, according to the EPA, even as GDP, population, and vehicle miles traveled have increased.
Source: epa.gov | https://medium.com/@carmieasauras/the-counter-intuitive-fact-file-c30f6c134699 | ['Carmelo San Paolo'] | 2020-12-23 03:04:27.683000+00:00 | ['Progressivism', 'Politics', 'Poverty', 'Economics', 'Facts And Myths'] |
How to Fail ICO pt.4 [In]efficiency of ICO Advisory | Receive reliable information about the involvement of the advisor in the claimed ICOs and his expertise.
Practically any ICO you might look upon has at least a couple of advisors included in the list of team members. Advisors are aimed to affirm the integrity of the project and add more value to it. They all have available ratings, and any team can observe and make their choice.
How advisors actually work
At first, we opted for a standard approach, so we looked through several advisory services ratings and chose two candidates who promised to have the work done for an affordable price.
The first advisor was to provide the project with PR support. Some of the contract issues: social media, full content creation, PPC campaign, PR Publication and Distribution, top-tier site listings.
What was really done:
Content: he shared a couple of our publications on his Linkedin profile;
he shared a couple of our publications on his Linkedin profile; PR Publication and Distribution: he sent us a couple of media services with the prices. When we checked the prices on the website, it was 200%
he sent us a couple of media services with the prices. When we checked the prices on the website, it was 200% Listings: the advisor said he listed us on 15 sites, but we have never found Alphateca there.
The second advisor was intended to help us with an audit of legal and technical parts.
What was really done:
The advisor performed an audit of the White Paper, gave us helpful advice for modifying it.
Tried to convince us that we could not manage to run an ICO and had to request assistance from his company at the cost of $250 000.
One should clarify what the team needs from advisors: the sphere and the level of the involvement. Generally, advisors can be useful for legal, technical or PR representation. Concerning the extent of activity, there are three types of advisors:
Those who have the top rating, big audience in social networks and recognition in crypto circles. The advisors charge big money and may attract some attention to your project via mention it in social media, showcases or expo. Advisors who charge less money, but have fewer followers and crypto community interaction. Advisors who fully assist the project and become a full member of it. We have not found them yet.
Mistake 7. Do not rely on the rankings only. Receive reliable information about the involvement of the advisor in the claimed ICOs and his expertise.
After the first experience, we changed our strategy and started searching for founders and top managers from the ICOs, which proved to be successful. It was clear that those people had come all the way and could contribute to the development of our project.
Some founders appeared surprisingly benevolent and supportive. They gave us some free advice, showed interest in the project, and the cost of their services was much lower than we would have to pay to the advisors. | https://medium.com/alphateca/in-efficiency-of-ico-advisory-fc2e684d8d08 | [] | 2018-09-25 13:49:09.614000+00:00 | ['ICO', 'Startup', 'Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Ico Review'] |
Blurring the police : what the article 24 of the French “Global Security” law may prevent you from seeing | Inspired by the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, the proposed law on “global security” (published in October 2020) wishes, in its article 24, to create a new offense.
The dissemination, by any means, of “the image of the face or any other element of identification” — with the exception of the RIO (registration number) — of a police officer or a gendarme in intervention, would be punished by one year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros, if intervening with the aim of undermining his “physical or mental integrity”.
In a few words, this proposed law would make it illegal for non-journalists to publish or show police forces photos without first blurring them.
Using videos to incite hatred or violence (against the police or any citizen) is already prohibited in France and punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros. As expressed by a group of journalists unions, the vague notion of the “aim” of undermining “physical or mental integrity” runs the risk of “a completely different reality”. “There is indeed much to fear that on the ground, the police officers, who already very often oppose, including by force, to the photo and video recordings — however perfectly legal — of their operations in the public space, feel more justified than ever in hindering them” ,notes the collective.
To better measure the impact of article 24 on journalistic work, on the right to inform (and to be informed), here are some practical examples, taken from the work carried out by the Le Monde’s video team since 2019.
Civic images and journalistic investigations
In October and December 2019, Le Monde published two video investigations on police violence, in Bordeaux and Paris.
They revealed:
What happened to the protester Olivier Beziade, targeted by an illegal LBD (Blast ball) shot. Mr Beziade is hemiplegic since. One of the police officers was indicted for “willful violence with a weapon”.
How an illegal tear gas canister shot made protester Manuel Coisne lose an eye.
Other police misconducts have since been documented by Le Monde, in short-form videos : the brutal (and fatal) arrest of the delivery man Cédric Chouviat, and a short range Blast ball shot, in January 2020.
None of these videos would have been possible without the hundreds of images captured by journalists, protesters, NGOs and witnesses. These are precious images that medias can collect, authenticate, cross-check and analyze.
These amateur images make it possible for journalists to document precise actions and decisive elements, that could not be verified otherwise.
Zooming in, we identified the type of a thruster and we revealed that is was used non-proportionally.
Smartphones and cameras not only capture images, they also offer precious location and timeline information (EXIF data). Any smartphone that films is also a GPS, a clock…
Banning non-blurred images would mainly prevent live video broadcasting. Neither Facebook nor any mass-market mobile app offers an automatic face blurring option. However, these “live videos” are often the most precious documents for establishing the truth.
They make it possible to follow long sequences of time without interruption (we saw many live streams during the 2018–2019 protests). They can be used to synchronize various images and audio files. Like here, where two videos from distinct sources have been synchronized using vehicle noise.
In one of our investigations, amateur-footage show not only a disproportionate attitude of a police officer, but also a climate of high tension (stone-throwing by some demonstrators, as seen below) five minutes before. The more images there are, the less unambiguous or manipulable they are.
Blurring the police, anonymizing the RIO (identification number)… Le Monde’s visual investigation team is already doing it. We also blur some protesters. But we do it by choice, a posteriori, once the investigation has been completed. Revealing facts without targeting an individual means letting justice do its job.
Like several other editors, Le Monde asked for the outright withdrawal of this article 24. As Jérôme Fenoglio, Le Monde’s director, writes, “the quality of information will never improve when it’s primary condition is restricted : freedom”. | https://medium.com/@chgroult/blurring-the-police-what-the-article-24-of-the-french-global-security-law-may-prevent-you-from-13e49afd2cf8 | ['Charles-Henry Groult'] | 2020-11-23 12:49:00.436000+00:00 | ['France', 'Investigative Journalism', 'Journalism', 'Police Brutality'] |
Senior Underwriter Jobs in London | Our client, a global leading player within the insurance field, is seeking a Senior Underwriter on a contract basis for the next 6 months and the role will be in Bristol.
The Role
The senior underwriter works with Account Management/Business Development colleagues to build, maintain and develop relationships with select brokers to optimize profitable growth.
The focus is to move the relationship with brokers from a trusted relationship to a trading partnership and secure profitable renewals and generate new business in line with the strategy and within agreed processes and risk appetite.
You will apply a range of underwriting, and relationship management techniques to optimize sustainable profitable business growth.
You will spend the majority of your time working with brokers identifying, discussing, negotiating and seeking to convert new and existing business opportunities and making effective underwriting decisions.
Using your well-developed relationship management and communication skills you will establish effective business relationships with your select broker partners and manage the underwriting of a portfolio of accounts.
You will be respected internally and externally for your trading, relationship management, and technical skills.
You will hold a senior underwriting license which you will maintain and you will be responsible for coaching others and act as a referral point.
You will be the expert in your particular class of business, and meet governance and compliance standards within your area of expertise.
The Responsibilities:
* Reviewing large, complex or specialist cases and delivering underwriting decisions within agreed timeframes, in order to secure profitable business within authority level and risk appetite
* Work with account managers to input into segment and local business development plans which identify existing and regular flow of new business opportunities
* Establishing an effective relationship with Account Management colleagues and others to have common goals and act as one team
* Actively managing and developing a portfolio of accounts to maximise profitable revenue potential from new and renewal business
* Supports Account Managers in identifying, prioritising, negotiating and winning of new Account relationships in line with strategy
* Accessing and applying all appropriate sources of information and insight in order to meet the needs of selected brokers and clients, whilst balancing business requirements
* Clearly and positively articulating proposition and risk appetite internally and externally
* Reviewing allocated existing business and following up on new business cases through working with Account Management colleagues
* Effectively negotiating and delivering underwriting decisions through following agreed processes at designated authority levels
* Developing a trusted, deep and long term relationship with colleagues and select brokers to generate, progress and close new, up selling and cross selling business opportunities
* Working with Account Managers and managing others to take responsibility for effectively and promptly resolving broker and/or client complaints to maintain quality and continuity of relationships
* Adhering to our regulatory framework at all times
* Support the Technical Underwriting and Pricing team to providing guidance to the production of new policy wordings to ensure policy documentation is current and accurate
* Providing expert guidance and coaching to less qualified/experienced colleagues and support them in their license progression through the creation of development plans
* Contributing to the wider development of effective business strategies, priorities and market propositions, drawing on own knowledge, understanding and interpretation of local markets, competitors and Accounts
* Leading and/or contributing to technical audits and peer review processes as required to support and enable the maintenance of an effective control environment
* Leading or contributing to the development and monitoring of Account plans, gaining agreement to and implementing them in order to secure renewals and optimise profitable new business growth potential at individual account level
* Capturing and recording of data in timely and accurate fashion
The Criteria
* Experience underwriting commercial combined mono property and liability cases
* Experience in working cases of premiums between £15,000-£100,000
* Experience working across functions / matrix organisation to collaborate and build strong relationships
* Proven record of successfully trading in the insurance marketplace
Alexander Mann Solutions, a Recruitment Process Outsourcing Company, may in the delivery of some of its services be deemed to operate as an Employment Agency or an Employment Business
Apply Now https://www.propertyjobs.net/job/senior-underwriter/ | https://medium.com/@propertyjobs/senior-underwriter-jobs-in-london-4843c33b20a1 | ['Property Jobs London'] | 2019-07-01 13:55:23.610000+00:00 | ['London', 'Jobs', 'UK', 'Recruiting', 'Recruitment'] |
Let’s Talk about Netflix’ Alice in Borderland (AiB) | The Game: Episode One (Spoiler Alert, but only for Episode 1)
As the boys are walking into a building, there is a BMW 523S parked there. As they wait by the elevator, a girl walks up and tells them they are now in the game and have no choice but to play or die.
She throws her ID out toward where they came in, and it gets zapped by a laser beam making a clean hole through its center to show them going back that way is sure death.
There is a table with what looks to be phones and a sign that says one per player. They each grab one, and another girl walks up, screaming and crying, “Where is everyone?” “What’s going on?”
The phone notifies them registration is closed, and the game begins. The participants go into a room, which has two doors. Their phones inform them they have 2:00 minutes to clear the room.
A sign on one door reads, “Live,” and the other reads, “Die.” The girl who walked up last freaks out and says, “It has to be live. I want to live.”
She runs through that door and is promptly killed by a laser beam through the head. Making the choice easier for the others.
The Significance of the BMW 523S
In the second room, they have ten seconds less to solve the room and escape. Arisu, the resident gamer, remembers the BMW outside. Since it is his favorite car (how convenient, right?), he knows it is almost five meters long.
Arisu is always compared to his smarter, younger brother by his father in real life and labeled as a loser by his brother. It is here, in the game, where Arisu can finally excel.
He quickly steps off five paces, does the math, and figures the number of rooms. That tells him the number of rooms per floor and that the right door will take them into an adjacent room. The other door would be the exterior of the building, and thus death.
The three clear the building and get a three of clubs playing card. The girl that joined them gives them a quick rundown about the significance of the playing card, and that each game gives them a playing card.
The Characters from Netflix’ Alice in Borderland Source
The Significance of Playing Cards
Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, where the playing cards were characters, in AiB, the card suit determines the game type.
Plus, the card number gives you the number of days of your visa. Therefore, the players got the three of clubs, so they got a three-day visa. They must participate in a game and get another Visa before their visa runs out.
Clubs are the playing card used to designate a teamwork game, hearts games mean you must play with the hearts of other participants, and there can usually only be one winner (unless you trick the game), and so on.
You’ll quickly find out the other card suits and their significance after a few episodes, so I don’t want to give too much away.
Why Watch AiB?
If you’re looking for an exciting series that will keep you glued to the screen this is it. (We binge-watched it in one night.) This was the most fun I have had from a TV series since Money Heist.
You might also enjoy this other Money Heist related story.
Summary & Recommendation
The storyline is impressive, even if outlandish. I wanted to say it was believable, but that would be a stretch. Unlike most manga I have watched, the acting is actually excellent. So much fun!
Given that the episodes are only 42 minutes, and there are multiple deaths in each episode, character development is incredible. You will cultivate feelings for the characters, which hurts, even more, when they die.
I truthfully thought, “Oh shit, I am going to have to sit through this BS manga because she loves this kind of stuff and I love her.” Boy, was I shocked when it turned out to be exciting and exhilarating. I can’t wait for Season 2.
My recommendation is that you set aside about six hours and binge-watch this series! It is one of the best Netflix series I have seen.
About the Author Photo by Jean Springs from Pexels
Stephen Dalton is a retired US Army First Sergeant with a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and a Certified US English Chicago Manual of Style Editor. Top Writer in Fiction, Short Story, VR, Design, & Creativity. Editor of Pop Off, Top Dalton’s Blog, 100WordStory, B.O.S.S., and SportsShorts100WordsOnly
You can see his portfolio here. Email [email protected]
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Reddit | Ko-fi | https://medium.com/pop-off/lets-talk-about-netflix-alice-in-borderland-aib-eaf2d03436f5 | ['Stephen Dalton'] | 2020-12-18 02:50:47.385000+00:00 | ['Tv Reviews', 'Manga', 'Netflix', 'TV Series', 'Action'] |
To Rollover or Not to Rollover | Rollover to an IRA
Most of us are not at risk of either litigation or bankruptcy, so rolling over the money to an IRA is a good option.
The big advantage of an IRA is control. If you keep your money with an employer 401K, you are stuck with the limited choices presented to you. These plans famously have a limited number of investment choices; perhaps only three: stock, bond, and a money-market fund. If you are a buy-and-hold index investor, this might be just fine.
Another consideration is the fees. Your 401K might be charging you higher fees than you can get elsewhere. You may need to dig into the fine print to determine this.
Once you decide to make the switch, you can roll your money over to virtually any financial institution that supports IRAs. I currently keep my own IRAs at an institution where I can buy ANY stock, bond, ETF, or mutual fund available to the public. I like the choice.
Taking money out late — Required Minimum Distributions
Upon reaching age 72 (specifically, the April following the year you turn age 72) you are generally required to take Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from your 401K and IRA accounts. The IRS is graciously letting your savings grow tax-free, but they want their cut eventually. RMDs are calculated by dividing your stash by a factor, which approximates how many more years the IRS thinks you are going to live. Mathematically, RMDs allow the IRS to effectively tax all your money before you die.
For example, let’s say you are 72 and have $1 million saved in tax-advantaged accounts. Your factor is 25.6. because the actuaries that work for the IRS believe your life expectancy (plus a spouse) is age 97 (72+25.6). You are required to take a distribution of 1M/25.6 = $39,063 this year, transferring this money (or shares) to a regular taxable account and paying the taxes.
Depending on your cash flow needs at age 72, RMDs might not be an issue. However, if you wish to keep that money growing tax-free, the location of this money becomes important.
If you are still working (yes, at age 72), you do not need to take RMDs from your current employer 401K. However, you still may need to take RMDs from your IRAs and any old employer 401K.
Note, that if you own more than 5% of the company, ie, you are self-employed, you still must take RMDs out of your employer Plan. Also, this RMD exception is completely up to the discretion of your employer; they may require everyone over age 72 to take RMDs, employed or not.
If you are retired, upon reaching age 72, you’ll also need to take RMDs from a Roth Account within a 401K or other plan.
However, if your Roth money is sitting in a Roth IRA, no RMDs are required
In summary, from an RMD perspective, rollover your Roth money to a Roth IRA, but if you plan to work past age 72, rollover traditional money into your next employer’s 401K. | https://medium.com/makingofamillionaire/to-rollover-or-not-to-rollover-64646dd5cb2e | ['Liz Baker'] | 2019-12-24 21:51:44.289000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Financial Planning', 'Rollover', 'Money', 'Retirement'] |
Phoenix Police and a Doll from the Dollar Store | Screen capture from social media
Yet another story made national news. Officers going from zero to two hundred in two seconds flat. Why? They responded to a report that a doll was stolen from a dollar store. The video of the interaction hit social media, and national news soon after. The family is in the process of suing the department for excessive force. If you have watched the video, it has the usual components. In this case a black family, including a pregnant woman, two children including a four-year-old, and officers drawing guns.
They did not approach this calmly. They did not ask any questions. They surrounded the vehicle and aimed service guns at minors while shouting orders, some of which were contradictory. Why? Well, to quote Kamau Bell, it was another episode “of living while black.” Fortunately, none was injured or killed, and yes, the department is going to get sued. It was a textbook example of implicit bias. This is not limited to the police, and all of us have it. Here is a nice little tool for you to test yourself. We see it often with officers who confuse cell phones for guns and believe a ten-year-old is an adult.
These stories are not rare. If you talk to members of minority groups, officers tend to do this, often. In the age of video, we get to see it. And full disclosure, since I have an accent, the moment I open my mouth and speak, officer’s demeanors tend to tense up. Why? I went from the nice white lady (the in-group) to the other in an instant. The only saving grace is that my heavy accent passes for Eastern European, so I am not as bad as I would if my accent was true to where I was born and raised.
Regardless, when this is something one experiences it is obvious that people who cannot pass will have a more difficult time. Which brings me back to how police react to minorities, and in particular black people. As I have written before, we live in a caste society. Our society considers the children of slaves to be the bottom of the system. Police internalize this as well. It doesn’t matter if you have a lot of money, or if you have a Ph.D. in anything. If you drive a nice car in the wrong neighborhood, you have a higher chance of a police stop, on any excuse. If you happen to live in what once was a red-lined neighborhood, your police department will patrol more aggressively. We have the data.
It matters little what department you are speaking off, or what city, minorities are targeted more often for stop and frisk, and for higher traffic stops. And if you happen to live in those neighborhoods your insurance rates will be higher and good luck getting a loan from the bank to buy a house or start a business. Yes, this is technically illegal. However, the practice continues fifty years on when legislation forbade these practices.
This leads to a vicious cycle, of which the police are but one leg. The ability to accumulate wealth among minority communities is low. Therefore levels of poverty remain high. Starting businesses, which lead to positive job creation, is not easy. Again, this leads to poverty. Moreover, good industrial jobs moved outside of city cores, to either periphery, other states, or other countries. The police though is an important leg in this. They are patrolling areas where they have little if any, social solidarity. While some officers are recruited from these neighborhoods, many of them move out as soon as they can.
Then there is the age of officers in the force, and where they are assigned patrol. According to the Marshall Project:
The divide between the police officers who patrol Garfield Park and Jefferson Park reflect divisions that hold true across Chicago and in police departments across the country, where high-crime areas are frequently staffed with rookies while the veterans flock to safer districts. Policing experts say that the practice is commonplace, since senior officers usually get priority when they ask to transfer, though Chicago’s union-mandated transfer process exacerbates the situation, tying the hands of commanders in deciding how to staff their districts. And while some say that the divide has its benefits, citing younger officers’ energy and ability to connect with at-risk youth, there are also significant risks — to the safety of citizens and officers, and to police departments that already struggle to forge lasting connections in many communities. “You’re putting your least experienced officers in the situations that really call for the most experience and best judgement,” says Sam Walker, a professor and policing expert at the University of Nebraska. According to Walker, younger officers are more likely to engage in overly aggressive policing, particularly if not given proper training. A lack of experience can also have deadly consequences. Last year, a Buzzfeed News analysis found that younger officers are more likely to use force — a finding also backed by a 2008 study of 186 officer-involved shootings. In Chicago, a database of police shootings compiled by the Chicago Tribune showed that the average officer who opened fire had about nine years of experience, compared to 15 for the department as a whole.
This is also affected by something else. Officers are influenced by the areas they patrol. How they respond and how they act comes with the territory. This is a serious problem since officers will follow what is called broken windows policing more often in less prosperous, and minority areas. These patrols also tend to encounter people with mental health issues more frequently, and they tend to be more violent encounters. This affects officers attitudes as well. This is worst when officers encounter people with mental health issues.
In better, more stable, neighborhoods those responses tend to happen as 911 dispatch calls. They also tend to occur in private residences, leading to more referrals to mental health or transports to emergency rooms.
There are different perceptions of law enforcement, and the conservative CATO Institute found this:
Americans do not believe the US justice system treats everyone equally 65% think police officers regularly racially profile Americans and 63% oppose the practice. Nearly two-thirds (65%) say police commonly “stop motorists and pedestrians of certain racial or ethnic backgrounds because the officer believes that these groups are more likely than others to commit certain types of crimes.” Another 63% also oppose police using racial profiling for traffic and pedestrian stops. Majorities of whites (62%), Hispanics (62%), and blacks (77%) oppose racial profiling by police. Republicans stand out with a slim majority (51%) in favor of racial profiling and 49% opposed. Black Republicans, however, disagree, with 65% who oppose racial profiling and 35% who support it.
This brings us full circle to what happened in Phoenix, which is hardly a rare event. We live in a society where awareness is there. We know implicit bias is a reality. Hopefully, this will start to change attitudes. But we are going to continue to see these videos because we still have a problem.
Police need training, but they also need supervision. There is the matter of department culture, which may at times go fully against training, or procedures. Why? Departments tend to circle the wagons anytime there is an incident. There are phrases officers use, such as “I feared for my life.” Also, reports do not conform to the reality of the encounter, in some cases.
It’s true that there are situations where officers should fear for their lives. If somebody comes out at them with a gun or a rifle, they must assume such item is loaded. Truth be told, some toy guns are way too realistic and even the orange tips are not enough to avoid tragedies. However, officers in other parts of the world are able to deescalate situations where somebody is holding a knife. And if officers keep distance, then that knife will not be effective. That takes time and training. This is a commodity that many departments do not have. Why? Part of it is a lack of enough officers to be able to handle a critical call, this is, and keep patrol levels up. So officers are in a rush to chase the radio.
There is also another reality. In the United States police departments have become the first responders in mental health cases. Police officers are not equipped to handle this. And when they respond to a store robbery at a dollar store, involving a black family, it has all the ingredients for a tragedy.
In my view, videos from bystanders are helping to highlight these issues. Why? They are showing encounters that we all know happen but had no real evidence they did. While dash cams and body cams should have gone a long way in settling some of this, and make officers calm, some departments have yet to adopt, one or both. And officers are still in a “us v them” mentality. This makes it hard for officers to police themselves, no pun.
But this goes beyond the police. We may not like it that officers use racial profiling in traffic stops and other situations. (Phoenix was a classic example because I am betting if the family were white the demeanor would have been different, and at no time did this family pose an actual threat to the responding officers.) It includes us. We all have some bias, and it comes from the society in which we live. We are trained to fear black bodies. We are also taught to fear brown bodies and those with an accent.
The first step is for all of us to realize how much of a problem this is. We may want to blame the police. In reality, officers grew up and came from our society. They did not come from the moon, or mars, or another country. While we need better supervision and training. We must ask, what are the structural reasons behind this, even if we do not like the answer. | https://nadinbrzezinski.medium.com/phoenix-police-and-a-doll-from-the-dollar-store-972d896ab42c | ['Nadin Brzezinski'] | 2019-06-17 13:27:31.921000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'Policing', 'Implicit Bias', 'Caste Systems'] |
Everyone Is A Brand: Here Are Six Strategies To Help Develop Yours | Branding. That’s the new buzz word on the heels of “entrepreneur” and “kombucha”. Hear the phrase “personal brand” and your mind is immediately flooded with images of Instagram influencers and YouTube sensations who somehow amass the following fit for an army. And sure, sometimes the headlines can be a bit clickbaity, but for the most part, people tune in because there is a connection. Personal branding utilizes the same principles as any Fortune 500 company. Both focus on marketing, authenticity and a unique promise of value.
Luckily, it doesn’t take a multi-million dollar advertising budget or a large amount of consumer data to develop your own brand. A personal brand simply speaks to who you are and what you love to do, even before you walk into a room. Understanding yourself, your goals and your values will determine what opportunities you attract.
Here are six strategies you can use when starting to build your brand:
1.) Know Your WHY
A brand is not a business. A business collects on the assets earned from a brand. A brand is who people think you are. The goal is to build a business around that brand. In building a strong foundation, you have to understand your “why”, even before you tackle how to get it done. Why are you showcasing yourself to the world? Why do you want people to know who you are on this level? Why are you providing this service or content? Starting with your “why” gives your audience a way to identify with you personally.
“We want to be around people and organizations who are like us and share our beliefs.” — Simon Sinek
Next, think about the things you are good at. What you enjoy to do. Start there and then work on how to develop an expertise in those areas. Do you love fashion? Are you a foodie? Do you write fan fiction? The easiest way to build that knowledge is to study the people already in those fields. Once you have built a skill set and understand what value you provide to an audience, establish a process around it so you can consistently deliver content.
2.) Get As Niche As Possible
Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of generalizing their business to reach as many people as possible. This tactic offers small returns. Why would a customer buy something from you when they can get the same product somewhere else at a lower price? But when you specialize and narrow your scope to a particular group, you gain a base who cannot find what you supply anywhere else.
I suggest going niche into who you are. Once you understand your “why”, follow that rabbit hole till the end. People pay the premium when they identify with a brand.
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” — Simon Sinek
3.) Identify How Others See You
A large aspect of who we are is how people see us. Other’s perceptions of us play into how we interact with the world. When you are seen as approachable, more often than not, people will strike up conversations with you and genuinely value your presence. The opposite can be said for those of us who come off as arrogant. There is no right or wrong. It is completely your choice in who you want to be. But understanding this part of how you are viewed in the larger world will tell you the direction you need to go.
4.) Be Authentic
Fitting in and being accepted into a larger society or group is an instinctual part of the human experience. Moving in numbers offers a sense of safety. We feel protected and valued when others want to keep us around. However, in building your own personal brand, you have to lead the society. You have to believe in your words and your actions for others to follow and connect with them.
Branding is not about being something you are not. It’s not crafting a persona. It’s about showcasing yourself to an audience. Find your “tribe” through genuine interactions. If anything, lean into who you are even more, especially if you are going to be on camera. Your brand is a reflection of your values, skills, and personality. All of which can be leveraged to grow a customer base.
5.) Develop Your Social Image
Your online presence goes hand-in-hand with your real-life identity. Your digital imprint is the next best thing to meeting you in person, maybe even better. Embrace technology. You are 100% in control of how you present yourself and what people see. Maintain a consistent online brand from what you post, to your comments and where you are tagged. Without sounding like an episode of Black Mirror, it takes time to transfer your physical essence into a digital platform, but it’s necessary when building your brand and eventually leveraging that into bigger opportunities.
No matter the platform, whether it be Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn, this is your real estate. Think of your profile and pages as your digital property. You have laid down the foundation and built every square with your own hands. Once you have amassed a large enough following, companies will take notice. In order to connect with YOUR followers, they will pay you to “rent” your squares and promote their products. They buy into your connection with your audience to gain sales off of the partnership. Think of Shawn Mendes and Calvin Klein or DJ Khaled and Weight Watchers.
Also, be sure to do a Google search on yourself from time to time. It may feel awkward at first, but you definitely do not want any old tweets coming back to haunt you.
6.) Dive Deep Into Your Expertise
As I meet entrepreneurs and ask them about their success, I have found a common thread: they are committed to their craft. If they have not gone to school for the work they do, they have definitely put in the equivalent amount of time to build their knowledge and experience in their field. Not only do they have the expertise, but they continually learn and seek higher levels of mastery. Continue to gain knowledge in not only what you do, but who you are. As you share your growth with the world and show your journey, you will find there is longevity in being yourself.
What strategies have you applied when building a personal brand? Let us know in the comments section. | https://medium.com/your-brand/everyone-is-a-brand-heres-six-strategies-to-help-develop-yours-f8a34f62ce84 | ['Divad Sanders'] | 2020-03-06 14:07:55.669000+00:00 | ['Branding', 'Leverage', 'Social Media', 'Business', 'Personal Branding'] |
Stretching Is Not a Good Way to Prevent Injury, Research Shows | I Quit Stretching and So Can You
The case against stretching has science on its side
I was a devoted stretcher for years. My high school track team began every practice with a ritualized routine of stretches, and all through my college running career, I would never begin a run without bending down to stretch my hamstrings. Until eventually I started looking into the scientifically verified benefits of stretching, and I was shocked to discover that I couldn’t find any. Sure, stretching can improve your flexibility — practice touching your toes enough, and you’ll increase your reach — but beyond that, the confirmed advantages to stretching are non-existent. There are even a few hints that stretching could be detrimental to athletic performance in some circumstances. After seeing this spelled out in so many scientific studies, I quit stretching cold turkey, and I’ve experienced no discernible harms.
My indoctrination into stretching is pretty typical. I stretched, because it was what runners did. Stretching was supposed to make me less sore and prevent injury. I also thought it loosened up my muscles, never mind that my hamstrings have been tight every day of my life, stretching or not. But it’s the notion that stretching could protect me from injury that was the most compelling to me. “I don’t know where it came from, but the idea that stretching is necessary to prevent injury has a long history,” says Adam Meakins, a sports physiotherapist and strength and conditioning specialist in Hertfordshire, England. “There’s a lot of fear around it,” he says, propagated by health care providers and the media touting stretching’s powers to prevent injury, despite evidence to the contrary. Even so, stretching has become a hallowed part of sports tradition. A 2016 survey of more than 600 personal trainers in the U.S. found that a staggering 80% of them included stretching in their exercise programs.
Before you stretch, ask yourself: What’s your goal?
Despite such popularity, researchers have failed to confirm the purported benefits of stretching. But before we get into the science, a few definitions. Stretching has an almost endless array of variations, but for our purposes here, stretching means “static” stretching — lengthening or pulling a muscle group until it’s as extended as possible and then holding. The classic example of static stretching is touching your toes. Sometimes it’s done before working out, sometimes it’s done after, but the consequences are generally the same.
Despite beliefs to the contrary, research has shown that stretching isn’t a good way to prevent injuries.
If your goal is to increase your range of motion (what we think of as “flexibility”) then by all means, go ahead and do some static stretching, says Gary Liguori, PhD, dean of the College of Health Sciences at the University of Rhode Island and a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine. Static stretching can help your flexibility (for whatever that’s worth), but he says, even if it has “little or no impact on performance, overall health or injury prevention.”
Stretching doesn’t prevent injury or soreness
Despite beliefs to the contrary, research has shown that stretching isn’t a good way to prevent injuries, Meakins says. Multiple studies have found that stretching doesn’t meaningfully reduce injuries. For instance, a 2005 analysis of studies on army recruits undergoing basic training concluded that static stretching did “not meaningfully reduce lower extremity injury risk of army recruits undergoing military training.”
Another common reason given for stretching is that it might reduce muscle soreness. But a Cochrane review published in 2012 analyzed data on stretching from 12 studies with a total of more than 2,300 participants and concluded that “muscle stretching, whether conducted before, after, or before and after exercise, does not produce clinically important reductions in delayed-onset muscle soreness in healthy adults.”
Unless you’re doing an activity like gymnastics or ballet that requires specific types of flexibility (like doing the splits) stretching probably won’t enhance your performance either. Studies have shown that flexibility in the hamstrings, as measured by a sit and reach test, is associated with less efficiency and economy for runners. A 2014 study even found that static stretching decreased performance in a one-mile time trial by trained male runners.
“Stretches held for a long period of time might decrease muscle power output,” Liguori says, but that probably doesn’t matter if you aren’t doing activities that require high muscle power output, such as sprinting or powerlifting. Whatever performance detriments stretching has, they are admittedly pretty small and probably don’t matter for most exercisers, but stretching isn’t really improving performance either. Stretching is often done as a warmup, but it’s not the only or even the best way to ease into a workout. Warming up with things like bounding and high knee kicks can be a good way to increase your range of motion, says Liguori, who admits he hasn’t done any static stretching in a long time.
Another strategy to stay flexible: strength training
Even if you’re aiming to improve your flexibility for its own sake, stretching isn’t the only or even necessarily the best way to do it. It might seem counterintuitive, but strength training is another good way to increase range of motion and make yourself more flexible, Meakins says. When you do a strength exercise like a squat through a full range of motion, you’re pushing your muscles to contract and stretch through that full scope of movement. There’s a common assumption that the stronger you get, the stiffer your muscles will be, but that’s not necessarily the case, Meakins says. Instead, it depends on the types of exercises you do. Eccentric exercises — think lowering a barbell or lowering your leg during a leg curl — actually elongate the muscles and can increase flexibility.
But the benefits of flexibility and stretching do not live up to their reputation. A recent paper in the journal Sports Medicine from exercise scientist James Nuzzo, PhD, of Neuroscience Research Australia argues that given the paucity of benefits, it’s time to retire flexibility as a major component of physical fitness and de-emphasize stretching as a standard component of exercise prescriptions for most people. The Institute of Medicine is already on board, Nuzzo writes. “In 2012, the Institute of Medicine recommended tests of flexibility not be included in youth fitness testing because of a ‘lack of evidence for an association between flexibility tests and health outcomes.’”
“Stretches held for a long period of time might decrease muscle power output.”
If I haven’t convinced you yet that you can quit stretching, I’m not surprised. The three pages I wrote about stretching in my book, Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery, garnered more backlash than anything else I debunked in the book. On a live NPR show, a circus performer called in to tell me that the “multiple hours a day” his performance team spends stretching is the reason they’re “not seeing any injuries.” To say that stretching “doesn’t do anything is just not true. I’ve seen it firsthand,” the caller insisted.
What could I say? It’s very hard to argue against personal anecdotes, and, as I told him, I couldn’t vouch for his experience. All I can say is that when researchers have tried to confirm that stretching prevents injuries they’ve come up empty-handed.
Still, I understand why stretching has so many devoted fans, and I’m open to the idea that it might feel worthwhile for some people. As I write in my book, stretching is “an excellent placebo, because it’s ritualized, it provides a sense of agency, and it feels like something’s happening, which can reinforce an expectation that it’s working.”
Placebos can be found all throughout sports and medicine, so in that sense stretching isn’t so unusual. “In fairness, we have a lot of ritualistic things people do for their health in America that have far less evidence than stretching,” Liguori says. And there are probably non-scientific reasons for stretching that shouldn’t be dismissed. “There are some stretching addicts out there who just enjoy the sensation of the pulling,” Meakins says. Some people might even find stretching meditative or a way to relax after or even before a workout. (Personally, I prefer warming up and cooling down with some light exercise, like walking for a few minutes before and after my run.)
If that’s you, then fine. Go ahead and keep stretching. I’m not going to stop you. But I might be a couple miles down the trail before you start your run. | https://elemental.medium.com/i-quit-stretching-and-so-can-you-9da188dfe324 | ['Christie Aschwanden'] | 2020-09-23 05:32:24.181000+00:00 | ['Stretching', 'Exercise', 'Body', 'Test Gym', 'Fitness'] |
5 Tips For Those Who Are Questioning Their Sexuality | If you don’t know what gender(s) you’re attracted to it is perfectly fine, this sort of thing happens to almost everyone at some point in their lives! Hopefully these tips will help you to better understand your sexuality.
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1. It is okay to not label yourself to a specific sexuality.
I cannot stress this enough! If someone asks you your sexuality you can simply say, “I’m questioning.” If they don’t understand what that means you could also say, “I’m not sure.” Just because you can’t label your sexuality doesn’t make it any less valid!
2. Think about what gender(s) YOU feel attracted to, not what others want you to be attracted to.
Just because people may pressure you into saying that you’re attracted to a certain gender doesn’t mean that you are. You need to push other’s opinions aside and ask yourself, “What gender(s) am I attracted to?”
3. Maybe you’re abrosexual!
Abrosexual flag
Abrosexual is a sexual identity that means that your sexuality is constantly changing. This isn’t a very common sexuality so many people do not know it exists. If your sexuality seems to be different every few days/weeks/months, this could be your sexuality!
4. Don’t pressure yourself into choosing a sexuality.
You might feel weird for not being able to label yourself with a sexuality, but DON’T force yourself to choose a label! This can end in you feeling stuck because you don’t fit in with the label you chose, but don’t want to start saying that you’re questioning again.
5. There is no ‘normal’ sexuality.
This one sort of goes along with the second one. This just means that just because everyone else is straight (or maybe everyone is in the LGBTQ+ community where you are) doesn’t mean that you need to have the same sexual identity. Every sexuality is valid as long as any activity you participate in with your partner is consensual!
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To conclude, you don’t need to fit in with a specific label to be considered valid. You should take your time and find your sexual identity through experience! Good luck! | https://medium.com/@tifa-everett/5-tips-for-those-who-are-questioning-their-sexuality-2a2f8ea4333e | ['Tifa Everett'] | 2020-12-24 05:42:42.736000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Questioning', 'Sexuality', 'Tips'] |
The Thousand People Who Matter | In most areas of B2B fintech or specialized institutional banking services, there are rarely more than a thousand key decision makers and influencers who can make a difference to your business. This is the case for most specialized B2B segments. Relevant audiences are relatively small.
Potential audience size ties directly to content strategy. B2B financial innovators should focus on getting the highest-quality bespoke content into the hands of people who make buying decisions — no more and no less.
Putting this principle into practice means writing content that explicitly addresses this audience, building a list of people in that audience, and getting your content into their hands. Those elements should be the sole aspects of a content strategy.
Make no mistake about this simplicity. It takes real work.
At the front end, it means content development that radically focuses on this narrow audience’s needs. What are their goals? What are their challenges? What do they need to know, feel, and do to make a buying decision? And since that’s a dynamic process, which part of the buying journey does each piece of content support?
All too often, generic content marketing best practices dilute that strategy. Content development goes off track when it means writing for generic audiences or search algorithms. The distortions of generic tactics divert vital time and energy away from truly targeted strategy.
Think about those thousand executives who might ever engage your services or onboard to your platform. How do they find and consume information? What don’t they do? They are most likely not poking around on Google looking for someone who can help them with high-priority business challenges.
If your audience isn’t looking for answers about how to get stains out of their shirt, don’t talk to them as if they are. Instead, go deep and deliver what they need from the frame of reference that they have.
Similarly, targeting and distribution need to focus all of its efforts on getting relevant content directly into the hands of these thousand people who matter to your business.
In most cases, your efforts should concentrate on sending content directly to their inboxes and earning permission to be there time and again. It can mean putting it in their hands at events (virtual today, but soon — one hopes — in person again). In other words, list building and distribution should be as intentional and focused as content development.
Adopting this mindset of “the thousand people who matter” transforms your content strategy, keeps you above the fray, above the noise. Take the time to focus on them and stop doing anything that doesn’t directly address them. You’ll see improved results and stop adding to the world’s unnecessary content glut. | https://medium.com/@christophergfox/the-thousand-people-who-matter-214341902a90 | ['Christopher G. Fox'] | 2021-02-24 15:45:02.229000+00:00 | ['Content Strategy', 'Thought Leadership'] |
Thanks for being an active reader. That makes me feel like I’m producing worthy content. | Thanks for being an active reader. That makes me feel like I’m producing worthy content.
😎👉🏽👉🏽 | https://medium.com/@washingtonsheena21/thanks-for-being-an-active-reader-that-makes-me-feel-like-im-producing-worthy-content-91f87a761407 | [] | 2020-12-26 18:27:12.993000+00:00 | ['Fans', 'Comment', 'Content', 'Readers', 'Popular'] |
Praying for a Miracle | In this story of an ordinary woman, a friend in trouble with cancer, I was praying the ‘Help!’ prayer. I was asking for the cup to be taken from her. And I knew that God’s will is always done. But I also know that we don’t have to be weak in our prayers. We can ask for anything.
In this case I asked for a miracle. Pure and simple.
And prayer doesn’t have to be said alone. In my case I’m part of a church family which has a team of what we call Prayer Warriors. Long-time Christians who are regular and powerful prayers. There are eight of us, including our two ministers. When a prayer needs to be said for a situation, a message goes out to the Prayer Chain and we all pray for the person or the situation.
We pray intensive, personal prayer (‘Help”), in community, even though we are physically apart. We prayed with faith that our prayers would be answered. In some way. In God’s good time.
We’ve had some miracles as a result of our prayers, I can tell you. Even I, a strong believer, have been stunned at the success of our prayers in situations where all seemed hopeless. For example, one young guy was so far down the wrong track in his life, that it seemed as though he would never be able to turn their life around. Enter regular prayer by the Prayer Warriors, asking for God to support the person, asking for good people to be sent to help and love them, and for them to be able to make their lives meaningful and joyful again.
So we asked for a miracle for this young man, every Monday afternoon for a whole year. And it happened. Gradually he came to himself and found the right path for himself in life. He has taken baby steps towards good future prospects. Amazing grace. An unearned gift from God. An everyday miracle.
Photo: Bruce Mars on Unsplash
Flushed with the success of that particular prayer, I asked God for a miracle for my friend. And so did the Prayer Warriors. We prayed and prayed for our dear sister-in-Christ. We asked that the right people with the right knowledge would be sent to her and that they would know when they saw her exactly what treatment she would need. And that’s exactly what happened. And it didn’t take a year for this miracle to happen. It took a week.
A new treatment was available. And because my friend had looked after herself over the years by exercising regularly and minding what food she ate and what she drank, the medics saw that she was fit enough to take the treatment. So they agreed she could go ahead and have this special, new, powerful treatment.
So this week we continue to pray. But this time they are ‘Wow’ prayers. Prayers of thanks for blessing received, for good people willing to step forward and take a chance on those we love, even in the direst of situations.
But we’re not stupid. We know that whilst miracles can be asked for, and given, they’re not in our gift.
Thy will be done. | https://medium.com/this-christian-life/prayer-works-edc221c8ea1a | ['Carole Tansley'] | 2020-01-24 21:46:25.150000+00:00 | ['Miracles', 'Micro Memoir', 'Faith', 'Spirituality', 'Prayer'] |
Unit Testing Node.js + Mongoose Using Jest | Unit testing is not the answer to everything, but it sure as hell does prevent a few embarrassing and mind numbing situations. Sometimes, no matter how careful you are when programming, some bugs go unnoticed and the simplest way to catch them before anyone else is unit testing.
In this guide, I will show you how to unit test your MERN stack’s backend using Jest. Specifically, Node.js and Mongoose.
If you’re experienced with Node.js then you can skip to Step 2 which details how to test your functions.
Step 1. Set up express backend
This step should be pretty straight forward for most people. All you really need to do is set up npm , install a few packages and make sure you can start your server successfully. I’m using nodemon but feel free to use npm as well.
npm init -y
npm i express mongoose nodemon
This is what your project should be looking like by this point:
basic set up in index.js
As we’re only concerned with testing the application, we only need a very simple API and since everyone likes food, I thought why not make another Restaurant API!
The Restaurant Schema
Restaurant model in model/Restaurant.js
Nothing about this should be new, but the enum for cost may be confusing to some people.
The enum is simply set up to add an extra step of validation to each restaurant object, with regards to their cost property. What this means is “A restaurant’s cost has to be a string and can only be one of the values ‘$’, ‘$$’, ‘$$$’. If no value is provided then give the restaurant a cost of ‘$$’.” Pretty simple, right?
One of our tests will cover a case where the string passed in for cost is not one of the strings in the enum. At this point the database will fail to save the new object and we will see how to handle that kind of error.
Create Restaurant Function
Our first function will be to create a restaurant given a name, location and budget.
The only reason why it should fail to create a restaurant other than a database error, is if another restaurant already has the given name (see lines 10–11), or, if the restaurant’s cost is not one of the strings in the enum mentioned earlier (see model/Restaurant.js).
helper function to create a new restaurant in controller/createRestaurant.js
If it succeeds, it will return the id of the newly created restaurant.
Create Restaurant Post Method
This step is not necessary for testing but just incase you’re not used to using helper functions, I wanted to include how you could incorprate them into your code.
controller/index.js
As you can see in the image above, createRestaurant(name, loc, cost) that we created earlier is being called in the post request and all of this is wrapped in a try catch statement so that if an error arises (eg. same name used twice) we are handling it.
Step 2. Install Jest and mongodb-memory-server
As mentioned in the article title, we will be using Jest to run our tests.
Jest provides methods to create, organise and run your tests. It is one of the most popular testing frameworks as it focuses on simplicity so that you can focus on the logic behind the tests.
“Jest is a delightful JavaScript Testing Framework with a focus on simplicity.”
The second package we must install is mongodb-memory-server . If you’re already familiar with how mongo works, you’ll know that you create a cluster that stores all of you app’s data. Most applications will be writing/querying/updating the database somewhat regularly and therefore, it is important to ensure that your interactions with the database are producing the desired outcome.
The mongodb-memory server creates a ‘cluster’ which only exists in your device’s main memory and is not physically stored to disk.
Therefore, once your application terminates, the database instance will no longer exist. This method will also be faster than if you were to mock the interactions with the database.
Now that we have the theory covered, let’s install both packages:
npm i mongodb-memory-server jest
Step 3. Handle in-memory Server
To make sure we’re not repeating code and keeping good style, it’s good to create and then export functions for handling the in-memory database and then call on these exported functions as they’re required throughout the rest of the project.
The mongodb-memory-server package we installed earlier has a very helpful github page that explains how to connect and create a db instance:
If you don’t want to read through the documentation, then the following code will be enough for you to get started with your unit testing.
Special thanks to Paula Santamaría for her article where she provides this module. I will link to her article at the end of this tutorial.
Handling interactions with in-memory database: tests/db.js
The connect and closeDatabase methods should be pretty self explainable, however, you may be wondering why we need a clearDatabase function as well.
When it comes to unit testing, each test should start on a blank canvas, which means that there should be no existing data in the database when we start a new test. Therefore, every time a test ends, we will call the clearDatabase function.
Step 4. Set up the test file
First, in our tests folder we will be keeping all the files which includes tests. It is important when it comes to naming the files to ensure that they’re done in this manner: fileName.test.js
Before any of the tests are run, we will need to connect to the in-memory database. Lucky for us, we have already created and exported a method to do that in tests/db.js . Similarly, we need to disconnect and drop the database once all tests are run. Finally, after each individual test, we must clear the database.
Now all we need to do is add this to the top of every test file:
const db = require('./db') beforeAll(async () => await db.connect()) afterEach(async () => await db.clearDatabase()) afterAll(async () => await db.closeDatabase())
Step 5. Anatomy of a Test in Jest
With everything set up, we can now focus on our first test for the createRestaurant function.
