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This widespread misconception has resulted in the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars for products whose efficacy has not been validated by clinical trials. In effect, many consumers are placing their trust in products promoted by manufacturers who do not invest the funds to carry out research to prove the safety and efficacy of these products. According to the National Institute for Aging, quackery is at an all-time high.1 American consumers are exposed to an overwhelming sea of advertising for dietary supplements and homeopathic products. Commonly called a “penis pump”, a vacuum erection device, or VED, creates negative pressure that expands and thereby draws blood into the penis. | https://medium.com/@wanessayarnes/granite-male-enhancement-pills-reviews-2021-improve-strength-confidence-on-bed-a55bdf32a7e | ['Wanessa Yarnes'] | 2021-02-20 07:15:08.917000+00:00 | ['Granite Male Enhancement', 'Male Enhancement', 'Testosterone Boosters', 'Me', 'Médium'] |
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Fanpage — Medium - | https://medium.com/@taipham.export/delivery-services-from-vietnam-to-cambodia-holine-0987456761-500c797a84dc | ['Ngọc Tài Phạm'] | 2019-09-06 05:02:31.218000+00:00 | ['Transport', 'Phnom', 'Delivery', 'Cambodia', 'Derlivery Cambodia'] |
This is 24! | While I don’t have all the answers, the most important thing is that I’m staying in the know that I come first. This life belongs to me and everything that happens in this sphere is felt by me and is my responsibility. I am choosing kindness, setting boundaries that are applicable to me and sharing love cause that’s the vibe over here. Importantly, I’m taking actions a lot more seriously and toning down on words of affirmation cause people do be lying. Haha jk, but seriously, I’m making sure to marry people’s actions and their words.
From anxiety holding my neck asking “who dey breeet?” to me living freely and silly. From pondering for long on what/who/how to post to me writing a medium ass post. From having the compulsive need to be “mature” and “let things be” to consistently enforcing my boundaries. Whew, this babe right here is in such a satisfying place.
Lastly, I am immensely grateful for the shorties in my corner. I’m choosing to nurture them, to invest in them and their interests, to love them as much as I can and allowing them love and spoil me. Best weekend in a while and boy did I document all the pictures on my Instagram — you can check them @temifaseyide.
With Love. | https://medium.com/@temifaseyide/this-is-24-8471b5e9fbef | ['Temi Faseyide'] | 2021-05-03 09:37:14.325000+00:00 | ['Friendship', 'Love', 'Birthday'] |
SOFT SKILLS | Soft skills can be defined as character traits or interpersonal aptitudes that affect your ability to work and interact with others. They can’t be taught in a classroom or measured quantitatively. Today’s job market gives immense importance to soft skills since these are the parameters that decide a candidate’s ability to work in a team and fit into the system. A survey presented by SMB World found that nearly 72% of CEOs believe that soft skills are more important to the success of their business than hard skills.
So here are a few of the soft skills that I found relevant and those which the hiring managers would vote for.
Communication (written and oral) Teamwork Problem-solving Work ethics Interpersonal skills
Do feel free to put in your comments regarding this topic :) | https://medium.com/@anuvindakrishnan/soft-skills-3c3571e696fa | ['Anuvinda Krishnan'] | 2020-12-19 06:56:14.150000+00:00 | ['Soft Skills', 'Communication', 'Teamwork', 'Problem Solving', 'Jobs'] |
A Letter to Students Who Just Started (or Are About to Start) Coding Bootcamps | A Letter to Students Who Just Started (or Are About to Start) Coding Bootcamps
My experience in coding bootcamp can hopefully help you overcome anxiety and nervousness before your first day
Photo by Tonik on Unsplash.
Hi, my name is Megan. First off, I want to congratulate you on starting/being admitted to the bootcamp of your choice! You may wonder, “Who is this stranger writing a letter to us about a coding bootcamp?” I am currently nearing the end of a coding bootcamp with Flatiron. Yeah, I know. I am not done with the program yet, but it does not mean I cannot write an article for you. As I am preparing my final project, I wanted to write this not only for myself but for anyone who is reading this today.
Are you feeling nervous? Anxious? Maybe some imposter syndrome? It’s normal to feel this way. It’s a new chapter of your life. You either:
Probably just left your old job behind and are about to make a major career change that will change your life forever. Are currently working part-time so you don’t have to worry about your expenses while taking classes at night and gaining new skills in the meantime to prepare for a career change. Simply want to learn some new skills and/or brush up on your web development skills. Are like me, who just graduated from college (or high school and decided not to go the traditional college route) and are hoping to look for better job opportunities and skills.
Feel free to comment if I have left some of you out! I want you all to feel included while reading this.
A little about myself: I am currently in the Immersive Software Engineering program with Flatiron. There are so many categories out there, but I hope I could include you in this letter — even if you are attending other types of coding bootcamps.
Every company sets their programs differently. I had to complete 100+ hours of pre-work before my first day of bootcamp. Before that, I had to go through a behavioral interview and then 80+ hours of prep work before the tech interview. Was it intense? Quite. But I enjoyed it a lot — especially the tech interview. Admittedly, I did postpone my tech interview several times just because I was so nervous and felt like I was not ready for it at all. I hope you all don’t make my mistake because I should’ve done the interview earlier. Once again, congratulations! You made it!
I remember feeling super excited when I received a call from my admission specialist that I got into the bootcamp I had been eyeing for months. He told me all about the prep work I had to do and I thought, “Yes! I love more coding!” But then sometimes I felt a bit unmotivated and my code would go untouched for days.
And guess what? On the last two weeks before my first day of bootcamp, I had to rush to finish all my work so I could catch up and start with my intended cohorts. *Show of hands if you’re also a procrastinator.*
These issues may sound familiar and resonate with you. | https://medium.com/better-programming/a-letter-to-students-who-just-started-or-about-to-start-coding-bootcamps-e469551eb0e9 | ['Megan Lo'] | 2020-11-23 15:55:30.280000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Coding', 'Startup', 'Learning To Code', 'Programming'] |
The One Thing You Need to Thrive in Remote Relationships | Ditch filters — dare to be vulnerable
I used to work at a global corporation, at which I collaborated closely with a colleague about 1000 miles away from me. Let’s call her Bella. Our communication relied heavily on Skype; we chatted continuously and made several online calls throughout the workday.
Bella and I were under a lot of pressure trying to do our jobs while keeping our mutual stakeholders content, which was our main and shared focus. We bonded over work that was causing both of us a lot more stress and anxiety than we were used to. Bella’s outspokenness and humor made it a lot easier for me (as relatively introverted) to open up and find solace in sharing my true emotions and opinions (and experiencing some fun in the dysfunctional as well).
What kept us sane, collected, and productive was the proximity that had been established through frequent and honest communication.
Most of our calls started with therapeutic rants from at least one of us, but we always ended up covering for each other and solving problems together. Sometimes over screen sharing calls and sometimes over quick emoji-filled texts. When I was on the verge of losing grip, she’d be my rock — and vice versa. We were supportive of each other and productive, like a high-performing team.
Prior to that, we had only met once in person. I felt closer to her than I did with an organizationally close colleague, who was actually sitting right next to me.
Feed vulnerability with compassion
Here’s another example similar to compassionate colleagueship. One that particularly moved me earlier this summer, when an online networking event spontaneously turned into a real and raw discussion.
Not too long ago I joined a mentor program, with a group of twenty-ish mentors and mentees. We had only met up once for an introduction just a month before the pandemic had up-coming workshops put on hold or converted into online events. As a way to keep in touch in the meantime (and maintain the enthusiasm that had been built up from the only physical meetup), the organizers set up a casual video call with the mentees in order to collectively check in on ongoing mentorships and help us network online instead.
What I noticed a few seconds into the Zoom meeting (which I stumbled into 40 minutes late, after life got in the way), was that vulnerability from a single person opened up for an honest and productive discussion among the participants.
People may shy away from giving honest feedback unless they can express it as constructive criticism, but this was a place of support, skill-sharing, and encouragement. The other participants responded with compassion as if we picked up right where we left off from meeting physically for the first time.
This triggered a brainstorm of suggestions on how we could move forward with networking, supporting and encouraging each other in spite of the restrictions caused by the pandemic. It enabled the mentees to share experiences and influence the program going forward, while the organizers received valuable feedback. Win-win. At the end of the call, the organizers even acknowledged the unique kind of presence that we had experienced.
Because we were able to move past the general awkwardness of both networking and video calls, we managed to ditch filters and focus instead on mutual aspirations. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/the-one-thing-you-need-to-thrive-in-remote-relationships-b9d924f90c3e | ['Sara Kiani'] | 2020-08-19 18:31:01.244000+00:00 | ['Authenticity', 'Communication', 'Relationships', 'Work', 'Philosophy'] |
How To Connect Raspberry Pi To Laptop Via WiFi | Here are the steps to share your PC’s wireless Internet connection with your RPi:
Connect the Pi to your computer’s Ethernet port with a standard Ethernet cable Go to “Network Connections” on your Windows PC and select “Wireless Network Connection. Right-click and select Properties. Under the “Internet Connection Sharing” tab, select both checkboxes. Reboot your computer. This step is very important. Your Pi will now obtain an IP address from your computer and be able to access the Internet through your computer. If you need to find the Pi’s IP address for SSH or for remote login from your PC, run the command “ping raspberrypi”, where “raspberrypi” is the hostname of your RPi. Note that your RPi must have samba running on it for the ping command to work.
That’s it, folks! Also, you can connect your Raspberry Pi via Ethernet cable as I’ve already described here: | https://medium.com/@jamesjdavis/how-to-connect-raspberry-pi-to-laptop-via-wifi-b9d19186982a | ['James J. Davis'] | 2020-12-12 10:50:14.778000+00:00 | ['Raspberry Pi', 'Network'] |
Cassidy and the Whale (Part 1) | We finally get to where we’re going, and my dad parks the car at the Laguna Beach parking lot. You’d think that would be the end of my misery, but oh, are you sadly mistaken. Now it’s time to haul the chairs, coolers, umbrellas, towels, blankets, and food all the way down to the sand, which is about 50 miles from where we have parked our car. I almost forgot, we have to haul Sissy all the way down to the sand, too, since she is just 18 months old, and is basically just another piece of cargo.
By the time we drag our sorry spectacle of a family all the way down to the beach, I am trying my very best to pretend that this is not my family and that I don’t know these ridiculous people who are walking with me. Sissy is in full on tantrum mode, sounding like a screeching eagle that has broken its wing and fallen to the ground in agony. Her screams are so loud that I am starting to wonder whether I will have permanent hearing loss after this outing with my circus of a family.
As soon as we are set up on the sand, I throw off my robe, revealing a new green one-piece bathing suit my mom bought me on sale at Monique’s Discount Warehouse. I slap my pink goggles onto my face, then charge toward the roaring waves so fast that I do not even feel the white-hot sand burning my feet. My dad yells at me to wait for him because I am only seven years old and I cannot swim like the big kids yet, but I tell him not to worry, I will stay close to shore and I will not go past the breaking waves (I lied). My dad agrees, and off I run faster than a Greyhound dog at the racetrack.
I am excited to be at the beach because I love playing in the water, but also because I desperately need to change the color of my hair. You see, I was born with the wrong color hair. For some reason, there was a mix up in the hair department when I was born, and someone gave me dark brown hair by mistake. Everyone knows that I was meant to be a blonde, except for the person who gave me this dark brown hair. My friend from school, Traci, told me that if I spend enough time in direct sunlight, the sun will change my hair from dark brown to blonde. So, I have decided that I will spend every waking moment standing directly under the powerful sun, to get the blonde hair that I deserve.
The salt water from the Pacific Ocean is cool and refreshing on my sweaty toes. It doesn’t take me long to get used to the water temperature, and before I know it, I am waist deep in the white wash that is surrounding my legs and hips and stomach. I look back onto the shore. My parents are struggling to set up the umbrella and lay the blankets on the sand, while Sissy is screaming so loud that everyone on the beach has stopped what they are doing, and they are staring at my family as if we are a scary brood of monsters. R.J. is standing on the sand with a candy bar in his mouth, laughing hysterically at Sissy and her shenanigans. This is my time to make a move, while no one is watching me.
I slip my pink Snoopy goggles off my forehead and over my eyes. I dive deep into the water, under a wave that has crashed in front of me. I have been on the swim team for two years now, and I am pretty good at keeping up with the older kids. Under the water, everything becomes so quiet that it seems as if the rest of the world has disappeared and turned to dust. I really like it down here. I wish I could stay here forever. After I come up for air, I look back and realize that I have swam out past the waves. The ocean’s horizon looks inviting and peaceful. I start paddling freestyle farther and farther out to sea.
I stop and tread water in one place, and try to feel downward with my feet. There seems to be no bottom to this heartless ocean, and I do not believe that I will ever touch the sand with my feet again. But I am not tired, not even close. So I start doing the breaststroke toward the ocean’s horizon. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/cassidy-and-the-whale-part-1-56838e23ab4a | ['J.S. Lender'] | 2021-05-13 18:20:50.258000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'California', 'Literally Literary', 'Short Story', 'Beach'] |
The Magi’s Quest | Gaspard, Melchoir and Balthazar
Wise as they come, or so we’ve heard
Traverse the land, approaching from east
Aback strange camels as the sand whirred.
This tale begins on a starry night
And catches their eyes, a star so bright
Instilling the Orients; a destination
The point of glory far from sight.
They journey blindly, awestruck by
This solitary star in a silent night
A whisper they’re kings, passes by
But a subject they remain to this source of light.
They approach a shed brimming with aura
God is here, they think aloud and alike
Gold, Myrrh and Frankincense
They place their gifts thus breaking the hike.
They, three kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts they traversed afar
Fields and fountain, moor and mountain
Following yonder star…..
~Vennila Seshadri (19BEE1053) | https://medium.com/@writesoc/the-magis-quest-aad77a7c9b55 | [] | 2020-12-22 12:54:58.305000+00:00 | ['Magi', 'Christianity', 'Christmas', 'Gifts', 'Folklore'] |
American Idol: Medford’s Dedes is trying to follow her hero’s soccer career | American Idol: Medford’s Dedes is trying to follow her hero’s soccer career
Bishop Eustace’s Nikki Dedes, 14, is one of the most talented freshman players in the state and has had the good fortune of not only meeting Carli Lloyd, but working alongside her, too
Medford soccer standout Nikki Dedes, one of the best freshman in the state, on Bishop Eustace Preparatory’s campus. (RYAN LAWRENCE, The Sun)
Imagine you’re a Little League pitcher with aspirations to pitch in a World Series one day and you don’t only get the opportunity to meet Clayton Kershaw, but you end up working alongside him at some point, too. Or, same scenario, but instead you’re a midget football quarterback or a youth basketball player, and Carson Wentz or Lebron James suddenly enters your own personal stratosphere.
Nikki Dedes can count herself as being in that fortunate, things-you-can-usually-only-dream-about category. The Medford soccer standout, a freshman on an academic scholarship at Bishop Eustace Preparatory School, can consider herself friends with Carli Lloyd.
Nine-year-old Nikki Dedes with United States soccer superstar and Delran native Carli Lloyd at Llyod’s soccer camp. (Photo provided by Dedes family)
Dedes first met Lloyd, the Delran native and two-time Olympic Gold medalist and two-time FIFA Player of the Year, when she was a soccer-obsessed, 9-year-old kid. Now she’s one of the most talented freshmen in the state and has had the opportunity to practice with Lloyd in Medford and work at the soccer superstar’s camps.
“I cried the first time I met her,” Dedes said of a Sky Blue game at Rutgers stadium in New Brunswick she attended in 2014, when she just so happened to be sitting next to Lloyd’s family.
“I was so excited,” she continued. “Her cousin called her over and she signed my jersey and skipped all of these people to talk to me. It was so intimidating.”
Flash forward five years later, and Dedes has been able to stand alongside Lloyd and act as a sponge, taking in as much as she can, and she aspires to be a high level player, too.
“Being around her just teaches you so much,” Dedes said, “you see what it takes to be a champion.”
Nikki Dedes with Carli Lloyd working at Lloyd’s soccer camp in 2017. (Photo provided by Dedes family)
Dedes will now try to collect at least one kind of championship in the coming weeks.
Bishop Eustace’s soccer team went undefeated for the first six-plus weeks of the regular season before losing to Paul VI in the opening round of the South Jersey Coaches Association Tournament. Eustace is one of the favorites to collect a state championship, which would be its first outright title since 2008 (it won four titles in seven years between 2002–08).
A year ago, the Crusaders were co-champions of Non-Public A with Immaculate Heart Academy after an excruciating double overtime tie.
“No co-championship,” Dedes said of her goal in November. “We have to keep working hard, especially coming off the tough loss (to Paul VI). We have to keep working hard and not be complacent. But we’re excited for the playoffs. Every game is a new game, and for some of the seniors, it could be their last game so they don’t want to end the season early. We want to get back to where (Eustace was) last year, and take the championship for ourselves.”
With a deep and experienced team, Eustace surely has a fighting chance. Having a freshman able to play at a high level upon arriving in high school doesn’t hurt, either.
One of two freshman starters along with Megan Morris, Dedes has been playing soccer exclusively for two years now, putting basketball and lacrosse aside and joining the Medford Strikers at age 12. She prepped for the challenge of playing against older, bigger players playing with older members of the Strikers club team last spring as a guest player.
It’s paid off.
“She’s also very tough, physical, not your typical freshman,” Bishop Eustace coach Boo Schubert said. “She can hold her own, even among the best players in the Olympic Conference. To be a freshman and have as many goals and assists as she has, and to play at that level with the other talent we have on the team, it’s amazing. But she’s worked really hard for that. Being able to translate her skills and play with girls three years older than her is something in itself.”
Bishop Eustace freshman and Medford resident Nikki Dedes attempts to steal the ball away from Seneca senior Jaime Araujo in a game in September. (RYAN LAWRENCE, The Sun)
Dedes only turned 14 in September. She’s gone from starry-eyed kid to formidable high school player in the blink of an eye, and still has what could turn out to be a career her idol Lloyd would approve of in front of her in the coming years. | https://medium.com/the-medford-sun/american-idol-medfords-dedes-is-trying-to-follow-her-hero-s-soccer-career-73c2b5b59566 | ['Ryan Lawrence'] | 2018-10-26 15:31:12.617000+00:00 | ['High School Sports', 'Soccer', 'New Jersey'] |
Quick and Easy Deep Learning WebApp | Quick and Easy Deep Learning WebApp
Photo by Sid Balachandran on Unsplash
Have you ever wanted to use deep learning in a project and show your results in an interactive way? Do you want to start your deep learning journey and quickly see your results as a working application? Let me show you how.
One of the easiest ways to deploy a small data-driven or machine learning app with Python is streamlit. Streamlit allows you to create WebApps with a lot of functionality using just a few lines of code as I will demonstrate in a minute.
Now that covers the deployment part, but what about the machine or deep learning? If you want to dive into deep learning, fast.ai is a great place to start. Their MOOC, now also their book and especially the fastai library provide you with everything you need to start your deep learning journey.
I want to show you just how quick & easy you can build an interactive classification WebApp that uses state of the art deep learning models. To do that I will take the 225 Bird Species Dataset from Kaggle,
train a deep learning model on it and then use that model in a streamlit App.
Photo by Dulcey Lima on Unsplash
Now I realize that classifying that many bird species is technically not the easiest task, and the model is far from perfect, if you want really good results you will have to dig a bit deeper. I just want to provide you with a classification app tutorial that doesn’t use MNIST, Fashion MNIST, CIFAR-10 or anything the fastai MOOC already uses. This tutorial is not showing you how to get a top spot on the Kaggle leaderboard for bird image classification. I’d rather show you how to build something end-to-end in a beginner friendly manner.
The first step is to download the data.
The Dataset contains 4 folders named “consolidated”, “test”, “train” and “valid”. Within each folder we can find 225 subfolders, one for each species. The folder names will provide the labels later. The “consolidated” folder contains all images, so it’s only of limited use for us.
Let’s focus on the train and validation folder for our task.
Data Prep & Model training
The next step is to load our data, preprocess it and train our model. This may sound like a lot and possibly overwhelming if you are a beginner, but fastai makes it surprisingly simple.
We first import the fastai.vision.all package. Please note that I am using import * here. I know about the issues this can create, I don't recommend using it for anything other than exploration and experimentation within a jupyter notebook. Once we've explored, trained and saved the model we will not use this kind of import again in our WebApp file.
from fastai.vision.all import * #set the path where our data can be found
path = Path("D:/datasets/birds/archive (2)") #check if the path is working by extracting one image
im = Image.open(path / "train/CROW/001.jpg")
im.to_thumb(224,224) #this should display your image
Now we can build a DataBlock and dataloader to load the data in a way our model can process them. In fastai this is done through the DataBlock class and the dataloaders. The GrandparentSplitter() tells the DataBlock to use all files in "train" for the training set and all in "valid" for the validation set.
birds = DataBlock(
blocks = (ImageBlock,CategoryBlock),
get_items = get_image_files,
splitter = GrandparentSplitter(train_name = "train", valid_name = "valid"),
get_y = parent_label, #get labels from folder names
item_tfms = Resize(224) #resize images to 224x224
) #use a dataloader to get the images
dls = birds.dataloaders(path)
This would be a good moment to check if everything went as expected. We will look into the first 10 pictures of the validation and training data to see if everything has been loaded correctly.
dls.valid.show_batch(max_n = 10, nrows = 2) dls.train.show_batch(max_n = 10, nrows = 2)
Your output should look something like this:
Image by Author.
Note that the training data is already shuffled for training, while the validation data is not and also doesn’t need to be.
Most of the pictures our classifier will have to deal with in a real setting won’t be perfect images worthy of a National Geographic feature (i.e. when someone wants to use your app to find out which bird they’ve taken a photo of). We should therefore add some transformations to the data. With birds.new() we can add new images or transformed images in our case. Using RandomResizedCrop we can add pictures which are random crops from the original picture, with batch_tfms = aug_transforms() we add transformations to the whole batch, these transformations are some useful standard image augmentations such as changing the brightness, tilting, stretching and squishing the picture.
birds = birds.new(
item_tfms = RandomResizedCrop(224, min_scale = 0.5),
batch_tfms = aug_transforms()) #we again load the data
#I set num_workers = 0 in order to run the torch code on my local #machine, this may not be necessary for you
dls = birds.dataloaders(path, num_workers = 0) #look at some of the transformations
dls.train.show_batch(max_n = 15, nrows = 3, unique = True)
Some of these pictures may look a little odd, but you can also spot some “okay but far from ideal” pictures, which may resemble something a user of your WebApp would upload later.
Okay, so we have our data, we preprocessed it a bit. It’s time to choose a model and train it.
Fastai strongly emphasizes using pretrained models and fine tuning them. This often leads to better and faster results than training something from scratch. Here we will use a ResNet34 which was pretrained on the ImageNet dataset. Hence, our model has already “seen” pictures and also kind of “knows” what a bird looks like. We can use that and now fine tune the model towards classifying different species of birds.
learn = cnn_learner(dls, resnet34, metrics=error_rate).to_fp16()
#to_fp16() works well for my local system, might not be necessary for you #lets train and tune the model for 5 epochs
learn.fine_tune(5)
For an in-depth explanation of the fine_tune() method see the fastai docs.
Once the model is trained we can check which kind of errors it makes, look into it’s loss over training time and of course use the test set to see how well it does on new data. You should definitely do all of these things. If you don’t know how, check the fast.ai tutorials or the MOOC.
However, I am not discussing these steps here as the main focus is not the model training and evaluation, but showing how to create a working app.
The model did pretty well. The error rate (on the validation set) is 0.02 for me, which translate into 98% accuracy. Please note that accuracy is not always the best metric and if you want to train a model you should look into more metrics.
It’s time to save our model and move into the next stage: Building the WebApp.
learn.export(fname = "first_model.pkl")
You should probably find a more meaningful name, especially if you have multiple models.
The Streamlit App
We are going to use streamlit as mentioned. To host your application locally open your terminal or command/anaconda prompt navigate to the directory your Python file is located and type streamlit run {your_file_name}.py .
The app should be available under localhost:8501.
We will need streamlit, numpy, PIL and fastai.vision to run everything.
import streamlit as st
import numpy as np
from PIL import Image
from fastai.vision.all import load_learner, Path
The beginning of our App should have title. Which in streamlit is as easy as typing st.title("Your chosen title")
The next part of our App is the file upload which is quick and convenient with: uploaded_file = st.file_uploader("Choose an image...", type="jpg")
st.title("Upload + Classification Example") uploaded_file = st.file_uploader("Choose an image...", type="jpg") #file upload
We now basically have finished the first state of the app, which looks like this:
Image by Author
To integrate our classification we first need to load the model.
learn_inf = load_learner(Path("first_model.pkl"))#load trained model
Now let’s classify the image and create some output.
The code checks whether there is an uploaded file, and once that is true the image file is converted in order to let our model predict its label using the .predict() method.
Once we have a prediction we create some output for our user with st.write() which uses standard Markdown formatting. I also added a small if statement to have better grammar.
#classification
if uploaded_file is not None:
#image transformation and prediciton
img = Image.open(uploaded_file)
st.image(img, caption='Your Image.', use_column_width=True)
image = np.asarray(img)
label = learn_inf.predict(image)
#label[0] accesses the actual label string
#output display
st.write("")
st.write("Classifying...")
#check for vowels in the names for correct grammar
if label[0][0] in "AEIOU":
st.write("## This looks like an")
else:
st.write("## This looks like a")
#our labels are in capital letters only
st.title(label[0].lower().title())
After you’ve uploaded an image the WebApp should look somewhat like this:
Great! Now we have a functioning, local WebApp that uses our deep learning model! Much cooler than reading through a jupyter notebook!
You could deploy this, however you may need to make some changes, regarding the use of GPUs etc.
Here is the whole code for the App:
###imports
import streamlit as st
import numpy as np
from PIL import Image
from fastai.vision.all import load_learner, Path ## You may need these to deploy your model on e.g. heroku if you are coming from a windows machine
#import pathlib
#temp = pathlib.WindowsPath
#pathlib.WindowsPath = pathlib.PosixPath ###App
##file upload and model loading
st.title("Upload + Classification Example") uploaded_file = st.file_uploader("Choose an image...", type="jpg") #file upload learn_inf = load_learner(Path("first_model.pkl"))#load trained model #learn_inf.model.cpu() # use this if you want to deploy the model somewhere without using a GPU, you may need pytorch cpu ##classification
if uploaded_file is not None:
#image transformation and prediction
img = Image.open(uploaded_file)
st.image(img, caption='Your Image.', use_column_width=True)
image = np.asarray(img)
label = learn_inf.predict(image)
#label[0] accesses the actual label string
#output display
st.write("")
st.write("Classifying...")
#check for vowels in the names for correct grammar
if label[0][0] in "AEIOU":
st.write("## This looks like an")
else:
st.write("## This looks like a")
#our labels are in capital letters only
st.title(label[0].lower().title())
You now know how to build an Image Classification App based on Deep Learning!
Streamlit offers many features and you could add more functionality or display more data or change the layout a bit, experiment and explore.
Fastai also offers tons of features, which I recommend you to explore as well.
I hope this article was helpful to you and now I ask you to:
Explore, experiment, build your own Apps and showcase what you’ve learned!
-Merlin | https://towardsdatascience.com/quick-and-easy-deep-learning-webapp-762f92f19f46 | ['Merlin Schäfer'] | 2020-11-02 19:47:31.575000+00:00 | ['Deployment', 'Fastai', 'Image Classification', 'AI', 'Streamlit'] |
Top 9 project management myths and how to avoid them | Over the years, project management is exercised to transform people, processes, and tools, to achieve desired outcomes well within the given objective. The challenges are enough devoid of myths. Every industry and corporates operates with predefined rules based on varied practices and beliefs. Many stories of falsehood surface time-and-again in the workplace and the foreseeing myths come in multi-folds.
The remarkable projects cut through the chaos and uncertainties allowing the teams to make well-turned-out and intelligent decisions based on reality. Here are nine commonly-held project management myths that straight away need to be booted, that’s probably known but has never attempted to debate. It’s essential to absorb and interpret the misconceptions. If neglected, it could cost organizations billions in revenue loss. Let me help you with an apparent foresight on the same.
Myth 1: Clients always know what they want
Clients are crystal clear of what they want at the end of the project, but they do not need to know about the solutions which could get them through, and so are not concerned about the little details, that are well-thought-out in the process. In some cases, the expectations are assorted more than what they narrate, which means, many of the clients, at times, are not project educated.
The example could be about the clients who are in the middle looking to save time on project planning rather than checking emails for the details of the project gestation, and with little idea of any project management software exists that could simplify their work. What this indicates is that the feedback is exceedingly critical to figure out the contests of a client continuously. Nevertheless, it is up to the team management to resolve to educate the inner working and reinstate them with the new insight based on inquiry and observation.
Myth 2: Project management is never-ending paperwork
This insight echoes realities from the inception of the project management, where they aren’t drawn-away from a notebook and pen. Collaboration and project management have altered project managers from activities such as recording meeting minutes, writing emails, and preparing product documentation. Today many project managers carry their diaries, notepads, and many data support tools, and use them to develop execution plans through creative ideas, and formulate strategies for achieving success faster, smarter, and with more stakeholder impact.
Project management is not a clerical job or documentation work. It’s more of a dynamic environment created to change well within an organization. Most project managers spend their energy and time communicating, decision-making, people management, assignment, task management, procurement management, and problem-solving.
Myth 3: Previous successful projects are recipes for future projects
The successful project learnings of the recent past are examined and thought-about for the new projects. Typically, this is being watched during many occurrences. The reasons are evident with different techniques, methodologies, and tools that have already become apparent to a particular project.
It is best to be watchful about your ongoing projects as every project is different and unique, though it looks similar. Never ignore the learning, gather the information ever and be prepared for new challenges. However, the agile mindset is helpful and make sure the schedule are in the context, having space for contingency plans and sustain attention to the most delicate details.
Myth 4: Processes are more valuable than people
The case is entirely tangential as compared to myth #3. Whatever the asserted processes that worked earlier remain the thing of the past, which is distinct to a different set of people had used on it. You cannot push this process onto a new crew assuming that the same outcomes could turn-out again, which is an obvious flaw short of making the blocks out of grenades.
That said, the team is your valuable asset and pushing people hard without considering the work conventions of each individual will offend more than step-up on deliverables. We know that processes also could be faulty and calls for a more flexible approach are desirable.
Myth 5: Detailed meetings and team updates are essential to keep a project on track
Wrike’s infographics illustrate that as many as 47% of the project teams find the meetings are the biggest time-waster. They quote that 30% of the time is spent on an unwanted forum. True to sense, the project managers respond that the meetings keep people in the loop and on the track. But the frequent meetings result in breaking their daily cycle and leave them with a sense of apprehension and insecurity.
It’s also the fact that the meetings are not the only medium of communication. The project manager must understand the need for the information that can be obtained through the periodic schedule and confirm that the two-way communication loop is well prepared in the course of the project plan.
When the project manager is resorting to numerous meetings in-between the work schedule to discuss, the team is undoubtedly wasting time that can be utilized for task completion. One can opt for sessions that are short and precise, besides the focus on a productive meeting rather than just a meeting. Value every single minute and watch these project management myths burst into flames.
The recommended tools are also available, which would put together your project plans from start to finish. Get Things Done maximizes the sense of the structure of your work methods. Also helps you simplify your project management activities and hinges upon intelligence and directly have an impact on performance.
Myth 6: Staying within budget and deadline is the barometer for success.
The most commonly used sentence by the project manager is “better done than perfect”. As mentioned, this is true only to some extent. The outlook about the project’s delay that goes beyond the estimated schedule is considered as a let-down and regarded as an unsuccessful project.
Assure that the estimates are precise and mindful of the budget. The project manager should spend worth the time to identify the risk and probabilities, document expectations and assumptions, besides following considerable contingencies would give the total view of the deadline.
If you are looking at ways to increase efficiency and balance the need to deliver client projects on time and budget- you can check with GetThingsDone.io.
Myth 7: Multitasking and wearing several hats is better than doing one thing
When you attempt to multitask, it means activation of many functions at a go. Neuroscientists have consistently debunked this kind of role. i.e., your concentrated efforts deplete memory cells through chemicals in the brain turning void, according to Daniel Levitin, professor of behavioural neuroscience at McGill University.
The other classic example of the Ellen show and the way she explains multitasking. The research suggests that focus on one activity at an instant is far more productive than taking many together.
Get Things Done — It is a SaaS-based metric-driven tool that helps you complete your work precisely by focusing on one activity at a time, as multitasking is a lie.
Myth 8: You do not need Tech support
Our lives without technology is a nightmare these days. Yet, some project managers only go so far when it comes to leveraging tech support in their planning efforts. Project management software today offers a lot and increase the speed of specific processes. From collaborative to project planning tools- the project manager must gather data at best to make the right decisions along with the ability to stay without prejudice, foresight and sustain of the business goals, rather than getting caught up in the micro needs of the moment.
Myth 9: Project Management software is going to cut through your pockets heavily
The projects come in various size and shapes, and in the environment of doing more with less. The need for managing a portfolio or as a team member is essential in finding methods and well brought out practices in the effect of using project management tools and software.
Having a headway, the project deliverables require tools and a range of pre-built templates are the critical aspects of the business. Apart, the expansion of the resource is evaluated necessary, which means that successful project teams exercise to plan, track and manage projects, that is possible today with the availability of cloud-based, economical solutions.
It’s a myth that project management software is abruptly high in price. If proper evaluation and study in place, the tools and software are tremendously valuable that could accomplish best in the business.
Final Words
Today’s changing environment and complex organizational needs demand a flexible project management systems, which are becoming more accessible, powerful and affordable. As the buzz intensifies, professionals hope to succeed as project managers should possess the collaborative skills, transparent, adaptive with state of confidence to execute.
The grounding rules of the project managers can best demonstrate their support transformation through their actions, keeping away from misconceptions and not blindly adhere to myths like those discussed above. Though exiting and its lots of work and the project deal is a reason to finish what you have started. | https://medium.com/get-things-done/top-9-project-management-myths-and-how-to-avoid-them-36841e96da8a | ['Mugdha Toro'] | 2020-12-23 15:31:54.704000+00:00 | ['Project Management Tool', 'Get Things Done', 'Project Management', 'Prioritization', 'Projects'] |
You seem to be getting it. You started off saying | You seem to be getting it. You started off saying
it is illegal to consider race, sex, national origin, age, disability, parental status or Veteran status when making these decisions.
Now you understand that, under Affirmative Action programs, race may be and has been considered.
I think that basically negates the point you were trying to make in your original essay.
In your original discussion and subsequent reply, you seemed at pains to deny, for example, that an Asian American with 1500 SATs is being denied admission to Harvard, while a Black American with 1200 SATs is getting acceptance letters and scholarship offers. Somehow this is negated by your observation that a White applicant got a job a half century ago from having what you assert was functionally equivalent to Affirmative Action without the fancy wrapper.
There may be good reasons for Affirmative Action today and you may want to bring them up in subsequent essays. But your argument drifts away from reality when you start arguing disparate treatment is not occurring or that it is illegal despite the Bakke or Harvard case rulings which say it is legal to consider race as long as you don’t have actual quotas.
In any event, you now seem to understand your original statements about Affirmative Action were way overstated: race is considered and it’s not true to say it isn’t. | https://medium.com/@caleb-mars/you-seem-to-be-getting-it-dfa3745651e7 | ['Caleb Mars'] | 2020-12-03 23:14:27.753000+00:00 | ['Affirmative Action', 'Civil Rights', 'Asian American'] |
A New Christmas model | A New Christmas model
So it’s not letting up, it continues its relentless, restless pursuit of our happiness! I am with my daughter, son-in-law and grandson: I had to choose a side, there’s no option for having it all! So we adjust to a smaller world, less lit, less colour but always full of love!
Looking back, I realise that Christmas’s have been getting smaller for many years; as the children have grown older, as extended family have move further away, as political and economic pressures have shrunk my world. The big Christmas get togethers, with turkey and trimmings, Christmas pudding and mince pies, it’s no longer the norm. We tend to huddle in smaller groups, we dissect along lines of love and familiarity. I have chosen my tribe, the ones who love in equal measure, the ones who are essential even in the shrunken world of covid.
What’s your new norm? Do you still hanker (an odd word but it sums up that feeling of need) for what you thought you needed in ‘the old dispensation’, the rituals, the ceremonies, the safe tradition that made you believe in elves and miracles? I still believe in the miracles, I refuse to lose my optimism, my hope eternal for without it there would be no air to breathe, there would be no new model for Christmas 2020. With hope, I know 2021 can only get better!
Wishing you a joyous season of love and Grace. | https://medium.com/@beverleyabrahams/a-new-christmas-model-493578316955 | ['Beverley Abrahams'] | 2020-12-24 11:52:09.705000+00:00 | ['Lockdown', 'Christmas'] |
You own every second that this world could give — Live! | Hey YOU,
Look at you! Going in circles again…
But hey, it’s alright. You’re alright. Let it go. Let your thoughts fly with the wind. Tell your hurts and misery away.
Remember, every single waking day is a present, a chance, an opportunity to see better in things. To refresh your dispositions. To unload the fog that’s blurring your heart. And it’s okay to do it slowly until you find yourself again.
This world is cruel, but this world is larger with beauty, and you need to find that balance in between. And it’s okay not to be okay.
But stop going in circles. Stop looking back. Stop finding answers in places you shouldn’t have questions in the first place.
Deep in that soul is where joy and happiness are rooted. Dig it back!
Find it back in you, only you! That’s where your home is. A wide ocean and tight emotion that only belongs to you.
Take yourself back home, back to where you belong. To your heart. To your soul.
Stop feeling sorry for the mess you fool yourself around. Keep going. Just keep going! What you are becoming matters more than what you have yet become.
Take all the time you need. To breath. To let go and live again.
You own every second that this world could give — just LIVE!
Remember your life song?
Hope when you take that jump You don’t fear the fall. Hope when the water rises You built the wall. Hope when the crowd screams out It's screaming your name. Hope if everybody runs You choose to stay. Hope that you fall in love And it hurts so bad. The only way you can know You give it all you have. And I hope that you don’t suffer But take the pain. Hope when the moment comes You’ll say… You did it all!
Coz yes! You own every second that this world could give. You saw so many places and the things you did. And with every broken bone — you can swear you lived!
So what are you screaming out? What are you acting out of your blues? LIVE!
Live in joy and pain. What is life if it’s not lived in irony. Raise your cup and own yourself again.
Always,
Me xxxx | https://medium.com/@charmoot/you-own-every-second-that-this-world-could-give-live-5464a5ca9bf | ['Charm Suarez'] | 2021-04-20 08:47:08.916000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Soul Searching', 'Live Life', 'Live', 'Random Toughts'] |
I believe | My Manifesto for a Moral Revolution — Part 2
This is part II of my manifesto written in response to the question posed by Jacqueline Novogratz and her Acumen team in the class Path of Moral Leadership.
What is the “impossible” you dare to imagine as “possible”?
What is the story about the future or an alternate reality your manifesto will tell?
What will help you sustain and thrive throughout this work?
These questions are based on her book ‘ Manifesto for a Moral Revolution ‘.
The manifesto was the last deliverable in 10 weeks of work in the company of so many others. I had opted in to the program searching for the language that would help me make a more effective case.
My mission: Offer hope to Generation Z. Make a difference in the climate crisis.
I am a dot turned out to be Part I of this conversation.
Here is Part II:
This is what I believe
- that we are capable of amazing possibility.
The world — in all its glory, dirt and grime — has been handed down to my generation by all the hundreds of previous generations who battled through despair, disease, war, and so much more.
What do we do with it? How do we accept this gift?
Do we tie a ribbon on it, and hand it forward to the generation after us?
Or do we open it, take a hammer to it and offer up the shards?
I believe
I believe we are capable of generosity and possibility.
I believe that the generations coming after us are filled with imagination, moral courage and a passion for righting wrongs and that we are here to empower and encourage them.
I believe that we will create a new tomorrow that protects our environment.
As a society before us challenged the morality of keeping slaves though that had been a tradition for centuries across multiple cultures, we will not accept an economic structure that demands that we pillage the earth’s most precious resources purely to sustain our national economies.
Instead, we will protect all the resources, particularly the water and clean air.
I believe we can invent the technologies that allow us to indulge in the advances of modern science and technology, but make the move to a greener use of energy.
We can feed the Earth’s growing population.
We can find meaningful engagement for each human so they contribute to society as a whole, embracing robotics and AI as our ancestors embraced the plough, made bigger, not less, by technology.
I believe in nurturing the generation that follows us with compassion, but also charging them with the responsibility to care for Mother Earth, not to squander its resources.
I trust and I know
I trust in the power of connection — families, communities, classes like Acumen & Akimbo that connect like-minded souls to each other so that we are able to foster a mindset of abundance and possibility. I am sustained by my connection to humanity and to nature: to the sunrise, the melting snow, the enduring cycle of tides and daffodils that bloom in the spring. Nature teaches us the resilience of rebirth.
I know that this world will survive past my race. So I believe in the Earth and place my trust in my generation and the generations after me to respect the Earth as a living being that pushes back when hurt but embraces when whole.
I will do what is within my power — stretching that capability to all its might — to make a green and wonderful world available to the next 7 generations, to gift to them as was gifted to me: the wonder, awe and amazement at what Nature can give us.
And in doing so, I honour the memories and sacrifices of the generations before, as well as the powers that created this beautiful Earth and bequeath to the generations that will follow.
This also exists as podcast episode 49 on my podcast Tilt the Future:
What do you believe?
What would you write in your manifesto?
CREDIT & THANKS; DEFINITIONS & RESOURCES: | https://medium.com/@karenadesouza/i-believe-a7e2a68212c1 | ['Karena De Souza'] | 2021-02-06 20:31:53.119000+00:00 | ['Manifesto', 'Gen Z', 'Acumen', 'Future Of Work', 'Climate Action'] |
The Past, Present, and Future of Scrollytelling | This piece specifically, and the proliferation of scrollytelling more generally, caused some people to wonder whether it was all too much–both the growth of the use of scrollytelling across the web and the overuse of “eye-candy” effects. People were also asking themselves questions like, “Should we all be doing things like this now?” And, “How can we institutionalize this?” And “Why would we?”
Many started to wonder if we had arrived at “peak scrollytelling.” Some people’s open questions turned to backlash. One of the most famous expressions of this backlash came in Robert Kosara’s aptly titled blog post, “The Scrollytelling Scourge.” In it, he laid out some of the ways scrollytelling goes wrong, including common misuse (in particular, “scrolljacking,” which is when scrolling causes unexpected behavior and is a widely accepted UX faux pas), awkwardness, and misalignment between the form and the story being told. He and others have argued that scrollytelling may lead to some eye-catching visualizations in the Times and elsewhere, but is often buggy, inaccessible on older devices, and distracting from the story at hand.
“If we need to create a moment of pause or if the goal is to allow comparisons and/or show change over time (showing statefulness), then it can be very helpful.” —David Sleight, design director at ProPublica
In hindsight, 2015 was a false summit. Today, it really feels like we may have actually, finally arrived at peak scrollytelling. It’s still all over the Times, is used left and right by everyone in data storytelling and visualization (including me), and is still very much a key feature of many award-winning data- and information-driven stories.
Why has scrollytelling ̶l̶a̶s̶t̶e̶d̶dominated the way it has? Like Spool pointed out, it’s just a good default mode for navigating content. But it’s more than that.
“If you put a neon sign on data, people pay attention. There are lots of ways to put neon signs on data. Scrollytelling is one of them,” data visualization researcher and practitioner Stephanie Evergreen told me. In other words, it’s about engagement.
You need to capture your audience’s attention and point them to what’s important. And scrollytelling does a great job of this — bringing content to life at just the moment you’re ready for it, as you’re consuming the relevant information.
There is a ton of research on humans’ limited ability to retain information, cognitive load, and how that affects processing information. For instance, we can process three to five chunks of information but we know that drops even lower when we’re stressed and/or busy. (Pandemic … hello!) Scrollytelling helps solve this problem, Evergreen says, because it’s about spoon-feeding our audience. “It sounds like infantalizing them but it’s not,” she adds, saying we need to understand them and their needs, and acknowledging our cognitive limitations allows us to choose methods of content delivery to maximize our results.
Even Robert Kosara, who wrote about the “Scrollytelling Scourge,” has started to come around. “There’s a lot less jerkiness and scrolling just plain not working right than there used to be,” he told me recently. “I still believe that for pieces where the story is told in discrete steps, the interaction should be discrete. Like maybe tapping the screen to go to the next step, or a single swipe per step.” So while maybe he wouldn’t call scrollytelling a “scourge” any more, it seems safe to say he still isn’t exactly a fan.
David Sleight, ProPublica’s design director, shared that his publication is “neutral to positive on scrollytelling — but it’s a question of where and why. If we need to create a moment of pause or if the goal is to allow comparisons and/or show change over time (showing statefulness), then it can be very helpful.” He pointed to the Bloomberg “What Is Code” piece as “an all-guns blazing example of cool whiz-bang stuff.” Work like that and Snowfall, he suggested, should be embraced “like your R&D lab for everyday articles.” They’re opportunities for discovering interesting things that can be applied, but maybe shouldn’t drive every decision, every piece, going forward.
The New York Times is largely credited with inventing scrollytelling on “Snowfall” and “now they have a hammer so everything is a nail. But it’s just a hack to tell stories in a way to take advantage of the the DOM. But is it the right and best way to tell the story?” asks Spool.
It’s a fair question.
Whither goes scrollytelling, in UX generally, and data storytelling specifically? Will it always be this widespread and popular?
“All trends are pendulums — it’s just a matter of how long it takes for the pendulum to swing. I don’t think we’ve hit peak yet because it’s not point-and-click easy — there is no WordPress plugin yet. Once that happens, we’ll have a year at most before the backlash,” says Evergreen.
There actually are plugins that create limited scrollytelling effects — animating in gallery images as they scroll into view. Even with these plug-ins, it’s early days on the tools front. Tableau and Flourish have “storytelling” features that are clickable steppers, and Flourish just recently published a short piece explaining how to turn this into a scrollytelling experience. And if you’ve been paying attention, Flourish almost single-handedly killed racing bar charts by making them so easy to create — they’ve been banned on Reddit’s DataArt subreddit and ALL FLOURISH VISUALIZATIONS have been banned on the Data is Beautiful subreddit simply because of the viral explosion of racing bar charts! Where goes Flourish …
This is the power of the democratization of data visualization tools, which Evergreen alludes to. And she’s not alone. Our own Elijah Meeks has talked about the “Third Wave of Data Visualization,” which includes the convergence of the ways we communicate with data and the tools we employ. This is made possible, in part, because the tools are in more people’s hands and they’re getting easier and easier to use. And Diana Yoo, data visualization head at Capital One, talks about the “Democratization of Data” to describe the incredible opportunity all organizations have when all of their people have access to data and can consume and even create visualizations that empower them to make better decisions.
Sleight doesn’t think this will necessarily lead to a backlash. ProPublica is building some scrollytelling features into their CMS—things like full-bleed photo title openers with crossfades, scrolling modules with triggers for stepped graphics. But maybe a coder will still have to step in to program that graphic to react to the scroll triggers. And, he points out that CSS handles a lot of the scrollytelling effects already — sticky positioning and transitions can be done much more easily now than when Javascript had to do all the heavy lifting, contributing to that democratization process.
“We’re putting more burden on the user,” Spool says, “and that’s not always a good idea.” He compared scrollytelling to video where all decisions are made by an editor about the pace and extent of an experience. What I think he’s getting at is that people love passive experiences like video and animation. We don’t want to drive the story, we want to experience it. You may remember the predictions from the early dot com days about the proliferation and eventual dominance of interactive stories where users could choose their own plot pathways and endings. That never took off. It turns out we didn’t want it!
Sleight adds that there are cross-platform issues to consider as well. He has to pay close attention to how a piece will perform on Apple News’ and Flipboard’s proprietary interfaces. This poses technical challenges that could prevent scrollytelling from taking over everything OR, alternatively, perhaps those platforms will adopt scrollytelling as a norm.
“The thing is, scrollytelling isn’t about the scrolling anyway. It’s just a very realistic content consumption experience that stems directly from how we interact with computers.”
I think scrollytelling is here to stay. Humans crave realistic experiences. Parallax is still popular, despite overuse and resistance in the early days, because it mimics reality. Things that are closer seem to move at a different speed compared to things that are far away. So seeing this effect feels “right” — even when it’s wrong (the background scrolls faster), we get a momentary “Ooh, interesting” moment.
The thing is, scrollytelling isn’t about the scrolling anyway. It’s just a very realistic content consumption experience that stems directly from how we interact with computers. We can only consume one thing at a time. As we consume chunks of content, we want relevant supporting information in context. Scrolling is the way we place this content in front of ourselves for consumption.
Spool was right to point out that humans love passive experiences like video. But I would argue that we get interrupted by the phone ringing, and we sometimes don’t have time for a five-minute linear experience. We want to skip ahead, and we want to see what we’re skipping, not just blindly jump ahead 60 seconds hoping for the best.
Scrollytelling is actually a perfect mimicry of video with the added ability to slow it down or speed it up, all while seeing every frame along the way. It’s like highly performant video scrubbing where we don’t miss a beat. Things happen in a linear way, over time, one thing at a time, just like reality but better, because we have some control over the pace and direction.
I have to admit that I love scrollytelling — I’m completely biased. But I was curious to understand how others feel about the technique. So, in addition to interviewing the experts quoted above, I ran a (not) HIGHLY SCIENTIFIC survey of Data Visualization Society members on the internal DVS Slack channel, asking “What do you think about scrollytelling?” Out of 71 responses, 80% of respondents chose “pretty cool” or “LOVE LOVE LOVE.” 14% chose “meh”, 6% chose “not enamored” and just one person chose “KILL KILL KILL”. You can debate the likert scale options — they were snarky, but fair!
Scrollytelling done right adheres to the UX “principle of least astonishment” created by Mike Cowlishaw, which says “if a necessary feature has a high astonishment factor, it may be necessary to redesign the feature.” “Snowfall” may have astonished readers when it came out, but today, most scrollytelling no longer provokes the same wonder. It is the most natural thing we can do. When something comes to life as we scroll, it’s “engaging” and “interesting,” sure, but not “astonishing.”
Now, if and when hardware changes and scrolling is no longer the way we consume content, maybe scrollytelling will fade away. Say the “next big thing” is augmented reality (we’ve been saying this for a long time, I know). Maybe as you move through the world and consume content, events will be triggered, content will light up and animate and come to life — your movements will automatically trigger “a neon sign on it,” as Evergreen phrases it — but scrollytelling will live on, maybe renamed “walkytelling” or “lookytelling” or something hopefully even more memorable.
