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December 24th, 2020 — Christmas Eve | Dear S,
This is my favorite day of the year. I know you love Christmas, but for me, the holiday to look forward to is Christmas Eve. More than Christmas Day, more than my birthday, more than Thanksgiving or the end of the school year, or any other day you might choose. In my family, this was the day of choirs and carols, grand dinners and unwrapping presents, pretty dresses and cozy pajamas. Candlelight and angel light and starlight. It was the magical place of childhood dreams. And as the evening draws to a close, I am surprised to find that even in 2020, this has been a particularly joyful day.
It shouldn’t have been. This has been the year where nothing is as it is supposed to be. There was no Christmas tree, just a Christmas Chair in the corner of the living room where I piled the boxes and bags sent by my parents and siblings. The Amazon box was the gift wrap of 2020 — I didn’t even bother to put wrapping paper on the outside. The weather was drab gray and pouring rain. Dinner was a recipe from a food delivery service that I threw together. I didn’t even think about dessert until I went to the grocery store this morning for toilet paper, so I ended up with sub-par mint ice cream. My decorations in my house consist of a few small fake poinsettias, a tabletop tree decoration that is more trunk than tree, and a berry wreath on the door with fairy lights (the only thing that is both charming and festive).
And yet. There was something beautiful about today. Yesterday was the end of the term, and thus a weight of obligations that finally came to conclusion. I woke up this morning with the lightness of freedom and that small excitement in my heart, the sense that something long-expected had arrived, even though I wasn’t prepared for it. In the cold rain, the house was cozy. The food was a comfort. My family, together on the screen of my iPad despite the physical span of four time zones, was as hilarious and warm and familiar as they always are. Stripped of expectations, today was perhaps one of the best Christmas Eves I have had in years.
Some might say it is because this year has been so dreadful that even the pale shadow of Christmas seems comparatively glorious. But that is too simple to me. Rather, I feel as if I brought intention to this day. I was deliberate in my joy, determined to embrace this moment and place myself within it. Stripped of what it was expected to be, it became what it was. Face to face with its reality, I found wonder.
Now I am tucked in a corner writing to you before I crawl into bed. It is already Christmas Day where you are, and in my mind, I imagine you sitting down to dinner with your family, laughing in that wide and deep way that makes me smile, enjoying a feast that I am almost certain your mother prepared. I hope you have found the same wonder and warmth in a holiday I know you love as much as I do. I hope you have found the time to embrace this moment and to place yourself within it, as fleeting as it is.
Merry Christmas, my dear friend.
Yours,
A | https://medium.com/@solitarynotes/december-24th-2020-christmas-eve-e6bd4740f92b | ['Notes A Solitary Corner'] | 2020-12-25 04:09:32.292000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Childhood', 'Joy', 'Christmas'] |
Mr. Gray | Life is bizarre and most things are interesting, you just have to word it right. Here to share a thought or two. | https://medium.com/@bgray24/12-25-20-3a33a94437cc | ['Mr. Gray'] | 2020-12-30 18:56:36.536000+00:00 | ['What Does It Mean', 'Poetry', 'Tomorrow', 'Love', 'Thoughts'] |
SupraOracles 2021 Recap: Mastercard, Berkeley Blockchain, and Partnerships Galore | The team at SupraOracles believes that blockchain technology has the potential to completely transform the future, especially in the fields of finance, self-governance, and human coordination. Blockchain technology offers individual users and businesses the chance to completely change how they can store and manage information through the use of a digital ledger that is available to everyone around the world.
SupraOracles is looking to utilize blockchain technology and smart contracts to build the financial infrastructure of the future.
DeFi is Making Waves
DeFi has the potential to upend the current financial markets. In traditional financial markets today, control of the global currency supply rests with banks and other centralized agencies. Blockchain technology eliminates the need for these middlemen, giving people control over their finances and financial decisions. While there is speculation that DeFi could eventually replace traditional financial systems, DeFi can work with traditional finance, completely transforming the space, with DeFi powered financial applications set to gain momentum as we move into the future.
Bringing DeFi to the Mainstream
Blockchains suffer from a peculiar problem: You cannot easily bring external data onto the blockchain due to their inherent structure. The solution to this problem is cross-chain blockchain oracles that allow blockchains to connect to external data, create communication channels or even create interoperability between multiple closed-loop systems.
However, current oracle solutions have their own set of problems. We have already seen over $1.4 billion lost to DeFi exploits in the last year. In fact, such DeFi exploits are relatively common — due to the limitations of current oracles — such as:
Price delays
Lack of transparency
Lack of accountability
Lack of true decentralization
The True Potential of SupraOracles
Blockchain oracles have long struggled with finding the right balance between scalability, decentralization, security, and finality. However, none have been able to crack the dilemma until now. Supra allows you to have the perfect balance of all four. SupraOracles is more than your typical middleware solution, with the team behind the project having brought something truly revolutionary to the market.
SupraOracles is a powerful cross-chain oracle capable of seamlessly bridging real-world, off-chain data to both public and private blockchains, enabling interoperable smart contracts. Supra offers developers a unique toolset, allowing them to create, deploy and manage their applications while also giving them superior performance and increased robustness. The solution offers instant finality, cutting-edge cryptography, and unmatched interoperability.
Looking Back at the Year
SupraOracles has had a significant and eventful year, with several key milestones reached and many new partnerships confirmed. These partnerships are a testament to the ongoing efforts of Supra, and the trust put into the product by other projects that have or are looking to partner with Supra.
Partnerships Announced
In August, Supra announced its first major partnership with blockchain ride-hailing app DRIFE. The integration saw hyper-accurate geodata from both riders and drivers on the blockchain, thereby enabling a transition away from a traditional centralized hub that would make decisions on behalf of its participants.
Since then, SupraOracles has confirmed partnerships with some of the most innovative projects in the crypto space, such as:
InsurAce — A decentralized insurance protocol that addresses industry challenges regarding accessibility, underlying risk, and capital inefficiency.
Injective Protocol — Allows users to create any financial market on their cross-chain, low fee, and fully decentralized exchange protocol.
KILDE — Operates as a two-sided platform connecting institutions and high net worth individuals with securitized private investments.
Nahmii — Effectively provides solutions for a variety of dApp projects, from supply-chain management systems to NFT platforms.
NFTfi — The marketplace for NFT collateralized loans, where you can put your NFT assets up as collateral for a loan or offer loans to other users on their non-fungible tokens.
Metis — Integrates the Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC) framework within its Layer 2 infrastructure to make it easy for developers to build their applications.
Strips Finance — Interest rate derivatives protocol for fixed-income interest rate swaps.
Unbound — The ‘First-Ever-Debt-Free Liquidity Provision System’ that collateralizes LPTs to generate synthetic assets, including UND and uETH.
In fact, Supra has announced over 70 partnerships this year, all of which you can find here.
Mastercard Global Startup
This year saw SupraOracles be included in Mastercard’s Start Path cryptocurrency blockchain program, which was undoubtedly a momentous occasion for the founding team at Supra. SupraOracles is the only oracle solution included in the list of innovators from the blockchain space, and sees the project rub shoulders with other promising projects like Avalanche, Domain Money, STACS, and Uphold.
Nasdaq Guest Contribution: Supra On Nasdaq
Joshua Tobkin, founder and CEO of SupraOracles, was invited as a Guest Contributor on Nasdaq. The article, published on the 15th of December on the Nasdaq website, talks about DeFi, and how it has become the fastest-growing sector in the crypto market. Joshua also spoke about DeFi’s oracle problem and the issues that plague current oracle solutions. They range from incorrect price reporting, oracle attacks, and how the need of the hour is an oracle solution that solves the oracle dilemma — offering scalability, security, finality, and decentralization. You can read the entire article here.
Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator
SupraOracles was also selected into the Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator Cohort this year. The application process was one the most competitive to date, with SupraOracles going up against 199 other applications for 21 highly coveted spots. The spots included diverse verticals, ranging from metaverses, decentralized finance, crypto-investment tools, oracles, and others. Berkeley Blockchain Accelerator is a joint venture between Berkeley Haas School of Business, Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, and Blockchain at Berkeley.
Cross-Chain Ecosystem Growth
SupraOracles also secured a grant from Polygon, with the grant being utilized towards building a bridge so that SupraOracles’ oracle solution can service their growing ecosystem. Polygon is looking to focus on key areas, such as blockchain gaming, NFTs, marketplaces, and DeFi, which are areas that SupraOracles is looking to service.
SupraOracles has received over $1M+ in non-diluted grants from a variety of ecosystems and networks including, but not limited to, Dfinity, NEAR, Tezos, and Zilliqa.
The Supra Roadmap
2018
SupraOracles established its core team in 2018, then made the following important breakthroughs:
Expanded research team
Random Number Generator (RNG) Oracle research breakthrough
Completed RNG “die harder” tests
Completed research for RNG Oracle Protocol
Consensus Protocol Research Breakthrough
2019
In 2019, Supra confirmed their novel Ledger design and early consensus algorithm performance results and continued research and development into Web 2.5 consumer applications. Supra also started work on a non-custodial DeFi platform, while successfully applying its consensus algorithm. 2019 was rounded off with the initial setup for the Entropy Foundation and Supra Labs.
2020
In 2020, Supra completed its core consensus protocol research, established the Entropy Foundation, and began applying their consensus algorithm to solve the Oracle problem.
2021
In 2021, SupraOracles expanded significantly and grew to a team of over 40 individuals. The technology, product, and marketing teams were all bolstered significantly — with experts from around the crypto space — in preparation for a series of upcoming product launches.
What to Expect in 2022 and Beyond
In 2022 and beyond, SupraOracles is gearing up to hit the following milestones:
PR for the numerous partnerships across DeFi
Whitepaper goes live
Alpha testnet goes live
Strategic fundraise
Tactical data partners and node operators enabled
Testnet goes live
First tranche of DeFi project integration
Public fundraise
Beta mainnet goes live
SupraX accelerator goes live
Ongoing exploring blockchain applications related to stocks, derivatives, and real estate
Product Growth: What To Expect
SupraOracles is on track to launch an alpha testnet in the first quarter of 2022. The testnet will enable Supra to demonstrate the throughput, oracle data stability, and finality. Supra also plans on holding an event for potential users where it will demonstrate the technological capabilities of the product. Afterward, Supra will enter the testnet phase — and once the necessary tests and preparations are completed — the team at Supra will finally launch their solution on the public mainnet later in the year.
Closing Thoughts
The team at Supra has managed to reach several significant milestones during 2021, from important achievements regarding product development — to closing significant partnerships with companies across a host of industries — and being selected for the Mastercard Global Startup program. This is just the beginning for SupraOracles, with the project having significant rollouts set for 2022. It will focus upon the SupraOracles testnet, mainnet, and set its eyes on enterprise solutions as well.
Join the SupraOracles community:
Website | Twitter | Telegram | LinkedIn | Announcements | Medium | https://medium.com/@SupraOracles/supraoracles-2021-recap-mastercard-berkeley-blockchain-and-partnerships-galore-d6938ae4b66a | [] | 2021-12-31 07:15:43.113000+00:00 | ['Web3', 'Blockchain Oracle', 'Year In Review', 'Mastercard', 'Supraoracles'] |
Want to share! | Don’t you think there’s something that stops us from sharing our thoughts?
If you are unable to express your feelings then yes, you landed in the right place.
There are various emotions that reside within us, and these emotions are not very complicated but just simple emotions that are being felt, but the problem lies in expressing these unsaid emotions. Like you, many people feel the same way. So don’t worry too much. There’s a friend of mine who usually doesn’t share her thoughts much until I push her to speak. I asked her why she has trouble speaking what she feels and she hesitantly said that people might judge her. So yeah, many people have different reasons behind not speaking up.
Some people fear that their negative, troubling emotions like anger or resentment could result in conflict and might affect the relationship with that person. Likewise, there can be many other reasons like fear of being rejected or be misunderstood and some reasons might have to do with the past, maybe u felt hurt or betrayed.
So now you could have identified your reason which hinders you from speaking up. Now the problem lies in how to deal with this? See it’s simple, you could share your thoughts with your closed ones because they will really not judge, or hurt and betray you! So speak freely and try to find those right words which can help you to be understood. And if you had done this already and freely expressed your emotions and then also if it didn’t help you much by telling them, then I’m sorry but they are not the right ones to help you!
Another solution is to consider paper as your friend. Yes! You read it right. Pen down your emotions, feelings and thoughts. Write as freely as you can. By doing this you could feel much better as at least you had expressed your thoughts to someone.
It’s just that by expressing your thoughts to someone or somewhere or even to yourself can be very much stress relieving. And by putting those thoughts into words can make you self aware of yourself and could also help in finding reasons to your emotions which you’re feeling. So, it can be very rewarding for your mind.
Unknowingly you would find yourself in peace! | https://medium.com/@mbaheti2001/want-to-share-e27a94f1b5b0 | ['Manvi Baheti'] | 2020-12-27 12:28:12.448000+00:00 | ['Emotional Intelligence', 'Mindmap', 'Healing', 'Mind', 'Mental Health'] |
Flutter and Firebase (II): Firestore. | Well, now that we have our login working, let’s create a protected application. Due to show user data and secret messages, we need.
A login page to stop unauthorized people. A profile page to show the user data. A feed page to show the secret messages of the user.
So now, in order to store user data, we are going to need a database. In this case, we are going to use Firestore. A Firebase real-time database that will allow us to subscribe to the data, and see changes the moment they are received in the database. We will follow these steps to complete the example.
Activate Firebase in our project. Create fake data for our fake user. Create a login view to authorizing our user. Create a view to show the user data. Create a view to show the user secret messages feed.
Activate Firestore
Now is time to use a Firestore database. So let’s create one.
Let’s create a database.
And click on “create database”.
Click on “Create database”.
The first option you have is, which set of access rules you want. If you are in development mode, maybe you should choose “Start in test mode”, but if you have an authentification layer, you need to “Start in locked mode”, and then modify the access condition.
Lock mode means no access. Later we will need to edit the rules.
So, here it is! Your new and shiny database.
Now it’s time to change the permissions to be able to access it. Just go to the “rules” tab in the upper menu, and change the condition in the code section from “allow read, write: if false;” to “allow read, write: if request.auth.uid != null;”. Then publish the changes.
Every time you launch a petition to the database, the first thing you check is that the “auth” in the request has a valid user id. And the only way to have a valid one is having obtained it after an authentication process, for example, using a login view. The user id must match one of the users already logged.
Create fake data
SO now, return to the “data” tab and start a new collection. We are going to create a users collection to store the basic data of our user. In this case, we can use this fake personal data generator site to obtain all the data we need.
Access here clicking on “+ Add collection”.
After creating it, you can add you first document (this is a NoSQL database, so each entry is a JSON document).
And now, let’s just fill a few fields. Choose the fields you want to have. I will use the email as the document id but you can just add an autogenerated id. The email will be a field of the user, to allow us to find the user by its email. The email will be our unique key to find our user.
And here we have our fake user.
Create a view to show the user data
So now that we have our database up and running, and our fake user data filled up, let’s show it in our application. The starting point will be the previous article where we already logged in into the platform. Using this other article, we are going to create three routes:
Login. User profile. User secret messages feed.
The login route will give the user access using email and password, and the other two will show the user’s data. But don’t worry. We will go step by step and doing things together.
I’m going to use a repository without the Firebase configuration files (you must use your own), and a branch for each article. The main branch will have the hello world, another branch will have the previous article code, and a new branch will have this article code (each branch with its related article name).
Login View
A login view is a simple form. We have two text fields for email and password (already filled up in the example), and a button to log in. The idea here is to authenticate the user and navigate to the user profile. In case the user fails to introduce its email or password, we will tell him that the credentials are wrong, but we are not going to specify whether the email or password, to avoid giving clues to hackers. Try to mess up with the login, and change the user credentials in the input fields.
Login screen.
The warning message will appear because its visibility depends on a variable called “loginError”. While the login error is false, the message will be hidden, and when the login process returns an error, and we set the login error to true, the message will appear on the screen.
Login screen with an error.
I’m going to pass over this because there are other articles about forms. So let’s go to the cool part, and fetch the user data from the database.
User Profile
Because we are using “Firestore”, we have a NoSQL real-time database, and that’s pretty cool because we can use a “StreamBuilder” widget to connect to a certain collection of data under certain conditions, and have a different snapshot of our collection every time the data changes.
The code is pretty simple. We just need to pass a “StreamBuilder” in the body of our view scaffold.
A simple StreamBuilder wrapping our view’s contents.
OK, let try to explain this awesome piece of code.
As you can see, we have wrapped our body with a new widget. This widget is called a “StreamBuilder”, and its purpose is to connect to a stream and serve new data inside its “builder” property. And what is a stream? A stream is a provider of an asynchronous sequence of data. That means that it’s like a Mario Bros pipe, from where from time to time a Koopa pops out. The “StreamBuilder” widget mission is to watch over the stream and give to us everything that appears through it.
“Firestore” will launch a database snapshot every time the data changes, so our widget will give us a new database snapshot with every change, and we will have our data update in real-time on our app.
A simple stream explanation using smiley faces.
And that’s it! Now you can check the app behavior, modifying the data in Firestore and seeing how it changes instantly in the app, having both screens side by side.
And now, you can navigate to the “feed” view and every time you add a new message, it will appear there. You just need to create a new collection called “feed” and add documents with two fields. The user “email”, and the “message”. If you do it correctly, the messages will appear in the feed screen.
Good luck! | https://medium.com/@timbergus/flutter-and-firebase-ii-firestore-2aea55d98a37 | ['Gustavo Muñoz'] | 2019-06-20 12:44:29.313000+00:00 | ['Firestore', 'Flutter', 'Firebase', 'Dart'] |
【專訪 Omnichat iOS 開發工程師彥婷】從零自學寫 code，到獨立開發產品 | 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/hazel-startup-adventure/%E5%B0%88%E8%A8%AA-omnichat-ios-%E9%96%8B%E7%99%BC%E5%B7%A5%E7%A8%8B%E5%B8%AB%E5%BD%A5%E5%A9%B7-%E5%BE%9E%E9%9B%B6%E8%87%AA%E5%AD%B8%E5%AF%ABcode-%E5%88%B0%E7%8D%A8%E7%AB%8B%E9%96%8B%E7%99%BC%E7%94%A2%E5%93%81-9c45499b58d | ['Hazel Lee 李宛儒'] | 2020-11-26 08:52:30.036000+00:00 | ['Startup Life', 'Talent', 'Startup', 'Talent Insights', 'Engineering Insights'] |
Most popular CI/CD pipelines and tools | Ever since Grady Booch coined the term Continuous Integration in his 1991 method, CI tools have been slowly taking over the workflow of programmers. However, 2011 saw the emergence of Jenkins from Oracles Hudson and hence marked a new era of wider community involvement as well as rapid adoption of tools and pipelines for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.
Lists like this are highly emotionally draining to write. In some instances, it could be hard making the keep/drop decision and the temptation would be to include everything includable. Lol! But if everything is popular that means none is popular. Without much ado here is my list of most popular CI/CD tools and pipelines in no particular order.
Travis CI:
This hosted CI-CD solution prides itself as the home of open source testing; its open-source home page travis-ci.org boldly states that it is home to over 900 thousand open-source projects and 600 thousand users. The wide popularity is largely because it is free to use for open-source projects. You can only pay when using it for private repositories. Travis CI itself is an open-sourced software. Its source code is available for free on GitHub. Jenkins: This is the open-source, standalone, free solution. It is written in java and runs in a web container. According to the Wikipedia CI/CD comparison article, it has support for the widest collection of different version control systems. Presently it can work with git, subversion, mercurial, perforce, BitKeeper, CVS, ClearCase, RTC(Rational Team Concert) and a host of others.
Secondly, the pipeline successfully runs an even wider selection of build automation tools like MSBuild, NAnt, Ant, Maven, Shell script, Groovy, Make, etc.
Downside: Unlike other pipelines listed here, it is the only one without an official hosting provided by its makers. This is quite understandable since it is a community-developed solution. Using it is however not a problem since most cloud hosting platforms offer out of the box support for Jenkins installation. This wide support and easy installation are why I termed Jenkins the Wordpress of Continuous Integration. Appveyor: This is a hosted service which can build, test and deploy projects on Windows and Ubuntu virtual environments. It supports the following build tools: Visual Studio, MSBuild, Psake, PowerShell, etc. It also integrates well with GitHub, Gitlab, Atlassian Bitbucket among other popular repositories. Though Appveyor supports Linux based projects, its been widely made popular by its strong Windows support and focus. Circle CI: This is another popular solution and just like Travis it is free to use for open-source projects. Its source code can also be downloaded from GitHub and self-hosted since it is itself an open-source project. It has wide support for GitHub, Bitbucket repos, as well as out of the box support adaptability to Amazon Web Services Virtual host. Semaphore CI: This is a proprietory but teeming solution. It has wide support for different programming languages and can run builders for Java, C/C++, Node.js, Go, Python, etc. The creators run a highly informative and well-written blog. This — in my opinion- has widely contributed to their increasing popularity. Gitlab CI: This is the continuous Integration offering by Gitlab Inc. Gitlab Inc also offers a hosted git repository with issue tracking similar to GitHub. Gitlab CI is released under the open-core development model, whereby the core functionality is released under an open-source license while added functionalities come with a proprietary license. It supports varied source building tools and test runners.
CONCLUSION
I know, I know. There are other ‘popular’ solutions like TeamCity, Bamboo, Buddy, and the open-sourced Buildbot. In the absence of publicly available statistical data, it is hard to gauge the popularity of these tools. What I have written here are my personal opinions and deductions.
However, if you feel a particular pipeline should have made it into my popularity list, I would love to hear you with a brief why in the comments.
image credit: edge.siriuscom.com
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To join our community Slack 🗣️ and read our weekly Faun topics 🗞️, click here⬇ | https://faun.pub/most-popular-ci-cd-pipelines-and-tools-ccfdce429867 | ['Tony Eneh'] | 2019-09-26 13:11:46.136000+00:00 | ['Continuous Deployment', 'Continuous Delivery', 'Opinion', 'Continuous Integration', 'Software Development'] |
How to Write 1,000 Words Every Day Without Fail | How to Write 1,000 Words Every Day Without Fail
This is the best writing habit you can have in your toolbox
If you want to become a full-time writer, you’ll have to get comfortable with writing…often.
Some days are naturally easier than others, but a daily writing habit will help you maintain momentum.
A daily 1,000 word target presents the perfect blend of challenging but manageable work that allows you to see meaningful progress.
1,000 words is enough for many articles. If you write 1,000 words every day, you’ll end up with 30,000 words for the month. That’s a new book every 1–3 months depending on how long you like to make them.
Writing 1,000 words each day can seem like a daunting task, but if you approach each day with a plan, you can streamline the process.
Determine What You’ll Write About The Night Before
The main reason writers get stuck is because they don’t know how to proceed. It’s one thing to know you have to write 1,000 words each day. Finding enough material to spread across 1,000 words is a different manner.
Towards the end of the day, write down more ideas than you can handle and map them out. What are the key points you want to present in your article or in a particular section of your book? This is also a great time to conduct some research. When you are in your writing session, you only want to be writing during that timeframe.
Writing down more ideas than you can handle gives you more options the following day.
Sometimes an idea that once seemed very promising looks dull upon a second glance. If you go into your writing session with a dull idea, it will take much longer to reach 1,000 words. Even if you did reach 1,000 words, the way you feel about a topic will show in your writing.
While 1,000 words is a measurable goal, you don’t want to write just for the sake of writing and risk putting out poorly written content.
Going into each day with more than enough content ideas gives you a greater chance of selecting topics you enjoy. This is vital for writing 1,000 words every day.
Set A Writing Schedule
The more writing habits you add to your toolbox, the easier it will be to maintain your efforts. Not only should you set a minimum word count for each day, but you should also set a writing schedule.
For a writing schedule, you get clear on when your writing sessions take place throughout the day. If you are a morning person, you should dedicate at least 30 minutes of your morning to writing.
If necessary, wake up before everyone else to ensure you can stay in the flow longer.
Each person has their different optimal times. Just because some writers produce their best work in the morning doesn’t mean you have to become a morning person.
Some writers produce their best work after midnight. Pay more attention to your productivity throughout the day and determine when you are the most productive. Schedule your writing sessions and other important activities around these optimal times.
Some writers may prefer to crank out all 1,000 words in a single writing session. Other writers may find more success having multiple writing sessions throughout the day.
Rather than writing 1,000 words in one go, you can have three writing sessions throughout the day and write 350 words per writing session.
Utilize The Gaps
The least obvious way to find additional time for your writing is by utilizing the gaps. Perhaps you’re waiting on a line or for your food to finish cooking.
During these gaps, most people go on their smartphones and scroll to keep themselves busy. These are the hidden opportunities to more easily write 1,000 words each day.
You can utilize these gaps to write 50 words here and 50 words there. Sometimes you can get in over 100 words while waiting on a line or for something else.
Each individual gap won’t give you too much extra content to work with, but they do add up…especially for busier people who may find themselves waiting for different things more often.
It’s very realistic for anyone to shave off 100–200 words each day with this strategy. While these may be extra words on some days, utilizing these gaps can make a big difference on your busier days.
If you have already written 1,000 words for the day and don’t want to write anything additional, you can use these gaps to brainstorm content ideas you’ll use in the future.
Have A Strong Why
The most important part of writing 1,000 words each day is to have a strong why. Why that number? Why can’t you just write 500 words each day instead?
Some people can do just that, but if you want to become a full-time writer, you’ll have to write a lot of content.
Sure, marketing plays a vital role too, and it’s an overlooked area for too many writers. However, you can’t do any marketing if you don’t write the content, and each piece you publish gives you another chance to get noticed by more people.
Each action you take is either a short-term pleasure at the cost of long-term gains or a short-term sacrifice for long-term gains. While you’re unlikely to turn into a full-time writer overnight, it is possible if you commit to your craft for a year.
Becoming a full-time writer requires that you create a considerable amount of content and grow your audience. 1,000 words each day is more than enough content each day to build your way up to full-time status.
Anyone can write 1,000 words each day. For most people, it takes less than an hour. The average person types at 40 words per minute. At that rate, it would only take 25 minutes to write 1,000 words.
Sure, you have to think a little as you write to ensure the content is good. However, the words per minute metric indicates it doesn’t take too much time to write 1,000 words. Most people can get it done in under an hour. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-write-1-000-words-every-day-without-fail-7cd48aef1b14 | ['Marc Guberti'] | 2020-08-06 17:03:18.314000+00:00 | ['Freelancing', 'Blog', 'Writing', 'Blogging', 'Writing Tips'] |
fear and doubt | never feeling good enough for anyone
sick in my mind with fear and doubt
wondering if i’ll ever make it out
deleted myself online
comparison too much for me
tried lots of different things
creative writing and poetry
nothing ever good enough
for me, or for you
rejection in my mind
wishing my life wasn’t mine
hate myself for feeling sad
too cautious to be happy
wondering if i’ve made a mistake
and thrown it all away
freelance writing drained me out
never tasting success
failure waiting on every corner
watching me pour my heart out
my mama doesnt believe in me
feel like god has turned his back
isolated and alone
is this really all there is to me?
self-perpetuating cycles
almost breaking out
until i feel sick in my mind
with fear and doubt
shouldve gone to med school
just like my mama said
at least then i wouldnt be
selling my soul to feel content
so much pressure placed upon me
eighteen and this is all i’ve got
never wanted to reach this age
to just be forgot. | https://medium.com/@imaanasim/fear-and-doubt-66580a2bfb5e | [] | 2021-01-27 13:10:40.114000+00:00 | ['Freelancers', 'Doubts And Fears', 'Poem', 'Medschool'] |
The Secession of East Pakistan Could Have Been Avoided. | The Secession of East Pakistan Could Have Been Avoided.
The brutal and tragic amputation of the east wing of Pakistan just 24 years after the creation of Pakistan in 1947 could have been avoided. Though this is debatable, the only part of the separation which everyone agrees on is that that situation could have been managed in a more rational and civil manner by the central leadership. The argument that this crisis could have been completely averted revolve around the idea that the weakening of National unity and the feelings of dissatisfaction, resentment and alienation by one fraction of a country does not develop overnight. These feeling are fostered over time due to a number of factor but mainly as a result the short sightedness of the people in power and their inability to foresee a small crisis’s potential of slowly developing in to a matter of national and international security. This easy will not discuss the gory details of the riots which turned into civil war after the East wing finally was declared and independence state (now Bangladesh) in 1971 or whether the brutal military aggression and suppression by the west wing was justified. This essay will argue on how ignoring the Bengali language demand, the misuse of the East wings resources for the West wing’s development laid the foundation of the divide, also how the geographical contiguity issue is just used an excuse by what is now Pakistan to find comfort in face of such a great but avoidable tragedy. This essay is an effort to prove that it was in Pakistan’s (West Wing) power to prevent the separation of East Pakistan now Bangladesh.
The first indiscretion that cost Pakistan half of its country was the Bengali language issues. Urdu was selected as the national language of Pakistan by Jinnah himself as lingua franca, which he believed would help unite the country and bring harmony. For Bengalis’ this was initially less about language and more about being recognised. They were not a minority in any sense, neither a religious one nor an ethnic one. And yet they were treated like one. When a major chunk of your population puts forward a demand, repeatedly. It is the responsibly of the central leadership to negotiate with them, if not negotiate, at least make them feel heard. It was a simple demand which obviously meant a great deal to the Bengalis who felt betrayed and exploited by the West wing. Their demand was called everything from a Hindu conspiracy to a secessionist movement except for what it truly was; half of your country seeking recognition. Too much damage had been done by the time Bengali was made national language under the article 214(1) of the constitution of Pakistan (1956).
The second thing that hit East Pakistan like a bullet was large scale development in West Pakistan. The Capital was moved from Karachi to Islamabad, literally developing a city from scratch. The government reserves, earning and savings of trade were all in the West Wing. All the foreign exchange was immediately transferred to the west wing and the province had little provincial autonomy. The East wing was an agro based economy which was already less developed as compared to the west wing. In the book “What Was Once East Pakistan” it is claimed that the two economic thesis was merely an attempt to guarantee and safeguard the resources and funds of the East wing. Which, if you think about, was their legal right. They were being robbed and their resources exploited. And any attempts they made to promote their interest was called a secessionist in nature. This only aggravated the already disappointed Bengalis. Province should not have to fight for their interest it’s the States responsibility. There is no way of finding out if the East wing would have separated or not, but their rigid stance on the six points put forward by Mujeeb-ur-Rehman is justified keeping in view the 23-year long history of ill treatment that they had received. Just like the Bengali language issue, we learned our lesson on provincial autonomy years after a shameful military surrender and the loss of half our country with the 18th amendment.
There is a notion that is widely accepted that the geographical distance of over thousands of miles between the two wings was a Hindu conspiracy to undermine the geographical integrity of Pakistan. And the co-existence with such a distance was not in the best interests or viable for Pakistan and separation was bound to happen. Considering the technological advancements especially when it comes to travelling this argument loses its ground. No doubt geographical situation that the two wings found themselves in was a unique one which came with challenges of its own but it was not something completely impossible to manage or even maintain. And this is not just a theory we can see the example of Hong Kong, separated from the Chinese mainland by sea. And even the Hawaiian island which is 2,500 miles away from the cost of California, which is double the distance that is there between Pakistan and Bangladesh. If China and Hong Kong can successfully work on a “One Country, Two Systems” proposal, Pakistan too could have devised a similar workable agreement. If not agree entirely on the “Two-Economy Thesis” proposed by the Sheikh Mujeeb-Ur-Rehman perhaps a compromise between the two wings. Claiming that it was bound to happen due to the geography appears to be Pakistan’s attempt to find solace in the face of the loss of half of its country and it’s easier to place the blame on others (Indian Conspiracy) or something completely out of one’s control such as the geography than to accept one’s own mistakes unfortunately.
The separation of the east wing was a consequence of the failure of the central leadership of Pakistan who were unable to promote and strengthen national unity in the country. A series of bad decisions and miscalculations were made on the issues concerning the east wing. Their demands on language to provincial autonomy were given no head which laid the foundation of separatism in the country. Pakistan robbed its own people of their resources, earnings and treated 56 percent of its population as a neglected minority. The Brutal and shameful secession of Pakistan could have been prevented if they had not robbed, manipulated and exploited their own people. The rights, interests and autonomy of provinces should be protected at all cost and the political institutions should be manoeuvred to strengthen National unity in order to prevent history from repeating itself. | https://medium.com/@noorhaider/the-secession-of-east-pakistan-could-have-been-avoided-188a1e87d12b | ['Noor Haider'] | 2020-07-07 21:16:23.859000+00:00 | ['1971 War', 'History', 'Pakistan Politics', 'Pakistan', 'Bangladesh'] |
How to live your Purpose #6: Use it to Recruit, Review and Reject everybody…even customers. | “What? You’ve got to be joking!”
Aghast. Frustrated. Then resigned. And couple of days later, happily compliant. I’m ashamed to say that this was me when I heard that an urgently needed recruit had been rejected by Airbnb’s Core Values Interviewers to be a full-time employee. She was an outstanding grassroots-organizer that we desperately needed to hire. She was to mobilize and train our Hosts to campaign in a city for a law-change that would recognize the new peer-to-peer economy. But like many other leaders in the company, I had to forego a candidate that had outstanding skills because of their lack of alignment with our Core Values.
1. Use Purpose to Recruit-Review-Reject: your People
The Purpose won’t be delivered if you don’t have people who are driven to deliver it. Equally, your Core Values won’t be lived, and may even fade away, if you don’t select people who inherently share those values. I would have been able to satisfy my urgent business need by hiring this person. But longer term, they would have diluted, or actively eroded, our powerful culture and values that drove us to deliver our Mission.
The recruitment of Purpose and Values-aligned candidates was operationalized relatively early in Airbnb’s history. From the very first hire, the Founders decided to put equal weight on a candidate’s expertise and their values. The moment the Founders realized the company had grown to the point where they could no longer interview every candidate…in 2012, when the HQ population was about 200 people…they initiated a process that’s now implemented daily, all over the world, for every candidate.
How does it work? Each candidate will get six to eight interviews to assess their functional skills…the normal check on whether they’re, say, a great engineer or marketing expert. Naturally, these interviews are conducted by their potential peers. But then they also have to undergo two ‘Core Values Interviews’ with employees who are not in their discipline.
These interviewers’ role is to filter out the candidates whose personal values don’t align with Airbnb’s. As we saw in the previous article, Airbnb’s Core Values are the aggregate of its Founders’ and employees’ shared personal values. So, they probe for evidence in a candidate’s personal and work life that their personal values are shared with Airbnb’s. Each of the Core Values, plus the three ‘Behaviors’, are listed in a form that must be completed by the Core Values Interviewer.
And they have veto power. They may be talking to the best engineer in Silicon Valley, or a proven Partnership builder in Paris. But if the candidate’s personal values are not aligned with Airbnb’s, they will not be hired. The most important part is that every new hire goes through this process — from interns to executives, and even members of the Board of Directors.
Airbnb has grown to over five thousand employees globally. It now has 500 Core Values Interviewers…so 10% of the workforce has been rigorously trained and is called upon to vet candidates. They are also trained to be aware of and eliminate biases. This is far more than a shallow “culture fit” test that many companies conduct. At Airbnb, candidates must demonstrate how their life experience reflects values that are shared with the rest of the employees.
2. Use Purpose to Recruit-Review-Reject: Companies
The Mergers and Acquisitions team has been trained to assess a company’s Purpose, Values and their alignment with Airbnb’s. The executive teams of these companies are given Core Values interviews. Importantly, the acquisitions team also has veto power on the criteria of Purpose and Values. At least one candidate-company for acquisition has been turned down because of their lack of alignment.
3. Use Purpose and Values to Review people once they’re in.
Having a Purpose and Values-gate on recruits is not enough, of course. Once you’ve hired Purpose and Values-aligned people, you must then reward them for not just their impact as an engineer or marketing professional, but how they made that impact. To build high performing teams over the long term, employees need to live the Purpose and Core Values every day. Do they behave, relate, and make decisions with others using the Core Values as a guide? Or, do they violate the Core Values and push their own self-serving agenda? At Airbnb, if they’ve slipped past the Core Values Interviewers, they can still be weeded out via the performance Review system. The ‘How’ is given equal weighting to the ‘What’ of a person’s impact. Like the interview process, there is no tolerance for continued failure to act according to the Core Values. It’s a fire-able offense, no-matter how good their skills are, or how senior they are.
The responsibility to live the Purpose and Values every day falls on everyone, but especially the Founders and leadership. But there’s a risk of “if everyone owns them, then no one does”. Airbnb has a small team, led by my friend Dave O’Neill, dedicated to operationalizing the values into everything everyone does.
4. Use Purpose to Recruit-Review-Reject: your Customers
This ‘Recruit, Review, Reject’ policy has been extended to Airbnb’s customers. Below is the sign-up page for new Hosts and Guests. It reads:
“Before you join: Our Mission is to build a trusted community where Anyone can Belong Anywhere. To ensure this, we’re asking you to accept our terms of service and make a commitment to respect everyone on Airbnb.”
The potential customer cannot join the platform unless they accept the ‘Airbnb Community Commitment’:
And it’s real. Over a million potential customers have been rejected because they wouldn’t commit to accept everyone, irrespective of their race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, skin colour, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age. In addition there’s a team that monitors the platform for abuses, and blacklists those who flout this commitment.
Lost customers, but a saved Purpose. For a platform that depends on the trust of strangers, who is accepted onto it is crucial.
In truth, this filter was implemented later than it should. It was introduced after a crisis when some Guests reported that they had faced prejudice by some Hosts. Joe Gebbia, I and others had talked about a Purpose and Values-led filter for users for years. It was unfortunate that a crisis had to be the catalyst for its implementation.
Now, Airbnb is extremely public about this filter for its users. In response to Trump’s ‘Travel Ban’, Airbnb ran a Superbowl Ad called ‘We Accept’:
And, as this New York Times article describes: “In a memo to employees after the executive order, Airbnb’s chief executive, Brian Chesky, was more explicit about his opposition. “This is a policy I profoundly disagree with, and it is a direct obstacle to our mission at Airbnb,” Mr. Chesky wrote on Jan. 29. That weekend, the company began to provide free and subsidized temporary housing for people who had been affected by the immigration restrictions.”
This public and uncompromising commitment to Airbnb’s Purpose is controversial amongst some people…Brian has even received death threats. For the rest of us, it’s exactly the right thing to do. Especially when you have a platform that’s dependent on over five million Hosts to deliver the Purpose of ‘Creating a World where Anyone Can Belong Anywhere’.
This obsession with Purpose may seem excessive to some. And, not every company can extend the Recruit-Review-Reject-according-to-Purpose to their customers. But for Airbnb, it’s fundamental. It’s both necessary to create the trust amongst strangers that allows the platform to work. And it’s a critical reason why employees and customers join, stay and are passionate about Airbnb. | https://medium.com/@douglas.atkin/how-to-live-your-purpose-6-use-it-to-recruit-review-and-reject-everybody-even-customers-ead881e9cf96 | ['Douglas John Atkin'] | 2019-10-19 13:36:21.566000+00:00 | ['Recruiting', 'Airbnb', 'Rejection', 'Purpose', 'Values'] |
在线观看【查克·史奈德之正義聯盟 】Zack Snyder’s Justice League(2021)- 完整版小鴨 HD.1080P | 在线观看〜扎克·施奈德版正义联盟 完整版（2021）））〜《《ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE -2021》》扎克·施奈德版正义联盟
扎克·施奈德版正义联盟 Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)电影完整版 | 完整版本-免费高清电影2021在线“中文版”
导演: 扎克·施奈德
编剧: 扎克·施奈德 / 克里斯·特里奥 / 威尔·比尔 / 杰里·西格尔 / 乔·舒斯特
主演: 本·阿弗莱克 / 亨利·卡维尔 / 盖尔·加朵 / 埃兹拉·米勒 / 杰森·莫玛 / 雷·费舍尔 / J·K·西蒙斯 / 杰瑞米·艾恩斯 / 杰瑞德·莱托 / 艾米·亚当斯 / 罗宾·怀特 / 戴安·琳恩 / 康妮·尼尔森 / 凯伦·布莱森 / 科雷西·克莱门斯 / 比利·克鲁德普 / 杰西·艾森伯格 / 艾梅柏·希尔德 / 威廉·达福 / 塞伦·希德 / 丽莎·洛文·孔斯利 / 哈里·伦尼克斯 / 乔·曼根尼罗 / 乔·莫顿 / 安·奥戈博莫 / 雷·波特 / 彼得·吉尼斯 / 萨曼塔·若 / 郑恺 / 马克·阿诺德 / 吉安皮罗·科格诺利 / 斯沃里·拉格纳内 / 安德鲁·G·奥格尔比 / 山姆·威克斯 / 杜晨·科洛斯
类型: 动作 / 科幻 / 奇幻 / 冒险
制片国家/地区: 美国
语言: 英语
上映日期: 2021–03–18(美国)
片长: 242分钟
又名: 查克·史奈德之正义联盟(台) / 正义联盟导演剪辑版 / 正义联盟 扎克·施奈德导演剪辑版 / Justice League Snyder Cut
IMDb链接: tt12361974
扎克·施奈德版正义联盟的剧情简介 · · · · · ·
为了确保超人没有白白牺牲，蝙蝠侠和神奇女侠计划招募一支超人类团队来保护世界，这项任务比布鲁斯设想要困难得多，因为每个新人都必须面对并跨越自己过去的心魔，团结起来，最终形成前所未有的联盟。只是一切可能为时已晚，无法从荒原狼、狄萨德和达克赛德的计划中拯救地球……
Snyder Cut closure clarified: Equity Association epilog’s appearances and prods
There’s no post-credits scene in Zack Snyder’s four-hour DC superhuman film, however you’ll be left with a lot to bite on.
Zack Snyder’s eagerly awaited Equity Alliance arrived on HBO Max on Thursday, bringing the chief’s unique vision for the DC superheroes to the web-based feature. It comes over three years after Joss Whedon’s 2017 dramatic cut frustrated fans and started a gigantic, extraordinary fan crusade requiring Snyder’s form.
t’s additionally four hours in length, so you would do well to be sitting easily with a lot of snacks before you jump into Batman and friends’ epic experience. I can save you a brief period by advising you there are no mid-or post-credits scenes as we’ve been molded to expect in superhuman films. All things considered, the most recent 20 minutes or so go about as an epilog.
How about we investigate what occurs toward the finish of the film and consider how could affect the fate of the DC Expanded Universe. Be cautioned, full SPOILERS sneak ahead like a frightening comedian.
Ok ha-ha-ha.
This scene may look natural in the event that you saw the dramatic cut. Subsequent to preventing Steppenwolf from bringing Darkseid and the armed forces of the planet Apokolips to Earth, our saints return to their lives and for the most part get cheerful endings. In any case, a watchman at Arkham Shelter finds some bare person has replaced Lex Luthor (who was captured toward the finish of Batman v Superman), allowing the supervillain to get away.
We discover Lex (Jesse Eisenberg) on a yacht, where he’s joined by Slade Wilson, otherwise known as Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello). The soldier of fortune has resentment against Batman — it appears to be the Bat was answerable for Deathstroke losing an eye — and Lex uncovers that the Caped Crusader’s genuine name is Bruce Wayne so Deathstroke can slaughter the saint.
This one is really direct: Batman and Deathstroke’s fight is going to get more close to home. Alfred would be advised to keep an eye out. Lex likewise says he has “more significant things” to do — conceivably connected to the way that he realizes Darkseid is coming. What a rascal.
The scene is additionally connected to the rejected Ben Affleck solo Batman film, which would have highlighted Deathstroke as the principle scalawag. It’s somewhat odd to get a reference to a dropped project (which has since been supplanted by the Robert Pattinson film), yet this plot string could be gotten some place down the line.
A more limited, more regrettable adaptation of this scene played during the credits of Whedon’s dramatic variant — Lex recommends he and Deathstroke structure a “association of our own” to counter the Equity Alliance. The enhanced one sends Deathstroke on a more engaged, Batman-killing way instead of simply having him join a group of baddies (or deal with an all-female ball club).
There’s still no clarification for Lex out of nowhere dressing like the Quality Hackman form of the character, however.
The last scene bounces into a dull, yucky future (which Snyder recently prodded in BvS) in which Darkseid’s powers have destroyed to Earth. Be that as it may, there’s still expectation — Batman, Cyborg, the Atlantean Mera, a mohawked Deathstroke (it appears he and Bats made peace) and Blaze have shaped an opposition gathering.
What’s more, there’s one more individual: Joker (Jared Leto), who has a phenomenally dreadful snicker that seems like a creaky entryway. There’s a chunk of strain among him and the Dull Knight, as he insults Bats about the friends and family he’s lost — his folks and his “received child.” When Batman cautions Joker to be cautious, the jokester adds somewhat more sensational zest.
“You need me, to assist you with fixing this world you made by letting her kick the bucket,” he says. “Poor Lois, how she endured so.”
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Zack Snyder’s Justice League台灣版 | https://medium.com/@palos/%E5%9C%A8%E7%BA%BF%E8%A7%82%E7%9C%8B-%E6%9F%A5%E5%85%8B-%E5%8F%B2%E5%A5%88%E5%BE%B7%E4%B9%8B%E6%AD%A3%E7%BE%A9%E8%81%AF%E7%9B%9F-zack-snyders-justice-league-2021-%E5%AE%8C%E6%95%B4%E7%89%88%E5%B0%8F%E9%B4%A8-hd-1080p-ebbc5eb57b73 | [] | 2021-03-19 14:10:28.167000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'News'] |
HISTORY OF INDIAN HANDICRAFTS | Handicraft is the traditional art of creating useful objects or decorative items made by hand. Wooden handicraft is a craft where skilled craftsmen/labor is employed to decorate or carve wood to create items with small carving tools. In India, wooden handicraft has thrived throughout the centuries. Handcrafted wooden items are a common element of Indian culture. Skilled artisans carve traditional designs on wooden items, and improve their look by painting them or with intricate metal/ivory inlay work. India is very notable for its ethnicity. To the extent culture and Art (workmanship) are concerned, India is one of the most ethnically rich countries in the World. It has been an incredible benefit of the nation that there is exceptionally very skilled craftsman here. Artistic people have made Indian wooden handicrafts famous in the world. Many rural citizens still procure their income by making objects of wooden handicraft items. India has an abundance of wood varieties like rosewood or Sheesham, mango wood, teak wood, pinewood, jack wood, mahogany wood, bamboo wood, etc. Wooden furniture in India comprises of style and hand carving art from different cities and states in India. Manufacturers and exporters from Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh (India) are world-famous for Indian wooden furniture and handicrafts. All kinds of styles like architectural wooden items, wooden handicraft items, Inlay wooden Products, distressed finish items, and many more designs are available with us. Our products mostly made of Teak wood, Pine Wood, Sheesham Wood, and Mango Wood.
For more wooden handicrafts blogs please visit our website:
https://www.druarts.com/blogs | https://medium.com/@druartswoodenhandicrafts/history-of-indian-handicrafts-9eea8af9a9fa | ['Druarts Wooden Handicrafts'] | 2020-03-11 10:51:15.882000+00:00 | ['Wooden Furniture Online', 'Wooden Handicrafts Online', 'Kitchenware', 'Manufacturers', 'Home Decor'] |
Tears of prematurity | I knew that day would change my life. I knew we would be a family. I knew my definition of love would change forever. Yes, I knew it had already been said, I had already felt it.
You decided to come to the world, well before the expected and yet I was happy. The doctor said you were fine.
Over my belly, you didn’t cry or do anything expected, but I still didn’t know, I couldn’t know.
Photo by Christian Bowen on Unsplash
While I went to the recovery, you came out beside me and your father still saw you they told me to come back later and I felt in the clouds in an indescribable feeling, even now you came out of or-foot me and the longing was already a lot. You were so mine. So much ours.
From time to time in my dreams, I am still haunted by the words of that nurse, who came to my bedside and in a soft sound held my hand and said:
- Everything is going to be fine, but your son had a cardiac arrest and went to the intensive care unit. If you want to, cry but remember that it’s only the first day of the rest of your lives.
I had a photo, a polaroid where you, my growing love, you were connected to all kinds of machines. I didn’t understand the polaroid, only much later that I realized why and the importance of it.
I didn’t care about the epidural recovery, I didn’t want to hear the advice that called for calm, I moved my legs as fast as I could. I had to come to you
I was already in the room when your father came back, he didn’t know, it took a little while before that picture he ran to see you.
They wouldn’t let me go… Damn Epidural. Damn them all, I just wanted to see you.
I was left alone in a room where all the mothers had the cot next to their children, mine was still empty. Empty of a child, empty of you. I felt a distressing force cutting me off from all logic, I called a nurse and in a sudden sense of injustice, madness, or such overwhelming love I told him:
— Either take me where my son is or I’ll go out and look for him anywhere in this motherhood.
And so it was, near midnight of that very day that I saw you, I did not hug you, I did not touch you, I did not feel your breath, I did not manage to breathe from me, in your life that seemed so fragile.
I cried, I cried in the impotence and frustration of that love of ours.
To leave you behind in motherhood was despair, they were not tears, they were cries and groans of an atrocious pain that has no explanation, only those who feel it.
It took almost 20 days to go out with you. Going out with my son in the maternity ward. It was years to overcome and calm my mind.
I had a great team that took care of you.
I had a family and friends who took care of me, us. When I felt that whirlwind of emotions, in each consultation, in each exam, until they gave you a definitive discharge that lasted for almost 24 months, I clung to your always detached smile, your energy, the new evolutions, and your look in mine.
Photo by Zach Lucero on Unsplash
That look of yours gave me strength from the first day to never give up, I only hope that mine will do the same for you.