Jest offers a way to organise our tests. Consider the following example for testing an asynchronous function that takes in an integer and returns the number as an integer and a string:
describe('First Group Of Tests', () => { it('First Test', async done => {
const result = await numberFunc(10)
expect(result.word).toBe("ten")
expect(result.number).toBeGreaterThan(10)
done() })
it('Second Test', async done => {
const result = await numberFunc()
expect(result).toBeNull()
done() }) })
Key points of this are:
The describe block is a way to place similar tests together. For example, if you’re testing the createRestaurant function and want to make sure it can handle various name lengths, you can place all those tests into the same describe block.
block is a way to place similar tests together. For example, if you’re testing the function and want to make sure it can handle various name lengths, you can place all those tests into the same describe block. The it block represents each individual test.
block represents each individual test. The most important part of an it block for an asynchronous test is to ensure you include the done() at the end of the test. If you don’t, the test will be finished before any asynchronous call completes and your tests will fail. The way that Jest explains the importance of done() in an async function is:
“Jest will wait until the done callback is called before finishing the test.”
expect is very similar to assert in other languages. It is the way we can check to ensure that our functions are retrieving/creating the objects we want them to. Whilst there are many different ways to use expect , I have only shown 3 options here. For more, check out https://jestjs.io/docs/en/expect
Step 6. Testing createRestaurant()
As the tests are run from top down, it’s good to keep the most simple/basic test at the top of the file. What I mean by this is the following:
example test suite to show order of tests running in Jest
Basically, the order of the tests in a file will matter.
So it’s good to start with a test for the most basic requirement of a function to make sure it works before moving on to more complicated cases.
So going back to testing createRestaurant() , the most basic test case would be creating one restaurant with a valid name, location and budget.
example unit test for a success case in tests/createRestaurant.test.js
Here is the our test file with it’s first test! If any of the three except() fail, then the test will fail and we will know something in our function is broken. For now, let’s run the test and see if it will work.
Step 7. Running Tests
In your package.json , add a test script:
"scripts": {
"test": "jest --testEnvironment=node --runInBand ./tests"
}
The --runInBand is there to get the tests to run one after another.
The --testEnvironment=node is there as we’re in a node environment.
What’s really important here is to give the correct file path to your test folder. For me that was ./tests .
Now when you run npm test in the terminal, you should see something like this:
Successful jest test
Now this was an example of a success test case. I will show you how to write tests for errors.
Error Testing
In the same file, you can create a new describe block for cases where we fail to create a new restaurant. Looking back at our Schema and function, the only times it should fail is if a name has been repeated or if the cost associated with a restaurant is not one of the values in the enum.
example testing for exceptions in tests/createRestaurant.js
In the first test, we’re checking that an error will be thrown if a name is repeated. We have already tested for the case of one restaurant being made successfully so we can be rest assured that line 33 will run smoothly.
However, line 35 should throw an error since the name “First” already belongs to another restaurant. As this is an asynchronous function that is meant to throw an error, we need to add rejects.toThrow() after our expect.
In the second test, we’re checking that an error is thrown when the third argument of createRestaurant() is not a string value in the cost enum.
If you run your tests again you should see this:
Running all tests successfully
Congratulations! You have successfully unit tested your Node.js and Mongoose backend using Jest.
Thanks for reading and please leave a comment if you’re unsure about anything.
This is my first article so chances are I’ve not done a perfect job so please let me know if you spot any problems 😌
References
https://dev.to/paulasantamaria/testing-node-js-mongoose-with-an-in-memory-database-32np | https://javascript.plainenglish.io/unit-testing-node-js-mongoose-using-jest-106a39b8393d | [] | 2021-03-04 21:17:05.885000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Programming', 'Jest', 'Tdd', 'Mongodb'] |
Be a Sweetie Wipe the Seatie…Or Else! | My email inbox dinged.
Urgent, Women’s Bathroom.
Crack went my knuckles — a nasty habit I developed since taking on this public-radio gig in California. I read on.
Somebody peed on the toilet seat again! I am going to find out who you are. We all need to respect our workspace. Sincerely, Christine, Operations Manager
Was it me? My hair roots shot up like dandelion bits.
Thirty minutes before the email, I sped to the bathroom, tightening my pelvis as I waddled. My black mini-pumps click clacked against the bric-a-brac floor. I could have peed ten minutes before that. I should have. But in typical workaholic form, I ignored my humanity to the point of near bursting.
I had to hit that bathroom fast. I was on deadline for a radio segment. A congressman’s office was going to call with breaking news on immigration-enforcement legislation. In a single sweep I crouched, did the deed, washed my hands and raced back to to my desk just in time to snag the ringing phone. Wait, did I even flush?
Ding. That’s Disgusting -Monique. Ding. Eww. this person needs better parenting -Sarah.
I glanced at my pale long fingers. There were a few soap bubbles on my thumbnails. Damn, I didn’t even wash my hands properly. I gently popped them and looked back at the computer screen. Another ding hit my ears like a belt to a bottom.
Ding. Seriously. Wipe the seat if you’re going to use a firehose at work. -James
Do I write a snarky reply, I thought. Rev up some faux outrage? I recalled a recent radio segment I had produced on the country’s culture wars. Americans, en mass, were protesting movies they had never even seen. I won’t be like those protestors, I thought. I won’t join the email chain gang.
But if I didn’t reply, would my silence be an admission of guilt?
I decided to look busy instead. I flipped on the TV to CSPAN and prepared my reporter’s notebook to track the latest vote. I bet Congressmen get private bathrooms, I thought. They can urinate all over the seat in the name of patriotism if they so desire. We hoi poli, on the other hand, must be a sweetie and wipe the seatie…or else.
“You can always check the hallway surveillance camera,” said Simone, the executive producer. Simone always spoke from behind a loose stack of books. So much so, I can’t recall that day’s clothing or if she was even wearing any. She always sounded like this unmoored voice at sea — a pirate’s echo.
Things were getting ridiculous. I’m confessing, I thought. I opened a ‘reply all’ window but closed it in the next breath.
I suddenly remembered I was in an office of creatives. I’d forever be known as some comical wordplay — like pee little pony or Mrs. pee and run. I didn’t want to be the butt of everyone’s jokes after too many martinis at the next holiday party.
I reached for Thomas Friedman’s latest tome The World is Flat from our shelf of review copies. Friedman’s publicist sent the book for an upcoming interview. I had planned to read it that evening curled up with my cat and a carnival-sized glass of cabernet. But I needed the distraction. I broke the book’s crust and read:
The internet Ding. is one of the great levelers Ding. of the global playing field. Ding. Ding.
Even Friedman seemed complicit in this public flogging. I felt a twinge near my right eyebrow. I wanted to be elsewhere. I wanted to quit. Seek refuge abroad? I had savings.
“Linda, do you think it was today’s studio guest, Judith Miller?” said Simone’s disembodied voice. (Simone’s genius: Bringing out the genius in others.)
The response she meant to solicit in me: “Ha. Because blaming her for the entire Iraq war isn’t sufficient?”
But I didn’t take the bait. All I could think about was the active witch hunt.
All day, my tongue tasted like gravel. My heart beat between my ears. Still I somehow managed to produce the radio segment and fight the impulse to clear my name.
The snarky email exchanges eventually died down and Simone never checked the surveillance camera (if there even was one).
That evening at home, still shaking, I snuggled with my cat and drank two-buck Chuck (straight from the bottle). And as I did, a brigade of Hegelian thoughts camped out in my brain:
How quickly corporate emails become a funnel for repressed anger.
Why do institutions (like public radio) that promote kindness and inclusivity often reek of cruelty and divisiveness? I suppose it’s the same reason the Buddhists and psychologists are often totally crazy. As a species, we seek what we lack. I guess we don’t ever really run away from our true nature. All that baggage we carry doesn’t just disappear in a flurry of good intentions.
It’s been more than a decade since that dreadful day. I never confirmed it actually was me who peed on the seat. Though my husband just revealed (as I write this) that I have committed the same crime in our home one or twice. Oh my.
Moral of the story: If someone sprinkles when they tinkle…don’t be an asshole. They might just have a lot going on. | https://medium.com/the-haven/be-a-sweetie-wipe-the-seatie-or-else-e5c6f9e54adf | ['Linda Freund'] | 2019-02-13 20:54:47.366000+00:00 | ['Workplace', 'Personal Essay', 'Workplace Culture', 'Humor', 'Corporate Culture'] |
3 Ways to Disinfect Your Toothbrush | 3 Ways to Disinfect Your Toothbrush
1. Salt
Before modern toothbrushes and toothpaste, ancient civilizations used salt to protect their dental health. As such, salt has long been known to have excellent sterilization and disinfection properties. To disinfect your toothbrush with salt, sprinkle a small amount on your toothbrush and soak it in a cup of water for 20–30 minutes. After that, take out your toothbrush, rinse it with running water, and let it dry. Now your toothbrush is disinfected.
2. Baking Soda
Baking soda is an eco-friendly cleaner that can be used in many places, such as the kitchen, the bathroom, or any other room in your house. It can also be used to disinfect your toothbrush! Just like with salt, sprinkle a small amount of baking soda on your toothbrush and soak it in a cup of water for 20–30 minutes. After that, you can take out your toothbrush, rinse it, and dry it. Doing this once a week will keep your toothbrush clean.
3. Mouthwash
There is also a way to disinfect your toothbrush using mouthwash. Unsurprisingly, it can be used in the same way as salt and baking soda. Put your toothbrush in a cup of water and pour mouthwash into the cup until the head of the toothbrush is completely submerged. After 20–30 minutes, take your toothbrush out, rinse it with running water, shake off the water, and let it dry in a sunny place. | https://medium.com/misbloc/3-ways-to-disinfect-your-toothbrush-ec78016a0f66 | [] | 2021-11-30 05:25:15.438000+00:00 | ['Dentistry', 'Disinfectant', 'Blockchain', 'Advice', 'Misbloc'] |
A Time to Kill | Part II: Violence in Delhi (2020)
The “Doubtful Citizen”
Fast forward to December 11, 2019, when the central government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The CAA was the final step in a series of policies with the power to disenfranchise millions of Indian Muslims — leaving them stateless and at risk of deportation.
The CAA was enacted after the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is essentially a list of Indian citizens. And if someone is not on that list, then the CAA fast tracks citizenship — but only for people of the Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, Parsi, or Sikh faiths. Muslims are conspicuously missing from the list.¹²
This practice of disenfranchisement was already in place in Assam, a state in northeastern India. A statewide NRC for Assam gave government officials arbitrary powers to label individuals as “doubtful citizens.” Muslims who are unable to prove citizenship are destined for one of the multiple detention centers in the state.¹³
It was this framework of policies that launched a series of protests around India, the most extraordinary of which was the Shaheen Bagh protest. Without the planning and sophistication of other organized protests, it started when a handful of women sat down in the middle of a major roadway and blocked traffic in the Shaheen Bagh neighborhood of southeast Delhi.¹⁴
Grandmothers, with children in their laps and daughters by their side, sat with an unwavering resilience. Day and night, they sat through one of the harshest winters in the last 100 years. This handful of protesters swelled into thousands, as women continued to join with every passing day.
Lacking the powers of wealth and influence, these protesting women looked for any way to become visible to a society that was prepared to look past them. They blocked the roads and slept on the unforgiving pavement to try and protect their identities, families, and homes. These women stood, in strength and solidarity, as the last line of defense.
Bilkis Dadi (center) at Shaheen Bagh protest. (PTI)
One of these women was 82-year-old Bilkis Dadi, who became the face of the Shaheen Bagh protest. In discussing the role women played in the protest, Dadi remarked,¹⁵
Women should feel empowered to step out of their homes and raise their voice, especially against injustice. If they don’t leave their homes, how will they showcase their strength?
Bilkis Dadi inspired women all across the country “to step out of their homes and raise their voice.” One such example was in the poor neighborhoods of Yamuna Paar.
Expendable
Yamuna Paar comprises a collection of neighborhoods like Jaffrabad, Seelampur, and Maujpur just beyond the Yamuna River in northeast Delhi. It has the highest population density in the city and also the most abject living conditions.¹⁶ Some areas could be categorized as slums, others as simply poor. It would not be uncommon for a Delhi resident to never venture past the river and into the reality of Yamuna Paar.
In these neighborhoods live not only the highest concentration of Muslims in Delhi, but also a large number of Bajrang Dal members.¹⁷ Bajrang Dal is a militant Hindu nationalist organization with strong connections to similar right-wing organizations like the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and BJP. The Bajrang Dal is notorious for their propensity for violence and most recently caused mayhem this year when they protested Valentine’s Day as a threat to Indian culture.
With the river serving as a protective barrier for the rest of Delhi, it is no surprise that this combination of people and circumstances has resulted in violence — sometimes spontaneous, other times strategic — in the past. The poor neighborhoods of Yamuna Paar are the perfect powder keg for India’s communal strife.
And it was in these “expendable” neighborhoods that over 500 women, inspired by the Shaheen Bagh protest, began a sit-in to block traffic in protest of the CAA.¹⁸
Kapil the Chemist
Anti-CAA protestors in Jaffrabad neighborhood of Yamuna Paar PC: unknown
The women of Yamuna Paar began their sit-in on February 22, and President Trump was scheduled to land on February 24. Sandwiched between these two events on February 23, a low-level BJP operative named Kapil Mishra convened a pro-CAA rally just down the street from the women’s anti-CAA sit-in.
In a speech he delivered while standing next to a Police official, Mishra gave a public ultimatum to clear the women’s protest from the street within three days or he and his supporters would “hit the streets.” He stated they would stay peaceful for the duration of President Trump’s visit to India but could promise nothing after the visit if the protestors were not cleared.¹⁹
Mishra delivering a speech demanding the streets be cleared of anti-CAA protest or he would clear them.
On the surface, holding one peaceful protest to counter another seems reasonable. However, the planning and build-up of Mishra’s counter protest were suspicious. Mishra gathered hundreds of members of nationalist Hindu organizations across the street from their opposition and riled them up with speeches about vigilante justice. Given the context, it seems highly unreasonable to have any expectation of peace, especially with the implicit backing of Delhi Police.
Mishra combined this combustible mix of people, created the optimal conditions for violence, and walked away. As he did, a witness overheard him talking to people in the crowd and saying²⁰–
Yahi sahi mauka hai. Isse bhuna lo. Ab chook gaye to dubaara mauka nahi milega.
This is the right time. Exploit it. If you miss it, you won’t get another opportunity.
A History of Violence
Prime Minister Modi chose Gujarat as President Trump’s first stop before going on to Agra and Delhi. Gujarat was where Modi began his rise to power, and it was also Gujarat that was home to India’s last major incident of communal violence in 2002, when mobs of militant Hindus brutally killed Muslims for several months.
Eyewitness accounts depict especially brutal descriptions of gang rape, the mutilation of pregnant women, and children set afire.²¹ The mobs, aided by voter registration lists and the complicity of police forces, continued the massacre under the newly appointed chief minister of the Gujarat state — Narendra Modi.²²
PM Modi welcoming President Trump in Gujarat. (Mandel Ngan/AFP)
Eighteen years later, Chief Minister Modi had become Prime Minister Modi. And on February 24, he welcomed the visiting President Trump to India at a packed cricket stadium in Gujarat. Standing just miles from where thousands were hacked to death in 2002, Trump praised Modi for “being tough” and India for how it “embraces freedom, liberty, individual rights, the rule of law, and the dignity of every human being.”²³
The violence in Yamuna Paar had already started the night before on February 23. When Mishra left his rally, tractors filled with stones and bricks arrived, providing an arsenal for the riled-up mob.²⁴ By the morning of February 24, the day Trump arrived, the stone throwing had transitioned to killing and destruction.²⁵
The violence in Delhi continued throughout the President’s visit. As Trump visited the Taj Mahal, Muslims were beaten and burned in the streets, their dead bodies thrown into sewage drains. As he held a business roundtable in New Delhi, Muslim shops, mosques, and schools were looted and set afire. As Trump praised Modi for his stance on religious freedom, ambulances were blocked from the wounded, and others were left dying in unequipped hospitals.
“The city is burning”
In an attempt to force police action and stop the ongoing violence, human rights lawyers filed an inquiry with the Delhi High Court. On February 26, Justices Muralidhar and Talwant Singh were scheduled to hear the inquiry.
Justice Muralidhar is a known figure in progressive circles. He had previously decriminalized homosexuality and given Congress leader Sajjan Kumar a life sentence for his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms. If there was any hope that the judicial system would work as a check against police inaction, he was it.
Justice Muralidhar
At the inquiry, Justice Muralidhar questioned the Delhi Police about why they had yet to file cases against BJP politicians for the hate speeches that instigated the violence in the first place. Furious at their responses, he gave them 24 hours to make a “conscious decision” regarding their next steps and ordered them to take a more active role in stopping the violence and providing aid to the victims. “The city is burning,” he told police officials and warned that “we can’t let another 1984 happen,” in reference to the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984.²⁶
However, Delhi Police was never forced to make that “conscious decision” because, close to midnight that night, Justice Muralidhar was informed by the central government that he was being transferred from the Delhi High Court to the Punjab and Haryana High Court.²⁷
The transfer had been recommended by the Supreme Court Collegium a few weeks earlier, but the decision to act on that recommendation and transfer Muralidhar in the middle of the night — effective immediately — just hours after he had reprimanded Delhi police officials, indicated a nefarious and underlying agenda.
The violence in Yamuna Paar continued.
Eat, Pray, Hate
The final death count from that week is estimated at 53, with hundreds more injured. But the statistics cannot tell the full story of the hate that filled those streets that week.²⁸
Mohammad Zubair was surrounded and ruthlessly beaten in broad daylight by a mob of young Hindu men. As they yelled slogans of victory and glory to God Ram, he curled up into a ball. He survived.²⁹
A mob chanting pro-Hindu slogans, beat Mohammad Zubair, 37, who is Muslim. PC: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui
Imran Khan was beaten by the mob with iron rods and metal pipes until he was unconscious. Thinking he was dead, the mob tied a rope around his neck and he was dragged into a gutter.³⁰
Thirty-year-old Musharraf was dragged out of his house and into the street. They beat him, even as his 11-year-old daughter Kushi fell to the mob’s feet and begged them to stop. They killed him and threw his body in the gutter.³¹
An unidentified body fished out of a drain in Khajuri Khas on Feb 26. (PC: unknown)
And on and on. Twenty-eight-year-old Mehtab Khan left his home to buy milk. His body was beaten and set on fire.³² All that remains of fifty-eight-year-old Anwer Qassar’s is a charred leg, who was shot and set on fire. Gulshan, Qassar’s daughter, had to get a DNA test to confirm whether the burnt and unidentifiable body was actually her father’s.³³
The Delhi Minorities Commission reported that the violence was “one sided and well planned.”³⁴ Eyewitness accounts support that finding. Abdul Kalam, who fled the area on the second night, described how “over 1000” men arrived in trucks.³⁵
Most of them wore helmets to hide their identity and shield their heads from possible stone attacks…apart from being armed with pistols, iron rods, crow bars, hammers, and other heavy tools, the attackers carried gas cylinders, big jerry cans of acid and petrol.
The Politics of a Public Lynching
There is no doubt that the violence could have been stopped quickly. Aside from the fact that Delhi already has a massive police and military presence, the city further prepared for President Trump’s visit with an unprecedented increase in security. Police personnel from six districts with nearly 40 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces were called in, as well as deployments of Army, paramilitary forces, an anti-drone detachment, snipers, and elite SWAT commandos.³⁶
And yet, when Mishra and his band of agitators began looting and murdering Muslims down the street from the Presidential festivities, the state refused to step in.
This violence was not random and chaotic; it was methodical and strategic. And the most shocking aspect of it was the audacity and arrogance to perpetrate the violence, and the local and auxiliary police merely stood by, all while the entire world watched. This did not happen behind closed doors or in some dark corner of the country. The media was not shut down or forced to leave.
Rather, it was the opposite. It happened when the world’s cameras were firmly fixed on the capital, with reporters staying in the city’s hotels and bearing witness to this morbid Trumpian reality show.
In fact, that seems to have been the whole point of it. Following big election wins in 2019, Prime Minister Modi was arguably one of the most powerful prime ministers in India’s history. Similar to President Trump, he had created an odd coalition between the capitalistic elite and extremists who fear cultural and religious obscurity.
With that abundance of political capital in hand, his administration moved quickly to remove Kashmir’s autonomous status and begin the process of delegitimizing Muslim citizenship. No Prime Minister since Indira Gandhi has wielded the same power and resources to even attempt such actions.
And now, with the ideologically similar President Trump as his guest, Prime Minister Modi allowed the mob to unleash on the Muslim population with impunity — all while we watched from home. He flaunted his power, with no rebuke from the American President. In fact, President Trump’s continued praise seemed to make the carnage permissible.
It was a purposeful, public show meant for the cameras. It was a reminder to India’s Muslims that things could get much worse, and a message to the world that the hegemony of the Hindu culture and religion is no longer some agenda hidden behind the veil of secularism, but a national identity. | https://medium.com/ektapunjab/a-time-to-kill-65934b815ff2 | ['Paul S. Mudahar'] | 2021-03-26 22:34:38.591000+00:00 | ['Sikh', 'Punjab', 'India', 'Caa Protest', 'Muslim'] |
13 (Super) Easy and Fast Ways to Overcome Your Bad Mood | 1. Listen to the right music. I have, achingly, replaced ‘Cigarettes After Sex’ with Casey Neistat mixtape. Listen to positive, upbeat and energetic music.
2. Smell a pleasant scent. Lavender is the best. Spray it at the back of your hand and smell it for at least a minute.
3. Give some money to a homeless person or to a charity.
4. Do you have a role model? Picture her/him right in front of you. What is she/he saying to you?
5. Stare at the blue, brightly-lit sky, if it’s morning. Stare at the moon and stars, if it’s night. Stare for a few minutes. Breathe in the fresh air.
6. Move your eyes to see different things in the room. Focus on everything that your eyes see. Do this for a couple of minutes.
7. Watch the videos of babies or pets.
8. Smile and laugh. Laugh out loud. For no reason.
9. Clean your room and organize everything.
10. Dance. Jump around. Of course, when no one’s around!
11. Do you have a friend in your life who’s happy, positive, empathetic, and thoughtful? Call her/him and talk for a few minutes.
12. Make weird noises.
13. Go out of the house, or out of wherever you are, and walk. Just walk. | https://medium.com/@thatnameasif/overcome-bad-mood-31ff549f9906 | ['Asif Ali'] | 2019-05-20 17:16:55.703000+00:00 | ['Bad Mood', 'Sad', 'Happiness', 'Negativity', 'Optimism'] |
‘Iced Tea’ | ‘Iced Tea’
The four of us have a lot of inside jokes and ‘doing stuff’ somehow got short-formed to ‘stuffing’ so that’s what we call getting out and about enjoying activities.
Today we had a full day of ‘stuffing’ so this is one is going to be short.
Looking at the clock displaying 22:20, I looked around the hotel room to figure out what the heck I’m going to write on…iced tea it is.
— — — — — — — — — — -
After an early dinner and a rainy swim, we dried off and went out for a before-bed stroll.
The rain had subsided earlier this evening and we wanted to get the most out of our day. Heading up toward Robson Street, the boys wanted another snack and drink and to take in a bit of Vancouver night-life.
Braden could drink iced tea all day long if I let him and he wanted a cold one tonight while on our walk before bed.
That was a usual no from me to getting loaded up with caffeine right before retiring for the night...even if we were on vacation.
Down the road was Safeway and Braden kept pushing for a particular drink he likes. After hearing him out, the chosen bottle of iced tea made it to the checkout line with us.
Pure Leaf Mango Hibiscus iced tea is the perfect mix of Braden’s two favourite things and it’s herbal so it’s naturally caffeine-free. Yes it has sugar but not jacking him on anything extra was enough of a win for me and it looked super refreshing to our parched selves after our nighttime downtown walk.
— — — — — — — — — — —
I would have to agree with B that iced tea is tha’ bomb.
From consuming too much Orchard Hill as a teen to having a permanent container of Good Host in the pantry, the booze-free brew is a solid family fav. If you’re looking for a really good one, one of the best ‘home brews’ we’ve ever had (in our opinion) can be found at Bright Eye Brewing in Kamloops, B.C. and I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Night,
-Becky | https://medium.com/@beckyboughton/iced-tea-cb3f8b3b4d2b | ['Becky Boughton'] | 2020-08-07 05:56:10.987000+00:00 | ['Vacation', 'Beverage', 'Kids', 'Family', 'Parenting'] |
Author Kryss Shane: How To Give Honest Feedback Without Being Hurtful | Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
It seems that most people who work in mental healthcare have a personal story or experience that draws them to this field. I’m someone who was always the support person and the go-to person for my friends, but I never considered making a career of it until much later. I was always a believer in equality, and this led me to begin to become mindful of ways in which minority groups weren’t represented in my middle school and high school textbooks and in the media, I was enjoying. This led me to speak up a lot in class, asking questions that many teachers had no answers to because their education also lacked inclusion. As my recognition of this problem grew, I began to realize this problem in my community and in families. This led me to earn my bachelor’s degree at The Ohio State University in Human Development and Family Sciences.
Simultaneously, I was volunteering a ton with LGBT+ organizations. Over time, my volunteer work grew, and many began asking why I didn’t do this as my profession. It hadn’t dawned on me before then that I could. This realization sent me into my first master’s degree program, where I graduated from Barry University in Social Work, where I focused my studies on LGBT+ issues. As years passed though, I was always bothered by how often textbooks in schools still lack representation of marginalized groups. This led me to go back to school, where I earned my 2nd master’s degree, from Western Governors University in Education, specializing in Curriculum and Instruction. I am currently working toward my doctorate in Educational Leadership from University of the Cumberlands, where I get to bring my LGBT+ work through the lens of leaders in our world, thus making me better at educating others and teaching them how to improve their allyship and activism. I am also working in undergraduate and graduate social work departments Columbia University and Brandman University, and writing articles, book chapters, and books that focus on the minority populations that have been too long left out. That includes “The Educator’s Guide to LGBT+ Inclusion” the first book of its kind to guide educators, administrators, and school staff to become able and empowered to make their schools more LGBT+ inclusive, I am also hearing that many parents and those who work with or help raise youth are also seeing the book as a way to become better at helping to raise children who are anti-racist and anti-homophobic and anti-transphobic!
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
My company, ThisIsKryss.com stands out because it stands up. So often, companies are afraid that being heavily focused in a controversial topic can make them too polarizing or cause them to lose business. I have always seen it as an opportunity to support what matters most. As a result, I’ve never hidden what I believe or what my company stands for. I’ve also never been shy about offering to educate someone who sends me hate mail, nor have I been shy about being unwilling to entertain ignorance with becoming angry or with investing time into their goal of trying to scare me away from my work.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
When I first began my work, it was still socially acceptable enough to heckle during conversations or trainings on LGBT+ people. It was still socially acceptable enough to make sexist comments to young women on stages. As a result, many of my first times on stage training and educating were met with loud homophobic and transphobic comments from the back of the room. It was also very common for men to ask about my genitalia or my bra size or whether I was single. I became very agile in redirecting conversations and at ascertaining when to address behaviors and when not to give them more oxygen. Now though, it is becoming less common for the comments to occur and, when they do, it is very likely that someone else in the room will shut the behavior down before I need to say a word. I think it really speaks to the learning that some are doing as well as the changes in whether people are willing to be a silent bystander to inappropriate language and behaviors. Though those behaviors are never acceptable, I always end up just a tad grateful for those moments, as it reminds me how far we’ve come in our society!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The biggest mistake I used to make is that I used to be really afraid of other speakers! I would read the bios and academic backgrounds of other speakers at events or of the C-suite at companies I was speaking to and I would become completely intimidated. It made me question myself and it made me become smaller both in my posture and in my literal and figurative voice. I had to learn to overcome that by getting to know others and to recognize that my work and my experience also held value.
In terms of funniest mistake, I’ve had a few situations where I’ve completely “fan girled” out when meeting someone whose work really inspires me. Admittedly though, this isn’t something I’ve outgrown. I still find it really exciting to meet someone whose work is pretty incredible. It most recently happened with Sally Hogshead. She’s a huge well-known speaker and I’d considered her to be someone whose events I would attend “someday.” Not as in an actual time on a calendar but in that big metaphoric *makes a rainbow gesture with her hands* someday. Someday when I was wealthy enough or someday when I was big enough in my career or someday when I was… something enough. Anyway, when my first book “The Educator’s Guide to LGBT+ Inclusion” came out, a dear friend, Jeanette Jennings (from TLC’s “I Am Jazz”) posted about it on her social media. Not long after, Jeanette emailed me and asked if she could give my info to a friend who wanted to get in touch. I agreed because any friend of hers is a friend of mine. It turns out, the friend was Sally! She suggested a phone call. Here I was, after years of admiring her, getting to have a one-on-one call. A week later, there I was, totally wasting the professional opportunity because my personal self was so totally geeking out over meeting her. (Luckily, Sally is actually a seriously awesome person and she was quite polite about my fan girling!)
What it made me realize though is that this isn’t so much about having to learn to outgrow or make up for funny mistakes, it’s about owning them! I’ve actually had some people get a little extra animated when talking with me and I never find it funny or embarrassing, I find it incredibly flattering and I am so grateful to know that my work impacts them. As a result, I have stopped trying to pretend not to be incredibly excited when meeting others!
What advice would you give to other CEOs and business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?
Burnout happens when there is no balance. That tends to occur when employees do not believe they can take a breath without letting their boss down. I always encourage leaders to be mindful of the long-term goals (which can’t happen if employees burn out). I also recommend that they model behaviors for their employees. As a result, some encourage their staff to put up an out of office message every day at 6 and that no emails are expected to be responded to before the next workday… and then they model that behavior. Others reward staff with healthy snacks in the office to ensure no one works through meals. I’ve met some who have been at the forefront of working from home programs in the company because they know it can benefit some employees to have flexible schedules or to work without a commute. Some of my favorite ideas come from ways in which leaders offer trainings and education during working hours with meals provided so that employees can continue to grow their skills without sacrificing mealtime or personal time.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
I am currently working on my doctorate in Educational Leadership, so this feels a bit to me like a paper I could write! I hope my professors won’t be too upset with me for combining their lessons and merging them with my own beliefs here… to me, leadership is the recognition of one’s own privileges and the realization of one’s own power paired with a goal or mission, explained using clear language in a way that encourages and inspires others to participate in working together toward success.
Leadership is not about who can get their name in the papers, it’s not about who can sucker others into following blindly. It’s not about manipulation. Leadership is what happens when a person inspires others to recognize their own power, which results in a collective movement toward change. We see this in the Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matter movement. It isn’t about one person and millions of followers, it’s about many people who are amplifying one another, who are demanding justice, and who are letting every Black and Brown person know that there is safety in numbers, that they are not alone if they want to take to the streets to fight to change a systemic problem that puts their lives in jeopardy. This movement is not successful because one person uses threats or harm to force others to do their bidding, it is successful because it supports many and it allows participants to feel their importance and to use their voices and their power to join a collective demand that all people be treated appropriately and that all systems that undermine this be dismantled.
In my work, I often talk about how to release and relieve stress. As a busy leader, what do you do to prepare your mind and body before a stressful or high stakes meeting, talk, or decision? Can you share a story or some examples?
I find that the stress dissipates when I am prepared. I am also a big fan of self-bribes. What I mean is that, before an event or talk, I gather the information from reputable sources. If it is a decision being made, I may have meetings or conversations with others to gain a fuller perspective. I also journal, which helps me to process my thoughts and helps to hold strong to my sense of self. As for self-bribes, I also like to find something to plan ahead in what I will get to do or have once the stressful situation has ended. Sometimes it’s a slice of pizza, sometimes it’s a break with a few episodes of Golden Girls, other times it’s a phone date with a friend or putting all technology on silent and just snuggling with the dog for 20 minutes. Knowing what I get to earn and being able to plan for the enjoyment of it can also help to remind me that my whole life is not forever tied to this upcoming big stressful moment. After the big event or moment, I then get to reward myself immediately, which lets the stress and anxiety dissipate before taking on the next task at hand!
Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Can you briefly tell our readers about your experience with managing a team and giving feedback?
I’ve always been a leader… even in preschool, the teachers noted that I was easy to be around if the others were playing the game I wanted to play. *laughs* It admittedly took time to learn how to lead without forcing everyone to do what I wanted how I wanted. Over time, the more secure I became in my knowledge, the easier it was to ask for guidance and advice in areas where they were stronger than me, including when the expert was someone whom I was leading. I also became better in being willing to recognize when I was wrong. This let the staff know both that being wrong was not a career-ender and it let them see that I was working to become better both at my work and at leading them. It resulted in them being more willing to share insights and to ask for my help and it caused them to offer me more grace as I learned and improved over time.
A great example of this was during my time as the Director of a social service agency in New York City. As part of the role, I was a leader both of the location and its staff, as well as volunteers, but it was also the very first time I was supervising social work student interns. I had a few months of notice before they began. Without sounding egotistical, I was absolutely the best intern supervisor who ever existed ever… until 2 minutes into their first day, when I handed out my perfectly organized binder full of perfectly crafted assignments and I watched their eyes grow wide. I realized instantly that I had completely forgotten that their internship with me was not the entirety of their lives and that I had created something gorgeous in theory that was overwhelming and unrealistic in practice. I went from being 100% certain of my awesomeness to completely aware that I needed to seek out people with experience and to learn from their greatness before I would be able to grow in my role.
I found that, because I was willing to own my mistake, it became easier for the students to acknowledge their own missteps. When it became clear to them that an error did not mean they lost my respect, it became easier for them to come to me and share their struggles so we could find a solution together.
This might seem intuitive but it will be constructive to spell it out. Can you share with us a few reasons why giving honest and direct feedback is essential to being an effective leader?
Feedback is really difficult for many to give or to receive; no one wants to do poorly, and no one wants to make someone feel bad. However, without feedback, it is impossible for either side to see progress or to measure success. I think about being in school. I never wanted to receive a bad grade but being graded on assignments gave me insight into where I was succeeding and where I needed to focus more work or seek tutoring. In the workplace, there is often little to no mandatory feedback. It can result in a lack of awareness when there is success or when there are problems. By having a feedback plan and by creating an opportunity for honesty and growth, the leader can support the employee and the employee has a better idea of where they stand and of how they can excel.
One of the trickiest parts of managing a team is giving honest feedback, in a way that doesn’t come across as too harsh. Can you please share with us five suggestions about how to best give constructive criticism to a remote employee? Kindly share a story or example for each.
1. Assume the Best — Often, as leaders, we can envision what we want, and we delegate to others because we cannot do everything ourselves. As a result, we can see it clearly when an employee’s actions are not what we envisioned. It can be easy to feel annoyed or to think that an employee who makes frequent mistakes is doing so on purpose. However, this is rarely the case. Most times, employees want to do well, and they are doing things as they believe you want them. When you begin by assuming the best of them, it can help to calm your own emotions and it can inform how you address situations with employees.
2. Choose Your Platform - Cameras and audio sessions are great for so many aspects of remote work. However, they can be difficult for delivering difficult feedback. An employee may not want to be on camera when hearing criticism as they may struggle with maintaining visible composure. Another employee may want the feedback in writing so they can review it and process it after they have initially heard it. When giving feedback, consider the best format for your employee. It may be a call without a camera in which you also email your notes from that meeting. It may be a recorded call with the recording sent to the employee so they can review what was said. Think through the format you use so that the focus is on the information exchange, not on whether they can maintain a neutral face or remember every word.
3. Choose your timing - It can be easy for a leader to become frustrated when an employee is making mistakes. Sometimes, feedback can occur amidst that frustration. It can then result in the employee feeling like their boss thinks horribly of them. Instead, make sure to be in a space of calm within yourself so you don’t take frustrations about the situation (or about other situations or people) out on an employee.
4. Give Space - Not everyone processes instantly. When giving feedback, let the person hear it and receive it and take time with it. Maybe this means they need to listen to feedback now and meet with you to discuss it tomorrow, after they’ve had time to absorb what you said. Giving them the time to hear you and to process their emotions about it can give them time to come back to you for a real conversation rather than to respond in a space of feeling defensive or hurt. You can also begin the meeting by explaining that you are sharing some concerns and that you would like to share them now, give the employee time to process them, and that you want to regroup and discuss this tomorrow morning. This lets the employee know that they can listen without being expected to immediately respond to something that may come as a total surprise to them.
5. Look in the Mirror - Many think that leadership is easy because it means just telling others what to do. A good leader sees that there is a way to do this with kindness and guidance and transparency and a clear mission. A great leader sees that they cannot lead well unless they continue to work to improve their own leadership skills. Before, during, and after giving feedback, it is vital that a leader checks in with themselves (and with a mentor or superior) to be sure that they are continuing to improve their own skills both in general and as a result of what they have learned through each experience of providing feedback to someone they lead.
Can you address how to give constructive feedback over email? If someone is in front of you much of the nuance can be picked up in facial expressions and body language. But not when someone is remote. How do you prevent the email from sounding too critical or harsh?
I’m a big fan of email because I love to write and because I love that writing is something a person can refer back to. However, writing comes without the nuances of non-verbal communication the way voice or facial cues can give. I am a believer in giving compliments in writing as quickly as possible after the good thing happened. I am also a big believer in taking time between writing a criticizing email and sending it. (Tip, don’t put the recipient’s email address into the email until you are ready to send it; this prevents accidental sending!) With a critique, I recommend journaling or drafting first. Figure out what went wrong and why, as well as what is within their control and what they should have known. This helps to eliminate muddy directions or blaming an employee for something outside their job or task description. Consider what you could or should have done differently and be willing to take ownership. Also, consider how you want the situation to occur differently. This way, when you write the email, you are clear in identifying the problem(s), explaining why they were the responsibility of the person, talk about future prevention of a repeat situation, and you can outline what you need the recipient to do either now or in the future. This offers clear information that is focused and direct and allows both sides to refer back to the email in the future, either to double check the work beforehand next time or in case the problem repeats.
In your experience, is there a best time to give feedback or critique? Should it be immediately after an incident? Should it be at a different time? Should it be at set intervals? Can you explain what you mean?
As I talked about earlier, when it comes to an incident, this really depends on the situation and on the emotions involved. If you are angry, it is probably not a great time to talk with your staff. If it is emergent and cannot wait, you may not have the luxury of time. However, in most cases, it is appropriate for the situation to end, for everyone to separate and cool down, and for a leader to become clearer in the feedback they want to give once they assess the situation and the problems that occurred. As for general feedback, I think monthly or quarterly meetings with staff can be quite helpful in assessing their growth and helping them to understand where they are successful and where they need improvement so that no one is surprised by a lack of progress or when someone wants to submit for a raise or promotion.
How would you define what it is to “be a great boss”? Can you share a story?
A great boss is someone who is transparent in their goals, who is open with their support, who is empathetic without being a pushover, who is accepting of employees for who they are, and who recognizes that their work is to make their employees successful.
I am part of numerous networking groups and there have been many stories shared during the time of the pandemic. I have found it has been consistent across industries that the bosses others have bragged about have been those who worked with their employees to adjust to covid-19 stressors, those who were non-judgmental of their employees needs, and those who focused on checking in with employees with offers to help sort through any problems. I think it speaks volumes about how important it is that those being led feel encouraged by and important to their leader and that taking a moment to be kind and to show compassion matters much more to most employees than having all of the answers or than making periodic mistakes.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
We are in the middle of a time when Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matter is growing with each passing day. There is absolutely nothing I could create or aspire to create that would do more good to the most amount of people than the ending of systemic racism and systemic transphobia. At best, I aspire to encourage others to become more mindful and more willing to become educated on how to bring inclusion and affirmation into the lives and worldviews of our youth. My book “The Educator’s Guide to LGBT+ Inclusion” was written with this goal in mind and we are seeing each day how leaders in this critical crucial life-altering life-saving movement are working not only to change the status quo, but to encourage us all to teach our children better so that they become adults who do better.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. -Audre Lorde
For me, this reminds me to use every position of privilege I have (whether by luck or having been earned) as a way to reach my goals or the goals of those I am leading. It reminds me that, though I may sometimes struggle or fear getting leadership exactly right or hitting every goal exactly perfect, I cannot and should not be rooted in fear. It reminds me that my fear cannot be the reason why I lose vision or why I do not act.
Being a leader is really difficult and sometimes it is scary to know how many are depending on you to know what you are doing and to know how to reach the goal. By acknowledging the reality of the fear and understanding why the fear is not the priority or the most important part of the work, I can be a more successful leader, which means those I am leading can be more successful too.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
My website: ThisIsKryss.com
Twitter: @itsKryss
Instagram: @ThisIsKryss
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kryssshane/ | https://medium.com/authority-magazine/kryss-shane-of-thisiskryss-com-ee608cfe4a35 | ['Alexandra Spirer'] | 2020-07-21 18:10:09.985000+00:00 | ['Authors', 'Feedback', 'Coaching', 'Leadership', 'Lbgtq'] |
The Nazi Who Succeeded Adolf Hitler | The Nazi Who Succeeded Adolf Hitler
Karl Donitz and Adolf Hitler (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/nazi-germanys-leader-admiral-karl-donitz)
Hitler’s suicide in 1945 didn’t end Nazi rule in Germany at once. In fact, prior to his suicide, Hitler had appointed a successor, Karl Donitz, who temporarily served as the new leader. So as to preserve Hitler’s god-like legacy that was cultivated during his leadership, Donitz wasn’t appointed Führer, but instead President of Nazi Germany.
Karl Donitz
Admiral Donitz had served as Supreme Commander of the German Navy, leading the German U-Boat attacks against the Allies, ensuring they didn’t reach mainland Germany by sea. He had served in the navy during the First World War, and Hitler had chosen him to take charge of the Nazi German navy upon his rise to power. He was known as an impressive naval commander during the Second World War, using a technique called the ‘wolfpack’ that involved many U-Boats targeting, overwhelming, and destroying specific Allied ships.
For this, Donitz was held in high regard and gained the respect and trust of Hitler. Similarly, Donitz was a vehement supporter of the Führer and a dedicated and loyal Nazi.
Towards the end of the Second World War, however, the German Navy was showing a growing number of defeats, while the British Royal Air Force bombing raids on German harbours further weakened the navy’s power. Nonetheless, Donitz’s career in the Navy was still acknowledged as immensely impressive, so much so that Hitler decided to appoint him as the leader of Germany just prior to his death. It came as quite a surprise that Hitler’s two closest party officials, Himmler and Goring, were not chosen by Hitler to succeed him as the leader.
On April 30th, 1945, with Nazi defeat imminent as the British, French and Americans closed in on Germany from the West and the Soviets from the East, Adolf Hitler killed himself.
The New Nazi Government
In early May 1945, Donitz set up a new government in the small northern town of Flensburg, just north of Hamburg and on the border of Denmark, establishing a new cabinet to make decisions regarding the proposed post-war Nazi Germany. It was named the Flensburg Government. Academic Chris Madsen states that the Nazi Flensburg government was allowed by the allies to be implemented as a means for the British to allow an orderly transition from Nazi to post-war Germany, noting that Donitz was:
“…not recognised as the legitimate head of state, but was only used temporarily under the instructions of the Allied Commanders, to carry out duties with the feeding, disarmament and medical care of the German armed forces.”
The new Flensburg Government lasted a total of only three weeks, terminating on 23rd May 1945. Donitz’s rule as President of Nazi Germany was short-lived as the allied forces marched into the new government and dissolved it, while at the same time arresting its members for war crimes.
Nazi Germany was no more, the Allies had won, and the war, at least in Europe, was finally over after six long years. Like other Nazi party officials — well, those who hadn’t committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wounds or swallowed cyanide capsules — Donitz was tried at the Nuremberg Trials. Donitz got off lightly. He was sentenced to ten years in prison while the majority of his contemporaries were sentenced to death.
Following his release in 1956, Donitz moved to a town in West Germany, publishing two books on his life and experiences under Hitlers leadership, his time as Supreme Commander and his subsequent brief presidency. He died in 1980. | https://historyofyesterday.com/the-nazi-who-succeeded-adolf-hitler-65659c2d3374 | ['Jack Patrick'] | 2020-11-17 06:03:09.611000+00:00 | ['Nazis', 'Hitler', 'History', 'War', 'World War II'] |
Why American Retirement is Bullsh*t | My accountant died this weekend.
I didn’t even know she was sick.
I found out she had colon cancer and three days after she got the prognosis, bam, she was gone. She was a smoker, gregarious, and to be completely fair, she was funny as f*ck in an accountant sort of way. She’d always leave me odd messages come spring, “Trevor, your taxes are due in one day. Where are you? I’m waiting for you to get your 1099 in. I hope you are living your life better than me in this cold, lifeless, cubicle!” she’d joke.
“Trevor, are you in Africa riding an elephant, where are you?” she would rasp through the phone. “Trevor, I’m not working an all-nighter for you. Please send me your dividend statements immediately.”
Now she’s dead.
I think about her and I wonder: was she happy with her life? Was her passion math? Was she waiting to retire before she went to the Galapagos Islands? What hadn’t she gotten to do that she had always wanted to? Did she ever want to stop smoking?
I don’t know if those were her questions, but I wonder if she was trying to get to that place of American retirement so she could find her own answers. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/why-american-retirement-is-bullsh-t-23ff327fe7e6 | ['Trevor Huffman'] | 2020-10-20 19:05:13.963000+00:00 | ['Startup Lessons', 'Investing', 'Business', 'Self', 'Retirement'] |
3 lessons from a stranger | I’m a wanderlust. I’ve travelled to a lot of places. And each place has something to pull me back. Or someone.
I had my last trip to Vrindavan. It’s a small place, and full of Krishna devotees. In fact, Vrindavan is flocked by tourists and devotees all year. There one can immerse oneself in true Hindu style of worshipping or start from ISCKON ashrams, learn, and then move ahead.
This story revolves around someone I met in one of ISCKON’s ashrams.
There was this guy, middle aged and slim built, sitting on the steps of the porch and reading the English version of Bhagwad Gita- a sacred text of the Hindus. I sat next to him, and was checking my phone. I had clicked some pictures of the ashram and nearby places and was just checking them out. He stole a glance, closed his book and asked me one simple question- why are you here?
This simple question started a discussion which has changed my perspective of almost everything.
I replied to him that I’m on a vacation and I love travelling to new places. I had heard a lot about Vrindavan and hence there I was. He had deep intriguing but calm eyes and a smile one finds soothing.
He asked- so you’ve been to all places here. I nodded a yes. He again asked- what is that one thing abundant in this ashram?
Ok. I was there. And yet I had no answer to this. I replied, in an unsure tone- pictures of Krishna?
Vague.
Think more.
Story of Krishna? His entire journey? All devotees of Krishna? Hymns and chants of Krishna?
No.
Ok. I’m out.
Look everywhere. Everyone here is focussed on one thing. Krishna. Some are through books, some through hymns and chants, and some through idol worshipping while some through meditation.
True.
But why I am being told all these, I wondered. I mean I am also here, focused on Him.
He took me by my hand and invited me to have something with him outside the ashram.
I agreed. We went out and there were many food stalls. He ordered two pomegranate juices. We started to drink it, and just when one starts to enjoy something he stopped me and offered a banana. He insisted me to eat it, and took my glass.
I took a bite and was somehow not liking it. I mean I was enjoying my juice, why asking me to have a banana right then? I can have it later also.
