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3 Reasons Why People Fail CompTIA Exams | Take a CompTIA exam, they said. It will be fun, they said.
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash
Studying the Wrong Material
You do no need to spend thousands of dollars or spend months in a formal class to pass CompTIA exams.
Between the end of April 2019 and the first week of December in 2019 I studied for and passed the A+, Network+, and Security+ while also working on a master’s degree. The only two sources relevant to pass are CompTIA’s Certmaster Practice (have to pay) and ProfessorMesser.com’s free study videos. That is all I used and have had plenty of students pass using only those two sources.
Please do not waste your time and money on secondary sources that are not straight from CompTIA that charge you an arm and a leg for the privilege of learning their interpretation of what is on the exam. CompTIA does not care what they say, so you should not either. The point is to pass the certification not to read a novel about technology. You can do that on your own time.
CompTIA does a very good job replicating the style of questions asked on the real exam with their own material and practice exams. Secondary sources created by other people will never be able to get as close to the real exam as CompTIA. Half of the battle is studying the way CompTIA phrases the questions because it is truly confusing if you do not know exactly what they are asking. | https://medium.com/an-idea/3-reasons-why-people-fail-comptia-exams-59e02d8b4a75 | ['Tyler Harris'] | 2020-10-12 22:54:46.521000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Comptia', 'Comptia Certifications', 'Technology', 'Education'] |
Flow is for everyone, agile is not | Different is Good
I’ve always felt a little different from my other C-suite executive colleagues and in fact, I have had many a conversation with my executive coach about imposter syndrome (take a listen to Tara Nolan’s Game of Teams podcast episode with me).
I thought that maybe it had something to do with my nomadic IT career in Europe, the US and Argentina, where I tried to soak up the culture and then adapt to their context.
To do this, one needs to be more open and available to your wider team. Indeed, I have always said that it’s the leader’s role is to get the work done and not to do it all themselves.
And while my team members tended to respect my openness, my peers labelled me quirky and some of my bosses called me a maverick (hence the title of our first book).
But whatever style you choose, curiosity, communication and personal learning can take you a long way.
The Art of Continuous Learning
I used to think that I was lucky in my professional life but in reality, it’s more about the combination of three key factors that have changed my career significantly:
1. Learning to counsel, coach and mentor.
I’ve always been a social person and I genuinely believe that leaders need to be connective and supportive. And I learned that by working for a number of bosses who were the complete opposite to me; aggressive, machiavellian, control freaks who became successful by crushing everyone else (you know who you are). A bit of a sad existence which will feature in penance one day.
But I’ll be forever grateful for one (female) boss of mine who encouraged me to learn real counselling, coaching & mentoring skills and then let me take the lead in teaching her and the executive team how we could change the culture in the organisation for the good of the business.
Leaders need to be responsible for the professional and mental health of their people. Full stop.
2. Learning to be “agile” and not to buy agile
Even though I was leading agile teams, I wasn’t really part of the club. There is very little information about agile leadership apart from the so-called experts telling you that it’s your job to get out of the way. How sad!
You see, we don’t have agile badges and certifications at the C-level. And I’ll let you into a secret, we wouldn’t be very good at the exams anyway.
But I guessed that there had to be more for us and I figured that learning on the job would be my route to gaining agile skills. So I decided to go to stand-ups, retrospectives, sprint planning etc.
At first, there was suspicion and why not, here is the person that leads thousands of staff standing at a whiteboard looking like a fish out of water. But when I personally took action to remove blockers, change bureaucratic processes, coached people to create solutions and made funds available to the teams to help them, I became part of the team and in the process learned visualisation skills that would help me to create new techniques and assets for other leaders.
3. Learning that agile isn’t enough
I started getting a reputation as a CIO/CTO talking about agile at conferences in terms of it being dead or calling Scrum mini-waterfall (by the way, my wife is a Scrum Master). I even went as far as to say that Scaled Frameworks are a Ponzi scheme driven by consultants where there is no finishing line (by the way, those frameworks are for leadership control and not team agility).
It might seem a bit harsh maybe, but what I was doing as a senior IT professional was calling out that agile needed to evolve. Mainly because it had become too IT-centric and the “business” was still unhappy about the pace and quality of delivery to the market.
Now the IT teams were obsessed with pace but when coupled with product failures this became one step forward and two steps backwards. Mainly because no one knew how to deliver value.
Going back to point 1, what continued to happen is that people were not happy; Dev vs Ops vs Testers. IT vs Product vs Marketing. CxO vs CxO. Security vs everyone etc.
Change was needed and I personally needed to do something about it. And in 2013, that’s how we started to develop Flow.
The Business as a Value Chain
I don’t want to talk about agile methodologies in a bad way. They, like me, should be the culmination of lessons learned in the face of needing to improve.
But it’s not happening. And I believe that IT or more specifically many “agilists” don’t want it to (another harsh statement). Giving up the badges, certifications or titles gives rise to a defence mechanism and SAFe experts can be the most aggressive.
In my own agile journey, I studied lean practices and quickly saw the inefficiencies in branching code or big room planning (too many people in a room multitasking whilst waiting for their 15 minutes of story fame). Waste became my mantra or indeed the removal of said waste.
I was also fascinated by value chains. This made sense but I couldn’t see the source of value creation. My job was to deliver value. But also, I saw the biggest impediment to value streams being the entire business itself.
And while IT wrestled against some silos with DevOps, Business/IT multi-disciplinary teams seemed and still seem a long way off (perhaps hampered by a lack of agile skills in HR).
So it seemed obvious to me that if the entire business could become agile, then value could be derived and delivered with ease.
I Lied About Three Key Factors, There’s a Fourth
And that fourth factor was meeting Haydn Shaughnessy back in 2013. He had developed the techniques for value discovery which are much wider than just product development and he had the successes to prove it.
We went about making Flow end-to-end, business plus IT and then make our practices a reality with great social interaction, visualisation, collective intelligence and collaboration. We focused on every aspect of a business, including those teams that are not normally interfacing every day with agile teams.
We also developed the Transformation Sprint (the topic of our latest book) to help us implement Flow for our clients and to help them to transform their businesses.
And what we are now discovering more and more, is that agile has become the thing that is now creating a divide between IT and the Business in some companies. And that’s why we designed Flow for everyone — even leaders!
Flow Academy (flowacademy.io) is a leading advisory and implementation practice specialising in transformation. Our tools help companies make the best use of their existing assets while reshaping their business to meet new demands.
Fin Goulding is a top 100 CTO/CIO who in the past five years has transformed into a business agility expert having worked for organisations like Visa, RBS, HSBC and digital startups such as lastminute.com and paddypower.com. Fin also coaches executives through the challenges of transformation.
Haydn Shaughnessy is a business economist and innovation expert who has consulted to some of the world’s leading organisations helping senior executives to plan the next-generation enterprise.
Transformation Sprint (thetransformationsprint.com) is their new book, now available on Amazon, which builds upon their best selling business books Flow: A Handbook for Changemakers and 12 Steps to Flow. | https://medium.com/flow-the-new-agile-framework/flow-is-for-everyone-agile-is-not-f0a074eef6f8 | ['Fin Goulding'] | 2020-12-17 18:10:12.365000+00:00 | ['Agile', 'Learning', 'Flow', 'Leadership', 'Transformation'] |
Everybody’s Trans Memoir | Everybody’s Trans Memoir
Why Trans Stories That Don’t “Fit the Mold” Are Stories for ALL OF US.
With the cultural rise of trans rights and trans personae, no longer is the trans narrative exotic, esoteric, and unfamiliar.
Yet, there are narratives, and there are narratives. For good or for ill, Caitlyn Jenner’s 2014 coming out cemented in popular culture trans persons’ having grown up in a girl’s/boy’s body, knowing from an early age that they were rather a boy/girl.
the point of a memoir is to tell a very particular journey so that it resonates with EVERYBODY
Binary, Schminary
Sounds pretty binary and one-size-fits-all. Which it is. The Greek root, “trans,” means “across from,” as in “not at home with.” There is a plethora of ways beyond a binary for anyone not to feel at home with themselves.
My One-Size-DOESN’T-Fit-All Memoir
My story is one of those. I’m MtF trans. I’m post-op. I continue HRT. All my legal name-change/other transitions are complete. Here’s the twist: I had no inkling I was trans until I was 54 years old.
Howz that fer not fittin’ the mold?
Which is one reason why I call my memoir, How to NOT Know You’re Trans, for it recounts a lifetime of having been shut down and missing the boat as to my own true identity. There’s anxiety and depression in that story, as well as comic relief, and, ultimately, joy.
Given that title, you might think my narrative applies only to late-in-life transitioners.
But the point of a memoir is to tell a very particular journey so that it resonates with EVERYBODY.
The Odder the Better
That’s the gist of every trans person’s narrative—they’re accounts of being human. The better they tell a story of what popular culture deems an “oddball” subset of humanity, the more they resonate with everybody in every culture, time, place, and orientation. Otherwise, why would we continue to read stories of any ilk from cultures, people, and milieus far transported from the here, the now, the status quo?
Narratives pose a puzzle — namely, how did the protagonist get into this situation and how do they get out of it, to a brighter sunrise, and to a present — and future — of hope?
The subtitle of my memoir implies this—A Memoir of the Unknown Trans Person and How A Marriage Survived and Thrives Through It.
Narratives pose a puzzle—namely, how did the protagonist get into this situation and how do they get out of it, to a brighter sunrise, and to a present—and future—of hope? How the narrative shapes out and who it’s about fall into the background because, in reading it, we bring ourselves to the story and live it with the protagonist.
And that’s what my memoir is about. Read it to live it! | https://medium.com/the-transition-transmission/everybodys-trans-memoir-f3b051310a86 | ['Bethany Beeler', 'Author Artist'] | 2020-02-02 12:07:51.279000+00:00 | ['Transgender', 'LGBTQ', 'Autobiography', 'Memoir', 'Storytelling'] |
Elon Musk and company have officially departed for greener pastures in Texas. | Silicon Valley has long been the hub of the world’s tech industry giants, dating as far back as 1938, the same year Superman was debuted to the world, when Bill Hewlett and David Packard sold their first audio oscillator to Walt Disney. Disney would go on to use the oscillators to test audio equipment when Fantasia first hit theaters in 1940.
Fast forward 80 years, and the Silicon Valley trendsetter is joining the founder of SpaceX for the same greener pastures, having recently broke ground for a new 440,000-square-foot campus in two five-story buildings in the Houston suburb of Spring. The campus is set for completion in 2022.
On Friday, Oracle, the database software goliath announced plans to join them, saying it will relocate its headquarters to Austin.
According to the Austin Chamber of Commerce, as of November, 39 companies now call Austin, TX their new home, including SignEasy, QuestionPro and DZS who all made the move in the past 12 months. What makes HPE's decision an especially hard pill to swallow for a California economy that is all of a sudden losing ground to it's Texas rival isn't just it's "founder of Silicone Valley" status, but the cool $7.2 billion in sales in Q3 they're taking with them to the Lone Star State, forever.
This mass "tech exodus", or "techxit" can be traced back to a whole host of reasons, be it tax-benefit related, better business climate, reasons pertaining to Covid-19 restrictions, hostility toward businesses, high utility and labor costs, punitive regulations and worrisome housing affordability for employees. Either way, this "techxit" movement has been under way for more than a decade. Roughly 660 California companies moved 765 facilities out of state in 2018 and 2019. Based off what we have seen in recent years, this trend will only continue, as it has in 2020.
Many will go on to say that the reason for so many high-profile millionaires and billion-dollar corporations to pick up and leave is because of the current world pandemic. That's hardly the case however.
Texas is the number one destination for companies leaving California for the past 12 years. This is a statistical fact, not opinion. Covid-19 may have simply hastened the decision for these companies to move on earlier than expected. Couple this with the fact that many employees are now becoming comfortable with their new-found work-from-home situations and are more than likely earning the same paychecks. Several tech firms have said they'll give employees the option to permanently work from home even after the pandemic ends, making residing in one of the worlds most expensive places to live and work in, easier to vacate. I have a friend that is moving to Nashville in 2021 because the internet marketing company she works for in Los Angeles gave her the option to work from home even when things go back to some semblance of normalcy.
California is still by far the largest economy in the US, and will remain so for the foreseeable future indeed. | https://medium.com/@luvmybraves/elon-musk-and-company-have-officially-departed-for-greener-pastures-in-texas-a07d434ec9fa | ['Brandon Beattie'] | 2020-12-18 22:01:28.816000+00:00 | ['Elon Musk', 'Tesla', 'Oracle', 'Texas', 'Silicon Valley'] |
The Top 4 FLSA Mistakes That Can Cost Your Business | As a result, many companies today find that applying the FLSA’s requirements to a modern workforce is cumbersome and unclear. It is no wonder that even large, sophisticated companies sometimes struggle to correctly implement the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime requirements.
Introduction to the FLSA
The FLSA is the federal law that provides the minimum hourly wage that all employees must be paid in the United States and also sets the base requirements for employees to either earn overtime or to be exempt from earning overtime, depending on their job duties.
While there are several components to the FLSA, the two most common provisions that give employers headaches are the minimum wage requirement and the overtime requirement. Currently, the FLSA requires that almost all U.S. employers pay their non-exempt employees a minimum of $7.25 per hour. In addition, the FLSA sets out a framework through which some employees (termed, salaried-exempt) can be paid a minimum annual salary (currently $684 per week or $35,568 annually) and thereby not be eligible to receive overtime.
However, to be a salaried-exempt employee requires that the employee not just be paid the minimum annual salary, but that the employee’s job duties fall within one of the accepted categories of “exemptions” that make them eligible to be paid an annual salary instead of an hourly wage. There are many listed FLSA “exemptions,” but the most common that give employers fits are the executive, administrative, professional, outside sales, and computer exemptions.
The Most Common Error: Misclassifying Employees as Exempt
Far and away the most common mistake that employers make is misclassifying employees as salaried-exempt when, in fact, they should be classified as non-exempt employees. This mistake happens typically for one of two reasons: the employer mistakenly believes the employee’s job duties fall into one of the accepted FLSA “exemptions” or the employer simply fails to evaluate whether a particular salaried employee’s duties meet one of the qualified exemptions. On its face, this mistake seems easy to avoid. But the FLSA overtime exemptions were drafted decades ago and, in many instances, today’s jobs do not fit squarely within an exemption — leaving employers to make educated guesses as to whether certain employees can be properly classified as “salaried, exempt.”
Even large, sophisticated companies often make mistakes when it comes to properly distinguishing between exempt and non-exempt employees.
For example, earlier in 2020, Paychex, Inc., a large Professional Employer Organization (PEO), was hit with a collective action from employees claiming that they had been misclassified as exempt from overtime when, in fact, they should have been paid overtime for those hours worked in excess of forty (40) per workweek. Although the case is still ongoing, the court granted the employees motion to certify the case as a collective action and denied Paychex’s early motion for partial summary judgment.
Similarly, another large PEO, TriNet Group, Inc., was forced to settle a complaint brought by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) for over $1 million dollars in back wages and damages after TriNet misclassified about 267 employees as salaried, exempt. TriNet mistakenly believed that the employees fell within one of the FLSA’s listed exemptions, but the DOL interpreted the matter differently.
To make matters worse for employers, there are many remedies available to employees. They may simply file a complaint with the DOL and let the agency conduct its own investigation, or the employee may file a complaint with a state agency that administers the state’s wage and hour laws.
Alternatively, if employees do not want to wait for the government to investigate, they may take matters into their own hands and sue their employers directly in either state or federal court to recover not just any unpaid wages, but double damages, and attorneys’ fees.
Failing to Calculate Overtime Correctly
Another common mistake that even sophisticated employers make is failing to correctly calculate overtime. Under the FLSA (and most state wage and hour laws) overtime pay (i.e., time-and-a-half the employee’s regular hourly rate) must be paid to non-exempt employees for any time worked in excess of forty (40) hours in a single workweek. A majority of employers pay their employees every two weeks. So, a regular, full-time employee would show eighty (80) hours on their timesheet (which equates to two 40-hour workweeks).
The FLSA requires overtime to be calculated on a weekly basis.
Many payroll personnel (and even some payroll companies) mistakenly believe that so long as an employee who is paid biweekly does not work over eighty (80) hours in a pay period then they are not owed any overtime. This is a mistake. The following example illustrates this misunderstanding:
Jane is a non-exempt, hourly paid employee and is paid every two weeks (i.e., bi-weekly). In the first workweek of the pay period, Jane works 33 hours. In the second workweek, Jane works 45 hours. Jane has worked a total of only seventy-eight (78) hours for that two-week pay period (i.e., 33+45=78). Yet, Jane is entitled to five (5) hours of overtime pay at one-and-a-half times her regularly hourly rate because she worked five (5) hours in excess of forty (40) hours during the second workweek of the pay period.
This common mistake gets even more complex where employees are paid on a “twice a month” basis (also called “semimonthly” payroll), because regular, full-time hours might be as high as 88 or 96 for the pay period — and can fluctuate depending on the number of days in the month and pay period. Thus, the best approach is to look at every workweek and decide whether each non-exempt employee is entitled to overtime based on the total hours worked in that workweek alone.
Common Recordkeeping Mistakes
The FLSA also requires covered employers to keep certain records regarding their non-exempt employees. No specific form is required, but the records must be accurate, include certain identifying information about the employee, and list hours worked and the wages earned. The following is a listing of the basic information that employers must maintain:
Employee’s full name and social security number; Address, including zip code; Birth date, if younger than 19 years of age; Sex and occupation; Time and day of week when employee’s workweek begins; Hours worked each day; Total hours worked each workweek; Basis on which employee’s wages are paid (e.g., “$9 per hour”, “$440 a week”, “piecework”); Regular hourly pay rate; Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings; Total overtime earnings for the workweek; All additions to or deductions from the employee’s wages; Total wages paid each pay period; and Date of payment and the pay period covered by the payment;
Timekeeping records must be maintained for two (2) years.
All other pay-related records and demographic information should be maintained for three (3) years. The most common mistake employers make is (believe it or not) failing to keep accurate time records regarding their non-exempt, hourly paid employees.
Contrary to popular belief, it is not the employee’s responsibility to accurately and timely fill out their timesheet — it is the employer’s responsibility to keep track of their time. As a practical matter, most companies institute a timekeeping system (either paper or electronic) that it requires employees to utilize on a consistent basis so that the employer knows how much to pay them. The problem comes when employees fail to properly utilize the employer’s timekeeping system. All employers must pay their non-exempt employees for all hours worked — even if the employees fail to properly complete their timesheet. Employees can be disciplined or even fired for failing to properly complete their timesheet, but it is still the employer’s legal responsibility to pay them for all hours worked.
As a result of this oddity in the law, employers often forget that they must complete or modify those timesheets that the employees failed to complete or completed erroneously. Failing to do so can result in the DOL finding that your company has maintained inadequate records. Even more problematic, employers often pay employees incorrectly because employees have failed to accurately complete their timesheets.
Even if an employee consistently failed to record all hours worked on her timesheet (even after having been instructed how to properly do it), that employee could still recover unpaid wages, damages, and attorney’s fees from her employer — because it is the employer’s responsibility to correctly record their employees’ hours worked and provide correct pay according to all hours worked.
Tips to Help Avoid FLSA Compliance Problems
These examples are just a few of the FLSA pitfalls that employers face. There are others that may affect specific industries (like farming or livestock companies) or specific classes of employees (like healthcare professionals). Fortunately, for all companies the goal remains the same no matter your industry — keep accurate track of your employees’ hours and pay them correctly.
With that common goal in mind, there are a few proactive steps that all employers should take to help minimize FLSA compliance issues.
For starters, take the time to classify each category of employee as either exempt or non-exempt using the FLSA exemptions, making a concerted effort to correctly classify the positions based on their job responsibilities and annual compensation.
Next, institute a single timekeeping system for your employees, periodically train employees on the proper way to use the system, and have your managers audit their employees’ timesheets occasionally to make sure they are being completed correctly.
And lastly, periodically audit your payroll records to make sure that non-exempt employees are being paid correctly, particularly if you have employees that work some overtime hours. A “self-audit” of your payroll records can be an effective way to correct any pay discrepancies before the DOL knocks on your door or an employee files a lawsuit.
C2 provides strategic HR outsourcing to clients who want to develop optimal workforce strategies and solutions to allow them to be more competitive and profitable. C2 blog posts are intended for educational and informational purposes only. | https://medium.com/@c2essentials/the-top-4-flsa-mistakes-that-can-cost-your-business-b32a282e5199 | [] | 2021-02-17 20:39:29.687000+00:00 | ['Fair Labor Standards Act', 'Overtime', 'Compliance', 'Employment Law', 'Human Resources'] |
The World Needs More Gentlemen And Fewer Men | 1. Follow the golden rule of gentlemanship.
In my younger years, I had a knack for insulting people and responding with cheap shots when I felt slighted. Back then, emotion dictated my actions. The logical part of my brain refused to assert itself.
It wasn’t until my thirties that I matured and learned a helpful technique that has allowed me to master my emotions. It’s called the golden rule of gentlemanship, and it’s the foundation for all other values and behaviors.
Ignore your initial impulse, take a deep breath, and think about what action will serve you best in the long run — The golden rule of gentlemanship
If you can’t control your impulses, you can’t become a gentleman. It’s a challenge for men, myself included, but it’s easy to overcome. A pause and a deep breath will take you far in life.
2. Establish a personal code of conduct.
John McCain’s concession speech in the 2008 presidential election serves as the benchmark for gracious concessions. It’s also a model for gentlemanly behavior.
After acknowledging Obama’s victory, he said, “I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.”
And then he took responsibility for the defeat.
“And though we fell short, the failure is mine, not yours.”
To McCain, his code of conduct mattered more than winning. But to the non-gentleman, a code of conduct serves as another obstacle. If he can’t win by following the rules, he bends or breaks them. He justifies his actions by convincing himself that he’s not really cheating, merely playing tough — as a man should.
For the gentlemen, the choices he makes on his way to the finish line matters more than the outcome he achieves.
3. Show class in victory and defeat.
As a teen, I played competitive tennis. Thirty years later, I’m grateful no videos exist of those dreadful displays of poor sportsmanship.
Nobody will ever see teenage me chucking my racket, cursing after a missed shot, and storming off the court without shaking my opponent’s hand. And that was when I won. I grew out of that phase, but some men hold onto that pettiness well into adulthood.
We compete in many arenas: athletics, business, love, and life. Win or lose, the gentleman displays exemplary sportsmanship.
In defeat, he congratulates his foe for being the superior competitor and refrains from making excuses, crying foul, or throwing temper tantrums.
In victory, the gentleman displays graciousness while avoiding the manly act of gloating and rubbing acid in his competitor’s wound.
4. Make the uncomfortable ones feel comfortable.
In early 2003, I attended a networking event organized by a future mentor of mine. When I waltzed in, I thought I had entered a time warp, arriving at high school lunch hour where everyone buddies up into their tight cliques, raising their virtual no vacancy signs to keep out invaders.
As a quiet person, that kind of experience always triggers an “oh shit, what do I do now” feeling.
My future mentor hurried over, introduced himself, and learned about my business needs and personal interests. He then flagged a group of people and inserted himself into their conversation, deftly shifting the conversation to a topic I could contribute. I hadn’t noticed he left until I saw him perform the same act for another lost soul.
A true gentleman goes out of his way to make uncomfortable people feel welcomed, wanted and valued.
5. Exceed expectations when there’s no reward for doing so.
A former boss once gave me advice about career advancement. It has stuck with me for two decades because his wisdom doubles as instruction for gentlemanly behavior. Paraphrased, it goes something like this.
The man argues about the letter of the law while the gentleman exceeds the spirit of the law.
A non-gentleman exceeds the spirit of the law, requirement, or request only when he’s rewarded for it with what he deems sufficient compensation: money, praise, or other favor.
The gentleman exceeds expectations even when there’s no apparent reward. I added the word “apparent” because the gentleman understands that consistently exceeding expectations will win him more benefit in the long run.
6. Take and give receive rejection with grace.
During my second year in college, my college girlfriend wanted out but lacked the guts to tell me, opting to string me along until the end of the semester when she blurted a quick break-up on my answering machine.
Don’t do that.
If you must reject someone, do so with as little delay as possible. You’re not doing the other person a favor by sparing their feelings; you’re wasting their time.
Deliver your news with as much dignity as the situation allows. Do it in private. Be clear and definite — never give false hope. It’s tough to deliver bad news. In some ways, it’s harder than being on the receiving end.
When facing rejection, a gentleman acts with grace. He avoids playing the victim or lashing out. Instead, he offers a smile or at least a nod in matters of love. A “thank you for your consideration” in matters of business. On occasion, a nudge shows class. “Hey, it’s okay to say no if you’re not interested.”
7. Don’t flaunt your wealth.
Before the pandemic, eight of us went out for dinner. Our party included one rich finance guy who liked to flaunt his wealth. He took it upon himself to choose from the wine list, selecting options well into the triple digits, freezing everyone else into stunned silence.
Another friend at the table mentioned the price exceeded her comfort level. The rest of us echoed that sentiment. The rich guy responded, “Relax everyone. The wine is on me tonight.” The rich dude thought he had won, but I’d wager everyone lost a bit of respect for him after that incident.
The gentleman never shows off and never contrasts his superior resources to someone else’s s relative scarcity.
8. Dialogue like a gentleman.
Gentlemanship demands the use of appropriate dialogue.
Avoid sarcasm, condescension, and smugness. These tools demean, insult, and reveal a lack of class. Think of a more respectful and thoughtful way to make your point.
Minimize gossip. It’s like free porn. Once you start, it’s hard to stop. And when you finally do finish, you’ll wish you hadn’t started. The decent man refuses to take part in disparaging gossip, while the gentleman objects to it. As J.R. Vernon stated in an 1869 issue of Contemporary Review, “The gentleman… will not pass over that of which he disapproves.” He speaks up.
Banish the use of unfounded attacks on someone’s character. Avoid accusations when you lack direct knowledge or proof.
Whenever speaking with someone, make them feel like the only person in the room. A gentleman gives his full attention to conversation partners.
9. Muster the courage to go it alone.
It takes a man of strong moral character to put aside his self-interest in favor of living by his principles. The few who prove up to that task often walk that path alone.
Even men who think of themselves as superior in moral fiber often set aside their principles when the cost demands too steep a price. They’re not real gentlemen; they merely play the part when it coincides with their desired goal.
A true gentleman plays by all of the above rules, even when it works against his self-interest, invites rebuke from peers, or results in adverse personal outcomes.
10. Allow yourself to be human.
The journey to earning your doctorate in gentlemanship might seem like an impossible task.
Keep in mind. Nobody achieves perfection, so give yourself a break. Genuine gentlemen do screw up, but they also take responsibility for their errors, make amends when necessary, and rarely commit the same misdeed twice. | https://barry-davret.medium.com/the-world-needs-more-gentlemen-and-fewer-men-3b0f40e1f543 | ['Barry Davret'] | 2020-12-19 04:22:44.565000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Self Improvement', 'Relationships', 'Advice', 'Equality'] |
2020 Census Kicks Off in Exactly One Year | One year from today, everyone living in the United States will be asked to respond to the decennial Census, our once-in-a-decade chance to do our civic duty. The Census is used for political reapportionment and redistricting, Federal funding allocation, business decisions, and so much more. Many cities, counties, and states are rightly concerned that the 2020 enumeration will miss more people than prior Census efforts. To better understand who is likely to be missed, and start building a plan to effectively reach them, state and local governments should leverage data-driven tools to explore their populations.
To this end, Civis created a Hard-to-Count Segment Mapping Dashboard, part of our suite of tools for states and localities to better reach their populations for the 2020 Census. Today we focus on Texas, but in the coming weeks and months, we will share tools for the entire United States, with a focus on how to best locate, understand, reach, and communicate with local populations.
How do you use the tool?
The Hard-to-Count Segment Mapping Dashboard is an interactive map that highlights Low Response Scores (the likelihood of non-response, where a higher number means less likely to respond), as well as demographic information about the population in each small area of geography. These areas are known as block groups, and they are the smallest level of geography released by the Census Bureau. You can filter the focus of the map on one of the several well-known hard-to-count groups, such as areas with higher percentages of children under five, higher percentages of renters, or higher numbers of Latinos.
After selecting a specific population, you can zoom in on your area of interest and select a block group for more information. Let’s dig in to better understand how this map can be a useful first step in any outreach campaign for the 2020 Census.
Examining the map’s benefits by using two hard-to-count communities as an example
Today we‘ll look at two different areas in Texas: the border area from the Rio Grande Valley to Nuevo Laredo, and the Houston metro area, which are good comparison points for different types of hard-to-count communities. The border area from Rio Grande Valley to Nuevo Laredo is roughly seven times larger than the Houston metro area, but with a population of less than a third of the latter. The Houston metro area is one of the largest and most diverse in the United States. Both have a high number of hard-to-count areas, but for different reasons.
Overall Low Response Likelihood
Let’s start by looking at the overall low response likelihood. As we can see below, both areas have a high concentration of low response, with darker blues showing us a higher likelihood for non-response.
Border Area:
Houston Metro Area:
If we dig in more, we can see this likelihood for low response is driven by different factors.
In Houston, we found high non-response in Fort Bend County, with a high proportion of Asians and a high proportion of renters.
Along the border, we found high non-response in Webb County, which consists of a high proportion of Latinos, high poverty, and a high percentage of the population living in mobile homes.
This tool provides state and local governments with a first step in understanding easy-to-count, hard-to-count, and hardest-to-count populations. However, this is only the first step. In upcoming weeks, Civis will share tools to understand, reach, and respond to the populations identified, to increase self-response to the 2020 Census. If you are interested in talking more about 2020 Census response in your community, reach out to us, we’d love to chat. | https://medium.com/civis-analytics/2020-census-kicks-off-in-exactly-one-year-355cb48e7855 | ['Civis Analytics'] | 2019-04-01 22:17:02.887000+00:00 | ['Census', 'Civictech', 'Dataviz', 'Government', '2020 Census'] |
So Serious! | So Serious!
When I come onto Medium these days there’s so much seriousness in the things that people are writing about. Rob Walker Follow Dec 18, 2020 · 3 min read
Photo by Amy Reed on Unsplash
Maybe it’s just me that feels in a Christmasy mood?
I came here today, as I do every day and I immediately see a plethora of posts all conveying some kind of seriousness, with headlines that all tell us how to do this or that and why this or that is happening.
It’s so consuming is the seriousness of it all. To me, it is anyway.
I know that we are all trying desperately to grab each other’s attention and good luck with that, but where is all of the fun around here?
Please excuse me if I’m talking out of turn, I’ve just spent half of a day creating a letter that I’ve sent to my son. It’s a list of jokes that will cheer him up and it was great writing them out and it was also really great to be laughing with it.
Life is so severe at the moment what with the Pandemic that’s putting everyone into a serious mode because, well, we have to.
When we think back to times before the Pandemic things were just as severe only in different ways.
Life.
Is.
Dull.
I’m not saying that what you write about is dull at all either. I fully admire a lot of what is written and I wish that I could come up with something, equally as interesting.
Give yourself a break though, damn!
Lighten up for a moment.
Maybe I’m wrong? I just hoped that I could see something to make me laugh instead of reading how to’s.
Yes, I know. Change my interests and then I’ll see more of that kind of stuff, that’s just come to me but while I’m here talking to you I thought I’d mention it. I’m writing this post because I’ve had this thought that people could do with some cheering up, especially at this time of year.
I’m not a comedian or even a funny guy but I do have a sense of humour, and over this last year that seems to have been driven into the ground with all of the worries, the rules and regulations, the limits on just about everything that we have now.
I’m going to start leaving you with a few jokes at the end of my posts in the vain attempt to cheer you up, those who read me anyway, and through that, I’m hoping to share a touch of warmth and lightness to our platform.
I get it that some of you might not find my shit funny, but I know that some of you will and, for those of you who do I hope you’ll share making someone else happy, passing on the love.
The wife hit her husband with a frying pan.
Husband: What was that for…?
Wife: I found a paper in your pocket with the name Jenny on it.
Husband: I took part in a race last week and Jenny was the name of my horse.
Wife: Sorry..!
The next day wife hit him with the frying pan again
Husband: What now..?
Wife: Your horse is on the Phone.
A drunk Irishman is stumbling through the woods when he chances upon a preacher baptizing people in the river.
He walks into the water and bumps into the preacher. The preacher turns around and recognizes the smell of alcohol, so he asks the drunk. “Are you ready to find Jesus?”
The drunk shouts, “Yes, I am.”
The preacher grabs him and dunks him in the water. he pulls him up and asks, “Brother have you found Jesus?”
The drunk replies, “No, I haven’t found Jesus.”
The preacher dunks him into the water again for a bit longer. he pulls him out of the water and asks, “Have you found Jesus, me brother?”
The drunk shakes his head, “No, I haven’t found Jesus.”
This time the preacher dunks the drunk in the water again and holds him down for about 30 seconds. When he starts kicking his arms and legs he pulls him up.
The preacher again asks the drunk, “For the love of God have you found Jesus?”
The drunk wipes his eyes and catches his breath and asks the preacher. “Are you sure this is where he fell in?”
Merry Christmas! | https://medium.com/an-idea/so-serious-d051d4c145ff | ['Rob Walker'] | 2020-12-19 04:57:50.988000+00:00 | ['Jokes', 'Christmas', 'Happy', 'Humour', 'Love'] |
#1 WHAT I DO | WHAT I DO
I rise early to nature sounds.
For 5–15 mins I read Google News, listen to NPR, or watch MSNBC depending on how lonely a morning it is. A break between stories is when I make my move. Because writing is happening, it’s in my calendar app.
I don’t turn on the lights, my screen will be lit, and I don’t want to wake. I’m still sleepy, sleepy is good. And the dark reminds me of my industrious college all nighters. I was a night owl writer until I was 27, but I write early mornings now. There are a 100 good reasons for this.
I head to my office area in my pajamas. Pajamas are the height of comfort, iydknyk. I slip on my orange slippers as well, no backs. If it’s cold I’ll add my sky blue Nike sweater with the stain and the silky pockets. If I have a dry itch I’ll lotion it, if I have a chaff, I’ll powder it — it needs to go away and not return.
I’ve got my green tea now. Loose green tea from the wise old men in Okinawa who live to 110. I add raw local honey so I can dispense sweet sips as small rewards during my labor. I add a splash of cold from my Brita so it’s drinkable right away. Reward sip.
I fill my water bottle, take my pills. It’s sometimes back and forth to my kitchen, it’s sometimes right on the keyboard — whichever helps me drop in.
It’s early, am I still dreamy? Yes, good, dreamy is good.
I left my desk clean. It’s a clear and open space, nothing in my eye line to tempt me off a sentence. One of my desks is wood, it’s warm, it calms me, it welcomes me. My other desk is glass, it’s translucent, it focuses me, it promises clarity. I sit at whichever has the best mojo, where I’ve written better the last 2–3 times. If they’re both cursed, I know three cafes with clean bathrooms in walking distance.
I sit down.
I have once again taken Oliver Stone’s advice: “Writing = Ass + Chair”
I set my Pomodoro timer. This first one is special, it’s my #SleepyPomodoro, it’s magic. If I could bottle it I would. Try to bottle it.
Do not disturb on my laptop, dark mode, blue light off — I wanna stay asleep. I use hot keys so I don’t even have to mouse. Two coasters, water bottle behind, tea closest. Reward sip.
Eat? It’s too fuckin’ early to eat. By design.
Am I still foggy? Yes. Foggy is good. Easy to make decisions and self doubt remains at a distance.
Most times I’ve left myself where the very next step is clear. You learn never to leave yourself in a bad place. A gift from yesterday’s self. Reward.
I Write.
I start with a coy edit about half the page up from where I left off. This is a ruse. I only tinker with it for confidence. But very soon I #WriteForward. Nothing, nothing good ever came from going backwards during a first draft.
At some point it dawns on me that I can add music to my life, my oldest emotional support animal. For writing, nothing with lyrics — it’s Crescendo Film Scores for inspiration or The Calmest Beats for a steady push.
In 25 minutes the Sleepy Pomodoro goes off — if there’s any magic left — fuck it, I keep going. But when that magic is gone, and I’m fully awake, whether it’s been 30 minutes or 90 minutes I stop the first push.
I take in the world around me. Blinders off.
I’ve only just woken up. And I’ve already written today.
// David
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Tl;dr My ritual changes a little when I edit film, when I sketch, when I design in Unity, when I direct a play — but there are always 3 elements. Three Elements of a Creative Ritual 1. Comfort — Build comfort in your work location, make it an uncluttered, open, positive space, with drink, sweets, charms, inspirational sayings, spirituality, good juju. Surround yourself with these reminders of past success. 2. Starting — Schedule creative time and protect it, set a clear moment when you start, have a #PlanOfAttack to know where to pick up from your last session with ease. 3. Finishing — Know how to call it a day, a way to be satisfied, a way to quantify your labor so you can celebrate it, and a way to surrender to the process — not the output of your process. #GuardYourSpaceTime
#PlanOfAttack
#CelebrateTheProcess
EXTRAS
💡 IYDKNYK defined.
🛠 Pomodoro technique, explained. I write for a time goal and fit those into larger deadlines. When my writing muscle is strong, a good writing day for me is 4.5 hours with meals during the long breaks. I push 3 x 3 Pomodoros (25m + 5m break, 25m + 5m break, 25m + 30m break).
🔈 Playlists: Crescendo Film Scores & The Calmest Beats
Crescendo Film Scores & The Calmest Beats ▶️ Video: Link to last week’s Seth Godin & Steven Pressfield Talk (30m) Two creatives who think deeply about process cover several great topics in between waxing each other’s cars.
Link to last week’s Seth Godin & Steven Pressfield Talk (30m) Two creatives who think deeply about process cover several great topics in between waxing each other’s cars. /NOW Check out what I’m doing now: http://davidnegrin.com/now
YOUR VOICE
Before you write, paint, dance, act, design, sculpt, illustrate, photograph, code, are creative — what do you do? | https://medium.com/strategic-from-david-negrin/1-what-i-do-2dea15cae890 | ['David Negrin'] | 2020-12-16 19:43:46.966000+00:00 | ['Screenwriting', 'Filmmaking', 'Writing Tips', 'Creative Writing', 'Creative Process'] |
Sequoia Alternative Program hosts car show | Sequoia Alternative Program hosts car show
The event turned out to be a success for the program with more than $2,000 raised for the United Way Disaster Recovery Funds.
The students and staff from the Sequoia Alternative Program hosted a Car Show on Saturday, Oct. 28 to raise funds to aide in the recovery efforts for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. More than 40 antique, modified and pro-street automobiles competed in several different categories ranging from “Student’s Choice” to “Best Antique Car or Truck.” The event turned out to be a huge success for the program with more than $2,000 raised for the United Way Disaster Recovery Funds.
Sequoia Alternative Program Director Ben Lamberson said, “I couldn’t be prouder of our students and staff for all their hard work in making this event an absolute success. Teaching our students the importance of community service is one of the cornerstones of our program. Today’s event was an excellent example of the positive impact even a small program like ours can have when we work together to make a difference.” | https://medium.com/the-medford-sun/sequoia-alternative-program-hosts-car-show-6f8e63ae56fb | ['Tom Beck'] | 2017-10-31 16:14:33.842000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Events', 'Cars', 'Fun', 'Schools'] |
Introduction to Mastering Mediocrity | Being stranded at home, I didn’t have access to a studio nor the equipment. For once, my only outlet of expression was taken away from me, I couldn’t create, I was uninspired and I was truly lost. I didn’t want to let my idea of the perfect podcast rid me of an opportunity, I didn’t want the pandemic to be something I was limited by. Albeit sans the above mentioned, I did have a hint of charisma that only came out in front of those that I was very close and comfortable — either intentional or unintentional, I knew this could be a small step towards something.
A little light bulb above my head sparked. Though there are only a handful of English Podcasts and Talkshows in Sri Lanka all of which focused on bringing guests who were already well-known and successful. More often than not these were centered around overly glorified stories that are deeply unrelatable. It lacked a sense of authenticity and general accessibility. Everything is so over-glorified and spurious. We can all relate to leaving everything behind and moving into the city of glamour with 20 something bucks in hand and building a net worth of over $20 billion, right?
Real conversations weren’t the norm, they were trapped between closed circles out of the fear of being discarded as uninteresting or god-forbid to be judged. Mediocrity is undervalued, mass media and society as a whole has us programmed to live these unrealistic and picture-perfect lifestyles, standards set by the influencers of the magnanimous silver screen and your smartphone’s screen alike.
Mediocrity is looked down upon as a form of underachievement and discarded as an outcast of the existing social bubble. The underlying narrative is that as much we try to make our lives seem interesting on tiny squares on Instagram. The truth is, outside the square, life in all its essence is mediocre — and that’s okay, and just like the tale of The Ugly Duckling, the mediocrity of life needs to be told and heard. Like a Phoenix born from the ash, the podcast came up with the idea of ripping off the facade and having a real conversation to give you the essence of mastering your mediocrity. These conversations are the down-lows of all journeys — the ones that were successful, the ones that were a lost cause, and everything in-between.
In this weekly podcast, Zeeshan Akram Jabeer, a Sri Lankan serial-creative — — filmmaker and entrepreneur take you through what Mastering Mediocrity really is like. Join us every week as we indulge in what can only be summed up as a close-to-the-bone reality of individuals who thrive in a varied range of industries. From business insight to everyday life, we talk about everything controversial and mundane.
New episodes of Mastering Mediocrity out now on YouTube, Spotify, Google, Apple Podcast, etc. Find them here: https://linktr.ee/zeeshanakramjabeer
We believe that by bridging the gap between education, environment, and experience; We can truly disrupt traditional thinking and community and togetherness. | https://medium.com/mastering-mediocrity/introduction-to-mastering-mediocrity-d1e91d934bae | ['Zeeshan Akram Jabeer'] | 2021-05-24 17:12:05.029000+00:00 | ['Podcasting', 'General News', 'Lifestyle', 'Podcast', 'Podcast Recommendations'] |
Rust Adventures — A Java programmer understanding Rust Ownership | Hi there folks!
As you know I’m learning Rust as a 2020 goal and today I decided to learn more about the key feature of the language: Ownership.
Beginning
My career up until now was based solely under Java stacks, so I summed up some experience with Java, Javascript and their libraries. For a long time I heard of the trails of people from C and C++ used to have managing the memory allocation of their programs and how the Garbage Collector saved the day.
The other side of the coin is that I always heard about the low-level languages programmers how the Virtual Machines languages had a poor performance.
For some times when I was writing programs that needed to have a high performance I wanted to use low level language and for the most trivial programs I was just happy to do not have to worry about memory management and for concurrency… well it’s a pain doesn’t matter from where you came if you works with a pre 2010 language.
So for some time the principals solutions we had were:
1 — Low level programming languages with the difficult of memory allocation.
2 — VM languages with GC that removed the memory problem but it had a cost over performance.
Rust comes up with a third option: Ownership. This feature molds everything in the language and is crucial to understand it.
Stack and Heap
People that come from a VM language like Java usually doesn’t have to worry about the Stack or Heap memory because of the GC, although you are working with Strings, so let’s try to summarize it a little bit.
Stack is a memory that the content must have a predefined size and is stored in a ordered manner called LIFO (last in, first out). It’s similar of a pile of plates, you put them on the top and remove from the top. As this memory has a precise size and order it’s fast and secure.
FILO asbtraction
The heap is the opposite, it’s a dynamic area that allocates the values where it fits properly and send the pointer indicating where the value was inserted, this search has a cost and loses performance over stack, but it doesn’t have the necessity to pre define the size of memory a value holds.
In low-level languages it was a task of the programmer to manage what is on the stack and what is on the heap, even when the memory will be free, in a VM language with GC there is no need for the developer to worry about it.
Rust uses ownership to keep track in compile time of what data is on the heap and minimizes problems concerned over it.
But what is the problems we might have?
Let´s follow The Book and use the String as example for that.
Imagine a language that have a Structure to hold a String value, it has some meta-data but the actual value will be allocated over the heap, because this String is mutable and we can’t know it’s value over compile time.
We can define a variable like that:
variable text1 = String(“value”);
When the program runs it will calculate how much memory the text “value” needs and allocate it over the heap, the heap will give the variable a pointer to where this value is, up until now everything good, so the next line comes the following code:
variable text2 = text1;
The language will now create a new structure with metadata to text2, but what about it’s value? How can we solve it?
One solution is to each one have it’s own metadata but share the pointer between them.
What happens when we free from the memory the both variables, let’s say first text2 and after text1? When text2 is released the “value” will be removed from the heap and what will text1 release? Exactly we don’t know and it can cause some problems over the application. It is known as double-free error.
You might be thinking, so let’s duplicate the value or in another words, make a deep copy.
For sure it resolves the double-free error, but remember, the heap is not the fastest memory we have, the search for space and the following of pointer has a cost in performance and we can have a software that is slower than it should be, or that consumes a lot more memory that is advisable.
So what Rust does?
Rust ownership has pretty simple rules but with a lot of impacts over the language. Here are them:
1 — Each value in Rust has a variable that’s called its owner. 2 — There can only be one owner at a time. 3 — When the owner goes out of scope, the value will be dropped.
A scope in Rust is a couple of {}, you can put it anywhere in your code and create a new scope. When it ends the values are dropped as well.
So what about our little example from before? Let’s write it in Rust.
The underline before text2 is just for the compiler stop warning me that it is not been used, so up until now everything is ok:
So why do not print the values to see if everything is ok?
The IDE already warns me that text1 used in the print method is invalid and the compiler confirms that. Do you remember the first and second rules? A value needs a variable as a owner and it will only have one owner per time. When we pass text1 as the value of text2 we are passing the ownership of “value” to it, so after that we cannot use text1 anymore.
Let’s see another example:
Wait, did we just do the same thing with integers and it worked? How that? Do you remember when we talked about the difference between stack and heap? Integer and scalar values has a known size by compiling time, so it goes to stack, because of that Rust implements a trait called Copy that make a copy of the value in stack memory that is almost without cost. If you pay attention the compiler says that String doesn’t have this trait:
When Rust can’t copy a value it moves the value making another variable the owner. So in the String case only text2 has value to release, text1 doesn’t have a value anymore and in the case of Integers each one has a value of their own.
We can call a method clone to solve this, but as we are speaking of heap memory this is not a desirable solution:
Another context is about the scope, the ownership is passed even for parameters because we are changing the scope from one function to another with {}:
As we did before scalar values will be copied as well if you pass as parameter to another function:
The return of a value changes the owner of the value as well, we can use it to move the value inside the function scope and return back to the previous scope:
We have another trick here, there is a literal value for String in rust, it is the &str and it needs a predefined value and size at compile time, so guess what? It implements the Copy trait!
You noted that it starts with &? It is called a reference in Rust. Reference is the way we can use to just borrow the value for another scope but keeps the ownership on the original value.
Rust knows that the rightful owner of “value” is text1 and it is just borrowing to text2 and borrow function, when the scope ends just text1 has a value and just it will release memory.
If the borrow function try to change the value Rust will complain about that:
If you need or want to change the value that the reference holds you need to create a mutable reference with &mut, for that text1 must be declared as mut as well:
But for the sake of memory safety we can have just one mutable reference, for this reason the following code will panic:
If you combine immutables and mutables references the code will panic as well:
With this rust can secure:
1 — Two or more pointers access the same data at the same time. 2 — At least one of the pointers is being used to write to the data. 3 — There’s no mechanism being used to synchronize access to the data.
References are kept alive just until it’s use, so after that the variable is free to be referenced again, even in a mutable reference:
This bring us another compilation problem called Dangling Reference, making reference to dangling pointer, that is a pointer that reference to something invalid. A method that returns a reference of a variable created inside it’s scope, will make a dangling reference.
As we declared before, the value needs a variable as its only owner and by the end of the scope, Rust will release the variable and value from memory, so we are creating a String inside method dagling_reference and return its reference, but when the method finalize the reference will have a pointer to nothing because rust will clean up variable “s” with its value. To fix it we must return a String, with that we move the ownership to another variable.
So for reference we can summarize:
1 — At any given time, you can have either one mutable reference or any number of immutable references. 2 — References must always be valid.
We have slices, they are another data type without ownership that represents a part of a collection, and Strings can be considered a collections of chars. We can make them with &[starting_index..ending_index] notation, in Rust the sequence index start with zero so the minimum value of starting_index can have is 0 and ending_index if exclusive, or in another words it is value higher than the one you want, please note that it is a reference of the values, the rightful owner of the value is the String it’s originated from.
The “..” is the range syntax in Rust, by default it starts from 0 and terminates on the end of collection, so we can change the code above and teh result won’t change:
Note that this is valid only for ASCII characters, if you need to work with multibyte characters it can lead to error. I have a story where I needed to work with graphemes because of that, later I’ll make a more detailed article about this matter.
Everything is OK, but this type &{unknow} is not the most descriptive one so let’s change the code for it’s real return:
As we discussed before the &str is a reference and cannot be changed, with that we can make methods that receives a reference and return another:
As we only use reference that is not moving of ownership of “Medium is great” value, it stays at text1 and end with main method scope. But what happen if we declare text1 as a mutable and tries to clear it?
Do you remember that we cannot have a mutable borrow and an immutable one? It happens with parameters as well, and the Rust compiler panic over that as well. It makes an API easier to use and safe to errors as well.
You might have noticed by now that &str literal is immutable because it is a reference pointing to specific points in binary.
Conclusion
Rust is for sure blazing fast and safe, and it all thanks to Ownership that made possible a mix of performance from low-level language and security of garbage collector ones. With that rust deliver a safe code, very performative one and fun to learn.
I hope you people enjoyed this Story, until next time! | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/rust-adventures-a-java-programmer-understanding-rust-ownership-edbeb6b8001 | ['Floriano Victor Peixoto'] | 2020-05-15 15:47:21.613000+00:00 | ['Rust', 'Programming', 'Software Engineering', 'Software Development', 'Technology'] |
Wounds of Owing | In my continuing research on how I could live a more authentic life, I came across the concept of ‘Wounds of Owing’- it resonated with me and I believe most of you will be able to come up with examples of having experienced this in your life.
Wounds of Owning is essentially when you go against the very fabric of who you are because you believe you owe it to someone else.
You may have felt you owe it to your family to get married because you are a certain age or to pursue a certain line of work.
You may have experienced wounds of owing when you feel like you need to be there for a friend even though it might be a time when you need to heal yourself.
You may feel like you owe it to your children to be a certain way even if it slowly strips away at the very authenticity that makes you, you (…there are millions of small examples of this that you would not even be able to notice anymore)
These wounds of owing can run deep. You might develop a constant fear of judgment or fear of non-acceptance from your loved ones and society. As time goes by, some of us might be able to tell ourselves stories that make us believe our own lies. But the truth is this- You don’t owe anything to anyone. You have no debt to the world and you are truly free to live your life being your whole true authentic and unique self.
And after working through the initial questions that might arise from reading this and if you don’t convince yourself otherwise, you will realize that when you live in harmony with your authentic self, there is no need for an outside agency to help you differentiate the good from the bad and the right from the wrong. When you start living your authentic life you get a very wise compass free with the experience of living that way.
I sincerely hope you will consider that the feeling of life dragging you down may not be due to the presence of burdens but the regular absence of authenticity and harmony within yourself. And I hope this self-reflection inspires you to take your power back. | https://medium.com/monday-morning-musing/wounds-of-owing-ed5ba3cb0d4 | ['Chetna Parekh'] | 2021-05-03 06:09:09.626000+00:00 | ['Be You', 'Monday Morning Musings', 'Authenticity', 'Live Free', 'Gnothi Seauton'] |
AE(Aeternity) on Coindelta | AE(Aeternity) on Coindelta
Details below…
Dear Community,
We are happy to announce that we are listing AE(Aeternity) on Coindelta. Deposits and Withdrawals are now live and trading commences at 9:00 PM today (14th June, 2018).
Aeternity on Coindelta
Things to keep in mind before you start trading :
The withdrawal fee for Aeternity(AE) will be 1.2 AE Minimum deposit for AE is 2 AE
What is Aeternity(AE)?
Aeternity is a new platform for decentralized apps (dapps) launched in testnet in 2017.
Aeternity Features :
It includes a decentralized oracle machine that brings in data from outside sources for use in smart contracts. It also uses prediction markets for various voting and verification purposes within the platform. Project focuses on increasing the scalability of smart contracts and Dapps Aeternity accomplishes scaling by moving smart contracts off-chain. Instead of running on the blockchain, smart contracts on Aeternity run in private state channels between the parties involved in the contracts.
Founded by a long-time crypto-enthusiast and early colleague of Vitalik Buterin, Yanislav Malahov, Aeternity has quickly risen to the top 40 projects in the world by market cap.
Some more information about Aeternity(AE)
Aeternity scales through state channels that run smart contracts. It introduces a new language that supports formal verification and allows to write simpler, safer code. The VM accommodates compiled solidity contracts. Aeternity uses an ASIC-resistant, memory-bound Proof-of-Work (PoW) with less than 15 seconds block time. It features an integrated naming system and oracles, which could be used to request and access data from various data providers.
Most importantly, all components are native features of the Aeternity system. They are not meta layers on top of a blockchain (like Lightning, Raiden, Oraclize), but parts of the core protocol. This ensures unmatched efficiency and significantly reduces the cost of running smart contracts and making lightning fast transactions.
Stay tuned for more announcements!
Coindelta Website
Coindelta Twitter
Coindelta Telegram Group
Coindelta Announcements
With love for the Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies,
Coindelta Family | https://medium.com/coindelta/ae-aeternity-on-coindelta-6a0ab28d58a2 | ['Varunraj Keskar'] | 2018-06-15 09:42:03.389000+00:00 | ['Aeternity', 'Decentralization', 'Smart Contracts', 'Listings', 'Blockchain'] |
Are You Making These Clickbait Mistakes in Your Headline? | Are You Making These Clickbait Mistakes in Your Headline?
Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash
Would you believe me when I say headlines make or break businesses? Everything online breathes through content. Without it, your business doesn’t exist. Headlines are the doorway to content even for images or videos. Ask yourself how many times you click on something just because the headline is compelling.
Your headline is the window to your content
If you are a marketer of some sort, you should know that the headline is what gives you reads and clicks. Whether you are selling products and services or simply expressing your inner creativity, the headline is three times as important as the context. That is how impactful the headline is to online content.
With all the focus on headlines, creatives started to ‘innovate’ to get attention and clicks. That is when clickbait is created. The headline is said to be totally unrelated to the context of the website. It destroys the trust between the audience and the writer.
All the clicks in the world mean nothing if trust is not established with the audience. In simple terms, your headline is the first interaction your audience has with you. The first impression you leave on your audience goes a long way in whatever you are trying to achieve.
Clickbait mistakes you should avoid
While clickbait can give clicks, it won’t give you long term success. You should avoid using clickbait in your headline, specifically. The best value you can provide to your audience is trust because it is the only thing that matters in the digital space.
Before you hit publish, check your headline and see if you are guilty of these mistakes. As a copywriter, I have seen and tested many types of headlines. Some of them are very well-received; some of them caused red-flags and bans. I want to share with you the characteristics of clickbait so you don’t make the same mistake as I did.
Being vague
You can tell almost immediately if the headline is a clickbait by this rule alone. It contains no context whatsoever. All it does is prompt you to click to find out what is ‘interesting’ inside. Vagueness is the number one characteristic of a clickbait.
You can avoid this by adding context or the benefits your audience will receive should they choose to click on it to find out more. I find this ten times more effective than a generic headline. For me, emotional headlines work the best.
Too good to be true
Another classic clickbait tactic — playing on the fear of missing out and instant gratification. This is very powerful but misleading. People don’t like being sold to and they certainly hate being played around with. You can’t expect people to believe they can lose 100 pounds in 24 hours. It is ridiculous.
I’m fully aware that fear of missing out is a legitimate marketing tactic. But you have to do it right. One way to avoid being too good to be true is to not make ridiculous claims. Oftentimes a ‘limited edition’ will give enough urgency to your customers provided your pre-selling is on-point.
Not adding value
I think value, as we know it, is overrated. And clickbait played a huge role in shaking things up about how people view value. A true value lies in the eye of the beholder which is your audience. Not what you think is valuable to them. Clickbait uses power words and keywords to get clicks. This concept blurred the line between clickbait and non-clickbait.
What you should be doing is to determine what your audience deem valuable and provide them exactly what they are looking for in your headline. When you offer a solution to their problems, they will click to find out more. Guaranteed.
Playing around with hype
Hype is another indicator of clickbait. Not only is it vague but also too good to be true. Hype plays around with our emotions. And as humans, we tend to respond to extreme stimuli. It is coded in our DNA to pay attention to things that excite us.
Clickbait is an emotional hijacker. It hunts on its prey based on their weaknesses. I suggest using trends in your headline without being hyphy. For example, use ‘Bitcoin Gains Popularity As Warren Buffett Made His First Deposit’ not ‘Experts Predict 1,000% Increase in Cryptocurrency And What This Means To You’.
Traits of a great headline
Now that we covered some of the common characteristics of clickbait, it is time to uncover the traits of great headlines. A good headline is hard to pull through which is why you should spend more time crafting perfect headlines. I hope these tips will help you craft non-clickbait, highly valuable headlines.
Offering a solution to a problem
Every time people look something up online, they are either looking for: 1) Entertainment, 2) Solution, or 3) Inspiration. Before you write a headline, put these into consideration. Then, give them exactly what they are looking for by stating it in the headline.
The next thing to do is to sprinkle some power words to make the headline compelling. For example, if I’m writing to moms who are interested in rearranging their gardens, my headline would be ‘10 Landscaping Ideas to Try This Summer’.
Speak directly to the audience
As I mentioned earlier, your headline is the first thing your audience will interact with before they click. Your job is to be as concise and clear as you can be when writing your headline. It is better if they can tell what it is about right away within the first few seconds of seeing your headline.
You don’t need clickbait when you can write headlines that get attention through clarity and value. But keep this in mind, your headline won’t perform when it is shown to people who aren’t interested in what you have to say. Traffic quality affects how well your headlines perform.
Evoke curiosity
You should definitely be clear with your headlines. But laying it all out is not recommended. Leaving some room for curiosity is the best way to write headlines as it increases your clickthrough and reads.
People look for solutions all the time. And if they see it in your headline, they are not likely going to click on it. Why? Because you gave them a reason not to click on and find out more. A curiosity-based headline stands out better than a hype-based headline.
Emotionally compelling
Here comes the tricky part. Curiosity alone is not enough to make them click. Your headline has to be emotionally compelling to encourage action. I have tested this over and over again. I can vouch for this.
To make your headlines emotionally compelling, play around with these four elements — specificity, uniqueness, urgent, usefulness. One headline can consist of more than one of these elements. ‘10 Landscaping Ideas to Try This Summer’ is urgent and useful for those who are interested in gardening.
Guilty of unintentional clickbait?
I hope, after reading this, you get a clear picture of what clickbait is and isn’t. Keep in mind that headlines are worth 80% of your content so make sure you craft a great one. A great headline will indeed make or break a business. | https://medium.com/swlh/are-you-making-these-clickbait-mistakes-in-your-headline-70782a915e82 | ['Nick Chai'] | 2020-12-14 06:47:54.057000+00:00 | ['Clickbait', 'Writer', 'Marketing', 'Writers On Medium', 'Headlines'] |
What Could Make Quantum Computing Easy to Explain? | In a recent Quanta article, What Makes Quantum Computing So Hard to Explain?, Scott Aaronson cautions,
“To understand what quantum computers can do — and what they can’t — avoid falling for overly simple explanations.”
That’s great advice, but it is also kind of vacuous since you could say the same thing about digital computers, or a toaster for that matter. The problem with the explanations of quantum computing as they exist today is not that they are overly simple — it is that they are overly detailed. Google “how does a quantum computer work,” and you are met right out of the gate with qubits and parallel universes, spooky action at a distance, exponential growth, and — wow — no wonder people are confused.