Bill Shander has been a data visualization practitioner for 25 years and also teaches data storytelling and visualization workshops to organizations around the world, and teaches online classes on LinkedIn Learning. He is also the Data Visualization Society’s Communications Director. | https://medium.com/nightingale/the-past-present-and-future-of-scrollytelling-10dd37dc1003 | ['Bill Shander'] | 2020-08-25 15:22:23.708000+00:00 | ['Web Design', 'Data Journalism', 'Scrollytelling', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Storytelling'] |
Datadog IPO & S-1 Teardown. Datadog S1 Teardown | Like our articles? Sign up for our Public Comps newsletter here
I worked in venture for 4 years at Insight Partners ($20 billion AUM software focused fund) and Signalfire ($800m AUM) where I focused on investing in growth-stage SaaS companies.
It was no secret that Datadog was one of the best private SaaS companies. Datadog’s S-1 made me realize what a truly amazing business it is.
In this post, we summarize Datadog’s S-1. Our philosophy at PublicComps.com (SaaS metrics for Public Companies) is that numbers don’t mean anything by themselves. So in this blog post, we benchmark Datadog’s metrics against its competitors and SaaS peers to contextualize why Datadog is such a phenomenal business.
Datadog benchmarked against the Public SaaS companies we track.
Problem
Prior to Datadog, the co-founders Olivier and Alexis led the development team and the technical operations team respectively at Wireless Generation. The database the two had to work with and maintain was called “Datadog” — hence the name of the company. Alexis and Olivier realized that there was a lot of friction between the developers who were writing code and the technical operations team who were making sure the code ran properly. There wasn’t a common set of tools or metrics that both the developers and operations team could look at to monitor the health of the same system they were all using. Was it the code or was it the test or infrastructure that was to blame when the websites slowed for users?
Additionally, in 2010 when Oliver and Alexis started Datadog, companies were just starting to move move from legacy on-premise IT to public & private cloud products like AWS. Because companies were starting to deploy updates to their websites in days instead of months, teams needed a way to observe their cloud infrastructure in real-time (“observability”). To complicate things further, there was a shift from monolithic code bases to distributed systems that leveraged micro services and containers which made monitoring the thousands of servers and hosts very painful for the IT teams and developers.
Product Overview
Datadog is cloud-native software product that allows IT teams, developers, and business teams to collaborate, monitor and analyze the health and performance of cloud infrastructure and applications to make sure their digital products are working properly.
Additionally, Datadog claims to be the first company to allow end-to-end monitoring and analytics by providing products across infrastructure & application performance monitoring, log management, user experience monitoring, and network performance monitoring. The company focuses on providing a unified view of a company’s entire tech stack in one product vs metrics living in different dashboards or solutions.
Timeline of Datadog’s various product lines from its S-1
2010 : Founded in 2010
: Founded in 2010 2012 : Launched Datadog Infrastructure Monitoring
: Launched Datadog Infrastructure Monitoring 2014 : Began monitoring containers
: Began monitoring containers 2016 : Began monitoring serverless environments
: Began monitoring serverless environments 2017 : Launched Datadog APM
: Launched Datadog APM 2018 : Launched Datadog Log Management and Analytics
: Launched Datadog Log Management and Analytics 2019 : Launched Datadog Synthetics
: Launched Datadog Synthetics 2019: Announced beta availability of Datadog Network Performance Monitoring and Real User Monitoring
Key Product Highlights
Easy to Integrate: At its core, Datadog integrates seamlessly to the entire tech stack ranging from cloud vendors (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud), databases (Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB), automation tools/source control (CircleCI, Bitbucket, Gitlab, Github), other monitoring services (New Relic), containers (Docker, Kubernetes, etc), bug tracking (Jira), etc. With the 350+ integrations, Datadog is able to pull and surface all the metrics that matter for the different services that make cloud applications and infrastructure work. The value for customers is that they’re able to integrate data sources or vendors in minutes versus requiring engineering resources that could take hours to add, say, MongoDB or Kubernetes as services to track.
Dashboard of Metrics: Datadog allows teams to put the core metrics that matter for their infrastructure & application onto a single dashboard. Instead of having to dig into specific metrics that different vendors spit out, Datadog allows users to see what’s going on at all times with their entire tech stack. The company provides an easy and simple way to drag and drop metrics onto a dashboard. Because of their log management product, Datadog is also powerful enough for developers to drill into specific logs to debug why a specific service became so slow.
Collaboration: The team at Datadog really emphasize the importance of breaking the traditional silos that Alexis and Olivier dealt with at Wireless Generation between the IT operations and developers. Because Datadog is a single dashboard that integrates across the entire tech stack, developers, IT, business users can investigate collaboratively and have a joint understanding of the health of their application & infrastructure. When there’s a spike in, say, query latency, someone on the IT team can make a comment and notify a developer and share what the IT team is seeing.
Cloud Agnostic: It’s worth noting that while AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Azure offer some sort of cloud monitoring solutions (e.g AWS has AWS Cloud Watch), Datadog is cloud agnostic and works across cloud vendors.
Alerts: Datadog integrates with 3rd party issue & incidence response tools like Pagerduty and communication platforms like Slack. In the spirit of collaboration, Datadog can automatically notify a developer or IT team on Slack if there’s a performance problem and allow users to trigger or resolve problems within Pagerduty or Servicenow.
Business Model
Datadog charges a subscription fee for its various products on a monthly or annual contract basis. Majority of Datadog’s revenue is subscription software sales so revenue run rate ~ annual recurring revenue (ARR). It’s worth noting that because Datadog doesn’t charge by seat, the company incentivizes companies to add more IT members, developers or business users to the product which drives adoption within organizations.
Go-To-Market (GTM)
Datadog has a highly efficient go-to-market model. In its S-1, Datadog talks a lot its land-and-expand business model focusing on a product that’s easy to adopt (hence the many out-of-the-box integrations Datadog offers) and with a short time to value. Not surprisingly, Datadog has a self-service and free trial model which allows any customer to integrate Datadog into various data sources for 14 days without requiring a credit card — reducing the friction of signing up and getting value right away.
Additionally, Datadog has an inside sales team and enterprise sales force. The customer success team is in charge of renewals and upsells. As we’ll see in the next section, the efficient GTM and land-and-expand nature of its cloud offering has lead to best-in-class payback period and net dollar retention.
Business Performance & Financials
In analyzing Datadog, we focus on the metrics that matter most for SaaS companies: Revenue, Revenue Growth Rate, Gross Margin, Retention, Payback Period, and Profitability/Capital Efficiency. Check out my article “Top 5 SaaS Metrics that VCs Look At” to understand the how & why behind the metrics.
Revenue: At $332m ARR, Datadog is definitely on the smaller side relative to all Public SaaS companies (e.g Salesforce is $16b annual revenue run rate) but DDOG in the same $300–500m ARR range as other high growth SaaS companies like Crowdstrike, Zoom, Elastic, Alteryx, MongoDb.
Datadog added $52.7m in its most recent quarter and in the last 4 quarters its added $150m ARR which is quite impressive. Further, Datadog is seeing an increase in net new ARR in the last 4 quarters ($52.7m net new ARR June ’19 up from $33.8m Mar ’19) which is always a positive sign of continued growth. | https://medium.com/public-comps/datadog-s-1-teardown-35934690e76f | ['Jon Ma'] | 2020-03-13 22:36:24.667000+00:00 | ['Datadog', 'S1', 'Metrics', 'IPO', 'SaaS'] |
Top 10 Tech Trends For 2021 | This year I’m focusing my “predictions” on broader technology trends that I strongly recommend you focus on if you are a Javascript Developer for frontend, backend or fullstack. So here we go!
Top Tech Trends for 2021 banner image
Typescript
If you are writing Javascript right now and you haven’t learned Typescript it’s exactly the right time (maybe even a little past time.) If you were waiting for a winner in the Typescript, Flow, JSDoc debate, the proof that Typescript has won is out there in plain view. The big open source projects are written in Typescript now, and from my experience the large commercial projects are already in it or moving to it. Angular is Typescript out of the box.
IMHO, the best way to get into Typescript is to take an existing Javascript project you are already familiar with, maybe a little side project you’ve been working on, or a proof of concept at work, and port it to Typescript. That will give you familiarity with the syntax and the tooling, without having to also solve novel code problems at the same time. This is how I do it on the Converting To Typescript series. We take some pretty simple Javascript code, and port it to Typescript step-by-step.
Most of my Blue Collar Coder videos will be Typescript in 2021, and I’m going to practice, practice, practice it all year long.
Seriously, y’all, if you take one thing away from reading this it’s this; learn Typescript. Jobs that list Typescript as a “nice to have” in 2021 are going to require it in 2022.
Video Version
If you’d rather watch this on video, you can do that too!
Micro-State Managers
Redux was already losing mindshare even before React hooks came along. Too much boilerplate. Redux Sagas ended up making code complex and hard to follow. Then in 2018 we got hooks and global state went from being the enemy to being a long lost friend. It would nice if the story ended there, but the reality is that useState and useContext while awesome, have efficiency issues in large React trees because everything from the Provider down needs to update on a change of the value.
This means that if you have state that is shared in different parts of the React tree then you’ll need some management solution for that. Revenge of the Redux then? Hardly. There are lots of new great micro-state manager options out there that can give you global state with nowhere near the Redux headaches. Some examples include Valtio, Jotai, Recoil, and Zustand (which also has the best landing page evaaahhh).
I’ve covered a bunch of these on my channel. And you should try it out in your own project or try one of my examples just to get a feel for how much easier these micro-state managers can be, and to give you some architectural ideas for the next time you have a need for global state management.
Bonus extra: XState is a really interesting alternative state management system based on state-machines. It’s really interesting if you have projects that have very specific UI states, or server states, it works there too. It’s also got a super sweet state visualizer that worth the price of entry all on its own.
GraphQL
GraphQL just turned five! Can you believe it? Now you could argue that GraphQL should have taken over by now. But five years into the “architectural style” of REST (it’s not a standard) we were still using XML as the data interchange format instead of JSON.
The GraphQL ecosystem had a great year in 2020 and it’s poised to have an even better one in 2021. Some hilights include the Hasura server that can put a GraphQL API on any RDMS with the touch of a button. The graphql/nexus library that came out this year that makes building in code much easier and outputs type bindings for Typescript (yet another reason to learn Typescript). And a GraphQL code generator that can create Typescript interfaces for severs you don’t own.
If you want to try out GraphQL yourself right now, you can pick an API from this list and just give it a whirl. Here is a fun weather API you can run queries on for free, no keys, no codes, just give it a try.
The Blue Collar Coder channel is going to have a full GraphQL tip-to-tail series starting early next year that will take you from learning about what GraphQL is an how it fits into everything, through making your first query, and all the way to building your own server and using advanced features like subscriptions.
Utility First CSS
I think there is a good debate to be had about whether the approach of a CSS libraries that have a class per selector makes a lot of sense, but one thing is for sure, the utility first Tailwind CSS library is insanely popular and here to stay.
To get started with Tailwind I recommend a video I just published on using Twin.Macro which is a very easy way of configuring a CRA (Create React Application) to use Tailwind efficiently. It will provide you with a great starting point to continue your exploration of this fascinating approach to styling and layout.
If you are looking for something similar to Tailwind, but that’s a little more React-centric, try Chakra-UI. To add margin to the top of a box in Chakra all you need to do is <Box mt={3}>...</Box> and it adds a nice margin to the top, so tweaking your layout is as simple as adding properties.
Ecmascript Modules
Ecmascript modules are getting a lot of play because folks hate node_modules and npm more broadly. I get it. The node_modules directory can be gynormous.
BTW, if you find your disk filling up from that run npx npkill in your home directory and it will find all the node_modules directories and optionally delete them.
Ecmascript modules are actually native to the browser and have been for a while. If you add type="module" to your script tag you can use import statements natively in the code to bring in Ecmascript modules. And the same thing works with Deno and also powers the popular Vite system to bootstrap Vue applications.
This may be something that we see more in development and less in production because there are efficiency concerns about the number of HTTP requests to import the code onto the page. But regardless, this is something you should try out at least once in 2021. Just give deno a go. It’s really easy and it leverage 99% of what you already are familiar with in node.
Micro-Frontends
There are two primary use cases I see for Micro-Frontends in 2021:
Reuse between Micro-Site applications - If you’ve broken up your monolithic app into a bunch of micro-sites and you are frustrating yourself with npm sharing, Micro-Frontends are a great solution for that.
If you’ve broken up your monolithic app into a bunch of micro-sites and you are frustrating yourself with npm sharing, Micro-Frontends are a great solution for that. Widgets - Micro-Frontends are basically widgets from the 2000s. If you want to have some packaged up code your customers can use to embed some UI on their page with your data, Micro-Frontends are the way to get that done.
The easiest way to make Micro-Frontends is using Module Federation, a new feature in Webpack 5. With Module Federation you can expose code (and its dependencies) from an application without removing it from the application, or creating any kind of wrapper code. You just expose it from one application then consume it in another using import statements. It’s as easy as that.
What’s even better is when the application exposing the components updates then any client of that code will immediately update as well. That means live code sharing across your site, or between you and your customers.
Zack Jackson and I have written a book, Practical Module Federation, that you can read and learn about how to use this new Webpack feature in your application. And the Blue Collar Coder channel has an entire playlist dedicated to Module Federation.
Web Performance
2020 was a huge year for e-Commerce, and it’s probably going to stay that way even as the quarantines (fingers crossed) lift. Anyone with e-Commerce experience knows that extra seconds means lower conversions, and lower conversions mean fewer sales. So getting the page to be faster, while still supporting the same feature set, is huge.
You can make yourself invaluable to future employers in the e-Commerce or content space by learning, at the very least, how to do bundle splitting and lazy loading as well as learning what performance vital measures you want to track.
WebAssembly
WebAssembly has gone from a joke idea (at least to me) into something very real world, particularly with the release of Microsoft’s Blazor framework that makes it easy to develop web applications in a Vue-like style using C#, but with the compiled output being WebAssembly code rather than Javascript. It’s an amazing framework that I’ve covered on the Blue Collar Coder channel.
But it’s not just Microsoft, it’s open source too. Now you can take your Typescript skills (yes, again, another reason to learn Typescript) and use them with AssemblyScript to build WebAssembly code using a familiar syntax. That used to be the kind of thing you could only do with Rust or Go, now it’s Typescript too!
If you are in the B2B space, in the kind of company that used to use Macromedia’s Flex, or one that uses ASP on the Microsoft stack, you’ll want to invest sometime in learning WebAssembly tools this year.
Unified tooling
The Node ecosystem is great, but because it’s grown up organically and that can be a hassle when we waste a bunch of time just getting all the build tools to work together. And so we are seeing the advent of projects like Rome and Deno that have all-in-one toolchains for compiling, running, linting and testing Javascript and Typescript code. Deno now even allows you to compile code into native executables.
If you are a backend developer I encourage you to, at the very least, check out Deno in 2021 just to see what’s up with Ecmascript modules and what it’s like to run without node_modules and compile to a native executable.
Monorepos
Love them or hate them, monorepos aren’t going anywhere soon, and that’s because the nature of the node ecosystem encourages the development and use of smaller packages that work in combination as opposed to monolithic applications. And monorepos eases the development of a set of related libraries.
Yarn workspaces made monorepos a lot easier, and now npm@7 supports them as well. Meaning that support for monorepos is baked into our package management tooling. You can layer lerna on top of that to add package versioning utilities on top of that.
If you are going to be coding in a professional setting you should invest some time in learning workspaces and making sure you know how to link libraries together so that you get live updating during development.
Bonus: Static Deployments
I stressed static deployments in my 2020 video and it’s just as important now to understand this architectural benefits of this old approach made new. Static deployment means pages that are served fast, and sites that don’t need server monitoring.
With the release of NextJS 9.3, and its subsequent releases, developing an application that deploys statically is easier than every. Now you can choose, page by page, which pages will be client side rendered, server side rendered or statically generated. They make it super easy.
I have a video on Blue Collar Coder that goes into using all three deployment models in NextJS. You could use that as a starting point to try out static, or you could take an existing Create React App or NextJS application and deploy it statically to gauge the performance and stability benefits.
Bonus bonus: Dark mode and a styling change
One prediction I know will come true in 2021 is the growth in popularity of dark mode. If you make a content site, in 2021 you are going to have to allow for dark mode if you haven’t already. Some frameworks (including Tailwind 2.0) now support dark mode. Check out this excellent article on automatic dark mode detection and investigate whether your UI toolkit of choice handles the dark mode switch automatically.
I also think there is a styling change coming. The “flat look” has had a good long run, but there is a decent chance of a coming style change with Neumorphism and Glassmorphism being top contenders.
It’s an exciting time to be frontend, backend TS/JS, or fullstack development! Who knows what 2021 will bring. But investing in your own skillset is never time ill-spent. | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/top-10-tech-trends-for-2021-48a258d1d5f | ['Jack Herrington'] | 2020-12-31 16:56:43.901000+00:00 | ['GraphQL', 'React', 'JavaScript', 'Typescript', 'Micro Frontends'] |
Top Altcoins for 2020 | Top Altcoins for 2020
By Mina Down on The Capital
The cryptocurrency market is heating up and many are calling 2020 Bitcoin’s next “bull run” year.
But out of the thousands of cryptocurrencies available, it is hard to know which have a future without putting a lot of time and energy into researching them. I have done this research and in this article, I highlight 11 Altcoins I think have the greatest potential for growth in 2020. Please consider using my referral link when signing up for any new exchanges.
Ethereum (ETH)
ethereum was created in 2015 and it remains my top choice of altcoin. ETH has massive potential and has been called “the most undervalued crypto on the planet.” ETH is incredibly popular for two reasons. First, its smart contract technology makes it extremely versatile. Second, the tools it offers make it easy for developers to build decentralized applications on its network. The use cases for Ethereum are vast and include this like banking and financial contracts, records and data management, prediction markets, escrow, and identity management and privacy. Ethereum transaction time is fast compared to Bitcoin and for the past several years multiple new coins have claimed to be “ETH killers” but have come up short.
In 2017, Ethereum hype was at its peak and people started to wonder if it was going to overtake Bitcoin. This was dubbed “the flippening.” However, this didn't happen and it seemed people gave up hope the flippening would happen. However, recent innovations like tokenized Bitcoin make it possible — at least in theory — for Ethereum to capture a significant portion of Bitcoin transactions.
Buy ETH on Binance or Kucoin
Chainlink (LINK)
Chainlink is an oracle network that allows blockchain smart contracts to connect to off-blockchain data in a decentralized way. “Oracles” are feeds that connect blockchains to off-blockchain data. This can include anything from commodity prices to flu symptom data to the weather. Connecting smart contracts to this type of real-world data is critical for the widespread adoption of blockchain technology. Without access to real-world data, smart contracts can only use on-chain data, i.e. data stored on the blockchain (this is why so many of the early Dapps have been gambling-related).
While there are oracles that already allow blockchains to access data from the outside world, they are usually centralized, like Synthetix. Chainlink is distinct in offering a decentralized oracle service.
Whether Chainlink will definitely figure out how to connect blockchains to off-chain data in a decentralized way is still to be seen. But the importance of oracles to mainstream adoption of blockchains is huge. Linking blockchains with external data are necessary and doing so in a decentralized way is the most secure, which is why I like this project.
Buy LINK on Binance or Kucoin
IoTeX (IOTX)
IoTeX is building a privacy-oriented blockchain platform based on the idea of integrating the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT refers to digital interaction beyond computers and personal devices to include all the things around us with digital capabilities. By 2022, the number of IoT devices is expected to surpass 50 billion. This mass of digital devices will need secure methods of communication and automation in real-time. This is the niche that IoTex is planning to fill.
The architecture of IoTeX is based on a root blockchain that provides security and governance for the network while managing various sidechains to carry out specific functions. The sidechains connect IoT devices based on specific parameters, such as working in similar environments, having similar trust levels, or having a similar function. IoTex debuted UCam, which is a private and secure security camera.
IoTeX’s most direct competitor is IOTA. The main difference between the two is that IOTA uses Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology to address scalability. However, this requires a global consensus. IoTeX is opting for another solution, called Roll-DPoS, which uses a randomized and scalable variant of the delegated proof of stake framework.
Buy IOTX on Binance or Kucoin
EOSIO (EOS)
EOS tries to respond to some of the shortcomings of the Ethereum Network. To develop a dApp on Ethereum you need to use a special programming language for smart contracts (Solidity). EOS overcomes this barrier by providing some services to developers, including database and account management services, which do not require programming knowledge.
EOS is fast and more scalable than Ethereum. For instance, the Ethereum Network requires users to pay fees, while EOS transactions are free and take on average 1.5 seconds. EOS also has enormous and enthusiastic community support, and for good reason. The coin is not mined. Instead, block producers are voted in by the community.
Buy EOS on Kucoin or Binance
Republic Protocol (REN)
This is one I am especially excited about. The Republic Protocol creates interoperability for decentralized applications, which means it makes it possible for different blockchains to interact with one another for things like cross-chain lending, exchanges, collateralization & more.
REN started with the goal of making it possible to anonymously purchase large amounts of assets without a centralized third party providing the service of keeping the transactions secure. Ren eliminates third parties with the Ren Virtual Machine (RenVM), which uses a decentralized and trustless network of “Darknodes” to identify and exchange cryptocurrency assets across multiple blockchains.
Now Ren’s mission is to become the interoperable transaction layer for every major blockchain in crypto. On May 27th, 2020 it released RenVM SubZero, which lets users use Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, or Zcash in any DeFi application.
The REN token has two functions. It pays trading fees for orders made on the RenVM and it pays bonds to a smart contract that manages the Darknodes in the Ren ecosystem.
In 2020, the Ren Alliance was established, which is a consortium of DeFi projects with the purpose of bringing new users, investors, and developers to the Ren project. Some of its members including Kyber Network, Matic, Polychain Capital, and IDEX.
Buy REN on Binance or Kucoin
Algorand (ALGO)
Algorand is a decentralized and permissionless public blockchain. The aim of the project is making a global borderless economy possible. To do this, Algorand is solving one of the major blockchain challenges. Namely, building fast and scalable cryptocurrency without trading off decentralization. The importance of scalability can’t be overstated high for the widespread adoption of blockchain technology. Current options like Ethereum can’t handle the traffic and Bitcoin is even more limited. Powering the global economy requires much higher throughput.
However, the challenge is that scalability seems to come at the cost of decentralization and/or security. Maintaining a decentralized network is critical for security. Finding the balance between security, scalability, and decentralization is what Algorand is trying to do. If it can pull it off it will be a huge success.
Buy ALGO on Kucoin or Binance
Cardano (ADA)
Cardano is a smart contract platform like Ethereum. What makes Cardano distinct is it is cognizant of the demands of government regulators. This straightforward but achievable goal is why Cardano is popular. It doesn’t claim to be trying to overthrow banks and governments. Instead, it wants to work with them. Cardano is correct on anticipating increased regulatory activity by governments in the cryptocurrency sector. Rather than creating another Ethereum copy, Cardano has developed its cryptocurrency network for their use case.
Buy ADA on Kucoin or Binance
Compound (COMP)
Compound has recently become the largest lending protocol in Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Users deposit crypto assets and earn interest along with daily rewards paid in COMP. The Compound protocol lets users lend and borrow 9 Ethereum-based assets including Basic Attention Token (BAT), 0x (ZRX), and Wrapped BTC (wBTC). Instead of lending directly to borrowers, lenders combine assets into pools from which users can borrow.
COMP rewards come from participating in the ecosystem as a lender and/or a borrower. The COMP token also gives users governance rights within the protocol. This means users have a say in the future of Compound.
When you lend cryptocurrency on Compound, you receive an amount of corresponding cTokens larger than the amount of crypto deposited. cTokens are ERC-20 tokens that represent a fraction of the underlying asset. cTokens are what allow users to earn interest. Users can also purchase more of the underlying asset with the cTokens they receive.
Until Compound came around, MakerDAO was the most popular DeFi project on Ethereum. MakerDAO lets users borrow cryptocurrency using Ethereum, BAT, or wBTC as collateral. The two most significant differences between the two projects are first the goal of MakerDAO is fundamentally to support the DAI stablecoin and second that Compound gives users additional incentive beyond interest rates (COMP) to participate in the protocol.
Buy COMP on Binance
BitTorrent (BTT)
In July 2018, TRON acquired BitTorrent, the biggest peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol in the world. It combined its blockchain network and BitTorrent’s P2P network to create an infrastructure for a decentralized content distribution platform for a global user base. The partnership between TRON and BitTorrent was referred to as ‘Project Atlas.’
The TRON network provides the torrent ecosystem with storage and bandwidth. BitTorrent has always had an incentive model built into it where users who upload faster can download more quickly. However, with TRON’s blockchain BitTorrent can now compensate users with TRX tokens for participating and contributing. Users can also use TRX to access special features, like faster downloads. BitTorrent peers will also be able to offer TRX as an incentive for others to run clients on faster networks and seed torrents for longer periods of time.
Given the strength of TRON and how established BitTorrent already is, it is unlikely the BTT token is going to fail anytime soon. The BTT token is at a relatively low price and I can’t imagine it will not rise with the tide in the next crypto bull run.
Buy BTT on Binance or Kucoin
PundiX (NPXS)
PundiX aims to use cryptocurrency to create a global cashless payment system. Its blockchain-enabled Point-of-Sale (XPoS) devices let shops, cafes, and convenience stores sell cryptocurrency and accept cryptocurrency payments. All a merchant has to do is have an XPoS in their store. Pundi has made several deals with real-world distributors of its devices. Most recently made a deal with a Canadian-based Bitcoin ATM operator to distribute XPoS in that country.
The device works with a mobile wallet called XWallet that lets customers make payments in physical stores. It has a simple interface for buying and selling BTC, ETH, XEM, and QTUM, as well as a check-out menu for making purchases with cryptocurrencies. For each transaction the XPoS prints a receipt and tracks orders and inventory for the store owner.
PundiX is an interesting project because it builds on the success of Pundi-Pundi, which is already a popular (non-blockchain-based) cashless payment app in Indonesia that uses smartphones to make instant payments in retail and restaurant outlets. The price of NPXS is also low at the moment, which means it will likely also rise with the bull market tide.
Conclusion
There you have it. The top 10 altcoins that I am the most excited to watch in the 202 bull market. | https://medium.com/the-capital/top-altcoins-for-2020-d8ca4c10c9f3 | ['Mina Down'] | 2020-08-22 12:07:54.120000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Altcoins', 'Finance'] |
A New Era for Camp Supernow | A New Era for Camp Supernow
When we first launched Camp Supernow, it was the dawn of our first ever summer in quarantine. Moved by the stories of dozens of friends and colleagues who were struggling to juggle working from home, educating their kids, and keeping everyone sane and happy, we set out to create a meaningful experience that made the lives of families easier.
As a band of experience designers and community builders, our goal was to create a special place where kids could escape from the stress of the pandemic, socialize and have fun together, and give parents a break from their duties for a few hours each day. On June 1, our virtual summer camp was born.
Over the summer, our belief in the power of community to support kids (and parents) only grew. We built a culture of boundless spirit, gratitude and joy, that kept kids coming back to co-create and bond with peers from all over the world. We realized it is the social and emotional learning — delivered via magical counselors, zany themes and joyful activities — that makes Camp Supernow so special.
Though the future is unknown, we do know this — kids’ ability to connect with others, cope with adversity, communicate their feelings and maintain self-confidence are the ultimate indicators of future success and happiness. As we move into 2021, we are reaffirming our mission to use the power of community to cultivate critical social and emotional skills in kids and support parents on their parenting journey.
Now to the exciting part. With a reinvigorated focus comes a fresh new look. We are thrilled to unveil the new Camp Supernow website and an entirely new look and feel to go along with it. The new brand was designed to bring to life the creativity, energy, joy and connection that defines the Camp Supernow experience.
We’ve got even bigger things cooking for 2021, but a few other updates until then..
Our Board of Super Experts — As we double down on our commitment to foster social and emotional learning in kids, we’ve brought together a board of Super Experts to serve as content and experience advisors across parenting, child psychology and social and emotional learning. Meet our experts.
New Super Parent Resources — The Supernow community doesn’t end with kids. We’ve heard from our Superfam and are excited to roll out new parenting resources so no one has to go it alone. Look out for monthly parenting workshops, newsletters, and community spaces and more. Next up, we’re hosting a workshop on Navigating Pandemic anxiety with Kids. Sign Up Here.
We’re so grateful for our beautiful community of families, friends and advisors who continue to help shape what Supernow is becoming. To more magic in 2021! | https://medium.com/@lyndwheels/a-new-era-for-camp-supernow-858cef92cb14 | ['Lyndsey Wheeler'] | 2020-12-09 20:22:14.301000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Virtual Learning', 'Edtech', 'Education'] |
Khadas’ New VIM3L SBC Is Aimed at HTPC Applications | Back in June, Shenzhen Wesion-owned Khadas launched their Amlogic A311D-based VIM3 SBC, which was meant to compete against the Raspberry Pi 4, Edge-V Pro, and Odroid-N2. It was faster and more powerful than those boards, but it came at a higher cost, starting at $99. While that’s a justifiable price if you intend to use the board’s many features, it’s not so much if you plan on using it for simple projects, such as building an HTPC.
The VIM3L comes loaded with an Amlogic S905D3-N0N SoC with a quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor, 2Gb of LPDDR4 RAM, and 16Gb of eMMC 5.1 storage.
To that end, Khadas is set to release another version of their VIM line, with the introduction of the VIM3L — designed around an Amlogic S905-series SoC, and should be an excellent choice for use as an HTPC. Under the hood, the VIM3L hosts an Amlogic S905D3-NON quad-core Cortex-A55 processor, with 2Gb of LPDDR4 Ram, 16Gb of eMMC 5.1 Flash storage, and a Mali-G31MP2 GPU. Additional storage options include 16Mb of SPI Flash, a micro SD card slot, and M.2 NVMe SSD compatibility.
Video output includes an HDMI 2.1 transmitter with 3D, Dynamic HDR, eARC, CEC, and HDCP 2.2 support, as well as a 4-lane MIPI DSI Interface (up to 1920 X 1080), and a 10-pin 0.5mm pitch FPC connector for touch panels. As for connectivity options, the VIM3L offers Gigabit Ethernet (with Wake-on-LAN support), Ampak AP6398S wireless module with 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-FI 5, 2×2 MIMO with RSDB, and Bluetooth 5.0.
Khadas’ VIM3L offers plenty of features that will make the board perfect for home theater use.
Rounding out the VIM3L feature set are an STMicro STM8S003 MCU, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, a USB Type-C port (with OTG and USB PD support), a KXTJ3–1057 3-axis digital accelerometer, an M.2 socket with 1-lane PCIe 2.0, USB 2.0, I2S, I2C, ADC, a 100M Ethernet PHY interface, and GPIOs. There’s also a 40-pin I/O header with accessible pins for the CPU (USB, I2C, I2S, SPDIF, UART, PWM, ADC), and MCU (SWIM, NRST, PA1).
There is even a two-channel IR receiver, RTC/Battery header, four-pin cooling fan header, LEDs, power/function/reset buttons, XPWR pads for an external power button, and a KBI interface to switch between USB 3.0 and PCIe. On the software side, Khadas will provide Linux 5.0+ and U-Boot, and the board will have support for Ubuntu 18.04, Armbian Linux distributions, along with HTPC-based firmware, including LibreELEC or CoreELEC, and Android 9.0 (among others). | https://medium.com/@CabeFSAtwell/khadas-new-vim3l-sbc-is-aimed-at-htpc-applications-7acf17080538 | ['Cabe Atwell'] | 2019-09-12 13:19:56.916000+00:00 | ['Single Board Computer', 'Htpc', 'Hardware', 'Home Theater'] |
2020 — An opportunity for change we can ill afford to waste | By William Cadbury, CFO, Kerry Foods
William Cadbury, CFO, Kerry Foods
There are many ways to describe 2020 but the word ‘challenging’ comes to mind as probably the most commonly felt experience for the majority of people.
For millions, ‘challenging’ is a genuine reflection of what they’ve felt and endured. There’s been so much difficulty, pain and hardship. Sadly, for some, this will continue into 2021 and beyond.
However, in 2020, we also found inspiration and a connection to the important things too.
Whether that was with ourselves, our loved ones, nature, or a much-needed rebalance and respect for people who genuinely contribute to society, such as our health practitioners at the NHS. It was incredibly moving and inspiring, to see such deep pride and support reflected in the collective clapping for those on the front line.
We also witnessed a much-needed explosion and awakening of community spirit. A spirit that we haven’t seen so visibly in a long time. Neighbours, who were once distant, busy strangers, started looking out for vulnerable people on their own street. People took time to listen and to connect with others.
Accelerated change
One thing is clear though, it turns out that we have incredible collective ability to be resilient and adapt at pace, demonstrated by entire workforces having to adapt to new ways of working, including working from home.
With crises come opportunities
2020 has shown how adaptive people and businesses can be when required.
Who would have predicted whole office buildings, indeed whole city centres could be shut down? And that businesses only needed a mere 24 hours to get everything back up and running, with barely an interruption in services.
It was incredible to witness. Furthermore, many organisations went on to transfer the physical to a virtual business world. Delivery organisations worked at incredible capacity levels to make sure there was provision of equipment to enable home working.
We had to deal with flexible working and support home-schooling. At the same time, we got to grips with on-line engagement of teams and with virtual Hiit/Yoga/Quizzes thrown in for good measure.
Businesses offered mental health and wellbeing support. There were parent support groups and virtual coffee connects etc. All have been part of how businesses have responded to help ‘keep going’.
It’s been very impressive to see how rapidly businesses have adapted.
But there’s also a reflection point that I wish to highlight to fellow business leaders, which is this…
Homeworking. A new balance
How many business leaders believed, stated even, that remote working wouldn’t work for ‘their organisation’?
I’d lay money on it being a significant number.
And yet the evidence has proved them wrong. Change was possible. But who was really resistant to that change? The leaders, or the organisations?
The test, post lockdown, when the ‘new normal’ finally returns, will be to see how “sticky” the changes are.
An example of this, for me, is closer to home.
As with many people having cut out a long commute, I’ve benefited hugely from having more time — with my family, to exercise, but also to work better, more productively. The thought of returning to my previous routine brings a deep sense of impending dread.
I’m already clear that isn’t what I am going to go back to. And I don’t think I am alone. Of course, I will return to the office, and I look forward to more human contact, but I won’t be going back in the same way.
I foresee, fewer days will be spent in the office. I for one will be organising my time differently, to ensure that ‘in office’ days are for collaboration, face-to-face connections and bigger team or group meetings. There is no doubt that meeting in person is beneficial for dealing with knotty issues, creative briefs, for building on each other’s ideas or supporting and developing early-career colleagues, which don’t work so well in the virtual world. But the other stuff?
The commute has been the one part of my life that I’ve felt unhappy about for years. I’ve proved to myself that I can change. But it has taken Covid to instil a change that we must now take into the future and make into a “sticky” change.
The winners will be those that learn and change
There’s been a lot of talk about future ways of working that reflect a similar scenario to my own. Less time in offices, more time working from home, balancing the work-life agenda.
In many cases, leaders are acknowledging and accepting that this will be the case. Ensuring that people feel part of something bigger, creating positive, connected cultures, giving people opportunities to develop and learn from each other are all important factors that will benefit from people coming back together physically, and are high on most business leaders’ agendas.
The leaders that will ‘win’ from the 2020 crisis, will be those that find a new balance and take the learnings of what has inspired people/organisations to make the changes and apply those to the things they need to change going forward…
Diversity and Inclusion
One such area is the Inclusion and Diversity agenda. In Daniel Snell’s recent articles, he’s highlighted the archaic nature of the old boys’ network, the uniformity on many boards and leadership teams, as well as the changing demands of Generation Z to fulfil their goals of a more balanced and purposeful life. The #BLM movement has undoubtedly created a wave of high-profile corporate statements, committing to making a change for the positive.
However, there were similar — albeit on a smaller scale — commitments made in the aftermath of the London riots of 2011, again, something that Daniel was deeply connected to through his #notinourname movement which he created at the time. Not much changed after those. So, what’s the difference now? Will the commitments be met, and will they be sustainable?
The speed with which messages, and actions, become visible through social media, bring a level of accountability not experienced in previous decades. Change needs to be Leader-led. Now that leaders have had their eyes opened to the ‘art of the possible’, other traditions, cultures and norms can be reviewed and changed with a different pace and vigour. Not only is it morally right for businesses to champion diversity, but diversity of talent also adds commercial value, (the ‘Diversity Dividend’). It’s a strong and compelling argument, but one that too many businesses still pay lip service too
A New Perspective
My own experience of partnering with Arrival in a development programme opened my eyes and my understanding of issues I’d never been exposed to. The first meeting between managers/leaders and the students had a huge impact.
Our introduction to our student partner involved a 10 minutes sharing of our life experiences to date. I recall sitting in stunned silence as I heard a 16-year-old share a set of life experiences most people won’t have in their lifetime. It really brought home to me how sheltered, privileged and consistent my own life and experiences had been.
It was also clear from the start the resilience and adaptability that shone through from nearly all the students present on the day. When one steps back and considers the strengths we seek in future leaders, that group of students we met that day could already demonstrate those 2 key spikes (resilience and adaptability) that take many a career to hone, and many struggle to achieve at all.
The experience resulted in a 2-way coaching partnership. The opportunity to hear about the response to challenging life experiences, the coping mechanisms, the cultural traits that impacted behavioural perceptions have all been vital to shaping the way I think and act in support of my team and colleagues. The links into someone with such a different background and experiences compared to me was really valuable in helping to understand more about what businesses can and should be doing to develop their L&D agendas. I know it’s helped me.
A way forward
Watching the progress of the Arrival programme recently completed with the Tesco leadership team has been truly inspiring. It has been clear that the team has embraced the facts. They need to do something different to create a more diverse team beyond the operational cohort. The immersion of the team in the life of those they were partnered with, visiting their home community and experiencing the culture and environment in which they have grown up, looks to have had a profound impact on their leadership team and the whole organisation.
The stretching of comfort zones, listening to uncomfortable truths and getting feedback from a different perspective must all have taken courage. The diverse team working with the Tesco Leadership now have the opportunity to hold them to account by continuing to engage with them to hear what progress they are making and what their plans are for the future. A brilliant model!
2020 — We must not waste the opportunities
Although 2020 will go down as a seminal year in the history books, it will also be a year that many people will just want to forget.
Those of us in leadership positions, who have the influence and ability to create change, must not waste the opportunities we have to do things better and differently. If we can take the positive learnings from this year, challenge our assumptions and beliefs, tune into new ideas and different approaches in every area of our work, then not only will our businesses emerge stronger and fitter, but we will be able to say that although challenging and hard, 2020 was the moment that forced the radical change that perhaps we needed.
Burning platforms and crises are incredibly powerful things that often lead to huge innovation and change. Those leaders who embrace the changes and adapt to the new environment, and continue to do so beyond the crisis, will be the ones whose businesses emerge fitter and stronger. | https://medium.com/arrival-education/2020-an-opportunity-for-change-we-can-ill-afford-to-waste-b016fb2e9b9a | ['Arrival Education'] | 2020-12-08 11:03:10.302000+00:00 | ['Inclusive Leadership', 'The Inclusion', 'Diversity And Inclusion', 'Arrival Education'] |
TensorFlow Image Classification using Transfer Learning for Beginners | Training a machine learning model could be quite time-consuming. Especially if you are trying to solve a complex problem. One solution to speed up the training process is to use a pre-trained model. This is called transfer learning.
Transfer learning allows us to use a pre-trained model to solve our problem. There are many pre-trained models out there like mobilenet, VGG, Resnet, etc. In this article, we will implement image classification using transfer learning in TensorFlow.
The code for this article can be found in my GitHub.
First, let us import certain libraries that we are going to need while also loading our dataset. We will use TensorFlow ‘horses_or_humans’ dataset to classify whether an image is a horse or a human. We will also visualize our data.
TensorFlow ‘horses_or_humans’ consists of 1027 images of horses and humans
Next, we need to split our dataset into training and testing data. We also need to reshape our training and testing data so it matches our model.
TensorFlow provides many pre-trained models for us to play with. In this article, The pre-trained model we are going to use is ResNet50, short for Residual Networks with 50 layers. It is based on the ResNet model that won ImageNet challenge in 2015. Do not forget to set all of the ResNet50 layers un-trainable so it will not update its weight based on our training.
Then, let’s train our model and also visualize its performances.
Our model performances
Let us use the testing data to see our model predictions.
The model successfully predict the test data
As we can see, the model successfully predicts our test data. But what about an unseen one? Can it still predict the image? Let us see. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/tensorflow-image-classification-using-transfer-learning-for-beginners-e1bd94ccfcca | ['Angga Bayu Prakhosha'] | 2020-09-09 19:10:50.031000+00:00 | ['Transfer Learning', 'Image Classification', 'Machine Learning', 'TensorFlow', 'Deep Learning'] |
Visualization With Seaborn | Seaborn is a Python data visualization library based on Matplotlib.
It provides a high-level interface for drawing attractive and informative statistical graphics. It provides choices for plot style and color defaults, defines simple high-level functions for common statistical plot types, and integrates with the functionality provided by Pandas DataFrames.
The main idea of Seaborn is that it provides high-level commands to create a variety of plot types useful for statistical data exploration, and even some statistical model fitting.
1.0.1 Table of Contents
Creating basic plots Advance Categorical plots in Seaborn Density plots Pair plots
# importing required libraries
import seaborn as sns
sns.set()
sns.set(style='darkgrid') import numpy as np
import pandas as pd #importing matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
%matplotlib inline import warnings
warnings.filterwarnings("ignore")
plt.rcParams['figure.figsize']=(10,10)
In this notebook, we will use the Big Mart Sales Data. You can download the data from Github: https://github.com/Yuke217
# read the dataset
df = pd.read_csv("dataset/bigmart_data.csv")
# drop the null values
df = df.dropna(how="any")
# View the top results
df.head()
1.0.2 Creating basic plots
Let’s have a look at how can you create some basic plots in seaborn in a single line for which multiple lines were required in Matplotlib.
1.0.2.1 Line Chart
With some datasets, you may want to understand changes in one variable as a function of time or a similarly continuous variable.
In seaborn, this can be accomplished by the lineplot() function, either directly or with relplot by setting kind=”line”:
# line plot using lineplot()
sns.lineplot(x="Item_Weight", y="Item_MRP",data=df[:50])
1.0.2.2 Bar chart
In seaborn, you can create a bar chart by simply using the barplot function.
function. Notice that to achieve the same thing in Matplotlib, we had to write extra code just to group the data category wise.
And then we had to write much more code to make sure that the plot comes out correct.
sns.barplot(x="Item_Type", y="Item_MRP", data=df[:5])
1.0.2.3 Histogram
You can create a histogram in seaborn by using distplot().
sns.distplot(df['Item_MRP'])
1.0.2.4 Box plots
You can use Boxplot() for creating boxplots in seaborn
for creating boxplots in seaborn Let’s try to visualize the distribution of Item_Outlet_Sales of items.
sns.boxplot(df['Item_Outlet_Sales'], orient='vertical')
1.0.2.5 Violin plot
A violin plot plays a similar role as a box and whisker plot.
It shows the distribution of quantitative data across several levels of one(or more) categorical variables such that those distributions can be compared.
Unlike a box plot, in which all of the plot components correspond to actual data points, the violin plot features a kernel density estimation of the underlying distribution.
You can create a violin plot using the violinplot() in seaborn
sns.violinplot(df['Item_Outlet_Sales'], orient='vertical')
1.0.2.6 Scatter plot
It depicts the relationship between two variables using a cloud of points, where each point represents an observation in the dataset.
You can use relplot() with the option of kind=scatter to plot a scatter plot in seaborn.
with the option of kind=scatter to plot a scatter plot in seaborn. Notice the default option is scatter
# scatter plot
sns.relplot(x="Item_MRP", y="Item_Outlet_Sales", data = df[:200], kind="scatter")
1.0.2.7 Hue semantic
We can also add another dimension to the plot by coloring the points according to a third variable. In seaborn, this is referred to as using a “Hue semantic”.
sns.relplot(x="Item_MRP", y="Item_Outlet_Sales", hue="Item_Type", data=df[:200])
Remember the line chart that we created earlier, When we have hue semantic, we can create more complex line plots in seaborn.
semantic, we can create more complex line plots in seaborn. In the following example, different line plots for different categories of Outlet_Size are made.
# different line plots for different categories of the Outlet_Size
sns.lineplot(x="Item_Weight", y="Item_MRP", hue="Outlet_Size", data=df[:100])
1.0.2.8 Bubble plot
We utilize the hue semantic to color bubbles by their Item_Visibility and at the same time use it as size of individual bubbles.
# bubble plot
sns.relplot(x="Item_MRP", y="Item_Outlet_Sales", data=df[:200],kind="scatter", size="Item_Visibility", hue="Item_Visibility")
1.0.2.9 Category wise sub plot
You can also create plots based on category in seaborn.
in seaborn. We have created scatter plots for each Outlet_Size
Now we create three plots based on different Outlet_Size using col.
# subplots for each of the category of Outlet_Size
sns.relplot(x="Item_Weight", y="Item_Visibility", hue= 'Outlet_Size',col ="Outlet_Size",data=df[:100] )
1.1 2. Advance categorical plots in seaborn
For categorical variables we have three different families in seaborn.
Categorical scatterplots:
stripplot() (with kind=”strip”; the default)
swarmplot() (with kind=”swarm”)
Categorical distribution plots:
boxplot() (with kind=”box”)
violinplot() (with kind=”violin”)
Boxenplot() (with kind=”bowen”)
Categorical estimate plots:
pointplot() (with kind=”point”)
barplot() (with kind=”bar”)
The default representation of the data in catplot() uses a scatterplot.
1.1.1 a. Categorical scatterplots
1.1.1.1 Strip plot
Draws a scatterplot where one variable is categorical.
You can create this by passing kind=strip in the catplot .
sns.catplot(x="Outlet_Size", y="Item_Outlet_Sales", kind="strip", data=df[:250])
1.1.1.2 Swarm plot
This function is similar to stripplot() , but the points are adjusted so that they don't overlap.
, but the points are adjusted so that they don't overlap. This gives a better representation of the distribution of values, but it does not scale well to large numbers of observations. This style of plot is sometimes called a “beeswarm”.
You can created this by passing kind=swarm in the catplot .
sns.catplot(x="Outlet_Size", y="Item_Outlet_Sales", kind='swarm',data=df[:250])
1.1.2 b. Categorical distribution plots
1.1.2.1 Box Plots
Box plot shows the three quartile values of the distribution along with the extreme values.
The “whiskers” extend to points that lie within 1.5 IQRs of the lower and upper quartile, and then observations that fall ourside this range are displayed independently.
This means that each value in the boxplot corresponds to an actual observation in the data.
sns.catplot(x="Outlet_Size", y="Item_Outlet_Sales", kind="box", data=df)
1.1.2.2 Violin Plots
sns.catplot(x="Outlet_Size", y="Item_Outlet_Sales", kind="violin",data=df)
1.1.2.3 Boxen plots
This style of plot was originally named a “letter value” plot because it shows a large number of quantiles that are defined as “letter values”.
It is similarto a box plot in plotting a nonparametric representation of a distribution in which all features correspond to actual observations.
By plotting more quantiles, it provides more information about the shape of the distribution, particularly in the tails.
sns.catplot(x="Outlet_Size", y="Item_Outlet_Sales", kind="boxen",data=df)
1.1.2.4 Point plot
sns.catplot(x="Outlet_Size", y="Item_Outlet_Sales",kind="point",data=df)
1.1.2.5 Bar plots
sns.catplot(x="Outlet_Size", y="Item_Outlet_Sales", kind="bar",data=df)
1.2 3. Density Plots
Rather than a histogram, we can get a smooth estimate of the distribution using a kernel density estimation, which Seaborn does with sns.dkeplot:
A Density Plot visualises the distribution of data over a continuous interval or time period.
Density plot allows for smoother distribution by smoothing out noise. The peaks of a Density Plot help display where values are concentrated over the interval.
An advantage Density Plots have over Histograms is that they’re better at determining the distribution shape because they’re not affected by the number of bins used (each bar used in a typical histogram).
# distribution of Item Visibility
plt.figure(figsize=(10,10))
sns.kdeplot(df["Item_Visibility"],shade=True)
# distribution of Item MRP
plt.figure(figsize=(10,10))
sns.kdeplot(df["Item_MRP"],shade=True)
1.2.1 Histogram and Density Plot
Histograms and KDE can be combined using distplot:
plt.figure(figsize=(10,10))
sns.distplot(df['Item_Outlet_Sales'])
1.3 4. Pair plots
When you generalize joint plots to datasets of larger dimentions, you end up with pair plots. This is very useful for exploring correlations between multidimensional data, when you’d like to plot all pairs of values against each other.
We’ll demo this with the well-known Iris dataset, which lists measurements of petals and sepals of three iris species:
iris = sns.load_dataset("iris")
iris.head() | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/visualization-with-seaborn-e2d9cacd932b | ['Yuke Liu'] | 2020-07-02 14:51:37.106000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Seaborn', 'Matplotlib', 'Data Visualization'] |
13 Most Common Google Cloud Reference Architectures | 13 Most Common Google Cloud Reference Architectures
Summary of #13DaysOfGCP architecture Twitter series
👋 Hi Google Cloud Devs!!
I am asked multiple times to compile a list of most common Google Cloud reference architectures. That got me thinking and I started #13DaysOfGCP mini series on Twitter. If you were not able to catch it, or if you missed a few days, here I bring to you the summary!
Kickoff and your topic 💭 suggestions
Thank you to all who provided the topic ideas and shared their thoughts. This has been instrumental in helping me pick the topics that you all were interested in seeing the over the course of 13 days.
Kickoff day to grab all your topic suggestions! Thank you for participating :)
#1: How to set up hybrid architecture in Google Cloud and on-premises?
Day 1: How to set up hybrid architecture in Google Cloud and on-premises?
#2: How to mask sensitive data in chatbots using Data loss prevention (DLP) API?
Day 2: How to mask sensitive data in chatbots using Data loss prevention (DLP) API?
#3: How to build mobile app backends on Google Cloud?
Day 3: How to build mobile app backends on Google Cloud?
#4: How to migrate Oracle Database to Spanner?
Day 4: How to migrate Oracle Database to Spanner?
#5: How to setup hybrid architecture for cloud bursting?
Day 5: How to setup hybrid architecture for cloud bursting?
#6: How to build a data lake in Google Cloud?
Day 6: How to build a data lake in Google Cloud?
#7: How to host websites on Google Cloud?
Day 7: How to host websites on Google Cloud?
#8: How to setup CICD pipeline on Google Cloud?
Day 8: How to setup CICD pipeline on Google Cloud?
#9: How to build serverless microservices in Google Cloud?
Day 9: How to build serverless microservices in Google Cloud?
#10: Machine Learning on Google Cloud
Day 10: Machine Learning on Google Cloud
#11: Serverless image, video or text processing in Google Cloud
Day 11: Serverless image, video or text processing in Google Cloud
#12: Internet of Things (IoT) on Google Cloud
Day 12: Internet of Things (IoT) on Google Cloud
#13: How to setup BeyondCorp zero trust security model?
Day 13: How to setup BeyondCorp zero trust security model?
Wrap up with a Puzzle
Conclusion and Credits
I am thankful and really humbled by your participation, engagement and topic suggestions that made this series so much fun, not just for me but also for the rest of the Google Cloud Community members!