Even today, after fourteen years I still cry looking at your first image, no longer rebellious but in a mixture of sadness and pride in seeing where you have arrived, we have arrived! | https://medium.com/an-idea/tears-of-prematurity-4eb6a4d10523 | ['Sandra Guerreiro'] | 2020-10-23 13:23:49.101000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Maternity', 'Baby'] |
左顧右盼後的藝術呈現 | Hongkongese multidisciplinary art duo- hijacking virtual and digital tools for creating extended choreographic experiences - across dance, theatre & visual arts | https://medium.com/@ghostandjohn/%E5%B7%A6%E9%A1%A7%E5%8F%B3%E7%9B%BC%E5%BE%8C%E7%9A%84%E8%97%9D%E8%A1%93%E5%91%88%E7%8F%BE-6c7d8cc31768 | ['Ghost'] | 2020-12-20 00:56:06.151000+00:00 | ['Fear', 'Contemporary Art', 'Dance', 'Performance', 'Activism'] |
Why your business should be on Instagram | We don’t need any sort of explanation for Instagram. It is one of the biggest social media app out there. To say that it is the pioneer of today’s internet wouldn’t be an understatement. From small to big, everyone is on Instagram. Instagram has more than 1 Billion downloads, so you can get a good guess m how humongous it is and how much potential it has for growth.
To give you a good measure about Instagram, here’s a little facts and numbers that will provide you some insights.
Instagram has over a billion monthly active users.
About 995 photos are uploaded to Instagram every second.
The number-one most-shared food on Instagram is pizza.
There are currently over 140 million Instagram users in the United States.
80% of Instagram accounts are for personal use.
More women use Instagram than men.
The majority of Instagram users are aged between 25–34 (33.1%).
60% of Instagram users go on the platform to find new products.
61% of brands are planning to increase their advertising budget for Instagram in 2021.
The Stories feature receives more than 500 million users daily.
Users spend majority of their time on Instagram compared to any other social media app.
It is one of the fastest growing community and the best platform to expand businesses in today’s fast paced world.
This should’ve given you a good idea on the vast reach Instagram has. Hence, businesses have set up dedicated teams for Instagram. Businesses are making good gains by displaying their product and using good marketing strategy.
Not only this, having a good profile on Instagram also helps you to be displayed on google. Thus, indirectly helping in your SEO and visibility. We hope this would’ve helped you in getting some insights. | https://medium.com/@anurag-17616/why-your-business-should-be-on-instagram-7001dc812360 | [] | 2021-12-24 15:15:17.805000+00:00 | ['Instagram', 'Marketing', 'Instagram Marketing'] |
There is No Peace on Earth When the Belfries of Christendom Are Full of Clanging Symbols | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Christmas Bells” is a stunning poetic study on the contours of the current sins of the church. In Longfellow’s day, the “black accursed mouth” of civil war was enlarged by the mouths of preachers justifying the enslavement of other humans with robust biblical exegesis. Politically, churches were one of the biggest reasons slavery, and segregation/Jim Crow laws after the war, were justifiable by the majority public in the South.
Today in the “belfries of Christendom”, as Longfellow’s poem depicts, “hate is strong/and mocks the song/of peace on earth, goodwill to men.”
In fact, hate defines Christendom today. Who mocks the “song of peace” on earth the loudest? Christians. The seat of the scornful is in the pulpit and the pews.
I’ve been thinking the phrase in 1 Corinthians 13: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
I wonder if today’s “tongues of men and angels” includes the theological prowess of those who pride themselves on their years of Greek and Hebrew and eschatology and Reformation history and extensive catechesis, exegesis — those with their concise and thorough understanding of all the Christian creeds. I wonder if it includes those who deem Christianity a mental assent to doctrine and use their righteous orthodoxy justify apathy in the face of suffering, because their abstract knowledge about the creator means more than the least of these whom God joined in the flesh: Emmanuel.
We can’t listen, because we’re too busy claiming we know better than everyone else. Our so-called “good news for all people” has been weaponized against the very people Jesus came to seek and save. And our proclamations are anything but good tidings.
We may speak with the tongues of men and angels, but the bells in our steeples have become cannon barrels.
In Luke 10 Jesus sends out 72 disciples to prepare the way for his good news. He sent them out empty-handed, and here is what he told them:
“When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you.”
Then he tells them to eat and drink. Heal the sick, and proclaim that the kingdom of God is here. Good news precludes good news.
But first, emptyhandness. And a proclamation of peace.
What did the angels tell the shepherds?
Peace.
On earth.
What did Jesus tell his disciples to pray to the father?
Your will be done.
On earth.
When the body of Christ is sitting up in the choir balcony, full of hot air, we can’t partake in the immanent Kingdom of God. James has harsh words for us, the ones who claim to be pure before God yet using our tongues to deceive instead of heal: “your religion is worthless,” he says.
How do we know our faith is real, then?
Ask the orphans and widows, says James.
Ask the women leaving churches where abuse is normal and moralized. Ask the queer people speaking up for the value of their lives despite being told they’re hated by their creator for existing. Ask the Black men that are incarcerated and executed if they aren’t strangled on the street first. Ask the indigenous people being arrested for advocating for the health of an earth groaning from the consequences of our greed. Ask the children behind wire fences at the border, being rationed toothpaste and plastic thermal blankets.
You have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little children.
If you claim to carry the good news of Jesus, leave your shoes and walking stick of theological accuracy behind. You are needed, but not as another voice spouting biblical “truth” bearing the fruit of hatred.
You’re needed at the table. Your tongue, quiet for a while, can taste and see that the Lord is good: If you can’t offer living water and the bread of life to the least of these, perhaps it’s time to receive it from them instead.
Until we stop our flapping tongues and open our mouths to recieve the communion of saints: this is my body, broken for you — we will miss the nourishment of the spirit as well — and we will be thumbing our noses right over the feast. | https://medium.com/@marijeanelizabeth/there-is-no-peace-on-earth-when-the-belfries-of-christendom-are-full-of-clanging-symbols-d564b583e96a | ['Marijean Wegert'] | 2020-12-18 19:08:56.364000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Theology', 'Exvangelical', 'Evangelical', 'Christian'] |
Quantum Computing in Python | Quantum Computing in Python
In this article I will introduce the basic linear algebra you will need to understand quantum computing. We will only use NumPy in this article, and you’ll get an intro at the end to some interactive Jupyter notebooks, so you don’t need to download anything or learn terminal to get started. All you need is a web browser. If you want you can download the notebooks and run them locally.
Photo by Shahadat Rahman on Unsplash
If you want to run these commands locally in Jupyter notebooks, to get started you’ll need to download the latest (free) distribution of Anaconda, which can be downloaded here. Once you have downloaded Anaconda, open the Anaconda navigator. The icon will be in your applications after download:
Anaconda Navigator Icon
Once you open the Anaconda Navigator, you’ll have the option to open a “Jupyter Notebook” or “Jupyter Lab”. Either will work, but personally I prefer Jupyter Lab.
Anaconda Navigator
If you prefer not to download anything, you can try Jupyter Lab in your browser by following this link. Once you’ve opened Jupyter Lab, click on the little “+” button to open a new Python 3 kernel. If can be found just under “File” and “Edit” near the Jupyter icon.
Clicking the “+” button results in the following window. Click on the Python 3 icon just under the orange notebook icon.
This will result in a blank cell (which will likely be white if you haven’t switched to “dark mode” under settings, which is what my settings are on and results in the sleek black aesthetic you see here.
In the empty cell in this window, type the following command hold down “shift” then press “enter” to run the cell. This will load the NumPy library which allows us to do linear algebra.
Importing NumPy
Creating Complex Numbers and Arithmetic Operations
Creating complex numbers is very easy in Python using NumPy. We can create two complex numbers 𝑧=3+4𝑗, and 𝑤=1−1𝑗 using the NumPy library. Here, remember “j” is the imaginary unit which in most math course is represented by “i” and complex numbers are usually written as “𝑎+𝑏𝑖” as apposed to “𝑎+𝑏𝑗”. We will use both throughout, so it is important to get comfortable with both and be fluent in converting between the two notations.
Defining Complex Numbers in Python
We can add the two complex numbers 𝑧 and 𝑤:
Adding two complex numbers in Python
We can also subtract the two complex numbers:
Subtracting complex numbers
Multiplying complex numbers in python is done as follows:
multiplying complex numbers
We can print the real and imaginary parts of complex numbers as follows for 𝑧=3+4𝑖:
printing real and imaginary parts
Vectors
Vectors will be fundamental in our study of quantum computing. The most basic unit of computation in a quantum computer is a qubit, which can be represented as a 2-dimensional complex vector of length one. So understanding vectors will be foundational and necessary for most of what we will be doing in this book. Vectors can be thought of in many ways, one of the most basic is simply as an array of numbers, which we will often represent as a column of numbers called column vectors, but in some cases we will also need row vectors:
row and column vectors
We can create a column vector and a row vector in Python:
row and column vector in Python
This should get you started with the linear algebra you need, but you’ll definitely need a more in depth look at how this is all used in quantum computing. To keep going, we have an interactive notebook up which you can access in your browser you can follow this link. For the entire linear algebra series of notebooks check out this page.
If you’re interested in learning quantum computing in-depth, consider supporting the project or contributing to it! The Singularity Research is constantly producing quantum computing notebook which translates textbooks and research papers into interactive notebooks to learn and use quantum computing and quantum machine learning. Reach out to
[email protected]
and include the subject “Hacking the Universe” if you have questions, want to contribute, or have an interest in using quantum computing and quantum machine learning. | https://towardsdatascience.com/quantum-computing-in-python-5e7e8efd0edf | ['Amelie Schreiber'] | 2020-05-08 17:32:06.631000+00:00 | ['Quantum Computing', 'Python', 'Linear Algebra', 'Programming', 'The Singularity Research'] |
Rate3 Prototype [Testnet LIVE!]: A Step-by-Step Explanation | Using RateX: Fiat-Fiat exchange
Our flagship product RateX is a browser extension to help consumers save on FX charges when we shop online. Essentially, when you pay for overseas cross-border changes, you pay additional (and often hidden) charges in two ways:
Credit card processing fees
Dynamic currency conversion fees (from buyer’s domestic currency to merchant’s accepted currency)
This often adds up to 3–10% on a transaction. In short, consumers pay more for a transaction and merchants receive less from a transaction.
We created RateX to solve this fiat-conversion issue and allow consumers to check-out seamlessly with a beautiful user experience.
How does RateX work?
A few simple steps:
Step 1: Install the browser extension from Google
Step 2: Shop normally on our supported merchants.
Step 3: On check-out, the RateX payment extension automatically appears and consumers can choose to pay by credit/debit card, Rate wallet or bank transfer.
At the Check-Out page for our supported merchants:
The RateX extension appears seamlessly during check-out.
A Closer Look at What’s Happening:
For Amazon (US) where merchants receive and settle in USD, we allow consumers to pay in SGD and TWD (our currently supported fiat pairs).
The savings (in FX conversion and processing) from using RateX are very clearly displayed too. We also display the prices you would pay if you use Amazon, and other banks’ credit cards for you to compare:
RateX for Amazon (US). Source: Rate.
Now, let’s take a look at another very popular merchant: Taobao from China. Here, consumers can pay in SGD or TWD, while merchants receive in RMB.
RateX for Taobao (China). Source: Rate.
How Consumers Pay:
Consumers can choose to pay by credit/debit cards or bank transfer, without incurring any of the additional credit card processing/exchange rate charges.
One of the payment methods: Debit/Credit card
What fiat currency-pairs do RateX support now?
Good, but not greaaaat.
Creating different valid currency pairs is tough. Right now, consumers can choose to pay in SGD or TWD for our supported merchants who can receiv only in USD, RMB and YEN.
Introducing… the Future: MetaMask for Payments.
Rate3: MetaMask for Payments. But Better.
RateX is wildly popular because it is easy to use, looks good and it works. Likewise, MetaMask is popular for Ethereum because it is easy to use, looks good and works seamlessly.
Imagine the MetaMask for E-Commerce Payments.
RateX as the first dApp to process payments
Using RateX as the first dApp, consumers can pay in their debit/credit card or any cryptocurrency (that are supported on the Stellar Network).
In this example, we use 1 specific case of payment through RTE tokens. In terms of list of supported currencies that consumers and merchants can receive, please read below. This transaction is live on the Stellar testnet.
Transactions are almost instant: 3–5 seconds.
Successful Transaction on the Stellar Testnet
Tracking your test transaction on Stellar testnet. Live!
After trying out the transaction, you can see the transaction hash and log on the Stellar testnet itself.
You see the transaction fees too — as borne by the merchant, due to our Cross-Border Payment Protocol.
What currency pairs can Rate3 support in the near future?
Consumers can choose to pay in any supported fiat currencies (either through their credit/debit cards, bank transfers) or supported cryptocurrencies (through any native crypto-wallets).
Currency flows in the future
For the detailed list of all currency and assets that Stellar currently supports, please refer to the offiical Stellar directory and StellarTerm.
Essentially, RateX allows one to do fiat-fiat exchanges.
Rate3 allows you to do much more. You can accomplish: | https://medium.com/official-rate3/rate3-prototype-testnet-live-a-step-by-step-explanation-11eb511f43fe | [] | 2018-08-06 09:53:59.159000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Rate3', 'Bitcoin', 'Stellar', 'How To'] |
Can you still Afford “not to afford” Cyber Security? | COVID-19 changes the game: Now is not the time to risk a cyber-attack.
Earlier ransomware incidents that have affected organisations such Travelex in the UK or Bouygues in France profoundly question the way cyber security has been managed — historically — in many large firms. And they add their names to an ever growing “hall of shame” which already includes British Airways, Marriott, Equifax and — sadly — countless others.
Large firms with multi-million IT and security budgets should not end up in that mess. Period.
Calling in one of the Big 4 firms to “sort things out” afterwards will not cut it anymore. At the heart of the matter, is not just the need to “do things” (protective and layered “defence-in-depth” measures are well known and have been for decades) but the governance surrounding execution in those firms, the way the prioritisation of security investment was handled over the years, and the cultural and managerial aspects surrounding those.
“We can’t afford this” is an excuse we have been hearing too often with senior executives around security over the years. Many CISOs take it as budgetary constraints. It is simply adverse prioritisation. And if security is not visibly towards the top of the agenda with management, you cannot expect good execution to follow regardless of the investments you make.
One trait many of the firms affected recently by cyber security incidents had in common (pre COVID-19), was their relatively good economic health. Those were not failing businesses chronically losing money or drastically challenged by digital disruption, as could have been the case for example in the retail sector. They were healthy and established market players churning up healthy profits.
How did they use to assess the threats they face? How did they manage their levels of exposure or protection against those? How did they determine the investments necessary to ensure adequate protection?
Clearly, not very well…
One thing is certain: They were not really short of cash — at the time. It may be a simplistic view from a CFO perspective, but the reality is that — post breach — money invariably used to appear out of nowhere to get things “fixed”.
That’s the most pathetic part of all those incidents: Shameless executives, who previously would have argued that they “could not afford” security measures, handing out millions in search of non-existent quick-wins or technical silver-bullets. And shameless tech vendors and security “consultants” lining up, without for a second daring to tell their clients what they need to hear: Buying more tech won’t help you, until you address the cultural and governance attitudes which have led you in that mess in the first place: Endemic short-termism, cognitive biases, or frankly in some cases, threat ignorance and lip service to compliance requirements.
Of course, once the entire business has been down for several days, priorities are put into perspective and mindsets change, but for how long?
Across the street, various competitors or suppliers would have been rattled and may also start thinking differently, but again, for how long?
Once the dust has settled, losses are just losses; they may not please the shareholders, but in a context where many things could go wrong for large firms, do they really matter if the health of the business is strong? For St Gobain, Maersk and others — badly hit by the 2017 NotPetya outbreak — lost sales associated with the cyber-attack were estimated in the hundreds of millions and direct costs related to crisis in the tens of millions. Unpleasant, not invisible but manageable — in good times — on an otherwise healthy multi-billion balance sheet.
Frankly, those days have gone. The COVID-19 crisis changes the landscape totally around cyber-attacks, and that type of cynical approach now borders on plain negligence.
Which business can now afford “not-to-afford” good cyber security measures, in a context where most remaining activity has shifted online, and we are all dependent on digital services?
Security has become essential to keeping the lights on, and nobody can risk a cyber attack in the middle of all this. At the same time, cash has become precious and the business outlook is unclear.
But prioritising against security spending seems unreasonable, even in the face of massive cost reductions, and in particular in organisations where current cyber maturity levels are low.
Now is the time to look at those maturity problems in the face and to focus the scarce resources available where they will have most impact. But cutting security spending to the ground in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis would be disastrous.
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Originally posted on 11 February 2020 and updated on 15 May 2020 | https://medium.com/security-transformation-leadership/can-you-still-afford-not-to-afford-cyber-security-369c898fddb9 | ['Jc Gaillard'] | 2020-05-15 09:10:55.977000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Security', 'Covid 19', 'Management', 'Leadership'] |
High Efficiency Motor Can Run for Many Thousands of Years | If you buy a Tesla or other electric vehicle, you expect the motor(s) to, perhaps, get you to work and back home, where you dutifully plug it in for the next day’s commute. Imagine, however, having an electric motor that doesn’t just last through the day, but could theoretically run for thousands — many thousands — of years on a single AA cell. YouTuber lasersaber has created just such a device, and while it won’t come close to powering your car, it’s still very interesting.
As you might suspect, the key to this motor’s efficiency is that it works with extremely low friction. This is enabled here by the magnetic levitation of a rotor made with pyrolitic graphite. Four permanent magnets attached the top of the rotor are moved around by electromagnets that provide power, forming a sort of very low power, high efficiency stepper motor. A number of resistors, a capacitor, and a reed switch are used to control the unit.
A large portion of the video below is spent explaining just how impressive the device’s power consumption is, and at a low RPM setting it uses only .15 microamps at 33millivolts, for a grand total power consumption of less than .005 microwatts. This means that theoretically, the device could operate for 89,880 years on single AA battery. It’s an amazing feat of efficiency, and as ‘saber notes, this could possibly be made even more impressive if the device was constructed inside a vacuum chamber! | https://medium.com/@JeremySCook/high-efficiency-motor-can-run-for-many-thousands-of-years-84915e7c4 | ['Jeremy S. Cook'] | 2019-03-26 22:25:49.657000+00:00 | ['Motors', 'Science', 'Technology', 'Batteries'] |
7 Things I Stopped Buying And Started Saving | Sale Items
When it comes to sales — when you’re buying items, you want to be very, very careful of this, because I find that a lot of my friends — for example, will end up spending $1000 on a shopping trip and they’ll say that, “it actually is worth $1500 and they saved $500 because of the sale and it was 50% off and they got a great deal of just $1000”.
But then my thought process is more so — you didn’t save $500, you spent $1000 and you have that much amount less in your bank today than you had yesterday and is the absolute truth.
That’s really how I view it — and you want to just think about this going forward, that’s just because something’s on sale doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to save money on this item.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
I try my best to not be affected by sales. When I am in need of something — I’ll just go out and buy that thing. I never try to get much affected by sales and discounts.
So there are obviously times where sales can make sense, where it’s coming up on winter and their summer items that are on sale or vice versa. If it’s winter and you want to buy summer items — that could just make more sense and you could save more money.
But we’re talking about the 70 percent off carpet blowout sale or the mattress blowout sale — the ones that happen all the time and the same go for cars as well.
It’s really kind of my idea is that you’re going to pay the market price for most items. So I just don’t bother trying to get as many sales as some other people might do. And this actually goes for couponing as well. I’ve seen people use coupons and they end up spending twice or thrice as much money as somebody who doesn’t use coupons because they’re buying items that they just have no need for — they think that it is essential to buy three of four to get one free and they end up spending more money, which is stupid.
So just keep that in mind as you go forward with buying items in the future in the psychology of purchasing things and how that really affects you.
Beverage Drinks
Another thing that I stopped buying almost altogether is any type of drinks, whether it be sugary drinks, even a lot of alcohol I don’t really buy as it just kills brain cells. But the average American consumes over forty-four gallons of soda per year and that explains a lot of the health problems that we have in America.
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
But it’s really not only a financial expense — it’s going to cost you a lot of money buying sugary drinks, buying soda, fruit juice in a lot of cases, and bottled water. I just drink tap water. I filter it through a filter. You can even get a more fancy filter, if you like, for thirty dollars and you’re good for quite some time by just drinking water. I don’t really need anything else and this isn’t really actually for real financial reasons.
It’s more so just because most drinks and fluids that you put in your body that aren’t water, they’re not going to be very healthy for you. And in a lot of cases, they are loaded with sugar and it’s just not good for you. This saved me a lot of money and it is also a very healthy option to opt-out of these things.
Unnecessary Food
Something else that I stopped doing is actually overbuying food. So this is an interesting topic because people tend to spend huge racks of money on food. It’s important to make your own food instead of going out to restaurants to eat. But at the same time, you want to be careful that you’re not spending too much money on food. This is actually a problem for many people.
Photo by Fikri Rasyid on Unsplash
Some people will buy eggs, or they’ll buy too much meat and then they won’t use it or they forget to freeze it. It’s sitting there in the fridge for a couple of weeks and then it goes bad.
There must be a balance between buying in bulk to save money and at the same time not buying too much bulk when the food will go to waste and you have to throw them out in the trash.
It creates a lot of waste financially and also for the environment, sustainability in general — it’s just not very good to do.
Buying a Car
Now, the next one here, I know people are going to disagree with this, and it’s not something that really works for everybody, but it’s something that I’ve been able to do and that’s by actually cutting down transportation costs quite a bit, by not having a car.
I never thought this was possible at some time because there’s always been a car with me — but it works for me.
I’m 25, so I don’t have kids to take care of, I don’t have to drive an hour to work and I live in a relatively urban area. So if you look at the most expensive things in our lives — it’s housing, then it’s transportation cost, which is about $8000 per year, then it’s food costs.
Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
If you are trying hard to cut that —find a way to not own a car. Like I mentioned, I didn’t think it was possible because I thought, — “ what about that one time that I have to drive to the airport or I have to drive an hour to go to a doctor’s appointment or somewhere in a different state for some weird reason ”. And I found that I just actually just don’t really need one.
I take Ubers from time to time, but even with that, I might spend $50 a month on Uber for the random trips where I need a car and it’s still saving me a lot of money because when you have a car, you’re not just paying for that car payment, but you’re paying for insurance, which could be a thousand dollars per year, you’re paying for wear and tear, you’re paying for maintenance. There are so many costs that add up to become a massive amount.
As I said, it’s over eight thousand dollars per year in transportation that we pay — whereas I personally probably pay a little bit over one hundred dollars per month in all of my transportation costs. It frees up so much cash in my personal budget for myself. So just explore a little bit and see if it’s possible. I know it’s not possible for most people, but for those people out there who might not need a car.
Hotels
Now, this is a personal preference, but I found that most American families, they might go on vacation and spend three thousand dollars on a week-long trip to the Bahamas, maybe Cancun, Aruba, and they go on these vacations at all-inclusive resorts where they’re paying four hundred dollars a night for a hotel room.
That’s not really my cup of tea. What I found and this is kind of actually really by accident is when I started traveling, I found that I could stretch, say, three thousand dollars for months traveling by being kind of savvy about how you do it — whether it comes to buying plane tickets, being smart about where you’re traveling to and hotels. I don’t stay in hotels. Airbnb is generally cheaper. You can stay with friends as well.
Photo by Edvin Johansson on Unsplash
Just make friends around the world. It’s a lot easier than what I thought it would be — but also staying in hostels. Now, this isn’t for everybody like I mentioned earlier that some of these things are very much personal choices. But I ended up staying in hostels when I travel, especially when I’m solo traveling — going to Japan for a couple of weeks, I don’t know where I’m staying. I’ll probably stay in a hostel because then I can meet other people, explore the city with other people instead of by myself.
And it’s like $20 a night — it just works out. It’s a win-win all around the board when it comes to traveling and staying in places that are not $400 a night, hotels where you’re not meeting people, you’re not experiencing the culture, you’re just kind of cooped up in a hotel or resort.
So even I’ll go as far as to say that if I had tens of millions of dollars in the future, I’d probably still stay in hostels because I think that they’re fun.
You meet a lot of new people and I just think it’s a great experience. And I’ve met so many new people and find myself in just places that I would never otherwise have done if I hadn’t stayed in hostels and met new people. So if you’re young — you’re in your 20s or 30s, I would just consider doing it now. I can’t condone couch surfing. I don’t want people to die or get killed. And I probably shouldn’t condone hitchhiking as well.
But those are some real ways to kind of have some cool life experiences. | https://medium.com/makingofamillionaire/7-things-i-stopped-buying-and-started-saving-792302e89b95 | ['Sharone T James'] | 2020-10-21 17:03:03.062000+00:00 | ['Minimalism', 'Money', 'Lifestyle', 'Self', 'Planning'] |
Sunrise 20201223 | entrepreneur, mentor, advisor, mother, wife, dog parent and lover, tennis player : changing the world one woman and entrepreneur at a time
Follow | https://medium.com/morning-haiku/sunrise-20201223-516fac9c92d2 | ['Jenny Lawton'] | 2020-12-23 23:48:59.022000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Gratitude', 'Life', 'Nature', 'Haiku'] |
what is toxic masculinity really? pt.1 (anger and control issues) | We’ve all heard the phrase “Toxic Masculinity” tossed around to criticize people’s behavior. I’ll be honest, I didn’t quite understand what it meant for the longest time, and it felt like a way for people to decry things that they just didn’t like. With time and truly listening to voices of those who were affected, I’ve come to my own understanding of toxic masculinity, and how it can truly hurt and push away the very people we want close to us. I’m tackling a pretty large subject, so let’s start breaking it down piece by piece, in no particular order. (I’ll be referring to Toxic Masculinity as TM)
One common trait of TM is anger and control issues. What is anger? As an emotion, it’s the feeling that you want to inflict hurt upon someone so you can retain a sense of control, space and even safety. It’s completely okay for anyone to feel anger, and you shouldn’t feel bad for having that emotion and needing to protect your space. Acting on that emotion is, however, completely within your control and is your responsibility. This is where TM comes into play. I’ll give an example from my own experience with someone with a fake name Alex.
Working with Alex, I began to feel that I had no space to be myself, and my opinions were minimized. If working on a certain project was important to me, it was only given lip service, but never given real time and attention. We’d only focus on what was important to him. Relationships need work and I wanted to go through the hard work of improving our relationship. I spoke to him privately about my feelings, only to have them dismissed even more with excuses and false promises. I completely understand if he feels minimized by the conversation, and we can talk about that, but he just turned the conversation into arguments that no longer had anything to do the real issues he created. TM says you need to attack the other person back even harder to prove that you can control the situation, and that’s just what he did.
Attacking me kind of just ruined the friendship even more as he resorted to name calling. He eventually created a radioactive crater where the relationship used to be. I understand where Alex was coming from. He had his own sense of the relationship that was in jeopardy of being lost. It’s true, and there’s no way around that truth. Our relationship could change, maybe for the better, worse, or just different. But we have no control over that, and fighting for control kind of just ensures that it ends up worse, never better.
He thought he could retain control of an unfair dynamic by a show of faux masculine prowess, but it only made me feel more distant and worse than before. Eventually I had to completely leave the relationship behind. I feel much better because I finally have the space I need and deserve, but his attempt at trying to control other people only made him completely lose a very meaningful relationship.
If you feel hurt, thats a very valid emotion and there are ways to tackle the wrong in an effective way. Talk to your friend in private about how you feel and what can be done so the situation can be addressed and improved in the future. Acting on anger will only worsen the relationship, and attempting to gain more control will only lead to you losing any control you had before. | https://medium.com/@howtotreatothers/what-is-toxic-masculinity-really-pt-1-anger-and-control-issues-3814b2ff9f3c | ['Human Bean'] | 2021-07-06 05:52:18.546000+00:00 | ['Work Relationships', 'Relationship Advice', 'Relationships', 'Toxic Masculinity', 'Toxic Relationships'] |
Best Selling VR Headset For Android iOS | The Best Selling VR Headset:Top rated BNEXT VR Headset available on Amazon with an affordable price of $38.99 and support both Android and iOS.
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Check out in detial at: Apk Monster Z | https://medium.com/@durraniii393/best-selling-vr-headset-for-android-ios-479c46072d4c | ['Arsalan Durrani'] | 2020-12-27 12:02:54.630000+00:00 | ['Best Selling Products', 'Vr Experiences', 'VR'] |
I checked the vitals of the patients and then we all went to the dressing room. | I checked the vitals of the patients and then we all went to the dressing room. I wanted to do atleast one of the dressings but, I didn’t do any today either…
After dressing we had ward rounds which got intense when our HOU figured that a patient with history of elephant stampede didn’t have an antibiotic included in his documented treatment ( I know it was important but, so is maintaining a good decorum and morale of the PGs who’ve been working all day everyday which is neglected more often than not)
We had to stay in the hospital the entire day correcting case sheets, organising them, attaching the sugar monitoring chart and investigation chart. Quite a bit of mindless work.
I like working in Surgery. It feels amazing to suture, it feels even better to see the patients improving each day, it’s surreal to watch a surgery and understand what’s actually happening. I just wish there was less mind numbing work, that there was less paper work, that there was more healthy work environment is all. | https://medium.com/@kniharikakoushik/i-checked-the-vitals-of-the-patients-and-then-we-all-went-to-the-dressing-room-5afa4647fc46 | ['Dr. Nk'] | 2021-07-20 13:55:59.485000+00:00 | ['Doctors', 'Surgery'] |
Spiritual Uber Rides & Why You Should Start Chasing Joy | Image by Rachel M. Peck
I’ve spent 80% of my life up to this point saving joy for later. I vacuum sealed it, with ideas like “work hard, play later” and by putting my head down to just “power through.” I tried freezing it by slowing down time and “savoring” it when the tiniest bit came my way. But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that joy isn’t something you keep or hold. Joy isn’t a possession to be carefully tucked away. It’s meant to be embodied, marveled at and chased.
What’s the Expiration Date on This Stuff Anyway?
For the longest time I saw joy as an endangered resource that could run out. I cherished it when it came by reading my favorite books slower, waiting for special occasions to use my new gifts from Christmas, and taking small bites of my favorite chocolate bar (ok, maybe not that small). When exciting projects came up, I’d wait until “the right time” to work on them, when I felt special enough or fully in my flow. I’d convinced myself I was giving joy the respect it deserved but all I was doing was hiding it and missing the point entirely.
Joy isn’t some mystical prophet; it never asked to be worshipped or for me to stop my life entirely to curtsy to its arrival. It wanted to be a part of my life all along — to let its hair down and party with me, to start projects before I was ready, to be imperfect with me, to accelerate everything that was exciting and race towards it with reckless abandon.
Your Uber Is Here and it Sucks
But joy is so much more than a good time. It’s an alignment master. It too knows our purpose and how we are supposed to succeed and help the world. It’s the vehicle that has arrived to take us to the party and it’s one slick ride. But we’ve become so practical that now we’re calling smelly, sketchy Ubers and expecting to arrive to our purpose party in the same amount of time. Good luck getting that rickety orange Toyota Camry past spiritual security…
We are all given certain wants, desires, and joy-bringers for a reason. It’s not a coincidence, so stop acting like it is and taking the hard road. Jumping into joy fully with both feet is the best way for you to help the world. Just think of how you feel when you do the things you love — you have more energy, you wake up ready for the day, you breathe more and sigh less, you have less spiritual road rage on your way. Denying yourself the things that bring you joy is a surefire way to burn out and not serving anyone (and — just taking a stab in the dark here — is probably something you’ve experienced more than once in your life). Cue the insomnia, depression, sickness, and angry outbursts at work or with your partner.
Save The Best for First
We’ve all been taught to save the best for last. Screw that! The path to your purpose doesn’t have to be hard to be relevant. We don’t have to be frugal with joy or save it for later. It’s not a resource that runs out. It can be infinite and we have the ability to create more of it. Read the book. Take the tags off the dress. Start the project before you’re ready. Eat the whole damn chocolate bar at once. Sprint towards joy with everything you’ve got and it will give you more. | https://medium.com/@jessicalyda/spiritual-uber-rides-why-you-should-start-chasing-joy-2d2616eeeeb0 | ['Jessica Lyda'] | 2020-01-14 12:16:20.344000+00:00 | ['Healing', 'Spirituality', 'Joy', 'Positivity', 'Wellness'] |
On Astrology and the Making of Sense | Also, introducing my upcoming book and a new science that I invented
By MARTIN REZNY
I completely understand your position, and many scientific skeptics share it with you, but in order to respond properly to it, I’m afraid I will have to refer you to a book that I’m actually quite close to finishing as we speak. I intend to call it Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Astrology. Basically, it will contain about 15 years-worth of my criticisms of what both astrologers and skeptics have been doing wrong all along.
Amusingly, this is an interesting coincidence in the astrological fashion, since of course this is the one thing that you right now feel that you need to respond to out of the whole article which is predominantly about other beliefs. I’ll take it as a sign to move up my timetable.
The main problem with a position like this is that it doesn’t respond to what astrology actually is, precisely because people of science don’t put much effort into studying astrology, and this has been a great frustration of mine for years — you can’t have a fruitful discussion when no one is actually informed. And it’s the reason why I feel that it’s time for me to explain myself fully. It’s not like I have any reputation to damage, so why not, I guess.
While there are many self-proclaimed “astrologers” who you can quote as believing that astrology is anything or can do anything, after years of studying it myself, the most logical explanation of its mechanism, which is not a particular stretch or mystery, appears to be about the qualitative dynamics of time, not the physical objects themselves, and definitely not about the four fundamental forces mechanistically determining behaviors.
It’s not about expecting the tug of Jupiter to cause you to do things, Jupiter’s motions are just part of a celestial clock. It’s about how in a world which is a simulation, you cannot rely on sheer random chance to generate a meaningful world. You can try it and see for yourself, analyzing the games that we have already made, and in that, there’s a practical application of astrology that I have recently finally formulated in my mind and gave it a name.
I decided to call it kaironics, after Kairos, the least known of the three ancient Greek gods of time. You have your basic Chronos, or linear time where each moment is equal and determined only by its length; then you have Aion, or eternal, unchanging time; and finally you have Kairos, or opportune time, where different moments have different qualities and are not equally good or bad for accomplishing any particular goal. If you’re interested in learning what that includes from astrology and beyond, check out my new website:
For now, I think it only makes sense to clarify what I mean by fractals and how they connect different levels of existence. Fractals do mean that these different levels share structural similarities, not that there are causal interactions between them in the way that forces work, that’s true. But assuming the world is a mathematical simulation, a fractal can be an indication that there’s a common underlying pattern to all of reality.
This would mean that even though the different levels don’t interact, they don’t have to, because all of them are shaped by the same random function. You can see something like that when using a random function in a game you create — the more crude it is, the more obvious is the shared pattern. What’s important to note is that random functions a) aren’t truly random and b) while they’re supposed to give the illusion of chaos, their main goal in a game with players is to organize actions and events into meaningful configurations.
What astrology has always been implying by the “as above, so below” maxim is precisely that you can find correlations, or synchronocities, between levels that don’t conventionally interact. That you can draw surprisingly accurate analogies between the dynamics of celestial bodies and the dynamics of things we do, like relationships. Astrology, if anything, is an attempt at the physics of meaning, and with that come levels of nuance for which most skeptics are too impatient to even understand what there is to be debunked.
But as I said, the complete explanation has to take up a whole book, as entire levels of misconceptions have to be deconstructed before we can even start having a fruitful discussion about it. Astrology doesn’t have to be right and no one certainly managed to prove it yet in a rigorous scientific fashion, but sneering at a straw man of it also accomplishes nothing. I promise I’ll get back to you with the rest of my answer, about two or three months from now.
Like what you read? Subscribe to my publication, clap, follow, or…
Make me happy and throw something into my tip jar | https://medium.com/words-of-tomorrow/on-astrology-and-the-making-of-sense-169adaaf782a | ['Martin Rezny'] | 2020-01-24 13:27:24.001000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Time', 'Philosophy', 'Astrology', 'Meaning'] |
Sierra Rhodes: Performance and Education Married Into One | Despite their divergence in method and demeanor, a thing that sex workers I talked to seem to all agree on is how an ill-informed audience can be of detriment to the content they’re consuming. For sex work specifically, harnessing the power of mass media to unwrap its mystery hasn’t been the easiest, so some have had to innovate. I reached out to Sierra Rhodes — a three-time PornHub Awards nominee, professionally known as TeenyGinger — in the hopes of learning how she does it. What I came away with instead is a much more complete synthesis of the current state of the porn industry, and where things ought to go for the good of all involved.
The beginnings for Rhodes were about standard for the internet age — she dabbled in the genre on a message board under the protective cover of anonymity, but then was compelled to continue it in a more professional capacity. “Originally I started posting nudes on the r/gonewild subreddit and it was just a kind of for fun thing,” she says. “Then I got so many requests for “Oh, I want to buy your panties!” and so from that I started selling my underwear to the people who would pay for that.”
Then inevitably, when that moved into more uncharted territory, Rhodes first had her reservations, but eventually got over them. “It took me a long time to be okay with “well, I don’t know if I wanna record my voice on camera, I don’t want my face to be in it” but as I got more comfortable being on camera, I started letting more of my personality come through,” she says. “I ended up with all these videos that I didn’t know what to do with so I started posting them on clip sites and then the videos that weren’t doing very well, I figured to put them out there for free on PornHub.”
What Rhodes predominantly put on PornHub at the time were rejects, bloopers and funny compilations — and as the recent turn towards parasocial attachment online would have it, they subverted her expectations and became a staple of her online presence. “A few of [my videos] really took off, and [then] they started outperforming my clip site ones,” she said. “It’s gotten to the point now where I don’t even sell physical items anymore — I don’t sell panties at all because I enjoy making videos a lot more.”
“As I got more comfortable being on camera, I started letting more of my personality come through”
With fewer avenues for socialization as many countries in the world are still under heavy lockdown regimes, the demand for something familiar and approachable is at an all-time high — it just so happens that Rhodes’ content perfectly met the moment. “Right around when COVID hit, my OnlyFans really took off,” she says. “I think a lot of that was because people were just staying home and separating from people more, and so they’re more likely to look up porn. They would run across my PornHub channel, subscribe to the OnlyFans, and from there it’s just kind of exponentially grown even more, and it’s allowed me to take on a lot of fun side-projects.”
One of those side-projects was an explanatory genre of videos the likes of which had already been present on YouTube but barely (if at all) explored on adult content platforms — Rhodes took it upon herself to illuminate some of the most obscure aspects of the industry by dipping into her sensibilities as an educator, injecting some of it into her performances. “I was binge-watching Tiffany Ferguson’s videos because I had just run across her, and I watched all of the media analysis stuff and was loving it. [There’s also] Sarah Z, D’Angelo Wallace, ContraPoints and a lot of commentary channels and I kept watching it and going “I wanna do this so bad! I know how to do all the editing for this, I should just do it!”,” she says. “I figured that you’ve got to talk about what you know, and I get questions about [my work] people DM me [about] all the time.”
Rhodes views dishonesty in her field as anathema to building a healthy relationship with your audience, so she saw crucial to her job a commitment to authenticity in every piece of content she creates. “I try to bring [it] to everything I do online, and I wish that more people would do the same because we’re all presented with this kind of one idea of sexuality on PornHub,” she told me. “It’s “step sister and step bro get stuck in a washing machine” or something like that, whereas in my content, it feels like I could be your neighbor! Especially since I don’t show my face, I try to let my personality show through as much as I can. […] I adlib most of my videos, and the only ones that I don’t improvise on the spot are the really scripted role-play ones — but everything else, I’m just making it up off the top of my head as I go. So I think people really appreciate that and if more content creators did what I’m doing, hopefully they’ll let their personality show through in their work too.”
One major obstacle to performing that work comes in the form of ill-advised legislation. Back in 2018, the signing of FOSTA-SESTA into law stripped sex work platforms of Section 230 protections under the pretense of limiting sex trafficking (something it may have ended up exacerbating), and with it came down harsher scrutiny on online platforms to further tighten their grip on all manners of posted sexual content — what Sierra fears may transpire as a result, is a heavier government surveillance regime which might put porn consumers and creators alike in a quite perilous position. “I think it’s really difficult and it’s kind of in a similar vein as a law in the UK they’re trying to pass on age verification online, which on the one hand sounds great! I would love to have a way to verify that everyone who watches my content is of the age of the majority, but it also means that in order to verify their age, they’re going to have some kind of tracking,” she says. “So the government knows exactly what videos they’re watching and what kind of content they’re consuming, and that crosses a lot of privacy lines. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is how I feel about this.”
If you ask legislators about this, even if they do not deflect to sex trafficking as the main concern, they’ll cast doubt on the porn industry’s ethical core — Rhodes acknowledges that while there are a lot of issues to solve, sweeping the rug from under sex workers is the least effective way to do it. “There’s a way to make ethical porn, but I don’t think all porn is ethical,” she says. “There’s a lot of stuff on the internet that doesn’t get verified in any kind of way before it’s uploaded — especially on sites like PornHub. […] I think that’s why a lot of content creators now are moving away from the free video sites and towards OnlyFans, JustForFans, and all those other subscription sites so that the consumer knows for a fact that “this is the individual who made this video and they’re being paid to make more videos like it.” It’s definitely something that we should explore more, and I wish more sites would take a more active role in verifying the content that gets posted there.”
What underlies a reticence to embrace a more comprehensive legal framework for sex workers is the claim that what they do is ultimately talentless, so it’s not worthy of the labor protections standard in other industries — as Rhodes outlines, this couldn’t be further from the truth. “You can make money with very low effort content — you’re just not going to make much,” she says. “In order to be as successful as a lot of the top models, you do have to put in a heck of a lot of work, but it’s a spectrum — I have coworkers who only work for 5–10 hours/week and they supplement the income with a vanilla job, whereas I have others who put in 80 hours/week and they’re making almost a million dollars.”
“There’s a lot of stuff on the internet that doesn’t get verified in any kind of way before it’s uploaded — especially on sites like PornHub […] I wish more sites would take a more active role in verifying the content that gets posted there”
The next frontier of patronizing sex workers would be blaming them for what is commonly known as “porn addiction”, and while Rhodes recognizes that there’s an industry incentive to keep audiences hooked, she chalks a lot of it down to the peculiar relationship viewers have with porn consumption, noticeably less healthy than with other media produce. “The majority of people can consume pornography without qualm but there are some who will become obsessed with it, just as most people consume alcohol in a healthy way but a few people would go off into the deep end,” she says. “There’s still so much wrapped up around shame because of societal messaging in general — people still have a lot of shame around it, and with shame comes that addiction cycle. It’s kinda like how people are more likely to indulge something if they have to hide it — if you have to hide the fact that you like porn from everyone else in your life, and you think that it’s such a bad and terrible taboo thing, you’re more likely to fall into addiction with it as well.”
An important prong of the sex work taboo comes from the Western European strand of Christianity, which even in its secular form has evolved into a moral scare against all that is deemed ‘indecent’ — Rhodes doesn’t rule out the cooperation of faith leaders in seeing that taboo finally vanquished, but she sees it as highly unlikely still. “We’re already having a tough enough time with faith leaders accepting of different sexualities, so I think that the thought of people having sex at all is still very taboo,” she says. “I’m not religious myself, I wasn’t raised in religion, and I do think that pornography addiction is a real problem — but a lot of times people will mix that up with “oh, if you start following the path of the Devil, you’re going to be stuck on that path forever” and going down the addiction rabbit hole, and that’s not the case for everyone.”
To see these issues dispelled, most would agree that a certain degree of sex work literacy is required so that audiences and lawmakers alike are keenly aware of what porn production entails. “I feel like my audience is a lot more literate than the average porn consumer — especially the people who make it to the end of my videos, because for a lot of them recently, I’ve been including aftercare at the end,” she says. What Rhodes means here by ‘aftercare’ is a post-scene ritual that seeks to dissolve any residual shame that members of her audience might still have about porn consumption. “I’ll even say that ‘hey, my name is Sierra, I live in Montana, this is my bedroom, I’m the only person here. I’m doing this myself because it’s fun and it’s what I do” — kind of like an exit interview. From that they’ll think “oh, this girl actually uploads her own videos” and then they go into my profile and see the other stuff. I wish there were easier ways to educate people — I feel like I have to be like “oh here are my boobs, and here’s a message!” but when I put up just the informational videos, they don’t do nearly as well view-wise, so I guess I’m using porn as [a trojan-horse for the information].”
It would seem intuitive for this information to be disseminated through more conventional channels — like YouTube for instance — but despite the possibility presenting itself, Sierra sees an insufficient guarantee of only adults being able to access that kind of content as a strong enough deterrent. “I would love for that to happen, but I can understand why they don’t allow it, since it would be very difficult for them to monitor,” she says. “As fond of the adult industry as I am, I do think that my videos should only be accessible to 18 and over. […] I really hope that at some point PornHub will be able to be behind a better age restriction without [overzealous] tracking [measures].”
“I wish there were easier ways to educate people”
Parallel to it has been the rise of more novel forms of sex work, some of them involving little of the performer’s physical appearance like VTubing — Rhodes thinks there’s a disproportionate amount of media attention placed on them, but she deems it more of a blessing than a curse. “Whatever gets the most attention is what’s going to be reported about, so on the one hand, yes, [it feels a bit overshadowing], but on the other, if it weren’t for Belle Delphine, then a lot of my IRL friends wouldn’t even know what OnlyFans is,” she says. “I think it works for some people, but not for everyone. There’s definitely a reason that people would buy Belle Delphine’s bathwater and not mine — it depends on the content creator, their personality — but I’m just not very good at trolling people; I’m far too honest and upfront.”
Casting a big shadow over our conversation is media’s tendency to render sex work a pet issue deserving of uttermost scold or praise for the sole purpose of eliciting strong audience engagement — Rhodes understands there are profit motives at play, but wishes things worked out differently. “I feel like usually, the media, they’re for shock value,” she says. “They’re reporting whatever’s so outlandish, crazy and wild that it doesn’t really portray sex work in the best light for one, but it also doesn’t do so accurately. […] I don’t feel like sex workers’ complaints are taken seriously and they’re only portrayed in either a very negative light, or positive to the extreme.”
Given all the concerns outlined, I asked Rhodes what would she change about the sex work industry were she given a magic wand to wave things into a better state — stronger worker ownership and greater safety for sex workers rank high on her list:
I wish for two things: One, that there would be a platform that actually puts creators first. I feel like all the current options that are available are definitely corporations first and content aggregators second. They don’t actually care about the models, so for one I wish there was a platform like that — it is what ManyVids was supposed to be, but that’s a whole other story. And two, I wish that I could be out and not have to worry about my safety because at this point in my life, that’s the only reason that I don’t show my face. All my friends know, my family knows, everybody in my life knows about it — I’m not hiding from anybody except for the guys who go out there to stalk and murder, so I wish those two things would be taken care of.
Despite great present political turmoil, Rhodes hangs her faith high for the next generation to legislate more fairly for her neglected cohort. “I do have hope for the next generation. I do feel like that when people our age are the ones who are in office, at least they understand what the industry and PornHub are, and how they operate,” she says. “A lot of it too is [the older people in our government] just don’t understand that there are models who are making money on the site that have it as a job, that are making ethical porn they consented to creating.”
Understanding that the current state of things is far from perfect, Rhodes felt it necessary to end our interview with a PSA on how to best relieve oneself of the worry that whatever piece of explicit content they consumed, hasn’t been made with the full accord of the performers involved. “The easiest way is to pay for it yourself, of course, but the other way is to check if the account has been verified on the platform that it’s on, and if the other videos match what they posted,” she says. “There’s a lot of amateurs that I’ll follow on PornHub, and you know because they have a little blue checkmark next to their name — that means that they’ve submitted their ID, they took a picture with a piece of paper that has their username and their face in the frame, and then if all the other videos on there look like it’s the same person, that’s probably the person who’s uploaded them.”
“I do have hope for the next generation. I do feel like that when people our age are the ones who are in office, at least they understand what the industry and PornHub are, and how they operate”
If there’s a thing that has been most true about my interactions with sex workers, is that they view themselves as collaborators first, and competitors second. In that same spirit of camaraderie, Sierra Rhodes shows that a mutual regard for one and another’s health is one key way to sustaining an ecosystem under heavy assault from both an ambivalent populace and an incompetent governance — to foster a greater understanding of how the industry works is crucial, and Rhodes has already planted the seeds for such work to become the norm.
Much like past evolutions of the adult content industry, Rhodes’ efforts might yet be an example that the rest can model after in a bid to shift the terms of the debate their favor. What remains to be seen is how truly effective will that be — and how well audiences will respond to being told that much of what they knew about the industry is several layers removed from the truth — but if all goes well, this might pave the way for a less perpetually-hostile livelihood for sex workers, one where everyone operates from a position of epistemic clarity rather than baseless speculation. | https://akhaledblog.medium.com/teenyginger-sierra-rhodes-aftercare-education-pornhub-onlyfans-sex-work-89c8de5fc06b | ['A. Khaled'] | 2020-11-17 12:02:48.855000+00:00 | ['Pornography', 'Internet', 'Sexuality', 'Culture', 'Sex Work'] |
Juniper publishers- Juniper Publishers-Inselbergs of Venezuelan Guayana Region: A Natural Laboratory for Plant Ecology Research | The Guayana shield is one of the most important biogeographic regions of the world, with a complex matrix of ecosystems and different types of vegetation [1–4]. One of the most outstanding ecological units of the region are the granitic outcrops, also known as inselbergs (from the German Insel: island, and Berg: mountain), and locally as lajas. These rock formations have high plant species diversity, a high number of endemic species with restricted geographical distribution [2–3]. From a biogeographical approach, these geological formations are also considered as continental islands, mainly because of the ecological processes that depend to a large extent on geographic isolation [5]. This geographical isolation confers unique ecological conditions for the formation of different types of plant communities on a small spatial scale. However, since pioneering research on Guayana inselbergs vegetation types, e.g., [3–4], knowledge about plant community ecology is still limited as a basis for establishing conservation measures [6].