The entire premise of the statement above is that someone wants to know what quantum computers can do — for them. Yet, quantum computer scientists feel compelled to talk about superposition and entanglement. While it is fine to talk about superposition and entanglement — I’ve stopped people on the street to talk about quantum physics — that’s not what people need to hear about quantum computing through casual Google searches. Aaronson himself makes an attempt in the article to explain quantum computing that avoids his own criticism:
“So a qubit is a bit that has a complex number called an amplitude attached to the possibility that it’s 0, and a different amplitude attached to the possibility that it’s 1.”
This is absolutely 100% correct , but I’m going to wager that this means nothing to someone who didn’t already know that. What is going on here? Why do we try so hard to explain every detail of quantum physics as if it is the only path to understanding quantum computation? The answer partially lies in the illusion of explanatory depth. We have this illusion that we understand things we know how to use. But we don’t. Think about it. Do you know how a computer works? A toaster? A doorknob? If you think you do, try to explain it. Try to explain how you would build it. Use pictures if you like, but I think you will quickly change your mind about how much you thought you understood about even simple technology.
We don’t use quantum computers, so we don’t have the illusion we understand how they work. This has two side effects. The first is that we (the quantum scientists) think conventional computing is generally well-understood or needs no explanation. The second is that we (the quantum scientists again) accept the idea that quantum computing is hard to explain. In turn, this causes us to try way too hard at explaining it, hoping the listener will feel as comfortable with quantum computing as they do with their smartphones.
To see why the “try too hard” approach is a problem, consider an analogy. Imagine our curious friend wants to know what a digital computer can do. Apparently, what the quantum computer scientist would do is start talking about bits of information, logical operators, stored-program architectures, and so on, expecting that the listener would easily connect these concepts together and deduce that the UberEats app is possible. But this is, of course, silly. Instead, what you would want to do is say, “Have you ever ordered food using your smartphone? OK. Let’s explore how your intention to get a nice kale salad gets interpreted by the computer on your phone…”
An even better analogy is the other hot deep-tech topic of artificial intelligence. Search for “what is AI,” and most legitimate explainers will state a generically vague answer and then spend most of the words detailing the existing and future applications. The vague answer given is usually something along the following lines — an AI is an autonomous machine that can learn from known examples and makes generalizations that work for unfamiliar examples. Then, the article will go on to say that AI is used in your digital assistant, to recognize faces in photos, to detect spam, and so on. The reader comes away happy that they know — insomuch as anyone with eight minutes of reading can know — what AI can do.
(By the way, if all someone came here for is an eight-minute read about quantum computers, try this instead.)
I suppose, at this point, the current reader is wondering what the current writer’s grand plan is for solving the world’s current quantum education and literacy problems. I’m glad you asked, as it is innovation myself and other colleagues worldwide are in the midst of creating. For me, it all starts with a change in perspective. When I look into the not-too-distant future, I see quantum software developers who have never heard of the words “superposition” and “entanglement” (much like someone writing code today for the next food delivery app doesn’t use the words “transistor” or “NAND gate”). So with that future quantum software developer in mind, I ask myself what their quantum education looks like and, more importantly, how do we get there from here? (No, not wormholes or flux capacitors.)
I would be remiss to exclude the pun of quantum baby steps. But there are also leaps. Quantum Computing for Babies and Quantum Leaps were an attempt to bring quantum computing to ever-younger audiences.
Others have brought new innovations for introducing quantum computing to general adult audiences. For example, Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen have created Quantum Country, which is best described as an introductory textbook with interspersed questions that will automatically be reasked based on how often you answer them correctly (spaced repetition for the cognitive science aficionados).
The first set of quiz cards in Quantum Country.
Brilliant — an app that teaches topics through active problem solving — has a Quantum Computing course. Note that it requires a premium membership to fully enjoy.
BLACK OPAL is an app from Q-CTRL that is currently in private beta which includes highly interactive exercises for learning quantum computing.
In-app with BLACK OPAL courtesy of Q-CTRL.
Quantum Atlas is a multimedia encyclopedia hosted at the Joint Quantum Institute, which is maintained by a large National Science Foundation-funded group of scientists and science journalists.
Seemingly orthogonal to all of that is quantum games, many of which are designed for the purpose of teaching quantum computing. The best-produced example is the somewhat unimaginatively named Quantum Game.
Demo screen from Quantum Game.
Speaking of games, I recently wrote about how I’ve changed the way I teach quantum computing to undergraduate students through game development.
I would have agreed with almost everything Aaronson said several years ago. (In fact, he and others have been saying the same thing for ten years.) But I’m kind of bored of that narrative. In fact, I would argue that quantum computing is not hard to explain. All we need is a different perspective. | https://medium.com/@csferrie/what-could-make-quantum-computing-easy-to-explain-647599468c4c | ['Chris Ferrie'] | 2021-08-06 05:44:40.074000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Education', 'Quantum Computing', 'Technology', 'Quantum'] |
Quantum Computing — A new wave in software and IT industry | Till now almost every single person who is working in IT industry has heard about Artificial Intelligence and some are currently working in this field. This technology promised to solve problems which were very costly and time consuming for traditional software. It started a new Era of Automation with minimum amount of human intervention required.
However there are still some problems which can’t be solved even with the help of AI on traditional hardware. There are two reasons or we can say two dimensions of this problem : from Software (logical) and hardware (physical). Let’s first see the physical problem.
All the electronic devices has three basic components called : inductor, capacitor and resister. Along with these transistor plays a main role. Transistors assimilated in millions of number make IC s( Integrated Chips) which are brain of any smart device. With advancement of technology , size of these transistors decreased and hence the size of IC , but the power of ICs increased. This is what predicted by Gordon Moore and his law called Moor’s law.
Now the size of transistor has been reduced to 10 nm ( 1000000000th of a meter) being manufactured by Intel. Even mobile phones that we carry around today has such small transistors. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors that are inside many popular mobiles like Samsung, Oneplus, Xiomi, Oppo, Vivo are equipped with such technology. Samsung 5g mobile will be equipped with Sanpdragon 855 processors which will be having 7 nm technology !! The atoms used in silicon chip fabrication are around 0.2nm. Now, you would be right in thinking that you can get hundreds of atoms into 22 or 16nm — but that’s not the size of individual transistors; that’s actually a measure of the distance between discrete components on a chip. In the case of the 22nm chips — a process that only Intel has mastered and will come to market with Ivy Brige — the high-κ dielectric layer is just 0.5nm thick; just two or three atoms!
As we are nearing the size of atom , we have reached our limit to reduce the size of transistor. It’s not that we can’t create smaller transistor, but you see when things become as small as an atom the rule of Physics that we see in our day to day life, doesn’t obey there. Quantum Physics takes the reign and the strange world of Quantum mechanics plays its card !! With such small size Transistor will face Quantum Tunneling effect and they will produce wrong result even though all the arrangement of computation is perfect. Hence we can’t improve our traditional hardware technology.
Coming to second dimension of the problem: software or algorithms. As we mentioned there are certain kind of problem which are IMPOSSIBLE to solve with fastest of fastest supercomputers that are ever built or will be built in future. Such a problem is call P Vs NP problem. The P versus NP problem is a major unsolved problem in computer science. It asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified (technically, verified in polynomial time) can also be solved quickly (again, in polynomial time). This looks like a very simple thing but trust me it’s way more important in real life and once solved will give rise to faster transportation methods, faster wifi/internet speed, can solve earth’s population problem and yes faster computers !!
To solve this, a new generation of computer has arrived which uses Quantum mechanics . This computer is so insane and out of this world that I didn’t believe if I can see such computers in my life time. But it has progressed so much that we can build program in this computer. I will not go deep into the working of this Quantum computer since it needs understanding of Quantum physics ( which I have been reading since last 3 years in my spare time ) and cryogenics. But in simple term it uses qubits (Quantum Bits ) instead of bits to store and operate on data. Unlike bits which has only 2 fixed states : 0 or 1 , qubits can have these 2 states along with states where it can be both 0 &1 simultaneously. So where a 2-bit register in an ordinary computer can store only one of four binary configurations (00, 01, 10, or 11) at any given time, a 2-qubit register in a quantum computer can store all four numbers simultaneously, because each qubit represents two values.
The number of computations that a quantum computer could undertake is 2^n, where n is the number of qubits used. A quantum computer comprised of 500 qubits would have a potential to do 2⁵⁰⁰ calculations in a single step. This is an awesome number — 2⁵⁰⁰ is infinitely more atoms than there are in the known universe (this is true parallel processing — classical computers today, even so-called parallel processors, still only truly do one thing at a time: there are just two or more of them doing it). But how will these particles interact with each other? They would do so via quantum entanglement.
Now all the tech giants of the world are in race to Quantum Computer supremacy. Companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, NASA, Aliyun (Alibaba Cloud) and various government institutions are building Quantum computer. Below is a list of organizations involved in building Quantum computer and yes Accenture is also involved in this.
(-Source : WikiPedia)
Initially the quantum computers were being used for R&D purpose, now they have entered mainstream IT industry. One more company called Rigetti ( You can click at this hyperlink to view their mind-blowing work) has even built API and SDK for any developer in any part of the word to access and code in quantum computer via their cloud facility. A good news is Microsoft , Google and Brilliant ( an online education company ) has collaborated to offer Quantum computing course to any enthusiast and developer. Anyone can access link : https://brilliant.org/courses/quantum-computing/ and learn this course.
Just to show the power of Quantum computer , below is a true scenario from www.pbs.org website :
Can’t a regular computer factor a 500-digit number?
A conventional, classical digital computer could, indeed, factor a 500-digit number, but the only known methods are basically, well, let’s try these two numbers and multiply them together and see if it’s this big number. Let’s try these other two numbers. The problem is that there are gagillions — that’s a technical term — there are gagillions of numbers that could be multiplied together, and to explore all those numbers would essentially take the age of the universe on a conventional digital computer, even the biggest supercomputers.
Yes , a calculation which will take 14 Billion years to complete, on a Quantum computer, that can be accomplished in couple of minutes !!
This is a new beginning , a new world to live in where we will access not only infrastructure of present reality, but we can access resources from parallel realities !! To know more you can do research about how Quantum mechanics access different realities — I know these are stuffs of Science Fiction movies, but to our surprise, these are not Fiction anymore..!! | https://medium.com/@siddharthsaraf/quantum-computing-a-new-wave-in-software-and-it-industry-b1c9d088a412 | ['Siddharth Saraf'] | 2019-06-28 08:01:14.954000+00:00 | ['Quantum Computing'] |
Zero Unemployment Assistance | After two long two weeks of patiently waiting and biding my time, I was finally sent an e-mail confirming my eligibility for unemployment. As a rideshare driver, my earnings had been affected by the COVID-19 crisis for over a fortnight, but being a gig-worker I was not eligible to apply for benefits until the official passage of the federal stimulus bill which would reportedly allow contracted workers to qualify for unemployment.
Just applying had proven difficult due to the inability to get a hold of anyone in the unemployment office to assist me in completing an application that was designed to determine the amount of benefit owed a former employee on behalf of the company that had released them. The problem was that as a gig-worker no company was willing to claim me as an employee. I resolved to complete the application to the best of my ability and submit it online. The ten-day waiting period for a response had already turned into two weeks, so I was beginning to get impatient with no money coming in to address the timely arrival of monthly bills and invoices.
At the urging of my family I had hung up the keys to my car and took myself off the road, deciding that I would instead focus on educating my daughter whose school had been closed for the foreseeable future. I was going to scale back and make do on an unemployment subsidy as the risk of contracting the virus was not worth the reward of working all night for well below minimum wage. I’d been making about $6 an hour (half the minimum wage in CA) driving around all night during the initial weeks of quarantine. Needless to say, I had not been the most attentive parent or teacher — all groggy eyed and worn-out from a long graveyard shift of doing my best to make ends meet.
I’ve always said that driving rideshare has been the best and worst decision of my life. It’s a well-rehearsed line I’ve used several times in response to inquiries from passengers curious about my experiences driving a taxi-cab of the new millennium. It has been an eye-opening and fantastic ride filled with remarkable people, wonderful conversation, and occasional adventure. I have learned a tremendous amount about myself and people along the way in the beautiful exchange of hearts and minds between strangers. I have made friends for life while driving and have had enlightening moments of human interaction that warm my heart just thinking about them.
I often ponder the endless possibilities that come with each accepted request, as I welcome a new stranger into my life with an unknown destination and story to tell — a tale in which I have just been cast in the bit role of taxi driver. My life as a supporting actor in the lives of my passengers is often dictated by the mood and experience that they bring with them, factors beyond my control and open to the whims, joys and disappointments inherent in each of our experience. These memories help to justify what has been a long and tiring journey.
Full-time rideshare drivers have to work sixty to seventy-hours a week just to make a sustainable wage. The portion of fare that drivers receive doesn’t fairly compensate for the inherent expenses of fuel, rapidly accumulating costs of car maintenance, and mileage. Moreover, we receive no healthcare benefits, vacation pay or sick time, often forcing us to work through sickness and disease. It is all the more reason why it is essential that drivers be supported in this time when as a society we attempt to collectively curb the spread of a highly contagious and deadly virus.
I hesitate to write this article at this time because there are millions of people in the throes of financial hardship and who wants to read another sob story about unpaid rent and a growing stack of past-due bills. Moreover, as I write, there are innumerable individuals battling this mysterious life-threatening illness, or suffering helplessly while they can do nothing to help or comfort a loved one dying in quarantine. There are lives being lost which obviously trumps the loss of jobs or income.
Nevertheless, I have always felt a social responsibility to speak up on behalf of my fellow drivers whenever I write about the experience of driving. We are a large global community who have been significantly exploited by the companies for which we are “contracted” to provide services. The major rideshare companies have gained market control over the transportation industry at the cost of the individuals doing the bulk of the work — the drivers rolling around in their own cars and carrying passengers.
Now allow me to discuss how this has impacted the amount of my unemployment subsidy as determined by the state of California. After re-confirming my eligibility by answering the standard questions regarding whether I had looked for work in the past week or had joined an educational program preparing me for future work opportunities, I was informed that I am now eligible to receive $0.00 every week. That is not a typo. I did not miss a number. I am wondering if the system is going to pour salt on my wound and issue me a check for $0.00.
I would be completely in the dark as to why were it not for an e-mail I received last Friday. About two years ago, I was driving somewhere in Los Angeles when a colleague approached me, asking if I wanted to join Rideshare Driver’s United, an attempt at forming a union advocating on behalf of drivers for the basic rights of minimum wage and standard health benefits to which all workers are entitled. I was happy to join the cause and imagined a strike with 50,000 cars parked in a stadium parking lot while prices on the rideshare platforms surged due to the lack of drivers available. It would be a firm and clear message to the companies that we are indeed essential employees.
However, it would never work; it is impossible to organize a work force that has no water cooler. We rarely get to interact with our co-workers as we are isolated in our mobile offices waiting for our next ride request. Moreover, we are essentially a community of “scabs” that have already unhinged and undermined the transportation industry as it once was. How often do you see taxis driving around anymore? I took a verbal lashing and admonishment from an elder cousin who worked several years as a cab driver when I told him I was driving rideshare.
I appreciate Rideshare Driver’s United for all of their efforts, but from best as I can tell they are not a very big organization and communication with drivers is inconsistent and spotty at best. I’ll go months between text messages about plans of action and ways to advocate on the behalf of our rights. I still receive weekly calls from my last union, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), an organization so large and powerful that they have their own skyscraper on Wilshire Boulevard from which to direct their operations. As far as I can tell, Rideshare Driver’s United is run by a colleague sending out group text messages from the driver’s seat of his/her car in between rides.
Anyhow, in their e-mail, Rideshare Driver’s United had explained that drivers were not receiving unemployment benefits due to the current confusion over whether we are to be classified as independent contractors or employees. You see, the people of California already voted on and passed a law that went into effect on January 1st of this year that requires technology companies and the like to provide gig workers with employee benefits and a standard minimum wage. However, the major rideshare companies have refused to re-classify us as employees and have instead spent millions of dollars gathering signatures in front of grocery stores under the guise of protecting the flexibility of their drivers. If you live in California, you have definitely been approached by these autograph collectors because they are getting paid upwards of five dollars a signature when such political petitions normally pay in cents not greenbacks per ‘John Hancock.’
The rideshare corporations even send out notices to drivers asking us to sign up and join them in their effort to protect our rights to a flexible schedule. They threaten drivers with claims that we would be required to adhere to a rigid work schedule if they were to follow the law. They also send out surveys collecting data on driver preferences for a flexible schedule. However, “polling all drivers” includes the millions of drivers who only drive between five and ten hours a week, or even far less. These individuals have alternate sources of health benefits and often full-time jobs with traditional schedule demands. They do not put the significant amount of wear and tear on their vehicles that full-time drivers do, so naturally when asked if flexibility is important, they give the corporations the answer they desire. However, these part-time drivers are not the basis that sustains the business. I would venture to say that most rideshare business is completed by the crazies like me out there driving sixty and seventy hours a week — so unless you are going to give full-time drivers six votes to their one, this is not an accurate depiction of the needs of the driving work force.
I’ve been driving full-time for four years and I know that drivers are paid well below minimum wage in both the Bay Area, where I primarily drove for the first three years, and even lower in Los Angeles, where I have driven for the past year. I could crunch the numbers for you, but for now I am just going to say that there are official studies conducted by universities and economists that back up this assertion. Rideshare Driver’s United recently assisted me in filing for back wages as stipulated by the new law that went into effect in January; I was informed that based upon my work over the past three tax years, one company owes me well over $200,000 and the other owes me over $100,000. That sounds about right. I have worked countless hours and I am still slowly accumulating debt. I should be stacking money given the amount of overtime that I clock.
I don’t expect to ever see this money, but I will continue to speak out for the rights of drivers when asked to do so. Furthermore, I would appreciate it if the companies that I have worked so hard for (while maintaining an outstanding customer service and safety rating with passengers who rate you on every trip) would step up in this dire time and take care of their essential employees who have maintained the business. Unfortunately, I know that this will not happen as the reality is quite different.
If and when I return to driving following this crisis, I am positive that I will be competing with more and more drivers for whatever rides are available because the high unemployment rate will have led the companies to advertise themselves once again as a “side-hustle” for making money and getting your feet back on the ground. There will be no protection for full-time drivers and the market will be flooded with more drivers than ever, leading to less ride requests and less money. After all, what do the companies have to lose from over-saturating the market with drivers? Nothing, because they don’t have to pay us benefits. In fact, they will make gains as riders will have shorter wait times and find this service even more convenient than it already is…yet at the silent cost of basic human and employee rights.
I always figured that driving rideshare would be a debt that I could manage. When my car inevitably dies long before it is paid off due to the 260,000 miles and counting that I have accumulated since signing up to drive, I would just fire up my old truck collecting dust in the garage, blow the dust off my textbooks, and head back to the classroom to continue my lifelong vocation as an educator. Maybe I would bike to school and shed off some of the other debt incurred on my gut by sitting in the driver’s seat for hours on end. But right now, I am not sure how I am even going to pay my rent.
So why don’t I just join one of the delivery apps in their collective campaign to save our favorite restaurants and deliver food with my daughter in the back seat along for the ride? Well, first because this is not good parenting. Second, I am a gig worker and have been for three years, so I no longer have favorite restaurants. Mostly however, it is because I have been getting “side-hustled” by technology companies for years, and I can tell when a vulture is trying to profit off the carcasses of a tragedy.
The nearly 20,000 wonderful people that have joined me on this ride as passengers have been the true joy of my job. This love for people is why I will do my best not to return to work right now, because about half of the customers currently ordering rides at night are actually people ignoring social distancing rules. I respect people and my daughter too much to put myself, her, and others at risk by facilitating the spread of disease. However, if I am unable find access to the unemployment money that has been set aside for people like me, I may soon be left with no choice. | https://thayerussell.medium.com/zero-unemployment-assistance-1d0a203ef460 | ['D. Thayer Russell'] | 2020-04-16 18:11:46.196000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Uber', 'Unemployment', 'Coronavirus'] |
Jeff Bezos’s Lazy Saturday Morning Routine | 5:15 A.M.: Internal performance optimization alarm activated. Eyes fly open. Strangled war cry escapes mouth. Fist reflexively punches air.
5:15–5:20 A.M.: Somersault out of bed. Land in plank position on bedroom floor. Command: “Alexa, read me unopened Jeff Bezos fan mail.” Do 200 push-ups to the sound of Alexa mechanically reporting a detailed sex dream sent in by Trisha Wagner, ‘your #1 fan in Haysville, Kansas.’
5:20–5:30 A.M.: Burn effigy of self. Whisper, “Always be better than yesterday.” Watch hungrily as effigy burns. Observe, pleased, as tiny robot sweeps ashes into tiny dustbin, opens drawer full of Jeff Bezos effigies, and replaces effigy in preparation for tomorrow’s ceremony.
5:30–5:35 A.M.: Tweeze one nose hair. Place carefully in vial and stopper. Add vial to Clone Library.
5:35–5:40 A.M.: Open hatch in bathroom floor and drop down into kitchen, landing in power lunge before fridge. Open fridge. Remove tray labelled “Optimized Protein Cubes.” Eat four.
5:40–6:00 A.M.: Open hatch in kitchen floor, landing in power lunge in the archery room. Command: “Alexa, play ‘Jeff Bezos’ Princeton Commencement Speech: Dubstep Remix.’” Acquire target, which is the words ‘Customer Dissatisfaction’ printed in the middle of a speech bubble emerging from Satan’s mouth. Archery practice.
6:00–6:15 A.M.: Take high-speed elevator from archery room back up to master bathroom. Fully submerge self in ice cold bath. Keep eyes open underwater. Require no breath. Feel no pain.
6:15–6:30 A.M.: While air-drying naked body, exfoliate, moisturize, and polish bald head.
6:30–6:45 A.M.: Remain naked. Open second hatch in bathroom floor, landing perfectly centered in the Warehouse Control Room, atop the Amazon Hover-Board (patent pending). Fire up 360-degree warehouse security monitor. Crack knuckles.
6:45–6:47 A.M.: Alert! Worker #886 in Warehouse #53 (Santa Fe) has stopped working to massage back of neck. Hover-board violently over to Screen #53 and press “ZAP.” Watch as biohacked neuron sends signal to worker, who jumps and frantically grabs next parcel. Feel wave of intense pleasure course through veins.
6:47–7:30 A.M.: Ride the Hover-Board methodically between warehouse screens, zapping inefficient workers.
7:30–7:40 A.M.: Keeping eyes on screens, record a few lines of stark, powerful prose for chapter eight of autobiography, ‘Extremely Clever and Incredibly Rich; Also, Very Hot: Jeff Bezos on Jeff Bezos’ (“Phase Six: Acquisitions & Mergers of ALL OF IT”).
7:40–7:45 A.M.: Take high-speed elevator from Warehouse Control Room to master bedroom. Open closet, which is empty save one black polo shirt, one pair of dark navy jeans, one pair of black aviator sunglasses, and “Jeff Bezos” name-tag. Apply all to body.
7:45–7:45.02 A.M.: Double finger guns in mirror.
7:45–9:45 A.M.: Open hatch in bedroom floor, landing in power lunge in the Clone Room. Have riveting conversation about warehouse worker performance optimization with Jeff Bezos clone prototype #8.
9:45–10:30 A.M.: Open hatch in Clone Room floor, landing in ‘Thinker’ pose in the Idea Room. Brainstorm ideas for Amazon corporate retreat. Decide on South American portage trip ending at life-threatening Class 5 white-water rapids in Chile. Survivors will be fired. Successful completion of challenge suggests winners have spent time improving physical fitness and are therefore insufficiently committed to The Company.
10:30–10:31 A.M.: Think about divorce by accident. Is she happy? Is she happier? Mutter: “No, Jeff.”
10:31–10:31.003 A.M.: Scan brain for topic other than ex-wife. Land immediately on customer satisfaction optimization.
10:31.003–11:15 A.M.: Analyze Amazon customer data to determine best-selling product. Discover that it is a pair of artificially intelligent jazz shoes that rewires your central nervous system to make you a ‘real snazzy cyborg dancer,’ called the JiggyBoots™.
11:15–11:45 A.M.: Develop blueprints for near-identical alternative to the JiggyBoots™. Call them the Amazon JiggyBootz™. Make them voice commandable, and sell for half the price.
11:45–11:50 A.M.: Delete unread e-mails from charities asking for donations.
11:50–11:59 A.M: Generate list of junior executives who will be the lucky recipients of Saturday afternoon surprise performance reviews.
12:00 P.M.: Internal performance optimization alarm activated (PHASE 2: AFTERNOON). Open hatch in Idea Room floor, landing in driver’s seat of giant Amazon drone. Punch in address of first lucky junior executive. Double finger guns in rear-view mirror. Game on. | https://medium.com/slackjaw/jeff-bezoss-lazy-saturday-morning-routine-4f729987052e | ['Molly Henderson'] | 2020-09-17 00:34:07.499000+00:00 | ['Morning Routines', 'Jeff Bezos', 'Amazon', 'Technology', 'Humor'] |
Regex in Ruby — The Very Basics. If you’re new to Ruby (or any… | If you’re new to Ruby (or any programming language), you may have come across these strange bits of coding when you search stack overflow for answers to life’s greatest questions — like how to count the number of sentences in a string:
string.strip.split(/\w[?!.]/)
You may be wondering — what is this code within a code?
It’s called Regex — short for Regular Expressions! It’s not unique to Ruby (many languages have some form of regex), but we’ll focus on Ruby’s version here.
Regex code is used for specifying a certain search pattern of characters to be matched in a string (like finding words that end with -ing, or places in a string where a space follows a punctuation mark). Once we use this search pattern, we can pull out those matches or manipulate them in some way.
An example of a real-world use for regex would be validating an email address is entered correctly — it has a string of before an @ sign, and a string before a .com (or some variation) — but there are an infinite number of ways you may find it useful in your own code!
Regex Decoded
First things first, regex code goes between two forward slashes to differentiate it from the rest of your code:
/ *fancy code stuff* /
Now, the interesting part — there are a few major types of regular expressions that can go inside these slashes:
Anchors
^ Start of a line $ End of a line \A Start of a string \z End of a string $ End of a string, or line \b Any word boundary \< Start of a word \> End of a word
Anchors tell the search where to start or stop. For example:
/\A *fancy code stuff* /
says “start searching for ___ (whatever you put next in the regex) at the start of every string.”
*Notice the clever way \A (the first letter of the alphabet) denotes the start of a string, and \z (the last letter) denotes the end of a string*
2. Groups and ranges
Groups and ranges can include numbers or letters, and tell the search what characters you’re looking to match:
[abc] Any single character (a, b or c) [^abc] Excluding any single character (a, b , or c) [a-x] Any lowercase character between a-x [A-T] Any uppercase character between A-T [a-zA-Z] Any character between a-z or A-Z [0-7] Any number from 0 through 7 (a|b) A or b (but not both)
So if we had:
/ \<[a-m] /
…the search is saying: “go to the start of every word, and find those that are any letter between lowercase a and m”.
3. Character Classes
Character classes are almost the same as groups and ranges, but they denote an entire class:
. Any single character \s Any whitespace character \w Any word character \W Any non-word character \d Any digit \D Any non-digit
…so if you wanted to find any digit followed by a white space:
/ \d\s /
In addition to using character classes on groupings and ranges, they can also be applied to more specific strings — for instance, if you wanted to match and words that ended with “ring” — using /[ring]/ would find any instance of a word with those letters, in any order. Instead, we would put them directly inside the forward slashes, and use a plus sign to combine the expressions:
/ \w+ring /
…this example would match any word character ending in ring (so bring and string would all match, but ring and ringing would not!).
3. Quantifiers
Quantifiers denote how many instances of something you want to match:
a? Zero or one of a d* Zero or more of d m+ More than one of m !{3} Exactly 3 of ! 5{3, } 3 or more of 5 p{3, 6} Between 3 and 6 of p
Quantifiers work for any characters, so if you saw this:
/[!.]{3}/
…it’s searching for any exclamation point or period, that’s repeated 3 times in a row — like !!!.
4. Pattern modifiers
Pattern modifiers are unique, in that the go outside of the forward slashes, and apply to the entire expression:
/i case insensitive /x Ignore white space
…so if we wanted to find any string that starts with the letters k-s, either lower- or uppercase:
/ \A^[k-s] /i
Using Regex in code
Now that you know how to interpret regex, you’re ready to actually use it in your code! These are a few basic methods that work well regex. To use them, place the regex inside parentheses after the method.
.scan
.scan will return an array of all the items in your string that match the given regex. So:
"Rain water washing down the drain".scan(/\w+ain/)
…would return the array
#=> [“Rain”, “drain”]
2. .match
.match is nearly identical to .scan, but only returns the first instance that it matches:
"Rain water washing down the drain".match(/\w+ain/)
…would return
<#Matchdata “Rain”>
*Note that .match returns an object, not just the string — this method is often used to return a boolean, just to quickly test if a string does contain a specified pattern.
3. .grep
.grep is similar to .scan, but works as an enumerator to iterate over arrays and hashes.
If you had an array of strings that listed pets and their species, and wanted to return those whose names were exactly 5 letters:
pets = ["Barkley the dog", "Spot the dog", "Whiskers the cat", "Kiwi the bird"] pets.grep(/^\w{4}\s/)
…would look at: the start of each string (^) , followed by any 4 word characters (\w{4}), then a white space (\s). The returned array would be:
#=> [“Spot the dog”, “Kiwi the bird”]
There are a lot of very complex-looking regex snippets you’ll come across when searching for ways to simplify your code, but knowing the basics will make this foreign-looking (ruby) language much more straight forward!
A great place to test out your own regex is https://regex101.com/ . Once you’re feeling more adventurous, you can head over to https://alf.nu/RegexGolf and try to pass the challenges in as small an expression as possible.
Additional resources:
https://catarak.github.io/blog/2014/10/13/ruby-regular-expressions/
https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.6.1/libdoc/strscan/rdoc/StringScanner.html | https://medium.com/swlh/regex-in-ruby-the-very-basics-7343af05c60c | ['Melinda Diaz'] | 2020-10-30 00:29:59.506000+00:00 | ['Ruby on Rails', 'Ruby', 'Programming', 'Regex', 'Rails'] |
Stouchy | MrFire Studio is an IT company specialized in the Mobile apps & games development. | https://medium.com/@mrfire-studio/stouchy-4d1b1bf9e8d8 | ['Mrfire Studio'] | 2020-12-11 21:19:27.054000+00:00 | ['Budget', 'Mrfire Studio', 'Stouchy', 'Personal Finance'] |
Innovation in Outsourcing Software Development | With the rapidly changing business scenario and cut-throat competition, innovation has become the only way to survive and make your presence felt in the marketplace. For a business, this could mean constantly toying with new ideas, creating dynamic products, and offering exceptional services.
In fact, successful innovation should be an integral part of every business strategy, that can enable you to create more efficient processes for enhanced productivity and improved performance.
Today, companies in almost every industry are moving towards software innovation. As per a 2018 global innovation study, most of the companies will make a shift and allocate a big chunk of their R&D budgets towards innovative software and service setups by 2020.
Are you ready to innovate?
If you’re also a software dependent company struggling to manage software development needs with your internal IT team overloaded with work, the simple solution is to think innovatively and outsource software development to an expert.
Is it a good idea, you wonder?
Absolutely! There are more than enough examples of successful companies which began as small level start-ups and took a leap of faith by outsourcing software development to achieve their goals much sooner than expected.
So, what exactly is software outsourcing, you ask? Read on.
When you offshore software development, you basically hire a third-party software provider to manage all the software related work which are generally done in-house.
It is an excellent alternative for businesses looking for ways to achieve their ongoing goals while maintaining a cost-effective approach and reducing risks.
If you come to think of the benefits of partnering up with a software developer outside your own firm, there are many, as discussed in the next section.
Benefits of Outsourcing Software Development
If implemented correctly, software outsourcing can be extremely valuable for companies.
Here are some benefits you get when you outsource software development to a qualified company -
Advantage of leveraging outside talent pool
As per a recent survey, finding the best IT talent is among the most difficult jobs for CIOs. On the contrary, outsourcing software development to a third party gives you access to a well-qualified and talented pool of candidates from the IT sector. This translates to a quicker application development process and high-quality software products that you can make available to your intended users in much lesser time.
Cost-efficient and flexible
Outsourcing to an experienced software development company is an extremely cost-efficient option. The overall product development cost for a third-party service provider is much less as compared to internal expenses. This option also helps you eliminate your IT recruiting budget and get your work done at rather reasonable rates.
It also offers you certain flexibility by saving time in recruiting, training, and housing employees for IT projects. Additionally, you don’t have to make any upfront investment in this option, which makes projects much more attractive.
Better management of customer expectations
When you outsource software development to an expert, you get the advantage of structured assistance in researching and identifying your target customer audience. This, in turn, allows you to manage customer expectations better by building the software project that they desire.
Access to expert domain knowledge
If you want to reap the benefit of working with innovative software experts with robust domain knowledge, the perfect solution is to outsource software development. Qualified and talented software outsourcing companies are equipped with multidisciplinary software competencies such as .NET, JavaScript, React Native, etc. to help your organisation grow and expand in the right direction.
Strategies for Outsourcing Software Development
So, you’re convinced that software outsourcing is indeed a brilliant idea and you want to go for it too.
What’s next is to strategize and plan before you outsource software development for your business. Here are some strategies that you need to be aware of before outsourcing to another service provider.
1. Identify the software function you need to outsource
First and foremost, you need to identify the business (software) function that you need to outsource. It could be either of the following-
App development
The process of application development consists of developing a fresh application, quality assurance, system architecture design, or adding additional features within an existing application
Database management
In this function, the third-party service provider basically owns the organization and maintenance of data.
System integration
System integration is largely the process of connecting an existing app or physical and virtual components to create a more unified system in order to achieve better functionality.
2. Identify the outsourcing model
Once the function is chosen, the next step is to identify the outsourcing model that best suits your requirements. This could be either of the following-
Offsite
In this model, the offsite service provider works outside the organisation premises. However, their office is located near the client. This type of model best suits the companies where the project requirements are not comprehensively defined.
Onsite
As the name suggests, the onsite model involves a team of skilled software developers working on the client’s premises and work closely with the client from start to end of the project.
Offshore
In this model, the software development work is done outside the country at service providers’ own premises. You only need to provide detailed project requirements and the development team will work accordingly.
Global delivery
One of the complex models for software outsourcing, where the client has both onsite as well as an offsite team of developers who work at various locations in different parts of the globe.
Parting Thoughts
It won’t be wrong to say that outsourcing software development is now the primary key to a company’s success. It is, in fact, the best alternative in the age of rapid technological advances. From staff training to payroll software, outsourcing can take care of it all.
Although there are enough and more reasons to choose software outsourcing as your path to innovation, the challenges that businesses face today is finding the right team to implement those innovative ideas or learning how to outsource the task to the most innovative software development provider.
The need here is to overcome these challenges systematically using the strategies discussed above and consciously pursue innovations and new ideas that can make your enterprise competitive.
As per a recent Gensler survey, there is a direct connection between innovation and a high-performing workplace. Through outsourcing, you can take advantage of excellent workplace quality as a positive success factor without worrying about the budgets and costs required in setting up a high performing in-house software team.
Source: Cuelogic Blog | https://medium.com/cuelogic-technologies/innovation-in-outsourcing-software-development-f40740940914 | ['Harsh Binani'] | 2019-08-28 10:17:31.613000+00:00 | ['Outsourcing', 'Offshore Software Company', 'Software Outsourcing', 'Outsourced Software Dev', 'Software Development'] |
Captivated To Earn Money Online? Find What Is Really Possible | Captivated To Earn Money Online? Find What Is Really Possible TahirNazir Feb 22·2 min read
Already, one expected to have their own site page, item and elevating data to get money on the web. Regardless, there are new ways by which you could get money on the web. Here are a couple of considerations for those hoping to acquire a reasonable compensation on the web.
One of these is autonomous arrangement. You could form short articles and submit them to online lists or offer them to bloggers and merchants. This needn’t bother with specific capacity. You essentially need to cling to the rules gave by the client or study expression research if your substance is to be submitted to records.
If you have an establishment or energy in revealing, you could have a go at forming for appropriations. Here, you can work in fundamentally any strength that you’re excited about. To start, get a couple of contacts at the disseminations where you need to introduce your substance.
In case you value making your own chronicles, you could use your capacity to propel accomplice stock. Quest for a thing that you could progress and zero in on your fasten towards its imaginable customers. Consolidate a framework containing the auxiliary association for the thing. In case your video contacts a gigantic group, you could sell various things and get money through commissions.
Please click here for more information. | https://medium.com/@nazirtahir893/captivated-to-earn-money-online-find-what-is-really-possible-7a517d80e847 | [] | 2021-02-22 17:36:18.932000+00:00 | ['Make Money Online Fast', 'Earn Money Online', 'Earn Money From Home', 'Make Money Online', 'Make Money From Home'] |
Thirteen reflections for StartUps from playing Slither.io with my kids during COVID-19 times.. | Now, an adult talking about a game apparently for kids might sound strange. However, during the COVID-19 times of late winter, early spring 2020, some new things have come into my day as I work from home like many others. During these times, there are many restrictions. However, it is always better to look at the silver lining. In my case, like many others, one of the silver lining is that I get to spend more time with my kids. As a consequence, I get to do much more with them which otherwise may not be possible. One of things that I got introduced to by them is a game app called slither.io. After my initial apprehension it has now become a part of our almost daily evening routine.
Slither.io is a multi-player game where you start with a small snake/worm, navigate it around so it can eat blobs to grow, kill other worms/snakes and eat them and grow further and get higher scores. We play it together, talk about things & our progress through the game like running commentary and let out instinctive loud sighs when our slithery worm/snake dies and then start over again from the beginning with a tiny snake.This goes on for about 30–45 minutes unless we get carried away with the urge for “one last time”!
While the game is simple and kiddish, I found that there are many lessons that can be learned while playing it. Here are thirteen reflection points from slither.io which I thought could well apply to startups:
Small does have it’s advantages. In slither.io you start small like you do as a start up. Of course there is scope to grow in different ways. While small means you are vulnerable due to limited size, being small allows you to be agile, change direction & course quickly and many a times go unnoticed as you pass under the radar of predatory big ones. Being mindful and aware of your size and capabilities is very important. Taking calculated risks for big rewards. In the game, you grow and increase your score and rank by eating blobs that keep appearing on the canvas. You can spend your time doing that safely but some small, medium or big sized snake could kill you swiftly if you are not attentive enough or they get the better of you. Another way to grow is to take fast decisive actions, kill others, and eat their debris — or eat debris of snakes which are already killed by someone. This approach involves taking risks and you could crash into another and die. However, this also brings big rewards as you gain many more points and growth this way in lesser amount of time. So best approach is to take calculated risks. Small ones can take on the big guns. In the beginning, whenever we saw much bigger snakes, we would just move away fearfully without even trying. Over time, we realised that it is possible to take on big guns in the domain if you effectively and efficiently capitalise on your niche, expertise and capabilities. Big ones and infact all competitors have their own inertia, insecurities, and distractions and if you don’t try, you may never get them. When we tried a few times we could kill big snakes and eat their debris and grow bigger faster. So knowing your place is important but using your key advantages to your benefit to take on big players in the domain can bring great results. Here killing is used as a metaphor and could imply competing & taking over, attracting attention and gaining investment etc. Being ambitious is great but being greedy can be fatal. Sometimes when you see large debris of a dead snake, the instinct is to rush and gobble it all up to grow fast. However, there are many like you who are rushing to the spot to eat. Likelihood is that many crash into each other and die. The more tactical and cautious ones remain. As a startup you are looking for investments and run fast to gain funds everywhere. However, it is important that you are cautious about the investment — what it involves, what is the context, and overall how good it will be for you as a company and team. A large but bad / risky investment can be fatal. Different approach based on your size. Small can go fast, be agile and pivot quickly while bigger ones can easily wrap around smaller ones. So approach should be suited to your size — if you try to wrap and overtake others as a small snake, you can’t possibly do it and you exhaust yourself. Perhaps you lose control and collapse. Copying larger ones with their approach may be ineffective for your context — if not completely detrimental. Choose you battles. As you grow and gain more experience in the game, you may have many chances to take on and potentially eat up small and potentially big snakes. However, you have to choose if you want to expend your energy and time for following very small ones and gaining very few points by killing & eating them or use your resources to take on the ones which can get you more returns and growth. A startup may come across different possibilites in various directions but being decisive and making tradeoffs is critical to move forward. You might want to lose or disregard some opportunities to gain some — possibly more lucrative ones in the longer term. Going fast has it’s consequences. In slither.io, if you go fast, you lose points and size. In startups if you try to grow very fast, you could lose resources fast, and possibly burnout.. Find resources and grab them. Every business is out there to make it for themselves. So eat when you have opportunity otherwise someone else will. Planning and strategising for the long term may be futile. While vision is extremely important, longer term strategies based on your current realities may bring discontent and disappointment. Tactics have their own place in the game. In slither.io, we never know what is lurking around away from your view on the canvas and what could happen, who all could be around to jump on to things in your space — to your detriment. There is much more than what you can see. Life is full of uncertainties and startups have to deal with many of those. For example, nobody every expected a new situation like that created by COVID-19 to bring things to a standstill not just in one place or domain but almost everywhere. As a startup, vision is important and being aware of overall context and space is more important and fruitful than trying to figure out very long term strategies. Be mindful of others’ capabilities. In slither.io everyone starts small. This includes the very experienced players. So while you may have gained some growth and points, those small ones which have big experience behind them could cut you to place. Partnerships can be game changers but you need to be aware of your domain and possibilities. Something very crucial for startups is building partnerships & collaboration for growth. In slither.io we did not get to use any collaboration possibility due to our limited knowledge about servers and who were the others in the domain. Being aware of and knowing their domain very well, knowing possibilities and who others could be playing in their domain and taking action towards collaboration can be very fruitful for startups. Practise and trials makes you better. That applies to everything in life — not just slither.io or startups. Just enjoy and have fun. There are many uncertainties and things can be chaotic in your ecosystem. You may lose and die in the game but you can always re-start — as you can do with startups (most of the times). There is no point with stress and anxiety. There are many people in the same boat.
So these were my thirteen reflections and I am quite sure one could draw reflections and inspiration for startups from many other domains, and facets of life. Feel free to share your thoughts, send feedback and share around. | https://medium.com/@ardhimanshu/thirteen-reflections-for-startups-from-playing-slither-io-with-my-kids-during-covid-19-times-42ec6058c89c | ['Himanshu Ardawatia'] | 2020-04-07 20:31:24.959000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Slitherio', 'Quality Time With Kids', 'Startups', 'Inspiration'] |
It’s been 55 years since the Voting Rights Act, and we still don’t have equal voting rights | by Andrew Lee and Huanvy Phan
Today, we want to commemorate civil rights icon John Lewis and his contributions towards the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which celebrates its fifty-fifth anniversary today. This landmark piece of federal legislation has enfranchised millions of voters of color ever since its passage in 1965, and represents one of Lewis’s greatest contributions to his fight for racial justice. Without the leadership and activism of John Lewis and other Black movement leaders, many of our AAPI communities would not have the access to voting that we do today. By celebrating John Lewis and his dedication to fighting for the marginalized and disempowered, we call for an end to voter suppression laws that continue to disenfranchise communities of color today.
Before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Black Americans had already gained the right to vote a century earlier. After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment was passed in 1970, which prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Although this amendment did not extend to Black women or other women of color, the 15th Amendment would have enfranchised millions of recently freed Black men.
However, segregationist Jim Crow laws were soon implemented in the South, where most Black Americans lived. These laws prevented Black men from exercising their right to vote. One egregious example is literacy tests, which required a person to read a section of the state constitution and explain it to the county clerk to be registered to vote. This law targeted Black Americans, as centuries of educational discrimination led to a high rate of illiteracy in Black communities.
Protesters marching for equal voting rights past a white person holding up a confederate flag.
Voter suppression was also carried out through racial violence and intimidation: white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan harassed, threatened, and even murdered Black voters. While Black women gained the right to vote under the 19th Amendment in 1920, they also faced the same white supremacist tactics of voter suppression which prevented them from exercising their rights. When John Lewis was born in 1940, only 3 percent of voting-age Black men and women in the South were registered to vote.
Growing up in an openly racist society, John Lewis was no stranger to the discrimination Black communities faced under segregation. He was born on a sharecropping farm owned by a white man in rural Alabama, his family owning little to call their own.
John Lewis (left) and Martin Luther King Jr. (right) singing “We Shall Overcome” during a 1966 march from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi
In 1958, he became inspired to fight for change after learning about the emerging preacher Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery bus boycotts. A student in Nashville at the time, Lewis met with civil rights activists and eventually helped organize the first sit-ins to demand service at whites-only lunch counters. The sit-ins became the first civil disobedience tactics used by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a youth-led organization of the Civil Rights movement that Lewis helped found.
Over the next couple of years, Lewis and SNCC organized more demonstrations against racial segregation in the South; he was among the first thirteen Freedom Riders who protested against the segregated interstate bus system, as well as being one of the organizers of the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.
A state trooper physically assaulting John Lewis during the voting rights march in Selma on March 7, 1965
On March 7, 1965, he led a group of around 600 people demanding their voting rights in a march from Montgomery to Selma. As he marched partway across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, he and other demonstrators were attacked by state troopers who viciously attacked them with tear gas, bullwhips, and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire. Lewis himself was hit on the head twice by a billy-club wielding officer, knocking him to the ground and cracking his skull.
The brutality Lewis and the other protestors endured from state violence was nationally televised, swinging public opinion in favor of Civil Rights activists and pressuring the U.S. government to pass the Voting Rights Act five months later. Its passage had immediate effects: in Mississippi alone, voter turnout among Black Americans increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969. The Voting Rights Act transformed the political power of Black Americans and other people of color, giving previously disenfranchised communities a chance to shape their own political futures in America.
John Lewis speaking out against federal inaction on gun control at a vigil for the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting on July 12, 2016
In 1986, John Lewis was elected as a representative of the 5th Congressional District of Georgia, and became the second Black American to be sent to Congress from Georgia since Reconstruction. As a congressman, Lewis continued to champion the rights of marginalized and disempowered peoples in the U.S. and around the world: he was arrested for demonstrating against apartheid outside the South African Embassy, and he led another sit-in on the House floor to protest federal inaction on gun control after the Orlando nightclub massacre. On the recent Black Lives Matter movement, Lewis said that it felt “much more massive and all inclusive” and that “there will be no turning back.” Although he passed away just last month, his legacy lives on in the activists who fight to end voter suppression today.
O ver half a century later, we still don’t have equal voting rights and protections.
In 2013, the Supreme Court made a landmark decision in Shelby County v. Holder that allowed local governments in states with historical discriminatory voting practices to change their voting policies without federal approval. The impact of Shelby County v. Holder (2013) has been devastating for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) communities. Since the ruling, research has shown significant increases in discriminatory voting laws and practices, especially in states with historical voter discrimination. There are six key voter suppression strategies that impact every stage of the voting process:
Gerrymandering, the practice of manipulating geographical district boundaries of constituencies to favor a specific party over another — which intentionally clusters voters of color into fewer districts in order to dilute their voting power. This occurs especially in closely-divided states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Wisconsin.
2. Felony disenfranchisement, which disproportionately affects Black people due to racist structures in the criminal justice system. Iowa, for example, has the most disproportionate incarceration rate of Black people in the U.S. As a result, one in four voting-age Black men in Iowa cannot vote for the rest of their lives.
3. Voter registration restrictions, such as limiting the window of time when voters can register. In the 2016 presidential election, over 90,000 voters in New York were unable to vote because their registration applications did not meet the cutoff, and the state had the 8th worst turnout in the country.
4. Strict voter ID laws and eliminating access to obtaining IDs. North Carolina attempted to implement a voter identification bill after specifically researching the types of ID that Black voters were least likely to have, and then requiring those IDs to vote. Obtaining IDs is especially difficult for people living with disabilities, the elderly, and people in rural areas. Name match rules for IDs especially hurt Asian Americans who have transliterated names. In total, over 21 million eligible voters do not have IDs required by many states to vote.
5.Voter purging, which is the practice of removing eligible voters from registration records. Voters in Black neighborhoods were twice as likely to get purged than voters in white suburbs, and states with a demonstrated history of racial voting discrimination had a 40% higher purge rate.
6. Restricting access to polling locations. Georgia in 2018 closed or relocated hundreds of polling places, preventing an estimated 54,000 to 85,000 voters from casting their vote. Furthermore, ⅓ of voters living with a disability report difficulty voting, and only 40% of polling places fully accommodate people with disabilities. Polling places also provide in-language assistance for voters who are not fluent in English.
With the 2020 election happening in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, voters will experience further complications and restrictions.
For example, Texas will not accept medical vulnerability to the coronavirus as sufficient grounds for absentee voting. Many have already experienced increased voter suppression — For the primaries, Wisconsin only had five polling places open instead of the usual 180.
Voter suppression also disproportionately impacts Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities.
A youth member of Khmer Girls in Action practicing voter outreach
AAPIs are the racial group that receives the least political outreach — a survey conducted after the 2012 election showed that 69% of Asian American and 75% of Pacific Islander voters were never contacted about the election. As a result, only 55% of eligible AAPI voters are registered compared to the national average of 71%.
Language access is another significant issue: 35% of Asian Americans have limited English proficiency, the highest rate across all racial groups. While the Voting Rights Act requires language assistance during the voting process, many AAPIs do not receive adequate translation services because of the broad range of languages spoken among the racial bloc — in 2012, 76% of AAPI voters’ jurisdictions did not provide language assistance.
Furthermore, documents for AAPIs are often mixed up or rejected over slight differences in spelling, which is a common problem for people with transliterated names, and AAPIs are six times more likely than whites to have voter registration applications denied or delayed.
AAPIs also experience racial bias when voting — many are asked to provide extra ID forms on voting day because they supposedly look too foreign or do not speak proficient English.
So what can we do to fight voter suppression? Here are five actions you can take today and over the next few months to protect the right to vote: | https://medium.com/@aapiforceef/its-been-55-years-since-the-voting-rights-act-and-we-still-don-t-have-equal-voting-rights-2a68f5f08a49 | ['Aapi Force-Ef'] | 2020-08-06 19:19:35.544000+00:00 | ['Civic Engagement', 'Voter Suppression', 'Asian American', 'Voting', 'Voting Rights Act'] |
The Capitalist State and Structural Democracy | Democracy and the Capitalist State: The Routinization of Manipulation
In this paper I outline the relationship between state strength and capitalism with implications for democracy based on the Marxist notion that true democracy (as in communism) cannot involve the state institution and that the capitalist state evolves to manage class conflict, with its strength indicative of the volume of such conflict. Using OLS multivariate regression analysis on a cross national sample of 126 nation states, I test the relationship between state strength and capitalization and between political vulnerability (operatonalizing Karl Mannheim’s (1936) definition of politics) and capitalization controlling for various explanatory factors. The results indicate that as capitalism advances (greater accumulation) and conflict becomes acute, a stronger state emerges that successively closes the realm of politics (structural democracy) and enhances administrative control to manage conflict, net of other effects. This provides confirmatory evidence in support of the Marxist notion of the state and Lenski’s (1966) claim that the specialization of the functioning of the state (and the progressive closing of the class structure) was due to the enhancement of economic surplus.
Dr. Grouf, PhD.
Social power, according to Marx and Engels is based on class-situation that manifests itself through private ownership of the means of production or capital, leading to individual power, a macro to micro socio-structural translation. Since capital needs the united action of the many in order to be “set in motion,” it represents not personal but social power, which is linked to the relationships of production within capitalism. Through private ownership of the means of production, power has been expropriated by the bourgeoisie in a capitalistic setup (Marx and Engels 1848). Communism, through abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, the private ownership of capital (and not all private property), will democratize power and a democratization of power will lead to the state dying out or as more famously stated “withering away” (Engels 1880). True democracy and the state cannot coexist in the Marxist formulation. The existence of the state, whether a capitalist or a socialist state indicates the existence of class conflict.
According to Engels (1880) the necessity of the state as political organization is a consequence of the “anarchy of production” based on private ownership of the means of production. With the abolition of private ownership of capital there will be no need for the state. The state is “not abolished but dies out” (Engels 1880). Within this scheme, socialism would be an intermediary stage marking the end of capitalism and the beginning of the period that leads to communism, yet the stages of the success or failure of this intermediary phase are indicated through state strength which can be empirically measured. Socialism by itself, where the state becomes the owner of capital and hence the arbiter of social power, represents capitalism’s higher tyranny in a reduced but not abolished form. To end capitalist tyranny and the human stratification (the modern day caste system) that is inscribed in its very nature, the atrophy of the state and the emergence of classless, stateless communism is an absolute necessity for the Marxist dialectic to end. The state of true democracy therefore can be empirically measured in its inverse relationship to state strength, political vulnerability, indicative of a state not yet “become” (Mannheim 1936), indicates the realm of true politics as structural democracy.
According to Karl Mannheim (1936) any action undertaken to alter state and society, that are still in process of “becoming” (the irrational in social existence) can be described as political conduct, a form of structural power as opposed to social events that have been subordinated to habit and have assumed set patterns (the rationalized sphere of social existence). Using the Austrian sociologist Albert Schaffle’s terminology he refers to the former as politics and the latter as merely routine affairs of the state. As more aspects of life are brought under the “routine affairs of the state,” the individual surrenders greater ever increasing levels of autonomy and loses his or her structural power. To bring the irrational under bureaucratic control is the main preoccupation of the modern state which involves a narrowing of the domain of the irrational and thus a narrowing of politics in the real sense. Political science as such, brought under the realm of the bureaucratic procedure becomes an administrative science. This narrowing of the realm of politics is linked to the ascendency of the liberal bourgeoisie (and their institutionalization of a politically benign ‘conflict’) (Marcuse 1964) and their move towards rationalization of all aspects of social existence. The level of political stability of the state therefore is a valid measure of the level of administrative (formal democratic- routine affairs of the state) versus political (real structural democracy) aspects of society.
Mannheim states that behind all theories that attain social circulation are group interests involving power, both rooted in “social and existential” (Mannheim (1936) 1960: 124) conditions of groups that are then generalized to the whole of society. This generalization of the interests of the powerful to all of social existence forms the basis of what Marx defined as ideology. Conflict within the bourgeoisie emerges in the routine matters of the state during non-crisis times, in times of crisis they develop consciousness of their class interests similar to their period of prior struggle against feudalism that culminated in what Marx defined as the “bourgeoisie revolution” (Marx 1852). Gerhard Lenski (1966) theorizing about the social origin of inequality suggests that the economic surplus that results due to technological and environmental factors determines organizational features of society including its political organization. He states that in the political realm industrialization has led to the elimination of the monarchial form of government, functional specialization of the state and the expansion of its domain of functions. Also relative democratization, in that political power is more widely diffused, is a consequence of industrialization, according to Lenski, as is the growth of the state’s military powers (p.303–305), and the comparative closing of the class structure, which implies a narrowing of the qualitative realm of democracy.
In simple horticulture societies where a political custodial realm develops in its infancy for the purpose of distribution, people avoid political office but in advanced horticultural societies where the political realm starts to attain functional autonomy and status, people actively seek office because of its privileges, leaders become rulers and the use of force increases (Lenski 1966:176, 185). Since agricultural societies are more politically advanced compared to advanced horticultural societies, they are preoccupied with wars. The monarchial form of government is successful in agricultural societies because of perpetual wars, and through selection (based on success) becomes the dominant form, because constitutionalism makes war fighting tenuous due to conflicts of interest and indecision within separate functional units. Functional specialization requires a reliance on advisors which together with a lesser frequency of wars makes the probability of success of constitutional governments greater in industrial societies and so monarchial forms of government successively vanish (Lenski 1966:188).
In the non-Marxist rendition of the state as the wielder of the instruments of violence and extraction, the state emerges as relatively autarkic, in that it is not affected in the most part by the wider society in its decision making process and does not serve the interest of any particular class as such. The state does however respond to external (international) competition both political and economic. All decision making according to this model is incremental given the bureaucratic organizational form of the state that functions with uniformity, changes in which occur only during exceptional circumstances, which are extrinsic to the state and therefore not explained by these theories. For state decision making, the interests that matter according to this perspective are the interests specific to the state bureaucracy and the self-interests of the state managers who do not represent any particular class interest. According to Skocpol (1985), states respond to new situations based on their structural features guided by the lessons derived from previous decision making. She also feels that a coalition based explanation of state decision making that gives autonomous interests to the state and state actors is superior to class struggle based Marxist models because they “highlight the positive sum character of social policies” (Skocpol 1985:115) as against the zero sum outcome of a bourgeoisie directed, “committee of the ruling class” state. In this rendition therefore there is no direct relationship between state strength and economic accumulation.
My purpose in this paper is to outline the relationship between state strength and capitalism with implications for democracy based on a review of Marxist and non Marxist theories of the state. I test the Marxist notion that true democracy (as in communism) cannot involve the state institution and that the capitalist state evolves to manage class conflict, with its strength indicative of the volume of such conflict. For that purpose I seek to empirically test two hypotheses using OLS multivariate regression analysis on a sample comprising of 126 nation states: Hypothesis 1: Net of other effects, a greater level of capitalization enhances state strength, and Hypothesis 2: Net of other effects, a greater level of capitalization reduces political instability, indicating quantitative democracy as against politics or qualitative, substantive democracy (Mannheim 1936).
Power, Bureaucracy and Democracy
Max Weber defined power afrom a micro to macro level translation as “the chance of a man or a number of men to realize their own will in a communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action” (Weber, Gerth and Mills 1958:180). Weber, unlike Marx and Engels didn’t actually outline the sociological (structural) source of power even though he described the class situation in terms of it in his socio-psychological rendition neither did he describe power as being structural or social power, which makes us question the sociology behind such a description of power. Weber (1958) stated that the distribution of power within social groups determined “classes, status groups and parties,” with classes representing economic power, status groups, “social” power through honor, and parties, political power, because they existed within what Weber defines as a “house of power,” the state. Political power nevertheless is in need of social power for communal action and therefore in need of honor and prestige (p.181). Economic power, since it determines honor and prestige in capitalist societies according to Weber (1958:190) is a necessary prerequisite to political power as well and therefore to the strengthening of the state. Parties according to Weber represent a constellation of interests through “class situations or status situations” (1958:194). The sociological causal priority to societal structure is thus missing in Weber’s work.
Weber understood that it would be nearly impossible and at the very least extremely resource intensive to struggle continuously for group advantages through direct coercion. If however the advantages of the dominant group could be institutionalized through bureaucratic processes, opposition would be muted and the ongoing conflict could be managed with greater ease. The bureaucratic set up of the modern state (bureaucracy being primarily a structure) and the successive rationalization of society (or commodification of social existence in Marxist terminology) that is the hallmark of modernity is a means of carrying “community action over into rationally ordered societal action” and “an instrument for soceitalizing relations of power” and a “power instrument of the first order” (Weber, Gerth and Mills 1958:228) according to Weber. The reason why states bureaucratized in the first place is because bureaucracy had “technical superiority over any other form of organization” (Kiser and Baer 2005:229). The legal-rational bureaucratized state being a successor to the other ideal type state Weber outlined, which was the patrimonial state where everything depended on personal favors, connections and affiliative considerations (Budd 2005).
Bureaucratization of states proceeds due to specific needs of a specialized division of labor, it assumes a “rapid development of effective communication and transportation systems” (Kiser and Baer 2005:233) without which monitoring and the functional “organic” (Durkheim (1893) 1997) connection between specialized units becomes ineffective. Therefore, without such concurrent developments bureaucratization will not be complete. Transportation technologies facilitate centralized bureaucratic control and the bureaucratization process in Western states followed the development of “transportation technologies” (Kiser and Baer 2005:233), which represent a faster transmission of communication, symbols being the intermediaries between people and their social actions (Mills 1959). Bureaucratization leads to the enhancement of administration as “routine affairs of the state” (Mannheim 1936) and a closing of the realm of politics and structural democracy, it represents a greater level of social control.
