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What Is a Good Read Ratio on Medium?

What Is a Good Read Ratio on Medium? And why a high read ratio can be a bad thing Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash A good Medium read ratio is generally between 20 and 50%. It depends, though, on the length of your article and the audience you’re trying to engage. Very short articles (3 minutes or less) tend to have a higher read ratio, because it takes less time for a reader to complete the article. Likewise, long articles tend to have lower read ratios — but not always. I have a 23 minute article that still has a 30% read ratio because its content is very engaging. But in general, if your article takes longer to read, it will tend to have a lower ratio. Seven minutes is usually the sweet spot in terms of article length to get an optimal read ratio. If your read ratio is too high, that can indicate a problem, too. If everyone finishes reading your piece, that can be an indication that it was too short. Readers may be left wanting more, and you may have had the opportunity to go into more detail on a specific topic. If you write a 5–8 minute piece and it has a very high read ratio, congratulate yourself on writing something really engaging, but also immediately start to think of follow-ups. Can you write another article (or several) building on the same topic, or exploring aspects of it in more depth? If people loved your shorter article about the topic and were really engaged, it’s likely that they’ll want to engage with your follow-up pieces too. If your ratio is really low, there can be reasons for that, too — so don’t immediately despair. It could be that your article is getting a lot of traffic from external sources (Flipboard, social media, etc.) and these readers (who often aren’t Medium members) tend to spend less time reading stories on average. Over time, it’s likely that your ratio will increase as more members read your piece. Also keep in mind that read ratio is a lagging number. It’s only updated periodically, and Medium waits a while before assuming that a reader has stopped reading an article. So for newly published pieces, your read ratio might appear very low at first, but over time it will go up as more people who are in the middle of reading the piece finish it, and as Medium updates the numbers. Here are some more tips on improving read ratio and other Medium metrics: This Formula Determines Your Medium Earnings — Thrive on Medium

https://medium.com/swlh/what-is-a-good-read-ratio-on-medium-ee63d2f6fd9e

['Thomas Smith']

2020-11-22 20:59:46.294000+00:00

['Passive Income', 'Read Ratio', 'Medium', 'Metrics', 'Writing']

1000X acceleration for Ethereum, 4817 Off-chain Games Played!

We are totally amazed by ETHSanFrancisco (hosted by ETHGlobal). If you missed this great event, we invite you to feel the vibrant Ethereum developer community through this impression video made by one of our awesome community members! Going into ETHSF, we wholeheartedly invited everyone to experience, build and have fun! We did exactly those three things and we would like to share our experiences! A “not-black-window” Testnet In ETHSanfrancisco, we soft launched cWallet to get valuable initial user feedbacks. The role of cWallet is first to serve as a entry point, through which users can experience, first-hand, actual blockchain applications powered by Celer’s off-chain scaling testnet Centauri. It also serves as a reference implementation, so that wallet developers can easily integrate Celer Network and dApp developers can easily transform their on-chain dApp to “cApps” . Try it out! https://get.celer.app/ During the short 36 hours, we have a whopping 401 cWallet installs! Every single user has experienced our instant payment application cPay: we have 719 off-chain payments by test users. We closely observed how users used off-chain payments to pay each other to aggregate balances to get more chances for our Celer Carnival games. There are a lot of user experience lessons we learnt and we will share them with some future writeups! In cWallet, we also preinstalled a super fun off-chain board game cGomoku. In this game, you can bet some testnet ETH with any player in the world or your friends. We will have a separate writeup about this game, but the key points here are that the “staking process” is done via off-chain conditional payment and the entire game is realized as off-chain smart contract. For this fun game, 4817 games was played and more than 150,000 state updates were made in ETHSF! On average we have more than 10 games played per user! Given the private nature of this soft launch, we are super excited about this repeated usage frequency! More importantly, each off-chain smart contract state update takes milliseconds to complete on Celer. If these state updates were done on-chain, it would take 625 hours or 26 days. While the aggregated state update latency on Celer Network is less than 50mins. 750X faster Ethereum smart contract transaction is achieved! 😎 Download now at get.celer.app Initial user feedbacks strengthened our belief that this kind of latency reduction brought by Celer is the inflection point for blockchain mass adoption. We will have a dedicated blog to discuss the ins and outs of cWallet soon. If you cannot wait, try it yourself! 😃Download cWallet now at https://get.celer.app/ 4 Teams using Celer SDK won 4 BIG Prizes! Conditional payment is the theme! Tech talk and SDK tutorial In ETHSF, we also released Celer Network SDK for the first time! We gave a tech talk on Celer Network’s technology and economic construct in general and also gave an in-depth tutorial of Celer Network SDK. We are super excited to see talented developers immediately jumping on developing some super cool stuff using Celer Network SDK! You can access our SDK for Android here, for iOS here and for web stack here. We also hosted three awards for this ETHSF: cInnovate for the most innovative application idea using Celer; cBuilder for the most complete implementation using Celer; cUX for application improving the user and developer experience of Celer. Interestingly, we found out that the concept of conditional payment promoted by Celer Network is very well accepted! We would like to proudly announce the award winning teams here! 🎉cBuilder Award, ETHSF Runner-up: Air Prediction offchain prediction market We built the first-ever off-chain prediction market with the help of Celer Network and Chainlink. In our off-chain prediction market, users can submit an event for prediction by providing an oracle contract address. Then all users can place orders to bet on the result with some ethers. These orders will form an off-chain order book. Once YES and NO orders (think about bids and asks in a stock market) match, the corresponding issuers will get noticed and establish a bidirectional conditional payment through Celer Network. Based on the result given by the oracle contract provided by Chainlink, Celer Network will resolve the condition and settle the payments instantly without touching any on-chain transactions. — Air Prediction Team UI of Air Prediction With the amazing launch of Augur, everyone has his/her eyes on the renaissance of prediction market. However, the user experience of Augur today is far from ideal: order books are on-chain and every order takes painfully long time to confirm. If the UX issue remains unsolved, we definitely won’t see mass adoption. In addition, this slowness makes market making close to impossible and results in a large market spread, shallow market depth with low market efficiency. Without an efficient market, we cannot possibly hope to achieve the collective intelligence vision promised by prediction market. Celer Network naturally helps on the prediction market case with the clear abstraction of conditional off-chain payment, where the “condition” in this case is an on-chain oracle. We are in active communication with the team implemented this and they are reaching out to Augur to see if it is possible to help Augur scale! 🎉cBuilder Award 2: Micro Subscription cloud service with SLA guarantee I was inspired by SLA example in chainlink repo. I realized that currently, it is not very convenient and efficient to resolve SLA dispute. With blockchain, I can programmingly resolve the dispute. Another issue I identified in current cloud service is that most of cloud service is subscribed by month, but it is not fair price model for user with low utilization. I think it will be very helpful to enable micro payment for service they actually use. There are multiple micro payment solutions out there, but I found out only Celer is able to support conditional payment by querying on-chain information. With conditional payment, I can use service condition to trigger payment. — Micro Subscription Team UI for Microsubscription We originally planned for only one cBuilder award, but this application is too perfect to be not rewarded and the implementation is fully functional and complete. This again is integrating Chainlink and Celer together! With this service, users can subscribe to cloud service by minutes and still have guaranteed SLA because when users are paying for the service provider, the service provider is also paying the user with conditional payment. If Chainlink declares the service is down, the conditional payment evaluates to be true and immediately users will be compensated for the loss! What an amazing idea and well executed prototype! 🎉cInnovate Award: Slick gas price option market We deployed Layer 2 solutions built by Celer Network to mitigate the gas fee. Leveraging Celer Network’s conditional payment feature, we simulate a futures contract (due to the limitation of infrastructure, we hereby simplify the process by simulating a linear contract instead of nonlinear derivative in this hackathon) with discrete trigger thresholds. In this case, we act as a market maker for the future, and will hedge the risk of these futures positions against counterparties (likely miners) in the decentralized marketplace we hope to build beyond the scope of this hackathon. — Slick Team UI of Slick The idea of this app is quite innovative. It’s basically a flight insurance for gas fees. So let’s say you gotta a huge transaction you want to push through Ethereum but the gas fee was too high in the day time, you kinda want to wait until gas fee become cheaper at night. Now, some “market maker” may step up and say that he will help you to send out this transaction when the gas fee is low and he is saying that he can do it with 2Gwei with 5Gwei fee to him instead of 50Gwei you are paying right now. So what do you do? You could of course trust him and give him the 2Gwei-gas-price transaction and use Celer to do the 5Gwei-gas-price payment. However, you can also request the “market maker” to send you a conditional payment of 50Gwei on the condition that he failed to deliver your transaction on-time. This is effectively forming a option market for gas fee! Now we have a new way of pricing gas! 🎉cUX Award: Celer Templates for Composite Smart Contract IDE I aim to simplify crypto development. Celer was a great opportunity since it is using a familiar framework (Truffle) yet is different enough to confuse developers. It creates an empty Celer smart contract with the right callback functions and deployment script — Celer Template team Every state channel has standard interfaces to implement. Sometimes, it might be the case that developer may miss some key interfaces to implement. Therefore, this IDE provides a super useful way to generate a standard set of interfaces for channelized application. cUX award it is! Interested in building? Join cPilot program now to receive free courses and get notify with online developer meetups! Celer Carnival is a blast! 😹 During the ETHSF, we hosted Celer Carnival on our booth, attracted more than 500+ developers came and had fun! By spinning the colorful wheel, attendees won a variety of Celer swags such as fidget spinners, bottle openers, notebooks..etc. Also, the first 100 developers who downloaded the cWallet dApps won the limited edition C’nicorn T-shirt! We have also hosted our first King of cGomoku Game! ⚫️ ⚪️ Folks competed with one another on the cGomoku off-chain and discussed the strategies on winning. Most importantly, they were amazed by the off-chain conditional payment and how the entire game was implemented by the off-chain smart contract. There were 4817 games played in total and on average we have more than 10 games played per user! 😆 😆 Meet Howy, our King of cGomoku after winning the 2-hour survival competition!! All Hail King Howy! 👑 Alright, that’s it for now. It has been a blast for us and see you next time in ETHSingapore! Follow us at:

https://medium.com/celer-network/not-a-black-window-celer-testnet-401-users-4-award-winning-capps-4817-off-chain-games-played-3114fab0af9f

['Celer Network']

2018-10-19 04:59:27.004000+00:00

['Celertech', 'Ethereum', 'Scalability', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain']

Wide-spread love for Dr. Kalam among Hindus, absence of it in Muslim discourse, and the connection with Hindu revivalism

Dr. Kalam has been one of the most loved President the country has seen. The joy on him becoming the President during Vajpayee’s term and later the outpouring of grief on social media on his passing away is testimony to the love that an average Indian carried for him. After Barrack Obama became President of the United States, articles appeared in Indian media on whether Hindu majority India would ever be able to cross the barrier of having a Muslim Prime Minister largely because of the legacy of the religion-based partition of India in 1947 with Jinnah-led Muslims demanding a separate homeland for themselves. While the Presidential post is a ceremonial one and has seen many Muslims in the past, getting a Muslim Prime Minister to lead the country sounds surely like a tall order. Or is it? India would accept Kalam as Prime Minister So deep and wide-spread was the love for Dr. Kalam that my conjecture is that India would have accepted him with open arms to take the top executive post of the country. Here’s why. Dr. Kalam was an intense nationalist and loved India deeply. Even while retaining his Islamic practices, like Dara Shikhon did, he adopted Hindu philosophy with open arms. This was a reflection of him living India’s core value systems — “Ekam Sat Viprah Bahudha Vadanti” (Truth is one, sages call it by various names). His spiritual Master was a Hindu saint — H.H. Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the head of BAPS, a Hindu organization of the Swaminarayan order. He read the Gita and practiced playing the Veena (purportedly a Hindu symbol of music & learning associated with the goddess of learning — Saraswati) everyday. He was a spiritual “seeker” (as opposed to a “know-er”) — which has always been the foundation on which all Dharmic/Indic religions are based. Widespread following for Shirdi Sai Baba and Sant Kabir — both Muslims — stands testimony to this embracing nature of Hindus notwithstanding anyone’s religion as long as they carry India’s core values. Missing discourse on Kalam among Indian Muslims The irony is that Muslims, specifically the divisive Muslim leadership of India reject him as a “non-Muslim”. This inspite of him being practicing Muslim. Here’s an excerpt from his interview with MJ Akbar: Q. In the book, you mention that you do the morning namaaz. A. Yes, every day, whenever possible. My father was very strict about namaaz and would wake me up at 4 a.m. and take me to the mosque. I also fast. Q. So why is it that the so-called Muslim leaders in the North always have the feeling that you are not a practising Muslim? A. First of all, I am an Indian and try to be a good human being. People can call me XYZ, that’s their freedom of expression. There is no conflict of any kind regarding my faith in Islam. I often visit temples and churches as well. God is everywhere. Dr. Kalam is curiously missing from the popular discourse among Muslims at large in India. So seeped is Islam (and the discourse among Indian Muslims about Islam) in ‘exclusivism’ of the true-ness of only their faith — and by corollary the falseness of all other religions and faiths — that it rejects any Muslim who openly admires and adopts spiritual practices from other faiths, specifically Hinduism. This goes completely against the core value systems of India — of inclusiveness and mutual respect of all faiths and religions. And yet, there is no discourse among the #AdarshLiberals (a term given to vociferous self-proclaimed defenders of India’s secular social fabric) about questioning and challenging this shameless rejection of Dr. Kalam. And sadly, it is divisive people like Zakir Naik who’ve been made heroes even among the highly educated and mainstream Muslims in India. This is the same Zakir Naik who had defended Osama bin Laden and defended killing people who leave Islam. “If he is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him,” he said. “Every Muslim should be a terrorist.”. Dr. Naik has also said that apostates who propagate other religions should be killed and that “the Jews” control the United States. He was recently honoured with the top Saudi award for ‘Service to Islam’. You might find it interesting (and deeply sad!) to note that Afshan Jabeen who was deported from Dubai to India for being an ISIS Supporter had the same televangelist Zakir Naik’s speeches on her view-list of Islamic preachers (and hate-mongers). In conclusion For Islam to meaningfully synthesize with other spiritual traditions of India, Indian Muslims must reject the exclusivist ideology of ‘your-faith-is-false’ and ‘only-Islam-is-true’. Just “tolerance” is not enough. Acceptance and respect is the answer. Islam must learn that. Until then it will continue to remain antagonistic to Hindus and other Dharmic religions of India. There is a direct link between this antagonism and Hindu revivalism taking root in the country. — — — — — — — — — — — — — - Recommended reads:

https://medium.com/essays-on-india-and-hinduism/large-scale-love-for-dr-4fb72eaf1420

['Hindavi Swarajya']

2016-01-10 18:47:48.230000+00:00

['Islam', 'Hinduism', 'India']

Why I Joined RUKA

Why I Joined RUKA Hi! I’m Louiser, and during the pandemic, I took a leap of faith and made a career change from marketer to graphic designer and after months of freelancing for the past year I have decided to join RUKA, as an Assistant Graphic Designer. You could say the moves I made in my career during the pandemic were brave, fearless, or even crazy. But I believe that in this short life we live we can either follow our passions or live a life dreaming of doing so — and I decided now was the time to follow passion. Acting without fear happens to be one of the RUKA core values and with their mission to change the hair game I am excited to be a part of what is to come. The moment I knew RUKA was the place for me was during the interview process, when I was asked a question relating to my own motivations when it comes to Design. Being able to use my creative skills to make an impact in the lives of those around me is important to me. The fact that the team really cared to understand me and my “why” made me see that RUKA honestly cared about the people they were hiring and it was a demonstration of how the brand is about more than just selling a product. The same care RUKA has for the community they have for the team. From previously working in companies where I was one of the few black people in the team — in some instances the whole company, it was refreshing to be welcomed by such a diverse team. At RUKA, inclusivity isn’t just a trend — it’s normal. We believe that bringing our full selves to the workplace is the only way to get better answers to our consumers. As a black woman growing up in the UK, I have felt the need for beauty brands that understood and catered to my needs and it has been amazing seeing the emergence of brands doing so in the past couple of years. Black women are finally getting their voices heard and I love to see it! Likewise, RUKA was formed by women who not only saw but from personal experiences felt a need, and were bold to bring a solution to the market. It’s inspiring to work on a team with people that aren’t afraid to take risks and 15-year-old Louiser would be so proud. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” — Barack Obama When I see RUKA I see change, and I am excited to be part of it. RUKA has already impacted the lives of many black women, and we still have a long way to go. I am excited to be on this journey of changing the narrative of beauty standards for women.

https://medium.com/@louiserbusinge/why-i-joined-ruka-e28b2f8198d0

['Louiser Businge']

2021-07-05 15:27:06.847000+00:00

['Startup', 'Career Change', 'Graphic Design', 'Hair And Beauty', 'Ruka']

Extending Reality at #VRX2019

HTC Vive, GE, Paramount, ExxonMobil and More Set to Join World’s Premier Extended Reality Event According to one study, the extended reality (XR) market is forecast to grow to more than $209 billion in the next four years, an 800% increase from their 2018 prediction of $27 billion. Whatever the true figure, it is beyond doubt that this technology is set to revolutionize industries across the world, with more verticals than ever seeking to drive business growth by leveraging its potential benefits. With a solution-driven agenda focused on enhancing the consumer experience of XR and driving its adoption, the VRX Conference & Expo 2019 will return to San Francisco, taking place December 12–13 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport Hotel. Key virtual and augmented/mixed reality stakeholders will share the visions, challenges and solutions they have encountered, discussing how XR can boost ROI, propel their business forward and engage consumers through immersive, innovative experiences. More than 600 attendees from across 10+ enterprise and consumer verticals, will join a senior speaker line-up from some of the world’s most powerful technology companies and brands, including HTC Vive, General Electric, Paramount, ExxonMobil and more. “Unquestionably the best conference of its kind I’ve been to. The quality of the presenters, depth of thinking, and real-world experience on hand was exceptional.” – Skip D’Amico, Global Manager, Digital Innovation, Cadillac VR Intelligence have now released the brochure for the VRX Conference & Expo 2019, detailing this year’s focus on customer-centricity to drive consumer and enterprise adoption. With 8 new deep dive seminars into core market growth areas, attendees will have the chance to hear from leading end users in each of these segments and debate with like-minded individuals, on top of the usual thought-leading topics around the latest hardware, software, content and market disruptors. After consultation with numerous stakeholders, the VRX Conference & Expo 2019 has adopted a new format, focusing on the particular challenges of specific industries, rather than solely high-level content. With detailed case studies covering industries from entertainment, energy, electronics and more, attendees from all verticals will benefit from the detail and insight on offer. “It provided some of the best access to large clients of any event we have attended. It was easy to meet and have impactful conversations. Definitely having many follow ups as a result.” — Kyle Jackson, CEO, Talespin This year at VRX 2019, we are focused on putting customers first to drive consumer and enterprise adoption of XR. With 8 new deep dive seminars into core market growth areas, attendees will have the chance to hear from leading end users in each of these segments and debate with like-minded individuals, on top of the usual thought-leading topics around the latest hardware, software, content and market disruptors. Access the newly released VRX Conference & Expo 2019 brochure As the global XR industry continues its rapid expansion, the VRX Conference & Expo 2019 is dedicated to providing a forum for debating the crucial hardware and software requirements for seamless user experience, helping businesses to look ahead, build project pipelines and ultimately drive innovation. Tech Trends is an official media partner of VRX 2019 Tech Trends offers a broad range of Digital Consultancy services to guide companies, individuals and brands in effectively leveraging existing and emerging technologies in their business strategy. Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

https://medium.com/edtech-trends/extending-reality-at-vrx2019-d69350bbc766

['Alice Bonasio']

2019-08-19 14:38:11.981000+00:00

['Tech', 'Virtual Reality', 'Extended Reality', 'VR', 'Technology']

For my future dear one, one who will carry my blood within theirs.

Hi, love. If you are reading this, first, I hope you do not regret being born. I am of course very happy for your existence, and I hope you feel the same for it too, as I knew before you came that wanting you to be born is selfish on my side. I didn’t know what you will go through in this world. I didn’t know whether you will step on this world lightly, and with happiness; or heavily, and being accompanied by sadness all throughout your days. But I want you to know that I am thankful for your existence. Love, when I wrote this letter, I know I have big expectations — about both myself and you. I expect myself to be able to teach you good values. I expect myself to be able to let you grow happily. I expect you to be a good person under my nurture. I expect you to have values I value. And again, that’s selfish on my side. I am both excited and afraid for your arrival. Afraid that you would disappoint me and I would disappoint you in return. Afraid that I would force my “flexible” values upon you — and that would ironically be forceful instead of flexible. Afraid that the way I raise you would be a burden to you — I’ve decided a lot about how I would raise you and I’m afraid I would get very insistent with that. Afraid that I would get disappointed at how you would become. Afraid that I would not accept the possibility that you and I would be worlds apart in personality, and afraid that that would make me love you less. I’m praying all the way from now to not let that happen. That, being the fact that I would love you less. I pray that I would accept you with all your differences. I pray that even with them, I would remember to act more out of love instead of just nurturance. I love you. and I hope I will let myself show that through my support and guidance, instead of just my teachings. I hope you would feel my love. Parent-child relations are tricky, isn’t it? I have to always remember that we are separate people, that you are not an extension of me, but I also would have to be responsible for the things you have and do growing up. I used to think my responsibilities include making sure you grow well physically, making sure your needs are met, making sure you grow with certain sets of good values. Now I learn that it is also my responsibility to make sure you feel loved, feel safe, that you know you are enough and adequate as a person. But thinking it as responsibilities, again, makes me scared that I would force everything onto you, including my love. But above the fear, there is the yearning, the excitement. I look forward to pouring you all of my love, to ask and listen to your thoughts, to help you do the things you like, to introduce you to good things in this world. I can’t wait to hug you 12 times a day, and tell you that you have done well today. I want to be the one who tells you all the good values, all the while opening a discussion on whether it is one you would like to adopt too. I want to be the one who gives you warmth, to be the safe space you can tell all your worries to. I want to be the one who can enable you to be the best person you can be. There is a lot of things I want to do with you, yet I do not know if I will manage to do as I planned. I do not know whether my plans are good for you specifically either. But all I want to say now is that I want to be your mother. I hope you would want to be my child too. Until then, love. -mom.

https://medium.com/@dhiarahmi/for-my-future-dear-one-one-who-will-carry-my-blood-within-theirs-55c057b8bf17

['Dhia R P']

2020-12-03 17:45:24.607000+00:00

['Letters']

CAUTION! Natives of This Sign May Be Psychopaths

Did you know that Donald Trump is a Gemini?! To some of you, I probably have already made a point. If not, let us look at what makes a psychopath a psychopath. Clinically speaking, experts describe psychopaths as: Socially irresponsible individuals. They have a high disregard for other people’s rights. They can’t distinguish between right and wrong. They have difficulty showing remorse. They don’t understand the meaning of empathy. They are pathological liars. They are skilled manipulators. I dated a Gemini for almost two years. If I could go back in time and undo it, I would, in a heartbeat. But this is a personal story, so it doesn’t apply to everyone. Nonetheless, some of you may be useful. To be clear, I am talking here about the male version of Gemini only. I have several female Gemini friends and I can say with confidence that what follows doesn’t apply to them. My Gemini wasn’t good looking; in fact, he was the opposite. But, since I was young and “the most naïve person on the planet” (in his own words), I thought that it is impossible to be that unsightly inside out. A high childhood consumption of Disney films played an important role in shaping my belief. Unlike diagnosed psychopaths, Geminis are very social individuals. People enjoy their company. Although they don’t seek it (like Leos do), they know how to steal the spotlight by telling fascinating stories and engaging others in fun games. They leave a pleasant and memorable impression on a crowd. My Gemini is no different. For a long time, I couldn’t vent about him to any of our acquaintances, knowing full well that they will doubt my words, not his character. He was liked and respected. My relationship with him was both personal and professional, which allowed me to notice psychopathic signs in both aspects of his life. Below I will give some examples of how these signs manifested. PProfessionally, disregarding other people’s rights was very easy to notice. Knowing that the marketplace was overcrowded and competitive, he knew how to force his employees to work long hours and be afraid to complain about it. Long hours meant also having them on standby, day and night during week days and weekends. HHe doesn’t distinguish between right and wrong. But he knows the concept exists, so he picks and chooses when to apply it according to his needs. He once bragged about stealing someone else’s client. He was so proud of himself for being a wit and persuasive talker. Until one day, he suspected a competitor had stolen one of his clients. And that was for him “wrong.” I spent two hours explaining to him that what he’s done previously is exactly what his competitor has done to him. Believe me, he could see how the two incidences were even similar. HHe showed no sign of remorse for hurting or taking advantage of people. That was mainly because he didn’t know that what he’d done was wrong. EEmpathy. Once, a friend’s cat gave birth to three kittens but refused to feed them. I took the surviving kitten, fed him, cared for him for two weeks. But the little thing didn’t make it. He died while I was at the office. I got very emotional and I couldn’t hold my tears. When he noticed what was going on, he threw the kitten in the garbage bin, looked in the eye and laughed. HHe is deceitful and enjoys lying. He finds lying amusing, especially when he gets away with it. At the end of the relationship, I discovered that he was hitting on my female friends and acquaintances since the very beginning of our relationship. HHe is calculating. He measures human exchange in terms of credit and debit. One of his family members once asked to borrow one of his cars. He lent him his spare car gladly. He explained to me later how he rationalized his decision: Since the guy was in great need, he is most likely to over appreciate the favor; this allows him to cash it later multiplied, at any time and in any other form. “I paid very little and I gained unconditional returns. This was a profitable transaction.” Mind games are his favorite hobby. Manipulating others into doing what he wants and needs with zero emotional attachment to them is astonishing. AAnother manipulative tactic he used to exercise on those who cared about him was passive-aggressive behavior. He uses the silent treatment with his employees as well as with his close family members to make them think they had done something wrong or that they had harmed his feelings. He would do it even when he is the guilty party in a particular situation. WWhen I ended the relationship, he thought I was harming him. He kept asking: how could I do this to him? In his mind, he had invested time in me and by leaving him I was preventing him from cashing out on his investment. Of course, not all Gemini(s) are psychopaths. I am sure some of them are as sweet as pie. But, it won’t hurt to check for the above signs to ensure that the guy you’re dating or about to date doesn’t tick more than two boxes. If he does, then you’re advised to look for an exit as soon as possible. Unless you’re an Aquarian woman, in this case you may very well be able to beat him at his own game(s). Go for it!

https://medium.com/@astro-teller/caution-natives-of-this-sign-may-be-psychopaths-fc86f3f373d7

['The Astroteller']

2021-01-16 13:24:19.818000+00:00

['Gemini Man', 'Profile', 'Astrology', 'Gemini', 'Psychology']

The identity behind your bra size

Try this on for size Wandering past Hoyt Street to Atlantic Avenue, I observed the storefronts change from Old Navy and H&M to a smattering of brunch spots, cafes, and clothing boutiques carrying one or two designers with hand-written “Out to lunch” signs on the windows. I scowled a little, hoping I wasn’t about to enter one of those “look but don’t touch” lingerie shops I tend to dread. Finally I arrive at what looks to be a high end clothing boutique with Asian influences and a sign that the lingerie shop is downstairs at the garden level. I weave my way though the tiny shop, down the stairs, and around the corner. Then I’m alone among a sea of bras. “Hello…?” I call out. A few beats pass. “…oh someone is here…” I hear shuffling from a place I can’t yet see. Then a woman pokes her head out from the back room. “Hello! Yes, how can I help you?” “Hi! I’d like a bra fitting, if that’s ok.” At that, the woman, who I later learn is Iris, launches into action mode. “I’ll take your coat,” she beckons, and I hand it over, dropping my purse to the floor as I uncurl my scarf. “No, pick that up!” Iris demands. “It’s unlucky for purses to be on the floor. Put that here, on this shelf.” I do as she says and then look down to my umbrella. “That,” she continued, “can stay right here on the floor.” She ushers me into the fitting room and instructs me to get ready for the fitting. “So just, take off everything, or just…er…” I awkwardly call to her from behind the curtain. She sighs audibly. “No! Just your shirt. I can’t have naked people running all over my store!” Makes sense, I think. As I wait for her to return, I hear her poking her way through the shop. “What are you looking for?” Iris asks me. “Well, my bra is broken and has been hurting me a bit today. But truth be told, I probably need a few other things too.” “Have you seen me before?” “No.” “Okay so we’ll start your record. Where do you shop today for bras?” “Nowhere good,” I admit. She pulls aside the curtain, takes a look, then hands me a bra. “Try this.” I put it on with her help. It’s not quite right. “Do you see how you’re moving out of it?” She asks. I don’t see. Clearly I haven’t been paying close enough attention to these things. Iris shuts the curtain as I try to teach myself what a bra that doesn’t fit looks like. I hear some rustling of tiny plastic hangers and she tosses me another bra. “Put this on,” she instructs. As I do, I think get a glimpse of the size tag in the mirror and do a double-take. She pulls aside the curtain in a flash. “Aha! There we have it.” She smiles. I acknowledge that it feels good. Really good. But I’m still a little shell-shocked from what I thought I saw in the mirror. “Um, what size is this?” I ask uncomfortably, praying I saw something different. She says the number out loud. I gasp in disbelief. Both the band and cup size are 1 or 2 places different from my usual size. “Wait, seriously?! But I’ve never worn that size before in my life!!” I stare at her open-mouthed, in complete shock. She gives me a look that says, well no shit, sweetheart, that’s why you’re here to see me. She shuts the curtain again and I finally notice the newspaper articles taped to the mirror. A New York Times piece from 2015 refers to Iris as “the bra whisperer.” Another remarks on her beloved presence in the neighborhood. It’s only then that I realized I have stumbled upon greatness. Iris spends the next 20 minutes passing bras back and forth over the curtain to me as I try on one after the other, each one further validating that number-and-letter combo she gave me earlier. At one point, she hands me a strapless bra that’s within striking range of my normal size. I shuffle a little in it, eager to find comfort in a size I’m used to. It doesn’t fit. She hands me one in my new size. It’s perfect.

https://medium.com/athena-talks/the-identity-behind-your-bra-size-e9352f5d3437

['Bethany Crystal']

2018-10-28 01:56:39.877000+00:00

['Women', 'Shopping', 'Gender', 'Feminism', 'Bras']

How to pay off credit card debt quickly — Bright Money

Pay off credit card debt quickly Pay off credit card debt quickly The best, most cost-effective way to pay off credit cards is to pay your balances in full before the due dates. You’ll find your full balance on your monthly credit card statements, along with its due date. If you can’t pay in full and have to carry a balance from one month to the next, you’ll pay an interest charge on the balance. If you continue to carry balances for months, you’ll pay more and more interest as your balance accrues. When you look at your monthly card statement, you’ll see the charges and purchases made throughout the month, along with the total balance and the due date. But you’ll also see a “minimum due” amount. Paying this amount keeps your account open and avoids penalties, but it doesn’t do much for paying off your debt. A minimum due payment only pays the interest charges due that month — leaving your balance to carry over into the next payment cycle. None of your minimum payment actually pays off your current debt. So let’s look at a few ways to pay off credit card debt — and reduce the interest you’re paying every month. 1. Pay more than the minimum due. Even if you can’t pay the full balance, try paying more than the minimum due. You’ll make progress on paying off your debt — and pay less in interest charges over the weeks ahead. Find a comfortable middle ground, between the minimum due and the balance total. Beyond the minimum, you can pay as much as you’d like, up to the full amount. 2. Adjust your monthly budget. First, make sure your credit card bills are part of your monthly budget. Estimate your card charges and purchases for a month and make room on your budget as a fixed expense. Then see what you can adjust. If you’re unable to pay your cards’ full balance every month, are there other expenses you can limit or eliminate? Re-allocate those funds for card payments — at least until your card balances are cleared. Remember: unlike other expenses, carrying a credit card balance costs you money — in interest charges — month after month. 3. Follow a proven debt-reduction plan Following a plan, using a proven strategy, can keep you focused on paying off your card debt. The two most popular strategies are both effective — the debt Snowball method and the debt Avalanche method. With both methods, you’ll pay the minimum due on all your cards every month. With the Snowball strategy, you’ll pay as much as you can afford on the card with the lowest balance. Once it’s cleared, you’ll do the same with the card with the next-lowest balance. It’s the fastest way to clear one card after another and build snowball-like momentum. With the Avalanche strategy, you’ll pay as much as you can afford on the card with the highest interest charges. That might not be the card with the highest interest rate — because a card with lower rate but a higher balance could be charging the most interest month after month. You’ll have to compare statements every month, but you’ll pay less in interest than with the Snowball strategy. 4. Try debt consolidation With debt consolidation, you’ll secure a loan dedicated specifically to paying off debts. Use the loan’s lump sum to pay off your card balances, then instead of juggling payments and due dates, make a single payment on your new loan — at a lower interest rate. Debt consolidation loans are usually personal loans, and many are secured loans, requiring an application review and collateral. Use Bright to pay credit card debts Bright can pay off your cards faster and save you money on interest charges. Once you download the Bright app, we’ll use our patented MoneyScience™ to study your finances, learn about your debt and make smart payments, always on time and optimized to save you money, getting you debt-free fast. Bright also offers Bright Balance Transfers, a smart alternative with competitive rates and built-in automation. Bright Balance Transfer offers a low-interest line of credit designed to pay off card debt fast while saving you from high interest charges. Once approved, Bright uses the funds from your Bright Balance Transfer to pay off your high-interest cards, moving those debts to our balance transfer program with its lower APR. Over the months ahead, Bright automates your new repayments, too, so you pay less in interest and it’s hassle-free. Bright Balance Transfers offers credit lines of up to $10,000 at APRs starting from 9.95%, depending on your eligibility. If you don’t have it yet, download the Bright app from the App Store or GooglePlay. Connect your checking account and your cards, set a few goals and let Bright do the rest. With a personal Bright Plan, you can apply for Bright Credit Builder or Bright Balance Transfer or use MoneyScience™ to pay off your cards fast. Recommended Readings: Good Debt vs. Bad Debt: What’s the Difference? What is APR and How Does It Work? Originally published at https://www.brightmoney.co.

https://medium.com/help-with-credit-card-debt/how-to-pay-off-credit-card-debt-quickly-bright-money-6be675f3a7b1

['Bright Money']

2021-12-25 05:32:44.426000+00:00

['Credit Cards', 'Bright Money', 'Debt', 'Personal Finance', 'Fintech']

Same Same But Different

Be the Change and all… plaque outside a local church Times change, but people not so much. There are always reasons. Things move so fast in our internet-driven, 24/7, high-speed society that it’s hard to assimilate everything all the time, so instead people lapse into familiar ways and patterns, a form of stasis perhaps, but keeping up often requires way more energy and free time than most of us have. As a result, we are all guilty of a certain rigidity of thinking. Now before you say, “not me” let me just say I know who you are because I am you. One time, long ago when Catholicism was all I knew, I thought that everyone who wasn’t Catholic was wrong and only I, and anyone who thought like me, was right. Thank the heavens I got over that! All it took was a comparative religion class for starters, where I heard, quite clearly, people of different faiths saying THE EXACT SAME THINGS about God that I was saying. Coincidence? I think not. Today, it’s happening again for me, but this time it’s politics. The people who think the exact opposite of me politically are saying the exact same thing about my guys (used in the generic sense of the word) as I’m saying about their guys, sometimes at the same time, which is when we look at each other knowingly — and laugh. Hallelujah for a break in the stalemate at the court of public opinion! It happened to me the other week with my neighbor who’s great, just not his political choices. Coincidentally, he thinks the same thing about me. I believe you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own set of facts. My mother used to admonish us kids to keep our opinions to ourselves. In a society of over-sharers, there’s something to that. Maybe if people kept a few opinions to themselves once in awhile our nation wouldn’t be in this pickle. Anyway, over the course of conversation with my neighbor, we both said we couldn’t believe what Candidate [fill in the blank] was doing, and when we both used the same words about our respective candidates AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT, it dawned on me: we are entrenched and we are never going to get anywhere, never going to get out of it or remedy it, never going to do the “full speed ahead” kind of maneuvering we need to save a planet that is very clearly trying to shake off the human component of its existence, unless — we honor our differences. That’s right — Honor Our Differences. It’s hard. I’m not going to lie. To think that our newest Supreme Court Justice could undo decades of advancements for women with a few strokes of the pen makes me apoplectic. But I know from whence she came in all her conservative thinking because I was once her. But people can change, yes, sometimes they can even surprise us as Pope Francis has done on more than a few occasions since he took over as the head of the Catholic Church with his message of inclusivity for all. To move forward we often need a push to find fulfillment and balance and an understanding of the process of transformation. Perhaps the world needs a life coach, or as my friend Kelly says, couples therapy. Generally, the only way to have trust in the process is to make it a collaborative one, something that’s been missing in the U.S., especially in religion and politics, for many years. Access and consensus are imperative. Siloing is destructive. People who believe in God telling me I’m wrong because I don’t believe in God the way they believe in God seems illogical to me, maybe even unethical. To them I say, has it ever occurred to you that you may be wrong? Very few things that have worried me have come to fruition. I’ll take that as a win, not because my worrying solved anything, but because it all worked out despite my interference. And things I’ve thought about people have not been true, or maybe things I’ve never thought about them have been true. Either way, my preconceived notions about people should not be the litmus test; everyone needs an opportunity to prove themselves and to be that which they came to this planet to be. Everyone. Even people with whom we disagree vehemently as in God Bless the Whole World, No Exceptions. So what is the next version of US? What does the U.S. 2.0 look like? What needs to change? What should stay the same? And how the heck are we going to get passed the political deadlock that has been the hallmark of our country for the last couple decades? We used to be able to talk to each other with admiration rather than derision. Can we find that happy place again? Try this. Recall a picture of yourself from childhood. What did that adorable you want and desire out of life? Your daily needs were probably limited and your daily joys likely great. Now take a peek at yourself today. Do you still recognize the child? Hopefully, you can still identify the shimmer and glimmer of the unbiased, unbroken child within because it still lives in your adult body. Can you go back to being that little person? Not without a time machine, but it is a useful exercise to remember what it was that drove you before you became somewhat jaded by life in general and the usual adult BS in specific. So grab those best parts of your childhood self while you’re thinking about them and pull them into the present. You’ll want them later. How about as a nation we do the same? Take the best parts of our lives and incorporate them into the next version of ourselves and try, really try, to work on the worst? My friend and life coach — yes, I got a life coach this year to help me figure out the next version of myself: Pam 2.0! — Mike told me a story about how when he was little — maybe 8 or so — he used to walk a blind man to the bar on the corner where the man could get a beer. There was never any spoken agreement between the two. Mike just saw him one day and knew where he was going so he’d grabbed the man’s arm and walked him to the bar and waited until he was done and then walked the man home. While there, the blind man drank a beer and he always bought Mike a coke. That’s not why Mike did it. He didn’t need that man to buy him a soft drink. He did it because even as a young child Mike was driven to service and he knew the man would appreciate his help. Plus, he got to hear the blind man’s stories and in that, Mike got his first taste of listening, a skill that completely supports his current side gig and maybe someday full-time job as a life coach. Coincidence? I think not. Who you were as a kid is who you really are underneath all the learned behaviors that society forces upon us. Your true soul energy had a powerful current running through you when you were a born; it continued into childhood and lives within you today, although it may be a bit more tamped down than the original. That doesn’t mean you should give up trying to connect. Tap into your soul now and try to remember what it was that drove you. Reconnect with the essence of your younger self and get some answers for the you of today. While you’re at it, have a little tolerance for yourself and the rest of the world. Give thanks for small incremental changes rooted in love. They are the very best and most lasting kind. Happy holidays to you all. I am grateful for the power of a free-thinking, diverse society that is always evolving and always rising to the challenge of living life in harmony with nature, and each another. At least that’s my vision. Want to join me? God bless the Whole World — No Exceptions.

https://medium.com/@pamlazos/same-same-but-different-c6d937816d1b

['Pam Lazos']

2020-12-18 13:26:59.493000+00:00

['Evolve', 'Politics', 'Joy', 'Tolerance', 'Be The Change']

Parisian dress code for clubbing

We assume that you are reading this because you’re either planning your trip to Paris or just about to go out in the city of love and you’re wondering, what to wear? When you think about Paris you probably imagine a little chic café, paved streets, the Eiffel Tower, couples holding hands and people dressed up as if they are coming out of a Vogue magazine. But when it comes to dressing up for a night out, what do you actually wear? If you know that the door policy at evening restaurants and clubstaurants is fairly strict, then the nightclubs are 100x times more rigorous. No worries though, we’re here to help. Clubbable helps people to get in the hottest clubs worldwide all the time, but Paris is one of our main spots so we know the dos and don’ts more than anyone around! Dress codes can be confusing, so let us help you with our detailed, visual guides of what can pass the door staff and what never gets in. We will split this in two, for ladies and for men, so it will be easier for you to find what you’re looking for. As always, ladies first. What does get in? Please keep in mind that we did not make these rules but they are enforced by the club’s policy. Parisians love an elegant, chic but sexy look. So anything that’s young, badass or flirtish, depends on your personal style, will get in. Let’s show you some real examples from girls who did get in at various clubs in Paris to make this easier. DOS Elegant, dreamy, vaporous short dresses Edgy look — biker, leather jacket/pants, skirts with a cool top or mini dress, mainly black Jeans, but only if you make it fashionable, it’s recommended to wear some type of higher heels with this look Long dresses, in Paris you can never be overdressed so don’t worry about putting on that fancy dress One word, sparkle! That tight short dress that looks like your second skin Proper pants with a casual or elegant top So as you can see, the styles are very versatile and fit different types of taste when it comes to what one is comfortable to wear. You can go all the way out and put on the most expensive royal looking dress or have a laid back look by pairing jeans with a nice blouse or cropped top. What’s very important are the shoes, if you’re a very tall person, above 1.75m/5’9, then you might get in wearing flat shoes, nothing sporty though, but if you’re shorter you will have to wear platforms or some type of higher shoes, even heeled boots can work depending on your outfit and the nightclub. A few examples of what would not get in are: DON’TS Big sweaters, unified jeans/ pants, granny dresses, sneakers, sports wear, puffer jacket, beach wear, flip flops.. That’s it for you ladies! Just look put together as per dos above examples and you’ll be fine. Now what should our guys wear? Booking an expensive table does not guarantee you entrance, if you want to spend 5k on a nightout but show up at the door dressed poorly you will not get in and we can’t help with that. DOS We’ll keep it short and simple for the nightlife men, shirts! Proper shirt Floral shirt Funky shirt Casual shirt You name it, just wear a shirt! Pair it with smart casual jeans or pants and you’re good. Go for a blazer or leather jacket rather than a puffy jacket to keep you warm. You can also opt for a sweatshirt, turtleneck or a simple t-shirt but they need to look smart. Accessories such as watches, necklaces, hats are also very welcomed. Or the best option that doesn’t ever fail you, a proper suit Keep in mind that your shoes are also very important, pick the ones that look smart or even formal shoes Footwear is also very important and even if you have a nice outfit on your shoes can determine if you get in or not. Only wear 1 — proper shoes or 2 — smart shoes Here are the examples Proper, formal shoes Smart casual shoes (careful with these, they shouldn’t be too casual) Now that you know how to dress to impress and be allowed entrance you must know what to avoid. DON’TS Fanny packs, caps, sports wear, backpacks, sneakers, hoodie over head, jogging bottoms, tennis shoes, tank tops, an overly colourful outfit that doesn’t match, sandals, visible socks, flip flops, big designer logo.. There you have it, what to wear and what not to wear when going out in Paris for girls and guys. If you follow our advice you will be looking good in the eyes of the door staff but you also need to have a good attitude, be sober and behave while waiting to get in. Good luck at the door and most importantly always have fun!

https://medium.com/@karlapop/parisian-dress-code-for-clubbing-4cabdec9cdbf

['Karla Pop']

2020-11-03 10:40:50.484000+00:00

['Style', 'Dress Code', 'Paris', 'Clubs', 'Nightlife']

Accounts from Incomplete Records

Accounting records, which aren’t strictly kept consistent with the double-entry bookkeeping system are referred to as Accounts from incomplete records. Many authors describe it as a single entry system. However, a single-entry bookkeeping system may be a misnomer because there’s no such system for maintaining accounting records. It is also not a ‘shortcut’ method as an alternate to the double-entry bookkeeping system. It is rather a mechanism of maintaining records whereby some transactions are recorded with proper debits and credits while just in the case of others, either one-sided or no entry is formed. Accounts from Incomplete Records Normally, under this technique records of money and private accounts of debtors and creditors are properly maintained, while the knowledge concerning assets, liabilities, expenses and revenues is partially recorded. Hence, these are usually referred to as accounts from incomplete records. For more details please visit:https://www.manishco.com/accounts-from-incomplete-records/

https://medium.com/@manish-shribalaji/accounts-from-incomplete-records-feb43513708

['Manishkumar Shrivastav']

2021-12-27 17:23:53.058000+00:00

['Accounting', 'Accountancy', 'Meaning Of Accounting']

House Price Prediction Machine Learning Model.

Thousands of houses are sold every day. There are some questions every buyer asks himself like: What is the actual price that this house deserves? Am I paying a fair price? In this project, a machine learning model is proposed to predict a house price based on data related to the house (its size, the year it was built in, etc.). During the development and evaluation of the model, I have demonstrated the code used for each step followed by its output. Note:-Here I’m using Jupyter Notebook. You can even use Google Colab or any other ID. I tried to add comments in all the cells so that you can understand them easily. If you still have any doubt you can reach me through the links given at the end of this blog. I have divided the blog into Simple steps. In order to make you all more clear. Import the necessary libraries and loading data. Data is rightly skewed hence Transforming it VISUALIZING NULL VALUES FEATURE ENGINEERING filling missing values LOADING LIBRARIES Modeling: 1. Gradient Boosting: Gradient boosting is a machine learning technique for regression and classification problems, which produces a prediction model in the form of an ensemble of weak prediction models, typically decision trees. It builds the model in a stage-wise fashion like other boosting methods do, and it generalizes them by allowing optimization of an arbitrary differentiable loss function. 2. XGBoost: XGBoost is an optimized distributed gradient boosting library designed to be highly efficient, flexible and portable. It implements machine learning algorithms under the Gradient Boosting framework. 3. LASSO: Lasso regression is a type of linear regression that uses shrinkage. Shrinkage is where data values are shrunk towards a central point, like the mean. The lasso procedure encourages simple, sparse models. This particular type of regression is well suited for models showing high levels of multicollinearity or when you want to automate certain parts of model selection, like variable selection/parameter elimination. 4. RIDGE: Ridge Regularization is a technique that helps overcoming over-fitting problem in machine learning models. It is called Regularization as it helps keeping the parameters regular or normal. The score of the model is 0.12503 Conclusion/ Results As a result, we can say, XGBOOST is the best fit to this dataset, gives 0.107 accuracy. Gradient, lasso, ridge Models are working very well on this Dataset. Ensembled all the models together for better results. Future Scope In future, the models can be upgraded with some better techniques in terms of getting higher and better accuracy.

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/house-price-prediction-machine-learning-model-41cb1cf98914

['Syed Nauman']

2020-12-17 15:09:01.001000+00:00

['Kaggle', 'Machine Learning', 'House Price Prediction', 'Board Infinity', 'Médium']

When a river is a person, would the world be different?

When a river is a person, would the world be different? From Ecuador to India to New Zealand, nature gets her day in court. The laws in these countries have been changed to include nature beings. In New Zealand, a law has been adopted that gives the Whanganui River, flowing across the North Island, the rights of personhood. That means the river can act as a person in a court of law. She has legal standing. One step at a time, some countries are starting to understand Deep Ecology. We, humans, are part of nature. Respectful equals. And our human laws will reflect that in time. © Désirée Driesenaar

https://medium.com/illumination-curated/when-a-river-is-a-person-would-the-world-be-different-98dcd0a483ab

['Desiree Driesenaar']

2020-12-28 16:47:51.383000+00:00

['Rivers', 'Life', 'Law', 'Short', 'Nature']

Meet a Husker: Nick Harp

For Pride Month, we’re featuring students who are making an impact on campus and beyond. This week, meet Nick Harp, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology from Knoxville, Tennessee. Through his involvements, Nick works to advance representation and support for LGBTQA+ folks at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and in the community. What prompted you to found UNL’s chapter of the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals? Is there anything particular you’re proud of from your time as president? Thanks for the great question. There were several factors motivating my decision. First, I came from an institution where the state legislature voted to defund the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, including the LGBTQA+ Center, which regularly lands it on a list of the most unwelcoming campuses for LGBTQA+ folks. Having had that experience, I wanted to become more active in LGBTQA+ advocacy but was not sure how to do so. Shortly after starting graduate school, I learned of the so-called “leaky pipeline” of LGBTQA+ folks with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) interests. In short, sexual minority folks don’t stay in STEM at the same rate as their heterosexual counterparts (Freeman, 2018). There are numerous reasons for this, but I think a powerful way to combat this kind of thing is having visible LGBTQA+ members in the STEM community. Achieving better LGBTQA+ representation in STEM and contributing to a more welcoming campus community thus became influential motivating factors for founding UNL’s chapter. Additionally, founding the chapter offered me an opportunity to merge my academic career with advocacy work. Further, I felt like the needs of LGBTQA+ graduate students weren’t necessarily being met by other groups on campus. I do want to be clear that there are lots of LGBTQA+ advocacy and support groups on campus that are doing awesome work, but I think that graduate and professional students sometimes have a different set of needs than other campus community members. Although the group is open to anyone on campus, we do focus our programming on topics that better cater to these needs. For instance, professional development opportunities (e.g., diversity statement workshops; Q&A with “out” faculty about the academic job market) are at the core of our programming. I think I am most proud of the growing collaborative nature of the organization, both in terms of campus relationships but also more broadly. We’ve made connections with other student groups on campus that are involved in diversity, equity, and inclusion work, which I think helps build a supportive community for the broad range of identities on our campus. We’ve also made community connections — we’ve attended LGTBQA+ events (e.g., Pride in the Park) and are currently working to develop partnerships with community businesses to help connect organization members with jobs and other opportunities. I also should mention that we, and the national organization, have recently undergone some rebranding. Our UNL chapter is now known as Out to Innovate at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (OTI-UNL). Rolls off the tongue just a little easier! And more importantly, I think the rebranding is more inclusive, considering the previous name only explicitly stated “gay” and “lesbian” despite our intentions to support the full LGBTQA+ community and allies. I’d also encourage interested folks to reach out to us via our Facebook page to learn more about connecting with the organization. Talk about working on a program to provide anonymous support to LGBTQA+ international students and its importance. This is an undertaking that we just began last semester, but I hope to see it come to fruition over the next academic year. I also certainly can’t take credit for the idea, as it was another member who mentioned this crucial gap in support for LGBTQA+ students. The goal of the program, ultimately, will be to provide an anonymous online chat forum that international students can use to reach out for support. Studying abroad comes with a lot of cultural navigation, and that includes expressions of gender and sexuality. One obstacle that many LGBTQA+ folks navigate at some point in their life is “coming out” and openly expressing their identity, and to be honest, this is sometimes navigated repeatedly (i.e., among different groups of people like friends, family, coworkers, etc.). Among the many considerations that folks have to consider is the possibility of negative ramifications after coming out. For instance, although there was a recent U.S. Supreme Court case that set a precedent of protecting LGBTQA+ workers from being fired for their gender or sexual identity, there were previously no federal protections. In other words, you might lose your job for coming out. Some nations even have laws that criminalize LGBTQA+ folks, and if someone is coming from that background then this process can really be distressful. Protecting anonymity is crucial because it helps overcome a barrier that some might be facing in terms of seeking social support. You also asked about why this is so important. LGBTQA+ folks that are lacking social support are at risk for a lot of negative outcomes (e.g., physical, mental, financial), so it is important to provide options for support to folks in need to help reduce risks of these kinds of outcomes. I think the anonymous support option is kind of a blind spot, and I hope that we can make this valuable option a reality soon. Talk about your community impact through the free legal name change clinic. This is another effort that I hope to see continuing. I was fortunate to be involved with this effort as a representative of the Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Gender and Sexual Identity (CCSGSI). The effort was highly collaborative and included folks from OutNebraska, the Legal Aid of Nebraska, the LGBTQA+ Center, and more. Unfortunately, I feel that this effort would have had an even larger impact had the COVID-19 pandemic not occurred. The event was shifted to an online format, which restricted attendance to those from Douglas County, after the implementation of lockdowns across the country, but the online event did provide valuable services to folks in the LGBTQA+ community. One of the reasons that these kinds of events and efforts are so impactful is that it provides support for folks navigating things that many of us are not taught about. In other words, seeking out legal aid or navigating the name change process yourself can feel like a lot to handle, and it is more difficult to find someone to ask for help navigating this because cis-gender folks rarely seek this. Offering resources like this from time to time is a great way to help support gender-diverse communities. It’s also a really important step for achieving identity recognition. There are lots of systems that require a legal (rather than chosen) name, and providing people with the tools to make that change legally helps their identity be recognized. While I’m on this topic, I feel like I should mention how important it is to apologize and correct yourself if you mistake someone’s identity or use an incorrect name — it just takes a second and is really important to acknowledge. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about related to the Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Gender and Sexual Identity? Sure! The Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Gender and Sexual Identity (CCSGSI) is a relatively new resource for the community, although there was previously a Committee on GLBT Concerns. One of my biggest concerns from chats with other student members of CCSGSI, which I hope to help address this year, is that not enough folks are aware of this resource, especially students. We have a student subcommittee that plans to start hosting office hours or listening sessions this year where folks can drop in and chat with us, so be on the lookout for that! I’d also encourage anyone that is interested in becoming more involved in LGBTQA+ activism to consider applying when there are available spots. It is a great opportunity to engage in activism, but there are also lots of chances to learn about how the university and campus function as a whole. Is there anything you hope to accomplish in your lifetime? Great question… I suppose there is a lot that I’d like to accomplish! On this front, in particular, I’d like to maintain my advocacy throughout my career. That’s a little nondescript for a goal, but it leaves room for growth. I didn’t expect advocacy and service to be a large portion of my experience as a graduate student, but I’m thankful that it has been. I’ve found that I quite enjoy the work, and I hope to take that with me as I continue to do post-doctoral research and hopefully move into a faculty position later in my career. What or who inspires/motivates you? I feel incredibly lucky to have so many sources of inspiration. I would have to say that my colleagues in CCSGSI and NOGLSTP-UNL/OTI-UNL are very inspiring. Seeing colleagues that are also passionate about this topic and willing to volunteer their time to advocate for the community is pretty impactful and helps keep me motivated. We also get to celebrate victories together; if you’re trying to do advocacy in a void, then you’ll burnout quickly. Establishing and maintaining supportive networks is crucial for motivation. I’m also inspired by my parents. They raised me to care for people in need, to stand up for causes that I’m passionate about, and to give it my all. I really can’t thank them enough for their impact on my life’s trajectory. What is your advice to other Huskers looking to make an impact? If you have an idea, then get out there, get involved, and give it your all. I really didn’t expect that NOGLSTP-UNL/OTI-UNL would take off as much as it has over the past few years, which has been really rewarding to see and has helped motivate me to continue the work. I think that, if there’s an area that you think is in need of impactful work, then you’re probably right, and there are probably others who share your feelings. Sometimes it just takes one person to push for something, whether that’s forming a student group or volunteering to serve in a campus or community role, to really make an impact.

https://medium.com/university-of-nebraska-lincoln/meet-a-husker-nick-harp-48cd24a3d7ae

['University Of Nebraska-Lincoln']

2021-06-09 15:48:44.566000+00:00

['Pride', 'College', 'Pride Month', 'Impact', 'Meet A Husker']