The Guayana inselbergs present different types of plant communities, which are shaped by a complex system of environmental gradients, mainly by the availability of water, topography and the depth of the substrates [5,7–8]. Thus, the mosaic of habitats present in the inselbergs of Guayana region, can occur discontinuously separated with different types of vegetation, such as epilithic (on bare rock), casmophytic (between cracks), forest in the depressions, continuous forests in flat sites of the peaks, and in accumulations of large blocks of granite. In addition, one of the most dominant types of vegetation are the patches of vegetation found in the depressions [3–5]. However, it is not yet known about the assembly rules of plant communities, especially the relative contribution of abiotic (i.e., microclimate, topography, water deficit) and biotic (i.e., facilitation) drivers, to test hypotheses in plant ecology.
The geomorphological and microenvironmental conditions of the inselbergs confer special ecological conditions where only some plant species with different types of morphological and ecophysiological adaptations can be developed [5,9–11]. This leads to a greater specialization of the species on a small spatial scale in extreme conditions compared to other surrounding ecosystems, such as savannas and forests [3–4]. For example, many of these species grow on substrates accumulated in depressions of different sizes, and on which patches of vegetation are developed [6], also known as islands of vegetation, on islands of rocky outcrops [7].
Recently some researchers have presented results on the ecology of plant communities in inselberg of Venezuelan Guayana; this has been analyzing the effect of patch size on diversity patterns [6,12]. Thus, these studies carried out in the Piedra la Tortuga Natural Monument reveal that there is a considerable number of endemic species in fine-scale vegetation patches, with up to 50% of endemic species per patch of vegetation [6]. This pattern of diversity is exclusive from a biogeographical perspective, because it is not common in other plant communities present around the inselbergs of Guayana, as for example in the savannas and forests that have a wide distribution throughout the region. This consequence has been well described, that in the inselbergs there is an important representation of endemic species (approximately 144) in relation to the entire Guayana region, and that is why it is considered as an important center of endemism in Venezuela [2–4]. On the other hand, several studies have also reported the high level of endemism existing in rocky outcrops in Australia, Africa and tropical America [5]. Although, there are still limited studies on the species-area relationship and species abundances distribution as basic information to establish new conservation areas [6].
The inselbergs of western Guayana are dominated mainly by herbaceous and shrubby growth forms (Figure 1), such as Tabebuia orinocensis, Acanthella sprucei, Commiphora leptophloes, and Pseudobomax croizatii the most representative shrub species in areas visited and studied on an ecological approach [6,12]. On the other hand, herbaceous species such as Irlbachia alata, Utricularia subulata, and Sauvagestia ramosissima, have been reported as ephemeral plants; which appear during the wetter periods when water stress is possibly less marked in these ecological formations [3–4,9–10]. In the case of shrubs, despite not being abundant in different types of plant communities in these inselbergs, they could be key species because probably generate appropriate microclimatic conditions for the establishment and survival of other species, for example in patch of vegetation found in the depression (Figure 2). Succulent stems (cactus) are other life forms characteristic of the study area, in relation to their strategies for storing water (eg Melocactus spp), also succulent leaves (Pitcairnia pruinosa, Pitcairnia armata), and geophytic as Portulaca pygmaea [4,9,13].
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Due to the importance value of the plant diversity present in the inselbergs of Guayana, it would be essential to continue research on the ecology of plant communities; especially due to the urgent need to create new conservation areas. For example, one of the few conservation units known in the region is the Piedra la Tortuga Natural Monument. Likewise, to establish new conservation areas with inselbergs in the Guayana region, it is necessary to consider that species with restricted distribution tend to be more vulnerable to extinction. Therefore, it is essential to know the minimum viable population of all those threatened species of inselbergs. This would allow estimating the minimum number of individuals needed to ensure a high probability of survival in the immediate future.
Finally, despite the lack of moisture as a general microclimate pattern in inselbergs, there are locally restricted habitats with vegetation that depend on seasonally humid conditions. For this reason, it is considered important to characterize the habitats within inselbergs to have enough conservation bases within these systems. For example, identify the environmental gradients where a vegetation type is developed, as well as the key species within communities. There are no doubts, that these inselbergs are an ideal scenario for the development of research in plant ecology.
To read more articles in JOJ wildlife and biodiversity
please click on: https:// juniperpublishers.com/jojwb/index.php
For more open access journals in juniper publishers | https://medium.com/@kristinaaden208/juniper-publishers-juniper-publishers-inselbergs-of-venezuelan-guayana-region-a-natural-ed685efc6b4f | ['Kristina Aden'] | 2020-09-15 05:44:36.326000+00:00 | ['Ecology', 'Biology', 'Plants', 'Conservation', 'Biodiversity'] |
Digesting Gartner’s MQ for Content Services Platforms a bite at a time | Bite one:
At first glance Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms 2020 might leave you a little confused. Consider that Axway (which used to be Syncplicity) was named a “niche player” by analyst/authors Michael Woodbridge, Marko Sillanpaa, Lane Severson while Veeva Vault wasn’t even included. Egnyte, according to the authors, just missed the mark. Other former Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) vendors like Box and Microsoft are also among Gartner’s picks.
While all of the aforementioned vendors have evolved substantially since 2016, when the last EFSS report was written, Gartner has also changed its criteria for content services/ECM platforms since then.
The primary difference between yesterday’s Enterprise Content Management systems and today’s Content Services Platforms, according to Gartner, seem to be “tightly integrated intelligent services…This has surfaced in a number of ways; in classification (content intelligence), in productivity (productivity intelligence) and in content protection (security intelligence.)”
Gartner also noted that their customers are showing demand for “cloud-based solutions that integrate into other” or as they call them “New Work Nucleus technologies.”
Since the aforementioned term may have influenced the position of Content Services vendors in this year’s Content Services Magic Quadrant, and will probably do so even more so next year, they may be worth looking into.
Gartner defines the New Work Nucleus as “a nascent, fast-growing market designed to improve team coordination, performance, communications and productivity.” Severson, Sillanpaa and Woodbridge wrote that the New World Nucleus is “often a SaaS-based set of applications.”
In a non-related article, distinguished Gartner analyst Matt Cain describes the New Work Nucleus as one that focuses on employee enablement. “We can target the best strategies to help the workforce become more collaborative, mobile, analytical and agile through the use of new work nucleus workloads.” he wrote.
In still another publication, Gartner says that the New Work Nucleus is “a collection of ever-changing, multivendor, SaaS-based personal and team productivity applications that replaces decades-old on-premises applications centered around Microsoft Office.” Products such as Asana, Box, Dropbox, Google G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, Slack and Workfront fall into this category according to Gartner.
All of this is to say that one of the reasons some vendors did better, and should continue to improve, in Gartner’s MQ for Content Services, is that have simple APIs into the aforementioned apps. This not to suggest, by any means, that these are more important than today’s core content services essentials, including content management library services, records management, process automation, open APIs, security and privacy controls, metadata, search. enterprise administration, reporting, mobility and collaboration.
Still, as enterprises evaluate content services platforms, there are more things to consider than who got the highest scores in the Gartner MQ. First and foremost, what industry are you in, do you use a so-called best-of breed connecting architecture, what non-content services vendors are you committed to (for example for manufacturers SAP may be more important than Dropbox or Asana), how many invoices do you want to pay — the more vendors, the more invoices — how many vendors do you want to deal with and so on. There are risks involved regardless of how you answer the question.
More on Gartner’s MQ for content services platforms to come. | https://digitizingpolaris.com/digesting-gartners-mq-for-content-services-platforms-a-bite-at-a-time-437cf7d82c37 | ['Virginia Backaitis'] | 2020-12-07 17:28:39.437000+00:00 | ['Box', 'Information Management', 'Microsoft', 'Information Technology', 'Content Strategy'] |
Remote Viewing the Year 2050 With Stephen A. Schwartz | Remote viewing pioneer Dr. Stephan A. Schwartz recently discussed his precognitive remote viewing project of the year 2050, which was conducted in 1978. In addition to anticipating historical occurrences many of us would live to see, such as the fall of the Soviet Union, the advent of the smartphone, the appearance of HIV, and the increase in pandemics, his team also made some startling predictions we have yet to endure (and may not want to). He cautions against using remote viewing to look too far into the future, because conditions may be so foreign to what we are familiar with that we may have no reference point by which to describe it.
Indeed, many of the accurate predictions conducted in 1978 which we have come to witness were unintelligible even at the time they were conducted. For example, he recounts his experience asking the Deputy Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about whether or not a blood-borne disease could cross from non-human primates in Africa over to humans and result in a devastating epidemic, at which point the director told him to “quit smoking” whatever it was that led him to have such thoughts. Nevertheless, it was not long after that that HIV reared its ugly head and resulted in the deaths of countless millions of people. The sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union and the advent of a physical device that could be used to speak with someone and also see them as though they were on a small television, were equally unintelligible to anyone, including educated futurists, at that time.
The tasking consisted of asking the viewers to go to a large city and look at it on the same day (in 1978) but in 2050. Viewers reported that Los Angeles and much of the West Coast, as well as Florida, had become inundated with water to the point of no longer being habitable. Dr. Schwartz is convinced this will result in the collapse of real estate value and the end of what he rightly refers to as “vampire capitalism.” These disasters, which will allegedly be the result of climate change, were no less unintelligible at the time because climate change as a serious political issue would not emerge until many years later in the early 1990s. His viewers also speak of a “great event” that occurs between 2040 and 2045, although it is unclear what this will consist of. Nevertheless, he is convinced, based on the results, that carbon-powered vehicles will be basically non-existent at this time and the petroleum industry itself will vanish into obsolescence. Although he believes the United States will endure as a de jure legal entity, he is convinced that the U.S. states themselves will merge based on a combination of regional and political proximity. At this time, records of this remote viewing project consist of a voluminous 15,000 pages.
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Join the RVCM Facebook group | https://medium.com/remote-viewing-community-magazine/remote-viewing-the-year-2050-with-stephen-a-schwartz-8bfa8635ecb2 | ['Monad Mantis'] | 2021-02-08 05:54:43.059000+00:00 | ['Remote Viewing', 'Future', 'Life Lessons', 'Precognition', 'Future Technology'] |
CAC < LTV | Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash
CAC < LTV
Selling dollar bills for eighty cents makes you very popular on your way to bankruptcy!
Every venture of every kind distills down to Unit Economics. Your business can produce one unit of something for a cost of X, and a customer is willing to pay you Y for it. For bakeries a unit is a loaf of bread, for consulting firms it’s an hour of time, for airlines it’s a seat-mile. If you want to operate profitably, you’ll need to sell a unit for more than it cost you to produce. Even an 8-year-old with a lemonade stand understands this.
And yet the leading case of startup death is realizing too late that the cost of getting the customer for that unit should have been added in there somewhere.
Let’s look at a quick example: If we make widgets for $6 and sell them for $9, then our unit economics show a nice $3/unit in gross profit. If last quarter we spent $1,000 on advertising and got 500 new customers who each bought a widget then our Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) was $2. We need to add that CAC into our cost of making and selling one unit, so our all-in unit economics show $8 in costs, $9 in revenue, so $1/unit in gross profit.
But what if we had evidence that once we have a customer they usually come back and buy more widgets? That would be great! Let’s say that, on average, customers come back and buy a total of 5 widgets from us. It still cost us $2 to get the customer, but now the Lifetime Value (LTV) of that customer is $15 (5 widgets sold with a gross profit of $3 each)¹. So our Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) of $2 looks pretty good against our LTV of $15.
Every venture starts off with a high CAC and a low LTV. Drive one down and the other up and — bingo!– you have a profitable operation.
Now our widget business is looking great, assuming those numbers hold up. Unfortunately, many many startups fail because they realize too late that their all-in Customer Acquisition Cost is higher than the Lifetime Value of a customer.
Every business needs to have a way of getting a customer for less than they can make from that customer. CAC has to be less than LTV. It’s a basic law of economics. Ask any 8-year old with a lemonade stand. So why it is still a leading cause of startup death? From my experience, here are the mistakes that many startup founders make:
Not adding in staff costs.
I’ve had entrepreneurs proudly tell me that they spent $5,000 on advertising in the quarter and got 5,000 new customers, so their CAC was just $1! But then I look at their financial statements and the have a full-time marketing person, two marketing assistants, a fancy graphic design freelancer, an inside salesperson and someone handling inbound web leads. So their actual customer acquisition costs were way more than a dollar. Because math.
Thinking your time is free.
I’ve had entrepreneurs tell me that their customer acquisition cost is zero because they do all the selling themselves! That’s only zero if you think your time is worthless. Also, it’s not scalable. So, when you are calculating CAC, make sure you ascribe a reasonable value to the time you personally spend selling.
Thinking that CAC is always a marketing problem.
I met with a startup recently who said that they fired their marketing person because the customer acquisition cost was just too high and clearly it was that the marketing person was doing a crappy job. So we dug into the funnel metrics together and found that plenty of customers were entering the top of the funnel on their e-commerce website, but very few were completing a purchase. In fact, most got all the way to the payment screen and then left. It turns out that the payment gateway they were using was a really crappy user experience. So they switched to a new payment gateway, and then number of people completing purchases doubled, which cut the CAC in half. Bingo. It wasn’t a marketing problem– it was a crappy payment gateway problem.
Over-estimating repeat purchases.
Every entrepreneur thinks their product is so awesome that customers will come back and buy more and more! Every startup with a subscription model thinks that very few customers will ever cancel their subscription! But this isn’t reality. So be conservative with how you calculate repeat purchases in order to come up with your LTV. Better to be surprised in a good way than to end up in surprise bankruptcy.
Not factoring in promotions.
Let’s say that you find that offering a “No questions asked return policy” increases your sales. That’s great! But if 15% of all purchases get returned, then you need to reflect this as either part of your customer acquisition cost, or you need to reflect it in your gross profit/LTV numbers. Don’t just wave your hands and pretend those economics don’t apply to you. They do.
Not benchmarking.
If you show me your pitch deck and it says that your LTV will be 72x your CAC, I’m going to laugh and ask you whether pigs can fly. I’ve never seen anything anywhere near that high and the chances that you are going to be the first person to ever overcome the laws of physics seems very unlikely. So look up what the LTV/CAC ratio is for similar businesses (here’s a good look at the Netflix numbers, for example). Generally, you want to have a LTV/CAC ratio of better than 3x, seldom have I seen anything more than 10x. So that gives you a range. If you’re way outside that range, you probably have some assumptions wrong. Find a similar business you can benchmark to.
Let’s face it — as entrepreneurs, we are naturally optimists. We all underestimate what it will cost to get a customer, and we all overestimate how much we will make from customers. Sadly, this optimism drives a lot of startups to failure, because they realize too late that they have CAC<LTV upside down. So do this math early, and do it with a solid dose of realism. If you do this, you will dramatically increase your odds of having a successful startup venture. I promise. | https://bretwaters.medium.com/cac-ltv-a6be2c3305ed | ['Bret Waters'] | 2020-12-17 16:53:24.520000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Entrepreneur', 'Startup Lessons'] |
5 Tips for a New Career | Whether you are looking for a new job and are willing to pivot in a new direction or do not want to continue working in your specific field, a career pivot is a major decision.
COVID-19 has impacted the world and devastated certain industries more than others. For those in highly specialized careers, the impact has been severe and the options for work seem limiting due to the amount of time spent in specific positions and/or industries. There is a lot of trepidation and doubt as to how to resume one’s career at this point.
A viable option is to pivot professionally and take your innate talent, skills and experiences garnered in one industry into another. The business environment is in the midst of changes that will set new standards for decades to come. Many companies are taking this time to evaluate how and where they do business. So why shouldn’t you as a professional?
I have 5 tips on how to begin to evaluate your options.
1. Identify your strengths and skills
Your experience brings along a list of transferable skills that can be beneficial to any industry. Write down your innate talents, specific skills and strengths. Sometimes it takes a real look at all of your abilities to discover new ways to apply them.
2. Identify areas of interest
Is there a specific field that you have had interest in and never had the time to evaluate or explore? Is there a hobby or activity you enjoy doing that you can monetize? Write those down and begin doing research.
3. Find your uniqueness
Figure out how the combination of your skills, passion and experience can uniquely serve a new niche. In many cases, your background and story can serve as a unique qualifier or distinguishing angle that can give you an edge in a new area.
4. Rebrand yourself
Once you have decided how you want to pivot professionally, reposition your background, skills and experience in a way that sets you up as a viable candidate to excel in your new career.
5. Connect with others
Reach out to others in the desired industry you want to enter. Use LinkedIn, Facebook Groups and local organizations to connect with others to learn more or offer your services.
The goal is to use a disappointing or unexpected turn of events to propel you in a new direction. A career pivot is a big decision but one that can be extremely rewarding and help you reach your true potential.
If you have a question or are interested in learning more, connect with me. | https://medium.com/@michelleenjoli/5-tips-for-a-new-career-3673340494a9 | ['Michelle Enjoli'] | 2020-12-15 14:33:18.918000+00:00 | ['Career Paths', 'Careers', 'Career Development', 'Career Advice', 'Career Change'] |
#StrategySunday — December 20, 2020 | #StrategySunday — December 20, 2020
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
Sunday has arrived. And what a week it’s been! I hope you’re doing amazing in creative and creator land, and if you need inspiration, I recommend scanning the weekly digest for articles that pique your interest.
I’ve had my own ups and downs this week (also see Lessons below), but all things considered, it still went quite well. And I must acknowledge myself for completing what I’ve completed too.
With that, here’s what I went over this #StrategySunday. | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/strategysunday-december-20-2020-d781bf408a75 | ['David Andrew Wiebe'] | 2020-12-27 04:32:25.098000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Updates', 'Strategy', 'Planning', 'Business'] |
Andela Women Tech Leadership Program | The Andela Women Tech Leadership program is currently a six(6) weeks program that focusses on software development, entrepreneurship and leadership. The program also aims at empowering women and equipping them with skills to enable them become world class technologists. This is in line with Andela’s mission of empowering today’s team and advancing human potential. With the belief that brilliance is evenly distributed and gender neutral.
The first cycle attracted more than 100 ladies from all over Africa. Half of the applicants (all of whom were Ugandan) were selected to join the program. This is because the program is currently running in Uganda and yet to kick off in our Andela centres.
The program was officially launched by Christina Sass the president of Andela. Christina shared inspiring stories about her journey as a woman in technology and also shared the story of how Andela was founded.
Phiona (Left) Maria, Emily, Cecilia, Christina, Gloria, Shakira and Angela
During the program, the ladies were divided into groups and given a software project to implement individually. Each group was assigned learning facilitators (Andelans) who were responsible for the progress and mentorship of the ladies.
Initiative core team
Aigo Faith a lady within the program shares her thoughts to as why you should never give up no matter what happens or what you think.
In addition to the software project, the ladies also had technical thought leadership sessions that were led by influential women both in Andela and Africa. These included Wambui Kinya the VP of success Andela, Agnes Muthoni the Director of Pre-fellowship Andela, Brenda Katwesigye, the CEO of Wazi Vision
The program has gone on to see ladies such as Dorothy Asiimwe who was new to programming go on and create her first software program and also share her experience and new knowledge with others.
Sonia Learning Facilitator(left) with Dorothy Asiimwe at the closing ceremony
If you are a lady out there with the dream of changing the world apply to join this program and also follow Andela on twitter and Facebook for all the latest programs and communications. | https://medium.com/the-andela-way/andela-women-tech-leadership-program-9185ee98ece8 | ['John Kagga'] | 2018-08-23 12:12:43.502000+00:00 | ['Generics', 'The Andela Way', 'Wit', 'Andela'] |
The Many Hats of the Solo Practitioner: Attorney, Salesman, Marketer, Webmaster, and Legal Answering Service! | When working as a solo practitioner, it’s important to also have the business acumen and people skills to sustain your legal practice. Not only will you be responsible for the actual casework as an attorney, you will be responsible for everything else, including marketing your practice, signing new clients, maintaining your website, and fielding phone calls. Some attorneys enjoy wearing all of these hats. Others find it overwhelming and make the mistake of waiting until they have too much work to handle to before they consider outsourcing reception duties, website maintenance, and marketing efforts. Before you start missing appointments and deadlines, here are some tips and tricks you can use to thrive as a sole practitioner attorney without getting overwhelmed.
Develop a Consistent Content Strategy
As a solo practitioner, you have enough to worry about without factoring in your web presence. You need to create a content strategy to market your practice — and stick to it. Ideally, you should craft one tweet per day, one Facebook post per day, and at least one blog post per week. You should also maintain and continually update a contact list of your clients and email them when you update your blog or website — once you ask for their permission, of course. If this sounds like too much work, consider hiring a content writing company or a social media administrator. They will be able to come up with great topics for posts and help you maintain your brand identity.
Ask Clients for Testimonials
Many people search Google to find an attorney, so it would behoove your marketing efforts to ask satisfied clients for a Google+ review. Before you do, however, ask them if there is anything you could have improved upon. If a client says he or she doesn’t have a Google+ account, ask for a handwritten testimonial that you can add to your website.
View Your Business as Something Independent from You
Becoming a successful solo practitioner attorney requires you to learn how to leverage people in an operational way. This means you need to start viewing your business as a separate entity from yourself and make sure that it continues to work for you even after you’ve gone home for the day. This of course requires an investment of knowledge, time and capital, and learning how to run a business without your constant presence. Until you are willing to make these investments, you will always find yourself frustrated by stress or lack of time from trying to fill every role yourself without the technical expertise and the knowledge to do so. You can earn a decent living as a solo practitioner, but until you turn your business into a real law firm and structure and support those who perform work for you, you’ll never find a great work life balance or be able to mitigate risk. This is an essential part of any solo practitioner attorney’s business and will help you greatly in the years to come.
Legal Answering Service
Employing Answering Legal can free you from your phone, allowing you to do the things you do best: practice law and perform for your clientele! In any circumstance where you might need to appear in court, meet with a client, or even sit down to write a blog post for your website, Answering Legal can answer the calls that you miss, ensuring that you never miss the potential new client caller! Our legal answering service is 24/7, so the days of no sleep are over. Wake up to new clients by employing Answering Legal and allowing us to perform the intake when a new client would normally have gone to voicemail. Don’t believe us? Try it out risk free!
Happy Hunting!
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Nick Werker
Nick is the Head Content Strategist, Social Media Manager, PPC Campaign Manager, and the Executive Head Writer at Ring Savvy/Answering Legal, Inc. Nick’s talent for story-telling enables him to write and recognize the type of content users want to read. | https://medium.com/answering-legal-inc/the-many-hats-of-the-solo-practitioner-attorney-salesman-marketer-webmaster-and-legal-71a4bdb9c849 | ['Frank Cordeira Jr.'] | 2016-07-12 14:04:52.501000+00:00 | ['Law', 'Legal', 'Lawyers'] |
Summary of Sadhguru’s Inner Engineering book | YOGA
Yoga tells us that we are actually composed of five sheaths or layers:
1. Annamayakosha -> Food body
2. Manomayakosha -> Mental body. What happens in the mind affects what happens in the body. This is because what we call “mind” is not just the brain. It is not located in any single part of the human anatomy. Instead, every cell has its own intelligence, so there is an entire mental body.
3. Pranamayakosha -> Energy body. If we keep our energy body in perfect balance, there will be no disease in our physical or mental bodies.
Above three layers are in the physical realm.
4. Vignanamayakosha -> Etheric body. This is beyond sense perception. This is a transient state. It is neither physical nor non-physical. Those who report near-death experience are those who could have slipped accidently into this state. If we learn to find conscious access to this dimension, there will be a quantum leap in our ability to know the cosmic phenomenon.
5. Anandamayakosha -> Bliss — beyond physical
Yoga is a science of aligning body, mind, and energy dimensions so that we reach the ultimate state of ecstatic union with life itself.
Ways of achieving ultimate state:
1. Karma Yoga — action -> Body
2. Gnana Yoga — knowledge -> Mind
3. Bhakti Yoga — devotion -> Emotion
4. Kriya Yoga — energy -> Energy
Every human being is a unique combination of the same ingredients. Yoga is a science of bringing body, mind, emotion, and energy together.
A physical body has five sources of senses:
1. Smelling (nose)
2. Hearing (ear)
3. Tasting (tongue)
4. Seeing (eye)
5. Touching (skin)
If we are seeking more than the survival, then these physical perceptions are not enough. Because essential nature of life doesn’t lie in the physical or psychological expressions of body and mind but in their source.
Yoga is fundamentally aimed at enhancing experience beyond five senses. There is a dimension beyond five sense perceptions. We can call it “self”, “divine”,” God” — terminology is entirely up to us.
Why people are not able to access the perception beyond these five senses — it is just a lack of attention which has denied people the possibility of discovering what lies within.
The science of using the body to hasten our evolutionary process is ‘hatha’ yoga.
Ha -> Sun
Tha -> Moon
Hatha Yoga brings a balance between these two dimensions. Hatha Yoga is not exercise. It is, instead, about understanding the mechanics of the body, creating a certain atmosphere, and then using physical postures to channel or drive our energy in specific directions. It aligns body’s inner geometry with cosmic geometry.
If we consciously get our body into different postures, we can elevate our consciousness.
Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutation) is not a salutation at all. It is about organizing solar energies within us. All life on earth is solar powered. The sun is the life source for this planet. Those who do Surya Namaskar regularly find their batteries last longer. It aids the balance or re-organization of inner energies in terms of lunar (feminine) and solar dimension (masculine) and produces innate physical and psychological equilibrium.
Surya Kriya — is about connecting moon and sun dimensions for spiritual growth.
Any life has the following 5 elements:
1. Air
2. Fire
3. Water
4. Earth
5. Ether
Our body is just a loan from this planet. What we call “death” is just Mother Earth reclaiming the loan that she offered us. If all that we have known is the body and anyway we are doing to lose it, anxiety and fear will be our constant companions.
Mind
The system of Yoga is a technology to create a distinction between us and our mind. There is a space between us and what we have gathered in terms of body and mind. Becoming conscious of this space is our first and only step to freedom. Awareness of this space opens up a new dimension of limitless possibilities.
There are only two forms of suffering in this world:
- Physical (arises in body)
- Mental (arises in mind)
Once this distance becomes a constant factor in our experience, we have reached the end of suffering.
Our ability to use this immensely sophisticated body-mind phenomenon can be raised to a completely new dimension of experience and utility as we stand outside of them. As the experience of space grows, the mind is no more a mess. It is a great symphony, a tremendous possibility that can take us to great heights.
Remind every hour that our mind (manas dimension) is accumulation.
Being a Buddha means that we have become a witness to our own intellect.
Mind has 16 dimensions in the following 4 categories:
1. Discerning/Intellect -> Buddhi
2. Accumulation / Memory -> Manas
3. Awareness -> Chitta
4. Sense of Identity -> Ahankara
Learn to place our intellect in the sheath of our awareness rather than in the sack of memory and identification.
Awareness (Chitta) is not mental awareness. It is not something we do. Awareness is what we are. Awareness is aliveness. The dimension of the mind that modern societies have completely ignored at their own peril is awareness or Chitta. This is the deepest dimension of the mind and one that connects us with which is the very basis of creation.
Awareness is a process of inclusiveness, a way of embracing this entire universe. We can’t do it, but we can set the right conditions so that it happens. Don’t try to be aware — it won’t work. If we keep our body, thought, emotion, and energies properly aligned, awareness will blossom.
Yoga, meditation helps in making Chitta dimension of mind dominants. Buddhi, Manas, and Ahankara are important, but only for survival.
Mind State
(1) Inert –(energize)-> (2) Active/Scattered –(energize)-> (3) One-Pointed -> (4) Conscious
Today’s modern science is proving that this whole existence is just a reverberation of energy, an endless vibration. Thoughts too are a reverberation. If we generate a powerful thought and let it out, it will always manifest itself. A positive thought will manifest a positive outcome.
For this to happen, it is important that we don’t impede and weaker our thought by creating negative and self-defeating thought patter.
Emotion
Emotion is just juicier part of thought.
Thought (Sugarcane) -> Emotion (juice)
Emotion is largely the thought that leads the emotion. Emotion is less agile than thought. Emotion can’t change immediately. It struggles. If it is sweet now, it can’t turn bitter at the very next moment. It takes time to turn around. It has a wider turning arc. Depending on the strength of our emotion, may be it will take three days or three months or three years, but after sometime it will turn around.
Shi-va
That which is note. Everything ‘that is’ has come from that which is not. If we look up in the sky, there is a vast emptiness. It is in the lap of this no-thingness that the dance of creation is happening right now. This emptiness, which is the very basis of creation is referred to as “Shi-va”.
Another dimension of Shiva is Adiyogi, the first Yogi who opened up the incredible science of yoga for humanity (about 15,000 years back).
Devotion
Even if we spend a lifetime, we still won’t understand a leaf, an elephant, and ant or an atom. We are incapable of figuring out even a molecule of DNA. Everything we can’t grasp is in a high state of existential intelligence than we are. When we see this — really see this — we are a devotee.
A devotee is someone who is willing to dissolve into the object of devotion. If we are a devotee of life, we will become one with it. Don’t be an outsider to the life process. Become a devotee. Dissolve.
Energy
At present, huma beings identify with the body and the mind. But fundamentally, what we call “myself” is just a certain amount of energy. Modern science has proved beyond all doubt that all of existence is made up of the same energy, manifesting itself in millions of bewildering different ways.
Energy — Paranamayakosha is the third layer of human being.
The spiritual process means a return to life. It means following the deep intelligence of we life energies.
Karma -> literally means “action”. Action is of three kinds — Body, Mind, and Energy
Whatever we do with our body, mind, or energy, leaves a certain residue. This residual forms a pattern of its own and these resultants pattern stay with us. When we gather a huge volume of impressions slowly these shape into tendencies, and we become like an automatic toy, a slave to our patterns, a puppet of our path.
Tendencies are generated by a vast accumulation of impressions caused by our physical, mental, and energy actions. What we call personality is just an expression of these tendencies.
We call our tendencies as “our nature” — but reality is it is not our nature — we are not doing what we want. These tendencies have become compulsive.
It is important to remember that Karma is not a negative word. Karma is what gives us stability and structure to our life. There is nothing wrong with stored information. It is very useful for our survival. If we deleted all of it, we wouldn’t know how to handle even the simplest aspects of life. The spiritual process doesn’t seek to demolish this storehouse of karmic impressions, but helps us to become more conscious of it, and establish a little space, which allows us to stand outside of it.
Kriya
As we have established, the body and the mind are ours, but still external to us. We have gathered both from outside; the body is an accumulation of food, and the mind an accumulation of ideas.
Even the imprints upon the energy body are an accumulation of the impressions of five senses. When we have ability to perform action with the non-physical aspect of our energy, then it is termed as “kriya”.
Increasing order of consciousness in the following four dimensions of physicality:
- Bodily actions
- Mental
- Emotional
- Energetic
The moment we learn to perform action with the non-physical aspect of our life energy, we suddenly move to a new level of freedom within and outside of ourself.
The Yogic practices, which involve postures, breath, attitudes of the mind, and energy activation are essentially oriented toward aligning the first three layers of the body
- The physical
- The mental
- The energetic body
It is only in the aligning them that we find access to dimensions beyond the physical — to the fundamental life energy itself.
Kriya Yoga
Is arduous and inhuman.
Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya
Sadhguru spent 20 years in transforming this kriya so this could be made available widely.
If we follow the path of kriya very intensely without guidance, it may take few lifetimes to bear fruit. If we have someone to actively guide the process, kriya can be most powerful and magnificent way to explore the inner nature and mystical phenomena.
The Energy Labyrinth
The yogic system offers a comprehensive view of the anatomy of the human energy body. It has mapped:
72,000
channels (nadis) in the energy system. The prana or energy moves through these channels.
72,000 channels spring from 3 basic channels:
1. Pingla — on the right
2. Ida — on the left
3. Sushumna — central
Pingla is symbolized as the masculine.
Ida is symbolized as the feminine.
Masculine and feminine don’t refer to biological differences, but to certain qualities in nature that have been identified as such.
Pingla -> Outgoing / exploratory qualities
Ida -> Receptive / reflective
The pingla and ida are also symbolized as the sun and the moon
The sun representing the masculine/aggressive and outgoing.
The moon — calm
On the level of mind, Pingla represents the logical dimension; Ida represents the intuitive dimension.
These two qualities are the fundamentals of the physical sphere of life. A human being is complete only when both masculine and the feminine function at full force and are in proper balance.
Sushumna, the central nadi, is the most significant aspect of our physiology, yet it generally goes unexplored. It is independent of the 72,000 nadis, but it is the fulcrum of the whole system.
The nadis don’t have a physical manifestation. If we cut the body and look inside, we will not find them.
The chakras are powerful centers in the physiology where nadis meet in a particular way to create an energy vortex. Like the nadis, the chakras are of a subtle nature and don’t have a physical existence. They always meet in the form of a triangle.
There are 114 chakras in the body. Two are outside the body and 112 are within the body. Among these 112, seven are major chakras. For most people, 3 of these are active; the remaining are either dormant or mildly active. We can live quite a complete life with just a few of them. If we were to activate all 114 chakras, e would have no sense of body at all.
The purpose of yoga is to active our energy system in such a way that our body consciousness is constantly being lowered, so we can sit here in the body, but are no longer the body.
7 Chakras:
Sahasrara -> Crown chakra
Ajna -> Third eye chakra
Vishuddhi -> Throat chakra
Anahata -> Heart chakra
Manipuraka -> Solar plexus chakra
Swadhishthana -> Sacral chakra
Muladhara -> Root chakra
Muladhara -> located at perineum (space between anal outlet and genital organ)
Swadhishthana -> just above the genital organ
Manipuraka -> ¾ inch below the naval
Anahata -> Below the point where ribcage meets the diaphragm
Vishuddhi -> at the put of the throat
Ajna -> between eyebrows
Sahasrara -> also known as brahmarandra — front panel on the top of the head (where newborn infants have a soft spot)
Energies find expression through these chakras. Experience that happens withing us — anger, misery, peace, joy, and ecstasy are different levels of expressions of our life energies.
Dominant energies in different chakras result in different life aspects.
Muladhara -> Food and sleep
Swadhishthana -> pleasure (this means we enjoy physical reality in many ways)
Manipuraka -> Doer, we accomplish many things in the world
Anahata -> Creative person
Vishuddhi -> Power presence
Ajna -> Intellectually realized
Sahasrara -> Unexplained ecstasies
Life intensity increases as we go from Muladhara to up. It is misleading to speak of lower and higher chakras. It is like comparing the foundation of the building to the roof. The roof is not superior; the foundation is not inferior. In the physical body, our energies need to be in the muladhara to some extent.
At the same time, chakras have a spiritual dimension, not just a physical one. If we bring right amount of awareness to it, the same muladhara can be transformed to a point where we become absolutely free of the compulsive need for food and sleep.
Muladhara/Swadhishthana/Manipuraka => For keeping the body stable and rooted / associated with earth / self preservation
Vishuddhi / Ajna / Sahasrara => energies that draw us away from the pull of the earth / concerned with the longing for the infinite
Anahata -> Middle chakra is a balance between the two.
Anahata is symbolized by the two interlocking triangles, one pointing downward and another upward, forming a six-pointed star.
The vishuddhi chakra, located in the pit of our throat, literally means filters. If we vishuddhi becomes powerful, we have the ability to filter everything that enters us. Indian iconography depicts Adiyogi, or Shiva, with a blue throat, because he is capable of filtering all the poisons of the outside world and preventing them from entering his system by stalling them in his throat.
The seventh chakra, sahasrara, is actually located just outside the body. For most people, it is dormant. Through spiritual practice or a very intense way of living, we can activate this. This experience is no longer intellectual, it is experiential. There is a wide spectrum of spiritual practices in the yogic system that enables one to move one’s energies from chakra to another. However, from ajna to sahasrara, there is no path.
Sacred Science — Consecration (Sanskrit word: Pratishtha)
If we transform mud into food, we call this agriculture. If we make food into flesh and bone, we call this digestion. If we make flesh into mud, we call this cremation. If we make this flesh, or even a stone or empty space, into a higher possibility, this is consecration.
Modern science today tells us that everything is the same energy manifesting itself in a million ways. If that is so, what we call divine, what we call a stone, what we call a man or a woman or a demon, are all the same energy functioning in different ways. If we have the necessary technology, we can make the simple space around into a divine exuberance.
An enormous amount of knowledge about consecration has been perpetuated across generations since ancient times. This is because regardless of how good our life is, or how long we live, at some point the fundamental human longing to get in touch with source of creation will invariably assert itself. It is because of this awareness that Indian culture built numerous temples on every street. The idea was simply that no one should live in a space that is not consecrated.
All spiritual initiations have been aimed at consecrating this very flesh into a temple like space. After that, all that is needed is maintenance. To consecrate an inanimate object — a rock, for example, costs an enormous amount of life. Making huma beings into living temples is much more inexpensive and eco-friendly.
When people in the world are too distracted and unwilling to make themselves into living temples, building stone temples become necessary. The basic purpose of building a temple is to benefit the majority of people who have no spiritual practice in their lives.
Constant maintenance of consecrated stone, temple, deity is required.
Deity: Yantra (working energy form)
Traditional wisdom has always advised people against keeping stone idols at home. If we keep them, we must maintain them every day with the right kind of process. If a deity is consecrated through mantras and if the necessary maintenance doesn’t happen on a daily basis, then deity becomes a withdrawing energy and can cause immense hard to people who live in the vicinity.
Prana Pratishtha
Prana Pratishtha is different in that it uses our own life energies to consecrate something. This is the process Sadhguru used to consecrate Dhyanalinga with a subtle energy form with all chakras operating at their optimal capacity, at the Isha Yoga Center in Coimbatore.
The Indian temples were never places of prayer. This tradition that we had a shower first thing in the morning and went directly to the temple, sat there for a while, and then began our day. Temple was like a public battery charging space. Most people have forgotten this nowadays. They just go to temples, ask for something, bum-bounce on the temple floor and then leave. This is quite pointless. The idea is to sit and imbibe the energies of the temple.
All the space where we spend time should be consecrated. When we live in such a space, our evolution need not stick to the Darwinian scale; we can simply leapfrog ahead to a state of ultimate well-being and freedom.
In India, most ancient temples were built for Shiva or “that which is not”. Most of the temples don’t have any idol as such. They generally have a representative form, a longa.
The word linga means “the form”. When creation began to happen or when unmanifest became manifest, the first form that it assumed was an ellipsoid — which is what we call a linga. Modern cosmologists have identified that the core of energy galaxy is always an ellipsoid. | https://medium.com/@innerengineering/summary-of-sadhgurus-inner-engineering-book-6a4734aa9b97 | ['Praveen Kumar'] | 2021-03-11 19:47:42.503000+00:00 | ['Sadhguru', 'Adiyogi', 'Yoga', 'Inner Engineering', 'Spirituality'] |
How and why you should stop complaining | It is in the fallen human nature to complain. Many people are always complaining about something. Anything can become a subject of complaints; the weather, ourselves, other people, our circumstances, other people’s circumstances, the world events, and much more.
But what leads to complaining? A discontent heart; a heart that is not right with God.
With time we realize that there is a difference between complaining and putting a point forward. There is a difference between giving an opinion and complaining. With complaining, we are blaming everything and everyone else but ourselves.
Yes, we should rise up against any form of injustice or immoral conduct, but what is the condition of our hearts when we are doing or saying something. What do we want to achieve when we say something? Why do we say or do what we do? Complaining comes from a point of weakness or fear. Do we go telling everyone and anyone our problems? How do we say what we say? Does it come from a prideful and bitter heart?
The Bible warns against complaining.
For it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good pleasure. Do everything without complaining or arguing. So that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine as the light of the world. Philippians 2:13–15.
Complaining, just like gossip, is infectious. When one person starts complaining, it is like a wildfire, it becomes difficult to quench.
But what if we stop complaining and address the issue, do something about it, tell the person they did wrong, address the right people and in the proper manner? What if we stopped talking behind each other’s back and tell it to the person concerned? There is strength in addressing the right people; most of the time we tell the wrong people, who then go telling everyone else and it becomes a cycle.
If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. Matthew 18:16.
The first step is to address the person concerned.
The big question usually is; why are we doing what we are doing? Are we doing it to please other people even if what we are doing is wrong? Are we doing something just to hurt the other person? Are we doing or saying something just to make a person look bad in front of other people? We are told to do everything in love; love covers.
The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear-minded and sober, so you can pray. Above all, love one another deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without complaining. 1 Peter 4:7–9.
What if we address the right people or authorities? What if we pray for one another? What a big difference it would make!
The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions. On the lips of the discerning, wisdom is found. But a rod is for the back of him who lacks understanding. Wise men store up knowledge, but the mouth of the foolish, ruin is at hand. Proverbs 10:11–14.
The Israelites were always complaining. God provided for them in supernatural ways but they were always discontent.
The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost — also the cucumbers, melons, and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna! Numbers 11:4–6.
Then the Lord told Moses and Aaron, ‘How long will this wicked assembly keep complaining about me? I’ve heard the complaints of the Israelis that they’ve been murmuring against Me. So tell them that as long as I live — consider this to be an oracle from the Lord — as certainly as you’ve spoken right into My ears, that’s how I’m going to treat you. Your corpses will fall in this wilderness- every single one of you who has been counted among you, according to your number from 20 years and above, who complained against me. You will certainly never enter the land about which I made an oath with My uplifted hand to settle you in it, except for Jephunneh’s son Caleb and Nun’s son Joshua. Numbers 14:26–30.
Let us pray for wisdom. Before we say or do anything, let us pray for God’s guidance. Not everything needs to be said and we don’t have to listen to everything people are saying. We have to guard ourselves.
But understand this, that in the last days there will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 2 Timothy 3:1–5.
When we complain, we sow bad seeds. Yet we forget we reap what we sow. Let us sow good, for in due time we will get a bountiful harvest. Let us pray for contentment even in the midst of life’s storms. Let us use our tongues wisely. Let us guard our hearts at all times.
But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into the temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. So people, eager for money, have wandered from faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 1 Timothy 6:6–12.
Blessings.
Get my free guide: How to forgive someone who has hurt you deeply. Click Here to download.
Get free consultation about my Christian women coaching mentorship program. Click Here to get more information. | https://medium.com/christian-life-coaching/how-and-why-you-should-stop-complaining-48c573f6d882 | ["Vicky'S Forum"] | 2020-12-18 19:09:34.623000+00:00 | ['Thanksgiving', 'Thank God', 'Stop Complaining', 'Complaining', 'Give Thanks'] |
A Most Perfect Union: Just-In-Time Compilers | A most perfect union: just-in-time compilers.
The world of computer science always seems to come down to tradeoffs. Sometimes, we’re forced to choose between two data structures, algorithms, or functions that could both get the job done, but are very different in nature. At the end of the day, the thing that we’re really choosing between which things we care about and value the most — and which things we’re willing to sacrifice.
But it’s not just computer science that this truth applies to; it’s all of computing. Even if we’re not directly working with computer science concepts, we still have to make choices and weigh tradeoffs when it comes to our code and how we write it. On an broader level, we have to consider the pros and cons of different technologies, design decisions, and implementation strategies, too. Again: more tradeoffs!
But tradeoffs in technology aren’t all bad. Sometimes, they’re exactly what drives us forward. New frameworks and languages are often created just so that developers don’t need to choose between things — in other words, so that the tradeoffs we must choose between don’t have to be so steep in nature. Many technologies aim to make these choices easier and far less painful so that other programmers don’t need to pick between two very different ways of solving a problem. Instead, these new approaches try to take the best of both worlds and find a happy medium, all the while learning from and fusing together concepts that already exist in the world. In the world of computing, this has happened time and time again.
Perhaps the most interesting example of this is the union of the compiler and the interpreter; it combines two powerful technologies, and created something new, which we now know today as the just-in-time compiler.
A rare breed: the compiler-interpreter mix
Last week, we took a deeper look at the compiler and the interpreter, how both of them work, and the ways that allowed one — the compiler — to lead to the creation of the other — the interpreter. As it turns out, the history of the interpreter is intrinsically connected to what came soon afterwards: the just-in-time compiler.
We’ll recall that the interpreter was invented in 1958, by Steve Russell, who was working with a MIT professor at the time, named John McCarthy. McCarthy had written a paper on the Lisp programming language, and Russell had been drawn to working with his professor after reading his paper on the subject.
However, John McCarthy also wrote another paper called “Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine”, which was published in 1960. Although we can’t be entirely sure, this paper appears to contain some of the earliest references to just-in-time compilation.
The IBM 7094 operator’s console, © Wikimedia Foundation
Another early reference to just-in-time compilers appears in 1966, in the manual for the University of Michigan’s Executive System for the IBM 7090. The manual for this particular machine’s system explains how it is possible to both translate and load code while executing it, a clue that just-in-time compilers were already starting to be implemented on a more practical level by the mid 60’s!
Okay, but hang on a second — what exactly did that manual mean? We’ve looked at when and where the just-in-time compiler first showed up…but what even is a just-in-time compiler to begin with?
Well, a simple way to think about it is this: the just-in-time compiler (or JIT for short) is the child of it’s parents, the compiler and the interpreter.
Just-in-time compilers: a definition.
The JIT is a fusion or combination of the interpreter and the compiler, which are each two types of translators in their own right. A just-in-time compiler has many of the benefits of both of these two translation techniques, all rolled up into one.
We’ll recall that both the compiler and the interpreter do the work of translating a programmer’s source code into executable machine code, either by translating it in one shot (compiler), or by interpreting and running the code line-by-line (interpreter).
A compiler can act as a great translator because it makes code fast to execute; however, it has to translate all of the source code into a binary file first, before it can execute any of it, which can make it painful to debug something from the source when we only have machine code to work with.
On the other hand, the interpreter can directly execute pieces of code during runtime, which means that if something goes wrong, it can maintain the context of where the executed code was called when it is run. However, the interpreter has to retranslate code multiple times, which can make it slow and less efficient.
A JIT compared to its parents: the compiler and the interpreter.
So where does the JIT fit into this? Well, to start off, the JIT acts like one of its parents — namely, it acts like an interpreter at first, executing and re-running code as it is called. However, if the JIT finds code that is called many times and invoked repeatedly, it behaves like its other parent: the compiler.
The JIT acts like an interpreter until it notices that it is doing a bunch of repeated work. At that point, it behaves more like a compiler, and will optimize the repeatedly-called code by compiling it directly. This allows a JIT to pull in the best of both of its “parent” translators — the compiler and the interpreter. While it does begin by interpreting the source text, it does so in a special way. The JIT has to keep a careful watch on the code that it is running inline during interpretation.
A JIT needs to be able to answer the question:
Can I keep interpreting this code directly, or should I just go ahead and compile this so I don’t need to keep repeating the work of translating?
So how does it answer this sometimes difficult question? Well, the JIT keeps a close eye on what’s happening, and monitors or profiles the code that it is executing.
How the JIT initially interprets the code in a source text.
While the JIT is interpreting the code, it simultaneously monitors it. When it notices repeated work, it thinks to itself: “Hey! This is silly. I don’t need to do this unneccesary work. Let me be smart about how I deal with this code.”
Now, this seems great in theory. But how does the JIT know how to answer this question in practice, exactly? Time to find out!
Smoke leads to fire, fire leads to compilation
We know that a JIT has to keep a close eye on the code that it runs. But how exactly does it monitor what’s going on? Well, we might imagine what we would do if we were monitoring something from the outside: we’d probably have a piece of paper or a notepad and mark things as they happened in order to keep track of events as they happen.
The JIT does exactly that. It usually has an internal monitor that “marks” code that seems suspect. For example, if a section of our source code is called a few times, the JIT will make a note of the fact that this code is called often; this is often referred to as “warm” code.
The JIT uses warmth and heat to determine how to optimize our code!
By the same token, if some lines in our source code are run many, many times, the JIT will make a note of it by marking that section as “hot” code. By using these delimiters, the JIT can easily figure out which lines and sections of code could be optimized — in other words, could be compiled rather than interpreted— later on.
Understanding the value and usefulness of “warm” and “hot” code makes a lot more sense with an example. So, let’s take a look at an abstracted version of some source text, which could be in any language, and of any size. For our purposes, we can imagine that this is a very short program that is only 6 lines of code long.
How does the JIT know what to do with a hot line of code, a warm line, and a line that is never even called?
Looking at the illustration shown here, we can see that line 1 is called very, very often. The JIT will recognize pretty quickly that line 1 is “hot” code.
Line 4 , on the other hand, is never actually called; perhaps it is setting a variable that is never used, or is a line of code that never ends up being invoked. This is what is sometimes called “dead” code.
Finally, line 5 is sometimes called often, but not nearly as much as line 1 . The JIT will recognize that this is “warm” code, and could potentially be optimized in some way.
The JIT needs to consider what it should do with all of these lines of code so that it can figure out what is the best way to optimize. The reason that this consideration needs to be taken into account is that not all optimization is actually good. Depending on the efficiency with which the JIT decides to optimize, the optimization might not actually be all that helpful!
Let’s look at some of these lines to see how exactly the JIT could end up making a poor optimization choice if it isn’t clever enough.
Baseline compilation: a definition.
