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Triangulation in Narcissistic Relationships | Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash
Triangulation is a manipulation technique toxic people use frequently. Even if you’ve never heard of this manipulation technique before, you probably experienced it at least once in your lifetime.
Although triangulation is usually a method used against children in toxic family systems, it can be seen in romantic, platonic or professional relationships as well.
To define it briefly; triangulation is when a manipulator, who wants to have total control of the relationship (and most probably has narcissistic tendencies as well), includes a third person to their bilateral relationship and tries to control both parties. I’ll try to explain the situation in a more detailed way with the various examples below.
Triangulation Within the Family
Triangulation within a family mostly takes place amongst siblings. Manipulative parents don’t treat their children equally and while idealizing one of them; they criticize and blame the other quite frequently. So, one of them is basically the golden child whereas the other is the scapegoat. In this way, they drive a wedge between the two while keeping them both under control.
***John and Matt are brothers close in age. Their mother spoils John a lot; she always makes sure he has everything he needs, she keeps telling him that he’s special and continuously brags about his success and positive qualities while talking to others. Although John enjoys the attention, it also puts a lot of responsibility on his shoulders. He tries way too hard to not let her down and be the person his mother expects him to be by studying hard and improving himself in any way he can.
On the other hand; the mother always criticizes Matt, making him feel useless and irredeemable by branding him as the black sheep of the family. No matter how hard he tries to improve himself, he can’t escape his mother’s judgement and belittlement. Eventually he starts to internalize his mother’s opinions on him and acts accordingly.
Matt envies John and believes that he will never receive the amount of attention and love John is being given. Interestingly, John also envies the rebellious nature of Matt and believes that he has more freedom due to the lack of expectations from him.
The mother is on the winning side either way. With the existence of John, she gets the opportunity to show what a great mother she is and with the existence of Matt, she gets to have a scapegoat she can point the finger at whenever a problem arises within the family. Besides, by driving a wedge between her two sons and making it nearly impossible for them to support each other; she gets to control them both separately.
Triangulation can be seen between spouses or divorced couples as well. One of them can try to turn the children against the other parent by making sure they are the only parent their children can rely on.
Triangulation in Romantic Relationships
In romantic relationships, triangulation is used by dragging a third person into the relationship.
***Emma and Oliver’s relationship started like a fairytale. Oliver fell in love Emma in no time and he decided that he could never live without her. He spoils Emma a lot with gifts and attention, constantly telling her how much she means to him. Emma enjoys this treatment and believes Oliver to be the best thing that happened to her. Although the couple have met only a few months ago, they’re already dreaming of spending the rest of their lives together.
In time, Oliver’s attitude begins to change. He starts calling her less often and spends more time with his friends rather than with her. Emma doesn’t think much of it at first, but then she finds out that Oliver has been seeing someone called Sarah. Although Emma immediately confronts Oliver about it; Oliver insists that he and Sarah are just friends and that Emma is being disrespectful and jealous for no reason. After the incident he continues texting Sarah right in front of Emma and continuously compares Emma to Sarah.
In the meantime, he tells Sarah that Emma is just an obsessed ex-girlfriend. Then he starts comparing Sarah to Emma, making her uncomfortable as well.
In this way, he keeps both women confused, jealous and afraid of losing him. By doing this, he believes that he can be the center of their attention by making them fight for his affections while also damaging their self-confidence. Long story short, he satisfies his narcissistic needs and keeps them both under his control.
But of course cheating isn’t necessarily needed for triangulation. In fact, they don’t even need the existence of a real person. The narcissistic lover can compare you to their ex, their new colleagues, their neighbors or even make up someone entirely imaginary for you to compete with.
Triangulation in Friendships
***Michael knows that his friend Sophia is self-conscious about her weight. Despite that knowledge, he keeps bringing up how fit and beautiful Brenda is during their conversations and how all women should be like her instead of “being lazy” and “gluttonous”.
In the meantime, he could also tell Brenda that Sophia is comfortable in her skin unlike “shallow and pretentious” women who try too hard to fit in others’ idea of beauty.
In this way, Michael makes Sophia feel lazy and weak while also implying that Brenda is shallow and insecure.
Even if Sophia and Brenda had the potential of being close friends, they start avoiding each other because of this invisible rivalry between them.
Triangulation in the Workplace
Triangulation in a workplace is usually used by a boss or an employee with a high status to fuel the rivalry between their workers.
***Patricia has been working at the same place for years, and Kevin is a new employee. During her conversations with Patricia, their boss Alice keeps mentioning how talented and hardworking Kevin is despite the fact he has just started working there. And while talking to Kevin, she always talks about how efficient and loyal Patricia is and that nobody in this company can be as good as her.
While competing against each other to keep their job and receive more appreciation from their boss; these two employees are manipulated by a very satisfied Alice without even noticing it.
Photo by Ahmed Carter on Unsplash
Why do People Use Triangulation?
Triangulation is a very easy and effective method. All the emotional manipulator has to do is to sow the seeds of jealousy, anger and rivalry between two people and watch the events unfold. In this way, they gain total control of the two people on each side of the triangle as well as the situation they find themselves in with the help of the chaos they have created.
Besides, triangulation can be vague and hard to notice. Because when you’re in a triangulation, all you can focus on is the person you’re forced to compete against, not the manipulator. While competing against the other victim, you find yourself feeling less valuable and less successful in comparison. In the meantime, you completely miss the influence of the person who made you feel “less” in the first place.
In fact, you can find yourself getting more and more attached to the manipulator. Because of triangulation, siblings can start loathing each other while trying hard to please their manipulative parents or two ex-friends can start believing that the manipulative “friend” is the only one they cannot afford to lose to somebody else.
To summarize; manipulators who use triangulation can create a chaotic environment and keep everyone under their control without anybody realizing what they’re doing.
Naturally, you need to get rid of the manipulator in your life in order to get away from this situation but that’s not always easy. Especially if it takes place in your workplace, you may find it hard to get away from this toxic environment due to financial reasons even if you realize who your actual enemy is. Or if you’re in a triangulation with a sibling, you may not have the option to get away from your parents especially if you’re still dependent on them. But even if you’re unable to escape the toxic environment, if you manage reaching out to the person you’re in the triangulation with you may have a chance to ruin the manipulator’s plot. Especially if it’s happening between siblings and these siblings decide to talk to each other about it after realizing what their parents are doing, they can end the hostility between them and start supporting each other. | https://medium.com/psychology-self-healing/triangulation-in-narcissistic-relationships-8760d2400b0f | [] | 2020-12-01 18:19:27.982000+00:00 | ['Triangulation', 'Narcissistic Abuse', 'Narcissism', 'Narcissist', 'Narcissistic Personality'] |
3 Things great Product Managers & Entrepreneurs have in common | 3 Things great Product Managers & Entrepreneurs have in common
Creative mind
Product Management is about finding solutions. What is the best product for my customer, which feature should I build next? And while anyone can provide some type of answers to these questions, good Product Managers are creative in finding the less obvious solutions, thinking “out-of-the-box” and wowing their customers.
Entrepreneurs are people who can build a business starting with nothing more than pure imagination. A creative mind and nonconformist thinking are required to put aside practical norms and come up with something novel. Entrepreneurs combine the creative mind with business thinking to create successful new businesses.
Credit: fancycrave1 / Pixabay
Knowledge of Market, Product & Competition
The well-known entrepreneur Ben Horowitz once said “Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line, and the competition extremely well” and “A good product manager is the CEO of the product”.
Knowledge of the customer, the market you are operating on and the competition is essential for understanding the forces that drive failure and & success of the product. This same knowledge is also crucial for succeeding in new business.
Getting the numbers right
Setting targets is key in Product Management. Everyone from management to the engineering team needs to have a clear picture of the overall product vision, and the goals set to move towards this vision.
The progress the team achieves towards the vision is measured in KPIs. A good PM works with KPIs to understand how the product and the team are performing.
Similarly, an entrepreneur needs to get the company’s KPIs right, to know how his company is developing, which areas are doing well or which need improvement. Creating a data-driven company culture helps to eliminate fuzzy conversations and clear and evidence-based communications. | https://medium.com/@productmind/3-things-great-product-managers-entrepreneurs-have-in-common-72f55679c8c7 | ['Gergana Drockur'] | 2019-11-27 11:22:29.212000+00:00 | ['Skills', 'Creativity', 'Product Management', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Kicking Off the 2019 Blockchain Summit | Kicking Off the 2019 Blockchain Summit
By Valery Vavilov
Five years ago, we had a big idea: Let’s invite some of the world’s smartest and most interesting people, from a broad cross-section of government, business and non-profits, to an intimate and collegial summit on Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island. There, we’ll identify creative new ways that blockchain technology can make the world a better place. Then, we’ll turn those ideas into action.
This week, the Blockchain Summit — organized by Bitfury, ACTAI and the Global Blockchain Business Council — celebrates its fifth anniversary as one of the most important and impactful gatherings in the blockchain ecosystem.
Kicking off our 2018 Summit at the Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco
This year, the Blockchain Summit will focus primarily on government. Our honored guests — some of today’s biggest game-changers in technology, academics, policy and regulatory issues, media, business, conservation and digital finance — will confront the broken systems and services that are failing their citizens every day. With an eye toward blockchain and other emerging technologies, we will identify ways that we can best repair them.
To discover how we can make the world a more just and livable place, we must start by talking about our governments and the rules they create and implement. We will discuss how these institutions have supported innovation and analyze if (and how) they are applying the same innovative spirit to themselves and their responsibilities.
We’ll talk about the declining levels of trust and blockchain’s role in repairing that. We’ll discuss security issues and blockchain’s ability to create digital identities. And we’ll talk about efficiency — reducing costs, streamlining processes, decreasing audit burdens, and ensuring data integrity.
We’ll highlight the importance of smart and innovative regulation. The world is changing so fast; Regulators need to embrace an agile approach to emerging technologies that enables them to evolve and grow.
We’ll ask hard questions, like where can we, and the policies and technologies we discussed during this summit, do the most good now? We will discuss two critical issues — the state of journalism in our world today, and the cruel realities of climate change. And we’ll analyze where technology is, and isn’t, a solution.
And finally, we will learn about the oldest and most successful use case of blockchain to date — digital currencies — and hear from our resident visionaries and experts about other innovations in store for blockchain and crypto.
Attendees visiting the Eve Branson Foundation during the 2018 Blockchain Summit in Morocco
We’ll do this, as always, in an atmosphere that encourages deeper levels of thoughtful conversation than could possibly exist at other conferences. This is what our summit is all about — drawing people out of offices and away from emails and phones so that we can think, talk, and learn from one another, with blockchain as a critical tool in our toolbox.
I encourage you to watch our panel discussions, which will be broadcast on Facebook Live, and follow our social media channels for news and updates about the Summit. And let us know what you think. Our Summit will only truly succeed if it sparks discussions and change beyond Necker Island. If we inspire you to imagine new solutions to old problems, reach out and join the conversation. It’s only by working together that we can truly make a difference. | https://medium.com/meetbitfury/kicking-off-the-2019-blockchain-summit-4f467247a836 | ['The Bitfury Group'] | 2019-06-21 12:45:32.879000+00:00 | ['Bitfury', 'Leadership', 'Technology', 'Blockchain Summit'] |
How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Lab-Leak Theory* | And now to the present day.
Two weeks ago, my former New York Times science news colleague Nicholas Wade wrote an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (and on Medium) arguing that the lab-leak theory deserves a harder look.
It has since been sent to me a dozen times with notes asking “What do you think?”
My first reaction was dismissive, even though I very much respect Nick as a journalist. (Some of his work is controversial and he can be cranky, but who am I to criticize anyone on those grounds?) I covered the pandemic from its earliest days and I disagreed with his retelling of how the leak-vs.-spillover debate began.
Also, I was offended by some aspects, such as his attacks on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci of the National Institutes of Health and Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, both of whom I have known for years; I know both are dedicated to saving lives, and they have always told me the truth — or what they honestly believed to be the truth at the time, because evidence sometimes changes. They are now both getting death threats, and that is repulsive.
The N.I.H.-funded EcoHealth Alliance does not do dangerous lab research; it doesn’t even have a lab. It hunts for dangerous viruses in the field; its zoologists teach people how to safely gather samples from bats, birds, chimpanzees and other creatures fortified with claws, teeth, beaks, muscles and pathogens.
That’s work I consider as essential as staffing the radar stations that watch for missiles coming over the North Pole. The Trump administration was insane to cut off funding for it. You need to know what’s coming at you. Actually cooking up novel threats is a different matter, of which more below.
I was also bothered by Nick quoting Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To my mind, after being warned about the virus by his Chinese counterpart in the first week of January, Dr. Redfield failed to shout from the rooftops and move mountains — and now 600,000 Americans are dead. He also raised the specter of a flu-Covid “twindemic” that turned out to be virological alarmism.
But…but…but…but…but…
The deeper I read into the papers and articles Nick cited, the clearer it became how much new information had trickled out in the last year. Not new to the most intense and well-educated followers of this topic, but new to the greater public debate. I include articles like this, this, this, this and this by Yuri Deigin, Rossana Segretto, Milton Leitenberg, Josh Rogin, Nicholson Baker and others.
And more and and more scientists feel misled.