Californians Can Now Track Covid-19 Exposure on Their Phones

Californians Can Now Track Covid-19 Exposure on Their Phones CA Notify app installation. Images: Gado Images California took a major step forward in Covid-19 technology today when the state became among the first in the USA to launch a customized coronavirus exposure notification app. This morning, many Californians awoke to an Android or iOS notification informing them that the app, called CA Notify, was live. Users can download CA Notify from the Google Play Store on Android or the App Store on iOS devices. It is also being pushed to your phone to prompt you to sign up. CA Notify uses your phone to track potential Covid-19 exposures as you go about daily life and to notify you of situations where you might have been exposed to a Covid-19 positive person. Because our phones are embedded with sensors already — and include location-tracking GPS and Wi-Fi tech — exposure notification apps seem like they should be easy to create with existing technologies. Sign up for The Bold Italic newsletter to get the best of the Bay Area in your inbox every week. A theoretical notification app could log your location and the locations of other users, much as Google Timeline logs the location of your Android phone already. If another user tested positive, the app could compare their location history to yours, and notify you if you spent time in the same place. It seems like a fairly easy problem for modern tech to solve. Except it’s not. For starters, an app that constantly logs your location and sends it to a centralized government database would be a privacy nightmare. Any government entity with access to the database could pull up your location history any time they wanted. The implications for biased policing, illegal searches, and other abuses would be monumental. Constantly recording your fine-grained location and sending it off to the government would also be a massive drain on your phone’s battery, data plan, and processor. Instead of storing it within the government, governments worldwide have worked together with both Apple and Google to create an innovative solution that allows for exposure notifications while keeping your phone snappy, and minimizing the risk to your privacy. The system is built on a protocol that uses the Bluetooth chip in your phone to communicate anonymously with other phones around you. https://palmach.org.il/mtc/E-v-C01.html https://palmach.org.il/mtc/E-v-C02.html https://palmach.org.il/mtc/E-v-C03.html https://palmach.org.il/mtc/E-v-C04.html https://palmach.org.il/mtc/E-v-C05.html https://palmach.org.il/mtc/E-v-C06.html https://palmach.org.il/mtc/Real-v-Atletico1.html https://palmach.org.il/mtc/Real-v-Atletico2.html https://palmach.org.il/mtc/Real-v-Atletico3.html https://palmach.org.il/mtc/Real-v-Atletico4.html https://palmach.org.il/mtc/Real-v-Atletico5.html https://www.americance.com/b-v-j6.html https://www.americance.com/e-v-c4.html http://www.bgh.org.il/tube/b-v-j1.html http://www.bgh.org.il/tube/e-v-c1.html http://www.bgh.org.il/tube/Jo-v-b04.html https://palmach.org.il/az1/b-v-j2.html https://palmach.org.il/az1/e-v-c02.html https://palmach.org.il/az1/Jo-v-box01.html http://www.tvuna.co.il/az1/b-v-j4.html http://www.tvuna.co.il/az1/e-v-c2.html http://www.tvuna.co.il/az1/Jo-v-box02.html http://hahagana.org.il/poka/n-v-a01.html http://hahagana.org.il/poka/n-v-a02.html http://hahagana.org.il/poka/n-v-a03.html http://hahagana.org.il/poka/n-v-a04.html http://hahagana.org.il/poka/n-v-a05.html http://hahagana.org.il/poka/n-v-m-gt1.html http://hahagana.org.il/poka/n-v-m-gt2.html http://hahagana.org.il/poka/n-v-m-gt3.html http://hahagana.org.il/poka/n-v-m-gt4.html http://hahagana.org.il/poka/n-v-m-gt5.html http://www.vodokanal.net/pop/c-t-vt01.html http://www.vodokanal.net/pop/c-t-vt02.html http://www.vodokanal.net/pop/c-t-vt03.html http://www.vodokanal.net/pop/c-t-vt04.html http://www.vodokanal.net/pop/c-t-vt05.html http://www.vodokanal.net/pop/c-v-t01.html http://www.vodokanal.net/pop/c-v-t02.html http://www.vodokanal.net/pop/c-v-t03.html http://www.vodokanal.net/pop/c-v-t04.html http://www.vodokanal.net/pop/c-v-t05.html https://www.americance.com/e-v-c05.html https://www.americance.com/e-v-c04.html https://www.americance.com/e-v-c03.html https://www.americance.com/e-v-c02.html https://www.americance.com/e-v-c01.html https://www.americance.com/a-v-r5.html https://www.americance.com/a-v-r4.html https://www.americance.com/a-v-r3.html https://www.americance.com/a-v-r2.html https://www.americance.com/a-v-r1.html If you download an app like CA Notify, your phone will constantly look for the Bluetooth signatures of other app users who are physically nearby to you. When it detects another user, it will log their presence, and record how long you spent in their proximity, and approximately how close you were. All this data is stored on your phone — it doesn’t get sent off to a central location, so the risk that it will be used to monitor your movements is minimal. Your phone will also broadcast your own signature, so other users can record when they’re been around you. If an app user tests positive for the virus, they can log this status in their CA Notify app. CA Notify will then send an anonymous message out to all other app users, with the infected user’s unique signature. This won’t be linked to their identity, so their privacy will be protected. Your phone will look at this message, and see if the infected person’s signature appears in your phone’s personal list of the people you’ve spent time around. If it does — and if you spent enough time around the infected person that you could potentially have become infected yourself — you’ll get a notification in your own CA Notify app. You can then choose to act on this however you’d like. CA Notify and the system behind it is an elegant compromise between keeping people informed and respecting their privacy (and the costs to their data plan). I downloaded the app this morning and will be experimenting with it more to see exactly how it works. The app itself is simple, with just a few tabs — Exposures, Notify Others, and Settings, which allows users to determine if they’d like to share additional performance and analytics information with the state. The app’s effectiveness will likely depend on how many Californians download it, and how well it filters out false positives. If you get a notification for every Covid-19 positive person you drive past (or everyone you’re within 100 yards of, even if they’re in a different building), people will likely get fed up and abandon the app. But if it automates the process of informing people about exposures, takes some burden off of contact tracers, and empowers citizens to manage and reduce their own exposure risk, the app could be hugely beneficial. I could see a future where exposure notifications are gamified. Just as people try to maximize their steps with a Fitbit, they could try to minimize their potential exposures by social distancing, going to businesses at less crowded times, and the like. It may be only a matter of time before a screenshot of the app showing “No Exposures” becomes a social media badge of honor, showing others that you’re taking Covid-19 measures seriously. Around 20 other U.S. states have already launched notification apps of their own, based on the same Apple/Google system. If you’re a Californian, consider checking out CA Notify today. If you’re not, check and see if your own state has a similar app, and see if it proves helpful in your own personal fight against the pandemic.

https://medium.com/@vatakalam102/californians-can-now-track-covid-19-exposure-on-their-phones-d1913de1776e

['Abdul Kalam']

2020-12-12 20:19:33.458000+00:00

['Apps', 'Public Health', 'Covid 19', 'Technology']

Upya Notes from the Last Mile: Mid-project Energy Catalyst update

Givewatts sales agents in action What happened this year? In March of last year, we announced our latest off-grid electrification initiative. The project would be in partnership with Givewatts, a Kenyan social enterprise and last-mile distributor, and funded by an Innovate UK Energy Catalyst grant. Upya would undertake a 12-month pilot in coastal Kenya, in order to demonstrate how our technology can reduce the cost of off-grid solar power for bottom-of-the-pyramid households in rural parts of Africa. The initiative would also help address the 7th Sustainable Development Goal (‘affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern electricity for all’) helping households gain access to and progress higher up the energy ladder. In April, we discussed our methodology for selecting our pilot site, including overcoming socioeconomic, logistical, and cultural barriers. We outlined that our ideal pilot site should have a cohesive and close-knit community, with appropriate topographical and geographical conditions, as well as a willingness to change. We identified sites in Kilifi, on Kenya’s coast, as an ideal area to target. Residents here have an average income of 300–800KES (3–8 USD) per day, enough to consider making the switch to a solar home system. Kilifi is also within reach of both Upya and Givewatts teams, meaning that time and money are saved in not having to transport stock or agents inland. Latest summary We are happy to report that despite the coronavirus pandemic sales have been successful. By December, we had reached our initial target of 50 SHS sales, with end-users tracked using our CRM software. While we anticipate a decrease in sales over Christmas and the New Year we are now aiming for a revised total of 90 by the end of March. Notable achievements this year include: - Our second order of solar home systems purchased and delivered to our Kenya warehouse - 100% of sales and monthly payments were processed using the Upya web platform and mobile app - Pricing Structure and sales determined by Share Scheme mechanism, where larger deposits are utilised to fund low down-payment deals for those customers who are closer to the bottom of the pyramid. - Impact interviews are underway with customers who have been with us longest - A process to allow roaming customers to make use of the fleet of solar home systems is undergoing early testing What is the typical end-user demographic? Below are two examples of end-users benefiting from our software. ‘Grace’: teacher and carer ‘Grace’ signed up to a 10-month payment plan for a small solar home system. She works multiple jobs, including as a teacher at a local primary school and is also a carer. Between ‘Grace’ and her husband, they earn and spend between $1.50 to $3.00 daily, totalling just under $90 per month. Of this, up to 45 cents per day ($14 per month) would have been spent on kerosene, which would have provided only 3 hours’ worth of additional lighting. Kerosene is also a fossil fuel and known to cause rashes, breathing complications and sore eyes. By purchasing a solar home system through the Upya and Givewatts collaboration, ‘Grace’ and her husband are able to extend the amount of artificial light they receive to 12 hours per day. Her solar home system contract cost her a few dollars in deposit and will cost her less than $10 per month for the duration of ten months. Once she has paid off her contract the solar home system will run for free with an expected product lifetime of 5–7 years. ‘Adam’: charcoal dealer ‘Adam’ is a charcoal dealer and the breadwinner of his family. His household contains a large number of men, women and children, with a monthly household income of $45–90 per month. He spends up to $1 per day on kerosene, alongside which he and his household would spend one hour collecting firewood; this typically provides him with four hours of additional light. ‘Adam’ suffers from breathing difficulties, red eyes and the occasional burn as a consequence of his work as a charcoal dealer and kerosene user. ‘Adam’ purchased the solar home system for him and his household to use. He is signed up to a ten-month payment plan, costing him $0.36 per day, which he makes in daily/weekly/monthly instalments. In doing so, ‘Adam’ has extended the amount of artificial light he receives to up to 12 hours per day, during which he can trade for longer to increase his income or help around the household. Kenya coronavirus update Kenya is currently experiencing its second wave of the pandemic, having seen 71,000 cases and over 1,300 deaths during the period between March and November. It is difficult to gauge the impact on the Kenyan economy, though it is estimated that the growth of real GDP will be 1.5% in 2020, versus 5.4% growth seen in 2019. We are pleased to inform that none of our project staff or field agents on-the-ground have suffered any health issues as a result of the global pandemic. While both Upya and Givewatts teams have been challenged in terms of reaching last-mile customers, we have worked within the confines of the coronavirus restrictions to continue making sales. These extend to mandatory mask wearing in public, the banning of large gatherings, meetings and conferences, a state-wide curfew, and a limit to hospitality and religious gatherings. Given the project’s emphasis on mobile money transactions, limited cash transactions reduced the requirements for physical contact between agents and customers. While the school year will only resume in January 2021 (limiting our reach to parents and families) fortunately domestic air travel resumed in July, and international flights resumed in August, allowing the Upya and Givewatts teams greater movement and an ability to visit sites in person. Upya and Givewatts have made use of virtual technologies and have continued to successfully coordinate the initiative using Zoom, Slack, WhatsApp and Email. Achieving our deliverables The London and Kilifi teams worked well together to overcome both technological and operational barriers. Sales within Kilifi have grown, spanning an area of almost 300 kilometres, owing to the determination of our sales agents. In spite of the challenges posed by the pandemic, we have engaged with rural end-users through a variety of engagements including training workshops, impact interviews and sales events. We have gained valuable feedback in order to implement changes within our operations, including expanding our sales area and product choice, and revisiting our pricing model to make longer-term deals more attractive and flexible. We are aiming to roll out referral-led sales in the coming weeks, alongside driving organic sales thanks to the high-quality manufacturing and performance of the last mile products. We will provide another update at the end of the project to celebrate the success of our latest initiative. Thanks especially to the team on the ground who interact with the project customers on a daily basis, without them none of the work would be possible!

https://medium.com/upya-notes-from-the-last-mile/upya-notes-from-the-last-mile-mid-project-update-34b1f15451a9

['Upya Technologies']

2021-05-20 21:03:43.954000+00:00

['Solar', 'Africa', 'Software', 'Green Energy', 'Environment']

Using Classification Models To Predict Vaccinations

We are currently in the seventh month of a global pandemic. I think I can safely say no one is enjoying it. The quicker this ends the better. One of the most important tools the medical field has when it comes to mitigating the spread of a virus is vaccination. However, vaccinations don’t work if no one gets vaccinated. Now, I realize that sounds like an obvious statement, and in many ways it is. However, it is nonetheless a hugely important fact. This is the underlying idea of “herd immunity”, and it is vital to be able to identify members of the community who are unlikely to get vaccinated. Fortunately for us aspiring data scientists this is not our first pandemic. In response to the H1N1 Flu in 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted a survey “in order to monitor and evaluate flu vaccination efforts among adults and children”. This phone survey asked people whether they had received H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines, in conjunction with information they shared about their lives, opinions, and behaviors. DrivenData provided a large chunk of this dataset and posed the question: Using the survey results can you make a model that predicts who will get either vaccine? I figured I would give it a shot (pun intended). For my last project, I created a linear regression model to predict a baseball team’s total wins. The target there (wins) is a continuous value and so it was perfectly suited for a regression model. This problem is not so simple (or perhaps it’s more simple?). Here our target value is binary, whether or not a participant got the vaccine. So for this problem, we will be looking at classification models rather than regression models. These are models that predict the likelihood of one result or the other, rather than trying to predict a continuous variable. In this post I will walk through the process I took to build my model as well as explain some of the different classification models I ended up not using. Data Cleaning Fair warning, this is the boring part, so if you aren’t very interested you will not lose anything by skipping this section. The data set consisted of 35 different questions. Twenty-three of the questions had numerical answers, with either a range on an opinion scale (1–5) or a simple binary yes(1) or no(0). Twelve of the questions however had categorical answers, i.e. income level, education level, race, city, etc. Most classification models will not work with pure categorical values, so I had to use a few different techniques to convert these categorical values into numerical inputs. The first method I used is to create dummy features for each category. For example, one question asked for a home city. Instead of keeping that one column with all the cities (in text form), I turned each city into its own column. Each city column had a 0 if the respondee did not live there and a 1 if they did. This can be a dangerous approach as it can greatly increase the number of columns, and thus the dimensionality of your dataset. The second method is to convert the text data to ordinal numeric values. This is done when there is some ordered relationship between the values. For example, when looking at education, the data was in the form of “Graduated High School”, “Completed Some College”, “Graduated College”, etc. These values can be converted to 14, 16, and 18 respectively to give a rough estimation of “years in school”. Again, this is only really appropriate where there is already some underlying relationship between the values, where one is “larger” than the other. On top of these transformations, I also had to deal with all of the “Null” values. In particular, for a question on whether or not a participant had health care, nearly half of the responses were “Null” i.e. no data. My first inclination was to just toss this column altogether, there’s not enough data so just get rid of it. However, upon closer look, I saw that while slightly over 20% of all the respondents got the H1N1 vaccine, of the people with “Null” healthcare only 13% got the H1N1 vaccine. This told me that there may actually be value in those “Null” values, so I decided to create “dummy variables” out of that column. I ended up with three columns, “Has Healthcare”, “Doesn’t Have Healthcare”, and “We Don’t Know”. Was this the right approach? Perhaps not, and with more time I would have loved to play around with this feature some more. But this process really exemplified how data cleaning is not a cut and dry process, but rather each decision is unique and requires thought out reasoning. Anyways, now that I had a numerical full data set with no “Null” values I was ready to move to the fun part. Model Introduction Welcome back to those that left us. There are quite a few classification models to choose from. For simplicity (and time) I will be focusing on three classifiers in this post: K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Random Forest Classifiers, Logistic Regression. KNN Let’s start with KNN. This model uses clustering to create a prediction. Let’s first envision a problem with only two features (X and Y) and a target (Orange and Blue). We could graph those features like so: Example KNN Now if we are given a new data point with an X and Y but not color, we could plot it and see what colors are around it. If it is near a lot of blues (in the top right) we will categorize it as blue, if it winds up near a lot of oranges (in the bottom left) we will categorize it as orange. We can fairly easily conceptualize how this would work if we added in a third dimension. And thanks to distance formulas in math, this idea can be scaled up to theoretically infinite dimensions. This is exactly what KNN models are doing. The main parameter you can set in a KNN model is the number of neighbors it will look for to categorize the data point. If you set K to 1, then the new data will be categorized as whatever the closest point is categorized as. This would lead to an extremely overfit model. Likewise, if you set K too high then the model will tend to underfit. Finding an appropriate K is imperative for a good model. Random Forest Classifier The second model I looked at was a Random Forest Classifier (RFC). An RFC is just a collection of Decision Trees, so let’s first breakdown what a decision tree is. Here’s a definition straight from Wikipedia: “A decision tree is a flowchart-like structure in which each internal node represents a “test” on an attribute”. Huh? Ok, maybe a visual representation would be a bit easier. Example Decision Tree The above is an example decision tree to decide what a person should do with their day. The questions are the nodes of the tree, and depending on their answers you work your way down different branches of the “tree”. At a certain point, you reach the “leaf node” which is the category that the model predicts. What does this mean for my model? Well, each survey question will be a different node. So if I feed in a set of survey answers, it will run it down the decision tree model and land at a leaf node which would be the prediction. One main variable you can use to “mold” this model is the tree’s “depth”. The initial node is set at depth 0, and each ensuing branch adds a layer of depth. The “deeper” a tree is the more overfit it can become. A really deep tree would do a great job of explaining the training data, but a poor job of generalizing for new data. There is no “one size fits all” for how deep a tree should be. It will differ for each dataset and each problem. Again, it’s helpful to have a good understanding of your problem in order to understand how to play with this variable. One dataset can have thousands of Decision Trees that give slightly different results. An RFC aggregates a certain number of these trees into a “Forest” and takes the mode of all of the Decision Trees’ results. For example, I made an RFC of 100 trees. If I feed in a set of answers and 70 trees predict “No Vaccine” and 30 predict “Yes Vaccine”, then the RFC will return a “No Vaccine” Prediction. Logistic Regression The last model I’ll discuss in the Logistic Regression model. Of the three this is definitely the hardest to conceptualize. Whereas Linear Regression assumed that there was a linear relationship between our features and our prediction, Logistic Regression assumes a linear relationship between the features and the log-odds of the prediction. So ultimately, the output of a logistic regression model is the percent chance the data entries correspond to one of two binary predictions. Example of Linear regression As you can see in the above image, logistic regression will give you a value between 1 and 0. The closer the value is to 1, the more likely it is to belong to that class. In my case 1 represents a “Yes Vaccine”, so if a logistic regression model returned a 0.85 it was telling me that the given survey inputs corresponded to an 85% chance of getting vaccinated. For a logistic regression model, it is very important to understand your “threshold”. The threshold determines at what cut-off to split your data. If you set your threshold to 0.6 then anything under that would be predicted as a 0. There are a few different methods to determine what threshold works best for your dataset that I will get into later, but again the most important thing to understand is it will vary for every problem. Model Selection Once I had a good understanding of how each model worked, I needed to determine which model would work best for my problem. My model would need to predict two separate targets, H1N1 vaccination, and Seasonal-Flu Vaccination. In the initial data exploration, I quickly noticed that the H1N1 target was highly imbalanced. The proportion of the population that got each vaccine As you can see from the above graph, while close to 50% of the respondents got the Seasonal Flu Vaccination, only about 20% of the respondents got the H1N1 vaccination. This means that we can’t rely on a metric like accuracy to determine how good our model is. Why not? Well, if we made a “dumb model” that just predicted a respondent would not get the H1N1 every single time regardless of the inputs, it would still have an accuracy of almost 80 percent! For this problem, I decided that the False Positives would be the term I would like to limit. These would be the people that my model predicted WOULD get a vaccination that ended up NOT getting a vaccination. This number is important because ultimately I want to be capturing as many of the non-vaccinators as possible. The more False Positives I have, the more non-vaccinators are slipping through the crack. Let’s take a look at how my models did. For the sake of this blog, I am just showing what I did for the unbalanced H1N1 target, but in actuality, I performed all these steps for both target variables. Here you can see three different confusion matrixes for my three models predicting H1N1 vaccines. The False Positives are shown in the top right corner. These are the people the model predicted would get the vaccine that did not. You can see that the Nearest Neighbors method fared the worst, misidentifying 241 non-vaccinators as vaccinators. In addition, it also had the highest number of False Negatives, people it predicted to not get the vaccine that did get it. So it was clear to see that the KNN model would not be the best model in predicting this problem. The other two models had much closer values. I had to look a bit further into these to decide which I would use. Recall versus Precision Recall and precision are two vital metrics when analyzing a classification model’s predictions. They are also very easily mixed up. Here are there formulas: So what do they mean? Precision can be thought of as the percentage of correct identifications out of all of the true values. While the recall is the percentage of correct identifications out of all of the models predicted identifications. In my case, I wanted to limit the false negatives so I wanted to maximize the recall. There will always be a trade-off between the two. So in order to get a higher recall value, sometimes you have to sacrifice a bit of precision. I realize those are a lot of numbers to look at. But focusing on the No H1N1 vaccination recall we see that both models had a score of .95. This means that of all the people that didn't get vaccinated, the models were able to identify 95% of them. Comparing this to the roughly 80% we would have gotten from just guessing that EVERYONE wouldn't have gotten vaccinated we see that our models are doing definitely doing better than a “dumb model”. It turns out my two models were pretty neck and neck when it came to their predictive abilities. By using some fancy ensembling techniques (combining multiple models and taking their averages) I was able to get to a model that consistently (albeit slightly) outperformed these more basic models. However, the last thing I had to factor in was model complexity. For me, this meant how big my actual model was (in actual MBs when I stored it) and how long the model took to make predictions. Logistic regression was an order of ten times smaller than the Random Forest model (remember the random forest was comprised of 100 decision trees) and could produce very quick predictions. So ultimately I decided to use the logistic regression model as my final model for my app. Try it out and see if anything surprises you! Takeaways I found that the most important features for my model were whether or not vaccines were recommended by a doctor and whether or not the respondent had health insurance. This is noteworthy because it tells us that across all ages, education levels, and socio-economic levels a doctor's recommendation is possibly the biggest tool we have. It may not be the most exciting discovery, but I believe it is important none the less. It seems imperative that doctors provide vaccine recommendations during any and every check-up. And if the doctors better understand the impact their recommendations have, I’m sure they would make sure to do so.

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/using-classification-models-to-predict-vaccinations-f71d1c43bec7

['Ryan Werth']

2020-11-18 12:56:33.915000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Pandas', 'Python', 'Classification', 'Data Science']

To Overcome Your Insecurities, Understand Where They Come From

To Overcome Your Insecurities, Understand Where They Come From A crash course in eliminating negative thoughts. Photo by Charnee May on Unsplash I used to feel insecure all the time. I was frequently worried that everyone would judge me for the insecurities I saw in myself. Honestly, I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror because I always felt embarrassed. Looking back, I realize that I allowed negative thoughts to get to my head. I let my insecurities control my mindset and prevent me from living a genuinely happy life. I felt hopeless. But one day, I learned that the best way to overcome your insecurities is to understand where they come from. Because once you can identify why they exist, it’s much easier to prevent them from affecting you in the future. Quoting an article published by VeryWellMind: “When you start confronting your negative views, you can begin to notice how many of them are not true in your life. Instead of assuming the worst, you may realize that you feel disappointed you did not reach a certain goal, but also accept that you are learning and growing from your mistakes and setbacks.” From this, I learned that your mindset will never improve until you take action. Why? Because the only person who can control your thoughts is you. Which means you have the power to prevent them from negatively impacting your life in the future. Here’s how:

https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/to-overcome-your-insecurities-understand-where-they-come-from-10e73345fd56

['Matt Lillywhite']

2020-11-30 15:02:48.351000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Anxiety', 'Psychology']

Pull Crypto Wallet Balance directly on Google Sheets (+150 coins available)

UPDATE TRY IT OUT: LIVE SAMPLE SHEET CRYPTOBALANCE Function If you want to get in real time anyone’s wallet balance, you’ll need: a Google Account for Google Sheets to Copy Paste code from Github This is what your Google Sheet will look like once you finish the setup: Google Sheets CRYPTOBALANCE Formula The CRYPTOBALANCE function returns wallet balances for over 150 cryptocurrencies. You will be able to access the balance through the following formula: =CRYPTOBALANCE(“CRYPTOCURRENCY TICKER”,“PUBLIC WALLET ADDRESS”, EMPTY CELL REFERENCE) NB : in some countries like Italy and Russia, Google sheet’s formula syntax is done with semicolon ‘ ; ’ instead of the comma ‘ , ’ If you get an error message from the formula, it might be the reason. In this case, the formula then becomes : =CRYPTOBALANCE(“CRYPTOCURRENCY TICKER” ; “PUBLIC WALLET ADDRESS” ; EMPTY CELL REFERENCE) 2 Required Parameters + 1 Optional {“CRYPTOCURRENCY TICKER”} The cryptocurrency TICKER/SYMBOL data to fetch, for example the symbol of Bitcoin is BTC. {“PUBLIC WALLET ADDRESS”} The wallet address associated with the cryptocurrency you want the balance from. Please pay attention, DO NOT ENTER your private wallet address. Optional {EMPTY CELL REFERENCE} ONLY on 3rd argument. Reference an empty cell and change its content to force refresh of the balances. EXAMPLE BINANCE BTC Cold Wallet Balance =CRYPTOBALANCE(“BTC”,“34xp4vRoCGJym3xR7yCVPFHoCNxv4Twseo”, $A$1) Open-Source Setup (5min)

https://medium.com/the-cryptocurious/pull-crypto-wallet-balance-directly-on-google-sheets-ca4805613c0e

[]

2020-10-14 14:02:34.955000+00:00

['Google', 'Formula', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Balance']

A Collection of Cool Quotes, Deserves to be a Caption on Social Media

Currently, the development of social media is very fast. Almost everyone nowadays has social media. Usually they use social media as a place to share photos or videos, but there are some people who use social media as their job. Social media that are often used include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram. Through social media, people share the moments they are experiencing, apart from being able to share photos and videos, on social media they can also add words to their uploads. Most of the quotes they choose to express their purpose. With interesting quotes, many other social media users will respond and like their posts. If you want to add quotes to your posts, here are some quotes that you can use. 1. “Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily make us better or even feel better, but it does pave the way for kindness.” — Eleanor Roosevelt 2. “The secret to our success is that we never give up.” — Ilma Mankiller 3. “Success and failure are both parts of life. They are only temporary.” — Shahrukh Khan 4. “The cool thing is not young people who have a lot of style, but young people who have lots of work.” 5. “Learn to be humble, humble yourself so that no one can humble you.” 6. “Don’t let other people’s opinions drown out your inner voice.” — Steve Jobs 7. “If your plan doesn’t work, then change the plan, not the goal.” — Anonymous 8. “Life isn’t always about boyfriends.” 9. “The worst loneliness is not feeling good about yourself.” -Mark Twain. 10. “I am more tired of working out.” -Ernest Prakasa. 11. “The best revenge is to make yourself better.” -Ali bin Abi Talib 12. “The work that never gets done the most is the work that never gets started.” -JRR Tolkien. 13. “It is not happiness that makes us grateful, but with gratitude that will make our life happy.” 14. “Start each day with a positive mind and a grateful heart.” -Roy T. Bennett. 15. “Be a person who challenges the future, not a coward who is safe in the comfort zone.” 16. “The struggle is a sign of your journey to success.” 17. “Love lasts forever no matter what is clear and in what direction.” -Emha Ainun Nadjib 18. “Never give up while you’re trying again. There’s no end to it until you stop trying.” — Brian Dyson 19. “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.” — Nelson Mandela 20. “Optimism is the faith that leads you to subscribe.” — Helen Keller 21. “Do not compare yourself with others. Compare yourself with yesterday’s person.” — Anonymous 22. “Great things never come from your comfort zone.” — Anonymous 23. “The pain in the struggle is only temporary. You could feel it in a minute, an hour, a day, or a year. But if you give up, the pain will be forever.” — Lance Armstrong 24. “Life is not as easy as turning your palms, but with the palms of our hands can change our lives much better.” 25. “Only someone who is afraid can act courageously. Without fear there is nothing that can be called brave.” 26. “Whoever tries to take you down is already under you.” 27. “Wasting your time doing useless things can destroy your future.” 28. “Failure is important because without failure, there is no reward for success.” 29. “Even though it looks difficult, if you don’t try it, you will never know how to beat it.” 30. In words, there is nothing wrong with humbling yourself, but in activity show your abilities. “ So, those are some quote words that you can use to make your posts even cooler

https://medium.com/@idnsite/a-collection-of-cool-quotes-deserves-to-be-a-caption-on-social-media-97304d19d593

[]

2020-12-18 00:16:22.366000+00:00

['Quotes', 'Motivation', 'Updates', 'Motivational Quotes', 'Twitter']

BL Thai Drama 2020 (Gen Y The Series) Episode 6 「ENGSUB」 (Channel 3 Drama Series)

Episode 6 | In the world of Y, many relationships might happen from imagination but how many times does that relationship comes from the real world? Watch On ►► http://dadangkoprol.dplaytv.net/tv/112908-1-6 Show Info Network: Thailand Channel 3 (2020 — now) Schedule: Wednesdays at 22:50 (30 min) Status: Running Language: Thai Show Type: Scripted Genres: Drama Romance TELEVISION 👾 (TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports. TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 5910s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 5Season 00s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[5] during the 5960s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 1000s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (53i, with 909091 intertwined lines of goal and 444545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3456561, 3456561 and 174. Since 1050, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, Starz Video, iPlayer and Hulu. In 1053, 19% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[1] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 5990s. Most TV sets sold during the 1000s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-1050s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 1050s.[6][1][5] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 1.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 1050s.[9] TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 1000s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 1000s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 1050s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV. 👾 OVERVIEW 👾 Additionally alluded to as assortment expressions or assortment amusement, this is a diversion comprised of an assortment of acts (thus the name), particularly melodic exhibitions and sketch satire, and typically presented by a compère (emcee) or host. Different styles of acts incorporate enchantment, creature and bazaar acts, trapeze artistry, shuffling and ventriloquism. Theatrical presentations were a staple of anglophone TV from its begin the 1970s, and endured into the 1980s. In a few components of the world, assortment TV stays famous and broad. The adventures (from Icelandic adventure, plural sögur) are tales about old Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking journeys, about relocation to Iceland, and of fights between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, for the most part in Iceland. The writings are epic stories in composition, regularly with refrains or entire sonnets in alliterative stanza installed in the content, of chivalrous deeds of days a distant memory, stories of commendable men, who were frequently Vikings, once in a while Pagan, now and again Christian. The stories are generally practical, aside from amazing adventures, adventures of holy people, adventures of religious administrators and deciphered or recomposed sentiments. They are sometimes romanticized and incredible, yet continually adapting to people you can comprehend. The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement. Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 1945–65, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk.

https://medium.com/@da-dan-g-k-opr-o-l-07/bl-thai-drama-2020-gen-y-the-series-episode-6-engsub-channel-3-drama-series-ba730ff8444d

['Ronald B. West']

2020-12-16 18:27:42.995000+00:00

['Romance', 'Drama', 'Gay']

An essential guide to Apple HomeKit

Apple launched HomeKit in 2014 and for many users it remains a bit of a mystery, an outlier in the smart home space that is wound up with the iPhone, Siri, and an unintuitive corner of the smart home universe. What is HomeKit, and is it appropriate for your home? Let’s dig in and break down what it is and how it works today. What is HomeKit?While HomeKit is exclusive to Apple and its licensees, it is really just a communications protocol, a framework of technologies that lets your iOS device work with any number of smart home products. Apple currently claims that more than 100 brands of products are now included in the HomeKit universe, including all the usual smart home suspects, including smart plugs and switches, light bulbs, thermostats, motorized window shades, and more. Mentioned in this article Apple HomePod Mini Read TechHive's review$99.00MSRP $99.00See iton Apple The centerpiece of HomeKit is its centralized control through the iOS Home app, which is now standard on all iPhones and iPads (and is now part of MacOS as well). Through Home, you have access to all your HomeKit-compatible devices (Accessories), which can be separated by room and assigned to Scenes (in which a number of devices are controlled simultaneously with a single tap) or controlled via Automations (for basic scheduling or as responses to trigger events). Devices that appear in the Home can also be controlled via Siri voice commands, either through an iOS device or a newer Apple TV (third-generation or later) or HomePod smart speaker. Apple HomeKit can control any aspect of your smart home, ranging from lighting, to security cams, and from motorized window shades to thermostats and more. In a nutshell, Home works a lot like any other smart home control app, except that it is not tied to a specific vendor’s product. If your devices are set up through HomeKit, they’ll appear in the Home app. You can also add compatible devices to your HomeKit network after the fact, and that won’t prevent you from using those same devices in other smart home ecosystems. [ Further reading: The best smart home systems ]How does HomeKit setup work?HomeKit setup is easily its biggest strength. For most products, setup involves using your iPhone to scan a QR code printed on the smart device (or affixed via a sticker). Sometimes the QR code appears on the device’s packaging or manual. Once the device is scanned and the device is powered up, your phone gets to work making the necessary connections. This process has changed a bit over the years, but now it is generally quite streamlined, and I’ve found that HomeKit devices—for the most part—set up quickly and seamlessly. HomeKit devices can connect to your phone for setup via either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. You don’t necessarily need an internet connection to get a HomeKit device up and running, but it certainly helps smooth out the process. HomeKit setup can often be confusing to novices because nearly every smart home device maker also makes its own app which can also be used to set up the device. Instructions vary—wildly—from brand to brand on this front. Some will direct you to start with the brand’s app, then switch over to Home at some point, and then switch back to the brand’s app to complete setup. Most of the time you can ignore the brand’s app altogether and just set things up in Home directly. Or you can ignore Home and just use the official app. Once setup is complete, you can generally use both apps to control the device, although that can present new challenges. Michael Brown / IDG A best practice is to create rooms and assign your smart home devices to them, so you can see and control everything at a glance. How do I interact with HomeKit devices?As noted above, the big idea is that you interact with your HomeKit devices in the iOS Home app, but you can also use the device’s sanctioned app to do the same thing. In fact, in most brand-developed apps, you will not only find that brand’s devices, but HomeKit-compatible devices developed by other brands as well. This can quickly get confusing if you have a complicated, multi-vendor setup, and it can create challenges if, say, you set up automations or schedules in both apps. When schedules conflict, results can be unpredictable, so it’s advisable to stick to one app for control operations whenever possible. Note that the official vendor apps for your devices should still be installed: You’ll need these apps for things like firmware updates on some devices, and many of these apps offer added features that the iOS Home app lacks (such as the ability to dynamically tune smart bulb color temperature over the course of a day). Michael Brown / IDG For smart bulbs, you can adjust brightness, color, and color temperature for each scene you wish to set up. While you can interact directly with a device via your phone, the real value of HomeKit comes from having a hub inside your house. Today, lots of devices can serve as a hub, including an AppleTV (third-generation or later), either of the HomePod speaker models, or an old iPad you have lying around (provided it doesn’t leave the house and is never turned off). A few other devices, including the Lutron Caséta Smart Bridge and the Insteon Hub Pro, can bridge the gap between smart home device and HomeKit, but they won’t allow you to control your HomeKit devices when you’re away from home. So, if you’re intent on building a HomeKit-enabled home today, you’re best off sticking with an Apple device as the hub. Without a HomeKit hub, you can control your devices only when your phone is on the same local network (or within Bluetooth range, if the device supports it). The hub works by bridging your HomeKit devices to your router, then on to the internet. With a hub you can interact directly with devices when you’re away, as well as enable geofencing features such as turning on the lights automatically when you get home. If you don’t have a hub and you launch the Home app on your phone when you’re not home, your devices will appear as unresponsive. Ben Patterson/IDG The $99 HomePod Mini was an important addition to the HomeKit ecosystem, but Apple’s least-expensive smart speaker still costs twice as much as the competition. How does HomeKit differ from Alexa, Google Assistant, SmartThings, and other ecosystems?HomeKit has several similarities with these platforms, including support for the products of multiple vendors and the voice control features of Alexa and Google Home. You can create some version of rooms, scenes, and automations with each of these platforms, too. And as with those other platforms, products that support HomeKit are increasingly advertised as such, with a “Works with Apple HomeKit” logo appearing on the packaging. Mentioned in this article Apple TV 4K Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $179.00Learn moreon Amazon The primary difference to consider is support: All four platforms support different vendors’ products, so you’ll need to consider carefully which devices you already own or intend to purchase if you’re interested in building your smart home around one of these platforms. For example, SmartThings is the only platform that supports Z-Wave devices. Alexa and SmartThings both support Zigbee devices. All four platforms support Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices—but again, compatibility is determined on a product-by-product basis, not just the wireless standard it uses. (You’ll also find that some vendors sell one version of a product with HomeKit support and one without, confusing things further.) As well, Alexa and Google Home products are more than just smart home platforms, built primarily around their voice-enabled smart speakers. You can ask Siri to set a timer or play music for you, but these are features of iOS, not HomeKit. Similarly, Alexa’s “Skills” system is nowhere to be found in HomeKit. Increasingly, HomeKit has been moving in this direction with the launch of the HomePod, but that device is hardly as an essential part of the HomeKit ecosystem the way an Amazon Echo is to Alexa. Another major difference is, of course, HomeKit’s reliance on Apple products. If you’re a diehard Android user, HomeKit’s probably not for you. Michael Brown / IDG Each of your smart home devices is represented by an appropriate control interface. Is HomeKit compatible with other platforms? Mentioned in this article Amazon Echo Dot (4th Gen) Read TechHive's reviewSee it For the most part, yes. You can have HomeKit, Alexa, and Google Home all operating in the same household and all interacting with the same devices, presuming they have the necessary support. (And remember, almost all HomeKit devices will come with their own brand-created app as well.) Problems can arise if you use different platforms to do the same thing. Theoretically you could connect one device to four or five different apps and use each of them to create a control schedule for that device. But this would of course be a catastrophic mess and is not recommended. That said, it’s common for busier smart homes to include more than one of these platforms to control products that are not compatible with the other(s). But, increasingly and thankfully, broad compatibility with multiple platforms is becoming commonplace. Jared Newman / TechHive You’ll want an Apple product that can act as a HomeKit hub, such as the Apple TV 4K shown here. A third-gen Apple TV will also work, as will an Apple HomePod or a spare iPad. Do I need an iOS device to use HomeKit?Yes. And to take advantage of all of HomeKit’s features, you need more than just an iPhone or iPad. If you want to use your HomeKit device away from your home, you need a hub as described above. Again, while you need an iOS device to use the features of HomeKit, you can still use a HomeKit device without an iPhone. You will simply must use the vendor’s official app to interact with the device—or another third-party platform, such as Alexa, Google Home, or SmartThings if the device is compatible with one of those systems. I’m an Android user. What can I do with HomeKit?In a word: Nothing—at least not with your smartphone. HomeKit works only with the Home app, and the Home app is only available on iOS devices. And there’s probably no hope that this will change any time soon. Mentioned in this article Google Nest Mini Read TechHive's review$49.00MSRP $49.00See iton Google Now, as described above, if you use Android and a device supports HomeKit, that does not mean you can’t use the device with your phone. You simply won’t be able to use HomeKit to set it up and manage it—unless you do it on an iPad. Instead, Android users should have no problem using the brand’s official smartphone app to set up and manage the product. How secure is HomeKit?HomeKit data is fully encrypted both at rest and in transit, and since Apple must approve every device in the HomeKit ecosystem, the platform is as secure as any other smart home platform. (Alexa and Google Home both encrypt data in a similar fashion.) In 2019, Apple announced a new feature called HomeKit Secure Video, which allows HomeKit-enabled cameras to use iCloud for video storage. Naturally, there are heightened security concerns around cloud-based video storage and streaming than there are with, say, controlling a light switch over the internet, so Apple has been careful to ensure that HomeKit Secure Video streams are encrypted from end to end. Ring just introduced the same capability for its security cameras, but Apple offers the privacy advantage of performing any video analysis on your local HomeKit hub. Additional security measures are also available in HomeKit Secure Video, such as the ability to restrict access to streams based on user and time of day. Apple has pointed out that the company doesn’t even have access to view your recordings. Michael Brown / IDG HomeKit now supports several brands of motorized smart shades, including the Lutron Serena shades shown here. How reliable is HomeKit?Although the setup process is usually amazing, in this reviewer’s experience, HomeKit reliability during day-to-day use is actually fairly middling, and it’s my least favorite platform to use for control and automations. I encounter more problems with HomeKit losing its connection to devices, failing to start or stop automations, and generally not working as expected than I do on other platforms. I’ve found the geofencing features on HomeKit to be particularly erratic, and the HomeKit interface isn’t terribly friendly, either. That said, no smart home platform has come up with a perfect interface or flawless operational record yet, so many of these criticisms also apply to other platforms. But while HomeKit and all products in this industry continue to evolve and improve, at present my interactions with HomeKit have been a bit lacking. Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.

https://medium.com/@jimmy43912772/an-essential-guide-to-apple-homekit-db720339e16e

[]

2021-01-27 17:14:47.988000+00:00

['Security Cameras', 'Surveillance', 'Chromecast', 'Home Theater']

Reducing Number of Features for Inference

Image by Author Reducing Number of Features for Inference Spreading your data across fewer dimensions makes it more understandable Growing up, I remember my dad, an Air Force pilot, showing me around a plane’s cockpit at a pretty young age. I remember the floor-to-ceiling tapestry of buttons, switches, and meters and wondering how long it took someone to get used to all that information; wondering how long it took someone to learn how it all works. To the former, years of practice. To the latter? It wasn’t until years later when I was in college that he let me in on the secret. In fact, the internal mechanism of each of those instruments can be summed up in a bit of military jargon known as P.F.M.: Pure F****** Magic. When performing linear regression for inference, P.F.M. is the enemy. An interpretable model is more valuable than a “black box” model, and often that comes with a (hopefully small) loss in accuracy. Often, this means putting ideas of feature interaction, polynomial regression, and other high-accuracy, low-bias procedures aside. Those models, while highly accurate, are hard to interpret and harder still to communicate. Sticking to linear regression, and simple linear models with fewer features at that, lends a lot to a model’s interpretability. Towards that goal, below I discuss three options for reducing the number of features a linear model uses and when to use each. There are also links to two additional methods that fall under the category of unsupervised learning at the end of the article. 1. Best Subset Selection For best subset selection, the idea is simple: try every single subset of features, from a single feature to all of them, and choose the subset that performs best by your metric (R2, MSE, etc.). Just that simple. Try every possible combination (in the mathematical sense of the word) of features and pick the best one. If you have n number of features, then you have 2 to the nth power number of feature combos to try. For that reason, this method isn’t feasible when you’re choosing from a very large number of features. You might be thinking, “Wait a second. Couldn’t this method just wind up telling me to use every feature?” It could, but there’s a pretty good chance it won’t. There’s this popular idea of a dichotomy between a model built for variance and a model built for bias, called the bias-variance trade off, with the general idea that a model can be (1) inflexible (biased) and easy to interpret, like linear regression; or, at the other extreme, a model can be (2) highly non-linear (variable) and hard to interpret. (This topic is beaten dead, go read about it.) There’s the interesting phenomenon, however, of a simpler, more rigid model not infrequently turning out better performance than a more sophisticated, flexible (P.F.M., black box) model (assuming you’re interested in it’s performance on test data, and when aren’t you?). So with a small enough number of features, give best subset selection a shot. The best performing model just might be a simple, interpretable one with few features. 2. Stepwise Selection This comes in three flavors: forward selection, backward selection, and hybrid. The general idea behind forward selection is to start with a single feature as a baseline and add in the one feature out of the remaining that best improves the model. You repeat this process until adding variables no longer improves your model. You choose the threshold for improvement here, usually a low enough p-value. Backward selection works the same way except in reverse. You start with all available features and remove one feature at a time until doing so no longer improves your model. Hybrid selection is a combination of the first two. You start with a single feature, like in forward selection, but for each step, you both (1) add in the feature that most improves the model and then (2) check to see if removing any variables significantly improves your model. Stepwise selection has an advantage over best subset selection in that it can be performed on a dataset with many more features, but it has also come under fire for being prone to error and overconfidence and for generally being unrigorous. Feature Engineering and Selection: A Practical Approach for Predictive Models by Max Kuhn and Kjell Johnson; Section 11.4, Stepwise Selction Stepwise selection is discussed here for its popularity, but its use is not recommended. When the number of features a dataset has is too large for best subset selection, the lasso is more strongly recommended. 2b. Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE) Though it passes under a different name, RFE is essentially the same procedure as backward stepwise selection. RFE comes with all the same caveats that stepwise selection does, but its use has been made popular by packages available from scikit-learn (see the documentation for their RFE and RFE with CV). 3. The Lasso (and Variants) The lasso is a regularization method for linear and logistic models that will naturally remove some of the features from a model’s fit, unless its hyperparameter, λ, is set to 0; increasing the value of λ increases the number of features that are removed until eventually all features have been removed––you’ve gone too far. Formula from An Introduction to Statistical Learning by Gareth James, Daniela Witten, Trevor Hastie, and Robert Tibshirani; 6.2.2, “The Lasso” Above you can see that the loss function the lasso is trying to minimize is just the residual sum of squares (RSS) plus an additional penalty for feature weights. The greater the value you choose for λ, the greater the penalty on feature weights, the more of them get removed. This is usually the challenge with using the lasso: finding the sweet spot for λ. The lasso has a huge advantage over best subset selection: even for a large number of features, the lasso is fast. Really fast. In one study by Hastie and TibshiraniX2, what took best subset selection 144 minutes took the lasso less than a second to complete. Two variants on the lasso that need mentioning are the relaxed lasso and the adaptive lasso. The first, the relaxed lasso, is the Grand Prix winner in that same paper by Hastie et al., with both best performance out of all methodologies, including best subset selection, and extremely fast computation times. In its simplest form, the relaxed lasso is just the lasso performed twice. Read more about it here. The second honorable mention, the adaptive lasso, is the only lasso method mentioned here that has the oracle property, being consistent in both variable selection and feature weight estimation (read: reproducible). Read more about it here. In Conclusion If you have only a few features to consider (~10ish at most), then there’s no reason not to just brute-force your data with best subset selection. If, however, you want an informative model, and not necessarily a model with the best raw predictive power OR if you have a large number of features to consider, then go for one of the Lasso variants. Stepwise selection (and RFE), while something of an industry standard, is facing some controversy in the theory-minded community: proceed with caution. References and Further Reading: (All bolding is my own.) An Introduction to Statistical Learning: with Applications in R. James, G., Witten, D., Hastie, T., & Tibshirani, R. (2017). New York: Springer. Feature Engineering and Selection: A Practical Approach for Predictive Models, Max Kuhn and Kjell Johnson, 2019. https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs4780/2018fa/lectures/lecturenote12.html https://blog.datadive.net/selecting-good-features-part-iv-stability-selection-rfe-and-everything-side-by-side/ “Best Subset, Forward Stepwise, or Lasso?”, Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, Ryan J. Tibshirani. “The Adaptive Lasso and its Oracle Properties”, Hui Zou. “The Relaxed Lasso: A Better Way to Fit Linear and Logistic Models”, Jehan Gonsal, 2018. And as promised at the beginning of this article, links to resources on two unsupervised learning methods for reducing number of features, one on principal component analysis (PCA) and one on partial least squares (PLS) regression.

https://towardsdatascience.com/reducing-number-of-features-for-inference-b54ea45f33be

['S. T. Lanier']

2020-12-10 03:24:27.555000+00:00

['Regression', 'Lasso Regression', 'Inference', 'Data Science', 'Statistics']

How to earn Cryptocurrency by playing games free

How to earn Cryptocurrency by playing games free Bitcoin was designed by somebody utilizing the title Satoshi Nakamoto. A Bitcoin address, or basically address, is an identifier of 26-35 letters and numbers, starting with the number 1 or 3, that speaks to a conceivable goal for a bitcoin installment. Addresses can be produced price by any client of Bitcoin. For illustration, utilizing Bitcoin Center, one can tap "Unused Address" and be relegated an address. It is additionally conceivable to urge a Bitcoin address utilizing an account at an trade or online wallet benefit. Now let’s get to the point. If you want to earn bitcoins or other coins online for free, there is a great platform that I can recommend. The name of this platform is WomPlay. You play games online for free. In return, you earn crypto money. You can start earning with WomPlay by registering from the link I will give below. > WomPlay

https://medium.com/@siirligun/how-to-earn-cryptocurrency-by-playing-games-free-d9e41dcbadee

[]

2020-12-15 15:24:03.171000+00:00

['Eos', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Coinbase', 'Bitcoin', 'Womplay']

Scientology and Me, Part Six: Postscript

by Stella Forstner Previously: parts one, two, three, four, and five. If you’re ever in the market for a bit of harmless revenge or a rather cruel practical joke, I highly recommend making use of the Scientology mailing list. Sign your friend up under a hilarious name, and 20 years later (assuming the church is still around) they’ll still be receiving mail for “Laura Rockemsockem Huntsman.” Scientology staffers, many of whom work for the church in order to obtain its expensive coursework, have quotas to meet, and must contact a certain number of people by mail or phone in an attempt get them into the church and spending money. Even the dead aren’t safe from the stats-seekers: During a visit to my dad’s house a few years ago, I let the answering machine run as a staffer from the org where my grandmother had taken some courses before her death five years previous left a message. It would have meant so much to her, the staffer told the obliging machine, to have a brick with her name on it in the new mission. Only $3,000. The church’s fortunes have been on a near-constant decline over the last decade or so. While still a powerful entity by any fiscal standard, the Church of Scientology has been hit with so many scandals and so much bad press, from reports of abuse to the maelstrom unleashed by Katie Holmes, that stats are almost certainly on a permanent downswing. The church is so desperate to get people in that even my mother, who left, on, uh, rather bad terms more than 20 years ago, recently got a call at her office. She recounted the call gleefully, telling me the caller, identifying himself as a staff member at the local mission, said he’d seen her name in the records and wondered if she’d heard about the new courses they were offering and whether she’d be interested in coming in. My mother politely told him her life was better than it had ever been and she had no interest in returning to the church, telling him she left because of policies she thought were unethical and wrongheaded. Things have changed, the man on the phone promised, and when my mother expressed her doubt, citing directives written by Hubbard himself, he became excited: “but we found out something that changed everything! You see, the writings weren’t taken down by Hubbard himself, they were transcribed!” Oh OF COURSE, I teased my mother, “fair game” (a policy that encourages attacks on Scientology’s perceived enemies) was just a transcription mistake, maybe the policy was really supposed to be called “they’re lame.” Neither of us were surprised in the least that the church is still making excuses, still unable to admit mistakes made or flaws in the ‘tech.’ Over the years mom and I have talked a lot about the church, sharing the rare investigation or exposé that dared tempt the organization at a time when they were known for destroying their critics, and later trading links about the latest scandals. For years we’ve watched the church attempt to silence its enemies, and in the years since the internet became a clearinghouse for Scientology’s secret documents and evidence of its illegal and unethical actions, we’ve seen it fail to do so. The last few years have brought many high-profile defections, the playful trollery of Anonymous, and plenty of excellent journalism, but also that infamous South Park episode and the widespread conviction that personal alien colonies are a fundamental part of what Scientologists believe. I’ve always known that people were curious about the church, but I wish they’d take the time to understand a little more about why people join and what they get out of it, instead of just writing it off as the cult of Tom Cruise and its ‘brainwashed’ members. If any one thing prompted me to write this piece, it’s that I hate the idea that my mother — who joined the church out of principles stronger than many of us possess, and then showed enormous personal courage in leaving the organization to build a new life for herself and her family — should feel embarrassed to share her history. With all the information out there now about Scientology, it’s difficult to imagine how and why anyone would be newly taken in by the church, although I’m sure it still happens. I don’t find it difficult, however, to imagine why they would stay in. All the outside criticism in the world can’t and won’t challenge the certainty of people who have spent decades in the church, invested thousands of dollars, enmeshed themselves in Scientology-centric social circles, and experienced the positive effects of the ‘tech.’ Listen to recent defectors like Mike Rinder, Marty Rathbun, and Paul Haggis: They didn’t leave because they heard that a bunch of people thought Scientology was stupid, they left because the contradictions between the church’s ethical claims and its practices became too gaping, too obvious to ignore. And it’s not only people who have left the church. In January 2012, a Scientologist in good standing named Debbie Cook sent out an email to 12,000 members condemning the aggressive fundraising practices of the current church, and had some fairly pointed words for the current leadership. Calling on Scientologists to demand change from within the institution, she wrote: “as a Scientologist you are more able, more perceptive and have a higher integrity. Scientology is supposed to allow you to ‘think for yourself’ and never compromise your own integrity.” While I sometimes joke about Scientology, I never mock the people who believe in it, and it saddens me to see so much unnecessary nastiness, so many thoughtless asides about brainwashed drones chasing body thetans. It’s usually not accurate or funny, it’s just mean. And I believe it only makes things worse — a group that feels it’s being persecuted will only turn more deeply inward and become even more distrustful of outsiders. Anyone who doesn’t support the church thus becomes its enemy, and this only tears more families apart and leave those members who already have doubts about the church all the more isolated. My criticisms of the church are grounded in my own experiences and those of my family. I’ve seen how they’ve treated my parents and some of their friends, how they’ve harassed, threatened, and tried to destroy the reputations of ex-Scientologists and others who’ve opposed them, and how they treated my ex-stepmother, a woman who (even though she thought I was evil incarnate) devoted her life to the church only to be abandoned by them at the end, denied financial support for medical assistance, and told she could cure herself with more auditing. I know that most people in the church, and in organizations like it, cannot or will not hear these criticisms. For most of my life I couldn’t tell my father what I really thought, because if I had been openly critical it would only have fed his sense that the church was under attack, that I was an enemy. But I believe that my efforts to be respectful of his beliefs while living my own life, pursuing my own principles, and trying to do a little good in this world, were part of a very slow process through which he was able to recognize that Scientology was not the only way. There’s a new “flagship mission” in downtown Seattle, and my errands in the city often take me by it on foot. While I’ve never seen anyone dole out abuse directly to the staff members offering personality tests or inviting members of the public to see a film about Dianetics, I don’t doubt that it happens; my friends and I might have done it ourselves 15 years ago. In a generally non-confrontational city like Seattle, people usually just avoid the staff or make fun of the fliers before letting them fall to the ground. I realize this is not an uncommon experience for anyone working with the public, but I imagine it takes on a different tone for Scientologists who must believe they’re working to help the planet, who cannot believe otherwise if they do this work. I’ve seen how the church works its staff to exhaustion, and I’m sure it doesn’t help when every celebrity magazine talks about Suri’s rescue and Tom’s strange cult, or how people look at new acquaintances like they have three arms if they say they’re a Scientologist. All people want to believe they’re on the right path in life, and when they find themselves in an organization that slowly separates them from their loved ones, leaving them with nothing to cling to but its doctrine, they cling to it ever more fiercely, especially in the face of cruelty and disrespect. So I try to be kind, to make eye contact, to smile when I walk past the mission. I decline their fliers and tell them I’m not interested but that I hope they have a good day. I want to be something small that lodges in their memory, a positive engram perhaps, so that if they ever decide the church isn’t for them they won’t feel like their only option is to return to a world that rejects them. I know I’m not sprinkling fairy dust or instantaneously opening people’s minds with my tiny efforts, but one never knows. As Leonard Cohen, himself a dabbler in Scientology in the 1970s, has written so beautifully: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Stella Forstner is the pseudonym of a Hairpin reader who wishes to protect her family’s anonymity.

https://medium.com/the-hairpin/scientology-and-me-part-six-postscript-2d3143cf7a2d

['The Hairpin']

2016-06-02 00:44:41.188000+00:00

['My Scientology Story', 'Religion', 'Scientology']

See What Can Be, Not Just What Is.

