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Trump Fights the Democrats from the Left on Covid Relief Bill as Squad Fails Us On It | Trump Fights the Democrats from the Left on Covid Relief Bill as Squad Fails Us On It Mcguiremitchell Dec 24, 2020·8 min read
Congress is committing political suicide over COVID relief, or rather the lack thereof. That, or we as a population really are as gullible and docile as they must assume us to be — and we will reelect politicians who think corporations deserve trillions in aid while average citizens should be given just the scraps. Then you have those saying they do want more relief for the average citizen, but they don’t want to fight for it because the GOP senate republicans might kill it. More over, this Covid Relief bill being packaged with other bills, and the complexity of it has drawn stark criticism for a variety of reasons relating to the confusion it has created.
As summarized by Govtrack.us,
This bill was originally introduced as the United States-Mexico Economic Partnership Act. That text passed the House and Senate in late 2019 and early 2020 (but in non-identical forms). In December 2020, the text of the bill was replaced with the omnibus appropriations and coronavirus relief bill. The original United States-Mexico Economic Partnership Act text was retained in Title XIX and passed along with the rest of the revised bill.
Somehow, what started as an economic trade partnership with Mexico evolved into the legislative host for not only the defense budget of 2021, but the covid relief package as well. This complexity has lead to some confusion and convoluted reporting. For example, many online were saying that the corona relief bill included half a billion dollars for Isreal, when really that was the NDAA which was packaged with the Corona relief bill — although there were 2 seperate votes, one with the full package, and one on the legislative cocktail without the NDAA.
To add to all that, Govtrack.us says that the bill is the 5th largest bill in US history, while AP says its “by far the longest bill ever”. Seem confusing? Alongside the media, even Trump is “conflating” the two, as NBC reported,
“In the four-minute video, Trump trashed the legislation for including, among other things, what he said was ‘$85.5 million for assistance to Cambodia; $134 million to Burma; $1.3 billion for Egypt and the Egyptian military, which will go out and buy almost exclusively Russian military equipment; $25 million for democracy and gender programs in Pakistan; $505 million to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Forty million for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., which is not even open for business, $1 billion for the Smithsonian and an additional $154 million for the National Gallery of Art.’ All of those items were in the spending bill, not the Covid-19 bill, which Trump seemed to be conflating.”
Trump would go on to say that “This is far more than the Americans are given. Despite all of this wasteful spending,” To be fair, the two bills were bundled together in legislation. Thomas Massie would actually tweet on the matter- which he deems “legislative malpractice”:
Brad Polumbo would add,
After the Senate and House announced they had come to an agreement, which included a 600 dollar check to every person, Trump shot their hopes down by actually demanding congress do more for the people than the 600 dollar crumbs — given its been 8 months since the last relief bill. In a video posted to twitter, Trump stated
“I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 (direct payment) to $2,000 or $4,000 for a couple. “I’m also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items from this legislation and to send me a suitable bill, or else the next administration will have to deliver a Covid relief package…And maybe that administration will be me, and we will get it done.”
Disregarding that last statement, the point is he is right for pointing out that the American people are being failed and that congress can do better. A 2000 dollar one time payment is a compromise. Corporations might have been able to manage alright with their trillions of dollars, but small businesses and individuals are struggling despite the CARES act which Dore calls the largest upwards transfer of wealth in History. Ironically, Trump is the one having to push democrats to fight for just a step towards equitable distribution of government resources. Meanwhile, establishment-backed democrats like Klobuchar are on television saying its an assault on Americans,
This demand for $2000 being for the obvious welfare of people isn’t how the mainstream media frames it. Take this CNN quote from the recent article, “Trump throws Covid relief bill in doubt by asking Congress to amend it”
“Still, Trump’s message appeared to be greeted favorably by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who tweeted: “Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks.” “At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 — Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent,” she said. “Let’s do it!”
“At last”…because Trump has been the one preventing the democrats from bringing it to the floor right? A roll call, like you would normally a bill you want to actually reach the senate, right? No, you will introduce by unanimous consent, where the chances of actually succeeding in your proclaimed goal are reduced to a sliver? Wait, this just in, Breaking news:
Both the media and democrats pass off the blame to senate republicans, saying that they wont pass a 2000 direct stimulus payment and that they need to compromise with Senate republicans. House democrats began looking to propose a bill by Unanimous consent, to deal with the media pressure, although it was highly unlikely to pass, designed really for the illusion of effort.
“Democrats would try Thursday to pass a separate bill that would send out $2,000 direct payments. Because many members of the House are out of town, Hoyer said, leaders will try to pass the bill by unanimous consent, but that means any single member can kill it. The fate of such a bill is unclear in the Senate.”
“Before Trump spoke, all signs and expectations had been that he intended to sign the relief bill as soon as it lands on his desk, possibly later this week. White House aides, in fact, said as much. While Trump didn’t explicitly say he would veto the legislation, his remarks suggested that he might. If he does, lawmakers might be able to override his veto, but if he simply refuses to sign it, the bill might die.”
The bottom line is that while house democrats claim they wanted the 2000 dollar checks, they were willing to compromise to the republican senate and yield their power — refusing to put pressure on them — whereas Trump seems to be challenging the Senate and demanding they step up to the plate. While the mainstream media frames this as all the senate GOP’s fault, others accuse house democrats of weak advocacy and claim their actions betray their words.
Richard Medhurst posted a video of him tearing the squad to pieces for a minute and a half, which honestly inspired this piece. It would begin:
“The consolidated appropriations act is a senate amendment to the original house resolution 133 bill. There is some confusion about this because H.R.133 is also called the United States-Mexico Economic Partnership Act.”
Medhurst would then explain that there were two separate votes on the 21st.
“One of them was containing the amendment from the senate with divisions B, C, E, and F, and the other, without them. Divisions B, C, E, and F, this is stuff like the the defense budget, money for space force, all this nonsense.
The squad, Tulsi Gabbard, most democrats they voted against H.R.133 with divisions B, C, E, and F. Alright? That is house roll 250. However, in house roll 251..Every single goddamn democrat, except Rashida Tlaib and Tulsi Gabbard,voted for it.
Now you might think, ‘oh yeah, that’s great’. No — its not — because the $600 stimulus crap, all of the covid stuff, is not in those divisions, its in M and N. So they got rid of the pork and the spam, but they are still okay with giving you 600 dollars, After eight fucking months! After they spend weeks saying its not enough and blaming the republicans.”
Medhurst would go on to reference Omar’s recent tweet, published just days before the roll call votes, where she says “every member of congress should be shamed”, because a $600 check is embarrassing, and we see other countries with less money doing $2–3k.
“And then she goes and fucking votes for it anyway.” — Highlighting the discrepancy between her words and actions. What’s the point of standing for something if you won’t fight for it, at all?
As much as the democrats need senate republicans, senate republicans need the rest of congress. The Senate GOP uses its leverage, but where are the house democrats employing any leverage? Tweeting about the mean evil GOP doesn’t count.
Shifting targets, he would continue,
“And AOC, she put up this poll last week on twitter, about whether 600 was enough..and 95% said no. And then she said if ‘you don’t like that, you need to pressure your representatives, and tell them that.’ ”
At this point, his eyes went wide, mad with sanity in an insane world…He leans in the mic to say, “And then she fucking voted for it anyway”.
“The best part, they didn’t even read the fucking bill! The bill is 5000 pages long”
“She says ‘we dont have time to read it’, and she still fucking votes for it.”
“Look man, you are either corrupt, or you are an idiot. You cannot be doing this shit. Even if the bill was one goddamn page, it doesn’t contain enough relief for workers. This is insulting. They fucking knew that. They didn’t read it. And they voted for it anyway.
Then Trump, this clown, comes and “out-lefts” the democrats, and the progressives. He wants 2000 dollars. You know what the squad’s message is in 2020?
It’s ‘fuck you — no healthcare. We’re not forcing Pelosi’s hand.’ It’s ‘fuck you, there’s no Covid relief. Here, have some crumbs.’ And you think that’s okay. You’re a fucking cuck. I’m not even American, and I’m offended on your behalf. How the fuck are you not offended?
Regarding the collective $25 million bump for House representative salaries, Kyle Lacio would tweet,
Others would relate the Unanimous vote support from the squad to the #forcethevote issue on #M4A
It only makes sense to end this article by doing two things. 1. Stating the obvious — the current system isn’t working, and trying to reform the system while always “compromising”(again, a 2000 dollar one time check should and would be a compromise)is not working. We need to stop “compromising” and start forcing compromises. Because both parties are failing us, and these “compromises” have gotten us nowhere, and never will.
2. There are viable alternatives, but they won’t be talked about by the current politicians in congress. Maybe because part of seeking alternatives to this broken system is by replacing the current politicians. Parties even. It is no secret that both the GOP and DNC are corrupt corporate parties that do not have the interest of the people in mind, but rather that of special interests. If the banks or oil companies or other big corporations were in trouble, they would have gotten bailed out months ago…(Oh wait, they did). But here we are. Still waiting. | https://medium.com/@mcguiremitchell32/trump-fights-the-democrats-from-the-left-on-covid-relief-bill-as-squad-fails-us-on-it-tlaib-52ad9f4a1788 | [] | 2020-12-24 18:54:57.576000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Democrats', 'Economics', 'Trump', 'Politics'] |
Nightingale Needs Illustrators! Plus, Some Tips for Your Next Data Visualization. | Our readers know better than anyone that creating a data visualization is no small task. There’s data collection, planning, execution, tinkering, finalizing, and then of course presenting and effectively communicating about your work. Any one of those steps can take your visualization in any number of directions, which means that (a) the possibilities are vast, and (b) that process is critically important.
Nightingale has always hoped to foster a diverse and collaborative community that can trade stories and share ideas about that process, and this week we published stories that highlight some of the many ways to approach creating a data visualization.
Phil Hawkins started us off with Part 1 of his series, “So You Want to Pick a Data Viz Platform,” which focused on the pros and cons of Microsoft Excel and offers some instruction for creating visualizations in the platform. And even if you know everything there is to know about Excel, Phil’s modern retelling of The Three Musketeers that is set in an office environment will change your mind.
In his piece “Diving Into Global Information Design: Cosmology in the Large,” Paul Kahn took us on a journey back in time with an exploration of Cosmology as designed across the ancient world. His examination of monuments and narrative through an information design lens, and the beautiful images throughout the piece, can inspire how we conceive of our own design projects.
In his pursuit of something a little more unique than a traditional line graph, Joseph Berkner came across the Path Chart. His piece, “What’s the Path of Your Data,” considers its virtues and teaches you how to make your own.
Ripley Cleghorn thinks you should close the computer for your next data visualization—and we happen to agree with her. Creating your next data visualization by hand will force you to spend more time with your data and ignite your creativity, even when you open the laptop back up.
And if you’re wondering why this is so important, make sure to read Allen Hillery’s interview with Ben Jones, who worked at Tableau for six years before founding Data Literacy, LLC. Jones shared some of the most powerful user stories he’s come across in his career, and explains why “advancing data literacy can be one of the most important contributions of our generation and the next few generations to come.”
A Couple Announcements:
Nightingale is looking for illustrators to help us make our stories as beautiful as they are meaningful. If you are interested, we encourage you to get in touch and apply by filling out the form embedded in the link above.
And, as always, we are looking to add to our team of writers. If you would like to write for us, or even just want to bounce some ideas around, please let us know! | https://medium.com/nightingale/nightingale-needs-illustrators-plus-some-tips-for-your-next-data-visualization-5d32c46aac71 | ['Isaac Levy-Rubinett'] | 2019-10-04 19:13:04.909000+00:00 | ['Tableau', 'Data Visualization', 'History', 'Data Science', 'Programming'] |
<Sub/Tweet> Evaluating LinkedIn’s New B2B Lead Generation Ad Type | It’s been a few months since LinkedIn released its long-rumored lead generation form ad unit, allowing B2B social marketers to streamline user experience and leap ahead in the advertising funnel.
I myself have leveraged this new ad type a number of times already and have some thoughts to share — hopefully you’ll find some points to take and apply to your own campaigns.
Customize Form with Your Brand’s Privacy Policy
Since LinkedIn’s lead gen product has been introduced much later than that of Facebook, the professional network had the opportunity to learn from other’s early shortcomings. In doing so LinkedIn has allowed marketers to include their own brand’s privacy policy within each form. This may seem to be an unimportant detail but it really is the difference maker for whether clients would approve the use of the LinkedIn lead generation ad type to begin with. When introducing a client to this new concept, be sure to make this a lead-off point.
Auto-populating forms — better than your average site form!
That’s right — LinkedIn’s lead generation ad type comes equipped with info auto-population capabilities! Just list the kind of information you’d like to receive in the specified form’s settings and users will be able to submit the form with one click/tap after reviewing. This is obviously a major plus that will persuade many marketers to move their B2B lead generation efforts off their website to LinkedIn.
Set expectations with clients before using this ad type
If brands have been exposed to the Facebook lead generation ad unit in previous campaigns, it’s possible they’re expecting the same CPAs from the LinkedIn counterpart. For that reason it’s important to set realistic expectations in regards to what this new ad type can accomplish on LinkedIn.
This has just as much to do with the nature of B2B paid social audience targeting as it does effectively planning and managing a lead generation campaign. On average, I’ve seen CPCs as high as $13.00 and CPMs around $44.00 on LinkedIn. Accordingly, average cost-per-lead values on LinkedIn can be astronomically higher and will vary based on your project budget and target audience. The one question you need to keep asking yourself is: How and where can we find the value in a LinkedIn lead generation campaign? Each advertiser’s answer will be different, but it will usually involve finding a balance between campaign reach, message resonance, and how you intend to use these leads in the future.
Most imporant — I’m seeing improvements
Despite my cautioning above regarding the budget it takes to make the new LinkedIn lead generation ad type, I’ve already seen improvements in performance. My campaign cost-per-lead values have decreased on average and I’m able to scale and pace campaigns using this new tool. Accordingly, I have found myself beginning to allocate more budget to campaigns using the lead generation form.
These improvements in ad type performance are the result of LinkedIn users becoming more familiar and comfortable with the lead form. They have seen the form materialize more often than before (thanks to marketers ramping-up their use of the product) and many more now feel more comfortable interacting, resulting in an increase in form opens, form completions, and conversion rates across the board.
More CRM integration coming soon
Marketers can currently export leads generated from given campaigns in order to send along to clients or upload themselves to certain CRMs. There are automation tools out there to make this process easier and more streamlined. I recommend Zapier. In coming months, I expect LinkedIn to offer more in terms of connectivity with advertiser CRMs that may eventually deem these third-party services unnecessary.
Don’t trust me? A/B test for yourself
When this product was first released I was skeptical as well. So I set up a simple test — run simultaneous lead generation campaigns on LinkedIn:
> One regular sponsored content update campaign optimizing for website visits to a branded page with a form.
> One regular lead generation form campaign.
With equal budgets and the exact same creative and copy on the sponsored content updates for each campaign, as well as the exact same audience targeting parameters, run for at least three weeks and observe. Keep in mind, I ran this test back in early April 2017, so the results may be even more noticeable for you. You should find reason to begin to at least assign a portion of your B2B lead generation budget to using the form product. In my opinion, it’s already worth a full campaign budget and significant consideration for 2018 planning.
Had a similar/different experience? Leave a comment! | https://medium.com/the-subtweet/the-sub-tweet-evaluating-linkedins-new-b2b-lead-generation-tool-25a5f310002 | ['Joey Vara'] | 2017-10-03 15:00:37.570000+00:00 | ['Lead Generation', 'B2b Lead Generation', 'Paid Social Media', 'B2b Marketing', 'Linkedin Marketing'] |
Revival of an introvert | If you are going through the same circumstances as me, this article is for you.
I am a nerd. That’s what everyone called me during my bachelor's degree. Back then, I was going to school, and that’s it. You can say that my full-time job was “a student.” I was also an introvert who wasn’t “fun.” I was constantly faced with harassment, discrimination, or even bullying from my teachers or peers.
That pressure is precisely what made me sometimes hate what I was doing. I think we can all relate to the traditional studying pattern of just going to school, and that is it.
According to a study in the United States, 96% of students in university are involved in extracurricular activities. The other 4% just went to school, and that’s it. The Tunisian case is the opposite of that. I belonged to the majority of Tunisian students that were not engaged in extracurricular activities. How many of you were introverted until you were involved in extracurricular activities?
Watch this if you want to learn more about AIESEC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3cHVnfK0ZQ&ab_channel=Youth%27More
What changed for me was when I started my master’s degree, I joined AIESEC. I joined because the old me wasn’t someone that I liked, and I wanted that change. I mean, we all want to experience life and see new things these days! What I loved is what others learned at school. I learned all that and more in AIESEC, an international organization that works on developing leadership in youth.
My AIESEC family
It taught me more than what I studied in school. I started this journey by learning new skills like how to write an email. I know you’re thinking: this is a basic task. But it was through these emails or sometimes calls; I got the chance to network with important people from Tunisia or internationals. They had a huge impact on me. They taught me new things about their culture, and most importantly, they shared their knowledge and experience.
Also, I learned how to be polyvalent by learning marketing strategies, designing skills, or improving my writing skills. I loved most the ability to lead a team and impact their experience in life, even if it was a small impact.
That is why I encourage people not to stick to what they do in school. In some cases, that can only bring them down and not explore their potential, seeing that in universities, we are subjected to limited knowledge. Also, as I said, it is better to learn through experience since it’s more enriching, and we learn more through them.
So for every student out there, I say: Let’s escape our everyday lives and embark on a new journey together. And most importantly, share your experiences. | https://medium.com/@khechinisarah/revival-of-an-introvert-574f498633e0 | ['Sarah Khechini'] | 2021-08-27 15:56:35.013000+00:00 | ['Aiesec', 'Students', 'Change', 'Introvert', 'Experience'] |
When will my Siglo tokens be distributed? | Since we announced Siglo at the beginning of the year, we’ve been working non-stop to launch the network. Like most innovation, this is an iterative process. The Siglo wallet beta out and people sending Siglos … But you’re wondering: When will I get my Siglo token? If that’s you, then this post is for you.
Siglo Wallet is live with thousands of beta testers, mostly in Mexico and Colombia. Beta is an important word: the wallet is running on the Ropsten testnet. Some beta users have been issued Pre-Tokens, and they will be convertible 1-for-1 for Siglo tokens after the TGE.
If you are a non US resident and have Android phone, you can download it here. We’ll be adding new functionality in the coming weeks for Android, and an iOS app is in private beta. If you want to join the iOS beta, email [email protected].
We are getting closer to the public release of our protocol. This year has been a hell of a ride so far, but fighting for digital and financial inclusion isn’t a piece of cake. While we don’t have an exact date for the token generation event (TGE), we want to be transparent and share with you our schedule. Thanks for all your support and patience.
…So when will I get my Siglo tokens? | https://medium.com/siglo/when-will-my-siglo-tokens-be-distributed-a86a3f21e626 | [] | 2018-11-09 23:34:03.853000+00:00 | ['Blockchain'] |
A Strategy for Successful New Year’s Resolutions | A Strategy for Successful New Year’s Resolutions
Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels
A little over 188 million Americans plan to make a New Year’s resolution for 2021. That’s over half of the population! So if you aren’t planning to make one, chances are you know someone who will. The most popular resolutions are health-related. People have ambitions to exercise more, eat less, and lose weight.
These resolutions are well intentioned — who doesn’t want to live a healthier life? But they will likely fail. That might sound harsh, but it’s supported by the data. Research shows only a dismal 4 to 8 percent of people achieve their resolutions.
Why Do We Fail?
My bet is you’re not surprised by the low numbers. And a lot of people avoid making resolutions because of it. Interestingly, some people make resolutions even though they know they’re going to fail. This is not a small group. An estimated 23.1 million Americans, or just over 12% of those who will make a resolution this year, admit they will be unable to keep their resolutions but they still make them.
There is no shortage of reasons explaining why so many people fail. And there is plenty of good advice for how to be successful. Yet, it doesn’t seem to help. The failure rate remains consistent year to year. If we know the problem, and we know how to fix it, what’s going on?
The problem is most of the advice focuses on the wrong things. The standard advice says people fail because their New Year’s resolutions are unrealistic. Most will also give strategies for how to create better, more realistic resolutions. Again, this is not wrong per se, but it is treating the symptoms instead of the disease.
It is true that unrealistic resolutions set you up for failure, and it is necessary to know how to make realistic resolutions. But that is not the core problem, it is just the visible result of the problem. People still quit reasonable resolutions. The real reason is much deeper, it extends down to the core of who you are as a person.
The reason New Year’s resolutions fail at such a high rate is because they are disconnected from people’s values.
Values vs Goals
To understand this argument, lets start with some definitions. According to the Oxford Dictionary, values are “a person’s principles or standards of behavior; one’s judgment of what is important in life.” In other words, values are your internal compass directing you through life. They help you make sense of the world, providing context to what is right and wrong. Some common values are honesty, kindness, and respect.
New Year’s resolutions are goals, they are something that we want to attain to better our lives. Oxford defines goals as the “objects of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.” Goals are the destination, where you want to go in life. They can be short- or long-term, easy or difficult. For example, a goal can be running a marathon, losing 10 pounds, or learning to play the guitar.
Regardless of the type of goal, you work to achieve it. And once you’re successful, nothing can undue it, it can’t be taken back. When you complete a marathon, it’s a fact that no one can take away. You can check it off your bucket list.
Rootless, Surface-Level Goals
Values differ from goals in some significant ways. First, you can’t complete a value or check it off a list. Honesty is never finished, you can be honest one minute and dishonest the next.
But perhaps more important to this argument, a value by definition is something that is important to you. Every action you make is connected back to a value, whether you recognize it or not. Goals, on the other hand, may not always be important to you. And by important, I mean down-in-the-core-of-your-being important.
You probably make goals that do not resonate with your core being more often than you think. For example, running a marathon because your friend convinced you it’d be fun. Wanting to lose 10 pounds because you think it’ll make you more attractive. Volunteering to collect donations for your kid’s school because no one else will do it. Goals like these may be important to you on a superficial level, but to have a high likelihood of success, they need to be connected to something deep down in the core of your being.
New Year’s resolutions that fail (…and any goal for that matter) fall into this “important, but not really important” category. As a result, they lack the roots that extend down into what is most important to you. This makes it easy to walk away when things get hard. So unless running a marathon is connected to an important value, it will be hard to muster the motivation to complete a 15 mile training run on a rainy Sunday morning. It’s will be much more enticing to sleep in.
By focusing only on superficial, surface-level goals for your resolutions, and not on your values, you risk trying to improve something that may not be that important to you in the first place. This is a type of extrinsic motivation and it is not sustainable. You are setting yourself up for failure.
Find Your Values
How can you be successful? The first step to achieving your New Year’s resolutions is identifying your values. Once you know your values, you can connect your resolutions to them. Anchoring resolutions to your values will shift your motivation from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation, giving you tenacity to push through and overcome barriers that will inevitably pop up.
Although every decision you make is connected to a value you hold, identifying your values is not something we do everyday. It takes time to sit and reflect on what is truly important to you. So if you have not done an exercise like this before, here are a few suggested steps to get you started:
Begin by writing down your values. If you need help thinking of values, this is a good list with over 200 different values to get you started.
Now it is time to prioritize them. Look back over your list and star those that are most important to you. Whittle the list down to three to five that you can focus on.
Use these values as your internal compass to make decisions about what resolutions are appropriate for you. For example, if you value discipline, starting a regular morning workout routine may be a good fit. However, if you value spontaneity, you will likely not succeed with a structured exercise routine.
If you find that your resolution is not connected to your values, then you either need to change your resolution or be more honest with yourself about what you value (and repeat the first two steps).
Finally, be sure to reflect on a regular basis because while values are stable, they can change, especially if you experience a life changing event (e.g., marriage, new job or loss of job, birth of a child, serious illness).
The time you take to learn and prioritize your values will pay dividends all year long. But it is still not a panacea. Achieving your resolutions will still be hard, difficulties will come and you will be tempted to quit. And while there is no guarantee you will be successful, knowing that your resolutions are anchored to something deep down in the core of your being should be just enough to help you push through to the end. | https://medium.com/@dpschary/a-strategy-for-successful-new-years-resolutions-7af45465401f | ['David Schary'] | 2021-01-04 01:09:55.039000+00:00 | ['Values', 'Self Improvement', 'Goals', 'Habits', 'New Year Resolution'] |
How iOS 14 Will Impact How Mobile Advertisers Fight Ad Fraud | Digital advertisers are always worried about ad fraud in their campaigns. The good news is that the programmatic mobile in-app advertising space has recently made great strides in the fight against ad fraud. However, the not so good news is that some of these advances in combatting ad fraud may be stopped in their tracks once the changes to the way identity is managed in iOS 14 gets implemented by Apple sometime in 2021.
This is not to say that ad fraud will run rampant on iOS devices as soon as these changes go into effect in 2021, as many fraud-fighting techniques and strategies will continue to be just as relevant and effective. For instance, pre-bid anti-fraud efforts will not be impacted. But the changes Apple is introducing could impact some key fraud prevention options and activities.
The Role of Device Identifiers in Fighting Fraud
As we’ve highlighted previously on our blog, perhaps the biggest change coming related to iOS 14 is regarding the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). These changes to Apple’s new mobile operating system coming in 2021 will require each app installed on a device to display a pop-up message that specifically asks iPhone and iPad owners to opt in to having their personal data collected and shared in this manner. As a result of this mandatory, one-time prompt, it’s expected that most people won’t opt in for all the apps they have on their device.
The IDFA is used right now in a variety of ways, including being leveraged to fight advertising fraud. That’s because behaviors (and related metrics) observed across the device can determine if an actual person interacted with an ad and is exhibiting plausibly human behavior.
In particular, advertisers will be keeping a very close eye on post-bid fraud like click injection in a post-IDFA world. For instance, if a device (or, rather, a single device ID) has a battery that is never below a 100% charge over its entire observed lifetime — even as it generates ad clicks, app installs, etc. — then it’s reasonable to assume it’s fraudulent.
Another example: for companies running user acquisition advertising for their app, one way to determine if a legitimate person downloaded an app is to look at post-click behavior like click-to-install time and mean time to install (MTTI). Is the person opening and using the app after installing it to their device, or at least 24 hours after downloading it? With IDFA, it’s possible to gain a holistic look at total on-device behavior.
But what happens when IDFA is taken out of the picture? In the above use case, if that UA advertiser is tracking installs using SKAdNetwork, then they have a limited view into post-install behavior from client-to-server transactions — just one reason why it could be trickier to determine if an install was legitimate or not.
Predicting the Future of Fraud Fighting In App
Of course, it’s critical to note that we’ve so far only talked about one type of mobile ad fraud. There are more types of in-app ad fraud besides post-install fraud, and many of these can be combated even without IDFA information. For instance, it’s still very much possible to ensure that real people are viewing an ad in full, that the ad was displayed to a real person, that the stated advertiser and publisher are legitimate, that the traffic is real, etc.
Plus, all of the pre-bid anti-fraud measures that have been implemented over the past few years are still valid. App-ads.txt and sellers.json still work in a post-iOS 14 world. In addition, mobile measurement platforms and other third-party vendors, alongside industry bodies like the Trustworthy Accountability Group and Adjust’s Coalition Against Ad Fraud, are still functioning and fighting fraud on the proverbial front lines.
And even in regard to install fraud, there are other ways to fight it without device-level data. For one, it’s still feasible to see if an ad click was legitimate or not, which can help suss out a potential click sniping or click injection scheme. Advertisers (and the wider ad tech industry) can also remove the incentives for these kinds of ad fraud to occur. This will hopefully lead to multi-touch attribution being more widely used too.
While mobile ad fraud may never disappear fully, it has been declining for some time now. The expected depreciation of IDFA will impact the anti-fraud status quo, especially around post-bid fraud, but the industry will continue to find new methods to boost trust and transparency in the ecosystem no matter what. | https://medium.com/@matt-kaplan-inmobi/how-ios-14-will-impact-how-mobile-advertisers-fight-ad-fraud-db45066755fc | [] | 2020-12-08 04:00:12.500000+00:00 | ['Idfa', 'Mobile Apps', 'Advertising', 'iOS', 'Ad Fraud'] |
Real-life intrigue in Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill | I hope you had a happy and safe Halloween! If you’re still looking for more Halloween-themed or spooky books, grab them from my blog.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.
I recently read Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, an account of his investigation into and exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s long history of sexual abuse in Hollywood, of the cover-ups that took place over decades by not only Hollywood, but by police departments, prosecutors, and the media.
It’s fascinating to read Farrow’s account of his investigation, the many women he talked to, and the way the story was suppressed by his news agency. He also lays out the corporate espionage and pressure tactics used against him by Weinstein, who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to a private investigation firm to surveil and investigate Farrow himself to see who he was talking to and what he knew.
It was the exposure of Weinstein that triggered the sudden explosion of the #metoo movement in October 2017. It really is shocking to hear how sexual harassment and abuse was ignored in Hollywood (and certain political campaigns and other industries). It was widely known, but allowed to go on for decades.
Catch and Kill, by the way, does not refer to killing women, but the practice of buying the exclusive rights to someone’s story in order to suppress it rather than to publish it, a practice that was used over and over again by certain media outlets in order to protect Harvey Weinstein.
I returned to… a story about the Hollywood “casting couch” — performers being harassed or propositioned for transactional sex at work… “You should look at Rose McGowan, she tweeted something about a studio head…” Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
In 2017, a routine network television investigation led to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family. This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse. And it’s the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement | https://medium.com/@pdworkmanauthor/real-life-intrigue-in-ronan-farrows-catch-and-kill-619b2b9de8a8 | ['P.D. Workman'] | 2020-11-03 14:04:49.761000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Ronan Farrow', 'Metoo', 'Harvey Weinstein', 'Reading'] |
I Charged The Down-payment For My Truck On A Credit Card. | I Charged The Down-Payment For My Truck On A Credit Card
Photo Credits: Credit Karma
I have a confession to make.
As much as I’d like to continue to discuss relentlessly why you should only buy assets and avoid liabilities.
I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t talk about the what, why, and how that led me to become more financially responsible.
So, here goes nothing.
I charged $2,000 on my credit card for the downpayment on my 2020 Toyota Tacoma, and today, I’d like to share why I did it and what I learned.
I began to realize I have a problem
Photo Credits: HuffingtonPost UK
After, I left the dealership that day; Driving home in my brand new ride. I didn’t feel the excitement I thought I’d feel by purchasing a new vehicle.
For most, this is one of the biggest purchases we will make in our lifetime, and as so, generally, the excitement phase/period of euphoria will last at least about a month.
Not for me.
Immediately, that night I began to question the decision I made, and I asked myself? Why the hell did you just go by a $40,000 dollar vehicle and put the damn downpayment for the vehicle on a credit card?
Voices of my father lecturing me like Rich Dad began to echo in my head as the first rationalization I came to realize at that moment hit me. I was broke.
However, despite me knowing that, my desire to gain guided the decision process in purchasing a vehicle.
While at the dealership, I fixated myself and imagined how much utility and fun I could have in my new truck doing everything from picking up furniture for my family to enjoying the offroad mud trails.
I fell into the exact trap car salespeople want you to slide into.
Only now do I realize there is nothing wrong with desiring to have more than what you may currently have.
But, it’s important to be able to know how to properly restrain that desire so that you are able to delay gratification and pay for things only when you have the money to purchase them outright.
This is an attribute of personal finances that, unfortunately, keeps so many people in the rat race.
And so, I learned to:
Only purchase consumer items once you have the ability to pay for them in full.
A New Financial Low Inspired Change In me
If there’s ever been a point in my life where I just felt a strong intrinsic desire to change myself; The day I came home from purchasing my vehicle was the day I knew I couldn’t continue down the path I was on.
I began investing time in broadening my financial literacy and understanding.
And yes, I was raised in a household with two certified public accounts, where I was taught about the value of maintaining credit, paying your bills, and balancing a budget.
Still, I felt like I need to expand my horizons even more.
So, I began with a Google search on personal finances and budgeting, and I read/bookmarked every worthwhile article I could on those topics.
Later, I purchased best-selling author Robert Kiyosaki’s famous book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, and I found it to be a remarkable read on personal finances.
I was seeking to become an expert in the field of personal finances for my own benefit, and in the process, I realized, first, there is a shortage of young people who understand finances, and two, there is a lot of bad information on the internet as well.
So, I set my life’s mission, goal, and purpose to help young people create a brighter future financially and otherwise.
The takeaway is this: Through my darkest hour, I found my greatest passion.
Material Possessions Cannot Make Us Happy, In fact, the opposite can happen.
Learning this about myself also brought about another self-actualization moment in my life.
Material possessions cannot make you truly happy.
The credit card I used for my downpayment was a card that I just received in the mail. As you know, to bait you into using it for spending, I was granted an introductory no-interest period for 9 months.
In my mind, I figured what the hell? I can pay my downpayment off way before the 9 months no interest period is up. No harm, no foul, right?
Reflecting on this made me come to the understanding that my financial literacy was severely lacking, and my financial decisions were going to lead me down a path where I would never have anything worth having.
So at once, here I was, on the brink of turning 22 years old. $40,000 dollars worth of auto loan debt and $2000 dollars worth of credit card debt and hardly any way to pay for it.
I was driving the vehicle I thought would be the pinnacle turning point of my life. The decision I thought would make everything better.
But, in the opposite fashion. It made everything worse.
In truth, it’s a scary feeling to have when you know that you have financial obligations; however, you possess no means to pay for them.
For days after the purchase, I began to psyche myself out over how I would make the monthly payments and pay the credit card debt off.
Suppose any of you have been here. You know finances can bring a huge amount of stress to one’s life, and let me tell yall.
Stress can kill you.
But, here’s the kicker.
I learned:
Stress, in any form, comes from making bad life decisions.
If you analyze any of the stressors in your life and sincerely question the source of those stressors. What you more likely will find is a bad decision that was made on your behalf.
In the case of me, my decision to purchase a $40,000 vehicle led to the anxiety and frustration that came later.
It’s okay, though, because nobody is perfect. But we’ve got to own our mistakes, learn from them, and do better.
I’ve seen news stories of people taking their own lives because of the financial stress they have allowed to overwhelm them.
We only get to live one life. Health is our greatest asset. Why should we let ourselves lose that by worrying about how we are going to pay other people?
The best way to solve a problem is to not have one. However, if you’re like me and you’ve found yourself in a situation. Don’t let that situation get the best of you.
I’m not killing myself for anybody
Say what you want. Call it however you’d see fit. But, I rather let my truck get repossessed than psyche myself out worrying about how to pay for it if my circumstances ever come to that.
Now, no, I am not advocating being irresponsible financially. All I am really saying is: Accept the worse, and after you’ve accepted the worse. Try to think of ways to improve upon it.
Yes, I took a page from Dale Carnegie.
No debt, no bill, is worth your health.
Thanks for reading :)
This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions. | https://themakingofamillionaire.com/i-charged-the-downpayment-for-my-truck-on-a-credit-card-heres-what-i-learned-3ce821fef8e4 | ['Joseph C. Malone'] | 2020-12-27 12:38:27.395000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Finance', 'Personal Finance', 'Finance And Banking', 'Life'] |
How To Set Goals To Keep Them | Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash
New Years Resolutions. We make them. We break them. We rinse and repeat. In fact, this process happens so consistently, it’s almost a running joke for many.
The thing is, resolutions don’t have to be impossible. Or impractical. They’re simply choosing a goal and going after it. So why do we tend to give up on them year after year?
When we continually miss our goals, often, it has to do with our mindset. How we think, how we plan, and how we execute those plans are all dependent on the mindset we’ve adopted from the outset of our goal.
2020 was a difficult year for many of us. And changing our mindset after such a turbulent year may feel impossible. After all, we’re grieving, worried, anxious, and stressed. All of that can add up to feeling trepidation and caution towards even trying to figure out what 2021 might bring. But that makes finding the right mindset even more important.
Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash
Review our success
When we think about what we want in the new year, we tend to focus on the things we didn’t do or achieve in the previous one. This is the year we get that promotion or learn that hobby or lose that weight. This is a natural inclination for most of us. I didn’t get the things I wanted last year, so I will try twice as hard to focus on attaining them this year. The problem with this strategy is that what we’re actually doing is focusing on failure as our path to success.
It’s possible to turn failure into success, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. But if we haven’t gone through the steps to change how we’re thinking about these failures, it’s going to be difficult to overcome the obstacles we already encountered that resulted in failure the first time. One way to change the way our brain interprets the year is to actually focus on everything we succeeded at as our starting point.
This is actually a powerful exercise in changing our mindset and for this exercise, no success is too small. Write down personal accomplishments and professional achievements. Did we give a roll of toilet paper to a neighbor? Write it down. Managed to do laundry before we ran out of underwear? Write it down. Helped keep our kids on track during Zoom class? Write it down. Finally figured out how to make a killer loaf of sourdough? You got it, write it down.
One of the most powerful systems in our brain is our reward system. This is the system responsible for how good we feel whenever we accomplish something. And that same system is triggered simply by remembering reward events. That means by focusing on our successes, we are reminding ourselves of these reward events and getting the powerful release of dopamine with every item we list. By deliberately focusing on our success, we can use this system to harness optimism and joy, which will help us look at the upcoming year with the same emotions.
Photo by Faris Mohammed on Unsplash
Change our focus
While we’re riding the joy of success, this is the time to reflect on what didn’t work. This may seem like following our positive thought process with a negative one, but we don’t want to simply list our failures. Instead, we want to think about what didn’t work and why. This is where we open ourselves to the lessons and this is how we can turn failure into success.
Emily Fletcher from Ziva Meditation encourages us to change the question from “Why is this happening to me?” to “Why is this happening for me?”. It’s changing one word, but that word changes our mindset from a negative to a positive. It tells our brain the event isn’t what matters. It’s the lessons we can learn from it.
Our brain doesn’t like an open loop. If we ask ourselves why things happen to us, it will seek out examples to uphold this assertion. Have you ever bought a new car and suddenly noticed the same make and model as you drive around? Our brain is attuned to notice the things we tell it are important, so if we love dogs, we’re going to notice dogs. This same principle works here. By changing the question we ask ourselves, our brain will then seek out everything it can learn and gain from each event we examine, both in past events and the present.
There’s always something we can learn in every event, both good and bad. Instead of focusing on the events themselves and asking why those events happened to us, we can change the way we see the event. This changes our mindset from one where we always see the downside to one where we are always seeking out the lessons and opportunities.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
Find the goal
Now we open our dreams and put them on paper. Write down everything we want to accomplish. And we mean everything. This list isn’t limited to things we think are possible or realistic. Instead, this is a list of every single thing we want for the year. And like we did with our success, write down the small goals, the big goals, and everything in between.
Focusing on a long list of potential goals may feel overwhelming, but if we open ourselves to exploring what we want without limit, we may end up being surprised what lands on that list. Often, we choose goals that we think are achievable or that we think others want us to achieve. These aren’t bad goals, but they may not be the right goals for us.
There are certain reactions we should have that tell us if a goal is right for pursuing. First, it should be a stretch. Wait, what about all those small goals we wrote down? We still pursue those. But those probably aren’t the goals holding us back or that we give up on. So those aren’t the ones we’re going to talk about right now. We’re talking about the goals that are going to make us work for a victory.
Beyond being a goal we need to work towards, a goal should make us nervous. When we feel just a little afraid, our brain shifts out of the comfortable habit loop and moves into active executive functioning. We are alert, ready to take action, observing details we would have otherwise overlooked. This change from passive to active helps keep us in a readiness mindset, which is imperative when we’re working towards a goal. If we move back to complacency, we’re unlikely to feel motivated enough to take action which leads to us abandoning our goals.
All of this becomes obvious when we write down all our possible goals. We’ll know what stands out, what makes us nervous, what excites us. And this tells us what we really want in that moment. Making a goal for something we don’t feel passionate about isn’t likely to reap success. Maybe we want to learn a language but what we’re really passionate about is traveling to that country. Learning the language can be an action step within the goal we actually want to pursue. Once we discover what is driving our motivations, we can identify the goal that ignites us, making it much more likely we’ll be successful in the end.
Photo by Felipe Furtado on Unsplash
Make a plan
It’s normal to think of setting a goal as a finite thing. We want to lose weight, so we’ll go on a diet and go to the gym every day. We want to learn a foreign language, so we’ll buy a program and practice every day while we commute. We want to write a book, so we’ll sit down and write 1,000 words every day. Sound familiar?
But this is the problem. The plan is actually so much more important than the goal. These are the action steps we need to take in order to reach the goal. If we want to win a race, we can’t say my goal is to win and expect to win. We need to train, and training is a multi-layered process that requires us to know where we’re at, where we need to be, and what we need to do in order to get there. So what does that mean?
First, write down where we’re at. If we want to learn a new language, do we have any experience or knowledge at all of the language? Next, break the goal down into small bites. We won’t become fluent in a day. Or a month. Maybe not even a year. Having a goal that is too big, or too broad will actually make it more likely we’ll quit. Remember the reward system in our brain? It needs wins in order to solidify a behavior into a habit. That means we need to give it benchmarks to celebrate small success in order to reach the bigger success. For our language goal, this might mean celebrating when we finish a module. Or can say and define one hundred words. It doesn’t matter what the milestone is, just that we have them and they’re in manageable increments.
At this point in our plan we have the following:
Our goal Where we’re at in terms of our goal Bite-size mini goals Defined rewards/celebration for reaching each mini goal Scheduled check-ins
This is a good start to our roadmap to success, but we still aren’t ready to dive into action. Now we need to examine what can go wrong and what we can do to make it go right.
Obviously we want to envision success. But part of envisioning success is knowing that things will go wrong. We’ll have bad days or bad weeks. Work will be stressful, making our energy levels drop. We’ll fight with our partners or go through a difficult time with our kids. Finances may get tight. And that’s not counting the thousands of little things that can build up and drain our energy and motivation daily. In order to make sure we can fight through these obstacles and difficult times, we need to think about them when we’re in a calm, focused state of mind.
Divide a piece of paper in half and write down everything that we can think of going wrong on one side. It doesn’t matter how trivial or how gigantic. And leave a space for unknowns. Because unknowns will happen too. On the other side, write a solution. What will we do when we get home from work exhausted with zero motivation to finish that language module? Do we take a break? Do we finish five minutes? Ten minutes? Do we meditate or do some yoga and evaluate on a case by case basis? Or maybe we simply use that day to test ourselves on previous lessons. It doesn’t matter what the action is, as long as we have an action.
Finally, we need to identify who and what our resources will be, and when we’ll need to use them. Some of this will be in the beginning. We’ll need to purchase a language program or enroll in a class. What are the action steps involved? Do we need a textbook, workbook, or language dictionary? Is there a tutor we can hire either now or when we’re stuck? Who are they? What are their rates? Do we need to save for this? What about when we’re feeling low? Do we have someone who can give us a pep talk when we desperately need it? Maybe our best friend can commit to checking in once a month. Or maybe we need to look for an accountability coach for weekly or even daily check ins.
Making a plan for success is trying to answer as many questions as we can about the reality of executing our goal. The more questions we can ask ourselves, the more detailed our plan is and the easier it will be for us to gain momentum when we need it most. One of the main reasons we fail to reach our goals is because we didn’t have a plan. Or we only had half a plan. Remember, our brain loves organization. Writing down as much detail as possible means we don’t have to struggle for that information at a time when we don’t have the tools or resources to come up with it. It reminds our brain here’s the plan, which relieves stress while giving us a sense of direction, purpose, and control. We don’t have to stop moving forward so we don’t lose our momentum.
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash
Be flexible
Once we have our plan in place, we begin. Do the first action step. Get to the first milestone. Celebrate and do your check-in.
A check-in is our re-evaluation. Remember when we said things will go wrong? They probably haven’t by our first check-in, but it’s more than likely that our reality is a little less glamorous than our dream. What does that mean? Well, it means that envisioning success rarely includes the downright feeling of drudgery actually achieving that dream involves. Training for a race? There’s going to be a lot of sweat. And sore muscles. And blisters. Learning a new language? There’s a lot of repetition. And mistakes. Reality is often far more dreary than we imagine success will be.
Use your check-in to imagine the dream again. Add the sparkles back. Remember why we want this and what it will mean to succeed. If we reach a check-in at a time when we missed our milestone, celebrate the progress we’ve made. We’re in a different place than when we began, and that’s amazing. But we also need to evaluate why we missed our bite-size goal. Maybe we hit a roadblock. Or we came up against an obstacle. This is when we open up our plan and figure out what’s going wrong. And how to fix it. Failure is never the end, it’s simply an opportunity to evaluate what went wrong so we can adapt our next steps.
Even if things are going right we need our check-ins. Maybe we’re hitting our milestones but they aren’t motivating us the way we thought. This is when we want to ask ourselves the same questions we asked when setting our goal. What do we want? Why is success in this thing important? What does success look like? It could be that maybe our passion changed. Or that we thought learning a language was how we would get a promotion but a new department opened up instead. In order to get to the heart of these questions, we need to look at our resources and ask ourselves if we need a pep talk or to bounce our frustrations off of a different perspective.
We want to be flexible in adjusting our goal but we want to be sure we’re doing it for the right reasons. That we aren’t quitting when reality gets dull, chasing only the initial spark of excitement. Because while change happens and things will always go wrong, passion will also wane. And that’s completely normal. It isn’t a sign to quit, in fact, a lot of time it’s a sign to keep going.
Our brain is incredible at adapting. And when we get good at something, it tends to want to create habits. These are routines it does without active thought. We don’t think about brushing our teeth, we just do it. But when we’re striving for a goal, a lot of the action steps become routine. Except we are keeping it active. Which means it can feel excruciating to do. One. More. Time. It’s hard. And it’s supposed to be hard. We chose the goal that was going to push us. Challenge us. And this is part of it.
Finding this distinction between shifting goals in a productive way versus giving up at the wrong time for the wrong reasons can be incredibly difficult to discern. Especially when we’re in it. We’ve heard the saying, we can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s appropriate here. And this is the value of regular check-ins. We can determine the problem and decide how to move forward.
Maybe the goal stays the same but the action steps were missing one or more factors. Or aren’t working any more. We’ve already accepted that we have unknowns standing in our way, so while we won’t have the answer written down, we’ll have the time to problem solve accounted for along with a list of resources to utilize. Flexibility means we give ourselves permission to ask questions, to evaluate change, and make adjustments to our action steps so we are always moving forward.
Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash
Conclusion
Setting a goal or resolution isn’t a set it and forget it process. It requires changing our mindset and planning our success. No matter how passionate we are, things will get hard and things will go wrong. The key to setting a goal so we can reach them every time is having a plan. Taking the time to prepare for both the small wins and minor failures helps ensure we don’t lose our momentum, no matter what happens along the way. | https://kwikbrain.medium.com/how-to-set-goals-to-keep-them-17b9df138f94 | ['Jim Kwik'] | 2021-01-01 02:09:01.321000+00:00 | ['New Years Resolutions', 'Kwik Brain', 'Neuroscience', 'Goal Setting', 'Brain Training'] |
Children Cute Hair Accessories Set Baby Fabric Bow Flower Hairpins Barrettes Hair clips Girls Headdress Gift | product description
Cartoon and Cute — Cartoon pattern hair accessories, small and lightweight, beautiful and cute, durable and unfading for long times wearing.
No Hurt to Hair — High elastic, moderate length, extremely soft, not easy to fall off, suitable for baby’s hair amount.
SIZE of — Approx 8 inch; Package include: 36 pcs Hair Clips+Hair Ties; Color: Bright Yellow(Show as the picture); One bow weight: Approx 36 g/pcs
Occasion — This is the perfect gift bows for any occasion! Birthdays, Baby Shower, Baby Gifts, Christmas and more.It is easy to clip onto hair, clothing, headbands, hats, handbags, shoes, etc. The “alligator teeth” of the clip keep it from slipping off
It’s for you — The mini hair clips for babies can be clipped in your hair with the featured alligator clip on the back whatever your hair is thick or thin.Great for any DIY project as the grosgrain bows are easily maneuverable to your preference
Features:
Make you dress up quickly.
To add charm to your overall image, make you are more confident and elegant.
An excellent headband for girl to wear in party, festivals or in daily life.
Note:
Due to the difference between different monitors, the picture may not reflect the actual color of the item.
Type 2: Headwear
Type 3:Hairpins: Type 4:Hair Clips | https://medium.com/@thingsababyneed/children-cute-hair-accessories-set-baby-fabric-bow-flower-hairpins-barrettes-hair-clips-girls-7980adcd9f19 | ['Things A Baneeds'] | 2019-11-14 15:17:21.685000+00:00 | ['Baby Products', 'Fashion'] |
1 | Hello everyone or whoever is reading this id first like to start off by sharing what the purpose of these entries are. I am a 17-year-old high school senior I live in Florida and I struggle with mental health issues. I feel like a lot of people my age especially right now need to know that they aren’t alone and that you’re not crazy. So basically this is just gonna be me talking about things that I’m struggling with or what happened to me or what’s happening to me basically just a dumping pot for all of the stuff thats happening while I figure out adulting . Soooo if that something that you’re interested in I encourage you to keep reading | https://medium.com/@jvmete/1-590568ab2626 | [] | 2020-12-24 05:50:33.292000+00:00 | ['Adulting', 'Growing Up'] |
Having a Baby During Lockdown Gave Me Parenting Peace I Didn’t Know I Needed | Having a Baby During Lockdown Gave Me Parenting Peace I Didn’t Know I Needed
Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash
My son was born on Easter Sunday in a year when everything was broken.
We hadn’t left the house in over a month. Schools were closed and we didn’t know when they’d reopen. Sports and play dates were canceled indefinitely. We’d lost my dear father-in-law unexpectedly only weeks before. Times seemed darker than I ever remember them being — for my nuclear family, my American family, my human family.
For nine months, as the baby rolled and kicked inside me, I’d had visions of what it would be like to parent my third and final child. We’d wake up early and drive his sisters to school, then nurse and play when we got home. Maybe I’d get some writing done while he took his morning nap. At the gym, I’d drop him in the baby room so I could go to my workout classes.
He’d quickly get used to being in the infant seat because we had places to go after school and on the weekends. He’d be my buddy at gymnastics for four hours a week, happily playing in his stroller until he was ready for a snooze. We’d have hats and sun shades and blankets and stroller toys so he could be comfortable in all kinds of weather. All that normal third kid stuff.
Except, when you’re smack in the middle of a global pandemic, there is no such thing as normal.
He was two weeks late, and I can’t say I blame him. I wouldn’t have wanted to come out into this mess, either. If I could, I would have kept him in even longer. I only needed a few extra months. A year, tops. Just until life settled down again.
He finally did arrive, in an epic display of synergy between mother and baby. The midwives, and even my husband, stayed in the background while the baby and I took center stage. I was in tune with my baby, and my body, as I went about the day’s routine. Opening Easter baskets with the girls and baking banana bread as I timed my contractions turned to rocking and breathing on the staircase and bouncing on the exercise ball until my water broke. I was free to change position when I needed to, get in the water when I was ready, and push when my body told me to. After two hospital births, it was an experience I didn’t realize was possible.
Life didn’t settle down after he was born. Rather than subsiding within a few months, the pandemic stretched on, shrinking and swelling and morphing with each passing day.
We had nowhere to go and nothing to do. The infant seat got a mere dozen uses before he outgrew it, mostly for trips to the doctor for checkups. There was no school, no gymnastics, not even trips to the grocery store. All the constraints and outside expectations I’d expected to have to implement suddenly dissolved into thin air.
And it was beautiful.
We’d wake in the morning as the sun’s rays peeked in through the blinds. He’d be fussing in bed, not yet awake, and just hearing our voices would send his lips curling up into a smile. Once he’d been changed and fed, his excitement to greet the day radiated through the house, the warmth of his squeals touching even the sleepiest among us. As I tended to breakfast and cleaned the kitchen, he would transmit his glee to the rest of the family. Between playing peek-a-boo on Daddy’s lap, sticking out his tongue and giggling at his sisters, and chatting with his favorite stuffed frog, his mornings were full.
Not having to prescribe a schedule meant I could work in sync with his signals. I was able to take it slow and really watch him and learn that, for example, when he rubbed his face on my chest it meant he was ready for a nap. Or that if he woke up crying, a pacifier and a pat on the back would help him go back to sleep until he was ready to be awake. After he was well-rested he’d pop up his head, look for us, and smile, and we would start the whole routine again.
The girls, nearly seven and nine years older, adored their baby brother. On their breaks from remote school, they took turns baby-sitting, giving me the luxury of time to myself that I never expected to have. I could take a shower, do my hair, or work out with only a little interruption. The girls’ coos and the baby’s squeals would drift in under the closed door, and a smile would tickle my lips.
