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A Chill Wind | There is a storm brewing
My optimistic side favors the positive; the worse of Winter is over. But as the wind bites my face and my brain calculates the distance between where I am and the car, the side of me that restrains inappropriate outbursts, chants curses to the low atmospheric pressure, the darkening overcast, and the building humidity.
At the high school this morning, I crossed paths with a parent and as we approached they said, “I’m done with this!” and I acknowledge them saying, “Here we go again!”.” | https://medium.com/the-story-hall/a-chill-wind-b77961c9ed43 | ['Jeff Bailey'] | 2018-03-07 23:59:54.043000+00:00 | ['Communication', 'Maine', 'Storms', 'Photography', 'Winter'] |
How Asset Managers are Leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) Techniques | AI-led Hedge Funds have delivered cumulative returns of 3X the overall Funds universe
A recent analysis by Cerulli Associates, a provider of global asset management analytics, of the assets under management (AUM) and net new flows of Europe-domiciled AI-led funds from 2013 to April 2020 shows solid AUM growth from 2016 to 2019. Notably, the research finds that the cumulative return of AI-led hedge funds was about three-times the overall returns clocked by the hedge fund universe during this period: 33.9% compared to returns of 12.1%. The report finds that European AI-led active equity funds added assets at a faster rate than other active equity funds from January to April this year. The research contends that there “has long been suspicion of the ability of AI to react to unexpected events, such as the coronavirus pandemic, but there is now a sense that the technology has advanced to the point where it is better able to adapt to unforeseen scenarios via the ever growing amount of market data available.”
Machines can understand the text better than ever before
In the investing world, it used to be the case that edge was based on access to better sources of information and superior analysis/number crunching. Given that access to information is no longer a competitive advantage, generating alpha has become much harder. Moreover, with the proliferation of humongous text-based data (unstructured) across media, it is no longer possible for human capacity alone (nor efficient) to read and analyze the data. To drastically cut the text-related grunt work and capture excess returns, the asset managers are increasingly leveraging NLP techniques — a key subset of AI to process unstructured text into actionable insights for decision making. The NLP has wide applications across various business areas. The Covid-19 pandemic and tougher economic climate have only accelerated the use of NLP in investment management. Some of the most compelling applications of NLP include assistance in credit scoring, fraud detection, customer service, chatbots, and document search and processing for business intelligence.
Examples of Some Key NLP Applications in Asset Management
1) During the pandemic, Blackrock employed NLP on research documents to glean insights from analysts many of whom were relatively slow to update their earnings estimates for the first quarter of 2020. The leading asset manager contends that while an analyst may take some time to update a numerical forecast, examining the text of their reports helps capture a true picture of their overall stance in the absence of a standard numerical estimate. Besides, Blackrock has recently also utilized the NLP model to generate sentiment signals for getting an early read on fiscal policy, allowing the investment manager to parse analyst language for a sense of how policy is moving across countries. The investment manager then tilts its portfolio decisions to lean into those with easing tendencies, such as the US.
2) Uncovering hidden market signals in equities: Global asset manager American Century Investments uses NLP to complement its research process with an NLP sentiment model that aims to detect deception in management commentary/language during quarterly earnings calls. The NLP model predicated on psychology and computational linguistics has been trained on Russell 3000 companies. It evaluates the text for an indication of deception such as omission (failure to disclose key details), spin (exaggeration from management and overly scripted language), obfuscation (management’s use of complex explanations/storytelling for a simple concept), and blame (deflection of responsibility characterized by the use of language such as ‘bad luck’, ‘challenging environment’, etc.).
3) Better Sustainability Investing: Deutsche Bank observed that typically large-cap companies tend to receive overall higher ESG ratings, probably because large firms employ greater resources to write detailed sustainability reports. For instance, about 85% of S&P 500 companies publish sustainability reports. The Bank decided to devise an alternative way to evaluate sustainability reports using the NLP algorithm — to ascertain whether the commitments firms made to reduce carbon emissions were correlated with achieved sustainability performance. For assessing carbon-related discussions within the reports, researchers identified five different topics along with the top keywords associated with each topic. The NLP model ranked companies based on their focus on the mitigation and adaptation topics. The algorithm also checked for mentions of numeric and quantitative terms (like ‘first’ and ‘half’), and for use of active versus passive language. The bank discovered that firms using highly active and numeric language have, on average, a 74% chance of reducing their future emissions. Moreover, companies that frequently discuss mitigating or adapting to climate change have a 65% higher probability of achieving reductions.
4) UBS wealth management is using NLP in its investment due diligence to detect negative news — via reading and analyzing vast amounts of documents fetched from search engines developed by its in-house AI-team. The algorithm saves hours of time and thus frees up the research team to focus on other critical tasks. In addition, UBS also uses the same model in its client screening process, where profiles are scanned to identify whether features meet a client’s criteria.
5) Top institutional investors such as AIG and Citadel are leveraging insights from alternative data such as text in social networks, shopping history, shipping info in order to enhance active investment return and are considering how NLP technology can improve efficiency and scalability in this practice. Moreover, several asset managers have hired in-house technical teams or enlisted third-party providers for automatic ingestion and analysis of public filings and derive signals from sentiment in the news and social media content.
Closing thoughts
Humans are generally better at high-level comprehension of written text and have a better understanding of the context. However, with the rise of myriad sources and enormous quantum of unstructured textual data, it makes compelling sense to harness technology to process such data. Meanwhile, advances in AI such as NLP techniques, coupled with a tremendous increase in computational power are at an inflection point. This presents immense opportunities for asset managers to leverage NLP techniques for deriving reliable insights from textual datasets and build a competitive edge. In the future, there is certainly going to be a huge divide between the firms that leverage technology and data for a competitive edge, and those who are falling behind. In the long run, this will reflect in the flow of assets and portfolio performance of asset managers.
However, a vast number of NLP solutions typically target the streamlining of repetitive tasks. To devise a solution to one’s custom needs and derive tangible gains from its implementation needs domain knowledge. We at Decimal Point Analytics, with our deep finance domain knowledge and expertise in data analytics, have been employing NLP techniques to bring out unique/distinctive insight for our asset management clients, affording them a distinct edge in investing.
To know more details of projects executed by us or to request case studies featuring asset management firms using Natural Language Processing, email us at [email protected]
You might also be interested in reading how Data Analytics can be helpful in monitoring risk in Asset Back Securities | https://medium.com/@decimalpointanalytics/how-asset-managers-are-leveraging-natural-language-processing-nlp-techniques-b83aa91cf9dd | ['Decimal Point Analytics'] | 2020-12-08 09:12:12.495000+00:00 | ['Naturallanguageprocessing', 'Data Science', 'NLP', 'Asset Management', 'Asset Management Software'] |
Smart chem cable industries limited | Largest Manufacturer of Co-axial, CAT5, CAT6 Cables, LED Lights, Electric Insulation Tape, BOPP Gum Tape in Bangladesh. BUET Tested, We guarantee quality products.
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Our qualified Engineers are specially trained to manufacture a broad range of wires that satisfy the most stringent requirements. We manufacture cables and wires using both standard and special materials in our 10,000 m² production space and meet every possible expectation.
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Our high-quality guarantee is backed by an integrated management system, which is implemented throughout our global network.
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State-of-the-art testing equipment and testing processes ensure our high quality standard. offers our customers high-quality products according to multiple international standards and certifications.
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SCCIL is an independent enterprise which develops, manufactures, and sells cables, wires, LED Lights, Tapes and accessories. We are committed to continuing to avoid and minimize negative environmental impact.
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Our Corporate:
Electronics & Communication
Rafsan Group has important role in Electronics & Communication sector in Bangladesh. We are a Cable manufacturer, retailer, supplier, distributor of CAT5/5E, CAT6/6E, Coaxial Cable 100% Copper, CSS etc.
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Apparel & Textile
Rafsan Group has important role in apparel and textile sector in Bangladesh. We are a apparel manufacturer, supplier, sourcing agency of raw materials, dyes, chemicals and other trimmings.
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Printing & Packaging
Rafsan Group has important role in Printing & Packaging sector in Bangladesh. We are a packaging material manufacturer and a wide range of printing facilities.
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Sourcing & Trading
Rafsan Group has important role in Sourcing & Trading in Bangladesh. We are a Sourcing & Trading Agent, supplier of raw materials, dyes, chemicals, accessories and trimmings.
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Rafsan Group has important role in Logistics & Delivery Services in Bangladesh. We are providing trasportation, global shipping, carrier, container, vehicles, truck etc.
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Charity Organization
Saleha Jahid Charity Organization Our Charity Organization located in Magura District, is helping rootless childs educations, foods, shelter and proper care.
READ MORE | https://medium.com/@info-2403/smart-chem-cable-industries-limited-5fd8bda8d88 | ['Smart Chem Cable Industries Limited'] | 2020-12-14 20:35:08.846000+00:00 | ['Cat6 Cable', 'Industry', 'Optical Fiber', 'Information Technology', 'Cat5e Cable'] |
Giving Up Social Media For 30 Days | Giving Up Social Media For 30 Days
Social media sites keep us scrolling with some clever tactics. Here’s how I am re-considering my use of these platforms after a ‘digital detox’, and how this led me to investigate the addictive methods that keep us hooked.
(Photo taken by Charles Shepherd and edited by myself)
1st October 2019, midday
After giving up social media for the month of September, I remembered that I could log back into my social media accounts. The challenge was over. I had succeeded… or had I?
I re-downloaded the facebook and instagram apps, saw 50+ notifications (mostly of random things that I didn’t need to know), and I started scrolling. I spent about 5–10 minutes catching up and then I put my phone down. I felt awful.
Getting back online felt like the dam of being ‘offline’, which had been blocking negative waters, had broken — a flood of the negativity that I had experienced from being on social media came back, and it came back fast. I realized I needed to get away from it all so I went to the gym and sweated out those feelings.
On my post-gym dazed walk home, I realized that taking a 30 day social media detox is really just an arbitrary amount of time offline. In that time I had seen great changes but I hadn’t considered how I should change my use of these apps and how I should shift my attitude towards them, if I was to prevent myself from slipping back into old habits.
Turns out that’s the important part of this whole process.
I had refreshed my life by being offline but now it was time to work out how I could keep the benefits, whilst being online.
And what better way to combat social media negativity than to understand why it is so key to modern day life now… and how it’s so addictive?
*Just a quick note that part of my job involves limited social media use. Over my 30 days off social media I had no access to my own social media accounts. I ensured minimal contact with the accounts that I was using*
What’s the root of the social media problem?
The social media ‘addiction’
Do you think you could take a month off social media? How about a week? Or simply one full day, from dawn ‘till dusk?
In answer to these kinds of questions a reply might run along the lines, “ Of course I can, I just don’t want to.” And Jason Zook suggests that “that’s the same answer for alcohol, smoking [when people are addicted]”
On average we spend over 3 hours on our phones each day. A good proportion of that time is likely spent on social media.
Social media is designed incredibly well. It plays to several human instincts (and weaknesses).
We’re tribal animals — we do as others do and we like to be connected. We want to feel heard, and we enjoy being surrounded by others who like and share our views (quite literally).
“Humans are social animals constantly looking for reinforcement signals or signals that we belong” ~ Jay Van Bavel (professor at NYU)
Social media sites mediate this tribal instinct into the online world. They connect us to everyone we know (who’s also online). We can see the activity of others and we have the the opportunity to quickly engage with content that we enjoy and believe in by sprinkling out ‘likes’. We can contact friends, be invited to events and receive notifications of friends’ birthdays (so we don’t have to remember them ourselves).
But it’s also pretty addictive.
How do they make it so addictive? Continuous scrolling, personalised feeds, bright colours and plenty of notifications (to keep you picking up that phone… or stop you putting it down). These methods are similar to those used by one of the most addictive casino games; the slot machine.
Whilst social media is not (yet) listed as an addiction, in extreme cases it can affect peoples lives pretty badly. And you can even employ a specialised social media therapist to help out.
Studies have demonstrated that people are happier when they take a break from social media. The University of Copenhagen measured the wellbeing of people before and after a 1 week break from Facebook. The results showed that the break had an overwhelmingly positive impact on their participants; showing signs of greater life satisfaction and more positive emotions, when they took just one week off the platform. Similar results were found in a study at the University of Pennsylvania, where limiting social media use showed decreased loneliness and depression when compared with participants who used these platforms as they normally did.
I think it’s most interesting that the CEO’s and creative brains behind these giant tech and social media companies are incredibly mindful about limiting technology in their house. “They don’t trust… their kids to be able to resist the charms of the very products they’re promoting”.
No need to keep up with the Jones’, the Kardashians are the new age
Successful companies sell lots of products because they market to our problems or insecurities. They tell us that we ‘need’ a particular product to keep up to date and to not get left behind.
Social media taps into this and by using it we start to feel that ‘need’ to keep up with our friends, and other people that we follow. However, social media is a highlight reel, so we actually feel the need to keep up with an unrealistic version of life. And no-one can win that game.
When I started re-considering my use of social media, I did question this feeling of need.
When I was online, I felt like I needed to know what everyone was up to. I felt like I needed to post about what I am up to. I felt like I needed to see all the posts in my feed so I didn’t miss out on anything. I needed the likes. I needed the comments.
When I was offline some of these needs (especially the FOMO of missing out on my friends’ activities) were the things that made me want to just cheekily pop online.
I also noticed that I wasn’t the only one with this need. One of my friends commented on the fact that they hadn’t received a like on their posts from myself and another of our mutual friends.
We not only feel a need for attention on social media but we also place an ‘expectation’ on those around us to reciprocate. We expect certain friends to interact with our post. Each like and comment sends a little dopamine boost to our brain and we want more. I am totally guilty of this.
“It could be an inconvenience to your peers for you to not be on facebook” ~ Matt Yglesias (Senior correspondent at Vox)
Not only will they have one less like or comment but they can’t invite you to events or tag you in a funny video without going out of their way to text/whatsapp/email you when you go offline.
It can also inconvenience your own life. When I took a couple weeks off social media over the Christmas period last year I suffered the inconvenience of being offline — I almost missed out on a social meet-up because I wasn’t on facebook or messenger. This is one reason it can be hard to decide to take time offline.
Nowadays, it’s unusual to come across someone who isn’t on facebook or instagram. Almost everyone succumbs to making an account in the end.
I remember being at university (back in 2014/15) and overhearing a guy saying that, “you need to get at least 30 likes on your facebook profile picture”, otherwise (and I paraphrase here) ‘it’s just embarrassing’ (it was something along those lines).
My first thought? That’s stupid. But you know what, I’ve aimed to get at least 30 likes on every profile picture that I have posted since — once I reached 30 likes I could ‘relax’ a little, believing that I wasn’t ‘irrelevant’.
I feel sad now when I think about that. Especially because I know I’m not alone in placing an absurd amount of significance on others reactions to what I post.
The popularity contest for engagement from our friends and followers is the new way that we keep up with the Jones’… but really we’re trying to keep up with the Kardashians (the Jones’ have been around a while but I’m sure the Kardashian would one-up them in the social media world).
The number of likes and comments that we receive on a post is at the mercy of others — we have no control over that.
However, we do have some control over how we perceive social media engagement (so that it doesn’t dictate our emotions) and how much we use these sites. | https://medium.com/swlh/giving-up-social-media-for-30-days-1f14ed7fdd9a | ['Katie Sheps'] | 2019-10-29 14:20:29.943000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Social Media', '30 Day Challenge', 'Digital Detox', 'Happiness'] |
Asshole Astrology: Week of 21 December 2020 | Asshole Astrology: Week of 21 December 2020
Horoscopes for horrible people. Christmas edition.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Here is next week’s horoscope for your sign.
It doesn’t matter when you read it, or which sign you are, as horoscopes are all made up.
What does the universe have in store for you? Let’s find out.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Aquarius: Try to get into the Christmas spirit this year. Ride a donkey, sleep in a barn, and lie about how you got pregnant. Spare a thought for those less fortunate than you this Christmas. You’ve got to admire those who volunteer to spend the holiday among the downtrodden, the needy, and dysfunctional social outcasts. But that’s family Christmas for you. I once tried to use the world supposedly ending on 21st December as an excuse to curtail visiting my folks for Christmas. Their response: “You won’t get out of it that easily.” Merry Christmas, everyone!
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Pisces: I wrote a letter to God but never received a reply. God is next to Santa on my list of unreliable people. Why didn’t you bring me what I wanted for Christmas, God? Sorry, wrong fictional old-man-with-beard. If God asked you to sit on his knee and tell him what you want for Christmas the Bible would read very differently. I’ve got some bad news for you: God doesn’t exist. Santa doesn’t exist either. Get over it. You ever noticed how Santa is an anagram of Satan? I’m just saying. As a belligerent fat man I seem to have missed my calling in life as an evil Santa.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Aries: You know something’s gone wrong with the world when it’s easier to buy crack on any street corner than to procure jam tarts for Christmas. When I was training as a journalist we met the Fleet Street Fox. But like when I met Santa, as a child, I spent some time wondering if it was really them. The Sun’s top story is probably going to be something horrendous like “Santa’s Sex Scandal Shocker.” Something to do with him coming once a year to empty his sack for the kids. Christmas is cancelled. I mean that in a good way. Don’t let the headlines ruin it for you.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Taurus: It’s beginning to look a lot like Doctor Who. Christmas. I meant Christmas. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. This time of year I have to stay offline or someone will spoil the Doctor Who Christmas Special for me. Spoilers! I usually record it. Christmas TV is notoriously bad so I like to have something to look forward to. I think one of the reasons I don’t watch much TV except for Doctor Who is people won’t shut up about it. It’s nonsensical if you stop to think about it and a bit of a letdown. I mean Doctor Who, of course, not the birth of Jesus.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Gemini: Don’t let the crass commercialsation of Christmas debase the true value of joyous drunken sex, gluttony, and debauchery. Maybe explain why you can’t afford presents and agree to spend family time together instead. Where others see Christmas holidays you could see free time to spend on your plans for world domination. Please accept this advice in lieu of sending you a Christmas card — life’s too short to spend it shopping. I can’t afford Christmas cards this year so I’m donating money to charity and holding Skype chats with people instead. Happy Capitalistmas!
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Cancer: One Christmas I found out that my Dad didn’t remember watching The Princess Bride. *mic drop* Inconceivable! It’s like finding out there isn’t a Santa Claus. Wait, you didn’t hear that from me. I’m just joking. Nearly had you going for a minute there, didn’t I? Anyway, I showed him the trailer and said: “Now do you remember?” He said: “Vaguely. It looks naff.” So I made my family watch The Princess Bride and they loved it. Which was of course the correct response. Miracles do happen. Christmas was saved. Was this a Christmas miracle? I’d like to think so.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Leo: This Christmas Eve: Be kind to each other, spend time with your loved ones, and watch Die Hard. Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho. Die Hard’s my favourite Christmas movie. Some people have made a tradition out of watching it every Christmas Eve. To me Die Hard’s the perfect Christmas film. I mean it’s no White Chistmas or Santa Conquers the Martians but it’s still a Christmas film. What films remind you of Christmas? Gremlins is etched into my brain, I know Princess Bride by heart, and Scrooged is usually on Netflix. Once I even watched Ant-Man. Don’t judge me.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Virgo: This year you ought to explore the Pagan roots of Christmas. If nothing else read up on Krampus the half-goat half-demon who punishes naughty children. You might spend Christmas hiding under your bed. Some say it’s not the right time to learn about such things. Fictional characters used to mock-celebrate a misappropriated Pagan festival in the name of a dead religion? Christmas is exactly the right time. Instead of decorating my Christmas tree with baubles and tinsel I’d rather decorate it with the heads and innards of my enemies. And, when you think about it, it’s more traditional too. Have a super Saturnalia. Krampus is coming to town!
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Libra: Do you hate Secret Santa? At my last job, without expressing my feelings on the subject, I was branded as some sort of Christmas-hating monster. As they planned Secret Santa they’d say to me stuff like: “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. We know you hate Christmas.” Secret Santa is the social obligation to go somewhere you don’t want, to spend money you don’t have, on buying people you dislike stuff they don’t need. The best gift you can give someone is to free them from the obligation to give gifts. Now I know what to get you for Christmas. Metaphorically I mean.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Scorpio: Christmas Dinner gives me the heebie jeebies. Is it wrong that I look forward to shoving oranges up a duck’s arse? Strictly from a culinary perspective, you understand, nothing kinky. I’ll probably spend Christmas day spooning and stuffing a greasy fat bird but my sex life is none of your business. The bane of my existence was brussel sprouts. I’d eat them at Christmas on condition that I didn’t have to eat them again the rest of the year. Last year my family forgot to cook them on Christmas Day and I was so obviously relieved that they took pity on me and decided I no longer have to eat them at all.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Sagittarius: Friends: I’ll be up north for Christmas. Burglars: my Pit Bull won’t. Before you send me email about this the Pit Bull is imaginary and I’d never abandon a pet. I dreamt a salesgirl showed me a cute little blue camera that was really a living Transformer robot in disguise. Now on my Christmas to do list: Kidnap Santa. What have you got left to do this year? Have you sorted out your playlist of Christmas Music? Trick question. There’s never a good time to play Christmas music! *shudder* As far as I’m concerned there’s only one good Christmas song. That’s Fairytale Of New York by Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues. Whatever else you do: Keep Calm and Enjoy Christmas!
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Capricorn: Make your own traditions. For several years running I sent real Christmas cards to internet friends who I only knew online. Postage is prohibitively expensive so in the end I had to stop. Even so that didn’t stop people from sending their replies. Some years I get more Christmas cards from people all over the world than I do from my family and friends back home. Underneath all the snark and sarcasm in truth I’m trying to connect with friendly creative humans anywhere in the world. That’s a noble tradition that’s worth pursuing at any time throughout the year. | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/asshole-astrology-week-of-21-december-2020-7e9ba3ea4041 | ['James Garside'] | 2020-12-21 07:33:04.807000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Self', 'Psychology', 'Life Lessons', 'Writing'] |
The Cyber Gap Series — Part 2 | Defining the Gap
Before exploring deeper into contributing factors, we must first characterize the jobs gap itself. Understanding how industry insiders both qualify and quantify the gap will establish several key concepts that will assist in framing the task at hand. Namely, how bad the gap numerically, how long this gap has existed, and what the forecasted future of the gap is. Defining each of these concepts will underline the impact each causal factor has, as well as the importance of pushing for further industry improvement.
The Numbers Gap
It is a well understood concept that population employment directly ties to the health of a nation’s economy, influencing not just the financial but also social, judicial, and political spheres. High employment rates equate to economic well-being just as high unemployment rates indicate financial, social, and political turmoil. This interrelation has been made all the more obvious in the wake of COVID-19, leaving nearly ten million Americans without jobs in the early days of the pandemic[1]. Combined with the natural fluctuations of both national and international global markets, one would expect a portion of the population to be unemployed, competing for placement amongst the workforce for a finite number of openings. Yet one such industry seems to be impervious to typical fluctuations, demonstrated by a consistent negative employment rate.
Indeed, the Cybersecurity industry has seen a zero-unemployment rate since around 2016[2], with roughly two million jobs going unfilled worldwide at that point in time. Since then, the world has seen the number grow to around four million worldwide, with half a million within the United States alone. And, as far as anyone can tell, this number will continue to grow well into the mid-to-late 2020’s, despite the economic impact of COVID-19, as the number of Internet “nodes” will continue to increase as more of the world comes online.
This is a trend that has its roots in the mid-2000’s, with 2007 marking the last time where the supply met the demand for Cybersecurity professionals[3], as indicated by industry compensation being comparable to that of other fields. However, demand began to outpace supply following the prominent cyberattacks against the country of Estonia[4] and the successful hacking of a noncritical Department of Defense database[5], both in 2007. Since then, the number of jobs available within the industry has exploded, with compensation outpacing the national median by several times. One need only to review reports published in the years between 2010 to 2016, all of which underestimated the total number of unfilled jobs that would exist in 2020 by roughly 50%. The federal government itself has suffered from this outpacing. Jim Gosler, founding Director of the CIA’s Clandestine Information Technology Office, has said only an estimated thousand or so individuals are qualified to undertake defending the nation’s cyber infrastructure, a job that would theoretically require ten to thirty thousand people in total.
Though the history of the Cybersecurity industry dates back to the early 1970’s, with the commission of the Ware Report[6] and the creation of the infamous Creeper worm by Bob Thomas[7], the current state of the industry’s job market has its roots in the events of 2007. Now thirteen years later, how can such a gap continue to exist? Why do 80% of industry managers view college degrees as ineffective marks of preparedness? How is it possible that, with nearly 61% of organizations seeing only half of the available pool as qualified, only 23% of educational programs are seen as fully preparing students?[8] With international and national attention, both public and private, and the respective resources of each being invested to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, how can so few be qualified to actively partake in the industry? We will next look to the economic, socio-political, and educational factors that have led to the current jobs market.
[1] Casselman, B., & Cohen, P. (2020, April 2). A widening toll on jobs: ‘This thing is going to come for us all’. The New York Times — Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/business/economy/coronavirus-unemployment-claims.html
[2] Morgan, S. (2016, September 19). Cybersecurity unemployment rate drops to zero percent. Cybercrime Magazine. https://cybersecurityventures.com/cybersecurity-unemployment-rate/
[3] RAND National Security Research Division. (2014). Hackers Wanted: An Examination of the Cybersecurity Labor Market (RR-430). RAND Corporation. https://doi.org/10.7249/RR430
[4] Traynor, I. (2017, November 26). Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia. the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/may/17/topstories3.russia
[5] Fox News. (2015, March 25). Pentagon source says China hacked defense department computers. https://www.foxnews.com/story/pentagon-source-says-china-hacked-defense-department-computers
[6] RAND Corporation. (1979). Security Controls for Computer Systems: Report of Defense Science Board Task Force on Computer Security (R-609–1). https://doi.org/10.7249/R609-1
[7] Techopedia. (2011, August 18). What is creeper virus? — Definition from Techopedia. Techopedia.com. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/24180/creeper-virus
[8] Center for Strategic & International Studies. (2019). The Cybersecurity Workforce Gap (01/2019). https://www.csis.org/analysis/cybersecurity-workforce-gap | https://medium.com/@cybernullius/the-cyber-gap-series-part-2-66fae92a6fd2 | ['Cyber Nullius'] | 2021-05-07 02:11:07.071000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Jobs', 'Cybersecurity', 'Training', 'Employment'] |
How to process a DataFrame with billions of rows in seconds | How to process a DataFrame with billions of rows in seconds
Yet another Python library for Data Analysis that You Should Know About — and no, I am not talking about Spark or Dask.
Photo by Christian Englmeier on Unsplash
Big Data Analysis in Python is having its renaissance. It all started with NumPy, which is also one of the building blocks behind the tool I am presenting in this article. In 2006, Big Data was a topic that was slowly gaining traction, especially with the release of Hadoop. Pandas followed soon after with its DataFrames. 2014 was the year when Big Data became mainstream, also Apache Spark was released that year. In 2018 came Dask and other libraries for data analytics in Python.
Each month I find a new tool, which I am eager to learn. It is a worthy investment of spending an hour or two on tutorials as it can save you a lot of time in the long run. It's also important to keep in touch with the latest tech. While you might expect that this article will be about Dask you are wrong. I found another Python library for data analysis that you should know about.
Here are a few links that might interest you:
Some of the links above are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I’ll earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link courses because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases.
In case you’ve missed my article about Dask:
Big Data Analysis in Python is having its renaissance
Meet Vaex
Vaex is a high-performance Python library for lazy Out-of-Core DataFrames (similar to Pandas), to visualize and explore big tabular datasets. It can calculate basic statistics for more than a billion rows per second. It supports multiple visualizations allowing interactive exploration of big data.
Vaex vs Dask
Vaex vs Dask logos
Vaex is not similar to Dask but is similar to Dask DataFrames, which are built on top pandas DataFrames. This means that Dask inherits pandas issues, like high memory usage. This is not the case Vaex.
Vaex doesn’t make DataFrame copies so it can process bigger DataFrame on machines with less main memory.
Both Vaex and Dask use lazy processing. The only difference is that Vaex calculates the field when needed, wherewith Dask we need to explicitly use the compute function.
Data needs to be in HDF5 or Apache Arrow format to take full advantage of Vaex.
Install Vaex
To install Vaex is as simple as installing any other Python package:
pip install vaex
Let's take it to a test drive
Photo by Eugene Chystiakov on Unsplash
Let’s create a pandas DataFrame with 1 billion rows and 1000 columns to create a big data file.
import vaex
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np n_rows = 1000000
n_cols = 1000
df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(0, 100, size=(n_rows, n_cols)), columns=['col%d' % i for i in range(n_cols)]) df.head()
How much main memory does this DataFrame uses?
df.info(memory_usage='deep')
Let’s save it to disk so that we can read it later with Vaex.
file_path = 'big_file.csv'
df.to_csv(file_path, index=False)
By reading the whole CSV directly with Vaex we wouldn’t gain much as the speed would be similar to pandas. Both need approximately 85 seconds on my laptop.
We need to convert the CSV to HDF5 (the Hierarchical Data Format version 5) to see the benefit with Vaex. Vaex has a function for conversion, which even supports files bigger than the main memory by converting smaller chunks.
If we cannot open a bigger file with pandas, because of memory constraints, we can covert it to HDF5 and process it with Vaex.
dv = vaex.from_csv(file_path, convert=True, chunk_size=5_000_000)
This function automatically created an HDF5 file and persist it to disk.
Let’s check the dv type.
type(dv) # output
vaex.hdf5.dataset.Hdf5MemoryMapped
Now, let’s read the 7.5 GB dataset with Vaex — We wouldn’t need to read it as we already have it in dv variable above. This is just to test the speed.
dv = vaex.open('big_file.csv.hdf5')
Vaex needed less than 1 second to execute the command above. But Vaex didn’t actually read the file, because of lazy loading, right?
Let’s force to read it by calculating a sum of col1.
suma = dv.col1.sum()
suma # array(49486599)
I was really surprised by this one. Vaex needed less than 1 seconds to calculate the sum. How is that possible? By using memory mapping.
Plotting
Vaex is also fast when plotting data. It has special plotting functions plot1d, plot2d and plot2d_contour.
dv.plot1d(dv.col2, figsize=(14, 7))
Virtual columns
Vaex creates a virtual column when adding a new column, — a column that doesn’t take the main memory as it is computed on the fly.
dv['col1_plus_col2'] = dv.col1 + dv.col2
dv['col1_plus_col2']
Efficient filtering
Vaex won’t create DataFrame copies when filtering data, which is more memory efficient.
dvv = dv[dv.col1 > 90]
Aggregations
Aggregation works slightly differently than in pandas, but more importantly, they are blazingly fast.
Let’s calculate a binary column where col1 ≥ 50.
dv['col1_50'] = dv.col1 >= 50
Vaex combines group by and aggregation in a single command. The command below groups data by the “col1_50” column and calculates the sum of the col3 column.
dv_group = dv.groupby(dv['col1_50'], agg=vaex.agg.sum(dv['col3']))
dv_group
Joins
Vaex joins data without making memory copies, which can save the main memory. Pandas users will be familiar with the join function:
dv_join = dv.join(dv_group, on=’col1_50')
Before you go
Follow me on Twitter, where I regularly tweet about Data Science and Machine Learning. | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-process-a-dataframe-with-billions-of-rows-in-seconds-c8212580f447 | ['Roman Orac'] | 2020-12-13 10:50:17.598000+00:00 | ['Pandas', 'Analytics', 'Data Science', 'Big Data', 'Python'] |
€940,000 of grants awarded to media organisations to report on global development challenges | Supporting sustainable and impactful journalistic coverage is essential to increase public awareness for, and interest in, the many challenges and solutions contained within global development and the Sustainable Development Goals. The European Development Journalism Grants programme supports journalistic media organisations with its year-long reporting projects about global development topics.
We are therefore excited to be able to announce the 8 awarded projects in this new round of the funding programme.
De Volkskrant (The Netherlands) will investigate the consequences of world trade and globalisation in the least developed countries by producing relatable stories, starting and ending with a specific product such as the battery in a smartphone or a t-shirt, and easy-to-understand standalone data visualisations.
“In 2018 de Volkskrant investigated the challenges of food security in Africa with our (EJC funded) project De Voedselzaak. Our harsh conclusion was that the continent would be able to feed itself if the West and multinational corporations would give it a fair chance. We’re thrilled that this grant enables us to pick up where we left off and delve deeper into the complex and abstract systems that cause hunger and inequality. With on the ground reporting and consumer-centered journalism we want to show our readers what the consequences of their actions are.” — Stan Putman, editor
Disclose (France) will investigate French development aid in African countries, and the lack of transparency in the use of public funds, through on the ground reporting and a series of investigative stories.
“At a time when information for citizens is essential to assert their rights and hold power to account, this fund will allow us to investigate in depth the use of public funds but also to reveal the private interests that sometimes hide behind development aid. A strong democratic society requires independent journalism able to conduct public interest investigations. For this support, thanks to the EJC.” — Geoffrey Livolsi, editor-in-chief
Euronews (Europe) will report on the issue of toxic masculinity in some African countries because the expectations surrounding manhood can be an obstacle to achieving a more egalitarian society. In addition to a podcast and opinion pieces from the continent, the reporting will be done entirely in collaboration with local journalists in an effort to listen to as many African voices as possible.
“We’re a diverse team, working in 12 languages and representing many more cultures. Gender equality is non-negotiable to us in our work so we are grateful to the EJC for the opportunity to investigate the issue of toxic masculinity. In the wake of the #MeToo era, we think it is vital to engage men in the conversation by showing that gender-based pressure harms them too.” — Euronews team
New Internationalist (United Kingdom) will address the looming hunger crisis for the world’s poorest people, seeking out the key ingredients for a more equitable and sustainable food system. The Seat at the Table series will trace the food supply chain down from international, national, informal markets down to consumers by highlighting dangers and risks and pointing to long-term, sustainable solutions to this dysfunctional food system.
“It’s hugely exciting to have the chance to dig deeper into what is sadly looking set to be humankind’s primary challenge in the years ahead — how to make sure that everyone gets to eat. Covid-19 was a real wake-up call, revealing how millions are just one shock away from hunger, especially in low-income countries. Our reporting will focus on these intense vulnerabilities — and solutions to these — in the Global South and also look at how in wealthy nations too, millions of families struggle to access nutritious food. Thanks to EJC, New Internationalist can stay with this story throughout the coming year — a journalist’s dream! — to unearth stories from across sub-Saharan Africa and the UK.” — Hazel Healy, co-editor
RiffReporter eG (Germany) will investigate how the protection of wetlands, rivers and other natural ecosystems is connected to the supply of clean water and sanitation. Showing the interconnection between biodiversity and development to highlight scalable solutions for one of the most important yet highly underrated topics: the supply of clean water.
“One of the biggest challenges in the coming years is to provide drinkable water to a growing world population. But this challenge is not only about wells, pipes and water purification. The real sources of drinkable water are ecosystems like wetlands, rivers and areas with large groundwater reservoirs. Our team of 10 reporters will investigate in Europe, Africa and Asia how these ecosystems can be protected.” — Christian Schwägerl, co-founder and CEO “We are delighted to receive support for RiffReporter’s independent science and environment journalism on such an important topic. With our newly started syndication ‘Marketplace’ for distributing RiffReporter content, we will work with a growing network of publishing partners to provide independent, high-quality reporting to the public during this important phase.” — Tanja Krämer, co-founder and CEO
SciDev.Net (United Kingdom) will launch a weekly podcast looking at science and health in sub-Saharan Africa, giving African journalists a platform to talk about how science affects their communities and giving African researchers an opportunity to highlight their work to European and African audiences.
“We are really excited to be selected by the European Journalism Centre for this grant and we hope it will give us a springboard to launch a self-sustaining podcast focusing on the really exciting work being done by African scientists and innovators.” — Ben Deighton, managing editor
Tageszeitung (Germany) will follow the trail of German development money in projects focusing on access to clean water and sanitation. The investigation, with a solutions-oriented approach, aims to reveal problems and potential solutions to water-related problems in the least developed countries.
“We are honored to be selected for this grant. In the current Corona-crisis we have seen that access to clean water and sanitation infrastructure is limited in most of the least developed countries but that it is essential for public health, the development of poor communities and gender equality. The funds will allow us to dig deep into the major challenges of access to clean water and availability of sewerage infrastructure in four different regions of the world. We are grateful to have more resources to allow us, as reporters, to do mainly on-the-ground reporting and to come up with a multimedia approach to publishing our findings.” — Simone Schlindwein, Tageszeitung-correspondent in the Great Lakes Region in Africa
Vanity Fair (France), with the project ‘Raise your Voices’, will focus on twelve resilient young women in different parts of the world who have by their actions changed their communities on issues such as poverty, hunger, education, health, gender equality and sanitation. The print edition will each month publish a four-page-feature. Podcasts and videos will be shared through its website and social media channels.
“We are really glad to be able to start this journey thanks to the grant! Vanity Fair is recognised for its detailed investigations, but the French edition is also in the process of evolving into a direction where we will focus more on current issues. The project ‘Raise your Voices’, which will be telling the story of twelve young fearless girls committed to a cause, will play a big role in this process.” — Elvire Emptaz, editor
(None of the 8 awarded projects will be published behind paywalls and will be freely accessible to a national or a global online audience.) | https://medium.com/we-are-the-european-journalism-centre/940-000-of-grants-for-media-organisations-to-report-on-global-challenges-66f9d1960274 | ['Bianca Lemmens'] | 2020-07-09 11:59:31.830000+00:00 | ['Journalism', 'Funding', 'Sdgs', 'Media', 'Updates'] |
Fascinating and sinister, some of Fujimori’s greatest hits | The ups and downs of the infamous Peruvian President and his family
William H. Prescott was a student at Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1811 to 1814. In his time there he got caught in a bread-laced snowball fight. A piece of bread crust entered and blinded his left eye. A talented student of Greek and Latin, Prescott wanted to become a lawyer. In 1815 his right eye gave up too because of infection and the long nights reading by candlelight that the law required.
After rest, sight did come back to Prescott’s good eye, but it was always weak, so he decided to give up on law and become a scholar. (This didn’t seem like a great idea for his sight either.) Using a noctograph, a machine designed for writing in the dark, he could work alone — but his eyesight came and went and sometimes he needed a reader. Prescott’s subject was the Spanish Empire. His History of the Conquest of Peru was widely recognized as the authoritative work on the subject in the 19th century. He had an eidetic or photographic memory — a great asset for writing epic histories. Prescott’s Paradigm relates to his criticism of the Catholic Spanish Empire in the context of the nineteenth century when the Protestant American Empire was on the rise, and would eventually clash with Spain in Cuba and the Philippines.
Prescott never visited Peru, and he claimed his own writing lacked a lively immediacy. However, from a distance in time, place, and culture he gives an impressive panorama of the intrigues between Cortez and Montezuma in Mexico — and Pizarro and the Inca in Peru.
From a distance in time and space, and culture — tho not as great as Prescott’s as far as time goes — can we begin to make sense of Alberto Fujimori controversial presidency of Peru at the end of the twentieth century?
Fujimori’s pardon was revoked in early October 2018. Before this now defunct reprieve, Fujimori, who was born in 1938, had been serving time in jail for various abuses of human rights. He began his twenty-five-year long sentence in 2009. Due to supposed health issues and political bargaining, in 2017, Peruvian President Kuczynski pardoned him. Kuczynski himself resigned under a cloud of corruption in March 2018.
Fujimori’s presidency (1990 to 2000), in the early years at least, was dominated by clashes with the guerilla groups Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. This undeclared civil war lead to thousands of deaths. Many of these deaths were caused by government backed paramilitary groups who also kidnapped and tortured civilians.
One of the fascinating features of Fujimori’s presidency was the battle he had with his now ex-wife, Susana Higuchi. Married in 1974, both were children of Japanese immigrants to Peru. Susana worked as a civil engineer, Alberto was qualified as an agricultural engineer, but taught maths before entering politics. According to her, he was a good husband until the moment he became President of Peru in 1990. Power went to his head. The most notable sign being his autogolpe, or self-coup, in 1992, in which he dissolved the congress and temporarily took dictatorial powers.
In 1992 Susana denounced Alberto’s family for being corrupt. The couple had four children so she obviously felt very strongly about this. What outraged her was that Alberto’s siblings were selling second hand clothes donated by Japan and intended for the poor in Peru. They were taking the best stuff for themselves (you can guess second hand clothes from Japan don’t consist of ratty t-shirts and stained pants) and made a profit selling the rest. Susana brought up her concerns with Alberto but he ignored her. In 2001 she told congress that after making her denouncement she was taken to the dark basement of the Amy Intelligence Service by hooded figures wearing infrared goggles, then tortured with electric shocks. They were trying to keep her quiet? Torture is usually to make people talk, right?
As a kind of protest Susana announced she was going to run for President. Alberto and his chief of security, Vladimiro Montesinos, managed to come up with and pass a law to stop her doing this. Commonly known as the ‘Susana law’, it prevented the spouse and blood relations of the acting president from becoming a presidential or congressional candidate. They also declared her mentally unstable and she was replaced as First Lady by her nineteen year old daughter Keiko. Alberto said he wouldn’t accept blackmail no matter where it came from. The Fujimoris divorced in 1994, Susana left the Presidential Palace but her kids stayed there.
In 2000 Alberto Fujimori’s government was falling apart due to revelations of corruption and human rights abuses. To avoid impeachment and prosecution Alberto fled to Japan. Unbeknownst to anybody, he held Japanese citizenship and so could hide out there indefinitely. Keiko left behind in the Presidential Palace, where she lived with her dogs, had to fend for herself.
During his refuge in Japan Alberto Fujimori appeared on a Japanese TV show with permed hair, but this was not the reason the two Japanese hosts, one older, one younger, found him an oddity. Rather it was his strangely accented Japanese and that he grew up in, and became president of, some country called Peru. Alberto revealed that he originally went to a Japanese school in Peru but it was shut during WWII and so he then went to a regular college. He was a good student, he said, a quiet kid, but he hit back if anyone messed with him — this his interviewers loved. He claimed that he decided to run for president as Peru was in trouble and he couldn’t see a future for the country if he didn’t step up. As he had very little money for his campaign, he got his kids to draw his election posters.
Fujimori described his election strategy like something out of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: he couldn’t go straight ahead because there was a big institutional wall in the way, he had to go around his enemy. He did this by riding around on a tractor, and having a band at his rallies — becoming a populist. Fujimori as son of an immigrant connected with the indigenous Peruvians who felt marginalised in their own country, dominated economically by those of Spanish descent living in coastal cities. He defeated the establishment figure of Mario Vargas Llosa, the brilliant novelist, who was preaching neoliberal style economics. Fujimori didn’t have much of an economic policy himself, in the end he did what Vargas Llosa had planned to do. Fujimori’s neoliberal reforms came to be known as Fujishock, these policies did lead to economic growth in Peru.
Susana went on to become a member of congress from 2000 to 2006 and eventually to have a relationship with all four of her children. Although Alberto treated her badly, she made overtures to visit him in jail after he was sentenced in 2009 for human rights abuses committed during Peru’s war of low intensity in the 90s. Alberto had returned from Japan, via Chile, in 2006. Susana said she wanted to see him for humanistic reasons as he was ill. Many believe that this illness was faked in order to help gain a pardon. But he didn’t want her to visit and they haven’t talked to each other for years.
As her kids Keiko and Kenji were now in politics Susana refused, in a 2012 interview, to answer whether she had really been tortured or not — given that discussion of this topic might hurt their political careers. In this interview, she presented herself as a woman at peace, who through major health scares had forgotten material concerns and now held deep Christian beliefs. She’d turned the page in life no longer looked back. In jest, she said they were wrong when they claimed she was crazy and that she was actually extremely crazy; but in seriousness that the whole thing about her instability was a frame up by Montesinos. She had never taken barbiturates or antidepressants and that smoking was her only vice. Montesinos himself had said sorry on his knees years after the invention of the Susana law and she had forgiven him. Montesinos is now in prison for various violations of human rights and arms trafficking. As for Alberto, Susana said in the interview that she needed time to think whether he should be pardoned by the government.
As President, Alberto had a lot to deal with — guerrilla groups and a flagging economy. Then there was the situation with his wife, what did he say about this? Certainly it was odd to have dinner at home with somebody who was trying to run against you for the presidency. Alberto, reflecting on that time, said it was…una cosa de locos — a crazy situation. | https://medium.com/@frank.e.beyer/los-fujimori-the-battle-between-husband-and-wife-97cd639310c0 | ['F E Beyer'] | 2020-04-20 22:44:11.361000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Fugitive', 'Peru', 'Fujimori', 'Corruption'] |
Twitter JSON data processing | Each tweet object comes in JSON format, a mix of ‘root-level’ attributes, and child objects (which are represented with the {} notation). The Twitter developer page gives the following example:
{
"created_at": "Wed Oct 10 20:19:24 +0000 2018",
"id": 1050118621198921728,
"id_str": "1050118621198921728",
"text": "To make room for more expression, we will now count all emojis as equal—including those with gender and skin t… https://t.co/MkGjXf9aXm",
"user": {},
"entities": {}
}
This is of course a small sample out of the huge dictionary composing each tweet. Another popular example is this Twitter Status Object map.
For most kinds of analyses, we will surely need attributes as the tweet text, the user screen-name or the tweet place. Unfortunately, as you can see, these attributes don’t come in a clean format, instead they are spread across the JSON levels — e.g., the tweet location coordinates are located in
tweet_object['place']['bounding_box']['coordinates']
It is due to this fact that the collected tweets need a large process of cleaning and transforming, which is the purpose of this post.
The Twitter data
I recently carried out a language localization project where I needed to do a social media analysis on Twitter. For this, I collected 52830 tweets over the course of several days containing the following keywords: ‘#FIFA20’, ‘#FIFA21’, ‘FIFA20’, ‘FIFA21’, ‘FIFA 20’, ‘FIFA 21’ and ‘#EASPORTSFIFA’. Then, in order to do a proper analysis on them, I had to previously clean each tweet object so I could draw meaningful conclusion.
Due to the nature of that project, I was mainly interested in data regarding the location of the tweet (country and coordinates), the sentiment of the English version of the text, and the language the text was tweeted in. And it was the goal of the processing steps to polish and find this attributes. You can find the details of the project in the following repository:
Let’s use this dataset to exemplify the steps of tweets processing!
Processing the JSON
As we saw, there are multiple fields in the Twitter JSON which contains textual data. In a typical tweet, there’s the tweet text, the user description, and the user location. In a tweet longer than 140 characters, there’s also the extended tweet child JSON. And in a quoted tweet, there’s the original tweet text and the commentary with the quoted tweet.
To analyze tweets at scale, we will want to flatten the tweet JSON into a single level. This will allow us to store the tweets in a DataFrame format. To do this, we will define the function flatten_tweets() which will take several fields regarding text and location (this one stored in place ). Take a look:
Now, you may want to study all the text fields (main, re-tweet or quote), however, here I will keep just one text field for simplicity. For this, we now define a function select_text(tweets) that selects the main text whether the tweet is a principal tweet or a re-tweet, and we decide to drop the quoted text as it usually is repetitive and may not be informative.
We now build the data frame. Notice that we choose the main columns (fields) relevant for a social media analysis. This includes the tweet language, lang , and the user-location , which is set manually by the user. We also keep the country , country_code and coordinates fields from place . These fields appear when the tweet is geo-tagged and it is usually contained in less than the 10% of the total of tweets. The following code block builds the dataframe:
import pandas as pd
# flatten tweets
tweets = flatten_tweets(tweets_data)
# select text
tweets = select_text(tweets)
columns = ['text', 'lang', 'user-location', 'place-country',
'place-country_code', 'location-coordinates',
'user-screen_name']
# Create a DataFrame from `tweets`
df_tweets = pd.DataFrame(tweets, columns=columns) # replaces NaNs by Nones
df_tweets.where(pd.notnull(df_tweets), None, inplace=True)
The head of the dataframe would look like: | https://towardsdatascience.com/twitter-json-data-processing-3f353a5deac4 | ['Héctor Ramírez'] | 2020-07-04 17:02:23.580000+00:00 | ['Social Media Analysis', 'Sentiment Analysis', 'NLP', 'Twitter', 'Data Science'] |
Why Can’t Women be Left Alone? | Why Can’t Women be Left Alone?
Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash
This morning I woke up to a message on Instagram threatening my life and my husband’s life for “mixing politics with Instagram”. Though not surprising, being told that I should “stop complaining about guns because I’ll be running from one soon”, was a bit startling. However, I was prepared for the commentary because nearly every single day I get a comment on Medium from mainly, old white men, threatening me, abusing me, and otherwise putting their nose where it doesn’t belong. Which, brings me to my query: why can’t women be left alone, why can’t we do anything without receiving commentary from men? I, for one, am exhausted by this behavior. Truly, I am so very tired.
I’m not only tired because I get this kind of unnecessary abuse every day, I’m tired because I grew up with this abuse. I grew up in a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, fat-phobic, abusive household. I grew up being told to shut my mouth. I grew up being told that if I wasn’t thin I wasn’t worthy. I grew up being told that women do not have a place at the table, we are to be quiet, to shut up and put out, to marry rich, to understand that we are nothing without men. Here’s the kicker, I am not special, this story is the same for most women. Most of us grew up this way.
My first rape was at age twelve, from then I learned that my body wasn’t my own, it was the property of men. This belief has been reinforced every day since then. With men touching me, assaulting me, the two rapes afterward, and now the commentary, every day, on articles about my body, about my lived experience, from men who love to tell me that my body is not my own. The most prevalent example of this commentary is that on an article I wrote about being a tattooed woman, where nearly everyday men tell me to “cover-up” so that I wouldn’t be touched or that my body wouldn’t be commented on. One man even went as far as to tell me that I would be more comfortable in a Burka, which may be true, if not for the fact that women who do wear Burka’s and Hijab get raped, abused, religiously mocked, and are fearful for their lives every day as well.
It does not matter if we are covered up from head to toe, our bodies are not our own, they are the property of the public. It does not matter, because men will interject, whenever they can, to let us know that we are public property.
Even our government will not let us have sovereignty over our own bodies. Our rights are up for debate every four years or whenever somebody wants to remind us that our organs are also public property. We do not have the right to choose whether to have a baby or not to have a baby. Our organs are on yard signs, they are in protests, they are argued about in the law. For women of color, reproductive justice is even further out of reach. Our bodies, even our organs, are not our own. They are the property of the public.
Outside of America, we are forced to iron our breasts and participate in female genital mutilation. We are forced into marriages that we do not choose. We are forced into situations that we have no say in even though those situations are forced onto us, our bodies, our lives, our organs. We have no say because we are not our own, we are the property of the public.
And when we dare to complain, when we dare to fight for our rights, we are told that our fight is useless. We are told that we have rights! We can vote! Yes, we can vote, but can we vote on the fact that we have no rights or sovereignty over our own bodies? Absolutely not. Can we choose what we can do with our own bodies? No. Can we simply walk around and enjoy our day without our bodies being mocked, commented on, shouted at from vehicles on the street, or worse, raped, abused, and killed? No, not yet, not in 2020. Not when Amy Coney Barrett, a woman with literally no experience, is elected to the Supreme Court, only because she is anti-women and LGBTQIA+ rights. Not today. We are not our own, we are the property of the public.
Patriarchal society tells us that men are above us in every single way. They are in charge of what we can and cannot do. Rape culture tells us to be fearful because as a product of a patriarchal society, rape culture allows this kind of behavior. It is normal. Joking about rape is normal. Joking about our bodies is normal. Supporting artists like Little Pump & R Kelly is normal. These are such small examples, but they are pertinent nonetheless. | https://medium.com/v-a-l-l-e-y/why-cant-women-be-left-alone-cfc6b317004e | ['Alexandra Tsuneta'] | 2020-11-03 11:58:06.275000+00:00 | ['Feminsim', 'Violence', 'Women', 'Equality', 'Femicide'] |
Humanitarian 101 | Humanitarian 101
Hurricanes. Mudslides. Earthquakes. Unrelenting conflict. The year 2017 bore witness to all these and more. It might appear that aiding victims and assisting with cleanup efforts will never end. The amount of work needed is mind boggling. Almost paralyzing. We ask ourselves, “Can any one person even make a difference?”
Assuming we can scratch the surface, where do we begin? Understanding the reasons behind the need is a good place to start. Geopolitical factors, environmental conditions, economic situations, and a thousand other issues have blended together over the centuries to create this global scene. Words and data fall short to truly quantify the problem — the true extent is best understood when considered in terms of how these situations affect people. One by one, story by story, people just like us all around the world have had their lives disrupted and now need basic necessities. They desire the dignity they once had and are looking for hope that someday their life will be better.
OUR APPROACH
At Global Aid Network® we help you express the kindness of Jesus in the toughest places on earth by relieving suffering, restoring dignity, and revealing hope. This is our mission.
Why? Because we believe there is One who does see it all. One who knows it all, from beginning to end, from the most expansive big-picture heights to the most intimate, seemingly-insignificant depths. So, from our perspective, that’s where “Humanitarian 101” begins: not with what humans are able or duty-bound to do, but with who God is, and with what He is doing already.
This is good news, because our chaotic and unpredictable world does not need strategic reshaping or fixing according to human standards. It needs something far more invasive, and far more beautiful. It needs true and certain hope.
PARTNERSHIP IS KEY
With the prayer and support of partners and volunteers, we come alongside in-country field team members all over the world to provide humanitarian assistance and coaching that helps them gain access, build credibility, and increase effectiveness. With these tools our partners can focus on and excel at the work to which they are called.
In a world of disaster and conflict, much of our work is response-oriented. We stand at-the-ready — to respond however necessary, whenever necessary. But we also strategically serve the needs of people in the toughest places on earth through three programs: food and agriculture, clean water, and critical aid. We do things like provide emergency food to people living in the midst of famine or war. We help build solar-powered wells and assist villages in constructing and cultivating drip-irrigated gardens. We send custom-built loads of critical aid for refugees.
Whether serving others when devastating events occur or helping those in a developing country, human nature asks, “Where is God in this suffering?” God is at work through each of us as we do our part to care for the afflicted in the name of Jesus. Our goal is not just to relieve suffering and restore dignity, but ultimately to reveal the hope of Jesus, so people enduring the effects of disaster, conflict, and poverty will know that beneath the seeming chaos of our world rests unshakeable bedrock. | https://medium.com/global-aid-network/humanitarian-101-8b76601f5d8a | ['Jason Cress'] | 2019-02-15 20:56:36.057000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Change', 'Sustainable Development', 'Humanitarian', 'Partnerships'] |
Lest…We’ve Forgotten Coventry…Again | Lest…We’ve Forgotten Coventry…Again
It annoys me every year how fickle the British public is when it comes to remembrance. Of course the major focus is on Remembrance day itself. But what is the point in saying “lest we forget” if just three days later the dreadful bombing of Coventry doesn’t even get a mention.
World War 1 was the first time a war ever had such an incredible impact on such a wide amount of the world. That was why they called it the War to End all Wars…which then didn’t work out so well…
World War 2 was the first time a war had such an impact on innocent civilians for no reason other than the two sides trying to hammer morale out of each other. Brutally murdering innocent people was horrific, and the UK and Allies were as guilty of it as the Nazis.
It is exactly this kind of hypocrisy that inspires my pacifism so much. There are never any “winners” of wars — only one side loses less than the other. The USA didn’t engage fully in WW2 until they were attacked. And they didn’t end their war with Japan…until they destroyed parts of the country for decades with what remains to still be the only use of nuclear bombs on civilian populations.
The wars were dreadful because all notion of “collateral damage” seemed to be used as a trade of as just part of war.
And there is simply no evidence that we have learnt anything. The UK continues to sell arms into the middle east, resulting in the perpetuation of wars that drives innocent civilians out as refugees. And now we are turning our noses up at them and saying they are someone else’s problem.
We have international agreements more committed to trying to get countries to accept their “share” of collateral damage than they do in preventing the onset of war.
Why don’t we just find an island continent, call it “War Land” and let anyone who wants to fight wars go and live there? Let’s get rid of “War Crimes” and make any and all wars illegal. Any attempt to start a war should be illegal.
Obviously, War is an emotionally charged topic, and that is what went into writing my collection of poetry, “Silhouette in the Sunset.” | https://medium.com/in-as-many-words/lest-weve-forgotten-coventry-again-7d17459ac2cd | ['I Am Words'] | 2020-11-14 12:56:22.720000+00:00 | ['Remembrance', 'World War II', 'Poetry', 'Coventry', 'Blitz'] |
I’m Bringing Sexy Back… | Hooray! We made it folks. Many of us will be able to kick up our feet, spend time with close ones, and chow down on some holiday cookies. I already have my cookie ingredients lined up for some yummy Christmas Eve treats while we, well the dog, waits for Santa. All of the eating and holiday laziness will keep many of us sedentary. Even though gyms will be open even on the Eve, I’m sure folks will “take a break" from pumping iron and worrying about the few extra pounds they want to lose.