Whatever you’ve got doesn’t matter. But what you ‘can’ make out of it does. Who you are is the result of what you’ve got and how you’ve used it. You can’t hope to keep enjoying the same benefits you’ve been getting if you stop doing the very thing that has made you who you are. Successful people weren’t born so. They achieved success by working more than what their past selves demanded. Everybody started somewhere. You’re starting at level zero when you first doing something from scratch. If you’re satisfied with your current status, you can never go beyond this level zero. When you’re in level zero, you don’t have much to hold on to. But you don’t wait for something to make anything out of it. You do anything to make something. You create that something out of nothing. You use whatever it is you’ve got. And that’s the key. What you know and who you are will always change if you are willing to constantly redefine yourself. Your present self can’t outmatch your future self if you cannot make the best use of what you’ve got presently. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve got of something. Everything has its worth. And that worth depends on how much value you can get from it. If you and someone you know have got the same “thing” and he’s got more than what you’ve got. The distribution may not be fair, but you can’t do anything about it. You don’t have a choice when you get a random distribution of things. But you have a choice what to make out of them. You have 2 choices: You can complain about it and do nothing. Or you can make up for it by utilizing fully what you’ve got. If you use what you’ve got to the best of your ability and that guy doesn’t use much of what he’s got — though he’s got more than you — you’ll be miles ahead of him.

https://medium.com/the-blog-of-zehn-ninos/see-what-can-be-not-just-what-is-79cb4a3d1f2e

['Zehn Ninos']

2020-12-25 11:02:00.879000+00:00

['Hope', 'Self Improvement', 'Inspiration', 'Personal Growth', 'Personal Development']

Navigating through runtime only modules and thinking outside of the box with androidx.startup and koin (decoupled multi-module projects)

Let’s set up a few case scenarios which we need solutions to, at the very least we want to be able to get a static fragment class definition and a bunch of intents to launch activities or services .e.t.c We’ll only focus on the following modules: discover-movie (feature module that is only available at run time) discover-series (feature module that is only available at run time) navigation (module for handling how to navigate between modules) Reflection Reflection is commonly used by programs which require the ability to examine or modify the runtime behaviour of applications running in the Java virtual machine. This is a relatively advanced feature and should be used only by developers who have a strong grasp of the fundamentals of the language. With that caveat in mind, reflection is a powerful technique and can enable applications to perform operations which would otherwise be impossible. Source While reflection is powerful it does have some drawbacks and limitations which you can read more about at the source above and here Example: Let’s define some extensions to manage some class loading stuff (full code extensions code can be found here): Now to define our components targets (full code extensions code can be found here): Each of our target have to know the fully qualified package name of the component we need to access, as you can imagine if we change class names, or minify then we might end up mismatching class package names. Accessing our components: Model to hold fragment definition and params Accessing navigation targets In the sample above we’re calling NavigationTargets and getting specific components specifically in this case only fragments in the form of Class<out Fragment> because I’m using the default fragment factory as the constructors for each of the feature fragments are empty Service Loader A service is a well-known set of interfaces and (usually abstract) classes. A service provider is a specific implementation of a service. The classes in a provider typically implement the interfaces and subclass the classes defined in the service itself. Service providers can be installed in an implementation of the Java platform in the form of extensions, that is, jar files placed into any of the usual extension directories. Providers can also be made available by adding them to the application’s class path or by some other platform-specific means. Source Typically using a service loader in android as is introduces some performance penalties unless you use R8 shrinker to optimize/rewrite the implementation to avoid the performance penalties. Since service loader is no longer supported by R8 for dynamic feature modules we won’t be covering this topic Dependency Injection Dependency injection is a programming technique that makes a class independent of its dependencies. It achieves that by decoupling the usage of an object from its creation. This helps you to follow SOLID’s dependency inversion and single responsibility principles. Source Example: Applying the Interface Segregation rule we can define an interface in our navigation module that we’ll use to expose fragments or intents similar to our Reflection approach. Notice that we’re not defining more than we need in this contract, this is because we’d rather define what we need and extend this interface if we need to access more modules. Full code Define navigation targets that we’ll use in various parts of the system: Contract for navigation targets, we don’t really need to define invoke at this point, it could be an extension function or whatever you want to use. Full code Take not that each of the defined navigation targets here extend the INavigationFeature. Full code An extension that we’ll showcase later to get fragment definitions Let’s hook up the Provider for each of our navigation targets in the appropriate feature module and register them in our dependency injector. discover-show feature implements contract from navigation module and provides details of implementation. Full code Let’s continue to define our DI modules Note how we’re setting our featureModule is set to provide a type of NavShow.Provider. Full code DynamicFeatureModuleHelper is just a helper class that implements the detail of how how the koin should load or unload modules Registering the specific module to the application global dependency injection registry, since this is a run time only module we can leverage androidx.startup to load this features modules dependencies. Feature initializer to initialize our declared DI modules 💁 Full code Manifest for FeatureInitializer, this exists in our feature module manifest. Full code Finally accessing a component from anywhere within the application 😋

https://mwax911.medium.com/navigating-through-runtime-only-modules-and-thinking-outside-of-the-box-with-androidx-startup-60accc8fab8e

['Maxwell Mapako']

2020-11-20 15:32:51.576000+00:00

['Koin', 'Android App Development', 'Kotlin', 'Dependency Injection', 'Clean Code']

It is easier to be a robber these days

Photo by Julio Rionaldo on Unsplash. with mask on your face gloves safely tucked in the pocked ready to put on your hands no one suspects you may do something bad; masks provide safety these days it is easier to hide behind the mask where unconverted desires lay unaddressed. one may wound without any sense of remorse or pride, though the mask doesn’t cover the eyes; the soul still naked, exposed, if it meets someone’s gaze it is easier to be a robber these days for dreams have already been scarce, hope rising like a dawn is washed in a low tide and if the robber steals what you carry inside it is because the mask fooled you that you were safe © Iva Beranek

https://medium.com/poetry-palace/it-is-easier-to-be-a-robber-these-days-1e8de662efbe

['Iva Beranek']

2020-09-23 14:58:45.453000+00:00

['Masks', 'Poetry', 'Identity', 'Dreams', 'Poem']

You’re In the Way

It sucks to feel like life isn’t working in our favor or that we aren’t able to achieve our goals. It’s easy to find people and things to blame when we find ourselves falling short. Of course we all have barriers in life that interfere with our progress (some more than others, privilege check). We may be slowed down, we may be blocked, and we we may even be stopped by these barriers. Acknowledging them is one thing, creating excuses out of these barriers is another. For example; you left for work at the last minute you could before the possibility of being late but now theres traffic and the traffic ends up making you 15 minutes late. You could say it was the traffic because in reality, the traffic did slow you down! But if you really want to be honest with yourself, you’ll admit you should’ve left earlier. More times than not, it’s that simple, we’re in our own way. Shifting blame and making excuses are much easier alternatives than accepting we may have played a hand in our own shortcomings (ouch). Putting forth effort in understanding this concept allows us to take our power back. It allows us to reframe our experience. Taking accountability for what we did or did not do when it comes to the course of our lives can be tough. It takes integrity to admit we are in our own way. It is an enlightening realization but more importantly a humbling one. We shift our language from “you, they, it, or that” to “me or I”. Circling back to ourselves puts the ball in our court. It becomes our move, our go. Accountability to self means acknowledging the role we play(ed). We can focus on our own actions this way and assess what needs to change. Accountability encourages change but to change we need discipline. This has been a word I’ve struggled with for a long time, unfortunately. This year it is an action I am committing to no matter how often I may struggle with it. Discipline creates stability. We need it to be consistent in getting from one destination to the next. Imagine playing a video game and its time to pick your fighter, you have the option to choose discipline or motivation (mind you these are characters lol). Which do you choose? Motivation sounds great because we think of enthusiasm, desire, and initiative. But discipline will take the win. Why? Because discipline reminds us that slow and steady wins the race. Discipline remains consistent, unwavering, and dedicated. To bring it back to ourselves, we aren’t always going to feel motivated or inspired but we can always be disciplined despite that. Just think to yourself for a moment, what do I want? Am I living a life I love? We need to know the answers to these questions. How do we view our goals and desires in life? What do we think of them? If the answers aren’t what we want them to be we need a plan to change that. Thinking and wishing of change is just that, thinking and wishing. Creating a plan means taking steps forward, taking action. One step forward means being one-step closer than we were. Planning makes our thoughts real. It creates possibility. Once we figure out those answers and create our plans we need to promise ourselves not to settle. If we’ve decided, why settle on anything less? Commit to the decision, to the dream, to the goal. We’re not accepting ‘almost, close, or this will do’. Selling ourselves short by settling for less leads to mediocrity (*shrugs*). I don’t know too many people who enjoy being mediocre by choice. Doubt has a way of bullying us into the settling corner though. It has a way of making us believe we don’t deserve, like we’re asking for too much, or aiming too high. It usually brings it’s other bully friend fear along too. But 10/10 doubt and fear aren’t as big and bad as they convince us they are. They’re wrong. Faith will prove doubt wrong every time. If we believe in ourselves, our abilities, and capacity to create that which we desire; doubt shrinks. Fear shrinks. They may even disappear. Then we’re only left with optimism and opportunity. Life has a funny way of reminding us of what’s important, or what should be, rather. It’s honestly too short to do anything less than what we absolutely love. We deserve to do what fulfills us and to live our best lives! But, we have to get out of our own way. We have to take accountability, create plans, be disciplined, and be diligent in creating the realities we desire. It’s our world. We take our power back when we shift our perspective and really get honest with ourselves. Don’t let life pass you by and have you pointing every which way. The happenings of life will be out of our control often, no doubt, but choosing to take initiative in how we maneuver it is always in our power.

https://dashayna-b.medium.com/youre-in-the-way-96a4d676cc96

['Dashayna Brown']

2020-02-13 02:17:34.023000+00:00

['Self-awareness', 'Discipline', 'Change Your Life', 'Accountability', 'Goal Setting']

Creative Bloke: A Motivational Product Idea

So, What’s the Plan? The best ideas arrive at late night or in the shower The plan for Creative Bloke is to offer some activities that will best suit the user’s mood and will help them to unwind. It’s very simple if we look at the flow below. I’m bad at creating flowcharts — lost practice since 2011!! So, let me try words. I’m not bad at it ;) Things to Remember We must remember that a person undergoing a blockade in workflow will already be undergoing frustration or demotivation or any other sort of negative feeling. To ask the user to sign in or sign up as soon as the app launches will be like throwing a board on their face saying, “No Entry Unless You Play by Our Rules!!” Not nice, is it? So, I decided to give the user the liberty of using the application without signing up. However, the user will be requested to create an account whenever they try to save any activity or preference. We’ll come to that later. So, they can choose later between investing 2–3 minutes to sign up and discarding their activity or preferences. How Do Things Start Step 1: I decided to start by understanding the mood of the already upset user. To begin with, the app can have six options for the mood. So, the first thing that the app will ask the user every time it is launched will be: I’m feeling - Angry Frustrated Anxious Blank Demotivated Overwhelmed These are the usual feelings that we unwantedly encounter while being neck-deep in work. Or maybe sometimes only our feet are stuck in the mud but our brain gets all whiny! Step 2: Once the user chooses any one of these moods, multiple options of activities will be presented to them. These include: Scribble Doodle Colour pages Soothing tunes Positive quotes Motivational stories Funny stories Jokes Breathing exercises Karaoke Record own voice These options will be presented to the user based on the mood selected in the previous step. However, if they want they can choose an activity outside of the ones given under the selected mood. Step 3: Once the desired activity is selected, the user can interact with it or can opt out and choose any other activity. Step 4: If the user is doing any creative activity, like scribbling or drawing or colouring pages or recording voice etc. then, if they want, they can save the output to their device or in cloud storage. This is where the account creation comes in. The user will be prompted to create an account/log in order to save the work. So, it’s up to the user if they want to go ahead or discard the work. The app will never force the user to do something that they do not want. Additionally, the user can save their preferences for activities like karaoke, breathing exercises and activities related to stories. Here again, the user will have to create an account/log in to do so. Step 5: Unlike most applications, Creative Bloke will never make the user stick to it. Being a UX researcher, I understand the value of both business need and user empathy. Finding a balance between the two is part of my job. The user will be able to interact with each activity 5 times, unless the user opts out of the activity themselves. After 5 rounds of interaction with one activity, the user will receive a prompt saying something along the lines of, “Are you feeling better now?” With the meaning of the message remaining the same, the words will vary in order to avoid being mechanical and to avoid sounding monotonous. The user will be able to choose between “Yes” and “Not yet”. If the user chooses “Yes”, then the app will politely ask the user to get back to work, and come back later for relaxation. If the user chooses “Not yet” then the app will ask the user if they would like to a) try some other activity or b) allow the app to suggest some activity for them If the user chooses option (a), then the list of all activities will come up, thus allowing the user to choose the desired activity. If the user chooses option (b), then the app will take the user to Step 1 where the user can select their current state of mind. Other Notes The app will allow the user to browse through and select any activity without setting the mood first. However, selecting a mood will provide them with a curated set of activities suitable for tackling that particular mood. Wireframes UI Design Prototype See the prototype in Figma here.

https://medium.com/@designinsanity/creative-bloke-a-motivational-product-idea-16a643e64e3a

['Sudeshna Adhikary']

2020-12-22 12:36:13.492000+00:00

['Case Study', 'UX Research', 'UX Design', 'Mobile App Design', 'Motivational App']

Becoming Whole

A Poem Photo by form PxHere I long for the nights when love’s arms pulse around me But I live for the days when my solitude yields good art I long for the nights when my desire spills over the edges But I live for the days when my strength encompasses me I long for the nights mirrored by your eyes But I live for the days when my imagination runs wild in the cosmos I long for the nights when your lips dance upon me But I live for the days when I croon a song made up along the way I long for the nights when drama fills the air But I live for the days when I am serene as the Sahara I long for the nights when comfort is near But I live for the days when not knowing is freedom I long for the nights when I am drunk on you But I live for the days when I am whole, unencumbered by the suffocating weight of you If you like this, you may fancy this:

https://medium.com/flicker-and-flight/becoming-whole-85c8122fded1

['Wendy S. Bradfield']

2020-12-30 18:47:52.522000+00:00

['Relationships', 'Love', 'Solitude', 'Poetry', 'Self-awareness']

How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate

Most of the energy in the Earth’s atmosphere comes from the Sun. It has long been recognized that changes in the so-called “total solar irradiance” (TSI), i.e., the amount of energy emitted by the Sun, over the last few centuries, could have contributed substantially to recent climate change. However, this new study found that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only considered a small subset of the published TSI datasets when they were assessing the role of the Sun in climate change and that this subset only included “low solar variability” datasets. As a result, the IPCC was premature in ruling out a substantial role for the Sun in recent climate change. A diverse expert panel of global scientists finds blaming climate change mostly on greenhouse gas emissions was premature. Their findings contradict the UN IPCC’s conclusion, which the study shows, is grounded in narrow and incomplete data about the Sun’s total solar irradiance. A new scientific review article has just been published on the role of the Sun in climate change over the last 150 years. It finds that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may have been premature in their conclusion that recent climate change is mostly caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. The paper by 23 experts in the fields of solar physics and of climate science from 14 different countries is published in the peer-reviewed journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA). The paper, which is the most comprehensive to date, carries out an analysis of the 16 most prominent published solar output datasets, including those used by the IPCC. The researchers compared them to 26 different estimates of Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century (sorted into five categories), including the datasets used by the IPCC. They focused on the Northern Hemisphere since the available data for the early 20th century and earlier is much more limited for the Southern Hemisphere, but their results can be generalized for global temperatures. The study found that scientists come to opposite conclusions about the causes of recent climate change depending on which datasets they consider. For instance, in the graphs above, the panels on the left lead to the conclusion that global temperature changes since the mid-19th century have been mostly due to human-caused emissions, especially carbon dioxide (CO2), i.e., the conclusion reached by the UN IPCC reports. In contrast, the panels on the right lead to the exact opposite conclusion, i.e., that the global temperature changes since the mid-19th century have been mostly due to natural cycles, chiefly long-term changes in the energy emitted by the Sun. Both sets of panels are based on published scientific data, but each uses different datasets and assumptions. On the left, it is assumed that the available temperature records are unaffected by the urban heat island problem, and so all stations are used, whether urban or rural. On the right, only rural stations are used. Meanwhile, on the left, solar output is modelled using the low variability dataset that has been chosen for the IPCC’s upcoming (2021/2022) 6th Assessment Reports. This implies zero contribution from natural factors to the long-term warming. On the right, solar output is modeled using a high variability dataset used by the team in charge of NASA’s ACRIM sun-monitoring satellites. This implies that most, if not all, of the long-term temperature changes are due to natural factors. Dr. Ronan Connolly, lead author of the study, at the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES): “The IPCC is mandated to find a consensus on the causes of climate change. I understand the political usefulness of having a consensus view in that it makes things easier for politicians. However, science doesn’t work by consensus. In fact, science thrives best when scientists are allowed to disagree with each other and to investigate the various reasons for disagreement. I fear that by effectively only considering the datasets and studies that support their chosen narrative, the IPCC have seriously hampered scientific progress into genuinely understanding the causes of recent and future climate change. I am particularly disturbed by their inability to satisfactorily explain the rural temperature trends.” The 68 page review (18 figures, 2 tables and more than 500 references) explicitly avoided the IPCC’s consensus-driven approach in that the authors agreed to emphasize where dissenting scientific opinions exist as well as where there is scientific agreement. Indeed, each of the co-authors has different scientific opinions on many of the issues discussed, but they agreed for this paper to fairly present the competing arguments among the scientific community for each of these issues, and let the reader make up their own mind. Several co-authors spoke of how this process of objectively reviewing the pros and cons of competing scientific arguments for the paper has given them fresh ideas for their own future research. The authors also spoke of how the IPCC reports would have more scientific validity if the IPCC started to adopt this non-consensus driven approach. The full citation for the study is: R. Connolly, W. Soon, M. Connolly, S. Baliunas, J. Berglund, C. J. Butler, R. G. Cionco, A. G. Elias, V. M. Fedorov, H. Harde, G. W. Henry, D. V. Hoyt, O. Humlum, D. R. Legates, S. Luning, N. Scafetta, J.-E. Solheim, L. Szarka, H. van Loon, V. M. Velasco Herrera, R. C. Willson, H. Yan (晏宏) and W. Zhang (2021). How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate. Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, doi: 10.1088/1674–4527/21/6/131. The pdf of the paper can be downloaded for free from Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the following link: http://www.raa-journal.org/raa/index.php/raa/article/view/4906 Quotes from some of the other co-authors Víctor Manuel Velasco Herrera, Professor of Theoretical Physics and Geophysics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM): “This paper is very special in that all 23 co-authors set aside our research directions and specialties to produce a fair and balanced scientific review on the subject of sun-climate connections that the UN IPCC reports had mostly missed or simply neglected.” Nicola Scafetta, Professor of Oceanography and Atmospheric Physics at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy): “The possible contribution of the sun to the 20th-century global warming greatly depends on the specific solar and climatic records that are adopted for the analysis. The issue is crucial because the current claim of the IPCC that the sun has had a negligible effect on the post-industrial climate warming is only based on global circulation model predictions that are compared against climatic records, which are likely affected by non-climatic warming biases (such as those related to the urbanization), and that are produced using solar forcing functions, which are obtained with total solar irradiance records that present the smallest secular variability (while ignoring the solar studies pointing to a much larger solar variability that show also a different modulation that better correlates with the climatic ones). The consequence of such an approach is that the natural component of climate change is minimized, while the anthropogenic one is maximized. Both solar and climate scientists will find the RAA study useful and timely, as it highlights and addresses this very issue.” Ole Humlum, Emeritus Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway: “This study clearly demonstrates the high importance of carefully looking into all aspects of all available data. Obviously, the old saying ‘Nullius in verba’ is still highly relevant in modern climate research.” Gregory Henry, Senior Research Scientist in Astronomy, from Tennessee State University’s Center of Excellence in Information Systems (U.S.A.): “During the past three decades, I have acquired highly precise measurements of brightness changes in over 300 Sun-like stars with a fleet of robotic telescopes developed for this purpose. The data show that, as Sun-like stars age, their rotation slows, and thus their magnetic activity and brightness variability decrease. Stars similar in age and mass to our Sun show brightness changes comparable to the Sun’s and would be expected to affect climate change in their own planetary systems.” Valery M. Fedorov, at the Faculty of Geography in Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia: “The study of global climate change critically needs an analytical review of scientific studies of solar radiation variations associated with the Earth’s orbital motion that could help to determine the role and contributions of solar radiation variations of different physical natures to long-term climate changes. This paper steers the scientific priority in the right direction.” Richard C. Willson, Principal Investigator in charge of NASA’s ACRIM series of Sun-monitoring Total Solar Irradiance satellite experiments (U.S.A.): “Contrary to the findings of the IPCC, scientific observations in recent decades have demonstrated that there is no ‘climate change crisis’. The concept that’s devolved into the failed CO2 anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) hypothesis is based on the flawed predictions of imprecise 1980’s vintage global circulation models that have failed to match observational data both since and prior to their fabrication. The Earth’s climate is determined primarily by the radiation it receives from the Sun. The amount of solar radiation the Earth receives has natural variabilities caused by both variations in the intrinsic amount of radiation emitted by the Sun and by variations in the Earth-Sun geometry caused by planetary rotational and orbital variations. Together these natural variations cause the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) at the Earth to vary cyclically on a number of known periodicities that are synchronized with known past climatic changes.” WeiJia Zhang, Professor of Physics at Shaoxing University (China) and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (UK): “The quest to understand how the Earth’s climate is connected to the Sun is one of the oldest science subjects studied by the ancient Greeks and Chinese. This review paper blows open the mystery and explains why it has been so difficult to make scientific advances so far. It will take the real understanding of fluid dynamics and magnetism on both the Sun and Earth to find the next big leap forward.” Hong Yan (晏宏), Professor of Geology and Paleoclimatology at the Institute of Earth Environment and Vice Director of the State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology in Xi’an, China: “Paleoclimate evidence has long been informing us of the large natural variations of local, regional and hemispheric climate on decadal, multidecadal to centennial timescales. This paper will be a great scientific guide on how we can study the broad topic of natural climatic changes from the unique perspective of external forcings by the Sun’s multi-scale and multi-wavelength impacts and responses.” Ana G. Elias, Director of the Laboratorio de Ionosfera, Atmósfera Neutra y Magnetosfera (LIANM) at the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Tecnología in the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (FACET-UNT), Argentina: “The importance of this work lies in presenting a broader perspective, showing that all the relevant long-term trend climate variability forcings, and not just the anthropogenic ones (as has been done mostly), must be considered. The way in which the role of these forcings is estimated, such as the case of solar and geomagnetic activity, is also important, without minimizing any one in pursuit of another. Even the Earth’s magnetic field could play a role in climate.” Willie Soon, at the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES), who also has been researching sun/climate relationships at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (U.S.A.) since 1991: “We know that the Sun is the primary source of energy for the Earth’s atmosphere. So, it always was an obvious potential contributor to recent climate change. My own research over the last 31 years into the behavior of stars that are similar to our Sun, shows that solar variability is the norm, not the exception. For this reason, the Sun’s role in recent climate change should never have been as systematically undermined as it was by the IPCC’s reports. Hopefully, this systematic review of the many unresolved and ongoing challenges and complexities of Sun/climate relationships can help the scientific community return to a more comprehensive and realistic approach to understanding climate change.” László Szarka, from the ELKH Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science (Hungary) and also a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: “This review is a crucial milestone on the way to restoring the scientific definition of ‘climate change’ that has become gradually distorted over the last three decades. The scientific community should finally realize that in science there is no authority or consensus; only the right to seek the truth.”

https://medium.com/@ceres-science/how-much-has-the-sun-influenced-northern-hemisphere-temperature-trends-an-ongoing-debate-121c5b1f2825

['Center For Environmental Research', 'Earth Sciences']

2021-08-07 13:23:22.051000+00:00

['Climate Change', 'Global Warming', 'Climate Science']

4 things the government should do to make sure bailiffs follow the rules

We helped 41,000 people last year who were struggling with problems caused by bailiffs. As part of the Taking Control campaign we’re calling on the government to introduce independent regulation of the sector. Here are 4 things they need to do. 1. Recognise the damage caused by bad bailiff debt collection The problems caused by bailiffs aren’t new. We’ve called for tougher regulation of bailiffs since at least 2006. Today, we submitted evidence to the government which shows the scale of the problem. Bailiffs collect debt from people who are in financial difficulty and often face other vulnerabilities. 2 in 5 of the people we helped last year had a long term health condition or disability. When bailiffs break the rules they push people further into debt and cause stress and anxiety — making it harder for people to get their finances back on track. The impact of bailiffs — YouGov polling of adults in England and Wales who had a negative experience with bailiffs 2. Ignore bailiffs’ claims they can regulate themselves Bailiffs will claim that their standards are improving. They aren’t. We helped people with 90,000 bailiff-related problems last year — 24% more than when the government aimed to ‘clean up the industry’ in 2014. And advisers think bailiff behaviour is getting worse, with over 4 in 5 saying bailiffs’ use of threatening behaviour has stayed the same or got worse since 2014. The current self-regulatory approach doesn’t hold bailiffs to account when they break the rules. Both the people who are contacted by bailiffs and our advisers say the complaints process doesn’t work. In total, nearly 3 in 4 people (74%) who were affected by bailiff rule breaking over the last 2 years didn’t complain. 3. Commit to regulating the industry during this parliament The rules introduced in 2014 were largely positive. They set out a clear fee structure, introduced a new licensing regime for bailiffs, and clarified the goods bailiffs can’t remove from people’s homes — such as things they need for their work. But they haven’t worked because they’re not enforced properly. A new formal complaints mechanism, introduced in the 2014 reforms, has only been used 56 times. The government should use its call for evidence to commit to solving the long-term problem of bad bailiff behaviour. Only an independent regulator can make sure bailiffs follow the rules. 4. Work with us and the sector to develop a model of regulation We recognise that introducing a regulator won’t be easy. At a minimum, a regulator needs to be able to license, supervise and sanction bailiffs when they break the rules. But it would be worth it. Our estimate is that a regulator would cost around £3 million a year and would save the government, taxpayers and people in debt as much as £160 million. The government essentially has 2 options. They can create a new body to regulate bailiffs — in a similar way to the creation of the claims management regulator. Or they can give powers to an existing body — such as the Financial Conduct Authority. We want to work with the government to develop a model of regulation that works.

https://wearecitizensadvice.org.uk/4-things-the-government-should-do-about-bailiffs-ac5aec879d2b

['Joe Lane']

2019-02-15 11:28:04.090000+00:00

['Economics', 'Debt', 'Consumer', 'Bailiffs', 'Money']

The Learning Problem: Comparison between Brain and Machine

This is the first chapter of a series devoted to analyze and decompose the learning problem in its very bases. In doing that I would like to stress the comparison between the biological and the artificial realm. Particularly, as a Physicist, I’m interested in understanding Emergence and Self-Organization phenomena, which are topics typically related to Complex Systems (e.g. the Brain or a Deep Neural Network). The central idea will thus be: showing how well-understood solutions (e.g. a single neuron) can be applied in a bottom-up manner in order to understand complex situations. With the purpose of building a solid structure for tackling this problem we’d need two tools: Mathematical Modeling and Simulation (a.k.a. Coding). I’ll go trough all of this since the very beginning, let’s get it started! If you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can solve: find it. (George Pólya, Mathematical Discovery on Understanding, Learning, and Teaching Problem Solving) Physics has been traditionally faithful to this idea: complex situations are preferentially studied on top of simple solutions. Even on the more abstract level, where issues pertaining to the general nature of constraints on cognitive processes are discussed, a physicist is likely to feel that natural language, for example, is much too complicated a subject-matter for a starting point. He is likely to try to construct a structure of increasing complexity consisting of definite realizations of simple processes possessing cognitive flavor. One of the main criteria for the selection of these stages is their analizability. Their properties can be studied in a non-abstract manner, avoiding mysterious conclusions which are brought by the blurriness of complexity. In this way, in order to understand the learning problem, we should deal with its basic units. In particular we’re going to compare neurons and perceptrons. Let’s go on with the first one. Neurons: biological candidates for understanding complexity [1] A short description of the biological background is called for, even though it wouldn’t be possible, for a long time to come, to overcome Eric Kandel’s description of the neural sciences (you can check, therefore, this outstanding text for a general overview of the field). Only those features which are essential for the construction of the model will be summarized here. The basic elements are, naturally, neurons and synapses. There is a fairly large variety of types of neurons in the human nervous system — variations are found in size, in structure and in function. As a choice of context, for the present purposes, we will consider a “canonical” type of neuron. If the underlying principles depend on the structure of individual neurons, it is unlikely that physics will contribute much to their clarification. Beyond a certain level, complex functions must be a result of the interaction of large numbers of simple elements. Fig.1A source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreamorris/2018/08/27/scientists-discover-a-new-type-of-brain-cell-in-humans/ — modified by myself A neuron is depicted in Figure1, alongside its schematic representation. The neurons communicate via synapses, which are the points along the axon of the pre-synaptic neuron at which it can communicate the outcome of the computation that has been performed in its soma to the dendrites or even directly to the soma of the post-synaptic neuron. The output part is the axon. Usually only one axon leaves the soma and then, downstream, it branches repeatedly, to communicate with many post-synaptic neurons. Now, from our perspective, the dynamics of neurons and synapses, which is very similar to the propagation of an electric signal in a cable, is based on the following sequence: The neural axon is in an all-or-none state. In the first state it propagates a signal — spike, or action potential — based on the result of the summation, performed in the soma, of signals coming from dendrites. The shape and amplitude of the propagating signal is very stable and is replicated at branching points in the axon. Furthermore, the presence of a traveling impulse in the axon blocks the possibility of a second impulse transmission. When the traveling signal reaches the endings of the axon it causes the secretion of neuro-transmitters — our harbingers — into the synapse extremity. The neuro-transmitters arrive, across the synapse, at the post-synaptic neuron membrane and bind to receptors, thus causing the latter to open up and allow for the penetration of ionic current. The post-synaptic potential (PSP) diffuses in a graded manner towards the soma where the inputs from all the pre-synaptic neurons connected to the post-synaptic one are summed. If the total sum of the PSP’s arriving within a short period surpasses a certain threshold, the probability for the emission of a spike becomes significant. Following the event of the emission of a spike, the neuron needs time to recover. We are going to name this amount of time as absolute refractory period, in which the neuron cannot emit a second spike (in this way nature sets a maximal spike frequency, de facto limiting the amount of information that a neuron can process in a fixed amount of time). The previous description indicates that the only way neurons can communicate the outcome of their computations to other neurons is trough the emission of neurotransmitters. For the sake of mathematical modeling we shall make a strong assumption, namely that: sub-treshold potentials do not lead to the release of neurotransmitters. In other words, neurotransmitters are released by spikes only. Now that we have a basic introduction of neurons functionalities we can take a look at a mathematical model, i.e. the Leaky Integrate-and-Fire (LIF) neuron. For the ones of you who are interested in the “heavy” math behind this model, I’m going to briefly introduce it. Leaky Integrate-and-Fire model, a mathematical perspective [2] The canonical way in order to deal with neuronal models is the circuit analogy. This is pretty technical, but I’ll try to keep it as low level as possible. For the ones of you who have taken an Electronics 101 it’ll just be a quick recap of a simple 𝑅𝐶 circuit. We’ve been previously talking about the summation (sometimes referred as integration) process that happens in the soma, which is, combined with the mechanism that triggers action potentials above some critical threshold, the very core of neuronal dynamics. Let’s now dive into math so that to build a phenomenological model of neuronal dynamics. We describe the critical voltage as a formal threshold 𝜽. If the voltage 𝑢(𝑡) (the sum of all inputs) reaches 𝜽 from below, we say that the neuron fires a spike. In this model we have two different components that are both necessary to define the dynamics: first, an equation that describes the evolution of the potential 𝑢(𝑡); and second, a mechanism to generate spikes. The following is the simplest model in the class of integrate-and-fire models is made up of two ingredients: a linear differential equation to describe the evolution of 𝑢(𝑡) and a threshold for spike firing. The variable 𝑢(𝑡) describes the instant value of the potential of our neuron. In the absence of any input, the potential is at its resting state 𝑣 . If the neuron receives an input (a current) 𝐼(𝑡), the potential 𝑢(𝑡) will be deflected from its resting value. In order to arrive at an equation that links the momentary voltage 𝑢(𝑡) — 𝑣 to the input current 𝐼(𝑡), we use elementary laws from the theory of electricity. If a current pulse 𝐼(𝑡) is injected into the neuron, the additional electrical charge will charge the cell membrane. The cell membrane will therefore act as a capacitor of capacity 𝐶. The charge will slowly leak through the cell membrane since this ladder is not a perfect insulator. We can take this into account by adding a finite leak resistance 𝑅 to our model. The basic electrical circuit representing a leaky integrate-and-fire model consists of a capacitor 𝐶 in parallel with a resistor 𝑅 driven by a current 𝐼(𝑡); see Figure 2 Figure2 — source : https://neuronaldynamics.epfl.ch/online/Ch1.S3.html . On the left: a neuron, which is enclosed by the cell membrane (big circle), receives a (positive) input current 𝐼(𝑡) which increases the electrical charge inside the cell. The corresponding circuit is depicted at the bottom. On the right: the cell membrane reaction to a step current (top) with a smooth voltage signal (bottom) With the purpose of analyzing the circuit, we use the law of current conservation and split the current into two components: The first component is the current which passes through the linear resistor 𝑅 and it can be calculated from Ohm’s law. The second component charges the capacitor 𝐶. Thus, by using Ohm’s law and the current-voltage relation for capacitors, we get: Luckily, this is a linear differential equation in 𝑢(𝑡) and it is easy to solve, especially if we consider a constant input current 𝐼(𝑡) = 𝑖 which starts at 𝑡 = 0 and ends at time 𝑡 = 𝚫. For the sake of simplicity we assume that the membrane potential at time 𝑡 = 0 is at its resting value 𝑢(0) = 𝑣. The solution for 0<𝑡<𝚫 is, thus: If the input current never stopped, the potential would approach for 𝑡→ ∞ to the asymptotic value 𝑢(∞)=𝑣 +𝑅𝑖. We can understand this result by taking a look at Figure2 right-side bottom. Once a plateau is reached, the charge on the capacitor no longer changes. All input current must then flow through the resistor. Additionally, for notation purposes we usually denote RC as 𝜏, phisically the time constant of our circuit. Now that we have introduced our ingredients it’s time to start baking some code. Let’s code a Leaky Integrate-and-Fire neuron We’re going to use Brian2, a very efficient Python library for simulating spiking neural networks (i.e. biological neural networks), which you can easily install by following the official instructions. I often use Jupyter notebooks in order to run Python scripts: it’s an interactive environment that let you code and integrate Markdown and a wide range of useful plugins specifically designed for scientific computing and machine learning. Once you’re ready with the installation, you can start by importing Brian2. import brian2 as br2 After that, we’re going to define some global parameters of our model: N is the number of neurons; tau is the circuit time constant, previosly defined ( i.e. 𝜏 = RC ); v_r is the resting membrane potential (i.e. 𝑣); I_c is the constant input current (i.e. 𝑖); v_th is the spike critical voltage (i.e. threshold 𝜗) N = 1 tau = 10 *br2.ms v_r = 0 *br2.mV I_c = 18 * br2.mV #v_th is a string, it's going to be clear in a while v_th = "v > 15*mV" You should note that in defining the variables we’ve set physical units as well. Consequently, we can sketch out the dynamics: Brian2 let you write the equations that describe your model, you have to specify units as well (I know the current is apparently measured in Volt here — it’s a kick in the teeth, but everything is done for the sake of congruence) eqs = ''' dv/dt = -(v-I)/tau : volt I : volt ''' By calling NeuronGroup we’re creating a group of Neurons (here we have 1 neuron) with the previously defined dynamics, v_r and I_c as the characteristics of our neuron. In order to record its activity we call StateMonitor, v_trace can be used to extract time and voltage values as we’ll soon see. lif = br2.NeuronGroup(N, model = eqs, threshold =v_th, reset = 'v = 0*mV') lif.v = v_r lif.I = I_c v_trace = br2.StateMonitor(lif, 'v', record = True) The last step consists in running the simulation and plotting the result. As previously said, we extract time from v_trace as our x-axis and voltage (v[0] refers to the first — and only — neuron). You have to be careful with physical units — again — and remember that for plotting we need a dimensional data. br2.run(0.1*br2.second) br2.figure(1) br2.plot(v_trace.t[:]/br2.ms, v_trace.v[0]/br2.mV) br2.xlabel('Time (ms)', fontsize = 24) br2.ylabel('v (mV)', fontsize = 24) br2.yticks([0,4,8,12,16]) br2.show() The result is thus a sequence of spikes. You should play with parameters in order to see different kinds of behaviour. We’ve described a fairly biological model of spiking neurons, but what’s the transition from this realm to the artificial one? Let’s talk about perceptrons. Perceptrons: artificial candidates for understanding complexity [3] [4] By continuing with the complex systems’ paradigm, from Minsky’s and Papert’s book: Although we do not have an equally elaborated theory of ‘learning’, we can at least demonstrate that in cases where ‘learning’ or ‘adaption’ or ‘self-organization’ does occur, its occurrence can be thoroughly elucidated and carries no suggestion of mysterious little-understood principles of complex systems. Whether there are such principles we cannot know. But the perceptron provides no evidence; and our success in analyzing it adds another piece of circumstantial evidence for the thesis that cybernetic processes that work can be understood, and those that cannot be understood are suspect. As hinted by the quotation above and strongly advocated by Turing, mental phenomena are nothing but an expression of a very complex structure operating on relatively simple processes. This is the very first thought that brought to the formalization of the brain. The perceptron is, in this way, the very first brick of Artificial Intelligence. We are going to formalize the biological neuron, de facto getting the perceptron and after that introduce Rosenblatt’s perceptron learning algorithm. We now focus on the logical structure of a single neuron. The description of the previous sections suggests the following scheme: Figure 3 There is a processing unit, the large circle , which represents the soma. A number of input lines connect, logically, to the soma, depicted with incoming arrows in Figure3. They represent dendrites and synapses. The input channels are activated by the signals they receive from the input variables (x’s) to which they are connected. These variables are our pre-synaptic axons, and they have an intrinsic logical nature, since they can either activate the channel (carry a spike) or not activate it (sub-treshold activity in the pre-synaptic neuron). To each input line, we associate a parameter w — the subscript refers to the various input channels. The numerical value of each w is indeed the amount of post-synaptic potential (PSP) that would be added to the soma if the channel were activated. Furthermore, there is a single logical output line (outgoing arrow in Fig3). It expresses the logical fact that our neuron produces a single relevant ouput — a spike . We can arrange the operations of the unit in the following way: At a given moment, some of the logical inputs are activated. The soma receives an input which is the linear sum of PSP values of the channels that were activated — the variable x indicates whether the channel is active (x = 1) or inactive (x = -1) values of the channels that were activated — the variable x indicates whether the channel is active (x = 1) or inactive (x = -1) The sum of PSP’s is compared to the threshold value of the neuron and the output channel is activated if it overcomes the threshold. Formally, we’ll get: with h as the PSP at our neuron and n as the number of pre-synaptic neurons. Mathematically h is nothing but a dot product. Anyways, the operation implemented by our little “machine” can be expressed as: with sign as the sign function and 𝜽 as the threshold of our neuron. H is basically 1 if its argument (h+𝜽) is positive and -1 if negative — and, to be precise, 0 if h +𝜽 = 0. The variable y indicates, in our biological analogy, whether a spike will appear in the output axon. Now that our perceptron has taken shape we can talk about how this mathematical structure can be involved in the learning process. Let’s introduce Rosenblatt’s perceptron learning algorithm. The learning process in perceptrons [4] There’s a clear analogy between neurons and perceptrons, but how can we use this ladder model in order to learn ? We’re going to show that the perceptron can be used to solve classification problems, namely it can tell you whether, if we have two sets of points, a point belong to one set or another. We can say without a lack of generalizability that the problem can be thought as a binary (yes/no) decision, where the variable y (the output value) defined above is one of these two binary values ( yes = 1, no = -1) . From the previous definition of h as a dot product it’s even clearer that x is formally a vector (the input vector). Every component of x is called feature, by talking in Machine Learning terms. In the same way w is a vector (the weight vector). The threshold term 𝜽 it’s usually called bias term. In the direction of a simplified notation we’re going to augment both x and w in the following way: Basically, by extending the sum from i = 0 to i = n. The learning algorithm we’re going to build will consider all these terms and in particular the term learning specifically refers on finding the best value of w’s components in order to achieve the best classification possible. Take a look at the following 2-dimensional (here x has only two components) problem in Figure4 and everything will be clear. Figure 4 — On the left: misclassified data. On the right: perfectly classified data. So, in practice, classification means finding a way in order to separate the two different “kinds” of data we have. Each “kind” of data is specified by a different label (plus or minus, in the figure above). So to speak, this is a two labels classification problem. It’s time to introduce the perceptron learning algorithm (PLA), which will determine what w should be, based on the data. This learning algorithm consists in a simple iterative method. By involving the term “iteration”, we’re going to introduce a new parameter in our model, namely, time. At iteration t, where t = 0,1,2…, there is a current value of the weight vector, call it w(t). The algorithm picks a point, associated with its label, that is currently misclassified, call it (x(t), y(t)), and uses it to update w(t). Since the example is misclassified, we have y(t) ≠ sign(w(t) · x(t)), where the dot represents the dot product. The weight update rule is as follow: Figure 5 — The last update This rule moves the boundary in the direction to classify x(t) correctly, as depicted in the figure above. The algorithm continues with further iterations until there are no longer misclassified points in the data set. With this intuitive view of the PLA, it’s now time to code it. Let’s code the Perceptron Learning Algorithm We’re going to implement the PLA from scratch by coding a simple Python script. Let’s open a new notebook with Jupyter and start by importing matplotlib.pyplot and numpy import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np We’re going to create a 2-dimensional random dataset of 5 points (with two possible labels, -1 and +1) by using numpy.random.rand(). In order to reproduce the result we’ll fix the random seed — you can actually choose every integer number, 137 has a particular meaning for Physicists though. # Setting the random seed np.random.seed(seed = 137) # Generate x1 and x2, coordinates of our points number_of_points = 5 x1 = np.random.rand(number_of_points) x2 = np.random.rand(number_of_points) # We have two labels, namely -1 and 1 possible_ys = np.array([-1,1]) # We randomly build the label y to point (x1,x2) association y = np.random.choice(possible_ys, number_of_points) Data are represented by triplets of values. # We create data as triplets of values data = [] for i in range(number_of_points): data.append((x1[i],x2[i],y[i])) You can take a look at your data by executing the following line and you’ll get: # Taking a look at data data The next step is to plot them by denoting with a “-” the label corresponding to “-1” and by “+” the label corresponding to “1” # Plotting our data plt.plot([x1 for (x1,x2,y) in data if y==-1], [x2 for (x1,x2,y) in data if y==-1], '_', mec='r', mfc='none') plt.plot([x1 for (x1,x2,y) in data if y==1], [x2 for (x1,x2,y) in data if y==1], '+', mec='b', mfc='none') After that we can start with the learning model. The very first thing to do is to initialize the weights, usually a “little” random value is the best solution for faster convergence. # Initializing the weight vector w = np.random.rand(3)*10e-03 Consequently, we define the function “predict” which is nothing but sign(w(t) · x(t)) def predict(x1,x2): # w[0] is the threshold value, x0 = 1 h= w[0] + w[1]*x1 + w[2]*x2 if h<0: return -1 else: return 1 The last part of the learning model is the function “fit” which corresponds to the weight update rule. The essence is: for every point we compare the predicted label with the actual one, if these are not equal each component of the weight vector is updated. def fit(data): stop = False while stop == False: stop = True for x1,x2,y in data: ypredict= predict(x1,x2) if y != ypredict: stop = False w[1]= w[1] + x1*y w[2]= w[2] + x2*y w[0]= w[0] + y By applying the function “fit” to our data, the PLA will converge to a solution. If this is the case we’ll get a printed ‘SUCCESS!’ as the output of the following cell. fit(data) # Check if the model is predicting correct labels for (x1, x2, y) in data: if predict(x1,x2) != y: print('FAIL') break else: print('SUCCESS!') Last but not least, we can plot our result. “f(x)” is the functional form of the line given by the PLA (you can get it by applying simple algebraic calculations — de facto by expliciting the expression for x2). def f(x): return -(w[0] + w[1]*x)/w[2] d = range(0,2) plt.plot(d, [f(x) for x in d]) plt.plot([x1 for (x1,x2,y) in data if y==-1], [x2 for (x1,x2,y) in data if y==-1], '_', mec='r', mfc='none') plt.plot([x1 for (x1,x2,y) in data if y==1], [x2 for (x1,x2,y) in data if y==1], '+', mec='b', mfc='none') In this way, we’ve solved a simple classification problem, i.e. we’ve been learning! Conclusions We’ve reached the end of our adventure: we’ve been traveling trough a mathematical model of the neuron and its implementation. With that in mind,we’ve been taking inspiration from it in order to formalize the neuron and build the perceptron. Be careful though, the perceptron is not a biologically plausible model. The relationship between neurons and pereptrons is much more similar to the one between birds and planes. Here, the problem of “flying” is actually the learning problem, but again, the road for a perfectly reliable plane it’s way longer than this. In particular perceptrons have an intrinsic problem, which is insurmountable without a major change. Minsky and Papert have been pointing out that issue so clearly that research in Artificial Intelligence has been subjected to a quite long break. Therefore, I would like you to point out this serious perceptron’s limitation. I think that you can grasp an intuition of the problem by looking at the code in the previous section and tweaking np.random.seed() and number_of_points. Give it a try and let me know! References [1] Amit, D. (1989). Modeling Brain Function: The World of Attractor Neural Networks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [2] Wulfram Gerstner, Werner M. Kistler, Richard Naud, and Liam Paninski. 2014. Neuronal Dynamics: From Single Neurons to Networks and Models of Cognition. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA. Online version: https://neuronaldynamics.epfl.ch/online/index.html [3] Marvin L. Minsky and Seymour A. Papert. 1988. Perceptrons: Expanded Edition. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. [4]Rosenblatt, Frank. 1962. Principles of neurodynamics; perceptrons and the theory of brain mechanisms. Washington, Spartan Books [5] Yaser S. Abu-Mostafa, Malik Magdon-Ismail, and Hsuan-Tien Lin. 2012. Learning from Data. AMLBook.

https://medium.com/mljcunito/the-learning-problem-comparison-between-brain-and-machine-1e52213a1a63

['Simone Azeglio']

2019-09-24 20:07:36.618000+00:00

['Python', 'Programming', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Neural Networks', 'Neuroscience']

Convolutional Neural Networks

Convolutional neural networks are a sub-category of neural networks that have proved to be extremely effective in arduous tasks such as image recognition and classification. The first CNN was built by Yann Le Cunn: LeNet5, but the real interest in CNN was sparked off after the ImageNet success of Alex Krizhevsky who was able to bring down the classification error to a record 15% from 26%. Show your support by subscribing to our newsletter! In this article I will be walking you through the steps of using a CNN on the MNIST digit classification task. A CNN is made up of four hidden layers namely: convolution layers max pooling layers fully-connected layers dropout layers I will explain the role and the concept behind each layer as we progress through the code. The CNN we are going to implement today is the model developed by Alex Krizhevsky and , also named after him -AlexNet. This model uses Lasagne with a Theano or Tensorflow backend to train the neural network. So we will be working with these two libraries extensively, also, scikit learn to visualize our prediction information. The MNIST dataset can be procured using the urllib module and using pickle to load the files into our model. We define a function load_dataset() : We can see the image data from our dataset using the matplotlib module: plt.imshow(X_train[0][0], cmap=cm.binary) The output we get is the following: Visualizing Dataset Next we have to create the structure of our neural network i.e. the layers, but before doing that, we have to define some variables which are essential for the functioning of our layers: The batch_size refers to the number of training examples in each batch for our batch gradient descent. The output_size is set to 10 which indicates the number of classes we predict in the output layer i.e. 10 digits in mnist. The data_size is the shape or the dimensions of the input data i.e. our data is represented by a three-dimensional block of size 28x28 and as our image set is black and white the third value or RBG channel is set to 1. The input_var and output_var are Tensortype object which will hold the input and output data. Finally, net is the name of our model which is a simple python dictionary. This is the structure of our neural net-AlexNet: The input layer simply takes the input data and its shape as arguments. The first layer is a convolution layer which has a filter i.e. a 2D matrix of fixed size F which shifts throughout the input matrix N with a specific stride S, producing an output of size- (N-F+2P)/S+1. Next, Pooling layers reduce the spatial size of the output by replacing values in the kernel by a function of those values i.e this layer shrinks the image size. Here we will be using the lasagne.layers.Pool2dLayer() . A max-pool layer divides the matrix up into pools creates a yet smaller dimensional matrix containing the maximum value from each pool(using the same filter method as discussed above). The fully-connected layers are hidden layers where each input neuron is linked to all neurons in the next layer i.e all neurons are connected. The dropout layer is positioned just before the output layer. Dropout sets a proportion 1-dropout of activations (neuron outputs) passed on to the next layer to zero. The zeroed-out outputs are chosen randomly. What happens if we set the dropout parameter to 0? This reduces overfitting by checking that the network can provide the right output even if some activations are dropped out. Finally, our output layer is a softmax layer. In probability theory, the output of the softmax function can be used to represent a categorical distribution— that is, a probability distribution over n different possible outcomes. As we have 10 classes or 10 handwritten digits we use the softmax layer with ten neurons. Keep in the mind the filter_size for each convolution layer has to be set carefully, otherwise the shape of the data may become negative due to excessive convoluting(Do the math by hand!). To better understand the various layers and layer arguments check out-http://lasagne.readthedocs.io/en/latest/modules/layers.html Next, to train the neural network we need to set some kind of update rule for our model. Hence, the first step is to define the loss function or the cost function i.e we will use the mean cross-entropy function. As you can see we have used L2 regularization technique to reduce the noise in our network. Now, the second step is to define the update rule. Stochastic Gradient Descent is one of the most widely used and effective weight update functions. I have used a variant of the SGD called Adam which is an optimized version of SGD. Followed by this, we will define the Theano functions which will train and test the model. We can extract the various inferences such as loss and accuracy and test error,etc. using the theano layer fucntions. The theano layer functions enable us to gather inferences from within the layers of a neural network i.e hidden layer representations which are very useful if you are aiming at extracting features from an image set. Next we simply train the model over our training data using mini-batches of size 100( Remember? batch_size=100) and test our model to display the test error: I ran the program on my humble CPU (will post the results on GPU later) and got the following output: Test Error: 0.01470 Time:4134.223 seconds Thus we got 98.53% accuracy on our test set. The model can be applied to larger datasets and real-world image processing applications. Till next time!

https://medium.com/themlblog/convolutional-neural-networks-81cab026aceb

['Tathagat Dasgupta']

2018-07-30 10:45:56.637000+00:00

['Digit Recognition', 'Neuralnettut', 'Computer Vision', 'Machine Learning', 'Neural Networks']

kara, scabs & a 1,000 crabs

by brian knippers (aka bigdaddynipps) it appeared overnight what a wicked bad sight little tiny red dot of pain this hurt and be-came in a strange way more intense than usual a throbbing pulsing hurt… I ignored it like a “real man” a week later I was wearing satan’s doorknocker on my shin oozing deep green-yellow mucus puss gelatinous goop spewing forth from this cavernous hole dark, horrofic, smells like rot depths of hell a dialogue of suffering ensued today’s bleed yesterday’s growth watching this bump rise big bigger really, really, really fucking big pointing to an angry red welt every time I approach the med-window where they serve medication drive-thru style on our unit med-assistants men & woman told me hey, that’s nothing to worry about one guy laughed at me it’ll go away in a few days chuck, chuck, chuck, he said they turned a blind eye “now serving 54” trained avoidance just give em’ a couple ibuprophen push em’ through medical meat grinder of the M-DOC M-DOC = Massachusett’s Department of Corrections health services department has been in official “cost cutting mode” since hiring a private corporation to manage healthcare that “corporation” that won the contract put out a bid for contract and hired a subcontractor to manage “health services” and the subcontractor then signed a subsidiary to manage health services onsite at all levels corporation down the goal’s to cut costs corporation to subcontractor to subsidiary cut costs with finger after finger in the pie the differential ends up a bottom line adjustment paid to the corporation money peeled directly out of healthcare services those formerly managing were to lazy to do their jobs effectively looking back you could’ve probably hired several more full-time workers to handle administrative tasks but why bother right? it’s only a bunch of taxpayers and inmates getting screwed who cares? medical care falls into the hands of a corporation’s subcontractor’s subsidiary that’s who we rely on for our medical well being a corporation that only cares about cutting costs hits an agreed upon bottom line metric earns a bonus oversees nothing this publicly traded company currently trading for around $75 per share that does quite well at the expense of incarcerated human beings insuring we don’t receive proper medication ensuring medications don’t come on a timely basis guaranteeing 90% of all requested procedures are denied knee, hip & shoulder surgeries are now considered cosmetic we’re all taking either generic or experimental medication and all this is nothing but laughable cut costs at all costs no matter what and then cut more we don’t care if they suffer you should never have to argue over whether a cut on your finger justifies a band-aid or an aspirin for your headache but these arguments happen daily at our drive-thru medication window a lot-lot lot-lot a nurse one I’m friendly with at least I’m always polite to her she’s polite to me and once in a while we share a laugh well she threw a heroic pigskin hail mary some call it downfield and that fucking ball flew suddenly I was scheduled to see a doctor satan’s doorknocker which had reared its ugly head finally reached grapefruit proportions now necessitated an emergency consultation I limped to hsu barely avoiding amputation possible gangrene who knows I’m exaggerating slightly but that fucker was big no joke the doctor said admit him immediately and I reluctantly agreed to be locked in a room in the most boring place on earth the h — s fucking — u health — services — unit then the doc turned to me and said why didn’t you report this sooner the nerve of these people I was thus delivered into the open arms of Souza-Bee’s healing angels such is the aplomb of my confidence shyness need not apply confidence has always been here part of the nip-tude I was born with you see… some people got it and others, well so… they these angelic ladies wafting of lovely variants such as rosemary, honeysuckle, jasmine and daffodils wandered into my room with the grace of a group of wild cats and the beauty of swans gliding across the water charismatic and oh, so lovely! these land based female figure skaters looked at me with Big (woman) Eyes! like the paintings told me in earnest brian we’re sorry we have to be the ones to tell you this and I said it’s okay angels an they said well, there’s no easy way to say this your leg’s infected and that’s when I snapped out of my daze pain nestled itself inside my head layers and layers of pain contorting my face I felt nauseous overcome by waves of discomfort stopping up my nose so I couldn’t breathe then there was irritation itching in my eyes temporarily blinding me shine-throbbing I could feel my pulse blocking my ears pain and simple ungodly quantities of pain the qualities of which are all consuming all knowing ouch! similar to fat kids hosting a fat kid’s breakfast birthday party french toast, eggs, sausage, bacon, homefries & grits maple syrup smiles leaking out of mouths stuffed with food brown sugar dripping strings of syrup dangling from third chins a buffet of “buffalo proportion” well I unduly struggle with all-you-can-eat pain my left leg becomes the angriest red devil ten minute’s to pre-eruption krakatoa panic hit me punch me but on occasion a bevvy of beautiful sirens would find their way into #6,134 they would sing me their songs change my dressing blink long & lovely lashes tell me I was going to be alright coo me back into blissful serenenity and ahhhhhhhh but and however this damn infection kept bowling me over lucifer’s fist hammering down upon my leg so angry thoughts of old women’s feet creep towards my mind old woman working her once was father’s now her’s diner breakfast mostly and some lunch for 72 years standing on blisters healed upon scars of old blisters which are based upon a foundation of more blisters saying, “would ya’ like another cup, sweetie?” with a doll’s smile on her fake fucking face while thinking to herself I’d like to stove this fucker’s head in with a shovel 6 bags of antibiotics pumped and dumped inside me every-day pause repeat they put me beside the back door cell #6,134 that slams shut bang! 391 times a day “back door” loud buzzing creaky hinge sound of large metal door opening pause hold it hold it gaining momentum… SLAM!!! drip 6am SLAM!!! drip 8am SLAM!!! drip 12pm SLAM!!! 6pm SLAM!!! 8pm SLAM!!! 12am SLAM!!! 3am SLAM!!! I felt like a mother nursing starving sextuplets wwaaaaaaa!! swish gargle spit repeat it’s the routine that kills ya’ smother my shin in shea butter & goat shite!! my wound festers all over skin pops and breaks being roasted over the open flames I’d rather die .45 caliber bullet teflon tip temple shot or midway up lower half left front leg point BLAM!!! shin shot bitches!! that’ll drain the infection I finally fall asleep my buddy brings me ear buds flex pain heel turn pain toe-in pain ride the ramp 720 mctwist frosty calm with a tail grab the first snowboardin’ dream I ever had in prison wipe out yard sale bounce on that mogul right there wake up after accidentally kicking the arm rail on the bed right on the shin right on my wound pain throttles me puss & blood begins to ooze through my bandage I scream aaaagggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! pain level 16+ eruption how it all went down down unremitting pain screaming sailor’s curses you %$#@! #?+@% #?@%& in cell #6,134 unconsciousness takes hold of me once unconscious here’s what I believe happened to me first, the goon squad smuggled me out “the joint” dragged against my will to a toxic waste deposit site cut off the bandage and opened up my wound with a rusty viet-cong jungle blade contaminated with deep jungle-rot infection virus that turns wounds green unless you’re back in the nam then it turns that shit black koko flown to japan leg submerged nuclear power plant outflow glowing neon sludge 24 to 48 hours wake up in cell #6,134 surrounded by toxic rats gnawing through steel and singing show tunes realize I’m hallucinating they give me more drugs ahhhhhhhh… I pass out again and after count I’m smuggled back out of the prison to a small island monastery in sardinia once they had me doped up and isolated at their mediterranean somewhere they allowed the monks to practice 13th century medieval quackery on my ass wound scrubbed clean with a rag made from sheep intestines dipped in baby urine once clean the monks rub in fresh cow feces the scatter bone dust on the cow shit they wrap the would with a bandage taken from the shrine of saint osferth patron saint of goose shit also saint of further infecting horribly painful swollen infections does this convict (inmate) die a martyr Bob? no jim not today but we’ve got some great parting gift’s for that scumbag black death! circa 1283 and now 11/19/18 SBCC style however, for unexplainable reasons that is reasons yet to be explained with all preoccupations considered being told regularly to wipe my ass and cleanse the wound aka infection I was questioned about how the infection-wound developed in this sterile hygienic perfectly clean freshly scrubbed prison environs come now he said be serious did you shoot up? are you a dope user? I said is this a bad dream and he said what? what did YOU do? it has to be YOUR fault why didn’t you mention it SOONER this must be your fault how could we in this dirty, filthy, stinking, shithole have anything to do anything at all with this infection? yes you’re 20,000,000 percent more likely to get an infection in prison and no I’ve never tried heroine doc but he says you don’t shower three times a day it’s your fault and I say doc you’re right as always all inmates are idiots & liars after all just ask any correctional officer they’d love to tell you what kind of maggots they babysit unless of course they’re to busy watching well whatever they watch right?