Having little contact with anyone outside my house, I no longer felt subject to other people’s expectations about how the baby should be sleeping or eating. I felt freer than ever to just do what worked for us. I fed him throughout the day without checking the clock. When he woke in the night, I nursed him without obsessing over his sleeping habits. Without a set alarm, it just didn’t matter that I lost a little sleep feeding him. And, most nights, I enjoyed the quiet closeness I felt with him as we rocked and dozed together.
One day flowed into the next, a time lapse of breakfasts and naps, giggles and nighttime snuggles. Soon he’ll be a year old and the only thing that’s changed in our world is him. He’s taken his first steps and gotten his first teeth but never been inside a store or a coffee shop.
Nothing about my son’s first year has gone according to the rigid plan I concocted while I was pregnant. But being forced to dismantle my idea of normal has been good for me — for all of us. The world around us is still reeling and restless, but one look at this little boy’s impish grin and clear blue eyes is enough to anchor us, if only for a few moments.
My son was born at a moment when everything seemed wrong with the world. And while his arrival couldn’t fix the brokenness, getting to know him has helped us remember to find enjoyment and peace in the day to day, in a way that wouldn’t have been possible in “normal” times.
And that’s the one thing about this awful year I wouldn’t change for the world. | https://psiloveyou.xyz/having-a-baby-during-lockdown-gave-me-parenting-peace-i-didnt-know-i-needed-679f8ee691c0 | ['Nicci Kadilak'] | 2021-04-12 20:23:17.547000+00:00 | ['Birth', 'Children', 'Motherhood', 'Parenting'] |
File Download in flutter. | File download in Flutter.
The below gif represents, how to download or view a file in Flutter.
I have created a sample file model.
class FileModel {
String id;
String name;
String fileUrl;
FileModel({
@required this.id,
@required this.name,
@required this.fileUrl,
});
}
2. Using the file model, I have created a list called fileList and added a few items to the list.
List<FileModel> fileList = [
FileModel(
id: '1',
name: 'image',
fileUrl:
'https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/JPEG_example_flower.jpg',
), FileModel(
id: '2',
name: 'image1',
fileUrl:
'https://images.all-free-download.com/images/graphicthumb/tulip_flowers_highdefinition_picture_01_166861.jpg'
), FileModel(
id: '3',
name: 'image2',
fileUrl:
'https://images.all-free-download.com/images/graphicthumb/tulip_flowers_highdefinition_picture_01_166861.jpg',
), FileModel(
id: '4',
name: 'pdf file',
fileUrl: 'http://www.africau.edu/images/default/sample.pdf',
),
]; 3. So, I have displayed list of files inside column. Column(
children: fileList.map((file) {
return _fileRowWidget(file);
}).toList(),
) 4. Inside column I have return a _fileRowWidget to display filename and download button. Widget _fileRowWidget(FileModel file) {
return Row(
children: [
Expanded(
child: Container(
margin: EdgeInsets.all(15.0),
child: Text(file.name)),
),
InkWell(
onTap: (){
_onTap(file);
},
child: IconButton(
icon: Icon(Icons.file_download),
),
)
],
);
} 5. Ontap of download button, _onTap(FileModel file) function is call. _onTap(FileModel file) async {
String fileURL = '${file.fileUrl}';
String fileType = fileURL.split('.').last.toLowerCase();
if (file.fileType == 'jpeg' ||
file.fileType == 'jpg' ||
file.fileType == 'image' ||
file.fileType == 'png') {
showCupertinoModalPopup(
context: context,
builder: (BuildContext _context) {
return _imageViewWidget(file.fileUrl);
});
} else {
await launchUrl(url: fileURL);
}
} This is the main function which required parameter file. Using file url we can get the file extension which is stored in string fileType.According to extension I am checking the filetype. If file extension is jpeg, jpg, image or png only open file otherwise call launchUrl function. First we have to look into widet _imageViewWidget(file.fileUrl).This widget displayed image and close button, ontap of close button it will pop the context. Widget _imageViewWidget(String fileUrl) {
return Material(
child: BackdropFilter(
filter: ui.ImageFilter.blur(
sigmaX: 1.5,
sigmaY: 1.5,
),
child: GestureDetector(
onTap: () => Navigator.pop(context),
child: SafeArea(
child: Container(
color: Colors.transparent,
padding: EdgeInsets.fromLTRB(
30.0,
50.0,
30.0,
50.0,
),
child: Column(
children: <Widget>[
Flexible(
child: PhotoView(
backgroundDecoration: BoxDecoration(
color: Colors.transparent,
),
imageProvider:CachedNetworkImageProvider(fileUrl),
loadingBuilder:
(BuildContext context, ImageChunkEvent event) =>
showLoader(),
),
),
Center(
child: IconButton(
icon: CircleAvatar(
backgroundColor: Colors.orange,
child: Icon(
Icons.close,
color: Colors.white,
),
),
onPressed: () => Navigator.pop(context),
),
)
],
),
),
),
),
),
);
} To display image I have used PhotoView, for that I have added dependency in pubspec.yamal file. Also added dependency for cachedNetworkImageProvider for chaching the network image. 6. If the filetype is not image, then call function launchUrl().
for that we have to first add dependency of url_launcher. static Future<Null> launchUrl(
{@required String url}) async {
try {
await launch(url);
} catch (e, s) {
print(' Unable to open url');
}
}
In this way, we can view or download the file. | https://medium.com/nonstopio/file-download-in-flutter-ad5932779f3 | ['Snehal Masalkar'] | 2020-12-01 12:32:30.105000+00:00 | ['Flutter', 'Flutter App Development', 'Mobile App Development', 'Download', 'Mobile Apps'] |
CEO of Porn: How deepfake pornstars became crypto-tokens | © Harem Token
Have you ever dreamed of becoming a porn magnate? Of having a vast supply of computer generated nudes to be traded in the blockchain? To create content from scratch catering to your a-priori, pre-defined preferences? Then enter the zone of Harem Token:
“who of you bought 3 jasmines yesterday? only 2 left now lol”
“you also gonna put in men an trannies bro? need disabled also. people with no arms or legs… even a missing ear”
“need more teeth representation. too many with good white teeth. need more snaggletoothed bitches”
“speaking of racism, can we get more representation bro. need some browns yellows n black with big tits”
These are all quotes living inside a Telegram group chat created by Harem Token, a start-up that generates deepfake pornstars that can be traded as Non-Fungible Tokens in the Ethereum blockchain. One of their earliest experiments was baptized Anna, now operating as the company’s poster-face. Alike Magic: The Gathering cards, each nude is a collectible that can be exchanged for different amounts of money depending on its rarity. Money also cashes in every time a NFT is picked from Harem’s public domain and deepfaked into a source, giving its owner a percentage for allowing the image to be used by others, acting as some sort of crypto-pimp.
Non-Fungible Tokens are digital goods, unique items or collectibles on the Ethereum blockchain that are reshaping how creative content can be distributed, bought and sold online. Alike cryptocurrencies, they are offering new gold-rush possibilities, in a period where global crisis has made them that much enticing. If a given NFT turns out to be on high demand, it could potentially sell for an inflated value, much like what happened in 2018 when Dragon, a CryptoKitty, was sold for 600 ETH (approx. $170,000)*, signaling the new trends of online pyramid schemes, where some players in the game can be left with massively overpriced, worthless assets. In Harem’s case, instead of Cryptokitties, the company seems glad to introduce instead the financial capacities of Cryptotitties.
Inside the chat, Steve, the CEO, Johnny K and Max answer a miscellaneous of questions, create quizzes, allowing members to decide what girls they prefer, setting up contests where the names and backstories of GAN generated females are disputed amongst members. The images circulating in the group, emojis and memes created by the Harem team, have inherited much of 4-chan’s iconography: Anna’s face photoshopped into Pepe the Frog, sitting in an office table with the tag “CEO of Porn”, Roko´s Basilisk inspired memes, with Anna’s face attached to a robotic figure, arriving to dethrone and destroy all THOTs (That Hoe Over There). Then there’s the visual representation of the actual tokens: dozens of newly AI generated female nudes, images of topless women standing against a white backdrop, lit by a clinical, uniform, all revealing light. In fact, it has been speculated where start-ups like Harem scrap their images from, which is most often from websites like czechcasting.com, a porn company accused of containing non-consensual porn, allowing these algorithms to train based on images of sex-workers without their consent, forming what writer Samanta Cole* has described as the algorithmic meat grinder of rape, abuse and non-consensual sex.
© Harem Token
© Harem Token
If the images Harem creates are fake, the women’s hustle behind them is real and so is theirs. Crypto is a world that can attract the dissatisfied, independent minded iconoclasts. Those who are not shy about riding legal and ethical loopholes. When asked about whether they day-dreamed of a Silicon-Valley office, Steve replied, “absolutely not. I don’t want to pay $5k a month for some co-working space filled with wantrepreneurs drinking soy-cum lattes and talking about how their newest twist on the SaaS model is sure to work. If we ever have an office it will be a dirty cheap warehouse in LatAm or Asia.” Countries in the global south have long seen crypto has a rescue boat from turbulent economies, so it comes as no surprise that Harem only has 3 full-time workers on remote mode and around “6 contractors from third-world countries that work on data labelling, curation and sorting”.
As a report from BPN Paribas* points out, “from a geopolitical perspective, these online economies are becoming essential revenue streams for survival. In crisis-stricken Venezuela, citizens are turning to virtual economies in order to generate income”. The only full-timers, Johnny K, Max and Steve are a blend of entrepreneurs and AI developers who saw porn and the marine trench hiding its official profit estimates as a territory with much potential and not many competitors, despite the early stage funding difficulties because, as Steve points, to investors, “porn is icky”. In a way, porn and crypto are the perfect volatility storm: on one hand there’s porn’s capacity of weaponizing reputation, a phenomena that Emily Rosamond* describes as reputation warfare, a new paradigm within online reputation where “systemic actors rely on systemic volatility produced by reputation’s ubiquitous online calculation and contestation”, on the other, there’s the volatility of crypto-tokens, which value can fluctuate several percentile numbers per day. If one concept is volatile enough per-se, the two concepts, crypto and porn, combined, seem capable of unfolding endless volatile re-configurations, to which Harem Token is a mere tip of the iceberg.
For Harem’s founders, there’s been other difficulties along the way. When asked about the reactions by women in their lives, the answers are pretty disparate. Johnny K. says when his girlfriend saw hundreds of nude pictures on his laptop, she made made him an ultimatum, “let’s say the AI won” he admits. As for Steve, he attests that if a woman asks him what he does, he claims to work for the government in top secret operations and if he revealed what he does he would have to kill her, Max seems the only one with positive reinforcement in his life, sharing that his sister and female friends had nothing but supportive words for his entrepreneurial endeavors. But what is the actual vision behind Harem Token? It is revealing that the company tags their NFT’s as “art”, sampling how digital artworks can be viewed, shared, and capitalized on the web, via porn’s speed of circulation. Crypto allows art’s existence on a fully digital logic, where image and value are two parts of the same (digital) coin. And as the BPN paribas* report explains, “the Ethereum blockchain made it easy and cheap to issue a token and create services with just a few lines of code, without the need for users to build their own infrastructure (…) unlike other tokens like cryptocurrencies, NFTs are not interchangeable — they can’t replace or be replaced by another identical item”, which is a way to say that NFTs are digital assets capable of mirroring the matrix of contemporary art’s traditional market via accredited authenticity and scarcity.
As for Harem’s art, for Steve it’s about creating “an unlimited supply of women so you can select the one you love the most, from a producer point of view — out of one movie you can make multiple movies. If you liked the video but you wished the girl had bigger tits or a prettier face for example”. It’s about creating “girls from nothing that can be deep faked into videos of your choice”, and the advantage of buying $Harem is that it provides a discount in video creation that allows to generate infinite and varied content “at a price no human creators on earth could possibly match”*. So the more $Harem, the more content, at leasts inside this platform locked mechanism revolving around their own currency and collectibles. Steve also believes that the future of content creation is to be fully AI generated: influencers, musicians, actors, directors, producers, podcasters, news anchors and pornstars will all be people who do not exist. As another member in the group points out, “algorithms know what content hits and what doesn’t, so why not create content that hits 100% all of the time?” For now, as Harem’s Telegram group chat steadily grows, the team is planning to create several social-media accounts on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram for the Harem “girls” as a marketing strategy, to share their background stories and make them interact with a potential audience. In the end, maybe this is just yet another opportunistic project with a strain of Silicon-Valley megalomania and misogynistic tics, maybe Harem Token will indeed deliver those armed with $Harem the actual profits to become real CEOs of porn, right from the comfort of their couches. Eitherway, the hustle is real and if the future Harem predicts is coming, then get rich or die Porning.
sources_
all quotes taken from inside Harem Token’s official Telegram, where I inquired the team for days in a row and tried to have them create a NFT with my name.
other sources_
*1- Nguyen, Chuong (2018) Cat got your wallet? Cryptokitties virtual feline fetches $170k in crypto cash [online] available at: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/09/05/most-expensivecryptokitty/
*2- Cole, Samanta (2020) Frankenstein’s Monster: Images of Sexual Abuse are Fueling Algorithmic Porn [online] available at: https://www.vice.com/en/article/akdgnp/sexual-abusefueling-ai-porn-deepfake-czech-casting-girls-do-porn
*3- BPN Paribas report [online] available at: https://group.bnpparibas/en/press-release/l-atelierbnp-paribas-report-highlights-digital-innovations-helping-meet-environmental-socialchallenges-asia
*4- Emily Rosamond on ‘From Reputation Capital to Reputation Warfare’ Youtube Video. 04:21. Posted [October 2019] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz5VFnZVhEQ
*5- BPN Paribas report [online] available at: https://group.bnpparibas/en/press-release/l-atelierbnp-paribas-report-highlights-digital-innovations-helping-meet-environmental-socialchallenges-asia
*6- Harem Technology and Token light paper [online] available at: https://b3167b99- a6f3–4d79–8b40–363f4c245dac.filesusr.com/ugd/ 5ea561_63b6ea1bba724f059f79cb4356c642c4.pdf | https://medium.com/@sandraalub/ceo-of-porn-how-deepfake-pornstars-became-crypto-tokens-224d9697e375 | [] | 2020-12-24 18:27:43.165000+00:00 | ['Haremtoken', 'Nft Collectibles', 'Token', 'Cryptoporn', 'Crypto'] |
A Quick Technique for Mindful living | Photo by Harley-Davidson on Unsplash
How can you keep your mind above it’s own institutionalization? Keep it from the daily habits of repetition which lead down a downward spiral? Subconsciously, your body works in the same rhythms producing the same outcomes. Breaking free of this monotonous tune requires an evaluation of your tasks throughout the day and going cold turkey on those that do not serve any valuable purpose.
This can be achieved by stopping and recognizing everything you do at first. Be mindful of what you are actually doing and how it is affecting your time. Will it bring you to any of your desired goals? Does it make you feel good? Or, is it a necessity? Writing this helps me organize my thoughts and produce something that could possibly help someone else in the future. This is valuable to me.
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
Like any vice, it may be extremely hard to give certain things up. Even the small act of checking your social media accounts can add up to create undesirable habits.
I realized that I am not in control of my mind if I do not attempt to be mindful of what I do. Even after evaluation of my daily tasks, interactions and figuring out which I no longer need, my subconscious mind still tries to perform those same undesirable tasks. However, now that I am in this mode of being mindful, I am able to recognize what I am about to do, take a breath and say “no”, “this is not what I should do if I want to improve my quality of life” . And even after that the temptation is there because of how deeply ingrained these habits have become. This is where forcing consciousness and thinking of your evaluation is required. Breathe, think, and move on. Substitute the undesirable task with a valuable one. Instead of scrolling through memes, fill your brain with even a small snippet of knowledge from a learning app or news aggregator. It will make you feel, and actually be more relevant socially as opposed to knowing what a distant friend ate a few hours ago. I am not attacking social media, but just using it as an example in this case, so take it with a grain of salt. If you have the discipline and thought process to see your social media feeds as a source of inspiration, then by all means scroll away. Even better, if you are using it to produce material that genuinely makes you happy or develops your skills (income producing or not) then it can be one of the best tools of expression. The same concept of “Breathe, think and move on” goes for all habits you wish to break and you can use “move forward” for those you choose to build.
The technique above is a simple one that after much self reflection I found works best for me. You may find that a different one works wonders for you but the overarching and sometimes saturated statement is “be mindful” of what you are doing. Not only does this work for physical things you do throughout the day but can also work in the way you react to things. When your brain builds its neural pathways, it associates memories,words, and other thoughts to possible outcomes so quickly that it produces an assumption of what is to come. I learned that by actually listening and evaluating each situation, in other words “being mindful” , that my reactions may not be as harsh or that I do not get as easily irritated.
By breathing and truly opening your mind to more possibilities your reactive mind becomes a receptive one. By using the same or similar technique as mentioned above repeatedly, it is possible to carve out new neural pathways and literally “open your mind”, in turn breaking off your mental limiters. If you think about your GPS in your car, you may see the route you take may be flooded with traffic, but it is the only route you know. You miss out on the hundreds of other routes that can get you to your destination while uncovering a scenic view along the way. | https://medium.com/@manaspring/a-quick-technique-for-mindful-living-2dfd471b95cd | ['Shreyas Nampalli'] | 2020-02-07 02:41:05.595000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Life Le', 'Lifehacks', 'Mindfulness', 'Self Improvement'] |
EHTAERB | EHTAERB
As in, “ … T’NAC I” — an acrostic
Senator Mitt Romney marched and tweeted his support for Black Lives Matter. Predictably, Donald Trump mocked his participation, while other GOP lawmakers cowardly avoided Trump’s shade. (Image Source)
Every recipe for solving problems
Has one necessary ingredient —
The problem must be acknowledged.
Addressing systemic racism in America,
Especially inequality in justice,
Requires whites to acknowledge
Black Lives Matter!
©2020 HHThorpe. All rights reserved.
Inspired by Owen Banner’s delicious poem, “Ritual and Ruin”, and prompt, “recipe”. Thanks to our hosts, Kathy Jacobs and me (🙃), and also to the rest of the talented Chalkboard team! | https://medium.com/chalkboard/ehtaerb-cc076b48aa60 | ['Harper Thorpe'] | 2020-06-10 20:14:09.703000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'One Line', 'Racism', 'Music'] |
55 Ways to Be Inclusive: New Year’s Resolutions for You and Your Team | Given recent growth on the Fusion team, the nature of our work and industry, and current events that are challenging us all to do and be better, we took 2020 as an opportunity to research and evolve our inclusion practices. We committed to challenging ourselves and each other to confront our own biases and think critically about how to make Fusion an even better team.
We have spent the past year revamping our internal processes to be more inclusive, coaching leadership about inclusion, and joining conversations with external thought leaders to expand our understanding of what it means to be inclusive.
A leader at our company once shared that if you are not inclusive, you have no business being diverse. With this in mind, our team compiled the below list to demonstrate how inclusion can start with a few small, intentional steps. As you read through, consider how you can translate each opportunity into your personal and business goals for 2021.
We humbly acknowledge that there is always room to improve, and we are committed to putting in the work to do so. We hope you join us.
Happy New Year! We look forward to what 2021 brings. | https://medium.com/fusion-accelerator/55-ways-to-be-inclusive-2021-accelerators-for-you-and-your-team-fe87bb21432 | [] | 2020-12-21 21:30:05.451000+00:00 | ['Diversity', 'Accelerator', 'Inclusion Diversity', 'Goal Setting', 'Inclusion'] |
by Martino Pietropoli | First thing in the morning: a glass of water and a cartoon by The Fluxus.
Follow | https://medium.com/the-fluxus/monday-daily-dose-2ec7751eda3 | ['Martino Pietropoli'] | 2018-10-08 00:18:10.633000+00:00 | ['Monday', 'Social Media', 'Art', 'Graphics'] |
Tips for Decorating a Small Living Room | Through this article, I will mention in detail some important tips for decorating a small living room. So read on.
With these tips, you can create a super cozy small living room and especially very comfortable where you can spend pleasant moments.
Because a living room is a space that should not be missing in a house or apartment since that is where you can receive visits, whether family or friends.
The important thing is that the decoration of a living room is adequate and correct. Because you will manage to create a living room that you always dreamed of having.
Without further ado, here I will mention the tips for decorating a small living room, so take note and get to work:
The first thing you should do is choose the color to paint the walls. For small spaces, it is recommended to use light colors.
For example; The white color is a color that makes the small space look wide and well lit. Also, it grants elegance and cleanliness.
At present, I have seen that many people paint only the walls of their living room and do not take interest in the ceiling, that bad.
Because the ceiling or ceiling must also be painted. Mostly the ceiling of a small living room should be painted a lighter color than the walls, so you will make your room look high and angry.
To complement and enhance the decoration you must place beautiful curtains on the windows. So that you can give your room small height and space you must place ceiling curtains to the floor.
You must keep in mind that the curtains that you place in the windows harmonize with the furniture and with the color of the walls.
Another of the tips for decorating a small living room is using mirrors. The mirrors open the space and reflect the natural and artificial light.
I suggest that you place a large mirror on the sofa or also on the opposite side of a window, so your room will have good lighting.
The furniture you place in your small living room should change the captivity of smallness into a functional refuge for all life activities.
In the corners of your room, you must place beautiful lamps, in the central mase that you have placed in your room decorate it with vases and on the walls, you place some beautiful paintings.
If you want your room to look more elegant and give an air of comfort, you must put on the floor a beautiful carpet that harmonizes with the decoration of your room.
Although you don’t believe it, natural plants can also be used to decorate your living room. With silver, you can create a relaxing space with lots of fresh air.
Of course, you should not take your small living room with plants, you should only place two or three and nothing else. You can place them in the corners or corners.
Decorating a small living room is not complicated but it does require some attention and a desire to make it work.
A fundamental rule for decorating small spaces is not to saturate the room with many furniture and objects.
Here are some tips and tricks to decorate a small room and make it look bigger but above all, it is much more functional.
1. Especially a small room with comfortable furniture and that are always light colors, so that they combine with the color of the walls.
But if you have furniture of other colors do not worry, what you should do is paint or change cloth.
2. Mostly a room should always have windows through which the light of nature can enter.
Taking advantage of natural light is essential for the space to look wide, bright and warm, it is also the most recommended type of light.
To give more style and modernity to the windows we must place some nice light and light-colored curtains.
Especially the color of the curtains should always combine with the color of the walls, accessories, and furniture.
3. As I said earlier that the walls of a small room should always be painted a light color.
Because light colors are very good to visually expand the space and give more elegance to the room.
In addition to painting the light-colored walls, you must place a mirror, this accessory is recommended to reflect the light of nature and make space look well lit.
Mainly the large mirror should always be placed on the wall that faces a wide window.
4. For a small living room to look large and spacious, it must have adequate natural lighting.
If the natural lighting is not enough you have to opt for artificial lighting, for this, you must combine direct and diffused light.
You must keep in mind that artificial lighting is always clear to avoid damaging your eyes.
5. Take into account the furniture is extremely important because the furniture is responsible for giving functionality to the living space.
The best way to optimize the space of a room is to place nice chairs that have the shape of L.
Especially these armchairs are placed attached to the wall because it leaves enough space to complement them with a chair, a small armchair or a pouf. | https://medium.com/@charliedekons/tips-for-decorating-a-small-living-room-b9a16b827f8d | ['Charlie Dekons'] | 2019-09-01 07:58:05.238000+00:00 | ['Living Room', 'Interior Design', 'Home Improvement', 'Home Decor'] |
An Asshole Theory of Prestige TV | Emily Nussbaum’s TV writing stands out especially for its ambivalence about the purpose of TV writing:
A show doesn’t need to be perfect to have a powerful allure for viewers who just want to hang out in the world it invokes. (I’ve watched every episode of “Nashville.”) But TV is triage these days. While it used to be possible to catch up with every ambitious drama — during that golden era of TV efficiency, when there were only five of them — that’s no longer true. At this year’s Television Critics Association meetings, FX’s C.E.O., John Landgraf, a prolific producer himself, presented a report that was highly alarming, at least to television critics. Last year, according to FX’s data, three hundred and fifty-two scripted first-run prime-time and late-night programs aired on broadcast, cable, and streaming networks in the U.S., not including PBS. Joe Adalian, crunching the stats at New York’s Vulture, wrote that the number of new prime-time scripted cable shows had “doubled in just the past five years, tripled since 2007 (the year Mad Men premiered), and grown a staggering 683 percent since the turn of the century.” When people angrily tweet at me that some show is the best thing on TV, I know they’re lying: they haven’t watched most of the other ones, and neither have I.
She is absolutely right. TV is triage! A lot of media consumption is triage. There is no way for an honest viewer — or listener, or moviegoer — to feel caught up, and there is likewise no way for a critic to write as someone who does. This has been true for a few years now, and it’s had odd effects on criticism. Movie reviewing has been reduced, largely, to data production for Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. Song and album reviews rarely precede the actual release of the music, so they’re treated as broad cultural writing prompts. Five or so years ago TV writing split into reviewing and recapping, which in the last couple years have merged into a strange hybrid, one which talks casually about what has happened, and which signals fandom along the way just enough to let the reader know that he has tastes in common with the writer (and that whatever recommendations might follow are worth hearing). People seem to want to read about why their favorite shows are good, or could be better, or aren’t as good as people say, as argued by someone more persuasive than themselves. This means lots of talking about things the viewer has already seen, and not much room for things they have not.
This can make reading about prestige drama itself feel like triage, or at least work. Which dysfunctional family do you want to eavesdrop on for eight to twelve hours? To which period of history do you want to apply modern anxieties?? How are we supposed to know which tragedy and which community deserves our tense but cathartic attention? Which middle-aged white antihero can we stand this year???
This will remain a problem until pop culture collapses into a billion personalized memes and shared media experience becomes inconceivable and people can review and read about “TV” and “movies” and “albums” like books, which is to say rarely. But that’s a few years off! Until then: what if we had a different way? What if we had a critical framework for prestige television that treats it as a genre (it absolutely is — and a specific one) instead of quality tier (a lot of it is bad)? An approach to not-fun-but-still-good television that acknowledges that it is mostly just about difficult people? And which calls them what they are? (They are assholes.)
This is not meant to be a simplification. There are many types of assholes. There are many types of representations of assholes. There are many degrees of quality and care in the representation of assholes; there are various intentions and inferences to be read into representations of assholes. There are assholes that remind you of yourself! There are assholes that remind you of people you know. There are assholes that speak to you, through their behavior as assholes, in such ways that enrich or clarify or pleasantly complicate your life.*
The quality of a show’s assholes might be the best clue we have as to its time-worthiness. Mad Men’s egregious assholes are, as time goes on, less interesting than they once seemed. The assholes of Togetherness are redeemable (not as people, but as watchable assholes) but why bother??? Better Call Saul is relitigating the motivations of assholes that viewers already know, which explains why it’s not sitting so well yet. True Detective’s disappointing assholes were all ass, no hole. Asshole Theory helps untangle feelings about a show like Nurse Jackie, which was full of things to dislike but which was absolutely compelling because it was centered around an extremely well-rendered and tragic asshole. Asshole Theory also helps explain the problem with CERTAIN OTHER Showtime shows, particularly the ones about families. They are shows populated with assholes of convenience — people who are assholes in a way that helps provide forward motion and script material, but that do not, and could not, exist anywhere outside of the Showtime-verse.
Asshole Theory has utility. Shows worth watching are full of the types of assholes that you know and are forced to tolerate, either by circumstances out of your control or personal weakness, and tell us more about them; shows worth skipping are populated with dime-a-dozen assholes dressed up as something more. A good, timeless asshole can buoy a series: Rectify is occasionally wonderful but also frustrating, and the presence and Teddy — an archetypal asshole the likes of which is rarely depicted accurately anywhere — makes it memorable. Asshole Theory helps us see straight past increasingly obvious PRESTIGE genre signifiers and into a show’s soul, which is actually located in its ass.
Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that Bloodline, which may not seem like a great show at first, and which is over-the-top in its Prestige-ness, is worth watching for its excellent multigenerational ensemble of assholes. The best on TV right now, maybe! Not that I could possibly know.
*Update: Awl pal Johanna Johannah King-Slutzky points out: “I get the sense that “asshole” is demotic + supposed to be intuitive but for me it’s not.” This is true, so: assholes, here, are a subset of difficult people as narrowed (considerably) by Prestige TV genre conventions, which I realize are also not well-defined. They brood, they are explicitly concerned with power, they are often men and even more often older, and they are preoccupied with age. They belong to nuclear-ish families on the constant brink of cataclysm. What else? | https://medium.com/the-awl/an-asshole-theory-of-prestige-tv-4c3cf6c4def9 | ['John Herrman'] | 2016-05-14 01:45:30.156000+00:00 | ['Bloodlines', 'Asshole Theories', 'Assholes'] |
✎ Free-ish since 1865 | ✎ Free-ish since 1865
Hi, I’m Whitney. This is a newsletter full of tweets from my feed. Tap the tweet to view its thread. | https://medium.com/quibble/free-ish-since-1865-5528247a807f | ['Whitney O Banner'] | 2020-09-03 22:48:43.688000+00:00 | ['Twitter'] |
Now, More Than Ever: Supply Chain Security — Unpacking The CMMC With Katie Arrington And Yolanda Craig | It should be evident by now that Information security should be a core value to any organization — and even more so for those that interact with government entities — and furthermore for those that operate within the government defense space.
It’s easy to say. But even for those that want to honestly act on this objective, how can they make “this” actually happen?
Good question indeed. This is precisely the one we are going to try to answer in this podcast.
Organizations can meet the letter of the law, or regulation, or standard. Checkbox process — done.
They can bring it to the front of the process and perform a risk assessment. Scenario documentation — done.
But what about the middle bit where a lot of the critical thinking takes place and where the controls get defined; where the organization not only claims they “take security seriously” but can also prove it?
How does an organization bridge this gap in a way that actually addresses the risk throughout the government’s entire supply chain?
This is where the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) comes into play. And looking at the most recent events, evidently, not a moment too soon.
Now it is the time to go ahead and learn what the CMMC is.
From the CMMC site:
The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (OUSD(A&S)) recognizes that security is foundational to acquisition and should not be traded along with cost, schedule, and performance moving forward. The Department is committed to working with the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) sector to enhance the protection of controlled unclassified information (CUI) within the supply chain.
OUSD(A&S), working with DoD stakeholders, University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC), and industry, developed the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) framework.
The CMMC will review and combine various cybersecurity standards and best practices and map these controls and processes across several maturity levels that range from basic cyber hygiene to advanced. For a given CMMC level, the associated controls and processes, when implemented, will reduce risk against a specific set of cyber threats.
The CMMC effort builds upon existing regulation (DFARS 252.204–7012) that is based on trust by adding a verification component with respect to cybersecurity requirements.
The goal is for CMMC to be cost-effective and affordable for small businesses to implement at the lower CMMC levels.
Authorized and accredited CMMC Third Party Assessment Organizations (C3PAOs) will conduct assessments and issue CMMC certificates to Defense Industrial Base (DIB) companies at the appropriate level.
This text above provides a decent overview. But you likely have some questions. If you want to learn more about CMMC, DFARS, C3PAOs, and DIB; and, if you want to hear how CMMC and NIST connect together; and, if you want to hear how the CMMC can be leveraged to improve (and demonstrate) your organization’s cybersecurity posture, then this episode is for you.
I had the distinct honor of bringing together two industry leaders that know the CMMC inside and out: Katie Arrington, CISO A&S at United States Department of Defense responsible for bringing the CMMC to light; and Yolanda Craig, a former manager of Cyber Information Technology) at the US DoD and now helping government contractors be cyber-ready.
This happens to be a very timely discussion given the recent cyber revelations for the American government supply chain. I would encourage EVERY organization (not just those supplying the government with products and services) to listen to this episode.
Now, more than ever, we need supply chain security. Now, more than ever, knowledge is power. Grab some here and share with far and wide.
Guest(s)
Katie Arrington, CISO A&S at United States Department of Defense
Yolanda Craig, VP, Cyber Strategy, Everwatch Solutions | Former Manager (Cyber Information Technology), US DoD
This Episode’s Sponsors:
Nintex: https://itspm.ag/itspntweb
Imperva: https://itspm.ag/imperva277117988
RSA Security: https://itspm.ag/itsprsaweb
Resources
CMMC: https://www.acq.osd.mil/cmmc/index.html
CMMC Accreditation Body: https://www.cmmcab.org/
CMMC Assessment Guide: https://www.acq.osd.mil/cmmc/draft.html
To see and hear more Redefining Security content on ITSPmagazine, visit:
https://www.itspmagazine.com/redefining-security
Are you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?
https://www.itspmagazine.com/podcast-series-sponsorships | https://medium.com/itspmagazine/now-more-than-ever-supply-chain-security-unpacking-the-cmmc-with-katie-arrington-and-yolanda-37c3547fb295 | ['Itspmagazine Podcast'] | 2020-12-21 15:57:02.838000+00:00 | ['Government', 'Hacking', 'Supply Chain', 'Cybersecurity', 'Technology'] |
Introduction to Bias in AI | To understand AI Bias, we need to understand Dataset Bias. Collecting, labelling, and organizing data is a time consuming and expensive effort. Many popular datasets in the artificial intelligence community can take years to produce and publish. This effort requires a large amount of resources, and does not make dataset creation a small or efficient task. Since it’s impractical to create a dataset with all possible permutations and domains, all datasets have some form of bias in them. This limitation in data causes lower performance and decreased generalization across unrepresented domains.
The simple answer is to create more data, but that’s not easy. A better solution is to improve existing machine learning models with existing solutions (e.g., domain adaptation). But before we dive into solutions, let’s review the problem itself.
What is the necessary vocabulary to understand AI Bias?
I’ll go over a few terms that come up often, but there are many more.
Dataset Bias
Dataset bias corresponds to properties that are seen frequently in a dataset. For instance, in the COCO dataset, “person” is the most frequent object category across images. The bias in the COCO dataset is “person”. Biases can make it easier for a human to distinguish between datasets, but they can also often result in decreased model performance (due to overfitting), which can hinder learning reliable features.
COCO dataset has 66,000 labels for “person”. It only has 2,000 labels for “elephant”. The data bias is “person”.
Domain Shift
Domain shift refers to the situation where training data and test data have different domains. For instance, domain shift happens when daytime images are used for training data and nighttime images are used for test data. The bias in the training data is “daytime”. This domain shift leads to lower performance.
Train the model on daytime data (left). Test the model on nighttime data (right).
What is an example of AI Bias?
Suppose you have a neural network that takes images and predicts object bounding boxes and labels. You could deploy it on a self-driving car to identify pedestrians. Let’s assume that the model was trained on a dataset from sunny California.
The detection system can detect pedestrians from California (left), but not from Boston (right).
Let’s say that you deploy the trained network in Boston during the Winter. Since the network hasn’t seen this type of data during training time, it’s very likely that it’s going to miss quite a few objects and quite a few pedestrians in this example. This is the problem of domain shift which is caused by dataset bias. Where the source data is from the source domain, and the target data from deployment is called the target domain. And it has distribution shift over the input data. The distribution has shifted from training to test time.
What are other examples of AI Bias?
Domain shift happens in applications when the models are deployed in the real world.
Datasets
In general, domain shift can happen when the model is trained on one dataset and the trained model is applied to a different dataset. Specifically, a dataset of objects can come from product images with white backgrounds and canonical poses, and the model can be deployed on a dataset collected from a mobile robot where the backgrounds are cluttered and the viewpoints and lighting conditions are very different.
Product images with white backgrounds (left). Robot images with cluttered backgrounds (right).
Skin Tones
Here is a very important problem where we are training a face detection system on data with a bias for light skinned faces. This results in poor predictive performance on images of darker skinned faces. We’d like to improve the performance for people with darker skin tones.
Face detection works on lighter-skinned people, but less on darker-skinned people. [Credit: Joy Buolamwini]
Modalities
Another example of domain shift is when its training data is biased to a particular modality. For example, the training data is RGB images, and the test data is depth images. Using domain adaptation, we can improve the detection performance on the Depth images.
This uses domain adaptation to improve performance from RGB images (left) to Depth images (right).
Sim2Real
Another very common example is training robots in simulation.
Training an object manipulator in simulation and deploying it in the real setting.
In this example, a robot arm is picking up an object. Ideally, we want to train these policies in simulation, because it’s a cheaper source of data that doesn’t damage the robot. However, at test time, we get real images. Therefore, we’d like to be able to adapt to this bias from simulation to reality. (For more information on Sim2Real, check out my Overview on Sim2Real. Coming Soon.)
Why is AI Bias bad?
Dataset Bias in the training data causes poor performance and poor generalization to future test data. The distinction in the kind of images during train and test can render a model useless during evaluation. It causes a significant drop in performance and makes our models inaccurate.
If you train on MNIST data, but test on a different domain (e.g., USPS, SVHN), then you have a significant drop in performance.
For example, if we train on MNIST and test it on images from MNIST, then it should have 99% accuracy. However, if we train on the MNIST domain and test it on the Street View House Numbers (SVHN). We’ll see that the performance will be around 67.1%. This is much lower than it should be, so this is a serious issue. In fact, even between two similar looking domains of MNIST and USPS, there is still a very significant drop in performance.
Existing Solutions
Solutions for AI Bias exist today. These solutions improve model performance. We get a high level sense of some of them here.
Domain Adaptation
Domain adaptation is one solution for domain shift. It’s a method for adapting a model to a novel dataset with no or few labels from the novel dataset. We assume access to a small set of target domain images during training. During training, you can get a sense of what the target distribution looks like.
Domain Generalization
Domain Generalization is another solution for domain shift. It doesn’t assume that target data exists in the training data. Instead, it assumes no target data at all during training. It’s a strictly zero-shot scenario and relies heavily on model generalization.
Latent Domain Discovery
Latent Domain Discovery helps with Domain Generalization. Some aspects of both dataset bias and domain shift can be easy for humans to infer by observation. But there can be some aspects which are inherently latent and may not be immediately obvious. Latent variables define a dataset but are not strictly observed. These latent domains exist but are not labeled in datasets. For instance, images found on the web can be thought of as a collection of many hidden domains. Discovering latent domains can significantly improve generalization and performance.
Image results for “person” consist of latent domains (e.g., “groups”, “silhouettes”, “line drawings”, “close-ups”).
Other solutions not mentioned here include Transfer Learning and Representation Learning. We will cover more solutions in further depth for future articles. In the meantime, feel free to reach out if you have any specific topics you’d like me to cover. Also, if you’re new to AI, this brief Intro to AI should help. | https://medium.com/machinevision/introduction-to-bias-in-ai-5058429ba0e | ['Luis Bermudez'] | 2021-03-03 04:56:11.468000+00:00 | ['Diversity', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Diversity In Tech', 'Bias'] |
Be Ready With Your Ask | I was caught out yet again this week when my mentor asked me what I needed help with.
Since returning from a long weekend away, I have been so focussed on getting stuff done, that I’d lost sight of the bigger goal/intention I am working towards. I’d got on with the project work, completed the usual month-end admin and sorted through and responded to my backlog of emails. I had been so busy doing the day to day, I had not put any focus on a goal I have set myself for 4 months from now. If I had put even an hour’s worth of focus on this activity, given my goals are always a stretch, I would have generated an associated list of things I am unsure of. The things where I require some help.
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment”. Jim Rohn
Have you ever been fortunate enough to be asked directly by someone you are assisting, how they can reciprocate and help you too? Again, this has happened to me a few times but I have never been consistent with my response. I rarely expect to be asked this and most often have awkwardly responded by saying “I’m fine for the moment but will be in touch when I do need help”. On the odd occasion that my goal has been at the forefront of my mind, I’ve been able to ask for help on a particular activity that had me stumped. During each exchange the person has either been able to help themselves or refer me onto a peer.
Therefore, in order to make the most of spontaneous opportunities for help, the preparation and planning need to be regular and consistently done. Whether being offered help or putting yourself in a position to ask someone for help, you need to be clear on your goals. If you make it routine to revisit your goal(s) weekly this enables you to not only maintain momentum and take steps towards them each week, but it also ensures you identify barriers and challenges as they arise. It is these that others can help you with.
“One common thing about great achievers is that they keep asking useful questions every day. They ask questions like; “What do I want and what do I need to do to get it?””. Israelmore Ayivor
To make this a discipline or habit, it is great to have an accountability buddy, someone you can goal set with on a weekly basis. Other people choose to get their accountability in a group or community, just by stating your weekly goal or intention for the week is powerful in itself. Then whilst your buddy or community might not be able to your barriers and challenges fully, it forces you to articulate them and be ready when the right person to help you presents themselves. With focus and planning, you can be sure that you will be ready with your ask when the opportunity arises. | https://medium.com/@bethanbishop/152-be-ready-with-your-ask-225d797639f5 | ['Bethan Bishop'] | 2019-07-20 18:09:21.134000+00:00 | ['Help', 'Growth', 'Business', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Aşk'] |
Rachel Rank | CEO, 360Giving
“I wish the social sector did more to leverage its voice and influence as an expert network that understands issues in detail and has the long view and concrete proposals on how to address them.”
As someone running a social sector organisation can you describe what the challenges are?
Balancing the external engagement opportunities and networking (and needing to be opportunistic with those) with day to day internal demands, including board engagement, strategic planning and fundraising.
Who do you go to, where do you go to or what do you read/listen to for support, and renewal?
My board, who are hugely supportive but also hold my feet to the fire; my mentor, Simon Burrall; a network of women CEOs that I’m in; my team, who I try to share most things with as part of building a team that’s trying to create long-term behaviour change — we share ideas, build straw men, bring our contacts in & try not be insular in our thinking.
Twitter has proved extremely useful for getting quick ideas, intros & making connections. Also a network of like-minded individuals in our target organisations who tell me what they and others really think about our work. I don’t have time to read much and its a source of frustration, but I try to set aside 1–2 hours each week for certain blogs, newsletters & news articles (I have a list I can share if useful?). For personal headspace/renewal, I enjoy podcasts.
Who do you think of as fellow travellers and why do they matter?
People running small, start ups that are reliant of grants; people working on open data standards (OpenContracting, IATI, OpenOwnership); female CEOs, who have generally been more open with me about how they balance the pressures of running a non-profit or start up. They matter because they’re either facing similar challenges (fundraising, managing growth and expectations, workload) or similar technical issues (data quality, data literacy, infrastructure that people want but don’t really understand what it takes to get it in place).
What are the biggest trade-offs you are having to make at the moment in terms of running the organisation?
How much time I spend doing external engagement, advocacy and promoting our work versus fundraising, reporting and supporting staff. It never feels comfortable having to choose between the two so I’ve had to learn to be brutal with prioritising, delegate to the point it feels uncomfortable and to not sweat the small stuff — its taken me a while to get to this point and to feel ok about saying no to people.
I’d like to see more alliances coming together to talk about an issue and work on joint strategies.
What do you wish the social sector did more of? And less of?
More of — Leveraged its voice and influence as an expert network that understands issues in detail and has the long view and concrete proposals on how to address them, e.g. on homelessness, disability rights, poverty, climate change, etc. I’d like to see more alliances coming together to talk about an issue and work on joint strategies.
Less of — talking about innovation. The word is used too much and I sense is partly driven by funders and the need to appear new, exciting and different. It’s ok to keep on keeping on, and focus on fixing or delivering a specific thing.
If you were designing a programme of support and training for the kind of social sector leadership that we need today, what would be the essential ingredients? | https://medium.com/socialleaders/rachel-rank-eb56927aba13 | ['Cassie Robinson.'] | 2019-03-11 09:18:25.309000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Social Change', 'Digital', 'Data', 'Social Justice'] |
Taquito Batch API tutorial | Taquito Batch API tutorial
How to use Taquito Batch API to send multiple transactions under the same hash
One of the friction points you will encounter when you start developing more complex dapps for your smart contracts happens when creating multiple new transactions in a row. Each Tezos account holds a counter that increments every time an operation is included in a block on the network. This means that you cannot forge a new transaction if you already have a pending transaction or you will get the now infamous error message Counter 12345 already used for contract tz1...
There are different scenarios when you want to send multiple transactions at the same time: for example, you could hold in your dapp every update request from your users before asking them to confirm them and emit them all at once. Taquito created the Batch API to make the process easier. This is the subject of this tutorial.
What is the Batch API?
Taquito provides a simple way of forging and sending transactions to the blockchain, whether you wish to send a few tez to a certain address or interact with a smart contract. Every time a Tezos account signs a transaction, its transaction counter is incremented by 1. This feature prevents users from sending two or multiple transactions in a row as illustrated in this code snippet:
/*
* ONE OF THESE TRANSACTIONS WILL FAIL
* AND YOU WILL GET AN ERROR MESSAGE
*/ const op1 = await contract.methods.interact("tezos").send();
const op2 = await contract.methods.wait([["unit"]]).send(); await op1.confirmation();
await op2.confirmation(); /*
* Error Message returned by the node:
* "Error while applying operation opWH2nEcmmzUwK4T6agHg3bn9GDR7fW1ynqWL58AVRAb7aZFciD:
* branch refused (Error:
* Counter 1122148 already used for contract tz1VSUr8wwNhLAzempoch5d6hLRiTh8Cjcjb (expected 1122149))"
*/
Tracking the confirmation of transactions and the update of the transaction counter can be very frustrating and cumbersome, this is why Taquito provides the Batch API. The Batch API allows you to group all your transactions together and emit them at once under the same transaction counter value.
How does it work?
The TezosToolkit object exposes a method called batch . Subsequently, the returned object exposes 6 different methods that can be concatenated according to the number of transactions to emit.
After concatenating the different methods to batch operations together, a single transaction is created and broadcast with a single operation hash returned. As for any other transaction created by Taquito, you then wait for a determined number of confirmations.
The withTransfer method
This method allows you to add a transfer of tez to the batched operations. It takes an object as a parameter with 4 properties. Two of them are mandatory: to indicates the recipient of the transfer and amount indicates the amount of tez to be transferred. Two other properties are optional: if mutez is set to true , the value specified in amount is considered to be in mutez.
The withOrigination method
This method allows you to add the origination of one or multiple contracts to an existing batch of operations. It takes an object as a parameter with 4 properties. The code property is mandatory and can be a string representing the plain Michelson code or the JSON representation of the Michelson contract. The parameter object must also include an init or storage property: when init is specified, storage is optional and vice-versa. init is the initial storage object value that can be either Micheline or JSON encoded. storage is a JavaScript representation of a storage object. Optionally, you can also indicate a balance for the newly created contract and a delegate .
The withDelegation method
This simple method allows for batching multiple delegation transactions. The method takes an object as a parameter with a single property: the address of the delegate.
The withContractCall method
This method may be one of the most useful ones as it allows you to batch and emit multiple contract calls under one transaction. The parameter is also pretty simple: it takes the function you would call on the contract abstraction object if you would send a single transaction.
The with method
If you prefer having an array that contains objects with the different transactions you want to emit, you can use the with method. It allows you to group transactions as objects instead of concatenating function calls. The object you use expects the same properties as the parameter of the corresponding method with an additional kind property that indicates the kind of transaction you want to emit (a handy opKind enum is exported from the Taquito package with the valid values for the kind property).
Note: you cannot make contract calls with this method.
The send method
After batching all the necessary operations together, you must use the send method to emit them. This step is very similar to what you would do to emit a single transaction.
Like with other operations created by Taquito, the send method is a promise that returns an object where the operation hash is available under the hash property and where you can wait until the transaction is confirmed with the confirmation method (taking as a parameter the number of confirmations you would like to receive).
What are the limitations?
The limitations of batched operations are within the limitations of single operations, for example, the number of operations batched together is limited by the gas limit of the Tezos blockchain.
In addition to that, batched operations can only be signed by a single account.
References
Also, Read | https://medium.com/coinmonks/taquito-batch-api-tutorial-fe2957057d3e | ['Claude Barde'] | 2020-12-28 14:09:23.968000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Programming', 'Tezos', 'Taquito', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
The End of Continuity | Ram Dass mentions that he didn’t appreciate his physical form enough before the stroke. Maybe he was so focused on the ethereal that he took the vehicle for granted. Less than a year after getting the tattoo and after all these hoped-for areas fractured, I would fall and shatter my heel — my first major injury — which would result in overwhelming upheavals and a cascade of painful revelations. My injury would not be comparable to a serious stroke, but it would certainly be Fierce Grace in action. Even though I appreciated movement and my body quite a bit before the fall, I’d learn afterward how much I did take things like walking without crutches or getting my own coffee for granted — which you can never fully grasp until they’re taken away.
Things like a stroke are so captivating to the consciousness, Ram Dass states. Suffering comes when you try to hang on to continuity, like things I can’t do. But when you do spiritual work, you have weird multi-awareness. You have moments when you feel dejected, angry, and disappointed. You think you can’t trust God. You also believe things happen for us and not to us. You remind yourself your plan is not your plan. You pray to get out of your own way. Stroke…Grace, Stroke…Grace. Being able to embrace paradoxes is one of the oft-used wrenches in the spiritual toolbox. You simultaneously do the hard work, and realize you have little control. Everything can change in a heartbeat, and does, constantly.
When Ram Dass got stroked, he didn’t have any spiritual thoughts. He only remembered looking at pipes on the ceiling. With a smile he says, In my own death, I didn’t orient towards spirit — that shows me I have some work to do. That’s the test. I flunked the test. These insights come on the other side of surrender, after being open enough to listen, and trusting that linear time will provide clarity as our retrospective wisdom coheres. For as articulate and radiant as Ram Dass was pre-stroke, he’s even more powerful to listen to post-stroke. His pauses sound like he’s getting a download, like each word is considered, like his eye of perception is clearer not cloudier.
Saint Jnaneshwar taught, “Steadfastness is the courage through which one would not close the eye of perception — even if the heavens were to fall.” Fierce Grace isn’t just something that’s bestowed on us — we have to face it with fierceness. After my fall, I learned more deeply how to be steadfast. I’d do one-legged burpees or get on the floor with my casted foot and do yoga that could be done on my knees. I left NYC for the west coast shortly after my return to shoes, when my rebuilding efforts felt fruitless. In a taxi on the way to the airport, I watched the trees speed by in a blur against the pink and orange sunrise. I was moving on to the next stage, the next place, with a strong limp, two suitcases, $400 to my name, and no available credit.
In the nine months since the accident, I had lost some physical capabilities; I had lost the dream job I was gunning for; I had lost my apartment. Maybe hardest of all, I had lost my meditation teacher and the spiritual friend-group with whom I’d ushered in 2013. Actually, I chose to walk away from them after seeing a pervasive lack of integrity. I was distraught and left wondering how it all went so awry, but also determined to meet my situation with faithful fierceness. I knew that if this was grace, it would educate me — and if this was a test, I’d try to be up for the challenge.
With no job waiting for me, I boarded the plane to California because I trusted my inner compass. Spirituality requires listening and surrender, but also requires some muscle, some grit, and some boundaries; it requires doubling down when things get rough, and using the tools even when you’ve lost the toolbox. | https://medium.com/@kimberlysheridanwrites/the-end-of-continuity-a243078e21ba | ['Kimberly Sheridan'] | 2020-12-22 16:11:16.030000+00:00 | ['Personal Essay', 'Ram Dass', 'Nonfiction', 'Tattoo', 'Spirituality'] |
March | Spring that happens without us
At the beginning of March I was still calm. Admittedly, I avoided public transport as a preventive measure and tried to walk around Warsaw on foot. I also visited my art studio several times to finish the painting River. Storm and create some sketches for the next image in the series.
We also had time to make a short escape to the forest to calm down our heads a bit. It was so deaf, wild and good. I always regain balance in the forest.
Later there was a “shut down”.
I am currently experiencing spring, watching it from outside the window. I see chestnuts trees bloom buds. When I make coffee in the morning, I have sparrow serenades under the window. Every day I am thankful that I am safe. I try to live more mindfully. I celebrate mornings, time before work.
Art in isolation
Right now, I’m afraid to go to the studio. The building in which it is located is relatively large — two floors and attic. This construction it’s unusual — in an eternal process/renovation. The painting space itself is divided by several people. My fear is justified and motivated me to arrange (better than before) creative space at home.
I ordered a wooden art-board, which I always missed, several new colors of watercolor and ink; pastels to which I returned after a few years.
Creativity is for me a language through which I express all my tensions, dilemmas, thoughts and emotions. It is something necessary and obvious. Technologically, I took a step back and began to combine watercolor with a linear drawing again. I loved this technique while still in college.
A new series of works is being created. Utopia
Two steps forward
Unfortunately, at this moment the April exhibition was canceled. Although no — this is a bad word — it has been moved to an unknown date. Everything depends on the further progression of the epidemic.
I look forward to the opportunity to exhibit and talk about live art. I still have so many projects to do this year! I hope that at least some of them will take place. I trust that very much.
At this moment, watching art online. If you have any contemporary artists to recommend, please share the link to their work! | https://medium.com/@magdalenasalome/march-996db0737076 | ['Magdalena Salome'] | 2020-03-31 19:32:49.231000+00:00 | ['Pandemic Diaries', 'Modern Art', 'Art', 'Diary', 'Artist'] |
Python Interactive Network Visualization Using NetworkX, Plotly, and Dash | They say a graph is more than a thousand words. I totally agree with it. I would prefer to look at a network graph, rather than reading through lengthy documents, to understand a complicated network pattern.