I now agree with Nick’s central conclusion: We still do not know the source of this awful pandemic. We may never know. But the argument that it could have leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology or a sister lab in Wuhan has become considerably stronger than it was a year ago, when the screaming was so loud that it drowned out serious discussion.
And China’s lack of candor is disturbing. It denies access to the institute’s lab logs and whatever messages were swapped during its own investigations, took down 2018 statements critical of lab biosecurity protocols, retaliated against Australia for advocating an open investigation and sharply restricted the W.H.O. investigators.
Calls for a better probe are mounting. Last week, 18 biologists, including leading and outspoken experts on this pandemic like the Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch and Yale immunologist Akiko Iwasaki, published a letter in Science calling for a new investigation and demanding that Chinese labs and public health agencies open their records to outside scrutiny.
To my mind, China could be forgiven for its standoffishness in early 2020. It was busy fighting its own pandemic. And if China had, say, arrogantly offered to teach the American C.D.C. how to investigate America’s killer hamburgers — the equivalent of the way the Trump administration spoke to China back then — we would have snubbed them too.
But now, 17 months later, China is persistently acting like a nation hiding something.
Also worrying: the hunt for the spillover theory’s smoking gun — a very closely related natural virus in a human or an animal — has gone on for over a year. Success would mean big prizes for the discoverer — especially from the Chinese government, which could say “See??”
And yet — zip. That doesn’t mean it won’t be found. But by now we might have expected at least some smoking shell casings.
I had been skeptical of the “lab leak” theory because animal spillover is such an obvious answer. Genetics has proven that almost every disease mankind has faced jumped from animals: bubonic plague from rodents, measles probably from cows, whooping cough maybe from dogs, and so on.
Also, the leak idea was just too conveniently conspiratorial.
I’ve covered several pandemics and studied others, and one element is consistent: they start in utter confusion that defies any sense that an evil genius is at work. Doctors know something’s wrong, but aren’t sure what. That was true when American veterans started dying of pneumonia after a 1976 convention (Legionnaire’s disease); when the Bronx Zoo’s birds started dropping dead in 1999 (West Nile virus); when young nurses fell ill in Mexico City in 2009 (swine flu); when camel butchers died in Saudi Arabia (MERS); and when Brazilian babies were born with shrunken heads (Zika).
This pandemic’s opening days were also shrouded in fog, and yes, there was a government coverup. But it was outed immediately and it didn’t emanate from Beijing.
In late December 2019, doctors at hospitals near the Huanan Seafood Market began seeing a strange viral pneumonia they couldn’t identify. On Dec. 30, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a warning.
It was quickly picked up by disease-alert websites like FluTrackers and ProMED; the W.H.O. put out an alert the next day. The New York Times wrote its first article on January 6, from Beijing; I started helping my China colleagues soon after.
By that time, one coverup had been underway for a week. Wuhan’s politically ambitious mayor, Zhou Xianwang, was eager to protect the local party congress he had scheduled for January and the pot-luck dinner for 40,000 Wuhanese he hoped would get him into the Guinness Book of Records.
On January 1, his police silenced the nervous doctors. The Huanan Seafood Market was closed and hosed down.
That was the equivalent of trampling a crime scene. The market’s wild game sellers — who might have had the infected animal, if there was one — scattered. Any live animals or fresh meat probably went to other markets or into the trash. Customers disappeared. The chance to use the market as the hub of a good epidemiological investigation was lost.
At the same time, other events occurred that looked like coverups, but maybe weren’t. As soon as it was clear that the threat was a dangerous new coronavirus, the local health commission and then the national one ordered diagnostic and genetics labs to destroy their samples or surrender them to high-level biosecurity labs. Most labs chose incineration — another crime scene wrecked.
That smacked of coverup, and was treated as such by the Trump administration, but it’s actually standard safety procedure to prevent outbreaks. Our C.D.C. gave the same order in 2014 when it realized that hospital labs had samples from Ebola patients being treated in Dallas and Omaha. “We told the labs in Texas and Nebraska to destroy them or send them to Fort Detrick,” Dr. Pierre E. Rollin, who recently retired from the C.D.C after 26 years of fighting global outbreaks, told me. “You can call that a cover-up, but it was a public health decision.”
During those first days in Wuhan, a major misconception circulated — that the virus did not spread easily between people. The W.H.O. repeated it, so did we. But that was not necessarily deliberate misinformation. With the market closed, the epicenter had scattered a few dozen cases across a city of 11 million. Very few PCR tests existed, and it was the height of flu season. At such times, it’s hard to know who infected whom with what.
Also, I don’t believe the image of China as a Teflon pyramid with Xi Jinping at the apex, the evil emperor who sees every sparrow that falls. It’s like other big countries, even totalitarian ones: messy, with competing scientists and petty bureaucrats. Its flaws often become public despite Beijing’s rigid control of the internet.
Each day back then, the rumors got more bizarre. Some scientists claimed the virus had snake genes. Others said it was part H.I.V., triggering claims that it was a bio-weapon.
Some of that fog of war lifted after Beijing sent Dr. Zhong Nanshan, the country’s renowned epidemiologist, to Wuhan to demand the truth. On January 20th, Dr. Zhong warned on national TV that the virus was spreading rapidly and that outsiders should stay away. On January 23, Wuhan was cut off from the world, Mayor Zhou apologized, and China launched its brutal but amazingly successful effort to crush its epidemic.
The first article I know of blaming the Wuhan Institute of Virology ran on January 26 in the Washington Times, a conservative paper founded by the Unification Church. It seemed based on two elements — the lab was in the same city (albeit nine miles from the market), and a brief, speculative quote from an Israeli biowarfare expert, Dany Shoham.
“Certain laboratories in the institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese BW alignment,” the paper quoted Dr. Shoham as saying. Any work on biological weapons would be “definitely covert,” he added.
When I reached Dr. Shoham by telephone later, he spoke very cautiously. He had not been misquoted, he said, but he emphasized that he had never said that deadly virus came from that lab. He had said only that it “was possible” that such a virus could have come from such a lab.
But the rumor was off and running.
Then, on February 3 — a week later — scientists from that Institute produced what smelled like a smoking gun.
They published an article on Nature’s open-access website saying one of the hundreds of coronaviruses gathered from bat caves that was in their freezers was a 96.2 percent match to SARS-CoV-2.
They called it RaTG13 (indicating a Rhinolophus affinis horseshoe bat captured in Tong Guan cave in Yunnan in 2013).
For conspiracy theorists, that was the clincher — if the lab had a 96 percent match, it must have leaked the killer.
But many of the world’s top virologists leapt to say “Not so fast.”
Coronaviruses mutate slowly, so a 4 percent mismatch in the 30,000 base pairs of the two viruses meant RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2 had diverged maybe 40 years ago, evolutionary geneticists said.
On February 16, as rumors swirled, five of the world’s top virologists got together to publish a letter on virological.org explaining why animal origin was more likely.
The letter, titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” was later republished in the journal Nature.
Its basic argument was that any lab trying to make a super-dangerous virus would start with the backbone of one already known to be pretty dangerous, like 2002 SARS. This new virus was so different from SARS, especially in its receptor binding domain — the crucial bit where the spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor on the surface of a human cell — that logically no one would have chosen it.
The binding domain was much closer to one that had been recently found in pangolin viruses, so it was likely the pandemic virus had jumped from bats to an animal — perhaps pangolins but not necessarily.
Also, the new virus had a cleavage site unlike those in related coronaviruses. (After binding to a cell, the spike has to “cleave” or split open, to meld with the surface and inject its RNA.) The new virus’s cleavage site was an unusual set of amino acids in an unusual spot on the genome. Such unexpected choices seemed more likely to happen during the constant random evolution that goes on in nature rather than the logic-driven “let’s try this next” methods of a lab.
Also the virus’s spikes had “glycans” which act as shields to protect them from antibodies. A virus sunbathing in a friendly lab cell culture wouldn’t need to evolve shields, while a virus constantly fighting off immune system attacks because it was evolving inside an animal would, they argued.
Therefore, they concluded, “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
The paper’s first author, Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, is still vigorously defending the paper’s basic premise — that an animal origin is by far the most likely.
But other eminent virologists, including at least one of his co-authors, are wavering.
During the uproar that ensued after the institute revealed that the RaTG13 strain was in its freezers, Dr. Daszak argued that merely having a virus in a frozen fecal pellet meant little. Infections take place only when viruses are warmed up and growing in cell cultures or animals.
Dr. Daszak had worked for years with Dr. Shi Zheng-li, the “Bat Woman” who now runs the Wuhan institute. His zoologists and field veterinarians had taught her bat-sampling — a dangerous practice even in caves with tourists in bathing suits wandering around.
Freezers contain hundreds of viruses. It is too expensive to fully sequence all of them and impossible to grow them all out in cell culture, he explained. So labs create a set of “bookmarks.” They sequence one short gene, called RdRP, that seldom mutates and keep a list of their RdRPs. Sometimes they post their lists to a public database like GISAID or Genbank.
Since the world had previously been looking only for relatives of the dangerous 2002 SARS or MERS, he said, labs would care only if a virus’ RdRP gene closely matched those.
“If it doesn’t, it’s of no interest, so you pop it back in the freezer,” he said.
Later, if a new dangerous virus turns up, labs can check their bookmarks for a match, thaw that one out and sequence all of it. That was why RaTG13 was found so quickly, he said. Ditto for pangolin virus sequences found in the freezers of the South China Agricultural University.
Because there were no viruses with closer RdRP matches either in public databanks or in a private Wuhan Institute list of 630 unposted RdRP genes he had seen, he said, the Wuhan lab presumably held nothing closer than a 40-year-distant relative of the killer virus.
“Believe me, if there had been, no one would have kept that a secret,” he said to me more than a year ago. “It would be a huge discovery. We’d be over the moon.”
Dr. Shi herself later told Scientific American that, when news of the new virus erupted, her first fear was that it had come from her institute. She did not sleep for days, she said, until she had finished checking her lab’s logs and assured herself that it had not.
Since then, though, more has come to light about the work done by Dr. Shi’s teams.
The most startling bit of information was that, rather than “finding” RaTG13 in her freezers in February, Dr. Shi had worked with it since at least 2016, but under a different name, RaBtCoV/4991.
RaBtCoV/4991 had not been gathered at random but from a mineshaft in which miners digging bat guano got pneumonia, some fatally. Dr. Shi’s lab sequenced enough of it to be able to say it was the most “SARS-like” of the viruses from that investigation.
There were arguments over whether the miners died of fungal pneumonia, viral pneumonia or both, but that link made it a likely suspect for any lab wanting to explore dangerous viruses. Not mentioning her previous work with it was troubling.
Also, Dr. Shi was trained by Ralph S. Baric of the University of North Carolina in building “chimera” viruses — taking, for example, the spike protein from a new virus and splicing it to the backbone of a known one like SARS. He invented “no-see-um” techniques that left no trace of the splice.
(Interestingly, Dr. Baric is one of the signers of the letter to Science demanding a more thorough investigation of all Wuhan labs.)
Then, to see if the new chimeras could infect people, they were tested against human airway cells and “humanized” mice — mice bred to have human ACE-2 receptors on their organs.
There is debate over whether this is truly “gain of function” research. Some argue that gain of function strictly involves taking a virus already known to endanger humans and trying to make it more lethal or more transmissible.
So Dr. Fauci was answering truthfully in his bitter exchange with Senator Rand Paul on May 11.
But many other scientists feel this is a distinction without a difference. They feel that building any new virus from suspect parts and then seeing if it infects humans is just as risky.
Like nuclear bomb testing, the need for “gain of function” research is hotly contested.
Proponents argue that it is the only way to stay ahead of epidemics: in a world full of emerging diseases, if you can figure out which pathogens are only a few amino acids tweaks shy of disaster, you can develop and stockpile vaccines and antibodies against them.
Opponents say that, noble as that goal may be, it is inherently too dangerous to pursue by building Frankensteins and poking them to see how strong they are.
Despite constantly rising biosafety levels, viruses we already know to be lethal, from smallpox to SARS, have repeatedly broken loose by accident.
Most leaks infect or kill just a few people before they are stopped by isolation and/or vaccination. But not all: scientists now believe that the H1N1 seasonal flu that killed thousands every year from 1977 to 2009 was influenza research gone feral. The strain first appeared in eastern Russia in 1977 and its genes were initially identical to a 1950 strain; that could have happened only if it had been in a freezer for 27 years. It also initially behaved as if it had been deliberately attenuated, or weakened. So scientists suspect it was a Russian effort to make a vaccine against a possible return of the 1918 flu. And then, they theorize, the vaccine virus, insufficiently weakened, began spreading.
Also, Dr. Shi’s teams had done work on inserting cleavage sites into viruses and seeing if that enhanced their ability to infect human cells. | https://medium.com/@donaldgmcneiljr1954/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-lab-leak-theory-f4f88446b04d | ['Donald G. Mcneil Jr.'] | 2021-05-25 15:41:02.945000+00:00 | ['Spillover', 'Conspiracy Theories', 'Vírus', 'Covid 19', 'Lab Leak'] |
Queer in Istanbul | Editor’s note: Beldan Sezen is a visual storyteller. In 2011, she was awarded the Three-in-One Chapbook Contest Prize for her graphic short stories “Fear City,” “Girls,” and “Demons.” Her first graphic-murder mystery, Zakkum, was installed at the Frauenmuseum Wiesbaden. Institutional collectors of her recent books include The New York Public Library, Stanford University, and the Library of Congress. Watch Beldan’s animated short ‘From the Diaries of Two Breasts’ here, or visit her website for more. | https://medium.com/muslim-women-speak/queer-in-istanbul-3778c2d3bc1e | ['Beldan Sezen'] | 2018-06-03 14:38:38.666000+00:00 | ['Turkey', 'LGBTQ', 'Human Rights', 'Sex', 'Women'] |
Otherness & Othering | Photo by Raphael Brasileiro from Pexels
One time, while I was living in China,
A white woman told me,
“Oh my god, you look like one of them
but you talk like one of us!”
and how I laughed it off.