I decided to make this week’s workout an intense one. A workout that will make you feel like you can conquer anything, even that tray of snowman cookies and grandma’s famous honey balls. Sigh. I decided to pump back as even tie in some side booty to wake up the glutes and get that heart rate up. This workout will need different types of equipment, but even if you still don’t have all the tools, a set of dumbbells and even resistance bands will do just fine. Also, this is not a 30 minute quick workout. This workout ran me an hour or so, but I left my at home gym refreshed and feeling intensely accomplished.
Build That Back and Work Them Hips
This back based workout will be completed in supersets with breaks that include side booty exercises. You can use dumbbells to replace barbells as well as resistance bands to incorporate weight.
SET 1
Row Machine (4×12): you can opt for a single dumbell or make your own row machine like I did with a barbell.
WITH
Weighted Standing Hip Abductors (4×20): use a plate, a dumbbell, or place a resistance band on your lower thighs.
SET 2
Lying Barbell Row (4×10): use heavier weight if possible. You can opt for a barbell or dumbells.
WITH
Incline Row (4×10‐12): this can be done with the actual machine, dumbbells, or resistance bands. The point is to be on a slight incline so that the focus works muscles differently.
WITH
Curtsy Squats (4×20): this can be done with dumbbells or body weight. Complete 20 squats for one side then switch.
SET 3
Wide Lat Pull-down (4×10-12): if you don’t have a cable machine, you can easily do this using a secured resistance band. You want to keep your hands further apart.
WITH
Side Lunges (4×20): I opted to use body weight but to move fast to pump in some cardio. Complete 20 for each side.
SET 4
Single Arm Lat Pulldown (4×10‐12): Again, this can be completed using a cable machine or a secured resistance band. Be sure to move in a controlled motion and do not rush.
WITH
Weighted Fire Hydrants (4×15-20): This can be done with light weight tucked behind the knee or with a resistance band placed near the knees. Be sure to keep your form and balance.
WITH
Banded Hip Abductors (4×20): this can be done sitting on a bench or on the floor. I prefer the floor since my feet can glide and I can focus attention in my core as well.
This workout is super intense and you will feel sore, but like all workouts IT IS WORTH IT! Have a happy holiday season and a Happy New Year! Stay tuned for BRAGworthy!
💛 Robin | https://thequeenbuzz.com/im-bringing-sexy-back-2f42573d9d25 | ['Robbie Anne'] | 2020-12-23 17:08:25.932000+00:00 | ['Workout', 'Fitness Tips', 'Fitnessmotivation', 'Fitness', 'Healthy Lifestyle'] |
How to Build a simple REST API: Introduction to NodeJS and Express. | The image is taken from Wikipedia.
Have you ever wanted to learn more about the Back-End development process? If you have had experience building Front-End apps, here is a good place to start. You will find how you can use the same technology stack to build servers. If you already have experience with developing APIs using other frameworks, you will learn here how much faster and easier it is to develop and deploy using NodeJS and Express.
Essentially, Node is a Javascript runtime environment built on the same engine as Chrome engine, the fastest JS engine yet. The non-blocking or asynchronous nature of Node makes it ideal for building I/O intensive applications.
Getting Started
To get started, head over to https://nodejs.org/en/ to download the latest stable version of NodeJS. Once you have installed the application on your machine, check your installed versions:
node -v npm -v
Initialize The App
There are multiple ways of initializing an app, but in this tutorial, I will be using the simplest way.
Let’s first create a new folder myapp and create a new file index.js:
$ mkdir myapp
$ cd myapp
$ touch index.js
To initialise, run the following command:
$ npm init --yes
The yes flag is used to enter default values for all the questions asked. The command output will be something like this:
{ "name": "myapp", "version": "1.0.0", "description": "", "main": "index.js", "scripts": { "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1" }, "keywords": [], "author": "", "license": "ISC" }
As you can see from the output, the main point of entry is index.js . These are just names, and you should not be bothered too much with it.
Install dependencies
Let’s install express and some useful modules that I usually work with.
npm i express morgan debug multer serve-index
There are other useful modules which will not be used in this tutorial, but I will list them down below for your reference. Some installed modules are not used in this tutorial but the GitHub gist provided references them. Include them to avoid compilation errors.
Let’s open up the index.js file we created and add the following code:
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000; app.listen(port, () => {
console.log('Server is up and running on port ', port);
})
Running And Configuring The App
Congrats! You’ve created your first express server! It will listen to a port from an environment variable (if available) or 3000. Let’s run the app like so: | https://medium.com/quick-code/building-a-simple-rest-api-introduction-to-nodejs-and-express-fc25daf57baf | ['Bilguun Batbold'] | 2019-02-25 10:14:49.335000+00:00 | ['API', 'Nodejs', 'Coding', 'Api Development', 'Express'] |
Office-Interior Design Trends 2021 | COVID-19 has unquestionably changed workplace space for the coming years, if not forever. While many individuals continue working online, others have returned, even if just for a couple of times per week, and many places have changed dramatically. Current office design trends emphasize security and well-being, as well as other factors like color, material, and sustainability, which will continue through 2021.
Designers and organizations are continuously seeking methods to preserve a peaceful and positive workplace culture while improving outcomes, from quality considerations such as soundscapes and flora to a greater focus on secure, protected workstations.
We encourage you to have a look at the best of the best.
1. Office design that is environmentally friendly
Office design that is environmentally friendly: Julian Brand
As a global community, we’re becoming more conscious of our environmental effect. We must do more as companies to decrease our carbon impact and help build a better tomorrow. It’s no wonder, therefore, that environmentally sustainable techniques and tools are a big part of the 2021 office design trend.
Office Design: Julian Brand
2. A Workplace That Feels Like Home
Because so many individuals still work remotely, the concept of modern workplace and aesthetics has evolved. The objective for desk employees is to give convenience and protection on all levels, as well as to help them feel at ease like they’re at home.
Designers might integrate domestic aspects such as comfy chaise lounges, mood lighting in shared spaces, or paintings exhibited around the workplace to promote a secure, pleasant feeling of “home” in the workplace.
Modern Workplace: Julian Brand
3. Smart workplaces and innovation
It’s not simply sufficient for workplaces to just be offices. They must be technically sophisticated offices. Our presence of computerized communications and the Network of Everything has grown as a result of working remotely. Electronic detectors are used in smart workspaces to recognize and respond to factors like as utilization, pollution levels, sunlight amounts, and much more.
As we come back to work, having a more interwoven connection with computers might also be beneficial.
Smart workplaces and innovation: Julian Brand
4. Fusion of Old and New
In today’s workplace designs, classic and modern color schemes are used to create an exciting mix of the past and present. Vintage and classic designs are popular among creators. Designs may also be used in bigger areas, such as surfaces and ceilings, and all these graphic designs can range from vibrant flashes of colour to subdued accented with gray hues. Bronze, industrialized vintage alloys, and rock appearances are all popular “old and new” style components. You may also incorporate two metallic finishes to create a unique look.
Fusion of Old and New: Julian Brand
“Whether it’s a graphic design area carpeting on top of an authentic hard slab or an ancient desk with a richly painted chair, mixing vintage and modern may be done in a variety of ways.
5. Friendship and connections
Whereas the manner in which we perceive functioning and our offices will undoubtedly continue to evolve in the year and, among the most substantial changes to the offices is that there is no more just a location with a seat, but has evolved into a goal in itself. A week at business became an occasion for many workers who have gotten accustomed to months of intense home work and few opportunities for informal connection. It is a rejuvenating time to attract friends, be motivated, meet up, cooperate, and socialize.
Friendship and connections: Julian Brand
The shift will imply more corporate design models inspired by the hotel and recreation sectors. Organizations will be forced to recruit and keep the greatest personnel by focusing on facilities and community experiences.
2020 also demonstrated how important it is to choose who they would share a glass of wine with and who they will seat next to. This is one office phase of globalization that has only grown since COVID-19 took effect, and it will help to shape how we think about work life layout for generations to follow. | https://medium.com/@julianbrand-interiordesigner/office-interior-design-trends-2021-807b10609b87 | ['Julian Brand - Actor Home Designer'] | 2021-09-11 09:41:06.447000+00:00 | ['Interior Design', 'Julian Brand Actor', 'Home Decor', 'Office Decor', 'Home Improvement'] |
Partnering for data quality | Author Vlad Rișcuția is joined for this article by co-authors Wayne Yim and Ayyappan Balasubramanian.
Why data quality?
Data quality is a critical aspect of ensuring high quality business decisions. An estimate of the yearly cost of poor data quality is $3.1 trillion per year for the United States alone, equating to approximately 16.5 percent of GDP.¹ For a business such as Microsoft, where data-driven decisions are ingrained within the fabric of the company, ensuring high data quality is paramount. Not only is data used to drive, steer, and grow the Microsoft business from a tactical and strategic perspective, but there are also regulatory obligations to produce accurate data for quarterly financial reporting.
History of DataCop
In the Experiences and Devices (E+D) division at Microsoft, a central data team called IDEAs (Insights Data Engineering and Analytics) generates key business metrics that are used to grow and steer the business. As one of its first undertakings, the team created the Office 365 Commercial Monthly Active User (MAU) measure to track the usage and growth of Office 365. This was a complicated endeavor due to the sheer scale of data, the number of Office products and services involved, and the heterogenous nature of the data pipelines across different products and services. In addition, many other business metrics, tracking the growth and usage of all Office products and services, also needed to be created.
In the process of creating these critical business metrics, it was clear that generating them at scale and in a reliable way with high data quality was of the utmost importance, as key tactical and strategic business decisions would be based on them. In addition, because of the team’s charge to generate key metrics for release with quarterly earnings, producing high quality data was also a regulatory requirement.
The IDEAs team formed as a data quality team consisting of program management, engineering, and data science representatives, and set out to investigate internal and external data quality solutions. The team examined internal data quality systems and researched public whitepapers from other companies that worked with huge amounts of data. Members of the team also spent a considerable amount of time with LinkedIn, learning about their data quality system called “Data Sentinel”² to potentially leverage what they had built, as they had already spent a considerable amount of time developing Data Sentinel and are also part of Microsoft.
The vision for a data quality platform in IDEAs was that it would be extensible, scalable, able to work with the multiple data fabrics involved, and be leveraged by the wider data science community at Microsoft. For example, data scientists and data analysts should be able to write data quality checks in languages familiar to them such as Python, R, and Scala, among others, and have these data quality checks operate reliably at scale.
Another key requirement was to have the data quality platform function as a DaaS, or “Data as a Service,” resulting in the need to apply the same “service rigor” in engineering, operations, and processes that were used to create and operate Office 365, the largest SaaS in the world. This meant having very high engineering standards around change management, monitoring, security controls, and auditability, and tightly integrating with Microsoft incident management systems to ensure that systems operate with high availability, efficiency, and security.
In the end, the team decided to build its own extensible data quality system from scratch in order for it to function with the scale and reliability of a DaaS and for it to interface with other internal Microsoft data systems. The initial functional specification was written in late 2018, and by early 2019 DataCop was born. Today, DataCop is part of the DataHub platform that also consists of Data Build and Data Catalog. Data Build generates the datasets required by the business in a compliant and scalable way and Data Catalog is a search store for all assets and surfaces with metadata such as data quality scores from DataCop, as well as access and privacy information. Future articles will describe how Data Catalog and Data Build are used to generate the metrics and insights that drive, steer, and grow the E+D business and serve as critical components of the data quality journey.
DataHub consists of DataCop, Data Build, and Data Catalog
Architecture
DataCop is designed with a mindset that no one team can solve this challenge on its own. The data ecosystem at Microsoft consists of multiple data fabrics, with data arriving in minutes to a month later. The system must be flexible and simple enough for other developers across Microsoft to add plugins and workers for adding to the data fabric or quality checks they want to build on. As a result, DataCop was built as a distributed message broker based on Azure Service Bus with quality check results stored on Cosmos DB.
Messages in the message broker must be self-contained and allow workers to work on them exclusively. This would allow messages from Orchestrator to run scheduled checks or from an Azure Data Factory (ADF) pipeline itself. Every time a data check or new fabric needs to be added, the developer can simply implement an override and develop their own worker process without affecting the rest of the system. The Azure team leveraged this to build on it quickly, as described below.
High level architectural diagram of DataCop
Workers are run today as Azure Web Jobs. Workers typically leverage another compute in Azure such as Azure Databricks or Azure SQL to execute quality checks against the actual data. Workers are lightweight and used to determine whether the checks are successful. This makes Azure Web Jobs a perfect fit for running them. For consistency, Orchestrator is hosted as a web job as well. Orchestrator is a time-triggered web job that generates the sets of quality checks that need to be executed and puts them in a respective worker-specific service bus queue.
The next important part of any data quality system is alerting. All Microsoft services use IcM, the company-wide incident management system. Data alerts are not like service alerts: Data arrives at a higher latency compared to typical services and can be recovered in some situations. If there is a need to restate bad data, an issue can be potentially open longer until the data is restated. So, alert suppression is set to handle a very different number of cases — data not available due to upstream issues for x days should result in one alert, and data not available downstream due to a common upstream issue should be suppressed.
This is a good place to touch upon another important topic in the data quality landscape: Anomaly detection. Data volume and metrics change often and are prone to seasonality. Having an anomaly detection system that can handle seasonality helps with a move away from monitoring data volumes and daily trends to a more sophisticated system. DataCop leverages Azure anomaly detector APIs to measure completeness stats such as file size and a few key metrics along multiple dimensions. This is a work in progress with further updates to come.
Data quality score for data assets in the DataCop User Interface
It was apparent that developers need a way to quickly author data quality checks and also deploy them. As a result, we integrated with Azure DevOps workflow to automatically deploy these data quality monitors. Today, the IDEAs team runs close to 2000 tests on about 750 key datasets that include externally reported financial metrics.
Partnership between M365 and Azure
The Customer Growth and Analytics team (CGA) is a centralized data science team in the Cloud+AI division at Microsoft. The team’s mission is to learn from customers and empower them to make the most of Azure services.³
Last year, as CGA’s scope was growing, an effort began to standardize technologies. Having a smaller number of technologies upon which CGA’s data platform is built makes it easier to move engineering resources as needed, share knowledge, and in general increase the reliability of the overall system. The use of Azure PaaS offerings reduced the need for writing custom code. The team standardized on Azure Data Factory for data movement and Azure Monitor for monitoring, among others. Unfortunately, at this writing, Azure doesn’t offer a PaaS data quality testing framework.
CGA realized the need for a reliable and scalable data quality solution, especially as the data platform evolved to support more and more production workloads where data issues can have large impacts, and so evaluated multiple options.
CGA tried out several data quality testing solutions with the code base, but quickly realized they were built for smaller projects, made some rigid assumptions, and would require significant investment to scale out to cover the entire platform.
Discussions with other data science organizations within the company to see how they were handling this led to LinkedIn and an introduction to Data Sentinel. Its main limitation is that it runs exclusively on Spark. CGA must support multiple data fabrics: In some cases, different compute scenarios require the specific best solution for the job, such as Azure Data Explorer for analytics or Azure Data Lake Storage and Azure Machine Learning for ML workloads. In other cases, data ingested from other teams comes from a variety of storage locations: Azure SQL, blob storage, and Azure Data Lake Storage gen1, among others.
Further outreach led to discussions with the M365 data science team and led to an introduction to DataCop, the solution described in this article. Its capabilities were compelling: Test scheduling, integration with the standard Microsoft alerting platform, and a declarative way of describing tests. Its main limitation was that DataCop didn’t support Azure Data Explorer.
Because Azure Data Explorer (ADX) is core to CGA’s platform, this could have been a showstopper, but in true One Microsoft spirit, the DataCop team was more than happy to work with CGA to light up the missing capability. The teams agreed to treat this as an “internal open source” project, with CGA contributing code to the DataCop solution from which both teams could benefit. Due to its flexible design, adding ADX capabilities was significantly easier than the alternative (investing in a home-grown solution).
DataCop extended with Azure Data Explorer support.
CGA deployed an instance of DataCop in its environment and over the following months had a big data quality push, including training the team on how to author tests and increasing test coverage to 100 percent of the datasets in CGA’s platform. At the time of writing, CGA has around 400 tests covering close to 300 key datasets. Over the past 30 days, CGA ran more than 4000 tests, identifying and quickly acting to mitigate multiple data issues that would have caused significant anomalies in CGA’s system. Onboarding DataCop saved significant engineering effort, which was refocused on test authoring.
Closing thoughts/summary
This article described DataCop, the data quality solution developed by the M365 data team in partnership with the Azure data team.
Data quality is a critical aspect of a business, both for informing decisions and for regulatory obligations.
The diverse data fabrics in use and their huge scale led to development of DataCop, a data quality solution for supporting the Microsoft business.
DataCop is a cloud-native Azure solution, consisting of a set of web jobs that communicate via service bus.
The plug-in architecture allowed the CGA team to quickly develop an Azure Data Explorer test runner and expand the scope of DataCop from the M365 team to also cover the Azure business.
Today, DataCop runs hundreds of tests every day to ensure the quality of data throughout multiple systems on both teams.
Vlad Rișcuția is on LinkedIn.
[1] The Four V’s of Big Data, IBM, 2016.
[2] Data Sentinel: Automating Data Validation, LinkedIn, March 2010.
[3] Using Azure to Understand Azure, by Ron Sielinski, January 2020. | https://medium.com/data-science-at-microsoft/partnering-for-data-quality-dc9123557f8b | ['Vlad Rișcuția'] | 2020-08-14 10:38:30.692000+00:00 | ['Data Quality', 'Data Science', 'Microsoft', 'Data Engineering', 'Azure'] |
The Skiing in Utah is Now IKONIC | Skiing down Stein’s Way at Deer Valley Resort (Photo by Ross Downard)
A few winters ago the IKON pass burst upon the ski industry scene as hard and as fast as a snow squall coming off the Great Salt Lake. With it came a flurry (no pun intended) of mixed reviews from industry experts, executives and locals alike. Utah seems to have missed the brunt of this fury, but a simple look at the public outcry in Big Sky, Jackson and Aspen most certainly show that some are not happy with the newest mega pass offering.
In Utah, the results seem to be somewhat mixed. Many Utahns see the IKON pass as ruining their favorite places, while others see the pass as giving skiers more options to world-class resorts. What seems to be a given however, is the fact that the IKON pass is adding cars to the already overflowing and Cottonwood Canyons. On the flipside, IKON passholders have either 5 or 7 days to Deer Valley, which is easily accessible from the population hubs along the Wasatch Front and avoids the dreaded red snake of traffic in the Cottonwood Canyons.
A Brief History of the Mega Pass
Back in 2008, Vail Resorts revolutionized the ski industry by introducing the EPIC pass. The EPIC pass drastically reduced the price of a season pass, while offering buyers access to ALL of Vail’s mountains with no blackout dates. The catch? The company incentivized consumers to buy the pass way before the season started. This allowed the company to lock in season pass revenue without having to worry about snow conditions. (There is a very good podcast about the idea and implementation of the EPIC pass which you can find here.) Since it’s start back in ’08, Vail has since expanded the EPIC pass to more mountains by adding partner resorts and buying more ski areas themselves. EPIC passholders in receive unlimited access to Park City Mountain Resort and additional days to Snowbasin .
Fast forward to 2018 and the IKON pass was introduced. It was launched to compete directly with the EPIC pass. It follows the same business model as the EPIC pass (Buy early for a low price, and get access to a lot of resorts) and includes 5 resorts in the state of Utah and access to dozens of other resorts around the United States, Canada and Europe. IKON passholders receive unlimited access to Solitude, and additional days to Brighton, Alta/Snowbird and Deer Valley.
With this as a backdrop, and as an IKON pass holder myself for all 3 seasons of the pass here are my thoughts on how things are going for the IKON pass.
A Local’s Perspective
2018–2019 Season: For the inaugural year of the IKON pass I was able reap the benefits of the college discount as I bought the pass before I graduated from BYU. I paid $719 for the full IKON pass and used it quite frequently. Fortunately my day job at Thread Wallets allows me the flexibility to ski outside of Saturdays and Holidays so I was able to log 18 ski days for the year on the pass with an average of $39.94 per day of skiing. Not bad if you ask me.
The breakdown of days looked like this.
Alta/Snowbird: 7 days
Deer Valley: 7 days
Solitude: 2 days
Jackson Hole: 2 days
One of the highlights of the year was a trip to Jackson Hole in January 2019.
2019/2020 Season: Since I wasn’t in college last year, I paid full-price for the full IKON pass. It ended up costing me $919, a $200 jump from the year prior. We also had a global pandemic that cut the season short, but I was still able to manage 16 days on the pass. My average cost per day jumped to $57.43 from the year prior. I had saved quite a few days on the pass for spring skiing so if you were to take COVID out of the equation, this daily rate would have dropped quite a bit more.
Breakdown of Days:
Deer Valley: 6 days
Solitude: 4 days
Brighton: 3 days
Jackson Hole: 2 days
Alta/Snowbird: 1 day
2020/2021 Season: Due to the COVID pandemic, the folks at IKON pass decided to increase discounts for returning passholders for the current season, because of the early closures in the spring of 2020. While the season is still young, I have so far logged 5 days on the pass while paying $799 for the full IKON. We will wait and see what my daily rate breaks down to.
Going Forward
I would give the IKON solid marks for both value and access. I am currently skiing for less per day than what I was paying per day back in High School. With that being said, for the IKON pass to truly become the gold standard of ski passes in Utah here are a few suggestions that I strongly feel would increase loyalty to the pass from locals like myself and others that I know.
IKON needs to add another option besides Deer Valley that lies outside of the Cottonwood Canyons but is within a reasonable driving distance from the Wasatch Front. It is apparent that when the Cottonwood Canyons are either on wind hold or closed due to avalanche control work, people go elsewhere. A recent Park Record article stated that Deer Valley’s numbers peaked when The Cottonwoods were closed. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, “If skiers have trouble getting up Little or Big Cottonwood canyon, they can now make a 40-minute detour to Snowbasin or Deer Valley.” Nathan Rafferty, the president Ski Utah has stated, that Snowbasin increases its staffing on days Little Cottonwood is closed for avalanche control because [they] know a lot of would-be Alta skiers are heading their way.”
Skiers and boarders head to other resorts when they know they are going to have problems getting to and from the Cottonwood Canyon’s resorts.
While the options might seem limited outside of the Cottonwoods, I see adding another resort option as a remarkably important aspect of the IKON pass going forward. Although I do admit that those options became even more limited when Snowbasin (one of the last great independent resorts in the west) joined the EPIC pass as a partner resort starting in for the 2019–2020 ski season.
While the details of this partnership have not been made public, the best option seems to pick off Snowbasin from EPIC as soon as their multi-year partnership concludes. This would give IKON passholders access to two Utah resorts outside of the cottonwood canyons.
Conclusion
Overall, I am quite happy with the IKON pass and the access that it gives skiers in the state. It allows any passholder to take advantage of good snow around the country and an affordable price. The price is so low that it’s actually cheaper than what I paid to ski back in high school. An IKONic win by my estimation. | https://medium.com/@ryansandersking/the-skiing-in-utah-is-now-ikonic-fae6fdf89497 | ['Ryan S King'] | 2021-01-04 05:27:20.746000+00:00 | ['Winter', 'Utah', 'Skiing', 'Business', 'Snow'] |
More info on metrics | Let’s take a closer look at the object and the way of miningmeter calculations.
More details on the main system components:
Stratum-proxy and hashrate billing system
Stratum-proxy proceeds shares from worker to a pool, taking into account the amount of shares sent by a worker and received by a pool, as well as calculates every worker’s hashrate. Every worker’s difficulty and pool status is being traced. Stratum-proxy supports work for different pools, and several workers’ work into one pool. Considering different difficulty levels. The gathered data is transferred into the monitoring system as corresponding metrics. The system groups them and assigns the needed values.
Pool API-connectors
Special pool API-connectors are used for obtaining pool data. As soon as not all the pools are assigned with APIs, direct pool web-interface parsing may be used as well. Irrespective of the way the information is collected, it contains the following data:
Average hashrate for the past 24 hours
Profitability for the past 24 hours
15 minutes to 2 hours is the standard period for data sampling. Data obtained closer to 23:59 UTC is used to get an exact daily value. If the API data is not available at the moment, the previous value is then considered.
Uptime-monitoring
Uptime monitoring is used to monitor the accessibility and pools’ response speed. Every pool is being monitored for site work, API and stratum. Monitoring is conducted by connecting to the corresponding pool ports from three locations — Europe, Asia and the USA. The stratum monitors all the available pool ports for the given algorithm. Monitoring is based on Telegraf and Prometheus. Telegraf gathers all the necessary data on accessibility and sends it to the Prometheus. Prometheus in its turn builds aggregated uptime metrics based on the received data. | https://medium.com/miningmeter/more-about-metrics-ace2f3fddc8d | ['Vladimir Fiseisky'] | 2020-03-13 12:59:20.196000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin Mining', 'Tech', 'Bitcoin Hashrate', 'Bitcoin', 'Mining Pool'] |
What Do Followers Want From a Leader? | There’s a lot of information available about leadership, through books, articles, and online blogs. In contrast, I rarely come across articles or books about being a follower.
So why do people follow certain leaders?
In the book, Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow, authors Tom Rath and Barry Conchie described their research. In their research, they asked followers to identify the leader that has the most positive influence on their daily life.
Once each individual identified their ideal leader, Rath and Conchie asked the follower to list three words that best describe what this leader contributed to their life.
Their findings concluded that followers have a very clear picture of what they need, want, and expect from a leader. Here are the top four basic needs:
Trust Compassion Stability, and Hope
Here’s the thing. These four words, with respect to leadership competencies, do not figure in the top four.
By that I mean the top four metrics used to measure effective leadership don't include the four that the very people they lead identified as being the most important.
As such, effective leadership, from the followers’ perspective, is ignored.
Great leaders, who place a priority on relationships, are successful for this very reason.
Trust and Compassion
These needs have meaning for followers, as they aim to align with leaders who can relate to them as human beings. Followers want leaders who demonstrate that he/she cares about them, as people.
Trust is the foundation of any relationship.
The leader/follower relationship is no different. Without a sense of trust, there can be no team. Research has proven that when trust is high in a group or organization, members are more engaged.
In any organization, where employees trust leadership, they’re more likely to be engaged with the organizational goals. From experience and personal observation, teams high in trust spend zero time discussing trust; whereas teams struggling with trust spend a significant amount of time debating trust. | https://medium.com/illumination/what-do-followers-want-from-a-leader-1d08802796e1 | ['Paul Myers Mba'] | 2020-04-26 21:43:29.644000+00:00 | ['People', 'Followers', 'Leadership', 'Self', 'Business'] |
Conversion Torture: The Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Erasing Identity | Conversion Torture: The Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Erasing Identity
America’s LGBTQIA youth is vulnerable and often left unprotected in circumstances of mental health and advocacy.
Identity comes in many forms and should be celebrated not punished Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
Conversion therapy has long been a controversial topic in the LGBTQIA community, in religious communities, in politics, and in culture. Calling it therapy is disingenuous — it is torture, make no mistake.
This month, we celebrated coming out day, but we have also remembered what hate can do as we commemorate Matthew Shephard, who was savagely beaten and tortured for his sexuality in 1998. Matthew would succumb to his injuries and spark a national debate about hate crimes, leading to landmark legal provisions. But where do children fit into advocacy and support?
State and Local Warriors
Unlikely allies can create a better community for our youth Photo by Yoav Hornung on Unsplash
A critical piece of legislation aiming to ban conversion torture is on the docket for consideration in Kentucky. Among other things, this bill would make the clear prohibition on the use of this as a therapy, allow for reprimand for licensed mental health providers, help ensure that cannot be relicensed in Kentucky and attempt to prevent children from being forced into traumatic “therapies” by their consenting parents. I had the pleasure of speaking with Daniel Beasley, the Lexington Regional Organizer for Ban Conversion Therapy Kentucky for an interview.
This exists in an ethical gray area. There is no law on the books against conversion torture. There are simply best practices and professional standards that indicate this is damaging. We would be among the first pro-LGBTQIA laws passed in the South and it would have huge ramifications. But this is a pro-life issue, at its core.
Other states have already championed the cause, but Kentucky is key in the fight for children because it represents a part of the country where it is already taboo to discuss sexuality and it is downright unacceptable to have a sexuality that is not heteronormative. You may not initially consider Kentucky a bastion of equality, but BCTK is making big moves in the bluegrass state with an unexpected ally. Beasley remarked on the importance of this alliance
Alice Forgy Kerr has championed this bill and it has honestly been a blessing, she is a strong voice and advocate
Kerr, a Republican senator from the 12th district, believes that the bill is truly an example of actual pro-life legislation in action. In addition to being a politician, Kerr is a leader and educator in the Baptist faith community. Kerr has noted that being pro-life, in part, is ensuring we protect our youth always, that we do not allow them to be subjected to torture, we do not damage them and we do not abuse them. Kerr believes that we are “perfectly made”. Being pro-life does not stop after birth for Kerr and she has forged an allegiance with BCTK to make sure she continues to strive for the best protection for our youth.
The Numbers — Suicide and Risk
Children are vulnerable to trauma and it can form who we are as adults and affect mental health Photo by Den Trushtin on Unsplash
Beasley went on to discuss the history of conversion torture and some alarming statistics. His focus was explaining that this practice is not condoned for licensed mental health professionals and yet it is still conducted. A scary margin of mental health professionals, whose duty it is to protect these vulnerable youth. Beasley points to a study conducted by UCLA
The number of reported interactions is likely not even a true reflection but what we know from a UCLA study is that 81% of people who have had conversion therapy received it from a religious leader, and 31% received it from a health care provider
It is important to note how profound the impact of this barbaric practice is on children with underdeveloped brains as they age and naturally explore their self-worth and identities. Backed by the UCLA study, Beasley states that LGBTQIA youth who experienced conversation torture have some disturbingly consistent statistics for suicide and attempts at self-harm.
92% greater odds of lifetime suicidal ideation 75% greater odds of planning to attempt suicide 88% greater odds of attempting suicide resulting in no or minor injury
You might be thinking “those numbers don’t add up to success in suicide, right?” Measuring someone's stability and trauma responses by whether or not they were successful at ending their life is horrible. Imagine for a moment you endured, against your will at the behest of well-intentioned, albeit misinformed, religious parents’, torturous practices from the entity who was supposed to protect you in life — a therapist or, other trusted person. These fraudulent and costly practices are abysmal and individuals charged with protecting the vulnerable, the marginal, engage in a host of interventions that likely destroyed your sense of self-worth and lead directly to physical and emotional abuse.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
The Mental Illness Cycle and Cycles of Abuse
Another interesting statistic in the UCLA article circles around to a larger problem. Youth are more likely to be subjected to conversion torture if they live in the home with at least one caretaker that is mentally ill, abusive to them directly, or abusive to their other parent. Children endure horrors at home only to be sent to therapy or religious-based camps in order to correct their perceived deviant behavior, often with the misconception that this practice will redeem their souls.
The horror does not stop at home for these kids. The cycle of abuse continues, not in spite of, but in large part because of archaic practices children have endured in “reparative therapy.” Reparative therapy is the new, softer buzzword given to this persecution tactic. It sounds a little less “trying to transmute your soul into something we can live with” and a little more professional, aye?
After they survive their interventions, there is literally no evidence that children adapt their sexuality as adults. There is, however, evidence that they grow up to be depressed, anxious and suicidal. Further, youth who have endured conversion torture and rejection based on their sexuality are more likely to end up using illicit substances that can lead to overdose, addiction and medical complications to cope with the horrific abuse and emotional rejection.
For normal, well-adjusted, scientifically supported therapies, we simply back up and try a different path when a client is not seeing improvement. In conversion “therapy,” we just abandon the child into adulthood and keep praying they aren’t queer — an adulthood, by the way, that will statistically be littered with increased risk of not surviving your inevitable trauma responses.
Resources and Information
Reach out and help the human community Photo by Austin Kehmeier on Unsplash
Education can change the world. Educating parents, religious organizations and therapists can have a positive impact on youth. The suspension of long-held, unsupported interpretations of elements of faith might be difficult or seem impossible. But fundamentally, those who practice this torture are preying on parents who are trying to do what they feel is best for their children for a number of complex cultural and religious reasons. Othering these parents will not be an effective agent of change.
Information is readily available about conversion torture. Making this information available to providers, to leaders, to parents, and to children could be helpful in fighting back against this abuse and this is a large part of the message from BCTK. In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, BCTK is allied with services and legislators to protect children in the Bluegrass, joining 20 other states in the fight to preserve our youth. Their website highlights the important points and has plenty of factual talking points that you can use to ambassador safety for children.
For national organizers and information for your locality, you can also reach out to organizations like The Trevor Project and Born Perfect. There are several volunteer opportunities that you can assist with. Donations are also acceptable if you lack the time but have the means to support our nation’s LGBTQIA youth. | https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/conversion-torture-the-long-term-effects-of-childhood-trauma-and-erasing-identity-80959056a286 | ['Marissa Newby'] | 2020-10-22 16:17:34.170000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Conversion Therapy', 'LGBTQ', 'Gay Rights', 'Mental Health Awareness'] |
Universe Island: Meet The Team Behind The Action-Adventure Sci-Fi Mobile Game | Since gaming began, we have seen the growth and innovation in the video game space grow exponentially. In 2019, the gaming market was worth around $151 million, with the projected growth by 2025 expected to hit $257 billion in 2025, so clearly, we are dealing with big numbers and a behemoth of an industry.
The video-game space has also seen a significant uptick in in-game purchases. Let’s look at another big number to understand this, in 2020 alone; gamers bought in-game content and assets worth around $54 billion. However, despite the burgeoning purchases, most games still utilize an outdated model of in-game purchases, leaving gamers with no proof of purchase, as these transactions are recorded only internally on in-game databases and servers.
Using NFTs In The Gaming Space
Currently, the gaming space is seeing a disruption in the current method of in-game purchases, with NFTs coming into the picture and transferring the ownership rights of in-game assets to players, allowing them to monetize their in-game assets. NFTs combine the crypto industry and gaming to create in-game economic incentives. Having said that, are there any games that utilize this model? Let’s look at one such upcoming game.
Introducing Universe Island
Universe Island is an upcoming third-person shooter game featuring NFT integration and an underlying story. This approach allows the game to deliver a story-driven experience while also featuring NFT equipment progression and rewards. The game is set in the metaverse consisting of several fractured islands, with each island having its own lore and history attached to it, along with an animated TV show to drive the narrative.
Thanks to their low entry barrier, the game take a classic third-person shooter approach. Universe Island takes the gaming experience one step ahead, allowing them to compete against other players, improve their rank and XP, and transform into elite players. The game ecosystem is powered by the UIM token that is at the core of the game’s play-to-win incentive.
So how does the game work? Well, think of how you would play games like Fortnite, Mass Effect, Resident Evil 2. Players spawn at random locations on a map, usually at opposite ends. They can choose from several formats to choose from, such as multiplayer or good old 1v1. Playing the game is pretty straightforward, shoot down the other player while also avoiding or defeating AI-controlled enemies. Why are AI-controlled enemies added to the mix? Well, just to make an already interesting game more interesting. We did say that Universe Island takes the gaming experience up to another level.
A typical game lasts not more than 5–6 minutes, with winners earning UIM tokens that can be utilized in-game or withdraw on-chain after completing a stipulated verification period after they put their claim request.
Meet The Team Behind The Game
So who are the ones behind the game? The team behind Universe Island is highly experienced and driven. It consists of members from a variety of fields, each of whom brings something unique to the project. The team behind the game draws on experience from fields such as gaming, programming, multimedia systems, etc.
Ladislav Liska
Ladislav is the founder and CEO of UNIVERSE ISLAND LLC. He has invested in several startup projects in the crypto space, and over the years, has gained significant insight into the gaming industry. He plans to marry gaming and blockchain technology, helping create a blockchain revolution in the industry. He also has years of experience in several high-level programming languages such as SQL, Delphi, Python, and Pascal. He also dabbles in smart contracts and Solidity.
Myat Shwe Thit
Shwe, Bachelor of Computer Science, is the financial goddess of Universe Island. Despite her field of study, she is drawn more to the financial side of the business. Shwe has many experiences in the administration and management of the company from the financial and marketing side. Not one penny is spent without her knowing about it. This overview is used to advise and optimize the cash flow to succeed in our mission. Order and planning are the keys to success, Shwe is our key!
Shwe’s role on the project is to advise in a financial matter, prepare administrative materials and run the marketing campaign.
Zdenek Novotny
Zdenek is a brilliant coder. Throw him a problem and he give you an optimized, structured, and fast solution. He knows about the depths of any programming language you can name and more. It is his passion, profession, and hobby. On his journey of code, he developed utilities, tools, full-featured SW, and games. Therefore, he is well versed with our engine of choice — Unity. One of Zdenek’s achievements is a C# [Unity Engine] for the game Cities Skylines.
Zdenek’s role on the project is to implement a database management system, back-end configuration, quality control, and most importantly he brings lots of experience into the team.
Ales Vovk
Ales got an engineering degree in the field of multimedia and telecommunications. The perfect combination for blockchain networks and gaming. He is experienced with coding, audio, and image processing. For the past three years, he has dealt with function and software development. This gave him experience in abstract problem-solving. Ales is eager to solve problems and loves math. His passion is crypto, and he likes to explore new worlds through video games.
Ales’ role on the project is to bring in cryptocurrency knowledge and solve problems such as probabilistic token emission and its implementation. He also does back-end configuration, maintaining the documentation, and much more…
Martin Rubin
Martin, the Game Developer, is a Bachelor of Art. He knows his ways throughout the full game development cycle. Unity is his bread and butter and this knowledge proved itself to be a wonderful time saver already. Over the years Martin has done a broad variety of games from strategies to shooters. He brings to the team a great amount of experience in the field of game design and knowledge of ballistics at a professional level. To name a few of many projects Martin was engaged in: VR simulator Kaleido for the company Pixelfield, mobile sport shooting game IPSC + Pistol World Challenge for HofmannHD, and more.
Martin’s role on the project is to lead the development of the Universe Island to the finish line and beyond
Closing Thoughts
As you can see, the team behind the game brings in a wealth of experience from different fields, combining them to give you Universe Islands. The team has set a clear roadmap and is clear on how the game will be developed, how players will experience the in-game storyline, and how NFT integration will feature in the game. | https://medium.com/@UniverseIsland/universe-island-meet-the-team-behind-the-action-adventure-sci-fi-mobile-game-2f44d585480a | ['Universe Island'] | 2021-12-17 10:28:33.253000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Esport', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Universe Island', 'Nft Games'] |
5 Lies About Counseling | And Why You Should Toss Them
You’ve had bad days, right? Yeah — that’s what I thought. Me, too.
I mean — who hasn’t? No matter what stage of life you’re in, things get stressful.
Job
No job
Married
Single
Kids
You get the picture. No one has the corner market on dealing with the tough stuff.
Even though we all deal with the same things — we handle them differently.
There will be things you handle in healthy ways. You know, like a mature adult. You face the problem, handle it, and move on.
But, there will also be things you don’t handle so well. And the ones you can’t seem to manage — you find yourself reverting to old patterns you thought you grew out of long ago.
And the latter is where some counseling could do you a world of good. I know — you’ve got some concerns. You may even think that if you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you can nip this thing in the bud. No. Help. Needed.
By all means, do what you got to do. But while you’re busting butt to turn things around, consider these 5 lies about counseling, and why you need to toss them.
Because when the time comes, I want you to be ready.
1. Seeking counseling is a sign of weakness.
I don’t care what you’ve heard or thought — asking for help is a sign of strength.
Anyone who’s ever gone to counseling will tell you it’s not easy. No one is doing the work for you. You’re there to get guidance on what needs to be done to meet your goals, even if you’re not yet sure what those goals are.
With Positive Psychology you focus primarily on your strengths not your weaknesses. So you’re not just sitting around talking about all the negative stuff. You’re learning how to use your strengths to overcome whatever you’ve got going on.
And even if you do have a few weaknesses- think of it like this: If you mentioned that you wanted to get a personal trainer, no one would belittle you. And the same principle should apply to getting counseling.
Either way — you’re actively taking a step- whether to improve yourself- or simply realize you’ve already got everything you need.
If you come across someone who has this negative view on counseling, brush it off.
This is for YOU.
And when you come out stronger and better than ever, they’re going to sit up and notice.
2. People who go to counseling are crazy.
Let’s face it. There are all kinds of crazy. If the above were true, there’d be mandatory counseling required for Every. Single. Person.
I’ve yet to meet a person who couldn’t benefit from counseling.
Just because life is crazy, doesn’t mean you’re crazy.
Repeat that.
Write it down.
You may be surprised to learn that most people who go to counseling don’t even have a mental illness. For them, it’s more about finding happiness and contentment in life.
And, on the plus side, who cares if people think you’re crazy? It may even slow down the drama.
That sister that’s constantly getting under your skin; maybe she’ll think twice about those snotty remarks at Christmas this year.
Because who knows what you may do? You go to counseling.
3. You don’t want to talk about personal things to a stranger.
Counselors have spent a lot of time and money training in their field. And they’re aware of the difficulties you face in counseling — like bearing your soul to a stranger.
That’s why you’ll have several sessions of just getting to know each other. Once you’re comfortable- then you can get down to business.
Counselors chose their profession because they’re passionate about helping others. And let me assure you they’ve heard and seen it all.
And here’s a little known secret, in studying the many topics and issues people struggle with, counselors become more self-aware of their own struggles.
This leads to some pretty empathetic people who won’t hold any judgments or preconceived notions about you. Counselors are going to be some of the most open-minded people you’ll ever talk to.
And their number one goal is to help you do you. There are no ulterior motives and no hidden agendas. They really are on TEAM YOU!
4. This is just life.
Maybe. But do you really want to live a just life? That sounds pretty depressing to me.
Yes, there are some things that are inevitable, but there are quite a few things that you do have the power to change.
Instead of thinking “this is just life”- try thinking this is YOUR life. That’s why it’s so important to find the courage to live the life you want NOW.
No one else will make this decision for you. Just in case you didn’t know, we humans can be pretty selfish. So if you’re content to live a barely-getting-by kind of life, people are going to let you. Because they’re trying to figure out their own stuff!
I’m not suggesting being self-centered. I’m just saying that if you don’t choose you every once in awhile- no one else will either.
Try betting on yourself for a change. You’ll be surprised to find that there’s more to life than just… whatever it is you’re facing.
5. It’s too expensive.
I won’t even try to deny that counseling can be super expensive. But that doesn’t mean it’s unattainable.
People are finally starting to recognize the importance of mental health.
This means most insurance companies will cover the cost, just like going to your primary physician. Check with your provider. They can give you the breakdown of what they cover and even provide a list of in-network counseling services.
No insurance? No problem. With a little research, you’ll find that there are free and discounted services available. Check with your local mental health centers and churches to see what they offer.
Another important thing to note: have a conversation with any counselor you’re considering seeing. In some cases, they’re willing to cut their fees in order to make it more affordable for you.
So just know, you can find someone you are comfortable seeing and not break the bank.
So there you are. No more excuses.
You now have all the information to get you started in the right direction.
It’s time to invest in yourself so invest wisely. Just go online and see what’s available in your area. Let a trained counselor help you through these not so easy steps. You’ll definitely be glad you did! | https://medium.com/@veronicadunkin93/5-lies-about-counseling-2d03df57f323 | ['Veronica Dunkin'] | 2019-08-13 00:47:57.762000+00:00 | ['Help', 'Freedom', 'Life', 'Mental Health', 'Counseling'] |
Migrating from Spring Boot to Micronaut | Spring Boot is an open source Java-based framework used to create micro Services. It is developed by Pivotal Team and is used to build stand-alone and production ready spring applications.
Micronaut is a JVM-based framework for building lightweight, modular applications. Developed by OCI, the same company that created Grails, It is the latest framework designed to make creating microservices quick and easy.
Today we will talk about migrating from Spring Boot to Micronaut. First of them, Spring Boot is currently the most popular and opinionated framework in the JVM world. On the other side of the barrier is staying Micronaut, quickly gaining popularity framework especially designed for building server less functions or low memory-footprint microservices. So most of the light weighted microservices are tend to be implemented using Micronaut nowadays.
Since Micronaut took quite a few principles from Spring Boot, migration is pretty easy. Roughly, the process looks something like this:
Add Micronaut’s core Maven dependencies. Find out which Spring Boot Starters you use, and find the corresponding Micronaut Project. Fix compilation errors by replacing imports (Micronaut generally uses the same annotation names as Spring). Fix your application.yaml configuration file. Run it.
However, there are a few gotchas: | https://medium.com/@vindipererauom/migrating-from-spring-boot-to-micronaut-9db05c62d232 | ['Vindya Perera'] | 2020-12-16 14:20:39.473000+00:00 | ['Tips', 'Spring Boot', 'Migration', 'Micronaut'] |
For Luck~ | The woman, bent and gray haired, knelt beside the upturned earth of her garden. It was spring, and she had purchased a flat of flowers at the hardware store, which she was looking forward to planting. Last Autumn she had suffered an unfortunate fall, which had kept her bottled up indoors for many long, unhappy months. But now she was out and about once again, and had returned to her garden with rapturous delight. She lifted a plastic-cased pansy and as she did so she was struck by a memory. One she had not thought of for so long it felt like finding something precious in the attic that you had thought lost an age ago.
The day had been filled with pink, fluttering petals. The botanical garden had been known for its pink blossomed trees. The air had been cool and the park bench wonderfully rough beneath her hands. The young man kneeling in front of her was holding out a bouquet of wildflowers, together with a few pansies from his mother’s garden. The moment was consumed with his question, lingering in the breeze between them… and with her answer.
A timer went off inside the house and the old woman stood, brushing dirt from her apron. She went to check on the cookies she was making for her daughter-in-law, who was stuck in the hospital with an injured leg, and her first child on the way.
The young man’s clothes had been worn, much-repaired, hand-me-downs. He had been as poor as a church mouse, with a head full of poetry and no money for higher education. She had been afraid, then, with her father’s promises of disinheritance still ringing in her ears. She had cried, that night, after she refused the young man with the flowers. She had cried for many nights afterward.
The old woman ran a hand along the shelves of best-selling novels, of poetry collections and short stories. The name emblazoned upon the covers a melancholy reminder of that long ago choice. She hung up her apron, placed the cooling cookies in a plastic container, and left for the hospital.
In her arms was a bouquet of wildflowers, with a few pansies thrown in among the rest, for luck. | https://medium.com/@stellaadaire/for-luck-2e5d209d4c54 | ['Stella Adaire Brown'] | 2020-12-23 02:51:03.886000+00:00 | ['Short Fiction', 'Short Story', 'Sentimental', 'Fiction', 'Young Writers'] |
Web Scraping Example in Python using BeautifulSoup | After that basic introduction, we can move on to the coding example. This small application is developed in Python using BeautifulSoup library as the web scraping library.
First thing first. We need to import relevant libraries.
Import BeautifulSoup in order to use the famous web scrapper library. Import urllib.request in order to open up HTTP requests to specific URLs. More detailed explanation: https://docs.python.org/3/library/urllib.request.html.
Further, import re (used for regular expressions) or any other module if you need to parse data from URLs.
After the imports, the first thing to do is to get the main URL and open a connection to that URL. I wanted to store the data I got from the connection in a text file, so I open a file connection as well.
We have done no scrapping at this moment, only opened up a connection to a URL, read all the HTML data and closed the connection. Now, it is time to parse the HTML data and scrape some meaningful information out of them.
The line of code above is very important in my experience. Most of the time, BeautifulSoup can figure out a site’s character encoding correctly, but sometimes it is not the case. Sometimes it cannot get the correct encoding and that caused me a lot of headaches. So, to be perfectly safe, I tell BeautifulSoup how he need to parse the HTML data from the URL with the code above. In most of the cases, the character encoding is UTF-8 and the data is in HTML format.
There are a bunch of different ways to identify your target html element like element tag name, id, class name, even with styles. I used some of these ways to get the data I need. I wanted to get all the rows from a specific table and I accessed the table using its element id. After that I accessed its ‘tbody’ using only the element name and got all the rows utilizing their ‘tr’ tags.
All the rows had URLs that link to website’s subdomain addresses. My main target was to traverse all the subdomains and get the desired data from the main tables in those subdomains.
It is not always viable but here I could get the desired table rows by distinguishing them by their styles. I wanted to get all the table rows (‘tr’)if their ‘style’ attributes not equals to ‘height: 46px’ (which was the height of table header). Then I proceeded to getting values from each cell in desired table rows. Using row.findAll(‘td’) I have got all the cell in an array. After that, I accessed the ‘a’ tag and then the ‘href’ tag of it and store them in an array called allURLs.
Now, I have got all the URLs of the subdomains. It was time to iterate over all the URLs and access the desired table data.
After accessing all the ‘td’s in the table, I disregarded a specific column by checking its text value. The rest is applying some operations just to extract the meaningful data from the data I scraped. Lastly I closed the file reader and printed out a basic information message. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/web-scraping-example-in-python-using-beautifulsoup-ed7db83d690 | ['İsmail Gök'] | 2020-12-21 17:48:31.856000+00:00 | ['Beautifulsoup', 'Web Scrapers', 'Python', 'Web Scraping'] |
How Higher Education has been ruined in India? | “Ensuring Quality Higher Education is one of the most important things we can do for future generations.” -Ron Lewis
What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘Education’? According to me, it is a necessity for human life which gives humans knowledge about how to behave, learning, creativity and many more things to survive in daily life. Now what we expect from an educated person? His education makes him humble and not arrogant, creative, social and many more things. But if we talk about an educated person then we also have to know what an educated person expects after completing his education. But hold on, is there a good learning environment in which a person can complete his/her education, especially in the case of higher education? I think this is a topic to be discussed globally, but I’m just talking about Indian education because I’m a part of this education.
Purpose of Education: — In simple words, the meaning of Education is to make an individual’s life meaningful. Education is all about ideas, innovation, and creativity.
The reality about the purpose of Education in India: — In India, the primary purpose of about 80% of educational institutions is to mint money. Most of these institutions are private. Therefore, private institutions have made a business out of educating the youth whereas the government institutes have failed to provide a good education.
First, let’s talk about government institutions. Government institutes in India are a hope for the students who can not afford to pay much for education as they provide lots of scholarships and have lesser fees than private institutes. But there are many things which make the government institutes the worst. Let’s see why:
Redundant Curriculum: — Government institutes stick to the curriculum that they had used years ago. There are no updations in the curriculum. If we talk about technology there is not update in technology on time. So, in simple words, the world is 10–20 years ahead of what is taught in the Indian Government institutes/ universities. There are some good institutes as well- which keep updating their curriculum like the Indian Institute of Technology, National Institute of Technology. But they are only a few.
Government institutes stick to the curriculum that they had used years ago. There are no updations in the curriculum. If we talk about technology there is not update in technology on time. So, in simple words, the world is 10–20 years ahead of what is taught in the Indian Government institutes/ universities. There are some good institutes as well- which keep updating their curriculum like the Indian Institute of Technology, National Institute of Technology. But they are only a few. More theoretical than Practical: — In government institutes, more theoretical than practical knowledge is provided. There are no case studies and real-life problems.
In government institutes, more theoretical than practical knowledge is provided. There are no case studies and real-life problems. Untrained teachers: — Teachers are not doing much effort to learn more. They always stick to their core subjects. If a new subject comes in the curriculum they do not like to teach that subject and instead deliver it via guest lecturers.
Teachers are not doing much effort to learn more. They always stick to their core subjects. If a new subject comes in the curriculum they do not like to teach that subject and instead deliver it via guest lecturers. Lack of Regular teachers: — In today’s era where education is very important, there is a lack of regular teachers in government institutes. There are more guest lecturers than regular teachers. Guest lecturers are only for some time and their salary is also less which is why they are not able to give good quality education.
Now let’s talk about private institutes. The private institutes are just like a business company. They look at students as their customers. They just want to make money from the students. A poor student can’t dream to study in an expensive institute like these. I understand that they have facilities but they just advertise it as a product. Students who are graduates from many of these institutes ruin their careers.
Indian Education becomes a business. But it is not good for the growth of the nation.
According to the Economics Times[1], “India is in the middle of an engineering crisis”. Why? Every year lakhs of engineers graduate from these institutes. But are they worthy of holding up complete jobs without training? No. The answer lies in the fact that students only focus on the marks in their subjects rather than the knowledge. Even good CGPA students are not able to perform jobs properly because they only focused on marks for their entire 4 years. And the result is- industry-academia gap.
All of these factors result in increased unemployment. According to the Business Standard[2], NSSO ( The National Sample Survey Office) report, the urban unemployment rate was 9.7% in 2018. Below is a figure showing the results of the Urban employment report.
According to Business Standard[3], the National Statistical Commission (NSC)’s report says that the job crisis is real as unemployment hits 6.1%, highest in 45 years, which is really shameful. This report is shown below,
Now the question is how do we make the education system better?
Here are some solutions to this:
Skill Training: Give skill training to the students so that they are able to improve themselves and earn some bread to survive and live a better life.
Infrastructure with good technology: Give students a good infrastructure with good technology, so that they keep themselves upgraded according to the new trends.
Improve the Quality of teachers: Training the teachers is also a very important thing to be considered. It’s the responsibility of the institute to hold workshops and training sessions for training the teachers about the new technologies so that they are well prepared to teach the students.
Solving real-life problems and use cases: This exercise can improve the practical knowledge of the students. A use case always gives motivation to a student to do something on their own.
This is the right time to manage our education system and upgrade it as needed.
References: -
[1] “India is in the middle of an engineering crisis” [The Economics Times]
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/education/india-is-in-the-middle-of-an-engineering-education-crisis/articleshow/63680625.cms
[2] “Urban unemployment rate at 9.7% in Q3CY18, reveals NSSO report” [Business Standard]
https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/urban-unemployment-rate-at-9-7-in-q3cy18-reveals-nsso-report-119060100033_1.html
[3] “Job crisis for real as unemployment hits 6.1%, highest in 45 years” [Business Standard]
https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/job-crisis-for-real-as-unemployment-hits-6-1-highest-in-45-years-119053101462_1.html | https://medium.com/eduwaivefoundation/how-higher-education-has-been-ruined-in-india-e559f3bebacf | ['Sahezpreet Singh'] | 2019-08-02 10:37:56.214000+00:00 | ['Present', 'Corruption', 'Future', 'Education'] |
Why I Write, and How it Changed Me | Photo Credit: Green Chameleon
“Why would a hard-nosed businessman become a writer?”
I didn’t know what to say to the middle-aged woman who asked the question at a talk I gave a few weeks ago. I finally replied with something sufficiently vague that she just nodded and sat down.
That evening after the talk, I thought about her question more seriously.
I did so the only way I knew how — by writing about it. The only way that any thought of mine can become intelligible (to me or anyone else) is by going through my process, which always means it ends up in written form.
Stephen King famously said, “Writing is refined thinking.”
My thinking process starts with a particular question or thought that dominates my mind for hours and days. I keep reflecting on it, unconsciously discussing it with myself, and finally putting pen to paper in my journal. From there, my thoughts might expand to a blog post, a talk, a task at work, or a project. I then revise and refine again and again till I have a final product.
My process of thinking — how my words reach paper — is similar to the preparation of coffee. Coffee passes through many levels of refinement before arriving at our palate in liquid form. Raw beans are roasted, ground, mixed with hot water, and then finally strained and served.
So it is with thoughts.
My interest in writing emerged almost five years ago when I began writing “Morning Pages” as heralded by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. I would decipher my dreams, then go on to analyze my previous day’s actions and consider in more depth the fears that were holding me back. I would also celebrate my victories, remind myself of all my good qualities, and appreciate the people and things in my life.
Writing has become like breathing to me; I must write to keep living. It has become my way of making sense of myself.
I don’t write for my loved ones. I don’t write to promote my business. I write for me.
We all need to have that “one thing” at our core — a vehicle for going deep into our essence, exploring the mysterious places of our heart, venturing into our past, and confronting painful moments stored away in our subconscious.
Through this creative endeavor, we face the stored up hurt rather than judging or numbing our feelings away for fear of meeting them. We allow our highest self to express.
In the last few years, my interest has grown into a passion. Writing and I have become one. Writing is me, and I am writing. Writing is now the foundation on which I lay all other building blocks to produce a better life for myself.
Writing transformed me. It released me from the shackles that had held me back since childhood. It has led to many of my spiritual trysts, wherein I meet my true self and feel the power of grace within me. It has penetrated deep into my soul, always asking and forever searching for the best way to be authentic.