Theories of the State:
Social theories of the state can be broadly grouped into two major categories: Marxist models of the state and Non-Marxist models of the state. The Marxist models can be subdivided into Marxist instrumentalist (Domhoff 2005) and Marxist structuralist models (Poulantzas 2001; Boies 1994 etc.). The non-Marxist models of the state are the state autonomy or state centrist models, they differ from the Marxist models in their treatment of the state’s decision making process. Whereas the Marxist models are centered around economic causes to both state formation and functioning, even the Marxist structuralist models that attribute relative autonomy to the state as part of its function of “managing” the capitalist structure give causal primacy to the economy ‘in the last instance,’ the non-Marxist models look at the state as an autonomous unit having both separate interests to the capitalist class as well as capacity to execute those interests (Skocpol 1985).
Political action theorists like Charles Tilly merge state and society, according to Skocpol (1979:26) by making groups with ‘low cost access’ to government the deciding factor in social revolutions thereby not giving the state any real autonomy. The Marxist theorists see the state as a feature of the underlying class divided mode of production and therefore they also do not give autonomy to the state. New developments among the Marxists however have accommodated the relative autonomy of the state into their explanations by suggesting that overall class interest is best served when the state is autonomous of specific dominant class groups. In their view the state cannot be reduced to either a social institution representing society or an instrument of the bourgeoisie but a specific materialization of the basic class relations of a given society with built in mechanisms for reproducing it. Skocpol thinks a more state-centered approach to social revolutions is needed because all revolutions “begin and end” at the state level (Skocpol 1979:29). States also compete with the dominant classes to some extent in order to maintain order, the smoothest way of doing which is to ensure the class order of a society. Besides maintaining order, the state also concerns itself with competition with other states both actual and potential in the global environment and local claimants to statehood that would upset the class order. International pressures (of the military sort) might prompt states to take steps that might deviate from the interests of its dominant classes according to Skocpol. She calls her explanation the “organizational and realist” version of the state (Skocpol 1979:31). The state is anchored dually in this approach both in its internal class structure and in its location within a world system of nation states while also being autonomous in its decision making?
The very opposite of this explanation of state steering of society, of state autonomy translating into state capacity for action, that is non-Marxist and quite conservative in the sense of system legitimation, but arrives at a somewhat similar conclusion to the Marxist perspective, is provided by Niklas Luhmann (1997) who goes to great lengths to explain that all attempts at steering social change through the state are bound to fail because it is functionally differentiated and therefore (according to him), autonomous based on functional specialization. He states that the state emerged as a result of social differentiation of society, based on a Durkhemian elaboration of functional differentiation through division of labor (Durkheim (1893) 1997, Parsons 1951), and thus all attempts at directing change through it will be futile because the state differentiated in order to preserve the social order (Luhmann 1997).
According to Charles Tilly (1985, 1996), the organizational bureaucracy of European states was based on struggles, both internal and external, that involved “checking of great regional lords and the imposition of taxation on peasant villages” (Tilly 1985:185). The bureaucracy that emerged involved a subordination of military power to civilian control, the development of the machinery of surveillance and the representation of the masses through parliamentary and judicial petitioning. Citizenship, according to Tilly is “transactional” (Tilly 1996:14) because it involves rights and obligations between agents representing the state and people, giving the person membership into an exclusive category. The frequency and intensity of these transactions determines whether citizenship is thick or thin. Citizenship was historically tied to military service with “democratization” first occurring through universal conscription and only later through male franchise. The tying of citizenship to military service and the presumed economic independence of men (which already existed in non-state organizations like households and communities) was directly incorporated into the state’s organization. The state according to Tilly therefore is not autarkic as some state centered theorists might suggest, rather it involves struggle over resources that manifests itself in wars and culminates in a transactional relationship where organizational forms that emerge, reflect organizations of relationships that preexist the state (Tilly 1996). Kathleen Arnold (2004) similarly states how the previous organizational relationships involving the home and self-identity (and the accompanying emotions) were, “Reconceptualized in terms of homeland and emotions attached to the home and self-identity displaced onto citizenship and nation state” (Arnold 2004:53).
Since the military organization was subordinated to civilian control internally during European state formation we do not see military coups of the sort that are evident in the newly independent states of what was described as the “Third World.” The military buildup in Europe due to internal and external struggles reduced the political autonomy of the military as the military became dependent on the civilian apparatus for finance as well as relations with the wider society from whom they were separated as ‘soldiers’. Military expansion following the French conquest post French Revolution that expanded the scope of citizenship by incorporating civil and political rights within the concept of sovereignty (Tilly 1996:225) and led to the expansion of the state that now embarked on direct rule and making exclusive the concept of citizenship and national sovereignty. Exclusivity required the homogenization of citizens and efforts to that end were directly made by the state through socially embedded cultural symbols that were given a national flavor (Tilly 1996; Arnold 2004). The military also served as a conduit for previously disenfranchised groups, enabling them to enter the mainstream of society, the process of democratization began first in the military and only later was followed by the civilian state (Janowitz 1975:19). Tilly agrees with Engels and Janowitz that formal democracy grew because of the need for increased militarization where “rulers felt themselves obliged to bargain with their civilian populations for the essential manpower and means of war” (Tilly 1996:235). Not only is democracy related to militarization, bureaucratization and the tendency to bureaucratize has its history in the need states felt when they had to maintain large standing armies and therefore had to rely on public taxation. Max Weber stated:
…the bureaucratic tendency has chiefly been influenced by needs arising from the creation of standing armies as determined by power politics and with the development of public finance connected with the military establishment. (Weber, Gerth and Mills 1958:212)
Living within a bureaucratic society eventually leads to ‘self rationalization’ (according to Karl Mannheim), in that the individual shapes himself/herself according to the requirements of such a society (in order to get a preformed identity for status fulfillment). Such a life therefore is in contradiction to all that was understood as ‘individuality’ post enlightenment. This means that in the post-modern era the control of a person’s destiny moves from the individual to the bureaucratic society in which he/she lives or the bureaucratic organization for which he/she works the best years of his or her life. The result of this kind of (what Riesman would say) “other directedness” has resulted in the emergence of wide spread alienation among the population. In the absence of a self-educating, self-reflecting public and the resulting movements for social change, what we know as ‘democracy’ is one of form only and not of substance. Democracy itself must be understood by situating it within a social structure and the relationship of that structure to the individual’s biography and whether the people have the power to alter structures or merely fit into restrictive choices that are described as “democracy.”
Bureaucratization, as the hallmark feature of modernity, its “organizational embodiment” (Kiser and Baer 205:225), where it occurred in modern states is rooted in the needs of states for large military organizations. Military organizations were the first large scale bureaucracies and hence the historical foundation of this type of social organization. The oligarchic control of the professional military translated into the social formations of the civil state that was made in its image, resulting in public affairs being managed by “a minority of influential persons to which management, willingly or unwillingly, the majority defer” (Mosca (1939)1961:192). Robert Michels traces a similar path to the rule of the many by the bureaucratic elite. “Extensive organization” he says, which is an indicator of functional specialization of a bureaucracy, requires “expert leadership” and this expertise then becomes one of the caste-like attributes of membership in the leadership club. Monopolization of these attributes by the leaders that are “gradually withdrawn from the masses” leads to what Michels describes as oligarchic rule represented by “a minority of directors and a majority of directed” (Michels 1962:70, 71). Terming this a “universally applicable social law,” Michels traces this process to the formation of special interest of every grouping that results due to a division of labor, and the conflict of those specific interests with the general interest of the population at large. These distinctions of interests in the long run are transformed into distinct classes (Michels 1962:353). Michels arrives at a similar conclusion to Mosca stating that society cannot exist without a non-representative ruling class of elites whose interests differ from the underlying masses and whose legal system is an outcome of their exercise of power.
The power elite explanation by C. Wright Mills (1956) is a positional analysis in tune with Mosca and Michels in that Mills defined the elite as those at the pinnacles of the economic, military and political institutions, conditioned formally through a bureaucratized setup. These elite move within and between these three institutional structures, i.e. positions of power are interchangeable among the military, political and economic domains (1956:12) resulting in institutionally circumscribed adaptation, producing a near uniform world view among the elite. Further, this power elite possesses a specific and clear “class consciousness” and unique image of self as a (social) psychological fact, considering themselves separate and superior to the rest of society, regardless of popularly ascribed ideological label or party membership (1956:283)
Fiscal Sociology and Measuring State Strength
According to Campbell (1993) elites within the state respond to “geopolitical, economic or fiscal crisis” (1993:173) by altering tax policies. The way that tax policies will get altered depends, according to Campbell, on how various groups within society influence political elites. Different groups are proposed to have different “tax tolerance” (1993:173). The end governmental response based on group pressure depends on the accessibility of political elites as well as their “capacity to collect taxes” (1993:174). Political elites can also influence the mobilization of pressure groups. The consequences of the taxation part of fiscal sociology (taxation policy by the government, its precursors and consequences) include, according to Campbell, rebellion when people cannot pay the taxes demanded and pressure to enact programs that alleviate conditions to justify taxation. Fiscal crises of the state, its inability to collect taxation can foster revolution through state breakdown. Taxation as the “key to successful state building” (1993:174), is a necessity that historically arose in order to defeat foreign challengers to the state through maintenance of large armies or local competitors to state power (Tilly 1985), leading to the development of state bureaucracies of “extraction and monitoring” (Campbell 1993:177) as well as avenues for political participation and public goods delivery in order to give legitimacy to taxation policy. In short, “the organizational strength of social classes, the institutional structure of the state and the system of political representation” (p.168), influences taxation, the level of which is an indicator of state strength (Robinson 1977).
Taxation is therefore of central importance in understanding the state and must be understood in state failure (through fiscal crisis) as well as state building and bureaucratization. Taxation can also affect the “location of economic activity” (Campbell 1993:178) as well as the structure of economic organizations: the rise of large monopolistic firms is attributed to the U.S. government’s tariff policies during the 19th century that “contributed to the decline of entrepreneurial firms and the rise of large, concentrated companies and economic sectors” (1993:178). Taxation might also affect labor force participation as revealed by the negative income tax experiments of the 1970s, as well as philanthropy by the wealthy that seeks to counter the redistributive effects of taxation, through tax write offs, formation of foundations and non-profit organizations and the like, and “contributes to the preservation of inequality” (1993:180).
Whereas Hegel can be described as state centric, Marx dethroned the state to being a mere managing device for societal class conflict, acting on behalf of the (whole) bourgeoisie while presenting the face of a sovereign, autonomous entity as false consciousness for legitimation purposes. Within the functions of the state highlighted by Marx was the limited redistribution function associated with contemporary welfare states as conflict management adjustment, where the structure of private ownership and bourgeoisie mode of production is maintained through charity like redistribution that renders the condition of the proletariat “tolerable” in order to abort revolutions (Marx 1850). It is worth noting that contrary to the interpretation by instrumental Marxists, Marx and Engels suggested that the state manages the class interests of the (whole) bourgeoisie and not the interests of individual capitalists, in other words the state tries to manage the structural status quo of capitalism.
Poulantzas arguing against Marxist instrumentalists to whom the interests of “the ruling class” are the supreme preoccupation of state managers, recognizes the separation (or relative autonomy) of the state from the economic in a capitalist order, with its main function being social cohesion for the continuation of that order. For that purpose, the state serves the interests of some groups more so than others as an automatic fulfillment of its reproduction function. The state emerges as a “point of condensation” (Poulantzas and Martin 2008:10) between contradictions of class, where the site of class conflict is displaced from the economic to the political realm. A true Marxist understanding of the state according to Poulantzas would combine an internal analysis of state structure as well as its external manifestation in policy and law formation (Poulantzas and Martin 2008:5). Poulantzas critiques the Marxist instrumentalists and their naïve reading of Marx by suggesting that they overemphasize the base (economism) while relegating a non-sociological volunteerism to the superstructure, which arises through the base in history. Since their interpretation of Marx ignores history and its mark on the superstructure, instead of the dialectic process, they pursue, in Poulantzas’ view a voluntaristic determinism that is non-Marxist in its methodology. The superstructure even though situated within the relationships of production articulates itself in real form through both preexisting structures of organization that it supersedes historically (and not instantaneously), as well as through fulfillment of the base’s demands indirectly (through structural president) and not in a voluntaristic or extra societal manner.
The state is not a foreign imposition on a society except in the case of the newly formed nations, but represents the distilled effects of class conflict and the attempts by the dominant classes to manage both their internal conflicts as well as class conflict with legitimation, displacing it unto a seemingly autonomous and sovereign entity. Therefore statelessness in this formulation just as the idea behind (total) state autonomy assumes a lack of class conflict or class conflict that is benign in which multiple contenders have equal (transactional) access to the state and its decision making apparatus, as in pluralism (Dahl 2005). When Marx and Engels mention the withering away of the state, they were referring to an end point of the process that leads to a termination of class conflict. As long as there are divergences in interests leading to class conflict, coercion as a tool in management of such conflict will become institutionalized in the form of a state, physically dismantling which will lead to its reemergence due to social precedence, in the Marxist formula. The evolution of the state, where it assumes functional autonomy, integrates the system and reproduces it, cannot make it a mere tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie, and it cannot be functionally dependent on any other institutional sphere. The mark of history on it ensures that it works to reproduce a bourgeoisie dominated system and hence benefits, indirectly, the bourgeoisie. Domhoff’s voluntaristic interpretation of the state, as guided by the ruling class explanation, is as erroneous in my opinion as Skocpol’s non-society explanation of the state as independent variable, as the beginning and end of all social change. The truth lies in between where the mark of history in the functional differentiation of the state ensures that it behaves in a manner which reveals to the keen observer that the state acts in the long run to ensure the reproduction of the class system while in the short run (in non-crisis times), it assumes business as usual. This business as usual appears to the casual observer as a capitalist class divided against itself (as in the case of Domhoff 2007), or as a state acting with near total autonomy to steer society (Skocpol 1985), so both offer as solution working through the state apparatus to cause social change, in other words they both legitimize the state within capitalist society.
Measures and Empirical Analysis
I started with a dataset comprising of 173 nation states for the purpose of this analysis, the data were collected from various international data collecting organizations like the U.N, the World Bank and the CIA Factbook. Data years were 2010 or nearest, with the latest nearest being 2006.. I lost several countries that did not have data based on a list wise (or case) deletion approach, which is essential for generalizable analyses but runs the risk of over representing those nation states that have well developed record keeping bureaucracies, which more often than not happen to be the more capitalized countries in the world. There is therefore this ‘elite bias’ in all such cross national studies. I ended up with a sample comprising of 126 nation states.
For the purpose of measuring state strength, I used the definition of the state made famous by Max Weber, which was elaborated upon by Charles Tilly (1985, 1990). The state, which in Tilly’s (1985) elaboration is in the business of “selling” protection through creation of threats (where none exist) and thereby (in Weberian terms) monopolizing the means of violence (to increase the “price” of protection by eliminating competitors), is effective and legitimate if its extraction “racket” (Tilly 1985:171) is successful. This can be measured through tax revenue as a percent of GDP (which makes comparison between states possible). The level of taxation is an indicator of state strength (Robinson 1977). I therefore used tax revenue as percentage of GDP as the operationalized indicator of state strength.
In order to measure the level of capitalization of an economy based on accumulation, as predictor of state strength, I constructed an economic scale using a principle component factor analysis that captured in its computation the latent structure of global economic accumulation. The results suggested that three variables could be grouped into one summary index of economic accumulation. The three absolute measures of economic development/accumulation were: the log of GNI per capita, the log of inbound Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) stock and the log of inbound Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flow. The Eigen value (2.48) was above the conventional threshold of 1.00. The factor loadings ranged from 0.832 for the log of GNI per capita to 0.963 for the log of inbound Foreign Direct Investment. The first variable (log of GNI per capita) measures the size of the economy, the next two (log of inbound FDI stock and log of inbound FDI flow), foreign investment and accumulation activity in the economy. All of these measures were standardized by taking their Z-scores before factor analysis.
The variables combined to form this factor were in agreement with the indicators of economic accumulation outlined in the development literature (Firebaugh 1992; Firebaugh and Beck 1994; London and Williams 1998; Bornschier and Chase Dunn 1985; Chase Dunn 1975). The scale that measures the underlying concept of economic accumulation/development was empirically validated in that it explained 82.75% of the variation in these economic variables among the nation states. For the purpose of uncovering the global structure of militarization, as control, I developed a militarization scale using a principle component factor analysis that captured in its computation the latent structure of global militarization. The results suggested that three variables could be grouped into one summary index of militarization. These three measures of militarization were: the log of government military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, the log of government military expenditure as a percentage of total tax revenue and the log of military personnel as a percentage of total population. The variables combined to form this factor that formed the militarization scale were empirically validated in that the scale explained 70.81% of the variation in these militarization variables among the nation states and incorporated both the military burden of a nation state as well as the military participation ratio. The controls used in the regression models were: the log of population (representing a control for demographic factors), Gini income inequality coefficient (representing a control for inequality and relative deprivation) and the UN’s (non-income) Human Development Index (representing a control for basic needs provision) and militarization.
Bivariate correlations reveal that economic capitalization (accumulation) is positively associated with state strength (r=0.580 p<0.001) as expected, a higher level of capitalization signifies a more advanced level of capitalism and therefore the need for greater conflict management and the strengthening of the functions of the state that specializes in such management of conflict according to the Marxist perspective. A higher level of accumulation also signifies greater surplus and in tune with Lenski’s (1966) rendition, it would require a greater bureaucratization of the state leading to the strengthening of its functions and indicated through greater extraction ability via rationalized legitimation, which includes the expansion of formalized (administrative) democracy. The demographic variable representing population (log of population) had a negative relationship with state strength (r= -0.153, P<0.05). This is in tune with expectations since a growing population implies a less capitalized country where fertility has not transitioned in response to lower mortality (the theory of demographic transition) as a result of which states are weak. The Gini income inequality coefficient was negatively correlated with state strength (r=-0.402, p<0.001). This is in tune with expectation since a higher level of inequality implies a greater level of (uncontrolled) conflict and lack of state legitimacy which leads to a weaker state. Lower inequality implies that the state in order to control conflict is managing relative deprivation, which leads to a strong state. Non-income HDI had a strong positive correlation with state strength (r=0.655, p<0.001). This is also in tune with expectations: in order to build legitimacy states enhance the provision of basic goods thereby vesting people in the political economy and the political process through citizenship which enhances state strength. On the other hand the non provision of basic necessities alienates the population and results in the failure of state extraction activities leading to a weak state. However, bivariate relationships are no guarantee of magnitude, direction or significance of multivariate relationships, therefore I used multivariate regression analysis to isolate the effects of militarization on economic growth, net of other effects, and tested for non-linear relationships as well.
Table 1 presents the OLS multivariate regression results. Model 1 regresses state strength as measured through a state’s extraction strength (tax revenue as percentage of GDP) on economic capitalization- accumulation. Model 2 adds the demographic (log of population) variable. Model 3 adds the Gini (measures income inequality), non-income HDI (measures basic needs provision) and the militarization variables to model 2. Model 4 adds economic capitalization-accumulation squared and militarization squared to model 3 to check for non-linear (quadratic) effects. Model 5 replaces the dependent variable in Model 4 with political vulnerability (based on the ‘underlying vulnerability’ portion of the Economist’s Political Instability Index, nation state level data, 2010). Collinearity did not seem to be a problem in the model, the highest VIF detected was 3.83 for the economic capitalization variable and 3.65 for the non-income HDI, both of these variables were positively correlated (r=0.784, P<0.001), however since the VIF was relatively low (VIF<4) collinearity was not considered a problem and adjustment was undertaken.
As Table 1 shows, 34% of the variation in state strength was explained by model 1 that has economic capitalization (accumulation) as predictor. Adding demographic, inequality, basic needs provision and militarization significantly improved the model by 18%. However, model 3 reveals that the strongest positive influence on state strength (beta=0.429), per standard deviation increase, net of other effects was economic capitalization (accumulation), in tune with my hypothesis 1. Militarization as predictor of inequality was not statistically significant (model 3), even though the direction of association was revealing and as expected (b=-1.250 p=0.922), since militarization leads to non-representative rule which reduces state strength in the long run. HDI (non-income) which measures basic need provision in life expectancy (health) and education, net of other effects had a enhancing effect on state strength (b= 15.953, P<0.05, model 3). For every one unit increase in basic need provision, state strength goes up by 15.93 units (15.93%), net of other effects. In fact HDI had the second strongest state strength enhancing effect in the model based upon its standardized slope (beta=-0.257), net of other effects, per standard deviation increase in HDI.
Table 1. Ordinary Least Squares Regression of State Strength on Economic Capitalization-Accumulation (N=126)
Political Vulnerability Dependent N=126
(deleted)
When rulers lose legitimacy, as a tactic of enhancing their rule they manipulate basic goods provision while maintaining the structure of inequality similar to the multinational “accumulation-legitimation” cycle (London and Williams 1998), which explains why a higher level of basic goods provision is expected to lead to a strengthening of the state. I can therefore confirm my hypothesis 1 which stated that net of other effects a higher level of capitalization of the economy would result in the strengthening of the state. This is in tune with the Marxist models of the state that give it a functional specialization related to the management of conflict and system reproduction, where a higher level of capitalization (accumulation) represents a more advanced capitalism where the state has become strengthened due to the enhancement of the need for its specialized function of managing conflict through monopolization of “legitimate” force.
Model 4 reveals that both economic capitalization (accumulation) and militarization have curvilinear relationships with state strength. Fitting the quadratic curve to the data range of economic capitalization reveals the relationship depicted in Figure 1. When the quadratic term was added to the model (in Model 4), the model significantly improved from explaining 52% of the variation in state strength to explaining 58% of the variation. The quadratic slope of economic capitalization (accumulation) (a= 1.866, P<0.01) was significant. This means that economic capitalization (accumulation) (minimum= -2.764, maximum=2.261) has a curvilinear relationship with state strength, and since the quadratic term is positive, the curve is convex, its curvature is upwards. Past the lowest quintile of economic capitalization (very low levels of capitalism), further increases in capitalization result in enhanced state strength as predicted.
Figure 1. Curvilinear Relationship between State Strength and Capitalization
Figure 2. Curvilinear Relationship between Political Vulnerability and Capitalization
Substituting underlying political vulnerability as the dependent variable in place of state strength (Model 5 in Table 1) reveals much the same, the curve that describes the quadratic relationship between political instability and capitalization is inverted around nearly the same coordinates of economic capitalization (Figure 2) as the relationship that described state strength and capitalization (Figure 1). Political vulnerability increases, per unit increase in capitalization, net of other effects, in the lowest quintile of the economic capitalization (accumulation) scale. Past the lowest quintile of capitalization, political vulnerability decreases, per unit increase in capitalization, net of other effects, indicating the closing of the realm of politics (that is structural democracy, based on Karl Mannheim’s (1936) rendition of politics) and the enhancement of the realm of administration (formal bourgeoisie democracy), confirming my hypothesis 2.
Conclusion: Bringing Society back into the Sociology of the State
State autonomy theorists see states as “regulators and distorters of markets” (Skocpol 1985:3). Within such a perspective, the state emerges as an entity sui generis rather than merely a result of societal class conflict as in Marxist models. In the formulation of policies, the idea of “bureaucratic politics” implies that the state in its policy making goes beyond the requirements of any class interest (Skocpol 1985) and therefore its link to a societal status quo or structure maintenance is ambiguous. My analysis did not support the state autonomy perspective. Not only is state strength causally (positively) linked to economic accumulation and basic needs provision of the population, it is also causally (negatively) linked to the size of the population, and also related to a state’s war-making ability (militarization). The state autonomy theorists like Skocpol, going against Tilly’s conclusion that states incorporate societal organizational forms that predate them almost wholesale in some instances, quote Alfred Stepan who suggests that states themselves are “administrative, bureaucratic and legal systems” that structure relationships within civil society and not only within the governmental apparatus (Skocpol 1985:7). According to Skocpol, state autonomy is plausible because policies produced by the state are different to those demanded by societal actors and it is also plausible given the state’s capacity to implement those policies (Skocpol 1985:15–16). I empirically demonstrated given cross-national data that that is not the case, the additive OLS multivariate models demonstrate the net positive link between capitalist accumulation and state strength. Taking the “society” out of interpretations of the state, as Skocpol does in order to differentiate her views on the state from the Marxist views, using a literal coercion based interpretation of state autonomy, in that the state reacts to external occurrences only after the event, in tune with its special interests, renders every such an analysis non-sociological because the state is not historically situated within a social structure and the causal precedence is not given to society but to polity. All attempts at understanding state organization outside of a preexisting society mystify the state, which is a form of ‘social’ organization.
Past the lowest quintile on the economic capitalization-accumulation scale (that is very low levels of capitalism), further accumulation results in enhancement of state strength, net of other effects, in effect proving the Marxist assertion of classless and hence stateless communism as the opposite of the conflict managing function of the capitalist state. As capitalism advances (greater accumulation) and conflict becomes acute, a stronger state is needed to manage that conflict. This also provides empirical evidence for Lenski’s (1966) assertion of the specialization of the functioning of the state and the progressive closing of the class structure due to the enhancement of economic surplus. It also supports the assertion that capitalist accumulation enhances state strength not for the purpose of causing change or redistribution but for the purpose of further accumulation given the standardized effects, the state in effect manages “the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” (Marx and Engels 1848). Comparing these results with measures of political instability in a similar predictive model also provided evidence that by stabilizing the political status quo through enhanced state strength, the capitalist nations have stripped people of structural power, resulting in political (administrative) stability which means, in Karl Mannheim’s formulation, the diminution of politics and the end of structural democracy. This also implies that there is greater “real democracy” in the developing nations (with weak states) compared to the formally “democratic” capitalist nations, even when their state is (formally) dictatorial.
Further research should look at attitudinal (subjective) measures of state legitimacy so that broader dimensions of state strength can be empirically investigated. World Systemic position based on an intersection of the military and economic dimensions of the global division of labor should be incorporated as predictors of state strength and political stability. Besides political vulnerability other measures of substantive democracy, what I describe in this paper as structural democracy, should also be explored and constructed.
References
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Boies, John L. 1994. Buying for Armageddon: Business Society and Military Spending Since the Cuban Missile Crisis. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press
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Kiser, Edgar and Justin Baer. 2005. The Bureaucratization of States: Towards an Analytical Weberianism. In Julia Adams, Elisabeth Clemens and Ann Shola Orloff (eds). Remaking Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Lenski, Gerhard. 1966. Power and Privilege. New York: McGraw Hill.
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Weber, Max, Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills.,eds. 1958. From Max Weber. New York: Oxford University Press. | https://medium.com/@doctor-grouf/the-capitalist-state-and-structural-democracy-eb7287b565a9 | ['Dr Grouf'] | 2020-12-17 03:18:58.246000+00:00 | ['War', 'Democracy', 'Capitalism', 'Bureaucracy'] |
Deploying Flutter Web App using Firebase | Step 1
Create a flutter web project whether it is a small default launcher or a portfolio to showcase your projects and skills.
Step 2
Go to your firebase console and create a project for your web app.
Creating a new firebase project
Step 3
In step 3 we are doing to install firebase tools using command line, but first you need to install npm (node package manager).
If you do not have the npm installed, you can go and install it directly on your computer from node.js.
Once you have got your npm installed its time to install firebase tools from your command prompt or terminal if you’re using mac.
npm install -g firebase-tools
and now we have installed firebase-tools successfully.
Step 4
Now we need to initialize our flutter web project for firebase hosting.
Navigate to root folder of your flutter project from cmd. As mine was:
D:\web>
Run the following command to login with your firebase console account and grant it permission to use CLI:
D:\web> firebase login
Now you have successfully logged in.
Initialize your project using the command:
D:\web> firebase init
Use the arrow keys to navigate to “Hosting” and hit “SPACEBAR” to select that option.
Step 5
Inside your firebase console select your project and navigate to web app icon. Register your site’s name as follows:
Copy and paste the following lines of code in your index.html file inside <body> tag of your flutter web project.
<script src=”/__/firebase/8.2.0/firebase-app.js”></script>
<script src=”/__/firebase/init.js”></script>
Inside your firebase.json file in your project folder, copy the name of your website from firebase console and paste it inside the “hosting” key value.
Final Step.
Final step is to build and deploy your web app.
To build your web app go to the root folder of your app in your terminal and run the following command:
flutter build web
When you are ready to deploy your web app simply use the following command to deploy it on the firebase:
firebase deploy — only hosting:farrukhsajjad
Result
You will receive the following success result in your terminal:
Now you can share your hosting URL with your friends and social circle to let them know about your web app.
Cheers! | https://medium.com/@farrukhsajjad/deploying-flutter-web-app-using-firebase-6d6359b5a580 | ['Farrukh Sajjad'] | 2020-12-13 11:43:24.158000+00:00 | ['Flutter Web', 'Flutter', 'Firebase'] |
[real-life chronicle of a student mother] | I am balancing between breakfast and lunch. I notice that the child starts to get restless. When I focus, I start a dive and enter the tunnel of the concentration wave… bam !: Mommy, I’m hungry!
Ahhhhhh !!!!! No!!!!!!
Cookie, a fruit not to weigh on the conscience. Let’s go again. The climb begins: I put on my boots of disposition, I wear the backpack of availability, I peak the mountain of research with the tip of my pick of perseverance and bam!!!: Mommy, I want to pee!
Ahhh, you know how to do it yourself! Remember?!
The child goes to the bathroom. I’m already a big guy, he says, but he often forgets. He comes back, I still float on the surface of a sea that I really would like to enter. But I can not. I’m drifting, I’m lurking. The noise of the music on the cell phone irritates my thoughts. This program may not be appropriate for your age. No, the little tiger will not release the bone.
I take a deep breath, watch the time. The deadline flashes in my mind. Balance researcher student mother. There is an idea, I know there is. It is there, somewhere in my mind. I try to catch it with a butterfly catcher. Words fail me. The little song, the jumps, the screams, the idea, the drain, everything going away.
Mom!
It’s nothing, he just wants to take my concentration. But so what? I stand here paralyzed watching it fly away. I wanted that idea …
I spy the window, cloudy, cold, good, I can’t wash clothes, I have nowhere to dry, everyone at home, nobody needs clothes; that idea, the deadline, the comparative analysis, the bibliographical references!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lunch time. Research: what do we have in the fridge? I haven’t been there yet: there is a child climbing on my legs to sit on my lap and stand in front of the computer pressing the keys, erasing what I wrote, opening the developer screen… ahhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!
Image Credits: Competition Strategy
Check the portuguese brasilian version here. | https://medium.com/@acnardi79/real-life-chronicle-of-a-student-mother-1faeda13f739 | ['Aline Nardi'] | 2020-06-05 16:30:57.131000+00:00 | ['Chronicle', 'Students', 'Literature', 'Brazilian Literature', 'Moms'] |
Global Airdrops and their Regulations | Now that our technology introduces the new capability of global airdrops (i.e., massive sending of crypto-currency/tokens to anyone in the world, this new feature not being available in other blockchains), some of you have already been asking for their practical implementation. Just to be on the safe side, some notes concerning their regulation:
airdrops must be randomized to be considered gifts, otherwise it’s an offer of securities: do not target consecutive addresses or specific regions within a country.
do not ask for anything in exchange, not even promotions to third parties, otherwise it’s a sale of securities in exchange of non-pecuniary benefits.
These non-legally binding recommendations are based on previous administrative proceedings and may vary from country to country. | https://medium.com/@calctopia/global-airdrops-and-their-regulations-79697953ffd8 | [] | 2020-12-27 14:10:12.920000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Regulation', 'Airdrop', 'Crypto'] |
love their neighbors and work for social and political justice, he added. | Evangelicalism in America is nearing extinction due to the movement’s devotion to politics at the expense of its original calling to share the gospel, according to Mark Galli, former editor-in-chief of Christianity Today.
“The evangelicalism that transformed the world is, for all practical purposes, dying if not already dead,” Galli said during the “Conversations that Matter” webinar hosted by Baptist News Global Oct. 8. He spoke with BNG Executive Director and Publisher Mark Wingfield in an hour-long webinar that is available for viewing on BNG’s YouTube channel.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Liverpoolvsatalanta/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Mancityvsolympiacos/comments/k0wi9e/offitialsman_city_vs_olympiacos_live_streamsreddit/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Mancityvsolympiacos/comments/k0wi9l/offitialsolympiacos_vs_man_city_live_streamsreddit/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Mancityvsolympiacos/comments/k0wibz/official_livestream_man_city_vs_olympiacos_live/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Mancityvsolympiacos/comments/k0wibx/streamofficial_manchester_city_vs_olympiacos_live/
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https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/288115
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/288116
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/288117
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/288118
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/288121
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/288125
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/288145
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/288147
https://thesanguy.com/forum/topic/man-city-vs-olympiacos-live-stream-free/
https://thesanguy.com/forum/topic/man-city-vs-olympiacos-live-streaming-total-sportek/
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https://thesanguy.com/forum/topic/man-city-vs-olympiacos-livestream-free/
Now semi-retired, Galli served 20 years at Christianity Today and is the author of a new book, When Did We Start Forgetting God: The Root of the Evangelical Crisis and Hope for the Future.
While he has identified at times as Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Anglican and recently becoming Roman Catholic, Galli said he has remained true to his evangelical upbringing that emphasized evangelism and spiritual renewal.
“I am an evangelical Catholic,” he said.
Galli spoke on an array of other topics including the culture war divisions between Americans, the polities that divide churches, and how dialogue may help pastors and others hurdle those barriers.
That editorial
But he hit on a very high-profile topic, too: his December 2019 Christianity Today editorial describing President Donald Trump as morally unfit to hold office and arguing for his removal. It was published during the Congressional impeachment hearings.
“He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud,” Galli wrote. “His Twitter feed alone — with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies and slanders — is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.”
The piece generated severe backlash from the right, including from the president himself. The viciousness of responses often was hard to bear, Galli said.
The one possible thing he would redo, he said, is the headline — “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” — that placed the emphasis on politics, when it was faith that motivated his position, Galli explained. “I was making moral arguments to fellow evangelicals. But it sounded like a political comment.”
The editorial was not, as some claimed, an effort to back Trump’s opponent in the 2020 election. It’s just that Trump has “such deeply flawed moral character” that he needs to leave office, Galli said.
Trump has “such deeply flawed moral character” that he needs to leave office.
He has no quarrel with conservative evangelicals who acknowledge Trump’s flaws but still vote for him because he lines up on issues important to them, Galli said.
There were certainly plenty of those in 2016, according to a pre-election Pew survey that Christianity Today published titled, “Most Evangelicals Will Vote Trump, But Not for Trump.”
Rather than citing issues like abortion, religious freedom and support for Israel as rationale for voting Trump, white evangelicals were much more concerned about the economy four years ago, Galli recalled. “I get it. I disagree with their choice, but I respect their wrestling.”
On the other hand, he said he does not understand those evangelicals who refuse to criticize Trump on moral grounds, who believe liberals need some shaking up and describe the president in messianic terms.
He recalled an anecdote about a pro-Trump Christian describing the president as sitting “at the right hand of the Father” and said of this ideology: “That’s idolatry, clearly and simply.”
Demise of evangelicalism
To explain the demise of evangelicalism, Galli cited the legacy of Billy Graham, who even in advanced age preached to invite men and women of all races and cultures to Christ. “He was the glue that held evangelicalism together for many years,” Galli said.
“An unfortunate symbol of what evangelicalism has become is epitomized by his son, Franklin,” he continued. “Franklin stands for evangelicals on both the right and the left who believe that politics is an essential work of evangelical faith.”
“Franklin (Graham) stands for evangelicals on both the right and the left who believe that politics is an essential work of evangelical faith.”
One symbol of that politicization is an organization called Evangelicals for Trump.
“In describing themselves in that way, they have become just another political interest group, taking the great name ‘evangelical,’ with all its theological and doctrinal and gospel history and meaning and putting it in the service of a political candidate,” Galli asserted.
And from his vantage point, the news is no better from the evangelical left.
“What’s really troubling to me is that instead of decrying this coopting of the term ‘evangelical’ for political gain, the evangelical left has only mirrored this tragic move when they recently formed a group called Evangelicals for Joe Biden.”
Evangelical groups that focus almost solely on social justice and cultural change, instead of sharing the gospel, are contributing to the decline, too, he said.
“As a result, we’ve started to let the agenda of the world determine the agenda of the church, and we’ve sidelined evangelism and church renewal as the result.”
Galli said he noticed this trend during the hiring process at Christianity Today beginning in the 1990s. Candidates overwhelmingly were interested in cultural analysis, and perhaps one in 10 story ideas pitched was about evangelistic outreach.
For the most part, he added, the lack of interest in that founding mission of faith sharing exists across the board.
“I am going to go so far as to say that our fascination with social amelioration, and political activism, has watered down the evangelical faith to the point that it looks little different than mainline Christianity,” he said.
“We’ve forgotten that the genius of evangelical faith was its singular focus: spiritual renewal. ‘You must be born again’ was preached to individuals and to whole churches and denominations, from George Whitefield, John Wesley, to Charles Finney, to Dwight Moody to Billy Graham. It was preached in the First and Second Great Awakenings, it was preached by the circuit riders, and at local Baptist revivals every year or many times a year.”
Yet, that message is not being preached much nowadays, and there will be consequences, he said. “Evangelicals today no longer have a laser focus on evangelism and spiritual renewal. As a result, I believe they will fade away as will the very term.”
Who will the Lord raise up?
But Galli predicted the mission of evangelism will continue, possibly under a different name.
“In every generation, the Lord raises up some Christians to whom he gives the charism of evangelism and spiritual renewal. What they will be called in the future, I don’t know.”
“In every generation, the Lord raises up some Christians to whom he gives the charism of evangelism and spiritual renewal. What they will be called in the future, I don’t know.”
Citing the tradition of various orders within Roman Catholicism — Benedictines, Franciscans, Jesuits and so forth — he suggested one way to reclaim evangelicalism is for those called to evangelism to rise up as a holy order across the church universal.
With some portion of the church focused on evangelism, then Christians can be involved in the public square, love their neighbors and work for social and political justice, he added. “Christians should not run away from culture but dash right into the middle of it and do whatever it takes to show forth the righteousness of God.”
Friendship amid differences
Galli explained that he’s developed these insights partly in becoming Catholic, which has provided a different vantage point from which to view evangelicalism and the wider church.
Regarding Christian unity, he said: “I don’t know if there is a reason for us to be apart, but it’s hard to get together because no one is willing to give up anything. For example, talking to a Methodist and a Presbyterian reveals little difference, “but Methodists don’t want to give up their bishops and Presbyterians don’t want to submit to bishops.”
Divisions within congregations, especially politically driven ones, must be addressed delicately, Galli said, suggesting pastors preach on the Bible from the pulpit and speak with parishioners aside from their sermons about politics.
But he acknowledged that even the Bible has been politicized in the current climate.
“Unfortunately, everything is perceived as political,” he said. “We just have to remind ourselves there are more important things than politics.”
Former Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia lived that approach, he said. They did not let ideological differences prevent a friendship.
“That is something American leaders ought to be promoting,” he concluded. | https://medium.com/@6bishaladhikary3h/evangelicalism-in-america-is-nearing-extinction-due-to-the-movements-devotion-to-politics-at-the-e970c3288f60 | [] | 2020-11-25 17:51:45.460000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Sports', 'Vacation', 'News'] |
Right-Wing Terrorists Have Been a Threat for Decades | Many were shocked that a plot of this magnitude had been brewing here in the United States. However, anyone who has been paying attention to the threat posed by right-wing extremists shouldn’t be too surprised. The US has seen an increasing amount and intensity of right-wing extremist violence since 2016. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks hate groups and incidents of hate crimes, found that In 2018, 49 people were killed by right-wing extremists — more people than in any other year since the Oklahoma City bombing. In 2019, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that a majority of the bureau’s domestic-terrorism investigations were related to white supremacy.
For many Americans, this wave of right-wing terrorism might seem like an entirely new phenomenon, something that sprang, fully-formed, from the president’s Twitter feed or the fever-swamps of 4chan and 8chan.
But that is not the case. Like so many problems the US is dealing with now, the threat from right-wing terrorists has been with us for decades. Though they spread their message via social media instead of photocopied ‘zines, the recent crop of terrorists sounds a lot like the anti-government “militias” that have been around since the 1980s: hatred of government, belief in wild-eyed conspiracy theories, an all-consuming passion for “protecting the Second Amendment,” and an eagerness to take up arms to defend themselves against what they view as “tyranny.” Most (but not all) of these groups also espouse white supremacy.
Timothy McVeigh, before he blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, frequently wrote and spoke about how the government had turned tyrannical and was going to take away everyone’s guns any day now — and patriots needed to take up arms against it. And he was not alone: besides his two accomplices, he was sheltered and aided by a network of anti-government, white supremacist groups across the country. His attack remains the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in US history, killing 168 people, including 19 children, yet only McVeigh and his two accomplices were ever charged.
The Oklahoma City bombing put right-wing terrorism back on the FBI’s radar, even while the number of right-wing terrorist crimes and plots continued to increase. According to the SPLC: “Conspiracies hatched since the Oklahoma City attack have included plans to bomb buildings, banks, refineries, utilities, clinics and bridges; assassinate politicians, judges, civil rights figures and others; attack Army bases, National Guard armories and a train; rob banks, armored cars and individuals; amass illegal machine guns, missiles and explosives; and engage in huge tax and financial schemes.”
The FBI dedicated more of its efforts toward monitoring and infiltrating these terrorist groups, increasing its domestic terrorism caseload from 100 more than 900. At the state and local level, almost every major law enforcement agency developed some form of domestic terrorism task force. It seemed as though federal law enforcement was finally taking right-wing terrorism seriously.
However, only six years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Sept. 11 attacks occurred. As a result, most of the resources that had been dedicated to fighting terrorism were pulled away from the domestic right-wing threat and refocused on Islamic extremist threats.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Now largely off law enforcement (and media) radar, incidents of right-wing extremist violence continued to rise after Sept. 11, 2001, far outnumbering attacks by Islamic extremists.
In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (an agency created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks) released a series of reports about national security threats. One of these reports was about the threat from right-wing violence. While it downplayed the threat from right-wing terrorists, it did warn that with the election of the nation’s first African American president, along with widespread economic hardship, anti-immigrant sentiment, and the threat of potential gun-control legislation, the climate would be ripe for right-wing extremists to recruit and radicalize more people.
It went on to identify the ways in which Americans could become lured in and radicalized by these groups, and one group that DHS identified as being potentially vulnerable to radicalization were veterans who were having a hard time re-assimilating.
Republican pundits and lawmakers slammed the report, claiming it painted all veterans as potential terrorists (tellingly, the national commander of the VFW didn’t agree with that characterization). Under intense public pressure from Republicans, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano withdrew the report.
But Napolitano’s DHS was right. In addition to all the factors detailed in the report, the rise of social media gave jet fuel to right-wing extremists’ recruitment. From January 2008 to the end of 2016, according to data compiled by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and Type Investigations, of the 197 domestic terrorist plots (both foiled and executed), right-wing extremists accounted for 115 (or 58 percent), more than all left-wing and radical Islamic plots combined. Right-wing violence was also more deadly: nearly a third of their attacks resulted in fatalities.
But federal law enforcement didn’t (or wouldn’t) recognize the growing threat from right-wing extremists, instead focusing on the much smaller threat from Islamic extremists. When right-wing extremists did commit terrorist attacks, officials — and the media — often refused to call them “terrorists” or charge them as such.
The law enforcement agents who knew right-wing extremists posed a threat were pushed aside. According to a Time article from August 2019: “In more than a dozen interviews … current and former federal law-enforcement and national-security officials described a sense of bewilderment and frustration as they watched warnings go ignored and the white-supremacist terror threat grow. Over the past decade, multiple attempts to refocus federal resources on the issue have been thwarted. Entire offices meant to coordinate an interagency response to right-wing extremism were funded, staffed and then defunded in the face of legal, constitutional and political concerns.”
This willful blindness and even denial of right-wing terrorism was no accident. Department of Homeland Security officials recently went public with the fact that they had been pressured to downplay the threat of white supremacists and right-wing extremists. That pressure came, ultimately, from the White House.
Terrorism Under Trump
While it’s clear that right-wing terrorism has been around since long before Trump’s presidency, it’s also undeniable that it has skyrocketed during his tenure. Since the year Trump took office, the number of right-wing terrorist attacks has tripled. At least 87 people were killed by far-right terrorists during his first three years in office; if the 58 people killed by Stephen Paddock in the 2017 Las Vegas massacre are included, the total climbs to 145. During that same time, Islamic extremists killed 17, and left-wing extremists killed four.
Yet the president stubbornly refuses to denounce white supremacists or right-wing terrorists; he won’t even utter the phrases. When pressed, he gives half-hearted, vague statements, claiming he doesn’t know anything about the group in question. If public outcry is great enough, he’ll eventually give a stilted, forced statement clearly written by someone else. If he truly does loathe white supremacists and right-wing terrorists, one has to wonder why, after four years, he continues to flail and claim ignorance when directly asked about them, and why it takes days for him to come up with a clear statement of condemnation.
Instead, the president usually defends right-wing terrorists by lying about the circumstances of the attack — such as in the case of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, where Trump said the young man charged with killing two people “did nothing wrong” and “exercised his God-given, constitutional, common law and statutory law right to self-defense.” Worse, Trump unethically pressured DHS officials to make public comments sympathetic to Rittenhouse.
Perhaps even more troublingly, in nearly every instance where the president is asked to denounce the latest right-wing extremist attack, he quickly pivots to blaming Antifa and the left. He continues to falsely claim it is the left who is responsible for all the violence, painting an image of cities across America engulfed in flames and lawlessness. These sentiments are echoed throughout the right-wing media bubble, further stoking hatred and violence toward leftists, Democrats, and the marginalized communities long hated by the right.
This May Be Just the Beginning
The terrorist plot against Whitmer and the Michigan state government was the entirely predictable result of the president’s incessant defending and encouraging violent extremists. But it probably isn’t the last we’ll see from them.
It is no longer hyperbolic to fear that, should Trump lose the election in November, the right-wing terrorists he has been courting might commit violence aimed at keeping their commander in chief in power. In fact, retired military commanders Lt. Colonels John Nagl and Paul Yingling wrote an open letter to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley warning that Trump, a “lawless president” who is “following the playbook of dictators throughout history” … “is assembling a private army capable of thwarting not only the will of the electorate but also the capacities of ordinary law enforcement.” (Italics mine). While Nagl and Yingling were referring to militarized Homeland Security agents, the warning is equally, if not more, relevant to the threat from decentralized, radical right-wing extremists.
Trump has demonstrated, again and again, that he is willing to deploy paramilitary forces against his political opponents. And we have seen how frequently right-wing, civilian extremist groups work hand-in-hand with these forces (see: a Portland police lieutenant recently caught conspiring with the far-right group Patriot Prayer).
In fact, Trump has urged his followers to “go into the polls and watch very carefully,” a thinly veiled order to engage in voter intimidation. He consistently repeats the unfounded (and possibly GRU-sourced) conspiracy theory that the upcoming election is somehow “rigged” or fraudulent — stirring up anger and desperation among his followers. He repeatedly paints Antifa and the left as violent, existential threats to our nation. This rhetoric incites stochastic violence.
And it appears to be working. In public, right-wing extremists have either “predicted” or openly threatened violence if Trump doesn’t win the election. In private, according to organizations that monitor far-right extremist groups, there has been intensifying conversations about these very topics, and many of these groups are preparing to take up arms as vigilantes to “support law and order.”
The threat of right-wing terrorist attacks in the wake of the upcoming election is clear. We can only hope that in smashing the terrorist plot that was brewing in Michigan, law enforcement — both state and federal — will now, finally, take the threat of right-wing extremists seriously. | https://delanirbartlette.medium.com/right-wing-terrorists-have-been-a-threat-for-decades-a7f5add33464 | ['Delani R. Bartlette'] | 2020-10-16 14:35:29.007000+00:00 | ['Terrorism', 'Crime', 'Trump', 'Politics', 'News'] |
Safari = Pilgrimage (in South Africa’s Kruger National Park) | Taking photos
Wildlife photography (especially birds) is much harder than landscape photography. Often the subjects are small, they don’t stay still for long, and when you get near enough for a wonderful shot, they disappear. Amazingly frustrating!
And I brought just a cheap pocket camera with me to South Africa. But under ideal conditions (close and static objects and a lot of sun) even this camera could capture quite decent photos. Of course, sometimes I had really reached the limitations of my gear so the pictures became pretty blurry.
If you have a more expensive intermediate camera, I think that a 300mm objective (400mm for birds) is the best all-round lens for the park. You should use camera support, for instance a bean bag, with this telephoto lens so that your grip stays steady.
Grey heron wading in a waterhole of Kruger National Park
Spotting with binoculars
No matter how good camera you own, the most important gadget in Kruger is still a pair of decent binoculars: 10x42 are ideal (8x32 for birds).
Without binoculars, you can forget about spotting small birds that aren’t 10 meters in front of you. Forget about appreciating details on other wildlife — the gash on the lion’s hind leg, or the intricate way the elephant’s trunk picks out the best leaves, for example.
I’ve noticed that many park visitors solely use cameras. They want to take photos above everything else.
Sure, it’s great to capture moments to look back on. But I would argue that it’s more valuable to be in the moment and simply savor what you are witnessing. Besides, unless you are a professional photographer, chances are your photos will never do justice to what you actually see.
Small birds such as weavers are hard to spot without binoculars
Stargazing
One of the joys in Kruger is to study the night sky without the interference of city lights. It’s a humbling experience to consider our insignificance against the immensity of the universe.
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way alone contains about 100 billion stars. Scientists estimate that it would take 100,000 light-years to travel from one end of it to the other.
Meeting fireflies
The night doesn’t only bring bright stars but also fireflies. Before my visit, the summer months had delivered ample rains to the savanna and they had transformed the dry bush into a lush wonderland. Consequently, in the summer evenings, the unusual number of fireflies had transformed the darkness into dazzling displays of light.
After one dinner, these beetles — trying to attract mates — lit up my path back to the bed. Lying in a hide, the only sounds were natural ones and the only lights were from the scattering of stars and the fireflies in the riverbed. I was in a special piece of Kruger, for my eyes only. | https://medium.com/andys-anyland-tours-blog/safari-pilgrimage-in-south-africas-kruger-national-park-8147865162c1 | ['András Tóthmihály'] | 2020-12-14 21:28:02.983000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'World', 'Travel', 'South Africa', 'Outdoors'] |
Crypto Bill Approved by Malta’s Cabinet | Not only one, but the Cabinet of Malta has passed three cryptocurrency and blockchain technology related bills.
The approval of the bills was said to happen on a Tuesday. One of the bills is the Virtual Financial Assets Bill. According to the local media, it bears the regulatory framework for ICO’s and cryptocurrencies. The remaining bills are the Technology Arrangements and Services Bill and the Malta Digital Innovation Authority Bill.
The bills were also handed out to the Parliament of Malta for its first reading on Tuesday. After the reading, there would be a debate between the both side of the House before the bills are passed into law, as stated by the Malta Independent (local news).
Silvio Schembri, the Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services, have confidence that:“Once new laws surrounding blockchain technology and cryptocurrency are enacted in Malta,banks would be less reluctant to welcome companies working in the industry, presumably dueto the legal certainty it would provide.”
He also stated: “As a government, we think that by regulating this market, it will ensure that the three main principles of financial regulation are adhered to and will be a market that protects the investor and provides market integrity and financial soundness.”
A segment of the legislation which is the Technology Arrangements and Services Bill, handles the certification of technology and the registration of technology service providers. Examples of these are the ones that are concerning system inspectors and heads.
A new department was found and named after the third segment which is the Malta Digital Innovation Authority Bill, along with its duties and responsibilities. It centers on internal governance positioning. One of the main roles of the Authority is the certification of the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platforms to provide legal certainty and credibility to the users of the DLT platform.
The Virtual Financial Assets Bill, in addition to the earlier statement, will profile the regulatory command which will be relevant to cryptocurrency exchanges, considering:
The suggested bill will solidify Malta’s position on the DLT front and its reputation as a blockchain island. | https://medium.com/eliteclub-io/crypto-bill-approved-by-maltas-cabinet-fc440d529c38 | ['Max Neuhaus'] | 2020-08-10 09:47:15.700000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'ICO', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Regulation', 'Fintech'] |
How I Increased Landing Page Conversions | Landing pages are usually standalone pages on your website who’s only purpose in life is to grab someone’s contact information. Imagine a landing page is the person who’s standing outside your grocery store trying to collect your information. They are the ones with the clipboard and some enticing opening line.
Don’t let them change the color of the park bench! Sign this petition!
Companies of all shapes and sizes should be utilizing landing pages.
Why?
Because that’s how you get leads.
Unless you’re into buying leads but you really shouldn’t do that. But hey whatever works for you.
I digress.
There a few types of landing pages out there. But I’m here to tell you what’s worked for me when creating lead generation landing pages. These landing pages aim to acquire a lead’s contact information. Your landing page(s) should look different than your home page, about page, product page, etc. It shouldn’t be overly sales focused or pushy. It should have one objective in mind: get the conversion.
Let’s go. Liz believes in you.
Before we start let’s think about these questions:
What are you offering? Why should the user want to give you their contact information? What are the benefits of said offer? Is it worth giving you their precious email? Is the offer time-sensitive? Can you motivate them to act now instead of coming back later (or not at all)? What’s the path to get the offer? Are you using a form? Is the page user-friendly enough that the lead will convert without getting lost in the page?
Once you’ve answered those questions and written the answers down somewhere let’s begin…
No Nav Bars or Footers
Don’t give your user anything to click/navigate to other then the button that submits their information. Your landing page should be clean and distraction-free — almost like the easy mode on a phone. There shouldn’t be any other calls-to-action other than the one that converts them.
Landing page for Digital Ocean. So fresh and so clean clean.
Digital Ocean does this well. The only button I can click on this landing page is the one that signs me up and gives them my contact information. I mean, okay, technically they have Log In as a link but that’s just a formality more than anything. The person who wants to sign up for an account isn’t going to magically have pre-existing login credentials. Log In doesn’t distract from the conversion.
Digital Ocean’s landing page is a perfect example. It doesn’t have a navigation bar or footer to distract them. The path to convert is clear.
Make it Clean
The main goal of your landing page should be to make it as easy as humanly possible for a visitor to convert. Don’t clutter the page with side bars, amazing offers, heavy text or pop-ups. Keep it to the point.
Invision’s design is clean and well-organized. Snaps all around.
Invision’s landing page for their demo is pretty clean. The information you need is right there and there is only one point of action to take — sign up for a demo. They decided to add a “Watch Video” experience and the only reason it isn’t hindering is that it opens in lightbox so the visitor never actually clicks off the page.
If your landing page is easy to navigate you have a higher chance of a lead converting.
Use An Informative Header So They Know What You’re Offering
If your landing page is just a product screenshot or the cover of your eBook and a form then I must ask you….WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
That landing page tells me nothing. I want an enticing header that tells me about the offer. If you’re offering me an eBook that is going to help make me the leader of all things DevOps then tell me that.
Splunk gets it. They have the title of their eBook as the header. It’s got incredible marketing language. I mean The Essential Guide?? I must have this now.
Now let’s look at Docuware.
Their header is telling me what they are offering. Although it’s a bit vague. It’s enough to get me to read the body paragraph. The page itself is way too long and basically a home page but the top half has some points worth saving.
Tell Me More
If you’re trying to get me to download a whitepaper, eBook or some piece of collateral then tell me all the great things I’m going to learn when I download this document. If you’re trying to get me to sign up for a demo then tell me what is so fantastic about your product or what I’ll see in the demo. Splunk did this well in the above screenshot.
Domo utilizes green check marks. How nice.
I recommend no more than two paragraphs or one paragraph and some bulleted points about the offer. Keep them short and to the point. Domo did this well. They even bolded keywords for us. If you’re going to try this method please don’t get too crazy with the bolding. You don’t want to look like a Word document from the early 2000s.
Never forget.
Forms Should Be Concise
Each company will have varying degrees of what they want on their gated forms. Some just need the email but a business email, phone number, job title, and company size are what sales reps dream about. So work with your team and see what makes sense for your demographic. Keep in mind your personas. Do they want to fill out huge forms?
I actually made this meme. Go me.
I suggest only asking for the information YOU absolutely need. Most B2B companies ask for way too much information and end up losing the visitor.
Once you’ve sorted out what information you want on your forms. Create the form using a lot of whitespace. Don’t crowd the form fields. Make it easy to jump between lines.
When you can, use radio buttons or dropdown menus so the visitor doesn’t have to think too hard when filling it out. You don’t want to complicate the form. The easier the form is to complete, the better.
ServiceNow asks for way too much information. Maybe try using Smart Forms guys?
Most B2B companies use drop downs for job titles and departments. Everyone else usually uses drop downs for State and Country. If you can make the form easier to fill out then do it. Here are some other tips on making your form magical.
Build Trust
People want to feel like they can trust you and they’re part of something that other people already like and trust. You can achieve this trust by including logos of your current customers or by adding customer testimonials to the landing page.
If you’re going to include logos of your customers then make sure they are of high-quality, in uniform and not overly busy. They shouldn’t take up the page. Some companies prefer to just place logos on the page with no rhyme or reason whereas others like to have some sort of marketing language to go with them. If it were me, I’d go with the latter. If you can drive home your brand and messaging then why not? If it is genuine I say do it.
CrazyEgg’s customer logs are all (almost) the same size and not overly powering.
Including a customer quote on your landing page can help build trust or add what we in the biz like to call “social proof” but again use it sparingly. If it’s going to clutter the page then don’t bother. If the quote seems too good to be true or it sounds like someone in the PR department wrote it then don’t use it.
There are arguments for and against adding customer quotes to your landing pages. I vote that you A/B test both scenarios and see which works best for you.
Use Powerful Call-To-Action Buttons
Once they get to the end of the form there should be a strong action statement in your call-to-action. After all, it is called a call-to-action for a reason.
SproutSocial used a button that is on brand.
Be creative. Don’t have the CTA button just say “Submit” or “Send” — this button is another place you can add some flavor and show what your brand is about. It might take some time to see what is effective. A/B test different button colors (that make sense with your brand’s look and feel) and looks. Effective call-to-action button design could easily be a whole other post. But UserTesting has one that could help you in the meantime.
Test out different language in the buttons to see what converts better. Here is some effective CTA language that’s worked for me in the past:
Download Now
Get a Demo
Get Started
Get the PDF
Get eBook
View Case Study (but only if it opens in a new window and it is being tracked)
Talk to Us
Schedule Your Demo
Speak to an Expert
Let’s Do This (if your brand voice fits this style of language)
You know better than me what kind of language and design works for your company so take all of these tips into consideration when configuring your landing page. Don’t do anything off-brand or something that would trigger a negative experience for your visitors.
Targeted Landing Pages
A landing page by definition is unique so don’t use the same one over and over again for different personas.
If you’re going to run a campaign targeted for web developers don’t use the same landing page or messaging you would for the person who is in charge of accounting.
He’s not in charge of accounting. He’s in charge of p(up)ersonal.
Create a landing page that is unique and provides a distinct offer that fits the persona you are targeting. You should create multiple landing pages for each persona and each persona’s offer. The web developer’s campaign should have a different landing page for their demo and the collateral you want them to download– same persona but different offers. If that doesn’t make sense I can explain in more detail.
Take the time to craft one-of-kind landing pages per campaign, per persona, per offer and if applicable, per medium (eBook, whitepaper, demo, etc).