I think about that moment a lot;
That allowance
to be “othered.”
We talk about the model minority
like there are shades to otherness
but my colonizer doesn’t see that.
He smiles patronizingly when
I speak with his accent
but doesn’t bother to learn
the language of my ancestors
in a land that his stole.
I think about how we are taught
across generations
to police our thoughts
and gentle our words
so that the colonizer doesn’t feel threatened.
I am told that this is how we beat the system.
My model minority is a majority
branded cheats & thieves
of intellectual property, with no original thought
by very original people
who parrot this rhetoric
while stealing our resources.
They are keen to let us know
that we are less than
because we live in a dictatorship,
because we do not have Freedom.
But the freedom my colonizer has
is delusion. Maybe one can only see chinks
in democracy through slanted eyes.
One time, while I was living in China,
An old Chinese man asked me,
“Where are you from?”
I think about that moment a lot.
That displacement of self
from Culture, History & Space.
I think about how I was taught
to colour myself into the lines
our colonizer has deemed Enough for us.
I think about the thoughtless jokes
we were taught to laugh off;
the caustic remarks we were told was acceptable
I think about how we are reminded
of how lucky we are to have escaped
from the persecution of skin
because of the colour of our passports.
I think about how some of us still
don’t understand the problem.
How some of us still
are willing to be “othered,”
as if we were really equals. | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/otherness-othering-8bc6125864e6 | ['C. Duhnne'] | 2020-11-02 11:06:45.002000+00:00 | ['Growing Up', 'Society', 'Racism', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Poetry'] |
Where did the romance of solitaire ring, the most famous engagement ring, start? | You have probably seen this scene a lot on social networks like Instagram:
One of your friends informs you of his marriage by sharing a photo of a solitaire ring in his hand!
Or in Bio Instagram and WhatsApp chat without saying a word and just using the emoji of a single diamond ring, it sends the message that I’m married and in a romantic relationship !!
I think we all know that the solitaire ring is known all over the world as a symbol of the most precious moments of life and love. This symbol is no longer just for Western countries and has been known in this way in our country and the whole world for several years.
Honestly, most engagement rings in the world are solitaire rings! but why? What happened when the solitaire ring and love and marriage became a strong and inseparable bond?
Follow me to tell you the story of the beginning of the love story of Solitaire Ring. After that, we will review some models of the most famous solitaire rings in the world so that you can easily choose your favorite engagement ring from among them.
Is only a ring with a single jewel called a solitaire ring?
As the name implies, this ring is called a single gem or solitaire ring that has a single diamond on it. The rest of the ring should be left without any decoration or gemstones and in complete simplicity.
A solitaire ring usually has a large diamond weighing more than 0.30 carats, and if the diamond is smaller than this, it is not considered a solitaire.
Some experts in the world of fashion and jewelry consider the Halo ring as a solitaire ring, while others, like me, are completely against this! Because the Hilo ring violates the main concept of the solitaire ring, which is the single diamond on it.
The Hilo ring has a large diamond on it, but it is surrounded by a halo of small diamonds, and sometimes even small diamonds are worked on the base of the ring.
But my advice to you is that if you want to have a real and original solitaire ring, be sure to choose simple and unique types of this ring!
Where did the solitaire ring love story begin?
When I tell you about a solitaire ring, what design comes to mind? Close your eyes and imagine this ring in your mind very well! You probably do not know, but the design you imagined is most likely the design of the classic and famous Tiffany ring!
A solitaire ring with a single diamond jewel with a round diamond cut on it and a white gold base, which ADVENTURINE magazine beautifully describes:
Charles Lewis Tiffany designed the design to worship the single diamond as a symbol of eternal love. Tiffany’s original design had six forks that held the large diamonds on the ring in the air at a distance from the gold base of the ring so that most of the light penetrated it from all sides of the ring and the diamond was extremely bright and sensual. He created from being suspended. This revolutionary, beautiful and unique design by Louis Tiffany was far removed from the crowded and diamond-studded designs of his time.
Not only did Tiffany put the diamonds in one piece, but she also left the base of the ring completely unadorned. Tiffany did not want anything to distract from the beauty of the single diamond on this ring.
Lewis wanted the diamond on his single ring to attract all the attention, just as love attracts all the attention! Tiffany Concept had chosen this ring for love and a romantic relationship, and she handled it beautifully.
Tiffany was the first jeweler to create a design as an engagement ring and a symbol of love. Completely confident in his design, he began promoting it in his own unique way.
After making a solitaire ring with the elixir of love, it was time for advertising. Tiffany launched extensive campaigns on the subject of love and marriage, and this was the beginning of turning Tiffany’s solitaire ring into a symbol of endless love between men and women.
Tiffany and her famous engagement ring have been in constant demand by young couples for about 130 years and a symbol of eternal love between the two, and do not seem to give up any time soon.
source | https://medium.com/@zomorodijewelry5/where-did-the-romance-of-solitaire-ring-the-most-famous-engagement-ring-start-7fa97797146f | [] | 2021-12-22 06:39:38.773000+00:00 | ['Diamond', 'Solitaire', 'Jewelry', 'Solitaire Rings', 'Solitaire Engagement Ring'] |
Why Hamlet Is The Best Play Shakespeare Ever Wrote | Photo Credit JP Cote
William Shakespeare, easily one of the greatest writers to have walked this Earth, wrote countless plays throughout his lifetime. Plays that we, as a society, four hundred years later, continue to read, study, and adapt. Of his plays that have survived the ages many are deemed good, many more deemed great. But I am here to argue that there is one play which stands above all others. One play that sets itself apart from the rest. One play that made Shakespeare the legend he is today. One play to rule them all! Too dramatic? Okay, I’ll tone it down a bit. But seriously there is one play that is the single greatest work William Shakespeare ever composed, and that play is Hamlet.
Now would be a great time to go into an extensively detailed summary of the plot of Hamlet, but I’m just going to assume that anyone reading this story has taken a high school English class. On the off chance that you haven’t read the play, you’ve definitely read the sparknote version of it. So, in the sake of saving you all from boring, redundant reading, I’m just going to get right into it. The first reason that Hamlet is the best, is also the most simple. It was bold.
In order to fully understand how bold a move Hamlet was, you have to understand the time period that the play was written in. During the early 1600’s a man by the name of Charles I was the king of England. Now Charles was not an authority figure like the ones we have today. People could not go on late night talk shows clowning him, or criticize his Twitter activity, or laugh at memes that made fun of his stupid hair. No, Charles was the King and this meant that his reign was heavenly ordained. This meant that to disparage him in any way was not simply to go against the country of Britain, it meant that you were going against God himself. And at a time when the existence of God was not something up for debate, but a concrete fact of life, this was kind of a big deal.
So, with all of this in mind, let’s review the following quote from Act 4 Scene 3. Hamlet says to his friend Claudius, “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm… nothing but to show you how a king may go progress through the guts of a beggar.” In this passage Hamlet is not only comparing kings to beggars, by explaining how they could both end up worm food, he is literally comparing kings to one of the lowest forms of life that we know of; worms. These lines are not simply controversial, they are absolutely blasphemous. It is surprising that Shakespeare got away with writing these lines with his head still attached much less that this play was adored and performed in public venues throughout England. Of course, Shakespeare was able to say that it was the character Hamlet who felt this way and not he himself. But there is no mistaking it, this was one hell of a gutsy move.
Apart from being a daring venture, the play shows some evidence that Shakespeare was well ahead of his time, philosophically speaking. In the first scene of Act 3 Hamlet is trying to act like he’s gone mad and parades around the courtyard ranting to himself. But the contents of this rant have become the most iconic lines of the play itself. “To be or not to be-that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles And, by opposing, end them… To die, to sleep-to sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” These lines are incredibly beautiful, and they illustrate his argument. Life is pain. To be alive is to experience pain, grief, and misfortune. Why not end it all? Why not avoid all the misery and simply put oneself to sleep? Life is meaningless, and we all die eventually, so what’s the point. Why not just avoid the agony and end it all.
But to understand why it is so interesting that these words were written, we once again have to imagine the time period. We currently live in a society where (for the most part) religion and politics/culture are separated. This was not the case in the 1600s. Nobody questioned the nature of life after death because that question had already been answered by the church. And certainly, no one questioned whether suicide was a favorable option to the pain of living because suicide is considered to be one of the harshest sins of the Christian faith. Sure, just like with the earlier quote Shakespeare could’ve sidestepped claiming that it was a fictional character in a fictional story, but the mere fact that he wrote these words shows the kind of thoughts that were swimming around in his mind. As any fiction writer will tell you, every character in one’s story is a little piece of themselves. For Shakespeare to compose such a gripping speech about the nature of life and death, he must have had some doubts of his own about the Christian religion. In this scene, Shakespeare proved that he possessed a philosophical mind on par with any of the greats who have lived throughout history.
Hamlet was a bold move and it certainly showed that Shakespeare had some philosophical prowess. But more than that, the play showed that Shakespeare had some serious intellectual prowess as well. In scene 1 of act 5 Hamlet is in a graveyard talking to his friend. He sees a skull on the ground, picks it up, and examines it. Hamlet then says, “Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ th’ earth?… Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam.” When Hamlet says Alexander he is referring to Alexander the Great. Possibly one of the most famous Kings to have ever lived. The connection being referred to here is that this skull could be anybody. It could just as easily be a peasants skull as it could a king because when it comes down to it we are all just dust that will eventually return to the earth from whence we came. What this quote proves is that Shakespeare had the ability to remove himself from the veil of society and to look at things from an unbiased perspective. He realized there is no heavenly ordainment. There is nothing that sets a beggar apart from a king except for the clothes they wear on their backs. All men die, and thus all men are created equal.
So basically, Shakespeare was an atheist who disagreed with the idea of monarchy and realized that all men are created equal and a society that positions certain human beings over others based on something silly like wealth or class is absolutely ridiculous. Shakespeare was well ahead of his time intellectually, philosophically, artistically and many more cally’s that I don’t feel like listing right now. But no other play proves this to such an extent. If you want to read some badass 1600’s literature, look no further than Hamlet. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/why-hamlet-is-the-best-play-shakespeare-ever-wrote-3e08886cbdd4 | ['Jean-Paul Cote'] | 2019-02-13 07:42:46.317000+00:00 | ['Literary Analysis', 'Humor', 'Nonfiction', 'Shakespeare', 'Literally Literary'] |
Fire and Fir | Under a dark cloudy blanket, a giant stood majestically overlooking his fluffy dwarf fellows, dressed in glamour that signified his sole superiority, his thousands of little hands naturally extended, around his arms wrapped festive wires, which climbed up from his stout and sturdy body firmly planted on the ground. His charming dark evergreen receded in the brilliance of the golden fairies. For decades he grew hungrily, avariciously absorbing all the nutrition given to him by Mother Land, keeping sturdy in the most violent of winds and the coldest of nights. To the dome of the heavens — that was his aptitude.
Today, looking at the glitters that shone warmly in those little people’s eyes as they held up their heads, admiring him, there was a little proudness in his heart. He’s never been bothered by the cold, but he still appreciated the warmth that now ran through his trunk. He looked down, and found the source of that warmth — a half-person tall campfire was erected in the centre of the five good friends. Two of whom he recognized: Don and Will who dressed him up. The others, however, the giant could only guess. Though accurately speculated, he still felt like he didn’t really know them, and he wanted to, for they seemed important to Don.
“Pst!” he signalled.
“Yes?” An impatient voice flared up, spitting carelessly. “Oh, sorry,” as the fire noticed the people around him startle.
“How does it look down there?”
“Um, snowy?”
“Yeah I know! They come to me before you. The humans, I mean. How does it look like down in that circle? …Jeez, after all these years, one would think you’d become more mellow. Still so grumpy, so impatient.”
“Oh…Mmm…Warm and cozy, like always. How’s it looking up there?” Fire ignored Fir’s comment and asked half-heartedly.
“Oh, magnificent! I’ve finally grown tall enough to overlook the whole plane without obstacles. I can see where the heaven meets the earth.”
“Good for you.”
“What are they talking about?”
“You can’t hear? I thought firs have great hearing.”
“Too tall. And it’s fairly windy up here — the trunks down there pretty much shielded off most of it.”
“Tall species problems,” followed by a head shake and a sigh. “They just talking about mundane, human stuff.”
“C’mon, tell me more. Deets! I know you’re a reticent kind, but indulge me. We haven’t seen each other for quite a while, after all.”
“True. When was it? Two centuries ago?”
“Something like that. Hunting was still a necessity, so was fire and wood.”
“Yeah…it’s crazy, isn’t it?” Fire grew pensive.
“What is?” Fir grew curious.
“Three human lifetimes had come and gone, but to us it’s barely noticeable anymore.”