We’ll start with line 1 . In this situation, the code on line 1 is executed very, very often. Let’s say that the JIT notices (monitors) that this line is being repeated often. It will inevitably take that “hot” line of code and decide to compile it.
But the way that the JIT decides to compile this code is just as important as the fact that it is compiling it to begin with.
A JIT can perform different kinds of compilations, some of them quick, and some of them more complex. A quick compilation of code is often a lower-performance optimization, and involves compiling the code and then storing the compiled result without taking too much time. This form of quick optimization is known as baseline optimization.
However, if the JIT chose to do a baseline optimization of line 1 , how would that affect the runtime of our code overall? Well, the result of a poor optimization choice on line 1 would result in our runtime increasing and rising linearly (O(n)) as the number of calls to the method on line 1 increased.
Alternatively, the JIT could also perform a longer, more in-depth kind of performance optimization called optimizing compilation, or opt-compiling. Opt-compiling involves spending time up front and investing in optimizing a piece of code by compiling as efficient as possible, and then using the stored value of that optimization.
We can think of baseline compilation versus opt-compiling as two different approaches to editing an essay.
Baseline compilation is a little bit like editing an essay for spelling, punctuation, and grammar; we’re not doing an in-depth improvement of the essay, but we are making a few improvements. On the other hand, opt-compiling is akin to editing an essay for content, clarity, and readability — in addition to spelling and grammar. Opt-compiling takes more up-front work, but leads to a better end result.
The nice thing about opt-compiling is that, once we’ve compiled a section of code in the most optimized way possible, we can store the result of that optimized code and perpetually run that compiled code again and again. This means that no matter how many times we call a method in the section of code that we’ve optimized, it will take constant time to run that code since we’re really just running the same compiled file each time. Even as the number of method calls goes up, the runtime for code execution stays the same; this results in constant time (O(1)) for code that has been opt-compiled.
Optimizing compilation: a definition.
Based on the Big O Notation of opt-compiling alone, it might sound like opt-compiling should always be the way to go! However, there are some instances when opt-compiling can be wasted effort.
For example, what would happen if our JIT went ahead and started opt-compiling everything? We’ll recall that line 4 is never actually called and is “dead” code. If our JIT took the time up front to opt-compile line 4 , which is never even run, then it will spend an unnecessary amount of time in order to prematurely optimize a line of code that is never invoked. In this scenario, opt-compiling blindly, without taking a deeper look at what’s actually going on in the code and without relying on the hotness of the code itself ends up being rather wasteful!
So, what’s a JIT compiler to do? Well, ultimately, it needs to find a happy medium between baseline compilation and opt-compiling. This is exactly where the “hotness” of code comes into play.
Finding a happy medium between baseline and opt-compiling.
The JIT uses the “hotness” of a line of code in order to decide not just how important it is for that code to be compiled, but also which strategy — either baseline or opt-compiling—to use when it compiles.
A happy, hot path leads to optimal JIT compiling
We already know that the JIT uses the “hotness” of code in order to decide which kind of compilation strategy to use. But how does it make its decision, exactly?
Combining hotness and optimal compilation strategies!
For code that is neither “hot” nor “warm” — including code that is “dead” — the JIT will behave just like an interpreter, and won’t even bother making any compiler optimizations whatsoever.
But, for code that is “warm” but not “hot”, the JIT will use the quicker, baseline form of compilation during program execution. In other words, as it interprets this code and notices that is is “warm”, it sends it off to be compiled while the code is still being executed. It will compile that “warm” code in a simple way — the quickest, low-performance way possible. This means that it makes a slight improvement because even baseline compilation is better than nothing for “warm” code.
However, for code that is “hot” and called upon frequently, the JIT will make a note of this, and when it is called enough times, it will interrupt program execution (interpretation), and send that code to be opt-compiled — optimized in the best possible way, which also means more time invested in compilation up front. The benefit to this is that the “hot” code only needs to be optimized the one time, even though it is slightly more work to do so. Once the “hot” code has been optimized, the JIT will just keep reusing and rerunning the machine code for the optimized version again and again during runtime, without ever having to need to send it off to be recompiled again and again.
The basic rule of thumb to remember is this:
For code that is not called often, the JIT will use baseline compilation, which is faster. However, for code that is called frequently, the JIT will use the longer opt-compile method, because it knows that it is worth the effort.
The risk of dynamic translation.
Ever so rarely, the JIT will make a call that is incorrect. That is to say, it will determine that some piece of code is called enough to be opt-compiled, but as it turns out, maybe it isn’t! For example, if our JIT looks for lines of code called 5 times before it is opt-compiled, and it sees a line of code that is called 4 times, on the 5th time, it will likely send it off to be opt-compiled. In very rare occurrences, it might so happen that the line of code that it opt-compiled is never ever called again! In which case, all the work it put into compiling that line went to waste.
This is just a part of the story when it comes to dynamic translation, which is what just-in-time-compiliation happens to be. Every so often, the JIT could decide to pre-optimize a piece of code that won’t actually ever be called again. This is pretty rare though, because most lines of code are either called very frequently, or only a handful of times. It’s likely that most modern-day JITs can account for this very well, but it is possible for a JIT to be wrong every once in awhile.
Most of the time, a JIT is pretty good about knowing when it should behave like an interpreter and when it should take a piece of code and compile it. The nice thing about this is that our JIT allows us speed up only the things that need to be sped up. Just-in-time compliation allows us to optimize and compile the code that we run the most often.
Furthermore, it allows us to continue to hold onto the place in our source code where that compiled code was run in the first place! In other words, we can still reference where some compiled code was run.
The benefits of the just-in-time compiler!
For example, in the image above, our JIT determined that function one() is a high “hotness”, and can be opt-compiled to be more efficient. Even though function one() was compiled, we can still reference where that compiled came from in our source text. Effectively, if there are any errors in this compiled code, we now know where exactly it came from in the source text. Since the compilation happens during runtime, we can easily debug any errors or problems, because we know to look at function one() for clues, since the error is coming from the compiled code generated by this particular line.
The just-in-time compiler gives us the benefits of both worlds: it allows us to run fast code that can be optimized and executed via compilation, while still retaining the maintained context from the intepreter, which programmers love to have while debugging.
A JIT gives us the best of the interpreter and the compiler.
The JIT is a perfect example of every once in awhile we get lucky in comnputer science, and don’t have to choose between tradeoffs. Every so often, it turns out we can have our compiler and interpreter our code, too!
Resources
Even though the JIT compiler is implemented within languages that are commonly-used in computing today, it can be hard to find good resources that really explain what they are, how they work, and why they are important. There are, of course, some videos and articles that do a good job of answering these questions, but you have to dig a little bit to find them. Luckily, I did the digging for you! Here are some good places to start if you’re looking for further JIT-related reading. | https://medium.com/basecs/a-most-perfect-union-just-in-time-compilers-2938712a9f6a | ['Vaidehi Joshi'] | 2017-12-30 21:56:51.074000+00:00 | ['Interpreters', 'Compilers', 'Jit', 'Programming', 'Computer Science'] |
The Fetch.AI Test Network: Getting going | The Fetch.AI test network is live, and you can interact with it today. In order to get access, you must hold some FET ERC-20 tokens and be able to sign a message that proves this is the case. We have found that the browser extension MetaMask (in Chrome, Opera or Firefox) is the easiest and most straightforward way of doing this. This tutorial walks you through the process necessary to get access to the test network, its wallet app (on both Android and iOS) and the Network Participation App (NPA). It also shows how you get hold of test tokens on the test network so that you have tokens to play with, either to fuel your own development for creating agents or smart contracts, or fuelling the agents on the NPA to deliver their value. We created this article to talk more about the utility value of the token going forwards and also to discuss other ways of growing your tokens, both now with the ERC-20 FET tokens and in the future with the mainnet tokens.
Please note: the goal of this tutorial is for you to sign a message to demonstrate you have FET tokens. If you are already an expert and understand how to do this with your own favourite wallet, you can skip a lot (if not all) of the steps here.
First things first. MetaMask provides easy access to Ethereum in your browser. It’s a wallet in its own right and lets you easily interact with Ethereum applications directly in your browser. You will already have your own, secure, way of storing your FET tokens and other tokens or cryptocurrencies, probably involving cold storage or hardware wallets. Getting set up with MetaMask is best done by adding it to your browser, going through its well documented installation instructions, and then sending it a small amount of ETH and FET to get you going (e.g., 0.2 ETH and 100 FET). When you are adding FET support into MetaMask, you will want to click on the burger menu (top left), then scroll down to the bottom and press “Add Token”. Then select “Custom Token” and add the token with the following information:
Token contract: 0x1d287cc25dad7ccaf76a26bc660c5f7c8e2a05bd
Token symbol: FET
Decimals of precision: 18
Then send yourself enough ETH and FET to be able to get work done on the Ethereum network. You can do this from your existing wallets or exchange.
Then, in the browser with MetaMask installed, go to the home page of the Fetch.AI community web site:
Click on the “Get Testnet Access” button to proceed to the next step.
You can log in with either your Github account or Google account. Pick the one you prefer and follow any instructions necessary to connect if you are not already connected.
Please note: If you do not have MetaMask installed, you’ll see this form. Look up how to sign a challenge with your particular wallet combination.
Once authenticated, you will see a screen like this:
Here, Fetch.AI is asking to connect to your MetaMask account. Read what is shown carefully, confirm it is as you expect and press “Connect”. This takes you to the next screen, where you will be shown a message that needs to be “signed” with your private key that shows you have ERC-20 FET tokens.
Press the “Request access” button to proceed. This will re-open MetaMask:
If the message isn’t automatically populated, copy and paste it from the browser window into MetaMask. If you are not using MetaMask, this is where you will pass the message through whatever procedure you would normally use to achieve such a thing. Press the “Sign” button to continue.
You will then be taken to this token verification holding page. This process can take up to 24 hours, but we are developing systems that can complete it in seconds. You will need to occasionally refresh the page, but when access is granted, you will see a QR code. It is this QR code that you scan into the Wallet app in order to gain access. There is a further step where we will need your testnet wallet address in order to send you test tokens for you to work with.
As you can see here, you get a QR code and a box to paste in a wallet address. So do this in these steps:
Start the Wallet Scan the QR code for access Feed in your wallet address to receive tFET test tokens
This process is the same for both the Wallet app and the Network Participation App, except you need not request tFET test tokens for the Network Participation App.
If you run into any difficulties, please contact us at [email protected] or post any questions in our Telegram channel or our other social platforms.
Welcome! | https://medium.com/fetch-ai/the-fetch-ai-test-network-getting-going-7487f347278 | [] | 2019-03-25 15:46:41.141000+00:00 | ['Metamask', 'Ethereum', 'Test Network', 'Erc20', 'Community'] |
Let’s Talk About pHUMP? | We’ve had many questions in our Discord that we will address with articles like this one as well as upcoming community calls. Today we’re going to talk about pHUMP and its importance to Whale.Loans.
Overview
pHUMP is to Whale.Loans what pOHM is to Olympus DAO. It was the token given out during our private sale. Our private round was for partners who aligned with our vision and are willing to help us successfully achieve our goals. This money was raised for things like audits, development, marketing and things like that. So we would like to issue a special thank you to Impossible Finance, LD Capital, DeSpread, Efficient Frontier, and a handful of other individual partners.
How it works
As you know, we cannot pre-mine HUMP. So we issued pHUMP which is a derivative of HUMP. pHUMP gives the holder the option to mint HUMP by burning pHUMP and providing the intrinsic value of HUMP. For example, an investor would provide 1 BUSD and 1 pHUMP to mint 1 HUMP.
pHUMP is worth the price of HUMP minus the intrinsic value, and it only makes sense to redeem it when HUMP is above intrinsic value.
The best thing about pHUMP is that it can’t be redeemed all at once and dumped onto the market. pHUMP is vested based on supply. This creates the best incentives for all parties involved. pHUMP is vested along with supply, and are only redeemed when we trade with a positive intrinsic value. We the team, investors and advisors, don’t only want the supply to increase, or the price to go up, we want both. And so do you.
The Specifics
The team, investor, and advisors pHUMP cumulatively vest as 10.5% of HUMP supply. This means that at 1m HUMP supply, a maximum of 105k pHUMP can be redeemed. At 10m HUMP supply, it’s 1.05m pHUMP. There’s a lot of upside for holders, but it is dependent on actual growth of the protocol.
The breakdown is as follows:
Team: 200m pHUMP and 6.5% supply
Investors: 250k pHUMP and 3% supply
Advisors: 100k pHUMP and 1% supply
Ultimately we decided on lower numbers than Olympus DAO because we were not the originators of this token design and we believe we can innovate and build a scalable ecosystem with less.
The Plan
These funds and resources will be used to support and build out our ecosystem. The treasury will be completely separate and will never be used for business purposes such as marketing or salaries.
In the near future, our focus will be on increasing usability. Our ultimate goal will be to onboard a user into any of our products in 1–3 clicks. We are also working on gas optimizations to help users save on gas fees. Most importantly, we want to focus on security for users as well as the protocol so creating products with insurance baked into them for user protection is a top priority. Also, in addition to regular audits we’ll be creating a bug bounty program as a serious measure of protocol safety. These things must be done first before we roll out additional products. Over the next couple of articles we are going to talk more about current and future products and infrastructure that will shape our ecosystem. To stay update on our launch, news and announcements visit:
Website: https://whale.loans
Discord: https://discord.com/rFzNx4wRtK
Twitter: https://twitter.com/whaleloans
Legal Disclaimers
The information provided in this Medium Post pertaining to Whale Loans,
Inc. (“Whale Loans” or the “Company”), its crypto-assets, business assets,
strategy, and operations, is for general informational purposes only and is not
a formal offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities,
options, futures, or other derivatives related to securities in any
jurisdiction and its content is not prescribed by securities laws. Information
contained in this Medium Post should not be relied upon as advice to buy or
sell or hold such securities or as an offer to sell such securities. This
Medium Post does not take into account nor does it provide any tax, legal or
investment advice or opinion regarding the specific investment objectives or
financial situation of any person. Whale Loans and its agents, advisors,
directors, officers, employees and shareholders make no representation or
warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy of such information and Whale Loans expressly disclaims any and all liability that may be based on such information or errors or omissions thereof. Whale Loans reserves the right to amend or replace the information contained herein, in part or entirely, at any time, and undertakes no obligation to provide the recipient with access to the amended information or to notify the recipient thereof. The information contained in this Medium Post supersedes any prior Medium Post or conversation concerning the same, similar or related information. Any information, representations or statements not contained herein shall not be relied upon for any purpose. Neither Whale Loans nor any of its representatives shall have any liability whatsoever, under contract, tort, trust or otherwise, to you or any person
resulting from the use of the information in this Medium Post by you or any of
your representatives or for omissions from the information in this Medium Post.
Additionally, the Company undertakes no obligation to comment on the
expectations of, or statements made by, third parties in respect of the matters
discussed in this Medium Post. | https://medium.com/whale-loans/lets-talk-about-phump-2d90e407a80a | ['Whale Loans'] | 2022-01-04 16:15:20.700000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Defi', 'Binance Smart Chain', 'Bsc', 'Crypto'] |
Three Poems of Fertile Darkness | Silent Knowledge
The soul, let’s say,
is that part of us who knows
we will die…
Duende!
How strange and sweet to acknowledge
such a darkness –
My ghost already here,
my heart beating just as lively
as your own.
*
The New Flesh
The soul is a stone.
When a body dies
the soul goes hurtling through space.
The eyes are stone.
When a body dies
the eyes drift down brightly,
but the lake has no bottom.
When we die
our breath turns into feathers
falling in someone’s dream.
The dream is our own
sprung loose from flesh.
The dream keeps happening
without us,
within us,
within the New Flesh.
*
The Achievement of Love
The achievement of love comes in moments.
It is not accomplished once and for all,
forever!
Has the universe reached its destination?
If one soul has grief,
then two souls also have grief.
It is never the end.
The crow flies, and flies, and flies…
* | https://medium.com/melodious-bardo/fertile-darkness-99c09bfdf817 | ['Stephen Podry'] | 2020-12-22 17:09:37.438000+00:00 | ['Grief Support', 'Grief', 'Love', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Poetry'] |
And so it begins... | I have genuinely never thought I’d be capable of creating a newsletter. I love curating stuff, but it’s always been limited to just sending it to my friends and talking about things with them. But now I feel like I’ve made the right choice, even if it’s slightly nerve-wracking.
To start with, I’m going to share my favorite poem of all time; Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Isn’t it so lovely? So reassuring? Tomorrow I’ll be sending out an email on forgiveness, especially forgiveness of one self and if holding grudges is really worth the hassle.
Until then, I hope this poem comforts you in its own beautiful ways.
Have a good night!
Amulya. | https://medium.com/dreamlands/and-so-it-begins-714c01756176 | ['Amulya Raghavan'] | 2021-04-07 15:28:05.049000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'First Post', 'Poetry', 'Mary Oliver'] |
Beside the Health Crisis, What Else the Asian Americans Have to Face During the COVID-19 Pandemic | Beside the Health Crisis, What Else the Asian Americans Have to Face During the COVID-19 Pandemic Ophelia Xie Jun 3, 2020·9 min read
New York City Chinatown has been fairly empty since Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the “stay-home” order. Some, who wore face masks, are afraid to go outside due to the increased anti-Asian harassment cases.
ZhenYu Zhou, a student at New York University, experienced the coronavirus outbreak in China, and returned to New York in late January. When he heard about the first confirmed case in Brooklyn in early March, he started to wear a face mask.
One day after class, Zhou saw a middle aged man staring and shouting at him on the R train from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Zhou did not catch the exact words from the man, but he recognized the man saying “Chinese” followed by an offensive slur. Zhou remained silent as he feared the man would come up and attack him. When the train arrived at the stop where Zhou usually gets off, he replied to the man with “I love you, too,” and walked out of the train as soon as the subway door opened.
“I was afraid that the man would follow me and hit me,” Zhou said. “So I walked fast, really fast, until I saw the subway door closed, and the man was still on the train.”
A few days later, Zhou found out about a man spitting on his friend’s face in the street.
Starting in March, the growing number of pandemic-related assaults against the Asian and Pacific Islander American community has them fearing for their safety.
Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans, such as the Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian people, face the same threat as they share similar racial features. A 23-year-old Korean woman was punched in the chin by a woman who said, “Where is your fucking mask?” in midtown Manhattan, according to a report on ABC News on March 11.
A few days later, a 47-year-old Asian man was beaten by a man in front of his 10-year-old son in Queens. The New York police arrested the attacker, who referred the victims as “you f — king Chinese,” and asked where their masks were.
Prior to the pandemic, the New York State Hate Crime Task Force reported less than 15 anti-Asian hate crimes annually from 2014 to 2018, according to data collected by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS).
After hearing the assault of the 23-year-old Korean woman in Manhattan, Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed the New York State Police Hate Crimes Task Force to assist the city police department and investigate the incident.
The New York City Police Department released the city hate crimes report of the first quarter in 2020, showing they have investigated 11 pandemic-related bias attacks against Asians, and have arrested 9 anti-Asian attackers across the city.
“However, we also know there may be hate crimes that are not being reported,” the New York City Police Department Chief of Detectives, Rodney Harrison said in a tweet.
As of April 15, the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council (A3PCON) received 250 reports of Coronavirus-related discrimination from Asian Americans in New York state and 1,497 nationwide.
A3PCON, an organization that advocates the rights for Asian and Pacific Islander American community in Los Angeles, established a “STOP AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) HATE” reporting center on Mar.19. Since the day it was established, the reporting center has tracked almost 1,500 coronavirus-related incidents targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across the country in one month.
Incidents from California and New York, the two states with the largest Chinatowns, have made up 58 percent of all the reports.
“The volume of incident reports continues to be concerning. But, beyond the sheer numbers, we hear the impact of hate in the pain, humiliation, trepidation and fear in the voices of AAPIs today,” the Executive Director of A3PCON, Manjusha Kulkarni stated in the report. “This is a widespread problem with significant ramifications for our communities.”
The Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), a New-York-based organization that provides social services to Chinese American, immigrant, and low-income communities, is also aware of the rising reports of the anti-Asian hate crimes.
“We have heard from our community of people experiencing incidents of violence that have not been reported due to fears of additional retaliation, people not having trust in the system to report, or facing language access barriers when they’re trying to report,” said Amy Torres, the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the CPC.
Torres said the over-the-phone interpretation services have hindered the victims of hate crimes to report the attacks they have been through.
“We’ve heard of people calling 311 in non-emergency situations asking for interpretation in Korean, but they got a Japanese interpreter instead,” Torres said.
Other than language barriers, some immigrants fear their immigration status or naturalization status may change if they call the emergency hotline for help, Torres said.
“Our community has always been seen as an outsider, and this is from the very beginning of Asian Americans coming to this country,” Torres added. “There’s a long legacy of using Asian Americans as a touchstone for setting off other incidents of hateful policy and discriminatory policy.”
The “Yellow Peril” period exercised an racial exclusion of East Asians throughout U.S. history in the 19th century, when Westerners felt threatened by the East Asian immigrants who offered to work for lower wages in the railroads compared to the Western workers. The threat later led to the Chinese Exclusion in 1882 that prohibited the Chinese immigrating to the U.S..
John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats wrote in The Margins that the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 is “a broader culture of political scapegoating” in U.S history.
“Reformers sought to assimilate new European immigrants into ‘American’ standards of living, blaming poor living conditions and crime on Old World cultures, not the poverty of the industrializing machine,” Yeats and Tchen wrote.
Today, Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., held President Donald Trump and his fellow officials accountable for bringing up the anti-Asian rhetoric in the nation by naming the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and “Kung-flu,” rather than focusing on the precautions of the epidemic.
“I have repeatedly called on public officials — from the President to the top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives — to abstain from using derogatory language that demonizes Asian Americans,” Meng stated in a press release. “This must stop.”
After a few weeks of using the term “Chinese virus” in his public announcement, President Trump tweeted to call for protecting the Asian communities from the pandemic-related attacks, saying that “they are amazing people.” In a separate tweet, he said the spread of COVID-19 “is NOT their [the Asian Americans] fault.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. tried to promote tourism in Chinatown, San Francisco in February. Two months later, the president criticized Pelosi’s past visit to Chinatown, and said she should be “responsible for many deaths.”
Yeats and Tchen described how today’s U.S. political parties often target a minority group as the “easy-to-hate scapegoat” to calm the anxiety of the majority Americans when dealing with national dilemmas. Amid the pandemic crisis, the Chinese Americans have become the scapegoat of the virus outbreak in the U.S., resulting in the growing number of anti-Asian assaults.
Media have also played a role of escalating the anti-Asian discrimination within the country, Torres said.
“Whenever there have been COVID-19 reports, media outlets are using pictures of Chinatown, and that’s not where the first cases of COVID-19 happened in New York State,” Torres said.
The New York Post posted a photo of an Asian man wearing a mask in Queens to report the first New York confirmed case. The story itself reported a 30-year-old Manhattan woman got infected with coronavirus in Iran.
“It is causing people who already have hate in their hearts to feel emboldened,” Torres said. “They feel that if the President is saying it, and if they are seeing it in the news, it is okay for them to harm people, and they feel the bravery to act it out in public.”
Lisa Nishimura, a senior at John Jay College, has suffered from anxiety and severe chronic depression before the COVID-19 pandemic. She said maintaining her mental health amid the recent anti-Asian rhetoric is even more challenging.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty and also a lot of anxiety in terms of my health, my safety and being able to survive financially, mentally and physically,” Nishimura said.
“As an Asian Latinx woman, hearing stories like this has made me afraid to go outside my house at times when I need to get essential things such as food or medication,” Nishimura said. “I often find myself making up scenarios like what I would do to protect myself to de-escalate a situation if it gets to a violent turning point.”
The reported anti-Asian incidents include verbal harassment, shunning of Asian people or Asian businesses, and physical harassment, according to A3PCON. The physical assaults along with the motivation constitute the state definition of bias-motivated hate crimes.
After being verbally attacked in the subway and hearing about his friend being spitted on, Zhou became afraid of leaving the house during the pandemic.
“We can’t really prevent these discrimination,” Zhou said. “it is unrealistic to protect ourselves by bringing a knife outside. The best option for us is to stay at home, unfortunately.”
Some chose to protect themselves by purchasing weapons. A New York Times report revealed the gun market in Washington, D.C. and Maryland was flooded during the pandemic. A number of gun shop owners said they have seen a number of Chinese Americans coming in to buy guns for the first time.
When dealing with “uncomfortable” speech against the Asian community, Fan Xia, a Chinese international student at SUNY New Paltz, refused to remain silent. In late January, Xia was in New York worrying about her family during the epidemic outbreak in China. A few Chinese international students told Xia that they were offended by a professor’s speech about coronavirus during class.
Fearing other Chinese students might have also been offended by the professor’s comments, Fan Xia decided to tell the college president their feelings over that professor’s speech.
Xia recalled the first time she walked into the college president’s office, the president was not there. A staff member suggested Xia write to the president for a better response.
But other Chinese international students, including Xia’s friends, refused to put their names on the letter as they worried about causing too much attention. They discouraged her from writing it.
“And it made me even angrier,” Xia said.
A few days before Xia sent out the letter, the SUNY New Paltz President heard of her report from his staff. He sent out a campus-wide email to address Xia’s anger and worry.
“We want to express our support for our students who have been impacted by negative comments, or who are worried about loved ones at home,” the college president stated in the email.
Xia urged everyone to speak up if they face a similar situation.
“Everyone is born equal,” Xia stated in her social media. “It is your silence that provides a chance for someone to attack you.”
New York Attorney General Lettia James launched a hate crime hotline to combat the rise of the coronavirus-related harassment and discrimination in mid-March.
“No one should live in fear for their life because of who they are, what they look like, or where they come from.” James said in a statement.
“I’m urging all New Yorkers to come together, call virus the coronavirus, and report those who would use this uncertain time to make racist, xenophobic or biased attacks to the hotline,” Rep. Meng said in the press release.
Gov. Cuomo has invested $2 million to support the State Police Hate Crimes Task Force as the budget season ended on April 3, hoping to ease the rise of bias-motivated threats, harassment and violence throughout New York state.
“Violence is not an answer to violence. And I think what we really need, during the time of crisis, and in order to have community healing after the time of crisis, is open dialogue,” Torres said.
Torres said CPC and a few organizations also offer upstander training sessions to encourage the bystanders to “intervene and de-escalate” the harassment happening around them.
“We make sure that the perpetrator knows that people are watching, that they won’t get away with this type of behavior, and that the public will hold them accountable,” Torres said. | https://medium.com/@xiey1_64641/beside-the-health-crisis-what-else-the-asian-americans-have-to-face-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-f81d969a70ca | ['Ophelia Xie'] | 2020-06-03 20:49:45.402000+00:00 | ['New York', 'Covid 19', 'Covid 19 Crisis', 'Asian American', 'Anti Asian Racism'] |
Golden Chain Gladiators | Like Doomed gladiators, we’re never free
We kill or die, no way to flee
Cause men yeah we’re made o’ meat
We all fear him…
The grim reaper, these cold streets
We know God’s round the corner…
n we scared to meet
You’re livin too, so you know the deal
To keep him away, you too would steal
Even a life… ya we could kill
But we freeze when we move
Cause comfort ya it keeps us still
So Come on put on that golden chain
Look all around you…just be the same
No? Uh-oh you’ve gone insane!
Promised me I’ll be free…one more win
These endless hoops, we jumpin in
Just Wanna be free…but NO thats a sin
You know, I think it’s all a lie
yo games ain’t fair, fuck it I aint gon’ try
Never those chains… ya I’d rather die
Our fears are loud
We hear em’ whisper
They too strong… but please remember
Kanye, Hopsin, Jordan
Freddie, Michael, Rogan
Ali, Tyson, Eminem
you believe… and YEA you will ascend!
But Come on put on that golden chain
Ya you don’t need it, dont really need your brain
Look around you…just do the same
No? Uh-oh you’ve gone insane!
Searchin for a reason
Somethin to gain
wish I could live my life
YA FUCK YOU! I’m still sane!
Now just playin… my own game
it kills me though… You’re all the same
Alzheimers…only remember your name
I wanna be free, live out my passion
I wanna make love, wanna die laughin
I’ve always thought that was the way
But maybe it’s time, I’ll go away
COME ON BITCH
DONT EVER surrender
never give in to greed
Luxury? nah we’re all you need!
We’re all winners, not too long ago
The hardest race…
we all won, heres a reminder
Mommas egg, first place n we blow
YOU CAN! DO IT CHAMP! COME ON! GO!
Come on put on that golden chain
Talkin bout them feelins gain
Look all around you…you can be the same
Take some pills ‘fore you go insane
But I say dream darlin, hope’s all you need
Find your light n join me
Let go, I promise you will see
We’re all one baby
Shockingly…free | https://medium.com/warlockworld/like-doomed-gladiators-were-never-free-we-kill-or-die-no-way-to-flee-cause-men-yeah-we-re-made-o-3f5eedd2b69c | ['Talk To Warlock'] | 2017-10-25 02:55:13.050000+00:00 | ['Songs', 'Freedom', 'Music', 'Rap', 'Life'] |
Setting Goals That Are Right For You | Setting goals sounds simple, but there are many areas that we need to consider at the start to ensure that they are the right goals for us and actually our goals.
At times balancing multiple responsibilities, or having ‘other things to do’ often means our goals gets lost as just something else that doesn’t get done.
Or for some the issues is even finding the time to think about what your goals should be, or remembering what they would have been before work, kids, COVID hit.
Setting Your Goal.
We need to ask ourselves the right questions so that our goals are truly in line for us. To decide the goal itself.
Where do I want to be in 5 years time? What is it that I would like to be doing? Where would I like my life to be?
Think BIG, think BOLD, think out of the box! Try not to let the foundations of your world around you now or any constraints hold you back.
So, let’s ask that again….
What is it that you would REALLY like to be doing?
Is actually This YOUR Goal?
We can often find ourselves in a position where we have been driven by other people’s expectations of us, our family, friends, partner or society. However when we really dig a bit deeper we realise that what we are doing isn’t what we really want to be doing but what others expect of us or what we thought they did.
With this in mind it is key to check that the goal that we have in mind really is what WE TRULY want to do.
Ask yourself these questions:
Are these my goals or someone else’s? Is this what I want to do or what someone else expects of you? Does this goal hugely motivate and excite me? Is it something that I would feel greatly accomplished for achieving?
When you reach that point when asking yourself, this is the goal for YOU.
The Impact On Your Life & Others.
The next consideration is how would you doing this impact those around you. How would achieving it change your life, or family life or availability to do what you currently do?
Would that impact then not be something that you want to happen? Sometimes thinking this part through can again highlight that this isn’t your goal. Or the end goal isn’t the future you see.
Having an awareness of this and a consideration of this means that you can be prepared for how this may change your life and the considerations you need to bring in to your goal setting plan.
Talking to those doing this impacts and bringing them in to the loop can be a great way to make sure that you have had the right conversations and at the same time you have also added in some accountability that you will be working on this goal. A double wammy!
If someone is not happy to support you in your new venture or find workarounds to help make it happen, this raises a few questions for sure.
We have all heard the advice around surrounding yourself with people that support you and RAISE YOU UP, not those who will hold you back or down. Sometimes we can change as the people that we surround ourselves we outgrow, any true friend or relationship will be on your team.
Summary.
Taking time to think through your goals can mean that you are truly sure that this is something for you. A smart decision that takes you forward to the world you wish to create for yourself, from the core. | https://medium.com/@sianwinfield/setting-goalsthat-are-right-for-you-f8c3d14f171 | ['Sian Winfield'] | 2021-06-17 16:01:53.314000+00:00 | ['Authenticity', 'Goals In Life', 'Goals', 'Goal Setting'] |
Doing Good in a Godless World | I begin with the premise there is no god, no supreme being, no deity. I begin with that premise because I have found no persuasive evidence to indicate such a supernatural being exist.
What does that leave? Apparently it leaves us in a godless world, one with natural, not supernatural explanations. That would mean existence is impersonal, without care, concern, or any emotion.
A lecture I was listening to, about debates between skeptics and believers throughout the ages, put it this way: Maybe there are just some people doomed to go their whole life without being happy. And the universe just doesn’t care.
But does that mean we live in a universe devoid of caring, concern, love or similar things? It does not. My very first thought was this means for such things to exist we must create them.
Prayer is useless when action is needed. If there are people in the world who hunger we can’t appeal to a god, we must find a way to feed them. If there are people who are oppressed and mistreated, then we must work for justice.
But just as my thoughts went in that direction I realized I was engaging in another fiction, one not dissimilar to the assumption of a deity. We can’t do anything. There is no us. There is just me, at least in my case. In your case there is just you. There are only millions of “I’s” not one big We.
There is no collective brain, no one body shared by the many. If action is taken then someONE takes it. SomeONE wills it. SomeONE encourages others, who then cooperate but each of them chooses to act as another ONE. Working in harmony does not negate the fact that individuals, not collectives, choose to act.
I am not saying some sort of collective action is impossible. Politics is the attempt to make non-consenting collective action possible. True, some degree of collective political action can achieve a smattering of the objectives those who coordinate it wish to achieve. But, it is too easily corrupted. As I have argued the concentration of power, which is what politics is, works to the benefit of the powerful, not the powerless. When we cease to act as individuals we corrupt the very good we are attempting to do.
The system of coercive coordination is inherently counterproductive and riddled with perverse incentives. Not even the best of intentions can save the process. The problem is systemic in nature. Having the right desires will not change the system. It is not a matter of changing personnel, it is a matter of changing methodologies from that of coercion to that of cooperation.
State action is not cooperation, but the opposite of cooperation. The slave didn’t cooperate with his master; he obeyed him. A woman doesn’t cooperate with a rapist, she is subdued by a greater force. Cooperation, that is non-coercive coordination, exists only because individuals consent to act together.
Not only is the god concept a fiction of a similar kind to the collectivistic concept; they also share another trait in common. Both are attempts to evade responsibility. If action must be taken then I must take it. If injustice is to end then I must work to end it. I can’t pass this responsibility off to a deity or to the collective “we.”
A godless world does not mean a loveless world, it means what love exists in the world must come from each of us as individuals. It is not possible for me to love everyone, but I can love where it is possible. It is not possible for me to develop the whole world and create universal prosperity. But it is possible for me to help one small part of the world to develop economically and to help make that portion of the world a better place. I can’t heal the sick, but I can help make healing possible. I can’t end all injustice, but I can fight it where I see it. I can’t be all-things to all-people, but I can be something to someone.
True, when famine sends children to bed hungry, or worse, the universe doesn’t care.
But I do.
When that great collective action, known as war, rips families apart, rains devastation on vast numbers of people, and sends young men to premature and senseless deaths, the universe does not care.
But I do.
When bullies beat someone for being black, gay, Jewish, or just different, the universe doesn’t care
But I do.
When organized bullies of moral majoritarians do the same to those they hate, through the political process, the universe does not care.
But I do.
And because I do, I must act. I can’t pass that off to a god who isn’t there, or the collective “we.” I must make the choice to take action.
I can hope that everyone will act the same way, but I must act as if no one will. I can’t choose for others, I can only choose for myself. And I choose to act.
What choice do you make?
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Your support to fund these columns is important, visit our page at Patreon. | https://medium.com/the-radical-center/doing-good-in-a-godless-world-26eee76ca075 | ['James Peron'] | 2021-03-22 20:18:30.459000+00:00 | ['Charity', 'Morality', 'Kindness'] |
The Rabbit’s Foot | This short story appeared in the now-defunct Recess Magazine in 2008.
White rabbits are supposed to be lucky, aren’t they?
We were playing in the back field after school, the four of us, booting around a football we’d stolen from the gym. We hid it in the boxwoods by the rugby shed. The ball had once been tight and hard, perfect to kick and send sailing with the toe of your sneaker even. But being in the damp and resting on the ground, its hexagons were peeling up. It was soft as an old puffball mushroom. When you kicked it, it made the sound of a punch in the stomach. So we booted it down the pitch, the ball going oof, oof. Hennessey as usual out front, pretending to be David Beckham. We all despised Beckham. He was too pretty for us, too popular. There was a red robin singing in one of the bare branches. The field was mostly black clay and mud. Spring not yet arrived.
Hennessey tried to balance the football on his toe, missed. The football rolled away.
“Pass it!”
“Pass it, Hennessey!”
Hennessey punted it to Barton, who juggled it between his loafers. Barton’s family had money, so he wore leather shoes instead of plain canvas. We told him it made him look queer, whenever he got the high exam score. Light in the Loafers, we called him, though secretly we envied them, the polished cordovan with the braided tassel on the toe. Barton passed it to O’Leary, who passed it to Wilkes. The four of us, we’d been together since nursery school. Our mums lived on the same cul-de-sac in the same cardboard neighborhood. It really was made of cardboard. Our older brothers or our dads, when they got angry, could put a fist in the wall like punching through a cereal box.
Wilkes batted the football back and forth. He wore a beat-up pair of Adidas, which we would have been jealous of but we knew his mum had got them second-hand at a cheap rummage sale. Wilkes was the best at football, good enough for the games instructor to ask him when he was going to join up, try out for the boys’ team. We didn’t like the games instructor. He was a big, red-faced man shaped like a plucked pigeon. He wanted to be called Coach but we called him Cunt behind his back.
Wilkes was going to be famous, you could see it in the quick movement of his toes. Wilkes was going to be on the national football teams, the ones with the names people wore on their scarves. United. National. David Beckham was making over three million pounds a season, we read it in a magazine.
O’Leary shouted, “Here comes the Bleeding Irishman from up the sideline!” He made a sprint for Wilkes. “He’s overtaking Wilkes! Passing him!” He tried to toe the football out from under Wilkes’ feet. We laughed when he fell to the ground. O’Leary was half-Irish. His father, we told him, was a drunk. We’d take turns staggering around with an empty ginger beer bottle, slurring at each other. “I’m Mishter O’Leary,” we’d say. Even O’Leary had to do it. “How’sh about another shnifter of sherry?” O’Leary liked to make jokes. He was the funniest, the one who could make you laugh even in class when everyone else was dead quiet and the teacher was looking to see who was making noise. Being disruptive.
It wasn’t quite the season for swallows, they came in midsummer. They flew over the grass when there was grass on the field. We watched them, running to catch them. Their wings cut the grass just in front of our feet, catching bugs too tiny to see. Hennessey once swore he’d managed to kick one, but we knew he was a liar. We gave him a punch in the shoulder for it, because lying was one of the deadliest sins.
Oof, oof.
“Pass it!”
Oof.
“Wilkes, I saw your pa leaving early this morning.” That was O’Leary. They lived in houses exactly next to each other, not across the way like the other two. Their mums traded magazines and did laundry sharing the same washline.
“He’s gone to town,” Wilkes said. We saw him get a little wrinkle in the middle of his forehead, straight up-and-down like the feather on an Indian.
“What for? Gotta job?” Wilkes’ father was on the dole. He’d worked in the foundry like our fathers until he got scorched and had to go on the dole. One of his legs was burned black, the skin gone to tar under his trousers. It was hard to look at him, sitting in his usual chair in front of Wilkes’ house’s television. It gave us the willies.
“Gone to pick up a car,” Wilkes said.
“What car?” Hennessey.
Wilkes had the ball again. He was batting it lightly between his Adidas, putting one toe on top of it and then hopping over. We’d seen some African do it in the World Cup. Wilkes was the only one of us who could master the trick.
“Gotta new car,” Wilkes said. The little wrinkle on his forehead looked purple for a moment, like he’d drawn on himself with a lilac crayon. “For the job. His job’s giving him a car, new suit. We might move to the city on account of it.”
There was nothing too special about Wilkes, apart from football. His skin wasn’t any clearer than ours, He didn’t own a necktie, like Barton, or have a straight nose like O’Leary. He didn’t look like a city pouf. We all wanted his luck.
“Why’s your dad got a job all of a sudden?” Barton asked.
O’Leary said maybe Mister Wilkes’ leg had gone white again, and we laughed. Wilkes didn’t say anything. His whole forehead was purple now, and he pointed his face at the ground. He tapped the ball off to Hennessey. Hennessey was the biggest of us, the only one who’d got his nose broken. He’d got an elbow in the face during a rugby scrum and had to leave the game with his jersey covered in blood. We’d never seen so much blood all at once. It wasn’t like scraping your knee. It covered Hennessey’s whole chin. Since then we’d all been a little bit afraid of him.
“Why would you leave?” Hennessey asked. Wilkes shrugged.
“Maybe got tired of it,” he said. We felt a prickle in our palms.
Hennessey booted the ball hard, too far ahead of himself. We weren’t chasing it now. We were getting near the edge of the pitch, where the trees began to crop together. They were still mostly bare. We’d thrown some kid’s, Hassan’s, scarf into the branches on recess once. It still hung there, stiff and colorless from the winter rain. Hassan had had to walk home without it, with us walking behind him to make sure he didn’t try to get it back. The skin on the back of his neck was red, but whether from shame or cold we couldn’t tell. The scarf had once been blue, hand-knit with cables running through it.
“D’you think you’re better than this?” Hennessey asked. Hennessey’s mum watched daytime telly. People on daytime telly were always having arguments where they asked each other that question.
“Lucky,” Wilkes said. “Just lucky.”
We hated him. We thought he could read our minds, the way he’d said lucky. Like he knew what we thought of him. Wilkes was going to move away. He’d be playing football at another school, a better one. He’d be famous by the time he was sixteen.
“You’re a liar,” Barton said. We’d come to where the football lay, stuck against a dead branch half-sunk in the clay. “Your father’s got no job.”
“Yes he has,” Wilkes said.
“He hasn’t,” O’Leary said. “He’s a bastard.”
“They’ve got no use for bastards in the city,” Barton said. He put his loafer on top of the football and mashed it into the ground. We could hear the air come out a little, in a sound like a sigh. “Your father’s just run away on his black legs.”
“Coalie legs,” Hennessey said. He said it so casually that we nearly didn’t notice the hateful word, slipping in like it belonged. But then O’Leary repeated it, and Barton too, finally. We shouted at Wilkes.
“Coalie! Coalie!”
“You’re no better than us,” Hennessey said. He put his hands in his pockets.
“I never said that,” Wilkes said.
“Yeah, you did. You’re lucky.” Barton was sneering now, his face going yellow in the afternoon light. “Lucky boy, rabbit’s foot.” He stomped Wilkes’ Adidas. Wilkes tried to jump back but we stuck with him, going deeper into the trees.
“Lucky boy, rabbit’s foot! Lucky boy, rabbit’s foot!”
We were all trying to stomp him. Lying is one of the deadliest sins. Liars get hot pokers when they die. We learned it in school. Hot pokers.
Hennessey kicked Wilkes in the shins. Wilkes threw a punch at O’Leary and missed.
“My da’s gone to town!” he shouted. “He’s got a new car!”
Hennessey elbowed him in the back, hard, like a gangster in films. Wilkes fell down against a tree. We didn’t see if he’d banged his head. We didn’t care. Barton kicked him again.
“You’re a fucking liar,” O’Leary said. He pulled off one of Wilkes’ rummage sale shoes and threw it into the brush. “Liars get hot pokers.” He pulled off the other and threw it up in the air. We hoped it would catch in the branches but it fell back to earth with a damp thump.
Wilkes tried to stand up. We could tell how cold the ground was, still nearly frozen. His socks didn’t match. They were two different lengths of white. They soaked up the wet from the clay.
“Fuck off,” Wilkes said. Hennessey punched him in the ear.
“You fuck off,” Hennessey said. “Fucking liar.”
“He’s got burned-up legs, too!” O’Leary said. “Pull his trousers off!”
Hennessey and O’Leary held Wilkes’ arms and Barton pulled off Wilkes’ trousers. They were just school trousers, we all wore the same. Wilkes had thin legs. His legs were pale, not tarry like his pa’s.
“Stop it,” Wilkes said. “I’m sorry, alright, stop it.” He was trying to use a voice like an adult, to calm us. He was afraid. His face had gone from purple to white. It was red in patches.
Barton was holding the trousers like he wasn’t sure. We were a little ashamed of Wilkes’ skinny legs, and the whiteness of his skivvies. We hated him, for looking weak. Wilkes had the best shot of all of us. He could be famous on a national team. By the time he was sixteen. Our brothers who were sixteen worked at Laundromats or sold bad hash to make money. They went out with girls who had spidery eyes and whose bellies stretched out their Madonna t-shirts.
Hennessey pushed Wilkes back into the tree. “You’re a liar. You’re a piece of shit,” he said to Wilkes. We all knew he was right. Wilkes wasn’t lucky. He wasn’t. We were the lucky ones, the strong ones. We could take his luck away from him.
Barton threw the trousers into the brush. “Liar,” he said. We were getting anxious. We wanted to leave. There was something black hovering in the air. It was smaller than an elephant but heavier. In cartoons unlucky people walked under windows where pianos were being thrown out. They were squashed on the pavement, their arms thin under the broken black wood. The pianos sometimes had teeth instead of keys. Sometimes they could run on their bow-legs. They ate the unlucky, jammed him under their lids where the strings and hammers were.
Wilkes made a sound like something had choked him.
“He’s crying,” O’Leary said.
Wilkes sat on the ground. His socks and his skivvies absorbed the wet earth.
“Fucking baby liar,” Hennessey said. But even he, the biggest, was backing away.
We started to run. We ran like rabbits in wheat, zigzagging back and forth through the wood. We looked back once, when we were nearly out of the trees. We saw Wilkes lifting his white thin legs like a bird. He was trying to climb into the brush to get his trousers and his shoe. His neck was red. We couldn’t see his face.
“It wasn’t us,” Barton said.
“But it was.”
“I’m practicing,” Barton said. He scraped the clay off his cordovan loafers. His mum hated us tracking dirt in the house. “It wasn’t us.”
“It was an accident. Wilkes had an accident.”
But we knew he wouldn’t complain. We hated him for that, too. We didn’t ever want to see him again, now that we’d seen him disgraced. He had been white, so pale he was nearly shining.
O’Leary was put on watch, since he lived next door to Wilkes. The next few days we watched for Mister Wilkes to come to our houses to speak to our dads, but he never came.
“Maybe he went to the city after all,” Barton said.
We were ashamed.
We waited for the new car to appear in the cul-de-sac, but it did not come. We knew it would take Wilkes away, Wilkes and his luck. We were afraid that he would take ours with him as well.
We waited. | https://crf-pdx.medium.com/the-rabbits-foot-f7cf8ba2ee7f | ['Foster Rudy'] | 2020-11-29 19:00:31.178000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Fiction', 'Soccer', 'Creative Writing', 'Spring'] |
The Frontline Workers Are Our Pandemic Soldiers | The Frontline Workers Are Our Pandemic Soldiers
Their battle is different, but they deserve respect.
Photo by CDC from Pexels
Today marked yet another day where Americans woke up to a morning of record-breaking COVID-19 cases. Again, I saw yet another article about nurses pleading with the U.S. public to believe in the severity of the virus.
It got me thinking: would we do this same thing to soldiers fighting a war? I know there have been others to draw this parallel, but it’s powerful enough to bring it up again.
Don’t think too deeply about this, but imagine for a moment that what was happening now was not invisible. Imagine it was a war, in our country, with military personnel who were advising us to stay inside to stay safe. Imagine they gave us all simple instructions that would likely keep us protected from the enemy: wear a mask, don’t gather in groups, and stay inside as much as possible. By following these orders, we could let them do their job outside: defeat the enemy.
Do you think we would listen to them?
Well, I do! And I think you would too.
So why is this pandemic much different? Because the virus cannot be seen? Because it does not brandish weapons with bullets? Because it is quiet and not earth-shattering in its explosiveness? Because it has no voice with which to directly threaten us?
None of that makes it any less real, or any less dangerous.
Not believing in the pandemic is one thing. Not listening to the people who deal with it daily, and therefore don’t have a choice whether or not to believe in it, is a whole other thing. A whole other ignorant thing.
Continuing with the military example, you wouldn’t discredit what a soldier coming home from battle said was happening — would you? Even if you didn’t agree with the war; if you heard someone with direct experience speak about it you would respect and believe in what they were saying, right?
I would! And look, I am a person who wishes wars and violence would cease to exist. But I would still believe our military members if they came home from a battle and discussed what was happening. I still support our military members for their tremendous work and service. And I look to them with deep gratitude. After all, let’s get real, I could never do what they do!
So, why is it that we cannot apply this same sentiment — en masse — to the frontline health workers?
They are fighting for our safety, just as the military does.
They are sacrificing time spent with their families, just as the military does. They are jeopardizing their own health and wellbeing for the good of other people — people like me and you! Just as the military does.
While I know our country’s history of supporting military veterans' reintegration is far from perfect (to say the very least), I think most people give a lot of respect and recognition to them. Far more than it seems they are providing the frontline nurses and doctors who fight this pandemic around the clock. | https://medium.com/politically-speaking/the-frontline-workers-are-our-pandemic-soldiers-cb4401042427 | ['Kristy Lynn'] | 2020-11-25 22:01:03.663000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Covid 19', 'Society', 'Pandemic', 'Perspective'] |
State of Managed Kubernetes 2020 | EKS vs. AKS vs. GKE from a Developer’s Perspective
In February of 2019, just a few months after AWS announced the GA release of EKS to join Azure’s AKS and GCP’s GKE, I wrote up a comparison of these services as part of the first edition of the open-source Kubernetes book. Since then, Kubernetes adoption exploded, and the managed Kubernetes offering from all the major cloud providers became standardized. According to Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)’s most recent survey released in March 2020, Kubernetes usage in production jumped from 58% to 78% with managed Kubernetes services from AWS and GCP leading the pack.