Thanks again and 👋 until later 🙂 | https://medium.com/google-cloud/13-most-common-google-cloud-reference-architectures-23630b46326d | ['Priyanka Vergadia'] | 2020-05-18 05:28:41.495000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Serverless', 'Cloud Computing'] |
Dubai based Cameroonian Fashion Icon, Breaks Social with Stunning Post. | Dubai based Cameroonian Fashion Icon, Breaks Social with Stunning Post.
Dubai based Cameroonian fashion icon has stunned entire social with photos of him in freshly-cleaned Tod Snyder suit with hair-cut that had him looking like a legitimate son to Gatsby himself (for those who still watch classic movies).
Victor stuns the internet with birthday photos
Victor Forsac, as he is called legally, posted on Instagram on the occasion of his birthday, quoting theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer;
Lord Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the knowledge to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. His photos on social media are always known to be tagged along with popular life quotes which to him “Are saving phrases and codes by which his life is defined”
Victor is known to have been working as a brand influencer for Tommy Hilfiger in Dubai for a year or two before the Arab state proclaimed a lock-down state due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
We wonder what more surprises this guy has in store for his fast growing social audience. Perhaps he’s sitting in his room now preparing his next internet stunt. — moves that are very much trending from this part of the World.
To see more of this fashionista's photos follow him on instagram by clicking this link | https://medium.com/pinboard-magazine/dubai-based-cameroonian-fashion-icon-breaks-social-with-stunning-post-d091c60e22d7 | ['Nengeh Banda'] | 2020-08-21 07:12:24.013000+00:00 | ['Style', 'Model', 'Dubai', 'Celebrity', 'Fashion'] |
Demystifying Neural Networks | All you need is a piece of paper and a pencil
“If you want to change the world, pick up a pen and write.” — Martin Luther
I will explain what neural networks do with a real simple example.
I will use this basic neural network architecture:
I will initialize weights, biases, training inputs and output with these following values:
What this is all about is adjusting the values of the weights w1, w2, w3, w4, w5 and w6 to obtain the output we want o = 1 for the given inputs x1 = .10 and x2 = .20.
Hidden Neurons h1 and h2, and Output Neuron o are divided into two different functions: Net (linear regression function) and Act (activation function). I will be using the logistic function as the activation function for all neurons.
These are the formulas for both functions:
Net = w * x + b –linear regression function
Act = Sigmoid (Net) –logistic function 1 / (1 + exp (-x))
Fase I: Fordward or Computing Output
Let’s compute our first output using initialization values:
Neth1 = w1 * x1 + w2 * x2 + b1 –linear regression function
Acth1 = Sigmoid(Neth1) –logistic function
Neth2 = w3 * x1 + w4 * x2 + b1
Acth2 = Sigmoid(Neth2)
Neto = w5 * Acth1 + w6 * Acth2 + b2
Acto = Sigmoid(Neto2)
Sigmoid is the logistic function to squash the output –> 1 / (1 + exp (-x))
Neth1 = .30 * .10 + .40 * .20 + .15
Acth1 = Sigmoid(.26)
Acth1 = .5646363
Neth2 = .50 * .10 + .60 * .20 + .15
Acth2 = Sigmoid(.32)
Acth2 = .5793242
Neto = .70 * .5646363 + .80 * .5793242 + .25
Acto = Sigmoid(1.1087048)
Acto = .7518875 (vs 1.00 target)
Fase II: Computing the Cost
I will be using the popular squared error function for calculating the Total Cost.
Etotal = .5 * (target — output)**2
Etotal = .5 * (1 — .7518875)**2
Etotal = .0307798
Fase III: Backpropagation for Output Layer
We use partial derivatives of Total Error with respect to each weight in order to know how much a change in each weight affects the Total Error.
∂Etotal/∂w5 = ∂Etotal/∂Acto * ∂Acto/∂Neto * ∂Neto/∂w5 –chain rule
∂Etotal/∂Acto = .5 * 2 * (target — output) * -1
∂Etotal/∂Acto = .5 * 2 * (1 — .7518875) * -1
∂Etotal/∂Acto = — .24811243085
∂Acto/∂Neto = output * (1 — output)
∂Acto/∂Neto = .7518875 * (1 — .7518875)
∂Acto/∂Neto = .1865526
∂Neto/∂w5 = Acth1
∂Neto/∂w5 = .5646363
∂Etotal/∂w5 = -.2481124 * .1865526 * .5646363
∂Etotal/∂w5 = -.0261347
In order to decrease the error we need to subtract this value from the current weight multiplied by some learning rate which I will set to 0.5.
w5+ = w5 — α * ∂Etotal/∂w5
w5+ = .70 — .5 * -.0261347
w5+ = .7130673
Repeating this process we get the new weight w6:
w6+ = .8134073
Fase IV: Backpropagation for Hidden Layer
∂Etotal/∂w1 = ∂Etotal/∂Acth1 * ∂Acth1/∂Neth1 * ∂Neth1/∂w1 –chain rule
∂Etotal/∂Acth1 = ∂Etotal/∂Neto * ∂Neto/∂Acth1
∂Etotal/∂Neto = ∂Etotal/∂Acto * ∂Acto/∂Neto
∂Etotal/∂Neto = — .2481124 * .1865526
∂Etotal/∂Neto = — .0462869
∂Etotal/∂Acth1 = — .0462869 * ∂Neto/∂Acth1
∂Etotal/∂Acth1 = — .0462869 * w5
∂Etotal/∂Acth1 = — .0462869 * .70
∂Etotal/∂Acth1 = — .0324002
∂Acth1/∂Neth1 = Acth1 * (1- Acth1)
∂Acth1/∂Neth1 = .5646363 * (1- .5646363)
∂Acth1/∂Neth1 = .2458221
∂Neth1/∂w1 = x1
∂Neth1/∂w1 = .10
∂Etotal/∂w1 = — .0324002 * .2458221 * .10
∂Etotal/∂w1 = — .0007964
w1+ = w1 — α * ∂Etotal/∂w1
w1+ = .30 — .5 * — .0007964
w1+ = .3003982
Repeating this process we get the new weights w2, w3 and w4:
w2+ = .4007964
w3+ = .5004512
w4+ = .6009024
Now it's time to go back to Fase I and compute our new output and new total error using the new weights:
Acto = .7547169 (vs 1.00 target)
Etotal = .0300818
You might think this is not a big change, but by repeating this 5.000 times you will get the following results:
Acto = .9830802 (vs 1.00 target)
Etotal = .0001431
Neural networks are no longer a mystery! | https://medium.com/@arielnovelli/demystifying-neural-networks-9d3483f3d09d | ['Ariel Novelli'] | 2020-11-03 13:42:45.820000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'Backpropagation', 'Neural Networks', 'Gradient Descent'] |
Mithat Bereket ile Yakın Tarihin Tanıklığı — Gez Göz Pusula Sergisi | in Eudaimonia and Co | https://medium.com/pusulatv/mithat-bereket-ile-yak%C4%B1n-tarihin-tan%C4%B1kl%C4%B1%C4%9F%C4%B1-gez-g%C3%B6z-pusula-sergisi-42955d11ccb3 | ['Pusula Tv'] | 2017-06-02 15:09:12.590000+00:00 | ['Gezgözpusula', 'Mithatbereket', 'Kıbrıs', 'Pusula Kamerası'] |
The #TeachRecyclingEarly Manual Project [TREM] | Improper Waste Management is a major challenge in Nigeria. Lagos which is the most populous state in the country currently emits an estimated 30,000 tons of waste every day.
Teach Recycling Early Manual Project [TREM]
Large scale migration to the state has led to a scramble for scarce resources and space which in turn has led to increased man-made activities such as landfilling and construction of infrastructures to meet the need of the diverse population.
These have subsequently led to an increase in its environmental challenges such as waste accumulation, flooding, among others which are detrimental towards the conservation /survival of the biodiversity, natural landscape, environment, and even human lives.
Now, scientists and climate enthusiasts alike beckon to everyone for urgent solutions to these detrimental factors which plague our societies today and directly or indirectly leads towards climate change.
In the wake of these negative conditions, International Climate Change Development Initiative (ICCDI), a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and currently a leading youth voice on Climate change saw the need to develop a short, basic and concise manual on the practices of Recycling called Teach Recycling Early Manual (TREM) and the Teach Recycling Early Project (TREP) to reduce waste (especially plastics) emission to the barest minimum. | https://medium.com/climatewed/the-teachrecyclingearly-manual-project-trem-e8a8b9d4f275 | ['Iccdi Africa'] | 2020-01-08 22:08:16.515000+00:00 | ['Schools', 'Environment', 'Education', 'Climate Change', 'Recycling'] |
Sawtooth Sequence Java Solution | A sawtooth sequence is a sequence of number that alternate between increasing and decreasing. In other words, each element is either strictly greater than it’s neighboring element or strictly less than it’s neighboring elements.
Problem Statement:
Given an array of integers arr, your task is to count the number of contiguous subarrays that represent a sawtooth sequence of at least two elements.
For arr = [9, 8, 7, 6, 5], the output should be countSawSubarrays(arr) = 4.
Since all the elements are arranged in decreasing order, it won’t be possible to form any sawtooth subarray of length 3 or more. There are 4 possible subarrays containing two elements, so the answer is 4.
For arr = [10, 10, 10], the output should be countSawSubarrays(arr) = 0.
Since all of the elements are equal, none of subarrays can be sawtooth, so the answer is 0.
For arr = [1, 2, 1, 2, 1], the output should be countSawSubarrays(arr) = 10.
All contiguous subarrays containing at least two elements satisfy the condition of the problem. There are 10 possible contiguous subarrays containing at least two elements, so the answer is 10.
Input:
An array of integers
Output:
return the number of sawtooth subarrays.
Solution:
import java.util.*;
import java.lang.*;
import java.io.*; public class Solution {
// Function to count the number of maximal contiguous
// increasing and decreasing subsequences
static long countSawSubarrays(int[] arr) {
int n = arr.length;
long ans = 0;
long[] saw = new long[n];
// check edge cases for n = 0,1,2
if (n == 0 || n == 1) {
return 0;
}
if (n == 2) {
if(arr[0] > arr[1] || arr[1] > arr[0]) return 1;
else return 0;
} // saw[i] represent the size of sawtooth subarray including index i.
// first element cannot form a sawtooth sequence
saw[0] = 0;
// initialize the saw[] array for n=2
if(arr[0] > arr[1] || arr[1] > arr[0]) {
saw[1] = 2;
}
for (int i=2; i<n; i++) {
// check if including ith element forms a sawtooth sequence
if((arr[i-2] < arr[i-1] && arr[i-1] > arr[i])
|| (arr[i-2] > arr[i-1] && arr[i-1] < arr[i]))
{
if(i==2) {
saw[i] = saw[i-2] + 3;
}
else {
saw[i] = saw[i-2] + 2;
}
}
// if ith element forms a sawtooth sequence just with previous element
else if(arr[i-1] > arr[i] || arr[i] > arr[i-1]) {
saw[i] = 2;
}
}
// compute ans, which is sum of all (non-zero values - 1)
for(int i=0; i<n; i++) {
if(saw[i] <= 0) continue;
ans += saw[i] - 1;
}
return ans;
}
// Driver code
public static void main (String[] args)
{
int[] arr = {1,2,1,2,1};
int[] arr2 = {9,8,7,6,5};
int[] arr3 = {-1000000000,1000000000};
int[] arr4 = {10, 10, 10, 10}; System.out.println(countSawSubarrays(arr));
System.out.println(countSawSubarrays(arr2));
System.out.println(countSawSubarrays(arr3));
System.out.println(countSawSubarrays(arr4));
}
}
Output: | https://medium.com/swlh/sawtooth-sequence-java-solution-460bd92c064 | ['Prashant Kumar'] | 2020-09-22 23:09:19.771000+00:00 | ['Dynamic Programming'] |
Welcoming Amanda Reierson, Thumbtack’s New Head of Marketing | Amanda is a 20-plus year marketing veteran who recently joined Thumbtack as our new Head of Marketing. She was most recently Chief Growth Officer for Farmers Insurance, where she led the company’s digital transformation, media strategy, and brought thousands of local insurance agents online. Before joining Farmers, Amanda oversaw Advertising Marketing at Yahoo! and has held other B2C and B2B Marketing roles at DIRECTV and the Los Angeles Times. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles and currently lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband and two boys.
One month into her new role, I sat down with Amanda to find out more about why she joined the team and what excites her most about the road ahead.
Jeff: What led you to join Thumbtack?
Amanda: It really came down to two reasons: the people and the mission. There’s such a warm environment at Thumbtack. Everyone I’ve met at this company is humble, driven, and committed. On top of that, the mission of helping local business owners thrive while also solving for how we continuously best care for our homes — a major customer pain point that I experience myself — was a huge draw.
Jeff: In some of our earliest conversations, you mentioned that the role was a “marketer’s dream.” What did you mean by that?
Amanda: Often companies will build a great brand and great messaging — but it doesn’t pay out from a customer experience standpoint. I love that we’ve put all our muscle behind building the product experience, the customer base, and the pro community before making a big splash. My biggest goal is to make Thumbtack a household name. All of the pieces are there, we just need to do more to tell the world about what Thumbtack has to offer. And the word is already getting out — this year over 4.5 million customers in every county in the country will use our platform alongside hundreds of thousands of skilled professionals across 500 occupations. I’m thrilled to be a part of a journey with so much momentum, and so much growth upside.
Jeff: Which Thumbtack value resonates most with you?
Amanda: Say what you mean. It was very apparent from day one that people here are honest, straightforward and want to win. There’s no time for beating around the bush or politics, we have too much to do! I thrive on relationships and understanding what motivates people, so I’ve been very pleased with people’s candor and willingness to open up, especially in a virtual environment that’s still somewhat new for all of us.
Jeff: On that note, what’s it been like joining a new company in a virtual work environment?
Amanda: The onboarding was incredibly organized, which helped a lot. One thing that’s really impressed me is Thumbtack’s culture of using documentation and collaborative work tools so that even if you’re not an extrovert, everyone has a seat at the table and can be heard. That culture also really lends itself to working remotely, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Thumbtack is looked back on as a market pioneer in defining the future of work.
Jeff: How has your past experience equipped you for this role?
Amanda: I’m definitely pulling from my past experiences in different companies and industries as I dive into this role. There are a lot of parallels from a tech culture perspective from my days at Yahoo!, and it’s exciting to be back in that environment. I’ve also learned from Farmers Insurance and DIRECTV that you have to be relentless about prioritizing your customer’s needs and preferences as you set business objectives. Finally, my experience across big companies has positioned me to build a world-class brand at Thumbtack on a national level while also helping small and mid-size businesses lean on digital channels to grow at a local level.
Jeff: How are you approaching your role in the first few months?
Amanda: Thumbtack has a really talented marketing team and it has been great to hear about all they have accomplished. Additionally, as a marketer I am learning the product, what differentiates us and what we know about the mindsets of our customers and professionals. This will equip me to help refine our value proposition and add more heart and emotion to our brand. Think about what Marie Kondo or The Home Edit have accomplished; there’s so much joy in moving your home and space forward, and I’m excited to tap into that emotion more directly — especially at a time when we have all bonded with our homes so much more than ever before!
Jeff: What invigorates you most about the particular challenges of marketing in today’s world?
Amanda: There’s so much clutter in everybody’s lives now. So being able to understand the customer mindset and break through to connect with them is really exciting to me. In order to do that, a marketer has to be relentless about testing in an omnichannel world, and reaching the right customer with the right message at the right time — whether it be through a website, advertisement or human touch. Marketers now have the technology to do that testing and learning at scale, more than ever before. On a personal level, I’ve always been really proud of all of the products and brands I’ve been a part of in my career, and chose them all with purpose. Having that personal connection really motivates me.
Jeff: You and your husband took a mid-career sabbatical to go backpacking around the world. How do you think that changed you?
Amanda: I could talk about this subject forever! Taking time off to travel was one of the best decisions, and leap of faith, that I have ever made. It taught me how little I really need to be happy (just a backpack’s worth!) but also gave me a real appreciation for coming home and creating roots. I’m so glad we took the leap and I do think it helped me settle more comfortably into the family and homeownership phase of my life.
Jeff: What’s an accomplishment outside of work you’re most proud of?
Amanda: My two boys. I learn new things as a parent every day, and raising my own family has been an adventure and very proud accomplishment. No two days are the same at work or at home, but that is all part of the fun.
Jeff: We’ve all had such varied experiences of the pandemic. What has the past year been like for you?
Amanda: While there has certainly been a lot of personal heartache for everyone, including my family, I take some comfort in appreciating the silver linings. We are defining a new way to work that may even be more productive in the end. I traded a commute for time with the family or getting out for that run. Companies are now willing to recruit talent from anywhere, which adds to diversity of thought and backgrounds, not limited by geography. And it has led me to Thumbtack. We have all encountered new chapters during this unprecedented time, and I couldn’t be more excited about this next one. | https://medium.com/thumbtack-blog/welcoming-amanda-reierson-thumbtacks-new-head-of-marketing-3ecf22d1970c | ['Jeff Grant'] | 2021-09-13 16:02:26.144000+00:00 | ['Hiring', 'Talent', 'Tech', 'Workplace', 'Marketing'] |
Rangers Protocol Progress Report | In July, Rangers Protocol completed the deployment and launch of its testnet and concluded the BlueStone connection. At the same time, the development of the Rangers Protocol Claim website and the related documents for the Rangers Protocol smart contract interaction were announced to be fully prepared. The chain browser is under intense development.
In August, Rangers Protocol strengthened the transformation of Rangers Engine, including completing functional coverage tests and fixing several bugs, including:
· Fixing the problem of symbols appearing garbled when querying NFT data
· Fixing the problem of occasional accuracy errors of floating-point numbers when querying FT main chain tokens
· Optimizing the storage performance of ETH and USDT main chain tokens
In addition, the development of the Rangers Protocol chain browser has been completed. With 95% of it being completed so far, it has entered the acceptance check stage. Rangers Protocol development documentation is being improved. | https://medium.com/rangersprotocol/rangers-protocol-progress-report-4d2df2faa000 | ['Rangers Protocol'] | 2021-09-07 06:41:19.060000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Evm', 'Rangersprotocol', 'Blockchain', 'Report'] |
Turning Rage into Productivity | My wife is one of the greatest motivators I have. Nothing gets me focused and ready to work quite like a conversation about how I don’t protect her feelings, or how I’m never happy anymore, or all of the ways in which I’ve destroyed our marriage.
The worst part of it, is that she’s wrong. Boy is she wrong. At least, that’s what I spit through drooling clenched teeth as I mercilessly shred another scouring pad on dish after dish, gently slamming coffee mugs onto the rubber prongs in the top shelf of our dishwasher. MY f %#ing dishwasher.
As this process repeats itself over and over again, plate after plate, I reach for more filthy dishes that resemble our collapsing marital covenant and — suddenly there are none.
The sink is empty. I look at the clock and only 6 minutes have passed… impossible.
Except I know it’s possible, because this is not the first time I have done a little passionate and contemptuous dish therapy immediately after an altercation. I feel a strange sensation of satisfaction and instant appreciation for the benefits of our loving disagreements.
There is no possible way this is healthy. The flood of cortisol leaves me sickened and upset for hours. But the mountain of plateware and forks I had been avoiding all morning is well on its way to the heat boost stage of Whirlpool Land.
So I accept the positive, and pop my head into the bedroom and ask, “May I refill your coffee, darling?” After she heaves the mug at my skull in order to save me the trip walking across the room to fetch it, I smile and know that we have once again effortlessly avoided festering problems. We can look at each other and both of us know there is no need to talk about it, it was no big deal.
In episode 7 of ESPN’s “The Last Dance,” Michael Jordan talks about how his father would emphasize the importance of turning negative events into positive motivation. When my wonderful wifey pulls up her mental powerpoint presentation on the myriad of spousal shortcomings I bring to the table before my blood pressure pulsates into white hot anger, I get energized.
It’s Game Time — I am preparing for another performance as the Michael Jordan of husbands. I’m about to tear the lawn mower through 6 weeks of uncut crab grass and decimate any piles of my crap I’ve left strewn about the house, then whirl around like a banshee with my power drill and screw in every single piece of shit loose screw in that sonofabitch house.
On some days, I even throw in a few hurtful personal attacks to help because I know the To Do list has grown out of hand if we’ve been getting along following her “peace and kindness methods.”
It’s not manipulation, it’s motivation. Nobody questioned Michael Jordan, and nobody questions me.
If you’re reading this, Dear, you’re the most beautiful woman in the world. And I’m sorry for my temper.
If you’re reading this, dirty spoons and bowls, I’m not sorry. You’re going to die. I’ll see you soon. | https://medium.com/@michael.somervell/turning-rage-into-productivity-c0a274db0a9b | ['Michael Somervell'] | 2020-05-15 19:05:35.915000+00:00 | ['Marriage Therapy', 'Anger', 'Positivity', 'Husband', 'Marriage'] |
The anthropologist exploring ethical questions about humans and horses | It started with a pony called Piglet and developed into a full-blown obsession. The more Rosie Jones McVey learnt about horses, the more fascinated she became in different training methods. Working with problem horses, she began pondering deep questions about how we relate to these beautiful creatures. Those whys and hows turned into a PhD in social anthropology.
There’s nothing quite like riding. With me it began when I was 11. I mucked out on a donkey sanctuary and in return got to ride some of the ponies. Then I moved on to help a woman who bought and sold ponies. I went with her to Reading livestock sales and bid for a Shetland pony with money I’d saved. I was 14.
I called the pony Piglet because I kept him on a scrap of land on a pig farm. I managed to buy a little trap and taught him to pull it. When I sold him, I used the profit to buy a bigger pony. I’d had my own horses for two years before my parents knew anything about it. They were just pleased I was being independent and outdoorsy — and not out partying.
As an anthropologist, I look back on this time as absolutely vital. It gave me the immersive experience that enables my ethnography to have a rich, reflective feel to it. As both an academic and someone who’s gained so much from involvement with horses, I’m able to communicate some of the complexities of a particular sphere of British culture.
At school I’d arrive with straw in my hair. I have a twin brother and we’re intensely competitive. We both loved school and I got 13 As and A*s at GCSE. I did less well at A level because I was busy planning to go to the US to work with rescued mustangs. I’d discovered a talent for riding and training horses, especially the ones other people didn’t want to ride.
In the 1990s, the horse whisperer Monty Roberts took the equestrian world by storm. His demonstrations of ‘Natural Horsemanship’ left audiences enthralled. Monty’s protégé Kelly Marks set up ‘Intelligent Horsemanship’ to promote his methods and other approaches.
The pros and cons of these alternative methods of training are hotly debated. They’re widely discussed by riders and owners — but under-researched by academics. People have such a huge range of choice of how to train and care for their horse. How they choose what to do is really interesting to me.
At age 18 I was running my own training yard. I became one of Kelly Marks’ recommended trainers and a rider in her demonstrations — I owe her a lot. I was always craving more knowledge, devouring books, new and old, on horsemanship to root out good ideas. This trajectory was took me back to academia.
I did a degree in Social Anthropology at Sussex University. After that, my partner (now wife) Hannah and I set off on a year of travelling. On our return, I went back to working as a full-time trainer. Helping people understand their horses, and manage their fears and anxieties, is really satisfying. But it became repetitive.
There were so many unresolved questions in my mind. I wanted to know how people think when they are interpreting their horses. What ethical frameworks do they employ, for example, when they decide why a horse behaves like it does? Hannah encouraged me to think about doing a PhD.
There’s been a flurry of research into human-animal relationships. Much of it has centred on pets we have in the home, or farm animals. But horse riding is a particularly interesting area because we relate to horses in a unique way, not quite as pets, not quite as permanent family members, not quite as working animals either.
Horses are strong, mindful, and instinctive creatures. In Britain we’ve found ways to get along with them and train them to do complex things — such as dressage and jumping. I felt that there was a gap in the research for a study that looked at the way people makes sense of animals’ minds — and how this is changing in the light of newer more ‘natural’ training techniques.
Ethnographic research involves living and working among the people you’re studying. Getting to know the trials and tribulations of their daily lives, you’re able to obtain very different data than would be available from a survey or interview-based approach.
Cambridge anthropologist Matei Candea has done a lot of work on human-animal relationships. I sent him an email. He suggested that I put in a PhD proposal and I was accepted. I got partial rather than full funding — but there was no way I could turn the opportunity down.
We spent my first term as a PhD student living in a tree house. Now we live in a cosy narrow boat. Our baby daughter sleeps to the sound of lapping water and birdsong. The boat is moored close to the livery yard where I did my PhD fieldwork and keep my own horse.
The other horse owners generously agreed to be my research participants. As they worked out how to forge a ‘real’ connection with their horses, I learnt more about the way ethics, empathy and knowledge evaluation intertwine. I thought they might be reluctant to talk to me. The opposite is true.
I hope to keep feet in two worlds. Once I’ve got my PhD I plan to combine academic work with continuing to work with people and horses. I really enjoy running clinics — for example for owners whose horses are frightened of being clipped, something many working horses need to have done in winter.
I love writing. During our year travelling, I wrote a book called Globetrotting. It’s partly a travelogue and partly an exploration of contrasting training methods across the world — from India to Argentina. Friends in the horse world keep asking when they can read my PhD. I’m not sure whether they’ll enjoy the academic style and philosophical approach — we’ll see!
Rosie Jones McVey is a PhD student at Girton College.
This profile is part of our This Cambridge Life interview series. | https://medium.com/this-cambridge-life/the-anthropologist-exploring-ethical-questions-about-humans-and-horses-255f6b89623f | ['University Of Cambridge'] | 2017-12-01 12:29:22.500000+00:00 | ['Training', 'Anthropology', 'Ethics', 'Horses', 'Relationships'] |
Business | Goofy Froot by Mike Grossman and Max Travers
Meet the rest of the Froots @ www.GoofyFroot.com
Keep it Fresh.
If you like this fly comic show it some love, hit recommend and share it with your homies. As always, keep it locked on Panel & Frame for more emerging voices in Comics, Literature, Art, and Film. Peace! | https://medium.com/panel-frame/business-cd0fcca55875 | ['Mike Grossman'] | 2017-07-03 16:39:54.214000+00:00 | ['Comedy', 'Coffee', 'Startup', 'Business', 'Comics'] |
What Makes A True Friend? | What Makes A True Friend?
Where does this need to be needed originate?
I want people to miss me when I’m gone…
I guess I’m pretty selfish for that.
Why don’t I wish that they stayed strong?
Guess my self esteem,
needs a pat on the back…
I want friends to pattern their claps
based on whether I’m the batter
who’s having some hacks.
Taking swings at flattering facts.
You weren’t the same without me.
Basically without me,
your appetite has to be capped.
Then I come,
now its like you’re having a snack.
Doesn’t that mean
my absence keeps you lean?
Your stomach stays attached to your back?
That I wish you would starve
if I’m not where you are?
Scenes written only satisfy
if I’m in on the act?
What kind of friendship is that?
These interests of a brat
got me pensive while I put pen to the pad.
Can’t dismiss this need to feel you’d be mad
if my friendship was a thing of the past.
Why do I find meaning in that?
Leaning toward I’m the worst kind of cat…
A scared one
who needs a helping hand
to stray from the trash.
The heap of hurt
on which I refuse to work.
So I enlist you for the task.
Using friends as a mask
to cover the lack of confidence
that I face with en masse.
I need an audience
to prove I am worthy of that.
That I’m worthy to have.
But I guess a true friend
wouldn’t burden your back… | https://medium.com/illumination/what-makes-a-true-friend-c3e74ac78ab | ['Kensho Keith'] | 2020-12-28 21:25:43.411000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Life', 'Philosophy', 'Poem', 'Writing'] |
Bella Rambles | Bella Rambles
Journal Entry 1
Living Life as “High Achieving Teenager” In a Pandemic
Let me start off by saying that I grew up loving school. Perfect attendance from 2nd through fourth grade, fifth grade I had the flu but was bound for the same accolade. I was told I was gifted at age 8, reading years above the other kids in my grade. I won “Battle of the Books,” a competition where you read as many books off the list as you could and battled other schools for who could answer the most trivia correctly. I lived and breathed off of the fact that I was smart. I wasn’t taught how to work for the grades I had. I coasted on being in class and soaking in everything said, as if I was a sponge and my teachers words were water running from the kitchen faucet.
Middle school was no different, the same “gifted” kids, the same notion that we were going to be the future. In middle school I devoured books to fill in for the fact that I somewhat lacked in the department of friends. In middle school I relied on the fact that I was smart, when I found out that girls were really mean. I found comfort in Sarah Dessen and Wendy Mass’s fictional worlds. I looked to high school to be better. It would be everything I dreamed.
I am a junior now. I don’t go to the same school as the kids I spent my childhood with. I found friends who actively wanted to be my friends and not just because my mom asked them to. High-school has not been all I dreamt it to be at age 12. I found out freshman year being smart was no longer enough. I was thrown into a whirlwind of expectations that had never been asked of me before. I struggled but found my stride. Then halfway through sophomore year a Global Pandemic hit. We were told it would just take two weeks. It’s been nine months. Everything that I have ever looked forward to has been postponed, pushed back or outright cancelled. I’m learning on zoom, desperately relying on “Crash Courses” Hank Green to teach me basics I should already know. I’m confused. I’m lonely. I’m struggling. Frankly, I’m pissed off. School is no longer learning, it’s memorization of google searches and desperate FaceTime calls to classmates to ask: “do you know what’s going on?” Students are being held to the same high standard, but we aren’t being taught. I am lucky enough to have the resources to save my grades if need be, but what about those who don’t? What happens to them and their future?
I know it seems selfish, people are dying so suck it up. But there’s only so many times you can dangle hope of normalcy in front of a 16 year old girl and yank it away without tears of frustration. I’m tired. We are tired. We want to learn and we want our lives back. I know zoom isn’t forever but sometimes it feels like it. | https://medium.com/@bgtfh35/bella-rambles-2aa8895153bc | ['Bella Thoms'] | 2020-12-18 04:50:27.450000+00:00 | ['Journal', 'Short Story', 'Teenagers', 'High School'] |
Liberia: Education Reimagined | Graham:
To get a sense of context and background please would describe the circumstances that led to the development of this out-sourced education programme.
Minister Werner:
If you are a follower of the history of Liberia you know that over the past 30 years Liberia has been experiencing decay in many ways. Beginning with the Rice Riot of 1979 that affected the University of Liberia where many students died. After that we had the coup d’etat that targeted the so-called Americo-Liberians. Many fled the country and then the chaos ensued from there.
Interview with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Charles Taylor came with the rebellion that lasted for about 14 years, during which not only Liberian nationals were targeted but also ECOWAS nationals that had been teaching in Liberian schools from secondary to tertiary institutions. Many teachers I had were from Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. I was in high school then and I remember one of my teachers, my vice principal, refused to leave then and was killed.
I tell you this story because it gives you an appreciation of how the system has, over 3 decades, experienced deterioration affecting everything from infrastructure to quality in terms of teachers and learning materials.
We have a national budget that hasn’t really gone beyond USD $600 million. When President Sirleaf was elected, she prioritised education, health and infrastructure.
I returned to Liberia from the United States, 6 years ago. My first task was to help reform the entire government public sector. Looking at institution, mandate and function, looking at issues of redundancy, cleaning the payroll to remove the bloated elements of it that came from the war and the warring factions, partition in government and all of that. That’s what I did for that 4 years within the civil service institution.
During the Ebola crisis starting in 2014, the President asked if I could go to health, to take over from the retiring Health Minister. The Senate said that we needed a medical doctor, so I didn’t go and then shortly after that, last May a year this month, I was nominated to come to the Ministry of Education.
The first thing we did was to take a tour of the entire country and that brought us face to face with the issues. We spoke to parents, we spoke to community leaders, we saw school infrastructure post-Ebola, we saw students, we saw everyone who wanted to speak. We held town hall meetings. With the support of Georgetown University, whose students came to Liberia for their internship, because I don’t have the capacity in the Ministry to work with us, I asked them to figure out what the issues are, really, that people want resolved.
In June of that same year we held our education sector planning review which brought almost every stakeholder together. We gathered in the coastal city of Buchanan. We identified 15 priorities that we felt needed to be tackled within 3 years if we wanted to set the system right. Of that 15, top of the list, was teachers. Teacher training, learning materials, teachers guides and all of those. We talked about girls education, school infrastructure and vocational education. These things were topping the list.
David Miliband
In September, around the time of the UN General Assembly, I accompanied the President and my task was to be able to communicate these priorities to people who wanted to listen. I was lucky enough to be invited by David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee in partnership with Dubai Cares and I spoke there on education in conflict. Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah also invited me around the same time to speak about issues of education, particularly focusing on post-Ebola reforms.
It was during these meetings that I met people from the world of philanthropy, and they wanted to hear more. In November I was in London, invited by Vitol Foundation. Vitol had convened a roundtable of potential funders for our priorities.
At the end it was said that,
“ Liberia under President Sirleaf has enjoyed a lot of international goodwill. We have devoted ourselves to the status quo. From what you are telling us the impact has not been achieved. Now, there are various initiatives in Africa that we want you to experiment, even if it means that we pay for it, for your travel there.”
We were pointed to East Africa to look at Bridge International Academies and what they were doing. We went to East Africa, spent at least a week there talking to parents, particularly Kenya and Uganda, talking to local authorities, visiting the schools, seeing the students, talking to parents and the stakeholders. At the end I was struck by the ability of the children to read at a great level, the commitment of the teachers and the fact that there were systems of accountability, monitoring and evaluation. The management systems were clear.
President Uhuru Kenyatta
I returned and prepared a report for the President. When she had an opportunity, invited by her Kenyan counterpart, President Uhuru, for a State visit in December of last year she said, “You have to come with me to show me what you saw.” We went when she had an opportunity in Nairobi to see what she could see. After she saw that she said,
“Okay, I need you to speak to your Kenyan government counterparts to give you an honest opinion about this program.”
When I met my Kenyan counterparts they said,
“Look, we like what Bridge are doing but we have a problem with standards. Standards for curriculum and standards for teacher training. We train our teachers through the universities, they must have degrees, and we designed a curriculum that every school must adhere to. Bridge has our curriculum but is not following it to the letter”.
I said,
“Okay, what I’m listening to and seeing is the parents who live in these slum areas where Bridge are operating are paying Bridge, and why are they choosing Bridge over the public institutions that are relatively free? There must be something at stake here.”
Then I was told that it’s true that the students at that level are doing relatively better than their counterparts in the public (state) schools.
We returned to Liberia and I used the Christmas period to reflect on how we could leverage some of the strengths Bridge portrays without violating what has been legislated in Liberia. Free education, free and compulsory education for children at the primary level.
I said, “Look, the best thing to do is to form a partnership with Bridge,” and at the time, I have to be honest with you, I did not know there were many other low-cost education providers. I decided to write to the same group that had convened in London and said,
“I was just in East Africa, as many of you wanted and what I saw looked very good but in Liberia we want to start a conversation in January in 2016 to talk about how we could form a partnership with Bridge.”
That letter went out and I think it was around the 24th and the 25th. Many traveled from within and without to come to Monrovia to talk about what this partnership could look like. It was in the meeting, particularly from civil society, that there were objections to looking at Bridge only. People wanted to see competition, they wanted to see all of that, so we said yes.
I said to them,
“Since this conversation began with Bridge, we are going to continue to go with Bridge but Bridge will not run private schools in Liberia.”
The schools in Liberia and the piloted schools will be for government. There will be no school fees paid, the materials the students will use will be free of charge, but we want to pilot this to see if we can leverage the kind of management systems that Bridge uses to improve learning outcomes including teachers showing up on time, extend their school hours and days, etc. To introduce them back into our system and in so doing build the Ministry’s capacity to carry on these things beyond the pilot year if we are not able to afford it.
We consulted with our public procurement commission in terms of the competitiveness of it. We gave our guidance, we put our call for expression of interest and within that time we also signed a memorandum of understanding with Bridge. Since then we’ve had at least 11 applications.
Graham:
Are these applications from domestic providers or are they from external NGOs?
Minister Werner:
Both. They come in several categories. They are Liberian, meaning run by Liberian. They are NGOs that operate in Liberia, such as Street Child. Then you have BRAC, that is in Liberia but operates in the health care sector but wants to do education now. Then you have Rising Academies that’s currently in Sierra Leone, but wants to come to Liberia, and you have Omega. Then in Liberia we have several others including, Youth Action Network.
Graham:
What is Liberia’s annual budget for education?
Minister Werner:
Of the $600 million USD national budget, the Ministry of Education receives around 44 million or so. Now, of that 44 million at least 35 million is for salary and then there’s a substantial amount for school subsidies. There isn’t money, actually, to do proper education planning or programming.
Graham:
I understand that you’ve received financial support from the World Bank via their Global Partnership for Education initiative. How much has Liberia received?
Minister Werner:
I think the program probably started in 2007 or so. The Global Partnership for Education has been constructing schools, and giving school grants and all of those things. I think it’s a $40 million project. The World Bank itself is the grant agent for this money. Post-Ebola it has given some school grants to be able to prepare the schools to be more resilient, to train teachers in psychosocial, pedagogy and the rest. It’s ending June this year.
Graham:
Who are the other external organisations that have been advising you on Liberia’s education programme?
Minister Werner:
The Tony Blair AGI, they support my office and they help us clarify issues, they bring in their own expertise. They help us to formulate some of the policy papers on this and to be able to talk to our donors to help them understand what is it that we are trying to achieve by doing this and the problems we are attempting to solve. They have a person in my office who keeps me abreast of everything that is happening.
ARK from the UK is also advising, playing a very good and appreciated supportive role in terms of us navigating this. Those are, apart from what we get when we convene, stakeholders meetings with USAID, UNICEF and others. Those are the main advisors on this.
Graham:
What is the cost to Liberia in contracting with Bridge for this programme?
Minister Werner:
We have agreed as a government that the teachers working in these schools will continue to be civil servants on government payroll, so government will be paying those teachers. Government will continue to maintain the schools. So those 2 areas of finance were already budgeted for, the rest will be provided through private philanthropy that will go directly to the providers.
Graham:
So to clarify, Bridge are not receiving any funds from the Liberian government or families but from external philanthropists?
Minister Werner:
This would apply to the other providers too, if BRAC and others were chosen. That’s how they would be funded.
Graham:
What is your response to the statement made by Samuel Johnson of the National Teachers Association and his concerns about capacity building?
Minister Werner:
The National Teachers Association, have been represented adequately in these stakeholders meetings. In fact, in the Ministry here, the Director for Teacher Education is the President of the National Teachers Association. There are other moving parts to this.
The Ministry is carrying out an aggressive teachers workforce reform. We’re using biometrics to verify our teachers, to check their credentials. We inherited a system bequeathed us by the war. Many people are in the classroom and they shouldn’t be. They are not educated to be in the classroom and we are finding out many “ghost teachers”. It’s interesting to see that Mister Johnson himself was discovered in one of our counties as a teacher, when he lives in Monrovia working as Secretary General of the National Teachers Association. Since 2013 he’s been receiving direct deposit paycheques from the government but he’s not been in the classroom, so this reform has many implications for those who want to circumvent the system to continue to cheat.
Click image to read correspondence between Minister Werner and Samuel Johnson.
The other part to it is that Bridge operates in Kenya as a private provider and as you know Bridge doesn’t have that many friends in the teachers union groups. Education International vehemently opposes Bridge, and while we were doing the stakeholder meetings they sent a team to Liberia to work with the National Teachers Association to oppose this. They mischaracterise this as privatising schools. The problem is that I know the heads of Education International, David Edwards and others, great friends of mine.
I saw them in Dubai prior and they didn’t want this to go ahead. I told them, I said,
“Look. What we are doing in Liberia is different from what Bridge is doing in Kenya. This is a partnership to improve certain systems, to build the Ministry’s capacity to do certain things, so it’s a pilot. We will have independent evaluation of it. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but we have to try whatever we can to accelerate and improve learning outcomes. Liberia is way too behind.”
Graham:
Why do you think they object to the programme then?
Minister Werner:
It’s because I don’t think they were open minded enough to see our perspective. Then I discovered later on that in Bridge-operated schools in Kenya and Uganda there are no teachers unions. That could be a reason. Bridge doesn’t tolerate teachers unions in the schools it operates.
Graham:
Both the Kenyan and Ugandan governments have halted the expansion of programmes with Bridge citing, for example, highest turn over of senior managers and teachers in any private education network in Africa, questionable results data, poor quality facilities, unqualified teachers, etc. Does this concern you & what measures are being put in place to ensure quality education is provided to Liberian children in this programme?
Minister Werner:
I will ask Bridge but I haven’t really seen anything from them. As I explained I met with my Kenya counterparts. I didn’t see my Ugandan counterparts on this. Although I went to the local government officials near the Kenyan border and went as far as Kampala, by the time I was in Uganda I think they had around 7 schools. My information is that they have maybe 3 times as many now and this is since December 2015 or so. I don’t know. Bridge, by the time I was in Kenya, had 404 schools.
Graham:
By outsourcing Liberia’s education provision to external non-domestic organisations are you concerned about the potential for “intellectual colonialism” to negatively impact cultural identity and future prosperity?
Minister Werner:
I agree with your concerns and I share them. My thinking is we need to lead in the leveraging of the advances we’ve been making in terms of technology as tools for education, in terms of the various methods and knowledge giving teachers in the classroom, and we need to lead in the design of our curriculum and all of those things that should be to make education better.
So yes, I am concerned about intellectual colonialism. However, making reference to what is happening, I think that the approach we are piloting may be a better approach in the sense that we are not relinquishing things that we hold dear, things we’ve legislated in Liberia. We are not being stopped from designing our own curriculum. I think that another way to look at it is to say, you know, we’re being bombarded with external media anyway.
Graham:
I assume that relying on non-domestic agencies for your education provision can’t be a long term plan. What is your strategy for domestic capacity building in regards to teachers, schools and curriculum?
Minister Werner:
Since the end of the war, we have partnered with USAID to train teachers. Liberia has 3 teacher training institutions regionally situated and the training of teachers since the war has focused on early childhood and the primary levels. That means we have huge deficiencies in junior and senior-high levels.
This year we started tackling the middle school level, which is 7, 8 and 9 by introducing a program we call the “B certificate”. It’s a 2 year program in one of the teacher training institutions to train teachers who can teach at that level.
There is a long term plan and we’re working with UNESCO to be able to put this in place with ICT education and the rest. Then we have what we call the County Education Officers. These are people in the regions who are responsible for education at the local level.
Liberia has 15 counties, and then those who assist them, we call them District Education Officers. There are 98 political districts, so there are 98 of them. We need to build their capacity to understand what their rules are in the counties. To be able to hold themselves, and the schools, and their community engagement to PTAs and the school boards growing in those areas. That is the much bigger project. I know the pilot has gathered more news but this is a pilot project we are pursuing. To have a good school you need a good principal.
That is one of the challenges, building good leadership. Not just about encouraging female leadership, which is huge in Liberia. Imagine 28% of our teaching faculty is female and when you check the leadership hardly does one find any woman at leadership level in the schools. It’s something that we are working on long term. Then the Ministry doesn’t have a stringent M&E (Monitoring & Evaluation) capacity to monitor all of these things, to make sure that teachers are showing up, to make sure that communities are engaged, to make sure that schools have what they need to operate. We hope we can build all of these things in the plan we are formulating.
Graham:
How can other organisations, domestically or globally, assist Liberia and your mission as Education Minister?
Minister Werner:
I think to help you must know the person and listen to the person. Interestingly I was in Israel recently with my Ghanaian and Ivorian counterparts and when Naana [Opoku-Agyemang] talked about Ghana, I almost thought she was talking about Liberia because I’ve always envied the Ghanaian system myself. I was in Kumasi for some time and there are shared problems I believe within the ECOWAS setting. I shouldn’t have to go to Israel to see my Ghanaian counterpart.
ECOWAS has to value education, to place it on the agenda where ECOWAS Ministers of Education can come together and talk about what the shared challenges are and how we can resolve them together within the context of the West African Examination Council, for example.
Here in Liberia we need help with teacher training. We need help with building the capacity of the teacher training institutions. There are too many young people out of the war who are functionally illiterate. We need help directing them to skilled training programs that actually give them skills and jobs. I believe if we want to solve the teacher issue we must also work to clean the payroll, which is what I’m doing now, and use the efficiency savings and put them back into the system so you have qualified teachers in the classroom. This is going to be key to revitalising or reinvigorating the school system in Liberia.
As I said earlier, before the war when we were in junior high school there were Ghanaian teachers, there were Nigerian teachers, there were Senegalese teachers, there were teachers from the Gambia. These were teachers in the sciences and math. We killed many of them, some ran away with their Liberian wives and they’re not coming back here. These are the challenges. Building the human capacity to deliver on the essential service of education is what is needed.
Further reading | https://medium.com/learning-re-imagined/liberia-education-reimagined-7dfd08baf3bc | ['Graham Brown-Martin'] | 2016-09-06 19:05:45.280000+00:00 | ['Edtech', 'Liberia', 'Global Development', 'Africa', 'Education'] |
How High-Performance Marketing Teams Work Together | How High-Performance Marketing Teams Work Together
There are threads of commonality woven through all high-performance teams. Here they are, with a focus on how marketing teams can use them.
These days, it can seem like the term “marketing teams” is somewhat of a misnomer. After all, most advice about marketing strategy tends to come from just a handful of marketing rockstars.
And get this: Most of those marketing rockstars aren’t actually part of teams. They are their own brand, and they’ve mastered the art of marketing themselves as marketers.
It’s a beautiful craft, really.
One that leads us to subscribe to their email list, buy their books, and wouldn’t you know it… guess who will be top-of-mind if ever we even entertain the idea of hiring a marketing consultant?
So here many of us are, then, often trying to improve our humble little marketing teams through learning from someone who doesn’t work as part of a marketing team (and actually may never have… or much has changed since they did).
Sure, some of their advice may have immense application for our marketing teams, but I find this advice is nearly always missing an important perspective: The realities of daily work as part of a modern marketing team.
They’ll teach us all about how to use the greatest new digital marketing tools (that they may or may not be getting paid to endorse) and they’ll show us, you know, 5 Crazy Fast Ways to Fill Your Marketing Funnel.
But what about all the crucial factors of communication, commitment, and collaboration it takes to be a high-performance team? What about this truth?:
A group of individuals who all know the crazy fast ways do not make a tight-knit marketing team.
I won’t mention any names — as their headshots are already buried in our brains and their newsletter is likely awaiting us in our inbox — but it’s an important distinction I want to make:
Why are the same handful of people our go-to source regardless of if we want to learn how to market ourselves as individuals or become a high-performance marketing team?
The former makes total sense, the latter not so much.
A brief history of high-performance teams
The concept of high-performance teams is widely thought to have originated in 1949, when Eric Trist of the Tavistock Institute visited a coal mine in north central England.
What he saw, according to Mark Hanlan, author of High Performance Teams: How To Make Them Work, was:
…self-regulating teams working throughout the mine — the result of cooperation with the workers, managers, and union leaders.”
Trist noted incredible levels of worker satisfaction and productivity, a combination at the time that went against the grain of traditional wisdom. It was thought that productivity and high-output could only be achieved at the expense of employee satisfaction.
From this point forward, new fields of research began to emerge (much of it led by Tavistock) that questioned the prevailing paradigm. In addition to studying what high-performance teams were doing, researchers now looked at how they were doing it.
This helped bend the conversation about workplace productivity from certain mechanics (like shaving seconds off the completion of a given task or even how to use financial incentives to drive more output) to humanistics (like how to create a team culture that embraces participative leadership and has the capacity to manage its own conflicts).
In the 1980’s, when companies like Boeing and General Electric began to take an interest in it, the concept of high-performance teams took off.
Today, the term “high-performance team” is often defined as a team that made a quantum leap in key performance indicators in less than a year.
Vague, I know, but it’s a definition worth holding close. That “in less than a year” timeframe is one many of us think about, especially those of us on a marketing team for a startup.
One year is a timeframe that feels within our grasp; it at once encourages us to believe that our action right now matters, while being far enough away that we can work toward results in quarters rather than days or weeks.
So what are the fundamentals your marketing department should have if it wants to go from good to great? I’m glad you asked!
Here are the threads of commonality that run through high-performance marketing teams. Dive in, and then check out our SlideShare at the end of this article to see what the marketing leaders at HubSpot, Bitly, and Grado Labs had to say.
They place a premium on empathy
High-performance marketing teams place a premium on empathy. They know empathy’s importance as it relates to each other, to their current customers, and to their potential customers. Let me briefly break each of those down:
A high-performance team must care about each other, and I don’t just mean about each other’s performance. A talented group of individuals can grow into a good team, but a great marketing team can’t be built unless the individuals care about each other.
This doesn’t necessarily mean they must all be best friends, but it does mean they occasionally share insights into their lives outside of work. Creating this level of connection can make it far easier to address conflicts as they arise (they will) because teammates, in having built the capacity to care, will be more likely to see their teammate as a complex person rather than as the results they produce.
Additionally, empathy also means each teammate, to the greatest extent possible, will be able to understand the nature of one another’s work. This can ensure that they defer to their teammates when necessary (and regardless of the hierarchy of job titles within the marketing department), and that each individual has a level of respect for the work of each of their teammates, which in turn can play a pivotal role in conflict prevention.
In regards to empathy for current customers, for starters, high-performance marketing teams know a relationship doesn’t end simply because a “lead” becomes a customer. In having empathy for their existing customers, marketing teams can take more pride in the work they create, develop better solutions to their customer’s questions, and feel the larger picture — which can be difficult in this digital age where connections are often many but shallow — of how the work they’re doing has impact on real people.
Lastly, empathy for potential customers, I believe, is the only way to truly provide any content of value. This is especially important if, as has been echoed by many of the marketing rockstars, content marketing is the only marketing left. With hundreds of thousands of articles being posted each day, it’s only in developing a deep understanding of your potential customer’s needs and struggles that you can create anything worth their precious time.
They measure what matters
If you’re reading this, you’ve felt the tug to measure (or at least look at) vanity metrics. The specifics of vanity metrics, of course, depend on what the marketing department’s goals are, but their allure to make the team feel false progress is universal.
High-performance marketing teams cut through this, and before they measure anything they first create a plan for what actually needs to be measured.
This sounds obvious, but many marketing teams, upon establishing the larger goal, move immediately to lining up all the steps they’ll need to take to reach that goal.
It makes sense, but what so often gets lost in that process is this: What, in the steps we’ve all agreed will lead us to our goal, must be measured?
“Must be” can come from a variety of reasons (such as the company’s CEO specifically requested it), but, in general, when high-performance marketing teams measure something it’s because they will take immediate action based on what those measurements show.
This is easier said than done, and is often a continuous process of trial and error, but it’s what the best marketing teams strive for.
They are at once self-directed and committed to the company mission
Much of what the Tavistock research found had to do with the effectiveness of self-directed teams. That is, teams that had a level of autonomy to make decisions without being micromanaged.