“That is true! I’ve hardly grown to middle age, and the person who planted me is a bunch of skeletons now. Even more so for you! You’re immortal.”
“Yeah, honestly, it’s like mere seconds for me.”
“You know…” just when Fir was going to contemplate out loud, Fire interrupted him.
“Oh, wait! Did you know this was Don’s first Christmas ever?”
“What? No way! He must’ve been to a party or two, living in the city.”
“Apparently he’s always busy with work, and with his family not on good terms since he could remember, it was just never a thing for him. ‘Couldn’t get into the spirit,” that’s what he said.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that. Oh, I miss that.” Washed over now with a sudden sadness now a sense of reminiscence, the breezes made Fir look more forlorn than he felt.
“What?”
“Remember when people used to talk to us? About their fears, hopes, aspirations, and sometimes even pray to us? That disappeared when all these machines started to appear.”
“Oh, yeah…I miss that too.”
“Yeah?” Fir was a little surprised. “I thought there are still spiritual people who use fire as a…a medium, or something?”
“Yeah, but it’s not the same, you know? It used to be a community, a village, and I felt a part of it, because people would dance around me and I would dance with them. Now, I’m a medium in their lives, not a part of it. For most, they come to me when they need me, which still feels nice — who doesn’t wanna feel helpful? But…” Fire looked around at the five friends surrounding him, feeling nostalgic, “I still miss this.”
“Oh? Aren’t Don and his friends just using you as warmth?”
“Well, they could well just go inside.” Fire flared gently his flames on the side, showing Fir the snow floor.
“Oh, I guess that’s true. They can still see me from inside, too, I guess… Speaking of, why did Don feel like Christmas all of a sudden, I wonder?”
“Oh, they’re just talking about this, actually. You know Anastasia? The student?”
“Yeah, I might’ve caught her name once or twice when Don was putting up these fairies with Will.”
“She was just talking about how she never felt the festive spirit, either.”
“Right,” a piece of conversation flashed back to Fir all of a sudden, “Don was saying their Christmas used to be just a gathering in one of their apartments with snacks and movies. No decorations, no dinner, not to mention any rituals.”
“Yeah, yeah! See, her family apparently is far away, and she never felt like Christmas without them here. So it’s always been just another weekend or something.”
“Oh…” Fir could felt throughout his trunk what he thought Anastasia must’ve felt. And he was a little blue.
“I know…” Fire was empathetic to his old friend.
“Well, what about Will? He was here helping Don put this whole thing together.”
“Oh, he’s just talking right now. Hold on…” And both fell silent for a while.
The high wind whistled in Fir’s ears, and he looked up to the moon peeking out from a crack between the grey clouds. He then looked out in the direction of the city. He imagined his life in this incomprehensible cement forest, times when he’s hard at work, and when he lays back somewhere after a long day. He wondered what he was feeling and thinking. He thought of Will, and how he and Don must’ve been strolling down the paths among the cement giants and talking about all kinds of things. Or maybe they talked through that sorcerous medium called a phone. Either way, he wondered what kind of conversation they had that brought all of them here, what had stirred in their hearts that caused them to break their tradition of movies with excessive snacking.
The wind wouldn’t stop whistling. Fir dreaded to listen with his own ears the stories of these tiny humans, which he didn’t know how hungrily he longed for until he now heard them again. Fire was quite an outstanding storyteller, despite choice of words being few, he managed to make Fir feel a faint sense of participation and the longing grew. He wanted to hear their voices and the specific peculiarities thereof, but in the end, he was quite immersed and lost in learning about these humans, thanks to Fire.
There was Don and Anastasia for whom the Christmas spirit was quite absent from the beginning. There was Will whose family wasn’t a big fan, so despite the fact that he is, he had grown used to the plain atmosphere at home, but that’s why he often spent the season with his buddies, making the night a bit more special (also an excuse to go crazy on indulgences). Then there was Maggie who grew up having quite traditional Christmases but has always been intrigued by such ideas as friends-giving. And finally Peter has always been a big Christmas fan, especially because he loved sharing his baked goodness, but he’s currently in a stage where he’d decided to explore the zone outside of family conventions and had been rather willing to just chill at Will’s apartment for this reason.
For variously individual reasons, however, tonight they gathered themselves under Fir surrounding Fire. Peter was excited with half a heart about a new thing that shall become Christmas staple, with the other half leaping about showcasing his pastries. Maggie was taken off the feet by her curiosity and sheer adventurousness. Will felt at heart that he had stumbled upon a second family who are excited about Christmas. Anastasia, the most indifferent, secretly made up her mind to make at least one change in her life this year, and Christmas happened to be around the corner, along with Don. Don, on the other hand, revisited one of his favourite sitcoms — the iconic FRIENDS. He almost scolded himself for the slowness with which he had arrived at the eureka moment.
An author, Don had always wondered what of the story of this silly sitcom attracted his complex mind. A clinician, Don had exhausted all resources, external or inner, trying to dissect the characters and put their circumstances under the microscope, trying to answer what seemed to be unanswerable. And many an answer has he arrived, Don was never satisfied with any of them. Not until now, sitting among friends speaking his mind to the campfire, did he realize it was all right in front of him. It was so simple yet trumped any analysis he’d ever attempted. As it poured out of him, he became lost in the glow of Fire. He felt uncanny in his heart, as it felt simultaneously empty and deep. In a flash, just before his friends’ voices pulled him out, he thought this pyre would speak back to him. But it was only the humble crackling whispers.
Fir was moved. His branches rustled with thrill. As if echoing his call, the ocean of evergreen sang in a synchronized chorus. Let the chilling winter winds howl, they could not penetrate the sylvan giants.
Fire was touched. His flame twisted with trill. As if answering to his passion, the mist of kindles danced in an exuberant choreograph. Let the snowflakes fall, they could not permeate the fiery radiance. | https://thecreative.cafe/fire-and-fir-56dd16165727 | ['Bill Yuan'] | 2021-01-31 04:08:26.498000+00:00 | ['Tradition', 'Christmas', 'Home', 'Community', 'Spirituality'] |
N.B. I write. But I am not a journalist. I have some influence. But I am not an Influencer. | N.B. I write. But I am not a journalist. I have some influence. But I am not an Influencer. Darren Woolley Jul 15·4 min read
I recognise I am in a privileged and yet often frustrating situation. I have built a reputation — good, bad, but never indifferent — in the marketing, media and advertising category. Many interesting and influential people will contact me to discuss ideas, plans and ask for my advice or opinion.
It is interesting when an email or a phone call or any number of social media platform messages come from people I do not know offering thoughts and opportunities I had not considered.
Some of my colleagues ask me why I always respond to each of these messages? The reason is that if the person has taken the effort to contact me personally (i.e. the message is addressed to me and my name is spelt correctly) then they must have seen in it some opportunity for themselves. Then why shouldn’t I take a minute to see if there is some opportunity in it for me?
It could be to learn about a new thing? Or learn more on something I already knew? Or obtain a different perspective? Or something of value either financially, emotionally, intellectually or otherwise.
But increasingly I am getting messages like this:
The email that started the conversation
The subject line was: Hairydog Makes 3 New Major Agency Appointments Ahead of Celebrity Ambassador Search.
The email read: Hairydog, an independent Australian-owned and operated alcohol delivery company, have recently made three new major agency appointments ahead of their celebrity ambassador search.
Project PR & Media, Milkman Agency and Brindle Marketing have all been appointed major roles with Hairydog including PR strategy and celebrity ambassador engagement, creative campaign management and media buying (respectively).
See attached media release with additional information.
Thanks,
I thought that is vaguely interesting. A tidbit of information. But what was it all about? Even the press release attached offered no more other than details.
The press release sent to me
As there was no call to action or a request for a response of any type I filed it in the trash. Only to then receive another follow-up email two days later and have the following exchange:
The subsequent email exchange
The follow-up email read:
Hi Darren,
Hope you have been having a great week!
Just following up the below email — let me know if you’re interested?
Thanks,
I was confused as to what would be my interest in this tidbit of industry news and wrote:
Yes, I got it
Is there something you wanted me to do?
Darren
The response was immediate and said:
We were hoping a write-up on the Mumbrella website detailing the appointments and the info in the media release!
Let me know
Thanks,
For those who know, I have been writing a column for Mumbrella so the past four months under the title “Woolley Marketing”. But then I have been writing opinion pieces in marketing, business and advertising for almost two decades. In fact, I found out I have my own MuckRack profile. But this does not qualify me as a hard-working professional journalist. I am simply an opinion writer, who hopefully writes opinions people are interested in reading.
Likewise, while I may have some influence in the marketing industry, I am not a paid influencer and it is not ‘influence’ for hire.
By the way, I forwarded the email from the PR company to the very hard-working and professional, Olivia Kruimel, Managing Editor at Mumbrella, explaining:
I am simply a Mumbrella columnist, not a reporter. It is not my role to write up or report on your press releases. Trinity P3 is a marketing management consulting firm. But I have copied the Managing Editor of Mumbrella, Olivia Kruimel here, as she may be able to help.
Cheers. Darren
Olivia wrote back:
Thanks, Darren.
You are far kinder than I am. I would have told them to do her job properly…
Cheers, Olivia
The world of the journalist and the PR Hack? It is not for me. | https://medium.com/@darrenp3/n-b-i-write-but-i-am-not-a-journalist-i-have-some-influence-but-i-am-not-an-influencer-4f5c24a31433 | ['Darren Woolley'] | 2021-07-15 07:36:17.646000+00:00 | ['Press Release', 'Influencers', 'Public Relations', 'Journalism'] |
How to make height of collection views dynamic in your iOS apps | Table views and collection views have always been an integral part of iOS app development. We all might have came across various issues related to them. In this article, we’ll discuss one such problem statement related to collection views.
Problem Statement
Let’s assume we’ve a UICollectionView in a UITableViewCell and around 20 UICollectionViewCells that we need to render in it vertically. We can definitely implement that in the blink of an eye with the given data source.
Now comes the actual problem statement — we need the UITableViewCell to adjust its height dynamically according to its content. Also, the UICollectionView must be such that all the cells are displayed in one go, i.e. no scrolling allowed.
Long story short: make everything dynamic…
Fixed and Dynamic Height Collection View
Let’s start coding
A view in iOS calculates its height from its content, given there is no height constraint provided. Same goes for UITableViewCell .
For now, we’ll keep a single collectionView inside our tableViewCell with its leading, top, trailing and bottom constraints set to 0.
View Hierarchy
Since we haven’t provided any height constraint to the collectionView and neither do we know the its contentSize beforehand, then how will the tableViewCell calculate its height?
Solution
Dynamically calculating the collectionView’s height as per its contentSize is simply a 3 step process.
1. Subclass UICollectionView and override its layoutSubviews() and intrinsicContentSize , i.e.
Code Snippet — 1
The above code will invalidate the intrinsicContentSize and will use the actual contentSize of collectionView . The above code takes into consideration the custom layout as well.
2. Now, set DynamicHeightCollectionView as the collectionView’s class in storyboard .
3. One last thing, for the changes to take effect: you need to call layoutIfNeeded() on collectionView , after reloading collectionView’s data, i.e.
func configure(with arr: [String]) {
self.arr = arr
self.collectionView.reloadData()
self.collectionView.layoutIfNeeded() //Here..!!!
}
And there you have it!
Sample Project
You can download the sample project from here.
Further reading
Don’t forget to read my other articles:
Feel free to leave comments in case you have any questions. | https://medium.com/free-code-camp/how-to-make-height-collection-views-dynamic-in-your-ios-apps-7d6ca94d2212 | ['Payal Gupta'] | 2019-02-27 13:18:24.213000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Programming', 'Technology', 'Swift', 'Data'] |
I Served 22 Years in Prison and Was Just Released Into a Pandemic | Life in the Time of the Coronavirus is a GEN series where we are interviewing people across the country who have had their lives upended or are experiencing the stress of the unknown.
Vanessa Santiago, 40, was released from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on March 30 after serving 22 years in prison. She is currently living in a short-term studio rental in Syracuse, New York, as she waits to move to Florida to rejoin her family, but parole obligations and travel limitations due to Covid-19 have forced her to put off these plans.
On March 30, 2020, I got out of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, New York state’s maximum-security prison for women. I went in at the age of 18 and walked out two days after I turned 40, into the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis.
Before my arrest, I lived a fast-paced life. I started having sex for money at 14. From then on, I stripped, schemed, and partied every day. At 16, I was put out on the streets by a 28-year-old man. I got young girls working for me, like a little madame. I searched for power, didn’t care for acceptance, wanted people to fear me. I was addicted to sex and violence. I had no morals.
Don’t misunderstand me: I wasn’t born cold-hearted, and I’m not that way now. As a kid, I squeezed everyone in a bear hug. But I remember being four years old and sitting alone at 3 a.m., waiting for my mom. From the age of seven until 13, I was sexually abused by multiple family members. I shut down. I was sent to a school counselor who also molested me. He molested other girls too. He got a few years’ probation. He didn’t even do time.
After that, I ran away. From 13, I lived on the streets or in group homes and juvenile facilities. My mother didn’t protect me. My father died in an accident at his welding job. The school system didn’t help me, and the justice system failed me. I dissociated. I had no compassion, no connection to humanity. I was in that mindset when I took the most extreme action: I killed a person.