This post is about a Python interactive network visualization application. In the first half, it covers the network visualization application features and a introduction of the tools I used for developing this application. In the second half, technical details on how to use NetworkX, Plotly, and Dash are discussed.
1. Network Visualization Application Features
A network graph reveals patterns and helps to detect anomalies. There is huge potential for network visualization applications in finance, and examples include fraud surveillance and money laundry monitoring. For this project, I will create a dummy dataset of transactions, and build a network visualization application to interactively plot graphs showing these transactions.
Firstly, this application will read in the dummy transaction dataset, and generate graphical representation of the transaction network. Here, I want to customize the graphical representation, such as the edges are color-coded according to transaction time, and the edge width are varied according to transaction amount. In this way, it is easy to quickly understand the transaction network graph.
Secondly, it will be an interactive application. When the user hovers on a node or edge, rich information will show. In addition, the user should be able to type in the account to search and the time range to show. Then, in response to the user’s input, the application will show transaction network graph accordingly.
2. Library Introduction
I find several useful python packages to enable the development of this application, including NetworkX, Plotly, and Dash. This session will cover a brief introduction of these libraries, as well as discuss about how they are useful for the development of this application.
2.1 Graph Theory and NetworkX
To represent a transaction network, a graph consists of nodes and edges. Here, the nodes represent accounts, and the associated attributes include customer name and account type. The edges are transactions with associated attributes of transaction date and transaction amount. The transaction network is a directed graph, with each edge pointing from the source account to the target account.
NetworkX is a Python package for the creation, manipulation, and study of the structure, dynamics, and functions of complex networks. It allows quick building and visualization of a graph with just a few lines of codes:
import networkx as nx
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
G = nx.Graph()
G.add_edge(1,2)
G.add_edge(1,3)
nx.draw(G, with_labels=True)
plt.show()
Apart from building a simple graph with the inline data, NetworkX also supports more complicated graph with dataset imported from csv or database. Here, I import the dummy csv files containing the transaction records, and built transaction network using NetworkX.
2.2 Interactive Figure and Plotly
Python comes with several useful plotting libraries. Unlike the static Matplotlib and Seaborn libraries, Plotly makes interactive graphs. It supports many common chart types, including line plots, scatter plots, bar charts, histograms and heatmaps. Together with ipywidgets, it allows interactive data analysis in Jupyter notebook.
2.3 Reactive Web Applications and Dash
Jupyter notebook is popular among data scientists. But I want to move one step further, to make the application accessible to other stackholders, who may not neccessarily have the background of data analytics. Web application becomes a good choice, as everyone can easily access the web applications using just the browser.
Then, I find Dash, which is a open source Python library for creating reactive web applications. Dash allows seamless integration of Python data analysis code with front-end HTML, CSS, and Javascript. With the Python interface and reactive decorators provided by Dash, the Python data analysis code is binded to the interactive web-based components. Since Dash is built on Flask framework and React.js for frontend rendering, I can easily access massive support from the open source community. Last but not least, Dash is fully compatible with Plotly, which means I can integrate the network graph created with Plotly as a component in the Dash application and further add other web-based components to interact with my data analysis code.
3. Coding
Now, let’s move on to the real coding!
3.1 Initialize The Dash App
Since Dash is built on Flask framework, it is not surprising to see almost the same syntax to start a Dash application as to start a Flask application.
3.2 Define The Layout
With the Python interface dash_html_components and dash_core_components, HTML and interactive web-based components are easily integrated to the Python analysis code. Here, the layout design follows Bootstrap grid system. This transaction network visualization app includes components of RangeSlider (to define time range), Input box (to type in the account to search), Plotly graph (to show the transaction network according to the user input), Hover box (to display the detailed information when the user hover on the graph), and Click box(to display the detailed information when the user click on the graph).
3.3 Bind to The Analysis Code
When the user makes changes to the RangeSlider or the Input box, the Plotly figure will change accordingly. When the user hovers or clicks on the node or edge in the Plotly figure, the Hover box and the Click box display the detailed information associated with the node or edge.
3.4 Define The Plotly Graph
Here, the code defines how to build the transaction network, initiate the Plotly graph, as well as how to change the Plotly graph in response to the user’s input. Basically, the code here define the logic of the network graph.
Firstly, import the dataset and transform date string to Datetime object which Python understands.
Then, build the network using NetworkX.
Define node with Plotly.
Define edge with Plotly. Here, to define the customized edge is not as straight-forward as defining the node. The edges are customized in two ways: the color of the edge represents the time of the transaction, the early the transaction, the lighter the edge color; In addition, the width of the edge represents transaction amount, where wider edges have larger transaction amount.
Define the invisible middle point on the edge, to allow hover effect on the edge. Since Dash only allows hover effect on data points, I add an invisible middle point on the edge to create an additional data point on the edge.
Finally, define the layout of the Plotly graph.
The final transaction network visualization app works like:
If you are interested in the code, please check it out on Github. | https://towardsdatascience.com/python-interactive-network-visualization-using-networkx-plotly-and-dash-e44749161ed7 | ['Jiahui Wang'] | 2019-11-19 14:07:03.519000+00:00 | ['Networkx', 'Plotly', 'Data Visualization', 'Network Visualization', 'Dash'] |
Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg and EV William — are the truest shields of our people against the closeted racist, functional semi-illiterate Judges. Like demi-gods, the trio guard TRUTHS. “I believe tru | Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg and EV William — are the truest shields of our people against the closeted racist, functional semi-illiterate Judges. Like demi-gods, the trio guard TRUTHS. “I believe truth the prime attribute of the Deity, and death an eternal sleep, at least of the body.” Lord Byron. Free at last, Free at last, Thank God Almighty, we’re Free at last. “Freedom of Expression is the cornerstone of our democracy.” Jacob Rees-Mogg. Freedom of Expression was part of the last Queen Speech. Olu Bamgbelu Dec 25, 2020·5 min read
www.facebook.com › Daringtruths01 › posts
District Judge Ayers, 15/12/20. … NEW HEROD: They lied to their children that they are geniuses; they kill all those who … Her Honour Judge Gargan, 11/12/20.
pt-br.facebook.com › Daringtruths01 › photos › district…
DISTRICT JUDGE AYERS OF BEDFORD COUNTY COURT: A BRAINLESS WHITE MAN; A RACIST DESCENDANT OF PROFESSIONAL THIEVES AND .
twitter.com › adeadeolacole1 › status
28 Nov 2018 — JUDGE AYERS,you’re a bad human being,a RACIST,and a COWARD.The JUDICIARY that made you a JUDGE isn’t working properly. You’re …
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD.
OUR FUNCTIONAL SEMI-ILLITERATE RACIST FREEMASON YOUR HONOUR.
A RACIST DUNCE.
Majestic appointee.
Majestic stupidity.
“There is no sin except stupidity.” Wilde.
Had his mum and dad cared, he’d be a properly educated QC, privately educated Rabinder Singh’s Class, and he’d do proper Law in STRAND.
“A complaints such as Mrs Bishop’s could trigger an enquiry.” Stephen Henderson, Racist Freemason, Head of MDDUS.
A brainless racist bastard.
An impostor and an expert of deception.
“I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.” George Bernard Shaw.
NIGERIA: SHELL’S DOCILE CASH COW. Then, racist bastards carried and sold millions stolen children of defenceless poor people (Kamala’s ancestors) — Habakkuk; now, the carry natural resources.
SUBSTITUTION: FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION.
OYINBO OLE: THIEVES — HABAKKUK.
“Moderation is a virtue only among those who are thought to have found alternatives.” Henry Kissinger.
WOLLASTON, ENGLAND: GDC-Witness, Ms Rachael Bishop, England’s Class Senior NHS Nurse, unrelentingly lied under oath — HABAKKUK.
A RACIST CROOK.
GOOGLE: MEDIOCRE GDC.
Based proximate contacts, Stephen Henderson, Racist Freemason, Head of MDDUS, stank; the incontrovertibly functional semi-illiterate Briton had a distinct body odour.
“The truth allows no choice.” Dr Samuel Johnson.
“Britons stank.” W.S.
W.S: Wole Soyinka, not William Shakespeare.
Wole Soyinka should know; at least one of his wives and many of his concubines were Britons.
BEDFORD, ENGLAND: Based on available evidence, GDC-Witness, Freemason, Dr Richard William Hill fabricated reports and unrelentingly lied under oath — Habakkuk.
A RACIST CROOK.
The persecute our people for the dark coat that we neither made nor chose, and they steal the yields of our God granted talents.
A bastardised, unashamedly mediocre, indiscreetly dishonest, potently weaponised, vindictive, and institutionally racist system that is overseen by MASONS (Mediocre Mafia) — Habakkuk 1:4.
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
CORBY, ENGLAND: Dr Kevin Atkinson (NHS) lied under oath
A RACIST CROOK
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW
Social Media is the WATERLOO OF RACIST MASONS,INCLUDING JUDGES;Jack Dorsey,Mark Zuckerberg and EV Williams GUARD TRUTHS,and they’re unplayable
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
CORBY, ENGLAND:
Dr George Rothnie (NHS) lied on record
A RACIST CROOK
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW
Social Media is the WATERLOO OF RACIST MASONS,INCLUDING JUDGES;Jack Dorsey,Mark Zuckerberg and EV Williams GUARD TRUTHS,and they’re unplayable
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
OXFORD:
Dr Stephanie Twidale lied under oath
A RACIST CROOK
BEDFORD,ENGLAND:District Judge, did Putin poison poison Bob Dudley?
Putin sits on the largest gas-reserve in the world; Kempston yields only food
NIGERIA: SHELL’S DOCILE CASH COW
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Freemason,Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
A RACIST CROOK
BEDFORD,ENGLAND:District Judge, did Putin poison poison Bob Dudley?
Putin sits on the largest gas-reserve in the world; Kempston yields only food
NIGERIA: SHELL’S DOCILE CASH COW
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
NORTHAMPTON,UK:
Dr Geraint Evans (NHS) lied on record
A RACIST CROOK
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW
Social Media is the WATERLOO OF RACIST MASONS,INCLUDING JUDGES;Jack Dorsey,Mark Zuckerberg and EV Williams GUARD TRUTHS,and they’re unplayable
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
BEDFORD: Freemason,District Judge,NIGERIA (oil/gas) is by far more relevant to the economic survival of your father and mother than LUTON.
You’re a leech; your ancestors were THIEVES — Habakkuk
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
WOLLASTON,ENGLAND
Ms Rachael Bishop(NHS) lied under oath
A RACIST CROOK
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW
Social Media is the WATERLOO OF RACIST MASONS,INCLUDING JUDGES;Jack Dorsey,Mark Zuckerberg and EV Williams GUARD TRUTHS,and they’re unplayable
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
BEDFORD, ENGLAND:
Dr Sue Gregory (OBE) lied on record
A RACIST CROOK
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW
Social Meia is the WATERLOO OF RACIST MASONS,INCLUDING JUDGES;Jack Dorsey,Mark Zuckerberg and EV Williams GUARD TRUTHS,and they’re unplayable
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
BEDFORD,UK:
Freemason,Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
A RACIST CROOK
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW
Social Mediocre is the WATERLOO OF RACIST MASONS,INCLUDING JUDGES;Jack Dorsey,Mark Zuckerberg and EV Williams GUARD TRUTHS,and they’re unplayable
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
BEDFORD,UK:
Freemason,Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
A RACIST CROOK
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW
Social Mediocre is the WATERLOO OF RACIST MASONS,INCLUDING JUDGES;Jack Dorsey,Mark Zuckerberg and EV Williams GUARD TRUTHS,and they’re unplayable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A | https://medium.com/@olubamgbelu21/jack-dorsey-mark-zuckerberg-and-ev-william-are-the-truest-shields-of-our-people-against-the-e35988612ab7 | ['Olu Bamgbelu'] | 2020-12-25 23:43:32.376000+00:00 | ['Law', 'America', 'Africa', 'Racism', 'Politics'] |
Thank you. | Thank you. Being able to find the words to describe ourselves can certainly help us understand both ourselves and be able to communicate our truth to other people, in a way that they should be able to understand with some basic internet research.
I know that after I had been in transition for 7 or 8 months, and was finding phrases like ‘baby girl’ (from fem presenting peeps I was dating) affirming rather than misgendering, I was struggling for 3 or 4 days every month with ‘am I really a woman? Is internalized transphobia and misogyny keeping me from identifying as a woman? Have I just been kidding myself by thinking nonbinary was safer?’
Then I discovered the word Girlflux. And in my head a bell rang and I said ‘it me!’ and peace settled inside me. So most of the time I’m happily a femme Demigirl. A few days a month I’m a Nonbinary woman (paragirl flux) and occasionally I’m just like 'gender, meh’ (librafeminine flux, close to agender). That’s mostly for me. I have varying ways to identify, depending on who the audience is and how much I think they would understand.
I always enjoy your writing. Stay loud and proud! Be visible, both for yourself, and for the other folks who need to see LGBTQIA2S+ people living their truth and thriving. | https://medium.com/@PolyPanSwitch/thank-you-a26c40cac6c4 | ['Mx. Marie Chase Lewis', 'They She'] | 2020-10-25 12:37:01.210000+00:00 | ['Transgender', 'Nonbinary', 'Lgbtqia2s', 'Girlflux', 'Queer'] |
Super Humans | Ladkiya hai to sukun hai, ladkiya hai to hum hai.
Have you ever seen superhumans? Nope! We all are surrounded by superhumans. They are the most protected and unbreakable walls that shield’s us. We are under our beautiful and peaceful shadows that are our mother, sisters, wife, and daughters.
Seriously, women are superhumans. One woman is handling multiple roles, at a time woman is a daughter, wife, sister, mother altogether. Not only a woman is a stick with these tags, she is giving more than 100% in every role, without getting noticed by someone. Just look around!
One woman handling two houses. Yes just imagine two houses. She solves the problems of both houses holding them together. She is there anytime for both the houses. women are the best examples of multitasking.
Woman by being a mother she is not helping their children she is also helping his husband by running the house, mentally, physically, and financially. I can’t describe mother, no one can, the word mother says everything. They are incredible.
Woman by being sister, she is not the only sister, by her smart moves, by everything she is mother to her elder and younger brothers. Sisters are always there for brothers. They are amazing.
The woman being a daughter, here comes the most most beautiful relationship. Having a daughter is an amazing thing in life. A true father wants only one thing in life and that is a daughter. Daughters cannot be compared by 10 sons, daughters are daughters. The most careful woman to a father is his daughter. They are great.
Women by being a wife, shows that how much women can have patience, the sweetest part of a man for his life is his wife. He gets relief and peace looking to his wife, as Allah T.A states in his Holy Quran “He who made of yourselves wives for you to dwell in”. Husband is all alone without his wife. They are beautiful.
Without women, this world is nothing but a cart without wheels. | https://medium.com/@hatim-bekhushi/super-humans-7c695fd5750c | ['Hatim Bekhushi'] | 2021-03-08 10:25:16.779000+00:00 | ['Sisters', 'Daughters', 'Mothers', 'Superhuman', 'Women Day'] |
While talking about mental health, words matter. Here’s why. | Have you ever been told that depression is a sign of intelligence? That the depressed people of the world “know too much” and therefore, they are devastated (and doomed). I have heard versions of this claim literally forever. When an actor or a comedian dies by suicide, when a brilliant friend comes out in the open to discuss their battle against mental health, and each time I have talked about my own struggles with a loved one who is unsure of what to say, there is always a vague statement that basically alludes to the idea that the smartest people are the saddest people.
I never know how to react to such references to depressed people. Are they saying I’m super smart? That’s kind of cool, right? May be I should be happy that people aren’t really calling me lazy or worthless? Also, this means that I don’t have to work as hard and I’ll still be successful, right? Wrong.
The focus on someone’s “smartness” and ability to “get by”, often takes away from their very palpable “struggle” to stay productive. Earnest attempts to positively respond to mental health challenges eventually serve to silence and overlook all signs that scream loud and clear, “You are in survival mode.”
Frankly, I’ve been caught in the trap of believing I can scrape by and get work done because I’m talented and brilliant. I call it a “trap”, because, well, it is. This narrative shifts the focus away from the prolonged, draining struggle to stay productive for someone battling mental health challenges — it completely overlooks the constant spiraling about how much you need to do (while you can’t do anything at all). It doesn’t explain why your stress impacts you enough to make you avoid eating right, sleeping enough or finally getting the work done.
The crash and burn model is exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. It makes you feel like you are invincible and capable of achieving the impossible while constantly depleting your energy and muting the inner voices that are trying to tell you to pay attention to the multitude of struggles that you neatly pack away to stay “productive”. Even if the triggers and experiences of anxiety and depression are buried deep down, the weight of this reality doesn’t disappear. This leads to a situation where 1. You expect yourself to always “manage” and “get things done” regardless of the toll it takes on you. 2. You term everything that is eating you up from within as “overthinking” or “temporary”. 3. You never recognize the mental health struggles that pose real barriers to your ability to keep working and caring about work.
So instead of buying into the toxic positivity that doesn’t serve me or validate what I’m going through, I’ve started naming what I believe is happening to me. When I read an email a million times before sending it, I tell myself that I’m not a “perfectionist”, I’m simply anxious. When I lay in bed watching grey’s anatomy while softly sobbing and texting friends about how much I need to get done in the day, I focus on recognizing what is weighing me down and try to name the depressive symptoms I’m experiencing. When I feel a mental block because of too many unrelated and overwhelming thoughts, I try to remind myself that I am emotionally flooded, not “crazy” or “confused”.
The process of actually naming my struggle is a means of respecting and accepting my experiences, needs and emotions. It makes me feel seen and heard. This helps me a lot. If you can relate, may be it will help you too. | https://medium.com/@snehatatapudy/depression-is-depression-c8f5db463bcd | ['Sneha Tatapudy'] | 2021-03-01 09:25:39.931000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Mental Health', 'Burnout', 'Reflections', 'Anxiety'] |
Follow Coin weekly update — New Exchange — 16th of March 2018 — Follow Coin — Medium | Dear Follow Coin community,
Please whoop it up, because this is the weekly update you have all been waiting for! Get ready for some really exciting news!
New Exchange!
With great pleasure we hereby announce our first exchange listing at Rfinex! https://rfinex.com/ WARNING! You can only send the NEW ERC-223 tokens to this exchange! If you haven’t swapped your old tokens do not send the old FLLW to Rfinex,you will lose your tokens!
Read how to swap your ERC-20 tokens here before you send it to the exchange: https://medium.com/followcoin/follow-coin-goes-erc-223
Rfinex provides transactions in major digital currencies and through the support of the Swiss banking system also digital currency exchange services in all major currencies of the world.
Our listing on Rfinex is a well thought of step towards global recognition of our Followcoin Brand and we are very happy with our listing on this exchange. Go to Rfinex now and deposit your followcoin right away!
1. FLLW deposits: 18:00 Mar 16, 2018 (UTC)
2. FLLW withdraw: 18:00 Mar 16, 2018(UTC)
3. FLLW trading: 13:00 Mar 19, 2018(UTC)
End date token swap: 16th of April
The official token swap will end at the 16th of April. Please make sure to swap your old ERC-20 tokens for the new ERC-223 tokens as soon as possible.
More information regarding this token swap can be found in our older Medium post: https://medium.com/followcoin/follow-coin-goes-erc-223
Giveaway
To celebrate our first exchange listing we are going to do a FLLW giveaway. We will announce these giveaways on Twitter page. So make sure to follow us and keep an eye on our latest tweets! | https://medium.com/followcoin/follow-coin-weekly-update-new-exchange-16th-of-march-2018-follow-coin-medium-86bd3bed9a5b | ['Follow Coin'] | 2018-03-19 10:51:50.702000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'ICO', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Top 10 Grossing Games On Android | 4) RISE OF EMPIRE (334 MB)
It's the age of war. Build your own empire with strategy and conquer the world!
One World, One Server
Real Time Nation vs. Nation medieval strategy war game. Join now! Train your troops and go to war!
Rise of Empires is a Massive Multi-Player, Real-Time strategy war game. The player will take on the role of a leader in a small town devastated by the invasion of the Eastern Dynasty and the mysterious appearance of the legendary Death Harbingers who now has corrupted and have full control of the ancient powers of the dragons. Build your empire once again from the ruins, train your troops, tame dragons, recruit legendary heroes and join your allies in the non-ending war. To befriend or to plunder, the choice is yours!
Unique Features
-World Wide War
Real-time combat against players across the world, lead your country to greatness
-Strategic Gameplay
One set of units just simply cannot dominate, Footmen, Cavalries and Archers, You have to know your enemy and yourself to walk the battlefield of this world.
-Powerful Dragons
Powerful dragons each with different unique shouts are at your disposal, crush your enemies with their help!
-Hero System
Whether you like to engage your enemies at a distance, take them on at close quarters, or you enjoy developing your base at home, there are TONS of heroes that can help you with just that!
-Alliance Warfare
Whether it’s going against different servers, or fighting for the title of the president at home, your alliance will always be backing you up, as long as you find the right people of course.
-Realistic Graphics
The Map, The World, Your City, The Units, The Heroes, Everything just seems, REAL
-Build Your Empire
Absolute Freedom in City Building, upgrade your facilities, research your technologies, train your troops and recruit powerful heroes to strengthen your empire!
ITS RATING⭐
Click here to download this game | https://medium.com/10-best-out-of-listed/top-10-grossing-games-on-android-e8095e770a4b | ['Quality Demanded'] | 2020-12-23 12:15:25.329000+00:00 | ['Gadgets', 'Games', 'Review', 'Android', 'Technology'] |
Wordpress | Shopify | Magento | Android | IOS | SEO | Social Media Management | Translating Ideas into Reality is what we do! We at Prodigitaly or simply “PD”, have been committed to the service of website development, web applications, and mobile applications for small and large companies across a wide range of industries. Our Specialities and Services : CMS , Technologies and Platform Wordpress , Woocomerce ,Magento 2 , Shopify , Drupal , Joomla, Wix, Squarespace , Weebly , Bigcommerce, Opencart , Volusion , Zencart Cakephp, Codeignitor, Laraval , Yii framework, Angular , Angular.js , Node.js Graphic Design : Logo designing Banner Designing Poster designing Flyer designing Infographic Designing Social Media posters PPT Presentation Designing Mobile App and Game Development Game Development iOS App Development iPad App Development Android App Development Windows App Development Hybrid App Development Native App Development Digital Marketing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Social media Management Search Engine Marketing Google Adwords Facebook Ad Marketing Instagram growth Marketing Twitter Marketing LinkedIn Marketing YouTube Marketing Online Reputation Management Video Creation Intro video Explainatory Video 2D Animated Video with Voiceover Whiteboard Video Web (HTML,CSS,JavaScript,React.js,Redux,Python/Django); Mobile (iOS, Android); UX/UI; Testing. Within such specified segments as E-Commerce, Entertainment, Media, E-Learning, Finance, Analytics, HealthCare, Online Service, Marketplace. We are fast growing, therefore we are always ready to extend expertise. We create Prodigitaly !! Transforming your vision to Reality. | https://medium.com/@prodigitaly/wordpress-shopify-magento-android-ios-seo-social-media-management-233c904b3cbe | ['Digital Consultancy - Prodigitaly'] | 2019-07-19 16:56:11.784000+00:00 | ['Application Development', 'Digital Marketing', 'SEO', 'Website Development', 'Magento Development'] |
How to Lose Weight Fast: 3 Simple Steps, Based on Science | If your doctor recommends it, there are ways to lose weight safely. A steady weight loss of 1 to 2 pounds per week is recommended for the most effective long-term weight management.
That said, many eating plans leave you feeling hungry or unsatisfied. These are major reasons why you might find it hard to stick to a healthier eating plan.
However, not all diets have this effect. Low carb diets and whole food, lower calorie diets are effective for weight loss and may be easier to stick to than other diets.
Here are some ways to lose weight that employ healthy eating, potentially lower carbs, and that aim to:
reduce your appetite
cause fast weight loss
improve your metabolic health at the same time
1. Cut back on refined carbs
One way to lose weight quickly is to cut back on sugars and starches, or carbohydrates. This could be with a low carb eating plan or by reducing refined carbs and replacing them with whole grains.
When you do that, your hunger levels go down, and you generally end up eating fewer calories (1).
With a low carb eating plan, you’ll utilize burning stored fat for energy instead of carbs.
If you choose to eat more complex carbs like whole grains along with a calorie deficit, you’ll benefit from higher fiber and digest them more slowly. This makes them more filling to keep you satisfied.
A 2020 study confirmed that a very low carbohydrate diet was beneficial for losing weight in older populations (2).
Research also suggests that a low carb diet can reduce appetite, which may lead to eating fewer calories without thinking about it or feeling hungry (3).
Note that the long-term effects of a low carb diet are still being researched. It can also be difficult to adhere to a low carb diet, which may lead to yo-yo dieting and less success in maintaining a healthy weight.
There are potential downsides to a low carb diet that may lead you to a different method. Reduced calorie diets can also lead to weight loss and be easier to maintain for longer periods of time.
If you opt for a diet focusing instead on whole grains over refined carbs, a 2019 study correlated high whole grain with lower body mass index (BMI) .
To determine the best way for you to lose weight, consult your doctor for recommendations.
-Watch Free Weight Loss Video for detailed Knowledge.
2. Eat protein, fat, and vegetables
Each one of your meals should include:
a protein source
fat source
vegetables
a small portion of complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains
To see how you can assemble your meals, check out:
this low carb meal plan
this lower calorie meal plan
these lists of 101 healthy low carb recipes and low calorie foods
Protein
Eating a recommended amount of protein is essential to help preserve your health and muscle mass while losing weight .
Evidence suggests that eating adequate protein may improve cardiometabolic risk factors, appetite, and body weight,
Here’s how to determine how much you need to eat without eating too much. Many factors determine your specific needs, but generally, an average person needs:
56–91 grams per day for the average male
46–75 grams per day for the average female
Diets with adequate protein can also help:
reduce cravings and obsessive thoughts about food by 60%
reduce the desire to snack late at night by half
make you feel full
In one study, people on a higher protein diet ate 441 fewer calories per day.
Healthy protein sources include:
meat: beef, chicken, pork, and lamb
beef, chicken, pork, and lamb fish and seafood: salmon, trout, and shrimp
salmon, trout, and shrimp eggs: whole eggs with the yolk
whole eggs with the yolk plant-based proteins: beans, legumes, quinoa, tempeh, and tofu
Low carb and leafy green vegetables
Don’t be afraid to load your plate with leafy green vegetables. They’re packed with nutrients, and you can eat very large amounts without greatly increasing calories and carbs.
Vegetables to include for low carb or low calorie eating plans:
broccoli
cauliflower
spinach
tomatoes
kale
Brussels sprouts
cabbage
Swiss chard
lettuce
cucumber
Watch Free Weight Loss Training
3. Move your body
Exercise, while not required to lose weight, can help you lose weight more quickly. Lifting weights has particularly good benefits.
By lifting weights, you’ll burn lots of calories and prevent your metabolism from slowing down, which is a common side effect of losing weight .
Try going to the gym three to four times a week to lift weights. If you’re new to the gym, ask a trainer for some advice. Make sure your doctor is also aware of any new exercise plans.
If lifting weights is not an option for you, doing some cardio workouts such as walking, jogging, running, cycling, or swimming is very beneficial for weight loss and general health.
Both cardio and weightlifting can help with weight loss.
So these are few tips from my side, Follow these tips and you will be able to lose your weight fast.
Follow us for more content. Feedback are most welcomed.. | https://medium.com/@talktoprashant7/how-to-lose-weight-fast-3-simple-steps-based-on-science-d5dd786ae72d | ['Prashant Rocky'] | 2021-01-06 14:15:20.920000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss Tips', 'Lose Belly Fat Fast', 'Weight Loss', 'Lose Belly Fat'] |
The Fiercest Tug of Tide | I will not leave you
to this rolling sea
of scrolling words
that dip
and pierce
your soul
with their
important truth.
I will dive deeper
than the fiercest
tug of tide
and pluck you
from even
the ocean’s
vast divide. | https://medium.com/where-my-poems-go/the-fiercest-tug-of-tide-2b3a73c68b4e | ['Elle Rogers'] | 2019-11-16 13:59:47.156000+00:00 | ['Poetry On Medium', 'Nature', 'Love', 'Redemption', 'Poetry'] |
What Is Happening to Money 101? | Money
Money is a technology.
It is a technology used to exchange value between parties instead of the limitations of direct barter (ex: I’ll give you this corn for that tobacco). It is highest quality financial potential energy. With money you can pay for goods, energy, water, fire, movement, protection, fuel, chemical, mechanical, or potential energy. It is the highest form of stored energy.
Properties of money are divisibility, scarcity, durability, fungibility, salability across time and space.
Free Trade Capitalism
In a free trade capitalist society, (with no money printer) money is rewarded to people who provide value to others. Do you want million dollars… solve a dollar problem for a million people, or create a service that provides enough value to 4 companies and charge them 250k each. There are many ways, but they all require one person or group to specialize in a product or service that others are willing to voluntary part ways with their money to get the product or service you are offering. Over time this improves society’s quality of life as people are financially rewarded to keep solving each others problems / inconveniences.
What about monopolies? There has never been a monopoly in world history that has maintained monopoly status without government support to artificially keep them solvent. When large companies get too big, they cannot keep everyone internally on the same page and become bloated with chains of commands, boards that become out of touch with customer needs etc. They naturally would die off as smaller, more nimble companies improve on their archaic processes and eat away their market share. Like a big tree eventually dying in nature to make way for new fresh plants. Only through government allocation of money and/or favorable regulation moats can these “zombie” companies stay alive engaging in non valuable products or services.
Gold
Gold was used for a long time as it fit almost all of the qualities of money mentioned in the Money section.
Scarcity — It was essentially finite in total supply because there is only so much gold in the world. The supply of gold increases only ~2% / year.
Divisibility — It is okay at this property, it can be in gold bars, coins, rings however any smaller means of measurement becomes less efficient to use as a means of exchange.
Salability — Salability across time, gold excels greatly because it is a rock that has been here for thousands of years. Salability across space, gold is very durable for the physical journey of transferring through space. However, imagine the logistics of buying something directly with gold across the world, it would take a lot of trusted third parties to monitor this transaction to make sure no gold was “lost” along the way.
Fungibility — an ounce of solid gold = an ounce of solid gold. They are swap-able in value for the most part.
Paper money was created to represent gold in storage (The Gold Standard) because it was easier to move around. This was in effect until early 1900s and was completely abandoned in 1971. The US government wanted more money for Vietnam etc and decided to spend more than they were collecting in tax revenues. They removed the dollar’s peg to gold and started printing money (Fiat Currency). Until this point, dollars were actually redeemable in gold at US treasuries in the early 1900s. Now instead of having to raise taxes immensely to sustain their spending (which would be publicly known knowledge that may have upset the population), they could now print “more money” and devalue the savings of everyone in a less obvious way. It is the same thing as taxing the population except many are not aware of this theft on their savings occurring.
Central Banks & Money Printer
Since 1971 our money is based off of no limitations in the real world, thus completely getting rid of scarcity property. It can be created at the mercy of whoever controls it (The FED). This has enormous consequences touching every aspect of the entire world, this is infinite, undemocratic, and unnaturally large amounts of power.
Imagine 2 dollars as 2 slices of an 8 piece pie. Now imagine someone takes the pie and cuts each of the slices in half, making a total of 16 slices now. Your slices have been cut in half, but you are forced to still only hang on to 2 of the newly made slices. You technically still have two slices as before, but you now have less of the pie. This is what happens when the government “prints” money.
What does that looks like in action?
This is the USD monetary base overtime. This visually shows overtime how they’re “adding more slices” to pie.
It does not create more value, it just steals value from everyone else holding pie, making the slices worth less. There is no limit to how small your slices get yet you are still mandated to conduct commerce in these shrinking mandated slices. This is why stimulus bills created from printed money that shrink the slice of your pie by 5% and then they carve out .5% of the bill to give back to you are actually a delayed net loss to the stimulus check recipients. All while the bigger players and corrupt organizations that are closer to the “spigot” get the freshly made dollars (or freshly cut slices) first.
Since March 2020, over 30% of all dollars in the history of America’s existence have been “printed”. The rate of printing, or the rate of debasement of your savings, is accelerating. Houses aren’t going up in value, stocks aren’t going up, used cars aren’t going up, it is really the dollar that is going down. It is falling in purchasing power as 30% more slices have been squeezed into the finite pie and allocated to people and companies closest to those in control of the printer.
Mandating the use of this depreciated currency tied to nothing makes it a “Fiat Currency”. It is important to note, every fiat currency throughout world history has failed.
Impacts on Society Since 1971: | https://medium.com/@sovpeople/what-is-happening-to-money-101-d4b9a76ab118 | ['The Bitcoin Buzz'] | 2021-09-08 02:55:49.729000+00:00 | ['Gold', 'Bitcoin', 'Stocks', 'Money', 'Politics'] |
Stakenet AMA - Part I | Q: How many people are actually involved in the overall project? Including websites, cloud-service, etc.? and How many people work for X9? and How many people make up the team and how many are developers?
A: In total there are circa 40 people who are involved with the project, which includes team members, 10 developers, website maintenance etc.
Q: Has a new big exchange been approached? Can we expect this in Q1 2021? When will we be listed and what stage are we currently at with them?
A: Due to NDA’s we cannot state an exact date about the exchange listing, but we are working hard to get it done asap.
Q: When will the DEX be launched?
A: You are able to test the current version of the DEX as we type this. The DEX is in open Beta which is a vital stage as this allows us to gather feedback from the community and find as many bugs as possible. We will release the DEX from the open Beta stage once we have integrated and tested ETH & ERC-20 tokens. Once this has been done and everyone is happy with how the DEX performs, then we will be able to give an exact date however; it is fully functional in its current Beta state.
Q: Even though we realize it is complicated to pin down exact dates, is it planned to at least give estimates on achieving the milestones of the roadmap? Since the percentage of approximate completion can be confusing and frustrating (because there is no indication on how long the current progress persists), maybe quarters would be more convenient. and Why not list things on the roadmap that are achievable in a year?
A: Thanks for the feedback and the critic!
We have learned from the past mistakes when using estimates within our roadmap. Innovation is at the forefront of what we do so the majority of the work we do is built from scratch so this requires time and can be very hard to estimate as we have nothing to compare against.
There are times where we rely on third parties, such as Ledger, which can cause unexpected delays and roadmap targets to be missed. Previously we use to have quarters on the roadmap which did not work as we moved targets around.
We understand our roadmap is ambitious roadmap as it includes not only innovation from our developers but also what is being researched. We will keep the roadmap as it stands and we relish the opportunity to complete it!
Q: Could you disclose any plans to audit the DEX and XSN Blockchain or other verifiable assurances or security?
A: At this point the code of MCLW and DEX is closed source, so we won’t have an audit there soon.
We are currently in contact with a code reviewer who might audit the core wallet and also get an audit of the security aspects of our MCLW and lightning DEX later.
Q: Is it possible to be listed on an exchange in Turkey?
A: Previously we listed on a Turkish Exchange, Sistemkoin. This exchange caused a lot of issues (delayed wallet/node upgrades, delaying withdrawals for users, strange price peaks and so forth). We as a team, and in agreement with our Turkish community, requested that we get delisted from their exchange.
Q: Can you elaborate on the utilization of the TOR Network and how exactly it comes into play regarding the Wallet/User anonymity?
A: With TOR Network your IP gets hidden by a decentralized server system, so your crypto wallet addresses can’t be traced back to your home IP. In the future, the wallets’ TOR system will be run by XSN Masternodes.
Q: Is there an ETA on the Cloud-UI polish/update? (staking/ scaling/ filtering/ graphs/ statistics…)
A: The Stakenet Cloud will receive not only a UI update but an overall update in the coming weeks and a much bigger update in the coming months. It will remain mostly MNaaS-focused from there on.
Q: Will the DEX be easy to use when released? Because the current system is very complex.
A: Yes, that’s what we have been working on the last months — it is called simple swap UI (SSUI). All you need to do is load your wallet with funds and only click “exchange” — and your work is done. Take a look here:
Live swap from closed-beta group
Q: Will the dex support XRP/ XLM/ Stablecoins in the future? and Any chance we will see Monero (XMR) on the DEX?
A: We have to be specific here: XLM (Stellar) has lightning enabled and should be possible to add eg after we have finished ETH and ERC-20 tokens integration. XRP (Ripple) isn’t lightning swap compatible, but still by using our hubs we will be able to add any coin, as long as we have a way to interact via a wallet or a node. Specially the ones that have high tx/s rate, low block time and cheap tx fees (e.g. XRP). In those cases, an on-chain instant low fee trade would be feasible (e.g. Lightning BTC <> on-chain XRP).
Stablecoins, eg USDT, USDC and DAI are ERC-20 tokens, so they will be added by using the Connext Network, especially USDT will be one of the very first tokens we are going to add.
XMR (Monero) is working at the moment on becoming atomic swap compatible, which is the base for becoming lightning compatible (read more here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/gx2ow6/ccs_funding_required_monero_atomic_swaps_research/ ). If XMR won’t become lightning compatible, we will add it to our Atomic-Swap tab.
Q: How long does it take to get the aggregator connected to a new exchange?
A: It mostly depends on the exchange to be integrated as there are different aspects to check:
How similar their API design is to other already integrated exchanges
How many open source clients are available for their API and in what programming languages they are written
How active / responsive their tech support is
How the requests limits and trading rules defined
What are the reporting tools they offer
Considering a fair amount of testing, it might need up to 2 weeks — months for any exchange to be fully integrated for an aggregator.
Once the exchange is connected and flexible configurations are implemented, it technically only takes seconds to add new pairs. However the hub aggregators will make sure everything runs stable, so they will test, add funds to the exchanges etc. before releasing it to the public.
Q: How important does the X9 Team consider Privacy Coins? Can we count on coins that have a Privacy by Default blockchain, like ZK-Snark technology or RingCT or Mimblewimble? (Not lightning capable, partially Atomic-Swap capable)
A: Privacy is very important to us, this is why we are using TOR and Lightning Network swaps (offchain => not visible to anyone outside). When we have our Atomic Swap tab ready we will also implement atomic swap compatible privacy coins. Also the privacy coin Beam coin might become lightning compatible. Furthermore we are actively watching privacy technology like Mimblewimble we could integrate into our own blockchain too.
Q: (How) will the Stakenet blockchain be connected to the DEX? What services can masternodes contribute to the DEX and the XSN ecosystem?
A: The XSN blockchain will be integrated at stage 3, called hydra, and will play an important role in the monitoring and policing of hubs. The blockchain will be used to set rules and regulations for the DEX operators that ensure good behavior and reliable service. In return for the blockchains service to act as “referee” for the operator, payment must be made in the native currency XSN (the extra work for the additional conversion does not lie with the users, but with the operators / DEX hub nodes).
To explain this, we have to go back a little: there is currently a problem in the Lightning network, because you don’t really know whether a hub or a blockchain service made many mistakes in the past or failed to perform swaps.
This problem could be solved along the lines of “karma” points. So if a hub causes a lot of errors and fails to meet user swaps, it has “bad karma”, if it behaves well it has “good karma”.
This is the perfect and ideal job for a blockchain, as this is some kind of auditing work (watching the hubs & services) you get rewarded for (like miners get rewarded for auditing work).
So the result would be that hubs running on the XSN network are reliable and have a reputation (= good karma) for good service. Users then prefer to connect and trade through these hubs (with “good karma”) when they do. Hubs (= liquidity providers) in turn earn fees, which gives operators an incentive to provide liquidity (the more liquidity they provide, the higher volume they can support). Higher exchange volume through their node would equate to higher $ returns.
Without a XSN masternode and without “karma points” you cannot offer and be paid for the following:
CPU and DB services from third parties TOR services Securities for the liquidity of Lightning Network Securities with more stablecoins, e.g. a XSN backed stablecoin Watchtower Services Escrow Services … and more critical services to be added in a later future.
Let’s wrap it up:
The XSN blockchain itself would act as an auditor, auditing the hubs to track their performance and behaviors. This is needed to mass scale, otherwise the service & experience would be poor for the users of the DEX (lots of failed orders, easily DDOS’d, low liquidity etc).
The service of auditing requires rewards/ payment to the blockchain (in this case for example the blockchain can apply rules to “force” hubs to send XSN to a burn for example). This is how the XSN blockchain and token have utility for the DEX. Keep in mind the DEX is just ONE of the many dApps and services that the XSN blockchain will provide | https://medium.com/stakenet/stakenet-ama-part-i-bdfcb8997d6d | ['Jo Park'] | 2020-12-16 12:56:56.333000+00:00 | ['Lightning Network', 'Blockchain', 'Xsn Articles', 'Xsn', 'Xsn Community'] |
Preserving Our American Democracy in an Era of Repression and Regression | Part Three: Plans for Preserving Our Democracy
Photo Credits: Tom de Boor, Adobe, et al
[This is the third and final blog of a three-part series focused on what is happening in our democratic republic in terms of repression and regression and what should be done in response to these conditions. In the first blog, we examined the areas of repression. In the second, we examined the areas of regression. In this blog, we present and discuss plans for protecting and preserving our democracy.]
Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with insistency. – Daniel Burnham, American architect and urban planner
In an April 10 White House coronavirus briefing, President Trump was asked by a reporter what metrics he would use to determine when to reopen the country. Trump pointed to his head and replied, “The metrics right here. That’s my metrics. That’s all I can do.”
That gesture and those words confirmed that the United States was in terrible trouble with this planning averse President who lives inside his own head in charge during this time of crisis. This is the case because inside that head there is little-to-no room for data, evidence, expert knowledge, intelligence, or analytical reasoning.
As a business person, President Trump demonstrated his lack of planning and management skills by bankrupting six hotels and casinos, which caused thousands of lost jobs and getting involved in more than four thousand lawsuits. As our President, Trump’s failure to put a timely and thorough health care plan in place to combat the coronavirus has already resulted in more than 1.4 million cases and nearly 86,000 deaths in the U.S. and traumatized the American economy.
There is no vacuum at the top. But it would be nice to have a vacuum cleaner that could be used to get rid of the flotsam and jetsam floating around in the mind of our feckless leader. Or perhaps all we need is the sun or a little bit of bleach for the President to ingest.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. But you have to have one to waste one.
Seriously, because of who he was and is, this is the best that can be expected of Trump — our commander-in-chief. He may be our “war-time” President. The war he continues to wage, unfortunately, is not on the coronavirus pandemic, but a divisive re-election and cultural war focused on mobilizing his base to go into combat on his behalf.
This is a tragic for the United States and destructive of our American democracy. Fortunately, while the coronavirus has shown us the worst of Donald Trump, it has brought out the best in many citizens who have leapt into the breach to fight for the common good and to breathe life back into the American idea.
Our democracy is not on life support and ventilators like those citizens with Covid-19 in hospitals across the nation, but it is definitely at risk. As we said in our two earlier blogs in this series, we are living in an era of repression and regression.
The repression has been going on for some time, but intensified with the presidential political campaign of 2016 and has intensified even more-so under the Trump administration. The scope of the regression is broad and encompassing and has been affecting many areas for decades before the pandemic.
The coronavirus pandemic has multiplied the impact of these repressive and regressive forces. As a result, it will be totally insufficient to only address the near-term health and economic consequences of the pandemic.
What will be required to win this war completely on behalf of the American citizens and to preserve our democracy is an integrated set of four plans. They are:
Health Care Stabilization Plan
Country Reopening Plan
Economic Recovery Plan (Short Term)
Democracy Renewal Plan (Long Term)
In earlier times, the federal government would have taken the lead in helping to develop and ensure those plans were put into place and implemented effectively. In these times, for the time being, the federal government is providing “guidance” and leaving it up to states and cities to chart their own course on the first two plans.
While the federal government (with a few notable exceptions such as FEMA, the CDC and the National Guard) has been more hands-off, citizens and organizations have heard the call to arms and been hands-on, providing input and ideas that can be used to develop all four of those plans. They have done so with classic American industriousness, ingenuity, and inventiveness.
We will identify some of that creative input and ideas in our discussion of the plans that follow. Let us begin, however, with an overriding recommendation, which is to establish an American Renewal Commission as the group to lead the development of these plans.
American Renewal Commission (ARC or Commission)
Kyle Cheney of Politico reported on April 6 that there were four proposals circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives to establish a 9/11 type commission to investigate the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The ARC we recommend would have a much broader scope and charge than the coronavirus investigative 9/11-type commission proposals currently being floated in the House. The Commission would be responsible for preparing the drafts of each of the four plans identified and ensuring they are an integrated set.
As an integrated set they should be comprehensive, coordinated, and citizen-oriented. The overriding vision for the set should be:
To provide the strategic and proactive framework for creating a more inclusive and equitable American democracy.
In combination, these plans should resemble but go well beyond the scope and thrust of the acclaimed Marshall Plan, which the U.S. put together to finance the rebuilding of Europe after the devastation of World War II. There should be a preamble to the plan that defines the parameters of a new social contract, similar to the one Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz proposes, “between voters and elected officials, between workers and corporations, between rich and poor, and between those with jobs and those who are un- or under-employed.”
The charge to the Commission should be to conduct a thorough and in-depth SWOT analysis and situational assessment of the United States’ current position in each plan area. Based upon those findings, at a minimum each draft plan should clearly spell out goals, strategies, strategic action programs, implementation requirements, facilitating factors, potential obstacles or barriers, and critical success factors. Each plan should include a budget and cost benefit analysis for its implementation.
The Commission will not have to start from scratch. Groups of all stripes and persuasions have already weighed in, and many more will undoubtedly be doing so in the months ahead. This full body of work should be reviewed and considered as input by the Commission in the analysis phase of its planning.
In terms of its composition, the ARC should be nonpartisan rather than bipartisan. Its members should be drawn from national leaders with expertise and experience in business, politics, government, civic and community service, and academia. The Commission should be headed by representatives from the business, civic/community, and governmental sectors. While it should include a few former elected officials, they should be a minority of the membership.
The ARC’s membership will be pivotal to its success. According to Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post, former New Jersey governor Tom Kean, who headed the 9/11 commission, told her that “the first and most important challenge for any commission would be making sure the right people are on it. Ideally, he said, they should be figures who are respected across party lines and who are not likely to seek political office in the future.”
It will not be just the appointed members of the ARC who matter. Of equal importance will be the management team and staff of the Commission. These individuals should have content knowledge and expertise in health care, government, economics, social policy and programs, have done major management studies, and created and contributed to the successful implementation of turnaround and/or transformation plans.
To avoid being seen as political, the Commission should be established and begin its work in the first quarter of 2021. Sufficient time should be spent to do the planning right which means 24 months for all four plans.
The plans should be developed in three phases: The Health Care Stabilization Plan and the Country Reopening Plan should be prepared and available within 12 months. The Economic Recovery Plan within 18 months and the Democracy Renewal Plan within 24 months.
The Commission should present its plans to representative stakeholder groups for review and comment. The final plans should be provided to the President and U.S. Congress for consideration and action.
The Commission should be paid for by a mix of public and private funds. It should also solicit volunteer-contributed time to assist in the research and analysis from organizations such as businesses, consulting firms, universities, and civic organizations.
One might argue that our elected officials at the federal level are already doing this planning when they write laws or develop policy. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. A law is not a plan. A policy is not a plan.
Moreover, Congress, over the past decade, has become increasingly more dysfunctional. It is also understaffed and frequently has to depend on lobbyists and think tanks to do its primary and secondary research. Those groups have agendas. They are hired guns for their cause, as they should be.
When it comes to an issue as critical as the future of this great nation and our American democracy, we adamantly believe that we need more objective and neutral data. We need real strategic planning and foresight.
The Commission would provide that. As Martin Luther King famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” This ARC would help to bend the United States toward more justice and opportunity and equality for all and it would do that first in its health care stabilization plan.
Health Care Stabilization Plan (Stabilization Plan)
Since it was established on January 29, The White House Coronavirus Task Force has been the group that “coordinates and oversees the Administration’s effort to monitor, prevent, contain and mitigate the spread” of coronavirus (Covid-19). The Task Force and the White House have been criticized for being slow to issue, and not directive enough, in its guidance, and for the lack of national testing plan and program.
As a result, a number of groups and individuals stepped up and put forward plans and recommendations. Three common elements among most of the proposals were: ramp-up testing, do extensive contact tracing, and treatment and quarantine of all those who are identified with the virus.
Because of his extensive involvement in addressing health issues through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates has become a very knowledgeable and one of the most influential people on what to do to combat this pandemic. On March 31, in a Washington Post op-ed, he outlined a plan to make up for lost time in dealing with the coronavirus.
Gates’ plan had three steps: (1) Implement a consistent nationwide approach to shutting down; (2) Have the federal government step up testing; (3) Implement a data-based approach to developing treatments and a vaccine.
On April 26, the Rockefeller Foundation issued a National Covid-19 Testing Action Plan. This Action Plan was created by the Foundation bringing together experts and leaders from science, industry, academia, public policy and the government.
It has three major objectives: (1) Launch a plan to expand from the current 1 million tests/week to 3 million within 8 weeks, and 30 million within six months. (2) Launch a Covid Community Healthcare Corps to do testing and contact tracing nationally. (3) Create a Covid-19 data commons and digital platform to create a national system to track the Covid-19 status and to find data-driven ways to improve diagnosis and treatment.
At about the same time that the Rockefeller Foundation put out its plan, Andy Slavitt, director of Medicare and Medicaid in the Obama administration, and Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration for President Trump, advanced a $46.5 billion coronavirus package. They did this because the U.S public health system lacks the capacity to address the needs presented by Covid-19.
Their $46.5 billion package would allocate funds as follows: (1) $12 billion to expand the contact tracing workforce by 180,000 until a vaccine is on the market; (2) $4.5 billion to use vacant hotels to house infected and exposed people; (3) $30 billion to offer 18 months of income support for those voluntarily self-isolating.
The White House has made some modest progress in having tests manufactured and distributed over the past month or so. And, on April 30, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that “if things fall in the right place,” meaning that the coronavirus vaccine, which is currently in Phase I trial, works, and is safe, the vaccine might be available for wide use nationally as early as January 2021. It remains the case that there is still not a national plan for managing and controlling the response to the coronavirus.
And, there will not be such a plan. This will be so even though President Trump said the Coronavirus Task Force will stay in place “indefinitely” on Wednesday, May 6, reversing his statement of a day earlier that the Task Force would be winding up its work by around Memorial Day.
The task force may be there but it will be, as it has been since its inception, a toothless tiger. And not all task force members of this “tiger” will be present in person for a while. On May 9, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIH, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of CDC, and Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of FDA announced they would be self-quarantining, due to contact with a person who has tested positive for Covid-19.
On May 11, President Trump appeared at a coronavirus news conference in the White House Rose Garden flanked by two large banners that proudly proclaimed “AMERICA LEADS THE WORLD IN TESTING.” That claim is true in the absolute number of tests that have been conducted but completely false in terms of the more important number, which is tests per capita. Even in cases where we’ve outperformed countries on this metric, as Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) points out, there are reasons for this that don’t reflect well.
On May 12, the Senate Health, Education and Labor Benefits Committee held a hearing on the coronavirus briefing with Drs Fauci, Redfield, Hahn and Admiral Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of Health at HHS as witnesses.
During the hearing, CNN reports, Committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-TN) stated, “All roads back to work and school run through testing. And that what our country has done so far on testing is impressive but not nearly enough.”
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) agreed with Alexander on the need for more testing, but she was much more critical of its current availability. She asserted: “We need dramatically more testing. It’s unacceptable we still don’t have a national strategic plan to make sure testing is free, fast and everywhere.”
Even though Senator Murray called for a national strategic plan for testing, there will never be one from this administration. This war has already been won. Trump declared victory on May 12 in front of those testing banners when he said, “We have met the moment and we have prevailed.”
This means when the American Renewal Commission convenes in January 2021 it will have the plans and proposals discussed here and many others to consider in drafting the Health Care Stabilization Plan after it completes an exhaustive assessment of the status of the coronavirus at that time. In conducting this analysis and decision-making the ARC should determine what has been accomplished since the coronavirus was identified, what has not and why.
This absolutely must not be done as a blame game or a finger-pointing exercise, however. It must be a search for the truth which will set America and Americans free from the effects of this pandemic and be to fully prepared for the next pandemic which will come inevitably.
One of the documents that the ARC should look at carefully as part of its inquiry is the Global Health Security Index (GHSI or Index). The Index was released in October 2019 as a joint project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the John Hopkins Center for Health Security, and The Economist Intelligence Unit. The GHSI ranks countries based on the preparedness to face a pandemic.