Anyway, I finished eating it and the juice. The juice didn’t give the same feeling again then.
He asked me if I loved animals. Of course, I did. We went to a cow shed and he started feeding them grass. I also stepped in and started to caress the neck of a cow. I asked him to pass a bundle of hay. He didn’t and insisted me to click a picture of him.
Ok.
Fine.
I did and then- upon his annoying insist- I also showed him the pictures I had clicked. He saw, asked a couple of questions-where, when and all- and then asked one more important question.
You wanted hay. Why are you not wanting it now?
Ummm, well because I am showing you pictures.
He sat on the ground, asked me to sit and then taught me a life-changing lesson:
“Give all your time and attention to the act you’ve chosen to do.”
He saw me sitting in the ashram but busy with my phone. He took the juice I was enjoying and gave me a banana-which he noticed I ate unwillingly- and finally distracted me completely from my objective of feeding the cow.
The first one, he said, was showing how impatient and full of unrest my soul was. What is the point of travelling if you’re busy with your phone or any other thing and not the city which is there to give you memories?
Ok, I was offended. I mean, I always thought that I am calm and have control over my thoughts and all. But he proved his point by asking me what was abundant in the ashram. I didn’t know what was happening in the ashram. I was lost! I was busy with something that could have been postponed. And I was losing every single moment that the ashram was giving me to feel, learn, and grow.
The second one, where I was enjoying my juice, showed how stubborn I was. I was too involved in that juice that I didn’t enjoy something that was equally tasty. And then I also didn’t enjoy the juice. What is the point of being so involved in one part of the present that you end up ignoring all those other ones which would also contribute to your future?
I was lost deep in my thoughts. Things were sinking in slowly. I had recently been involved in a nasty divorce. There were fights and just that. I was so involved in proving my point, in fighting, that I completely forgot that there was a marriage too. A bond beyond and beside those fights. I kept ignoring that and eventually lost it all. I was too involved only with one part. Unfortunately, that one part was leading downhill.
The last one -the one where he distracted me- showed that I was lacking integrity.
That did hurt. But I was ready to hear it.
He didn’t say anything. I did ask how it showed that I lacked integrity. He didn’t answer. He just smiled.
I have been pondering over every single word that he had said.
Truth is so near us, yet we are in oblivion.
I’ve mended my relationship (or whatever is left of it) with my ex-wife, use a simple feature phone so as not to get distracted by all the notifications and all, and I’m more into feeling than thinking.
I don’t know whether I’m happier but sure I do know that I’m more content now. More satisfied with myself, my work, my travelling, and my relations.
Thank you stranger! | https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/3-lessons-from-a-stranger-87e77fe7d65d | ['Sudipto Adhicary'] | 2016-02-18 02:26:47.122000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Fiction', 'Short Story'] |
Distributed, Trustless Timestamps | Distributed, Trustless Timestamps
How adding the blockchain creates advantages over traditional PKI techniques.
For some engineers, it’s galling to see the blockchain being used as a notary to log non-financial transactions, particularly when Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) seems to have already solved the problems for making verified claims. While PKI alone could be used, we found that adding the blockchain provides a technical missing piece that results in better characteristics for both Issuers and Recipients of digital credentials.
In 2016, when we began collaborating on the Blockcerts standard, the cornerstone of the project was to create a recipient-centric approach for issuing official records, consistent with the principles of self-sovereign identity. This resulted in digital credentials needing to have the following characteristics:
Independence: The recipient owns the credential, and does not require the issuer or 3rd party to be involved after receiving the credential.
The recipient owns the credential, and does not require the issuer or 3rd party to be involved after receiving the credential. Ownership: The recipient may prove ownership of the credential
The recipient may prove ownership of the credential Control: The recipient has control over how they curate credentials they own. They may choose to associate credentials with an established profile they own, or not.
The recipient has control over how they curate credentials they own. They may choose to associate credentials with an established profile they own, or not. Verifiability: The credential must be verifiable by 3rd parties, even within a trustless environment.
The credential must be verifiable by 3rd parties, even within a trustless environment. Permanence: The credential must be a permanent record that can reliably last a lifetime.
At the same time, we learned the following characteristics are needed for the credentialing system to be useful to an Issuer:
Proof: Issuer must be able to prove they issued the credential.
Issuer must be able to prove they issued the credential. Expiration: Issuer must be able to set expiration date of credential.
Issuer must be able to set expiration date of credential. Revocation: Issuer must be able to revoke credentials.
Issuer must be able to revoke credentials. Security: The system is secure and imposes minimal ongoing burden.
Additionally, if the credential is going to have utility for 3rd parties, they must be convinced of the credential’s veracity:
Integrity: The content of the credential hasn’t been altered.
The content of the credential hasn’t been altered. Authenticity: The Issuer is who the certificate claims and has not been forged.
The Timestamp and Key Rotation
A reliable timestamp is clearly important in the case of a credential that expires, but an independently stored timestamp is also critical for Issuers to rotate their issuing keys — a security requirement.
Verifying a credential requires checking that it originated from a particular Issuer while that issuing key was valid. This requires knowledge of the timestamp beyond anything written into the credential itself.
Why?
If a private key is ever compromised, nothing prevents an attacker from issuing fake credentials and backdating in the content. Even if an Issuer publicly revoked those fake credentials, an independent verifier would not know the difference between a valid and invalid credential, unless there were some reliable source of when the transaction took place. In traditional PKI techniques, this could be done through use of a time stamping authority (TSA), but that places a dependency on a trusted third party.
On the other hand, the blockchain provides a permanent and trusted timestamp by design. To undermine this timestamp would require massive computational effort — rewriting the entire blockchain — to tamper with data before a certain point. So, the blockchain provides an independent timestamp for when each credential was conferred to a Recipient. This ultimately gives Issuers the ability to rotate their issuing keys without undermining the ability of 3rd parties to reliably verify transactions.
Furthermore, the blockchain is a distributed ledger that does not depend on any trusted party like a Certificate Authority. The effect is improved availability, the capacity to independently verify, and redundancy that avoids single points of failure.
Overall, the blockchain offers promising enhancements over traditional PKI techniques which help reach security goals while enabling individuals to hold their own official records, independent of any authority. | https://medium.com/learning-machine-blog/trusted-timestamps-bbeb3d29cc0 | ['Learning Machine Is Now Hyland Credentials'] | 2017-03-26 21:02:46.917000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Software Development', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
Crisis of Confidence: The crash of Air Algérie flight 6289 | Rescuers swarm the crash site of Air Algérie flight 6289 in search of survivors. (CNN)
On the 6th of March 2003, an Air Algérie Boeing 737 lifted off from the runway in the remote Saharan city of Tamanrasset, bound for Ghardaïa and Algiers. But within seconds of becoming airborne, the plane’s left engine failed, plunging the pilots into an emergency situation for which they were not prepared. Witnesses watched in horror as the plane climbed to 400 feet, stalled, and plunged into the desert, where it erupted in flames. As rescuers rushed to the scene, they found that an explosion had totally consumed the plane, along with everyone inside it. But it just so happened that one man wasn’t in the plane — a 28-year-old soldier, seated in the very last row, had been thrown from the aircraft on impact and emerged as the only survivor out of 103 passengers and crew. The clues explaining why they died lay strewn across the Sahara Desert, and it would be up to investigators to figure out what went wrong with the engine — and with the crew. But some aspects of the investigation were woefully incomplete, and an in-depth analysis suggests there may be more to the story of why 102 people died on Air Algérie flight 6289.
7T-VEZ, the Boeing 737–200 involved in the accident. (Ken Fielding)
Air Algérie is the state-owned flag carrier of the North African nation of Algeria. Algeria is known as a relatively stable country today, but in 2003, it had only just emerged from 11 years of civil war that resulted in numerous high-profile terrorist attacks and aircraft hijackings. Air Algérie’s fleet was outdated and in questionable condition; it would be another decade before it acquired the capital to upgrade to modern airliners. The workhorse of its domestic fleet was the Boeing 737–200, the earliest generation of the ubiquitous model, which was powered by two cigar-shaped Pratt & Whitney JT-8D engines.
View over Tamanrasset, 2016. (Habib Kaki)
It was one of these 737–200s that was scheduled to carry out a domestic flight from the city of Tamanrasset to the capital, Algiers, with a stopover in Ghardaïa on the 6th of March, 2003. Located near the geographical center of the Sahara Desert some 1,600 kilometers south of Algiers, Tamanrasset is among the most remote cities on earth. The city was originally a military outpost built to protect Trans-Sahara caravan routes, and only began to see permanent settlement under French rule in 1915. Despite its inhospitable location, the population of the city has grown to 76,000 today, making it the largest inhabited place in the Central Sahara, and it remains a key transportation hub — no longer serving traditional caravans, it instead serves as a major stop on the Trans-Sahara Highway, one of the only roads across the desert that is paved most of the way.
Route of Air Algérie flight 6289. (Google)
Just outside town alongside the Trans-Sahara highway is Tamanrasset’s Aguenar Airport, where Air Algérie flight 6289 prepared to depart for Ghardaïa and Algiers on the 6th of March. The plane was nearly full, with 97 passengers and six crew on board, including dozens of Algerians and a smaller number of Europeans. The captain’s name has not been released, but it is known that he had been flying since 1979 and had over 10,000 flying hours, of which about 1,000 were on the Boeing 737. Although the practice was banned under international rules, he had also been flying as a first officer on the Boeing 767 at the same time, despite the two planes not sharing a common type rating.
His first officer that day was Fatima Yousfi, who was notable for becoming the first woman ever to fly for an Algerian airline when she got her license in the late 1990s. By 2003 she had accumulated about 5,200 hours, including around 1,300 on the 737, which she had been flying for around six months longer than the captain had.
Undated photo of Fatima Yousfi. I was unable to find any pictures of the captain, or even his name. (Save Me organization, via Facebook)
As flight 6289 waited at the gate, First Officer Yousfi found herself alone on the flight deck, as the captain was running late. She ran through the pre-departure calculations herself, and was about ready to start the pre-flight briefing when the captain arrived in the cockpit with a flight attendant in tow. As he and Yousfi started up the engines, the captain kept talking to the flight attendant, in violation of the sterile cockpit rule, which prohibits non-essential conversation between engine start and 10,000 feet. The pre-flight briefing, which would have gone over emergency procedures (such as what to do if an engine fails after takeoff) fizzled out before getting to any of the most important items.
At around 3:08 p.m., the crew finished up their calculations and taxied to the runway. The plane was almost at its maximum takeoff weight, the airfield elevation was over 1,300 meters, and the temperature was rather high — all factors that meant they would need to extract maximum performance to get the airplane off the ground. But both pilots had taken off from Tamanrasset many times before, and they were quite familiar with the unfavorable conditions often encountered in the Sahara.
At 3:12 p.m., the tower cleared flight 6289 to take off on runway 02, and the crew acknowledged. The captain delegated responsibility for the takeoff to First Officer Yousfi, who would be the pilot flying for the leg to Ghardaïa.
“Come on, let’s go. Let’s take off,” said the captain.
Yousfi pushed the throttles to takeoff power and the plane rumbled off down the runway.
“You have 90, 100 [knots],” the captain said, calling out their airspeed.
Seconds later, he called out, “V1, rotate.” They were now past the point at which the takeoff could be aborted. In response to the command to rotate, First Officer Yousfi pulled back on the controls, and the 737 lifted off the runway.
“Gear up,” she ordered.
But before the captain could reach for the landing gear lever, a series of loud bangs rang out from the left engine. Inside the engine, fatigue cracks in a blade of the stage 1 nozzle guide vane in the high pressure turbine had reached the breaking point. A large section of the guide vane broke away, causing a chain reaction failure of both the high pressure and low pressure turbines. As ground-up bits of the turbines spewed out onto the runway behind them, the engine began to lose power, and the plane started yawing to the left due to the sudden thrust imbalance. “Bismi allah, bismi allah, bismi allah!” First Officer Yousfi quickly exclaimed. “What’s this? What’s happening?”
Location and function of nozzle guide vanes on ajet engine (not a JT-8D). (Model Aircraft blog)
At this point she needed to immediately initiate the engine failure on takeoff procedure, which all pilots should have memorized: reduce the pitch angle to maintain V2 (rotation speed), raise the landing gear, increase thrust on the remaining engine, and use the rudder to counter the yaw. But before she could do any of these things — before either pilot had even identified the left engine as the source of the problem — the captain said, “Let go, let go!” Having realized that an emergency was occurring, it seemed that he wanted to take control of the airplane.
“I’ve let go, I’ve let go,” said Yousfi.
“Let go!” the captain repeated.
“Gear up, or….?” Yousfi began to ask.
But the captain didn’t reply. He seemed to be focused on trying to fly a normal climb profile, keeping the pitch attitude firmly at 18 degrees. With a failed engine, however, he needed to keep the pitch angle below 12 degrees in order to avoid losing speed. As the plane’s one remaining engine struggled to push the plane up at such a steep angle, their speed began to fall rapidly. At the same time, the right engine mysteriously began to lose power as well — not because there was anything wrong with it, but because someone in the cockpit was moving the throttle lever.
Data from a simulation of the flight run by Boeing shows the plane’s altitude, airspeed, engine thrust, and roll angle during its brief flight. (Boeing)
As flight 6289 soared toward its brief zenith, First Officer Yousfi keyed her mic and said to the tower, “We have a small problem, 6230 [sic]!”
The captain still seemed to think she was trying to fly the plane. “Let go, remove your hand!” he said.
“I’ve let go, I’ve let go!” Yousfi insisted again.
“Remove your hand!” the captain repeated.
“I’ve let go!” said Yousfi.
Suddenly, the speed of the airplane dropped low enough to trigger the stick shaker, warning the pilots of an impending stall. Seconds later, unable to continue climbing so steeply with only one engine at a low thrust setting, the plane stalled at a height of 400 feet and began to fall from the sky.
“DON’T SINK!” the ground proximity warning system called out.
“Please!” shouted First Officer Yousfi.
“Remove your hand!” the captain insisted.
“DON’T SINK,” said the GPWS.
Suddenly, at a height of 335 feet above the ground, both black boxes mysteriously lost power and stopped recording. What the pilots said in the final moments of the flight will never be known. But by this point, there was nothing they could do anyway: just seconds later, with its nose pitched high and its right wing hanging low, flight 6289 slammed into the desert just past the end of the runway and burst into flames. The plane slid across the Trans-Sahara Highway and came to rest a few hundred meters further on, totally consumed in flames.
My sketch of the final seconds of flight 6289. (Own work)
Upon witnessing the accident, controllers activated the emergency alarm and firefighters rushed to the scene, arriving some three and a half minutes after the crash. They found that although the main fuselage was largely intact — only the cockpit, tail, and wings had broken away — the intense fire triggered by the plane’s full fuel load had already rendered survival impossible. Those passengers who might have survived the relatively low-speed impact most likely perished within seconds as the raging inferno consumed the plane. It was then that they found one man clinging to life — not inside the plane, but in the sand, well back from the place where the wreckage came to rest. The man was a 28-year-old Algerian soldier who was returning to his barracks after spending his leave in Tamanrasset; he had found himself seated in the very last row and was thrown from the plane when the tail section broke away on impact. Firefighters found him lying unconscious with weak signs of life, and ambulances rushed him to hospital in critical condition. Despite his dire state, however, within hours his condition stabilized and he began to recover. His luck cannot be overstated: he was the only survivor out of 103 passengers and crew, a death toll which made this Algeria’s worst ever air disaster at the time.
Rescuers swarm the crash site of Air Algérie flight 6289 in search of survivors. (CNN)
Responsibility for investigating the accident fell to a special Commission of Inquiry established by the Algerian Ministry of Transport and led by the sitting Transport Minister, as Algeria did not have a dedicated aircraft accident investigation agency. The Commission of Inquiry soon found that the plane’s left engine had failed due to fatigue cracks in one of the blades of the stage 1 nozzle guide vane, which directs the flow of air from the combustion chamber into the high pressure turbine. The fatigue cracks had been caused by thermal damage associated with age: the engine had accumulated over 20,000 flight cycles and hadn’t been overhauled since 1999. The failure of the blade resulted in severe damage to “downstream” components that rendered the engine unable to produce any appreciable amount of power. Investigators also found similar cracks on the nozzle guide vanes in the right engine, although these had not yet progressed to failure. But the investigation didn’t appear to dig any deeper than this: despite these findings raising serious questions about Air Algérie’s engine maintenance and inspection practices, the final report included nothing about these topics at all.
Another photo of rescuers at the crash site. (Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)
However, an engine failure alone shouldn’t cause an accident. Like all airliners, the Boeing 737–200 is certified to climb on only one engine, even at max takeoff weight, so there wasn’t really any reason that this should have led to a loss of control. On the other hand, it was true that responding to this failure would have required very prompt action on the part of the pilots. This was a worst-case-scenario engine failure: right after liftoff while near the max takeoff weight with the gear extended on a high-altitude runway in hot weather (note that takeoff performance is inversely correlated with both altitude and temperature). Although the plane could climb, the performance margins were slim.
Nevertheless, a well-trained crew that was on top of its game could have easily handled the failure, climbed to a safe altitude, turned around, and put the plane on the ground without any great difficulty. The problem was that this crew was not at all well-prepared. The first officer’s abortive attempt at a pre-flight briefing was cut short, apparently because the captain preferred to spend his time chatting with the flight attendants. Perhaps the most important part of this briefing is the discussion of what to do in the event of an engine failure after decision speed (or V1). Normally, pilots would discuss the correct speed and angle of climb, the proper aircraft configuration, who will fly the airplane, and other aspects of safely handling an engine failure on takeoff. The purpose of this exercise is to prime the pilots so that they can react almost instinctively if such a failure occurs. The fact that this crew never finished the pre-flight briefing shows that they did not place much weight on the possibility that they could encounter an engine failure on takeoff — even though this is probably the most common out of all the serious failures that a pilot might encounter in his or her career. This lack of appreciation for the importance of the briefing most likely originated from the broader culture at Air Algérie, but once again, the Commission of Inquiry seemed to have nothing to say about this.
The wreckage came to rest at the end of a long trail of blackened sand and scattered debris. (BEA)
After the plane took off, the engine failed right as the first officer called for “gear up.” This was an extremely critical juncture that the crew — especially the captain — botched badly. Instead of scanning the instruments to figure out what had gone wrong, which was his duty as pilot not flying, the captain’s first instinct was to demand that First Officer Yousfi relinquish control of the airplane. This was quite possibly the worst decision he could have made, short of flying the plane straight into the ground. In such a critical situation, the last thing a crew should do is execute a control handover. Yousfi was hand-flying the plane at that moment, and she was the one with the instinctive “feel” for what it was doing; her role was clearly defined, and so was the captain’s. He should have looked at his instruments and announced “failure, left engine,” which would prompt First Officer Yousfi to follow the engine failure procedures that she had presumably committed to memory. Instead, he created a fog of confusion from which neither pilot ever recovered, losing precious seconds trying to build up an awareness of the airplane’s energy state that Yousfi probably was well on her way to acquiring already.
After taking control of the plane, the captain did almost nothing to handle its dire energy state. He didn’t attempt to achieve the proper single-engine climb speed or pitch attitude and he didn’t respond to Yousfi’s suggestion that they retract the landing gear (an action which would have decreased drag and increased the plane’s performance). In fact, the captain and the first officer never discussed the warnings and instrument indications they were receiving and never tried to determine the nature of the problem. Instead, the captain spent the rest of the brief flight trying to get Yousfi to give up control, even though she insisted she had already done so. By the time the plane began to stall, it was already too late; the only way to recover was to sacrifice altitude for speed by pitching down, and they were only at 400 feet, too low to avoid striking the ground during a stall recovery maneuver. The captain went to his grave holding the pitch attitude at a firm 18 degrees nose up while yelling at Yousfi to “let go” of the controls.
The Commission of Inquiry did not expend much time trying to explain this ridiculous behavior, but there is enough evidence to do a little bit more speculation ourselves. First of all, why did the captain want to take over control in the first place? The commission wrote that he might have observed the first officer struggling to control the plane, or he might have felt it was his duty as captain to take over during an emergency. To this I would add a third contributing factor: he might not have trusted the first officer to handle the failure. His very first priority as soon as something went wrong was not to determine the source of the problem, but to make sure that First Officer Yousfi was not the one flying the plane. This reaction only makes sense if he believed Yousfi was incapable of handling the situation, and that she, not the failure, was the most immediate source of danger. There was no evidence to suggest that this belief was accurate: Yousfi actually had more hours on the 737 than he did, and she had done her best to stick to procedures up to that point; it was the captain who broke protocol and interrupted the pre-flight briefing. Instead, it seems likely that the captain was distrusting of first officers on principle — especially if that first officer was a woman, given that Algeria is a highly patriarchal society.
Over the seconds which followed the initial control handover, the captain continued to ask Yousfi to let go of the controls, while she repeatedly stated that she had already done so. This confusion is difficult to understand, but there are some plausible explanations. If we assume that the captain took over control because he distrusted the first officer’s ability, it’s possible that when he immediately experienced difficulty controlling the plane, he thought it was because Yousfi was still trying to make control inputs. Evidently he did not actually look at what she was doing (this seems more likely than the alternative, which is that Yousfi was lying about having let go), perhaps because he was struggling to maintain the normal climb profile.
From this angle, it can be seen that the cockpit was largely intact, and the cabin and tail came to rest nearby, but were consumed by fire. (Algerie 360)
A key element of this scenario is the possibility that the pilots never figured out that an engine had failed. At no point on the cockpit voice recording does either pilot ever mention the engines. No one calls for engine-out emergency procedures or follows the engine-failure-on-takeoff memory items. No one tries to shut down the failed engine. In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever that either pilot knew an engine had failed. Such a situation could have arisen due to the botched control handover, which left both crewmembers unsure who was supposed to be monitoring the instruments — the captain might have thought this would be the first officer’s duty as pilot-not-flying, while the first officer might have thought the captain already knew what to do because he volunteered to take control so quickly. If no one ever looked at the engine gauges, the source of the problem might well have remained unclear right up until the end.
Another possibility is that they knew an engine had failed, but one of the pilots reduced power to the wrong engine by accident. The reduction in thrust on the right engine after the failure of the left engine makes no sense given the circumstances, but the Commission of Inquiry didn’t try to explain this bizarre occurrence. There have been a number of cases where a pilot rolled back or entirely shut off the wrong engine during an engine failure after failing to take sufficient time to examine the instruments. This could well have happened here, as the captain quickly took over without first assessing the situation, potentially causing him to make an incorrect snap judgment about which engine had failed. This would potentially explain the failure of both flight recorders before the plane hit the ground — on the 737, if both engines stop generating electrical power and the auxiliary power unit is not brought online, the black boxes will lose power and stop recording. However, proving this theory would be difficult; the plane had a very outdated flight data recorder that only tracked six parameters, so details like control column forces and throttle positions were not recorded. Had this information been available, it might have been easier to determine whether the pilots misidentified which engine was malfunctioning or whether they were both trying to control the plane simultaneously.
Another view of the cockpit. Although the cockpit is deceptively intact, this doesn’t mean that impact forces didn’t kill both pilots instantly. (Algerie Presse Service)
Regardless of the details of how they lost control, one thing is clear: neither pilot was prepared for the engine failure. And responsibility for that lack of preparation must fall on Air Algérie, which should have instilled crews with a healthy respect for the various ways in which things can go wrong. Indeed, for pilots around the world, the crash of flight 6289 should serve as a reminder that the worst case scenario really can happen, and every pilot must be ready at all times. The pre-flight briefing requires repeating the engine-failure-on-takeoff procedures before every single flight precisely because you only have a few seconds to react should you find yourself in the situation faced by the crew of flight 6289.
In its final report, the Commission of Inquiry issued four recommendations: that Air Algérie provide better training on when and how to perform handovers of control; that all Algerian flight crews be subject to a one-time assessment of their compliance with procedures; that Air Algérie put in place a safety analysis program that can make use of anonymous reports and flight recorder data to identify unsafe trends; and perhaps most critically, that the Ministry of Transport create an independent agency to investigate plane crashes.
A memorial to the 102 victims now stands at the site of the crash, on the shoulder of the Trans-Sahara highway. (Mechri Omar)
While these recommendations were on point, it is unfortunately true that the Commission of Inquiry could have done a lot more to understand the causes of the accident. Asking why the pilots failed to follow the procedures is critical to preventing other pilots from making the same mistakes, but this investigation failed to do that. I have offered some informed speculation about potential thought processes that could explain their actions, but this cannot replace the more scientific analysis performed by trained investigators that should have been carried out by the commission. Many other areas also could have been explored. Was Air Algérie inspecting its engines properly? Why was the captain flying two different aircraft types at once? Answering these questions would have done much to improve aviation safety in Algeria. In the absence of reforms, it’s unclear that safety in Algeria is improving. In 2014, a Swiftair MD-83 operating on behalf of Air Algérie crashed in Mali with the loss of all 116 passengers and crew. And in 2018, in what is probably Africa’s worst air disaster, 257 soldiers and crewmembers died when an Algerian military transport plane crashed shortly after takeoff in the town of Boufarik. Despite these accidents, it does not appear that Algeria has heeded the commission’s recommendation to set up an independent accident investigation agency, a step that has led to significantly better investigation outcomes in dozens of countries all over the world. It is clear that if a repeat of the crash of Air Algérie flight 6289 is to be avoided, more work will need to be done.
________________________________________________________________
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How to Deal When Doing the ‘Right’ Thing Becomes a Wrong Turn | How to Deal When Doing the ‘Right’ Thing Becomes a Wrong Turn
When you accept that doing the right thing doesn’t mean circumstances are always going to go your way, you breathe a sigh of relief.
By Kara Post-Kennedy
About a year ago, I sent a seemingly perfectly healthy child to school and picked up a boy that afternoon with symptoms so alarming (to me, he was not overly concerned) I brought him into the doctor a few hours later. I am a no-stone-unturned and no-time-like-the-present sort of gal. His pediatrician confirmed a bacterial infection and prescribed antibiotics.
I drove him to the pharmacy with a strong sense of being a superhero mom, and even treated him to take-out Chinese, so great was my feeling of “mission accomplished without even breaking a sweat.” End of story, right? Yeah, I wish.
A few days on the antibiotics and things are about the same; he remains unconcerned, so I take my cue from that. Then Friday, day three, I get a call from the nurse at school — my son is in her office, in pain, and she is understandably worried. I pick him up and get him home for the weekend with pain relievers and ice packs and now I am Googling. Yeah, I know — always a mistake.
His symptoms should be getting better by now, Google informs me. Maybe these symptoms are pointing to a much scarier diagnosis, Google warns. If you don’t catch it in time, there could be the direst of consequences, Google threatens.
Now the boy (who also has access to Google, or “The Great Santa-Slayer”, as I like to call it) is getting alarmed. His symptoms are not only NOT improving, they are actually marginally worse; in fact, there are some NEW symptoms. He is freaking out, I am trying to play it cool — surely, this is nothing catastrophic–and no good has ever come of Googling symptoms; we can convince ourselves of any malady if we obsess over it enough.
Nevertheless, Monday the follow-up call to the doctor is made; and although done without any overwhelming sense of urgency I detect, an ultrasound is ordered and scheduled for the next day. To “rule out” any of those other possibly devastating diagnosis. Truthfully, I don’t have much of a poker face, but I summoned every ounce of my will to present confidence and reassurance to my son; we will get answers, we will heal him.
And as the next day dawned, my front became my reality — a calm descended and that reassuring mantra repeated on a loop in my brain. If you saw us in the hospital, you would have believed we were there on a lark; smiling, joking, hugging as we made our way through the corridors. We were there to get answers; we were there to heal him.
Very fortunately, the answer was this: he will be just fine. We needed to tackle the infection with a stronger antibiotic and within a day we could see signs of his symptoms abating. His physical symptoms, that is.
Because my son had caught something more powerful than a bacterial infection; he had caught a bug we call ANXIETY.
To be clear, my boy has always been an easy-going, even-tempered, happy-go-lucky child. Even as a toddler, if you can imagine such a thing. No grabbing, no pushing (well, once, but that’s another story. A GREAT story, actually), no demands, no tantrums. On the rare occasion that something displeased or upset him, his reaction was generally appropriate and he was always responsive to reason.
But this illness caused a tear in his worldview — he believed, and had consistently confirmed, that when you “do the right thing”, you get the “right” results. Yeah, I know. I guess most children figure out the whole “life isn’t fair” before the tween years, but most children have siblings, and NOBODY ON EARTH can drive that point home quicker than a sibling, amiright???
The expediency with which we had addressed the problem (going to the doctor) and the seeming surety of the solution (antibiotics are magic!) had accounted for his breezy attitude in the first few days of his illness — we had done the “right thing” right away. The fact that the foolproof solution had not only failed to yield positive results but seemed to be distinctly edging his recovery in the wrong direction was more than discouraging to him — it was frightening. What role his swirling fear and rising anxiety played in those worsening symptoms we will never know, but what I do know is this: even after his recovery was reassured by the ultrasound and the palliative effects of his new medication were clear, he STILL FELT ANXIOUS.
As a parent, I believe most of us try to impart to our young children a sense that we are a sure thing. We will have answers, we will have comfort, we will provide support and encouragement and we will always be there. We try to make them feel that with us, they are 100% safe and secure.
In other words, we lie.
And just like (damn, you!) Google unmasked Santa Claus, this experience taught him the hard truth: there are no guarantees. And even when we do our best we can fail. And even when we seek the assistance of “experts” like doctors, they can make mistakes (like prescribing the wrong medication) that impact us negatively.
In other words, this was a game-changer.
So we talked it out; I told him that stress and anxiety, so new to him, are actually a pretty normal part of the human experience. I also told him that “negative” emotions, like sadness and fear, can often serve a positive purpose. Most importantly I told him that the fact that we can “do the right thing” and still find things take a wrong turn is actually great news.
He had a bit of trouble with that last part there, understandably.
But here’s the truth: when we do our very best and still “fail”, we learn a really gorgeous lesson…that is, that perfection isn’t a “thing”, at least not for us mere mortals. AND (spoiler alert!) sometimes we TOTALLY and COMPLETELY SCREW UP and have things work out just fine. You know it happens; more often than not, actually.
When you accept that doing the right thing doesn’t mean circumstances are always going to go your way, you breathe a sigh of relief. Because the pressure is off to “do the right thing”. And, as John Steinbeck wisely put it, “now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
My son is back to being his happy, good-natured self. At the same time, he has changed; he has assimilated this new learning for better and for worse. He knows that he doesn’t have to be perfect, AND he knows that sometimes, sh*t happens; a lot of times, in fact.
And I learned something, too: my tween doesn’t need a “superhero mom” any more than he needs Santa Claus. He needs a real-live human Mother who says, “Hey, I get anxious too. I make mistakes too. I get scared and frustrated too. And I don’t have all the answers. But if we need answers, I will leave no-stone-unturned to find them with you.” He needs to know perfection isn’t a “thing” and my desire to give him a “perfect” childhood, while understandable and sweet, is misguided.
It devastated me to see my son, my sweet baby, so anxious and afraid. But he got through it and now he has a much bigger coping skills toolbox than before. When we try to make things “perfect” for our kids, we rob them of the opportunity to face challenges and learn that they are equal to them; we rob them of experiences necessary to thrive in the world.
Sometimes we do what we think is “right” and it goes “wrong” — or does it?
Maybe we just needed a not-so-gentle reminder that adversity provides the building blocks for our soul; that grit is as much a part of great character as compassion. Maybe we need to understand that perfection is not a “thing” because perfection is BORING. Maybe we need a wake-up call that no matter how hard we try to “do the right thing”, life is messy, unpredictable and glorious because of it; and sometimes a “wrong turn” can be the beginning of a great adventure.
Maybe we needed a reminder that every great story has beginning, middle and an END. And it is the fact that there is an end that gives true meaning to the beginning and the middle. And there is no truly “right” thing to do, but follow your heart and know that in the end, all will be well.
—
This story was originally published on Your New Best Friend and republished on The Good Men Project. | https://medium.com/change-becomes-you/how-to-deal-when-doing-the-right-thing-becomes-a-wrong-turn-a8c56407ff9f | ['The Good Men Project'] | 2020-06-26 12:26:00.944000+00:00 | ['Happiness', 'Health', 'Mental Health', 'Self Acceptance', 'Anxiety'] |
Is time an illusion? | Is time an illusion?
“The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Albert Einstein. Many great minds and spiritual teachers have advised that “Now” is the only reality that exists. I have tried on many occasions to be more present. . . to get into the flow of the now without much success. It’s like trying to achieve enlightenment, or deep sleep, or an orgasm, the harder you try, the more elusive the outcome. All that being said, I am still being given the opportunity to experience the power of the present.
About 15 years ago, I was inspired to create a healing center, where people of all walks of life and varying resources could have access to healing. I set off on creating the center and after about 18 months, I resigned myself to failure and settled for a “real job.” Writing prescriptions for drugs that I don’t believe in and working within a dysfunctional system that creates far more disease than health. I would have moments of inspiration to do something different, but the memory of my failure wouldn’t let me get very far. It was like being haunted by hungry ghosts.
In 2020, the inspiration to create a healing center came again and with the whole world in a collective pandemic reboot, it gave me just enough time and energy to nurture the inspiration and begin taking action. Yet at every step the hungry ghosts of failures past have been chasing me. Fear, shame, imposter-syndrome, anxiety, people pleasing, etc. While there has been financial expense associated with my vision, the mental and emotional costs these ghosts demand has been by far the biggest daily drain on my resources.
Which brings me back to the illusion of time. If the past and the future truly are illusions, then the idea of past failure is also an illusion. I realize that my future self doesn’t trust my past self but both of these “selves” exist only as an idea in the now. So what to do when faced with an unsolvable problem? Get creative!
I am creating a meeting place in my heart and mind where these imaginary selves can hang out and befriend one another. At first it seemed weird, but I think about my past self and my future self all of the time, so why not think about them both showing up in the only place that really exists. . . now?
It is too soon to say if this solution will work. At present, these two imaginary selves don’t seem that interested in each other, but I have a hunch that if my past and my future selves can ever become friends, the healing center just might happen too. | https://medium.com/@lorasolomon/is-time-an-illusion-93c79ec8ca37 | [] | 2020-12-26 15:27:37.473000+00:00 | ['Illusions', 'Time', 'Meditation', 'Healing'] |
The Constitutional Amendment That Needs More Attention | In rural Indonesia, under the heat of the waning sun, eight people were seen digging holes. Graves. The graves were to be used by people who had recently died from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Their crime? Being caught not wearing a mask in public.
CNN called the punishment “unique”. I called the punishment unusual.
For the first time in recent memory, I was grateful for the under appreciated words of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution which protects me and millions like me, from being forced to abide by unusual punishments.
In an era of intense public shaming and amidst ongoing discussions about bail and criminal justice reform, I think many of us would benefit from relearning, absorbing and appreciating the words of the Eighth Amendment.
Our shortest right
The Bill of Rights includes the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution that were ratified after its initial passing. Of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights, the Eighth Amendment is the shortest. It is only sixteen words long.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. — Amendment VIII, US Constitution
While other amendments such as the first, second and fourth often take up the bulk of our political and historical discourse, the Eight Amendment is extremely important and could definitely see new life in America today.
CNN seems to think that being forced to dig graves for your peers, in an era of mass death tolls and ominous government seizures of power, is simply an exercise of “empathy” and “manual labor”. I thought it to be unusual at best and cruel at worst.
In fact, being forced to dig graves has long been a punishment used in connection to psychological torture events such as mock executions. It was a favored method of punishment and torture used by ISIS in the Middle East.
Fortunately in this country, we have the sixteen words of the Eighth Amendment ensuring that something like this could not happen here.
Excessive bail and fines
Most people are taught that we are protected from cruel and unusual punishment, even if they don’t know exactly where that protection comes from. I would wager a guess that most people do not know that they should also be protected from excessive bail and fines.
What makes bail excessive? Who determines what is excessive and what isn’t?
These are questions that I have had more and more frequently as of late. Is a million dollars an excessive amount? How about being held without any bail at all? Is infinite bail excessive?
I think in an era where questions like this are moving quickly to the forefront of people’s minds there is ample room to invoke the Eighth Amendment.
As a political scientist and history writer, I fully believe that working on precedent and established documents is a much better option than trying to forge something new. At least, if the system is working properly, it should be.
Perhaps instead of launching massive anti-bail campaigns, we can open lawsuits aimed at getting a modern clarification or interpretation on what counts as excessive bail. The Constitution is clear, we are protected from having excessive bail levied against us.
So where is this protection?
Unfortunately, many jurisdictions, judges and government agencies seem completely fine with allowing massive bail numbers to be set for people. In their minds, it is not excessive. But I can promise them that someone living below the poverty line being slapped with a $500,000 bail amount is definitely going to look, sound and feel excessive.
The problem is, if you start mouthing off about your Eighth Amendment rights to a cop on the street or a judge in the courtroom you are likely to get slapped, physically or otherwise.
So what can we do?
Lawyers for civil rights groups need to start invoking the Eighth Amendment more often and more aggressively. There needs to be a public awareness campaign about your civil rights as written in the Constitution. People should start using this amendment as frequently as people bring up the first or second amendments. It often feels like once you get past the first couple of amendments, people lose interest.
The authors of the Eighth Amendment did not mince words. It says it right there in black and white. Excessive bail shall not be required. Shall not. Be. Required.
So why is that so often the case?
I think given the right amount of attention and energy, this issue could be solved. It ties in so nicely with already existing movements against cash bail, against police brutality and against institutionalized racism that it should be a slam dunk. It already says it in the Constitution and the Constitution applies to all of us. Someone just needs to remind the people in Washington and down at central that the Constitution still exists and can still be enforced.
Remember your rights
Too often I feel as though the Constitution is seen as a “right wing thing”. People on the right go to the Constitution often when it comes to gun rights and religious rights. And you know what? They win often.
That is because the Constitution protects all of us. It is a tool for all Americans.
Yet, there are many today who do not want to use the Constitution to help solve their problems.
I’m not sure why so many people seem to write off the Constitution completely. There are good things in there, things we can use today even if you disagree with parts of it, use the parts that are favorable to your advantage.
Looking at the pictures of the poor Indonesians being forced to dig graves, I am grateful for our Constitution. Then I look and see that someone caught with cash and meth is being held on $250,000 bail and I think that there is more to be done.
The Eighth Amendment deserves its time in the sun. It deserves to be appreciated and it deserves to be used as a legal cudgel to bang against the cell walls of excessive bail that is plaguing this nation.
You are allowed to plead the fourth and you are allowed to plead the fifth. Maybe someday we will be allowed to also plead the eighth. | https://medium.com/carre4/the-constitutional-amendment-that-needs-more-attention-20eca685780f | ['Grant Piper'] | 2020-09-26 03:23:12.060000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'USA', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Justice', 'Constitution'] |
Telifie, who we are | Hey! We’re Telifie, the maker of the smart home drive in Dayton, Ohio. Telifie was created to eliminate the monthly subscriptions cloud storage services charge and give more features to users with more privacy and security!
The Device
Telifie comes in 256GB, 512GB and 1024GB sizes. WiFi is required for setup and, after that, you can connect it to your smart phone for faster access when you’re at home. Our servers act as a middleman for transferring files so your content is never stored permanently in the cloud. Pick a color for the lights that show when you’re using Telifie, or sometimes things look better with the lights off if you’d like.
Smart home dashboard
Our smart home dashboard gives you the capability of presenting your files from our apps on your TV and you can get notifications, stay up-to-date on the weather, and so much more with updates free forever. Connect the Telifie to surround sound with the aux port (that’s right, an aux port) and make a smart speaker system and play music through the Telifie with your phone. You can use it without the TV too!
Access
Our apps require two-factor authentication and sport an elegant design that gives you all the capabilities you need to get the most out of your Telifie. File transfers and device communication is encrypted and authentication keys are refreshed regularly.
The bigger picture
As our journey continues, our mission will never change: provide affordable, elegant, and versatile products for everyone. We are proud of our warranty and servicing program where you can get free servicing for life! A Telifie costs less than a year of cloud subscriptions and gives you the most bang for your buck. You can check out our roadmap for our software running on the device, called Connect.
Our Kickstarter is launching on May 25th, and we need your support to fully fund $40k to put a Telifie in your hands and make privacy and security a priority for customers. Visit our Kickstarter page and save our campaign to get just one email when we launch for up to 30% off our MSRP or signup for our email list (just once a week, no spam).
Lastly…
My name is Kenny Hawkins, the CEO, and Founder of Telifie. I graduated from Miami University (Ohio) in 2020 and took a year to build Telifie. It is most important to me that Telifie remain an honest and ethical business. As a user, you can suggest and vote on features and talk to us at any time free of charge.
We are a small business and we want to maintain that mentality of supporting our community. I appreciate your help and can’t thank you enough for believing in Telifie. Thanks for reading until the end! | https://medium.com/telifie/telifie-who-we-are-ff27ad1c0e94 | ['Kenny Hawkins'] | 2021-05-03 08:15:13.011000+00:00 | ['Gadgets', 'Kickstarter', 'Technology'] |
7 Life Lessons From The Man Behind Mario Bros | 7 Life Lessons From The Man Behind Mario Bros
The wisdom of Shigeru Miyamoto
Mention Mario to an average person, and most likely, they’ll tell you exactly who he is and what he looks like, even though he doesn’t exist in real life. Now, ask the same person if they know Shigeru Miyamoto, and chances are they will have no idea who you’re talking about.
Veteran gamers, however, know Mr. Miyamoto is a prominent and respected figure in the video-game industry, and the chief developer of some of the most renowned franchises of all time, including the Super Mario Bros and The Legend Of Zelda series.
For over forty years, Shigeru Miyamoto has worked tirelessly and loyally for Nintendo, developing, producing, and directing video games since he was hired as their first artist in 1977. And even now, being nearly seventy, he doesn’t seem to be planning to retire anytime soon.
Miyamoto’s work is based on his philosophy to deliver only the best playing experience to customers so that games can be enjoyed by everybody, young and old. These views have allowed him to make remarkable breakthroughs in the history of video games, making him an authority in the world of home entertainment.
And as there is wisdom in both his achievements and words, here are seven quotes that reflect this philosophy perfectly, accompanied by a short takeaway to add to our repertoire of life lessons.
1. “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”
Miyamoto’s most famous quote is perhaps his most powerful one, as it combines the values of patience, hard work, and commitment.
We often find ourselves rushing to be the first to get something done, to meet a deadline, or simply impress others by our speed, often forgetting about the overall quality of our product or service.
A study by Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University reveals that rushing to complete work on deadlines often leads to more mistakes in the process. As a result, what could have been an excellent piece of work often ends up being average at best. And as we all know, in this world of top-tens, average just doesn’t cut it.
Back in the mid-90s, Miyamoto delayed the release of the Nintendo 64 to allow his team to finish one of its games so that it could meet his strict quality standards. He didn’t care about meeting a deadline. What mattered to him was meeting players’ expectations.
Quick takeaway:
Never compromise the quality of your work for the sake of punctuality. It’s better late and well-made than rushed and poorly-crafted.
2. “I enjoy thinking about ways to create something that other people have not even thought about, something no one has managed to achieve.”
One key to success is the development of something innovative, something that the public hasn’t seen or even imagined before, rather than following in everyone’s footsteps.
This has been a staple in Shigeru Miyamoto’s way of thinking, as he is a man of breakthroughs: He pioneered the development of video games with a plotline, the first of which was Donkey Kong, back in 1981. He also co-directed and produced The Legend Of Zelda, which popularized open-world exploration in video games, making it one of the most influential titles of all time.
Miyamoto knows it’s not all about making money and becoming successful. For him, it’s about fueling work with a passion for innovation, and as a result, he has been able to come up with ideas and technology that have revolutionized the video game industry and the world of entertainment in general.
Quick takeaway:
To stand out and give the public something they’ll love, you have to come up with an innovative idea: something that differentiates you from the rest. Constantly imitating the success of others will get you nowhere.
3. “I think that inside every adult is the heart of a child. We just gradually convince ourselves that we have to act more like adults.”
Back when we were kids, we didn’t care much about the opinions of others, as long as we had a good time doing whatever it was we enjoyed, like playing in the backyard and riding a bicycle. And we didn’t engage in those activities because they would make us rich, or because they made us more popular. The activity itself was its own reward.
Miyamoto firmly believes that play, fun, and entertainment are a natural part of ourselves, one we often forget under the pressure of adulthood. This became quite evident when a middle-aged Miyamoto revealed himself at E3 2004, armed with a sword and a shield. That’s when you know the inner child is there, and that he’s having a great time.
Shigeru Miyamoto at E3 2004 — Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Quick takeaway:
Growing up doesn’t mean you have you give up on what makes you feel alive. It merely means you have to rearrange your routines and newly-acquired responsibilities to become who you’re meant to be without putting aside who you’ll always be: a fun-loving child at heart.
4. “Nintendo’s philosophy is never to go the easy path; it’s always to challenge ourselves and try to do something new. To create a new standard, you have to be up for that challenge and really enjoy it.”
Whenever there’s a challenge ahead, we react to it in two different forms: either we fret, cry, and complain until we get it done — usually with subpar results — or we launch directly into it, do our best, and remain excited the whole way through. That’s when we get the best possible results.
This is what Miyamoto has done all these years, and it’s perfectly exemplified with the development of Super Mario Bros. 3. It took him and his ten-man team two whole years to complete, at an unusually high budget of $800,000. It proved extremely challenging to improve on virtually every aspect of the first two Super Mario Bros games, but he and his team pulled it off, creating one of the highest-rated video games of all time.
Quick takeaway
Life is not about being the best or making the most money. It’s all about rising to the challenge and enjoying doing so. Only then do we get the results we’re hoping for.
5. “I’d like to be known as the person who saw things from a different point of view to others.”
During the mid-2000s, Nintendo was busy conceptualizing and developing a 7th-generation video game console, a product that would compete with Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
It was then that Miyamoto suggested a strategy to come out on top of the competition. Instead of centering on superior graphics, he proposed focusing on broadening their target audience by shifting the way they played games, an idea that resulted in the implementation of intuitive motion controllers.
The result? The Nintendo Wii was born, and became the most popular 7th-generation video game console, outselling both its competitors and demonstrating that more isn’t always better.
Quick takeaway
Perspective can change the course of our projects and reveal information on how to make them better than we originally conceived.
6. “It would be a joy for me if someone who was working with me became a big success.”
I love seeing people become successful. It gives me the idea that I too, can do it if I’m willing to commit myself to a goal. Some others, in contrast, can’t stand seeing their peers pursue their dreams and fulfill their aspirations.
Psychology calls this Crab Mentality: just like crabs instinctively pull each other down when they’re trying to escape a bucket, some people do all they can to conspire and sabotage their peers’ progress, just because they feel incapable of being successful themselves.