https://medium.com/@brian-knippers/kara-scabs-a-1-000-crabs-77005186e80

['Plod - Poetry Life Or Death']

2019-04-12 16:54:54.142000+00:00

['Fiction', 'Prison', 'Mass Incarceration', 'Prison Reform', 'Legal Services']

Yuvina :- A Story of love {One sided Love}

Hello , Yuvraj here . My first story on MEDIUM , Very excited to write . So today guys i am going to tell you about a story . Its basically my life which I spent in my 8th grade as a wonderful and adventurous story. SO LETS BEGIN……. So I was a very shy guy in my 7th grade according to my friends . I passed out 7th grade with flying marks means good (Just pretending that). Then my 8th grade session started and everything was normal and very usual . One month passed and then summer vacations. Bang , now after summer vacations our school started again and back to usual life you see . One day in my class which is as crowded as hell , our MATHEMATICS (weird subject)teacher was teaching and there was knock at the door :- “KNOCK knock!! Ma’am please may i come in” That’s the first time I heard her voice and was like WOWWW!! She started walking in the class and my class which was a hell maintained a complete silent when she entered as I remember . She just came to borrow some extra chalks but for the first time in life someone wrote the letter ‘LOVE’ in my heart . At that present time my heart said “I am in love with her” and my bad one of my friend heard it. Now you all can imagine whenever your friend hear those things that they didn’t to , they will screw your left time span in school . And the same thing happened with me , they all just teased me like hell but at the same time I liked it too…… THOSE days were like heaven and if compare them with today they are just zero. Like due to covid-19 this whole year has gone like waste . COMING back to our story now I became a little bit famous in school due to all those love love things . NOW moving ahead , now the time comes where i did an effort to impress my first crush . A Sentence SO previously you read that I started liking a girl and now in this section you will get to know the first climax of my story. There was a test going on . The test was of hindi subject and in that test i came up to word “SNEH” meaning love in hindi so me and my friend named Dhamma BOTH wrote a sentence:- I WROTE “ sneh- Main Adeena se sneh karta hoon” which means that I love Adeena. OHO shitt man I revealed my crush’s name . OKAY let’s move forward So now as it was a test , my hindi teacher took it lightly I thought but after she gave all the tests paper in class . SHE called me specially and I was thinking why the hell ma’am is calling me only not my friend Dhamma too . Then Dhamma said “Heyo Yuvraj boy , I pranked you” these are the exact words that he said to me and I swear to god that time I felt like just go and kill him. THEN , ma’am introduced me infront of the whole class as the new MONITOR of the class and I was like what just happened man like you all are feeling right now . Then she told the reason that:- “ Mr. YUVRAJ had wriiten an awesome sentence in the test because of which he is going to get failed and I am making him the class monitor to keep him busy and stay away from love and all” I was really embarrassed at that time . THEN at end of the day I became the class monitor and that sentence had gone viral in school because of which I got famous in school. IN THE END , whatever happened was just because of ‘A SENTENCE’ What happens next that Adeena got to know that I liked HER and then the most crazy thing happened………….. TO BE CONTINUED……

https://medium.com/@yuvraj240962/yuvina-a-story-of-love-one-sided-love-cb902ca8dc74

['Yuvraj Kesarwani']

2020-12-27 11:11:23.849000+00:00

['One Sided Love', 'Suspense', 'Relationships', 'Storyoflove', 'Relationships Love Dating']

Snowboarding Put Me in Debt but Gave Me Something Priceless

Snowboarding Put Me in Debt but Gave Me Something Priceless My cousin and me in more than a stack’s worth of gear each. Photos courtesy of the author Winter mornings in Vermont hit different — always have. At 6 a.m., the sun is but a whisper on the peak of the mountain. The towers of pine are weighed down beneath a midnight silhouette. The cold — the kind that shoots down into your lungs and then splinters — makes its presence known in the fog that builds against windows. And then, slowly and quietly, shadows emerge from the resort. Some contort themselves into yoga stretches, others huddle over coffee, but they’re all bound by a devotion to the mountain. I started snowboarding in my early twenties. Before that time, I’d had no interest in what I’d considered “White boy sports.” Much to my mother’s chagrin, I was perfectly content spending my mornings sleeping in and my nights on the stoop with a bottle and the boys. But my mother had remarried into a skiing family. And every year, as the trees manifested embers of leaves that would eventually leave branches bare, she’d call up and see if I wanted to join the family on a weekend ski trip. My response was always the same: “I don’t do that shit.” Something changed shortly into my mid-twenties, though. New York City and all its good times seemed to grow more limiting. My 21st birthday left me hungover, my eye swollen shut, and a box-cutter slice near my right temple. (Never drunkenly try to fight six people, especially when one warns you they have a knife.) After a couple more years of drinking with diminishing returns, I was ready for something different. And then one weekend, my mother reached out with another invitation promising just that. She said there would be a hot tub and beer — that was good enough for me. I figured I’d lounge around the lodge or something, maybe hop on a board just to see what it was all about. But that weekend not only changed how I felt about snowboarding; it changed my outlook on life. From the moment I felt the bite of hard-packed, icy snow on my tailbone, I knew snowboarding would be different. I was no longer the passive observer. It’s strange to hit your twenties and realize that you’ve never really experienced nature before. Sure, as children, my cousins and I looked forward to summer excursions at the Rockaways and frolicked in the rough break until our lips turned purple. We spent trips in Puerto Rico marveling at how the jungle seemed to swallow even the most metropolitan of areas. But these experiences were characterized by their passivity: We took in nature but ultimately remained apart from it. From the moment I felt the bite of hard-packed, icy snow on my tailbone, I knew snowboarding would be different. I was no longer the passive observer. All around me, the cold closed in. Mountain peaks crested like distant waves and hinted at areas hidden behind thickets of snow-covered pines, sealed off behind danger I didn’t yet have the skill to navigate. But those peaks held a promise that when I did, I would no longer be at the mercy of the elements but a part of them. In the days that I did not make the nearly six-hour drive to the mountain, this promise became an obsession. Before I started snowboarding, the city had been unbearable during winter because of the cold and snow. But now it became unbearable when I couldn’t snowboard. The streets seemed grayer and more lifeless as I realized how wrong I had been about the idea of “White boy sports.” In believing the narrative that the great outdoors weren’t for people of color, I’d essentially written myself out of it. And so, I made up my mind to write myself back in. On a particularly gray and listless Saturday, I phoned my cousin to ask if he was down for something different. I suspect he was at a similar crossroads in his fading love affair with the city because he said yes almost immediately. Two hours later, we found ourselves at Hunter Mountain; I taught him the snowboarding basics I barely knew myself. I watched him fall for hours. But with each tumble, something began to click. The pain, the sore muscles, the frostbitten fingers — it all comes together to make the experience more vivid until there is nothing else you’d rather be doing, no place you’d rather be. I’d effectively passed on the obsession to my cousin, and together we started to discover that the great outdoors belonged to us. But if snowboarding had given me a newfound appreciation for nature, it had also given me an unsustainable habit, and I quickly found myself in debt. It’s the other part of the outdoor intersectionality narrative. Sure, I’d written myself back into nature. But how long could I afford to stay there? It’s a conundrum that many working and lower-middle-class families face: having the desire to pursue an activity but not the means. I was fortunate. For years, my stepfather maintained my stints on the mountain; he knew its importance. He was the one who rented the cabins and paid for that first lesson that started everything because he knew that money was the biggest obstacle. He also knew that what he had given me — and what I’d extend to my cousin and him to his brother and so on — was the gift of tradition. We now had a ritual, a passion that would age with us and allow us to experience a different world. Above the clouds at Mount Hood. Might as well be Jupiter. But my time in that world would be limited. Whatever my step-pops couldn’t be on the hook for I made up for with fiscal irresponsibility. Everything went on the credit card to pay off further down the line: $800 lift passes, $500 snowboards, gear, boots, food, gas. But for every lump-sum monthly payment, there was an escalating number of charges until, finally, I just couldn’t afford the habit anymore. I watched my season dwindle from a high of 26 days on the mountain to 10 to five to maybe one here and there. But even though I got to snowboard less frequently, the desire to be in nature remained. So I began to look for activities that would keep me there. I started hiking more, driving out to Long Island or up the Hudson for good ones. On a trip to my grandmother’s hometown of Isabela, Puerto Rico, I took up surfing. It provided the same connection to nature that snowboarding did but at a fraction of the cost. Eventually, I moved out to PR full time. Similar view to the previous picture but free. Now, my days are spent loading up my beater station wagon and pointing it toward the gaping maw of the jungle, seeking out caves or secluded surf spots beneath the ardent Caribbean sun. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss winter, that I didn’t miss the mountain. I miss those Vermont mornings. My cousin and I reminisce about the black-coffee-fueled night drives up I-95 and the hikes just beyond the lift chair to find untouched terrain. Those were good times. But for me, it’s more than just nostalgia. Snowboarding came into my life at a time when God was leaving it. Becoming an atheist was liberating but also a bit jarring. I’d gone from believing in something almighty to believing in nothing. In that absence, the sport showed me that there were still things bigger than myself. And when it became prohibitively expensive, rather than lose that perspective, it simply pushed me further into nature, to seek out those lonely places where God was just another word for the mountain or the pine. And because of that, I’m sure I’ll return to it. I don’t expect snowboarding to get cheaper suddenly. But I’m at the stage in my life where I understand that, sometimes, a little more effort can yield a much greater reward. Mountain resorts are convenient places to find yourself in the midst of nature. But where the resort stops, the real mountain begins; the only price of entry is how far your legs can carry you or how long you can stand the cold. And in the search of that — those lonely places — we just have to hike a little farther past the lift.

https://level.medium.com/snowboarding-put-me-in-debt-but-gave-me-something-priceless-d709db2dc77

['Miguel Machado']

2020-12-24 06:33:33.870000+00:00

['Race', 'Money', 'Sports', 'Snowboarding', 'Outdoors']

Calling Out Syria’s Crimes

Bloomfield: We first met you in 2014, when you came to the Museum on one of the most memorable days of my life. Tell us about the images you brought to us. Moustafa: The Museum was the first place we could think of to bring these horrific images. Through my work we were introduced to a forensic photographer for the Assad regime’s military police. Early on in the revolution, he was asked to take photographs of innocent civilians who were tortured to death in and around Damascus. He took a total of 55,000 photographs over a period of two and a half years. And this very brave man, whom we call “Caesar” to protect his identity, eventually fled and was able to bring the photographs with him, to show the world what is happening in Syria. We are so grateful that the Museum and its Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide have been able to draw the world’s attention to them — in an exhibition at the Museum, in a display on Capitol Hill, and through news coverage and social media outreach. Bloomfield: You lead the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which is working to alleviate suffering in Syria, where more than 400,000 people have been killed since violence broke out in 2011. But your organization is also actively working to build democracy there. Can you tell us about that? Moustafa: Our work on the ground in Syria focuses on nurturing the civilian governing structures that are rising up in the contested and liberated areas of the country. People have fought for their freedom at great personal risk and loss, so we try to support local civilian governing councils to make sure that terrorist groups, extremists, or warlords aren’t the ones who come in to fill the administrative vacuum. In the course of our work for democracy, by the way, we’ve lost two members of our staff to the Assad regime, who were tortured to death; two others were taken by ISIS and killed. Bloomfield: What role has Iran played in the Syrian conflict? Moustafa: Since the beginning of this conflict, despite crippling sanctions, Iran has supported the Assad regime. Iran called for its proxy, Hezbollah, to enter Syria and to supplement the regime’s army in killing and going after civilian populations, civil society, and civilian councils. And as they did this, we were in awe, because the Syrian people always believed that their supporters in the West, in the free world, wouldn’t let us fight alone against this dictator. We see the Russians also supporting the Syrian regime. The Syrian people are fighting two extremist forces: a dictator supported by Shiite extremists and the Russians, plus the terrorist groups ISIS and al-Qaeda. There’s a mutual understanding I would say between extremists like ISIS or Hezbollah to go after the moderate Muslims and others from this beautiful mosaic of ethnic backgrounds in Syria because they don’t want people who want a civilian, pluralist, democratic state. Bloomfield: Can you talk about the impact of the Museum’s work? Moustafa: One of the most heartbreaking things, talking to people who are living in the midst of a horrendous war, is when they tell me the world has deserted us, forgotten us — our blood is just simply not enough to care about. But this institution, the Museum, changes that. You should see Syrians’ reactions when they witness the Museum’s efforts to bring awareness. It’s almost as important as giving them food or water or sheltering them from bombs. It means the world to them that somebody out there has not forgotten them, that people have connected with them on a human level. This place supersedes politics; it builds bridges; and it allows for the possibility that we may see a Middle East that is safe and stable with everyone living together in peace. Rescuing Judaica in Syria One of the civilian councils that the Syrian Emergency Task Force supports is located in Jobar, a Damascus suburb that is home to the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, which dates back to 720 BC. After the outbreak of the Syrian crisis, members of the local council tried to protect the synagogue from looters and buried priceless Judaica — including rugs and Torah scrolls — for safekeeping. Because of their efforts, these artifacts were not damaged when the synagogue was shelled and destroyed in 2014, according to Moustafa. “That’s who the real Syrian people are,” Moustafa explains. “They understand that this important Jewish history is also world history, and that is sacred to them.” Watch a Museum program on the effort to save the Jobar synagogue. This article was first published in Fall 2016.

https://medium.com/memory-action/calling-out-syrias-crimes-754ae9cdcad1

['United States Holocaust Memorial Museum']

2019-07-26 13:54:02.691000+00:00

['Genocide', 'Genocide Prevention', 'Syria']

Working With Multiple UIButtons and Utilizing Their Tag Property

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always used UIButton’s IBAction functionality when when working with buttons. Whether if it was one button or a couple, it’s simple to connect buttons to their respective ViewController and write some logic within their IBAction function. However, what if you needed to work with multiple buttons? Say…ten or twenty buttons? While it’s highly unlikely you’ll find this many buttons in an app’s screen, apps like a typical calculator beg the question on how they are configured under the hood with so many buttons? This is where a button’s ‘tag’ comes into play. In Main.storyboard, a button’s tag property can be assigned a unique number in the Inspector. Again, it has to be a unique tag value; buttons cannot share the same tag or else it’ll crash upon runtime when tapped/triggered. It’s no different than calling a set of twins the same name because calling that name will cause confusion. I will spare you from reading an entire guide on building an entire calculator to show off a button’s tag use; I will keep it short and work with 3 buttons. In this example, I will show you how you can have 3 buttons utilizing the same IBAction, and produce a specific output based on its tag. So let’s start by building out a simple view controller with three buttons side-by-side(you may add them to a stack view if you wish), constrained horizontally and vertically. Apply the background color of the far left button red, the middle button to green, and the far right button to blue. Above the button, add a label and constrain it above the button set far enough where they do not obscure each other. Give the label a fixed height of 50 and a width of 100. Finally, constrain the label horizontally to center. The UI should look similar to the one below. So let’s start configuring the buttons’ tags. Let’s start with the red button by selecting it and going to the Inspector properties in the left pane. Down at the bottom but still close to the center, you’ll find the tag property. Let’s assign the red button’s tag with 1. Select the green button and apply 2 as the tag value. Finally, select the blue button and apply 3 to the tag. So now that we’re done setting up our UI, option+click the ViewController.swift file to open up Assistant editor and have both ViewController.swift file and Storyboard open side-by-side. Let’s start by connecting the sole label to the ViewController.swift first by holding down Control + click and dragging the label from Storyboard to ViewController.swift file above the viewDidLoad() function. Simply name the IBOutlet as displayLbl. Below the viewDidLoad() is where we’ll establish one IBAction function. To do this, Control + click and drag the red button to the ViewController.swift file. Name the IBAction connection as buttonPressed and ensure the Sender is selected as UIButton. This is crucial because we want our logic to trigger when a UIButton is specifically pressed. Next, repeat the same process with the green and blue buttons however, drag it to the same IBAction buttonPressed function just created. As you drag both green and blue buttons to the buttonPressed function, you’ll see the entire function get highlighted. This is a good indication you have connected all 3 buttons to buttonPressed function. Consider this function the one function to rule them all. Your ViewController.swift file should look similar to the one below: So now that we got our label and 3 buttons connected, let’s work on the logic to output some data when the buttons are tapped. We got 3 buttons delegated by one function. How do we tell our logic output THIS when THIS button is tapped. Well our one input property sender of type UIButton can handle the task of figuring out which button was tapped with the help of the UIButton’s tag. Rather than writing some lenghtly if/else logic, let’s work with my favorite condition-handling method: switches. Because sender has access to the UIButtons tag property, we can have our Switch statement evaluate the sender.tag value. The case results can be the likes of our tag values of 1, 2 and 3. Each case result can output a String to the displayLbl. The exhaustive default case can just be break as the result. Let’s put this in practice: It’s the moment of truth — let’s the run the app. Once it loads up, tap on a button and the label should display the color of the button you have pressed. So as you can imagine, having one function to delegate the triggered output of three buttons is easily managed rather than having to connect all three buttons with their own IBAction. If you need to add more buttons with specific output, simply connect it to this function and add modify the switch logic. If it doesn’t seem to display the correct color or there is no output at all, double check you have configured the tags as instructed above and confirm all three buttons are connected to the one IBAction buttonPressed function. If the label is outputting the color correctly, congratulations! You have successfully utilized a button’s sender tag! Happy coding!

https://medium.com/@joeavargas/working-with-multiple-uibuttons-and-utilizing-their-sender-tag-property-17f3cced8db8

['Joe Vargas']

2020-12-22 17:26:54.347000+00:00

['iOS', 'Mobile App Development', 'Xcode', 'Apple', 'Swift']

Introducing Stories for Graphs

We are excited to announce a new feature, Stories on Graph Commons. A network map, or a graph, is a powerful medium to visualize and analyze relations at scale. It doesn’t present a single story, but multiple possible narratives. At first glance, a giant hair-ball of a graph can be, for the non-expert, confusing, intimidating, or just illegible. Not everyone has the facility to read a network map and use algorithmic interfaces to filter and navigate. So we created the Stories feature, to allow you to tell simple narratives from complex data maps. As of today, you can start creating interactive slideshows to tell dynamic stories from your graphs. You can narrate interesting patterns, actors, paths and clusters in your data, through a visual interface that mimics the movements of a camera across your graph. Beginning with the familiar narrative flow of a story, you can reach more people, and introduce them to the tools that will allow them to engage with your graphs. It looks great on mobile browsers too! Explore the stories below and try the interactive tutorial to begin making your own stories. Who is opposing or supporting the EU climate change policies. 8-slide story by SIMPOL Project, Financial Systems Simulation & Policy Modelling at University of Zurich. Sector-based curation that enhances creative production amongst our community. 9-slide story by ATÖLYE, Transdisciplinary Innovation Platform in Istanbul. Erdogan’s brother-in-law ties the family to the Azeri SOCAR conglomerate. 11-slide story by L’Espresso Magazine, Italy’s prominent weekly and Italian partner of ICIJ. This story tracks the major attacks committed by ISIS from among the 88 attacks by 9 different terror organizations since 2011. 5-slide story by 140journos, new media journalism from Turkey.

https://medium.com/graph-commons/introducing-stories-for-graphs-58f184254480

['Graph Commons']

2017-06-25 18:13:12.131000+00:00

['Civictech', 'Big Data', 'Journalism', 'Open Data', 'Storytelling']

Lake Garda — 6 reasons not to travel there

Lake Garda is undoubtedly one of the most popular destinations in Italy for North Europeanss. We know the headline is provocative, even though Lake Garda is beautiful, it can not meet all expectations. We put the spotlight on that here. Lake Garda is Italy’s largest lake and is beautifully situated in dramatic surroundings in the north of Italy, approximately midway between Milan and Venice. The lake is a very popular holiday area, and it is not just non-italians who drive here — many Italians choose to spend a weekend or a holiday here. Lake Garda is thus a well-known and loved holiday destination by many. And there ARE a lot of good things to say about Lake Garda . It is certainly not without reason it is popular. Here is beautiful, here is water and mountains and the small towns are cozy and if you come behind the facade, you will find true Italian authenticity. But there are also disadvantages when a destination like Lake Garda becomes (too) popular. That is why we have made a guide for you with six reasons why you should NOT go on holiday by Lake Garda. The destination is not for everyone, and what you dream of during the holidays you may have to find a completely different place in Italy . Reason number 1: Beach holiday? The lake does not have the best beaches, so this is not the place to go if you dream of a beach holiday with white powder sand. Italy has many and very different beaches, but the best are out along the coasts and not along the lakes. You can instead consider going to the Marche region . Reason number 2: The tourists? Lake Garda has many tourists in the summer. As in REALLY MANY . Lake Garda is especially known for being a good family holiday destination and here are both amusement parks, water park and a zoo. So if you are dreaming of peace and quiet, we would probably recommend you find another vacation destination. Umbria will suit you better. Reason number 3: Romance or children? Lake Garda is a paradise for children and campers. Put another way: If it is a romantic couple holiday you are going on, then you should probably settle for a day trip to Lake Garda, and then stay somewhere else… you can always visit for a day or two. We could suggest a romantic trip to Umbria or Sorrento . Reason number 4: The traffic? The traffic around Lake Garda can be really dense and slow. The road around the lake is beautiful and the views are fabulous, with the two dramatic mountains in the background and the deep lake. But you will most likely end up sitting in line or snailing off on the roads during the busy summer months. Especially when there is a change of holiday home on Saturday. If you drive all the way here from Denmark, try to arrive before the other tourists get up, or when they have sat down at the dinner table and the calm subsides. Reason number 5: The food? And now we’re talking about the dinner table… The restaurants’ menus on Lake Garda are adapted to the tourists. Put another way: If you dream of finding the little well-kept restaurant that the locals hang out at… yes, then you have come to the wrong part of Italy! In return, you can definitely find many eateries that your kids will love. Some even claim that the food in some places is so touristy and “anti-Italian” that you get better pizza at home in Denmark than here! If you want the authentic and original pizza, then you should go to Naples in the region of Campania . Reason number 6: The delicious bathing water? The water in the lake can be ice cold to swim in! Lake Garda is an alpine lake, located at the foot of the Dolomites. The mountains are part of the southern limestone Alps and when the snow melts in late spring, the meltwater runs down the slopes to the streams and they end up in… yes, guess it yourself. Let’s just say the water can be quite fresh to dip your toes in in the spring and the first half of the summer! If you need warm bathing water in the first part of the season, then you should go further south, e.g. to Sicily . We do also love Lake Garda, but…. Opinions are divided — some love Lake Garda and come here many times, others love to hate it! We belong to the group that loves Lake Garda, but not for every occasion. Italy is a big country and there are beautiful places in many places in the boot country. But no matter what position you have, it never hurts to think through what type of vacation you would like to go on before you start planning your trip. If you are a parent and would like to give your children a nice trip, then Lake Garda can be the perfect place to spend summer holidays because here is really child-friendly. If, on the other hand, you would rather holiday in a large house that has room for several generations and where there is peace and quiet, then it may be better to consider another region for your holiday in Italy. Eg. both Marche and Tuscany have excellent villas, many at a price that can compete with a holiday home on Lake Garda. You can read more about the different regions in Italy here on our website . Visit Lake Garda with Stay Local !

https://medium.com/@staylocal/lake-garda-6-reasons-not-to-travel-there-296b6924ea00

['Flemming Handberg']

2021-01-08 14:48:39.682000+00:00

['Veneto', 'Lombardia', 'Italy', 'Holidayinitaly', 'Lake Garda']

Making Sense of the Pro-Life Movement

Pro-Life and Pro-Choice have been the terms of record for the abortion movement for decades. Pro-life means no right to an abortion — except in certain circumstances usually beyond the woman’s control. Pro-choice means the woman gets to decide to terminate a pregnancy or not and — for the most part — other people butt out. Many — perhaps even most — of the members of the no-abortion group tie their position on the issue to their religious faith, whether Christian or some other religious tradition. They often say it is their faith that causes them to vehemently oppose the taking of a human life. This is a noble view of life that millions of Americans hold and should not be discounted by the millions of Americans who hold a different view. The nobility of this view is eroded, however, whenever the value of a human life seems to vary depending on external factors such as the race, gender, age, nationality, and socioeconomic status of that life or the political expediency of defending life in the public square. There are several ways that the “pro-life” argument breaks down and provides space for critics to attack the no-abortion group. First, an abortion, or the deliberate termination of a pregnancy, is a reactive measure taken to remedy an unwanted pregnancy. It is like getting a filling in your tooth to fix a cavity. The filling is a reactive measure taken to remedy an unwanted cavity. However, the better approach — or so we have been taught for years — is to avoid getting the cavity in the first place by limiting candy and sweets, brushing and flossing, and visiting the dentist regularly. In this case, education and resources are provided as preventive measures so that the cavity never occurs. The same approach works in reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. By providing pregnancy prevention education and resources, women are equipped with the preventive measures they need so that the unwanted pregnancy never occurs. The time, money, energy and passion that are consistently devoted to denying women access to abortions would actually do so much more to advance the pro-life cause if they were devoted to reducing unwanted pregnancies in the first place. The stated goal of the no-abortion group would be achieved — reducing the number of abortions — but in a way that does not burden women with the emotional toll of guilt, shame, loneliness, depression, fear, and loss that is often associated with abortions, even when the woman believes she has made the right decision. The passion that the no-abortion group invests in saving the lives of the unborn does not always translate to caring for the lives of the born. In recent years, the federal government has taken Draconian measures to limit illegal immigration at the Southern Border. These steps have included actions that would certainly border on crimes against humanity (human life) such as separating children from their parents, making children sleep on concrete floors in steel cages, with blankets made from aluminum foil, failing to reconcile parents and children, forcing women to have hysterectomies against their will, and prosecuting good Samaritans who were caught trying to provide water and nutrition for individuals crossing the border illegally. Each of these actions seems unspeakably cruel at face value. Many of these actions have been taken by federal officials who profess to be “pro-life.” Additionally, “pro-life” supporters of these “pro-life” officials — including many who claim to be “pro-life” because of their religious faith — have been largely silent on these serious abuses. Perhaps some who consider themselves pro-life can justify their silence on this behavior because these individuals are not citizens. They or their parents have committed crimes. Illegal immigration is just that — illegal. Perhaps they believe the crime of crossing a nation’s sovereign border deserves the punishment of caging or never seeing your child again or being sterilized. Perhaps that is how they can explain the inconsistency. Perhaps that is how they can look the other way. Still, that fails to explain the lack of value for the lives of American citizens. Many “pro-life” officials advance laws and policies that deny Americans access to living wages, healthcare, and even food. Admittedly, one can live without earning a living wage. In theory, one could also live without access to healthcare. But no one can live without food — not for long. What is the point of being so passionate, so adamant about women seeing unwanted pregnancies through to term and delivering a baby, only to say, now it is not the government’s responsibility to feed, house, clothe, heal or help this child to thrive? What sense does that make? Why would the same people who insist that the government swoop in and guard all uteruses decide on the day of delivery that the government’s work is done? It’s all on you now, they say. If you sink or swim; if you fly or crawl; if you thrive or if you die. It is no longer the government’s concern.

https://medium.com/illumination-curated/making-sense-of-the-pro-life-movement-253d55b0eedb

['Dr. Dion']

2020-12-02 08:53:50.219000+00:00

['Pregnancy', 'Politics', 'Abortion', 'Pro Life', 'Pro Choice']

The 3 Most Important Skills to Learn Now to Thrive in 2020

The 3 Most Important Skills to Learn Now to Thrive in 2020 Do you feel like you’re going nowhere? Learn these to thrive like you never have before. It’s hard to believe 2019 is close to ending. If you’re anything like me, whether 2019 went well or not, you want to make 2020 better. Many think there’s a limit to how good a year can be for them, but I assure you this is not the case. You can always thrive more. Never accept mediocrity. You only have one life, so there’s no reason not to make the best of it. “You only have one life, but if you do it right, once is enough.” — Mae West 2017 wasn’t a glorious year for me. It wasn’t bad, but nothing to brag about. Near the end of that year, however, I decided to get out of that mediocrity. It was almost an accident, really. How were 2017 and 2018 for you? Back in September of 2017, I went to live in Cambodia to work remotely on my startup. In the course of the next 12 months, I also lived in Spain, India, Canada, and Colombia. I started 3 businesses, wrote 4 books, wrote 300+ articles on productivity, learning, life lessons, etc, became a top writer in 16 categories on Medium.com (including top 1 in Travel, Education, and Inspiration), became healthier, opened my own light coaching program, learned 36 new skills, etc. Reading that, you may not guess that I’m actually a software engineer by trade, building video games for a living. Needless to say, I did thrive in 2018. So, did I manage to make 2019 better in the end? To some degree, yes. A year ago, I wrote this piece, which went viral: The 3 Most Important Skills to Learn Now to Thrive in 2019 It was the first time one of my articles exploded. It’s the one that put me on the map. As such, I had to live by it. In 2019, I did more of what I talked about in that article. The result: a pretty fantastic 2019! And I know that can happen to you too, to levels you may not even imagine possible (I certainly didn’t). So, why am I writing this now? We’re just in October after all! Truth is, to become who you want to become, you’re going to need to change, and change doesn’t happen overnight. Two to three months from now though, that’s reasonable. I’ve been there and know other people who have also been there. But trust me, it’s not easy. What I’m proposing in the following paragraphs is no shortcut to success. It’s a set of skills that, once learned and honed, can lead you to any success you may strive for. Of all the skills that contributed to me thriving in 2019, I narrowed it down to the three most important in my opinion. This also comes from compiling and testing theories in some of the best self-help books in the world. In 2018, I listed the following 3 skills as the top ones to learn: 3. Learn to take action. 2. Learn to adapt to change. 1. Learn to learn. In 2019, I’m adapting this list based on new experiences and research. I ordered them from least to most important in my mind:

https://medium.com/swlh/the-3-most-important-skills-to-learn-now-to-thrive-in-2020-2e618c5701dc

['Danny Forest']

2020-06-25 13:14:04.100000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Inspiration', 'Productivity', 'Education', 'Life Lessons']

Connect From Anywhere With Community in Trailhead GO

Connect from Anywhere with Community in Trailhead GO We’re integrating everything you love about collaborating in the Trailblazer Community by bringing Community right into the Trailhead GO mobile app. Chelsey Smith Follow Apr 6 · 4 min read With Trailhead, anyone can learn in-demand skills, earn resume-worthy credentials, and connect to opportunity to land a top job in the Salesforce ecosystem. With 1300+ Community Groups across 90 countries, our amazing Trailblazer Community is the true heart of Trailhead and why we do what we do. The Trailblazer Community is a core differentiator for Trailhead, and we’re driven to find new, innovative ways to empower you to learn and connect from anywhere. Introducing Community in Trailhead GO Cue the confetti — the number one most requested Trailblazer Community feature is here. We’re taking the Trailblazer Community mobile with Community in Trailhead GO! Personalized just for you, Community in Trailhead GO puts your Trailblazer Community feed front and center in the Trailhead GO mobile app. And it’s available now for both iOS and Android devices. You can connect from anywhere — allowing you to network, collaborate, and connect with Trailblazers around the world, right from the palm of your hand. The impact the Trailblazer Community has is huge, and engaging with it drives success. According to a recent poll, more than 80% of Trailblazers said that learning through community participation has increased their productivity and innovation, and enabled them to discover new solutions. Now, with Community in Trailhead GO, you can interact with groups you’re a member of, Trailblazers you follow, and topics you’re interested in with the new Collaboration Feed. Post your own content in the Trailblazer Community to build connections and share updates, like an interesting Trailhead LIVE session you watched or a job posting for a Salesforce Developer that just opened at your company. Share your knowledge and build your network If you’re skilling up on mobile and want to seek input from the community, you no longer have to context switch to collaborate with other Trailblazers in Community Groups. Engage straight from your phone for an integrated, lightning-fast experience. Post your own content, view updates, like and share posts and photos, and join featured groups in the Trailblazer Community just like you would on your desktop. Community is how we connect learning with our Trailblazers — and we’re meeting you everywhere you are. You can access the Trailblazer Community without ever leaving the Trailhead GO mobile app, allowing you to truly connect from anywhere. Discover relevant content in the Collaboration Feed with the new search functionality. Find featured groups, view a topic, or follow topics you care about while you skill up on the go. Did you post a module to inspire learning or share a valuable trailmix in a Trailblazer Community Group? You can now stay on top of comments on your posts or mentions with push notifications, ensuring you never miss an update. Connect to the global Trailblazer Community from anywhere Salesforce Solution Architect Daniel Gorton started engaging with the Trailblazer Community and never looked back. He discovered that the greatest superpower of the Trailblazer Community is the exchange of ideas, experiences, and skills. “Sharing knowledge helps expand our understanding of the platform, inspires us to innovate, and builds our courage to speak up and contribute what we’ve learned.” Daniel was one of the first Trailblazers to receive access to our newest updates. Since joining the Community in Trailhead GO beta, Daniel has loved connecting with the Trailblazer Community anywhere, anytime with the addition of Community in Trailhead GO. “That [Community] tab has already increased my engagement with and responses to our community big time, right from my phone! Thank you! Plus, when I do still get email alerts (from the main community site) I love that I am brought right to the post in the app.” Fabien Taillon is a CTO, Salesforce Architect, and co-leader of the Paris Developer Group. This global Trailblazer is motivated to learn because Trailhead allows him to design his own education. He also received access to our newest update and was thrilled with the results. “Après des années à en rêver, c’est désormais chose faite, la Trailblazer Community est facilement accessible depuis l’application Trailhead GO! Simple, réactif, intuitif, l’accès à la Communauté Salesforce est au bout des doigts.” [“After dreaming about it for years, the Trailblazer Community is finally going mobile! Thanks to the Trailhead GO app, it’s now easier than ever, lightning-fast, and super intuitive to access the Salesforce Community on the go.”] Join us on Trailhead LIVE for more Learn more about Community in Trailhead GO and see it in action. Tune in on April 21 at 11:00 AM PT to our Trailhead LIVE session, Introducing Community in Trailhead GO. Join me, Product Manager of Trailhead GO, as I take you through the newest release that allows you to access Community feed, groups, posts, comments, and more straight from your mobile device. Available now for both iOS and Android.

https://medium.com/trailhead/connect-from-anywhere-with-community-in-trailhead-go-fbbcb6afc63b

['Chelsey Smith']

2021-04-06 14:03:04.380000+00:00

['Mobile', 'Trailhead', 'Learning', 'Salesforce', 'Social']

RubyRussia 2020: How the largest Ruby event went online

For 10 years in a row, we have organized the annual RubyRussia conference in Moscow. Last year, we managed to bring together over 800 Ruby developers including Yukihiro Matsumoto, Aaron Patterson, Nick Suterrer, and other Ruby stars. Even though many things have not gone according to plan in 2020, we managed to make the conference a success in an online format, getting more than 600 attendees during just the first day of the event! Learn more about the challenges of transferring such a large event online, find tips for holding online events, and get links to the reports about complexity in Rails projects, design and development of an asynchronous architecture, and much more:

https://medium.com/@evronecom/rubyrussia-2020-how-the-largest-ruby-event-went-online-7bd706676cb8

['Evrone Evrone']

2020-12-17 09:26:54.635000+00:00

['Rails', 'Ruby', 'Development', 'Conference']

Marshall Tuck’s Financial Support of Convicted Felon Ref Rodriguez

“Rodriguez’s misdeeds…made a mockery of the laws governing elections.” - LA Times Editorial Board By the time the last vote was counted in the 2015 LAUSD School Board election, it was the most expensive school board race in the history of the country. The impending cost to run for the Board District 5 seat was clear from the beginning when challenger Andrew Thomas loaned his campaign $51,000 during the filing period ending September 30, 2014. In order to show that he was competitive, charter industry candidate Ref Rodriguez knew that he had to prove that he was also capable of filling his campaign coffers. He ended 2014 showing that he had raised $50,001. The choices that he made in reaching this achievement would eventually lead to him pleading guilty to felony charges and resigning his Board seat in disgrace. State Superintendent of Education candidate Marshall Tuck made his first donation to the Rodriguez campaign during the December 2014, push. However, his $500 donation was dwarfed by the “$21,000 in campaign donations from employees of his charter school network, Partnerships to Uplift Communities” that were also made in December. These donors included “a handful of his workers — a janitor, maintenance worker, tutor — [who donated] at or near the contribution limit [of] $1,100.” The details of these donations were filed with the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission on January 12, 2015. Apparently, the ethical questions surrounding these donations did not draw the attention of Tuck, who made his second donation on February 11, 2015. KPCC brought these questionable donations to the attention of the public in an article dated February 27, 2015. Rodriguez insisted at the time that “the employee contributions weren’t coerced and will not be reimbursed.” Tuck must have taken him at his word as he made a third donation to the campaign on April 23, 2015. Rodriguez won the election and was eventually made the President of the LAUSD School Board. Two years later the house of cards came crashing down. On September 13, 2017, Rodriguez was charged with “25 counts of ‘assumed name contribution’” for using his own funds to pay back the donors and a felony charge of perjury. While he stepped down as president, he still held onto his seat, even after being arrested for public intoxication. He eventually pled guilty and vacated his Board seat, leaving his former constituents unrepresented. To be clear, Candidates can return funds from their donors. In fact, Tuck himself “returned a $5,000 contribution from a major backer of Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative that banned same-sex marriages in California.” However, there is no indication that Tuck’s money was returned after the indictment. Tuck was asked by email if he ever requested a refund or if he regrets his support of Rodriguez, but he did not respond. Like the charter schools he represents, he apparently feels that the public has no right to know how he is operating behind the scenes. ____________________________________________ Carl Petersen is a parent and special education advocate, elected member of the Northridge East Neighborhood Council and was a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race. During the campaign, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action and Dr. Diane Ravitch called him a “strong supporter of public schools.” Opinions are his own.

https://changethelausd.medium.com/marshall-tucks-financial-support-of-convicted-felon-ref-rodriguez-c3b7ddde1f9c

['Carl J. Petersen']

2018-10-10 04:51:11.382000+00:00

['Elections', 'Politics', 'Education', 'California', 'California Politics']

Game of the Night: An Offensive Explosion as Blazers Cool Off the Rockets in OT.

Game of the Night: An Offensive Explosion as Blazers Cool Off the Rockets in OT. When players get in “the zone” there is nothing more easy to watch, like a surfer taking on wave after wave. But when multiple players get hot, like what took place tonight between the Houston Rockets and Portland Trailblazers, it’s as prime-time as ABC’s Dancing With The Stars. With the circus James Harden had this off-season, he still managed to put up 44 pts along with 17 assist. Just another day in the office as he went score for score with CJ McCollum who had a career night of 44 pts and 9 career high 3’s with the last one being the game winner. The back and forth between those two were literally identical this game. Step back 3’s, in n out dribbles with a pull up jumper and having that basketball on a yoyo all night made it seem like this game was never gonna end. But it did with CJ hitting a 3 to go up 2 with less than 6 seconds left on the clock and James Harden on the next play with time running out, easily beating his defender off the dribble but instead of kicking it out to the wide open shooter he tried to thread the needle to the slashing PJ Tucker which was deflected in traffic. Harden, visibly upset, couldn’t win his first game even with those astronomical numbers and the scrutiny of the media and Houston-faithful watching his every move. This of course coming after his trade demands and off-season antics that totally disregarded NBA COVID-protocol leading up to this game. Harden was fined $50,000 by the NBA and after multiple players held out for health reasons game 1, including newly acquired former all-stars John Wall and Demarcus Cousins, they had to postpone the Rockets first game of the season making this game tonight against the Trailblazers they’re debut. This article wasn’t aimed to be about James Harden. Honestly, he just picked up from what he was doing these past couple seasons as being one of the best offensive threats the NBA has ever seen. I was more so enthralled by the up and down ebb and flow of this game as CJ was hitting tough step backs,,, from 3! It’s clear he added more range to his shot which is more of a high release, stiffer jumpshot suited for mid range jumpers and floaters down the lane. He only shot 37% from 3 pts range to 49% from inside the 3-point line last season. But boy did he showcase what he worked on this off-season setting a career-high night. 9 makes from behind the arc would definitely help you reach more points faster. Another thing that caught my attention was the effectiveness of Jusuf Nurkic against the Rockets front court. Staying out of foul trouble while logging in 35 min. shows his value on the court as the Blazers are a +10 with him out there. I hate the plus/minus player efficiency stat because, first and foremost I don’t understand it, and lastly it doesn’t prove why and how specifically each player is valued as such. But Nurkic solid but subtle double-double of 12 points 11 rebounds didn’t measure the tough baskets and physical play he had to get in order for CJ and Dame to do their thing tonight. More importantly, those 12 points and 11 rebounds were as important as Dame Lillard’s 32 pts 9 ast & CJ Mcollum’s 44 pts 8 ast. because Houston Rocket’s 4 yr undrafted forward Christian Wood from UNLV had a monster night with 31 pts and 13 rebounds. This guy might be the savior of the Rockets season. He just signed a 3-yr/$41 million dollar contract just as Harden wants out. I don’t know if a performance like this from Woods in a Rockets loss proves enough for the James Harden saga to simmer down, but regardless if Harden stays or not, adding pieces to a Houston Rockets core of John Wall, Christian Wood and a recovering Boogie Cousins, the Houston Rockets and coach Stephen Silas should be optimistic on what they can build off of this drama filled start of a new Rockets chapter. But lastly, if either of these teams are thinking of coming out of the West against what the rest of the conference has in store, they both have to play identical to tonight. An offensive onslaught with physical play in the painted area will keep these Rockets and Blazers teams in the mix with the rest of the conference. Tall task to ask, but hey that’s why you play the games and try to win championships.

https://medium.com/@marcusmones/game-of-the-night-an-offensive-explosion-as-blazers-cool-off-the-rockets-in-ot-b7e0bd064fb5

['Marcus M.']

2020-12-27 18:16:40.812000+00:00

['Offense Culture', 'Basketball', 'NBA', 'Stats', 'Analysis']

Bullying and Mobbing: Let it THRIVE or STOP is your choice !

Bullying and Mobbing: Let it THRIVE or STOP is your choice ! Maya Jul 4·5 min read Bullying and mobbing is unfortunately a regular part of life. Luckily, it has finally entered the media spotlight, and the public outcry is forcing parents, teachers, administrators, management, and policymakers to step up and do something. But have we reached a point where it can be banished forever? What is Bullying? According to stopbullying.gov website, bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior against someone that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. There are three types of bullying: verbal, social and physical bullying. It is typically perpetrated by one person although others may join in. What is Bullying and Mobbing on the workplace, within the family or other areas? According to this research paper published in International Journal of Business and Social Science, Bullying and mobbing is a secretive, targeted, and widespread form of abuse. The behavior is designed to ostracize, isolate, undermine, and eliminate the person(s) being targeted. (Ref: European Foundation, 2002). Perpetrators actively, though often covertly, seek to harm others-physically, emotionally, and spiritually, using tactics designed to injure individuals and create physical and psychological power imbalances (Burgess, Garbarino, & Carlson, 2006). Bullying and mobbing at workplace are “vindictive, cruel, malicious or humiliating attempts to undermine an individual or groups of employees” with mobbing additionally defined as a “concerted effort by a group of employees to isolate a co-worker through ostracism and denigration” (Denenberg & Braverman, 2001, p.7). Consequences of bullying and mobbing on the target This article on mastersinpsychologyguide.com explains that when children experience bullying, they tend to become emotionally withdrawn. Regular exposure to hurt, humiliation, and social isolation may cause them to sink deeper into a world of their own. This article from psychologytoday.co highlights that bully occurrences in school cause a great deal of misery on kids and teens, effecting the victim for decades and sometimes even a lifetime. The pain of bullying may be felt most acutely around adolescence, a developmental stage where sensitivity to rejection heightens greatly. Victimization is a common source of school avoidance, leads to feelings of shame and self-worthlessness, and may lead to chronic depression and anxiety. According to this research paper published in International Journal of Business and Social Science, targets experience isolation and shame; may lose their employment or have their employability negatively impacted; experience mental health and/or physical crises; and are at risk of suicide (Ref: European Foundation; McCord & Richardson, 2001). In general, It is not a hidden fact that, in most cases, the world and systems support people in manipulative, rich and powerful positions, which often renders victims virtually helpless. Plus victims face societies that are psychologically hardwired to victim-blaming. Among the most harmful aspects of bullying are the feelings it creates within the victim, feeling themselves helpless and in a hopeless situation. Consequences on the offender or organizations involved Based on this research carried out by European Foundation, offenders of mobbing and bulling at workplace often face no consequences. “Many bullies can be seen as charming and friendly, but they are highly destructive and can manipulate others into providing them with the resources they need to get ahead,” said Darren Treadway, Ph.D., who co-wrote “Political Skill and the Job Performance of Bullies”. (Reference) Target isolation and sense of shame, along with the silencing of witnesses, help assure the permanence of the offender in the organization. Because the offenders are maintained and the system left intact, in most cases studied, the scapegoating and ostracizing continues as administrators and new employees are infected by this workplace virus (Namie & Namie, 2009). The WBI found that only 1.7% of employers “conducted [a] fair investigation and protected [the] target from further bullying with negative consequences for the bully”.(Reference) So, it seems that whole systems (teachers, Management, HR and groups) somehow let bullies and mobbers thrive knowingly or unknowingly. It is difficult to digest the fact that HR, management, teachers and schools do not have the skills to identify bullies and see the victims of bullying. The most important question is that why bullying and mobbing can survive at the first place? First and foremost, the target is generally without any power. No, this had nothing to do with victim mentality. They can see that nobody is standing by them and others are sheepishly following the crowd. In general nobody or hardly anybody believes them or stands by them. Secondly, the leader of the bullying and mobbing group convinces and manipulates the group and people in power that it’s justified, funny and/or even cool. Teachers, HR, management and others involved, trust and believe the bully and avoid the victims. Thirdly, teachers, managers, HR, and senior staff lack the knowledge and skills to handle bullying and mobbing cases, to deal with bullies and their victims. Fourthly, bullying, or mobbing supporters avoid or ignore their consciousness and sheepishly or intentionally back the bully, cruelly hurting innocent people. Last but not least, people consciously avoid seeing the bullying and mobbing happening in front of their eyes. They prefer to stay in their perfect cocoon, not wanting to deal with the victims facing a bully, leaving the victim alone and on its own to handle any consequences. This may be because of own fear of the bully or becoming ostracized themselves, or not wanting to step out of their comfort zone to help the victim. Conclusion As long as people and systems keep on supporting the bully and mobbers blindly, and as long as systems and people keep on getting manipulated by bullies and mobbers, it seems that history will keep on repeating itself. According to this article from psychologytoday.com, bad people can exploit others to their advantage. A big part of the problem is our tolerance for bad behavior, and unwillingness to intervene, and a growing culture of inaction and ignorance. Is there hope to eliminate this? It all depends on the conscience of bullies and mobbers and most importantly their supporters. As long as people and systems don’t change, and stop being part of it, bullies and mobbers will thrive. People need to learn the necessary skills to identify bullies and the victim(s) of mobbing. How can teachers and managers keep a blind eye on bullying and mobbing victims, their suffering sometimes even reaching suicide and suicidal tendencies? They need to learn how to question and listen to both sides of the story and not just believe on one side blindly. The bullying and mobbing supporters, the sheep, are equally responsible for this situation. They need to stand up and stop being followers. They have the power to choose the right path. They says that life is a mystery. Bullying and mobbing can happen to anybody. It can even happen to the bully or their followers. They say that people understand the pain only if it happens to themselves. Put yourself in the shoes of the victim. Would you want this to happen to you? If your answer is no, then step out of your shadow and do something about it. Stop being a bully, stop being a sheep and follower/supporter of a bully, take a stand and ban bullies from the school, workplace, families and from everywhere else. System changes or not, remember that the universe or divine powers have their own magical ways of supporting innocent peoples in this world. Let the universe, or god, or higher divine power, whatever you want to call it, be the judge of the bullies, mobbers, and their gangs.

https://medium.com/@mayaworld/bullying-and-mobbing-let-it-thrive-or-stop-is-your-choice-3165170fb3c1

[]

2021-07-09 11:23:42.909000+00:00

['Bullying Prevention', 'Bullying At Work', 'Bullying', 'Bullying In Schools', 'Workplace Mobbing']

Bitfury AI Opens Offices in Italy and Netherlands

Today the Bitfury Group announced its artificial intelligence division, Bitfury AI, has opened two new offices. The first office, focused on R&D, is now open in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, a leading tech and innovation hub. The second office is a regional location in Milan, Italy. Beginning with the appointment of veteran technologist Fabrizio Del Maffeo in August 2019, Bitfury’s artificial intelligence team now has more than a dozen employees hailing from technology, AI and IoT powerhouses like Intel, Synopsys, Advantech and the ASUS Group. The team was also joined by two expert advisors in 2019, Prof. Dr. Luca Benini and Prof. Dr. Marian Verhelst. Prof. Dr. Luca Benini is the chair of Digital Circuits and Systems at D-ITET ETH Zurich, specializing in RISC V/CPU artificial intelligence accelerators. Prof. Dr. Marian Verhelst is the Senior Scientific Director of IMEC and professor at KU Leuven, specializing in digital and analog accelerators. “Artificial intelligence is the emerging technology of the century,” said Valery Vavilov, CEO and co-founder of Bitfury. “This newly expanded team will help us fulfill our mission of making the world more trusted and secure by delivering intelligent solutions that help humanity take full advantage of the benefits of AI.” “Eindhoven is renowned internationally as an engineering and technological center, with major companies like Philips, Intel, Synopsys operating R&D divisions here,” said Fabrizio Del Maffeo, head of Bitfury AI. “The expansion of our team into this region will help us have access to the best R&D expertise and resources in the Netherlands, while our Italy office will lead development of our AI turnkey solutions.”

https://medium.com/meetbitfury/bitfury-ai-opens-offices-in-italy-and-netherlands-c2482685121c

['The Bitfury Group']

2020-03-04 07:20:40.786000+00:00

['Bitfury', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence']

Building an Ethereum Dapp With GraphQL

In this post we will build an auction platform like eBay where users can post items for sale. For the sake of brevity, our example will only fire a single query that lists the auctions that are available on our platform. Since we can send any kind of query to our schema, you can easily plug into your favorite GraphQL framework and work how you want. Ethereum and GraphQL When you first heard about GraphQL, it’s very likely that it was as a query language for a remote server’s API. In the decentralized world, there is no central server like there is in traditional architectures. That does not mean, however, that we cannot take advantage of all of the amazing tooling that the GraphQL community has produced. By defining a schema that exists only in our client, we can use GraphQL as an abstraction layer over our collection of contracts. This allows us to query the current state of our platform as if it was a traditional server and resolve queries against the blockchain. Our Contracts The code for this post lives on GitHub. The platform is made up of two different contracts. One is called AuctionHub which maintains a list of addresses that point to instances of another contract called Auction . That second contract only has a single public field: the name of the item for sale. Let’s begin by deploying some contracts so we have something to query in our UI. Clone the demo project and install the project dependencies. Just a heads up: this might take a bit. git clone [email protected]:AlecAivazis/ethereum-graphql-demo.git \ && cd ethereum-graphql-demo \ && npm i Once it’s done, start a local ethereum blockchain we can test against: npm run testnet Notice the list of accounts under Available Accounts . We'll need one of them later. In another terminal, compile the contracts: npm run build:contracts This should generate two files for each contract under contracts/* . The *.bin files are the compiled version of each contract and the *.abi are json files that describe the contents of the contract (attributes, methods, etc.). The demo project comes with a script that will bootstrap a few contracts and print the address of the hub. Before you can run it, you have to update the wallet address that you want to use when creating our test contracts here. Once that is updated, you can create the demo contracts with: npm run init If everything went according to plan, you should see the address of the hub that we just deployed. Take note of this address. We’ll need it later when defining our schema. With our contracts deployed, we are now ready to start querying them with GraphQL. Building Our Client The repo already contains a very basic UI that that we can just use without worrying too much about how it works. Just know that if you update the queries that your components are firing, or the GraphQL schema, you have to re-run the compiler with npm run relay for the changes to take effect. Defining the Schema The first step to building our client-side GraphQL layer is the same as in the traditional world: define a schema that represents our domain. This representation should apply regardless of the persistence and execution details of your product. Whereas before the schema acted as an agreement between the server and client, in our decentralized world, this schema encodes the internal API between our UI and contracts. It can even act as the hand-off between separate teams responsible for blockchain and UI development (if that separation makes sense for you). Let’s see how this works. Start by adding a file named schema.js under the src/ directory with this content: If you have experience with the graphql-tools package then this should look familiar. What we've done here is define a GraphQL schema that let's us query for all of the auctions in our system. Specifying Resolvers On its own, a schema is not enough to resolve queries. We also need to tell the runtime how to resolve the requested fields. This is done by defining an object whose keys are the type name and whose values are another object with functions to resolve each field: As you can see, we’ve told the runtime that resolving the itemName field on the Auction object type requires invoking the itemName method on the instance of the auction contract. This returns a promise with the the value of a constant method which will give us the string we want. Similarly, we resolve the list of all available auctions by looking at the auction hub we created earlier and returning an instance of the auction constract for each address stored in the hub. By doing this, we have completely abstracted away the existence of the hub from the user interface. If we do in fact have separate teams working on the UI and the blockchain infrastructure, the UI team doesn’t have to understand how to find each auction. All they have to do is fire a query like { allAuctions { itemName } } . Querying Our Schema With our schema in place, we are now ready to start wiring up the user interface and our contracts. In Apollo (the graphql framework used by the demo project), you can provide something called a “link” which is responsible for handling the queries. If you open up src/client.js in the the demo project, you’ll see that it already contains a lot of the boilerplate necessary to define a custom link. There is however, a core piece missing — the actual logic to resolve the query. Let’s add that now: As you can see, resolving our queries does not involve firing a network request as it would in the centralized case. Instead, we just pass the query string and variables to the graphql function which uses the resolvers that we defined earlier to handle queries. With those two files in place, we should now be able to run our client and see a list of the auctions in our platform. Start the development server with: npm run relay && npm run dev and navigate to http://localhost:8000. If everything goes right, you should now see a list of items — one for the three auctions we created in the init script. Why is this Better? By now you might be asking yourself if going through all this effort was worth it. If you have experience working with web3 then you know that the imperative API can become extremely duplicative without some kind of domain specific abstraction layer. Take for example the code necessary to grab a list of every auction in our platform (copied from above): There are a lot of questions to answer when trying to figure out the best way to abstract this logic into something reusable. Some parts of this are specific to our Auction/Hub breakdown. Other parts are boilerplate that you will find any time you want to build up a list of something. Once we do have it broken up how do we wrap up the logic in a way that makes our UI easy to consume? While there is no silver bullet to all of these questions, each solution has its pros and cons. By using GraphQL as a data-layer for your smart contracts, you can provide a robust integration for your UI components that abstracts the details of the retrieval logic behind a declarative API. This does, however, come at the cost of an extra logical layer in your application. Once you have gotten over effort of encapsulating your contracts in a single schema, you can take advantage of all of the awesome tooling that the graphql community has produced. On top of that, this model also enables an extremely smooth story for a semi-decentralized approach where information comes from sources both on and off the chain. We can stitch our schema with remote services and build a unified abstraction that lets us build our interfaces without worrying about where the information is coming from. I have used a similar approach in one of my dapps to integrate with a popular oauth provider. Conclusion and Next Steps In this post, I showed you how to build a client-side GraphQL schema that resolves against smart contracts running on an ethereum blockchain. We then wired the schema to our user interface so we could easily query the state of our contracts. This provided a nice abstraction for our UI to query our contracts without worrying about how to retrieve the requested data. To keep things focused, we only went over how to resolve a single query against the blockchain. However, there is a lot of things that can be added on top to make the developer experience and your application plus ultra. Some of those include:

https://itnext.io/building-an-ethereum-dapp-with-graphql-e8987ede4e7f

['Alec Aivazis']

2021-03-01 19:00:46.674000+00:00

['Ethereum', 'Ethereum Blockchain', 'GraphQL']