For this to work, all members of the marketing team must be fully committed to the larger company mission. If they aren’t aligned — whether it’s because the mission statement isn’t carved out, the company isn’t doing work that aligns with the employee’s values, or the employee simply doesn’t feel their work matters — productivity will drop.
Also key to success of the self-directed team is that they have some basic knowledge of project management methodologies. This doesn’t mean they are project management experts, or even that they strictly use a particular methodology, but it does mean they have a simple project management system worked out for how they complete tasks and projects.
As Robin Kwong, Special Projects Manager at the Financial Times, told us, the key for his team is project clarity right from the beginning:
I find that if I had clearly set out from the beginning why we are doing this project, how we are doing it and what we are doing (and have the team’s agreement on it), then not a lot more has to be done during the course of the project to make sure we stay on track.”
A high-performance team will have this and more, including frequent progress updates and a schedule of the anticipated times each part of a project should be completed.
Lastly, the best marketing teams are able to work as a tight-knit group without overly siphoning themselves off from the larger team they are part of. Again, it’s a matter of balancing team vision alongside overall company mission.
They maintain efficient lines of communication
As any marketing team will tell you, their work is often tightly integrated with various departments and even freelancers. A content creator may hand off the work to the design team, only to find out that the design team received and has been working on a previous draft.
Or, as the marketing team grows, confusion arises over who now makes the final decision regarding certain projects. As Cyrus Molavi wrote in his piece, What’s the Optimal Team Size for Workplace Productivity?, the most productive teams have between 5 and 7 members.
High-performance teams are cognizant of how growth can impact decision making, and when they realize their team’s size is beginning to impact performance, they find a way to split it up.
Efficiency of communication also means marketing teams communicate their efforts (including wins and challenges) with the larger company. When marketing teams have minor wins — like the making of a strategic connection or how an influencer shared their work — they often don’t communicate it with the company.
These are key moments worth sharing, as they not only can boost company morale but they also provide a glimpse under the hood of the often immeasurable but still important aspects of marketing.
They have at least one teammate tasked with seeing the future
I get it. Small and scrappy marketing teams rarely have the time to pull their head out of the weeds to see the larger picture. But here’s the deal, they have to. Or at least one member of the team does.
As Patti Sanchez, Chief Strategy Officer at Duarte Inc., told us:
If you’re feeding the fire, you’re not seeing the future. The easiest way to feel productive is to feed the fire — to address all of the stuff you see piling up right in front of your face — but that comes with a cost. And it’s a kind of cost that money can’t take care of.”
In other words, if your marketing team hasn’t designated someone (and this also means granting them the time) to see the future, it’s going to be awfully difficult to make the “quantum leap” it takes to become a high-performance team.
By “seeing the future” I mean not just positing what the marketing team’s goals are, but actually having the distance away from the daily work towards them to see how best they are reached and what may lie beyond them.
Whoever on the marketing team is tasked with seeing the future can, occasionally, embrace this concept from Andrew Wilkinson’s Lazy Leadership:
…it’s about taking a step back, leaning on your team, and becoming an observer instead of an active participant…”
They respect each other’s focus habits
If this is the first article you’ve read here at Flow, welcome. If not, you likely know by this point that we believe focus — in this age of increasing distractions — is the future.
As such, we believe focus isn’t just what happens in the “flow state,” it’s actually something you need to create team processes for.
If your goal is to become a high-performance marketing team, creating pockets of time to get focused and stay focused is crucial.
As is respecting every teammate’s need to do this.
We recommend creating focus schedules. This can be something as simple as the marketing leader telling his/her team:
Don’t message Jan on Wednesdays. That’s her day to focus on outreach and nurture relationships with those who respond.”
Or it could be developing shared calendars based on which segments of time each teammate will be in focus mode (and therefore should not be asked to do this or that).
The foundational components, of course, are that each member of your marketing team a) knows their focus needs, b) feels in a safe enough space to share those needs, and c) is part of a team that grants those requests when possible.
They foster each other’s learning and growth
This is something all high-performance teams have in common: They all help each other rise as individuals.
Each teammate has a strength, and in not just exhibiting but sharing that strength each teammate can better the other (and often grow their team relationships as a result).
This may mean the marketing team leader tasked with seeing the future can develop the copywriting skills that could lead to them crafting the perfect company mission statement as a result.
It means the teammate who writes content for the blog can learn how to set URL parameters from the teammate with more experience in digital marketing strategy.
This can happen through one teammate simply saying “Hey, can you jump on a call and share your screen so I can see how you did that?”, or it can even happen through a company culture where teammates are always sharing with each other interesting articles they’ve been reading.
Regardless of how it happens, when every teammate helps each other rise, and when they genuinely enjoy the process of doing so, the overall team will rise.
They know this: What fires together, wires together
Now we’re taking a page from neuroscience, where this phrase is often used to describe synaptic transmission — how neurons that repeatedly fire together, through our practices or habits, eventually learn to do so more efficiently.
As much as a high-performance team is one that, within a year, makes a quantum leap, the best teams need time to fire together so they can wire together.
Over time, great marketing teams streamline their communication processes, whatever project management strategies they’re using, their individual and team focus habits, and so many other factors. As they do this, their work begins to sing better together.
They intuitively know what the other wants, and where the other will be. It’s how the sushi chef no longer has to look when his assistant of 40 years hands him a piece of fish, or how a basketball player throws a no-look pass and her teammate is the only one who knows where the ball went.
This kind of mastery isn’t just reserved for individuals; good teams can build a level of team mastery over time. The more a marketing team effectively fires together, the more their efforts will efficiently wire together.
Take these threads of commonality with you, along with the realization that not all marketing teams are created equal, and not all rise to an elite level in similar ways.
In embracing these, in whole or in part, you’re setting your marketing team (and not just the individual rockstars within) on a path to be better. For ease of sharing, here they are:
High-performance marketing teams:
Place a premium on empathy
Measure what matters
Are at once self-directed and committed to the company mission
Maintain efficient lines of communication
Have at least one teammate tasked with seeing the future
Respect each other’s focus habits
Foster each other’s learning and growth
Know what fires together, wires together
And here’s our SlideShare packed with insights from Meghan Keaney Anderson, VP of Marketing at HubSpot; Andrew Dumont, VP of Marketing at Bitly; and Jonathan Grado, VP of Marketing at Grado Labs:
***
Illustrations: Bully | https://medium.com/flow/how-high-performance-marketing-teams-work-together-26d09c84be6f | [] | 2017-02-16 22:24:48.951000+00:00 | ['Management', 'Marketing', 'Leadership', 'Productivity'] |
Holding Distant Hands | Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash
As an unmarked box is delivered, to our humble front door
A careful night of planning, together but apart once more
Lined with an outfit, a board game
And a perfectly pre-chosen film
We dress in each’s attire and count the minutes til’
With a rapping at the door, posing as an unknown surprise
A companion’s delivered food, could it be a burger or maybe fries
In unmarked boxes, the aroma is wafting great
The Styrofoam mystery, will serve as a disposable plate
We dial in together and open in a shock
Our favorite foods in front of us, munching as we talk
Joking on the outfits, we had chosen as the others cover
We begin to roll the die
Taking turns with one another
In a game of twists and turns, triumphs and setbacks
Each move we make is fantastic, causing our smiles to crack
With a winner declared, we rest into our most comfortable spot
A classic holiday film, with a resembling plot
The actors are distant, across the globe it seems
But in one fell-swoop they’re brought together
Just as this night of dreams | https://medium.com/@timvarner1989/holding-distant-hands-40d67e1598e | ['Tim Varner'] | 2020-12-07 14:39:24.575000+00:00 | ['Lifehacks', 'Academia', 'Poetry Prompt', 'Mental Health', 'Poetry'] |
“Once again, our country has been struck by an Islamist terrorist” Says French President Emmanuel Macron | Three people were recently stabbed to death in Nice, France, by a 21 year old Tunisian man, named Brahim Aouissaoui, who had just arrived in the country earlier this month. The young man was armed with three knives, and was holding a copy of the Quran, when he attacked all three victims within a local church.
One of the victims, a 60 year old female, was found “virtually beheaded”, according to local officials. Another, a 55 year old male was found with his throat slit. And the final victim, a 40 year old woman, was able to flee to a nearby cafe, but later died of her multiple stab wounds.
The Mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, said that Aouissaoui “repeated endlessly ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest)”.
Police were able to shoot and detain Aouissaoui.
In a statement, the French President says “clearly, France is under attack”: | https://medium.com/australians-news/once-again-our-country-has-been-struck-by-an-islamist-terrorist-says-french-president-emmanuel-541df5e3166e | ['Steven Psaradakis'] | 2020-10-31 11:01:02.781000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Crime', 'Society', 'Terrorism', 'Islam'] |
The Secret Origin of Carbon Wrangler | The Secret Origin of Carbon Wrangler
Sometimes is just hits you over the head. Sometimes, there’s an epiphany.
I came home from the 22nd Conference of the Parties in Marrakesh, where the Paris Accord was ratified. I kissed my wife and declared “I know what I do. I’m a Carbon Wrangler.”
She responded, “What?”
— — -
The enormity of Work — the tasks and investments to be done to reverse and restore climate change — is bound up in the carbon budget (my first blogtalks a lot about this). To avoid the worst of climate change, we must dramatically and consistently drop emissions to zero very quickly. We must also undo our carbon legacy and burden — the two trillion tons of CO2 mankind has dumped into the air and oceans.
It’s a goliath work load, but no way to dodge it. The math is the math. The Work remains.
In this, I’ve had the good fortune to work with excellent people throughout my career, including graduate school, my first job (at ExxonMobil’s R&D Center in Houston)., and the University of Maryland. My colleagues were outstanding, I learned a ton, and I felt I served the institutions and my confrères well. I travelled the world, stunned by the geological and geophysical world I traversed.
This good fortune continued into the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and into high levels of public service at the US Dept. of Energy. These were the acmes of my career. I felt well configured to take on the tasks at hand and was surrounded by the best leaders, staff and colleagues one could wish for — extraordinary colleagues with a sense of mission and purpose.
Despite this huge opportunity and fabulous support, something was off. I didn’t fit in.
While I enjoyed my work in each organization and accomplished a lot, something chaffed. Every five years or so I would seek to reinvented myself, treading some intangible pathway to greater impact and a better self. I know my employers were sometimes baffled and frustrated by my difficult fit.
This came to a head in Marrakesh, the 22nd Conference of the Parties and a big waste of time. Convened right after President Trump’s election, the 30,000 people there flapped around like wet hens. There were endless “park and bark” presentations — broadcasting a message without discourse. There was showboating and grandstanding, empty promises and sad displays. And, of course, there were the diplomats; isolated, striving to forge a difficult consensus in a difficult context.
Concurrent with COP22, I was invited to attend a parallel event called the DoFest. Launched by Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of Emerson Collective, and Andy Karsner, the new director of Emerson Elemental, the DoFest sought a completely different path. While it recognized the importance and value of government actions, individually or collectively, it announced brazenly that we weren’t waiting. Instead, it would convene and empower Doers to create a Roadmap for action — a manifesto to engage.
Doers come from industry, academia, and civil society. Doers are entrepreneurs, scientists, or artists. They would start today to build the world we needed, because that’s what Doers do.
I was completely engrossed. I met musicians and explorers, actors and financiers. I saw people starting companies, and others saving their indigenous tribes. I met conservationists, Presidents of countries, artists and architects. Each day began with indigenous Moroccan music and a native prayer. To this day, one of the most beautiful things I ever witnessed was the third morning’s invocation, a hula danced by Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey, a National Geographic fellow and ocean wayfarer.
Each day challenged the participants to harness the left and the right side of their brains to invent the future. I saw aspects of the world refracted through different philosophies and experiences, all with the goal of restoring fundamental balance between humans and nature. The questions were enormous — How can we restore depleted ocean stocks? How can we cheaply and ubiquitously monitor pollution? How can we save the drowning island nations, under resourced as they are? Above all, how can this be activated in the absence of national governments — how can individuals, companies and civic institutions auto-actuate their desired future?
And in the last minutes of the event, it suddenly hit me. I knew what I did and do:
· I keep CO2 from the air and oceans
· I create a circular carbon economy, which recycled carbon into economic value
· I remove CO2 from the air & oceans and return it to the geosphere.
It all made sense. I take CO2 that’s in the wrong place and put it in the right place. I am a Carbon Wrangler.
— —
Since then, I’ve spent most my professional days seeking to help people launch enterprises that harvest and manage carbon emissions. Some are policy makers, seeking ideas or technical insight. Some are companies, seeking expertise and a policy/international perspective on CCS or carbon-to-value. Some are entrepreneurs, seeking to better understand markets and existing policy options. Some are project developers and financiers, seeking to pull together a new fund or capital investment. Some are students, seeking to know more about carbon management options and what might be done. In all cases, I feel fortunate to spend my days this way and grateful for the chance.
Towards that end, I’m excited to work now at the Center for Global Energy Policy (CGEP). Led by Jason Bordoff at Columbia University, CGEP provides answers to vexing questions across the energy space, from sanctions to markets to climate. Towards that end, the Center launched a new initiative on carbon management. I started this past September as a senior research scholar and once again have excellent colleagues — the faculty and staff of CGEP and Columbia University — in the greatest city in the world.
I expect to be busy. The Work remains.
— — -
In addition to Andy Karsner and Emerson Collective, I wish to thank the Principals of Energy Futures Initiative (Sect. Ernest Moniz, Joe Hezir, and Melanie Kenderdine), Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and the Hewlett Foundation. I am forever grateful for your inspiration, forbearance, and generosity of spirit. | https://medium.com/@carbonwrangler/the-secret-origin-of-carbon-wrangler-945662778d16 | ['Julio Friedmann'] | 2019-06-25 12:29:36.679000+00:00 | ['Carbon Emissions', 'Energy', 'Climate Change', 'Ccs', 'Co2 Emissions'] |
Make your data easy to read use Angular custom pipe | Angular guid
Make your data easy to read use Angular custom pipe
Custom angular pipe
Standard Angular pipes are very handy but it will be much better if we will make our own pipe.
Let’s create a small project.
app.component.ts
Every user have a phone number which is very hard to read.
Table
We can solve that issue by making a custom phone pipe. For that we need to do couple of things:
use a Pipe decorator where we have to put a name of a pipe, this name we will use in html files.
implement PipeTransform interface, this interface have a definition of transform method
Our implementation of the transform method will be simple, we just adding a space to the phone number.
phone.pipe.ts
Pipe is ready. Now we need add our pipe in ‘declarations’ section in module where we want to use it, in our case we need to put it in ‘AppModule’. After that in HTML file we can use our pipe.
Result of phone.pipe.ts
Every user have a money on his account. Let’s make a small shop and show to user have many stuff he can buy in our shop. For that we need to make another pipe with parameters. In this case our implementation of the transform method will take more than one parameter.
amount.pipe.ts
Also we need to put this pipe in ‘AppModule’.
AmountPipe in AppModule
Right now our shop is selling TV and tablets.
AmountPipe in app.component.html
Result
Angular custom pipe is very beneficial because we can give to our data any look.
If you need to take a close look on project here isthe link. | https://medium.com/quick-code/angular-custom-pipe-will-give-your-data-any-look-919d46696639 | ['Yurii Kuznietsov'] | 2020-11-06 16:46:35.579000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Front End Development', 'Angular', 'Programming'] |
Learning Radical Self-Love: A Review of “The Body is Not an Apology” by Sonya Renee Taylor | Book Cover of “The Body is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love” by Sonya Renee Taylor
Do you want to learn how to love yourself but don’t know where to start?
You’re not alone.
Fortunately, there’s a book that breaks down the ways we succumb to body shame throughout our lives and teaches how to begin overcoming those patterns. Sonya Renee Taylor, poet and author, wrote The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love to empower each of us to create a world free of body shame.
The author covers a wide range of topics in this book. Beginning with the rationale behind a body-centered analysis, Taylor then makes her case for why we need a radical approach. In order to dismantle body shame, she argues, we must rid ourselves of the notion that some bodies are “bad” while others are “good.” This requires a dash of intersectionality.
This isn’t a small task — and Sonya agrees. However, if we want to see our communities embody inclusivity, kindness, and empathy, we must first cultivate these viewpoints within ourselves.
Taylor offers “the three peaces” to guide us towards making peace with our bodies. The first particularly resonated with me: “Make peace with not understanding.” Sonya Renee explains how, especially with increased access to information from the internet, society pressures us to know everything — to never be wrong. Of course, this isn’t a reasonable expectation for anyone. No one can know everything! Allowing space for not understanding, furthermore, opens up the “opportunity for exploration without judgment or demands.”
This book packs a punch when it comes to detailing the structures that cause us to enact body shame. From government and the media to capitalist messages signaling that we must buy more to achieve our vision of “enough,” it’s no wonder we internalize so much shame about our bodies! We then project that shame by reinforcing those same systems — what Taylor calls “body terrorism.”
“Mapping a way out of shame” and into empathy — and, eventually, radical self-love — seems like a monumental challenge! Taylor’s practical advice, thankfully, can point us towards the habits and thought patterns that peel away layers of body shame one day at a time.
I give this book five stars out of five! Get your copy and support independently owned bookstores by clicking the link below!
All Rights Reserved: Please contact us to purchase any articles for reprint
Books in this Article:
https://bookshop.org/a/18512/9781523090990 | https://medium.com/@convivialculture/learning-radical-self-love-a-review-of-the-body-is-not-an-apology-by-sonya-renee-taylor-d258bdb4eaa | ['Convivial Culture'] | 2021-03-22 03:17:35.775000+00:00 | ['Body Positive', 'Intersectionality', 'Love Yourself', 'Body Image', 'Self Love'] |
GCP Internal Network LBs , How magical? | If you ever decide to tcpdump on a node behind an GCP internal Loadbalancer you will be surprised to see that the packets aren’t destined to the interface ip on your VM , the ip headers maintain the destination address of the load balancer , let me draw it:
I have a normal NLB passing traffic to a instance group with a bunch of dnsmasq nodes , nothing out of the ordinary.
The issue is that if you tcpdump on the dnsmasq nodes, you will find that packets aren’t destined to the node , the interfaces aren’t in promiscuous mode and the packets are still accepted and responded:
The dnsmasq node has this address:
root@dnsmasq:~# ip -4 -br a | grep ens4
ens4 UP 10.1.16.238/32
No alias nothing else , now if i tcpdump a request:
11:35:47.356361 In aa:aa:aa:aa ethertype IPv4 (0x0800), length 100: 10.10.1.52.55173 > 10.1.16.240.53: 24391+ [1au] A? www.pepinos.com . (56)
So 10.10.1.52 its the user (me) , i am querying the lb (fwd rule) ip (10.1.16.240) and that traffic is fwd to the dnsmasq instance , so far so good.
But how the dnsmasq instance responds to a packet that isn’t destined to itself?
I’ve looked into the syscalls of dnsmasq and i get pretty much the same:
root@dnsmasq1:~# strace -fffffffff -e trace=recvmsg,sendmsg -p 5454 2>&1 | grep pepinos
recvmsg(4, {msg_name={sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(53408), sin_addr=inet_addr("10.10.1.52")}, msg_namelen=28->16, msg_iov=[{iov_base="\2F\1 \0\1\0\0\0\0\0\1\3www\7pepinos\3com\0\0\1\0"..., iov_len=4096}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_control=[{cmsg_len=28, cmsg_level=SOL_IP, cmsg_type=IP_PKTINFO, cmsg_data={ipi_ifindex=if_nametoindex("ens4"), ipi_spec_dst=inet_addr("10.1.16.240"), ipi_addr=inet_addr("10.1.16.240")}}], msg_controllen=32, msg_flags=0}, 0) = 56
sendmsg(4, {msg_name={sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(53408), sin_addr=inet_addr("10.10.1.52")}, msg_namelen=16, msg_iov=[{iov_base="\2F\201\200\0\1\0\2\0\0\0\1\3www\7pepinos\3com\0\0\1\0"..., iov_len=76}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_control=[{cmsg_len=28, cmsg_level=SOL_IP, cmsg_type=IP_PKTINFO, cmsg_data={ipi_ifindex=0, ipi_spec_dst=inet_addr("10.1.16.240"), ipi_addr=inet_addr("20.86.0.0")}}], msg_controllen=28, msg_flags=0}, 0) = 76
So it is clear , the dnsmasq node , has no problem replying to an interface address that it does not own (known maybe as promiscouous mode) , but this box isn’t set to do anything fancy (let alone promiscuous mode)
Ebpf?
Initiall i thought it could be some EBPF rule attached to XDP , rewriting the ip headers , but that should be visible from userland when you strace , and it was not the case , `ip link|grep xdp -i` returned nothing , I’ve also looked with bpftool and still nothing
Aliases?
No , nothing in the box , the dnsmasq node has only one interface with a single address.
Documentation?
There’s some lazy mentions to what it’s happening but at no point its documented what happens on the instance:
So that’s exactly what we see, the question is how the node responds to a packet that isn’t destined to it.
Virtio?
GCP instances come preloaded with a lot of tools and drivers , they use virtio for network drivers and that is a hook where the hypervisor could control some of the traffic comming in:
So there’s some data there and if you lsmod or sysctl list-unit-files you’ll see the bloat:
But i still think this is too complex , mangling with drivers and/or ebpf to do something so silly and simple.
Routes:
Routes would be something that you could potentially use to divert traffic to yourself so i started to look at normal places:
root@dnsmasq:~# ip route
default via 10.1.16.1 dev ens4 proto dhcp src 10.1.16.238 metric 100
10.1.16.1 dev ens4 proto dhcp scope link src 10.1.16.238 metric 100
Nothing there , remember that we’re looking for traces of the 10.1.16.240 (which is the address of the loadbalancer)
I remember that there is the fib_trie that also display local rules , but before lets say show me the routes i need to get to 10.1.16.240:
root@dnsmasq1:~# ip route get to 10.1.16.240
local 10.1.16.240 dev lo src 10.1.16.240 uid 0
cache <local>
Wait what? is it a local route? so i can ping you? (this lb is only passing udp traffic)
root@dnsmasq1:~# ping -c1 10.1.16.240
PING 10.1.16.240 (10.1.16.240) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.1.16.240: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.020 ms
Plot thickens , so somehow this route has been injected on the fib_trie:
root@dnsmasq1:~# grep 10.1.16.240 /proc/net/fib_trie
|-- 10.1.16.240
|-- 10.1.16.240
AH!!!!
root@dnsmasq1:~# ip route ls table local | grep 240
local 10.1.16.240 dev ens4 proto 66 scope host
So the local kernel routing is a very special table that is maintained by the kernel and it allows you to set unicasts or ip aliases (http://linux-ip.net/html/routing-tables.html)
So that’s it , But who triggers this ?
Im not gonna go a long way about this , but:
They’ got a daemon on your instance:
Here’s the repo:
And more importantly here’s the magic:
Look at the args … sounds familiar ? it’s running ip route!
Let’s test this in a local env!
That won’t work obviously , i don’t own the ip 1.2.3.4 (i wish i do)
But let’s do what the daemon does by hand!
ip route add local 1.2.3.4 dev lo
perfect:
root@x1:~# ip route ls table local | grep 1.2.3.4
local 1.2.3.4 dev lo scope host
And now!
that’s the mystery solved! | https://medium.com/@garciaj-uk/gcp-internal-lbs-how-dirty-edff5d1c27c6 | ['Short Tech Stories'] | 2020-12-23 13:26:29.020000+00:00 | ['Kubernetes', 'Gcp', 'DevOps', 'Linux'] |
PROfile: Giannie Couji | (photo: Ubikwist magazine shot by Chris Craymer)
by Britnie Dates
Vision in the Voyage
Worlds open wide through the power of story; speaking (as we recently did) with Giannie Couji serves as a most compelling testament to this assertion. The founder and Editor-in-Chief of Ubikwist Magazine — an independent publication celebrating culture and diversity — Couji gives style-passionate readers a glimpse into the work and lives of fascinating individuals across a wide array of sectors around the globe. A voracious reader in her youth, her love of compelling language remains central in her work, shaping her decades-long career in fashion to this day. Accordingly, each themed Ubikwist edition interweaves a curation of seemingly disparate stories in its telling of one beautifully cohesive tale. This alchemy is no fluke; the mix is informed by Couji’s own multifaceted interests and life; she’s a magazine publisher, a model, a muse, and increasingly, a major voice in the dialogue concerning Black equity in fashion industries. Her journeys have taken her from the Caribbean to NYC, by way of Paris then London where she honed her craft at publications like Femme and i-D respectively. In her current New York state-of-mind, she’s finding breakout success in front of the camera; yep, that’s her being lensed for Vogue Italia and gracing a Rachel Comey lookbook. Through it all, she’s pushed the industry to evolve in more inclusive directions and now its conversations seem to be finally catching up to her. Not that she’s slowing down anytime soon.
We’re fascinated by the first professional steps that truly inspiring people take as they enter the industry. Can you share with us how you began your career?
I got in the belly of the beast straight away. I didn’t become an assistant right away, but I was the person in charge of receiving and returning the clothes from the shoots. I did it for almost two and a half years, but it was really good schooling because it really teaches you to be organized. When you have, for example, four or five fashion editors shooting at the same time, believe me, you’d better be organized. Because sometimes they swap stuff between them and they don’t tell you so you’re going crazy looking for a piece from that person and it’s like no, it’s with the other person. So I did that for about two and a half years and when the assistant I reported to was leaving, I was offered that main assistant role. That was in 1988 or 1989.
Styling is where you really began to make a name for yourself within the industry; what is it about styling that initially captured and held your attention?
I think, originally, haute couture captured my attention. Because when I was going to school, in Paris, I used to cut pictures. Especially of Black models because they were like the queens of the haute couture catwalks. So I used to cut the pictures and glue them in the back of my book at school. So sometimes I was like I wanted to dream and I was just looking at those pictures, you know? That started when I was around 14 or 15 years old. They looked so elegant and amazing and they were doing like Yves Saint Laurent, Ungaro—all those girls (especially the Black girls,) they were running the catwalk at the time.
Skin, Tricky, Tasha Tilberg, and Angela Davis cover Ubikwist. (photos: Ubikwist Mag)
You were born in Martinique. Can you tell me a bit about growing up on the island?
I don’t think anyone can have that sort of upbringing now. I was brought up by my grandmother, so it was very free. After school we used to go to the beach and swim and come back and play in the street and you know, we never really locked the doors. I grew up in a very safe environment. And I was always curious; I still am to this day. I always had my head in a book. Maybe because I was growing up on a small island, I knew there was better — probably not better, but I knew there were bigger things outside the island. So I was always an avid reader since I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. It was kind of a way to dream as well. You know, transforming my imagination.
You mentioned being raised by your grandmother. Can you paint a picture in our minds of who she was?
For me, she was a force of nature. A mix of Wonder Woman and Indiana Jones- she was fearless. I think it was so amazing to witness because she was really tiny. She was super skinny and she had six kids: five girls and one boy. I remember as a kid, we were at home and one day she came back and she had this massive snake that she had found on the way home and killed. She came back home with it like a trophy. That’s why I was like, kind of like Indiana Jones. As a kid, for me, she was like a superwoman.
She was very witty; she was very funny but she was also very frank and honest. And I think I got that from her. And my mom is pretty much like that. I mean pretty much my aunties, I mean the whole family is like that. We get it from her. I think my grandfather was a little more diplomatic.
Was fashion a part of what you found special about her?
I think she was a very stylish person. When she was dressing up she was dressing up to the T. She was always immaculate. And I think I got my passion for handbags from her because she would never leave the house without a handbag. You know West Indian women- it was all about the handbag, always. She was a very beautiful woman, very stylish. Even if she was in a casual dress, just hanging out at home, she was still looking super chic.
Do you draw on her grandmother’s influence in your work?
I am always inspired by her. But when I was growing up in Martinique, fashion never crossed my mind. I wanted to be a doctor, and after that, I wanted to be a lawyer, and after that a translator. And after that, I’m like “Ok, I love to dance, I want to be a dancer.” But that came later when I moved to Paris. And my mom, coming from the West Indies — I think your parents are looking for your best interests and when I said I want to be a dancer, she said, “Oh no, that’s not a proper job.” For her it was like, doctor or accountant.
Totally! What did your mother do for a living?
My mom was an accountant. So I thought, I guess I’m going to get into accountancy. So I studied — I didn’t get my degree but I studied for almost two and a half years. In Paris, I met a woman through a friend of mine and she said she was a stylist. And for me, a stylist was a designer, someone who designs clothes. And she said, “No, I’m not a designer. I’m actually the one choosing the clothes for fashion shoots. “ She was a freelance stylist, working for Vogue Sport at the time. And we kind of lost touch. When I was studying accountancy, I realized that’s not what I wanted to do. And so a couple of years after I met her, I was flipping through one of the biggest magazines in France called Femme, which doesn’t exist anymore. And she became the fashion director of that magazine and I thought, ‘You know what? I’m just going to give her a call to see if she’s looking to add someone to a team. And I called and asked if she remembered me and she said, of course, I remember you. And I said I’m looking for a job, I don’t really want to be an accountant anymore. She was like I can’t offer you a paid job but I can offer you an internship and I said when can I start and she said ok, you start tomorrow.
Couji shares a candid with actress and Ubikwist cover-subject, Indya Moore. (photo: Giannie Couji’s Instagram)
You have a rare perspective, having spent time on both sides of the camera; on top of all your work behind the scenes, you’ve also been tapped as a model for a slew of publications and brands. What’s it like to stand on both sides of the lens?
When I’m in front of the camera I’m working with a team, so I totally forget that I’m a stylist. I’m a model so I don’t get involved with anyone’s business so this is different entirely for me. As a stylist, I love working, I love doing research, watching movies, pictures, getting inspired, and stuff. And I love the whole process of being a stylist. I like both because I like the concept of teamwork. I love teamwork. You can create, regardless of being a stylist or model, you can create beautiful images together. I really like that; I really appreciate the effort of everyone getting involved.
Was your experience as a stylist and editor an impetus for starting Ubikwist as an independent publication?
Absolutely. It was one of the main reasons. Because I’ve been in fashion for so long and I witnessed a trend and I was like, ‘I don’t like this trend at all.’ When I started in the 80s, there was a lot of diversity, lots of models of color. And suddenly, I don’t know if it was because of the grunge movement, but suddenly in the 90s, it was so difficult to get — you know I was a contributing fashion editor for i-D from 1994–2010, but it was like a nightmare just to get a black model. I used to call agencies, and they would have maybe, maximum, four or five Black girls on their roster. And I used to say, “How come you have like 100 caucasian girls or 50 caucasian girls and you only have like 2 Asian and 3 or 4- and they’re like, ‘Oh, you know, the clients don’t book them.’ And I’m like, “Yea, but it’s up to you to educate your client because that’s really racist! You’re telling me that Black women don’t buy fashion, they don’t buy cosmetics…is that the message you want to send?” So it was very frustrating and upsetting. The idea of creating a magazine came to me while I was living in London. I lived in London until 2008; I moved to New York in 2009. I had this idea and I pitched it to a friend and he was kind of lukewarm about it. So when I arrived in New York I pitched it to another friend, and he was really into it, but he would say, “Next year, next year, next year.” And after waiting almost five years, I was like you know what, it wasn’t the plan, but I can’t wait another four years to launch a magazine so I’m just going to do it by myself. With no knowledge in publishing. I mean, I had friends who worked in it so I asked them for advice. But I never did a magazine. I worked in magazines, but to be that involved, like a boss, it was something new.
Tell us about launching; what was the path to getting Ubikwist off the ground?
I launched in 2014 but it was like a test issue. That issue wasn’t even sold in stores, it was like issue-0. I showed it to a few people who tried to discourage saying publishing’s extremely difficult. And I’m like, “you know what? I don’t want to live with regret, that’s the last thing. I’m going to try and if I fail, I fail and if it works, it works.” And I was really lucky because with the first issue, one of my very good friends, his boyfriend was working for MAC and I showed him issue-0 and he really, really liked it and really wanted to help. He was like you know I love the magazine, I love the message and I would like to help. So I was really lucky. MAC Cosmetics sponsored the first and second issues. So we were able to get it printed.
The magazine is primarily self-funded with additional support from gracious friends who are donating through crowd-funding…but it’s mainly self-funding. But everyone, all my friends in Paris are like, “You have to do a French version!” And I’m like, “yea, but it costs money you know? (laughs)” I’m already struggling to do the English one. But that’s in the plan for the future when we get the financing, we will definitely do a French version because I think people really like the magazine over there.
Why was it important for you to start Ubikwist specifically as a printed publication?
I always say, call me old school but for me — I mean Ubikwist is both print and digital — but for me (I’ll speak for myself), I don’t think you get…it’s not the same feeling when you read a digital magazine and when you flip the page. If I have to choose, I would choose print for sure.
Ubikwist brings together creatives from all spheres to celebrate their personal stories in a real way; you felt print was the sort of medium for sharing that personal of a message?
Yes, Absolutely! Definitely. Some people buy a magazine and after they finish with it they throw it away. But most [Ubikwist] readers say they see the magazine almost like a book, like a collector. I have this woman who emailed me once and I think she’s one of the biggest fans because each time we do lots of different covers- sometimes we do four and sometimes we do 6. Because I also want to give readers the choice. And so some people, you know, it’s the same content inside, but they just buy the four or six different covers. Which is great!
What’s great is the way you mix fashion, culture, and politics throughout the publication. Finding Angela Davis on the cover of a magazine that’s also chronicling fashion and connecting the dots between these seemingly disparate worlds, that’s certainly not common.
You know what? When we first started in 2014, I think we were the only magazine doing that. You have to reflect the world you’re living in, that’s the way I see it. And the world is not only about fashion. So it’s as simple as that. I know a lot of magazines have taken years to wake up to that, but now look at Vogue. Look at Harper’s Bazaar. All these magazines, they’re trying to be more into social issues, activism, which is great. It doesn’t stop us from making people dream about fashion.
Couji gracing Rachel Comey’s F19 presentation. (photos: Rachel Comey)
Amid these shifts toward a more politically conscious fashion dialogue, have you found your footing within the industry?
I think I had the voice, it just took a while for people to hear it. But I think I always had the voice. It’s only in the last few years that people started to pay attention. But I’ve been working in the fashion business for almost 34 years now, so I’ve been around the block, as they say [laughs.] It’s only in the last three or four years that people suddenly have been like, “Oh, she’s here!” But like I say, “better late than never,” you know? But it’s also about everything happening in America, with Black people getting killed by the second. So me, personally when I arrived [in America], I knew racism existed. I wasn’t naive. It exists in Europe, in Paris, and in London. But I think it’s a different racism in Europe than here. When I arrived, I was just shocked at how many Black people were being killed and no one was getting convicted or going to prison. It’s crazy. And so I was kind of revolted by that. And so I started posting things on Facebook and on social media, on Twitter and Instagram and I was never scared to raise my voice about it. It was never a trend for me — I’m consistent about it and I will be until I die.
With Ubikwist, what is the story you want to tell? That you hope people walk away with when reading?
I want them to see that it’s a magazine with integrity and we support Black people and indigenous people of color, which is the main focus. In fashion, in music, in film, in art, in design, in all of those mediums. For me, it’s not only a fashion magazine; I see Ubikwist more as a cultural platform. My background of course is fashion, but I don’t only see it as a fashion magazine. It’s fashion/culture. | https://medium.com/the-kelly-initiative-profiles/profile-giannie-couji-d78cf495168e | ['The Kelly Initiative'] | 2021-03-03 23:24:02.889000+00:00 | ['Style', 'Giannie Couji', 'Black Lives Mater', 'The Kelly Initiative', 'Fashion'] |
We Killed the Cat | Rohit was always an hyperactive kid. He was irritating and unpredictable. And as everything unpredictable, there was some kind of wildness with him that made us afraid of him. He dictated things, and we went along with it. One day while going back to home, we decided to give Anjan a surprise. Anjan’s house was on the way and we knew that he kept a cat as his pet. The cat was usually found lying or moving around in the verandah.
Rohit said, “Let’s hide his cat.”
And we agreed. I did not want to, but I did. We waited outside the fence as Rohit moved very carefully towards the cat. He caught it by its neck, but the cat scratched him pretty bad. Rohit did not lose his grip on the cat, instead he bashed the cat into a large piece of stone that was lying on the front yard!
The only blood and flesh that I had seen till that point of time, was that of the frogs ran over by the vehicles. My heart stopped as I watched the tiny furry creature frantically moved, and finally came to a stand still. Rohit ran away. We stood there in shock, and were still there as Anjan came outside his home and ran towards the cat. He could not believe his eyes. He could not hold back his tears. I had never seen him cry, even when we bullied him so much.
I told him that it was Rohit. But he did not move or utter a word.
That was the last time I saw Anjan, till I again met him twenty years later in a help group. I did not recognize him when I met him again. I did not even recognize the condition I was in. I was told that I had worms eating away my legs. | https://medium.com/thenewnorth/we-killed-the-cat-8751d5998fc3 | [] | 2020-11-04 06:29:27.390000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Short Fiction', 'Short Story', 'Storytelling', 'Fiction'] |
관용어(Idioms):#9 —Turn aside | Flutter for an app, Vue for an web, nodeJs for a server, Linux | https://medium.com/@nerdrun/%EA%B4%80%EC%9A%A9%EC%96%B4-idioms-9-turn-aside-6b4fb2594d29 | [] | 2020-12-19 11:00:11.837000+00:00 | ['Daily', 'Idioms', 'Phrase', 'Languag', 'English'] |
How to Create a Tmall Advertising Strategy in 3 simple steps? | How to create a Tmall advertising strategy in 3 simple steps?
Tmall’s advertising system is very complicated. It has 16 advertising channels and probably will add more in the future. Each advertising channel has a separate top-up system. This means once you top-up the budget in one channel, you cannot move it to another channel.
At the same time, the strategy during a sales holiday will be very different compared to on a regular day. So is the strategy for each industry and each sales level.
How to build a budget allocation plan without all-in on test campaigns on every channel?
You could follow the 3 simple steps:
Analyze the spending plan of the top-performing stores, and close competitors in your industry Create test campaigns based on these results Optimize and create your own spending plan
The simplest way to create an initial plan is to look at how your competitors are spending their budget.
The Tmall App store has many 3rd party tools for monitoring competitor’s performance. The tool that we use at WalktheChat is called SYCM (生意参谋). It offers a competitor listening service that enables you to monitor the marketing spending and performance of 5 stores and 10 products for a fee of 1,188RMB per year.
You can find the list of the top 100 best ranking Taobao/Tmall stores (either by traffic or by sales transaction) in your industry using this link: https://sycm.taobao.com/mc/mq/market_rank
For example, Pandora was the NO.1 performing jewelry store on Taobao/Tmall during the Double 12 campaign.
With the competitor listening tool, we could graph Pandora’s spending distribution during December 13th (regular period) and December 12th (a promotion holiday Double 12). Note the data given is an index, not the actual spending budget.
Pandora’s spending index during a sales holiday of Double 12 was up by 44% compared to a non-sales day. The advertising channel that has the strongest surge was Juhuasuan (聚划算), the flash-sale channel.
Now you can check the strategy of your direct competitor that has a similar sales target.
MISSOMA is a premium jewelry brand that just opened its Tmall store in July 2020.
They achieved 2 million RMB sales result during the 2nd month of launching on Tmall, mainly by investing in WeChat and Little Red Book influencers. They are a good account to benchmark against if you are operating a new jewelry Tmall store.
According to SYCM, here is MISSOMA’s spending index:
MISSOMA spent most of the paid traffic on key-word search ads and product recommendations. It shifted 16% of its budget towards 智钻 Zhizuan (homepage ads) during the sales promotion period.
This strategy can help you decide how to properly allocate the budget between all the Tmall advertising channels.
The major drawback of this strategy is we can only look back on past data. Brands should clearly understand the ranking of each Tmall promotion in order to better allocate budget throughout the year.
The easiest way to see the competitor’s future spending plan is to acquire this information from Dingding group. The Tmall operation team usually creates groups of brands from the same industry and all the brands are required to share their promotion budget in a shared file. | https://medium.com/@kutsholding/how-to-create-a-tmall-advertising-strategy-in-3-simple-steps-f94e95f0eff3 | ['Dmitrii Kuts'] | 2020-12-27 16:28:00.758000+00:00 | ['Affiliate Marketing', 'Tmall', 'Alibaba', 'Chinese Marketing', 'Advertising'] |
Manufactured | Born, unwillingly, into a life not their own.
Do this, not that. No questions asked.
Be this, be that, graduate college with a loan.
Undeterred, they live what dictators lacked.
A beautiful template. Like an Apple phone.
Predetermined lives. Programmed and hacked.
A JavaScript void(0). Stay alert and never yawn.
“Now off you go! Be happy,” they quacked.
But never gave the liberty to the coded clone.
And now there it goes, expressions blacked.
Years pass until they’re led to the Death Zone.
“RIP,” they say, after having its dreams attacked.
Now the other clones forget, as their code’s shown.
And the cycle continues, until the end of their contract. | https://medium.com/be-unique/manufactured-b1da5eedd4a1 | ['Tarek Gara'] | 2020-09-11 02:26:00.971000+00:00 | ['Coding', 'Poetry', 'Manufacturing', 'Poem', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
Managing Risk in Alpine Climbing and… Product? | These days I have the luxury of spending a little more time planning outdoor adventures, this time a month long alpine climbing circuit in the American Alps outside Seattle this summer. Yes, very exciting!
As I plan these trips, it occurred to me that for years now I’ve been learning about my day job as a PM from a very-not-day-job-place — Alpine Climbing.
One of those lessons is about the role of risk in decision making — from deciding on the way in a total white out to determining a… go-to-market strategy?
What is “risk” anyway? ‘A situation involving exposure to danger’ (Thanks, OED)
The relationship of climbing and risk isn’t new — even just being on a mountain is a situation, and harsh environments by definition involve exposure to danger. It’s a big reason why I can’t watch Alex Honnold in Free Solo without my palms starting to sweat, even when I know I’m safely planted on a couch and not on a portaledge suspended thousands of feet in the air.
I’ve personally found myself in situations that make my friends (those who are willing to say something at least) go “but isn’t that risky?” Exhibit A below: being at the the top of knife edge ridge with a 3k ft drop on either side, during an unexpected snowy whiteout (in July!), and in rock shoes that are not happy in snow. Yikes...
(Left: A memorable experience in a snowy July whiteout; Right: The long way down that was hidden behind clouds, thanks RMI Guides for the Photo) | https://medium.com/@jamie.m/managing-risk-in-alpine-climbing-and-product-6c96b803518 | ['Jamie Mccroskery'] | 2019-08-19 18:36:19.489000+00:00 | ['Product Management', 'Climbing', 'Technology', 'Risk'] |
Music generation using Deep Learning | “If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”― Charles Darwin
Life exists on the sharp edged wire of the Guitar. Once you jump, it’s echos can be heard with immense intangible pleasure. Let's explore this intangible pleasure…
Music is nothing but a sequence of nodes(events). Here input to the model is a sequence of nodes.
Some of the music generated example using RNNs shown below
Music Representation:
sheet-music ABC-notation: it has a sequence of characters which is very simple for Neural Network train. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_notation MIDI: https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-generate-music-using-a-lstm-neural-network-in-keras-68786834d4c5 mp3- store only audio file.
Char-RNN
Here I'm using char-RNN structure(Many-Many RNN) where one output corresponds to each input(input Ci -.> output C(i+1)) at each time step(cell). It can have multiple hidden layers(multiple LSTM layers).
Visualizing the predictions and the “neuron” firings in the RNN
Under every character, we visualize (in red) the top 5 guesses that the model assigns for the next character. The guesses are colored by their probability (so dark red = judged as very likely, white = not very likely). The input character sequence (blue/green) is colored based on the firing of a randomly chosen neuron in the hidden representation of the RNN. Think about it as green = very excited and blue = not very excited.
Process:
Obtaining data preprocessing(generating batch-sgd)to feed into char-RNN
Please follow the below link for more datasets. Here I used only Jigs (340 tunes) dataset in ABC-format.
The dataset will be fed into RNN training using a batch size of 16.
Here two LSTM cell represents for each input. The input X0 goes in all LSTM cells in the first input layer. You will get output(h0) and information send to the next time step layer. All output at time step one, LSTM_t1_1, LSTM_t1_2 connected to dense layer whose output is h0. The dense layer at time-step one is called time distributed dense layer. Similarly for the next time step.
Return sequence=True in Keras used in case of when you want to generate output at each input in timestamp sequence. For every input, we need sequence of output. The same input will go to every cell and generate output at every cell in one layer. Every time step(i), we will get a vector of output(256 in given problem).
2. Time distributed dense layer. Please follow the above discussion for a better understanding. At every timestep, it will take all LSTM output and construct a dense layer of size 86. Here 86 is number of unique characters in whole vocabulary.
3. Stateful=True, the last state for each sample at index i in a batch will be used as the initial state for the sample of index i in the following batch. It used in the case when you want to connect one batch with the second batch with the input of the second batch is the output of the first batch. In the case of stateful=false, each batch has zero input to the first time step layer.
Model Architecture and Training:
It is a multi-class classification in which a given input, it will give an output which is an anyone of the total number of character.
The training model generates 86 character after every input of character. based on probability, it will decide the final output character.
Next, we will feed C(i+1) to model, it will generate C(i+2) character. This will continue until all batches of character feed of whole data.
Output:
Open the following link and Paste your generated music is given space in order to play.
For Tabla music:
If you are able to change each sequence as a character than you can use the above char-RNN model. Please read the following blog for a detailed understanding.
MIDI music generation:
Here we will use Music21 python library to read MIDI file and able to convert into the sequence of event. Please read the following blog for detailed understanding.
Models other than char-RNN(Very recent blog):
Its survey blog, have all models apart from the char-RNN model based on Neural Network. Please follow if want to explore.
Google project on generating music:
Based on Tensorflow and LSTM, the project of google researcher.
Reference:
Google Image(for image ) rest link given at respective section
========Thanks(Love to hear from your side)=========
Find detail code on my GitHub account… | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/music-generation-using-deep-learning-a2b2848ab177 | ['Rana Singh'] | 2019-12-16 04:45:40.965000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Mathematics', 'Music', 'Machine Learning'] |
Fuse | There was a young man with a short fuse
Who was constantly chasing his muse
She said it’s curious
That he grew so furious
Which just helped to blow his fuse | https://medium.com/rambling-mind/fuse-d6d1d76e06a3 | ['Tom Thomasson'] | 2017-09-21 17:50:20.649000+00:00 | ['Limerick', 'Poetry', 'Humor', 'Inspiration'] |
Video Storytelling for Asian Audiences | We’ve heard these a lot. What can you do that your rivals can’t? Are you the best option in the market? What exactly is your USP? These questions tend to motivate brands to traditionally center their ad messaging around USPs which are usually brand-focused. Is this approach truly effective in making ads relatable to their target audience or is it time for brands to explore emerging approaches which have consumers at their forefront?
While there are numerous ways to ideate and create video content, based on my personal research, I believe the inclusion of these 2 concepts in your video content will put in good stead to achieve your marketing goals in 2020 and beyond.
First, Universal Human Truths also known as UHTs are human ideals, qualities or situations that are motivational or easily recognizable. These could include emotions or common experiences that your target audiences are likely to have gone through.
Second, localization is equally important. Communicating the selected UHT in a local context like using festivals or experiences unique to that country will help strengthen the message and emotional connection with the brand.
Identifying and adapting UHTs in an apt manner are crucial steps in creating emotional connections between brands and their target audiences. | https://medium.com/@kishanj/video-storytelling-for-asian-audiences-40a02c7fd976 | ['Kishan S.'] | 2020-12-26 05:58:26.113000+00:00 | ['Video Marketing', 'Asia', 'Vídeo Storytelling', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Content Marketing'] |
The Bachelorette, kissing, and consent | So who here watched Monday night’s episode of The Bachelorette (S13, E3) and cringed when Fred asked Rachel if he could kiss her?
Always Mean Girls GIFs. Always.
Yeah. It was awkward.
But here’s the thing: it was more than just awkward, and it revealed two important points that have been glossed over in media coverage since the episode aired.
First, it showed that asking for consent is different from actually getting consent. Second, it raised a conversation about how to go about obtaining that consent.
Having consent before you kiss someone is SO IMPORTANT. It can also be SO HOT. Please, come with me on this journey.
So let’s review what happened. Fred, who’d had a long-time crush on Rachel, really wanted to kiss her. In their conversations up to that point, they’d mostly stayed to light, friendly topics, and hadn’t yet developed a more romantic connection. Rachel seemed to view Fred as a friend and perhaps didn’t yet want to kiss him (but more on that later).
Fred, focused on his own desires, decided the time had come to kiss her. In his rambling lead-up to The Kiss, he said: “I haven’t kissed you yet. I’ve been waiting for the right time to. So instead of waiting, I can’t really wait. It’s more about creating that moment.”
Then he said: “So I’d just like to ask, is this a time that you feel that I can kiss you?”
Rachel was surprised at being asked, and said she felt awkward and that no one had ever asked to kiss her before. So then Fred decided to kiss her, and afterward she sent him home. Bye bye Freddy.
Oh dear, there is so much to deconstruct here.
Let’s start with how obtaining consent is seen as unsexy. In the aftermath of the episode, various outlets have claimed that asking before you kiss someone is a “mistake”, “the single worst way to score that elusive first kiss”, and (my favourite) “the least sexy move of all time”. Some website called View the Vibe (which I had not heard of before I Googled “Rachel Fred kiss bachelorette”, so, take that for what you will) even said “you should never ask for a first kiss”. To which I say:
Once upon a time, I was on a date with someone I was really excited about. We were cuddling, we were laughing, we were having a great time. At one point we were very close together, his eyes fixed on mine, his hand on my face, and I could feel those first-kiss butterflies starting to flutter. And before anything happened, my date said to me,
“I’d really like to kiss you right now.”
It was quiet, and intimate, and so sexy, and it was honestly one of the best first kisses — nay, one of the best EVER kisses — I’ve had.
If done well, getting consent before you kiss someone can be seriously hot. What’s hotter than knowing someone you’re into wants you to kiss them?! When you know you’re both feeling it, the kiss becomes even better: not only are you excited to be kissing this person, but you know, unequivocally, that they’re just as excited as you are. To paraphrase a cinematic legend, you know that you’re all in this together.
But more importantly than sexiness, getting consent is vital in and of itself. While some may think that kissing is in a different category than sexual assault or rape, kissing someone against their will is in fact a form of sexual assault. Here in Canada, where I live, the definition of sexual assault includes “all unwanted sexual activity, such as unwanted sexual grabbing, kissing, and fondling as well as rape.”
Unwanted — that’s the key word.
I need to make an important note here, which I hinted at earlier: I’m not saying Fred’s kiss was or was not unwanted. Only Rachel knows what she actually wanted in that moment, and I can’t make assumptions on her behalf. Consent isn’t static, and can’t be assumed based on someone’s past behaviour or statements, either with that partner or a different one. Different people also have different preferences regarding how they want to kiss or be kissed, and therefore might indicate their consent in different ways.