Throughout his career, Shigeru Miyamoto has worked with several people who have become prominent names in the video-game industry. An example is Takashi Tezuka, who joined Nintendo in 1984 and started working directly under Miyamoto’s direction. They teamed up to develop several video games, with Tezuka eventually taking directorial roles for several Super Mario Bros and The Legend Of Zelda titles, both franchises created by Miyamoto.
Quick takeaway
We often focus so much on our gain that we forget that we are all part of a community, and therefore, the win of one is the win of all.
7. “I don’t really think of things in terms of legacy or where I stand in the history of Nintendo or anything like that.”
Last, but not least, here’s a lesson on modesty. According to The New York Times, “Miyamoto still approaches his work as a humble craftsman, not as the celebrity he is to gamers around the world.”
When you think about it, he’s long had the experience and the technical knowledge to start his own video-game company, yet he’s content to stay at Nintendo as an employee. It seems Miyamoto doesn’t care about his status but what he can bring to the company he’s in. His philosophy centers on the end result of his efforts, not on the personal gain he will get from them.
Quick takeaway:
Although there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with being ambitious, a job well done will always top fame and earnings.
Bottom line
Shigeru Miyamoto has made a name for himself by sheer force of commitment, hard work, and perseverance. He’s never been interested in personal gain, but in delivering the best possible gaming experience to the world.
Focusing on the end result, the fun Miyamoto has brought to the world is his reward. And here’s a good opportunity to learn from the grandmaster of the video-game industry: To get the best possible results, we must passionately commit to our endeavors, embracing the challenge, and doing our best to deliver and go the extra mile.
Who knows, at the end of our journey we too can smile ear-to-ear like Shigeru Miyamoto, while we wait for our Game-Over day, in the knowledge that our efforts have made a difference. | https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/7-life-lessons-from-the-man-behind-mario-bros-2c413c00bd52 | ['Joe Donan'] | 2020-12-28 21:02:31.649000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Personal Growth', 'Psychology', 'Life', 'Nintendo'] |
This is me at work. | This is me at work. I’m watched — without my knowledge or permission. My emails are shared and/or forwarded — without my knowledge or permission. I’m discussed and then given the written document. I’m accused of being rude/impatient/condescending/rigid/not fitting with “our” culture — all without any concrete examples, as of yet. I don’t know what I said to whom to warrant this labelling. I’m hounded, supervised and will have to submit to 3 meetings per week with Administration. I’m afraid to breathe. I’m afraid to offend and I don’t know who I offend, when or how. I live in constant low-grade anxiety at work.Good and kind liberals, all of them. With the one person-of-color (for lack of a better term) to interface with me.
Due to random white rage/sensitivity, I. Can’t. Breathe at work. | https://medium.com/@19119/this-is-me-at-work-f2e58182e1c5 | [] | 2020-12-25 13:47:05.739000+00:00 | ['Umair Haque', 'Marleyk', 'White Privilege'] |
Blockchain Technology and The Future of Work | Founders in Focus Episode #1
Welcome to the very first episode of Founders in Focus. A show that gives you unprecedented access to the most influential startup founders in the world of blockchain. We’re on a mission to educate and inform founders and investors on the current affairs of the blockchain industry, providing an accurate and up to date perspective on the competitive business environment, global investment landscape, and the leaders who are changing the game.
In this value-packed interview, Jack du Rose, co-founder of Colony, gives us an inside look at what it takes to build a blockchain-powered company.
Tune in as we discuss: | https://medium.com/blockchain-review/founders-in-focus-episode-1-646d17192cec | ['Julien Breteau'] | 2018-03-23 20:10:49.707000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Founders', 'Videos', 'Bitcoin'] |
How to Build Google Social Login in Django Rest Framework and Nuxt Auth and Refresh its JWT token Part 1 | How to Build Google Social Login in Django Rest Framework and Nuxt Auth and Refresh its JWT token Part 1
Photo by Taras Shypka on Unsplash
Overview
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a side project. One of the requirements is to enable the user to sign in to the application using Google social login. The web app is built using Nuxt for the frontend and Django REST Framework for the backend.
Initially, building the social sign in flow was not hard at first, but I struggled with refreshing the JWT token in the web app. Most of the resources on the internet do not discuss how to refresh the JWT token. In this tutorial series, I will show how to build a basic JAMstack app with Nuxt as the frontend and Django REST Framework for the backend and allow social login from a Google account.
What we’re going to build
We are going to build a simple Nuxt app that accepts user login with Google accounts. It will connect to a Django API Server as a backend.
How Nuxt Auth Google Login Works
Before we start, it’s good to know that the Nuxt Auth Google scheme is inherited from the OAuth2 login scheme. If you intend to use other OAuth2 providers (e.g., Apple, Facebook, etc.), the flow should be somewhat similar. This is how the login flow will work behind the scene:
Nuxt OAuth2 sequence diagram
When this.$auth.loginWith("google") function is invoked (typically by clicking a button), the browser will be redirected to the Google OAuth2 login screen with a URL like https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?protocol=oauth2&response_type=token&access_type&client_id=to%20xxx&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A3000%2Flogin&scope=openid%20profile%20email&state=XKVqiO-8r9Pwky8viP9dS&code_challenge_method=implicit . Notice the client_id & redirect URI parameters in the URL. When the user choose which account he/she wants to connect to the login screen, Google will authenticate the user and return the code and access token to the Nuxt callback page. NuxtJS will request a JWT access token from the Django API server by supplying code & access token payload obtained from Google in step #2. Django API Server will revalidate the code and access token from NuxtJS with the Google authentication server. If the code and token are valid, Django API Server will create a user account in the DB and then returns the JWT access token & refresh token. Nuxt then receives the new access token and refresh token from Django API Server and store the JWT tokens in both browser's local storage & browser cookies. However, it’s always recommended to store the JWT token in cookies only and never store it in browser local storage. Nuxt Auth will then requests user information from Django API Server. Django API Server will reply to the request with the user information. Nuxt Auth will store the user information.
How Nuxt Auth Refreshes JWT Token for OAuth2 Flow
Provided that the user’s access token has expired, and when you click a page in NuxtJS that sends a request to Django API Server, the Django API will reply with 401 Unauthorized access Nuxt Auth will intercept the failed API requests to refresh the token and retry the API request earlier. Nuxt Auth will refresh the token at the endpoint you set in the URL endpoint in nuxt.config.js Django API Server will reply with a new access token and refresh token Nuxt Auth will replace the old access token and refresh token in cookies & browser local storage with the new one Nuxt Auth will retry the API call made earlier with a new access token Voila! You got a correct 200 OK result from the API server
Let’s begin
Prerequisites
These are the software I’m using to write this tutorial:
Python v3.7.3
Django v3.1.3
Django REST Framework v3.12.2
django-allauth v0.42.0
dj-rest-auth v1.1.0
PyJWT v1.7.0 (djangorestframework-simplejwt library does not support the latest version of PyJWT yet)
Node v10.15.3
Nuxt v2.14.6
Nuxt Auth module v5.12.3
You also must have access to the Google Cloud console in order to obtain Googel OAuth Client ID & Secret Key.
Step 1: Build a Nuxt app
First, let’s begin by bootstraping a new Nuxt app
$ mkdir google-login
$ cd google-login
$ npm init nuxt-app frontend create-nuxt-app v3.4.0
✨ Generating Nuxt.js project in frontend
? Project name: google-login
? Programming language: JavaScript
? Package manager: Npm
? UI framework: Buefy
? Nuxt.js modules: (Press <space> to select, <a> to toggle all, <i> to invert selection)
? Linting tools: (Press <space> to select, <a> to toggle all, <i> to invert selection)
? Testing framework: None
? Rendering mode: Universal (SSR / SSG)
? Deployment target: Static (Static/JAMStack hosting)
? Development tools: (Press <space> to select, <a> to toggle all, <i> to invert selection)
? What is your GitHub username? sdil
? Version control system: Git
I’m using the Buefy UI framework as I’m familiar with it the most. You can use other UI frameworks if you wish to. Next, let’s install the Nuxt Auth v5 module:
$ cd frontend
$ npm install --save-exact @nuxtjs/auth-next
$ npm install @nuxtjs/auth-next @nuxtjs/axios
Add Nuxt Auth module in frontend/nuxt.config.js file and define google strategy:
Now, create a login page frontend/pages/login.vue with the following content:
login.vue
In line 15, we are logging in the user with the google strategy we defined in nuxt.config.js file.
Next, create a protected page at frontend/pages/protected.vue
protected.vue
In line 12, we enabled the Nuxt Auth middleware, which means this page is only accessible when the user is signed in. Otherwise, the user will be redirected to the login page.
Let’s test our Nuxt app to make sure that Nuxt Auth is actually working. Run nuxt dev command to run the development server and navigate to localhost:3000/login .
It’s expected for you to see a Google login error at this point since we haven’t set up the Google OAuth yet.
Step 2: Build Django API Server
Start a Django project & install the dependencies.
$ cd google-login
$ django-admin startproject backend
$ pip install django-rest-framework dj-rest-auth django-allauth django-cors-headers djangorestframework-simplejwt PyJWT==1.7.0
Update 16 Feb 2021: You’ll need PyJWT version 1.7.0 in your system because djangorestframework-simplejwt library does not support PyJWT latest version yet. Refer here: https://github.com/SimpleJWT/django-rest-framework-simplejwt/issues/326
Let’s create a new social-login app.
$ django-admin startapp social-login
Write backend/social-login/views.py file like below:
Install the social login app URLs in the root URL at backend/backend/urls.py :
Add the following lines in backend/backend/settings.py like below:
Let’s test the login endpoint with curl CLI:
# Run DB migration first
$ python manage.py migrate
# Start Django webserver
$ python manage.py runserver 0:8000 # Run in another terminal
$ curl -i -X POST localhost:8000/social-login/google/ -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '{"code": "test", "access_token": "test"}' HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
... $ curl -i localhost:8000/auth/user/
HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
... {"detail":"Authentication credentials were not provided."}
localhost:8000/social-login/google/ endpoint will be used to validate code & access tokens given by Google. This endpoint will also be used for a token refresh.
localhost:8000/auth/user/ endpoint will be used to retrieve user information.
This 500 error & 403 error are expected as we haven’t set up the Google OAuth login yet. This proves that our Django app is serving correctly.
Step 3: Setup Google OAuth Flow
Login to console.cloud.google.com and navigate to the API & Services > OAuth consent screen. We’ll first need to create an OAuth consent screen for our project.
Fill in the App name, user support email & developer contact information.
For scopes, add user email & profile and hit Save & Continue.
Next, go to Credentials & click Create New Credentials, and select “OAuth client ID”.
Fill in the details like the following.
Make sure you write the correct Authorized redirect URLs. In our case, it’s http://localhost:3000/login . If you’re deploying on the production server with a valid domain, change it accordingly.
Keep the Client ID & Secret shown after creation.
Step 4: Add Google Client ID to Nuxt app
Set the client ID obtained in Step #3 in nuxt.config.js file like below
# frontend/nuxt.config.js
auth: {
strategies: {
google: {
- clientId: 'to be added',
+ clientId: '<your cliendID here>',
+ codeChallengeMethod: '',
+ responseType: 'code',
+ endpoints: {
+ token: 'http://localhost:8000/social-login/google/',
+ userInfo: 'http://localhost:8000/auth/user/'
+ },
},
}
},
By now, our Nuxt app should be able to authenticate users using their Google account. See below:
Yay, it works!
Step 5: Add Google Client ID & Secret to Django app
First, you’ll need to create a new Django superuser
$ python manage.py createsuperuser
Username (leave blank to use 'fadhil'): admin
Email address:
Password:
Password (again):
Superuser created successfully. $ cd backend$ python manage.py createsuperuserUsername (leave blank to use 'fadhil'): adminEmail address: [email protected] Password:Password (again):Superuser created successfully.
And then, go to localhost:8000/admin and navigate to the “Social applications” section. Click “Add new” and fill in the details.
Fill in the Client ID & Secret Key obtained in step #3. Lastly, in the Sites section, add the “example.com” site by clicking the arrow button in the middle.
Let’s test the web app from end to end.
Yay! It works as expected. Our Nuxt & Django API Server are well integrated.
To be continued…
That’s all for part 1. We’re not done yet. For the coming part 2, we will refactor the Django API server so that it can refresh the JWT token and ensure that the user is logged in throughout his/her session. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-build-google-social-login-in-django-rest-framework-and-nuxt-auth-and-refresh-its-jwt-token-752601d7a6f3 | ['Mohamad Fadhil'] | 2021-02-16 12:38:41.727000+00:00 | ['Django Rest Framework', 'Python', 'Vuejs', 'Nuxtjs', 'Django'] |
Newborn Sleeping Problems and Solutions — Baby Care | This happens for any cause that prevents enough quantity of sleep. Infants differ significantly in how much sleep is, with the amount changing for the first year. A one-month-old will require as much as 16 hours, sleeping off and on all day and night. Starting from 6–9 months the number reduces to about 14, with the nighttime taking in excess of about 3/4 of the total. Qualities of baby sleep matters as well. There are numerous dissimilar sleep disorders that can reduce the quality of your newborn sleep.
It occurs in the course of a deep sleep, while nightmares during the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) portion of the sequence. Yes, babies have nightmares, which interferes with their sleep quality.
Sleep Apnea is more regular or common in older babies of 9 months to about 3 years old. These are psychological matters that may be at the core of some cases of newborn sleep difficulties, though this is unlikely.
Apnea that results from obstacles can be treated surgically or when the physician recommended if this is necessary. Normal pre-surgery assessment involves careful observation of brain waves by means of an EEG and eye and chin movements.
For this and other types of apnea, monitoring systems are obtainable that will warn the parent when breathing discontinues for more than a few seconds. Lightly waking your child, pursued by comfort, will let the baby recommence breathing and fall immediately back to sleep.
It is important to keep away from creating sleep problems by not feeding solids before infants are ready to bed. For the first six months, breast milk or formula is all they require. Also, stay away from juice or milk near bedtime after about 3 months of age. Don’t feed your child in order to promote sleep. A satiated tummy doesn’t certainly lend itself to a peaceful sleep. Instead, you can try to associate sleeping with positives by providing closeness, a pacifier, a stuffed toy, or another safe object. Overfeeding during nighttime will upset your baby to fall asleep.
16 ways helping your baby to fall asleep quickly
Thus it’s a smart move for mothers to sleep whenever their babies sleep. But this a particularly transient phase and after six to eight months of age babies start sleeping for brief periods in the day and sleep for long hours at night.
There are particular things that will help your kid settle to sleep.
Relieving music can assist with muffling different sounds around the house and assists with taking care of children quicker. Pick a music player that has a couple of various sound choices, with the goal that you can discover what your kid enjoys the most.
It may be repetitive sound, sounds, or even a cradlesong. When they’ve discovered something they like, have that clamor playing in their room before they sleep.
Locate some light-counterbalancing blinds that will obstruct the light. As they get more established, you may gradually open these shades with the goal that they don’t get too acquainted with even think about completing dimness.
This will assist them with staying snoozing when they’re in new conditions that don’t have a similar light-dropping drape.
Asleep time routine can assist a youngster with winding down before bed, and can likewise assist them with getting ready intellectually and truly for the day’s end.
Pre-sleep time exercises may incorporate a jug, a sleep time story, and nightgown.
At the point when these things show up, youngsters will recognize what is anticipated from them, and that recess is finished. Attempt to keep the room a little calmer when this normal start.
Particularly in their early years of life, children will still like a warm environment and cozy space as they were in the womb. Sleepsuits and wraps up are incredible for keeping the child warm and enclosed by an agreeable position.
Wraps up can likewise prevent babies from awakening themselves with abrupt developments and shocks, and it can even end unsteady infants from hitting or scratching themselves.
Individuals of any age will in general sleep well when they rest in colder temperatures. The indoor regulator ought to be somewhere in the range of 68 and 72 Fahrenheit so your baby can sleep more comfortably.
Confirm the temperature of your infant’s chest. This piece of the body is the zone that will let you know whether they’re uncomfortable temperature or not.
Accomplices who can get a strong 5 hours of rest every night is basic to their general wellbeing and their presentation as guardians. To do this, accomplices must function as a group every night, despite the fact that caring work is a one-person duty. Depend on your work plans or shifts you can adjust the timings for baby.
You as a partner can sit tight, changing, or relaxing the child, or whatever else is required. You may have different night shifts with the goal that everybody despite everything feels rested the next morning.
Most infants wake up in the night just on the grounds that they can’t find their pacifiers. You can fix this issue by instructing your kid to realize where they can discover a pacifier by themselves.
Just put pacifiers in each edge of the crib. At that point go through every night controlling your child’s arm to go after the pacifiers in any corner.
Regardless of whether you know there will be a wreck toward the beginning of the day, it is useful to skip diaper changes. These developments may trick your infant into believing it’s an ideal opportunity to wake up and play.
It is good to have the entirety of the basic changing things you need in an area outside of the room. This training will assist you in avoiding wasting a lot of energy in the room searching for things, and you won’t need to turn on the light to discover anything.
Children can easily switch off their drained mode and head over into playtime quickly. As a parent, it’s fundamental to remain quiet and gathered when sleep time moves around.
Children will attempt to lure you to have a laugh for entertainment however now isn’t the time. Regardless of whether you feel regretful for not playing with them, this will make both of your mornings a great deal more reasonable!
In the event that your baby looks at you during rest time, they may feel that it’s an ideal opportunity to wake up. On the off chance that you have to go somewhere, try to relieve them and don’t look at their eyes and set them back down without any communication.
However, you’ll need to devise a method that’s best for your kid and your families as sleep patterns in different babies are dissimilar.
More Interesting Stuff you like to Know :
what you need to know about colic in baby- symptoms and remedies
Baby Feeding — Breast Milk & Your Baby Health
Safe Toys for your Baby How do I best take care of my newborn? | https://medium.com/@momnbabycares/newborn-sleeping-problems-and-solutions-baby-care-4c051af63a75 | [] | 2020-08-07 08:51:36.908000+00:00 | ['Baby Sleeping Promble', 'Baby Care', 'New Born Baby', 'Baby Sleep'] |
Bitcoin Price Manipulation Puts Trust In Cryptocurrencies At Risk | Last year was a huge year of firsts for cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, which soared from a price of $1,000 at the start of 2017 to a peak of over $19,000 in December.
As the price of Bitcoin doubled, doubled again, then doubled again, its price seemingly on a parabolic trajectory for the moon and beyond, the apparently ‘easy money’ to be had from investing in Bitcoin resulted in a rush of retail investment.
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE | https://medium.com/bitbay-blog/bitcoin-price-manipulation-puts-trust-in-cryptocurrencies-at-risk-d9cfbc164456 | ['Bitbay Official'] | 2018-09-11 14:10:23.568000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Investing'] |
🆕 Zoom integration | Monosnap + Zoom integration allows uploading and sharing files related to Zoom Meetings to Monosnap storage on the fly. Let’s see how it works!
All step by step guides related to Zoom integration, you can find here.
How to connect Zoom?
There are two ways to enable Zoom integration:
1. Create Monosnap account using your Zoom account
2. If you already have Monosnap account, you can easily connect it with your Zoom account:
Log in to Monosnap Storage
Go to the storage Settings
Monosnap Storage
Select Connect Zoom button. You will be redirected to log in to Zoom account
Monosnap Storage Settings
After successful login, you will see your Zoom account in the Monosnap setting
Monosnap Storage Settings
How Zoom integration works
Forget about preparing for Zoom Meetings, Monosnap automatically creates folders related to Zoom Meetings.
With Monosnap, you can focus on discussion and visual notes to not forget or miss something important.
Monosnap Storage
You can easily find these folders by Zoom icon in the Monosnap storage.
⚠️ Note! If you don’t upload any file during Zoom Meeting, the folder will be removed to prevent creating dozens of unnecessary empty folders in Monosnap storage.
Monosnap Editor
You can share files with:
People on the other side during Zoom Meeting Your co-worker or client who was absent on Zoom Meeting
Preview in a messenger
Monosnap + Zoom integration allows you to keep your meeting files in one place and not forget or miss something essential after the meeting ended.
All step by step guides related to Zoom integration, you can find here. | https://medium.com/@monosnap/zoom-integration-9cd77f55becc | [] | 2021-04-30 20:44:58.644000+00:00 | ['Screenwriting', 'Screenshots', 'Zoom', 'Cloud Storage', 'Monosnap'] |
There and back again in 2020: A year on the trail building Recover Athletics | Nick S, Nick K, and Jaffer with Meb Keflezighi in Tampa
2020 brought a series of unexpected twists in the journey of building Recover Athletics. Back in January I began every weekday morning by waking up at 6:15am, running 5 miles around Fresh Pond Reservoir with Nick Kafker (our “morning 5er”), and then commuting from our Cambridge apartment into GSV Labs in Boston to meet up with the rest of the Recover team.
I look back fondly on the morning 5er’s with Kafker. We were optimistic about the year ahead. We’d recently closed our friends and family round, raising $250,000 to fund our recovery platform, and had released our beta mobile app in Testflight to about 95 runners in the Boston area. As founders we were learning a ton every day, and in lockstep about where the product was headed.
Looking ahead now to 2021, I remain more convinced than ever that Recover will be a successful venture. We began the year with just a handful of beta testers, and we end it with an app in the App Store and 600+ paying members; we’ve now raised $350,000 and are backed by some of the brightest minds in sports and tech; we hired a talented CTO, Jaffer Syed, to join us on this mission. Today our team is aligned and hungry to make a difference in the fitness industry and in the lives of thousands of American runners in 2021.
But it’s a cooler optimism that I feel today than at this same time last year. 2020 was a hard road for Recover. We’ve parted ways with 2 of our original cofounders — our group of 4 has slimmed to a lean team of 3. Rather than collaborate in an urban apartment or coworking space, Jaffer, Kafker and I work from our parents’ houses in the suburbs. Today I commute from my high school bedroom to the basement.
This sounds pretty bleak. Back in December 2019 I would have been shocked if you told me this is what my life would look like in 2021.
But even though COVID closed down offices and running races, today I feel only gratitude for where I’m at in life. Despite the shocks to the industry, the sport of running has flourished. Strava added over 2 million new endurance athletes to its app every month this year, and as running grows so too does the collective need to avoid injury while doing it. The urgency to stay healthy has driven over 9,000 athletes to download our app since May.
And personally I feel exceptionally privileged. I still have savings in my bank account, and I live in a beautiful home without paying rent. An elite education gave me access to a network that I’ve leveraged extensively to help bring Recover to life. I’ve met and learned from dozens of key stakeholders in sports, consumer technology, and venture capital. Most importantly, I wake up every day and know that I’m pursuing my life’s work. There is truly nothing I’d rather do than work as hard as I can to build an innovative health application for athletes.
In 2020 I learned that the journey of entrepreneurship isn’t glamorous. It’s a roller coaster with soul crushing lows and sleepless nights because it looks like we’re running a broke company with a broken product and an insufficient team to realize this opportunity. And often the very next morning I open my laptop to product usage data & messages in my inbox that make me believe we’re building the next tech unicorn in Boston and that nothing stands in our way.
Odds are good that 2021 will hold more paradoxical moments like these for our team. Next year will be a battle. And when I write a similar reflection in December 2021, chances are that even though the numbers will be bigger, I’ll still be saying, “We have so far to go, but we can do this.” In other words, the battle probably won’t be won.
But I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is the journey of a lifetime. There’s no greater gift than the opportunity to build a startup in the industry you’re passionate about, with your best friend, and a small but dynamite team. We earned every inch of progress this year, and we’re ready to bring the heat in 2021.
Thank you to our family and friends, investors, advisors, partners, and 9,000 runners across the USA who gave us a chance and supported us this year. We promise to keep battling, to do great things, and to make you proud in 2021! | https://medium.com/@nicotstewart/there-and-back-again-in-2020-a-year-on-the-trail-building-recover-athletics-1d6942a1743d | ['Nick Stewart'] | 2020-12-23 14:11:39.360000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Startup', 'Running', 'Recovery'] |
Getting to the Bottom of Things: UX Edition | As I navigate life in the world of UX I seek for constant growth. This time has given me the chance to contemplate on my work. I’m a user experience designer and researcher and it’s my passion to improve the experiences that users go through on the web and mobile. I’m always pushing myself to learn more and to be a designer that brings meaningful work to the table. To be meaningful, the first thing that comes to mind is the research that I do in my work. I set parameters, talk to users, and audit similar websites, amongst much more. After all that work I can’t help but wonder to myself, did I get everything? What have I missed?
I leafed through my copy of Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things for some more insight.
“One of my rules in consulting is simple: never solve the problem I am asked to solve.” (Norman, 216)
I came across this quote while reading through the chapter about design thinking. When solving experience problems, it’s not always best to have a certain result in mind. It’s rational to work with an idea of what you think the data will tell you but it shouldn’t cloud your expectations.
You need to be open to surprising yourself with what you find during your research. What I try to get to with this questioning is to know what customers are trying to do. I additionally want to know what impediments lay in front of them.
Observing Customers
One of the most interesting parts of my work is observing people. As a designer and researcher I’ve led user interviews. It’s fascinating because people can create a thousand perspectives from any experience. I’ve conducted these interviews in-person and on the computer. Whenever I have the chance I always take the in-person option to speak to people. Interviewing over zoom calls requires you to sacrifice a lot of nuance. It’s harder to read facial expressions (especially if they have their face cams turned off). It’s unfortunate but due to everything going on right now, it’s the safest option. Luckily I have other tools at my disposal.
Errors & Root Cause Analysis
We all have experienced errors. They’re annoying, stressful, and in certain situations, deadly. Errors get in the way of what we as users what to do. In focusing on these barriers, I use Root Cause Analysis. This kind of analysis takes a look at human error and asks “why did this error occur?” and “what can be done to prevent this?”. In his book, Don Norman adds that a useful tool when performing the root cause analysis is The Five Whys. The Five Whys strategy was a strategy first implemented by Sakichi Toyota. It asks those investigating a problem not to stop when they uncover the first reason to a failure. It’s not a hard set rule to only go to five, but it’s still a good discipline to push your expectations farther.
I like working in UX is because I’m able to make digital spaces more pleasant and efficient. I’m grateful that I have resources such as The Design of Everyday Thing and similar resources. I will become a better designer with all the resources I have available. | https://medium.com/@southallt4/getting-to-the-bottom-of-things-ux-edition-de0764424419 | ['Thomas Southall'] | 2020-12-14 00:04:40.832000+00:00 | ['User Research', 'User Experience Design', 'User Testing'] |
Observation | Sometimes the cold
gets out of hand,
As no sun is felt or seen,
Then I wait to understand,
Why I fall asleep.
Then hope
returns in her own time
Because I rise again for life,
To fly with courage high above,
Fill time and space
with love. | https://medium.com/illumination/observation-52478dcb9f2e | ['America Zed'] | 2020-12-12 11:16:58.476000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Wisdom', 'Insights', 'Poetry'] |
My kids go to daycare a short distance from the navigation center proposed for Seawall Lot 330. I support it. | My kids go to daycare a short distance from the navigation center proposed for Seawall Lot 330. I support it.
In the absence of available shelter, the waiting rooms for people experiencing homelessness are on our streets. My young children used to go to a daycare served by Van Ness Station. They would encounter someone sleeping in the Muni elevator almost every morning. The reality is that people are suffering, and our children are watching. I can’t think of anything more inefficient and ineffective than sheltering people in the elevators that our disabled neighbors and children in strollers rely upon for access to transit.
We must do better, and the Mayor is admirably leading the charge, doing what San Franciscans elected her to do. The expansion of navigation center capacity will improve the experience of children and literally everyone else all over our city who encounter troubling street behavior on a daily basis.
It is shameful that Embarcadero NIMBYs are openly planning legal action intended to drain our collective resources and kill the center entirely or decrease its capacity and effectiveness. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the site. In fact, it is superior to the existing sites in many ways including its size and excellent transit access.
The best investment of our tax dollars is in demonstrating that efforts to undermine the navigation center program and similar necessities for the greater good will not succeed. That wealthier neighborhoods, including my own (Noe Valley), will not get a pass in addressing homelessness. That neighborhoods may shape the details of new navigation centers but not threaten their existence or capacity.
HOW CAN YOU SAY YES TO SHELTER?
Public comment is happening at the Ferry Building TODAY, April 23! If you are unable to attend, take 15 seconds to send an email of support. And sign the petition! If you want to see shelters built all across San Francisco, become a supporting member of YIMBY Action.
On any given night in San Francisco, approximately 4,400 people have no place they can stay indoors. There are less than 2000 beds available in the City’s shelters and navigation centers — an enormous shortfall with huge costs in human suffering. Learn more at nav.yimbyaction.org. | https://medium.com/yimby/my-kids-go-to-daycare-a-short-distance-from-the-navigation-center-proposed-for-seawall-lot-330-80c0751ca39c | ['Laura Fingal-Surma'] | 2019-06-27 20:41:29.416000+00:00 | ['Homeless', 'Yimby', 'Homelessness', 'San Francisco'] |
Will it be a villa? Think twice. | A home is where you will spend a lot of your time, your children will grow up, and your family will call their own space. The home you buy is a crucial decision to be made, which in turn is influenced by various factors of its own. Add to this the investment angle and you’ve brewed a considerable amount of confusion. Today, an assortment of factors affects an aspiring homeowner’s decision — location, size, type, rate, security, connectivity, amenities, and living expenses. Each factor gets a different score from family to family. Some may want to live the cosmopolitan life in all its glory right in the middle of the city. Some would like the fast, well-connected life with their apartments on Sarjapur Road. Some individuals might want the luxury, corporate life and look for apartments near ITPL Main Road. The demand for real estate properties has become so diverse and dynamic that top builders in Bangalore today are offering you luxury apartments in the city, eco-premium 2BHKs in the greener outskirts of the city, and even villa townships in strategic hubs of the city.
Gated communities or villa townships often pose a larger-than-life way of living — a wide range of amenities, green spaces, and lots more square feet. Investors with elderly parents and young children can look at townships as they offer beautiful atmospheres while having plenty to do inside. This does not mean that life is all sunshine and roses in gated communities. One major downside is that of location. You can wave goodbye to a balanced city life while driving far away from the city as only the outskirts can provide the land requirement for large townships. And we all know the reputation of Bangalore traffic. Apartments in Whitefield will be a lot less frustrating to live in on a day-to-day basis. Inconvenience of travel and connectivity is a huge downside to overcome. To top it off, maintenance costs tend to be significantly higher in a township, thereby adding to your living expenses.
Stand-alone buildings and apartment complexes may not offer you the extent of sprawling greenery as townships do, but there are a variety of projects with different offerings for your needs. As a home buyer, you can make a smarter choice within the range of options and projects. Apartments are usually within city limits and give you enhanced connectivity. Today, a lot of builders are accounting for a greener lifestyle and offering a closer connect with nature within the city itself. DSR Waterscape is one such 2 & 3BHK apartments on Horamavu Main Road. The DSR group also offers you 2BHK apartments on Sarjapur Road as well as 3BHK apartments in DSR White Waters II if you want a life balancing connectivity with affordability. DSR Lotus Towers offers you a world of luxury in Whitefield itself. If you want a cosmopolitan life slightly above the ordinary, this is the project for you.
As you can see, apartment complexes offer you a holistic life of connectivity, affordability, luxury, and even greenery. With visionary builders like the DSR Group, you can make a safe investment decision in one of their many, unique projects. The only downside is that the next one seems better than the other.
The article was originally published at DSR Blogs. | https://medium.com/@nikhilforbudindia/will-it-be-a-villa-think-twice-85ec8608bb61 | [] | 2020-12-24 06:44:22.540000+00:00 | ['Apartments', 'Real Estate', 'Bangalore'] |
Top 5 Common Mistakes Students Make While Preparing for Exams | Year after year, the world of the internet stays awash with mistakes that students make while preparing for exams. Several of them are hilarious, and most of them are one-of-a-kind. The majority of them are concerning misinterpretations of certain terms and phrases. Examination blunders, on the other hand, are quite common. These errors may be prevented by taking a few easy measures at the right moment or ahead of time. Learning from mistakes is an unavoidable aspect of learning. However, if you continue to make the same mistake twice, it may be quite discouraging. There are certain frequent mistakes students get into while undertaking examinations.
Following are some of the most common mistakes that students make while preparing for exams:
Not Knowing Your Desired Grades:
How would a student realize which examinations are by far the most crucial to prepare for if they don’t know exactly which grade they require on every one of their final examinations to acquire the marks they desire in their classes? Indeed, in a perfect world, students could study for each and every topic of each subject and receive perfect scores on every one of their tests. However, even though they only have a small window of time to research, it makes perfect sense to allocate more attention to the courses wherein their standardized test rating seems to be more important. It can help a lot since it counts for a higher percentage of their final rating or since they need a decent test score to raise their estimate to their desired rating.
The study from one source:
Most students believe that if they attend the class, visit the professors’ examination review sessions, as well as read the learning material supplied by the instructors, they will become well equipped for the examination. The resources an instructor offers give them a good idea of what they believe is crucial to know for the test because they’re a fine place to begin.
However, simply attending study sessions as well as reading the study material will not be enough to ensure that a pupil will perform well enough on the examination. One must take measures to ensure that they actually comprehend the topic if they really would like to succeed in any examination of any sort.
Start Panicking:
It’s natural to become anxious and panicked when confronted with a qualifying examination, particularly if your immediate instinct is that you won’t be able to address any of the important questions. Breathe deeply and gently count to 10. This will assist you in de-stressing. It may seem self-evident, yet it is critical to calm yourself and answer the exam questions, even if they are super tough.
Even if you’re having trouble, you should really be ready to come up with at least one topic that you could always explain and at least confidently seek to answer. Begin there, and after you’ve completed that particular question, repeat the process. Don’t abandon the examination since you literally cannot think there’s anything more to write about. That won’t get you any points.
Delay Things:
Numerous students have an excessive amount of time to think and laze around. They want to plan and prepare after a while, however, as a consequence of their laziness, distraction quickly sets in. As a consequence, they decided to postpone it even more. They delay things for the following day, the next day, the day after tomorrow, and so on.
Examinations show up unexpectedly. The pressure mounts, the stress mounts, and the adrenaline levels soar. As a consequence, there occurs a great deal of uproar. As a result, never trust the idea of “early the next morning.” Begin now! You would be able to alleviate a lot of stress throughout the days leading up to your tests if you do it this way. In comparison to how it was previously, your efficiency would increase dramatically.
Fail to Prioritize Subjects:
Sitting down and going over all of the documents and notes during a lecture in a type of sequential order is a frequent method to study for tests. In particular, with respect to being such a silent strategic approach of studying, it puts students at danger of having to run out of the time they have to evaluate the latest content and information they discovered, which is almost always emphasized more strongly on the qualifying examination and it can also be perhaps one of the most complicated subjects to comprehend, particularly in courses like calculations, math as well as language groups that significantly raise the difficulties involved all through the academic session. Students are required to learn in terms of priority rather than sequential sequence, focusing the bulk of their energy on the material that would be most useful to them in the future.
Lack of Action Plan:
Evaluate the set of questions as well as the duration of time you get before you begin to write for any test or examination. It will give you an idea of how much time you have for every question. Try to limit yourself to that amount of time for each topic. You may always seem to go around if you already have time to spare up, although it is preferable to tackle each question being asked.
Have you decided what’s more essential and what is really less significant? What should have been the first question to attempt, or what should be the final thing to do? Do you know that how much amount of think you’ll really have to devote to every particular subject and question? These would be the considerations and priorities that must be made prior to starting the process of studying for any exam.
A Final Thing
If you are preparing for any engineering exam and are facing the above-mentioned issues, try to look for the best way out. | https://medium.com/@tehreemalfoy/top-5-common-mistakes-students-make-while-preparing-for-exams-b285b83957b9 | ['Tehreem Fazal'] | 2021-12-10 10:42:45.819000+00:00 | ['Studying', 'Study Abroad', 'Study', 'Photography', 'Apple'] |
Precious Time | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/chalkboard/precious-time-216dc379bacb | ['Joanna Vang'] | 2020-12-19 23:22:20.734000+00:00 | ['One Line', 'Chalkboard', 'Poetry', 'Precious Moments', 'Time'] |
Grenfell Tower Fire Was A Classist Tragedy | It is three years since we awoke to the news that Grenfell Tower was on fire, accompanied by images of a dark grey smear of smoke across the London skyline, and a rapidly climbing death rate. What happened in those early hours of June 14 th2017 is ingrained in the public mind. However, despite the numerous investigations, reports and public inquiries, we have witnessed very little change since.
No tragedy is so painful as one which could have been avoided. Grenfell Tower Fire is a heart-breaking example; before the fire had even been extinguished it became horrifyingly clear that faults in the fire safety systems of both the building’s interior and exterior were to blame for the scale and ferocity of the blaze. Grenfell Tower, owned by KMCO Group, was missing many basic fire safety measures. Whilst combustible cladding lining the exterior allowed fire to climb up and along the outside rapidly, major interior flaws such as incompetent ventilation systems and having a single staircase that would fill with smoke greatly impeded any chance of effective evacuation.
No one can deny that paying attention to these details would have mitigated the consequences of the fire. The survivors needed justice, but with so many buildings similarly flawed, change was needed first.
A snap ban was applied to combustible cladding on high-rise buildings in November 2018, a year and a half after the tragedy. But with this ban doing nothing to target buildings which already had the cladding, it has been no match for the years of damage done by the deregulation of fire safety in privatised buildings. Government data in January revealed that, two and a half years on, there were still 450 high-rise residential buildings in England with combustible cladding. 72 of these had no plans to remove it.
These findings pushed government to create a fund to help remediate any buildings with unsafe cladding, as well as pledge to publicly name building owners who fail to do so. This, in addition to the 2019 release of a set of recommendations to regulate the fire safety procedures and evacuation plans in high-rise buildings, show that progress is perhaps finally nudging its way through. However, it is frankly astonishing that changes which could be a matter of life or death have taken so painfully long to break through.
An area we have seen more progress in is the response of the London Fire Brigade (LFB). A report released last November condemned the LFB’s measures for fires of such scale as ‘gravely inadequate’. This is difficult to dispute: the response showcased an array of ill-thought out procedures (many blame the LFB’s advice to residents to ‘stay put’ for the deaths of their neighbours) to equipment inadequacies among the LFB (on the night a firefighting platform had to be called in from Surrey).
Yes, a fire of such scale was unprecedented, but was it totally unexpected? The LFB were aware of the risk inherent in tower blocks such as Grenfell, but had implemented no plan or regulation to protect such vulnerable buildings or their residents.
Nevertheless, LFB chief Dany Cotton continuously refused to admit any mistakes made in her response. If we are to learn anything from this tragedy it is that we cannot underestimate the importance of listening to residents’ concerns and implementing immediate change where necessary. Cotton’s attitude was not only highly insensitive; it risked impeding the responsiveness of our public services in learning the tragic lessons of Grenfell.
However, some felt that criticism of LFB chief Dany Cotton’s was unfair and a distraction tactic from the systemic problems that contributed to the catastrophe: a policy of austerity that resulted in insufficient funding for the LFB. Whilst blaming an individual’s response is a fast and effective way to see immediate change, I agree that Cotton’s response (to resign from her position 4 months early) was wholly insignificant in the course of justice and change.
So what lessons have we learned? With its highly-combustible cladding, failing fire doors and lack of a central fire alarm system, to many it now seems bizarre that Grenfell Tower was never identified as the ticking time-bomb it turned out to be.
In fact, it was.
Grenfell Action Group, a team of residents, foresaw and warned on their blog that inevitably only ‘a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord’. So why did these warnings fall on deaf ears? And why do they continue to? Amongst the council for the richest borough of London, Kensington and Chelsea, it would seem there was no empathy for the wellbeing and safety concerns of its lower income residents.
We cannot ignorethat this was a classist tragedy. What Theresa May called on that day a ‘failure of the state’ supersedes fire-safety negligence and ill-planned responses; it exposes a terrible danger in the treatment of low-income communities as second-class citizens. In ignoring this we only stall the course of justice for Grenfell.
Hence, 3 years on, despite the private interviews conducted by police and the talk of manslaughter charges, there have been no arrests. This disappointing inaction ignores that, although Grenfell Tower Fire was no act of arson, it has its own set of criminals. I will remind you of a sentiment we have all become very familiar with recently: ‘if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor’. In the same way, we must regard the indifference of councils and landlords towards the safety and lives of their citizens and tenants as more than carelessness — it is negligence that directly cost lives.
So how can people get away with such a blatant disregard for human life? It is because the lives of the working class are viewed as expendable. Cast your mind back to all but one month ago, when the government asked people who cannot work at home — that is, people undertaking typically working class professions — to return to work despite the risk. Consider also the fact that, despite the horrors of Grenfell, in which at least 72 people lost their lives, three years on 358 similar buildings still have that infamous flammable cladding. It is an uncomfortable but very real truth.
Years of underspending had allowed the Royal Borough Of Kensington and Chelsea to amass £274 million, yet they refused to pay the extra £294 thousand that would have provided Grenfell Tower with non-combustible cladding. In doing so they put a price on human life, and then decided that it was too expensive.
The value of these individual lives was further degraded when Theresa May’s government announced that, despite their amnesty on immigration checks for survivors who came forward as witnesses, these survivors could still be subject to deportation 12 months later. The significance of Grenfell’s residents has varied greatly since the tragedy, as they went from ‘tenants’ to ‘victims’ to ‘witnesses’, but landlords, council and government seem to have difficulties in viewing them as anything beyond. In its scrabble to satisfy the calls for justice, the government failed once again to see the residents of Grenfell Tower as a community of precious and individual lives.
There will be no justice until we acknowledge that at the foundations of Grenfell Tower Fire lay social injustice. A combination of policies of deregulation and austerity were further exacerbated by neglect towards lower income communities. It is beyond a disgrace for citizens to not have access to safe shelter — it is a breach of human rights. Yet in January this year 210 000 households were still living in high-rise buildings with combustible cladding.
Grenfell Tower still stands. Anyone who drives on the Westway will be familiar with the strange silence that automatically settles in the car as the soft green wrapping, imprinted with a bold green heart, looms up next us. For those driving into London, it serves as a melancholic reminder — and a warning — that the vitality and opportunity promised by the city still seems to be off limits for so many. With plans for its demolition to be completed in 2022, let us set to work dismantling the societal structures that paved the way for this tragedy.
Words by Isabella Ward | https://medium.com/the-indiependent/grenfell-tower-fire-was-a-classist-tragedy-6b7788c6aab2 | ['Isabella Ward'] | 2020-06-15 07:57:07.889000+00:00 | ['Justice', 'Opinion', 'Politics', 'Classism', 'Grenfell'] |
The Blob, the Monolith and the Units | Photo from Bob Lusk Outdoors
Jackson’s Gap, Ala. — Manoy Creek is six feet lower than the summer pool depth at Lake Martin right now, exposing structures and branches we don’t see in warmer months. Attached to many of them are transparent green-brown globs that look like brains. I wondered if these might be sacs of fish eggs, but Dad said fish lay eggs on the bottom of the lake, not in weird blobs near the surface.
We took an opportunity to inspect one at close range on Thanksgiving morning when we hoisted a chair from underneath the dock, the furniture having been a victim of strong winds back in the spring.
A string of smaller globs was affixed to the back of the chair, and we prodded them with a fireplace poker. The substance was gelatinous, fishy smelling, surprisingly dense, and covered in symmetrical star patterns speckled with dark green dots. We thought it might be a type of algae or fungus.
Googling “jello-like blob in lake” informed us we were wrong.
It turns out these blobs are the soft exoskeletons of prehistoric invertebrate animals called bryozoa that eat plankton and other microscopic particles floating in the water. Bryozoa reproduce by cloning themselves, with the individual zooids (or cellular structures) that comprise a bryozoa forming colonies using secretions from their bodies. The concept is similar to that of a coral reef, except I’m going to guess that most people would think coral reefs are beautiful and bryozoa are gross.
The bryozoan eats by extending tiny little arms into the water like a squid, capturing tinier bits of food, and pulling it back into a U-shaped digestive tract. The bryozoa bodily functions aren’t discernible to the unaided human eye, otherwise I would not have picked them up with my bare hands, nor slashed their self-made skeletal jello commune with a fireplace poker. | https://medium.com/@knightstivender/the-blob-the-monolith-and-the-units-af25367567ba | ['Knight Stivender'] | 2020-12-01 01:52:49.766000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Art', 'Thanksgiving', 'Family', '2020'] |
Racial Justice Tidal Waves | Many heroes standing tall
Demanding respect and equality
Harmful pasts long endured,
Dramatic voices being heard
Chanting “Black Lives Matter”.
Their protests and demonstrations
Creating renewed public awareness,
Support multiplying every day
United States and globally
Recognition time has come.
White supremacists, tragic figures
Intimidators, armed with guns
Racial taunts, misguided lips
Some public officials inciting,
President and Attorney General.
Tidal waves, indelible imprints
When wildly wash ashore,
Respect, equality engulf world
Racial Justice tidal waves. | https://medium.com/blueinsight/racial-justice-tidal-waves-39e53df21aac | ['Randy Shingler'] | 2020-06-23 15:44:52.775000+00:00 | ['Blue Insights', 'Racism', 'Poetry', 'Equality', 'BlackLivesMatter'] |
3 Additional Reasons Why You Should Be More Like Bamboo | Bamboo Springs Back
In winters, as the snow keeps falling on the bamboo, the bamboo bends progressively. However, a point comes when the bamboo takes it no more and springs back up to stand tall, brushing aside the snow in the process. It’s as if the bamboo is proclaiming that it will not be defeated.
This is a metaphorical lesson for us to build emotional resilience. Life can get pretty hard at times. And even more, at times everything seems to go wrong. In such situations, we must bend but not break, like the bamboo. We must also harness the power to spring back by building emotional resilience.
Psychologists suggest that to build emotional resilience, we must be optimistic and see failures as a kind of helpful feedback. It also helps to remember that such setbacks are a part of life. If life were full of ups, it would lose meaning. Highs and successes give life peaks. But we must also remember that it’s the setbacks that give life depth and meaning.
You can also take it one step further by trying to be antifragile. In his book of the same name, Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes that things that gain from the disorder are antifragile. To be fragile is to break due to failure. To be resilient is to recover from failure. But to be antifragile is to go beyond resilience and to actually gain from failure to be stronger than ever.