BFGS in a Nutshell: An Introduction to Quasi-Newton Methods

If this is your first time learning about Newton’s method, you’re probably just as shocked as I was when it was my first time. “Surely this is too good to be true!” you might exclaim. Why ever use gradient descent if Newton’s method converges to the minimum so much faster? It turns out that the benefits we gain from Newton’s method comes at a cost. There are two main issues with Newton’s method: It is sensitive to initial conditions. This is especially apparent if our objective function is non-convex. Unlike gradient descent, which ensures that we’re always going downhill by always going in the direction opposite the gradient, Newton’s method fits a paraboloid to the local curvature and proceeds to move to the stationary point of that paraboloid. Depending on the local behavior of our initial point, Newton’s method could take us to a maximum or a saddle point instead of a minimum. This problem is exacerbated in higher dimensional non-convex functions, where saddle points are much more likely to occur compared to minimum points. We thus see that Newton’s method is really only appropriate for minimizing convex objective functions. The silver lining here, though, is that a considerable amount of optimization problems in machine learning are convex problems, such as linear (and ridge) regression, logisitic regression, and support vector machines. An obvious example of a non-convex model would be neural networks. For the rest of this article, we will restrict our attention to only convex objective functions. Correspondingly, we require the Hessian to be positive definite. Newton’s method is very computationally expensive. While the computation of the gradient scales as O(n), the computation of the inverse Hessian scales as O(n³) (computing the Hessian scales as O(n²), inverting it scales as O(n³)). As the dimensions of our problem increases, the overhead in memory and time gets out of hand very quickly. For example, in 50 dimensions, we’ll have to calculate 50(50+1)/2 = 1275 values for the Hessian at each step, and then perform approximately another 50³ operations to invert it. It’s clear at this point that the benefit of an increased convergence rate will be far outweighed by the large cost of the additional computation time. Despite its limited practical use, Newton’s method is still of great theoretical value. We did see how efficient the second-order optimization can be if used correctly. What if we could somehow leverage the efficiency gained from considering second-order behavior, but avoid the computational cost of calculating the inverse Hessian? In other words, can we get a sort of hybrid between gradient descent and Newton’s method, where we can have faster convergence than gradient descent, but lower operational cost per iteration than Newton’s method? It turns out there’s a class of optimization methods, called quasi-Newton methods, that does just that. Quasi-Newton methods We went through Newton’s method for optimization, which, in contrast to vanilla gradient descent, leverages second-order behavior in addition to first-order behavior at each step, making for a much faster convergence to the minimum. However, we also saw the downsides to Newton’s method — one of which is how computationally expensive it is to both calculate the Hessian and to invert it, especially when dimensions get large. Quasi-Newton methods are a class of optimization methods that attempt to address this issue. Recall that in Newton’s method, we make the following update at each iteration: where the Hessian is computed and inverted at each step. In quasi-Newton methods, instead of computing the actual Hessian, we just approximate it with a positive definite matrix B, which is updated from iteration to iteration using information computed from previous steps (we require B to be positive definite because we are optimizing a convex function, and this automatically takes care of the symmetry requirement of the Hessian).We immediately see that this scheme would yield a much less costly algorithm compared to Newton’s method, because instead of computing a large amount of new quantities at each iteration, we’re largely making use of previously computed quantities. At this stage the nature of the update scheme for B has been left vague, because the specific update for B is given by the specific quasi-Newton method used. There is however one condition that all quasi-Newton methods must share, and that is the Hessian approximation B must satisfy the quasi-Newton condition (or secant equation): which is obtained from the first order Taylor expansion of ∇ f(xᴋ₊₁) about ∇f(xᴋ) (we can also view this as sort of a finite difference equation of the gradient itself). We can rewrite the quasi-Newton condition more succinctly by letting yᴋ = ∇ f(xᴋ₊₁) −∇f(xᴋ) and Δxᴋ = xᴋ₊₁−xᴋ, so that we have Furthermore, we can verify the positive definiteness of our Hessian approximation B by pre-multiplying the quasi-Newton condition with Δxᴋᵀ, so our requirement for positive definiteness (ie. the curvature condition) can be expressed as Δxᴋᵀ yᴋ>0. Before we go further however, let’s take a step back and consider only one dimension, where our intuition is strong. The secant equation, in one dimension, is and the curvature condition is satisfied by requiring (f′ᴋ₊₁−f′ᴋ)/(xᴋ₊₁−xᴋ) > 0. Solving for f″ and substituting into Newton’s method in one dimension, we get We thus have here an optimization method that leverages the (approximate) second-order behavior of the objective function in order to converge faster, without actually taking any second derivatives. Instead, at each iteration k+1, we construct an approximate inverse second derivative using only quantities from previous steps — in this case the first derivative from the previous two iterations k and k−1. This method — approximating Newton’s method in one dimension by replacing the second derivative with its finite difference approximation, is known as the secant method, a subclass of quasi-Newton methods. Now back to our n-dimensional quasi-Newton condition (equation 4). At first glance, it looks like we could just work analogously to our one-dimensional case: we can simply solve for Bᴋ₊₁ directly, and substitute it into Newton’s iterative step (2). Job done, right? Not quite, actually. Despite looking deceptively similar to our one-dimensional case, remember that B is in general a symmetric n × n matrix, with n(n+1)/2 components, whereas our equation only has n components. This means that we’re trying to solve for n(n+1)/2 unknowns with only n equations, making this an underdetermined system. In fact, we were only able to find a unique solution to the secant equation in one dimension because the unknown components of the Hessian, being 1(1+1)/2 = 1, coincide with the one equation that we have. In general, there are n(n+1)/2 − n= n(n−1)/2 unknowns that we cannot solve for. This is where quasi-Newton methods come in, where the secant method is generalized to multidimensional objective functions. Instead of approximating the second derivative merely by using the finite difference like in the secant method, quasi-Newton methods have to impose additional constraints. The common theme still runs through though — at each iteration k+1, the new Hessian approximation Bᴋ₊₁ is obtained using only previous gradient information. Various quasi-Newton methods have been developed over the years, and they differ in how the approximate Hessian B is updated at each iteration. As of today, the most widely used quasi-Newton method is the BFGS method, and this will be our focus for the remaining of this article. BFGS optimization It’s been somewhat of a long trek so far, so let’s pause for moment and do a quick recap before moving on. Our objective is to find the minimum of a (twice-differentiable) convex function. A simple approach to this is gradient descent — starting from some initial point, we slowly move downhill by taking iterative steps proportional to the negative gradient of the function at each point. Newton then taught us that we can take far less steps and converge much quicker to the minimum if we also consider the second-order behavior of the function, by computing the (inverse) Hessian at each step. This comes at a cost, however, as calculating (and inverting) the Hessian takes a lot of resources. A compromise would be to instead just approximate the Hessian at each step, subject to the quasi-Newton condition. In one dimension, this just amounts to approximating the second derivative by replacing it with a finite difference approximation; this method of optimization is called the secant method. In more than one dimension, the quasi-Newton condition does not uniquely specify the Hessian estimate B, and we need to impose further constraints on B to solve for it. Different quasi-Newton methods offer their own method for constraining the solution. Here, we will focus on one of the most popular methods, known as the BFGS method. The name is an acronym of the algorithm’s creators: Broyden, Fletcher, Goldfarb, and Shanno, who each came up with the algorithm independently in 1970 [7–10]. Figure 2. From left to right: Broyden, Fletcher, Goldfarb, and Shanno. We saw previously that in n>1 dimensions, the quasi-Newton condition (4) is underdetermined. To determine an update scheme for B then, we will need to impose additional constraints. One such constrain that we’ve already mentioned is the symmetry and positive-definiteness of B — these properties should be preserved in each update. Another desirable property we want is for Bᴋ₊₁ to be sufficiently close to Bᴋ at each update k+1. A formal way to characterize the notion of “closeness” for matrices is the matrix norm. Thus, we should look to minimize the quantity ||Bᴋ₊₁−Bᴋ||. Putting all our conditions together, we can formulate our problem as

https://towardsdatascience.com/bfgs-in-a-nutshell-an-introduction-to-quasi-newton-methods-21b0e13ee504

['Adrian Lam']

2021-01-19 12:14:00.698000+00:00

['Getting Started', 'Editors Pick', 'Machine Learning', 'Optimization', 'Mathematics']

Revolutionising Journalism Education in International News Reporting Via Zoom

Fast forward to 2020. COVID-19 lockdown has pushed all lectures online. It can be difficult enough teaching how to be an international reporter in-person, because the methodology involves sitting in sanitised surroundings. A former senior BBC executive refers to this as air condition journalism. Quite how you impart emotion on the necessity of a risk assessment, should a missile come your way, is challenging. One day VR of the kind, such as “Carne y Arena,” by Alejandro González Iñárritu will be common place. The experience puts the viewer in the moment. In this case the desert as Latin American immigrants find themselves under assault. Imagine being a reporter in this situation? But until then, what? In 2006, a decade from now I tell Apple Inc, in a presentation that yielded a profile on their front page, we will be streaming from our homes into businesses. You have become the brand. Television has already given us the tools for this feat ahead. We’ll gladly watch hours of TV. What if online lectures became a personalised TV programme. This is what the Open University attempted did in the 1970s and perfected in the 90s and to date I still watch Bob Ross’ Joy of Painting on BBC Four. I watched it yesterday! In lockdown can you provide a comparable experience for the next generation of journalists? I see fault lines, particularly in the pipeline. Zoom has become the default, but I can see a number of new features to make this process a better experience. Three key words here are:

https://medium.com/afterthought/revolutionising-journalism-education-in-international-news-reporting-via-zoom-e67c5ca4de89

['Dr. David Dunkley Gyimah']

2020-12-24 12:25:28.411000+00:00

['Journalism', 'Academia', 'Zoom Lectures', 'Media', 'Education']

A Classification Model Showdown at the Huang-Page Buffet

by Jiawen Huang with Greg Page Background: Customer Satisfaction at the Huang-Page International Super Buffet We recently opened the Huang-Page International Super Buffet (HP Buffet) in a location just north of Boston. Since opening, we have received rave reviews from restaurant critics and fans of casual dining. For the sake of simplicity, the HP Buffet offers a limited range of items: california rolls, crab rangoon, pizza, deviled eggs, sesame chicken, spare ribs, texas toast, italian sausage, bulgogi, egg rolls, and soft drinks. For a flat rate of $11.95 per person, guests may eat as many servings of the above items as they wish to consume. In theory, this simple, all-you-can-eat setup should optimize happiness among our visitors — people can come to the buffet hungry, eat as much as they wish to, and then leave once they feel full. Thankfully, our observations from the first few weeks of operations show us that most patrons of the HP Buffet are quite happy with our service and food. However, we also notice a pattern that troubles us a bit — it seems as if some of our visitors overeat at the buffet; when they do, they seem very dissatisfied with their experience. Understanding Customer Satisfaction: Exploratory Data Analysis In order to better understand the relationship between food consumption and overall satisfaction at HP, we conducted a simple exit survey for patrons. For a three-week period, as our guests left the premises, we simply asked them whether they felt satisfied, with the only possible responses being “Yes” or “No.” After recording each guest’s answer, we then directed our staff of interns to review the footage from our surveillance cameras to painstakingly record each of these patrons’ item-by-item consumption totals during their visit. We matched the survey answers from each patron with his/her consumption stats in order to generate the dataframe used for this analysis. The data indicated that nearly 70 percent of the 5847 guests in our survey left the buffet feeling satisfied. Of course, we can improve on this, but these numbers look encouraging: As we dug deeper into the satisfaction survey results, we discovered some pattern that confirmed our earlier suspicions: for many menu items, consumers’ average satisfaction levels simply went higher as more units were consumed. For some other menu items, however, customers’ happiness initially increased with additional consumption, before leveling off and then even decreasing once a guest passed some particular threshold of units consumed. For instance, let’s take a look at crab rangoon consumption: At first, additional units of crab rangoon consumption seem to suggest higher likelihood of patron satisfaction — note the improved satisfaction average among guests who had more than two pieces of crab rangoon. However, average satisfaction diminishes sharply once a patron exceeds eight servings. Why? We’re not entirely sure why. Perhaps over-consumption of crab rangoon makes our guests feel bloated, tired, or nauseous. We will defer the “why” question for another time, but here, we will concentrate on what the data reveals. With some menu items, the drop-off in satisfaction wasn’t as dramatic. With bulgogi, for instance, average satisfaction hovers near the overall restaurant mean for patrons who have eaten 0, 1, or 2 servings. A third serving of bulgogi, however, is associated with a precipitous decline in guest satisfaction, as noted by the barplot below. Logistic Regression: Model Performance First, we used logistic regression to model the relationship between consumption and satisfaction. After randomly assigning 70 percent of our records to a training set and 30 percent to a test set, we used the LogisticRegression module from scikit-learn to fit a model. The model included all of the food items as inputs, with ‘satisfaction’ as the outcome variable. The table below shows the coefficients associated with each of our menu items: We will say more about these coefficients, and their interpretation, in the “Comparing the Models” section. The model’s accuracy of 74.64 percent compares favorably to the null rate of 68.43 percent, but not by a wide margin. The model’s precision rate, shown below, indicates that of the times that the model predicts a customer will answer “Yes” to the satisfaction survey, it is correct 76.24 percent of the time. The Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Curve, shown below, informs us about the model’s True Positive Rate and False Positive Rate at various classification thresholds. We will use a separate article to cover the ROC curve in greater depth, but for now, we will simply note that an ideal model’s ROC curve would rise from the lower left corner upward, before moving from the upper left corner to the upper right corner. The diagonal line on the graph shown below represents the performance of a model that randomly assigned records to either class. The more closely the model approximates the ideal situation described above, the higher its Area under the Curve (AUC) metric will be. As indicated below, our model’s AUC value is .7282. Random Forest: Model Performance Next, we built a random forest model, using the RandomForestClassifier module from scikit-learn, with the same set of variables. As shown below, the random forest model demonstrated considerably better performance, as measured both by its accuracy and its precision. After calculating those basic classification performance metrics, we went on to construct the ROC curve shown below. By the AUC metric, the superior performance of our random forest model, compared to the logistic regression model, becomes evident. The random forest AUC score was a 25 percent improvement over the AUC score from the logistic regression model. Comparing the Results To understand why a tree-based model delivers superior results to the logistic regression model when working with this dataset, we should take a moment to compare and contrast the way these models are built. A logistic regression model is fit to the data through a process called Maximum Likelihood Estimate (MLE). MLE generates coefficients for each predictor that will maximize the likelihood of correctly placing a record into the correct outcome class. The coefficient values associated with each predictor tell us how much the log-odds of a “1” class outcome change after a one-unit increase in the predictor’s value; when using the method shown here, each predictor can take only a single coefficient value. This “one-size-fits-all” limitation with logistic regression coefficients explains why this type of model falls short when trying to predict outcomes at the HP Buffet. For some of our foods, logistic regression works well. For instance, with pizza or with spare ribs, more consumption is associated with a greater likelihood of satisfaction in a predictable, linear way. For the foods that make our guests happy when consumed within a particular range, though, the logistic regression model just gets confused. The negative coefficients for crab rangoon, sesame chicken, bulgogi, and egg rolls suggest that any consumption of these items decreases the log-odds of satisfaction. However, a close inspection of what really happens with the data tells a different, more nuanced story. Let’s take a look at the relationship between sesame chicken consumption and satisfaction: In our entire sample, there were only two patrons who ate fewer than three pieces of sesame chicken, so the first value here can be dismissed as insignificant. But look at what happens as a person’s sesame chicken consumption rises from three to four to five pieces — satisfaction increases remarkably. In fact, a person who consumes five pieces of sesame chicken is far likelier to be satisfied than is a randomly-selected visitor from the whole dataset. A random forest is the result of an ensemble of tree models. With tree models, there is no assumption of linearity — the tree can simply split records into groups based on rules. These rules are not subject to any specific parameters or assumptions, but are simply determined through a mathematical process that maximizes the homogeneity of the resulting groups. With the HP Buffet data, a rule could say “IF crab rangoon <= 8, patron will be satisfied, but IF crab_rangoon > 8, patron will not be satisfied.” The same general concept could be applied to egg rolls, sesame chicken, bulgogi, or anything else — the structure of the tree models enables the type of nuance that the logistic regression model misses. Conclusions For handling the HP Buffet consumption data in order to predict guest satisfaction, the random forest is clearly superior to logistic regression. However, every dataset is unique, and we do not mean to suggest that random forests are necessarily “better” than logistic regression models. A big advantage of logistic regression models is their interpretability. When the input-outcome relationships are more linear and straightforward, the coefficients genplaceerated through the MLE process are quite useful, as they quantify the relationship between input variable values and expected outcomes. A logistic regression model can tell us not only whether some particular predictor is more likely to push a record towards the “0” class or the “1” class, but also how strongly this predictor influences the log-odds. While a random forest model often delivers impressive overall results, and delivers useful information about overall feature importance in determining outcomes, it does not offer the same detail about the input-outcome relationship that logistic regression does. When a dataset presents quirky, non-linear variable relationships like the ones at the HP Buffet, however, logistic regression models are likely to miss the mark. I am a Master’s Degree student in Applied Business Analytics. I will graduate in Fall 2020. My co-author is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Business Analytics at Boston University.

https://medium.com/@kevinhuang10060/a-classification-model-showdown-at-the-huang-page-buffet-a7c62c1baca6

[]

2020-12-08 16:05:37.436000+00:00

['Model Performance', 'Random Forest', 'Classification', 'Logistic Regression']

Launching at the End of a Sprint

For the last few years, we’ve been doubling down on our sprint-based approach to software engineering. Unfortunately, one trend hasn’t seemed to change. When we say ‘development ends’, clients seem to hear ‘the product is ready to launch’. There should always be a buffer between when software engineering completes development and when customers are invited to partake. Ideally, this gap is measured in weeks, not days or hours. There should be time for documentation, support, training, and communication. When the last line of code is freshly written, it’s unlikely those elements are ready for public consumption. Assuming the sprint involved engineers actually writing code, the software product needs to be tested. There’s a myriad of other services and configurations required to ‘get off the ground’. To name a few: System Emails need to be configured Code and database changes deployed to the production environment Custom domain setup and propagated Your product has been tested and proven capable of holding up Promising the product to customers and clients on the last day of a sprint puts everyone on edge. Not only does it leave zero room for error but further stresses an already complex process. Apart from the more ‘technical’ issues that need to be set up and checked, there are a number of non-technical checks that need to be made: Your customer support team will need to be hired and fully trained Everyone in the company — executives, marketing, customer support, development, etc. — will need to be made aware of the launch and ready to field questions or requests from customers You’ll need yo create your plan to track user behavior and make sure the metrics you track are most important for your team The last day of a sprint cannot be the first day of product launch.

https://medium.com/polar-notion/launching-at-the-end-of-a-sprint-36f5f53fdb93

['Morgan J. Lopes']

2019-08-01 18:56:01.081000+00:00

['Startup', 'Agile Methodology', 'Software', 'Entrepreneurship']

Acceptance

Acceptance Acceptance is such a strong word. I don’t even remember what it feels like to look at a picture of me and feel like I’m beautiful,like the picture is perfect… Always being on the heavier side, I can’t seem to think of a time I was honestly happy in my own skin. As a child, I remember being told that don’t worry “this is just baby fat. It will go away”. I vaguely remember wondering if there was anything wrong with the way I looked. Up until then I was perfectly content with how I looked. Always having my parents and everyone around me keep reminding me of my weight. I almost hated my grandmother cause she showed me new exercises to reduce my belly. As I started growing up, a few heart breaks had me wanna get my revenge-body and I got it. Only that I didn’t know I had it. I still saw myself “fat". Now as I look at those pictures 10 years later,what would I not give just to get that body back. I could trade anything to just tell that girl to be happy,smile a little more,bunk a few more college lectures, have a little more fun, make a few more boyfriends, shop a little more,wear those beautiful dresses… Today as I stand at a 100 kgs, not in control of my weight due to pcos, having the most loving husband,living away from family in the UAE,I wear a bathing suit without much embarrassment. I realised that the way I felt about myself was a strong refection of what others thought about me. Now,jusy as my husband loves me no matter what,I try to love myself each day, accepting myself one step at time.

https://medium.com/@dishtiputhran/acceptance-1a114c9ca459

['Dishti Puthran']

2021-04-07 19:10:57.422000+00:00

['Love Yourself', 'Pcos', 'Self Acceptance', 'Being Fat', 'Self Love']

Tips to Prepare for a Home Renovation before You sell Your House in Newport

Tips to Prepare for a Home Renovation before You sell Your House in Newport Jay Conner Aug 22, 2019·3 min read Preparing for a home renovation isn’t easy, especially when you are thinking about selling your house. Changes are, you are still living in the house and have to deal with your home being out of order. When you are working on the paperwork to sell your house, getting a home renovation is the last thing you want to think about. Therefore, we are sharing few beneficial tips that will help prepare you for home renovation. Analyze the necessities and don’t go overboard in trends First things first, you ought to be clear about the kind of changes that you are deciding incorporated in the look and feel of your home. It’s essential to be up to date and modern but at the same time not be too trendy. You also don’t want to spend money on unnecessary items. Ask yourself: What NEEDS to be updated? What needs to be freshened up? (for example: your cabinets may just need a sanding and repainted instead of completely replacing What looks untidy or worn? Those are the things to focus on Is it needed? Sometimes we get carried away with too many details It may be a good idea to ask a seasoned agent what is needed if you have no clue where to start. Tips to Prepare For a Home Renovation before you Sell your House in Newport Take a look at the Finances Money is a crucial factor in almost everything. You will have to decide what is in your budget and what is important to upgrade. It must be put into consideration that older homes, in comparison with the newer ones, require much more attention and sometimes can get real costly. Make sure you do your due diligence and do some research. You will have to factor in your realtor and closing costs in your budget as well. If you are handy, doing some items yourself might be cheaper but it will cost time. Team up with a contractor You probably will have to hire a contractor, and make sure you do your research on the company you choose. Hopefully, they can help with an estimate of the costs. They can pull permits, and if you hire the right contractor, they can save you both time and money. An experienced contractor must procure all the necessary building permits and see through the entire process. When it comes time to sell, one of the questions buyers and their real estate agents often ask is whether all the required building permits were pulled. After you have decided on the contractor, communication is crucial. Make sure the company is easy to communicate with for your concerns. This may include discussing the scope of the project’s timeline, estimated budget, etc. Protect your valuables While your renovation is being done, consider removing your valuables and put them in a safe place. You also will want to consider artworks, photos, electronics and other decorative art. It is a possibility that things can get damaged so remove them from the rooms that are being renovated. Final Thoughts Home is where the heart is. Improving a house isn’t convenient. It involves a lot of money, time, and effort. Planning out everything in advance and knowing what to expect, will prepare you as you sell your house. However, if this sounds too time consuming or too expensive, we can help! We can purchase your house “as is.” By working with us, you won’t have to pay for repairs, cleaning, marketing, or any more holding costs. You will receive a fast closing, providing you with your cash right away. You’ll be able to immediately end all holding costs and troubles you are facing that have arisen when selling your Newport House. Learn more about selling your house without any cost by giving us a call today! Call 252–422–3570

https://medium.com/@jaybuyshousesfast/tips-to-prepare-for-a-home-renovation-before-you-sell-your-house-in-newport-5581317c8823

['Jay Conner']

2019-08-22 16:24:20.799000+00:00

['Home Renovation', 'Real Estate', 'Home Improvement', 'Newport']

Dear Austin FC Supporter Community…

Members of the Austin FC Supporter Community, Like a lot of organizations, and like a lot of you, 2020 has been a challenging year for Austin Anthem. Not being able to have in-person events with our supporter friends and neighbors has taken its toll on our ability to grow as a community as we race towards our inaugural match day in 2021. We’ve done our best, but we fully acknowledge that there have been missteps and that we are learning as we go. In 2013, when we were founded as MLS in Austin, we were a very different organization: a few new members here and there, an occasional meetup in person, and a shared dream — of a team in Austin. Seven years and thousands of supporters later, we now have a team that starts competitive play in a few months. We are also now a much bigger organization — with that presents new opportunities and challenges. We’ve not always succeeded in the mission to address different viewpoints, and unfortunately, some of those with a different perspective chose to take a separate path. All of these views have always been focused with Austin in mind, but the strategies of how to achieve them are vastly different. Different viewpoints are healthy, but in the short term, the results have been disruptive. From our perspective, these disruptions include bad actors who are more interested in creating an “us vs them” mentality rather than looking out for the best interests of the greater Austin community. These individuals are small in number, but amplified by the continued acceptance of those who should know better. It’s been disheartening to see many remain silent and complicit or go along with far-fetched claims. All of this has made it clear to us that there is a need to identify a better way to represent our growing community. With all of the good Austin Anthem has done over our history, admittedly, it’s been frustrating to have been assigned all of the “bad” in the aftermath by some — to be the convenient punching bag — and to have this used to legitimize others poor behavior. It’s a byproduct of being the incumbent. Some of the main complaints were indeed legitimate, but the majority of them were not in good faith and wilfully absent of context. Historical disagreements on different strategies have jumped into the realm of personal attacks on our character, integrity, and our passion. Many of them are downright malicious. These differences, coupled with the rhetoric, have created a divide within our club’s supporter culture. It was our hope that time would allow us to put all that in the past, and that behind the scenes we’d be able to resolve disagreements out of the public eye. We no longer have that time. It’s been squandered on petty social media turf wars and a culture of mistrust mixed in with nine months of staying at home. Online meetings which were designed to bring each other together have only served to show us just how far apart we have become. Austin FC supporters deserve better. Austin deserves better. This year, we’ve addressed many of our internal challenges directly, by expanding our Board of Directors and formally establishing the electoral process. We’ve codified rules regarding ownership of assets — from creative art to physical instruments — to ensure everything remains owned by the collective rather than any individual. And we’ve been fortunate enough to have added a bunch of new volunteers into our org team ranks to provide a fresh perspective on it all. We will always be a work-in-progress, driven by the passion of members that help us shape our supporter culture. Here’s our promise to the Austin FC community for 2021 and beyond. We will do everything within our power to build the most inclusive soccer supporter community in the country. If it’s something we can do directly as Austin Anthem, great. If it’s something another organization is doing that we can assist, even better. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to supporting soccer. Soccer dads, desk jockeys, and smoke bomb moms are all integral to the Austin soccer community. There’s no room for gatekeeping, no matter how it’s packaged. Just as there’s no right way to be a supporter, there is no right way to organize a supporters group. There’s no manual, no checklist to follow. We only have history as our guide, and every day we have to be willing to make a change. We’re ready to make yet another change. We have outlined a proposal for a small council of leadership from all Austin FC supporter groups that will provide the foundation for which we all can actually work together. We think our shared love of Club, our love of City, and our love of the Game can get us started. Some tenants of this proposal: There is no place for hate in Austin soccer. Our community will not tolerate discrimination based on race, gender, sexual preference, or religion. Neither should we. No organization should harbor any member who does so. Match day is owned by all supporters of soccer in Austin, because it represents all of Austin. There is no soccer culture we need to model ourselves after, no specific types of music we must play, and no traditions we must imitate. We must collectively merge the talents and creativity of our city to build a distinctly Austin culture, and do so in a fair manner that is representative of all, not just some. There is no match day experience that happens without this. Full stop. Different cultures bring different ideas, and each should be honored. While organizations should be able to build a unique experience for their members, there should be a common goal on gameday of supporting Austin FC together. Each organization must hold its members and leaders accountable for their actions and creating supportive ecosystems rather than an us-versus-them ecosystem. There is zero benefit to fighting one another and not working toward the greater collective good at all times — no matter if that is in person, in a meeting with the club, or on social media. It is the responsibility of us all to drive the success of other organizations. The long-term health of Austin soccer depends on it. Create a clear voice of the supporters for the Austin FC ownership. This club represents the best of our community, and we must hold them accountable at all times for that. The most effective way to do that is with a singular voice. We will be sending invitations out for an initial meeting to discuss this operational umbrella proposal in the first week of the new year. It is our hope that a new year will bring about new perspectives, approaches, and attitudes. The alternative is something like the fractured fanbases of Dallas and Houston. These are a testament to stubbornness and the inability to grow together have squandered so much positive potential for their communities. There is a real concern that could become us. Without a correction, this could result in groups and individuals becoming excluded from match day privileges. Or, worse as seen in other cities, where no SGs are allowed to bring in instruments, no group allowed to bring in TIFO, with tours and special access reserved for the corporate clients. A long-term battle between club leadership and fractured club supporters does nobody any good. If you want to help us build an Austin soccer community for our generation and the next, then join us and vote for leaders who will do that. If you want to help another organization do it, then join them and choose leadership that will be a part of the solution. Join many! If you want to start something new, Austin Anthem will help you — if you want it. It’s time to end the chaos. It’s time to recognize we all have the same goals and mission, and it’s about time we all behaved that way. Please reach out if you have questions or would like to get more involved. Yours in verde, Josh Babetski President Dan Conrad Vice President Traci Babetski Secretary Christine Hanley Treasurer Tony Cardone Committee Representative Jorge Chavez Committee Representative Michelle Frasch Committee Representative Ryan Vautherot Committee Representative Chloe Hanson Member Representative

https://medium.com/austinanthem/dear-austin-fc-supporter-community-fda7c1fc67bf

['Austin Anthem']

2020-12-24 00:10:07.694000+00:00

['Austin', 'Austin Fc', 'Soccer']

Top 10 Installed Mosaics in 2020 That Will Leave You in Awe

As we get ready to kick off the New Year, it’s always a time of joy and reflection. Just as it was for the rest of the world, all of us here at Mozaico have had to roll with the changes and deal with hardships through mosaics. As a company that makes mosaic art, we’re committed to finding and sharing the beauty of handmade mosaic. When travel came to stop, we decided to find the best destinations to visit after the pandemic ends. (Turns out that we haven’t even scratched the surface, with our virtual globe trotting!) We’ve learned from our customers that one of the happier side effects of quarantine was the chance to look at our homes and really think about what we want from our personal spaces. To that end, we’ve introduced our blog readers to the latest trends in home style. From bathroom makeovers to the best looks in mosaic rugs, we’ve been challenged to share design inspirations and find the freshest, most appealing looks. We’ve also seen a new interest in creating mosaic art designs at home. To introduce our customers to the world of handmade mosaic art, we offered our DIY kits, and researched to find easy and fun crafts for you to try, such as coasters and tabletops The results of all our research, challenges, and reflection has led us to create some of the most beautiful mosaic designs ever. We’ve channeled hardships into art, and this has led to some incredible installations of glass mosaic wall art, mosaic backsplashes, and works of abstract mosaic, modern mosaic art, and much more. We’d like to thank you, our customers, for daring us to dig deep and produce your custom mosaic tile pieces of all types. So, without further ado, we’d like to share with our readers the results of our Year in Review at Mozaico. We’ve selected our Top 10 new mosaic that we created in 2020, with the hopes that you’ll receive as much inspiration and joy from their beauty as we have! A colorful abstract mosaic art is sometimes the exact artwork needed to add vibrancy into the spaces of interiors and simply into one’s life. Through stone art and abstract mosaic patterns, Circular Chaos tells a story with each hand-cut stone. Effortlessly placed, this mosaic artwork is defined the way the viewer deems relative. It is a vibrant mosaic mural of experiences, thoughts and emotions. Featuring two classical colors, this rustic black and white mosaic lotus embodies a traditional yet appealing aesthetic. With the precision it entails, the glistening glass flower provides you with a unique look that beautifully embellishes this vintage elevator. Fireplaces aren’t a conventional place to install mosaics, but it would definitely look gorgeous. This White Swans mosaic design is customized so that it perfectly decorates the fireplace. It adds a lovely and luxurious touch to the white framed fireplace. Whether framed or not, mosaic wall art is one of the most favored installation places. This wave is one of our bestsellers. The details and the curves definitely create a nautical dream! This aquatic wonderland is simply mesmerizing. One of our most admired mosaics of the year, this Sea Creatures mosaic unveils the mysteries of the ocean and brings in aquatic vibrancy into your spaces. This dolphin mosaic medallion creation adds so much luxury and character to this client’s Jacuzzi. One will definitely have a relaxing experience with this unique mosaic. This beautiful mosaic design portrays an authentic vibrantly colored peacock. This unique mosaic will forever reflect the nobility and integrity that this royal creature encompasses. Another kitchen backsplash is this vibrant lemon tree mosaic that highlights the traditional mosaic art designs. Through almost abstract art and painting with mosaic stones, this marvelous mosaic will forever add a natural touch to your kitchen. This client’s kitchen is simply an inspiration with a colorful palette that will always dazzle! Tangiers is an empress of the desert; a geometric mosaic design that will embellish your entryway with sandy and earthy colors. This mosaic is a centerpiece that will surely dazzle your guests every time they visit. Placing this mosaic as a bathroom backsplash is for those of an eccentric taste. Tara, the Indian goddess represents the eternal life force that fuels all life. Perhaps placing this mosaic in the shower where all life decisions are made and restarting our day happens is a wise thing after all. As we prepare to approach 2021 with new hopes, resolutions, and ideas, don’t forget that mosaic art is one of the most enduring, timeless, and beautiful ways to beautify your home. We welcome your challenges to our designers and artists, and we hope that our Top 10 mosaic designs bring you even more inspiration. We’ll continue bringing our readers all the most interesting mosaic art news, craft ideas, home style ideas, and exotic travel destinations to you in 2021! Thanks for following us, and stay tuned for even more marvelous mosaic artistry from Mozaico. Comments

https://medium.com/@mozaico-art/top-10-installed-mosaics-that-will-leave-you-in-awe-bbe4e15b5f8a

[]

2020-12-22 15:11:01.981000+00:00

['Home Decor', 'Best Of 2020', 'Home', 'Interior Design', 'Mosaic']

The Sun Is Up Forever

Photo by Sebastian Voortman from Pexels I am a cloud of dust Wandering through the wind. I am on a magical journey to the unknown. I sparkle As I make my way through The same breeze that caressed against your cheek. Unbeknown to you, That was me you felt. That cold, humble breeze. That was me. You couldn’t see me. The drops that wept from the sky Were made from the infuriating anger That dwelled deep within my soul. I wanted you to see me I just wanted you to see me. I am the flow of the river. The same river that you watch your reflection in. You see me, But I am unnoticed. There is a mixture of chemicals Charged beneath my surface. Can you feel the electricity, Or is that just me? I am moving, Ever flowing. Some call me a free spirit. I suppose that’s true. I began as a trickle from the sky. I learned to walk before I even began to crawl. Before I knew it, I was running down the side of mountains. Raging onto the rocks and the shore. My angst was never enough to grab your attention. I became still and quiet, Hoping that the reflection of perfection that I showed you Would edge you into my loving embrace. But life is never that simple. My unrequited feelings Fell victim to dreary waterfalls of darkness. I am an unexpected lover And a beautiful mess. I grew into something That I never could have imagined existed. I was a walking contradiction. I watched your calmness Sleeping next to me. I could watch a million sunrise with you It took awhile to get here. I was born as dust in the wind. I grew to the range of the water. Do you believe in fate? Do you believe that we had to endure this journey To be where we are right now? As I watch you sleep next to me, I think that it might be the case. We had to realize that we are not moments. We are not meant to be invisible. We are not made to be unnoticed. I think that, sometimes, Fate has a funny way of showing us What life is really about. I think about the darkness. Now I know the unknown, And I never want to leave. You are the sun, And I want the sun to stay up forever.

https://medium.com/@bankstiffanyamber/the-sun-is-up-forever-961a08ebcfea

['Tiffany Banks']

2020-12-17 21:20:06.280000+00:00

['Love', 'Growth', 'Fate', 'Journey']

Artificial Intelligence and Robots taking over the world

Yeah… the title might have been a little false. Oh well. Artificial Intelligence is something you’ve definitely heard of before, but not many people truly understand it. Think about it this way, the most common form of Artificial Intelligence (or AI for short) is when a computer is taught to think and make decisions like a human, without any human interaction. So far, the AI we’ve created isn’t as powerful as you might think. The most common form of AI is “reactive machines,” which form decisions only based on the info they’re given. Reactive machines can’t make memories or remember details from another session. It can, however, create new strategies and become better at the task it’s assigned to do. Examples of this type of AI are programs that can play games like Chess, or other multiplayer games. The next higher form of AI are called “limited memory systems.”. While reactive machines cannot look into the past, limited memory systems can.. somewhat. They’re usually only able to look into the near and immediate past to make decisions based on what just happened. A major example of this type of AI are self-driving cars, which take traffic patterns and car movements from the immediate past to calculate a safe route to the driver’s destination. “Yeah, yeah that’s cool and all, but where are the Terminator-style AI robots?” Let’s get into that. The next form of AI is called “theory of mind AI,” and it’s the next major step in AI research. Theory of Mind AI is when an AI is able to understand and differentiate between different human emotions. This might not sound too impressive, but an AI understanding emotions would be a HUGE milestone in AI research. Understanding emotions will bring AI one step closer to imitating a human. The fourth and final form of AI is “self-awareness” or “artificial consciousness.” An AI with self-awareness will be able to recognize itself, meaning it will know that it’s an artificial intelligence, it’ll know what its purpose is, and it’ll know what the AI itself wants to do. A perfect self-aware AI will be almost indistinguishable from humans, which, yeah, might sound a bit scary, but just imagine the possibilities! Now, the fun, but truly scary part, AI taking over the world. Self-aware AI will be able to have its own intentions and would be able to think and act however it chooses. Just imagine that. If you think about it, an AI that has free will, that can understand emotions and that can make decisions for itself, couldn’t it easily be mistaken for a human? Think about how amazing, yet terrifying that possibility would be, and how many possibilities could open up. If that does happen though, we might need to stay cautious anyway. If an Artificial Intelligence becomes self-aware, it could hide things from us humans, and, while highly unlikely, they could plot a plan to get revenge on us. Tom Scott made an interesting YouTube video about this, I highly recommend you check it out below. Let me know in the comments what you think about Artificial Intelligence! Do you think researchers and engineers should keep developing AIs to reach the stage of self-consciousness, or should we stay on the safe side?

https://medium.com/@arjun-mehandiratta/artificial-intelligence-and-robots-taking-over-the-world-dfab793031a1

['Arjun Mehandiratta']

2021-02-20 14:48:24.497000+00:00

['AI', 'Robots', 'Computers', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Terminator']

Is React Right for You?

What are the benefits of React? React has many advantages compared to other libraries. Here is a selection of the most notable ones: 01 Easy to update and manage React components make it easy to update and manage apps. Components can be reused, thus allowing developers to edit all instances of a component simultaneously. This maintains consistency, facilitates easy maintenance, and stabilizes the code. 02 Virtual DOM Most modern apps need to handle lots of user interaction and run regular data updates, both of which can affect performance due to the DOM’s tree structure. React rendering, however, is accelerated by Facebook’s implementation of Virtual DOM (vDOM) which, in simplified terms, virtually represents applied modifications that are then analyzed by an algorithm to evaluate which need to be made in real DOM. This is also beneficial for search engine optimization as the vDOM can be returned. 03 Extension tool that assists with debugging React Developer Tools is a browser extension tool that assists with debugging by allowing developers to inspect components in the DOM by showing component hierarchies, state, props, and more. 04 Strong community Due to its popularity, React has a strong community. This means that there is a wealth of tutorials, resources, and information that allows developers to learn to use the library quickly and easily. It also means that whilst other frameworks may come and go, React is a stable, reliable option for organizations. 05 Transition from webpage to app. React Native’s similar design pattern to React streamlines the transition from webpage to app. 06 JSX allows JavaScript to be written in React JSX allows JavaScript to be written in React with embedded HTML, making the React code much simpler. This also provides more informative error messages and can protect from injection attacks. Who is Using React? React is popular with many well-known companies. Estimates suggest its used by over eight thousand industry leaders. Here are a few of the best-known brands that are currently using React as part of their stack. In 2017, Twitter changed their stack to include React. As a site with over one hundred million users per day and thousands of tweets tweeted every second, it’s essential to have a robust, stable framework that can update quickly. As the company responsible for creating React, it’s unsurprising that Facebook, which currently boasts over one billion users per day, leverages React to create a fast, client-driven, interactive user experience. Facebook uses React alongside Relay, which is a Graphic QL client for React. It has also used React Native to create its mobile app. Netflix used React to “dramatically transform the user experience on [their] desktop and mobile platforms”. The developers at Netflix re-evaluated their previous UI stack and decided to move to React, citing better startup speed, runtime, and modularity as their primary reasons. As Instagram was bought by Facebook in 2012, it is again unsurprising that it uses React to build its UI. Instagram is a complex UI that requires geolocation, map APIs, and accurate search functionality.

https://medium.com/scalac/is-react-right-for-you-1624c8dff5b7

[]

2020-12-17 16:17:40.224000+00:00

['Cto', 'Software Development', 'Programming Languages', 'React', 'Programming']

When to Hire Out

When to Hire Out First-time renovators often put the cart before the horse. We have a house- let’s do absolutely everything! Your timeline would only make sense if you somehow knew how to freeze time, go back, clone yourself, win the lottery with your knowledge of the winning numbers, hire out, and even then, your timeline is wrong. When I look back on our list of to-dos from our move in this past July, I think, “oh, sweet, summer child, what a fool you were.” But, still, it’s a great feeling to get worked up about what your house can be. See the potential! Why not get excited about the renovation? Hang onto that feeling…there will be times when that feeling eludes you. Times, for instance, when you reach the point of mudding and taping. Mudding and taping will bring no excitement. All joy will die. No one will smile. Everyone will wear black and grieve the renovation stage we are now at… how did we get here. Why have we done this to ourselves? I love painting. I put on ratty old clothes, turn on some music, grab a glass of wine, and I’m off to the races. Time flies when you’re having fun, right? But even with a task I loved, it was tiring. Some days, coming home from work, I’d stop at the gate and think, “fuck, I still have so much to get done tonight.” And I wasn’t even doing the hard stuff! Partner was opening walls, rewiring, in the attic to install pot lights, and more. My biggest concern was that, as time wore on, we would both reach the end of our workday and dread coming home to this new exciting project. This new exciting project would become an unbearable burden causing both of us to linger at work before slowly trudging home. To modernize the main floor, we covered the scalloped plaster walls with drywall. Tones of drywall. We also did this to cover the popcorn ceilings. With all the drywall up, we hummed and hawed about doing the mudding and taping ourselves. I had no reason not to want to because I genuinely did not understand what went into it. I mean, you cover up the screws, cover up the seams, and there you go. It might be a few days’ work, and there are enough YouTube videos to guide us through it. Partner assured me that it was slightly more work than that. After going over finances, we decided to call it. We both needed a break; we were both exhausted; we both really, really didn’t want to mud and tape. And I’m so glad we didn’t. We hired a fantastic professional who worked for two weeks, 9 hour days, and gave us tips for when we do the basement. As much work as I thought it was, my perception was so very, very wrong. Poorly done mudding and taping is very noticeable. Seeing how hard this amazing, experienced professional worked and the great outcome made me grateful we hired out. Here’s a glimpse at some of the work halfway through the process. Mudding and taping isn’t the bar for when it’s best to hire out. The bar is dread. Dread might come from the type of work needed or the amount of work to be done- recognize it. Let yourself feel every emotion about the house because if you don’t, if you keep charging ahead, the dread will catch up to you. If you can’t afford to hire out, let it be a warning sign to take a break. If you can afford to hire out, do so for these types of things. Hell, there’s got to be someone in your neighbourhood who LOVES to do a job you hate, who gets excited at the possibility of it. Find that person pay that person. It’s worth it.

https://medium.com/@homeandcity/when-to-hire-out-b993cf217168

['Kiersten Mcdonald']

2020-12-18 23:15:41.683000+00:00

['Home Improvement', 'Renovations', 'Home', 'Construction']

Movie review: Ship of Theseus

This is a true masterpiece. It’s divided into three sections where each follows a persons journey in relation to a particular organ. The apt title of the movie is defined as: In the metaphysics of identity, the ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. It’s a low budget movie that is mainly filmed with a handheld camera, a team of 2–3 in addition to the actors, and it took in total 6 years to make. It is pure. Anand Gandhi is a genius and it’s bizarre to me that this or his other movies aren’t more well-known internationally. IMDb 8 stars 2t 20 min 2012 English, Hindi, Arabic, Swedish Director: Anand Gandhi Writers: Anand Gandhi Stars: Aida Elkashef, Neeraj Kabi, Sohum Shah Part 1 — The Eyes Aliya become blind after a childhood illness. She is now a young adult, a photographer, and has just become fairly renowned for her art. She clicks photos only guided by the sound and uses her other senses to edit the photos, in close cooperation by her boyfriend. When she gets an eye transplant and can start to see again, her life changes drastically as her identity as a blind photographer is no longer true. Part 2 — The Liver Maitreya is a Jain munk living a simple life and is fighting to abolish testing on animals via the legal systems as his belief is that animals and humans should be treated equally. He’s also a renowned philosopher and we get to see some interesting conversations between himself and a teenager who is eager to debate with Maitreya. He goes through quite a personal journey when faced with the dilemma of taking medicine to save his failing liver, but which has been tested on animals, or refuse it and eventually die from liver failure. This was my favorite part of of the movie due to the many gloriously shot scenes, purely visually, but understanding the complexity his mind must go through facing this life-depending dilemma. Part 3 — The Kidney Navin gets discharged from hospital after a succesfull kidney transplant made possible by an NGO who solely works with organ transplantations donated by deceased people. He is young, has a great career to has made him a lot of money, but otherwise, his life doesn’t seem to contain much else. Then his grandmother, an activist in her youth, ends up in hospital following an accident at home, and during a visit from Navin, he discovers that a man has just been admitted to the hospital with quite the harrowing history of why; a few weeks prior this poor worker had an emergency surgery to remove his appendix but when he is admitted to hospital this time it’s because one of his kidneys are missing, presumbly stolen during his appendix surgery. This kicks off Navins journey in coming to terms with the ethics around organ donation, and the relationship between the rich and the poor. I watched Ship of Theseus over three nights just so I could savour it even more. It is a gripping movie that I think will stay with me for life, and I can’t wait to see it again and again.

https://medium.com/@rikkeg/movie-review-ship-of-theseus-d5bb895b399f

['Rikke Giertsen']

2020-12-29 07:09:44.805000+00:00

['Movie Review', 'Movies', 'Bollywood', 'IMDb']

What Will Summer Plans Look Like?

It’s time to start thinking about summer plans, parents! We’re talking about that ever-stressful patchwork of day camps, activities, daycare, classes, babysitters, and grandparents to entertain and care for our children over the summer. Did that just make your blood pressure rise? It did mine. And let’s make the planning extra spicy this summer. Hellooooo summer planning during a pandemic! Anybody else start pitting out their shirts with stress sweat? Please tell me I’m not alone in this panic party over the summer schedule. How do we do it this summer? Let’s start with the good news. I’m not a glass-half-full vs. glass-half-empty kinda gal, but rather consider myself a glass-has-water-in-it-to-the-halfway-point type. I like to think I’m a realist, and in real terms, I think we can be optimistic about this summer, right? The coronavirus is better understood so we know more about what protects against it. And vaccines are being distributed. I’d say we’re definitely better situated than last summer, but there’s still some trepidation about knowing what we can safely plan for. Can we travel? Can the kids go to swim lessons? Will there be a Fourth of July fireworks display? Who knows? Now we aren’t infectious disease specialists, virologists, or behavioral psychologists over here, but we are parents. (That counts for something, right?) So if you just need another viewpoint about how someone’s thinking through the process, here’s how we are looking ahead toward planning the summer months. Look at the options — all of them. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an all-or-nothing summer. I tend to catastrophize (dear God, we just finished the last piece of fruit! The children are going to get scurvy!) and so it’s easy for me to fall into a mindset of well, I guess we won’t do anything this summer, again. But there are definitely some intermediary steps between hiding in my house to avoid the virus and throwing down at the nearest college party right after flight hopping all over the world. I keep reminding myself that risk mitigation is part of our daily lives and I need to be realistic in terms of how I assess risk in regards to summer plans and Covid. For instance, do I drive a car? Yep. Do I cook over a gas stove? When I’m not ordering kids’ meals from Chipotle, yep. Did I attend Kim Kardashian’s lavish 40th birthday party prior to vaccinations and without a mask? Oddly, I did not get an invite, but wouldn’t have gone even if I had because traveling and partying mask-less prior to a vaccine is too much risk for me. (Biggest takeaway here is that I would NOT have gone to Kimmy’s party even if she had invited me and she probably understood that which is why I didn’t get the invite in the first place, mkay?) Point is, we take risks every single day. Yes, some have higher stakes than others, but going through the same risk assessment process to make a decision is an ok way to look at what you decide to plan for the summer. And it’s difficult to do this objectively — we have a lot of emotions tied into our choices around the pandemic. But I jump in my car nearly every day without a second thought to my safety (obviously after I fasten my seatbelt) and statistically speaking, there’s a fair amount of risk there. So weigh your options and the associated risks for kid and family activities. For example, is there going to be some risk associated with your kiddo attending an outdoor day camp for a few hours every morning? Sure, but is that risk outweighed by your child’s social and emotional needs to be around peers as well as your need to be able to focus on uninterrupted work for a few hours? Maybe. That’s for you to decide. To help assess the risks involved, you may want to know how many kids are in the group, what protocols are in place to mitigate viral spread, what Covid rates look like in your area, etc. Take in all that information and weigh it against the other side of the coin — which is your child not participating — and make your decision. Just because an activity is scheduled and happening doesn’t mean it’s a completely safe bet. It most likely (hopefully) means that some extra thought and professional consultation has gone into how the activity will look this summer to mitigate risk of spreading Covid. And that’s going to require you to gut-check yourself on what you deem as a reasonable risk. And it’s ok if you and your peers and even extended family members have different levels of risk aversion and mitigation when it comes to Covid. We are all trying to make the best decisions with the information we have and that’s going to look differently for various families. Another step to take when looking ahead to summer plans is to gather good information. Once you know what steps an activity is taking or how everyone plans to prepare for the family reunion or whatever it is that you are considering, weigh those precautions against what experts say you should do. (Again, NOT an expert on viral spread here but I can point you in the right direction!) I think we need to be cautious about hearing from a friend of a friend that her kiddo goes somewhere and “it’s totally safe”. Unless that friend of a friend is an infectious disease specialist (and maybe she is and you can tell me to mind my own bee’s wax!), then she really doesn’t have the authority to make that assessment for you. Gather your information from sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and your own trusted health professionals. These sources can give you some objective guidelines to follow. Objectivity is really important here because it helps take some of the emotional component out of the decision making process and offers clarity. And finally, if last year has taught me nothing else, it’s the need to be flexible. Plans can crumble pretty quickly — there’s a need for someone to quarantine, community guidance changes overnight, or we’re just being super-duper cautious about a case of the sniffles. Whatever the reason, it can feel disappointing, stressful, and defeating to have something you planned for and counted on cancelled at the last minute. Try and head off those emotions and the chaos they cause by being ready with a back-up plan — an easy project stowed away that can entertain a kiddo for an hour, a new book to look through, or even an on-call relative or friend who can pop over to help out. And there’s no shame in some popcorn and a little extra screen time in these instances as well. Even if some organized activities and many major events and gatherings we typically look forward to are not on the docket this summer or still in planning limbo, there are plenty of fun activities we can still hope to do. (And no, they don’t all involve having a pool built in your backyard but man, if there was ever a summer that I wanted a pool off my back porch, it was last summer!) It’s worthwhile to put some thought into it and get a little list ready in your back pocket should you find yourself thinking oh my gosh, what on earth are we going to do today or how can we make this actually feel like a weekend? Part of the fun of summer is the anticipation of fun things ahead. Here are a couple of family fun, very low-risk activities to keep in mind: U-Pick farms offer an opportunity to harvest some of the best summer produce like blackberries or peaches yourself An inflatable pool, a sprinkler, a water table, a slip-n-slide, water balloons — basically anything your kids can cool down in and do outside with some neighborhood buddies can be hours of fun Act like a tourist and research what are the top attractions your area has to offer. I can’t tell you how many hidden gems I’ve discovered in my town this last year — hiking trails, museums with limited capacity, unexplored parks, etc. Embrace the staycation vibe and only do carryout — no cooking or dishes for a few days! Botanic gardens and arboretums are big, open air spaces that are beautiful venues in which to picnic and explore New guidelines are saying that with certain precautions in place, it’s reasonable to visit those grandparents you’ve been missing this last year so go get a great big hug Go camping or set up a tent in your own backyard Road trip! Spend the day on your bikes and make a whole route with stops for lunch and more Visit your nearest creek or pond with containers in tow and collect bugs and outdoor creepy crawlies Make a star gazing night extra special with s’mores and a telescope Visit a nearby farm and learn about the animals and all the many jobs that are done to keep the farm operating Work with friends or neighbors and set up a field day for the kids with one family’s bouncy castle, another family’s slip and slide etc! Gather a group of kiddos to decorate their bikes or scooters and have a parade Line up the perfect ice cream sundae bar, maybe even make homemade ice cream Basically, when we look ahead toward the summer months — and I can’t stress just how much I am looking ahead to those days of warm sunshine and no virtual school deadlines — let’s try to focus on what we can do. (That sounds a little glass-half-full to me…maybe I am an optimist after all?) We can be smart about what we plan and draw good guidance from trusted sources as well as try to objectively assess the risks versus benefits of activities we choose to do. And most importantly, we can focus on the best ways to connect with those we love and have missed most over the last year. It may not be a summer full of the crowded gatherings we are used to, but it is shaping up to be better than the last.

https://medium.com/abby-finn/what-will-summer-plans-look-like-a45e7027b2d7

['Anna Allen']

2021-03-19 14:09:45.063000+00:00

['Moms', 'Summer', 'Family', 'Motherhood', 'Parenting']

16 Remote Working Tools for Better Collaboration & Communication

How can you ensure that your team is as effective as possible while working remotely? Luckily, there are remote working tools that may help! If you choose the right work from home tools for your remote employees, you’ll get the same results as if they were in the office, or even better. To help you to navigate all the choices, below is a list of 16 remote working tools to consider! Best Hubs for General Teamwork Google Workspace (Formerly G Suite) Google workspace is usually easy to implement in your business. Many people use Google products like Gmail in their personal life so they will be familiar with the basics. Google Workspace includes loads of collaboration tools with real-time updating. The programs can even show your team who else is currently working on a document. Collaborative Google Calendar, Docs, and Sheets are easy for multiple employees to use at once. Calendar can even be used to set reminders to a whole team with ease. Google Drive storage is included, and is even unlimited on some accounts. Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams has become incredibly popular in recent years. In the workplace, its full integration with Office 365 is incredibly useful if you are already using Microsoft Office. Microsoft provides solutions for both text chat and video calls for one-to-one meetings or larger groups. Teams also provides access to email, Skype, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Dropbox Email isn’t the best for sending files and it certainly doesn’t work when sharing large files among big teams. Dropbox lets your remote employees share and collaborate on documents with ease. Multiple integrations with other remote collaboration tools are available. Slack Slack makes use of communication “channels”. It’s used by over 750,000 businesses all over the world as a platform for team collaboration. You can use it for text chat within the channels, but also video and voice calls. You can invite clients and partners to collaborate on a channel with a free plan, too, to keep everyone in the loop. You can connect with teams and channels from other companies, too. The company, Slack, has been bought out by Salesforce, and can be found within their platform. Slack is a big platform with over 2,000 Slack Apps to integrate and streamline your workflow. There are also numerous Slack APIs to help you to embed your own internal tools and apps. Best Tools and Remote Working Software for Remote Communication Otter.ai Otter.ai can be your AI assistant for all of the online meetings you’re having. It flawlessly integrates with Zoom to provide real-time transcripts of your conversations, which then become searchable, shareable notes available for further team collaboration. In a nutshell, Otter.ai can save your team an incredible amount of time and cut down on stress of virtual meetings; with Otter, all meeting participants can focus on the conversation itself, instead of note-taking, as everyone will receive a full transcript of the meeting for further use. This also helps those team members who miss a meeting or have technical issues during the meeting stay up to date on everything that’s been discussed. The best part? Because the app makes use of Ambient Voice Intelligence, it continues to learn individual voices as well as terminology used in your business, and becomes better at transcribing your team conversations with every use! Learn more about the ways in which Otter.ai helps businesses create a thriving remote work environment. Miro Miro is one of the best work from home tools for businesses that have a visual focus. It is a virtual whiteboard, but it offers much more than that. In the words of the brand; “Miro is an infinite canvas that helps you ideate, strategize, get organized, and work with your team.” For brainstorming sessions, and anything that you would ordinarily do on a whiteboard or even on paper in an office, Miro can give you an incredible, real-time, interactive tool. It’s easily accessed by the whole team. Mural Mural is another online whiteboard tool, which allows for unlimited rooms and “murals” for users, perfect for big teams. On top of that, it has some incredible integrations so it can seamlessly work with other project management and remote working tools. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Suite, Dropbox, GitHub, OneDrive, and more work from home software can all be linked. Loom Loom is a solution somewhere between email and video chats. Instead, this online tool revolves around video messages. The video can be taken from either your camera on a phone or a laptop, or by making a screen recording. Both have the option to add audio. Why use this instead of scheduling video calls? For a start, it is far easier to send a quick message than it is to schedule video conferencing or even a one-to-one call. In many scenarios, when you need a visual solution, it’s also much easier than a text message or an email. Best Tools for Team Collaboration Asana Asana lets you manage a remote workforce easily when working on a project. As well as being a communication tool, it makes task management easy, as you can assign certain tasks to individual employees, with timescales, to ensure a project gets done on time. The “Forms” feature lets you create a standardized intake process for new customers, client feedback, or other data. It makes it simple for the team to get all the info they need and get to work. Basecamp If your business has a task-based or milestone-based approach to tasks, Basecamp can give you a simple and effective workflow. You can set projects, and tasks within, as well as including everyone who is involved during the process. Basecamp is incredibly flexible as it allows you to turn off features you don’t need, including message boards, to-do’s schedules, and file storage. You can also easily integrate tools like time trackers to manage employees. Other unique features include automatic check-ins to make managing staff, and giving prompts to employees, even more straightforward. Github Though not strictly industry-specific, Github is one of the best remote working tools for software development, web development or any other industry where code is key. Coding features and functions include “Codespace” allowing you to “Code, build, test, debug, and deploy” code instantly, in a cloud environment, allowing numerous coders to collaborate with ease from any device. Code Review also makes it easy to see code changes by your colleagues quickly. Jira Jira is a fantastic remote working tool if you are focused on bug tracking. It initially started as software for fixing errors and tracking bugs in projects, but has evolved into full project management software. It is ideal for dealing with large software projects with glitches and bugs, allowing teams to track, assign, prioritize, and ultimately fix bugs. Jira also supports a lot of third-party integration. Monday.com Monday features some excellent time management tools, allowing you to track work hours within a team and assign tasks through a visual workflow. The “Boards” system provides a visual table that allows all team members to see the progress status. You can also link boards together to allow multiple teams to work together. This makes it easy to keep everyone updated. Trello This is another workflow-based project management system. It impressively includes workflow automation with its AI assistant, “Butler”. Butler lets you remove tasks that could prove to be a waste of time. You can use rule-based triggers to remove tasks. You can also use calendar and due date commands to powerfully automate parts of your workflow. Best Tools for Virtual Meetings Zoom Zoom allows for reliable virtual meetings and even includes whiteboards and private chats, as well as annotation for everyone in the team to collaborate. To make the most of Zoom, you can integrate other apps including Otter.ai, which will automatically transcribe and take notes on your online meetings and conferences. Skype Skype is one of the remote collaboration tools that has been around for a long time (since 2003). Nowadays, it can be found within Microsoft Teams. It is still a great tool for virtual meetings and even lets people dial into virtual meetings using a telephone. There is also a Skype App for use from iOS and Android devices. Google Meet Hangouts provides many of the same features as Zoom. If you are already using Google Suite, it makes sense to use Google Meet for integration, and you can hold conversations and group video calls for free. You can even invite clients who can join the call without a membership. Up to 10 team members can jump on the video call before you have to pay. Insider Tip: There is now an integration with Otter.ai and Google Meet bringing Live Notes and Captions to all Otter subscribers. In Conclusion… As most businesses switch to online work across different time zones and devices, remote working tools and best practices are vital. Sending spreadsheets back and forth among your business is not going to cut it. A streamlined system that keeps everyone informed and engaged is required. Fortunately, the 16 tools mentioned above can all serve a useful purpose, and many can integrate with one another. Choosing the best tools for remote teams can make all the difference, saving you and your teams a lot of time, money and hassle.