I am still in my toddler years as a writer, but already writing has taught me many lessons that I can apply in my life. It has stripped me of my arrogant egoic ways and taken me out of the closed-box mentality that defined me for so many years.
I have been consistently blogging for the past two years, with one blog post per week. I rise early, meditate for twenty minutes, read for another thirty minutes while having my coffee, and then finally journal my thoughts for twenty minutes. These written thoughts then germinate in my mind. When I come back from work in the late afternoon, I find myself ready to write the first draft of a blog post or some words toward a book chapter.
This discipline of sharing myself — my soul — has not only changed me, but has also inspired many others to dig deeper into their hearts and lives. It has culminated in my first book, The Shift, in which I discuss the various human experiences that resonate with all of us.
I know that if I remain faithful to my writing and work to strengthen my inner voice, then I will become more consistently connected to my higher self.
And ultimately, this connection will bring greater mastery of the craft and broader service to humanity.
This is why I write, and why I will keep writing. | https://medium.com/emphasis/why-i-write-and-how-it-changed-me-6afb7ed00a16 | ['Mo Issa'] | 2017-11-23 14:04:41.669000+00:00 | ['Passion', 'Writing', 'Creativity', 'Lessons', 'Purpose'] |
The Lekki Massacre: Nigeria’s Deadly ‘State of Exception’ | By Akin Oyawale, PhD.
EndSARS protesters in Lagos, Nigeria.
Blood on our flag, hunted like a stag; if Nigeria is cursed, we all are the source. ‘The labour of our heroes past, shall never be in vain, to serve with heart… m-i- ght … one nation bound in freedom, peace and unity’. Dying words of a young Nigerian who was martyred and soon became a past hero (only seconds separating him from singing to himself) by the bullets of the same agents that International Relations Theory tells us are their apex guardians; the military prevents external invasion and the police and other cognate agencies maintain law and order in the domestic sphere. Put together, they constitute the coercive elements of the Nigerian state against those who threaten the hierarchy of the Nigerian democratic Leviathan with anarchy-inducing violence — a spectre whose bones are eternally exhumable in even the most advanced states. On the night of October 20 at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos (the financial centre of Nigeria), the resilience and persistence of unarmed protesters against various forms of governance issues and primarily police brutality (epitomised by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad — SARS), triggered the infamous Hobbesian ‘Bellum omnium contra omnes’, translated as ‘the war of all against all’ pretext by the political class.
As Agamben (2005: 7) aptly notes, ‘the state of exception means that lawbreaking can be approved by the highest officials and go unpunished’. What transpires when the dusts of challenges to ‘regimes’ from ordinary Nigerians settle, is the carnage that is more often than not, orchestrated by the country’s own military and what makes these situations peculiar is that, ‘it is impossible to distinguish transgression of the law from the execution of the law, such that what violates a rule and what conforms to it coincide without any reminder’ (Agamben, 2005: 7). Extrajudicial killings of the unarmed unambiguously violate all known laws of civil and international relations and the government is aware that this cannot be openly acknowledged without risking further pariarization among the international community — if one ever existed. The point is to make a (non)violation indistinguishable.
Odi, Zaki Biam, Baga, Abonema, and Zaria, among others represent the major massacres under our civilian Leviathans since 1999. This is not about some ‘barbaric’ Third World (an anachronistic jargon) condition or a ‘post-colonial’ malaise. Trump was adamant about subverting an 1878 US law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits federal/state officials (inclusive of governors and the president) from using the military in domestic affairs, by invoking the Insurrection Act, another law, which permits the POTUS to deploy military force in exceptional domestic situations; a discursive production of the exception (the BLM protests and protesters) is what is required. In Africa, the ‘exception’ was up a notch under colonial regimes, especially with the subpersonhood status attributed to colonised — Black, Brown, or Yellow — peoples.
From smaller repressions such as the Iva Valley massacre to largescale atrocities such as the putting down of the Mau Mau uprising, there was little thought about the right to life of those unfortunate enough to look through the barrels of the colonial government’s largely native adjutants. What I’m saying here is that the state of exception is long-standing and no Western country can save Nigeria as this is a common feature of the modern state (the greatest ‘organised criminals’ in town according to Charles Tilly or ‘wholesale terrorists’ according to Noam Chomsky), from Washington DC to Beijing — it is only a matter of degree and rhetoric. All governments need to do is sanction the powerful signifier of security or law and order and things — mostly bad things — happen. For the EndSARS protest, protesters were ‘hoodlumised’ and ‘hooliganised’, making the exception permissible.
It’s a month since the massacre, and there is a face-saving exercise through judicial panelling or rather ‘panel beating’; ‘beating’ the truth via the circuitous joyride will likely produce the findings they seek. Amnesty International already confirmed 12 deaths. However, it is not whether people died or not, it is the fact that deadly force (by the army) was sanctioned against those who barely posed any immediate physical threat and were largely vulnerable. In a Roald Coarsean sense, if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything. This, we know but we live in a country of perpetual mysteries. How Nigeria’s minister for information and culture, Mr Lai Mohammed will sanction the same exception towards the CNN is up for debate. To the CNN, the regime’s Nigerian Online Commandoes (NOCs) are out to get you, at least virtually; you better watch your back. To me, this is the most recent ‘known unknown’ within Lai’s Paradox (not to be confused with the liar’s paradox). | https://medium.com/@oyawaleakin/the-lekki-massacre-nigerias-deadly-state-of-exception-42d2a570a933 | ['Akinyemi Oyawale'] | 2020-11-21 14:27:01.528000+00:00 | ['Nigeria', 'Endpolicebutality', 'Police Brutality', 'Lekki Massacre', 'Endsars'] |
3 Questions to Help You Stop Feeling Unlucky | Ask Yourself These 3 Questions
The entire premise of the parable is that our judgment of an event creates the accompanying emotion.
So, to not have our happiness or suffering be completely controlled by external events, we need to learn to think differently about how we label them.
Here are three questions to help you reframe your situation:
1. Can you think of events in your life that seemed incredibly unlucky at the time but later turned out to be positive?
Let me help you out with some examples:
A devastating breakup that turned out to be a good thing when you later found the love of your life.
Getting laid off which finally allowed you to turn your passion project into a full-time profession.
Having a mental breakdown which finally forced you to learn coping mechanisms and deal with your trauma.
Developing a disease which kickstarted your journey into wellness and helped you build an empire (think Dave Asprey of Bulletproof Coffee fame).
2. Think of something in your life that feels unlucky now. Can you think of any future outcome (no matter how ludicrous) in which this unlucky thing could be positive?
In biology, there is a phrase known as eustress. The prefix “eu” is derived from the Greek word meaning “good” and the word translates to “good stress.”
The point is this — almost all significant growth in our lives, whether it is building muscles, becoming more emotionally resilient, or developing a better immune system, must be precipitated with a period of stress. The outcome of that stress — whether it builds you up or breaks you down — is entirely up to you. If you cannot imagine a positive external outcome from your current suffering, at least know that any event you experience can be a catalyst to internal personal growth.
3. Think of the events in both points 1 and 2 — did/will any of it matter in 5 years?
Eight years ago, I was a rising star in my company. I was tasked to run increasingly complex projects that were at the boundary of my experience level. One day, one of the large projects I was running went south and we nearly got fired by an important client. To make matters worse, this project was a high profile endeavor that was prominently featured in the news. At the time, I was convinced that the failure was entirely mine and that it would forever tarnish everything I had worked so hard for to that point.
I was wrong.
We think people think about us more than they actually do. Were there repercussions? Sure. Was it as bad as I thought it would be? Definite not. In fact, the client cared more about how we responded to our failure far more than the fact that we actually failed. That project launched a whole new trajectory for my career and today, my main role is to fix problem projects.
Whether it’s a relationship heartbreak or a career setback, most negative things will seem irrelevant in 5 years. When I look back now, I can honestly say that the event was a blessing. Learning to confront a difficult situation in the real world gave me the confidence to deal with far worse problems in the future. It was a lesson no MBA could ever teach me.
But would I say it was lucky or unlucky? I would say it doesn’t matter what I label it — then or now. The event that I thought would define my career seems insignificant in the grand scheme of everything else I have experienced in the last 5 years. | https://medium.com/big-self-society/3-questions-to-help-you-stop-feeling-unlucky-a43dd27cc4cc | ['May Pang'] | 2020-12-01 16:17:15.178000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Personal Development', 'Life Lessons', 'Self', 'Life'] |
100 Favorite Shows: #2 — Game of Thrones | Image from The Agony Booth
“I know death. He’s got many faces. I look forward to seeing this one.”
At the beginning of 2006, a kernel of change popped in the world of television when David Benioff and D.B. Weiss met with George R. R. Martin, the writer of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, and correctly answered the question, “Who is Jon Snow’s mother?” From there, development and production began on what would become the biggest television show of all-time, curving through a tug-of-war between cinema and television, an engaged top brass at HBO, and a botched first take at the pilot. Eventually, Game of Thrones debuted on April 17, 2011, slowly building up its following over the course of the next eight seasons. HBO aftershows, devoted fan podcasts, merchandising and fandoms and conventions on the scale of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. They all helped define the Thrones era of television, which came to an end in the middle of May in 2019. The conclusion came after tens of millions of viewers of the series and the most Emmy nominations of any drama series ever made. Set across Westeros and Essos in a medieval/fictional realm, Game of Thrones followed a jockeying for power to sit on the Iron Throne from numerous players like Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), as well as a marching army of undead “wights” and “White Walkers” that consumed Jon Snow (Kit Harington) from beyond the continent’s icy wall. Multiple spin-offs are in development, but we’ll never again experience the specific feelings conjured by Game of Thrones.
(Spoilers for Game of Thrones are present to all who enter this essay. The show goes beyond the books, too. So, you know, double spoilies!)
“At the beginning,” Shireen Baratheon (Kerry Ingram) reads while leaning into Ser Davos Seaworth’s (Liam Cunningham) cell at Dragonstone. She points to a word, “Aegon,” and explains how the ordering of letters produces the specific sound that defines the conquerer in Westeros lore who inadvertently set the story at the center of Game of Thrones in motion, before continuing her reading of the story to her friend. Neither Shireen nor Davos has particular cause for hope at this juncture of the story as the “Red Woman,” Melisandre (Carice van Houten), continues to poison Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane) against them in the name of the Lord of the Light. But in that brief moment, Shireen is just a friend teaching another friend how to read because he never had such a privilege before. It’s a crucial piece of humanity situated in the middle of season three’s “Kissed by Fire,” promptly overshadowed by the episode’s more iconic moments.
To be fair, it’s not my favorite moment in the episode either. (My eyes weakened in most Stannis and Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) scenes — everyone had their own relationship and preferences with Thrones.) But it is a scene that clearly delineates how vital Shireen is to Davos, and vice versa. Together, they endure the feelings of betrayal, isolation, and otherness inflicted upon them by those they felt they could trust.
The bond between the two is so strong that it persists in the character arc of Davos (and Gilly (Hannah Murray), who also learned how to read from the little Baratheon girl with greyscale), even after her horrific burning at the stake from Melisandre’s prompting. As the series was winding to an end, the second episode of season eight, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” featured a quiet moment between a different little girl in Winterfell (Bea Glancy’s Teela, who also had greyscale and spoke with Shireen’s spirit) and Davos and Gilly.
When Teela expresses her desire to fight in the Battle of Winterfell, Davos and Gilly find a tether to Shireen within her. Rendered speechless, Davos can only affirm Gilly’s understated request for Teela to keep her and her baby safe in the crypts of Winterfell. Teela isn’t Shireen, but she is a reminder of the humanity that often broke through the gray, gloomy world of Westeros; she’s a reminder of why they’re fighting on the side of the living in the first place.
This episode presents such an issue through Teela, through every hug, tear, and vow of protection for characters, even through Samwell Tarly (John Bradley) bestowing his family’s sword, Heartsbane, on Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen) in the name of Jorah’s father, Jeor (James Cosmo), who fought for Sam seasons ago. It’s a move that comes just episodes after Jorah passed Longclaw onto Jon Snow and it’s a decision that eliminates any twisted notions of familial loyalty and shame. It’s a gesture that shows how we’re impacted by the people we held dear in the past and the ways in which we pass those same sentiments down to others.
Image from Mashable
“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is filled with these Davos-Gilly, Jorah-Sam type interactions that introduce moments between characters who were major aspects of Thrones and had hardly met beforehand. There’s one particular scene in this calm-before-the-apocalyptic-storm episode which features the entire cast (sans King’s Landing players) gathered around a table and developing a strategy for fighting the Army of the Dead. It’s just one moment, but it’s almost hard to take in what’s actually being said because the collection of characters in one frame rivals the “Portals” sequence from Avengers: Endgame. After eight years, characters from the south, north, east, and west had all gathered — every journey led to that moment.
We see Jon Snow delivering a very Captain America-esque inspirational speech (“Our enemy doesn’t tire,” he implores), Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) infuses the debate with his own battle experience, Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) provides his Three-Eyed Raven foresight into the Night King’s intentions, and Samwell is the one to ask why the Night King wants Bran (because “Death is forgetting” and Bran is the memory of the living). Across the table, we see Theon and Tormund (Kristofer Hivju), Beric (Richard Dormer) and Arya (Maisie Williams). All the various perspectives and histories we involved ourselves in for countless sprawling hours had all converged and come into play for this moment. Isn’t that astounding?
It’s a testament to how much work Game of Thrones put in to earn these pay-offs with major ensemble pieces starring characters dialoguing with one another. All the time we spent beyond the wall with Jon and Tormund made us care about and root for them as vital characters in the story, just as all the time we spent traveling across a continent with Jaime and Brienne (Gwendoline Christie). It’s important to understand the perspectives of all characters, so we can feel that conflict within us when they clash.
Take the aforementioned “Kissed by Fire,” for example. The episode begins with Beric dueling The Hound (Rory McCann) to the death, but we’ve seen both sides of their journey to that point and we’re not necessarily rooting for either of them to die. They possess two perspectives we truly care for. It’s the same thing with Melisandre, who kills Shireen and brings the beloved Jon Snow back to life. Or in “Beyond the Wall” when a ragtag group of fighters (Jon, Tormund, Jorah, The Hound, Beric, Gendry (Joe Dempsie), and Thoros of Myr (Paul Kaye)) are assembled to retrieve a wight and bring it to Cersei as proof of the undead. Their initial bristling at one another (Jon v. The Hound, Gendry v. Thoros) is eventually replaced with Dungeons and Dragons type teamwork when Gendry slashes a hammer against a wight and Beric ignites a flaming sword, illuminating their various attributes.
Image from Pinterest
Game of Thrones always possessed moments like these, when the enemy of one character was the friend of another. But ultimately, the characters who made it so far as to provide stellar turns in critical installments of the series were the ones who understood the value of a cooler head in Westeros. It’s depicted in “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” when Brienne, Jaime, Tormund, Davos, Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), and Podrick (Daniel Portman) sit around a fire and reminisce about all the battles they’ve survived and all the times they fought House Stark. Only to see their journeys wind up in the same castle at the same hearth, fighting for the same Starks they once hated.
This was Game of Thrones. It was one part fantasy epic with massive amounts of innovative world-building and one part political drama on par with any HBO walk-and-talk we’d seen before. Yet, this combination was wholly unique and will likely forever remain unparalleled. For every awe-inspiring set piece with dragons flying overhead, we had three scenes of delightfully clever and dynamic characters hashing out their perspectives. It could be a swords-and-sandals picture, it could be a fantasy lore deeper than Tolkien, it could be horror (a zombified Ned Umber still haunts me), it could be romance, it could be on The Soup, it could be everything a person could want from a television phenomenon built on appointment viewing and metatextual conversations on a weekly basis. (I partook in this, too, with my own series of Thrones power rankings for the eighth season.) And it was all unfolding on television, like no other global talking point on a Harry Potter-scale that we’d seen before for the medium!
Game of Thrones was mind-shattering brawls (like “Hardhome,” written by Benioff and Weiss and directed by Miguel Sapochnik), impossible bottle episodes (“The Watchers on the Wall,” littered with chills-inducing moments), satisfying developments (“The Lion and the Rose,” from Martin himself), and installments I’ve still shielded my eyes from after multiple rewatches (“The Mountain and the Viper,” from Benioff, Weiss, and Alex Graves). And none of these installments even came from my favorite season, the third, or my favorite writer, Bryan Cogman (who understands Thrones better than anyone). None came from Michelle MacLaren or David Nutter because the creative team on Thrones was so deep and well-established that even iconic moments could just spring up whenever; they didn’t have to be the culmination of a season-long build-up. They could just be the result of episodes moving the story one step further, with a slew of narratives playing out simultaneously, moving characters from location to location logically and devoting them to thematic conversations (about redemption, loss, revenge, and greed, among others) along the way. It belongs in the pantheon of the greatest stories ever told.
But of course, “when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” as Cersei enlightens Ned Stark (Sean Bean) in season one’s “You Win or You Die,” ahead of Ned’s impending, shocking death. Yes, characters can build bonds on roads that curve through Riverrun and yes, they can put aside their differences to capture a wight. Ultimately, though, they must be wary. You must always be on edge in Westeros because, like it or not, every character is in the game of thrones. Jon may not want the throne, but he’s playing the game. Tormund may not understand the throne, but he’s in the game. Always be on the lookout for the nefarious figures of the world because if you notice them too late (like Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) does in “The Winds of Winter”), you don’t get a second chance at survival.
Image from Syfy Wire
It’s hard to trust people in Westeros, so when characters do find worthy allies, they must hold onto them like warmth in an icy field beyond the wall. As Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) gravels at the end of “The Climb,” chaos is no pit in their cutthroat world; it’s a ladder. “Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try it again. The fall breaks them,” Littlefinger says to Lord Varys (Conleth Hill), depicting his viewpoint of the world. “And some are given a chance to climb. They refuse. They cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.” He’s not entirely wrong; the world of Game of Thrones is rife with political posturing, maneuvering, backstabbing, and misguided power-grabbing.
However, his philosophy is not the only way forward in Thrones (after all, it eventually gets him killed). The true way to survive in Westeros is somewhere in the middle of Jon’s “let’s all come together and love each other” ideals, Melisandre’s devotion to the Lord of Light, and Littlefinger’s belief that we only climb upwards and eventually topple. Be wary, yes. Be ambitious, yes. But never let these virtues intrude on your loyalty, your love, your faith. The only way to win the game of thrones is to embrace the rare sentiments of Westeros that the throne dares to obliterate.
Image from Goat of Thrones
Of course, that doesn’t stop characters from embracing their own agendas. The characters occupying King’s Landing for the majority of the early seasons are engaged in a number of conniving plots with myriad moving pieces across the Westeros-themed chess board. The plots ranged from Tyrion’s “drink and know things” clever endeavors that involved heroics at the Battle of the Blackwater and tongue lashings that would soar over Joffrey’s (Jack Gleeson) head, clue Shae (Sibel Kekilli) into what others in the south knew of her loyalties, and deeply annoy his father, Tywin (Charles Dance), who always demanded impossible perfection from children disinclined to provide it.
In these early seasons, though, for as much as Tyrion is depicted as the wisest character in the show, it’s still Tywin running the politics of the continent. He is constantly arranging marriages and writing letters to faraway houses, but the audience is never privy to the endgame intentions behind them. With hindsight, we can see Tywin making a plethora of decisions as King Joffrey’s hand to ensure Lannister dynasties for centuries to come. However, we can also see that the constant impediments were people unwilling to blindly follow his bidding. Sometimes, that would come in the form of his children rebuking the Lannister way of life and sometimes, it would come as a result of a disruptive house, like when the Tyrells come to town and muck up the preordained hierarchy.
The matriarch of the House, Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns (Diana Rigg), matches Tywin’s cleverness and strategics every step of the way, but she’s never flustered by the ceaseless cruelty emanating from the Lions. Olenna understands who Tywin is and never mistakes him for a lesser threat (It’s a “rare enough thing” to witness a man “living up to his reputation,” she quips in the negotiations of house wedding), proving that experience still counts for a great deal in Westeros. Eventually, Olenna outlasts Tywin, but she never gets the better of the Lannisters. Even perfectly prepared characters who climb the ladder still manage to slip on a rung.
After all, in Thrones, experience counts for a great deal, but it’s also what pushes many in the series to advocate for a “breaking of the wheel,” changing the system so the immense failings of the houses in power are never allowed to suffocate those below them again. That’s an important part of the game, too. True-hearted characters grow weary of the ruling powers and seek out the leaders they believe in and want to fight for, rather than get conscripted to do so. As such, Daenerys Targaryen’s place in the game is a vital antidote to the cyclical selfishness at the top of King’s Landing.
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Barristan Selmy (Ian McElhinney) is dismissed from his lifelong appointment to the King’s Guard by Joffrey in “The Pointy End” and, at first, he’s wounded by the disgraceful display. This rage eventually transitions to relief as he finds his way to Essos and Dany, a ruler he genuinely believes the virtue behind. His loyalty is supported by Jorah, another exiled figure in Dany’s orbit, because they can see the value in abandoning tradition in favor of righteousness.
Tyrion, too, is later swept up by Dany’s supposed quest for chain-breaking across the world. He spends the entirety of his post-season four tenure endearing himself to Dany and earning the eventual title of Hand to the Queen. On the one hand, it’s a satisfying pay-off, as Dany prepares to head west (Tyrion consoles her concerns with “How about the fact that this is actually happening?,” alluding to the lengthy tenure Dany embarked upon for the first six seasons), but it’s also a testament to Daenerys’ intoxicating power over those who view her as change, at long last, in the world. Barristan, Jorah, Tyrion, eventually Jon. They all shed their world-weary streaks of depression when they met Daenerys, a champion of peace they felt would improve the world. That pathos endured much longer than Tywin’s logos and ethos-centric strategies. (Too much pathos, though?)
Ultimately, I think the gravitation surrounding Daenerys is due, in large part, to her legacy beyond just seeking to reclaim the throne in the name of Tagraryen and in the name of prosperity for all. It’s also because she seeks to ensure that her years of legacy-building in Essos were not for naught. Moments before naming Tyrion the Hand, she breaks off her fling with Daario Naharis (Ed Skrein and Michiel Huisman) in order to ensure that the Second Sons he leads will keep the peace she established in Meereen while she seeks reclamation elsewhere.
Yes, Dany’s story is easily read as a white savior narrative (her Targaryen genes only occasionally impede her desire to free the Unsullied, unite the Dothraki, and learn the languages of every culture she encounters), but that doesn’t change the fact that she genuinely sought to change the wrongful way of life in areas removed from Westeros that she would never have been privy to without her prior exile. It’s a turn of the exiled leading the exiled, as Daenerys gathers her supporters through love (her initial relationship with Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) endears herself to all who suspect she might solely be invested in power) and through revision of tradition (Slaver’s Bay becomes the Bay of Dragons). The massive fleet installed behind House Targaryen indicates how powerful pure-hearted belief can be in Game of Thrones.
After all, Daenerys isn’t the only one who fields a team like the 2010–11 Miami Heat. In “The Winds of Winter,” Jon Snow is finally proclaimed the King in the North by the heads of houses that have stood behind the Starks for years. “True friends are found on the battlefield,” they proclaim, stating that Jon’s heroics in the Battle of the Bastards (in a moment of valor that is as admirable as it is hysterical, considering Jon’s supposed death wish) are proof that Ned Stark’s blood runs through him (in a rousing moment from Lyanna Mormont (Bella Ramsey) and that he is the true King in the North. Jon has proven his loyalty to the northern cause and the Manderlys, Mormonts, Glovers, and more proclaim him their king because they believe in him — just as those in Essos believe in Daenerys. It’s a marked juxtaposition to Cersei’s eventual crowning as the ruler on the Iron Throne, which is proclaimed solely by Qyburn (Anton Lesser), one of the only men on Cersei’s side, save for the fealty of peasants.
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No one believes in Cersei the way they believe in Jon and Dany. This would gnaw at her if she wasn’t primarily obsessed with power and careless as to how she got there. In “The Winds of Winter,” the opening (ominously scored by the always impeccable Ramin Djawadi) is a carefully plotted and clearly spaced sequence that depicts Cersei’s malicious intentions to clear the entire chess board of King’s Landing. From the meddlesome Tyrells to the obnoxious High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce) to the old advisory guard traced within Grand Maester Pycelle (Julian Glover), the episode’s beginning eliminates them all in an explosion of wildfire (which also clears out some innocent civilians) vastly more harmful than anything the “Mad King” ever managed to accomplish.
As the green fire rolls throughout King’s Landing, Cersei smugly smirks (no one could grin and sip a glass of wine (she drinks because “it feels good”) in satisfaction quite like Headey) and basks in her newfound freedom from those who interrupted her path to power. To arrive there, Cersei felt the need to dabble in horrors Tywin was never quite capable of, but from her point of view, each rung must be conquered at any cost. Even if her beloved son, Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman), commits suicide as a result. Even if she is exactly what she accuses her enemies of being. Even if the episode ends with Dany and her team of all-stars finally sailing west, preparing to challenge a rule that only just begun, borne on the blood of the innocent, the Roses, and the ones who dared to eclipse Cersei’s own shadow of power.
The wildfire explosion was meant to vault Tommen (and, by proxy, Cersei) to power in King’s Landing, but it was also a means to revenge for Cersei, who desired nothing more than seeing those who upheld the cult-like religious sector, the High Septon, suffer. Beyond just the viscous, unforgivable revenge treatment ascribed to Septa Unella (Hannah Waddingham), her revenge against the High Sparrow inadvertently leads to Tommen’s death. Revenge is just disgusting. It’s disgusting how Cersei upholds it. It’s disgusting how Dany later usurps Cersei’s own cruelty in “The Bells” to seek revenge for Rhaegal’s death. It’s disgusting how Walder Frey (David Bradley) betrays the codes of invited guests in the Twins to murder Robb (Richard Madden), Talisa (Oona Chaplin), Catelyn (Michelle Fairley), and Grey Wind Stark in the infamous Red Wedding of “The Rains of Castamere” to get revenge on Robb’s Frey marriage double back.
And, of course, it’s disgusting how Arya later pays the cruelty back to Walder Frey (it has to do with pies and I don’t feel keen to discuss it further, but hey, if Lannisters can pay their debts, then the North can remember). Revenge is a massive theme on Game of Thrones (from the bombastic blow-ups to the careful plotting Olenna later devotes herself to, rather than mere survival for the Tyrells), but it’s never more distinctly depicted than in Arya’s repeated reading of her list of people in Westeros she wants to kill. Those who killed her father, those who kidnapped Gendry, those who kidnapped her. Arya has many people she seeks to kill (which also contributed to part of the show’s deliriously funny meme culture, as real-life Arya lists have grown in the past four years) and as the series progresses, she actually manages to check off a couple names.
I felt roused by many of Arya’s vengeful quests, feeling like the horrific deaths of many noble Stark men were avenged by her satisfying actions, but I was also concerned that she was dedicating herself to a path that had only ended terribly for every character who became consumed by revenge over the course of the series. As Arya is one of my favorite characters, I was truly heartened by her final moment with Sandor Clegane (the Hound) while the city crumbled in “The Bells.”
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The Hound’s entire character arc was built around a confrontation with his brother, Gregor, the Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, Conan Stevens, and Ian Whyte), to get revenge on his sibling’s past abuse that left him scarred for life. When we meet the Hound, he’s seemingly a brutalizing thug who loves to kill peasants and then show frightened children his bloodied teeth. The more time we spend with him, though, the more we see the aching humanity beneath his terrifying veneer. While serving as Joffrey’s personal muscle, he goes to great lengths of personal risk to aid Arya and Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) from the wrath of the Lannisters. Yes, the Hound is a grown man set in his ways who sees revenge as a concrete mission. But he also posseses a sensitive side that appears when he’s paired on a journey with Arya, undergoing a holistic redemption arc that elucidates the shades of grey throughout Thrones.
The only thing better than Thrones’ perfectly-executed (and multiple) redemptive character arcs was when these same arcs were brought to satisfying conclusions. When Arya and the Hound meet again before the Battle of Winterfell, she probes him and asks why he’s fighting for people who aren’t himself, to which he replies, “I fought for you, didn’t I?” (He also has a hysterical line when Beric, another “miserable, old shit” who was once on Arya’s list, arrives, prompting the Hound to growl, “Thoros isn’t here anymore, so I hope you’re not about to give a sermon.” (He’s referencing Thoros’ perpetual resurrection of Beric through the Lord of Light.) “Because the Lord of Light’s gonna wonder why he brought you back nineteen times just to watch you die when I chuck you over this fucking wall.”)
The Hound’s preceding sentiments are true, but not solely in the sense that he fought for Arya’s safety. He also fought for her innocence, protecting her from witnessing the horrors of her bleeding brother and the sliced neck of her mother. And he does it one last time in “The Bells,” instructing her to leave King’s Landing while she can. His vengeance against the Mountain is too far gone to rescue, but her desire to get retribution versus Cersei would only result in death and more Stark heartbreak. At a certain point, Arya’s need for revenge against Cersei became a mission for her own satisfaction, entirely removed from the need for justice for both Ned and Sansa. The Hound recognized it; he fought for Arya one last time.
All of these characters, all of these themes — they’re as timeless as Shakespeare. We still study Hamlet today because it has plenty to teach us about the permanent nature of humans across centuries. The same is true of Game of Thrones. These characters exist in a nonsense plane, but they’re just as human as those of us who will die having never seen a dragon before. The siblings on Arrested Development and Succession, for example, resent their parental figures just as much the Lannister trio hates how Tywin has corruped them into pawns for his purpose of power, rather than as children to love.
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These shades of grey in Game of Thrones return at the end of “Kissed by Fire” (a crucial Lannister episode) when Tywin demands Tyrion marry Sansa and Cersei marry Loras (Finn Jones). As born into the conniving Lannister schemes as Tyrion is, he’s still regarded by many Houses for his loyalty, trustworthiness, and preeminent focus on kindness when engaging with others. That’s a Lannister who is more than what people hate the Lannisters believe him to be. And even though Cersei is a bottomless pit of cruelty, she’s also wounded by Tywin’s usage of her to continue marrying men from other houses rather than wielding power herself.
These Daddy issues are intrinsic to what it means to be a Lannister. It’s the birthright of the three siblings to be despised and used by Tywin Lannister. In “You Win or You Die,” Tywin guts a deer and espouses his belief of what a family is good for to Jaime, who has likely heard this speech before. Tywin directs, “Your mother’s dead. Before long, I’ll be dead. And you and your brother and your sister and all of her children.” He continues, “All of us dead, all of us rotting in the ground. It’s the family name that lives on. It’s all that lives on. Not your personal glory, not your honor, but family.” For the entire lives of Jaime, Cersei, and Tyrion, they were told that their name matters more than their own lives and their own choices. The influence of Tywin is a palpable deciding factor for how many greet the initial side-character villainy of Jaime Lannister. But as we see with his siblings and with the Hound, the world of Thrones is never good versus evil.
The best moment of “Kissed by Fire” (as I mentioned before) comes when Jaime and Brienne take a bath together at Harrenhal. He’s missing his hand, he’s just made the choice to forego milk of the poppy during Qyburn’s surgery, and he’s still held prisoner by a woman who values oaths above all else. That’s a tricky dynamic for the man in Westeros most commonly associated with oath-breaking (he’s the Kingslayer, of course) after his stabbing of the “Mad King.” But as he slips into a humid haze, Jaime tells Brienne his story of why he stabbed King Aerys when he had previously sworn to protect him.
He’s bloodied and shaggy-haired as he regales Brienne with the story that fuels his character development throughout Game of Thrones. Coster-Waldau’s hushed, weary tones are utterly captivating throughout, drawing the viewer in closer as we hang on every word from his bitter retelling. He’s more than a Kingslayer, more than a Lion (judged by the Wolf), more than a Lannister even. “Jaime,” he whispers to Brienne when she catches his fainting body at the climax of the story and she calls out a request of help for “the Kingslayer!” “My name is Jaime.”
No redemption arc on Game of Thrones was better than that of Jaime Lannister’s (whose POV chapters in Martin’s books are also the best). Not only does he prove himself to be more than a villain to root against in the name of moralistic Starks, but he proves himself worthy of even piercing Brienne’s staunch armor of loyalty. This embrace in the bath eventually leads to Jaime’s knowing rescue of Brienne of Tarth in “The Bear and the Maiden Fair.” This, in turn, leads to Brienne vouching for Jaime when he arrives as a Lannister in Stark territory at the end of “Winterfell.” Daenerys is frustrated by indecision and Jon and Sansa are splitting with anger at the mere sight of Jaime Lannister in their family’s castle. But Brienne stands up for the man who made a pledge to “fight for the living” and it saves him. Jaime is the epitome of everything Game of Thrones stands for: characters shedding their preconceptions, making decisions to come into their own, building bonds across continents and years. It’s all right there in Jaime Lannister.
At his birth, he was fated to be a Lion, just as Robb was fated to be a Wolf and Margaery was fated to be a Rose and so on. But beyond this sense of fate, there is also the element of choice. Bran Stark’s arc, for example, in set in motion by Jaime at the end of the pilot, “Winter Is Coming.” After he pushes Bran from the window, Bran is forced to reconcile his lost dream of being a knight in favor of being the world’s memory and a seer into all timelines.
Jaime’s actions resulted in paralysis for Bran, but they also ensured that Bran became what he was always meant to be in Westeros. As Bran mentions, Jaime isn’t the agent of cruelty he once was, but he “still would be if [he] hadn’t pushed [Bran] out of that window.” And Bran would still be Brandon Stark, rather than the Three-Eyed Raven. Choice is vital as a disruptor in themes of fate and blind categorization based on identity. Just as Jaime proved himself capable of transcending Lannister delineations, so too do we see characters proving themselves to be more than what they’re initially depicted as. Gendry is not just a smith’s apprentice, he’s the son of a ruler with an intrinsic key for the Lord of LIght’s intentions. Tyrion is not just a dwarf hated by his own family, he’s a once-in-a-generation brain who is also capable of unleashing vitriol against blood-thirsty masses, ungrateful for his past service to them.
This idea that characters are more than what they’re initially fated and perceived to be is most gorgeously present in my favorite character, Jon Snow. At first, Jon is shown to be just another Stark sibling (“Ned Stark’s bastard,” in fact) who wants to head to the Wall and serve the rest of his days protecting the realm from the specters and ghouls that lurk beyond. By the end, he’s the reluctant King in the North who wants to serve his family and his folk as much as he wants to become the next Mance Rayder (Ciarán Hinds) and live out his days in northern solitude.
But what Jon Snow becomes is not the key to his character. It’s the truth behind Jon Snow’s identity that is intrinsic to the greater themes of Game of Thrones. Throughout season six, Bran flashes back to the youth of Ned Stark (portrayed in these sequences by Robert Aramayo) and slowly teases out the long-awaited reveal (especially for book readers, who long pondered the R+L=J (Rhaegar + Lyanna = Jon) theory) of what transpired in the Tower of Joy during Robert’s Rebellion. In “The Winds of Winter,” the moment finally arrives as we see a grief-stricken Ned (who can potentially hear Bran’s calling) kneel by his sister Lyanna’s (Aisling Franciosi) deathbed. He comforts her and she whispers in his ear, “Promise me,” as a nearby attendant passes Ned a baby. The camera zooms in on the baby’s newborn face, Djawadi’s score swells, and we smash cut to the weary adult face of Jon Snow, sitting in the halls of Winterfell, prepared to be proclaimed King in the North.
That’s the whole story right there. That’s what Game of Thrones is all about and it transpires in the series’ greatest moment, which still sends a barrage of chills across my body whenever I watch it. It’s a moment that shows Jon Snow is the the ruler who was promised, the rightful king of Westeros, the heir to the Iron Throne. Above all, it shows Jon as the long-awaited bridge between ice and fire, direwolves and dragons, Starks and Targaryens. (Crucially, Rhaegar (Wilf Scolding) and Lyanna were in love with one another and they married before Jon (Aegon) was born, showing that the hero of the story was a product of love, rather than a product of kidnapping and rape.)
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However, it’s not a moment that usurps the idea of “cripples, bastards, and broken things” at the heart of Game of Thrones (like how The Rise of Skywalker eliminated the idea that a hero (Rey) can come from anywhere). Jon Snow doesn’t know of his lineage. In that moment, he’s still “Ned Stark’s bastard” at heart and it’s “Ned Stark’s bastard” who is proclaimed King in the North by myriad Houses who ignore the tradition of bastards being unable to rule and instead unite behind Jon regardless. Jon is pure of heart and worthy of ruling (the White Wolf) whether he’s a Targaryen or not. That’s the crucial piece of this. Jon will not change based on his newfound lineage. He was anointed as the hero because of how he acts, not because of who he is. That’s what Game of Thrones is all about.
In most stories of high fantasy, Jon’s brother Robb would be the hero of Game of Thrones as the shimmering knight set out to defend his family’s honor against dastardly do-badders. His shocking mid-series death leaves us shaking our heads in retrospect (Robb, just get the fuck out of Riverrun and leave the Karstarks alone) because it’s hard for a good man to actually be the king. Only the ruthless ones are cut out for seizing power. Robb’s death (along with Ned’s) created an “anyone can die” mentality for Thrones that ultimately wounded the show in a counter-intuitive sense (it was unclear to me why people wanted Bronn (Jerome Flynn) to die), but it also created a sense that the heroes of the story were not who we expected.
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Instead, the characters left by “The Winds of the Winter” are the ones truly central to the story of Game of Thrones. It’s a bit of subversion as the unexpected heroes of Thrones are actually Jon Snow, the bastard, Arya Stark, the overlooked little girl, Sansa, the superficial princess, Tyrion, the dwarf, Davos, the Onion Knight, and so on. They’re all more than what others perceive them to be initially and they’re all what the story of Thrones is about because the story of Thrones belonged to anyone.
Anyone could be a hero on Game of Thrones. Gendry rose up from Flea Bottom in a bit of medieval meritocracy. Bron sang “The Dornish Man’s Wife” and grew to care for Jaime and Tyrion, even though he mostly felt like looking out for himself. Samwell Tarly illustrated the need for different roles, aside from rulers and fighters, in Westeros as he grew out of the Night’s Watch (changing them with honesty, care, and an appreciation for venison stew along the way) to become the new Maester at the Citadel. After all, we need readers and scholars just as much as we need archers and swords.
For as much as Thrones belonged to the characters from all corners of the world, it was also, at its heart, a Stark story. (This was perfect for me, as I write this with an Arya action figure and Stark notebook in plain view, both gifted by a dear friend with whom I shared the finale viewing experience.) After all, the final, breathless moments of the series depict Jon venturing beyond the wall, Arya sailing west of Westeros, and Sansa being proclaimed the Queen of the North. But it was not an easy road for the characters to arrive at these points. Just like the series grew over time to tackle more daunting episode conceptions, so too did the Starks, who trained as walkers before they became the realm’s most dangerous sprinters.
Much of Bran’s early arc, even when he meets Jojen (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), is built around trying to get to the Wall to be with Jon because he believes the safest place to be is with his trusted sibling. However, the more Bran learns to accept that his destiny in Westeros is to “fly,” as the Three-Eyed Raven (Max von Sydow) proclaims, affirming Bran’s visions that grew removed from riding on horseback, the more he accepts the irrevocable change thrust upon his family.
The same is true of Sansa, who learns (partly through unspeakable acts of violence that will never be justifiable as “teaching moments”) the value of defending her family, her home, and her name. As she tells Littlefinger (whom she’s since grown wise to never trust) in the Godswood, she wishes she could think more about what she has in her life (siblings to fight for, Winterfell to defend), rather than what she wants (to be the prettiest queen in King’s Landing, a dream long since washed away). When Dany makes a plea based on feminism to Sansa to help her reclaim the Seven Kingdoms, Sansa is no longer the “little dove” who is fooled by smiles and rosy cheeks. Instead, she only replies to Dany with a demand for the freedom of the North.
And of course, the same is true of Arya, who trains in the art of discipline, balance, and skill beyond just ruthless sword cutting and arrogant arrow-based show-boating. At first, she trains with Syrio Forel (Miltos Yerolemou), who instills the “Not today” refrain for the God of Death within her. En route to Braavos, she trains with Jaqen H’ghar (Tom Wlaschiha, even though “a man has no name”) to learn that the most biting attacks come from deception and masks. To become as skilled as she thinks she is, as she wants to be, Arya must learn to not only trust her eye, but her intuition (which also leads to her aligning with Sansa over Littlefinger at the end of season seven). It results in one of the series’ most satisfying pay-offs as she meets Melisandre (who once told her she’d close many eyes forever) again in “The Long Night,” which unfolds in three distinct sequences, each resembling a different genre of action). Then, the Red Woman reminds her that some eyes that need to be closed are blue eyes. Watching Arya grow from a little girl balancing on one leg to the one who ends the Long Night? That’s why I love this show.
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For the most part, the Starks managed to rise above the corrosive, corruptible nature of power in Westeros. (Even though the Lord of Light is real and Jon literally died and was resurrected, he still struggles to convince people about the greater threat of the White Walkers. Sometimes, the laws of men take precedence over the laws of gods.) Many rulers in the series exist within echo chambers of assistants and loyal servants who assure them that they are the “true heir” to the Iron Throne. Melisandre convinces Stannis that the throne is his destiny. Viserys (Harry Lloyd) promises Daenerys that the throne will belong to the Targaryens once again. Robb is only ever propped up by the northerners as the one who must rule Westeros, rather than simply Winterfell. Of course, this power never works out. (Even Samwell’s proposal of democracy in “The Iron Throne” is met with laughter and dismissal, showcasing the elites’ disinterest in the common people. What was Hodor (Kristian Nairn) if not a brainwashing trial vessel for one of the Stark heirs?) Dany, Stannis, and Robb each end up dead, but they torch a violent path before they part the mortal realm. After all, history is made by a few shakers and travelers, but it’s often the “little birds” (as we see in Cersei’s plot to blow the Sept) who do the laborious work.
The fatal flaw behind each of their power grabs is that, when it came time to commit to their actions, they abandoned the humanity that got them there in the first place. In her youth, Sansa willfully trusted others solely because she was desperate for some sense of joy that she hadn’t felt since she pestered her father to take her south. That’s a history expressed emotionally in her gripping hug of Theon when he turns back up in Winterfell towards the middle of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.” It’s also a history that Daenerys fails to understand when she operates in Winterfell as an outsider.
For the audience, the bonds of the Stark family were introduced to us from the very first episode, as they all spent time together. These bonds then stretched across seasons (one of the crucial relationships of the show, Jon and Arya, is depicted sixty-two episodes apart from one another) and anchored us in the seminal hope that they’d one day reunite. When Daenerys has to ask about Jon’s loyalty to Sansa, the connection to Theon, and the identity of Lyanna, it isolates her. She doesn’t fully grasp that a history was forged in Winterfell beyond the reach of the Targaryens.
By the time characters like Jon and Arya reunite, though, they’re aging into new positions on the series. The first season of Game of Thrones saw characters like Ned and Robert (Mark Addy) as the grizzled veterans of Westeros, but they’re not still kicking and drinking by season eight. Instead, it’s characters like Tyrion and Jaime who have aged into those positions, having lost a couple steps both mentally and physically. It’s Jon, Sam, and Edd (Ben Crompton) — no longer the young guns of the Night’s Watch — thinking back to where they started as a trio to become some of the last at Castle Black, like J.D., Turk, and Elliot rising through the Sacred Heart ranks. Even the youngest characters aged from the kids to the X-factors (Arya and Gendry sleep together after she quips that he “doesn’t know any other rich girls.” Podrick indulges in a full glass of wine, rather than just half a cup). Yes, characters could be absent for seasons at a time, but they would still grow and develop in the interim, occupying the roles the others possessed before them and striving to be better.
This sense of humanity is instilled in the prior heroism of (some of) these veterans. The honorable Ned Stark, of course, vowed to keep Lyanna’s secret about Jon’s identity (“Promise me, Ned”) because it was her dying request and he would never renege on that, even when it besmirched him in the eyes of Catelyn. It’s “the things we do for love,” after all. Jaime uses the one-liner for purposes of attempted murder and Bran uses it in a moment of acting oddly high school with Jaime, but the sentiment rings true when it’s harnessed sincerely. There’s genuine heroism in the things we do for love. Just as some rulers failed to see the humanity behind their thirst for power, so too does the Night King fail because he’s unable to grasp why his enemies are fighting. It’s not about their survival; it’s about their love.
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However, this also depicts the tragedy of Jon Snow. His character is tragic because he so deeply wants to fight for love, but his honorable, wildling-trusting nature dictates his moral code and prevents him from doing so because he’s needed to fight for the world. It would be so much easier to stay in the hot springs cave with Ygritte (Rose Leslie) after they have sex and she gently suggests, “Let’s not go back.” It’s the only thing Jon wishes they could do when he holds Ygritte’s dying body in his arms a season and a half later. Their kiss at the top of the wall in “The Climb” remains a soaring, emotional highpoint of Game of Thrones, providing us a seminal moment of humanity amidst the tired chaos and bleary destruction. Jon would be so much happier if he could just stay in that cave and love a woman as she loves him for the rest of their days.
Which is why it’s all the more heartbreaking when he does leave that cave. He does abandon Ygritte. He does watch her last breath of life. But he could never change his course of action because he’s resigned to the fact that that’s not his purpose in the story. The Lord of Light brings him back for a reason and it isn’t to stay in a cave with Ygritte or Daenerys or whomever. It was to save the realm from annihilation.
“Every time I come back, I’m a little bit less,” Beric informs Arya when she pleads for Thoros to bring Ned back to life as he does for Beric. It’s not a life (or second life or third life) that he would wish upon anyone, but it’s a life he experiences all the same. And it’s the one Jon is forced into, as well. For the hero of the story, for the favorite character of many, it seems almost like an injustice that Jon is forced to lose the shredded hope within him when he returns to a plane of existence that actively works against him and eradicates the humanity still remaining in him. The only thing worse than seeing Ygritte die is being the only one trusted to kill Daenerys and save humanity from the “Mad Queen.” Yet, Jon is forced to do both.
Image from IGN
It’s cruel, but it’s necessary, especially in Jon’s mind. When he speaks with Beric beyond the wall about the connection they have as two of the only people to ever return to life, courtesy of the Lord of Light, they discuss the burden that they must bear, sacrificing their own happiness for the good of others. Beric concedes that he doesn’t know what they’re fighting for with the Lord of Light in mind and he acknowledges that death is the enemy that always wins. “You and I won’t find much joy while we’re here,” he admits to Jon. “But we can keep others alive. We can defend those who can’t defend themselves.” They are the shields of humanity, laying down their lives and joys so that others may experience them. Yes, it’s easier to stay in the cave with Ygritte. Yes, it’s what I root for — even on rewatches. But Jon cannot ignore the greater calling. For him, it’s enough to know he must fight.
It’s hardly a beautiful sentiment, but it is full of heart in the sense that it contrasts a sunshine-laden kiss atop the wall with a wildling whose days were numbered. Game of Thrones always had the capacity to be beautiful, all the way to the end. Of course, one of the most joyous scenes in the entire series comes in the final season, when Tormund and Jaime convince Brienne to say, “Fuck tradition” and allow herself to be knighted by Jaime.
“In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother, I charge you to defend the innocent,” Jaime says to Brienne, carefully sliding his sword along her shoulder blades before proclaiming her a knight of the seven kingdoms. Even with the army of the undead steamrolling towards Winterfell in just one episode, Thrones still had room for a gorgeous moment of humanity like this. The applause from the room with no ulterior motives aside from pride in Brienne. The affirming nod from Jaime as he shares the realm’s greatest honor with his lifer companion (who would later pay his legacy forward in Westeros’ history book). The purest form of joy expressed in Christie’s face as tears bubble over and a genuine smile bursts across her face. If Game of Thrones built to nothing else, at least it built up to this: a moment of human connection, love, and accomplishment. The sense that it was worth it.
It’s a beautiful scene that comes in the mix of Jaime responding to the “Kingkiller” misnomer and Tormund’s story of giant’s milk and the origin of his Giantsbane surname (“She thought I was a baby!”). But it also leads directly into Podrick carrying the torch of Billy Boyd, in terms of fantasy stories with haunting, foreboding songs, as he croons “Jenny of Oldstones.”
High in the halls of the kings who are gone
Jenny would dance with her ghosts
The ones she had lost and the ones she had found
And the ones who had loved her the most
The ones who’d been gone for so very long
She couldn’t remember their names
They spun her around on the damp old stones
Spun away all her sorrow and pain
These stanzas of the song probe exactly what I love so much about Game of Thrones and still do, even a year after it ended, as it resides in a position of my favorite television drama ever made. (Perhaps not the best, but certainly my favorite.) The stories we forget, the stories we find, the characters we encounter along the way. They’re always there for us. Whether they’re characters we haven’t met in years or characters we see every day, they’re there and they’re close — shaping our hearts and our minds.
The redemption of Jaime Lannister, the fight in the Hound, the determination in Arya, the sacrifice in Jon Snow, the tragedy of Daenerys, the wit of Tyrion, the growth within Sansa. They’re always a part of us, speaking deeper into what it means to be human, even through they are characters who are decidedly foreign to our own world.
But even then, the most relevant part of the song was still to come. Podrick’s voice echoed through the halls as the series came to an end, with only four weeks left and continents to span for experiencing them. His song marked exactly how the world felt about the final season and about beloved television stories, in general, beautiful and heartbreaking as they could be. Game of Thrones is the chorus and the chorus is Game of Thrones.
And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave
Never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave. | https://medium.com/the-television-project-100-favorite-shows/100-favorite-shows-2-game-of-thrones-6bca5197b3e9 | ['Dave Wheelroute'] | 2021-04-15 20:56:28.510000+00:00 | ['HBO', 'Game of Thrones', 'Lists', 'Television', 'A Song Of Ice And Fire'] |
1. Express Js CRUD Tutorial using mongodb.(create) | Create model:
vim user_model.js =======================code==================
const { Schema, model } = require('mongoose') //New Schema toiri kori
const userSchema = new Schema({
title:{
type: String,
required: true,
trim: true
},
description: {
type: String,
required: true,
trim: true
}
}) const user_table = model('user_table',userSchema)//create user_table module.exports = user_table
2. Create form:
vim home.ejs ====================code==========================
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<link href=" https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css " rel="stylesheet" integrity="sha384-giJF6kkoqNQ00vy+HMDP7azOuL0xtbfIcaT9wjKHr8RbDVddVHyTfAAsrekwKmP1" crossorigin="anonymous"> </head>
<body>
<h1>Hello, world!</h1> <form action="/user_create" method="POST">
<input type="text" name="title">
<textarea name="description"></textarea>
<input type="submit" class="btn btn-success" value="Submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>
3. Create Controller:
vim homeController.js ==================code========================= const user_model = require('./user_model') exports.createUserGetController = (req, res, next) => {
res.render('home')
} exports.createUserPostController = async (req, res, next) => {
//console.log(req.body)
//res.send(req.body) let {title,description,options} = req.body let user = new user_model({
title,
description
}) try{ await user.save() //save data,async for await
res.redirect('/') } catch (e) {
console.log(e)
} }
app.js | https://medium.com/@safaetulahasan/1-express-js-crud-tutorial-using-mongodb-create-9e725ace9e7f | ['Safaetul Ahasan'] | 2020-12-17 22:40:47.388000+00:00 | ['Expressjs', 'Nodejs', 'Mongodb'] |
Before the All-Star Game | Half a season of NBA stats and figures of the top 4 and bottom 4 teams
With the second half already in full swing I wanted to take a look at some NBA data of the top 2 and bottom 2 teams in both conferences to see what separates them besides just the wins and losses column.
This was more an exercise in exploratory data analysis (my thanks to https://github.com/Fossj117/NBAdata for the web scraper and @amitkaps who helped me figure out what I needed to get the data ready for dplyr) and I looked at just a few offensive stats. With one being 3 point shots and 2 different ways to take the shot, being as a pull up shot while dribbling the basketball and as a catch and shoot shot from a stationary position and hopefully open. There is a way to verify how open a player is on a particular shot (http://www.gregreda.com/2015/02/15/web-scraping-finding-the-api/) but the data used is just aggregate totals for the first half of the season. Another one is passes, touches, as well as assists. And another being drives to the basket and how many points the driving player gets a game and how many points the team produces a game on the same player driving to the basket.
Golden State Warriors
The Splash Brothers is an apt nickname as 5 players average over 2 attempts a game and 3 players averaging over 3 attempts. Of course attempts splash brothers does not make but the 3 players averaging over 3 attempts make quite a few of them with Stephen Curry at 41.3%, Klay Thompson at 44.6%, and Draymond Green hitting 34.7%.
With the pull-up 3FG being one of the hardest shots to make it is surprising that 1 player (Stephen Curry) takes 4.2 attempts a game, but when that players makes 40.4% we can see why he has free rein. | https://medium.com/medium-rare-only/before-the-all-star-game-34c008996059 | ['Michael Warner'] | 2015-03-02 22:01:15.916000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization'] |
What about integration testing? | What about integration testing? I think that in a service with a lot of interconnections it’s not that easy to write and maintain effective integration testing. | https://medium.com/@carocci-eugenio/what-about-integration-testing-334ba4b75812 | ['Eugenio Carocci'] | 2020-12-17 22:44:25.128000+00:00 | ['Software Testing'] |
Angular ngRx store unit testing | Unit Testing our Store 🧪
Now it’s time to test! 💥
We will use Jasmine as Unit test framework but it’s not mandatory.
Actions 🎬
Testing actions is very easy since we just need to check the good creation of the action object.
Reducer 🔍
In our reducer, we will have 2 test cases:
The initial state
The SetData action
As we will set data, we need a little bit of configuration: resetting the data property from initialState to ensure it will remain the same at the very beginning of each test. Here, we use the afterEach method from Jasmine framework.
Effect️s 🌪️
Testing effects requires more configuration since we need to mock the store and the data provider, the DataService . To achieve, you will find the settings in the definition of the testing module (lines 20–24).
The lines 23–24 allow to define a mocked object DataService containing a list of functions. Then, line 29, we define what value a function will return.
Finally, we have to trigger the effect by adding an action to the action pipeline actions$ . The check is operated by subscribing to the effect as described lines 44–45.
Selectors 🎯
As selectors are just a way to browse into the store features, we can create a complex object similar to our store to check if the selector fetches the correct property.
Here, it’s easier to create states and entities thanks to factories to make it more adaptative to each test case.
What about Features Module State ? 🤔
Unit testing features module state can be done independently for each state as described above.
However, you will face some issues regarding unit testing selectors in a feature module. It requires to change the state to encapsulate our feature state into a root state.
Tip 🃏
The MockStore class provides a very useful property: scannedActions$ . This is an observable on which we can add a subscriber to check all the dispatched actions.
It could be useful when you dispatch several actions in an effect.
Final words 🔚
Unit testing a ngRx Store is really easy in fact, right !? Thanks to the Flux pattern, each part of the store is self-sufficient and can be tested independently.
Feel free to comment if you’ve encountered a specific case which is not covered in this article so far. | https://itnext.io/ngrx-store-testing-cheat-sheet-59e069eb47c | ['Adrien Miquel'] | 2020-10-25 22:33:57.803000+00:00 | ['Ngrx', 'Angular', 'Redux', 'Unit Testing', 'Jasmine'] |
How to Run 30 Machine Learning Models with a Few Lines of Code | MACHINE LEARNING
How to Run 30 Machine Learning Models with a Few Lines of Code
Image by Keira Burton. Source: Pexels
When starting a new supervised Machine Learning project, one of the first steps is to analyze the data, understand what we are trying to accomplish, and which machine learning algorithms could help us achieve our goals. While the scikit-learn library makes our lives easier by making possible to run models with a few lines of code, it can also be time-consuming when you need to test multiple models. However, what if we could run multiple vanilla models at once before diving into more complex approaches and have a better idea of what models in which we should invest our precious time?
That’s what lazy predict tries (successfully) to accomplish. It runs 30 machine learning models in just a few seconds and gives us a grasp of how models will perform with our dataset. To better understand how we can use lazy predict , I created a Titanic Survivor Prediction project so that you can code along. You can find the full notebook here. You can code along with me. Basic experience with Python, Pandas , and scikit-learn will help you better understand what is going on.
Importing and cleaning data
First, let's import pyforest . PyForest imports the 40 most popular Python libraries with one line of code. I wrote an article about it, and you can find it here. I will turn some ugly warning messages off using the warning library. I will also import some metrics libraries. We will need it later on.
import pyforest
import warnings
warnings.filterwarnings("ignore")
from sklearn import metrics
from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score
Now, let's import the dataset we will be using from Kaggle. You can find the dataset on this link. Note that I didn't import Pandas . That's because it comes included with pyforest .