Adopting an emotional resilience and to top it off, the mindset of antifragility will help us see failures and setbacks in a new light. Even though they may feel undesirable, we will be able to recognise and utilise the blessings within them. | https://medium.com/real-1-0/3-additional-reasons-why-you-should-be-more-like-bamboo-dbe15379484d | ['Akshad Singi'] | 2020-11-25 17:02:45.793000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Self', 'Self Improvement', 'Advice', 'Life Lessons'] |
Copyright Free Images कैसे डाउनलोड करे 2020 | halo doston aapka bahut bahut swagat hai doston is post mein main aapko yah bataunga ki aap apne blog ya website ke liye copyright free images Kahan se download kar sakte hain aapko UN website on ke bare mein main is post mein main batayega doston post ko Pura padhen jisse ki aapko is baat ka naraj ho jaega ki aapko free copyright images Kahan se download karni hai to ja shuru karte Hain aaj ki post
Pixabay.com
doston is website se aap copyrights free images download kar sakte hain ya bahut hi acchi website hai yahan se aap high resolution wali stock images download kar sakte hain aapko jisse images ki jarurat hai aap is per search karke usi mein jisko download kar sakte hain copy acchi aur popular website hai
Pexels.com
Is website mein roj lakho copyright free images upload kiye jaate Hain is website main aap images ke sath sath free copyright videos ko bhi download kar sakte hain is website main aap custom size choose karke bhi images aasani se download kar sakte hain
iske alava or dusri website ke bare me jane jinse aap free copy right image download kar payenge
top 10 websites for free copyright images | https://medium.com/@technicalvkv/copyright-free-images-%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%88%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%87-%E0%A4%A1%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%89%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%A1-%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%87-2020-4e2a050cb76d | [] | 2020-12-20 09:44:43.398000+00:00 | ['Blogging', 'Blog', 'Technology', 'Images', 'Hindi Blog'] |
Top reasons to implement chatbots in recruitment | It is no secret that as recruiters the fundamental and the most challenging part of their job is to find the perfect candidate from tons of applicants. One should not be mistaken that this let alone describes the recruiter job. To ensure that the bestl candidate is sourced and hired, recruiters need to complete various tasks. The tasklist includes responsibilities like developing effective recruitment strategies, maintaining constant communication with candidates, and so on.
An assistant who can take care of all the repetitive tasks in the hiring process can be the saviour for recruiters at this stage. What better than AI-driven recruitment chatbots, to be that much needed recruiter assistants! Conversational bots are revolutionizing the HR functions in a way beyond what anyone imagined. Studies indicate that the use of chatbots has exploded in the recruitment space over the last couple of years. Let’s take a look at how chatbots have enhanced the hiring experience and why recruiters should include chatbots as an integral part of the recruitment process.
Why recruiters should implement a recruitment chatbot
Powered with AI and NLP capabilities, recruitment chatbots have minimized the overall workload for recruiters. The conversational chatbots have streamlined candidate experience, even for high volume hiring. Throughout each and every recruitment stage, bots have optimized recruiter tasks and have helped recruiters to create a personalized recruiting experience. Below are a few factors that outline why chatbots should be a part of the recruitment strategy in organizations.
Effective application process
From sourcing to on-boarding stage, chatbots have been accepted as the most efficient assistants to recruiters in making the application process effective. Chatbots are capable of automating repetitive tasks including parsing resumes, scheduling interviews, conducting candidate follow ups or managing the post onboarding activities. Almost 80% of the top-funnel recruiting activities are automated via chatbots, which minimizes the overall recruiter efforts at all hiring stages. This helps the recruiters to focus on both hiring the right talent in the least amount of time and also lowering the cost.
Increase candidate touchpoints and improve candidate experience
Maintaining a constant communication with talent pipeline is next to impossible for recruiters specifically when it comes to high volume hiring. But it is inevitable to build that connection and nurture candidate relationship for a positive candidate experience. In order to assist recruiters in finding, hiring and communicating with potential new talent, the use of chatbots can be the perfect solution. The 24/7 support provided via chatbots creates a positive impression in the overall recruiting process. Research shows that around 74% of candidates leave the application process midway and if there is a chatbot to constantly interact and nudge with the candidates, such situations can be avoided to a large extent.
Transparency in hiring process
In the traditional hiring model, once a candidate has submitted a job application, the candidate is left clueless about the application status as there is limited communication. At each hiring stage for candidates there exists an indefinite waiting period to receive an update about the next steps. On the other side, for recruiters, it is not easy to reach out to each candidate and provide updates or feedback regularly on their job application. A chatbot can fill this gap by constantly being available, providing feedback and automating updates to the candidates. This makes the hiring process more transparent to the candidates and reduces the efforts of the recruiters.
Build stronger employer brand
A transparent application process where there is 24/7 candidate support available creates a positive impression about the brand in front of the candidate. Candidates typically are more interested to join such organizations. Implementing an AI-driven chatbot will have a positive impact on the overall employer brand. Be it rejection or selection, if a candidate receives a timely update from the recruiter side, it shows how much the organization values its future employees. Such a positive candidate experience can end up being word-of-mouth recommendations too. Also, chatbots can be used to voice your enterprise values and employee benefits which will attract more candidates to the brand.
Chatbots : Revolutionize hiring in the digital era
In today’s talent landscape, an effective recruitment strategy is essential to attract and retain the best talent. Candidates expect a predictable recruiting experience which they could relate to the consumer experience that the brand stands for. In such a scenario, recruiting teams should consider the possibility of implementing chatbots as an effective tool for candidate engagement. Enterprises should also remember that simply launching a chatbot does not complete the process. Necessary steps should be taken to constantly tune the chatbots and make it more responsive for successful candidate engagement. Employers should look for capable technology solutions that will help them hire the best talent.
Originally Posted on: https://hyreo.com/top-reasons-to-implement-chatbots-in-recruitment/ | https://medium.com/@hyreo/top-reasons-to-implement-chatbots-in-recruitment-69b8107336f0 | [] | 2020-12-06 06:49:05.706000+00:00 | ['Hr Automation', 'HR', 'Candidate Experience', 'Employee Engagement', 'Digital Transformation'] |
The Vandal’s Shadow | 11:17 PM — At the Sundial of Inhuman Involvement
Wyatt Kask stood at his hotel room window smoking a cigar. He waved his hand over a panel, and the sliding door opened to the balcony. A night wind ruffled his gray beard. The Wellington cityscape was like a field of black knives on which the clouds cut themselves slowly. He reached for the glass of scotch on a nearby table, but hesitated, his stance swaying momentarily.
“Service?” he called out.
“Yes, Mr. Kask,” a voice from the ceiling said.
“My scotch moved.”
“I am sorry, your service provider does not comprehend. Please restate your statement.”
“My scotch moved around in its glass. Is the hotel about to tip over?” He looked down to smaller towers, over a hundred stories below.
“No, Mr. Kask. The hotel is engineered to sway under certain conditions. The Wellington area is currently experiencing some mild tremors, but there is no need for concern. All structures in Wellington are built to withstand apocalyptic seismic events.”
“Great. I’m in town less than two hours and already on the brink of disaster. Why must people build cities on fault lines?” Kask took a drink.
“The area has a long history of human habitation, first being settled by Maori circa 1280 of the Gregorian Calendar.”
“Thank you, that’s enough. It was a rhetorical question. What time is it now?”
“Twenty-three eighteen.”
Kask poured another glass and stepped out onto the balcony. The clouds were lit from below by the lights of the city. He released some cigar smoke and then took a deep breath of fresh air. Crowds flowed on the suspended walkways below, and trains shot in and out of black facades at all levels.
“Mr. Kask, you have a call from an Officer Chang,” the hotel service said.
Kask stepped back into the room. “Finally.”
“Would you like me to open the connection?”
“Yes,” Kask said.
“Wyatt Kask?” a human voice asked.
“Yes, this is he.”
“I’m Officer Chang of GU Wellington Patrol. Thank you for coming to the city on such short notice. I’m in the lobby — may I come up to see you?”
“Sure.” Kask put out his cigar and sat in a chair facing the door. A few moments later, the door chimed. “Enter,” Kask said.
Officer Chang was trailed by another officer, both fully uniformed and carrying their spears. The second policeman closed the door behind him.
“Detective Kask, Patrolman Chang.” The first officer bowed. “This is my partner, Patrolman Ngata.” The second one bowed as well.
“Please, I’m retired. You can call me ‘mister.’”
“Oh, of course. And thanks again for coming all the way to Wellington. You’re the closest homicide detective we could find. Is that cursive Chinese?” He referred to the black tattoo running along the center of Kask’s bald scalp, from brow to spine.
“No, Mongolian. Got it in one of the frontier settlements. It’s a reminder of a great debt I owe to someone.”
Chang took a step closer. “Oh, now I can see it’s not Chinese. You must have had many wild adventures out in the settlements. It’s such an honor to meet a frontier lawman, especially a detective.”
“Thanks. Yes, I could tell you some stories you wouldn’t believe. But in speaking of which, I gather you called me here for some rather unbelievable reason. There’s been a murder?”
“Yes sir. Well, we think. We’d like you to confirm.”
Kask said nothing, pouring himself another drink. Chang seemed about to say something, but waited. “There’s not been any murder on Earth for decades,” Kask said after taking a sip.
“Right, you’re absolutely right. That’s why we thought we’d better bring in someone like you on this.”
“Someone like me?”
“With your experience,” Chang said quickly. “I’m sure you’ve had to handle much rougher situations out there in the settlements than anything little old Wellington can throw at you.”
Kask shrugged. “Possibly. Anyway, I’m just retired. I’ve had enough adventure for several lifetimes.”
“And I would take the guess that perhaps the reason you retired to Earth is its comparative safety,” Chang said.
Kask nodded.
“So, do you really want to retire to a world with murder?” Chang asked.
Kask looked out the window, then back at them. “Alright, fine. I’ll help you as long as it’s understood that the Wellington Police owe me a favor.”
“The exchange of favors with public officials is illegal on Earth,” Ngata said.
“Okay, then how about we say the sheriff owes me a bottle of scotch, which he can drink with me when he’s off the job.” Kask stood, finishing his drink. “Well, we’re wasting time. I should look at the crime scene as soon as possible. Is forensics there yet?” He put on his trench coat.
“Forensics?”
“Yes, forensics.” Kask donned his fedora and they headed out of the hotel room.
“I’m afraid we don’t have such a department, at least not for physical crimes.” Triangular sconces threw yellow along the hallway, but somehow it remained dim.
“I’m not surprised.” They reached the elevator and began the silent descent to the main lobby. The elevator stopped once on floor 693 to let on a ball-bot carrying a tray of empty glasses. Its capping module, modeled vaguely after the head of an owl, politely swiveled to face the doors’ interior.
The main lobby was on floor 200. When the three humans stepped off the elevator, the curving window-front showed the interior of a cloud layer illuminated by diffuse spheres of light from other buildings. They headed across the black and gold floor to the arches of the main entrance and emerged onto the public train platform. A train emerged from the fog and stopped shortly after they walked onto the platform, but the patrolmen ignored it and led Kask down some stairs. They emerged onto a small suspended ledge which opened onto another rail line directly below the public train.
“The emergency line,” Chang said and nodded toward a lone, small transporter, sleek for speed. “It’s much faster than what you’re used to.” Chang looked at a randomly changing number on his badge and typed it into an access terminal, interleaving it with a memorized pass code. The access gate slid open, and Chang gestured for Kask and Ngata to board first. They entered the silvery interior and strapped into thickly padded black seats, with Chang in the forward station.
“Patrol Car 9374, this is Patrolman X. Chang piloting. Enter destination: Carter Observatory.”
“Unable to comply,” the patrol car said. “That destination is restricted.”
“Override restriction with Case Code 20486.”
“Destination entry successful.”
Chang’s final command was not oral: he swept a finger in a circular motion over a touch dial, and the transporter moved forward, then quickly accelerated.
Kask looked out at the multicolored lights streaking through the haze. “Carter Observatory. The crime scene is there?”
“Yes,” Chang answered. “It opened in 1941 and closed in 2173, preserved as a non-functional historic site. But in the early 2200s they stopped preservation, and the flora of the Garden began to take it over. No one much goes there anymore. The crime scene was discovered by a surveillance drone hunting for park squatters.”
“You said before that you weren’t even certain a murder had actually been committed.”
“Yes, well, you’ll see when we get there. It’s quite a mess. So, let me ask you. What is interstellar hibernation like? I’ve never met anyone who’s done it.”
“Not that bad. Quite convenient, actually. The process is much smoother now than when it was first implemented by the Central Kingdom Space Administration.”
“So you’re genetically engineered to produce those chemicals?”
“Cryoprotectants, yes. Humans can’t survive the freezing process otherwise.”
“Your clothes are quite unusual,” Ngata said. “Is that what they wore on Earth in your time?”
“No, these were already quite out of date. But I spent some time in a settlement where it was popular for people to manufacture clothes of their choice from various historical periods. I chose this, and just stuck with it ever since. Got some odd looks when I went back to Los Angeles, though.”
Ngata nodded. “Is it true about the level of lawlessness on the frontier?”
“I suppose it’s slightly exaggerated. In one year I solved five homicides in a settlement of fewer than ten thousand people.”
Ngata raised his brows. “That’s quite amazing. But how many went unsolved?”
Kask looked at him directly in the eyes. “I solve every case.”
“Oh …. Why are there so many murders? Crimes of opportunity? Passion?”
“The settler towns have mayoral computers, of course, to regulate material resources. I found that most often the motive involves the power struggles of social dominance. Out there you come to realize that people are just hairless monkeys with very sophisticated ways of killing each other.”
Ngata and Chang exchanged looks, but said nothing else to Kask. He went back to staring out the window. They began to feel deceleration, and the clouds grew thinner. Their patrol car changed tracks and swooped on a downward slope through fuzzy silhouettes of buildings. They were less than three hundred meters above the ground when the car came to a halt at a small platform. They exited, and Kask lit a cigar below the neon glow of a Global Unity Police insignia.
“Sir, smoking is illegal,” Ngata said.
Kask eyed him through curling haze which flickered in the harsh light. “Don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t real smoke, of course.” He got into the transparent elevator and shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Well?”
The two policemen boarded the elevator, and they began their descent to ground level. Emerging from the lowest clouds, Kask could now see a rolling expanse of vegetation, walled by city lights beyond. The elevator slowed below the canopy and stopped on a circular platform. They exited into the Botanic Garden.
“We’d better hurry,” Kask said. “I smell rain coming. Evidence could be lost.”
Chang nodded, leading the way. They stepped onto pavement shattered by grass and walked. The only light now came from the police torches. Soon Kask could make out a rectilinear building ahead, capped with two domes. The entire brick structure was overgrown with vines. They passed the main entrance. Off to the right, Kask could see another old dome up a hill.
“Where are we going?” Kask asked.
“We’re almost there. The body is at the Sundial of Human Involvement.”
“I’ve always found this view to be calming,” Ngata said as they rounded the corner of the old building. The officers stood and looked out over a valley and steep hills beyond, which were only intermittently revealed by the night mist. As an afterthought, Chang gestured behind him.
Kask saw a semicircle of small, cubic stelai surrounding a black Rorschach pattern on the ground. He squatted down and saw that the pattern was formed from a gelatinous substance mixed with chunks of tougher material. He picked up a hard chip of something.
“This is bone,” Kask said.
“How do you know?” Ngata asked.
Kask held it up and turned it over. “See this pattern here? That’s the trabeculae of cancellous tissue.”
“Okay. I’ll take your word for it.”
“But it’s hard to know whether this is from a human.” Kask saw three people, each wearing different uniforms, round the corner of the building as he put the bone chip back into its original place. They stopped a few meters from the sundial, and one wearing blue and gray beckoned to the patrolmen. Chang approached him in response, and they began to talk in low tones.
“What the hell are you doing?” the man in the finely patterned uniform asked. “I thought I told you to wait for me before letting him poke around.” He and the others wore the same formally styled black hats, and they carried no spears.
“I apologize, sir. I thought you would already be here by the time we arrived. Kask hasn’t really done anything yet except a general visual inspection of the scene,” Chang said.
“It looked to me as if he was touching something just now.”
“Well it seems he found a bone chip, but he’s unsure whether it’s human or not.” Chang unconsciously smoothed his uniform. The man waved Chang aside and approached Kask. He looked at him from down his nose.
“Well, you’re Kask, I take it.”
“That’s right.” Kask rose from his crouch.
“I am Deputy New Zealand Regional Chief of Police Haratua. That is Assistant Regional Chief Mahuru, and that is Municipal Sheriff Hakihea of Wellington. We’re allowing you a lot of leeway with this one, but we’ll be watching you closely. This isn’t the wild frontier. There’s an order to things.”
“If I’m stepping on anyone’s toes, I can bow out. I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“Of course, we’re grateful for your assistance — I don’t mean to give the wrong impression. I’m just saying ….” Haratua trailed off.
Kask pointed to a spot in the muck. “There’s bone in there.”
“So this was a person. This is murder then,” Sheriff Hakihea said as he edged closer to Haratua’s back.
“Well, if I make an eyeball estimate of the amount of material we have here, I’d say it looks more like a large animal,” Kask said. “But there’s one way to find out.” Kask removed a small cylinder from his arm-comp and used it to scoop a sample of the material. He placed it back in the receptacle and tapped a few buttons. “Now we wait a moment.”
“What is that? A genome sequencer?” Ngata asked.
Kask nodded. He gestured to the mess on the sundial. “Any idea what sort of weapon could do this?”
Everyone remained silent. Sheriff Hakihea shook his head. “Lethal weapons have been illegal in Global Unity for a long time. They’re pretty rare since the Great Melting laws. Unless this was some kind of industrial instrument, but I can’t fathom what.”
Kask’s armband chimed. He pulled up his sleeve and examined the readout. “Interesting. The genome belongs to no known sequenced species on Earth. However, there are several genetic tags publicly flagged.”
“So you’re saying small sections of the genome are in a publicly available database?” Hakihea said.
“Yes. And doing a search on the web, it links to — a company called Pendant Industries. Ever heard of them?”
“They’re a robot manufacturer,” Hakihea said. “I see their logo on robots all over the city.”
“But why would a robot company have published DNA sequences? What does their website say?”
“Apparently nothing about that sort of thing,” Kask said as he was scrolling through his display. “My original search got a hit on some database, but we can’t really see it. Some proprietary stuff.”
“All right, I’ve heard enough,” Haratua said. “Kask, I want you to go to the head of Pendant Industries and find out what this thing is. Sheriff, you can call ahead to make sure Kask can get in for the interview. Patrolmen, you can resume your normal patrol.” Haratua was about to say something else, but he paused and looked back along the path going around the observatory. A woman approached them, flanked by two patrol officers guiding her.
“What’s this?” Hakihea said when they arrived. “Don’t bring a civilian so close to the scene.”
“Sorry sir,” one of the patrolmen responded. “We think she might be a witness, so we thought you might want to talk to her.”
Haratua exhaled. He spoke to Hakihea. “Take her into the old observatory and have Kask interview her.” Hakihea took the woman by the arm and guided her back along the path, into the abandoned building. Kask followed.
They entered the main doorway, which was already open to the elements, and made their way to a domed chamber. Vines grew on an old telescope and wherever sunlight could reach through the arched slit above.
Hakihea gestured to a cylindrical object near the base of the telescope.
“Sit down,” he said to the woman. She looked at him.
“I’m fine standing, thank you,” she said listlessly.
“It’s not for your benefit. Sit down,” the Sheriff said again. Kask took off his fedora and crossed his arms. The dim light glowed on his smooth head around the tattoo.
She sat on the object slowly, maintaining her straight posture and expressionless countenance.
“What’s your name?” Hakihea asked.
“Evelyn Cai.”
“Occupation?”
“Broker.”
“And what were you doing in this area after dark? Are you a squatter?”
“Do I look like a squatter?” With her eyes, Cai gestured over the expensive clothes which made her body look like a plastic doll. Hakihea stared at her, waiting. “I was working on a hobby. That’s not a crime.”
“And your hobby is …?”
“Photography. I specialize in night photography, particularly.”
“And where’s your camera?”
“About fifty meters above us.” She lifted her hair, pointing to a removable electroencephalographic reader on her scalp.
“Call it down.”
Cai made no indication of her compliance, but a moment later, a small camera drone drifted down through the telescope door and positioned itself between them.
“Land it and turn it off,” Hakihea ordered. Cai did so without protest. “Did you see anything around the sundial tonight?”
“No, I was no where near that area.”
“And your camera? Might it have spotted something?”
“I doubt it.”
“We’ll need to check its hard drive anyway, if it has one.”
“Of course you are welcome to. It does have a light-weight quartz-etching drive.”
“Thank you for being so cooperative, Ms. Cai.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said sharply.
“Well, I don’t know. Some people don’t like to be told what to do. They’re unaccustomed to it in a free society. Or perhaps you feel privacy is being invaded.”
“Privacy? I’ve never understood that concept.”
“Ah, well. It’s just something people say sometimes. It felt like I should say it there.” Hakihea chuckled lightly.
Kask cleared his throat and stepped closer to the two of them. “What type of commodities do you broker, Ms. Cai?” he asked. Cai looked him up and down for a moment.
“Information,” she said.
“What kind?”
“If I told you it might compromise the identity of my clients.”
“So you do understand the meaning of privacy,” Kask said.
“I don’t call it privacy. I call it common sense business practices.”
“So, you’re an ‘information broker’ and it just so happens that your hobby is night photography?”
“It’s not entirely a coincidence. I have a lot of knowledge of imaging techniques from my work. It has led me to artistic applications in my spare time.”
Kask gestured to Hakihea, pulling him away from her; they talked out of earshot near the entrance to the chamber.
“That’s enough time spent on her for now,” Kask said. “We’re not going to get much else from her, and I need to look into this Pendulum thing.”
“Pendant. Sure, I’m done with her if you are. She doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it, anyway.”
“You’re joking, right?” Kask glared at the Sheriff. “She may be right in the center of it.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“Don’t take too much offense to this, but how long have you been sheriff?”
“Almost twenty years. Why?”
Kask paused and then said “Ah, you know what, nevermind. Don’t worry about it. I have my process, you have yours. Let’s just get on with it.”
“Well alright then.” Hakihea walked back to Cai. “You’re free to go now. We’ll contact you later if we think of any more questions. Thanks for your help.”
“And when can I get my camera back?”
“Oh, right. Well, it’ll probably be a couple days. We’ll ring you.” He smiled.
Cai did not change her face. She rose and walked out, her eyes fixed on Kask as she went past him.
Hakihea picked up the camera drone and exited the building, with Kask following. They watched Cai disappear down a path, and then Mahuru approached them.
“Chief Haratua has decided that the sheriff will assist you throughout your investigation,” Mahuru said to Kask. He walked away toward the sundial. “Oh, and you have two weeks to close the case,” Mahuru said over his shoulder.
Hakihea extended his spear and tested the shocking prongs before collapsing it again, then looked expectantly at Kask.
“I plan to be done long before then,” Kask said quietly. | https://medium.com/@panesser/the-vandals-shadow-b37b6c9a1271 | ['Andrew Nesser'] | 2020-12-23 20:57:43.213000+00:00 | ['Mystery', 'Science Fiction', 'Futurism', 'Detective', 'Fiction'] |
SpaceX Starship SN8 explodes on landing after test flight.(Video) | “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” Elon Musk.
SN8 landing/exploding. Photograph: Gene Blevins/Reuters
Launch:
Once again SpaceX is making history. After an aborted flight 1 second before the launch on Tuesday, SpaceX did it. The test flight had been intended to reach an altitude of 41,000 feet (12,500 metres), propelled by three of SpaceX’s newly developed Raptor engines for the first time. The launch was very smooth and no problems were identified. However, landing was a bit different!
Landing:
Not everything did go as planned… Indeed, Starship prototype has exploded while attempting to land after its test launch from the company’s rocket facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Live video of Wednesday’s test showed the self-guided rocket landing at speed following a controlled descent before disappearing in a ball of flame.(Video at the end of this article).
Was the whole flight a failure?
Not at all!
As Elon Musk said, SpaceX had obtained “all the data they needed” from the test and hailed the rocket’s ascent phase a success. He even added that the landing had failed because the rocket’s “fuel header tank pressure was low” during descent.
Watch it blow ! | https://medium.com/@aime-risson/spacex-starship-sn8-explodes-on-landing-after-test-flight-video-a77215324735 | ['Aimé Risson'] | 2020-12-10 21:18:55.214000+00:00 | ['Elon Musk', 'Starship', 'Space', 'Spacex'] |
Time Management: The Single Most Important Component to My Productivity | Time Management: The Single Most Important Component to My Productivity
The combined strategy of time management that applies to most artistic creators, especially with the COVID-19 Pandemic
Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash
Stop and retrace your day today, what you’ve done thus far, or, if you’re reading this in the morning, stop and think about what you did yesterday. What was the structure like? Did you find time to write? Did you set aside a few hours to churn out a few dozen or hundred words to your liking? Were you satisfied with your productive output? What do you think you could’ve done better? Honestly, I tend to stay away from writing self-help articles that try to tell people how to work. Everyone’s workflow is different, people thrive on different things, people are distracted by different things, where some people can write in a crowded bar, others would need a quiet library or home office. The Covid-19 outbreak has changed the way we do everything in our lives for pretty much everybody, including us writers. I’ve noticed that quite a few people have reported that they’re finding it more difficult to write, even if they have extra time to do so and less responsibilities. If this sounds like you, I think the answer might lie in how you use your interrupted versus your uninterrupted productive time, and how you balance and use the two in conjunction to create better pieces.
It doesn’t matter what your business or work is, if you’re in charge of yourself and independent, whether it’s with your dream business startup, or writing career, or perhaps even your music gig, time management is an essential skill to have.
Over the years, one thing that’s been a constant for my productivity has been the effect of how I manage my time on the total output of work. This same principle applied when I was a musician and it still applies as a writer, though I wouldn’t put too much stock in the first part of that section because I was a terrible musician. Let’s just say writing is more my calling than music was.
Ultimately, what the different spaces we may write and the different times we may seek out those spaces have to do with our productivity is the difference between distracted and undistracted time. We don’t analyze material the same when we have a small amount of allotted time versus an extended period where our brains can focus.
The Divided Day
Many of my days are spent dividing the day up and putting the focus in when I can, allowing myself an hour here, two hours there, and spacing it out so I can get other things done. We all have lives that need tending and there’s really not anything we can much do about that, sometimes. When my month is primarily composed of divided days, I tend to get a lot less finished, but I get a whole lot more started. I think this is pretty true of everyone. We start a piece, our focus is broken, we go do something and come back only to find it extremely difficult to get back into the frame of mind we were in when we left.
The divided day has its perks, make no mistake. This is actually a good thing and will come in handy later. For many people, starting a piece is the hard part and continuing them even harder. But we can utilize the divided day to touch up pieces that are old with no intention of finalizing them.
When I sit down to finish a piece and only give myself an hour to do it, something just doesn’t feel right, no matter how close to done it was when I started. But I can use the divided day to slowly work on pieces over time, etching them out like a sculpture slowly sculpts his finest works of art.
The Whole Day
As harsh as this may sound, I think any writer’s work will suffer if they cannot take whole days to themselves in order to write. No distractions, phone turned off, no friends, no Facebook, no social media, nothing. The whole day is necessary for the pieces that can be started and brought to completion in a single day and to really give those pieces that have been sitting on my shelf a few proof-reads before I feel comfortable enough to hit publish.
Whole days are what I designate as publishing days. When I submit or publish work in a rush, I feel uncertain and insecure about how well I did. I don’t feel confident. I tend to think this lags onto our next pieces and the following pieces and can build up and pretty soon, we’re unsure, we feel scattered, confused about our purpose, and like we’re working in a total state of distraction and chaos. This isn’t good for us as writers. Some writers prefer to have a designated writing area so they can get into the habit of treating writing like their actual work for another company (because it is) and eliminate all distractions during that period of time.
If we really want to be serious, whole days are absolutely essential to our productivity and our sense of purpose as creators, whether we’re writers or musicians or artists is less relevant than how we manage our time to maximize our productivity and focus. Not all focus is equal.
Ten minutes to glance over a piece and improve it here and there, touch up sentences, and change out words for more interesting ones are not the same as having three hours to feel comfortable in taking our time, focusing solely on the work in front of us, and publishing the finalized work once we’re happy with it.
The Combined Strategy
I actually use both of these in conjunction for my process. I give myself dates for each piece to be published by, I build them slowly in several apps (Microsoft To-Do and OneNote are essential for my business) where I can organize each piece by title, main topic, section, and then the content of each part, contributing to a lot of pieces slowly over time. This makes the respective parts better, overall.
A lot of people I know tend to try to use one or the other. There are the peeps who always want to have a good chunk of time ahead of them, at least a couple of hours before they even get started. I’m absolutely frickin’ convinced that this is why so many people rarely start anything, if ever. So, from my heart to yours, for God’s sake, start your work even if you don’t have the time to finish it. Get a paragraph out there. Writing doesn’t have to be linear, get anything out there, throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks. Sometimes I start with what ends up becoming the 8th paragraph of a piece. You can always reassemble later, but if you struggle with getting words on paper, the thing you need to embrace the gaps in time, whatever they may be, to pour out your thoughts no matter how good or bad, and roll with it.
They don’t have to be masterpieces, what’s important in the downtime is tossing whatever scraps you can out there to build with later. The more notes you have, the better off you’ll be when it comes time to assemble pieces of work. If you’re a musician, take that time to think up a new melody or rhythm or what have you and make sure you get it down by practicing it a few times. Use that time wisely.
Then when you finally get a day ahead of you to put all of your efforts towards the completion of work, you’ll just have tons of material lying around. Assembling it all into the perfect whole is the only task you have ahead of you and you don’t have to focus on conjuring up so much new material and writing everything from scratch, you can more assemble the ideas you’ve already thought up in the interim moments. Completing a piece is much easier when you have a predetermined guide to follow, one that you’ve made on your own.
Takeaway
I’m actually not one of those people who believes we need to maximize every moment of every day. I’m a firm believer that rest and daydreaming are very important elements of the human psyche and imagination (I did a story on the importance of daydreaming on mental health) and they’re crucial to my productivity and overall well-being as a person. But I think that there are still going to be moments in between where we can sneak in some ideas when our brains are up for the task, and, of course, time we’ll need to set aside if we’re going to take our work seriously, time that’s uninterrupted where we can dedicate 100% of our focus to the task at hand. As you can see, I’m a proponent of the wholistic approach.
Don’t rely too much on one strategy or the other, A lot of people try to pinch whatever time they can in their already-hectic lives, but aren’t willing to trade in the things they love for the whole-day approach. I’ve been this person and, honestly, it took eliminating social media from my work atmosphere before my work really began to take off in terms of productive output (and reception).
Other people try to rely way too much on sitting down in front of a blank, empty screen without ideas laying around to assemble and just rolling with the assumption that they’ll be able to dream up all the right words in that very moment. But that’s not really how our concentration works. We can’t force our brains to think of interesting things in the times when our brains aren’t cooperating. This is why a balanced strategy is the best for my productivity and hopefully, by employing it, it might help yours as well. | https://joemduncan.medium.com/time-management-the-single-most-important-component-to-my-productivity-fb26c3b3787d | ['Joe Duncan'] | 2020-04-14 02:51:26.767000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Creativity', 'Time Management', 'Business Strategy', 'Writing'] |
The New Ethereum Improvement Process | The new changes to EIP-1 center on one thing: Separating the EIP repo from the hard-fork coordination process.
The EIP repository is intended to be a place for technical specifications. However, by introducing the hard fork coordination process, politics were introduced into the EIP repo.
The new process intends to reduce the amount of politics within the EIP repo by separating the hard-fork coordination process as much as possible.
In the U.S. legislative process, bills are drafted, then a separate process occurs to pass them into law. The EIP repo is seen as a place where EIPs are drafted and kept as records. The hard-fork coordination process now is a separate process that passes EIPs “into law.”
This starts with the removal of the ACCEPTED status.
With the removal of ACCEPTED the EIP process, once one process for Core EIPs, and another process for all other EIPs, now is a single process within the EIP repo.
DRAFT -> REVIEW -> LAST CALL -> FINAL
A new repository has been made to track the hard-fork coordination process, and which EIPs are in mainnet — Eth1.0-specs. | https://medium.com/ethereum-cat-herders/the-new-ethereum-improvement-process-928c628b306e | ['Edson Ayllon'] | 2020-12-24 00:13:26.166000+00:00 | ['Project Management', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Standards'] |
Powerful And Moral Realities Of Life For Everyone | We don’t understand the realities of life, or it takes time to understand them. Every human being has a story of his life and that person is a hero in this story of his life. As time goes by, this life takes many of our exams and teaches us lessons.
We human beings always, more than destiny and longing to meet ahead of time, which leads us to despair. We are comparing ourselves to other people without knowing and understanding that God has created us.
He (God) has also written my destiny. He (God) has also planned my life.
Patience, Humility, courage, and enthusiasm never allow a person to fail, but the bitter realities of life are creating a lot of fears in us. Likes, Fear of failure, fear of losing someone, etc. But dare, extend your hand to go into this fear and touch this fear and see……. Then step forward and enter this circle of fear. In this way, one by one, make all the fear of your life your friend. But never let despair come to your heart. You keep trying to make yourself a brave person at every moment.
Knowing that the rising sun every morning has appeared with a new destiny of a new day, then what a disappointment? Let’s start your day with a new spirit that this time is yours. If you want to make this time beautiful with courage or to lose this moment in despair.
Learn from your mistakes that are now yours past, but also have a great lesson for you. It is not wise to repeat mistakes over and over again, so always think about your mistakes and learn from them.
Look at the surrounding people, the people above you (richest), and the people below you (poorer), then you will know that life is not perfect for everyone. But with courage and effort, you can make yourself successful, but victory requires strong struggles and patience.
Always trust yourself, because it is trust, courage, and perseverance of effort that will lead you to success, and despair will push you into a deep abyss of failure. Always do the work that gives you happiness, so peace of mind and contentment do not come from envy, jealousy, and disappointments. | https://medium.com/@muzammilakram/powerful-and-moral-realities-of-life-for-everyone-759d84179683 | ['Muzammil Akram'] | 2021-04-06 15:23:40.921000+00:00 | ['Life Realities', 'Morality', 'Moral', 'Life Lessons', 'Life'] |
News — At The Edge — 2/16. Much of a desirable future is clear —… | Much of a desirable future is clear — AI rights, privacy, education, legal pot, online hate — yet civilization seems terminally mired in the past.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“’ Whether we entrust our decisions to machines of metal, or to those machines of flesh and blood which are bureaus and vast laboratories and armies and corporations… [t]he hour is very late, and the choice of good and evil knocks at our door.’….
Concern has tended to focus on ‘us versus them’ (robots) or ‘gray goo’ (nanotech) or ‘monocultures of clones’ (bio). To extrapolate…,Any thinking being (made of any arrangement of atoms) could have access to any technology….
[Should be] concerned about the rights of all sentients in the face of an emerging unprecedented diversity of minds…[and] harnessing this diversity to minimize global existential risks….
[Today] as we change geographical location and mature, our unequal rights change dramatically. Embryos, infants, children, teens, adults, patients, felons, gender identities and gender preferences, the very rich and very poor — all of these face different rights and socioeconomic realities….
[We’d] probably have great difficulty pulling the plug, modifying, or erasing (killing) a computer and its memories — especially if it has befriended humans….
Homo sapiens variation in rights explodes into a riot of inequality as soon as we move to entities that overlap (or will soon) the spectrum of humanity….If robots don’t have exactly the same consciousness as humans, then this is used as an excuse to give them different rights, analogous to arguments that other tribes or races are less than human….
The robot Qbo has passed the ‘mirror test’ for self-recognition, and the robot Nao has passed a related test of recognizing its own voice and inferring its internal state of being….
For free will, we have algorithms…aimed at nearly optimal probabilistic decision-making….We could argue as to whether the robot actually experiences subjective qualia for free will or self-consciousness, but the same applies to evaluating a human….
The line between human and machines blurs, both because machines become more humanlike and because humans become more machinelike…blindly follow GPS scripts, reflex tweets, and carefully crafted marketing, but also as we digest ever more insights into our brain and genetic programming mechanisms….
As we (e.g., Hawking, Musk, Tallinn, Wilczek, Tegmark) have promoted bans on ‘autonomous weapons’…other machines — for instance…Homo sapiens voting — can be more lethal and more misguided….
William Gibson said, ‘The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.’ While this underestimates the next round of ‘future,’ certainly millions of us are transhuman already — with most of us asking for more.” https://medium.com/s/story/a-bill-of-rights-for-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence-d9b1c0e80bac
“’The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all… not owned privately’….[With] era of surveillance capitalism in a symbiotic relationship with advertising…[privacy] is a commons….
[T]he accumulation of individual privacy…like the accumulation of individual votes, is enormously consequential….[and] accumulation of data is…not a ‘personal privacy’ issue, but a massive public security problem…three problems, in fact….
absence of privacy has a chilling effect on dissidence and individual thought…. No privacy means no experimentation with anything…society disapproves, especially if it’s illegal…(…a long history of ‘illegal today’ becoming ‘acceptable tomorrow’…)…. If privacy becomes a commodity… [rich] will use this information asymmetry to threaten and persecute people who challenge the status quo, thereby perpetuating it. Accumulated private data…will increasingly be used to manipulate public opinion on a massive scale….
[W]hat really worries me…[is] the highly effective, highly scalable manipulation of human behavior that AI enables, and its malicious use by corporations and governments’….
Anything which eats away at our individual privacy, especially at scale, is a risk to that commons….[The] selling privacy cheaply isn’t any better for society than letting it be seized without any compensation…[because] a more rapid degradation of the commons ….
[Or] would you think it OK for a company to purchase citizens’ voting rights….
[N]eed to defend privacy as a commons…[not] individual asset…sold to surveillance capitalists. It, and we, are more important than that.” https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/10/privacy-is-a-commons/
“’[Read] my share of textbooks…[and] it’s a pretty limited way to learn something. Even the best…can’t figure out which concepts you understand and …need more help with….
[Instead] look at the text online, watch a super-engaging video that shows you how it’s done, and play a game that reinforces the concepts’….
[Just] using open-courseware saved students an average of $66 to $121 per course….[annually] can add up to $1,000, which can be the difference between staying in school or having to drop out’….
[Also] makes education more convenient and efficient. ‘Not having to show up to a physical classroom at a specific time makes a big difference to students who are balancing school with working and raising a family’…[making] education more available to a broader array of people…[not]enrolled in a university….
[But] can be an overwhelming number of online classes and educational videos to choose from, and they’re not all going to be worth your time.” https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/bill-gates-the-best-way-to-learn-today-is-not-from-textbooks.html
“The Marijuana Revenue and Regulation Act, would ‘responsibly legalize, tax and regulate marijuana at the federal level…to ‘preserve the integrity of state marijuana laws and provide a path for responsible federal legalization and regulation of the marijuana industry.
The federal prohibition of marijuana is wrong, plain and simple….Too many lives have been wasted, and too many economic opportunities have been missed. ‘The American people have elected the most pro-cannabis Congress in [history]….
[Bill] includes the Small Business Tax Equity Act…to prevent marijuana businesses’…getting hit with an unfair tax bill’ and another measure…to ‘shrink the gap between federal and state marijuana policies.” https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/429139-dem-senator-files-s-420-bill-to-legalize-marijuana
“[Today] given the mounting evidence…the drug could prove beneficial in treating a number of health problems…a significant change in WHO’s position…for the last 60 years….
[So] cannabis resin and other marijuana products should be downgraded from a schedule IV to a schedule I drug under international law….[Also] products made with a cannabis extract known as cannabidiol…[with] no more than 0.2 percent THC, should be removed from all international drug control conventions….
[Criminalizing] ‘cannabis in the 1961…in the absence of scientific evidence, was a terrible injustice.’” https://www.newsweek.com/who-recommends-rescheduling-cannabis-international-law-first-time-history-1324613
“37 percent of Americans were subjected to severe hate and harassment online in 2018…up from about 18 percent in 2017…[and] half of all Americans experienced some form of harassment….
[56%] indicating… some of their harassment occurred on [Facebook]….[19%] on Twitter…(… seems low)…[17%] on YouTube…[16%] on Instagram and 13 percent on WhatsApp …half of all daily users on Twitch have experienced harassment…38 percent of Reddit users….
’It’s deeply disturbing to see how prevalent online hate is, and how it affects so many’….
[Many] think that online hate makes people more susceptible to committing hate crimes….
80 percent [want]…action from lawmakers….[84%] think… technology platforms…need to do more work to curb the harassment, hate and hazing….LGBTQ community were targeted most frequently [63%].” https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/13/2018-really-was-more-of-a-dumpster-fire-for-online-hate-and-harassment-adl-study-finds/
Find more of my ideas on Medium at, A Passion to Evolve. Or click the Follow button below to add me to your feed. Prefer a weekly email newsletter — free, no ads, no spam, & never sell the list — email me [email protected] with “add me” in the subject line. | https://extranewsfeed.com/news-at-the-edge-2-16-1a62eb2dcf8 | ['Doc Huston'] | 2019-02-17 01:31:33.227000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Education', 'Privacy', 'Marijuana', 'Law'] |
Will Tech’s Monopolies Survive 2020? | Will Tech’s Monopolies Survive 2020?
How the triple turmoil of a pandemic, protests, and a presidential election threatens Silicon Valley’s status quo.
Photo: Wang Ying/Xinhua via Getty
Welcome back to Pattern Matching, OneZero’s weekly newsletter that puts the week’s most compelling tech stories in context.
There was a brief moment, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic’s first wave in the United States, when it looked like Big Tech might be back in the public’s good graces. With stay-at-home orders across the country, screens were no longer an addictive distraction from real life, but the locus of real life itself. Zoom was powering business meetings; Houseparty, happy hours. Facebook was once again a dominant force in news; Apple and Google were partnering on a privacy-conscious contact tracing app. Politicians in the United States and Europe who had been laying the groundwork for new regulations suddenly had more urgent things to worry about.
That moment has passed. The lifting of lockdowns has been greeted not with sighs of relief at a return to the status quo, but with rallying cries to change it. There are protests in the streets. A presidential election looms. While criminal justice reform tops the domestic agenda, the appetite for tech reform appears to have returned as well.
The Pattern
Big Tech is back in the hot seat.
💬 The European Commission this week opened two antitrust probes against Apple, focusing on how its App Store rules and Apple Pay system, respectively, hamstring competitors. The App Store investigation was sparked by a 2019 complaint from Spotify about Apple’s practice of taking 30 percent of all subscription revenues from users who sign up for third-party apps on iOS. That puts Spotify at a disadvantage in competing with Apple’s own Apple Music service, from which Apple keeps 100 percent of revenues. (In 2018, Spotify stopped allowing users to pay via iOS.) The Apple Pay investigation, meanwhile, will examine how Apple limits the use of its devices’ “tap and go” payment functionality to Apple Pay alone, once again giving its own service a big edge over competitors.
💬 Spotify is hardly the only company affected. I wrote in depth in February about the brewing antitrust case against Apple, and the developers lining up to testify against it. In a twist of timing, one of those developers, Basecamp, launched a new paid email app, called Hey, on the same day the EU investigation was announced. Apple rejected it, on the grounds that it doesn’t allow the in-app subscription options that would give Apple its 30-percent cut. Protocol’s David Pierce recounted how that decision went down, while The Verge’s Dieter Bohn blasted Apple for inconsistencies in how it enforces its rules. Even Apple blogger Jon Gruber, who often defends the company, agreed that the company’s rent-seeking has gone too far. (Meanwhile, if you’re interested in Hey, read developer Kaya Thomas’ OneZero review of the buzzy, pricey new email platform.)
💬 Even mighty Facebook can’t get its apps onto Apple devices when they compete directly with Apple’s own offerings. The New York Times reported Thursday that Apple has rejected Facebook Gaming, the social network’s new casual gaming app, at least five times in the past four months, citing policies against apps that function primarily as game stores. Google, for its part, quickly approved Facebook Gaming on the Google Play store in April. Illustrating the user-unfriendly effects of Apple’s restrictions, the Times article explains that Facebook’s approach to getting its app approved has involved continually making the interface less intuitive, on the theory that this would make it less store-like.
💬 That Apple governs its App Store with impunity, and often to its own advantage, is not new. Neither is it new that Apple’s own apps sometimes compete with, copy, and crowd out those made for its platforms by independent developers. What is different now are the scope of Apple’s first-party app ambitions, the number of developers willing to risk the giant’s ire by speaking out, and the willingness of people in power to listen. In OneZero this week, Owen Williams argues that the EU case could be “a defining moment for the technology industry, as companies like Google and Facebook may find themselves scrutinized in a similar way.” And speaking of Google…
💬 Google made a similar power play this week by integrating its Meet videoconferencing software into the Gmail app. It’s a transparent attempt to leverage Google’s dominance in one market — email, in this case — against a rival (Zoom) that was outcompeting it in another market.
💬 The regulatory fervor is not confined to Europe. Back in the United States, the right broadened its assault on Section 230 this week, as Sen. Josh Hawley introduced a bill that would make it easier to sue tech companies for inconsistencies in how they moderate content. The move comes two weeks after Donald Trump signed an executive order challenging the legal protections that online platforms enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Gizmodo’s Dell Cameron argues that the bill, like Trump’s order, is mostly toothless: It still allows companies to set their own rules of moderation, as long as they stick to them and apply them equally to all parties “in good faith.”
💬 And yet that even that mushy qualifier could open the door to enough lawsuits that some companies may simply decide a more hands-off approach is safest. Which is, of course, what Trump and Hawley want: for social platforms to keep their paws off of racist or false content from right-wing sources, including the president himself. This week conveniently brought us an illustration of the kind of dustup that could turn into a lawsuit, when NBC News reported that Google had banned the financial site ZeroHedge and conservative political site The Federalist from its ad network for spreading racist conspiracy theories about the anti-police brutality protests. As an uproar spread — both sites have large, vocal followings — Google disputed NBC News’ story. Google said The Federalist was never demonetized, but that it had reached an agreement with the publisher that involved removing racist comments from The Federalist’s comment section.
💬 These are the types of interventions that liberals and civil rights activists, along with some of tech companies’ own employees, have been calling for. (Some civil rights groups are now calling on companies to boycott Facebook’s ad platform.) They’re also the type that get the right riled up and build momentum for bills like Hawley’s, as Ben Shapiro and Ted Cruz were quick to rail against Google’s moves this week. As I wrote in a previous newsletter, we appear to have at last reached the point where the big platforms have to pick a side. Twitter was the first to do so, when it started flagging some of Trump’s tweets as misleading, and the company kept up its enforcement against him this week by putting a warning label on a video he tweeted. The video fabricated fake CNN footage of a “terrified” Black toddler running away from a “racist baby,” then implied that the network was spreading divisive fake news (a classic example of Trumpian projection).
💬 Facebook has opted for the laissez-faire approach to Trump’s posts, but even it felt compelled to take action this week when the liberal blog Media Matters for America reported that the president was running Facebook ads with Nazi iconography. (Trump’s campaign then claimed the inverted red triangle was an antifa symbol — which is a lie, according to historians who study the group.) Facebook removed the 88 offending ads.
💬 Antitrust enforcement and Section 230 reform are separate issues. But the growing momentum behind both is indicative of a larger trend: Big Tech has lost the benefit of the doubt. That happened long ago in Europe, but it is finally happening in the United States as well, from both major parties. And any notion that the pandemic or a Republican presidency would ease the regulatory pressure on Silicon Valley has now been put to rest. Americans of all ideologies are fed up with business as usual, their polarization arguably stoked by the tech platforms themselves, and their economic stability undermined by the rise of the gig economy. In other words, we’re living in a mess that is partly of the tech industry’s making. And now that mess is coming back to haunt it.