During my early years in prison, I said: “I don’t have kids, so I don’t care what happens to me.” But when, after a time, I really reflected, I had to admit I hurt people because I was angry and in pain, and I believed I deserved to die in prison. I started to change my behaviors, to take classes, to learn who I really was. I tried to nurture other women. I thought about my victim, how I had taken her from her loved ones. I met a free man, and we began to correspond. We got married. He inspired me to be better, to want a different future, to want to accomplish something. I read the Bible. I prayed. In 2019, I went before the parole board, explained my past and how I’ve changed. I owned up to what I’d done. On March 9 this year, I got the letter: They were letting me out.
Suddenly, my release was imminent. At the same time, I was watching on the news how the coronavirus was spreading. By mid-March, the prison stopped family visits with no warning. Then we noticed the maintenance men were in our units every day, fixing everything. Usually, a toilet or an ice machine can be broken for months, years. But they were preparing because they knew they weren’t coming back. They knew we would be locked down.
I was bewildered by the self-checkout at Walmart. And how do you stand in line? In prison, we always had to be close. Now I have to be six feet away from everyone?
People had been getting sick, one here, one there. The civilian who ran commissary tested positive. We stopped getting our items regularly. People started smuggling stuff around the prison, from unit to unit, to survive: coolers, frying pans, food, soap, toothpaste. With the virus, it got extra chaotic because guards didn’t want to touch or search us. They still found ways to dehumanize us, acting as if we had the disease. But they were the ones who brought it to us.
Then people were plucked up because they had contact with someone sick. They were quarantined on their own unit or in medical, and often nobody knew what happened to them. Back in February, I started vomiting, had diarrhea, lost my sense of taste and smell. They put me in a room with three other people. I don’t know why they were there, except one had diabetes; for all anyone knew, I could have given them Covid-19 or gotten it from them, but we were never tested. I made a mask out of pantyliners and tried to stay away from them. Because I didn’t have a fever, I was sent back to the general population after one night. Over the next month, more and more people were getting sick. I started panicking, thinking if I didn’t get out soon, I may never leave.
On March 30, I stepped out onto the street, holding a bit of legal paperwork, two books, and my medications. My husband was there. He wore his own mask but hadn’t brought one for me. He was holding some gum and some sunflower seeds like I requested. Then he drove me five hours to his place. There wasn’t even a little space for me in his dresser. He wouldn’t give me a dollar or explain how to do anything. Last time I was on the streets, I was a child, a child who didn’t follow any of the rules. So I didn’t know how to open a bank account, pay a bill, use a smartphone or a microwave. Didn’t know my own bra size. I was bewildered by the self-checkout at Walmart. And how do you stand in line? In prison, we always had to be close. Now I have to be six feet away from everyone? I didn’t know the regular outside rules or the new Covid-19 rules.
I was mostly stuck in a house with a person who didn’t want me. I felt lower than I have in 10 years. I started missing prison. I stayed wide awake for the first three days, lost and lonely. Then I got a room at the Econo Lodge. When I couldn’t afford that, I found a temporary studio rental.
I’ve been out for three weeks now, trying to figure out my next move. Parole rules stipulate you need to find a job or be in school, but there are no jobs, so I’m pushing forward to study. And I need to get to Florida, where my family has relocated, but again, it’s complicated by parole and now the travel ban. Meanwhile, strangers mostly have shown me the ropes: how to use a key card, how to work a borrowed laptop. I’m exploring the internet, learning Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. It’s exciting and addicting. I write little posts and try to reconnect with people.
I’m also fighting for those I left behind, working on clemency petitions to Gov. Andrew Cuomo for my friends. I keep in touch with their families, but we’re all in the dark. If you get taken to the prison medical unit, they won’t let you make calls or check emails, won’t give you a pen and paper, sometimes no soap and no shower, just your food shoved through on a disposable tray. One woman who has Covid-19 and asthma was so terrified, she kicked down the door so she could call her mom. So many of my friends in there are innocent and suffering from underlying health conditions. It could be a death sentence for them. I would have given them my place to go home, but that wasn’t an option. So I gave them my word I’d try to help.
Even while I worry for them, every day is a little better for me. I accept that I’m free, even in this room. After all, I can walk out if I want, stay up until midnight, talk on the phone until I fall asleep, buy an ice cream cake at the store, see my nephew celebrate his birthday live on a video call. These are the luxuries you don’t have in there. Sometimes, I watch kids playing basketball with their parents in their driveway nearby. It’s beautiful. People say this isolation is like a prison, but it’s not. In there, you never have the chance to see something like this, to maybe even one day be a part of it.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. | https://gen.medium.com/i-served-22-years-in-prison-and-was-just-released-into-a-pandemic-e79d68edf37a | ['Justine Van Der Leun'] | 2020-04-21 17:21:49.753000+00:00 | ['Justice', 'Prison', 'Life In The Time', 'Covid 19', 'Coronavirus'] |
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🦋 TELEVISION 🦋
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 191s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 1915s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 150s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3451513, 3451513 and 3334. Since 115, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 150s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-115s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 115s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 115s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 150s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 150s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 115s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
🦋 OVERVIEW 🦋
A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues.
Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault.
In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare The Expanse, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, The Expanse’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being.
Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant. | https://medium.com/@rruthan/s5-ep4-the-expanse-series-5-episode-4-hd-720p-online-a47ad1b881be | [] | 2020-12-22 06:36:17.187000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Mystery', 'Science Fiction', 'Drama', 'TV Series'] |
Leverage Reinforcement Learning for building intelligent trains — Flatland NeurIPS Challenge 2020 | SBB in collaboration with Deutsche Bahn (DB) and French railways (SNCF) organized another round of the flatland challenge. The goal is the same as in the previous challenge, we need to train intelligent trains that can successfully navigate the railway network, from an initial starting point to predefined target, without causing deadlocks and other delays in the network. (The blog post about last year’s challenge can be found here.) The evaluation is done on previously unseen set of environments. Additional complexity is introduced by trains malfunctions, the goal of which is to test the adaptability of the trained agents. A simple example of one environment and the movements of the trains is shown on Fig.1.
Fig.1. Visualization of the challenge. Shown are starting positions of the trains, their target stations and the railway structure.
The motivation of the challenge comes from the SBB’s need to increase its network capacity. Therefore, a mechanism for simulating and evaluating a change is needed. Self-adapting and intelligent trains are part of the plan of the challenge of increasing the railway network’s capacity.
New challenge
In this year’s challenge, the constraints for solving the environments was different. Whereas last year, when there was a set of environments that needed to be solved in 8 hours timeframe, now the evaluation is done on an infinite set of environments, and the goal is to score as many points as possible. The score of each environment is calculated based on the percentage of agents that successfully reached their targets, as well as total number of executed steps. The termination criteria for the evaluation were either low score (mean percentage of done agents in the last ten environments is lower than 25%) or 8 hours of evaluation time has passed. This means that the proposed solution needs to have two points of optimization: time and accuracy. This tested the ability of the reinforcement learning agents to generalize well in short amounts of time. The next sections give a detailed overview of our solution.
Solution
The challenge had a special Reinforcement Learning (RL) category, and this approach was preferable (and more challenging) over the algorithmic one. We competed in this category and managed to train a well performing agent. The main parts of our RL solutions are shown on Fig.2. We used the Flatland simulation environment as our training environment. Our intelligent agents represented the trains. We used the RLlib library for model implementation. The model took the state of the agent as an input and outputted the optimal action. In each episode, we collected SARSA pairs for each train, and provided them as the training set to the model (meaning there was one global model that learned the policy for all agents).
Fig.2. The basic elements of the RL algorithm
The advantages of the RL approach were manifold. Firstly, it can generalize well for new and unseen environments, and adapt to road blockages. Secondly, by modification to the reward function, we can hand-craft the desired behavior of the agents. And lastly, it is far more computationally efficient compared to a planning and algorithmic approach. At each timestamp, each agent observes just a small portion of the whole map and sends it through the model (Neural Network). Fig. 3 highlights the portion of the map visible to each agent.
Fig.3. Highlight of the portion of the map that each agents observers in its state vector
New observation (state of the agents)
The first choice we needed to make is how to represent the environment. Unlike last year where we used the pre-made observations modified with our custom features, this time we focused more on generating totally custom observation based on a graph. The first attempt was to build a cell-graph, meaning each cell in the map is represented as a node in the graph. An example of this representation is shown on Fig 4.
Fig.4. Cell graph representation of the environment
It is obvious that a lot of the cells have a degree of 2, and can be merged together, which means that this representation is not optimal. In our second attempt, we represented each switch as a node, and there is a edge between two nodes only if there is a directed path between the switches. This led us to the representation shown in Fig. 5.
Fig.5. Each node in the graph representation of the environment is a switch
But an important piece of information was missing from this representation and that is the direction of the agents.
Initially each rail in the environment is represented in the graph like (x, y, d) where x, y are the coordinates of the rail in the environment and d is the direction in which the agent will be if it is on that rail.
An edge between two nodes, (x1,y1,d1) and (x2,y2,d2) means that a train with position x1,y1 and a direction d1 can go to x2,y2 and its new direction would be d2. However, since for each rail there would be a minimum of 2 nodes but with different directions in the graph, we decided to shrink it in a such way that the nodes represent the switches and the edges are the segments between the switches, which we called segment graph. An example segment graph is shown on Fig.6. From there we generate a feature vector for each train in the environment.
Fig.6. Segment graph representation of the environment
The next choice we needed to make was how to represent each segment of the graph. The goal was to provide each agent with enough information, so it can make an intelligent and informed choice for the next action. We focused on features describing distance, deadlock and environment properties. We experimented with a lot of features, and choose the final set based on agents’ performances.
Many of the features that we included in our experiments proved to be more of noise to the model and led to reduced model performance. These features included statistical information about the environment (for example graph measurements that can be extracted from the representation of the environment, like betweenness and closeness), time tick info (the number of elapsed steps since the beginning of the episode), info about the next switch (usability and distance), info about the other agents (distance and malfunction), etc.
The most important features that were included in all of our well performing models were: information about the shortest path (distance, direction), some conflict info (for example deadlock, deadlock in the next whole segment until the next usable switch), the status of the agent and priority. Here, our most important feature is priority, which we will dive deeper into in the next section.
Priority
The concept of priority significantly improved the results in the last round, so we decided to include it in this round as well. The details can be found in the previous blog post (here). In short, each agent is assigned priority based on the conflicts it has. First, we build a conflict graph, (shown on Fig. 7). The nodes represent the agents, and there is an edge between two nodes if there is a conflict between the agents (assuming they follow their shortest path to the station). The conflicts are resolved by a graph coloring technique. Namely, in each step a node of the graph is chosen, and a priority of 1 is assigned. All of its neighbors are assigned a priority of 0.
Fig.7. Representation of the priority concept. On the right, the wait-for graph is shown, together with the color values for each node (1 or 0)
Two main asserts needs to be true for the conflict graph. First, no two neighbors can have a priority of 1, and second, there should be sanity checks implemented for an agent with priority of 1. For example, an agent whose path is blocked by another agent can’t have priority.
In this round we introduced another improvement to the priority concept. Namely, we added a different priority for ready-to-depart agents, allowing us to penalize this behavior differently in the reward function. We experimented with different strategies for assigning priority to ready-to-depart agents. The simplest idea is to limit the number of active agents on the map, meaning when more than x agents are active all ready-to-depart agents have a priority of 0. We upgraded this concept, and when calculating the priority of ready-to-depart agents, we added some logic for the free shortest path of each agent, for example information whether another agent with the same path is already on the map.
Reward structure
The rewarding is one of the most significant part of the RL algorithms. There are many examples where reward structures that make sense to humans are not appropriate for the RL algorithms; namely, the agents often learn how to leverage loopholes in the reward structure to optimize the smaller objectives and thus maximize the total reward at the end, without achieving the main goal. Think chess for example; if the reward is given for taking pieces, the agents may focus on taking the opponent’s pieces and still lose the game at the end.
We struggled with similar behavior from our agents. Upon visualization of the poor-performing agents, we identified examples when they deliberately moved to unwanted situations just so they can avoid them and get a positive reward. For example, if one of the choices on the switch has agents in the opposite direction, we award reward if the agent chooses the other option and doesn’t get into deadlock. The result was agents that deliberately got into “near deadlock” situations, so they can collect the “avoid deadlock” reward.
In our final reward setting, the only positive reward was getting into the target. We also included smaller and larger penalization for correcting unwanted behaviors. The biggest negative penalization was for getting into deadlock. With smaller penalization we correct not following priority, missing the shortest path, unwanted stopping etc.
Models and training
In this round we also experimented with different RL models, both on-policy (IMPALA, PPO, CCPPO) and off-policy models (APEX-DQN). For all the models we used the RLlib library for implementations. (https://docs.ray.io/en/master/rllib.html). RLlib offers scalability and unified API for different models, which together with easy configuration makes the experiments easier to implement. The best model, as well as the best parameters, were chosen experimentally. Our best results were achieved with APEX-DQN network.
Additionally, we adopted some of the baseline ideas, for example action masking. In each state, only a subset of actions are valid and available, due to the railway settings and the choice of switches. The action masking mechanism ensured that at each time stamp for each agent only valid actions can be chosen. Moreover, we decided to reduce the dimensionality of the action space. Namely, we removed the do nothing action which just copies the previous decision the train made.