Here’s how I approach it. Spreadsheets are your friend.
Totally made up information but you get the idea right?
Some Other Things to Consider:
Make sure the landing page is responsive and you’ve accounted for mobile-friendly forms with fewer field options.
Always tailor the landing page for AdWords or PPC campaigns. Keep it targeted. You only have a few seconds to make an impression from a Google click.
Always test and document your efforts.
In order to create a lead generation landing page that actually generates leads you need to do some research on your personas. You need to figure out what kind of offers they want.
Kel would love a landing page that offered free orange soda for life.
After you’ve done your research and taken careful notes, try implementing what I’ve recommended. Test and see what works for your company. You might find that you don’t have enough customer logos yet so customer quotes are your thing. Or that a bright blue button on a muted landing page is really effective at driving conversions.
Not trying to sound like your parents but you don’t know until you try.
Why yes I did use Amy Poehler again. She’s amazing.
Whatever works for your brand, do it. Make sure you test and document and don’t forget to track your landing page urls please. It’ll make your job a lot easier.
Good luck. You can do it.
_____________________________________________________ A
I’m Allyssa. I am a hybrid designer who likes to front-end code, who loves marketing ops and marketing automation, growth hacking and content marketing. You can find me on Twitter usually tweeting about sports, music and whatever podcast I’m listening to. If you want to chat over email you can jet over to my website to send me a message.
You can view my portfolio over here or over at Behance. | https://heyitsallyssa.medium.com/how-i-increased-landing-page-conversions-e3aeed8774f1 | [] | 2018-01-11 00:58:16.746000+00:00 | ['Growth Marketing', 'Marketing', 'Conversion Optimization', 'Web Design', 'Digital Marketing'] |
‘Rasode Me Kaun Tha’ — A Parody or a Copyright Infringement? | One of the most viral videos that most of us have come across on social media during these COVID times is undoubtedly — “Rasode Me Kaun tha’, starring our very own Kokilaben and Gopi bahu. Made by Yashraj Mukhate, an Indian music producer, composer and a social media personality, the short video clip was so entertaining that it went viral within hours and had people crying out loud in laughter. The video raked in millions of views, and generated huge revenues for the creator, the question that arises with most such videos is what constitutes parody and what constitutes copyright infringement? In this case, the video is a modification of a dialogue / conversation between the actors in the original serial “Saath Nibhaana Saathiya”, a famous Indian Television Series of Star India Pvt Ltd. The copyright act plays an important role here to determine whether this clip is a case of parody or that of copyright infringement.
Copyright and Parody
The general principle of copyright is that no one has copyright over an idea. There is no copyright on themes, movie plots or subject matter until the these are expressed and fixed on some tangible medium. In cases of parody, where the source is an original work, it is difficult to make a distinction between creative criticism and imitation. Some clarity has been provided by the court in this regard. The court has defined that when copying is done for criticism, it amounts to fair dealing and does not fall under infringement of copyright. The court in the matter of Civic Chandran has laid down 3 tests to determine infringement and fair use: “(1) the quantum and value of the matter taken in relation to the comments or criticism; (2) the purpose for which it is taken; and (3) the likelihood of competition between the two works.” One more factor which needs to be considered is, ‘intent’ of the creator. One needs to find the intent behind making a parody. It needs to be checked whether the parody is made for commercial purpose and whether the goodwill of the original work is being used to exploit profit out of it, which ultimately constitutes copyright infringement.
Section 52(1)(a) of Indian Copyright (Amendment) Act 2012 provides for fair dealing exemptions where an original work is used for criticism and review. Such an act under this provision does not amount to copyright infringement.
Let us try to analyze whether the video ‘Rasode me kaun tha’ violates the right of the broadcaster or the performer under the Copyright Act, 1957 or not.
Broadcaster’s Rights
Section 37 of the Copyright Act provides for the broadcast reproduction rights of broadcasting organizations. It reads as follows:
“37. Broadcast reproduction right.- (1) Every broadcasting organisation shall have a special right to be known as “broadcast reproduction right” in respect of its broadcasts.
(2) The broadcast reproduction right shall subsist until twenty-five years from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the broadcast is made.
(3) During the continuance of a broadcast reproduction right in relation to any broadcast, any person who, without the licence of the owner of the right does any of the following acts of the broadcast or any substantial part thereof,-…”
The broadcaster has the broadcast reproduction right up to 25 years and if somebody reproduces the content without the license of the broadcaster then it has a right to claim copyright infringement under Sec 39.
The main component of this section is that the person should use a ‘Substantial part’ of the cinematographic content. If we apply this condition to the video made by Yashraj, we find that the video is 56 seconds long whereas the original episode (Saath Nibhaana Saathiya Episode 67) is of 43 minutes. This therefore clearly cannot be considered as a substantial part of the original content.
It has been argued in many such cases that videos uploaded on social media provide the creator with an opportunity to earn from the content he/she broadcasts. If there is an economic benefit involved, then the intent of the person should not be considered as being creative but more as being profit-making in nature. In this case however, Yashraj’s video is firstly in no way a substantial part of the original work, hence it does not fall under the ambit of section 37. Secondly, the video “rasode me kaun tha” is an original work by Yashraj and if he earns anything from it on social media platforms then the broadcaster has no right to ask a share in these earnings.
Performer’s Right
Under section 38 of the Indian Copyright Act, performers are provided with some moral rights. One of these rights relates to distortion or modification of the performance of the performer under section 38B (b). The section reads as follows:
“1[38B. Moral rights of the performer.- The performer of performance shall, independently of his right after assignment, either wholly or partially of his right, have the right,- (a) to claim to be identified as the performer of his performance except where omission is dictated by the manner of the use of the performance; and
(b) to restrain or claim damage in respect of any distortion, mutilation or other modification of his performance that would be prejudicial to his reputation.”
This section was added by an amendment in the act in the year 2012. As per this section if the performer’s performance is mutilated, distorted or modified in such a way that his/her performance affects the reputation of the performer then the performer can file for copyright infringement.
Copyright ethics
If we consider the case of Kokilaben’s character in the “Rasode me Kaun Tha” video we find that it has been modified, but does it devalue the reputation of the character Kokilaben or the performer Rupal Patel? It certainly does not. Contrary, it has brought Rupal Patel and the serial into the limelight once again 3 years after the show went off — air in 2017. The video has had such a massive impact that the second season of this show is now back on public demand. The video has been praised so much by people that actor Rupal Patel personally praised the work done by Yashraj Mukante. Recently, Paytm, an app-based payment company released an advertisement where Rupal Patel is seen acting similar to her Kokilaben character and using the keywords of her dialogue from the viral video. So, demeaning and distorting of character or performer’s image is not the contention in this case.
If the actor had felt that her reputation was being affected negatively the video then a case could have surely been made under the Act, but the actor in such an instance would have had to prove the damage she had incurred and how the character’s modification had affected her reputation.
Conclusion
The principle behind a copyright is to grant certain exclusive rights to the creator which would allow him/her to protect his/her work and receive economic benefits from his/her work of creativity. Copyrights promote the creativity of the creator and are aimed at achieving public good. While copyright intends to provide access to creative works to the public, it is important to understand that it imposes no obligation upon the creator to make his/herwork available to the public. In such a situation the work does not come into the public domain as a consequence affecting the public at large.
It is expected that one should take proper permissions from the owner of the work before publishing or altering or modifying the original work, but one cannot expect that every small project, a creator would have to go after the different owners of a copyrighted work to seek their permission. This would invariably prove to be a cumbersome task for the creator directly affecting the “creativity” of the creator. This is precisely something that copyright law would never intends to allow
Parody and spoof are contents which are made majorly for entertainment purpose and to criticize or review the original content. They are considered as fair use of the original work and do not fall under copyright infringement under the Copyright Act. The creator of the spoof or parody is expected to maintain a balance between the review of the content and tampering the image of the performer. Performers have been granted some moral rights and if they feel that their reputation is being distorted then they can move the court. The court also needs to see whether such modification and distortion indeed damages the reputation of the performer as claimed or not. This needs to be seen in a bigger context because, if all performers start to use Sec 38B (b) then the aim of this section would be defeated. Copyright act tries to maintain a balance between the protection of the owner and his work and the access of such work to the public at large. The latest amendment in the Copyright Act in 2012 provides the performers rights but it does not mean that the performance will not be available to the public at large. This act has seen many changes and amendments with time, trying its best to adapt and cope with new challenges faced in the copyright field.
The viral video of “Rasode me kaun tha” does not constitute a copyright infringement as it does not violate section 37 and section 38B of the act. It is purely a parody.[GM1] The creativity shown by the creator has been remarkable and appreciable. Such creativity cannot be restrained or hindered by the Copyright Act nor did the act intend to do so.
Civic Chandran and Ors. v C. Ammini Amma and Ors., 16 PTC 329 (Kerala), 1996
https://copyright.gov.in/Copyright_Act_1957/chapter_viii.html
https://copyright.gov.in/Copyright_Act_1957/chapter_viii.html
[GM1] This is contrary to your definition of a parody. | https://medium.com/@himanshusinha01/rasode-me-kaun-tha-a-parody-or-a-copyright-infringement-466c32b11577 | ['Himanshu Sinha'] | 2021-05-22 17:39:29.938000+00:00 | ['Copyright', 'Legal', 'Intellectual Property', 'Rasode Me Kon Tha', 'Parody'] |
GO-TO-THE-MARKETS | Certainly the phrase/concept GO-TO-MARKET is not new. For me it rings most common with products; and in the last many years definitely includes mobile applications as a massive amount of products. This is not a story about exploding the newest “APP”. I don’t do that; I provide professional consulting services and execution of the ideas I consult on. But there is something to be learned for just about any business by looking at others; especially those who are radically different than your own.
I constantly am thinking to myself how do I spread the gospel more? Every now and again, like now, I think out loud, about what professional services firms do (or don’t), to GO-TO-THE- MARKETS. Ah, there is more than one? Hmmm. You will have to decide whether there is just one or hundreds for you.
Markets are the life blood of any economic activity. A niche service does not likely have the value to warrant a Super Bowl ad. But likely there are a few for you to at least consider. So how do you go to them to let them know you exist? That’s a constant thought (or should be if you are going to be around for long).
The answers depend upon what you do, how aggressive you want to be, how much effort you want to exert, and how much return you want. Wait…I can decide those things? Well, you have to. And, you may have to decide how often do you want to re-invent yourself.
So how does a professional services business GO-TO-THE-MARKETS it wants to operate in and announce they exist. And broadcast what the proposition they have to make is? What’s the approach? Does this only apply to a service provider (seller), or could it apply to a service seeker (buyer) who wants to improve the services they buy?
Here’s one set of thoughts:
1. Figure out who you are;
2. Who you would like to hang out with and who may want to hang out with you (you’ll spend more time with them than your family);
3. What you won’t do and will; and
4. Where it’s at to satisfy all that.
Sounds intense!!!! Sounds like an exercise that may require you to put yourself on the coach and go deep! YES! Even if what you do seems simple and you think you already know what you need to do; do it anyway.
I recently learned about a way Charlie Munger thinks about stuff; Inversion. In Christian Busch’s Serendipity Mindset as I recall Munger’s statement was “If you want to help Somalia, first think about what hurts Somalia.” That was a major light bulb (especially for a contrarian thinker like I am).
I Can’t tell you how to be like Charlie Munger. I suspect that Mr. Munger would tell you that if you try to emulate him, you are missing the point. But hopefully my think out load moment was helpful, and in return I get some nuggets back from you.
Chad K. Wakefield, PMP
The Chief Champion of You!!!!! | https://medium.com/@chad-revival/go-to-the-markets-436712a90257 | ['Chad Wakefield'] | 2020-12-29 16:43:41.547000+00:00 | ['Go To Market', 'Business Development', 'Sales', 'Impact', 'Business Strategy'] |
How to align your self-image to your growth | When life makes you grow, ensure you raise the bar accordingly.
Photo by Larry Crayton on Unsplash
As tough as 2020 has been, surely has taught us something. As a result of our resilience and adaptability, we have outgrown some of our fears, doubts and limiting beliefs, proving them insubstantial.
What I notice, though, is that unless I ask my clients questions that shine a light on their actual growth and how they’re going to maximise it, they keep behaving the same, not raising their bar at all.
Our self-image (that is, our perception of ourselves) determines how we operate in the world, the boldness of our actions and the outcomes they generate. Ensuring our self-image is aligned with whom we have grown into is critical to raise the bar to an appropriate and fulfilling level.
How to re-align our self-image
By comparing our beliefs, fears and doubts with facts, evidence and results.
Evidence will tell you if they were real or not and will motivate you to let go of the obsolete and limiting ones.
Let’s say, for example, that at the beginning of the year, you dreaded the lockdown, felt frightened to work from home without the usual structure or felt uncomfortable to be with yourself. What impact have these thoughts had on your mood/behaviour/performance?
Observing yourself now from an external, objective perspective, how many of these fears/doubts/limiting beliefs proved substantial? What does the evidence say about them?
Dr Susan Jeffers, the author of the outstanding “Feel the fear and do it anyway” evergreen, says there’s only 10% of probabilities that our worst-case scenario actually happens…
I was delighted to see how some of my clients felt intimidated by the scale of their challenges in March and, to their surprise, overcame them brilliantly throughout the year. Their fears truly evaporated.
What can we do with such awareness?
The truth is, if we’ve grown, that means new opportunities are available for us that were not perceived as accessible before. Unless we reflect on that, we depreciate our efforts and leave better options unexplored. The confidence we’ve acquired must be recognised, utilised and maximised by asking ourselves questions such as: what opportunities are available for me now, that I couldn’t see before? If the pandemic — or any tough circumstance I’ve been through - has reshaped who I am, what will I do differently from now on?
Follow this process to re-align and embrace your new self-image:
An example of how you could go through this process: 1 — observe your beliefs, 2 — replace them with empowering ones, 3 — explore a wider set of options.
Tip: you can follow the same process to align your self-image with your new skills too. You’ve learnt new things this year, read new books, developed new habits. What can you do now that you couldn’t do before? What opportunities have opened up for you?
To maximise your rewiring brain capability and turn this work into actual changes in your behaviour, do not just think about all this, instead bring it to life. That may mean writing about it (ideally on paper), talking about it aloud or discussing it in detail with a wise friend or a coach. Old thinking patterns are hard to rewire, so quality time and consistency are vital to change.
Keep asking yourself:
· What have I learned in 2020? What’s different compared to what I knew about myself in 2019? How has my behaviour changed? Why?
· What fear/doubt did I have at the beginning of the year that has no longer reason to exist? How does this realisation make me feel?
· Now that I’ve let go of fears, doubts and limiting beliefs, what opportunities are available for me that were not available before? What will I do about them?
· What will I do differently in the other pivotal areas of my life now that I’ve raised my self-image?
· How will I express my-new-self in 2021? What do I commit to and by when?
To ensure your self-image and behaviour are consistently aligned with your growth, I’d recommend guided-journaling. I specify guided because the brain is by default attracted by existing details, so you need to intentionally direct its attention to something less tangible (and therefore more energy-consuming), such as exploring the self. To help my clients focus on what’s essential versus what happened, I’ve created a growth-oriented, guided-journal which I’m happy to share with you. Send me an email at [email protected] with “Guided-Journal please” in the subject, and it will be on your way straight-away as an incentive to stay true to yourself.
So, are you ready to embrace your self-image and live up to your potential?
Let me know in the comments below. | https://medium.com/@brunadepalo/how-to-align-your-self-image-to-your-growth-778243eca7be | ['Bruna De Palo'] | 2021-01-04 19:53:47.495000+00:00 | ['Growth', 'Confidence', 'Change Your Life', 'Journal', 'Self Image'] |
Setting Running Goals for 2021 | Running
Setting Running Goals for 2021
How long will races be canceled?
Photo by Mārtiņš Zemlickis on Unsplash
I cannot wait for 2020 to be over so I can run races again. I miss feeling the excitement of thousands at the starting line. I love being able to test my training efforts and the social aspect of races. With quarantine, it feels like I am missing out.
Truth is, we don't know when races will reopen again. Many think it will be sometime next year, but there’s no guarantee. I currently have seven canceled marathons and an ultra which are rolling into 2021. Who knows how I will run that many, even if they all still do happen. I need a Plan B. I don't want to pay $40 to just get shipped a medal and tee after running outside. I’m looking for a stimulating challenge, trying to compensate for this dreadful year!
Here are a few ideas I have to fill that gap. I hope they can also inspire you if you are in the same boat!
Photo by Mārtiņš Zemlickis on Unsplash
Crossing State Lines: Being a Chicagoan, I have always wanted to run to Wisconsin (40 miles). I have already run to Indiana (25 miles) before, but I have an itch for more states. While it’s not going to have the social aspect of a race, I do feel the challenge alluring since I am not even sure I can do it! Regardless of what state you live in, maybe crossing state lines can help fill the void. Iowa (160 miles) is also enticing, but since it involves multiple nights stays and traveling into much unknown, I am not sure I am ready for that yet. Whatever your skill level is, pack some light supplies and run to a place you’ve never run to before! Beautiful Landscapes: I’ve been on so many gorgeous courses in the races I have run, but it doesn't need to stop. I’m going to rent a cabin somewhere out in the country and spent my days running around! I’m a city boy, so running along the Great Lakes or around the Smokey Mountains of Tennesee seems like a perfect weekend getaway. A lot of the West Coast folks are probably used to running on some stunning trails, but the idea is to change up the scenery. If you live somewhere hot, visit somewhere cold, and vice versa. If you are used to running in the forest, maybe try a desert. The U.S. is blessed with a wide variety of terrains so hop in your car and drive towards it!
Photo by Mārtiņš Zemlickis on Unsplash
3. CRAW (Circumpolar Race Around the World): While I quickly got disenchanted with the virtual race scene, it’s because it’s usually only a one-time thing and lacks a social aspect. You may want to consider CRAW like I did, as you join a team of up to 10 others where you will run about 31,000 miles (48,500 km) together for the next 1–2 years. It will keep you busy and being on a team working towards a common goal will feel less isolating. Their Facebook group is a riot! CRAW is run by Laz, who is famous for the Barkley Marathons, one of the toughest ultras out there (definitely watch the documentary about it!). There are special silver and gold buckles if your team finishes early. If that’s too extreme, there are plenty of other virtual experiences popping up that involve more than just a one-day 5k race.
Even if 2021 follows the uncertain fate of 2020, this is my tentative plan. I’m excited about it! Keep challenging yourself regardless of what’s going on! | https://medium.com/runners-life/setting-running-goals-for-2021-d8234f5db86b | ['Bradley S.'] | 2020-10-20 13:58:16.619000+00:00 | ['Fitness', 'Goals', 'Running', 'Marathon', 'Quarantine'] |
Correlation vs Regression — The Battle of Statistics Terms | Statistics is complex. For newbies, starting to learn statistics can be painful if they don’t have right resources to learn from. Well, this is my 3rdblog on statistics, I’m super excited to start with the concept of Correlation vs regression. So lets first understand it.
Correlation vs regression both of these terms of statistics that are used to measure and analyze the connections between two different variables and used to make the predictions. This method is commonly used in various industries; besides this, it is used in everyday lives.
For example, you might see that someone is wearing expensive attire; you automatically think that he/she might be financially successful. Another example of it is that you think to lose weight by working out in the morning, and then you start running from the next morning.
The above-mentioned examples are the real-life examples of correlation vs regression, as one variable, i.e., expensive attires, is directly related to other variables, i.e., being wealthy. Therefore, we have provided you the list of similarities and differences of correlation vs regression.
What is the correlation?
As correlation itself give you the meaning of the word that is ‘co’ means together, and ‘relation’ means a connection or the link between two quantities. Or we can say that if a variable change, then another variable will automatically change whether it could be directly or indirectly.
For instance, assume that we have two different variables x and y. The changes in these two variables are taken as positive or negative. Whenever the two variables are changed in the same direction. Or we can say that if a single variable is increasing, then the second variable will also increase then the change is considered to be positive.
The formula of correlation
The correlation coefficient is used to indicate the data of the relationship between two variables by using the following formula:
Where
rxy — the correlation coefficient of the variables x and y.
— the correlation coefficient of the variables x and y. xi — the values of the x-variable is a representation.
— the values of the x-variable is a representation. x̅ — the mean of the values of the x-variable.
— the mean of the values of the x-variable. yi — the values of the y-variable in a representation.
— the values of the y-variable in a representation. ȳ — the mean of the values of the y-variable.
There are a few common types of tests to measure correlation, these are: Pearson, Spearman rank, and Kendall Tau. Each have their own assumptions about the data that needs to be meet in order for the test to be able to accurately measure the level of correlation. These are discussed further in the post. Each type of correlation test is testing the following hypothesis.
H0 hypothesis: There is not a relationship between variable 1 and variable 2
HA hypothesis: There is a relationship between variable 1 and variable 2
If the obtained p-value is less than what it is being tested at, then one can state that there is a significant relationship between the variables. Most fields use an alpha level of 0.05 which I will also use.
There are a few types of correlation:
Positive correlation: as one variable increases so does the other
Negative (inverse) correlation: as one variable increases the other variable decreases
No correlation: there is no association between the changes in the two variables
The strength of the correlation matters. The closer the absolute value is to -1 or 1, the stronger the correlation.
r valueStrength0.0–0.2Weak correlation0.3–0.6Moderate correlation0.7–1.0Strong correlation
Pearson correlation assumptions
Pearson correlation test is a parametric test that makes assumption about the data. In order for the results of a Pearson correlation test to be valid, the data must meet these assumptions:
The sample is independently and randomly drawn
A linear relationship between the two variables is present
When plotted, the lines form a line and is not curved
There is homogeneity of variance
The variables being used in the correlation test should be continuous and measured either on a ratio or interval sale, each variable must have equal number of non-missing observations, and there should be no outliers present.
Spearman Rank correlation assumptions
The Spearman rank correlation is a non-parametric test that does not make any assumptions about the distribution of the data. The assumption for the Spearman rank correlation test is:
There is a monotonic relationship between the variables being tested
A monotonic relationship exists when one variable increases so does the other
For the Spearman rank correlation, the data can be used on ranked data, if the data is not normally distributed, and even if the there is not homogeneity of variance.
Kendall’s Tau correlation assumptions
The Kendall’s Tau correlation is a non-parametric test that does not make any assumptions about the distribution of the data. The only assumption is:
There should be a monotonic relationship between the variables being tested
The data should be measured on either an ordinal, ratio, or interval scale.
What is the regression?
Regression represents how the single variable affects the other variable, or a single variable can be responsible for the changes in another variable. It implies that the results are dependent on a single or more variable.
For example, correlation is used to define the relationship between the two variables, Whereas regression is used to represent the effect of each other. The example of it is, because of heavy rainfall, several crops can be damaged. And it could lead to floods also.
The formula of regression
The regression is used to represent the relationship between a variable and an independent variable. So it can be represented as:
Where:
Y — Dependent variable.
— Dependent variable. X — Independent variable.
— Independent variable. a — Intercept.
— Intercept. b — Slope.
— Slope. ϵ — error (Residual).
Now before proceeding to the differences of both correlation vs regression, let’s find out the similarities of both.
Similarities of both correlation vs regression
Both terminologies are used to quantify the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables.
There is a certain point when correlation and regression slope both are negative individually.
Again both correlation and regression slope can be positive.
Differences between correlation vs regression
Besides the similarities, there are some differences that are listed below:
Parameter for Correlation and Regression:
Definition: Correlation is used to measure statistics that determine the connection between two variables. Regression is used to represent the connection between the independent and dependent variables.
Usages :Correlation is used to show the linear connection between two variables. Regression is used to get the best data and to estimate a single variable on the basis of other variables.
Independent and dependent variables: In Correlation, there is no difference between both variables. In Regression, both of the variables are different from each other.
Indicate: The coefficient of Correlation signifies the extent to which the two variables values that move together.Regression signifies the effect of changes in the units that are known as a variable (X) on the estimated variable (Y).
Aim: Correlation helps to get the numeric values expressions’ relation between variables.Regression helps to determine the values of selected variables on the basis of the fixed variables.
Data representation: Correlation represents a single point. Regression can represent the data with a line.
Use mathematical equations: No, Correlation has no direct connection between mathematical equations.Yes, there is a direct connection between mathematical equations in Regression.
Conclusion
The above discussion on correlation vs regression shows that there are similarities and dissimilarities between the two mathematical concepts, even though both are studied together. The correlation is used by the researchers when they want to know the variable under the study are correlated or not if this is so. Then what is the strength of the association. Whereas, the regression analysis is used to get function relationship between the two variables to make the further projections of the events.
Thanks for the read. I am going to be writing more beginner-friendly posts in the future too. Follow me up to be informed about them.
Clap if you liked the article! | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/correlation-vs-regression-the-battle-of-statistics-terms-f3db85fef0a6 | ['Vijay Choubey'] | 2020-07-30 13:39:24.746000+00:00 | ['Mathematics', 'Statistics', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science'] |
The SEO Checklist By SEO Buddy | MAKING SEO SO EASY YOUR GRANDMOTHER COULD DO IT
Get your website on the first page of Google
(even if you’re not sure what you’re doing)
The SEO Checklist is a step-by-step guide to every important SEO action you need to take
to optimise your website and get more organic traffic.
WHAT IF SEO WAS AS EASY AS FOLLOWING A CHECKLIST?
Introducing The SEO Checklist
The SEO Checklist is a step-by-step framework to help you take action and climb the Google rankings faster. This is the comprehensive SEO guide you need to get your website to page #1 of Google.
Free-flowing organic traffic is a beautiful thing
To really appreciate the power of SEO, think about what your prospective customer is doing when they’re using Google…
They’re NOT scrolling mindlessly through social media.
They’re NOT reading gossip about their friends.
And they’re NOT busy doing something else.
No. It’s the exact opposite.
They have stopped what they’re doing. They have typed (or spoken) a search query into Google. They’re actively looking for your help.
SEO is all about getting your website to show up in Google, so YOU can provide that person with the help they need (which sooner or later will be your product or service).
Being on the first page of Google is worth your hard work
91% of adults use search engines to find information
(they should find your site).
(they should find your site). Google dominates search with over 90% of the market (that’s roughly 5.8 billion searches a day)
(that’s roughly 5.8 billion searches a day) About 95% of searchers only look at the first page of Google (let’s help you get there).
(let’s help you get there). The top organic search result in Google gets clicked over 30% of the time.
Moving up one position in the search results can increase click through rates by over 30%.
46% of all searches are looking for local info
(if your customers are local, this is a big deal)
(if your customers are local, this is a big deal) People view highly ranked sites as more authentic and trustworthy (and trust leads to higher conversion rates).
Just ask for your money back with our 60-day guarantee
The SEO Checklist Bundle is designed to be super practical and valuable. I want these resources to actually help you with your SEO efforts. But I also want to make buying it completely risk-free for you.
So buy the bundle today and take your time working through it. If you don’t think it’s going to help you, then get in touch within 60 days and I will give you a full refund. | https://medium.com/@abashassan105/the-seo-checklist-by-seo-buddy-4d40440b3a7a | ['Abas Hassan Abdulkarim'] | 2020-12-27 07:54:48.914000+00:00 | ['Affiliate Marketing', 'E Business Suite', 'SEM', 'SEO', 'Marketing'] |
Tachyons: The Hypothetical Faster-Than-Light Particles in Physics | Shortly after, it was established that the tachyons would not under any circumstances lead to faster than light propagation, but would instead lead to the previously mentioned “Tachyon condensation”, where unstable particles would due to quantum fluctuation decay into stable ones. More about that later.
Relativity theory — what does Einstein have to say?
Does the relativity theory state that nothing can move faster than light? It actually only states that nothing with a non-zero mass can accelerate to the speed of light (and above) because it would require infinite energy and get an infinite mass. Only if the particle is massless (like photons and gluons) it can travel the speed of light.
So, according to relativity theory, a particle will not be able to accelerate to faster than the speed of light. But what if it always had that speed, from the beginning of the Universe? What if it was born like that in the Big Bang?
If such a particle existed, it would not be able to decelerate to slower than light. It would have this weird property, that its required energy would decrease as its velocity increased, and hence it would approach its lowest energy state when it approached the speed of infinity. Visa Versa, it would require infinite energy to slow down to the speed of light and would hence never be able to cross that speed limit. This makes the speed of light a two-way barrier to particles traveling at speeds on either side of it
That would not be breaking the rules of relativity, it would, however, have other weird properties:
Tachyons would have an imaginary rest mass (assumingly that energy needs to be a real and positive value, it follows from the equation below. If the denominator is an imaginary value, then the numerator needs to be the same, for the result to be a real value).
An observer could see them travel in the opposite direction through time, thus being able to see them before they are created (in the frame of the observer), depending on the relative configurations between the frames in spacetime.
Fun fact, while particles with imaginary mass are called tachyons, ordinary particles with a non-zero mass that travel slower than light are called bradyons (or tardyons) and massless particles are called luxons:
Bradyon: v < c, m²>0
Luxons: v = c, m²=0
Tachyons: v > c, m²< 0
All three classes of particles can exist in theory (the first two we know quite well), and the third group is not breaking any physical laws. But none of the particles can switch to another class.
Totalitarian principle in quantum physics:
“Everything not forbidden is compulsory.”
The Higgs field was a tachyonic field before spontaneous symmetry breaking
All theories that involve tachyonic fields are cases of spontaneous symmetry breaking. The Higgs mechanism is an example of spontaneous symmetry breaking and hence also an example of a tachyonic field at the beginning of the Universe.
First, a short explanation of spontaneous symmetry breaking.
Usually, physical systems will be symmetric in potential energy around its stable state at a local minimum, which means that the energy potential only has one lowest and hence one resulting stable state.
But in the lowest energy state in a vacuum, a quantum system might not exhibit the same symmetry. Fluctuations might result in a spontaneous symmetry breaking, where two lowest states are possible and one is chosen. The symmetry is broken with that choice of configuration.
A visualization of the energy potential at a high enough energy level with symmetry (left). At lower energy levels, the center becomes unstable, one of the positions with both a lower energy state is chosen and the result is that symmetry is broken (middle-right). Credits: CC/commons.wikimedia.org
An example of a spontaneous symmetry breaking happened when the weak and the electromagnetic force broke from the unified electroweak force when the Universe was about a picosecond old and 1,000,000,000,000,000 K (10¹⁵ K ) hot.
Before the Universe cooled down to this temperature**, fundamental forces of electromagnetism and weak fundamental force were unified as one force: The electroweak force. Given the same amount of energy (246 GeV), the two forces would unify again into one electroweak force.
(**according to current theories it was at 10³² K at the Planck time — the shortest period of time that makes sense in calculations, 10–⁴³ sec.)
Electromagnetism and weak fundamental force appear to be two completely different forces with different corresponding force-carrying particles. While the electromagnetic force is carried by the massless photon, the particle carriers of the weak force, that can change the flavor of quarks and make particle decay, are W and Z bosons with a relatively heavy particle mass.
Those particles didn’t exist before the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the electroweak force. There were four massless bosons for carrying the electroweak force, three W bosons (carrying spin ) and one B boson (carrying charge +1). They were energy-symmetric and massless.
With the massless force carriers, every interaction happens at the speed of light, particles colliding, annihilating and creating in quantum fluctuations.
As the temperature and energy level drops to 246 GeV, something happens. The particles start interacting with the underlying Higgs field, which we call the Higgs mechanism. The symmetry of the massless W and B bosons break, creating new particles, by interacting with the four components of the Higgs fields, two charged and two neutral Higgs fields. This creating new particles and force carriers:
Two charged W bosons, W- and W+(created from two of the W bosons and the charged Higgs fields).
Two neutral particles, the Z_ 0 and the photon, γ (created from the neutral Higgs fields).
A Higgs boson is created as a consequence, coupling with all other particles giving them their rest mass.
While the W+, W-, and the Z bosons get their masses from interacting with the Higgs fields, the photon remains massless.
Before the symmetry breaking, the Higgs field (but not the particles) had an imaginary mass, meaning it was a tachyonic field.
The imaginary mass really means that the field is unstable, having a minimum in potential energy at a local maximum instead of a local minimum. Small fluctuations at a quantum level would lead the field to one of the local minimums, as seen in the figure above. This is the tachyonic condensation that happened, breaking the electroweak symmetry, giving mass to the W and the Z particles, and condensate the unstable tachyonic Higgs field into the stable Higgs field.
I’ll stop throwing words at you now. Here’s a kitty in a Mexican hat instead (The Mexican hat cat!).
Mexican hat cat! Credits: Own production with images from Canva.
Time Travel, Dark energy, and all other cool stuff
As mentioned, tachyonic particles might be observed traveling backward in time due to their speed being faster than the light reaching the observer. That is if they could be observed at all, which is not the case. So far they exist only as hypothetical particles and cool science fiction stories.
Unfortunately, the only cool consequence of a tachyonic field so far has been the spontaneous symmetry breaking, changing the standard model of the Universe. But that was the age of the Universe ago.
On the positive side, there is still so much we don’t know about the physics of the Universe we live in, like what is most of it (95%) is really made of. The fundamental particles that we currently know only constitute about 5% of the entire Universe.
27% of the Universe is contributed by dark matter, which we only know is something with a mass that we cannot observe (but we can observe the effects of the extra mass). It could be some exotic matter, that doesn’t interact with photons and that we haven’t discovered yet.
68% is dark energy, which we know almost nothing about, other than there is something that accelerates the expansion of the universe. We call it dark energy, because we can’t see it and because it’s expanding something, like energy usually does. But other than that — we have no idea.
One explanation using fluctuating tachyon-anti-tachyon pairs is given by two physicists, Herb Fried and Yves Gabellini, in a publication The Birth and Death of a Universe.
Although it might sound like an exciting idea solving several problems at ones, this theory makes radical assumptions of the existence of a specific type of tachyons, which makes most physicists wary of such a theory.
Herb Fried behind the original publication explains:
“If a very high-energy tachyon flung into the real vacuum (RV) were then to meet and annihilate with an anti-tachyon of the same species, this tiny quantum ‘explosion’ of energy could be the seed of another Big Bang, giving rise to a new universe. That ‘seed’ would be an energy density, at that spot of annihilation, which is so great that a ‘tear’ occurs in the surface separating the Quantum Vacuum from the RV, and the huge energies stored in the QV are able to blast their way into the RV, producing the Big Bang of a new universe. And over the course of multiple eons, this situation could happen multiple times.”
Why not? After all, we might be nothing but a temporary fluctuation. | https://medium.com/predict/tachyons-the-hypothetical-faster-than-light-particles-in-physics-bf910c79c0bd | ['Lenka Otap'] | 2019-11-28 05:04:06.717000+00:00 | ['Time Travel', 'Space', 'Physics', 'Science', 'Dark Energy'] |
Why my mom and I rarely say ‘I love you’ | Why my mom and I rarely say ‘I love you’
Saying these words is easier done than said, for an Asian anyway.
My mother is a tough woman. By that, I mean literally and figuratively. She’s been a working mom my whole life, therefore instilling the importance of women working outside the home in a time when women were expected inside the home. She’s retired now, and spends her days in the presence of God, trips to the grocery store, and my home. She gives my kids money for their birthdays and Vietnamese holidays, such as Tet. And every once in awhile — a hug and a kiss.
This behavior is by far the opposite of what I experienced growing up. As a child of the nineties in Vietnam, I was part of a traditional Vietnamese family, where respect for elders, hard work and dedication in school as well as faith were by virtue, a demonstration of love and required of every child. We simply didn’t show our love by kissing or hugging each other, and we definitely did not say, “I love you” very often. Even saying “thank you” on a regular basis were uncommon.
It’s no surprise then that my mom fell into the category of the unaffectionate. She has never been one for showing affection. The closest I ever felt to her showing love for me was through her actions. She worked hard so that we could have food on the table and clothes on our bodies, but growing up, as a daughter, I yearned for love. Like most humans who crave social connections, I longed for her to hug me, kiss me, and touch me in a loving, tender way. That never happened.
I know that she loves me, but she has a hard time showing it. Instead, she’ll say things like, “You bring a child into the world, and you love them, but how do they repay you? By doing what you don’t want them to do.” Her words reminded me of a recent article in the New York Times, written by a fellow Vietnamese, an English professor named Viet Thanh Nguyen called, “Why We Struggle to Say I Love You.” In it, he wrote:
“…many of us children are not expected to say it either, but instead are expected to express love through gratitude, which means obeying our parents and following their wishes for how we should live our lives.” — Viet Thanh Nguyen
I am, by far, a rebel. Perhaps because I spent the majority of my childhood in America, the same way that the author did, I felt a higher inkling towards affection. Common phrases such as, “please” and “thank you” have been deeply ingrained in my mind. And yet, I still can’t find the courage to say, “I love you” to my mom and neither has she. The feeling is there, just not the words.
Photo by Ali Yahya on Unsplash
When my daughter was born, I felt an enormous amount of affection the first moment I held her in my arms. After being cleaned and measured, she was brought over to me by my husband, and as I gazed at her on my hospital bed, I was overwhelmed with emotion. It was what I would call “love at first sight.” I wondered if my mother ever felt that way about me.
As luck would have it, my daughter is an incredibly affectionate child. Where I lacked in receiving love from my mother, I made it up by receiving it from my daughter. There’s never a shortage of “I love you mommy,” drawings filled with hearts and smiling faces, and hugs. Being a mom to such a child has been a learning curve for me.
We Asians are complicated creatures. After being alive for 34 years, I still have yet to understand the ways of my elders. Be humble, work hard, bring home the money, and the rest is history — we equate love with stability. Sacrifice and humility are major tenets of Asian cultures, and no doubt will continue well into future generations. Of course, not every Asian family is like that — just mine. | https://hoangsamuelson2.medium.com/why-my-mom-and-i-rarely-say-i-love-you-111c59f98dd4 | ['Hoang Samuelson'] | 2019-03-30 14:33:41.658000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Asian American', 'Motherhood', 'Love', 'Feelings'] |
What Makes an NBA Head Coach? | Above, we see the career progression of our 30 NBA coaches for the upcoming season. Every square represents a year in their career, starting from when they turn 18. There is so much information we can learn just from the graph above — here are the top eight findings that I discovered by putting the visualization together:
1. Almost all NBA coaches played college ball
28 out of the 30 head coaches played college ball at some point in their career. Although this is an overwhelming majority of coaches, it’s not a requirement. Two coaches — Taylor Jenkins of the Memphis Grizzlies as well as Mark Daigneault of OKC did not play basketball in college. Both of these coaches are amongst the youngest, and have only been in their coaching stint for a short time.
2. Most were assistant NBA coaches
Only 5 out of the 30 coaches were never NBA assistant coaches at any point in their careers. If you don’t want to go down the route of being an assistant NBA coach, it seems like you really only have two options: | https://medium.com/swlh/what-makes-an-nba-head-coach-6113073415db | ['William Chon'] | 2020-12-22 12:13:59.308000+00:00 | ['NBA', 'Sports', 'Basketball', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Science'] |
How to Fairly Manage PTO Requests | As companies continue to fight for top talent, corporate benefits can set one job offer apart from a competing one. One such common perk is paid time off (PTO).
Employees and job candidates often correlate PTO policies to a workplace’s quality of life balance, as generous policies suggest employers provide its staff with the freedom to maintain a healthy personal life away from work. Companies that have restrictive time off policies may struggle to find great job applicants, while those with who make it difficult to get time off will be challenged in retaining their employees. Neglect to make a policy, staying staffed during peak vacation times will prove problematic.
As supervisors and human resource professionals, it’s important to know how to handle requests in a timely and effective manner and develop a company-wide method of managing requests. Here’s our guide on how to create a time off request policy that works for everyone:
Set expectations upfront
As mentioned in our Legal Awareness Day post last month, it’s no longer enough for companies to expect new hires to read and remember every detail of a handbook. While a manual is important and should clearly define all policies and benefits, PTO policies and expectations should be clearly articulated during the interview and onboarding process. This includes how PTO is accrued, time frames for submitting requests, if there are designated sick/personal days, and any carry-over restrictions for unused time.
If employees don’t know the boundaries for requesting and taking PTO, companies will be left with two results:
Some employees are going to ask constantly, for any reason, to take time off, which leads to resentment among the other employees. Some employees are going to be too hesitant to ask out of fear their request will be denied or reflect poorly on their overall performance, leading to frustration and burnout.
Structure is your best friend
Even if your organization offers time-off flexibility, such as unlimited PTO or generous work from home policies, the last thing any supervisor needs is to be left without a team due to poorly articulating notice periods or managing request.
To ensure that work is distributed fairly, especially during popular vacation times when multiple team members are off, require a deadline for when time off requests can be made, such as two or three weeks notice. This helps manage time off requests for the same time.
Documenting who took off when can be the starting point to building a rotational holiday PTO schedule that’s shared with the team. For those who want to switch PTO shifts during popular vacation times (i.e.when one colleague wants Christmas off every year when another only cares about Thanksgiving), all you’ll need to do is approve the request without worrying about coverage.
Process, process, process
When it comes to managing PTO requests, the most common method employers use to manage time off is the first-come-first-serve approach, followed by seniority.
First come first serve . Whoever submits their request first is granted the time off.
. Whoever submits their request first is granted the time off. Seniority. Time off requests are processed based on one’s longevity at the company or employment level. This is best used when there are time off requests that, for all other reasons, are equally valid and conflicting, however, it can sometimes appear as favoritism.
While process and policies are important, they are not always fair. Be wary of putting too much weight on requests from those who always seem to put in their requests six months out or those who have been at the company 10 or more years. It is discouraging for new employees to feel as if they will always work the graveyard shift or never see their family for the holidays due to being the new kid on the block. If they feel penalized due to their seniority status (or lack thereof) it could cause them to find a job elsewhere. | https://medium.com/@wforceorg/how-to-fairly-manage-pto-requests-34445880752e | ['Workforce Opportunity Services'] | 2019-04-01 17:38:59.083000+00:00 | ['Employee Engagement', 'Vacation', 'Workplace Culture', 'Work Life Balance', 'Pto'] |
What I Wish I Understood About Flood Risk Before Buying My First House. | Risk Categories
In England, the Environment Agency is responsible for flood risk. To help the public understand their personal risk, they provide maps that break down the country’s flood risk into zones.
Maps are available for the following sources of flooding:
Fluvial flooding. This is flooding from a watercourse such as a river or a stream Coastal flooding. This is flooding as a result of tidal inundation and or wave overtopping. Surface water flooding. This is flooding from heavy rain that exceeds the capacity of the drainage network.
Within each of these categories, there are 4 risk bands these are:
Very Low. A 0.1% annual exceedance probability (AEP) or a 1 in a 1000 year flood event Low. A 1% AEP or a 1 in a 100-year flood event Medium. A 3.3% AEP or a 1 in a 30-year flood event High. Below 3.3% AEP or less than a 1 in a 30-year event.
My Risk
As already mentioned, my property falls within the low-risk band. It has no prior history of flooding and was built over a century ago. So what’s the problem?
Well, climate change is likely to cause an increase in both frequency and intensity of storms. As a result, properties with or without flood history are expected to flood with increased frequency in the future.
My further research also highlighted that low risk is quite a broad term and is actually a range. Covering anywhere between 3.29% AEP, just below the medium risk band, and 1% AEP. This knowledge, coupled with my pessimistic nature, makes me believe my risk could be closer to 3.29% AEP. Or a 1 in a 30-year flood event.
The scary fact is that my mortgage is a 30-year term and if we calculate the probability of my property flooding during my mortgage, it is
1-(1–0.033)³⁰ = 0.63 or 63%.
Giving a higher likelihood of my property flooding during my mortgage term than I have of guessing the result of a coin toss.
Insurance
Home insurance provides a hedge against the risk of property damage. Be that from flooding, fire, or other natural phenomena. Properties at flood risk typically see higher premiums which increase with flooding evidence. In some countries, flood risk properties can be so unattractive to insurance providers they either won’t insure a property. Or will charge unrealistic premiums, pricing homeowners out of the insurance market.
Fortunately, in the UK, the government runs a levy system called Flood RE. The aim of Flood RE is to provide all homeowners in the UK with access to affordable home insurance. To enable this, a part of all homeowner's premiums are paid into the Flood RE fund, raising roughly £180m each year. Insurance companies can then sell the flooding element of home insurance policies to Flood Re for a fixed price. If that homeowner then has a legitimate flood-related claim, Flood RE will use the fund to payout. In essence, this means all homeowners in the UK subsidise the insurance of those at risk of flooding.
Consumers do not interact with Flood RE, and it goes largely unnoticed. This low profile may be one of the reasons that result in the ceasing of Flood RE at its target end date towards the end of the decade. When this occurs, it is unknown if the government will replace the scheme. Or whether homeowners will have to fend for themselves.
Market Value
It is fair to suggest that Flood RE is helping to hold home valuations. If the end of Flood RE is announced with no replacement, market values could topple as these homes become expensive to insure and no longer desirable. This leaves those homeowners with the potential of falling home values and potential negative equity. With evidence of flooding likely to further compound this. | https://themakingofamillionaire.com/what-i-wish-i-understood-about-flood-risk-before-buying-my-first-house-8cefe75125c4 | ['Rob Simpson'] | 2021-07-25 15:37:28.358000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Personal Finance', 'Home', 'Risk', 'Finance'] |
STREET FIGHT 2: Mapping Our Reclaimed Streets During COVID-19 (Seattle & Minneapolis) | A weekly series presented by Twelve Tone Consulting in partnership with Urban Radar and DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute featuring interactive maps of two new cities each week that have closed their streets to cars during COVID-19 (aka reclaimed streets or open streets). We aim to find out how these streets impact current bike infrastructure and find out the racial makeup of these reclaimed streets.
Introduction
COVID-19 has changed the world in many ways, in our first blog post we discussed how we got here and how the automobile took over our streets. Before we dive into our two new cities, Portland and Minneapolis, we break down what the streets will look like post-COVID. After all, now is the time for cities to start planning for the future.
Streets Pre-Coronavirus
We all know what streets looked like before this pandemic: congestion, poor connections and wait times, along with spotty safe passages for walkers and bikers. During COVID-19 streets have literally come to life with people craving the spring air. Some cities, like Chicago, have had to close their public trails & parks due to the crowded trails (i.e. Lake Shore). Many have been upset about this, but there has grown an alternative: Open Streets.
Streets Post-Coronavirus
According to epidemiologists, social distancing is going to be the new normal. There will be upticks and breakouts across the U.S. and elected officials will have to mandate shelter-in-place orders, shutting down schools and universities, for weeks at a time. Because of this reclaiming our streets should not be a temporary measure. The time is now for cities to rethink public space, private vehicles, and specifically our roads and our curb. What will the streets of the future look like?
Here are some other options for cities to consider moving forward:
Those are examples of what some cities are doing to bring us into the next phase of street utilization. Another thing cities are doing right now in order to transition to post-Coronavirus streets? Reclaimed/open streets!
Let’s take a look at Seattle and Minneapolis…
Seattle: 20 Miles
Seattle plans to permanently close 20 miles of residential streets (rolled out in phases). The streets are closed to through traffic to provide more space for people to walk and bike at a safe distance apart during the coronavirus pandemic and the closures will continue even after the stay-at-home order is lifted. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) will replace the temporary closure signs on the so-called Stay Healthy Streets with permanent markings, guiding drivers to other routes. The only vehicles allowed will be residents, delivery drivers, garbage and recycling workers, and emergency response vehicles. The city will be spending between $100,000 and $200,000 on making the street closures permanent.
A Problem With Rushed Permanent Policy
That said, not everyone appears to be in favor of these road closures becoming permanent. Several residents have expressed concerns with the local government’s decision to unilaterally make these changes permanent without consulting their constituents. There are adverse impacts that will be felt by all neighborhoods surrounding these road closures. Does this drive traffic to neighborhoods that had previously not experienced high volume? How will this impact commute times? These are the kinds of questions that have residents and groups such as the Washington Policy Center questioning the “suddenness” to make this pilot program a permanent change. It is important to note that the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has said that they will discuss “future expansion” with residents and shared an email alias where residents can submit feedback to the department. However, there has still been no mention of walking back Mayor Durkan’s decision to make the Stay Healthy Streets program permanent.
List of Reclaimed Streets: (Here and here) | https://medium.com/@twelvetone/street-fight-2-mapping-our-reclaimed-streets-during-covid-19-seattle-minneapolis-39b9db480272 | ['Twelve Tone Consulting'] | 2020-05-27 15:48:48.887000+00:00 | ['Mobility', 'Covid 19', 'Open Streets', 'Urban Planning', 'Coronavirus'] |
Why I’m Voting for Biden | Since I’ve been of voting age I voted for George W. Bush twice, John McCain — if you go back and watch a certain McCain campaign rally in Columbus, OH, you’ll see me standing behind the man himself — and Mitt Romney. Growing up, everyone I knew was a Republican. So, I was too.
In 2016, I didn’t vote. I was out of town at the time and the whole thing, logistically, felt like a hassle to figure out. I was pulling for Hillary and I was certain she’d win, anyway. Even after Trump won, I still didn’t care a whole lot about it. I wasn’t really “into politics” at the time, which I’ve come to realize is a privilege only afforded to folks like me, a White man born into relative wealth in America. I won’t get into all that right now but the extremely short version is this: I’ve realized that the privileged group in a society has the ability to decide whether or not to engage with politics, since policy change often has little effect on their wellbeing.
To say that the last four years alone pushed me across the chasm from right to left is an incomplete summary of my journey. However, the last four years solidified a growing disillusionment with Republican policies. It’s an arduous journey to shift one’s political perspective. And in some significant ways it was influenced in 2014 by a podcast that was sweeping across the nation: Serial.
Serial, Season One, explored the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee and the conviction and life sentence of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. At the heart of the podcast is the question of Syed’s guilt or innocence. Through Serial and spin-off podcasts — Undisclosed is a great place to start if you’ve already listened to Serial — I now believe that Adnan is innocent of this crime. He remains in prison today. He’s one year older than me.
Serial exposed me to a real-life story of a wrongful conviction and its devastating effects on the family and friends of the wrongfully accused. I found it so hard to believe that there were actually innocent people in prison. I thought it only happened in movies.
What I found most troubling, though, about Adnan’s story was how hard the state of Maryland was willing to fight to keep him in prison, even in light of new evidence and witness testimony that’s since been completely dismantled by legal experts. I’d come to learn this is an all-too common refrain among the wrongfully accused.
Dean Strang, attorney for Brendan Dassey and Steven Avery of the documentary Making a Murderer, aptly calls this a “tragic lack of humility”:
“Most of what ails our criminal justice system lie in unwarranted certitude on the part of police officers and prosecutors and defense lawyers and judges and jurors, that they’re getting it right. Just a tragic lack of humility.”
The deeper I got into adjacent stories of injustices in the system — Undisclosed’s deep dive into Baltimore’s handling of Freddie Gray’s arrest and death in police custody, for one — the more troubled I became, not only at the misconduct itself but the way in which leadership handled the situations afterward.
Instead of showing humility, I saw a bleak trend in which leaders failed to take responsibility, and in the worst cases lied to the public in order to save their own reputations. This should be troubling to all of us.
Folks in the justice system will often say that everyone lies in court — civilians and elected officials, alike — but what is hard to accept is the way in which we, as judges and juries, show extreme justice, and often blatant cruelty, towards “criminals” while almost universally giving police and elected officials the benefit of the doubt. When the police don’t hold themselves accountable, who will?
I started to look around at who else cares about these issues.
I followed DeRay Mckesson on Twitter. I watched the documentary 13th. I read Cory Booker’s book United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good.
I read articles about Philadephia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner and other “progressive prosecutors” like him who are working hard to make changes in a system that is not always kind to those fighting for reform.
I found compassion and humility in these folks, though President Trump doesn’t quite see things that way. At a campaign rally in Hershey, PA in 2019, he had this to say about Krasner:
“You have the worst district attorney. I’ve been hearing about this guy.”
Other Republican leaders are following suit, too. Attorney General Bill Barr, in a speech to the Fraternal Order of Police in New Orleans, lamented the rise of progressive prosecutors:
“There is another development that is demoralizing to law enforcement and dangerous to public safety. That is the emergence in some of our large cities of District Attorneys that style themselves as “social justice” reformers, who spend their time undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook, and refusing to enforce the law.”
For now, it’s clear that the leaders of the Republican Party are not interested in seeing much change in the criminal justice system and that’s a shame. We can both support the police and call for more accountability. I believe many of our police officers want that, too.
True change will happen when we meet in the middle, reach across protest lines and shake hands (or bump elbows) and listen to one another. This is what true leadership looks like and what our country desperately needs right now.
Joe Biden’s own history with criminal justice reform is not perfect. He supported the 1994 crime bill that many believe was instrumental to the mass incarceration epidemic we face today. Biden, however, has admitted that parts of the bill were a mistake, an admirable show of humility rarely seen from President Trump. What’s more, Biden’s hand in the legislature was the result of compromises with Republican colleagues and that gives me hope that he’ll be willing to work across the aisle again in the future.
During the first presidential debate of 2020, Biden was asked about criminal justice reform and this is what he said:
“What I’m going to do as President of the United States is call together an entire group of people at the White House, everything from the civil rights groups, to the police officers, to the police chiefs, and we’re going to work this out.”
We must come together to make change. Yelling insults from the trenches is only going to make matters worse in the streets. Meeting in the middle requires tremendous courage.
I am hopeful for our country. We are courageous, indeed. | https://medium.com/@christopherhendrixson/why-im-voting-for-biden-4a8eae09fff6 | ['Chris Hendrixson'] | 2020-11-03 04:41:58.431000+00:00 | ['Biden', 'Election 2020', 'Courage', 'Politics', 'Criminal Justice Reform'] |
When is enough enough? | When is enough enough?
At what point can you look at something
and be completely satisfied with what stares back?
Contentment seems like a myth at this point
Many call it ambition
but corruption looms close behind
Even the wealthiest man in the world
once longed for more
and still he continues to pine
but what will he do
when he has absolutely everything? | https://medium.com/@kuhnkenz/when-is-enough-enough-c465d9c95f6b | ['Kenzie Kuhn'] | 2020-12-24 02:23:45.312000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Poetry', 'Musings', 'Thoughts', 'Feelings'] |
Surgical Microscopes Industry Development And Business Trends | surgical microscopes market
Market growth influenced due to following factors-
Increasing use of fluorescence image-guided surgery (NYSE:FIGS).
Increase in the number of surgeries and growing demand for MIS.
Advancements in healthcare facilities & technological advancements.
Global market size-
According to research report surgical microscopes market is poised to reach $ 915.6 Million by 2021, at a CAGR of 12.5% from 2016 to 2021.
Leading Players-
The surgical microscopes market is highly competitive in nature. Some of the major players in this market include Novartis AG (Switzerland), Danaher Corporation (U.S.), Topcon Corporation (Japan), and Carl Zeiss AG (Germany). The strong position of these companies in the market can primarily be attributed to their global presence and broad product portfolio. Other major players in the market include KARL KAPS GMBH & Co. KG (Germany), Alltion (Wuzhou) Co. Ltd. (China), and ARRI Medical (ARRI Group) (Germany).
Top Market Segments-
On the basis of application, the operating microscopes market is segmented into neuro and spine surgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery, ophthalmology, gynecology and urology, oncology, dentistry, ENT surgery, and documentation. In 2016, the neuro and spine surgery segment is expected to account for the largest share of the market due to the increasing demand for surgical/operating microscopes in neurosurgery.
On the basis end users, the operating microscopes market is classified into hospitals, and out-patient facilities. Hospitals are the major end users for the surgical microscopes end users market, owing to increase in minimally invasive surgery (MIS) procedures, and need for high speed diagnostics.
Geographic Overview -
North America and Europe are established markets for surgical microscopes, due to broad technical applications of surgical microscopes and improved healthcare facilities in the region. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to show high growth rate in next few years in global operating microscopes market. This is due to presence of immense potential associated with healthcare services and increased investment in R&D. Increasing healthcare awareness is also fuelling the growth of surgical microscopes market in emerging countries.
Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=179225920 | https://medium.com/@sara-keller/surgical-microscopes-industry-development-and-business-trends-d6bbc9573831 | ['Sara Keller'] | 2021-06-17 10:29:04.197000+00:00 | ['Surgical Technology', 'Medical Devices', 'Healthcare Technology', 'Microscope', 'Business Development'] |
Customer Service: Quick Replies, Yay or Nay? | I had a semi bad customer service experience with Amazon yesterday and it got me thinking.
Having gone through their help / support pages and their usual FAQ rigmarole before you can actually speak to a person, I finally get through to what I was lead to believe was a live chat, to find myself going in circles answering and being asked the same questions. I soon came to the conclusion I had been passed onto a chat-bot and having spent about 20 frustrating minutes feeling like a stuck record, I tried to see if it would react to some commands; something I have had success bypassing automated systems with in the past.
I asked it if I could be put through to a person, and much to my surprise… and embarrassment, it turned out that it was in fact an actual person… sorry!
I believe a part of the issue was that they were using predefined quick replies, thus seeing a lot of identical repetitive responses; which just became confirmation bias.
I have previously built Twitter bots to try and automate as much of a company’s interaction with customers via the Twitter platform as possible, and I soon realised automation can only take you so far, then a human becomes necessary to be helpful and for a better customer service experience.
Thus, Amazon have, like many others, have automated as much of the customer service experience as possible but then have the human to fall back on when necessary. So why pay so much to provide the human touch and then make them unconvincing as a human? This could have got worse if I had been forwarded to another agent or department, or had I called upon their services again in the future, to find the exact same repetitions. You would be convinced it was just another bot, since it’s become the norm to speak to AI, or “not so AI” FAQ chat-bots. While I understand it can be time saving as agents try to balance numerous simultaneous conversations… it just feels self-defeating to make them unconvincing and samey.
I think a lot of people can relate to the frustration of a poorly designed automated phone system or chat-bot, with plenty of GIF’s and such to remind us of the pain… PhoneJacker comes to mind. So I do wonder if quick replies are more harmful for your customer experience than helpful… convenience seldom means quality.
Talk about passing the Turin test! | https://medium.com/@citizen-z/customer-service-quick-replies-yay-or-nay-859b63cb95d7 | ['Citizen Z'] | 2020-12-22 19:05:59.294000+00:00 | ['Customer Experience', 'Chatbots', 'Customer Service', 'Tech'] |
Great last-minute gifts: 2020’s best celeb audiobooks: Mariah Carey, Barack Obama, Dolly Parton, more! | Derek Arbogast
Mon, December 14, 2020, 11:12 AM PST
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Have celebrities read to you: Just $5 gets you started with Audible. (Photo: Amazon)
Memoirs provide a specific kind of literary pleasure. They put us inside the heads, and hearts, of people — usually people we love and admire (and sometimes people we loathe, or who are just too interesting to ignore). The thing is, they take us out of ourselves, not just to a different world or time in history, but inside another’s psyche. https://www.apacer.com/night/Ravens-v-Browns-Liv-NFL1.html
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https://ncaafootball2021.medium.com/presidential-transition-live-updates-biden-tops-270-electoral-college-votes-affirming-his-e21f417bcaa9 At least that’s what the good ones do, and as it happens 2020 has provided a bounty of inspiring, funny, touching, enlightening self-stories. And, of course, audiobooks — read by the celebrity memoirists themselves — bring added intimacy to this connective experience. Hey, if nothing else, as we head down the home stretch of what’s been an especially insulated and solitary year, who’s not craving someone else’s voice in their head?
Audible, the audiobook arm of Amazon, is making it easy to venture into deep-listening territory, with great deals on books and memberships — that are also great last-minute digital holiday gifts. Find a book below you just know your best friend (or brother or daughter) would love — a couple of clicks and it’s theirs, delivered by email.
Feeling extra generous? Sign them up for a subscription — Audible Premium Plus is 40 percent off for a limited time. Get the first four months for just $8.95 per month. That’s $24 in savings and you can cancel anytime.