Undercurrents
Under-the-radar trends, stories, and random anecdotes worth your time
🗨️ Two Black leaders at Pinterest left the company over racial discrimination, saying they were subjected to offensive comments, unfair pay, and retaliation. CEO Ben Silbermann subsequently issued a public apology and admitted “parts of our culture are broken,” Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier reported. But the ex-employees, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, who made up two-thirds of the platform’s public policy and social impact team, said on Twitter that they heard the apology only through the media. Their allegations are part of a wider reckoning over tech companies’ treatment of Black employees, and they dent the reputation of a platform that had previously earned praise for some progressive policies — which, it turns out, Ozoma and Banks had been criticized by their managers for championing. Read Ozoma’s full thread here.
🗨️ Lesser-known face recognition companies are eagerly courting law enforcement, looking to fill the vacuum after IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon stepped back. Clearview AI, NEC, nd Ayonix are among those poised to capitalize by ignoring the anger over surveillance technology’s discriminatory effects on Black communities, the Wall Street Journal reported. My OneZero colleague Dave Gershgorn has written about an even longer list of companies, including many that you might not expect, that have been trying to cash in on a face recognition gold rush. In Bloomberg Opinion, Cathy O’Neil makes the case that face recognition by law enforcement will continue until or unless Congress repeals post-9/11 legislation, such as the Real ID Act, that prioritized antiterrorism efforts over civil liberties.
🗨️ Instagram’s algorithm systematically incentivizes its users to show skin in their photos, according to a report from the nonprofit AlgorithmWatch.
🗨️ The great scourge of bots on social media may be overstated, bot expert Darius Kazemi argued, in a New York Times article by Siobhan Roberts.
Headlines of the Week
Facebook Groups Are Destroying America
— Nina Jankowicz and Cindy Otis, Wired
Devin Nunes’ Attorney Says He’s at ‘Dead End’ in Quest to Reveal Identity of Twitter Cow
— Kate Irby, Fresno Bee
Thanks for reading. Reach me with tips and feedback by responding to this post on the web, via Twitter direct message at @WillOremus, or by email at [email protected]. | https://onezero.medium.com/will-techs-monopolies-survive-2020-90a8ea05b6c3 | ['Will Oremus'] | 2020-06-20 13:57:29.136000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Apple', 'Facebook', 'Pattern Matching'] |
Finest Guide to be able to Clash Royale for of Gems tool | Finest Guide to be able to Clash Royale for of Gems tool clashroyaleihack Oct 13, 2016·2 min read
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Black Insurance raises funding to power next stage of development | Black is joining forces with a seasoned VC firm to bring insurance disruption yet closer
Black is pleased to announce that we’ve just closed a new funding round, taking us a big step closer to bringing our insurance software and carrier capability to market.
The round was led by Concentric, a London-based early-stage VC that also invested in our partner Insly, and has extensive knowledge of the market we operate in.
This funding round marks an important point in our growth, providing the resources we need to further develop and refine our insurance software, with a beta version finished in May. It will also allow us to prepare for acquiring an insurance license from the regulators, and start raising the solvency capital we need to start trading.
Black is in advanced stages of developing a next generation insurance software, which will simplify and reduce the cost of offering insurance capacity to managing general agents (MGAs). By building our insurance platform from scratch, rather than relying on legacy systems and processes, we avoid the inefficiencies faced by traditional insurers. Prioritising growth over immediate ROI, we pass these savings onto MGAs and consumers, as higher commissions and lower prices.
Selling via insurance intermediaries means Black doesn’t need to specialise on a particular type of cover or geography, or offer sales and claims, as this is all provided by the MGAs. This makes the business highly scalable and ensures we can focus on building the best technology, with seamless integration and sophisticated underwriting data facilities for MGA-s.
MGAs control substantial insurance portfolios and are always on a lookout for better insurance carriers. Our value proposition has resonated strongly with them so far, resulting in a €2 billion sales pipeline, with €30m for imminent onboarding. Once the technology is ready and our license is secured, we’re in a solid position for growth. Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/blackinsurance/black-insurance-raises-funding-to-power-next-stage-of-development-c5cc45f6ce21 | ['Mart Parve'] | 2019-06-05 09:54:10.067000+00:00 | ['Insurance', 'Agile', 'Insurtech', 'Fintech'] |
5 Awesome reasons for any developer to learn Rust right away | 5 Awesome reasons for any developer to learn Rust right away TechGig Aug 23·3 min read
By the end of this piece, you’ll understand why hundreds of other people believe Rust is the best programming language available.
Software complexity rises with time as more features are expected in a shorter amount of time, and tolerance for faults decreases as standards rise. New programming languages and libraries appear, and while they occasionally enhance things, they mainly merely keep things the same. By the end of this piece, you’ll understand why hundreds of other people believe Rust is the best programming language available.
So, what exactly is Rust?
Rust is a super-efficient, super-secure, and super-fast programming language that defies the trend of incremental gains. Not only that, but it goes one step further: it alters your perspective on software development.
Some people (Andrei included) believe that Rust is the ideal programming language love child, combining the strength of C++ with the safety of Java or other interpreted languages.
These are the 5 top reasons why you should learn Rust:
1. Puts Developers First
Rust prioritises developers by offering capabilities that make software development more efficient and dependable. This includes maintenance, which is an important component of the lifecycle of a project. Rust prioritises developers by offering capabilities that make software development more efficient and dependable. This includes maintenance, which is an important component of the lifecycle of a project. The Rust ecosystem is at the heart of the Rust development process. On crates.io, there are tens of thousands of crates (a crate is a Rust code library), all with auto-generated documentation.
2. Dependable Code
Errors with null pointers? Nah. Problems with the runtime reappearing six months later? Nope. Getting up at 2 a.m. for an emergency hotfix? Rust isn’t like that. Rust programmes are built on the foundation of reliability, which is why Rust is the language of the future.
3. WebAssembly (Wasm)
What role does Rust play here? Rust is positioned to become the de-facto language for targeting Wasm on the internet. Rust uses very little memory, has no garbage collector, and features Tier 2 Wasm compiler support, as well as a wonderful Wasm packager that can be used with web development workflows like webpack. This enables Rust to fully utilise Wasm in order to achieve significant speedups on computationally intensive web apps.
Because Rust can run on both the backend (natively) and frontend (through Wasm) of online applications, it’s a no-brainer to learn it if you want to build fast, dependable web apps that can be accessed from anywhere and on any device.
4. Industry Support
Rust has a promising future. To keep the Rust project active and in continual development, the Rust Foundation maintains it and guarantees that core contributors are adequately supported.
Microsoft is a founding member, along with Amazon, Google, Huawei, Facebook, and, of course, Mozilla, which was instrumental in the development of the Rust programming language.
5. Proven Track Record
Improving current projects doesn’t always get the same attention as launching a whole new product, so here’s a taste of what’s going on with Rust:
Rust Linux kernel drivers have recently been added to linux-next, which is the staging area for inclusion in the release kernel. This is significant because the Linux project has only ever accepted C code.
To address their scale issues, Dropbox redesigned their sync engine in Rust.
Discord added Rust to their codebase to speed up Member List processing (excellent news for everyone on the ZTM server!)
To improve the security of billions of devices, Google is creating new Android components in Rust.
Given Rust’s popularity, strong community, industry support, and ability to produce extremely fast and highly efficient applications, now is the best time to learn Rust! | https://medium.com/@techgigdotcom/5-awesome-reasons-for-any-developer-to-learn-rust-right-away-f605b8ca3060 | [] | 2021-08-23 11:10:05.004000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Programming', 'Rust', 'Programming Languages', 'Software Engineering'] |
All the Small Things: How mastering small things is the key to mastering big things | All the Small Things: How mastering small things is the key to mastering big things Daniel Villa Follow Nov 13 · 5 min read
Photo by an_vision on Unsplash
Gravity operates equally on the apple as the heavenly bodies. The same little force that nonchalantly plucks the apple to the ground is responsible for tethering together a star and a globe of billions of intelligent life forms. The force on the apple, however, was so small that it took these intelligent life forms a few millennia to even realize it was there. I believe gravity is a good analogy for how we should approach life, and of course, our engineering careers.
Accomplished Navy Seal and modern entrepreneur Jocko Willink touches on this idea with his saying: “Unmitigated excellence in every area.” So let’s explore the idea with some concrete code.
The CodeWars.com platform is built for devs to practice their skills and learn from each others solutions. I believe that we’ll find a popular but false understanding of what is excellent code. Of course, the authors of the code solutions probably wouldn’t make that claim, but it is what most community members are likely taking away from their experiences there.
There is a question on Code Wars which is as follows:
Write a function, which takes a non-negative integer (seconds) as input and returns the time in a human-readable format (HH:MM:SS)
Here is the top-most ranked JavaScript solution with the most votes in two categories: “Best Practices” and “Clever”.
Here is an alternative solution.
I believe the second is a “less popular” solution and is unlikely to get many votes. Perhaps because is obvious and therefore boring. It is not clever. However, Bob Martin author of Clean Code, and a few other seasoned veterans would tell you that this code is more of a “Best Practice” precisely because it is obvious and not to mention far more testable and maintainable. It took longer to write the second solution; it was the pursuit of excellence that produced it.
But let’s be real, if you took one look at my lawn you would wonder how a guy like that could write a thing like this. Ain’t to nobody got no time for that. However, this idea of excellence, like all good and true ideas, was not discovered in modernity. As early as the 18th century we find a quote like this: “whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.” The author goes on to include “even down to dancing and dress”.
Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash
As engineers, solving the problem is part of our job, but not all of it. If you want career success; if you want to move planets; writing code is just the apple from the tree. We tend to think of admin tasks as not worth doing — certainly not “well” or “excellently”. Things like documentation, presentations to peers, unit tests, and refactoring take a side or back seat. As you level up your career the technically week co-worker or unpopular employee might might suffer the same treatment.
Two things we can draw from this quote: priority and what is “well”. Is it worth doing? I promise you there are things on your list right now that are simply not worth doing. Either because someone else can do it (it is not worth your time) or it is not in the top 3 things to do today or this week. If it is not in the top 3, remove it from your list. With your shortened list, are you convinced you can do them well? Or to borrow from Jocko’s language, excellently? In the case of engineering, and I suppose any other field, our point of reference is always the Pro and the Thought Leader. The Pro has actually build an enterprise system. The Thought Leader influenced the Pro and has built many systems themselves. Find these people and study them. For the record, unit tests and documentation are both worth doing and worth doing well. However, doing them well means applying them correctly. There are many books about that.
This idea of excellence goes even further back into the reaches of history and still has lessons to learn. In the Old Testament there is a passage that says “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”. The lesson here is one of letting go and accepting what fate may bring us and committing to living well in the midst of circumstances we cannot control. How often do we find ourselves doing things we did not plan to do? Daily, at least.
Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash
Ok, so you voted for NodeJs but the team chose Java. You have a choice. You can get your knickers in a bunch about it and become an anchor to the team, complaining, looking for everything opportunity of “I told you so”, and posting every single security article on the team chat. Or you can determine to be the best Java dev on the team. Imagine another scenario: You wind up as the dev lead on a team that you did not build and that you do not like. You can mope through the process like the living dead — yes, that is an option — or you can commit to being the best dev lead. You never know what you might learn about others, yourself, and soft skills you thought were not very important. We don’t know where our life will ultimately lead, but committing to doing all things well nearly guarantees success no matter what you find yourself doing.
I think at times we think too much of our plans. We construct a career path wherein we expect ourselves to do X and then Y, then building on Y we should reach Z in 1 year. Plans are good and needful. Plans are always wrong. The risk we run is that we overlook a seemingly useless situation because of what we think it means for us. Mentoring that struggling coworker is a perfect example. Or learning to work with difficult people. Mastering these difficult situations can perhaps launch you further in your career than you thought possible.
Back to gravity.
As the saying goes, any success a series of small success. Any good system is a series of small good parts. I would submit that any leader of great things has learned to lead himself or herself in tiny daily tasks and personal relationships. Like gravity, mastering the small things, like the falling of an apple, is the best way to learn how to prepare to take on moving entire worlds.
So, here’s to all the small things! 🍻 | https://medium.com/dev-genius/all-the-small-things-how-mastering-small-things-are-the-key-to-mastering-big-things-7a05be451d3a | ['Daniel Villa'] | 2020-11-14 01:16:20.693000+00:00 | ['Career Advice', 'Software Engineering', 'Software Development'] |
HS2, Broken Promises and Climate Consequences | No expense spared for the South. No money left for the North. This isn’t “levelling up”. This is the same old story.
That’s how Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester reacted to the scrapping of the HS2 leg to Leeds. But what is HS2? And why is this such a big deal?
High-Speed Rail — A Change of Plans
HS2 is a massive project which intended to improve links between London and big Northern cities, including Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, via high-speed rail.
HS2 has the potential to vastly improve journey times, with Birmingham to London reduced from 1h 21 to 52 minutes. Birmingham to Nottingham would take just 19 minutes.
However, it is not just about knocking minutes of journey times, as Jon Stone argues in an essay for the Independent newspaper. He explains that HS2 can vastly increase the capacity of the UK’s rail network, by building new lines designed for express trains travelling between cities. Currently, these kinds of trains have to share tracks with older, slower commuter trains. Because you can’t overtake on a train track, there has to be large gaps left in the timetable (1). Read the full, well-written article here.
The net effect of this is low capacity and inefficient running of trains is that it drives up prices. Train companies can charge high prices, knowing they will still fill the limited number of seats.
Stone argues that HS2 is a necessity if we want to solve these issues.
Yet, making the headlines recently is the government’s announcement that the Eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds will now be scrapped in favour of making improvements to existing rail services (2). This announcement sparked a big backlash from leaders in the North who believe that the government has watered down plans for the region whilst being happy to splash the cash in the South. Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer stated that “The north of England has been betrayed.” (3).
It is easy to see why these leaders are unhappy. The journey from London to Leeds currently takes 2h 13 mins, however, under the original HS2 plans it would have been reduced to 1h 21mins. With the government’s latest proposals the journey will take 1h 53 mins (4). It will also see less of the increased capacity benefits that HS2 brings.
The plan for HS2. Source: BBC
It was only back in May when the current transport secretary Grant Shapps was confirming that the high-speed link between Birmingham and Leeds would go ahead and may even be finished earlier than expected (5).
That was not true, but the government continue to defend their new plans with Shapps arguing they “will bring benefits at least a decade or more earlier” and at less cost (4).
So why exactly was the Eastern leg of HS2 scrapped?
HS2, the most ambitious infrastructure project in the UK, has always been controversial.
One of the biggest sticking points for its critics is that it is very (very) expensive. It was originally priced, in 2013, at £32.7 billion, but costs have spiralled almost every year since and in 2019 a government-commissioned review estimated final costs could reach as much as £106 billion (6).
In December 2020, the National Infrastructure Commission recommended the government should prioritise establishing rail links between cities in the North and Midlands over new projects such as HS2.
And, as mentioned above, the eastern leg was not due to be completed until 2035–2040.
These two reasons are how the government justifies the scrapping of this part of HS2 in favour of their new plans. However, ultimately the reason for why it was scrapped will depend on you ask with some people arguing it's because the government doesn’t take investment in the North as seriously as it should.
Northern Powerhouse Rail
For the North East of England, there is even more bad news for rail development. Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) is another set of proposals which initially aimed to implement a new high-speed line from Liverpool to Leeds via Manchester with multiple other links and new stations for Bradford and Warrington.
This has been cancelled (or at least significantly scaled back) with no high-speed line between Leeds and Manchester and no new stations for Bradford or Warrington.
Instead the government is focusing on improving existing lines and argues that this is the best way to prioritise improving connections whilst balancing affordability.
However, Railway Industry Association chief executive Darren Caplan has said:
It is worrying that this scheme has been scaled back. Northern Powerhouse Rail will be essential in connecting up towns and cities in the North of England
There is a particularly strong case for a new station in Bradford, Britain’s seventh largest city, with 25% of the population aged under 16 — but not yet connected on a mainline railway (7)
Undeniably the significant cut to plans, both HS2 and NPR, particularly affect the North East and its leaders may question whether this is the ‘levelling up’ they were promised by the prime minister. | https://medium.com/cited-sealed-delivered/hs2-broken-promises-and-climate-consequences-7eaad578b3c7 | ['Cited', 'Sealed'] | 2021-11-23 17:25:49.932000+00:00 | ['UK Politics', 'Levelling Up', 'North', 'Trains', 'Hs2'] |
COVID first world problems: The everyday changes… positive or negative? | Photo by Mikey Harris on Unsplash
2020 has been a year of drastic change. The pandemic has affected millions of lives and almost every facet of human existence. While the board-scale anguish brought on by COVID-19 is evident, I leave that for a different discussion and instead dwell on the mundane things in life and how they have changed for many of us. Here, I share a few first world problems¹ and changes I have observed in my everyday existence. I tack on a “positive” or a “negative” to each point to suggest how it has affected my status quo. Have a read. Comment. Share your thoughts on mundane COVID changes in your life. | https://medium.com/the-haven/covid-first-world-problems-and-the-everyday-changes-positive-or-negative-49d4f3413fa7 | ['Adam Evans'] | 2020-12-25 02:46:50.608000+00:00 | ['First World Problems', 'Funny', 'Covid-19', 'Observation'] |
How Does It Feel, Mr. Tree? | How Does It Feel, Mr. Tree?
I know for certain you must feel
Photo by Gilly Stewart on Unsplash
A poem:
How does it feel?
I know for certain you must feel,
the winds ripping at your chest.
You’ve been on this earth for so long,
that death may be your only wish.
How does it feel
When beasts choose your skin for their meal,
when young children become obsessed
with picking your hairs by the throng,
when axemen want you to perish.
How does it feel?
I pity you much with great zeal
and in my heart, you’ve made a nest.
Dear Mr. Tree, so bold and strong,
I pray you have no more anguish. | https://medium.com/writers-blokke/how-does-it-feel-mr-tree-93059a408dee | ['Aysia C.'] | 2020-12-17 10:22:50.182000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Fiction'] |
Firebase Cloud Messaging Configuration | and voala you every thing is set you can test your notifications from the firebase console | https://medium.com/@zeglaty/firebase-cloud-messaging-configuration-462cd0dba149 | ['Abdulmagid Elmaghbub'] | 2020-12-19 12:25:43.143000+00:00 | ['Push Notification Service', 'Cloud Messaging', 'Apple Push Notifications', 'Firebase', 'iOS'] |
Flats for Sale in Miyapur, Flats for Sale in Pragati Nagar, Flats for Sale in Kukatpally | Praneeth Constructions delivering 20+ perfect projects with the top-notch build quality. Are you Looking for Flats for Sale in Miyapur, Flats for Sale in Pragati Nagar, Flats for Sale in Kukatpally.
Praneeth Constructions has been established as a name for undeniable faith since its inception in 2007. Ever since, we’ve left no stone unturned in delivering 20+ projects with utmost care and detail owing to our top-notch quality. We believe the core driving factor of our victory other than our commitment to construction is the trust our patrons have kept on us. Quality is a non negotiable for us and we have derived some of the best techniques to deliver great homes for those who believe in us and share their dreams. Check out our project range and be nothing short of convinced when we say we have taken the first place to deliver to you your much awaited dream home. | https://medium.com/@shashankdar27/flats-for-sale-in-miyapur-flats-for-sale-in-pragati-nagar-flats-for-sale-in-kukatpally-1637198b25ca | ['Shashank Dar'] | 2020-11-25 10:27:45.863000+00:00 | ['Housing', 'Real Estate', 'Hyderabad Real Estate'] |
What is Labour Law Compliance? | Firstly let us know, what is Compliance?
The term Compliance means sticking to the rules or laws which is concerned with the particular business.
Obviously, Labour law compliance is abiding the labour laws enacted by governmental bodies.
Labour law compliance is applicable for all the companies, it doesn’t matter whether it is private or public sector. It is also practising all over the world with different standards/laws.
Particularly in India, it takes place across three strata. They are
Central regulations
State regulations
Local regulations
All the three regulations are controlled over by the Labour and Employment ministry of India. The main motto of this ministry is to protect and safeguard the interest of workers; also it is focused on the promotion of welfare and providing social security to the labour force.
According to the Indian Ministry of Labour and Employment, at present there are 44 statutes are available for the labour force which is seriously enacted by the Central government.
labour law compliance
For your reference, here also I list out some of the Indian Labour Laws:
· The minimum wages act,1948
· The payment of wages act,1936
· The trade union act,1926
· The factories act,1948
· The mines act,1952
· The child labour act,1986
· The employee compensation act,1923
· The unorganized worker’s social security act,2008
· The cine workers welfare act,1981
In a nutshell, Labour law compliance is accepting and abiding the labour laws such as minimum wages act, mines act, etc. which I have stated earlier.
As can be seen, it is not an easy job to manage labour law compliance individually by the organization. Because there is a frequent update in the rules or laws, Sometimes failure in compliance management will tend to severe penalties even closure of the business.
So it is better to hire the best labour law compliance management firm to keep your business healthy and maintain the company’s reputation.
Cheers!! | https://medium.com/@christejeni/what-is-labour-law-compliance-49d2e92410ef | ['Jeni Christe'] | 2019-06-17 05:28:21.046000+00:00 | ['Labour Law Compliance', 'Compliance Management', 'Compliance', 'Compliance Services', 'Economics'] |
Pulse: The Telegraph journey towards real-time analytics | Industry Outlook
Technology enables publishers to measure the impact that a piece of content is having as soon as it becomes public. These days, reacting to this data is a vital part of promoting quality journalism in the sea of online articles competing for our attention. The real-time understanding of how a story is performing can significantly help to improve the customer experience on both our website and mobile apps. It’s important to know what our registrants and subscribers want to read and how we can deliver articles that are relevant to our audience.
The Challenge
Under this premise, in 2017 the data team was challenged to build a real-time dashboard, to display in the newsroom (pictured below), to show which articles were driving registrations and subscriptions.
The first step was to identify a reliable data source on which we could build our analytics. The Telegraph’s entire website ran on Adobe Experience Manager and for this reason, we decided to consume the Adobe Livestream API in order to ingest behavioural information as soon as it was collected. Unfortunately, since no post-processing was applied to those data sets, filtering out the noise and retrieving only relevant records posed a challenge.
The First Iteration
We took an Agile approach and built a simple proof of concept (PoC) to establish that from this specific data source it was possible to extract meaningful analytics. We came up with the following design.
A poller consumes the live stream of data and without any transformation writes record by record in Pub/Sub. Then a Dataflow real-time pipeline consumes the queue and filters out irrelevant records. The rest of the data are cleaned and enriched before being uploaded into Elasticsearch. One of the beauties of Dataflow is how clean the data transformation process looks once the code is deployed on Google Cloud. A flow diagram is automatically generated that shows the different logical steps implemented in the pipeline.
In this way, it becomes easy to identify bottlenecks and errors in your process. Also, all the generated logs are automatically available in Stackdriver, which takes care to monitor the application and alert.
In Elasticsearch only a rolling window of 8 days of data is kept while all the history is available in real-time in BigQuery, with the possibility to plug this into the top DataStudio dashboards. There are multiple reasons why we decided to adopt Elasticsearch for this specific use case:
Knowledge of the technology. Elasticsearch had already been successfully used at The Telegraph in other solutions and we had in-house expertise.
It presented the possibility of using Kibana to quickly deliver a dashboard without involving any front-end developer.
Horizontal Scalability.
Low response time for the type of queries that we wanted to run.
Less than a couple of months since we started the proof of concept a basic Kibana dashboard was ready.
Figures in the dashboard above are purely illustrative.
The solution went live in September 2017 and despite some limitations, it was really well received by the newsroom.
The Second Iteration
By the beginning of 2018, the product had already been tested for a few months and most of the stability issues intrinsically linked to real-time data processing were solved. Due to the high scalability of Pub/Sub and Dataflow spikes, the handling of requests on our website to show how content is performing had become trivial.
We decided at that point to move further and build our bespoke dashboard on the top of the same backend system. A few months later a second version of the dashboard with richer information was released.
Figures in the dashboard above are purely illustrative.
During this second iteration, we decided to remove Kibana and decouple the visualisation from the storage through an API developed in NodeJS and using GraphQL. This was actually one of the first times that we played with GraphQL at The Telegraph and it was a pleasant surprise, since it allowed much more flexibility. We moved away from a rigid contract with multiple endpoints in favour of a simpler approach with fewer endpoints and a clear schema allowing us to extract and filter data from Elasticsearch in a cleaner way. Below is the updated design.
Pulse
After this second release, we decided to undertake a new challenge.
It’s one thing to have a dashboard displayed on a big wall that doesn’t allow much interaction, but quite another to have a product that allows users to conduct real-time exploration of how our content is performing. The idea of “Pulse” was born.
The PoC phase was officially terminated and we started to consider Pulse as a product with a well-defined roadmap.
A new team led by our Head of Data was created with the right mix of UX designers, data engineers and frontend developers. We ran a few workshops with different business users to understand the needs and priorities of the newsroom. After a couple of weeks, the first designs were ready.
Once these sessions were concluded it was clear which metrics and dimensions were relevant to measure the performance of our articles.
Luckily, from a backend point of view, the changes to the design were minimal, since we were starting from already a strong base, but most of the features requested would have required us to massively extend the solution.
Once we finished collecting the requirements and we had a clear understanding of what we were trying to achieve we updated the architecture as shown below.
In this third phase, it was not possible anymore to rely on a single data source to serve the data. Next to Adobe live stream we added Chartbeat, while Adobe post-processed Hitlog and the Unified Content Model (UCM, an article storage platform developed in house by The Telegraph Engineering team).
The new integration with Chartbeat has been developed in order to offer metrics that was not possible to track through Adobe analytics. An example of this might be the average engaged time on a page for a specific audience.
The post-processed Adobe Hitlog was added in order to offer a historical view of how our content was performing.
Aside from the new data sources, further development work was necessary. The API used to serve the dashboard was rebuilt from scratch using Python and GraphQL to conform with the stack of technologies that we normally use. A new Redis cache was introduced to improve the response time and offer a smooth experience to the end user. The real-time data pipeline that consumes Adobe live stream data was updated to include the new metrics and offer better data cleansing.
The need to also classify our articles, through a set of tags in near real-time, led to a hybrid design where both real-time, near real-time and batch data pipelines coexist. For this purpose, a tags data pipeline was developed. This specific pipeline runs every N minutes and for each article published on the day it checks if a set of conditions is satisfied in order to classify our content accordingly.
The frontend has been built from scratch as well. Since we didn’t have anything in place yet, our frontend team started from a blank canvas and in record time developed a responsive dashboard that offers the possibility to our users to explore the statistics of each article or section under a set of predefined filters.
Figures in the dashboard above are purely illustrative.
Pulse went live at the beginning of 2019 and it is now part of the tools that are constantly used by our journalists.
What’s Next
What will be the next step? This time we are definitely going big!
In next weeks (from writing this blog), we will release Pulse XL to replace the old editorial dashboard. This will introduce a historical data view, geographic information in our main dashboard and also will uniform all our real-time dashboards under the same product.
Regardless of whether you are on mobile, on desktop or in The Telegraph newsroom, Pulse will provide support with reliable figures on our strategy.
Pulse has changed our newspaper’s attitude to data; we are placing more confidence and trust in the information captured about our content. Put simply, we have one of the best available pieces of technology for capturing and analysing the stories that we publish in real-time. Pulse flags segments, such as engaged registered visitors, then prompts journalists on how to convert them to subscribers in real-time. This will be customisable for every team across editorial to ensure all content is achieving its purpose and contributing to the Telegraph’s broader strategy.
Stefano Solimito is a Principal Data Engineer at The Telegraph | https://medium.com/the-telegraph-engineering/pulse-the-telegraph-journey-towards-real-time-analytics-cd08c1078fa6 | ['Stefano Solimito'] | 2019-03-14 11:51:54.817000+00:00 | ['Google Cloud Platform', 'Analytics', 'Data Engineering', 'Data Visualization', 'Big Data'] |
Building an App to Make Browser-based Calls to Congress with Flask and Twilio.js on Heroku | Your leaders should be accessible to the public
In 2015, I wanted to build an app to provide a way for administrator of public networks (school, libraries, etc.) to provide a look-up and dial tool for members of congress and have it deployable on any target (comparatively low-power machines, or on a personal laptop, or wherever phone access or this information is inaccessible for whatever reason), as well as as a platform application, which we built using these concepts.
Twilio seemed like a natural solution for this. I recently re-architectured the application, mostly to bring it into compliance with the latest Twilio JavaScript tool, and to refresh some of the clunkier parts of the original application. I elected to use Flask for this, and ultimately deployed it to Heroku.
To see the live product, you can visit: https://dial.public.engineering
More information about the project can be found on our twitter, at-publiceng.
If you’re ready to check out how we went about building this tool…
Setup
This application has a few external dependencies:
Your application will make use of environmental variables to set this, so when you deploy your application (in our case on Heroku), whatever facility (a PaaS like Heroku, or via a provisioning tool like Terraform, or on a flat Linux system) may exist for this should be used to set the following variables:
export twilio_sid=${twilio_sid}
export twilio_token=${twilio_token}
export twilio_twiml_sid=${twiml_sid}
export numbers_outbound="+12345678900"
export GOOGLE_API_KEY=${google_civic_api_key}
In your project root, you’ll need a requirements.txt :
Flask==1.1.2
gunicorn==20.0.4 # Only if you plan to deploy to Heroku
requests==2.24.0
twilio==6.47.0
jsonify==0.5
In your app.py , import the following, and we’ll make use of the above variables, before proceeding:
from flask import Flask, render_template, request, jsonify import os import requests from twilio.rest import Client from twilio.jwt.client import ClientCapabilityToken from twilio.twiml.voice_response import VoiceResponse, Dial import urllib import base64 import random, string TWILIO_SID = os.environ['twilio_sid'] TWILIO_TOKEN = os.environ['twilio_token'] TWILIO_TWIML_SID = os.environ['twilio_twiml_sid'] NUMBERS_OUTBOUND = os.environ['numbers_outbound'] GOOGLE_API_KEY = os.environ['GOOGLE_API_KEY'] app = Flask(__name__)
Building the application: Functions
The app relies heavily on the passing and receiving of dictionaries as a messaging format, so most functions will send or receive one such dictionary, and these will eventually be used to populate the templates for the web UI itself.
First, a function to take a zip code, and retrieve representative contact info, and build a response containing formatting numbers, and other data I might use from that datasource. Then, I proceed to get some aesthetic data for the UI, like the name of the locality this area covers (for the House of Representatives, for example):
From there, we go into the actual work of using this data, and making some calls. A small function to generate, and then set a default_client which will be important for the callback from your TwiML application, which is a requirement to be able to make the outgoing calls:
def randomword(length): letters = string.ascii_lowercase return ''.join(random.choice(letters) for i in range(length)) default_client = "call-your-representatives-%s" % (randomword(8))
then a function to validate a phone number to ensure it comes from this datasource:
def numberVerify(zipCode, unformatted_number): reps = get_reps(zipCode) nums_found = [] for r in reps: if unformatted_number in r['unformatted_phone']: nums_found.append(r['name']) photoUrl = r['photo'] if len(nums_found) != 0: return { 'status': 'OK', 'zipCode': zipCode, 'name': nums_found[0], 'photo': photoUrl } else: return { 'status': 'FAILED' }
The Flask Application and URL Routes
With the helper functions completed, you’ll see how they are consumed in the decorated functions for Flask that run when a route is hit using a designated HTTP method, for example, for / :
the following template is returned:
So, once you submit your Zip code, it is POST ‘d to the /reps URI:
which, you’ll see, consumes the helper functions we wrote above: from the form in the template above, it retrieves your zip code, hands it to location_name to get your locality name, to representatives to build a dict of your representatives and their info, and we use the default_client we specified above which the Twilio.js tool (which I’ll demonstrate in a moment) will connect to in order to make the call from your browser. We use all of that data in the template, to populate a page like:
You’ll see at the top, your default_client will have a status indicator, and when it is ready, you can click Start Call on whichever representative to initiate a phone call from the browser.
In the template file, in this case call.html , anywhere in the <head> section, you’ll use the Twilio JS script:
<script src="https://media.twiliocdn.com/sdk/js/client/v1.3/twilio.min.js"></script>
and then use the following function inside of another script block to call your token endpoint:
function httpGet(Url) { var xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); xmlHttp.open( "GET", Url, false ); // false for synchronous request xmlHttp.send( null ); return xmlHttp.responseText; }
which looks like this, back in app.py :
This uses your Twilio token and SID to create a capability token, and then you can add capabilities using the TwiML SID, and for example, allow incoming callbacks using your default client to allow Twilio to connect a call from your browser back to the application.
So when you start the call, in the template, by clicking the button:
The onclick action will connect your Twilio.Device to the phone number from that iteration of the representatives dictionary.
This will hand off the new token, the client ID, and the number you wish to call to the above Twilio device, which once received, will use the TwiML application’s callback URL, in this case, /voice to connect the browser to the call. The /voice function is somewhat involved and was probably one of the more complicated pieces to figure out, as some of this diverged pretty distinctly from the documentation as compiled:
The purpose of TwiML apps is to provide a response to a call to Twilio APIs/phone number, and in this case, we’re providing a VoiceResponse() , so we need from the request it received the phone number to send that voice response to, which we’re splitting out of the request form as number:<whatever> , and in the absence of a number, the default_client. NUMBERS_OUTBOUND is your Twilio programmable voice number you acquired at the beginning, which will appear on the caller ID, and the Dial class will facilitate the rest.
Deploying to Heroku
I have a repository (I will link to all of this again at the end) for deploying to DigitalOcean and to Heroku (where the app lives now), to show a couple of different methods of how I’ve handled deploying this app over time, however, this will focus on the application layout, and a baseline approach to deploying to Heroku with Terraform.
In your project root, you’ll need a Procfile which will inform Heroku how to run the application, in this case:
web: gunicorn app:app
This is one of the packages you might remember from your requirements.txt , and since Heroku prefers the Pipenv format for managing the application as a virtualenv, we can use it to generate the appropriate package manifest:
python3 -m pipenv install -r requirements.txt
and commit the resulting Pipenv file instead along with the Procfile.
With the Heroku requirements committed to your Git repo, you can proceed to create, in another directory, your Terraform project.
You’ll create the following vars.tf file:
variable "release_archive" {} #The Download URL of your git repo variable "heroku_app_name" {} variable "release" { default = "HEAD" } variable "twilio_sid" {} variable "twilio_token" {} variable "twilio_twiml_sid" {} variable "numbers_outbound" {} variable "google_api_key" {}
then, in main.tf we can start laying out the deployment:
provider "heroku" { version = "~> 2.0" } resource "heroku_app" "dialer" { name = "${var.heroku_app_name}" region = "us" }
Then we’ll specify what Heroku should be building:
resource "heroku_build" "dialer_build" { app = "${heroku_app.dialer.name}" buildpacks = ["https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-python.git"] source = { url = var.release_archive version = var.release } }
I am using the release variable to be something you can update in order to have Terraform redeploy the application, rather than anything to do with what version it deploys from; you’ll want to specify a tag or a branch in your release_archive URL which will be something like:
release_archive = "https://${git_server}/${org}/call-your-representatives_heroku/archive/${branch_or_tag}.tar.gz"
this process allows you to re-apply the same version, but still have the state update in Terraform as a detectable change. The buildpack line just refers to the Heroku environment to use, in our case, their default Python stack:
buildpacks = ["https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-python.git"]
Now, our application which has a lot of environment variables, and because they’re credentials, we want them handled properly, we are going to specify the following blocks for our above Heroku application:
resource "heroku_config" "common" { vars = { LOG_LEVEL = "info" } sensitive_vars = { twilio_sid = var.twilio_sid twilio_token = var.twilio_token twilio_twiml_sid = var.twilio_twiml_sid numbers_outbound = var.numbers_outbound release = var.release GOOGLE_API_KEY = var.google_api_key } } resource "heroku_app_config_association" "dialer_config" { app_id = "${heroku_app.dialer.id}" vars = "${heroku_config.common.vars}" sensitive_vars = "${heroku_config.common.sensitive_vars}" }
You’ll specify all of these values in your Terraform variables, or in your terraform.tfvars file:
release = "20201108-706aa6be-e5de" release_archive = "https://git.cool.info/tools/call-your-representatives/archive/master.tar.gz" heroku_app_name = "dialer" twilio_sid = "" twilio_token = "" twilio_twiml_sid = "" numbers_outbound = "+" google_api_key = ""
There are other optional items (a Heroku formation, domain name stuff, and output), but this covers the deployment aspect from the above application layout, so you can proceed to set your Heroku API key:
HEROKU_API_KEY=${your_key}
HEROKU_EMAIL=${your_email}
in order to initialize the Heroku Terraform provider:
terraform init
then you can check your deployment before you fire it off:
terraform plan
terraform apply -auto-approve
and then head to http://${heroku_app_name}.herokuapp.com to see the deployed state.
More Resources
Follow public.engineering on Twitter
Call Your Respentatives app source
Call Your Representatives deployment scripts
Single-use VPN Deployer app source
Single-use VPN Deployer deployment scripts (also includes DigitalOcean and Terraform deployment plans)
If you’d like to support the platform in keeping up with fees for the price of the calls, and that of hosting, or would just like to enable ongoing development for these types of projects, and to keep them free for the public’s use, please consider donating! | https://jmarhee.medium.com/building-an-app-to-make-browser-based-calls-to-congress-with-flask-and-twilio-js-on-heroku-b4d85886206e | ['Joseph D. Marhee'] | 2020-11-19 00:46:39.551000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Twilio', 'Heroku', 'JavaScript'] |
What is cloud computing? A beginner’s guide | We have always been storing the programs and data that we need onto our computer’s hard disk and accessing it whenever required. This is computing. But now technology has taken over and the need to store everything on your physical hard disk is no longer there. Here, Cloud Computing comes into picture. Cloud Computing is the method of computing in which the data and programs are stored over the Internet and not on your hard disk. The Internet is referred to as the Cloud in ‘Cloud Computing’.
My Background: I am Cloud and Big Data Enthusiast , I am here because I love to Talk about Cloud. I am 11x Cloud Certified Expert. 4x AWS Certified , 3x Oracle Cloud Certified , 3x Azure Certified 1x Alibaba Cloud Certified .
What is cloud computing ?
Cloud computing is the delivery of on-demand computing services — from applications to storage and processing power — typically over the internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis.
How does cloud computing work?
Rather than owning their own computing infrastructure or data centers, companies can rent access to anything from applications to storage from a cloud service provider.
One benefit of using cloud computing services is that firms can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead simply pay for what they use, when they use it.
In turn, providers of cloud computing services can benefit from significant economies of scale by delivering the same services to a wide range of customers.
What cloud computing services are available?
Cloud computing services cover a vast range of options now, from the basics of storage, networking, and processing power through to natural language processing and artificial intelligence as well as standard office applications. Pretty much any service that doesn’t require you to be physically close to the computer hardware that you are using can now be delivered via the cloud.
Over the past there years, job searches that included keywords related to the top cloud providers, such as “Google Cloud,” “Azure,” or “AWS,” increased by 223%, the report found. Job listings that included these terms in the description rose by 101% over the same time frame.
Why is it called cloud computing?
A fundamental concept behind cloud computing is that the location of the service, and many of the details such as the hardware or operating system on which it is running, are largely irrelevant to the user. It’s with this in mind that the metaphor of the cloud was borrowed from old telecoms network schematics, in which the public telephone network (and later the internet) was often represented as a cloud to denote that the just didn’t matter — it was just a cloud of stuff. This is an over-simplification of course; for many customers location of their services and data remains a key issue.
What are examples of cloud computing?
§Cloud computing underpins a vast number of services. That includes consumer services like Gmail or the cloud back-up of the photos on your smartphone, though to the services which allow large enterprises to host all their data and run all of their applications in the cloud. Netflix relies on cloud computing services to run its its video streaming service and its other business systems too, and have a number of other organisations.
§Cloud computing is becoming the default option for many apps: software vendors are increasingly offering their applications as services over the internet rather than standalone products as they try to switch to a subscription model. However, there is a potential downside to cloud computing, in that it can also introduce new costs and new risks for companies using it.
Public cloud services serve as the one bright spot in the outlook for IT spending in 2020. Cloud spending in many regions is expected to grow rapidly as economies reopen and more normal economic activity resumes, with regions such as North America expecting to return to higher spending levels as early as 2022.
What is Infrastructure-as-a-Service?
Cloud computing can be broken down into three cloud computing models. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) refers to the fundamental building blocks of computing that can be rented: physical or virtual servers, storage and networking. This is attractive to companies that want to build applications from the very ground up and want to control nearly all the elements themselves, but it does require firms to have the technical skills to be able to orchestrate services at that level. Research by Oracle found that two thirds of IaaS users said using online infrastructure makes it easier to innovate, had cut their time to deploy new applications and services and had significantly cut on-going maintenance costs. However, half said IaaS isn’t secure enough for most critical data.
What is Platform-as-a-Service?
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the next layer up — as well as the underlying storage, networking, and virtual servers this will also include the tools and software that developers need to build applications on top of: that could include middleware, database management, operating systems, and development tools.
What is Software-as-a-Service?
§Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is the delivery of applications-as-a-service, probably the version of cloud computing that most people are used to on a day-to-day basis. The underlying hardware and operating system is irrelevant to the end user, who will access the service via a web browser or app; it is often bought on a per-seat or per-user basis.
What is private cloud?
§Private cloud allows organizations to benefit from the some of the advantages of public cloud — but without the concerns about relinquishing control over data and services, because it is tucked away behind the corporate firewall. Companies can control exactly where their data is being held and can build the infrastructure in a way they want — largely for IaaS or PaaS projects — to give developers access to a pool of computing power that scales on-demand without putting security at risk. However, that additional security comes at a cost, as few companies will have the scale of AWS, Microsoft or Google, which means they will not be able to create the same economies of scale. Still, for companies that require additional security, private cloud may be a useful stepping stone, helping them to understand cloud services or rebuild internal applications for the cloud, before shifting them into the public cloud.
What is hybrid cloud?
Hybrid cloud is perhaps where everyone is in reality: a bit of this, a bit of that. Some data in the public cloud, some projects in private cloud, multiple vendors and different levels of cloud usage. According to research by TechRepublic, the main reasons for choosing hybrid cloud include disaster recovery planning and the desire to avoid hardware costs when expanding their existing data center.
Refer to this article for more Information.
Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 6.3%
in 2020
I hope that this guide helps you in building your career with Cloud and getting Cloud Certified,
If you have any doubt or unable to understand any concept feel free to contact me on
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If you liked this content then do clap and share it . Thank You . | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/what-is-cloud-computing-a-beginners-guide-1e89fdb8791d | ['Adit Modi'] | 2020-12-21 17:47:56.951000+00:00 | ['Cloud Native', 'Cloud Services', 'Cloud Storage', 'Cloud Computing', 'Cloud'] |
Motionless | — a poem of potpourris.
Motionless
Amongst all the havocs, chaos, and riots, we need this. For now, I’ll savor every minute.
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels
We rest our heads beneath
the starry canvas of the night.
In-between the betweens,
and the ever-restless shores.
We ease our minds with
the infatuating solace imbued
with an irreplaceable warmth;
by holding each other tight.
We close our eyes and
our troubled soul
whilst we make way for home;
where our arms would entwine.
And when tomorrow sets us apart,
I send my love for your way. | https://medium.com/thenewnorth/motionless-387bb5ac49c3 | ['Lita Tiara'] | 2020-08-10 18:44:14.836000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Relationships', 'Life', 'This Happened To Me', 'Love'] |
Solving Drones’ Biggest Privacy Concern | In the past, if you didn’t want your neighbor seeing you sunbathe in your backyard, you simply built a fence. If your neighbor happened to be tall, you built a taller fence.
Today, things have changed.
Just like most consumer technologies, drones follow a direct inverse correlation when it comes to price and performance: the better they get, the cheaper they become. This means that in the near future we’ll be hearing loud buzzing every time we go to beaches and parks. But noise pollution aside, what’s more concerning is how this proliferation of drones will affect privacy.
What if your neighbor flew his drone 20 feet over your backyard ? How about a 100 feet? How far vertically do you own the rights to your property?What if he doesn’t even fly directly over your property, but next to it and can still watch you?
For those that don’t think this is a realistic scenario…
Thankfully, this time the footage was recorded by the girls’ father, but nonetheless we’re facing interesting legal challenges that will force us to reconceptualize privacy and trespassing laws.
The Battle Has Began
Over the last several years, not only have multiple criminal cases have been filed regarding drone invasion of privacy in the US, but we’re already seeing people take the law into their own hands by using guns to shoot obtrusive drones out of the sky. The conclusion is clear and twofold- people want privacy, and the law can’t provide it.
Design Imitates Reality
The show Black Mirror features the episode “White Christmas” which imagines a future society where retina implants allow people to block others from their sight in real time:
What if DJI drones could blur out faces in real-time, or even entire bodies?
Imagine the neighbor from earlier flying over your backyard but can’t see you sunbathing as your body is entirely blurred out in his video, or even removed in real time.
This approach is not as far fetched as it sounds- Google has been automatically blurring out faces in Google Street View for years, and newer DJI drone models already have the ability to recognize and track people and even follow them autonomously.
I envision a solution is similar to the National Do Not Call Registry database where people can sign up not to be called by telemarketers. Instead, people can add their face to a global exclusion list which could be pushed down to drones via firmware updates, much like DJI’s No Fly Zone which prohibits drone flight in restricted airspace.
I believe this could be achieved without any hardware changes to the drone, but with just a software update on the remote control device (smartphone or tablet) which could also store the blacklist database and perform the facial recognition. This will eliminate the battery and computational burden from the drone itself.
Censoring Buildings
The privacy issue also applies to buildings, although this would require a different approach as censoring buildings presents a different set of challenges:
It would require a wide variety of photo angles to capture the entire house. Residential property is often dynamic: cars and bikes in the driveway, lawnmowers in the front yard, etc A complete visual model of a house could get very large in size and take up much memory in drones
Potential Solution Vectors
I’m not sure what the solution is, but these are some areas worth exploring:
Google Maps satellite view offers GPS coordinates along with a bird’s eye view images of property (probably not very useful)
University of Washington has developed a method of recreating 3D models of buildings from video by analyzing their shadows, though it requires precise GPS coordinates of the camera.
Tesla’s cars utilize “fleet learning” which means as each car captures local road conditions, it shares them with all other cars to increase their collective knowledge.
New DJI drones are equipped with 3D sensors which could capture their environment and recreate a 3D topological map.
Physical markers placed around the property.
If you have any solutions, please do comment below.