What I do know, though, is that Fred didn’t actually get clear consent from Rachel before he kissed her. He was so preoccupied with kissing her that he didn’t consider whether or not she might want to kiss him. Rachel’s mood and body language (pulling away from him, saying she felt awkward) seemed to indicate she might not have been feeling it, but Fred didn’t take note of these cues and check in with Rachel about what they meant.
Importantly, I’m also not saying that body language is a replacement for consent. You can’t assume someone wants you to kiss them just because they’re smiling or sitting close to you or you feel a ‘vibe’. (Sidenote: why do I always picture Usher when I see the word ‘vibe’?) Consent still has to be clear, willing, and continuously renewed.
The distinction here is that it’s not about asking so much as it’s about obtaining consent. Asking doesn’t mean you’ll get consent — it’s only half of the equation. While it’s laudable that Fred asked, he didn’t consider Rachel’s verbal response and non-verbal cues before he went in for the kiss. Getting consent requires more than asking the question. It requires receiving a clear, enthusiastic response in the affirmative category.
This also clears up the misconception that consent is awkward and therefore bad. Consent doesn’t always have to be a difficult question, delivered in stuttering pieces, like Fred’s example. It also doesn’t have to be a formal, academic-feeling exercise. Getting consent can be a fun and sexy lead-up to the kiss itself, becoming an exciting part of the experience rather than detracting from it. There are many ways to go about getting consent in passionate ways that also prioritize clear communication.
And if you don’t get clear consent? Check in again. Find another way to ask your partner about what they want in that moment. A Responsible Kisser (trademark pending) needs to consider not only their own desires, but also the desires and boundaries of the person they want to smooch. And if that person doesn’t want to kiss you — whether because they’re not into you, or they’re not in a state where they can make a free and willing decision, or for myriad other reasons (all of which are legitimate!) — YOU DON’T KISS THEM.
And sure, we can wonder at why Rachel went along with this kiss, given that she didn’t seem to be into Fred. Alas, we’ll never* know. But as stated above, she’s the only one who can say whether she truly wanted to participate in that kiss or not, and also what she has thought about it since, so we can’t make assumptions on her behalf. It’s also worth acknowledging here that it can sometimes be difficult to interject and stop a kiss that you’re not feeling, especially for women who have often been socialized to think that men’s pleasure comes first, and especially within a context where many boys grow up seeing pop culture examples of men ‘romantically’ grabbing women and kissing them without asking.**
So, my point is this: make sure you know someone wants you to kiss them, clearly and freely, before you pucker up. Also make sure they’re still into it during and after the puckering up. Getting consent is vital so you don’t wade into sexual assault territory, and it can also be unbelievably sexy.***
Still not convinced? There are so many great resources out there on this topic. Here is a list of some creative ways to ask for consent. This list has 35 *more* ways! Here are five pop culture examples of consent done right (and hot). Honestly, there are so many resources.
In closing, a note to Fred: Thanks for asking for consent! Now, please pay attention to the cues of your partner and the response you get when you ask! And maybe check out these resources?😉
*Or at least, not until the inevitable “Men Tell All” episode.
**Further acknowledgement that sentence is super heteronormative as it’s generally talking about the cultural context for cisgender, heterosexual folks.
***Last point: sometimes this whole focus on consent being sexy can be problematic. I know, it’s complicated. Basically, just make sure your partner (partners) is (are) into it, and keep checking in with them throughout. It’s sort of a first-haircut-in-a-long-time-and-you-want-to-try-a-pixie-cut situation. | https://medium.com/consent-culture-a-conversation/on-kissing-and-consent-and-the-bachelorette-64f62f54317a | ['Halena Seiferling'] | 2017-06-29 03:13:51.644000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Sex', 'Consent', 'Relationships'] |
The Canadian Dream: A Green Light, Not So Far Away | Source: Karim Salaheldin
The American Dream has always been a long coveted, well, dream. In all fairness, the American Dream is no easy feat — sure, it may have become much easier now than perhaps when it was first coined in the 1930s, but the reality is, the American Dream is still nothing but an impossible dream for many.
Well, maybe for Americans at least.
Studies show that in the US, an important factor to one’s success is the wealth of their parents, but in Canada individuals born to poorer families have a higher chance of receiving good education, owning a home, and in general leading better lives than their parents, than their American counterparts. The American Dream is not as difficult to achieve in Canada as it is in the US.
The American Dream itself is the idea that anyone can attain their version of success in a society where upward social mobility is possible for everyone- with no regard to their origins, their families, or what socio-economic classes they were born into. Social mobility refers to the movement across classes of social hierarchy, and the American Dream is thought to be achieved through hard work, sacrifice, and risk-taking, not by luck, chance, or family status. Furthermore, the American Dream demands equality and equal opportunities for everyone based solely on achievement and ability.
In January, the World Economic Forum published its Global Social Mobility Index which ranks different countries based on their citizens social mobility regardless of socio-economic class or background. The index ranked 82 countries and their economies on five different elements: work (specifically opportunities, fair wages, and work conditions), education, technology access, institutions and protection.
Without surprise, the Nordic countries have the best social mobility scores, while countries with emerging economies such as Brazil, have significantly lower scores. From the G7 countries, Germany was the most socially mobile with a rank of 11, while Canada was not too far below in rank 14. The US ranked 27 out of 82 – perhaps not a bad score in general, but shocking given the common notion that America is where dreams come true.
The World Economic Forum released a statement saying “the headline finding of the report is that most economies are failing to provide the conditions in which their citizens can thrive…as a result, an individual’s opportunities in life remain tethered to their socio-economic status at birth, entrenching historical inequalities”. Data collected by IPSOS found that Americans who grow up in high income households, already have three times the likelihood to have stronger social and professional networks compared to those who grow up in lower income households. Wealthy-born Americans experience twice the advantages in terms of both financial and social capital.
The American Dream itself does not stray far off from what was written in the American Declaration of Independence, this idea that all American men have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. While this notion has attracted millions to the US, it has failed to come true. Many countries surpass the US in social mobility among other rankings. Canadians live longer than Americans, are six times less likely to be imprisoned, and the 6th happiest while Americans are only the 13th happiest in the world. The green light might be starting to fade away and take on a new name: the Canadian Dream.
No matter how you dissect the American Dream, every facet of it it more easily obtained in Canada than in the US itself. Starting from education, in the US only 46% of the population have been able to get a college degree. In Canada, it’s over 10% more. Canada’s employment rate is four points better than the US’s, and the home ownership rates are 5% higher. Not only are the standard factors of the American Dream better, even the day-to-day aspect of working towards the Dream is better in Canada where Canadians work over 80 hours less per year and take an extra three days for vacation.
Moreover, politically Canadians are much better off. Americans can no longer claim the title “land of the free” as Americans have been ranked the 23rd freest people in the world by the Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index, while Canada placed neatly at a 6. The conservative Heritage Foundation ranked the US’s economic freedom 17 compared to Canada’s 7th place. Reporters Without Borders ranked Canada 18 for freedom of press, and humorously enough, despite the well-boasted First Amendment, the US finds itself with a rank of 41. For over 80 years Canada’s Gini coefficient (a measurement of economic equality in a country)has been significantly better.
Scott Gilmore, a former Canadian diplomat, explained why, in a CTV interview, the American Dream has moved up north. Canada’s healthcare system has been a key player as unlike Americans, Canadians are not going bankrupt because of the the overwhelming healthcare costs and bills. For this reason, the poorer parts of Canadian society are able to thrive. There is also an easier access to education, and Canadians do not have nearly as much of a student loan problem as Americans.
For any government, tackling the issue of social mobility is vital. According to a policy brief from OECD, there are a number of harmful economic, political, and social consequences of having a “broken social elevator”. Mobility prospects are actually important factors in determining well-being and life satisfaction, and it also matters for social solidarity and democratic participation. Health outcomes being transmitted from generation to generation- having little to no wealth on top of sick parents are two of the biggest predictors of poor health in an OECD country. Lastly, social mobility is the foundation of economic growth- low social mobility for a country’s citizens can erode the economy.
The World Economic Forum also outlined the work ahead for all of the countries who were studied in the index to allow citizens to be more unutterably aware of their identities with their countries rather than melting into the systemic issues. It encourages the government to play a much stronger role as an equalizer, and ensure a level playing field regardless of their citizens socio-economic backgrounds. This can include creating an entirely new financing model for social mobility, and really get down to restructuring policies to address the issue of wealth concentration and improving on tax progressiveness to support the social mobility agenda. If governments want to solve this systemic issue, they will have to invest money in social spending much more than they do already.
Likewise, there is a greater need for support in the education sectors and lifelong learning, and governments must work towards promoting skills development throughout a person’s career. Education must also be more accessible in terms of the availability and the quality of education that students across a country receive. Once citizens reach the workplace, they will also need to be greeted with a new social protection contract- one that offers holistic protection for workers and support during job transitions.
However, the government cannot be the only harbinger of change — there must be support for these new agendas reflected in the private sector as well. Studies show that the companies that perform the best long term, are the ones that prioritize purpose over profits. Similarly, if businesses want to perform better, they must work towards generating greater trust between customers and stakeholders by helping build more equitable societies. To boost social mobility, businesses need to pay fair wages and eliminate the gender wage gap, but more specifically they are asked to take the lead to promote a meritocracy when hiring, upskilling by paying fair wages, and providing vocational education.
The American Dream demands that industries and sectors address historic inequalities within their structures and create action plans specific to their industries, taking into consideration the varying circumstances of different industries.
What is often seen as literary fluff rather than a political need, the American Dream is a vital part of economic and social bliss. It is completely necessary to believe in the green light, and not lose sight of the importance of social mobility and the factors that indirectly affect it. Maclean’s believes that “no generation of Canadians has ever had more and been able achieve more than us — and no generation has been less ambitious”.
With all the tools and opportunities that Americans can only dream of having, Canada must find a purpose to work towards alongside the agenda of improving social mobility — this is what builds a better society. It is vital for the world’s economies to work towards finding purpose and social mobility, otherwise every country in the world will be doomed to watch the future year by year recede before them. | https://medium.com/junior-economist/the-canadian-dream-a-green-light-not-so-far-away-a5ef5814fda2 | ['Naoshin Fariha'] | 2020-04-29 00:56:05.752000+00:00 | ['Socioeconomic Disparity', 'Social Mobility', 'American Dream'] |
Predicting the MCU Phase 5 | So yesterday was a big day for Marvel fans.
Black Widow. Eternals. Shang-Chi with the REAL Mandarin. A Doctor Strange horror sequel. A fast-tracked fourth Thor film featuring the return of Natalie Portman as none other than Thor herself. All that plus a slew of Disney+ shows and you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed.
But I’m sure you’ve already noticed that Kevin Feige and gang didn’t reveal the slate beyond 2021. Not that we aren’t totally grateful and excited for everything that was revealed but I’m sure you and I both are already wondering what comes next.
Feige ended the event cryptically mentioning that he didn’t have time to talk about several now-confirmed titles before giving us all heart attacks and pulling Mahershala Ali onto the stage to announce a reboot of Blade. It was probably the most shocking moment of an already crazy event.
So lets take a look at what might come after the epically named Thor: Love and Thunder and connect the dots between the films Feige name-dropped and the dates that have already been put on the calendar.
Blade (February 18, 2022)
Several of the most recent MCU introductions have happened in February (Black Panther, Shang-Chi, Captain Marvel in March) so it would make sense to start off the year with Blade. I had originally had Black Panther II here to line up with its previous release date but I could not see Blade as the big summer film for Marvel. Plus with the massively warm reception for Mahershala Ali (and deservingly so) it would make sense that they would want to push this film to as soon as possible.
I’ll be doing a Blade dream casting soon.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (May 6, 2022)
The third installment of the Guardians was supposed to usher in a new era of the cosmic MCU in 2020 but after James Gunn’s firing it appeared that the Eternals would take on that role. This was confirmed yesterday but James Gunn’s return in March of this year saw the project pushed forward. It was even thought this would happen before Thor 4 although that was also pushed forward. I can’t imagine now that it will come any later than 2022 with Gunn having already finished The Suicide Squad at that point and having plenty of time to return to the MCU. Expect to see Adam Warlock, the High Evolutionary and Drax’s daughter Moondragon in this one. I also made sure to include Thor in the photo because I desperately hope this team-up promised in Endgame still happens even though Thor now has a solo outing beforehand.
Black Panther sequel (July 29 2022)
The most surprising omission of the night was arguably the lack of announcing a sequel to Black Panther. The 2018 hit became the ninth highest grossing film of all-time and was lauded for its diverse cast and representation of African culture. I can’t imagine them holding off on returning to Wakanda for too long and having the sequel in 2022 would set it four years after the original release. Reports have indicated that villains Queen Divine Justice, Achebe or even a returning Killmonger may appear although Okoye alluding to Atlantis in Endgame makes me hope that Namor will finally make his entrance.
Captain Marvel sequel (March 2023)
Now we’re heading into the unconfirmed dates. Along with several others listed above, Feige confirmed a sequel to Captain Marvel last night and releasing it in March 2023 would set it four years after the first installment, just like my prediction for Black Panther. Carol Danvers too proved to be a popular addition to the MCU and a second film has been a given since before it was announced. The post-credit scene in Spider-Man: Far from Home may have introduced S.W.O.R.D. as an intergalactic replacement to S.H.I.E.L.D. which could be explored further here. There’s also a lot more opportunity to learn about the surprisingly friendly Skrulls as well as a whole universe of foes to be introduced.
Fantastic Four (May 2023)
This is one that fans have wanted for a LONG time and, with it now confirmed, a big May 2023 release may be perfect for the First Family. Along with the X-Men, the Fantastic Four were the biggest property Marvel acquired from Fox and they likely would have been introduced much sooner otherwise. There are loads of opportunities for an entire series of movies including introducing everyone from Doctor Doom (who hopefully will get his own film courtesy of Noah Hawley) to Galactus and the Silver Surfer. It has been rumored that, like many stories in the MCU, it will be based on Marvel’s Ultimate Universe. Although with so many franchises on the way featuring younger heroes, I feel like Marvel may opt to make the team an already established and more experienced set of characters.
Check out our Fantastic Four dream cast here.
Nova? Ironheart? Young Avengers? Thunderbolts? (November 2023)
Going this far out, I can’t even really predict what comes next. We’re past the confirmed projects (excluding a reference to “mutants”) and there are plenty of rumored options that could fill this slot. Particularly because November releases are typical reserved for stories that Marvel is not as sure about yet. With that in mind, there are four projects that have been discussed enough and Marvel has shown a decent amount of interest in.
A Nova film has been rumored for a long-time and Kevin Feige previously said that Richard Rider has “immediate potential” in the MCU. Let’s hope this sees the last member of the Nova Corp dealing with a decimated Xandar and possibly face the cosmic villain Annihilus.
More recently, many have called for a movie based on the Iron Man successor, Riri Williams or Ironheart. Even Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr., has called for such a film. This is a more recent property but has quickly met critical acclaim.
There have been many rumors that a Young Avengers movie is coming at some point. A report earlier this year called it out amongst several other properties Marvel is looking to develop. However, at this point the roster is very slim and a story like this would likely have to be built over the course of the next several movies. We know Kate Bishop is coming and Stature (Scott Lang’s daughter) has already been introduced. Wiccan could be brought to life in WandaVision and Spider-Man and Ironheart could also join this team. It’s certainly likely we will see this film at some point but it may be further out than 2023.
Finally, there have been rumors of a Thunderbolts film coming at some point. This could also be Dark Avengers when Norman Osborn is introduced (more on that in a second) although Zemo’s team is a more popular property and would allow for a bit of distance from the Avengers brand. It just doesn’t fit into the MCU that the name Dark Avengers would even be used. Marvel has been careful to keep a selective group of villains alive including Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp, Baron Zemo from Captain America: Civil War, Vulture from Spider-Man and even the Abomination and Thunderbolt Ross from the Incredible Hulk. This would be a good opportunity to bring at least a few of them back and maybe even incorporate some new characters. This would be a refreshing change of the pace for Marvel and its probably my personal favorite choice for this slot.
BONUS: Spider-Man sequels (July 2021 and 2023)
Sony controls the release date for the now most-wanted webslinger which is why I am keeping this separate from the rest of the releases. While not announced at SDCC, it’s also likely Spider-Man 3 will release in the Summer of 2021 as the studio has made it clear they want a new installment every two years. It’s also been purported that the series will extend beyond three films which would mean Spider-Man 4 would release in 2023. My hope is that the 2021 film will introduce Kraven the Hunter in an adaptation of his Last Hunt storyline (because you can’t make a Kraven movie without Spider-Man, right Sony?) and there are now rumors that he may come from Wakanda which would be a very clever twist on his story. It also makes sense that this film would introduce Norman Osborn with him becoming the primary antagonist in the 2023 film. There was a report that Norman Osborn would become a major antagonist across the MCU and many storylines that have been discussed involve him (including the Dark Avengers discussed above). The seeds may have already been planted for this as well so it’s only a matter of time before we meet the Green Goblin.
We still likely have a while before this is either confirmed or denied and 10 new films and TV shows to enjoy until that date. Marvel has a second panel at D23 but its likely they’ll discuss the recently announced properties in more detail which makes sense. We already had a huge overload yesterday and this article may just be making your brain fry. Either way it’s a very exciting time to be a comic book fan. | https://medium.com/b-roll/predicting-the-rest-of-the-mcu-phase-4-slate-618939f79c15 | ['Graham Steinberg'] | 2019-07-29 15:12:52.791000+00:00 | ['Lists', 'Film', 'Marvel', 'Comics', 'Movies'] |
Zomato NCR Data Analysis | This is my first blog on medium and one of my first projects in data science. The whole project is done on python using the following libraries:-
pandas
plotly
matplotlib
seaborn
In this post I will doing some exploratory data analysis on Zomato Restaurant data.
Zomato: It is restaurant search and discovery service founded in India. It is extremely strong in India, UAE and a couple of other countries although they are ‘present’ in 22 countries. It is the one of the best and most comprehensive restaurant search and discovery app available in the industry today.
The data has the following attributes:
‘Restaurant ID’, ‘Restaurant Name’, ‘Country Code’, ‘City’, ‘Address’,
‘Locality’, ‘Locality Verbose’, ‘Longitude’, ‘Latitude’, ‘Cuisines’,
‘Average Cost for two’, ‘Currency’, ‘Has Table booking’,
‘Has Online delivery’, ‘Is delivering now’, ‘Switch to order menu’,
‘Price range’, ‘Aggregate rating’, ‘Rating color’, ‘Rating text’,
‘Votes’, ‘Country’, ‘Number of Cuisines Offered’, ‘Restaurant’
To download the data click here .
The aim of this blog is to know about various attributes like cost, location, cuisines affect the sales of zomato.
Number of restaurants in each city in NCR
This is an analysis of all the zomato partnered restaurants in the National Capital Region(NCR) which includes the cities — Faridabad, Gurgaon, New Delhi, Noida. Above is the graph showing number of restaurants in each city. Lets see the various parameters:-
Number of cuisines offered
From the above plots we can see that in all 4 cities more than 50% restaurants offer less than 4 cuisines. The cuisines offered are :- Chinese, North Indian, Fast Food, Mughlai. We can see Delhi and Gurgaon offer the highest variety of cuisines.
2. Popularity of cuisines
This shows the ratings of the number of restaurants offering this cuisine. On an average none of the cuisines can be said favorites based on this plot. But North Indian restaurants tend to be much highly rated.
The North Indian cuisine is clearly more favored by restaurants over other cuisines. Still the average ratings for all the cuisines is around 3.5.
3. Rating v/s Cost
The average cost for two in NCR region is calculated to be about ₹1500. Most of the restaurants have cost less than the mean. Also some important observation that none of the expensive restaurants > ₹2000 are rated less than 3. We also get to know some of the high rated but cheap restaurants like:-
Zaffran,DLF mall Sector-30, Gurgaon
Citron Hotel, Sector -15, Noida
Most of the restaurants rated 4.5 or higher are within the price range of ₹500-₹1500.
4. Number of votes
Ratings are only good if the sample size of the people is good. On average number of voters per restaurant is almost 200 with more than 60% of restaurants being rated less than 1000 times. Also many of the higher rated restaurants are rated less than 500 times. But we also get some restaurants which are rated highly and heavily. Some such restaurants are:-
Tpot — Sector 39,Gurgaon
— Sector 39,Gurgaon Captain Grub — Greater Kailash 1
— Greater Kailash 1 Cafe Gatherings — DLF Phase 4, Gurgaon
5. Localities
Number of Restaurants in localities
The above plots shows localities with at least 60 restaurants. Among these Connaught Place has the highest number of restaurants(131) followed by Shalimar Bagh(120). Connaught Place is one of the oldest and most visited markets in New Delhi.
Average Cost per Locality
Most expensive places:-
DLF CyberHub — with an average cost of ₹1320. It is one of the biggest party places for all the MNC’s built in Gurgaon, thus justifying the price.
— with an average cost of ₹1320. It is one of the biggest party places for all the MNC’s built in Gurgaon, thus justifying the price. Khan Market — Average cost of ₹1250. It is one of the most posh areas in Delhi and home to the biggest brand market in Delhi.
— Average cost of ₹1250. It is one of the most posh areas in Delhi and home to the biggest brand market in Delhi. Connaught Place — Average cost of ₹1175. It is the biggest market in Delhi and also one of the most visited places. Place is full of fancy restaurants.
6. City v/s Cost
Gurgaon is clearly the city with most expensive restaurants followed by New Delhi. This is majorly because of all the MNC’s that are based out of Gurgaon and more posh culture than any of the other cities.
CONCLUSION
From all the data analysis we can conclude that :-
Zomato has partnered with highest number of restaurants in NCR region in which it has most restaurants in New Delhi. People tend to prefer North Indian cuisine over others. People tend to rate restaurants between 3.5–4 and very few restaurants get a higher rating. None of the more expensive restaurants are rated lower than 3. Most of the restaurants rated highly is because of less number of voters. Most expensive among all the 4 cities is Gurgaon.
All the data has been analyzed and visualized using python. You can see the source code here. | https://medium.com/@pandekartik007/zomato-ncr-data-analysis-e7665edb249a | ['Kartik Pande'] | 2020-04-22 03:17:16.056000+00:00 | ['Udacity', 'Zomato', 'Data Science', 'Plotly', 'Python'] |
How To Survive A Plane Crash | So my story became less about the plane crash and more about the tale of survival. One man struggling to come to terms with grief. How to deal with survivor’s guilt? How many years therapy and what kind of toil does that take on a person?
George eventually settled down. Drifting from one job to another. Marrying and having a daughter. Yet, he never spoke of the event that had dramatically changed the course of his life.
Furthermore, he moved to Reno, a few short blocks away from the site of the crash. This was no random choice. George would later speak of how moving to Reno felt like being closer to his father.
It was a reminder of life before the accident. A memory of the last great time he had spent with his dad. A man still struggling to come to terms with the crash.
George Lamson Jr. Image AP
It wasn’t until 2014, when the CNN documentary “Sole Survivor,” aired that George reflected on that tragic day. A man haunted by the past forever asking himself ‘why?’. Why George? Why did he survive the crash and nobody else? Was it fate? Was it really random?
George set up a Facebook group in 2010 to reach out to other survivors. The unhurt victims of crashes that derailed lives. He found solace in knowing he wasn’t alone. That there were others out there, all touched by the hand of death and luck. He found there was no reason or logic to the stories.
It was what it was. One person, Ky Dickens reached out. She was a documentary filmmaker who wanted to learn more about survivors. She would be the person responsible for making ‘Sole Survivor’.
“When George told me that, I thought immediately this is a person that has not dealt with this yet,” she said in a telephone interview. “He is still very bound to the site. At first, he told me the decision to live in Reno was just kind of random. But about 2 ½ years into the project, he finally told me that being in Reno reminds him of his dad and brings him closer to his dad. It was the last great time he had in his life before everything changed.” Source — USA Today.
George attended the premiere of the film screened in 2014. It was a moment that finally lifted the burden of guilt that had plagued his life. People gave him a warm, standing ovation as he took to the stage to say a few words.
George recalled that “One person in the audience said to me, ‘We never thought badly of you. You were a light to us in a very dark time.’ Another person spoke and said, ‘You are like family to us.’ I was in tears and so were many others.”
Back in the present and George continues to reach out to other survivors, offering a friendly shoulder to all who need to talk. Perhaps that was always the destiny that fate had in store for George. Perhaps that, after-all, was the reason he lived, that he survived to help others in need. | https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/how-to-survive-a-plane-crash-491d4e18906f | ['Reuben Salsa'] | 2020-08-26 18:57:19.737000+00:00 | ['Flight', 'History', 'Life Lessons', 'Salsa', 'Tragedy'] |
Does Making A Quantum Measurement Really Destroy Information? | Imagine that you’re a scientist attempting to understand reality at a fundamental level. How would you go about exploring it? You’d attempt to break up the matter you’re dealing with into tiny, well-understood components. You’d design experiments to test and measure the properties of those tiny subatomic particles under a variety of conditions. And — if you were clever — you’d attempt to use the properties that you measured and the experiments you performed to learn exactly what rules the Universe obeyed.
In principle, you’d think, you could make enough measurements or perform enough experiments to learn as much as you wanted about any particle (or set of particles) in the entire Universe. Indeed, that was the expectation of many at the dawn of the 20th century. As it turned out, however, the quantum Universe had other ideas in store for us. Certain measurements, when you make them, completely invalidate the information you had learned from your prior measurement. The act of measuring, apparently, really does destroy information. Here’s how we figured it out.
Certain mathematical operations, like addition or multiplication, are order-independent, which means they are commutative. If order does matter, and you get a result that’s different depending on the order in which you perform your operations, those operations are non-commutative. This has key implications for the world of physics. (GETTY)
In theory, the story starts with a basic idea from math: the notion of commutativity. Commutative means “you can move something around” and it doesn’t change. Addition is commutative: 2 + 3 = 3 + 2. Same thing with multiplication: 2 × 3 = 3 × 2. But subtraction isn’t: 2–3 ≠ 3–2, but rather you need to throw a negative sign in there to make the expression true. Division isn’t either, and is a little more complicated: 2 ÷ 3 ≠ 3 ÷ 2, and you’d need to take the reciprocal (the inverse) of one side to equal the other.
In physics, this idea of commutativity doesn’t just apply to mathematical operations, but to physical manipulations or measurements you can make as well. A simple example that we can look to is the idea of rotations. If you take an object that’s different along its three dimensions — like a cellphone — you can attempt to make two rotations:
holding an object in front of you, rotate it 90 degrees counterclockwise about the axis facing you,
then take that same object and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise about the vertical axis in front of you.
Perhaps surprisingly, the order in which you perform these two rotations really matters.
The author’s last cellphone in the pre-smartphone era exemplifies how rotations in 3D space do not commute. At left, the top and bottom rows begin in the same configuration. At top, a 90 degree counterclockwise rotation in the plane of the photograph is followed by a 90 degree clockwise rotation around the vertical axis. At bottom, the same two rotations are performed but in the opposite order. This demonstrates the non-commutativity of rotations. (E. SIEGEL)
This idea of non-commutativity shows up even in the classical world of physics, but its most famous application comes in the quantum realm: in the form of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Here in our classical world, there are all sorts of properties of an object that we can measure at any moment in time. Put it on a scale, and you measure its mass. Put a motion sensor on it, and you can measure its momentum. Fire a set of lasers at it, and you can measure its position. Send it into a calorimeter, and you can measure its energy. And if you set up a stopwatch while it’s oscillating, you can measure the amount of time it takes to complete one full cycle.
Well, in the quantum Universe, many of these measurements are still valid at the particular instant you make them, but not forever. The reason is this: certain quantities that you can measure — pairs of observables known as conjugate variables — are inherently related to one another. If you measure momentum to a certain precision, you cannot inherently know your position to better than a certain specific accuracy, even if you previously measured your position more precisely than that previously.
An illustration between the inherent uncertainty between position and momentum at the quantum level. The better you know or measure a particle’s position, the less well you know its momentum, as well as vice versa. Both position and momentum are better described by a probabilistic wavefunction than by a single value. (E. SIEGEL / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USER MASCHEN)
The idea of Heisenberg uncertainty was unpalatable to many, and yet, the Universe seemed to mandate it. This extended to other sets of conjugate variables as well:
position (Δx) and momentum (Δp),
energy (ΔE) and time (Δt),
electric potential, or voltage (Δφ) and free electric charge (Δq),
or angular momentum (ΔL) and orientation, or angular position (Δθ).
However, if you really want to demonstrate the physical necessity of something, you absolutely have to obtain the experimental results to back it up. It isn’t necessarily enough to state something like “I don’t know how precisely I can trust my measurements,” you have to discover a way to reveal that information that you previously knew or measured to some degree of accuracy has been destroyed by the act of subsequent measurements.
In 1921, physicist Otto Stern came up with a brilliant idea to test exactly this.
Individual and composite particles can possess both orbital angular momentum and intrinsic (spin) angular momentum. When these particles have electric charges either within or intrinsic to them, they generate magnetic moments, causing them to be deflected by a particular amount in the presence of a magnetic field. (IQQQI / HAROLD RICH)
Imagine that you have a quantum particle, like an electron, a proton, a composite nucleus: an object made up of protons and neutrons bound together, or even a neutral atom with a nucleus and electrons orbiting it. There are a number of quantum properties inherent to this object, such as mass, electric charge, etc. In theory, there should also be a form of angular momentum inherent to this particle as well, not merely from the fact that it orbits (or is orbited by) other particles, but intrinsic to itself in isolation. This quantum property is called spin, in analogy with the idea of a top rotating about its axis.
If you had a spinning top, you can immediately imagine two ways it could be spinning:
clockwise about its vertical axis,
or counterclockwise about its vertical axis.
If you lived in a world that wasn’t weighted down by gravity — where you have a preferred direction (towards the center of the Earth) that orients your spin axis — you could also imagine that it could be spinning either clockwise or counterclockwise about any axis at all in any of the three allowable dimensions. That’s the setup: the notion that the idea of spin, or intrinsic angular momentum, exists for these particles. Although 1921 was several years before Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit formulated their hypothesis of an electron’s spin, the notion was still present in the original “old quantum theory” of Bohr and Sommerfeld.
If you have a quantum particle that possesses the intrinsic property of spin, passing that particle through a magnetic field will deflect it according to the possible values of its magnetic moment, which is related to spin. In quantum theory, this means that spin ought to be quantized and discrete. (CK-12 FOUNDATION / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
How could one measure the spin of quantum particles? And how, moreover, could you determine if spin was a continuous quantity capable of taking on any value, as the classical Universe predicted, or whether it was inherently quantum in nature, with only specific discrete values it could take on?
Stern realized that if you had a magnetic field that pointed in one particular direction that was perpendicular to the direction in which this charged, spinning particle was moving, the field would deflect the particle according to its magnetic moment, which would be related to its spin. A particle without any spin wouldn’t deflect, but a particle with spin (either positive or negative) would be deflected along the direction of the magnetic field.
If spin was quantized and discrete, you would only see specific locations where these particles, all moving at the same speed, would land. But if spin was classical and continuous, those particles could land absolutely anywhere.
A beam of particles fired through a magnet could yield quantum-and-discrete (5) results for the particles’ spin angular momentum, or, alternatively, classical-and-continuous (4) values. This experiment, known as the Stern-Gerlach experiment, demonstrated a number of important quantum phenomena. (THERESA KNOTT / TATOUTE OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
In 1922, physicist Walther Gerlach put Stern’s ideas to the test, devising what is now known as the Stern-Gerlach experiment. Gerlach started by setting up an electromagnet around a beam of silver atoms, which were easy to accelerate to a uniform speed. With the electromagnet turned off, the silver atoms all landed at the same location on a detector on the other side of the magnet. When the magnet was ramped up and turned on, the beam split into two: with half the atoms deflected along the direction of the magnetic field and half deflected opposed to the magnetic field. As we know today, this corresponds to spins of +½ and -½, aligned or anti-aligned with the magnetic field.
This early experiment was enough to prove that spin existed, and that it was quantized into discrete values. But what came next would really demonstrate the power of quantum mechanics to destroy previously known information. When you pass those silver atoms through a Stern-Gerlach apparatus with the field turned on, the beam of atoms splits in two, corresponding to spins in each of the two allowed directions.
What, then, would happen if you were to pass one of those two halves of the beam through another Stern-Gerlach experiment?
When you fire particles through a Stern-Gerlach experiment, the magnetic field will cause them to split into multiple directions, corresponding to the possibly allowed states for spin angular momentum. When you apply a second Stern-Gerlach apparatus in the same direction, no further split occurs, as that quantum property has already been determined. (CLARA-KATE JONES / MJASK OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is that it depends on which direction your magnet is oriented. If your original Stern-Gerlach apparatus were oriented in, say, the x-direction, you’d get a split where some of the particles were deflected in the +x direction and others were deflected in the -x direction. Now, let’s only save the +x particles. If you pass them through another magnet that’s also oriented in the x-direction, the particles won’t split; they’ll all be oriented in the +x direction still.
But if you oriented your second magnetic field in the y-direction instead, you’d find something a little surprising. The beam of particles that originally had a +x orientation now split along the y-direction, with half deflecting in the +y direction and the other half deflecting in the -y direction.
Now, here’s where the critical moment occurs: what happens if you save, for example, only the +y particles, and pass them once again through a magnetic field oriented in the x-direction?
When you pass a set of particles through a single Stern-Gerlach magnet, they will deflect according to their spin. If you pass them through a second, perpendicular magnet, they’ll split again in the new direction. If you then go back to the first direction with a third magnet, they’ll once again split, proving that previously determined information was randomized by the most recent measurement. (CLARA-KATE JONES/ MJASK OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
Once again, just like they did initially, they split into +x and -x directions. When you passed them through that second magnetic field, in a different (orthogonal) direction to the first magnetic field, you destroyed the information you obtained in your first measurement. As we now understand it today, the three different possible directions for spin angular momentum — the x, y, and z directions — all don’t commute with one another. Making a quantum measurement of one type of variable really does destroy any prior information about its conjugate variables.
Multiple successive Stern-Gerlach experiments, which split quantum particles along one axis according to their spins, will cause further magnetic splitting in directions perpendicular to the most recent one measured, but no additional splitting in the same direction. (FRANCESCO VERSACI OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
The Stern-Gerlach experiment went on to have lasting implications. In 1927, it was shown that this splitting occurs even for hydrogen atoms, showing that hydrogen has a non-zero magnetic moment. Atomic nuclei themselves have a quantized angular momentum intrinsic to them, and also split in a Stern-Gerlach-like apparatus. By varying the magnetic field over time, scientists figured out how to force the magnetic moment to enter one state or another, with state transitions capable of being induced by a time-varying field. This led to the birth of magnetic resonance, still used ubiquitously in modern MRI machines, with subsequent applications of the key transition leading to atomic clocks as well.
A modern high field clinical MRI scanner. MRI machines are the largest medical or scientific use of helium today, and make use of quantum spin transitions in subatomic particles. The physics behind them was uncovered way back in 1937, where time-varying fields were first discovered to induce the Rabi oscillation. (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USER KASUGAHUANG)
The act of measurement and observation seems like it shouldn’t affect the outcome, as it’s a truly absurd idea that watching a system can alter its properties. But in the quantum Universe, this not only occurs, but was demonstrated before the theory was even fully understood. If you measure a particle’s spin along one direction, you destroy any previously-obtained information about the other two directions. Even if you had measured them previously and known them exactly, the act of making that new measurement fundamentally erases (or randomizes) any information you had gained earlier.
When many physicists first hear Einstein’s quip about how “God doesn’t play dice with the Universe,” this is the first experiment they should think of as a counterexample. No matter how well you think you understand reality — no matter how precisely or accurately you measure it in a variety of ways — the act of making any new measurement will intrinsically randomize some of the information you had pinned down just prior to your measurement. Making that new measurement really does destroy old information, and all you need is a magnet and some particles to prove that this is true. | https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/does-making-a-quantum-measurement-really-destroy-information-3565373bc79 | ['Ethan Siegel'] | 2020-12-17 15:03:59.090000+00:00 | ['Physics', 'Quantum', 'Quantum Physics', 'Information', 'Science'] |
Five life-changing paintings everyone should see before dying | Guernica (1937) — Pablo Picasso, The Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid
Guernica by Picasso — Oil paints on canvas
Maybe one of the most memorable and symbolic pieces Picasso has ever created, Guernica, is a masterpiece, both in size and in content. The cubist style of the 3,5 by 7,7m canvas brings a different dimension to the meaning and consequences of war, portraited as a brutal, inhuman, chaotic, and painful event that affects militaries and civilians.
This painting is heavily inspired after the bombing of the city of Guernica by Nazi forces in 1937. The magnitude of this tragedy incited Pablo to denounce what had happened to the Spanish people during and after the attack. Through the simultaneous composition of different elements, Picasso was capable of capturing, in a complex layout, the falling out of one of the most agonizing genocides in Spanish history.
At the upper left corner and the middle of the canvas, we can see respectively a bull and a horse, which are both elements of national significance to the Spanish culture. The drawing of these animals with deformed bodies and distorted expressions reverberates with the feeling Picasso had that the military caste was sinking Spain in an ocean of pain and death.
However, Guernica managed to extrapolate the barrier of one country and became in the following years an international declaration of war against war and a manifesto against violence. The soldier lay dead on the floor, reinforces this message by holding a broken sword in one hand and a white poppy in the other. Universally flowers are known for representing a peace offering, translating the painter’s desire of the end of war and brutality.
Fun fact: Dora Maar, Pablo’s girlfriend at the time, photographed the progress of the painting, which allow us today to have an insight into the thought process behind one of the most elaborate artistic protest of the century. In case you are interested, the site of the Museo Reina Sofía has a timeline of the entire painting and its repercussion around the world, along with the photos mentioned before. | https://medium.com/art-direct/five-life-changing-paintings-everyone-should-see-before-dying-6f94ed8105bb | ['Beatriz Freitas'] | 2020-08-02 08:27:13.716000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Painting', 'Museums', 'Artist', 'Culture'] |
Chapel on the Hill #5: The Witch Hunter | Image by R. Loughlin
There are few things more peaceful than a quiet snowfall, the Witch Hunter decided. He was squatting in front of a small shack, leaning against one of the posts of its overhang, looking out across the dawn. The shack was in a clearing in the middle of a thick, grey forest. The snow deafened all the world around the little homestead; the clouds hung heavy over the forest and all before him seemed at peace.
The Witch Hunter let himself become part of the quietude that bonded all things together — the trees, the animals, the sky — in common concord this grey dawn. There was no sound, no wind; the air was crisp but heavy, like a blanket come down from the sky. The snow fell steadily, covering the homestead in a white mantle. It covered everything — the trees, the barn, the shack, and the Witch Hunter, all — equally. There is no escaping this world, the Witch Hunter mused, we all share a part in it. All — including the creature tied to the bed in the shack behind him, surrounded by those that once called it Father. The quiet and the peace of the clearing, and of the forest, provided a needed remedy for the darkness of the night before, and against the darkness still within.
He checked his belt for his purse; he hefted it once and made sure it was tied securely. Always get paid in advance, Verdyn used to tell him. Folk are more willing to credit God than a professional once the miracle comes. And if the miracle doesn’t come — better to be halfway out the door.
Once he was able to capture and secure him, the Witch Hunter had given the Father a strong dose of asfi root, boiled, then rubbed against the skin. The case was severe, so the Witch Hunter made the dosage severe. It was tricky work, and it took time. The dosages needed to be applied half-hourly under a full moon. The Witch Hunter didn’t believe the full moon was necessary, a vestigial superstition, he supposed, but he followed the procedure anyway. Slowly, each dosage calmed the creature further until it finally closed its wild eyes. Now all he had to do was wait. The asfi root had an equal chance of expelling the Demon successfully or killing the host. Time would tell. Once dawn became morning, in full, he would know. Either the skin would melt away or the eyes would awaken, clean and clear, upon the world once again.
The Witch Hunter looked out at the trees, stretching their bony hands up to the leaden sky, begging for Spring to bring life back to their branches. He hoped the family would have their Spring, too. This world was cruel, he knew, better than most, and the kindness of Chance was rare. He’d seen what happens when Chance wasn’t kind, and the remedies didn’t take hold. He’d seen too many families look on, helplessly, as their loved ones descended into madness — or worse. A long time ago, he decided he could see no more of that; he no longer wanted to feel the eyes of a grieving mother burning into him, silently blaming him for what Chance had given; he no longer wanted to walk out of a family’s hovel, taking nearly all the coin they had and leaving only the lifeless body of their loved one behind. And so he took what peace he could from the snow, and waited until he knew it was over — one way or another.
As unforgiving as it was, it was necessary work. The Clergy of the Great Knowledge, seated in the Walled City, did not officially recognize the Order of the Hunt. Indeed, they condemned all Faethlamin as folklore and superstition. Everyone knew the story of The Stranger, and the importance of tending your fire against him, but it was understood as a folktale. And while the Clergy sermonized against a metaphorical Evil, Death and his servants hunted openly. In truth, the number of Faethlamin was falling; their ranks were thinning every season. It had been years, in fact, since the Witch Hunter had come across a Demon — a true Demon — like the one in the shack behind him. But it wasn’t because of the Witch Hunters; he didn’t know why, but he could sense something else was happening. He could feel it in the trees, in the stone — in the cold winds that blew through the lonely valleys of Trist. As the numbers of the Demons grew smaller, he could feel Evil growing stronger.
Finally, through the rough-hewn door behind him, he heard a sudden cry from the Mother and he knew it was over. The Witch Hunter got up, quickly checked his purse once more, and walked into the trees beyond the clearing, leaving the little shack and its family behind him. | https://medium.com/the-spring-house/chapel-on-the-hill-5-the-witch-hunter-472d2962a34c | ['Robert W Loughlin'] | 2020-12-16 15:54:00.300000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Fiction', 'Series', 'Chapel On The Hill', 'Fantasy'] |
My World by Viktor Grebennikov: Dedication and Preface. | Dedication
I dedicate this work to Anatoly, my dear brother who died fighting for my beloved homeland of Crimea in 1942. It was a year filled with agony and terror.
Preface
Many wonderful people have helped me to publish this book. Unfortunately, I only have enough space to express my gratitude to a few of them. I’d like to thank:
Vladimir Yartsev, my chief editor and Alissa Tobuch and Vladimir Minko, my literary editors. Thank you for getting the book ready for publication.
Maria Cherkasova, Socio-Ecological Union Director, and Svyatoslav Zabelin, Socio-Ecological Union Coordination Division Director (based in Moscow). Thank you for your moral, financial and logistical support.
Aman Tuleev, the Chairman of the Council of People’s Deputies of Kemerovo Oblast and member of the Federation Council. Thank you for printing colorful ads necessary for publication and your precious spiritual guidance.
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Thank you for your generous 30,000 USD donation. I wholeheartedly support your stipulation this book gets distributed to children for free.
Olga Shiganova, EnSi Group Director from Novosibirsk. Thank you for taking care of all the logistics involved in this project: business trips, paperwork, office supplies, etc.
My son Sergey, my wife Tamara, my grandson Andrey. Thank you for all the ways you’ve helped me throughout the years and putting up with me (most of my writings and drawings were produced at home). This book only exists because of you.
I absolutely must thank all entomologists who shared their collections (some of them are very rare) with me:
V. Ivonin,Y. Korshunov, V. Dubatolov, P. Ustyuzhanin from Novosibirsk.
V. Kuznetsov from the Far East.
L. Slavgorodskaya, Y. Budashkin, S. Ivanov from Crimea.
P. Marikovsky from Almaty.
A. Osychnuk, M. Nesterov, N. Scherbak from Ukraine.
G. Petere from Germany.
P. Gallant from France.
Occasionally you’ll see two dates on my drawings. This means I had to make a particular drawing twice: before my arrest in 1947 and after my release in 1953 during the Khrushchev Thaw.
I’d also like to mention V. Zolotarev, a physicist from St Petersburg. He greatly contributed to elucidating my discovery of the Cavity Structure Effect which led to so many more fascinating findings.
And most of my gratitude goes to my dear students, both young and old. Had it not been for you, I would have become another hardened cog in the bureaucratic machine a long time ago. I especially dedicate my humble — yet perhaps somewhat extraordinary — work to my young students. | https://medium.com/@dianathoresen-57102/my-world-by-viktor-grebennikov-dedication-and-preface-269ff138cf5f | ['Diana Thoresen'] | 2020-12-14 08:33:15.854000+00:00 | ['Anti Gravity', 'Biology', 'Science', 'Viktor Grebennikov', 'Theoretical Physics'] |
How To Make Money On YouTube Videos | Many people want to know How to make money on YouTube videos. This is not surprising because YouTube is known and used in many households throughout the civilized world. It is actually the third most used search engine in the world. Enough video is uploaded every three minutes to play non-stop for more than a week. And then that video is watched in 39 countries in 54 languages. There are different ways to make money with YouTube videos. How to make money on YouTube.This article is about one of the easiest ways to generate money with YouTube, and that is by joining the YouTube Partners Program.
The YouTube Partner Program was created in 2007. Joining this program is super easy and once it is set up it doesn’t require any extra effort on your part. In fact, hundreds of YouTube Partners are earning more than 6 figures in income each year. But even though this amount of income is obviously attainable by some, most people are very happy to earn much less than that. And why shouldn’t they? The money is there for the making and it can be gained with very little effort.
So what is involved in making money this way?
Joining the YouTube Partner Program
This is a simple step by step procedure for starting on the YouTube income ladder:-
Open a YouTube Account. How to make money on YouTube
If you aren’t sure how to do that, just open up your internet browser and type in or copy “how to open a YouTube account”
Click on one of the links that open up and then follow the directions.
Once you have completed your details and created a Gmail account (for receiving and sending emails) you will be directed to your own YouTube Channel.
Second Step
Upload a video to your new YouTube account. How to make money on YouTube
The video does not have to be of high technical quality.
Uploading a video that you have recorded on your phone, your camera, or even on your webcam is quite good enough.
The most important thing is that your video is interesting, amusing, or informative so that people will want to watch it.
You also need to make sure you own all the necessary commercial rights to the visual and audio elements of the video. How to make money on YouTube
The main problem occurs when someone includes a pop song in their video, for instance. And that pop song is copyright. Or there could be a song playing on the radio or TV when a video is being recorded, for instance. Just make sure that you are not recording anything that is copyright and you will be alright. How to make money on YouTube
And, if you prefer, YouTube has a wide collection of music that is free to use and it is a simple thing for you to change the soundtrack on your video once it is uploaded and before it is published and made public.
How to make money on YouTube | Obviously, if your video includes someone talking you won’t want to change the soundtrack. But if a music background is part of your recording, then you can easily use YouTube’s selection.
Third Step | How to make money on YouTube
Publish your video.
When you upload your video to YouTube the default setting is to make it “public”. This means that the general public will be able to watch it.
If you prefer, you could change that public setting to Private or Unlisted, but since you want people to watch your video so that they can click on your advert, you will prefer to leave it at the default public setting.
And finally, you can take the:
Fourth Step
Join the YouTube Partner’s Program.
In order to join the program you need to have at least one video approved for monetization, and so, providing your video was acceptable then everything should proceed easily.
Simply go into the Channel Settings on your YouTube Channel, open the Monetization section, and apply for the Partner’s Program. How to make money on YouTube
Finally, to make sure that you are the one who receives the money from the “clicks” on your video, you need to open up your own Google AdSense Account.
To do this, simply paste or copy the following into your web browser “how to open a Google AdSense Account”, follow the links that come up, and get your own AdSense Account
After that, enjoy your video making and start to record and upload your videos as often as you want to.
Your videos will be there, on the internet, for people to watch and click on the adverts, and bit by bit, your income will start to build up.
And so if you are still wondering How to make money on YouTube videos, just follow the procedure listed above and start to enjoy yourself while building an income.
Tube Mastery and Monetization by Matt Par
For More Business Ideas, Click Here Business Tips, Business Lessons, Online Business Tips, Offline Business Tips, Business Strategies, Business Environment Ideas, Business Marketing, Business Marketing On Social Media, Website Business, Domain Selling Business, Websites Making Ideas, Website Niches Ideas, Niches Keywords Ideas, Micro Niche Website Ideas, Blog Writing Tips, Blog Writing For Business, And visit to learn all the ways of doing business…CLICK HERE | https://medium.com/@zeetastic1/how-to-make-money-on-youtube-videos-cc6c67eb5b43 | [] | 2020-12-27 19:09:08.222000+00:00 | ['How To Make Money Youtube', 'Make Money', 'How To', 'YouTube', 'How To Make Money'] |
Custom Size LED Light Panel | https://www.maxillumination.com
We manufacture and offer the custom size LED light Panel/LED Light Sheet, which integrate the led strips into the light guide plate(LGP).
Why we choose LED light panels as the lighting solution?
(1) LED light panels are thin, high illumination with custom size. So we could tailor dimension of led light panel to fit your project.
(2) Low power consumption. Even in high-output operating conditions, LED light panels consume far less power than traditional lighting fixtures during the same working hours.
(3) Long service life. LED light panels do not have light-emitting, heat-depositing, light-fading, etc. Under the proper current and voltage, its service life is more than 10 times that of the conventional light source.
(4) High brightness and low heat. The LED light panels have a relatively low heat generation, and even in an environment where the heat requirement is relatively high, the heat sink can be installed to solve the problem.
(5) Rugged and durable. The light panels are made of acrylic materials, and there is no loose part in the panel. High quality material minimize the color change.
(7) Changeable. The dimmable LED light panels can use various basic colors of red, green and blue to form different combinations of different light colors to meet the light requirements of different occasions.
At present, LED light panels have been used in a variety of applications and have received increasing attention.
(1) Industrial indoor lighting
When high-quality LED light panels are used in industrial indoor lighting, they can enhance the visual space range, improve working conditions, improve energy efficiency and reduce operating costs. They are brighter and more reliable than traditional lighting while improving visibility and employee’s safety.
(2) Commercial interior lighting
Commercial indoor LED panel lighting not only saves money by reducing energy and maintenance costs, but also increases employee productivity. Unlike traditional fluorescent lamps, LED light panels emit a comfortable light. This advance has proven to increase employee motivation, energy and attention by creating a more attractive and comfortable workplace.
In addition, the led light panel is also used to backlit advertising for the poster or graphic in order standout the newest products. It’s popular applied in the LED light box. The led light panel also is installed in the ATM machine and vending machine to backlit poster.
(3) Home decoration
Dimmable LED light panels allow you to adjust the lighting in any room to match its function for a specific time. For example, in the living room, you might want to watch TV in low light but have a high light output for friends to meet. Dimmable LED light panels provide the perfect atmosphere for a family dinner, while also providing enough light for the room or as a work space for the school. These LED light panels also reduce energy consumption when dimmed.
LED light panels have an incredibly thin design that makes them ideal for wall finishing applications. They are lightweight and easy to install. They have the advantages of reducing labor costs, whether they are used to retrofit offices or in new buildings. These LED light sheets are currently widely used for backliting.
LED light panels are available in a variety of sizes, including the popular 2'x2' and 2'x4' styles. The size of the LED light panels now also supports customization. The LED light panels emit light evenly, do not produce spots, emit no flicker and contain no mercury. They are the best partner for modern decoration to be honest.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), evenly distributed diffused light is the ideal source of light in the workplace because it helps reduce eye strain and the negative effects of glare on employees. The low glare lens of the LED light panels also help to eliminate black spots, reducing the number of fixtures needed to cover the area.