The United States ranked first out of 195 on the Index, with an overall value of 83.5. Tellingly, however, it fell short in some critical indicator areas, including: access to health care, where it ranked 175 out of 195; socio-economic resilience, with a ranking of 59; and exercising response plans, with a ranking of 54.
The deficiencies in these areas, in conjunction with the lack of presidential and federal leadership, may help to explain why the U.S. has stumbled in responding to the Covid-19 onslaught. The ARC can make this determination based upon the facts and data it collects.
As noted earlier, the ARC should have the Health Care Stabilization Plan drafted, reviewed, commented upon and delivered to the President and Congress for action within 12 months.
One concern should be mentioned. This timeline assumes that when there is a second round of Covid-19 beginning in the Fall of 2020 — as most medical experts project there will be — this round will be mild in comparison to the first one. If, on the other hand, the second round is a wave comparable to, or worse, than the first round, as many medical experts predict, the ARC should compress its time frame for completion to the shortest period in which a quality job can be done in preparing the Stabilization Plan.
The Stabilization Plan should be focused solely on pandemic preparedness and management. As Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, all of the Democratic candidates for President, and numerous others have highlighted, the United States public health care system is “sick”. The ARC should provide the answers to dealing with the illness of the health care system as part of the Democracy Renewal Plan.
Country Reopening Plan
As with the Stabilization Plan, the ARC should have the Country Reopening Plan drafted, reviewed commented upon and delivered to the President and Congress for action within 12 months. Also, in this area, as in the area of health care, there was not, and will not be, any national plan for country re-opening.
The White House did issue Opening Up America Again Guidelines on April 16 for states to follow. These guidelines stated that there should be a 14-day period of “downward trajectory of influenza-like illnesses” and a “downward trajectory of documented cases” before re-opening.
CNBC reported that by April 30, none of the states had met the guidelines. Nevertheless, as reported in the New York Times by May 7, more than half of all of the states had re-opened partially, and the bulk of the states that had not reopened or had serious restrictions were primarily in the Northeast, the Midwest Great Lakes, and the West Coast. Even in many of those states, people were being allowed to walk on beaches, parks, and other open space areas.
With a few exceptions such as Georgia, the states have not acted precipitously and have developed well-designed phased plans for re-opening slowly. The plans tend to resemble each other and generally follow the phased approach set out in the White House Guidelines.
For example, New Jersey which has been the second hardest hit state with coronavirus cases and deaths announced a six-point “Road Back Plan” on Monday, April 27. NJ Governor Phil Murphy opened beaches and parks on May 2, but stated it was premature to open any businesses.
Florida ranks eighth in coronavirus cases and deaths. FL Governor Ron DeSantis announced his “Safe. Smart. Step-by-Step.” Plan for FL on April 29. Many beaches were already open. His plan called for re-opening selected businesses on a reduced scale on May 4 in all counties except for Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach, where the preponderance of Florida cases existed.
Most governors and city mayors have demonstrated strong leadership and the ability to cooperate in creating innovative and collaborative approaches to confront and combat the coronavirus pandemic. These collaborations for reopening planning extend across state lines. There is an eight-state coalition in the Northeast and a four-state coalition on the West Coast.
These responsible actions and coalition-building have been essential because of the contrasting signals and messages sent from the White House regarding reopening America. The Guidelines issued by the White House speak for themselves.
Unfortunately, they do not speak to the President. On May 2, the Washington Post ran a revelatory article describing the President’s “desperate attempts to reopen America,” guided not by science or epidemiologists but wishful thinking and an econometric model which forecast a peak in cases in mid-April and a much lower death count than has occurred.
The President has exacerbated his desperate attempts by tweeting approvingly in support of those who have come out in states across the country to protest and demonstrate against business closures and stay at home orders. These tweets and his public comments rationalizing and encouraging that aberrant behavior have been extremely divisive. They have moved the U.S to the precipice of anarchy.
On Chis Wallace’s show on Sunday, May 3, Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Deborah Birx called protesters storming the Michigan Capitol not wearing masks and jammed together and not social distancing “devastatingly worrisome” because it increases the potential for new coronavirus cases and more deaths.
Dr. Birx also reinforced that the medical community’s projections for Covid-19 deaths have been over 100,000. That is much higher than the 60,0000 that President Trump had been claiming would be the peak. By that Sunday night, May 2, President Trump himself was adjusting his numbers from 60,000 to closer to 100,000.
The chaotic and nationally uncoordinated reopening process, combined with the President’s cognitive dissonance, make the American Renewal Commission’s development of a Country Reopening Plan especially critical. The country will have reopened in some shape and form by January 2021. But the impact of that reopening because of the lack of a uniform and consistent approach will be variable.
In this planning area, as in all of the others, the ARC will have solid data to draw upon as the basis for creating its plan. Although not done deliberately, the states provide a Whitman’s sampler, or an uncontrolled experiment, of data that can be analyzed to see what was done and the results achieved. ARC should create an index to evaluate and rank the effectiveness of states responses to determine what to recommend going forward to ensure the best possible outcomes across the country.
Additional reference points, among others, include the original reopening plan put together by FEMA and the CDC; the May 1 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) put together by the CDC; and the 17 page CDC report, “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework” (Guidance Framework) which provides step-by-step directions on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public facilities. Jason Dearen and Mike Stoppe of the AP report that this Guidance Framework was to have been issued on Friday, May 1 but the White House has shelved it.
The review of the original FEMA/CDC reopening plan should identify deviations from it in the White House reopening plan. The May 1 MMWR highlighted four factors contributing to accelerated spread: travel-associated importations, large gatherings, introductions in the workplace and densely populated areas, and “cryptic transmissions resulting from limited testing and asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread.” These factors should be used to assess whether they were adequately addressed in the federal government’s guidelines and the states reopening plans. The Guidance Framework should be reviewed and the ARC should conduct interviews to ascertain why it was not issued or used to facilitate the opening up process.
The analysis in this area should determine best practices that can be highlighted in the Country Reopening Plan. That plan can be used to extend and enhance the reopening across the nation or to revamp the re-opening process if the reopening that began in late April and early May led to shutdowns due to reaccelerating the expansion of Covid-19 in the Fall of this year.
Economic Recovery Plan (Short Term)
On May 2, after a Fox News interview, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told reporters, “I think right now, because there’s been good news really that the opening up is starting faster than we expected, appears to be doing so safely that we won’t really need a phase four (Coronavirus stimulus package).” Hassett was incorrect in that opinion.
Here are some of the dire facts. The U.S. economy shrank 4.8% in the first quarter of the year the biggest decline since the Great Recession. Over 33 million Americans had applied for unemployment benefits by the end of April. The unemployment rate in April shot up to 14.7%. Consumer spending went down a record 7.5% in March, the sharpest decline in 60 years.
And things will go downhill from there. Hassett himself, on April 28, warned that the jobless rate in June could hit 16 to 20%, and that the GDP could crater in this quarter (April — June) by an annual rate of 40%. On Face the Nation on May 10, Hassett increased his jobless projections stating, “I’m looking for rates north of 20 [percent], sadly.”
In mid-March, many economists and firms were predicting that the economy would go into a recession due to the coronavirus. By mid-April, the International Monetary Fund predicted the worst downturn worldwide since the Great Depression, with the American economy contracting by 6%. On April 29, after reviewing various reports and data sources, New York Times business reporter Ben Casselman wrote, unequivocally, “The worst is yet to come.”
University of Chicago economics professor and adviser to Barack Obama Austan Goolsbe’s assessment aligns with Casselman’s. In a May 3 New York Times op-ed, he opines, “A medical crisis created an economic crisis. But a political crisis can make the economic crisis much worse and that may be where we are heading.”
Note that Goolsbe said “may be.” Goolsbe states that the potential for an economic crisis can be lessened by “controlling the spread of the virus” and “spending billions to fight the economic devastation.”
It will take considerable time to control the spread, so more governmental spending is absolutely necessary. There must be a fourth round of stimulus — and depending on how things play out after that, it may be that even a fifth and sixth will be needed.
William Gale, the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy at the Brookings Institution advises that the case for more stimulus investments is strong and the costs would be small. He argues: (1) Funds targeted to state and local governments would help mitigate the recession; (2) Not all debt is bad — Good debt serves genuine national interests; (3) U.S. public debt will not trigger a crisis — The U.S. borrows in its own currency.
Additional federal funds are critical for sustaining the American economy at some level and avoiding an almost complete crash. As Washington Post economist Robert Samuelson observes, “A good deal of the so-called stimulus doesn’t really stimulate. Instead, it stabilizes — or aims to stabilize…”
Samuelson didn’t say this but a primary reason this will be the case is that we Americans today are living in the United States of Inequality. Those on the underside of the economic divide will be the ones harmed in the aftermath of this pandemic.
The New York Times launched an inequality project in April to look at the huge disparities in wealth, health and by race in the United States and how the pandemic could impact them. In an op-ed on April 9, the Times Editorial Board declared “Over the past half century, the fabric of American democracy has been stretched thin.”
After examining what contributed to this stretching, the Editorial Board asserted “The crucible of a crisis provides the opportunity to forge a better society but the crisis does not do the work.” The Board goes on to state that there is “…a need for new ideas and the revival of older ideas about what the government owes the nation’s citizens, what corporations owe employees and what we owe one another.”
This crisis does present an opportunity. It is a pivot point which the American Renewal Commission can leverage in preparing its Economic Recovery Plan to reduce the major areas of inequality and regression to ensure the economic divide is narrowed substantially.
We discussed the following regression areas in our second blog of this series: American workers; women; minorities; big business; small business; urban areas; rural areas; civic learning and engagement; and political partisanship. We also noted that many others could be added to that group including millennials, schools and teachers, the print news and media, manufacturing, and innovation.
As its first task, the ARC should create a comprehensive list of all the major areas of inequality or regression, and then use it to determine what progress has been made in each area, based upon the stimulus spending and other initiatives sponsored by state and local governments, the private sector, religious, civic and community organization, and citizens. The Commission can then proceed to the second task of deciding what should be done in the years to come to make the economy better and fairer for all.
The Commission will have a broad range of resources it can draw upon in developing its inequality reduction recommendations. There has been a wealth of books written over the past decade or so outlining plans and proposals to address the inequalities in the U.S. And the coronavirus pandemic has generated a cornucopia of new ideas.
The new ideas have come from a wide variety of sources. The Brookings Institution has been especially prolific. They have published numerous blog posts on the impact of COVID-19 and how it has exposed serious flaws in vital U.S. systems and actions to be taken to correct them.
We set out the following ideas of our own and others in a blog just as the impact of the coronavirus was starting to unfold here: instituting a consumption tax dedicated toward this area; redoing the tax plans of the past that have benefitted primarily big businesses and the most wealthy to make them more equitable; development of more good-paying jobs through governmental supplements; giving workers a stronger voice in the workplace; financial support for small business start-ups and entrepreneurs; guaranteed government loans for struggling small businesses, which may have difficulty paying back loans going forward; initiatives directed at regions and rural areas that are lacking in economic development; infrastructure rebuilding jobs; national service jobs in areas of high unemployment; child support for single working mothers; and meaningful skill development that is related not to training but to guaranteed job placement and on-the-job training as opposed to classroom work.
Based upon the catastrophic collapse and disappearance of jobs for those on the lower rungs of economic ladder, we would add the establishment of a Civilian Coronavirus Corps to that list of ideas and put it near the top. This CCC would be similar to but different than the Civilian Conservation Corps that was operated as a New Deal public employment relief program during the Great Depression.
The Civilian Conservation Corps was for young unmarried men (17–28) and they did conservation work across the country. This CCC would be focused on those low-paid workers of both sexes from the industries and groups that have been most affected by the pandemic shutdown. Research indicates those low wage earners are disproportionately women and minorities, and work in the leisure, hospitality, retail, personal service, and health care sectors
The CCC would be public service employment to do a wide variety of things including conservation, infrastructure repair, child care, arts and crafts, and health care assistance. The CCC would expand and build upon the Pandemic Response and Opportunity Through National Service Act that has been introduced in the Senate by Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Chris Coons (D-DEL).
Many of the tomes related to inequality were written in response to the impact of the Great Recession. Some of our favorites, in no particular order, are: The Price of Inequality (Joseph Stiglitz); That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum); Our Kids (Robert Putnam); Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of A Great American School System (David Kirp); The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream (Jacob Hacker); Opportunity, Responsibility and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream (A report from a working group of the conservative leaning American Enterprise Institute and the liberal leaning Brookings Institution).
Although these books were published in the past decade, their recommendations warrant consideration in this new decade because for the most part they have not been implemented, and in many instances the inequalities they address have worsened. We ourselves wrote two books that contain scores of recommendations that remain relevant: Renewing the American Dream: A Citizens Guide for Restoring Our Competitive Advantage (co-authored with George Munoz) and Working the Pivot Points: To Make America Work Again.
Based upon its analysis, the ARC should develop a multi-faceted and robust economic recovery plan that can be employed to narrow the inequality gap by the end of this decade. That plan should include measurable criteria to enable the review of progress made on an annual or regular basis.
One of those central measures should be what we call Individual Economic Well-Being (IEW), which can now be monitored more closely because the Department of Commerce is issuing a new report, which takes us beyond GDP to look at distributional accounts to see how economic growth is experienced by individuals and families. These distributional accounts allow a detailed examination of income inequalities.
Democracy Renewal Plan
The Democracy Renewal Plan will be the capstone of the four plans. The American Renewal Commission should develop this plan to enhance, expand and extend the recommendations and strategies set out in the other three plans.
This Plan is especially important because numerous studies show that Americans were losing faith in the American Dream and the American democracy even before the shattering impact of Covid-19. This decline has occurred across all ages but is strongest among younger Americans below the age of 45. If this faith continues to disappear, our democracy will become a hollow crucible and eventually die.
The ARC should develop the Renewal Plan to prevent this from happening. The Economic Recovery Plan will start the process of restoring faith and confidence in the potential of America and Americans. The ARC should use this plan to add the other additional ingredients that will be required to revive the American dream and make it accessible to all.
The ARC should define those essential ingredients and the strategies required to help make faith grow again. At a minimum, they should include a focus on:
the dream itself
the federal government
civic life, civic learning and engagement, and
the public health system.
Initial thoughts for consideration in each of these areas follow.
The American Dream
Each of us has our personal conceptualization of the American dream. Here is a working definition, that we posited as the dream for the majority of Americans in our book Renewing the American Dream:
The American dream is the opportunity each and every citizen has to realize one’s personal potential and to achieve success, generally measured as economic security. The fundamental elements of the dream are getting educated and working hard in order to have a good job that pays decent wages, provides adequate benefits, puts food on the table, a roof over one’s head, and allows for retirement with dignity.
The ARC should craft its own definition, and then do research to see how well the nation is doing today in providing the context for an individual to achieve her or his personal potential. A framework that could be considered for conducting that research is the American dream construct. That construct is comprised of eight forms of capital: intellectual capital, economic capital, social capital, individual capital, community capital, institutional capital, spiritual capital, and organizational capital.
One of the recommendations that could come from this analysis, if it was not put forward in the Economic Recovery Plan, could be the need for some form of temporary or permanent universal basic income. When Andrew Yang advanced a basic income proposal as the centerpiece of his campaign to become the Democratic nominee for President, it appeared unrealistic and unattainable. In May of 2020, given the harrowing circumstances created by Covid-19, this may no longer be the case.
Federal Government
All of the most recent presidents have done some downsizing, restructuring, or tweaking of the federal government. Bill Clinton conducted a National Performance Review, reduced the size of government, and instituted the Governmental Performance and Results Act. George W. Bush implemented the Program Assessment Rating Tool. The Obama administration installed a performance goal setting and monitoring process.
Donald Trump came in and his approach was to decimate nearly all federal agencies — most especially the domestic ones. In many cases, he appointed an agency head who was opposed to the agency’s mission. That appointee changed the agency’s mission, inverted its policies, and drove many competent federal bureaucrats out of the organization.
The ARC needs to do a pre-Trump and post-Trump study of each agency comparing its mission, priorities, programs, policies and procedures, and staffing. This study should be done by enlisting small task forces in each agency and providing them with the template to conduct this examination and prepare their reports. The Commission should use these reports to develop strategic blueprints to reinvent the agencies over the next four to eight years.
President Trump has also had a dramatic and radical effect on the three branches of government: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Examining this should not be in the scope of the Commission but made the purview of the incoming President and the next Congress.
Civic Life
The problems in our democracy are cross-cutting. Over the past few years, we as citizens have lost trust in our institutions and, as importantly, in each other. Some of the institutional problems and issues will be addressed in recommendations in the Economic Recovery Plan.
In the Democracy Renewal Plan, the ARC should concentrate on the current social, political and cultural polarization. There is an abundance of research from groups such as the Pew Foundation that can be used to document the extent and identify some of the root causes of the splintering of Americans.
Plausible solutions will be tougher to come up with. As in the other areas, there are many sources that can be consulted to find those that will be the best.
One of the points of refence for the Commission should be Yuval Levin’s, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, book, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and Campus: How Recommitting to Our Institutions can Revive the American Dream.
Levin concludes it is all up to us. In his New York Times article he writes, “…To ask the great unasked question of time: ‘Given my role in this institution, how should I behave? …As a President or a member of Congress, a teacher or a scientist, a lawyer or a doctor a pastor or a member, what should I do here.”
The answer to that unasked question, as we have proposed, is to behave as a 21st century citizen. To do that, be interested, issues-oriented, informed, independent, and involved. Recognize that as Americans we have the broadest sets of rights in the world and that along with these rights come responsibilities.
The ARC should put forward recommendations in the Renewal Plan for how we in our civic life should exercise those rights to improve our America institutions and to forge new bonds of trust and cooperation with one another across political lines.
National service and Interdependence Day are two ideas related to civic life that we and others have proposed before that seem timely now in terms of the potential they provide for rebuilding a shared sense of community and purpose.
The national service program would be a mandatory year of service (military, national, public) for young Americans. General Stanley McChrystal and the Service Year Alliance and the Aspen Institute have been in the forefront of advancing this concept. Given where America stands today, for young high school or college graduates it could be one year plus the opportunity to re-enlist for a second and possibly even a third.
Interdependence Day would be a new national holiday dedicated to celebrating the “us” in USA. It would be a day to come together and to begin to deal with the red and blue divide by building bridges instead of barriers.
In the domain of civic life, there are also important rights to be looked at in terms of political participation that are affected by voting rights laws, election districts and the electoral college. The Commission should inquire into these areas also and make recommendations regarding them.
Civic Learning and Engagement
The road to becoming a 21st century citizen should start early through effective civic learning and engagement. It used to in the 20th century, but in many states and places does not today. This is so because in this 21st century courses in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) have taken precedence over and in many cases displaced civics.
There are many groups working to reverse this trend, including the National Council on Social Studies, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, CivXNow, the Civics Renewal Network, and the Frank Islam Institute for 21st Century Citizenship. And there are a few states including Florida, Illinois, and Massachusetts that are on the cutting edge in terms of “action civics” to move the acquisition of the core knowledge, skills, and dispositions for citizenship beyond the classroom and into the community.
The provision of civic learning and engagement opportunities is important at all points long the educational continuum. Middle school is the essential place to begin the process of nurturing our nation’s future citizens for three primary reasons: (1) Formation of a positive orientation early in a student’s career increases the potential for sustained interest and participation; (2) Middle school represents a critical window of opportunity because of the developmental state of students in those years; (3) Middle school is where the civic learning gap is currently the largest and most problematic.
In 2018, the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution published its 2018 Report on American Education. That report provides an in-depth inventory and commentary on state civics requirements. It also provides a set of ten proven practice for a high-quality civic education.
The ARC needs to draw on these and all available resources to develop recommendations to improve the health and vitality of our civic education. Finally, it is imperative that the Commission provide recommendations to improve the United States public health system significantly.
Public Health System
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that this system is woefully inadequate and ailing. Janeel Interlandi of the New York Times, in an article, cites some of the deficiencies this crisis highlighted and states, “Nearly all of these problems might have been averted by a strong national public health system, but in America no such system exists.”
The Health Care Stabilization Plan will pinpoint what needs to be done in the near term to deal with the consequences of the pandemic and ensure that a pandemic of this type does not reoccur. It will not, however, address the systemic needs and inequalities which were gargantuan and have grown even larger because of the impact of the pandemic.
The Commission needs to specify recommendations for accomplishing this in the Democracy Renewal Plan. Those recommendations belong in this plan because there can not be a healthy democracy without a healthy citizenry.
It is ironic but the pandemic which put the spotlight on the nation’s healthcare and mobilized so many on the front-lines of health care had a devastating effect on the health care industry. The Washington Post, in a May 4 article, reported, “…the health care industry is suffering a historic collapse in business that is emerging as one of the most powerful forces hurting the U.S. economy and a threat to a potential recovery.”
This is the case because the truth is that America’s public health system is a non-system. Robert Reich characterizes it this way in a March 15 Guardian article, “Instead of a public health system, we have a private-for-profit system for individuals lucky enough to afford it and a rickety insurance system for people fortunate enough to have a full-time job.”
As the debate over the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) proved in 2010, and as Trump’s attacks on that legislation before getting into, and since he has been, in office have shown, public health is a political football. On May 6, Trump upped the ante in his ongoing onslaught and attack on the Affordable Act by asking the Supreme Court to rule the whole Act unconstitutional rather than one small element in it. That is why the American Renewal Commission needs to step on the playing field and advance an agenda for public health that has some chance for bipartisan support.
What would bring that support? That’s hard to tell. Ms. Interlandi outlines some ideas for such a system in her article. As mentioned earlier in this blog, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren called for a radical restructuring of the nation’s health care system during their campaigns to become the Democratic nominee for President. Those proposals seemed far-fetched at the time but now that Sanders and Warren are out of the race, Joe Biden has embraced some of their concepts and proposed a more aggressive approach to redefining the nation’s health care delivery system.
These ideas may not be so far out in left-field now due to what has transpired because of the pandemic and its effect on public opinion. Three factors that become more important for any health care recommendations because of the pandemic are: mental health to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder — especially that of those on the front lines, first responders and essential workers; nursing home quality and support; and supply chain management.
The Commission has a chance as a “neutral” entity to fill the void of non-cooperation on this issue. By bringing the right people to the table to work with them and to endorse its recommendations, it may be able to do successful surgery and produce recommendations that can eventually garner presidential and congressional approval.
In conclusion, the Democracy Renewal Plan should provide the opportunity for America and Americans to stand and deliver in a united front that puts the common good and country first.
Time to Unite the Divided States of America
A house divided against itself cannot stand. - Abraham Lincoln
Preserving democracy hinges on having leaders at the top who appeal to our better angels and summon us to work together on a common cause. In this regard, the United States of America is unhinged because of the modus operandi of our current President.
On Sunday May 3, Donald Trump sullied the memory of Abraham Lincoln. Trump did this in one of his most disgraceful and self-indulgent performances since assuming the presidency — and there have been many — by turning the Lincoln Memorial into a stage for him to talk too much, to wallow in self-pity, and to display his ignorance.
Performing in what was called a town hall for Fox News, Trump sat at the foot of the famous seated statue of President Lincoln in the Memorial. At one point he said, “Look I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen. The closest would be that gentleman right up there. They always said Lincoln — nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”
Lincoln winced at this blasphemous comparison but said nothing. We didn’t know Lincoln but we do know Donald Trump and he is no Lincoln.
Lincoln was a great leader. Donald Trump is no leader at all
Since January 20, 2017, the United States of America has been leaderless. Instead of being the President for all of the people and its states Donald Trump has divided the United States and its citizens.
He has governed only in the best interests of his base and the states who supported his election. He has continued to do this through the pandemic.
Science, data and medical expertise have been shunted aside and quackery and snake oil have taken their place. Magical thinking has replaced rational thinking.
Trump has sent out tweets calling those individuals who gathered in protests disobeying social distancing guidelines, some of whom were members of extremist groups carrying swastikas, confederate flags, and military style weapons, “very good people.”
They were not. The very good people were those responsible citizens who were protecting all Americans and defending their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by staying at home and social distancing when in public.
Those Americans, in this era of repression and regress, need to exercise their freedom of expression by voting to put someone in the White House who will unite the divided states of America. Its current occupant is incapable of that.
Trump proved once again what a divider he is when he tweeted out a negative comment on President George W. Bush’s eloquent and moving video message sent to Americans on Saturday May 2 during the Call to Unite 24-hour livestream broadcast. In his message, President Bush called for us to set partisanship aside during these times of crisis.
Trump responded “Oh, bye the way, I appreciate the message from former President Bush, but where was he during impeachment for putting partisanship aside. He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history.”
Unity is not a word that Trump has in his vocabulary. Nor is humanity.
That is why Americans of all political stripes and persuasions must rise not as partisans but committed citizens concerned about the future of our democracy and vote to put a new president in the White House. That president will unite the divided states of America and put the Commission in place to create the plans to end repression and regression.
Those plans when implemented will make our America democracy healthier and more inclusive and equitable.
The critical need for accomplishing this was stressed by Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, in his April 6 letter to shareholders, in which he stated that the “current pandemic is only one example of the bad planning and management that have hurt our country.”
In his letter, as highlighted by Mary Papenfuss of Huffington Post, Dimon opines, “Done right, a disciplined transition would maximize the health of Americans and minimize the time, extent and suffering caused by the economic downturn.”
He goes on, “I am hoping that civility, humanity and the goal of improving America will break through. We have the resources to emerge from this crisis as a stronger country.” Adding, the Covid-19 crisis is “forcing us to work together…and reminding us that we all live on one planet.” “E Pluribus Unum.”
Those are powerful and compelling words. In closing, we leave you with these words which are even more-so.
We are not partisan combatants. We’re human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together. And we’re determined to rise. – George W. Bush, May 2, 2020
Originally published by the Frank Islam Institute for 21st Century Citizenship. For more information on what 21st century citizenship entails, and to see exemplars from around the world, please visit our website. | https://21stcenturycivics.medium.com/preserving-our-american-democracy-in-an-era-of-repression-and-regression-c8918a7f6b79 | ['Frank Islam', 'Ed Crego'] | 2020-05-15 17:55:38.850000+00:00 | ['Healthcare', 'Democracy', 'Civic Engagement', 'Economics', 'Politics'] |
I am a Monolithic Dragon | I am a Monolithic Dragon
I wear a museum on my hands.
“This is how I wanna feel
And the sound fills my soul.” — Troy Baker
I have this pendant that’s the Chinese character for Dragon, which my Chinese friend informs me is “Such a white person thing to wear.” She says so without any due respect at all, which is fair. I like to wear it, though, because my mother gave it to me at a time of her life when she was doing a lot of reading into as wide a range of spiritual schools as she could.
That secretly describes her whole life, so yeah…welcome to my childhood.
Mom gave me a pendant that said dragon because I was born in the year of the dragon, according to the Chinese zodiac. Ever since I’ve learned that I’ve thought it was pretty cool, and I like that my mom decided to give me a pendant to remind me.
I had a kind of squashed childhood. This isn’t a complaint. Only an observation. Anyone who’s been in a big family will understand the feeling of feeling like your emotional real estate is limited. My siblings ran the width of emotional expression to fill out their particular slot in the available space of my mother’s attention. All stripes, from your typical acting out typifier to my kid brother who went the angle of expressive silence that nobody could mistake for complacency.
I had a kind of interesting position in the family. Second child and first son of young parents, me, and mum and dad had me and my two sisters inside of a four year period. It so happens that my sisters decided that the way they would use their emotional real estate was noisily. They liked to assert themselves, and they might not have noticed it but they also had a gift for juxtaposition. What one of them did, the other eschewed in favor of all that thing wasn’t.
I figured out the gaps between their two little emotional realms early in life. And if I had been a more assertive personality somebody might have noticed. Not me, though. Creature of the night, me. Quiet and shadows my tools. Shadows and patience and letting be what will. That’s my aim, anyway.
I don’t see it as a worry. I had to grow up, and I had to figure how to grow up with strong women who demanded a lot of time and air, and I figured on a quiet approach.
I rarely fought for my mother’s attention. That’s what I’m trying to say. I rarely did, because it felt like everyone else felt more urgency. So I waited, and I wrote, and I waited.
I never felt neglected by my mom. I do think I got a little less of her time than some of my siblings, but I never felt neglected. I just didn’t demand as much.
Well, one day my mom acknowledged that she had been thinking about me by giving me a pendant of the Chinese character for Dragon, because she’d been reading and thinking and she discovered I was born in the Year of the Dragon. She didn’t explain that. It’s just what I came to understand as I wore it.
Secretly, this story is about cultural appropriation and how I wasn’t doing that. Because I never thought to myself about my Dragon pendant that I understood its significance in the Chinese sense. I had a vague notion, but I understood that I hadn’t grown up in the mythology and I would never really feel the significance of it. Or, at least, it would be hard to feel.
Having a pendant that had the Chinese character for Dragon means a lot to me on a personal level. Partly because of my mother, and partly because of the significance I imbued it with for myself. Every time I put the thing on, I would think the same phrase to myself. I would think, “To the cult of the self,” which sounded self-absorbed in my head, except that what I meant by it was this whole process of self-creation that life is.
We are all on a journey to make ourselves. Some schools of thought preach that’s the main point of life. Which, like, works for me sometimes.
In the end, see, all culture is cultural appropriation to a point. There is bad cultural appropriation, and I think that if we’re honest and true most of us can see the bad sort when we see it.
In the end, though, we appropriate any culture that we need in order to build ourselves. We occlude experiences into our greater self-image and become a larger whole by absorbing gobbets of experience and adding their meaning to the person we make ourselves into. If we do it thoughtfully and with self-awareness and respect for ourselves and for what’s outside of us we’re probably giving ourselves a good start on doing something at least a quarter decent. I always remind myself of the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, which is just a good piece of advice in general. It says that everything is capable of suffering. We don’t always know what we might hurt, but if we bear in mind that everything — everyone — can get hurt and we can at least think about trying not to add to that too much then we’re at least starting with okay intentions.
That’s what I do, anyway.
I wear a lot of shine. I wear a lot of rings and a lot of ornaments, and I wear a lot of shine. I think of my shine as a little bit like a museum. Every bit’s got a story about it, if you ask, and every story’s a part of the mythology that I’ve lived that goes into this Cult of the Self. I spend my life making myself. We all do. One way that I choose to express this religion of self-making to the world is through my bits of pretty.
And I am a monolithic dragon. My mom said so. | https://olivershiny.medium.com/these-bits-of-pretty-say-i-am-a-monolithic-dragon-731165949eb1 | ['Oliver', 'Shiny'] | 2019-01-30 17:05:54.084000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Religion', 'Family', 'Culture', 'Racism'] |
Viva la #GenerationBlockchain | Over 4,000 students and 500 schools across 117 countries.
The revolution will be decentralized.
About Me
My name is Erick Pinos. I like Iron Man, peanut butter, and blockchain. I got a glimpse of the rabbit hole in 2014 when the MIT Bitcoin Project airdropped $100 worth of Bitcoin to every MIT student. I slowly but surely descended into blockchain fanaticism when I learned about the world-changing ramifications of projects like Ethereum and Steem. I started trying every blockchain service I came across and kept a blog on Steemit. Fortunately, the rest of the world soon caught on. Inspired by Sia’s story of starting at HackMIT 2013, I did HackMIT 2017 in the hopes of kicking off my own project. Our team won the ConsenSys prize for best blockchain hack. We didn’t continue the project after but I did join the Digital Currency Initiative and did research on decentralized solar microgrids. I became president of the MIT Bitcoin Club, presided over the 2018 MIT Bitcoin Expo, and spent the majority of my time skipping class to travel to blockchain conferences and meeting everybody that I could. After graduating MIT, I became the CTO of Game Theory Group, a blockchain advisory firm and research center.
After an eight month soirée as the director of operations for BEN, I will be taking over the role of executive director from Jinglan Wang, who led BEN through it’s explosive growth in 2017 and 2018. She will continue being one of BEN’s most kickass advisors while she focuses on developing cryptoeconomics.study, the first open source course in the world dedicated to the emerging field of cryptoeconomics. She’ll also be working on Handshake, a decentralized solution to replace centralized Certificate Authorities and DNS by optimistically distributing ownership.
About BEN
BEN’s mission is to create an open and free world by promoting technological literacy through technological decentralization. Blockchain will free the flow of value across cyberspace like the Internet freed the flow of information. Blockchain is a tool for accessibility, banking the unbanked, democratizing access to financial instruments, reaching untapped markets, utilizing unused resources, and making digital cats.
BEN is a decentralized swarm. Read Swarmwise to understand. | https://medium.com/blockchainedu/viva-la-generation-blockchain-971b4df7209f | ['Erick Pinos'] | 2018-11-29 18:07:15.095000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Swarm', 'Bitcoin', 'Students', 'Blockchain'] |
TACTICS: Intentions, goals, execution! | TACTICS: Intentions, goals, execution!
Today it is essential to stick to your guns. You have been planning; you have been pondering what you do, how you accomplish. You must execute your planning. You need to combine rigorous planning with a ‘hardcore’ execution.
Yesterday, I was talking to the head of sales of EMEA at an enterprise company. Let’s call her Janice. She has been very inspirational, and we touched upon how great it is to plan but even more to execute.
So, what does Janice thing about planning vs. execution? Let me paraphrase it. You can try to plan everything, but it’s instead set up small projects and campaigns and go out to test it. Most likely, you might fail, which will force you to go back and recenter.
“When we accept that doing a thing for the first time might be ugly, we accept the messiness and failure, we don’t have to pretend to be perfect.” — Fit-budd
Intentions and goals
In my opinion, first, you have a thought to do something, and from there, you design your goals and go out and act on your plan.
An intention is an idea that you plan (or intend) to carry out. If you mean something, it’s an intention. Your goal, purpose, or aim is your intention. It’s something you intend to do, whether you pull it off or not.
A goal is an idea of the future or desired result that a person or a group of people envision, plan, and commit to achieving. People endeavor to reach goals within a finite time by setting deadlines.
Let’s say you are having a good intention to understand diet and the relation with your gut, but is that enough? A good intention does not mean you will go and act upon that intention unless you decide to do repeatedly study, read and try until you understand the relation properly.
Action is the fact or process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim.
Here some of the keywords:
Steps, measures, activity, movement, work, working, effort, exertion, operation, act, take steps, take measures, take the initiative, move, make a move, react, do something.
Simplify, simplify, simplify
If you think about your goals like a sequence of milestones and touchpoints, rather than one big piece and chunk, it will be easier for your brain and you to associate with it and execute it.
Human beings need to have a big fat ‘WHY’ if you have not read the book from Simon Sinek, Golden Circle.
You need to follow strong motivation and make sure you measure progress.
“The biggest secret of progress is — consistency.” — Fit-budd
Embrace struggle and perseverance
So, embrace the learning curve, be accountable to your friends and family. Show them you are working towards something bigger and that you need and want to succeed. Don’t take it for granted; we give up way too often and way too soon.
Build your self-esteem around something real, not something fragile, like accepting when you say you’ll do something, and you DON’T DO that!
Be the gal and guy that honors struggle and perseverance. Build your self-esteem around executing your goals. Stick to your guns, proud yourself with going out and trying stuff out even when it’s scary. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/tactics-intentions-goals-execution-ff30023109a7 | ['Mateo Melichar'] | 2020-05-14 18:18:22.159000+00:00 | ['Goals', 'Intentions', 'Planning', 'Achievement'] |
How to land an SWE internship or job (from NTU alumni sharing) | Recently I was invited to give a talk to students from NTU School of Computer Science and Engineering, as part of the alumni sharing forum that the career coach Patrick was running. I thought the talk could benefit a greater audience than those who attended, so here’s the talk heavily transcribed from my memory.
Hi, I’m Mingyu and I was a Computer Science student at NTU between 2016 and 2020. I graduated in December last year, and I am currently a Software Engineer at Google. During my time at NTU, I did a number of internships at Shopee, Grab, and Google. In today’s sharing, I will be talking about my internship experience, my current job as a Software Engineer, and I will also share my tips on finding a software engineering internship or full-time job based on my personal experience.
My journey of internships
Shopee
My first ever internship was at Shopee, in the summer of 2018 when Shopee had not blown up to be the huge e-commerce company it is today. I was just starting my second year, and to be honest, I did not want to start looking for internships at all because I felt horribly underprepared, and my grades weren’t the best. But my roommate at that time, who was also in Year 2 CS, was actively applying for internships, and strongly encouraged me to do the same. So I was thinking, “why not?”, and sent my application to Shopee. And I was lucky enough to get an offer after two technical interviews, and one informal talk with VP. So the lesson here is, just apply, because you’ll never feel ready. And I’m now speaking from my experience — you’ll never feel ready, just apply.
The next semester, I went on exchange to a university in Canada, called the University of Waterloo. After that, I came back and started my internship at Shopee. I was working at the web front end team, and it was a very fulfilling experience. Before the internship, I never even wrote a line of JavaScript, which was essential for web development. By the end of the internship, I built the product rating and shop rating page for Shopee mobile web, and it’s still being used today. That gave me a huge sense of accomplishment! Apart from work, there were also some amazing perks, such as unlimited supplies of snacks, coffee, and tea. But that was pre-COVID, of course. We also had an intern offsite at Universal Studio. In the end, I received an offer to intern at Shopee again. But I eventually decided to complete my 6-month credit-bearing internship elsewhere because I wanted to try a different company.
Google
After finishing my internship at Shopee, I entered Year 3 and also started looking for my next summer internship. Because of my exchange experience in Waterloo where many students went to intern at Silicon Valley, I wanted to go further for my next internship, so I applied to a bunch of internship positions in the US, with a few in Singapore. However, I didn’t have much success in that. What I didn’t know was that many companies just couldn’t sponsor a job visa — but they won’t tell you directly, so I got either generic rejections, or simply ghosted. The lesson here is to apply to big tech companies if you want to intern in the US. But the good news is that, during that application cycle, I heard back from Google Singapore. After clearing interviews, I got the offer.
My internship at Google took place in the summer of 2019, and it was an amazing experience. I was in the Google Pay team, working on some developer tool, using TypeScript, NodeJS, and Web Components. The heavy emphasis on writing high-quality code and rigorous review process really pushed me to learn. Besides, there were amazing perks at Google. All the rumors you heard about working at Google are true. I was lucky to intern there before COVID happened, and there was free food, and even an on-site barista. Every Friday, there was a TGIF event with snacks, drinks, and sometimes performances. For our intern batch, we also had a yacht party. After the internship, I received an offer to intern at Google again, and subsequently received the full-time offer after another internship, and that’s how I got the job I have today.
Work as a Software Engineer (SWE)
I’m currently working full-time as a Software Engineer, and contrary to what I imagined back in school, writing code actually does not take up the overwhelming majority of time. I have been working from home since the start of my job, and my typical day usually consists of meetings, reviews, and producing work. I have a weekly meeting with my team, so we can update on who’s-doing-what, and clear any issues blocking our progress. Then I also have weekly meetings for the projects I’m working on, and this is usually cross-functional, with people such as UX Designers and Product Managers. I also have 1:1 meetings with my manager to check in, or the people that I work closely with to sync on progress. Next, there are reviews — code reviews and design reviews. Last but not least, I write code and design docs.
Now, I’m going to talk about how you can prepare to get a software engineering internship, or full-time job.
Get an SWE internship / full-time job
Resume
The first thing you need to do is to write a very solid resume. At some point, I realized that getting interviews can be even harder than passing interviews, especially with popular companies that receive a large number of applications every day. To stand out from a large pool of applicants, you need to remember that your resume is a marketing tool, and the goal is to impress recruiters, or potential hiring managers, so that they want to interview you. There have been rumors saying that recruiters only spend less than 10 seconds reading your resume (and it’s probably true), so you really want to catch their attention in the shortest time possible.
That means your resume needs to be short and concise — you should keep them within 1 page. You also want to put in keywords, especially those on job descriptions. For example, if the job description says they’re looking for someone with experience in Java, try to put Java on your resume. You also wanna include your relevant work experience, and your projects. Having projects is particularly important if you don’t have any relevant work experience. If you don’t have experience, your projects would be your experience. You want to describe your work in action-oriented bullet points, and emphasize the impact, rather than responsibilities. A template that I often like to use is “built X feature in Y language using Z framework / technology”.
I believe that a good resume usually has these 4 sections: education, skills, experience, and projects. The education section is where you put the degree you’re pursuing, and your anticipated graduation date. If you’ve taken some interesting classes, such as Distributed System, it’s also good to include them. For the skills section, I often like to break them into programming languages (such as Java, Python), frameworks (such as React, Flutter), and tools (such as Git, Docker). The experience section is where you put your experience relevant to programming, but I understand that not everyone has relevant work experience, especially those who’re looking for an internship for the first time. But experience doesn’t have to be work. For example, I volunteered in teaching kids Python, and I had that on my resume because it was relevant to programming. However, if you really can’t find any relevant experience, then make sure you have projects under your belt. In the project section, you can put projects you’ve done for school work, or your side projects.
Technical Interviews
A strong resume helps you get interviews. The next thing you want to do well is the technical interviews. Technical interviews are the most common type of interviews for SWE roles. It usually lasts 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the company. And it usually focuses purely on data structure and algorithms, with 1 or 2 questions asked during the interview. Technical interviews can be intimidating when you first try them, but there is actually a pattern for success. You need to be able to find the solution to a given problem, sometimes working towards an optimal one. Usually, you can choose any programming language, but make sure you choose a language that you’re really familiar with, so that you can use the common data structures and algorithms as your toolbox, and be able to implement them when you’re asked to. Last but not least, you need to be a good communicator by talking through your ideas and solutions, and making sure the interviewer understands you.
Although technical interviews can be intimidating, it’s really a skill that can be trained and improved over time like any other skill. To prepare for technical interviews, you want to revise common data structures and algorithms that you learned in school. Typically, you can choose any programming language, but make sure you are very comfortable with APIs of the language you choose. That means being extremely familiar with using and implementing common data structures and algorithms. For example, if you use Python, you need to know how to use a Heap in Python, and how to use or implement binary search. The best way to improve your technical interview skills is through practice, and there are many websites for that. LeetCode is a popular choice. In addition to practicing coding questions, you can also do some mock interviews to be familiar with the process, and practice communicating while writing code. In terms of time management, I would recommend spending 90% of the time on solving questions online, and 10% of the time on mock interviews. My opinion is that mock interviews familiarize you with the process, but being able to solve the question is a skill that takes more time to hone, and practicing questions is the best way to prepare for that.
I also have some tips for you during the technical interview. A common pitfall is to start writing code right after getting the question. Don’t do that. Instead, check your understanding with the interviewer first. Ask clarifying questions, such as edge cases. This can potentially save you a lot of time, in case you misunderstood the question, and also give the interviewer a good impression. Before writing code, it’s also a good idea to explain the solution you have in mind to the interviewer first. Sometimes, they may even tell you if your solution works. After finishing writing the code, test your code by walking through a few test cases. In a real job, you will be writing unit tests to cover your code. But in an interview, walking through some test cases verbally would be enough.
More resources
This Is What A GOOD Resume Should Look Like | CareerCup: https://careercup.com/resume
How to Craft a Winning Resume: https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/winning-resume/
Technical Interview Handbook: https://techinterviewhandbook.org/
Good luck!
Q&A
Q. How important is having a good GPA?
I believe that in terms of importance, work experience > projects >> GPA. It only matters a lot when you don’t have much project experience or work experience. But if you do, I don’t think you should worry about your GPA because work experience and projects are way more important.
Q. How do you focus on coursework while preparing for interviews?
I would say that they’re not always mutually exclusive. For example, you can devote your time to your course project, and that project can be a very nice addition to your resume. Other than that, my advice is to find the right balance between coursework and job search.
Q. How can I improve skills such as writing high-quality code?
You don’t need to worry about them before getting the job, as they’re often not part of the interview process. After you start working, you will have opportunities to write code and get reviews from others. Over time, your ability will be improved. But it’s not something that you should be worrying about before getting a job.
Q. Do you think companies will hire someone with little or no knowledge for a specific domain but is willing to learn?
Many companies hire generalist software engineers, and match you to a team after passing their technical interviews, so oftentimes, especially as an intern or fresh graduate, it’s okay to not have experience in a specific domain, and get hired. That being said, if you’re keen on getting into a specific team (say Android), you need to demonstrate your interest. I think one of the best ways is to have projects related to that technology. | https://medium.com/@mingyuliu_16/how-to-land-an-swe-internship-or-job-from-ntu-alumni-sharing-b1e4454b9e83 | ['Mingyu Liu'] | 2021-12-21 10:21:37.804000+00:00 | ['Singapore', 'Interview', 'Software Development', 'Internships', 'Resume'] |
A Return to Isolationism | by Chris Seck
Leading Republicans and Democrats generally agree that America should have an interventionist foreign policy, although they differ on the details. The post-Iraq mood of the American people, however, hints at a future return to isolationism.
For all their differences over Iraq, the leading Republican and Democratic presidential candidates generally agree that America must have an interventionist foreign policy. They may disagree on the importance of the U.N., the role of allies, or the use of war as a first or last resort. But, broadly speaking, they agree that America is the world’s sole superpower, that we have a duty to promote freedom abroad (although they disagree on where), and that the presence of U.S. military bases around the world is a good thing.
The leading Democratic contenders — Clinton, Obama, and Edwards — tend to agree that military action is sometimes necessary, particularly on humanitarian grounds. Despite their general opposition to Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, the leading Democrats are not averse to military action. Senator John Edwards, for example, calls for the “creation of a 10,000-member reserve corps to help stabilize troubled nations.” Senator Barack Obama goes one step further, saying in an April 2007 speech that “America’s larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom — that is the yearning of all who live in the shadow of tyranny and despair.”
If any of this sounds familiar, it should. The leading Republican candidates — Giuliani, McCain, and Romney — also express a similar desire to “make the world safe for democracy.” During the May 2007 GOP debate, candidate Rudy Giuliani dismissed out of hand Congressman Ron Paul’s idea that U.S. interventionism abroad could be a source of anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Currently, all three leading Republicans continue to support the Iraq war. Senator John McCain, for example, stated in late 2006 that he remains “fully supportive of his [President Bush’s] determination not to leave Iraq until the freely elected government of that country and its armed forces are able to defend their country from foreign and domestic enemies.” Similarly, Governor Mitt Romney calls for the U.S. to expand its armed forces by 100,000 and argues: “Our objective is a strong America and a safe world.”
The top Republican and Democrat presidential contenders believe in an interventionist foreign policy, albeit with different ideas on when and where to intervene. However, I believe that regardless of which politician is elected in 2008, America will not choose to fight any major wars in the near future. The American public, disillusioned by recent memories of the Iraq war, will be generally averse to supporting any new wars that are non-defensive. In other words, our willingness to go to war is directly influenced by our memories of the previous war.
Consider the current Iraq war. Although many Americans blame President Bush and his “neoconservative” advisors for orchestrating the war, I personally find it difficult to lay all the blame on individual leaders. Politicians in a democratic society merely follow what the people want, and back in 2002, the American people overwhelmingly wanted war. A 2002 Pew survey revealed that 62% of Americans supported military action to oust Saddam Hussein. In a CNN poll conducted in March 2003, on the eve of the invasion, more than two-thirds of Americans supported the Iraq war. Instead of pointing fingers at President Bush and the Republican leadership, we ought to ask ourselves: “Why did so many Americans support the Iraq war?”
The answer can be summed up in one word: Afghanistan. The public was optimistic because our war in Afghanistan — contrary to our initial expectations — was going well. In November 2001, U.S. forces had captured Kabul and ousted the Taliban leadership. In December 2001, under General Tommy Franks, U.S. forces won a brilliant victory at Tora Bora, killing more than 200 al-Qaeda terrorists without losing a single soldier. By 2002, the name of future Afghan president “Hamid Karzai” was on everybody’s lips, and with the formation of an interim government in Kabul, the American effort to liberate and democratize Afghanistan seemed highly successful.
It was during this optimistic period, with America on a winning streak and our military seemingly invincible, that we began to believe that our successes in Afghanistan could be replicated in other places. President Bush, enjoying 65-percent approval ratings in mid-2002, was still very popular. During this period, the American public was highly optimistic, and it was under these confident circumstances that the idea of invading Iraq became so popular.
Today, that optimism no longer exists. With over 3,400 dead and 25,000 wounded, most Americans believe that the Iraq war is going badly. Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the eventual cost of the war could reach $2 trillion, saddling future generations of Americans with huge war debts. Journalists make millions selling pessimistic tomes with titles like State of Denial: Bush at War, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. According to a Newsweek poll conducted on May 5, Bush’s approval rating is about 28%, making him lliability to the future Republican presidential nominee.
Post-2008, with bitter memories of Iraq still fresh in their minds, few Americans will be calling for any major military commitments, no matter what the politicians say. Short of an attack on American soil that warrants immediate retaliation in self-defense, there will be little public support for another Iraq-esque war. Even if America does decide to intervene militarily in other nations, say, to stop genocide, chances are that these wars will be fought in the same risk-averse manner as Clinton’s 1998 Iraq bombing campaign or the 1999 Kosovo campaign: U.S. planes bombing targets far above the range of antiaircraft fire, with few or no ground troops committed because we have no desire to incur casualties. Instead of fighting real large-scale wars, we will fight small, high-tech battles that can be won without losing a single soldier.
Ultimately, this means that regardless of whether our next president is Republican or Democrat, he (or she) will inherit a war-weary American public. Our next president’s ability to wage war will be very much limited, regardless of his or her foreign policy views. After 2008, Americans may be willing to fight wars in self-defense or small, casualty-free wars that stop genocide. But they will not support another major discretionary war, at least not until they forget the Iraq experience in the fullness of time. Our future leaders may believe in foreign interventionism, but in the aftermath of Iraq, the American people are likely to be isolationists at heart. | https://medium.com/stanfordreview/a-return-to-isolationism-6d3745279d16 | [] | 2016-12-11 01:47:53.394000+00:00 | ['Hillary Clinton', 'Politics'] |
Struggles of a new Indian freelancer | Photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash
I’m a freelance writer from India. It wasn’t until the pandemic forced me to become a writing freelancer. Even though I need to write a lot for chess, which is my field of expertise, I never really considered getting into writing.
However, the pandemic changed everything…
In this article, I want to share common struggles which new Indian freelancers are facing with. If you’re looking to hire a new Indian freelancer or or you are freelancer yourself, I encourage you to read this.
Native English Speaker
A lot of people will relate to this. I spent my entire school life talking, writing and breathing English. That was the only language I spoke at school. At home we speak our mother tounge, Marathi. Hindi is another language one picks up as habit in India.
The problem is, I don’t know if that qualifies me as a native speaker of any language. In fact, I didn’t even study the grammatical rules of my mother tounge, Marathi.
And Hindi? Well I studied the grammar but I don’t speak the language much. So I can’t really be called a native Hindi speaker either.
So whenever a client asks me if I am a native English speaker, I’m in a dilemma. Yes I can speak, write and hold a conversation easily with a native English speaker. But English isn’t what I speak at home or in most places in India? So even I’m confused if I’m a native or not?
Before you dismiss any Indian freelancer for not being a native speaker, think again. They could’ve spent their entire lives studying English and they still struggle to answer this question — Are they native English speakers or not?
In reality, most of them would describes themselves as multi-lingual. And a lot of them can speak English as fluently as a native speaker would.
Bad Reputation
India is a huge country. It has over a million people, even in my city. And almost everybody can understand and speak English. Since jobs are scarce and pay in pennies, Indians will do anything to get work.
They’ll spam inboxes asking for work and most them won’t even have good conversational skills or etiquettes to start a conversation. Another thing is that they may spam you with links. All of this has led to Indian freelancers having a bad reputation.
And because of the poor reputation, most new Indian freelancers struggle. I’m not talking about well-established freelancers here, but the new ones. The ones who can write and speak well and have the etiquette to hold a conversation.
No Medium Monetization
For any Indian freelancer, it isn’t possible to monetize their medium account. Medium had allowed Indians writers to monetize their account but stopped it again during the mid 2020.
In a way, it’s a good thing and a bad thing as well.
If majority of Indians find out that one can make money writing on medium, the quality of Medium articles is going to fall. Yes, I’m an Indian and I know what I am talking about.
You see, it’s not very difficult for Indian people to gather views(remember, just my city alone has over a million people in it). We have a distinct advantage when it comes to population. Also we love making extra penny by doing a ‘jugaad’ — an unconventional way of fixing things and getting work done. As a result, anyone will pop up on the platform, share it with their vast network and look to monetize.
But the genuine Indian writers, who have great ideas to pen down, are going to suffer. I haven’t met most of them but I’m pretty sure they are reading this article & understand what I’m saying here.
These people have great ideas, the skill to write but unlike people from other countries, it’s not possible for them to monetize their Medium account. And that is the real problem.
Blaming Medium for not giving us the option to monetize, may look like a problem. But I don’t think it is. Even though there are other reasons why Medium isn’t paying Indian writers, consider this -
If my neighbor who barely speaks English, finds out about Medium monetization, he’ll immediately jump on the train. That I’m sure. And that’s not something which will add value to the quality of articles on Medium.