We introduced the concept of incremental training, meaning the difficulty of the provided training environments changed over time. At the beginning, the training is done on simple environment with very few agents. The idea is for the agents to learn simple behaviors like following the shortest path to the stations. As the training progresses, so does the complexity of the training environments. The idea behind this is to allow the agents to experience more complex situations and thus learn more complex behaviors, like avoiding deadlocks, choosing less frequented paths etc.
Results and evaluation
As mentioned earlier, the agents need to solve as many episodes as possible. The complexity of the environments increases during the course of the evaluation, introducing the concept of levels. Each level consists of 10 environments to be solved with different malfunction frequencies. The level configurations can be found here.
Flatland was a really fun and exiting experience, but it was also challenging at times to find a good solution. We trained many agents with varying performances. Our best performing agent was able to get to environment 229, which means it solved environments from level 22, with 181 agents and 20 cities, which is really impressive! The total score we obtained was 181.48, and during the evaluation the average of 88.1% of the agents reached their targets successfully. The reason for termination was reached overall time limit for evaluation (which was 8 hours). Our best performing agent got us a second place in the competition in the RL category! A part of the evaluation of our winning agent is given on Figure 8.
Fig.8 Visual representation of the performance of our top agent
Although there is still a room for improvement, we are very satisfied with the score. The models showed some really intelligent behavior in terms of following priorities and avoiding deadlocks, which is another proof that a Reinforcement learning approach is suitable for this kind of tasks. | https://blog.netcetera.com/leverage-reinforcement-learning-for-building-intelligent-trains-flatland-neurips-challenge-2020-6cc8882f7700 | ['Stevanoska Evgenija'] | 2020-12-18 14:44:15.325000+00:00 | ['Rllib', 'Reinforcement Learning', 'Sbb', 'Challenge', 'Optimization'] |
Processing Engines for Big Data | Introduction
This article is based on my previous article “Big Data Pipeline Recipe” where I tried to give a quick overview of all aspects of the Big Data world.
The goal of this article is to focus on the “T” of the a Big Data ETL pipeline reviewing the main frameworks to process large amount of data. The main focus will be the Hadoop ecosystem.
But first, let’s review what this phase is all about. Remember, at this point you have ingested raw data that is ready to be processed.
Big Data Processing Phase
The goal of this phase is to clean, normalize, process and save the data using a single schema. The end result is a trusted data set with a well defined schema. Processing frameworks such Spark are used to process the data in parallel in a cluster of machines.
Generally, you would need to do some kind of processing such as:
Validation : Validate data and quarantine bad data by storing it in a separate storage. Send alerts when a certain threshold is reached based on your data quality requirements.
: Validate data and quarantine bad data by storing it in a separate storage. Send alerts when a certain threshold is reached based on your data quality requirements. Wrangling and Cleansing : Clean your data and store it in another format to be further processed, for example replace inefficient JSON with Avro.
: Clean your data and store it in another format to be further processed, for example replace inefficient JSON with Avro. Normalization and Standardization of values
and of values Rename fields
fields …
Remember, the goal is to create a trusted data set that later can be used for downstream systems. This is a key role of a data engineer. This can be done in a stream or batch fashion.
The pipeline processing can be divided in three phases in case of batch processing:
Pre Processing Phase
If the raw data is not clean or not in the right format, you need to pre process it. This phase includes some basic validation, but the goal is to prepare the data to be efficiently processed for the next stage. In this phase, you should try to flatten the data and save it in a binary format such Avro. This will speed up further processing. The idea is that the next phase will perform row level operations, and nested queries are expensive, so flattening the data now will improve the next phase performance.
Trusted Phase
In this phase, data is validated, cleaned, normalized and transformed to a common schema stored in Hive or in another data store. The goal is to create a trusted common data set understood by the data owners. Typically, a data specification is created and the role of the data engineer is to apply transformations to match the specification which includes validation rules, transformations, standardization of values, renaming fields, etc.
The end result is a data set in Parquet or other columnar format that can be easily queried. It is critical that you choose the right partitions and optimize the data to perform internal queries.
You may want to partially pre-compute some aggregations at this stage to improve query performance.
Reporting Phase
This step is optional but often required. Unfortunately, when using a data lake, a single schema will not serve all use cases; this is one difference between a data warehouse and data lake. Querying HDFS is not as efficient as a database or data warehouse, so further optimizations are required.
In this phase, you may need to denormalize the data to store it using different partitions so it can be queried more efficiently by the different stakeholders. The idea is to create different views optimized for the different downstream systems (data marts).
In this phase you can also compute aggregations if you do not use an OLAP engine. The trusted phase does not know anything about who will query the data, this phase optimizes the data for the consumers. If a client is highly interactive, you may want to introduce a fast storage layer in this phase like a relational database for fast queries. Alternatively you can use OLAP engines.
For streaming the logic is the same but it will run inside a defined DAG in a streaming fashion. Spark allows you to join stream with historical data but it has some limitations. OLAP engines are which are better suited to merge real time with historical data.
Processing Frameworks
Some of the tools you can use for processing are:
This is the most well known framework for batch processing. Part of the Hadoop ecosystem, it is a managed cluster which provides incredible parallelism, monitoring and a great UI. It also supports stream processing (structural streaming). Basically Spark runs MapReduce jobs in memory increasing up to 100x times regular MapReduce performance. It integrates with Hive to support SQL and can be used to create Hive tables, views or to query data. It has lots of integrations, supports many formats and has a huge community. It is supported by all cloud providers. It can run on YARN as part of a Hadoop cluster but also in Kubernetes and other platforms. It has many libraries for specific use cases such SQL or machine learning.
The first engine to unify batch and streaming but heavily focus on streaming. It can be used as a backbone for microservices like Kafka. It can run on YARN as part of a Hadoop cluster but since its inception has been also optimized for other platforms like Kubernetes or Mesos. It is extremely fast and provides real time streaming, making it a better option than Spark for low latency stream processing, especially for stateful streams. It also has libraries for SQL, Machine Learning and much more. It is faster than Spark and a better option for data streaming.
Apache Storm is a free and open source distributed real-time computation system.It focuses on streaming and it is a managed solution part of the Hadoop ecosystem. It is scalable, fault-tolerant, guarantees your data will be processed, and is easy to set up and operate.
Another great stateful stream processing engine. Samza allows you to build stateful applications that process data in real-time from multiple sources including Apache Kafka. Managed solution part of the Hadoop Ecosystem that runs on top of YARN.
Apache Beam it is not an engine itself but a specification of an unified programming model that brings together all the other engines. It provides a programming model that can be used with different languages, so developers do not have to learn new languages when dealing with big data pipelines. Then, it plugs different back ends for the processing step that can run on the cloud or on premises. Beam supports all the engines mentioned before and you can easily switch between them and run them in any platform: cloud, YARN, Mesos, Kubernetes. If you are starting a new project, I really recommend starting with Beam to be sure your data pipeline is future proof.
Conclusion
Processing engines are the most famous tool currently used in the Big Data word. As a big data engineer, you will be working with these engines quite often. It is critical that you understand the distributed nature of these engines and you know how to optimize them, secure them and monitor them.
Remember that there are also OLAP engines that provide a single solution to query large amounts of data without the need to write complex transformations but by loading data in a specific format which makes queries much more performant.
For a new project, I really recommend looking into Apache Beam since it provides an abstraction on top of all the other engines allowing you to change the processing engine without changing the code.
For stream processing, specially stateful stream processing, consider Flink or Samza. For batch, use Spark. | https://itnext.io/processing-engines-for-big-data-5827bfad6b02 | ['Javier Ramos'] | 2020-10-29 12:37:54.566000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Etl', 'Scala', 'Apache', 'Spark'] |
Beyond Coding: Watson Assistant Entities — Part 2, The Faces Of Entities | Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
In the first article, we went through an overview of where entities fit in the Watson Assistant structure. We also touched upon the different types of entities and their benefits.
In this article, we will take a closer look at the different types of entities — synonyms and patterns. As we know, entities are a feature which allows us to group items or concepts. This allows us to strengthen the intelligence of our Watson Assistant. But to further improve a customer’s (or end-user’s) experience, we can use entities to recognize patterns and extract data.
Entities are also broken down in two areas. The first is user-generated entities and the second is system entities. For now, we will focus on user-generated entities (entities you create for your assistant). System entities will be discussed in other articles.
User Generated Entities — Synonyms
At their very core, entities are synonyms which help the assistant determine what the customer is asking (in conjunction with intents). Entities are the mechanism by which we link concepts (words) to one another.
Consider entities to be a collection of groups. Each entity contains its members, and each member contains its synonyms.
The simplest example (which has been used to explain various concepts) is the group of Animals. For instance, we want to provide people with an assistant which helps them navigate a zoo’s enclosures. Part of the process is to understand which animal is being discussed.
With this in mind, we would create an entity called Animals. Within this entity, we would have several animals and their synonyms.
For example, “Hippopotamus” would have the synonyms “hippo”, “river horse”, “hippopotami”, “hippopotamuses” (to take into account the evolution of language) and perhaps even “Hippopotamus amphibious”. For this example, we will ignore the pygmy hippopotamus.
You would then continue to add synonyms for animals as required. But the level of detail depends on the domain, or topic, the assistant will discuss. In our fictional zoo, all birds may be housed in a single enclosure, which means you could create “Birds” as part of the “Animals” entity and populate it with synonyms such as “parrot”, “owl”, “kookaburra”, “condor”, “eagle” etc. If the birds were scattered in multiple enclosures, you could create an entry for “Birds of prey” / “Raptors”, “Nocturnal birds” or “Marsh birds”.
An example of the Animals entity
The delineation on how to define the entity is something we will look at in future articles, but for now it should be understood that an entity is the umbrella concept while the entries underneath it are the group’s members.
Possible expansions of the Animals entity
This now means the assistant now understand that a hippo and a parrot are both animals.
But is that the extent of the synonyms capability? Not at all. We could expand the entity synonyms to use phrases, or multiple concepts.
Consider the phrase “Tell me about”. It’s an indicator that the customer is asking for information. We could create entities for the components, but a phrase entity would suffice. We could consider adding “Explain to me”, “What do you know”, “Do you have information”, etc. By going beyond simple word synonyms, we begin to expand the building blocks — and the power — of entities in our assistant.
We’ll take a closer look at creating and defining entities in future articles, for now, it’s important to understand that entities aren’t limited to single concepts or words — as I’ve mentioned, an entity houses the groups of similar concepts.
User Generated Entities — Patterns
Entities as synonyms are useful in identifying information and determining the topic being discussed. But is data identification the most we can expect? Definitely not!
With pattern entities, you can tell the Watson assistant that you expect customers will provide certain data types — anything from an email address to an alphanumeric serial number. With pattern entities, you’re only limited by the customer information you need to identify.
Unlike Synonym Entities, Pattern Entities identify a recognizable pattern in the customer’s query. The structure of the pattern is determined by the regular expression (or regex) defined in the entity. I won’t delve into regular expressions (not only is the subject extensive, but there are numerous online resources which can help), but I will provide a simple example to better understand what we mean by Pattern Entities.
A pattern entity should follow the same considerations as a Synonym Entity — a top-level entity containing groups of concepts. But instead of synonyms, you are simply defining patterns.
It should be noted, an entity cannot be both a Synonym Entity and a Pattern Entity — entities can only be one or the other.
With that in mind, let’s consider our zoo navigation example. Our customers have been traveling around the zoo and they are told about discounts and offers with the zoo’s partners. To find the best discounts for their area, we need a zip code. With System entities, we can’t do anything more than understand the topic is “zip code” and “discounts”.
So, we create a new entity — Contact_Details. We now have an entity devoted to understanding how we can communicate with the customer. But more importantly, we can extract the information.
Once we have the high-level entity, we add a “Zip” entry. We then tell the assistant which regular expression pattern we want to use — (\b|\s)\d{5}(\b|\s). This simple example tells the system to look for continuous 5 digits with spaces or boundaries around those digits.
An example of Pattern entities
We now have a way of identifying the pattern, we can now extract this information from the customer’s response. The way we achieve this will be discussed in future articles, but for now we should understand that once we have the zip code we can decide what to do next — send it to the discount systems to display partners; provide analytics for the zoo to determine where they should increase discount partners and so on.
More About Entities
Now we’ve taken a quick look at the two different types of entities available. It’s important to understand how they work and how they differ to get the best out of entities. We’ll be looking at entities in-depth in future articles, where we examine:
How to use entities
How to determine which entities we need
Entity Best Practices
Read about pre-built system entities in the third article of this series. | https://medium.com/ibm-watson/beyond-coding-watson-assistant-entities-part-2-the-faces-of-entities-b51e849f27e7 | ['Oliver Ivanoski'] | 2019-08-28 13:43:39.503000+00:00 | ['Watson Assistant', 'Wa Editorial', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Chatbots', 'Editorial'] |
How to participate in the Instaraise IDO | How to participate in the Instaraise IDO Instaraise Follow Sep 8 · 4 min read
Just one day to go before our public sale goes live. Instaraise public sale will begin on our own platform at 14:00 UTC on 9th September 2021
Please go through this article carefully for hassle-free trade.