Other Uses
The issue of unsolicited photography doesn’t end at just drones. We’ve all been photographed at bars, concerts, parties and public places in general without our consent.
What if a similar blacklist existed for mobile phones?
Nothing is stopping Apple (legally) from pursuing a similar function in their iOS that excludes people who don’t wish to be photographed by strangers. Intelligent exceptions could be made based on contact lists, geo-proximity, bluetooth range, etc.
Believe it or not Apple already has a patent that’s somewhat relevant- blocking your camera’s function to record video and audio in a certain locations using infrared emitters. They example given in the patent is that of a concert where concert-goers are prevented from recording or photographing live performances.
Another related application is the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich’s yacht, which is equipped with “an anti-paparazzi “shield”. Lasers sweep the surroundings and when they detect a CCD, they fire a bolt of light right at the camera lens”
Conclusion
One thing is for certain- human privacy is a complex issue which will only intensify with increasing technological advancements. It’s important to note that the methods I’ve described above are not bullet proof as drones can be jailbroken just like iPhones. There also will be a myriad of legal challenges such as residential owners verifying property ownership rights, and drones capturing 3D models of private property, but I think they’re trivial in the grand scheme of things.
The protection of human rights is a constant cat and mouse game between technology and law where technology is alway a few steps ahead, which is why we must embrace it instead of shooting it out of the skies. | https://medium.com/svilenk/how-the-show-black-mirror-solved-one-of-drones-biggest-privacy-issues-cbb022f4cd4e | [] | 2020-08-31 18:35:26.235000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Privacy', 'Design', 'Law', 'Drones'] |
Apache Kafka Pyramid | Introduction
When we did our first integration project at a customer site years back, we were rather naive about what it means to integrate streaming data into an enterprise world. We took the idea of central nervous system events to heart and wanted to help our customers build it. We were surprised to find out the challenges we had to solve were less technical and more of an organisational nature. Similar to the challenges when adopting a DevOps culture.
Since then we have observed this pattern in nearly every enterprise we’ve worked or talked with. To help us and our customers we condensed these experiences into a model we call the Apache Kafka Pyramid. Similar to the Maslov Pyramid it depicts a linear journey through different stages of needs that must be solved before being able to achieve self-fulfillment.
The Model aka Apache Kafka Pyramid
When you integrate Kafka in your enterprise you will observe certain layers of challenges that we model as a Maslov’s pyramid below.
The maturity levels range from physiological needs or stable runtime to self-actualization or global impact. The technology and thus Apache Kafka, in this particular case, play a less and less important role towards the top. Let’s dive in together and determine the main challenges we observe and how we can usually get by them.
Physiological Needs — Apache Kafka in Production
Bring your first use case to production and maintain it
Let’s start with the basics. At the bottom of the Apache Kafka Pyramid, there’s the need for being able to run Apache Kafka in production. That includes having enough resources allocated (like memory, CPU, disk) for your first production-grade Apache Kafka Cluster. But it also means having enough technical skills to push it through to production.
There are different reasons to enter the Kafka domain, but eventually, you want to solve a technical (probably architectural) challenge pulled by business needs. It can be the implementation of event-driven-systems, -messaging or even -architecture.
In this stage, those people trying to solve a business case in a DevOps manner are the same ones taking care of Apache Kafka. There is very often not yet a need to handle advanced security and governance because access is granted only for a small number of people working on the business case (from development to production).
If you are running mission-critical applications in production with Kafka, you have already mastered this level.
Safety Needs — Apache Kafka Secured
Agree to rules for peaceful living next to each other
Because the implemented business case in production shows off the technical possibilities of the so-bright-future, the existing Apache Kafka cluster will get attention from early-adopters inside your organisation. If there’s no attention, there are probably other things to fix first (won’t go into details here).
With attention comes the motivation for other early-adopter teams to use Apache Kafka and the need for opening clusters to a broader audience is given. Guidelines and rules for a peaceful (and governed) living environment are needed. Questions like allowing the creation of topics with 10,000 partitions or retention time of -1 (indefinitely) have to be discussed.
Some rules were already in place during “Apache Kafka in production.” But there are tons more, probably also depending which stakeholder role you’re asking. Certain rules also need to be enforced and not just monitored, like being able to identify consumers or producers. It’s important that applications are isolated from the negative impacts of other applications’ misuse or misbehaviour in an Apache Kafka cluster and that tradeoffs between convenience and safety are taken into account.
As a consequence, moving Apache Kafka out of the business value stream towards the infrastructure is inevitable and becomes Kafka-as-a-Service (with a dedicated so-called Kafka Team).
To fulfill the need of security, governance and operational stability, the security mechanisms and certain restrictions have to be applied to Apache Kafka (for consumers and producers) and it’s Self-Service (for users like data engineers). The existing security architecture often misses some pieces for such data pipes (same for any pub/sub tech) and an update might be needed as well.
On this level, Apache Kafka is monitored on its own (Kafka-as-a-Service) and it has its own expectations and obligations (SLAs) to producers or consumers. Owners of those producers or consumers are still focused on their applications.
Securing Apache Kafka brings the support of the (security) architects, system operators, teams already using Kafka and people responsible for governance. Chaos can be prevented and risks of data leakage or misuse are mitigated (GDPR included).
Using an Apache Kafka service from a Cloud provider (like Confluent Cloud, AWS EKS, Aiven Apache Kafka) can drastically reduce the time to bring business cases to production. But using Cloud services requires you to have an enterprise Cloud strategy in place where an Apache Kafka Cloud service fits in. Understanding Apache Kafka from an architectural view is still a requirement, no matter if you have Apache Kafka On-Prem or in the Cloud.
Belongingness & Love Needs — Topic Love
Get love from your Kafka family and take part in other’s journey
The disadvantage of having Apache Kafka secured is that the use per se is no longer that easy and the responsibilities and processes are not clear for outsiders (To whom does this topic belong?, How can I get a new topic? or How do I get access to this topic?).
Certificates, roles, and accounts have to be created or assigned and credentials need lifecycle maintenance. The great pace of the Kafka journey in your enterprise has slowed down and the motivation for other teams and new applications to move to Apache Kafka has decreased because of rules, paperwork, people work, lack of information, and the missing support for the technology from non-early adopters (probably the majority) within the company.
Up to now, the Kafka-as-a-Service isn’t built around curation but governance. It’s built with rules in mind, not humans. The gap between the previous stage and this one is what we call the Apache Kafka chasm (something for another blog post — stay tuned).
So, what can you do to support further adoption? To be honest — it’s primarily an organisational topic.
Additionally, to embrace Kafka adoption further on the people level, you can make sure teams can act on their own with their pace and their level — of course still with guardrails. Support curation and foster living in Apache Kafka families, with different motivations. There are applications which process millions of data records in real-time or applications for training ML algorithms. Both can live in the Apache Kafka ecosystem but have different requirements from a Self-Service and lifecycle management perspective which need to be taken into account.
That includes convenient ways to manage topics without stepping on anyone’s toes, management of topic ownership, motivation for sharing and transparency about the transport and data, etc.
And keep in mind if these motivations, ideas and solutions are not shared constantly, then it’s like bringing sand to the beach.
Esteem Needs — Data-as-a-Product
Be confident and proud and lead others to do so as well
Now that there’s an awesome Apache Kafka Self-Service in place. A lot of effort was put into Apache Kafka enabling. But still, the data culture hasn’t taken over yet. Providing data is still seen as a necessity and not as a chance to prove that provided data comes with the exact quality your customers have requested.
Expectations can only be kept when owners are taking care of the data and therefore proud of what they do. Customers (owners of consumer applications) need confidence in the provided data and will request things like data SLAs or other obligations. You get confidence through proof and you get proof through transparency.
Transparency means seeing what this Kafka topic is all about in terms of stream quality (availability, latency, throughput, retention time, general configuration…), data quality (attribute, row, set or domain integrity — without getting into details here) and lifecycle management (ownership, schema change policy, versioning, support…).
Transparency also means to know more about consumers. An agreement always consists of expectations and obligations from both parties (producer and consumer) and that’s also true for consumers in regards of behaviour (like keeping up with the throughput, batch sizes) but also being aware of the (lifecycle) costs on the producing side if you consume a high availability, high throughput, low latency stream with high data quality. On the other hand, a consumer without any expectations on data quality has no coupling on data at all and is therefore much less expensive to serve than a consumer with strict expectations about a schema (from a producing point of view).
At this level, one can speak of Data-as-a-Product where the main focus is no longer the application and topic, but the data itself. Automation and monitoring are in place along with the data flow (where the data value pulls; SLO and SLAs on data). The governance has moved from protecting the infrastructure towards protecting the data and therefore data security (and encryption) is getting more attention again.
At this stage, Apache Kafka gets company from other technologies and data serving patterns (e.g. S3 or Hadoop serving static/batched data sets). Apache Kafka is currently one of the best bets when providing streaming and data sourcing endpoints in the Data as a Product world, targeting Data Engineers. Other technologies suited for that manner are e.g. AWS Kinesis, Google Pub/Sub, Apache RocketMQ or Apache Pulsar.
Self-actualisation — Data Ecosystem
Take part in global discussions for a better world
When an enterprise reaches the Data-as-a-Product level with Apache Kafka (or any other streaming technology in this manner), it already knows that there’s more, much more, to tackle. Does your enterprise have subsidiaries? Do you need to get data from a partner company? For subsidiaries, it’s probably solved because the enterprise can define the ruleset and security requirements. But for data exchange between enterprises? Did you go through the whole Apache Kafka journey just to find out that it’s still much easier to use the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and files with comma-separated values (CSV) to transfer data between those parties (and used a shared secret to access the server)? This disillusionment probably comes already at level “Topic Love” but it got there through a much smaller context. Providing CSVs through FTP can also be a Data-as-a-Product, so no worries. But here we’re talking about Apache Kafka and therefore about streaming data. Which is a must, eventually.
This means you need to solve hybrid setups and cross-enterprise (or cloud) data exchange. That’s only possible by agreeing to the way transparency, governance, and data exchange are handled. So, basically the agreement on metadata definitions. That’s possible by using a third-party service or using global standards (or wait for them being developed, e.g. for access management in a global ecosystem for data). Agreements (SLA) between producers and consumers are recorded in contracts.
The organisational challenge becomes a global one. It looks like this stage is really similar to the third one (Topic Love), but on a much bigger scale. Instead of sharing the how-tos and best practices within your company, exchanging them in groups of equally footed organisations is the best route for future collaboration.
Whereas producers and consumers on the lower layer are clearly identifiable as an Apache Kafka producer or consumer, a producer or consumer in a Data as a Product world is no longer the technical implementation, but an organisational abstraction (like a team) and at the top of the pyramid, the organisation abstraction might be the organisation itself (think of a contract between two organisations).
Summary
When you integrate Kafka into your enterprise, you will witness different layers of challenges that resemble the layers of Maslow’s pyramid. The order of layers is linear, that means in order to reach the full maturation stage you can’t skip any previous level.
Depending on your use-cases certain layers will be stretched, others may be less relevant. If something’s not working, it might be that additional groundwork has to be done in layers below.
How far up do you want to get in your own Apache Kafka Pyramid and why do you want to get there?
Please send us a message if you have a story to share of your own Apache Kafka journey or are interested in mapping the Apache Kafka Pyramid via www.agoora.com, through Twitter, or just simply leave us a comment here. | https://medium.com/swlh/apache-kafka-pyramid-f475d8840596 | [] | 2020-12-01 15:48:18.081000+00:00 | ['Event Sourcing', 'Event Driven Architecture', 'Distributed Systems', 'Apache Kafka', 'Kafka Streams'] |
I can’t hear you! | We have a routine in the morning, like everyone else! Around 7 a.m., the kids wake-up, followed by the morning routine with the plan to get in the car by 7:40 a.m. The drive to school is about 8 minutes away. Once we are buckled in, the first thing to do is to say a short prayer. That’s our morning prayer during a weekday morning. Usually, Jeremiah prays first, followed by Jonathan. Then we say the Lord’s prayer, Song of Solomon 8:6, and Psalm 23. All of this is done in a 4–5 minute window during the drive to the school.
Jonathan is lower in his voice compared to Jeremiah when praying. The sound of the heat blowing in the car and other noises on the road sometimes make it harder to hear. He is also sitting on the passenger side at the back, so a little bit more distant from me than Jeremiah. Adding all this, sometimes it becomes harder to hear Jonathan’s prayer, and there have been times where I asked him to be louder. Obviously, the masks these days don’t help it either.
Two weeks ago, we were waiting on a signal to make a left turn on a Monday. Jeremiah just finished his prayer. Next was Jonathan’s turn. He started, but I could not hear him well, and I said, “Mone, pray louder, I can’t hear you!”. (‘Mone’ means son in Malayalam). He got a bit louder, and now I could hear. That’s great, and he is doing what he is supposed to be doing. I’m happy!
Well, wait! It took about 30 seconds when I had a tube light moment. I don’t know if the tube light concept is universal. Hence, here is a few sentences about it. Back in the day (in India), we used to make fun of each other when we don’t get a joke. You were called a tube light because tube lights may take a few minutes to turn completely on, and during the process, they flicker. It’s that tube light moment in my mind reflecting on what I just told Jonathan that brought a smile to me. | https://medium.com/@jerinjuby/i-cant-hear-you-55f0ff534b9a | ['Jerin Juby'] | 2020-12-19 19:12:35.027000+00:00 | ['Prayer', 'Faith', 'Parenting', 'Christian', 'Life Lessons'] |
Fact Sheet: Everything You Need to Know About the Secure Wallet | The world of crypto-assets has climbed out from the dark corners of the Internet and into mainstream investment portfolios. Rarely a day goes past where the topic isn’t discussed in the news or at the local pub, and whilst every second person claims to be an expert, there has already been more than $2b USD lost since the start of 2018. With the increasing value of these assets and the personal liability of holding them, safe and secure storage solutions have never been more essential.
Introducing the ECOMI Secure Wallet, the first in a line of product releases by ECOMI and most secure means of storing crypto-currencies and assets available.
What is the ECOMI Secure Wallet?
In development since 2010, the Secure Wallet is a physical cold-storage hardware device. Designed to be completely impenetrable to malicious attacks, the wallet and its infrastructure ensure that it is never connected to the Internet, nor connected directly to an online device, maintaining the most secure asset protection while providing a user-friendly interface.
Physical Design
The Secure Wallet is literally the size and thickness of a credit card. Designed to be ultra-portable, the storage device fits easily in whichever wallet/case you currently use to store your credit cards. By using printed circuitry and an e-paper display screen the Secure Wallet is almost weightless, coming in at a meager 20 grams, is waterproof, and comes with 15 degrees of flex.
Moreover, the wallet features a single button for confirmation of transactions and one-time-password generation, allowing the overall design to remain sleeker whilst providing an added level of security.
Interaction and Connectivity
Operation of the ECOMI Secure wallet is done via an encrypted Bluetooth connection on a paired Apple or Android device. By removing the need for a wired connection to a computer/phone the device ensures it can never be compromised, whilst still allowing for the highest degree of portability.
Interaction with the device is done via the companion app. This comfortable and recognisable use of app technology has created the most user-friendly cold storage device available. By using the companion app, owners of the Secure Wallet are given control over the seamless transfer of crypto-assets in and out of the device, safe and secure storage, as well as the ability to create up to 5 individual wallets per asset.
It is also important to note that there are no fees for the use of the Secure Wallet (other than the associated blockchain confirmation fees). | https://medium.com/ecomi/fact-sheet-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-orbis-secure-wallet-45032118a7e8 | [] | 2019-06-07 19:45:15.092000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin Wallet', 'Cold Wallet', 'Bitcoin'] |
I Want to Scream: COVID Obviously is the Reason | I Want to Scream: COVID Obviously is the Reason
A poem that places a face on Coronavirus #3
Jodi is my granddaughter; she is a teenager who is navigating a new world during the pandemic. She volunteered to participate in this project to put a face on COVID. These are her thoughts formed into a poem.
Click to the link below to access her thoughts. | https://medium.com/faces-of-coronavirus/i-want-to-scream-covid-obviously-is-the-reason-d50a21e4178a | ['Brenda Mahler'] | 2020-12-26 19:46:27.250000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Covid 19', 'Reflections', 'Coronavirus', 'Faces Of Covid'] |
Tony Schwartz — The Most Influential Writer Of Our Time | How often does it happen that someone who changes the world does so inadvertently? Probably not at all so rarely. How many start with the goal in mind to change the world and keep going until they reach their goal? I’d like to see that monkey that, even before taking its first step, envisioning such a megalomaniacal goal. So that is unlikely.
Probably most of the people who changed the world did only what they wanted to do anyway and only in retrospect one could see — oops, they changed the world!
Probably the most influential writer of our times is a tragic hero who inadvertently steered the world into an other directions. Literature is sometimes able to change the world, but only a few works have influenced people’s thinking and behavior enough that it has shaped entire societies.
Religious writings developed such a force, or is it better to say the other way round that writings that developed such a force became religions?
James Joyce “Ulysses” had a formative influence on the thinking and acting of society. Even if only a tiny part of the people may have read this book. As someone who has spent a lifetime studying the effect of stories on perception, I know from my own experience how much this book has had a formative influence on my thinking, even though I have probably never even held it in my hand, let alone read it. But regardless of my perception, James Joyce “Ulysses” is a great work of literature, experts agree.
Adam Douglas “Hitchhiker’s Guide Through The Galaxy” developed this kind power and not only made smartphones look the way they do today — years ago I gave a friend a copy of this work printed on thin bible paper. It was a joke, of course, but like every joke, it did not come out of nowhere.
In this sense, Mickey Mouse is important literature, because Mickey Mouse also had a formative influence on the thinking and actions of society. Although the experts are no longer quite so unanimous on this point, this view is hardly disputed anymore, at least in academic circles.
All of the following considerations are based on the idea that the significance of literature, regardless of its “literary quality”, can be measured by the force it proves to have to influence society. If you are not able to follow this thought, I would like to thank you kindly for your attention up to now and say goodbye, because the following considerations will not make any more sense.
You are still here? Onwards, then.
This is about the most influential writer of the present. And yet only a few know his name. The name of his most important work is familiar to millions of people. Many have read the book and quote from it as if from a bible. The book is a work of fiction, at least that is what the author himself says. It is a work that has influenced the thinking of millions of people, has shaped society and politics in the USA and the world. The author had neither foreseen nor intended the immense political influence of his words. The author had not had the slightest idea of the consequences his words would have decades later. He did not intend it and would not have wanted it. He simply did not imagine that the stone he threw from the mountain could cause an avalanche.
As a young writer the author hired himself out as a ghostwriter more than 30 years ago. As such, he wrote a tale of a hero for someone who fascinated him, but whom he despised. It was a tale of a hero as his client wanted to hear it. The client paid the writer well to be the hero of his story.
Years later, the writer even revoked his book, when he realized the danger that was coming to the people and the whole planet. But how can you revoke fiction — a fiction that more and more people began to believe in? A fiction cannot be revoked. Just as Goethe could not have revoked “The Sorrows of Young Werther” when the book was accused of driving readers to suicide.
The young author had probably underestimated the power of his words, had thought that the words he used were blunt knives, yet they were razor-sharp. The author was at the zenith of his work. His whole life long he would never again be able to create a work of this magnitude. Disgusted by the success, he never tried in the same direction again.
He wrote the book for a 38-year-old, pretentious New York up-and-comer, a foolhardy, unscrupulous man about whom hardly anyone outside of New York had ever heard of at the time.
The writer was interested in money, he was a ‘writer for hire’, but also one who took his work seriously.
Thus the writer looked into the abyss of his hero, as every good writer does. He looked at the hero from many angles, and all these views underpinned his work.
The book is entitled “The Art Of the Deal” and now the whole world knows its hero. For he became president of the United States of America and as such he came to be a key figure in the fate of the planet. It is a history of modern media, the book made the fictional hero of the story first a TV star and the idol of millions of people before they elected him a real president.
Humans are story animals, or in other words, the ability to tell stories has turned an animal into a human. Stories have always been the instrument to make the world comprehensible. But today we live in a media world in which stories are produced non-stop, no longer to understand the world, but to entertain people, and to keep the media industry running.
So it can happen that an extremely talented writer by accident invents a hero who should never have been a hero and who then enters the real world stage. | https://medium.com/@thalhofer/tony-schwartz-the-most-influential-writer-of-our-time-745d8d97e33c | ['Florian Thalhofer'] | 2020-12-07 19:13:41.471000+00:00 | ['Trump', 'The Art Of The Deal', 'Literature', 'Tony Schwartz', 'Influencers'] |
The Transmutation of Sexual Energy | Transmutation of Sexual Energy
In this excerpt from Kishor Gandhi’s book Light on life-problems, Sri Aurobindo elucidates on Transmutation of Sexual Energies. Kindly note that this exchange occurred in the early twentieth century and therefore contains references to some personalities who were prominent at that time.
Question: Balzac, the famous French novelist, was of the opinion that indulgence in sex greatly hampers the high type of mental activity. According to him, “The man of genius is frigid. When he tries to lead both lives, the intellectual life and the love life, the man of genius dies, as Raphael died (it seems he died at 37 after a night of excessive sex) and Lord Byron.” So also Havelock Ellis, recognized as the world’s greatest authority on sex, maintains that to increase artistic and mental capacity and force it is necessary to restrain sexual activity. “The brain and the sexual organs,” he says, “are yet the great rivals in using up bodily energy, and there is an antagonism between extreme brain vigour and extreme sexual vigour, even though they may sometimes both appear at different periods in the same individual”. We find this evidenced in the life of some great masters of art like Beethoven and Mozart, in whose life sexual indulgence played a much smaller part than in the life of an average man. This would seem to imply that it is necessary to conserve sexual energy for the energisation and intensification of higher intellectual and aesthetic life. How far is this view justifiable ?
Answer: That is correct. The sex-energy can be controlled and diverted from the sex-purpose and used for aesthetic and artistic or other creation and productiveness or preserved for heightening of the intellectual or other energies. Entirely controlled, it can be turned into a force of spiritual energy also. This was well known in ancient India and was described as the conversion of retas into ojas by Brahmacharya. Retas, the sex-fluid, consists of two elements, one meant for sex-purposes, the other as a basis of general energy, and if the sex-action is not indulged and the sex-fluid is prevented from being spent away, it turns into ojas. The whole theory of Brahmacharya is based upon that by the Yogis.
This is a list of Sanskrit terms to help understand the next question:
Retas = sexual fluid.
Tapas = spiritual heat felt in the body during meditation.
Ojas = spiritual vigor which is felt after union with and immersion into cosmic energies.
Tejas = spiritual light observed within.
Vidyut = electrical power which courses through the body during Yoga.
Question: What is the process by which ‘retas‘ (sex fluid) is transformed into ‘ojas‘ (vigor)?
Answer: The fundamental physical unit is the retas, in which the tejas, the heat and light and electricity in a man, is involved and hidden. All energy is thus latent in the retas. This energy may be either expended physically or conserved. All passion, lust, desire wastes the energy by pouring it, either in the gross form or a sublimated subtle form, out of the body. On the other hand, all self-control conserves the energies in the retas, and conservation always brings with it increase. But the needs of the physical body are limited and the excess of energy must create a surplus which has to turn itself to some use other than the physical. According to the ancient theory, retas is jala(fluid), full of light and heat and electricity, in one word, of tejas.
The excess of the retas turns first into heat or tapas which stimulates the whole system, and it is for this reason that all forms of self-control and austerity are called tapas or tapasya, because they generate the heat or stimulus which is a source of powerful action and success. Secondly, it turns to tejas or light, the energy which is at the source of all knowledge. Thirdly, it turns to vidyut or electricity, which is at the basis of all forceful action whether intellectual or physical.
In the vidyut again is involved the ojas, or pranashakti, the primal energy which proceeds from ether. The retas, refining from jala to tapas, tejas and vidyut and from vidyut to ojas, fills the system with physical strength, energy and brain-power and in its last form of ojas rises to the brain and informs it with that primal energy which is the most refined form of matter and nearest to spirit. It is ojas that creates a spiritual force or virya, by which a man attains to spiritual knowledge, spiritual love and faith, spiritual strength. It follows that the more we can by Brahmacharya increase the store of tapas(heat), tejas(light), vidyut(electric) and ojas(vigor), the more we shall fill ourselves with utter energy for the works of the body, heart, mind and spirit.
Question: Many eminent psychologists, doctors and thinkers believe that complete sexual abstinence is dangerous and may lead to serious nervous trouble and even mental derangement. They maintain that the new form of energy produced from the sublimation of sexual energy may be harmful and may lead to perversities and morbidities. Rene Guyon, for example, points out: “When the libido is repressed, when its impetus is crushed back, it is forced to find an outlet by some other route …. But this compensation is not necessarily useful, superior and worthy of admiration. It can just as well be harmful and destructive.” How far is this true ?
Answer: It is a fact that sex suppressed in outward action but indulged in other ways may lead to disorders of the system and brain troubles. That is the root of the medical theory which discourages sexual abstinence. But these things happen only when there is either secret indulgence of a perverse kind replacing the normal sexual activity or else an indulgence of it in a kind of subtle vital way by imagination or by an invisible vital interchange of an occult kind; harm never occurs when there is a true effort at mastery and abstinence.
Question: The Freudian system of psycho-analysis has attributed a large number of physical and mental disorders to suppressed sexual desire. To what extent are the assertions of this system true?
Answer: The psycho-analysis of Freud takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and crude. As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mind to take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole field of Nature in its narrow terms runs riot here. Moreover, the exaggeration of the importance of suppressed sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood and it can have a nasty influence and tend to make the mind and vital more and not less fundamentally impure than before.
Reference:
Kishor Gandhi was a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. His book Light on Life Problems from which the above excerpt has been taken is freely available at Google Books and the Internet Archive
Further Remarks on Sexuality
These are some general observations by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Mirra Alfassa on topics related to Sexuality: Sex Education; Touching; Whether indulgence, starving the flesh or mixing freely can alleviate sexual difficulties encountered in spiritual practice.
On mixing freely
Nagin Doshi (1917–1998) joined the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1931 as a fourteen year old boy. As he recalls in the preface of his book Guidance from Sri Aurobindo, he had to rely on his Gurus for guidance in every minute aspect of life:
I came to Pondicherry in 1931 when I was about fourteen years old. In those days the Mother did not admit youngsters into the Ashram. It was only out of her kindness that she made an exception in the case of four children: Bala, Romen, Shanti and myself. We did not have a school here at that time, nor were there regular study classes. Before coming, my mind was occupied with only two things — study and cricket: they were my life and my world. I had almost decided to go to Europe and become a “big” doctor. I first visited the Ashram during my school vacation just for the sake of making a nice long journey, certainly not for taking up Yoga. I stayed for a month and returned in time for the reopening of my school. During that stay, what the Mother did within my being I could hardly fathom. But the result was that I returned home to stay for only two days. I hurried back here with the full realisation that I could not possibly live, either happily or unhappily, without the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Till 1933 I did not know what this strange thing called Yoga was. Hence the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were to me just like my own human mother and father. When the correspondence with Sri Aurobindo started, he had to teach me everything, not only what was meant by Yoga but also what culture, religion, philosophy and morality were. He used to correct my English, too, for quite a long time. Whatever I have gained in any way is a growth from the seeds he and the Mother sowed in me during those boyhood days [1].
The following exchange of letters between Nagin and Sri Aurobindo occurred in 1936–37 when the former was a nineteen year old teenager.
Nagin: Dr. R says that I get sex-imaginations because I do not mix freely with women.
Sri Aurobindo: Men mix freely with women in Europe — it doesn’t prevent them from having sex impulses, thoughts or imaginations.
Nagin: He says Europeans don’t get so many sexual thoughts, impulses etc. like shy Indians.
Sri Aurobindo: That is not true — they have quite as many and they indulge them more freely.
Europe and America are full of free sex indulgence — they do not nowadays consider it a thing to be avoided but rather welcomed. But this is an Ashram and people are supposed to be doing a sadhana(practice) in which sex has to be surmounted. In the Ashram there are many who mix freely with all the sadhikas(women disciples) — they are certainly not free from sex. Avoiding also is not a panacea. One can avoid and have sex imaginations and desires. But it is absurd to say that avoiding is the cause of sex-imaginations and impulses or that mixing is a panacea for it.
It may be true that ordinarily mixing with women removes shyness etc., — though it is not always so, for many people are sex-timid by nature — but that is a means for ordinary life, not Yoga, and in ordinary life marriage is the direct means for getting rid of sex-uneasiness; marriage or else having love-affairs with women and satisfying the sex. But that is not the proper means for an Ashram and Yoga. In Yoga the proper means is to train the mind and vital to meet women without thought of sex, to look on them as sadhaks(i.e. practitioners) and human beings only, not as objects of sexual possession and enjoyment.
What is best for everyone is to be able to meet women without seeking out their company, to meet without being preoccupied with the sex. Shyness and uneasiness are usually signs of the sex-preoccupation unless they are constitutional, when they will be there for other things also, not for women only [1].
Can indulgence eliminate sexual desire?
Sri Aurobindo: The Mother has already told you the truth about this idea. The idea that by fully indulging the sex-hunger it will be finished and disappear forever is a deceptive pretence held out by the vital to the mind in order to get a sanction for its desire; it has no other raison d’être or truth or justification. If an occasional indulgence keeps the sex-desire simmering, a full indulgence would only sink you in its mire. This hunger like other hungers does not cease by temporary satiation; it revives itself after a temporary abeyance and wants again indulgence. Neither sops nor gorging are the right treatment for it. It can only go by a radical psychic rejection or a full spiritual opening with the increasing descent of a consciousness that does not want it and has the truer Ananda(bliss) [2].
Starving the flesh as a remedy?
Sri Aurobindo: Hurting the flesh is no remedy for the sex-impulse, though it may be a temporary diversion. It is the vital and mostly the vital-physical that takes the sense-perception as pleasure or otherwise.
Reduction of diet has not usually a permanent effect. It may give a greater sense of physical or vital-physical purity, lighten the system and reduce certain kinds of tamas. But the sex-impulse can very well accommodate itself to a reduced diet. It is not by physical means but by a change in the consciousness that these things can be surmounted [2].
Touching and personal space
Sri Aurobindo: In ordinary society people touch each other more or less freely according to the manners of the society. That is quite a different matter because there the sex-impulse is allowed within certain more or less wide or narrow limits and even the secret indulgence is common, although people try to avoid discovery. In Bengal when there is purdah(curtain), touching between men and women is confined to the family, in Europe there is not such restriction so long as there is no excessive familiarity or indecency; but in Europe sex is now practically free. Here all sex-indulgence inner or outer is considered undesirable as an obstacle to the sadhana (spiritual practice) — as it very evidently is. For that reason any excessive familiarity of touch between men and women has to be avoided, anything also in the nature of caressing, as it creates or tends to create sex-tendency or even the strong sex-impulse. Casual touching has to be avoided also if it actually creates the sex-impulse. These are commonsense rules if the premiss is granted that sex has not to have any indulgence [2].
On Sex Education
The question of sex education came up because the Sri Aurobindo Ashram had a school where boys and girls were educated together. This conversation was recorded on 1st February, 1972 and is even more relevant today given the over-sexualization evident in society as a result of globalization.
Question: Sweet Mother, Nowadays in schools elsewhere, especially in the West, much importance is given to “sex-education”.
Mother Mirra Alfassa: What is “sex-education”? What do they teach?
For myself, I don’t like people to be preoccupied with these things. In my time we were never preoccupied with these things. Now children talk about them all the time — it is in their minds, in their feelings. It is disgusting. It is difficult, very difficult.
But if they talk about it elsewhere, we have to talk about it here too. They should be told the consequences of these things. Especially the girls ought to be told that the consequences can be disastrous. When I was young, in those days, people never spoke about all that, they never paid attention to these things. In those days, people did not talk about all that. Here, I did not want this subject to be discussed. That is why we do physical culture. In that way the energies are used to develop strength, beauty, skill and all that; and one is more capable of control. You will see, the ones who do a lot of physical culture, they are much more capable of mastering their impulse.
(After meditation ) The energies that human beings use for reproduction, which take such a predominant place in their lives, should instead be sublimated and used for progress and higher development, to prepare the advent of the new race. But first the vital and the physical must be freed from all desire; otherwise there is a great risk of disaster [3].
This was another conversation recorded on 16 February, 1966.
Question: A complete lack of knowledge about sex can produce serious trouble. I want to give some information to children whom I know.
Mother: A simple notion of medical knowledge may be useful in taking away this silly old harmful feeling of shame which brings perversion [4].
The following statement was issued by the Mother on 16 August, 1960 regarding the school children:
As girls and boys are educated together here we have always insisted on the relations between them to be those of simple comradeship without any mixture of sex feeling and sensuality; and to avoid all temptation they are forbidden to go in one another’s room and to meet anywhere privately. This has been made clear to everybody. And if these rules are strictly followed, nothing unpleasant can happen [4].
References
Nagin Doshi. Guidance from Sri Aurobindo, vol. 3 (Pondicherry: SABDA, 1987), p 124 Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga, SABCL vol. 24, Physical Transformation. Tara Jauhar. Growing up with the Mother, (New Delhi: Sri Aurobindo Ashram — Delhi Branch Trust, 1999), p 75. The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother, vol. 12. (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1979), pp. 157–158.
See also: | https://medium.com/devansh-mittal/the-transmutation-of-sexual-energy-658ca2a59391 | ['Devansh Mittal'] | 2019-10-11 14:15:11.035000+00:00 | ['Yoga', 'Psychology', 'Meditation', 'Sexuality', 'Spirituality'] |
The Nimiq Discord Update — Week 9 | The Nimiq Discord Update — Week 9
Welcome to the Nimiq Discord Update! This a community contributed weekly write-up on what Team Nimiq have been posting in the official Nimiq discord channel alongside community led projects and content being created for Nimiq.
Strengthening the network
Week 9 brings a raft of updates from the team about the pending improvements to the Nimiq network. The update will see a greater number of seed nodes deployed to support the increasing demand ‘dumb’ nodes have had on the network, this will result in users experiencing a more consistent and improved experience when connecting to the Nimiq network.
Following on from the deployment of the seed nodes, the team has announced its intent to rewrite the current Node.js in Rust to optimise performance and security. The rewrite will result in greater parity between the performance of browser-based and backbone miners, enable multi-threading which is currently not possible server side with Node.js and further increasing the number of RPS (Responses per second) being handled. More on information on Node.js vs Rust can be found here.
Ever wonder why you can’t reach consensus in the Nimiq safe? Poolwatch.info created and managed by community member Brantje has created a page to monitor the initial 8 seed nodes deployed by the team.
Marketing (Plans, Strategy & Design)
Following the official blog post by Team Nimiq on the marketing strategy moving forward found here, it has been confirmed by Nimiq developer Soren that work is currently being conducted on a variant of the widely popular beta-net feature of cashlinks. Exchanges remain a priority with HitBTC set to list Nimiq in the near future with testing being conducted.
As a reminder Team Nimiq “plan on considering larger scale and more classic means of marketing in sync with advances in network performance”. With the recent network performance issues and the planned fixes for them, it would be reasonable to tether expectations for wide spread marketing with the strengthening of the network.
Exchanges (Listing & Discussion)
[No change] Mentioned in week 7's edition, Nimiq has officially listed on ‘Tradesatoshi’ as the first exchange to integrate NIM, there have been issues with regards to withdrawals so caution is advised.
tradesatoshi.com/Exchange/?market=NIM_BTC
As mentioned in the previous section, Nimiq is set to list on HitBTC with integration in progress. HitBTC by 24 hour volume is consistently in the top 10 cryptocurrency exchanges in the world with a consistent 24 hour volume above $100 million everyday. Another exchange that Nimiq is set to list on is LAToken, a smaller exchange with a 24 hour volume of approximately $6 million.
The Nimex.app exchange remains invite only but a reliable way to exchange NIM with ETH, feedback has largely been positive and the developers have maintained fast response rates to any problems encountered by users. Volume on Nimex has remained relatively subdued. Join the Nimex discord here.
Mining (Pools & Developments)
poolwatch.info
Peaking at 909.8 MH/s on the 17th of June with a low 523.7 MH/s on the 22nd, the global hashrate has reached an equilibrium with an average weekly hashrate at an estimated 700 MH/s. The network remains skewed toward centralisation with the top two pools Beeppool and Skypool taking up the lion-share of the global hashrate.
nimiq.watch/#chart-hashing-distribution
Want to help the hashrate distribution effort? I’ve compiled a list of mining pools you can join in a previous post.
Trading & Price (Transaction volume & Capitalisation)
tradesatoshi.com/Exchange/?market=NIM_BTC
The orderbook for Tradesatoshi puts the nominal value of Nimiq somewhere between $0.005–0.0075 per NIM. A fall from 85~ satoshi’s from last week. Nimiq transaction volume has reached a new ATH with the amount being traded between users up approximately 25% from last week (This excludes the periods when the Nimiq team have activated NET to NIM).
Optimisation by miners to increase efficiencies have put the break-even price for mining Nimiq at approximately $0.0045 with large scale miners seeing a break-even closer to $0.002.
The entire cryptocurrency market is currently experiencing a bear market with the total market capitalisation at $258,878,567,596 down from $267,076,546,959 1 week ago according to CoinMarketCap.
Community (App development & Announcements)
nimiq-shop.herokuapp is a web shop demo developed by community member RLaFranchi to show case the potential of having Nimiq as a built-in payment protocol:
“I’ve been working on some hobby projects revolved around Nimiq. I wanted to share a demo with you for a digital goods web shop that accepts Nimiq…I have found that the best way to learn something is to just dig right in. I wanted to integrate Nimiq with libraries I’m already familiar with — a Vue.js frontend and Ruby on Rails backend. I plan to write about it as somewhat of a technical how to and have it be more geared towards Vue and/or Ruby developers, but where Nimiq is a highlight as alternative payment option as something like Stripe or PayPal.” — RLaFranchi
Price.Nimiqx developed by Miao has expanded to including Fiat to NIM conversions for Nimiq.
Nimipet has released notes on upcoming updates to the game (?). They will be introducing styles, a CPU slider, an updated leaderboard and Nimipet marketplace.
Nimiqgames.ca developed by community members Ben and Doolan uses Nimiq as a currency to play dice games with non-gambling games planned for the future: (Remember to gamble responsibly)
“ Hey everyone. @ben and I have been working on a project to see how a coin like Nimiq could be used to run a gaming website. We’ve been working hard the past few months, and we’re very eager to go live, so we’re introducing the Beta here today. I hope you guys will check it out, and we’re open to suggestions and questions either here on discord or through our contact email [email protected]” — Doolan
If you’d like your community update added to the next post please contact me through the comments or @Symphonys on the Nimiq Discord! | https://medium.com/nimiqcommunity/the-nimiq-discord-update-week-9-d4d7f8d2a658 | [] | 2018-06-22 19:30:02.392000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Nimiq', 'Bitcoin', 'Fintech'] |
Improving The World With Technology | The year is 2020. We are sending cars into space, talking to foreigners without knowing their language, sending information to over 100 locations per minute, and seeing pictures of a city that isn’t even close to where we are. Ever since the first era of revolution in the 1800s, all the way until the fourth era -which is today- we have come up with brilliant inventions and brought human kind closer to the unimaginable than ever. It’s time to utilize our capabilities and knowledge to something of higher standard, but this time to take a look inside ourselves. To improve our own conditions and change the world for the better with the help of technology and motivation inside our very own human mind.
“Be the change that you want to see in the world” — Mahatma Gandhi
What are the challenges of the world at the moment?
Our planet is a blessing. Astronauts and scientists describe the Earth as one strange rock, yet a beautiful miracle that have appeared in our solar system. At the same time, the controversial topic about climate change and gas emissions is a topic many find provoking. Many ask themselves whether it’s the development and the evolution of technology that has caused this today. We’re talking excessive use of electronics, careless use of electrical energy, factories with massive gas emissions, or even just buying plastic. At the same time we live in a world where social media controls our attention, thoughts, and drives our curiosity. We can’t even vote on our favored political party without being impacted in one way or another from algorithms that roam the social media platforms. These are just a fragment of all the things that we have great potential in improving at as a humanity, but where do we start?
What I care for is for a world for anyone to be able to live to their best potential, and with technology in hand to help. When it comes to plastic, gas emissions, excessive use of energy and electronics we’ve gotten great improvements, but we’re not just there yet. There are also great advancements in the security of pedestrians when it comes to machine learning algorithms to prevent accidents. In addition to traffic, we also have Artificial Intelligence on our side to help the medical sector with issues such as detecting early cancer sells. I believe in a world where the human brain and technology can meet halfway to shake hands and work to achieve great results- where we can improve data and information to a world of possibilities and positivity. I believe that by recognizing the challenges and obstacles, we can find countermeasures and attempt to improve the conditions of the people and the world- by anything small and by anything big.
The online and the offline behavior censor protocol
Now I’m sure this sounds quite weird, but let me explain. We also need to take care of our network as humans, and to spread positivity around us. For example, when parents think of social media many associate it with bullying.
We have already built a foundation of improvements when it comes to the current social challenges we face. We have an online and an offline behavior censor protocol, as I like to call it. The online behavior censor protocol makes sure that information that passes online is distributed in a way where hate and insecure acts are eliminated. I’m not talking about some sort of high-tech program. I’m simply talking about the process of making sure that those who try to bully/assault in any sort of way, gets blocked, deleted, removed or stopped in any sort of way. We use this as one of the only temporary countermeasures against online harassment.
The offline behavior censor protocol acts as a real-life process of stopping those harassment and attacks on individuals, other objects or topics. We have participated in stepping in, speaking up and backing others up when it has been needed. We have been the brains behind the procedures of censoring away unneeded comments and blocking others out of our life or helping others. My belief is that we need to mitigate the possibility of negativity existing in the first place. Not by fighting back- but what I’m talking about is something that takes place in much earlier stages- By teaching people early on to act forgiveness, kindness and to teach about emotions and many other countermeasures. Why are we fighting fire with fire when we can educate correctly?
Technology, intelligence, children and the future
Information Technology is no longer a stranger to us, and isn’t the type of terminator movie as you saw in the 80s. Information Technology is our right hand in almost every subject, whether it is learning, helping, removing, printing, communicating, speaking, etc. You think it, you name it. For that reason, Information Technology is one of our biggest sources of help that we utilize for our own good in our daily life. In my opinion, I believe people should be taught Information Technology so that they too can see this potential. The more you know about the possibilities of the future, the more you can use the world for your advantage. There are already many kids who do this. Kids who learn Information Technology and earn their own money to support themselves, only with the help of knowledge and experience. They also live a simpler life as technology help them in many ways to increase the efficiency of everything they do, whether it is writing, doing work, planning a daily schedule or to secure their life in almost every way without having to monitor every task with cyber security.
I imagine a future where teenagers and kids can help themselves improve and get to know themselves better, to learn about emotions and to learn about their own mind. A place where we can understand our own personal problems with the use of technology and deep neural networks to register our personal information such as our intelligence and personality traits. This way we are our own change to the world, by understanding our own emotions and how to manage them. Perhaps it may sound very artificial, but this is not a strange phenomenon for some, as people are already developing and creating similar programs and processes. However, there shouldn’t only be a focus on the mental improvement. I mentioned earlier about enabling children and to give them the opportunity to live a life, not having to depend on their “start” chapter or other obstacles they may come across that aren’t their own fault. Such as increasing help for those who have difficulty in learning by giving them a custom-built plan and using the correct tools to heighten the disabled features of some people to give them a kick start where ever they want to go. I understand that this is what we’re already doing, but by using technology and machine learning we can learn how to increase the efficiency and the specifics of details. We will have a better outcome while at the same time do what is custom and best for us. By giving people equity and enabling understanding between each other, I think we are already eliminating many real-life problems such as misunderstandings, mistreatment and other possible situations that could escalate to something more major. People will understand that it’s not about helping others, it’s about starting to understand yourself and improve your own journey before you start understanding and improving others. | https://medium.com/@ergoetzy/improving-the-world-with-technology-5677c91b2d67 | [] | 2020-12-05 19:02:19.943000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Information Technology', 'Humanity', 'Future Technology'] |
REST APIs — Tips and Best Practices | Writing a REST API for any software developer can be a daunting task as there are a plethora of considerations in designing and developing for the long term. One should consider the needs of the consumer in terms of simplicity and a clean implementation, as well as planning for the long term with goals such as scalability and maintenance. Consumers can be either end users or developers working with your API.
Whether the aim is to develop an API for a consumer facing web application or mobile app you will find that there are best practices that fit the solution. Questions concerning how many users expect to consume your API is a good place to start but perhaps it is best to first explain what REST is.
REST is…
Representational State Transfer, an architectural approach for designing web services. Typically, it is a client — server model where clients interact with the server exchanging HTTP requests which will request the necessary resources and the operation to perform. It is also stateless in that each request is treated on its own and does not affect the result of future requests. REST is most often associated with HTTP however REST is not strictly tied to this protocol.
The most common methods in REST are:
GET — retrieving a resource
POST — create a resource
PUT — create or replace a resource
PATCH — update a resource
DELETE — delete a resource
An endpoint is putting together a URL with a method, such as:
POST http://localhost:8080/users/1
With a basic understanding of what REST is we can dive into the best practices.
Name your API endpoints wisely
REST operations already imply an action, such as GET or DELETE, so it is not necessary to name your API with actions such as fetchUsers when simply users will suffice. Always go with nouns over verbs. For example:
POST /users
GET /users/12
DELETE /users/12
Also, notice using plurals instead of single naming, which is important because more often than not, you are working with multiple resources. Occasionally you can use a single word to describe your scenario if you are truly operating on a single resource or performing a task such as kicking off a background thread. The best recommendation is still to name your resources in plural.
Status codes aren’t just for show
HTTP has developed their own standards when it comes to response codes. It is best to return the status code that is the most meaningful and descriptive.
100–199: Information responses — Basic information returned to the user such as when a request is received but not yet processed
200–299: Successful responses — What you would expect to return to the user if the request succeeded.
300–399: Redirection — Messages should be returned when the resource has moved in most cases.
400–499: Client error responses — Errors on behalf of the user, such as invalid syntax or requesting an object not found or is unauthorized.
500–599: Server error responses — These errors should be returned when the server experiences a problem or has a limitation.
Do not confuse users with improper error codes. Sometimes it can get dicey when it comes to the finer details such as 401 (Unauthorized) and 403 (Forbidden) since these seem similar, but ultimately it is good to be consistent with the standard.
Versioning is your best friend
APIs will undergo healthy change and evolution, but when push comes to shove, there can be times where breaking changes are needed and implementations are replaced. For this, it is recommended to version your APIs ahead of time to communicate this point. This can be done simply with including a version number in the URL: www.myapi/v1/getUsers
Filtering, searching, sorting, pagination
When dealing with possibly thousands of resources you may find filtering, searching, sorting and pagination to be useful. A benefit through REST is that you don’t need separate endpoints for these features. Many API frameworks have this built in, but you can design your API on your own as well. Quite often they can be specified as query parameters in the request.