On Medium, some publications require you to have your story behind a metered paywall. As an Indian writer on Medium, that’s an impossible thing to do.
In the end, the good writers from India have a huge disadvantage compared to their western counterparts when it comes to Medium monetization.
Societal Pressure
Most Indians are encouraged to grab a job first and think about business later. Freelancing is still an unknown concept in some Indian societies. We are born to study, go abroad and take a job. If not you can settle in a stable job in India. In some communities people are encouraged to start a business. But rarely are we encouraged to become freelancers.
Since Indian job market is a hyper-competitive space, I understand why our society wants us to settle down and discourages anything involving risk. Because of this, a lot of Indian freelancers have problems in either letting go of their job or starting out as a freelancer.
Most new freelancers have to face this pressure on a daily basis. Often times when the societal pressure builds up, a lot of them are forced to let go of freelancing and settle in a job.
Content Mill Rates
Since India is a hyper competitive space, most Indian freelancers are willing to cut their rates just to get work. As a result, you’ll find a lot of people doing more work and charge less than their worth.
Most Indian writers will do work to be paid in pennies. A lot of Indian employers or clients know this and they often look to get work done at less. Let’s not talk here about work scams in India. People are offering pennies to genuinely talented Indian freelancers.
On the bright side, there are Indian clients(or employers) who’ll pay you a fair price for the work you do. Such people do exist. Don’t let a few scams taint your view about Indian clients. However, it’s very difficult to find such clients.
In the end, I think it all comes down to believing in yourself and your worth. You attract the people you are like. If you believe you are more than a penny’s worth, you’ll find those people.
Payment Integrations
This one is a big headache. The problem is if you don’t have an approved Paypal account as an Indian freelancer, expect to get ripped off if you want to transfer foreign currency to your Indian bank account.
You can go for wire transfer but expect the client to cut charges. Also it doesn’t make sense for the client to send you small amount as wire transfer. For larger amounts, wire transfer is fine.
With services like Paypal, Payoneer it is easier to get paid faster. The approval process takes time though and these companies have little human resource to deal with so many approval requests.
Without them, transferring currency is be a problem. I know people in my country who charge a ridiculous 50% rate for transferring money to your account through their Paypal account. It’s like you can’t do without them. In such cases, it’s better to have friends who have an active Paypal account. Maybe a really close friend who can do it for you for free.
But the problem is your friend will always know what you are doing, how much you are earning etc. Also sometimes, the transaction maybe flagged by Paypal if the payment is for someone else and being received on someone else’s account. | https://medium.com/@ranveermohite/struggles-of-a-new-indian-freelancer-b00cca8937df | ['Ranveer Mohite'] | 2020-12-23 10:20:47.440000+00:00 | ['Writer', 'Freelancing', 'Indian', 'Monetization', 'Freelance'] |
Ubuntu 15.10 Codename ‘Wily Werewolf’ Released — How to Install Desktop Guide with Screenshots | Ubuntu is probably the most well known Linux distribution right now and it’s used by millions of people around the world. It’s recognized to be one of the most user friendly Linux distribution, which is probably why it gained it’s popularity.
What’s new in Ubuntu 15.10
Before we start we should mention what is new in Ubuntu 15.10. The changes in this new version are important, but not that glamorous as some may have expected. As promised earlier Ubuntu 15.10 comes with kernel version 4.2. This means that Ubuntu will have better support for:
New AMD CPUs
Intel SkyLake CPUs
Better drivers for sensors
New drivers for different input devices
Of course, kernel version 4.2 has some important bug fixes, which should also provide better overall performance.
Here is what else is new in Ubuntu 15.10:
Persistent network interface names – you can now setup custom names for network devices. The names will remain even after reboot
Overlay Scrollbars – the annoying Ubuntu scrollbar has finally been fixed
Core application updates – as usual Ubuntu ships with the newer version of it’s core applications
for more details visit this article
http://linuxtechexpert.com/ubuntu-15-10-codename-wily-werewolf-released-how-to-install-desktop-guide-with-screenshots/ | https://medium.com/@linuxexpert/ubuntu-15-10-codename-wily-werewolf-released-how-to-install-desktop-guide-with-screenshots-3bd232269df5 | ['Linux Tech Expert'] | 2021-08-19 09:54:34.028000+00:00 | ['Ubuntu'] |
It Won’t Be The Last One | By Nana Dadzie Ghansah
Sooner or later, the world will gain control over the COVID-19 outbreak. It will be through containment, effective treatment, a vaccine or a combination of the three. History teaches that. Even the Black Death ended. Even the incurable HIV/AIDS has been controlled.
History also tells us that sooner or later, human behavior will lead to another epidemic or even pandemic. How is that?
Disease outbreaks occur through uncleanliness, vectors, lack of prevention (Anti-Vaxxers etc.) and zoonotic spillovers.
There are areas of the world that still lack clean drinking water and these areas still have outbreaks of cholera and typhoid.
The mosquito still transmits yellow fever and other viral diseases that are endemic in areas in the Tropics and flare up into epidemics every now and then. Even the bubonic plague broke out not too long ago in Madagascar!
Then is the fact that viruses are spilling over from other mammals to humans causing events like the COVID-19 and SARS outbreaks.
Lastly, refusal by some to get vaccinated means that occasionally, we are going to see diseases like measles and polio break out.
Human behavior does not only lead to the direct breakout of diseases. What we do after these disease break out will ensure that we will forever see epidemics or even pandemics.
Since time immemorial, the attitude of those in power towards the outbreak of diseases has worsened these events.
One can almost predict these reactions and the Chinese authorities epitomized it wonderfully during the initial weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak in December 2019. Instead of appreciating the observations of Li Wenliang and his colleagues that there was a new cluster of patients presenting with SARS-like pneumonia, they censored them.
When a disease breaks out, there are always those, often healthcare workers, who notice the initial cluster of cases and sound the alarm.
Those in power will often deny these reports. Then as the cases mount, they’ll seek to suppress the scientific or observational findings of those who are seeing this cluster swell.
When that does not work, they try to argue that things are not so bad.
By the time leaders realize things are bad, the initial outbreak is beyond containment.
We can forgive the lack of scientific knowledge for the reasons leaders in the Antiquity and Middle Ages gave for the epidemics that afflicted them. The Antonine plaque of 165 AD in the Roman Empire was blamed on an angry Jupiter. It was smallpox. The Church claimed The Black Death was due to bad miasma. Others said it was caused by the Jews and slaughtered them for that. It was bubonic plague.
(Looking at how Copernicus and Galileo were treated, I doubt the Church would have listened.)
However, to deny outbreaks, seek to suppress their reporting or make light of their severity has to be unforgivable in our present times. This is especially egregious since early action can contain disease outbreaks. And yet those in power do it.
We saw President Woodrow Wilson and other allied leaders do it during the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 leading to 50 million people dying worldwide. They suppressed information about the epidemic so as not to depress morale during the 1st World War.
It happened during the outbreaks of bubonic plague in San Francisco in the early 1900s. 190 people ended up dying.
We saw President Reagan avoid the issue of HIV/AIDs until 1985.
We saw several African Heads of States, like Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, refuse to accept the fact that HIV/AIDs was killing their people in the 1990s and 2000s.
We have seen the Chinese reactions to SARs and COVID-19.
It is not only leaders who misbehave when diseases break out. Among the general population, denial abounds too. That is often compounded by crazy conspiracy theories. This is followed by a period of panic and hysteria. When these reactions do not work, fear sets in. Deep crippling fear. Finally, people learn to accept the new reality and a rational response ensues. In that regard, we of the present day are no different than the Flagellants in Europe of the 14th century, who whipped themselves bloody to get God to stop the plague during Black Death.
Another factor that adds to the possibility is the unwillingness by governments to spend the money necessary to prevent these diseases from breaking out. Preventive programs in the hotspots of the world are often underfunded. Even developed nations are cutting back. The US recently axed its Pandemic Team as well as the PREDICT Program — a program made of scientists working around the world to hunt down the viruses, like COVID-19, that could lead to the next epidemic or pandemic.
So yes, human behavior being what it is plus economic policy that often short changes public health, we will continue to see epidemics and pandemics. Even in spite of all the scientific advancements, yes, we will continue to see these events. | https://medium.com/@ndghansah/it-wont-be-the-last-one-33894a10a6de | ['Nana Dadzie Ghansah'] | 2020-03-07 04:21:30.002000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'Epidemic', 'Virus', 'Covid 19', 'Public Health'] |
How to Journal Consistently — Using Google Forms and Automated Emails | Introduction
If you’ve spent any time in the self-help community, then you don’t need anyone to tell you how beneficial having a daily journal practice can be.
However, if you’re like most people, you probably gave it a shot, went strong for a week or two, but, for whatever reason, you weren’t able to stick to it — allowing your daily practice to regress into a weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly practice.
For a long time, I wanted to record my thoughts and reflect each day but I just couldn’t do it. I bought a new journal, prepared some prompts, scheduled time to do it, tried to tie the practice to other habits like eating breakfast or brushing my teeth, bought different sized notebooks to make carrying them easier, and tried writing them in the notes app on my phone, but nothing would stick long enough to become a daily practice.
In my opinion, the biggest adversities facing a daily journal practice are:
Not having your journal when you want to use it.
Not wanting to spend the time to write in it each day.
Not having a physical reminder to do it each day.
Not being able to easily analyze past entries.
After boiling my problems down to these four issues, I came up with a solution that addresses each one. It’s allowed me to record my thoughts and experiences daily for over a year. The method that works for me is sending myself automated emails with a link to a Google Form which stores the responses in a Google Sheet.
It works because it:
Is always available on any device.
Has a standard set of questions which can be answered in as much or little time as I’d like.
Provides an email to-do reminder and is easy to see if it hasn’t been done.
Allows previous records to be analyzed easily in Google Sheets.
Is easy to update with new questions as my life changes.
With the help of this article, I hope it can do the same for you too.
How to Make an Organized Daily Journal for Free Using Google Drive and Zapier.com
Outline
At a high level, we will:
Create a set of questions we want to ask ourselves daily, based on the habits we’d like to track and what questions we’d like to reflect on.
Put those questions into a Google Form survey.
Create an automated workflow to send ourselves an email containing a link to that survey at the same time each day, using Zapier (for free).
Review past responses in Google Sheets and see how easy it is to visualize the responses to our daily surveys.
Creating Your Google Form
Google Forms is a free tool in Google Drive — like Docs and Sheets — used to conduct surveys. It allows users to ask questions and accept specific types of responses like multiple choice, check boxes, and long answer. Each response is stored logically in a single Google Sheet, where each row corresponds to a particular day and each column represents the question answered. In this case, we’ll use Google Forms to make entries into our journal and our actual “journal” will be the Google Sheet.
To create the form,
Go to drive.google.com. Click “New” > “More” > “Google Forms”. Give the form a name and think of some questions about your day that you’d like to track over time.
When it comes to the Google Form, you want to make it long enough to record all the information you want to track, without making it so long that you dread filling it out.
New form with a title and description.
Add new questions by pressing the “+” on the right side. Play around with the different types of responses.
I think a good survey has some questions about habits you care about, some objective questions like what you did, and some personal questions like what you thought and how you felt.
Some of the questions I ask myself are:
How did you eat today on a scale from -2 to +2? (Multiple Choice: Horrible, Bad, Decent, Good, Great)
What type of diet did you follow today? (Checkbox: Vegan, Vegetarian, Whole 30, Standard, Meal Plan) (i.e. “Vegetarian Only” or “Vegan Meal Plan”)
Did you meditate today? (Multiple Choice: Yes, No)
How was your day on a scale from -2 to +3? (Multiple Choice: Horrible, Bad, Decent, Good, Great, Amazing)
What made today good or bad? (Long Answer: usually describing everything I did and what I thought about it)
What did you read today? (Short Answer: delimited with “+” signs for analytics)
What do you want to get done tomorrow? (Short Answer)
Anything else you’d like to record? (Long Answer)
It’s not my whole survey, but it gives you a good idea about the types of questions and responses. I try to spend between 7 and 15 minutes on it, with the majority of time spent on the long answer responses.
Once you’ve added your questions, click the “Send” button at the top of the screen and copy the shortened link. This link will be how you navigate the form later, and what we’ll put in the body of the automated email.
Send form link.
Create an Automated Email Workflow Using Zapier
Once you have a shareable link, you’re ready to make an automated email.
There are plenty of ways to create reoccurring emails such as Chrome extensions like Boomerang for Gmail and email marketing tools like MailChimp. The problem with most tools is that their free tiers are either too small to allow 1 email per day, or creating a reoccurring email as simple as ours is just too complicated. That’s why I use and recommend Zapier.
Zapier is a web-based general task automation software. Their free tier allows up to 5 workflows to be executed up to 100 times per month — which is perfect because we only need 1 workflow to be executed up to 31 times per month.
To get set up, go to Zapier.com and sign up if you don’t already have an account. I signed up with Google but they also allow signups using Facebook or email.
Zapier Dashboard
When you log in, click “Make a Zap!”.
The first thing to do when creating a workflow is to set a trigger. In this case, our trigger will be a specific time of day.
To make the trigger:
In the “When this happens…” search bar, type “Schedule by Zapier” and click the result with the same name. In “Choose Trigger Event,” select “Everyday” and press “Continue”. Click the box to make sure the event occurs on the weekends. Select the time of day that you’d like to receive your email, then press “Continue”. Skip the “Find Data” section because you wont have any daily schedules to add the trigger to. (Don’t worry if you already clicked it, it will behave the same.)
Choose App & Event
Customize day.
Now that we’ve told the app when to run, we need to tell it what to do.
Press “Continue” to make the event:
Under “Do This”, type “Email by Zapier” and click the app. The action event should be “Send Outbound Email”. Press “Continue”. In the “Customize Outbound Email,” the “To” section should be addressed to the email you check regularly. The subject can be whatever you’d like the email subject to be — it really doesn’t matter. Mine is “Your Daily Survey is Ready!”. For the body, the only requirements is that you include the shareable link to your Google Form. My email body only says: “Record your day here: <link to form>”. You can change the “From Name” to anything you’d like or leave it blank. My email “From” section says “Yourself”. Click “Send Test” if you want to check if you receive the automated email and see how it looks. After the test, click “Done Editing” and then “Turn Zap On”
That’s all there is to it! Now you’ll get an email to your inbox at the same time each day prompting you to fill in the survey. If you haven’t done your survey yet that day, then the email will be marked as unread — so you’ll know the next time you check your email if you forgot to journal.
Editing, Referencing, and Analyzing
When you want to reference your survey records, go to your Google Drive and find the Google Sheet with the same name as your survey, plus the phrase “(Responses)” — so if your Form is called “Daily Survey,” then your Sheet is called “Daily Survey (Responses)”. You can also get to your Responses Sheet by navigating to your form and clicking, “View responses in Sheets”.
If you want to add to or edit a previous entry in Sheets, just go to the corresponding cell and edit its contents like you would any other Excel sheet.
If you want to edit your survey (i.e. the questions you ask or acceptable responses), navigate to your Google Form in Google Drive and edit the questions on the “Questions” tab.
The “Responses” tab will display visualizations of your responses in either a table or chart, which can be helpful when analyzing all responses at once. If you want to analyze specific time periods, I’d suggest making a copy of the Sheet and adding charts to the copied Sheet rather than the live one which is accepting responses.
“How was your day” all responses chart.
By recording my responses to these questions each day, I can easily answer questions like:
“What do I usually do on days I consider great?” (It usually has to do with having great conversations, meeting exciting new people, traveling, or all of the above.)
“Does meditating actually make a difference on my perceived well-being?” (Yes. I’ve never had a day that I both meditated and considered a bad day.)
“Can I actually tell people I’m vegetarian?” (Probably not, only 68.9% of days in the past 90 were vegetarian or vegan.)
You can answer your own overarching questions with whatever data you collect with your survey.
Conclusion
Directing yourself to an online survey through a reoccurring email can alleviate some of the biggest challenges in maintaining a daily journal practice, and even add some unique benefits when analyzing your life with your journal.
By using Google Forms to add entries, Google Sheets to store records, and Zapier to automate reoccurring emails, you can easily create a system, that you actually stick to, for free.
Postscript
I also use Google products to host my personal website for free and for implementing the Getting Things Done Methodology. Feel free to contact me via LinkedIn or my website, jordanpierre.co, to let me know if you’d like me to write similar articles about either of those.
Happy journaling! | https://medium.com/@jordan-pierre/how-to-use-google-forms-and-automated-emails-to-journal-consistently-cefe101c6b9 | ['Jordan Pierre'] | 2019-09-01 16:33:46.561000+00:00 | ['Habits', 'Journaling', 'Quantified Self', 'Self Improvement', 'Daily Journal'] |
You May Remember 2020 as the Year the ‘Super-Battery’ Became Real | You May Remember 2020 as the Year the ‘Super-Battery’ Became Real
Tesla, VW, QuantumScape, and GM are vying to produce the norm-shattering battery first
Photo: Martin Vorel/Creative Commons
After years of fitful development, doubt, miscues, and embarrassments, the humble battery seemed — in 2020, finally — to vault within reach of the promise that entrepreneurs since Thomas Edison and before have had for it.
In a key development, the cost of lithium-ion batteries is now near $100 per kWh, an inflection point that would give electric vehicles (EVs) cost parity with their gasoline-driven competition, according to BloombergNEF, a renewable energy research group. At the same time, multiple teams of researchers report a breakthrough in a new type of battery — a long-sought anode containing pure metallic lithium. The breakthrough has ignited a fierce contest among major automakers GM, Toyota, and VW to be first to bring EVs containing such super-batteries to market first. The middle of the decade has shaped up as a collision point between the carmakers and Tesla, which is carving out its own path to the super-battery.
Yesterday, yet another big name was reported to be entering the contest: Apple has plans to debut an electric driverless vehicle as early as 2024, according to Reuters.
As an illustration of the mania, look no further than Wall Street, where at least eight advanced battery and EV companies either went public this year or are in motion to do so in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, traders have driven up Tesla’s share price seven times this year; yesterday, the company was listed for the first time on the S&P 500. In other trading, the shares of QuantumScape, a startup metallic lithium battery company, rose 28.7% and another 10.6% after hours. Wards Auto, an industry website, called the whole scene an “EV investment craze,” a bubble bound to pop.
That may be true, but it is also a coming of age for the battery, which was invented in 1799 by Alessandro Volta and only now appears on the cusp of obtaining transformational performance. If the current path continues, lithium-ion batteries might bring a wholesale change not only to transportation, but also finally enable renewable power sources such as solar and wind.
Whether we are, in fact, entering an age of mass-market EVs is not a sure thing. What we have seen so far is a marked supply-side signal — lots of companies wanting to make and sell EVs containing super-batteries. But on the demand side, we mostly have niche buyers who fit in the green category or are seeking a sort of status by driving around in an EV. That’s what makes cost parity the EV’s proving ground — it will tell us whether people, now given a good price, want electric cars.
The surge of activity seemed to reflect the “Tesla effect” — both the pressure felt by all major automakers not to be made obsolete by Elon Musk’s company and a centrifugal force drawing in startups hoping to copy Musk’s feat. For GM, VW, and the others, going all in for EVs — obsessively and at full throttle — now seems a matter of survival. “Anyone who isn’t up to their neck in EVs is pretty much toast,” Sandy Munro, a leading auto industry consultant based in Michigan, told me.
Musk set the tone for the year in September with “Tesla Battery Day.” In a tour de force resembling the best shows put on by Apple impresario Steve Jobs, Musk laid out a road map that he said would cut the cost of Tesla batteries by half while giving them five times the energy, 16% more range, and six times more power.
Experts think that Musk already has a vast head start in batteries. But the kind of cuts he described could give him a cost of $55 to $60 per kWh, a dramatic plunge that would be very, very hard for others to match any time soon.
Among the steps Musk proposed to get there was more than doubling the size of his batteries to what he calls the “4680,” a cylinder measuring 46 millimeters in diameter and 80 millimeters in height. It’s a move that would cut costs by improving energy density, increasing range, and eliminating expensive steel. The number of individual batteries would be reduced from 4,416 to 960 — a whopping drop in all sorts of unnecessarily occupied vehicle space. “You can get a higher current without increasing the temperature and you get lower impedance,” said Kurt Kelty, vice president of automotive at Sila Nano, a battery startup, and the former long-time director of battery technologies at Tesla. “You can get current in and out of the cell faster.”
A problem is that internal heat rises with size, a potential redline since that could lead to explosions. Tesla’s resolution was to lop off the metallic tabs that normally stick out of both ends of the battery. Removing them would push the heat to the bottom of the cell and from there out of the battery pack.
Musk also found cost savings outside the battery — by eliminating thousands of individual parts, for example, by uniting the entire rear and front end into separate large casts of aluminum. “That is going to get rid of a third or more of the body shop,” said Munro. “This is a huge transformation. Elon Musk isn’t screwing around.”
According to the Reuters report, Apple’s plans for taking on Tesla and the others is an electric, driverless vehicle. The effort, begun in 2014, has been hard for Apple because the natural strategy would be for it to lean on its strength — design and software — and partner with a carmaker that would make the actual vehicle. Only, the thinking in the car industry is that much of the profit in EVs and driverless vehicles will be derived largely from software, such as data, onboard services, and updates. Apple is known for the high slice of the profit it demands, and no carmaker would be likely to willingly cede the biggest share of the pie. Apple, it has been assumed, would find it difficult to find a carmaker partner.
Apple declined to comment. But the Reuters report said Apple might have finally struck a deal with a carmaker.
A central breakthrough of the Apple vehicle, according to Reuters, will be the battery. As its chemistry, Apple may use lithium-iron-phosphate, or LFP, which delivers relatively low density but is cheap and safer than the other main chemistries. That fits with the six-year history of Apple’s attempts to create an electric car. In 2015, Apple reached a settlement with A123, an LFP pioneer that claimed that the iPhone giant had poached five of its main battery engineers. All five are still at Apple, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
Earlier this month, I coincidentally spoke with one of the five, Don Dafoe, about general battery advances. He did not respond to a message yesterday but in the December 1 conversation, Dafoe said that, when he was working at A123, it was developing a tabless system similar to Tesla’s that it called “Infinitab.” He said that a number of other companies had also worked on the idea but that no one had figured out how to scale it up. He said that if Tesla managed to do so, it deserved credit for the breakthrough. Musk, Dafoe said, “has tended to speak things into existence. It drives the engineering team to make it go.”
After years of an almost timid EV promotional style, GM came out swinging this year. It introduced Ultium, a battery system that is right on the state-of-the-art cutting edge — a formulation that twins high nickel content with low cobalt, known as “NMC 811.”
It announced the release of two flagship EVs next year — the 350-mile Hummer supertruck and the Cadillac Lyriq. And it threw itself into the scrum for the mid-decade super-battery propelled EV.
GM’s R&D division has set up a competition between two teams to power the super-battery. The contest is for whether the anode — the negatively charged electrode — will be made of metallic lithium or silicon, said Tim Grewe, director of GM battery cell engineering.
Both materials provide a substantial jump in energy, but for different reasons have not yet worked. Silicon’s problem is that it expands four times during the charge-discharge process and tends to shatter the battery. With pure lithium-metal, spikes known as dendrites form on its surface and short circuit the battery, sometimes causing fires.
GM’s silicon team, working with South Korea’s LG Chem, is attempting to build it to be almost 100% silicon, and has already achieved hundreds of charge-discharge cycles with its test cells, Grewe said. He declined to say precisely how many cycles. But most leading silicon anode companies are aiming at a composition closer to 50% of the electrode once you take into account inactive material that surrounds the silicon.
Most surprising is the metallic lithium effort. Grewe said the team is using liquid electrolyte, which researchers have largely avoided since metallic lithium is highly combustible when in contact with moisture. But Grewe said GM is using three redundant safety mechanisms including a protective coating over the anode, and that the team has already achieved 500 cycles, sufficient for 100,000 miles of driving in a 300-mile car. “It’s an incredible breakthrough by GM’s R&D,” he asserted.
At the moment, most of the betting is on Tesla. Some experts favor VW, which is gambling the company itself on winning EV dominance. But look for a death grip since, for many, losing could mean a gigantic and possibly existential blow. Will Paxton, a battery expert with Ford’s Greenfield Labs, the carmaker’s research center in Silicon Valley, said Ford’s next EV — the Mustang Mach-E SUV — is a “clean sheet,” built from the ground up as an EV. Ford is an investor in Solid Power, a competitor in the contest for the metallic lithium-based battery. Paxton said the Mach-E “will be the example of how the major automakers can compete against the startups.” It will, he said, “stack right up against the Tesla Y.” | https://themobilist.medium.com/you-may-remember-2020-as-the-year-the-super-battery-became-real-ac45eef70fe0 | ['Steve Levine'] | 2020-12-22 15:16:43.870000+00:00 | ['Electric Car', 'Batteries Industry', 'Elon Musk', 'Tesla'] |
How Medium keeps conquering readers? | How Medium keeps conquering readers?
Medium is the best medium to read and write and it is spreading like fire!
The word of the WhatsApp mouth is enough to win new readers who turn into new subscribers. Initially, I thought it was costly and then I pondered about the learnings it brings along. I read a lot and always thought of writing. But I was not sure about the platform that I would I choose to write. Paper is fast becoming boring. And then I got introduced to Medium.
I just pick up my phone and start typing my stories on Medium. I keep accumulating stories as drafts and publish those whose content is ready! This also allows me to move back and forth just like my wandering thoughts!
Medium keeps me busy while I am waiting at a restaurant for my order or my turn inside a clinic/hospital.
Medium made the fonts so readable and almost inspiring for authors to write with some great options like a default Title font, double quotes, bullet points, @, attachment of pictures and you just keep wondering how simple they made it.
What made me subscribe? | https://medium.com/@errtested/how-medium-keeps-conquering-readers-3aff648e5e82 | ['Mohammad Suhail'] | 2020-09-03 19:57:34.243000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Productivity', 'Thoughts', 'Médium', 'Stories'] |
I Don’t Understand What You Mean by “Relationships Are Hard Work” | I Don’t Understand What You Mean by “Relationships Are Hard Work”
I can’t be the only one who has a fantastic time with my partner
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
Nearly every article I see linked on Twitter or Instagram about relationships are about how they’re such hard work. How you have to put in 100% to maintain that relationship and love.
…I don’t get it.
I’ve been with my partner for over six years and we have lived together for more than three years. And I have never once grown tired of him. I have never once thought to myself “this is so hard, I feel like I’m working hard at this relationship.” Am I the outlier in this argument?
Is it wrong that I would genuinely rather spend an evening in with my partner than go out with a couple of girlfriends? Is it so bad that I actually like spending time with him? Is it unhealthy that he’s my absolute best friend? I don’t think so.
Yet every op-ed article about marriage or relationships would have me believe I’m the weirdo here.
Sure, we have our arguments. We have our tough spots. But they last minutes, at best. We are constantly communicating our feelings and letting each other know what is good or bad. I love him more every single day and I don’t think there’s any “work” behind that.
I was reading an article today about how relationships MUST require work in order to succeed. Joy Joses, the author, uses the analogy of a seed being put into soil and then put in a dark cupboard. She says that you wouldn’t expect it to grow and thrive if it were out of the sun and not watered, and you should expect the same with a relationship. You have to nurture a relationship in order for it to grow.
Here’s the thing: People aren’t plants. And even if they were comparable in the way that Joses explains, there are literally thousands of different kinds of plants, many of which actually do thrive in darkness and with little water or attention. Much like plants being different, I think every relationship is very different.
My relationship with my partner is vastly different than my parents, who are happily married, and even more vastly different than his parents, who have been divorced since he was four years old.
I don’t think there can be one recipe for a relationship. I think every single person is different and therefore every single relationship is different. Believe me, I’ve had my fair share of relationships that DID feel like work. We had to work to prioritize each other, we had to work to make time for one another, and there was work on both sides to communicate effectively.
Maybe I got lucky with my forever partner because all of that has come easily since day one. | https://medium.com/living-freely/i-dont-understand-what-you-mean-by-relationships-are-hard-work-ae89ee2c1ffb | ['Megan R. Clark'] | 2020-12-17 22:52:41.419000+00:00 | ['Marriage', 'Lifestyle', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'Dating'] |
Vote for Women | Scenes from quarantine — Day 154:
It was a day, maybe two, after Super Tuesday, after Elizabeth Warren stepped down, that I had the crushing realization. I had made an awful mistake. I had spent months defending the handful of women who aspired to our nation’s highest office, had insisted that this country WAS ready for a woman president, and that “because I don’t think anyone else will vote for her” is a terrible reason not to vote for the candidate you believe in. I had spun words like cotton candy and completely missed the pivotal central point.
I knew this year was the hundredth anniversary of the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Of course America found a whole heap of other accounts to deny or abridge the right to vote for indigenous women, black women, Asian women, immigrant women, or women who made the mistake of marrying the wrong person, but generations of (mostly white) women carried signs and distributed handbills and got arrested and went on hunger strikes and made a ruckus and wore the now iconic sashes emblazoned with “VOTES FOR WOMEN” and made a place in our constitution for a fundamental right, that a vote could not be denied to a person solely because she was a woman. This was important. It should have happened in 1788, not 1920.
And on the Decidedly-Less-Superb Wednesday that I realized that the message from a hundred years ago needed a small but profound change ninety-nine, ninety-five, forty-four years later or probably even forty-seven years earlier. As important as putting the fundamental right in place, it is every bit as important to call every citizen who CAN vote to action, to right a long-standing wrong and to bring true equality to our nation.
VOTE
FOR
WOMEN
VOTE FOR WOMEN. We didn’t say it loud enough prior to Super Tuesday and too much of America was unwilling to do it on Super Tuesday. VOTE FOR WOMEN. Before the 2020 presidential primary elections, only five women had even made it onto the presidential debate stage. VOTE FOR WOMEN. Los Angeles elected its first-ever female City Council member, Estelle Lawton Lindsey, in 1915, four years after California women were given the vote in state and municipal elections. She served as acting mayor for 36 hours during her term. VOTE FOR WOMEN. The City of Los Angeles has never elected a female mayor. VOTE FOR WOMEN. After more women ran for Congress than ever before in 2018, more women are running for Congress this year than in 2018. More Republican women are running for Congress than ever before. More women of color are running for Congress than ever before. More Black women are running for Congress than ever before. VOTE FOR WOMEN. Trans women (and transgender and non-binary individuals) have faced extraordinary persecution and made the slimmest gains in seeking representation in local, state, and federal elections. A vote for trans women is a vote for women. VOTE FOR WOMEN. Vote for women running for governor or legislative assembly member or mayor or county supervisor or city council or school board or judge.
We are seventy-five days from the election. We cannot vote for a woman for president in this election, but we can vote for a woman for vice president. We can vote for women in Congress, we can vote for women in state government, we can vote for women in our counties and cities. And we can vote for women in the next election and the next one after that and the next one after that.
We can also, like the suffragettes from a century ago, make signs, make sashes, make bumper stickers, make a ruckus. As we nod to their message, we make it our own and expand it to include, to acknowledge, to support all the women who were excluded, marginalized, dismissed across the centuries. We can invite everyone to share this message. We can urge everyone to act.
After a long and painful struggle, American women have the vote. It’s not wrong to feel proud of that achievement, but the work is not done. Now it is time that we do our part.
VOTE FOR WOMEN.
#scenesfromquarantine | https://polcamilla.medium.com/vote-for-women-39a7c576f628 | ['Tanya Klowden'] | 2020-10-29 05:02:15.710000+00:00 | ['Women Candidates', 'Suffrage Centennial', 'Votes For Women', 'Kamala Harris', 'Election 2020'] |
WLST script to reset data source password in WebLogic server | This tutorial explains the approach to reset the password of all the data sources in the WebLogic server. Sometime we may need to reset the password of all the data sources, the below WLST script can be used to achieve the same.
The reset through console takes more time, the WLST script helps to reset the password quickly
WLST Script
ResetAllDataSourcePassword.py
adminIP = raw_input("Enter domain1.AdminIP:")
adminPort = raw_input("Enter domain1.AdminPort:")
adminPassword = raw_input("Enter adminPassword:")
DBPASSWORD= raw_input("Enter new DBPASSWORD:")
DOMAIN_PATH='C://Albin/SW/Oracle/Middleware/Oracle_Home/user_projects/domains/base_domain'
es = encrypt(DBPASSWORD,DOMAIN_PATH)
adminURL='t3://'+adminIP+':'+adminPort
adminUserName='weblogic'
connect(adminUserName, adminPassword, adminURL)
server='AdminServer'
cd('Servers/'+server)
target=cmo
edit()
startEdit() # SOADomain Datasource Configuration
cd('JDBCSystemResources')
allDS=cmo.getJDBCSystemResources()
for tmpDS in allDS:
dsName=tmpDS.getName();
print 'Changing the Password for DataSource ', dsName
cd('/JDBCSystemResources/'+dsName+'/JDBCResource/'+dsName+'/JDBCDriverParams/'+dsName)
set('PasswordEncrypted',es)
save()
activate()
disconnect()
Script
Before executing the script, change the configurations as required.
Execute the script — <<Oracle_Home>>\oracle_common\common\bin\wlst.cmd ResetAllDataSourcePassword.py
Now the data sources password reset to the new value. | https://medium.com/tech-learnings/wlst-script-to-reset-data-source-password-in-weblogic-server-125f8243e6c8 | ['Albin Issac'] | 2020-08-06 18:39:44.425000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Weblogic', 'Oracle', 'Software Development', 'Servers'] |
How to Mentor and Develop Others | Expecting the best of people can be a self-fulfilling prophecy
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
The standard image of coaches or mentors that most people have is that of a seasoned veteran or executive helping a favoured younger person along or grooming a promising talent. However, anyone can be a coach and provide help to others; colleagues, novices, peers and even superiors. Managing upward and helping superiors and managers do a better job is also part of the art of sensing other people’s development needs and bolstering their abilities.
Sensing other people’s development needs is an important skill for professionals in today’s ever collaborative and decentralized work environment. Coaching and developing others is a person-to-person art that is centred around counselling. The effectiveness of counselling hinges on empathy and the ability to focus on one’s feelings, insights and perspectives, and sharing them with others.
Many people resist coaching because they are afraid of seeming inadequate or incompetent or struggle with vulnerability. To win over people like this, you can’t afford to be impersonal, cold, self-serving or one-sided in your interactions with those you want to influence.
If you can’t win the trust of people you wish to influence, your advice won’t be received and will go unheeded. I was only able to trust, show vulnerability, honesty and work better with coaches who showed respect, trustworthiness and empathy.
An open and trusting relationship is the foundation of success in coaching and developing others. The best coaches I have had the privilege of working with were the ones who showed a genuine personal interest in me, my abilities and goals, they also showed empathy and understanding of my situation and challenges. In the absence of trust, coaching is impossible. So how can you develop this skill?
The art of giving feedback
Providing effective feedback is a delicate business. It requires a combination of giving out both praise and constructive criticism. While praise is easy to give, it is far more challenging and tricky to criticize. People generally respond more strongly to negative events than positive ones, and in John Gottman’s influential book on managing relationships, Gottman suggests that positive interactions must outnumber negative interactions for relationships to succeed.
Showing positive appreciation to people you coach and finding something positive about what they’ve done is key to effective feedback. When I provide feedback to people I coach, I try to find one or two positive things to highlight. This could be as simple as appreciating their openness to hearing my feedback or highlighting their overall effort at a task or exercise.
The worst time to give feedback is during an emotional hijack. An emotional hijack is an episode where you lose control of yourself, this is commonly referred to moments where one “goes bananas” or “lost it”. Feedback given in this situation is usually not objective and results in a character attack, avoid giving feedback if you are not in the right emotional state.
In a study of the effects of performance feedback on self-confidence among several MBA students. These students were either praised, were criticized or received no feedback on their performance in a simulation of creative problem-solving. They had been told that their efforts would be compared with how well hundreds of others had done on the same task. Those who heard nothing about how well they did or who only received criticism suffered a great blow to their self-confidence.
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
The Pygmalion effect
The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon wherein high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area. Its name comes from the story of Pygmalion, a mythical Greek sculptor. Pygmalion carved a statue of a woman and then became enamoured with it. Unable to love a human, Pygmalion appealed to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She took pity and brought the statue to life. The couple married and went to have a daughter, Paphos.
Expecting the best of people can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Athletic coaches and good managers can boost a person’s performance by giving them a suitable challenge coupled with a boost of confidence.
A reliable method of promoting positive expectations is to let others take the lead in setting their own goals, rather than dictating the terms and manner of their development. This communicates the belief that the person being coached can achieve their desired outcome.
Another technique that encourages people to perform better is to point to problems without offering a solution. This implies that they can find the solutions themselves. This approach involves initiating a Socratic dialogue by leading the person through a series of questions. This lets students find their way to the answers which bolsters confidence in decision making.
At a higher level of development, coaches or mentors can arrange ongoing assignments and tasks that will give the person being coached needed training, exercise or challenges. This might take the form of delegating responsibilities or putting the individual in charge of projects or situations that will demand using new skills.
Although doing this demands sensitivity to the readiness of the person being coached — If the assignment is too easy, little will be learned; if it is too difficult, the person may experience a setback. The skill lies in arranging successful stretch experience that gradually increases capability and confidence.
In conclusion, individuals who are competent in developing others are able to acknowledge and reward the strengths and accomplishments of people they coach. They are also able to offer useful feedback and properly identify people’s needs for further growth. Furthermore, they are able to give timely coaching and offer assignments that challenge and foster the skills of those they mentor. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/how-to-mentor-and-develop-others-f93e9d6ec42a | ['David Owasi'] | 2020-08-09 19:26:07.972000+00:00 | ['Emotional Intelligence', 'Self', 'Leadership', 'Mentorship', 'Work'] |
Secret Email System Review: How To Do Email Marketing? | 4.How Is The Secret Email System Different?
Most people teaching this stuff don’t make as much money as Matt Bacak or they have only been around for a few years. The things that Matt is going to share have all been proven super successful. In fact multimillion dollar successful.
There is no theory here. Anyone can blatantly copy this method and I’m going to take full advantage of that.
It will work for people just starting, people that want to quit their job, people that want to retire early, for people that just want to make money and have their own freedom business.
You’ve probably seen this strategy in action several times in one way or another. But I’d venture to guess you haven’t started using it or making it work. I’m guilty of this myself.
A large number of people have tried to use this method, BUT, most get it wrong. Each of them left out one or more key elements that make the strategy so effective. Leave one of these out and at best you’re wasting your time, or worse, you’re wasting money.
5. Is There A Guarantee?
Yes. Matt takes all the risk and gives a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee. He even lets you keep the book.
Get ready for September 28th 2020, this is invaluable and if you are serious about building a business online, you simply NEED to have it!
In fact, I’m not just telling your about this very special opportunity, I’m personally going to get the Secret Email System myself.
6. Recap Of What You’re GettingWith The Secret Email System
Peace of mind to be learning from a true Heavywheight Champion (priceless)
Secret Email System eBook
10,978 New Leads-Daily Masterclass
3x Formula Calculator
Irresistible Offer Video Guide
$2.1 Million Email Swipe File (1000 Emails)
Secret Of Millionaires Book
Secret Email System Checklist
My Secret 357,582 Lead Generation Template
Gigantic Swipe File Book
Total Bonus Value: $997
Update 29. September
Free 45 Minute Breakthrough Session With Matt’s Team
Access To The Private Facebook Group (Priceless)
Click Here To Order The “Secret Email System” + Bonuses
7.Detailed Recap Of The Secret Email System
Secret Email System eBook
This is the eBook where you learn the whole Secret Email System.
2.10,978 New Leads-Daily Masterclass — (197 Value)
How to generate high quality leads each and every day.
3.3x Formula Calculator — ($97 Value)
The profit equation Matt uses that breaks down subscribers, clicks and EPC to help maximize sales.
4.Irresistible Offer Video Guide — ($97 Value)
How to find and pick high converting offers that work (Nothing is going to save a bad offer. If you’re getting it wrong at this stage you’re doomed!)
5.$2.1 Million Email Swipe File (1,000 Emails) — ($497 Value)
Matts own private email swipe files of 1,000 emails that’s responsible for $2.1 million in sales.
6.Secret Of Millionaires Book — ($19 Value)
Nine common characteristics of internet millionaires and how to adopt them for your own success.
7.Secret Email System Checklist — ($47 Value)
Step-by-step checklist that makes sure you implement the system in the right order, so you can get results.
8.Secret 357,582 Lead Generation Template — ($297 Value)
The same exact lead generation template Matt used to generate 357,582 leads! (I’m already curious for that one ;))
9.Gigantic Swipe File Book — ($297 Value)
Words, phrases, sentences, attention grabbing headlines that you can use in your emails and for ideas and promotions that trigger leads to open emails, which lead to sales.
Update 29. September: Matt Just Added 2 More Bonuses To The Stack
10.Free Breakthrough Session With His Team — ($97 Value)
A Free 45 minutes strategy session with his team to help you get clarity and figure out how to best implement the system.
11.Private Facebook Community (Priceless)
Access to a private group of 20,000+ email marketers where you can learn, share and network with some of the top email marketers in the world.
8. Final Thoughts On The Secret Email System
Let’s start with some facts and the question if you should get started with email marketing.
According to a study done by McKinsey & Co. in 2019, email marketing is more effective than social media marketing by a factor of 40. Let me repeat that, by a factor of 40. Think about the amount of money you would like to earn per year. Realize that utilizing email marketing this number can become reality.
There’s a reason why your inbox gets hit with emails from big brands every day. Email marketing works. In fact, it works so good, that it’s your most valuable asset.
If profit from the internet and freedom is what you seek, I believe Matts program is the ultimate blueprint.
I hope you found this Secret Email System review helpful and have now enough information to make the decision if you should buy the product.
P.S. : If you’re running an online business or planning to start one, you should definitely at least check out the eBook. It’s only $5.60 at the moment.
Considering the price, the value given inside the ebook and the bonuses is INSANE! Click the button below to get instant access.
Click Here To Order The “Secret Email System” + Bonuses
9. The Best Bonus
Instead of giving you more courses/products as a bonus, I have decided to go a completely different route, give you a no-shitter instead and a kick out the door. If you feel that’s not good enough, I can tell you’re already heading down the wrong road.
The last thing you need when you purchase the Secret Email System is more stuff. The Secret Email System is a complete system with a lot of first-class bonuses that complement the core training.
If you are beeing honest with yourself, you probably know that more courses lead to procrastination. And this is the last thing you want to happen.
Keep it simple stupid.
Buy the course, focus, go and make stuff happen. Get this one right and it will be the last course you need for a long, very long time.
End of sermon.
10. Updates On The Secret Email System
I will update this section as I go through the system.
10.1 First step taken. Let’s do it! :)
After the purchase of the ebook, you will get emails with the receipt and a link to a website, where you can download the bonus files for either a Windows PC oder Mac. The file itself is a big one, 619 megabyte zip-file.
At the end of the page you will have the chance to join a 3 day virtual email mastermind. You actually have to apply for this one. But, if you get accepted, you have access to Matt for 3 days directly and he will personally make sure that you have your ducks in a row.
That’s what he did with Russel Brunson, the CEO of ClickFunnels, a 9-figure software company.
Try it, you might get lucky.
P.S.: If you have never heard of Russel Brunson, you should probably check out his two best-selling books. Russel is an online marketing prodigy and these books are one of the best ever written on the subject. For the price he’s selling them, it’s a steal:
10.2 The Secret Email System eBook
Whats included in the introduction?
In the introduction Matt explains what you will learn inside the ebook:
Why you don’t want go down the road everyone suggests building an online business.
want go down the road everyone suggests building an online business. The easiest way to start making real money online.
to start making real money online. How the best part of his system is able to produce “ self-funding ” email subsribers that will feed the business.
” email subsribers that will feed the business. A dirty little secret to make even more money.
to make even more money. The missing link to make email marketing “really” work.
to make email marketing “really” work. Why he is more than qualified to teach such a system. (Walks the walk, 8-figures earned through email marketing)
to teach such a system. (Walks the walk, 8-figures earned through email marketing) Why the Secret Email System is the one and only total package solution.
2. The Long, Hard Road (that almost everybody takes)
The road to disaster everybody is telling you to take.
How to properly make use of blogging and social media marketing.
Why blogging and social media marketing are not reliable revenue streams for most people.
3. The Shocking Truth
Creating a product first is idiotic.
Don’t follow your passion, follow the money.
Becoming insanely rich by creating and controling markets through email.
What customers really care about.
Start building your business with maximum leverage.
How to score a sale in the first 6 seconds.
Why the money is in the list.
The true power of email marketing.
4. The Way To Success
The fastest, easiest and most risk-free way to set yourself up for success.
How to pick the right market.
The way to success through reverse engineering.
The strategy behind an irresistible offer.
Top niches for making serious money online.
Shortcut your way by picking the irresistible offer.
Affiliate networks to join.
The science of choosing the right domain-name.
Autoresponder tech stuff.
Getting the best subscriber by utilizing a pre-framing optin-page.
How to create the opt-in pitch.
Using special thank you pages.
How to produce self-funding subscribers (Getting subscribers for free)
5. Top 7 Traffic Sources For List Building
Join forces with joint ventures.
Leverage social media properties.
Retargeting.
Sponsored emails.
Solo Ads.
Co-registration.
Special Articles.
6. Moneymaking Mantra
Find an offer, mail an offer.
The Diderot effect.
People are going to buy from someone, so it might as well be you.
7. How To 10x It
Use the data you have gathered. (I can’t give more details. You will have to buy the ebook)
8. The Last Missing Piece
The secret of the high-performers.
9. But Wait, There’s More
How to get people to open your emails.
Click Here To Order The “Secret Email System” + Bonuses
10. What’s The Purpose Of Your Email Campaign?
Why you need to have a purpose for building a list and creating an email campaign.
Building credibility and trust.
11. How To Organize Your Email Campaign
How to move your subscribers through the buyer journey.
The importance of giving value first.
12. How To Create Credibility With Your Subscribers
How to achieve trust and build credibility.
The importance of overdelivering.
13. How To Create Rapport With Your Subscribers
Why building rapport first is crucial to your success.
How to build rapport.
14. How You Should Write Your Emails
Why you don’t want to use a template.
What to do instead.
15. Writing Headlines For Your Emails
Headlines is where it’s at.
The best types of headlines to use.
16. Writing A Call-To-Action In Your Email
Don’t be afraid to be direct.
Examples of good call to actions.
17. How To Write Content Emails
How to make it more personal.
How to stand out.
How to train the reader.
18. How To Write Free Gift Emails
Keep it simple.
What format to use.
19. How To Write Promotional Emails
Why the relationship with your subscribers matters so much.
How to tie affiliate products to your own credibilty.
How to prequalify readers first.
20. How To Write Feedback Emails
Why feedback emails are so important.
21. How To Write Emails That Generate A Response
How To Make It Personal
22. How To Properly Format Your Emails
How many characters per line to use.
How to break up your emails.
23. Why You Must Write Your Own Emails
What most people are doing wrong.
How to build a relationship with your subscribers.
How to build an effective email campaign.
24. How Often Should You Be Mailing Your List
How to mix different styles of emails.
Factors to consider.
25. How To Track The Success Of Your Campaigns
What metrics really count.
Delivery Rate — How quality impacts delivery rate.
Open Rate — How to react to sudden drops.
Click Through Rate — What to do in case of low CTR.
Unsubscribe Rate — When to take action.
26. The Biggest Email Marketing Myth
Adapt to changing needs and markets.
How to stay on top.
How to split you risk.
27. How To Make Money From Your Subscribers In The Long Run
The two prong system.
Product creation and pricing.
Sales funnels.
What type of content strategy to use.
28. Wrapping Things Up
The email marketing feedback loop.
What you need to do to really succeed in this business.
What to focus on in list building.
Why to think long term.
10.3 Secret Email System Bonuses
10.3.1 Secret Email System Checklist
14 point checklist summarizing the main points of the Secret Email System ebook.
10.3.2 Private Facebook Group
You get access to a private facebook group dedicated to list building where Mat shares information.
10.3.3 Internet Millionaire Mind Book
Invaluable insights into how super successfull people think. A lot of people will overlook just how important mindset is.
10.3.4 Gigantic Email Swipe File
1056 email winners as a template for your inspiration. Very nice.
11. My Honest Opinion
After going through the ebook and the bonuses I have to say, I never got so much out of a $5.60 investment.
If you have a business, even an offline brick and mortar business, invest in yourself and buy the ebook and get the bonuses for FREE. The value given, considering the price, is insane.
If you have a business you need email marketing. If you do email marketing you need to buy this ebook. It’s as easy as that.
THANKS. | https://medium.com/@sumitmathur7665/secret-email-system-review-how-to-do-email-marketing-email-marketing-software-3276950b9ff2 | [] | 2020-12-17 15:10:50.039000+00:00 | ['Email Secrets Review', 'Campaign', 'Email Marketing', 'Email', 'Marketing'] |
The Marine (2006) review | From the Tony Scott school of direction — where the camera barely stays still for a second — comes The Marine, a WWE Films production. John Cena stars as John Triton (I wonder how long it took them to think up that name?), a former Marine who was busted out of the army and must now acclimatise to normal life.
That might make for a decent drama piece, but it wouldn’t be a very interesting action film. Plus, with all due respect to John Cena, I can’t see him doing a serious drama film at any point. Then again, if Mr Schwarzenegger can do it, I guess anything is possible.
So, because this is an action flick, it doesn’t take very long for him to be on the trail of a group of diamond thieves who have kidnapped his wife.
Robert Patrick is the A-Lister bad guy, playing a diamond thief with a mean streak. And, it seems, a whimsical streak. When he’s not mercilessly killing people he’s cracking witty comments that raise at best a mild chuckle. His gang of villains fare little better, playing up against the established cliches but are ultimately nothing more than bad guys for Triton to kill.
You can tell that the budget took a hit, because after the first couple of action sequences the second half of the film takes place almost entirely in the swamp. Allow me a moment to contain my excitement… There we go.
And everything blows up. Police cars, gas stations, more cars. Warehouses. Bars. Trucks. Robert Patrick. Almost everything except the swamp explodes, and often for no other reason than it looks cool.
And when will that camera stay still? It swoops around everybody in a dizzying whirl, only taking time to stop long enough to get a glimpse of Kelly Carlson’s cleavage.
From a script level there are several issues, but they don’t spoil the fun that can be had throughout. If you think too much about the plot, especially in this sort of low grade action film, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. With that said, there are a couple of narrative threads thrown in there that are either not developed, not explained or just ended abruptly. What happened to the guy Cena threw through a window? Nobody knows. Or cares.
In terms of the direction there’s one genuinely good shot, where diamonds are showered in blood, but that’s it. Some flashy camera movement doesn’t stop The Marine from being a mostly dull affair. It’s a shame too, because the opening 15 minutes or so are almost acceptable, and the big explosions are impressive but almost seem to be placed to wake the audience up between the lulls in action.
Where it fails the most significantly is in making John Cena indestructible, as no matter who or what is thrown at him he comes out the other side virtually unscathed. In fact you could argue that the same thing happened in his pro wrestling career. Snark snark. | https://medium.com/simonprior/the-marine-2006-review-d99be20445b7 | ['Simon Prior'] | 2017-07-08 22:34:11.690000+00:00 | ['Action', 'Thriller', 'M', 'Drama', '2006'] |
Dear Anna… | Dear Anna…
Here I stand listening to your praises from different tongues. They seem to have forgotten the day you walked down the aisle and I stood at the end with tears flowing down in awe of the union to be sealed, or maybe they feel I didn’t know of certain qualities you possessed. Whatever the reason, my ears are bleeding and I wish to plug their mouths and shut them off.
Sadly, that is not the worst, dealing with your compliments are fine enough. However the chants of “Olorun a wo, Olorun a da si", whispers of “Omo lo ma sin iwo o” or those with nerve to pat my shoulder and tell me “omo yii ni ko toju o”. How could you leave me with a child, Anna, I can’t even carry her properly. I’m still learning to change a diaper, just this morning, I accidentally put the milk in her nose, Anna.
Please just wake up, fulfil your promises or don’t you remember? We agreed to see our grand children, when we have heads brimming with gray hair, after laughing at each other for crying over a sad movie and making fun of our toothlessness. We said we would hold hands and sleep to awake into a perfect light.
You breached that contract, Anna. You cheated! You are making these people say things they shouldn’t bother thinking of. Please Anna, you even got your wish, our daughter looks like my twin, you now have two of us in the house just open your eyes.
Oh! My love, stop lying still in that rose pink dress. Take my hand and come out of this box. You never liked confined spaces so I see no reason why you are lying like a log of wood.