Below are the details of the sale :
Start time : 9th september 1400 UTC
End time : 11th september 1400 UTC
Token Symbol : $INSTA
MAX : 2000 XTZ
MIN : 50 XTZ
Token Price : 0.092 USD
Total no. of Tokens for Sale : 980,000
Total Raised Amount : $90,160
Token Address: KT19y6R8x53uDKiM46ahgguS6Tjqhdj2rSzZ
How to avail $INSTA in the sale
All the Users who have done their KYC on the Instaraise platform will be able to participate in the sale. The KYC whitelisting will be closed 2 hours before the sale starts
Below are the steps to participate in the sale
Note**: The images displayed below are for demo purpose only, actual data may differ!
Go to our Platform: https://instaraise.io/
If you haven’t connected your Tezos wallet to our website yet, Click on “Connect wallet” and connect your preferred wallet for the purchase.
A pop up window will appear displaying all the supported Tezos wallet on our platform. Click on your preferred wallet and link it to our Website.
If you have already connected your wallet to our website, skip the previous step.
Now go to the home page of our website and Click on “View Projects”
This page will show all the previous as well as ongoing sales on our platform
Click on the displayed “Instaraise Public sale” card which will start at 14:00 UTC on 9th September
Pool details, your allocations, pool status and time remaining will be shown here.
Page displaying all the information regrading the Public Sale
Pool Information
Your allocations
To invest in the pool, Click on “Invest in pool”
A pop up window will appear in which you just have to enter the amount of $XTZ you want to invest.
Once the amount is filled, Click on “Confirm” to execute your purchase.
And that’s it! If your purchase is successful, you will see your tokens in the “Your allocations” section.
The Public Sale will be done on a First Come First Serve basis, so make sure to participate early before the pool gets exhausted (in 72 hours)
Note** Only those users who have completed their KYC on our platform will be able to participate in our IDO
If you still haven't completed your KYC, please go through This article: https://medium.com/instaraise-official/instaraise-public-sale-specifications-e7fadbfdff32 to complete your KYC.
Or directly go to this link and complete your KYC
For any queries, join our main channel: https://t.me/Instaraise | https://medium.com/instaraise-official/how-to-participate-in-the-instaraise-ido-88bc7bf1112b | [] | 2021-09-08 14:32:05.564000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'İdo', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Tezos', 'Defi'] |
3 ways to improve your visual design skills | Practice establishing visual hierarchy by creating many variations of a design using different component styles, and use the black-and-white technique when you feel stuck. A few tips on components:
Fonts — Larger and bolder fonts capture attention and should be used sparingly for headers.
Larger and bolder fonts capture attention and should be used sparingly for headers. Lines — Lines help separate groups of information, serve as layout grids, and can fill awkward white space.
— Lines help separate groups of information, serve as layout grids, and can fill awkward white space. Color — Darker and more saturated colors draw more attention.
— Darker and more saturated colors draw more attention. Shapes —Simply shapes (circle, triangles, squares) are generally more aesthetically pleasing.
—Simply shapes (circle, triangles, squares) are generally more aesthetically pleasing. Images — Images can be enticing, but try to stay away from stock photography.
— Images can be enticing, but try to stay away from stock photography. Space — Space is your best friend. Use it to separate groups of information or to isolate (highlight) important things.
If you need help understanding the fundamentals of visual design components, Steven Bradley wrote some amazing posts on lines, color, shapes, and space.
2 — Use Gestalt principles
All designers should understand Gestalt Theory and the principles of visual perception. Gestalt Theory was developed in the early 1900s by German psychologists, who theorized ways in which humans organize visual experiences. Designers nowadays use Gestalt principles as a framework for more effective visual communication.
“By matching a target audience with selected high impact gestalt images we can shorten the distance to effective communications” — Gregg Berryman
Smashing Magazine already explains the fundamentals of Gestalt Theory, so I’ll focus on showing examples instead.
Figure/Ground
Typically the ground is the background in which the figure (object) exists upon. The goal is to maintain focus on the figure and clearly differentiate it from the ground. Designs with high-contrast colors will establish a stronger figure/ground relationship, while designs with low-contrast colors will have a weaker relationship. Newbies should keep backgrounds simple (light colors or subtle textures) and limit the number of colors for figures.
Proximity
Objects in proximity will visually unite into groups. Proximity can be combined with color to make groups even more apparent. The opposite of proximity — space — can reinforce groupings or isolate unrelated objects.
Similarity
Similar looking objects are perceived to be related. Similarity in objects share the same color, shape, size, or direction. Use similarity to visually tie related objects together.
Photo submitted on r/crappydesign by UglyDuce
Continuity
The human eye continues to follow lines, curves, or objects placed in sequence. When objects in continuity intersect with other objects, our eyes naturally perceive these objects as distinct entities (not grouped). Use color to further reinforce continuity and flow.
We are naturally able to distinguish objects with continuity from other objects.
Closure
Incomplete objects, or space that is not completely enclosed, are perceived to be whole because our brain fills in the missing gaps. Designers can use the principle of closure to create visually compelling graphics.
3 —Check your fonts!
Designers should make sure that words are both legible and readable. The older I get, the less patience I have for deciphering tiny, ultra-thin, or lightly colored words. With typography there are a few best practices to follow:
Start with 2 fonts
A font is a typeface (aka font family) set at a specific size and weight. Jon Tan explains:
“Using the Georgia typeface example, the “Georgia Regular”, “Georgia Italic”, “Georgia Bold”, and “Georgia Bold Italic” in my library are all fonts of the Georgia typeface.”
Rule of thumb is to start with 1 header font and 1 body font of different typefaces, and to use no more than 2–3 typefaces per layout. The more headers or styles you have (quotes, links, etc), the more fonts you’ll need. This Medium post uses 2 typefaces (Lucida Grande and Cambria) and 7 fonts.
Check out Hongkiat’s font tools to find good font pairings. Many designers use Google fonts because it has 818(!) free typefaces to choose from. Other designers subscribe to paid services such as MyFonts or Fonts.com.
14px minimum body font size
I was once part of the ‘tiny words are cooler’ camp. After watching dozens of users struggle to read my designs with 12px font, I killed this mentality and found 14px to be the minimum size for readability. Web trend nowadays are to go even bigger, as evidenced by this 21px body font Medium post. The exception is when you want to deemphasize things like disclaimer text. Check out Christian Miller’s piece on Why your body text is too small.
Line height = 1.5–2x font size
Line height refers to the amount of space between sentences in a paragraph. Too small of a line height makes text feel crammed, and too big of a line height makes sentences feel disconnected.
“Many people with cognitive disabilities have trouble tracking lines of text when a block of text is single spaced. Providing spacing between 1.5 to 2 allows them to start a new line more easily once they have finished the previous one .” — w3c.org
In addition to line height, paragraph height is the amount of space between paragraphs. According to W3c’s web content accessibility guidelines, you should set paragraph height to >1.5x the line-height.
Optimal line character count— 66 characters
The number of characters per line is key to ensuring readability. Lines that are too long are hard to follow, while lines that are too short breaks reading rhythm. Many designers regard The Elements of Typographic Style as industry standard for optimal character count:
“Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely-regarded as a satisfactory length of line for a single-column page set in a serifed text face in a text size. The 66-character line (counting both letters and spaces) is widely regarded as ideal.” — Robert Bringhurst
W3c’s web content accessibility guidelines reinforces this standard, asserting that lines should contain “…no more than 80 characters or glyphs.”
Other visual design tips | https://uxdesign.cc/3-ways-to-improve-your-visual-design-skills-fa9dc8e583ff | ['Jules Cheung'] | 2017-12-17 03:24:38.309000+00:00 | ['UI', 'User Experience', 'Typography', 'Design', 'UX'] |
“Friday Night” | Can’t really focus
On anything
Other than you
Scared to admit
You got me open
Got me hoping
You hand me the key
To your heart
Had me hooked
From the start
Saw you across the room
And wanted nothing but you
Drinks downed
Liquored confidence — a mission to pursue
Words were few
And far between
Jolly ranchers
Swimming in vodka
Drowning in alcohol
Looking for anything but Allah
RnB spilling from the speakers
Stealing touches, kisses, and rubs
As if we snuck under the bleachers
Throw it back for me
Watch me catch it — wide receiver
Look back at me
Got you speaking tongues
No need for a preacher
Drunk in love —
Disguised lust
Locked the guest bedroom door
So we don't have any need to rush
Kissing every inch of you
Leaving no parts untouched | https://medium.com/brian-the-man-behind-the-pen/friday-night-6e74f5a1456 | [] | 2020-11-07 11:36:02.396000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Relationships', 'Poem', 'Love', 'LGBTQ'] |
HOW TO CALCULATE YOUR OVULATION CYCLE TO GET PREGNANT | Getting Pregnant With Irregular Periods- Let’s Know How
It’s regarding irregular menstrual cycles and people who do not have 20 days cycle. Therefore we would like to help you calculate your safe days of ovulation day sand fertile days when even when you have irregular menstrual cycles take a look.
however we looked at those people who have a 28-days cycle and also those people with irregular periods. Now today we would like to look at those of us those of you who have irregular periods. For example you find that someone today has 23 another day has 25. Second we are also looking at those people who do not have 28 days. But the first thing is that you must be sure of your menstruation you must be sure of the length of your menstrual cycle.
How do you calculate the length of your menstrual cycle?
This is where most of you make mistakes. Usually when you ask your gynecologist about this ,they ask you back for the length of your menstrual cycle. And most of you give that answer three “my length is three days”,” my length is five day “.
You what you mean by length of the menstrual cycles
The number of days someone spends while bleeding on contrary it’s a no!! The length of the menstrual cycle is not these days you spend while bleeding. The length of the menstrual cycle are the number of days from the time you begin menstruation or from the time you begin bleeding and the next time you begin bleeding.
What do I mean if you bled today
Take it as day one. Of course here you’ll bleed for like three to five days and more don’t mind about the number of days you’ve spent while bleeding mind about the day you started bleeding. For example you started on first of June. So we mind about date first June. Now after bleeding you spend some days without bleeding many days without bleeding. Now the other day you bleed again for example if you bleed again on 30th, 30th will be the beginning of another menstrual cycle therefore it will be day one of another menstrual cycle.
Now what are we going to do?
We are going to look at first you count the days from first up to away before another menstrual cycle begin sand this is the 29th day. Therefore if someone starts bleeding on firsthand then bleeds again on 30th it means this person has a 29days cycle
That is how we cultivate the menstrual length the length of the menstrual cycle.
Now for people who have irregular menstrual cycles what are you going to do?
You are advised to calculate this for a period of six months which means every time you bleed will be noted day one another time you bleed day one until a period of six months. Mind you these people who have regular bleedings or regular menstrual cycles don’t need to contribute to that period of six months but if you have or irregular menstrual cycle and you know that, what you are supposed to do is to calculate the length of your irregular periods menstrual cycle for a period of six months.
Now when you calculate this for a period of six months want you to isolate the shortest the shortest menstrual cycle. You isolate for me the shortest menstrual cycle. Therefore in summary we have the length of your menstrual cycle.
How are you going to use the length of your menstrual cycle to know your safe days,
Your fertile days. So when you know the length of your menstrual cycle or if you’ve calculated length of your menstrual cycle and remember for those with irregular periods or irregular menstrual cycles use the shortest length.
So take the length of your menstrual cycle as M now this is where mathematics comes in
So we shall have L.L represents the length of your menstrual cycle
So we shall have L the length of the menstrual cycle minus 18 we shall get an answer
Now we are assuming we shall get Z.
So Z is the beginning of your fertile days.
Now if you get Z plus 4 ,for this will equal your ovulation day.
And if you get the ovulation day which is O plus 5
Now you’ll get the end of your fertile days.
I know most of you are confused by this mathematics,
Let’s assume you have a 21 day cycle, So our L will be equaling to 21 days so you have a 21 day cycle,
So we shall get 21 minus 18 that means, your fertile days will begin from the third days
If we add 4 on 3 we get 7 therefore your fertile days are beginning on the third, day on 7th.
The 7th day is your ovulation day.
The third day you are not safe you are safe from the first day up to the second day the third day you are not safe.
Now on 7we add 5 when we add 5 we get 12.
What does it mean?
A person with a 21 day cycle is safe from the first up to the second day only
These are the people who will tell you that they conceived when they are still bleeding or when they are still undergoing their messes.
So on the from the first of the second day this person is safe but from the third day up to the 12th day this person is fertile.
So here you can conceive from the third day after the 12thday.
Then from the 13th day you are safe again until you resume your menstruation or until you resume your menses.
So a 21 days cycle first to second day you are safe third to 12th day you are fertile you’re not safe 13th until you resume your menstruation you are safe and your ovulation day is on the seventh day.
We can give another example for clarity.
Now let’s look at a 26 days cycle if you have a 26 day cycle this is how you calculate yourself days and fertile days.
We shall take L as 26
Therefore we shall get 26minus 18 and this will be 8th.
So 8th is the beginning of your fertile days.
Now eight plus 4 you get 12.Therefore 12 is your ovulation day.
Now we get 12 plus 5 equals 17.17th is the last day of your fertile period.
Now let’s look at it and how it will be. .
You have started bleeding today that is the day one. So this is day one, day two, three, and 26.
So how is it going to be reflected because this is the most important thing you need.
So from day one up to day seven you are safe
26 days cycle day one up to the seven you are safe.
You are unsafe from this day from the eighth day. Your ovulation days on 12th this is your ovulation day.