Container Management Usage from CNCF 2019 Survey
From my personal experience working with Kubernetes, the most notable difference from 2019 to now has been the feature parity across the clouds. The huge lead that GKE once enjoyed has been largely reduced, and in some cases, surpassed by other providers. Since there are plenty of resources comparing each service offerings and price differences (e.g. learnk8s.io, stackrox.com, parkmycloud.com), I’m going to focus on personal experiences using these services in development and production as a developer in this article.
Amazon EKS
Considering AWS’s dominance on the cloud, it’s not surprising to see huge usage numbers for EKS and kops. The obvious advantage for existing AWS customers is to move workloads from EC2 or ECS to EKS with minimal modification to other services. However, in terms of managed Kubernetes features, I generally found EKS to lag GKE and AKS. There is a public roadmap on Github for all AWS container services (ECS, ECR, Fargate, and EKS), but the general impression I get from AWS is a push for more serverless offerings (e.g. Lambda, Fargate) more so than container usage.
That isn’t to say that support from Amazon hasn’t been amazing nor do I think EKS is not Amazon’s priority. In fact, EKS provides a financially-backed SLA to encourage enterprise usage (Update Jun 15, 2020 — as for 5/19/20, AKS also provides financially backed SLA). With EKS making RBAC and Pod Security Policies mandatory, it beats out GKE and AKS in terms of base-level security. Finally, now that GKE is also charging $0.10/hour per master node management, the pricing differences between the two clouds are even more negligible with reserved instances and other enterprise agreements in place.
Like many other AWS services, EKS provides a large degree of flexibility in terms of configuring your cluster. On the other hand, this flexibility also means the management burden falls on the developer. For example, EKS provides support for Calico CNI for network policies but requires the users to install and upgrade them manually. Kubernetes logs can be exported to CloudWatch, but it’s off by default and leaves it up to the developer to deploy a logging agent to collect application logs. Finally, upgrades are also user-initiated with the responsibility of updating master service components (e.g. CoreDNS, kube-proxy, etc) falling on the developer as well.
Deploying Worker Nodes is a Separate Step than Provisioning a Cluster — Image from AWS
The most frustrating part with EKS was the difficulty in creating a cluster for experimentation. In production, most of the concerns above are solved with Terraform or CloudFormation. But when I wanted to simply create a small cluster to try out new things, using the CLI or the GUI often took a while to provision, only to realize that I missed a setting or IAM roles later in the process.
I found eksctl to be the most reliable method of creating a production-ready EKS cluster until we perfected the Terraform configs. The eksworkshop website also provides excellent guides for common cluster setup operations such as deploying the Kubernetes dashboard, standing up an EFK stack for logging, as well as integrating with other AWS services like X-Ray and AppMesh.
Overall, until EKS introduced managed node groups with Kubernetes 1.14 and above, I found the management burden on EKS fairly high, especially in the beginning. AWS is quickly catching up to the competition, but EKS is still not the best place to start for new users.
Azure AKS
Surprisingly, AKS surpassed GKE in terms of providing support for newer Kubernetes versions (preview for 1.18 on AKS vs 1.17 on GKE as of June 2020). Also, AKS remains as the only service to not charge for control plane usage. Like EKS, master node upgrades must be initiated by the developer, but EKS takes care of underlying system upgrades.
Personally, I have not used AKS in production, so I can’t comment on technical or operational challenges. However, as of 5/19/2020, AKS not only provides a financially backed SLA (99.95% with Availability Zones), but also made it an optional feature to allow for unlimited free clusters (Updated Jun 15, 2020).
Still, Azure’s continued investment in Kubernetes is apparent through contributions to Helm (Microsoft acquired Deis who created Helm) as it graduated from CNCF. As Azure continues to close the gap with AWS, I expect AKS usage to grow with increasing support to address community concerns.
Packaging Applications — CNCF Survey
Google Cloud GKE
While Google’s decision to begin charging for control plane usage for non-Anthos clusters stirred some frustrations among the developer community, GKE undoubtedly remains the king of managed Kubernetes in terms of features, support, and ease of use. For new users unfamiliar with Kubernetes, the GUI experience of creating a cluster and default logging and monitoring integration via Stackdriver makes it easy to get started.
GKE is also the only service to provide a completely automated master and node upgrade process. With the introduction of cluster maintenance windows, node upgrades can occur in a controlled environment with minimal overhead. Node auto-repair support also reduces management burdens on the developers.
Similar to many GCP products, GKE’s excellent managed environment does mean that customization may be difficult or sometimes impossible. For example, GKE installs kube-dns by default, and to use CoreDNS, you need to hack around the kube-dns settings. Likewise, if Stackdriver does not suit your needs for logging and monitoring, then you’ll have to uninstall those agents and manage other logging agents yourself.
Still, my experiences with GKE have been generally pleasant, and even considering the price increase, I still recommend GKE over EKS and AKS. The more exciting part with GKE is the growing number of services built on top such as managed Istio and Cloud Run. Managed service mesh and a serverless environment for containers will continue to lower the bar for migration to cloud and microservices architecture.
While GCP lags AWS and Azure in terms of overall cloud market share, it still holds its lead for Kubernetes in 2020.
Google Cloud Service Platform — GCP Blog
Resources | https://medium.com/swlh/state-of-managed-kubernetes-2020-4be006643360 | ['Yitaek Hwang'] | 2020-06-16 14:57:37.830000+00:00 | ['Kubernetes', 'Azure', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'AWS', 'Gke'] |
[LeetCode]#1588. Sum of All Odd Length Subarrays | Environment: Python 3.8
Key technique: while
Given an array of positive integers arr , calculate the sum of all possible odd-length subarrays.
A subarray is a contiguous subsequence of the array.
Return the sum of all odd-length subarrays of arr .
Example 1:
Input: arr = [1,4,2,5,3]
Output: 58
Explanation: The odd-length subarrays of arr and their sums are:
[1] = 1
[4] = 4
[2] = 2
[5] = 5
[3] = 3
[1,4,2] = 7
[4,2,5] = 11
[2,5,3] = 10
[1,4,2,5,3] = 15
If we add all these together we get 1 + 4 + 2 + 5 + 3 + 7 + 11 + 10 + 15 = 58
Analysis:
Calculate all possible pairs as below. Return summary
Solution:
class Solution:
def sumOddLengthSubarrays(self, arr):
ans = 0
for i in range(len(arr)):
j = i + 1
while j <= len(arr):
ans += sum(arr[i:j])
j += 2
return ans
Submissions:
Reference:
https://leetcode.com/problems/sum-of-all-odd-length-subarrays/discuss/980723/Python-Non-Brute-Force-solution | https://medium.com/@donic0211/leetcode-1588-sum-of-all-odd-length-subarrays-3d686dc33336 | ['Fatboy Slim'] | 2020-12-22 09:13:45.217000+00:00 | ['Python3', 'Leetcode', 'Python', 'Leetcode Easy'] |
How to Manage Your Work Time Effectively | Photo by Lukas Blazek
You’re already running late for work. Your alarm goes off and you roll out of bed begrudgingly. You look at yourself in the mirror and let out a sigh.
The shower is cold, you want it to wake you up. You rush out the door and quickly say good-bye to your partner and children.
The 9 o’clock traffic grinds your gears. You think of your busy workday ahead and grunt to yourself. You can practically see the piles of papers on your desk.
A daydream sets in where you ponder how to manage your time more wisely. You already feel so behind and you haven’t had your cup of coffee yet.
Does this sound like you? Plenty of people suffer from time management. It seems the more you try to get ahead, the further and further you fall behind.
What gives?
You need a time management system for your life — especially your work-life. Control over our time is massively beneficial to our work-life balance. While you cannot control everything, you feel better when you are more in control of your time.
To master the clock, read our guide below. As you read you will gain more and more insights into this necessary skill. By the end, you will feel so rich in time abundance.
Rise and Shine
Are you a morning person? If not, you ought to become one. Waking up early is one of the best moves you can make when you want to improve your productivity.
Waking up early has a compounding effect on your day. It feels good on multiple levels.
You feel good because you woke up early but also feel good because it sets the tone for the day. You can now schedule your time with anything you wish. Positive ideas in the rise and shine department are exercise (specifically 45 min. of cardio), meditation, reading, and journaling.
Where Does the Time Go?
You can’t get anywhere if you don’t know where your time is already going. As an experiment, log your time for a week. Time tracking will have a birds-eye-view of your time and where you spend it.
The truth is you all have the same amount of time every day, week, month, and year. It’s up to us to make the best use of it. This can feel daunting at first, but once you understand this, you can work on it.
To see where your time goes when you are working, you need a time logging system. You can log our days and hours with pen and paper. Or for a more modern approach, you’re going to want to do some time tracking.
Use a Tomato to Ketchup
As an extension of seeing where your time goes, now you must have time limits for your tasks. By setting up time parameters, you now have a more manageable construct you can work within. One of the best ways to track your time is with the Pomodoro Method.
The Pomodoro Method breaks down your task into 25-minute intervals and a 5-minute break in between. This tomato method is simple yet highly effective. Committing to the task for only 25 minutes at a time makes it less daunting and more doable.
By learning how to manage your time more efficiently, your life will improve. The organization alone will do wonders for your psyche.
One Thing at a Time
Don’t multitask. Do one thing at a time. This sounds simple but in reality, it can be quite difficult to do.
The truth is that every time you switch from one task to the next, you are only making it more difficult for yourself in the long run. By focusing on your one task, your productivity will skyrocket.
Make this as simple as possible and avoid distractions.
Die, Distractions, Die!
Work is uncomfortable. Don’t make it more difficult by getting distracted. Easier said than done.
The internet is a vortex, and if you’re not careful you can get easily sucked in. From social media to chat to e-mail to phone calls — no wonder you can’t get anything done!
All of these things that feel good may be satisfying at the moment, but they come at a cost. Your work suffers, you spend a lot of time getting through it, and at the end of the day, you feel drained.
Again, focus on the task at hand. All of these time sinks do eat up an enormous amount of time. Be kind to yourself and do your work.
The key is to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. You have to get past the initial uncomfortable feeling that is the task. Once you get past the feeling, ride the task’s wave out to shore for as long as possible.
This requires self-discipline. A notable skill and habit to practice.
Aside from the internet, there are distractions in life and in our minds. If you get a pop-up in your mind, the best thing you can do is simply write it down. That way, you can store it somewhere in a physical place.
Say “Poof” to Perfectionism
When you say yes to being perfect, you also say yes to slowly working. The truth is that being perfect doesn’t exist. It’s just some made-up version of yourself that is unrealistic.
Attempting to be perfect is like pumping your brakes. Let’s say poof to perfectionism once and for all.
Action Is a Muscle
What is the action? Knowing the simple action you need to take next helps.
For example, say your job is a freelance writer. What is the action you need to take? What is the action muscle you need to exercise?
The action you need to take is typing keys on a keyboard. By simplifying down your task to a verb, you can do so faster. You can drop into your task quicker when you remember to just move your fingers and type.
Practice Your Craft
Pinpoint which tasks are of importance to you and practice them. As an extension of the paragraph above, you need to practice your craft. If you need proof of this, consider Michael Jordan as an example.
If you want to get better at something, you have to put in the time. You have to practice your craft. Keep pushing forward through the discomfort and you will be triumphant on the other side.
Learn How to Manage Your Time
Learning how to manage your time takes time. It also takes discipline and hard work. Be easy on yourself if you are wanting to schedule your time better.
Getting things done is a necessary skill to learn. We all have the same amount of time, but it’s how we use it that is important.
To better your time today, why not try a time tracking app? Start a 30-day challenge to get a grasp on your days. A worthy challenge to someone who deserves it.
Originally published at actitime.com | https://medium.com/@actitime/how-to-manage-your-work-time-effectively-c50de2c365ac | [] | 2020-12-24 10:21:11.390000+00:00 | ['Productivity Hacks', 'Productivity Tips', 'Time Management Tips', 'Time Management', 'Productivity'] |
Work is not work | Work is not work
Still set boundaries
I separate my work in two, my day job and my personal work. The first one can be work at times, the latter usually not, that’s because I like it and enjoy doing it, so I don’t see it as such, it’s just how I spend my free time.
Im often referred as “always working” but we all heard that clichè that if you love what you do it won’t feel like work, and it is true.
I believe that finding something creative to do is far more rewarding than just seating all day staring at a screen, and if like me, you’re also aiming to do greater things a create a body of work as way to shape your career, the it is also the only way, at least that I know. However, the more I follow this path, the more I realise two things:
The more you do it, the more it will inform it will inform your decision making You should not be working all the time. Actually, taking a break is my only necessary for your own sanity and health, but also the best way I found to get inspiration and keep coming with new ideas.
Yes, enjoying is key and will set you ahead of the curve in terms of not having to dwell about doing things or not, you just do it. It will be the key differentiator between you and those that just don’t even make the effort on trying.
Just don’t forget that, despite the gift it is that work is not work, there should always be certain boundaries, because no matter what you do and you feel about, life still life, so don’t miss it out, not the people around you. | https://medium.com/thoughts-on-the-go-journal/work-is-not-work-c8ab5c780338 | ['Joseph Emmi'] | 2018-05-20 22:03:21.217000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Boundaries', 'Work', 'Entrepreneur', 'Personal Development'] |
About getting lost | We all have dealt with loss. It is something that happens whether we like it or not. But getting lost requires a certain amount of willingness to flirt with the uncertainty.
Whenever I am in a new place where I dont have any clue about the geography, I always take a long walk. I would have a vague idea about the place I stay. Other than that I am completely clueless. I take some random road, may be the one that promises a scenic route and start walking. Sometimes I get lost in my thoughts, sometimes I get lost in the surroundings. But I get lost anyway.
Finding the way back is the difficult part. It always takes extra miles of walking and countless detours to get back to the source. But I believe we can always find the way back if we trust ourselves in getting lost. I always have. And I always get clarity and reassurance about the person I am after every small stretch of getting lost. | https://medium.com/@chembarathi/about-getting-lost-52a0344eaa29 | [] | 2020-12-12 14:23:26.833000+00:00 | ['Personal Growth', 'Personal Essay', 'Reflections', 'Life Lessons', 'Life'] |
Hey Harvard, Don’t be a Veritass | Workers and student supporters chant, “Hey Harvard you can’t hide; we can see your greedy side,” as they march through Harvard Square. — Photo Credit: ANNIE E. SCHUGART, Harvard Crimson
In rare, non-election related news, let’s talk about Harvard for a second.
Harvard just got a $10 million grant to study black poverty in the Boston area. Now, let me first say that studies like this are an important service that educational institutions provide to the general public and our body of knowledge. They should be well-funded.
BUT. At this very moment, Harvard’s dining staff are on strike for living wages. That staff is — surprise, surprise — overwhelmingly people of color. In addition to this latest study, Harvard academics have published a large amount of work in past years about the generational wealth gap between whites and communities of color. They are not alone.
Maybe, just maybe, one of the things they might have learned in all those studies was that being paid a living wage, with quality benefits and a decent 401k for retirement might have something to do with lifting people and communities out of poverty.
Perhaps, having learned this at great expense, they could offer workers these things to improve the quality of life of real-life people of color in their community. Now according to Harvard(which has the largest academic endowment in the world at $36 billion), their “hourly wage is the highest among cafeteria workers and university service workers in Boston”. “Workers make an average of $21.89 an hour, earning about $33,000 a year for 38 weeks of work’’, according to the university’s administration.
Offering more than that would be unreasonable, right? The problem with that logic is that the cost of living in Boston, like many other major metropolises on planet Earth, is absurdly high.
The annual before-tax income required for a (single) adult to provide a quality standard of living for themselves and only one child in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton area is approximately $55,895 a year or $26.87 an hour. Add another dependent? $64,000. Another dependent? $78,000.
Now to be fair, this data doesn’t come from Harvard researchers — it comes from a mile up the road at a world-renowned clown college called MIT. I know they’re not an Ivy, but I think we can probably trust their numbers.
Lots of “well-meaning” liberals who went to fancy schools like I did often wonder why there is such a persistent culture of distrust in elites and elite institutions in some populations. There have been entire forests of newsprint spent agonizing over why rust-belt or Appalachian whites don’t trust pointy-headed East Coast elites. Or why people of colour, who vote overwhelmingly Democrat, still don’t trust various “liberal” candidates who “have their best interests at heart”. Or why Americans’ trust in key US institutions is so low.
The answer to these questions is obviously complex. There are countless variables at play here. But part of this distrust has to be because of bold-faced, absurd disconnects like this.
The wealthiest university in the world, which has extensively studied racialized poverty, will not pay its Black and Latino (or white) dining staff a living wage. They know what a living wage is. They know that is important. They certainly have the money to pay it, without any long-term concerns about solvency. But rather than do what is simultaneously right, reasonable and possible, Harvard’s administration would rather rely on employee “volunteers” to work in their dining halls, which they must now operate on a skeleton schedule, while offering severely reduced options and boxed lunches to their students. All of this while still charging the aforementioned students in excess of $43,000 a year for tuition and in excess of $15,000 for room and board.
This is why people find it so difficult to trust elite institutions. They talk about excellence, but seem prepared to cut off their noses to spite their faces. They talk about pursuing knowledge and truth, but then they work iniquity.
Besides being amoral, this behavior is also incredibly embarrassing. We all know y’all are too smart to act this dumb.
For cryin’ out loud, Harvard. Stop being such a fucking veritass. | https://medium.com/unfadable/hey-harvard-dont-be-a-veritass-de6e9ca4e0d6 | ['Jared A. Walker'] | 2016-10-14 16:07:12.822000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Poverty', 'Education', 'Minimum Wage', 'Racism'] |
League of Legends CSPM Predictor | Summary
This article is about how to implement a Creep Score Per Minute predicter that estimates the number average creep score in a league of legends match given 4 parameters (CS%P15, GOLD%, DMG%, DPM) using a hand made dataset of professional games in 5 major regions.
Keywords: Linear Regression, League of Legends, Data Mining, Python.
Introduction
League of Legends is a team-based strategy game where two teams of five powerful champions face off to destroy the other’s base. You can choose 140 champions to make epic plays, secure kills, and take down towers as you battle your way to victory.[1]
LoL has multiples game mechanics, one of the most important of this is Csing. In the game, you need to obtain gold in order to become powerful, in order to reach this goal you have to do two basic things, Kill and Farm, but we are going to focus in the second one. Farming involves Csing, you basically kill creeps in order to get gold, and with gold you become powerful, simple as that. Not everything in life is easy, so while trying Csing you will face multiple scenarios in which it will be either hard to do it or not.
Csing wins games
It is well known in LoL, that if you have a high CSPM, you are a good player, and it is just because it is the core of all LoL gameplay, and it has vital importance in game, that is way I decided to focus on, to help players know what a good Csing is comparing it with professional level.
Irelia farming creeps. Source: https://aminoapps.com/
Let’s get more technical
Multiple linear regression (MLR), also known simply as multiple regression, is a statistical technique that uses several explanatory variables to predict the outcome of a response variable.[2]
We basically trying what is previously mentioned, predict the CSPM(Outcome) using (CS%P15, GOLD%, DMG%, DPM), but what are those?
CS%P15 — Tells us the average Share of team’s total CS
GOLD% — Tells us the average share of team’s total gold earned
DMG% — Average share of team’s total damage dealed to champions
DPM — Average damage to champions per minute
Those are our model X’s, but we are going to talk about this later.
The multiple linear regression formula is given by:
Where:
yi is the dependent or predicted variable
is the dependent or predicted variable β0 is the y-intercept, i.e., the value of y when both xi and x2 are 0.
is the y-intercept, i.e., the value of y when both xi and x2 are 0. β1 and β2 are the regression coefficients that represent the change in y relative to a one-unit change in xi1 and xi2 , respectively.
and are the regression coefficients that represent the change in y relative to a one-unit change in and , respectively. βp is the slope coefficient for each independent variable
is the slope coefficient for each independent variable ϵ is the model’s random error (residual) term.[3]
In our case our model is given by this formula:
CSPM Model.
But, how we reached this?
Exploratory data analisys
There is no magic in engineering, to have the 4 “X’s” of our model we did an EDA, in order to summarize the main characteristics of our data and also to know the correlation of our “X’s” and our “y”, but how you do that?
Correlation Matrix
Boom, we simply plot the correlation of our data set in order to see what “X’s” are relevant to our “y”, and we can see that the 4 highest values of the CSPM row are our model “X’s”
Having this information, we now need to know how our current model fit our data.
R-Squared(R²) , Root Mean Square Error(RMSE) and Cross-Validation.
R-squared is a goodness-of-fit measure for linear regression models. This statistic indicates the percentage of the variance in the dependent variable that the independent variables explain collectively.[4]
The RMSE is the square root of the variance of the residuals. It indicates the absolute fit of the model to the data–how close the observed data points are to the model’s predicted values.[5]
Cross-validation is a technique for evaluating ML models by training several ML models on subsets of the available input data and evaluating them on the complementary subset of the data. Use cross-validation to detect overfitting, ie, failing to generalize a pattern.[6]
We use this three to be sure that our model is the correct one for our data and to know if our model is performing in a good way.
Results
After running our model and testing with our dataset, the final results are this:
Prediction Error Plot
Our RMSE , R² and Mean Cross Validation values are:
RMSE — 0.6050913077558205
R² — 0.5464690260259888
MCV — 0.59
Which tells us that our model performance is not that bad and has learnt from our data.
Now it is time to test our model with different data manually.
Testing
For these purposes we will use 4 data cells from a 2020 CBLOL dataset of champions, specifically Ashe Row, which had (0.30 CS%P15, 0.25 GOLD%, 0.22 DMG%, 459 DMG). The expected value is 8.9.
CBLOL 2020 Champion Dataset. Source: https://oracleselixir.com/
After running our model, the final results are:
Model Results
Which tell us that our model, is in a good spot regarding its training.
Conclusions
Based on the results obtained, the goal of the project was reached.
Even thought the model has succesfully predicted the CSPM, it can have multiple change and upgrades for better performance, such as testing with other linear models.
Biblography
[1]How to Play — League of Legends. [Online]. Available: https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/how-to-play/. [Accessed: 23-Nov-2020].
[2]W. Kenton, “How Multiple Linear Regression Works,” Investopedia, 21-Sep-2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mlr.asp. [Accessed: 23-Nov-2020].
[3]“Multiple Linear Regression — Overview, Formula, How It Works,” Corporate Finance Institute, 02-Jun-2020. [Online]. Available: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/multiple-linear-regression/. [Accessed: 23-Nov-2020].
[4]J. Frost, Lamessa, Laurie, B. P. Mondal, Katja, J. H. Lee, Renu, Daren, Hamster, M. Sethi, S. Made, K. Oser, Josh, T. Lee, G. Love, A. Singh, Gui, Guilherme, O. Ojuri, Hitesh, L. romen, Jeff, Badr, Thomas, Dana, Takunda, Jim, Greg, S. Hussain, Angie, Charles, Luyando, Alexandros, K. Meekaewnoi, N. murthy, Nic, M. Hartley, Don, A. verma, Kamala, Q. Khachoo, A. Gupta, Miteya, and D. Dubey, “How To Interpret R-squared in Regression Analysis,” Statistics By Jim, 03-Nov-2020. [Online]. Available: https://statisticsbyjim.com/regression/interpret-r-squared-regression/. [Accessed: 23-Nov-2020].
[5]J. Moody, “What does RMSE really mean?,” Medium, 06-Sep-2019. [Online]. Available: https://towardsdatascience.com/what-does-rmse-really-mean-806b65f2e48e. [Accessed: 23-Nov-2020].
[6]T. M. Mitchell, “Machine learning,” Amazon, 2017. [Online]. Available: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/latest/dg/cross-validation.html. [Accessed: 23-Nov-2020]. | https://medium.com/@a01207405/league-of-legends-cspm-predictor-4ff203d6efbc | ['José Manuel García Lugo'] | 2020-11-23 07:35:31.119000+00:00 | ['League of Legends', 'Python', 'Linear Regression'] |
The Challenges of Staying Informed in the Mis-Information Age | Google’s own trillion-dollar search engine algorithm is susceptible to false and misleading information. When Devin Patrick Kelley gunned down 26 churchgoers in Sutherland Springs, Google spread misinformation thanks to it’s ‘Popular on Twitter’ feature⁷. Google may have put too much trust in unverifiable sources when feeding real-time Twitter results for related searches. Just hours after the incident, tweets falsely labeled Kelley as a Muslim convert, member of a pro-Bernie Sanders group and a radical with ties to ANTIFA. Millions of people read the Google feed and the misinformation and speculation shaped perceptions while failing to provide verifiable facts.
Google’s had other issues with false or misleading information appearing in search results. Originally meant to answer common questions from consumers, Google’s ‘answer box’ is powered by websites ranking on the first page for specific searches⁸. The ‘rich snippet’ or ‘position zero,’ as it’s also commonly known, helps power voice searches on mobile devices and Google Home. While only 15 to 20 percent of all Google searches currently return a featured snippet, the impact can be significant. Earlier this year, prominent search engine marketer, Danny Sullivan, noticed that select Google searches were returning clearly false results, including the idea that Barack Obama was attempting a government coup d’état. ALT-right news sites like Breitbart also generated unfounded results, including the accusation that Hillary Clinton is an alcoholic. The questionable sources can originate across the political, socio-economic and geographic spectrum, making it difficult for Google to identify and remove erroneous results, but that doesn’t make the issue any less important to address.
Originally known for posting pictures of flowers, weddings and gardens, Pinterest has broadened its userbase significantly. Unfortunately, with growth comes opportunity for misuse. While Pinterest is an image-centric website, it’s not immune to manipulation. For example, many people turn to Pinterest for healthy lifestyle advice and information. Unfortunately, Pinterest is chock-full of misleading information, ranging from miracle cures to warnings about common ingredients that can kill you⁹. One popular pin saved to 16,000 boards suggested vitamin B17 is a viable cancer treatment, when in fact it can kill in high dosages due to cyanide levels. Another pin claims Alkaline water kills cancer. The Washington Post reported Pinterest was also inundated with bogus election-oriented content by the Russians.
No platform is immune.
Social media platforms are not the only targets of hostile hackers and opportunistic hucksters. Even a highly-trusted marketplace like Google Play Store has been compromised. For a brief time in early November, anyone attempting to download WhatsApp for Android from the Google Play Store may have been duped into adding a fake app¹⁰. While the fake app provided WhatsApp functionality, it buried users in advertising. The creators of the app utilized a few simple tricks, including an identical icon, similar-looking company name and copy to convince hapless visitors to download. The app could have contained more malicious malware or otherwise compromised phones, should the criminals decided to go that route. Fortunately, that was not the case; unfortunately, nearly one million people downloaded the fake app before it was deleted from the store.
Because of all of the questionable content on ‘trusted’ platforms over the past year or so, US internet users are more jaded about the information sources from which they consume content. In a recent HubSpot study, most US respondents indicated they distrust the top three platforms nearly equally: 59 percent of Facebook users find the platform to be at least somewhat untrustworthy, compared to 55 percent of Google and 58 percent of Twitter users¹¹. | https://medium.com/online-marketing-institute/the-challenges-of-staying-informed-in-the-mis-information-age-586dc99859e4 | [] | 2017-11-23 01:50:00.434000+00:00 | ['Information Technology', 'Fake News', 'Facebook', 'Digital Marketing', 'Social Media'] |
My 41 Favorites of 2020 | APPRECIATE STUFF
Violet Wilson, April 2020
This is the link I’m pretty confident you will forward.
Butterscotch, March 2020
This entire series of “increasing complexity” is so fantastic — such a great construct. Also check out Jacob Collier Plays the Same Song In 18 Increasingly Complex Emotions. (I also want to check out People Doing Things Fast series.)
1242212027 (Douyin) via @artskillgallery, December 2020
Remarkable.
@mateusasato, December 2020
He is just a marvel. Tons more of Mateus’s videos here. Also the pink Strat.
The Outline Trilogy by Rachel Cusk is a rich masterclass in writing, and simply an incredible pleasure. I found myself rereading her sentences not because I had to—neither reading comprehension nor speed is my strength—but because I wanted to. (If I “had three wishes” I would spend all of them in one shot on improving the above.) Her character studies astonish; her vignettes transport you so deeply away from the action — though not a lot happens in these novels unless you count heartily what takes place in the protagonist’s head — that you startle when she returns you back, just a page or two later. I love this writer. (Lots of reviews online; here’s The Guardian’s.) Oh, one other thing: She uses adverbs.
These paintings remind me a bit of ’80s Eric Fischl, and they are amazing. Follow him on IG at @marktennantart
This got a lot of attention. Rightly so.
Paul Ford, 2020
My hero.
tomosteen, December 2020
There are so many more like this on tomosteen’s channel. Check it out. Lego Masters Season 2 contestant?
@silasbusk, December 2020
Cardistry is pretty big on Instagram, but this one’s special. Lovely move. (I didn’t know if that was the proper term while editing. Then I found this.) | https://medium.com/@chochinov/my-41-favorites-of-2020-67e26de4e4a0 | ['Allan Chochinov'] | 2020-12-29 15:44:00.015000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Long Reads', 'Happy New Year 2021', 'Year In Review', 'Hobbies And Activities'] |
Question of Intent: The crash of Garuda Indonesia flight 200 | Passengers flee the burning Boeing 737 after the crash. (Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)
On the 7th of March 2007, a Garuda Indonesia Boeing 737 touched down hard on landing in Yogyakarta, sending the plane careening off the runway and into a rice paddy. As passengers scrambled to escape, jet fuel ignited beside the passenger cabin, causing a rapidly-spreading fire that claimed the lives of 21 people.
As experts converged on the scene, they saw the crash not as an isolated event, but as the latest tragedy in a long string of accidents and incidents involving Indonesia’s flag carrier. For regulatory authorities, the crash in Yogyakarta was the last straw, prompting the European Aviation Safety Agency to ban all Indonesian airlines from Europe. Meanwhile, investigators from Indonesia, Australia, and the United States set about piecing together the string of human errors that led to the crash. What they found was shocking: the captain had insisted on landing despite an extreme airspeed and descent rate, ignoring numerous alarms and warnings before slamming the plane into the runway at incredible speed. What compelled him to do something so blatantly risky? And why didn’t he listen when his first officer screamed at him to go around? The answers to both questions would play out not only during the investigation, but also in the courtroom afterwards, as the captain faced a controversial criminal trial over whether his actions rose to the level of manslaughter.
PK-GZC, the aircraft involved in the accident. (Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)
Garuda Indonesia flight 200 was a regularly scheduled domestic flight from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta to the city of Yogyakarta, farther east on the island of Java. Yogyakarta (pronounced “jog-yakarta”) is a unique semi-autonomous city administered as a hereditary sultanate, retaining some aspects of its political structure that predate its incorporation into the modern state of Indonesia. Home to more than four million people, the city is also an important cultural, religious, and educational center, and hosts some of Indonesia’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning.
Garuda Indonesia, Indonesia’s flag carrier, operated the popular route between Jakarta and Yogyakarta using a Boeing 737–400, part of the second generation of the popular medium range airliner. In command of flight 200 on the morning of the 7th of March 2007 were two experienced 737 pilots: 44-year-old Captain Muhammad Marwoto Komar, a 21-year veteran of Garuda Indonesia, and 30-year-old First Officer Gagam Saman Rohmana, who had been flying with the airline for three years. Joining them on board the early morning flight were five flight attendants and 133 passengers, including numerous Indonesians as well as a group of Australian officials and journalists attending a meeting between the Australian and Indonesian foreign ministers in Yogyakarta.
At 6:00 a.m. local time, flight 200 took off from Jakarta for the approximately one hour hop to Yogyakarta. Throughout the climb and cruise phase, the flight was entirely routine, and as the plane neared its destination, Captain Komar gave a perfectly normal approach briefing, telling First Officer Rohmana that they would land on runway 9 using the instrument landing system (ILS), with a target airspeed of 141 knots (261km/h), flaps extended to 40 degrees, and a decision height of 587 feet.
Twelve minutes later, the approach controller in Yogyakarta cleared flight 200 to perform a visual approach to runway 9. But Captain Komar had not briefed the procedures for a visual approach, because he had planned to use the ILS. Instead of changing plans or asking the controller for a new clearance, he simply went ahead with the ILS approach, which he did not have permission to perform.
To complete the ILS approach, they needed to intercept the signal from the glide slope, which would guide the plane down at the correct angle to reach the runway. But right off the bat, there was a problem: flight 200 was coming in too high, and would need to enter a steep descent in order to reach the glide slope. Paying close attention to his altitude, Komar pitched the plane down and began to descend.
Flight 200’s descent (yellow) versus the normal approach path (black). (NTSC)
At 6:51, flight 200 descended below 10,000 feet, still well above the glide slope. As Komar kept the nose pointed steeply downward, the plane’s speed began to increase, exceeding the speed limit of 250 knots (463km/h) imposed below 10,000 feet. And over the next several minutes, their speed only continued to increase, reaching 269 knots (498km/h) by 6:54. Still, in the cockpit everything seemed relaxed. Captain Komar quietly sang to himself and occasionally exchanged superfluous remarks with First Officer Rohmana, in violation of the sterile cockpit rule, which prohibited non-pertinent conversation at low altitudes. In the perfect morning weather, they easily spotted the runway, informed the approach controller that they had visual contact with the airfield, and received clearance to descend to 2,500 feet.
But still, they were above the glide slope, and Komar was becoming increasingly worried that he wouldn’t be able to reach it in time. He steepened the descent even more, and by the time the plane had descended to 3,400 feet above the ground, they were traveling at an unbelievable 293 knots (543km/h), or 337 miles per hour, a speed more reminiscent of the cruise phase than the descent to the airport. And yet Captain Komar seemed to have no idea how fast they were going.
Despite not looking at his airspeed indicator, it would have been hard not to notice such an extreme speed, and Komar pulled back a little bit to 243.5 knots (451km.h) over the next minute. He instructed Rohmana to extend the flaps to one degree, and then two, to help them slow down and increase lift for a smooth landing. Normally, the flaps must be extended to 30 or 40 degrees for landing, but Komar had by now decided that the only way to get to the runway would be with the flaps at 15 degrees, allowing them to descend more steeply than flaps 30 or 40. It didn’t occur to him that if they couldn’t reach the glide slope using the normal flap settings, it might be better to go around and try the approach again.
At 6:56, Captain Komar called out “gear down,” and First Officer Rohmana lowered the landing gear. One minute later, still traveling at 238 knots — more than 100 knots over the normal landing speed — Komar said to Rohmana, “Check speed, flaps 15.” But upon checking their speed, Rohmana saw that they were far above the maximum speed of 205 knots for that flap setting; in fact, extending the flaps to 15 degrees while so far above the maximum could cause damage to the flaps or even rip them right off the plane. Instead, he extended the flaps to only 5 degrees, which was the most he could command at that speed. “Flaps five,” he replied, without explaining why he couldn’t extend them to fifteen. Why he thought Komar would be able to understand the problem based on such an ambiguous reply is unclear.
Speed thresholds for different flap settings. (NTSC)
By now the plane was dropping at a terrifying 3,460 feet per minute, more than three times the maximum descent rate allowed on approach, and enough to destroy the plane on touchdown. To many of the passengers, it was obvious that something was wrong; some even predicted that they were going to crash and assumed the brace position. In the cockpit, the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) detected a dangerous closure rate with the ground and began to emit a series of dire warnings.
“SINK RATE,” it said, warning that they were descending too quickly. Captain Komar ignored it.
“TOO LOW, TERRAIN!” the robotic voice called out. “TOO LOW, TERRAIN!”
The plane reached a height of 1,000 feet above the ground, the point at which the approach must be stabilized in order to continue the landing. Flight 200’s approach was unstable in almost every possible way: they were too fast, they were above the glide slope, they weren’t configured for the landing, and their sink rate was too high. But Komar kept right on going, plowing onward toward the airport below, as though his world had shrunk down to nothing more than his yoke and the runway.
Profile of flight 200’s approach. (NTSC)
Seconds later, the controller cleared flight 200 to land, and Komar again said, “Check speed, flaps 15.”
First Officer Rohmana said nothing. The EGPWS blared, “TOO LOW, TERRAIN!”
“Check speed, flaps 15,” Komar said again. There was no response. “Flaps 15,” he said. “Flaps 15! Check speed, flaps 15!”
“WHOOP WHOOP, PULL UP!” screamed the EGPWS. “WHOOP WHOOP, PULL UP!”
“Wah, Captain, go around, Captain!” said the terrified first officer.
Captain Komar ignored him. “Landing checklist completed, right?” he asked.
Utterly bewildered, First Officer Rohmana couldn’t formulate a reply.
Flight 200 overflew the runway threshold at twice the normal height and 98 knots above the normal landing speed. Captain Komar pulled back to flare, the plane leveled momentarily, and then he slammed it onto the runway 860 meters beyond the normal touchdown point and 87 knots too fast.
“Go around!!” Rohmana screamed. The plane hit the runway so hard that it pulled nearly 2 G’s and bounced into the air, prompting Captain Komar to plant it nose-first back into the ground.
The second impact sent the plane airborne again, before it finally touched down a third time with enough force to destroy both front wheels and collapse the nose gear. Throwing up sparks as the cockpit slid along the runway, the plane careened toward the edge of the airport, unable to stop despite Komar’s attempts to hit the brakes and activate the thrust reversers. The 737 ran through the runway end safety area and over the grass, broke down the airport perimeter fence, struck a ditch, crossed a road, hit another ditch and an embankment, and plowed several dozen meters into a rice paddy. The impact bent the cockpit backward and partially beneath the main passenger cabin, while the right wing ripped off, swung up and over the fuselage, and crashed to earth on top of the left wing. Both engines separated and rolled along behind the plane before coming to a halt in the muddy field. Jet fuel, liberated from the tanks in the right wing, sprayed all the way down the right side of the fuselage and immediately ignited.
Simulation of the crash of Garuda Indonesia flight 200. (Mayday)
On board the plane, almost everyone had survived the violent crash, although many had suffered injuries ranging from lacerations to broken bones to concussions. As flames erupted right outside their windows, dazed passengers rushed toward the exits, throwing open the doors and jumping down into the knee-deep water that surrounded the plane. Bleeding and limping, they staggered away from the burning plane, staring back in disbelief as towering flames and billowing smoke poured from the shattered fuselage. News cameraman Wayan Sukardo, who survived the crash, soon turned his video camera back toward the plane, capturing the long lines of dazed passengers walking away through the rice field. But not everyone had escaped: inside the plane, smoke rolled down the aisles and plunged the cabin into darkness, as the raging fire began to shatter the windows and spread into the fuselage. People pushed and shoved against each other in total darkness, some managing to find the exits and collapse through the open doors, but others perished in the smoke and flames.
An excerpt from cameraman Wayan Sukardo’s aftermath footage. Watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77jutxaKPa4&t=358s
Meanwhile, the airport’s fire services rushed to the scene, but found that they couldn’t get their trucks near the plane due to the ditches, fences, and berms surrounding the rice paddy. The water cannons couldn’t reach the plane, and extinguishing hoses were quickly run over by vehicles and punctured. To make matters worse, there was no clear on-scene commander, and several different people began to issue their own orders, some of which were contradictory. As the first responders struggled to figure out what to do, the plane burned out of control and the surviving passengers began to tend to each other’s injuries, until paramedics managed to maneuver their stretchers over the fences and into the rice paddy to render assistance.
Police watch as the plane burns after the crash. (SBS)
Although initial death counts reported in the media varied considerably, it was eventually concluded that 21 people had died inside the burning plane, including a flight attendant. Among the dead were several support staff and journalists who had been part of the Australian delegation to the diplomatic summit in Yogkyakarta (although the two foreign ministers were on a different plane). A further 112 people were injured, 12 of them seriously.
This was hardly the first time that Garuda Indonesia was involved in a major accident. Between 1975 and 2007, Garuda had suffered no less than seven other fatal crashes resulting in a total of 374 fatalities, including a 1997 accident in which 234 people were killed. The airline also suffered constant incidents and near misses such as runway overruns and landing gear collapses. Among the world’s flag carriers, Garuda Indonesia was considered one of the worst in terms of safety. The crash also came less than three months after Adam Air flight 574 crashed during a flight between the Indonesian cities of Surabaya and Manado, killing all 102 people on board. Indonesia’s rate of fatal crashes per million takeoffs was fifteen times the global average. As investigators from Indonesia, the United States, and Australia began work to uncover the cause, European regulators decided that they had seen enough. In the summer of 2007, the European Union banned all Indonesian airlines from flying to Europe, scuttling Garuda Indonesia’s plans to add flights to European destinations beginning in 2008.
Firefighters struggled to put out the flames that consumed the cabin. (Reuters)
Meanwhile, investigators recovered the black boxes and examined their contents in Canberra, Australia. Both proved to be shocking. The flight data recorder showed that flight 200 had landed at a speed 87 knots (161km/h) faster than normal, and at a point 860 meters beyond the touchdown zone, easily explaining why the plane ran off the end of the runway. The speed and angle of the final touchdown also exceeded the structural limits of the nose gear, causing it to collapse.
To understand why the plane landed so hard and fast, investigators reviewed the cockpit voice recording. Its contents were utterly bewildering. Captain Komar appeared to have deliberately flown an approach that far exceeded the normal limits on speed and descent rate, landed with only 5 degrees of flap, and ignored no less than 15 EGPWS callouts, the most serious type of warning that a pilot can encounter. First Officer Rohmana called for a go around twice, but his cries went unheeded. Investigators described it as some of the worst cockpit conduct they had ever seen.
By the time the fire was put out, only a charred hulk remained. (ABC News)
Interviews with Captain Komar revealed that at the very least, the crash wasn’t deliberate. He remembered hearing the EGPWS warnings but believed he could land anyway. He didn’t know what his airspeed was at any point during the descent, and every decision was made in order to allow him to reach the runway, seemingly without regard for whether this was reasonable. Furthermore, on the cockpit voice recording he asked for “flaps fifteen” four separate times, as though his thought process was stuck on that particular item, and when First Officer Rohmana first called for a go-around, Komar instead asked whether the landing checklist had been completed. All of these behaviors were symptomatic of a psychological phenomenon called fixation. Somehow, Captain Komar had fallen into a narrow mindset in which he became singularly fixated on the goal of getting the plane on the runway, to the point that his brain simply disregarded any information other than their position relative to the glide slope and what he needed to do to get on course. Any cues suggesting that this goal was impossible and that the plan was best abandoned were simply tuned out. Unfortunately, a safe landing really was impossible: despite its breakneck descent, flight 200 never managed to capture the glide slope.
Investigators work at the crash site. (Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)
To understand how a pilot could succumb to a psychological trap that he should have known how to recognize, investigators turned to the pilots’ training. They found several disturbing shortcomings. Neither pilot had ever been checked on his ability to respond correctly to EGPWS alerts, and multiple instructors had noted that Captain Komar tended to fly approaches too fast. Most disturbingly, investigators discovered that shortly before the accident Garuda Indonesia had introduced a policy whereby pilots would be rewarded for using less fuel, which could have incentivized continuing the approach instead of going around. However, Captain Komar turned down this opportunity to throw his airline under the bus and told investigators that the fuel policy did not in any way influence his decision making. Nevertheless, it was suggestive of a company culture where cost savings were considered more important than safety.
Investigators work at the crash site. (Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)
The inquiry into the pilots’ training also shed some light on why First Officer Rohmana, despite his abject horror at the actions of his captain, never took control: although Garuda’s company rules required the first officer to step in and fly the plane if the captain is compromising the safety of the flight, neither Rohmana nor any other first officer was evaluated on his ability to recognize when this was appropriate and respond effectively. His failure to explain why he couldn’t extend the flaps past 5 degrees also seemed to point to an atmosphere in which first officers were not encouraged to speak up.
Unsurprisingly, a regulatory audit of Garuda Indonesia conducted in 2001 had found widespread crew coordination problems as a result of these training issues. Captains habitually ignored their first officers, situational awareness and decision making were extremely weak, and unstable approaches were routinely continued to landing. Considering that pilots did not seem to place much weight on the concept of a stable approach, the opinions of first officers were not valued, and Komar was used to exceeding normal approach speeds, the sequence of events on board Garuda Indonesia flight 200 began to make more sense.
Smoke lingered after the fire was put out. (The New York Times)
Underpinning this poor pilot training was a lack of regulatory oversight. Indonesia’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the equivalent of the US Federal Aviation Administration, was supposed to ensure that all Indonesian airlines complied with regulations. But the weak and understaffed agency had only audited Garuda Indonesia once in the entire decade leading up to the crash, which was obviously insufficient to detect recurring patterns of regulatory non-compliance in pilot training that plagued the airline. It was apparent that Indonesia’s safety problems came not so much due to a lack of regulation — although there were gaps in some areas — but due to the almost complete absence of any enforcement mechanism. This was the deficiency that led not only to Garuda Indonesia flight 200, but also contributed to all the other transportation accidents that rocked Indonesia on an almost monthly basis.
Another view of the tail section. (The Guardian)
Finally, the investigators revealed major problems with the design of the airport and its emergency response procedures that contributed to the deaths of 21 people in what should have been a survivable crash. Key to the outcome was the fact that the plane came to rest in a rice paddy surrounded by ditches and fences that prevented fire trucks from reaching the crash site until after the fire had already consumed the plane. These same obstacles also hindered the ability of paramedics to reach the injured passengers. Airport authorities did not seem to have considered what would happen if a plane ran off the end of runway 9, even though this result should have been eminently foreseeable, especially considering that the runway end safety area was shorter than the minimum specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Furthermore, airport firefighters had not been trained in any scenarios in which a crash occurred outside the airport perimeter fence; they had not conducted any training simulations since 2005; and firefighters complained that the simulations they did conduct were unrealistic. All of these factors left them unprepared to respond to a real accident.
The burned out remains of the passenger cabin. (Aviation Accidents Database)
In October of 2007, Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) released its final report, which stated that causes of the crash were excessive speed and descent rate, poor crew communication, disregard for the 15 EGPWS alerts, the captain’s failure to abort the approach, and the first officer’s failure to take control and perform a go around. The details of the events on board the flight shocked the world: how could a supposedly trained and experienced pilot fly so recklessly when the lives of passengers were in his hands?
After the publication of the report, the Australian government called on its counterpart in Indonesia to press charges against Captain Komar, over the protests of their own accident investigation team, and Indonesia complied. On the 5th of February 2008, Komar was arrested on charges of manslaughter, and although the Indonesian government attempted to argue that there was risk of him fleeing the country, he was subsequently released on bail. Komar did not flee the country; instead, he and his lawyers denounced the charges and vowed to defeat them in court.
Captain Muhammad Marwoto Komar appears in court to face charges of manslaughter and negligence. (Mayday)
The case for the manslaughter charges, which could land Komar in jail for five years, was fairly strong. But at the same time, many legal experts and air crash investigators expressed alarm at the decision. According to Annex 13 of the International Civil Aviation Regulations, the agreement under which most accident investigations are conducted, the contents of an aircraft’s black boxes, as well as interviews with crewmembers as part of the investigation, must not be used for any purpose other than finding the cause of the accident. There is in effect a tacit agreement between pilots, airlines, and investigators that testimony given to an accident investigation — whether it’s in post-crash interviews or recorded on the CVR — will not be used against any individual in court, unless the benefits of doing so outweigh the sanctity of the agreement. When asked about this dilemma, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer replied, “I think our first priority is to make sure those who are responsible — who survived the accident — are brought to justice.” Instead of confronting the uncomfortable controversy surrounding the decision, he simply dodged the question.
A disclaimer in the NTSC’s report on the crash warns against using the report for any purpose other than improving safety. (NTSC)
On the surface, it seems appealing to try Captain Komar for manslaughter. His actions during the flight directly led to the deaths of 21 people, while he walked away unhurt — the sort of poetic injustice that makes our blood boil. Such a situation evokes a primal desire for revenge that is often mistaken for a desire for justice.
But a more detailed examination reveals why charging a pilot with manslaughter after an accident like Garuda Indonesia flight 200 is not only wrong, but dangerous. By undermining the promise that statements given to the investigation will not be used in court, it makes it harder for future investigations to get critical information from witnesses who may be at fault in the accident. If a pilot fears criminal prosecution for revealing the truth, the goal of finding the cause of the accident will be sidelined. The result is that safety suffers.
Investigators examine one of the 737’s mangled engines. (Bay Ismoyo)
There is also an ethical consideration to be made. The purpose of a prison sentence is — or at least should be — to isolate a dangerous criminal so that he or she cannot harm others. A thief or a murderer is locked away so that they cannot steal or kill again. But what about a pilot who flew too fast on approach and overran the runway? Captain Komar didn’t go to work that morning intending to crash a plane and kill 21 people. Furthermore, he was fired from Garuda Indonesia and there was no chance he would ever fly an airliner again. So what was the point of putting him in jail? Certainly it wasn’t to keep others safe. Sentencing a pilot like Komar to prison is more akin to the fulfilment of a popular revenge fantasy — no benefit is gained by locking him up, except that we feel good for having done so. Politicians who should know better call for gratuitous punishments because the public demands it.
On the 6th of April 2009, Captain Muhammad Marwoto Komar was sentenced to two years in prison for criminal negligence. His lawyers vowed to appeal, and the Garuda pilots’ union threatened to go on strike unless the conviction was overturned. “Our main concern is that this decision could actually disturb aviation safety,” said union chief Stephanus Gerrardus. “Imagine how hard it would be for a pilot to perform his duty when he’s burdened with something like this. It makes pilots doubtful, and could lead to mistakes. If we don’t get any… correction on this, we will not hesitate to strike.” The Indonesian Pilots Federation, which represents other Indonesian pilots, also stated that it would consider striking if the conviction was upheld on appeal. In the end, the unions got their way: on December 12th, an appellate court overturned the lower court’s decision, ruling that prosecutors had failed to prove that a crime was committed. After a two year ordeal, Captain Komar finally walked free.