Don’t you want to be trapped by a color of light? Adjustable LED light panels provide wireless control of color temperature through wall units or handheld remote controls. Studies conducted at schools have shown that adjustable lighting has an impact on test scores, productivity and learning. A milder color temperature will enable students to obtain higher scores, while a warmer color temperature reduces small movements and inattention. Accordingly, by adjusting the color temperature of the LED light panels, we can achieve environmental interventions in offices, conference rooms, schools, etc., and set corresponding lighting intensity for different tasks, such as conferences, presentations, and collaborative projects.
LED light panels come in a variety of shapes and sizes which allow them to be selected and matched according to the layout of the space and the lighting effects they want to achieve. The color temperature of LED light panels includes cool white (3000 Kelvin) and bright white (6500 Kelvin). LED light panels can also be dimmed with dimmers and are compatible with motion sensors to save more energy while customizing your lighting.
In order to set the color of the room and achieve the layout you want, you need to know the specifications of the panels for its output. The effect of decorating a room with LED light panels depend on brightness and lumens. Do you want to create a relaxed environment, a vivid and bright environment, or a romantic environment? Correct use of the LED light panels, such as adjustment of color temperature, beam angle, dimming ability and color rendering index (CRI) can all achieve the above effects.
Lumens are the units that measure the amount of light produced by a light source. The higher the lumen index, the brighter the light source. When buying a new LED light panel, lumens are often the first factor to consider, and using this unit is more reliable than using a wattage to select a panel. The kitchen, bathroom, laundry and closet are suitable for high-lumen lighting panels, and the choice of brightness depends entirely on the appearance you want.
The color temperature of the LED light panels are measured in Kelvin. Kelvin values represent different colors. For example, the light of 2000K to 3500K looks more orange or yellow and is called warm or warm white light. As the Kelvin value increases, the color becomes more “paper white”, called natural or neutral white (between 3500K and 5100K), and finally becomes a blue-white, cool white (more than 5100K). As the color temperature of the light source increases, the brightness usually increases. So when buying LED light panels, we need to be aware that choosing a warm white bulb with a color temperature of about 3000K may mean sacrificing some brightness. Choosing a color temperature of about 3500k will result in higher brightness but it also means there will be higher output at the same time.
In addition, we need to refer to CRI indicator when choosing LED light panels. Simply put, the closer the CRI of light is to 100 (CRI of incandescent or daylight), the better the color reproduction of the object under that light. High CRI LED light panels are ideal for living room lighting because they accurately display paint and furniture colors. High CRI LED light panels can also be used in kitchens, closets, bathrooms, changing rooms and other areas where the appearance and color reproduction requirements are high.
We are always committed to providing high quality LED light panels and other LED fixtures. Our products are rigorously tested before they leave the factory to ensure you get the quality products that are genuine in the industry. | https://medium.com/maxilluminationled/custom-size-led-light-panel-8773fece61e3 | ['Max Wong'] | 2019-12-25 03:23:02.121000+00:00 | ['Lighting'] |
2020: The Future of Cutting-Edge Medicines is Now | United States: Regenerative Medicine
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently reviewing more than 800 investigational new drug (IND) applications for gene and cell therapies.[1] (Box 1) The FDA predicts that by 2025, 10 to 20 cell- and gene-therapy products will be approved annually.[2] For gene therapy alone, the FDA foresees 40 to 60 product launches and >500,000 patients treated by 2030.[3] Cell therapy, while also surging, faces bioengineering challenges in reproducibly manufacturing and administering cells to thousands of patients.[4] Limitations in the manufacture of cell therapies include cell harvesting, expansion, manipulation, purification, preservation, and formulation.[4]
The combination gene/cell/immunotherapy called chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy is the subject of 111 active investigations as of June 30, 2018.[5] Of note, 44% of these are CD-19 directed. Hematologic cancers comprise 68% of the CAR-T investigations; the rest are solid cancers.[5]
Expectations are high for gene and cell therapies because they have the potential to cure previously incurable diseases.[5] Regulatory bodies are scrambling to keep up with the pace of innovation. The FDA released six gene-therapy guidance documents[5] for comment in July 2018; all are still in draft form:
Human Gene Therapy for Hemophilia, www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/human-gene-therapy-hemophilia Human Gene Therapy for Retinal Disorders, www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/human-gene-therapy-retinal-disorders Human Gene Therapy for Rare Diseases, www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/human-gene-therapy-rare-diseases Chemistry Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) Information for Human Gene Therapy Investigational New Drug Applications (INDs), www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/chemistry-manufacturing-and-control-cmc-information-human-gene-therapy-investigational-new-drug Testing of Retroviral Vector-Based Human Gene Therapy Products for Replication Competent Retrovirus During Product Manufacture and Patient Follow-up, www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/testing-retroviral-vector-based-human-gene-therapy-products-replication-competent-retrovirus-during Long Term Follow-up After Administration of Human Gene Therapy Products, www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/long-term-follow-after-administration-human-gene-therapy-products
FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) is working to streamline the review and safety reporting requirements for gene-therapy protocols.[7] The agency plans to add about 50 clinical reviewers dedicated to oversight of cell and gene therapies,[2] doubling the current number of reviewers.8 Accelerated product development pathways offered by the FDA now include the Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) designation, created as part of the 21st Century Cures Act in 2016 (Figure 1; Box 2). RMAT includes all the benefits of the Fast Track and Breakthrough Therapy designations, including early interactions with the agency.[1] It may allow regenerative therapy developers to conduct smaller, shorter trials.[9] As of September 2019, 44 RMAT designations have been granted,[10] most recently for CAR T-cell therapy CT053 for the treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.[11]
Figure 1. FDA accelerated product-development pathways.[1,5]
In addition, CBER has implemented the Initial Targeted Engagement for Regulatory Advice on CBER products (INTERACT) program to facilitate communication with the FDA at an early developmental stage.[5] INTERACT will provide sponsors of innovative products with informal regulatory advice about preclinical requirements, manufacturing, and clinical development programs even before the start of any formal regulatory filings.[7]
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has undertaken similar efforts. For example, the NIH’s Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee has transitioned to become the Novel and Exceptional Technology and Research Advisory Committee (NExTRAC). NExTRAC will facilitate transparent discussions about the scientific, safety, ethical, and social issues associated with emerging biotechnologies.[12] The inaugural meeting was held December 5–6, 2019.[12]
See Tables 1–3 for currently FDA-approved cell and gene therapies.
Europe: Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products
Europe has been a pioneer of what the European Medicines Agency (EMA) calls “advanced therapy medicinal products” (ATMPs) and was the first region to adopt specific regulation for their development and approval.[13] To date, the EMA has granted the most marketing authorizations for ATMPs worldwide. During 2014–2018, however, the number of advanced-therapy clinical trials in Europe has stalled, growing by only 2%. Comparatively, the number of these trials in North America and Asia rose by 36% and 28% in the same period.[13]
Key issues in Europe include the fragmentation of regulatory bodies and ethical committees and lack of process harmonization. In addition, gene therapies are classified as “genetically modified organisms” in Europe, requiring an extra approval and adding complexity to the clinical-trial authorization process.[13] Moreover, Clinical Trial Directive 2001/20/EC allows 90 days for the review of clinical-trial applications for ATMPs, with a possible 90-day extension. Other types of medicinal products require a decision within 60 days, and even with the longer timeline, ATMP decisions are often delayed beyond the extension period. A new Clinical Trial Regulation expected to be implemented by the end of 2020 offers streamlining, but does not substantially improve timelines.[13]
Several potentially remedial initiatives are underway.[14] For example, in 2014, a public-private partnership between the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations and the European Commission devised the “Medicine Adaptive Pathways to Patients” initiative. It facilitates up-front agreement with the EMA about the development plan across target populations and indications.[14]
The EMA launched Priority Medicines (PRIME) in 2016 specifically to optimize regulatory strategies and expedite pathways for ATMPs.[15] PRIME uses existing EU regulatory tools — such as scientific advice (formal dialogue with the EMA), conditional approval, and accelerated assessment — “to define and optimize the development pathway for priority medicines addressing high unmet medical need and/or demonstrating therapeutic innovation.”[15] Also, steps have been taken (eg, guidelines and a common application form) to begin harmonizing GMO authorizations across Europe.[15] Thus, after a slow start, gene and cell therapies in Europe are likely to advance rapidly in the coming years.
See Tables 4–6 for currently EMA-approved cell and gene therapies and tissue-engineering products.
Challenges with Rapid Development
The commercial market for regenerative medicines has grown fast. For example, in the US as of May 2017, at least 716 clinics offered stem-cell therapies.[9] Regrettably, unauthorized interventions that have not been submitted to the appropriate regulatory bodies for efficacy and safety review are directly marketed to consumers around the world as regenerative treatments and stem-cell therapies.[9,16,17] These unapproved treatments are concerning for public-health officials, hopeful patients, and many others.[9] The only stem cell-based products that are FDA-approved for use in the United States consist of blood-forming stem cells (hematopoietic progenitor cells) derived from cord blood (Box 3). These products are approved for patients with disorders that affect the hematopoietic (blood-production) system. Bone marrow also is used for these treatments, but is generally not regulated by the FDA for this use.[18]
FDA officials have used aggressive measures to remove high-risk treatments from the marketplace.[20] In June 2019, a federal judge ruled in favor of the FDA in a lawsuit against a Florida-based stem cell company, U.S. Stem Cell, whose treatments blinded at least four patients.[21] In Europe, despite clear EMA legislation regarding ATMPs, the regulation of unproven stem-cell therapies has been difficult to enforce and inconsistent across jurisdictions.[22]
Simultaneously, however, access to approved cutting-edge medicines continues to be a problem. One cause is the lack of international coordination in the harmonization of regulatory requirements for regenerative medicine clinical trials.[17] The FDA recently stated that reducing differences among European, US, and Canadian regulations and availability of a globally developed general regulatory framework would expedite patient access, since developing regulations from scratch is challenging.[3] The FDA’s practical next steps include[3]:
· More actively seeking harmonization of regulatory approach in high-income countries
· Scheduling meetings among US, EU, Canada, others
· Encouraging sponsors that are considering global development programs that include the US to invite other regulators to early-stage meetings
· Working with the World Health Organization to produce a white paper on a potential regulatory framework for cell and gene therapies for low- and middle-income countries
· Promoting international collaboration on advancing methods for production of gene therapies
· Developing public-private partnerships that can facilitate gene therapy for ultra-rare disorders
While efforts like the RMAT designation that facilitate expedited-development pathways are laudable, they also increase the burden on the FDA to enforce post-approval study requirements for confirmation of safety and efficacy. The agency has historically struggled to meet this responsibility.[9] The balance between timely patient access and the meeting of key protective standards is challenging.[1]
Coming To Market
Truly revolutionary cell and gene therapies have become available in many therapeutic areas. They have changed standards of care and modified or even cured diseases. While the number of approved advanced therapies is small, many more are in preclinical and clinical development. Global collaboration is important because the science is evolving rapidly, while manufacturing technology is lagging behind.[3] Current regulatory and policy initiatives seek to encourage innovation and expedite review. Global regulatory convergence among high-income countries could help with commercial availability of advanced medicines in low- and middle-income countries. In addition, innovative reimbursement models must be implemented; for example, to cover a one-time treatment curing a chronic disease. Vigilance is essential in all of these areas, and as our knowledge grows, so too will the availability, efficacy, and safety of these products.
References
1. Woodcock J, Marks P; for the US FDA. Delivering Promising New Medicines Without Sacrificing Safety and Efficacy. August 27, 2019. Accessed January 3, 2020 at www.fda.gov/news-events/fda-voices-perspectives-fda-leadership-and-experts/delivering-promising-new-medicines-without-sacrificing-safety-and-efficacy
2. US FDA. Statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D. and Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research on new policies to advance development of safe and effective cell and gene therapies. January 15, 2019. Accessed January 3, 2020 at www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/statement-fda-commissioner-scott-gottlieb-md-and-peter-marks-md-phd-director-center-biologics
3. Marks P, for the US FDA. The Relevance of Global Convergence to Accelerating the Availability of Gene Therapies. ASGCT Policy Summit on Global Regulatory Issues. November 4, 2019. Accessed January 3, 2019 at www.asgct.org/advocacy/policy-summit/regulatory-november-4-asgct-policy-summit
4. Aijaz A, Li M, Smith D, et al. Biomanufacturing for clinically advanced cell therapies. Nat Biomed Eng. 2018;2(6):362–76.
5. Vatsan RS, for the US FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Regulatory Expectations for Cell and Gene Therapies. Presentation at 4th PQRI/FDA Conference on Advancing Product Quality: Patient-Centric Product Design, Drug Development, and Manufacturing. April 9–11, 2019. Available at https://pqri.org/4th-fda-pqri-conference-on-advancing-product-quality-presentations/
6. American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. Gene and cell therapy FAQs. 2020. Accessed January 15, 2020 at www.asgct.org/education/more-resources/gene-and-cell-therapy-faqs
7. Marks P; for the U.S. FDA. FDA’s Efforts to Advance the Development of Gene Therapy. May 1, 2019. Accessed January 2, 2020 at www.fda.gov/news-events/fda-voices-perspectives-fda-leadership-and-experts/fdas-efforts-advance-development-gene-therapy
8. Usdin S; news release for BioCentury. FDA Promising Carrots and Sticks for Gene, Cell Therapy Developers. January 15, 2019. Accessed January 3, 2020 at www.pharmavoice.com/newsreleases/fda-promising-carrots-sticks-gene-cell-therapy-developers/
9. The Pew Charitable Trusts. Report: FDA’s Framework for Regulating Regenerative Medicine Will Improve Oversight. October 17, 2019. Accessed January 3, 2020 at www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2019/10/17/fdas-framework-for-regulating-regenerative-medicine-will-improve-oversight
10. US FDA. Cumulative CBER Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) Designation Requests Received by Fiscal Year, December 13, 2016 to September 30, 2019. Accessed January 2, 2020 at www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/cellular-gene-therapy-products/cumulative-cber-regenerative-medicine-advanced-therapy-rmat-designation-requests-received-fiscal
11. Adis Insight. Drug profile: CT 053 CAR T-cell therapy. Accessed January 3, 2020 at https://adisinsight.springer.com/drugs/800050542
12. National Institutes of Health, Office of Science Policy. Introducing the NExTRAC. April 24, 2019. Accessed January 3, 2020 at https://osp.od.nih.gov/2019/04/24/introducing-the-nextrac/
13. Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. Clinical Trials in Europe: Recent Trends In ATMP Development. October 2019. Accessed January 2, 2020 at https://alliancerm.org/publications-presentations/
14. Corbett MS, Webster A, Hawkins r, Woolacott N. Innovative regenerative medicines in the EU: a better future in evidence? BMC Med. 2017;15:49.
15. Detela G, Lodge A. EU regulatory pathways for ATMPs: standard, accelerated and adaptive pathways to marketing authorisation. Mol Ther Methods Clin Dev. 2019;13:205–32.
16. Bianco P, Barker R, Brüstle O, et al. Regulation of stem cell therapies under attack in Europe: for whom the bell tolls. EMBO J. 2013;32(11):1489–95.
17. Kleiderman E, Boily A, Hasilo C, Knoppers BM. Overcoming barriers to facilitate the regulation of multi-centre regenerative medicine clinical trials. Stem Cell Res Ther. 2018;9:307.
18. US FDA. FDA Warns About Stem-Cell Therapies. September 3, 2019. Accessed January 3, 2020 at www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/fda-warns-about-stem-cell-therapies
19. Seoane‐Vazquez E, Shukla V, Rodriguez‐Monguio R. Innovation and competition in advanced therapy medicinal products. EMBO Mol Med. 2019;11(3):e9992.
20. Richardson L, for The Pew Charitable Trusts. FDA and congress move to stop unproven stem cell interventions. August 22, 2019. Accessed January 5, 2020 at www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2019/08/22/fda-and-congress-move-to-stop-unproven-stem-cell-interventions
21. US FDA. Federal court issues decision holding that US Stem Cell clinics and owner adulterated and misbranded stem cell products in violation of the law. FDA News Release. June 4, 2019. Accessed January 10, 2020 at www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/federal-court-issues-decision-holding-us-stem-cell-clinics-and-owner-adulterated-and-misbranded-stem
22. MacGregor C, Petersen A, Munsie M; for EuroStemCell. Regulation of unproven stem cell therapies — medicinal product or medical procedure? August 30, 2015. www.eurostemcell.org/regulation-unproven-stem-cell-therapies-medicinal-product-or-medical-procedure | https://medium.com/@jmahon_57047/2020-the-future-of-cutting-edge-medicines-is-now-e87f81e06692 | ['Jacqueline Mahon'] | 2020-02-20 17:54:36.773000+00:00 | ['Biotech', 'FDA', 'Regenerative Medicine', 'Pharmaceutical', 'Science'] |
Caught Wet Handed… | This story was inspired by a naughty fantasy of my amazingly beautiful friend Asrai. A fantasy of being caught… and the repercussions… I hope I have done it justice. ❤
I was awoken by the incessant wailing of your alarm clock. I groaned and pulled the quilt over my head, not that it seemed to dull the sound, but it was just the done thing. You kissed the back of my neck and squeezed my backside, then the bed jostled as you rolled over to turn off the beeping before climbing out of bed. I crawled to your side, inhaling your scent and absorbing some of the heat I had lost. My body still ached from last night, the pull of my muscles making me smile as I recalled you coming home from work saying how little you had done compared to normal because you were training someone. You paced back and forth across the kitchen saying you had so much energy and you didn’t know what to do with it. I had hopped onto the kitchen table, throwing my loose vest I had been wearing at you to catch your attention. ‘Do me…’ I said to you as I began to tweak my nipples. I smiled. ‘Do me…’ I whispered again….What did I sound like?! It had worked though… You had fucked me right there on there on the table. Hard and fast, releasing some of that pent up energy as first you took me facing you, playing with my clit to make me cum around your cock. Then spinning me around, pressing me hard into the table as you fucked me from behind. The thoughts had me squirming in our bed. I could feel my skin flushing with desire again. I wanted to pull the covers off and call out to you... but then you would be late for work… I sighed deeply, wishing you had the time to come back to bed with me.
Just because you couldn’t satisfy me, didn’t mean I couldn’t satisfy myself. I moved one hand under my t-shirt to squeeze a nipple, the other I slipped into my shorts, shivering as my finger tips grazed along my hip bone, through my trimmed hair to my slit. I stroked the line briefly before moving my fingers between my lips. My arousal hadn’t spread yet so I went lower to rub and tap at my entrance causing liquid to quickly come to my fingertips so I could now tease my clit easily. I could hear you moving around the flat. The sound of running water had stopped leaving only the quiet echo of your humming and the odd rattle and clank of items as you prepped the coffee machine for your flask. Not long after you walked through the open bedroom door naked. Only us two lived here so wandering around in not a lot was common place, hence the sex on the kitchen table last night. I looked at your naked form, appreciating the hard curves of muscle you got from physical labour. The tan lines from the summer beginning to fade. The black spiraling spikes and curves of your tattoos that covered your strong arms. I squeezed my clit, a quiet content hum escaping my lips. You glanced in my direction as you pushed the drawer you had been in closed ‘Like what you see?’ You smiled before sitting down on the edge of the bed to get dressed. ‘Always…. I’m hoping you are doing more teaching today...’ Your deep laugh echoed around the room as you stood to finish pulling your jeans over your black boxers and buttoned them. ‘I’m supposed to be yeah…I was going to try and blag my way out of it… but maybe I won’t…’ I rolled onto my front, throwing the arm that I had had under my shirt behind my head to watch you pull your t-shirt on. I still played with my clit, small gentle rotations with my fingers so you wouldn’t notice my hand moving. I felt so naughty, touching myself in front of you without you even knowing. You grabbed your stuff from the top of the drawers, wallet, keys, phone, all disappearing into your pockets before you lent over me, one hand beside my head. ‘Have a good day beautiful ’ You smiled before kissing me quickly. ‘Mmmmmm you still smell like sex’ You pressed your lips to mine two more times before heading out. As the door shut with a gentle clunk I flung the quilt off me and reached for my bedside table. I yanked the drawer open and reached into the back for the little silk bag I knew was there. I pulled at the drawstring and reached inside to pull out my ‘Purple Boy’ as I had dubbed him. I had bought it during a dry spell to mix up my alone time. I had only used him once or twice before I had met you so he had been consigned to the back of the drawer. I pulled my sleep shorts off and threw them to the side before grabbing the end and rubbing him back and forth between my labia. When his slight ‘veins’ and the cut looking head were nice and wet I slipped him inside, groaning loudly as the further I pushed him in, the wider he stretched me. I left him there, content for a moment to just feel… full… But that quickly became not enough. I brought both hands to my pussy, sliding my purple boy in and out slowly with one, teasing my clit with the other. Raising my feet off the bed I speed up my thrusting and rubbing, my orgasm building in my lower belly. I lay my head back, my eyes slipping shut as it curled tighter and tighter.
‘Well, well, well…’
I gasped in shock and looked down my prone and near naked body to see… You, standing leaning against the door frame. Your arms were folded across your chest, stretching the material of your t-shirt around your large biceps. ‘What are you doing back?!?!’
‘I forgot something, came back to get it. I opened the front door quietly incase you had gone back to sleep and I hear this moan so I came to check on you and what do I find….’ You clicked your tongue three times.
I went to put my legs down. ‘Nah ah! Leave them there, I’m enjoying the view. You waited until I left so you could fuck yourself?’
I knew it was a question from your tone…. The slightly higher pitch of your voice at the end, along with one raised eyebrow. ‘I… I was thinking about last night. I really wanted to call you back to bed but I didn’t want you too be late…’ I bit and licked at my bottom lip nervously, feeling self conscious. I had no reason to be, you had seen me like this and many other ways before, but I felt so exposed in the position and I could feel my legs beginning to ache a little.
You stepped closer to stand at the edge of the bed, looking down at my wet pussy with purple boy filling me up. ‘So while I was getting dressed you were playing with yourself?’
I didn’t realize I could get more flushed. I nodded shamefully. ‘Yes..’
‘And when I kissed you goodbye…. Where was your other hand?’
I bit my lip and sighed. ‘…On my clit…’
You put one knee up onto the bed, making me moan as the movement made the long dildo jostle inside me a little, your other knee joined it shortly afterwards. You looked down at me for what seemed like forever, your eyes trailing from my face, to my stomach where my vest had ridden up then down to my cunt dripping around Purple Boy as he stretched me. You reached forward. ‘What?....This clit here?’ and your thumb lightly caressed my sensitive skin making me throw my head back and groan loudly. The bed moved almost violently and before I even registered what you had done, your hot wet tongue was lapping at my pussy. ‘Oh Fuck!!’ My hands slid into your hair to try and keep you on my clit but you were too strong, moving your mouth lower, higher, all around, teasing with kisses, licks and nips, but never quite where I needed it.
‘You prefer this to me?’ You said against my wet flesh as you slowly began to slide Purple Boy in and out.
‘Fuck no!’ I managed to gasp out.
‘Why?’
I looked down at you, your head leaning against my thigh, a smug smirk gracing your wet lips. ‘What?! What do you mean why?!’
Your smirk turned into a grin and you started to pump the dildo quicker. ‘I wanna know why you prefer me to it, It’s not a hard question is it?’
The faster rhythm made my words catch in my throat for a moment.
‘Seriously?! You want me to stroke your ego now?!’
You bit the thick flesh of my thigh, I cried out. ‘It’s only fair… Seeing as you were caught red handed… Or should that be Caught Wet Handed’
I groaned loudly in frustration. ‘Fine!’ I blew out a breath to clear the hair from my eyes. ‘You are better cause you fuck me harder and faster than I could ever do with that…’
You smiled as you continued to fuck me with Purple Boy. ‘And?’
‘and….your heat…’
You looked a little surprised. ‘Heat?’
‘…I love that as you fuck me… I can feel your cock getting hotter and hotter in side me… the hotter it is, the closer I know you are to cumming…’
I looked away from you for a second. ‘It’s silly I know….trivial…. Every cock gets hot, but I’ve just never felt it so much as with you’ I looked back at you. ‘So yeah… I love your hot cock’
I smiled up at you, and you were smiling back, a soft, loving smile that turned into a wicked grin. ‘Here I thought you loved it when I shoved ice cubes in your pussy’
I barked out a laugh. ‘Oh I do, I fucking love it, especially followed by your hot cock’
‘Okay… that’s enough ego stroking…how about some clit stroking’ It wasn’t question that you needed an answer to as you dove back down and stroked my clit with your tongue. Long sweeps, short laps, then you caught it between your teeth to nibble and suck hard, all the while pumping Purple Boy inside me.
My orgasm caught me by surprise. One moment it was just building, edging closer and closer with each lick of your wicked tongue then suddenly it exploded outwards, travelling along all my nerves. My back arched off the bed and I cried out, my words of ‘Oh fuck!’ strung out as you continued to work my clit as I clenched around Purple Boy.
I collapsed back down, trying to get my breathing under control and stretching my limbs outward. I looked to see your smug face, glistening wet with my juices. ‘Wow babe… ‘ I managed to chuckle out as I looked up at the ceiling.
The bed moved and I heard the distinct sound of a zip being undone. You were now kneeling on the bed, jeans open, stroking your already rock hard cock. ‘My turn’ And that was all the warning I had before you grabbed Purple Boy, yanking him out fast of my still quivering pussy, there was a heavy thunk as you tossed him aside, seized my hips with both hands and buried yourself in his place. The sudden change had me gasping for breath as you began to undulate hard.
‘I have a confession’
You managed to say between thrusts. ‘I woke up so fucking horny this morning, must have been dreaming about last night too’ One of your hands moved to scratch and tweak at my nipple. ‘I really wanted to roll over this morning for another round but as I was about to the alarm went off’ You bent over me, your hands landing each side of my head, nearly folding me in half and driving your cock even deeper. ‘I thought of you… in the shower this morning, practically begging me to take you on the table last night’ You bit and sucked one of my nipples, drawing a moan from my throat. ‘Thinking of your tight little pussy… remembering how you played with your tits’ You said as you lent back.
I brought my hands to paw at my breasts. ‘Like this?’
A groan emanated from your throat. ‘Mmmmm yeah like that’
‘My dick got so fucking hard thinking of it all I just had to rub one out right there in the shower’
‘You tell me off for touching myself when you had a fucking wank in the shower?! Bastard!’ I reached for one of the pillows from above my head and threw it half heartedly at you. To your credit you took it right in the face before it landed on my stomach. ‘Thanks I needed that’ You said as you pulled out, yanked my hips up to shove the pillow underneath me and then thrust back home. The change of angle made you feel deeper than before. ‘Sorry love, but this is gonna have to be quick’ And you began to fuck me again, harder and faster. We bounced on the bed with the power of your thrusts, and the headboard banged against wall. I’ll probably have to deal with the neighbours later but right now, I didn’t give a fuck!
I could feel another orgasm creeping and curling around my cunt, the rough denim of your jeans adding a glorious friction every time they brushed my thighs. I reached down to where we were joined, made a V with my fingers and pressed your cock between them as you plunged in and out of me.
‘Touch yourself, I wanna feel you cum around my dick’
I did as you asked, moving my fingers up and around my clit, even the lightest of touches causing a shiver to run through my body, making my pussy clench around your length. Smaller and smaller I made the circle, pulling my body tighter and tighter with each sweep of my finger. I leant my head back and closed my eyes, heightening every other sense.
The repetitive rhythm of the headboard striking the wall.
The firm grip of your fingers on my waist.
Our ragged breathing filling the air.
The jolt that ran through my body as I finally closed the circle and rubbed my slippery fingertips hard and fast against my clit. I held the air in my lungs for a split second, releasing it with a moan as my body came undone for a second time that morning. My pussy clenched, desperately squeezing your cock as I continued to touch my clit. Your thrusts quickly became erratic as my own orgasm ripped yours to the surface. I felt one, two, three more hard bumps on my hips before you held yourself inside me, grinding your hip bone against my hand, pressing it harder into my clit, and a loud, almost feral groan emanating from your throat echoed around the room. I felt hot cum begin to fill me up and I shivered once more as my hungry pussy, and myself, finally got what it had been craving.
The room fell silent, compared to a moment ago, just the sound of our breathing remained. ‘Do you have to go to work? We could just stay here and fuck all day?’
‘I wish!’ You chuckled as you pulled out of me. ‘Fuck! The front of my jeans are soaked! Did you squirt on me?!’ I looked down my body to see a very clear wet patch around your zipper and just below it. I looked up at your slightly shocked face. ‘Ooops!’ I said as I tried to hide a smile. ‘Sorry…’
You climbed off the bed, dropping your jeans and grabbing another pair from the clean washing pile. ‘You’re not sorry’
‘No….I’m not really. You should keep them on, then when the lads at work ask you can say you fucked me so good this morning I squirted all over your dick’
‘They won’t ask…’ You climbed back on the bed and over me. ‘They will just say I pissed myself’ You kissed me, pressing your lips hard against mine. ‘You can change the sheets as you’re off today and...’ You pinched my nipple making me gasp. ‘Make sure we have ice for later’ One more kiss and you got off me.
Suddenly my lower body was twisted side way and your hand landed firmly on my bare arse. The smack echoed loudly as the heat and pain exploded across my cheek making my pussy clench one more time. ‘Fuck!’
‘That was for jizzing all over my jeans… Later babe’ You said as your heavy boots thudded across the floor, the door opened and closed and I was left alone once more, but this time with soaked bedding, a sore bottom and a very satisfied quivering cunt. | https://medium.com/asrais-purple-prose/caught-wet-handed-be13aa205823 | ['Pandora Knight'] | 2020-10-30 16:30:36.042000+00:00 | ['Sexy', 'Short Story', 'Erotica'] |
The One Word That Made the Last 1,100 Days the Best of My Life | Full disclosure: I’m one of those people whose eyes pop open before her alarm goes off, jumps out of bed like a gazelle and is buzzing to start her day — all before 5 AM or having a single ounce of coffee.
Sound like a nightmare? Try being my boyfriend.
But in all seriousness, I wasn’t always like this. For most of my career, I was a “night owl”; the one who’d get back on her laptop at 10 pm to finish a kickass presentation at 2 am. I was going to bed anxious and overstimulated, was forced to set (then snooze) multiple alarms and rarely made it to the office on time.
Each and every morning was a struggle. I knew my health (and the health of my career) couldn’t sustain this type of schedule, so I committed to making these changes:
First, I stopped opening my laptop back up at 10 pm, and I’d open up a good book instead.
Second, I moved my weightlifting training from 6 pm to 6 am so I stopped missing out on consistent physical activity because I got stuck in a meeting or had no energy at the end of the day.
Finally — and most importantly — I changed one word in the question most of us ask ourselves when we wake up.
The first and second change gave me more energy and vigour throughout the day.
But the third change is the one that transformed how I live my life. | https://medium.com/better-advice/the-one-word-that-made-the-last-1-100-days-the-best-of-my-life-3e54b32f7582 | ['Liana Buenaventura'] | 2020-11-02 13:30:47.981000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Gratitude', 'Personal Development', 'Perspective', 'Personal Growth'] |
Candidates Duke it Out in Vegas | “Will all actual Democrats raise their hands, please?”
Candidates Duke it Out in Vegas
Like all articles on The New Haberdasher, this story is presented to you for free. If you like what I do, consider supporting my work with a small monetary contribution at my Patreon and thank you.
First, I would like to apologize to supporters of the following candidates who are vying for the privilege of being on the ballot in opposition to President Trump: former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and current Senator Amy Klobuchar. I apologize because whichever of these individuals is your preferred candidate, your preferred candidate is a Republican.
Sorry.
Since 1992, or before, the Democratic Party has radically shifted to the Right in this nation, and those ideas which would seem like Mainstream Democratic Party issues in all realms except cultural issues were GOP issues before then. 1992 is, if you are either too young, or have forgotten, the year that Bill Clinton was elected the 41st President of the United States. Clinton was a conservative Southern Democrat, and was incredibly popular in the US, mainly because his coalition included a lot of former Republicans who were just so sick and tired of slash and burn nonsense of the soon to be Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his anti-tax, starve the beast cadres who would seize power in the “Revolution of 1994.”
Clinton was the chosen candidate of the right-leaning Democratic Leadership Council, who believed that the leftist orientation of the Democratic Party in the 60s, 70s and 80s meant that the Democratic Party would never win National Elections. The way to recapture office, they reasoned, was to sell out the poor and the working class in favor of middle and upper class interests. “Everyone is middle class” may as well have been their mantra. It was a cynical tactic aimed at recapturing power, and it destroyed the progressive bona fides that had held the FDR and LBJ coalitions together for decades and had guaranteed the Dems a 40-year monopoly on House Leadership. But hey! it got Bill Clinton elected, so I guess it was all worth it, right?
Clinton essentially capitulated to the GOP talking point that Leftism and Progressiveness were evil words, never to be uttered in Washington again, except by horrible socialists, or in Bloomberg’s words tonight, by “communists”. Clinton’s administration saw him work with, and brag about working with, the GOP to gut welfare, deindustrialize the US (which essentially ended the notion that hard work can actually lead to stability for millions of American workers, while paving the path that would lead Trump through the Rust Belt right into the White House) and incarcerate millions of Americans, who were disproportionately Black or Latino as a newly militarized police force raided our inner cities and carted people off to newly privatized prisons.
His cheap money policies ironically led directly to both the student debt crisis which is plaguing this country, and the mortgage crisis which essentially completed his war on the working class in this nation by teaching employers that they can expect their workers to work for nothing, and his administration’s lax policies toward pharmaceutical regulation led to not only the opioid epidemic, but sharply increasing medical prices which we seem to be completely incapable of getting ahold of today.
Clinton bombed Iraq regularly during his administration, and fabricated a war in the Balkans to take our attention off his impeachment. He did more to facilitate the rot in our nation than any other President during my lifetime, and the aftermath of his administration is still being experienced daily today.
But that same cynical nonsense still holds sway in the Democratic Party. President Obama, popular though he was, failed to end the war, failed to reign in big banks, and failed to end the garrotting of workers in the US. For 8 years, the Obama Economy disproportionately helped the rich get richer, a fact that he did not deny, while workers worked harder for the stagnant wages. The Wars continued, and new ones were started. More immigrants were deported by Obama’s Administration than before or, despite Trump’s most strenuous efforts, since. Etc etc etc…
Why in the world would anyone calling themselves “Democrats” still support these policies? These are Republican Party issues. Somehow, the svengalis in the GOP got the Democrats to do their work for them, so they could go off the deep end and prostrate themselves before their Dear Leader as full fledged members of his personality Cult. For the life of me, I am unable to provide a reason why, of the 6 people on stage at tonight’s wrestling match, 4 of them still explicitly endorse that DLC attitude toward the people of this nation. That ideology is corrosive, and quite frankly, produces very negative outcomes for the working and poor in this nation. It is largely the reason why a significant portion of the working people in our country decided that the Democrats are no longer on their side.
Based on their answers to the various questions posed by the moderators tonight, the only two actual Democrats, the only ones who actually adhere in any realistic way to pre-DLC Democratic Party principles are Senators Warren and Sanders. I know: Sanders claims to be a socialist. He is as much a socialist as I am a liberal, which is to say, not much at all, but hey, if he wants to call himself that, he’s welcomed to it, and my life is not affected a bit. Warren does not call herself a socialist, but a progressive and a capitalist. But whatever they call themselves, they are the only ones who hold true to the policies of the Democratic Party from the last time it was distinguishable from the Republican Party, being during the Lyndon Baines Johnson Administration.
The others could very easily be Republicans, and had Sanders and Warren not actually been there, we might be forgiven for believing that this was a four way debate among actual Republicans (who, for better or worse, can be conceptually separated from Trumpists.) Sure they all mouth the talking points about cultural issues. They all talk about Black and Brown people in jail, though it is not clear what any of them have done to get them out of jail, and it is clear that at least 3 of 4 of them have actively supported policies which increased the number of Black and Brown people bring railroaded to jail, while the fourth, Joe Biden, was an avid supporter (and co-author) of the Clinton Crime Bill, among other “tough on crime” DLC policies. Sure they support gay rights, and Buttigieg is himself gay, but let’s be completely honest: Buttigieg spent much of his life denying that he was gay by his own admission, and I doubt the other three have always been such ardent supporters of gay rights, until it was socially alright to openly support gay rights. I get it, personally, having taken a journey on the question in my adult life my own self. But I don’t represent like I am out flying the Pride Flag outside my house, and have been doing so since I could remember like these Conservative Dems. In short, I’m not Kirsten Gillibrand.
Gay Rights, Indeed! An obviously inebriated Clintonite K. Gillibrand points and yells at a camera.
The cultural issues aside, where are their pro-worker policies? What do they plan to do to help poor people not be poor? (Actually, we know Biden’s, Klobuchar’s, and Buttigieg’s answer: More Means Testing! And Bloomberg felt that too much was being taken from the rich, while advocating for higher taxes for the poor.) What do they plan to do to keep rich people from passing laws which protect wealth and privilege and make it easy for wealthy people to transfer wealth from the lower classes into their pocket? What do they plan to do to end the military industrial complex?
We know that Sanders and Warren both talk about all of these ACTUALLY progressive issues constantly, among a number of others. I could tell you what both of their plans are for any number of a slew of progressive positions. If I know anything about the DLC wing of the contest, it is that they intend to continue fighting for the (upper-) middle class: Buttigieg has recently even adopted fiscal hawk language, if not necessarily its associated policies yet, which is specifically designed to strengthen means testing for social welfare programs and balance the budget on the backs of the poor and workers. Biden and Klobuchar want to essentially keep everything the same with regard to health care, which includes provisions to allow private, for-profit insurance companies and pharmaceutical industries to continue to prey on the sick and the poor in this nation. And two of four of the DLC candidates still advocate for marijuana prohibition, despite the fact that 2/3rds of the people nationwide, from both sides of the spectrum, support ending prohibition and legalization.
Which leaves a sober observer, who has no stake in the fight, really, to scratch his head. The DLC position is clearly so anti-poor that its manifesto may as well be subtitled “How to help the Republicans starve the poor out of existence.” Meanwhile, demagogues like Donald Trump prey upon the poor’s fear and anxiety. The fact that so called front runners are pushing this Republican Agenda, except with more pandering to minorities, is underscored by the fact that at least one of them was not so long ago the Republican Mayor of New York.
What is most striking is that only Buttigieg took oblique notice of this in the “debate” tonight. It feels that it was almost an unspoken agreement that few, if any others, were going to mention it. But one thing is for sure: If Democrats nominate one of these four “moderates” which are actually Right of Center, but appear left of Center because the crazies on the far Right have dragged the center so far over that former Republican billionaires can now explicitly call themselves Democrats and run a credible campaign as such, then they too will wonder why they get Republican policies for the US, despite the fact that this country is a majority leftist nation, in terms of the policies it supports.
In conclusion, a recent article declared the Democratic Party to be “[T]he centrist Party.” The article is not wrong: DLC policies have ensured that there is no nationally organized Leftist Party. This is why Sanders and Warren seem so out of touch that Democratic Pundits , “insiders” and donors beg for alternatives to their whacky ways and are paralyzed with the fear that Americans might actually vote for them.
I am not saying that you should vote for either of these two: unless your desire is to see a Democrat run against Donald Trump in 2020. But here is my advice: Remember that Democrats have never been able to out-Republican the Republicans. With one exception, and that is Bill Clinton, which is why Republicans hated him so much, but he remains one of the most popular Presidents in recent history. Yes, he won, but what is a kingdom if it costs you your soul? I don’t believe that any of these people who are fighting to claim the DLC mantle will be able to pull off what Bill Clinton did. So if your argument is “electability” and you use that to disqualify either of the actual Democrats in the primary race, you will probably be shooting yourself in the foot. Good Luck with that. | https://medium.com/docstoden/candidates-duke-it-out-in-vegas-2bc18168d3cf | ['William P. Stodden'] | 2020-02-23 05:03:30.291000+00:00 | ['2020 Democratic Primary', 'Opinon', 'News', 'Politics', 'Current Events'] |
Cryptocurrency — quick fire Q&A | What are they?
A cryptocurrency (or crypto currency) is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange. Just like money but online.
Currencies like Bitcoin use cryptography (code) to:
secure its transactions
control the creation of additional units; and
verify the transfer of assets
Critically cryptocurrencies use decentralized control as opposed to centralized electronic money and central banking systems. The decentralized control of each cryptocurrency works through a blockchain, which is a public transaction database, functioning as a distributed ledger.
When did these digital currencies come about?
Bitcoin, created in 2009, was the first decentralised cryptocurrency. Since then, numerous other cryptocurrencies have been created. These are frequently called altcoins, as a blend of alternative coin.
Aren’t they the preserve of drug dealers on the Dark Net?
They have been exploited by different groups partly because decentralised cryptocurrency is produced by the entire cryptocurrency system collectively, at a rate which is defined when the system is created and which is publicly known.
Where as in centralized banking and economic systems such as the Federal Reserve System, corporate boards or governments control the supply of currency by printing units of fiat money or demanding additions to digital banking ledgers.
Who invented them?
The first currency Bitcoin was created by the group or individual known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Still to this day — no one knows who they/he is although a few people have tried to claim responsibility (e.g. Elon Musk)
There are loads of currencies aren’t there?
As of September 2017, over a thousand cryptocurrency specifications exist; most are similar to and derive from the first fully implemented decentralised cryptocurrency, bitcoin.
I don’t understand what people mean by ‘mining’ — it’s not buried in the ground?
Given its a digital currency — this is obviously a metaphorical expression. Within cryptocurrency systems the safety, integrity and balance of ledgers is maintained by a community of mutually ‘distrustful’ parties referred to as miners: members of the general public using their computers to help validate and timestamp transactions, adding them to the ledger in accordance with a particular timestamping scheme. Miners have a financial incentive to maintain the security of a cryptocurrency ledger.
Most cryptocurrencies are designed to gradually decrease production of currency, placing an ultimate cap on the total amount of currency that will ever be in circulation, mimicking precious metals. Compared with ordinary currencies held by financial institutions or kept as cash on hand, cryptocurrencies can be more difficult for seizure by law enforcement. This difficulty is derived from leveraging cryptographic technologies. Again helping those drug & arms dealers.
What does this other term Blockchain mean — and what part does it play?
The validity of each cryptocurrency coins is provided by a blockchain. A blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography. Each block typically contains a hash pointer as a link to a previous block, a timestamp and transaction data. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is “an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way”.
How many Bitcoin are in circulation?
The statistic presents the total number of Bitcoins in circulation from first quarter of 2011 to fourth quarter of 2017. The number of Bitcoins has been growing since the creation of this virtual currency in 2009 and reached approximately 16.78 million in December 2017.
How many are left?
In fact, there are only 21 million Bitcoins that can be mined in total.
There are also stockpiles of inactive coins that are held around the world, the largest supply of which belongs to the person or group who founded Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Perhaps this supply, consisting of roughly one million Bitcoins, is intentionally being saved for a time when the global supply is facing increased levels of demand.
Whose made a killing out of the Bitcoin bubble?
The Winklevoss twins, famously known for suing Mark Zuckerberg after claiming he stole their idea for Facebook, are now Bitcoin billionaires.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss won $65 million from the Facebook lawsuit, and invested $11 million of their payout into Bitcoin in 2013, amassing one of the largest portfolios of Bitcoin in the world — 1 percent of the entire currency’s dollar value equivalent.
Their slice of the Bitcoin pie is now worth over $1 billion after Bitcoin surged past $10,000.
The cryptocurrency has surged over 10,000 percent since the Winklevoss’ investment, when one coin traded at around $120.
“If Bitcoin is a better gold or seen as a type of gold-like asset, then it could be in the trillions on a market cap,”
Tyler Winklevoss stated.
“We do feel those are very real possibilities.”
The twins have never sold a single Bitcoin, noting that only a handful of Bitcoin wallets hold more than $1 billion worth of the cryptocurrency. | https://medium.com/pelican-trading/cryptocurrency-quick-fire-q-a-eabd8bdadd01 | ['Mike Read'] | 2018-01-23 14:38:41.179000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Fintech'] |
Amazon EC2 — A Step By Step Tutorial | Launching an EC2 instance
Signing up For AWS
To launch an EC2 instance first you’ll need to set up an AWS account. Amazon provides new users with 1 year of free tire access which comes with free access to various AWS services within certain limits. To get more information about AWS free tier and creating an AWS account visit this link.
Launching EC2 instance from the Management Console
Although there are various options provided by AWS to launch an EC2 instance (management console, CLI, APIs, and SDKs), AWS Management Console provides an interactive and neatly built user interface from which we can access and manage all the available services of AWS. To launch an EC2 instance, log in to your account that will take you to the management console. Your management console looks like this:
AWS Management Console
You can search for the EC2 service in the search bar or you can select your service from the Services option in the navbar at the top. The EC2 service will be under the compute category. Upon selecting the EC2 service you’ll be on the following screen. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/launching-an-amazon-ec2-instance-a-step-by-step-tutorial-da8af465aa64 | ['Furqan Butt'] | 2020-08-28 12:40:55.103000+00:00 | ['Cloud Computing', 'Ec2', 'Iaas', 'Big Data', 'AWS'] |
7 Psychological Impacts Bedroom Interior Designs Have On Your Child’s Development | Children spend more time at home than anywhere else, and nearly one-third of their lives are spent in their bedrooms.
In a child’s eyes, a great home is where love resides, memories are created, and joy & comfort can always be found. It’s no surprise that a child’s comfort experience and growth are highly influenced by their bedroom environment.
So what do you want your forever home to mean to your little ones?
Is it a place where they can look forward to quality family moments? A place where they can snuggle in their PJ’s, having popcorn while laughing at their favorite movies? Is it the feeling of warmth they feel in their hearts after a kiss goodnight? Or all of the above?
In this article, we will explore how interior architecture design synergize with child psychology, and how it can influence the development of your child’s creativity and well-being.
1. Accessibility & Tidiness.
You can feel whether a home is the ‘the right one’ for you within the first five seconds of stepping into a room.
Ideally, you’d want a room that gives a good primary impression, you want it to make you say “Yes! This is THE ONE!” and not “It’s okay, I guess.”
According to the practices of ‘Feng Shui’, there are certain ways of arranging and decorating a room that, when done right, can bring success, good luck, love, and positive energy.
For example, having a clear path in a room can make a room look more open and dynamic.
Tidiness is also something that is embraced in Feng Shui and design composition, as it accents the therapeutic aspect of being tidy in your space.
Having a clean room that allows smooth movement brings many benefits:
It saves physical effort and time.
improves memory, emotional effort and in turn,
decreases stress and discomfort.
Not only that, studies have proven that children who grow up in homes with organized structure have better focus and learning abilities.
It all starts in the bedroom, so it’s important to make bedroom cleanliness part of being in a healthy growing family.
Toy crates are an outdated, dull and un-engaging way to motivate today’s children to clean up after playtime. So why not opt for some more modern alternatives?
For instance, you can elect for drawers or compartments that make the most out of the space. Think bigger than space in the closets or under the bed. Hidden shelves and chambers or Lego walls are a fun way to add a personal touch to your kid’s bedroom, and will add an engaging tone to clean up time.
2. Functionality & Flexibility
Usually, when people work with a designer for a new home, they are usually in a period of big transitions in their life. For families looking to create their forever home, this is an important aspect that needs to be considered.
A child’s bedroom shouldn’t just reflect where they have been or who they are, but also where they hope to go and who they would like to be. Overdoing a theme is one of the biggest mistakes that people make when creating a child’s dream bedroom. Sure, the race car bed might excite them for a few months, but they will get bored of it quickly.
An expert knows that it’s more important to capture the essence and emotions of cherished details in a home rather than to duplicate the details themselves. By creating a space using timeless principles, the room grows older with the child, adapting with them and creating a compound effect of memories created.
So how can you add meaningful value to your child’s bedroom without cluttering and taking up space?
Rooms that have the right amount of novelty and stimulation exude a freshness that gives the home a creative energy with a modern sense that will inspire your child’s inner growth. You can also opt for furniture that can be easily moved or wall art that can be switched out over time.
By not being stuck to a specific trend of decoration, your child’s bedrooms can remain relatable despite how old they get. Making them feel they always have a room back home even they move out, which one day they can share with their own kids.
3. Nature Simulation
The organic appeal of nature and all its elements has always been loved by homeowners around the world. It evokes feelings of peace, calm and welcoming into their space.
Bringing nature into our homes is an eternal design aesthetic that brings a bespoke quality into your home.
But why is it so?
Interior designer Carolyn Feder, founder and owner of Sensory Interior Design in Dallas says that it is due to the subliminal messages sent to the brain.
Bringing the outdoors into your children’s bedroom not only serves as a source of inspiration, but images of nature’s miracles can also aid in developing kids’ attention to detail.
“Photos help children learn how to observe details around them and they learn how to appreciate everything nature does for us as a whole.”
Some ways this can be done:
Textures inspired by nature; woolen rug, Scandinavian luxury bed frames
Glass walls that projects moving images of nature.
Indoor plants and water features.
Wooden wall panels.
Nature’s color palette throughout the room.
After all, your kids spend a majority of their time indoors in artificial environments, adding a dash of nature will help heal and remind us of our roots.
4. Color
It’s a no-brainer that color is a significant effect on your mood, as color psychologists will tell you. In interior design, this gives you a fun benefit as it means you can directly influence how your rooms affect you.
Lighter and brighter colors, like red, yellow and green are excellent for stimulating creativity and spirit. While pastels and rustic hues like beige and gray bring tranquility and calmness.
The basic purpose of a bedroom is to rest, however, kids do many other activities in the bedroom. They need an environment that can nurture their growth and exploration while promoting a calm, stress-free haven.
With such an array of options to choose from, how can you pick the perfect shade?
The answer is simple: you don’t have to.
With the help of LED lighting, you can customize the feel and atmosphere of your room using your smart phone. These are easy to install with wide variety of color choices.
Your children can have the opportunity to customize the look of your wall based on their current mindset or mood at any time.
Another way is to choose a minimalist color tone and use wall art, decorations or display shelves to add the contrasting color pop instead. That way you can leave it up to the imaginative minds of your kids how they’d like to color their room.
5. Light
One of the biggest influences in the psychology of design and space is lighting. Lighting specification can make or break the look and feel of a room, and it is for this reason designers pay close attention to the balance of natural and artificial light in a plan.
Light does two important thing for growing children:
Bright natural light boosts mood and concentration, and sufficiency of it prevents disease, and nearsightedness. Sunlight helps children produce adequate levels of vitamin D that is needed to prevent undesirable health outcomes such as early puberty and inferior mental planning skills. Morning sunlight exposure can help prevent delayed bedtimes and circadian rhythm problems. Studies suggest that delayed bedtimes -without opportunities for catch-up sleep- are linked with poor school performance and behavior problems. Improper lighting at night can also be a hazard for sleep, which is a rising concern for parents with the prevalence of blue light from smartphones for children’s entertainment.