I laid our bed just the way you like it with three pillows on your side, all for you. Come lie beside me till the end of time. | https://medium.com/@Mo.Alfy/dear-anna-af7a9ee06ae5 | ['Olamide Mariet'] | 2020-08-07 11:43:54.681000+00:00 | ['Death', 'Tears', 'Baby', 'Yoruba'] |
Apps I can’t live without (v2021) | With this post, my wish is to highlight some of the great apps I use in my daily life.
Let me start by giving you some context that may help understand my choices a bit better.
Personally, I’m a tech geek and an Apple fanboy, so I’ll be mostly talking about apps in the Apple ecosystem.
Professionally I’ve been working in web development for the last 20 years, started as a developer, and now I lead tech and product teams. Currently, I’m CTO at sheerME.
Let’s dive into the apps, starting with my Macbook Pro.
I’m working in a 13-inch core i5 from 2016 with 16GB of ram (eagerly awaiting the arrival of my M1 Macbook Pro).
The browser of choice: Google Chrome
Two reasons why I prefer chrome, the devtools, and the extension ecosystem.
These are the extensions I currently use:
Metamask: A crypto wallet (I’m big into Ethereum)
Defi Saver Gas Price extension: Also for the Ethereum ecosystem, it keeps me informed of gas prices (used to pay for transactions inside the network)
Ghostery: My preferred ad blocker
Raindrop.io: A very well done bookmark manager where I store bookmarks for future reference but also where I drop articles I want to read later.
raindrop.io bookmark manager
Mail Client: Superhuman
It’s a bit on the expensive side but it helps me deal with email a lot faster than all the other clients I tried so for someone that spends a big chunk of his day on email, it’s well worth it.
I’m very tempted to try hey.com from the basecamp guys but I can’t switch to a hey.com email address so for now I’ll stick with Superhuman.
It’s a bit on the expensive side but it helps me deal with email a lot faster than all the other clients I tried so for someone that spends a big chunk of his day on email, it’s well worth it. I’m very tempted to try hey.com from the basecamp guys but I can’t switch to a hey.com email address so for now I’ll stick with Superhuman. Calendar App: Fantastical
Fantastical is all about the little details… the way you can identify a zoom, hangout, skype call or any other just by looking at the event in the calendar, the small icon that tells you how the weather is for the day, the natural language parser that enables you to create events just by typing what you want…
Fantastical
Music Player: Spotif… Apple Music
Being so entrenched in the Apple ecosystem it is very hard not to go with apple music, as much as I love Spotify, particularly the dynamic playlists that allow me to discover new music every day, Apple music just works so well across all my apple setup that I couldn’t resist.
Being so entrenched in the Apple ecosystem it is very hard not to go with apple music, as much as I love Spotify, particularly the dynamic playlists that allow me to discover new music every day, Apple music just works so well across all my apple setup that I couldn’t resist. Note-taking: Roam Research
As a very visual person I’m naturally drawn to apps like Bear notes or Craft but after a couple of tries, I’m now convinced that Rom is the best note-taking app for me. The main reason is that it solves my biggest problem with notes in general, the resurfacing of relevant content when needed.
Before Roam, most of my notes would quickly fall by the wayside. With Roam, they just pop up when needed.
As a very visual person I’m naturally drawn to apps like Bear notes or Craft but after a couple of tries, I’m now convinced that Rom is the best note-taking app for me. The main reason is that it solves my biggest problem with notes in general, the resurfacing of relevant content when needed. Before Roam, most of my notes would quickly fall by the wayside. With Roam, they just pop up when needed. Password Manager: 1Password
Using a password manager today is mandatory, you need individual strong passwords per service and no memory will work for that. I particularly like 1password because it works reliably across devices, it has an immaculate security record and it’s constantly improving with new features launched every couple of months.
Using a password manager today is mandatory, you need individual strong passwords per service and no memory will work for that. I particularly like 1password because it works reliably across devices, it has an immaculate security record and it’s constantly improving with new features launched every couple of months. Window Manager: Rectangle
I normally use multiple screens and prefer to use my windows maximized so to facilitate the window alignment I use Rectangle.
Now a full section dedicated to communication, as social animals this one occupies a large group of our day-to-day most-used apps.
Slack
I use slack mostly for work, to communicate with my colleagues during office hours.
I use slack mostly for work, to communicate with my colleagues during office hours. Discord
Discord is very good for group chat as well, it started within the gaming community but now the usage is more generalized. I use it mainly for Crypto communities and retrogaming (another hobby of mine, SEGA forever!)
Discord is very good for group chat as well, it started within the gaming community but now the usage is more generalized. I use it mainly for Crypto communities and retrogaming (another hobby of mine, SEGA forever!) Telegram
Telegram is probably the one I use the least, I’m a member of some Crypto communities that still live there so I keep it for now.
Telegram is probably the one I use the least, I’m a member of some Crypto communities that still live there so I keep it for now. Signal
With the recent privacy fears rising from Facebook and some of its properties like Whatsapp some of my friends are jumping ship and into Signal so I have to be there as well.
With the recent privacy fears rising from Facebook and some of its properties like Whatsapp some of my friends are jumping ship and into Signal so I have to be there as well. Whatsapp
My main tool to chat with friends.
My main tool to chat with friends. Facebook groups
I mostly stopped using Facebook years ago, but some of the communities I’m a member of are still there so I still use groups.
Another group of apps most of us have are the small utils that make our lives using a mac a bit better:
Bartender 4
This is a nifty utility to hide the menu bar items, I prefer my menubar clean.
This is a nifty utility to hide the menu bar items, I prefer my menubar clean. Unsplash wallpapers
Unsplash wallpapers rotate my desktop wallpapers automatically every day.
Unsplash wallpapers rotate my desktop wallpapers automatically every day. Boom 3D
I find the sound coming of the mac pro a bit to plain, so I use Boom to turn up the bass!
Boom 3D
Paste
Paste is a clipboard manager, there’s plenty available but I really like paste visuals.
Paste clipboard manager
Development tools:
VS Code
My code editor of choice.
My code editor of choice. TablePlus
To navigate databases (mostly postgreSQL nowadays)
To navigate databases (mostly postgreSQL nowadays) iTerm
A more customizable replacement for the mac terminal.
A more customizable replacement for the mac terminal. There
A cool menubar utility to be aware of my colleague's timezones.
As my last highlight an app I use as a 3D printer hobbyist, my slicer of choice Ultimaker Cura.
Now onto iPhone
I’m currently using a pacific Blue iPhone 12 Pro with 256GB, and these are my main apps:
(Some of the obvious ones I mentioned on my mac are also on my iPhone with the same usage objectives, apps like Whatsapp, Signal, Slack, or the Superhuman email client.)
For content consumption:
Fiery Feeds
I still like RSS feeds and Fiery is my reader of choice, mostly because it plays really well into the way I like to skim through the articles.
I still like RSS feeds and Fiery is my reader of choice, mostly because it plays really well into the way I like to skim through the articles. Overcast
Overcast is my preferred podcast player for more than 5 years now, I got addicted to the way it removes pauses and speeds up the audio dynamically, playing fast but without losing quality or detail.
Overcast is my preferred podcast player for more than 5 years now, I got addicted to the way it removes pauses and speeds up the audio dynamically, playing fast but without losing quality or detail. Tweetbot
Tweetbot is my favorite Twitter client, I find it a lot less cluttered than the official one, nothing like running away from algorithmically driven feeds
Tweetbot is my favorite Twitter client, I find it a lot less cluttered than the official one, nothing like running away from algorithmically driven feeds Raindrop.io
Like on Mac I use raindrop on iOS as my bookmark manager, their share sheet widget is particularly useful.
Like on Mac I use raindrop on iOS as my bookmark manager, their share sheet widget is particularly useful. Youtube
Yep, can’t avoid it, there's simply too much good content there.
Yep, can’t avoid it, there's simply too much good content there. Netflix
My streaming service of choice (although Disney+ and AppleTV+ are moving in the right direction)
To monitor my health:
Apple Health
I use Apple Health as my health data aggregator, it collects data directly from the apple devices (iPhone and Apple Watch) but also from third-party apps like Oura or from apple shortcuts I use to track caffeine intake or water consumption.
I use Apple Health as my health data aggregator, it collects data directly from the apple devices (iPhone and Apple Watch) but also from third-party apps like Oura or from apple shortcuts I use to track caffeine intake or water consumption. Oura
Oura ring is my wearable of choice, I use it to track my overall health with a focus on sleep quality.
Day-to-day utilities
Fantastical
Just a beautifully crafted calendar like on mac.
The highlight on the iOS version is the widgets.
Just a beautifully crafted calendar like on mac. The highlight on the iOS version is the widgets. Carrot Weather
The weather app with a strong personality. We all know there are tons of weather apps in the app store, so why this one? Good design, complete information, and on top of that dark sense of humor, what else could you ask?
For my cryptocurrency addiction:
Delta portfolio tracker
Delta
My preferred portfolio manager. Getting a bit bloated but still the best if you want to track assets outside the Ethereum blockchain.
My preferred portfolio manager. Getting a bit bloated but still the best if you want to track assets outside the Ethereum blockchain. Zerion
If you’re into Defi, Zerion is the best. You can track Eth addresses including staked assets in multiple protocols and you can even transact directly from the mobile app.
If you’re into Defi, Zerion is the best. You can track Eth addresses including staked assets in multiple protocols and you can even transact directly from the mobile app. Zero
Normally do intermittent fasting 18:6 and Zero is a good app for fasting tracking. As a bonus, they also provide a lot of literature about the subject.
Other apps:
Revolut
My preferred challenger bank.
My preferred challenger bank. Waze
Hands down the best GPS app for car driving.
Trakt
Trakt
A good app to track and discover new series / movies within your taste profile.
A good app to track and discover new series / movies within your taste profile. Shortcuts
I’m a fan of automation to eliminate repetitive low value-added tasks and I’ve been playing more and more with apple shortcuts so it’s an app I will put more time into over the next couple of months.
With the iOS 14, the widgets gained a new life.
The ones I use on my screens are:
Fantastical — for a quick view of my next appointments;
Weather line — for a preview of the weather over the next couple of hours
Zerion — to monitor the evolution of my portfolio
Fantastical Widget
One important aspect of the iPhone is how I organize the apps. On my first screen, I maintain just the apps that I consider “productive” (no Twitter).
On my second screen are apps I use often but I’m trying to decrease usage, and all the other apps are only available through the app library or spotlight search.
This is a small thing but helps to maintain good habits… I hope.
I also have an iPad Air but I acquired it recently so I don’t have confident app recommendations, the only one I really recommend if you’re into taking handwritten notes using an apple pencil is nebo so useful and fun to use, give it a try.
Finally, I would just like to highlight a couple of web apps that I can’t live without
Clubhouse
In my job I do a lot of product management and clubhouse is the software I prefer to use. Very good interface, easy to use, and adapts very well to the agile methodologies for product management.
In my job I do a lot of product management and clubhouse is the software I prefer to use. Very good interface, easy to use, and adapts very well to the agile methodologies for product management. Google Docs and Google Sheets
For collaborative documents, these are the best around. Lots have tried and failed, I don’t think there is any alternative at the moment that allows for easy sharing and collaboration.
And that’s it for now, hope you find some of these useful. | https://medium.com/@alexmc/apps-i-cant-live-without-v2021-127bfcaf374f | ['Alexandre Carvalho'] | 2021-02-17 21:17:23.341000+00:00 | ['Apps', 'iOS', 'Mac', 'OS X', 'Apple'] |
A “Vaikne Esmaspäev” with the Liisi Koikson Trio, Live at Must Puudel Cafe, Tallinn | Liisi Koikson continued a mini-tour of favourite Estonian gig venues last night, taking her friends who made up her jazz trio to the Must Puudel, epicentre of so many cool happenings in Tallinn. The wind was up and the air stung in that icy early-winter way outside, but Liisi’s music, as I’ve said before, always takes me to a happy place, convincing me everything will be alright. There will be other artists whose songs remind me of other times in my life, but Liisi Koikson will always be the soundtrack of when I arrived in Estonia, as I said here.
[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”2500.0"]
The Liisi Koikson Trio at the Must Puudel, Tallinn, 30/09/2013[/caption]
As you can see above, it’s a small cafe, cosy, intended to feel like a 1970s house. Originally, the owner, Estonian indie-rocker Vaiko Eplik, used this room to stage a weekly music quiz, as well as regular bands from Estonia, Finland and further afield. Now he also owns the larger sister cafe Sinilind, a lot of the centrepiece events have moved on — but for an artist like Liisi, with a pure, precise tone, this is undoubtedly the ideal venue, as her music, and the subtle way in which it is played by her musicians, benefit from being heard at close quarters.
As well as old favourites like “Ettepoole” and “Varjud”, the opportunity was taken to try some new tunes, like “Hey Baby”, a rare English-language song, penned by Liisi in London having, she said, been inspired by a lot of soul music. Some of the other new music showed a move towards darker, more atmospheric territory. It is a delicate balancing act, keeping fans of the earlier work happy while also broadening the range of musical of influences, but she seems to be managing it.
“Not Like This”, on her Soundcloud profile, on the other hand, is pure Eva Cassidy, and sounds utterly timeless. This is going to be quite some album eventually. | https://medium.com/charmoffensive/a-vaikne-esmasp%C3%A4ev-with-the-liisi-koikson-trio-live-at-must-puudel-cafe-tallinn-440ba476e1b6 | ['Stuart Garlick'] | 2017-05-23 19:01:17.199000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Gig', 'Live', 'Liisi Koikson'] |
Avoiding the Pitfalls of KPI design. | As simple as possible, as complex as necessary.
Simple metrics tend to be better KPIs, a rule of thumb is that any business metric should be able to be recreated with a cheap calculator. Not all your stakeholders will understand your methodology in-depth, and if your metrics will be the common language they better be easy to pronounce.
Start simple, with total volumes, averages, percentage of a total, medians or percentiles if you’re feeling brave, but if your metric looks more like a model, go back to the basics.
If your metrics need a degree of normalization, you can transform them to percentages, but avoid additional coefficients, or weighting methods.
Simple yet effective metric:
New clients — Total number of clients without purchase history that completed an order in the last 30 days.
Model-like metric:
% Absorbed clients — Total number of clients that completed a purchase from the competitor in the last 60 days and completed an internal order in the last 15 days over total number of new clients.
Model-like metrics can have a lot of thought behind, and they can be very insightful. But if they are not easy to explain or recreate, they will be rarely trusted and hence, used. Metrics and KPIs are here to help us inform our decisions, and if they add more doubt than clarity the purpose is defeated.
Find the dimensionality.
It’s tempting to try to create a KPIs that solves for everything in a single view — but you will end up with a convoluted metric that is hard to explain and read.
It’s better to have a group of metrics that tell the full story, in other words, KPIs that are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive*. Each of them should cover different angles of the same dimension, and all of them read together should cover the entire scope to observe; the project, the operation, or the company.
So find your dimension to observe and adhere to it; financial health, quality, growth, efficiency, landscape, people, etc. There are a myriad of metrics for each of these dimensions, for example, for financial health you could be looking at gross bookings, revenue, Net income, OpEx or CapEx just to mention a few. Picking the right ones is the art.
*- MECE, (I got you my McKinsey people)
Tie back to performance.
You will want to understand what you aim to change with your project or initiative to measure the change. Try to answer the question;
If I change X, which Ys I think will change?
Speculative? Absolutely — but that’s how hypotheses work, we want to prove such change.
Note from a concerned analyst: Do not design a project around a metric — The operation should drive the metrics, not the other way around. There’s a subtle but crucial difference between:
“I will do this to improve our quality metric”
and
“I will do this to improve our quality, and it will reflect on our quality metric.”
Note aside, Imagine for a second you are the growth manager of the Bay Area based soon-to-IPO, Sourdough bread delivery company, Yeastly.
Your dimension to work with is clear — Growth, and you have a set of metrics to tell your story.
Now clearly lay out the purpose of your project or initiative to quantify.
This is, identify the end point of what you’re trying to achieve.
Let’s do a couple of scenarios, where we want to improve the different sub-dimensions of growth, depending on our goal, we will have to choose our KPIs.
Table 1. Our designers told us bright red is “yeasty”, we don’t know what they mean with that.
Understand the cause-effect relationship. The simple exercise of questioning yourself:
“I do X to improve the Z dimension, which W metrics are likely to react?”
Those are your KPIs — The metrics you hypothesize will move after launching your initiative.
Be ready to double-click.
A good KPI will always enable deep dives and insights generation. Business lingo aside, this means that you should be able to make different cuts of your KPI that will enrich the conversation and support the larger trends. If you see that Yeastly’s Oder Volume is growing you should be able to easily break down the KPI to the market level to understand where the growth is coming from.
When a metric is too complex, these cross-sections are harder to do and slow down our decision making. If your KPIs are good, explaining trends will become an easy task.
Wrapping up.
I know this only covers the very surface of the art of choosing and designing metrics — I promise I’ll write more in-depth about this. But for now, just remember that; simplicity is better, follow a business objective, base the selection on the cause-effect, and be ready to double-click. | https://medium.com/@guillermo-esquivel/avoiding-the-pitfalls-of-kpi-design-83e9391d761 | ['Guillermo Esquivel'] | 2021-06-01 00:49:05.491000+00:00 | ['Data Analytics', 'Statistics', 'Kpi', 'Metrics', 'Business Intelligence'] |
Creating a High-Fidelity User Interface & Interactive Prototype in an hour | Marvelapp has several advantages that we need in the process of creating user interfaces and also interactive prototype:
Can be used to quickly make high-fidelity user interface & interactive prototypes
Web-based, so it can be used on platforms such as Windows and Mac
Provides applications for Android and iOS so the process of designing & prototyping can be done on a mobile basis
Provides applications for Android and iOS so we can validate directly from the Marvelapp application on our Android or iOS platform.
2. Adopt potential big ideas into a Flow
Starting to design applications without understanding flow is a wrong step and we will waste time and energy. Understanding flow first helps us to focus on what information we want users to see and what actions users need to take. So we can convey it in an effective way.
Big Idea from ideation process (Crazy 8s)
Do’s:
Keep referring to the moment/focus of the big idea
Discuss and understand the flow quickly
Check and re-order if there is a flow that is still not sequential.
Also, understand the information and actions that will be displayed on every page we want to make.
Don’ts:
Start designing immediately without clear flow and with the random flow
Don’t understand what you want to make
Too long discussion.
3. Visual Design Style
Avoid copying the aesthetics/design of a particular product or application without clear reasons. Start looking for design inspiration that fits the application categories, patterns, and elements that we will create.
After that, quickly understand the identity of the product we are going to make, especially in the colors that represent our product.
Keep in mind, this is the initial iteration you designed for your product. So, you will have time to iterate the next design after we validate.
Use this web to look for design inspiration based on patterns and elements: http://mobbin.design
Do’s:
Look for design inspiration & styles that match the applications we make based on the categories, patterns, and elements we want to make. Example: “Health” category, “Charts” pattern, “Cards” element.
Do a quick analysis of the identity of our brand product to determine color and style design. (Example: Health & fertility use a green base and must look clean).
Don’ts:
Debate to determine the color & visual fit
Make several design options for each page
Change the design style during the design process.
4. Apply Design Theory & Basic Principles of Visual Design
In Validation Stack, this stage is the lowest level before we do Design validation to the next level such as User Research and User Evidence.
This part is very important. We will use this systematic method to prove that at least our prototype design is supported by theoretical principles and has scientific foundations for good design.
Here are some design theories and principles that can be used as references:
🔸 Visual Hierarchy
A good visual hierarchy helps us present information in an ideal way and has a clear structure. So, users can understand the order of information for each element. Hierarchy can also help our brains distinguish the most important sequences/levels of visual elements in design and reduce cognitive burdens. It allows users to take the actions they will take. We can create a visual hierarchy by distinguishing size, color, contrast, fonts, and using other basic design principles.
Do’s:
Combine this technique with the “proximity” design principle
Use font types that have a complete font weight type such as Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, Semibold, Bold, Extrabold, and Black. This will make it easier for us to create visual and information hierarchies.
Don’ts:
Distinguish each visual hierarchy using many colors and sizes
Use more than two types of fonts/typeface and are not natural in combining fonts.
🔸 Content
The habit that must be abandoned when creating designs and prototypes is to always fill in the content using “lorem ipsum”, the most used dummy text by designers. We will not be able to run valid Usability Testing with dummy text because real users really need real content to understand and capture the information on the prototype.
Using content that can actually help users understand the information that we present. If we don’t have real content yet, we can replace it with similar content and don’t use “lorem ipsum” or placeholders to replace the content.
Do’s:
Use real content or something similar.
Fill with relevant content.
Don’ts:
Using dummy text.
Use language and terms that are difficult for users to understand.
Make users get lost and make wrong decisions.
🔸 Proximity
In design, related elements must be brought together so they will be seen as a unit/group, will reduce visual distraction and make the design easier for users to understand. While unrelated elements must be separated from each other because they will be considered as unrelated elements and not a single entity.
Do’s:
Close the related elements in a composition to form relevance, hierarchy, organization, and structure.
Don’ts:
Separating related elements and bringing together unrelated elements.
🔸 Similarity
The similarity is usually combined with proximity techniques to form an organization from a collection of several elements or components by showing elements/components related in groups.
Do’s:
Arrange the elements or components that have the same element/attribute/function in one group.
Don’ts:
Group elements / components that do not have the same element / attribute / function.
🔸 Continuity
This technique is also used to give instructions to the user that there are elements/components can be seen next to them/afterwards.
Do’s:
Arrange elements/components to form a continuous pattern so that it attracts the user’s eyes to follow the elements/components arranged from one to the other.
Don’ts:
Don’t hide elements/components that should have continuity.
🔸 Focal Point
With this technique, we can clarify and pay attention to what we want users to see and we want them to do.
Do’s:
Create Visual elements that we want to highlight look prominent so it will attract and capture the user’s attention.
Don’ts:
Putting too many focal points that cause visual distraction and will make users confused.
🔸 Common Region
This principle is closely related to proximity. When the objects are in the same closed area (group), we will see them as 1 group unit that is the same.
Do’s:
Add barriers(negative space) or separators between groups
Don’ts:
Add barriers(negative space) or separators too far between groups and use unnatural barriers(negative space) between groups.
🔸 Simplicity
Simplicity is a technique that applies and emphasizes simplicity in design and tends not to consist of many visual elements. The challenge is with a simple design, we must be able to convey strong and very clear information that can be quickly digested by the user.
The simple design is easier to understand and easier to remember. The simpler your design, the more striking and easy it is to understand it.
Do:
Presenting information that is strong and clear simply.
Don’t: | https://uxplanet.org/creating-a-high-fidelity-user-interface-interactive-prototype-in-1-hour-f0550dfc966a | ['Rizki Mardita'] | 2019-06-18 10:18:22.941000+00:00 | ['Marvel App', 'Design', 'Prototype', 'UI', 'Hi Fidelity'] |
India: [still] next China? | Just returned. Having spent several days in India, besides several years doing business with(in) India and much more time observing India, I am still questioning on the bright economic prospects of this country.
In many aspects — e.g. having huge and fast growing population mostly starting on the bottom steps of consumer staircase and ready to overwork for surprisingly low rates — this economy seems being destinyed to recapture China’s leadership position in the global industrialization mixed with new economy marathon. Moreover, it was far better prepared to pioneer gig economy compared to China, as it has had much better starting position in computer sciences and related human resources.
However, this bright incredible future seems to stay just a forever potential, so far not realizing in reality. Why? May be that is mentality and culture, may be climate (usual excuse for both extremely cold and hot countries)… Even food approach says a lot — “if a dish is not tasty — that’s cause lack of massala”. Btw, there is also “massala film” movie production style — like spices, freely mixed genres. Might Indian economy follow the same way? However, the main consumer of it will still stay inside. Same as with food.
Even taking into account the above, I have all grounding to believe in good potential for (our, e-comm, other, …) business in India. Based, as mentioned, on its high growth, mainly due to accelerating internal demand, same time as lasting competitiveness of local production. | https://medium.com/@denisdubovtsev_12944/india-still-next-china-6984edffdf24 | ['Denis Dubovtsev'] | 2019-09-15 17:16:55.783000+00:00 | ['Wefast', 'Gig Economy', 'Dostavista', 'India', 'Crowsourced'] |
Bitcoin the New Currency Becomes a Standard | Bitcoin is the new currency that has finally come around as a standard for payment by over 100,000 merchants. It’s an exciting new way to pay for goods or invest. Investing in bitcoins or buying goods requires the purchaser to have bitcoins to trade with. There are several ways to get bitcoins.
One way is to buy bitcoins from a bitcoin exchange. If you choose this way it’s best to find a licensed vendor. There are many vendors now who are licensed in their jurisdictions to trade bitcoin. Check in your locale for licensed bitcoin vendors.
Another popular way to get bitcoins is by exchanging them for gift cards. Amazon, iTunes, even Starbucks all offer gift cards that can be exchanged for bitcoins. One of the most popular sites for this is Paxful. Once you sign up for an account you can then trade gift cards for bitcoins. Or use your cash to buy gift cards. For example, if you have a $50 gift card from iTunes, you put your request out there and Paxful will hook you up with a seller. You will almost never get $50 of bitcoins since the seller now has to somehow get their money back on the gift card but you may get $45 in bitcoin for $50. Deals vary from seller to seller. The cool thing about gift cards is you only need the gift card and receipt. No names are exchanged it’s a completely encrypted transaction. Hence the name cryptocurrency.
The drawback of cryptocurrency is it can be used for money laundering and hiding money in general. China, while it hasn’t banned cryptocurrency, has stopped bitcoin ICOS. Some of their exchanges have closed. Bitcoin in China trades at a discount to the rest of the world. Japan, on the other hand, has added more than 10 places to legally exchange bitcoin adding another option for the bitcoin buy/sell experience.
$20 of bitcoin in 2008 is now worth over $20,000,000. The bubble may burst or just fluctuate but it looks like bitcoin is here to stay.
For those who are looking to invest, getting bitcoin is pretty much the same. Buyers need to go to an exchange and buy the coins. Some places allow credit cards, Paypal and bank transfers. After that the bitcoin is yours to hold and sell dear! Whether using bitcoins for making purchases or investing or selling, it’s an exciting new entry in the world of currency. | https://medium.com/@zapataibrahim/bitcoin-the-new-currency-becomes-a-standard-ed66b9fa7442 | ['Zapata Ibrahim'] | 2021-03-22 19:53:21.645000+00:00 | ['Bitcoincash', 'Bitcoin Wallet', 'Bitcoin'] |
Star Struck Sailor | arnoldus in Pixabay
Who is I in this mind of mine?
I find myself wondering sometimes
Searching the stars for signs
Are fate and destiny intertwined
With choices and decisions made
Or accidents and impulses defining
What will become of me?
A star struck sailor lost at sea
Dropping anchors that fail to find ground
Listening for whispers in the silence without sound
Trailing fingers in water’s salt
Wondering what it takes to be free
Give yourself away or come back to me?
Bridges and lakes and the light of Galilee
Or something beyond words and images,
Rhymes and riddles?
Something silent hiding the secret miracle
Everything bound up in nothing
Parceled out piece by piece
To those that behold the mystery | https://medium.com/literally-literary/star-struck-sailor-61b58abd5aa1 | ['John Horan'] | 2020-08-31 05:31:02.013000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Christianity', 'Self', 'Faith', 'Buddhism'] |
Darknet Use and Bitcoin — A Crypto Activity Report by Crystal Blockchain | Darknet Use and Bitcoin — A Crypto Activity Report by Crystal Blockchain Crystal Blockchain Follow Jul 14 · 8 min read
This report by Crystal Blockchain analytics reviews the use of bitcoin by darknet entities. The report analyzes darknet interactions with exchanges and other entities throughout the first quarter of 2020 and compares it to historical darknet activity from the past three years.
Key Findings:
The amount of bitcoin (measured in BTC) transferred between darknet entities and other entity types declined in Q1 2020 compared to the same period one year ago; however, the value of the amount of bitcoin transferred (measured in USD) grew by 65%.
This is not just due to the increase in the USD value of bitcoin from 2019 to 2020. The amount of money being transferred by darknet entities is still growing, and they are continuing to use bitcoin as a medium of transport. The mass adoption of bitcoin, as well as its ease of use and popularity, is a contributing factor as well.
In Q1 2020, there was a rapid growth in the amount of bitcoin sent from darknet entities to mixers. During that same period, the amount sent in bitcoin to exchanges that require verification was reduced — seeming to indicate a reduction in the use of cryptocurrency exchanges for criminal and darknet activities in favor of more anonymous services like mixers.
The share of bitcoin sent from one darknet entity to another also grew in Q1 2020. It is possible that darknet users are trying to hide their bitcoin flow inside of the darknet, avoiding detection of their activities. This also encourages darknet services to cooperate and grow their revenue internally.
Definitions
Exchanges with verification requirements are exchanges with mandatory Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures, that will not allow the withdrawal of cryptocurrency or fiat money without confirmation of identity.
Exchanges w/o verification requirements are exchanges that allow the withdrawal of cryptocurrency or fiat money without any mandatory KYC procedures.
Mixers are services for mixing cryptocurrency funds from different sources with other funds, in order to obscure the trail back to the original source.
Darknet entities are entities that operate via the darknet and offer illegal services or goods in exchange for (mainly) cryptocurrency.
Other entity types are entities such as payment processors, gambling services, illegal services, miners, marketplaces, online wallets, ransom extortioners, scams, stolen coins, and/or others.
Introduction
The immutability and transparency of the Bitcoin Blockchain enables us to identify suspicious activity on a global level, an effort that would be impossible with fiat payments.
Guidelines and regulations have been laid out by the Financial Actions Task Force (FATF) and the European Union (EU) for exchanges, online wallets, and other Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) in order to prevent illicit activity involving cryptocurrencies. These regulations have significantly contributed to the identification of fund source “purity” and relationships to darknet entities such as gambling sites, illegal marketplaces, and more.
The public nature of transactions on the blockchain, paired with these digital asset regulations, makes it even easier to identify suspicious activities through analytical tools like Crystal Blockchain.
This report represents both direct and indirect bitcoin transactions between clusters owned by darknet entities, as well as non-darknet and unidentified entities. The report includes transactions between darknet and other types of entities, as well as unknown intermediate addresses (i.e., addresses that do not belong to any identified services.)
This analytics report was compiled using the Crystal Blockchain platform All Connections feature.
Notes:
The report compares growth across two metrics — growth in amount of bitcoin (actual) and growth in value (measured in USD).
For clarity, we use USD and $ to indicate overall value, and use numbers only when indicating the amount of bitcoin (by number of coins) observed.
General Analysis of Darknet Entity Interactions
(Q1 2017 — Q1 2020)
About the chart: This graph shows the relationship between the amount of bitcoin sent and received by darknet entities since Q1 2017. For example, in Q4 2017, bitcoin amounting to $180 million USD was sent by darknet entities, with $174 million USD was received by darknet entities. (All USD dollar amounts are calculated based on the value of bitcoin at the time of its transaction).
Q1 2020 saw a drop in amount of bitcoin both sent and received by darknet entities — a 22 % and 26 % drop, respectively, compared to Q1 2017.
The total amount received by darknet entities decreased from 64k bitcoin in Q1 2019 to 47k bitcoin in Q1 2020.
The total amount sent by darknet entities also decreased from 64k bitcoin in Q1 2019 to 50k bitcoin in Q1 2020.
These drops in bitcoin received and sent could be due to the growing popularity of altcoin usage by darknet entities.
However, if we consider the amounts in USD, we see that darknet entities received and sent an increased amount of money — from $384m in Q1 2019 to $411m in Q1 2020. This is partly explained by the growing capitalization of bitcoin, as well as further mass adoption of bitcoin. As it becomes increasingly easier to use cryptocurrency, the popularity of this payment method is steadily increasing.
Analysis of Entity Types That Received Bitcoin from Darknet Entities
(Q1 2017 — Q1 2020)
About the chart: This graph shows the breakdown of all bitcoin received by darknet entities (in percentages). For example, in Q4 2017, 60% of all bitcoin sent to darknet entities came from exchanges without strict verification requirements.
Darknet entities often solicit and use exchanges without strict verification requirements (likely to avoid KYC/AML restrictions). The share of all bitcoin received by darknet entities from such exchanges decreased from 62% in Q1 2019 to 45% in Q1 2020.
However, the share of bitcoin received from exchanges with verification requirements increased to 29% in Q1 2020 (up from 22% the previous year). This is likely due to more new exchanges implementing verification procedures due to requirements from the FATF. Users prefer these exchanges to ones that don’t follow FATF requirements.
The share of bitcoin sent from one darknet entity to another (i.e., all transactions between different darknet entities) also grew from 10% in Q1 2019 to 19% in Q1 2020 — indicating overall growth in darknet revenue and cooperation.
This share growth could also indicate that darknet users are trying to hide their bitcoin flow inside of the darknet itself, avoiding the risk of having their activities unveiled by entities (like exchanges) that have implemented FATF requirements.
Analysis of Entity Types That Sent Bitcoin to Darknet Entities
(Q1 2017 — Q1 2020)
About the chart: This graph shows the breakdown of all bitcoin sent by darknet entities (in percentages). For example, in Q4 2017, 57% of all bitcoin sent from darknet entities went to exchanges without strict verification requirements.
The most notable change in how darknet entities send bitcoin is the growing use of mixers.
In Q1 2019, only 1% of bitcoin was sent to such services — in Q1 2020, it rose to 20%. In comparison, the share of bitcoin sent to exchanges with verification requirements fell from 24% in Q1 2019 to 13% in Q1 2020. This is likely in response to increased regulation and verification processes for exchanges, leading darknet bitcoin owners toward other services to obfuscate the source of their coins.
Interestingly, entities from the darknet also sent a lower share of bitcoin to exchanges without verification requirements. In Q1 2019 it was 60%; in Q1 2020 it dropped to 46% of all bitcoin. There are several possible explanations for this drop, but exchanges without verification requirements were likely used less and substituted with mixing services.
Darknet Interactions with Exchanges with Verification Requirements
(Q1 2017 — Q1 2020)
About the chart: This graph shows the breakdown of all bitcoin sent and received by darknet entities from exchanges with verification requirements. For example, in Q4 2017, darknet entities received a total of $22 million USD in bitcoin from such exchanges and sent a total of $29 million to these exchanges.
The amount of bitcoin received by darknet entities from exchanges with verification requirements was similar in Q1 2020 and Q1 2019 (approximately 9,000 bitcoin). However, across this same time period, the amount of bitcoin sent by darknet entities to exchanges with verification requirements significantly dropped from 14,073 total bitcoin to 5,455 total bitcoin.
The amount of bitcoin sent (in USD) from the darknet to exchanges with verification requirements also dropped, from $53m in Q1 2019 to $44m in Q1 2020. This is likely due once again to the increased KYC/AML requirements at these exchanges.
Important to note is that darknet entities received twice the amount of bitcoin (in USD) from exchanges with verification requirements in Q1 2020 ($73m) compared with Q1 2019 ($36m).
Darknet Interactions with Crypto Mixers
(Q1 2017 — Q1 2020)
About the chart: This graph shows the breakdown of all bitcoin sent and received by darknet entities from crypto mixer services. For example, in Q4 2017, darknet entities sent $1 million USD of bitcoin to mixer services and received approximately $360,800 USD of bitcoin from said services.
Bitcoin mixing services continue to grow in popularity thanks to their use by darknet entities.
The amount of bitcoin sent to mixers by darknet entities rose significantly this year — from 790 total bitcoin in Q1 2019 to 7,946 bitcoin in Q1 2020. The same growth was also observed in USD — an increase from $3m in Q1 2019 to $67m in Q1 2020. This indicates a rapid adoption of crypto mixing services by darknet entities.
The amount of bitcoin received by darknet entities from mixing services also increased three-fold, from 106 bitcoin in Q1 2019 to 288 bitcoin in Q1 2020. This equates to significant increase in USD received from these services — close to $2 million USD in Q1 2020 compared to the same period in Q1 2019 ($400,000 approximately).
From this analysis, it seems that exchanges with verification requirements are becoming less popular as a way to withdraw bitcoin from darknet entities, while mixers are becoming more popular for withdrawing from darknet entities.
Darknet Interactions with Other Darknet Entities
(Q1 2017 — Q1 2020)
About the chart: This graph shows the increase in bitcoin (by value in USD) transferred between darknet entities. For example, in Q4 2017, $33 million in bitcoin was transferred amongst darknet entities.
Darknet entities are sending more bitcoin amongst themselves as well. The sum of transferred amounts between darknet entities grew significantly (looking at amount of bitcoin and value in USD) between Q1 2017 and Q1 2020.
In Q1 2019, bitcoin transfers between darknet entities amounted to 5,478 bitcoin, while in Q1 2020 it was 6,722 bitcoin. The amount measured in USD was even more notable, increasing from $21m in Q1 2019 to $55m in Q1 2020 — more than double the amount. This seems to indicate the darknet ecosystem is either growing in size or its revenue streams are becoming interconnected (or both).
Conclusion
Bitcoin is available to anyone in the world to use. This means that, while it is
increasingly a place for legitimate business, it may be used for malicious and criminal activities as well.
Unfortunately, despite our observations that the amount of bitcoin being sent and received by darknet entities has been decreasing since 2017, the overall value exchanged (in USD) continues to increase. Also worrying is the fact that darknet entities continue to increase the amount of bitcoin (in actual bitcoin and USD value) sent amongst themselves. These statistics indicate that bitcoin continues to be a financial tool for darknet entities.
While more exchanges implement the FATF requirements, darknet users are trying to avoid the risk of unveiling of their activity by those exchanges. To veil darknet activities, they started to prefer mixing services to exchanges for withdrawal of cryptocurrency.
What is reassuring, however, is that these activities are easy to monitor and identify with analytical tools like Crystal. As a result, the impact of the strong regulations enacted by the FATF and the European Union to fight these illicit activities is already apparent. We expect to see even more significant changes in these patterns throughout 2020 as a result of these efforts.
See the Crystal Blockchain platform in action. Get a demo today. | https://medium.com/meetbitfury/darknet-use-and-bitcoin-a-crypto-activity-report-by-crystal-blockchain-353a8678730 | ['Crystal Blockchain'] | 2020-07-14 12:59:48.191000+00:00 | ['Darknet Markets', 'Blockchain Analytics', 'Crystal Blockchain', 'Bitfury', 'Bitcoin'] |
Slobodna škola Pionir — Novi projekti | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/omnes-group/slobodna-%C5%A1kola-pionir-novi-projekti-2dce2815de21 | ['Kristina Keljevic'] | 2020-12-11 12:36:58.487000+00:00 | ['Srbija', 'Programming', 'Recruiting', 'Development', 'JavaScript'] |
Towards Maintainable Elixir: The Anatomy of a Core Module | Elixir in Action author Saša Jurić
So far in this series I’ve focused on the higher level code design. Today I’ll dive a bit deeper and show the code of a typical context (core) module in Very Big Things’ projects. This article will repeat a few points from the previous posts, but it’s worth consolidating this information in a single place.
Building a changeset
To keep things simple we’ll study a small synthetic example. Let’s say we’re building a forum backend, and we need to implement the create post feature. A post is described by the following properties: author, title, and body.
We can start by adding the create_post function in the top-level core module called Forum . Here’s the initial take:
This function follows the pattern outlined in the second part of this series. The interface layer is responsible for normalizing the data, while the core is responsible for business level validations.
The first important point in this example is that the changeset builder function is inlined in the body of the core operation. This is another instance where we depart from the “blessed way” promoted by the official Ecto and phoenix docs. We don’t keep public changeset functions in the schema module. Such approach consolidates the parts which are logically tightly coupled. The changeset building logic is typically needed by a single context function, or occasionally by a couple of related contexts functions (e.g. update and create).
Consequently, our schema modules usually contain very little logic, mostly an occasional function which returns a value that can be computed from the schema fields (including its associations). For example, if in an online shopping system we have two schemas, Order and OrderItem , where each item has the fields price and quantity , both schema modules could contain the total_price/1 function. Usage of Ecto in schema modules is not allowed, which is enforced by the boundary tool.
Reusing the builder logic
We usually start by keeping the changeset builder code directly in the context function. However, if the logic becomes more complex, or if the changeset builder code needs to be shared between multiple functions, the builder code can be extracted into a separate private function. We avoid creating public changeset builder functions, because this leads to weakly typed abstractions which return overly vague free-form data.
Let’s see an example. We’ll expand our code by adding the support for the edit_post operation. We’ll start by refactoring the existing code, moving most of the logic to the private helper called store_post :
With these changes in place, edit_post can reuse the store logic:
With chaining
Typically our public core mutator functions return {:ok, result} | {:error, reason} . Since most of these functions need to perform multiple internal operations, they usually end up being implemented as a with chain. Let’s see this in action. Suppose we want to introduce a constraint that a post can only be edited by its author, a moderator, or an admin. Here’s the first take:
This style allows us to clearly and concisely describe the main flow of the operation. On the flip side, it leads to a proliferation of micro-functions such as fetch_post and validate_post_editor . To be clear, writing small, and even micro functions is not discouraged, as long as they assist with code clarity. Hiding a complicated or a cryptic expression behind an explanatory name can often help explain the intention better. But in this example the additional functions are introduced only for the mechanical reasons. We need them so we can normalize the results into a shape that can be used in the with expression. Consequently, the logic of the operation becomes too fragmented, forcing the reader to excessively jump back and forth.
As it turns out, with a couple of small general-purpose helper functions the entire implementation of the edit operation could be consolidated in a single function. Let’s see how we did it.
First, we’ve expanded our repo module with a set of fetch functions, such as fetch , fetch_by , and fetch_one , which behave similarly to the existing get_* functions, except they return the result as {:ok, result} | {:error, reason} .
Here’s a simplified implementation of fetch_one :
The functions fetch and fetch_by can now be implemented on top of fetch_one .
In addition, we’ve created a small helper function called validate , which converts a boolean into :ok | {:error, reason} :
Many of our validations return {:error, :unauthorized} on failure, so we’ve added another small helper called authorize/1 :
With these helpers in place, the edit operation can be expressed as:
Arguably, the top-level flow is as concise as the previous version, but it doesn’t require creating additional private functions. Consequently, a reader can see the entire logic in a single place. Empirically we’ve established that these small general purpose helpers allow us to significantly reduce the amount of micro functions and improve the reading experience.
Authorization
The previous example demonstrates another important part of our design approach: we typically deal with authorization inside the core. Whether some action is permitted or not most often doesn’t depend on the external interface, such as REST or GraphQL. Therefore, authorization is a core concern.
In addition, we avoid using 3rd party authorization libraries such as Bodyguard or Canada. We’ve established that such libraries don’t add significant value, and they might in fact lead to an overly fragmented code by forcing the developer to move the authorization logic into separate functions or modules. Our view of the world is that authorization is just another business-level constraint, and therefore it belongs together with other business-level validations. Mechanically, we treat authorization as an implementation-level conditional, avoiding the pattern of a separate “policy layer”, which usually complicates the code with little to no benefits.
Sometimes a dedicated policy abstraction might be needed. For example, let’s say that in our forum backend we need to support custom roles, allowing the superuser (admin) to create roles and assigns permissions. This will require a set of database tables and a decision logic that given an (account, operation) combination returns true (authorized) or false (unauthorized). Such logic is most likely best placed in its own core sub-boundary (e.g. Forum.Policy ) which will be used by other core boundaries.
Transactions
Often a context operation must perform multiple database operations, so it needs to run inside a transaction. There are two options for doing this, using Repo.transaction(fn -> … end) or Ecto.Multi . Empirically we’ve found that both of these options introduce some amount of noise. The transaction function requires a manual rollback, which means that we need to add an else clause to the with chain. On the other hand, multi operations add a significant amount of noise in the shape of Multi.some_function(name, …) . Finally, in both cases we need to unwrap the result of Repo.transaction to normalize it into {:ok, result} | {:error, reason} .
To reduce this noise, we’ve built our own helper called Repo.transact that works as follows:
It takes a lambda, and runs it inside a db transaction. If the lambda returns {:ok, result} , the transaction is committed. If the lambda returns {:error, reason} , the transaction is rolled back. Either way, transact returns the result of the lambda, so there’s no need for unwrapping.
Let’s see it in action. Suppose that while the post is stored we also want to send notifications to the mentioned users. Typically, this will require inserting one database entry for each notification, so we can fulfill at-least-once delivery guarantees. Since the notification needs to be sent when the post is stored, regardless of whether it is created or edited, the best place for hosting this logic is the store_post/3 function:
For the sake of brevity, the actual storing logic is pushed deeper into store_post_record. Given its current size and the size of the remaining code, it would also be fine if this logic was inlined in store_post .
Let’s see a simplified sketch of the transact function:
This function is bundled together with the previously mentioned fetch helpers in a module called VBT.Repo which is a part of our common internal library. To make these functions available in the repo, we replace use Ecto.Repo with use VBT.Repo . This change is performed automatically by our custom project generator.
Summary
This post showcased our lower-level design approach. The key idea is that we’re consolidating things which are naturally tightly coupled, such as changeset builders, authorization, and repo operations. In simpler cases this entire logic can reside in a single function. Otherwise different parts can be extracted into separate internal functions.
Inside our core functions we try to express the flow using the with chain, or the |> pipeline in the less frequent cases where we don’t need to return an error. Utility functions such as validate , authorize , and repo extensions such as fetch functions and transact, helps us reduce the amount of micro-functions.
As more functionality is added we look for the opportunities to split the module. For example, if we end up supporting additional post-oriented operations, we could move the related code to the Forum.Post module, which would expose functions such as create , edit , like , flag , etc. The same module would also contain the query functions for fetching posts. | https://medium.com/very-big-things/towards-maintainable-elixir-the-anatomy-of-a-core-module-b7372009ca6d | ['Saša Jurić'] | 2021-03-22 12:18:13.082000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Backend', 'Elixir', 'Programming'] |
Solved: Rainmeter Spotify Visualizer & Now Playing Feature | One of the downsides of Spotify is when you want some visual effects react to what’s been playing on Spotify, you can’t possibly find some on the app. But here comes Rainmeter, a desktop customization tool that helps you visualize everything that’s been streaming on Spotify.
So in the following parts, we’re going to be looking at how to how to get Rainmeter Spotify visualizer and the now playing feature. Also we’ll show you how to troubleshoot Rainmeter Spotify not working issue.
How to Get Spotify Plugin for Rainmeter
In this part, I will show you how to get the Spotify Visualizer via Rainmeter. After that you’ll also learn how to get the now playing plugin on Rainmeter.
Spotify Rainmeter Visualizer
For the Spotify visualizer, actually there’re tons of them on the internet. As long as they can be properly run, then they can visualize what’s playing on Spotify. Here I’m going to show you one of them to make your desktop react to Spotify songs.
1. Go to www.rainmeter.net to download the latest version of Rainmeter and install it on your computer. It’s totally safe if you download the tool from the official site.
2. Go to drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OrdSibB5s_rAy5maUCn0Cf9bZpt8CwtI to download the Rainmeter skins. Of course you can pick a skin that you like on websites like Deviantart.
3. Unzip the RAR file then copy the Simple Epoca file and paste it to Documents/Rainmeter/Skins.
4. Open Rainmeter and click Refresh all at the bottom left.
5. The Simple Epoca skins should be added to your skin list, double-click on it and find the Visualizer.
6. Click on one of the visualizers and then click Load, then the visualizer will appear on your desktop.
7. Now play a song on Spotify, then the visualizer will react to the sound coming from Spotify.
8. You can right-click the visualizer > Settings > Draggable to adjust the position of the visualizer. And you also can click Edit Skin to change the parameters to make it look more natural.
Spotify Now Playing Feature on Rainmeter
There used to be many skins on Rainmeter that can show the now playing status with a slick interface. But as Spotify updates frequently, all of them can’t work properly right now. Some of them still can control the Spotify playback, but they just won’t show the album art and the song information anymore.
So how to show Spotify now playing song information and control the playback on your desktop? Keep reading.
Show Spotify Now Playing on Rainmeter
Since you can’t technically show what’s playing on Spotify through the widget on Rainmeter, the only way to display Spotify songs is to play them as local files and show what’s been playing on your local media player. But how can you download Spotify songs?
With TunesKit Spotify Music Converter, you can directly download all your Spotify songs to your computer without Premium. Then you can play these songs on any media player like Windows Media Player. On Rainmeter, set the default player as the player you’re using to play the downloaded Spotify songs, then you can get the now playing feature.
TunesKit Spotify Music Converter is designed to convert Spotify audio files into 6 different formats such as MP3, AAC, M4A, M4B, WAV and FLAC. Almost 100% of the original song quality will be kept after converting process. With 5X faster speed, it only takes few seconds to download each song from Spotify.
1 Launch TunesKit and Import Songs from Spotify
Open TunesKit software and the Spotify will be launched simultaneously. Then drag and drop tracks from Spotify into the TunesKit interface.
2 Set Up Output Parameters
After adding music tracks from Spotify to TunesKit, you can choose the output audio format. There’re six options including MP3, M4A, M4B, AAC, WAV and FLAC. And then you can adjust the audio quality by selecting the output channel, bit rate, and sample rate.
3 Start the Conversion
Once all the setting is finished, click the “Convert” button to start loading Spotify music tracks. After the conversion, all the files will be saved to your specified folder. You could browse all the converted songs by clicking “Converted” and navigate to the output folder.
4 Get Now Playing Feature on Rainmeter
After download Spotify songs to your computer, you can access them on your file manager. And you can play them without the Spotify app with the default media player. To show what you’re playing on Rainmeter:
1. Open a Player skin and go to Settings.
2. Choose the name of the player you want to play downloaded Spotify songs with.
3. Play Spotify songs on that player and the now playing feature will show on your desktop. | https://medium.com/@johnclaytonmayor/solved-rainmeter-spotify-visualizer-now-playing-feature-e70410cba7a6 | ['John Clayton Mayor'] | 2020-12-14 02:14:16.271000+00:00 | ['Spotify'] |
Social good is better blockchain understanding | Reviewing and compile blockchain industry topic, updating market references and research environment.
Today, we are picking up the blockchain and social good impact.
South Korean SK Group has announced to cooperate with Ripple, to create blockchain-based donation platform. The platform will allow for direct, low-cost and peer-to-peer (P2P) foreign-currency transactions, instantly settling free of intermediary institutions.
Two separate tokens will be utilized. The Social Value Coin (SVC) will trade 1:1 to the won and be used for making the actual donations. The Social Value Power (SVP) will be distributed as compensation to those using the platform.
From Apps Run the World, In 2017, the top 10 Non Profit software vendors accounted for nearly 63% of the global Non Profit applications market which grew 6.7% to approach nearly $2.6 billion in license, maintenance and subscription revenues. Through their forecast period, the Non Profit applications market is expected to reach $3.4 billion by 2022, compared with $2.6 billion in 2017 at a compound annual growth rate of 5.2%.
In Europe, social good is the target of blockchain development field. At Horizon 2020, is to find projects using Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) that incorporate “blockchains for social good.”
Having formally embraced the developer community through the International Association of Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) earlier this year, it would now appear that the EU are at a stage where they seek a wider, public roll out of the technology.
Binance charity foundation is aiming to make transparent donation process with blockchain power. BCF has already reached over 40,000 end beneficiaries with donations collected from more than 1,000 donors and many key industry players ever.
They expect to reach 170 schools and 100,000 kids under the Binance for Children initiative. For the Pink Care Token project, we will provide 50,000 girls with access to sanitary pads in Uganda by the end of the year.
Social good is the better understanding unlocked blockchain future power.
Thank you for reading daily Collabogate overview and please contact me if you want to be writer of research blogging.
Looking for Collaborator to start working with global network! Please register below the link for business collaboration together. | https://medium.com/collabogate-research-group-in-tokyo/social-good-is-better-blockchain-unde-eb1072686e1f | ['Kohei Kurihara'] | 2019-08-12 03:11:33.887000+00:00 | ['Data', 'Tech', 'Blockchain', 'Digital', 'Social'] |
Soy Boys: How Did Veganism Become Anti-Masculinity? | Soy Boys: How Did Veganism Become Anti-Masculinity?
This story is available to read for free on COSY.LAND.
Photo by Darya Tryfanava on Unsplash
In 2016, the Vegan Society reported there were twice as many female vegans (63%) than men (37%) in the UK. One could suggest many reasons why that might be the case.
Women are generally considered to have more empathy and consideration about wider issues like animal welfare, the environment, and some suggest they are less stubborn than men when it comes to re-evaluating their beliefs and habits, particularly in pursuit of a healthier lifestyle.
But I would argue this statistic, among others where vegan men are shown to be a minority, reflect deeper concerns about abstaining from animal products, and its bearing on masculinity.
In other words, there is still a widespread view that “eating meat makes you more of a man”, that I want to get to the bottom of.
What is a ‘Soy Boy’?