# importing .csv files using Pandas
train = pd.read_csv(‘train.csv’)
test = pd.read_csv(‘test.csv’)
I will skip some Exploratory Data Analysis in this article because our primary focus is to start using lazypredict . However, in my initial EDA that you can find in my GitHub, I noticed that we need to convert the column Sex into numeric. We can easily do that with a lambda function .
train['Sex'] = train['Sex'].apply(lambda x: 1 if x == 'male' else 2)
We can also drop a few categorical columns that we will not be used for this micro project. For homework, I recommend you trying to play around with these features when you finish this article.
train.drop(columns=[‘Name’,’Ticket’,’Cabin’, ‘PassengerId’, ‘Parch’, ‘Embarked’], inplace=True)
Train Test Split
Let's now split our train set into the variables X and y. I will address all the features to X, except Survived, which is our target label.
X = train.drop([‘Survived’], axis=1)
y = train.Survived
And now, let's split the variable into train and test sets. I will go with the default 0.25 for the test size. You can easily add other values using.
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, random_state=42)
Modeling with LazyPredict
Now it's time for some fun. If this is your first time using lazypredict , you will have to install it. To do so, you can type pip install lazypredict in your terminal. If you already have it installed, let's import it to your project. Since this is a classification project, let's import LazyClassifier as well.
import lazypredict
from lazypredict.Supervised import LazyClassifier
Finally, let's run the models and see how it goes.
clf = LazyClassifier(verbose=0,ignore_warnings=True)
models, predictions = clf.fit(X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test)
models
Voilá. You just iterated over 30 models in less than 2 seconds. That is incredibly fast and effortless. However, how can we make sure that these results are accurate? Well, we can now check the results by running a few models and comparing them. For this project, I will test the dataset with a Random Forest and Logistic Regression model. Let’s see if we can get anywhere close to the results we just saw. Let’s start with Random Forest.
rf = RandomForestClassifier()
rf.fit(X_train, y_train)
y_pred = rf.predict(X_test)
As we can see, the accuracy and F1-Score got a very similar result. Let's now try Logistic Regression.
rf = LogisticRegression()
rf.fit(X_train, y_train)
y_pred_lr = rf.predict(X_test)
Again, we got a very similar result. It seems that the results are trustworthy. That was easy.
Conclusion | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-run-30-machine-learning-models-with-2-lines-of-code-d0f94a537e52 | ['Ismael Araujo'] | 2021-03-22 23:17:09.961000+00:00 | ['Projects', 'Data Science', 'Libraries', 'Machine Learning', 'Python'] |
Vasati — the Science of Vedic Architecture and Interior Design | Vasati — the Science of Vedic Architecture and Interior Design
A wonderful example of Vedic architecture in the city of Kanchipuram in South India (Photo by Manhertz Edit, 2017)
Home decor according to the universal laws of nature
If we step in one of Andrea Palladio’s buildings, such as his famous villas in Vicenza, we are filled with an unusual feeling that is unknown when entering into contemporary western buildings. Similar harmony and positive energies are present in the masterpieces of ancient architectural traditions, be they in Europe, India, South America, or any other part of the world. Modern western buildings are rarely able to provide this special feeling to their users and inhabitants.
For the masters of ancient times, it was well known how to build in accordance with the universal laws of nature. These laws form the basis of Chinese Feng Shui, European geomancy, Central American Mayan architecture, and Vastu which has Indian or Vedic origin.
The Vastu writings are about 5,000 years old and according to our knowledge contain the oldest descriptions of these universal laws of nature. The ancient Vastu writings can be found in the Stapatya Veda, which is part of the Atharva Veda. We can hardly find any other architectural tradition that would have survived unchanged from a 5,000-year perspective, and whose principles would be valid to this day. The buildings that withstood the damage and destruction of natural disasters (floods, storms) — in most cases, were built exactly according to the laws of Vastu.
One of Andrea Palladio’s famous villas in Vicenza, the Villa Almarana (Photo by Ágatha Depiné on Unsplash)
The famous Roman architect Vitruvius was certainly familiar with the Vastu writings of India, as the chapters of his legendary architectural writing “De Architectura” refers to one of the classic Vastu writings called Manasara. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio lived 2,000 years ago, and his work inspired Andrea Palladio, who — most probably without knowing it — inserted Vastu principles into his world-famous 16th-century Renaissance architecture. The knowledge behind his work and the origins of his art could have come to light only now by studying the ancient principles of Vedic Architecture. In this way, we can finally understand why do we feel so good in the famous Palladio villas.
Vastu, the origin of Feng Shui
Despite the fact that India and China are separated by the vast mountain range of the Himalayas, there has always been a cultural flow between these two countries. For example, both the ancient Indian martial arts and Buddhism arrived in China over time. The original Sanskrit terms of the various fighting line-ups of kung fu are still known to some masters to this day. Based on the many similarities between Vastu and Feng Shui, it can be concluded that the two architectural cultures have been related to each other for a certain time. While Feng Shui is considered to be about 2,000 years old, systematic descriptions of Vastu can be found as early as the early parts of the Vedic writings, which date back to 5,000 years.
Even more convincing evidence of the ancient age of Vastu is the ancient cities of the 5,500-year-old Indus-Sarasvati culture that were discovered in 1921. As the first town was found close to a village called Harappa, this culture became known as the Harappa civilization. One of the most famous cities of this age is Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan designed in a lattice system. The main streets are north-south and are east-west oriented, dividing the city into rectangular blocks. Mohenjo Daro’s houses were built parallel to the main directions, and in each, we find an inner courtyard. All the cities of the Harappa civilization that were built along the Indus and Sarasvati rivers show a similar structure. They were designed like a chessboard and were divided into square areas of equal size. The temple was erected in the center of the whole city. The town itself was divided into parts according to different functions. These cities did not evolve spontaneously but were built on the basis of systematic plans of pure geometry. All these features strictly follow the Vastu principles, which leads to the conclusion that the science of Vastu already existed before the construction of these cities. The other conclusion is that the Vastu principles are even older than the Vedic scriptures in their written form. (The ancient Vedic knowledge — including the science of architecture — already existed before they have been written down.)
From all these, we can conclude that Vastu is older than Feng Shui and certainly influenced the development of Chinese architectural science. At the same time, we find considerable differences. Among other things, China’s different cultural and climatic conditions may be responsible for these differences. The cold winds of the north and the perpetual military harassment of the Mongols — also from the north — may have led Chinese Feng Shui to view the north as a lower quality direction, while in Vastu (or as we call Vasati) the north — together with the east — is a direction from which favorable energies flow into the house or plot. This is similar to the energetic principles that have been known for hundreds of years in European geomancy and in the work of modern representatives of geomancy. Because of all these Vastu plays a very important role in the architecture and home furnishing culture of the Western world.
Located in South India is the famous temple city of Sri Rangam, which is one of the gems of Vedic architecture. (Photo by Manhertz Edit, Tiruchirappalli, 2017)
Once I was giving a lecture on Vedic architecture in an elementary school. To my greatest surprise, when I started to explain to the kids the five material elements (earth, fire, water, air, ether), they happily told me that they know these elements! As it turned out, four of the five elements were learned in school, only ether was new to them.
So it seems that Vastu is the original, natural art of inviting positive energies into our homes and has been used in the Western world since the time of the famous Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius — without anyone being aware of it.
Vasati — the modern form of Vastu
Vastu is a comprehensive architectural concept. For millennia, houses, temples, and even entire cities have been built on its basis in India. It is based on the natural laws of space energy, and this science is used to bring the living space into harmony with nature and the inhabitants.
The house is like a man’s second body. It works like a lens that focuses on the effects of the natural environment. The quality of the living space affects the health, the mental and emotional state of its residents.
Ancient Indian architecture — Vastu — by discovering the effects of the environmental influences on man has evolved into a scientific system that is based on thousands of years of observation and experience. By this, we mainly mean such influencing factors that we would not even think about, but that affects our health and well-being. These include the Earth’s magnetic field, the subtle structural energies of the Earth and Sun, the orbits of the Sun and Moon, and gravity.
These impacts all affect the quality of our house or apartment. The house can be considered as a bioenergy field that affects the bioenergy field of the human body. The Indian scientist, A.R. Hari conducted research on this and concluded that most chronic diseases are a reflection of our living spaces’ conditions. Violating the natural laws of spatial energy promotes the manifestation of chronic diseases, in contrast, a living space with a strong bioenergy field increases the resilience of the residents against any diseases.
When Vastu is applied to the climatic and cultural conditions of Europe, it is called Vasati, which is the modern form of Vastu. The word Vasati, like Vastu, means a house or a building. My old friend and teacher, Marcus Schmieke (a German physicist, quantum physicist, and inventor), began to use the word Vasati as a name for Vedic architecture.
Thanks to Marcus Schmieke, the science of ancient Vastu — also known as Vasati — became understandable and accessible to the people of Europe. The picture was taken after one of his lectures, in which I was his Hungarian interpreter. (Photo by Manhertz József, Budapest, 2019)
The word itself refers to the three important components of Vasati, and we, the disciples of Marcus Schmieke, consider these three components to be equally important. These are the followings:
VA — laws of energies (physics)
SA — laws of information (astrology)
TI — laws of geometry (mathematics)
Applying Vasati rules to a new building
The rules of Vasati can be used most freely and widely while designing or building a new house. When designing a new building, in addition to the Vasati’s rules, we also take into account the astrological data of the future residents. From these data, calculated by Vedic astrology, we can determine, for example, the own direction of the prospective habitant which shows those directions which are preferable to him or her, and thus we can personalize the building. This is very important information when planning, as it shows which areas of the apartment will be where the owner is feeling well, which ones are better to avoid, or at least use less often.
With the help of astrology, we can also calculate the most favorable starting time for the construction of the house. When designing a new building, a wide range of Vasati possibilities are available — and the success is guaranteed.
Let me give you an example here. Back in the early 2000s, when I was still living in Germany and studying from Marcus Schmieke, he designed a Vasati house that was built in Southern Germany. The house was still under construction we received an enthusiastic phone call from the owner. He was in the half-finished house when a lady appeared in the doorway. The lady in question was intensely engaged in healing with reiki, making her very sensitive to subtle energies. As she accidentally walked near the half-ready Vasati house, she suddenly became aware of a very special, favorable flow of energy. As she followed the source of the energy, she arrived at this Vasati house and told the owner that she did not know what kind of house was being built here, but she wanted to have such a house too…
Our own family house was also built according to the principles of Vasati (Photo by Manhertz Edit, 2020)
Applying Vasati to an existing building or apartment
The question may naturally arise, what can we do if we are unable or unwilling to build a new house, but at the same time want to somehow plant the beneficial effects of Vasati in our apartment? I would like to reassure everyone that we have a wide range of Vasati corrections at our disposal, which we can use to remedy various Vasati deficiencies, eliminate adverse energies, and lure favorable energies into the house.
Let’s have a look briefly at the correction options!
1. Physical changes that may require the help of a bricklayer. (For example, we open a new window or door, move a wall, etc.)
2. We can change the function of some rooms. (The room originally used as children’s room is now used as the master bedroom, or the guestroom becomes the home office, etc.)
3. We can change certain habits. (For example, if the door used as the main entrance is in a not favorable place, we can use another door as the main entrance, which we may not have opened too often before.)
4. We can change the location of the furniture. (We move the large closet off the east wall, turn the bed over, etc.)
5. We might use the five elements (earth, fire, water, air, ether) to make certain corrections. (For example, where you want to strengthen the element fire, you can light a candle regularly or place some electrical equipment or some red-colored object — all these represent fire.)
6. Different colors also have such an effect that we can use during Vasati correction. (It’s very good to place green things in the north of the apartment, or yellow things to the east, for example.)
7. One can use various special energy tools such as mirrors, plants, pictures, minerals, herbs. (It doesn’t matter, for example, which part of the room has a mirror. It has a good effect in the northern, northeastern, and eastern wall, but in the southwest it has an unfavorable effect.)
8. We can use Vasati’s subtle-energy tools. These popular devices are used in such cases when we cannot make any physical changes but the house has serious Vasati deficiencies, or we want to strengthen or transform the energies of an area of our home. These are the two- and three-dimensional energy devices, the Vasati yantras, the Meru chakra, and the Vasati pyramid. (The yantra is a geometric embodiment of energies consisting of symbols, mantras, and specific colors.)
From this list, it becomes clear that there are many options available for the Vasati corrections of an existing building! I suggest you take advantage of these opportunities and improve your quality of life even if (now) you don’t have the opportunity to build a new Vasati house! | https://medium.com/@manhertzedit/vasati-the-science-of-vedic-architecture-and-interior-design-2c9833492afd | ['Manhertz Edit'] | 2020-10-16 10:04:57.601000+00:00 | ['Home Decor', 'Home', 'Feng Shui', 'Vastu', 'Vastushastra'] |
We’re Hiring! | Prompts = Dignified, Pay, Staff
‘Excuse me, sir?’
‘Yes?’
‘My companions and I have been looking to hire a senior mage to explore a dungeon with.’ Several fresh young faces, a few not old enough to shave, beamed at him. A couple of them shook old, rusty weapons to emphasize their enthusiasm.
‘Well?’
‘You’re a dignified presence, arcane staff close to hand, sitting in a tavern smoking a massive pipe, blowing intricate smoke rings, with long grey hair, beard, and eyebrows.’
‘And?’
‘We can pay.’
‘I’m not for hire.’
‘But there’s gold!’
‘Not interested.’
‘And spell books!’
‘First editions? Autographed?’
‘Maybe? I guess?’
‘Let’s go.’
Links to other sites where I publish:
Instagram = https://www.instagram.com/one_hundred_words_by_parz
Facebook = https://www.facebook.com/Parzival-Sattva-427507144484255
Blogger = https://onehundredwordsbyparz.blogspot.com
Medium = https://medium.com/100-word-or-less-stories
YouTube = https://www.youtube.com/user/parzivalsattva
And a link to where my Lovely Lady Love (who also operates the camera) posts her art: https://www.youtube.com/user/recyclinggoddess
Join in on the fun of making a story from the same prompts I do! https://www.facebook.com/groups/565109053911712 | https://medium.com/100-word-or-less-stories/were-hiring-e1713e461c4d | ['Parzival Sattva'] | 2020-12-16 08:48:08.353000+00:00 | ['Flash Fiction', 'Microfiction', 'Wizards', 'Dungeon', '100wordstory'] |
Practical Data Analysis with Pandas and Seaborn | Practical Data Analysis with Pandas and Seaborn
Exploratory data analysis on a bank customer dataset
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
Whether we are creating a dashboard, doing predicting analytics, or working on any other machine learning task, we first need to explore the data at hand. We should obtain a thorough understanding of the data and the relationships among variables.
There are many tools and packages that can be used to analyze data. What they all have in common is that the best way to learn them is through practice.
In this practical article, we will explore a dataset that contains information about the customers of a bank. The ultimate task is to predict whether a customer will leave the credit card services of the bank.
We will be using Pandas for data analysis and manipulation and Seaborn to create visualizations.
The first step is to import the libraries.
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
sns.set(style='darkgrid')
Let’s create a dataframe by reading the provided csv file.
churn = pd.read_csv("/content/BankChurners.csv", usecols=list(range(21)))
I have excluded the first column and the last two columns by providing a list of indices of columns to be included in the dataframe. The usecol parameter is used to select only certain columns. We can pass the names or indices of the columns to be included.
The first column is client number which does not add any value to the analysis. The last two columns were not relevant as indicated by the dataset provider.
The shape method returns the size of the dataframe in terms of the number of rows and columns.
print(churn.shape)
(10127, 20)
(image by author)
There are 20 columns. The screenshot above only includes 7 columns for demonstration purposes. We can view the entire list of columns by using the “columns” method.
Before starting the analysis, we should check if there is any missing value in the columns. The isna function of Pandas returns true if a value is missing. We can apply sum functions to count the number of missing values in each column or entire dataframe.
churn.isna().sum().sum()
0
There is no missing value in the dataset. | https://towardsdatascience.com/practical-data-analysis-with-pandas-and-seaborn-8fec3cb9cd16 | ['Soner Yıldırım'] | 2020-12-22 17:58:15.541000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Python', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Analysis', 'Pandas'] |
Simulating the Coronavirus Epidemic in Switzerland with a realistic model | Next, I will explain how the analysis works, starting with the model. To arrive at above plot, I had to check the model with different values of its parameters plugged in a vast number of times against the data, keeping only those parameter values and predictions where the predictions of the model lie within the constraints given by daily death count data and daily total cases. There are a few assumptions made to justify the model used and also some shortcomings of it, all of which will be discussed after explaining it.
The model itself can be thought of as a function that when given any values for its parameters returns timelines of the different cases. But, for a complicated system like an epidemic, one can unfortunately not write down this function in a closed form. Instead the model is specified using differential equations, where the variables are fractions of the total population in different types of subpopulations. Any person can be a member of one and only one types of population. The populations appearing in the model are “Never infected”, “Currently infectious”, “Recovered, immune”, “Dead”. Note that these are more specific than just “Healthy” and ”Infected”. The main parameters of the model describe the relations between the populations. These can be summarized in the following diagram, which I’ll explain below. In this discussion we’ll also be able to see one first main shortcoming of the model, namely that one possibly important type of population is still missing, something one could address in a later analysis.
The arrow originating from “Currently Infectious” going left and meeting the arrow coming from “Never infected” means that a currently infectious person has to meet a person that has never been infected to add to the population in “Currently Infectious”. This would subtract the corresponding amount from “Never infected”. The interpretation of the parameter α in the simulation I ran is the amount of people one infected person creates on average per day. The arrows originating from “Currently Infectious” pointing rightward simply mean that “Currently Infectious” people can become members of “Recovered, Immune” or sadly, “Dead”. The parameters shown there correspond exactly to the daily probabilities of one person moving from “Currently Infectious” to one of the other populations, i.e. β is the daily probability of an infected person to recover and become immune, while γ is the daily probability of an infected person to die.
This model has some obvious shortcomings: First of all, spatiality, i.e. the population being spread out in space with differing densities and all the rest of it, is completely ignored. For a small, densely populated country like Switzerland this assumption seems reasonable. For a larger, less densely populated country, e.g. the United States, this assumption might no longer sufficiently hold. Such a system one could attempt to model by having spatially separated populations appear in the model with additional transition probabilities between them. Secondly, many other possibly meaningful subpopulations are being ignored as well. In the model used here, incubation for example is instantaneous: a person coming into contact with an infectious person immediately becomes infectious as well. This means that one infectious person in the model might not really correspond to real-world infectious persons, as one might need to split this group into infected(not yet infectious) and infectious. To inform policy, other stages through which infected persons may progress are important: One might add groups of people that are severely ill, that need to be hospitalised, that need to be taken into intensive care units, and that may need to be put on inhalators. This would of course complicate the model immensely, as additional transition probabilities between these groups and the subpopulations already in the model would need to be introduced where appropriate. Finally, the transition probabilities are assumed to be constant, which if society goes into lockdown is not realistic. However, for most of the time period from which data was used, quarantine was already in place, such that the probabilities calculated reflect spreading characteristics during and despite quarantine measures.
The dynamic relations between the populations in the model can now be expressed via differential equations, which, when iterated numerically, become difference equations. The next paragraph shows the part of the python code that calculates the daily change in the populations:
for i in range(time_steps):
delta_healthy = - alpha*healthy*infected
delta_infected = + alpha*healthy*infected \ -(beta+gamma)*infected
delta_immune = + beta*infected
delta_dead = + gamma*infected
healthy = cut_off(0,1, healthy+delta_healthy)
infected = cut_off(0,1, infected+delta_infected)
immune = cut_off(0,1, immune+delta_immune)
dead = cut_off(0,1, dead+delta_dead)
What I did not mention yet, is that each of the variables and parameters appearing in that bit of code is actually a numpy array of at least 32³ entries to make use of all the vectorization and parallelization built into numpy I could get to help speed up the scan of the parameter space on my 2012 Dell Potato.
The analysis works roughly as follows then. After loading the data, I am smoothing it slightly by sliding a moving average of 3 days over the data to correct for spikes and dips caused by delays in data reporting. The data consists of time series of integrated daily reported deaths and integrated daily total reported confirmed cases, taken directly from the WHO situation reports (https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/). I am using the total cases as a lower bound, but for deaths, I am assuming that as rare integer count events, they are Poisson-distributed. Because of this, I assume that if any day had a total number of deaths N that were picked from a Poisson distribution, the true mean of the Poisson distribution lies with the usual probabilities within 1 sigma, 2 sigmas, etc. where the 1 sigma error is given by the square root of N.
Next, I want to perform a scan of the parameter space. This means that I need to generate lots of parameters, which are then plugged into the model, after which the model predictions are checked against the constraints I want to impose from the data. To do this, the function that does one round of scanning, first generates large vectors of randomly chosen values for the three parameters, alpha, beta, gamma. Equally long vectors of the initial populations of the different types of the population are generated as well, after which they’re multiplied together in the way shown in above code snippet.
alpha = 1*np.random.random_sample((n**3,))
beta = np.random.random_sample((n**3,))
gamma = 1*np.random.random_sample((n**3,)) healthy = np.array([1 for i in range(n**3)])
infected = np.array([1/initial_healthy_pop for i in range(n**3)])
immune = np.array([0 for i in range(n**3)])
dead = np.array([0 for i in range(n**3)])
The result of one iteration are four numpy arrays of length n³ containing the predictions of the n³ models differing by their input parameters. These are then appended to larger arrays which at the end of that simulation run contain the n³ simulated time series, which are then returned by the function.
Next we check if the models lie within the bound prescribed by the data, i.e. whether the total number of cases in each model is larger than the total number of cases for each where the data is available so far, and if the number of deaths lies within the upper and lower bounds generated from the daily death counts and their errors. However, to speed up things considerably, I am trying to perform all operations on large numpy arrays solely by using built-in operations and functions that according to the numpy manual are vectorized and already internally use parallelization where possible:
for j in range(max_delay):
dead_timeline_cropped_transposed = \ np.transpose(dead_timeline[j:j+len(dead_data)])
healthy_timeline_cropped_transposed = \
np.transpose(healthy_timeline[j:j+len(dead_data)]) # t_j == 1: model good
t_j_list = (np.prod( \ np.heaviside(dead_timeline_cropped_transposed-dead_lower,1) * \ np.heaviside(dead_upper-dead_timeline_cropped_transposed,1) * \ np.heaviside(total_healthy_upper-\ healthy_timeline_cropped_transposed,1),1))
The speed-up achieved by never ever looping over large arrays is what only made this type of analysis possible on my computer, as the speed-up is by a factor of several thousand, which makes the difference between the program running for 2 hours and 2000 hours or more.
The elements of the array t_j_list indicate for every model if it is valid, i.e. if its predictions lie within the constraints by the data. Now only for those models that survived this step, the values of the three main parameters are saved, also externally, together with a new parameter generated in this step, namely all possible values of how many days the data needs to shifted along the simulation for the model to be allowed. A model is allowed when at any point in its simulation it lies within the constraints of the data.
This entire step of generating parameters, running simulations, checking against the data, saving surviving points can be repeated as often as necessary to collect sufficient amounts of statistics for the next step, analysing the valid models and plotting the data.
The previous step was generally the hardest one. Now for the few 100 surviving models, I simply checked for every day and every population what the minimal and maximal values on that day were. Similarly one can check what the ranges of the parameters were and other properties of the data, such as when the peak was reached in the surviving models, or when the earliest day with less than one infected person is.
I am still improving the program, but the code will be available when I have sufficiently cleaned it up. I am planning to update this post as further data becomes available and as I improve the analysis. | https://medium.com/python-in-plain-english/simulating-the-epidemic-in-switzerland-with-a-realistic-model-uncertainty-despite-high-quality-d9b36805241a | ['Thomas Neder'] | 2020-04-15 19:05:08.728000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Python', 'Covid 19', 'Numpy', 'Data Visualization'] |
Intro to High School: Facing the Stress | Lesson 1: The Clock is Ticking
Image Source: Daria Kisleva/ the McGill Tribune
What does high school mean to you? Was it a time of exhilarating freedom, a period of personal evaluation, or a distant nightmare? For some, it may have been all of the above.
While high schools are differ depending on the country and customs of an area, the core values are, for the most part, similar. High school is to prepare the youth to venture into adulthood and feel better prepared to handle the “real” world. Part-time jobs, extensive academic programs, and social relationships are usually linked to high school for many youths. But, how has high school changed over the decades, and is it for the better?
20 years ago….40 years ago…60 years ago…what was high school really like? Well, for one part, the number of classes available was limited, and the amount of time dedicated to classwork after-school was also more manageable. Today though, students are expected to enter college with an adult resume full of the most prestigious classes, an impressive list of clubs, in combination with skill sets useful for their future career.
Don’t get me wrong; being fully prepared for your future is absolutely splendid, especially if you are passionate about what you want to do. Schools create an environment where you can access so many outlets to grow social connections and learn about the world to become well-rounded individuals. The only concern is…how much of the individual’s mental health is being sacrificed so that they can be “well-rounded”?
Image Source:SpringerLink
Image Source: Longdom Publishing SL
One over-arching theme presented in high school is academic achievement — a large goal being attaining success. This success-driven mentality, though, can lead to academic stress. Further down the line, academic stress can then manifest into anxiety, depression, and students’ loss of motivation.
To corroborate the diagrams depicted above, some statistics worldwide can help see the truth behind academic stress. According to a study in China (“A Review on the Relationship Between Chinese Adolescents’ Stress and Academic Achievement.”), students spend more than 16 hours a day to increase their chances of making it to college. Even with such effort, in 2019, of the almost 865,800 who took the national college entrance exam in China, only 366,700 were accepted into colleges. Likewise, a study performed in India (“Academic Stress, Parental Pressure, Anxiety, and Mental Health among Indian High School Students.”) showed that in a sample pool of 190 teenagers, 63.5% were suffering from academic stress. Neglecting self-confidence, as well as social and self-attention, can result in failure instead of success.
Living exclusively for school and continually fearing failure is devastating for all hard-working students, but there are other contributing factors behind these worsening occurrences of stress.
Lesson 2: Parental Pressure
Image Source: cehs News
Other than the school’s competitive nature, local area circumstances and parents are other key contributors to stress. Many parents do not want their children to be left behind in the whirlwind of life, which can cause them to be stricter and more authoritative about school. Some parents even go to the extent of removing all “frivolous” activities — like enjoying time with friends and participating in activities not related to school. This “tough-love” strategy may morph into an unhealthy cycle of telling their teenagers to improve. | https://medium.com/@ariannysuriel03/intro-to-high-school-facing-the-stress-d6853d694e7 | ['Arianny Suriel'] | 2020-12-09 04:24:29.536000+00:00 | ['Teenagers', 'Academic Stress', 'High School', 'Stress'] |
A New Day for American Democracy: An Eight-Point Agenda | Malcolm Kenyatta delivers a speech in Gettysburg, PA, outlining his eight-point plan for a New Day for American Democracy
Six month ago to the day, the world watched a bloody and brutal insurrection unfold, stoked by a defeated President and his supporters, in a doomed attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power — the bedrock of our democratic republic.
Let’s be clear — these attacks were not just aimed at a building but at the very foundation of our government, our society — this was a direct assault on our democracy itself.
But these broadsides did not end on January 6th. They’ve continued unabated until this very day. While we no longer see active storming of federal buildings the theatre of combat has shifted to legislatures, the courts and to the hearts and minds of voters across the country. The opponents to free and fair elections push regressive proposals that degrade trust in the sanctity of the vote. Trafficking in misinformation and disinformation, they’ve utilized every tool at their disposal to make it more difficult for citizens to be a part of the democratic process — especially those that they think threaten their power.
This past Saturday, late in the evening dozens of white supremacists marched on Philadelphia filled with hatred and chanting the same bile heard in Charlottesville. As news spread of their presence in the city I was reminded of a conversation I’d had with my grandmother two years ago. She called me with pain in her voice and tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry baby, I’m so sorry baby. I thought we had fixed some of this stuff and here you are talking about the same things.” I refuse to have to have that conversation with my grandkids. All of us should refuse. Our mission, our patriotic duty must be to make the prescient words of our founding documents real in our lifetime.
That is why today I’m laying out my vision for a new day in American democracy. This eight-point agenda is critical to securing our democracy now and into the future.
It’s been famously said that, “an educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” That is why at the cornerstone of my vision and the first bill I will introduce once I’m elected to the US Senate is the creation of a Civilian Democracy Corps, housed under AmeriCorps, to reinvigorate the teaching of civic education and how to spot misinformation and disinformation. Around the world, America is engaged in the painstaking work of aiding new democracies in their development, but we must also do that work here at home. These Civilian Democracy Corps members would go all across the country and work with schools, nonprofits, and community organizations to teach civic education to folks of all ages.
If we’re going to have a Democracy, we have to continually educate our people about how it works. We must also reckon with the fact that monopolistic tech and media companies have raked in enormous amounts of money as misinformation and disinformation have run rampant on their platforms. It is a national security threat we must address head on.
Second, I renew my call to end the Jim Crow Filibuster. The filibuster enables a minority of Senators to block legislation supported by the majority. Our government derives its power from us and the filibuster has been used repeatedly to silence us and block movement on vital legislation overwhelmingly supported by the American people. The filibuster is not sacred, but voting is, equality is, justice is.
Thirdly, with the filibuster gone we must pass HR1 better known as the For the People Act, a comprehensive set of reforms to voting and elections that would make voting dramatically easier, removes the ability of states to enact the voter suppression measures that has been proliferated in recent years, end partisan gerrymandering, and take on the poison of dark money in our politics. Big corporations and their “elected employees” have been able to drown out the voices of everyday people from the political process and it must end. Just last week the Supreme Court made the problem even worse, and HR1 must be the response.
American heroes like John Lewis, who was beaten and bled to preserve and expand the right to vote represents the best of us. But we must do more than praise his legacy and the legacy of those whom he marched alongside, we must pass The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, point four of my plan. This bill would re-enact the 1965 Voting Rights Act, one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress. The Supreme Court, led by radical conservative justices, has again and again taken a hammer to the core tenants of the VRA and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would secure them. But the right-wing activist nature of our federal courts compels our attention.
Point number five: To save the courts, we must expand the courts. Let me be clear, it was Mitch McConnell ignoring the constitution and his own made up precedent that packed the court. We need to expand the Supreme Court, as has been done multiple times to rebalance the scales of justice. Senate Republican packing of the court has made it deeply politicized and responsive almost solely to big corporate interests and the Federalist Society.
I know there are those who say disrupting Senate tradition by ending the filibuster or by expanding the Supreme Court risks breaking the very body I desperately want to fix. But the truth is the Senate is already deeply broken, and the only tradition we risk disrupting is the tight grip of power wielded by an ever-contracting group of well off and well connected interests that benefit from the status quo.
Senator McConnell has made it clear that if he regains control of the Senate, he will not allow President Biden to fill a vacancy prior to 2024 if there is an opening. This after refusing to confirm President Obama’s nominee and filing the seat of Justice Ginsburg 17 days before an election. Mitch has plainly said that he is 100% focused on blocking the President’s agenda and the filibuster and a radical activist court are his tools of choice. As Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” We must disarm him of his tools of obstruction. Period.
The current status quo has done nothing more than silence voices that must be heard. That’s why, for points six and seven of my plan, I reaffirm my unwavering commitment to DC Statehood and to self determination for Puerto Rico.
Finally, point number eight: to move forward we can’t ignore the past — or we are doomed to repeat it. Last week I introduced state legislation to create an annual day of remembrance on January 6th to be known as ‘Democracy Observance Day’. All Americans and Pennsylvanians must remember January 6 as a day that shook the foundations of our democratic republic. Democracy is fragile, and we all have a duty to protect it in the face of conspiracy theories, lies, and violence.
Securing our democracy is about securing a future for working families. Protecting the right to vote goes hand in hand with making sure that Democracy actually works for working people. When we think about our Democracy it’s more than just voting. It’s about all the different ways we make our voices heard. It’s about making folks’ voices heard in the workplace so they can have better wages, protections and good benefits. It’s about people being able to peacefully protest without fear of being harmed at the hands of law enforcement. It’s about using our collective voices to speak up about the dueling crises of climate change, debt, gun violence and fully funded schools.
In his first inaugural President Lincoln said, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
As we stand here at Gettysburg we reflect on the fact that every time we’ve seen America at an inflection point such as this. Every time we’ve seen America choose those better angels of our nature, we’ve also seen a new generation of leadership — calling for change. A new generation that’s unafraid to rise up and call America higher. A new generation demanding we live out the words of our creed.
On July 4th, 2017 as fireworks exploded overhead my mother Kelly took her last breath. But the wisdom she left me with is forever imprinted on my heart. She’d say, “nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.”
Those words serve as an indelible reminder that democracy requires something of us — every single one of us. It required the ultimate sacrifice of so many men who gave their lives on this consecrated ground to preserve the union. It required something on the enslaved and abolitionists who risked everything to chart a path to freedom. It required something of the suffragettes who rightly believed that they were created equal too. It required something of the heroes who sat at diner counters while being spit on and lambasted, fighting off dogs and water hoses because they knew a change was going to come. It required something of the brave souls who fought back at Stone Wall for the right to pursue their happiness. It requires something of us now. | https://medium.com/@malcolmforpa/a-new-day-for-american-democracy-an-eight-point-plan-24bd7f32f324 | ['Malcolm Kenyatta'] | 2021-07-06 20:34:40.944000+00:00 | ['Pennsylvania', 'Voting', '2022 Elections', 'Senate', 'Democracy'] |
The Struggle | The Struggle
An Original Poem by JMR
Go to battle
Every day
Not for Truth, or Justice
or the American Way
Find Yourself
Any How
Any Way
It's a Struggle
Well you been
Knocked Down;
Shot Down,
Brought Down
Shut Down,
Run Down
You Been Denied.
Realized
You were never going down.
A fighter
Been Shattered
Worn Out;
Thrown Out,
And Battered
Been Hurt.....
Left for Dead,
No Bread
Lost all you Owned
Precious Metals, Memories
Even lost your Home
Lost your Sanctity
All that Mattered
Synapse; Relapse,
Splattered.
Ghosts?
Got the Scars.
Cause Experience Shows the Most
Besides
Scars are how we keep Score
Feed the Devil
On your Shoulder
with Sin
Evil will Reign
Demon Anger will Win
I say
Fuck the shoulder-
Take him on the chin
Lift his tail up
And invte yourself in ..
Insatiable Appetite for
Destruction
Deduction. Reduction
Tempestual
Storm on the Horizon
Depression sets in
Let in Set in
How Does lower than low
Ever get in?
You gonna let it win? Ir get
Fed Up
Fucked Up
Excuse me while I Interrupt
Had shit turned around
Instead of down being down
down was up
Maybe you
Just Did Too Much
Upitty-upitty upitty-up
Need to start anew
And satisfy your confusion
And such
Next you are-
Crossing Over
Transcend differences
Extend Transcendence
Make a difference
With your Life
Blend the wrong with the wrong
And the the Right with the Fight
Tie up the Losers
Lose all the Users
Use up the Ties
Dont give Up...
Improve
You don't have to be the best of the best
Just be always getting better and
You'll be better than the rest
Cut back your Limits
Boozing and the
Black Eyes
Choosing
Down Sized
Shrunken beats Drunken
Cut off your Bad Ties
They gotta go
Stop Perpatrating
Petty Lies
No Blowing Smoke
It clouds your Eyes
And your Judgement
Get educated
Or make your money
Dropping fries
Go to church
Get Baptized-
In the name of the Father,
The Son, the Holy Spirit, and the One
Fix It.
Are you
in it.
To win it?
Ashamed as you are told
Those things you did
Day in Day out
Before you got
Slow and Old
Loosing Sight of what mattered
When you strayed
You went Panning for Gold
Treasure Hunter
Lesson Learned
In the Air
Too many Balls to Juggle
All the way around now .
You know the Struggle
Go to sleep at night knowing
That work got done
Tomorrow's a new day
may be the one
To end the Struggle
If not
The Fights On Again
Fight your Battles
Until they're Won
Finished!
Done! | https://medium.com/@jimringe/the-struggle-aa8d720ea75b | ['James Ringe'] | 2020-12-18 09:10:42.685000+00:00 | ['Resolutions', 'Self Improvement', 'Struggle Of Life'] |
What is an Array in Java ? | What is an Array ?
- Arrays are mostly used to store multiple items in a single variable.
- Arrays are useful when grouping multiple items for easier access.
!!!NOTE: Array in Java != Array in JavaScript
How to Create an Array:
First of all, all items inside of an array have to have same data type.
EX) String, Integer, Boolean etc…
When creating an array, the data type has to be specified.
EX) String rides[] = {“car”, “bicycle”, “skateboard”};
EX) int grades[] = {86, 72, 99, 100, 84, 92};
How to Access Elements:
When accessing elements of an array, we can simply use [index].
!!!NOTE: First element of an array has an index of 0 NOT 1.
First element has an index of 0 so we can use index of 0 to get the first element of an array.
EX) rides[0]; // returns car;
EX) grades[2]; // returns 99;
We can also use for-loop to iterate through an array.
for(int i = 0; i < rides.length; i++){
System.out.println(i);
}
// the above for-loop will print out every element of a rides array.
It is also possible to make Multi-Dimentional array.
EX) int height [] = {{1,2,3,4,5}, {11,22,33,44,55}};
To access the elements of Multi-Dimentional array, we can use [] again.
EX) height[0][0] // returns 1. first [0] is the first array in height array which is {1,2,3,4,5} and the next [0] is the first element of {1,2,3,4,5} which is 1. | https://medium.com/@jinhyukp77/what-is-an-array-in-java-40b161a26cc2 | ['Jin Hyuk Park'] | 2020-07-24 03:32:36.734000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Programming', 'Arrays', 'Data Structure Algorithm'] |
I Quit Drinking for 100 Days — And My Entire Life Changed | I always knew quitting drinking would shake things up, but I had no idea just how dramatically (or quickly) every aspect of my life was about to transform.
Photo Credit: Canva
From the physical to the mental and emotional, here are some of the most remarkable changes I experienced in my first 100 days without alcohol.
Full Disclosure: I was drinking a lot before I embarked on this “journey.” (Daily and heavily for almost a year straight.)
Weight Loss from Quitting Alcohol + (other vanity benefits!)
On the vanity front, I feel charmed. I look effortlessly fabulous. My skin is flawless (especially compared to the drab disaster it was three months ago), and my body looks phenomenal. There is a certain je ne sais quoi in my reflection — a reminder of the natural charm and joy I used to radiate abundantly but had long since stifled somewhere along my decade-long path of self-destruction.
For reference, I am 5’7 and weighed a bloated and puffy 145 when I quit drinking. I now weigh 131 consistently. That is a massive weight loss and evidence of how bad my drinking had gotten to warrant 14 pounds of excess fat. Yikes.
My clothes fit perfectly now. I love my reflection and even enjoy seeing candid photos of myself. This is new.
I can run with ease and endurance now that I have shed the weight of an entire (albeit extra-small) human. So yes, praise the Lord for showering me in the gift of glow and health! It is undeniable that I am getting better and better looking with each passing day, a humble brag worth sharing because it’s the type of materialistic and shallow tidbit I desperately needed to hear back when I was working up the courage to take the sober plunge.
Spoiler alert: This was probably the only huge change that didn’t require me to do any real work. (Don’t worry, I more than make up for it in other departments!)
It has been a treacherous battle, but at least I’m looking mighty fine fighting it!
Emotions and the “New Me”
Do you ever feel so out of control of your emotions that it is as if the sane and peaceful “you” is watching crazy “you” flip out? There were so many times — especially towards the end of my drinking career — where I would have these surreal out-of-body experiences that made me seriously question my sanity.
At times I wondered if maybe this was a sign that I was close to death…like maybe the spirit world was hijacking my brain or something. Come to find out, these flickering moments of “being present” were actually the few times I was truly alive.
That zen and mature “spirit” in my head was actually me. Go figure.
The moment I quit drinking, the “real me” replaced the crazy bitch living in my body, and 100 days later, I think it’s safe to say that the nut job is not coming back.
Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t turn into the Dali Llama or anything overnight, but at least all systems are now operating on the same wave-length. I don’t act like a mental patient anymore when things don’t go my way. I allow myself to feel the sad feelings and acknowledge my disappointments, but my emotions are no longer running the show.
There isn’t this weird divide of denial and depression separating the “me” in my head from the “me” in my body. It is so refreshing.
The Weird and Unexpected Side of Quitting Drinking
Some of the earliest changes I noticed when I first got sober also happened to be some of the strangest.
Emojis
Before I quit drinking, the “frequently used Emoji” section of my iPhone was as messy as my life. The hopeless guy throwing a hissy fit was my go-to, followed by the exasperated girl slamming her palm against her forehead. The smug dude and the “dead” face were also part of my daily rotation, making me seriously question why anyone wanted even to text me at all.
Despite my bleak outlook on life, I was also a big fan of “poppin’ bottles” — or rather, pretending to pop bottles. (Apple doesn’t make a depressed woman cracking open her 10th can of Michelob Ultra.)
The point being, both me and my Emojis were hot messes. Within two weeks, all the angry/sad/throw-up men were repaced with a smattering of hearts and joy. I used to hate people who had the time and energy to select the perfect heart for their messages, but here I am.
Internet Love
From likes on Facebook to upvotes on Reddit, I am making up for years of lost time spreading internet love! I like every post like my life depends on it, going so far as to scroll back to make sure I gave credit where credit was due. I even found myself reviewing purchases on Amazon for the first time in my life. Who have I become?
No More Secrets
One of the most significant (and most surprising!) benefits of sobriety is that I no longer have secrets to hide — at least not on a day-to-day basis as I did before.
And I’m talking SECRETS. A recycling bin stuffed to the gills with glass bottles (and cans when I was feeling self-conscious.) Random empty containers in my car. Humiliating mail, weird messes, bizarre routines, suspicious behavior. This list goes on and on. I was shady AF.
100 days later, it’s hard to believe that erratic lunatic was me. (Cue my other ex-favorite emoji: 🙈)
Not having to keep a million secrets anymore is one of those weird changes that is both one of the biggest — yet also the one I’ve most taken for granted. It isn’t until I’m hit with a situation where I could have been “discovered” that I find myself momentary freezing in panic before breathing a sigh of relief once I realize that I’m not really hiding much anymore.
Take the other day, for example, when I was asked to give my boss a ride in my car with only 2 seconds’ notice. I can’t even begin to list the reasons why this would have caused “old me” to lose my shit. I would have burst into tears and caused a theatrical, elaborate scene — basically everything short of throwing myself into oncoming traffic to avoid letting him see how I “really” lived.
But now, I don’t have to worry about my boss suffocating on stale cigarette smoke and clouds of perfume — or getting smothered in half a foot of mail and gum wrappers.
The Treacherous Ascent Out of Rock Bottom
One of the overarching themes of the past 100 days has been confronting the truth. Facing “hard” things and dealing with them head-on. This shift has been one of the most challenging yet rewarding accomplishments that I’ve experienced so far.
I had shit piles up the wazoo when I finally quit drinking. Enormous scary things as well as a laundry list of minor to-dos that I had let grow into bigger issues. Everything was too much for me to handle in the end, so I didn’t.
I had a closet full of mail that I had stopped opening altogether about six months prior to quitting drinking. Mail had become the primary source for my bad news, and I wasn’t having any of it.
Side note: You’re probably sick of hearing about all of my ridiculous mail problems, so I’ll make this last one quick — I also had to make amends with the USPS this past month. (Yes, me and the post office had beef.)
As you and see, my net of problems was cast far and wide, and even my poor postman wasn’t safe from the consequences of my shitty actions.
I wasn’t even hanging by a thread in the end. I was long gone.
Taking Care of Business!
Fast-forward 100 days, and I’m making great progress working through this backlog of crap I had been too anxious or too inebriated to handle until now. And when I say backlog, this is no exaggeration. I had pressing financial issues and life negligences for days, papers, bills, and mail scattered (and hidden) in every nook and cranny of my house. I truly had not the slightest clue what was going on in my own life.
Three months into this, and I’m proud to report that I have finally tackled the bulk of the beast. Dozens of daunting phone calls, tons of bills, and a slew of other urgent random issues that only someone who has mentally checked out of life for the better part of a year would understand.
I’m turning into a person who “does hard things.” When I get a notification on my phone that a bill is due, I pay it. This is a novel and new behavior. In the past, I would have been too scared even to look.
Ok, I may be using the term “hard things” a bit loosely, but you’ve got to cut me some slack here. 3 months ago, I was too fragile to even LOOK at my electricity bill, let alone pay the damn thing. So as trivial and mundane as a phone payment may seem now, I was in such a dark place a few months ago that these baby steps are actually pretty enormous wins.
Onwards and Upwards
I can safely say that the worst is finally behind me. With each passing day, I feel more and more grateful for this opportunity to be an active participant in my own life.
On the first day of this journey, I was in deep shit. So the fact that I can look back now and see just how far I’ve come over the past three months is what gives me the straight and courage to carry on.
And for the first time in a long time, I am so freaking proud of myself. | https://medium.com/@untangledblonde/i-quit-drinking-for-100-days-and-my-entire-life-changed-87df047b2d17 | ['Untangled Blonde'] | 2020-12-26 05:30:57.769000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Self Improvement', 'Addiction', 'Mental Health'] |
Reinforcement Learning & Sushi Go! | Reinforcement Learning & Sushi Go!
Use Reinforcement Learning algorithm to solve the popular card drafting game Sushi Go!
Reinforcement learning is an area of machine learning concerned with how an agent takes action based on its environment to maximize its long-term reward. Although the concept has been out for a while, its application has not been nearly as successful as supervised and unsupervised learning. RL tends to be hard to converge and even solving simple problem requires some careful architectural design. Today, we will train some RL agents to play the game of SushiGo.
The Game
Photo by Martin Liu
SushiGo is a card-drafting game, where 2–5 players aim to grab the best combination of sushi dishes with the highest score. Each player has an initial hand of 6–9 cards (depending on the player number). Players pick a card from the hand, put it on their board, then pass it on to the next player. The next player picks a card from that hand (now 5–8 cards), put it on their board, and so on. If the initial hand size is 6, then after 6 turns, each player will have picked 6 cards. The players now calculate the score from their board and compare against each other. In the original game, 3 rounds are played, and whoever has the highest sum of scores wins the game. You can also watch the video below to get a sense how to play the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0jdqucqqfQ
The game includes the following cards:
Sashimi: 10pt for set of 3. 0 otherwise.
Tempura: 5pt for set of 2. 0 otherwise.
Nigiri: 3pt for Squid, 2pt for Salmon, and 1pt for Egg.
Wasabi: Triples the value of the next Nigiri. 0 if no Nigiri afterwards.
Dumplings: 1pt for the first dumpling, 2pt for the second one, 3pt for the third, 4pt for the fourth, and 5pt for other ones.
Maki Rolls: For each Maki card you take, you will add the number of Maki Rolls on that card to your board. This can be 1, 2, or 3, depending on the card. At the end of each round, every player calculates the number of rolls they have. The most gets 6 points, and 3 points for second. Ties will split the reward.
There are two additional cards in the game, but not included in this version of implementation due to complexity. They are:
Pudding: At the end of the game , the player with the most puddings get 6 points, and the player with the least get -6 points. Unlike other cards, puddings are not discarded each around.
, the player with the most puddings get 6 points, and the player with the least get -6 points. Unlike other cards, puddings are not discarded each around. Chopsticks: Chopsticks can be used to swap for two cards during a pick later. Since a player now has the ability to pick two cards at a time if it does have a pair of chopsticks, the action space becomes quadratic.
Representing action, state, agent, and environment
After understanding the game from a human perspective, it’s time to think of it in machine learning framework. In RL, regardless of the method we choose, we need to define the agent and environment, and how the agent chooses its action based on the state.
What are the “actions” in the game? A player only has one type of action, that is to pick a card from the hand that is given to her (or 2 if using chopsticks). An agent only needs to learn how to pick a card.
The next question is, what information about the environment does a player know at the time of decision making? While picking a card, the player knows:
The combination of cards in her hand
The combination of cards on her board (picked cards)
The combination of cards on other players’ board
The cards on previous hands (that she saw on previous turns)
From a human perspective, the first three can be seen at real-time, while the fourth one requires the player to memorize the hands from previous picks.
Implementation of game logic
This implementation simplifies the original game in a couple of ways. Instead of playing three rounds, players will play one round in a game. Since there are no chopsticks, the action space is limited to choosing a card instead of a pair. Also, if two players both get the highest score, they will share victory with no discount.
For each round, the state class draws from the deck randomly, and then each player get a starting hand. For each pick, a player picks a card given its hand, board, and other players’ board.
for p in self.players:
p.pick_a_card(all_player_boards)
self.pass_around()
At the end of each game, players will “reflect” on their performance and adjust their knowledge system. The player uses a reward of 1 for win, -and 1 for loss. The players will loop through all the encountered states during that game and update values based on their logic.
for i, p in enumerate(self.players):
if self.scoreboard[i] == max_score:
p.feed_reward(1)
else:
p.feed_reward(-1)
How does the players choose their action based on the reward information? That’s where different player differ in their behaviors.
Players
Random Player
Choose a card randomly given each hand. Can be used as a baseline opponent.
Rule-based Player
The player pick cards based on simple priority. Since there are cards that are strictly better than others (3 Maki better 1 Maki, Squid Nigiri better than Egg Nigiri, etc.), this could be a major improvement from picking randomly. Based on my personal experience with the game, the priority is:
Squid Nigiri -> Sashimi -> Tempura -> Salmon Nigiri -> 3 Maki -> Dumpling -> 2 Maki -> 1 Maki -> Egg Nigiri -> Wasabi
Wasabi can sometimes be good, but that would require a player to pick Nigiri after picking Wasabi, so I left it the least priority for simplicity purpose.
Q-Learning Player
Q-learning seeks to learn a policy that maximize reward, by choosing action given certain state. Given the episodic nature of the game, and that there is only one reward (win or lose) in the end, we can translate this into evaluating the value of the state after our action. Since the agent needs to memorize every possible state value pair, having too many distinct states are obviously hard for agent to learn. Therefore, I only uses post-action board as the state. That is, after picking a card, what does my board look like? What is the value of that state of the board?
To update the value of the state, a decay gamma is applied for each step before the end. For example, if a player wins with some state, the value for that state will move towards 1. The state one step before the final state move towards 1 * decay_gamma. If state is not seen before, it will be initialized as 0. When choosing action, the agent iterate through all the possible next states by adding any available card to the current board, and pick the card that leads to the state with the highest value. In code, it would translate to
for possible_next_card in set(self.hand):
board = copy.copy(self.board)
add_a_card_to_board(board, possible_next_card)
value = self.model_dict.get(str(board), 0) + random.random() / 1e6
if value > max_value:
max_value = value
action = possible_next_card
A small randomness is added to the value so it does not always choose the first card initially.
Deep Learning Player
In order the resolve the issue large state space, we can use a deep learning model to estimate the value of each state. This allows to include more features at decision time since we longer have to memorize all the distinctive states.
At first, I tried to use a similar learning logic as q-learning. I use features including the player’s board, the player’s hand, and other players’ board, and use this predict the best possible next state. However, given the relative small change of input (picking a different card would only result a single different column), the model does not learn too well. Instead, I modified the logic so that the model does not output a scalar value, but rather an array of values for each different actions. This is more similar to human’s approach, where we evaluate our options and try to pick a card that is best for us. Some cards are inherently of higher value than others, so this method allows the model to capture the “intrinsic value” of cards more easily.
At decision time, the agent passes the current state as the input and output a value for each action. The agent chooses the available action that has the highest value output. During the learning, a player will compare its model output to the actual value. Since the agent does not explore other actions, we will use the model output value for action that are not chosen. For the chosen action, the value will move towards the (reward * decay) product.
model_input = self.board + convert_hand_to_counter(self.hand) + other_player_board_feature action_values = self.model(torch.FloatTensor(model_input))
action_value_rank = torch.argsort(action_values, descending=True)
for r in action_value_rank:
if r.item() in self.hand:
action = r.item()
break
Configuration & Parameter Selection
For the exploration vs. exploitation balance, I chose 0.3 as the exploration rate. That is, the agent explores 30% of the time and chooses action randomly instead of following its model. I found that exploration rate does not make a significant impact in this game, likely due to dynamic nature of the game. Each game provides you very different cards to start so you are exploring anyways.
I chose 0.01 as learning rate for both agents, and reward is +1 for winning and -1 for losing. This should allow quick learning although it might need to be decreased during later epochs.
I chose 0.9 as the decay gamma. That is, for each step away from the final state, reward is multiplied by 0.9. This should allow the agent to learn early states more slowly and carefully.
For simulation, I use 200 training games and 200 eval games in one epoch (round). During training games, players will explore at 0.3 frequency. During eval games, players does not explore but still learns based on the result of the game.
Result
Initially, I did some 1 on 1 games to see if the models are learning. However, since the game is usually played with 3–5 people, I decided to put different agents together and see how they perform against each other. Here is the result.
4-Player Game Stats, Round = 200 Train + 200 Eval Games
Here, we can see that Rule-based player is dominating in first few rounds, and then the deep learning player and q-learning player starts to catch up. Deep Learning player maintain its win rate for a few rounds, before q-learning player starts to get better. Rule-based player’s win rate starts to decline steadily, while the random player hardly wins any games.
Additional, I checked the model to see if it can provide any result for gameplay insight. For simplicity purpose, I checked the model output, if the boards are all clear and there is one card for each kind in the kind. In this case, the value estimation is:
DL Model, Value Estimation on Empty Board
Since the player is playing against 3 other opponents, most of values are negative since the player cannot maintain a 50% win rate. However, the order is used to determine the player’s action. Specifically, we can see that the player really prioritizes Wasabi over others. It would also prefer Sashimi over Squid Nigiri, which is interesting as well. When I play, Squid is usually a must-take on first turn. The prioritization on Wasabi is something interesting, but it could be that since not all the opponents are very strong, the agent might be able to get a Squid Nigiri for a combo 9pt in the first few turns.
Code
I’m currently working on implementing pudding and chopsticks logic and see how it changes the agent behavior. Also, I plan to work on adding memory of previous hands to the model input to see if that can increase win rate. Let me know if you have any other ideas! | https://towardsdatascience.com/reinforcement-learning-sushi-go-238ad9bd7311 | ['Martin Liu'] | 2020-12-29 03:29:00.153000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Card Game', 'Sushi', 'Reinforcement Learning'] |
You Don’t Have To Get Over Your Insecurities — You Have To Get Through Them | It comes naturally to us to think that we need to get over our insecurities in order to be able to proceed, and in an attempt to do so, we find ourselves looking for ways to get over parts of ourselves that complete us.
We can’t get rid of something that is a part of who we are, and trying to do just that, will not work for us.
Trying to get over anything that brings you dark feelings is almost always never a solution to feel lighter.
What is the solution, then?
It is finding the strength within, to be still with what scares you;
It is developing the courage to sit with those insecurities, fears, and dark feelings;
It is creating space for allowing what you are fighting not to allow;
It is getting through what you want to get over.
Why is this the solution?
Because the only way that you can free yourself from your insecurities is by allowing them to show you that they are here to take you through;
Because what you are trying to run away from, is meant to carry you ahead;
Because you need to let yourself be with what causes you so much discomfort, so that you can begin to find comfort in its presence;
Because your insecurities are trying to show you why you shouldn’t fear them in the first place.
You see, as cliché as it sounds, the only way you can discover if those insecurities will destroy you or not, is by (Well!) going ahead and discovering;
And in order for you to discover, you have to give in to them and let them work on (and for) you;
You have to keep giving in, till it begins to draw you out;
Until you finally discover that they were never here to destroy you, but only to build you further.
While you are thinking to yourself;
“This is where I can lose everything.”
Your insecurities whisper (albeit so softly, that it’s often too easy to not hear) to you in return;
“This is where you can gain what you didn’t know you could.”
You can only get yourself to stop being afraid, if you can learn to see the truth in what the fear is trying to guide you towards. | https://medium.com/change-your-mind/you-dont-have-to-get-over-your-insecurities-you-have-to-get-through-them-dbb9af76adda | ['Chandrika Bhattacharya'] | 2020-12-16 06:09:54.710000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Emotional Intelligence', 'Self Improvement', 'Self-awareness', 'Psychology'] |
My new Electric Car and how it resembles the Hardware and Software divide | Why do I reiterate this again? Since 2 months I’m the owner of an Opel Corsa-e, a fully electric vehicle made by one of Europe’s car incumbents, which shows the divide clearly.
In case you want the full details, here’s a list of unforced (as far as I know) UX issues (feel free to skip to the conclusion).