A simple and effective solution to finding the healthy balance of light in your child’s bedroom is to have appropriate size and number of windows, along with blackout curtains and drapes that match. A dimmer switch can be installed in the light switch to ensure that you have controlled lighting.
6. Your Bedroom Defines Who You Are
Interior design can be viewed as the art of decorating a space to achieve a balance of aesthetics and functionality. However, it can also be looked at as a way of giving meaning to the space that you live in.
From the preference of color and pattern of the wallpaper to the intricate design of your jewelry box that sits on the dressing table, you can define your living space to present your personality.
According to design psychology, our sense of identity and self-perception are psychologically influenced by our physical environment. It is said that there is a complex two-sided relationship between a person and their space.
In a sense, when you define your living space, your living space defines you.
Children that grow up in a healthy familial environment have shown to display self-conscious behaviors and emotions (shame, guilt, embarrassment, pride) as early as 2 years old. As they grow in their first few years, their psychological view of themselves also develop.
Studies have revealed that children with positive perceptions of themselves grow to achieve good social and academic capabilities later on in life.
A great way to allow this is to create areas in your child’s bedroom that freely encourage their hobbies. There are multiple ways to do this:
Reading corners under skylights with the simulation of nature sounds (river streams, heavy thunderstorms, birds singing, etc.)
Interactive smart wall to display drawings and designs
Soundproof area for playing musical instruments
Customized walk-in closet
Display shelves to showcase novelties that reflect them.
So, having a strong sense of identity is crucial to your child’s development as they grow older, to nurture good self-esteem and individuality. As the bedroom is where they first learn space identity, it should reflect their unique interests and personality.
Not to mention that by surrounding themselves in a physical environment that reflects their interests, it primes them for a deep self actualization process. This will train them to be able to define the abstract part of them themselves and visualize it into a physical manifestation of their inner most desires.
7: Privacy, Please!
Space privacy is another psychological impact of interior design; an individual requires a healthy degree of privacy, or they might feel discomfort, anger or anxiety. The fundamental goal of achieving privacy through design is to attain symmetry between personal time and social relationships.
During your children’s first year, it’s expected that constantly being cared for and supervised falls under the tiring role of being a parent. So it can be difficult when, a couple of years later, you have to start letting your child have their first taste of autonomy.
The need for privacy is a completely natural part of kids growing older, it comes hand in hand when they slowly learn to be independent.
Though it may be unsettling for parents, this encouragement can be beneficial to the children, as it overall builds familial trust and a sense of competence. This can later help in learning important abilities such as decision-making skills and resourcefulness as they grow older.
Here are some ideas to add a personal touch to your children’s bedrooms that can also serve as a protective measure:
Mezzanine (sleeping and lounging quarters separated from creative areas)
Secret closet or room.
Sleeping quarters with windows or walls that can change from transparent glass to frosted glass.
Partition walls that separate the room into different function areas (see photo above)
Conclusion:
Children are the backbone of the future and your legacies. As parents you want to pass on your life lessons and pave a path for your children to capitalize on what you’ve learned so they don’t have to make the same mistakes.
The same way that smaller plants grow faster when they are nearby larger trees. The trees roots act as a guideline for the smaller trees to find sources of water more easily.
You would want to prioritize your child’s health, safety and happiness throughout their years at home while living lavishly with the comfort experience that they can look forward to.
After all your forever home is something that they will take over later on in their older years and will act as a symbol for your legacy long after you’re gone.
By solidifying the lessons you want to ingrain in your children while simultaneously integrating that with their personal individuality, you end up creating a self-empowering physical environment. Which will preserve these lessons and memories that grow with your children by using healthy design psychology principles.
Be the first to spark the discussion. I’d love to hear from you! If you enjoyed reading this article, share it with someone you think will like it, too. | https://medium.com/@latitudedesign/this-is-how-your-childs-bedroom-can-affect-their-psychological-development-6b3b61f49672 | ['Latitude Design'] | 2020-02-25 18:11:59.200000+00:00 | ['Malaysia', 'Children Health', 'Psychology', 'Bedroom Design', 'Interior Design'] |
She did Understand Me | A week after her funeral, their attorney visited to discuss her will.
“The estate, including $500,000, the cottage, and the Mercedes to her younger son.”
“She did understand my needs,” sobbed Jack. | https://medium.com/the-friday-fix/she-did-understand-me-e1db8e517ca9 | [] | 2020-06-12 11:01:01.787000+00:00 | ['Children', 'Mothers', 'Listen', 'Love', 'Microfiction'] |
Why Letters are So Important on Medium | So what exactly are Letters on Medium?
You might not have heard of the Letters feature on this site. I had never heard of them until late April! I had had my own publication for weeks and hadn’t even looked at the Letters link.
But now I use them every day, and I’m not sure my success on Medium would be where it is today if I hadn’t eventually been tipped off to this feature.
To use Letters, you need to create your own publication. If you’ve never created a publication before, you should probably look at this first…
Once you’ve created your publication, you probably shouldn’t use the Letters feature right away. It’s not really in your interest to use it until you’ve started building your followers. | https://medium.com/med-daily/why-letters-are-so-important-on-medium-33bfd3c12fa0 | ['Brian Rowe'] | 2019-10-05 16:48:25.434000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Community', 'Writing', 'Medium', 'Email Marketing'] |
Financial inclusion in emerging markets | Financial inclusion in emerging markets
It may come as a surprise but in emerging markets like the Philippines, having a bank account is not the “normal” thing.
Alarming? Yes — who would’ve thought that financial access, a basic right, isn’t enjoyed by majority of the adult Filipino population. In fact, according to the 2017 study on financial inclusion by the World Bank, only 34.5% Filipinos of ages 15 years and above have formal bank accounts. That leaves more than half of the Filipino population excluded from the benefits of a traditional banking system. Read more about why the Philippines is unbanked.
In a statement issued last May, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) announced that with the high rate of unbanked Filipinos in the country, digital payments seem like a promising solution — considering that recent studies show spikes corresponding to e-payments.
Why is financial inclusion so important?
The need to widen the reach of financial access is essential in enhancing Filipinos’ standards of living. If every Filipino was financially “served,” then their overall social and economic well-being will improve in terms of managing expenses, smooth consumptions, investments in education and healthcare, making safe and secure payments and saving for the future. It is safe to say that by creating ways to bring financial inclusion to the unbanked, a whole new gateway of opportunities will arise to upgrade not only the quality of their lives but also the economy of country.
Using blockchain tech to ‘get there’
So, how do we turn the financially “unserved,” into the financially served? The financially unserved are the remaining 65.5% of Filipinos who, according to the World Bank, do not even have basic bank accounts. These individuals are restricted by the systems and processes of the traditional banking system and rely heavily on cash transactions only.
Though the government has already started on digitizing e-payments to facilitate this problem, we are eyeing the blockchain technology as the key to improving financial inclusion as well.
Through XONIO, we want to provide telco prepaid users, which comprises 95–98% of the population in emerging markets, a platform to convert their telco credits into a digital currency that can be used to purchase digital goods and buy cryptocurrency. By combining an everyday utility such as telco prepaid airtime with a secure, immutable and transparent technology such as blockchain, accessibility to the masses, even in remote areas, becomes possible.
Sample screens of XONIO Mobile
Why blockchain?
Blockchain is quite the revolutionary technology. If you’re new to the tech or would like to understand it more, please check out our article here.
3 ways blockchain helps promote financial inclusion 1. Accessible to everyone — There are millions of people all around the world, especially in emerging Asian Markets, that do not have access to traditional banking institutions. Through blockchain and cryptocurrencies, the unbanked will finally access the token economy and enjoy all the benefits the blockchain has to offer. 2. No more intermediaries — Because the blockchain is a trusted decentralized system, the need to hire third parties to facilitate transactions on your behalf is no longer necessary. Transactions are made easier and more upfront. 3. Lower transaction costs — Since there are less people involved in transactions, less fees are imposed. Users get the most out of their wallets.
With all these benefits, we believe that XONIO can deliver a unique financial inclusion solution to emerging market consumers. | https://medium.com/xoniotoken/financial-inclusion-in-emerging-markets-philippines-22007aed21d9 | ['Kiara Sandoval'] | 2018-09-25 03:01:02.347000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Financial Inclusion', 'Xonio Opportunity', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Fintech'] |
Public Speaking: How to Prepare for an Important Presentation | Now that we know so much about the art of public speaking and we have designed attractive presentation slides with the right amount of details, we have created an engaging presentation style and we understand the meaning of confidence and how helpful it will be to us when presenting, we are ready to prepare ourselves for the final stage of this task. Hopefully, this already feels like something we are less afraid of and something within our reach that soon we will be comfortable enough doing on our own. Let’s begin by discussing the Q&A Session.
Public Speaking, Part 7 — Questions
If no one in the audience has questions we can skip to the last slide of the presentation which can have our contact details and say “Please send me an email or a Linkedin message if you have questions” and if that’s not appropriate we can fade out to a black slide and say “Thank you”.
However, it’s more likely that the audience will have questions. That’s why we will explore frameworks that will help us more logically and more comprehensively answer these questions as a crutch. We will talk about how to address questions when we don’t really know the answer. We will discuss more transition words that can help when answering questions and buy us a lot of time to actually think of the answer.
Let’s start by introducing the “crutch” concept and show one example of it. It’s helpful to have frameworks prepared when answering questions and we don’t need to have the perfect answer, we just have to show we know how to use a logical framework. These crutches are generic enough to include in many types of answers if needed:
“The topic X is controversial as there are many reasons to be in favor of X, including Example 1, 2, 3 but there are risks to consider, including Risk 1 and 2.
In terms of Example 1…Moving on to Example 2…We also must consider Example 3…Lastly, let’s discuss…
Moving on to Risk 1 of public speaking (it has to be objective)…We need to also discuss Risk 2…
In conclusion, X is a logical solution because of Example 1, 2, 3, as Risk 1 and 2 are easy to overcome. As such, X is appropriate.
Applying that framework shows that the person using it can communicate logically in a well-instructed manner. When it comes to frameworks to use when giving a speech or answering questions we are going to discuss three things — Qualitative framework or crutches to fall back on; Quantitative framework of crutches to fall back on; Framework to use to answer any question (when we don’t know what is the answer).
-S.W.O.T analysis framework — Stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats;
- The Porter 5 Analysis framework — Framework for analyzing a company’s competitive environment. The number and power of a company’s competitive rivals, potential new market entrants, suppliers, customers, and substitute products influence a company’s profitability;
- BCG framework (Boston Consulting Group) — Framework for marketing-related questions. It classifies business portfolio into four categories based on industry attractiveness (growth rate of that industry) and competitive position (relative market share);
- P.L.C (Product Life Cycle framework) — The life cycle of a product is associated with marketing and management decisions within businesses, and all products go through five primary stages: development, introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.
Quantitative frameworks — They apply for banking or people that work in the finance industry, for CEO’s or strategy consultants
A framework to use to answer any question (when we don’t know what is the answer).
-I will get back to you crutch — “I am sorry but I don’t know how to answer but I will get back to you. Thanks.” Then in the thank you email later that night we can mention the answer. This shows that we are proactive and thoughtful. We can send it to whoever organized the event and if applicable have them send it to everybody else that was in attendance;
-The other company crutch — We could say something like “I am sorry but I don’t know much about company X. However, please let me know if you would like me to discuss company Y instead. Thanks.”;
- The other industry crutch — “I am sorry but I don’t know much about industry X. However, please let me know if you would like me to discuss the similar industry Y instead.
Next
We should talk about transition words to use. Using structure when answering a question during public speaking makes us look polished, prepared, confident, and very competent as well. It helps us communicate information much more clearly and buys us time. For example, if we have a bunch of things that we want to say we can use transition words such as — in addition; in terms of; moving on to; the last thing I want to say is…When somebody asks a question and we need a few more seconds to respond we can just repeat the question. Once again, if we don’t know the answer we can say something like “I’m sorry. I don’t know but I will find out and get back to you.”
There are some things to say in the Q&A session (or the speech) that the audience will remember and that means we have to be real and honest. Personal stories like “ When I grew up in…my mother used to tell me…” or “In…we also did the same thing but the only difference was this…” will be highly appreciated. After all, we want the people to remember they have met somebody with character and diversity, somebody interesting. Separately, we should use the person’s name when answering questions, connect with him and with the audience in general, be humble and self-deprecating.
Also, there are words it’s best not to use at all. We should not start by saying “Honestly, I am going to tell you the truth” as this doesn’t really refer to honesty. More importantly, we should not bad mouth a competition or anybody at all — if we say anything negative, people might not trust us. What we should also avoid is rambling, our answers should be short. If we find ourselves rambling, we could immediately finish the sentence by saying “and so the bottom line is” and put our final thoughts.
When we want to politely disagree with a question we can use the feel, felt, found out framework saying something like “I used to feel that way but I felt differently when I found out that…” Of course, we can just express our opinion on the matter without telling the person that they are wrong.
More
Another thing to consider is how to predict what the next question will be. We will keep our answers short, strategic and end them in a certain way. We should always give a little but not everything and keep some of the information in reserve. When we are asked about something we should answer with a directional comment because when answering a question we also make a statement. We don’t want to reveal the logic as to why, we want them to ask for more details. With that being said, we could make one more extra effort to impress the audience. We can have extra content and additional slides and use them when answering a question if we think they will of any help to us.
Something important to include in the answers are risks or counterpoints to maintain credibility. We should make sure that we are objective and that the counterpoint is actually a credible weakness or a risk that we anticipate the audience might be thinking about. A good exercise is trying to think like the audience — what do they want to hear next, what are they thinking next.
Since the audience is the customer, we should not only look from their perspective but also make sure that we answered correctly. If the person who asked the question looks confused, then other people might be as well. We can ask something like “Does this make sense, John?” using that person’s name. If someone looks a bit nervous and has trouble finishing the question we can help them by smiling a little and nodding. That reassures them out along the way (and if it’s a great question, we can start with that).
What to do when the audience looks bored? It’s not much different from when we are giving a speech. We can change the tone a bit (but not too much or it sounds arrogant), skip to the next topic, use transition words, walk around or we can break the monotony by saying a quote or telling a quick funny story.
Public Speaking, Part 8 — Practice:
Delivering a great speech has a lot to do with practice. That’s why we will discuss many ways to practice — while looking at the slides, then while not looking at them, with massive distractions in front of us, having other people watch us present so they can provide feedback. Also, we will talk about crucial things we have to do before and on the morning of the speech. As a result, we are going to be relaxed and happy and we will thoroughly enjoy giving the presentation to the extent that we are going to be a little bit sad when it’s over.
We can start by saving the presentation on Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, on our smartphone and then maybe take a long walk with that phone and memorize the whole text. When we have learned what’s on the slides we can record ourselves practicing without looking at them. After that we could try to practice with a distraction — for example, we could take a walk again but this time we can go to a busy street and record ourselves again. Then listen to the recording over and over again so we could deliver it almost perfectly on the day of the event.
The day before the presentation will be a good time to go to the room we will presenting in and do some more preparation. We should practice the speech there if the room is available and set the smartphone up at the very back of the room and record ourselves. If there is not going to be a sound system we should make sure people in the back can hear everything. Also, we could check if the font size is big enough (maybe 44 or bigger) and if everybody in the back can read it. If possible and if there is a microphone that’s going to be used, we can meet with the person in charge of the microphone and practice talking into it. The laptop should also be well hooked up in advance so we know it works perfectly.
The day before the speech we should also pack or bring 31 crucial items. They might not always be applicable but it’s a good thing to consider them:
Extra shirts, pants, jacket (and get them dry cleaned a week before at least); make sure that the shoes we wear are clean because that’s what people see when we are on the stage and also that they are soft bottomed so we don’t make noises when we are walking on the stage (it’s a distraction); A steamer or iron and make sure we steam or iron our clothes the night before and never the day of the event; Mints in case we speak with anyone after the presentation; Nutri-bars to eat right before going on; A bottle of water as they sometimes forget to give us; Business cards and products details, brochures, few cheap USB drivers that have details of the product, we can give them to massive potential customers or sales prospects; If the speech is early in the morning or in a different time zone it’s good to get up earlier for at least a few days before the presentation; if the speech is later in the day we could get up later in the day as well so we are fresher; Identification (as we might need it to get into the building or the room);
Tech
USB drive back up with the speech on it just in case; A Clicker and back-up batteries for it; Our own laptop and make sure it’s charged; If possible back up laptop; All types of cables to attach the laptop to a monitor, just in case they don’t have the right cables at the event; If there is a sound in the presentation we can bring or borrow small powerful speakers as a back-up; A charged iPhone, Android, or tablet for a timer so we can keep track; The phone number of our contact for the event;
Clothing
Layers of clothes in case the temperature is too hot or too cold; Earplugs for good sleep the night before the event, maybe even renting a hotel room closer to the event if travel is going to be awful; Emailing the contact for the speech the day before the event to confirm; Bringing the appropriate electrical plug adapters; Markers for a whiteboard or portable whiteboard if needed; Traveling to the event the day before so we know where to park (and bring cash); Turning off annoying warnings on the laptop or WiFi in general; Restarting the laptop and making sure there is plenty of space so it can run a lot faster; If we use a browser during the Q&A session we should make sure to have Wi-Fi access (The Wi-Fi is quite often written at conferences on the back of the name tag); Running a security software scan on the laptop the day before — it will get rid of pop-ups; Bringing earphones and listening to whatever gets us in a relaxed and peak state before presenting; Arriving at least the day before (if we fly to present); A notebook and a pen as we might need to write down a question that we can’t answer — so we could research it; A classy and conservative bag for the presentation items, same thing with the suitcase; Aspirin and throat lozenges;
What we need to remember is that perception really becomes reality in the mind of the audience when it comes to every single thing about our appearance.
Public Speaking, Part 9 — Appearance:
Unfortunately, people often judge by the cover and decide in the first few minutes if someone is credible. The same goes for public speaking. So we should think carefully about what to wear but also how to get in ideal, confident, and relaxed peak mental state (the zone), about nutrition and rest as they are crucial to the way we look.
How to get in the zone? After a good night’s sleep, we could get up and listen to inspiring music, meditate or do breathing exercises. It will be helpful to turn off the sound of the phone and every other distraction as nothing matters now, except today. We can say a prayer or think about the people we love — family, friends cheering for us and wanting us to succeed.
We can also start the day by thinking of the time we were so incredibly happy and energized when we were confident and felt invincible. A good idea is to list ten things that we are incredibly grateful for right now — that make us happy and relaxed, put us in a great, peaceful, confident, and relaxed mood. When we arrive at the event, we can make sure to be social and talk to the people there so we can focus on them and not on us, becoming a little less nervous.
How to know what to wear? If we are presenting at another company we can call the contact that we have at that company and ask them what we should wear or check out what people wear on their website. Sometimes Linkedin profile pictures work just as well. If we are close to getting promoted and are presenting at the company where we work, it will be great to dress a bit like the person or people at the level above us — so that the people think of us as being on the next level. If in doubt it’s best to overdress and put on a tie and ask somebody at the company/event if the tie is needed.
Our clothes should be ironed or steamed the day before and we should spend a lot of time picking the perfect clothes to wear. After all, this is a very important day. If the place of the event is in another country we can do a research about what’s appropriate or ask somebody familiar with the culture what colors to wear and what not to wear. We should make sure that we have extra shirts, jackets, et cetera.
What nutrition tips we should follow when preparing for public speaking? We have to bring at least one high-energy protein bar and eat it before the speech for extra energy. It will be best if we don’t eat too many complex carbohydrates or have sugar for breakfast or anything that can make us tired. Too much coffee can make us shaky and irritable.
Public Speaking, Part 10 — Post Presentation to do’s:
We need to keep in mind after the presentation what the purpose was of our public speaking. Did we accomplish everything we needed to accomplish — and if not, what should we do immediately from a call to action perspective. Many people forget to do that and they don’t ask for the sale, for example. That’s why we should revisit the purpose and make sure to follow up based on the purpose of the speech.
If we receive business cards or emails from people that watched the speech, we should connect with them immediately on Linkedin and when they accept the Linkedin request, if possible, we can immediately set up a coffee meeting with them.
It’s also important to thank the event organizer and the administration staff, to send them a quick thank you message (as we want to be invited to present again). We can also mail the event organizer the slides and if the slides are huge we can mail a PDF version and compress the PDF using a free web resource like sodapdf.com.
In conclusion
we can say that fear of public speaking is a common experience. Trying to overcome it and become better at it will help us get far in life. It could change our perspective, the way we look at things, and the way we express ourselves. Although it might seem almost too hard in the beginning, when we follow some bits of advice and prepare carefully we will not only succeed but thrive. | https://medium.com/@blogsandclasses/public-speaking-how-to-prepare-for-an-important-presentation-45df23fce7bc | [] | 2021-05-19 13:26:32.372000+00:00 | ['Presentations', 'Students', 'Speech', 'Sales', 'Public Speaking'] |
Creating Logistics Software With An Eye For Customer Experience | Providing an exceptional customer experience has become the main topic of discussion in most industries, including logistics. Third-party logistics providers strive to attract and retain customers by creating feature-rich customer portals.
Moreover, in 2020, B2B companies consider digital interactions two to three times more important to their customers than traditional interactions according to McKinsey research. The major spike in demand for transportation services has forced companies to automate and streamline their processes. Taking these facts into consideration, creating platforms where customers can track and order shipments at any time has become an unspoken rule in the transportation industry.
Some companies have already introduced client portals and are reaping the benefits of this decision. Some are still doubtful and remain behind their competitors.
Read More: Creating Logistics Software With An Eye For Customer Experience
If you’ve decided to create a self-service portal for your individual or business clients, it’s high time to take action. Creating a self-service portal will allow you to successfully compete with market leaders as well as get a competitive advantage over those who are still hesitating.
At Claritus, we receive lots of inquiries from logistics companies looking to build customer portals. In this article, we walk you through the main benefits of creating this type of software and help you decide on the requirements for your application. We hope this information will help you make a decision and develop a solution that will be warmly welcomed by your customers.
Why client portals are a boon for logistics companies
There are strong reasons behind the desire to build a customer portal as fast as possible. We’ve thoroughly analyzed the logistics market and the inquiries we’ve received to define some of the most common benefits of creating a customer portal:
Reduced operational costs
Traditionally, to book a truckload shipment or check the status of a delivery process, a customer had to call a dedicated logistics manager or sales representative. By creating a self-service customer app, you enable your customers to check information or fill in order information by themselves, reducing the number of support requests.
Customer autonomy lets agents work more productively, focusing on more complex tasks and solving problems faster.
Increased customer satisfaction
Customer portals empower users to access information or order services 24/7 without contacting a customer support representative. Within the last few years, self-service portals have become a necessity for organizations in many industries.
A customer app will also help you increase customer satisfaction by gathering valuable insights into customer behavior. This data will help you improve the quality of your services and deliver a more personalized user experience.
Increased customer lifetime value
Convenient services along with visibility of your processes can encourage customers to work with you on an ongoing basis. When you build transparent relationships with your customers and let them see all information and documents regarding their shipment orders in one place, they’ll want to keep using your app. Providing visibility and personalized offers is a great way to increase customer retention.
How to meet increasing customer expectations?
To reap the benefits we’ve described above, your service should effectively meet specific customer needs. Bear in mind that in most companies, apps for customers mirror information from internal software like transport management systems, order management software, and warehouse management systems. So as a rule, creating a customer portal is infeasible without automating a company’s internal processes (if you don’t have any software yet) or integrating existing software with new software solutions.
What can help you create software aligned with your business?
To build a customer portal, some companies mistakenly follow the strategy of creating custom applications identical to the apps of their rivals. Unfortunately, this strategy has a high risk of failure, since it doesn’t take into consideration the specificity of a company’s business processes and customers’ needs.
To build an application that meets the needs of your customers and is perfectly aligned with your business processes, you should conduct a thorough analysis of your business processes and existing software solutions. Here are some questions you should ask yourself to define the requirements for your customer portal:
1. What are the most common questions customers ask your logistics agents?
Survey your employees on the most common questions and problems your customers bring to the support team. This will help you define the top priorities for your customer portal. Do employees have problems accessing invoices or bills of lading? Then creating a convenient document database should be a high priority.
2. Is it convenient for your employees to use your existing software?
Interview your employees about the convenience of using existing software. What functionality do existing solutions cover and what tasks should your logistics managers do manually?
Create a list of problems your employees encounter when using the software. Analyze the potential causes of mistakes and data losses. Also, define what processes could be automated.
3. How is information stored and processed?
Before your customers can access the information they need in the customer portal, ensure that information is effectively stored and processed on your TMS or ERP software. How do agents collect and change information about shipments? What software do they use for these purposes? Are there any risks of a data breach? How do your employees gather information for reports and exchange data between operating units? Answer these questions to find possible room for improvements for storing and exchanging data.
4. How can customers access shipment information?
Do your agents send shipment information manually via email or is it sent automatically? How do they notify your customers about delays or arrivals? Define the most favorable communication channels and the format in which information will be sent to users. Also, pay close attention to integration with your existing software so information is immediately changed and sent to the customer portal via a safe communication channel.
As you can see, building a successful customer portal is impossible without internal software (like a TMS, WMS, or ERP) that works like a clock. If you want to create a custom client portal that integrates with third-party solutions or create both a TMS and customer portal, you can rely on us. Claritus has solid experience creating logistics software even under tight deadlines as well as integrating custom software with existing solutions.
You can learn more about what we can do for logistics companies or contact us directly to discuss a solution tailored to your particular needs. here | https://medium.com/@claritusconsulting01/creating-logistics-software-with-an-eye-for-customer-experience-603e5e8cc6ff | ['Claritus Consulting'] | 2020-12-21 12:45:06.561000+00:00 | ['Softwares', 'Logistic'] |
you don’t look like it | “You don’t look like it.” she confidently said.
“Like what?” I asked calmly but deeply annoyed.
“Like you’re bipolar. I don’t know, I just think it would be more obvious. My aunt has bipolar and it really shows.”
“Oh okay. Well it looks and feels different for everyone. There isn’t one way to be bipolar.”
The conversation ended quickly and we moved on to the next topic while struggling on our hike. I had decided to tell my friend that I had been recently diagnosed with bipolar II and started taking medication to help me function on a daily basis. I was now in the stage of making amends for my inexcusably difficult behavior the year before when I was experiencing the worst of my symptoms. I knew that I had improved greatly and I wanted to give her insight into the inexplicable torment that I had been through. I wanted to show her that I was becoming better and had more control over my life. I didn’t anticipate that she would invalidate it.
The problem for her was I didn’t fulfill the mold of what it meant to be bipolar. My moods didn’t swing fast enough for her. I seemed too stable in my educational and professional endeavors to be considered reckless. And there was no physical evidence in our relationship to show her that I my mind operated differently or that I worked my way through the world differently. I was still in college, I still hung out with our friends, and I seemed to be a functioning human being.
This encounter wasn’t the first nor would it be the last. I am what you may call “high functioning” with my mental state. Because I can complete the tasks expected from me in school and work and I can socially function, there is no possible way I could be bipolar. I am not the “certified crazy” stereotype that is slapped onto those who are bipolar. I’m not what you see in the movies or the TV shows and so I simply cannot be what I, my experiences, therapists, and psychiatrists have proclaimed.
In truth, in that moment of invalidation from my friend, I wanted to draw her a picture of the turmoil that my weary mind had been through. I wanted to take her to the silent and lonely moments of depression where it even felt like a chore to fill my lungs with oxygen. I wanted to take her to the moments of pure euphoria where I owned the world and I where I would give away myself to others and causes because I knew that once the fog rolled in, I would hide in the shell again. I wanted her to witness the frightening depressing fog that would roll in when the euphoria began to fade way. A fog that would completely engulf my mind and take me farther away from the person who I truly was. I wanted to show her the layers of masks I wore to be a socialite, how hard it was to get out of bed, to focus on the words in the books in front of me, and to calm a brain that never stopped spinning in a thousand directions.
I didn’t paint the picture for her and I didn’t paint it for many others who came along to invalidate my experiences. They would reassuringly let me know that I was one of them and I surely couldn’t be part of the “others.” A deep anger resides within me knowing that the world has created a division between the neurotypical and neurodivergent. A divide that renders the neurodivergent, like me, as helpless and damaged beings who can’t possibly function in society. They can’t accomplish, they can’t sustain relationships, and they can’t be their own independent beings.
I have become accustomed to the startled looks that I elicit when I say that I am bipolar. I choose not to explain to others how even if I don’t fit the bill for what it looks like to be bipolar, I still have my own experiences that have been diagnosed and are being treated. I choose not to illuminate every intimate detail of my life that can let others understand my struggles and blessings with my diagnosis because I shouldn’t have to justify what I already know to be true. I choose not to explain my neurodivergence because I shouldn’t have to defend my humanity nor those who also identify as neurodivergent.
I simply choose to proclaim that I am bipolar while being a public health professional, a daughter, a sister, and a friend. I’ve been advised that my openness about the way my mind works will only draw criticism and stem professional opportunities away from me. What once scared me now gives me more resolve to advocate for neurodivergence and for a world that accepts all minds, not what just is “normal.” If it scares the opportunities away, then so be it. There is no room for discrimination against the neurodivergent.
She’s right. I probably don’t look like it. But I feel like it, I live with it, and I am 100% okay having it. | https://medium.com/@noorz/you-dont-look-like-it-c70c02901d4b | [] | 2020-12-27 02:11:33.627000+00:00 | ['Mental Health Advocacy', 'Bipolar', 'Mental Health Awareness', 'Neurodivergent', 'Neurodiversity'] |
Online collaboration with Mural | I’ve got nothing to do with @mural. I just started using the tool a few weeks ago. I have however found myself very excited, and getting into it more and more. It’s opened up a different form of meeting for me. One where I can allow conversation to begin around a topic, and then guide along some “rails” by creating a collaborative space on the fly. It feels like making art with meetings. (And I don’t really know how to use it that well, yet) | https://medium.com/the-organization/online-collaboration-with-mural-7e75d2c0ff29 | ['Peter Brownell'] | 2020-09-17 12:05:57.538000+00:00 | ['Meetings', 'Collaboration', 'Online Tools'] |
Let Go… | Let Go…
“Is okay to cry, is okay to be sad, is okay too be by yourself sometimes. But you need to let go of the things that hurt you, don’t hold on to them and set them free. There are a million doors to be open and are willing to receive you, but you need to let go and move on… Time is what we need but time is what we don’t have, don’t be closed in a dark room forever; one day you need to spread your wings and learn how to fly again even if you fall the first time keep on, you are doing a great work but, you need to let go. You think that it matter because that time you thought it meant the world but it didn’t…. you are still here don’t let them get to your mind you are stronger than you think, you are enough. Don’t shut people out because you feel hurt, you even don’t know if they are the cure to your pain. Maybe God thought that it was the best way to get you together, but if you shut them out you are letting your cure go. ¿How many chances in life do we have to meet a particular person everyday? The answer is that “WE DONT” they are willing to give us there all in exchange for nothing, they are willing to love and help a soul out, they are willing to be with us for the rest of our life, but we shut them out and let them go. We don’t get second chances and we start to regret our whole life of what it would’ve have been if that time we just let that. person in, but they are happier now, and that could’ve been you…
. “We should start and let go of things from our past, a pain that is no more there but in our minds, we need to let go of our broken hearts and learn to accept and receive new loving, a new heart… We grow stronger everyday and we don’t need a broken heart to remind us how strong life can be, but that is how it goes, life is hard. We need to let others mend our broken hearts we need to let others be our cure we need to let others in and those are the ones that we need for the rest of our life. Don’t let that one bad person ruin your point of view and trust for that future right person, learn how to let the bad things go, and learn how to accept the new and good things in your life, remember life is only one… | https://medium.com/@kaneichasuren/let-go-102ab9d1e4b1 | [] | 2021-07-02 01:21:01.655000+00:00 | ['First Post', 'Life Lessons', 'Life', 'Let Go', 'Love'] |
Pimpin’ At the Pen | Pimpin’ At the Pen
Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas from Pexels
The following was written some 3 years ago before I was sentenced to and served a year at a prison with an even worse reputation than the one I describe here.
As the day draws near for me to face my fate with the judge, I’ve done a fair amount of research into the Federal Bureau of Prisons over the past 4 years. And one thing I decided was that if possible, I wouldn’t serve time at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park (yes, there’s a federal lockup in Brooklyn). Call me crazy but when I go out in the yard, I want to see trees and country…and certainly not Brooklyn or New York Harbor.
Well…that general feeling was exponentially reinforced when I read the news yesterday that three corrections officers at the facility are alleged to have been sexually abusing female inmates in a serial fashion. Reliable sources have told me stories about women at Rikers Island blowing corrections officers for Lady Bic shavers and such. And every so often, stories hit the Internet about inmates and staff “interfacing.”
But that stuff — though misguided — was consensual. In the case of this recent story, it appears that the three officers were preying on women who didn’t speak English and who were most likely going to be deported after serving their sentences. So I guess the perpetrators figured they could get away with this sort of activity.
To the point: I can’t remember reading a more repulsive story in the genre. Of all the low down and dirty predation! I’m sure these guys have their side of the story…and maybe this is a case of women crying rape when expedient. Regardless, the fact remains that when a CO beds an inmate, he’s treading on thin ice. Nothing good can come from that!
At least two of the “boys” accused in this case have some previous issues. One got involved in a road rage incident on the FDR Drive during which he exited his car and punched a woman in the face twice. Another is a defendant in a bribery case, accused of smuggling cell phones and narcotics into the prison for payment to augment his income. Additionally, two of the three men charged operate in a supervisory capacity at the prison and are actually responsible for training employees not to sexually abuse inmates.
All in all, the facts paint a bleak and ugly picture of exactly what goes on inside the federal prison in Sunset Park. And a pretty picture it is not!
The identities, charges, and nationalities of the abused women have not been divulged to the press. I sincerely hope there are no K-girls in the mix. When I hear poor English skills, no visitors, and imminent deportation (which are facts reported about the case), I think Asians or South Americans. My guess is that at least some of the six women who came forward to testify against the officers were sex workers.
But I’ve not heard anything to that effect. And I hope I don’t. Working in a foreign country as a hooker…and then being incarcerated for the “crime”…and finally, forced to have sex with corrections officers, sounds like a rough row to ho (pardon the pun).
P.S. One day while down at suicide watch during my incarceration, a friendly officer came through to check on us — as officers always did on my shift. We got to know the guards pretty well. And if you acted like a human being, they would reciprocate in kind.
When I asked this particular officer “Hey! What ever happened to those guards at MDC who were forcing girls to give them blow jobs,” he engaged me in a 20-minute conversation about the stupidity of those guys — and how risky it is for a CO to do anything even remotely against the rules.
His take was that they got what they deserved — and that those three guys were an embarrassment to his profession. The only thing that slowed him down or cut him off was a call on the radio to report to another location. Otherwise, I think he would have spent the entire shift rapping to me about his job.
MCC was a very fucked up place (with no yard — let alone one where I could see the countryside) — and a prison which virtually every inmate who was transferred from MDC felt was inferior to the Brooklyn prison. But at least, most of our guards were human. And that was a good thing — because a lot of the inmates weren’t.
The lieutenant who led the charge caught a 25-year sentence when it was all over. Alas, there is some justice in this world. | https://medium.com/doing-time/pimpin-at-the-pen-26a291007435 | ['William', 'Dollar Bill'] | 2020-12-21 13:44:01.361000+00:00 | ['Law Enforcement', 'Rape', 'Sexual Assault', 'Prison'] |
Pitching Angels 10: Three Ways to Get Funded Without an All-Star Team | They Can Swing a Bat But Can They Get Funding?
Every startup claims to have an all-star founding team. But let’s be brutally honest — if you really had an all-star team of seasoned executives with multiple exits under your belts, you’d (1) be able to fund that million dollar seed round yourselves without needing our little dribs of cash, or (2) you’d be able to call Tim Draper or Peter Thiel or whichever VCs funded your last big IPO and have a check for $10 million in your hands tomorrow. So, okay, you have an all-star team, but it’s the local little league and you need help to reach your World Series dreams.
As we discussed last week, investors claim the only thing that matters is the team. In the seed round, the current business plan you’re pitching is a kind of science-fiction, and the revenue projections and exit strategy pure fantasy. By the time you get to that exit, you’ll have pivoted, adjusted, refined, and revised so many times that the only slide remaining on your current deck will be the founding team.
So here is how to get funded if you’re one of the 99.999% of early stage startups that doesn’t have a team that makes the VC’s drool over their checkbooks:
1. Add an Experienced CEO to the Team
So you’re a couple friends from college with a great idea and boatloads of initiative but you’ve never built a startups through to a successful exit. Consider adding a co-founder CEO who fills in your gaps and adds experience. This isn’t a job posting on ZipRecruiter or even a position for a headhunter. In most cases, the right person is someone already in your network who knows the industry and knows the customers and has connections with investors. Someone whose you not only trust but you’ll enjoy working with (and fighting with) daily.
It can be a difficult decision to give up some control over the business you’ve creative, especially when there are critical decisions about the direction of the company, but with a more experienced team, your chances of success multiply.
I frequently hear, “We’ll bring in someone after Series A when we can afford to hire an experienced leader.” That makes sense for the transactional positions like VP of Sales. But the core team setting the company strategy should be working primarily for equity. Find a CEO who believes in your mission and your ultimate success and add her to the team now. Entrepreneurs are used to working for equity rather than a salary.
2. Build a Killer Advisory Board
Advisors are great, especially if you’re young and inexperienced, and if they believe in you and your mission, they’ll willing to mentor you for free. They can add depth and breadth to your team, can help you navigate the industry, understand customer concerns, avoid making avoidable mistakes, and introduce you to potential investors and customers but… and this is a big but: only if you’re actually taking their advise and not just window dressing.
I’ve seen too many pitches that show a page filled with of august names. Someone who you met once and agreed to be a mentor. While I appreciate the hustled it took to introduce yourself to movers and shakers in your field, but if you put them in your pitch as part of the team, I want to know exactly what they’re doing for the company, and I’ll expect to talk to them during due diligence.
Your first impulse will be to add technical experts, especially if you have a technical product and that’s a great start. But make sure to add people who can provide guidance on marketing, customer acquisition, distribution, legal/intellectual property strategy, financing, team building and all the other areas of the business where you’re lacking experience. And make sure to speak with them regularly and take their advice.
3. Build Market Traction
Investors may insist they invest in the jockey, not the horse, but once you prove you’re saddled atop Secretariat or Sea Biscuit and hanging on to his mane, investors will stop caring that you didn’t go to Harvard and your team doesn’t have eleven previous exits. The vast majority of successful startups are from someone who had a great idea to solve a problem who wasn’t previously a founder of Tesla or employee number four at Snapchat. The problem is that the vast majority of failed startups also came from someone with a great idea to solve a problem. Until you have customer traction, the only thing we have to go on is your track record. Once you have customers, revenues, purchase orders, and reviews, that’s a stronger indicator that you’re on to something good.
The best way forward is to scrimp and save and take as little investment as you can during the early stages, and most if not all of that from friends, family, team members, and acquaintances instead of random investors. Build a team that’s working for equity even if that means some of the team works only weekends and nights, do everything you can yourself to keep your burn rate to a minimum and get into revenue as quickly as possible. Once you can point to a solid MRR, fundraising becomes far easier.
Join me next week when we go in depth about the traction you need to show on your pitch deck to get investors excited. Sign up for your weekly insights at https://pitchingangels.com. | https://medium.com/@dcpalter/pitching-angels-10-three-ways-to-get-funded-without-an-all-star-team-81fbfefa8ebc | ['Dc Palter'] | 2020-12-14 23:00:22.918000+00:00 | ['Funding', 'Fundraising', 'Team', 'Startup', 'Pitching'] |
New Twists in Preparing Your Annual Great Holiday Movie Marathon — Daily Quote | The last-minute madness of the holiday rush begins at 5:01 pm Friday. With lists and reminders by my side, I set to work. In the wee hours of the morning, tired but happy, I collapse into bed, knowing my reward is near.
The enormous pile of nondescript delivery boxes will have transformed. Purchased presents, festive holiday paper, sparkling ribbons, glittering bows, and decorative tapes are magical ingredients. Wrapped gifts will soon pack Santa’s bags, ready for distribution to friends and family. I plan to add the trays of countless dozens of themed cookies to the neatly labeled piles first thing in the morning. Only a few select treasures will lie tucked beneath a twinkling Christmas tree, waiting for our scheduled Zoom call. I review my notes, check the list once more, and smile. Tomorrow morning is drop off day.
Saturday’s remaining agenda calls for pajamas, naps on the couch, and the traditional family movie marathon. There are no surprises in this lineup. The list contains classics, both new and old, with some added, just for fun. The stories haven’t changed — we know every word. A watch party is a new twist, but I expect the films still have the power to evoke nostalgia kissed delight. Friends will text to compare movie trivia, bet on the likelihood of a White Christmas, and make plans for the New Year. When the pizza arrives, holiday stress is guaranteed to dissolve into holiday cheer.
What is your favorite holiday movie?
_________________________________________
Keep on writing.
Jo Hawk The Writer | https://medium.com/@johawkthewriter/new-twists-in-preparing-your-annual-great-holiday-movie-marathon-daily-quote-ebafc6d5b999 | ['Jo Hawk'] | 2020-12-18 06:02:18.771000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Quotes', 'Christmas Movies', 'Holidays', 'Inspiration'] |
2020 | I wrote some performance poetry for the first time.
Did you know 2020 would be this way?
I certainly didn’t.
Didn’t even believe it in March.
It’s a weekend thing, this lockdown, I told myself.
Alright, maybe a week.
And then it got dark.
Months and months of staying indoors, social distanced from friends and the even next-doors.
Did you know 2020 would be this way?
I moved away from home the previous year
But it wasn’t tragic
I just didn’t know that six months later I’d find myself in the middle of a global pandemic.
Borders are closed, no more flights for you.
Stay at home and wash your hands
The news was incessant
And so I did just that, cooked and cooked and wiped down surfaces with lots of disinfectant.
I’ve been grateful for technology which lets me video call my parents
There’s been some zoom for work but mainly for virtual birthdays with the smiling faces of friends
Netflix, Whatsapp, Amazon Prime and Sainsbury’s Chop Chop
A problem with any of them and then it’ll really feel like the world might end.
But more than anything, this time has forced me to go on a deep personal journey of self-discovery.
What is important to me, who fills me with love, when do I feel seen?
I feel like my body is now always acutely tuned to these answers, sometimes even when my mind or heart isn’t.
It’s an unmistakeable energy, a vibration I can no longer ignore.
And for that I am thankful so much more.
Such immense gratitude for this system that has grown stronger during this strange time which will get stronger the more I use it, the more I trust it, to protect me and mine.
I don’t want anything in my life that causes even the slightest bit of stress or anxiety.
And yet, there are exceptions even to that which I’m willing to allow.
I’m paying attention to why that is and how it’s possible those moments hold up a mirror to the parts of me that still need some work.
And then I ask myself, “How will I manage this stress?”
How will I let it teach me those lessons without swallowing me whole?
I need to get better at saying I’m sorry, for example.
Why do I struggle with it so much?
Because I feel stupid? Because it makes me look stupid?
Yes, women need to be less apologetic but when you make a mistake, you also need to be a person who can say, “I’m sorry,” like an adult
and mean it
without making excuses
woman or not.
Time has raced past and slowed down.
Why is now so important?
Because, as I remind myself gently and to anyone who will listen — it’s all we have.
I see grocery store workers stock shelves tirelessly lifting heavy loads
And I’m so grateful for their labour that quite literally feeds a country
Overwhelmed doctors, nurses, paramedics and all other hospital staff
Overworked transport workers and underpaid teachers who in the madness that has been this year still keep the world moving
It’s been said before but these are the real heroes
It’s been said before but when the world was falling apart it was art and beauty that helped us keep our sanity
Will future paychecks reflect the social impact of a job or are we just sticking to the number of zeroes?
Who do I worry about, what do I worry about? What are my priorities?
Everything I do, everything I build and create I want moving towards these larger goals.
After a lifetime of judging people for not being proactive in their own lives and as someone who loves pretending they’re in control, this year has shown me how little we really do.
Sweet surrender.
It’s such a relief to allow your life to happen to you and just enjoy it instead of trying to force it into shape.
It is freeing
It is so delicious to relinquish.
Tier 1 Tier 4, I can’t take it anymore.
Someone let me outdoors!
A plane ride, going out for a meal, a hug
All things I’ve wanted
All the things I won’t ever again take for granted.
I have a deeper respect for my body.
For how hard it works, constantly.
I don’t want to take it for granted.
Which means eating consciously, doing yoga regularly.
As much for my body as for my mind.
My improved cooking skills during lockdown have been such a find.
I’m also finally accepting to myself that I’m pretty weird.
And instead of trying to beat it out of me, I’m leaning into it.
Embracing it like another lovely part of me.
Do you know how I know I’m doing better with self-love?
I looked at myself in the mirror the other day and usually where I’d find something to dislike about my face, the size of my nose, the rest of my body, I didn’t.
I felt like I really “saw” me.
Because if I can’t “see” me, how can I expect anyone else to?
I see the imperfections and I love them, I love them because they make me “me”.
I don’t need to be perfect.
Perfect, darlings, is so 2019.
Did you know 2020 would be this way?
I certainly didn’t.
But it’s been everything I’ve needed and if I pause to think about it, that’s how it’s always been — exactly what I need, exactly when I need it.
So this year, no resolutions.
I’m only focusing on waking up each morning and have fun
I will only decide whether I’m happy doing something for me or for someone else.
Which is a balance, like everything else. | https://medium.com/@ayesha-aleem/2020-4611ae8de66c | ['Ayesha Aleem'] | 2020-12-23 15:55:57.074000+00:00 | ['Peace', 'Change', 'Love', 'Life', '2020'] |
Belarusian independent media and Telegram channels outperform state media on Facebook | By Givi Gigitashvili
Since being blocked by the Belarusian government and labeled as “extremist,” multiple independent media outlets in the country have experienced a surge in followers on Facebook and maintained their leading positions vis-à-vis pro-government outlets.
Amid protests over the summer of 2020, the Belarusian Ministry of Information blocked 85 online resources on August 21 of that year, including websites of independent media outlets, websites of opposition politicians, various VPN services, and privacy apps. At the time, the Belarusian Association of Journalists stated that in doing so, the Belarusian government intended to disrupt the spread of information on post-election protests and police brutality against demonstrators. The move was seen as a censorship and the obstruction of the legal activities of the media in Belarus. In addition to blocking websites, authorities detained 480 journalists in Belarus in 2020, with 27 journalists still behind bars as of June 2021.
During the August 2020 protests, Telegram channels became an important source of information and a venue for coordination among pro-democracy protesters. The channels’ follower counts grew rapidly. When the Belarusian government disrupted internet access in Belarus, Telegram enabled anti-censorship tools to ensure that the app would remain accessible to the majority of users in the country. This made Telegram an even more reliable and essential tool for Belarusians to receive information about the protests. As these independent channels flourished, however, forces connected to the Belarusian government started to use Telegram more actively to disseminate counter messaging. Soon after, the Belarusian government declared around 30 opposition Telegram channels “extremist material,” and accused them of publishing information inciting riots.
Despite these efforts to suppress the reach of outlets critical of the government, however, these channels’ Facebook pages have largely outperformed the pages of state-controlled outlets in Belarus.
Methodology
In order to analyze the performance of the banned outlets on social media, the DFRLab selected six media outlets with the highest number of followers on Facebook that all had their websites blocked by the Belarusian government in 2020 or earlier: Belarus Partisan, Charter 97, Euroradio, Belsat TV, Naviny, and Tut.by. The majority of these outlets were founded in Belarus, with the exception of Belsat TV, which was founded in Poland but focuses exclusively on Belarus. After these websites were blocked, people in Belarus started to use various tools such as TOR, VPNs, and proxy servers to bypass the ban and access prohibited content. | https://medium.com/dfrlab/belarusian-independent-media-and-telegram-channels-outperform-state-media-on-facebook-45f9397f24c7 | [] | 2021-06-17 11:48:46.588000+00:00 | ['Telegram', 'Belarus', 'Social Media', 'Censorship', 'Facebook'] |
How to Overcome Procrastination. Kebiasaan menunda pekerjaan memang… | My name is Denanti Nurintani and I'm a first-year student in Indonesian Education and Literature at Muhammadiyah University Purwokerto. | https://medium.com/@denanti/how-to-be-overcome-procrastination-34bbfa7f2242 | ['Denanti Nurintani'] | 2020-12-16 07:17:56.976000+00:00 | ['How To', 'Procrastination', 'Tips And Tricks', 'Tips', 'Hard Work'] |
4 Things I Wish All My Teachers Could Have Done | I personally think most teachers are burdened with perfectionism, thinking they have to be perfect in front of their student to be a ‘role model’. They have to know all the answers just because they are the teachers and they feel embarrassed to be (or admit to being) wrong.
I had been running into arguments with teachers from the 2nd grade all the way till 11th grade (which was my final year of high school).
1. Be honest with students
I remember a high school teacher of mine who was assigned as my public speaking mentor told me this during our first meeting — “I am your public speaking mentor but I have not spoken on stage even once in my life. I can guide you on the things you say, not how you say them,” She instantly won my respect.
Teachers often don’t feel comfortable telling students about their weaknesses, and things they are unfamiliar with. This comes off very badly when a teacher pretends to know something he or she does not.
I wish all my teachers could have been more like the teacher I mentioned earlier. By letting students know your flaws, students would know what to expect and would proceed to show understanding when things don’t go as expected. They treat you as human, an imperfect, flawed human that makes mistakes, just like the rest of them.
2. Be a leader or a guide, not a dictator
A teacher was never meant to only provide answers and solutions, but to communicate the means to reach the desired ends.
Often times, teachers are pressured to give the right answer, thinking that is their job. This makes it hard on students when they just could not agree on a certain thing because the teachers’ pride would be at stake. This does not necessarily have to be the case.
If teachers’ acknowledge that their job is to teach the methodology of obtaining an answer instead of the answer itself, it gives the students the freedom to explore possibilities.
3. Have two-sided conversations with students
The teacher-student relationship does not have to be bounded by the “teachers talk and students listen” concept. A teacher is an educator, a person who communicates knowledge to students. It would be ineffective teaching if what a teacher teaches never makes its way to the student’s heart.
Therefore, it is crucial for teachers to sometimes be the listener. Listening to students and engaging in meaningful conversations with them would allow the teachers to get to know their students better. By knowing their students better, they would gain insight that would be useful for teaching, such as what students are interested in, what are their values, what puts them off and so on.
It is just like marketing. It doesn’t matter how good a product is if the brand is detached from its target audience due to a lack of understanding of their target audience. It is important to understand their target audience by engaging with them.
4. Acknowledge that there are things to be learnt from students as well
It is staggering to me how “young people are dumb” still does not sound as disgusting of a generalization as it should be. We have entrepreneurs and self-made millionaires still studying high school or college popping out on the news every now and then. The frequency of this only gets greater and greater as the years go by. There are people that have figured out quite a lot of a certain thing in any circle, even in school.