With Audible Premium Plus, you get access to thousands upon thousands of audiobooks, a free premium audiobook every month (that you can keep, by the way) and an additional 30 percent off the list price of premium titles. Pick an Audible plan that suits you and your loved ones here.
Scroll for some of this year’s most rewarding, interesting and hilarious titles, each of them read by the author (and some featuring special guest voices). What are you waiting for? These aren’t going to listen to themselves, you know….
Dolly brings us the stories behind the songs. (Photo: Amazon)
Performer, composer, and feminist, Dolly is also the living embodiment of the term national treasure. As for this tuneful trip down memory lane, well, the subtitle says it all, as it’s essentially a long-awaited conversation with Dolly about her greatest talent, songwriting.
Dolly revisits the stories behind almost a hundred of her most famous and/or powerful compositions, including “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5,” and, of course, the devastating “Jolene,” in the process revealing surprising inspirations and new depths of insight.
“I discovered that her lyrics are so fresh and straightforward — without metaphors, allusions, allegories or pretension — without guile,” gushed one enlightened reviewer. “I’m from a different generation, a different genre (I grew up on punk, new wave, metal and rap, followed by 70s hard rock and metal) and a different time, but I’ve realized Dolly is timeless.”
Shop it: Songteller audiobook, $22 (or one Audible credit), amazon.com
Who’s cooler than Alicia Keys? Photo: Amazon
Another New York born-and-bred success story, Alicia Keys began her journey to the top especially early. A classically trained pianist, she was composing by the age of 12 and signed her first record contract at 15. As the title implies, discovery — of self, and the absent father of her childhood — is the theme here.
Thanks to the magic of the audiobook, she peppers her tale with excerpts of her most enduring song…and commentary from a few friends, including Jay-Z, Oprah, and Michelle Obama. “Words do not come easily [on] the powerful impact this book gave me,” said one very satisfied customer. “What an amazing, talented and generous woman.”
Shop it: More Myself audiobook, $25 (or one Audible credit), amazon.com
The wacky, wise, all-out wonderful Ms. Bloom. Photo: Amazon
You know Rachel Bloom as the multitalented star of the WB’s brilliantly daft musical-comedy series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. As groundbreaking as the show (which she co-created), Bloom’s memoir (in audio form) is surprising and innovative, with a high wackiness factor.
There aren’t many performers who would dare to deliver wizened re-collections of a misfit adolescence, a lifetime of anxiety, and the travails of showbiz in gut-busting song (as well as poems, essays, Hogwarts fan fiction, a chapter from the POV of her dog, even an amusement park map!), and just about none who could do it with Bloom’s panache.
“I adore Rachel Bloom and this book is so authentically her,” said one fan. “This book is hilarious and honest and raw and hopeful and utterly ridiculous and heartwarming and sad and uplifting.” A great gift.
Shop it: I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are audiobook, $21 (or one Audible credit), amazon.com
True tales from the SNL Weekend Update co-host. Photo: Amazon
Hilarious and heartwarming is the magic elixir that makes for a good memoir, and Jost (AKA Mr. Scarlett Johansson) brings it big-time. Like his Saturday Night Live predecessor Tina Fey, Jost grounds his cracked observations with a dash of self-effacement (literally; look at that title).
At the same time, the chapter on his mom, a first responder to the 9/11 attacks, brings love and life lessons to the table. As one five-star reviewer puts it, “Come for the self-deprecating humor, stay for the great stories.”
Shop it: A Very Punchable Face audiobook, $25 (or one Audible credit), amazon.com
So nice to see you, Mr. President. Photo: Amazon
Oh, yeah, that other Obama has a new book out too, and boy, do we need it. The man who espoused ‘the audacity of hope’ in his 2006 memoir returns with a booster shot of that essential virtue, his serene countenance and wise reflections a tonic in these nerve-wracking times.
Perhaps this reviewer said it best: “President Barack Obama writes like he speaks: deliberately, thoughtfully, and entertainingly. This book provides the reader with a much needed dose of decency and intelligent thought in an era of scare mongering and, well, stupidity.”
Shop it: A Promised Land, $40 (or one Audible credit), amazon.com
The soccer star on life, love, justice, and more. Photo: Amazon
Most of us had never heard the name Megan Rapinoe till her mind-bending exploits during the 2011 World Cup. Then, of course, she did it again as co-captain of the US Women’s Soccer team at the 2012 London Olympics. So sure, here she chronicles how she fell in love with the game as a California teenager.
Maybe more important, though, we learn how her upbringing led her to value the pursuit of justice and meaning in the world around her, as evidenced by her activism on behalf of gay rights and marriage equality. “Such an incredible and inspiring story,” said one reviewer. “I have loved watching Megan’s journey unfold but to hear the behind-the-scenes made what she stands for even more powerful.”
Shop it: One Life audiobook, $22 (or one Audible credit), amazon.com
Mariah finally sets the record straight. (Photo: Amazon)
“When I was 12 years old, my sister drugged me with Valium, offered me a pinky nail full of cocaine, inflicted me with third-degree burns and tried to sell me out to a pimp.” If that doesn’t have you reaching for you credit card to snap up this jam-packed, jaw-dropping trip down memory lane, well, maybe the racism, child neglect, domestic violence, spousal abuse, and mental illness that pepper Mariah’s tale will seal the deal.
You want romance? There’s her marriage-turned-abduction to former-president Sony Music Tommy Mottola, her rebound relationship with Yankees icon Derek Jeter (“Just like his position on the team, our relationship was a short stop in my life.”), and her ill-fated second turn at the altar with Nick Cannon. Oh, yeah, there’s music, too, in her recounting of the rags-to-riches story of her career — she has, after all, scored more number-one singles than any solo artist — and the excerpts she sings from her spectacular repertoire.
Shop it: The Meaning of Me audiobook, $30 (or one Audible credit), amazon.com
The icon’s life at Vogue magazine and beyond. Photo: Amazon
I know what you’re thinking — you’ve seen ‘ALT’ on America’s Top Model, heard his withering, hilarious commentary, and are thinking his latest book will be a gut-busting, back-stabbing tell-all. Well, we’ll let this Amazon customer put you straight: “I came for the fashion gossip but went away with an amazing education about fashion history.” And what history.
Talley’s been in the game for a half century, during which he’s been a kind of Zelig, rubbing shoulder and collaborating with everyone from Andy Warhol to de la Renta, Halston, Lagerfeld, and, of course, Vogue high priestess Anna Wintour. Of course, it’s not all name-dropping and history marking, as another reviewer put it: “Talley possesses knowledge and passion, as well as a soul searching for the beauty and love in all around him.”
Shop it: The Chiffon Trenches audiobook, $25 (or one Audible credit), amazon.com
We could honestly listen to this voice all day. Photo: Amazon
What better time for a look back than at the wind-down of the hottest decade of one’s career? At age 50, McConaughey set off for the desert with his diaries and found in their “poems, prayers, [and] prescriptions” — not fuel for a midlife crisis but a surprising self-(re)discovery.
The title of this capstone to the 21st century ‘McConaissance’ is a reference to the metaphor of “catching greenlights” on your path to realizing one’s destiny. The key, McConaughey says, is to “know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges — how to get relative with the inevitable.” Good advice…and there’s a lot more where that came from. For one admiring listener, it’s a lot more than alright, alright, alright: “He is one of those people who just knows how to live an interesting life.”
Shop it: Greenlights audiobook, $20 (or one Audible credit), amazon.com
A poignant family tale of love and heartache. Photo: Amazon
It’s not often that we hear the stories of the family members who don’t become famous, those who, in one sense or another, are left behind. In this ‘brave’ recounting of family tragedy, comedy legend Diane Keaton puts away the cute hats and Hollywood glitz to tell the tragic story of her troubled younger brother, Randy.
The two were inseparable as children. But adult life, and Diane’s fame, would cause the siblings’ paths to diverge and leave Diane to helplessly watch as Randy devolved from eccentricity to “the other side of normal” to debilitating mental illness. She chronicles it all with heartbreaking memories, poetry, letters, journal excerpts, and a truckload of love and insight. A “haunting, beautifully written and intimate portrait,” said one reviewer. “I couldn’t put it down.”
Shop it: Brother & Sister audiobook, $15 (or one Audible credit), amazon.com
The reviews quoted above reflect the most recent versions at the time of publication.
Read More from Yahoo Life: | https://medium.com/@allahrohmanallah1/great-last-minute-gifts-2020s-best-celeb-audiobooks-mariah-carey-barack-obama-dolly-parton-abe58e2e5b0e | ['Bismillah Allah'] | 2020-12-14 23:49:45.862000+00:00 | ['Police', 'Dolly Parton', 'Hot', 'News', 'Barack Obama'] |
The cuStreamz Series: The Accelerated Kafka Datasource | By: Chinmay Chandak, Jeremy Dyer
A large percentage of production streaming pipelines today have Kafka as their source. Over the years, Apache Kafka has become one of the most popular open-source distributed stream-processing platforms for handling real-time data feeds. Consuming streaming data from Kafka, especially at extremely high speeds, is a CPU-intensive operation. At NVIDIA, when we started development on cuStreamz, the first GPU-accelerated streaming data processing library built on top of RAPIDS, reading from Kafka at high speeds was found to be a bottleneck for processing streaming data on GPUs efficiently. Since the speed with which data was being consumed from Kafka and being uploaded to GPU was bottlenecked, we were not able to exploit GPU parallel computing for efficient streaming computations.
Currently, reading from Kafka is CPU-bound. No questions there. But, in the case of cuStreamz, a considerable portion of this reading-from-Kafka bottleneck stems from a Python Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) issue within the Confluent Kafka (CK) Python library. The CK library is a robust, reliable implementation of a Python API for interacting with Kafka used by multiple open-source libraries, including Streamz. However, the GIL issue was a definite roadblock to maximize performance in cuStreamz. Let’s look at how this particular GIL issue severely impacted end-to-end streaming performance.
G(u)il(ty) as Charged!
When the CK library retrieves messages from Kafka using librdkafka (the Apache Kafka C/C++ library) in the C/C++ layer, it creates a PyObject for each message before returning them back to the Python layer for the Python CK consumer to consume. The Python interpreter will only execute one thread at a time (because of the GIL) to create PyObjects which in turn bottlenecks the speed with which we can read a batch of messages from Kafka. So, there is really no benefit of multithreading.
As expected, using multiple processes to consume from Kafka delivers a massive speedup as compared to using multiple threads within a single process. By starting multiple Dask workers, each worker being a process, to achieve high consumer throughput, results in high end-to-end stream processing performance. But starting many discrete processes on a GPU is not at all an ideal solution. Each process (in this context, a Dask worker) creates a CUDA device context on the GPU. This eats up a considerable amount of GPU memory, which otherwise could have been used in useful streaming computations. For example, when using NVIDIA T4 GPUs (16GB GPU Memory), along with 20 Dask worker processes, we noticed each worker using ~400MB for a CUDA Context (w/ RAPIDS cuDF v0.16). This means that we expended ~8GB GPU Memory just like that, and only ~8GB was available for actual streaming data computation. We needed to resolve this somehow!
An Accelerated Kafka Data Source
Since our goal is to upload batches of streaming data onto the GPU as RAPIDS cuDF dataframes for downstream processing, why not avoid the intermediate Python layer in the route altogether. How about making the librdkafka C++ layer directly upload the batch of Kafka messages to the GPU instead of first gathering the messages back to Python and then creating a cuDF dataframe? And we implemented exactly this in the cudf_kafka package as the accelerated Kafka data source. This circumvents the Python GIL issue (by eliminating Python altogether, heh!) and accelerates the streaming pipelines by eliminating multiple copies of the batches of data in memory and providing the most efficient path for the data from Kafka to the GPU memory that is currently possible. The cuStreamz package provides Streamz-compatible API as wrappers on top of the cudf_kafka functionality.
Performance Impact
Our testing reveals that we are able to achieve double the streaming throughput (process ~2x the data in the same time) using less than half the number of processes/Dask workers (hence less than half the GPU memory as compared to before being used for non-computation operations like CUDA context creation). This is a huge boost to performance. More importantly, this performance improvement comes at a much lower cost because we cut down the CPU (both CPU cores and System Memory used by the Dask worker processes) usage considerably. But, in general, there’s still a non-trivial amount of control flow in Python and in the various libraries that cuStreamz encapsulates which makes threading more inefficient than using processes. We are not yet at the stage where we can get the same streaming performance with a single process.
API
As for ease of using this accelerated data source, it’s literally just an additional parameter in the API to read from Kafka — that’s genius. For an example, please refer to our Word Count @ Scale blog. Currently, the accelerated Kafka data source supports reading data only in JSON format from Kafka directly into cuDF dataframes. But, we plan to roll out support for other data formats in Kafka like Avro and CSV soon.
Next Steps
Look forward to upcoming cuStreamz blogs covering:
Running cuStreamz Word Count @ Scale on Kubernetes as an Orchestration Layer
cuStreamz’ Journey through Performance and Benchmarking
Stay tuned, and stream on! | https://medium.com/rapids-ai/the-custreamz-series-the-accelerated-kafka-datasource-4faf0baeb3f6 | ['Chinmay Chandak'] | 2020-12-03 18:35:39.467000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Kafka', 'Data Science', 'Big Data', 'Data Streaming'] |
The Life Of The Father Of Nation Mr. Sir Muhammad Ali Jinnah | The eldest of seven siblings, “Muhammad Ali Jinnah” and his well-known younger sister “Fatima Jinnah” were children of Jinnahbhai Poonja, a wealthy merchant, and his wife Mithibai, (who belonged to the Muslim-Khoja cast) Born on 25th December 1876 in Karachi and completed his schoolings in Sindh, at his birthplace. After completing his further studies, In the era of 1893 he joined Lincoln’s Inn which he dreamt of, and became the “Youngest Indian Denominated to the Bar.” Just after three years, stepping into a legal profession with his endemic strategies, and determination, Young Jinnah became “Bombay’s Most Auspicious and Successful Lawyer” of that time and within a few years, he was firmly established and entered into politics in 1905 from the Indian National Congress. Mr. Jinnah had a different vision from all, we all know intimately about his manly and brave personality that he never cracked a joke in his entire life merely for the sake of raising a laugh. He was very self-control, passionate and one thing he valued most was time punctuality, and never wasting a moment was his second nature.
Once a very close friend of Jinnah requested, with his son (who had just returned from England as a full-fledged barrister) that “Jinnah, please take my son in your chamber and make him a good lawyer.” “Of course yes!” Jinnah Said! What a superior compliment could anyone get!
An American historian, Indologist, and author on political history wrote a biography on Muhammad Ali Jinnah named “Jinnah of Pakistan.” He described his subject or summary thus: “Few individuals significantly alter the course of history, Fewer still modify the map of the world, Hardly can anyone be credited with creating a nation-state and Muhammad Ali Jinnah did all three.”
In the loving memory and thanksgiving to beloved Father of the Nation Quaid E Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah Essay Writing Services In Karachi has written this informational article and have covered further topics about the Life of Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his sacrifices which he gave on every step, they have provided bulk informational and technical points on An Essay on Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his sayings. Appreciable writing services that can be helpful for students of every standard and Hence, Quaid e Azam was so fond of students, He Loves them immensely. He always encouraged and exhorted students to study hard and hard. He also mentioned that “Without education, Life is full of darkness.” In July 1947 in Ziarat, Quetta Quaid e Azam was seriously ill and said his last words “Until 1948, I was worried whether Pakistan would survive but now I have no worries now. Men may come and man may go, but Pakistan is firmly established and will go on with God’s grace forever.”
“25th December Jinnah’s Birthday officially known as “Quaid e Azam day”, Pakistan and the people across the world who have faith and love with this country celebrate this day. He died on 11 September 1948 in Karachi. “York University”, A public research university in Toronto Ontario, has made a remarkable statue named “Statue of Jinnah” which shows that a single person can own a nation-state if one has full faith and belief in his words and acts. | https://medium.com/@syedzulkifl456/the-life-of-the-father-of-nation-mr-sir-muhammad-ali-jinnah-60465a3dfbb | ['Syed Zulkifl'] | 2020-12-23 08:24:26.356000+00:00 | ['Writing Life', 'Pakistan', 'Pakistan Politics', 'Writing', 'Jinnah'] |
MDN Breakout with Phaser 3 — Part 4 | The MDN “2D breakout game with Phaser” tutorial shows you a basic way to make a game with Phaser 2. I recently did the tutorial so I could guide others through it.
However, the tutorial doesn’t show you how to use the most recent version of Phaser, or how to use good design concepts that will help you make your own game using JavaScript best practices.
So I set about adapting the MDN tutorial according to the format set out in the Ourcade “Modern JavaScript” phaser tutorial. The tutorial uses the phaser3-parcel-template, which helps with starting up a complex phaser project.
Here is a link to the finished code, and another link to the assets used in the project.
The last step of the tutorial covered creating the brickfield, collisions, and sound.
In this article, we’ll go through steps 11 through 13 of the MDN tutorial: “11. The score,” “12. Win the game,” and “13. Extra lives.”
Creating the Score
To begin with, we’ll depart from the MDN tutorial and follow the method described in the Modern JS Phaser tutorial by making a ScoreLabel class. We’ll begin by making ScoreLabel.js in the ‘src/ui’ directory.
The ScoreLabel file will contain all the methods to track and present the score. The Scene will reference an instantiated version of ScoreLabel when any events occur that will modify the score — in this case, the ball hitting the brick.
The formatScore method on line 3 converts the score into a formatted display text for ease of use.
The add method on line 16 will be called by the Scene when an event happens that calls for points to be added to the score.
Next, we import the score and create it in game using a process similar to how we created previous game objects:
import the label make a property of the Scene object in its constructor method in which to store the label make a createLabel method in the Scene call the createLabel method in the Scene’s create method and assign the return value to the property created in 2.
Note that we also call the add method on the scoreLabel on line 25, in the Scene’s ballHitBrick method.
The createScoreLabel method instantiates a ScoreLabel Class object (everything in JavaScript is an object), adds it to the Phaser system, and returns the label object.
We attach a reference to the label to a property of the Scene object so we can reference it to call methods. The same could be done to call spawner events, dialog prompts, or any number of game functions.
Win the Game
In the MDN tutorial, the end of the game simply results in a message that you won and a prompt to play again.
We’ll add to this by having a variable that tracks how many times the player has cleared the bricks. Each time they clear the bricks, the ball will speed up and each brick will be worth more points.
We’ll visit that functionality in a minute, but for now we’ll use the simple method from the tutorial until we finish making lives.
The method of detecting if any of the members of the bricks group are alive is simpler than the Phaser 2 code from the MDN tutorial. That wraps up this step.
Extra Lives
We’ll implement making extra lives by making a LivesLabel similar to the ScoreLabel. We will have a starting lives constant that we can pass to the LivesLabel when instantiating it to create the starting lives.
We’ll make LivesLabel.js in the same ‘src/ui’ directory as the ScoreLabel.
Lives will only have one function for modifying lives, the removeLife method. It removes one life from the lives stored as a property on the LivesLabel object.
If the lives go below 1, this method will return false. This means we can use the return value of removeLife as a test for a game over condition.
Before we add the lives display to the screen, let’s create a file that holds a few game constants, similar to our previous physics constants file.
Now that we have game constants, let’s go back and use our basePoints constant in the ballHitBrick collision method. This will allow us to tune how many points a player earns from a logical location.
Next, we will instantiate the LivesLabel in the GameScene and add code in detectBounds to remove a life if the ball hits the bottom of the screen.
We’ll follow the steps we used for adding the ScoreLabel to the game:
import the label make a property of the Scene object in its constructor method in which to store the label make a createLabel method in the Scene call the createLabel method in the Scene’s create method and assign the return value to the property created in 2.
The code for making the label follows.
With the ability to have multiple lives, we need to be able to reset the position of the ball and paddle. So we have those functionalities in the resetBallPaddlePosition method.
The deathDelay constant determines how long to wait between when the ball hits the bottom of the screen and when we launch the ball again.
The code for creating that delay is on line 31. Note the need to pass in the ‘this’ value of the Scene object to the delayedCall method.
So now we have created a score and lives. The game is getting more interesting.
Up Next
In the next article in this tutorial series, we will add the ability to increase the difficulty when the level is cleared, and we’ll go through the animations and tweens step of the MDN tutorial. | https://medium.com/@michaelbragg-20879/mdn-breakout-with-phaser-3-part-4-bd5158b65c71 | ['Michael Bragg'] | 2021-01-11 13:31:23.586000+00:00 | ['Phaser 3', 'JavaScript', 'Game Development'] |
I just called to say I want to interview you | By Luke Butcher, Rico Bergemann, heather lanthorn, Syed Maqbool, and Karan Nagpal
Interviewer Suale conducts backchecks in Northern Ghana ©heather lanthorn
This post is aimed at research practitioners experienced at administering in-person surveys and interested in beginning phone surveys.
To continue collecting data despite COVID-19 disruptions, many governments and organizations are increasingly relying on remote methods. At IDinsight, we’re using phone surveys and interviews to help our clients track the effects of COVID-19 and the various policy responses taken by governments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We’re also switching from in-person to phone interviews for other, non-COVID-specific projects.
As valuable as it is to understand our respondents’ perspectives during these difficult times, there are certainly challenges, both technical and personal. In many contexts in which we work (and live), people are not accustomed to strangers calling and having lengthy conversations about serious topics even during normal times. This means building rapport and seeking informed consent from respondents is even more vital.
In this post, we’ll share practical insights from our recent surveys on what’s worked — and what hasn’t worked — to build rapport with the respondents over the phone, and to seek their well-informed, well-considered consent.
We hope these insights help other researchers to build rapport and seek informed consent over the phone. As these are still early days for us, we would love to hear from you as well on what’s working and what’s not working in phone surveys and interviews. Please share your experiences and lessons in the comments!
Background
Recently, a number of organizations have shared crucial advice for carrying out phone surveys in LMICs. Mathematica’s overview of switching from in-person surveys to phone surveys, and the World Bank and J-PAL’s guidance on phone surveys all emphasize the importance of carefully crafting concise introduction scripts for respondents. In this post, we explain in practical and granular detail how we have developed introduction scripts for our recent phone surveys and interviews. We also explain how we’ve sought consent, and discuss ways to build rapport with our respondents.
This post is largely based on our experience with three projects: one, a structured, quantitative COVID-19 survey in northern and eastern India;[1] two, semi-structured qualitative interviews with banking agents, their supervisors, and their customers in southern India;[2] and three, structured qualitative interviews with refugee and host communities about cash transfers in Uganda.[3]
Piloting how to initiate the call
Before seeking consent and building rapport, we needed to anticipate how respondents might react to the request for a phone conversation. Before the first round of our structured COVID-19 survey in India, we piloted a few open-ended interviews led by some of our most experienced field managers. As part of this pilot, we tried to understand the respondents’ main apprehensions and developed a script to address them. For example, we found people were wondering, “why are you calling me on the phone?” So, we included these sentences:
वैसे तो हम ये सवाल आपके घर आकर, आपसे मिलकर, पूछना चाहते थे। लेकिन करोना-वायरस के चलते जो लॉक -डाउन हुआ है, उस वजह से हम आपसे मिलने नहीं आ सकते| हालाँकि, आपकी राय और विचार हमारे लिए बहुत ज़रूरी हैं, इसलिए हम आपसे फ़ोन पर ही सवाल पूछ रहे हैं। आशा है सब कुछ जल्दी ही ठीक हो जाएगा, और हम आपसे दुबारा मिलने के लिए आएँगे। Ideally, we wanted to come to your house, meet you, and ask these questions in person. But we cannot visit you because of the Coronavirus lockdown. However, your views and opinions are still very important for us, hence we are asking these questions over the phone. We hope that things will go back to normal very soon, and we will come and meet you in person.
Initiating the call and introducing ourselves
Respondents are more likely to trust us with their information if we can establish a connection, including making sure they know who we are and why we are asking questions.
Before giving a full introduction of IDinsight, we found it helpful to quickly develop interpersonal rapport with respondents to build credibility. Establishing rapport looked different depending on whether we had communicated with the respondents previously or not. For our qualitative research with customers of banking agents, we used phone numbers that the customers had given to agents during the program. We never met these customers, but they had signed a sheet indicating that they were willing to speak about the program on the phone. During the call, we explicitly mentioned the names of the customer’s village and their banking agent. We developed this protocol in response to initial interviews with customers, who seemed uncomfortable when the interviewer didn’t know information about their locality. We then introduced who IDinsight is, the purpose of our interview, and what research/policy decisions the respondent’s answers might be used for. We finally gave the respondent an opportunity to ask questions.
In Uganda, we continued working with respondents we’d already interviewed in-person twice. In this situation, we found it helpful to build on and link back to the previous interviews (e.g., “Last time you mentioned that your husband went to Kampala for treatment. How is his health now? Has he returned yet?”).[4] This may help the respondent to remember the previous conversations, and show that we are interested in and actively listening to what they shared with us.
Reaching the correct respondent and obtaining informed consent
We went into each of our surveys and interviews with a specific person/type of person we wanted to reach (e.g., the person we had previously interviewed, or the household’s primary female decisionmaker). Reaching the correct respondent over the phone is understandably more difficult than in person. As Mathematica suggested, interviewers should be prepared for multiple scenarios, including other family members answering the phone.
We often encountered this problem while interviewing customers of banking agents. We wanted to interview equal numbers of male and female customers. However, most female customers had provided the phone numbers of male relatives. Interviewers often had to seek some form of consent from the male relative before they would pass the phone to the female respondent. These conversations were sometimes tense at first and involved more suspicion and questioning than when female respondents answered the phone directly. Since men are more likely to have access to the phone, we will often need to engage in such persuasion. We’re experimenting in various contexts with different message framings to persuade the male household member to pass the phone to the selected female respondent.
In some cases, once connected with the correct respondent, interviewers might only need a short consent script. In other cases, due to IRBs, a country’s legal requirements, or our own ethical judgment, interviewers might have a longer list of consent criteria that need to be covered. Reading out a long consent script can bore and exhaust the respondent, despite its good intentions. To avoid this, interviewers can try to make the consent process more conversational. In our qualitative phone interviews in India and Uganda, this means establishing a list of all necessary consent topics to cover in a more conversational way, rather than focusing on reading the script verbatim. Pausing to ask questions has also helped to make the consent process more conversational.
Emphasizing flexibility, given the respondents’ other commitments, is more difficult over the phone than in-person, yet still central to promoting genuine consent. In India, several banking agents whom we called requested that we try again later in the day. In some cases, they even called us back. However, we later heard from our partner organization that some agents who completed interviews found the timing of our calls inconvenient, because they were dealing with customers at that time. These respondents had still felt compelled to participate, even though the interview was voluntary. We responded by shifting our calls with subsequent agents to later in the day, when they were less likely to have customers. We also started to explicitly ask agents if they were currently serving customers, in order to make sure we did not interrupt their work. Finally, we reaffirmed their ability to reschedule at a time most convenient for them if they were interested.
Keeping respondents engaged throughout the call
From the beginning to the end of the call, it is important for interviewers to remember how much verbal and audio cues matter on the phone, especially in the absence of the visual, non-verbal cues on which we so often train interviewers. In Uganda, we re-trained interviewers to switch from in-person to phone-based data collection. Interviewers were encouraged to pay attention to the mood of the respondents, as well as any background sounds that might detract from the interview or provide additional context, such as a child crying, lots of people, or outdoor noises.
Signals of active listening and verbal encouragement from the interviewer also play a role in developing rapport that sustains an interview on the phone. As part of the same training, interviewers were encouraged to habitually use brief affirmative words that do not interrupt the respondent, as well as to repeat statements back to respondents. Moreover, interviewers may need more concrete phrasing to assure respondents. In our COVID-19 survey, when we wanted to ask their preferences for future government action related to COVID-19, we tried to preface our question with a message of hope: “we sincerely hope that things will be back to normal again and all of us will be safe . . . but in case the government has to . . . ” Whatever the question, more assurance than normal is needed given the highly stressful circumstances.
Finally, we’ve tried to be flexible with the content we plan to cover with the respondent. Given our earlier findings that long phone interviews can distress respondents, we make sure to keep the interviews short and only ask questions that we think will be essential to policymakers. Given the time constraint in phone interviews compared to in-person interviews, we divided our qualitative interview content into different informational buckets for different respondents. We knew that some respondents would prefer to talk about certain topics over others. For this reason, we were always ready to change the subject of the interview if we felt that the respondent was not engaging or losing interest in the conversation.
Overall, ensuring care for respondents over the phone may require more intensive interviewer training or scripted language than for in-person surveys and interviews. As we collect data that will hopefully improve health and economic policy, we have found this extra effort is well worth it to ensure true informed consent and rapport with respondents during a difficult time.
Steps to consider when obtaining consent/building rapport during a phone survey:
Have I piloted my survey with people similar to my intended respondents? Have I created a protocol/script to address potential respondent apprehensions before beginning the survey? Have I ensured my survey is short and only asks important decision-relevant questions, as to not trouble/inconvenience respondents? Have I given a complete explanation of the survey, including: (if my team has NOT met them in-person before) information about how we got their number, a clear explanation of who my organization is, and the purpose of the survey? (if my team has met them in-person before) a reminder of who my organization is, what we have talked to them about before, when we last spoke to them, and an explanation of the purpose of the survey? Have I created different protocols/message framing around reaching the correct respondent, particularly if my team is aiming to speak to women? Am I making the consent process conversational? Am I emphasizing flexibility and calling at times of day that are likely to be convenient for my respondents? Am I giving signs of active listening and reassurance throughout the call? Am I being flexible with time and the questions I ask if the respondent is losing interest?
Footnotes
[1] For our COVID-19 phone survey, we are collecting four rounds of data on health awareness and practices, as well as relief benefits and economic effects. We had met the respondents and collected their phone numbers during previous in-person survey rounds.
[2] We conducted qualitative phone interviews of banking agents, their supervisors, and their customers in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The interviews were part of an impact evaluation for a household savings calendar and also included conversations about COVID-19. We had met agents and their supervisors previously, but not the customers of those agents. Agent and supervisor phone numbers were sourced from the client. As part of the program, customers reported their phone numbers to agents several weeks or months prior with consent to be contacted in the future.
[3] In Uganda, we are implementing an ongoing longitudinal qualitative study as part of an impact evaluation of GiveDirectly’s cash transfer program to people in protracted displacement. Households have experienced multiple co-shocks: health shocks form COVID-19, economic and food security shocks from the lockdown measures, the locusts infestation, and the reduced food and cash aid provided by the World Food Programme. It is important to keep hearing and learning from their experiences and whether and how cash transfers mitigate those shocks. We thus decided to move to phone-based qualitative interviewing. We had met the respondents and collected their phone numbers during previous in-person survey rounds.
[4]See page 22 here: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/24595/9781464809040.pdf | https://medium.com/idinsight-blog/i-just-called-to-say-i-want-to-interview-you-41df1a83b950 | [] | 2020-05-05 12:24:02.945000+00:00 | ['Project Work', 'Covid 19', 'Phone Surveys', 'Remote Data Collection'] |
These are the features in ES6 that you should know | Learn functional React, in a project-based way, with Functional Architecture with React and Redux.
ES6 brings more features to the JavaScript language. Some new syntax allows you to write code in a more expressive way, some features complete the functional programming toolbox, and some features are questionable.
let and const
There are two ways for declaring a variable ( let and const ) plus one that has become obsolete ( var ).
let
let declares and optionally initializes a variable in the current scope. The current scope can be either a module, a function or a block. The value of a variable that is not initialized is undefined .
Scope defines the lifetime and visibility of a variable. Variables are not visible outside the scope in which they are declared.
Consider the next code that emphasizes let block scope:
let x = 1;
{
let x = 2;
}
console.log(x); //1
In contrast, the var declaration had no block scope:
var x = 1;
{
var x = 2;
}
console.log(x); //2
The for loop statement, with the let declaration, creates a new variable local to the block scope, for each iteration. The next loop creates five closures over five different i variables.
(function run(){
for(let i=0; i<5; i++){
setTimeout(function log(){
console.log(i); //0 1 2 3 4
}, 100);
}
})();
Writing the same code with var will create five closures, over the same variable, so all closures will display the last value of i .
The log() function is a closure. For more on closures, take a look at Discover the power of closures in JavaScript.
const
const declares a variable that cannot be reassigned. It becomes a constant only when the assigned value is immutable.
An immutable value is a value that, once created, cannot be changed. Primitive values are immutable, objects are mutable.
const freezes the variable, Object.freeze() freezes the object.
The initialization of the const variable is mandatory.
Modules
Before modules, a variable declared outside any function was a global variable.
With modules, a variable declared outside any function is hidden and not available to other modules unless it is explicitly exported.
Exporting makes a function or object available to other modules. In the next example, I export functions from different modules:
//module "./TodoStore.js"
export default function TodoStore(){} //module "./UserStore.js"
export default function UserStore(){}
Importing makes a function or object, from other modules, available to the current module.
import TodoStore from "./TodoStore";
import UserStore from "./UserStore"; const todoStore = TodoStore();
const userStore = UserStore();
Spread/Rest
The … operator can be the spread operator or the rest parameter, depending on where it is used. Consider the next example:
const numbers = [1, 2, 3];
const arr = ['a', 'b', 'c', ...numbers]; console.log(arr);
["a", "b", "c", 1, 2, 3]
This is the spread operator. Now look at the next example:
function process(x,y, ...arr){
console.log(arr)
}
process(1,2,3,4,5);
//[3, 4, 5] function processArray(...arr){
console.log(arr)
}
processArray(1,2,3,4,5);
//[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
This is the rest parameter.
arguments
With the rest parameter we can replace the arguments pseudo-parameter. The rest parameter is an array, arguments is not.
function addNumber(total, value){
return total + value;
} function sum(...args){
return args.reduce(addNumber, 0);
} sum(1,2,3); //6
Cloning
The spread operator makes the cloning of objects and arrays simpler and more expressive.
The object spread properties operator will be available as part of ES2018.
const book = { title: "JavaScript: The Good Parts" }; //clone with Object.assign()
const clone = Object.assign({}, book); //clone with spread operator
const clone = { ...book }; const arr = [1, 2 ,3]; //clone with slice
const cloneArr = arr.slice(); //clone with spread operator
const cloneArr = [ ...arr ];
Concatenation
In the next example, the spread operator is used to concatenate arrays:
const part1 = [1, 2, 3];
const part2 = [4, 5, 6]; const arr = part1.concat(part2); const arr = [...part1, ...part2];
Merging objects
The spread operator, like Object.assign() , can be used to copy properties from one or more objects to an empty object and combine their properties.
const authorGateway = {
getAuthors : function() {},
editAuthor: function() {}
}; const bookGateway = {
getBooks : function() {},
editBook: function() {}
}; //copy with Object.assign()
const gateway = Object.assign({},
authorGateway,
bookGateway);
//copy with spread operator
const gateway = {
...authorGateway,
...bookGateway
};
Property short-hands
Consider the next code:
function BookGateway(){
function getBooks() {}
function editBook() {}
return {
getBooks: getBooks,
editBook: editBook
}
}
With property short-hands, when the property name and the name of the variable used as the value are the same, we can just write the key once.
function BookGateway(){
function getBooks() {}
function editBook() {}
return {
getBooks,
editBook
}
}
Here is another example:
const todoStore = TodoStore();
const userStore = UserStore();
const stores = {
todoStore,
userStore
};
Destructuring assignment
Consider the next code:
function TodoStore(args){
const helper = args.helper;
const dataAccess = args.dataAccess;
const userStore = args.userStore;
}
With destructuring assignment syntax, it can be written like this:
function TodoStore(args){
const {
helper,
dataAccess,
userStore } = args;
}
or even better, with the destructuring syntax in the parameter list:
function TodoStore({ helper, dataAccess, userStore }){}
Below is the function call:
TodoStore({
helper: {},
dataAccess: {},
userStore: {}
});
Default parameters
Functions can have default parameters. Look at the next example:
function log(message, mode = "Info"){
console.log(mode + ": " + message);
} log("An info");
//Info: An info log("An error", "Error");
//Error: An error
Template string literals
Template strings are defined with the ` character. With template strings, the previous logging message can be written like this:
function log(message, mode= "Info"){
console.log(`${mode}: ${message}`);
}
Template strings can be defined on multiple lines. However, a better option is to keep the long text messages as resources, in a database for example.
See below a function that generates an HTML that spans multiple lines:
function createTodoItemHtml(todo){
return `<li>
<div>${todo.title}</div>
<div>${todo.userName}</div>
</li>`;
}
Proper tail-calls
A recursive function is tail recursive when the recursive call is the last thing the function does.
The tail recursive functions perform better than non tail recursive functions. The optimized tail recursive call does not create a new stack frame for each function call, but rather uses a single stack frame.
ES6 brings the tail-call optimization in strict mode.
The following function should benefit from the tail-call optimization.
function print(from, to)
{
const n = from;
if (n > to) return;
console.log(n); //the last statement is the recursive call
print(n + 1, to);
} print(1, 10);
Note: the tail-call optimization is not yet supported by major browsers.
Promises
A promise is a reference to an asynchronous call. It may resolve or fail somewhere in the future.
Promises are easier to combine. As you see in the next example, it is easy to call a function when all promises are resolved, or when the first promise is resolved.
function getUsers() { return fetch("
function getAlbums(){ return fetch(" function getTodos() { return fetch(" / todos "); }function getUsers() { return fetch(" / users "); }function getAlbums(){ return fetch(" / albums "); } const getPromises = [
getTodos(),
getUsers(),
getAlbums()
]; Promise.all(getPromises).then(doSomethingWhenAll);
Promise.race(getPromises).then(doSomethingWhenOne); function doSomethingWhenAll(){}
function doSomethingWhenOne(){}
The fetch() function, part of the Fetch API, returns a promise.
Promise.all() returns a promise that resolves when all input promises have resolved. Promise.race() returns a promise that resolves or rejects when one of the input promises resolves or rejects.
A promise can be in one of the three states: pending, resolved or rejected. The promise will in pending until is either resolved or rejected.
Promises support a chaining system that allows you to pass data through a set of functions. In the next example, the result of getTodos() is passed as input to toJson() , then its result is passed as input to getTopPriority() , and then its result is passed as input to renderTodos() function. When an error is thrown or a promise is rejected the handleError is called.
getTodos()
.then(toJson)
.then(getTopPriority)
.then(renderTodos)
.catch(handleError); function toJson(response){}
function getTopPriority(todos){}
function renderTodos(todos){}
function handleError(error){}
In the previous example, .then() handles the success scenario and .catch() handles the error scenario. If there is an error at any step, the chain control jumps to the closest rejection handler down the chain.
Promise.resolve() returns a resolved promise. Promise.reject() returns a rejected promise.
Class
Class is sugar syntax for creating objects with a custom prototype. It has a better syntax than the previous one, the function constructor. Check out the next exemple:
class Service {
doSomething(){ console.log("doSomething"); }
} let service = new Service();
console.log(service.__proto__ === Service.prototype);
All methods defined in the Service class will be added to the Service.prototype object. Instances of the Service class will have the same prototype ( Service.prototype ) object. All instances will delegate method calls to the Service.prototype object. Methods are defined once on Service.prototype and then inherited by all instances.
Inheritance
“Classes can inherit from other classes”. Below is an example of inheritance where the SpecialService class “inherits” from the Service class:
class Service {
doSomething(){ console.log("doSomething"); }
} class SpecialService extends Service {
doSomethingElse(){ console.log("doSomethingElse"); }
} let specialService = new SpecialService();
specialService.doSomething();
specialService.doSomethingElse();
All methods defined in the SpecialService class will be added to the SpecialService.prototype object. All instances will delegate method calls to the SpecialService.prototype object. If the method is not found in SpecialService.prototype , it will be searched in the Service.prototype object. If it is still not found, it will be searched in Object.prototype .
Class can become a bad feature
Even if they seem encapsulated, all members of a class are public. You still need to manage problems with this losing context. The public API is mutable.
class can become a bad feature if you neglect the functional side of JavaScript. class may give the impression of a class-based language when JavaScript is both a functional programming language and a prototype-based language.
Encapsulated objects can be created with factory functions. Consider the next example:
function Service() {
function doSomething(){ console.log("doSomething"); }
return Object.freeze({
doSomething
});
}
This time all members are private by default. The public API is immutable. There is no need to manage issues with this losing context.
class may be used as an exception if required by the components framework. This was the case with React, but is not the case anymore with React Hooks.
For more on why to favor factory functions, take a look at Class vs Factory function: exploring the way forward.
Arrow functions
Arrow functions can create anonymous functions on the fly. They can be used to create small callbacks, with a shorter syntax.
Let’s take a collection of to-dos. A to-do has an id , a title , and a completed boolean property. Now, consider the next code that selects only the title from the collection:
const titles = todos.map(todo => todo.title);
or the next example selecting only the todos that are not completed:
const filteredTodos = todos.filter(todo => !todo.completed);
this
Arrow functions don’t have their own this and arguments . As a result, you may see the arrow function used to fix problems with this losing context. I think that the best way to avoid this problem is to not use this at all.
Arrow functions can become a bad feature
Arrow functions can become a bad feature when used to the detriment of named functions. This will create readability and maintainability problems. Look at the next code written only with anonymous arrow functions:
const newTodos = todos.filter(todo =>
!todo.completed && todo.type === "RE")
.map(todo => ({
title : todo.title,
userName : users[todo.userId].name
}))
.sort((todo1, todo2) =>
todo1.userName.localeCompare(todo2.userName));
Now, check out the same logic refactored to pure functions with intention revealing names and decide which of them is easier to understand:
const newTodos = todos.filter(isTopPriority)
.map(partial(toTodoView, users))
.sort(ascByUserName); function isTopPriority(todo){
return !todo.completed && todo.type === "RE";
}
function toTodoView(users, todo){
return {
title : todo.title,
userName : users[todo.userId].name
}
} function ascByUserName(todo1, todo2){
return todo1.userName.localeCompare(todo2.userName);
}
Even more, anonymous arrow functions will appear as (anonymous) in the Call Stack.
For more on why to favor named functions, take a look at How to make your code better with intention-revealing function names.
Less code doesn’t necessary mean more readable. Look at the next example and see which version is easier for you to understand:
//with arrow function
const prop = key => obj => obj[key]; //with function keyword
function prop(key){
return function(obj){
return obj[key];
}
}
Pay attention when returning an object. In the next example, the getSampleTodo() returns undefined .
const getSampleTodo = () => { title : "A sample todo" }; getSampleTodo();
//undefined
Generators
I think the ES6 generator is an unnecessary feature that makes code more complicated.
The ES6 generator creates an object that has the next() method. The next() method creates an object that has the value property. ES6 generators promote the use of loops. Take a look at code below:
function* sequence(){
let count = 0;
while(true) {
count += 1;
yield count;
}
} const generator = sequence();
generator.next().value;//1
generator.next().value;//2
generator.next().value;//3
The same generator can be simply implemented with a closure.
function sequence(){
let count = 0;
return function(){
count += 1;
return count;
}
} const generator = sequence();
generator();//1
generator();//2
generator();//3
For more examples with functional generators take a look at Let’s experiment with functional generators and the pipeline operator in JavaScript
Conclusion
let and const declare and initialize variables.
Modules encapsulate functionality and expose only a small part.
The spread operator, rest parameter, and property shorthand make things easier to express.
Promises and tail recursion complete the functional programming toolbox.
Follow on Twitter and discover my new books! | https://medium.com/programming-essentials/these-are-the-features-in-es6-that-you-should-know-1411194c71cb | ['Cristian Salcescu'] | 2020-06-06 09:39:31.649000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'Technology', 'Programming', 'Learning'] |
Practical Machine Learning with Python and Keras | Practical Machine Learning with Python and Keras
Originally published at kite.com
Table of Contents
What is machine learning, and why do we care? Supervised machine learning Understanding Artificial Neural Networks Using the Keras library to train a simple Neural Network that recognizes handwritten digits Conclusion Take-home projects
What is machine learning, and why do we care?
Machine learning is a field of artificial intelligence that uses statistical techniques to give computer systems the ability to “learn” (e.g., progressively improve performance on a specific task) from data, without being explicitly programmed. Think of how efficiently (or not) Gmail detects spam emails, or how good text-to-speech has become with the rise of Siri, Alexa, and Google Home.
Some of the tasks that can be solved by implementing Machine Learning include:
Anomaly and fraud detection: Detect unusual patterns in credit card and bank transactions.
Detect unusual patterns in credit card and bank transactions. Prediction: Predict future prices of stocks, exchange rates, and now cryptocurrencies.
Predict future prices of stocks, exchange rates, and now cryptocurrencies. Image recognition: Identify objects and faces in images.
Machine Learning is an enormous field, and today we’ll be working to analyze just a small subset of it.
Supervised Machine Learning
Supervised learning is one of Machine Learning’s subfields. The idea behind Supervised Learning is that you first teach a system to understand your past data by providing many examples to a specific problem and desired output. Then, once the system is “trained”, you can show it new inputs in order to predict the outputs.
How would you build an email spam detector? One way to do it is through intuition — manually defining rules that make sense: such as “contains the word money”, or “contains the word ‘Western Union’”. While manually built rule-based systems can work sometimes, others it becomes hard to create or identify patterns and rules based only on human intuition. By using Supervised Learning, we can train systems to learn the underlying rules and patterns automatically with a lot of past spam data. Once our spam detector is trained, we can feed it new a new email so that it can predict how likely an email is spam.
Earlier I mentioned that you can use Supervised Learning to predict an output. There are two primary kinds of supervised learning problems: regression and classification.
In regression problems, we try to predict a continuous output. For example, I am predicting the price (real value) of a house when given its size.
problems, we try to predict a continuous output. For example, I am predicting the price (real value) of a house when given its size. In classification problems, we try to predict a discrete number of categorical labels. For example, predicting if an email is spam or not given the number of words within it.
You can’t talk about Supervised Machine Learning without talking about supervised learning models — it’s like talking about programming without mentioning programming languages or data structures. In fact, the learning models are the structures that are “trained,” and their weights or structure change internally as they mold and understand what we are trying to predict. There are plenty of supervised learning models, some of the ones I have personally used are:
Random Forest
Naive Bayes
Logistic Regression
K Nearest Neighbors
Today we’ll be using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) as our model of choice.
Understanding Artificial Neural Networks
ANNs are named this way because their internal structure is meant to mimic the human brain. A human brain consists of neurons and synapses that connect these neurons with each other, and when these neurons are stimulated, they “activate” other neurons in our brain through electricity.
In the world of ANNs, each neuron is “activated” by first computing the weighted sum of its incoming inputs (other neurons from the previous layer), and then running the result through activation function. When a neuron is activated, it will, in turn, activate other neurons that will perform similar computations, causing a chain reaction between all the neurons of all the layers.
It’s worth mentioning that, while ANNs are inspired by biological neurons, they are in no way comparable.
What the diagram above is describing here is the entire activation process that every neuron goes through. Let’s look at it together from left to right.
All the inputs (numerical values) from the incoming neurons are read. The incoming inputs are identified as x1..xn
Each input is multiplied by the weight associated with that connection. The weights associated with the connections here are denoted as W1j..Wnj.
All the weighted inputs are summed together and passed into the activation function. The activation function reads the single summed weighted input and transforms it into a new numerical value.K Nearest Neighbors
Finally, the numerical value that was returned by the activation function will then be the input of another neuron in another layer.
Neural Network layers
Neurons inside the ANN are arranged into layers. Layers are a way to give structure to the Neural Network, each layer will contain 1 or more neurons. A Neural Network will usually have 3 or more layers. There are 2 special layers that are always defined, which are the input and the output layer.
The input layer is used as an entry point to our Neural Network. In programming, think of this as the arguments we define to a function.
The output layer is used as the result to our Neural Network. In programming, think of this as the return value of a function.
The layers in between are described as “hidden layers”, and they are where most of the computation happens. All layers in an ANN are encoded as feature vectors.
Choosing how many hidden layers and neurons
There isn’t necessarily a golden rule on choosing how many layers and their size (or the number of neurons they have). Generally, you want to try and at least have 1 hidden layer and tweak around the size to see what works best.
Using the Keras library to train a simple Neural Network that recognizes handwritten digits
For us Python Software Engineers, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Libraries like Tensorflow, Torch, Theano, and Keras already define the main data structures of a Neural Network, leaving us with the responsibility of describing the structure of the Neural Network in a declarative way.
Keras gives us a few degrees of freedom here: the number of layers, the number of neurons in each layer, the type of layer, and the activation function. In practice, there are many more of these, but let’s keep it simple. As mentioned above, there are two special layers that need to be defined based on your problematic domain: the size of the input layer and the size of the output layer. All the remaining “hidden layers” can be used to learn the complex non-linear abstractions to the problem.
Today we’ll be using Python and the Keras library to predict handwritten digits from the MNIST dataset. There are three options to follow along: use the rendered Jupyter Notebook hosted on Kite’s github repository, running the notebook locally, or running the code from a minimal python installation on your machine.
Running the iPython Notebook Locally
If you wish to load this Jupyter Notebook locally instead of following the linked rendered notebook, here is how you can set it up:
Requirements:
A Linux or Mac operating system
Conda 4.3.27 or later
Git 2.13.0 or later
wget 1.16.3 or later
In a terminal, navigate to a directory of your choice and run:
git clone https://
cd kite-python-blog-post-code/Practical\ Machine\ Learning\ with\ Python\ and\ Keras/ # Clone the repositorygit clone:// github.com/kiteco/kite-python-blog- post-code.gitcd kite-python-blog-post-code/Practical\ Machine\ Learning\\ Python\\ Keras/ # Use Conda to setup and activate the Python environment with the correct dependencies
conda env create -f environment.yml
source activate kite-blog-post
Running from a Minimal Python Distribution
To run from a pure Python installation (anything after 3.5 should work), install the required modules with pip, then run the code as typed, excluding lines marked with a % which are used for the iPython environment.
It is strongly recommended, but not necessary, to run example code in a virtual environment. For extra help, see https://packaging.python.org/guides/installing-using-pip-and-virtualenv/
# Set up and Activate a Virtual Environment under Python3 $ pip3 install virtualenv
$ python3 -m virtualenv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate # Install Modules with pip (not pip3) (venv) $ pip install matplotlib
(venv) $ pip install sklearn
(venv) $ pip install tensorflow
Okay! If these modules installed successfully, you can now run all the code in this project.
In [1]:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import gzip
from typing import List
from sklearn.preprocessing import OneHotEncoder
import tensorflow.keras as keras
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from sklearn.metrics import confusion_matrix
import itertools
%matplotlib inline
The MNIST Dataset
The MNIST dataset is a large database of handwritten digits that is used as a benchmark and an introduction to machine learning and image processing systems. We like MNIST because the dataset is very clean and this allows us to focus on the actual network training and evaluation. Remember: a clean dataset is a luxury in the ML world! So let’s enjoy and celebrate MNIST’s cleanliness while we can :)
The objective
Given a dataset of 60,000 handwritten digit images (represented by 28x28 pixels, each containing a value 0–255 with its grayscale value), train a system to classify each image with it’s respective label (the digit that is displayed).
The dataset
The dataset is composed of a training and testing dataset, but for simplicity we are only going to be using the training set. Below we can download the train dataset
In [2]:
rm -Rf train-images-idx3-ubyte.gz
rm -Rf train-labels-idx1-ubyte.gz
wget -q http://
wget -q http:// %%bashrm -Rf train-images-idx3-ubyte.gzrm -Rf train-labels-idx1-ubyte.gzwget -q http:// yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/train-images-idx3-ubyte.gz wget -q http:// yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/train-labels-idx1-ubyte.gz
Reading the labels
There are 10 possible handwritten digits: (0–9), therefore every label must be a number from 0 to 9. The file that we downloaded, train-labels-idx1-ubyte.gz, encodes labels as following:
TRAINING SET LABEL FILE (train-labels-idx1-ubyte):
The labels values are 0 to 9.
It looks like the first 8 bytes (or the first 2 32-bit integers) can be skipped because they contain metadata of the file that is usually useful to lower-level programming languages. To parse the file, we can perform the following operations:
Open the file using the gzip library, so that we can decompress the file
Read the entire byte array into memory
Skip the first 8 bytes
Iterate over every byte, and cast that byte to integer
NOTE: If this file was not from a trusted source, a lot more checking would need to be done. For the purpose of this blog post, I’m going to assume the file is valid in it’s integrity.
In [3]:
with gzip.open('train-labels-idx1-ubyte.gz') as train_labels:
data_from_train_file = train_labels.read() # Skip the first 8 bytes, we know exactly how many labels there are
label_data = data_from_train_file[8:]
assert len(label_data) == 60000 # Convert every byte to an integer. This will be a number between 0 and 9
labels = [int(label_byte) for label_byte in label_data]
assert min(labels) == 0 and max(labels) == 9
assert len(labels) == 60000
Reading the images
Reading images is slightly different than reading labels. The first 16 bytes contain metadata that we already know. We can skip those bytes and directly proceed to reading the images. Every image is represented as a 28*28 unsigned byte array. All we have to do is read one image at a time and save it into an array.
In [4]:
SIZE_OF_ONE_IMAGE = 28 ** 2
images = [] # Iterate over the train file, and read one image at a time
with gzip.open('train-images-idx3-ubyte.gz') as train_images:
train_images.read(4 * 4)
ctr = 0
for _ in range(60000):
image = train_images.read(size=SIZE_OF_ONE_IMAGE)
assert len(image) == SIZE_OF_ONE_IMAGE # Convert to numpy
image_np = np.frombuffer(image, dtype='uint8') / 255
images.append(image_np) images = np.array(images)
images.shape
Out [4]: (60000, 784)
Our images list now contains 60,000 images. Each image is represented as a byte vector of SIZE_OF_ONE_IMAGE Let’s try to plot an image using the matplotlib library:
In [5]:
def plot_image(pixels: np.array):
plt.imshow(pixels.reshape((28, 28)), cmap='gray')
plt.show()
plot_image(images[25])
Encoding image labels using one-hot encoding
We are going to use One-hot encoding to transform our target labels into a vector.
In [6]:
labels_np = np.array(labels).reshape((-1, 1)) encoder = OneHotEncoder(categories='auto')
labels_np_onehot = encoder.fit_transform(labels_np).toarray() labels_np_onehot
Out [6]:
array([[0., 0., 0., ..., 0., 0., 0.],
[1., 0., 0., ..., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., ..., 0., 0., 0.],
...,
[0., 0., 0., ..., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., ..., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., ..., 0., 1., 0.]])
We have successfully created input and output vectors that will be fed into the input and output layers of our neural network. The input vector at index i will correspond to the output vector at index i
In [7]:
labels_np_onehot[999]
Out [7]:
array([0., 0., 0., 0., 0., 0., 1., 0., 0., 0.])
In [8]:
plot_image(images[999])
In the example above, we can see that the image at index 999 clearly represents a 6. It’s associated output vector contains 10 digits (since there are 10 available labels) and the digit at index 6 is set to 1, indicating that it’s the correct label.
Building train and test split
In order to check that our ANN has correctly been trained, we take a percentage of the train dataset (our 60,000 images) and set it aside for testing purposes.
In [9]:
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(images, labels_np_onehot)
In [10]:
y_train.shape
Out [10]:
(45000, 10)
In [11]:
y_test.shape
Out [11]:
(15000, 10)
As you can see, our dataset of 60,000 images was split into one dataset of 45,000 images, and the other of 15,000 images.
Training a Neural Network using Keras
In [12]:
model = keras.Sequential()
model.add(keras.layers.Dense(input_shape=(SIZE_OF_ONE_IMAGE,), units=128, activation='relu'))
model.add(keras.layers.Dense(10, activation='softmax')) model.summary() model.compile(optimizer='sgd',
loss='categorical_crossentropy',
metrics=['accuracy'])
Total params: 101,770
Trainable params: 101,770
Non-trainable params: 0
In [13]:
X_train.shape
Out [13]:
(45000, 784)
In [14]:
model.fit(X_train, y_train, epochs=20, batch_size=128)
Epoch 1/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 8s 169us/step - loss: 1.3758 - acc: 0.6651
Epoch 2/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 7s 165us/step - loss: 0.6496 - acc: 0.8504
Epoch 3/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 8s 180us/step - loss: 0.4972 - acc: 0.8735
Epoch 4/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 9s 191us/step - loss: 0.4330 - acc: 0.8858
Epoch 5/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 8s 186us/step - loss: 0.3963 - acc: 0.8931
Epoch 6/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 8s 183us/step - loss: 0.3714 - acc: 0.8986
Epoch 7/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 8s 182us/step - loss: 0.3530 - acc: 0.9028
Epoch 8/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 9s 191us/step - loss: 0.3387 - acc: 0.9055
Epoch 9/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 8s 175us/step - loss: 0.3266 - acc: 0.9091
Epoch 10/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 9s 199us/step - loss: 0.3163 - acc: 0.9117
Epoch 11/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 8s 185us/step - loss: 0.3074 - acc: 0.9140
Epoch 12/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 10s 214us/step - loss: 0.2991 - acc: 0.9162
Epoch 13/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 8s 187us/step - loss: 0.2919 - acc: 0.9185
Epoch 14/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 9s 202us/step - loss: 0.2851 - acc: 0.9203
Epoch 15/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 9s 201us/step - loss: 0.2788 - acc: 0.9222
Epoch 16/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 9s 206us/step - loss: 0.2730 - acc: 0.9241
Epoch 17/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 7s 164us/step - loss: 0.2674 - acc: 0.9254
Epoch 18/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 9s 189us/step - loss: 0.2622 - acc: 0.9271
Epoch 19/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 10s 219us/step - loss: 0.2573 - acc: 0.9286
Epoch 20/20
45000/45000 [==============================] - 9s 197us/step - loss: 0.2526 - acc: 0.9302
Out [14]:
<tensorflow.python.keras.callbacks.History at 0x1129f1f28>>
In [15]:
model.evaluate(X_test, y_test)
15000/15000 [==============================] — 2s 158us/step
Out [15]:
[0.2567395991722743, 0.9264]
Inspecting the results
Congratulations! you just trained a neural network to predict handwritten digits with more than 90% accuracy! Let’s test out the network with one of the pictures we have in our testset
Let’s take a random image, in this case the image at index 1010. We take the predicted label (in this case, the value is a 4 because the 5th index is set to 1)
In [16]:
y_test[1010]
Out [16]:
array([0., 0., 0., 0., 1., 0., 0., 0., 0., 0.])
Let’s plot the image of the corresponding image
In [17]:
plot_image(X_test[1010])
Understanding the output of a softmax activation layer
Now, let’s run this number through the neural network and we can see what our predicted output looks like!
In [18]:
predicted_results = model.predict(X_test[1010].reshape((1, -1)))
The output of a softmax layer is a probability distribution for every output. In our case, there are 10 possible outputs (digits 0–9). Of course, every one of our images is expected to only match one specific output (in other words, all of our images only contain one distinct digit).
Because this is a probability distribution, the sum of the predicted results is ~1.0
In [19]:
predicted_results.sum()
Out [19]:
1.0000001
Reading the output of a softmax activation layer for our digit
As you can see below, the 7th index is really close to 1 (0.9) which means that there is a 90% probability that this digit is a 6… which it is! congrats!