Captain Komar and his daughters walk away from the courthouse after his acquittal in 2009. (Mayday)
While lawyers were battling over whether Komar had committed a crime, regulators and investigators worked to begin the herculean task of improving Indonesia’s dismal safety record. In its final report, the NTSC issued a long list of recommendations, including that Garuda reconsider its fuel incentive program; that all Indonesian pilots be evaluated on their ability to respond to EGPWS warnings; that Indonesian airlines make use of the Flight Safety Foundation’s training modules on approach/landing and controlled flight into terrain accidents; that the DGCA step up its inspections of Indonesian airlines in order to fulfil its legal mandate; that Yogyakarta Airport extend the runway overrun areas to meet the minimums specified by ICAO; that Indonesian airports ensure their firefighting equipment meets minimum requirements, have plans for accidents occurring outside the airport perimeter, and establish clearly defined chains of command; and that the DGCA ensure airports near water or swamps have the appropriate types of rescue equipment. Prior to the publication of the report, Yogyakarta’s Adisujipto International Airport constructed an access road to allow vehicles to enter the rice paddy and updated its firefighting equipment; and Garuda Indonesia emphasized to pilots that they will not be punished for performing go-arounds, and implemented new EGPWS training.
An engine lies on the edge of the rice paddy as another 737 lands safely on runway 9. (Bay Ismoyo)
Following the publication of the report, Garuda Indonesia began a complete restructuring of its safety regime, from training to flight operations to maintenance. The crash and the ban on flights to Europe proved to be the wake-up call that the troubled airline needed; its management finally seemed to realize that they were the face Indonesia presented to the world, and that they had to start acting like it. Over the years following the crash, Garuda was completely transformed, and in June 2009, the ban was lifted. Shortly thereafter, Garuda Indonesia inaugurated a flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam as a celebration of its progress. The efforts seem to have paid off: today, Garuda Indonesia is considered a safer than average airline, and flight 200 was its last fatal accident. The same cannot be said for Indonesia’s domestic carriers, however. The country continues to suffer a fatal accident every couple of years, usually involving sketchy low cost airlines that still lack adequate oversight. But the progress made at Garuda shows that change is possible — instead of simply sending a pilot to prison and declaring their mission accomplished, experts tackled the real root cause of the problem, in the process making Indonesia a safer place to fly.
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You can also support me on Patreon. | https://medium.com/@admiralcloudberg/question-of-intent-the-crash-of-garuda-indonesia-flight-200-d0dee10580ac | [] | 2020-05-26 06:54:04.699000+00:00 | ['Law', 'Aviation', 'Indonesia'] |
I thought I have forever. | “Might, when you have your passage blocked, all you have to do is knock.”
I thought I have forever.
Nothing could have prepared me for losing a battle I didn’t see coming. Nothing could have prepared me for hurting so much, upon losing someone I have no blood relation with.
You used to call me “Mighty”. It’s a mockery, really, I used to set my Friendster name to “Mighty Uty”. It’s so corny, you always remind me of that. You even saved my contact details as that name. I used to be so annoyed, but right now I would move mountains to even get my phone flashes your name in the notifications once again. I would move mountains to understand where and when you’re hurting, when you need me even when you don’t let me know. I would move mountains for the world to know how true, genuine, and amazing you are.
I thought I have forever.
I thought I can always call you later, I can see you when things get better. I used to share to you spots we can visit, coffee shops we can try and places we can go. We have dreams to see movies you create someday, me clapping the loudest when they call out your name to the stage, while filming you like a proud Asian mom. But right now I can look up to the bright sky of March every time I think of you, or maybe I’d go to those places we have always wanted to go. I know you’d come around and make fun of me for browsing the menu before we get there. Hey, I always come prepared, don’t blame me.
I thought I have forever.
Just now I realize, here are the things I don’t tell you enough: 1.) I need you always. I don’t need a lot of people to retain my sanity, but I do need you. You are always needed and loved, and expected even in places you have never set foot on; 2.) I am always here for you. I never seek for only sunshine without expecting your thunderstorms. Your burdens are mine to carry, too, for as long as you would have me. Even if it’s 3AM and you just want to talk, I will listen and put your insecurities to sleep; 3.) You deserve the world. With the way you give the world to your loved ones, I can only wish to give you the same. You deserve the world that is kinder to you, and I hope we have given you that; 4.) I love you. Of all people, you know how hopeless romantic I am, including to you. Even then, I wish I can tell you that everyday.
I thought I have forever.
I don’t. But while I’m here, I will spend the rest of my life persevering the life lessons you have taught me. I will continue to love life the way you taught me to, to celebrate small wins even if it’s just a walk to the nearest convenience store while the sky is clear and you’re breathing just fine, or to help cooking dinner with your parents. And most importantly, I will listen more. I will keep your selflessness remains intact through my flawed being, hoping I can be the light the way you are to the people around you.
Forever, my sweet boy. Sayangnya ibu, mataharinya ibu..
My best friend, my mirror, my way back home. I love you, and I’ll treasure you forever.
Rest easy, Bi.
M | https://medium.com/@muthia/i-thought-i-have-forever-dc1b9c63e431 | ['Muthia S W'] | 2021-03-23 08:04:11.230000+00:00 | ['Grief', 'Love Letters', 'Friendship', 'Love'] |
Crust Shadow Lightpaper | Crust Shadow is a “Kusama version” for Crust Network, an early unaudited release of the code that is available first and holds real economic value. Crust Shadow is designed to be a Kusama parachain, and will participate in Kusama’s slot auctions. Crust Shadow is a proving ground for XCMP, and can provide storage functions to other parachains. Crust Shadow will be upgraded with the development of Kusama.
What can you do on Crust Shadow?
At the early stage, Crust Shadow starts with a PoA consensus, in order to be Kusama parachain compatible, you can develop a cross-chain message model or use cross-chain message passing service on it. Crust Shadow is a storage functional network, storage orders that come from the relay chain will be passed to Crust Maxwell’s storage market.
At the later stage, Crust Shadow will upgrade to provide full functionality based on Kusama’s parachain development process.
CSM Token
The CSM token is Crust Shadow’s native token. The total initial amount of CSM is 200 million, and will be allocated to the community. CSM can be used in the following aspects:
Staking to maintain the coming GPoS consensus of the Crust Shadow Used to guarantee the Crust Shadow nodes Serving as guarantee deposit for providing recourse service Serving as a transaction fee for using the Crust Shadow Used to purchase resource services Used for election and voting of on-chain governance mechanism, and vote on proposals Used for privacy encryption of data, exchange and trading of data assets, and censorship governance of data content Used to participate in Maxwell’s storage market related activities Users can use it to obtain discounts related to Maxwell’s or Crust Shadow’s storage market rates Can be further used to exchange CRU in Maxwell market revenue pool.
Crust Shadow is owned by those that hold the CSM tokens.
CSM Token Allocation
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Telegram | Discord | Subreddit | https://medium.com/crustnetwork/crust-shadow-lightpaper-341ac5f0a1bb | ['Crust Network'] | 2021-06-08 10:07:52.908000+00:00 | ['Web3', 'Cloud', 'Kusama', 'Crust', 'Parachain'] |
Budgeting & finance stuff isn’t scary — here’s how you can play it smart. | Budgeting can feel a little intimidating if you are just starting your journey to financial independence. However, this stuff isn’t actually that scary. It’s not a code you can’t crack. In fact, you can follow these 5 simple tips to ace the art of budgeting.
Start Investing Early
It pays to start early. Literally. If you start investing Rs. 2000 every month in an equity mutual fund, it can grow to about Rs 20 lakh after 20 years. Or you can start off with a small amount of Rs. 1000 and let the power of compounding do wonders and multiply your investments over time.
2. Watch Your Taxes
There should be a mandatory course on taxes for college students, right? The happiness of receiving the first paycheck comes with the painful burden of taxes. This is when you realize that a chunk of your income is taxable and if you are feeling completely clueless, start by doing your research on investment plans for tax savings. Our suggestion? Hire a professional to file your taxes for you initially.
3. Keep Emergency Funds
Stay out of financial troubles and save money to use later for emergency purposes. Life is unpredictable and so are our expenses. Instead of panicking when an unexpected emergency hits you out of nowhere, you will have enough to keep you afloat. Put aside a portion of your salary in a high-interest savings account. You can always use LazyPay for your instant credit needs.
4. Set Your Financial Goals
Setting long-term and short-term goals is crucial to your financial health. Goals like saving for a trip, buying a car or even buying that vintage watch, gives you the motivation to keep hustling & work towards achieving it. While you are at it, don’t forget to have long-term goals like saving for retirement.
5. Track Your Monthly Expenses
You might have to put in some extra effort but it’s going to be worth it when your savings come to your rescue at some point in your life when you are running low on funds. Categorise it into living expenses, transportation, OTT subscriptions, groceries, medical, EMI, shopping, etc. and record it in an excel sheet or a diary.
Budgeting is not rocket science. You can track your finances easily if you just put your mind to it. | https://medium.com/@lazypay/budgeting-finance-stuff-isnt-scary-here-s-how-you-can-play-it-smart-9d5eaae4a99 | [] | 2021-06-21 12:44:17.072000+00:00 | ['Investment', 'Finance', 'Budgeting', 'Taxes', 'Goals'] |
Why Do We Enjoy Being Scared? | Why Do We Enjoy Being Scared?
Photo by Levi Stute on Unsplash
There is nothing better than a great horror movie. There is something about a foreboding atmosphere, creepy music and shadowy figures in the background that elicit simultaneous fear and joy. As we anticipate something terrifying, our heart begins to race while our breathing speeds up. If the movie is well-directed, you might even yelp when the ghost or monster appears. While fear itself is unpleasant under any other circumstance, millions of us love horror movies.
I often wonder why we enjoy sensations and movies that terrify us. Intuitively, it does not sound like it makes a lot of sense. Fear evolved to help us respond to potential threats within our environment. While fear is conserved in the animal kingdom, our enjoyment of it may be unique. Is this something that cropped up by chance or a feature that our entertainment allows us to experience?
While our response might be a little different than a mouse, many of the same brain circuits are activated. Yet we might be the only organisms that subject ourselves to fear for recreation. The horror genre is rife with monsters, slashers and gore. But we go back to watching the latest Halloween movie every year to scare ourselves. Some evidence suggests that these scares might benefit us beyond providing enjoyment.
As we fall down this fascinating rabbit hole, we learn about why we might have developed this emotion. These clues will help us understand ourselves and our obsession with the horrific and macabre.
What is Fear?
Fear is an emotional response to our environment. We collect information from the environment through our sensory organs, mainly our eyes and ears. This information is transformed into electrical signals and related to our brains. Different regions of the brain then use these signals to assess danger within the environment. If anything odd, strange or downright dangerous detected, it must react! An almond-shaped region in our brain, called the amygdala, helps us evaluate and respond to these signals.
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Over the history of psychology and behavioural neuroscience, many theories of fear emerged. Early theories proposed that fear might be a reactive response, like a reflex. Newer paradigms acknowledge fear as a central state. It is more than our behavioural responses to danger. Nor is it the way we feel in such a circumstance.
Fear involves the intermingling between our inner state, external stimuli and our physiological responses. Fear causes our conscious experience as well as our response to it. We might still be terrified several hours after watching a horror movie.
As a central state, fear helps animals assess their situation and determine the ideal course of action. A monkey might be hungry and eye some tasty bananas. However, if a lion is stirring nearby, the monkey needs to evaluate its fear against the reward/need for food. Individuals that responded appropriately to their environment lived to procreate and pass on their genes.
Fear plays important roles in not just our motivations but also the way we might experience pain, how we respond to aggression and how we navigate reward and punishment.
Photo by Melanie Wasser on Unsplash
Why Do We Like Being Spooked?
The way we experience fear is unique, but only a few psychologists delved into understanding our obsessions with the horror genre. One explanation involves a theory of emotional transfer. Many films build suspense and anticipation through audio and visual cues. Once the feelings of suspense or anticipation are resolved, the audience experiences a euphoria.
However, many horror movies do not resolve themselves neatly. The protagonist is not guaranteed to survive the movie either. This throws another wrench into the emotional transfer theory. Perhaps then it’s these feelings of destruction and unpredictability that draw us to these films. These feelings might provide us with well-needed gratification. Still, this isn’t consistent with what we know about the biology of fear.
Perhaps identifying why certain people enjoy and others are disgusted by these films could give us a better explanation. Sensation and thrill-seeking associates well with how much we like horror films. By exploring risky stimuli that expose us to the state of fear or danger, we might gain enjoyment. Interestingly, different aspects of sensation-seeking determined how much they enjoyed a horror film.
Other individual studies found that other emotional traits such as low-empathy correlated with the enjoyment of these movies. It is quite reductive to say that people who love horror movies have low-empathy based on this one study. While we might not understand exactly why some people love horror movies, we can look for benefits.
Sensation-Seeking and Resilience
Is there any benefit to watching these movies then? Perhaps the dozens of potential zombie scenarios prepared me for something else. While it’s unlikely we’ll face zombies anytime soon, we’ve found ourselves in a pandemic situation. Interestingly, people who seek out horror films showed more mental resilience and preparedness in the face of the crisis.
Perhaps playing out these scenarios or experiencing them vicariously through the screen teach us to prepare for hardship. This study suggests that simulating these events provides us with benefits when it comes to our mental health and preparedness. We might be the only organism on this planet capable of playing out these scenarios and benefiting from them.
We might be hard-wired to seek the excitement within the screen, having adapted fear to our benefit. The amygdala is well-connected to many other regions in the brain, making it plausible that they might help reinforce resilience or preparedness. If you’re aching for some thrills at home, just throw on a horror movie! | https://medium.com/@4lassya/why-do-we-enjoy-being-scared-ac6df42e7e1c | [] | 2020-12-20 12:50:08.630000+00:00 | ['Babies', 'Babies Health', 'Health', 'Life', 'Coronavirus'] |
Passive income — how much can you earn with DIMTOKENs and DNT? (UPDATE) | About 6 months ago I wrote “Passive income — how much can you earn with 50+ DIMTOKENs?” and the results were that with 50+ DIMTOKENs at that time, you could earn 1.5 USD or 6% each month passively if the volume in the DIM Ecosystem were 1 billion. You can read it here.
Since then the price of DIMTOKENs have increased in value and there have been many updates on the ecosystem and therefore I felt there is an interest in the community on how much is possible to earn passively with DIMTOKENs.
What is MAST?
Before we dig into the numbers it’s important to notice that there has been an update within the DIM Ecosystem where Gmex, Mindex and DIM are offering a Multi-asset stable token. With this MAST-IBO comes an airdrop to DIMTOKENs holders. You don’t have to participate in the IBO to be entitled to the airdrop.
How much can you earn with only DIMTOKENs?
In the last post, I covered how much you can earn with only 50+ Tokens. This time I will do the calculation with 999 DIMTOKENs. Remember that DIMTOKEN holders will receive 30% of the collected fees from the transfer volume within the DIM Ecosystem.
Let’s assume the volume within the DIM Ecosystem is 1,000,000,000 USD:
Fees in total: 1,000,000
DIMTOKENs holders fees(30%): 300,000
Fee distributed to each token(10m tokens): 0.03
With 999 DIMTOKENs you will receive 29.97 USD each month.
The current price for DIMTOKENs is very volatile at the moment so for this example I will assume that 1 DIMTOKEN cost 1 USD.
To buy the 999 DIMTOKENs you must pay 999 USD. With the 29.97 USD in income each month, your dividend each month will be 3% or equal to 36% in a year.
How much can you earn with DIMTOKENs and DIM Node Tokens?
As mentioned there will be an airdrop to the DIMTOKEN holders that hold more than 1,000 DIMTOKENs. The airdrop will look like this:
More than 1,000 DIM Tokens = 1 x DIM NT totaling to 1,000 DIM NT
More than 3,000 DIM Tokens = 3 x DIM NT totaling to 9,000 DIM NT
More than 5,000 DIM Tokens = 5 x DIM NT totaling to 25,000 DIM NT
If you hold DNT you will be entitled to receive 40% of the fees generated within the Ecosystem*. There are 250,000,000 DNT in supply.
For this example, I will use 5,000 DIMTOKENs and 25,000 DNT in the calculation.
Again let’s assume the volume within the DIM Ecosystem is 1,000,000,000 USD:
Fees in total: 1,000,000
DIMTOKENs holders fees: 300,000
DNT holders fees: 400,000
Fees for DIMTOKENs distributed to each token: 0.03
Fees for DNT distributed to each token: 0.0016
Total fees DIMTOKENs: 150
Total fees DNT: 40
With 5,000 DIMTOKENs and 25,000 DNT you will receive 190 USD each month.
Again the current price for DIMTOKENs is 1 USD so the investment needed to achieve above is 5,000 USD. The DNT will you receive for free in the airdrop.
With the USD in income each month, your dividend each month will be 3.8% or 45,6% in a year.
The above calculation does not include the value of the DNT given free. DNT can be sold freely on the market sometime after the airdrop.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not provide financial or investment advice.
I’m a paid promoter for DIM. The above is my personal view and not an official communication by DIM.
*It’s not entirely certain that if you don’t run a DNT node you are entitled to 40%. I recommend you to keep yourself updated on this through the community and the updates from the team. | https://medium.com/dim-univers/passive-income-how-much-can-you-earn-with-dimtokens-and-dnt-update-806b047946f8 | ['Morten Madsen'] | 2019-02-24 20:00:52.195000+00:00 | ['Passive Income', 'Bitcoin', 'Money', 'Dimcoin', 'Blockchain'] |
Dear Favorite Medium Writers | I’d like to know how anyone knows if they’re being honest with themselves. Where’s the evidence room? Where’s the at-home lie detector test? Where do I attach these electrodes that tell me whether I’m being real or whether I’m just playing for an audience?
I have been hiding my flaws so long that I can’t even remember where I hid them. Even when I think I’m being authentic, I tip my head and ask, “Really?”
I’ve been marketing my narrative so long that I wouldn’t know the truth if it smacked me in the face with a sock filled with rocks.
I’m not kidding. Teach me what you know about the truth. I’ve been circumventing what I really think for so damn long, I wouldn’t be able to answer questions about myself on a quiz show.
In truth or dare, I pick dare.
I couldn’t pick my truth in a lineup. That’s the thing about being accommodating to other people’s truths for too long. You get all muddy brained when you should be clear as day. You got the story you thought people wanted to hear down to a tee, but you can’t remember the real one. There are some similarities, like landmarks, but the details are fuzzy.
Seriously, Medium writers, teach me how to be honest. I’m not trying to be clever. I’m like an archeologist who’s found myself in a place where something very cool is buried, but it could be anywhere. Just point me in the right direction. You don’t have to dig with me. I know you got your own excavation.
So Medium writers, as I walk this path, I ask, how do you find the truth? How do you sift through the flotsam? How do you find out if you have anything worth saying? Anything worth teaching? Any story worth telling?
Maybe you don’t know either. Is that so? Maybe we can help one another. Like the famous saying goes, “The journey is the destination.” Maybe none of us know our truth until we fall through the earth and land on it. On the other hand, if you have a map, I’d be greatly obliged to you. | https://medium.com/muddyum/dear-favorite-medium-writers-2ce09758d2e3 | ['Amy Culberg'] | 2020-12-18 00:16:49.783000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Writing Tips', 'Ｍedium', 'Writing', 'Self-awareness'] |
The Loathe of Alice | Free Verse
Alice found herself
staring back
vacuous
–jaundice cat
in her looking-glass.
The malice
of Alice …as such
she couldn’t even
find it
in herself
to care much
about anyone else
even an ill Alice.
Transfixed…
she winced
to her own
loathing grin,
hissed:
I really
don’t care,
do
U? | https://medium.com/resistance-poetry/the-loathe-of-alice-4050fe6a4450 | ['J.L. Littlejohn'] | 2020-10-05 11:48:49.215000+00:00 | ['Resistance Poetry', 'Poetry', 'Trump', 'Covid 19', 'Election 2020'] |
Space Ecosystems: Ireland with Laura Keogh | If you’d like to get in touch with Laura, you can find her at the following:
If you’re keen to hear on the go, the episode is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Stitcher Radio under Clayming Space.
Enjoy! And please like, share and subscribe, so we know the type of content you want us to produce. | https://medium.com/clayming-space/space-ecosystems-ireland-with-laura-keogh-4ea7c5e3043c | [] | 2019-09-30 12:01:01.142000+00:00 | ['Ireland', 'Libra', 'Brexit', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Space Exploration'] |
DLT M&A Weekly: March 10th, 2019 | DLT M&A Weekly: March 10th, 2019
Distributed ledger technology mergers and acquisitions
No new DLT M&A transactions were announced this past week.
Today we’re taking a closer look at Coinbase’s strategic acquisition efforts over the past year or so. Coinbase is by far the most active DLT acquirer today, after recruiting Emilie Choi from LinkedIn in May 2018. Emilie leads corporate and business development as well as Coinbase’s venture effort.
Our assessment below highlights each acquisitions previous business, how it fits within Coinbase’s efforts and the strategic drivers of each acquisition. Much like Google and Facebook in their early days, many of Coinbase’s acquisitions are team and technology-driven transactions. Also notable, Coinbase has moved early and aggressively to build its regulatory compliance capabilities which are becoming increasingly important as the securities regulators’ influence is felt within the crypto asset marketplace. | https://medium.com/hackernoon/dlt-m-a-weekly-3398f8cd32b1 | ['Eric F Risley'] | 2019-03-11 19:10:39.742000+00:00 | ['Coinbase', 'Distributed Ledgers', 'Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Mergers And Acquisitions'] |
Kids & Disappointment: Can Disappointment Help Them? | Kids & Disappointment: Can Disappointment Help Them?
“They said ‘no,’ huh? It didn’t work out. So what’s next?” I was looking forward to hearing those words from my father; words that I’ve definitely heard many times before as a kid. This was his answer any time I didn’t get what I wanted from a situation. This last conversation with these words happened just a few months ago when he came over for coffee one Sunday morning. I updated him on my latest news that I didn’t land the job that I had I set my sights on. Even though I anxiously waited months to hear a reply, and even though I felt humiliated and frustrated that I didn’t get it, the words put my situation into perspective and made everything about my news feel a lot less enormous. When my father left my house that morning I was starting to feel like I could move on with my life. His reply signaled my brain to process the situation like this: They said no and that’s the end of it. It’s time to stop obsessing. What a relief for an overthinker like me. For me, this kind of reaction, or maybe it’s more precise to call it a non- reaction, always frames my disappointment in a healthy way by pivoting the situation from borderline tragic to surmountable. In short, it lessens my disappointment and makes me resilient.
It gets me thinking about how I don’t hear many parents, myself included, react to their children’s disappointment like this. What if every time our kids came to us with their disappointments, we said, “Oh well, it is what it is. What’s next?” How would our kids’ react and frame their situations? As a middle school and high school teacher, I don’t always hear parents accept their kids’ disappointment. I get it, trust me. The desire and worry to raise happy children is everything. I haven’t been able to give this reply to my kids. I’m hoping that in the future I can belt out a reply like this if necessary, but as of now, I overthink, strategize and try to solve any disappointment that disrupts their young lives. And because of that, I haven’t always helped them. I should know better because I’ve seen what can happen if we eliminate all disappointment from our kids’ lives.
For several years, I was my school’s English Department Chair which meant that one of my responsibilities was to place students in honors or AP level classes. After the students took a test that would assess their qualifications for these higher level classes, I braced myself for the onslaught of calls, emails, and conversations between parents and me. I could write the script for how these discussions would go even before talking to a parent. They were always the same: my kid works hard; they really want to go into a higher level class; the qualifying test wasn’t fair; they enjoy reading so why not put them in the class they want ? My typical response: their test scores and yearly performance don’t reflect the requirements of the higher level courses so we would best serve your child by placing them in a standard level class. But what if parents said to their kids, “Ok you’re placed in a non-honors course, what’s next?” Think of the pressure that is unloaded for that student who’s best suited for a non-honors class. How healthy for that kid to accept their appropriate class and move on to other things that can fulfill them.
One year, I gave a student named *Audrey a B for the year. A few days after I entered grades into the school’s reporting system, summer time was in full swing. I was absorbed with my 8 month old daughter when I checked my school email and found three messages from Audrey’s mom saying that it’s urgent I call her. I put my daughter to bed early that night so I could give this mother my undivided attention, thinking that her situation was dire. I immediately regretted the call when I realized it was about Audrey’s class placement. I will paraphrase the conversation: I needed to place Audrey in an honors English class because it’s what her daughter wanted. Audrey was so disappointed to discover that she didn’t qualify. So it was the same message that I predicted many times before. In the end, my school’s Administration had Audrey’s parents sign a document stating that she could take the honors level class despite the school’s recommendation. Audrey was placed where she wanted to be and resolved her disappointment.
But the problem didn’t go away for anyone. Audrey was disappointed every year thereafter that she wasn’t placed in an honors or advanced English class. And every year her mother went to bat for her to be moved into them. Her mom always won her class placement campaigns, so Audrey was placed in her desired classes throughout high school. You might be thinking that Audrey’s problem was solved each year, but by her senior year, she was so anxiety-ridden from the pressure of these challenging courses that her mother was calling our Administration monthly, describing how stretched her daughter felt and how lost and intimidated she felt in her classes. She claimed that Audrey’s teachers didn’t “get” her kid, and that made her child miserable in class. As a teacher, I think her mom should have let Audrey ride out her disappointment that summer after her freshman year, but as a parent, I think I want to “help” our kids navigate life.
Just yesterday I walked my kids along a rocky trail that leads to a pretty field and playground. We were not familiar with this trail so I told my 9 and 3 year old to look closely at the rocks and only climb on ones that weren’t too big or dangerous for them. Basically, they could only climb on ones that didn’t require my help. Many times during the walk, my 3 year old was frustrated and disappointed that he couldn’t climb the biggest rocks that came his way, that he had to stick to smaller ones. I resisted the urge to help him because I knew that holding him up on every rock he liked would shorten our time at the playground, which I knew he would love. We made it to the playground quickly and he was happy he “found” it. Later, he even proudly told his dad that he climbed rocks all by himself and found the playground all by himself. This had me thinking: if we help kids sprint from one inappropriate rock to another, there’s a good chance that they may not feel authentic success or reap the benefits of endurance. Their ultimate happiness, not their instant gratification, should guide our actions when we advocate for our kids. Perhaps the best thing to do is allow kids to sometimes feel disappointment so they can develop resilience, grit, and self -worth, -life-long traits that no amount of disappointment can erase.
*The name Audrey is purely fictional. | https://medium.com/swlh/kids-disappointment-can-disappointment-help-them-a1e91b52ad8a | ['Crosson Collins'] | 2019-09-24 05:59:22.139000+00:00 | ['Kids', 'Education', 'Parenting', 'Psychology', 'Teens'] |
Absolutely Incredible Jellyfish | Andy Blumenthal is a dynamic, award-winning leader with 30 years of experience delivering results across the public and private sectors. Views are his alone. | https://medium.com/@andyblumenthal/absolutely-incredible-jellyfish-46e0ba6bcb0 | ['Andrew', 'Avraham'] | 2020-12-15 00:19:31.135000+00:00 | ['Water', 'Ocean', 'Fish', 'Jellyfish', 'Nature'] |
CBD Men’s Lifestyle — The Benefits and Basics of Vaping CBD | When it comes to vaping cannabidiol, the products available seem endless. The oils, cartridges, vape pens, and batteries can easily overwhelm you when you aren’t fully aware of what they are. In this article, we will dive into the world of vaping CBD so that you understand what it is, the benefits and precisely what you’re buying.
What is CBD?
Cannabidiol, also known as CBD, is the non-psychoactive cannabinoid found in cannabis. CBD is usually found in the form of oil, which is produced by extracting the cannabinoids from hemp plants. Although the true effectiveness of CBD has not yet been approved by the FDA, its therapeutic properties have been revealed through numerous anedoctal evidence showing that it can help a vast range of symptoms.
CBD is commonly used to help with chronic aches and pains, inflammation in the body, anxiety, seizures and many other conditions. Due to an overarching use case, CBD has become widely available throughout the world as an over-the-counter alternative aid.
Read Related Post: What is CBD? A Primer for Men
What is Vaping?
Vaping is the act of inhaling and exhaling the aerosol, often referred to as vapor, which is produced by an electronic device such as a vape pen or vaporizer. The vaporizer device normally contains a liquid or “e-juice” that contains either propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin-based liquid combined with CBD and other flavorings.
The Benefits of Vaping CBD Oil
Vaping is just one way of using CBD but it has become incredibly popular because of simplicity and instant effects. Unlike other ways of delivering cannabidiol to the body, such as by taking a capsule or ingesting an edible containing it, inhaled CBD enters directly into the bloodstream through the lungs and is not processed anywhere else in the body. This allows for a higher percentage of CBD to be quickly absorbed into the bloodstream and interact with the cannabinoid receptors that are part of the body’s endocannabinoid system. This means that you can enjoy the beneficial effects of CBD faster by vaping when compared to other methods.
Read Related Post: Different Ways To Consume CBD
Another benefit of vaping CBD is its convenience and discreetness. Vape pens are often small and can be taken along anywhere and used when needed. Additionally, there is no discernible smell or lingering odor from vaping CBD .
Lastly, there is a wide range of flavored vapeable oils and juices on the market to satsify just about anyone’s palate. Some people dislike the taste of CBD oil when taken orally and vapeable CBD juices offer an alternative for a more enjoyable experience.
How Do You Vape CBD?
The way that you vape CBD is dependent on the style of the vaporizer. Not all vaporizers are created equal — let’s take a look at how you can vape CBD.
Pen Style Vaporizers
Probably the most popular style of vaping CBD is through disposable, one-time-use CBD cartridges or pens. These pens come pre-filled with a liquid CBD juice and can be used right out of their package.
Luckily, pen-style manufacturers are moving away from one-time-use products, since they produce an unnecessary amount of waste. Gaining traction are refillable cartridges, which allow you to refill a cartridge with your CBD oil of choice continuously.
These cartridges are then connected to a small battery pack that has an internal heating element. Once screwed on, you simply press a button and inhale. The heating element is triggered and begins to heat the CBD vape juice. Everything occurs rapidly with these hand-held products, and you’ll have a mouthful of vapor in no time.
Convection or Conduction Vaporizers
You can commonly find CBD oils that are in the form of wax. These are called CBD concentrates, and they’re generally made from CO2 extraction. It’s essential that you find a lab tested concentrate that verifies that the product in question is void of any residual chemicals.
With these malleable CBD products, it’s best to place them into a vaporizer that contains a chamber. Two types of vaporizers fit this bill: convection or conduction.
A convection vaporizer works by heating the overall chamber to a specific temperature. This heat engulfs the entire CBD product and vaporizes it.
A conduction vaporizer works by direct contact. This means that there’s a heating element within the conduction chamber that heats the CBD product directly.
Both of these vaporizer styles allow you the flexibility of placing any CBD product into the chamber for vaporization. Whether your CBD products are flowers, oils, or wax; each can be adequately vaporized within a conduction or convection-style vaporizer.
Another significant benefit of convection or conduction vaporizers is that they typically allow you to customize your temperature. The one-time-use vaporizers don’t recognize this option generally, which limits the range of what you can taste when enjoying your CBD products.
Also, by being able to choose your temperature, you can easily find a setting that produces the smoothest and most flavorful vapor. This customizability leads to a much more enjoyable time while indulging in the many CBD products that are available.
Desktop Vaporizers
Desktop vaporizers are the outliers of the vaporization field. These large devices are meant to stay at home due to their size. These are intricate devices that allow a wide field of temperatures to choose from.
Overall, these devices function in a similar way to the convection or conduction vaporizers but don’t require a recharge since they are directly plugged into an electrical source.
How Does Vaping CBD Effect Your Body?
As we mentioned, the effects of vaping CBD products are instantaneous. Depending on the percentage of your CBD, you’ll feel the onset quickly. Since CBD isn’t like THC, you’ll feel a sense of calm, rather than a high feeling.
If you have pains, they will begin to drift away, and the pain will be less localized. If you’re battling stress or anxiety, your body and mind may relax thus improving your overall mood.
It’s typical that the effects of CBD through vaporization last between 2–4 hours. This number can increase or decrease depending on the individual, so it’s important that you start slowly and gradually adjust your dose as you see fit.
The Best CBD Products For Vaping
With so many options, the choice is up to you. If you prefer to vaporize CBD-rich flowers, then these are available. If you enjoy the flexibility of CBD oil and wax, then the horizon is limitless. Everything boils down to your own preference and your needs, but it’s essential that you review each product to ensure that it’s safe to consume.
Always shop with a reputable company and check a CBD product for its lab results. This should include the CBD percentage, residual chemical analysis, and terpene profile — along with many others. After these critical factors have been verified, you can begin shopping the many varieties available, such as:
Now that you understand how you can vaporize CBD products, you’ll feel far more confident when making a purchase. Vaping CBD products is at the forefront of alternative medicine, and it’s becoming widely acceptable as CBD legalization flourishes in the United States.
RELATED: Looking for high quality vape juice? Learn more about AVIDA vape juice products in our comprehensive AVIDA CBD Products Review. | https://medium.com/@cbdmenslifestyle/cbd-mens-lifestyle-the-benefits-and-basics-of-vaping-cbd-4c65401f88f2 | ['Cbd Men S Lifestyle'] | 2019-10-01 00:49:56.559000+00:00 | ['Vape Pen', 'Vape Juice', 'Vaping', 'Cbd Vape Oil', 'Cbd'] |
Improving Sales Conversion Rates at Credit Risk Monitor® | By Rich Pacheco, William Dunn, Charbel H. Sebaaly, Chuwei Lyu, and Daren Ren
Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash
Background
Our team partnered with CreditRiskMonitor® (CRMZ) to improve their sales funnel conversion rates. CRMZ is a subscription-based risk monitoring tool that predicts the likelihood that a company will go bankrupt within the next 12-months. CRMZ’s customers use the tool to make decisions in extending customer credit, managing supplier relationships, and managing treasury exposures.
Illustration of CRMZ’s sales funnel
In CRMZ’s current sales process, a sales team calls prospects, converts prospects into qualified leads, conducts product demos for qualified leads, and converts these leads into paying subscribers. Sales representatives make an average of 231,600 calls to prospects per year. As indicated to in the chart above, different percentages of customers flow through each subsequent stage. CRMZ is interested in improving their sales funnel conversion rates for each step to drive increased revenue (i.e., increasing conversion rate at each stage by 1% could increase revenue by as much as 41%).
Hypothesis
We hypothesized that four key factors driving customer demand for the product drive sales conversion:
1) Environmental — while macroeconomic events may cause potential customers to become more interested in the risk of bankruptcy of their customers, we did not pursue these factors as our goal is to increase revenue regardless of the economic climate.
2) Marketing Efforts — marketing is likely to drive awareness of their product and CRMZ’s reputation as a market leader, and targeting potential customers with specific data-driven campaigns could move them from awareness to consideration.
3) Types of Customers — certain types of customers have different propensities to use CRMZ, and could be categorized by industry, company size, and job function.
4) Sales Representatives — characteristics and behaviors of the sales representatives, such as tenure and number of calls, also drive sales.
Data Sources
● Customer Relationship Management (CRM) — customer relationship management tool data tracked sales representative activity such as calls and emails to/from prospects and demos conducted.
● Marketing Automation — activities to prospects such as marketing emails sent, email open rate, click-thru rate, and other interesting moments.
● Sales Enablement — activity to prospects related to pitches sent and prospects engagement with the pitches.
● Site Data — activity from paid and trial users interaction such as number of logins, number of public and private companies in their portfolio, and the value of their contract.
● Social Marketing — LinkedIn and Facebook post content and engagement metrics.
Exploratory Analysis
We first analyzed conversion rates based on demographics and found that prospects from the mining, manufacturing industries tended to convert both from prospect to trial user and trail user to paid user faster than other industries.
Sankey diagram of CRMZ’s customer journey
Next, we sought to visualize the customer journeys that prospects typically traversed until signing a contract using a Sankey diagram (see chart on left). For this, we explored the CRM data, which recorded more than one million actions over the past five years for prospects. Given the quantity of data, we simplified the dataset by combining actions and taking only the first occurrence to obtain meaningful insights. Apart from identifying the importance of phone calls in the sales funnel, this analysis also highlighted some important information gaps that the client can use to redesign their data collection process. In particular, we found an unrealistic portion of users only interacted once with the company before signing a contract.
Model
Our main model was a logistic regression with XGBoost, a machine learning algorithm, to predict conversion from leads to demos based on CRM, Site, and Sales Enablement data. Using all the data, features related to sales representative performance dominate prediction (red square below). In addition to sales representative performance, emails and calls are important in predicting conversion to demos.
Feature importance of logistic regression
We next predicted conversion from demos to paid users at four different time points: three months, six months, twelve months, and no month restriction after the first contact. We found that as time increases, PAYCE® score (measuring private company bankruptcy risk), becomes more important, indicating that customers convert sooner when they are interested in information for public companies, aligning with CRMZ’s value proposition.
While our prediction models were strong (AUC consistently > 0.90), we did notice that there were approximately 700 “false positive” customers expected to convert to demos but had not yet converted. Our models also contained a lot of data that would not be readily available for new prospects leading to an issue of using this model in practice.
Recommendations to Client
Based on our analysis and output the client has begun to implement some changes to improve the predictive power of future models or provide additional business value.
First, they are investing in better connections between their CRM data and Facebook/LinkedIn marketing data to understand the customer journeys more comprehensively and get more traceability on pre-funnel activities.
Second, we recommend categorizing calls more granularly as to prospects vs. to leads vs. to trials users to frame the calls according to the stage of conversion. CRMZ had already begun to implement this in their sales process, but this finding reinforces the general trend toward better metadata practices.
Third, as the logistic regression indicated, there was a lag effect for customers interested in private vs. public companies. Understanding a prospect’s desire for public vs. private company information early in the sales process could allow sales representatives to more efficiently allocate resources in approaching these different customers.
Fourth, we recommended conducting Myers Briggs or a similar assessment of their sales reps in order to be able to see if there were consistent traits in high performing sales reps.
Lastly, their sales team should explore the 700 prospects that didn’t convert to paid but were predicted to convert. Our analysis suggests that these false positives are likely to convert and we suggest exploring how these “low hanging fruit” can be efficiently converted or see what qualitative trends the model was unable to pick up.
Conclusion
Overall, we were able to build a predictive model that identifies a prospect’s propensity to convert along various stages of the sales funnel. While the model is not a solution ready for implementation, the process allowed us to provide actionable insights which can increase the business value to CRMZ. | https://medium.com/@richpachecojr/improving-sales-conversion-rates-at-credit-risk-monitor-a629a91043e4 | ['Rich Pacheco'] | 2021-01-23 02:49:52.088000+00:00 | ['Logistic Regression', 'Salesfunneloptimization', 'Credit Risk', 'Sales Conversion', 'Sankey Diagram'] |
Simple Linear Regression. Formulae & Calculations | Decoding :
Simple Linear Regression
We are all aware of the most simple equation in Statistics and Machine Learning model; the Linear Regression Equation. With this article, I aim to bring in clarity on how the formula can be calculated by hand for the line equation. Here is the formula:
y = mx + c, where m is the slope and c is the y-intercept.
First let's look at the calculation of the simple linear equation with 1 variable with the following age and weight example of school children. Here Age is the predictor (X) and Weight is (y) which is to be predicted based on Age.
Note: For simple linear regression, you X and y variable needs to be numeric in nature.
Dataframe (d) created manually depicting the age and Weight of students in a school/ college.
We will not look at the distribution of the data here as the purpose it to understand the calculation, so let’s quickly jump into the working. For this purpose, we need the following information:
n — Number of records
ΣX — sum of X
Σy — sum of y
Σxy — sum of X*y
Σx2 — sum of X squared
Σy2 — sum of y squared
Required information
We will now proceed to find m which is the slope for the line also known as the coefficient. This simply means that for a single unit change in x, y will change by m. This shows a correlation between X and y.
Once we find m, we will calculate the value of c which is the constant value at y-intercept. This means that even when there is no X present at for the equation, a minimum of c on the y axis can be attained. For example if we are trying to find a linear relationship between Years of Experience and Salary, the minimum Salary that the company offers despite the years of experience will be a constant value c.
Please Note: These statements are not always practically true in all cases but the logic stands true. The value of c in some cases can also be negative and it should not be confused as the minimum value of y with no independent variables in the picture.
Similarly, the value of m can also be a negative value which simply means a negative correlation between X and y. With every unit of increase in X, y decreases by m.
To calculate the slope/ coefficient m :
Value of coefficient (m)
Thus our value for m = 0.21 after rounding up. We will now calculate the value of c using the mean of X as X̄ and y as ȳ and compute in the formula –
c = ȳ — m*X̄
Value for constant (c )
We now have our equation for this line:
y = 0.21*X + 49.27
Say for a given age of 15 years we need to calculate the weight we simply compute in the above equation:
Calculation for y when Age= 15 years.
Lets quickly confirm this using the inbuilt Linear Regression function from the sklearn library
sklearns’ Linear Regression
We see that the results are exactly the same as calculated by hand.
Summary:
In this article we looked at the calculated behind the simple linear regression equation with only 1 dependent variable. m being the slope of the line and c is the overall constant.
Next article we will look at the calculation for multiple linear equation.
This is the first article from a series I’m trying to do called: ‘Decoding’. My idea with this series is to understand the formulae of the most basic concepts of Machine Learning. Next time when you apply them, you will definitely have a better idea of what is happening in the backend.
Any feedback is most welcome. Give me a clap if you like this article. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/decoding-simple-linear-regression-b3f5528e54b7 | ['Nishigandha Sharma'] | 2020-08-14 12:56:12.518000+00:00 | ['Linear Regression', 'Data Journalism', 'Simple Linear Regression', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
Playing the Game of Life — Service Vs Self-Service | An memory stuck of when i was in a restaurant in Lima airport in Peru (Named: Tanta) before i was about to board my flight. A waiter walked upto me as i was finishing my amazing main meal, i was pretty full and he asks me “you want desert amigo?” . I rapidly shake my head smiling, “no im ok thanks” (because we as humans are so used to saying no and get on the defensive when anyone speaks to us or offer us anything in life! )
Then he says, “are you sure? I can bring them to you and show you?”, So i say no “no i’m ok”. And he smiles and goes away respectfully.
I later see him offering another table and they say yes to seeing the deserts. He then brings this gigantic multi-tiered tray over with every single desert, i was pretty impressed ! He then begins to describe every single item with the most artistic and delicious descriptive language. I was even more impressed and felt my mouth water, but i still didn't want any desert
He then hands them the cutest tiny spoons and offers to let them try a tempting piece of every desert on the menu. Wow, now i was really impressed, not only by the offer to try the deserts, but also by seeing the customers faces light up by how kindly he was treating them. He was laughing, being curious about their lives and demonstrating pure class.
I then call him over and get the same level of treatment that he gave to them, selfless and pure joy for what he was doing. Delivering happiness without expecting anything in return, i could have eaten all of the desert samples and said no. But he was talking to me about my interests, my life, my trip, and he was openly sharing his too so it was a two way exchange. and finally he asks, “which do you like best?” I say chocolate, and he says “would you like to order one?” And i mutter hmm, and he notices me checking the time and asks me “you could take it away if you don’t have much time to eat it here? 🙂”
I ordered the desert and decide to eat it there, the experience helped me to slow down and realise that there is no need to rush to my flight gate.
The cake wasn’t even that great, but it tasted so much better because i was awestruck over the experience i was having with this man (but really with myself), it was life giving and commendable beyond words. I boarded my flight with a glow, again not because of the sugary treat in my stomach, but because of the sweet taste in my heart.
Be the waiter, drop yourself and you become yourself. Everything becomes effortless because you are just serving by being willing to be wrong, judged, laughed at and rejected. Some may take it, some may not, but if you can be the shining light in someones day, you can elevate them beyond their imagination. Drop the need for “being someone”, and you become everyone.
There is no dominance or hierarchy in society, i believe that we must all be powerful leaders yes, but so was the waiter, he led me wonderfully, he showed me that i was misunderstanding. He led me without expectation or ego.
Wait on people, lower yourself off a pedestal, serve them, offer them menu items constantly without the need to receive a yes.
How dare you EXPECT another human to say yes? Our first words are no, ever been around a screaming child! All they will say is no! So you must earn the right to receive a yes, you must show them that yes is an option if they can see past the auto-no, but if you aren’t willing to help people see by giving them a detached non-egoic service, how dare you become offended when people don’t resonate?
That means you are in it for YOU, you don’t really care about them. That’s Self-Service. From this place, you will not create success and happiness in life, and if you do, it will be inauthentic and that will create some kind of karmic effect on another area of your life.
The one thing i have learnt about life is that we must connect to the greater whole. It has much more potential than playing from the world of our “self”. Its like driving a bicycle vs a Ferrari. When you let go of yourself and connect to the highest version of you, you aren’t really “yourself” anymore. You are the bigger picture, the intelligence of life, the thing that allowed einstein and the greatest musicians and scientists to change the world, that’s the potential of this service focused life, its not forced, its an expression of nature.
Lose yourself, and you win.
So — How did you find this article? I hope you enjoyed my story. I love recalling insightful moments from my life.
If you got anything from it, write to me directly, tell me 1 key insight you took away from it.
Heres a link to my bio to check out more of my resources, events, and a little more about me.
https://linktr.ee/Consciousness
Love, Raj | https://medium.com/@rajgorsia/service-vs-self-service-when-playing-the-game-of-life-5d28a26c4801 | ['Raj Gorsia'] | 2021-08-09 17:00:28.917000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Giving', 'Services', 'Consciousness', 'Self-awareness'] |
What is the Scope of a Lawyer in Pakistan? | What is the Scope of a Lawyer in Pakistan?
Scope of LLB in Pakistan is very vast. It is basically an undergraduate degree offered by various universities in Pakistan for students who wish to pursue a career in legal profession. This is a first professional or a primary law degree for the students who want to pursue a career in this profession. Law profession is very famous in Pakistan and it is considered as a very respected profession as well.
WHAT DOES LLB MEAN:
LLB is the abbreviation for the Bachelor of Laws. The degree abbreviates to ‘LLB’ instead of ‘BL’ due to the traditional name of the qualification in Latin, (‘Legum Baccalaureus’).
LLB (Bachelor of Law) is a three year undergraduate degree in law. If you want to join this degree then you can go for LLB after completing bachelors in any stream of study.
WHY LLB?
LLB in Pakistan is a superior choice than any nonprofessional degree after graduation. It will improve your social status in the society because it a profession which gives you power and respect at a very same time. And above of all you will be able to provide assistance to the people. After 2 years of experience, you can appear in the exam of civil judge also.
Read Complete Article Here : 👇
https://www.rajaaliriaz.com/2021/04/what-is-scope-of-lawyer-in-pakistan.html?m=1 | https://medium.com/@rajaaliriaz07/what-is-the-scope-of-a-lawyer-in-pakistan-f37e3bfda4ec | ['Raja Ali Riaz'] | 2021-04-25 10:27:26.321000+00:00 | ['Benefits Of A Lawyer', 'Scope Of A Lawyer', 'Advocate', 'Attorney', 'Lawyer'] |
How To Dockerize R Shiny App — Part 1 | Docker : Representational Image
In my previous post I had written about how to host an R shiny app on AWS cloud. Once the app is hosted successfully, your end users can access the app easily. But what if your end users want to host the app locally in their system and possibly make changes to the app itself?
While I had demonstrated a ‘’Hello world” version in my previous article, in real work environments the R shiny app can get really complex. Some R shiny apps can have complex algorithms running in the back end for e.g churn prediction, probability of failure of equipment, weather prediction etc. All these algorithms written in R invoke lot of packages. Some of these packages may not be compatible with R version installed in the recipients’ system.
I too faced many hurdles while hosting an R shiny app in real environment, ranging from missing data files, R work spaces, missing R shiny app components (UI.R & Server.R) and of course not to mention the various missing or not ‘up to date’ library packages. I wished if there was a way where the people responsible for developing the R shiny app had just given me a zip file with all dependencies taken care off and all I had to do was unzip it and run the code to host the app. Wishful thinking some would say, but not really. Enter the ‘Docker’.
What is a Docker?
Though the software engineering folks might be already aware of Docker, I will try to explain in layman terms for people unfamiliar with it. So here it goes
Imagine you are in some remote town on Earth. You wish to build a toy building out of Legos, but your town neither has Legos nor do you know how exactly to put the pieces together to make a building.
Image source : http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/edab/
Enter your friend ‘ Docker’ . The docker has already pre built the building with Lego pieces and packaged it in a gift box. Talk about an Ideal Christmas Gift 😉. Now all you have to do is unpack it and keep it on your table. Tada !!! your wish has come true.
Now what are the hassles you just avoided
· Buying the right Lego pieces which help you build the toy building · Putting the Lego pieces together · Wasting time
Now let’s extend the Lego analogy to delve deeper into Docker.
· The Lego pieces are akin to your code and its dependencies (packages, libraries), and the environment (OS, Version of Software, IDE). · The gift box is the ‘container’ safely containing all the components. · You unpacking and safely putting it on table is deployment of the code.
While doing the above, the advantages you had were
· You did not have to install the latest version of the language or its packages/libraries · You did not have to configure your environment · You could directly deploy the code and yes you saved lot of time
Alrighty then, now that we have an intuitive idea of what Docker is, lets push the envelope and explore it more technically.
Docker Under the Hood:
The Docker is basically a Container. Container is a running instance of an image.
Image is a snapshot of the environment in which you ran the code. It contains the operating system, software and library packages.