https://medium.com/@otter-ai/16-remote-working-tools-for-better-collaboration-communication-32bab18663df

['Otter Voice Notes']

2021-01-26 19:30:56.786000+00:00

['Collaboration', 'Communication', 'Meetings', 'Google', 'Remote Working']

Parenting Without Gender Expectations Means Accepting All Outcomes

Parenting Without Gender Expectations Means Accepting All Outcomes Aly Windsor realizes that “He’s all boy” is OK with her. Photo Credit: Ben White on Unsplash By Aly Windsor Recently, I took my two-and-a-half-year-old, Avie, to a Toddler Music and Movement class that, thanks to him, devolved into something more like Toddler Music and Mosh Pit. Most of the other kids were girls who twirled or held hands in groups of three or four and happily, dreamily, skipped around in circles while music played. Avie stomped, put his hands on the floor and kicked one foot up in his classic “trick” pose, ran around in his own circles wind-milling his arms, and finally, purposefully, crashed into one of the girl groups and knocked them down. Too far away to intervene in time, I watched in horror as I recognized the following flicker of cognition in Avie’s eyes. He saw the girl pile on the floor as a perfect opportunity for a pile-on. So, without further ado, he flopped right on top. You can imagine how well this went over with the girls and their mothers. I want to preface the rest of this by saying that I’m a parenting agnostic. After three years of poring over “expert” opinions, searching online forums, reading mommy blogs, chatting tentatively with other parents in real life, joining and fleeing a parenting cult or two, engaging in fierce Facebook battles, and amassing thousands of hours of personal experience, I’m done. For me, there is no right way and no infallible guru or philosophy. There are plenty of theories and plenty of critics. Every day I realize more and more how much of what I do as a parent is experimental. What worked yesterday might not work today or next week. I’ve got my guiding principles but, otherwise, it’s all improv, and sometimes, oftentimes, a whole lot of flailing. One of the guiding principles my partner and I are committed to is raising our kids with as few gender limits as possible. Our intent is not to make them genderless or feminine. We only hope that by giving Avie and his little brother, Izzy, the space and support to grow and explore who they are or want to be without oppressive expectations, gender and otherwise, we will promote a foundation of emotional health for them. (This does not mean we’re raising them without any expectations, just that we’re trying to refrain from imposing those that we believe to be oppressive.) Most of the critical work lies ahead of us when our boys begin to absorb our culture’s pervasive rigid gender messaging at school and beyond. In the meantime, their drawers are full of colorful clothes and their toy boxes overflow with musical instruments, play kitchen gear, vehicles, Cabbage Patch dolls from my own childhood, every sort of ball, and carefully selected children’s books. When our boys get hurt or feel sad, we validate their tears and offer lots of hugs. We’re also cautious about the language we use to describe them, employing words like tough and brave sparingly, but generously calling them determined, creative, funny, and gooses. (Who knows what kind of harm that last one will do.) So, I was a little rattled when around Avie’s 2nd birthday, a parent friend described Avie to me as “all boy,” implying that Avie was even more boy than his own son. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard someone refer to him this way but it was the first time it came from someone I trusted and who knew Avie fairly well. I still thought of Avie as my baby then, my sweet, sometimes irascible but cuddly, little buster baby. He wasn’t even a boy to me, yet. And he definitely wasn’t more boy than other boys. But a real live masculine man and parent of another boy thought he was. And anyway, why did this bother me? Not long after, on an extended-family vacation, Avie tumbled around with his older-but-not-much-bigger cousin, Seth, in a week-long dominance struggle. “Where’s Seth?” he asked once, holding a large metal flashlight. When asked why he wanted to know, he replied, “I want to hit him.” The family members present didn’t take him seriously until they heard Seth’s cries minutes later. Then Avie saw the movie Puss and Boots and fixated on threatening others with “sharp things” like sticks and broom handles. Later, we joined a playgroup where I discovered that Avie was consistently the most likely to induce tears and/or injury, usually unintentionally, among the other friendly boys and girls. Then we arrived at the toddler mosh pit experience. I began to see what my friend saw. Avie is a physical kid. He has a lot of energy, a strong will, and little fear. I love these things about him. But as I’ve watched him grow and repeatedly menace our cat with heavy objects, growl at kids on the playground, and belly-flop on girl piles, a fear that I had failed in my pursuit to nurture compassion in my older son grew too. (Briefly, I also worried that I’d born a sociopath.) I had been so convinced that, if given a compassionate family environment, boys can be just as empathetic and thoughtful and calm as girls are perceived to be. And okay, I admit it: I was harboring a little internalized misandry. I half-consciously believed that “all boys” were only like that because they were fed steady diets of macho BS. Well, a funny thing happened. Our special aforementioned guiding principle efforts led us straight to this: a roaring, hitting, sharp thing-wielding, playground tornado, bear of a boy child (in purple pants). And then I realized there’s nothing wrong with that. He’s only (almost) three and a lot of kids his age, girls included, can act like wild beasts regardless of their home environments. Besides, at least one part of my failure was perception. Avie is all of the above but he is also affectionate, considerate, and sensitive. He was an early talker and sits in rapt attention for books and movies. He tells me that he loves me often, and hugs and kisses me and Izzy and his Duda (my partner) all of the time. When Avie’s feelings get hurt (and they do, easily), he’ll sit in another room and hang his head until I find him to talk it out. He picks me flowers, sings songs, tells elaborate stories, and cannot go to sleep without cuddling with one of us. I see now that most of this softer side of Avie emerges at home. Out in the world, he’s still learning how to relate to others (Heck, at 32, so am I!) and for whatever reason, be it nature or nurture or neither, he just feels most comfortable being “all boy” in public. That realization made me feel better. But this next one knocked me for a loop. When I bristled over Avie being labeled “all boy,” it was because I was only giving him the latitude to be himself if he was who I wanted him to be. By intending to shield him from oppressive cultural standards for maleness, I was inadvertently limiting him to being anything but “all-boy” (even if only in my mind and facial expressions). But if I’m truly committed to raising our boys without gender expectations, that means accepting and valuing all outcomes, “all-boy” included. When I shared the toddler mosh pit story on Facebook, a friend and comrade in attempting to parent outside the gender binary joked that we should come over “so Avie can hunt some game in the backyard while [her daughter] tries on dresses and bakes cookies.” I laughed and cringed, and I “liked” it. — This story was originally published on the author's blog and republished on The Good Men Project.

https://goodmenproject.medium.com/parenting-without-gender-expectations-means-accepting-all-outcomes-99865423d815

['The Good Men Project']

2020-11-07 15:03:08.615000+00:00

['Life Lessons', 'Children', 'Family', 'Gender', 'Parenting']

PART 2: Planning & Preparing Mind and Body for Ayahuasca

PART 2: Planning & Preparing Mind and Body for Ayahuasca There are many places around the world that people go to to experience an Ayahuasca ceremony these days. The quality and experience of the shamans or guides you choose and the environment you are in will have a big impact on your overall experience. If you have shamans, guides or retreat centres that provide a safe, relaxed and protected space you will be able to fully relax into the experience and let go. Unfortunately there are pretenders out there that have learned how to sing and put on a good show but have no real understanding of how to hold space and mix the brew properly. So, doing your research, reading reviews, creating a shortlist and then actually looking into the person or centre is a vital part of the journey. There are many paths that lead someone to an Ayahuasca ceremony and as I mentioned earlier there are many places around the world to experience one. In this piece I’ll just be talking about my experience in Peru and the experiences of others I met along the way. The three most common paths I’ve seen people take on their way to a Peruvian Ayahuasca jungle experience are; Those that are travelling around South America or Peru and they hear from a fellow traveller about this ancient plant medicine being taken by people in the jungle. They think fuck yeah ill try that and get on a plane, head to Iquitos or the Sacred valley with little to no planning or preparation. Other people have landed in Iquitos ready to experience the Amazon in all its wonders and then get offered countless Ayahuasca experiences by locals on their arrival. They decide to go and do a 1 or 2 night experience again with little or no preparation. The last group of people are those that have already heard about these experiences, they do their research, they plan out where to go, when to go, what retreat is within their budget and fly to Peru with the specific intention of going through a 7–15 day retreat. Now, I don’t like to be prescriptive about other people’s journeys or decisions they make on their path but I’ll offer my experiences and let people make their own judgements. In 2011 I was cruising around South America when I first heard about Ayahuasca from a mate who had had a few experiences with it. It seemed like a potentially life changing thing to do, so when the opportunity arose a few weeks later to jump onto a bus and head into the amazon from Lima I jumped at it. I had no plan, no specific centre or shaman I was looking for, I just landed at a town deep in the mountains, asked around and eventually found a ‘so called’ shaman to take me through a ceremony. I had also been partying my way around South America for the prior 4 months so not exactly the ideal preparation. I’m not gonna go into detail about this particular experience but lets just say it was a bit of a let down, it tasted horrible, I purged a bunch of times but didnt feel like I got any insights or any visions to write home about. Somehow I sensed that because I hadn’t respected the process and the medicine it hadn’t helped me satisfy my expectations. But the seed had been planted and for the next 8 years I would always wonder when the time might be right to head back into the jungle and do it properly. At the start of 2019 I moved back to Melbourne after being in the US for a number of years. I was preparing to start and embark on a new chapter of my life. The last chapter had been extremely satisfying but at the same time extremely challenging. I could feel that a change of direction was in order. My old identity no longer fit and I knew I had to enter the path of uncertainty to figure out what kind of person I wanted to become. In order to grow in every sense of the word I knew there was a need for a bit of internal re-engineering. I was in the process of planning out my 2 month trip to Italy and Japan in early 2019 when I went on a trip down to see some mates in Apollo Bay. One of them being the mate I spoke with before going on the first Ayahuasca trip 8 years earlier. After a crazy weekend and some deep convos, I decided to do a 5 day water fast and cruise down the great ocean road with my swag in toe. Obviously with a lot of time to think I suddenly started thinking about the trip I was about to embark on and started to entertain the idea of fitting Peru into the equation and do a proper Ayahuasca mission. All of a sudden something in my body lit up and I knew deep within that now was the time. Luckily I hadn’t booked my flights to Japan as yet so I decided to go to Chile first on the way to the jungle and then onto Italy after. My mate had some recommendations on people and places to talk to in Iquitos about the experience. I kept them in mind but had a strong feeling that I needed to embark on my own journey and do my own research just so I could feel into what places felt right for me. What I noticed after weeks of researching different retreat centres and other peoples reviews and experiences was that choosing the right people to go on this journey with was going to be super important. There seemed to be about three different costing options. There were some centres and people offering week experiences for around the $700-$1000AUD price point but the facilities and reviews were extremely mixed. Then there were a bunch of options in the middle range for around $1500-$2000 price range and these centres had proper websites, reviews that were a little varied but on the most part they seemed quite legit. Finally, there were some options up the high range up towards 3k for a week or 9 days at retreat centres who had amazing reviews, beautiful facilities, lots of support staff and the highest levels of safety. I weighed up the different options and went with a retreat centre in the mid range. I resonated with the written content on their website They had a heap of positive reviews Their facilities while not over the top looked great There were 2 shamans father and son who looked super experienced, haha I know how do you ‘look’ experienced but I dunno they just did. There was a Western facilitator and retreat manager, which I liked because it meant that there’d be no language barriers The dates worked well for me I felt comfortable with the price Last but not least I liked the way they communicated with me while I was making the decision. They sent me very specific guidelines and steps to take in the lead up to the retreat, they were very clear about diet and any medications that might react with the Ayahuasca and they seemed professional and most importantly I felt a sense of safety with them. Ayahuasca is not a journey, adventure or a medicine that you should take lightly without consideration. There are many other plant medicines, drugs and experiences that can be done on a whim, but Ayahuasca in my opinion is not one of them. It’s a journey into ones self, its a journey into your inner world that can be scary, uncomfortable and traumatic for a lot of people. But at the same time it can be life changing, beautiful, joyous, healing and the connection you have to yourself and the environment will likely never be the same. Landing in Iquitos, seeking out a random experience with a random so called shaman without doing your homework, preparing your mind and body in the lead up and having respect for this profound medicine is not the path I would recommend taking. There are stories far and wide about people having experiences that are physically and emotionally dangerous so don’t do what I did first time around and do it properly if this is something you feel called to do. So what does preparation look like? I feel I’ll lose 90% of you after reading reading this haha. But here goes. 2 weeks prior No sexual activity including masturbation No alcohol No drugs of any kind including weed No pork No hot or spicy foods No cold ice drinks And as you get closer like within a week add these items to the list Refined sugars Red meat Dairy products Fermented foods Caffeine and other stimulants. By eliminating these items you are preparing your body physically, mentally and spiritually for the Ayahuasca journey ahead. These are guidelines, you will not die if you don’t follow them 100% but they are super important for many reasons but these two resonated the most for me. By preparing your body physically by eating clean foods and eliminating as many toxins prior as possible you are potentially limiting the amount of internal housekeeping and purging the body will have to do during the experience. By showing your commitment and respect for the Ayahuasca plant and the traditions that go along with it you are building an energetic connection with them which is essential in having the best experience. Other activities and things I did in preparation were yoga and meditation Breathing exercises (most important) Get into nature as much as possible, helping the body to relax Set your intentions. You could go into the experience doing none of these things mentioned above. But, if you’re not open to some basic preparations then you really gotta ask yourself why you’re actually doing this? If you have the right intention and the right attitude towards your experience and you want to get the most out of it then you wont think twice about committing to these foundational steps. If you’re in it to have fun and trip out a bit then this isn’t the plant medicine for you. After getting clear why I was going, what my intentions were and what retreat centre I was going to it was almost time to kick off.

https://medium.com/@JoshMcNamara9/part-2-planning-preparing-mind-and-body-for-ayahuasca-3450a4c5ce15

['Josh Mcnamara']

2021-07-17 10:03:27.302000+00:00

['Health', 'Mental Health', 'Psychedelics', 'Breathwork', 'Spirituality']

How To Create A Binary Heap In JavaScript

Building our Binary Heap Class In our example below, we will be building a max binary heap. Once you understand how to build this, creating a min binary heap can be done in a similar way. To start, we will create a class and call it MaxBinaryHeap. This will have one property, called values, which will be initialized as an empty array. class MaxBinaryHeap { constructor() { this.values = []; } } Inserting into our Binary Heap Let’s first look at how we can add values to our max binary heap. The first step will be to push the value to the end of our values array. The push method will put the value in the next spot in our heap. Remember the first rule of our heap: All levels of the tree must be filled in order. If the last level of the tree is not filled, the nodes of the tree are filled in from left to right. Then, we will need to do a bubble-up effect. This means we will compare the inserted value to the parent value. If the inserted value is greater than that of the parent, we will switch these values. We will continue this until our inserted value is in the correct spot. Inserting into our Binary Heap Removing from our Binary Heap When removing from a binary heap, we will typically be removing the root value. This means that in a max binary heap, we are removing the largest value, and in a min binary heap, we are removing the smallest value. In our example, we will call our method, extractMax. To do this, we will first swap the root value with the last value in our array. Then, we will do a bubble down effect. Since our new root will likely not be in the correct position, we will compare this value, to its children. Whichever child is greater, we will swap it with the parent. We will continue to do this until the value is in the correct spot. In the end, we will return the max value.

https://javascript.plainenglish.io/how-to-create-a-binary-heap-in-javascript-e1e6f6446ff9

['Chad Murobayashi']

2020-12-21 11:59:17.465000+00:00

['Computer Science', 'JavaScript', 'Binary Heap', 'Data Structures', 'Algorithms']

On Love and Enlightenment

Not two weeks before I began reading Flossie Deane Craig’s novel Feathers In A High Wind did I encounter those lovely lines in the quasi-Sufi philosopher’s collection of mystical poetry, originally composed in twelfth century Khorassán (a region of modern day Iran). Given that the former title is a gritty narrative of life in bucolic northern Arkansas over the years book-ending World War One, I thought these two works to be about as remote from each other as they could be. Imagine my surprise, then, when I stumbled upon that very quatrain a little over halfway through Feathers in a High Wind. As it turns out, Flossie was a woman of more literacy, eloquence and style than her seemingly humble origins would imply. In the decades after her death, the journals comprising Flossie’s novel were treasured by her family as entirely fictional works. However, it was eventually discovered that those heirloom stories of love, strife and change were more than just recreations of the habits, customs and livelihoods of the period; rather, they chronicled actual events. More incredibly, the names scattered throughout the journal entries were recognized as pseudonyms for the people in Flossie’s life. Thus, when Feathers was finally published in 2015 thanks to the combined efforts of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the pseudonyms were reverted to their corresponding historical names, and Feathers debuted as an authentic ledger of Flossie’s remarkable and tumultuous life in the years from 1912 to 1919. Flossie Deane Craig is my great-great-great grandmother. So closely related to me is she that a picture exists of myself as an infant being held by her then very senior daughter Cerece (whose birth and rambunctious childhood form one of the book’s most tender threads), and yet, for the first twenty years of my life, the significance of this relationship escaped me. Family trees tend to forego vivid details for the sake of graphical efficiency, causing ancestral marriages and unions to appear as nothing more than procreative mechanisms necessary to reach “the present’’. Thus, in my youth I found it difficult to recognize Flossie from among myriad faces in sepia-toned old photos, or to distinguish her name when it emerged from time to time in nostalgic family chatter. Again, until I read Feathers in a High Wind, I failed to understand how impressive a woman she really was. Consider the ambient conditions of her rural town of Paragould, Arkansas (population then around 5,500) in the 1910s. Aside from the stirrings of growing industry, the region was one of agriculture, piety, patriarchy, and, if a man was from a well-to-do family, inherited responsibility (of tending to a family farm or business, for example). For women, who were not to win their franchise for quite a few years to come, opportunities for the pursuit of individual ambition were slim, as their futures usually hinged on the career trajectories of the men they married and attended to. Societal roles were, in modern parlance, “traditional”. Men worked and earned the vast majority of household income, and women were the domicile managers, cooks, and primary child-rearers. One could certainly argue that this environment exerted a stifling effect on the development of those progressive elements like female intellectualism, independence, and autonomy that would only evolve en masse nearly a century later. And yet, the pages of Feathers In A High Wind reveal Flossie to be a woman equipped with period-revolutionary sorts of bravery and intellect so premature that they align snugly with the female empowerment campaigns of today. Take bodily autonomy as a case-in-point. At several instances in the novel, women (including Flossie) are burdened with the arduous task of pregnancy and childbirth as a consequence of the random (and occasionally violent) carnal hungers of their husbands, who then return to their work lives and leave their expectant wives to cope. Such treatment exacts monstrous mental and physical tolls on these women, one of whom snaps and merrily subjects her cruelly rapacious husband to a Tarantino-esque murder-castration. Thankfully, Flossie elects a different solution, and covertly begins a rudimentary course of birth control, freeing herself from the constant, gnawing anxiety of being subjected once again to pregnancy. This at a time where the refusal of a husband’s advances, much less the suppression of reproductive functionality, was sufficient merit for moral castigation, especially on Christian grounds. Where the spiritual and the transcendent are concerned, Flossie spurns the idea of locating God in stuffy farm churches and among shrieking, frenzied worshipers (Flossie’s mother-in-law exclaims “when God wants to shout me, I just let him shout me!”), preferring instead to forgo the services and seek God in winds and snows and in nature’s other splendors. She derides the casuistry of the churchgoers who exalt God’s favor in the Great War, noting that her kind and loving God would never be partial in such horrendous human conflicts, and observes that the most enthusiastic believers are often the poorest models for her notion of Jesus (for years, my father cruised south Georgia in a truck sporting a bumper sticker with a Gandhi quote reading “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” I’m not claiming that Flossie was Gandhi, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t draw the similarity). In the face of a hawkeyed preacher who questions her devoutness, she conceals these convictions with an admirable and clever mendacity. No doubt those convictions would have alienated her from her community as an out-and-out heretic, destined for Hell. That eternal condemnation, which I suspect she would still earn from certain Christian sects today, brings me to perhaps her most groundbreaking intellectual reform, captured contemplatively when she writes “But all I could see was that Man… managed to make for himself a hell, wherein, if one listened, there might always be heard weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth.” Her surmise that Hell is earthly and man-made, or in other words a product not of divine creation but of human frailty, is strikingly similar to that revelation which saw the megachurch preacher Carlton Pearson lose his congregation almost one hundred years later. I have not even begun to describe Flossie’s ardent battle to wrest influence over financial matters from her lovable, endearing, and at times equally despicable husband Alex Walker, or her fervent struggle to win over his leery and judgmental parents, or her charming enthusiasm for “new” technology like cars, running water, and electricity and lighting systems, but if I haven’t yet made my point about Flossie’s striking and uncommon enlightenment, I’m not going to have made it, am I? However, the vital artery of the book, and transitively of Flossie’s character, is her desperate quest not just to find romantic love — she and Alex accomplish this feat for a time early in the book — but to determine its authentic sources, to capture it for good, and to distill it as best she can. Unlike some couples in the novel, she understands that love does not stem from the sex and the distribution of responsibility that accompany wedlock, and that while the children of a marriage do not guarantee a love between the parents, they may certainly help to kindle it. Flossie (I think accurately) comes to envision love as a fluctuating state and searches again and again to find its stasis. This endeavor fails frequently, though often through no fault of her own, and each failure elicited in me an unusually potent twinge of familial compassion. After all, her loneliness when Alex leaves her to fend for herself during a trying pregnancy, her broken spirit when she learns of his unfaithfulness, and her confusion and resignation at his repeated unwillingness to say “I love you” are all palpable accounts of the suffering of my kin. Her trials reminded me of something the author Salman Rushdie once remarked during an Emory University literary panel discussion about love: “When we talk about love, we usually add to it.. related concepts such as fidelity, durability… it’s supposed it would go on for a long time, and it’s supposed to be monogamous… that might all be nonsense. That might just be a kind of comforting, bourgeois domestication of love. And that actually love might have more or less nothing to do with those things. It might be much more savage and brutal and non-enduring, a thing that betrays itself… it might be the kind of love that you find in high tragedy.” Flossie never seems to find respite from confrontations with the callousness and temporality of love, and yet that struggle seems to be the surest indicator that her love was true. There were poignant and powerful instances of love and devotion, especially one wrenchingly sublime moment of vulnerability and understanding and partnership with Alex after several years of marriage, but even that long-awaited unity succumbs to high tragedy as the novel mournfully concludes. After closing the book in what I can best describe as a trance, I felt as if I suddenly knew my third-great grandmother and her family as if I had met them, but that elation was dampened by the sad reality that they had all died long before my arrival to this world. I suspect that a natural consequence of knowing one’s ancestry, or of being anyone’s descendant, is to (perhaps solipsistically) wonder what traits and vestiges of past generations endure in oneself, and after I reveled in Feathers In A High Wind, I couldn’t help but give in to that little tug of introspection. While I entertain the notion that I can write, I have yet to scribble as elegantly and poetically as Flossie, and while heresy and nonconformity are for me sources of personal pride, I have yet to exercise those postures as daringly as she did. Nonetheless, and despite the chasm of time and societal change that separates us, I daresay we would have had a great deal to talk about, and I have a great deal from her left to learn. Fortunately, Feathers promises that what lessons she may yet teach her great-great-great grandson are hidden in the glorious depths of her work.

https://medium.com/@ethanwetherington/on-love-and-enlightenment-6be646f8d32d

['Ethan Wetherington']

2020-12-19 05:19:17.498000+00:00

['Empowerment', 'Enlightenment', 'Literature', 'Love', 'Family']

What is automated trading?

Definition: Automated trading is a method of participating in financial markets by using a program that executes pre-set rules for entering and exiting trades. As the trader, you’ll combine thorough technical analysis with setting parameters for your positions, such as orders to open, trailing stops and guaranteed stops. Understanding automated trading Auto trading enables you to have maximum control over your portfolio and take advantage of as many potential opportunities in the market as possible, while keeping risk at a minimum. You can carry out many trades in a small amount of time, or you could build a sophisticated system that executes precise entries & exits only when pre-set conditions are met for the asset(s). Parameters can range from more basic rules like volume, moving averages, etc conditions being met, or through coding — parameters can contain significantly more logic such as mean reversion or statistical arbitrage techniques. Many hedge funds simultaneously deploy dozens of algorithms into the market, and data shows that funds which utilize automated trading software (sometimes called quantitative hedge funds, depending on the extent of their use of algorithmic software) typically outperform their competitors who rely on human decision. How does automated trading work? First, you will choose a platform and set the parameters of your trading strategy. You’ll use your trading experience to create a set of rules and conditions, and then test your theory on historical data to determine how successful it would have been in the past. Once you’re ready to deploy into a demo or live account, your custom algorithm will apply the criteria to place trades on your behalf. These conditions are normally based on the timing of the trade, the price at which it should be opened and closed, and the quantity. example, ‘buy 100 Apple shares when its 50-day moving average goes above the 200-day average’. The automated trading strategy that’s been set will constantly monitor market prices and any other parameter you set, and trades will automatically be executed if predetermined conditions are met. The aim is to execute trades more efficiently, taking advantage of specific technical market events while minimizing emotion by only functioning through predetermined logic. What are the benefits of automated trading? With automated trading, you can: Fit your strategy around your schedule — execute trades automatically, day or night. You can enjoy your life not being glued to watching charts and worrying about trades! Reduce the impact of stress through sophisticated investing strategies Identify new opportunities and analyze trends with a wide range of indicators Ability to select between short/medium/long-term strategies across multiple asset classes Execute multiple real-time trades simultaneously and remove manual execution What platforms can you use for automated trading? Surmount AI Our goal is to remove the barrier of entry for individual investors to access automated investing. We’ve built a platform that enables any trader, regardless of if they are unsure how to code or have a smaller account size, to access and develop automated investing strategies and even get paid from helping other traders profit. Users can develop automated trading software in a zero code environment and browse the quant marketplace to utilize machine learning, algorithmic, and copy trading software. Simply connect your existing portfolio and select which strategies you want to automate with. Orders are filled using fully encrypted market-leading technology, ensuring you receive the safest and fastest possible execution on every trade. MetaTrader4 Code your own expert trading algorithms, create indicators, and place a range of orders. Plus, import Expert Advisors (EAs) to help find opportunities according to your pre-defined parameters. EAs can either notify you of an opportunity or open a position automatically. Alpaca Head over to Alpaca’s trading platform and execute your own coded trading algorithms and place a range of orders for stocks (and soon to be cryptos!) Alpaca is a newer company that’s enjoyed explosive growth for their first of its kind full-API trading platform. Even if you’d prefer to use Alpaca’s platform for order execution, you can still develop and test your strategies on Surmount, then download the Python source code. APIs Build your own platform and create advanced trading solutions from scratch though coding your algorithms from the ground up. Who typically trades with APIs? Trading with APIs is extremely popular with institutions such as hedge funds and registered trading firms, and as access becomes increasingly available, retail traders are also beginning to rush into the automated trading space. That’s because APIs offer access to more advanced programs that can remove the guesswork out of trading and act solely through a series of preset conditions that have been proven to be historically profitable. Conclusion Even if you want to continue executing the majority of your own trades, automated trading can prove to be an effective tool in many ways for your portfolio. Whether it be a matter of consistently mitigating risk, increasing activity, monitoring positions, taking profits/losses, or when to buy the dip — an automated trading system can help to maximize profits while minimizing the stress that can be associated with financial markets.

https://medium.com/@surmountai/what-is-automated-trading-a1114b9f8152

['Surmount Ai']

2021-12-29 17:28:11.218000+00:00

['Quantitative Finance', 'Algorithmic Trading', 'Stocks', 'Forex', 'Crypto']

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['Rona Wantaza']

2020-12-22 04:12:55.048000+00:00

['Abortion Pills', 'Legal Abortion', 'Abortion']

Meet the Most Beautiful Woman in the World: Cléo de Mérode

Meet the Most Beautiful Woman in the World: Cléo de Mérode Portrait of Cléo de Mérode (Source: Public domain, color by Klimbim) She was the most famous woman in the world. Everyone knew her face. Millions scanned the newspapers for tidbits of information about her. Millions more purchased postcards, playing cards, and other items bearing her likeness. She was featured in print advertisements and on posters everywhere: the great beauty of the Belle Époque. Triple-view postcard featuring Cléo de Mérode (Source: Public Domain) Dozens of painters, sculptors, photographers, sketch artists, and cartoonists labored to capture her image. Even scandal did not diminish her popularity. It only increased it. But today, hardly anyone knows her name. Who was Cléo de Mérode? Here is her story. A child prodigy and teen trend-setter Cléo as a child (Source: Public Domain) Cléopâtre-Diane de Mérode (1875–1966) was born in Paris, France, into an aristocratic and artistic family. Her parents, Viennese Baroness Vincentia Maria Cäcilia Catharina de Mérode and Austrian judge Theodor Christomannos were not married and estranged. Consequently, the first time Cléo met her father, she was a young adult. When she was eight, Cléo’s mother enrolled her in ballet classes. The child made her professional debut as a dancer at the Paris Opéra when she was 11. At 16, she was already turning heads with her signature hairstyle, the chignon. “The Stockholm telephone authorities are finding fault now with the way in which (switchboard operators) do their hair. It appears that of late the Swedish lassies …have adopted the mode of coiffure first initiated by the French dancer Cleo de Merode, in which the hair is drawn over the ears. The subscribers have since found a falling off in the hearing powers of the operators, as the result of which complaints of inefficiency in the service have been made.” — The American telephone journal, Volume 8, 1903 Cléo’s signature hairstyle (Source: Public Domain) The hairstyle became so popular that it nearly inspired a strike by Swedish telephone operators. Ordered by management to stop wearing their hair over their ears like Cléo de Mérode, they flatly refused to comply. How the Swedes resolved the dispute is unknown, but the incident shows the dancer’s powerful influence on fashion and beauty trends. When she wasn’t dancing, beginning in her teen years, Cléo de Mérode was modeling for some of the greatest artists of the day. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, famous for his paintings and sculptures of ballet dancers, did her portrait as did Edgar Degas. Portrait by Giovanni Boldini, 1901 (Source: Public Domain) Other painters who captured her likeness include Manuel Benedito, Giovanni Boldini, Georges Clairin, François Flameng, Henri Gervex, Friedrich August von Kaulbach, Alfredo Müller, Einar Nerman, József Rippl-Rónai, and Carlos Vázquez Úbeda. She also posed for sculptors Eugène-Denis Arrondelle, Mariano Benlliure, Alexandre Falguière (twice), and Ernst Seger. The dancer is said to be the model for Alphonse Mucha’s stunning series of Art Nouveau busts La Nature, although this is unsubstantiated. You can see the wax mask of her by Georges Despret at the Musée Fin-de-Siècle Museum in Brussels. Cléo de Mérode is depicted in countless newspaper and magazine illustrations, cartoons, and postcards. Georges Goursat drew several caricatures of her during the 1900s. Photos by Nadar (Source: Public Domain) But nothing had a greater impact on Cléo de Mérode’s fame than her photographs. Her image was easily mass-produced and distributed worldwide. A postcard bearing her likeness, sent from Uruguay in 1904, recently sold on eBay. Some of the more prominent photographers who photographed the beauty included Nadar and his son Paul Nadar, Léopold-Émile Reutlinger, and his son Jean Reutlinger, Henri Manuel, Charles Ogerau, and Otto Sarony. These images, usually on postcards, are still popular with collectors. Millions of these were produced and sold each year throughout her heyday and beyond. People were crazy for Cléo. Anything with her name or picture on it, be it underwear or playing cards, sold like hotcakes. Gossip Girl of La Belle Époque Promotional photo showing deMérode’s left ear (Source: Public Domain) Beauty and fame invariably attract envy and conjecture. One of the first rumors circulated about Cléo was that she used her famous hairstyle, which completely covered her ears, to conceal that she was missing either one or both of them. There’s no reason to believe the missing ear rumor is true, although, in nearly every photo of her to be found, her ears aren’t visible, nor does she appear to be wearing earrings. Some versions of Mucha’s bust La Nature are equipped with earrings, but the ear lobe isn’t depicted. Obviously, nothing other than a photograph would prove it one way or another, and I could only find one, confirming that her left ear was intact. Cartoon By Auguste Roubille depicting Léopold II and Cléo de Mérode (Source: Public Domain) The next rumor about de Mérode was much more serious. It was spread beginning in the fall of 1895, implying that 20-year-old Cléo was having an affair with 60-year-old King Leopold II of Belgium. The age difference aside, Leopold was a world-class womanizer, married, and the father of four children. The press began revering to the pair as “Cléopold.” Initially, the gossip hurt de Mérode’s reputation somewhat. It didn’t help when in 1899, Leopold took 16-year-old French prostitute Caroline Lacroix as his mistress and proceeded to father two children by her. This gave the rumor mongers additional clout in deeming Cléo de Mérode a courtesan in service to the king. Gossip columnists and political cartoonists had a field day with the Cléopold scenario, and the rumor persisted for nearly 10 years. Cléo denied any involvement with Leopold, and evidence suggests she was telling the truth. An article in the June 4, 1911, edition of the New York Times declared no foundation to the rumor. The dancer did not, however, deny the allegation too vigorously. After all, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. (Cléo de Mérode and the Falguière sculpture depicted in a painting by Carlos Vázquez Úbeda “Cléo de Mérode at the Salon” (Source: Public Domain) Not long after the Cléopold rumor began, de Mérode caused another sensation over the sculpture La Danseuse that Alexandre Falguièr exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in the spring of 1896. Falguièr said that he based the life-sized marble nude on a full-body plaster cast of Cléo de Mérode. The critical reception for La Danseuse was not good. In her article “The corset, the bicycle and the Hottentot: Alexandre Falguière’s The Dancer and Cléo de Mérode’s modern, feminine body” academic Susan Waller writes that art critics reacted with unusual vehemence to the artwork, labeling it a “modern” body and denouncing it as “deformed” or “damaged.” Perhaps the bad reviews motivated de Mérode to strenuously deny having posed for the body, only the face. Whether or not she was telling the truth, she took advantage of the association by using a facsimile of the statue in one of her later performances. “Her beauty is not only remarkable, judged by any standpoint, but it is of a type very different from that which is ordinarily offered to the eye of the pleasure-loving public… A suggestion of chastity, of melancholy, or even of piety in the object of (the Parisian’s)carnal admiration revives his jaded senses. Cleo de Merode pleases this refined Parisian taste.” — from the New York newspaper the Journal, May 17, 1896 The furor over the statue inspired Carlos Vasquez y Obeda to paint Cléo de Mérode au Salon, which is currently in a private collection. It shows Cléo and another woman at the Salon exhibition inspecting the statue. La Danseuse can be seen at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. International sensation Cléo de Mérode (Source: The Sketch — August 31st, 1910) Thanks to her image's wide distribution, the world at large was anxious to experience Cléo de Mérode in the flesh. She toured Europe, where she was generally well-received, except for her appearance at the Alhambra in London in 1902. In an interview with the British illustrated weekly journal The Sketch, she is quoted as saying, “I dance the ancient dances, the Louis XIII, the Louis XV, the gavot, the pavan, the minuet, and I led at Royan Louis Ganne’s ballet of ‘Phryne.’ I am gowned by a real dressmaker. I know music very well and play the piano as little as possible. I know how to arrange a basket of fruit, place flowers in a jardiniere, and touch a book without spoiling it. I have read the poets and the historians, and I do not write. I wear stockings that are as fine as a woven mist. What other accomplishments shall I speak of?” F.A. von Kaulbach. Portrait of Cleo de Merode, 1904 The Sketch also provided its readers with de Mérode’s measurements so they could compare them with what the magazine deemed to be those of the Perfect Woman entitled, “Attribute: Cleo de Merode (Perfect Woman)” (An hourglass figure was considered the standard of beauty at that time): “Weight: 121 1/4 lbs. (140 lbs.) Height: 5 ft. 6 in. (5 ft. 6 in.) Waist: 19 ins. (21 in.) Neck: 4 in. (4 in.) Calf: 4 3/4 in. (4 3/4 in.) Hips: 2 3/4 in. (13 in.) Shoulders: 13 in. (14 in.)” The dancer’s first appearance in New York City, in 1897, was a disappointment. Her month-long booking at Koster and Bial’s music hall appearance failed to charm the critics. They were less than complimentary, to put it mildly. “Cléo de Mérode can go back to her inconspicuous position among the ballet dancers at the Paris Opéra, crowned with the distinction of having made the most successful failure of the season. Critics and public joined in a chorus of disappointment after her first appearance at Koster & Bial’s, and yet she has set a new fashion in personal adornment, crowds mark her progress on the street, and large audiences assemble to see her.” — theater critic for Munsey’s Magazine The bad reviews didn’t worry Cléo. She was making 40 times her salary at the Paris Opéra. Her response to reports of her critical failure in New York included some criticism of her own. Portrait by Paul Nadar (Source: Public Domain “The papers stated that I was a failure, but they lied. I pleased the Americans vastly. The papers pretended that I danced badly, as if Americans could tell. They know nothing about dancing and don’t like ballets.” — Cléo de Mérode At the height of her fame in France, de Mérode made what was considered to be a risky decision for a “serious artiste.” She agreed to appear at the notorious Folies Bergère cabaret music hall. Some feared it would end her career, but those fears were unfounded. Instead, it garnered her a whole new host of fans. She continued to enjoy a large measure of notoriety until World War I, during which time she entertained wounded soldiers, dancing well into her forties. The curtain comes down Poster for Peacock Alley (Source: Public Domain) In her later years, de Mérode retired to the seaside, where she taught dance and crafted figurines as a hobby. She was also involved in two lawsuits. In 1923 she unsuccessfully sued the owners of the film Peacock Alley, one of the biggest hits of 1922. The dancer claimed the film’s characters and plotline damaged her reputation. In it, the main character “Cleo of Paris” gives birth to an illegitimate child. The court did not find sufficient parallels to de Mérode’s life to rule in her favor. (Source: raptisrarebooks.com) In 1950, however, she successfully sued Simone de Beauvoir for libel. In her book The Second Sex, Beauvoir described de Mérode as a prostitute who came from peasant stock and further claimed she had assumed an aristocratic-sounding stage name to further her career. Although she had asked for five million francs in damages, the judge only awarded de Mérode one franc because she never properly refuted the rumors previously and had used them to garner publicity. He also ordered de Beauvoir to delete the section about de Mérode in subsequent editions of her book. Collage of photos by Cecil Beaton (Source: Vogue magazine, fair use) Cléo de Mérode set the record straight in her autobiography, Le Ballet de ma vie (The Dance of My Life), which was published in 1955. One of de Mérode’s last interviews was in 1964, for Vogue magazine. Cecil Beaton visited her at her Paris apartment. His photographs and interview of her were featured in the magazine’s February 15, 1964 issue. Beaton wrote that, as he left, she asked him to destroy any unflattering photos. Cléo de Mérode never married nor had any children. In her autobiography, she writes that she was only involved with two men in her life: a French aristocrat who died of typhoid fever in 1904 and, from 1906 to 1919, Spanish sculptor Luis de Périnat. The de Merode tomb in Pere La Chaise Cemetery, Paris On October 17, 1966, Cléo de Mérode died in the same Paris apartment at 15 Rue de Téhéran where she gave her Vogue interview. She is interred at the famous Paris cemetery Père Lachaise alongside her mother. Adorning the tomb is a statue of Cléo in mourning sculpted by her former lover Luis de Périnat.

https://historyofyesterday.com/meet-the-most-beautiful-woman-in-the-world-cl%C3%A9o-de-m%C3%A9rode-bdeb5c3dcae

['Denise Shelton']

2021-06-01 20:49:22.171000+00:00

['La Belle Époque', 'History', 'Beauty', 'Dance', 'Celebrity']

The One Skill Every Leader Needs to Master

A story goes that at one time, the Phrygian people had no ruler. An oracle prophesied that the next man who entered the city on an oxcart would be the king. A peasant named Gordius was that next man. Upon riding into town on an oxcart he was declared king. Out of gratitude, he dedicated his oxcart to his god. His son, Midas (Yes! That Midas!), took the oxcart and tied it to a post in commemoration. He used an intricate knot, made of tree bark. This knot was comprised of a series of complicated smaller knots. No one could untie it because the number of individual knots themselves made it impossible to see how the larger knot was fastened. For centuries, the cart remained there. Tied to the post. A reminder. At some point, the Phrygian people were again without a king. Another oracle declared that whoever could untie the knot would rule all of Asia. A young man named Alexander liked the sound of that. Some say he lifted the post out of the ground and slipped the knot off. Others say he took his sword and cut the knot in half. Either way, he found a simple solution to untying the Gordian Knot. The rest, as they say, is history. Leaders Are Faced with Gordian Knots I was asked to help a group with an issue they were stuck on. They were divided into factions on a topic. And they had been for a long time. Over a decade in fact. The topic was important and it generated strong opinions. But no one believed that a solution was possible. In fact, a number of people tried to “pre-let-me-off-the-hook” by telling me I shouldn’t hope to find a solution. Just “the fact that we are talking” was good enough. “Any progress” would be a win. Given the low bar set before me — I excitedly accepted their offer. We set aside a day to meet. Before meeting, I asked the leaders of the group a lot of questions. When we finally met with the full group — I asked more questions. Then I helped them ask each other questions. Through those questions, they found the answer to their problem before lunch. Their surprise was tangible. They had untied their Gordian Knot and almost couldn’t believe it. The Power of Questions The right questions provided focus. I didn’t have an answer for them. They needed to get clarity and make a decision. Good questions helped them break free from the complicated, circular, or confusing conversations they had been stuck in. There are many tricks of the trade of asking good questions. But here is a handful of work-horse techniques that will take you a long way — especially when problem-solving. How to Untie Gordian Knots With Good Questions Identify and Separate the Issues: What’s going on here? If you’ve ever tried to untie a real knot, you know it helps to know how many different pieces of string make up the knot. Most issues that people wrestle with are described as if they were one problem. One issue. In fact, they are often dealing with multiple issues that have somehow become entwined. Taking the time to identify each of the “pieces of string” that make up the knot — makes it much easier to resolve. Reframe as questions: “What is the main question(s) that we need answered?” For example, reframe: “We never understand what is really wanted” to “How can expectations be clarified on a consistent basis?” “I don’t understand what her job is and she always seems to be telling my team what to do.” Instead ask, “What are our roles and responsibilities?” “He’s a jerk. He’s patronizing and sarcastic.” To: “What behaviors help you feel respected?” An issue, on its own, often sounds like a complaint. It invites defensiveness or shuts down creativity. But a question can invite an answer. Tackle each issue on its own. It may seem like it will take a lot of time — but you’ll find it is actually much faster than what you’ve already been doing. To start tackling those, take the next step of understanding the interests behind the issue. Identify Interests: What makes this important to you? Interests are the deep underlying motivations or desires that we each have. Most people actually share very common interests and are unaware of this. However, they are very aware of their conflicting ways of pursuing those interests. When you’ve had the conversations described above, the interests usually start to emerge. For example: “It seems that you both want to serve the customer well. It also seems that you both want to clearly know what to expect from each other and for there to be consistency. Last, it seems that you both would like to be treated with respect. Could we say that you both want: Good customer service, clear expectations, consistency and to be treated with respect?” Identifying interests is the problem-solving equivalent of Alexander realizing he didn’t need to figure out the knot. Whether you metaphorically pull the post out of the ground or pick up a sword — identifying interests makes creating a lasting solution much easier. Solutions and Commitment: What could help you both consistently get what you want? If the work has been done above — This is where people usually brainstorm and spitball ideas around. But instead of doing it in a way that seems to neglect the interests of the other side — there is a greater tendency to try to satisfy the interests of each side. Out of all the ideas — the group can being to identify the ones they want to move forward with. I like to ask follow-up questions to secure commitment. I do this because people don’t like conflict and the minute things feel better they often assume that they are better. So, I test this with questions: To what degree do you feel that these solutions will solve the original problem? How do we address any percentage that feels unresolved? What can we see that might undermine or challenge our success moving forward? What behaviors or practices do we both need to commit to — to make this work? What do we agree to do if we start to feel confusion or friction again? Most Problems are Solvable (but not with the kind of thinking that created them) On a regular basis, I help leaders and teams solve old problems. Largely because I help them look at the problem differently. This allows once hidden solutions to emerge. Most of this is accomplished by asking questions. If the answers you believe you have aren’t working, stop trying to make them work. Instead, try asking new questions. You might be surprised at the knots you can untie. Take good care, Christian

https://medium.com/@cmuntean/the-one-skill-every-leader-needs-to-master-ca905764c0df

['Christian Muntean']

2021-06-08 19:28:13.977000+00:00

['Leadership Development', 'Executive Coaching', 'New Perspective', 'Leadership Coaching', 'Leadership Skills']

Spring Scheduler in multi node environment

This articletalks about handling the scheduled tasks in Spring boot applications when deployed in multi-node environments. Talks about solutions how to handle such situations. Problem Statement: When Spring scheduler is scheduled to run every one hour if it is deployed in multi nodes, the scheduler triggers on both the nodes. This is expected as each node is a separate service altogether. In my earlier assignments, we use to have a separate microservice that has only scheduled tasks with no other functionalities and it is deployed as a single node on a global region. But there might be many scenarios where we have to add a scheduled task in any of the existing microservice which is deployed on multiple nodes. Solutions to resolve this You can configure your application to have multiple profiles. For example, use another profile ‘cron’ . And start your application on only one server with this profile. So for example, in a production environment, you have three servers (S1, S2, S3), then you could run on S1 with profile prod and cron( -Dspring.profiles.active=prod,cron ). And on S2 and S3 just use prod profile( -Dspring.profiles.active=prod ). And in code, you can use @Profile("cron") scheduler classes. This way it will be executed only when the cron profile is active. Use a distributed lock. If you have Zookeeper in your environment, you can use this to achieve a distributed locking system. You can use some database(mysql) and create a sample code to get a lock on one of the tables and add an entry. And whichever instance gets the lock, will make an entry in this database and will execute the cron job. You need to put a check in your code if getLock() is successful. only then proceed with execution. Mysql has utilities like LOCK TABLES , which you could use to get away with concurrent read/writes. For option 3, which works well for a spring-based solution, there is a specific library that takes care of this exclusive locking on schedulers. There is a dependency that provides this locking mechanism. Please find it here. Implementation in Spring Boot If you visit the official page, you will find a lot of different variations of configuration settings for RDBMS and No SQL databases. I have chosen Postgres as DB. compile('net.javacrumbs.shedlock:shedlock-spring:4.9.3') compile('net.javacrumbs.shedlock:shedlock-provider-jdbc-template:4.7.1') Create a table by the name, shedlock. These are default names used by shedLock, we can always override them with the help of JDBC Template. Please look at the official documentation for more details. Let Spring Boot application configuration know about shedLock The defaultLock is set for 30 seconds when no value is provided the default time till the lock is enables was 30 seconds for application at the global level. Scheduler Task -> For demo purposes, I am triggering the task every 2 minutes. I have started the same application in three different ports 9800, 9801, and 9802. A logger is used to determine which instance has picked up the task. For every 2 mins the shedlock table gets updated with the times. If you observe, it is locked at 21:34 until 21:34:30 as we have used max lock time as 30 seconds. Log statements 2020-12-20 21:34:00.110 INFO 4139 --- [ scheduling-1] c.s.spring.SampleSpringSchedulerTask : Scheduler is Triggered in Spring Scheduler on 9800 2020-12-20 21:36:00.043 INFO 4142 --- [ scheduling-1] c.s.spring.SampleSpringSchedulerTask : Scheduler is Triggered in Spring Scheduler on 9802 2020-12-20 21:38:00.002 INFO 4142 --- [ scheduling-1] c.s.spring.SampleSpringSchedulerTask : Scheduler is Triggered in Spring Scheduler on 9802 The first time 9800 picked up the task, on the other 2 occasions 9802 picked up the task. Now I am stopping the 9802 instance and let's see which node picks up the task now. Service that is running on 9801 is executed. It is like we can not predict which node instance triggers the task, but it ensures that only one instance executes the task. Other Optional parameters in ShedLock: The name in SchedulerLock is enough to make it a unique name. But other options include First, we’ve added lockAtLeastForString so that we can put some distance between method invocations. Using “PT5M” means that this method will hold the lock for 5 minutes, at a minimum. In other words, that means that this method can be run by ShedLock no more often than every five minutes. Next, we added lockAtMostForString to specify how long the lock should be kept in case the executing node dies. Using “PT14M” means that it will be locked for no longer than 14 minutes. In normal situations, ShedLock releases the lock directly after the task finishes. Now, we didn’t have to do that because there is a default provided in @EnableSchedulerLock, but we’ve chosen to override that here.

https://faun.pub/spring-scheduler-in-multi-node-environment-49814e031e7c

['Eresh Gorantla']

2021-01-12 19:29:59.156000+00:00

['Spring Boot', 'Java8', 'Multi Node', 'Spring Schedulling Task', 'Scheduled Tasks']

THE MONOCHROMATIC ABERRATION

Martin Luther King Jr. once stood on the pedestal of abominable ignominy and echoed with reproach the cries of a thousand children, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Juxtaposing the ideologies of torrid discrimination and abhorrible gegenpressing, the world has eventually metamorphosed into a unique blend of cultures, civilizations and conflicting geo-political ideologies hurled under the wheels of time. Grabbing a cue from the aeons of desperation and shambolic virulence of the ancient divisive ideology of “Divide and Conquer”, the leaders of yesterday and the torchbearers of today embarked on a heuristic expedition to discern the eclectic connection between the colour black and Satan. It is merely degrative to the concrete foundation of our society that the pillars of yesterday are crumbling and the walls of today are being shattered by our miscommunicated ideals of racism. Imagine for a second, strolling on the streets, hand-in-hand with your son or daughter. Would you for a second imagine what would happen if your skin betrays you? Out of the million things in the world, a million evils in our society today, you would trust your own skin to save your back, wouldn’t you? Ironic! I repeat; Ironic! We hear the sages of yesterday preach us to trust ourselves. And yet, degluting the philosophies of equality and equity, we are hurtling towards an era of the innate death of our morals: the clarion call we must heed to realise Martin Luther King’s dream. Stemming from the blood following through our veins, hypocrisy is but a misjudged notion. Rising to the sunshine, one may claim to be an advocator of racial equality, may even go out of his way to help a few “black” kids out there and yet at night, he will be the first to mock and abuse that dark-skinned servant in his home. The irony presents itself even when I use the term “black”. This word in itself has the ability to trigger more than half the world’s population, yet ironically black is but another word in the dictionary. When your child is shown a black ball in an interview and he answers correctly, your heart swells with pride and you pat him on the back. Binging for its roots in the treasure house of the obliterated tales of yore, the tracts of apostolic spiritualism finds solace in the dungeons of darkness, wherein thrives our hatred, jealousy and racist mindset. Be it the Herrero-Nama genocide, the Armenian genocide, the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, Guinea or Sudan or the apartheid movement in South Africa, history is but another excuse for menacing solidarity. Stoically, our lives are but an interlude to absence. Yet, we associate black as the absence of purity, wherein it is merely the absence of light. That wafer-thin ice gives way to the heuristic claim by the “Whites” as the “Burden of the Whites” metamorphosed into the “Salvation of the Whites”. From Nelson Mandela to FW de Klerk, from Abraham Lincoln to Hilary Clinton, the prophets of yore intertwined their preaching with the tales of their forefathers, of digress at the colour black, of hatred of the darkness, of their fight to achieve recognition of a colour they found themselves struggling in. They say, “Time and tide wait for no man.” Come the 21st century, the world struggles to find its place in the enervated dungeons of racism. Hate crimes against the Afro-Americans in the USA, utter disregard for gun laws and a blatherskite approach to eclectic nationalism has metamorphosed the world into a potboiler for Tudor-like stringiness. Struggling to find room for breathing in a world of treacherous nought, racism has confined ourselves to the prisons within and beyond ourselves. The Doll Test was an exercise conducted by the government of the USA to demonstrate the effects of racism on the mindset of Afro-American kids in the USA back in the 1970s. The exercise yielded horrendous results as each and every Afro-American child associated himself with black, and hence with impurity. And yet, as they say, to every lock lies a key. Indeed, the key to our Utopian concept of equality seems lost in the ocean of meandering complexes. As Fabrice Muamba had lamented, “Sadly racism is inbuilt in our children since their birth. And it will continue to exist until we stop associating black with impurity, unless we stop wearing black to funerals, until we stop using black to refer to Satan.” The path, they say, is treacherous and thorny. The roses are prickly and yet enthralling. Our struggle against racism is but an interlude to the monotonic interparty of life. As the leaders and flagbearers of Gen Y, our duty lies in the demolition of these “narrow domestic walls” to build better and brighter futures for our children and for theirs as well. To shatter the misconceived ideals will be a Herculean effort and yet I believe in every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows. Coping with an unreal struggle for existence, our battle in arms against ourselves must begin now. To defeat oneself needs greater courage than your enemies. Yet, it is a battle that we must fight today for the benefit of society. Ironically, the Bible, the shepherd of the masses has been quoted by naysayers to promote racism. A year ago, a religiously devout farmer in Accra, having discovered that the Bible supports racism, came to hate his own skin. In frustration, he wrote a note which surfaced online. I quote some excerpts from the same: “ To the lilting melodies of the Caribbean folklore, to the canorous and sensuous serenades of the absquatulate love of the sanctifying spray of Adam’s ale, John Hopkins pays his tributes: “ In epochs of desperation, frustration and adscititious apprehension, we as humans are fine-tuned to turn to the solitary entity, whom we believe to be superior to us- our Creator- the Maker of Heavens- God and by self-extended definition- religion” In an astrobleme of ideologies, in a Barmecidal mirage of dogmas, the Law of the Jungle stands to be modified: “Revolution before evolution.” Trespassing on the tepid borders of insecurity, mistrust and benthos of disparaging benignity, my horizons have metamorphosed from apostolic spiritualism to an enervated bergschrund of despondency, wherein I flounder with bilboes constraining my vocation. During my juvenescence, I was dictated by my blatherskite father in the sacred treatises of pietism- erudition that would hold me in good stead for thirty-three protracted years of morbid suppression of my self-despotism and cruel reticence of my talents. Gazing up at the teeming multitude of the glistening stars in the cosmic obscure blanket of the nocturnal heavens, I would habitually whistle aloud, amidst my bruxism, and promise, “Die dood wag op diegene wat dit waag om my Vader te ontmoedig.” [Death awaits those who dare to disrespect my Father] Brought up in an ether of vicious reverence for Him, I was never a stranger to the cantillation under the deep cerulean. At the tender age of three, the Gods of monochromatic bigotry peeked in through the translucent cavities of religious armours, as the clepsydra of demurring comminatory commensalism rained through chiliads. Indeed, the mere notion of transformations in perception owing to diverse hues and colours of His Creation seemed incredulous to me. With concinnity and conniption I have never experienced before, I was thrust into a neo-discriminatory world of bias, where skin colour forms the bedrock of prejudice against one’s own brethren; where religious beliefs and orthoxodism is fueled by racial intolerances. And then incarnated the outrageous revelation of degluting ethics of human discrimination. Envisioning my beliefs thwarted in a realm of deracinated ideals, embodiments of my generic frustrations disembogued in a basin of disenthralled tears. The pen, they say, is mightier than the sword. Be it or be it not, I find solace in the little words of freedom; the little grains of joy: “We talk of how the pen is mightier than the sword. So why does the ink in my skin continue to be cut by the whit-hot blade of racism? My hair is black as vanilla bean. My skin and eyes are dark brown like old African trees. My soul is black with the ink I use to write my story. So my pen may be mightier than the sword, But if I wrote in the blood of my people, they might finally be able to read the words on the page.” I failed to fathom, in my remotest senses, the root of the peculiar sense of discrimination between the hues of day and night. At the juvenile age of four, my mother illuminated my brain with the idea of symmetry: day exists in harmony with night; Sun exists in co-operation with the Moon; white exists in bondage with black. At the back of my head, there is a faint voice, which orates and muddles and ensorcells on its own: “If He creates us, why doesn’t he paint us uniformly?” This lack of symmetry troubled me as much as the ingenuous whims and fancies, existing through eviternity.

https://medium.com/@sankalpasarkar17/the-monochromatic-aberration-643c5d7b22b6

['Mystique Rheordan']

2020-11-06 19:49:01.942000+00:00

['BlackLivesMatter', 'Racism', 'Discrimination', 'Black And White', 'Humanity']

Equating Black Girls With Bad Attitudes Is Not the Answer

To fall from favor is emotionally taxing and physically draining, but when someone believes herself to be “fit to wear a crown,” she embraces her full potential. One of the girls I spoke with at Ms. Patton’s school referred to being Black as being part of “royalty.” To her, racial pride was at the center of her belief in herself as a member of this learning community. She was worthy of investment, worthy of praise. While most children may not be of actual royal lineage, when they believe they’re “fit to wear a crown,” they’re likely to feel worthy of redemption. Even when they make a mistake, they understand that the response is not intended to derail their learning or their lives, but rather to reconnect them to their true purpose. The neglect — or erasure — of this identity can lead to girls internalizing harmful historical narratives about their inferiority, and could even leave them feeling as if no one cares about them at all. For teachers and other educators, reinforcing the royal mindset requires a commitment not to equate accountability with discipline and punishment. We have conflated them for too long. Rejecting this false equation should be the norm, a baseline for all learning institutions. It isn’t something to consider, debate, or negotiate. As a premise, it is simply too faulty and dangerous. Disciplinary action against Black girls included dress code violations, disruptive behavior, and cell phone use — discretionary judgments that are often made through a racialized and gendered lens. Overall, students in U.S. schools are effective learners who do not exhibit behavior that warrants exclusionary discipline. However, racial disparities continue to plague those girls who do get into trouble in school. The research on Black girls and other girls of color in assessments of school discipline shows that the actions that lead to their suspension or expulsion do include fighting but are more often minor infractions whose punishment is not in fact about protecting the school from violence. Girls of color are more likely than others to be suspended for violations of school rules (for example, dress codes embedded in codes of conduct), for failure to comply with adult requests (for example, producing identification when requested), and for subjective, even arbitrary, infractions that leave ample room for personal biases to reign supreme, such as “willful defiance.” In Kentucky, where researchers Edward Morris and Brea Perry examined the specific infractions leading to the use of exclusionary discipline statewide, they found that African American girls were more likely than white girls to be suspended for subjectively determined “violations” of school order, and that the racial disparities were more prevalent among girls than boys. The study acknowledges that “black girls are much more likely than other girls to be cited for infractions such as dress code violations, disobedience, disruptive behavior, and aggressive behavior — and these gaps are far wider than the gaps between black boys and boys of other races for these offenses.” The Kentucky study found that the specific infractions leading to the disproportionate use of disciplinary action against Black girls included dress code violations, disruptive behavior, and cell phone use — discretionary judgments that are often made through a racialized and gendered lens. Morris and Perry found that Black boys were twice as likely as boys of European descent to receive a disciplinary referral; however, Black girls were three times as likely as girls of European descent to receive a referral, based largely on the school administrators’ interpretation of behavior as disruptive or disobedient.

https://zora.medium.com/we-need-to-stop-criminalizing-school-age-black-girls-236ca856b607

['Monique W. Morris']

2019-08-26 18:42:05.187000+00:00

['Culture', 'Race', 'Racial Justice', 'Equality', 'Education']

A practical approach to queering design

Queer design is collective Although empathy has been packaged up as a neat little Design Thinking™ books, workshops, and proprietary consulting models, the queer designers I know have a lifetime of experience in empathy on even the most skilled sprint facilitator. A lot of queer designers I’ve talked to feel they are able to more fully put themselves in others’ shoes because of how much time they’ve spent pretending to be someone else. We’ve turned a survival mechanism of being able to move through spaces that aren’t for us into a professional adaptation. And we bring that outsider perspective with us when we enter the field. In design today, people on the outside are considered edge cases and most large organizations don’t design for them. But as Eric Meyer says, “When you say ‘edge case’, you’re really just defining the limits of what you care about.” A lot of queer designers I’ve talked to feel they are able to more fully put themselves in others’ shoes because of how much time they’ve spent pretending to be someone else. So it’s not enough to bring outsider perspectives into the design process, we need to bring in people currently relegated to the edges of our practice and actually center them in our work. One way to do that is having diverse teams. Studies have shown that diversity leads to increased productivity and innovation, although the queerer the design industry becomes, the less we should need to rely on business metrics to argue for what’s right. We also have to expand our definition of a design to people who aren’t traditionally included in it and embracing a spirit of co-design. We need to enroll our “edge cases” as our partners in the design process to create work that serves them as well as it does everyone else. We should do this not because products that accommodate users at the margins do a better job at meeting the needs of everyone in middle (although they do) but because we should be challenging the idea that the experiences we build should have margins at all—or that the business’s margins should define them. We must also challenge the idea that we are the ones who should be building these designs. Communities can solve problems for themselves when they have the resources and designers from within those communities are empowered to do so. Very often, what a problem calls for is not a designer to unlock the solution but the political will to enact what we know will work (usually money, usually controlled by people who’d rather not see the problem solved). Not every nail needs design thinking or an interface or a logo. “I am not a beginning. I am not an end. I am a link in a chain.” ― Keith Haring I think queering design means letting go of our egos as designers. There’s still such a cult of celebrity in the field. We’re taught to revere individual designers who make iconic work, like Milton Glaser and the I heart New York logo. We pay less attention to work created by teams or ephemeral work that eschews a sense of “timelessness” to improve people’s lives now. A lot of us are still chasing that FastCo Design spotlight, the retrospective of our work, or the seat of honor at an AIGA gala. But some of the most memorable queer designs aren’t attributable to one person. The “Silence = Death” poster, which I think is one of the most striking designs in history was designed by a collective. Feminist activist artists the Guerrilla Girls work anonymously to keep focus on the issues their work addresses.

https://medium.com/queer-design-club/a-practical-approach-to-queering-design-f331bbc948a7

['John Warren Hanawalt']

2020-12-02 18:19:50.121000+00:00

['Queer', 'LGBTQ', 'Design', 'Technology', 'Diversity']

War photography — The frames of chaos and miseries.