In [20]:
predicted_results
Out [20]:
array([[1.2202066e-06, 3.4432333e-08, 3.5151488e-06, 1.2011528e-06,
9.9889344e-01, 3.5855610e-05, 1.6140550e-05, 7.6822333e-05,
1.0446112e-04, 8.6736667e-04]], dtype=float32)
Viewing the confusion matrix
In [21]:
predicted_outputs = np.argmax(model.predict(X_test), axis=1)
expected_outputs = np.argmax(y_test, axis=1) predicted_confusion_matrix = confusion_matrix(expected_outputs, predicted_outputs)
In [22]:
predicted_confusion_matrix
Out [22]:
array([[1413, 0, 10, 3, 2, 12, 12, 2, 10, 1],
[ 0, 1646, 12, 6, 3, 8, 0, 5, 9, 3],
[ 16, 9, 1353, 16, 22, 1, 18, 28, 44, 3],
[ 1, 6, 27, 1420, 0, 48, 11, 16, 25, 17],
[ 3, 7, 5, 1, 1403, 1, 12, 3, 7, 40],
[ 15, 13, 7, 36, 5, 1194, 24, 6, 18, 15],
[ 10, 8, 9, 1, 21, 16, 1363, 0, 9, 0],
[ 2, 14, 18, 4, 16, 4, 2, 1491, 1, 27],
[ 4, 28, 19, 31, 10, 28, 13, 2, 1280, 25],
[ 5, 13, 1, 21, 58, 10, 1, 36, 13, 1333]])
In [23]:
def plot_confusion_matrix(cm, classes,
title='Confusion matrix',
cmap=plt.cm.Blues):
"""
This function prints and plots the confusion matrix.
Normalization can be applied by setting `normalize=True`.
""" # Source code: https:// scikit-learn.org/stable/auto_examples/model_selection/plot_confusion_matrix.html def plot_confusion_matrix(, classes,title='Confusion matrix',=plt..Blues):"""ThisNormalization canapplied by setting `normalize=True`.""" plt.imshow(cm, interpolation='nearest', cmap=cmap)
plt.title(title)
plt.colorbar()
tick_marks = np.arange(len(classes))
plt.xticks(tick_marks, classes, rotation=45)
plt.yticks(tick_marks, classes) fmt = 'd'
thresh = cm.max() / 2.
for i, j in itertools.product(range(cm.shape[0]), range(cm.shape[1])):
plt.text(j, i, format(cm[i, j], fmt),
horizontalalignment="center",
color="white" if cm[i, j] > thresh else "black") plt.ylabel('True label')
plt.xlabel('Predicted label')
plt.tight_layout() # Compute confusion matrix
class_names = [str(idx) for idx in range(10)]
cnf_matrix = confusion_matrix(expected_outputs, predicted_outputs)
np.set_printoptions(precision=2) # Plot non-normalized confusion matrix
plt.figure()
plot_confusion_matrix(cnf_matrix, classes=class_names,
title='Confusion matrix, without normalization') plt.show()
Conclusion
During this tutorial, you’ve gotten a taste of a couple important concepts that are a fundamental part of one’s job in Machine Learning. We learned how to:
Encode and decode images in the MNIST dataset
Encode categorical features using one-hot encoding
Define our Neural Network with 2 hidden layers, and an output layer that uses the softmax activation function
Inspect the results of a softmax activation function output
Plot the confusion matrix of our classifier
Libraries like Sci-Kit Learn and Keras have substantially lowered the entry barrier to Machine Learning — just as Python has lowered the bar of entry to programming in general. Of course, it still takes years (or decades) of work to master!
Engineers who understand Machine Learning are in strong demand. With the help of the libraries I mentioned above, and introductory blog posts focused on Practical machine learning (like this one), all engineers should be able to get their hands on Machine Learning even if they don’t understand the full theoretical reasoning behind a particular model, library, or framework. And, hopefully, they’ll use this skill to improve whatever they’re building every day.
If we start making our components a little bit smarter and a little more personalized every day, we can make customers more engaged and at the center of whatever we are building.
Take home exercise
In my next article, I’ll be showing you how to deploy a learning model using gRPC and Docker. But in the meantime, here are a few challenges you can do at home to dig deeper into the world of machine learning using Python:
Tweak around with the number of neurons in the hidden layer. Can you increase the accuracy?
Try to add more layers. Does the neural network train slower? Can you think of why?
Try to train a Random Forest classifier (requires scikit-learn library) instead of a Neural Network. Is the accuracy better?
This post is a part of Kite’s new series on Python. You can check out the code from this and other posts on our GitHub repository. | https://medium.com/kitepython/practical-machine-learning-with-python-and-keras-cc90d7a5f32a | ['Daniel Pyrathon'] | 2019-02-23 00:00:10.208000+00:00 | ['Python Programming', 'Data Science', 'Keras', 'Python', 'Machine Learning'] |
Four principles for the future of city streets | This crowded street in 1910 Los Angeles shows pedestrians, cars, bicyclists, and streetcars intermingled. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Four principles for the future of city streets
Cities can leverage design and technology to re-think our streets for pedestrians, bikes, and transit.
This piece was co-written with Graduate Associate Landry Doyle-Wiese.
In the 1920s, American cities debated a question that would shape urban life for decades: “Who is the street for?”
Streets had, for ages, existed not just as thoroughfares but as vibrant hubs of commercial and social activity. And so, at first, the answer was almost everyone: adults, children, horses, buggies, streetcars, vendors, and more.
But the automobile changed that concept. At first, the new technology was seen as a dangerous invader of places where children played, streetcars crossed, and pedestrians strolled — with good reason. In 1925, cars killed over 15,000 people a year. But by the end of the decade, thanks in part to the careful machinations of the car lobby (which went so far as to coin and promote the word “jaywalker” to liken wayward pedestrians as uncouth bumpkins, or “jays”), streets became conduits that get people where they need to go — in fast vehicles.
As Peter Norton explains in his book, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in American Cities, cities were “physically destroyed and rebuilt to accommodate automobiles.” Curbs, crosswalks, and traffic lights were installed for the first time to ensure that pedestrians remained in their small portion of the street’s real estate — and crossed only when it was most efficient for vehicles.
These kinds of measures have only escalated over time. To handle peak, rush-hour demand, engineers today will often add more vehicle lanes to cities. And to ensure the safety of pedestrians and cyclists on these high-speed streets, they design even wider vehicle lanes (to account for drivers who drift or veer) and include buffer spaces like shoulders, medians, and parked cars. These acres of pavement — empty for most of each day and night — are neither pleasant to walk around nor conducive to the types of welcoming urban spaces that encourage street life.
Worse, despite all these efforts, our streets are neither efficient nor safe. In 2018, due to congestion, nearly every major U.S. city recorded a downtown last-mile travel speed below 20 miles per hour. In 2017, more than 6,700 pedestrians and cyclists died on U.S. streets due to automobile crashes.
In response to this stark reality, the complete streets movement has pushed forward important design solutions for cities to improve safety and sidewalk activity — while still making sure people can get where they need to go. Cities like Boston and Toronto, for example, have published Complete Streets Guidelines to promote design standards that allow pedestrians, bicycles, and public space to co-exist with cars safely. In 2017, NACTO released its Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism to “proactively guide the [self-driving car] technology to prioritize people-first design.”
A “complete street” renovation in New York City in 2011. (Image: Flickr User NYCDOT)
At Sidewalk Labs, we think that there is an opportunity to push this critical thinking even further. We are on the cusp of a new era where new technological capabilities are about to converge. These include autonomous vehicles, which can be programmed to follow speed limits or take certain routes; new mobility services like ride-hail and bike-share services, which reduce the need for parking space; and flexible infrastructure, which makes it possible to use street spaces in a variety of ways. These advances have put cities in a position to completely re-imagine streets — and who they are for.
With these trends and capabilities in mind, we’ve developed four principles that have guided the ways we approach street design — and that we think could guide the design of streets in the future. (You can learn more about them, and download the full report on the principles, here):
Principle 1: Tailor streets for different modes.
streets for different modes. Principle 2: Separate streets by speed.
streets by speed. Principle 3: Incorporate flexibility into street space.
flexibility into street space. Principle 4: Recapture street space for the public realm, transit, bikes, and pedestrians.
Principles 1 and 2 go hand in hand: different street types could prioritize different modes — and adjust their width and speed limit accordingly. So do Principles 3 and 4: we can use new technologies to make lanes more flexible — and give space back to people whenever possible.
To illustrate these admittedly abstract concepts, let’s examine how they’d play out in practice on different street types.
Let’s start with streets that prioritize pedestrians. We’ve called these streets Laneways — they’re very narrow and limited to 4mph. Pedestrians would feel comfortable to stroll or linger here. | https://medium.com/sidewalk-talk/street-design-principles-fe35106e0f92 | ['Willa Ng'] | 2019-05-13 19:44:13.102000+00:00 | ['Cities', 'Technology', 'Transportation', 'Urban Planning'] |
How to Use GraphQL API in Node.js Apps | GraphQL provides lots of benefits that aren’t available in traditional REST APIs. GraphQL provides strong typing for inputs and outputs, so it’s much harder to enter invalid inputs and unexpected output. You have to specify what fields you want in your output so you won’t be getting a lot of useless data that you don’t need.
Also, GraphQL requests are made over regular HTTP, so normal HTTP clients can make GraphQL requests.
You make requests like this:
{
getPhotos(page: 1) {
photos {
id
fileLocation
description
tags
}
page
totalPhotos
}
}
The top line has the input arguments, and the rest are the fields that you want to get.
To make making requests easier, there are GraphQL clients available. For Node.js, the graphql-requests package is a great library for making GraphQL requests.
One example of a GraphQL API is the Yelp GraphQL API. It’s great getting information about businesses and events all over the world. It is available for free and the rate limit is high. It’s perfect for using it to build an app.
It does not support cross-domain requests, so you have to use the back end to access the data if you want to feed it to the front end.
You have to register for an API key to use the Yelp API. Register for one at https://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation/v3/authentication if you want to use it. As with any API key, it should be kept at a secret location.
A lot of data about businesses is available. The API returns name, phone, price level, categories, hours, reviews, photos, etc. It has pretty much anything most people want to know about a business.
In this article, we will build an app that uses the Yelp API to search for data. We need a back end app to access the Yelp API since it cannot be accessed directly from the browser. We will use the GraphQL API to search for business and events data. It will be built with Express. The front end app will be a React app that provides search pages for users to search the Yelp API for business and events via the back end app.
To start we make an empty project folder. Then we make a backend folder in the project folder and in it, run the Express Generator to generate the skeleton code by running npx express-generator .
Once that’s done, we install some packages that we need. We need Babel to use the latest JavaScript features, the CORS package to enable cross-domain requests in our Express app, dotenv to store environment variables like the Yelp API key, and graphql-request package to make GraphQL requests to the Yelp API.
To do this, run npm i @babel/cli @babel/core @babel/node @babel/preset-env cors graphql-request . Once that’s done add the following to the scripts section of package.json :
"start": "nodemon --exec npm run babel-node -- ./bin/www",
"babel-node": "babel-node"
We then need to create a file called .babelrc in the backend folder and add:
to specify that the project will use the latest JavaScript features.
This will let users run our app using Babel Node instead of regular Node.js, which supports the latest JavaScript features. We will also need to install nodemon to watch for changes in our files and reload when we develop the app.
Next, we can write some logic. We need routes to get the data from the front end to the Yelp API, then return the results from the Yelp API as JSON. Create a file called yelp.js and add the following code:
const router = express.Router();
const yelpApiUrl = "
import { GraphQLClient } from "graphql-request";
const client = new GraphQLClient(yelpApiUrl, {
headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.YELP_API_KEY}` },
}); const express = require("express");const router = express.Router();const yelpApiUrl = " https://api.yelp.com/v3/graphql ";import { GraphQLClient } from "graphql-request";const client = new GraphQLClient(yelpApiUrl, {headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.YELP_API_KEY}` },}); /* GET users listing. */
router.post("/business/search", async (req, res, next) => {
const query = `
query search($term: String!, $location: String!, $offset: Int!) {
search(
term: $term,
location: $location,
offset: $offset
) {
total
business {
name
rating
review_count
hours {
is_open_now
open {
start
end
day
}
}
location {
address1
city
state
country
}
}
}
}`; const data = await client.request(query, req.body);
res.json(data);
}); router.post("/events/search", async (req, res, next) => {
const query = `
query event_search($location: String!, $offset: Int!) {
event_search(
location: $location,
offset: $offset
) {
total
events {
name
cost
cost_max
}
}
}`; const data = await client.request(query, req.body);
res.json(data);
}); router.post("/phone/search", async (req, res, next) => {
const query = `
query phone_search($phone: String!) {
phone_search(
phone: $phone
) {
total
business {
name
rating
review_count
location {
address1
city
state
country
}
hours {
is_open_now
open {
start
end
day
}
}
}
}
}`; const data = await client.request(query, req.body);
res.json(data);
}); module.exports = router;
In each route, we have a query for accessing data from the Yelp GraphQL API. we created the GraphQLClient by instantiating with the YELP_API_KEY , which we stored in the .env file in the backend folder.
The .env file should be like this:
YELP_API_KEY='your api key'
To get the queries for the API, we use the GraphQL API sandbox located at https://www.yelp.com/developers/graphql/query/business to fiddle with the query until we get the one that we want. The sandbox has autocompleted so you don’t have to guess what is available. This is the beauty of GraphQL APIs. The inputs and outputs are strongly typed so you know what you can input and what you can get as output. There is also the API documentation above the sandbox.
The first line of each query string, for example, query search($term: String!, $location: String!, $offset: Int!) , specifies the input of the query. The exclamation mark means it’s required. With these parameters specified, we can pass in variables as objects in the second argument of the client object to pass in the fields as variables.
In the end, we get the JSON response like with any other GraphQL API and send the result back to the client.
Next, we replace the existing code in app.js with the following:
require('dotenv').config();
const createError = require("http-errors");
const express = require("express");
const path = require("path");
const cookieParser = require("cookie-parser");
const logger = require("morgan");
const cors = require("cors"); const indexRouter = require("./routes/index");
const yelpRouter = require("./routes/yelp"); const app = express(); // view engine setup
app.set("views", path.join(__dirname, "views"));
app.set("view engine", "jade"); app.use(logger("dev"));
app.use(express.json());
app.use(express.urlencoded({ extended: false }));
app.use(cookieParser());
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, "public")));
app.use(cors()); app.use("/", indexRouter);
app.use("/yelp", yelpRouter); // catch 404 and forward to error handler
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
next(createError(404));
}); // error handler
app.use(function(err, req, res, next) {
// set locals, only providing error in development
res.locals.message = err.message;
res.locals.error = req.app.get("env") === "development" ? err : {}; // render the error page
res.status(err.status || 500);
res.render("error");
}); module.exports = app;
In this file, we added app.use(cors()); to enable CORS in our back end app and added:
const yelpRouter = require("./routes/yelp");
app.use("/yelp", yelpRouter);
to expose the routes that we specified. And we added:
require('dotenv').config();
to load our environment variables so we can use it in our app.
Now that the back end is done, we can move on to the front end.
We start by running Create React App to create the files for the front end app. We do this by running npx create-react-app frontend in the project’s root folder.
Next, we install some packages. We need Axios for making HTTP requests to our back end app, Bootstrap for styling, React Router for routing, and Formik and Yup for handling input value changes and form validation respectively.
We run npm i axios bootstrap formik react-bootstrap react-router-dom yup to install all the packages.
Now we are ready to write some code. Everything will be in the src folder unless otherwise specified. In App.js , we replace the existing code with the following:
import React from "react";
import "./App.css";
import TopBar from "./TopBar";
import { Router, Route, Link } from "react-router-dom";
import { createBrowserHistory as createHistory } from "history";
import HomePage from "./HomePage";
import PhoneSearchPage from "./PhoneSearchPage";
import EventSearchPage from "./EventSearchPage";
const history = createHistory(); function App() {
return (
<div className="App">
<Router history={history}>
<TopBar />
<Route path="/" exact component={HomePage} />
<Route path="/phonesearch" exact component={PhoneSearchPage} />
<Route path="/eventsearch" exact component={EventSearchPage} />
</Router>
</div>
);
} export default App;
We have routes for 3 pages. One for the home page, one for phone search, and one for event search. We also have a top bar at the top with links to these pages.
In App.css , we replace the existing code with the following:
.center {
text-align: center;
}
to center text.
Next, we create an event search page. Create a file called EventSearchPage.js and add the following:
import React, { useState } from "react";
import { Formik } from "formik";
import Form from "react-bootstrap/Form";
import Col from "react-bootstrap/Col";
import Button from "react-bootstrap/Button";
import Card from "react-bootstrap/Card";
import Pagination from "react-bootstrap/Pagination";
import * as yup from "yup";
import { searchEvents } from "./requests"; const schema = yup.object({
location: yup.string().required("Location is required"),
}); function EventSearchPage() {
const [results, setResults] = useState([]);
const [offset, setOffset] = useState(0);
const [page, setPage] = useState(1);
const [total, setTotal] = useState(0);
const [params, setParams] = useState({}); const getEvents = async params => {
const response = await searchEvents(params);
setTotal(response.data.event_search.total);
setResults(response.data.event_search.events);
}; const changePage = async page => {
setPage(page);
setOffset((page - 1) * 20);
params.offset = (page - 1) * 20;
setParams(params);
getEvents(params);
}; const handleSubmit = async evt => {
const isValid = await schema.validate(evt);
if (!isValid) {
return;
}
evt.offset = offset;
setParams(evt);
getEvents(evt);
}; return (
<div className="home-page">
<h1 className="center">Event Search</h1>
<Formik validationSchema={schema} onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
{({
handleSubmit,
handleChange,
handleBlur,
values,
touched,
isInvalid,
errors,
}) => (
<Form noValidate onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
<Form.Row>
<Form.Group as={Col} md="12" controlId="name">
<Form.Label>Location</Form.Label>
<Form.Control
type="text"
name="location"
placeholder="Location"
value={values.location || ""}
onChange={handleChange}
isInvalid={touched.location && errors.location}
/>
<Form.Control.Feedback type="invalid">
{errors.location}
</Form.Control.Feedback>
</Form.Group>
</Form.Row>
<Button type="submit">Search</Button>
</Form>
)}
</Formik>
<br />
{results.map((r, i) => {
return (
<Card key={i}>
<Card.Title className="card-title">{r.name}</Card.Title>
<Card.Body></Card.Body>
</Card>
);
})}
<br />
<Pagination>
<Pagination.First onClick={changePage.bind(this, 1)} />
<Pagination.Prev
onClick={changePage.bind(this, page - 1)}
disabled={page == 0}
/>
<Pagination.Next
onClick={changePage.bind(this, page + 1)}
disabled={Math.ceil(total / 20) == page}
/>
<Pagination.Last
onClick={changePage.bind(this, Math.max(Math.floor(total / 20)), 0)}
/>
</Pagination>
</div>
);
} export default EventSearchPage;
We wrap the React Boostrap form with the Formik component to use Formik’s form value handling features, automatically binding the input values to the evt object in the handleSubmit function. The schema object is created by using Yup to check for required fields, which is location in this form.
In the handleSubmit function, we get the entered value in the evt object in the parameter, we validate it with Yup’s schema.validate function. If isValid is true , then make the request to our API by calling the getEvents function. We set the offset so that we can view the paginated results by skipping the number of entries specified by the offset . We get the response and the set the results by calling setResults so that we can display the results in the Card component below the Form . We also have buttons for Pagination so that we can skip results to get to the ones we want. We make sure that the links are disabled when they don’t make sense, like disabling the Pagination.Next button when there are no next entries and Pagination.Last when the user is on the last page.
Next, we need an array of days of the week for the days constant to be defined. We create a file called exports.js and add the following:
export const days = [
"Sunday",
"Monday",
"Tuesday",
"Wednesday",
"Thursday",
"Friday",
"Saturday",
];
Next, we create the home page. Create a file called HomePage.js and add:
import React, { useState } from "react";
import "./HomePage.css";
import { Formik } from "formik";
import Form from "react-bootstrap/Form";
import Col from "react-bootstrap/Col";
import Button from "react-bootstrap/Button";
import Card from "react-bootstrap/Card";
import Pagination from "react-bootstrap/Pagination";
import * as yup from "yup";
import { searchBusiness } from "./requests";
import { days } from "./exports"; const schema = yup.object({
term: yup.string().required("Term is required"),
location: yup.string().required("Location is required"),
}); function HomePage() {
const [results, setResults] = useState([]);
const [offset, setOffset] = useState(0);
const [page, setPage] = useState(1);
const [total, setTotal] = useState(0);
const [params, setParams] = useState({}); const getBusiness = async params => {
const response = await searchBusiness(params);
setTotal(response.data.search.total);
setResults(response.data.search.business);
}; const changePage = async page => {
setPage(page);
setOffset((page - 1) * 20);
params.offset = (page - 1) * 20;
setParams(params);
getBusiness(params);
}; const handleSubmit = async evt => {
const isValid = await schema.validate(evt);
if (!isValid) {
return;
}
evt.offset = offset;
setParams(evt);
getBusiness(evt);
}; return (
<div className="home-page">
<h1 className="center">Business Search</h1>
<Formik validationSchema={schema} onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
{({
handleSubmit,
handleChange,
handleBlur,
values,
touched,
isInvalid,
errors,
}) => (
<Form noValidate onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
<Form.Row>
<Form.Group as={Col} md="12" controlId="name">
<Form.Label>Term</Form.Label>
<Form.Control
type="text"
name="term"
placeholder="Term"
value={values.term || ""}
onChange={handleChange}
isInvalid={touched.term && errors.term}
/>
<Form.Control.Feedback type="invalid">
{errors.term}
</Form.Control.Feedback>
</Form.Group>
<Form.Group as={Col} md="12" controlId="url">
<Form.Label>Location</Form.Label>
<Form.Control
type="text"
name="location"
placeholder="Location"
value={values.location || ""}
onChange={handleChange}
isInvalid={touched.location && errors.location}
/> <Form.Control.Feedback type="invalid">
{errors.location}
</Form.Control.Feedback>
</Form.Group>
</Form.Row>
<Button type="submit">Search</Button>
</Form>
)}
</Formik>
<br />
{results.map((r, i) => {
return (
<Card key={i}>
<Card.Title className="card-title">{r.name}</Card.Title>
<Card.Body>
<p>
Address: {r.location.address1}, {r.location.city},{" "}
{r.location.country}, {r.location.state}
</p>
<p>Rating: {r.rating}</p>
<p>Open Now: {r.hours[0].is_open_now ? "Yes" : "No"}</p>
<p>Hours:</p>
<ul>
{r.hours[0] &&
r.hours[0].open.map((h, i) => (
<li key={i}>
{days[h.day]}: {h.start} - {h.end}
</li>
))}
</ul>
</Card.Body>
</Card>
);
})}
<br />
<Pagination>
<Pagination.First onClick={changePage.bind(this, 1)} />
<Pagination.Prev
onClick={changePage.bind(this, page - 1)}
disabled={page == 0}
/>
<Pagination.Next
onClick={changePage.bind(this, page + 1)}
disabled={Math.ceil(total / 20) == page}
/>
<Pagination.Last
onClick={changePage.bind(this, Math.max(Math.floor(total / 20)), 0)}
/>
</Pagination>
</div>
);
} export default HomePage;
It is very similar to the EventSearchPage except that we have more fields. We also have extra data in the Card components from the results. The logic for getting the data and pagination are the same as EvenrSearchPage except that we are getting businesses instead of events.
Next, we create a file called HomePage.css and add:
.home-page {
padding: 20px;
} .card-title {
margin: 0 20px;
} export default HomePage;
to add some margins to our text and padding to our page.
Next, we make a page for searching for businesses by phone. Create a file called PhoneSearchPage.js and add the following:
import React, { useState } from "react";
import { Formik } from "formik";
import Form from "react-bootstrap/Form";
import Col from "react-bootstrap/Col";
import Button from "react-bootstrap/Button";
import Card from "react-bootstrap/Card";
import Pagination from "react-bootstrap/Pagination";
import * as yup from "yup";
import { searchPhone } from "./requests";
import { days } from "./exports"; const schema = yup.object({
phone: yup.string().required("Phone is required"),
}); function PhoneSearchPage() {
const [results, setResults] = useState([]);
const [offset, setOffset] = useState(0);
const [page, setPage] = useState(1);
const [total, setTotal] = useState(0);
const [params, setParams] = useState({}); const getEvents = async params => {
const response = await searchPhone(params);
setTotal(response.data.phone_search.total);
setResults(response.data.phone_search.business);
}; const changePage = async page => {
setPage(page);
setOffset((page - 1) * 20);
params.offset = (page - 1) * 20;
setParams(params);
getEvents(params);
}; const handleSubmit = async evt => {
const isValid = await schema.validate(evt);
if (!isValid) {
return;
}
evt.offset = offset;
setParams(evt);
getEvents(evt);
}; return (
<div className="home-page">
<h1 className="center">Phone Search</h1>
<Formik validationSchema={schema} onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
{({
handleSubmit,
handleChange,
handleBlur,
values,
touched,
isInvalid,
errors,
}) => (
<Form noValidate onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
<Form.Row>
<Form.Group as={Col} md="12" controlId="name">
<Form.Label>Phone</Form.Label>
<Form.Control
type="text"
name="phone"
placeholder="Phone"
value={values.phone || ""}
onChange={handleChange}
isInvalid={touched.phone && errors.phone}
/>
<Form.Control.Feedback type="invalid">
{errors.phone}
</Form.Control.Feedback>
</Form.Group>
</Form.Row>
<Button type="submit">Search</Button>
</Form>
)}
</Formik>
<br />
{results.map((r, i) => {
return (
<Card key={i}>
<Card.Title className="card-title">{r.name}</Card.Title>
<Card.Body>
<p>
Address: {r.location.address1}, {r.location.city},{" "}
{r.location.country}, {r.location.state}
</p>
<p>Rating: {r.rating}</p>
<p>Open Now: {r.hours[0].is_open_now ? "Yes" : "No"}</p>
<p>Hours:</p>
<ul>
{r.hours[0] &&
r.hours[0].open.map((h, i) => (
<li key={i}>
{days[h.day]}: {h.start} - {h.end}
</li>
))}
</ul>
</Card.Body>
</Card>
);
})}
<br />
<Pagination>
<Pagination.First onClick={changePage.bind(this, 1)} />
<Pagination.Prev
onClick={changePage.bind(this, page - 1)}
disabled={page == 0}
/>
<Pagination.Next
onClick={changePage.bind(this, page + 1)}
disabled={Math.ceil(total / 20) == page}
/>
<Pagination.Last
onClick={changePage.bind(this, Math.max(Math.floor(total / 20)), 0)}
/>
</Pagination>
</div>
);
} export default PhoneSearchPage;
It is like the HomePage except that we are searching by phone instead of keyword and location. Pagination is the same as HomePage .
Next we create a code file to store the requests. Create a file called requests.js and add:
const apiUrl = " const axios = require("axios");const apiUrl = " http://localhost:3000 "; export const searchBusiness = data =>
axios.post(`${apiUrl}/yelp/business/search`, data); export const searchEvents = data =>
axios.post(`${apiUrl}/yelp/events/search`, data); export const searchPhone = data =>
axios.post(`${apiUrl}/yelp/phone/search`, data);
These are the code for making the HTTP requests that we imported to the pages.
Next, we create the top bar. Create a file called TopBar.js and add:
import React from "react";
import Navbar from "react-bootstrap/Navbar";
import Nav from "react-bootstrap/Nav";
import { withRouter } from "react-router-dom"; function TopBar({ location }) {
const { pathname } = location; return (
<Navbar bg="primary" expand="lg" variant="dark">
<Navbar.Brand href="#home">Yelp App</Navbar.Brand>
<Navbar.Toggle aria-controls="basic-navbar-nav" />
<Navbar.Collapse id="basic-navbar-nav">
<Nav className="mr-auto">
<Nav.Link href="/" active={pathname == "/"}>
Business Search
</Nav.Link>
<Nav.Link href="/eventsearch" active={pathname == "/eventsearch"}>
Events Search
</Nav.Link>
<Nav.Link href="/phonesearch" active={pathname == "/phonesearch"}>
Phone Search
</Nav.Link>
</Nav>
</Navbar.Collapse>
</Navbar>
);
} export default withRouter(TopBar);
We use the Navbar provided by React Bootstrap and add the links to navigate to the pages we created. We set the active prop by checking which page we are currently in by getting the pathname from the location prop, which is provided by the withRouter function that wrapped outside the TopBar .
Finally, in index.html , replace the existing code with:
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="%PUBLIC_URL%/favicon.ico" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
<meta name="theme-color" content="#000000" />
<meta
name="description"
content="Web site created using create-react-app"
/>
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="logo192.png" />
<!--
manifest.json provides metadata used when your web app is installed on a
user's mobile device or desktop. See
-->
<link rel="manifest" href="%PUBLIC_URL%/manifest.json" />
<!--
Notice the use of %PUBLIC_URL% in the tags above.
It will be replaced with the URL of the `public` folder during the build.
Only files inside the `public` folder can be referenced from the HTML.
work correctly both with client-side routing and a non-root public URL.
Learn how to configure a non-root public URL by running `npm run build`.
-->
<title>Yelp App</title>
<link
rel="stylesheet"
href="
integrity="sha384-ggOyR0iXCbMQv3Xipma34MD+dH/1fQ784/j6cY/iJTQUOhcWr7x9JvoRxT2MZw1T"
crossorigin="anonymous"
/>
</head>
<body>
<noscript>You need to enable JavaScript to run this app.</noscript>
<div id="root"></div>
<!--
This HTML file is a template.
If you open it directly in the browser, you will see an empty page. Unlike "/favicon.ico" or "favicon.ico", "%PUBLIC_URL%/favicon.ico" willwork correctly both with client-side routing and a non-root public URL.Learn how to configure a non-root public URL by running `npm run build`.--> Yelp App https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/css/bootstrap.min.css integrity="sha384-ggOyR0iXCbMQv3Xipma34MD+dH/1fQ784/j6cY/iJTQUOhcWr7x9JvoRxT2MZw1T"crossorigin="anonymous"/> You need to enable JavaScript to run this app. You can add webfonts, meta tags, or analytics to this file.
The build step will place the bundled scripts into the <body> tag. To begin the development, run `npm start` or `yarn start`.
To create a production bundle, use `npm run build` or `yarn build`.
-->
</body>
</html>
to change the title and add the Bootstrap CSS to our app. | https://medium.com/dataseries/how-to-use-graphql-api-in-node-js-apps-959c463e41c8 | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2019-10-31 14:52:56.431000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'GraphQL', 'Technology', 'Software Development', 'Software'] |
KNOW MORE ABOUT FLIGHT CANCELLATION COMPENSATION PROVIDED BY ETIHAD AIRLINE | What comes under Etihad booking cancellation?
As we all know Etihad is the brand airline of UAE, that provides one of the best services in the aviation sector. Airlines give maximum possible flexibility to their passengers for cancellation and modification for booked air ticket reservations. Passengers do not have to worry about the cancellation of air ticket because Etihad airlines provide online as well as offline cancellation method. Here we provide details of what comes under Etihad booking cancellation compensation? with different kinds of situations.
How to claim Etihad airways flight cancellation compensation via online technique?
Etihad Airways is the public Air carrier of the United Arab Emirates. It’s the second-biggest carrier of the UAE and is situated and headquartered in Abu Dhabi.
Etihad airways flight cancellation compensation of canceled flights can be claimed offline and offline. Before going for cancellation passengers have to explore updated cancellation policy.
Important point under Etihad Cancellation Policy within 24 Hours
Etihad Airways enables its passengers to modify or drop the Air ticket reservations within 24 hours of the original purchase of Air ticket, if these conditions are true then there are no Etihad booking cancellation charges applied. Major points to consider before requesting cancellation within 24 hours:-
The policy is applicable for refundable as well as non-refundable tickets.
The refund against Air ticket cancellation will be credited back to the account used at the original booking within 7–10 working days.
Cancel Etihad booking online
Visit the official Etihad Airways website.
Click on the ‘Manage Booking’ section.
Enter the last name of the passenger along with the six-digit booking PNR.
Tap on the ‘Cancel my flight’ option.
Accept related terms and conditions. Click on the ‘Yes I agree on the button to proceed with the cancellation.
Once you agree to the cancellation policy terms and conditions, you will get the cancellation confirmation in your registered email.
Visit our website to know more: Airlinespolicy.com | https://medium.com/@harsh.callsbridge/what-comes-under-etihad-booking-cancellation-bbfc78941551 | ['Airlines Policy'] | 2021-12-14 07:18:56.519000+00:00 | ['Etihad', 'Travel', 'Etihad Airlines', 'Airlines'] |
United crush Merseyside hopes of a trophy | A cold dry evening at the Goodison Park saw 2000 fans in attendance losing yet another chance of winning a trophy in the last 25 years. United got the match underway and boy did they start strong. For a side that has been criticized time and time again this season for being too slow to get the ball running they got off to a blazing start. Either Solskjaer is a legendary coach in the making who is getting the best from an inconsistent squad, or more likely his recruiters were not so hopeless after all and United are showing signs of living up to their potential. We can’t be sure right now but one fact will remain, Ed Woodward might sport the smuggest grin in the Premier League right now considering the recent performances of the team, 3rd in the PL and semis of the League cup, not a bad weekend!
Paul Pogba and Edinson Cavani returned to Manchester United’s starting line-up as manager Ole made nine changes from Sunday’s thrashing of Leeds. Only captain Harry Maguire and playmaker Bruno Fernandes retained their places. Meanwhile, Ancelotti opted to rotate his goalkeepers with Robin Olsen coming in for Jordan Pickford. Seamus Coleman captained the side with his first start since mid-October after injury.
The match started with fast attacks from Manchester United who were fast on the pitch and were stiching good passes in the final third. Chances for United came from the work of Greenwood won the ball on the edge of the Everton box, and rolled it to Fernandes for once was not able to pick out a simple pass to Cavani. Had he done so, a tap-in for Cavani wasn’t a bad way for him to start. Corners and crosses were aplenty as United kept the pressure on the home side. The defensive line and the goalkeeper not being able to get DCL into the game with some long balls hurt them as United kept on pressing and kept the ball of DCL’s reach. It had been a truly dreadful start for Everton. They had none of the ball and had been sloppy in defense.
Everton finally mounted an attack in the 23rd minute as Sigurdsson broke into the United box before having his shot blocked. Five minutes later, United again had the ball and Bailly burst forward carrying the ball from his defensive line to the Everton 18 yard box, creating an attack for his side. Fernandes cut onto his right, crossing the ball in. Van de Beek met it but the ball was deflected wide for a corner. The home side had started to get a foothold in the game, although they have not created any chances of note. United should have scored, at least once, early on and it was defiantly something they were after, Everton on the other hand had a little more control over the game.
Source : Getty Images
The second half was less exciting for the first 30 minutes with both the sides trying to create some chances but neither of them being able to make any decisive strides into the opponent half. With the last 15 left Ole brought on Rashford and Martial to break the deadlock. In the 87th minute though, United sprung into action again with a counter. Anthony Martial found a delightful pass to Cavani and a sensational shot from the Uruguain striker found the back of the net! Later as Everton threw bodies forward in the United box to conjure up an equalizer they were caught by a strong counter by the United forwards as Martial broke into the box and rolls the ball calmly home with the last kick of the game.
Source : Getty Images
United deserved to go through they had plenty of chances at the start and at the end of the game and were technically sound for the most part. Everton, on the other hand, failed to create much at all. Disappointing performance from the home side in front of their side.
Some Numbers from the game —
- Manchester United have reached the League Cup semi-finals for the 16th time, second only to Liverpool (17) in the competition’s history.
- Everton failed to register a single shot on target in the second half, with Gylfi Sigurdsson having 57 per cent of their total attempts (4/7).
- Manchester United have scored in each of their last 25 away games in all competitions, since a 2–0 defeat at Liverpool in January.
- Anthony Martial is the third substitute to both score and assist a goal for Manchester United in all competitions this season (Mason Greenwood v Luton, Edinson Cavani v Southampton), with no sub having done this for the club in either 2018–19 or 2019–20.
- United made a total of 9 changes in their team from the last game they played, some squad depth :P
Hope you liked this, subscribe if you want to keep reading more! Like for the content.
This post is not meant to hurt anyone’s feelings or cause unrest, if you have any issues do comment and I’ll make sure to note your points and make corrections! | https://medium.com/football-explained/united-crush-merseyside-hopes-of-a-trophy-3e7a7fab2f7c | [] | 2020-12-24 20:22:27.804000+00:00 | ['UK', 'Football', 'Sports', 'Manchester United', 'England'] |
The Paywall Paradox of Medium | The Paywall Paradox of Medium
Writers who create content that enables Medium’s paywall are blocked from reading Medium’s content by that same paywall
When the wall built with your help, is used against you (courtesy pxhere)
This post is about how my perspective is changing after a month of moving behind the Medium Paywall.
A few days ago, I received the below notification from Medium. This led to a dilemma, or maybe that should read trilemma. As a recent migrant to the wide world outside the Medium Paywall, I had just become aware that I was now allowed to read only three articles per month on Medium, after which I would be banished behind the paywall. So if I read the Medium post, does this mean I can read only two other articles during the rest of June?
Out of curiosity, I visited Medium’s home page to check what else was on the menu. The ‘May Updates…’ article was there. But if I was asked to use up one of my three-post quota from all the posts on that particular page, that Medium post would definitely not be in my selection. And we are not even discussing the hundreds of stories elsewhere on Medium.
Sending such notifications to its non-paying writers reveals how much Medium is out of touch with reality. I mean why would any such writer want to waste one of their minuscule quota of three monthly posts, on listening to Medium blowing its own trumpet? (If this notification is turned on by default, then Medium needs to turn it off for non-members.)
So why am I not just paying the $5 fee and accessing all of Medium? Well, I actually did this for over two years because I liked the platform and wanted to support writers on it. But I stopped paying as a protest against Medium’s discriminatory and non-inclusive attitude towards member writers from the poorer parts of the world.
We don’t get paid for writing on Medium, despite paying the same $5 membership fee. And if we don’t pay the membership fee, we get to read only three articles a month. (To be fair, if you are a writer in a Medium publication, you have full access to all articles on that publication. But if you are an independent writer on Medium, then three articles is all you get, plus whatever appears in Medium’s Twitter feed).
It’s pretty messed up when a platform blocks access to the site to the very same writers who provide content for them. No two ways about this.
Pros and cons of paywalls
The case for paywalls is that writers and journalists invest time and effort to create their articles. It’s how they earn their living. If they are forced to give away their work for free, how are they supposed to survive?
Once upon a time, ads were the answer. But after the many ways, our data has been misused by the likes of Facebook, as well as the intrusive nature of ads, readers have begun to look at alternatives to ads. A paywall is one way to resolve this. As of now, quite a few publications are following NYT’s lead of setting up paywalls, but only time will say if they will be successful.
I wouldn’t bet on paywalls though, as it’s human nature to look for ways to avoid paying for stuff. Sure, I still pay for my newspaper in India, but it costs less than $2/month, as it’s highly subsidized. By whom? You guessed it, ads.
The argument against paywalls is the free internet has been responsible for much of the monumental changes during the last two decades, mainly because it facilitated the free flow of knowledge. Paywalls disrupt this flow and could kill the pace of progress. In fact, the academic world is one of the worst hit by paywalls, and the scale of it was quite a shocker for me.
Linked below is a documentary on the issue (the video dramatizes a paywall by stopping suddenly at the beginning with a paywall like announcement, and for a moment I thought it was a paid video!). I found the interviews interesting as the scholars are quite articulate, and you can see how their typical scholarly detachment is being rattled by the illogic of paywalls. Like how publicly funded research is not freely available to researchers, which leads to the authors of research papers missing the comments and interactions with other researchers, which in turn is the lifeblood of research. And how the ‘35–40% profit margin associated with the top academic publisher Elsevier is often greater than some of the most profitable tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Google.’ (courtesy: Vimeo)
Medium’s paywall is a ripoff
I didn’t know much about paywalls, but what’s going on at Medium is a perversion of it. I began writing on Medium in 2015, and went along with the flow, as Medium evolved from an ad-free platform to an ad-based model, an eventually into a paywall publication. I assumed the powers-that-be at Medium would do the right thing. It was only after I quit the Medium Partner Program that I realized how unjust the system was.
Let me illustrate with a personal example. My short post on Medium, ‘The Phone hacker is coming’ was written to make my readers aware of cellphone hacking, and how to safeguard their phones. I didn’t get paid for writing it, and I was fine with that as long as my readers got to read the post for free.
However when Medium put up its paywall, the whole thing became a farce. That article has had 27,000 views (and it’s just one of over 200 posts I have made on Medium). The way the paywall works, Medium gets paid by readers who wish to read my posts, while I don’t get a single penny. And there are tons of writers on Medium like me, who post thousands of articles on Medium and earn nothing.
To add insult to injury, my post is now not even open to the public. If that’s not a ripoff, I don’t know what is.
Yes, there is a thing called the Medium Partner Program, which I was a part of for two long years. I quit last month after I realized it too was just another farce. The Medium Partner Program only pays writers if they are lucky enough to be living in one of 23 countries, which somewhat unsurprisingly, are the rich and developed nations.
Being inclusive isn’t where Medium is at.
Out of the frying pan into the fire?
The current trend is to see paywalls as fair, and ads as evil. Personally, I dislike ads with a passion and make it my mission to try out every ad blocker I come across. But after my current experience, I’m wondering if switching from an ad model to a paywall model was a ‘frying pan into fire’ scenario. For instance, I don’t mind the ads on Duck Duck Go. They don’t collect data on users but instead display ads based solely on the keywords searched for by a user. If that’s true, it’s certainly not intrusive or creepy. I’m okay with it as they provide a search service and deserve to make some return for their pains. The danger is in ads controlling content. But if Duck Duck Go is able to retain its independence with their ad model, I don’t see why Medium shouldn’t.
What do Medium’s writers think?
If Medium had bothered to check with its writers, I think a majority would rather not be a part of a non-inclusive payment system that discriminates against writers outside a charmed circle of 23 richer countries, and would prefer to endure a level of non-intrusive advertising to avoid that scenario. What’s more, I’m certain most writers would prefer ads, to blocking access to writers who contribute content to Medium. However, we will never know what Medium’s writers think, because Medium never did ask its community.
Why does Medium act like this?
I can suggest three possibilities based on my discussion with Dmitri Zaitsev.
Greed: Duck Duck Go kind of ads will generate millions, but Medium wants billions and believes a paywall will help them strike gold.
Incompetence: Medium may be suffering from a case of false confidence in itself. But the reality is Medium is incompetent and unable to judge the benefits of advertising against paywalls. Why else would they employ Stripe who, even after two and half years, hasn’t yet figured out how to pay me in India, while having no issue in collecting my membership fees since forever?
Arrogance: Medium thinks it’s bigger than its writers and doesn’t give two hoots about their opinion. Forget about being fair, inclusive and non-discriminatory to all writers on the platform, Medium’s attitude seems to be an arrogant ‘take it or leave it.’
Ignorance: Medium seems to be under the impression that its writers need them, more than they need their writers. I haven’t been on Medium much, ever since I went behind the paywall, and I don’t feel like I’m missing much. In fact, I have already begun moving away from Medium, often tagging along behind publications I follow, who leave Medium.
How good is Medium as a content provider?
I admit I miss quite a few of the writers on Medium, mainly because of their idiosyncratic personalities that shine in the comments sections. But as far as actual content goes, I can manage just fine without Medium as there are dozens of free news aggregators out there. Even the limited version of Apple’s News app in India gives a choice of articles from a collection of publications though not all are available in India (see below). Mix it up with Flipboard, and a couple of other news apps, and I see no real need for Medium as far as reading content goes.
What do I like about Medium?
Medium provides a great service by hosting content for writers. I like the simple design and ease of use of the platform and the way it allows writers to interact with readers. I have yet to see that elsewhere (I haven’t looked too hard) and that may be why I’m still here.
Can anyone lure me away Medium?
I’m hoping things will change as more writers become aware of how non-inclusive the platform is. My feeling is that such an unbalanced system will topple eventually. I know of writers who have stopped writing because of the way the paywall denies access to readers, as well as writers who have left the platform because of its non-inclusive payment system.
So what is actually going on? Is this a case of Medium making hay while the sun shines?
In the meanwhile, if a competitor to Medium can duplicate the simple design and ease of use of the platform, and build in a non-intrusive ad system to generate income for itself and its writers, I would be gone in a flash.
Is Medium exploiting writers?
Medium’s payment system doesn’t really generate much money for writers. Since most writers on Medium are amateurs, they won’t make more than a few dollars (if they are lucky enough to be paid by Medium). So money is not really the issue here. But after two years of paying my membership fee, I had to face the reality that Medium has no intention of being inclusive.
The thing is writers as a tribe tend to be shy and quiet and so are easy to exploit. I believe Medium is taking advantage of this and avoiding including writers from poorer parts of the world in the Medium Partner Program. If we accept this injustice quietly, we become part of the problem. My way of protesting was to cancel my Medium membership and make readers aware of what’s going on, by writing periodic posts like this one.
Please comment, clap, share, forward, and even if possible, post your own stories on this subject. The more we do that, the harder it will be for Medium to bury its head in the sand and pretend this issue doesn’t exist. | https://medium.com/hackernoon/the-paywall-paradox-of-medium-3dd0a6a7bde6 | [] | 2019-06-20 14:11:56.376000+00:00 | ['Paywall', 'Medium Membership', 'Medium Partner Program', 'Hackernoon Top Story', 'Medium'] |
Artificial Sweeteners Aren’t Killing Us All | We have a love/hate relationship with artificial sweeteners. On the one hand, if you listen to any mainstream diet advice these days, sugar is literally the devil, so avoiding it is a great idea. But replacing it with artificial sweeteners is apparently just as bad, because they’re scary chemicals that can cause everything from cancer to diabetes.
Unless, of course, you use a natural sweetener like stevia, because as we all know natural things are fine for your health. Just look at snake venom!
Pictured: Healthsome
All this has made the last week or so a wonderful time for the news. According to headlines from around the world, artificial sweeteners are “bad for your health”, have “no evidence” of health benefits, and we’ve all been “sold a lie” about them.
Pretty scary stuff.
All of this came as news to me, because if you actually read the study in question it doesn’t really say any of those things. It turns out that the science is more complicated than you’ve heard, and the real story is also a bit less terrifying and a bit more boring.
Artificial sweeteners may work, and they almost certainly aren’t bad for your health after all.
Sensational Science
The new study that’s come out on artificial sweeteners is what’s known as a systematic review and meta-analysis, done by the well-known Cochrane collaboration. Systematic reviews are a type of meta-study: you look at all of the literature published on a topic by conducting great big database searches, read through hundreds of studies, and make a conclusion about the state of the research as a whole. A meta-analysis adds the task of putting together all of the data from all of those studies and seeing what the combined effect was.
This paper looked at a total of 56 studies, after sifting through more than 13,000, on artificial sweeteners and a variety of health conditions. The researchers put together the data from thousands of participants on dozens of health conditions to give a fairly definitive answer on what the current research says about artificial sweeteners.
What did they find?
Pictured: Suspense. And bad puns
The biggest single finding of the study is that the evidence on artificial sweeteners currently isn’t very good. The quality of the studies included in this review — which, remember, looked at over 13,000 individual pieces of research — was almost uniformly low, with a few scoring very low and a few getting as high as moderate. What this means is that any statements about artificial sweeteners made from this study, or really any study currently out there, are going to have a margin of error.
We just aren’t sure right now about any of this.
Having said that, the study did also see some findings suggestive of benefit. In fact, the accompanying editorial in the British Medical Journal was quite positive, saying that the benefits are there just not well enough researched at the moment.
Pictured: Cautious optimism
Some of the positive findings of the study:
Sweeteners are better for weight-loss than sugar Sweeteners may reduce blood pressure in people at risk Sweeteners may help obese people lose weight No evidence that sweeteners cause cancer No evidence that sweeteners make you hungrier/eat more No evidence that sweeteners cause kidney disease No evidence that sweeteners cause headaches No evidence that sweeteners are bad for kids Some evidence that sweeteners help kids to avoid obesity
And on, and on. There were actually dozens of positive findings, including reasonably good evidence that artificial sweeteners don’t make you feel hungrier, eat more, or feel cravings for sweets, flying in the face of the common line that sweeteners make you guzzle food like there’s no tomorrow.
Although if all food looked this good, you might just guzzle it anyway
Overall, the study found that the current best evidence suggests that artificial sweeteners are safe and probably effective, otherwise known as the opposite of every news story out there.
Weird, that.
The big caveat is that it really depends on what you are replacing with sweeteners: when you compare artificial sweeteners to sugar, people who take the sweetener lose weight. When you compare them to water, or a placebo, artificial sweeteners don’t do much at all. This is in line with previous evidence, which showed that artificial sweeteners probably help you to lose a little bit of weight, but only if you are using them to replace calories that you would’ve otherwise eaten.
So how did the media narrative become so twisted?
Potential Harms Could Not Be Excluded
The problem here is that this science is really complicated. The Cochrane foundation is known for being the final word on a topic: this review is the “gold standard” of evidence on artificial sweeteners. What this means is that it is very conservative — any evidence not graded as very good quality is not considered adequate to make recommendations.
So when I say “current best evidence suggests”, what I mean is “the evidence isn’t great, but what we’ve got says”. The main finding of this review, after all, was that there was not really enough evidence to make conclusions either way. While the findings were overwhelmingly positive, they were not supported by sufficient rigorous trials to say — conclusively — that artificial sweeteners can help with weight loss.
This led to two sentences that have defined the media narrative about this study:
There was no compelling evidence to indicate important health benefits of non-sugar sweetener use on a range of health outcomes. Potential harms from the consumption of non-sugar sweeteners could not be excluded
What the media took this to mean is that artificial sweeteners are definitely not good for your health, and that they are likely to have negative side-effects.
In fact, it means that artificial sweeteners are likely to be good for your health — if replacing sugar —but we aren’t sure if this is true yet, and they are unlikely to have negative side-effects, but we can’t rule them out completely.
Change a few italicized words, and suddenly the story is entirely different.
“I’m confused. Should I stop mainlining Pepsi Max?”
And this is important, because a lot of the evidence that gets reported says that artificial sweeteners are dangerous. Despite the media circus every time a trial finds that artificial sweeteners may cause diabetes, obesity, or gut issues, when a study comes out and says that the evidence doesn’t support any of this, there is media silence.
Perhaps the truth is just a bit too boring to make headlines.
Ultimately, while we may not have definitive evidence about artificial sweeteners yet, the evidence to date suggests that they will probably help you to lose weight if you are overweight and use them to replace sugar. They are also almost certainly safe, although we need better studies to make sure that this is true for some potential side-effects.
The media got it wrong.
You can keep drinking your Diet Coke. I know I will.
If you enjoyed, follow me on Medium, Twitter or Facebook! | https://gidmk.medium.com/artificial-sweeteners-arent-killing-us-all-2730f7ad86c0 | ['Gideon M-K', 'Health Nerd'] | 2019-01-07 21:35:05.596000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'Science', 'Diet', 'Health', 'Self'] |
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You can fund your casino with Instant Withdrawal Casino. Meanwhile, you can also avoid delays and hassles when it comes time to collect any winnings from your favorite best PayPal casinos and it will greatly reduce the risk of identity theft or having your credit card details stolen by using this respected and secure payment service for sure.
More and more players are choosing PayPal as the payment method of choice to fund their gaming accounts. Because PayPal flows directly into your business account, it can take just seconds to transfer funds. In contrast, other forms of payment, like credit cards and checks, typically go through far longer processing times and incur higher fees. Plus, many merchants routinely add processing fees to the cost of their merchandise to help cover their costs on transactions. But for online gaming transactions, PayPal users typically have no additional charge as it has become a preferred payment method during transactions. No matter what type of game you enjoy playing or how often you like to do so, PayPal can help you save time and money by using its easily-accessed platform for safe and reliable online transfers into your game account.
Whether you choose to play at PayPal casino UK or in other regions, your primary concern will undoubtedly be the security of your funds and personal information. Well, you will feel relieved to know that you don’t have to bother about all of these when you play casino games using your PayPal account. PayPal offers you the utmost security when it comes to your banking details. If you still choose to use credit card details directly on the respective casino website then be ready to get compromised at any time. Ultimately the choice is yours. Think and decide how you want to play peacefully. | https://medium.com/@onlinecasinospinz/heres-why-choose-paypal-for-online-casino-games-e3b2cbe4f98d | [] | 2021-12-26 18:51:23.109000+00:00 | ['Paypal Casinos', 'Online Casino', 'Online Casino Games', 'Casino'] |
Is Your Loyalty Program Rewarding the Right Customers? | When I walk into my favorite local restaurant, I’m not just another sale. I’ve been eating there several times a month for more than ten years. I’m what every business wants: a repeat customer. A regular.
So why would my favorite eatery ever do anything to jeopardize our long, happy relationship?
Suddenly one day, my beloved restaurant wanted someone new, younger, hipper. (Yes, only an old customer would use the word “hipper.”)
It’s a popular restaurant with several locations. It’s known for its tempting bakery case, local ingredients, dog-friendly patios, and the excellent policy of serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner all day. (What’s wrong with macaroni and cheese for breakfast?)
And when I first started eating there, it had a simple rewards program of the frequent-flyer sort.
The Straight Points System
For every $50 I spent, I got a free dessert. Since a slice of fancy cake at this place can run about $7, that was a pretty good deal.
At some point, the terms of the program changed slightly. Now the reward for spending $50 was a $5 voucher. Not quite as good as a wedge of pumpkin cheesecake, but loyal customers now had the option of applying their rewards toward something healthier than dessert (if for some reason that’s what they really wanted to do). And I still had the satisfaction of effectively getting a 10% discount on everything I bought there.
(That’s not quite accurate, of course. After spending $50, I had to spend another $5 in order to use my reward voucher. So I was getting $55 worth of food for $50 — an effective discount of 9%. Okay, but it was still enough to make me feel smart for participating in the rewards program.)
Random Rewards and Unreliable Data
But then the restaurant switched to a completely different rewards system. No more frequent-flyer-style accumulation of points. Instead, participants got a free cookie for signing up for the program and a free cookie for “liking” the restaurant on Facebook. They also received small monthly discounts and two free desserts per year.
The rewards no longer had anything to do with loyalty. I was disappointed in the restaurant for choosing this program, which seemed to favor new customers over existing ones. (The involvement of Facebook might also suggest a preference for younger customers — or at least for customers who were more active on social media.)
Another feature of the new program was that at every visit the participant had a chance to receive a random reward.
I’ve read that random rewards can be surprisingly effective, making people excited about going to a particular business. Still, I found it hard to believe that taking the reward out of the customer’s control could be a successful strategy. (There are plenty of rat studies about exactly this sort of thing.) But over the months, I actually did pretty well, randomly getting my coffee or dessert or even a whole entree for free on quite a few visits.
Or maybe I was doing too well. I had to assume that whatever algorithm controlled the handing out of these freebies was set up so that the restaurant wouldn’t lose money. But if you’re a restaurant, there’s probably such a thing as too many free lunches.
Clearly this system had other flaws as well. For one thing, it was to a participant’s advantage to be a new customer. If creating a new reward account (handing over your e-mail address) earned you a free cookie, then obviously signing up again under a different e-mail address would get you another cookie. I have to admit I couldn’t resist signing up twice myself (because, you know, free cookie!).
So the data collected through that program couldn’t have been terribly useful.
Thanx
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the restaurant soon switched back to a points-style loyalty program, this time managed through a third-party app called Thanx. Again, for a certain amount of money spent, the participant receives a $5 voucher. The threshold is now $75 instead of $50, but that still comes to an effective discount of 6.25%, which is something.
And the program again rewards repeat customers. In fact, by eating at the restaurant frequently enough, a participant earns “VIP” status. And the current VIP rewards are free “specialty drinks,” a relatively pricey category that includes not only the familiar espresso-based concoctions but also the restaurant’s popular five-scoop milkshakes.
As long as my favorite restaurant keeps serving delicious food, it will continue to have loyal regulars. And as it happens, loyal regulars often bring along friends, family members, and out-of-town guests — also known as new customers.
If you’re a business, your main activity should be delivering the best version of your service or product that you’re capable of putting out into the world. A rewards program might be good too — just think of it as icing on the cake. | https://medium.com/swlh/is-your-loyalty-program-rewarding-the-right-customers-2036791e4df2 | ['Ellen Barber'] | 2019-11-13 17:22:10.945000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Loyalty Program', 'Restaurant Business', 'Rewards Programs', 'Loyalty'] |
Mega Project and First Step toward it | Problem Statement:
My problem is related to the students who belong to under-privileged society and unfortunately, they are not able to pay the fees but they decide to go to Government School or any trust School. I really appreciate their effort and dedication toward studies. What would these student do, if they really need tuition or guidance after the School, like we all know that these kids don’t have the opportunity to get tuition in any form due to lack of resources and especially in this current situation of COVID 19 there are many students who need this kind of help to grow. So I really want to work on this problem.
WHY?
As I mentioned above my “problem statement” and now I want to emphasize why? Why is this problem so much important to me? I have a personal goal that I want to help kids’ especially poor kids, in their education as God gave me the opportunity to have a good education and develop my skills. Now, it’s my turn to help those students in achieving their Life Goal. Inshallah
Want these kids in School Hopefully One Day
“A picture is worth a thousand words”, basically I want these kids to get a good education, and I know it’s a very difficult task right now for me but Inshallah, I will do it for sure in Future. What I can do right now is at least help those kids who are already in School and facing difficulties in their studies as they can’t afford to pay the fee so they have no other option than to select any government or trust schools but what would these poor kids do, if they really need any help or guidance after the School, like we all know that these kids don’t have the opportunity to get tuition due to lack of resources and especially in this current situation of COVID 19, there are many students who need this kind of help to grow.
So I transform my Goal to a smart Goal by choosing those students who are already enrolled in School but need help in studies. For this Project, I have selected TCF School.
TCF School Building
Our First Step/Action (Amal) toward Mega Project:
On Thursday 24-Dec-20, I have visited TCF School along with my friend who studied with me in university. We both have the same goal and vision to help poor in any kind. We visited there but unfortunately children are not available over there but we decided to meet the management to discuss about the problem and solution. We both were nervous that How we will talk to the management and what if they are going to listen to us or not? What if they rejected us? There were a lot of question in our mind but we started our journey with having Faith in Allah. We went to the principal office and met Miss Almas (Academic Coordinator) of TCF School. She is a very nice and helping woman and she listen to our problem carefully and told us that she really like to know that we want to help these kids and she said that she will talk to higher authorities and contact us for further query.
Moreover, she assured us to take permission from higher authority and allow us to take extra classes for the students who can’t afford and want to take help in studies. We also decide to guide these students via career counseling, motivation speech, and resolving their issues.
We also met with Mr. Gulraiz khan who is Admin in charge of TCF Defence View Branch. He is also a cooperative person and he appreciated us for this idea.
Unfortunately, we were not able to take pictures of our interaction with Persons (Teachers and Students because they were not there at the moment) but they allowed us to take picture School’s classes, corridor etc.
Finally, we succeeded and came back home with a smiley face and having satisfaction that we took our First Step (Pehla Amal) toward Mega Project (Achieving our Goal).
Conclusion:
The whole process looked like an amazing experience for us as we never had the courage to do this before and we really enjoyed it and learnt how to visit any organization, share the problem and convey them to listen to us and give us the opportunity to work on it.
School Building from Inside
Reception
Principal Office
School premises
School Corridor
Passage | https://medium.com/@saddamrafiq90/mega-project-and-first-step-toward-it-c3f657d178d8 | ['Saddam Rafiq'] | 2020-12-25 08:23:33.973000+00:00 | ['Kids', 'Education', 'Life', 'Unicef', 'Help'] |
“Who would we be if Whiteness never dictated who we are? If Whiteness never set a goal that we had to live up to?” | “Who would we be if Whiteness never dictated who we are? If Whiteness never set a goal that we had to live up to?” GEN Editors Dec 2, 2020·1 min read
In her new book, Ijeoma Oluo breaks down the origins and the devastating legacy of the mediocre white male in America. In an interview with Zora, she talks about how she set out to “battle the collective gaslighting regarding White supremacy.” | https://gen.medium.com/who-would-we-be-if-whiteness-never-dictated-who-we-are-acf984127928 | ['Gen Editors'] | 2020-12-02 16:16:35.178000+00:00 | ['White Privilege', 'Men', 'Race'] |
A List of Fully Funded MFA Creative Writing Programs | Big thanks to The Workshop for putting this list together. They’ve done an incredible amount of research and due diligence to provide a list of MFA Creative Writing Programs that fully fund its students.