Here are a few examples of each:
Filtering: GET /users?status=online
Filtering is narrowing the results to a specific field and value. Here, keeping it simple with retrieving only the users whose status is set to online.
Sorting: GET /users?sort=username
This specifies the results to be sorted by username, often lexicographically or from A — Z.
Searching: GET/users?status=online&search=bob
Combining a filter with an exact text search is a way to narrow the resources more specifically. ElasticSearch is one example that tends to use the power of full text searching.
Pagination: GET/users?limit=50&offset=100
Pagination is segmenting the data by requesting a certain amount of the data (the limit in this case) and how far into the search (the offset).
Rate Limiting — Everything in moderation
Rate limiting controls the amount of data that your server can return. This is very useful in preventing bottlenecks with millions of clients simultaneously hitting your APIs. One way is to include in your request headers the following:
X-Rate-Limit-Limit — The number of requests a client can send within a particular time interval.
X-Rate Limit-Remaining — The number of requests left over that the client can send within the interval.
X-Rate-Limit-Reset — The time stamp when the rate limit will reset.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
Taking a page out of the SOLID principles, it is best to keep your API simple by having each endpoint perform one single responsibility, and doing it well. This means not having one API do the work of multiple. This also means keeping a simple data model for all objects, and consistently representing them. An example is expressing a hierarchy with a simple Employee-Person relationship rather than writing a dozen different types of employee types.
Other tips to keeping it simple is using only a small set of status codes, throwing one or two different types of exceptions and only exposing the properties that are absolutely essential to the user. It is not useful to return data that will not be used by the developer or consumer.
To err is human, to document is divine
Documenting code is essential, and APIs are no exception. Creating a documentation page makes your API accessible and should not be hidden behind a PDF or signin page as that almost defeats the purpose. Docs should explain the request and expected responses and include an example of each operation. While documenting can seem tedious, there are tools out there that will make documentation a lot easier.
One such tool is Swagger, which lets you document via annotations that describe your API so clients can understand the behavior. The Swagger framework will create the documentation in a URL where clients can also try out your API as a demonstration.
Conclusion
Developing a RESTful API can be a complicated task. However, following a few basic principles is a good start as is reading the specifications and checking out tools and frameworks that simplify the job will make life easier for you and for your consumers and developers. Happy coding! | https://medium.com/@mahlertech/rest-apis-tips-and-best-practices-e7b7015fccae | ['Richard Mahler'] | 2020-11-24 17:26:39.141000+00:00 | ['Rest Api', 'Development', 'API', 'Web Development', 'Software Development'] |
6 Popular Haircut That Makes a Man Handsome With an Oval Face | Craftsman Voyage | 6 Popular Haircut That Makes a Man Handsome With an Oval Face | Craftsman Voyage Craftsman Voyage Oct 29, 2019·4 min read
Men always look for foxy hairstyles that would complement the shape of their face; however, finding a hairstyle that best suits your face shape and features isn’t that easy. Hairstyles have the potential to change and complement your look. This post is for men who have an oval face.
An oval isn’t particularly the most alpha of face shapes for men, but most men’s hair salons would agree that it’s definitely a good canvas for some experimentation as most haircuts look good on men with an oval face shape. Being symmetrical, the face shape does justice to pretty much any hairstyle, hence, the choice is very much yours.
Here are a few hairstyles that look good on oval face types -
The Buzz Cut
Sometimes known as the military cut, the buzz cut doesn’t wipe out your hair completely, but leaves a peach fuzz. Male fashion icons as Brad Pitt, David Beckham, and Justin Timberlake have all flaunted the haircut at some point in their career. When combined with the right attire, the buzz cut can make a killer statement. Consult with your barber in Bangkok or the hairstylist at any of the good men’s hair salons to know more about the hairstyle and whether or not it would look good on you.
Pompadour
The pompadour has been ubiquitous for the last many years now. The hairstyle was nailed by John Travolta in the ’80s and Justin Bieber nowadays. There are different styles of the same, such as the Mohawk, the fringed pompadour, or even the slick back. You’d need help from your barber in Bangkok to help you figure out the best version of pompadour that’d suit your face.
The Side Part
The side part is perhaps one of the widely appreciated hairstyles today and is fairly easy to achieve. The hairstyle gives men a serious and no-nonsense look. The hairstyle has been around for far too long but never gets out of style. This everlasting hairstyle suits men with white-collar jobs or when people are to attend formal occasions, or even when you plan on going out for a casual outing. At Craftsman Voyage barbershop in Bangkok, we have clients who rock this hairstyle with pride.
Man Bun
Unlike all the above hairstyles, the man bun doesn’t need you to part ways with your precious locks. There are some men who love to let it down. It would take about six months to reach the coveted hair length. All you have to do is comb the hair and sweep it from the forehead and the nape till the locks meet at the crown, and then knot it.
Comb-Over
The comb-over is one of the few men’s hairstyles popular among men with oval face shape. Versatile hairstyles keep coming and going, but the comb-over never goes out of favor. The hairstyle intensifies the stress on the top, and the top hairs can be swept to one side. Our barbers at Craftsman Voyage Bangkok suggest the hairstyle to clients who have good hair volume. The style is thus worn to show the volume of the hair on top.
Slick Back
To get the slick back hairstyle, your hairstylist at the local men’s hair salon would blend an undercut or fade haircut on the sides with medium or long hair on top. That said, if you’re looking for the classic, long slicked back hair, you will not need the fade on the sides. It is one of the most minimalist hairstyles but reveals the richness of your mane. | https://medium.com/@craftsmanvoyagebangkok/6-popular-haircut-that-makes-a-man-handsome-with-an-oval-face-craftsman-voyage-2e0a0974863d | ['Craftsman Voyage'] | 2019-10-29 09:56:42.987000+00:00 | ['Hair', 'Haircuts For Men', 'Bangkok'] |
Why Do I Do This? | Sometimes I ask myself why I do this. I almost died this morning. Why I am doing this? What are you trying to achieve?
It is a difficult question.
It is an unanswerable question for the most part. I do it because I have a dream. I do it because I have been told persistence pays off. I do it because Damon Dash said: “I’ve never in my life seen anyone play the game the way it was supposed to be played and not be successful. Never seen anyone with hard work and honesty hustle and not win.”
That’s why I do it.
But, damn, it is difficult. This morning I was dead on my feet at boxing training. We did the pads circuit twice and did some bag work, then we did some sparring. I think it is a little bit of the flu that I am fighting and also because I only slept about three hours.
My chest was unable to cope. I won’t say I couldn’t breathe because that’s going too far. But I struggled to get breath and to be upright and strong. That is boxing, it is the toughest thing I have ever done. Death is a daily occurrence in the gym.
So why do I do it? …
Because the proof is in the pudding. I have never been in this good of a physical shape in my life. I feel great. I feel strong and upright.
I am calm and quite focused in terms of maintaining tranquillity towards my day. | https://medium.com/@molapoktm/why-do-i-do-this-ecb1d4652128 | ['Teboho Molapo'] | 2020-12-28 14:51:54.700000+00:00 | ['Perseverance', 'Life', 'Life Lessons', 'Training', 'Personal Development'] |
You Always Deserve a $6 Cup of Coffee | You Always Deserve a $6 Cup of Coffee
You hold the key to happiness in your hand.
Photo by Fahmi Fakhrudin on Unsplash
I took on an internship at a tech startup during my senior year of college.
I didn’t have any business working at a tech company, but I needed to log 120 internship hours to graduate. What a deal right?
I interviewed in a building about 20 minutes from campus, and in my haste, I accepted the position on the spot.
For 13 weeks, I got a taste of the post-grad work life. And like a real working adult, I was always rushing to get to work on time.
I wasn’t as put together as I am now.
Most days during my commute, I noticed the most absurd drive-thru line at the Starbucks next to the office.
“Why don’t these people make their coffee at home,” I thought as I pulled into the parking lot just shy of on time.
I didn’t understand how people had time to wait in line for 15–20 minutes for a cup of coffee when they could save time, and money, by brewing it at home.
I thought like this, until I became a 9–5 workday zombie myself.
Now, I appreciate the experience of walking to another location for a coffee that’s only slightly better than the one I make at home. It’s not about the coffee but what it does for you.
It’s the little things that make a big difference. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/you-always-deserve-a-6-cup-of-coffee-f6b16d2a09ef | ['Ryan Porter'] | 2020-11-13 04:28:23.974000+00:00 | ['Happiness', 'Food', 'Ideas', 'Psychology', 'Productivity'] |
Reflection. Unlearning. Adjusting. | Growing up in my household, I didn’t think much about what it meant to be a person of color or to identify as Latina, mostly because that vocabulary wasn’t present at home. My family discussions rarely revolved around race. My mom would tell me “Sos parte Chilena y parte Guatemalteca,” — You are half Chilean and half Guatemalan — and that was that.
As I entered the school system and began interacting with a wider group of peers, I began to experience an identity conflict. A number of my Latina friends would say to me that I am “Blanca” in comparison to their own skin colors. I have shifted between being called White and being called Brown all my life. Like so many, somewhere along the way I realized that being White was perceived as “better” than being Brown.
To this day, even as I proudly recognize my parents’ countries of origin in any personal interaction, I still find myself having to negotiate my self-identity both externally and internally.
In the United States, I am defined as a Brown person. I’ve come to realize that colorism has been a part of my experience before I’d ever even heard the word. While I struggle to fully recognize myself as a person of color, I realize that society has racialized my existence for me. In most settings, I have acquiesced to this racialization as a societal norm or inevitability.
In many ways, Latino Challenges Toward Racial Justice expanded my knowledge of what it means to be Latino/Latina/Latinx in the United States. Several of the topics we explored resonated with my personal experiences and provided me with new perspectives.
What’s in a Name? | The Black/White Binary
One of the core discussions we had during the workshop was around the terms Latino/Latina/Latinx (and other pan-ethnic terms like these) and how these terms have the ability to erase an individual’s national origin and struggles if used improperly. Blanket terms can strip away so much from an individual’s identity.
We also discussed the Black/White binary by exploring the question, “Where do Latinos/Latinas/Latinx people fall in the equation?” The conversation made explicit the ways we are pressured to identify as White (especially via television representation and other social media avenues in both the U.S. and Latin America), even when our skin color may be closer to Brown or Black. The topic of how we underwent the process of racialization was one of the most fascinating portions of the workshop for me.
Another complex issue we discussed was colorism in the Latinx community and how it results in Whiteness being treated preferentially. With limited options on forms that request demographic information, including the census, Latinx people have often opted to identify as White. As we discussed in the training, this is often because they don’t feel that identifying as Black represents them racially and/or is due to the Latinx communities’ internalized experiences with racism. This only further complicates demographic data as communities of color seek greater visibility and resources.
Tu sos Alexis Gabrielle Martinez Miranda, parte Chilena y parte Guatemalteca
In both Chile and Guatemala, I am considered particularly tall and “White.” I have been granted a certain kind of esteem for my apparent Whiteness, but also a discrediting of my identity when I am simultaneously perceived as not Brown enough.
During a visit to Chile, my grandfather explicitly expressed how happy my complexion made him. He was so proud that I was tall and White like my mother.
Admittedly, passing as White has made me feel significant at times. It’s made me feel, in not so pretty and poetic ways, that:
● I am seen and beautiful.
● I am heard and respected.
● I am better and privileged.
On those occasions I catch myself feeling a bit satisfied with being able to pass as White, I feel ashamed for thinking that being White is somehow better or more suitable in a particular context.
The flip side of this internal exalting of Whiteness is my external frustration at not being recognized as Guatemalan.
“You are not chapina. No way, you don’t look like us!” some have said to me.
They have essentially denied me my roots and my heritage that my father has passed on to me. And in moments like those, I find myself trying to legitimize my identity, my “Latina-ness.”
“Well, yes, I am half-Chilean, but I am also half-Guatemalan. These are my roots. This is who I am.”
As I mentioned, terms like “Latina” and “Hispanic” weren’t present in my home growing up. I struggle to remember that moment where I came to identify myself as one or the other. In some ways, I can see why my parents did not introduce this vocabulary at home; perhaps because cultures across nationalities are so different. It wasn’t appropriate to make Chileans, Guatemalans, and other nationalities, one monolithic group.
By doing so, it erases the individuality of what makes a Chilean a Chilean, a Guatemalan a Guatemalan. It lumped the obstacles that both my parents went through and all the unique values that shaped my upbringing and worldview. To be Chilean and Guatemalan, to say I am a child of both, rather than to just say I am a Latina, was something my parents really wanted me to tell the world.
Tu sos Alexis Gabrielle Martinez Miranda, parte Chilena y parte Guatemalteca.
Coming to Terms
When I find myself frustrated, I wonder, why do I feel the need to validate my existence?
I’m not just trying to validate my existence to others, but also to myself.
I don’t think my experiences are incredibly unique. Figuring out exactly what it means to be Latino/Latina/Latinx in the United States is an exercise in self-exploration that many have taken or will take at some point. How each person comes to terms with this will be influenced by their own journeys.
The question I ask myself is, how do I self-identify now in the U.S.’s broad terms? I realize I can’t answer this or begin fighting the long battle against racism without first addressing the racist thought patterns I’ve internalized.
When I do say “I am Latina,” I mean that I am a woman who appreciates and honors her heritage and the struggles her parents went through. They came to this country and built a life for themselves and provided opportunities for their children to thrive.
I am proud to introduce myself as a first-generation U.S. American, who is half-Chilean and half-Guatemalan. But presenting myself as Latina is a habit I’ve cultivated over the years. Even when I started using the term, I never truly knew what it meant. To this day, I struggle to self-identify racially and ethnically. I suppose the road to self-discovery is a lifelong journey — one that requires constant reflection, unlearning, and adjusting. | https://medium.com/meyer-foundation/reflection-unlearning-adjusting-3d598d09fa77 | ['Alexis Martinez'] | 2019-06-19 17:25:45.163000+00:00 | ['Race', 'Racial Equity', 'Latinx', 'Staff Opinion'] |
Building a Geospatial cache in Go | Disclaimer: This article is my experience and opinions and not that of my employer :)
At work, we have a service which holds polygons for countries, cities and even neighbourhoods we operate in, and it is the job of this service, to return the underlying city/country and other internal data like translations and some business data, given a coordinate.
We solved this problem the tried and tested way of indexing the polygons in a postgres server with the very powerful postGIS plugin. And this served us very well. Provided we kept scaling up postgres to meet our traffic, we had really great postgres latency, usually less than 20ms. Unfortunately we kept having to scale up postgres more and more, while the traffic the service handle was expected to grow more and more. As a result, we set out to find alternatives.
Redis — Geospatial.
Redis Geospatial commands
The first option we explored, was to take advantage of our redis clusters, and use redis to cache this geospatial data. Unfortunately to the best of my knowledge, there was no way to index polygons. At best, we could store the geohashes and query based on geohashes, or take advantage of the redis geospatial feature set, which only seemed to support radius queries and not point in polygon queries. This would not solve our usecase. Exploring more, we found a redis fork https://github.com/tidwall/redis-gis, which had been created to solve this problem. But unfortunately the project was archived and discontinued. Further investigation led us to Tile38.
Tile38
Tile38 is the improvement to the redis-gis. It seemed to solve our particular usecase. We could have a service similar to redis with great replication policies and a great feature set.
I was also drawn to tile38 because I had used other libraries by the author (github.com/tidwall), most particularly his burntdb project, which I had studied in the past as part of a code review/study club I help organize outside of work. So I knew it would be solid, just based off my experience with burntdb.
We implemented and tested this out with good results locally. Unfortunately, due to some limitation in our infrastructure we couldn’t get this in production as quickly. While waiting to get tile38 in our infra, another team presented on the success they had with preloading and serving polygons in-memory using the s2 system, and we figured maybe caching in-memory would be a good approach for us.
Another reason why caching in-memory was very attractive is that within this services, we had other endpoints which needed to make some calculations based on these polygons, and sometimes for a single request, would perform 2–10 similar database polygon calls. So, even though having tile38 is great, we would pay the (little) latency costs of performing these requests over the network 10x for each request. So having something in-process would remove the latency costs. This lead us to exploring other alternatives.
Brute Force
Before this in-memory exploration, we already had a sort of in-memory polygon lookup system which had been running for months with no problems and no notice. This system handled querying of country data. Basically we have polygons and data for the roughly 250 countries. This data gets pulled from the database when each docker pod spins up, and when a country request comes in, we loop through the list of countries and perform a point in polygon calculation for each polygon in the list of 250 countries, until we find the right country. This means finding a country would have a complexity of O(n), which is not so great, but then considering n is 250, this worked really nicely for us.
Also, because the list is loaded on startup, and the only operations on the list were read operations, there was no need for mutex locking over each operation, and hence a less complex system with less potential issues due to lock contention. We still have this system working for the countries data, and have no need to change it yet.
For the actual point in polygon calculation, the maths involved is really simple and involves subtracting the polygon edges from the point we’re querying for, to calculate whether the point exists within the given polygon.
Point in polygon calculation. Where poly is a list of coordinates representing the polygon.
The point in polygon query can then be optimized by doing a point in bounding box query, and then only doing the full point in polygon query if the point is in the bounding box. Example implementation:
Raytracing
I don’t fully understand this approach and what differentiates it from the regular point in polygon calculations. But from my understanding, you would still need to loop through all the polygons and perform the checks for each polygon at a time. Here is an example of it’s implementation:
There is an interesting article which visualizes how the point in polygon queries work, incase this interests you: https://observablehq.com/@tmcw/understanding-point-in-polygon
Google S2[Quad trees]
Following the work of another team in the company, I was drawn towards implementing our in-memory geospatial caching via the google s2 library(https://github.com/golang/geo), as this was implemented by the teams involved, with good results. Actually, these results from the teams was what gave us the confidence that it would be feasible to cache this data in memory. in their usecase, they preloaded roughly 10,000 polygons into a machine on startup, and then simply queried this data with no need to update the data except for periodic refreshes. What was most interesting was that they were able to fit all this data into a service which was using less than 1.5gb of memory while handling their not so trivial traffic.
For our own usecase, we had <20,000 polygons and were expecting this number to even triple as we are working on support polygons for areas and even neighbourhoods we operate in. So, keeping all the polygons in memory would likely be challenging, but at least this gave us an idea that it would not need an astronomic amount of memory.
Unfortunately, implementing s2 for our usecase was quite challenging for 2 reasons:
Converting our geojson polygon to s2 polygon representation wasn’t straightforward
While exploring the google s2 golang library, we were able to index a polygon with a bit of pain, but in little time. The pain was due to having to convert our geojson polygons which were in the paulmach/orb format, into the google s2 polygon format. Since I couldn’t find articles or documentation on how to do this, I had to do some trial an error to eventually convert our polygons to s2 polygons in a way that it is deemed valid by s2.
Converting to the google s2 polygon format. Ignore the log lines.
S2 — ShapeIndex only returns the shape without the identifier
After getting the polygon, I first tried using an s2 shape index to index this polygon with no issues. The issue was how to get back shape id which I can associate with a city. Instead, I was able to query and get back the shape, but I had no way of knowing what city is associated with that shape. I had some ideas such as hashing the shape and matching the shape to the city based on this hash, but without a lot of testing I can’t tell for sure that this hash would always be the same for a given shape. And it just felt a bit more complicated than necessary. In the end, I couldn’t find any way to get this generated id.
Shape index rough exploration (Ignore the commented out lines)
Like you would see in the screenshot, adding a polygon to the shapeIndex returns an `id` for the shape. But when I query for the shape using the NewContainsPointQuery , I get back the shape but couldn’t find anyway to get the orginal `id`. While exploring the s2 documentation I noticed that the more correct solution to the problem I was solving is the cell index.
S2 — Cell Index
The cell index allows me to index an s2 cell or cell union along with a label. The best part is that we can run queries and actually get back the label, which we can associate with a city. The only issue is that this index doesn’t support shapes like polygons, and we have to convert our polygons into cell unions, which are a combination of cells or squares that cover the polygon.
A polygon (red) surrounded by s2 cells (blue)covering it’s region
Basically, s2 cells are gotten when the earth geometry is recursively divided into 4, until a point that is sufficient for covering our polygons. If you’re familiar with geohashes, this is fairly similar to geohashes, except that s2 takes into consideration the curvature of the earth, where geohashes do not. Each cell has a unique 64bit cell id which is an identifier for the given cell
The challenge with this solution is that the indexes are static. After an index is built, it can’t be changed. We can’t add or remove shapes, which makes this a difficult solution to use as a caching layer, which by nature involves adding and deleting items regularly. I can think of workarounds like reindexing the entire index when anything changes, but this would require a lot of locking and it’s hard to tell how slow the indexing is for large workloads, eg 10,000 cities, without any testing. And is it even practical to reindex 10,000 cities each time a city expires and needs to be changed? Probably it would have been possible to reindex the cities in batches, for example every hour. But this limitation pushed us to consider the next option.
Cell index documentation https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/golang/geo/s2#CellIndex
RTree
Rtree is another popular option geospatial index. It results in slightly slower lookups than s2, but seemed like a simpler tradeoff between complexity and performance for our use case. It is also a popular option which has been the defacto spatial indexing solution in databases before s2 came around. PostGIS and even tile38 are both implemented on top of an RTree. From my investigation so far, Rtrees do not really support polygons, and are only able to index rectangles. They then build a sorted tree structure representing a hierarchy of the polygons indexed, so that we don’t necessarily need to walk the entire list to find a shape. Basically, making searches more like a binary search O(log n)
We decided to use the tidwall/rtree library, since it is the library used behind the scenes by tile38, and hence is actually tried and tested in the real work.
To cache the metadata and also handle TTL expirations, we used DGraph’s ristretto which we’ve used with great success in other places. It has great performace compared to other inmemory caching systems we tried. So, check it out if you need to cache something in memory.
Our approach for implementation was:
Calculate and index the city’s rectangular bounds in the Rtree index against the city slug (or other identifier). Note, we only index the rectangular bounds and not the actual city polygon. For that same city, index the city metadata in a ristretto in-memory cache (https://github.com/dgraph-io/ristretto). This insert and the querying are protected behind a read write mutex, since the tile38 Rtree library doesn’t seem to be thread safe. Looking at the tile38 codebase, their geoindex was also secured behind a RWMutex. On query, we get back a list of cities where the point is within the city’s rectangular bounds. But the point might still not be in the actual polygon. So when we search and find a city in the RTree, we still go ahead to query the entire city from the ristretto cache. The entire city in the ristretto cache contains data like the name and slug of the city, but also the full city polygon, which we then to do a direct point in polygon query to be sure that the point is actually within the city.
The final implementation is actually not a lot of code:
Saving and Querying cities in the rtree and ristretto cache.
Now our workflow for handling city by coordinate requests is:
New request comes with coordinates, we check the rtree for any polygon that contains those coordinates. If a polygon is found, we check ristretto for the rest of the data for that city, and do a more precise point in polygon query on the full polygon to be sure the coordinates are within that city polygon. If yes, we return the city to the client (internal or external) If data is not found in ristretto or in the rtree, we proceed to call postgres and do the actual point in polygon postgres query as usual. When postgres returns a response, we store index this data in ristretto and the city polygon bounds in the rtree to serve future requests.
Results
The service is able to handle 9x more traffic on our staging load tests. In the graph below, you can see a load test run on the service without the geocache, hitting only 20k rpm, but with the geocache was hitting 150k rpm. | https://medium.com/@tonyalaribe/building-a-geospatial-cache-in-go-ab635777ccb1 | ['Anthony Alaribe'] | 2021-04-13 11:04:07.063000+00:00 | ['S2', 'Golang', 'Geospatial', 'Polygon'] |
What happens to the brain in Parkinson’s? | What happens to the brain in Parkinson’s?
Parkinson’s is the world’s fastest growing neurological condition, with 12 million projected to be living with it by 2040. But what is going wrong inside the brain and how can we stop it? Claire Bale Follow Jul 22 · 7 min read
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash
Parkinson’s develops when cells in a particular part of the brain — called the substantia nigra — stop working properly and are lost over time. These brain cells produce a chemical called dopamine and play a central role in coordinating movement.
Symptoms start to appear when the brain can’t make enough dopamine to control movement properly.
Picture of the brain showing where the substantia nigra is located
There are 3 main symptoms — tremor (shaking), slowness of movement and rigidity (muscle stiffness) — but there are many other symptoms too.
Parkinson’s is progressive, it gets worse over time. That’s because more and more brain cells become affected and stop working properly.
How and why brain cells get ‘Parkinson’s’ is a question that researchers have been trying to answer for decades. If we can find the answers, and understand what is happening inside the brain, we will be able to create treatments that can stop Parkinson’s in its tracks.
We don’t have all the answers yet, but we now understand some of the key things that go wrong with brain cells that are damaged and lost in Parkinson’s.
Let’s take a look at some of these now.
Malfunctioning mitochondria
In the late 1980’s scientists funded by Parkinson’s UK studying brain tissue from people with Parkinson’s first spotted problems with mitochondria inside cells in the substantia nigra.
Mitochondria are like tiny batteries that are present inside almost every cell in our bodies. Their job is to convert fuel from our food into energy. Brain cells have thousands because they are so large and so busy sending the messages to control everything we do. As a result, our brains use up around 20% of all the energy our bodies generate.
When mitochondria don’t work properly, they can’t produce enough energy and this means cells stop working properly too. Even worse, broken mitochondria actually become toxic to cells and poison them.
Since this initial discovery, scientists have continued to study mitochondria in Parkinson’s to try and understand these problems better and figure out ways to fix them using new drugs.
Find out how researchers in Sheffield are creating new drugs to restore mitochondria.
Trouble-making proteins
Proteins are the building blocks of our bodies. A bit like making things with lego, our cells are built with proteins of different shapes and sizes. Cells are constantly making new proteins and recycling old ones to keep themselves healthy and working well.
But in Parkinson’s, and many other neurodegenerative conditions, proteins seem to misbehave. Large bundles of proteins (called Lewy bodies) were first seen inside brain cells from people with Parkinson’s in 1912 by German scientist Friedrich Lewy.
While we’ve known about Lewy bodies for over a century, we are still not completely sure how they might be contributing to the problems inside brain cells in Parkinson’s. Some scientists believe these masses of tangled up proteins clog up brain cells and cause damage, others think they may be benign — a symptom rather than a cause of major problems inside cells.
In 1997, two major discoveries highlighted one protein in particular that may play a key role in Parkinson’s.
Researchers identified that alpha-synuclein is the main protein found in Lewy bodies. And a separate study found that a change in the gene that makes alpha-synuclein causes a rare inherited form of Parkinson’s.
Further research has revealed that mis-shapen forms of alpha-synuclein build up inside the brain cells affected in Parkinson’s.
These distorted proteins may not only be toxic but may also be responsible for the spread of the condition as the protein leaks out of affected brain cells and enters neighbouring cells.
As a result of these discoveries, there is now huge focus from the pharmaceutical industry to create treatments that can help the brain to identify and remove toxic forms of alpha-synuclein.
Find out about therapies targeting alpha-synuclein that are already being tested in clinical trials.
Faulty recycling
As mentioned previously, our cells are constantly recycling their proteins. Old and unwanted proteins are dismantled and the parts are used to make new proteins that the cell needs. A bit like taking an old car apart and using its components to make a new one.
The task of ‘dismantling’ of old proteins is carried out by lysosomes and proteasomes, which break up proteins that have been ‘put out’ for recycling.
Important clues that problems with recycling may be central to the development of Parkinson’s have come from studying the genetics of the condition.
The two most common genetic forms of Parkinson’s are caused by changes in the GBA1 and LRRK2 genes.
The GBA1 gene provides the instructions to make a protein called glucocerebrosidase (or GCase) which is found in lysosomes. Experiments show that when there is a change in this gene, the GCase protein doesn’t work properly. This decreases recycling and increases levels of damaging alpha-synuclein.
Meanwhile, the LRRK2 gene provides the instructions to make the LRRK2 protein. This protein appears to be involved in many activities inside brain cells, including recycling.
Recycling is a complex process and we know that our cells become less efficient as we get older. Problems with recycling may contribute to the build up of unwanted proteins like alpha-synuclein and damaged mitochondria — which can overwhelm brain cells. So making recycling work more efficiently is an exciting avenue for developing new treatments.
Discover how scientists are finding ways to boost the recycling process to create new treatments for Parkinson’s.
Excessive inflammation
Inflammation is the body’s defence system to protect itself from harm and repair tissue damage. If we bump or cut ourselves, our immune system sends in its troops to get rid of unwanted invaders and start the healing process. And we might notice the signs of inflammation — like swelling, redness and soreness. Once, it’s job is done, the immune system retreats and the inflammation disappears.
The same thing happens when we get ill with a viral or bacterial infection. Our immune system kicks in, raising our temperature to try and kill off the infection.
Our immune systems and the inflammatory process is absolutely critical. Without it, small cuts would get infected and any infection could prove deadly.
But sometimes our immune systems get confused and trigger an immune response when it isn’t helpful. A constant state of inflammation can actually cause damage to our cells and organs. This is what happens in conditions like rheutmatoid arthritis, where inflammation in joints causes pain, stiffness, and mobility problems. And there is evidence that in Parkinson’s something similar is happening inside the brain.
The immune response inside the brain is mainly controlled by cells called microglia and astrocytes. These cells are not responsible for communicating messages, like the dopamine-producing cells affected in Parkinson’s. Instead their job is to support and protect other brain cells.
In Parkinson’s, microglia and astrocytes trigger excessive and chronic inflammation which is believed to contribute to and possibly accelerate the damage to dopamine-producing brain cells.
However, why this happens is still unclear. It could be in response to cells dying and releasing toxins, it could be that toxic forms of alpha-synuclein might also play a role and it could even be that inflammation elsewhere in the body is contributing, especially in the gut.
As a result, researchers and companies are now developing new treatments for Parkinson’s that aim to dampen down harmful inflammation in the brain.
Find out about how a small company developing anti-inflammatory drugs for Parkinson’s was bought by a major global pharmaceutical company.
Piecing together the clues
While we’ve made phenomenal progress in understanding what’s happening inside the brain in Parkinson’s there is still a lot we don’t understand.
One major question that scientists are grappling with is what goes wrong first? And how do all these different processes combine to cause Parkinson’s?
Is it problems with mitochondria and energy production that cause recycling to stop working properly, which means proteins build up and this triggers inflammation? Or is it some other sequence?
Understanding this chain of events and how things fit together is crucial to figuring out where and when to intervene with new treatments. Do we need to create treatments that tackle all of them?
Another major question is: do the same things go wrong in the same way in everyone with Parkinson’s?
We know that Parkinson’s is a very individual and variable condition — and that there may be different types. Could it be that actually different problems inside brain cells are causing these different forms of the condition? And do these different forms need different treatments?
There is still much more to learn and understand but what we’ve uncovered so far is already leading to treatments with the potential to slow, stop or reverse Parkinson’s. | https://medium.com/parkinsons-uk/what-happens-to-the-brain-in-parkinsons-4d5b31f4d7b | ['Claire Bale'] | 2021-07-22 08:02:35.783000+00:00 | ['Research', 'Brain', 'Progress', 'New Treatments', 'Parkinsons'] |
Lost Romance’s Gerry Perlinski Chats About Basement Shows, The Wizard of Oz, and Hair Metal | Lost Romance
New Jersey-based indie-rock outfit Lost Romance released the music video for “Heart On A Wire” not long ago. Lifted from Lost Romance’s latest album, Strum It Again,” the song is about the difficulty and possibility of opening up to another person emotionally.
The brainchild of Gerry Perlinski, Lost Romance took shape in 2011, followed by releasing their debut EP, The Light and the Dark. Since then, Lost Romance has shared the stage with King’s X, Rye Coalition, Pat DiNizio of The Smithereens, and Elliott Easton of The Cars, among an array of others, as well as touring the U.S. and performing at CMJ, CBGB Fest, NAMM, and the Light of Day Festival.
The music video, directed by Josh Stoddard, depicts Lost Romance performing at a basement party, pumping out raw rock tinted with suggestions of punk. Initially, the visuals are shot in black and white, and then transition to color, symbolizing the emotional passage from guarded to vulnerable, opening a whole new world of expression.
“It’s the last time you have to chase / All these feelings that you need to face / Open your heart before it’s too late.”
Pop Off caught up with frontman Gerry Perlinkski to talk about the genesis of Lost Romance, his songwriting process, and the unique method utilized to record Strum It Again.
How did you get started in music? What’s the backstory there?
Growing up, I was not only a fan of music, but I enjoyed the whole spectacle of rock n’ roll. A child of the ’70s and ’80s, there were so many artists that inspired me. However, if I had to point to a catalyst for wanting to become a guitarist and starting a band, it would have to be Eddie Van Halen. He was not only cool but was like a comic book superhero come to life. I had Van Halen posters on my wall. The first guitar solo I ever learned was “Running With The Devil” at around10 years old… on an acoustic guitar no less!
My parents also had this amazing record collection. All kinds of vinyl from The Beatles to Herb Alpert, gypsy music to Polish traditional folk music. Back in the early 70’s my uncle, Pawel Perlinski, released an album of jazz fusion with a group called The Jazz Carriers which he co-founded in Poland. I was mesmerized by the album cover with its crazy fish-eye lens photo of the group on the cover. It’s raw blend of jazz and rock in the early stages of fusion made a lasting impression on me not only as a listener, but as a proud member of my family. It was the small seed that told me that I too could be a musician.
My first band was started in high school as most are, but it wasn’t until college that I started performing in original bands. I was strictly a guitarist in several groups, but I eventually took the plunge as a vocalist and primary songwriter while leading my first band Akasa back in the late ’90s and early 2000s. I cut my teeth being part of the New Brunswick, NJ indie rock scene as well as the Lower East Side scene of NYC. While playing in a variety of different bands at that time, I traveled in the same circles with Ween, The Strokes, King Missile, and Soul Coughing.
What is your songwriting process? Does the entire band participate or is there one primary songwriter?
For the majority of the songs in Lost Romance, I am the primary songwriter. I normally bring fully written songs (music and lyrics) and have each player put their special magic to them. That being said, there have been a few co-writes with other musicians in the band over the years.
My songwriting process usually goes one of three ways:
1. I have a chord progression and melody, then write the lyrics. Most likely written on an acoustic guitar.
2. I hear a phrase that catches my ear somewhere and base a song around it. These can come from overheard conversations of strangers, inspiration from books and films, and traveling to new places.
3. The song comes all at once. It’s more like a stream of consciousness situation where the song flows through me. Music, lyrics, melody, and arrangement. Those are usually my favorite songs and somehow end up being the most beloved by the fans.
How did Lost Romance come to get together?
Lost Romance was born out of a solo album that I was recording back in 2011. It was to be a six song EP and my debut as a solo artist. But after getting to the mixing stage, it was beginning to sound more like a band album than a solo album.
I was working with producer David Pattillo, aka Strange Majik, at his studio on the Lower East Side when the inspiration to move ahead with a band name was solidified. Although I wanted to have a steady lineup, Lost Romance has become more of a collective over the years with key players on recordings and rotating touring members.
Who is in the band (names) and which instrument do they play?
On this current album, we have Dan Haag on bass and backing vocals and Mohammed Amine Smires on drums and backing vocals. In addition, we have touring musicians Dave Harman (who is in the video!) and Josh Van Ness on drums, plus Jon Ru on bass.
What inspired your new song/music video “Heart On A Wire?”
The video was inspired by ’90s era indie bands like Pavement, Sugar, and Buffalo Tom. We wanted the viewer to not only have fun watching it but get a glimpse into the world of an underground rock show in New Jersey. Basement shows are an integral part of the independent music scene in the state and have been since the early ‘80s.
The song itself is about a relationship where one person is afraid to open themselves up to the other completely. The other person feels like they are always going out on a limb and not receiving what they want in return from the relationship.
The black and white that turns into color when the party is revealed is about the joy that could happen if the other person finally allows themselves to be open. It is also a nod to one of my favorite movies, The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy goes from dreary Kansas in black and white to full technicolor when she lands in the magical world of Oz. And of course, everyone knows how magical New Jersey is!
Lost Romance
What do you hope your fans/listeners take away with them from the video?
I hope that the listeners enjoy the video for what it is, a fun ride! It’s a glimpse into the Jersey music scene and what it’s like to be at a basement show. If you’re from here and have played in or been a part of the underground scene, this is familiar territory. But, for everyone else, it may open them up to a world they would never normally see or experience.
“Heart On A Wire” is from your latest album, Strum It Again. What can you share about the album?
Our new album has been some years in the making. Many of the songs on this record have been part of our live shows so if you’ve seen us on the road, you’ll recognize most of them. It was recorded mostly in Jersey City and unlike most modern albums, the basic tracks were done on a 4-track cassette recorder. The difference between doing tracks this way versus digitally is that you have to be on your game musically for it to work. If you don’t get the take right, you have to do it over again. That being said, we actually were able to get most of the songs done in one or two takes. It pays to be rehearsed and tour a lot!
Musically, the songs on Strum It Again are a tip of the hat to an older, simpler style of music. We worked on getting that raw vibe of bands like Husker Du, The Replacements, and The Smithereens with a modern twist. What I love about those bands was the brashness of the instruments juxtaposed against the strong melodies and moving lyrics.
Do you have a guilty music and/or entertainment pleasure?
Hair metal!
Why do you make music?
I initially made music to express my emotions and to move people. It’s definitely cheaper than therapy! But as I continue my musical journey, I realize in addition to those things, I make music to become immortal. I want to leave something behind that people will enjoy forever. I love the fact that I can listen to Jimi Hendrix 50 years after his passing and still feel what he felt and hear his spirit. It’s beautiful.
How are you handling the coronavirus situation?
All things considered, I’m doing ok. It’s been a rough year for everyone on many levels, but I’m hanging in there. It feels weird not being able to hang out with people you love in person and to tour and see fans at live shows. Just about the time everything was getting shut down, we were in the middle of taking off for a three-week tour in support of Strum It Again back in March. Our plan was to play down to SXSW and come back up through the South and East Coast. Even though we had to cancel the tour, we decided we still wanted to release our album. We felt like the world needed to have more good music in it, so we didn’t want to wait.
Looking ahead, what’s next for Lost Romance?
Right now, we’ll continue to promote this album for as long as we can. Since we didn’t do a proper tour for it, our plan is to do that once things begin opening up again, hopefully in 2021. In the meantime, we’ll be doing more live streams on our Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube channels so make sure to subscribe, follow, and like us there to watch. We’ve also begun tracking songs for our next album so look out for updates and behind the scenes footage too!
Follow Lost Romance Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify | https://medium.com/pop-off/lost-romances-gerry-perlinski-chats-about-basement-shows-the-wizard-of-oz-and-hair-metal-98b0fa12f474 | ['Randall Radic'] | 2020-12-07 11:59:34.330000+00:00 | ['Music Video', 'Lost Romance', 'Music', 'Heart On A Wire', 'Interview'] |
BEST TOP 3 INTERNSHIP DURING YOUR GRADUATION | In this blog, we’ll discover our best top 3 internships which you can do in between your degree & you will also get paid for your work. You can also expand your career with the help of an internship & you will also get to explore some other countries or States.
In this blog, we’ll cover
A-What is an internship?
B-Why to choose an internship?
C- What are the top 3 internships?
1-What is an internship?
The internship is provided by particular Companies, Organizations, and Government through a campaign or by advertisement. It is one kind of job which is taken by a student to seek or learn something professionally & interns also get to learn how to work in a diverse environment.
2-Why to choose an internship ?
Choosing an internship will help you to expand your innovative ideas & your communication skills. An internship can help you to learn some profession professionally during your internship you will also get paid for your work and if you are a good intern you might get the opportunity to be a permanent member of that company.
An internship makes your job journey a Little bit easy because while doing your graduation if you get a good internship and at the same time you are a good intern so the company will make you stay as long as you want. An internship will enhance your CVs so the possibilities of getting your dream job increases because it is a practical job.
Now let’s see our top 3 best internship
1. World bank internship
2. UNICEF Internship Program
3. UNESCO Internship Program
So let’s see this internship in details
World Bank internship:-
World bank focuses on poverty in developing countries. The world bank internship program gives an opportunity to work with them. The internship helps individually to enhance their innovative ideas & it is one of the best ways to enhance your CV. The world bank internship provides some categories to work in (for example:- Administration Dept & many more). It provides an internship in two seasons
a) Summer season
b) Winter season
Eligibility Criteria
1: There is no age limit
2: Fluency in English
3: The candidate should be an undergraduate and they should have proof of enrollment in a full-time graduate study program.
Application process
1: They accept an online application form and it should be on time.
2: Fill the required void space is mandatory
3: Documents you required is- CV, Statement of interest, or enrollment proof of graduate study program.
4: The format of the file should be a doc, Docx, or pdf.
For further information visit the official website:- https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/careers/programs-and-internships/internship
UNICEF Internship Program:-
UNICEF stands for United Nation International Children’s Emergency Fund. It is one of the most organized organization. UNICEF is a united nation’s agency that provides humanitarian and development aid to children worldwide. The UNICEF is working in 190 countries. It promotes the health & well -being of children. It concentrates on the protection of children’s rights and their basic need. UNICEF offers university students, Ph.D. students & past 2 years graduated students to work with them. UNICEF internship program is a fully-funded program and you don’t have to pay application fees. The duration of this internship is 6 weeks to 26 weeks.
Eligibility Criteria
1: Candidate must be 18 years old.
2: No relatives working in UNICEF.
3: Candidate must be eloquent in one of this language — English, French, Spanish.
4: Candidate must be a graduate past 2 years, undergraduate or Ph.D. student.
Application process
1: UNICEF accepts the online petition & it should be on time.
2: Fill the void space & attach the required documents- CV, Requirement proof, Cover letter.
For further information visit the official website:- https://www.unicef.org/careers/internships
UNESCO Internship Program:-
UNESCO stands for the United Nation Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization. UNESCO builds peace through International co-operation in education, science, and culture. UNESCO is very important for maintaining peace and disciple in the countries. UNESCO offers university students like undergraduates, graduates past 12 months, Ph.D. students to work with them in different different departments. The duration of this internship is 2 to 6 months.
Eligibility Criteria
1: Must be at least 20 years old.
2: Must be Fluent in one of these languages English, French.
3: Must have Computer knowledge
4: Must have good communication skills
Application process
1: The language of filling the form should be either in English or French.
2: UNESCO accepts online application & it should be on time.
3: CV is a mandatory document.
For further information visit the official website:- https://en.unesco.org/careers/internships. | https://medium.com/@deepikamunnisharma/best-top-3-internship-during-your-graduation-2fad588b04c5 | ['Deepika Sharma'] | 2020-12-12 20:58:53.380000+00:00 | ['Best Internship Company', 'Unicef', 'Blogging', 'Internships', 'Unesco'] |
Not a Bad Dog | My own dogs watch from our bedroom window for our eventual return. I just loved this picture because it reminds me of our sweet little Shorkies 😊 (Even though this is obviously not one) he is still waiting patiently for his master.
As always, thanks to the tireless efforts of Kathy, Harper, and the whole Chalkboard team! | https://medium.com/chalkboard/not-a-bad-dog-d2e141aebbb4 | ['Kim Smyth'] | 2020-11-05 02:44:07.215000+00:00 | ['One Line', 'Presence', 'Patience', 'Poetry', 'Companionship'] |
How to stop time? | How many of you seriously wonder about stopping time? Many of you right now are in your happy zones and hence wish this or maybe you are a scientist. Those who are in the sad zone, for them there is a common saying — “This shall too pass”.
But not deviating much from the topic my idea of stopping time is writing diaries. It is more like preserving time. And why I am saying this or why did I write diaries?
Well, it so happened in 7 th standard that my teacher punished me for being too talkative and changed my bench mate to a guy. Me being talkative couldn’t resist talking to him. And he was pretty interesting. One day he got this book — “Diary of Anne Frank”. I read the book, liked the pictures in it, and connected with Anne on an emotional level.
The very same day I went home and bought a diary. My first diary. For the first few days, I kept wondering what to write. But since I never break a pact with myself I was adamant that I will at least try this for a month.
You know how my diary sounded for the first few days — “I woke up at 6 am. I went to school. I had a sandwich in the break. I came home at 3 pm. I had curry for lunch. I finished my homework. I had rice with curry in dinner. Good night”.
Don’t worry you can say aloud that it sounded boring and dumb. It did. But after the first few days, I started connecting to my diaries more and more. It started becoming a friend that I never had. Nor do you have such friends. No one tells their real thoughts and whole life to anyone. We are humans and we have bad thoughts and we have a fear of getting judged.
So yes, every single thought and happening was jotted into my diary. And this became a routine.
But then my dad discovered that I write diaries. He read it behind my back (when I was in school). For a few days, my parents kept reading my diary regularly and I wasn’t aware of it.
Then how I came to know about it?
So I fought with my parents one night. And as I said we are humans with evil minds. I must have probably written down the worst for my parents. I even went to the extent to write that I might be adopted.
Yes, that day I returned home from school and my parents were really angry and hurt. We talked and I managed to make them understand that this was just a phase and I am over it. But that day I realized writing diaries is risky. It is like giving your darkest secrets to an unknown person.
I tore my diary and burnt it. I cried for days. Yes, it wasn’t the pain of break up. It was worse. It was the pain of losing your best friend. My dad saw this and realized his mistake.
He hasn’t read my diary from that instance onwards. No one in my house dared to read them. And they are safe in my locker.
So it has been years and my time has been captured in these pages. I remember most of my life vividly. Because when I am sad or bored I just pick any year’s diary and start reading them. I remember dates of events that might sound meaningless to you but are special to me. My first basketball match, the first time I went to a picnic with a friend and all the places I have visited, everything is in these pages.
Some benefits of writing diaries are- | https://medium.com/@ssayesha18/how-to-stop-time-91024d9ac5f8 | ['Sayesha Singh'] | 2020-12-21 18:49:08.434000+00:00 | ['Stopping Time', 'Journals', 'Diary'] |
Syntropy | Syntropy
It is amazing that this has been up for years with but 1800 or so views. Syntropy is a natural intuition by anyone who reflects on things whether aware of consciousness as a term or not. Entropy has always been an offense to intellect, not because it is not real but because it is only part of reality. Yet it is the coup de grace of those who believe that objectivity is all there is. Enough of this. The ideas in this video need wider circulation. Please post any added references that will aid further development of syntropic understanding.
These two videos belong together. Both of them deal with the future as the source of the present. I am almost tempted to add something pataphysical to suggest the seeking of freedom in contemplating some implications of thinking beyond the pincers of materialism. Don’t get me wrong. Only from such a beyond can one love stuff properly. | https://medium.com/everything-comes/syntropy-ba9da91fbb32 | ['Stephen C. Rose'] | 2018-10-18 13:21:12.221000+00:00 | ['Consciousness', 'Philosophy', 'Entropy', 'Life', 'Syntropy'] |
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