Battery & Range
Because of its high efficiency, range of an EV can vary drastically. I would drive in the so called ‘Sports’ mode (crazy torque) more often if it wouldn’t drain the battery as fast. What didn’t matter as much before — like weather or altitude, is suddenly becoming important.
In general, when a thing is very volatile, it makes sense to get a larger buffer to bolster spikes. The opposite is true in electric cars, ranges are shorter. It doesn’t help that range estimates are tested with ‘californian’ conditions.
Just like with smartphone or laptop batteries, they hold longer if your charging cycles are only between 20% to 80%, which means unplugging before the car is fully charged. If you follow that the maximum range gets shorter.
This all would be tolerable if the onboard computer would calculate the remaining range in a reassuring manner. After all the computer could know the current and future weather conditions, if I’m normally driving to work right now, how my driving style translates, and so on. None of that seems to be taken into account. I can’t rely on the range estimate shown. Even the simple question: “If I continue to drive like the last 5 minutes, how far will I come?” stays unanswered.
So you resort to look at the SoC (State of Charge) and subtract a few percentage points for the current route out of operating experience.
If only the car would show percentages. The only thing I’ve got are 8 bars. One of them equals 12.5%. Yes, driving the Corsa-e makes you better at math.
(Same is true for charging. I can’t see how many kWh are getting pumped into the car. I just see “Charging 14 km per hour”.)
On board computer & Updates
I don’t have much to gripe about the infotainment system, because on a day-to-day basis I never use it. Android Auto or iOS Carplay outsource this part to the smartphone, luckily.
Sometimes it’s not starting on the first try, though. Unplugging and plugging the phone back in usually helps.
But let’s look beyond Android Auto. Cars are becoming more like software programs. And just like with software programs, settings and options are important. For example I would like to set the strength of the B mode. But the amount of fine-grained control is very limited in my model (don’t get me started on the bundle philosophy of cars).
When I found a rare settings dialog, it’s not even clear if that applies to my vehicle. Features can be set, but have no consequence.
That’s because the feature is turned off only by software. I hate this approach, because I feel somehow cheated. It would cost nothing to enable it.
Immediately after the first drive the app told me that there’s an update for the infotainment system available.
I had to email myself more info.
The real instructions were linked in the mail. The link was 404. With forum help, I found the instructions for a similar Peugeot.
I had to download 7 GB and a separate license file.
I had to erase the USB stick with a certain file system.
I had to place the license file in a specific folder inside the other content.
I had to plug the drive into my car and after only 40 minutes while the car was on, it was done.
To this day, I can’t name what has changed. But at least I didn’t had to make an appointment at my local dealer with a LIFO principle in place.
Yes, that’s why OTA updates are important.
Gears & Shift knob
There are three options to activate the hand brake. Button on the left side of the shift knob, separate button, stopping the engine. I have never in my live had to activate the hand brake while the engine was running. So two out of three options are useless to me.
You can decide if you want to drive in D mode (feels like a gasoline car) or in B (with advanced energy recovery).
B is unfortunately not really made for one-pedal driving. You will still need to use the brake pedal in sharp turns.
When I stop in front of a red light, I want the car to not move, even if I lift the brake pedal again (Start Stop system). But no, once I lift my foot, the car starts rolling.
I use the B mode for cities and the D mode for highways because that’s the energy efficient way. What I would like to have is an automatic switch at ~60 km/h.
If that would be the case, and if R would be a button somewhere else, I wouldn’t need the whole shift knob. Think about the room that would be made free.
This is the downside when you take an existing gasoline car and retrofit it with batteries.
Intelligence systems
Costs are the main reason I didn’t opt-in for the Corsa’s autonomous driving assistant. The bigger reason may be that I heard that it isn’t very intelligent.
The whole self-driving thing is pretty funny: Some see it already implemented, some are very skeptical.
I don’t know if Tesla will be first and I think they are extremely overvalued as of right now. But still, sometimes ambition (and the lack of ambition from others) make the difference.
When Daimler says “Waymo is full of IT specialists”, the implication is that they are not. How can you compete when cars are full of code, apart from the buzz around self-driving? Don’t you need a software culture for everything remotely intelligent, too?
Regarding the cockpit display:
Cruise control can be enabled at 40 km/h or higher. German villages have a 30 km/h speed limit.
The speed indicator is digital and only updated every second or so. This has two effects: I only know how fast I’m driving with a certain lag and the car feels slower than it has to.
The crown maybe takes the MyOpel app. I can do two things. Turn the air con on (when the car is charged over 50%) and see the the location & battery status. The app is extremely sluggish and usually takes a minute and several tries to submit a command to the car. The moment you want to view past drives, it reliably crashes. Lots of Play Store commentators can confirm.
Learning french with error codes
Charging & Navigation
I’m reluctant to take the european charging station infrastructure into account — on the one side it’s not the fault of car manufacturers, on the other side they are in the game of enabling driving experiences, and with EV’s, charging is a great chunk of the experience. (Maybe that’s what people are missing who don’t see any disruptive potential in Tesla.)
Granted, besides Tesla, Audi and recently Fiat showed onboard navigations that take the current SoC into account and route to charging stations in between point A and B.
Everyone else: Either you plan and research charging stops beforehand, or you hack your way with dongles, API keys, software reboots, etc..
Charging speeds vary a lot. If you want to drive longer distances, choose high charging speeds. But — and this is a bit misleading — car makers only tell you the time it takes to go from 0% to 80%. Because the charging curve decreases significantly over time.
I bet car makers are reducing speeds cautiously to play it safe — they fear to have to replace batteries often.
Charging cables and adapters are a mess, too. Opel’s “Universal Charger” is chipped away so that you can’t get the whole potential from a standard energy outlet. The same is true for the Typ 2 cable. Surprise, by placing a simple magnet on the cable it works. | https://medium.com/hyperlinked/my-new-electric-car-and-how-it-resembles-the-hardware-and-software-divide-d34a68a1e996 | ['Andreas Stegmann'] | 2020-11-17 15:55:32.363000+00:00 | ['Automotive', 'Software', 'Tesla', 'Electric Car', 'Europe'] |
Electoral College confirms Joe Biden’s victory | Presidential voters representing the Electoral College confirmed President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory on Monday. 538 total votes were cast with 306 going towards Biden and 232 going for President Donald Trump. The vote featured no “faithless electors”.
While the official vote is typically not newsorthy, public interest has increased due to the President’s insistence that the election was rigged and continued litigation his legal team has pursued. The accusations against the election process brought to question how many “faithless electors” there would be in this election. There were 10 “faithless electors” in 2016 despite 32 states and the District of Columbia enforcing laws and fines that discourage rogue electors.
Adding to the drama of the vote was the refusal to acknowledge presidential election results before the Electoral College vote by a majority of republicans in Congress. While not completely accepted yet by the whole collection, that sentiment has shifted since the vote went official as more republicans have been vocal in their acceptance of the results.
The Electoral College vote appears to have cemented the election process. Trump’s legal team has thus far been largely ineffective, having pursued 57 lawsuits and only being granted relief in one. So far, courts have found no widespread evidence of voter fraud or evidence that any fraud would change the outcome of the election. Only 5 cases remain active.
The Electoral College represents all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The candidate who crosses 270 votes wins the Electoral College and the presidential election. | https://medium.com/@dgoodkind/electoral-college-confirms-joe-bidens-victory-1a61627effe5 | ['David Goodkind'] | 2020-12-19 04:33:00.415000+00:00 | ['Electoral College', 'President', 'Biden', 'Trump'] |
Helping city solutions spread: How we think about ‘replication’ at Bloomberg Philanthropies | By Cristina Cacciato, Bloomberg Philanthropies Government Innovation Team
Earlier this month, Governor Enrique Alfaro of the Mexican State of Jalisco (pictured above) announced that a groundbreaking program that is reducing corruption in the city of Guadalajara will expand to at least a dozen more cities across the state. The endeavor, launched with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, represents not only a critical step for good governance in Mexico but also an evolution in the foundation’s thinking about how best to spread solutions to big urban challenges from one city to another.
The successful program — a winner in the 2016 Mayors Challenge — is called Visor Urbano. It’s a website that handles construction and business permits — transactions where bribes and special favors can easily come into play when handled face-to-face. A study in Guadalajara found that moving these processes online reduced bribe requests by municipal agents by 74 percent. This impact is garnering interest from cities across Latin America looking to adopt the program. Alfaro, who launched the program as mayor of Guadalajara before he became governor of Jalisco, brought the city’s implementation team along with him to his new Office of Innovation.
From here, they will focus on spreading the program throughout the state and beyond. The team will build on Governor Alfaro’s $3.7 million commitment to standardize Jalisco’s property data, which provides the critical digital infrastructure for Visor Urbano and platforms in other cities. Our support will bolster these efforts by giving the Visor Urbano team funding and coaching to help cities implement the solution and scale up its impact.
[Read: Study finds Guadalajara licensing system dramatically reduced corruption]
Visor Urbano is one of many successful ideas Bloomberg Philanthropies will help replicate through a new initiative focused on solutions spreading. All recipients of Bloomberg Philanthropies replication support will come from the pool of cities that have previously won our Mayors Challenge competitions in Latin America, Europe, and the U.S. The Mayors Challenge gives cities permission and funding to develop bold new ideas to tackle pressing challenges. At the heart of the competition — and a principle important to Mike Bloomberg — is the belief that when an idea is successful, it will spread. For our Mayors Challenge winners, it’s time to scale their successful ideas.
At the same time, we understand that you can’t simply “copy and paste” good ideas from one city to another. There are barriers that prevent good ideas from spreading — especially in the public sector — and the local context matters a lot. As we designed the new program, we researched why some good ideas spread and others don’t. Inspired in part by Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations, a book first published in 1962 and still prescient today, we arrived at three key elements necessary for solutions to spread in the public sector:
The idea must be highly visible and easy to understand
The idea’s impact must be clear, with data to illustrate that it works
The idea must be easy to try out without a large investment of public funds
We’ve designed a spectrum of supports to give successful ideas a boost in all three of these areas. On one end of the spectrum is a light-touch model aimed at increasing understanding and awareness of the ideas, providing cities with low-risk ways to test them, and technical assistance to help interested cities implement them.
To build demand for successful ideas, we will help Mayors Challenge teams shine a spotlight on their projects at conferences and virtual events, in trade publications, and on social media. To make ideas easy to understand, they will publish a playbook or “replication manual” outlining the program’s core elements and how to communicate benefits to key stakeholders. To make ideas “trialable,” the light-touch support model will develop affordable ways for cities to conduct low-risk prototypes of the idea to see if it would work.
[Get the latest innovation news from Bloomberg Cities! Subscribe to SPARK.]
On the other end of the spectrum are successful ideas, like Visor Urbano, that are complex to implement and require more intensive support for the ideas to spread. To implement Visor Urbano, cities must do a lot of work updating their maps with current property and deed information, as well as zoning data. Despite the talents of the project team in Jalisco, they simply don’t have the capacity on their own to provide technical support to dozens of new cities. The Bloomberg Philanthropies grant will support the Jalisco team with funding and coaching as they build and execute a cost-effective replication model. That will allow the team to engage with and train staff in interested cities, find fixes as they hit roadblocks, and establish data systems needed to track progress.
While we’ve learned that there is not a “one size fits all” approach to spreading solutions, there are supports we can provide cities to overcome common obstacles when sharing and adopting ideas. Through this program, we hope to not only amplify the impact of great Mayors Challenge ideas, but to build the public sector’s understanding of how cities learn from each other — and how they can do more of it. | https://medium.com/@bloombergcities/helping-city-solutions-spread-how-we-think-about-replication-at-bloomberg-philanthropies-896fd6505a59 | ['Bloomberg Cities'] | 2020-12-16 15:27:56.364000+00:00 | ['Mexico', 'Philanthropy', 'Innovation', 'Cities', 'Corruption'] |
The Governor’s Island | The Governor’s Island
Marcel Rommens; Shutterstock
It was in the beginning of autumn.
Angelo took me to the island.
The morning we arrived we rushed to the Governor’s mansion. I did not see one single soul along the way.
The mansion was a typical Spanish colonial building with clay roof tiles, stucco walls, and an arched entrance door.
A smell of mold and ocean lingered in the corridors. The walls looked like the faces of old patients locked in an asylum.
Angelo and I stopped in front of a huge door at the end of the main corridor. He opened it without saying a word. What was new? He did not speak the entire day.
In the dim light I distinguished the silhouette of a man. The man stood in front of the sole window, his back turned toward me. He was dressed in a military uniform.
His silhouette… Ha! Was I so much in love with Miguel that I was imagining every man in the world looked like him?
The man turned around.
I stopped breathing. The memory of long nights of love came over me with the force of a hurricane determined to wipe everything from the face of the earth.
Miguel. The man in front of me was Miguel.
I do not know for how long we stared at each other.
He spoke first:
“Surprised, Clara?”
That was the most idiotic question Miguel had ever asked me. My legs trembled. Tears burned my eyes. Rage inundated me. I raised my voice.
“Surprised? Who? Me? If Winston Churchill would walk in this room right now, wearing Josephine Baker’s famous top hat instead of his, and Bottega Veneta stiletto sandals I would not blink an eye. From now on until the end of my days I swear nothing is going to surprise me anymore.”
“I can explain.”
“Don’t indulge me. Explain what? That you are the Governor of an empty island where hardly anybody sets foot? And what is it with that military uniform?”
“You should have read Miriam’s files before you came.”
“No. You should have explained what’s going on long time ago. Whatever the name of this insanity is, now it’s too late.”
“Wait.”
I did not. I left the building. I ran toward the ocean. The wind disheveled my hair with the fury with which dishevels awnings in the winter. It was winter in my soul. A cold winter whose ice the intensity of that summer could not dispel.
I heard Miguel’s voice behind me.
“Clara, stop.”
I reached the rugged coastline. I wanted to stop. My left foot slipped. I fell into the void beneath me.
“Nooo!”
For a second Miguel’s voice cut in two the howling of the waters.
I thought to myself: “I am pregnant.”
I felt the impact with the water, and everything turned black. | https://medium.com/storymaker/the-governors-island-5cd311a29ac4 | ['Gabriela Marie Milton'] | 2020-12-26 19:30:34.004000+00:00 | ['Short Read', 'Short Story', 'Literature', 'Short Fiction'] |
2 Malaysians create ‘greener’ ice cream float ~ ‘Float On Cone’ | Startup company Carpe Ri Sdn Bhd is set to take on the challenge of offering unique marketing & branding options for companies through its eco-friendly ice cream product, the ‘Float On Cone’
Co-founded by Joon Tan & Danieul Mudali, the company offers customisable delicious ice creams which are able to carry colours brilliantly, allowing clients to customise the dessert & use unique dessert offerings as part of their branding exercise
“Take AirAsia or Grab for example. We can create confections which accurately reflect their logo colours & even incorporate their unique backstory with the use of appropriate ingredients,” Tan said
As the company plans to embark on its next chapter of growth, targeting to become a US$100 million (US$1=RM4.34) company by 2030, both Tan & Mudali are looking forward to work with clients, especially global quick service restaurants (QSRs)
“We are in the midst of negotiations with a few brands in the Philippines, Indonesia & Malaysia, but we are not at liberty to reveal more as we have existing non-disclosure agreements,” said Tan
She said the ‘Float On Cone’ has a very small carbon footprint as there is no need for paper, plastic cups or straws
The entire dessert can be consumed except for a small paper sleeve for the cone
Tan said the main market for the product will be QSRs e.g. McDonald’s, Jollibee, A&W & Marrybrown
She said the product’s commercial potential attracted Malaysia’s early-stage start-up influencer, Cradle Fund, which had picked Carpe Ri for its ‘Coach & Grow Programme’
Besides being eco-friendly, tasty & unique, Tan said the product could help reduce QSR’s frozen dessert costs by between 25% & 40%
“This is also where Cradle Fund sees our potential. We have the potential to grow into a US$100 million company within 10 years,” she said, adding that to-date, the company has spent RM350K of its own funds on research & development
Carpe Ri has a patent pending for their halal ‘Float On Cone’, which gives them access to the global frozen dessert industry soon
“We have registered with the Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia & will be extending our patent worldwide through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). “We’ll be filing for PCT in 3 months,” she said, adding that the patent application process was made easier as they were guided by experienced international consultants
On the production side, Tan said Carpe Ri has signed original equipment manufacturer (OEM) deals with regional ASEAN manufacturers, with no plans to build a factory as yet
“We do not have any direct competition & plan to co-opt as well as work with all stakeholders in the industry. For example, for soft drink manufacturers, we’ll use their syrups (for the ice cream). So, it is a win-win situation for all as we share savings through the value chain,” she replied when asked about market competition.
Carpe Ri has been involved in the ice cream industry for 4 years, reaping the benefits of the recession-resistant business
Taking advantage of a highly sought-after durian variety, the Musang King, the company sells Musang King ice cream to the Hong Kong market, which is the most expensive variety over there.
“The frozen dessert business is recession proof & worth about US$100 billion annually, with QSRs & convenience stores accounting for 20% of that market,” Tan concluded optimistically | https://medium.com/@siennylovesdrawing/2-malaysians-create-greener-ice-cream-float-d154b60074ec | [] | 2020-05-20 05:28:17.315000+00:00 | ['Ice Cream', 'Dessert', 'Branding', 'Creative', 'Foodies'] |
THE PRIMACY OF EMOTION: BIG THINKING ABOUT FEELINGS | Sitting in the back of a class called Personality and Behavior Change, I was chatting with my classmate who was a professional in Human Resources at a large corporation in Manhattan.
I can’t remember the context of the conversation, but I remember I told him, “I love emotions.”
“Really?” he said, incredulously, with a light netting of fear across his face.
“Yeah, why?” I said.
“Most people hate emotions,” he said.
I was (intellectually) taken aback.
“Huh,” I said genuinely.
And I think that kind of ended the conversation. Class started, or something. But it made me think.
And yes, I do love emotions. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the fugly.
I didn’t understand how saying so would catch him off guard.
A couple of years later, I was on a second date. We were in a taxi on the way home to my place from the bar. I was telling her what I thought was my life mission, or life philosophy, or what I believed in, or something in that word salad.
It was night in Brooklyn, and I couldn’t see in her face if she accepted or approved of anything I was explaining to her. She was, at least, not obviously disapproving of my attempt to explain vulnerable and cool s**t without sounding pretentious, confused, or immature.
I hesitated, because the pretentious me didn’t trust she would understand the meaning of the word “primacy.” (Spoiler: she did, it turned out she had a much better vocabulary than me and beat me in Scrabble every time.)
“I believe in the…. primacy of emotion,” I ventured.
Still not seeing much in the way of approval for what I was saying, I think I fumbled the next several sentences. I left myself less than enthusiastic about my explanation.
I’m not sure I’ve totally nailed it since then, but here’s a shot.
The Primacy of Emotion: A List of Big Thoughts About Feelings
We are constantly immersed in, surrounded by, and generating moods and feelings, expression, motivation, enervation, and corresponding physical changes in blood and brain chemicals, muscles and movement.
People are scared of emotions. People avoid recognizing their own emotions. People don’t want to talk about emotions, or learn about them, or think about them. This gives emotions even more power to push us around.
Emotions connect and divide us, they motivate and discourage action, they clarify and confuse thinking.
Scientists (psychologists) are afraid of emotion. With the modern growth of psychology in the 20th century, we see heavy emphasis on behavior and cognition. Psychologists, like everyone, steer clear of emotion.
Emotions decide and guide our lives as much as anything else. Maybe more so. Our lives are created by emotions. Satisfaction, desire, fear, comfort, and well, heck, we could list all the darn feelings that structure and drive our lives but there is such a panoply of them, a smorgasbord, a buffet….. it would be like listing all the colors on your computer. Or all the commands in all the software.
Emotion is crucial for love and trust and communication. Emotion is essential for teaching and learning, for dealing and business-ing, for memory and striving.
But enough concept. You might get the feeling of boredom and your eyes skip along to connect with, or grab on to something else.
GRAB HERE!
Right now, you might be aware of a lot of feelings. (If you’re not aware, know that emotional literacy and awareness is an improvable skill.)
With emotional awareness comes the potential for emotional growth. And there’s nothing I’ve seen, but nothing, as powerful and effective at changing your life than emotional growth.
Your emotional growth is everything. Or almost. I don’t want to be so absolutist. But, it’s really freaking important to happiness, success, fulfillment, peace, or whatever you think the goal is in life.
So, in conclusion: all the feels. The real feel. The really real. Every day and always. I heart emotions. | https://medium.com/@josephrivertimmins/the-primacy-of-emotion-thinking-big-about-feelings-72786e4308eb | ['Everything You Do Is Amazing'] | 2020-12-24 00:07:52.630000+00:00 | ['Emotional Intelligence', 'Feelings', 'Psychology', 'Emotions'] |
The People We Were | Marvin returned to Yaoundé two days after Robert was discharged from the hospital. Robert drove him to the Garanti bus park and lingered until the bus was ready to take off. He hugged his brother close and tight, promising to visit him as soon as possible.
“Just make sure you’re completely healed before you come,” Marvin teased gruffly. “I don’t have a car to carry your half dead body to the hospital again.”
This earned him a playful shove which he laughed off. Robert watched the bus disappear into Douala’s early afternoon traffic before driving home. To his surprise, Tatiana sat in his living room with his parents when he returned. She gave him a worried once over, before coming to wrap her arms around him. He hugged her back with mixed feelings of gratitude and guilt.
“Thank God you are well,” she whispered.
“Thank you for coming,” he whispered back.
She insisted that he and his parents sit down so she could she serve them the food she brought.
“You have all been at the hospital,” she explained, ladling achu soup into the hole she had expertly made in the pounded cocoyams. “Let someone who was not there take care of you now.”
Even his mother seemed moved by her thoughtfulness.
Later that afternoon while his parents napped, Robert sat down next to her on the couch and took her hand in his.
“Thank you for still caring, Tati,” he stared down at their entwined hands, thinking about the many times he had resented her for not painting her nails in the delicate shade of creamy pink that Fese favored. Guilt swelled over gratitude.
“No wahala, Bobby. I’m glad you are feeling better.”
“Me too. I’ve never been so sick in my life!”
“Bertrand told me that you almost died, that the doctors didn’t know what was going on. I was so scared. Did they ever find out what you had?”
“All tests came back negative and then I got better.”
“Wow…” Tatiana said. “So it came and went, just like that?”
Robert started to say yes then hesitated. It had not come and gone just like that. Many things had happened before, during and since.
“With some spiritual intervention,” he replied still staring at their hands.
“Look at you talking about spiritual intervention!” Tatiana chuckled. “That illness really got to you.”
“I guess it did, Tati,” Robert said with a sigh. “I guess it did. My outlook on life is definitely different now. I feel like there is so much more to life than all the things I have been trying to pursue since I came back to Cameroon. Not that there is anything wrong with what I have been doing. I just feel like there is a lot I have been taking for granted and even more I have not bothered to explore, especially here in Cameroon, about the people, the cultures, what we believed before colonialism and Christianity and all these things which have changed the way we live and relate to each other.”
“Near death experiences always change people’s outlook on life,” Tatiana mused softly.
“This all started before I even got sick,” Robert explained. “When I was in Buea to cover Senator Effoe’s funeral I met this child from one of those villages in the Manyu division that soldiers burnt. Talking to her and hearing about her life really made me see that there is the Cameroon we know and the Cameroon we hope can be and that those two Cameroons are sitting on top of a Cameroon made of all the people who were in this part of the world before it became Cameroon — people whose worldviews, aspirations, and values are still influencing the way we live now. The question is how we are all going to move into the future with this new identity we have been given. I look at myself, for example, and I know that I am from Oku. But there is so much about being an Oku man that I still have to learn and these things I don’t know have already profoundly impacted my life in ways that I cannot even begin to explain, talk less of reconcile with what I think I know about the world. I feel like I have become a child again, and the world is this mysterious place that I have come to, and I have all these different groups of people from whom I can learn. I feel like someone unraveled my sense of self into this big wide space capable of holding so much more.”
“That is really deep, Bobby,” Tati squeezed his hand.
Something in her voice made him look up at her. She was smiling at him, but her eyes were watery with confusion and pain.
“Tati…” he began.
“What happened to us, Bobby?”
The anguish in her whispered question sliced through him. He closed his eyes in guilt.
“I’m so sorry, Tati,” he whispered back.
“But that’s the thing,” tears spilled down her face as she spoke. “I don’t know what you are sorry for. I don’t know what happened or what changed. You never gave any indication that something was wrong, then you just ended things. Next thing I hear is that you are in the hospital sick and possibly dying.”
Photo Credit: Adobe Stock
“It was very selfish of me to do what I did to you during our relationship, Tati. I was only thinking about myself. I didn’t call you when I got sick because I didn’t think it was fair and then I was too sick to do anything.”
“What did you do, though? Why did you end things so suddenly? Were you cheating on me with someone else?”
Robert felt like he had, given the way he felt about Fese, but couldn’t find a way to say it.
“I think I spent more time wanting you to be someone else rather than seeing and appreciating you for who you are.”
She gave him a long look after he spoke.
“Is it Fese?”
Robert stared at her in shock. How could she possibly have known? He started to deny it but as he opened his mouth to speak, Tatiana’s eyes narrowed, and her jaw clenched. Robert had come to know Tatiana well enough in the three years they spent together so he knew the clenched jaw, narrowed eyes, and steady gaze she was leveling on him at the moment were how she prepared herself to hear lies from someone she trusted to tell her the truth.
“I’m sorry, Tati.”
“I always suspected you had some feelings for her.”
“Nothing happened between us, I swear.”
“I know, Bobby. You’re not that kind of guy.” Tatiana said softly.
Neither of them said anything for a few seconds but Robert could hear the wheels of her mind turning from where he sat.
“You broke up with me when she and Bertrand got engaged!”
Her shock at the realization made Tatiana’s voice rise slightly.
“I’m so sorry, Tati,” he said again, thinking of Bertrand’s suggestion that he just be honest with her. “I wish I could go back and change things.”
“I’m sorry too,” she replied, sadly. “I wish things were different.”
“I wish they were too, Tati. I have a lot of soul searching and self-accountability to work through.”
“Sounds like you do,” she replied, standing up. To her credit, her tone was not nasty, just very matter of fact. Robert stood up with her.
“Thank you for coming to see me and for bringing food. My father really likes achu.”
Her eyes dulled with some gloomy emotion for a few seconds then she smiled. It wasn’t her normal happy smile, but it was genuine. It struck Robert then that Tatiana had been holding out hope that things could be mended between them.
“It was good to see him again.”
He helped her pack up the bowls she brought food in, which his mother had washed and set out to dry.
“Let me drive you home,” he offered.
She declined firmly so he walked with her to the road and insisted on paying her fare. She gave him one last hug before entering the taxi.
“Thank you for everything, Tati,” he whispered into her ear.
“You’re welcome, Bobby.”
(The People We Were is an excerpt from a longer work of fiction I am currently working on.) | https://medium.com/@mythologicalafricans/the-people-we-were-47e2863426b1 | ['Mythological Africans'] | 2021-08-11 21:40:52.702000+00:00 | ['Lovestory', 'Cameroon', 'Fiction'] |
Shades of Darkness | Shades of Darkness
Photo by Angus Read on Unsplash
I step into your darkness,
but I can't see you.
I hesitate to call out, to intrude,
what if you're asleep?
This pitch-black,
most severe shade of darkness —
could it get any darker!
Blinded by light for too long,
now I cannot see
the figure lying still,
not very far from me.
I close my eyes, delving
into the deepest of my darkness;
in that profound blackness
I search for my lost sight.
As I open my eyes, it’s there
before me: a grey world painted
in its myriad intriguing shades.
In its hands, clasped in a tight hug,
delicately interwoven,
I finally find you. | https://medium.com/scrittura/shades-of-darkness-3b2a8af04e3b | ['Sajina Ignatius'] | 2020-12-15 03:26:21.165000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Self', 'Connection', 'Depth', 'Darkness'] |
You just landed a new job in the Bay Area. You’re going to move alone. Now what? | In spring 2019, I finished my Masters’ program and landed a new job in the Bay Area. I’d heard horror stories of moving there — crazy landlords, sky-high cost of living — yet my new job was absolutely aligned with what I always wanted to do, and I was excited for the opportunity for a new adventure. So, I accepted the offer.
This is pretty! But it looks slightly apocalyptic…uh oh. Is it a metaphor?
About three days later, the initial rush of excitement abated, and I found myself struggling with all the risk and uncertainty that moving brings.
Here were the main questions I had:
Where should I live? How do I get a place to live? Do I need a car? Can I afford this city? For how long? How will I make friends? As an introvert, will I be a lonely sad hermit for the first 6(+) months? What are some moving tips?
A lot of the information out there is sponsored by moving companies (take from that what you will), so here are a series of posts meant to help you — a Mobile Millennial, the recipient of a great new job, the solo mover — navigate this scary, yet exhilarating, transition.
On the next post: how should you pick your new neighborhood? | https://medium.com/@mobile.millennial/you-just-landed-a-new-job-in-the-bay-area-youre-going-to-move-alone-now-what-83e10cacec9b | ['Mobile Millennial'] | 2019-06-03 21:12:33.188000+00:00 | ['Bay Area', 'Millennials', 'Logistics', 'Transitions', 'Moving'] |
코드체인 감시 봇들 | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/codechain-kr/%EC%BD%94%EB%93%9C%EC%B2%B4%EC%9D%B8-%EA%B0%90%EC%8B%9C-%EB%B4%87%EB%93%A4-98fd04abcfda | ['Seon Pyo Kim'] | 2019-05-22 10:12:40.670000+00:00 | ['Monitoring', 'Codechain', 'Bot'] |
How I handled null values in Android Proto DataStore? | I was very excited to know practically how this new storage solution (DataStore) works. So in the Christmas holidays, I made a sample project on Proto DataStore to learn and improve my skills.
While working with DataStore i had multiple issues, but the major and most challenging issue was supporting null values in Proto DataStore.
We can’t store null values in Proto DataStore instead we have other solutions.
I found following solutions to add Null support in proto3, you can use according to your use-case.
(I will add more solutions as soon as i will come to know)
Method 1
We have wrappers.proto to support null in protobuffers
To use above wrappers you need to import “google/protobuf/wrappers.proto”;
And to declare nullable string use StringValue,
Method 2
We can use Oneof to define a nullable type, as of my understanding the best way of using this is 👇🏼
But in this case, you have to do a lot of additional stuff, like handling null via if else in service implementation.
Method 3 (using Default Values — Recommended)
In proto3 all fields are optional by default so each field have default value
These defaults are type-specific:
For strings, the default value is the empty string.
For bytes, the default value is empty bytes.
For bools, the default value is false.
For numeric types, the default value is zero.
For enums, the default value is the first defined enum value , which must be 0.
, which must be 0. For message fields, the field is not set. Its exact value is language-dependent. See the generated code guide for details.
We have to handle these default values using conditional code like if object is null pass its default value instead.
Thank you!!
That’s all from my learnings!!
Hey!!, I am ready to add more methods , if you know something different to handle null in protocol-buffers, Please let me know. i will be very thankful to you. you can find me on LinkedIn. | https://medium.com/@ishroid/proto3-null-support-3e8decd0afbc | ['Ishrat Khan'] | 2020-12-30 10:26:07.928000+00:00 | ['Null Safety', 'Android', 'Proto3', 'Protobuf', 'Kotlin'] |
Are charities, modern-day slave masters? | When you think of charity, you think helpful, recuse, cure, right? and some are just that, but some are there for the sole purpose to make money. I know what you are thinking they have to make money to survive and that is true they do, but what about if their primary purpose is to exploit a group of people to solely make money? is that right? well that’s what some charities do, yes they do and it can be very damaging and it needs to stop.
Charities get funding from local authorities to provide services, some are great services and help and move people on to where they need to be, but some, they keep people in cycles so that they can profit off them. What do you mean? well, they create these crazy schemes projects, called PEER Learning, PEER Research sound so helpful when in actual fact it is a way to use people to seek funding. I know people are thinking what’s wrong with that, well it can be triggering and re-traumatizing causing some people to revert back to old ways such as alcohol or drugs. How is this fair? they can not even be arse to pay for a professional psychologist for supervision that they could afford to provide, but they just do not care enough.
Some charities will cover travel at £5.00 per day ( if you travel) and food £6.00 per day, for your time of sometimes up to 4–5 hour days and their rationale is it will affect a person benefits. They are so out of touch with the reality of the problem they claim to want to solve that they don’t even know that there are other ways that you could genuinely seek to support a person’s basic needs. Now for some, it’s not just monetary value they seek, some people whom they get involved because they want to help or they genuinely think that by volunteering it will help then get better and move on, they trust the people they are volunteering for and those organisations just what to use them for funding.
Yep, they pass people around like they are a cheap piece of meat to be used, you could in some cases unknowingly be volunteering for more than one charity. I hear your thoughts, how do you unknowingly do this? here’s how, if charities have amalgamated into one, IE have subsidiaries they use one project manager to deliver the project and just change the name but use the same paper heading and just implement the logo of each, each time they have created another project, that they have sourced to fund for or they just bring other people into the mix. You could easily be doing 30 hours week, thinking your helping your self but actually your help everyone else get what they need from you.
Does that seem fair to you? some will offer laptops and clothes vouchers to get you to start, to but you have to do the whole course. Then when you have finished there is nothing at the end. Some will offer a grant that you can apply for £500.00 for the equipment you do not need, when in actually face what you need is to pay your bills and buy food to put on the table, so you do not have to use a food bank. Some times if you ask for help they will signpost you to another organisation when they have millions sat in the bank from funding and donations that they could not have received without you.
Some charities are really good and do what their primary purpose says which is to make some else life better as a result of what they bring to the table, but with every positive there is a negative and some are solely here to exploit the people they aim to serve, causing more damage than good.
Next time you go to donate, find out how they are serving, find out if their staff are trained, find out what they do to support the well being of their volunteers, find out if they meet their beneficiaries basic needs, are they accredited? Know where and whom your money is going too and whom it is helping. | https://medium.com/@selinahanley/are-charities-modern-day-slave-masters-5caf8fb54662 | ['Selina Hanley'] | 2020-12-09 11:18:35.145000+00:00 | ['Trauma', 'Exploitation', 'Abuse', 'Abusive Relationships', 'Charity'] |
Spring Boot with Google Sign-In | This article provides basic steps to enable google sign-in with a simple spring boot web application. You will learn how to enable google sign-in authentication with spring security.
The code for this example can be found in my Github repository
You need the following prerequisite A text editor or IDE JDK 1.8 or the latest Gradle 4+ or Maven 3.2+ Google account Basic understanding of OAuth 2.0 Authentication process
There are two ways to enable authentication and authorization to web applications. The first option is to implement, create, and maintain a user database with the Authentication process, the second option is to use an external authentication framework.
OAuth2 Authentication
OAuth 2.0 is the industry-standard protocol for authentication and authorization. OAuth 2.0 grant a third-party web site or application access to the user’s protected resources. The below diagram explains how the authentication process works.
authentication process
When the user requests an API through a web client which requires an authenticated user is redirected to the Google Sign-In page. One of the request parameters is the client ID, so google knows which registered application the user tries to Sign-In. If the authentication process is successful, the user agrees on the scope of data to be shared with the application. The browser received an authorization code. at the moment browser knows the user has successfully signed in, but again API application validates the authorization code sent from the browser. Google sign-in system confirms the code and sends backs an access token. This token will be used by the browser or client application to query the requests.
Register the Application in the Google Sign-in portal
To use Google OAuth 2.0 as an authentication provider, let us create a web client in Google cloud console. To enable google auth with spring boot you need a client identifier and shared secret which needs to be passed as a configuration parameter to the application.
1) log in to the Google API console using your Google account.
2) Enable Gmail service, Analytics services, and Google+ service APIs in Google cloud console.
Google cloud console
3) After enabling the above services, navigate to the credentials section on the left menu, and choose the OAuth client ID option.
Google cloud console
4) If you're accessing this service for the first time, then you need to create a project.
5) After selecting the OAuth client ID next, choose the application type as “Web application” which will provide the authorized javascript origins and authorized redirect URIs form.
Google cloud console
6) After choosing the application type, let's provide the application name, Authorized javascript origins, authorized redirect URIs, and select the create option.
Google cloud console
7) finally, you will find the Client ID and Client secret in the OAuth client created section. Copy the client id and client secret for later use to configure the web application.
Google cloud console
8) Now we have successfully created the auth client in the google cloud console.
Google cloud console
Simple Web Application
Generate Spring application using Spring Initializer. The Spring Initializer helps to generate a spring boot application quickly with needed dependencies. This project needs the spring web, Thymeleaf, spring-security, and spring oauth2 client. The above image shows the configurations set up for this project. After generating the project, you will get a zip file with the given artifact name. Unzip the project file and open it using an IDE. This project uses Maven as the build tool. You can use Maven or Gradle to build the project. The following image shows the project structure and pom.xml file that got created for the Maven project.
pom.xml file
The dependency section shows a list of selected dependencies for this project.
Add an Index Page
Before moving into the security section, let us create a simple web application with an index.html home page. You can use the Thymeleaf template to create the views. Create the index.html file inside the following location: src/main/resources/templates/index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:th="https://www.thymeleaf.org"
xmlns:sec="https://www.thymeleaf.org/thymeleaf-extras-springsecurity3">
<head>
<title>Welcome</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome Page</h1>
<p>Welcome to Spring Security</p>
<form th:action="@{/logout}" method="post">
<input type="submit" value="Sign Out"/>
</form>
</body>
</html>
After creating the template view needs to configure the pages based on Spring MVC. Let us create a view controller and configure the Spring MVC. Create MvcConfig.java file in the following location: src/main/java/com/example/googledemo/MvcConfig.java The following code shows the implementation of Spring MVC configuration
package com.example.googledemo;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.ViewControllerRegistry;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.WebMvcConfigurer;
@Configuration
public class MvcConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {
@Override
public void addViewControllers(ViewControllerRegistry registry){
registry.addViewController("/index").setViewName("index");
}
}
This class overrides the method of the WebMvcConfigure class addViewControllers() method and binds the views with the controller. Now lets us enable the spring security and secure this web application with the user login.
Now all the users can view the index page. Suppose if you want to secure and restrict the index page from unauthorized users, the index page access needs to be secured by forcing the user to the google login page.
Spring Security dependencies are already added to the pom.xml file during the project generation.
Secure the application with Spring Security
Let's create a SecurityConfig.java class and annotate it with @EnableWebSecurity to enable the Spring web security support to the Spring MVC. After enabling the spring security, run the application and access it in the browser. You will see the spring default login form.
Spring default login page
Now you need to override the spring default security methods to apply the application authentication logic. You need to extend WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter class and overrides a couple of its methods to set some custom specific security access configurations. The configure(HttpSecurity) method needs to override to define which URLs need to be secured and which not.
Enable Google Sign-in
Now we need to configure the generated client credentials to the application.properties file in the resources folder. The spring security-related prefixes start with “spring.security.oauth2.client.registration” and follow with client-related custom properties.
application property file
After adding the above application properties for the google client, this will enable all the required beans for OAuth 2 login.
Protect API Endpoints
package com.example.googledemo;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.builders.HttpSecurity;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.configuration.EnableWebSecurity;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.configuration.WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter;
@EnableWebSecurity
public class SecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {
@Override
public void configure(HttpSecurity httpSecurity) throws Exception {
httpSecurity.csrf().disable().antMatcher("/**").authorizeRequests()
.antMatchers("/", "/index.html").authenticated()
.anyRequest().authenticated()
.and()
.oauth2Login().permitAll()
.and().
logout().logoutSuccessUrl("/");
}
}
The above SecurityConfig.java class provides the implementation of the security configuration. here you can notice oauth2Login() element which provides a number of configuration options to enable the customized OAuth 2 logins for different providers. The above configuration shows that all the endpoints and URL paths are protected with authentication and the user will be redirected to the login page by default if not authorized. Finally, the logout URL is also configured with logout() which clears the current session of the user if the “/logout” URL endpoint is triggered and redirected to the base path again after successful logout which will again navigate the user to the login page.
The index.html page contains the logout function which will trigger the “/logout” endpoint and navigates the user to the login page after the successful logout.
index.html file
Whitelisting the home page public
We can whitelist any views from the authentication by providing the permitAll() permission as shown in the bellow configuration.
.antMatchers("/home").permitAll()
Build and Run the application
Last you need to Build and Run the application. You can run the main class using the IDE from the location: src/main/java/com/example/googledemo/GoogledemoApplication.java
GoogledemoApplication.java file
You will get the following console output with a successful application startup.
Console output
Build the executable JAR
You can build the executable from the command line using the Maven build command. You can build a jar with all the necessary dependencies, classes, and resources files to run the demo app. Use the following command to run the application.
mvnw spring-boot:run
You can package and build the jar using the following command.
mvnw clean package
Console output of the successful build
Build console output
After building the jar then run the build jar from the target folder location.
java -jar target/googledemo-0.0.1.jar
Once the application starts executed, access the URL in the browser.
The application will redirect the user to the Google login screen and provide Gmail login details.
Google sign-in page
If login successful, the User will be redirected to index home view
Web app index page
After accessing the welcome page you can able to sign out by clicking on the sign-out. Spring security revokes the authentication and you logged out from the web application. After logged out the application will redirect the user to the Google login page.
Google sign-in page
Summary
This article discusses basic google authentication with spring security for Web Applications in spring boot. By following the steps you can build a simple web application with Google login and learn how to configure basic authentication to web applications. The code for this example can be found in my Github repository. | https://medium.com/@yatheesanc9/spring-boot-with-google-sign-in-8e304dbe936e | ['Yatheesan Chandreswaran'] | 2020-11-01 10:13:09.500000+00:00 | ['Spring Boot', 'Authentication', 'Google Sign In', 'Web Applications', 'Spring Security'] |
A message from Beaxy regarding the XRP Partial Payment Exploit | Dear Beaxy User,
As you have likely heard by now, Beaxy experienced the XRP Partial Payment Exploit. We take this crime seriously. It was a crime against Beaxy, our team members, and most importantly you — our valued users.
We understand that a situation like this creates stress and anxiety about the safety of funds at Beaxy. Our brand has been built on a foundation of trust with our users, and we assure you that the cause of this issue has been addressed and you can trade with confidence at Beaxy.
We want you to know a few important things:
Through the XRP exploit, a malicious actor was able to credit their account with funds despite not actually having deposited these funds. This led to an illegitimate sell-off in BTC. The user was then able to withdraw approximately 44 BTC and 110,000 XRP, a total estimated value of $570,000 the day on which it occurred.
User account balances were unaffected as Beaxy funded the stolen tokens from its reserve.
Beaxy has more than enough funds on hand to continue to fully fund our reserves, our current operations, and our future development roadmap.
We take this matter very seriously and are working with law enforcement to bring those responsible to justice.
We’re working as fast as we can to get you the information you need. Our users are always the first priority.
Our roadmap and business plans remain on course and unaffected.
It is important to note that there was no single transaction that we can point to that would summarize this event. Over a 2 hour period, many transactions occurred that were used to take advantage of the XRP partial payment exploit. Given that large legitimate XRP wallet movements were coinciding with the event, and curious activity was underway on other exchanges, speculation was to be expected.
As the investigations into the bad actors involved prevent us from commenting further, we remain committed to establishing the premier marketplace for exciting, cutting edge projects and digital assets. To that end, we remain committed to our communities and providing platforms for our users to engage in robust conversation. That open dialogue can lead to unfounded speculation and we remain committed to setting the record straight.
The adverse financial impact to Beaxy is public record and was well known to the community after the events transpired, hence we felt it was unnecessary to add these details initially. Again, user account balances were unaffected as Beaxy funded the stolen tokens from its reserve. Beaxy was the first to detect and report the issue to its users. Since then, we have implemented solutions to prevent such exploits in the future.
All things considered, our users appreciated the way we handled the situation.
In fact, we’ve always aimed to do right by users. Here are some of the things we’ve done in the past to that end.
Cut our total token supply in half
Implemented over 60+ user suggested features
Awarded tokens and feature prioritization to bug testers
Gifted users BXY for a balance issue
Maintained a 93% customer service rating
Maintained average sub 1 hour response time
Gifted boosted accounts & other rewards to the community
Additionally, we’re going to do an AMA on Thursday (8/29) at 6 PM UTC. Feel free to post your questions in the AMA channel in our Discord and we will get to all of them as best we can.
Thank you for your patience, understanding, and loyalty to Beaxy! | https://medium.com/beaxy-exchange/a-message-from-beaxy-regarding-the-xrp-partial-payment-exploit-93194dff0cee | ['T.J. Wilson'] | 2019-08-26 22:34:36.726000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Beaxy', 'Blockchain'] |
Cultural Enlightenment | Cultural Enlightenment
Courtesy of Planet Ho!
Athena by Pexels
Originally written for Screw Magazine, I offer an uncharacteristically upbeat take on my previous profession as an adult ad agency owner whose job it was to take care of my clients’ (who were escorts) advertising needs.
To clarify: If a working girl chooses not to work the boulevard, she has to advertise her service in either a print vehicle (which is now all but dead with respect to escort advertising) or the Internet to attract customers. Often, the ladies were not knowledgeable enough to negotiate that task. They needed someone to write their copy, do their artwork, and help them decide where to advertise in an effort to maximize their advertising buck.
If this sounds like Coca Cola deferring to the expertise of a major Madison Avenue ad agency, that’s exactly what it was from the point of view of the ad agency strategizing on behalf of the client. But of course, I wasn’t servicing business types in suits and ties. My clients wore g-strings, wonder bras, and stiletto heels.
The media outlets (New York Magazine, Village Voice, New York Press, et al) were all too eager to have an agency like mine do all this work for them. It provided plausible denial with regard to what these advertisers were actually selling — all while allowing them to streamline employee costs via not having to hire employees to handle all this advertising which in fact, brought in a huge amount of revenue.
Every working day (which is really every day for me) I take a trip around the world on my advertising beat. First, I visit with Russians…then Brazilians…then Chinese…then Koreans…and you get the idea. And via these multiple daily international experiences, I’ve come to know the world at large even more thoroughly than I did when I was a cabby (another international experience albeit mostly India and Pakistan). It’s interesting how each group approaches the job of selling ass.
Brazilians come from a youth culture that prevents them from working their 40 to 50-year-old bodies on the home front where nobody wants to buy sex from a girl who’s as “mature” as they are.
Colombians tend to support their families by sending money orders on a regular basis to what amounts to their pimp relatives.
Venezuelans are unique in that they primp and dress like rich girls only to go home to a domicile that is gross and run down. They, more than any other culture, value their outward physical beauty, cleanliness, and presentation at all costs.
My Russian clients, like their Brazilian counterparts, are a little long in the tooth and similarly responsible when it comes to their craft. The only difference is they turn an hour into twenty minutes in the room. I’ve never heard of a Russian girl giving good service in this business. But for all the aforementioned girls, none seems to be a drug addict, alcoholic, or an irresponsible shopaholic!
Enter Koreans and Americans both of whom boast breakneck/kamikaze cultural traits. Americans are mostly sloppy and irresponsible, supporting thug boyfriends, jailbirds, and drug habits. Instant gratification seems to rule. As far as I can see, they save nothing and simply live in the moment.
To my surprise, Koreans (especially the owners) can be very wild and compulsive. My best customers always ventilate by screaming and smacking me around for good measure. And they beat each other up as well. But at the same time, they’re very friendly, generous and loyal. I’ve tasted every Korean dish on every menu and been treated to meals on a regular basis — by girls who often abuse the fuck out of me when the mood strikes.
On days off they often get blind drunk and/or go to Atlantic City to lose all their money. And they give awesome massages. You can't believe how strong a petite girl’s hands can be until you’ve been tended to by a Korean!
Another curiosity in their culture is the “host bar” phenomenon. This is an establishment where Korean girls go to sit together in a room, get totally wasted on very expensive alcohol (like Johnny Walker Blue), and totally abuse the guy whose job it is to serve them.
It’s a great gig for some good-looking Korean men who don’t mind being humiliated for a handsome fee. But at least one Korean guy I know told me he was offered the job and refused it knowing full well what was involved.
And just think…if I didn’t know all these women as I do, I would never have come upon this valuable course in world cultures. Such a bonanza! Such a windfall! I am truly blessed — and cognizant of that fortunate circumstance.
More sociological stuff about escorts: | https://medium.com/rogues-gallery/cultural-enlightenment-d8e82f366945 | ['William', 'Dollar Bill'] | 2020-12-11 22:28:07.794000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Life Lessons', 'Memoir', 'Prostitution', 'Enlightenment'] |
How To Choose Hotel Disposable Slippers | You may just start your first hotel business, or you might source for hotels, how much you know a disposable hotel slipper? Slipper is one of the tiny objects in guest rooms, however, it plays a very important role in welcoming guests, enhancing your guests check-in service experience.
Hotel disposable slippers are usually made up of fabric upper and sole. There are many different models for option. For each type of slipper, you can check below details to know better about it.
Different from pattern types are available in open toe, closed toe, pointed toe, platform, fastening tape and flip flops etc. And the sole can be both feet type and left & right feet type. Generally, hotels prefer to purchase a left & right feet type of slippers, as guests find them comfortable and fits their foot better.
Referring to a slipper upper material, there are many options for choice. Cotton terry, velvet, linen, towel, waffle, coral plush and non-woven fabrics etc are the most common models for slippers. According to your hotel budget, you can choose a very cost-effective and high-quality slipper for your guests. Non-woven and towel slippers are welcome in economic hotels, and velvet, cotton terry, linen and waffle ones are commonly used in star hotels.
Slipper sole is a very important key factor on price. In general, EVA sole is more widely used. And now, with the development of eco-friendly environment concept, a new environmental friendly IXPE slipper sole comes onto market, attractive to green hotels and resorts. These anti slip soles can be made in different patterns, diamond, leaves, water ripple, strip and doted fabric and so on. There’s little difference on each cost.
A slipper with hotel logo is a briliant promotion idea to enhance your reputation and upgrade hotel service. A logo can be screen printing, hot-transfer printing, embroidery and sewing labeling. Emrboidery logo is most popular for cotton terry, velvet and towel slippers, as they look so nice and neat in color threads. | https://medium.com/@petophotelsupply/how-to-choose-hotel-disposable-slippers-158debb57b29 | ['Petop Hotel Supply'] | 2021-12-30 01:34:53.485000+00:00 | ['Hotel', 'Hospitality', 'Slipper', 'Resort', 'Eco Friendly'] |
The Velaslavasay Panorama | Sara Velas established the Velaslavasay Panorama in 2000 at the Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda on Hollywood Boulevard. The museum’s name combines Velas’ last name with her mother’s maiden name, Asay. In 2004, its original venue threatened with demolition, the Panorama moved to its present location at the Union Theatre.
Sara has traveled around the world to investigate the panoramic art form and for over the past decade has been focused on researching the contemporary creation of panoramas in Asia. In June of 2019 she unveiled Shengjing Panorama — the first ever US><China Collaborative 360-degree panorama.
When interviewed in 2016 for the journal Museum Futures, Velas noted that: “A few times, I suppose I’ve not been the ideal interviewee because folks would ask me ‘Now that you’ve done this, what would you like to have happen?’ Getting at a higher pinpointed truth or ‘secret meaning.’ My genuine answer is that I want to keep working on it, tending to it and aligning its growth - similar to a garden (and also literally a garden).”[5] | https://medium.com/@ryanschude/the-velaslavasay-panorama-332cb0b69b9f | ['Ryan Schude'] | 2021-01-12 21:58:52.103000+00:00 | ['Velaslavasay', 'Panorama', 'Museum', 'Art', 'Painting'] |
A Failed Political Class | The past four years of the Trump presidency has exposed the almost existential flaws in our constitutional system. But, by any measure, 2020 has been an especially horrible year. The challenges of COVID-19 have clearly exposed the structural inequalities in our country and in our economic system. Many of our lowest paid and most abused workers have turned out to be providing essential services. The enormous inequities in our health care system have contributed to the rampant spread of the virus. But perhaps more than anything, the last year has exposed the almost utter failure of our political class.
Today, Trump is plotting a coup from inside the White House, abetted by advisors that the Washington Post describes as “a pardoned felon, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a White House trade adviser and a Russian agent’s former lover”. The twice-admitted traitor Mike Flynn, who was working and being paid by Turkey when he was Trump’s NSA, is in the White House advising the President to declare martial law. Trump is also plotting with co-conspirators in the House and Senate as well as with VP Mike Pence in order to challenge to January 6th congressional certification of the Electoral College. And he has called out his armed militias to come to DC and go “wild” on the day of that vote. He has pardoned his felon conspirators with Russia, his fellow corrupt politicians, and fellow perpetrators of crimes against humanity, signaling to current military personnel that they will be protected if they support his coup.
Bill Kristol reports that Trump’s recently appointed political cronies in the Department of Defense are “trying to figure out, in coordination with people in the White House, ‘how to make things happen’”. In addition, Trump is temporarily suspending transition briefings for the Biden team by the Department of Defense as we suffer possibly the greatest national security breach in US history. According to the Washington Post, Trump “has told advisers not to share information with Biden’s team that could be used against him” and there are real concerns that the administration is engaged in a pattern of document destruction.
Meanwhile, over 3,000 Americans are dying every day from COVID. Around 330,000 have already died and, at minimum, probably another additional 40,000 died due to pandemic-related disruptions. The fact that the United States has had the worst pandemic response than most of the world is due to the administration’s incompetence, corruption, magical thinking, anti-intellectualism, and simple lack of concern. The administration managed to pit states against each other in a fight for medical supplies and never mounted a national testing program. Republicans turned mask-wearing and social distancing into a culture war issue, holding super-spreader events across the country. Since June, over 8 million Americans have fallen into poverty and 50 million currently suffer from food insecurity. And now, because of Trump’s refusal to sign even this clearly insufficient COVID/government funding bill, 10 million Americans will lose at least one unemployment check and untold numbers face eviction.
Congressional Republicans are by and large content with this state of affairs, supporting Trump’s coup attempts either openly or in complicit silence. For Senate Republicans, their biggest objection is to the President’s effort to challenge the certification of the Electoral College on January 6th, primarily because that may actually force them to choose between Trump and democracy. Of course, they had that choice last January during impeachment and they unanimously, bar one, chose Trump.
But, in many ways, Democratic leaders have failed us as well, though not nearly on the same scale as Trump and the GOP. Facing the most corrupt administration in modern history, Pelosi and House Democrats chose to largely ignore the ongoing crime spree, focusing on passing lots of excellent messaging bills that went nowhere in Mitch McConnell’s Senate. With two of the most corrupt GOP Senators standing in the way of Democratic control of the Senate, imagine how much better positioned Ossoff and Warnock would be if there had been a relentless pursuit of even a handful of administration corrupt acts over the last two years.
Pelosi took a similarly cautious tack on impeachment. She shut down committee chairs interested in pursuing the threads of the Mueller investigation and the one real hearing that got held, with Michael Cohen, created evidence of tax, bank, and insurance fraud that NY authorities are now pursuing. It was only Trump’s traitorous attempt to blackmail Ukraine into investigating the Bidens that forced Pelosi’s hand on impeachment. And, even there, she created the narrowest impeachment possible and pretty much dropped the issue after Senate acquittal.
One can also argue with Pelosi’s tactics in regard to the COVID relief bill. Perhaps most questionable was the decision to dismiss the $1.8 trillion deal with Mnuchin and then settle for the $900B compromise in return for nothing. As Adam Jentleson rants, “Been arguing for a week on here with folks who assured me that there was no possible way that Trump’s endorsement of a bigger bill could be used as leverage and that therefore it was OK for Dem leaders to abandon the 1.8T baseline, reset it at 900B and *then* give away state aid…That was a climb down of nearly $1T, from the 1.8T Pelosi had established with Mnuchin…One big excuse offered to explain why Dem leaders couldn’t get a bigger bill was that the Trump/Mnuchin endorsement of a 1.8T deal with $1,200 checks was supposedly not real leverage, therefore Dem leaders should be excused for resetting the baseline at 900B in return for nothing”. It was clear that McConnell could not and would not pass the $1.8 trillion bill but Pelosi never forced him to take that vote. And now it is only Trump’s tantrum about relief checks that may force the vote that Pelosi would not.
Forgoing the $1.8 trillion deal was part of broader strategic mistake to negotiate with Mnuchin alone, absolving McConnell of any responsibility for what then emerged. While some may disagree with that assessment, the reality is that Democratic leadership is now cheering a bill everyone knows will be insufficient and will require more action early in the Biden administration while wistfully pretending that McConnell and the GOP will not obstruct that effort once the Georgia elections are over. Everyone knows that McConnell will once again put a gun to the heads of the American people and once again force Democrats to settle for something insufficient under the threat of getting nothing. This has been the Republican game ever since Newt Gingrich shut down the government in the 1990s and Democrats have still not figured out how to respond.