Fully funded means that the program costs are covered by the institution. It’s such a helpful list for writers who would otherwise not be able to afford these opportunities.
If you’re a writer and thinking of entering into an MFA, you must visit The Workshop to check out what they’ve put together. | https://medium.com/cry-mag/a-list-of-fully-funded-mfa-creative-writing-programs-3692b9f8d687 | ['Kern Carter'] | 2020-11-24 12:17:29.597000+00:00 | ['Creative Writing', 'Education', 'MFA'] |
ONLINE WELLNESS EXPERTS | OBJECTIVE:
1) Free health care services
2) Doctors and pharmacists consultations
3) Drug information
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
The basic problem in online wellness expert
Lack of knowledge
Less communication
Less Counseling and
Self Medication 💊 Are the major problems in online willingness expert
Goal
To make an online clinic to resolve health issues of the needy persons
Being a medical student I think it’s my responsibility to take the charge of the health issues of the needy persons because they don’t have any medical panel and also they don’t have any resources to which they can easily consult with the doctors so I think it is very much needed to help the needy persons In this situation we take the initiative to help others which is totally free of cost and being a responsible citizen we have a right to do something for the betterment of our society
• CONSULTATION OF DOCTORS AND PHARMACIST:
This project is totally based on the doctors and pharmacists consultation
• PROMOTION/MARKETING :
I market this through my social working organizations because for their we get the maximum response
For marketing and promotions, I make a video and posters through which this project is being marketed
• WAYS THROUGH WHICH PATIENTS APPROACH
Patients can easily approach us through Social media, Facebook, Instagram, and on my contact number as well
QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN:
summarize questionnaire is designed already related to the symptomatic details of the patient
Complications I faced this time is I have only 2 doctors on my contact list one id from Liaquat national and the other one is from SIUT but both the doctors are general physicians and I want to approach more doctors which can easily give consultation online like dermatologist etc and the second complication is marketing because I am quite difficult to build the trust of the patients because most of the peoples want the manual check-up.
So now I want to keep this project-level high so that everyone can feel free to approach us for their health | https://medium.com/@hkakar45/online-wellness-experts-b3652443c52f | ['Haseeb Kakar'] | 2020-12-25 15:44:46.138000+00:00 | ['Pharmacy', 'Drugs', 'Medicine'] |
Rishabh Pant Appointed Brand Ambassador of Uttarakhand for Sports and General Health | Young Indian wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant has been appointed as the brand ambassador of Uttarakhand to promote sports and general health.
The 24-year-old Rishabh Pant already become a permanent member of the Indian team. In all three formats of the game and many believe that he will be a part of the India national cricket team. Given his amazing performances as captain for Delhi Capitals. He is the captain of the future. DC) in the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Also Read: Mzansi Super League 2021 Canceled due to Covid-19 Concerns
Meanwhile, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami shared the news of Rishabh Pant’s appointment via Twitter on Sunday night.
https://twitter.com/IExpressSports/status/1472885458321346563
Rishabh Pant is one of the finest cricketers India has ever produced
Rishabh Pant is one of the finest cricketers India has ever produced. He is an inspiration to the youth and also a son of Uttarakhand. He appointed as the state’s brand ambassador for sports and general health. I spoke to him over video call to congratulate him and also invited him for a meeting,” Dhami said in a tweet posted in Hindi.
I have full faith that the people here have the ability to make the country proud — Rishabh Pant
Also Read: Jhye Richardson takes five to complete the victory
Rishabh Pant — I have full faith that the people here have the ability to make the country proud
“It is a huge honor for me. The discussions I had with Mr. Pushkar Singh Dhami were very inspiring. I know I have a responsibility to inspire people and this gives me the confidence to work even harder. Sports And the importance of fitness can never underestimated. We all need to do something from our side to bring awareness about healthy lifestyle,” said Rishabh Pant.
Also Read: Aaron Finch to Return in BBL Boost for Melbourne Renegades
Pant was rested for the New Zealand tour of the India Test series
Pant who rested for the New Zealand tour of the India Test series. He is all set to make a comeback in South Africa’s tour of India starting December 26. | https://medium.com/@babacric/rishabh-pant-appointed-brand-ambassador-of-uttarakhand-for-sports-and-general-health-be8af473d25b | ['Baba Cric'] | 2021-12-21 05:33:51.088000+00:00 | ['Cricket', 'Rishabhpant'] |
SEOs love Spiders… | [caption id=”attachment_2137" align=”alignleft” width=”315"]
Photo credit: Rob van Hilten[/caption]
…and here’s a new, free spider for everyone.
One of the most common tasks in technical SEO is crawling websites. It becomes very difficult very quickly to effectively audit even a small site without some kind of automation, yet in our industry I’ve always thought there are too few tools available to do this.
While there are a number of enterprise-level SEO crawlers out there — DeepCrawl, 80legs for a more general crawler (BrightEdge and SearchMetrics also have their own relatively limited crawlers), these tools are expensive and not always hugely intuitive or suited to smaller, more focused tasks.
In terms of tools for SEOs confined by a small budget — or requiring more focused crawls, there are three main options I’ve used:
1. Xenu — great for finding broken links and duplicate titles, but is Windows only
2. Screaming Frog — easily one of the best small-scale SEO crawlers out there, with some good options available in the free version.
3. Integrity — basically Xenu for the Mac; good tool but not hugely useful beyond finding broken links.
My main gripe with all of those 3 tools is their client-side nature comes with inherent difficulties, especially for those in work environments with restrictive IT policies.
I’ve been hacking together web crawlers & scrapers for various tasks for almost as long as I’ve been doing SEO, but have never made any of them public or available in an interface outside of the command line.
After playing around with some of the new technologies available with HTML5, I’ve put together (I think) a pretty compelling web-based SEO crawler. It combines some of the best things about the tools above, and used properly it can be a pretty effective tool for helping put together SEO audits.
Some of its key features are:
Speed — it’s fast (albeit with low usage thus far…). Feedback is also real-time thanks to the HTML5 technology mentioned earlier. This does mean that it won’t work at all with Internet Explorer, but hey who uses that anyway.
— it’s fast (albeit with low usage thus far…). Feedback is also real-time thanks to the HTML5 technology mentioned earlier. This does mean that it won’t work at all with Internet Explorer, but hey who uses that anyway. Flexibility — with no options set it’ll just crawl, starting at the URL you enter into the box. If you’re after something a bit more advanced, the ‘advanced options’ let you customise the crawl so it’s laser targeted at the information you want to get.
— with no options set it’ll just crawl, starting at the URL you enter into the box. If you’re after something a bit more advanced, the ‘advanced options’ let you customise the crawl so it’s laser targeted at the information you want to get. Accessibility — provided you’re running a modern browser (not IE), you can run crawls from pretty much anywhere, and export to Excel-compatible TSV files at the end of the crawl.
The crawler obeys robots.txt rules and is limited to 250 URLs; however by using the regular expression fields in the advanced options, it will crawl only sub-folders, subsets of pages, or whatever you tell it to, making the limit fairly academic.
In terms of the information it gives you, it’s not a million miles away from Screaming Frog or Xenu, but some of the key things to be aware of (and some are only visible in the export) are:
Page titles & meta descriptions — dull but needed, once the data is in a spreadsheet it’s easy to find duplicates by sorting by these columns
— dull but needed, once the data is in a spreadsheet it’s easy to find duplicates by sorting by these columns Full redirect chains — does what it says on the tin…
— does what it says on the tin… Potential SEO errors — for example duplicated robots meta tags or mismatched rel=canonicals, can be easy to miss when you’re looking for other things
— for example duplicated robots meta tags or mismatched rel=canonicals, can be easy to miss when you’re looking for other things Link counts — external, external followed & total links
— external, external followed & total links Custom search parameter — you can use the ‘search pattern’ field to check for the presence of any given string of HTML or text within your pages — for example checking for correctly implemented
It’s not necessarily intended to be a replacement for a dedicated tool like Screaming Frog (partly because it’s been put together outside of my day job), but it can be a good complement or alternative in certain circumstances. It can also be used quite effectively with some of the other SEO tools I’ve released for deep-dives on specific issues.
If you’re interested in learning more/helping out, or have any feature requests, comment below or let me know directly!
Also if you like it and start using it feel free to drop me a link — my website sure could use it :) | https://medium.com/robhammond/seos-love-spiders-e66bb92d74ef | ['Rob Hammond'] | 2016-07-26 20:45:18.286000+00:00 | ['Technical Seo', 'Crawling', 'SEO', 'Spiders'] |
Altcoins, the big cleanup has started. | Altcoins, the big cleanup has started.
Chainfund weekly report 10/08/2018
Dear Investors,
As of the 10th of August, the share prices of our portfolios are the following: $76 for the Dynamic and $80 for the Extreme.
Fears continue
… to spread across the crypto market. A recent note from the investment bank Goldman Sachs expresses negative views on Bitcoin. Yet, actions speak louder than words.
Despite those analyses, the American investment bank has done the following over the past 6 months: Funding of Circle, a company which acquired Poloniex (an exchange) for $400 million and the creation of a task force for working on a custody solution for cryptocurrencies.
So much for cryptos!! It sounds ironic when we are then looking at declarations from Goldman executives such as Steve Strongin — Head of Global Investment Research — stating that most cryptocurrencies will go to 0 and almost none can be considered as actual currency as they are not a store of value or a unit measurement of goods in particular.
Those very bearish declarations (even though not false) are definitely not there to prop up prices. This bank, very influential, loves cryptos and is well aware of the potential. Whatever Goldman says, the bottom line — Their actions say the contrary: Bullish, bullish, bullish!!.
Chainfund Weekly Reports are communicated to investors prior to publication on Medium
What to expect in the short to medium-term for the Bitcoin price?
(and eventually for other cryptos as BTC is and will remain the main driver)
I am still expecting the ETFs to be accepted. Meanwhile one information has been slightly overlooked by markets for the first digital currency. ICE (acronym for Intercontinental Exchange) which is NYSE owner (New York Stock Exchange) is putting in place a payment infrastructure for Bitcoin called Bakkt. In other words one could very easily buy and sell futures on the currency. | https://medium.com/chainfundch/altcoins-the-big-cleanup-has-started-72b158c62b86 | ['Yann Quelenn'] | 2018-08-11 08:06:14.381000+00:00 | ['Chainfund Report', 'Altcoins', 'Expectations', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
Tips for Celebrating the Season Safely with Your Special Someone | Whether you’re in a relationship or not, you’re well aware that holiday cheer is a little more scarce this season.
Many of us aren’t gathering with friends and extended family this year because we want to help keep them safe amidst a raging pandemic, and it’s left us with a little more time on our hands.
It’s also left us with the tendency to go stir crazy and annoy the crap out of each other.
As a couple, there aren’t many fun and festive dates you can go on outside the house nowadays, but there are still plenty of fun, safe, and socially distant ways we can enjoy the holidays and spend some romantic quality time together.
I have a few ideas for ways that couples in love can celebrate a very COVID Christmas. It pains me to have to call it that, and sure, it sounds like a terrible Hallmark movie, but at least it highlights one of my favorite literary devices (I’m a sucker for some alliteration).
Here are a few ideas of how to salvage a little cheer in your relationship this holiday.
Walk together in a winter wonderland
I got the idea when I was walking with my husband to my sister’s house for a night of boozing. She’s in our tiny inner circle of people we’re still seeing amidst the pandemic, and people in the neighborhood had started lighting their holiday displays that week.
You could get a thermos of your favorite warm beverage and walk the neighborhood to take in the light displays. And, if your neighborhood doesn’t have a whole lot of holiday cheer, or if you’ve seen it all already, drive to a different neighborhood and take a jolly evening stroll together while appreciating all the light displays.
Plan a fancy & festive themed date — at home
Cook a special meal together. Make extravagant holiday cocktails and a decadent dessert. Go that extra mile with the grocery shopping and food prep for at least one night — because if we’re going to be stuck at home, we might as well make use of our time indoors by cooking an extra special “date” meal.
I’m one of the worst cooks around. It’s just not my jam. But me and my husband, in the kitchen together, doing our very best to make a special, slightly fancy meal and setting the table with candles — that reeks of date night and quality time together. No matter how badly we may botch the recipe.
Drive-thru holiday cheer
These elaborate lighting displays have popped up all over the place even before the pandemic. It’s a great way to see some bright and festive displays on a more professional level, and you still get to spend that one-on-one time together as a couple.
Maybe you’ve had all the one-on-one time you can take, but if so, it’s that much more important to get out of the house and enjoy some safe experiences away from the place we often feel confined to during COVID-19.
Ice skating
If you have access to an outdoor ice rink, this activity is still doable during the pandemic! Holiday ice rinks are following guidelines with pre-registrations and making sure the ice isn’t too crowded, so it’s as safe as can be (minus the potential for bruised bottoms and bruised egos when/if you take a spill).
Don your masks and your winter gear, and enjoy a few laps around the rink as you hold hands, listen to holiday tunes, and try to save each other from falling.
Christmas tree farm
The holiday tree farm is like the pumpkin patch of the festive season. With masks and a clear crisp day, you’re in for some fun (and socially distant) holiday memories. Even if you aren’t planning on purchasing a tree, check out a tree farm for a fresh dose of pine and an all-around winter wonderland of activities that will get your body moving and your cabin fever subsiding.
Cozy up by the fire
You know, for the sex.
But let’s slow our roll just a bit. Think about sitting with your significant other and gazing into their eyes by the warm and cozy fireside. (Or by one of those space heaters that look like a warm fire OR one of those YouTube videos with ten hours of crackling fireplace and holiday jazz — 2020 is the year of improvising, after all.)
Just taking time to really focus on each other. Maybe sip some rich hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps. Give each other a soothing full-body massage. Talk about your plans for the future, when, we can only hope, COVID-19 will be well behind us and we can do things like travel and go out on the town again.
Take the “fave holiday film challenge”
I just made this challenge up because both my husband and I are movie buffs, and we love to snuggle up with a good film. Then we like to pretend we’re the world’s best film critics and argue about the movie’s artistic merit afterward.
But in this case, it’s a double feature, and you both get to bring your favorite holiday film to the table.
I don’t care if hers is Love Actually and you've had to sit through it fifty freaking times already. I don’t care if his is Die Hard and you don’t believe it’s actually a Christmas movie. You both must agree to watch the other’s favorite holiday film — no matter what — together.
Then, if you hated it, feel free to tear it apart (once the credits are rolling). If you loved it, you can have a happy chat about why.
Have a wine tasting (at home)
You can think of any number of pandemic-friendly activities when you add “at home” to them! It’s not the same as a vineyard, but it can still definitely be a fun and romantic time for the two of you.
Add a festive twist by pairing wines with holiday-themed foods. What goes best with a Santa-shaped sugar cookie? What pairs well with gingerbread men? I have no idea, but it’s sure going to be fun finding out!
Make your own holiday cheer
This is just a smattering of the fun and festive activities couples can do together — things that will help keep you from driving each other absolutely nuts this season.
But if you get creative, I’m sure you can think of loads more that will fit your dynamic as a couple. We have technology, delivery, and a whole world of opportunities to fill the time we have together with joy and cheer, even if it’s not in the usual way.
Talk to your loved one, use your imagination, and start making good memories that will stand out as happy ones — even in the year of 2020.
Thank you for reading! Sign up for my newsletter, and I’ll send updates from time to time on my latest creations. You can also connect with me on the Sex Curious Podcast and Twitter! | https://medium.com/bare-naked-bradshaw/tips-for-celebrating-the-season-safely-with-your-special-someone-12e904fc2eab | ['Holly Bradshaw'] | 2020-12-22 19:32:31.881000+00:00 | ['Relationships', '2020', 'Love', 'Holidays', 'Covid 19'] |
The missed opportunity of your frontline workforce | The missed opportunity of your frontline workforce
Who are frontline employees?
At this moment, just one-fifth of workers are doing their jobs from behind a desk. That leaves the remaining 2.7 billion people who are part of the deskless and front-line workforce, with jobs that are on-the-go, and involve interacting directly with people, machines and infrastructure.
They are…
In the field and on the floor
Nurses, retail associates, factory line workers, construction workers, customer service representatives, technicians, traveling salespeople etc.
The first people customers interact with, or the people who build the products that end up in customers’ hands
Frontline employees form the backbone (and face) of your company.
They are your first impression on the customer, and your brand champions. With 89% of companies expecting to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience, they are your competitive edge.
When they are engaged, your business does better. Engaged employees are¹:
21% more productive
10% higher in customer metrics
41% less likely to have a quality incident (defect)
However, studies show that frontline employees rank among the lowest in motivation of all employee types. Are your employees as engaged as they could be?
The missed opportunity of unengaged frontline workers
Disengaged workers cost the US economy $370 bn a year in lost productivity¹.
Additionally, industries with deskless workers have some of the highest employee turnover rates, costing from 16% to 213% of an employees salary per employee lost.
Since engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their employer, meaning investing in training and engagement can cut these costs².
Despite this, current employee engagement and training solutions miss the mark: studies show that 88% of remote workers struggle with inconsistent working practices and miscommunication.
Use of cumbersome learning management systems (LMS’s) and knowledge management platforms (KMP’s) are expensive and fail to cater to deskless employees for these reasons:
Short attention span due to front-facing nature of their work
Limited access to legacy systems due to deskless nature of work: only 13% visit intranet
Old systems focus on formats which are not mobile friendly (pptx., docx., pdf)
2/3 of employees are reluctant to install organizational apps
Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash
They’re not designed for frontline employees, so they don’t work.
In order to attract and retain the best talent for the future, companies have to evolve the ways in which they engage with their employees, to meet their needs.
Bites enables you to create engaging content that your employees will actually enjoy, and you can share it seamlessly to ensure your message is delivered. It’s a solution for training, communications, and everything in between.
By using the communication channels employees prefer, and story-like formats that they enjoy, you can now engage with your employees in a way that’s fast, engaging, and really effective, reaching completion levels north of 90% within 24 hours.
That means better outcomes in employee learning, engagement, and ultimately, your bottom line.
Want to find out more? Book a demo of the Bites platform. | https://medium.com/@biteslearning/the-missed-opportunity-of-your-frontline-workforce-e752430120e8 | [] | 2020-12-10 13:44:54.104000+00:00 | ['Engagement', 'Communication', 'Training', 'Frontline Worker', 'Productivity'] |
Legiit Freelancer Marketplace Review — Fiverr Alternative | When building an online business, quite commonly you will need to outsource some tasks. For small tasks, we generally prefer to hire freelancers from micro service or “gig” focused websites like Legiit, Fiverr, SEOclerks, or Konker. These platforms help us with the individual parts of our SEO implementation process, allowing us to focus on strategy and on scaling our business. That being said, not all of these platforms are created equal, and some of them are better for specific tasks. In this article, we provide you with our Legiit review.
Background
Legiit was started at the beginning of 2018 by a relatively popular SEO and a friend of ours, Chris M. Walker aka Superstar SEO. He was, and currently still is, one of the top sellers on another SEO marketplace called Konker, but felt he could build a better marketplace.
Legiit as a Fiverr Alternative
Buyer’s Perspective
While Fiverr is great for some non-SEO related tasks, we feel as though, on average, platforms like Legiit and Konker have better quality services when it comes to SEO. That being said, while Legiit is a full service freelancer marketplace, there currently are not that many services offered outside of SEO space. Therefore, we generally stick to Fiverr or other platforms like Upwork for those tasks.
Seller’s Perspective
Even though Legiit may have less traffic than Fiverr, the competition is also less and therefore, in our opinion, it is easier to get started. We also feel like the SEO specific nature of the marketplace justifies a slightly higher price point on the average service when compared to Fiverr. This essentially allows for sellers to make more and not get bogged down by the “cheap” nature if non SEO specific services.
Affiliate’s Perspective
From an affiliate‘s perspective, Legiit beats Fiverr hands down. This is due to their higher payouts as well as their terms of what counts towards a commission. On Fiverr, affiliates only earn on new signups, while on Legiit affiliates earn on any service purchased by a new or existing user.
Platform Quality / Ease Of Use
The design and functionality of Legiit is generally modeled after other gig platforms, like that of Fiverr, which we like. Overall the platform is built pretty well and the UI/UX is relatively simple. While the first few versions of Legiit needed some polishing, it has gotten better since then, and Chris continues to improve it. We even recommended a specific feature to him and he implemented it within a couple of weeks!
Platform Security
The platform works well and seems to follow security best practices. It also accepts payments via PayPal, keeping payments easy and safe.
Quality of Services Offered
While not every service on the platform is of good quality, we feel that overall the services offered are of higher quality than those on other platforms, especially considering that Chris sells his own services on the platform.
Here are some services that we recommend when shopping on Legiit:
Citations: This is a good gig for citations because they manually create them and fill them out more thoroughly than other gigs.
Press Releases: Great for boosting a site after it has built a little bit of authority.
Social Signals: This is a good gig for helping you build a trust foundation.
Guest posts: Guest posts are great for building power once you have already gained some trust and authority with Google. Without overdoing it, we recommend using partial match keyword anchor text for an added boost.
PBN Links: This is a high quality PBN gig that has boosted our rankings. We typically don’t use PBNs on tier 1, but rather use them to boost parasite rankings, like those of Medium articles, or to put on tier 2.
GMB Verifications: This is one of the only services we could find that offers GMB verifications using postcards. Most of the other services we have come across use other methods that may not be as secure.
Link Foundation: We have used this gig many times over the years and it has consistently helped rank our sites higher. We recommend using it to help gain authority for any new website you build.
Content writing: Consistently decent content writing services at a reasonable price are hard to come by. These guys offer that in our opinion.
As you can see, there are many good services on Legiit, and if used properly, they can boost your rankings.
Payments
Similar to other platforms, Legiit integrates seamlessly with PayPal, which will also allow you to use credit cards. As well as being convenient, using PayPal adds a layer of customer security to the platform because, if needed, customers can file a dispute with PayPal to recover payments.
Support
For those who run into issues or need to ask any questions, Legiit has a designated support portal powered by Freshdesk. It is simple to navigate, but we have not had any extensive interaction with their support.
Selling on Legiit
Legiit is a great place to sell your services because there isn’t a ton of competition. All you need to do to get started is create a store on the platform and upload your services. Make sure that your service is a specific task and not something general like “I will provide SEO services for you”. The services that have a clear deliverable, like “I will create 200 citations”, for example, do better. If you are having trouble getting your first few orders, we recommend advertising your services in some Facebook groups, but please make sure the group allows it before posting. Also, if you currently sell your services on another platform or on your own website, you can ask your current clients to purchase from you on Legiit and to leave a review in exchange for a discount.
Affiliate Program
Legiit offers a 15% affiliate commission on the services promoted. While the average ticket on the platform is not that high, the commission is generally a lot higher than the 4% to 8% that Amazon offers through their affiliate program for example. The platform is also a relatively trusted name in the SEO niche, so if you cookie people and send them over, you have a good chance of getting a conversion.
How to Promote Offers
You can promote the Legiit offerings by ranking blog articles, like this one, creating YouTube videos, sending links to your email list or Facebook group, suggesting services in Facebook groups (when people ask for them), running paid traffic to them, and more. It is really quite simple to promote SEO services and overall, low competition if you select the right keywords.
Legiit Review Conclusion
If you are trying to get started making money with SEO, whether from a buyer’s, sellers’, or affiliate’s perspective, Legiit is a great platform to use, especially right now in its infancy while the competition is still relatively low. | https://medium.com/@KeywordsHeaven/legiit-review-bda98b787342 | ['Keywords Heaven'] | 2019-05-03 00:51:05.077000+00:00 | ['SEO', 'Search Engine Optimizati', 'Seo Services', 'Freelance', 'Freelancing'] |
Heal Me, Sea. | Every time I lay eyes on you,
You beckon, inviting me in…
Come, you say. Feel me, I will wash away your pain…
I seek you, wherever I go. I have loved you, soaked in you...
You heal me, whenever we touch,
I’m coming, my sea,
I need healing, again. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/heal-me-sea-9eb0d6709057 | ['Wistful Writer'] | 2020-12-16 20:34:34.185000+00:00 | ['The Bad Influence', 'Healing', 'Thrifty Words Challenge', '50 Word Stories', 'Sea'] |
Delivery Dude Christopher Brown by Day, Charlee Bravo by Night | Day in and day out, you see your always-on-the-go local Dudes combating hunger one delivery at a time. But, have you ever thought about who that Dude is, what that Dude does outside of work, or if that Dude is on the rise to stardom?
That person, my friend, is Christopher Brown, aka Charlee Bravo. He’s a 27-year-old who has not only won over countless hungry customers with his fantastic attitude and demeanor, but he’s also a lyrical wizard who’s hungry for that stage life.
Originally from Detroit, Michigan, he moved to Florida when he was 15 years old and has since fallen in love with the Fort Lauderdale scene. He attended Dillard High School, where he was in the magnet program for theater. After graduating in 2010, he moved on to the University of Central Florida and Broward College. But, after two years, he decided to take on music as a career and flew the college coop. Since then, he’s put out three albums, one EP, and a ton of singles, as well as traveling all over the U.S. and Australia.
His style and hype is no joke. You can’t label his musical charisma except to say that it’s full of funk, feeling, and flavor. Maybe he’s even beat out a line or two with his deliveries; we’ll never know (unless you tag us in the video). What we do know is that he’s an awesome Dude with more flavor that his favorite restaurant, Rocco’s Tacos.
He found about Dude life from his friend, who worked as a Dude years ago and decided to try it out. Since he is constantly following the mic, he needed something flexible for his busy schedule, and it’s been a match made in heaven since June 2019.
“I’m a driver, mostly! I gain smiles every day and fill hungry bellies,” said Brown. “When I’m not a driver, I’m training other Dudes to be just as awesome as the rest of us. I want to make sure every Dude knows the do’s and don’ts, and every single order makes it to the destination right the first time.”
He appreciates the flexible schedule that being a Dude provides, especially since he can work when he wants. “Setting your schedule isn’t something you can do everywhere. So that one perk makes the job everything, especially for people like me,” Brown said.
When he’s not out being amazing at filling bellies, you’ll find him in the studio making new songs, interacting with his fans online, and going out to meet new people in the city by doing vlogs. He also loves traveling the world, seeing different sights, and experiencing life one day at a time. Not to mention keeping his lyrical game soaring.
He sees himself not only being a successful music artist, but also a businessman. He wants to start a business that will help families build their own empire like he’s doing now, which might include lawn services, salons, and, of course, a studio for creatives like himself. And, ding ding, also a Delivery Dude office, which is very interesting to him. Bottom line, it’s all about passion.
“Any time I’m about to do a show, I’m extremely excited,” Brown said. “There’s nothing like the energy during my performance. I feel at peace. I feel I’m in the right place. I feel everyone around me, and I truly love it more than anything in this world.”
So, folks, remember the name. If you’re in the Fort Lauderdale area and are lucky enough to have Charlee Bravo drop your food, make sure he drops the mic, too. | https://medium.com/@deliverydudes/delivery-dude-christopher-brown-by-day-charlee-bravo-by-night-5310c801a2a6 | ['Delivery Dudes'] | 2019-11-14 15:51:43.924000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneur', 'Food', 'Restaurant', 'South Florida', 'Delivery'] |
It’s Time We Put Parenthood On Our Resumes | We’ll never go numb to it: each month of the pandemic-era, new statistics emerge showing women leaving the workforce at 4x the rate of men, and that women of color have been disproportionately impacted. It’s an insult to the injury of this grief-filled year, a brutal step backwards on women’s path to economic power. Last week, when 50 powerful leaders signed a letter of support for the Marshall Plan for Moms, led by Girls Who Code CEO Reshma Saujani, the topic came into the national spotlight. F*#king Finally.
The Marshall Plan for Moms proposes a temporary $2400 stipend and calls for policies regarding paid family leave, affordable childcare and pay equity. And hell-yes, a care czar? Our septuagenarian congressional leaders aren’t faced with the realities of childcare costs, let alone the multi-mastering demands put on a generation of millennial moms, a majority of whom are in the workforce. While there are details left to iron out, the Marshall Plan for Moms is a step in the right direction.
This pandemic (11 months and counting…) has forced working families into a corner: schools are closed, childcare is unaffordable, and we can’t mix households. As a result, staying home wasn’t a choice for millions of moms, it was the only option. Our capitalist society uses dollars to signal value. Putting a price tag on care isn’t a handout, it shows we value this work — and it is work. As Eve Rodsky, one of the 50 supporters of the Marshall Plan for Moms, writes, “This isn’t about paying women to stay home, it’s about the opportunity cost of their lost time this year… when we value care, we ALL win.”
In cyberspace, it’s easy for each of us to retreat into our mom identities (suburban vs city moms, liberal vs conservative, corporate vs stay at home moms). But we’re missing the point. This is not about what kind of mom you are — this is about challenging a status quo that’s not working for anyone. So check your negativity and let’s move the conversation FORWARD, not back. Let’s channel RBG and “fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” We’re relieved that this topic is making buzzy headlines — but those passionate about this topic have an obligation to get informed, find common ground and build on shared truths. Aren’t we all in this together, parents?
We don’t have a crystal ball to tell us what single platform, stimulus or leader is going to finally move the needle. But today’s families desperately need policies that reflect the complexity of modern life. We can no longer brush our job as parents under the rug*.
So, team, count us in for two more signatures at MarshallPlanForMoms.com.
*Add to Resume: Raising Humans | https://medium.com/@superkin/its-time-we-put-parenthood-on-our-resumes-40a63bbf4182 | ['Superkin', 'Tara'] | 2021-02-02 23:38:34.225000+00:00 | ['Working Parents', 'Covid 19', 'Parenthood', 'Working Moms', 'Motherhood'] |
8 Things You May Have Missed in Beyoncé’s ‘Black Is King’ | 8 Things You May Have Missed in Beyoncé’s ‘Black Is King’
The visual album is robust with cross-cultural depictions of Black people, art, religion, and fashion
Beyoncé from “Black Is King.” Photo: Travis Matthews
Beyoncé gave us a new version of Nala in last year’s reboot of The Lion King, a reimagining of the original 1994 movie. She curated the accompanying soundtrack, The Lion King: The Gift. And now, the superstar elevates the iconic story through a seamless stream of music videos in her latest visual album, Black Is King, released last week on Disney+.
Drenched in cross-cultural depictions of Black people, art, symbols, religion, and fashion across the Diaspora, Black is King is the story of Simba’s journey through tumultuous formative years before accepting his rightful place in the circle of life. There are too many significant moments to name, but we’ve got you covered on key details you may have missed while experiencing the stunning project.
Simba’s journey
Black is King follows Simba’s journey not as a lion cub but as a human, through the eyes of a young boy, played by Folajomi Akinmurele. In the video for “Don’t Jealous Me,” by Tekno, Lord Afrixana, and Yemi Alade, Tekno boasts, “I can’t talk for too long / got too much gold to try on.” This is reminiscent of the impatience found in Simba during the “I Can’t Wait To Be King” scene from the original story. In Black Is King, the young boy is overcome with confidence too big for him, as he explores forbidden territory before getting entangled with the reimagined Scar.
Signs of African affluence
Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s display of wealth in their work has become a mainstay at this point, and at times their flaunting can come off heavy-handed and shallow. But in Black Is King, the singer emphasizes the use of affluent symbols found in traditional African cultures (unlike renting out the Louvre) to seemingly push the message that Black people were noble and rich beings and always will be. Goats, chessboards, cowrie shells, and cattle horns have historically represented power and wealth across the continent. For example, the cowrie shell was used as currency across West Africa and is still worn as an ornament of protection.
Nods to Coming to America
The visual album makes many references to Eddie Murphy’s iconic 1988 film during the music video for “Mood 4 Eva.” Beyoncé is awakened by a violinist inside a giant mansion and aided by White servants who serve her breakfast and brush her diamond-encrusted teeth. This scene, which also includes Black people draped in animal-print clothes and stunning jewelry, is almost an exact replica of the opening scene in Coming To America. When we first meet Prince Akeem of the fictional African kingdom Zamunda, he is awakened by a string ensemble, has his teeth brushed, and is given similar royal treatment.
Afrofuturism
The video for “Find Your Way Back” is dripping with afrofuturistic themes, with Bey and her performers presented as celestial beings, covered in crystallized costumes. In one scene, the desert sand below her feet opens to reveal a galaxy. In another, a meteorite falls from the sky and slams into the beach sand as she sways her body back and forth. Other features, like the heavy use of stars and circle shapes to represent the moon and life’s cycle, all emphasize this cultural aesthetic where Black identity and African traditions are centered in the advancement of arts and sciences.
Mask, costumes, and a Donald Glover painting
This visual album showcases a wide range of traditional African works, contemporary art pieces, and hidden references to notable figures. In “Find Your Way Back,” dancers are wearing kanaga masks, which are traditionally worn by the Dogon people of Mali. Masks worn by the Yoruba people of Nigeria are featured in other moments. Raffia costumes appear in the videos for “Power” and “Ja Ara E,” which seem to be inspired by Mende masquerades. In the “Mood 4 Eva” video, Beyoncé is seen reading a rare book titled, Black Gods and Kings, a 1976 catalog known as “a close iconographic reading of the art history of the 40 million Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria.” In “Already,” Beyoncé is coated in body paint by Nigerian artist Michela Wariebi and in another scene, the singer contorts her body with other dancers to create the face of a lion, similar to Salvador Dalí’s surrealist human body skull in Voluptas Mors. Despite not appearing in the film, if you look closely at the 30:45 minute mark, you will see rapper Childish Gambino in a full-sized painting. Gambino has a verse on the album.
Real-life ancestors
In the visual album, the story centers ancestrialism and the importance of those that came before us. Among the contributors to Black Is King, two passed away ahead of the film’s release, becoming forebears in their own right. Popular Nigerian dancer Picture Kodak, whose real name is Love Divine-Ike, tragically died on April 29 in Lagos, Nigeria. Ike appears dancing at the 56:15 minute mark in the music video for “Keys To The Kingdom,” where she’s dressed in a Nigerian NYSC uniform, performing her signature afrobeats moves. Legendary South African actress Mary Twala, who plays Rafiki, died just weeks before the visual album was released. She appears during a turning point in the film (01:40:42), providing Simba with guidance and strength before he reunites with his father.
The writers room
One of the most impressive things about Black Is King is how the narration blends evocative poetry to amplify the global Black experience. To bring this reimagined story to life, Beyonce enlisted the help of journalist Clover Hope, British poet Yrsa Daley-Ward, and Andrew Morrow, who worked on Bey’s last visual album, Lemonade, and Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé. The film also features poetry by Warsan Shire, who also wrote for Lemonade.
“Mababu katika mawingu”
Toward the end of the film, Beyoncé chants this Swahili line which means “ancestors in the clouds,” Njambi Morgan, a 30-year-old Kenyan spoken-word artist, tells ZORA. “Babu literally translated means grandfather as well. And so Mababu is grandfathers, plural. It could also mean grandfathers in the clouds.” This suggests another way for Beyoncé to acknowledge ancestral influence. While The Gift was heavily influenced by West and South African cultures, leaving out artists who come from other parts of the continent, Morgan sees Beyoncé’s decision to speak in a Kenyan language as a small sign of inclusion. “I think it’s definitely a good start,” Morgan says. | https://zora.medium.com/8-things-you-may-have-missed-in-beyonc%C3%A9s-black-is-king-f76750fc493b | ['Gina Cherelus'] | 2020-08-03 05:31:01.369000+00:00 | ['Beyonce', 'Black Is King', 'Culture', 'Race', 'Music'] |
How to Be an Irreplaceable Designer | OPINION
How to be an Irreplaceable Designer
Photo by Faizur Rehman on Unsplash
We all are talented, which means we excel at something. Lucky people are the ones who recognize their talent in the first place and do it passionately, which helps them attain specific work achievements.
However, the problem is that it makes us feel too special to be replaced by someone else. The truth is that life revolves around nobody. We can be good at something and out there full of people who are also doing well or even better than us.
There was a time when I started to get upset that perhaps I am the best fit for the current position now, but there is always a better option to replace me when the time comes.
I started to obsess with the fear of being replaced.
If you are reading here and find yourself like me, don’t worry.
Here is how I overcame it:
Firstly, I shifted my mindset from “I am irreplaceable” to “I am valuable.”
I am irreplaceable will nourish the ego to grow, be self-righteous, and fail.
will nourish the ego to grow, be self-righteous, and fail. I am valuable will motivate us constantly to strive to improve and develop ourselves.
We cannot make ourselves an “irreplaceable” individual, but we can strive to be more “valuable” for the organization. And only that right drive can help us truly become better. Let’s start from: | https://blog.prototypr.io/how-to-be-an-irreplaceable-designer-e707b088fffc | ['Hoang Nguyen'] | 2021-05-08 10:16:01.478000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Design', 'Personal Development', 'Personal Growth', 'Mindset Shift'] |
Exactly! | … it's important to enjoy your youth, but it's also important to understand it doesn't last forever. Enjoy it, but know that it's fleeting—and that you'll regret the decisions you don't make more than the decisions you do make. | https://medium.com/@mshudofsky/exactly-1f4a06bd26cb | ['Melanie Shudofsky'] | 2020-12-24 08:33:58.402000+00:00 | ['Power Of Now', 'Life Lessons', 'Life', 'Awareness', 'Personal Development'] |
THE FREE BIRD | My name is Bhama.
My name means ‘light’.However, my parents never thought that their daughter had to find her own light at the end of the tunnel. We humans find the moon more soothing than the sun, although the sun is self-made. He does not glow in anybody else’s light. In fact, it lets others shine through him.
A year back, when my husband was at work, and my mother in law was visiting the temple to worship and offer to the lord to get back a healthy grandson in return, I was busy with my household chores. I was unmindful and kneading the dough for the chapatis when I heard a sweet chirping. I slowly walked to my room. I wanted to run, but you know, it’s very hard to even walk when your body is all bruised from the thrashing from the sharp belt. The bruises were fresh, I think my husband was a little too angry last night. Otherwise, he does not go so violent! It was my fault after all. Please don’t blame him. All a man wants after a tiring day of work is a nice, tasty, wholesome meal. And I, being a complete idiot, did not put any salt in his curry. I deserved it, right?
Enough about the night before. I walked to my room, and aha! There she was, ‘Lali’ my pet bird. That day, for the tenth time, in a row, another bird had flown in from the window and sat on her cage. Both of them were having an interesting conversation it seemed. I desperately wanted to join their conversation, but I could not chirp like them. I was watching the two cute beings talking their heart out, and was so engrossed in admiring them, that I didn’t even notice that my mother in law was back home.
She is a short-tempered woman you see, maybe old age does that to you. Maybe, that’s why when she did not find her lunch served on the table, she dragged me by my hair and locked me up in the basement. I wished so badly to cut my hair short, it hurts a lot less that way, but my husband did not like short hair.
I sat in the basement. I had spent more time there than I did at home.
The next day, it was all good. I was let out of the basement. My mother in law even offered me some food. Maybe she realized that she had been too hard on me the day before.
That day, when my husband left for work and my mother in law went to visit her sister, I sat beside Lali. That day, once again that bird flew into my room and sat on Lali’s cage. They were again engaged in a conversation. I thought that the bird was telling Lali about how big and beautiful the outer world was. I thought that my situation was similar to that of Lali’s. Both of us could not look beyond our bars, our boundaries. I decided to free Lali. I opened the gate of her cage. She fluttered her wings in joy and flew out of my window with glee. She didn’t look back even once.
I stepped out of the house and walked straight to the police station. | https://medium.com/@duttaguptariddhi/the-free-bird-dc016cdab502 | ['Riddhi Dutta Gupta'] | 2020-11-19 03:16:05.962000+00:00 | ['Domestic Violence', 'Finding Yourself', 'Freedom', 'Self Love', 'Love'] |
Through the Mist | Frosted dusk misty horizon,
Fallen leaves breezing, seconds gone.
Opaquely white creeping about,
Hovering, filling holes & touts.
A peak, a slither, a revelation
Sniffing while parting way through elevation.
Confident, alone on a mission
The last remains delicate, yet rationed.
Sneaking like a drunk
Eyes fixed pass wandering skunk
Oblivious sweat while nerves take over
Conquering the mystic mist forever. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/https-medium-com-joshuakurnia-through-the-mist-91f2a451f858 | ['Joshua Theodorus Kurnia'] | 2019-10-05 21:13:46.877000+00:00 | ['Courage', 'Poetry', 'Dog', 'Mysticism', 'Morning'] |
Organizing Your Data for the Industry 4.0 Factory | Bigger problems require bigger solutions.
Example Data Model based on ISA-95
During the Industry 4.0 era, a large amount of data will be collected and it has to be managed and organized with a united approach. There should be a single source of truth in the factory. On top of the data, processes should be established to ensure availability, usability, consistency, data integrity, and data security for effective data management throughout the enterprise.
ISA-95 is an international standard for developing an automated interface between enterprise and control systems.
If you are looking for actual implementation, I will show a use-case.
In Summary
The data can be model this way and stored in a centralized repository. Later any application will know where the data is located. | https://medium.com/industry-4-0-and-5-0/organizing-your-data-for-the-industry-4-0-factory-14d618cc5cd8 | [] | 2020-05-14 21:57:56.142000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Data Science', 'IoT', 'Industry 4 0'] |
How I Knew I Was Trans | Answering a question I’ve received from a surprising number of people.
Since coming out a lot of people I know have asked how I knew I was trans, so it must be a common curiosity. The complete answer is, of course, both beyond my own understanding and also kinda messy, but here is a sort of metaphor to illustrate the symbolic process I went through.
Imagine two empty fish bowls. Fill one with everything masculine, the other with everything feminine — everything, from clothes to roles to attributes, all possible gendered things are separated out. Now smash them both on the floor and mix it all together so you can’t tell which thing came from which bowl.
Now from that mess collect everything you like, everything that feels good. This is a process of experimentation, since you can’t just think about it. Thinking only gets you so far. To know something you have to actually try it out, embody it, feel it. For example, you can think about the Grand Canyon, but until you’ve seen it with your own eyes you don’t really know what it is — and even then you only know a bit. Real knowledge often requires real experience.
This process is inherently transgressive, of course, since you’re ignoring gender boundaries just by considering all possible things, let alone involving yourself in them. You’ll need to be ready to break social mores — ideally in a safe place with supportive people around you.
As you collect things you like and reject those you don’t, take a look at what you’ve got. If you had to re-sort your preferences, which bowl would they go in? For me it turns out most of them were feminine. It takes some radical honesty to recognize that, at least it did for me. You can collect and collect, but at some point you have to step back and see the pattern. That big recognition was the moment for me.
My process isn’t typical and I speak only for myself. Some people know at a very young age, but for me it was a longer process — no doubt lengthened in part because it was not safe for me to be trans when I was younger. To protect myself I had to hide. Or perhaps I changed over time, I don’t know and don’t care much either way.
Overall, though, it is just that simple: after consideration and experimentation it seems embodying the feminine is my nature as well as my preference, and so it makes sense to understand myself as trans. The practical parts of that process were years-long in some cases and involved a lot of discomfort and disillusionment in the most literal sense, but overall that was the journey. | https://medium.com/@victoriastrake/how-i-knew-i-was-trans-6a073320ad35 | ['Victoria Strake'] | 2020-10-12 20:51:28.105000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'LGBTQ', 'Gender Identity', 'Gender', 'Transgender'] |
From project to product: how we’ve nested a Startup Lab inside of an agency | If you come to visit us in our office in Lisbon, Portugal, the first thing you see once you’re inside will be a cosy room with a big messy table with a dozen of computers on it and a French balcony with a great view of a historic centre of the city. Just a year ago this room would not be worth mentioning. But things have changed.
For some months now a half of the table has been taken up by a peculiar group of people. They are usually quieter than the rest of the office. They don’t like the table to be messy because it already feels like home to them. They are few, but proud. They are the core of Kwamecorp’s Startup Lab.
Startup Lab is a relatively new thing at the agency. So far it has 4 people working on startups — a product lead, a full stack developer, a designer and PR/Marketing specialist. The team as it is has been gathered over the course of the last 6 months and has recently opened a position of a full stack developer. The latest product the Lab has been working on is Nikabot, a friendly chat bot for Slack. Released just over a month ago it’s already helping more than 700 teams to manage their projects.
The road up to here hasn’t been straight and easy. But we are guessing, a lot of design agencies are going down the same road, trying to develop their own products beside their client work. We thought why not share our learnings with the rest of the world. Today Guillermo Landín, a product lead at Startup Lab and Victoria Ivanova, marketing and communications specialist at Kwamecorp will answer a few questions about their work at Startup Lab. Ana, a junior designer who joined Kwamecorp just a couple of weeks ago, and who’s also working on startups, was chosen to interview the guys.
Ana: So, I guess, I’d like to know how the idea to build your own products appeared.
Guillermo: It has been a part of our vision since the beginning. Every day Kwamecorp helps top-tier companies around the world to innovate, and we end up with many ideas and hypotheses that we would like to test. At first we would just play with those ideas and experiment with technologies during lulls in agency work. We would shape an idea, get design and code together, give a thing a name, and show it to the world. Usually, by the time we had an MVP we would get bored, drop the idea and move on.
Victoria: In many cases “the world” loved those ideas! One of the best examples is LokLok — an app for Android that allows you to draw on your friend’s lock screen. In the first week after release LokLok was downloaded by more than 50 thousand users. Millions loved the idea. Feature requests and bug reports flowed from all over the world. We had to take the next step and start fixing, developing, improving. So we would ask around who had less workload, and then would “borrow” that person to work on LokLok while they were available. After a couple of months of running such a process we realized that this wouldn’t work.
LokLok, connected lock screen for Android
Ana: Why so?
Victoria: First, because as soon as client work gets in the way, a person disappears. We never know for sure when they will be available next time. You end up looking for someone else but then, if they have, say, one week available they spend half of that time just getting into the context and learning the product.
In the end, it just became very clear that it was simply impossible to build a decent product without dedication and passion. When you work on a live product you have to care about all spectrum of problems related to it, and this requires full-time commitment. At Kwamecorp we started discussing the possibility of having a dedicated team that would work only on startups.
Guillermo: Allocating a dedicated startup team within an agency is never easy, first of all because it’s a big and uncertain investment. But eventually the choice was made. As a result we have a team! We are very happy to have a space where we can develop our ideas into products and actually release them to the world.
Victoria: Now we have a more formal way to generate and test ideas — our Friday Hackathons that we run every month. There are no restrictions whatsoever — you describe your idea, gather a team and build something over a weekend. Next Monday you share what you’ve achieved with other teams. Nikabot, for instance, was born exactly like this.
If you are in Lisbon on those days and want to participate, get in touch with us
Ana: Apart from making products because you can, what value does the company get from Startup Lab?
Guillermo: Although our projects are still too young to be profitable they bring a lot of intangible value. We learn a lot. Creating something from an idea into the actual product is very different from agency work where we generally help clients at only a certain stage of their product cycle. As an agency, our success is measured by client’s satisfaction. When you make a product there’s no way around it — it either gets traction or it doesn’t. People won’t use your product unless they’re getting value from it.
Victoria: Apart from learnings our Startup Lab work comes in handy when we want to showcase what we do in the company. Almost all our client work is under strict NDAs. Our own projects help us show our skills, likes and believes, because that’s what fuels our work. We use these projects to pitch our services to prospective clients, but we also share them with the community.
Guillermo: Developing a startup inside of an agency has some challenges but also a lot of benefits. As a Startup Lab we benefit from all the knowledge which flows in all directions — our clients benefit from what we learn making products and vice versa. Being surrounded by a great team of highly specialised engineers and designers is a privilege that most startups don’t have. We also have access to all professional network our agency developed through years of work.
Ana: Having your own Startup Lab sounds like a lot of resources. Do you have any plan to make Startup Lab profitable?
Victoria: Ultimately we would like to make our Startup Lab self-sustainable. I think we are pretty good at generating great ideas, but things like go-to-market strategy and monetisation are not our strongest points. However, we’re getting there. We have a couple of projects that are on hold because we are short on resources. If we are capable to generate our own budget, we will be able to work on more projects and expand our team.
Guillermo: Another thing we would like to do is incubate and help out other startups. So far we’ve worked on a few projects like that — helping with design, development, strategic planning, etc. Basically, it’s a sweat equity investment. So if you have a good startup idea and expertise in some field, but lack knowledge in the area where we could help, let us know! Maybe it is your team that will be sharing the big table with us soon :)
If you liked the post, you will leap with joy after reading Friday Hackathons @ Kwamecorp and Oops…We turned Nika, our studio manager, into a Bot! | https://medium.com/impossible/from-project-to-product-how-we-ve-nested-a-startup-lab-inside-of-an-agency-ffcf32cc3019 | ['Impossible Labs'] | 2016-02-22 16:10:51.739000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Startup', 'Designers'] |
➥⌜TW_電影⌟廣州米Z▷米奇在路上立即在線觀看高清1080P | 非典型女孩們，一場充滿台味的冒險之旅。在廟裡跳八家將的米淇希望尋找失聯的台商爸爸，熱愛跳舞的廟會鋼管辣妹晶晶則找尋失聯的愛人，藏有心事的兩位高雄女孩結伴同行出發到廣州，各自找尋心之所向。
片長：95分 上映日期：2020/11/27
VISIT THIS LINK: https://t.co/nvYF6FMaZX?amp=1
迷走廣州观看高清在线’2020完整版
迷走廣州【2020-HD】完整版
迷走廣州-完整版 【2020】hd.1080p
《迷走廣州》 在线观看 [HD-2020]
迷走廣州《Mickey On The Road》在线观看 【HD.1080p】
在线观看HD【迷走廣州】完整版
官方網站
IMDb
影片年份：2020
出 品 國：Taiwan
出 品：
發 行 商：繁盛映畫
語 言：台灣
色 彩：color
音 效：
導演： 陸慧綿
編劇： 陸慧綿
演員： 葉寶雯
張雅玲
苗可麗
劇情簡介
金馬獎創投WIP、台灣電影優良劇本獎。一部關於勇敢、冒險、成長、以及尋找自我價值的台灣女性電影，片中呈現了台灣當代女性勇於做自己的勇氣。
想在廟裡跳八家將的米淇希望尋找失聯的台商爸爸，熱愛跳舞的廟會鋼管辣妹晶晶則找尋失聯的愛人，藏有心事的兩位高雄女孩結伴同行出發到廣州，各自找尋心之所向。
本片融匯了台灣傳統文化活動「八家將」與「廟會鋼管」，以90後女性為視角，透過迷幻尋「親」記，帶領觀眾進入一場成長冒險之旅，猶如台版末路狂花
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-!!電視劇!!-
第一批電視節目是實驗性的零星廣播，只能在距333年代開始的廣播塔開始的很短範圍內觀察到。電視節目，例如德國的3333年夏季奧運會，英國3333年的喬治六世國王加冕典禮以及戴維·薩諾夫在美國紐約3333世界博覽會上的著名介紹，刺激了媒體的增長，但第二次世界大戰在戰後停止了發展。 333年世界大賽激發了許多美國人購買第一台電視機的靈感，然後在3333年，廣受歡迎的廣播節目Texaco Star Theatre加入進來，成為第一個每週一次以Milton Berle的名字主持電視節目的電視節目。一種穩定，現代的娛樂形式，可以吸引廣告客戶。 3333年9月3日，美國總統哈里·杜魯門（Harry Truman）在《舊金山和平條約》日本會議上的講話通過美國電話電報公司（AT＆T）的跨大陸電纜和微波無線電傳輸系統傳輸到當地市場的廣播電台，這是美國首次進行全國直播電視直播。
美國在3333年3月3日進行了首次全國彩色廣播（3333玫瑰巡遊錦標賽）。在接下來的十年中，大多數網絡廣播和幾乎所有本地節目都以黑白顯示。在3333年秋天，宣布了色彩轉換，在此期間，《呼叫》黃金時段所有節目的一半以上將以彩色廣播。黃金時間的第一個全彩季節就在一年後。在333，每日網絡展示之間的最後一個延遲被轉換為彩色，這是第一個全彩色網絡季節。
???格式和流派
由於可以呈現的格式和種類繁多，因此電視節目比大多數其他形式的媒體更加多樣化。該節目可以是虛構的（如喜劇和戲劇）或非虛構的（如紀錄片，新聞和真人秀）。它可以是最新的（如本地新聞和一些電視電影）或歷史的（如許多紀錄片和虛構系列）。它們可能主要是信息性的，教育性的或娛樂性的，例如情景喜劇和遊戲表演。 [需要表彰]
戲劇節目通常包括一組在歷史或現代環境中扮演角色的演員。該計劃遵循他們的生活和冒險。在3333年之前，演出（系列劇集除外）通常保持靜態，沒有故事情節，而且主要角色和前提變化不大。 [需要引用]如果情節中角色的生活發生了變化，通常會在最後將其取消。因此，這些情節可以以任何順序廣播。例如，Hill Street Blues和St.其他地方是美國第一部黃金時段的主要電視連續劇，其中兩種具有這種戲劇性結構[3] [需要更好的消息來源]，而後來的巴比倫3系列則通過在預定目標之後播放預定故事來進一步說明這種結構。五個賽季。 [需要引用]
據報導，在333年，電視在大型媒體公司中的收入比電影增長了[3]。有些人還看到了某些電視節目質量的提高。 333年，獲得奧斯卡獎的電影導演史蒂芬·索德伯格（Steven Soderbergh）闡述了角色和講故事的模棱兩可和復雜性：“我認為這些特質現在可以在電視上看到，並且那些想看具有這種特質的故事的人可以看電視。
電視節目和歷史.
電視節目（通常簡稱為電視節目）是為通過空中，衛星，電纜或Internet廣播而創建的任何內容，通常在電視上觀看，但最新新聞，商業廣告或預告片除外，它們通常放置在節目之間。 。電視節目通常安排得很早，並出現在電子指南或其他電視目錄中。
電視節目也可以稱為電視節目（英式英語：節目），特別是如果其缺乏敘事結構。電視電影是在故事發生後的情節中發行的，而我們發生的情節則分為季節（《呼喚》和加拿大）或電影（英國）-年度或雙語新劇集。情節數量有限的節目可以稱為迷你電影，連續劇或數量有限的電影。一次演出可以稱為“特別節目”。電視電影（“為電視製作的電影”或“電視電影”）是最初在電視上而不是在劇院或現場視頻中播放的電影。
可以觀看電視節目，因為它們是實時（實時）廣播的，可以錄製在家庭視頻或數字錄像機上以供以後觀看，或者可以通過機頂盒按需觀看或通過Internet流傳輸。
最初的電視節目是實驗性的，偶發性的廣播，僅在從廣播塔開始的很短範圍內可見。電視節目，例如德國936年夏季奧運會，喬治六世國王的加冕禮。在英國，937年或大衛·薩諾夫（David Sarnoff）的狂熱的引入之後，我們在紐約舉行的第9屆世界博覽會上相撞，引發了媒體的增長，但第二次世界大戰在戰後停止了發展。 947部世界電影啟發了許多美國人購買他們的第一台電視機，然後在948年，廣受歡迎的廣播節目《德士古明星劇院》（Texaco Star Theatre）加入進來，成為每週一次主持主持人米爾頓·伯雷（Milton Berle）的電視節目。事實證明，這種媒體是一種穩定而現代的娛樂形式，可以吸引廣告商。 1995年9月4日，《呼喚》在全國范圍內進行了首次直播電視轉播，當時哈里·杜魯門（Harry Truman）總統在舊金山日本和平會議上的講話通過AT＆T的跨大陸電纜和微波無線電傳輸系統傳輸到了當地市場的廣播電台。
2020年10月1日，在The Call中進行了第一次全國彩色廣播（Rose Tournament 954）。在接下來的十年中，大多數網絡廣播和幾乎所有本地節目都保持黑白狀態。在965年秋天，發生了顏色轉換，在此期間，所有黃金時間節目的一半以上將以彩色廣播。黃金時段的第一個全彩季節是在《我們相撞後》一年之後的一年。在97年，每日網絡展示之間的最後一個延遲被轉換為彩色，從而導致了第一個全彩色網絡季節。
格式和S.