We all share the history of war, either through our ancestors or ourselves. War not only represents an action taken to conquer a place or for power. War is also an uproar against injustice and inequality. Any action to reclaim what was ours is also a war. And these commotions live in every moment of war through war photographs. Since the inception of the community, there has been war. And we have been conveyed the agonies of war through war photographs. It takes us to the war place and shows us what we were unaware of. These pictures evoke real emotions. We experience reality and make us hope for the better. There has never been a more influential medium to encounter the terrible and inhumane reality. We were taught about the horrific history of wars through this immersive medium. Photographs that engage the entirety of our senses, not just our eyes and ears. It makes us dive in every dilemma in devastating and remarkable ways. The war and its purpose might be different but the intention is the same as every war photographs to, make us withstand horrors and then to end them. The trauma every war photographs goes through is extremely tough. They watch innocents die, family departs and an entire generation butchered. Concealing the terror within, they continue capturing as they are messengers to rest of the world of how war can destroy an entire community. Some photographers even fall into anxiety and depression, the study says. And throughout all of their captures there will be a feeling of helplessness, of not being able to do anything for the suffering of others, and the steady terror and danger they submit themselves and their family to. Photographers wanted to educate people in the world about the lives of those trapped in difficult situations such as poverty and living in war zones etc. They use the emotional power of still images to captivate people and make them pay attention to subjects they would rather ignore. It seems like a reasonable belief that the closer we get to realities, the more we will learn, and the more we will understand the absurdity of our ways. But showing horrors doesn’t necessarily end them. When it comes to war photography, each photograph has gone through the learning curve of balancing shock and developing a unique approach to storytelling. Different approaches to exemplifying violence and war have different impacts. The more effective photographs are modest and engaged story conveying photographs. They help us connect with the pain and an urge to reach out to them. It tells us how we reached here and what our ancestors have gone through for the same. It gives a reason to live kinder every day for the soldiers who live for us and leaves for us. These photographs paralyze our intuition and enhance our ability for meaningful change. War photography also grappled with these challenges at its inception. Some of the earliest photographs were of dead bodies on the battlefield. Those photographs were fundamentally clicked with the hope that just the very act of showing this dreadfulness would stop the war. And somewhere with the expectation of preventing such another calamity falling onto a nation. The air around you becomes a hammer that is going to crush you into pieces. You have a hard time getting your thoughts together. They’re frozen into a million pieces in your brain. You can’t think. The bombing is so strong, it destabilizes you. And the smell, the disgusting smell. Then there’s the noise, the screams. You’re trying to focus on what you’re going to do when it stops, which way you’re going to go, who’s going to be reliable.- Patrick Chauvel These words represent the atrociousness faced by every war photographers. Looking at the war captures years later, when we have grown overhauled to stories coming with pictures, they stir our thoughts. We don’t know their names, their backgrounds, or the traits that made up their lives. But war photographs connect us with their repulsiveness and make us find a common ground. Even though photographers wish people would look more closely at these dooming images, there is evidence that this may hurt more than it helps maybe we grow impassive to these images. Even though to feel something we have to put aside the fear and accept the reality. The war photographs show no pictures of fantasies or cooked up stories. It rather evokes an emotional resonance through striking and long takes on the empty faces of survivors and observers. Besides dulling us, images of death, violence, and horror deeply influence us without our knowledge. Shocking and sensational images of war and suffering are increasingly appearing in our current media situation and have become hard to distinguish our life from them. Because ultimately the pain and suffering will knock our humanity and make us do something better. The problem with war pictures does not universally mean the same things to all people. It relies on what side you are on. If not distributed carefully and responsibly, they can end up serving a very different purpose than what they were intended for. While you and I may be terrified witnessing the murder of a person it might convey some different phase of emotions to people who are connected. The people on the opposite side of the struggle feel satisfying revenge witnessing the death of their enemy through a war picture. That’s why it is said that a war picture is too strong in conveying emotions to people than any other mediums. It sticks on to our mind and keeps us awake in the night. Certainly, all media are eventually used to represent war. Photography, radio, television and now virtual presence. The mere representation of war is not as effective as a devoted one. Here comes the influence of photographs. They are more immersive and overwhelming. Photographs are as desirable to just show the pain, rather than learn the very difficult way of learning it from different sources. It is a medium of an entirely new approach to the storytelling of agonies and miseries.

https://medium.com/printartica/war-photography-the-frames-of-chaos-and-miseries-82db44ee08d6

[]

2020-12-13 11:28:10.983000+00:00

['Photograph', 'War Photography', 'Illustration', 'Art', 'Digital Artists']

Mystic Sun

I am lit by the rays of a Mystic Sun Travelling from afar, the limbs of the One. To my mind and senses they do lend A covert support, an ability to fend. Often my walk is unsteady, speech falters My heart barren, mind on strange altars. All is bedlam and of method bereft Who then props me and my daily craft? When on edge and I know no way Then comes a Blue-Hand that bids me stay. My unfailing companion is this Mystic Sun And I an eager subject of His vast dominion.

https://medium.com/inevitable-word/mystic-sun-cbf5794ee5ec

['Mahesh Cr']

2017-09-09 10:41:04.223000+00:00

['Poetry', 'Bhakti', 'Sri Aurobindo', 'Yoga', 'Sri Krishna']

All you need to know about the Kineticex Project

Kineticex Token is designed to allow anyone easily access a cryptocurrency. Just through the installation of the mobile app, any user will be able to see KRC Token being added to his/her wallet based. Unlike most cryptocurrencies that are “mined” with special heavy equipment, a user can obtain KRC Token through the mining system on the app. Kineticex aims to make KRC Tokens the cryptocurrency of the future. Kineticex team is working on a system that will help users to generate steady profit. We are committed towards creating a transparent and secure environment for cryptocurrency enthusiasts on our platform. Our mission is provide a simple, secure and transparent cryptocurrency platform for every individual and organization regardless of the eld. Kineticex are creating a stable digital currency with high distribution and high value on an Ethereum blockchain platform that will embrace everyone to the cryptocurrency world. KRC Token is designed on Ethereum, a blockchain-based distributed computing system that allows smart contracts. The Ethereum blockchain platform allows us to incorporate all the features of KRC Token into smart contracts. Smart contracts provide a means to validate transactions, and the Ethereum blockchain reduces the chance of any attack on the coin and solidifies the security of the platform. There will be Soft-CAP of 7500 ETH, Hard-CAP of 68750 ETH and 500 Million KRC Tokens in total supply. We have allocated 70% of tokens to be sold to public. There will be Pre-sale, during which KRC Token will be available on “1 KRC = 0.0001 ETH”and 25% KRC Tokens will be sold in Pre-Sale from public allocation. The ICO will be done in three rounds, and 45% KRC Token from public allocation will be available on “1 KRC = 0.00025 ETH” throughout three rounds. The ICO will begin from August 15th, make sure you get KRC tokens. Read more: Exchange: https://kineticex.com/ Follow us in Twitter: https://twitter.com/KineticexE Like and share: https://www.facebook.com/kineticex.io/ Join us Telegram: https://t.me/kineticexexchange Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kineticex-revolution-ltd/

https://medium.com/kineticexexchange/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-kineticex-project-a3a7c03db871

['Kineticex Support']

2018-08-02 13:01:37.590000+00:00

['Smart Contracts', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Token']

How to Boost Your Productivity While Working From Home

I’m writing this from North Carolina where I’m hunkering down at home with my family. Since I’ve worked from home for over ten years, my daily routine hasn’t been affected very much. Everything feels like normal until I read the news or hear my neighbor’s high school age son playing basketball in the driveway during school hours. But maybe you’re like many of my friends and family members and suddenly find yourself working from home for the first time. It can be a big adjustment from working in an office, especially if you have kids at home too. That’s why I’ve written this article for you. I’m sharing several tips and strategies I’ve collected over the years that help me boost my productivity while working from home. I hope they will help you too as we all adapt to this difficult situation we’re currently experiencing. Let’s dive in. 1. Set up a dedicated workspace I’ve found that one of the number one factors that’s helped me stay productive while working from home is having a dedicated workspace. In the previous house I lived in, I had my desk in my bedroom. In my new home, I have a separate room for my office. I love this because it helps me separate my work from my personal life. It also is a much more professional environment for doing live video calls with my writing and web design clients (I like using Zoom for live calls). If you don’t have a separate room you can set up as an office, here are three tips for making a productive work environment in the space you do have: 1. Try to find a place that’s outside your bedroom, and especially avoid working from your bed in your pajamas. Sitting in bed will make you sluggish, wreck your productivity, and might also threaten your quality of sleep at night. The Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard observes, “Keeping computers, TVs, and work materials out of the room will strengthen the mental association between your bedroom and sleep.” Of course, if you can’t find a private place in your home besides your bedroom, then you can set up a desk and chair in that room. Just make sure you’re not tempted to move to your bed and do your work there. 2. Pay attention to your posture. A desk and ergonomic chair is the optimal workspace, but even then you might need a laptop stand in order to work comfortably. I sometimes raise my laptop up on top of several books so I don’t have to bend my neck down to look at the screen. If you don’t have a desk where you can work, be careful about sitting on your couch for hours. It’s much better to move your workspace around your house throughout the day. In fact, I find that I don’t like working in one place for a long period of time. I’ll start out in my office working on an intensive writing project that requires my full attention. Then I might move to the kitchen table to respond to emails. Afterward, I might work on less intensive projects while sitting on the couch in the living room, but I time myself when I sit there and make sure to get up when the timer goes off. 3. If the only place in your house where you can work is in the living room in front of the TV, and you’re finding it difficult to focus because you usually use that room to relax, try to change the environment. Usually, I work on my fiction projects in the evening when I’m tired and don’t want to sit at my desk. But I still want my brain to be focused. I love putting on ambient scenes on the TV of a fireplace crackling and the sound of rain falling outside. Here are several YouTube channels where you can find these types of scenes: Ambience of Yesteryear, New Bliss, and p12oud. You might prefer playing music. I wrote this article about the different writing rituals of famous authors that helped them get into a flow while they were working. And for more tips on setting up an inspiring workspace, check out my article where I take a peek at the workspaces of several famous writers. 2. Create a Structure to Your Day With a Morning and Evening Routine I’ve run into two challenges while working from home: One, it’s easy to procrastinate on getting started on your projects. And, two, it’s easy to get so caught up in working on your projects that you don’t stop until late into the night. Creating a morning and evening routine is an efficient solution that will help create a structure to your day so you don’t become a workaholic (or lounge about the house all day). I write up a schedule with the exact time I’ll wake up in the morning, what activities I’ll complete before breakfast (for example, reading the Bible, writing in my journal, exercising), then what time I’ll have breakfast, and, finally, the time that I officially have to get started on my workday. Similarly, I have an evening routine. First, I have a set time for when I stop working on any business projects. Usually, this is around 5:00 since I like to spend my evenings working on my fiction writing. I also have a time for when I must shut down my computer completely so I’m not tempted to start working on a business project again late at night. It’s critically important to decide on your working hours. If you’re living with family or roommates, you can tell them exactly when you’re working so they’ll know not to disturb you during that time. Of course, your working hours might be completely different than mine. Maybe you like working on business projects in the evening and prefer to keep your afternoons for other activities. Or maybe you have kids and have to adapt your schedule to their activities. Experiment until you find the solution that works best for your job, your personal life, and your productivity. 3. Make Schedules and Keep Track of Your Projects Aside from your evening and morning routines, I also recommend creating specific schedules and to-do lists for your projects. During your working hours, what will you be working on? You can time block this part of your schedule. For example, from 9am — 11am, you’re working on a copywriting project for a client. From 11am — 12:30pm, you’re replying to emails. When creating your to-do list for the day, don’t make the list so long that it becomes overwhelming. A good medium is 3 to 5 tasks that you could reasonably complete during your working hours. Make sure the tasks are specific. For example, I don’t write, “respond to emails”. Instead, I’ll write something like, “respond to emails from Harry, Larry, and Susan”. In order to keep your daily to-do list short, you should keep track of your projects and deadlines on a single master list. (You could keep it in Evernote, Todoist, or in a physical planner.) The master list is where you write down everything that you need to accomplish (it could be a year-long list of projects or maybe it spans the upcoming three months). Then every night write up a separate to-do list for the next day, pinpointing which items on your master list are your top priorities. Organize the tasks on your daily to-do list according to importance and complete them in order. Begin with the items that are your “Most Important Tasks”. You should try to tackle the MITs first thing in the morning before moving on to the other tasks. It becomes more difficult to complete them the longer and longer you put them off. Depending on what kind of projects you’re working on, you might find it helpful to devote an entire day to working on one project, rather than switching your focus between multiple projects. For example, I might devote Mondays and Tuesdays to writing blog posts, Wednesdays and Thursdays to working on client projects, etc. In this article, I wrote about the journaling method I use to boost my productivity and keep track of all of my projects. 4. Limit Distractions and Take Breaks In today’s world, multitasking has become such an acceptable part of our daily life that it’s a tough habit to break. As we work on a project, we might stop every few minutes or so to check a text on our phone or a notification from Facebook or Instagram. However, our brains can’t focus on a handful of tasks all at the same time. Instead, the brain has to scramble to switch its focus every time we start doing something different. When we’re multitasking while working on an article or any kind of writing project, that means that our brains only have a matter of seconds to jump back and forth as we check Facebook, then write a few lines, then quickly check our email, write a few more lines, then check our text messages, then return to our writing project. According to this Wall Street Journal article, “It takes more than 25 minutes on average to resume a task after being interrupted.” Even worse, “It takes an additional 15 minutes to regain the same intense focus or flow as before the interruption.” That’s forty entire minutes, and that doesn’t even take into consideration multiple interruptions. In order to prevent multitasking, I keep my phone in another room while I’m working. Sometimes I need to access Facebook for my work, but I’ve installed an extension in Chrome that disables the feed so I can only read notifications or visit people’s profiles directly. It’s called Newsfeed Eradicator (it displays an inspirational quote in place of the feed). Additionally, I often use noise-canceling headphones and listen to music to drown out distractions from my surroundings. I also use the Pomodoro technique to sharpen my focus while working on projects. I’ve written more about it here. Essentially, you set a timer for twenty-five minutes during which time you work on your project, and then you take a short five-minute break. Those breaks allow your brain a little bit of time to reenergize but still keep you in the flow. When I’ve been working for about an hour and made good progress, I’ll reward myself with a longer break and might allow myself to check social media or watch a YouTube video. I’ll time this, though, so I don’t take too much time away from the other work I need to do. 5. Stay Healthy Working from home all day can be harmful to your physical and mental health if you don’t take the necessary precautions. As I mentioned before, you need to pay attention to where you’re working. Sitting on a couch all day long can lead to neck and back pain. And that’s not helpful for your productivity at all. Even if you’re careful to have good posture while working, it’s still not healthy to sit for hours. Get up from your desk, stretch, and move around during your breaks. I go for a 30-minute walk outside when the weather is warm. In the wintertime, I like to go for 10-minute walks on a treadmill in my house throughout the day. (I wrote about how walking can boost your creativity in my article here.) I also lift weights and have a stretching routine. My family set up a little gym in our garage where I can lift weights, but if you don’t have access to a gym, you might like to try bodyweight exercises. Here’s a 7-minute bodyweight workout. (Of course, make sure to check with your doctor before beginning any vigorous exercise plan.) Another danger is skipping meals because you get so busy working. Or you might end up binging on unhealthy foods because you’re working right next to the kitchen. Here are some ways to combat that: prepare your lunch the night before (maybe make a big dinner so you have leftovers you can quickly reheat for lunch the next day). Create a meal plan for the week. Stock up on healthy snacks. You also might experience eyestrain if you’re staring at a screen for hours on end. The blue light from computer screens can also disrupt your sleep. To combat this, you might be able to download an app on your computer that changes the tint of your screen at nighttime. I bought a pair of blue light blocking glasses. I wear them in the evening, and sometimes throughout the day too (I also wear them to watch TV in the evening). Here’s an article I wrote all about blue light and about the glasses I bought. Finally, working from home can feel confining if you live alone or if your spouse, family members, or roommates work outside the home. You don’t have colleagues to talk to and bounce ideas off of. With everyone isolating now, you’re probably staying at home as much as possible. But, if you continue working from home in the future, you might find you like working at a coffee shop once a week (or more often) to get out of the house and experience a different environment. Or maybe you try to be more proactive about making sure to meet up with friends. Right now, this could mean a video call. The Takeaway I love the flexibility that working from home provides. If you’re working for yourself, you have complete control over your schedule and when you accomplish certain tasks. But you do need to be disciplined and establish processes that will help you get your work done and also make sure you’re keeping your brain and body healthy. I wish you all the best with your projects and hope these strategies will help you.

https://medium.com/copywriting-secrets/how-to-boost-your-productivity-while-working-from-home-35caafa1c6f0

['Nicole Bianchi']

2020-03-19 20:48:55.780000+00:00

['Productivity', 'Freelancing', 'Work', 'Writing', 'Remote Work']

Travel Segmentation by User Search Behaviors

Travel Segmentation by User Search Behaviors In the travel and tourism industry, segmentation is an important strategy for developing itineraries and marketing materials targeted towards different groups with varying travel intents and motivations. It helps the businesses to understand the subgroups that make up the audience so that the businesses can better tailor products and messages. One caveat in the travel industry is that unlike online shopping, leisure travel is an infrequent purchase, most leisure travelers only travel once or twice every year, active customers are either uncommon or very slow in making their bookings. But the good thing is that people love to travel and many of us even spend more time planning vacation than working on our finances. As a result, if you are a frequent user of any online travel agency, you have handed your data over to the company in exchange for the company delivering value to you. You have told them about yourselves, your travel intents and motivations. You expect the travel options that are more personalized to you rather than the long list of options you get today. In this prototype of segmentation model, we are trying to understand the nuances of user behavior and intent, segment users’ searches by trips, that is, the process of dividing trips into groups based on common characteristics. For various reasons, I won’t be able to share the data set, but feel free to use your own data set that suitable for this prototype. Or you are welcome to check the Jupyter notebook. Data Preprocessing & Feature Engineering During the data processing & feature engineering stage, I made the following decisions: We are going to segment these searches by trips, so I removed the duplicate trip_ids. There are over 31% of searches that user added “watch”, I will use the data with “watch_added_dt”, because: 1). The more we know the user the better we can personalize the message to fit their interests. 2). When a user adds “watch”, this indicates he (or she) is interested in this trip and would like to receive notifications on the update of the flight fare. Over 77% of these searches were originated from the United States, I believe it makes sense to segment these trips (originated from the US) first. Because: 1). I want to use US public holidays as a feature. 2). Travel behaviors may differ between travelers from different countries/regions. Fill missing “stay” with median values. Remove rows with missing “lowest_price” because I believe price is one of the most important elements for trip segmentation. Add a new feature — “booking_window”, which is the difference between “first_searched_dt” and “departure_date”. Add a new feature — “route”, which is “origin” to “destination”. Add a new feature — “holiday”, which is US public holiday derived from “departure_date”. Table 1 After processing, the data we are going to work with contains 269,203 trips with 25,696 different flight routes and 773 different departure dates to 178 destination countries, as shown in Table 1. Observations: • In the data, the first price and lowest price are pretty close. • Approx. 0.3% of these trips were for the same day departure and return (i.e. “stay” = 0). • Another 0.1% of these trips were looking to leave ASAP (i.e. “first_searched_dt” and “departure_date” were the same day). Exploratory Data Analysis What are important factors to characterize a “trip”? Let’s focus on the following features. Weekends or weekdays departure 76% of the searched trips were for weekday departures. Destinations Figure 1 The data set is largely dominated by trip destination within the Unite States (over 68%). Flight routes Figure 2 Observations: • 19 of these top 20 searched routes were traveling within the United States. • 12 of these top 20 routes were from NYC to somewhere, mostly to somewhere warm within the country, only one route was from NYC to Paris. Departure day is holiday or not, if so, what holiday. Figure 3 I had a feeling that the users are not likely to travel during busy holiday travel seasons, probably has something to do with the high-season prices. Lowest price. When a user started watching a price, he (or she) should always aim at waiting for the lowest price, so I decided to use lowest price other than the first price. Figure 4 We can see that 73% of these trips are in the price range from 100 to 500 dollars. How long they stay. Figure 5 73% of these trips are in the stay range from 0 to 7 days. Booking window Figure 6 55% of these trips are in the booking window range from 0 to 90 days. K-Mode Clustering The standard k-means algorithm isn’t directly applicable to categorical data like this one. Therefore, I will use the k-modes algorithm which uses a simple matching dissimilarity measure to deal with categorical objects. It defines clusters based on the number of matching categories between data points. To use k-mode, I converted three numeric features into categorical features, that is: “lowest_price” to “lowest_price_bin”, “stay” to “stay_bin”, “booking_window” to “booking_window_bin”, according to the threshold in the above three pie charts. Figure 7 According to Figure 7, I should choose k=3, which is three predicted segments. Identify the segmentation Segmenting trips by destination regions. Figure 8 Segmenting trips by flight routes. Figure 9 Segmenting trips by US public holidays. Figure 10 Segment by weekends vs. weekdays. Figure 11 Distribution of lowest price by segment. Figure 12 Distribution of stay by segment. Figure 13 Distribution of booking window by segment. Figure 14 Interpret the results Segment 0: The largest segment which contains 178,519 trips. They are mostly domestic routes within the United States, plus some routes from the US to Mexico or Antilles. Most of these routes are likely to be from NYC or Chicago to somewhere warm, such as California, Florida or Nevada. These trips are likely to depart on weekdays. The average price is 310 dollars, the average stay is about 6 days, and user’s average booking window is less than 3 months. So, the trips in Segment 0 sound like week-long vacations from the East to the sunny destinations. Segment 1: This segment contains 48,101 trips. Trips in this segment are largely domestic. These trips are likely to depart on the weekends, that including Memorial weekend and Labor day weekend; They are weekend Getaways for about 3 days. Because it is a weekend Getaway, the flight distances are likely to be short within the US. The average price is 319 dollars. So, the trips in Segment 1 are mostly quick weekend Getaways with relative short flight. They can be cheap, romantic or last minute, or just recharge from the hustle and bustle of the city life. Segment 2: This segment contains 42,583 trips. Trips in this segment are likely to be international trips such as traveling from the US to Europe or Asia. It also includes domestic trips but traveling far away to Hawaii. For this type of trips, the users tend to search departure on weekdays. The average price is 743 dollars, and the average stay is around 14 days. Users tend to plan earlier for long distance trips with average booking window at about 4–5 months. How do we use this information? The business will be able to provide an optimal experience for its users based on their intent by using above knowledge to create more effective content or recommendations. For example, once a user searches and watches a trip in Segment 1, the online travel agency would know this user is likely to look for a weekend Getaways, the online travel agency then can give travel advice on weekend Getaways or recommend other similar weekend Getaways destinations that currently have promotion on flights or hotels. Jupyter notebook can be found on Github, enjoy the rest of the week! References: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download doi=10.1.1.932.2724&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://www.kaggle.com/ashydv/bank-customer-clustering-k-modes-clustering

https://towardsdatascience.com/travel-segmentation-by-user-search-behaviors-c45e5ea56d22

['Susan Li']

2020-02-25 14:38:17.026000+00:00

['Clustering', 'Segmentation', 'Data Science Tutorial', 'Ml For Travel', 'Unsupervised Learning']

Women, It’s Time to Own Your Sexuality

Women, It’s Time to Own Your Sexuality Just think of how much bad sex you can avoid Can we talk about sex? Of course we can, but most of us don’t. Oh, we may boast to friends about the great sex we’ve had (and hopefully we have) or make jokes with then about the crappy sex we’ve had (we’ve all been there), but talking about sex — what we think about it, what it means to us, why we have or don’t have it — is, well, complicated. I didn’t realize just how complicated until I read Taking Sexy Back: How to Own Your Sexuality and Create the Relationships You Want by Alexandra H. Solomon, a psychologist and professor at Northwestern University and author of Loving Bravely. If you’re a woman, or someone who loves a woman or someone who is raising a woman-to-be, you will want to read this book, coming out Feb. 2. Trust me. Here’s why. Imagine you are about to have sex for the first time with someone you’re really into and seems to be into you, too. What could be more wonderful and exciting? As you head to bed (assuming that’s where you’re going at it) though, there’s going to be a lot more going on between the sheets than just the two of you. In fact, each of you will be bringing everything you’ve ever been taught — or more likely not taught — about sex, from religion to your parents to sex ed to porn, etc., as well as past traumas; shame-filled cultural messages; your relationship with your body; your sexual history … in other words, a lot of stuff. A veritable orgy of stuff, actually, which often gets in the way of us having joyful, pleasurable sexual experiences. And don’t we all want joyful, pleasurable sexual experiences? Yes please. Solomon wants to change that for us. I’m here for that. Knowing Your Sexy Even long-time lovers will be bringing that same orgy into their sexual relationship until they address the beliefs and experiences that are helping and hurting their sexuality, what she calls Your Sexy. As she notes: “All our choices, including our sexual choices, are guided by love or fear. Sexual experiences that are guided by fear sound like this: I will be rejected or abandoned if we don’t have sex. Something is wrong with me/us if we don’t have sex. I can’t have sex otherwise people will think I’m a slut. Sexual experiences that are fueled by love sound simply like this: yes.” Yes! Just a healthy, happy “yes” to an experience you want, and the way you want it. As much as I research and write about love, relationships and sex, I am embarrassed to admit that I have never asked myself any of the questions she suggests we explore, including these no-brainers: what were the early stories I was given about sex, and to what degree do they serve or hinder me today? what are the ingredients I need to have a “good” and fulfilling sexual experience with another person? what do I believe about the role of sex in an intimate relationship? to what degree do I feel entitled to or deserving of pleasure? I don’t know about you but I wasn’t taught much about sex when I was young — certainly not from my parents or sex ed at school. Yes, I devoured the books in my parents’ bedroom when they weren’t around — Our Bodies, Ourselves and Human Sexual Response were pivotal — as well as my friend Susie’s brother’s not-so-secret stash of Playboys (which she and I pored over while also pouring glassfuls of his booze stash, sadly creme de menthe). So I can’t really answer how the early stories I was given about sex “serve or hinder me today” because there were no stories. The stories I created about sex were part media-driven, part experience, and thus I was pretty clueless for a number of years except for the handful of skilled lovers who taught me a thing or two. Yes, you deserve pleasure As for feeling entitled to or deserving of pleasure — who the heck ever talked about that? Was I supposed to feel pleasure? Could I ask for it? For much of my early sexual experiences, I had no idea. Which is why I especially love Solomon’s question about feeling deserving of pleasure; even now, in 2020, we somehow forget that good sex is all about mutual pleasure (yes, it’s supposed to feel good for women, too!), and that we gals are absolutely more than deserving of having it. Maybe (most likely) we forget that good sex is all about mutual pleasure because we still aren’t being taught that. As Solomon writes: “Women are taught to be sexually appealing but not demanding, to be sexually available but not too hungry, to bring our partners to orgasm but to fake our own pleasure for their benefit and protection. Many of us cannot name our sexual anatomy or describe what those parts long for.” Is it any wonder that sex is often a constant struggle for many hetero couples, and that women sometimes lose interest in having sex? That can be changed, and her book lovingly and compassionately walks us through that. Just think of all the bad sex that can be avoided by owning your sexuality. “Embrace the fact that you are entitled to sexual experiences that enhance you. Experiences that leave you feeling more alive, more connected (to yourself and to your partner), more curious.” About ‘casual’ sex And that’s ultimately what we want from sex, even so-called casual sex — a catch-all term we use, sadly, for any kind of sex that takes place outside of a committed, monogamous relationship and thus is fraught with baggage, writes sex and culture critic Ella Dawson. If we view casual sex — the majority of our sexual acts, she notes — as “an impersonal act of taking pleasure rather than creating it together,” then we can be “casual with each other’s humanity.” No one wants that. All sexual encounters can and should be about creating pleasure together, even if it’s for just one night. But that requires knowing and honoring Your Sexy. No matter the kind of sex you’re having or wanting, the best gift you can give yourself is to understand, accept and take charge of your sexuality. Taking Sexy Back is a loving, inclusive and essential way to start that journey. Now, go get get some pleasure.

https://omgchronicles.medium.com/women-its-time-to-own-your-sexuality-a0d8a83bf55e

['Vicki Larson']

2020-01-28 14:19:15.392000+00:00

['Sex', 'Women', 'Love And Sex', 'Relationships', 'Sexuality']

Why Bitcoin Cloud Mining is still Profitable?

Mining Vs Buying Bitcoin Buying Bitcoin directly is extremely risky as the prices historically have been highly volatile, and fluctuations could result in significant losses for investors, moreover, you need to overcome human weaknesses in finding the perfect selling time, it is difficult to make a right decision. Compared to buying on the Exchange, the cost of cloud mining is often not obvious and often considered as a long term investment, it is easier to HODL during the rollercoaster ride market time. When the prices going UP Cloud mining investoers can share the benefits that bull market brings and the yield is only slightly lower than the buying. When the prices going DOWN During the bear market, the miners will shut down some mining rigs that would cause a decline in difficulty, which means the investors are able to mine more coins (approximately 2–3 times than normal), compensating most of the the losses incurred due to prices decreasing. If you HODL the coins until the next bull market cycle, you would most likely earn higher profits. Historical ROI of Bitcoin Cloud Mining Cloud Mining Annual ROI ROI in 2015 At the beginning of 2015, if you purchased an Anteminer S3 with $282 for 1.421Th/s hashpower, assuming that the electricty cost was $0.0465 per kwh, in other words, $0.89 per day. If you sell the mined bitcoin everyday at 8 am, you will get a total revenue of $743.84 by the end of the year, that is 164% of yield. ROI in 2016 At the beginning of 2016, let us suppose that you can purchase an ANteminer 1Th/s hashpower 300W/T against $218, the electricy cost is the same: $0.0465 per kwh, if you sell the mined coins everyday, your total revenue will be $270 and residual value of $87.21. The total ROI would be 63.86%. ROI in 2017 The year of 2017 is special, as the ROI was 870%. ROI in 2018 As of the press time, we estimate a ROI of 46%. Conclusion As you can see that the average annual ROI over the past 4 years is around 280%, which is more profitable than most of the investment products available on the market.

https://medium.com/hash-pro-cloud-mining-official-blog/why-bitcoin-cloud-mining-is-still-profitable-a6b6a62f3db5

['Hash.Pro Cloud Mining']

2018-12-28 10:12:27.839000+00:00

['Bitcoin']

What problems does Parami try to solve

What problems does Parami try to solve AD3.0 is a native advertising system based on the Web3.0 concept. It mainly solves the following three problems: How to establish a user-centric advertising system How to gather the traffic on Web3.0 How to improve the ROI of digital advertising A User-Centric Advertising System Parami provides users with a decentralized identity solution based on the W3C standard DID (Decentralized Identity), and aggregates users’ social media identities from other platforms and decentralized identities from other chains under this decentralized identity, so as to obtain a more complete digital identity base. At the same time, Parami provides users with a light wallet based on social media platforms (Telegram, Wechat) and a DID Avatar solution integrated into social avatars, allowing users to interact with advertisements in the browser of social media platforms and get the revenue credited to their wallets, which is more convenient to use and easier for users to get into. Traffic Aggregation in Web 3.0 Parami believes that the traffic of Web3.0 is no longer the traffic aggregation based on APPs or websites, but the traffic aggregation based on people (KOL, Creator, Community Owner). Parami will provide social coin-based community member value connection for these DAOs. At the same time, DAO members usually have a common label, so the advertising and cashing method based on this characteristic will be more targeted. In a sense, advertising for a DAO = buying the social influence of all members of a DAO. Improve the ROI of digital advertising We can see that more and more advertising incentives based on on-chain data have already started to be realized. Platforms such as Uniswap and 1inch have already started to adopt an incentive model based on on-chain behavioral data for token incentives. Parami will abstract a user preference data model based on on-chain data on this basis, which will be used for both user incentive marketing of blockchain projects and for the future entry of traditional internet products. Parami uses zero-knowledge proofs, blind signatures and other privacy computing techniques to build a PCAP (Personal Crypto Advertising Preference) based on user DIDs, which is a homomorphically encrypted user advertising preference profile (user profile), which records the user’s labels and their values in different dimensions. Each time an advertiser gives an incentive to a user (DID), it has the right to rate the user on the corresponding label. Due to the homomorphic encryption feature, this ensures that the scoring process is updated in an encrypted and homomorphic manner. Each time a user interacts with an ad and receives an incentive, the user is actually proving zero knowledge of their tag/label data. This helps cash in on users’ ad preference data while protecting privacy. The advertiser’s payment is actually a reward for the preference data provided by the user. Obviously, the user’s PCAP profile becomes a shared evaluation profile for all advertisers in the process of rewarding the user for ad placement. This profile can, on the one hand, better record the user’s ad preferences by dynamically updating the user’s interactions with the ads, and on the other hand, reduce the emergence of people just fishing for incentives (an user interacting with all ads does not maximize revenue, but rather will face negative feedback in the scoring process).

https://medium.com/@paramiprotocol/what-problems-does-parami-try-to-solve-81e4f2ed2e74

['Parami Protocol']

2021-06-13 14:34:39.365000+00:00

['Web3', 'Blockchain', 'Privacy']

Location In Flutter

Nowadays, working with a location in the app is very common. Using the Flutter Location plugin, it’s effortless to get the user’s location on Android and iOS devices. In this article, we’ll show how to get the user’s current location and display the address. We will also implement a demo using the location package. Table of Contents : Introduction Setup Code Implementation Code File Conclusion Introduction : Sometimes to provide the best possible user experience, you need to know the GPS location of their device. The Location package allows you to obtain the current geographic location of the device and listen for changes. You can use this data to display maps, calculate distances, determine the direction the device is facing, and more! Setup : Step 1: Add the dependency Start by adding the dependency to the pubspec.yml file dependencies: location: ^3.0.0 Android: all the dependencies are automatically added to your project. IOS: Modify the Info.plist file to add the permission NSLocationWhenInUseUsageDescription NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription It can be found inside <your-project-root-directory>/ios/Runner/ folder Step 2: To get the user’s location import the library into MyLocation.dart import 'package:location/location.dart'; Implement Code : Create variables for storing address and location in the MyLocation.dart class and showing in the google map. On location change, we will display it on the screen. LocationData _currentPosition; String _address,_dateTime; Now we get the location, In this function, we will get the coordinates of the user Now we are showing coordinates on the screen. Get address from the coordinates Display address and coordinates Wherever you want to display it on the screen On Google map, In these snippets, we are using google map and text to display the user’s coordinates and address. Code File import 'dart:async'; import 'package:flutter/material.dart'; import 'package:location/location.dart'; import 'package:geocoder/geocoder.dart'; import 'package:intl/intl.dart'; import 'package:google_maps_flutter/google_maps_flutter.dart'; class MyLocation extends StatefulWidget { @override _MyLocationState createState() => _MyLocationState(); } class _MyLocationState extends State<MyLocation> { LocationData _currentPosition; String _address,_dateTime; GoogleMapController mapController; Marker marker; Location location = Location(); GoogleMapController _controller; LatLng _initialcameraposition = LatLng(0.5937, 0.9629); @override void initState() { // TODO: implement initState super.initState(); getLoc(); } void _onMapCreated(GoogleMapController _cntlr) { _controller = _controller; location.onLocationChanged.listen((l) { _controller.animateCamera( CameraUpdate.newCameraPosition( CameraPosition(target: LatLng(l.latitude, l.longitude),zoom: 15), ), ); }); } @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return Scaffold( body: Container( decoration: BoxDecoration( image: DecorationImage( image: AssetImage('assets/images/bg.jpg'), fit: BoxFit.cover), ), height: MediaQuery.of(context).size.height, width: MediaQuery.of(context).size.width, child: SafeArea( child: Container( color: Colors.blueGrey.withOpacity(.8), child: Center( child: Column( children: [ Container( height: MediaQuery.of(context).size.height/2.5, width: MediaQuery.of(context).size.width, child: GoogleMap( initialCameraPosition: CameraPosition(target: _initialcameraposition, zoom: 15), mapType: MapType.normal, onMapCreated: _onMapCreated, myLocationEnabled: true, ), ), SizedBox( height: 3, ), if (_dateTime != null) Text( "Date/Time: $_dateTime", style: TextStyle( fontSize: 15, color: Colors.white, ), ), SizedBox( height: 3, ), if (_currentPosition != null) Text( "Latitude: ${_currentPosition.latitude}, Longitude: ${_currentPosition.longitude}", style: TextStyle( fontSize: 22, color: Colors.white, fontWeight: FontWeight.bold), ), SizedBox( height: 3, ), if (_address != null) Text( "Address: $_address", style: TextStyle( fontSize: 16, color: Colors.white, ), ), SizedBox( height: 3, ), ], ), ), ), ), ), ); } getLoc() async{ bool _serviceEnabled; PermissionStatus _permissionGranted; _serviceEnabled = await location.serviceEnabled(); if (!_serviceEnabled) { _serviceEnabled = await location.requestService(); if (!_serviceEnabled) { return; } } _permissionGranted = await location.hasPermission(); if (_permissionGranted == PermissionStatus.denied) { _permissionGranted = await location.requestPermission(); if (_permissionGranted != PermissionStatus.granted) { return; } } _currentPosition = await location.getLocation(); _initialcameraposition = LatLng(_currentPosition.latitude,_currentPosition.longitude); location.onLocationChanged.listen((LocationData currentLocation) { print("${currentLocation.longitude} : ${currentLocation.longitude}"); setState(() { _currentPosition = currentLocation; _initialcameraposition = LatLng(_currentPosition.latitude,_currentPosition.longitude); DateTime now = DateTime.now(); _dateTime = DateFormat('EEE d MMM kk:mm:ss ').format(now); _getAddress(_currentPosition.latitude, _currentPosition.longitude) .then((value) { setState(() { _address = "${value.first.addressLine}"; }); }); }); }); } Future<List<Address>> _getAddress(double lat, double lang) async { final coordinates = new Coordinates(lat, lang); List<Address> add = await Geocoder.local.findAddressesFromCoordinates(coordinates); return add; } } Conclusion In this article, I have explained the location package demo, which you can modify and experiment with according to your own. This little introduction was about to get the user’s current location and display it on the map. I hope this blog will provide you with sufficient information in trying up to get the user’s current location in your flutter projects. We will show to get the user location demo program for working location in your flutter applications. So please try it. ❤ ❤ Thanks for reading this article ❤❤ If I got something wrong? Let me know in the comments. I would love to improve. Clap 👏 If this article helps you.

https://medium.com/flutterdevs/location-in-flutter-27ca6fa1126c

[]

2021-01-07 11:17:08.589000+00:00

['Flutter Package', 'Google Maps', 'Flutter', 'Location', 'Dart']

I Grew Up as A Rugby-Playing Ballerina

Blood seeped through my pale pink tights at the knee as I pulled them on in the back of the car. My arms were covered in patches of crusted mud. I was on my way to ballet practice, and rugby practice was over for the day. I began dancing at two years old and never stopped. My mother had always wanted to pursue dance further than she was able to, but I never felt like I was thrust into any sort of Dance Moms situation. In fact, at one point in high school, I nearly quit dancing. Dance was a “girl’s world” full of glitter, pink, lace, and lipstick. It was so overly gendered that I didn’t feel like I fit in. I wasn’t skinny, and I had muscular thighs. In private lessons, I was taught how to do jumps and turns that were normally reserved for men. Most of all, I was powerful. Growing up with an older brother, I naturally wanted to do everything that he did — music, acting, art, summer camp, and especially sports. But in high school, when I was desperately searching for my own identity, I founded something that was all mine: a rugby club for girls. All of a sudden, I was unique. We didn’t have our own coach during our firs year, so we trained with a boy’s club. I was the smallest one on the pitch, and yet I was learning how to properly tackle a quasi-man three times my size. This world was full of blood, hard hits, mud, and power. Each world seemed overly gendered. Where did I fit in each? In the dance world, my powerful muscles launched me into the air. Thanks to my stamina, I could cope with hours of practice, rehearsals, and performances. I would never go on to be a professional ballet dancer, but I found my place dancing jazz and contemporary. In the rugby world, there was a perfect position for me: scrum-half. I was quick to get the ball out to my team, always flitting about like a bird, avoiding tackles. Rugby and dance helped me understand that my weaknesses were also my strengths. Even if society shouted at me to “be a beautiful princess” as I danced or not to “let them see you cry” as I succumbed to a tackle, I left these messages behind me and formed my sense of self. Gender is ever present in sports and dance, but I truly believe that it doesn’t have to define your ability or your art. It is possible to be a rugby playing ballerina, but only if you find your way between the lines.

https://medium.com/write-like-a-girl/i-grew-up-as-a-rugby-playing-ballerina-e78adcfec927

['Jamie Bird']

2020-05-21 20:13:03.124000+00:00

['Dance', 'Women', 'Gender', 'Life Stories', 'Rugby']

My Family Home Selling? But, Before You Buy…

Mom’s Front Porch Contrary to what you might take away after reading the title, the house where I grew up is a great house. It’s the not so fairy tail ending that, in my opinion, makes all the difference. My earliest memories of the house at 603 Brosig Avenue in Navasota, Texas are from around age four or five, back in the seventies. Okay, the “early” seventies. When my family moved in, the house had been fashioned into a duplex. With the renters gone, it was time to turn a home back into a home. That’s where my father came in. He was into carpentry and construction. Even his father, my grandfather, spent some time with us creating custom wood cabinets and bookcases. The house went through changes through the years, much like the people inside. Remember that stuff called paneling? We had it for a few years. Carpet and colors came and went as well. The one thing that always remained, however, was that it always felt like home. It was a safe-haven from the world around, or so it appeared. Finally, the days came where my parents were free of the kids. My brother and I set out on our own adventures in life. I actually came back on a couple of occasions, after a marriage and a job didn’t work out. It still felt like home, that safe-haven I mentioned. Mom’s Bottle Tree Yard Art My father and I were never close. During the adult years, my brother and I were also not close. In all reality, we didn’t even speak. I really never knew why. My only theory was our differences. First, he was nine years older than me. Also, he was mechanically-inclined. To this day, I still struggle with changing a tire. So I thought we simply had nothing in common. On the other hand, my dad and brother were close. Again, I pointed to differences. Carpentry and mechanical things were beyond my aptitude. Instead, I was very close with my mother. There were many things that built our special bond. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer after becoming pregnant with me. My mom worried that she wouldn’t get to see me grow up, or that maybe I would even be born with cancer. While I was born prematurely, the other scenarios never came to fruition. My mother’s health started to falter, as she moved closer to her eighties. Once again, I returned home. My brother, his wife, and their son had moved a trailer in on my family’s property earlier on. I soon noticed a strange pattern. My brother and his family, though living on my parents property, never interacted with my mother. They didn’t have any interaction with me either. They did, however, make sure to have time for my father. I let it go and continued caring for my mother. I overheard my father on the phone with his brother one day, where he said he and my brother would love to “run me off,” but there would be “hell to pay” from my mother. I was very hurt by that and talked to my mom about it. Of course, she immediately confronted him about it. At the end of my mom’s life, when she was in the hospital, my brother and his family would come pick-up my father from the hospital and take him to dinner. I would remain in the room with my mother. I noticed that they were increasing the effort to keep my father close. His mental state had been slipping for quite some time. Looked like all the early signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease. In fact, my brother and his wife were building a house and told him they were also adding a room for him. They were going to take care of him. They had already mentally discarded mom, I guess. Mom’s Final Good Day During the final week of my mother’s life, she was at home under hospice care. I remained by her side and was the designated person to administer Morphine. As for my brother and my father, neither even acknowledged my mother during this time. They watched the Superbowl and, as I later discovered, broke into a locked lock-box where my parents important documents were — including a copy of the will. After my mother drew her last breath, I realized the obvious. I was out, turned against, and the plot began. My mother was cremated, but they wouldn’t tell me when her cremated remains would be buried or where. The day after she died, my father started taking all of her things to the trash, including her bridal pictures, sentimental things and other items of value. My brother had my father set him up to have control over his finances and property. I rescued this from the trash — mom’s wedding photo Next, my father served me with eviction papers. The Justice of the Peace happened to be a friend of the realtor my father and brother chose and I was given only three days to find a new place to live. Under normal circumstances, I would have at least had 30, according to the law. The small-town politics were definitely at play. I didn’t even have enough time to gather all of my things. Had the tables been turned, as in my brother in my situation and father passing first, I would have never done this to my brother. I guess I owe that to my mother, who always placed her family first. I will always wonder where my brother’s ideology came from. I am at peace with a few things. My mother knew I was there for her and I hope she even felt my presence in her final moments. We left no words unsaid and no touches withheld. I had never watched anyone die, but I will never forget how a life, a personality, a certain glow and energy slipped away before my eyes, leaving only a shell behind. It was in that moment, I realized that it was not the roof, the rafters, the carpet or the drapes that made this house a home. It was my mother. Once she was gone, the house too was just an empty shell. There is, however, one thing I am not at peace with. In the end, all my mother really wanted was to say goodbye to a family united. I am very sorry mom, but we all let you down. I haven’t heard from my father or brother since. I suppose I never will. And remember that room my brother was adding for my father? Through the grapevine, I have learned that my dad was placed in one of the nursing homes in Navasota (and not a good one). Looks like in the end, my brother pulled one over on us all. I am troubled that my father is in this particular nursing home. I would not have made that choice under any circumstance. I guess he chose his path. If I could, I would love to purchase the house, hang another “welcome” sign, search for another bottle tree, and plant more flowers. Maybe even be able to return some of the happy and peaceful vibes, ones that would not turn out to be merely a mirage in the end. One can wish, right? When it comes to my father and brother, I am not angry in the least. The emotion of anger never entered my mind. There are far too many other thoughts that filled the slot, like my mother’s feelings and hope for the future of her family. If it is true that time is a healer, than perhaps I will be the last to know. As for me and my mother, there isn’t a day that goes by that I do not think of her. Her memory remains and so does my gratitude for her and her life.

https://medium.com/@its_jamespatton/my-family-home-selling-but-before-you-buy-537cdef90060

['James Patton']

2019-06-09 03:49:51.697000+00:00

['Grief Recovery', 'Death', 'Grief And Loss', 'Family', 'Mothers']

TCN Box Application Will Soon Launch Its Utility Services

· TCN tweets about its new TCN Box Application Utility services to be in process. · This crypto utility service will provide mobile recharge, DTH recharge, ticket booking, hotel booking, flight booking services. · Tech Token Network’s TCN Box application has many surprises to announce. TCN Box Application Utility Service is Under Progress! We are processing new services on the TCN Box blockchain application that are specifically designed for business use to amplify collaboration with trading partners, clients, and supply chain parties. We are looking forward to offering reliable, immutable info related to the digital ledger of blockchain with our services. The recent announcement of the new blockchain application services was made at the conference held back this week where our team decided to release a word on the TCN Box application. The development of utility services is still under process; however, we have prepared a timeline to release it soon. This application is developed in the form of utility services for individual users struggling to get hands-on. This utility service will enable users with mobile and DTH recharge, ticket booking, hotel booking, flight booking services, etc. There are many releases set to schedule once TCN Box is launched for public use. “Our team is developing variant blockchain applications to explore and optimize solutions for solving everyday complexity via intelligent data sharing, AI, and machine learning. We offer the prominent technology to revolutionize the current set of industries and its time has already stated”- says the CEO of Tech Token Network. TCN Box utility services will allow users to track products via the supply chain to raise trust in business transactions. We are creating this app to give better visibility across a multi-tier supply chain, improvise customer satisfaction, and advance product delivery and contract execution. TCN Box is the first blockchain app to be deployed on Tron and Binance. We emphasize high throughput and low transaction costs by allowing widespread adoption of blockchain tech via client use cases. Our TCN box will soon enter its next phase of platform strategy that will commit to remaining the cornerstone of the rapid growth. We can say that this application will lead in both user numbers and transaction volume over major blockchains. We are preparing TCN box on the cutting edge of blockchain software development to present as a superior product and commitment to the community. To maintain the growth of TCN box in the future, we have anticipated a strategic investment from the specific Tron Arcade fund that will officially raise funds for this application. TCN Box will surely be the premier development and potential blockchain platform for users to trade, socialize, and stake over variant ecosystems. Read More: TCN Technology Token- (TCNBOX) Tech Token Network- TCN Box Application Blockchain applications have gone far beyond cryptocurrency and future aspects. This tech holds the power to create more transparency and security with saving business time and money. This sector is impacting variant domains in many ways that range from how the smart contracts are enforcing to make the government work more effectively. There are more incredible examples of real-world blockchain use cases that are a pragmatic yet revolutionary concept. The list is exhaustive; however, these tech applications are already changing the role model of business. We are developing open access, tokenized, and decentralized network that will allow smart infrastructure to operate around a digital economy. These are the following facilities that the utility service will provide: 1. Travel Agents We will provide a private, safe, and transparent travel booking and stay application entirely developed on on-chain and AI. It will offer ticket booking, hotel booking, flight booking services. 2. Delivery Model The application will focus on delivery, freight, and courier services provided on a global scale over blockchain network collaborating with the leading partners 3. Decentralized Financing (Defi) TCN financing application will give access to a decentralized exchange to lend, stake, and farm the yielding of high token assets. We will also add support for other tokens. 4. Booking Service The app will allow the user to access booking facilities and payment services as well. The user is authenticated to retrieve services like paying bills, mobile, and DTH recharge. All the four above-mentioned services are induced in the application built with TCN Box blockchain cloud service which is planned to launch soon by the coming month. Our Future Plans TCN has been working effortlessly in many applications and projects since launch. TCN box will be created to be the world’s first blockchain application with a high-performance technology development protocol. It acquires the industry experts’ experience in blockchain as well as traditional technologies to develop an exceptional software experience. TCN box will lead the market stats in terms of transaction count, users, and transaction volume, hitting the charts of top tracking sites like BApp Radar and Review. We have set the daily volume of TCN box to reach worth USD 10million with over 4,000 daily active users. We will set up the TCN box community which will hold over 16,000 engaging traders. TCN box will kickstart as a small side-project with relatively 3 founders however, we will put all our resources to swiftly grow to a team of 11 full-time members. We are trying to establish out of the crowd technology using collective super-intelligence with decentralized economic internet. The experts and specialists are focusing on building a highly scalable next-generation distributed ledger technology combined with machine learning that delivers the predictions and infrastructure to power the future economy. For more updates you can follow us on the following media channels: Twitter | Telegram | Medium | Facebook | YouTube | White Paper

https://medium.com/@tcntoken/tcn-box-application-will-soon-launch-its-utility-services-d54103017c95