Ironically, Pelosi has largely ruled the House over the last two years in much the same way that McConnell has ruled the Senate. As Alexander Sammon writes, “More and more, in recent years, House Speakers have ruled imperiously, compared to a bygone era when committee chairs held much more power. But Pelosi’s pandemic-era control marks a dramatic departure from the regular operation of the House. Historically, members below the very top rung of leadership have played at least some role in governance. This House of one represents a reductio ad absurdum of the recent trajectory, where the rank and file just doesn’t matter except as a hand to press the electronic voting button”. That kind of autocratic approach has resulted in one of the Democrats most popular progressive members being denied an important committee post simply because she dared to question the House leadership’s electoral strategy.
The result such dictatorial leadership in the House and Senate is that massive bills like the $2.3 trillion combined COVID relief and government funding bill get negotiated largely in secret and then dumped on members to vote on before there is even time to read the bill. Such a process actually provides the leadership with even more power even if it can have its advantages. Jon Chait, noting that $2.3 trillion bill contains “a huge package of energy reforms that will result in major greenhouse-gas reductions”, writes, “The larger lesson here is that, in the modern era, constructive legislation is still possible — as long as the issue stays below the radar…negotiating issues privately, dumping them into a giant must-pass bill, and passing the whole thing within hours short-circuits the demagoguery cycle”. That is not a resounding endorsement of democracy. Of course, the process also produces horrendous results such as the $120 billion giveaway to the rich by not treating all of PPP loan forgiveness as income. As Mark Joseph Stern retorts, “In a healthy democracy, the legislature would not take votes on 5,000 page bills released a few hours earlier. In a healthy legal academy, law professors would spend more time examining the flaws in the Constitution that led to this dysfunction and less time deifying its authors”.
The larger issue for Democratic leaders is their continued unwillingness to accurately portray the Republican party for what it is. Even back in 2012, when presented with the Republican platform of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans while trying to end “Medicare as we know it”, voters refused to believe that any politician or party would actually run on those policies. Republicans hide their actual policies with outright mendacity, for instance constantly and brazenly lying that they will protect pre-existing conditions even as they support the legal attempt to dismantle the ACA. As Brian Beutler says, “The Republican Party’s core rottenness-its dishonesty, corruption, pettiness, racism-is the defining political fact of our time”.
In addition, the aftermath of this election has only confirmed the fact that the Republican party no longer believes in democracy. As Chris Murphy declared, “Right now, the most serious attempt to overthrow our democracy in the history of our of country is underway. Those who are pushing to make Donald Trump President, no matter the outcome of the election, are engaged in a treachery against their nation…For much of the last four years, we thought the problem was that Republicans knew what the right thing was, but they just didn’t do it because Trump was so scary. I think this moment is showing us that there are a whole lot of Republicans who believe this nonsense…This is a party that has a whole bunch of enemies of democracy inside its top ranks. That’s bone-chilling”.
Yet Democrats continue to seek out “reasonable” Republicans to try and make deals with. They do not exist. Beutler continues, “One of the conceits of modern American liberalism, now badly outmoded, is that bipartisan consensus, and consensus among stakeholders, are key to building public trust and durable policies and institutions. It’s a pleasing notion. But it only works if we assume that all parties will conduct themselves in good faith. A president who promises to bring the parties together can succeed if both parties are amenable to compromise. When the opposition party is steeped in bad faith, though, he merely hands his opposition the power to turn him into a failure and a promise-breaker. A party that prizes minimizing conflict over partisan policy victories likewise hands an unscrupulous opposition the power to derail its agenda”.
Biden is delusional if he thinks that Republicans, who refuse to even acknowledge his victory and are so fearful of their own base that they are afraid to even have to vote to confirm the result of the Electoral College, are suddenly “going to feel they have much more room to run and cooperate” when he is in the White House. Even if the “several” GOP Senators that Biden claims have said want to work with him will not be enough to overcome any filibuster. By pretending otherwise, Biden essentially does a disservice to his own administration and the country as a whole. As Adam Jentleson writes, “If it’s true that no good deal can ever be struck with Republicans because they don’t care about human suffering, which is the prevailing defense of the COVID deal, then it’s incumbent upon Democrats to devise a political strategy that takes this reality into account…The current strategy of spending months validating Republicans as good-faith negotiators on the front end — including going to their press conferences and praising them as legislators — but then trying to blame them as bad-faith villains when the deal falls short is inadequate”.
To be clear, this is not a “both-sides” critique. The Republican party is an anti-majoritarian, anti-democracy party. They had no policy platform this year other than simply “keep us in power”, no agenda for the next four years other than “keep us in power”. As Steve Schmidt describes it, there is now only the Democracy party, comprised of the entire Democratic party and Biden Republicans, and the autocratic Republican/Trump party. And Democratic leaders do both rank and file Democrats and the country a disservice by pretending that Republicans are actually interested in governing for all Americans. That doesn’t mean that Democrats won’t have to make deals with Republicans when the GOP controls certain levers of government. But it does mean describing the party as it is. And by doing so, Democrats will make it much harder for Republicans to put a gun to the head of Americans and then count on Democrats to take something insufficient under the threat of nothing as McConnell has done with COVID relief. | https://medium.com/@tidalsoundings/a-failed-political-class-6ed195f12ad9 | [] | 2020-12-27 14:08:55.092000+00:00 | ['Covid 19 Crisis', 'Democratic Party', 'Republican Party', 'Politics'] |
Should Education be free for everyone | Education is a very well-known thing worldwide and many people question whether or not everyone should be entitled to have the right of receiving a free education. There are many countries that believe that people should receive free education because of how poor they are causing them to struggle in paying bills. There are also other countries that make a good amount of money causing them to believe that people should pay for an education simply because they could afford it. This is a very controversial topic among people due to the very opinionated reasoning people have about it as shown in the examples above and this is also a very fascinating topic as it could bring so many benefits into the world. Education should be granted freely to everyone because it increases people`s chances of success in the future and helps people with financial issues.
To begin with, it has been shown multiple times that the people who receive higher levels of education end up really successful in the future, which is one reason why a free education should be granted to everyone. According to Education Should Be Free to Everyone, Sarum states that, “With the population highly educated, this will benefit the whole world and lead to the increase of the development for human life.” (Sarum). This evidence illustrates that the more a person is educated, the greater their chances are on succeeding in the future because they will be most likely to contribute to the world in many ways leading them to make a huge impact on the world and how others will view it. Someone who is able to receive free education all their life is someone who is most likely going to use their intrinsic motivation to go and achieve the highest level of education they could possibly get leading them down the road to success for many different things such as doctors, lawyers, politicians, ETC. For example, in Should College Education Be Free, the wall street journal states that, “Advocates of free college say that giving everyone access to education not only would help individuals to succeed and contribute to society, but also would produce a better qualified work force for the evolving economy.” (The wall street journal). What readers should understand is that this piece of evidence is saying that a free education that everyone could have access to will ensure society to change tremendously in a positive way by people being able to handle more demands that their jobs require of them and the reduced amount of unemployment rate there would be due to the highly qualified people in the world. With so much qualified people in the world, not only would success be offered to them but it will also be offered to the world as a whole because it will make the world a better place with the better doctors, lawyers and better professional careers people will have that will make the world safer. As mentioned above, people can now be informed of how much success can be granted all from a free education.
In addition to a free education being accountable for higher amounts of people`s success in the future, it also helps people financially in many ways showing another reason why people should be granted a free education. As seen in why all public higher education should be free Samuels states that, “If students did not have to work while in school, the graduation rate would improve drastically.” (Samuels). This quote explains how if there wasn`t so much stress on students to pay for school, there would be an increase in the amount of students that turn out successful and that are helped out financially. There may be people in many countries that are trying to get their children to another school in a different country because of how poor and uneducated their country is trying to improve the quality of their children`s lives but now the children have to face the consequences of not being able to gain a proper education that they deserve to get just because their parents cannot financially afford to send their children to have a great education needed. Allowing these children, the chance of receiving a free education will help them and their family financially leading them to be able to better support themselves in their country all while receiving the proper education they need to be called successful. For instance, in Education Should Be Free for Everyone, Sarun states that, “If there was a change in prices of education, this would impact everyone as people will be able to attend.” (Sarun). This piece of evidence illustrates that if the entire nation came together to grant free education to everyone the world would be such a happier place as it would impact everyone financially because they will now be able to gain control of their finances better and people will now be happy to receive the proper education they need to be successful in the future at no cost. All the people that are struggling financially can benefit tremendously from a free education granted to them because they will be able to get the proper education they need to make sure they are not stuck in the same situations again in the future. For all these reasons is how having a free education can help people financially.
On the other hand, some people may believe that education should not be granted freely to people because of people`s social economic background and race. According to Race Not Just Poverty, Shapes Who Graduates in America, Barnum states that, “Education policy sometimes proceeds under the assumptions that socioeconomic statues matters, but that race and racism aside from their impact on family income doesn`t.” (Barum). This piece of evidence is showing the fact that some people believe that the rule of education follows certain guidelines such as being associated with one certain social economic statue or race in order for people to receive free education. For these reasons is why someone might believe that education should not be free because of the different social economic statues or races people have. Their argument is wrong because it contradicts the overwhelmingly amount of evidence there is that no matter what anyone`s race or economic background might be, it is not right to discriminate anyone and treat them unfairly by not granting them the same right to a free education as everybody else has. Furthermore, in the article Your right to equality in education, The ACLU states that, “The Constitution requires that all kids be given equal educational opportunity no matter what their race, ethnic background, religion, or sex, or whether they are rich or poor, citizen or non-citizen.” (The ACLU). This piece of evidence emphasizes greatly the importance of everyone receiving an equal education and no one being treated unequally in terms of some people being able to receive free education while others can`t. It also offers a lot of support that no matter what the differences are between people, everyone is entitled to receive the same level of equality in education which is a free education for everyone. Therefore, I believe that education should be free to everyone as everyone deserves to receive equality in the type of education they receive.
In conclusion, education is something that makes up a huge part in people`s lives in so many ways. Education can be both a very rewarding and fascinating thing as it is the key to the future and can help you in any direction you choose to follow. Whatever your dream may be whether that be to find the next cancer cure or to invent the next million dollar selling computer system in the world, education is the perfect path to follow to ensure that those dreams come true. With education there is nothing you can`t do. I encourage people now after hearing the amazing things free education brings to the world, to keep on pushing harder and keep on fighting to ensure that free education becomes a thing granted to everyone worldwide. Free education is something that should be granted to everyone worldwide because of the amazing things it offers people such as increasing their chances of success in the future and helping people financially. | https://medium.com/@lifeadvice/should-education-be-free-for-everyone-d9d208701125 | [] | 2020-12-05 23:19:33.511000+00:00 | ['Education Reform', 'Education', 'School Choice', 'Schools'] |
Recidivism, Rehabilitation, and the Grand Tour | Recidivism, Rehabilitation, and the Grand Tour
The US prison turnstile
Unsplash — Pablo Padilla
In theory, prisons should perform the dual function of rehabilitating and deterring its convicts from becoming repeat offenders. Inmates would be trained with a skill to make an honest living once they get out. And prison life made uncomfortable enough to leave those subjected to it in search of a better way.
Well, maybe in other countries those in control are doing a good job on this front. But judging from my experience, I’d have to give the BOP a failing grade here in the USA. To be fair (to the BOP), I was locked up in a transient facility where most inmates would not be serving a lot of time. So I can understand why the authorities might skip over our prison. But there were some prisoners “down” for a year or two. And if you incarcerate somebody for that duration, you ought to have programs in place to help him make a living upon release to society.
When it came to rehab, it was mostly non-existent at MCC. Though I personally had no financial need for skilled training, most others did. And whether I did or not, even I was hoping to get some if for no other reason than to fix my plumbing (or car) when the need arose after I was released — or to simply have something to occupy my mind. Alas, there was really almost none to be had!
The plumbing jobs were administered by a hispanic man who rumor had it, took care of his own. So if an inmate wasn’t hispanic — and had no experience or expertise in the skill — he wasn’t likely to get that job. And if a non-hispanic and inexperienced inmate did luck into that employment, he’d be hazed forthwith. One inmate told me he was soaked to the bone performing a task that the others knew would give him a good dousing. Similarly, the electrician jobs went almost exclusively to loud-mouthed gangbangers of color. Maybe I was imagining things, but rumor and my vision claimed differently.
In fact, the only employment which seemed to be open to all regardless of race, ethnicity, or experience was suicide watch. And that was hardly employment that might help an inmate navigate the square world on the outside.
With respect to course work (as opposed to the mostly non-existent on-the-job training I just described), the BOP was equally lacking. I was told by my first bunky (Benji) that the prison offered a class in commercial driving (big rigs).
I figured “What the hell! Let me learn how to drive a big rig.” I asked the head of education when I could sign up. He looked like a deer in the headlights when I presented the question.
In reality, there was no course in commercial driving. It, like much else at MCC, existed only in the theoretical — and not actual — realm.
Finally, 9 months into my sentence, the prison actually offered that course (though the prison brochure claimed it was a constant offering) in commercial driving. And who taught it? An actual teacher? Not quite. Try an inmate who was serving 6 years for the crime of transporting cocaine across state lines in his rig. Was he qualified to teach the course? Maybe. Maybe not.
In theory, there was a GED class for the many inmates who’d dropped out of high school and never got a degree. My bunky Chan was tasked with teaching that class by virtue of the fact that he volunteered for the job (Chan was not one to do physical labor) and had a college degree — albeit no experience teaching. Whether I questioned his abilities as a teacher was irrelevant. The BOP did not.
It was all moot anyway. Chan reported that the woman who administered the program was only semi-literate herself — and mostly absent. I roomed with him for 4 months, and he never (not once) descended to the library (where the education department was located) to teach a class. Occasionally, somebody would stop by for a little tutoring. But mostly, Chan sloughed him off. He wasn’t getting paid to do the job and really, had little interest in doing it. His teaching position simply fulfilled a requirement that all inmates work. All in all, hardly an educational scenario in which any student — let alone slacker inmates — could excel.
Oddly, John, an inmate with a PHD from Berkley in Astro-physics, was allowed to teach a college-level course in Astronomy. In truth, John was brilliant. And the course was excellent. Far and away way too cerebral for the surroundings. But really, what is an inmate going to do with the theoretical knowledge John’s course of study provided those matriculated in his class? While I enjoyed his presentation — and others did as well — the class certainly wasn’t going to help a prisoner make a living on the outside.
The federal government has a program called RDAP, an intensive 500 hour course with which druggy offenders with more than two years remaining on their sentence can enroll to trim a year off their time incarcerated. Two things about that program:
First, it wasn’t available at MCC. Because most (but not all) inmates in our prison were transient, the BOP didn’t bother. Those who managed to qualify were sometimes shipped out to another facility to participate in that program. But not always. It was a struggle many qualified inmates endured.
And second, nobody I knew who applied for RDAP really did so with an eye toward reforming. They were simply losing a year off their sentence. From what I heard, guys mostly talked out their drug shit, reminiscing to their old get high days while the teacher might interject here and there to direct the conversation. In short, the “high road” was not in evidence in that program.
On to the subject of recidivism. You would think that a country as modern and forward-thinking as the United Sates of America could figure out a way to convince its first-time offenders to not offend a second time. But unfortunately, not even close.
While at 68, my entrance into MCC was but my first go-round in the federal system, I was almost alone in that distinction. The prison was filled with guys who’d been in and out several times before. There were precious few of us who were rooks. And the ones that were struck me as people who didn’t hurt anybody…would not ever return…and probably never would have been incarcerated in the first place in another modern country.
One thing I noticed about the majority of prisoners (and especially those who’d been in and out for years) was how comfortable they were with prison life. The problem is if you’re a criminal type, you have a plethora of like-minded guys to hang out with behind bars. You can relate to most of the other inmates. You don’t really have to make a living. All your housing and food is provided for you. You got your three hots and a cot! That’s significant for some inmates. All they’re really missing is women. And if they could get that, I’m quite certain that a surprising percentage of prisoners would choose to stay. It’s called being institutionalized. And trust me, there was no shortage of institutionalized prisoners at MCC.
Clearly, this is not a formula to prevent recidivism. So many of the inmates had been in and out of the system so many times — for so long — that I coined a term for what turned out to be the majority of the prisoners at MCC. I’d say so-and-so had done the “Grand Tour.” Meaning “they’d been everywhere man, they’d been everywhere.”
And actually, much of the conversation in prison centered around conditions and features in a wide menu of prisons. “When I was on the compound,” or “at Canaan…or Laretto…or Otisville…or Danbury…or Fort Dix,” were words and phrases I constantly heard in prison. Even Paul Manafort’s conversation had that institutionalized feel. (Manafort was my celly for a spell during my stay at MCC.)
It has occurred to me that making prison an absolutely horrible experience during which inmates are tortured to the point that they’d do anything not to return might prevent recidivism. But it would also induce rioting — and murders — and suicides — and basically, a laundry list of collateral damage I can’t even fathom. Honestly, I don’t have the answer to the recidivism problem. And from my experience in the system, the BOP was as clueless as I — if not more.
I can only report that the issue was not addressed properly where I served my time. And clearly, from the stats, however the BOP is trying to rectify the problem isn’t working particularly well. Thus, we have all those inmates doing the Grand Tour. While I’m confident I won’t be one of them, I can’t say that the majority of my fellow prisoners at MCC can honestly make the same statement. The USA has a problem in this area. And that problem is at least being acknowledged if not rectified. Keeping so many prisoners behind bars is getting too expensive for the American taxpayer. Which is mostly why the situation is being addressed. Sympathy for the devil is in short supply. | https://medium.com/doing-time/recidivism-rehabilitation-and-the-grand-tour-5768b712e643 | ['William', 'Dollar Bill'] | 2020-11-25 12:56:12.814000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Mental Health', 'Prison', 'Culture', 'Psychology'] |
PCS #3 EU & NA Grand Final Stage Week 2 Matches Are Completed | Source: PUBG Corp.
We are closing in to the end of year with many intense competitive events all around the esports scene, and PUBG Continental Series is at its best with the exciting Battle Royale dose we all crave.
In PCS #3, we are watching best 16 teams of European and North American stage each. This means that every match is a whole new story with untold possibilities to affect the results of this huge competition for $200,000 prize pool. While NA region is clearly dominated by last champion Soniqs loud and clear, Europe is witnessing a crazy competition every single match.
First week of EU matches were completed with Tornado Energy on the lead while Northern Lights and Digital Athletics were on a close pursuit for the leadership. Second week went through literally a scrambling of rankings throughout the 8-match run, and in the end we finally see a Turkish team, Digital Athletics, on the lead with 10 points of difference. Especially the second match of second day was a true celebration for Turkish fans as last two teams standing were Digital Athletics and the other Turkish team in the series, ETiGET Esports. ETiGET also showed a truly impressive performance in the second week, managing to jump to 12th place from the 16th.
Tornado Energy and Northern Lights are now on a close pursuit with 131 points both. Behind them, Team Liquid is coming up pretty strong with 125 points, definitely maintaining their position for a very possible attempt on gaining the lead position in the last week. Rest of the teams are battling for the remaining four spots to get a slice from the prize pool in the end, unless one of them decides to go on a rampage and stir up the leaderboards.
North American rankings are not as close as European rankings, though last week’s runner-up Team Veritas lost its pace very quickly and fell back to 9th place. Instead we are seeing Guadalajara Gascans with an impressive 160 points, chasing Soniqs with 25 points of difference. Third team Oath is proving stable with a smooth progress, standing solid like a gatekeeper for the top 3. Like a tradition already, the determining factor of top spots remains to be the points difference in Miramar map.
Last matches of North America and Europe will be played on 19th–20th and 21st-22nd of November respectively. These final weeks will be absolutely crazy, especially with the head-to-head positions of European teams. Make sure to tune into twitch.tv/pubg and watch the action live. | https://medium.com/@otoyoldiregi/pcs-3-eu-na-grand-final-stage-week-2-matches-are-completed-ee3951dd9f03 | ['Can', 'Otoyoldireği'] | 2020-11-17 09:16:38.073000+00:00 | ['Esport', 'Gaming', 'Pubg'] |
FNDZ staking on Ferrum | FNDZ is teaming up with Ferrum to offer our holders a web-based staking service which allows you to stake your FNDZ tokens for constant time-based returns based on the duration of your staking commitment. In other words, the longer you stake, the higher the rewards.
We will be opening a new staking pool on 1st Jan 2022 at 11am UTC
FNDZ Staking Terms
Full maturity: 90 days
Full Rewards: 14% APR annualized
Early withdrawal: 60 days
Early withdrawal: 8% APR annualized
No Minimum, MAX stake allowed 150000 $FNDZ
Pool size: 7 million $FNDZ
Contribution window opens on 1st Jan 2022 at 11am UTC
Contribution window closes on 8th Jan 2021 at 11am UTC if pool is not filled before then
The option to unstake will open up in 90 days (full maturity), with early withdrawal after 60 days. The APR will be reduced to 8% in the FNDZ Staking pool should you choose to remove your tokens before the full 90 days of the staking pool term.
Staking $FNDZ Through Ferrum’s Flexible White Glove Staking Service
With the emergence of DeFi and the appeal of passive income, staking has taken on a fresh new relevance. Unfortunately, DeFi staking has been chiefly reserved for big-cap projects with mainnet, leaving hundreds of exciting new projects with few flexible options to offer staking and liquidity farming for their token.
This gap in the market is why Ferrum built their flexible DeFi Staking Platform. Participants lock their tokens and earn high yields based on the length of time staked. It’s like a decentralized high-yield bank account, with maximum customization for projects and flexibility for participants!
Thanks to the flexibility offered by Ferrum Network solutions, FNDZ will be able to launch its Staking program, which will help to increase their token utility while rewarding community supporters and their early investors.
If you are new to Staking, we have a handy guide below.
A step-by-step guide to staking FNDZ:
Download and install an Ethereum web3 compatible wallet, such as MetaMask. Because Metamask is the most widely adopted wallet, we’ll use it for this staking tutorial.
Add Binance smart chain to your MetaMask. Then import the FNDZ token contract address by clicking ‘Add Token’ in your MetaMask wallet. This is the contract address — 0x7754c0584372D29510C019136220f91e25a8f706
Deposit FNDZ into your MetaMask (plus enough BNB to pay for gas fees). If you need help with getting FNDZ, visit our ‘How to buy’ guide.
Next, go to our staking website
Select the FNDZ Staking pool you would like to contribute to and press “Stake” (when it opens).
After you’ve clicked on “Stake”, the MetaMask pop-up notification will open. Click “confirm” at the bottom of the menu to connect to the staking smart contract.
When you are ready to stake, press “Stake”.
This will take you to a new page. First, read and understand the disclaimer and then, if you are happy, agree to the terms.
Next, input the amount of FNDZ you wish to stake.
Then confirm the amount is correct and approve the allocation.
Allow MetaMask to spend your FNDZ (i.e. send your FNDZ to the staking contract) and press “confirm”.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON TRANSACTION FEES : You can edit the BSC Network gas fee in MetaMask by pressing “edit” and choosing a custom gas fee. Note that lower fees have slower transaction times (this is optional as the bsc network is faster and cheaper than Ethereum).
: You can edit the BSC Network gas fee in MetaMask by pressing “edit” and choosing a custom gas fee. Note that lower fees have slower transaction times (this is optional as the bsc network is faster and cheaper than Ethereum). Next, confirm your staking transaction is accurate and press “submit”.
MetaMask will pop up. Confirm your transaction in MetaMask, and remember to edit the gas fee if you wish to change the increase or decrease transaction speeds.
Finally, wait until the transaction goes through (see countdown on the right hand corner of the page), and after a few seconds your stake should be confirmed!
If you have further questions, please drop into our Telegram group chat where our official FNDZ Admins will be glad to assist you.
As always, thank you all for your support, and happy staking!
The FNDZ Team
FNDZ — Social Media
Website | Telegram |Announcements | Twitter | YouTube | Discord | Medium | Reddit | Instagram | Github | https://medium.com/fndz/fndz-staking-on-ferrum-34a83c4d20f6 | ['Fndz Contributor'] | 2022-01-21 13:33:12.314000+00:00 | ['Staking', 'Defi', 'Bsc', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin'] |
ThanksGiving, Black Friday Sale During Global Pandemic [INFOGRAPHIC] | Learn precautionary measures to celebrate the holiday season safely. Enjoy the virtual Thanksgiving and Black Friday sale this year, and keep people around you safe and healthy.
Thanksgiving is nearly upon us. And Black Friday too.
Now that the holiday season is about to get started, we must not forget to take precautionary measures to avoid exposure and spread of COVID-19.
Have you planned out a Thanksgiving dinner for this year?
Speaking of COVID-19; Are you prepared for the holiday season 2020?
The holiday season 2020 is going to differ from the past years.
CDC SOPs Considerations for Hosting or Attending a Gathering
CDC recommends us to follow SOPs and avoid in-person gatherings to minimize the spread of Coronavirus.
Ensure you sanitize your hands and wear a face mask during Thanksgiving gathering, even with the household.
Are you planning to see your grandparents this Thanksgiving?
Try to avoid traveling, as it can increase your chances of getting exposed to public places hence catching the deadly virus.
Don’t worry; you can still enjoy Turkey, Cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes with your loved ones.
However, you have to celebrate Thanksgiving eve virtually. Greet Thanksgiving to your friends and family online. Host a small dinner for the household, prepare a meal together, and watch parades and football.
Black Friday is also here. Are you ready for the holiday shopping season?
We all are excited to buy holiday gifts, but in 2020 everything has gone digital.
MUST READ: Global Surge in Spyware During COVID-19
You can avail of Black Friday sales and cyber discounts online. Fill up your shopping cart with exclusive online deals and avail of the most significant discount sale online.
All we gotta do is to stick to the safety precautions suggested by the CDC. And we are ready to enjoy the festivities of the holiday season. Stay healthy and relish the holiday season virtually. Don’t forget to keep your friends and family in prayers this Thanksgiving.
We are here with the Holiday season survival guide to help you celebrate Thanksgiving 2020 and Black Friday sales with tranquillity. We hope that the next year will bring health and prosperity to our lives. | https://medium.com/@davidhwilliams341/thanksgiving-black-friday-sale-during-global-pandemic-infographic-9360a9cf8cbe | ['David H. Williams'] | 2020-11-23 13:59:45.671000+00:00 | ['Blackfriday Deals', 'Black Friday', 'Infographics', 'Thanksgiving', 'Covid 19'] |
“I Would Know by What Power I am Called Hither…” — Understanding the Jurisdictions of Kenyan Courts | King Charles I
In 1649, King Charles I was tried for high treason in the name of the people of England but the question soon became, how could a king actually be tried for treason? Treason in itself was an offence against the king and so could the king be tried for an offence against the king? In his trial, King Charles I raised this point and asked,
“I would know by what power I am called hither. I would know by what authority, I mean lawful [authority].”
And so would we all want know by what authority we are brought before a court, be we kings or not. For without this authority, the court has no basis to hear the case against you, and its decision in the case would amount to nothing.
During our legal training at the Kenya School of Law, we were taught that jurisdiction is everything; without it a court has no power to make one more step. Jurisdiction is the authority vested in the court by law to adjudicate upon, determine and dispose of a matter. In Kenya, assumption of jurisdiction by courts is a subject regulated by the Constitution, by statute, and by principles laid out in judicial precedent. Jurisdiction therefore flows from the law.
Here is the jurisdiction of the various courts in Kenya:
The Supreme Court of Kenya
Established under Article 163 of the Constitution and being the apex court in Kenya, the Supreme Court has the following jurisdiction:-
Exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine disputes relating to elections to the office of the President arising under article 140. This means that no court, other than the Supreme Court, has the jurisdiction to hear and determine disputes relating to an election for the office of the President. Appellate jurisdiction to hear and determine appeals from the Court of Appeal and any other tribunal as prescribed by national legislation. Appeals lie from the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court as of right in any case involving the interpretation or application of the Constitution. Appeals may also lie in cases where the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court certifies that a matter of general public interest is involved. The issue of public interest was further traversed in the case of Malcolm Bell v Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi & another (2013) It may give an advisory opinion at the request of the national government, any state organ, or any county government, with respect to any matter concerning county governments. It may also decide on the validity of a declaration of a state of emergency, any extension of a declaration of state of emergency, and any legislation enacted, or action taken, in consequence of a declaration of a state of emergency.
The Court of Appeal
Established under Article 164 (1) of the Constitution, the Court of Appeal is an appellate court subordinate only to the Supreme Court of Kenya.
It hears appeals from the High Court and may have original jurisdiction only when punishing contempt of court, or when staying the execution of orders of the High Court.
It has the power to determine appeal cases with finality, to order for a trial or a re-trial, to frame issues for the determination by the High Court, to receive additional evidence, or to order that it be taken by another court.
The High Court
Established under article 165 of the Constitution, the High Court has:
Unlimited original jurisdiction in criminal and civil matters. The jurisdiction to determine whether a right or fundamental freedom has been denied, violated, infringed or threatened. The jurisdiction to hear an appeal from a decision of a tribunal appointed to consider the removal of a person from office. The jurisdiction to hear any matter regarding the interpretation of the Constitution including the determining whether any law is inconsistent with, or in contravention of, the constitution. The jurisdiction to determine whether anything said to be done under the authority of the Constitution or of any law is inconsistent with, or in contravention of, the constitution. Jurisdiction to hear any matter relating to the constitutional powers of State organs in respect of county governments, and any matter relating to the constitutional relationship between the levels of government, or relating to conflict between national and county laws. Supervisory jurisdiction over subordinate courts, and over any person, body or authority exercising a judicial or quasi-judicial function, but not over a superior court. Any other jurisdiction, original or appellate, conferred on it by legislation.
The High Court in Kenya has various divisions that allow it to exercise its jurisdiction. These divisions include, the Criminal Division, the Civil Division, the Constitutional and Human Rights Division, the Judicial Division, the Commercial and Tax Division, the Family Division, and the Anti-corruption and Economics Crimes Division.
It is important to note that the High Court has no jurisdiction over issues reserved for the exclusive jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and issues falling within the jurisdiction of specialized courts, i.e the Employment & Labour Relations Court and the Environment and Land Court.
It is also important to note that all matters to do with companies and company law are filed in the High Court.
The Employment and Labour Relations Court
The Employment and Labour Relations Court (ELRC) is established under the Employment and Labour Relations Court Act, 2011. It is a court of the same status as the High Court and has exclusive original and appellate jurisdiction to hear and determine all disputes referred to it in accordance with Article 162(2) of the Constitution. It also has jurisdiction over matters relating to the provisions of the ELRC Act, or any other written law which extends jurisdiction to the court on matters relating to employment and labour relations.
The Environment and Land Court
The Environment and Land Court (ELC), established under the Environment and Land Court Act 2011, is a superior court of record with the status of the High Court. It has jurisdiction to hear and determine disputes relating to the environment, and the use and occupation of, and title to, land.
The Magistrate’s Court
In Kenya, the hierarchy of the Magistrate’s courts is as follows: The Chief Magistrate’s Court, the Senior Principle Magistrate’s Court, the Principal Magistrate’s Court, the Senior Resident Magistrate’s Court, the Resident Magistrate’s Court and the District Magistrate’s Court.
In criminal matters, any charge may be brought in the magistrate courts save for capital offences which are prosecuted in the High Court.
In civil matters, the jurisdiction of magistrate courts is entirely dependent on the value of the subject matter and is categorized as follows:
Chief Magistrate’s Court — Kshs. 20,000,000
Senior Principle Magistrate’s Court — Kshs. 15,000,000
Principal Magistrate’s Court — Kshs. 10,000,000
Senior Resident Magistrate’s Court — Kshs. 7,000,000
Resident Magistrate’s Court — Kshs. 5,000,000
The Kadhi’s Court
Established under article 169 of the Constitution, the jurisdiction of the Kadhi’s court in Kenya is limited to the determination of questions of Muslim law relating to personal status, marriage, divorce, or inheritance proceedings in which all the parties subscribe to the Muslim faith. The parties should however submit to the jurisdiction of the court.
It is noted that the Kadhi’s court has unlimited pecuniary jurisdiction as highlighted in a recent case in the High Court at Embu (Succession Number 47 of 2014). The court also has jurisdiction to hear children matters as regards parties that profess the Islamic faith.
Other roles of the court include: officiating and registration of Islamic marriages, mediation between Muslim couples in marital disputes, adjudicating over divorce proceedings, and the issuance of divorce certificates.
Conclusion
As highlighted above, jurisdiction is the foundation on which a court may legally hear and determine a case. Without jurisdiction, a court has no power to make one more step.
In the Charles I trial, the king protested as to the court’s jurisdiction on the basis that his own authority to rule had been due to the divine right of kings given to him by God and so, he could not be tried. The court challenged this doctrine of sovereign immunity and proposed that the King of England was not a person, but an office whose every occupant was entrusted with a limited power to govern ‘by and according to the laws of the land and not otherwise’ and therefore the king could be tried if he did not govern by and according to the laws of the land.
Thus before proceeding in any matter, in any court, it is important to first know by what power you are called thither…by what lawful authority. | https://medium.com/@hrigga/i-would-know-by-what-power-i-am-called-hither-understanding-the-various-jurisdictions-of-81f40a929eeb | ['Hamisi Rigga'] | 2021-03-23 14:54:47.139000+00:00 | ['Power', 'Jurisdiction', 'Constitution', 'Courts', 'Law'] |
Cryptocurrency, Blockchain and ICO Resources | Yesterday my neighbor asked me a question about ICO’s and cryptocurrency and wanted to discuss something he was thinking about doing. I realized that this could be a good topic for my daughter Rachel to work on as part of her independent study and started looking for a file I have (had) on resources I printed back in July. I turned my office upside down looking for the file and ended up doing some significant purging and filing as a result. I was pretty stressed out about it and started to recreate the list of resources. Finally, my neighbor showed up with a cocktail at my front door and…you guessed it…the file folder. I’d given it to his wife so she could take a look at the docs and she ended up leaving it on her filing cabinet for six months.
Taylor Pearson posted a list of the top cryptocurrency resources in July 2017 and I found the list incredibly helpful (it doesn’t seem to be available any longer so I’ve recreated below). I recommend consuming the information in the following order. I will be adding to the list over time now that I have a place to put the articles/podcasts I find (last updated 3/22/18). | https://medium.com/terri-hanson-mead/cryptocurrency-and-ico-resources-55766cae29e | ['Terri Mead'] | 2018-11-28 16:37:37.391000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Angel Investing', 'ICO', 'Bitcoin'] |
This is how I use Pivotal Tracker. | Five years ago, I was first introduced to the tool Pivotal Tracker (thanks, Jesse!). It was my first time using any type of story-based project planning tool. Since then, I’ve experimented with many of the usual suspects: Trello, Jira, Redmine, Asana, Sprintly, Basecamp. But I never found a tool that matched my expectations quite like Tracker did.
Which is why when it came time to select a tool for us to use at Notion, I had my heart set on Tracker.
If you’re not familiar with it, here’s a brief summary taken from Tracker’s site:
Tracker is a story-based project planning tool from Pivotal Labs that allows teams to collaborate and react to real-world changes instantly. It’s based on agile software methods, but can be used on a wide range of projects. Tracker maintains a prioritized backlog of project deliverables, broken down into small, estimated pieces, called stories. It dynamically groups these stories into fixed segments of time, called iterations, and it predicts progress based on real historical performance (velocity).
The Setup
Workspaces let you add multiple projects to a single view.
While most users of Tracker are probably development teams, we actually run each of our business units through it. Thus, we have five individual projects under the same account: Dev Work Log, Operations, Growth, Product Roadmap, and the Island of Misfit Stories. I’ll explain each in detail further down.
Tracker has a Workspace feature where you can show panels from multiple projects in the same view. For example, my main workspace shows me the Current/Backlog panel for the Growth, Dev Work Log, and Product Roadmap projects as well as the Ice Box for Dev Work Log and Product Roadmap. 95% of my time in Tracker is spent in these panels. When I need quick access to any other project panel, I can simply turn it on and off from the side panel.
If you run multiple projects or teams, Tracker’s workspaces will save you time, keep your teams aligned, and prevent headaches down the road.
It’s worth noting that workspaces are unique to each user, so I highly recommend finding a workspace setup that works for you and help your team members set one up if you need them in the same view.
Notifications
With this many projects and tickets flowing through Tracker, you can imagine that a lot of notifications are sent. Thankfully, you can turn off email notifications and integrate with Slack, both of which we have done. (Side thought: I wonder if the day will ever come where Slack is enabled by default in SaaS tools and you have the option to turn on email if you want?)
Slack’s integration settings with Tracker allow you to control the level of noise.
I recommend taking a look at the Slack integration settings and only enabling the notifications that you want.
Since not everyone spends as much time in Tracker as I do but everyone is constantly in Slack, pushing notifications there has been an efficient way to keep everyone in the loop and to raise awareness on issues faster.
Slack lets you create multiple configurations so you can have different projects linked to different channels.
The Dev Work Log
The dev team effectively uses the tool as prescribed. Our project contains the features, chores, and bugs that we are responsible for delivering every two weeks. Every other Monday, we run a sprint planning where we review the stories in the backlog, estimate the level of effort until we’ve satisfied our expected delivery based on velocity, and then we get to work. Nothing out of the usual for the dev team.
Tracker also has some great charts that I use for at-a-glance insight into how our team is doing. (Full disclosure: our product integrates with Pivotal Tracker, so I check most of our analytics in our dashboards in Notion. If you’re interested in details, shoot me an email at [email protected].)
The one I reference the most for the dev team is the Iteration Flow. For us, a healthy sprint is one where stories are delivered and accepted at a consistent pace and only a few stories are being worked on at a time. That means a consistent climb of green columns, small columns of yellow and blue, and NO red. :)
Irregularities or plateaus can identify blockers or trouble spots in your sprint.
Reviewing these charts at the end of a sprint helps visualize any problem areas that we can address in future sprints.
The Product Roadmap
In the past, I’ve been on teams where PMs have used Basecamp, Aha!, Asana, and good ol’ Excel docs to manage the roadmap. While each of those tools have their benefits and use cases, my biggest complaint has always been that they feel removed from the dev tools. Yes, some integrate directly with ticketing tools — but the fewer steps the better when it comes to gettin specs into the developers’ hands.
So to reduce the number of steps, I’m running the roadmap directly inside of Tracker and it’s been working amazing.
The Product Roadmap’s icebox is organized using release markers that group features by theme. This makes it easy to move entire chunks of stories at a time and allows us to quickly visualize how much we might be cramming into a sprint. Because as we all know, roadmaps change frequently and trying to reorganize and maintain a spreadsheet is hellacious.
How stories move through our projects.
When it comes time to define the specs and user stories for a feature, we move stories through Tracker just like we do dev tickets. Start a ticket to indicate you are working on it. Finish a ticket to indicate you have completed the specs. They are then reviewed as a set and marked as Accepted to indicate they are ready for development.
Next, I select all the Accepted stories, duplicate them, and move them to the backlog of the Dev Work Log project.
(I duplicate them so the timestamp of the stories in the work log resets. We track specific metrics around cycle times for the stories. Duplicating allows us to track them individually across each project.)
By keeping undefined features in the product project and defined/spec’d features in the dev project, it reduces the clutter and lets the dev team have visibility into what is coming up next with more certainty. It also allows us to easily see what specs are being defined and worked on without it effecting the dev team’s velocity and throughput calculations.
Roadmaps change frequently and organizing them in spreadsheet is hellacious. Doing it all in Tracker has been a life saver.
Related to the Product Roadmap project is the Island of Misfit Stories. This is simply an extra icebox where we keep stories that don’t currently fit into the roadmap but we also aren’t quite ready to delete them yet. Since Tracker doesn’t have any way to archive tickets, this is our temporary solution and seems to be working fine.
The Growth and Operations Projects
Since we have been having such success with the roadmap in Tracker, we decided to run the growth and executive teams through it as well.
The growth team runs sprint planning every other Monday as well, but the sprints overlap with the dev sprints by a week. And like the dev stories, we create user stories and specs for each task we are trying to accomplish in the sprint. It’s a great way to stay on track and align with the rest of the company when features overlap. It also keeps us focused on marketing efforts — where tasks can often spiral out of control if you let them.
Similarly, my co-founder and I have an Operations project that only we have access to. Here we include any tasks to get done as it relates to running the company.
Conclusion
Hopefully that gives you a pretty good understanding of how I use Pivotal Tracker with my team at Notion. Some of it may be a little unorthodox, but the beauty of Tracker, in my opinion, is that it’s designed for agile teams but is flexible enough to accommodate your own approaches as well.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or notice any typos feel free to list them out here. I’m happy to explain more. And if you are interested in contributing to This is how I SaaS, please do so! | https://medium.com/this-is-how-i-saas/this-is-how-i-use-pivotal-tracker-671bc8a74863 | ['Kevin Steigerwald'] | 2016-01-28 15:39:04.970000+00:00 | ['Pivotal Tracker', 'Project Management', 'SaaS'] |
Step 0 of product design: the first step of turning an idea to a product | It is funny to think about the origin of every product we use everywhere. Why they choose this approach, why they built it like that and what inspired them on each step.
I don’t want to talk about the fundamentals of product design & development. In this article, I want to talk about only the first step in creating something entirely new: approach & perspective.
Early in product management game, you realize there is nothing that can be called entirely new. Everything (and I mean “everything”) we created so far, is a transformation of something else that we either created or we found in the world. Creation or invention is not to create something from 0, it is to create something that is much much better than existing solutions. It should be A LOT better, otherwise, it’s called an improvement.
Again early in the game, you realize that not every day we should invent new stuff. Creating a new solution is only the first step of that product. After that, you need waves and waves of improvements, and hopefully, if the creation is good enough, generations & generations of improvements that will carry the original solution to its full potential.
Inc.com
The joy of starting something exciting
But why we’re discussing these simple facts? Because when you decided on a new project and you started working on a new product and solution, you have a lot of exciting ideas and you can go forward in many different ways, and that’s where many go wrong.
A lot of ideas (read startup ideas) are very good, exciting & extraordinary, but when it comes to choosing the right approach, all but few will fail (not to mention the right execution, but that’s a matter for another time)
We blame it on not understanding the market, bad timing, hard competition, etc. But we forget maybe the approach that we started our idea on, may not be the right approach. Do you know what’s worst? When you realize that we may have selected a wrong approach because we didn’t explore the different perspectives. I want to dive in first on how perspective is the key to product management with few examples.
Great Product vs. Great* Product
Let’s get a closer look at two of the major messaging services in the world: WhatsApp vs. Telegram.
Both of these platforms are (if you agree or not) extraordinarily successful. They have millions and millions of users in almost every country on the earth and they are deeply integrated with not only people but millions of businesses as well (Although WhatsApp is much bigger than Telegram, you can argue that telegram growth rate & penetration in many societies are major success factors for it).
They supposedly do the same job, but they are fundamentally different. WhatsApp was built on this perspective that SMS sucks and it should change, it should get much much better. This simple idea is the backbone of WhatsApp. So they created it this way. If you study WhatsApp’s engineering and how it was developed, you’ll be amazed of its power. And if you look at WhatsApp from a product view, you see a much-improved SMS system. In every scenario, you can see the hint of the SMS in every section of WhatsApp.
Look at how WhatsApp handles contacts, it’s identical to what our old phones did, or how it sends any media, it’s an improved version of SMS. Even when you want to use WhatsApp web, it follows the same protocol: You must have an active, connected phone to send SMS, so you need it for WhatsApp, even though you’re not using any of your phone’s function.
This perspective of WhatsApp is so entangled in the company that even more than 10 years after the original release and after Facebook acquisition (and even total change in leadership), it stayed with the whole company, it’s in their culture. So when they developed WhatApp Call or any other new features, it always followed the same perspective and as a result, a very narrow window of creativity in their approach.
I’m not saying WhatsApp is a bad product, on the contrary, but I’m saying their perspective gave them a little room for innovation because if you think about it, SMS was not our only tool for communication, so why base & limit our product on such an incomplete solution?
Now let’s look at Telegram. Same as WhatsApp and any other app that you used so far, it was modeled after another product that we already use. In the case of Telegram, they had the same goal as WhatsApp, but their model was based on Email.
Emails suck, it’s outdated and confusing and a much much improved version must be built (Just like what Email did with Mail!). So Telegram tried to do just that, in a mobile-oriented world.
Telegram’s perspective was that their product “eventually” should have everything that people need from their emails. With this perspective, they didn’t limit themselves to mobile phones, they used them to start and update after update, they introduced new features that people needed from their primary communication platform, not only an SMS alternative.
Look at Telegram protocols to send/receive any media, how you can have multiple accounts (same as you can have multiple email accounts), how you want to separate your personal life (email) with professional life (email) and many other features that are available in emails but they are just a bit more complicated.
Telegram made emails simple, but they never told anyone they want to make emails simple, because they didn’t. They want to make communication as simple as possible, and maybe the product that can improved most in that area was email.
This perspective opens them to a world of opportunities, which would be closed for a product designed and based on SMS. One of the most important features of Telegram, that people and especially businesses love is Telegram Channels.
Email is older than the web itself but if you look at it, the web was inspired by email (among other products). Soon after people used email, they wanted to send emails for more than one person and after that, they wanted to send emails to everyone they know, and after that, there was only one step: If I can send an email and everyone in the world could see it. In that matter “sending” became “Posting”.
Telegram Channels followed the same principle. Just as you could’ve sent a personal message, you can now post it on your own channel so everyone in the world could access it (Oh that reminds you of websites? how funny!). Same principle, same design, same system.
Now you can see how not a very different perspective, created something entirely different with a different world of opportunities. The perspective created a new visionary approach that updates itself in time and still creates new products that people love. It’s not limiting Telegram, it’s opening new doors for it.
T hat’s why perspective is so important. If a wrong perspective is this much limiting for WhatsApp, which was a great product, that was beautifully timed, had a perfect product-market fit and had one of the best engineering and management teams in the world, it would definitely kill “your” product before it even starts.
And once more, this perspective and approach, it’s not only on the product level but it’s embedded in Telegram’s engineering & even its culture. The way Telegram handles connections, files, relations, channels, and even user database, they are all inspired by this perspective and that give Telegram a lot of room to grow. The potential is so great that they only have had scratched the surface. Funny thing is that the email itself is not dead, it’s growing and evolving and that means new worlds can be discovered, but not yet.
Pitfalls
Let’s look at it from a different point of view, if we model our product from another product, we most certainly improve the best parts, but what about the bad parts? When email wanted to be better than mail, it did just that, but it wasn’t long after that one of the most important bugs of mails followed the email too, the junk mail.
That is an important aspect. If you’re modeling your product after another product (and we did establish that everyone does that, let’s not kid ourselves), we should look for its pitfalls. if we don’t, we carry them to our product too and sometimes these pitfalls are so big that our product will not survive them. Think about this twice, every product we build should be a much-improved version, so we’re looking at pitfalls, but there are some pitfalls that are so embedded in the system that even recognizing them as pitfalls would prove to be a very difficult task (just like junk mail & spam advertising of today’s communication platforms & social networks).
Think about Tinder. Tinder’s main idea was to solve the pitfalls of other dating apps & websites. Actually, that was their only idea: The other dating websites suck, especially for women, so we should address all of their pitfalls by creating a product that is designed to prevent problems & un-satisfaction. I’m not saying that Tinder was 100% successful on that front, but it was very successful and I believe there will be newer platforms that will identify Tinder’s pitfalls and this road goes on and on. | https://uxdesign.cc/step-0-of-product-design-or-what-is-the-first-step-of-turning-an-idea-to-a-product-305013cbf505 | ['Farokh Shahabi'] | 2020-02-23 08:19:31.832000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'UX', 'Product Management', 'Startup Lessons', 'Design'] |
Could Red Wine and Cheese Protect Us from Mental Decline? | According to new research, the types of foods we eat have a direct impact on how well our brain ages. A study at Iowa State University, found data to indicate that moderate cheese eaters showed fewer age-related problems in their neural pathways, and that those who drank red wine over the span of the experiment, actually improved their cognitive abilities.
Red wine and cheese — Source — Pixabay
Now before we all start dancing and whooping at the thought of binging over Christmas using these findings as our excuse, the team at Iowa say it’s too early to tell whether this is because people who consumed red wine and cheese were more affluent or had healthier lifestyles to begin with, or whether compounds within the products are influencing our brain functions.
That being said, the study was considered to be large scale, including data from 1787 participants between the ages of 46 to 77, all of whom were volunteers in the UK. The subjects were part of the UK Biobank, a huge biomedical database of genetic and health information from half a million people.
Those who participated, also completed intelligence tests at the start of the study and twice more after set periods of time, over a number of years. Lead scientists, Auriel Willette and Brandon Klinedinst, claimed that these tests assessed an individual’s ability to think on the spot.
In addition to the intelligence tests, subjects completed questionnaires about their food and beverage intake, with specific questions regarding the frequency with which they consumed fresh fruit, dried fruit, salads, raw vegetables, oily or lean fish, processed meat, poultry, beef, lamb, pork, cheese, bread, cereal, tea, coffee, beer, cider, red wine, white wine, spirits or champagne.
With such an extensive list, the lay person might surmise that participants who indulged in higher quantities of red meats, high fat foods and alcohol, might show the greatest cognitive decline over the course of the study. Instead, the data suggests four surprising results.
The first was that cheese was the outstanding winner in protecting us against an aging brain, even in those volunteers at the upper end of the age range. The second was that moderate daily alcohol consumption, particularly red wine, seemed to aid cognitive function over time. Obviously, excessive drinking would have the reverse effect, not just on the brain, but on other organs too.
Roasted lamb — Source — Pixabay
The third finding was that out of all the red meats, so long pilloried as being an unhealthy food option, lamb eaters showed an improvement in their intelligence tests. The fourth discovery is not so surprising. The team found that excessive use of salt increased cognitive decline, but predominantly in those already at risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease.
Willette and Klinedinst now hope to run randomised clinical trials to see if changes to diets can improve specific brain functions in a significant way.
The scientists came to the same conclusion that many of us have assumed for generations. What you put into your body is just as important to long-term health as how it is treated. Klinedinst said; “I believe the right food choices can prevent disease and cognitive decline altogether. Perhaps the silver bullet we’re looking for is upgrading how we eat.” This reinforces the basic tenet laid down by French lawyer, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 1826 when he announced, “Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es” or “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”
The links between the human gut and the microbial activity within it are known to have a causal link with moods. Therese Limbana and colleagues of the California Institute of Behavioral Neurosciences and Psychology, has studied the links between gut microflora and mental health extensively, stating that foods which enhance positive gut microbes can have an active influence over patients suffering from depression. With more and more scientists investigating the gut-brain axis, it’s safe to assume that a poor diet will have negative consequences, not just on our physical health, but also on our levels of mental acuity and resilience.
Older man drawing a heart in the sand — Source — Pixabay
What is particularly disturbing, is that poorer families can often only access cheap, high fat and sugar meals, often classed as junk food, while healthier options are too costly for their budgets. This is where governments should step in and place taxes on the junk to help supplement lower prices for the fresh fruit and vegetables needed to rear the next generation of intelligent, well-adjusted and fitter children.
Sadly, it’s unlikely to ever happen in any meaningful way while the massive multinational corporations are generating vast wealth pedalling junk to the masses, but on an individual level we can all make the right choices. Just a few simple alterations to our own diets could make all the difference to our cognitive abilities right into old age. I’m just thrilled that cheese can be counted among the safer options. | https://medium.com/@samnash/could-red-wine-and-cheese-protect-us-from-mental-decline-7dd86ef810fd | ['Sam Nash'] | 2020-12-23 13:35:36.614000+00:00 | ['Neurology', 'Health', 'Life', 'Science', 'Aging'] |
The Ripple Concept of getting things done. | How many times haven’t we thought of getting things done, but couldn’t?
How many times haven’t we thought of making an impression on someone, but somehow couldn’t or the impression faded away slowly?
How many times haven’t we wanted to get things done by others(maybe ask for a raise)? But we just haven’t.
As an INTJ, I personally feel the world works in a different way.
You can’t force things to happen. Each time you do something or wish something, you emit a frequency or energy into the universe. It then ofcourse takes time for that to happen.
But what you can do to maximize getting things done is with the ripple concept as I call it.
Moving forward lemme explain you the concept of ripples first.
So if you have observed a round circular bucket, if you create a small disturbance in the middle, what exactly happens is, the ripple travels from the center to the walls of the bucket, bounce back and travel back to your finger at the center.
That’s it! One ripple at a time.
Now if you create disturbances before the rebounded wave comes back to you, the rebounded ripple and the second ripple you just sent gets evened out in the middle causing no good to you.
So here the main part now.
If you want to get a work done, or maybe talk to a girl or a guy you are checking out, first approach the person, introduce yourself, strike up a conversation, talk for not more than two or three minutes(Doesn’t have to be this small, if you really have an ample amount of time, Hit it xD), Smile and leave.
Next time you see them or perhaps the next day, just smile and look away ( PS: I’m talking about this with experience. Will sure write to explain behind the theory of it)REMEMBER not to Talk or start a convo. Let this be on for a few days.
What you just did? Yeah you just successfully completed the first ripple. Way to go buddy!!
Now is the time for second ripple.
This time when you meet them. Strike a convo and this time considerably talk for a longer duration.
What happens here is that, according to psychology, their brain forms positive impressions about you, completing the previous incomplete impressions of yours.
BOOM! There goes the second ripple.
All of this must happen in accordition with intution.
I pretty much sure everything will turn out well.
If you could just apply the same concept to other areas, like maybe asking for a raise it’s gonna be really a fruitful one I assure you.
Alright babye cya.
The first ripple with you is successfully completed. Seeya next week. | https://medium.com/@7nns7/the-ripple-concept-of-getting-things-done-30fccc2fb256 | ['N Nithin Srivatsav'] | 2019-03-15 14:15:19.869000+00:00 | ['Talk To That Girl', 'Life', 'Getting Started', 'Getting Things Done', 'Life Lessons'] |
How to Write Great Headlines | How to Write Great Headlines
I’m running a mini-experiment in which you are the subject. Bear with me — you’re not lab rat or anything like that. Rather you’re a reader. And I want to test out which of the following headlines piques your interest the most.
First off, I started this article with the title “How to write great headlines.” I imagine that you only opened the article if you were interested in writing great headlines, or, finding out what goes into a great headline.
Because, let’s face it if you’re going to spend time or money or both writing content, you want content that your readers are going to read. The first step to getting your readers to read your content is to draft a click-worthy headline.
So, let’s see if I can improve on my email title a bit.
“How to” is a great way to start a blog or article. It implies that, in the article, the reader will learn the “how-to” of writing a great headline.
Some say that adding numbers to headlines works even better, by concretizing (is that even a word?) the promise. We could replace the “how-to” with “3 Ways to Write Great Headlines,” or “The 3 Essential Parts of a Great Headline,” or “Every Great Headline Needs These 3 Things.”
Every Great Headline Needs These 3 Things
By including numbers in the title, I give you a very concrete promise. Not only am I going to teach you how to write a great headline, but it only takes 3 steps — or 5 or 8, or whichever number you choose.
Some people will say that unusual numbers work better than your traditional 3, 5 or 10. For example, if I were to rewrite the title as:
Every Great Headline Needs These 4 Things
It makes it more plausible that every headline should have each of these 4 things, not 2, 3 or even 5 things.
Before I continue, let’s talk about the word “things.” NEVER use “things.” Surely I can come up with a better and more appropriate noun, such as components or parts. I looked for synonyms at thesaurus.com and came up with “element.” Now the title becomes:
Every Great Headline Needs These 4 Elements
Adjective choice is also very important. If I can find a better word for “things,” I surely can come up with a better word for “great.” Since the purpose of writing a headline is to get your readers to read your content, how about using a word like “irresistible?” After all, I want my headlines to be so irresistible that my readers will consume the content. The headline now becomes:
Every Irresistible Headline Needs These 4 Elements
There’s also talk among content marketers about headline length. Hubspot chimed in this issue, citing the following data and results:
1. Headlines within 70 characters won’t get cut off in search engine results.
2. Headlines that are between 8–12 words get the most Twitter shares.
3. Headlines that are between 12–14 words get the most Facebook likes.
4. Content Marketing Institute says that 8-word headlines get a 21% higher click-through rate.
The title “Every Irresistible Headline Needs These 4 Elements” contains 7 words and 50 characters.
(By the way, I use https://wordcounter.net/ to count my words and characters).
It looks like we need another word, or two.
So let me change it up a bit:
Include These 4 Elements to Write Irresistible Headlines
I think, by doing so, I’ve strengthened the call-to-action by speaking directly to the reader who wants to write great headlines. Oops, I mean — IRRESISTIBLE headlines.