Teachers have to obliterate the idea that they have nothing to learn from students and that they are only in school to teach. Students feel valued when teachers actually pay attention to what they are good at and point them out. Being open to learning from even people who are younger or of lower status than you is an admirable thing.
The Chinese have this traditional saying
敏而好学，不耻下问，是以谓之‘文’也。- Confucius
This quote by Confucius means
Those who are worthy of the posthumous name (an honorary name given to royalty, and nobles after the person dies) ‘Wen’ are those who are not just smart and diligent but also do not find shame in asking and learning from those who are of lower status than them.
In short,
Learning from a person of lower status is the behavior of a noble person.
Conclusion
The four things I wished all my teachers could have done were these:
Be honest with students Be a guide, not a dictator Have two-sided conversations with students Be willing to learn from students
The teachers that did these things in my school experiences were the most well respected and persuasive teachers, and the teachers that are most likely to make a huge impact in a student’s heart.
A note of gratitude
With all that said, thank you to each and every teacher out there. You shape our future generations in ways greater than you could possibly imagine. I, and I believe many more, are extremely grateful for the incredible service you are providing for our world today and the bright future that lies ahead. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/4-things-i-wish-all-my-teachers-could-have-done-4630ef712d6f | ['Carlson Ng'] | 2020-11-09 20:02:48.566000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Teaching', 'Teaching And Learning', 'Communication', 'Leadership'] |
DEX Masterclass 102: BitShares DEX complete ecosystem & stable.PHP case study | The Bitshares DEX was the first decentralised exchange to come online, as still today it is one of the most advanced DEXs around. The Bitshares DEX is actually a vast ecosystem that touches on many different mechanisms unique to cryptocurrency — such as creating stablecoins.
What you’ll learn
Why DEXs are on blockchains
How the BitShares DEX works
BitShares ecosystem: BTS, Voting, Committee, Worker Proposals
The difference between Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Delegated Proof of Stake
What are BitShares DEX gateways and how do they work
User Issued Assets & Market Pegged Assets
Case study: stable.PHP
DEX Masterclass 102 Recorded Video
Why are DEXs on Blockchains?
It all comes down to trust. On a centralised exchange, traders do not know each other but they trust in the exchange itself to make sure everything works as it should. On a DEX, there is no centralised party to take on that role as traders exchange assets directly between each other.
This is where blockchain comes in as a way to allow people who do not trust each other to still interact without having problems when it’s time to transact.
What that means for a DEX, is that every single interaction is recorded on the blockchain for everyone to see. It gives everyone equal access to the order books and the history of everything that has happened on the DEX.
What is BitShares & the BTS token
Created in 2014, the BitShares DEX was the first of its kind in the world. It’s native token is BTS which is used to operate the DEX and pay for transaction fees, execution fees and voting. BTS is also used as collateral for the many stablecoins available on the BitShares DEX. And just like with any other decentralised token, there is no single party in control of BTS.
Executing trades on BitShares a lot simpler and certainly faster. That has everything to with Delegated Proof of Stake. This model was first pioneered by BitShares, and is an improvement on Proof of Stake. With Delegated Proof of Stake, there are only a limited number of people who verify blocks which are referred to as Block Validators — that’s the delegation. These people are voted in by other members who are required to have coins to do so — that’s the stake.
BitShares has anywhere between 21 and 27 Block Validators, who are randomly assigned in an unpredictable order via the blockchain itself. Block Validators don’t need to have a stake in the system themselves, they just need to be good at validating blocks in order to get voted in.
How Delegated Proof of Stake makes BitShares DEX reliable and faster
The unpredictability is what makes this model work.
With Proof of Work, you can predict that the people with the most hashing power are going to mine the most blocks. In the case of Proof of Stake, the people with the largest stake will be the biggest validators.
But with this Delegated model, say there are 21 Block Validators, there is only a 1 in 21 chance for a validator to be the next in line. The probability of 5 Validators colluding and also being the next 5 Validators chosen at random is incredibly low. And if Validators don’t do a good job, they get voted out.
However, Validators do already know from who the next block is coming from, so there is no need for a discovery process which can take a lot of power and time.
That’s what makes it possible to have a 1.5 second blocktime on the Bitshares blockchain which results in quick transactions on the DEX.
BitShares: Voting, Committee and Worker Proposals
BitShares works as a Decentralised Autonomous Corporation, directed by a combination of voting, a committee and worker proposals.
Voting can be done by anyone that holds BTS. Votes can be cast for block validation, as well as voting people into the committee of BitShares, and approving Worker Proposals.
The committee has the ability to set transaction fees, charged in BTS, based on what the stakeholders want. All fees collected on transactions are kept in a reserve pool. That reserve pool is then used to pay people working on approved Worker Proposals. So essentially, the committee is in charge of keeping the balance between money coming in (fees) and money going out (worker proposals).
Worker proposals are a way for anyone in the community to propose working on a certain project to benefit BitShares. If everyone thinks that’s a great idea then they will vote for the project and then the committee releases the funds from the reserve pool to pay the worker in BTS.
What are Gateways
Gateways are different windows into the BitShares blockchain. There are currently around 15 gateways that are all running on the same BitShares system, the same exact blockchain. In fact, with a BitShares account you could login through any of these gateways to access the DEX from a different window.
While all the gateways operate under the same rules, private companies create them to provide additional features that would add value for their customers. Think of different user interfaces or the ability to list additional currencies.
For example, trading Bitcoin on the BitShares DEX and blockchain requires a custom solution because BTC is on a different blockchain. Gateways such as Sparkdex are providers of those solutions.
What type of cryptocurrencies can be traded on Sparkdex
There two different types of cryptocurrencies we will discuss here: User Issued Assets (UIA) and Market Pegged Assets (MPA).
UIA: Trading Bitcoin on the Bitshares blockchain
To make trading BTC on the BitShares DEX possible, a gateway will run a Bitcoin node that process transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. When a customer makes a BTC deposit, the gateway will take that BTC and issue a BitShares-based token in exchange which represents the value of that Bitcoin deposit. That is the UIA and as a BitShares based token, it can be traded quickly and easily across the BitShares ecosystem.
The UIA token takes on the name of the gateway that issues it. So in the case of Bitspark, the UIA Bitcoin token used for trading on the BitShares blockchain is Sparkdex.BTC. And because all the gateways are actually hooking into the same system looking at the same order books, you will see the BTC tokens of other gateways regardless of which gateway you are using yourself.
At the end of the day, when a customer wants to withdraw the BTC deposit, the gateway token is exchanged back into real Bitcoin and burned thereafter. This is where gateways can really distinguish themselves in terms of how fast they can receive and withdraw your Bitcoin.
The burning of the gateway issued UIA token is required to prevent a buildup of tokens that have no actual BTC tied to them. A good gateway will provide transparency around the issuance and burning of UIA tokens. See the Sparkdex transparency page as an example.
MPA: stablecoins
Market pegged assets (referred to as smart coins or stablecoins), use smart contracts and collateral to create new coins with a value tied to another asset.
While there are many stablecoins today, BitUSD was the first one ever created back in 2014, made possible by the BitShares MPA feature.
MPAs created on BitShares do not require trust. The collateral for creating say BitUSD, is held in a smart contract. For BitUSD, that collateral is BTS which means that at any point in time, you can exchange BitUSD for the same US dollar value in BTS tokens.
If BTS drops in value to the point where it can no longer back the value of BitUSD, the blockchain automatically sells it off. To create a buffer that can deal with the volatility of the collateral’s price, in order to make 1 BitUSD you need 1.6 BitUSD worth of collateral.
Stablecoin case study: stable.PHP created by Bitspark
Bitspark has created stable.PHP, a stablecoin for Philippine peso using BitUSD as collateral backing. The PHP stablecoin has 2 main uses across the business:
1: Cash in, Cash out in the Philippines
It gives Bitspark access to the Philippines market, providing people with a way to cash in and out of cryptocurrencies using their own local currency. All without needing to rely on Bitcoin exchanges or local banks. Using stable.PHP, customers in the Philippines can do many different things such as sending and receiving money across borders, or even paying their solar electricity bills in selected regions made possible by the partnership between Bitspark and Okra Solar.
2: Shorting the Philippine peso
Because the collateral backing the PHP stablecoin is BitUSD, there are shorting opportunities for traders to capitalise. Almost every emerging market currency over time depreciates against the US dollar because USD is the global reserve currency, and the same goes for Philippine peso. With USD as your collateral, you can make money over time as PHP depreciates either creating more PHP or take the initial PHP and buy more BitUSD.
Both uses, emerging markets accessing crypto and traders being able to short exotic currencies, is what Bitspark is replicating around the world by issuing local currency stablecoins for all the world’s currencies over time.
In the next episode
In DEX Masterclass 103, we get down into the practical side of things and walk through each of the main sections you’ll find on Sparkdex.
Watch DEX Masterclass 103 | https://medium.com/the-ledger-by-spark/dex-masterclass-102-bitshares-dex-complete-ecosystem-stable-php-case-study-d0d0879a979b | [] | 2019-12-19 10:08:01.128000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Bitshares', 'Crypto Trading', 'Stablecoin Cryptocurrency'] |
What Is LPD Video Walls & How Its Better Than Others? | Prysm — the well-known and respected US-based manufacturers of large interactive wall displays — has unveiled the globe’s biggest interactive and fully touch-sensitive single panel video wall displays in two sizes, namely, 190 inches and 135 inches.
These display walls are one of the finest products from the maker and a component of its much talked about and widely publicized patented & proprietary Laser Phosphor Display (LPD) 6K Series.
LPD 6K is a fully interactive display; its strong polymer surface is completely impact-free and scratch-free, even as it supports a maximum of 30 unique touch-points. It uses the firm’s LPD technology, which’s better than LED and LCD display in several manners. For instance, these displays have a bigger range of colors, decisively better contrast ratio, and require 20% less electricity. These are also much reasonably priced, in comparison with other similar large format displays.
The LPD 6K series has a resolution equivalent to 6K in the 190-inch size and 4K in the 13 -inch. As mentioned earlier, it’s touch-sensitive and entirely interactive. Besides, it’s made with roughly 96% recyclable stuff. In addition, the screen is entirely flexible. You can roll it up into a 6-foot high tube to move it.
So, it’s hardly surprising that the LPD 6K Series has established a new international standard for interactive video walls and collaborative displays. LPD is pitched against plasma display panel (PDP), liquid crystal display (LCD), surface electron display (SED), and similar other large-format display technologies.
The new bezel-free LPD displays provide users with improved image quality with full interactivity. These displays also express the deepest black levels possible, resulting in a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1.
Q. What’s Interactive Video Wall?
It’s an effective display option that helps you display your message or information on a grand scale. As a result of many different screens, it offers a helpful method to present your content large than life.
Loaded with multi-touch options on your wall, it gives several users the option to interact with the wall screens at one time, without having to wait for their turn to engage with your products or services.
This technology enables you to provide immersive and efficient interactive displays for your audience, particularly, vis-à-vis the traditional interactive video wall. Your audiences get that additional level of control over the content they are being exposed to, and this in a way puts the control into their hands and gives them a memorable business or event experience.
Q. How Prysm LPD Video Walls are Different & Better than Other Similar Display Walls?
As discussed earlier, the LPD Video Walls are ‘different’ and better than similar other wall technologies in many ways.
Let’s find out how!
1. Lower Power Consumption
To begin with, LPD requires less electricity, vis-à-vis the rival technologies, comprising LCD and light-emitting diode (LED). When one switches over to LPD displays, he sees a 70–75% reduction in power consumption than the majority of other display technologies available in the market today. An LPD gadget differs considerably from an LCD in that over 90% of the original light gets wasted in the second procedure.
2. No Encroaching Seams/bezels
As there are no touch options or collaboration experiences in other larger-sized video walls, these often are plagued with the issues of intruding seams and bezels. With the LPD displays, you don’t face any such issues.
3. Superior Quality Viewing Experience at Different Angles
Unlike other large interactive displays, the LPD 6K Series delivers the clearest resolution available to help you see clearly every specific color and treatment. With a maximum of 6K x 2K resolution and smart light engines, you get to experience constant picture quality across the life span of the display — not possible with other large-format displays.
4. Easily Foldable & Transportable
LPD walls from this maker give you the option of transporting them to any location through small corridors and using the common elevators. This isn’t possible with the traditional video wall display products and you have to face difficulties moving and installing them.
The LPD technology comes with some additional benefits, including enormous black levels, an extensive 180-degree screening angle, a 65,000-hour panel life, minus any burn-in problems, and entirely recyclable components. | https://medium.com/@prysmsystems/what-is-lpd-video-walls-how-its-better-than-others-edd215b8a392 | ['Prysm Systems'] | 2020-12-18 09:36:25.060000+00:00 | ['Smart Display', 'Video Wall', 'Display', 'Meeting Rooms', 'Conference'] |
How To Perform Marketing Audit By Yourself — Mobiteam | There are, definitely, a lot of other examples and case studies related to marketing audit. They differ from each other due to specific cases that are highlighted and most of the time it is difficult to find a marketing audit that suits your case. In this article, we will talk about the marketing audit and how to perform it by yourself.
Instead of writing the entire theory and answering questions such as why you need it and when it is best to perform one, we will approach the questions that are a part of the entire marketing audit process.
So, let’s start with top priorities, and in all cases, clients come first.
#1 Clients
Who is your client? Identify client profile and find out what are the client’s needs, interests, demands, and requirements. Why does the client need the product or service you provide? For further work, you will need this information in the work process with managers of customer care and sales.
The more detailed you are able to answer the above questions, the more efficient your marketing audit will be, so here is a free tip — take your time and find all possible details that may help you and your business.
#2 Product
Now that you have all client information, the next step is to understand your products and services. The more features and properties the product has — the larger the marketing audit report.
Set the full list of products and services you provide and all their properties and features Visual identity and design. Does your product have a unique brand style? Is the product customized somehow and it differs from everything else? Do you have a unique selling proposition or slogan? If yes — name it Identify the product’s advantages compared to other similar products Product’s purpose. Does your product serve a purpose? If yes, describe it Do you produce your product by yourself or just resell it? How can you save money in producing, managing, and selling your product? Do you use the latest or up-to-date technology in product development? Have you performed a sales analysis? If yes, describe it
#3 Sales
Next after figuring out with products, come sales. Identifying and analyzing all aspects of the sale process can help the business progress. So, here are the sales-related questions you should ask yourself:
How do you search for your clients? Do you use a sales script? Have you ever analyzed your/your sales manager’s work? If yes, describe How often do you answer customers’ calls and questions? Do you consider the client approach is correct, calm, and friendly?
#4 Work with clients
Besides understanding who is your client and target audience, it is also important to understand the entire process of working with them. At some point, business owners find out that they could’ve done more to attract them, or to convert visitors into customers.
So, here are the questions that would change your mind when talking about the interaction between your business and customers:
What other benefits your customers have besides owning the product they purchase? How do you make your customers return to you for another product or service? Do you have a set of rules and principles when interacting with customers? Do they like other products of yours, or they come only for one? How much money do they spend on average? Is there anything that would make a client go, or choose another product from the same segment? Why?
#5 Pricing
Pricing impacts marketing big time. There is marketing for big prices and marketing for small prices. You can’t expect having great results when setting incorrect pricing for your products and services. This is why, we have prepared the next set of questions to ask yourself, and these are all related to the pricing:
Name the prices for your products. How is the price set and what it is made of? Define a clear structure of your prices. How flexible your price can go? What are the minimum and maximum prices for your products? Are the prices the same for all customers or there are some preferential prices for special clients? Why? What kind of payment systems your business has integrated so far? Do you plan to add or remove some? Why? Does your business have special promotions on holidays or other special occasions? Why? Does your pricing policy depend on the period of time or other important factors?
#6 Market
Knowing the market is as important as knowing your products and clients. Your business has to be up to date with trends and competition — otherwise, you risk losing customers. Big companies, technologies, and innovation usually set the trend waves, so following them can give a big boost to your company progress and sales. Here is a list of questions related to the market that can help you with the marketing audit:
How do you sell your products (Shops, eCommerce, network)? Have you thought about trying other alternatives? Why? Do you provide delivery services? If yes, under what circumstances? How does your selling platform look like compared to other marketplaces? How are the visitors welcomed by your business, compared to competitors? Is your business up-to-date with the latest trends and tendencies? Have you used something innovative in the process of selling your products or services? If yes, why? Why is your business more attractive than your competitors? Could it be more attractive?
#7 Advertising
Having a good knowledge about all of the above-mentioned key-factors is important. But, promoting and being aware of your advertising possibilities is also an advantage. These are the question related to advertising and promotion
Do you have a budget for advertising? If Yes, how much and on what channels? What type of advertising is more effective, according to your experience so far? Does your business have a loyalty program? Why? What discounts you made so far, and why? Analyze all online resources where your business is present. Would you buy products or services from them? Does your business have a mobile app? Why? Does your business use email marketing? Are there any related products or services attached to other products you sell? How do you convert your visitors into customers?
So far, so good. Yet the list of questions for marketing audit can continue, as you may want to add more, customized questions to your business. Generally, performing a marketing audit by yourself is recommended once a year at least. But, if you don’t have enough time or not sure you can handle the entire process, let us do it for you. With Mobiteam, you are in good hands.
Read the full article: https://mobiteam.de/en/how-to-perform-marketing-audit-by-yourself/ | https://medium.com/@sobieski/how-to-perform-marketing-audit-by-yourself-mobiteam-82152dc0f7a3 | ['Marcel Sobieski'] | 2021-01-25 08:59:53.643000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Wordpress Web Development', 'Web Design Company', 'Marketing', 'WordPress'] |
Reloading Rails Partials on Demand with render_async | The new version of render_async is out, and one of the most requested features is out with it as well! Read on to find out about the novelties in the new 2.1.8 version of the gem.
A quick overview of the recent changes:
That’s it, let’s jump into details of each change below.
👂 Psst! We have a render_async Discord server. Join us there.
Refresh Rails partials on demand
As you might already know, render_async loads partials asynchronously after your page has loaded. Loading of partials in an async way is excellent and helpful, but the gem users wanted more power and control. After so many different requests for this, we implemented the feature to manually refresh the already loaded partial on the page without reloading the whole page.
You can do this easily by dispatching an event with a “refresh” name to the render_async HTML container. Let’s show this on an example where we load comments in a partial:
<%= render_async comments_path,
container_id: 'refresh-me',
replace_container: false %>
<button id="refresh-button">Refresh comments</button>
<script>
var button = document.getElementById('refresh-button')
var container = document.getElementById('refresh-me');
button.addEventListener('click', function() {
var event = new Event('refresh');
// Dispatch 'refresh' on the render_async container
container.dispatchEvent(event)
})
</script>
Now, the render_async will load comments on page load. But, if the user wants to reload the comments section, she can click the “Refresh comments” button. The button will then emit the “refresh” event to the render_async’s container.
One thing to note is that you need to pass in the replace_container: false . Passing this option will save the original render_async HTML element so you can dispatch the "refresh" event on it. To find out how you can enable this globally, so you only write it in one place, see the configuration options.
Working on this feature and solving so many people’s problems with this was amazing. I hope you find it useful in your routine.
We added a new feature to the existing combination of features. Just in case you weren’t aware, you can do HTML polling with render_async. On top of that, we added a feature where you can start and stop polling on demand. This is doing a great service to users, but some of the users wanted to start polling immediately as the page loads, not to wait for the user to trigger polling.
Luckily, we added a feature that allows you to specify to start polling on page load:
<a href='#' id='comments-button'>Toggle comments loading</a>
<%= render_async comments_path,
toggle: { selector: '#comments-button',
event: :click,
start: true },
interval: 2000 %>
The code above should render the “Toggle comments loading” button, and start polling as soon as the page is rendered. This is all possible by adding the start: true option to the toggle hash.
DRY up the code with new configuration options
Finally, some new configuration options landed in the latest 2.1.8 version. So, what is new? If you needed to set nonce: true with render_async, you could now do this globally. Also, if you are about to use our new feature with refreshing partials, you will benefit from setting replace_container: false in one place.
You can do this in your initializers or wherever you find comfortable by doing:
RenderAsync.configure do |config|
config.nonces = true
config.replace_container = false
end
To figure out why you would need replace_container: false , please read the first section of this blog post about refreshing Rails partials.
If it is your first time hearing about this, we also have other configuration options in the docs.
Fix start and stop events
There were problems with event listeners for async-start and async-stop events. Those events served to control polling through events. Since those event listeners were set up as soon as the render_async JavaScript code got evaluated, they didn't get registered if you put content_for :render_async in the head of your pages.
In the new version, we made sure these event listeners registered after the page has fully loaded. If you have this problem, you can safely put back content_for in the head, and everything should work fine.
Final thoughts
Do not forget to star 🌟 the project and share it with your friends and coworkers if you find it useful.
Releasing a new version, polishing the README, and working on new features was a blast! Thanks to everyone that helped and keep doing the great work on contributing. Please join the Discord if you are using this gem. That way, we can make it even better!
P.S. If you like my work on this gem so far, and you want to give me some juice and motivation to keep improving and maintaining it, consider sponsoring me on GitHub Sponsors or through PayPal.
Also, feel free to share this on Twitter with friends and coworkers below: | https://medium.com/@nikolalsvk/reloading-rails-partials-on-demand-with-render-async-9baf84eb8219 | ['Nikola Đuza'] | 2020-11-18 16:01:21.391000+00:00 | ['Ruby', 'Programming', 'new 2.1.8 version', 'Rails', 'Ruby on Rails'] |
2019 Year In Review | 2019 was a busy year for SmugMug, just as it was for our partners at Flickr. We’ve all been hard at work making the world better for all you photographers out there. Most significantly, we made big improvements to how you and your visitors view and buy your photos. Your photos are being viewed, engaged with, and purchased more as a result of that work.
This year we supported and provided opportunities for four interns, helped Flickr complete their infrastructure migration, fixed hundreds of bugs, upgraded the operating systems that power SmugMug, and, as a result, kept everything running all the time — day or night.
I wanted to take some time to summarize the many improvements made over the past year and talk about how that’s helped you. Here are some of the more than 1,000 product improvements made over the course of the year (that’s over four improvements per business day!).
Love for showcasing your photos:
New Lightbox: The window that displays your photo got a smoother, simpler, better viewing experience. As a result, your visitors are engaging on your photos more, more stories are being written about the photo, and our Pros are selling more.
The window that displays your photo got a smoother, simpler, better viewing experience. As a result, your visitors are engaging on your photos more, more stories are being written about the photo, and our Pros are selling more. Default gallery presets: Save your most common gallery settings so you can easily apply them when creating a new gallery. You can even set one as a default so your new galleries will always have the settings you want from the start.
Save your most common gallery settings so you can easily apply them when creating a new gallery. You can even set one as a default so your new galleries will always have the settings you want from the start. New photo sizes: Send us your 4-gigapixel, 500-MiB photos. We can handle them!
Send us your 4-gigapixel, 500-MiB photos. We can handle them! Browsing is more accessible to all: We’ve made browsing all aspects of SmugMug more friendly, especially for those who browse with keyboards.
We’ve made browsing all aspects of SmugMug more friendly, especially for those who browse with keyboards. Better display of your photos: When you or your visitors look at a photo, you want that photo to look amazing and display right away; we’ve made improvements to ensure they display at lightning speed, especially on mobile.
You and your visitors use your mobile devices more frequently every day, and we’ve invested heavily in making sure the iOS and Android apps are constantly providing more value for you.
iOS and Android improvements:
Auto-Upload: Enable Auto-Upload today in our iOS and Android apps to keep your phone photos safe.
Enable Auto-Upload today in our iOS and Android apps to keep your phone photos safe. HEIC Support: Photos taken in the new image format, particularly on newer iPhones, are now accepted everywhere at SmugMug.
Photos taken in the new image format, particularly on newer iPhones, are now accepted everywhere at SmugMug. Change gallery settings: You have even more options when you’re on the go: allow (or disallow) gallery downloads, set cover images, and more from within the apps.
You have even more options when you’re on the go: allow (or disallow) gallery downloads, set cover images, and more from within the apps. Organize your photos: Move and collect virtual copies of your photos in the apps.
Move and collect virtual copies of your photos in the apps. Sign up for SmugMug: You can now start and pay for a SmugMug account from your iOS or Android phone.
It’s important to help many of you make money, and we saw some nice improvements in helping your photos turn into $$$.
Helping Pros make $$$:
Shop view: The new “Shop View setting” is helping you sell more by surfacing your shopping cart as soon as visitors open your photos. Maximize your sales by enabling this in “Gallery Settings”.
The new “Shop View setting” is helping you sell more by surfacing your shopping cart as soon as visitors open your photos. Maximize your sales by enabling this in “Gallery Settings”. Getting started with selling: Pre-built pricelists and a walk-through guide are helping photographers get started with selling. If you’re unsure how to sell your photos, look for the new “Suggested Pricing” options to use data-driven prices to help you get started.
Pre-built pricelists and a walk-through guide are helping photographers get started with selling. If you’re unsure how to sell your photos, look for the new “Suggested Pricing” options to use data-driven prices to help you get started. Page templates from our designers to you: Photographers like you frequently have “About Me,” “Services,” and “Pricing” pages to attract new visitors to your photos, and it’s now super easy to create these with our pre-built templates.
Photographers like you frequently have “About Me,” “Services,” and “Pricing” pages to attract new visitors to your photos, and it’s now super easy to create these with our pre-built templates. Order status improvements: You and your clients are getting better information about the status of orders thanks to the new Order Status page.
Lastly, the shopping cart expanded this year with several new products for you to buy and sell.
More products to buy and sell:
… plus hundreds of other improvements that won’t fit in this space. Many of these improvements were thanks to your constant feedback, and we love to hear how we can help you all. Keep it coming. We’ve got a great 2020 in store and can’t wait to deliver more for you.
Aaron Meyers | https://news.smugmug.com/2019-year-in-review-232b292bd366 | ['Aaron Meyers'] | 2020-02-21 17:29:56.444000+00:00 | ['Release Notes', 'Year In Review', 'Product'] |
The Race To Zero We Must Win | By Ed Matthew, COP 26 Co-Director, The Climate Coalition
Hundreds from around the world unite in a giant message during the United Nations COP21 Climate Summit. (Photo by Yann Arthus-Bertrand / Spectral Q)
Five years ago, world leaders gathered in Paris for COP21 and made a landmark promise to restrict global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees C and to do everything they can to limit heating to 1.5 degrees C. This commitment is at the heart of the Paris Agreement.
On 12th December, the fifth anniversary of that landmark event, the UK Government will host an international Ambition Summit on climate change, where it hopes world leaders will step forward to announce major new pledges to slash their emissions of greenhouse gases.
To help galvanise the most ambitious pledges possible, the UK Government will soon unveil its renewed target for cutting emissions by 2030, as part of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC); an obligation under the Paris Agreement. Collectively NDCs help to determine whether the world is on track to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C.
News broke this week that, according to analysis by Climate Action Tracker, the world is on course for 2.1C of global heating rather than the 3C to 4C previously estimated. This takes into account recent pledges by China, South Korea and Japan to go net-zero and the promise by US President-Elect Biden to join them.
This is incredibly positive news but it comes with some major caveats. A global temperature rise of 2.1C would still bring devastating impacts, and these net-zero targets are meaningless unless robust early action is taken to slash emissions in the next 10 years. To get on track to 1.5C, the UN’s body of climate scientists (the IPCC) estimates that global carbon emissions need to be cut almost in half by 2030. So the NDC targets for 2030 really matter.
Civil society organisations have called on the Prime Minister to ensure the UK NDC is in line with that 1.5C target. But what level of cuts would that require of the UK?
The UK has so far reduced its territorial emissions by 45% since 1990. It already has a legally binding carbon budget which covers the period 2028 to 2032 and was set under the old target enshrined in the Climate Change Act to reduce UK emissions by 80% by 2050. This 5th Carbon Budget requires a cut in emissions by 2030 of 61% according to the Climate Change Committee.
The Climate Coalition is calling for the UK to show leadership by going even further and reducing its emissions by 75%. And here is why.
Firstly, the UK has now updated the Climate Change Act, increasing its 2050 target from 80% to net-zero emissions. So purely on a legal basis, we need to go faster in the 2020s if we are to meet this target.
Secondly, a higher level of cuts is technically feasible. Recent research by the Imperial College London finds that on a feasibility basis alone, UK emissions could be cut by 72% by 2030. This is based on existing technologies and a conservative estimate of costs. There is every reason to believe that as technologies develop and costs reduce, this level of cuts could be increased yet further. This is also a huge economic opportunity. The faster we move, the faster we will build the green, zero carbon industries of the future, that will be critical to our economic recovery.
Thirdly, the UK is the seventh biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from a historic perspective. It has a clear moral duty to reduce emissions as fast as it possibly can and support others to do so. The poorest countries in the world have done the least to cause climate change but they are the ones who are likely to suffer the most.
Fourthly, it is a question of global leadership. The greater the level of ambition by the UK, the greater the impact this will have internationally. As host of the critical COP 26 climate summit in November 2021, the UK must lead the world in ambition and action.
Fifthly, we are in a climate crisis that is already impacting the people, places and life we love. Even a global temperature rise of 1.5 degreesC is not safe, and will result in far greater levels of damage than we’ve already seen in recent years. The impacts of this climate crisis could almost completely wipe out some ecosystems and lead to millions of deaths. The UK’s 2050 net-zero target is simply not ambitious enough. As one of the most advanced economies in the world, with the highest rate of emissions reductions of any countries in the G20, we must get to net-zero much sooner than 2050.
A UK NDC target of 75% may stretch beyond what seems feasible today. But we must be guided by what is needed to keep us as safe as possible, not by political expediency or technical limitations.
We can be inspired by the words of President Kennedy when he announced the mission to go to the moon:
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
The UK’s greatest power on climate change is as a leader, inspiring other countries to act with maximum ambition. The race to zero is a race for survival and it is one we must win. | https://medium.com/@theccoalition/the-race-to-zero-we-must-win-ba84f312b25f | ['The Climate Coalition'] | 2020-12-08 12:12:36.742000+00:00 | ['Uk Government', 'Climate Change', 'United Nations'] |
How to make the perfect resume for Freshers, 2021? | How to make the perfect resume for Freshers, 2021?
Introduction
For freshers, graduating college or university is one of the biggest life events. But, what next? Finding a job is the next best thing to do. But, a job application is incomplete without the most important document for a job application and that is a resume. A resume tells the recruiters or employers why you are the perfect choice for a job. It shows your skills, experience, and abilities. But, your resume should act as your representative and, therefore, it needs to be perfect. The question is, “How to do so?” If you are a fresher who is all set to enter the corporate world, ensure you read this blog post first. In this blog post, we will be attempting to answer the question,“How to make the perfect resume for freshers, 2021?” For your reference, we will be presenting you with a sample resume as well.
Steps to make the perfect resume for Freshers, 2021
We thought of presenting a list of the important steps in order to answer the question, “How to make the perfect resume for freshers, 2021?” Here are the steps:
More blogs:
1) Go through the job advertisement thoroughly –
The first step to make the perfect resume for freshers in 2021 is to go through the advertisement thoroughly. By “thoroughly”, we mean jotting down the keywords and keyphrases that the job ad contains. How will that help you? That will help you highlight the skills that match the requirements as given in the job description.
2) Mention your contact information –
The next step is to mention all your contact information that includes your name, home address, contact number, email address, and ensure you include your contact information at the beginning.
3) Add links to your professional networking or social networking accounts –
By adding links to your professional networking sites or social networking accounts, you help your recruiters get additional professional information that may even help you move ahead in the screening process.
4) Write a description that best describes you and your professional profile –
This is an important step to make the perfect resume for freshers in 2021. Let the recruiters know about you, your professional aspirations, and your achievements in your college or university.
5) Mention the soft skills and hard skills that you have –
Mention the most relevant soft skills and hard skills that will help your recruiter make a decision quickly. For example, for a marketing profile, make sure you mention your communication skills, leadership skills, and negotiation skills.
6) Mention your educational qualifications –
This is the next step on our list of the steps to make the perfect resume for freshers, 2021. Mention your educational qualifications along with the duration (dates) and scores obtained. If you have a scholarship or a certificate, mention that too.
7) Mention your internship/work experience –
The next step is to mention any internship experience that you may have along with the duration. Even if you are engaged in any part-time job, ensure you mention the same.
8) Let your potential employers know about your hobbies and interests –
By mentioning your hobbies and interests, you let your recruiters know about the person you are.
9) Mention additional skills –
This is the next step to make the perfect resume for freshers in 2021. By mentioning additional skills like knowledge of foreign languages or any professional certification, you will make it easier for your potential employers to decide if you are a perfect fit for the job. This will help you especially when you apply for a multinational company that works with various linguistic groups.
10) Let your potential employer know that you are a fast learner –
Your employer knows you may need help learning new skills. But, they need assurance of the fact that you are capable of learning those skills well and quickly. That is why it is important to tell recruiters why and how you are a fast learner. The best thing to do is give practical examples from your life to highlight the same.
11) Revise before submitting your resume –
Yes, you need to apply your revising skills even while applying for a job. How? Look for grammatical errors or factual errors in your resume before submitting it. After all, perfect resumes always stand out.
12) Refer to similar resumes –
This is the next step on our list of the steps to make the perfect resume for freshers, 2021. As a point of reference go through resumes for profiles similar to yours and ensure your resume does all the talking on your behalf.
13) Ensure your resume is not too long –
Let’s admit it! Recruiters do not have a lot of time that they can use to spend on a single resume. So, ensure your resume is short and crisp, and preferably one-page long. Also, ensure the usage of business fonts (Arial, Calibri, and others) and colors that go with a professional resume.
These are some of the steps that will help you answer the question, “How to make the perfect resume for freshers, 2021?” confidently.
Sample Resume
Name of the Applicant (You)
House Address of the Applicant
Email Address of the Applicant
Contact Number of the Applicant
Links to professional networking or social networking platforms
A Brief Description of the Applicant
(Introduction of the Applicant to the recruiter)
Soft Skills
(Skill #1)
(Skill #2)
(Skill #3)
Hard Skills
(Skill #1)
(Skill #2)
(Skill #3)
Educational Qualifications
Degree/Certification
(Name of the Institute) (Date of Joining to Date of Completion)
Internship/Work Experience
(Name of the Organization)
(Date of Joining to Date of Completion)
(Job title)
Hobbies and Interests
(Hobby #1)
(Hobby #2)
(Hobby #3)
Languages Known (Read/Write/Speak)
(Language #1)
(Language #2)
(Language #3)
Original link here and more information here: https://techflashes.com/how-to-make-the-perfect-resume-for-freshers-2021/ | https://medium.com/@ronakspecscale36/how-to-make-the-perfect-resume-for-freshers-2021-46cb9bffdb71 | [] | 2021-11-30 15:17:23.796000+00:00 | ['Freshers', 'Tips', 'Blog', 'Resume', 'Students'] |
Data Analysis and Visualisations using R | Data Analysis and Visualisations using R
Step by Step Guide for Beginners
Are you starting your journey in the field of Data Science? Do you need to know how to get started with R? Are you intrigued by Data Visualisations? If yes, then this tutorial is meant for you!
Overview & Purpose
With this article, we’d learn how to do basic exploratory analysis on a data set, create visualisations and draw inferences.
What we’d be covering
Getting Started with R Understanding your Data Set Analysing & Building Visualisations
1. Getting Started with R
1.1 Download and Install R | R Studio
R programming offers a set of inbuilt libraries that help build visualisations with minimal code and flexibility.
You can download R easily from the R Project Website. While downloading you would need to choose a mirror. Choose R depending on your operating system, such as Windows, Mac or Linux.
It is super easy to install R. Just follow through the basic installation steps and you’d be good to go.
For an easy way to write scripts, I recommend using R Studio. It is an open source environment which is known for its simplicity and efficiency.
Launch Screen after starting R Studio
1.2 Install R packages
Packages are the fundamental units created by the community that contains reproducible R code. These include reusable R functions, documentation that describes how to use them and sample data.
The directory where packages are stored is called the library. R comes with a standard set of packages. Others are available for download and installation. Once installed, they have to be loaded into the session to be used.
To install a package in R, we simply use the command
install.packages(“Name of the Desired Package”)
1.3 Loading the Data set
There are some data sets that are already pre-installed in R. Here, we shall be using The Titanic data set that comes built-in R in the Titanic Package.
While using any external data source, we can use the read command to load the files(Excel, CSV, HTML and text files etc.)
This data set is also available at Kaggle. You may download the data set, both train and test files. In this tutorial, we’d be just using the train data set.
titanic <- read.csv(“C:/Users/Desktop/titanic.csv”, header=TRUE, sep=”,”)
The above code reads the file titanic.csv into a dataframe titanic. With Header=TRUE we are specifying that the data includes a header(column names) and sep=”,” specifies that the values in data are comma separated.
2. Understanding the Data set
We have used the Titanic data set that contains historical records of all the passengers who on-boarded the Titanic. Below is a brief description of the 12 variables in the data set :
PassengerId: Serial Number
Survived: Contains binary Values of 0 & 1. Passenger did not survive — 0, Passenger Survived — 1.
Pclass — Ticket Class | 1st Class, 2nd Class or 3rd Class Ticket
Name — Name of the passenger
Sex — Male or Female
Age — Age in years — Integer
SibSp — No. of Siblings / Spouses — brothers, sisters and/or husband/wife
Parch — No. of parents/children — mother/father and/or daughter, son
Ticket — Serial Number
Fare — Passenger fare
Cabin — Cabin Number
Embarked — Port of Embarkment | C- Cherbourg, Q — Queenstown, S — Southhampton
2.1 Peek at your Data
Before we begin working on the dataset, let’s have a good look at the raw data.
view(titanic)
This helps us in familiarising with the data set.
head(titanic,n) | tail(titanic,n)
In order to have a quick look at the data, we often use the head()/tail().
Top 10 rows of the data set.
Bottom 5 rows of the data set.
In case we do not explicitly pass the value for n, it takes the default value of 5, and displays 5 rows.
names(titanic)
This helps us in checking out all the variables in the data set.
Familiarising with all the Variables/Column Names
str(titanic)
This helps in understanding the structure of the data set, data type of each attribute and number of rows and columns present in the data.
summary(titanic) | https://towardsdatascience.com/data-analysis-and-visualisations-using-r-955a7e90f7dd | ['Samarth Malik'] | 2019-04-17 13:09:02.842000+00:00 | ['R Programming', 'Analytics', 'Titanic Dataset', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization'] |
Your Isolation Could Actually Be Killing You | Being alone is not the same as being lonely.
Solitude can be very healthy, especially if you live a busy work life. And some people choose to spend time on their own without others around. After all, everyone needs their own personal space to unwind and reflect.
Being lonely, however, is a different subject matter entirely. You can be alone without feeling lonely and you can be lonely without being alone.
This can be a sign that the social connections you have in your life are not fulfilling your friendship needs.
Social media can contribute to loneliness.
More and more people these days decide to go on a social media break because they know how toxic it can be to our mental health. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram can encourage a more convenient way of communication; however, it can also lead to a less social society as well.
If you have 458 friends on Facebook, how many do you actually contact on a regular basis? Think about that one.
Social media can be good or bad — depending on how you use it. And for those who are prone to stress and anxiety, spending too much time on it can make you feel lonely.
Try to set up face-to-face interactions with your friends in real life. If you’ve been spending too much time on your own, meeting up with someone in person for even an hour or two can uplift your spirits.
Going for a walk helps refresh your mind and body.
Despite what some people think, you don’t necessarily need a membership at a fancy gym to work out.
Walking is a simple and affordable activity that has been proven to offer many health benefits for the body and the mind. And you probably already do it a lot on a regular basis.
But if you find yourself sitting at home working for days without a real break, take a step outside. Like all forms of exercise, walking releases endorphins and it will help decrease your sensitivity to stress.
Because walking increases blood flow to the brain, it’ll help you concentrate and think better. This is great for writer’s block, especially when you are feeling stuck on a particular story you want to write.
Loneliness can also be accompanied by boredom.
If you live by yourself and work from home, it can become quite boring. Picking up a new hobby can bring you excitement, especially if you’re getting to know people at the same time.
In the past, dancing has helped me get out of my comfort zone. It’s a good social activity that is both energizing and fun.
I also spend a lot of my time traveling to foreign countries and finding new restaurants to venture off to.
Trying different things all the time will help keep your life exciting. Even if you take a new route to work every morning, it can help refresh your perspective.
Stay away from people who suck away your energy.
I’d rather spend my time around people who are easy-going, positive and have nice things to say about others. Being around toxic people who like to stir up drama can make you feel lonelier than you were before.
It’s hard to stay happy around people who make you feel uncomfortable or undermine your self-respect. Pay attention to who you spend your time with and don’t be afraid to let them go if you find them toxic to your mental health.
Work on building meaningful relationships that make you feel connected, nurtured and cared for. | https://medium.com/narrative/your-isolation-could-actually-be-killing-you-436d870b48c2 | ['Katy Velvet'] | 2019-12-03 16:53:41.591000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Loneliness', 'Life Lessons', 'Health', 'Psychology'] |
ALL ABOARD THE IL 76 `CHICKEN RUN’ TO LADAKH | For those of us unfamiliar with the ethereal landscape of Ladakh, this strategic part of Jammu & Kashmir is connected to the rest of India by two roads, one through the Kashmir valley via Kargil and the other through Manali over the scenic Rohtang pass. However, since these roads are fair weather friends, the denizens of the Indian Army, and even locals, who inhabit the region, get to travel between Leh and Chandigarh VIP class, courtesy the Indian Air Force, in a special IL 76 aircraft that has an amazing capacity to carry animated and inanimate cargo, loaded in random sequence for reasons of national security and mood swings of the air force loadmaster.
Such organised chaos makes this flight, to use a cliché, a flying circus, in which humans of varying shapes, sizes and rank, chickens, fruits and vegetables, frozen goat and sheep carcasses, even eggs and milk, travel together in perfect harmony. Strict instructions to use seat belts and have an oxygen mask handy, in case of early entry by the rarified atmosphere of Leh into the aircraft, are followed neither in letter or spirit. Getting comfortable on a senior officer’s suitcase or a sack of potatoes, as both have a remarkable similarity in content, offsets a lack of seats. The cargo is loosely anchored with the express purpose of ensuring that it shakes, rolls or is cajoled into every nook and corner of the aircraft at takeoff. Instances of finding a few Gurkha Johnnies stuck in the wing hydraulics on return to Chandigarh are not uncommon.
Timing is crucial if one is to get on the Chicken Run early or if one wishes to spend a few extra days in Chandigarh. The flight leaves at first light (that is early morning for those uninitiated in military lingo) just as the crotchety old members of the Chandigarh Golf Club are teeing off, usually rattling the dentures of one of these venerable gentlemen, who might recant a silent prayer or shout a few curses at the gallant men off to defend the frontiers (it all depends on whether he holes his putt or not). To catch the Chicken Run you must wake up by 2.30 AM. Alternately, you must plan your previous evening with an unsuspecting host who not only feeds and waters you but is also forced to drop you straight to the loading area at 3.30 AM as that is the only option for him to get rid of a singing yahoo (i.e. you!) other than looking for the 12 gauge. Do remember that this method usually works only once even with the best of your friends.
The flights out of Chandigarh are two each morning, one going to Leh and the other to Thoise, which is the base camp for the Siachen Glacier. It is Air Force protocol to ensure that baggage meant for one location usually ends up at the other, so do keep a hawk eye on your precious roll bedding (officers — for the use of) otherwise it will be of use to no one. There are unconfirmed reports of pilots taking vicious pleasure in unloading luggage through the escape hatch somewhere over the Himalayas as revenge for having to fly the ‘pongos’ so early each morning. Officers always get special treatment. On days when there are two flights to Leh, the loadmaster, grinning from ear to ear, supervises the alternate loading of a sack of supplies and one Indian Army officer on the first flight following his own version of Sir Chetwode’s dictum “…you go first always and every time.”
Pilots play their own game of “Who’s the Boss” with the load manifest officer. They do very scientific calculations for a sacred term called the “All Up Weight” that changes based on variables such as the pilots getting breakfast on time, senior air force VIPs and other significant passengers who might need a last minute ride, and special cargo (read household goods of a newly posted VIP) that need to be transported to Leh.
The load manifest officer has a dedicated loading party who seem to be in a hurry to get back home, throwing the luggage from the tractor to the aircraft hold in next to no time. Such is their strength and dexterity in (mis) handling heavy luggage that they could challenge any wrestler without the blink of an eye. Maybe they are ex nightclub bouncers because no passenger ever dares to request them to be careful with their miserable pieces of luggage.
Winter flights have their own peculiar charm with many practices of boarding and de-boarding, as weather conditions in Leh change faster than women’s fashion. You might takeoff from Chandigarh and after an uneventful flight land right back at Chandigarh without ever knowing it, all the time marvelling at the newfound neatness and planning of Leh town, which you briefly glimpsed as you came in to land. Your arrival back in Chandigarh is greeted with whoops of joy by none other than the local ‘boy’ at the tea bar who sees the return of 250 hungry passengers as heaven sent business for the next 24 hours.
And yet, after all the trials and tribulations one faces in catching the Chicken Run, once you are onboard all is forgotten. Humans and animals drift off to dreamland in next to no time, lulled by the rhythmic engine vibrations. Soon another sound rises above the din of the powerful Illushyin engines; that of 200 odd passengers (and a few chickens) snoring in all their glory. | https://medium.com/@birender-dhanoa/all-aboard-the-il-76-chicken-run-to-ladakh-e12b0751e10d | ['Birender Dhanoa'] | 2021-05-27 07:09:56.298000+00:00 | ['Humour', 'Army Life'] |
How To Design Your Own Marketing Materials Faster | How To Design Your Own Marketing Materials Faster
For those who love to DIY and don’t wish to outsource graphic design
As I speak with many prospects in the efforts to grow my graphic design business, I’ve come across many businesses that prefer to outsource design work as well as many people who’d rather do it themselves.
There’s no need to hire a graphic designer if you wish to learn to design and create your own marketing materials. On the one hand, it’s one way to keep your business costs lower. On the other, you can truly pick up these skills on your own. I used to be you, completely self-taught. Which means, you can do it too.
Although I have a team of designers now, I used to spend hours fixing photos, pixels, colours, arranging text to fit images and making thousands of redo and undo actions on Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator.
Designing stuff to me is like sipping tea and doing nothing. Like meditation, it is that therapeutic. I could do it for days at one stretch. It could be the same for you. Dabbling with design tools takes time, but you may prefer doing it yourself because you simply enjoy the process.
Even with countless advice saying you should outsource design work to save you more time and sanity to grow your business, you just want that freedom and control to be able to shift things around whenever you want. I get that.
But you are not a designer by profession. You have a business to run, and you want to get things done fast, not freaking four hours trying to be someone you are not and to find your day gone, never to get it back again. You want to quickly learn the ropes to know where to put things together so that your designs pop.
You are your worst client and perfectionism gets in the way…a lot!
Chances are you could be a startup founder, content creator or a marketing professional who simply needs to churn out branded designs to promote your content and business on an ongoing basis.
You know you need to pretty up your materials because no matter how great your content is, nobody is going to take a second look at them unless they look awesome. That’s also one reason why Canva exists and many people like you are loving it.
Truth is, you don’t need to have design talent if there’s such a thing at all. Though it isn’t that easy if you are not a born designer, artist or if you can’t draw. It’s not impossible if you do the prep work before you start designing your own marketing materials:
#1: Put yourself in your audience’s shoes
Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash
If you are just getting started, who do you work with? If you have an existing business, who are you currently working with and who do you serve? If there’s rule #0, it could be “identify your audience”. Do good research at this point and you will save hours each day down the road.
When you are creating marketing materials, you may be giving away valuable information, telling a story and something that has to be effective in getting attention. It should not just be attractive to your eyes, but to those whom you wish to work with and those who will benefit from your products and services. Most likely you don’t serve everybody, hence you should create something that’s for your target audience only.
In the early days, I used to design for everybody and that cost me at least two hours every day changing the design multiple times. I was never satisfied with the design because when I got inspired by a nice design I saw somewhere, I adapted it to my own marketing materials. Then I got inspired by another and changed the designs.
#2: Create a brand guide of your audience
University of the Arts Helsinki via Behance
A brand guide does not have to be complicated or too elaborate. You may call it a style guide or a brand style guide. It’s commonly known to be distributed to contributors who are working on your materials and need references on how to create content for you.
Even if you are working on your designs alone, you need one because you want to bring your message across in one tone today and the same tone on another day. You want your marketing materials to be consistent all the time across all channels. This guide is your reference to have the end in mind first before you design anything.
Without a brand guide, you’re like a lost captain of a ship with no compass out in the open sea. In the case of design, without this guide, you have to spend time thinking about what colours, fonts or illustrations to use every time you want to create something. That slows you down even before you start working on your designs.
With a brand guide, all you need to do is create it once with your target audience in mind. Every time you design something to show your target audience, be it a lead magnet, blog post featured image or social media image, you already have a guide to refer to.
#3: Improve your workflow
Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
You may need to design an email newsletter today and a workbook tomorrow. They may be different items used for a different medium, but their graphic elements, images, textures and layout can be repurposed.
All designs may have different text or images, but there’s always a common workflow to create each of them, which you will want to improve upon to design anything faster.
Here are ways to improve some common workflows: | https://medium.com/design-your-story/how-to-design-your-own-marketing-materials-faster-aef906262511 | ['Marilyn Wo'] | 2019-10-07 18:43:13.958000+00:00 | ['Branding', 'Entrepreneur', 'Startup', 'Design', 'Marketing'] |
My Mom. My mom is a quite interesting person… | Hello how are you? Good? Well, have you ever heard a 10 year old write a letter to the public about his mom’s birthday probably not. The regular person would write a letter to their mom saying the same thing, You are wonderful You are amazing blah blah blah. Now what if they did the same thing in an cooler way, and told it to the public. That would be kind of cool right? Well then if you think it’s cool why don’t I do it here and now.
My mom is a quite interesting person. She has worked hard all her life. Did you know My mom had actually woken up at 5 everyday when she was around 5. She did that every single day until college. She was born in a small city called Pilibhit. It is in UP, India. She had gone to Shishu Mandir as her elementary school till 5th grade. Vidya mandir was her middle school and her high school. She had studied college in Banasthali Vidyapith. That was her childhood and education.
After I was born, we went to the U.S (me,my mom,and my dad) . We went to New jersey and lived there for around a year. Then we went to CA. My mom went to college again, and got her second degree. She had found a job in Google. Yes I know what you are thinking wow my mom’s amazing. Well that’s true, but wait for the end. She worked there for 3 years. Isn’t that cool. Just so you know what google is (which probably everyone in the world knows) is a search engine. Now she is working at Facebook. Clearly, My mom is hard-working.
Isn’t that like the type of life story that a person from a documentary has. I guess she should be in a documentary. Well, Happy birthday Mom, and I love you. | https://medium.com/@ayaankhandelwal123/hello-how-are-you-e475ee0d6f2b | ['Ayaan Khandelwal'] | 2020-11-06 21:47:01.728000+00:00 | ['Mom', 'Happy Bday'] |
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