['Tech Token Network', 'Tcn']

2021-05-22 09:19:47.966000+00:00

['Tcn', 'Blockchain Application', 'Tcnbox', 'Techtoken', 'Trx']

Benefits of an online Bootcamp

Benefits of an online Bootcamp Curious if an online boot camp could help you level up? Bootcamps are designed to help individuals gain skills in a reasonably short amount of time to transition into different careers or to increase competency in certain expertise. Rather than enrolling in a multi-year degree program, many students are opting to enhance their career potential and become professionals through short, intensive training courses like bootcamps. For example, coding bootcamps exist to help people gain the skills they need to transition into a career in web development. Bootcamps tend to be designed to provide a more direct path to your goal. Many online bootcamps help you to not only strengthen your technical skills but also your problem-solving skills and creativity. Bootcamps have become one of the most sought after methods to obtain the additional skills required to cover the extra mile in your career. Over the last few years, boot camps have popped up all across the globe in disciplines ranging from software development, UX/UI design, and even software sales. An online bootcamp could be right for you if you cannot afford the opportunity cost of quitting your job or if you don’t want to or can’t change your physical location. This post will mostly focus on the benefits of online coding bootcamps but many of these benefits also apply to any online bootcamps such as UX/UI and sales. Here’s a list of six benefits of online bootcamps to give you a more complete understanding to decide if one could be right for you. Online bootcamps allow for a more flexible schedule Online coding bootcamps offer valuable flexibility and convenience for busy individuals. Whether a student’s schedule is filled with family obligations, a pressing full-time job, or both, attending classes on campus every week can be a challenge. Online bootcamps provide schedule flexibility that allows students to complete coursework during hours that work best for them. Since there are often no defined school hours, you can learn full-time if you want, but you can also learn on nights and weekends if it works better for you. This means that you don’t need to quit your job to attend an online coding bootcamp. For many people, quitting their job simply isn’t a viable option — whether they’re taking care of their families or can’t afford to give up a steady income for an extended period of time. Choosing an online bootcamp allows you to uphold your responsibilities while learning. 2. You can attend regardless of your location Completing a coding bootcamp online also has exceptional value for students who do not live near a bootcamp location. Universities and some traditional coding bootcamps require attendance in a physical location. This is the place where you’ll spend time doing the work and learning. But with an online program, the only thing you need to attend an online bootcamp is access to the internet, your geographic location isn’t important. With the increasing rate of available coding positions and online bootcamps nationwide, it’s less likely you need to relocate. But do take note that students attending online bootcamps must have the discipline and work ethic to do the work, especially when someone isn’t looking over their shoulder. With an online coding bootcamp, you have the freedom to attend lectures from the comfort of your own home, which is a huge benefit if you have the discipline to stay on track on your own. 3. Learn New Skills in a Short Period of Time If you want to learn new skills it could take you from 4–6 years with the traditional college route. When you attend an online bootcamp, you can bypass those years and go for an intensive training program that will help you learn the skills in demand in as little as several weeks or months. Courses at bootcamps usually range between 4 and 30 weeks with a majority of them falling in the 9 to 12 weeks range. Although you may gain more overall knowledge at a traditional 4-year university, most bootcamps focus this intense, short term training on the fundamental skills that will help you break into a new career quickly. 4. Online Bootcamps are, Generally, More Affordable For many people looking to learn in-demand technical skills, a boot camp acts as an affordable alternative to a regular, four-year college education. The price of attending a college for traditional education has skyrocketed. There are many costs that also come alongside tuition like housing, books, etc. that don’t come cheap. Some brick and mortar bootcamps can also be more expensive because of the expenses for paying for a space that is large enough to accommodate the students, instructors, and teaching assistants. These costs to the bootcamp may be passed down to the student via a higher tuition. By bypassing this cost altogether, online coding boot camps tend to be more affordable and accessible for students. Some online coding bootcamps have a fixed-cost tuition and offer deferred payment options or Income Share Agreements. Others set a monthly fee for access to the curriculum and support community, since the amount of time each student spends coding could be different 5. Peer Community Similar to having the support of instructors and tutors, being able to collaborate with peers improves the learning process significantly. It can be helpful to interact with other students who are going through the same ups and downs of learning as you. Most online classes are very intentional about ensuring you are connected with an awesome network of students in your program, bootcamp grads, and instructors. Many use a real-time chat system, like Slack. Some will offer additional outlets to help foster the community and drive interactions between students at an even deeper level. The value of having peers beside you who are going through the same experience as you cannot be understated. Classmates are able to relate, provide their own unique perspectives and strengths, and help as you break down problems you might be facing. Not to mention, you’ll leave with the added benefit of having built a network of peers and friends that can help you in your future career. 6. Online Bootcamps Often Prepare You For The Real World In terms of learning a new skill, and especially one that is going to be the center of your new career, nothing is more important than practical application. The core goal of many bootcamp experiences is to make sure that students are ready to land a job after graduating and are prepared for using the skills they learn in the real world. Employers value the ability to understand high-level concepts, but at the end of the day, it’s important to be able to apply the concepts you’ve learned in real life. Online bootcamps often teach you the soft skills needed to succeed in the real world as well. For example, a soft skill that many bootcamps may teach you is how to work together with others. Regardless of the industry — engineering, accounting, marketing, etc — it’s important to know how to work alongside others. Online bootcamps help to prepare you for the real world by teaching you modern work patterns. Learning at a remote boot camp also gives you the skills and experience to work remotely, if you so choose to later on. For example, attending an online coding bootcamp gives you the freedom to build your career by making you proficient at working remotely and learning multiple, sought after, coding languages. Having the ability to code multiple languages potentially allows you to have the flexibility to go anywhere in the world and work in multiple different development environments. You can also utilize your coding knowledge as a freelance programmer, and whether you build your own app/program or consult on other companies’ projects, you can potentially design a career and work schedule for yourself. Deciding to go to an intensive, online boot camp can help you break into a new career and gain new skills that can help you increase your experience and maybe even your income. It’s important to note here that before you even plan to attend a boot camp, you should acquire a bit of self-knowledge. For example, what are you exactly looking to get out of the boot camp — an entirely new career, a better job, or new opportunities? Since an online boot camp is a significant investment, and making a decision on the right one has important career implications, it’s essential to choose the one that will be right for you. To help you get started and make the best decision, here are 5 tips to choosing the right boot camp for you.

https://medium.com/changing-careers/benefits-of-an-online-bootcamp-5b2b496cd6fe

[]

2020-10-03 21:02:03.843000+00:00

['Remote Working', 'Bootcamp', 'Coding', 'Jobs', 'Online']

I Banned My Daughter From Using the Word ‘Tomboy’

How it reinforces outdated gender role expectations Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash Early on, I banned my daughter from using the word ‘tomboy.’ My explanation to her: “There is no such thing as boy things and girl things. There is nothing that a boy can do that a girl can’t.” In response, she ventured: “Peeing standing up.” But even then, there are ways around it. I didn’t want my daughter to feel that she was borrowing from the rightful owners or trespassing on foreign land in pursuing traditionally male preoccupations. It’s a term thrown around all too carelessly by people who should know better. I’ve heard “my daughter is such a tomboy” used as a badge of honor by women who would stake their claim on their feminist credentials. We need to stop using this word because every time we do, the gender binary is reinforced. Expectations based on a binary concept of gender are limiting and unnecessary. Why do we do this? Who decided that playing in the mud and climbing trees is for boys and indoor play based on nurturing is for girls? Of course, no-one would argue that girls are being stopped from doing anything. Parents still feel that they need to put forward an awkward explanation for their child behaving in a way that comes naturally if it doesn’t fit into prescribed categories of ‘girl’ and ‘boy.’ There is nothing transgressive or shocking about a child being themselves when it is not hurting anybody. Surely what is unhealthy is labeling a child in a way that stifles and invalidates rather than encourages their interests. I can’t help feeling that life is becoming increasingly defined by the gender binary, where more and more things ostensibly genderless become gendered. I became acutely aware of this as my daughter moved through the baby, toddler, and preschool years. It seemed that every purchase caused me to choose between a ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ version. There was no gender-neutral potty or nursery chair. So began the segregated clothing categories with no ground in between. I know we are all prone to idealising our own childhoods, but memories of my 1970s childhood seem to be swathed in gender neutral brown, orange, and yellow plaid and velour. The notion that gender is a binary concept is itself scientifically questionable. Further, the relationship between a child’s biological sex and their gender identity and expression is far from straightforward. Gender reveal parties are problematic because they assume all these things as given. There is a certain arrogance in pre-empting a child’s gender before they are even born and imposing all the expectations that go along with it. But that’s a whole other discussion for another day. I’m not about to argue that girls shouldn’t play with dolls or boys shouldn’t play with trucks. But a girl shouldn’t have to navigate choosing a ‘boy’ thing over a ‘girl’ thing because she shouldn’t have to distinguish between categories in the first place. To dissuade a girl from pursuing a traditionally female interest would be missing the point that there is nothing inherently female about it. Toys aren’t inherently gendered. The designation of separate categories of ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ toys has been completely arbitrary. Generally speaking, there is also nothing inherently good or bad in any toy. The question is how we define its place in our children’s lives, or if indeed, we need to define it at all. I didn’t discourage my daughter from playing with Barbie dolls, although it never really gained traction with her. When I was a child, playing with Barbies arose from a fascination with miniatures. There was something about creating and maintaining tiny microcosms of order complete with furniture, décor, and clothing that appealed to my particular neurology. Sure she went through a stage of embracing the pink, sparkly and twirly. We facilitated it amongst the myriad other things that she played around with and moved on from. We made sure she had other options. A couple of years down the track, her tastes veered toward the sporty and athletic. But the twirly dresses didn’t make her a ‘girly-girl,' and the activewear didn’t make her a ‘tomboy.’ I want my daughter to feel free to pursue things that ignite her passion and interest. If anything stands in her way, I’m determined that gender won’t be a factor. At one stage, she was obsessed with making slime. Practical drawbacks aside, I could see the value in sensory stimulation, creativity, investigation, and learning. It was also a relatively ‘genderless’ interest, sought out by her because it met her needs in these areas. More recently, she has become somewhat obsessed with makeup. I’m not about to put the kibosh on it because I can see the opportunities for creativity and self-expression that it affords her. I’m also not going to jump to the conclusion that it makes her vulnerable to premature sexualization when she is much more interested in looking at herself in the mirror than being on display outside the house. The emergence of popular internet identities such as James Charles demonstrates how makeup can transcend gender and be primarily about individual expression. My daughter is making her own meaning by exploring her interests. Children derive an infinite variety of meanings from how they play, explore, and interact with each other. Our role as parents is to support and facilitate this, not to impose restrictive gendered meanings. Those who see the issue of the gender binary in children’s lives as a trivial preoccupation that doesn’t matter: it does. It matters because when children absorb the notion that different things are open to them depending on whether they are a boy or a girl, it limits their options, with potentially dire consequences. Attitudes shape practices that have material effects on people’s lives. It matters in these ways: The stratification of occupations by gender and feminisation of industries such as childcare has entrenched low wages and poor conditions and contributes to a persistent gender pay gap. When women arrange their lives to stay home and play the caring role because “it just makes sense to do things that way,” they leave themselves vulnerable to future economic insecurity, particularly if the relationship dissolves. Many women have achieved success in study and work only to find their careers plateau due to the disproportionate amount of time they continue to spend on the domestic front. Even when they work the same hours outside the home, the woman shoulders the physical, mental, and emotional labor that keeps the family intact. The persistence of gendered expectations fuels the controlling and coercive behavior that is central to the experience of domestic violence for many women. Their male partners have a sense of entitlement because they have been taught that certain things are due because they are men. Their children become witness to this message. Expectations based on a gender binary result in poorer outcomes for girls and women all around. We need to stop and think about the messages that are being imparted when we casually call a girl a ‘tomboy’ or 'girly girl.’ Boys also need to go through life, confident that they won’t be limited because of their gender. We need to stop the ridiculous panic that ensues when a boy chooses to dance around in his sister’s tutu. Women miss out because they are denied social and economic power and, in some cases, personal agency. Men miss out because they are denied emotional engagement and a sense of being grounded in their private realm. Binary gender expectations limit everyone from enjoying the full experience of what it is to be human. I like to think that my daughter has not yet absorbed a message that she can’t do anything because she’s a girl. This is not to set up unrealistic expectations or engage in toxic positivity. She is growing up in an increasingly uncertain and complex world, that it’s my job to help her to navigate. There will be plenty of factors limiting her dreams, but the fact of being a girl should not be among them. My daughter is raised by two mothers who have careers and have shared her care equally between them. She has heard us talk about our female bosses and colleagues. She remembers when Australia had a female prime minister. For my daughter, the notion that a woman can’t be in charge is simply absurd. That an opportunity would be denied, or an obligation imposed purely due to being a girl is unfathomable. I am doing my best to counteract society's messages, but I can’t do it alone. From the beginning, it became clear what we were up against. It started with daycare and the misguided efforts of carers to “correct” her aberrant ideas of what boys and girls wear, play with, or are interested in. As she got older and spent time in households other than her own, she became aware of how gender impacts the way families are organized. The mothers of her friends are strong, capable women. But what message does it send when they continue to take on the bulk of the domestic bundle without question? At some point, she will be in a relationship, which statistically is most likely to be with a man. She will need to negotiate their respective roles in the relationship. I want to think she can have this conversation without being distorted by outdated expectations that her partner has brought from his world. Messages about gender roles are powerful, and the way they play out in the home will shape the world that children grow into. The language we use to talk to children about gender is important. We need to stop taking it for granted and doing things because that’s how it’s always been done. If it seems easier not to change, you have to ask who it’s easier for. Being mindful about parenting choices is not new. We do it concerning what our children eat and how they consume technology and pop culture. By making choices about the messages we give children about gender, we have a chance to bring about change. It’s not about achieving a prescribed outcome. It’s about disrupting old patterns of doing things so that new options can emerge. The more mindful parents can be about gender messages, the more we support each other to counteract and re-shape the messages coming from society. For example, children will learn to ask questions and examine assumptions if something seems off. If there is one thing innate in children, it is a sense of fairness and justice. We owe it to future generations to stop curtailing their life experiences from birth (or even before) for the very fact of whether they are a girl or a boy.

https://medium.com/modern-parent/i-banned-my-daughter-from-using-the-word-tomboy-64ed7b190da2

['Justine L']

2020-11-26 08:13:32.579000+00:00

['Gender Identity', 'Parenting', 'Gender Roles', 'Language', 'Gender Equality']

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗗𝗼 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴?

❓𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗗𝗼 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴? So many people fail in Affiliate Marketing. Most of the blogs write blogging about affiliate marketing and how anyone can make money with affiliate marketing. Promote someone else product and get some great commission on every sale. Actually, it is a really simple process but not easy. It takes time and a lot of time to make your audience value and reputation in your audience. A value content on that behalf people knows you. You will be tired of reading and watching videos about how people will succeed and how they earned — — -$(Amount) in — Days(In days). You should act on how they made this amount of money in those days. ✅Reason Why People fail in Affiliate Marketing 𝟏. 𝐋𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝟐. 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐲 𝐎𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝟑. 𝐋𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝟒. 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝟓. 𝐏𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 ➡️𝐋𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 Many people have a big lack of confidence that doesn’t believe in his/herself. Always these find his/herself in a negative environment and showing excuses to others. I have tried this but didn’t earn anything so It’s not working. I don’t have skill than how I will do that. If you always showing excuses then why you will succeed. Everyone knows how they can solve their problems and issue. If you don’t have anything then Start with what you have. If you don’t have the skill then find people who will teach you and will do for you. ➡️𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐲 𝐎𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐞 Many people have affected by this shiny object syndrome and they always change their path and frequently. People who are not stable in their work than how they will succeed in their path. Some people always change their path regularly if they don’t get results or attract other people “Hey I made 2000$ within 2 hours”. This type of content will confuse them. They always change their course. They always change their plan. So It’s really tough to get results. We have to focused on one thing and if we succeed in that one thing then after that we have to choose another one. ✨✨”𝘍𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘦𝘥 “✨✨ ➡️𝐋𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 Many people are promoting products without their interest. They just those products who give them a better commission after a few weeks and months they didn’t find success. If you are not doing what you want they how you will succeed. Focus on that thing in which you are really interested. ➡️𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 Consistency is the key to your success. If you are not consistent with your work then how people will connect to you. Provide value to your audience on regular basis and make a relation with them. Regular update your content on the platform. ➡️𝐏𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 Many people don’t have patience in life. They always run behind success. Remember one thing no one will be successful overnight. Just ask some great affiliate marketers how they spend their time and doing it for how many years. Ask them if how much money and time they spend on (paid advertising, Content creation, or other expenses). Always be positive and Follow the step by step process and make a plan for yourself.

https://medium.com/@surajnagarwal1/-7322ea0139ae

['Suraj Nagarwal']

2020-12-14 07:00:40.345000+00:00

['Failure', 'Reason', 'How To', 'Affiliate Marketing', 'Why']

A Split and Deadly End — The Case of Danilo Restivo

A Split and Deadly End — The Case of Danilo Restivo Who let a man so dangerous travel freely throughout Europe? Danilo Restivo liked to cut hair. No, not in the traditional sense, after licensing and years of cosmetology school. He enjoyed, or moreso found a sick perversion in, slicing off the strands from unsuspecting girls’ and women’s heads, and taking the locks as souvenirs for his guilty pleasure. He gave objects of his affection gifts or, when they rejected him, played them the soundtrack to the Italian thriller Profondo Rosso, in which a killer musically tortures his victims before their demise by his own hand. Italy was not safe for its female citizens who’d inevitably cross paths with Restivo, otherwise known as “The Barber of Potenza.” Hailing from Sicily, the man had a convincing nature about him, and in his lengthy trail of terror, a priest, a schoolgirl and a neighbor all found themselves trapped in his gravity. In Potenza, a horrible crime would occur, locked away in a church attic for years. (Credit: Gazzetta del Sud [Edit by Author]) Elisa Claps wanted to be a physician. The teenager, 16, found herself in a predicament. A strange, somewhat older man had asked her on a date. They had a five year age difference. She was hesitant, but according to The Guardian, she felt bad for him. On September 12, 1993, Claps begged her close friend Eliana De Cillis to accompany her to the nearby church for support. Cillis then left the Church of the Holy Trinity as Claps met Danilo Restivo right after the 11:30 Sunday mass. The young girl was never seen alive again. Immediately, police and others questioned Restivo, who had come home with a cut on his hand. The truth was stranger than fiction. Coming from a powerful family, Restivo managed to evade direct questioning, telling the police that he was an acquaintance of the missing girl. Italian authorities approached the priest from the church, a man named Don Mimi Sabia, who refused to let the investigators search the premises. Following the disappearance, Sabia closed down the church and left for an extended “retreat.” Those desperately trying to find Claps had to look outside of the building, trying to pick up the pieces of a fragmented case. In 1996, the courts tried Cillis, Restivo and an Albanian man named Eris Gega for giving false information to the police. Restivo was sentenced to 20 months in prison, and many assumed he was responsible for the crime. He was permitted to move freely without actually going to jail. While Claps’ family continued to search for her, Restivo left the city. By 2002, he was in England. He married someone he met online, a woman named Fiamma Marsanga from Bournemouth, Dorset. Restivo soon resumed his fetishitic habit of cutting hair without consent. Heather Barnett, 48, was also known to friends as Bunny. Restivo had just moved in opposite of the English mother of two with Marsanga, and visited one day to ask if Barnett, who was a seamstress, could make curtains for his living space. Soon after, Barnett found out her spare keys had been stolen. She changed the locks, and on November 12, 2002, the woman brought her children to school for the last time. Caitlin Marsh, 11 and Terry Marsh, 14, quickly noticed the house was in disarray when they came through the door after a day at school. They opened the bathroom door to a grisly sight. Barnett had been bludgeoned to death, her breasts sliced off in grotesque fashion. The assailant also slit her throat and left Barnett’s clothes undone halfway. Her children, shocked at the gruesome murder, fled the apartment in terror. Restivo, eerily closeby, comforted them as police arrived. When she was found, the mutilated Barnett had locks of her own hair in one hand, but another person’s tresses in the other. According to BBC’s Crimewatch, the scene was carefully devoid of fingerprints or DNA, the sign of a somewhat forensically aware killer. Accidentally, though, a shoe print in blood had been left behind, situated alongside a green hand towel which was not from the family’s apartment. Restivo was one of the first people the police talked to, and they soon noticed that his shoes reeked of bleach, the white surface scrubbed clean. He quickly emerged as a suspect, with an investigation finding that CCTV showed Restivo walking on a nearby street following Barnett’s homicide. Still, they could not pin him down without more proof. Now two years after the homicide, police in England had become sharper than the force in Italy who permitted Restivo to run rampant. They tracked him throughout his daily activities and found the man walking around outsides areas, stalking lone women. Crimewatch explained that on May 12, 2004, the surveillance team felt inclined to stop him, as he was behaving and dressed rather strangely. When they confronted Restivo, they discovered knives, a balaclava and other suspicious items in a “murder bag,” as later described by authorities. The police accused him of following women during his free time, supported by hours of reconnaissance. What Restivo said as he was cross-examined, as provided by BBC, was chilling: “No, no, no, I was simply there to relax and enjoy nature, I have never stalked women…On the bus, that was not stalking for me.” Using forensics, the blood on the green towel from Barnett’s apartment matched Restivo. In spite of the evidence, the courts said the information could not quantify a surefire conviction. Meanwhile, back in Potenza, old secrets were uncovered that would transform the scope of the charges. Under piles of discarded tiles in the old church loft where she was last seen, Elisa Claps’ body was found by workmen sent to patch the leaking roof. She had suffered the same style of attacks as Barnett, yet had been essentially lying in what looked like plain sight. She had been brutally murdered on the same day of her disappearance and the church’s former priest seemingly gave the killer a place to store the body. Sabia, who was now deceased, had aided Restivo; Tobias Jones of The Guardian proved that while the priest assured others back at the time Claps went missing that he did not know the man, there were pictures of Sabia at Restivo’s eighteenth birthday party, immediately destroying that lie. But the religious corruption did not end there. Don Marcello Cozzi, the priest for Claps’ family, delivered a powerful speech at the funeral held, once her remains were discovered in 2010. Seventeen years later, they buried her outside the church where she had been hidden away, with over 5,000 people in attendance. He claimed that two months before police were alerted to the body, another priest had been alerted to the body by cleaners. The church fretted over the implications that Claps’s corpse only could have gotten there with direct help from one of its highest powers. In short, when the workmen were sent upstairs on March 17, the body had been rearranged to look different than it had for years underneath assorted rubble. Not only did Sabia help bury the young girl in the loft, but he was one of an unknown amount of others who held back the knowledge of the murder to steer blame away from their esteemed position or institution. Jones stated that when workmen were sent there in the 1990s, they saw the same pile of debris without any visible body protruding, implying that the way police first saw the final resting place may have been staged. Restivo had stabbed Claps to death over ten times, mostly from behind, but her small frame had decomposed dramatically. The professor who examined the remains, Francesco Introna, presumed she was sexually assaulted from bruising around the pubic region. Certain cuts implied that Claps valiantly fought back against her attacker, who came brandished with scissors and rage. Once they had Claps’ body, the prosecution zeroed in on Restivo. In a monumental decision, they chose to charge him not only with the murder of Barnett, but Claps as well, which had happened nine years prior. Other civilians came forward to allege that Restivo was responsible for even more incidences of clandestine hair severage in public areas. Steven Morris with The Guardian found that over twenty women had come forward in the United Kingdom and Italy with accusations against Restivo. One of them was a schoolgirl who claimed something “white and sticky” was in her hair following the ordeal. The trial revealed that DNA from Claps did indeed match her alleged killer. Restivo had a lengthy record which included multiple accounts of sadism against others, and a knowing family that defended him financially regardless of morals. Claps and Barnett’s slayings echoed each other; both were undressed in the exact same way and were murdered using the same kind of weapon. Each crime had been committed on the twelfth of the month, in what many deduce was either to serve a ritualistic purpose or maybe was an example of a bizarre, coincidental accident. In 2011, almost a decade after Barnett’s killing and two decades since Claps’s untimely death, Restivo was found guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison. Caitlin Marsh stared down her mother’s killer in court, but the children still lived with emotional scars from the incident. In the aftermath, on BBC on June 30, 2011, she said: “I used to have nightmares and flashbacks reminding me of the events of the 12 November..I also don’t like going into bathrooms. I used to think that someone might be waiting for me. Now I just hold a fear of what’s behind the bathroom door.” Many wondered if Restivo’s actual victim count was much higher. The same day the police interrupted his stalking, his tool kit appeared to be likely evidence of a future or previous death. It was also the twelfth of the month. Bronagh Munro with BBC, as well as countless others, deduced that the July 12, 2002 murder of Korean student Jong-Ok Shin may have perfectly fit into Restivo’s repertoire. There was only one thing; a man was already in prison for her murder, and his name was Omar Benguit. Shin went by the nickname Oki and had been going home after a night out with friends. At 2:50 a.m., she was repeatedly stabbed in the back, then died as a result of her injuries. For a month, there were no leads, no suspects and no hope for finding who had senselessly murdered the English language student. Beverley Brown was a drug user and prostitute that pointed the police towards Benguit. She claimed that on the night of the crime, she drove Benguit and other fellow heroin users to the scene. After Oki reportedly refused Benguit’s advances, he stabbed her, then forced Brown to drive to a crack house where she was gang raped by all of the men. Authorities immediately chose Brown as their star witness, but the woman had a history of making false allegations in the past. It was relatively easy to pin the homicide on Benguit. He had over 60 convictions with a history of violence. Nonetheless, Brown did not seem to have her story together. She gave certain details to The Jeremy Kyle Show that were not brought up in the trial. At least 12 of the people who later testified against Benguit were “self-confessed drug addicts,” as reported by Munro in her year looking through the inconsistencies of the case. A majority of them recanted once clean, citing pressure by police and the desire to satisfy their addictions. The courts came to the conclusion that the gang rape had not actually happened, and did not hold anyone accountable for the sexual assault. Two juries could not successfully reach a verdict, leading to a third trial. Benguit’s legal team introduced another idea of who Oki had crossed paths with that night — no one else other than Danilo Restivo. The crimes did have similarities, such taking place on the same day of the month, an almost identical style of frenzied killing and the deduction that a balaclava used to stab the victim matched the description of the one in Restivo’s bag uncovered by police. Hair was also located by Oki’s body, but the police found a woman who claimed it could have been because of a mobile hairdresser she used that propelled the contents of her trash can into the wind. CCTV seemed to show Benguit somewhere else at the time of the murder. Additionally, Oki had told others that a masked man was her attacker before she died, but Brown never mentioned a mask. Restivo was living nearby only three streets away. In fact, only a few months later, he murdered Heather Barnett in cold blood. Before Barnett’s tragic death, another woman reported Restivo to the police for talking in extreme detail about Oki’s murder, him commenting on the exact weapon used as well as the depth of her wounds. None of that information was public knowledge. Eventually, the jury returned with the ruling of life in prison. Benguit always maintained his innocence, his appeals rejected. The only evidence against him has been testimonial eyewitnesses. Over the years, criminal justice organizations have examined his case, hoping to free him from what they believe is a wrongful conviction. Restivo, The Barber of Potenza, will be in jail forever. Maybe Benguit will not. Restivo may be responsible for more crimes than the two attributed to his name, but nothing is certain. Claps, Barnett and Shin deserved to live the rest of their lives before a killer intervened. Their potential was stolen from them simply because Restivo eyed their short, dark tresses with a twisted attraction, emerging out of Europe’s shadows to curse them each with a dismal fate.

https://bekah302.medium.com/a-split-and-deadly-end-the-case-of-danilo-restivo-b928ff08013c

['Rebekah Schroeder']

2020-11-13 23:50:46.584000+00:00

['Serial Killer', 'Danilo Restivo', 'True Crime', 'Nonfiction']

The Living Cocoon Coffin

What does it mean for you and the environment? You can decide to be buried in a coffin made from fungi-like mycelium fibres The Living Cocoon Loop Coffin, image by Bob Hendrikx of Delft University, Netherland. (loop-of-life.com) If you are one of those who are passionate about the environment, and you are keen to do your own bit, before and even after death, then there is a new way to do just that. There is now a fast compositing coffin, made from fungi-like mycelium fibres. A 26 years old, Dutch Researcher and Bio-designer at the Delft University Of Technology, Bob Hendrikx, invented a biodegradable coffin, that makes the corpse decompose faster, into the soil, thus enriching the soil as well. He created the living cocoon coffin from mycelium, which removes toxin from the corpse, and then break down the body into living micro-organisms. This accelerates the decomposition of both the body and the coffin itself within three years. Three years is all it takes in comparison to the conventional wood or bamboo coffin that breaks down by its 10th year. You might wonder what Bob was thinking when he started to research into this biodegradable coffin. This is what he said, at the launch of the coffin, “We are currently living in nature’s graveyard, our behaviour is not only parasitic, it’s also short-sighted. We are degrading organisms into dead, polluting materials, but what if we kept them alive? The Living Cocoon enables people to become one with nature again, and to enrich the soil instead of polluting it.” The beauty of this is that it also cleans the surrounding soil of whatever pollutants there are, and turning them into biodegradable microorganisms. What Is Fungi Mycelium? Mycelium is fungi like in the world of the web that interacts and inter-tangle with each other. Mycelium is multi-cellular, and they are actively engaging in looking for waste to recycle. Hence, Bob Hendrikx called them ‘’Nature’s Recycler’’. They do this by constantly growing and extending their tentacles under the soil, thus providing essential nutrients that feed their growth. Hence they can grow to thousands of acres. In Netherland, farmers use mycelium to regenerate their soil and to get rid of toxin. Bob Hendrikx continued, “Mycelium is constantly looking for waste materials to convert into nutrients for the environment, It does the same with toxic substances, including oil, plastic and metal. For example, mycelium was used to leech radioactives waste in Chernobyl, it is utilised in Rotterdam to clean up soil, and some farmers also apply it to make the land healthy again.” A Girl’s Question Brought The Idea To Him At 2019 design week in Netherland, Bob said he was much concerned about living home pod, which he wanted to showcase. Then a girl came up to inspect the home pod and asked him if she could leave her grandma there if she dies. Bob said, after that, he started thinking that mycelium can even be the perfect idea to build up a coffin, instead of a home, ‘’allowing us to go back to the soil, according to Genesis 3:19, and providing foods for plants.’’ In the Loop Of Life Foundation, Netherland Bob Hendrikx founded the Loop-of-life Foundation, a biotech start-up, which he also directs. Here, the coffins are grown from the mycelium in just seven days. He creates a mould, with a mixture of mycelium and substrate (or compost), and the mycelium eats the compost and grows to fill up the shape of the mould. It grows in just seven days, requiring neither heat nor light. The living cocoon coffin had been tested with funeral directors both in Hague and in Delft. Another biotech design company in the USA, ‘ecovative’, has also tested it in USA soil, but yet to come up with its report on the benefit to the eco-biodiversity of the soil. He is also interested in developing light-emitting fungi, to serve as a bio-marker to identify each grave. This can also replace natural flowers that people place on the graveyard. The Cost The living cocoon coffin currently costs $1350, including taxes, which he believes will gradually become cheaper as more people get interested in it. Commercialisation of Death The commercialisation of the dead continues as people develop funeral rites and burial practices in honour of the dead. Families prefer a living memory. Throughout the world, as in everything else, the greed of the funeral directors is geared towards making people forget the transition from death to decay. The funeral industry is in the UK is worth about £1 billion annually, that uses about 4.2 million litres of embalming liquid each year, and 20 million feet of wood for coffins and vaults. The chemical used to treat the coffins and vaults leech into the groundwater/soil. Cremation, although, slightly cheaper, at about £1000, releases toxic fumes into the atmosphere. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, more than half of Americans are interested in a green funeral because of the cost savings and environmental benefits. Cocoon Coffin Has Already Been Used Actor Luke Perry was buried in cocoon coffin in March 2019, according to the daughter, Sophie Perry. The first woman, aged 82, was buried on September 12, 2020, in Hague on the coffin. Other Green Burials Some cultures have their supposedly green burials around the world. Notable are SKY burials practised by the Himalayans where the corpse is exposed to a very high altitude to be scavenged by wild birds. There is also water cremation or alkaline hydrolysis, in which the corpse is chopped up, and treated in potassium hydroxide Most environmental issues are caused by the living but have you ever considered the environmental impact of death? Alkaline hydrolysis, a greener alternative to burial or flame-based cremation, uses a combination of water and potassium hydroxide to decomposing bodies. It doesn’t require burial space, uses 1/12 the energy of traditional cremation and doesn’t produce toxic gases or air pollutants. The Take-Aways Bob Hendrikx next mission is, ‘’to know exactly what contribution the cocoon coffin makes to the soil as this will help us to convince local municipalities in the future to transform polluted areas into healthy woodland, using our bodies as nutrients.” We can gift our bodies back to the earth, that has sustained us over our life for the benefit of those coming behind. Trees can be planted to regenerate the earth.

https://medium.com/illumination/the-living-cocoon-coffin-4ece27490800

['Lanu Pitan']

2020-12-08 02:41:29.162000+00:00

['Ecodesign', 'Biotechnology', 'Funerals', 'Spirituality', 'Life Lessons']

Introducing GraphQL to Microservice Architecture: A Case for Splitting Queries and Mutations into Separate Services

Introducing GraphQL to Microservice Architecture: A Case for Splitting Queries and Mutations into Separate Services Quest Henkart Nov 23, 2019·7 min read Photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash Abstract GraphQL offers a very compelling solution to a common microservice problem. By implementing an API-Gateway using GraphQL, we can significantly improve the transactions between the consumer and API as well as ease the growing pains as the API and consumer requirements evolve over time. However implementing a GraphQL gateway presents another problem. GraphQL’s query and mutation implementation are both very interesting and very powerful, but seem to be two separate ideas combined under one specification with very different requirements. By splitting them into 2 separate services. We see improvements to ease of use, documentation, manageable code, scaling, resiliency and authorization. Introduction Microservice architecture solves many problems while introducing a few. One of the most external problems that my team and I faced was the lack of abstraction of routing, fulfilling UI requirements and providing clear documentation for our API consumers. This is a common pitfall with microservices. If we are trying to create a distributed system and avoid a monolith system or a single point of failure, at which point should we abstract the complexity of the system without exposing it to our consumers. A simple example of a system exposing its complexity and architecture We want to avoid the above example. Not only are we forcing the client to know which prefix to hit to access certain endpoints, We are also leaking a significant amount of our internal infrastructure. On top of that, we are requiring the client to hit multiple endpoints to populate a single view. This is better expressed in this article which introduces the concept of API Gateways and Backends for Frontend. API Gateways I first learned about this concept when learning about how Netflix architects their services, and how they manage the level of reliability and composability for hundreds of devices all with different requirements. They manage this with a complex microservice backend with a strictly defined internal API. Then individual teams design their own dedicated backend, each fulfilling their own requirements for whatever platform they are building for. I was interested in introducing a GraphQL API-Gateway. GraphQL provides a very interesting solution for a complex microservice backend, in that it creates a “Backend for Frontend” approach without requiring the Frontend team to develop their own personalized server. That is because, by design, GraphQL allows the client to determine what data they need and how they need it, as long as it coheres to a strictly defined schema. To me, this sounded like a simplified version of Netflix’s approach. A better tool to achieve similar results with much less overhead GraphQL Once we introduced a GraphQL API-Gateway into our architecture. The client was no longer responsible for knowing which prefix to hit to reach a certain microservice, in fact, the client no longer even needed to know that we had microservices. We stopped getting as many requests to update our API responses, since our API consumers could define their own responses. Updates and changes to our API would no longer require deprecation notices or breaking changes, and internal updates were less error prone because the coupling of defined types was drastically reduced and abstracted behind a clear GraphQL schema. Finally, the client could populate any view in the app with a single request. Transferring GET requests to GraphQL was easy and elegant. Suddenly 20 microservices were exposed into one, easy to understand object. Mutations The next step was introducing mutations. Mutations represent the Create, Update and Delete actions. Instead of REST endpoints, they are represented in camelCase function names ex createPost(input: {text: “text”}). Where the transferring of our queries vastly simplified our API, the transferring of mutations quickly began to bloat our API beyond readability. All mutations should have special inputs and deterministic outputs. But I quickly found that our normal query outputs were unusable as mutation outputs since it allowed the consumers to use unnecessary resources calling sub-resolvers — sub queries that aggregate data— on a mutation response. For example, there is no reason to retrieve all unaffected comments for a post when updating the content of the post. Eventually we began to see our schema bloat. We would have our entry-point object, a Bulk version — which omits large text bodies for requesting a list —and a mutation input and output. Suddenly our API which was supposed to simplify things was causing us to manage 3 different schemas of the same type. Making our auto-generated documentation confusing as well as making our own development error prone. Internally we would have separate files for mutation handlers and query handlers, mutation models and query models, etc. As we began to add more mutations, I quickly began to see a natural split in the growing monolith. Splitting the Monolith Once we split the mutations into their own service, everything became very clean and clear. The split was obvious for our consumers as well, as they don’t have to worry about storage or our service infrastructure, they only need to concern themselves with what action they want to take. Now we had one set of outputs and inputs for each object and the code was much easier to manage. The documentation was also improved. Instead of a massive list of query types next to a massive list of mutation types. Suddenly the consumer can get to the documentation they want quicker and easier depending on if they are looking for a query type or mutation name. Each gateway was built specifically for their differing requirements. Authorization The authorization requirements for queries and mutations are generally quite different. By nature, any GraphQL query originates from the root resolver or entry point object. That same request cascades down the subresolvers. A lot of the authorization and validation occurs naturally by referencing the parent object. For example, if the query hits the user root resolver. query user { email posts { body } } We authorize at the first stage when retrieving the user. When the ‘posts’ subresolver is called, we already know the identity of the parent user object, so authorization of providing the user’s posts is already taken care of. This ended up vastly simplifying most of the authorization middleware we had for our REST APIs. Meanwhile mutations are a bit different. If someone hits the API with mutation createPost(input:{…}) { body } Then we must retrieve their sessionId from the cookie, retrieve it from our redis store and authorize their ability to create content as well as auto populate fields from their session (such as userId etc). This interaction was very similar to the requirements of our normal REST API. The different requirements for authorization make things complex when our middleware had to contain exceptions or different functionality depending on the request payload of the user (indeed with GraphQL, the only way to determine if the query is a mutation is looking at the payload body). Splitting into two services allowed us to remove exceptions for our authorization middleware and tightened up our system in general. Now we could develop different authorization middleware depending on the differing requirements of the services, and avoid error prone exceptions. Scaling and Resiliency Another benefit to separating the queries and mutations is that the resource requirements for these actions are generally very different. Queries focus on aggregating data and are hit constantly. While mutations are hit less often but are more likely to cause errors since they are mutating data. Since the heavy lifting of modifying data was handled on our service layer, mutations required a much lower resource allocation. Decoupling mutations with queries allow us to scale both services depending on necessity. But even more importantly, it allows the API that populates our app, allows users to navigate or even contact support to be much more failure resistant. If the Mutation-API has a critical bug, the user will still be able to navigate the app as normal and even reach our Help Center. GraphQL has redefined the way we are able to think of API design and introduced a clearer transaction between the API and consumer in a way that allows each to develop and evolve independently from each other. GraphQL’s query and mutation implementation are both very compelling but seem different enough to necessitate a split. By splitting these two ideas, we have developed a very clean, resilient, and easy to use API with clear documentation and types and a complete separation of concerns. Comments, Concerns or Objections. Please share in the comments

https://medium.com/@questhenkart/introducing-graphql-to-microservice-architecture-a-case-for-splitting-queries-and-mutations-into-b3c1ca59ee04

['Quest Henkart']

2020-10-25 18:13:38.349000+00:00

['GraphQL', 'Api Gateway', 'Backend Development', 'Backend', 'API']

Dear Black Men: I Love You and I’m Scared for You

Dear Black Men: I Love You and I’m Scared for You On behalf of the women in your lives, thank you. For everything. Photo: Abdulrasheed Yusuf/EyeEm/Getty Images I don’t have anything to say about what’s happening right now. I’m spent. All I can say, on behalf of myself and the men and women I represent, we love you. We need you. We respect you. We honor you. We love you. I’ve been at LEVEL since last summer when this publication was preparing to launch. I thought about making sure we covered fashion. I thought about how to cover politics and entertainment through the right lens. I wanted to make sure we covered what it means not only to be a queer Black man but to be a Black trans man in this world. I wanted grown men of color from all walks of life to see themselves represented. On launch day, we had essays about LEVEL men like Jay-Z and Jordan Peele who exemplify what it means to age with dignity and vulnerability. The world we all live in is closer to Minneapolis than makes any of us comfortable. In Brooklyn, in Philadelphia, in Oakland, there is no escape. The men I love are always in danger. But I’m ashamed to say that I forgot about this part of the job. I forgot there would be a George Floyd. I forgot I’d be in Slack channels with my co-workers just dumbfounded. What is there to say? How am I at home, assigning a story, when I want to go to Minneapolis and fuck shit up? I forgot my actual job would be to help synthesize it all. As one of two women of color on staff, I forgot what it would be like to deal with men of color writing out their feelings and needing to edit them. We have a small and tight-knit staff at LEVEL. Even before the pandemic, I worked from home, so I’ve only spent limited in-person time with most of them. Aside from some meetings and team dinners, I’ve learned their personalities and emotions via Slack and Zoom. These are Black men of all ages. Men I worry about just like the men in my personal life. And they’re all — we’re all — completely invested in properly amplifying the voices of men of color. Over a decade ago, I spoke at Howard University to a group of journalism students; afterward, I met a young man named John Kennedy. Within minutes, after the briefest of talks, I knew he was going far — and sure enough, he’s now my sharp-as-a-tack editor on my weekly column, Dear Level. After a single early team dinner, I fell in love with our staff writer Tirhakah Love’s rapier wit. And now I love that he brings his whole full self to every single piece he writes — sometimes before he’s even ready to process it. Jada Gomez, our senior platform editor, is on the frontlines, working with men of color to amplify their voices on some very difficult pieces (including one from my partner). Our executive editor Peter Rubin is the best kind of ally — one who listens and distills and perfects all of our writing and ideas with respect and aplomb. And Jermaine Hall, LEVEL’s founding editor in chief, has worked in spaces like this for decades. He and I have often put our heads together and tried to work out how to communicate to and for our people. I’ve also watched him raise two young Black men with the same love and intention I hope to have with my own. My point is, LEVEL is not just a publication. It’s a place made of flesh and blood people. These are men of color and the allies who support them. And the world we all live in is closer to Minneapolis than makes any of us comfortable. In Brooklyn, in Philadelphia, in Oakland, there is no escape. I live in a liberal New Jersey enclave outside of Manhattan. It doesn’t matter. The men I love are always in danger. A few months ago, I was driving in my partner’s new car, with him in the passenger seat. His temporary plates had recently expired, and we hadn’t yet gone to the DMV to get the new plates. We were riding dirty and we knew it was a risk. Sure enough, I got pulled over after dropping my daughter off at school. I slowed to a stop. I kept my hands on the steering wheel, on 10 and two. I didn’t move. My partner sighed and said, “I might as well get my documents out.” “No,” I said, out of the side of my mouth. “Keep your hands on the dashboard!” “It’s fine,” he said. “Let me just get the insurance card out of the — “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I screamed. “Keep your hands on the fucking dashboard and don’t move!” He gave me a look that said, we’ll have a conversation about this later. But he stopped moving in just enough time for the officer to get up to my window. We gave him the docs, he reminded us to get the new plates, and let us go. I was shaking and sweaty. My partner didn’t approve that I yelled at him that way. I was angry that he didn’t follow the unwritten rules of what to do when being stopped by police. He told me he handled things his way and was fine doing so. He said he prefers to have all his paperwork out so he doesn’t make any movements when the police come up. All I could think about was how that could turn out with the wrong cop on the wrong night. We actually debated which policy is better to prevent getting killed by a cop with an itchy trigger finger. That never gets normal. Ever. Why should it? But how could it not? This past weekend, months after that encounter, my partner asked me to marry him. It wasn’t a complete surprise; I knew from our first date that we’d end up here. But it was still an amazing feeling to know that this man wants to support me and be with me for the rest of our lives together. But when the reality of the ring on my finger settled in, it turned into fear. The day after I said yes, the death of George Floyd reminded me of life married to a Black man. I remembered that when my partner leaves the house, I’ll say a silent prayer that he won’t go in the glove compartment too early. I remembered that if he decides to go for a jog, I’ll hope no one decides that he must be breaking into houses. These will be a constant, now and after he becomes my husband — a constant fear that he won’t make it home for any number of innocuous reasons. Innocuous doesn’t matter when a cop’s knee is on your neck. To add insult to injury, my partner brings along his sweet, adorable seven-year-old son, a boy with an infectious laugh and eyes almost too wide to be real. He refuses to teach me how to play Fortnite, but he helped his dad pick out the ring for his soon-to-be stepmom. (And told him the stone should be bigger. Thanks, kiddo.) I have two daughters, and I’ve worried about them plenty — but God help me, I am about to assist with raising a young Black man. As his new parent, I’ll have to have conversations with him that I never had with my girls. In a few years, we’ll have to let him go out with his friends, navigate life and all that it means for young Black men. When his dad was just a few years older than he is now, he had guns pointed in his face by rogue cops in the Bronx who thought the bookish and laid-back young man was a drug dealer. It’s not just my new husband and stepson I’ll worry about. There’s my 23-year-old nephew, a DJ, who often ends up in risky spaces. There’s my first husband, who had his own dealings with racist cops growing up in the ’80s. He has always maintained that if he ever finds the cop who abused him and his friends as teenagers, it’s on sight — 30 years later. We still co-parent together and he’s my friend. I need him alive. But will he put his hands on the dashboard and just wait? Will he ask one too many questions when a cop is being a jerk? I can’t figure any of this out. I can only be present. I can only tell you that I love you. That we love you. We love you for dealing with this pandemic and making us feel loved and protected. We love you for raising our babies. We love you for looking straight ahead when we cover our eyes. We love you for looking toward the future and seeing us in it. We love you for loving us. When incidents like George Floyd’s murder happen, we often proclaim say his name — as we should. But we should also lift the names of the Black men in our lives, the ones still here and the ones passed on, who do the daily heavy lifting in our lives. Before I sat down to write this, I asked my Facebook friends a very simple question: Why do you love the Black men in your life? Messages poured in, too many to print. One woman said she’d never had an opportunity to publicly proclaim her love for her dad and her husband; another praised her father for teaching her how to love, and be loved by, a Black man. And time and time again, these women sang your praises. You are strong, you are empathetic, you are resilient, you are loving. You lift us up. And for many of us, all we can do in this moment is profess what we’re feeling. For you. For all of you. For us. We love you. Now and forever.

https://level.medium.com/we-love-you-black-man-976b9dd2a278

['Aliya S. King']

2020-06-13 15:23:34.904000+00:00

['Justice', 'Equality', 'Race', 'Racism', 'Black Men']

Deploy models in PyTorch 🚀. let’s put a model into production

Deploy models in PyTorch 🚀 torchserve to the rescue! All the code used in this article is here Recently, PyTorch has introduced its new production framework to properly serve models, called torchserve. So, without further due, let’s present today’s roadmap: Installation with Docker Export your model Define a handler Serve our model To showcase torchserve, we will serve a fully trained ResNet34 to perform image classification. Installation with Docker Official doc here The best way to install torchserve is with docker. You just need to pull the image. You can use the following command to save the latest image. docker pull pytorch/torchserve:latest All the tags are available here More about docker and torchserve here Handlers Official doc here Handlers are the ones responsible to make a prediction using your model from one or more HTTP requests. Default handlers Torchserve supports the following default handlers image_classifier object_detector text_classifier image_segmenter But keep in mind that none of them supports batching requests! Custom handlers torchserve exposes a rich interface to do almost everything you want. An Handler is just a class that must have three functions preprocess inference postprocess You can create your own class or just subclass BaseHandler . The main advantage of subclasssing BaseHandler is to have the model loaded accessible at self.model . The following snippet shows how to subclass BaseHandler Subclassing BaseHandler to create your own handler Going back to our image classification example. We need to get the images from each request and preprocess them get the prediction from the model send back a response Preprocess The .preprocess function takes an array of requests. Assuming we are sending an image to the server, the serialized image can be accessed from the data or body field of the request. Thus, we can just iterate over all requests and preprocess individually each image. The full code is shown below. Preprocess each image in each request self.transform is our preprocess transformation, nothing fancy. This is a classic preprocessing step for models trained on ImageNet. Our transformation After we have preprocessed each image in each request we concatenate them to create a pytorch Tensor. Inference Perform inference on our model This step is very easy, we get the tensor from the .preprocess function and we extract the prediction for each image. Postprocess Now we have our predictions for each image, we need to return something to the client. Torchserve always expects an array to be returned. BaseHandler also automatically opens a .json file with the mapping index -> label (we are going to see it later how to provide such file) and store it at self.mapping . We can return an array of dictionaries with the label and index class for each prediction Wrapping everything together, our glorious handler looks like Since all the handling logic encapsulated in a class, you can easily unit test it! Export your model Official doc here Torchserve expects a .mar file to be provided. In a nutshell, the file is just your model and all the dependencies packed together. To create one need to first export our trained model. Export the model There are three ways to export your model for torchserve. The best way that I have found so far is to trace the model and store the results. By doing so we do not need to add any additional files to torchserve. Let’s see an example, we are going to deploy a fully trained ResNet34 model. In order, we: load the model create a dummy input trace the input through the model using torch.jit.trace save the model Create the .mar file Official doc here You need to install torch-model-archiver git clone https://github.com/pytorch/serve.git cd serve/model-archiver pip install . Then, we are ready to create the .mar file by using the following command torch-model-archiver --model-name resnet34 \ --version 1.0 \ --serialized-file resnet34.pt \ --extra-files ./index_to_name.json,./MyHandler.py \ --handler my_handler.py \ --export-path model-store -f In order. The variable --model-name defines the final name of our model. This is very important since it will be the namespace of the endpoint that will be responsible for its predictions. You can also specify a --version . --serialized-file points to the stored .pt model we created before. --handler is a python file where we call our custom handler. In general, it always looks like this: my_handler.py It exposes a handle function from which we call the methods in the custom handler. You can use the default names to use the default handled (e.g. --handler image_classifier ). In --extra-files you need to pass the path to all the files your handlers are using. In our case, we have to add the path to the .json file with all the human-readable labels names and MyHandler.py file in which we have the class definition for MyHandler. One minor thing, if you pass an index_to_name.json file, it will be automatically loaded into the handler and be accessible at self.mapping . --export-path is where the .mar file will be stored, I also added the -f to overwrite everything in it. If everything went smooth, you should see resnet34.mar stored into ./model-store . Serve our model This is an easy step, we can run the torchserve docker container with all the required parameters docker run --rm -it \ -p 3000:8080 -p 3001:8081 \ -v $(pwd)/model-store:/home/model-server/model-store pytorch/torchserve:0.1-cpu \ torchserve --start --model-store model-store --models resnet34=resnet34.mar I am binding the container port 8080 and 8081 to 3000 and 3001 respectively (8080/8081 were already in used in my machine). Then, I am creating a volume from ./model-store (where we stored the .mar file) to the container default model-store folder. Lastly, I am calling torchserve by padding the model-store path and a list of key-value pairs in which we specify the model name for each .mar file. At this point, torchserve has one endpoint /predictions/resnet34 to which we can get a prediction by sending an image. This can be done using curl The response { "label": "tiger_cat", "index": 282 } It worked! 🥳 Summary To recap, in this article we have covered: torchserve installation with docker default and custom handlers model archive generation serving the final model with docker All the code is here If you like this article and pytorch, you may also be interested in these my other articles Thank you for reading. Francesco

https://towardsdatascience.com/deploy-models-and-create-custom-handlers-in-torchserve-fc2d048fbe91

['Francesco Zuppichini']

2020-06-12 09:05:46.115000+00:00

['Deep Learning', 'Programming', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Pytorch']

How Quitting Facebook and Instagram has Significantly Increased my Happiness!

Let’s take each separately. Facebook No more sucking and getting sucked into drivel Truth be told, I really enjoyed FB for years (sharing photos of vacations, food, liking and commenting on other photos, where am I, what I am doing and so on)…until I changed as a person and FB was not for me anymore. I loved the Likes and the Comments. All these interactions made me feel popular and belonged. I used to check-in to places until I realised all these are just artificial connections and interactions and was not making my actual real life any better. All I saw on FB was — People sharing the same post again and again — memes, motivation, other people’s enlightenment passing on their own, people sharing where they are holidaying, what and where they are eating, where they are partying after hours/weekends, people giving advise on others what they themselves should follow first. People liking and commenting on other people’s photos and activity whom will not see eye-to-eye in person. Worst was holiday photos and check-ins, which was followed by hundreds of likes and comments. After a point of time, these posts made me depressed and felt my life is so hollow and dull, compared to the colourful lives everyone else seems to be living. Honestly, I did the same for years and I apologise to everyone who felt the same as what I felt about my life. Each life is beautiful in its own right and any comparison is artificial and futile. Probably the only thing I liked was Groups which I am missing as many professional groups are on FB Groups still. Though I am aware many Groups ARE moving away from it as it is not only me who is moving away from FB. Add to it all the news for all the wrong reasons for which FB has been in the news is also probably adding and reaffirming that going off it was a prudent thing to do. I am curious to know why people are still on FaceBook. What value are they getting from it? Genuinely asking? If one wants to stay in touch, more personal and direct conversations on calls/WhatsApp are more long-lasting and enduring. On FB, people are merely acting that they are concerned about other people. Why not do in private — If you want to empathise with someone… Praise someone… Help someone… Find more info about something… If you want to build any long-lasting relationship without the limelight? Let’s face it and be very clear…most people who “Like” any holiday-related photos are full of envy and desire that they were in your place. Consciously or subconsciously. Why add to anyone’s misery and be a cause for depression? And this has been proven in multiple studies. I enjoyed Facebook till I was that person who enjoys it. But as a person, I have changed and hence Facebook is no more for me. I had rather spend more time with few people than spend a little time with more people. Instagram Endless scrolling leads to endless misery I loved Instagram! Probably even more than Facebook as this was easy to consume — no text, only pictures and videos and a joy to create — share pictures and have conversations on those pictures as a result. Considering my interest in finding interest in random things, taking pictures and sharing, Instagram was flawless. Considering I am a FOODIE, sharing pictures of food and trying new restaurants, Instagram was sent from heaven. I used to get a lot of likes and comments both offline and online. The above two activities I may do say 2–3 times a week, so doing these including comments and conversations was not more than 2–3 hours max. As a creator, Instagram was great. It was the consumer mind which was getting messed up. It was impossible to not get hooked on to stories and keep browsing endless stories, 99% of which was useless. A celebrity sharing holiday pictures… A merchant sharing their new merchandise…most of it fakes/replica of shoes, watches, jackets, etc Random people sharing random pictures with funky stickers, etc. Random people speaking random things as if it was a sermon… “Influencers” influencing us to get influenced to buy this or that… I was hooked like a person hooked on to drugs…I knew it was bad and taking my mind for a spin but I just couldn’t resist. All this was making me depressed and I finally pulled the plug and deleted the app. Now I no longer spend most of my meals taking pictures. I spend quality time with family when we are eating out. Feel stupid I didn’t do this earlier.

https://medium.com/@anirudhbb/how-quitting-facebook-and-instagram-has-significantly-increased-my-happiness-b2a0d3bf06bf

['Anirudh B Balotiaa']

2019-02-01 04:53:15.245000+00:00

['Facebook', 'Social Media', 'Addiction', 'Consumerism', 'Instagram']