A dockerfile helps define an image. It is a series of steps to create an image. It will contain details of which library packages to load, where to copy the files from and to which location.
The below picture illustrates the process aptly
Picture adapted from Slideshare
An excellent tutorial on Dockers by Jake Wright can be viewed in the below link.
So folks, the Docker helps in hosting an R shiny app as depicted below. System B hosts R shiny app successfully thanks to the Docker.
Representational image of R shiny app hosted successfully
Hope you liked my article. Here is Part 2
You can reach out to me on
Linkedin
Twitter | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-dockerize-an-r-shiny-app-part-1-d4267659312a | ['Venkat Raman'] | 2018-10-13 13:35:14.275000+00:00 | ['R', 'Data Visualization', 'Docker', 'Software Development', 'Data Science'] |
A Successful Online Business — How to Start One | With regards to the subject of beginning another online business, most business people imagine that experimentation is the best approach yet this isn’t so. Various experienced financial specialists can give you subtleties concerning what went directly during their endeavor into the universe of new businesses, and what turned out badly. In view of these appraisals, there are sure blends of practices that, whenever done right, can bring about beginning an effective business. This is what most online entrepreneurs depend on.
Examining the Market
These days, the market is to some degree comparative across the world so it doesn’t require some investment for a specific need to go worldwide. That is the reason you’ll have to investigate your market for deficiencies before you can think about an item and survey whether it has an unfulfilled interest on the lookout. Scour the web to discover answers to your inquiries.
Examine normal online discussions like Quora and Reddit for individuals’ inquiries concerning the accessibility of specific help and item to tackle a specific issue. Search for watchwords that have a high number of inquiries however many less important outcomes. This will be a sign of a market that needs more arrangements.
Obviously, you will have a couple of rivals in the field so it’s ideal to look at their showcasing systems and items before you begin chipping away at your own variants. This will help you make something imaginative that increases the value of the buyer.
Post-Good Content
Is it true that you are stressed over how you’ll persuade clients through an online deals call? This is what you need to clarify so they proceed with the whole cycle, up until the last buy.
Give headings that arouse shopper curiosity
Address the issue that your image can settle
Guarantee your unwavering quality by giving subtleties of your experience and the individuals in your group
Give tributes of upbeat clients
Make a decent offer
Furnish them with assurance so they feel consoled
Make it a matter of earnestness so they can’t won’t
Make the deal
While strolling your client through the site, ensure that you’re zeroing in on their need and how you’re causing them.
Convey a Proper Website
For a business that works exclusively on the web, a site fills in as a base camp and you sure as hell can’t settle on the nature of yours. Take it from internet selling experts, most retail marks keep their sites genuinely basic; they realize that they have under 15 seconds to catch customer consideration, which implies a more modest systematic yours has under 10. So recall:
No crazy tones or text styles; clear, dull text styles on white functions admirably enough
Make it easy to explore to and from pages
Handle customer consideration on each page with fascinating pictures and recordings
Gather email delivers from visiting traffic to give reports on deals
Abbreviate the number of snaps it takes to affirm an exchange; one to add card subtleties and one to affirm
Advance it for cell phones
Web index Help
Working a business online necessitates that you be on an acceptable footing with the web crawlers, particularly the ruling force, Google. Utilizing a PPC (pay per click) plan to promote your new business is compelling at drawing more traffic towards your site. This will work a lot speedier than trusting that natural traffic will stream in.
Publicizing through Google AdWords’ Network Display techniques gives the advantage of your image’s pennants being up inside only hours. In addition, using such a framework offers the advantage of allowing you to test how compelling different watchwords are for driving more traffic.
Whenever you’ve figured out which catchphrases work best, you would then be able to fuse them into your notices, online media posts, and above all, your site. This will help your rankings on SERPs.
Be a Leading Authority in Your Niche
Besides being your kind of revenue, the web fills in as the populace’s biggest wellspring of real data in a hundred unique structures. In the event that you appeal to individuals searching for data, and not simply the individuals who set out to make a buy, you wind up building footing among a bigger gathering of individuals.
Thus, bait in data searchers by giving your ability to put together articles with respect to various sites. You can make different types of substances, for example, recordings, infographics, and pictures that make certain to have an effect on perusers who may wind up making a buy later on. On each useful piece, add the alternative for them to impart it to their companions.
Be dynamic on the very stages where your intended interest group poses inquiries identifying with your field, and respond to them. All things considered, in addition, engaging than a CEO who effectively responds to inquiries on the web?
Influence Email Marketing
At the point when you give visiting traffic the alternative to present their email addresses, you get an important rundown of potential clients who have made the ways for their inboxes for you. Basically, it shows that they have built up an interest in your image, are eager to frame a drawn-out relationship with your image.
People who visit your site and leave their email address are fundamentally allowing you to get in touch with them. They are expected clients and email advertising is the most ideal approach to development with leads.
Upgrade Customer Loyalty
Clients search for esteem any place they go and that is the thing that you need to offer. It’s very conceivable that over a fourth of individuals who made a buy from your site would do it again in the event that you reach them again with a decent arrangement.
The principal deal you make is the most critical but at the same time, it’s costly. Henceforth, you’ll need to offer them related things that work out in a good way for their buy and send redeemable coupons to guarantee that they return. On the off chance that you reward them with motivations to purchase once more, your clients make certain to be faithful to your image.
Despite the fact that the online-world is confronted paced and dynamic, it isn’t the situation for business sectors and organizations that are working through the web. The fundamental parts of beginning productive online business areas yet equivalent to previously. | https://medium.com/@abahfrankie/a-successful-online-business-how-to-start-one-12093a676ea2 | ['Frank Abah'] | 2020-12-16 20:04:02.365000+00:00 | ['Online Marketing', 'Make Money Online', 'Digital Marketing', 'Online Business'] |
How To Deploy Static Angular Website With Azure DevOps | Build Pipeline
We need to do build pipelines as part of continuous integration first. The way this pipeline works is that the moment you check-in code into Github or Azure Repos, this pipeline builds the project, test it, make the built artifact ready for the deployment. Let’s follow all the steps to build this pipeline.
Create a Project in Azure DevOps Create a Repo and Put your code in Azure Repos Create a pipeline that takes it from the source repository. Install all dependencies Run the tests Build the code Copy files from source for staging Archive all the copied files Finally, publish the artifact. Enable Continuous Integration with triggers
Create a Project in Azure DevOps
Let’s create a project in your Azure DevOps account. I named it StaticWebsite with visibility of your choice. You can make it public or private.
Creating a project
Once you created this project you can see the dashboard which is empty right now.
Project Dashboard
Put your code in Azure Repos
It’s time to create a repo and place all the code from the example project from above and push your code into this repo. I created a repo called static-angular and push all the code into this repo.
static-angular
You can generate the Git credentials when you click on the clone button on the top right corner. You need these credentials if you want to push the code into this repo later.
Create a Build Pipeline
Let’s start a pipeline with selecting a source and repository branch
Select a Source
On the next page select an Empty job
select an empty job
You need to define all the tasks under this job such as Install dependencies, Run Tests, Build the project, Copy Files, Archive files, Finally publish artifacts.
Define Tasks
First, you need to click on the + icon on the right side of the Agent job to add tasks. We need to select the Command line task for the first three tasks: install, run tests, and build.
Command-line task
Install dependencies
When you run this pipeline you clone the Angular project from Azure Repos. This repo doesn’t have any dependencies installed so we need to run npm install as a first task
install dependencies
Run Tests
Always test the project. Let's run the units tests with this command npm run test-ci which in turn runs this form the scripts section of package.json ng test --no-watch --browsers=ChromeHeadless --code-coverage
Build the Project
Once all the test cases are run, we need to build the project for the artifact.
Build the project
Copy the files
We have the build ready so we need to copy files from source folder to target folder to staging. For this, we have to select the Copy Files task. All the code actually resides in this directory Build.SourcesDirectory and we need to move all the source code to staging directory Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory
Copy Files
Archive Files
We have copied all the files to the target folder. It’s time to create an Archive file with the task Archive Files. Select this task and give all the details such as the Root folder, archive type and an archive file.
Archive Files
Publish Artifact
Use the task called Publish build artifacts to publish the artifact.
Publish Artifact
Finally, Define the trigger
Let’s define the trigger for this build. Edit the pipeline by clicking on the triggers and enable continuous integration. Any commit to the static-angular repo master branch triggers this pipeline.
Trigger
This is how the final artifact looks.
Artifact
Here is the complete YAML for this build pipeline. | https://medium.com/bb-tutorials-and-thoughts/how-to-deploy-static-angular-website-with-azure-devops-46546b536aeb | ['Bhargav Bachina'] | 2020-06-02 03:19:11.647000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Cloud Computing', 'Azure', 'JavaScript', 'Web Development'] |
20 Selected Definitions of Biotechnology | 20 Selected Definitions of Biotechnology
Biotechnology is the perfect combination of biology and technology(Bio +Technology) actually it is the combination of these two fields that are applied to benefits for industrial areas, our medical field, environment health, many more. The term, biotechnology is of recent origin, the discipline itself is very old.
Different scientists and researchers have different views to explain the term biotechnology, here are 20 different definitions that explain biotechnology. These definitions are reproduced below with the view orient the readers to the nature and scope of the discipline.
1.
Biotechnology is a fusion of biology and technology means the use of biological agents or their components for generating useful products services.
2.
The applications of scientific and engineering principles to the processing of materials by biological agents to provide goods and services.
3.
Any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or a derivative thereof, to make or modify products or processes for a specific use.
4.
The applications of biological organisms, systems, and processes to manufacturing and service industries.
5.
Biotechnology consists of “the controlled use of biological agents, such as micro-organisms or cellular components, for biological use”-U.S. National Science Foundation.
6.
The controlled use of biological agents such as microorganisms or cellular components for beneficial purposes.
7.
Biotechnology is “the integrated use of biochemistry, microbiology, and engineering sciences to achieve the technological application of the capabilities of microorganisms, cultured tissues/cells, and parts thereof”-European Federation of Biotechnology.
8.
The use of living organisms and their components in agriculture, food, and other industries.
9.
Biotechnology is a technology that utilizes biological systems, living organisms, or parts of this to develop to create different products-NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
10.
The use of biological organisms and their constituents for the transformation of inputs into commercial outputs.
11.
A technology using biological phenomena for copying and manufacturing various kinds of useful substances.
12.
Biotechnology Comprises the “Controlled and deliberate applications of simple biological agents-living or dead or cell components -in technically useful operations, either of productive manufacture or as service operation”-J.D. Bu’ lock,1987.
13.
The industrial production of goods and services by processes using biological organisms, systems, and processes.
14.
Biotechnology may be defined as “the use of living organisms in systems or processes for the manufacture of useful products. It may involve bacteria, algae, fungi yeast, cells of higher plants or animals, or subsystems of any of these or isolated components from living matter”-Gibbs and Greenhalgh,1983.
15.
“ The application of biological organisms, systems or processes” Constitutes biotechnology-British Biotechnologist.
16.
The use of living organisms to solve problems or make useful products.
17.
Biotechnology is the branch of science in which living things are used to make a new product.
18.
A set of techniques and processes involving biological materials.
19.
The Processes, which are based on the natural capabilities of micro-organisms, etc are commonly considered as old biotechnology.
20.
Biotechnology is the use of biological processes, organisms, or systems to manufacture products intended to improve the quality of human life-Margaret Rouse at whatls.com.
The area covered under biotechnology is very vast and the technique involved is highly divergent; this often made a precise definition of the subject rather difficult. | https://medium.com/technology-hits/20-selected-definitions-of-biotechnology-a72112af5c92 | ['Kiranjeet Kaur'] | 2021-01-06 11:02:20.778000+00:00 | ['Definition', 'Define Biotechnology', 'Biotechnology', 'Definitions Biotechnology', '20 Definitions'] |
Creative Cloud: What’s Cooking? | Product teams tend to be all about launches. They develop projects in secret, then focus all their attention on the big release. But what about the middle of product development? That’s when you’re struggling to figure things out and when you learn the most.
Within the companies I know, teams increasingly want to be more “real-time” with their customers, being more transparent about what they’re developing and why, and getting feedback during the process. (Having been an entrepreneur with tiny teams and now a product leader of a large company, I try to remind people who blatantly stereotype and generalize companies that, ultimately, how a company acts comes down to its people and their intentions.)
I’d love to take this opportunity to share some of our intentions on the Creative Cloud team at Adobe, as well as a few things we are working on that could change the creative world as we know it.
Experience Design as a Platform
Today, product designers rely on a collection of loosely integrated parts to design, prototype, animate, share, test, and build digital products. Some of these products are limited to a single platform, some of them are web-only, some of them have shaky performance or limited integrations with other tools, and very few of them take all stakeholders of design into account.
At the same time, the field of experience design is going through some major changes. Design teams can no longer work in isolation, or spend their days navigating file systems and dealing with version control. They must be able to design at scale, taking more and more platforms and states of the customer experience into account and iterating faster than ever before. Modern designers prototype early and often, making rapid-fire tweaks and sometimes wholesale changes based on feedback from stakeholders.
The overwhelming challenge is how to coordinate all that design work and the different groups of stakeholders. How do multiple designers and engineers collaborate efficiently on a project? How do you collect design feedback from the wide variety of stakeholders without having comments and suggestions trapped in a dozen different email threads? How do you have teams throughout the company working on separate projects, but ensure the designs are consistent, stay in-sync, and reuse as many brand and user experience elements as possible? Those are the challenges of designing at scale.
Answering those questions is the battle right now in the experience design market. The product team that can build a true experience design platform that integrates seamless collaboration and that supports creating and maintaining design systems for efficiently sharing colors, styles, components, and assets will win in an extraordinarily competitive field.
The modern team or enterprise is as coordinated in their creativity and design as they are in their operations. Brand assets and fonts are consistent across every internal presentation and external communication. Product elements and components are aligned and updated in real-time, from websites to mobile apps to desktop software. The new XD makes this possible.
In our latest release, you’ll see some of the specifics about how we’re helping teams achieve consistency and efficiency with support for flexible and intuitive design systems. XD is being crafted by and for forward-thinking UI/UX teams that value performance, collaboration, and a fully-integrated experience with a robust ecosystem of third-party plug-ins.
In developing this release, one major question the XD team had to answer was how to share projects. Creative Cloud users are accustomed to saving their work in files on their local device and then syncing those local files up to the cloud for collaborators to see. But the team quickly realized that paradigm didn’t work with the complex sharing and collaboration needs of modern organizations. And it didn’t deliver the performance our customers wanted. Instead, the source of truth about a project always needs to be in the cloud so that all the collaborators and stakeholders can access it. So, we created Cloud Documents. With Cloud Documents, projects are automatically saved into the cloud, where everyone can view and interact with the one true version of the project, all with the level of performance we expect from modern applications.
I’m excited to see how Cloud Documents and support for creating design systems in Adobe XD change the ways design teams work with each other and with their stakeholders.
Transcending Desktop-Only Creativity
One of the most wondrous tenets of creativity is that it happens on its own terms. Whether you’re sitting on a train, walking through the woods, or sitting at your desktop, your tools must enable you to create in real-time wherever you are. Of course, professional, digital creative tools have been bound to the desktop for decades. But with recent developments in cloud computing and powerful devices like Apple’s iPad Pro, digital creativity has the opportunity to happen anywhere.
We’re taking advantage of these trends by transforming our flagship tools into multi-device systems, starting with Photoshop. This year, we will bring Photoshop to the iPad, with more platforms and devices to follow.
Bringing the full codebase of Photoshop to a device like the iPad is both a tremendous technical challenge and an amazing opportunity. Translating the deep, complicated interface of Photoshop on the desktop to a touch device gives us a chance to modernize the application and make it more accessible for new users.
Our goal is to deliver a product with the power and capabilities to enable real, professional work with much less complexity. There will be fewer dropdowns and panels and more contextual ways to access your advanced capabilities through modern touch gestures.
Like most opportunities, though, this one comes with risks. Many creative professionals have been using Photoshop for years or decades. They have engrained expectations, shortcuts, and muscle memory that help them do their jobs. What streamlines Photoshop for one user may break a much-used pattern for another.
We’re doing research and getting user feedback to guide us in this transformation, but we know things won’t be perfect at launch. We depend on feedback from our veteran users and new customers and expect to make changes based on what we hear.
Exciting Journeys Ahead
These are just a few of the upcoming changes you’ll see in Creative Cloud, but we have a long roadmap of projects that will fundamentally improve how people create. Stay tuned for some pretty exciting updates for our video products and the Lightroom ecosystem for photographers. And our newly founded 3D & Immersive product team is charting the course for a wildly creative and immersive future.
Bold journeys don’t come with maps, though. Our product teams are guided primarily by empathy with the users they serve. We’ll succeed only through the partnerships we’ve built with creative communities and with the help of the priceless feedback we receive through those partnerships. | https://medium.com/positiveslope/creative-cloud-whats-cooking-e18c4b934f17 | ['Scott Belsky'] | 2019-05-17 12:57:38.933000+00:00 | ['Design Process', 'Creativity', 'Design', 'Adobe', 'Design Systems'] |
Mastering Instagram Hashtags | According to Instagram, over 95 million pieces of content are shared on the platform each day. How do you keep track of all that information? Hashtags have become our best hope — and Instagram uses them really well. If a librarian like old Melvil Dewey, creator of the Dewey Decimal Classification system, was around today, he’d give hashtags a thumbs-up and a happy-face emoji wink wink.
Instagram hashtag
Where Did Hashtags Come From?
Twitter user Chris Messina created the concept of using the hashtag for social media conversations. On August 23, 2007, he tweeted a suggestion to use the # sign before the keyword or phrase as a method of categorizing conversations within the site. His innovation didn’t gain widespread acceptance immediately. People complained that including # signs made messages difficult to read.
The system gained real social acceptance later that year during the San Diego wildfires. The hashtag #sandiegofire became the organizing phrase that enabled people to communicate quickly and conveniently on the site. The method of using the # sign in front of a word or phrase, although distracting to people reading the message, proved very useful.
Twitter coined the name hashtag, and on July 1, 2009, the company began hyperlinking the hashtagged words together in search results, making the function of using hashtags very convenient. The list of social networks and related sites that have adopted this practice is fairly extensive.
How Instagram Uses Hashtags
So how do hashtags work on Instagram? When you share content on Instagram and include a hashtag in the caption, anyone can tap that hashtag and see other images that have used it too. The content is displayed via the Explore tab with three useful options. See below.
Instagram hashtag mastering
1. Related hashtags
As the name implies, this displays similar hashtags that may be of interest. There aren’t related hashtags for every hashtag, but for the more popular hashtags there are and it can be a useful way to identify similar user groups within a topic or industry.
2. The Top view
This view displays content that has the most engagement — the most likes and comments. The nice part about this feature is that the cream rises to the top. So if you’re trying to make yourself known using a specific hashtag and your content happens to be well liked, then viewers of that hashtag will likely see it, even long after you’ve shared the content. For example, when looking at the top content for #instagrampower, you can still see posts that came out during the initial book launch for the first edition in 2013 by scrolling down the feed just a bit, even though it’s been used over 1,500 times.
3. The Recent view.
As its name implies, this view shares the content with the most recent use of the hashtag at the top of the feed. For less popular hashtags, the most recent images will be visible toward the top for longer. For more popular hashtags, you’ll have to scroll farther down the feed to find them.
MARKETING STRATEGY TIP — HASHTAGS YOU CAN “TRY” TO CONTROL
If you include a very popular hashtag with your content, it will likely be shown at the top of the Recent feed for just a split second, and it will also be very hard to get ranked in the Top view for that hashtag. But if you include a less popular hashtag, it will stay on the top of the Recent feed for a longer period of time. It will also be much easier to get it to rank in the Top view. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle — hashtags that are used in your niche, but not so popular as to be hard to influence and impossible to be a leader in.
How to Use Hashtags
Hashtags have enormous utility for creative marketers. Let’s review a few of the powerful ways you can leverage them.
1. Include them on your posts to expand the reach of the content. You can include up to 30, but that is probably a little excessive.
2. You can create your own hashtags and use them creatively in your business for things like contests, promotions, and thought leadership.
3. You can look for hashtags, and now you can follow them as well, to research popular trends and participate in conversations within your industry or niche by commenting, liking, or sharing your own content using that hashtag.
4. You can identify new prospects by looking to see who is using relevant hashtags.
Create Your Own Hashtags
Creating your own hashtags enables a nice collection of marketing activities, including leading conversations and creating topics that rally customers and interested prospects in ad hoc conversations and sharing. Being the thought leader also positions you as the leader of your tribe. Creating a hashtag for a specific customer purpose also gives you the opportunity to ask people to use that custom hashtag as a social media reply device. This approach is what powers most Instagram contests, which we’ll cover more deeply in future.
Hashtags can be set up by anyone simply using the # symbol before a word or phrase. You can use any hashtag you’d like without needing anyone’s permission. That’s good news for creative types, but an obvious problem occurs — hashtag wars! When two dueling marketers try to use a hashtag for different purposes, things can get confusing. Hashtags can also be used in association with negative or inappropriate images, so practice care.
As a marketer, there are some best practices that you need to keep in mind when you start to consider how best to create and utilize hashtags. Let’s review them:
1. Be brief — use either one word or a short phrase.
2. Try to create a hashtag that is memorable and easily understood.
3. Check to make sure the hashtag is not open to multiple interpretations, or else it runs the risk of being used for the wrong purpose. Be careful here, weird things can happen.
4. Check to make sure the hashtag is not already in use before creating it. Make your hashtags unique or they’ll be used by others and therefore become more problematic as people use them for random things.
5. Don’t create hashtags that include another company’s brand or product name, except for rare occasions, like this book — please take a picture and share it using the #instagrampower and #instagrampowerbook hashtags.
6. Remember that once you set up a hashtag, it becomes a communication tool for anyone to use. What you popularize, others can hijack. You cannot control its use.
Research Trends in Your Niche
Even in a tiny niche, like the doll clothes market, there are new topics, trends, and concepts being created all the time. New competitors come into the market, new events happen, and industry news comes and goes. By following thought leaders in your industry and watching their use of hashtags, you can quickly keep your finger on the pulse of trending topics. Because of the visual nature of Instagram, this type of research is even more helpful for product sellers because you can get a quick look at new items you might not otherwise see.
hashtag research
Save and Cut and Paste
Search for terms through Instagram’s Explore tab until you discover what your niche’s customers are commonly using. Then consider making a list of the hashtags on your phone’s notes function so you can easily cut and paste them into your Instagram caption each time they are needed.
Find Prospects Using Hashtags
You have an opportunity to identify people who are interested in your niche or industry. Simply look to see who is sharing pictures using the related hashtags. This is a significant opportunity that is easy to do. You can also follow a hashtag. When you do that, you see the items shared that use the hashtag and you can quickly like and comment on the content.
The Great Placement Debate
In the early days of Instagram people were sensitive to not use more than a couple of hashtags, and they would frequently only place them in the first comment, rather than in the caption. Those practices have shifted. Now people use tons of hashtags, and they also include them in the caption. To make the caption statement stand out and not be crammed into one giant paragraph with a lot of hashtags, users often add a space or two under their comment, include a period or two, and then add all their hashtags. That separates them nicely from your written comments.
Join in the Sharing
In some industries or niches, using the common hashtags can feel like a giant waste of time, and it might be. But in other niches, participating in the trending topics is a simple way to engage with prospective customers. You’ll have to decide whether this is a good approach for your situation.
One indicator of whether your time will be well spent joining a conversation via a hashtag or using it for an Instagram image is whether you are (or your brand is) fairly well known and respected. If so, then you have an easy way to make a strong social impact. If not, then you’ll need to work much harder to make yourself known, and you’ll have to determine if that is time well spent. If you are a product marketer, the answer is probably a strong yes. If you are a service provider, then you’ll likely want to focus on local hashtags to connect with local prospects. As with all other forms ofadvertising, you probably need to take a long-term view and not make up your mind based on one or two attempts.
Cautionary Tales
As mentioned previously, companies have learned that hashtags can be hijacked and used for customer complaints. Hashtags are wild and free. Once created, they take on a power of their own. Creating a hashtag associated with your brand is the equivalent of setting up “open mic night” on the Internet. Be afraid, be very afraid. Setting up a popular hashtag and giving it prominence through your other media channels, only to have it constantly used to trash your company, is a PR nightmare. Be careful to consider your brand’s reputation in the marketplace and whether it might be wiser to simply participate in industry conversations rather than creating unique hashtags that can be used against you.
McDonald’s and the #McDStories Hashtag
McDonald’s learned this the hard way when it set up a Twitter hashtag campaign. The initial hashtag it created was #MeetTheFarmers, which the company used effectively to share stories of healthy produce and locally sourced ingredients. McDonald’s paid to promote the hashtag, so it gained wide prominence. A solid effort — no problems so far. But the second hashtag, #McDStories, was much more problematic.
Soon the hashtag was being used to share food poisoning stories, broadcast customer service complaints, mock the company with funny insults, and generally bash the brand. The anti-McDonald’s sentiment turned into a competitive sport. Twitter users took turns coming up with the most sarcastic tweets they could, and happily tacked on the #McDStories hashtag to broadcast their messages.
The initial error was only one layer of the ordeal. Social media bloggers also took the opportunity to publicly correct the company on its approach. Not only did McDonald’s receive mockery from the public; it received public criticism from social media marketers, too.
There are plenty of lessons to learn from the McDonald’s story. Let’s review them briefly:
A hashtag is a communication tool, and like any good tool, it can be used to build up or tear down. Hashtags are like a megaphone, and if you create one, it has power. If you take it a step further and advertise it on your other media channels, you give it even more prominence and power.
2. Crafting hashtags in a focused way that shapes the conversation in a direction of your choosing is wiser than making them more general. The #MeetTheFarmers hashtag didn’t provide an easy on-ramp to complaints like the #McDStories hashtag did.
3. Your brand resides in the mind of the consumer. If you ask people to share their thoughts publicly, you might be surprised at the level of negativity. Don’t expect them to be “on message.” In social media, this inability to control the message is particularly problematic for larger brands that have negative consumer sentiment to deal with. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t use social media; it means they should be careful how they structure the engagement.
Hashtag Dos and Don’ts
We hope these cautionary tales have helped clarify the importance of getting your plan nailed down when it comes to using hashtags. Let’s review a list of best practices.
Hashtag Dos
Do take the time to research the hashtags associated with your industry and learn how they are best used.
2. Do participate in the use of hashtags to extend your message to a broad audience.
3. Do look to see who is using your niche or industry hashtags and follow them.
4. Do use caution when creating new hashtags to ensure you can shape the dialogue as much as possible.
5. Do create hashtags that are brief and easily understood.
6. Do use websites that help you learn about new hashtags and keep up on trending topics.
Hashtag Don’ts
Don’t forget that hashtags are a tool that can be used to do damage.
2. Don’t underestimate the negative sentiment that might be bottled up about your brand and unleashed via hashtags.
3. Don’t create hashtags that are too general and open to broad interpretation or multiple meanings.
4. Don’t use general trending hashtags for marketing purposes.
5. Don’t create hashtags with brand names that you do not have express permission to manage.
6. Don’t overuse hashtags. Most people suggest using between 2 and 10, but no more. Technically you can add up to 30, but that is not recommended unless you’ve really considered the impact. Adding a long list of hashtags could make you look a little too desperate.
An Interview with a Hashtag Pioneer — Josh Decker
One of the most creative uses of hashtags I’ve ever seen is at professional sporting events. For example, at Seattle Mariners games, where the fan content was shared on the jumbotrons in near real-time as they posted using hashtags. Have you seen that at events you’ve attended? When I first saw it, I was blown away by the beauty of the idea — turning fans into the stars of the show. It’s one of my family’s favorite parts of the day! See below.
instagram hashtags
The company behind the technology is Seattle-based Tagboard, founded by Josh Decker. Tagboard partners with more than 200 major sports teams, and its technology is used at the largest events around the world. Tagboard also powers on-air sharing of social content for TV broadcasts. I asked Josh to share more about his journey and his perspective on hashtags:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for Tagboard?
A: The idea for Tagboard came about because communities all over the world were using digital communication channels, but those conversations were disconnected. We wanted to connect these people. We wanted it to work across social networks and be opt-in. The hashtag became a way for people to connect. When I had the idea for Tagboard, it was 2010 — you should have heard me trying to explain this idea to my mom. She thought I was crazy. But we thought, Hey, we think this hashtag thing will catch on and spread, and we’ll have something pretty awesome to work with. And that’s the idea of what you see at a Mariners game. You use that hashtag and you get added to the pool of content that the Mariners team can choose to put up onscreen. It’s a way for the fan to get rewarded for communicating and connecting with the community.
Q: Was there a specific breakthrough moment when you realized this was going to be a commercially successful idea and that hashtags were going to power the idea?
A: It was the first time I saw a hashtag used in a commercial on TV. I’m an Audi guy. I had the idea for Tagboard because I was part of an Audi community and wanted to improve the way we communicated online. Audi, being a very digitally savvy brand, had the first commercial with a hashtag. It was a Super Bowl commercial in 2011, and I thought, Oh snap! We’re going mainstream. This was around the same time we launched the company. We’d been working on it for six months, but when I saw that hashtag, I knew we were on the right track.
Q: Is Tagboard just for big brands, or can smaller businesses use it too? What are some use cases that our audience might be surprised to read about?
A: Tagboard, when we started, was not supposed to be a software-as-a-service company. It was a user-focused tool. It was more about helping anyone connect with their community online. We didn’t get traction on the user side, but brands and marketers saw the value in it. We’ve proudly kept a free search option on our website that anyone can use. We’ve had over 5 million hashtags searched on our website.
The great thing is that we’re able to work with the NBA Finals, or World Cup, but we believe that it should be accessible to anyone. We have large enterprise-level solutions, but we also have our free search tool, so we’re able to serve anyone.
Q: At a social/cultural level, what do you think the highest and best use of Tagboard and hashtags is?
A: I continue to be blown away when Tag board is used to not only share breaking news, but to connect the people who are affected by that news. I’ve seen it used for earthquakes, wildfires, building fires, crane collapses, and shootings that are becoming way too common. Any time a big event happens, news networks are using Tag board to break the story, because Tag board is the only way to help them access that breaking news content, live from the scene, in real time, on any social network, giving them the ability to find that content and use it to tell the news and share updates and alerts from the government or other official sources.
Q: How have you seen the commercial use of hashtags change since 2011 ?
A: Hashtags started as a way to thread conversations, and we lost that at some point, but now I feel like we’ve gone from this attitude of “Who can come up with the cutest hashtag” to more of a foundational component of a marketing campaign. It’s cleaner, it’s to-the-point, and it’s more broadly used as a tactic to maintain consistency and relevance. You’re not seeing as much of the noise around hashtags, and we’re starting to see the signal come through. We’re seeing hashtags used for more longer-run evergreen campaigns. Hashtags have gone back to the community. It started there, and then marketers got ahold of it, and overdid it, and it became a marketing thing, and we’re seeing it shift back to a community orientation, even in the way marketers use them.
Q: Are there any tips or suggestions for readers that are trying to effectively use hashtags in support of their online work?
A: Listen to your community. If you’re trying to come up with a new hashtag for your campaign? Don’t. All you have to do is go online and see what your community is already using. Ninety percent of the time, the best way to come up with your hashtag is to listen to your audience. If you need to come up with your own, keep it short and simple.
Q: How about any cautions, warnings, or things to watch out for?
A: I’m always a fan of camel casing — capitalizing the first letter of a new word within the hashtag — because sometimes you can miss some double meanings that won’t show up otherwise. And don’t overdo it. Don’t force it. Communities are built on trust, and when they feel like you’re forcing something down their throat, they won’t trust you. At the end of the day, you can’t force it.
Q: If readers want to learn more about using Tagboard, what should they do?
A: Check out our website, tagboard.com, or scroll through our Twitter feed @Tagboard. We share a lot of the work our clients do on Twitter, so you can get a great taste for how the product works, and how it’s used in the real world.
SNAPSHOT
1. Hashtags are a great tool for engaging with customers.
2. Include them with your content as you share it.
3. Use hashtags to research your industry and connect with new prospects.
4. Remember that if you create a hashtag in association with your brand, anyone can use it, including haters.
source : | https://medium.com/plus-marketing/mastering-instagram-hashtags-172b00584b10 | ['Jasem Karrar'] | 2020-12-08 20:15:13.549000+00:00 | ['Instagram Stories', 'Instagram Hack', 'Instagram', 'Instagram Marketing', 'Hashtag'] |
How Your Computer Works | 1. 1s and 0s
A computer is just like any other machine: a bunch of cleverly placed parts that, because of their placement, happen to perform an interesting task. For example, a car is technically a large hunk of metal, but because it is thoughtfully put together, it’s able to do more than just sit around and look pretty. Likewise, computers are a bunch of metal wires connected to a small piece of silicon, which is really another bunch of small wires. Once a computer is plugged in, the electricity that flows through these wires can be controlled in a way that does some interesting things. In computing disciplines, this controlled flow of electricity is represented with 1s and 0s, which represent the presence or absence of electric charge, respectively. Everything a computer does is founded on this single idea; numbers are represented in the binary counting system (which only needs two symbols, 1 and 0, to represent any number), and those numbers are used to represent everything from the text on this screen to the colors of the pixels that are displaying it.
2. CPU
The main component of a computer that “does things” with 1s and 0s is the Central Processing Unit (CPU). The CPU is capable of performing a limited number of simple instructions. Each instruction has a unique binary number that the CPU’s creator assigned to it in a document called an Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). When a CPU loads a certain binary instruction, the wires inside the CPU are designed to execute the corresponding task. As far as we are concerned, it’s not too important how these instructions get assigned to binary numbers; as long as we can all agree on a single, unique number for every instruction, things work out fine.
When your computer starts receiving power, the CPU starts running a very, very long list of these instructions, beginning from a predetermined starting place. The CPU continues to work its way through this list until it stops receiving power. You might be wondering if it’s possible to keep your computer on long enough for the CPU to reach the end of the instruction list. The answer is no, and here’s why:
CPU instructions can be broadly organized into three distinct categories:
1) Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing binary numbers. (Arithmetic Operations)
2) Switching to an instruction that is not the very next one. (Control Flow)
3) Reading or writing binary numbers from a memory device. (Input/Output)
The instructions in category 2, control flow, allow us to change where the CPU looks for instructions in such a way that it runs through the instruction list indefinitely. For example, one way you could do this is add a single instruction at the very end of the list that tells the CPU to start over from the beginning of the list. This creates a very simple loop, which the CPU can run over and over again to infinity.
Another thing you might be thinking is: “given that a computer can access the internet and do calculus, the instructions you just listed sound too simple”. But consider this: the CPU is running billions of these instructions per second. For example, a modern phone processor is so fast, it’s able to calculate the individual color of every pixel on a 4K screen around 50–100 times per second, send those colors to the screen, and find the spare time to continuously figure out the physics of a game like Angry Birds. As for how adding numbers translates to complicated things like physics simulations, well, after some clever engineers got wires to do a couple basic things like add numbers, a lot more clever engineers devised ways to take those basic operations and get them to do more interesting things. If you want to learn more about how these crazy things are accomplished, consider studying computer science :).
3. Memory
A CPU has a limited number of wires designed to store numbers. A group of wires that store numbers are often called a “memory device” , but in the CPU, they have a special name: “register file”. The CPU uses the register file to keep track of binary numbers that the CPU needs in order to execute its instructions. However, this register file isn’t nearly large enough to store entire programs (read: very, very, very long lists of instructions). Rather, the register file is made to behave a lot like your refrigerator: it keeps a limited amount of important stuff close at hand.
So while the CPU is very good at calculating things, for various reasons it is designed to be not-so-great at remembering them. Instead, your computer stores programs and their data in a separate memory device, commonly known as DRAM (many people just call this RAM). The CPU can then access DRAM through a series of connections separately known as the system bus, the memory bus, and the I/O bridge. The inner workings of these connections are rather detailed. It is enough to know that these connections allow the CPU to ask DRAM for binary numbers, and for DRAM to send those numbers to the CPU.
DRAM does have one tricky caveat, though: when the computer is turned off, the information stored in DRAM is erased. Memory devices that behave in this way are called volatile. Memory volatility is a problem, because we like the ability to turn off our computers without triggering a digital armageddon. In order to solve this problem, another memory device called a hard disk drive (HDD), which is non-volatile, is used for no-power safekeeping.
The fact that we have HDDs may cause you to wonder why we even bother using DRAM, as well. We use DRAM because HDDs are very, very slow and DRAM is comparatively fast. When your computer boots, DRAM acts like a middleman between the HDD and the CPU. Put another way, binary information typically flows from the HDD to DRAM, and then from DRAM to the CPU.
4. Booting
When the computer first begins receiving power, the CPU starts up and looks for its first instruction at the predetermined starting place. It then begins executing the instruction at that address. When the computer is first reset, rather than pointing to a location in DRAM, this special address points to a small memory chip that stores a program called BIOS (Basic Input Output System). BIOS is a small program designed to search for the next program, known as the bootstrapper, for the CPU to execute. It does this by searching the hard disk drive for eligible programs, asking the user to pick a contender, then loading the selected program into DRAM and showing the CPU the first instruction. Many computers only have one “eligible program” installed, so BIOS takes the liberty of making this decision for you.
The bootstrapper is essentially BIOS on steroids. BIOS was designed to load very small programs onto a computer’s DRAM. The bootstrapper, on the other hand, is designed to load the operating system (OS; think Windows or MacOS), a program that manages all the other programs you’ll end up running. After the bootstrapper is done loading the OS into memory, it tells the CPU to run the OS. After some housekeeping we won’t delve into, the OS will be up and running, and your computer will be ready to run its first “real” program.
5. Processes
When I first began learning about computers, I thought it was odd that a single processor that’s already occupied with the operating system could run another program, much less the many programs necessary to get to the login screen, at the same time. Everything from calculating pixel colors to managing components to receiving data over the internet to processing the data received over the internet to playing cat videos has to have its own, separate program, which needs the full “attention” of a CPU. Given this information, even fancy new processors that have 2,4 or even more CPUs seem suspect.
It turns out that the OS and computer hardware are able to work together to make the illusion that many programs are being executed at once. In reality, at any given point in time, the majority of programs aren’t getting executed at all. Instead, they are executed concurrently, meaning that they take turns using the processor. To illustrate, suppose that you are running Chrome and Spotify on your computer. Both Chrome and Spotify are treated by the OS as processes, which means that they are actually copies of the programs’ instruction code that the CPU has loaded into DRAM from the HDD. The OS chooses one of these processes to execute, and sends its starting instruction address to the CPU. Every few milliseconds, a hardware (read: physically built-in) timer sends the CPU a signal that time is up for that process. The CPU then gives control back to the OS (whose address is tucked away under a digital pillow). The OS then rinses and repeats. Because the processor is so fast and the delay between execution periods so small, this ends up appearing to you, the user, as if both Spotify and Chrome are working at the same time, even though they really aren’t.
6. Virtual Memory
Programs don’t just share the same CPU, either. They also share the same memory. This means that the OS has to deal with the tricky business of setting up a single DRAM device so that every process is able to store its data and code on the system. As with CPUs, the hardware and software closely cooperate to make the illusion that each program has complete control over the computer’s memory unit. This abstraction is called Virtual Memory (VM). It’s called virtual memory because a program may “think” it is accessing a certain part of the computer’s memory, but really the data at that address could be just about anywhere in DRAM, the disk drive, or even nowhere at all.
In the CPU, there is a special module called the Memory Management Unit (MMU). Every time the CPU executes a memory read or write instruction, the address of that load instruction is sent to this unit. Inside the MMU, the address is split up in two parts. The first part references a “page” of memory, and is called the Virtual Page Index (VPI). “Pages” are just equal-sized chunks of a memory device that computer architects decided to use to make the computer easier to organize. The second part of the address is called the Virtual Page Offset (VPO). The computer uses this part to figure out how far into a specified “chunk” the requested data is. Because DRAM and the hard disk drive are cut up into these chunks, processes that are just getting started by the OS are first cut up into chuck-sized pieces. The starting addresses of each of these pages are then loaded into a special register file called a Page Table (PT). The MMU uses the PT to translate the VPI into an actual address that contains the data. Whew, that was a mouthful. Each time the OS switches processes, it switches the page table that the MMU uses so it can correctly translate the virtual addresses of that specific process. That way, every process can think it has full control of the computer, and the computer can happily manage memory for several running processes at once.
7. Conclusion
That’s it! There is a lot of additional circuitry and algorithmic thinking that has gone into making all of these parts work together, and it is pretty messy! But the main idea behind all this computer stuff remains the same, and the knowledge that’s been outlined in this paper will likely apply to your personal devices for the next while. In the foreseeable future, it is also plausible that your personal device will become a quantum computer, or a bunch of very strange wires that can represent 0s, 1s, and 01s. But more on that at another time… | https://medium.com/@semaphore12/how-your-computer-works-376d596c61e9 | [] | 2021-01-24 19:54:48.693000+00:00 | ['Introduction', 'Computers', 'Computer Science'] |
Yummy Pasta Making In Home | Macaroni and Cheese Pasta
INGREDIENTS
6 ounces (170g) elbow macaroni
Salt
6 ounces (180ml) milk
6 ounces (170g) grated mild or medium cheddar, or any good melting cheese, like Fontina, Gruyère, or Jack
INSTRUCTIONS
Place macaroni during a medium saucepan or skillet and add only enough cold water to hide. Add a pinch of salt and convey to a overboil high heat, stirring frequently. still cook, stirring, until water has been almost completely absorbed and macaroni is simply shy of hard, about 6 minutes.
Immediately add milk and convey it to a boil. Add cheese. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring continuously, until cheese is melted and liquid has reduced to a creamy sauce, about 2 minutes longer. Season to taste with more salt and serve immediately.
2.Creamy Garlic Penne Pasta
INGREDIENTS
1 box (1 lb) penne pasta
3 TB butter
2 tsp. minced garlic
3 TB flour
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup milk
2 tsp dried parsley
½ cup grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
INSTRUCTIONS
Cook pasta consistent with packaged directions.
Melt butter during a medium saucepan, add garlic.
Cook for 1 minute over medium heat
Add flour and cook for a further minute, stirring constantly.
Add milk and broth, stirring constantly. Cook until sauce boils and thickens.
Add parsley and parmesan cheese. Add desired salt and pepper. Continue stirring until cheese has melted. Serve immediately.
Pour sauce over pasta and serve. want to check Best Pasta maker
3.Pasta With Blistered Cherry spaghetti sauce
INGREDIENTS
1 pound (450g) dry pasta
Kosher salt
4 medium cloves garlic, thinly sliced
6 tablespoons (90ml) extra-virgin vegetable oil , divided
1 1/2 pounds cherry tomatoes (about 2 pints; 750g)
1-ounce fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped (about 1 cup; 30g)
Freshly ground black pepper
Parmesan cheese, for serving
INSTRUCTIONS
Place pasta during a large skillet or sauté pan and canopy with water and an enormous pinch of salt. bring back a overboil high heat, stirring occasionally. Boil until just shy of hard, about 1 minute but the package instructions recommend.
Meanwhile, heat garlic and 4 tablespoons (60ml) vegetable oil during a 12-inch skillet over medium heat, stirring frequently, until garlic is softened but not browned about 3 minutes. Add tomatoes and cook, stirring, until tomatoes begin to burst. you’ll help them along by pressing on them with the rear of a wooden spoon as they soften.
Continue to cook until sauce is rich and creamy, about 5 minutes longer. Stir in basil and season to taste with salt and pepper.
When pasta is cooked, drain, reserving 1 cup of pasta water. Add pasta to the sauce and increase heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring and tossing constantly and adding reserved pasta water as necessary to regulate consistency to a pleasant, creamy flow. Remove from heat, stir in remaining 2 tablespoons (30ml) vegetable oil, and grate during a generous shower of Parmesan cheese. Serve immediately, passing extra Parmesan at the table.
4.Indian Style Masala Pasta
INGREDIENTS
1 cup penne pasta or any pasta
water to boil
½ tsp salt
1 tsp oil
1 tsp butter
2 clove garlic finely chopped
1-inch ginger finely chopped
½ onion finely chopped
1 cup tomato pulp
¼ tsp turmeric / Haldi
½ tsp Kashmiri red chili powder
2 tbsp spaghetti sauce
½ tsp garam masala
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp corn
¼ capsicum finely chopped
¼ carrot finely chopped
2 tbsp peas / matar
7 florets broccoli
3 tbsp water
½ tsp mixed herbs basil, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme
INSTRUCTIONS
Saute 1-inch ginger and a couple of clove garlic in 1 tsp oil and 1 tsp butter.
Further, saute ½ onion till they turn soft.
Add 1 cup tomato pulp and saute well. Keep stirring till the tomato pulp thickens.
Now add ¼ tsp turmeric, ½ tsp chili powder, ½ tsp garam masala, and ½ tsp salt. Saute till the spices get cooked completely.
Now add 2 tbsp corn, ¼ capsicum, ¼ carrot, 2 tbsp peas, and seven florets broccoli. saute for a moment. want to check Best Pasta maker
Add in 3 tbsp water and blend well. Cover and simmer for five minutes.
Now add in 2 tbsp spaghetti sauce and ½ tsp mixed herbs. mix well.
Add in cooked pasta and blend gently till the sauce gets coated well.
Finally, serve masala pasta Indian style hot topped with cheese if required. | https://medium.com/@khushikalburgi950/yummy-pasta-making-in-home-1a248cd64784 | ['Khushi Kalburgi'] | 2020-07-03 11:03:40.799000+00:00 | ['Pasta', 'Food', 'Recipe', 'Foodies'] |
Why you should document your UX product specs. | Last month, I was working on redesigning an annual benefit statement that will be sent to the whole company at the end of the year. Considering the fact that design was done five years ago, we decided to give it a UX touch before we turned it to visual designers to redesign the look and feel of the statement. Therefore, I started to research and design information architecture for our benefit statement.
From a user perspective, the project merely seems like just a statement of what benefits you received that year. However, it is way more significant than it looks. As I mentioned, this benefit statement would be sent to the whole company, that means we have nine different countries for whom to design. Every country has an entirely different set of benefits — not to mention different languages, currency system, and legal requirements that may apply.
With so many different regions, one universal design might not apply to all the areas. Because some countries give a couple hundred units in their currency and some countries give millions of units; some countries are required to display every single detail and policy in the benefit calculation, and some countries present a total number of benefits.
My original plan was to design nine different versions for every region, but after I finished the first region, I died a little bit inside. I was afraid of adding or removing content without checking with HR considering it can be legally required. With that said, I started to look into a better way to work on this project (once was enough, really). The “lazy” way of thinking is to consider what’s out there that can automatically finish this for me. I don’t remember what my thought process was, but Google Material Design Library inspired me. Design different UI elements to display different benefits and make a guide for Dev to build them. Basically, a guide says in this situation use this table in this way.
I analyzed the content in every region and designed tables that can fit different materials. Creating this guide ended up taking more effort than designing nine versions. However, I learned so much by developing a design guide than actually designing a product, and I would love to share it with you:
What UX Product Specs I built and Why
image from http://atomicdesign.bradfrost.com/chapter-2/
From my mentor, I learned that what I built is called UX product specifications. Similar to the visual design style guide, UX product specs should document the reasons behind your UI element to an atomic level (Atoms are the smallest UI element such as labels or buttons) by describing its usage. In general, UX product specs include all your UX design work documents, such as problem statements, the sitemap, workflows, and annotated wireframes. Depending on your audience (dev team or stakeholders) you might want to include extra information designated for them. There’s no standard way to convey this information because it is all dependent on how you want to communicate your design.
In my case, I was inspired by Google Material design. I found it beneficial for adding “dos” and “don’ts” because we might set some UI elements to behave a certain way, but it might mislead developers (or designers) to use it differently. For instance the Material Card Design Spec: When you look at the “don’ts” example, the product specs have defined the element and its behavior. However, when you look at the “dos” example, it is a better design behavior because it doesn’t break the context from the content. When your product specs have a lot of UI elements defined, there are many possibilities to create a molecule that obeys the product specs but not necessarily work well with the content. Therefore, understanding “dos” and “don’ts” is very beneficial for helping your audience develop based on your product specs.
If you are interested in reading more about how to write general UX product specs, I found Chris Kiess’s guide very helpful.
Better understanding, validating, and showing your design
As a designer, you are often asked to present your design in front of a group of people. They can be engineers, stakeholders, product managers, or your fellow designs. At those presentations, people will always ask you why you designed it a certain way. As a young designer, like me, you can be too panicked to justify your reasoning behind those design decision. In that moment, you will lose trust from your clients or stakeholders.
I am not going to say writing product specs are the way to solve those problems, but it helps me rethink my design decisions and memorize them by writing them down. Honestly, sometimes we are so comfortable with our design work and decide without having a second thought. Enough so that we might miss opportunities or not think about the reason behind them. When writing down the anatomy of the UI element, it is time for you to slow down and rethink every single detail. So hopefully, when you are asked to justify your design decision, you will answer the question the way you want.
Help Engineers know why you designed this way
Think about the situation above. Designers don’t always get a chance to present their design work in front of the dev team. Sometimes, the dev team might even be offsite or across the ocean. Now, other than giving them wireframes to build off of, how can you clarify the design decisions or help engineers understand your vision? The UX product specs now become an honest blueprint from you to the engineers.
Often when engineers receive design comps, they don’t agree with them. I was surprised when I heard that idea from one of our dev teams, but it’s actually not that surprising. I remember there was a dev team from overseas who didn’t want to “waste” their time to build the design work when I was interning at a design consultancy firm. I am not saying design specs can fix those problems but at least it gives designers a way to articulate their reasoning. You might think an intuitive design doesn’t need explanation, I would agree if the audience consists of users, but an intuitive product is not necessarily a design for engineers to build. A product specs should give them the insight of why the designers made the choices they made, and if engineers/stakeholders want to validate the choices, we should include the research in UX product specs.