Which do you prefer?
How to Write Great Headlines
How to Write Irresistible Headlines
Every Great Headline Needs These 3 Elements
Every Irresistible Headline Needs These 4 Elements
Include These 4 Elements to Write Irresistible Headlines
Or, can you write me a better one?
Need done-for-you content? We have the expert team for you. | https://medium.com/@cantormel/how-to-write-great-headlines-3e5de809773a | ['Melanie Fine'] | 2019-10-30 00:51:21.294000+00:00 | ['Content Marketing', 'Content Marketing Agency', 'Content Strategy', 'Headlines'] |
Founders announces first Mothership Series release of 2021 | Founders Brewing Company announced Maple Barrel-Aged Frangelic Mountain Brown will be the 16th release in the taproom-only Mothership Series and the first release of 2021.
Frangelic Mountain Brown is aged in bourbon barrels that previously housed maple syrup, adding complexity to the existing sweet and nutty coffee notes of this brown ale. Courtesy Founders Brewing Co.
Frangelic Mountain Brown is aged in bourbon barrels that previously housed maple syrup, adding complexity to the existing sweet and nutty coffee notes of this brown ale, according to Founders.
“Brown ales aren’t usually considered a flashy beer style, but this one certainly has some flair,” said Jeremy Kosmicki, Founders brewmaster. “In fact, it’s pretty jam-packed with amazing flavors like hazelnut, coffee, maple, oak and bourbon — all perfectly balanced into a solid brown ale base.”
Maple Barrel-Aged Frangelic Mountain Brown will be available in six-packs of 12-ounce bottles and on draft beginning Jan. 27, exclusively in both the Grand Rapids and Detroit taprooms.
The Mothership Series features ultra-limited, brew team favorite beers only found in bottles at Founders’ taproom locations. Previous Mothership Series beers have included: Frootwood, Passion Fruit Gose, Blushing Padre, Detroit Double IPA, Devil Dancer, French Toast Bastard, Oktoberfest, Pale Joe and Mucho Lupu.
Posted By: Grand Rapids Magazine on December 27, 2020. For more information, please click here to read the source article. | https://medium.com/@thedrakeharper/founders-announces-first-mothership-series-release-of-2021-8ec1b9dc91 | ['Drake V. Harper'] | 2020-12-27 19:45:20.753000+00:00 | ['Food And Beverage', 'Spirit', 'Drinking', 'Founders', 'Releases'] |
Continuously Deploy a Static Website With Azure Pipelines | Introducing CI/CD
Deploying applications can be a tedious task, with people historically having to write their own scripts if they wanted to avoid long, manual processes. Every project and every organisation runs on a different infrastructure, so for a long time, there was never an easy way to automate these processes. For each deployment, the same processes would have to be repeated and so it took up a lot of time. Fortunately, the widespread adoption of cloud computing and investment in DevOps, has changed this. Now it is easier and cheaper than ever, to fully automate with CI (continuous integration) and CD (continuous deployment).
The deployment process
Step by step
To begin, we need to break down the deployment process step by step. This makes it clear exactly what you need to do and in what order. Sometimes deployments require one step, while others can require tens of steps. Combined, all the steps will make up a pipeline.
For a static website
When deploying a static website, at its core, the process seems very basic. Files simply need to be copied to the correct location on the host machine. Various protocols are available to do this, whether it be SFTP, FTPS, HTTPS or whichever else. The protocol used will depend on your hosting provider.
Most likely you will be using a static website generator, so will want to prepend steps to transform your input into your output files. The tasks required for this depend on your tech stack. At a generic level, the tasks involved will include installing dependencies, navigating the file system and running tool-specific commands.
Azure Pipelines
Pipeline anatomy
Azure pipelines is a high-level, extensible, cloud-native platform, designed for fully automating code integration and deployment. Azure pipelines offers both build and release pipelines, with build pipelines originally intended for continuous integration and release pipelines for continuous deployment. Build pipelines have evolved and been optimised for both continuous integration and deployment, with them being rebranded as multi-stage pipelines, while release pipelines are now a legacy feature.
When creating Azure pipelines, you specify stages, in which you define executable jobs, which are made up of one or more tasks. This is a way of sectioning your pipelines, so that you can respond to different outcomes for each stages of your pipeline. Azure pipelines comes with hundreds of pre-configured tasks and allows you to run custom scripts, or even create your own task extensions.
It might also be worth mentioning that you can set up different environments for your builds and run them on different machines. It is easiest to run builds on Azure-hosted machines, but if you want you can set up agents to run them on your own machines.
Agents
Azure pipelines agents are installed on the machines that run your builds and releases. It is useful to understand how agents are setup, so that you can correctly define your pipelines.
Job agents for build pipelines run a build in a numbered directory $(Agent.BuildDirectory), that by default contains three subdirectories: \a $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory), \b $(Build.BinariesDirectory) and \s $(Build.SourcesDirectory). Agents have predefined variables, which can be referenced from your build pipelines, including the variables listed to reference these directories.
Agents are set up slightly differently for classic releases. They contain a numbered directory that is prefixed by an r, with the only subdirectory being \a $(System.ArtifactsDirectory). Likewise with build pipelines, classic release pipelines also have a set of predefined variables.
Stages and jobs
Whether you opt to use multi-stage pipelines or classic releases for deployment, you need to decide how to structure your pipelines. Stages are meant as a high-level grouping of work, with jobs being a unit of work that run on a machine. Therefore, it is common to separate your pipeline into stages such as Build, Test and Release, while jobs might be Transform Files, Upload Files to Network or Notify Users of Updates. As well as standard jobs, Azure pipelines has special deployment jobs.
Artifacts
In Azure pipelines, each job runs on a different machine, so often files need to somehow be transferred between stages and jobs. This is most easily done with artifacts, which are a set of tasks for transferring files in your builds.
A pipeline in practice
Structuring our pipeline
For a static website, we want to take the code in our source control repository, then transform that into a set of files that are ready to deploy. After that, we want to deploy these files to our web host. It is logical to group this in to two stages: build and release. The build stage is likely to only require one job, as building your project and transforming your input files is one unit of work. Deployment jobs are meant to run through your entire deployment, so your release stage should also require one job, as most likely you will only have one deployment target.
Setting up the pipeline
If you do not have one already, create an Azure DevOps organisation and project. Navigate to the Pipelines tab in your Azure DevOps project, then select New pipeline.
You will need to connect to your source control repository as the first step to setting up your pipeline. Next select a pipeline template; it’s easiest to start off with the Starter template. Once you have done that, you will be presented with the pipeline editor. Azure pipelines are configured in YAML, though Azure DevOps contains a handy assistant which honestly makes things 10x easier! For each task you use, take a look at the documentation if you are struggling to understand the configuration required.
The pipeline definition contains a trigger, which is the branch that is monitored for changes, to begin a new build. Likely you will want to keep this as master. A pool is also defined, which specifies the agent machines to run on. Pools can be defined at the root, per stage or per job. Be aware that if deploying to Azure, some tasks are windows-only.
You may notice that the template contains definitions for steps, but not stages or jobs. This is because if you only have one stage and one job, you do not need to explicitly define them in the pipeline. Start off by removing all the steps and define the stages and jobs that you have planned out. I also like to define the artifact name(s) as variables, for the artifacts that I will be creating to transfer files between each stage.
trigger:
- master pool:
vmImage: 'windows-latest' variables:
ARTIFACT_NAME: DevelopMomentumWeb stages:
- stage: Build
displayName: Build
jobs:
- job: Transform
displayName: Transform Input - stage: Release
displayName: Release
dependsOn: Build
jobs:
- deployment: DeployToStorage
displayName: Deploy to Azure Storage
Stages will run in parallel, unless they are defined as having a dependency on another stage. You are able to define conditions for each stage to run. The default condition is that their dependant stages completed successfully.
The Build stage
Having connected your repository, for standard jobs, the agent will copy your code into the \s directory and set that as the working directory. Therefore, the first thing you need to consider is the installation of build dependencies. Azure-hosted agents already have a lot of software installed, meaning you might not need to define any steps for this. You can view the included software by clicking the links in the agents table on the Microsoft documentation.
In this example, I’ll be building a static website using .NET Core and Statiq, therefore I need to perform the CLI commands dotnet restore , dotnet build then dotnet run . Azure pipelines comes with a task DotNetCoreCLI , which I will use. For each task, I need to provide the project path, which can be placed in a variable. Statiq only outputs files if the working directory is set to the directory containing the input folder, so this needs to be defined in the task. Something that I didn't realise at first, was even with the working directory defined, the project path in the DotNetCoreCLI@2 task must be defined relative to the \s directory.
- job: Transform
displayName: Transform Input variables:
project: 'src/Blog.csproj' steps:
- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
displayName: Restore
inputs:
command: 'restore'
projects: $(project) - task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
displayName: Build
inputs:
command: 'build'
projects: $(project)
workingDirectory: 'src' - task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
displayName: Generate
inputs:
command: 'run'
projects: $(project)
workingDirectory: 'src'
Now we need to publish the artifact, which is the output folder that Statiq generates. Generally, artifacts should be staged before being published, which involves copying them to the \a directory. You should do this with the CopyFiles task, which takes the source and target folders as parameters. Publishing artifacts can be done with either the PublishBuildArtifacts or PublishPipelineArtifact task, yet it is recommended to use pipeline artifacts, as they are intended as a replacement to build artifacts.
- task: CopyFiles@2
displayName: Copy
inputs:
SourceFolder: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)/src/output'
Contents: '**'
TargetFolder: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/output' - task: PublishPipelineArtifact@1
displayName: Share
inputs:
targetPath: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/output'
artifact: '$(ARTIFACT_NAME)'
publishLocation: 'pipeline'
The Release stage
The build stage is now defined and so we can look at the release stage. We’ve defined a deployment job, which is currently missing an environment and a strategy.
Multiple environments can be useful when creating responsive, large-scale applications, though in this case we do not have to worry about them. We just want a single empty environment, which we can get by providing any environment name.
To finish, we need to define the deployment strategy, which is a process that can contain the following hooks:
preDeploy - used for resource initialisation
- used for resource initialisation deploy - performs the actual deployment
- performs the actual deployment routeTraffic - configuration to serve updated version
- configuration to serve updated version postRouteTraffic - meant for health monitoring / user notifications
- meant for health monitoring / user notifications on: failure - to perform rollbacks
- to perform rollbacks on: success - meant for clean up
There are three different deployment strategies, though the only one you need to be concerned about is runOnce . This strategy is the simplest of the three, as it runs each stage of deployment one time per build.
jobs:
- deployment: DeployToStorage
displayName: Deploy to Azure Storage
environment: developmomentum-production
strategy:
runOnce:
In my example case, the website needs to be deployed to Azure Storage, which involves deleting the old files then copying the new files to the storage container. The website uses Azure CDN and Cloudflare as a DNS provider, both of which cache the website. These caches need to be cleared on every deployment, so that traffic is served correctly.
variables:
AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT: developmomentum strategy:
runOnce:
deploy:
steps:
- task: AzureCLI@2
displayName: 'Delete Existing Files'
inputs:
azureSubscription: 'Pay-As-You-Go (8df2aaab-fa1b-4031-9a60-43ebee006b38)'
scriptType: 'pscore'
scriptLocation: 'inlineScript'
inlineScript: 'az storage blob delete-batch -s `$web --account-name $(AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT) --auth-mode login' - task: AzureFileCopy@4
displayName: 'Copy Files to Storage'
inputs:
azureSubscription: 'Pay-As-You-Go (8df2aaab-fa1b-4031-9a60-43ebee006b38)'
SourcePath: '$(Pipeline.Workspace)/$(ARTIFACT_NAME)/*'
Destination: 'AzureBlob'
storage: '$(AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT)'
ContainerName: '$web' routeTraffic:
steps:
- task: PurgeAzureCDNEndpoint@2
displayName: 'Purge Azure CDN Endpoint'
inputs:
ConnectedServiceNameSelector: ConnectedServiceNameARM
ConnectedServiceNameARM: 'Pay-As-You-Go (8df2aaab-fa1b-4031-9a60-43ebee006b38)'
ResourceGroupName: developmomentum
EndpointName: developmomentum
ProfileName: developmomentum
continueOnError: true
- task: tfx-cloudflare-purge@1
displayName: 'Purge Cloudflare Cache'
inputs:
username: '[email protected]'
apikey: '$(CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY)'
zonename: developmomentum.com
continueOnError: true
In my definition, I’m using an Azure CLI task, which takes an inline script. Scripts and script based tasks can include variables and Azure pipelines will automatically convert them into environmental variables, which will be passed into the script.
I’m using a couple of extension tasks for cache purge, which can be found in the task assistant. These tasks need to be installed before you can use them in your pipelines. I’m also defining that the cache purge steps should not disrupt the pipeline, even if they fail.
The Cloudflare cache purge task requires an API key, which must be kept secret. You can define secret variables by adding a variable in the Variables menu, selecting Keep this value secret.
Secret variables cannot be passed into scripts. For this reason, Azure CLI authentication cannot be done using keys. Each Azure subscription I have defined is a reference to a service connection that has been set up.
Authentication
Service connections allow your pipelines to authenticate with external applications. Setting up a service connection in Azure DevOps is easy. In your project, navigate to Project Settings, then select Service connections. Create a service connection by selecting New service connection and going through the wizard.
External permissions
With a service connection set up, you may need to configure permissions in your external service. I am running an Azure CLI command against Azure Storage, which requires the service connection to be granted the permissions to delete files from Azure Storage.
Azure products manage permissions with Access control (IAM), which allows you to assign roles to various entities in Azure. With role assignments, you can give your service connection whatever permissions are needed.
Committing the pipeline
With the build pipeline now defined, you can save it, which will commit the azure-pipelines.yml file to the root of your repository. I recommend selecting Create a new branch for this commit, as you might need to tweak your initial configuration, which is better done on a separate branch. You'll then be able to run your build pipeline.
Common deployment targets
Deploying to Azure
Being an Azure branded product, Azure pipelines has incredible integration with Azure. There are so many native tasks and deploying to Azure is easy. Instead of going into too many details, I will point you towards reading the documentation for the specific tasks, which is extensive.
Deploying to AWS
Azure Pipelines has great support for deploying to AWS, via the AWS tools extension. Installing the extension for your organisation will make a bunch of AWS tasks available for your pipelines. The user guide for the extension contains a task reference, which goes into details regarding the parameters available for each task. | https://medium.com/swlh/continuously-deploy-a-static-website-with-azure-pipelines-fce6442a590b | ['Adam Shirt'] | 2020-06-11 12:20:42.601000+00:00 | ['Azure Pipelines', 'Azure Devops', 'Azure', 'DevOps', 'Software Development'] |
From Paris to Key West | The Coming Immigrant Revolt
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” — Emma Lazarus, inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.
I was in Miami on a business trip last month and used the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Key West. The last time I was there was roughly thirty years ago. Perhaps I was just seeing the island through different eyes but I have to admit it felt very different this time around.
The intervening years have not been kind to the Keys. The multiple recent hurricanes and resultant economic downturn have been devastating to the region. And the recent introduction of cruise ships have added, there’s no other way to say it, a certain sleaze factor to the island.
Debris was strewn all across the side of the road as I drove down the highway that connects Miami to Key West: a four hour drive down a one lane highway. The locals kept talking about the “high season” starting in a couple of weeks, right around Christmas. Meanwhile, the streets were mostly empty.
Step a couple of blocks away from the busy main drag and you’ll still find the same quaint artsy shops, the breezy island bungalows, and the quiet Bed & Breakfasts catering to climate refugees from the frigid Northeast. There are also still plenty of elegant restaurants and shops around on the island but, increasingly, establishments on the main drag are giving way to T-shirt shops, tequila bars, and kiosks selling day-long excursions to nearby islands.
Downtown Key West looks like pretty much any Caribbean or Mexican resort town, waiting lethargically in the warm afternoon for the tourists to come off the cruise ships and give the economy a boost.
There seemed to be two Key Wests vying for control of the island: the old Key West of cottages and fancy restaurants right along with T-shirt shops and assorted tourist traps right next door. What was most intriguing to me was that “The Two Key Wests” seemed to live in equal but separate worlds, their paths rarely crossing. This was driven home to me by an amazing experience I had in a high end restaurant one night.
I walked in around five PM and sat at the bar, looking for a glass of wine and a light dinner, fighting jet lag to stay awake for a few more hours. The place was deserted except for the bartender who was busy washing glasses behind the bar and the restaurant manager who was interviewing prospective waiters at the other end of the hall.
I listened absentmindedly as the first interviewee spent about twenty minutes answering various questions posed by the restaurant manager. When the next candidate sat down for his interview, it became immediately clear that he was not a native English speaker. He spoke English clearly and had no trouble communicating but he did have a Spanish accent.
Within a couple of minutes, something very odd happened. I heard the bartender say loudly and to no one in particular: “English as a first language!”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by the remark. Perhaps it was just a follow-up comment to a discussion he had with one of the waiters a few minutes earlier. I hadn’t paid attention to their conversation.
I ignored the comment and continued to sip my wine. The restaurant manager asked a couple of other questions. Within thirty seconds, the bartender said, again, loud enough for everyone in the large restaurant to hear but also apparently to no one in particular: “English as a first language!”
Another minute or so went by before the manager brought the interview to a close and thanked the candidate. The entire interview had lasted no more than three or four minutes.
It took me a few minutes to realize what had just happened. All at once, the bartender’s comment made perfect sense. He wasn’t talking to the waiter, he wasn’t even talking to himself. He was listing a hiring requirement for waiters previously agreed upon with the manager: English as a first language. Why are you wasting time on this guy? He’s clearly fresh off the boat. Not our type of people. Move on.
He had just vetoed the candidate solely on the basis of his speaking skills, his native tongue, his accent — and hence his heredity — and nothing else. I have no trouble believing that the candidate was deficient in a dozen other ways — but I would have expected those to be decided by the hiring manager who was interviewing him, not by someone twenty feet away who is not even officially part of the interview process. I am assuming, of course, that he was a legal immigrant with all the proper paperwork. I am not in any way, shape or form, trying to make a case for illegal immigration.
I was stunned as I sat there thinking about this but, by then, the candidate had long left. I quickly paid and walked out, not wanting to get involved. Walking back to my room, I rationalized the situation in my mind. What the hell was I going to do anyway? Raise a stink about racism right then and there? To what end? I told myself arguing with a single bigot wasn’t going to change anything.
But the episode has weighed on me. This was clear and unadulterated racism, condoned by the management of the restaurant. The only thing missing was a printed sign hanging above the bar: “Coloreds need not apply.”
I’ve seen the same thing in the West coast for years, of course, with Mexicans and other immigrants trying to claw their way up the economic ladder. The economy of the rich rarely interacts with the economy of the poor, it seems, and does so only reluctantly.
I happen to have lived on both sides of the fence. I am privileged enough to have retired from a successful career at age 52. I have lived the American dream, you might say. But I’m also one of those immigrants who clawed his way up the economic ladder. I made $2.60 an hour washing dishes in a steakhouse as my first job while also attending college as a foreign student upon first arriving in the US almost forty years ago. I, too, was once fresh off the boat.
But enough about me. This is not about me. This is about all those others who are struggling and haven’t made it yet. Having lived in this country for my entire adult life, I consider myself an American and I sincerely believe that most Americans are not racist. But it is also true that a small subset engage in xenophobic activities such as the one described above.
Immigrants have always been discriminated against in this country. If it wasn’t the Cubans and the Mexicans, it was the Japanese during World War II. Or the Irish after the potato famine. Or the Chinese who built the transcontinental railroad. Or the Italians fleeing poverty. Or Middle Easterners escaping barbaric regimes back home.
Replace Cuba and Mexico with Middle East or Italy or Ireland or Japan or China or India or any one of a dozen other world regions over the past two hundred years and you are guaranteed to find similar experiences by each of those ethnicities. If they weren’t profiled at the border, they were rounded up into internment camps, they were used as indentured labor to build the country’s infrastructure, they were shunned and ostracized as outsiders. But every one of those ethnicities is now broadly accepted in America and has found a way to not just integrate with, but also to change, the culture of America for the better.
At every point in the history of this country, some subset of the population has been discriminated against — based on their place of birth, based on their native tongue, based on their cultural beliefs, based on the color of their skin, based on their financial situation, based on their willingness to take low paying jobs away from Americans. Based on things they often had no control over.
And it wasn’t always brown or black people that were hated. A hundred years ago, European Catholics were discriminated against just as much as Muslims are today. Newspapers warned that the influx of Catholics would “take jobs, spread disease and crime and plot a coup to install the Pope in power. In 1844, mobs burnt Catholic churches and hunted down victims.”
Progressives and conservatives are in a rare unity welcoming Pope Francis to the US, but anti-Catholicism was rampant…www.theguardian.com
The Muslims and Mexicans being vilified and discriminated against today are a resilient bunch. They are already merging with the rest of American society at a faster pace than previous ethnicities. The Japanese had it worse. The Irish had it worse. The Chinese had it worse. The list goes on. No one said it would be easy. But it’s the only way forward.
“I say you know it’s funny I think we were on the same boat back in 1694.” — Indigo Girls. Shame on You. Shaming of the Sun.
I love this country but I shudder as I see the rights of immigrants pummeled on a daily basis. These are the very people that are working their asses off to make this economy grow. Whether it’s the gardeners mowing our lawns or dishwashers and cooks in our restaurants or the laborers working in our factories, they are part of this country. They’re here already and chances are they’re working multiple jobs to make their own lives and the lives of those around them better. They’re helping the economy by working hard, making money, and spending it.
And yet, what they get in return is racism, xenophobia, and a hidden two class system that is as pernicious as the Jim Crow laws of the past century. What do we gain, exactly, by antagonizing them, discriminating against them, creating a hidden “separate but equal” universe for them?
Where is the #MeToo moment for immigrants who are discriminated against? Why aren’t they banding together and demanding their rights?
We attacked the equal rights problem several times over the past couple of centuries. Equal rights for blacks — which almost tore this country apart. Equal rights for Women — makes sense, they’re half the population. Equal rights for gays and lesbians and transgender people. All good stuff. But how about Equal Rights for Immigrants? I wonder if we have the stomach to attack that one head on.
Our political problems will continue to worsen if we don’t address this problem. No, trickle down economics doesn’t work. Been there, done that, had financial meltdown. No, allowing lobbyists and special interests and big corporations to run this country won’t work either. Been there, done that — again and again. The results have been a disaster each and every time.
We need to treat immigrants like they deserve to be treated, like the downtrodden that we promised to take care of. If we don’t do it, who will? We are the richest nation on earth and yet we squander our money away and turn a blind eye to those needing our help — for reasons that they have no control over: their place of birth, their cultural beliefs, their accents. It almost doesn’t matter where they come from.
We’ve shown that we can discriminate against white Christians from Western Europe just as well as brown Muslims and black Africans and yellow Asians. So the problem is not them. The problem is us.
If we don’t solve this problem constructively, positively, as a united society, we will have a revolution on our hands with immigrants demanding their equal rights — which they fully deserve.
And don’t tell me we don’t have the money. We are the richest nation in the world. Here are just two data points to disabuse you of that notion:
“Each year the US population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the rest of the world.” — Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. “U.S. military expenditures are roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined.” — NationalPriorities.org.
All I’m saying, Mr. President, is if you give these people a helping hand instead of a kick in the groin, if you help them with job opportunities instead of reminding them that they come from “shithole” countries, perhaps they will give you a few more people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. A few more Albert Einsteins and Neils Bohrs. If, instead, you spend billions on an ill-conceived and useless wall to keep them out, we all lose in the long run.
It would take just a little bit of introspection to realize that “they” haven’t changed. They are still who they are and who they’ve been for many generations. It is only us, the people of America, the very definition of America, that have changed over the past two centuries.
I am an immigrant. I am also an American. Two hundred years ago, we were all immigrants. And yet, somehow, we keep finding reasons to hate “them,” the others, whatever the definition of “them” happens to be in the current decade. How hypocritical of us.
“But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close; And I saw that his face looked just like mine” — Bob Dylan. John Brown. The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964.
Here’s a — hopefully constructive — suggestion. Let’s start documenting the cases of discrimination against immigrants. And you don’t have to write an essay to do so. An uploaded video recording will do just fine. | https://benbob.medium.com/from-paris-to-key-west-290e2bb76e6c | ['Ben Fathi'] | 2018-08-05 03:59:55.497000+00:00 | ['Key West', 'Travel', 'Racism', 'Journalism', 'France'] |
3 Online Courses to Learn Angular for Different kind of Learners | From last couple of decades web engineering is dominating how we use softwares to make our life easier or to solve a business problem, Web has solution for everything. Web is one of the evergreen field of this digital era. But with the time web engineering also evolved and getting mature day by day. In old times we used to develop web apps with just static HTML and then JS come into action and helped us in making Dynamic Web apps but the development is tough and not cost effective to overcome this issue many JavaScript frameworks were made and Angular is one of them which is developed by Google for effortlessly building dynamic web apps.
In this article we are going to find the best courses to learn Angular for different kind of learners.
If you are looking for a course that takes you from ground zero to cloud nine then this course is for you but make sure you good amount of patience and time because in this course you learn everything from higher level to very deep concepts, apart from all these this course will first teach you the theory of every concept with small examples then it goes to larger and complex project, so if you have plenty of time, clear insight of JavaScript basics, and eager to learn angular completely then surely go for this course. Explore this course now
If you are a beginner looking for a fast track course which teaches Angular in very less time and in a Project oriented manner then this course is for you because it will not overwhelm you by directly introducing deep and complex concept, it will explain everything during different phase of the the project so that you can learn every concept one by one instead of learning all at once, so if you are a beginner and want a working knowledge of angular in less time then surely go for this course.Explore this course now
If you have some very basic knowledge of web development and want to get your hand dirty with angular in a moderate amount of time with a proper balance of time and real life projects then this course is for you, this course will go from very basic to the peak, along the journey you will learn the usage of various third party libraries and third party services like firebase etc. More often this course is also focused on following best practices in development and production. so if you have moderate amount of time , Basic understanding of JavaScript and want to acquire complete knowledge then surely go for this course. Explore this course now
Why you should purchase a online course.
Although we are aware of the fact that online course gives you flexibility to learn from anywhere, anytime and on any device, but the best thing is the life support they provide when you are stucked somewhere then you can get your problem solved in no time. That’s why we encourage you to purchase the course and don’t try to acquire them illegally.
Thanks, and follow us for more amazing articles related to technology. | https://medium.com/codingurukul/3-online-courses-to-learn-angular-for-different-kind-of-learners-9f7c2517ad09 | ['Suraj Kumar'] | 2019-10-20 07:18:36.180000+00:00 | ['Angular', 'Online Courses', 'Programming', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript'] |
This little analogy is so good as I wipe my coffee up that spewed forth from my laughing mouth… | This little analogy is so good as I wipe my coffee up that spewed forth from my laughing mouth, and gather my thoughts again. Sometimes I’ve felt the voting machines suffer the same fate as little bro. It is time to wake to the fact that we are managed by powers outside normal control(and elections) to contain the masses into a cohesive unit of reasonable solidarity. They drone us into autonomous, compliant, respectable citizens. The tools used are varied, and effectively mixed throughout the media streams, woven into narratives where we DO want to belong, where we feel an uncanny discordance if we feel we are straying from the crowd. “Managed democracy” as the late Sheldon Wolin so aptly termed. So it’s high time to put down any ‘controller’, most likely now plugged into the corporate(MSM) media streams, step back a little, and think for yourselves.
Sure Bernie offered hope where there hasn’t been any for so many years. He at least got some people to look outside the going streams of numbed compliance, and offered a peek at something better for the majority of our lower classes. Maybe we do end up with a democratic candidate that seems recently lobotomized which assure a Trump win. But the young folks everywhere will have Bernie, and Tusli, to thank for glimpses into a different future. One with more social offerings for a better future. One that may end some of the regime change nonsense that displaces millions and creates new aggressive enemies where we didn’t have any before. Because if we all awaken in concert with real effective change we may have a better future. Peace, The Ol’ Hippy | https://medium.com/@jrallen1200/this-little-analogy-is-so-good-as-i-wipe-my-coffee-up-that-spewed-forth-from-my-laughing-mouth-b611fa99bb | ['John Allen'] | 2020-03-11 19:25:54.912000+00:00 | ['Revolution', 'Progressive', 'Bernie Sanders', 'Politics', 'Joe Biden'] |
About Me — Corina Oana. My truth in this moment | My truth in this moment
The anti-immigrant sentiment in contemporary America reminds me of why, when my father settled in Paris, I chose America — Europe’s attitude towards immigrants didn’t make me feel cozy.
Back in 1991, here in America, people said my accent was cute. I couldn’t pronounce squirrel and scissors. Or was it my young adult age and America’s obsession with youth that made it cute? Now, it’s only when I fake my accent that people hear it, but ELL still sneaks up daily, as does living and writing with Dyslexia.
I don’t want to write my life story here. I do want to write about my life with writing:
⁃ it slows my mind down, and when I intentionally pick my words, the pause I take so the word can appear is a practice of mindfulness
⁃ it connects me to parts of myself which previously had no voice, and the more I get to know them, the richer I feel, and the more I feel a sense of belonging and intimacy
⁃ it connects me to you and you represent the world because when we write, we draw on the energy and consciousness of writers of the past and of the future
This isn’t an exhaustive list, it is what matters in this moment. In this, my now. It is what I craft now that my daughter is the independent teenager I’d hoped she’d be. Now, being a single mom allows me to keep some of my life-force.
Fun fact: I just moved to a 8 x 14 ft room in Cambridge, MA after cashing in on the one investment that worked: the purchase and sale of a home. This is an exercise in letting go of attachments. Prequel to life in a tiny house.
I’m drawn to spirituality and healing and fermenting and composting. Justice and non-normative ways of being and living. I have a toxic relationship with power and align myself with others who are committed to collective liberation. I’m out here looking for you.
Reciprocity is a practice, and below I thank a few of those who uplift me: publications, writers whose stories or style inspire me:
Illumination
Be yourself
Sayeh Behesh
Florence Wanjiku
Dr. Mehmet Yildiz
Mayank Pamnani | https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-corina-oana-5a9316a4dcba | ['Corina Oana'] | 2020-12-23 01:48:39.374000+00:00 | ['Introduction', 'Nonbinary', 'About Me', 'Justice', 'Immigrant Stories'] |
Kindness Is Cool: The Price of Friendship | I grew up being told that making friends as easy.
Yet, as a young Christian homeschooler, I had a lot of trouble with friendships. Most of my friends at an early age were just family acquaintances, or kids in my Sunday school. It was only when I reached middle school that I began to desire an actual close kinship with somebody. And it seemed like every kid I tried to grow close to just left me behind. Middle school is ruthless. If you aren’t pretty, or popular, no one wants to talk to you.
All my older siblings had “best friends,” so why didn’t I? When I asked my dad this, he told me that there was a secret to making friends I should know. One that made being popular almost mindless. And being the lonely, left-behind kid in all my circles, I was interested.
My dad told me this, word for word. I remember it to this day.
“People don’t want to be friends with cool people. They want to be friends with kind people. Be kind to others, and they’ll line up to talk to you. Kindness is cool.”
I took this to heart. I took it to heart through all of middle school, and soon enough I was hanging out with a different person every week. Kids I didn’t even know invited me to their birthday parties. When I walked up to a circle of people, they moved to make room for me. I felt like I had unlocked a superpower.
In high school, my strategy was the same. I went to a online, classical Christian school, where the competition was even more intense than middle school. My classmates went to debate clubs and their favorite books were by C. S Lewis or Herodotus. Even the boys were reading Jane Austen. I was added to a group chat just for Lord of the Rings memes. I felt completely and utterly out of my element. I was smart, sure, but this was a whole new level of intelligence. It was like in a romantic comedy when the rough-around-the-edges country girl has to learn which fork to use for dinner at the big mansion or whatever. I don’t know, weird analogy.
Either way, I was determined to connect with some of these people. I put my well-practiced kindness to work, and sure enough I started to get to know some of my classmates. I quickly realized, however, that Level 2 wasn’t going to be that simple. People liked kindness, sure, but they also liked intelligence. And you can’t really just flip a switch for that.
I was never booksmart in high school, and I’m still not. But that wasn’t going to stop me. I pretended to know who Nietzsche was. I laughed at jokes I didn’t understand. I faked having interest in competitive essay writing and the history of WW2. After a while, I was really starting to seem like one of them. I felt included. I felt like I had earned their friendship.
The only problem was that it wasn’t sustainable. The truth was, I just wasn’t like them. When the last two years of high school hit, my family moved and I got completely depressed, pushed to the edge. I stopped going to class, and cheated just to get a passing grade. I was deteriorating, and so was my image. People just… left me behind. Again. I graduated with no one beside me and a blank front yearbook page.
And I think that’s when I realized how expensive friendship really was. I had no one beside me in life. I didn’t party, and I’d never had a boyfriend. So I sought out friendships online.
I joined discord servers and Instagram group chats. I met people through competitive gaming communities. I had more people in my life than I knew what to do with, but I just couldn’t figure out how to buy them yet. Half these people were shallow, competitive gossips. I knew as soon as I turned around, they were talking about me, too. Three of some of my closest online friends muted me on Twitter, and I realized I had to figure out how much I was willing to pay for them.
What was it, then? A couple extra compliments? A sub to their private Twitch channel? Modding them on my Discord server? I told myself I wouldn’t be shallow like them, but the little things piled up. I even kept it a secret that I was religious, one of the most important integral parts of my identity, because I was so terrified they would leave me behind.
There was no trust, no real connection. It was just a bunch of tinder for a slowly dying fire. I had given so much time, energy, money, and dedication, and I became so emotionally exhausted without a single thing to show for it. I was bitter. I hated seeing other people happy unless it was conceptualized in a TV show. I resented other people’s accomplishments. I hated seeing people succeed where I couldn’t, get compliments where I didn’t, get invited places that I wasn’t. Friendship was a transaction.
You’d think with that revelation, there would be a twist coming. Some big change, like a redemption arc. Maybe you’re expecting me to say that now that I’ve learned my lesson, I’m surrounded by friends and I’m happy.
Two years out of high school, and I really can’t say that anything has changed.
I do have one friend now. We connected over kpop, of all things. She’s my favorite person in the whole world. Only one year of friendship, but I know that she would take a bullet for me in a heartbeat. She makes sure I eat enough, because she knows I have a problem with that.
She’s the only person I’ve ever told about what happened those last two years of high school that pushed me to the brink. And I think, that night on her bedroom floor, the moment I opened my mouth was the moment I realized what I had been doing wrong.
“People don’t want to be friends with cool people. They want to be friends with kind people. Be kind to others, and they’ll line up to talk to you. Kindness is cool.”
I was that person. That friend, on the other end. I had wasted so many resources chasing the cool people, just to make me feel like I had a place. But the truth is, I hated every second of it. It’s agony.
When she came into my life, her first priority was always taking care of me, and I gravitated towards that faster than any other person I’d ever met in my life. Even when we had only been friends for a few months, she took me shopping for my birthday. We listened to music in my car for hours. I know her guest bedroom is always available, no matter what, just in case I need an escape. She’s the coolest person I’ve ever met.
Thirteen years of excruciating effort, and my best friend beat me to succeeding in following my dad’s advice. Friendship isn’t expensive at all. Friendship isn’t exhausting or traumatic. It’s a connection. It’s two people putting the other person first in this world for some crazy, mysterious reason. And that’s really, really cool. | https://medium.com/@ineo/kindness-is-cool-the-price-of-friendship-ecb4e6fc00a7 | [] | 2020-12-19 02:33:34.636000+00:00 | ['Personal', 'Friendship', 'Journal', 'Advice', 'Diary'] |
Closing the Door | Letting go of people who don’t want to be in your life
Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash
Today I wanted to write something important, refreshing, for everyone. However, the moment when I am in life means that I can’t focus fully on anything but experiencing what is happening around. I said goodbye to someone important to me today. I did it, not because I wanted to, but because I needed to keep going.
You could say I stopped staring at the closed door and turned the other way because that was what I had to do.
I promised myself at the beginning of the year that I would not do anything against myself and that I would be honest in everything I do. So what the hell? — you might think. Well, yes, I was honest, I said what I felt and thought, and then I had to say goodbye. As adults, people often need acceptance and adaptation to the conditions, taking into account also the feelings and actions of other people. It means, more or less, recognizing situations where stubbornness is nothing more than banging your head against a wall. And that’s not good for you.
The fact that we are ready for something or for someone at a certain point in life does not mean that others are also ready. It’s a very individual matter at what point in our lives we meet each other. Realizing that we want something or not can also mean that we will have to be patient and do something completely different. I know it’s confusing, but I try to figure it out myself.
Coming back to the goodbye I have mentioned above. There are times in life that we cannot move forward. It doesn’t matter if it’s because of a broken heart, broken hopes, or any other kind of loss. We are stuck in a place full of regret and dilemma. However, there comes a point where, regardless of our condition, we must shake off. Yes, I know
sinking into sadness is so much easier. It’s like getting bogged down in a thick chocolate pudding. It is so cosy, you feel so warm and safe to feel sorry for yourself.
Being rejected always hurts. We take the loss personally, in terms of pride and ego, of self-esteem as a human being. This is the way things are. It takes time and self-understanding for it to stop hurting. Pretending that nothing happened is only delaying the inevitable — having to work through the loss. I lived with hope, I was deluded, I was naive, you can call it that. I pretended it was okay because I was counting on it wasn’t over. The truth was, I had to say when it would be over. End for me.
In fact, I moved on to the next stage. No, I am not completely healed because despite saying goodbye, sincere and conscious, I am still sad. However, I don’t want to feel sorry for myself or miss this person anymore. I want to swallow the lump in my throat and open to what I’m missing when I focus on the past. Why? Well, you can come up with a list of reasons which applies to any interpersonal relationships which are to be over:
you deserve it not to be just an entertainment or an option you should have relationship that you can share with the world, not hide you can’t wait forever for someone to think it through and decide that you’re worth it you shouldn’t ask for attention and affection — it supposed to be natural if you give yourself, it should not embarrass anyone you should know your worth
Maybe I’ll cry over it today one more time. In the evening, when the children go to bed. In the morning I will try to look at things differently and not turn back regretfully looking at the closed door. | https://medium.com/red-poppy/closing-the-door-c539996a7e8f | ['Katarzyna Orłow'] | 2020-12-15 13:20:02.701000+00:00 | ['Goodbye', 'Relationships', 'Letting Go', 'Loss', 'Sadness'] |
Is hospitality to blame for its own staffing crisis? | Is hospitality to blame for its own staffing crisis?
Is this now the time for reckoning upon an industry notorious for poor working conditions and low pay? Matt Shiells-Jones Follow Jun 2 · 9 min read
Corona changed hospitality. Not the beer (oooh, now I want beer), the virus! COVID-19 shut venues across the world and saw staff ousted at unprecedented levels. Furlough saved many in exchange for financial burden on businesses. But as reopening loomed, venues reported a recurring theme; staff having new jobs elsewhere. Once loyal employees were criticised for being selfish. The pariahs lambasted for ‘playing the system’ by claiming furlough whilst working elsewhere at a cost to their original employer.
I can’t say I blame them; no matter how much my business head says this was taking advantage. Let’s be honest: if you had the chance to earn 80% of a wage for doing nothing, and earning a wage in another industry at the same time, wouldn’t you? It became the chance many needed at trying a new role in a new industry, whilst retaining the security of your existing wage and without having to quit a job you already knew well. It became the paid sabbatical many needed to reassess their careers.
I also understand business owners annoyance as they face opening with no staff. More so after having spent months bearing a large financial cost for keeping them on furlough. Particularly for those smaller family businesses; it would feel like a kick in the teeth.
Hospitality is a demanding and often under-appreciated industry.
It is no secret that guests can be demanding; and with piles of legislation governing the industry it can be a minefield for staff to navigate. Add in the industry standard minimum wage for most of the ‘on the floor’ roles and you can see why people don’t want to return. Especially if they can earn the same, or more, stacking shelves in B&M bargains or Aldi with nay a skid-mark to be scrubbed. That is the reality for many. Who wouldn’t prefer a job that doesn’t have the demands of hospitality? In a positive way it does mean those who remain are likely more passionate about staying within the industry.
Staff in hospitality also face physical demands: walking miles every day and the constant bending and carrying of areas like events, restaurant and housekeeping. Spending over eight hours a day on your feet in often uncomfortable shoes is not an enticing prospect. These are also roles rife with performance targets that quantify performance to numbers on a spreadsheet.
We have created an environment where the term Human Resources has never been so apt; staff often feeling no more than resources to be consumed. This is one of the brutal truths that many need to understand from their teams, yet seem so reluctant to face.
Then there are the hours
Early starts, late finishes, AFD’s. Is it any wonder kitchens struggle for chefs when it is not uncommon to see them pulling shifts in excess of 12 hours a day in hot, sweaty environments?
The systematic removal over the years of extra pay for bank holidays or overtime created a labour-intensive environment with minimal contractual reward. By removing the incentive to work for longer, it has become an industry ever reliant on the good will of people to keep staffed; even worse often playing on the fear of job loss if staff don’t do the extra hours. The 40-hour contracts where you are told that you “won’t be expected to do more than about 50 hours or so a week” are of no real attraction either; I have been subject to these conversations myself in the past. Yet these are still standards the industry holds itself to. They are repeated patterns I have seen time and time again in over twenty-five years in the trade. The same for the EU Working Time Regulations where very few managers have been discouraged from agreeing they will work more than 48 hours a week on average. HR Managers themselves saying tropes such as ‘its how the industry is’ or ‘it will never happen but just in case’ and ‘its expected for all management roles as you will be required to work extra hours’. Management roles in the industry are expected to continuously submit to long hours and six or seven day working weeks. In some macabre way this is often framed as the only way to succeed in the industry; those unwilling to submit fully in both body and soul to the succubus of corporate demand will never taste success. People are pushed in to burning out as the only way they can possible succeed.
It is also an industry obsessed with zero-hour contracts. The one-way street where staff are expected to be available every minute of every day at the drop of a hat. In return they get no guarantee of hours at all and could do anything from 0 to 100 hours in a week. I appreciate the business benefits of having flexible payroll and the occasions that zero-hour contracts actually suit employee lifestyles (which are few and far between). All too often staff are seen as unloyal for not accepting a last minute shift, as though the employee is the problem. They are not. This lack of stability, coupled with high expectations of drop-everything commitment and loyalty, is seen by many as unfair. Yet still we blindly charge ahead with the hope that people will continue desperately begging us for hours. The employee playing the part of Oliver Twist and the employer Mr Bumble, as the discord between employer and employee grows and the attitude of ‘be grateful for what you get’ becomes ever more pervasive. Ask zero-hour contract staff what they want, truly want, and many will simply just want guaranteed hours.
But the tips are good… right?
Ummmm… not really for most; especially when service charges are subject to administration fees by employers. Oh yeah, its true! In some cases these charge are 25% or more (I worked for a company charging 25%). The same deduction applying for tips or gratuities. In many cases this is just seen by staff as a racket for companies to cream extra revenue from customers (yes, I have also worked for a company where service charge was part of the budgeted revenue). Some say they use the service charge to provide better pay to staff. But are simply masking the fact they pay a low base pay. It is a horrid import from the USA where staff ultimately rely on tips to top up their wage. It also makes the books look good – higher revenue from service charges contributing to payroll, meaning percentages are better and company performance financially is boosted.
Except in the UK people don’t like to tip and it is questionable whether it should be accepted that a company charges diners extra for simply providing a service that should be factored in to the purchase price – Tesco don’t charge an extra 12.5% for going through a manned till rather than self service; so you can see how the public may be reluctant to pay these charges. I could rant on this for hours, especially surrounding the ethical side of this. Some employers frame service charge as a kind of performance related bonus; but many staff simply don’t see it this way. Instead they see it purely as a means for the company to get more money out of them.
Don’t even start me on companies that have returned people from furlough on less pay than they were on before furlough. Yup. Oh don’t get me wrong; I think they are tosspots of the highest order! I have seen this in many hotels already, and we are not talking your budget crap-hole where your door lock is a piece of string around a hook; I mean large swanky hotels with huge reputations, providing luxury stays and entertaining the elite of society. The kind where A-listers sneak in through the back door to avoid paparazzi. All this while the business is giving their staff the choice of redundancy, or keeping your job but taking a pay cut of up to 20%.
Roles were condensed – sales, revenue and marketing teams were culled like businesses removing a diseased limb. The survivors suddenly became regional managers on the same salary. They may have had a couple of grand extra bunged their way, but giving someone a £2k pay rise whilst saving over £100k in payroll by cutting teams, is nothing more than a sleight of hand move that creates a false economy in the long term. I get why it happened, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree.
Yet despite ALL this; some operators still wonder what the problem is?
The truth is this – hospitality has become an industry reliant on low cost labour. Profit margins have been squeezed to incredulous levels and salaried roles have become the brunt-bearers of an industry led by spreadsheets rather than service. It is a kind of labour pandemic. It is not exclusive to hospitality; speak to those in social care and you will see similar arguments and working conditions.
So how do we fix it?
There is no magic wand. Increasing wages is a sticking plaster. The truth is that for each study saying that minimum wage is a good thing, there is another saying it is a bad thing.
But minimum wage has become a standard. It has become a de facto part of the industry where people often only see a wage increase through promotion or legal requirement, rather than their productivity or value add to the business. And those on minimum wage often feel like they work hardest, for the least.
There are talks of skills gaps; an argument revisited every few years. The lack of government support for specific skills has grown over the years – vocational qualifications in areas such as reception became ‘customer service’ and roles like Housekeeping and Events were practically brushed aside.
Yet whilst we could pay people based on their skills, we open up the old debate that is equality in pay – why should two people doing the same job be paid differently? Every sword is double-edged.
The one area many can improve is their employee treatment.
No-one wants to go to work and hate it! It really is that simple. Decisions taken at head office impact the person on the floor. All too often without consulting them. Without understanding the working environment, how can you expect to keep employees happy and passionate? Ask yourself how many of your management team can check a guest in, process payments, cook breakfast or clean a room in twenty minutes. If these are the standards you set your team, your managers should not be relying on ‘I have done my time in that job’ to excuse ever doing it again. This only says they don’t truly understand the changing nature of the jobs people are doing day in, day out, under their command. And yes, I am a General Manager who spends hours of every day in my departments, doing these jobs and experiencing what it is like for my teams. It is not being a leader, it is simply understanding what they go through every shift and making sure we are able to adapt and support as they need.
Be honest, be open, stay true to your word – three basic things that employees will value. Don’t say its a 40 hour contract and expect them to work 80. Pay them overtime or give time back in lieu. The truth on this point being that if you cannot let your employees stick to their contract hours, then you are failing in managing them and giving them the support they need. You are responsible for your employees being given the support and tools they need to complete their jobs in their contracted hours.
This is where hospitality has failed over the years and slowly slid in to become an employer of need rather than passion for many. Offering environments where staff get baked potatoes and beans every day as staff lunch, doesn’t live up to the expectations of ‘meals included’ in your staff benefits list. Even more so when staff are actually excited about getting leftover conference buffet snacks from an event; because even food saved from going in the bin is better than the meals they have every day! You may think this is a ridiculous statement, but I have seen it repeated time and time again in hotel after hotel.
Discounts at shops is another one; come on, I worked in hotels with these benefits for over a decade and never, not once, used this scheme nor had any employee ask me how to access use it. Because we all know we can get better discounts through Google searches. Yet businesses would sooner pay a monthly fee per staff member for this, than pay for better food. Oh and stop with staff appreciation weeks – appreciate your staff every day! Trust me when I say no-one really cares that they get a mars bar and can of pop once a year when they are struggling with systemic failures to provide them what they need to do their jobs.
In conclusion:
Until hospitality puts the same energy in to looking after its staff, as it does looking after its guests, the cycle of poor staff retention will continue.
In my next article here, I look at what options hospitality has, and if they will work! | https://medium.com/the-standpoint/is-hospitality-to-blame-for-its-own-staffing-crisis-268342bf614f | ['Matt Shiells-Jones'] | 2021-06-11 21:36:04.341000+00:00 | ['Restaurant Business', 'Hotel', 'Hotel Management', 'Hospitality Industry', 'Employment'] |
Introducing Fuse (FUSE), an ‘Out-Of-the-Box’ Solution for Decentralized Economies | Providing businesses with a reliable, cost-efficient and powerful decentralized technical platform is a focus of what GetBlock is developing and advocating. This approach is perfectly aligned with that of the Fuse (FUSE) team tasked with creating ready-made blockchain-based solutions for enterprises, communities and enthusiasts.
What is Fuse (FUSE): ideology, concept, consensus
Fuse (FUSE) blockchain was introduced amidst the 2019 Crypto Winter. The project was backed by veteran VCs including Collider Ventures, Blockedge Capital, Faculty Capital and so on. Since its inception, Fuse Network has been laser-focused on empowering businesses and local communities with blockchain-based economical systems for everyday use.
Image via Fuse
Fuse (FUSE) mechanisms are accessible even from mobile phones while its transfers are charged with trivial $0.01 fixed fees. That’s why its core use-cases include daily retail payments as well as micropayments, the ‘Holy Grail’ of all modern blockchains.
Fuse (FUSE) transactions are secured by Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus (like in Bitshares, EOS, Cardano and so on). This means that its network integrity is guaranteed by validators and delegators. The first group of network operators contribute to Fuse (FUSE) by running nodes (see below) while the second one delegates their FUSE stakes to preferred validators.
Its ‘plug-and-play’ design is another ‘killing feature’ of Fuse Network (FUSE). Its team stresses that even non-CS entrepreneurs and community activists will be able to leverage the power of blockchain with Fuse (FUSE) integration:
CIT: Fuse lowers the bar of entry for entrepreneurs to build powerful, effective and sustainable products. So they spend less time and money on IT, and can focus on reaching and growing their clients and customers.
Also, Fuse Network is interoperable with Ethereum Virtual Machine which allows it to interact seamlessly with two most popular smart contract hosting platforms ever: Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain.
Three layers, plenty of use-cases
In terms of infrastructure, the Fuse Network (FUSE) ecosystem is organized in three inter-dependent layers. The first (‘retail’) layer is responsible for end-user functions of the Fuse Network (FUSE) blockchain. Technically, it is represented by Fuse Wallet, an on-chain crypto storage and transfer instrument. The wallet operates on Ethereum (ETH) mainnet and can be accessed via Android and iOS-based applications.
Image via Fuse
The second layer (‘operational’) serves as a smart contract framework for network operators. This environment is tailored for the needs of tech-savvy users and is dubbed ‘Fuse Studio’. It operates on both Ethereum (ETH) mainnet and FUSE DPoS.
The third layer (‘network’) is a blockchain itself: it is accessed only by validators of Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus. Since Fuse Network (FUSE) is an open-source project, all blockchain-based developers can experiment with its functionality. Fuse Chain is interoperable with Ethereum (ETH) mainnet.
Such a robust scheme of Fuse Network hierarchy guarantees the secure and seamless experience for the users with various levels of blockchain expertise. FUSE token is a backbone element for this ecosystem: this token is used for fees, delegation and rewards purposes on FUSE mainnet.
Running a FUSE node: why you may need it
Typically, receiving periodical payouts for transaction validation is the main economic incentive for running a node in blockchains like Fuse Network (FUSE). Meanwhile, it also provides node operators with seamless access to the core elements of Fuse and ensures seamless interaction with crucial decentralized mechanisms.
Image via Fuse
GetBlock eases this process: with our instruments, Fuse Network can be accessed with zero level of blockchain coding experience. GetBlock connects its clients to the Parity node of Fuse and assists in dApps migration. | https://medium.com/@getblock/introducing-fuse-fuse-an-out-of-the-box-solution-for-decentralized-economies-f0ccef8dd17d | [] | 2021-06-08 13:01:31.671000+00:00 | ['Fuse', 'Fuse Network', 'Blockchain', 'Node', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
How I Landed my Senior Data Scientist Job | How I Landed my Senior Data Scientist Job
Photo by Japheth Mast on Unsplash
This is Part 2 of a series of posts. If you want to see the data behind which jobs I applied to and how I progressed through interviews, check out Part 1 here.
There seems to be a lot of content on the internet about how to land your first data science job, but not about how to make vertical moves from a junior or mid-level position. Six months ago I started a new job as a Senior Data Scientist and I thought others might find it useful to read the story of how I got the job.
This article is not meant to be a “here’s 5 things to do that will guarantee you find a data science job” — far from that. I am telling my story just because I think it will be interesting for people to read about. My nature is always to instruct so I may give some “advice” here and there but most of it is based on a very small sample size (N=1). I’ll list which strategies I purposefully used to find a job versus those that were blissfully coincidental. At the least I hope this article is an entertaining read for a data professional, and perhaps can serve as a source of inspiration for some.
The data
I go into more detail in this blog post, but here’s a graphic summarizing which companies I applied to and how I progressed through the interview processes:
Job search timeline. Dark gray bars without an end point indicate I was rejected after June 30. Light gray bars indicate I never heard back.
First, some background
(If you read Part 1 you can skip this section)
Hi, I’m Aaron! The end of the story is that I’m a Senior Data Scientist at Saturn Cloud. My role is to help clients utilize our platform as well as create engaging data science content that builds our credibility in the market and educates users about the technologies that we support. This is very different than what a “typical” data scientist (is there even such a person?) does at a company — my role can be thought of as a mix between a solutions architect and developer advocate but geared towards data science. Even so, I believe my experiences here should resonate with anyone looking for a data science job (or any job, for that matter).
I received a PhD in Computer Science from Florida Atlantic University where my research was focused on data mining and machine learning for healthcare applications. Prior to Saturn, I was a Data Scientist at Modernizing Medicine, an electronic health record company. I started my career at Modmed as an intern through a referral from my PhD advisor. This was before they had a data team, and I had the pleasure of growing my career along with the team over several years. Because of this, I was searching for a Senior Data Scientist position without going through a single interview in over six years! I did have a lot of experience interviewing people for data roles at Modmed, but was definitely terrified of being on the other side of the table.
For more background, this was the resume I used for my job search and my portfolio website.
The few things I purposefully did right
There were a couple of things that I consciously set out to do both before and during my job search that I believe helped me navigate through the process and eventually land a great gig!
Keep a short list of interesting companies
I would always be genuinely curious about different data science roles and organizations, and keep a “Companies” note on my phone where I would add any that I found interesting. This helped give me a starting point for when I was actually looking for a job, rather than going straight to blasting job posts on LinkedIn (I did eventually do this, however). It turned that I found the job at Saturn Cloud through LinkedIn, but it was a great experience choosing to apply for companies that I knew.
Dream job checklist
This part is critical to ensuring that a job search is at least somewhat directed. My approach was to send out applications to companies that I was at least mildly interested in, then through the interview process see how much of my “checklist” the role and company covered. This is all about your desires and values: what technologies do you like to use? What industries would you want to work in? What do you value most about a company’s culture? One role probably won’t cover your whole list, but it’s important to evaluate it critically. Otherwise you may take the first offer that comes your way, only to become unhappy then end up doing this whole process over again in six months. This was my checklist, directly copied from the Notes app on my iPhone:
Established data driven culture, surrounded by smart data people
High visibility / high impact work
Doing good
Work life balance
Design oriented
Questions to ask employers
This goes along with the previous point, but it’s important that an interview is you interviewing a company as much as it is a company interviewing you. Many of these questions I got from various tweets, LinkedIn posts, or articles from the interwebs. Some of these may not be phrased to directly pose the question to your interviewer, but can also be points that you gather through the experience and research of the company and the team you would work with. These are once again directly copied from my Notes app 😬.
Where do you see the organization going? Technology? Growth?
How will I be measured? How can I assure my success?
How is manager when it comes to feedback? Do you give regular feedback?
What level of management experience does the manager have?
Remote work?
Community involvement — speaking engagements
Time off?
Compensation — salary, relocation, time off
How many employees, revenue, growth plans, funding
How is your project manager / scrum master?
Project management methodology / software
Mac versus PC (PC meaning no-go 😇)
Things I accidentally did right
Making a job search successful often happens way before one starts looking. Here are some things I inadvertently did right before I was even thinking about getting another job. Most of these observations are anecdotal, but I feel contributed to the success in finding my current role. Your mileage may vary!
My network
Okay, this sounds like some boilerplate job searching advice: “build your network!”, “its all about who you know!”. But really, it is. And this wasn’t really something I actively built up because I knew it would help my career, it just came organically from current and former co-workers, attending meetups and conferences, and doing things online.