You might have heard the term ‘soy boy’ thrown around to insult a man who allegedly lacks masculine characteristics. Similar insults from your Alpha Male Bro include ‘cuckold’, and ‘beta male’ — all generally geared towards trivialising a man’s masculinity by doing rather ‘unmanly’ things, like being subservient. Or in the case of being a cuckold, enjoying the thought of your wife sleeping with another man.
As the Urban Dictionary definition goes:
I know Urban Dictionary doesn’t appear to be the most reliable source of information, but for colloquial terms, it’s probably the best resource we have.
Despite admittedly finding the humour in it, the belief that soy consumption can negatively impact the male physique and sex drive is less funny, and more interesting.
Rather than seeming like just another instance of toxic masculinity, it represents a common misconception that vegan men have less testosterone than their meat-eating buddies.
It’s such a prevalent belief among men, that this myth can deter young men (often insecure or trying to achieve bodybuilding gains) from pursuing the advantages that come with adopting a plant-based diet. | https://medium.com/cosy/soy-boys-how-did-veganism-become-anti-masculinity-868bfb3032fa | ['Haider Samsara'] | 2021-01-16 18:48:50.982000+00:00 | ['Gender', 'Masculinity', 'Fitness', 'Animals', 'Vegan'] |
Reasons to Start a Technical Writing Blog | You may ask why a technical writer needs a blog and what should the content be devoted to? Technical writers have the following reasons to start blogging:
Sharing experiences. I do read technical writing blogs as they are a good source of information and ideas. And, I do my best to tell other people what I know. I am happy to know that my experience may help someone.
I do read technical writing blogs as they are a good source of information and ideas. And, I do my best to tell other people what I know. I am happy to know that my experience may help someone. Developing writing skills. Even if we write technical documentation every day, it doesn’t mean that we do not need to polish our skills. Writing something different from user manuals and instructions, as a rule, has a positive effect on one’s style and manner of presenting data.
Even if we write technical documentation every day, it doesn’t mean that we do not need to polish our skills. Writing something different from user manuals and instructions, as a rule, has a positive effect on one’s style and manner of presenting data. Attracting the attention of potential customers and employers. That is especially important for beginners. In addition to your portfolio, you can use your best posts to show that you are a many-sided writer.
That is especially important for beginners. In addition to your portfolio, you can use your best posts to show that you are a many-sided writer. Learning. It is a simple truth: when you teach, you learn. Writing a post, you will have to research as well but not only rely on your experience. I am sure blogging will make you a great expert.
It is a simple truth: when you teach, you learn. Writing a post, you will have to research as well but not only rely on your experience. I am sure blogging will make you a great expert. Solving the community’s problems. It is amazing to get positive feedback from your readers and to realize that you’ve done your best to improve one’s professional routine.
It is amazing to get positive feedback from your readers and to realize that you’ve done your best to improve one’s professional routine. Building connections. Step by step, you’ll get connected with many professionals in your field. That is a source of new useful information and sometimes an opportunity to get a better position.
Creating content for a technical writing blog is not an easy task. There can be doubts about whether you are able to prepare enough content. Use a content plan to see how many posts per week or per month you need.
I believe that content should solve problems and help first of all. Of course, entertaining content should take place too, but the main goal of a technical writing blog is to educate, give tips, and provide readers with valuable information that will help them. Every day you face professional challenges. That is the source of your content. Tell readers what you do to overcome the difficulties.
Here are the technical writing blogs that may inspire you:
If you are a technical writer, and you still have doubts about starting a tech writing blog, I hope this post will help you analyze all the pros and cons and make the right choice.
How did I become a technical writer? What skills do you need? Read FAQ on Technical Writing. | https://medium.com/technical-writing-is-easy/reasons-to-start-a-technical-writing-blog-780ce48cbb6 | ['Kesi Parker'] | 2020-12-25 07:31:50.752000+00:00 | ['Techcomm', 'Tips', 'Blogging', 'Technical Writing', 'Blogging Tips'] |
Machine Learning Algorithms: Surprises at Deployment? | In a recent ArXiv paper by a large group of Google researchers (+ two EE/CS professors and a PhD student), called “Underspecification Presents Challenges for Credibility in Modern Machine Learning” they report discovering a new underlying cause of deployment surprise: “under-specification”, that is, that algorithms that seem equally good at time of development (i.e. they all give a similar “solution” and therefore the problem is under-specified) perform dramatically differently during deployment, in terms of performance on subgroups.
Is the above paper’s discovery a new insight? Are deployment surprises a specialty of deep-learning? is “under-specification” a deep learning problem? Is under-specification in fact a problem in prediction?
That predictive algorithms can perform dramatically differently on data subgroups is well-known. Simpson’s Paradox is an extreme example, where a correlation between an input and output changes direction when examining subgroups of the data. The larger the number of predictors, the larger the chance of a Simpson’s Paradox. Predictive models are also easily “fooled” when the training dataset includes a minority group that has a different input-output relationship than the rest of the training data. Models are fooled because metrics used to train and evaluate algorithms give equal weight to each observation (e.g. least squares or maximum likelihood for training; RMSE and accuracy metrics for evaluation).
Illustration of Simpson’s paradox: a positive x-y relationship appears for each group separately, but a negative x-y relationship appears when the groups are combined. (Source: Wikipedia, Creative Commons)
While the Google researchers paper’s abstract concludes with a vague sentence that might mislead readers to think there’s a technological solution (“Our results show the need to explicitly account for underspecification in modeling pipelines that are intended for real-world deployment in any domain”), in several places in the 59-page paper the authors conclude:
“This confirms the need to tailor and test models for the clinical settings and population in which they will be deployed.”
or
“This is compatible with previous findings that inputting medical/domain relational knowledge has led to better out of domain behaviour…, performance… and interpretability… of ML models.”
The paper closes with a proposal to circumvent the need for a context-specific dialogue between the data scientist and the end user by building models that favor “predictors that approximately respect causal structure”. While using causal structure is feasible and useful in some domains, especially in low-dimensional problems, the areas where ML shines are exactly those where causal relationships are difficult to specify. Explanation and prediction both have their merits, and predictive solutions can still be sound and useful even without underlying causal modeling if developers and users collaborate and communicate during the entire loop of design, testing, deployment, and post-deployment feedback.
At their basis, deployment surprises are a failure to understand the limitations of ML, or even statistical models. They all rely on many human choices —by data scientists, data collectors, data engineers, people on whom data are collected, the end users (e.g. decision makers), and more.
In judicial decision making, there has been a growing number of studies identifying issues related to deployment disasters, triggered by the 2016 ProPublica report on glaring errors of the COMPAS system used in several judicial decision making contexts. Many of the issues are related to discrepancies between the data used to train the algorithm and those during deployment, but there are many other context-related issues that surface when we ask “how will the ML solution be used to generate an action?” We can then ask what data the judicial decision maker will use as input to the system and compare that to the input used to train the data (different populations, different definitions of “recidivism”, etc.). We can compare the action that will be triggered (e.g. parole decision) to the action used to define the output in the training data. These are examples of the critical knowledge a dialogue would uncover. | https://medium.com/swlh/machine-learning-algorithms-surprises-at-deployment-6388b006fc0c | ['Galit Shmueli'] | 2020-12-11 17:35:03.478000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Prediction', 'Decision Making', 'Human Behavior', 'Deep Learning'] |
RELEASE — PROTESTORS DEMAND MICROSOFT STOP PROFITEERING FROM CONCENTRATION CAMPS, IMMIGRANT RAIDS AND DEPORTATIONS | Close the Camps NYC Leads March and Sit-in at Microsoft for Colluding with ICE — Group Demands #NoBusinessWithICE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — September 14, 2019
CONTACT: Andy Ratto, 678–561–7248, [email protected]
New York, New York, September 14, 2019 — Close the Camps NYC coalition led hundreds of protestors to peacefully march on the premiere retail location of Microsoft on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, staging a sit-in to demand that the tech giant stop allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to use its technology in the racist campaign against immigrants and legal asylum seekers.
This action comes one month after the Close the Camps NYC coalition successfully gathered hundreds of protestors who shut down the West Side Highway. That event publicly shamed RXR Realty LLC for allowing ICE to covertly operate among social justice organizations in its Starrett-Lehigh office building.
“By knowingly and willingly providing technology support to ICE, Microsoft Corporation is colluding with ICE and its racist mission to tear apart families, and mistreat children” said Andy Ratto, an organizer with Close the Camps NYC. “This is a moment of life-or-death for 11 million undocumented people in the United States, and we will not remain silent as Amercian corporations profitteer from — and enable — human suffering.”
“As members of this society it is our responsibility to hold U.S. corporations accountable. By being complicit in their actions we are being complicit in the targeting of the Latinx community and the racist torture and trauma that is being inflicted. We have the power to end this cruelty, “ said Beatriz Lozano, an organizer with Close the Camps NYC.
“We live in a country where 11 million undocumented people are hunted by the state every day,” said Brenda Valladares, from Moviniento Cosecha. They are not only picked up at their homes, schools, workplaces and hospitals BUT they are also surveilled and tracked to quickly funnel them into ICE agents phones to detain and deport. In an Era of Big Tech, where our movement and community have seen terror, trauma, and separation, these companies saw a business opportunity. After Palantir, Microsoft is the second largest cloud service provider for the US Federal government. It is unacceptable for any corporation to be complicit with, let alone profit from, violence against immigrant families,”
American tech giants knowingly enabling ICE is well-documented: From Amazon, Inc. to Palantir Technologies to Microsoft, Inc., these major corporations are following the same grisly path of IBM, which powered the Nazis, enabling the Holocaust.
About Close the Camps
Close the Camps NYC is a coalition of groups and organizers working to close concentration camps in the United States and abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to demilitarize immigration processes. Three other social and environmental justice groups sponsor Close the Camps NYC and its nonviolent direct action: Cosecha; Extinction Rebellion; and Earth Strike NYC.
Supporters of this action include:
ACT UP
Adhikaar
Bay Ridge for Social Justice
Brooklyn Resisters
Cosecha NYC
Code PINK
Earth Strike NYC
Empire State Indivisible
Fight Back Bay Ridge
FIRE
Freedom Socialist Party
Housing Works
Indivisible BK (INBK)
Indivisible Harlem
IWW NYC
MACC — Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council-NY
Movimiento Cosecha (National)
New Sanctuary Coalition
NYC DSA Immigration Justice Working Group
NYCD 16 Indivisible
Outlive Them NYC
People’s Power Assembly
Revolting Lesbians
Rise and Resist
South Asia Solidarity Initiative
South Asian Americans Leading Together
Stand With Kashmir
SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) NYC
Take on Hate
Tech Workers Coalition
XR (Extinction Rebellion) NY
Follow our actions — and others nationwide — by using #NoBusinessWithICE, #DignityNotDetention, #ShutDownICE, #AbolishICE, #CloseTheCampsNYC, and #CloseTheCamps in social media.
Website: https://www.closethecampsnyc.com
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CloseTheCampsNY
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CloseTheCampsNYC/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CloseTheCampsNYC/
### | https://medium.com/@closethecampsny/release-protestors-demand-microsoft-stop-profiteering-from-concentration-camps-immigrant-raids-6f86f9848950 | ['Close The Camps Nyc'] | 2019-09-14 22:01:04.776000+00:00 | ['Protest', 'Immigration', 'NYC'] |
How to win your Mornings? | Mornings are one of the most important parts of your day, Its a part of the day which can help you fuel yourself to be active and productive as your day progresses. Every go-getter needs this fuel. A productive morning routine can help you stay focused and engaged with your targets for the day and what you want to achieve (Or, when you don’t feel focused, a morning routine gives you awareness of your goals and redirects you towards them)
A morning routine is a self-investment, provided by you and for you.
And without it, things can be ugly.
Tips to create a productive morning routine :
Wake up on a dedicated time: It is a known fact that regular sleep patterns reinforce circadian rhythm and build a healthy sleep drive. You should select your wake time, including weekdays or weekends. Once you have set this time see if it is feasible. You don’t have to become a morning person if you are a night owl. But setting time can help you organize your self and help you create a starting point to the morning routine which enhances productivity.
Engage in physical activity: Engaging your self in any physical activity in the morning helps you boost your metabolism as you are resting overnight and have good energy. One of the biological reasons for working out in the morning can be effective increased levels of testosterone (especially in males) that happen first thing when you wake up. Overnight our bodies begin to increase their testosterone production. Because of this, our testosterone levels are highest upon awakening. Taking advantage of this morning boost of testosterone can help build muscle more efficiently. Morning workouts also help in building consistency as your daily schedule can change according to your work needs and working out in the evening when you are tired after a long day at work just doesn’t bring the 100 percent commitment out of you.
Eat a good breakfast: A good breakfast is as important as the physical activity you engage in. After you have worked out it is about 10 hours that your body has not gotten proper food (provided you sleep for 8 hours) and it needs the energy to carry out the tasks over the morning. It is very important to have a good breakfast so that you are not starving while catching up on work early morning which can be counter-productive.
No Screen-time until breakfast: This helps you keep your self focused towards your routine and not get diverted towards any tasks you might have to do (Don’t avoid them if they are important). Try not to engage with your phone or laptop until you complete your morning routine, Things might seem urgent but believe me, once you engage in a good workout and give your self-sufficient food the energy to solve any problem becomes 10x.
Challenges you may face :
Being two-minded: This is a feeling which most of us go through, It is a situation where you have to choose between sleeping more or just pushing yourself to go get that workout in. Most of us fail to convenience ourselves and end up being lazy but the ones which win over their mind by pushing hard are the real go-getters and are able to see results.
Stress, tension or conflict: This is very normal. Most of us go through a period where we don’t like our job, have family problems or any other thing which makes you feel your life is miserable. There is no reason for you to stop doing something which affects you in a positive way. A good morning routine is that positive thing that will give you the strength to win over those tough times and believe it or not that feeling of winning after falling down is amazing. So don’t ever let external things affect your routine.
Physical collapse: If you are going through a situation where your body is going through some physical problems, Do not stretch yourself in this situation. It is better to take rest and not workout while you still maintain you’re wake up times and nutritious breakfast.
How to Start Today?
Identify your needs :
Where currently are you investing your time and energy?
What areas of your morning routine need attention?
Find out ways to meet your needs :
What can you do invest your energy back into yourself?
How can you nurture those lacking areas of your morning routine to create more balance?
Work towards meeting your needs : | https://medium.com/@tansanand46/how-to-win-your-mornings-8e9d7f740e37 | ['Tanpreet Anand'] | 2019-05-27 05:09:47.833000+00:00 | ['Efficiency', 'Habits For Success', 'Productivity', 'Morning'] |
Becoming a Twitter Elite. | If you missed the debut episode, this link should take you there.
Twitter is like that fun social hangout in your neighbourhood that every young adult is attending and you also desire to join in as well, to catch as much fun, vibes, cruise and Inshallah as others. But it can be depressingly sad to have just a two-digit number of audience with an almost unnoticeable fraction of that number engaging on your posts for over two decades of joining the app. It's like attending a party and still feeling alone in the midst of the crowd when no one ever notices you. Yet, seeing that Twitter has a record of pioneering a litany of online movements and trends, including the famous #EndSARS protests, you could as well be on your way to becoming the next big wave on the internet. But Nigerian Twitter is an extreme sport. It has fatal injuries, penalties, offsides, yellow and red cards, but I'm here to walk you through the guides to becoming big on this bird app.
So, get your account ready. And I don't mean the account bearing all your real names. Create a new account. We are starting from the bottom, to the top. Ensure this new account doesn't in any way look like your regular account. You can choose to create a parody of popular Twitter accounts. It gets difficult for one to quickly recognise who the real Taaooma is when you have your “Taaoma” account popping up in their search results too. Well, unless they are observant and smart to detect the blue verified tick that omits your account. Confuse people with your parodies, regardless. You can also choose to create catfish accounts too. Use nudes on your DP as thirst traps. Litter your timeline with raunchy photos as baits. Nigerians are generally horny people, especially the men. You'd definitely attract the gullible ones easily. And with your account set, you're already in the right step to making it big on Twitter.
Tweeting is quite similar to blogging, you just serve an audience what you feel they might be interested to read, only that you do so with 280 characters or less. So in making contents, you have to be fluid and concise. Know how to say 5,000 words in 280 characters and less. Twitter people aren't that patient like their Facebook counterparts, to be reading your long posts. So, brevity is key.
Be smart, be interesting, make your audience want to read your tweets. Aside just being interesting, be vulgar and provocative too. That's how you drive massive traffic to your new account. Be smart while at it. Have sense. Even if you don't have, pretend you do by showing up out of the blue — regardless of the topic — to give your two cents and your hot take on topics that absolutely no one summoned you for. Politics. Sports. Movies. Health. Business. Jokes. Religion. War. Patriarchy. Feminism. Boko Haram. Fulani Herdsmen. Kidnapping. Be there for it all. And serve it hot! Twitter people love gists, and they like it hot and spicy. Consistently dish it to them premiumly.
Now that you have gotten your quality established, focus on quantity. Join every Follow for Follow and Like for Like thread like a spammer. Follow everybody you encounter on the app, even though you both are clueless on where you're headed, just follow yourselves still. Remind people to kindly follow you back. And for the stubborn ones; go even to their inbox and remind them to Follow back. Be deliberate about your growth. And as you go on your following spree, make sure the numbers on your Following never exceeds that of your Followers. Never, ever! You don't want to ruin your celebrity status before it even starts. So, peruse the list and unfollow hundreds of people, especially those who aren't following back — these ones want to use you as a brick to build their own celebrity statuses. But you can't be used so cheaply by obdurate goats. Unfollow them instantly. That's basically how stars do.
And as your followership grows, feed them with contents. Remember, hot and spicy, vulgar and provocative, raunchy and obscene contents. Sometimes ask dumb questions like, “how long should a proper sex lasts?” Other times, tell terrible jokes. Lie ruthlessly in your posts. Lie about the girl who visited you and begged for sex that you declined. Let your followers do the judgements in the comments and drag themselves. Watch them blab and pull one another by the pants, phallus and balls. Don't reply any comments. Just watch. An intending celebrity shouldn't condescend to replying comments, or else all you have worked for thus far, would more or less be like an exercise in futility. So, maintain the leader-follower boundaries.
Post obscene pictures, let thirsty lots lust after you. Ask harmless questions like, “are you really fine?” and watch deep and pensive people come under your comments to cry with teary eyes emojis. Be controversial in your posts, people would surely come to vent. Constantly offend marginalized groups in the society to gain clout. Attack Feminist Coalition, lynch on Tatibiji FC, offend people and groups. Make them want to get back at you. And on these posts that you put up, instruct your followers to Retweet them. You gain new followers that way too.
Retweet other influencer’s posts too. Connect with them. To be popular likewise, you have to keep a circle of popular tweeps. You know an even casual reply from them on your comment can earn you massive followers? So, be visible under their posts. Complement them, hype them, say things to draw attention and get noticed. Sometimes, your perfunctory “nice pics” can’t earn you that. So, I suggest you insult them. Buhari, Sanwo Olu, Davido, Bobrisky, Wizkid, Tiwa Savage, Lai Mohammed, Desmond Elliot. Insult celebrities. But don’t worry, people won’t see your insults as that sordid, they would call it savagery. So, savage people cruelly, without conscience. Follow trending hashtags to locate where the violence is, and launch attack. Be a typical keypad warrior; always be in fights. But be in fights with popular people, and avoid the mediocre ones — they have nothing to lose and you have nothing to gain likewise. Meanwhile, if a popular Twitter user engages you in a fight, your followers list is further blessed.
And as your audience further grows and remains blessed, and depending on how soon or how long it takes to attain 5k followers, do your first giveaway. And at various landmarks like 10k, 20k, 50k, 100k followers, do follow-up giveaways. Nigerians online are attracted to giveaways. Many are broke and need this your money. Organise contests for them, tell them to like and retweet your posts, let them virtually market you to qualify for the giveaways. And by then, you would be worshipped. You would earn loyal followers, people that would be calling you sir or ma, without even knowing you're just 18. They would respect you regardless.
And at this point, change your name from the SexyDiva on your catfish account to what you rather wish to be known as. Add “Influencer” to your bio, and “Content creator,” and “Social media strategist and manager.” Charge outrageously for ads on your page. You started from the bottom, now you're here. Sew puffy shoulder pads to your clothes and walk around like you have huge boils in your armpits.
And as you adhere to these guides, be sure that your name shall become enlisted among Twitter elites like some of us, Inshallah. | https://medium.com/@slimmyveek/becoming-a-twitter-elite-e50112a522be | ['Slimmy Veek'] | 2020-12-20 20:10:06.228000+00:00 | ['Humour', 'Nigerian', 'Twitter', 'Becoming Nigerian'] |
The sublime art of gifting | Pic: Amina Filkins, Pexels
Sometime in October, dear friend Honey, asked me if I would be interested in experiencing a workshop on using tech tools to bolster my own workshops, online. Only a few days earlier, her boss had shared her idea of offering this workshop as a gift to a teacher, in the year of the pandemic. Having never received a gift like this, I was wary at first. What is the catch, I wondered? What do you need from me? I am very grateful for this opportunity, but there is nothing like a free lunch. Or is there?
Honey reassured me that there were no expectations. Not that I minded. I would have readily done whatever was required, because I was desperate to learn how to use online tech tools. This was the first time I was getting a gift from a stranger! But I had nothing to fear. Through the seven sessions of the workshop on ‘Accelerated Learning’, I experienced a sense of joy and freedom that is hard to explain.
The thing is they treated me just as they treated anyone else — paid or not! And in that I learnt a very valuable lesson. The power of gifting lies when there is no hint that it is a gift. It is done very normally and life goes on. There are no expectations. Just the expectation that the course will be of use to me in my work.
Thank you Melanie, Shilpa & Honey of ‘The Learning Gym’ for this incredible gift. Yes, the workshop experience was an amazing gift in itself, but more importantly I learnt from you - the art of gifting. | https://medium.com/@flyinghigh/the-sublime-art-of-gifting-276ab3a3e5d3 | ['Rajesh P I'] | 2020-12-26 05:46:20.682000+00:00 | ['Compassion', 'Learning', 'Joy', 'Life Lessons', 'Gifting'] |
Guiding you Door-to-Door via our Superapp! | By Neeraj Mishra , Lara PuReum Yim , Sufyan Selamet , Nagur Hassan & Summit Saurav
Remember landing at an airport or going to your favourite mall and the hassle of finding the pickup spot when you booked a cab? When there are about a million entrances, it can get particularly annoying trying to find the right pickup location!
Rolling out across Southeast Asia is a brand new booking experience from Grab, designed to make it easier for you to make a booking at large venues like airports, shopping centers, and tourist destinations! With the new booking flow, it will not only be easier to select one of the pre-designated Grab pickup points, you can also find text and image directions to help you navigate your way through the venue for a smoother rendezvous with your driver!
Inspiration behind the work
Finding your pick-up point closest to you, let alone predicting it, is incredibly challenging, especially when you are inside huge buildings or in crowded areas. Neeraj Mishra, Product Owner for Places at Grab explains: “We rely on GPS-data to understand user’s location which can be tricky when you are indoors or surrounded by skyscrapers. Since the satellite signal has to go through layers of concrete and steel, it becomes weak which adds to the inaccuracy. Furthermore, ensuring that passengers and drivers have the same pick-up point in mind can be tricky, especially with venues that have multiple entrances. “
Grab’s data analysis revealed that “rendezvous distance” (walking distance between the selected pick-up point and where the car is waiting) is more than twice the Grab average when the booking is made from large venues such as airports.
To solve this issue, Grab launched “Entrances” (the green dots on the map) last year, which lists the various pick-up points available at a particular building, and shows them on the map, allowing users to easily choose the one closest to them, and ensuring their drivers know exactly where they want to be picked up from. Since then, Grab has created more than 120,000 such entrances, and we are delighted to inform you that average of rendezvous distances across all countries have been steadily going down!
One problem remained
But there was still one common pain-point to be solved. Just because a passenger has selected the pick-up point closest to them, doesn’t mean it’s easy for them to find it. This is particularly challenging at very large venues like airports and shopping centres, and especially difficult if the passenger is unfamiliar with the venue, for example — a tourist landing at Jakarta Airport for the very first time. To deliver an even smoother booking and pick-up experience, Grab has rolled out a new feature called Venues — the first in the region — that will give passengers in-app photo and text directions to the pick-up point closest to them.
Let’s break it down! How does it work?
Whether you are a local or a foreigner on holiday or business trip, fret not if you are not too familiar with the place that you are in!
Let’s imagine that you are now at Singapore Changi Airport: your new booking experience will look something like this!
Step 1: Fire the Grab app and click on Transport. You will see a welcome screen showing you where you are!
Step 2: On booking screen, you will see a new pickup menu with a list of available pickup points. Confirm the pickup point you want and make the booking!
Step 3: Once you’ve been allocated a driver, tap on the bubble to get directions to your pick-up point!
Step 4: Follow the landmarks and walking instructions and you’ve arrived at your pick-up point!
Curious about how we got this done?
Data-driven Decisions
Based on a thorough data analysis of historical bookings, Grab identified key venues across our markets in Southeast Asia. Then we dispatched our Operations team to the ground, to identify all pick up points and perform detailed on-ground survey of the venue.
Operations Team’s Leg Work
Nagur Hassan, Operations Manager at Grab, explains the process: “For the venue survey process, we send a team equipped with the tools required to capture the details, like cameras, wifi and bluetooth scanners etc. Once inside the venue, the team identifies strategic landmarks and clear direction signs that are related to drop-off and pick-up points. Team also captures turn-by-turn walking directions to make it easier for Grab users to navigate — For instance, walk towards Starbucks and take a left near H&M store. All the photos and documentations taken on the sites are then brought back to the office for further processing.”
Quality Assurance
Once the data is collected, our in-house team checks the quality of the images and data. We also mask people’s faces and number plates of the vehicles to hide any identity-related information. As of today, we have collected 3400+ images for 1900+ pick up points belonging to 600 key venues! This effort took more than 3000 man-hours in total! And we aim to cover more than 10,000 such venues across the region in the next few months.
This is Only the Beginning
We’re constantly striving to improve the location accuracy of our passengers by using advanced Machine Learning and constant feedback mechanism. We understand GPS may not always be the most accurate determination of your current location, especially in crowded areas and skyscraper districts. This is just the beginning and we’re planning to launch some very innovative features in the coming months! So stay tuned for more! | https://medium.com/grab/guiding-you-door-to-door-via-our-super-app-cfa47b757a38 | [] | 2021-04-21 08:41:12.704000+00:00 | ['Apps', 'Tech', 'Data', 'Maps'] |
Social Media is the new e-commerce | How social components integrated into the traditional online shopping process with a social e-commerce product could shape the way we consume by using persuasive patterns?
Rise of e-commerce integration into social media (Instagram Shop case study)
Following Facebook Shops’ launch, Instagram announced the launch of a worldwide test for Instagram shop. My attention is to decipher how this type of new tab could become major and reinforce a dynamic of influence on our buying behaviors.
This move seems to make sense when measuring the traction generated by Instagram for Shopify. Indeed, Shopify merchants and Direct to Consumer brands in general live and die by Instagram through direct posts, paid ads, and influencer marketing. Instagram is a perfect channel to grow their audience. Today, I can click on a Instagram ad or engage in the organic content from a brand or a feed and then I’ll link out to a shop where I’m going to purchase something- which represents a disjointed experience. All this engagement on Instagram leads to purchases on Shopify, which obviously means the Instagram user is navigating away from the app to engage and spend elsewhere. With the launch of Instagram Shop, the platform has the chance to close the DTC e-commerce loop and keep everything in-house.
Here is how Instagram presents is new Instagram Shop tab: soon, an Instagram Shop button will be added to the main navigation bar, replacing the Activity “heart” button:
Source: Instagram blog
This change in itself represents a significant pivot towards e-commerce. Plus, thanks to the rollout of Instagram Checkout, shoppers in the US can tap “Buy on Instagram” to make a purchase without even leaving Instagram, which of course is a major step in this pivot.
From what is presented by Instagram, I can see 2 major missing parts to Instagram Shop:
a 360° degrees standardized customer experience : handling shipping/receiving and return/complaints. If those parts of the customer experience can be made competitive on the platform, Amazon will have a serious competitor.
: handling shipping/receiving and return/complaints. If those parts of the customer experience can be made competitive on the platform, Amazon will have a serious competitor. a more effective and interactive way to discover products: the presented Instagram Shop copies e-commerce experience but not surpasses it with social media advantages. This is precisely what we are going to discuss about.
The new Instagram Shop tab features a “Collections” carousel, with lifestyle-orientated curations. Personalization appears through the brands carousel selection, where users can discover all of the shoppable brands they already follow on Instagram and also with the “Suggested For You” selection, with an automatically generated selection of products.
Source: Instagram blog
For now, it’s unknown exactly how the Instagram algorithm determines which products get surfaced here, but it’s likely a mix of your browsing history and the accounts you follow. The point of this article is to show examples of how showing more transparency in the way products are pushed to the user could actually supercharge sales.
How social media + e-commerce could become the perfect combo?
The features presented by Instagram represent a fraction of the potential of integrating e-commerce into the platform. Indeed, this new tab makes it possible to keep the entire user experience in one place. The experience is seamless and buyers will no longer have to leave Instagram to make purchases. But this model could have a major leverage point that is not reflected on the few screenshots provided by the Instagram blog: the mimetic desire.
Amazon’s screenshot
Indeed, Instagram shop has the potential to offer a much more social product discovery experience than what marketplaces like Amazon offer today. This social aspect of discovery can be found on some e-commerce marketplaces through the feature: “People who bought/liked this item (that you looked at/liked/bought yourself) also bought/liked…” which confers a sense of reassurance about our choices. We have something in common, we like the same item, we are likely to have common tastes, so I can trust this recommendation.
This is actually how collaborative filtering algorithms work:
Excerpt of my Netflix recommender system synthesized diagram: collaborative filtering part
A recommendation engine powered by such Deep Learning methods creates a smarter product discovery experience for the user. But those “similar to me” users are anonymous, I don’t really feel a sense of belonging with them. Reusing these methods and adding a visible social dimension with people I know would increase their power of influence tenfold.
It is not insignificant to observe a trend in e-commerce to integrate social bricks in their experience. To the integration of e-commerce into social media, e-commerce responds by integrating a social media dimension into e-commerce. This is for example the case of Shopify with the launch of Taler. The product is not a social media’s competitor per se, it is more a Canva’s competitor.
Taler is a social design sandbox that helps for launching your new business or Shopify store with hundreds of templates for Instagram Stories, Facebook Covers & YouTube banners. With Taler, the goal of Shopify is to broaden its scope of use for the client, taking into account the fact that the vast majority of Direct-to-Consumer brands will promote their products on social networks, in particular on Instragram. So Shopify model relies on discovery channels such as Instagram and Pinterest to drive users to its stores. This is why they have developed a product to effectively communicate on these channels. This proves the advantage that Instagram has over other marketplaces: product discovery is mostly done through the platform.
Screenshot of Taler’s landing page
Search vs Browse
E-commerce marketplaces still have to crack the search vs browse:
• Search: you know what you want and you can simply find it
• Browse : you can find whatever you want, before even knowing you want it
Pinduoduo
Pinduoduo, an $87B company based in China, has created a social e-commerce product based on browsing a feed of products and sharing with others to lock in savings. Pinduoduo’s twist lies in its integration of social components into the traditional online shopping process, which the company describes as the “team purchase” model.
By sharing Pinduoduo’s product information on social networks such as WeChat, users can invite their contacts to form a shopping team to get a lower price for their purchase. The mechanism keeps the users motivated and better hooked for a more interactive and dynamic shopping experience.
Browsing shopping leads to a whole new paradigm in which platforms need to be able to indicate what is the best product, while adding social proof to foster desire, beyond simple ratings and reviews of strangers. Social e-commerce has the ability to provide social proof from data of people:
I know and even admire
Who I want to trust
I want to imitate
How the integration of e-commerce into social media could leverage the theory of mimesis ?
Mimetic theory applied to social e-commerce product
To take up René Girard’s triangular desire theory, belonging to the mimetic theory, desire does not go from a subject to an object along a linear trajectory, but is mediated by a third person (a model). In social networks, those models are what we call influencers, or even Gurus.
Simple illustration of the Triangular Desire Theory
Any product has to be desirable in order to be sold. Selling on social networks involves paying special attention to the sources of desire, which are significant forces of traction. Desirability is an inherent concept in open social networks: you follow the people whose lives you desire, and you try to show yourself in your most desirable profile. It is the desire we generate that creates traction. On social networks such as Instagram or Facebook, the traction of desire generates mimetic forces. We want an item not because that item is particularly desirable, but because it is recommended by a desirable person, which makes it desirable.
Man is a mimetic animal, and Gen Z provides telling examples of this principle.
Tiktok example : mimetic forces in the creative process itself
Let’s take the example of TikTok where the majority of users belong to Gen Z. In the app, we find the three types of mimetic behaviors:
normative mimicry : conformism, a particular mimicry aiming at the of the group’s approval
: conformism, a particular mimicry aiming at the of the group’s approval informational mimicry : we do as others do, believing them to be better informed
: we do as others do, believing them to be better informed self-referential mimicry: we follow the majority
When creating content, the average user will foster mimicry as a source of inspiration.
The key creative component on the platform are “trends”. The principle of virality on Tiktok is to launch a trendy concept that will then be imitated by as many people as possible (self-referential mimicry). The concepts launched by power users act as a rule and source of inspiration and are massively copied, which lowers the barrier for content creation (normative mimicry).To learn new trendy concepts and create around them, the user browses her discovery feed, and follows the influencers that make and break trends (informational mimicry). It is then a matter of following intrinsic and non-formulated creation rules which are in fact a mimicry system. One expresses one’s individuality and creativity by making the rule one’s own.
It is very interesting to note that on this social media, mimicry is a key driver for content creation : based on a user study of TikTok and Kwai, by Tencent Market Insight, 77.8% of users indicated their motivation of video creation was wanting to try by themselves when seeing funny videos.
From creation mimicry to purchase mimicry
To go from the imitation of concepts, established as a rule in the creation process, to imitation in purchasing behavior, there is only one step.
We then understand the potential power of influence of TikTok, and the extreme efficiency that a shop marketplace directly implemented on the platform, like Facebook Shops or Instagram Shop, could have.
By the time I write, more and more potential buyers are positioning themselves for the acquisition of US TikTok, the lucky one will have in his hands an extraordinary potential social e-commerce product.
We can easily imagine inserting a shop icon on the main interface leading to an in-app shop store:
TikTok main interface (in French) with an added shop tab
The “TikTok Shop” would have the significant advantage of pushing relevant items recommendations since the store recommender system would benefit from the numerous data points retrieved by the app and from its high-performance algorithms. The first items shown would be the most liked by the people I follow (and would obviously take my preference criteria into account with equal weighting — criteria captured by the app’s algorithms while I’m browsing, like the hashtags I engage with the most).
To leverage the mimetic desire, allow me to introduce what I call the “mimeffect” feature. It’s about making visible the people I follow who liked (or bought, or recommended) the item I’m looking at to convey signals:
As you can tell, I’m not a Designer, but you get the idea
On the user profile pages, we can imagine adding the same shop tab leading to a screen listing all the items in the user’s wishlist, but also items that the user is selling on the platform. This tab would be the ideal place for influencers who would like to integrate the sale of their own merch directly on the platform or for DTC brands:
Having everything in one place could be very powerful for Tiktok. Trends could be more correlated to brands : to perfectly replicate X viral video, you have to wear Y particular hat of Z particular brand, which you can find and purchase directly on the platform.
Premium mediocrity: building social capital through signaling
What type of Persona will fall prey the most to mimetic desire? To answer this question, I refer to the term coined by Venkatesh Rao in The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial: the premium mediocrity.
According to Rao, premium mediocrity is a social class (“premium medium class”) composed of people who signal the appearance of striving upwards, while also being aware that it does not indicate actual upward mobility. This social class is a 2.0 version of the “middle class” affected by a tense and fragile social order, in which having a degree no longer guarantees having a good job, and having a good job no longer guarantees lifetime stability. Within this class, people are anxious about the now uncertain character of social mobility. To overcome this anxiety, these people adopt an attitude of “fake it til you make it”, or in the words of Venkatesh Rao:
“Premium mediocrity is dressing for the lifestyle you’re supposed to want, in order to hold on to the lifestyle you can actually afford — for now”
Premium mediocrity is particularly expressed on social networks, where we have an attitude of social demonstration, in which we imitate the behavior of the social category to which we aspire to belong. Mimicry take an important place in the signaling mechanism prevailing on social networks. To pretend, one must first learn, and to learn, one must imitate. And then, anxiety is ease with the Likes & Followers dopamine shots or increased by the lack of those elements.
The “mimeffect” feature as a potential Killer Feature for Instagram Shop
The “mimeffect” feature on Instagram Shop could be similar to the one sketched above about Tiktok. In the “Suggested For You” section, an item bought by a person I follow and who doesn’t follow me back, would be a data point with an important weight in the recommendation system. The same goes for a person with whom I generate a lot of engagement such as Likes, photo comments or DM, or a person with a large number of followers. And above all, the purchases of these people would be made visible on the interface. On each item presented in the “Suggested for you” category, the number of people I follow who have purchased that item would be displayed.
Instagram Shop would then have a hybrid recommender system. The products presented in the top of suggestion would be those that would match with my browsing activity and the brands I follow (content filtering), but also the products bought by people I follow who cumulate to them all the most important sum of followers, as well as the products bought by those with whom I interact the most (collaborative filtering).
Let’s simplify the idea with a basic example of a scoring system:
User-Item based filter : distribution of recommendation scores by criteria
The user would have a disable function on each of these purchases for the feature if he does not want his followers to know that he has purchased a particular item. His purchase will then be taken into account in the recommendation of this item to his most assiduous followers, but his profile would not be displayed
Impact on brands
This kind of weighting would lead to a new form of brand-influencer partnership to bring products higher up in the personalized suggestions and increase their visibility on the shop store. Influencers would therefore be encouraged to consume themselves directly on the platform, allowing Instragram to promote products on the shop marketplace while promoting the marketplace itself.
It is also important to note that for brands, the shift from a search-based world to a browse-based world represents a redistribution of traction power. The players who will be best able to capture the audience’s attention will win the game. A completely social product discovery experience redistributes the cards.
This mimeffect feature would have the potential to activate: | https://medium.com/@eleonoreserge/social-media-is-the-new-e-commerce-263764eb16fb | ['Eleonore Serge'] | 2020-08-26 15:34:24.535000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Marketplaces', 'Product Management', 'E Commerce Business', 'Social Network'] |
The political week in 5 points | America mourns the loss of war hero and political maverick, John McCain. Taken captive when his plane was shot down over Hanoi in 1967, he was repeatedly tortured by the North Vietnamese until his release five years later, having refused to cooperate. When he entered politics in 1983, he became a fierce advocate against torture and for the promotion of democracy around the world. McCain first stood for the presidency in 2000, losing the Republican Party’s nomination to George W Bush, and again in 2008, when he lost the general election to Barack Obama. As Senator for Arizona, he earned a reputation for independent thinking and bipartisanship, sponsoring landmark legislation on campaign finance reform and championing immigration reform. One of his final legislative acts was to cast the decisive vote in saving Obamacare from repeal. It has been reported that McCain has requested former Presidents Obama and Bush (43) to deliver eulogies at his funeral.
Donald Trump implicated in criminal conspiracy by former lawyer as legal net tightens. In a dramatic week in Washington the former manager of the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort, was found guilty of eight counts of fraud. Within an hour Michael Cohen, the President’s former ‘fixer’, pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws in order to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Not only did he admit to paying ‘hush money’ to two women who claim to have had affairs with Trump; he also claimed to have done so “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” He claims to have information of interest to Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the election, and has pledged to cooperate with the special counsel. Meanwhile, the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, has been granted immunity by prosecutors in the Cohen investigation. Carl Bernstein, the veteran journalist who helped uncover the Watergate scandal, offered his view on the unprecedented developments: “What we are watching in the Trump presidency is worse than Watergate.”
UK government publishes ‘no deal’ impact papers, with an exception for Northern Ireland. The 24 papers are mainly technical in nature, advising businesses and organisations what they should do in the event that no agreement is reached on the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and the future relationship between the two. They are also designed to show the EU that the UK is prepared to walk away from negotiations, rather than accept a ‘bad deal’. However, the Chancellor repeated his previous warning that such a scenario would have “large fiscal consequences,” with a projected 7.7% decline in GDP. Meanwhile, the government has avoided publishing ‘no deal’ contingency plans for Northern Ireland’s electricity market, which has operated under of an all-island market since 2007. The Times reported that draft proposals would see “mass importation of generators, some placed on barges, to ensure sufficient capacity.” It also quoted a senior official involved in the preparatory work: “When we looked at this we found there weren’t enough readily available generators in the world for what would be needed.”
Pope Francis visits Ireland with plea for forgiveness. It was estimated that up to 300,000 people gathered for Papal Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, around a million fewer than the number attending during Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1979. The Pope confronted the shame of the Catholic Church over institutional abuse, seeking forgiveness for “abuses in Ireland, abuses of power, conscience and sexual abuses.” He met with victims and survivors, one of whom was Marie Collins. She asked Pope Francis about the Church’s handling of abuse, but was disappointed with his response: “In answer to [my] question of setting up a tribunal and what sort of concrete measures there’s going to be, it would appear that there’s not going to be anything more.” The visit highlighted the palpable sense of anger that remains across Ireland, and the diminished role of the Catholic Church as an institution. The Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, notably called for a new relationship between the Church and state, with the former “no longer at the centre of society.”
Jeremy Corbyn faces new criticism over antisemitism. A video emerged of the Labour leader making a speech in 2013 in which he says “Zionists … clearly have two problems. One is they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either … So I think they needed two lessons, which we can perhaps help them with.” The comments were widely interpreted as prejudicial against Jews. Mr Corbyn rejected allegations of antisemitism, claiming to have used the term ‘Zionist’ “the accurate political sense [ideological support for Israel as a Jewish national state] and not as a euphemism for Jewish people.” He added: “I am now more careful with how I might use the term ‘Zionist’ because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by antisemites as code for Jews.” The Labour Party’s own report on antisemitism, published in 2016, acknowledged “the way in which the word ‘Zionist’ has been used personally, abusively, or as a euphemism for ‘Jew’.” | https://medium.com/northern-slant/the-political-week-in-5-points-49c00ec1d770 | ['Jamie Pow'] | 2018-08-27 04:08:09.647000+00:00 | ['Bipartisanship', 'Barack Obama', 'Antisemitism', 'Brexit', 'Allen Weisselberg'] |
How to train your QGAN | How to train your QGAN
Quantum machine learning with PennyLane
By Nathan Killoran, Josh Izaac, and Christian Gogolin
Machine learning is frequently presented as one of the ‘killer apps’ of quantum computers. Unlike conventional digital computers, which employ classical bits, quantum computers manipulate physical systems at their most fundamental level, opening up a much richer structure for computation. Quantum computers natively process quantum information, which corresponds to vectors in very high-dimensional vector spaces.
Intuitively, this makes quantum computers very well suited to machine learning tasks. Indeed, sufficiently large fault-tolerant quantum computers will eventually give computational speedups for the basic linear algebra calculations prevalent in many machine learning algorithms.
The first generation of quantum hardware is now here. It is also accessible — often for free — over the cloud. This emerging quantum hardware has inspired quantum computing experts to rethink their previous mindsets. Instead of designing algorithms for perfect large-scale devices, we have begun to explore the awesome things that can already be done with the devices we have.
This has led to a flurry of new algorithms: quantum approximate optimization algorithms (QAOA), variational quantum eigensolvers (VQE), quantum classifiers, quantum generative adversarial networks (QGANs), quantum neural networks (QNN), and — more generally — the notion of hybrid quantum-classical models. These cutting-edge ideas are exciting, yet their potential is still largely unexplored. Quantum machine learning and quantum optimization have become very hot research areas lately, with a whirlwind of new work developed in the past few years.
Number of research papers released each year containing the term ‘quantum machine learning’ (source: Google Scholar)
At Xanadu, we have one of the best quantum machine learning research teams in the world, regularly contributing to the cutting edge of the field. Yet we recognized early the need to open up this hot area to a broader audience, taking it beyond the current circle of insiders and experts. We do this to accelerate the exploration of new algorithms, to expand the search for new near-term quantum machine learning algorithms, and to establish best-practices for building quantum and hybrid models.
Imagine the ideas that will emerge when anyone can train quantum computers as easily as they would train a neural network. With this in mind, we created a dedicated software library for quantum machine learning — PennyLane. | https://medium.com/xanaduai/how-to-train-your-qgan-debf929a7918 | [] | 2018-11-20 23:01:15.251000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Neural Networks', 'Quantum Computing', 'Deep Learning', 'Tech'] |
The Next Evolution of Marketing Mix: Growing our Company in the Me Generation. | When old marketing frameworks aren’t relevant for a digital age, new ideas must be adopted to reach our multi-tasking, well-connected customers.
tl;dr: Marketing mix frameworks have evolved to place customers first in our marketing strategies. Emphasis should be on our customers’ needs and wants and how our products can help satisfy those desires. Participation should be a new dimension with which we build our strategies. Companies that build participation avenues early will see organic growth through customers’ excitement and intimacy with products.
Step into a time machine:
We all remember sitting in our Marketing 101 classes, learning the basic 4P’s framework. We were taught that if we stepped into our marketing kitchen, customer acquisition and subsequent profits would be as simple as adding our four “P” ingredients. A dash of promotion. A sprinkle of place. Et voila: success!
Dinner is served! Swedish Chef courtesy of GIPHY.
But making a marketing recipe from a combination of product, price, place, and promotion isn’t as viable a formula in today’s connected world.
Let’s look at the formula another way.
The 4P’s v2.0
Created by McCarthy in 1960, the 4P’s were thought to be the most common and necessary variables to the marketing mix plan:
1. Product is WHAT we are selling: a good or a service.
2. Place is WHERE we are selling it: the channels.
3. Promotion is HOW we are selling it: building awareness.
4. Price is HOW much a potential customer is willing to pay: perceived value.
The theory is that if you should be able to build your marketing strategy around these four elements for business success.
But where is the rest of the customer acquisition funnel? What about brand bonding and loyalty? Today’s world has easier flows of information and more informed customers. We must adapt our marketing strategies. We need a more user centered approach.
This is where 4P’s become 4C’s and/or 4E’s.
Image Credit: compilation by the author of frameworks from McCarthy (1960), Lauterborn (1990), and Fetherstonhaugh (mid 2000’s).
New Frameworks: a focus on customers and their journeys
As seen in the diagram above, these new frameworks place a stronger emphasis on our customer and her journey with our company. We are not selling a product and its features, but an answer to our customer’s needs. Who does our customer want to be, and how can our product help her achieve that image?
A best practice is turning our attention from our product initially, and focusing on our customers first. Each of the 4C’s reframes our original “P” metrics to be more applicable and customer-centric.
Moving beyond the user, the 4E’s make the framework more holistic, with a deeper focus on customer experience and journey. Not only should our company be developing a product that fits the market by solving a customer’s needs, but we should be creating continuous pre- and post-sales connections.
Ann Handley, author of “Everybody Writes” and world’s first Chief Content Officer, says,
“Make your customers the heroes of your stories.”
But perhaps we should be helping our customers become the heroes of their own stories.
People buy into Apple’s mission of “challenging the status quo and doing things differently” not because they are happy to be associated with a company that has cool values, but because they too hope to become or be seen as rebellious and innovative.
I swear, I’ve never waited 8 hours in line for an iPhone. Futurama courtesy of GIPHY.
Louis Vuitton gets customers to spend $10,000 for a handbag they don’t need, not because they have a super unique product, but because the company plays into consumers’ fantasies of being glamorous and worldly. They achieve this by using beautifully photographed celebrities holding handbags while they walk through exotic locations, emphasizing the storied heritage of the brand, providing a scarcity of purchasing channels, and offering personalized service throughout the purchasing journey.
For more on this, see Simon Sinek’s Why, How, What mindset TED Talk and Alan Klement’s Jobs to be Done theory.
The 5P’s: Customers are our co-stars
Just as The Beatles had a mysterious, missing fifth member, so too could our trusty 4P framework. There have been many candidates for this role: people, proliferation, permission, personalization, physical evidence. But the word that seems most relevant for today’s social society is participation.
The digital transformation has created a participation revolution:
· We watch, with hundreds of millions of other people, the birth of a baby giraffe.
· We share our vacation pictures with that girl we met once in 5th grade (and hundreds of other people).
· We send 140 character public message to CEOs of our favorite products and lead singers of our favorite bands.
We participate in the day-to-day lives of friends and strangers alike, and consumers expect the same from favorite brands and new companies. Businesses that do not engage customers at all cycles of product life risk dying a quick, lonely death.
So how can companies foster participation with their customers to give them a starring role? Introducing four more “C” words to think about:
The New 4C’s: better, faster, stronger.
Businesses should focus on building excitement and intimacy in their relationships with their customers through both company- and customer-led engagement. We can achieve these more meaningful relationships with (a) communication, (b) creation, (c) care, and (d) community.
Image Credit: Modified from the Marketing through Social Media course at HEC Paris, Jouy-en-Josas, France
a) Communicate: Using social media and content marketing to reach your audience and interact with them in digital spaces they frequent and feel comfortable in
b) Creation: Allow users to create content that sells the product or service for you, making them the stars — influencers, evangelists, and buzz generators
c) Care: Develop customer care avenues that are efficient and effective, so as to nurture loyalty and trust in your product, as well as continuously monitor progress
d) Community: Build a space where like-minded lovers of your product can come together and bond with the company and themselves
Using these new 4C’s to build a strategy for customer acquisition, retention, and referral will allow our audience to participate more authentically, and become the authors of their own product evolution story.
Content Marketing: Is it me you’re looking for?
Now that we’ve built a strategy that focuses on customer participation, we need to maintain engagement. How do we implement these frameworks? Remember: our focus is no longer on product, but on customers’ need and wants and their experience.
One of the best ways to do this is by producing quality content. Lookout for these pitfalls when attempting a digital strategy:
1. Producing content simply to fill space in our channels: A focus on outbound messages and acquisition content, but not enough community building to bolster participation.
2. Not coordinating content across channels: Content is produced randomly and excessively, with little thought to design or consistency.
3. Creating content on a campaign-by-campaign basis: No long-term vision about how customers interact and experience content over time.
4. Not curating content that is channel specific: Mixing up which users frequent what sites, and how they interact with the content; not understanding which content “pops” on each site.
Plan a coherent, thoughtful engagement plan with an emphasis on holistic experience. The hope is that further participation and community building will happen organically if the correct seeds are planted early.
From Strategy to Reality
Frameworks and theories may seem clunky and burdensome as we try to employ them. But they can add value when we understand how to adapt them. It doesn’t matter if there are 4P’s or 4C’s. What matters is how we can build on these concepts to create meaningful stories and experiences for our customers.
What’s the one word you would add to your marketing mix framework? It doesn’t have to begin with “P”!
I’d love to hear your ideas of how marketing strategy is evolving, either in the comments below or at [email protected]
A big fist bump to Thomas Maremaa, Haomin Xu, and Christine Luc for the thoughtful comments. Props to Elizabeth Braden for editing. And a heartfelt thank you to Tradecraft and HEC Paris for providing me space to learn and grow. | https://medium.com/tradecraft-traction/the-next-evolution-of-marketing-mix-growing-our-company-in-the-me-generation-d3e98779a21d | ['Jessica Poteet'] | 2017-08-03 23:09:31.242000+00:00 | ['Strategy', 'Marketing', 'Growth Hacking', 'Millennials As Consumers', 'Digital Marketing'] |
What makes Hulu’s ‘Normal People’ so relatable? | A binge-worthy show that will make you relive your first love
Photo by Stephanie Greene on Unsplash
In the middle of the lockdown, I found myself extremely bored. Browsing through the catalog of TV show I stumbled across Hulu’s ‘Normal People’. Based on Sally Rooney’s Book with the same name, this mini-series embody the adventure that is young love.
Watching the main characters Marianne and Connell falling for each other, struggling with expressing their feeling, fighting the social norms, and discovering themselves will remind you of your first encounter with love.
The twelve 30 minutes episodes follow the complex romance between the Irish girl and boy through secondary school and college. Marianne is considered an outcast in school while Connell is a very popular guy. Striving to remain socially accepted Connell hides their relationship. Marianne goes along with it until this brings her unbearable pain and she brakes it off.
Despite that at first, one of the protagonists seems more in place among his peers, both find it difficult to form meaningful emotional connections with others. Connell is much more sensitive and intelligent than his friends. Тhe way he sees the world is different, and in his words only Marianne shares his views.
In college, their paths cross again, and our characters get on the carousel that is on-again/off-again relationships. In the off periods, Marianne and Connell both date other people. This just makes them realize that no one else understands them as profoundly as they understand each other.
The show has an incredible cast and great dialogs. The shots with behind the head following camera makes you experience the scenes as if you are there.