Help other designers if they will pick up this project in the future
I asked my mentor how to measure good product specs. He said, “if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, I would expect developers and designers can continue the project without you.” I am so sad that no one cares if I get hit by a bus but I agree that a good product specs should have enough information to carry on the project without my presence.
To be honest, I wish the previous designer who worked on that benefit statement left a UX specs for me (maybe they did but the specs were lost over time). So I could feel more confident working with statements that need to meet legal requirements in other countries.
However, I hope my UX specs are good enough for other designers to redesign the product in the future if they need. At least, I think they won’t struggle as much as I had to.
Unify the design language
There was one time we received email feedback from one of our stakeholders. She used a word — backsplash — in the feedback. So our team was guessing what she meant by backsplash, whether it was the landing (splash) page or something else. We messaged her, called her, emailed her and even had a couple internal meeting to talk about what the feedback meant. A week later, we found out that backsplash page was the page behind a pop-up model. The conversation would have been so much easier if we set a unified language between us. And I think the missed opportunity is the product specs, because when you annotate your screens, you will name every UI element within the screen. That way, when people who don’t speak the same design language are trying to communicate with you, they can refer to the names in your product specs so it causes less confusion.
The current design industry is still very messy. There are so many different creative ways. People use so many different words to name something similar depending on where you learned design. So product specs can help communicate even within the design team. It helps to set up a “bible” for a product.
What can I do better next time?
Just a couple of things I wish I did and will try to do next time.
Start documenting product specs at the beginning of the project
Use product specs to communicate within the team
Keep product specs up to date and follow it as the “bible” for the product.
I know some companies require designers to document product specs. We don’t require it because we work very closely with our dev team. However, I still think it is very valuable to document product specs, and it is not just something you do because of work. It effectively facilitates your design communication.
Citations: | https://uxdesign.cc/why-you-should-document-your-ux-product-specs-afc98e6b4271 | ['Zhiyu Xue'] | 2019-05-12 22:43:04.988000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Design Systems', 'UX', 'Design Process', 'Product Design'] |
PolyCrystal Deflation Updates 💎 | Our next steps to decrease inflation 😊
Deflation So Far
First off, we want to thank the entire Crystal Crew for their support and enthusiasm for our deflation plan this far. You all have been an amazing help for helping PolyCrystal achieve the positive momentum it’s had for the past few days.
As a sign of our appreciation, we would like to put the next big deflation decision in your hands.
Further Emission Reduction
We want the community to vote on which direction the emission rate of $CRYSTL should take. We will be holding a poll on the main Twitter account starting at 3:00 UTC and it will last the following 24 hours. The options for the emission rate are:
The emission rate should stay the same at 3 $CRYSTL per block
The emission rate should decrease slightly to 2.5 $CRYSTL per block
The emission rate should decrease significantly to 2 $CRYSTL per block
The winning option from this poll will be implemented on 07/09 at 16:00 UTC
https://twitter.com/PolyCrystal_/status/1412202905965236236
Multiplier Update
Additionally on 07/09, we are going to reallocate the multipliers from farms that are increasing sell pressure, and increase the multipliers of the $CRYSTL-$MATIC farm and main $CRYSTL pools. This is being done to reward our $CRYSTL stakers and decrease the amount of $CRYSTL rewarded to those who only farm to sell.
We will continue to monitor deflation and listen to community feedback in order to most effectively decrease inflation. 😊 | https://medium.com/@crystlfinance/polycrystal-deflation-updates-90e34bcc709a | ['Crystl Finance'] | 2021-07-06 00:13:49.175000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Yield Farming', 'Polygon', 'Defi'] |
Achieving screen responsiveness in flutter | One of the challenges of building applications with flutter is responsiveness. As we have MediaQuery in CSS, it can also be used in flutter to get the size, orientations and other information about the user screen. This has been a huge help but still we still have other issues.
Take for instance, building an application that has a screen with more than one section here let’s say two. We can then apply MediaQuery.of(context).height * 0.4 (40 percent of the device screen) or any any value to divide the screen into the desired fractions.
Here we’ve solved the screen division problem but while working on the application we’ll likely run into an overflow error while assigning sizes to widgets in these divisions. We will encounter this error as we are using the same font size or container size we would have used for the full screen even though we are now working on a fraction of the screen. This error can be solved in different ways like manipulating the widgets sizes until all can fit in without the overflow error but this will only work for our current screen, as when the app is run on a smaller screen we will have the overflow error back.
A way to solve this effectively is to make the widget(font, container and others) relative to the size of the screen. This is implemented in @theflutterway Complete E-Commerce Flutter UI on youtube. The idea is simple, we create a function that takes the height of the widget from the design and the screen size used in the design then return a value with which we can use for our current screen. Hence the function will return a bigger font for a bigger screen and vice versa while following the same design.
Here’s the implementation, we create a size_config.dart file in the lib folder and we import the SizeConfig class in our screen files. It should be noted that in the implementation below the design screen is sized 812 by 375.
import ‘package:flutter/material.dart’; class SizeConfig {
static MediaQueryData _mediaQueryData;
static double screenWidth;
static double screenHeight;
static double defaultSize;
static Orientation orientation; void init(BuildContext context) {
_mediaQueryData = MediaQuery.of(context);
screenWidth = _mediaQueryData.size.width;
screenHeight = _mediaQueryData.size.height;
orientation = _mediaQueryData.orientation;
}
} // Get the proportionate height as per screen size
double getProportionateScreenHeight(double inputHeight) {
double screenHeight = SizeConfig.screenHeight;
// 812 is the layout height that the designer use
return (inputHeight / 812.0) * screenHeight;
} // Get proportionate width as per screen size
double getProportionateScreenWidth(double inputWidth) {
double screenWidth = SizeConfig.screenWidth;
// 375 is the layout width that the designer use
return (inputHeight / 375.0) * screenWidth;
}
then the function can be called using
import ‘size_config.dart’;
Text(“Responsive Text”, style: TextStyle(fontSize: getProportionateScreenWidth(28),)
SizedBox(height: SizeConfig.screenHeight * 0.1)
Even though the example shows the implementation in flutter, i believe this can be used in other front end framework where responsiveness is desirable.
Thanks. | https://medium.com/@saheedadedeji/responsive-screens-with-flutter-a76b1a8616c3 | ['Saheed Adedeji'] | 2020-12-30 12:18:18.131000+00:00 | ['Flutter App Development', 'Responsive Design', 'Mobile App Development', 'Front End Development', 'Flutter'] |
How to Uncover the Treasure in Our Writing | How to Uncover the Treasure in Our Writing
Created, photographed, and practiced by Brenda Mahler, author
Donald Murray was the guru of teaching writing in the 1980s. Since I graduated from the university in 1985, he was my mentor on how to teach writing. I read everything he wrote and became a convert believing more can be learned through writing if the focus remains on the process instead of the product.
In his text “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product,” (Donald M. Murray, The Leaflet (November 1972), rpt. in Cross-Talk in Comp Theory, 2nd ed., ed. Victor Villanueva, Urbana: NCTE, 2003.) Murray focused on the process of writing acknowledging that writers use language to gain understanding of their world and thereby communicate information to readers.
Lately, I have observed writers churning out texts of subpar quality with a focus to produce a final, submit, publish. When writers create with the end in mind, they miss the process of discovery. Social media allows anyone to produce and circulate words quickly with limited emphasis on eloquence: expression, style, quality, or technique.
Murry stressed the beauty of written words and their intensity when combined in the most effective, proficient, and clearest manner.
Maybe, because teachers place the focus on completing the task by assigning a topic, providing a formula, and allowing 45 minutes to produce, student writers believe the goal is to finish. Or possibly because writers’ financial rewards are equated with quantity, quality takes a backseat. Our world values getting it done over taking time to do our best.
Murray states, “Instead of teaching finished writing, we should teach unfinished writing, and glory in its unfinishedness. We work with language in action. We share with our students the continual excitement of choosing one word instead of another, of searching for the one true word. This is not a question of correct or incorrect.”
Donald Murray challenges us to approach writing with an open mind. Yes, we must focus the topic, however, we should allow time for revision to manipulate metaphors, elaborate images, and polish before publishing. As part of his instructions for teaching the writing process, he provided 10 reasons to permit manuscripts to develop and gain a voice without the intervention of a heavy-handed writer or a preplanned agenda. These 10 recommendations provide freedom and empower the words to take on a life of their own. If done correctly, often the writer will learn as much through the process as the reader.
As a professor, Murray spoke directly to teachers, so he often used the term students. Since he provided strategies for creators, “writers’” can be substituted each time “students” is read so his knowledge can be applied to us all.
Donald Murray’s reasons to process writing
1. “The text of the writing course is the student’s own writing. Writers examine their own evolving writing . . . so that they study writing while it is still a matter of choice, word by word.”
A writer’s skills improve through the practice of manipulating words and experimenting with the language. If we remain open to discovery, our toolbox of techniques grows.
2. “The student finds his own subject. . . It is the responsibility of the student to explore his own world with his own language, to discover his own meaning.”
Through the process of writing, meaning is discovered. Often as a piece develops, it comes alive and controls the direction of the narrative.
3. “The student uses his own language. . . [as] they embark on a serious search for their own truth.”
The work should resonate the voice of the writer. By writing in a consistent style, the material becomes personal and not an imitation of others.
4. “The student should have the opportunity to write all the drafts necessary for him to discover what he has to say . . .”
Each stage of the writing process fulfills a purpose and the process as a whole is recursive. A writer should grant themselves the freedom to move from gathering ideas to drafts and through revision knowing the opportunity to revisit any stage is an opportunity for improvement.
5. “The student is encouraged to attempt any form of writing which may help him discover and communicate what he has to say.”
Writers should choose the most appropriate genre to convey the thoughts and emotions of the writing.
6. “Mechanics come last. It is important to the writer, once he has discovered what he has to say, that nothing get between him and his reader. He must break only those traditions of written communication which would obscure his meaning.”
By allowing themselves to process writing, writers can isolate tasks so that editing doesn’t interrupt the ideas and stifle creativity.
7. “There must be time for the writing process to take place and time for it to end. The writer must work within the stimulating tension of unpressured time to think and dream and stare out windows, and pressured time the deadline to which the writer must deliver.”
A simple reminder that deadlines are always an important part of the process.
8. “Papers are examined to see what other choices the writer might make. The primary responsibility for seeing the choices is the student. He is learning a process. His papers are always unfinished, evolving, until the end of the marking period.”
Writers should replace “end of the marking period” with “published.” A paper is never done. It continues to evolve as it takes on a life of its own. In fact, even after a paper is published it can be revised to address a new audience or fulfill a different purpose.
9. “The students are individuals who must explore the writing process in their own way, some fast, some slow, whatever it takes for them, within the limits of the course deadlines, to find their own way to their own truth.”
Every topic imaginable has been discussed. Every story has been told. However, through the writing process, a writer creates a unique piece of art that shares their reality.
10. “There are no rules, no absolutes, just alternatives. What works one time may not another. All writing is experimental.”
For me this quote shares wisdom. Read the rules, digest the grammar, apply the formulas and then forget it all and write from the heart. When the words communicate, there is success.
I understand, writing serves many purposes. Sometimes deadlines push me to produce a product with the focus on content instead of style or voice. However, Mr. Murray’s recommendations provide a cautious warning to writers. Authors influence the readers; they impact society and with this responsibility comes the charge not only to communicate a message but to persuade, entertain, motivate, inspire, and feed the readers’ spirit.
As you continue on your path as a writer, remember to allow time to process the writing so the words lead you to wisdom and open to new discoveries. | https://writingcooperative.com/how-to-uncover-the-treasure-in-our-writing-8b89c2145f48 | ['Brenda Mahler'] | 2020-12-26 20:37:12.901000+00:00 | ['Style', 'Quotes', 'Writing Tips From Writers', 'Process', 'Writing'] |
SAP Data Analytics in the Google Cloud | SAP Data Analytics in the Google Cloud
How to combine SAP with the Google Cloud Platform— Provider of powerful data analytics tools such as BigQuery, Data Studio or recently looker — to gain a powerful data analytics platform and valuable insights. If you are interested in practical data analytics approaches for SAP data, this article could be also interesting for you. Christianlauer Jul 19, 2020·4 min read
The Cloud as Enabler for Data Analytics — Image by Alex Machado on Unsplash
Architecture
With SAP HANA, the SAP Data Service is already build in so you can easily export data from a SAP application or its underlying database to BigQuery. However, the combination of GCP and SAP is also possible for companies who are still living in the ERP world.
These following points show possibilities of loading data from SAP to Google Services:
Extracting data via RFC (Remote Function Call) interface with data integration tools like talend/Google Dataflow/etc.
Writing an ABAP program
3rd party connectors like fivetran
Using a SAP Replication Server
Therefore, a possible solution could look like this:
SAP to Big Query — Image from Google [1]
Realize Delta Load
Getting the data is the first step. Afterwards, you will deal with the question of how to realize a delta logic, because you probably don’t want to load all the data on a regular basis via full load. This would only come with disadvantages like heavy loading times and also having no historical data. Especially departments like controlling, internal audit, etc. often build up their data analytics based on historical data views.
While the SAP Data Service comes already build in with a CDC wizard, other data integration approaches might need some extra work. To realize this step it’s important to get to know the SAP tables and table structure very well. Realizing the delta load on an own logic can be realized especially with the help of two tables: CDHDR (Changes Header) and CDPOS (Changes Position). These tables are tracking changes in master data or transactional data.
Data Transformation
With the new era of column based data warehousing tools such as BigQuery, data transformation is often necessary due to performance but also because of different table structures or data types between the source and target system.
One example is, that in SAP you have the tables BKPF (Accounting Document Header) and BSEG (Accounting Document Segment). Due to its column based structure it will make sense to denormalize the data within the BigQuery. The solution could be to join BKPF and BSEG and, if needed other master data and reference tables — for example with the help of the build in BigQuery DTS (Data Transfer Service). As a result, you can come up with a denormalized data object architecture as shown in the figure below:
Illustration: From raw tables to a denormalized data object — Image by Author
Another transformation to gain performance and cost efficiency could be to use nested data structures. Newer data warehouse technologies like BigQuery or Amazon’s Redshift do work better with this data structure. Use cases for working with nested data are e.g header/segment tables like BKPF and BSEG or if you have cases where a table holds columns which don’t change much, like:
name
lastname
combined with historically often changeable columns like [2]:
address (a nested and repeated field and its following nested fields):
(a nested and repeated field and its following nested fields): address.address
address.city
Implement (Self Service) Reporting
The last part would be to realize reports and data analytic possibilities. With BigQuery, the data analyst already has a great tool for analytics. Data scientists can use Data Lab or one of the many ML Services within the GCP. Data Studio could be the right solution for business users for sharing KPI’s, dashboards, etc. To implement a Role/User access model within the BigQuery ,it’s a common way to use the BUKRS attribute (Company Code) — so a user would only see data of the company code assigned to him, that’s also the way SAP handles user rights.
Conclusion — the combination of SAP and GCP could lead to significant data analytics competencies and possibilities in your company. SAP systems are hosting a lot of interesting data that wants to be analyzed while GCP comes with many data analytics/scientist tools and services which will enable to do so.
Sources & Further Readings:
[1] Google, https://cloud.google.com/solutions/sap/docs/bigquery-replication-from-sap-apps?hl=de
[2] Google, https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/nested-repeated
https://blogs.sap.com/2018/04/08/hana-sda-google-bigquery/
https://cloud.google.com/solutions/sap/docs/bigquery-sap-export-using-sds | https://towardsdatascience.com/sap-data-analytics-in-the-google-cloud-8f1a8a662355 | [] | 2021-01-25 06:59:22.335000+00:00 | ['Data Analytics', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Sap', 'Bigquery', 'Data Engineering'] |
International politics over Indian Farmers’ Agitation is a dangerous trend. | International politics over Indian Farmers’ Agitation is a dangerous trend. Some foreign politicians have become self-proclaimed spokespersons of the Indian farmers. Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada as the guardian of worldwide liberal values lectured India on peaceful farmers’ protest. Rather like a pragmatic politician, sensing 1300 thousand Canadian-Indians’ mindset, smartly invested in their vote bank. Trudeau said that Canada would stand for the right to peaceful protests. Indeed we appreciate. But does he apply the same to Canadian citizens? In Feb. 2020, Canada faced protests and blockades. Rail crossings were closed. Passengers and freight trains disrupted. It was feared there would be fuel shortage. But soon after, a police crackdown followed on the peaceful protesters. Regrettable. Deplorable.
Indians living overseas particularly from Punjab Farmers’ families have taken the issue in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia demonstrating outside Indian Embassies to draw attention.
You can find the reasons for the farmers’ protest here:
https://medium.com/illumination/indian-farmers-protest-reaches-four-months-and-about-two-weeks-against-three-farm-laws-passed-by-2571381e3a0 | https://medium.com/illumination/international-politics-over-indian-farmers-agitation-is-a-dangerous-trend-3a3bbf7ec3b9 | ['Indra Raj Pathak'] | 2020-12-23 15:13:05.049000+00:00 | ['Farmers', 'Short Form', 'Less Than 150 Words', 'Agriculture', 'Law'] |
Sequence Models and Literature. Tales of the Alhambra. | A quick hands-on demonstration of sequences models using BRNN/LSTM on Tensorflow. I do not attempt to go too deep into the roots of the different algorithms used for this case but try to give an understanding of the overall process, where [1]data consist of sequences of (x, y) pairs with significant sequential correlation. Or, in other words, nearby x and y values are expected to be related to each other. This is designed for someone who has some coding experience.
Most of our daily lives are made up by sequential data and by “sequential data” I mean data where the order in which the datum appears matters. DNA sequencing is one of the most well-known examples. Human-computer interactions, where the order of keystrokes may elude to fraud is another; as is the field of meteorology, where sequential observations, over time, predict weather. Or, in our case, the very words that you are reading now, where your interpretation comes from the order of the words that I have written; and these words are written in a way that they are dependent on the preceding words.
The focus of this piece is how to predict sequential data in text. For this I have chose to use Washington Irvings’ Tales of the Alhambra, which I selected after having visited the Alhambra situated in Granada, Spain (a stunning place to visit).
The Tales of the Alhambra is a collection of essays and sketches, written in the 1800s, set to the backdrop of Granada (Andalusia, Spain). The data comes from The Project Gutenberg. You can find the original text here.
The Albaicín (Albayzín) in Grenada, looking back at the Alhambra.
The most effective model to predict sequential data is a deep neural network as it is highly efficient at capturing non-linearity. In this post we will be covering BRNN (Bidirectional Recurrent Neural Network, also sometimes referred to as Bidirectional Recursive Neural Network)) and LSTM (Long Term Short-Term Memory). This is as they have been proven to be very efficient neural network architectures[2].
An Overview of BRNN and LSTM
BRNN
A layered neural network, [3]BRNN has been around since 1997, and is a form of generative learning. An evolution of the regular recurrent neural network (RNN) cells states shift in a positive time direction, forwards (future) and backwards in a negative time direction (past), so that cells states from a later training set can impact the earlier. These are connected to the same output layer. The general structure of RNN and BRNN is depicted in the diagram below.
By using two different time directions, input information from the past and future of the current time frame can be used, unlike with the standard RNN which requires the delays for including future information.
LSTM
In the same year that BRNN came along, so did the gradient-based approach of [4]long short-term memory (LSTM). As we know, storing data over prolonged time intervals with recurrent backpropagation takes a long time. LSTM learns to bridge negligible time lags by introducing a memory unit, called the cell, into the network. This means that LSTM is able to remember a lot over prolonged periods of time.
Below is diagram of a LSTM building block. There is very nice blog here >> by Colah, who has an impressive with Google Brain and is now working on OpenAI. As well, I recommend the lessons of Andrew Ng (LSTM on Coursera) and Laurence Moroney’s Introduction to Tensorflow for AI, also on Coursera.
Getting Started
You can copy and paste the Python code below, directly into your Jupyter Notebook or Colab. Open and start playing!
import numpy as np
import tensorflow as tf
print(tf.__version__)
from tensorflow import keras
from keras.preprocessing.text import Tokenizer
from keras.preprocessing.sequence import pad_sequences
from keras.models import Sequential
from keras.layers import Dense, Dropout, Embedding, LSTM, Bidirectional,Activation
from keras.layers.recurrent import SimpleRNN
from keras.optimizers import Adam
2.3.0 | https://medium.com/swlh/tale-of-the-alhambra-sequence-models-and-literature-4b6491d95070 | ['Faycal Zouine'] | 2020-09-30 01:27:14.385000+00:00 | ['NLP', 'Machine Learning', 'TensorFlow', 'Sequence Model', 'Data Science'] |
The mysterious monolith — is it art? | The mysterious monolith — is it art?
A Weird Monolith is Found in Utah Desert: “It’s probably art” officials say. [And now it’s gone]
“Weird Monolith, probably art”
That is the headline of a November 24 New York Times story.
Update: now that the ‘mysterious monolith’ has been removed, its conventionality has been revealed. And its lack of depth (in both senses of the word) is about the only surprise. It doesn’t change what I wrote, but it is a nicely wrapped up conclusion. My only question is why leave that single steel triangle?
Updated Update: this is why writing about current news is problematic…now that a number of these have appeared, disappeared, been replaced by wooden crosses or whatever ‘art criticism’ is next, the monolith(s) are becoming a lot less mysterious. They are now political/social/crowd-sourced/interactive/participatory but they are also, ironically, less ‘art’ (in my view) than when originally discovered.
They are now a brawl, and very little of that brawl is artful. They also used to be fun, and funny, but now are simply a headline that won’t go away!
Fortunately, this article isn’t just about the monolith(s) so it is still worth a read!
To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “I may not know what art is (or even what is art) but I know it when I see it.” [Stewart was talking about defining pornography, but it seems to work when talking about art.]
Apparently we don’t know when something is art or not…This is definitely art. So why doesn’t everyone get that part right away?
a) People are visually and artistically illiterate
b) All they can think of is 2001: A Space Odyssey
c) It’s more fun to imagine this is an alien probe deep in the earth’s crust
d) They don’t think it’s art because they don’t like it
e) All of the above
It is an unmistakable nod to Stanley Kubrick’s black monolith, that appeared in seemingly Neolithic times, freaking out the monkeys and turning bones into weapons. So doesn’t that put it firmly in the ‘yes, art’ category? Apparently not quite.
2001: A Space Odyssey image of mysterious monolith surrounded by primates
Of all filmmakers, it is incontrovertible (and an unremarkable observation) that Kubrick made art. LACMA’s landmark exhibition (and it is, you know, an ART museum) should have put any doubts to rest, but maybe the mere popularity of the films injects some doubt into the proposition. But why? Art can’t be popular? Films are not art? Inscrutable parts of films are too challenging to be art?
The exhibition dedicated a set of rooms for each film he made, and some he didn’t make but planned. One planned but unmade film I discovered at the exhibition was ‘Aryan Papers’ based on Louis Begley’s book “Wartime Lies”, written while the then international lawyer was transforming himself into a respected and awarded author. He wrote the book living in a house I designed in the Hamptons (and still lives there, part time, after 40 years), something he was kind enough to write a short essay about for a book 13 years later.
The exhibition, in addition to being a remarkable and remarkably dense retrospective on Kubrick’s work, included an app that I sorely miss now that it has disappeared from my phone. The app included documents, images, letters, and other resources that didn’t just distill the show into an abbreviated format, but actually became its own exhibition, continuing years after the exhibit closed.
Kubrick’s correspondence alone form an exhibition unto itself, including letters:
Kubrick just checking…
Asking IBM for permission to use their brand as part of the invented computers. Not noted, after they declined, is the myth that HAL, the eventual name for the computer, is simply the letters in the alphabet that precede (H) I (A) B (L) M .
(H) (A) (L) . Asking a studio for some monstrous Mitchell BNC cameras ‘for sentimental reasons’ (when he actually used them to fit the huge Zeiss Planar lenses commissioned by NASA needed to shoot Barry Lyndon scenes in candlelight.)
Saul Bass sucking up to Kubrick praising 2001. Maybe that’s a bit harsh, but Saul won’t be contradicting me, so I’m going with it.
Plus such gems like pics of the typewriter from The Shining, with an ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ sheet still in the platen. And the light blue dresses the twin sisters wore in those terrifying hotel interior scenes.
But enough reminiscing.
[as an aside, my wife grew up with her intellectually and developmentally disabled brother Richard. One day in 1968 Richard, who watched a LOT of TV, kept announcing that Kennedy had been shot. Carin told him to “stop reminiscing”…until she realized he was reporting on RFK’s assassination, not reminiscing about JFK’s!]
It is natural to make the connection to 2001: A Space Odyssey, but bizarre to discount the stainless steel pylon as not definitely art, but just ‘probably art’. It is art. Period.
It’s hard to get a detailed view of the Utah piece, but what we know is that it is, in form, an extruded triangle, not a four-sided but a three-sided volume, like a prism on end (a triangular prism, to be exact). The material and shape reference the St. Louis Arch as much as Stanley Kubrick.
One edge is pointing, like an arrow if you looked at it from above, to a vertical crevice in the massive rock formation behind it. It appears to be made of sheets riveted to a frame or bolted to the other panels. It is about 10’ high and its perfectly flat surface (no visible ‘oilcanning’ or buckling of the surface) belies a very carefully considered design and fabrication. It also fits perfectly, as some of the modern primates climbing around it note (not knowing how deep it goes!) into a pocket cut in the stone below, and that reinforces the idea that this was no amateur artist.
John McCracken, undated photo, with mini-monolith
David Zwirner, whose gallery represents John McCracken (who died in 2011) and believes this is definitely McCracken’s work. It’s not just the form, but informed by the artist’s belief in UFOs, time travel and extraterrestrial beings. That pretty much sealed it for me, but some in Zwirner’s gallery believe it is an homage to McCracken by an admiring artist.
McCracken work in polished metal
[n.b. a McCracken exhibition is scheduled for Spring 2021]
Lt. Nick Street, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety in Utah said the authorities were confident that “it’s somebody’s art installation, or an attempt at that” notes The New York Times.
So, now Department of Public safety officials are art critics? Is there anything that Americans won’t opine on, despite their obvious ignorance on a topic? A friend, a design writer, likes nothing more than to discuss movies she hasn’t seen, and we are all in on the joke. But this is something else.
“A resonance deflector”, a “satellite beacon” and an object “dropped by aliens” are just some of the alternative facts; as with other self-evident truths there is no lack of contrarians to firmly deny reality.
A majority of Republicans believe that Trump won the 2020 election, while less than 1/3 of all Americans believe in evolution. The percentage of Americans accepting Darwin decreases the more one attends church, until only 1% of weekly church attendees believe in evolution. Evolution. A theory as sound as Newton’s laws of motion (and as subject to continual refinement) is dismissed by 2/3 of Americans while accepted by 95%-99.9% of scientists (depending on the survey). And the list of denials of reality is endless; the Holocaust, AIDS, Climate Change, GMO’s, Vaccines, Covid-19. The list of false beliefs is equally bottomless; QAnon, Big Foot, Pizzagate, Flat Earth, Chem Trails, 5G, Birtherism, et. al.
Why?
Much has been written on the precise mechanisms that drive the acceptance of patently false information. Confirmation bias, belief perseverance, tribal identity and algorithms that tend to push online viewers to more and more extreme inputs, all conspire to reinforce a view, no matter its relationship to reality.
Pew Research graphic on international wealth vs prayer frequency
The US is an outlier in the global trend that the higher the per capita GDP the lower the frequency of daily prayer; we are alone in both wealth and high incidence of religious devotion. The US population also embraces, to an astonishing degree, the notion of American Individualism; the belief that the individual is the primary locus of agency.
Responsibility to a larger collective, and the collective’s responsibility to the individual, is less evident in the American psyche. I live, these days, in a small upstate New York town that is pretty evenly divided politically, and elections are routinely won and lost by fewer than 100 votes. One election in a nearby town was won by 1 vote. If anything reinforces the primacy of the individual an election won by a single vote would be it!
Our town has just tipped last year, for the very first time, to a Democratic party dominated town board. On the way out of office the departing Republicans passed, in secret, a 60% tax cut, crippling the tiny town’s finances. At a contentious town board meeting my neighbor, from across our small road, stood up to ask why everyone was so upset about a tax cut! Shouldn’t we all be happy to have a bit more money in our pockets? The town taxes are so minuscule that my ‘savings’ amounted to about $185. That is 60% of my total town tax (and just so you don’t gasp, other property taxes amount to something closer to $10,000).
An individual (and not a poor one by any means) was so dominated by his own greed that even the $185 that he had paid for years was too much to contribute to the common good. In a town that for most of the last 225 years has banded together to build schools, roads, recreational centers, and parks, at the direct expense of its citizens, has now devolved to the point where it takes 10 years to privately raise the money to build a new library. Town residents were once happy to assess themselves for the good of the town, but now even funding the town’s minimal services is less important than a few extra dollars of one’s own. | https://uxdesign.cc/the-mysterious-monolith-is-it-art-or-design-c71526c92dac | ['James Biber'] | 2020-12-09 17:29:20.169000+00:00 | ['Ts', 'Design', 'Art', 'Creativity', 'UX'] |
Jenkins Pipeline Archetypes | As Jenkins pipeline usage increases in a development organization, pipeline scripts tend to become similar in structure and functionality. Creating a library of pipeline archetypes reduces pipeline code duplication and increases code re-use across teams.
Concept
At Disney Streaming Services, my team maintains a Jenkins library, Libjenkins, that is available to any team in our organization. It includes not only commonly used steps but also pre-built, configurable pipelines. We call these archetypes. They contain stages and steps common to various project types, allowing pipeline scripts for those project types to be very small. They also delegate much of the build logic to the project build tool, allowing the pipelines to be lean.
Structure
One of the archetypes in Libjenkins is DockerApp. It is used for building, testing, and publishing applications packaged as Docker images. It checks out the source files, builds the application and image, runs the tests, then tags and publishes the image. The application can be written in any programming language.
DockerApp (src/archetypes/DockerApp.groovy) has the following structure:
def call(Map opts = [:]) {
node {
try {
def image = opts.image ?: "..."
// ... inside(registry: opts.registry, image: image) {
stage("Checkout") {
checkoutScm() if (isRelease(opts)) {
git.setIdentity()
// ... run build tool to apply git tag ...
}
} stage("Build") {
// ... run build tool to build app and image ...
} stage(name: "Test", skipWhen: opts.excludeTest) {
// ... run build tool to run tests ...
checkTestResults()
} stage(name: "Publish", skipWhen: opts.excludePublish) {
artifactory.withCredentials(credentialsId:
opts.artifactoryCredentialsId) {
// ... run build tool to push versioned image ... if (env.BRANCH_NAME == "master") {
// ... run build tool to tag 'latest' ...
// ... run build tool to push 'latest' ...
}
} if (isRelease(opts)) {
git.pushWithCredentials args: "--tags",
credentialsId: opts.credentialsId
}
}
} // ... send success notification ...
} catch (Exception e) {
// ... send failure notification ...
}
}
}
Here are some things to note:
The method call(Map opts = [:]) wraps the pipeline code, node { ... } . This makes the pipeline callable like any pipeline step (with one caveat, described below).
wraps the pipeline code, . This makes the pipeline callable like any pipeline step (with one caveat, described below). The parameter opts allows the user to provide configuration options, such as excludeTest , which can be used to skip the Test stage.
allows the user to provide configuration options, such as , which can be used to skip the Test stage. The inside step runs the given block (the stages) in a Docker container. The user can specify the Docker image and registry.
step runs the given block (the stages) in a Docker container. The user can specify the Docker image and registry. Some of the stages have options name and skipWhen . This is possible because Libjenkins includes a custom implementation of the stage step.
Steps
Custom pipeline steps are located in the vars directory. They get loaded as global variables that can be called like methods.
The inside step (vars/inside.groovy) looks like this:
def call(Map opts = [:], Closure block) {
// ...
if (!opts.image) { error "missing image option" }
def registry = opts.registry ?: env.DOCKER_REGISTRY
def runParams = [ ... ]
def image = docker.image("$registry/${opts.image}" as String)
image.pull()
image.inside(runParams, block)
}
The stage step (vars/stage.groovy) looks like this:
// custom implementation: stage(name: ...)
def call(Map opts = [:], Closure block) {
// ...
if (!opts.name) { error "missing name option" }
if (!opts.skipWhen) { return steps.stage(opts.name, block) }
} // pass through: stage("<name>")
def call(String name, Closure block) {
// ...
steps.stage(name, block)
}
Usage
Because it is included in the src directory, DockerApp gets exposed as a class. Using it is like using a pipeline step, with the caveat that it must be instantiated before it can be called. Configuration options ( registry , image , excludeTest , excludePublish , etc.), are specified as <key>: <value> pairs.
Here’s an example pipeline script (Jenkinsfile):
@Library("libjenkins2") _
new archetypes.DockerApp().call()
Here’s another example, with configuration options:
@Library("[email protected]") _
new archetypes.DockerApp().call registry: "internal",
image: "trose-build", excludeTest: true, excludePublish: true
(You can also do new archetypes.DockerApp()(...) , but I think the double parentheses look like a mistake.)
Testing
I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about testing. All of the archetypes in Libjenkins are fully tested. For unit/integration testing, we use the JenkinsPipelineUnit framework and some custom code. You can read about that in my article Testing Jenkins Shared Libraries. For functional/end-to-end testing, we use Testcontainers and a Docker container that includes Jenkinsfile Runner. I hope to write an article about that in the future. | https://medium.com/disney-streaming/jenkins-pipeline-archetypes-fb8dcd9b6d62 | ['Thornton Rose'] | 2020-03-05 11:14:32.080000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Streaming', 'Jenkins Pipeline', 'Technology', 'Docker'] |
The Ideal Number and Range of Digital Policies for Your Organization | Photo by Pierre-André Roy
In digital governance projects I am often asked what is the ideal number and range of policies to ensure digital integrity. The answer varies and is specific to the organization, since each organization is unique. In general, the range is 7–10 for a small organization just starting to implement digital policies, and upwards of 35–40 for a larger organization that has already mapped out its requirements. Multinational organizations with mature digital practices that address regulatory and legal risks, as well as the opportunities and competitive advantages of digital, will often exceed 40 policies.
Which digital policies you choose to create and adopt depend on variables particular to your organization:
Business sector: Commercial, B2B, governmental, or not-for-profit
Commercial, B2B, governmental, or not-for-profit Vertical industry: Financial or insurance organizations will have different requirements than those of pharmaceuticals.
Financial or insurance organizations will have different requirements than those of pharmaceuticals. Geographical location of users: Country-to-country and regional regulations and legal requirements differ, impacting the type and scope of policies.
Country-to-country and regional regulations and legal requirements differ, impacting the type and scope of policies. Digital platforms: Websites, mobile applications, customer relationship management, social media, chatbots and others each have their own requirements which translate into their own policy statements.
Websites, mobile applications, customer relationship management, social media, chatbots and others each have their own requirements which translate into their own policy statements. Organizational status: If you are the global parent organization with national subsidiaries or joint ventures, you might delegate authority for policy definition and dissemination which will likely decrease the number of policies required at the global level and increase the overall number of policies in the ecosystem.
If you are the global parent organization with national subsidiaries or joint ventures, you might delegate authority for policy definition and dissemination which will likely decrease the number of policies required at the global level and increase the overall number of policies in the ecosystem. Risk tolerance level: The lower your organization’s threshold for risk exposure, be it brand, legal/regulatory, fiscal, or market place positioning, generally the more control you will want to exert over what can and cannot be done with digital, and thus the higher the number of policies.
So before anyone can answer the question of what is the ideal number and range of policies to ensure digital integrity in your organization, a proper analysis and assessment will need to be made using all indicative factors.
This insight originally appeared on kpodnar.com. | https://medium.com/kpodnar/the-ideal-number-and-range-of-digital-policies-for-your-organization-7575ae5dd936 | ['Kristina Podnar'] | 2018-02-15 00:02:36.623000+00:00 | ['Tech'] |
This Covid-19 Year has Sucked; But What a Great Time to Start Giving Again | Photo by Michael Tuszynski on Unsplash
When we first moved into the neighborhood over 16 years ago. I wasn’t the one to wait around for my neighbors to knock on the door offering tasty “Welcome to the neighborhood” cookies. I made it a point to take the initiative to go out and meet my new neighbors. At least the ones in the cul-de-sac.
This was easy to do considering our children had beat us to the punch and had made fast friends with their children. It was the beginning of many years of our children growing and playing together out in the middle of the street. Where every parent could see them right through our front windows. This is one of the reasons we purchased a home in a cul-de-sac.
During our first year on the block during the holiday season and for many years to come. I purchased bottles of Welch’s Sparkling Juice as gifts for our neighbors. I figured this was a family-friendly gift that everyone could enjoy. For me, it was a simple way to say “Thanks for being a good neighbor” all year round. The holiday season seemed to be a perfect time to do it each year.
I did it consistently for the first 5 years. After that, it was more sporadic. It was not that my neighbors were no longer “good neighbors”. But in the thick of raising our children with all the time and monetary demands required. The neighborly gift-giving slipped further and further down on my priority list.
The years came and went with quick waves replacing conversations we use to have with our neighbors. It was like the popular meme “ain’t nobody got time for that” had become true for all of us. | https://medium.com/an-idea/this-covid-19-year-has-sucked-but-what-a-great-time-to-start-giving-again-ae71fbef6027 | ['Carla D. Wilson Laskey'] | 2020-12-24 02:56:00.905000+00:00 | ['Shopping', 'New Year', 'Humanity', 'Holidays', 'Covid 19'] |
Four Effective Ways for Falling in Love With Reading | Nerd is the moniker that we give to those people who read voraciously. Some of us might even consider that these people lead a lacklustre life because they spend most of their time reading books. Little did they know that some of the world’s high achievers are avid readers.
When was the last time we pick up a book? Was it a month ago or a year ago? What makes those people who read routinely get an edge over those who don’t read? How do we learn to be like one of them and reap the benefits of reading?
Reading could benefit us in multitudinous ways:
• It helps us gain a new perspective
Reading allows us to get a broader, and often antithetical, view from the author. Although we don’t have to agree with the writer’s point of view, it will raise the awareness that differences do exist. This will help us to be more reflective and show more empathy towards the people around us.
• It serves as the source of information and inspiration
My mother used to tell me that the only thing that other people can’t take from us is our knowledge.
Reading is one of the best ways for us to get new information. This information could be a catalyst for a new business idea or a guide to help us with the challenges that we face.
• It is a way to relax
A good book can teleport us to a tranquil alternate universe. It is one of the ways to relax ourself after a long day of studies or works. It might be a substitute for a holiday in Bali. At least, that’s one of the habits that would greatly benefit us in the long run, and it’s cheaper than a trip to Bali.
Diagram by James Clear
As the olden adage goes, “Many a little makes a mickle.”
The purpose of building a good habit is to transform a seemingly monotonous task — reading in our case — into something more enjoyable. If we could just get 1% better every day, we would technically be 37 times better after a year! We shouldn’t regard reading as a chore, but as a way to improve our quality of life.
Here are some of the methods that have helped me to get into the habit of reading:
1. Ingrain Reading as One of Your Routines
Firstly, we need to create cues to inculcate the habit of reading to our daily life. When I first started reading, I put my book and Kindle on my bedside. This simple act will remind you that you are attempting to foster the habit of reading. Make it clear to yourself that “instead of roaming my social media aimlessly, I will read my book for at least 5 minutes before I head to bed.”
You could start with the genre that you love, be it fiction or non-fiction. I started off reading Young Sherlock Holmes as I love detective and mystery stories. Although I then slowly expanded the types of books I read once I got comfortable reading every day.
Have you ever felt guilty for not continuing reading the book that you really wanted to finish? Before I started my reading habit, it could take me a whopping 2–3 months just to complete a 200-page-long book. The key to overcoming the lack of motivation is to start with small goals.
James Clear, in his book, Atomic Habits, proposes this concept called habit stacking. Intrinsically, it is a method in which we stack our existing habits with the new routine that we want to pick up. In our case, it would be something along the line of “I will read for 5 minutes after I take my bath.” This will actually serve as a cue to remind us about our new reading habit.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/four-effective-ways-for-falling-in-love-with-reading-e675499dce4b | ['Erwin Leonardy'] | 2020-12-30 03:42:22.180000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Life', 'Education', 'Books', 'Life Lessons'] |
Why we’re betting our future on JavaScript, and you should too | I’ve started as Sales & Marketing Manager at 23:Seconds since beginning of this year.
23:Seconds is a JavaScript competence center.
We love coding and we believe we can better the (digital) world with JavaScript.
To get myself started with my job I’ve asked three basic questions.
What the heck is JavaScript?
Why does the world need JavaScript?
Why does the world need 23:Seconds?
These are my findings:
JavaScript … is a high-level, dynamic, untyped and interpreted programming language It has been standardized in the ECMAScript language specification Alongside HTML and CSS, it is one of the three essential technologies of web content production; the majority of websites employ it and it is supported by all modern Web browsers without plug-ins. — Wikipedia
A Non-Techie guy like me reads this Wikipedia introduction like this:
JavaScript is one of the three essentials to produce web content.
According to W3school JavaScript is the most popular programming language in the world. This gets support from a chart I’ve pulled from Githut. It shows the overwhelming dominance of Active repositories on Github. JavaScript (JS) is also leading in total pushes.
Further investigation learns me JS will stay around for a long time.
Dan Rowinski, editor in Chief at Arc seconds theses observations. He states: JavaScript is eating the world (Or is the world eating JavaScript). He’s arguing that JS is the undefeated champion amongst programming language for the browserside. There is no competition on that front. The real battle is the fight on the serverside.
On that side JavaScript is gaining a lot of traction. That’s largely explained by the popularity of rising star Node.JS. This is a platform, built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript run-time, for easily building fast, scalable network applications.
Information-age.com posted in October 2015: ‘The rise of Node JS. And why it will rule enterprise software development for at least another decade.’
Reading about the JS evolution I found that applying JavaScript for browser- and serverside has three huge and obvious business advantages:
Better communication within the development team.
2. Minimising cost of development.
3. Faster deployment.
I’m convinced that these advantages explain why Startups choose for JS.
It’s the rational thing to do.
But even the big companies are all-in on JS:
Netflix and Paypal employ Node.JS on the back and JS on the front. Facebook is trusting on React Native as a JavaScript Framework to build dynamic native apps without the native languages. Google is the driving force behind Angular.JS.
Pretty big names aren’t they?
Why do they trust on JS?
If you ask me it’s to simplify things for the development team. Take Meteor for example. With this Full Stack JavaScript library we enable Single development — Cross device — Cross platform. That allows fast deployment in a diverse world of mobiles, desktop, tablets, Androids, iOS’s.
It simply saves costs.
That’s why.
And that’s where 23:Seconds steps into the game.
We’re Belgium’s brightest JavaScript competence center.
We’re betting our future on this technology.
And it’s a save bet to.
Because with JavaScript we’re not only providing JS coding ninja power for the front- and backend side. We’re also on the front row with trending topics like connected devises and IoT.
(We’ll elaborate on this on an other blogpost)
My personal conclusion after 2 months working at 23:Seconds?
I joined a lean company that’s at the cutting edge of technology.
We’re going to see the new things first, do the new things first.
It excites me to my bones.
My advise for you:
If you’re looking to digitalise your service or your company … you’d better use JavaScript.
It’s faster, cheaper and it’s going to be around for as long as humans use Internet.
We’re happy to assist you achieve your disruptive ideas.
Don’t hesitate to reach out.
Written by Dimitri Op de Beeck | https://medium.com/23seconds/why-were-betting-our-future-on-javascript-and-you-should-too-46e01b4caf69 | [] | 2017-09-19 11:44:47.023000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'JavaScript', 'Digital Marketing', 'Sales'] |
Jujutsu Kaisen | S1XE13 | Ep 13 [Engsub] On’MBS | Yuuji Itadori is a boy with tremendous physical strength, though he lives a completely ordinary high school life. One day, to save a friend who has been attacked by Curses, he eats a finger of Ryoumen Sukuna, taking the Curse into his own soul. From then on, he shares one body with Sukuna. Guided by the most powerful of sorcerers, Satoru Gojou, Itadori is admitted to the Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School, an organization that fights the Curses… and thus begins the heroic tale of a boy who became a Curse to exorcise a Curse, a life from which he could never turn back.
✅📺 P-l-a-y NOW JOIN US 📺: ➤ http://fullstream.dplaytv.net/series/377543/1/13
Title : Jujutsu Kaisen
Episode Title : Tomorrow
Release Date : 26 Dec 2020
Runtime : 25 minutes
Genres : Action , Animation , Anime , Comedy , Fantasy , Horror
Networks : MBS
» Watch Jujutsu Kaisen Season 1 Episode 13 On MBS «
TELEVISION 👾
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 5910s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 5950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[5] during the 5960s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 1000s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (516i, with 909091 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3456561, 3456561 and 1314. Since 1050, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, Starz Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 1053, 19% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[1] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 5990s. Most TV sets sold during the 1000s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-1050s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 1050s.[6][1][5] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 1.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 1050s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 1000s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 1000s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 1050s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
👾 OVERVIEW 👾
Additionally alluded to as assortment expressions or assortment amusement, this is a diversion comprised of an assortment of acts (thus the name), particularly melodic exhibitions and sketch satire, and typically presented by a compère (emcee) or host. Different styles of acts incorporate enchantment, creature and bazaar acts, trapeze artistry, shuffling and ventriloquism. Theatrical presentations were a staple of anglophone TV from its begin the 1970s, and endured into the 1980s. In a few components of the world, assortment TV stays famous and broad.
The adventures (from Icelandic adventure, plural sögur) are tales about old Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking journeys, about relocation to Iceland, and of fights between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, for the most part in Iceland. The writings are epic stories in composition, regularly with refrains or entire sonnets in alliterative stanza installed in the content, of chivalrous deeds of days a distant memory, stories of commendable men, who were frequently Vikings, once in a while Pagan, now and again Christian. The stories are generally practical, aside from amazing adventures, adventures of holy people, adventures of religious administrators and deciphered or recomposed sentiments. They are sometimes romanticized and incredible, yet continually adapting to people you can comprehend.
The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement.
Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 1945–65, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/jujutsu-kaisen-episode-13/jujutsu-kaisen-s1xe13-ep-13-engsub-onmbs-83c3f5e1fcb9 | ['Barbara T. William'] | 2020-12-25 08:00:43.798000+00:00 | ['Anime', 'Action', 'Animation'] |
(Mac) 마이크에서 슬로우모션이 걸린듯한 소리가 난다고 해요. | 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/ryca-official/mac-%EB%A7%88%EC%9D%B4%ED%81%AC%EC%97%90%EC%84%9C-%EC%8A%AC%EB%A1%9C%EC%9A%B0%EB%AA%A8%EC%85%98%EC%9D%B4-%EA%B1%B8%EB%A6%B0%EB%93%AF%ED%95%9C-%EC%86%8C%EB%A6%AC%EA%B0%80-%EB%82%9C%EB%8B%A4%EA%B3%A0-%ED%95%B4%EC%9A%94-4c88a953becd | [] | 2020-12-14 02:12:35.234000+00:00 | ['Remote Work', 'Ryca'] |
Walking among the dead | Cemeteries are places of peace and contemplation generating an atmosphere that forces you to think or just let go. I have often asked myself why I’m drawn to these, for me, nostalgic places: they remind me that I’m bound by time. By allowing me a glimpse of things lost to the past, I feel the present more strongly.
Already as a child I liked cemeteries and I’ve wandered around many sprawling but also small graveyards in France and England during the summer holidays. Sweet messages of “Till we meet again”, a faithful dog buried at the feet of his owner, and small chapels drew me in. As an adult, my travels brought me further: cycling through the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano (yes, cycling was allowed), passing by the chilling wall of coffins for the poor in Havana, or the City of the Dead of Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.
One of my all time favourites is still the West Cemetery of Highgate, one of the Magnificent Seven in London. Highgate has two parts, the East and West Cemetery. For its protection, the older West Cemetery, which holds an impressive collection of Victorian mausoleums, gravestones and elaborately carved tombs, allows admission only in tour groups. The eastern section, which contains a mix of Victorian and modern statuary, can be toured unescorted. There are many illustrious people buried at Highgate and the Internet gives enough information on the history and interments at the cemetery. Karl Marx might be the most famous one but there are several others such as one of my favourite writers, Douglas Adams.
The grounds of Highgate have a feeling of neglect and decay but are also full of wild flowers, bushes, undergrowth and trees. The Egyptian Avenue with its gloomy appearance and the Circle of Lebanon are particularly magnificent but the whole atmosphere of overgrown paths, toppled monuments and wild greenery clinging to statues of angels and alike, is what makes this such a special place to visit.
Tales of ghostly figures inhabiting Highgate are often whispered, and on one of the many tours I’ve taken over the years, I too wondered if the cemetery was haunted. I asked the guide: “Not haunted, my dear. It is a place of the dead, not the living and we are on their turf.”
I remember I smiled but didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure I agreed with him and I still see it differently. When you walk among the graves, you pass thousands of stories, many unfinished and some completed. Graveyards are for the living as the dead tell no secrets. So, you wonder. You feel mortal. You feel alive. | https://medium.com/@ciswrites/walking-among-the-dead-fa0393368ff5 | ['Cecile Riphagen'] | 2021-06-22 12:07:09.163000+00:00 | ['Travel Writing', 'Travel', 'Spirituality', 'Wonderfulwanderings'] |
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