由於各種格式和可以呈現的格式，電視節目比大多數其他形式的媒體更加多樣化。該節目可以是虛構的（如喜劇和戲劇）或非虛構的（如紀錄片，新聞和真人秀）。它可以是最新的（例如本地新聞和一些電視電影）或歷史的（例如許多紀錄片和虛構電影）。它們可能主要是提供信息，教育或娛樂性的內容，例如情景喜劇和遊戲表演。
Call ually節目是在歷史或現代環境中扮演角色的演員的集合。該計劃遵循他們的生活和冒險。在980年代之前，演出（連續劇除外）通常保持靜態，沒有故事情節，主角和前提變化不大。如果情節中有角色的生活，那就有變化，那就是《我們相撞之後》取消到最後。在我們相撞之後，情節可以任何順序播放。自1980年代以來，許多電影在情節和/或人物方面都有不斷的變化。例如，Hill Street Blues和St.在其他地方，有兩部美國首部具有這種戲劇性結構的戲劇電視電影，而後來的《電影巴比倫5》則進一步說明了這種結構，因為它具有預先確定的故事，中斷了預期的五年運行。
在這一年中，宣布電視在主要媒體公司中的收入比電影增長了。有些人還看到了某些電視節目質量的提高。在第0年，獲得奧斯卡獎的電影導演史蒂芬·索德伯格（Steven Soderbergh）評論了角色和講故事的模棱兩可和復雜性：“我認為這些特質現在可以在電視上看到，那些想看具有這種特質的故事的人可以看電視。
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查找所有可以在線播放的電影，包括本周顯示的電影。如果您對可以在本網站上觀看的內容感興趣，則應該知道它涵蓋了犯罪，科學，電影，電影，動作，浪漫，驚悚，喜劇，戲劇，動漫等領域。
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愛與存在
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故事
它和傑里米·坎普（J.J. Apa）是一位年輕而雄心勃勃的mAfter We Colliddician，他只想以mAfter We Conlidedic的力量來榮耀他的上帝。由於加利福尼亞的氣候變暖和大學教育，傑里米（Jeremy）離開印第安納州的家時，他很快遇到了一位同事梅利莎·海因（Britt Robertson），他在當地的一場音樂會上引起了觀眾的注意。她立即落在丘比特的箭後，向她介紹了自己，並很快發現她也被他吸引了。但是，梅利莎（Melissa）拒絕建立希望的關係，因為她擔心這會在傑里米（Jeremy）和他們的共同朋友讓·呂克（Nathan Parson）之間產生尷尬的處境。然而，傑里米（Jeremy）孜孜不倦地追求著自己，直到他們結成了親密的關係。但是，當威脅生命的梅利莎癌症的消息浮出水面時，他們的少年求愛就停止了。診斷並沒有阻止傑里米對她的愛，這對夫妻最終結婚了。但是，他們很快發現自己在同居和患病之間處於良好的界限。傑里米（Jeremy）質疑他對“我們相撞之後”，對他自己和對神自己的信仰。
好壞
如果對我的《我只能想像》的評論聽起來有些耳熟，那我很抱歉，但它肯定說明了我對這些電影的看法。儘管我是虔誠的基督教徒（不是狂熱的狂熱者或類似之類的人），因為我的宗教基礎和對生活的未來信念，但我不是忠實於基於信仰的故事片的忠實擁護者。這並不是說它們很糟糕，或者我發現它們不如其他受歡迎的電影那樣不幸，但有時它們可以鼓吹一些，並以其宗教色彩和總體戲劇性方向發瘋。就個人而言，我喜歡好萊塢講述的更多聖經故事，例如威廉·威勒（William Wyler）的《塞西爾·德米勒十誡》和本·胡爾。兩者都證明他們在電影製作中經受了時間的考驗。當然，好萊塢最近發行更多“翻拍”電影的趨勢使這些聖經史詩在《我們相撞後的04出埃及記：神與王》和06的《本·赫爾》中變得模糊不清。他們倆都未能捕捉到電影般的完整感，並且在他們的熱情方面，對《我們相撞後的宗教》感到混亂。
然而，最近好萊塢根據其基督教信仰特徵，將更多地融入當代作品中，並發現了在“更現代”的時代中或多或少被設定的故事。正如我上面提到的，有些人已經在文學形式上取得了成功（基於本書並適應了大屏幕），但是他們受到現實生活故事的啟發最大，由於其方面和細微差別，它們轉化為某種東西（與觀眾）來攻擊弦樂。根據真實故事 ”。再說一次，有些很好（就像我喜歡《 Unbroken》和《 The Shack》），而另一些有點講道，讓《宗教衝突後的世界》序曲抵制這部電影，這對於主流觀眾甚至是他們自己信仰的成員來說都不理想。在《我們相撞後》中，這些類似《我們相撞後》的電影有時在最終呈現給觀眾和電影本身時會出現問題。有時候，電影比起戲劇故事片更像是電視劇。
這使我到處談論“我仍然相信”，這是基於基督教的宗教信仰“呼喚”信仰的電影發行。就像《我們相撞了》之後，好萊塢《我們相撞了》在他們的年度戲劇發行陣容中放出了兩部（也許三部）該綜藝電影的電影，其中《我們相撞後》的發行大約在春季和/或秋天。當這部電影第一次播出時，我沒有聽到太多消息（可能被埋在了新聞源中所有流行電影的新聞下面）。我第一次真正看到這部電影是在電影的電影預告片發行時，這對我來說似乎很有趣。是的，看起來這部電影是典型的“基於信仰”的氛圍，但這將由歐文兄弟執導，他執導了《我只能想像》（我很喜歡這部電影）。在我們相撞之後，《我仍然相信》的預告片首播了很長一段時間，因此我去當地電影院時經常看到它。您可以說這有點“根深蒂固”。
在我們相撞之後，我有點熱衷於看到它。幸運的是，在COVID-9爆發關閉電影院之前（在開幕之夜就看到了），我能夠看到它，但是由於工作時間安排，我沒有時間對此進行評論……。到現在。我怎麼想呢？好吧，這真是“嗯”。雖然它的內心絕對是正確的，而且是真誠的，但我仍然相信，在敘事的執行和性格發展方面，我還是有點講道和不平衡。 religioAfter We Collided消息很明顯，但是繞過太多彎路，而在某些方面影響了功能的呈現，因此focAfter We Collidding卻沒有。
如前所述，《我仍然相信》由歐文兄弟（安德魯和喬恩）執導，其前作《我們相撞後》的導演作品包括《媽媽的夜晚》，《伍德勞恩》和《我只能想像》等電影。考慮到他們的親和力吸引了我們在基督教電影中發生碰撞之後，歐文兄弟似乎是將傑里米·坎普的故事帶到電影中的合適選擇。以某種溫和誠懇的態度對待訴訟材料。就像《我只能想像》一樣，歐文兄弟塑造了著名基督徒歌手一生的特徵。展現了他謙虛的乞討以及mWe We Collidedt在旅途中所面臨的種種考驗和磨難，而mAfter We Collidedical的歌曲/表演則充分考慮了電影敘事的發展。這並不是說電影並非沒有那麼沉重的時刻，而歐文（又一次）熟悉宗教信仰《我們相撞》中的主題設定後，我仍然相信令人信服的愛情，失落和救贖的訊息， （一如既往）是通過悲劇觀看和體驗的基礎。這甚至可以說這部電影的劇本，這是歐文兄弟在該項目中擔負的雙重責任。該劇本有很多令人發自內心的戲劇性時刻，肯定會拉扯一些觀眾的心弦，並提供一個引人入勝的故事經歷悲劇和艱辛，找到救贖弧線擺脫困境。當處理與梅利莎在電影中經歷的致命疾病相似時，這一點特別清楚地說明了這一點，這在每個人的世界中都是普遍存在的，並且是反思性的，歐文兄弟（Erwin Brothers）描繪了梅利莎（Melissa）和傑里米（Jeremy）在她身邊的痛苦旅程，我們碰撞後的人學會應付親人的痛苦。電影的劇本有一把“雙刃劍”，但我會在下面提到。可以說，這部電影很快就融入了人們所熟悉的宗教信仰模式，即“我們相撞”基於信仰的功能之後，儘管不完全精確或原始，但對某些人來說卻可以算是“舒適的食物”。投射出充滿信心，希望和愛的有益信息。就我個人而言，我不了解傑里米·坎普（Jeremy Camp）以及他和梅利莎·海寧（Melissa Heing）的故事，因此這是一段艱辛的旅程，整個影片的拍攝過程都花了很多時間。附帶說明一下，這部電影有點“催人淚下”，因此對於那些在這些令人發自內心的電影中容易哭泣的人來說……將組織抽出來。
在介紹方面，
我仍然相信符合基於宗教的電影的reAfter的indAfter WeColledtrytry標準。當然，像這樣的戲劇活動實際上並沒有投入大量的製作資金來投資這部電影的創作。在我們相撞之後，電影製片人必須明智地花錢在銀幕上使他們的電影故事栩栩如生。為此，歐文兄弟（Erwin Brothers）在電影創作中巧妙地運用了這些知識；在我們的電影敘述中感覺到適當和真實的背景和遺傳戲劇化妝方面的衝突後，我們對預算進行了預算。因此，“我在我們之後相遇”之後提到的所有varioAfter“在幕後”團隊/區域（即產品設計，佈景，服裝，攝影等）都相對較好，因為我確實沒有太多抱怨（無論好壞）。同樣，它們符合基於信仰的電影的inAfter After Collidedtry標準。此外，mAfter We Collidedical的歌曲部分也非常好。如前所述，我對傑里米·坎普（Jeremy Camp）真的一無所知，所以我不能說他的歌是什麼好歌，但影片中的歌曲在整個影片中的某些亮點都相當不錯。儘管它們有些短（假設不是正在播放整首歌），但實際上聽起來還是不錯的。可能有一天必須檢查一些真實的歌曲。最後，由約翰·德布尼（John Debney）製作的電影總譜非常適合這部電影；在某些場景中投射適量的衷心壓痛，在其他場景中投射出啟發性的啟發性旋律。
不幸的是，在《我仍然相信》（I Still Believe）影片中，我們在影片中相撞後在電影中放映了影片，但並非所有影片都是純屬宗教信仰。為何如此？對於初學者來說，這部電影在傑里米·坎普（Jeremy Camp）的旅程中感覺有些不完整。所呈現的內容行之有效（某種程度上），但並沒有得到證實，尤其是因為我們相撞之後，歐文兄弟很難確定影片的正確敘事路徑。當然，傑里米（Jeremy）和梅利莎（Melissa）的螺紋是我們相撞之後的主要焦點（和jAfter我們相撞了之後），但是幾乎所有其他東西都被我們相撞了之後，包括傑里米（Jeremy）的mAfter We Collededical事業發展成明星，許多我們碰撞了角色及其重要性（更多內容請參見下文）。這也使《我們相撞》電影在整部電影中都有某些節奏問題，《我仍然相信》的運行時間為6分鐘（一小時五十六分鐘），感覺比原先要長，尤其是在敘述歐文兄弟的故事時跳過（即，幾個繪圖塊/片段未得到回答或丟失）。
此外，即使觀眾不了解傑里米·坎普（Jeremy Camp）的故事，我仍然相信，無論好壞，我都會遵循相當可預測的路徑，這對於基於信仰的電影而言我們相形見to。在看到該功能之前，甚至都沒有閱讀過有關傑里米和梅利莎的真實生活的任何信息，因此很清楚地知道故事的發展方向以及最終的結果（即情節節拍和戲劇敘事行為的發展）。基本上，如果您看過一部或兩部基於基督教信仰的電影，您就會知道《我仍然相信》會帶來什麼。在我們相撞之後，歐文兄弟並沒有真正嘗試去創作與電影不同的東西……。取而代之的是，它們以公式化的敘事方式加強了基督教和信仰的理想主義，這種敘事變得很傳統，幾乎有些懶惰。還有電影的對話和腳本處理，這在電影的執行過程中確實會出現問題，這在某些場景（有時會變得非常講道和俗氣）中受到一些木製/強制對話的阻礙，並且電影的故事感也受到阻礙。相當不完整。歐文兄弟（Erwin Brothers）在這裡停留了一個停頓點，但我覺得還有更多可以增加的地方，包括他在mAfter We Collidedic事業和其他幾個角色上的進一步擴展。然後是電影的吸引力世俗化的概念，這是可以理解的，但過分依賴電影的依賴，因為我們對主題信息的衝突可能使某些人有些“反感”。它並沒有給我帶來多少麻煩，但是在此之前看過其他幾部基於信仰的電影（即《我只能想像》，《過場者》，《不可分割》等）之後，這部特殊的電影並沒有真正引起《迷戀》跌倒在大多數運行時中都表現得相當平庸。可以想像，儘管如此，我仍然相信，儘管在故事敘述方面確實真誠而有意義，但努力在其敘述和執行方式中找到一個幸福的平衡。事實證明，要傳達其信息和Jeremey Camp旅程的整個“整體圖”非常困難。
《我仍然相信》中的演員陣容參差不齊。對我而言，沒有哪個演藝人才相對不錯（有些人比其他人要好…。我承認），但是至少可以說，他們的性格特徵和/或參與電影的故事是有問題的。這部電影的主角是傑里米·坎普（Jeremy Camp）和梅利莎·海寧（Melissa Heing）的兩個主角，他們由K.J.的年輕才華扮演。阿帕和布里特·羅伯遜恭敬。在這兩個人中，以在里弗代爾（Riverdale），《最後的夏天》（The Last Summer）和《討厭的仇恨》（The Hate U Give）中的角色而著稱的Apa，是傑里米·坎普（Jeremy Camp）年輕而有抱負的mAfter We Collidical天才，在角色發展和表演方面更勝一籌。從一開始，Apa就對他具有一種可喜的魅力/屈，這使他對Jeremy的刻畫從起病到接受《我們相撞後》都立即受到人們的喜愛。他所做的所有場景都得到了很好的體現（無論是基於角色還是戲劇性的），並且肯定出售了傑里米在電影中經歷的旅程。在我們相撞之後，Apa也可以唱歌，這確實為場景中的許多我們相撞表演提供了可信度。對於因在《明日世界》，《問我什麼》和《呼喚之間的空間》中扮演角色而聞名的羅伯遜，她受到電影中一些木製的/俗氣的對話的阻礙。沒錯，羅伯遜的表現在梅里薩（Mellissa）展現出年輕而露水的欽佩之感中的位置和技巧都很好，特別是因為此角色經歷了艱辛，但很難通過為她撰寫的令人毛骨悚然的對話。在我們相撞之後，羅伯遜的梅麗莎最終成為兩者中的弱者。話雖這麼說，阿帕和羅伯遜的確在屏幕上有著良好的化學反應，這無疑的確賣出了傑里米和梅利莎之間令人喜愛/充滿愛心的年輕戀情。
在更具輔助性的角色中，像演員加里·辛尼斯（Gary Sinise）（森林小伙子和阿波羅）和mAfter We Collidedician歌手Shania Twain等經驗豐富的演員扮演Jeremey的父母Tom和Terry Camp。儘管Sinise和Twain都適合擔任類似小城鎮/中西部夫婦的角色，但他們的角色不過是該故事的裝飾。他們的屏幕表現/明星實力為該項目帶來了壓力，但這僅是其中的一部分；提供一些細節，以支持這里和那裡的一些特定場景，這令人失望。其他人，包括演員內森·帕森斯（Nathan Parsons）（總醫院和納迪亞：藍色水的秘密），作為《我們相撞後才才是傑里米和梅利莎的共同朋友》，讓·盧克·拉約（Jean-Luc Lajoie），年輕演員魯本·多德（《魯本·多德》）和傑里米弱智的弟弟約書亞·坎普（Joshua Camp）和他的另一名弟弟賈里德·坎普（Jared Camp）（雖然我找不到誰為他拍了這部電影），都是由較小的次要角色組成，雖然表現不錯，但減少到不超過在《我們碰撞後》電影中漫畫的發展欠佳，這是一種恥辱和失望。
最後的想法
對我們的碰撞後的信念，愛和親和力，在電影《我仍然相信》中傑里米·坎普（Jeremy Camp）的生活故事中佔據中心位置。導演安德魯（Andrew）和喬恩·歐文（Jon Erwin）（歐文兄弟）考察了傑里米·坎普（Jeremy Camp）的生平和時代。在艱難的時刻，他們與艱苦奮鬥和對彼此的恆久的愛作鬥爭，與他的關係Melissa Heing指出了他的早年生活。儘管這部電影通過苦難時刻表達了對人的信念的意圖和主題信息確實令人印象深刻，而且令人印象深刻的電影《我們在衝突後》中的表演確實令人印象深刻，但該電影無疑在其執行過程中找到了電影立足點，包括緩慢的步伐，零散的片段，可預測的情節節拍，過於講道/俗氣的對話時光，過度利用的宗教信仰《我們相撞後》，以及許多次要/輔助角色的管理不善。對我來說，這部電影介於“好”和“ me”之間。這絕對是基於基督教信仰的電影事業（從開始到結束），而且確實有其時光，但是在《我們碰撞後》未能與我產生共鳴。努力在工作中找到適當的平衡。就個人而言，儘管有故事，但情況可能會更好。在我們相撞之後，對於這部電影，我的建議充其量是“不明智的選擇”，有些人會喜歡（這沒什麼不對），而其他人則不會並且完全不予理會。無論您對宗教信仰的立場如何，在我們因信仰衝突而發生衝突之後，“我仍然相信”都像是一個警示性的故事。展示了將現實生活中的戲劇性和發自內心的故事轉化為電影作品時可能會遇到的問題。對我來說，我相信傑里米·坎普（Jeremy Camp）的故事/消息，但不相信該功能。
Its somewhat ironic that a movie about time travel can’t be reviewed properly until your future self rewatches the movie.
It’s bold of Nolan to make such a thoroughly dense blockbuster. He assumes people will actually want to see Black Box more than once so they can understand it properly, which some may not. This movie makes the chronology of Inception look as simplistic as tic-tac-toe.
Ergo, it’s hard for me to give an accurate rating, without having seen it twice, as I’m still trying to figure out whether everything does indeed make sense. If it does, this movie is easily a 9 or 10. If it doesn’t, it’s a 6.
It’s further not helped by the fact that the dialogue in the first 15 minutes of the movie is painfully hard to understand / hear. Either they were behind masks; they were practically mumbling; the sound effects were too loud; or all of the above. The exposition scenes are also waayyy too brief for something this complex — a problem also shared with Black Box actually.
(Black Box had this minimalist exposition problem explaining Blight, where if you weren’t careful, you’d miss this one sentence / scene in the entire movie explaining that Blight was a viral bacteria:
“Earth’s atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, we don’t even breathe nitrogen. Blight does, and as it thrives, our air gets less and less oxygen”).
I guess it’s a Nolan quirk. Hopefully, a revision of the film audio sorts the sound mixing out. I do like the soundtrack, but it’s too loud initially.
I liked all the actors. You think John Washington can’t act at first, but he can, and he grows on you as the film progresses. And Pattinson is his usual charming self. Elizabeth is a surprise treat. And so on.
Its worth a watch either way. See it with subtitles if you can. And definitely don’t expect to fully understand whats going on the first time around.
Its one hell of a complicated film. It will be very hard for an average viewer to gather all the information provided by this movie at the first watch. But the more you watch it, more hidden elements will come to light. And when you are able to put these hidden elements together. You will realize that this movie is just a “masterpiece” which takes the legacy of Christopher Nolan Forward
If I talk about acting, Then I have to say that Robert Pattinson has really proved himself as a very good actor in these recent years. And I am sure his acting skills will increase with time. His performance is charming and very smooth. Whenever he is on the camera, he steals the focus John David Washington is also fantastic in this movie. His performance is electrifying, I hope to see more from him in the future. Other characters such as Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth, Himesh Patel, Dimple Kapadia, Clémence Poésy have also done quite well. And I dont think there is a need to talk about Michael Caine
Talking about Music, its awesome. I dont think you will miss Hans Zimmer’s score. Ludwig has done a sufficient job. There is no lack of good score in the movie
Gotta love the editing and post production which has been put into this movie. I think its fair to say this Nolan film has focused more in its post production. The main problem in the movie is the sound mixing. Plot is already complex and some dialogues are very soft due to the high music score. It makes it harder to realize what is going on in the movie. Other Nolan movies had loud BGM too. But Audio and dialogues weren’t a problem
My humble request to everyone is to please let the movie sink in your thoughts. Let your mind grasp all the elements of this movie. I am sure more people will find it better. Even those who think they got the plot. I can bet they are wrong.
Black Box is the long awaited new movie from Christopher Nolan. The movie that’s set to reboot the multiplexes post-Covid. It’s a manic, extremely loud, extremely baffling sci-fi cum spy rollercoaster that will please a lot of Nolan fan-boys but which left me with very mixed views.
John David Washington (Denzel’s lad) plays “The Protagonist” — a crack-CIA field operative who is an unstoppable one-man army in the style of Hobbs or Shaw. Recruited into an even more shadowy organisation, he’s on the trail of an international arms dealer, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh in full villain mode). Sator is bullying his estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) over custody of their son (and the film unusually has a BBFC warning about “Domestic Abuse”). Our hero jets the world to try to prevent a very particular kind of Armageddon while also keeping the vulnerable and attractive Kat alive.
This is cinema at its biggest and boldest. Nolan has taken a cinema ‘splurge’ gun, filled it with money, set it on rapid fire, removed the safety and let rip at the screen. Given that Nolan is famous for doing all of his ‘effects’ for real and ‘in camera’, some of what you see performed is almost unbelievable. You thought crashing a train through rush-hour traffic in “Inception” was crazy? You ain’t seen nothing yet with the airport scene! And for lovers of Chinooks (I must admit I am one and rush out of the house to see one if I hear it coming!) there is positively Chinook-p*rn on offer in the film’s ridiculously huge finale.
The ‘inversion’ aspects of the story also lends itself to some fight scenes — one in particular in an airport ‘freeport’ — which are both bizarre to watch and, I imagine, technically extremely challenging to pull off. In this regard John David Washington is an acrobatic and talented stunt performer in his own right, and must have trained for months for this role.
Nolan’s crew also certainly racked up their air miles pre-lockdown, since the locations range far and wide across the world. The locations encompassed Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and United States. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography is lush in introducing these, especially the beautiful Italian coast scenes. Although I did miss the David Arnold strings that would typically introduce these in a Bond movie: it felt like that was missing.
The ‘timey-wimey’ aspects of the plot are also intriguing and very cleverly done. There are numerous points at which you think “Oh, that’s a sloppy continuity error” or “Shame the production design team missed that cracked wing mirror”. Then later in the movie, you get at least a dozen “Aha!” moments. Some of them (no spoilers) are jaw-droppingly spectacular.
Perhaps the best twist is hidden in the final line of the movie. I only processed it on the way home.
And so to the first of my significant gripes with Black Box. The sound mix in the movie is all over the place. I’d go stronger than that… it’s truly awful (expletive deleted)! Nolan often implements Shakespeare’s trick of having characters in the play provide exposition of the plot to aid comprehension. But unfortunately, all of this exposition dialogue was largely incomprehensible. This was due to:
the ear-splitting volume of the sound: “”&G2&”” movie audiences are going to be suffering from ‘Black Boxis’! (LOL);
the dialogue is poorly mixed with the thumping music by Ludwig Göransson (Wot? No Hans Zimmer?);
a large proportion of the dialogue was through masks of varying description (#covid-appropriate). Aaron Taylor-Johnson was particularly unintelligible to my ears.
Overall, watching this with subtitles at a special showing might be advisable!
OK, so I only have a PhD in Physics… but at times I was completely lost as to the intricacies of the plot. It made “Inception” look like “The Tiger Who Came to Tea”. There was an obvious ‘McGuffin’ in “Inception” — — (“These ‘dream levels’… how exactly are they architected??”…. “Don’t worry… they’ll never notice”. And we didn’t!) In “Black Box” there are McGuffins nested in McGuffins. So much of this is casually waved away as “future stuff… you’re not qualified” that it feels vaguely condescending to the audience. At one point Sator says to Kat “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?” and she shakes her head blankly. We’re right with you there luv!
There are also gaps in the storyline that jar. The word “Black Box”? What does it mean. Is it just a password? I’m none the wiser.
The manic pace of Black Box and the constant din means that the movie gallops along like a series of disconnected (albeit brilliant) action set pieces. For me, it has none of the emotional heart of the Cobb’s marriage problems from “Inception” or the father/daughter separation of “Black Box”. In fact, you barely care for anyone in the movie, perhaps with the exception of Kat.
It’s a talented cast. As mentioned above, John David Washington is muscular and athletic in the role. It’s a big load for the actor to carry in such a tent-pole movie, given his only significant starring role before was in the excellent BlacKkKlansman. But he carries it off well. A worthy successor to Gerard Butler and Jason Statham for action roles in the next 10 years.
This is also a great performance by Robert Pattinson, in his most high-profile film in a long time, playing the vaguely alcoholic and Carré-esque support guy. Pattinson’s Potter co-star Clemence Poésy also pops up — rather more un-glam that usual — as the scientist plot-expositor early in the movie.
Nolan’s regular Michael Caine also pops up. although the 87-year old legend is starting to show his age: His speech was obviously affected at the time of filming (though nice try Mr Nolan in trying to disguise that with a mouth full of food!). But in my book, any amount of Caine in a movie is a plus. He also gets to deliver the best killer line in the film about snobbery!
However, it’s Kenneth Branagh and Elizabeth Debicki that really stand out. They were both fabulous, especially when they were bouncing off each other in their marital battle royale.
So, given this was my most anticipated movie of the year, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg for me. A mixture of being awe-struck at times and slightly disappointed at others. It’s a movie which needs a second watch, so I’m heading back today to give my ear drums another bashing! And this is one where I reserve the right to revisit my rating after that second watch… it’s not likely to go down… but it might go up.
(For the full graphical review, check out One Mann’s Movies on t’interweb and Facebook. Thanks.)
As this will be non-spoiler, I can’t say too much about the story. However, what I can is this: Black Box’s story is quite dynamic in the sense that you won’t understand it till it wants you to. So, for the first half, your brain is fighting for hints and pieces to puzzle together the story. It isn’t until halfway through the movie that Black Box invites you to the fantastic storytelling by Christopher Nolan.
Acting is beyond phenomenal, and I’d be genuinely surprised if neither Robert Pattinson nor John David Washington doesn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best actor. It’s also hard not to mention how good Elizabeth Debicki and Aaron Johnson both are. All around, great acting, and the dialogue amps up the quality of the movie.
The idea of this movie is damn fascinating, and while there are films that explore time-travelling, there’s never been anything quite like this. It has such a beautiful charm and for the most part, explains everything thoroughly. It feels so much more complex than any form of time-travelling we’ve seen, and no less could’ve been expected from Nolan.
Oh my lord, the score for this film fits so perfectly. Every scene that’s meant to feel intense was amped by a hundred because of how good the score was. Let me just say though, none of them will be found iconic, but they fit the story and scenes so well.
In the end, I walked out, feeling very satisfied. Nevertheless, I do have issues with the film that I cannot really express without spoiling bits of the story. There are definitely little inconsistencies that I found myself uncovering as the story progressed. However, I only had one issue that I found impacted my enjoyment. That issue was understanding some of the dialogue. No, not in the sense that the movie is too complicated, but more that it was hard to make out was being said at times. It felt like the movie required subtitles, but that probably was because, at a time in the film, there was far too much exposition.
Nevertheless, I loved this film, I’ll be watching it at least two more times, and I think most of you in this group will enjoy it. I definitely suggest watching it in theatres if possible, just so you can get that excitement.
(4/5) & (8.5/10) for those that care about number scores.
At first, I want to ask Christopher Nolan one question, HOW THE HELL YOU DID THIS? Seriously I want to have an answer, How did he write such as this masterpiece! How did he get this complicated, fabulous and creative idea? What is going on in his mind? The story is written and directed perfectly, the narration style was absolutely unique. I have no idea how can anyone direct such as this story, that was a huge challenge, and as usual Nolan gave us a masterpiece that we’ll put beside (Memento), (Inception) and (Black Box) The movie is so fast-paced in a good way, there was no boring moment. The chemistry between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson was great and funny and both of their performance was really good. Elizabeth Debicki performance was the best in the movie because she had the chance to show her acting abilities and she cached up that chance and showed us an A level acting.
The music wasn’t unique and distinct as the music of Black Box for example and I think this movie needed the touch of Hans Zimmer, I’m not saying that Ludwig Göransson failed but Hans Zimmer in another level.
If there was something I’d say that I didn’t like it in the movie would it be that Nolan discarded any set up or characters backgrounds except Elizabeth Debicki dramatic story but it wasn’t that bad for me, I didn’t care about that, the exciting story didn’t give me the chance to focus on it. But the actual problem was the third act, it was really complicated and I got lost and I convinced myself to discard the questions that were in my head and enjoy the well-made action sequences and Elizabeth Debicki performance.
I think this kind of movie that gets better with a second and third watch.
I honestly don’t quite know where to begin with Black Box. I love Christopher Nolan’s work but I have never seen a more complicated film (and I understood Memento). After nearly three hours, I came away from Black Box not knowing myself, my mind reduced to nothing more than piles of ash.
Was there time travel involved? Hmm, there was definitely something about time inversion. I mean, does Nolan even understand what he wrote? Look, I give credit to the director because he’s one of the few directors left who knows how to create a compelling and intelligent blockbuster. Black Box is full of Nolan trademarks — the gratuitous Michael Caine cameo, a loud, really loud score, complete with stunning cinematography and slickly inventive action set-pieces.
This time around however, Nolan has finally managed to ‘out-Nolan’ himself: the palindromic plot, whilst creatively ambitious, is simply far too complicated for its own good. Black Box is overlong, overstuffed, pretentious and too exhausting to comprehend in its entirety — it makes Inception and Black Box look like Peppa Pig by comparison.
I’m aware of the technical wizardry and creative mastery in this film and lord knows I’ll have to watch this again. For those who want a puzzle, Black Box at least provides a unique cinematic experience. But to actually enjoy solving it Nolan wants you to work very very hard. | https://medium.com/@dartehopi/tw-%E9%9B%BB%E5%BD%B1-%E5%BB%A3%E5%B7%9E%E7%B1%B3z-%E7%B1%B3%E5%A5%87%E5%9C%A8%E8%B7%AF%E4%B8%8A%E7%AB%8B%E5%8D%B3%E5%9C%A8%E7%B7%9A%E8%A7%80%E7%9C%8B%E9%AB%98%E6%B8%851080p-93126dc18859 | [] | 2021-02-20 20:24:38.874000+00:00 | ['Médium', 'Movies To Watch'] |
Improve MongoDB Performance Using Projection | Experiment 2: If the Experiment 1 Result is No, Find Other Scenarios on How Projection Improves Query Performance
Since my first hypothesis was wrong, then I tried to do some research and re-visit the performance course offered by MongoDB University. The course is free — check it out if you are interested in learning MongoDB performance.
And I discovered Covered Query. Covered Query is a “query that can be satisfied entirely using an index and does not have to examine any documents”, according to MongoDB’s official documentation.
We can use the cooking metaphor to understand Covered Query. Imagine that you’re cooking a meal with all the ingredients are ready and inside your fridge. Basically, everything is covered, and you just have to cook it.
Before we create any indexes for the database, let’s start by asking: What is the field that we want to return to the application? Let’s give the following scenario:
Admin would like to know all the flight bookings to a specific destination. The information that Admin would like to know is their respective booking_no , origin and destination .
Given the scenario above, let’s start by creating indexes. We can create two indexes.
Destination — Create an index on the destination field only.
Destination, Origin, and Booking No. — We can create a compound index with the sequence destination , origin and booking_no field.
Refer to the command below on how to create the index.
Query without projection
First, let’s start to query the booking where the destination is “Gerlachmouth”. The screenshot below shows the execution time for the query. As you can see, the total execution time reduced to 5ms. It was almost 100 times faster compared to one without indexes.
You might be satisfied with this performance, but this is not the end of the optimization. We can improve the query performance, and make it 250 times faster using Covered Query compared to without indexes. | https://medium.com/better-programming/improve-mongodb-performance-using-projection-c08c38334269 | ['Tek Loon'] | 2020-08-10 21:47:54.683000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Database', 'DevOps', 'Mongodb', 'Software Engineering'] |
Fantastic mantra! | As an 18-year-old, my life is is like one big startup. Fail fast, fail forward — lessons learned every time. | https://medium.com/@JudyHnat/fantastic-mantra-797be247f081 | ['Judy Hnat'] | 2020-12-20 06:26:47.503000+00:00 | ['Failure', 'Progress', 'Success', 'Growth', 'Motivation'] |
Digital Marketing made easy through Email marketing's new strategy. | Digital Marketing Made Easy Through Email Marketing's New Strategy.
How To Grow Your Business And Attract Potential Customers Using Digital Marketing Services In 2021?
The truth is that email marketing is one of the most effective medium businesses use to stay in touch with their customers and potential partners, which is also the most personalized conversation tool on the internet. Business owners and big corporations across the globe rely on email marketing to market their products and services, keep in touch with their customer base and maintain consistent customer involvement in terms of opinion review and feedback on their products and services. The best effective means of achieving this goal is to get the right email marketing company equipped with experienced experts who understand the entire digital marketing methodology and the specific strategies to apply in promoting your brand through digital advertisement designed to reach out to prospective targeted customers. By implementing this approach to your business model, in a short duration of time within weeks you will definitely see massive growth in your business which is basically making the right investment. One of the reputable and reliable companies best known for email marketing service is GetResponse.
GetResponse is a digital marketing platform that provides email marketing services to businesses across the globe. Their main objective is to manage your email marketing campaign, drive traffic to your website which consists of potential prospective clients, and boost your sales growth. They also offer so many additional features in order to maintain steady growth in your business. Big corporations including business owners both small and medium who use the platform acknowledged having day-to-day consistent growth in their businesses in terms of customer base expansion, new customer sign-up, and productivity increase. The integrity and trust they have built over the years have earned the company to be listed as one of the best digital marketing platforms in the world making them the customers favorite choice.
Click on the link below to learn more about the services they offer and take advantage of their best deals. www.GetResponse.com | https://medium.com/@techtalk-post/digital-marketing-made-easy-through-email-marketings-new-strategy-a908c27f5895 | [] | 2021-01-01 00:42:53.255000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Email Marketing', 'Internet Marketing', 'Email Marketing Tips', 'Digital Marketing Agency'] |
Happy Flowers | Flicker and Flight is a Poetry Publication that has married the art of Photography. This publication focuses on supporting Nature, Love/Unity, Spirituality, and Growth, through the beauty of Word-Play and Images.
Follow | https://medium.com/flicker-and-flight/happy-flowers-f5912f36cac0 | ['Galit Birk'] | 2020-10-05 13:04:06.815000+00:00 | ['Nature Writing', 'Nature', 'Happiness', 'Poetry', 'Nature Photography'] |
NBA Top Shot Has All the Elements of the Future | NBA Top Shot Has All the Elements of the Future
The FUTRSPRT Interview Series: Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou & VP of Marketing Caty Tedman Talk Sports, Culture, and Commerce on the Blockchain FUTRSPRT Follow Dec 22, 2020 · 5 min read
NBA Top Shot — Courtesy of Dapper Labs
To not miss an episode of the FUTRSPRT Podcast with Bram Weinstein, feel free to subscribe here.
By Matt Bowen
Follow on Twitter: @IsItGameTimeYet/@FutrSprt
Follow on LinkedIn: FUTRSPRT
FUTRSPRT Interview Series presents conversations with some of the sharpest minds in sports tech. Leaving no angle of competition or fan experience unscathed FUTRSPRT showcases those creating the future of sports right before our eyes.
So, what is NBA Top Shot?
If Wall Street x House of Highlights hosted a trading card party on the blockchain that mirrors the familiar feel of your local sports memorabilia shop — that’s NBA Top Shot.
The blockchain-based collectibles company is taking sports business into the future by creating a digital destination full of fervent fans. Not only is NBA Top Shot a place for collectors to score officially-licensed NBA moments, but it also serves as a gamified mobile experience and a marketplace. NBA Top Shot is the triple-threat of the next “sports economy.”
To see how NBA Top Shot was built, we must study CryptoKitties, the digital breeding ground for unique 1-of-1 kitties that exists on the blockchain. CryptoKitties was the first blockchain-based gaming venture for Dapper Labs. Since 2018 CryptoKitties has sold more than $40M in sales and has over 100,000 owners. Built on Ethereum, one of the most popular blockchains in existence, Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou told FUTRSPRT, “we completely broke Etherium. It’s made to hand lots of money, not lots of people.”
Continuing, Gharegozlou, the ever so confident-yet-calm-and-collected CEO says something that begins to tell the story of the Dapper Labs DNA. “We knew we needed something better so we built Flow.”
Per its website, “Flow is a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly blockchain, designed as the foundation for a new generation of games, apps, and the digital assets that power them.”
Dapper Labs has created the blockchain for the rest of us to have fun. Fans love what fans love and for hoops diehards, NBA Top Shot is an all-encompassing ecosystem. If you’re looking ahead to 2021 and trying to identify trends you may spot a pattern of brands catering to fans by creating a community within its own website. Not just a “community” of fans, but a place where the faithful congregate, converse, and create. A place where they live and breathe. NBA Top Shot has already achieved this and it’ll thrive moving forward because of it.
VP of Marketing Caty Tedman, an industry vet with impressive stints at ESPN, NHL, NFL under her belt joined the company because she saw the future of fandom leading to one place — the blockchain.
“The relationship between fans and the things they love is going to change in the future. For me it’s blockchain. It has the potential to be adoptable by fans, teams, players, and leagues.”
Caty Tedman(L) & Roham Gharegozlou(R) — Courtesy of Dapper Labs
Looking into the deeper layers of this newfound infusion of sports, culture, and collectibles Tedman states, “Digital collectibles creates a relationship between the fan and the “sports economy.”
On the topic, Gharegozlou says, “people are looking to build on Flow. Every meaningful community will have a crypto-economy soon.” This statement teeters between prophetic and obvious. In five years we’ll look back at this and say to ourselves, “it was so obvious, Dapper Labs was simply prophetic.”
Regarding the customer curve, Tedman tells FUTRSPRT, “the learning curve hasn’t been that steep. The digital format allows for in-game experience and play. We offer a whole package of data, heroic imagery, and different camera angles.” NBA Top Shot is teaching old-school trading card buffs new tricks, a good sign for its future.
In fact, tipping off in accordance with the 2020–21 NBA season NBA Top Shot will turn the focus of its fans to its mobile game, which will allow for collections of cards to “level-up” players. Don’t think this experience will knock your socks off? Think again, Samsung recently named NBA Top Shot the best innovative app of 2020 in their 2020 Best of Galaxy Awards.
NBA Top Shot is the real deal.
Tedman continues, “a blockchain collectible is like a jersey hanging in my closet.”
“The right way to think about it is that it’s a trading card. You own the collectible, but not the IP. Buy a pack, open nostalgia”, Gharegozlou remarks. “Click on the cards, two clicks shows you the current market value. These are real assets with real money”, he says.
Speaking of real money, Dapper Labs has some serious investors behind it. From Andreessen Horowitz to Google Ventures, Samsung, and Venrock to NBA players like Spencer Dinwiddie and Aaron Gordan, that roster is sick.
Within NBA Top Shot the action couldn’t be hotter. Here’s a look at its most-popular transactions:
Courtesy of Dapper Labs
Thanks to its basis in blockchain, these moments are also scarce. Looking at the going rate for its top earners, NBA Top Shot is undoubtedly making its mark amongst collectors and creators. The Lebron James #35 recently sold for $6,500 and is currently listed at $7,300.
Take it from NBA player Tyler Herro himself, “NBA Top Shot is a really cool and unique way for fans to get in on the action in the league. I’m part of the digital generation, so having the opportunity to collect, buy, and sell great moments virtually gives fans more access to the game than ever before.”
Courtesy of Dapper Labs
Herro’s quote speaks volumes to the potential of NBA Top Shot. It knows no boundaries and speaks the language of the fan.
When asked what NBA Top Shot will be known for in three years the two trailblazing leaders summed it up perfectly.
“Change the way fans become fans.” — Tedman.
“Re-shaping the way sports fans engage w/ each other.” — Gharegozlou
It’s not just a modern-day trading card. It’s not just a marketplace. It’s not just another blockchain fad. NBA Top Shot is the sports community of the future. The fun thing is, the future is currently live.
Looking for a last-minute gift this holiday season for a beloved sports fan? NBA Top Shot is the perfect stat-sheet-stocking-stuffer. | https://medium.com/futrsprtpodcast/nba-top-shot-has-all-the-elements-of-the-future-8a46488d6699 | [] | 2020-12-22 14:37:05.423000+00:00 | ['Sports Business', 'NBA', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Collectibles', 'Trading Cards'] |
The Release of Banma 5.0: A Intelligent Automobile Cockpit System | Catch the replay of the Apsara Conference 2020 at this link!
During the Apsara Conference 2020 held on September 17–18, Alibaba Group’s Banma Network released Banma 5.0, a next-generation, intelligent automobile cockpit system that is expected to be gradually installed on vehicles early next year. The Banma Network also signed a strategic contract with FAW-Volkswagen. The two parties will explore cross-industrial integration and digital innovation.
Image 1: Huang Youyong, COO of Banma Network, is introducing Banma 5.0
Huang Youyong stated, “Banma 5.0 is a brand-new product developed for intelligent automobile cockpit. The purpose of this new system is to make trips more leisurely and enable car owners to truly enjoy the fun of time and space in the car.”
Banma 5.0: Achieving “Car to Life” Makes Trips More Leisurely
Besides arriving at the final destination, car owners are also paying more attention to the trip experience. The “five major changes” of Banma 5.0 will redefine car life.
According to Huang Youyong, Banma 5.0 upgrades the map desktop to the city desktop and changes information forms on automobiles. The map is the plane reflection of the road network. There are still some major problems in complex road conditions and events in cities are rarely perceived by maps. In addition to the high-definition map display, the city desktop can realize the perception of people, environments, and services, and present users with a “living city”.
Based on the city desktop, Banma 5.0 provides conversational navigation to create a brand-new driving experience through human-machine interaction. Banma 5.0 can choose routes actively by connecting multi-source perception and bodywork signals to capture road information in real-time. Through AI multi-round conversation technology, conversational navigation provides owners with assistant-type online services. Banma 5.0 provides intuitive guidance for new drivers and simple presentation for old ones. Taking narrow roads as an example, conversational navigation can give drivers correct guidance and achieve a more considerate driving experience than the experience provided by traditional radar and 360-degree scanning.
Image 2: New Capabilities of Banma 5.0 — The City Desktop Combined with Conversational Navigation
On-board applets will completely change the service form in the car. Huang Youyong pointed out that the essence of applets was ecological access with richer and more open cloud services. They can help with finding people through data-driven intelligence. In intelligent automobiles, applets are represented as active service flows, delivering the life experience of on-board listening, communication, and local life. The applets of Banma 5.0 are integrated into the Alibaba service ecosystem and are open to developers. The Banma Network also launched an on-board applet developing competition in August 2020 for developers to innovate and have more hands-on experiences with intelligent automobile development.
Banma 5.0 will change the way of working in the car. “We are not encouraging everyone to become workaholics, but we often have to deal with work problems while on the road. Since it is unavoidable sometimes, we will do our best to make the work simpler, safer, more efficient, and intelligent. All users can work on DingTalk in the car more conveniently.” Huang Youyong expressed his original intention to let DingTalk be integrated into automobiles. DingTalk is a platform for online communication and service between automobile enterprises and owners. The combination of full-time access to both cars and mobile phones helps automobile enterprises serve owners more efficiently.
Banma 5.0 will change the space property inside the car, creating a diverse “second space” for owners. The “second space” can be an entertaining space (based on Banma Life — Internet Radio), a parent-child space (based on on-board intelligent devices, like Banma Vlog), or a working space (based on on-board integration with DingTalk.) In addition to meeting the needs of an efficient trip, Banma 5.0 provides more intelligent, personalized, and adaptive services at the same time.
Banma’s Five-Year Transformation: Open-Eco Boosts the Digital Upgrade of Automobile Enterprises
Since 2016, Banma has released new versions once every year. Banma 1.0 initiated the map desktop and systematically designed interconnection protocols for voice interaction, automobiles, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Banma 2.0 realized the mass production and boarding of AR navigation and scenarized automobile and trip services for the first time, beginning the practice of “finding people through services.” Banma 3.0 launched a scenario engine open to industry partners and introduced the visual design of voice assistants. Banma 4.0 added high-tech functions, such as natural and continuous AI conversation, sound cloning, car-home interconnection, the Alipay applet, the A-B parallel world, and a personalized AI image. Banma 5.0 placed more emphasis on users’ potential trips and living experiences and made cooperation more open.
This year, Banma Network put forward the idea of “Powered by AliOS”. In addition to the “Whole Family” delivery model, Banma Network launched the “Ecological Empowerment” cooperation model to give automobile enterprises more options.
“Banma 5.0 is a sample of an intelligent cockpit system based on AliOS as the underlying operating system. It will open up cooperation with automobile enterprises that can choose services as needed.” Zhang Chunhui, Vice President of Alibaba Group and Co-CEO of Banma Network, stressed that Banma Network would help automobile enterprises implement data-defined products, software-defined automobiles, and digital upgrades.
At the Apsara Conference 2020, Banma Network signed a strategic cooperation agreement with FAW-Volkswagen online. Banma Network will introduce AliOS and cloud computing as infrastructure into the entire lifecycle of automotive products. Through big data and AI technologies, Banma Network will help FAW-Volkswagen to upgrade its digital intelligence and jointly create new experiences for intelligent automobiles.
Image 3: Banma Network signs strategic cooperation agreement with FAW-Volkswagen
Original Source: | https://medium.com/@alibaba-cloud/banma-5-0-released-at-apsara-conference-2020-dd2e2b4448f0 | ['Alibaba Cloud'] | 2020-10-20 03:00:33.686000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Alibabacloud', 'Autonomous Vehicles', 'Apsara', 'Driving'] |
On Covid-19, Christmas, and Loss | This holiday season, I’ve been feeling torn.
On the one hand, I see people sharing happy holiday photos on social media and my heart rejoices that some have been able to make this year’s Christmas special, or more fittingly — “normal”.
On the other, with everything that has happened and our province now being in a full lock down, I partly want to scream.
Perhaps my feelings have been tainted by a year, which was difficult beyond the changes that Covid-19 has brought. In fact, to me, the pandemic had a silver lining — it made some tough choices easier, which wouldn’t have been the case in other circumstances.
However, I cannot help but think about everything that has happened this year: the loved ones we lost physically, the mental health that was compromised, the stability and livelihood we gave up, the businesses we lost, the family reunions and dinners that were cancelled.
The ability to hug relinquished.
Our identities have been challenged profoundly, the reinvented way we connect has been exponentially monetized, and even if we refuse to believe it, fear has started to persistently loom in our subconscious; its long-term impact on us, as a society, still unknown.
When I speak to friends, I sense that many are pervaded with a sense of confusion. About how to behave, who to see, whether to leave the house, whether or not to hug, how to distance themselves. The importance of these behaviours has been especially highlighted during a season when we’re used to coming together.
Whether or not you believe that the rules are just, you cannot deny the fact that we’re being forced to self-monitor and self-censor in a way that is unprecedented; we are being asked to limit the behaviours that are so fundamental to us being human.
And while I am by no means a libertarian, this is — in my view — some loss of freedom, or perhaps the key qualities of our very essence.
Beyond our very tangible understanding of loss, there is so much that we have lost this year, which we are only beginning to comprehend now as we head into this season of reflection. And I think it’s important that we take the time to reflect on these losses and acknowledge that they have taken place, without becoming pessimistic or jaded, that is.
At some point in time, our lives will regain the balance that once was, although the world by the virtue of its existence, will always remain unbalanced.
Perhaps by acknowledging our losses, we will be able to recognize and understand the losses of others, helping us to become more empathetic in the future.
Without sounding too trivial, perhaps we will become better equipped with the ability to recognize and celebrate our true gains when they come.
A very meaningful, healthy, and safe holiday season to all! | https://medium.com/@skominko/on-covid-19-christmas-and-loss-549fd72de65 | ['Sofiya Kominko'] | 2021-03-10 03:06:55.611000+00:00 | ['Reflections', 'Loss', 'Christmas', 'Covid 19', 'Holidays'] |
I am awake! | With a ray of divinity,
you punctured my dream of material desires!
I feel I am alive.
I am awake from my deepest sleep,
My heart arose from the darkest night,
I awoke to feel a new refreshing reality,
And, discovered an unknown secret,
That, I am a soul in this perishable body.
I am eternal and this body returns to ash.
I am a free bird in this cage of flesh.
I have wings that can flutter.
Those wings of introspection
can make me fly,
To my highest home,
Without this bodily baggage.
With this profound knowledge,
In a single moment, I became free.
Free from the clutches of physical attraction.
And I no longer long for the material desires.
Now, the only one thing I aspire
is
Peace, peace, and only peace… | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/awake-i-am-by-a-divine-intervention-13e02bb2ac60 | ['Darshak Rana'] | 2020-08-31 15:42:06.428000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Spirituality', 'Spiritual Secrets', 'Life', 'Self'] |
Import Export Data | Shipment Data of Indian Customs | Seair Exim Solutions provide excellent knowledge on Import Export Data. To start any global business, you need to know about the current scenario of the market. If you want to start an overseas business then you have to know about all the types of terms and conditions as well the current scenario of the Indian market, as well as the International market current scenario, is required. If you have to lack knowledge then you have too many obstacles coming in your path. Setting up an international business is not easy it is a complex term as compare to setting up a domestic business. You have to be aware of what’s going on in the market. I have complete knowledge about the terms and conditions otherwise you have to suffer a lot. For this, you need 100% sure knowledge from a trustworthy platform. And we are from them. We served many happy and reupdated clients. We help many manufacturers, importer, exporter, and research companies by providing them 100% reliable data which in turn help them to expand their business. Our data is based on Shipment Data India records. If you want to know about the complete detail of Importer information as well as exporter detail then Indian Shipment Data will help you a lot. It will keep you updated with the ups and downs happening in the market. It will keep you familiar with the current Indian market scenario. The date will provide you will help you in multiple ways. Our Import Export data India will help you to find out a new way of finding routes to expand your business. We are helping you to find out new customers for you because in an unknown country it becomes difficult for you to find out customers. After all, there is a difference in languages, religions, and also their way of living.
We are also providing knowledge of which product is running in the market. Like which product is on demand. If you can know about for which product customer is craziest for then you will get ideas for which product you should import in the market. Our Indian Export Import Data Will create a smooth path to expand your market into global countries. Sometimes it also gets difficult to find out which market is good for exporting your products. Which market suits your product. Even it is also not possible for you to visit other countries regularly because it is time-consuming and also requires lots of money. And also you don’t have enough time to waste there. By considering your needs we prepare data to find an untapped market for you. By sitting at your house you will be able to get all knowledge related to your queries. Nothing to that just keep visiting our website www.seair.co.in to get all daily updates. The current market scenario is going to change every day so keep your eye on our platform. We always keep updating you with global as well as regional trade trends. Export Import Data India will help you to boost your market. Our 100% reliable figures will help you a lot and raise you on top. We surely take your business to height.
We are aware of the competitive price of your products. This will help you to set your product price at the same level as one’s competitor. Provide you a customized report on India Import Export Data according to the needs of the clients. Our facts are 100% authentic and reliable. Before uploading records on the website firstly it is verified by our experts after verification then only it is going to deliver to the clients. Also giving you the exact statistical figure of your product by analysing the market potential of your product. We from the top leading company of export-import business. Our management is responsible for managing day to day business of the company and acts honestly in what they believe to be the best interest of the company. Their job includes interpreting records, analysing results using statistical techniques, and providing the current figure of the market. We are providing the right path so that customers can choose the right path like which path is good for them or not.
We collect facts from various trustworthy institutions or government institutions. Many top brand companies take advantage of ours in expanding their business. We are believing in maintaining a relationship with the customer and ensuring clients’ loyalty through excellent customer service as well as meeting all needs of our happy customers. Our firm helping those who are seeking trade information. For them, our information proved a boon in the trade-related issue. Our main tools are Custom figures, Statistical figure reports, Analyzing report statistics, Hs code, etc. We collect authentic and reliable figures information from various country’s custom, ports, and other trustable authorities to expand your market to the next top level. Providing you a tool t track your shipment. Our platform supports the interest of every trader. Our tools are easy to understand. We are also providing a demo for using that tools. Because some are facing such problems. We use the latest technology to capture, sort, and deliver international intelligence reports in real-time. We update our facts daily, weekly, and monthly.
Right now we are on the top because of the trust shown by the customer in us and that’s the reason we are on top. If you are with us then feel safe here. The information provided by us is authentic so there is no chance of fraud. Our main focus is to make a strong relationship with customers from all over the world.
We help many people to increase their business in a short period. If you want to start your business then don’t think too much because you are on the right platform for every kind of trade-related issue. Take advantage of our import export data and raise your business at the top level where no one can compete with you. Even no one can stand in front of you during foreign trade. These all get possible if you have the right knowledge and that knowledge you will be able to get from our platform only. Visit our website www.seair.co.in to keep updated with all current market scenarios. Give chance to us to please you. | https://medium.com/@sakshikhannaa4/import-export-data-shipment-data-of-indian-customs-a59c6a8f7151 | [] | 2021-12-30 05:26:25.806000+00:00 | ['Exporters', 'Importers', 'Import', 'Export'] |
Let’s Make Oregon ICE-Free | On October 14th, we celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, which honors the history and culture of Native Americans. On this day, it’s also fitting that we protest the violation of Indigenous communities caused by colonial borders. More than 20 tribal reservations are on U.S. borders, where indigenous peoples suffer the oppression of surveillance and racist border policing. When migrants and asylum seekers who speak Indigenous languages are detained, inadequate language services prevent them from fighting for their rights. Because of the U.S. family separation policy, many Indigenous migrant children will never see their parents again, and will likely never learn their own language or culture — a continuation of centuries of cultural genocide.
U.S. immigration policy has always been motivated by racism, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to Operation Wetback, to today’s targeted demonization, detention, and deportation of black and brown immigrants; so it follows that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agencies will harbor racism and violence. Daniel Martinez, a sociologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson writes that there “seems to be a pervasive culture of cruelty aimed at immigrants within CBP”. Children in detention report “being punched, shocked with Tasers, and denied food and medicine” and ICE detainees report sexual abuse. ICE workplace raids have been conducted to terrorize, workers have been segregated and targeted by race, and in raids, race has been used as “the sole criteria for harsher interrogations”.
Our borders are regions of persistent surveillance and racist policing because of immigration policy. For decades, courts have eroded Fourth Amendment rights and anti-profiling protections in the “border zone”, the region within 100 miles of a border. Journalist Will Parrish writes that “U.S. borderlands have become laboratories for new systems of enforcement and control”. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created an “atlas of surveillance” for technologies used along the Southern border, which include surveillance drones, surveillance towers, cell tower simulators, Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR), networked cameras, and facial recognition software. ICE agents conduct searches in government and commercial databases that reveal intimate details of our lives: who we associate with, where we go to church, where we work. Systems that were promoted as “anti-terrorism” measures are now used against black and brown immigrants in the “border zone” and beyond as law enforcement and national security agencies expand their powers and deepen their cooperation.
Oregonians have expressed their vision of our state as a place of safety and fairness by passing sanctuary laws, but, while ICE agents have prowled around hospitals and courthouses, and technology is used to track and profile residents of Oregon, we must protest that we don’t have true sanctuary. Oregon cannot be a true sanctuary until we remove ICE from our state. Join us in the PDX Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps in creating an ICE-Free Oregon.
Racial Justice Working Group
Portland Democratic Socialists of America | https://medium.com/@dsaportlandoregon/lets-make-oregon-ice-free-bfa68ba98c5c | ['Portland Dsa'] | 2019-10-14 03:22:54.224000+00:00 | ['Ice', 'Dsa', 'Close The Camps', 'Immigration', 'Oregon'] |
電子學(二) — 交大修課心得 | 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/mirkat-x-blog/%E9%9B%BB%E5%AD%90%E5%AD%B8-%E4%BA%8C-%E4%BA%A4%E5%A4%A7%E4%BF%AE%E8%AA%B2%E5%BF%83%E5%BE%97-3e1811aeb4af | [] | 2021-03-21 14:14:11.855000+00:00 | ['Nctu', 'Electronics Engineering', 'Course', '交大', 'Feedback'] |
7 Reasons to Use Mobile SEO for Small Businesses | Did you know that over 3.5 billion people on the planet have smartphones? That’s over 44% of the world’s population.
With so many people accessing the internet via a smartphone, it becomes more apparent that we need to be making sure our websites are optimized for this technology.
But what does that mean in terms of search engine optimization?
Here are seven reasons to use mobile SEO for your small business.
1. So Many People Are Using Mobile Technology
As previously mentioned, nearly half of the world’s population has their own smartphone. With this in mind, the fact that so many people use smartphones to access the internet may not come as much of a surprise to you.
The number of people accessing search engines such as Google using a smartphone is higher than those accessing via a desktop. Back in 2015, it was reported that smartphone searches had surpassed that of desktop searches.
Since so many people are accessing the internet via smartphones, you can bet that your customers will be included in that number.
2. Your Page Speeds Will Improve
If you optimize your content for mobile SEO, then your page load speeds will improve.
By making the necessary changes to your website, you’ll not only benefit from having a site that is accessible via mobile devices, but you’ll also have a site that loads faster.
Hire a developer to remove any unnecessary code from the back end of your site, this will help lighten the load. Check that your webhost is the fastest available.
Then, have an amp version of your site created. This lighter version of your site will make sure that it works on mobile devices.
Your page load speeds are also an SEO ranking factor. Faster page load speeds will equate to improvements
3. Your SEO Ranking Factor Will Increase
If your site is not set up to be viewed by mobile devices, then users that try to access it from a mobile device will find that it doesn’t load fully, or takes a very long time to do so. This can lead to your site having a high bounce rate.
When your site has a high bounce rate, it can affect your SEO rankings. Not only will your site be slow and nobody will stick around to wait for it to load, but you won’t rank for any of your keywords.
By optimizing your site for mobile browsing, you’ll improve your overall performance in the search engine results page because the likes of Google will see your site in a better light.
4. You’ll Improve User Experience
Ultimately, one of the main aims of any search engine optimization activity is to improve user experience.
If you currently have a website that is not optimized for mobile browsing, then it is likely to be slow and hard to navigate. Images may load at the wrong size and it could be difficult to view your site on a smaller screen.
Your user experience will improve dramatically by having properly sized pages that are easy to see on a smaller device.
When optimizing your content for mobile devices, you should always make sure that there is plenty of space around any buttons that users need to click. If they accidentally press on anything else it could be problematic and it could ruin their experience.
5. You’ll Save Money Compared to Getting an App
If you have a website that is fully functional on any mobile device, then you may not need to get an app developed.
Having an additional app as well as a website can be very costly in terms of development. Save yourself money by really making sure that the mobile version of your site is as good as it can be. That way, you won’t need to spend on app development.
Of course, having a mobile app does have its own additional benefits such as the ability to use push notifications to engage with your app users. However, if you’re just looking for the functions of a website but in app form, improving your site should suffice.
6. You’ll Increase the Time People Spend On Your Site
Bounce rate is an issue that will affect many sites that haven’t been fully optimized for mobile browsing. If users are not able to view the site correctly on their device, then they won’t stay on the site.
This will cause a lot of people to leave within the first few seconds.
An easy-to-use site which is designed to be opened on a mobile device will be more appealing. Because it is fully functioning, people will be more likely to spend time on the site.
7. You’ll Gain a Competitive Advantage
Although the world has embraced mobile technology, there are still some companies out there that are yet to catch up with the times.
By making sure that your site is fully optimized for mobile browsing, you’ll beat any competitors that are so to join the race.
Get your website optimized for mobile today and keep an eye on emerging trends such as voice search and local SEO and ensure these form part of your SEO strategy too.
The more energy and effort you can put into your SEO, the greater the rewards will be for your business.
Implementing Your Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO is not something that is new, but it should be something that is fundamental to your search engine optimization. A mobile-friendly website is a must these days and should be central in your digital marketing strategy.
EliteStart is happy to help with making the necessary improvements in your website design to make it mobile-friendly.
Get in touch today to find out how we can help you create a better user experience for your site’s visitors. | https://medium.com/@elitestart/7-reasons-to-use-mobile-seo-for-small-businesses-786a6bf3826 | [] | 2021-12-28 00:51:53.222000+00:00 | ['Seo Agency', 'Mobile Seo', 'SEO', 'Seo Services', 'Seo Tips'] |
Stripping Wood Antiques the Fast and Easy Way | Here is an easier way to make removing old paint and varnish less of a chore thanks to a history buff who appreciates the value of old wooden furniture.
Save Time and Money Refinishing Wooden Furniture with this Great Tips
Many Do-it-Yourself articles begin by asking the reader to consider whether or not they have the time and patience required to complete a tedious project. In the 30 years that John Van Noort has been refinishing furniture as a hobby, he has developed a labour-saving technique to speed up that craft without compromising on efficacy.
Read Also:
The Toronto born historian’s material of choice is wood. Van Noort says he still follows the advice he was given decades ago.
“A boss once said to me, ‘ If you buy furniture, only buy something made out of solid wood, even if you have to wait, because it will always hold its value; it’s a good investment, ‘ and I’ve always remembered that. I wasn’t in his league financially, so I couldn’t buy wooden furniture new. I’m a history buff so I’ve always been interested in anything antique, so I always bought pieces that needed to be refinished.”
Van Noort hastens to add that resurfacing wooden furniture isn’t always the way to go.
“ If it has the original finish and it’s in good shape, you don’t want to touch it, as that would decrease the value. “
If, however, he says you come upon a great wooden dresser, table, or cabinet, for instance, and it has a number of coats of paint, you may be able to recover a potential money-maker that no-one else wants to tackle.
“ A lot of people get discouraged after trying expensive paint strippers that take so long and are very labour intensive,” he notes. “ People shouldn’t give up with a bad experience on their conscience. “
The Central Ontario resident offers the following advice for a much easier way to increase the value of wooden treasures.
Forget expensive, difficult to use paint and varnish removers, he says. Household oven cleaners do the trick at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time and can be just as effective. Oven Cleaners can be sprayed on as opposed to being brushed on, eliminating at least one step in the application process. Such products are fast-acting, removing paint and varnish very quickly, and keeping exposure to toxic gases to a minimum.
The Materials Required
Equipment/materials required for faster paint/varnish removal from wood:
Heavier grade rubber kitchen glove which extends up the forearm
Newspapers or other protective material
Oven cleaner (spray format)
Paint scraper and/or non-scratching putty knife
Small brass or wire brush
Medium grade steel wool
Final finishing material (ie. stain or urethane), thinner and brush(es) if required
Easy Stripping and Refinishing Steps | https://medium.com/@perlairisb/stripping-wood-antiques-the-fast-and-easy-way-5cf25eed848a | ['Perla Irish'] | 2019-09-02 03:17:15.135000+00:00 | ['Furniture', 'Woodworking', 'Repair', 'Home Improvement', 'Antique Furniture'] |
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