‘Normal people’ covers the experience of young love in a relatable and realistic way. It also tackles themes as self-discovery, the need of creating meaningful connections, social status and mental illness.
So, press the play button and enjoy! | https://medium.com/@adriana-asparuhova/what-makes-hulus-normal-people-so-relatable-7f84fd45f492 | ['Adriana Asparuhova'] | 2020-12-21 16:36:53.052000+00:00 | ['TV Shows', 'Love', 'TV Series', 'Relationships'] |
FLIXY — the social film & tv app. | Say hello to FLIXY — the social film & tv app that helps you discover movies and tv shows you’ll really want to watch.
Have you ever wasted hours just searching through Netflix (and the like) for the right content to watch? Do you catch yourself scrolling through IMDb but find that it’s mostly just a ‘Wikipedia for movies’, and that the star-rating system is vague and unreliable? Us too.
When it comes to movies and tv shows, we’ve found that the best opinions to trust are your friends’. Enter FLIXY.
By showing you what your friends are watching, enjoying, reviewing, and recommending, FLIXY saves you loads of time and helps you discover films and tv shows you’ll actually like.
FLIXY is currently in closed beta, but we’re launching soon. You can subscribe for updates here and we’ll notify you when we’re ready to let you in. For more info head over to flixyapp.com or share with your friends, here.
Any press-related questions can be sent to [email protected].
We’re looking forward to making movie night great again for millions of people around the world. And in case we don’t see you… Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight ;) | https://medium.com/@flixyapp/flixy-the-social-film-tv-app-a2cf27261400 | [] | 2019-01-02 08:28:04.804000+00:00 | ['Social Networking', 'Movies', 'Film', 'TV Shows', 'Film Reviews'] |
15 Simple Ways to Make Your Hair Grow Longer, Faster, According to Experts | Here’s a secret…a few years ago, I was under no pretense to listen to my hairstylist after a long day of TV watching or shooting footage. I was a fan of Sally O’Neill’s thoughts on YouTube, and I have all her videos playing on my phone playing that killer soundtrack to my hair splashing everywhere but the right way.
The problem became getting her to watch a video instead of recording it on her phone’s video player. So it gets boring after a while, and now they have everyone hooked to her video and I’m shut out.
If you’re one of those habitual video watchers, I was too.
Right?
Wrong.
Turns out that it’s hard for the old human to switch on their iPhone, and there’s a reason for that. It’s too easy to just leave the videos on the play, listen to them over and over, and it’s tedious to watch them without getting asked to sit down and watch them.
Instead, you should shift your phone to muted sound and your laptop when you don’t want to watch another video or to join the chat conversation in the background.
Keep your headphones and your phone turned to sleep mode, then sit down and watch your videos, either as they’re recorded on your phone, or a real-time video you’re having a good time with, or your favorite collection of videos on YouTube.
Once you start, and once you get used to it, you’ll see results pretty quickly. I record my videos on my iPhone just to talk through them while I’m wearing them and move them in and out of focus without cutting into the stream.
Here’s how you should go about it.
Choose your category
It’s the “silent” option that is instrumental in the magic of hair. In fact, because of the power of technology, new styles are just about to be unlocked now that’s faster than they have ever been before. I used to have an electric razor because I really hated it but now I can just use my phone’s camera and go against my body. | https://medium.com/@lahorepak311/15-simple-ways-to-make-your-hair-grow-longer-faster-according-to-experts-655a6b8971ab | ['Ali Arai'] | 2021-10-11 10:49:39.258000+00:00 | ['Hair', 'Hair Loss', 'Hair Salon'] |
Remote workers in Madeira — making the best out of lockdown | Two and half years ago we were travelling and living with Grete in South-East Asia as backpackers. We had tight daily budgets, and my head was constantly working as a calculator. Without the budget, we couldn’t have stretched it to 10 months. But it meant difficult decisions every single day. Should I buy this cake? Is this attraction worth it? Can we find it somewhere cheaper?
At the same time, we met many travellers who didn’t have this problem. They worked for some company in Europe, were working as freelancers or leading businesses. Somehow they had found the opportunity to earn money location independently. I was so envious for them.
Remote work conference in Bali confirmed us that remote work was already a reality for many, and many companies had gone fully remote.
I started to wonder if there ever could be a remote job in the logistics industry…
First remote work experience
After our travels, I was happy to get accepted to a Product Manager role in Post11. Among other factors to chose Post11 were: work looks to be flexible, and there should be a lot of travelling. Later, in my reflecting article, I also doubted: “Although, I probably won’t learn many skills that could help me become “digital nomad”, “remote worker” or “entrepreneur” one day.”
Fast forward to the beginning of 2020, I had been promoted to Head of Product Management and a year full of visiting partners and conferences all over the world was planned.
And then Covid-19 arrived, first to our mother company in China and soon to Estonia. Not long after I had to pack my stuff and escape to the home office. The home office life brought new challenges, but for our surprise, productivity in the home office didn’t drop significantly. Although we were at the mandatory home office only for 9 weeks, I even had an opportunity to hire remotely a new team member to my team.
Decision and preparation
After spring lockdown, we understood with Grete that the successful remote work experience might give us a unique opportunity. What if we could return to the home office for a longer period? And then just move our “home” to somewhere else? It could give us the life we have dreamed of — we could become location independent remote workers!
Followed months of doubts, and endless discussions between our dreams, fear of Covid, and negative financial impact. Finally, we asked ourselves what would make us proud many years later. Should we play it safe or take the risk? It was good to discuss our idea with older and more experienced relatives and workmates, who all confirmed that if they could go back in time, they would travel more when they didn’t have kids yet.
After we decided to take the risk, we started delicately asking permissions from our employers. I heavyheartedly gave up my coaching jobs in Spin-programme and Keila JK. And made some small renovation in our apartment and rented it out to a friend, who was luckily looking for a place.
First destination
We were dreaming of moving to Lisbon. Probably, because we spent our first small vacation there as young love-birds, and have very warm memories in our hearts. But since Covid cases in mainland Portugal grow rapidly during autumn, we started to look for an alternative destination.
We found Madeira island, a small island 1000 km from Portugal coast. The climate is warm, Covid is under control, interesting culture, wine is cheap, and nature is breathtaking. Also, infrastructure is developed, wifi is reliable, and only 2 hours of time zone difference with Estonia. What else could we need?
Not too much time later, we were saying good-byes to friends, family, and workmates, packed our bags, and stepped on the plane first time as remote workers.
Proud moment
We have now lived in Madeira for one month and don’t regret our decision for one bit. It’s been challenging to find a balance between work and adventure-time. We are not used to working and travelling at the same time, so we keep reminding ourselves that it’s not a holiday. We are here for many months, and we need to find some routine that is more sustainable than drinking wine on Tuesday afternoon because the Sun is shining.
There’s a quote: “Fortune favours the prepared mind”.
We acknowledge that we are extremely lucky to have jobs during the pandemic. And even more lucky to have jobs that allow us to work remotely.
On the other hand, many life decisions we have made in past years were done to support the location independent lifestyle one day. We have highly valued flexibility when deciding between jobs. Neither have we taken many responsibilities, like a bigger apartment, new car, pets or any small humans.
We have been patiently preparing for this life change. And when we understood there’s an opportunity, we decided to seize it. | https://medium.com/@martmniinepuu/remote-workers-in-madeira-making-the-best-out-of-lockdown-b5b636e7581a | ['Mart-Mattis Niinepuu'] | 2020-12-22 17:32:21.032000+00:00 | ['Remote Working', 'Digital Nomads', 'Madeira', 'Ordinarymart', 'Remote Work'] |
$15M Munchee ICO refunds investors | Talk about an amazing holiday season. The SEC just convinced Munchee Inc, a self proclaimed solution to Yelp’s problems that uses the blockchain, to repay the money it received from eager investors. These lucky investors will see their BTC and ETH refunded, and they’ll be able to gain back those amazing recent jumps in prices from these cryptocurrencies.
Time to celebrate in style.
Now we all know corporate generosity usually has some strings attached. The following is a pure speculation at what really happened: Munchee, launched its ICO as a solution with a whitepaper. Then it started a pre-sale giving those big whale investors nice discounts ahead of the actual sale to unsuspecting investors. While they were celebrating their success, they got a call on their 1–800 customer service phone number from an attorney at the SEC. Small talk ensued and they promised to call back the SEC in short order. Chelsea Lam, the co-founder, called the company’s attorney and after much debate about whether fighting the SEC is worth it, Chelsea called the SEC back and asked for forgiveness. Actually, she offered to rescind the entireraise and signed a consent form.
It is interesting that no officers of the company were named in the order, preserving some of their reputation.
Looking into this story, I was able to find something that was really unusual and may demonstrate how crazy the ICO marketplace is. One of the listed advisors to the ICO is Christina Gagnier. For those who are not familiar with what an ICO advisor is, this is one of the great make-believe schemes ever invented.
Here’s how it works: A company looking to launch an ICO realizes they have no credibility or reputation for receiving these thousands of Bitcoins from investors. So they run around looking to bring in advisors who probably know nothing about the company and pays these new “advisors” in tokens to put their names on the list. Sometimes they pay a percentage of the proceeds to the advisors. Investors see the list of advisors and decide this is a great deal and invest.
So who is Christina Gagnier? She is an IP attorney at Gagnier Margossian, former member of the FCC consumer advisory committee and was on a task force for then Attorney General and now Senator Kamala Harris. She is an adjunct faculty as UC Irvine School of Law and ran for Congress in 2014. Basically, a superstar and very successful attorney. So why would she get involved in a company illegally selling securities to the general public?
What is clear is this: Launching an ICO with a utility token is no longer fashionable. The SEC’s chairman, Jay Walker, who recently wrote a seminal paper on this subject, warned the marketplace that his commission is watching everyone and calling those who disguise securities as utility tokens. He is targeting not only the companies, the CEO, and the officers, but also the lawyers, accountants, advisors and anyone helping raise the capital. The party is over.
StartEngine does not endorse or highlight any individual companies on our website. We prepare a company interview for all new companies our website. Readers should not consider statements made in this post as formal recommendations and should consult their financial advisor before making any investment decisions. To read our full disclosure, please go to:http://startenginebetadev.s3.amazonaws.com/production/pdfs/Disclaimer.p | https://medium.com/raising-the-entrepreneurial-boom/15m-munchee-ico-refunds-investors-f1e26b8dd8a0 | ['Howard Marks'] | 2018-04-23 21:57:35.748000+00:00 | ['ICO', 'Bitcoin', 'SEC', 'Jobs Act', 'Blockchain'] |
Focus | Make time for something that’s important to you
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
Do you feel distracted? Do you feel like you are being pulled in 20 different directions at the same time?
You are not alone. Many of us feel that way.
I was thinking this morning about my propensity for taking on lots of different projects at the same time, and the difficulties I have in completing them.
Why would I take on another project before completing the one before?
It’s usually because my mind is always thinking of ways to make the world a better place. When a project idea pops into my mind, I want to dive into it right away. The idea of waiting for completion seems foreign to me. My brain tells me that lots of half-baked plans are better than one plan that is done.
The solution to this dilemma is two-fold.
1. I need to prioritize.
2. I need to be willing to stick with something to the end, and trust that it is good enough.
Perfectionism.
This is really what we are dealing with when we take on multiple projects. The theory goes that if we keep on working on the project until it is perfect, we can control the reception of it. The other part of this is thinking that I won’t do it perfectly, so why bother starting at all.
This is faulty thinking.
I can never produce a perfect product, and I can never control the reception of it.
I have been writing on Medium every day. I am letting go of my concern about my work being perfect and becoming more concerned about determining what my message is and the best way to convey it.
Working through my fears of not being good enough is allowing me to show up more authentically.I am learning to trust that I am OK exactly the way I am.
It’s not about how much I produce or how others like what I do. It’s about connecting with my true self.
I would invite you to think of a project that you have been delaying, putting off, been afraid of, or outright have no idea how to approach. If you apply these five steps, I believe that you will see yourself moving forward with more focus.
1. Decide what feels good to you. Check your energy level and decide if this project is something you are willing to put a lot of time and energy into.
2. Be willing to block out time in your schedule to work on this. For me, I make sure that I spend time writing each day before I attend to other projects.
3. Ask others for help. If you are stuck be willing to ask someone to guide you through your process. Asking for help is a sign of strength.
4. Believe that what you are working on is going to benefit you and is a benefit to the world. You have an important task to do that will benefit someone. Own your special place in the process and know that your work will help someone.
5. Let go of the need to be perfect. Doing your work is something to be celebrated. It will not be perfect, but you can feel proud that you are doing something that is important to you.
This is a process. Finding a way to stay focused on what is important to you takes lots of practice. You will not suddenly do it perfectly. But you will find over time that you will be proud of the progress you make.
Today is a great day to make time for something that is important to you.
I believe in you.
Essay by John C. Davis All Rights Reserved 2020
John C. Davis is an author, writer, speaker and musician based in South Florida. John spent much of his career as a music educator for middle and high schools. Now focused on writing, his newest book Accept Connect Heal: A Vision of Hope for Our World is available on Amazon. | https://medium.com/illumination/focus-9c157bd53a90 | ['John C. Davis'] | 2020-07-01 04:56:14.527000+00:00 | ['Focus', 'Committment', 'Illumination', 'Committed', 'Intentional Living'] |
Moments | “Life is a series of moments. The quality of attention and action that we bring to each moment determines the quality of our lives.” — Dan Millman
Yup.. life’s a series of moments. Our lives are made up of a thousand of them. It’s like braiding time into bonds that explain each other, like knitting spontaneous change and opportunity. We’ll make a pretty macrame or ruffled crochet, that depends on every step we take. We won’t be able to choose what kind of yarn we get, or how it’s the needle we hold. But we can determine what we will make from what we have right now. With determination and a little luck, we’ll make something pretty in the end.
There is a series of moments that I want to always remember. That when back in time, where I first wore a Kuarsa jacket, right when I was holding the duties and responsibilities as a Sriwijaya Geological Engineering Student Association administrator in charge. At first, I found it quite difficult to manage. Small messes often occur…
After a while, until I finish my tenure, the old series of moments awoke the basic understanding in my mind which so far has often been overlooked. However, at that time we are all mindful of the difficulties of confirming the basic aspect because we’re too focused on achieving work targets. I became increasingly aware that the duties and responsibilities I think I should do first are not only to run my work program as best as possible. But what we should be done first is to have properties that reflect the Kuarsa jacket itself.
I believe, that the main basis is the most important. To instill the belief to be resistant after the problems and difficulties we have, to be critical, also to be the solution and give the best results for the association, for our family, for the world. And last, to instill the belief that our association is not just a bunch of members of geology students but we are all friends, we are family.
The moments that I got at a series of times while I was on campus, met many people, people who give lessons in their own way, were precious moments for me and I’m grateful.
This article is to commemorate BSRG’s anniversary, and for our brother, Nanda, may you rest in peace. | https://medium.com/@jasminezahari/moments-4d4800899323 | [] | 2020-12-18 05:44:16.446000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Geology', 'Moments', 'Self Development', 'Self Awareness Stories'] |
The Week in Public Services: 13th October 2020 | This week: responding to rising coronavirus cases; the hospital discharge debate resurfaces; and the next exams crisis?
General
It’s been a while…life, work, everything else, got in the way. Cutting through the noise of the last few weeks, here’s what — on reflection — I found most useful:
First off — this blog from Tom Chivers, which looks at whether Covid-19 is less likely to kill you than it was in March. Thanks to advances in medical knowledge, doctors know how to treat the virus better than they did in March. The infection fatality rate in the UK — how many die as a percentage of how many people have the virus — has probably come down a bit since March (partly because younger people are getting the virus, partly because of improved treatment, and possibly because people are now being infected with a smaller ‘dose’ of the virus due to more widespread mask wearing). To be clear — this does not mean that we can all just relax and let the virus spread unmitigated; but it’s good to reflect on the positives and the medical advancements. We all need hope.
This Atlantic longread on the ‘k rate’ — a measure of dispersion, rather than transmission, of a disease — is super interesting. (It’s also long and quite involved, so grab a cup of coffee for this one). The point is basically that Covid-19 is “an overdispersed pathogen [meaning that it tends to spread in clusters]”, and that this explains some of the seeming puzzles that transmission rates have been so different in otherwise similar countries with similar restrictions. One thing I hadn’t realised is that this is one reason why flu plans were so inappropriate — flu typically doesn’t spread in the same clustered way that Covid-19 does. It may potentially mean that contact tracing in reverse — looking for the origin of an infection rather than who a person may have passed the virus on to — could be very valuable.
Moving back to the UK, this longread from Chris Cook explores (£) why Britain responded badly to Covid-19. His argument is that as flu pandemic plans were so detailed and thoroughly planned, it proved hard for ministers and officials to follow a different course. That much is fairly well-established already, but it’s worth reading in full for the insights from civil servants and scientific advisors on why the government made its decision to initially abandon a containment strategy in March, and why local authorities were not more involved with contact-tracing. This longread from Matt D’Ancona on testing specifically, is also a good read, which pins the decision to go for the centralised Deloitte-run ‘Lighthouse labs’ on “an almost religious belief [within the current Cabinet] that big private sector solutions are better than fragmented public services”.
The big debate is of course what to do now that coronavirus hospitalisations are rising in England. My two cents, on why NHS England and Improvement should remove some of the national targets they reimposed during the summer — is here.
But looking at the big questions and stripping out the central/local and internal Tory party politics for a second, there is one really important point to make: there is not really a big scientific division about the public health response. There is more consensus about public health measures (even if the right economic response is still a matter of significant controversy) than some of the media coverage I’ve seen. For sensible commentary, I find the following people really helpful — Tim Harford, Adam Kucharski, and Christina Pagel.
For all the ideologically-tinged New Zealand vs Sweden debates, either approach would be viable (£) — but both require a working public health system including, vitally, a functioning test-and-trace system. On which note — my colleague Cath wrote an excellent blog arguing that the new ‘tier restrictions’ announced on Monday will just be a rebranding exercise unless there is local backing and an effective test and trace regime. Andy Cowper’s BMJ blog is also clear: restrictions aside, the government still needs an adequately functioning Test And Trace system and proper support for self-isolation (there’s a theme here, pay attention at the back).
And in a blog that looks particularly pertinent now, my colleague Sarah has looked at how the government can make better decisions if there is a second wave: set time aside to think about the medium- and long-term, bring businesses, unions, and local government into decision-making, and appreciate scientific advice — without treating them as policymakers.
Looking to the future, Reform have published an interesting collection of essays on how to build a ‘resilient state’ with lots of the great-and-the-good contributing ideas. Worth reading with Tom’s back-and-forth on the essays with Owen.
Health and Social Care
Right, in testing news, the director of the Francis Crick Institute has criticised the government’s centralised approach to testing, arguing that the Department of Health and Social Care has got in the way of increasing testing. Meanwhile, care homes are still finding that most test results aren’t turned around within 48 hours. The longer they have to wait, the harder it is for them to keep residents safe, and the bigger the risk of infection. Gaaaaahhhhhhhh.
The headline that really made me choke on my cheerios, though, was last week’s news that a technical glitch meant that nearly 16,000 cases of coronavirus went unreported — meaning that the last week’s daily figures were underestimates and, more importantly, contact tracers will have been delayed in their efforts to trace contacts of people who tested positive. This is really pretty bad, as the BBC explained. What has that meant in practice? Jen Williams chronicles the problems this late-reported data caused in Manchester, where local officials think they were delayed in tracing the contacts of around 2000 people with coronavirus. “Intergalactic level incompetence”, according to one local official.
Putting that in context, this Tortoise longread (£) is a good factcheck — with great visualisations — of how testing in the UK compares to other countries. While the UK does perform more tests per 100,000 people than the EU average, the way we count tests includes antibody tests (measuring whether someone had the infection the past) and tests posted home (only some of which are returned). It’s not clear how other countries measure their tests so…we might be testing more people than other countries. And the more important question is whether people with symptoms can get a test and a result quickly. Here, Test-and-Trace’s performance has been getting worse (although, to be fair, I have seen no comparisons to other countries), as Adam Briggs has been dutifully documenting.
Billy Palmer also continues to produce great graphics about NHS Test-and-Trace. There are a lot of unused antibody tests which are (sometimes) counted in headline testing capacity numbers, and the number of swab tests processed is (still) not the same as the number of people tested. Great effort to piece together disparate bits of information to come up with a best guess of how much testing is actually happening, where, and for what.
Perhaps the most brazen news though is that Deloitte — already in receipt of significant government funding to deliver testing for Covid-19 — is attempting to sell councils a “local test and trace solution” in a move which has been described as “brassneck” profiteering by senior public health figures.
In better news — the Department for Health and Social Care now think they have a more resilient PPE supply chain. I was heartened to read that “we want to consider stockpile requirements for other types of pandemic threat”, alongside an immediate Covid-19 stockpile. The Department says this review will take advice from scientific advisors on NervTAG. This is sensible — as the IfG said in our report about resilience earlier this year, the government’s focus on planning for pandemic influenza after 2009 was a weakness of pre-coronavirus emergency planning. Excessive focus on any one threat, or being prepared for the last crisis, is unlikely to pay off. Slightly worried, however, to hear that the immediate four-month stockpile in case of a future surge in demand will only be in place for November — there is presumably a risk of further shortages if there is another surge before then…
Also new in the last few weeks: a National Audit Office investigation about how the Department of Health and Social Care and the Cabinet Office bought ventilators in the heat of the first phase of the crisis. The NAO are remarkably sanguine about the whole affair, concluding that “both departments maintained sufficient record of their programmes’ rationale, the key spending decisions they took and the information they had to base those on […] effective programme management, controlled costs where they could and recovered some of their committed spending once it became apparent that fewer ventilators were needed than they had originally believed”.
In other new research, the Institute for Fiscal Studies have analysed how use of NHS care varies by educational status. The headline finding is that “after taking into account individual health needs, the highly educated aged 65 and above use considerably more NHS outpatient (specialist) care than their less educated peers”. This only emerged after 2010, which raises an important question which the authors are unable to answer — why?
(Nerdy sidenote: it’s based an awesome method of linking longitudinal survey data and NHS hospital records — admin data is cool. What’s even more fun is talking about research methodologies, and Harry Evans has written a wonderfully insightful thread about why evaluating integrated care initiatives is so hard when people want to show results quickly, finding control groups is difficult, and it’s often hard just to define the intervention. Still, given the alternative is plausible guesses, it’s gotta be worth trying).
Back to other new research:
The Nuffield Trust have analysed why there is a shortfall of new recruits for mental health nurses
Fantastic Health Foundation research into how general practices in deprived and wealthy parts of England compare (they find, amongst other things, that “practices serving more deprived populations receive around 7% less funding per need adjusted registered patient”, there are fewer GPs and more practice nurses in deprived areas, but regardless of the level of deprivation in their area, patients have a similar probability of having an appointment at their GP practice)
Useful summary of the latest NHS performance data from QualityWatch
A good blog from John on whether the NHS can expect a ‘V-shaped recovery’ when it comes to providing non-covid services (TL;DR — “with the continuing need for infection control measures in hospitals, the consequent effect on productivity, and recent signs of rising covid cases and hospital admissions, whether it will be possible to return to average levels of pre-covid activity over the next few months must remain in doubt”; or even shorter — probably not, especially if there is a second wave)
Mark Dayan reminds us why Brexit still poses big challenges for the NHS when it comes to regulating medicines and devices, finding staff, and getting cash out of the Treasury
Former Matt Hancock SpAd Richard Sloggett wrote an interesting, David Rumsfeld-inspired, blog about the five ‘known unknowns’ of managing the next phase of the pandemic — how best to deal with Covid patients, non-Covid patients with long-term conditions, patients waiting for planned care, ‘missed conditions’ owing to lower-than-normal screening during the pandemic, and patients indirectly affected by the virus. And last but not least, the October NHS England board papers are out, and include an independent report with a fairly expensive set of recommendations into how to improve diagnostics.
In social care, the new Infection Control Fund guidance is out. David Brindle notes that more of the money will be going to domiciliary care this time round. Taking the long view, Simon Bottery has written a great article on why a national care service — whatever that means — isn’t the slam-dunk solution it might appear. Why, you ask? Put simply, social care reform can be thought of in six distinct buckets: who is eligible for it, who manages it, who commissions it, who provides it, who regulates it, and how it is funded. For some of those questions, a national solution (in my opinion — eligibility, regulation and funding) is a good idea. “Local councils know their communities and markets and are best placed to support a person-centred approach. Yet they don’t always deliver, so again there is a need for national bodies to work with councils — a national programme to spread innovation and good practice would help, along with work by integrated care systems to join up services with health.” The picture, as always, is complicated…
And in the spirit of admitting mistakes about complicated things: I was thoroughly, completely, wrong. For a while, I’ve been saying that we’d never be able to know exactly how many cases of coronavirus in care homes came from faster hospital discharge because there was not a robust testing system at the time — and without having tested all discharged patients, we wouldn’t have known how many patients were transferred to care homes with asymptomatic coronavirus. Fortunately, lots of people are much smarter than me, and a new SAGE note summarises five studies into care home coronavirus outbreaks.
These studies, by looking at the timing and spread of infections and retrospective genomic analysis have, overall, found that “the weight of evidence [for the routes in which viruses entered care homes] is stronger in some areas than others […] evidence of staff to staff transmission has emerged in the genomic analysis (high confidence) [and] weak evidence on hospital discharge and modelling the impact of visitors does not suggest a dominant causal link to outbreaks from these sources.”
NHS Providers CEO Chris Hopson thinks this vindicates the NHS Providers view that hospital discharges were not the main cause of excess mortality in care homes. Hmmmm — one big caveat: absence of evidence is not the same of evidence of absence. Just because it’s hard to observe cases originating from hospitals in the data, it doesn’t mean that fast hospital discharge wasn’t responsible for at least some cases of coronavirus in care homes. As the researchers themselves note, there is “evidence for multiple routes of virus ingress to care homes, [and] are not systematic enough to quantify the relative frequency of different routes of ingress […] these studies do not definitively rule out any mode of ingress”. Still, it’s more evidence of the harm that lack of political attention to social care during the start of the pandemic caused.
Children and Young People
Important and worrying evidence from a Department for Education survey of local authorities suggests that the rise in referrals [to children’s social care] that many predicted as lockdown was eased is happening . “The total number of referrals during Wave 8 [the end of August] was 12% higher than the usual number of referrals in the same period over the past three years. An increase was seen by around 60% of local authorities”. Concerningly, 72% of local authority respondents reported that foster care and residential care placements were more expensive due to Covid-19 pressures (compared to just 15% reporting no increase). Ofsted have explained what they’ve been up to during the pandemic here.
In school news, and I don’t mean to alarm you here, we may be sleepwalking into another exams crisis next year. The DfE’s latest guidance on exams for 2021 says that GCSE, AS, and A level exams will go ahead next year, including some changes to assessment. Sounds sensible — better than trying to guess at the results of non-existent exams, right? Well, maybe — but there are a few problems with just running exams too. As the two Chris’* have pointed out: what happens if certain sorts of schools do systematically better/worse than normal in 2021? Is that fair to have the same exams everywhere, given that privately educated kids and kids in wealthier families have had spent more time studying, with higher quality lessons, broadband connections etc.? (God knows how much evidence there is on this point — see past Week in Public Services, pretty much any week since March this year).
In other new research:
A brilliant report from Luke Sibieta and colleagues at the Education Policy Institute comparing how education policy in each of the four nations during the pandemic to see what they could learn from each other (spoiler alert: England should be looking to Wales when it comes to free school meals and online learning)
The Centre for Public Impact have published a report on what positive lessons for children’s social care social workers and other practitioners think we can take from coronavirus
And some nerdy fun: the ONS explain how they tried to measure how much education there was when there was, erm, almost no information about measurable education output
Law and Order
In policing, the government has been crowing about the news that, as of 15th September, 100,000 people have applied to become a police officer. However, as Gavin Hales notes, there remains a worrying uptick in voluntary resignations over the past few years — probable means the government ought to focus on retaining existing police officers as well as recruiting new ones…
In prisons, there’s been an interesting mix of new articles and research published on what prisons were like during the lockdown. First off — this from the BBC suggests that the lockdown made prisons safer. This Prison Reform Trust briefing on how prisoners coped under the restrictive prison regime put in place to limit coronavirus transmission is much less sanguine, and argues that increased safety has come at a huge price: “the day to day misery of confinement to their cells for 23 hours or more, over a period of five months so far”. And this account from an anonymous prison officer in The Guardian suggests a bleaker picture still. I hadn’t realised that prisoners have only had 10 minutes to shower and 30 minutes to exercise every day since March.
Finally, a good Commons briefing has also set out what we know about ethnicity and the criminal justice system, and disproportionality (in this case, comparing the share of the general population that identifies as belonging to BAME groups with the share at specific points in the justice system) in everything from the judicial benches to sentencing.
Local Government
In a point that I think has been missed in the national coverage of coronavirus, an investigation by The Observer looked at what Preston council are doing to try to stop the growth in cases, and found local officials setting up their own testing sites and tracing systems out of frustration with the poorly-working national system. 82 councils have so far set up their own systems. There are about 150 upper-tier local councils in England, so that’s just over half — let that sink in. (If you, like me, were wondering what exactly these local tracing systems were, Adam Briggs has written an excellent explainer).
Ongoing public health debates aside — yes, I know that is a big thing to put aside — there has been less local government news over the last two weeks. The Local Government Association released a report about fragmented central government funding for local government, which found that councils receive — or, in many cases, apply for — a larger number of grants than in the past, even though they are receiving less central government funding. They make a strong case that this is not a sensible way to distribute money.
Grant Thornton and CIPFA have also released a new report about local authority finances, setting out the known unknowns that will affect local authority finances. Not a cheery read, but a very clear analysis — well worth reading.
* Has anyone else has noticed that Chris Giles and Chris Cook have been producing some of the clearest analysis of exams? Is it something about being called Chris? | https://medium.com/week-in-public-services/the-week-in-public-services-13th-october-2020-3cb1e5e9ace5 | ['Graham Atkins'] | 2020-10-16 19:31:45.747000+00:00 | ['Second Wave Of Covid 19', 'Testing', 'Care Homes Uk', 'Exam', 'Coronavirus'] |
Can Collective Ownership Save the Environment (and the Moon)? | Let’s not mince words — Earth is in serious trouble. Every day, our environment is suffering under the duress of sustaining an exponentially rising — and careless — human population. Every day we, as a species, make questionable decisions that favor short term — albeit unsustainable — gains rather than long term stewardship of the planet and its resources.
How did it come to be like this? Which system or set of practices is enabling us to eradicate, pollute, and irreparably harm the very place in which we live? While there are many and varied possible answers to our query, we aim to posit only one part of the equation. Private exploitation of resources that should belong to a public commons is a major contributing factor to the current devastation the Earth is slammed with.
When we refer to a public commons, what we mean is this: Natural areas of vast resource, beauty, and ecological diversity should be collectively owned by a diverse array of interests rather than by private and national ones. A diverse array of interests might look like a distributed consortium containing environmentalist groups, teacher’s unions, exploratory drilling committees, sports teams, corporations, non-profits, and private individuals.
A diverse collective of owners holding land in the Arctic might, for example, become deadlocked over whether to allow the exploratory drilling committee to go forward with plans to drill. Even if that land fell under a national territory, which in most circumstances would allow for the drilling to go forward, the collective’s impasse would stall the project. Such a collective, representing interests from so many angles, would form a sample of the population in general, and could be a better way to regulate the types of projects that have repercussions for the entire planet.
Why We Need to Save the Moon Now
As the situation currently stands, there isn’t an immediate path to collectively owning and regulating activities within places of great ecological importance like the Amazon, the forest of the America’s Pacific Northwest, and Taiwan’s mountainous forests. Looking out into the murky future, it’s possible to envision a time when the Earth’s treasures have been extracted, as a vampire might do, by the private interests given free rein to profit as they please.
A scenario like that, along with increased technological capability, might lead those same private interests to the lunar surface where there are untapped natural (and valuable) resources such as helium–3. You’ve surely seen enough dystopian sci-fi movies to imagine how this plotline goes.
1. Evil corporations set out into space
2. Said corporations discover vast troves of exploitable resources on moons, planets, and other celestial bodies
3. Back on Earth, humanity toils in an overpopulated, heavily polluted, and bleak global society
4. Evil corporations recruit desperate Earthlings to terraform distant colonies.
While such plots may seem like nothing but novel storytelling to some, their plausibility is all too real considering the list of companies lining up to make it to the moon. Private interests like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Scaled Composites, and others are chomping at the bit to be the first private companies to make it to the moon. Because their main motivation is profit, a company like Scaled Composites will help an exploratory lunar drilling outfit send their crew up, where they’ll strike lunar gold, sparking a cosmic gold rush.
To prevent such scenarios from occurring, we’re in a position now to lay public claim on the moon before private companies and individuals do.
Diana: A Platform for Collective Ownership of the Moon
The tools for registering collective ownership of the moon are not a distant developer’s dream in a galaxy far far away. No, the tools are already here, and they’ve been built by the dedicated team of Diana developers.
Diana is a platform for registering and creating collective ownership of the moon. We’ve divided the moon into billions of equally sized parcels. To own a piece of the moon, all one needs to do is register on the Diana.io platform. After doing so, you’ll be issued a DIA tokens which represent your ownership and give you the right to your lunar claim in the future.
Anyone can register their own piece of lunar land, creating the world’s first public registry of collective ownership using blockchain technology. In this way, lunar land registration is immutably recorded to a decentralized ledger which makes it impossible for the registration record ever to be tampered with, edited, or erased.
Can collective ownership save the environment? After testing the concept off-planet using the moon as a preliminary testing grounds, we might find inspiring success in the model and deploy it to save our precious lands.
To join the Diana movement, visit Diana.io. | https://medium.com/dianaios/can-collective-ownership-save-the-environment-and-the-moon-764eea042a0d | ['Diana', "The World'S First Blockchain Moon Registry"] | 2019-06-26 14:17:38.888000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Space', 'Blockchain', 'Registry', 'Dapps'] |
B21 Invest — Weekly Update. What have we been busy with this week | What have we been busy with this week
At B21, our team is dedicated to provide regular updates and product improvements even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. The entire team is working from home — providing the best of the product updates and features. While taking care of family is the most important task at hand, we are focused and resolved to make B21, the best investment app.
The first set of users including our friends and family have already onboarded and started investing. Our marketing team is also working on an omni channel marketing campaign to bring more users into the B21 family.
A glimpse of how our daily calls look like with our Indian team
Based on the feedback of our current users, we are constantly bringing updates on the B21 app giving a seamless experience. This week we improved the User experience by updating certain aspects in the onboarding process. We also added a new feature — You can now add funds directly to your cash balance in the B21 app so you can maintain a cash balance and invest instantly when you desire.
What’s next ?
Integration of the B21 Token — Very soon we will introduce the B21 token in our mobile application, which is used as a utility token and allows users to receive discounts when paying for their fees and to earn VIP levels in B21.
— Very soon we will introduce the B21 token in our mobile application, which is used as a utility token and allows users to receive discounts when paying for their fees and to earn VIP levels in B21. Exchange listings - We are in talks with the top exchanges to get the B21 token listed thereby increasing the external trades of the B21 token and giving additional benefits to B21 users. While timing is important, we do have agreements in place with exchanges to conduct the listing and are preparing for the listing launch..
- We are in talks with the top exchanges to get the B21 token listed thereby increasing the external trades of the B21 token and giving additional benefits to B21 users. While timing is important, we do have agreements in place with exchanges to conduct the listing and are preparing for the listing launch.. ACH — We are now working on enabling instant deposits with ACH for our U.S. customers, this feature will enable users to fund their account directly from their U.S. bank instantly. This is one of the most requested features on B21 and we are making it happen..
Check the links below to download and start investing
Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.b21.invest&hl=en
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/b21-invest/id1499042083 | https://medium.com/b21official/b21-invest-weekly-update-98ded2ace4c8 | [] | 2020-03-31 07:09:24.321000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
Google Cloud Data Catalog Filesets: unlock its full potential | Google Cloud Data Catalog Filesets: unlock its full potential
Enrich your Google Cloud Storage Filesets with useful statistics about your files
Photo by bendavisual on Unsplash
The Dilemma
Have you ever lost track of how many files you have stored at your cloud provider? Is your Object Storage solution disorganized? Do you have empty buckets you are not aware of? Do you want to better manage your files to be compliant with all those new data protection regulations?
Data Catalog to the rescue!
If you are not familiar with Data Catalog, a recently announced member of Google Cloud’s Big Data services family, there’s a great series on medium that explains some of its capabilities.
With their newest version, users are now able to create Filesets.
from google official docs
A Cloud Storage Fileset is a set of one or more files in Cloud Storage. What will define its cardinality, is the file pattern provided at creation time.
We will talk more about the file patterns and give some concrete examples later on.
In order to Create your Fileset, first you need to have a user defined Entry Group, let’s understand this relationship:
based on google official docs
The Fileset Entry is contained within a user-created Entry Group. So we must create the Entry Group beforehand.
Please follow the instructions at the google official docs, if you want to test it out and create your Fileset entry, there are samples on multiple languages, showcasing how to do it.
Once you have your Fileset Entry set up, you are able to discover it using DataCatalog’s search engine and add business Tags to it, but this raises a question… what if this Fileset Entry does not point to anything? | https://medium.com/google-cloud/google-cloud-data-catalog-filesets-unlock-its-full-potential-5625c745303c | ['Marcelo Costa'] | 2020-05-08 22:17:06.174000+00:00 | ['Data Catalog', 'Big Data', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Google Cloud Storage', 'Data Analysis'] |
How to Build a Reporting Dashboard using Dash and Plotly | A method to select either a condensed data table or the complete data table.
One of the features that I wanted for the data table was the ability to show a “condensed” version of the table as well as the complete data table. Therefore, I included a radio button in the layouts.py file to select which version of the table to present:
Code Block 17: Radio Button in layouts.py
The callback for this functionality takes input from the radio button and outputs the columns to render in the data table:
Code Block 18: Callback for Radio Button in layouts.py File
This callback is a little bit more complicated since I am adding columns for conditional formatting (which I will go into below). Essentially, just as the callback below is changing the data presented in the data table based upon the dates selected using the callback statement, Output('datatable-paid-search', 'data' , this callback is changing the columns presented in the data table based upon the radio button selection using the callback statement, Output('datatable-paid-search', 'columns' .
Conditionally Color-Code Different Data Table cells
One of the features which the stakeholders wanted for the data table was the ability to have certain numbers or cells in the data table to be highlighted based upon a metric’s value; red for negative numbers for instance. However, conditional formatting of data table cells has three main issues.
There is lack of formatting functionality in Dash Data Tables at this time.
If a number is formatted prior to inclusion in a Dash Data Table (in pandas for instance), then data table functionality such as sorting and filtering does not work properly.
There is a bug in the Dash data table code in which conditional formatting does not work properly.
I ended up formatting the numbers in the data table in pandas despite the above limitations. I discovered that conditional formatting in Dash does not work properly for formatted numbers (numbers with commas, dollar signs, percent signs, etc.). Indeed, I found out that there is a bug with the method described in the Conditional Formatting — Highlighting Cells section of the Dash Data Table User Guide:
Code Block 19: Conditional Formatting — Highlighting Cells
The cell for New York City temperature shows up as green even though the value is less than 3.9.* I’ve tested this in other scenarios and it seems like the conditional formatting for numbers only uses the integer part of the condition (“3” but not “3.9”). The filter for Temperature used for conditional formatting somehow truncates the significant digits and only considers the integer part of a number. I posted to the Dash community forum about this bug, and it has since been fixed in a recent version of Dash.
*This has since been corrected in the Dash Documentation.
Conditional Formatting of Cells using Doppelganger Columns
Due to the above limitations with conditional formatting of cells, I came up with an alternative method in which I add “doppelganger” columns to both the pandas data frame and Dash data table. These doppelganger columns had either the value of the original column, or the value of the original column multiplied by 100 (to overcome the bug when the decimal portion of a value is not considered by conditional filtering). Then, the doppelganger columns can be added to the data table but are hidden from view with the following statements:
Code Block 20: Adding Doppelganger Columns
Then, the conditional cell formatting can be implemented using the following syntax:
Code Block 21: Conditional Cell Formatting
Essentially, the filter is applied on the “doppelganger” column, Revenue_YoY_percent_conditional (filtering cells in which the value is less than 0). However, the formatting is applied on the corresponding “real” column, Revenue YoY (%) . One can imagine other usages for this method of conditional formatting; for instance, highlighting outlier values.
The complete statement for the data table is below (with conditional formatting for odd and even rows, as well highlighting cells that are above a certain threshold using the doppelganger method):
Code Block 22: Data Table with Conditional Formatting
I describe the method to update the graphs using the selected rows in the data table below. | https://medium.com/p/4f4257c18a7f#37f2 | ['David Comfort'] | 2019-03-13 14:21:44.055000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Dash', 'Towards Data Science', 'Dashboard', 'Data Visualization'] |
How to Make Time for Social Justice Work and a Nap | If you struggle between wanting to lay down and take a nap or make an impact as a leader or as a creative soul — you are in the right place.
I’ll always look back on history and think of 2020 as the year a whole new generation of anti-racists were born.
Yes, there was a virus and a pandemic that made life really, really hard.
But there was huge progress in ways we hadn’t seen in our lifetimes in the area of racial justice because of the heart-breaking police murder of George Floyd.
And yet .. there is so more work to do to disrupt how white supremacy rules over our every system in society.
We simply cannot give up. We cannot quit. We cannot let our exhaustion stop us.
Because yes. We are exhausted. Tired to the bone.
The thing, though, is this is hard work because it’s a marathon not a sprint.
June 2020 was a sprint.
Now it’s time for the marathon, especially for white women like me.
Because we really do care and we need to prove it.
The world needs us to lean in — not out.
And this is the time we need to lean into our divine rage — before another urgent matter arises.
As a life design coach AND a social justice warrior and anti-racist for nearly 20 years, I will be sharing some of my own well-being practices that help me stay strong, balanced and sane so that I can make a bigger impact without giving up in my upcoming Rise Stronger in 2021 7-Day Challenge. (Sign up here.)
The strategies we’ll be focusing on during that week-long challenge are a higher level of well-being than we’re used to implementing in our lives and that’s why they are so powerful.
However, until then … I really wanted to make sure I specifically address how to make sure you take time for that nap AND your social justice work.
RECONNECT WITH YOUR WHY
In my private coaching work, I talk about your Why Factor all the time. You have to know what you are working toward in order to really know where you are going. It’s far too easy to get sidetracked with shiny objects by the latest explosion in the internet anger machine. Rather than jump all over the place, reconnect with your values, your mission and your personal goals for working toward human rights and social justice issues. If you don’t know what your why is, that’s a great place to start.
PAUSE AND TAKE BREAKS FROM THE NEWS. LOTS OF THEM.
Only you know what your body needs and so sometimes what you need right now is not convenient for the news cycle. It’s OK to opt-out of reading or watching today’s big news story to focus on your needs. If you are experiencing anxiety or overwhelm, it’s time to stop and take a long break. Your brain and your body needs a lot of time to heal and recover, especially from traumatizing events. Pro Tip — It’s even better is to work in weekly — or daily — rests from the news rather than go full on digital escape. I personally try to take at least 60–90 minutes of unplugged time in my day.
GO BIG OR GO HOME
In order to make an impact in the world, we must make intentional actions that actually do good. So while screaming on social media how mad you are feels like you’re doing something, ask yourself what you can really do to make an impact. Instead of sharing on Facebook, can you call your representatives, write emails or call voters? Pro-Tip — Dedicate an hour or two a week solely to your social justice work so you can keep up your own consistency. I do this on Fridays thanks to a colleague who suggested it.
FIND YOUR PEOPLE
The best thing I ever did was start a local group of like-minded people in my community. We started as a small group of super upset and angry women in 2016 and now we are 2K strong with men and women with a variety of passions and life experiences. Having this group to lead, empower and stay connected with has been crucial to keeping me going and not giving up. This is not solitary work that we’re doing. It’s relational. It impacts people. And that’s why it’s really best done with a group to help grow your momentum and not feel so alone. To find your people, you may have to put yourself out there and use your voice. This is a Brave Yes move for sure.
STAY IN YOUR INTEGRITY
Since it’s so easy to get caught up in the collective anxiety or anger of the people on social media, it’s also vital that you keep your integrity about you and know what you are willing to do and what you are not willing to do. For instance, I don’t lead with anger. It’s just not my style of empowering people and disrupting. I am at my best when I am empowering others to use their voice, tend to themselves and leading them on how to stay in their integrity. My line of balance is about staying calm and impactful. You do you. Don’t worry about what others think. Being fully resourced in mind, body and spirit means you will have a greater capacity to serve. You simply won’t be effective if you are exhausted and overwhelmed.
Ready to balance your passions for social justice and taking a nap? Join my Rise Stronger in 2021 FREE 7-Day Challenge. I’ll show you a set of 6 strategies that you can use to feel stronger, be calmer and have more resilience to bounce back from the daily stress of being human. | https://medium.com/@shawnlfink/how-to-make-time-for-social-justice-work-and-a-nap-129298ee28e4 | ['Shawn Fink'] | 2020-12-23 14:56:17.148000+00:00 | ['Social Justice', 'Well Being', 'Racial Justice'] |
Simplify Code Review Process with Auto Mention Code Review Systems | As Tokopedia grows fast from time to time, so does the number of sub-teams and modules in our android team codebase. Each sub-team usually owns a number of modules, depending on the size of each sub-team. We use CODEOWNERS file system from GitHub to make sure that every code changes to a specific module should be reviewed by at least one of the members of the sub-team that owns that module.
Actually this system is great for securing the codebase from breaking changes. The only problem is: when we create a pull request (PR) with huge changes in a lot of modules and want to request for code reviews.
The Problem
What we usually do when we want to request for code reviews on our PR is by checking out who’s sub-teams are the codeowners by looking at the top right corner of the GitHub PR page.
Then we find out the list of persons that belong to each sub-team. For example, we want to know who are the members of android-minionkevin-dev, then we go to the sub-team page.
After we got the member list, we slack DM them one-by-one so if one team member is unavailable for reviewing (taking leave, in a meeting, etc), the other member can do the code review. After the review process finished and approval given, everything is done. Really? No no no.. not that easy fellas!
Remember that is just one approval from one CODEOWNERS sub-team. You have to repeat the whole process all over again for all sub-teams that own the modules changed in the PR. If you make changes to substantial things like the library that are used in many modules, you usually need to get approval from 10 or more sub-teams.
Frustrating? Yes. But those are just from the PR creator side. From the reviewer side, there is also one freaking thing: you should find out yourself which files are yours from the list of hundreds of file changes on the PR.
This cumbersome and frustrating process is there from times to times, until I have an “Eureka!” moment and figure out a solution to end this pain across all android teams.
The Solutions
I actually thought to myself: If there exists a system to notify all members of each CODEOWNERS sub-team that need to review a PR, along with lists of file changes that are mapped for each sub-team, it could solve all the problems, both for the PR creator and reviewers.
So I started with utilizing Slack, as our main communication and notification tools across the entire company. First, I create slack user group for each CODEOWNERS sub-team, so that we can just mention the user group to notify all of the sub-team members, instead of slacking them one-by-one.
Here is one example of slack user group, that you can just use @android-core-dev to get attention from all the core team members, instead of mentioning them one-by-one (look, I’m there btw 😂)
After that, I create a slack channel #android-auto-mention-code-review where all code review related matters will be inside here.
As you may notice from the above picture, yes, I automate the process of mentioning each CODEOWNERS user group that needs to review a PR via this little cute yellow Android Bot. What you have to do to trigger this bot is just comment /check review on your PR, and just watch him working hard to get approval from all CODEOWNERS needed.
This little bot also list all file changes needed to be reviewed by specific user group in a thread reply to the mentioning slack message, so the team members can directly look at the file list via Threads menu in the upper left corner of the Slack Apps, without going back and forth to the code review channel
Here is the example preview of that automatic thread reply
From there, all core team can know that from all 26 file changes in PR #14123, ten of them are belong to core team and need to be reviewed by them. Also, if there is any change requested by core team, the PR creator can just reply to this thread again to notify core team again that the change request has been addressed.
Although this invention and approach are hard to think until I figure it out, the tech ingredients that I used to create this magic is pretty simple and not a matter of rocket science. Basically, all we needed are just these components:
The way to detect /check review comment on a PR The way to programmatically obtain changed files list of a specific PR The way to programmatically obtain CODEOWNERS file content The way to programmatically mapped changed files list to each CODEOWNERS sub-team The way to programmatically post something to slack channel
Let’s break them out one by one!
So, to detect /check review comments on a PR, we simply use webhook system that is provided by GitHub. With this system, your company server machine can get notified when any GitHub event happened on your company repository, including new comments on PR. This notification includes what is called webhook payload, which consists of the event details. So what I do is getting the commented PR number along with comment body, check if comment body equals /check review, and then trigger auto mention code review Jenkins job, with commented PR number as parameter. Here are the docs of GitHub webhooks if you want to explore more.
After Jenkins job triggered, the first thing that the job do is to obtain changed files list in the commented PR. Fortunately, GitHub also provides this functionality through their API. Just pass the PR number and you are good to go. Don’t worry about :owner and :repo params, cause there are the same as in your ordinary GitHub repo url (github.com/:owner/:repo). Just hardcode them to keep it simple!
Then we need the content of the CODEOWNERS file. Again, we can use this API from GitHub to obtain it. Don’t forget to add this field in your request header
‘Accept’: ‘application/vnd.github.v3.raw’
or else you will only get encrypted content that is meaningless 😂
Now we have all the ingredients needed: The changed files list and the CODEOWNERS content. It’s time to cook them together so that we get delicious food: Separated changed files list for each CODEOWNERS sub-team. It seems complicated at first, but if you do further analysis, nothing to be scared of by exerting brute force iteration with n² complexity.
Imagine you have a very huge codebase in your company with 100,000 files inside a single repository, and you also have 1,000 lines in CODEOWNERS file. In worst case scenario — when you create a PR that changed every single file in the repo (100,000 changed files) — you will iterate 100,000,000 times to compare each changed filename to each line of CODEOWNERS. That is below 10 seconds for most of the computer nowadays with an average filename string length of 50. Very acceptable!
Lastly, we need to serve that delicious food to the customer. I use this pretty simple API from Slack to post full custom messages into #android-auto-mention-code-review slack channel, including user group mentions, PR links, and list of file changes in a reply thread. Please read my previous post to get more detail into how I did this step-by-step.
Conclusion
After this auto mention code review system is implemented, the code review process is much simpler and not as frustrating as earlier. Developers are happier, work-life balance can be attained, as they have more time to spend with their families instead of struggling with the stressful code review process. Henry Pri once again saves so many lifetimes of android developers at Tokopedia.
Want to be a hero too? Just use this invention, and treat me a cup of coffee if you get a noble prize from your company. Just kidding ;) | https://medium.com/tokopedia-engineering/simplify-code-review-process-with-auto-mention-code-review-systems-ca2264de16a9 | ['Henry Priyono'] | 2020-09-08 09:39:41.821000+00:00 | ['Android', 'Software Engineering', 'Engineering Productivity', 'Tokopedia'] |
Page Manager — Creating Pages. Under any Project, you can create… | Under any Project, you can create multiple pages.
Page Manager lets you switch between multiple pages.
To open the page manager, click the page name on the top bar.
With Page Manager you can do the following:
Edit Page Headers (Like adding external stylesheets, fonts, scripts) Edit Page Name Delete Pages.
Creating a Page
To add a page to your site, click the Create new page icon on the top bar.
Then type “yourpagename.html”, that’s it.
Editing or Modifying Page Settings
To modify or edit page settings, click on the page name on the top bar. It will open the page manager where you can see the list of pages of you’ve created.
Then Click on the edit icon right to the page name in order to edit the page name or page header content. Here you can add meta title ,description external stylesheets, fonts, scripts, stc…
Deleting a Page
To delete a page, click on the delete icon right to the edit icon in the page manager to delete the page permanently. | https://medium.com/gridbox/page-manager-creating-pages-7c0553e701ed | [] | 2018-11-22 19:25:53.116000+00:00 | ['Prototyping', 'HTML', 'Learn', 'CSS', 'Bootstrap'] |
DEATH VAN (animated space-rock adventure) | Watch the video here
In this computer animated short, the space-rock duo DEATH VAN tours through a miniature world inhabited by surreal creatures that are haunted by a menacing and mischievous entity.
http://skuff.tv/clip/5602/death-van-animated-space-rock-adventure
Head to skuff.tv to watch more cool clips | https://medium.com/skuff-tv/death-van-animated-space-rock-adventure-4f818265524c | ['Daisy Crawford'] | 2018-02-20 22:45:41.993000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Animals', 'Music Video', 'Animation', 'Weird'] |
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