I was super fortunate to start my career at a high-growth startup and work with some brilliant and amazing people who became close friends. Some of these people went on to work at companies like Twitter, Airbnb, and Facebook. It’s not all about “big tech” companies but it is nice to name drop sometimes 😬. In fact, I applied to several of them and was rejected by all of them (Twitter, Spotify, Facebook, Apple, Tesla — but who’s counting?). Anyway, back to the point. Though these friends are not data scientists, I can still relate to their experiences in the software industry and bounce ideas of them. I was even able to get referrals for roles at Twitter and Spotify (shoutout to my guy Regy Augustin).
The aspect of my network that was most instrumental for finding my current job was the meetup scene. Fortunately, a few data science and machine learning meetup groups popped up in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area over the last few years. Miami is nothing like bigger tech hubs such as San Francisco, New York, Austin, etc., but it was great to participate in these communities. It can be pretty tiring going to events after a full day of work (especially when you have to drive from Boca to Miami during rush hour), but I always pushed myself to go because I wanted to meet people and learn things. Many (most) of the times I felt like it was a complete waste of time — the talk wasn’t good, conversations were awkward, wasted gas, etc. But I’m a big fan of this idea:
I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances — Brian Tracy
(disclaimer: I have no idea who Brian Tracy is and do not endorse him or his work. I just like the quote.)
You don’t get a “life-changing” encounter at every meetup. Sometimes you don’t even get a marginally meaningful connection. But sometimes you do. And to me, that’s worth trying all the other times.
60% of the time, it works every time — from “Anchorman” movie
(I also do not endorse the product that was being pitched during this scene of the movie)
I probably had a way easier time getting into speaking at meetups because the communities were still burgeoning. I gave my first meetup talk at the Ft. Lauderdale Machine Learning group in 2015 when I was a second-year PhD student. I remember being terrified because the group was super knowledgeable about deep learning, which I knew nothing about at the time. A big break for me was when the Miami Machine Learning group started, and I gave my first talk there in 2018. At the end of a meetup, one of the organizers just said “Does anyone have something they can present at a future meeting?”, and I volunteered. That was it! Eventually that lead to me speaking at several meetups and then taking on an organizer role. Big shoutout to Alex Rubinsteyn who started the group even as a part-time Miamian. Working in New York City, he saw the value that meetup groups provided to the data science community and wanted to bring that to Miami too.
Alex also brought the idea of becoming a PyData chapter and hosting the first PyData Miami conference in 2019. With the work of Alex, myself, and many other organizers, we were able to bring a great event to Miami and plan to have many more in the future. I was even given an intro to a startup through a couple degrees of connections starting from a random Slack message with another organizer from PyData (thanks Ben Suutari!). Saturn Cloud, the company I now work for, was actually sponsor of the PyData Miami 2020 conference (that was eventually cancelled because of you-know-what). I didn’t even put two and two together until I was halfway through the interview process — it turns out I already had several emails with my interviewers months before I applied 😅.
Public-facing work
This is a big one, and something many people give as advice for data scientists looking for a job. Saying you know a tool or algorithm on your resume doesn’t give the recruiter any context or depth around your knowledge of the technology. GitHub repos, blog posts, and talk recordings give recruiters a chance to see what you really know. This can be challenging sometimes when doing data science work at a company, because you are not able to make your code or data public for others to see.
Fortunately for me, I was able to give a talk at the Spark+AI Summit in 2018 related to my work at Modmed (of course after going through several reviews by the legal and marketing teams). I also gave numerous talks at conferences, meetups, and miscellaneous events that were related to my PhD research and other side projects. I always made sure to record the talk and post it on YouTube, even if it was just a screencast from my laptop.
Though I hadn’t contributed to an open source project before this job search, I did have a public GitHub repo with code that I wrote to conduct machine learning experiments for my PhD research. I actually ended up doing a presentation about this framework during my interview process for Saturn.
Doing lots of different things
I had a few very different companies tell me that I would be a perfect fit for a role, and I think this is because of the variety of work I’ve done and published throughout my career. I found myself covering work across both the data engineering and data science worlds, and my PhD research allowed me to dive deep into machine learning theory. At the very least, being interested in different topics and reading up on them gives you a starting point for conversations. Sometimes you just need one hook to get an “in” with your interviewer!
Well designed portfolio
I don’t have any quantitative measure of how effective my portfolio site was, or if recruiters even looked at it. But I believe that a well-designed and eye-catching portfolio is something that sets data scientists apart from the pack or at least makes your application more memorable for a recruiter. I don’t take any credit for the UI design (thank you Camila O.H.), I just put all the <div> tags in the right place.
If anything, the site served as a way for me to brush up on my HTML/CSS/Javascript skills (mostly reminding me why I chose data science, no offense to web developers 😅). But it also helped me review the work I had done so far in my career, keeping everything fresh in my mind when it came time for interviews.
COVID-19
This is certainly nothing I did, but I do have some observations about how COVID-19 lockdowns and remote work affected by job hunt. This was (and is) a terribly difficult time for many people, and I am extremely fortunate to be in an industry that was still hiring during those uncertain times. Working remotely came to my advantage when scheduling interviews as I didn’t have to figure out a way to sneak out of the office to answer a call, or take a random day off to travel to an onsite interview. Being stuck in my aparment on evenings and weekends also helped me reflect more on what I wanted in the next job and spend time curating my resume and portfolio.
What I learned
The job search was definitely an enlightening experience for me. I did not anticipate the mental and emotional toll it takes on you, from pulling late nights filling out applications, to being crushed when your “dream job” rejects you, to having to be in top-shape for a demanding technical screening — all while still maintaining the responsibilities of your current job and everyday life!
Whiteboard coding interviews are dumb
Warning, I’m about to rant. TL;DR: whiteboarding is dumb; take-home projects are the move.
This could be a whole blog post in and of itself. I only went through a couple FAANG-style coding interviews (actually it was just F) and they were miserable. I went through the software engineer and data science interview process for Facebook, and while they were a bit different, I froze up during both of them. Looking back, I know that I am fully capable of answering those questions, but the environment wasn’t really conducive to thinking clearly.
I’ll admit I probably didn’t prepare nearly as much as other candidates, but this was because I feel like I shouldn’t need to do that. Why should I spend months reviewing CS course material I learned years ago that doesn’t even get used in the job? Why do I need to go through a dehumanizing live-coding experience? None of these processes reflect what happens in day-to-day work. Perhaps they are merely to ensure that candidates have already “drunk the Kool-aid” before applying.
For counter-examples, I had take-home coding tests from several smaller companies. They were all well-defined problems, and I had time to think about them and work on them in the same manner I would on the job. They also served as examples of what my work on the job might be like — I ended up withdrawing a couple of applications before completing the test partly because I was not interested in the work!
Having an offer expedites you through the pipeline
This was no means planned, but when I was expecting an offer from Saturn Cloud I was in the middle of the interview pipeline with a few companies. I wanted to make sure that I got the chance to evaluate those positions so I told the companies that I had an outstanding offer, and that really sped things up. With one company I had an initial phone screen with a recruiter, mentioned that I was interested in the job but had an offer coming, and they scheduled an interview with the Director of Data Science on the same day!
Interview pipeline speed gets good candidates
This is reflection more for a company hiring than for someone looking for a job. Many of the rejections I received came after I had already begun or completed interview processes with other companies. I specifically recall one of my interviewers at Saturn Cloud telling me that their goal was to move quickly through the interview process, and for it to not take more than 6 hours of my time total. I really appreciated this and it spoke well of the company — that they thought through the interview process and respected my time even before I was an employee there.
That’s a wrap!
For anyone that made it this far — thanks for reading! I hope this story was interesting and helpful for anyone looking to level-up their data science job.
Feel free to contact me on Twitter @rikturr to keep the conversation going! | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-i-landed-my-senior-data-scientist-job-aa02f8a456b8 | ['Aaron Richter'] | 2020-12-11 00:26:10.822000+00:00 | ['Recruiting', 'Machine Learning', 'Job Interview', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization'] |
How To Make Your Blog Posts Not Boring — Strategic Content Marketing | There’s no shortage of crappy content out there.
The internet is jam-packed with blog posts on every topic you can think of from time management tips and parenting advice, to the more unusual topics like 10 household items you can use as a sex toy.
Yup! That’s a real thing. I just found it on my hunt for “weird and wacky blog posts”. Honest.
There’s a lot of competition online.
But most of the content out there is just bloody boring.
I can’t even count the hours I’ve spent skim-scrolling through blog posts that promised something great but delivered nothing more than the same re-hashed info in a dull, ‘poke-me-in-the-eye-boring’ way.
This is great news!
It means people are desperate to read something that’s exciting, interesting and actually gives some fresh, valuable content.
Enter… you.
I know you already know the benefits of blogging.
You already know that posting regular blog content will increase your search ranking on Google, increase your social media engagement, build a better relationship with your customers, position you as an expert and help you make more sales. AKA make you more money.
But how do you make sure your blog content isn’t just as bland as the rest?
That’s easy.
1: Pick Topics That Are Actually Worth Reading About
I’ll hold my hands up here and say this is something I’ve fallen foul of myself in the past too. I’m a pretty skilled writer (and modest too). So I can quite literally make a blog post out of anything.
But just because you can write about something, doesn’t mean you should.
In my Content Writing Crash course, one of the exercises I give my students is to write a blog post about the last time they went to a cafe for a coffee. Boring as hell right?
The idea is to push them to look at things from different angles, learn how to deliver key messages through storytelling and develop their ability to make even the most mundane of stories interesting.
It’s a great exercise and some of them produce some good posts. But just because we can make a blog post out of a trip to a coffee shop, doesn’t mean we should.
Before you write your next blog post, ask yourself if it meets the ‘RIOT’ criteria.
R- Relevant: Is this topic useful to your target market? Is it relevant to them and the problems they’re currently facing?
I- Impactful: Will this topic make an impact on your reader? Will it give them something of value in exchange for their time reading?
O- Overdone: Is this topic interesting and can you write it with a fresh new perspective, not just a re-hash of what’s out there already?
T — Talkaboutable: Is this topic worth sharing? Is it something people will tell their friends about or share on their social media?
If your topic hits the ‘RIOT’ criteria then you’re onto a winner.
2: Be Yourself
Don’t worry, I’m not going all ‘heart-centred’ on you.
I’m not going to start preaching about how you need to find your third eye and operate your business from your root chakra. I seriously hate all that. My hippy traits are confined to my medicine cupboard. And maybe my yoga practice. And tattoos.
Business I prefer to do a little more directly.
When I say be yourself, I mean be real.
Use the language you’d use in conversation, say the things you’d say in real life and allow your personality to come through in your writing.
People like to get to know people.
If you share your story while educating, entertaining and solving your reader’s problems then they’ll get to know you, like you and trust you.
Take this post as an example. This is a post teaching you how to write interesting content. But you’ve also learnt lots about me.
You know that I hate the hippy-fluffy approach that lots of women take towards business. You know that I like natural medicines, that I practice yoga and that I have tattoos that you’ll (most likely) never see.
You’re probably also starting to realise that I’m pretty direct and I like to push the boundaries of what’s acceptable to mention in a business-related post — like DIY sex toys.
But it’s all real. It’s all me. I am that blunt in real life. I do have a dry, witty sense of humour and I’m more than happy to crack a few inappropriate jokes if it breaks the ice.
If you meet me in real life after reading my blog posts you’ll already feel like you know me. Like like we already have a relationship.
That’s how you get results from your content and keep your reader’s reading…
But how do you do that?
How do you stop the ‘professional’ writing robot taking over and word-vomiting boring content that’s devoid of any of your actual personality all over your page?
Partly, it’s practice. But mostly it’s having a clear understanding of who you, your company and your customers are, and what you stand for.
It’s by understanding your story strategy.
If you’ve not got your story strategy figured out just yet, I can help. But in the meantime, you can de-robot your writing by recording yourself reading it out loud. Listen to it, and if it doesn’t sound like you in normal conversation then go back and edit until it does.
3: Tell Stories
Last week my 15-year-old and I had a little chat. Now, he’s way better behaved than I was at his age. He doesn’t drink or smoke or hang out on the streets. He has nice friends and nice hobbies. He’s just a great kid.
But he’s headstrong and won’t be told what to do. (I have no idea where he gets that from…)
Now, we all want to protect our kids and keep them safe. But teenagers (even the good ones) like to rebel. It’s kind of their thing.
I know that telling a teenager not to do something is more like an invitation for them to try rather than an effective warning not to do it.
So I came up with a way to tell him not to do stupid things, without directly telling him not to do stupid things.
I tell him stories.
I like to think of it as undercover parenting. Teaching him important things without him knowing it’s happening… I hope he never reads this post or my cover will be blown!
I tell him stories about other people who have done stupid things and the consequences that they’ve had to deal with as a result.
Like when I was a teenager and got into a car with two lads that I’d never met before. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But when they drove me back to their house, started watching porn, drinking beer and snorting cocaine before driving me back home I realised what a terrible plan it had been. Now, as an adult, I can see just how lucky I was. That situation could have been so much worse!
So I don’t tell my boy not to get in stranger’s cars.
Instead, I tell him this tale and we laugh together at my stupidity, discuss all the ways it could have gone terribly wrong and our conversations end with me saying “You’d never do something as stupid as that would you?” and him looking at me with that look of parental disappointment and disgust that only a teenager can muster and replying “Don’t be ridiculous”.
It’s the perfect example of the power of stories.
Stories are one of the most powerful tools in marketing. As you’ve seen here, stories can be used to deliver messages that may otherwise be resisted.
They can subtly educate, inspire and overcome objections… All without the reader even knowing it’s happening.
And they can make even the most boring of topics interesting and engaging.
Look at this example here — I’ve just told you a story about how I use stories to teach my son not to do stupid shit, whilst also teaching you how to use stories to make your topics interesting.
I could have just said “Tell stories. People like to read them more than they like to read boring stuff” but that wouldn’t have been quite as interesting now would it?
So there you have it.
Three ways to make sure your blog posts are not as boring as the rest.
If you’ve found this blog post useful then share your comments with me and the link with your friends 🙂 | https://medium.com/@lucinda-dawes/how-to-make-your-blog-posts-not-boring-strategic-content-marketing-cfb3048fe9c1 | ['Lucinda Dawes'] | 2021-03-15 17:35:20.965000+00:00 | ['Blogging Tips', 'Blog Writing', 'Content Marketing', 'Blogging For Business', 'Content Writing'] |
The Cypher-Citizens Passport is a Node. | With the crypto-market deflating, it is a good time to connect with the original principal of blockchain: Privacy (via a node). Become an active participant in decentralization via your own node, easily deployed on Blockdaemon.
Building tech architecture to run multiple node deployments for multiple protocols (Fabric, Quorum, Ethereum, Stellar, Bitcoin, Gcoin etc.) and infrastructures (heck, all of them), is an eye-opening learning experience in the long list of “how bad all this blockchain tech currently is”. Compared to the cloud ecosystem, developers have few to no tools, but an array of choice between ideologically defended open-source protocols with rudiments of functional consensus protocols and unique configuration needs.
It is obvious that technical debt will have a new meaning for blockchain for business because engaging with projects and protocols when you don’t know which one will be around in a few years is insanely complex and inefficient. One of our new partner ecosystems — Aion — has some interesting interoperability solutions, in case you are curious about this particular issue (connect to their network via Blockdaemon soon).
Since we started the “Heroku for Blockchain” journey a year ago, most major participants have woken up to the potential of 2nd layer solutions and configuration tooling that works across multiple protocols and clouds. Heck, even Heroku wants to be the Heroku for blockchain.
Make sense, the traditional distributed cloud technology players — Engine Yard, Heroku, rackspace, DigitalOcean and Mirantis etc. — offer plenty of solutions that can be ported onto the blockchain ecosystem. We have made it our mantra to use what is there smartly, rather than developing something completely new from scratch. We need to deploy capital efficiently in order to survive the proliferation of solutions, on top of a costly infrastructure providers wanting to make “$s” selling mispriced data-plans for nodes experiencing enormous data-fluctuation. Down the line, data-arbitrage and tokenization to handle cross-networks will break up these data-cartels, but until then we have a fight to fight.
It requires a new concept, away from the traditional economic value added model (i.e. shareholder value), because capital cost will become lower over time and tokenized in all digital networks. Consensus and user participation will yield much more economic value — i.e. rewarding participants for their degree of participation and unbacked trust they bring to the system.
Questions about Decentralization
For Blockdaemon, that translates into lowering the currently very substantial cost of networks and to bring the best of breed of cloud computation orchestrators, large-file p2p distribution and continuous deployment processes to blockchain. Top functionality for enterprises. But it only matters if it can be built on top of blockchain, not just distributed ledger technology. What does that mean? What does decentralization mean? A question we have spent and are spending a lot of time on.
A popular solution set is to build non-blockchains under the blockchain flag (I am looking at you, Ripple or even EOS (which has potential)). That is fine for many blockchain business use cases, and the degree of decentralization needed may differ for permissioned chains. That said, larger public networks are nearly inoperable and far away from being business-ready. Ethereum is the latest chain getting a ton of stick around size, sync and throughput (Bitcoin has its own challenges, so sadly no time to gloat for this Bitcoin Maximalist (Index working sets are becoming too large)).
There are decent answers out there for that problem also — it isn’t so much an intellectual challenge (dozens of 2-Layer solutions, from sharding to lightning to infura etc.), it is an implementation challenge. Off-chain blends with Rest-APIs set on parallel infrastructures to blockchains, that periodically get anchored into blockchains. It gets talked about well in this CoinDesk article. We will offer our own version of this to our business partners.
What are blockchains really about?
While all this infrastructure/layer 2 talk is vital, it is important to not forget what the real use-case for blockchain is, so enterprises don’t get solely focussed on efficiencies. There are use-cases out there beyond chasing a tomato from a to b — the original Cypherpunk Manifesto, the problem set that blockchain was developed to solve was privacy (great piece by CoinDesk here):
“Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn’t want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn’t want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.”
It starts here — Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world. This lies at the source of what blockchain can do — they can unshackle the capital constraints interwoven with our digital identities (currently we need to give up some of ourselves in order to feed the engine), by pushing rewards back on the actual consumer. It is a principal shift in how value is generated and it changes capital models substantially. When thinking about blockchain for business, the question is how do we enhance business processes with gradient increases of anonymized data sets that are for free, yet very valuable. It pushes innovation outward (away from the middlemen) to the “real-mensch” who is supposed to be the user of a service.
While the true degree of disruption is yet to be revealed, we call can agree on one simple fact: It all comes back to Nodes. The only perfect way to protect your data and to participate is by running your own node. It empowers you. It gives you a voice in the consensus mechanism (well, not always, but sometimes). It secures you a copy of all transactions. As an individual who is passionate about bitcoin (check out this amazing talk by Saifedean Ammous in case you need a reminder about how powerful this all is), I urge everyone who can to run a Bitcoin node. It makes you a first generation Cypher-Citizen.
That is why we built out our simple public node deployment tool for Bitcoin and Ethereum across any (well, most) infrastructure — we have been up and running with it for a few months, and learned a ton. Initially we throttled the intake. Now I am happy to announce that we are unleashing the Kraken — Nodes, Nodes, NODES!
We also make the first few months for free — other folks run their simple templates for free to upsell you, we throw up a real node (and that can cost money). Go get them as long as the cloud credits last.
Finally, in case you missed this, we joined Hyperledger to help folks with their fabric deployments. If you are running a consortia or a network using fabric and need help easily connecting other partners/nodes, ping us (the Drift window on our website is a good way to get in touch). Get deploying! | https://medium.com/blockdaemon/the-cypher-citizens-passport-is-a-node-4c2ae036e9a9 | ['Konstantin Richter'] | 2018-06-14 20:46:14.137000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Node', 'Blockdaemon Editorial', 'Heroku', 'Bitcoin'] |
Beaten and Broken — Part 1. How I was forced to witness torture | Five small children appeared and chucked buckets of water in front of our vehicle.
“Why the hell are they doing that?” I asked my girlfriend, Jen. She didn’t answer, just stared out the window at nothingness. And it really was nothingness. There wasn’t a house or a paved road anywhere for miles, only the unmarked, barely visible dirt road we were on and the color beige everywhere else. I looked at the five Nicaraguan men sitting with us in the “collectivo” van. Seeing as my Spanish was virtually non-existent, I assumed I wouldn’t get an answer to my query anytime soon.
Semi-trailers roared by. Eventually, I noticed that a truck driver would stop to give the kids some coins. I realized that it was a vain effort to dominate the dust brewed up from the vehicles’ tires. Sometimes our own driver would slow down and give the children a few cordobas — the Nicaraguan currency. More often he gave them nothing.
I wondered how far those kids had to walk to get their water.. I sympathized with them but also caught myself thinking that their efforts were in vain and therefore probably undeserving of any real reward. My own thoughts surprised and frightened me. My unlucky and unfortunate experiences in Central America were making me bitter.
I tried to stop being a judgy First-Worlder and enjoy the scenery. Nicaragua’s beauty was undeniable. I stared off at the great deserted plain that led to three volcanoes at the horizon. I snapped a few quick pictures of the volcanoes and quickly pocketed my camera.
The van bounced violently as it hit potholes in the dirt road. Our feet were on top of our bags — I had insisted on bringing them in with us instead of storing them in the back, as a security measure — which forced us to sit slightly higher than everyone else in the van. Our heads struck the ceiling at every pothole. “This is first-class stuff,” I whispered to Jen. With her eyes half-closed, she nodded.
After about ten minutes, the dirt road ended and the collectivo turned into what was quite obviously a city. The metamorphosis from desolate plain to urban city was immediate and astonishing. We drove through shanty-towns and embassy districts until we arrived at our destination: the taxi depot. Little did I know, I would learn to recognize the embassy district all too well.
I paid the driver of the van 50 cordobas — about $1.40 American — and shook my head vigorously at the man offering to take our bags out for us. I took our bags out myself. The taxi depot was not impressive — a flat piece of asphalt with about fifty cars and vans and just as many drivers shouting out their destinations. We were immediately hounded by a swarm of taxi drivers asking us in accented English where we needed to go.
“We’re still figuring it out,” I said. “Please leave us alone.” They reluctantly backed off and solicited other potential passengers.
“So this is Managua so far,” I said. “I’m sure it will be better than Tegucigalpa, at least.” I wasn’t worried. I had high hopes for Nicaragua. I was in denial about going through a sort of “grass is greener on the other side” syndrome.
Jen and I took out our Lonely Planet map of Managua. Our hostel looked to be about five miles away.
“Want to just walk some of it?” I asked Jen. “I sort of want to stretch my legs and see what Managua has to offer before we put our bags away and relax.”
“Sure,” she said.
We were both sick of being stuck in so many chicken buses and vans, and walking for a little while would be a breath of fresh air. I only knew that the hostel was north, in the direction of the lake, but I didn’t know how to say the word north in Spanish. I stopped people on the street and asked, “Donde está el Lago de Managua?”[Where is Managua Lake?] I received several puzzled looks, and some people looked concerned and asked us why on earth we would want to go there. “The hostel,” I would say, shrugging. We had a rough idea of how to get to our hostel, so we headed north.
After a few minutes, I noticed that the neighborhood seemed to be getting grittier. Razor-wire enveloped school buildings, the side streets were glorified alleys, and many of the houses were made of cardboard and sheet metal. I was used to seeing this type of neighborhood in Central America and I was fairly desensitized to it, so I was still not particularly worried.
I took a look at Jen. She looked tired. “Want me to hold your handbag?” I asked her. “Aww,” she said, swooning. “What a gentleman!” I took her handbag and grinned from ear to ear. I thought it was going to be a pretty good day, despite the heat.
There was some traffic on the street but barely any pedestrians outside. The only other people were ahead of us, two men walking in the same direction we were walking in. One of them was tall, a giant by Central American standards; the other man was short and squat. The tall man wore a white shirt with black shoes and the short man wore a black shirt showcasing Taz from Looney Tunes and wore white shoes — I laughed out loud at how ridiculous they looked next to each other. The tall one looked at us and did a double-take, but I thought nothing of it. They turned left at the next corner and disappeared.
Jen turned to me. “Want to take a taxi?”
“No, it’s okay,” I replied. “Not right now. Maybe in five or ten minutes. I’m not in any hurry.” I smiled, looking at the horizon towards the lake. | https://byrslf.co/beaten-and-broken-part-1-7fec53e69bd9 | ['Mark Farnsworth'] | 2021-09-12 15:31:49.653000+00:00 | ['Nicaragua', 'Police Brutality', 'Beyourself', 'Travel', 'Torture'] |
The Case Against The Filibuster | By Evelyn Li
The United States government is predicated on a system of checks and balances. But one such check appears nowhere in the Constitution and is the biggest hindrance to a productive federal government.
The filibuster is a procedural rule in the Senate that allows senators to delay or prevent voting on a piece of legislation, traditionally through a prolonged speech that extends the debate until the filibustering Senator yields the floor — which never actually happens without the vote of a supermajority of other Senators. Senators in opposition to a bill are motivated to filibuster when they know a majority intends to pass it into law. Though the specific mechanisms of the filibuster have changed greatly over time, the filibuster has retained its core anti-democratic function: to empower a deep minority in the Senate to slow down, and even stop, movement on legislation.
At the start of the republic, there was no filibuster. But in 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr gave a farewell address in which he exalted the Senate, though he recommended the body streamline its rules. Burr advocated the elimination of the “motion to move to the previous question” procedure, which allowed any senator to propose an end to debate and call senators to a vote. In 1806, the Senate followed his advice and eliminated the only way to prevent a senator from continuing debate.
It took senators decades to realize that unlimited discourse was now permitted. The first official filibuster did not occur until 1841, and it was over the largely trivial matter of hiring different Senate printers. For the rest of the 19th Century, there was technically no formal way for the Senate to end a debate without a speaking Senator voluntarily yielding the floor. So even one single Senator could, in theory, grind an entire branch of government to a halt.
Despite its power, the filibuster was little-noticed for a century, until it nearly caused a crisis. In 1917, ahead of World War I, eleven senators filibustered a bill approving President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to arm American merchant vessels for twenty-three days. An increasingly-desperate Wilson called a special session of the Senate during which senators, at the president’s urging, wrote a cloture rule allowing debate to be stopped by two-thirds of the senators in attendance voting to end debate.
Still, for the most part, the filibuster was very rarely used. But then segregationists began employing it against civil rights legislation. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond holds the record for the longest filibuster; he spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in an unsuccessful attempt to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
In 1975, Senators Walter Mondale and James Pearson advocated to lower the percentage of Senators needed to shut down a filibuster from two-thirds to three-fifths. This threshold applies to the entire chamber, not just those present and voting. The proposal was adopted and is what is in place today: 60 senators have to agree to end debate and call for a vote.
Modern-day filibusters no longer require long, showy speeches. Multiple bills can remain pending on the Senate floor at a time, so someone merely needs to indicate their intention to filibuster and unless the majority can whip 60 votes to end debate, Senate leadership will merely move on to another topic.
The underlying mechanisms of the filibuster are worth repeating: Senators wishing to impede the passage of a certain piece of legislation do not need to convince 51 of their colleagues (a simple majority) to vote against it.They simply need to coordinate 41 senators to prevent a vote from ever taking place.
Effectively, every piece of legislation that passes in the Senate can only do so with supermajority approval.
A supermajority requirement to pass legislation in any legislative body is undemocratic. But a supermajority requirement in the United States Senate can be particularly undemocratic. With each state, regardless of population, having two senators, some senators represent hundreds of thousands of voters while others represent millions. The skew is so pronounced that it is possible for 41 senators, elected by 18 percent of the population, to invoke a filibuster, overriding the will of 59 senators elected by the other 82 percent.
The frequency of filibusters has increased astronomically. Between 1917 and 1970, Senate records show 60 cloture votes to break a filibuster. Between 2009 and 2015 alone, there were more than 500 cloture votes. And these votes have had major consequences.
In 2009, for example, Senate Democrats were in the midst of writing and whipping votes for the Patient and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). The party held a supermajority of seats: 59 seats. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an Independent who caucused with the Democrats, effectively served as the 60th Democrat. Lieberman, however, strongly objected to any version of the healthcare bill that included a public option and threatened to join Republicans in filibustering such a bill: “I can’t see a way in which I can vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of government-operated and run insurance company,” he said. Needing his crucial vote to prevent a filibuster, the Democrats submitted a compromised bill. One person, representing a state of 3 million people, held hostage 59 other senators and ultimately decided the current state of healthcare in this country.
The filibuster continued to define the Obama presidency. Soon after voting on healthcare, the Senate had to scale down energy reform meant to mitigate climate change because leadership couldn’t break the filibuster. Cap-and-trade, originally on the agenda, was deemed too ambitious. Then majority-leader Harry Reid said, “It’s easy to count to 60. I could do it by the time I was in the eighth grade. My point is this, we know where we are. We know we don’t have the votes [for a bill capping emissions].”
One of the most infamous filibusters took place in 2013. In the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Senators Joe Manchin, a Democrat of West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, a Republican of Pennsylvania, co-sponsored a “common sense” universal background check gun control measure. This bipartisan effort fell six votes short of the 60 needed for cloture. It would have passed 54 to 46 if not for the filibuster. According to a Pew Research Center poll from the same year, such background checks had the support of 73% of Americans.
The Framers intended the House majority, the Senate majority, and the President to serve as the veto points in our legislative process. These three should be enough to check and disperse power. By a historical quirk, the filibuster gave another veto to a group as small as 41 senators. And we suffer the consequences: popular ideas are blocked at every turn. The government consistently fails to enact the will of the people.
Some defend the filibuster as a bulwark against the “tyranny of the majority”, a way to ensure change happens slowly and deliberately. But the filibuster is not saving us from “the tyranny of the majority.” The protection of minority opinions is already embedded in the design of the Senate, with smaller states having as much power as bigger states. Instead, the filibuster transforms the Senate from a body in which minorities have rights to a minority-rule system unable to accomplish anything.
Not only is the filibuster inherently undemocratic, it also prevents other aspects of democracy from being improved upon. Last year, the House passed H.R.1, the For The People Act, an omnibus bill to address big money special interests, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and more. HR 1 has no chance to become law as long as the filibuster exists. Mitch McConnell has publicly stated as much. But with the filibuster out of the way, a pro-democracy Senate could finally pass these fundamental reforms next year.
The best reform would be to get rid of the filibuster completely. However, many people, including sitting Senators, are unwilling to go that far. Fortunately, there are other intermediate reforms that could greatly improve the process. Building on Mondale and Pearson’s successful resolution, the votes needed for cloture could be lowered again — to 55, for example.
Alternatively, the filibuster could be eliminated for certain situations (though this would be a weak reform). In 2017, Mitch McConnell rewrote the Senate rules to prevent Democrats from filibustering the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. This came after Harry Reid made a similar move in 2013. Both set a precedent for expanding the kinds of decisions that can be fast-tracked and protected from a filibuster.
Lastly, to keep the tradition of the filibuster alive, the Senate could merely bring back the talking filibuster, in which a Senator has to be speaking on the floor of the Senate to continue a filibuster. This way, legislation will likely only be delayed instead of obstructed entirely, and the culture of valuing all opinions on which the Senate prides itself can be upheld.
Any of these changes would be preferable to the status quo: a Senate rendered weak and ineffective.
Evelyn Li is an Equal Citizens Fellow and incoming student at the University of Chicago. | https://medium.com/equal-citizens/the-case-against-the-filibuster-a61016330ac6 | [] | 2020-07-31 14:28:27.301000+00:00 | ['Us Senate', 'Filibusters', 'US Politics', 'Politics', 'Democracy'] |
There Is No Justice for the Dead | A photo of George Floyd and his daughter Gianna juxtaposed with his murderer’s mugshots
By the time this article is published most people will have heard that the killer (former) cop Derek Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Chauvin may receive a sentence of up to 75 years and George Floyd will remain dead. I must assert that the incarceration of a single agent of the violent state is not what justice looks like; justice looks like the targets of said state, such as Floyd, being alive, well, and unworried about their impending demise at the hand of the state. We cannot achieve justice for George Floyd so long as it is not a possibility to bring him back to life, nor may we achieve justice for Anthony Cano, a boy who was murdered by a Chandler PD officer during a ride-along with his own father, nor for Dion Johnson, a young man murdered by DPS in Phoenix, nor for Aiyana Jones, a 7-year-old girl murdered by SWAT pigs in Detroit, nor for Ma’Khia Bryant, the 16-year-old girl who was killed by police in Columbus on the same day Derek Chauvin was found guilty. There is simply no such thing as justice for a dead man.
Candle-light vigil for James Garcia who was killed by Phoenix police while parked in his own driveway held at the very same driveway. (2020)
There has been a lot of talk about accountability within the realm of politics since the murder of George Floyd. Things are being said, especially by the liberal portion of Americans, such as “Police need to be held accountable for their misconduct,” and, “We’ll vote Biden into office and hold him accountable if he does something wrong.” After the entire existence of this sick system which purveys countless inhuman deeds with impunity one would think the masses would realize that we simply lack the power to hold this system accountable to any of its actions, not just because many of us don’t seem to agree on the meaning of accountability, but because the system itself is not accountable to us. To quote writer, Rubén Angel, on the meaning of the word, “Accountability relates to community restoration and justice achieved through mutual agreements and commitments to growth. One cannot hold murderous systems of oppression ‘accountable.’ We can only abolish them.” There is no way for the violent penal system to restore a life that has been taken, there have been no mutual agreements between the people and the state and there have been no signs that the very system of violence that took the life of George Floyd, as well as countless others, will seize to continue doing so. In fact, since the trial of Derek Chauvin began, police have killed 64 people, averaging 3 per day, including a 13-year-old boy in Chicago named Adam Toledo. To further demonstrate how police are not accountable to anyone let’s take a look at some data. Between the years 2005 and 2019 only 104 “nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers with the general powers of arrest… have been arrested for murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting where the officer shot and killed someone at incidents throughout the United States. Of those 104 officers, to date only 35 have been convicted of a crime resulting from the on-duty shooting (15 by guilty plea, 20 by jury trial, and none convicted by a bench trial).” Of the 35 cops who have been convicted of a crime, only 4 were convicted of murder. In a country where over 1000 people were killed by police in 2019 alone, only 4 were convicted of murder in this 14 year stretch of time between ’05 and ’19. Let that fact sink in; thousands upon thousands of people killed by police year after year and the killers that are legally recognized as murderers are a single digit. And we’re supposed to see it as progress that that single digit just rose by 1? Won’t be me. It should be becoming more clear by the passing of each day that justice and accountability cannot be brought to the past or present in regards to police violence; it can only exist in the future and the only way to ensure that a violent system seizes to commit acts of injustice is to put a permanent end to the system altogether. This is what Angel means when he writes “We can only abolish them.”
March for Breonna Taylor and Dion Johnson led by BLM Phoenix-Metro (2020)
But abolition, in regards to prisons and policing, is much more complicated than simply being rid of a system. Even more important to the process of abolition than a violent institution’s disillusionment is the elimination of the conditions that produce such an institution in the first place. These institutions exist not as a preventative measure but as a response to crime. Really think about what that means; police and prisons do not prevent crime but merely respond to them. If a person is calling the police it is more than likely that a crime has already been committed and prison, obviously, comes long after a crime has been committed. There is no strong evidence to suggest that intensifying this system causes crime to decline. No conclusion has even been able to be drawn about the only significant drop in crime in U.S. history which occurred during the 90’s. While the so-called justice system focuses on punishing the population for committing crimes, abolitionists seek to eliminate the material conditions that produce crime. An example of such conditions is the rampant poverty and lack of dignified work that drives people to participate in the drug trade. The drug trade exists as both a crime and a condition of its own which produces more conditions such as addiction which one may be driven to commit more crimes to keep up with; crimes which may produce more conditions and more crimes and so on and so forth. Various chains of conditions such as this can all be traced to larger conditions like poverty and inequality which prisons and policing only intensify while abolitionists seek to eliminate these conditions as well as the crimes they produce. In summation, it is not possible to achieve justice for those whose lives have been damaged and taken by the american system of policing and the path to achieving justice for the would-be George Floyds of the future is much bigger than the prosecution of individual killer-cops; we cannot rely on the brutal system to keep itself in check anyway. Such justice can only be secured by a complete reimagining of society that does not include police and prisons. | https://medium.com/@dryback/there-is-no-justice-for-the-dead-7c8e80783c46 | ['Jacob Gutierrez'] | 2021-06-24 19:45:19.047000+00:00 | ['Derek Chauvin', 'George Floyd', 'Abolition', 'Police', 'Politics'] |
Most Underrated Non Chinese smartphone :2020, Influenced by users if above both product would have been available across the global market definitely gives good competition and users might have been… | Most Underrated Non Chinese smartphone :2020, Influenced by users
if above both product would have been available across the global market definitely gives good competition and users might have been increased.
https://www.techieness.org/post/most-underrated-non-chinese-smartphone-2020-influenced-by-users | https://medium.com/@techienesshub/most-underrated-non-chinese-smartphone-2020-influenced-by-users-if-above-both-product-would-have-a65a39998df | [] | 2020-12-18 17:53:35.099000+00:00 | ['Underrated', 'LG', 'Smartphone Addiction', 'Smartphones', 'Sony Xperia'] |
Deep Learning methods for checkboxes detection and classification | In Machine Learning -and that is probably what makes it so interesting- there are often several ways to tackle the same problem. Depending on how we choose to model the task, each step will be impacted. How are we going to obtain the data and which degree of labeling do we need? Which kind of ML algorithm will be better suited, and which loss and metrics will be computed to train the model efficiently? All the approaches will not necessarily lead to the same results, and we usually look for the best trade-off between :
The performance (how good is the model?)
is the model?) The inference time (how fast is the model?)
is the model?) The scalability and simplicity of the approach (how light and maintainable is the approach when we will need to adapt it, retrain it, or explain it to our customers)
For instance, stacking 50 models in order to gain a little accuracy boost does not usually make much sense in a production context, as maintainability, infrastructure costs and inference time would be severely impacted. On the other hand, in a Kaggle competition this is the absolute opposite, as sometimes a few thousandths or even ten-thousandths of unit metric can lead to important gaps in the leaderboard.
While designing our CheckBoxesAnalyzer for insurance documents, we went for a first approach that turned out to be not so convenient in the long run. We will present this solution to you (here in the case of accident reports), and explain why it was finally a bad idea and how we built a much more efficient architecture afterwards. Because eh, part of the Data scientist’s job consists in making mistakes, being wrong and learning from it, right?
An example of the checkboxes section we want to analyze. The model has to predict a state for each one of the checkboxes : is it ticked or not?
The “heading straight to disaster” approach
In our problem, there are two possible states for the checkboxes, either they are ticked or unticked. It felt natural to isolate each checkbox in order to train a binary classification model on them. Such an approach assumes that we are able to first locate and crop each checkbox. As we already had an OCR module to parse the different textual zones of the document, we decided to use them in order to find the checkboxes.
More exactly, on the accident report each box is assigned to a fixed textual label, for instance boxes number 1 are the one corresponding to the “* en stationnement/à l’arrêt” (parked/stationary) label, boxes number 2 to the “* quittait un stationnement/ouvrait une portière” (leaving a parking space/opening a door) label, and so on. By using the textual zones returned from the OCR, we can compute Levenshtein ratios, identify labels with their number, and then compute some relative offsets from the text coordinates to find the checkboxes.
For each textual zone, compute Levenshtein ratios to identify the number it is associated with. Then, use coordinates (X, Y) and dimensions (dx, dy) of the bounding box to compute some relative offset and locate the zones that contain the checkboxes associated with the given label.
To use this solution, one needs first to compute manually each offset for each of the 17 labels and 2 drivers, which leads to 34 offset functions that must be defined. Of course this is an expensive process, but which needs to be done only once. Although the approach might seem a bit heavy, it was quite effective to crop correctly all the checkboxes on our accident reports.
Classify them all!
We are now left with the task of classifying them as ticked or not. How are we going to do this?
It is always a good idea to try not to inject Machine Learning models where they are not needed. Here, we first thought about counting the pixels, as a ticked box would imply more black pixels than an empty one. However, to count pixels effectively, images must first be binarized in order to have pure black and white inputs. Depending on the acquisition process of the accident report (scanned, photograph, photograph of a scanned document, …), the lightning, contrast and noise of the image, the kind of mark (tick, cross, circle,…) and the thickness of the pen, there can be some important variations regarding the optimal pixel thresholding values. This makes it hard to find binarization parameters that would work on all the checkboxes crops, even when using advanced methods such as Gaussian Blur or OTSU Adaptative Thresholding.
So we tried to flatten the image and train a shallow ML model on the vectorized inputs, such as SVM or XGBoost. By doing so, we are essentially making the model learn an “intelligent pixel counting”, but we are facing the same issues as above, even when vectorizing images with methods that take into account visual properties (Histogram of Oriented Gradients vectors, SIFT* descriptors, …)
Sometime, you just didn’t pick the right tool for the right job!
As often when dealing with Computer Vision tasks, Deep Learning models turn out to be the most effective. Indeed, convolutional layers allow the model to build its own features, and understand itself the spatial structure of the images (corners, lines, curves, shapes, …). In our case, no need to invoke a full ResNet50, a few layers of Convolution and Dropout allowed to obtain quickly a near 1 validation accuracy, errors being usually made on ambiguous inputs.
So we implemented a solution to detect and classify each checkbox and reached an almost perfect accuracy. Super, right? It turns out that this approach has some strong weaknesses, some of them you might have identified already :
It depends directly on a first OCR step to detect textual zones on the image. This means that, each time the OCR module will fail to identify some text, we won’t be able to provide a prediction for the corresponding checkboxes
It is not robust to template changes, even when the new template shows minor differences. That is especially the case when the language of the accident report changes : all the words are translated and as such, we loose all our markers used to locate the checkboxes. All the offsets must be manually computed again!
The approach can easily be fooled when the input document is rotated or shows some deformation, which is very often the case when the accident report has been scanned on an irregular surface or shot from a non-flat perspective
Various kinds of expositions : straight, rotated, with perspective, scanned, physically deformed. The offset methods described above would not do well with such inputs
Enough time had been lost trying unstable methods, we had to find an other solution!
The “we should have done it from the beginning” approach
After we realized that the first approach was too sensitive, we decided to remove all the pieces that made it hard to maintain and scale … and finally ended up with a much simpler approach. In fact, when we as human take a look at the accident report, we don’t mentally isolate each checkbox and decide if it is ticked or not, we just get an ensemble view of the checkboxes, detect with a single look which are the ticked ones and check to which number they correspond.
We decided that we would not think about the problem at the scale of the single “checkbox”, but rather give the whole checkboxes section to the model and let the magic figure out itself which are ticked or not. This means that the problem is now a multi-label classification task with 17*2=34 classes. This time, targets are one-hot encoded vectors of size 34, with 1’s for checkboxes that are indeed ticked.
An input image for the new architecture
The input image being now more complex, we chose a deeper architecture, namely an EfficientNet B3, with a sigmoid activation for each coordinate of the output vector and trained with a binary cross entropy. Although this approach is a bit longer to converge than the first one, after a sufficient number of epochs we reached the same near-perfect performances.
But this new architecture was far better than the first one! | https://medium.com/@zelros/deep-learning-methods-for-checkboxes-detection-and-classification-ebffa221bd0 | ['Zelros Ai'] | 2021-02-05 10:51:43.525000+00:00 | ['Insurtech', 'Insurance', 'Computer Vision', 'Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning'] |
Thinking Process Problem | You lose the ball easily during the game and you feel guilty about it. You haven’t recovered to feel better from your first mistake and the ball comes to you again. This time you pass the ball to the wrong place so the ball goes out. You feel even worse. You have decided to hide so your teammate can’t pass the ball to you, believing that you won’t make any other mistakes.
The easiest way to solve a problem is by avoiding it. Let me rewrite that sentence because I made a mistake, “the easiest way to make a problem worse is by avoiding it.” Because, if you keep running away from a problem, you accumulate all those little problems, and they’ll become even bigger problems. If I ask you to pass the ball to your teammate during training without any pressure from a defender and you have no problem with that, it means that your passing skill is good enough. But why is passing the ball to your teammate during the game so much harder? You don’t have skill-related problem, but you have a thinking process problem.
Before you receive the ball, did you look around to see where the ball is? The defender’s position? Where the space is? Your teammate’s position? Then, if you are aware of everything around, you can make any decision that is right for that situation and execute the skill properly.
It sounds easy and everyone knows about this. So, I would like to dare you to make at least 50 passes per match with a 94% pass completion rate (Sergio Busquets Stats). If you’re successful on that, congrats! Do other skills such as shooting/dribbling with a 94% success rate, and do it consistently. Now, you are on the way to becoming one of the greatest in the world. That’s how we differentiate between professional footballers who play in first league compared to players from the second or third league. They have similar skills but players in the first league are more consistent and more persistent. When they make a mistake, they will try their best to solve it instead of avoid it.
Author Zaya Mardika
Editor Charalambos Elias
Photographer Aditya Aji | https://medium.com/folition/thinking-process-problem-ffee51003f70 | ['Zaya Mardika'] | 2021-01-04 15:41:43.001000+00:00 | ['Football', 'Womens Soccer', 'Girls Soccer', 'Womens Football', 'Soccer'] |
Case study: How I added a new feature on Instagram | For this new project of my bootcamp, I had to work on an existing and highly adopted app and incorporate a new feature into the existing product. Instagram is one of my favorite apps and I spend a lot of time daily to scroll my thread and watch stories. I was very excited to work on it and see what I can suggest based on UX research.
The client : Instagram
Instagram is the 6th most used social network in the world. It highlights the photos and videos posted by its users through posts or stories. Now, the app is mainly used to follow friends and favorite influencers in areas such as fashion, beauty, sport, cooking etc…
Since its launch in 2010, more than 50 billon photos have been shared on Instagram and more than 100 million photos and videos are posted daily. The user is exposed to a colossal volume of content.
A loved app with some defaults
I went to meet them to find out more about their uses and to know what they think about the app.
Gains
Instagram is an app they like very much with a positive image.
Thanks to it, they can take their mind off the stressful news.
It is a source of inspiration : they can find products to buy, places to visit during their holidays, fitness exercice to do at home or cooking recipes.
Pains
Instagram doesn’t reflect the reality
They can get lost in the overflow of content
The can’t easily find a post that interests them, including places they would like to visit later.
A new feature using geolocation
Geolocation is very important on Instagram : the posts using geolocation get 79% more commitment.
Users can use geolocation when they post a story or on their feed. They like to use it to keep track, to give specific information to their followers and inspire them.
Adding an interactive map would be consistent with highly used geolocation on Instagram.
Instagram’s competitors using interactive map
To be able to make a relevant proposal in line with the users needs, I looked how the competitors use an interactive map.
Direct competitors
Facebook : User can use geolocation on this posts but there is no interactive map.
Snapshat : The Snap Map allows user to see where his friends are, to share his location with them and to watch stories made next door or at the end of the world.
Indirect competitors
Flick : It’s an app to share professional photos. An interactive map allows to see photos taken at a specific point on it.
Mapstr : The app allows the user to visualize his good addresses and ideas all on one only map.
Swarm : The app allows the user to keep track to places he has been to. When he is somewhere, he can check in and a pin is added to his personal map.
Market positioning
Instagram is rather positioned as an entertaining app oriented towards the community. Adding this map could allow it to strengthen its personal and interactive dimension. This way, the app would have a real practical utility to the user and wouldn’t be only a source of inspiration.
Emily, the daily user of Instagram
Goal
She browses her thread and her stories to find nice places to share good moments with her friends.
Motivation
When she sees an interesting post, she takes a screenshot to find it later.
Pain
But sometimes she looses it and has to do a Google search with tag words to find it again.
The problem to solve
How our feature might help Emily save places of interest in Instagram without having to use alternative ways ?
The concept : pin places on a map
The concept of this new feature is to pin a place of interest from a post or a story to make it appear on a personal interactive map.
An understandable and visible feature
Before designing the map, I wanted to implement the feature at a visible and understandable place for the user.
Low-fi prototype with the feature implementation
When geolocation is used on a post or a story, a pin appears below the photo to allow the user to pin the place to his map. He can access his map on his profil clinking on an icon add next to the preexistent ones.
When the user looks at his map, he sees a map with different color pins. Each color belongs to a category to more visibility as you can see on the prototype below.
High-fi prototype with the feature implementation
The prototype
Discover the feature through high-fi prototype
Iteration on categories awarding
After the testing session made between the two version of the prototype, I have refined categories awarding.
On the first version, the user was only warned that the place had been added on his map.
Mid-fi prototype before iteration
On the second version, the user is invited to give a category to the place before pinning it.
High-fi prototype after iteration
I added a red pin to show to the user that the place has been added to his map. It recalls the heart which turns red when the user likes a post.
What’s next ?
I would like to keep improving this feature by connecting it with the interactive map of the past stories section.
When the user would post using geolocation, the place would appear on his map. This way, the user would have a global vision of the places he have been. This feature would make sense for the users who post travel photos on Instagram.
What I learnt
For this new challenge I had to use the Lean UX method which consists in going quick and iterate. Each prototype version was tested by users and this feedback was really precious to improve the feature and go into the details. This way, I focused on an only problem to solve. I had to make choices and put some aspects away to be efficient and don’t loose time on useless details. | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/case-study-how-i-added-a-new-feature-on-instagram-73f5e538439f | ['Caroline Graver'] | 2020-11-21 15:36:54.441000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Case Study', 'Features', 'Prototyping', 'Instagram'] |
MINDSET — a crucial problem in the way of education. | Getting proper education is the birth rights of everyone restricting which is the crime.
A child without education, is like a bird without wings. -Tibetan proverb
Education transforms us completely from inside and outside by changing our mind and personality as well as improving our confidence level. It’s key to success because It doesn’t only change our life completely but also we can change other’s lives as it is constructive in nature.
As education is near to my heart so for mega projects I want to do something related to education. That's why I did some research and observed some people around me (I can't share pictures of them due to privacy) but I am sharing here their thoughts related to children's education.
First is a family who has three daughters and one son, they are only giving quality education to their son and in spite of they are financially stable, for daughters they think that educating a girl is not beneficial because they will get married one day. Their daughters will not give any benefit to them, only their husband will get benefits. That’s why they don’t give education to their daughter.
One story is related to a house near my house. The parents have 5 boys and no one even got their primary education. Their parents and they aren’t interested in education because they think it’s a wastage of money, they could earn money by doing something else e.g. helper in a shop etc. They think that education is only to earn money.
Some people think that education has no benefits as people didn’t get job, so as far as job concerned, I know now a days getting a job is difficult but if you are educated then you can do freelancing or do entrepreneurship, like if anyone has completed degree in computer science then he can start his own business, one of my classmate did a course in coding, now he has started his own startup, even if you are sonologist then you can do freelancing, I have checked it..so that’s prove there are various ways to earn money in spite you are not getting job. The point is we are not getting education only to earn money. Education is a tool which provides people with knowledge, skill, technique, information, enables them to know their rights and duties toward their family, society as well as the nation. It expands vision and outlook to see the world. It develops the capabilities to fight against injustice, violence, corruption and many other bad elements in the society.
Here I also want to share a story related to a person who got an education in spite of he was not financially stable.
One of my relatives has done an MBA. He is doing a good job, has own house and car. But when he was very young his father died, he was not financially stable and had no money for education, even though he had nothing to eat due to this he had severe fainting issues, in spite of it he did a job in a shoes shop and during free time in shop, he studied. He did it because he was willing to become an educated person.
I know the above stories were surprising for some of you but these types of parents are present in our society who don't want to give even primary education to their children. Previously I also thought that they don't get education because of financial instability but when I came to know about the above people's thoughts and also remembered about my relatives who are now successful but on their early stage they were not financially stable. It changed my perspective. Because I was thinking that money is the biggest issue for children who are not getting education but the real issue is not money, it's the mindset, lack of awareness and thinking style of their parents. People have no awareness related to education they think it's not important, and it's not only related to girl's education but also for boy's education.
"OUR GREATEST NATURAL RESOURCE IS THE MINDS OF OUR CHILDREN." -WALTER ELIAS DISNEY
So the core issue is the MINDSET of parents and I want to work on changing it. I want to give awareness to parents and change their mindset about education because parent’s thoughts have a vast impact on their children’s minds.
"THE BEST STUDENTS COME FROM HOMES WHERE EDUCATION IS REVERED: WHERE THERE ARE BOOKS, AND CHILDREN SEE THEIR PARENTS READING THEM." -Leo Buscaglia
For this I want to provide training to youngsters through psychologists, educationalist and motivational speakers.
If they will train then they can do parents and children counselling effectively in their area. Because I talked to these types of parents, few parents understood it but majority don’t even want to hear about it, if we will have psychological training then we will come to know how to convince them because psychologists have the ability to understand other people’s mind, and they will help us in changing their minds. That’s how their children can get education. | https://medium.com/@aiman.asadi174/mindset-a-crucial-problem-in-the-way-of-education-438caf3ec2f1 | ['Aiman Asadi'] | 2020-12-25 11:21:46.270000+00:00 | ['Parents And Children', 'Amal Academy', 'Education', 'Mindset', 'Psychology'] |
We can’t grow, develop without constant inner scrutiny, inner war | Question from the Internet:
“Are internal moral conflicts necessary for a person’s development?”
Yes, we constantly need to go through an inner war in order to grow, develop.
As it is true for general society as well, without disputes, arguments, constant examinations there is no progress, so an individual also can’t progress without constant inner scrutiny, without constant, purposeful and conscious self-change, self-adjustment.
Of course it is much easier in a unique, closed, purposeful environment that facilitates this, where through mutual activities we can constantly reveal how much our inherently self-serving, self-justifying, subjective ego is harmful, so we could constantly adjust, elevate ourselves above the instinctively egotistic, selfish calculations, behaviour towards different qualities, values, behaviour.
In an environment that purposefully thrives towards selfless, altruistic connections, towards positive, mutually responsible and mutually complementing connections, cooperation, this brutally honest self-recognition and subsequent refinement, this inner war and ceaseless self-upgrade is very easy and feels like an adventure.
https://youtu.be/9B1uS0mg_q4 | https://medium.com/@samechphoto/we-cant-grow-develop-without-constant-inner-scrutiny-inner-war-6f328569e25e | ['Zsolt Hermann'] | 2021-01-21 20:06:56.456000+00:00 | ['Support', 'Development', 'Education', 'Humanity', 'Growth'] |
Human Made Marketplace + Documentation | The Project
In my adaptive media class, we are creating a brand with multiple media outlets. For example, we are focusing on a podcast and branding it on another form of social media. The brand I chose to make mine about was zero waste. Zero waste means living a life that’s a lot more sustainable and focuses on waste prevention. Zero waste is not just not using straws to save the turtles (sksksksksk) but to limit our waste that goes into our lands and oceans. A sustainable life also focuses on the carbon footprint we are leaving on the planet. An excellent way to find out your carbon footprint is this questioner that takes an in-depth look into your footprint that you are leaving on the planet.
The Mobile App
For this project, I was asked to create a mobile experience for users to download to their phones that will be an alternative media for the zero waste company I had come up with. The concept I came up with was an eco-friendly low/zero waste marketplace for those to sell their homemade goods. The zero-waste community is vast, and this would be big for small businesses and those who find it hard to find eco-friendly options in their town or city. Human Made is made with the idea of removing Amazon’s use within those lives who are concerned about their carbon footprint.
Link to the XD Prototype
To start, I went for a clean, natural design. I wanted the user to feel fully involved within the app as well as the community. I went for earthy undertones of browns to bring in the eco-friendly vibes straight from the beginning. As well as, I chose the fonts that I felt resembled nature, homemade, and delicate. I didn’t want the user to feel overwhelmed initially, so I tried my hardest to create a calm and warming feeling from the beginning.
This concept was very original and would bring an incredible feature into the zero waste, eco-friendly community. This will give a great outlet to those who work hard to create homemade products to sell.
Thus, I present — Human Made, Zero Waste Market.
Human Made | Prototype
The pages
When creating the pages of the app, I had the user in mind. I made features that I would want to use within the app and design features that would pop up during holidays or events. That being said, I added a gift-giving guide. I also wanted to give the users the option to search for specific products they might be looking for. Also, I came up with suggesting searches based upon topics that they searched for in the past or searches similar to what they have looked into before. Since this app is for the community’s people, I wanted to make features in the mindset of what I would like.
This app was made in hopes for people to turn to when they are doing personal shopping and gift-giving. The world is full of plastic, so giving all the reusable, eco-friendly homemade products to a home would be an excellent place for those to shop. Human Made is the perfect sister brand to Planted Zero; thus, it is just a store for those to shop while following the brand and trying to make a difference in the world. | https://medium.com/by-emerson/human-made-marketplace-documentation-2d89f9417ec6 | ['Emerson Young'] | 2020-12-11 03:27:07.893000+00:00 | ['Case Study', 'Prototyping', 'Zero Waste', 'Design Process', 'Adobe Xd'] |
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