12th is your ovulation day and your fertile days end on 17th.
So the 17thday is the end of your fertile days
Therefore from day 8 up to day 17 you are unsafe. What we mean by unsafe you are fertile.
Now, you’ll again be safe from the 18th day, up to the 26th day or up to when you resume your menstruation.
Therefore in summary a 26 days cycle is safe from the first of the seventh day,
unsafe from the eighth day up to the 17th day and safe again from the 18th day until that person resumes her menstrual cycle.
do not forget the ovulation day which is the 12th.
The last example is on the 33 days cycle.
So with a 33 day cycle your L will be 33 and therefore where will the fertile days begin from. They’ll begin from 33 minus 18 which is 15.
Therefore 15 is the beginning of your fertile days.
Now the ovulation day will be on 15th plus 4 which is 19.
Therefore 19th day’s the ovulation day.
Then where will the fertile days end? Willed from 19th plus 5 days which is 24 therefore on the 24this the end of your fertile days.
Therefore what do I mean? Here i mean that if your cycle is a 33 day cycle you are fertile from the 15th day up to the 24thday and then on the 19th on the 19th day is your ovulation day that is the day that has the highest chances of you conceiving.
And therefore let’s look at this. You’ve started bleeding all you had your mensses today take it as day one.
So this is day one, day two, and thirty three. Therefore your fertile days are beginning from the 15thday. From the 15th day up to the 24th day.
Therefore here you are unsafe. This is it from the 15th day up to the 24thday you are unsafe and very very unsafe on your ovulation day which is the 19th this is the ovulation day.
And my friend when are you safe when can you have relief. From the first day up to the 14th day all these days are yours because you’re safe.
That is a 33 days cycle and then from the 25th act when you resume your menstruation you are again safe.
Related Articles
Conclusion | https://medium.com/@bidisha127/how-to-calculate-your-ovulation-cycle-to-get-pregnant-e1057a886360 | ['Bidisha Das'] | 2020-09-15 15:43:21.263000+00:00 | ['Ovulation Calculator', 'Baby', 'Newborn', 'Pregnancy', 'Pregnant Women'] |
The War on Freedom and Self-Reliance | “The history of failure in war, or in any other human endeavor, can almost be summed up in two words: Too late. Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy. Too late in realizing the mortal danger. Too late in preparedness. Too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance.” — General Douglas MacArthur
In part one of this series titled, How The Deep State Destroyed The World…
I explained that we are in the midst of the largest psychological operation (PSYOP) in the history of mankind…and that the enforcers for the controlling ruling class are waging a relentless PSYOP on all citizens, and they will not relent until the people themselves put a stop to it.
In part two, we discussed The Greatest Conspiracy of Mankind, and how the deep state is actively working to steal your freedom to include your right to privacy, free speech, bear arms and many others forms of freedom.
We concluded part two by saying that freedom isn’t free and that the true test and measurement of a free society is the willingness and ability to protect and expand the very principle of freedom.
Today, I’d like to discuss how the deep state is raging a war on self-reliance and provide you with a game plan for taking back control, protecting your freedoms and living life on your own terms.
HERDING SHEEP
We’ll begin with an Eastern tale that speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean.
He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where the sheep were grazing.
The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines and so on and, above all, they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and their skins, and this they did not like.
At last, the magician found a remedy.
He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them, first of all, that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned; that on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant.
Secondly, he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them.
Third, he suggested that if anything at all was going to happen to them, it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it.
Further, the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to some that they were eagles, to some that they were men, to others that they were magicians.
After this, all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end.
They never ran away again, but quietly waited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.
This tale is a good illustration of our current position and relationship with the deep state.
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.” — Frederick Douglass
WAKE UP BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE
Humanity is at a fork in the road.
We can no longer stand there looking at the terrain pondering which direction to take.
It is hardly a choice, after all.
One road leads to a global, fascist dictatorship that would control every aspect of our lives, including our thoughts.
The other will open the door to freedom and potential on a scale the world has ever seen.
Hard one, isn’t it?
A choice between prison and living life as a compliant sheep, or paradise and being in full control of your own destiny.
GET OFF YOUR KNEES AND GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE SAND
If you know a tornado is coming, what is the smartest, most effective response?
Is it to get on your knees, bury your head in the sand and pretend it’s not that serious?
Contrary to popular belief, ignorance is not bliss…it’s brutal, and the brutality of ignorance is such that it will make you dead while you’re alive.
The only intelligent and courageous way to deal with the deep state tornado is to acknowledge it, get off your knees, get your head out of the sand, and turn around and face it head on!
By doing so, you are playing offense, taking control of the situation and giving yourself the power to protect your freedom and your destiny.
This is the choice that we are all faced with today!
THE POWER OF SELF-RELIANCE
You’ve no doubt have heard this old saying from Aesop’s Fables…”Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
To best understand why you want to Be Self-Reliant…let’s examine both sides of this conversation.
The metaphor of feeding someone, of giving them something to get through and meet the demands of one day, and one day alone shows that people can only be helped so far.
No matter how you slice it, this is a restrictive, demeaning, and highly manipulating mindset that is fueled by a poverty mentality.
Why? By providing people with handouts and free money in the form of universal basic income (UBI)…by removing obstacles from their path…and by eliminating the need for labor and learning from our own mistakes, we are establishing bad precedent.
I’m talking about bad precedent that’s virtually impossible to reverse as once people get a taste of something for nothing, they want, expect and will demand more of it.
Instead of promoting self-reliance…we are guilty of teaching and encouraging people to become reliant upon others.
Relying upon others to do what you can, should and must do for yourself is not only unhealthy for your development of skills…it also makes you psychologically weak, confidence deprived, and quite literally puts your very future at risk.
The principle whereby we rely totally on the support, guidance and even nurturing of someone else for too long a period is typical of far too many governments, families and institutions.
To be self-reliant…to build a purposeful, powerful, and sustainable business, family or society requires strength, self-confidence, independence, courage, initiative and most importantly an appetite and appreciation for hard work.
TEACH A MAN TO FISH
What’s the benefit of “teaching a man to fish?”
The benefits of teaching a man to fish are numerous and life-changing.
Not only does the man become self-sufficient and able to survive without being provided for, but he has also developed a sense of achievement, mental toughness, pride and fulfillment which can only be viewed as being priceless.
How good does an angler feel as he pulls a fish from the water?
Much better than when one is placed generously in front of him…merely to eat.
Sure it may be good, for a while, to be provided for, but the human psyche is bigger than that in a healthy human being.
We all need to be valued for who we are…what we’ve become…and what we are capable of achieving.
In other words, we help people best, when we “teach people HOW to fish.”
By teaching people life, money, and self-management skills, we validate them for who they are and the contribution they are able to make.
By exposing them to best practices, and challenging them to demonstrate a strong work ethic and self-reliance…their confidence grows as does their contribution and value to society.
They know they are useful and valued and with this confidence they do more.
They learn that to stretch themselves is good. That they have within themselves untapped resources which show off the potential they have always had but is now released.
Indeed ‘teaching them to fish’ realizes not just the material potential they have, but catalyzes even bigger capabilities in them.
Their development muscle has been stretched and exercised, so it becomes bigger, stronger and far more capable.
Could there possibly be a better alternative to self-sufficiency?
Is there a parent anywhere on the planet who would not want their son or daughter to grow up to be a strong, self-confident and highly capable human being? Is there an entrepreneur or executive who would not want to be surrounded by self-starters…people who initiate, people who know what to do without being told? Is there a country, state, county or city on earth that would not be better off with citizens who are highly functioning, self-reliant and who know how to fish on their own?
What possible downside would following this advice bring to your life?
It all begins with understanding the importance of self-reliance…the make or break skill set you need to protect your freedoms, control your destiny and keep the deep state out of your life.
In closing…heed these final words uttered by General Douglas MacArthur:
“The history of failure in war, or in any other human endeavor, can almost be summed up in two words: Too late. Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy. Too late in realizing the mortal danger. Too late in preparedness. Too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance.”
The clock is ticking and the deep state wants you entertained, preoccupied, confused and even scared. The last thing they want is for you to think and for yourself.
I urge you to become fully self-sufficient before it’s too late…because freedom is a terrible thing to lose!
Part 4…A Good Hard Kick in the Ass to Wake Up and Get Serious.
If you enjoyed this post…it would mean a lot to me if you could click on the “claps” icon on the left side of page…up to 50 claps allowed — Thank You!
Gary Ryan Blair is creator of the 100 Day Challenge…a radical approach to goal achievement that shows people how to achieve 10X size goals by applying the methods and best practices of growth hacking. Get all the details here. | https://medium.com/mind-munchies/the-war-on-freedom-and-self-reliance-4c7819d32d13 | ['Gary Ryan Blair'] | 2020-11-02 15:51:06.135000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Life Lessons', 'Personal Development', 'Leadership'] |
Lightning Network ICO Private Token Sale (with 150% bonus) | We are building world’s fastest blockchain platform which natively implements Bitcoin Lightning Network Protocol & Ethereum Plasma Framework. With fast transaction speed over 1 million transactions per second, low transaction fees, and its Bolt cryptocurrency, Lightning Network is set to overtake Visa/Mastercard and become the dominant global payment network.
Qualified investors are now invited to participate in Lightning Network ICO Private Token Sale (with 150% bonus) from April 1st, 2018 to May 31st, 2018.
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http://lightningnetwork.me | https://medium.com/lightning-network/lightning-network-ico-private-token-sale-with-150-bonus-9f3ebbdb5bf5 | ['Junhua Chang'] | 2018-04-03 00:47:21.339000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'ICO', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
10 Types of Pine Trees that Everyone Should Know | What is a Pine Tree?
Many of us have a tendency to refer to all conifers as pine trees, which is not illogical considering that the pine family (Pinaceae) is the largest family of conifers and accounts for approximately ¼ of all cone-bearing trees (the definition of a conifer is a plant that bears cones). However, those roughly 200 species in Pinaceae include not just pines, but firs, spruces, cedars, hemlocks and larches. Most Christmas trees sold in this country are firs or spruces, despite the fact that they are often referred to as pine trees. To truly be a pine tree, a conifer must belong to the genus Pinus.
Wild-growing pines quickly become too large for all but the grandest gardens, as the photo of the sugar pine demonstrates, although amongst the approximately 100 recognized species in the genus Pinus there are many trees with attractive features. The key for gardening successfully with pines is to choose among the thousands of dwarf pine cultivars. A cultivar, short for ‘cultivated variety’, represents a selection that was chosen due to its slower growth rate, dwarf form, unusual color, weeping habit, etc. It’s in the world of cultivars that you can find attractive, tough, interesting, structural choices to enhance your garden’s year-round beauty.
10 of the best pines for gardens and one to avoid
1. Pinus densiflora ‘Low Glow’
Low Glow Japanese red pine (USDA zone 5) has a spreading habit, lush green needles and when mature, reddish textured bark. It is slow-growing and well-behaved, requiring little pruning or special care. The specimen above is pruned regularly to open the crown and expose some of the trunk and branching, but it is not necessary, as the photo as the link demonstrates.
2. Pinus mugo (mountain pine or mugo pine) cultivars
The ACS recognizes almost 80 cultivars of this species, commonly called mugo (pronounced ‘moo-go’, not ‘mew-go’) pine or mountain pine (USDA zone 3). Mugo pines are probably the pines most often seen at mainstream nurseries and big box stores, and are often deemed unexciting by amateurs and aficionados alike. Mugos are some of the toughest conifers out there, native to the windy mountains of central Europe they are accustomed to eking out an existence in a tough environment. But there is also beauty and drama lurking in this widely variable and misunderstood species! Take the ‘Jakobsen’ mugo pine above: it naturally develops an open and interesting architecture, requiring no pruning to provide a structural garden focal point. Its deep green needles lend richness and depth to the landscape. It is a wonderful choice for a container, as well, and works beautifully in a rock garden.
There are quite a few golden mugo pines, in addition to ‘Schweitzer Tourist’, ‘Carstens’ is an excellent low-growing selection, as is ‘Sunshine’. Others, such as ‘Ambergold’ or ‘Winter Sun’ grow to become quite vertical in habit.
3. Pinus parviflora (Japanese white pine) cultivars
The Japanese white pines (USDA zone 5) are well-formed, elegant plants, with soft, delicate needles that are often streaked with white, blue or gold. These cultivars also have some of the most stunning pollen cones in the conifer world. They are not as tough as the mugos but with good drainage and a bit of afternoon shade in hot areas, they perform well in garden settings. ‘Fukuzumi’, pictured above, has a naturally windswept habit and rich blue-green needles. This specimen has never been pruned.
‘Tenysu kazu’, also known as ‘Goldylocks’, is a stunning selection, with creamy-golden new growth.
As if the soft, fluffy needles and elegant habit were not enough, Japanese white pines sport some of the most dramatic and eye-catching male (pollen) cones in coniferdom. Check out those on Pinus parviflora ‘Cleary’:
Or ‘Bergman’:
4. Pinus banksiana ‘Uncle Fogy’
If the Pinus parviflora cultivars are some of the most elegant pines, ‘Uncle Fogy’ clearly has to be one of the most ridiculous. This cultivar of Pinus banksiana (USDA zone 2) is twisted, alternately weeping and upright and no two look the same.
Pinus banksiana, or jack pines, grow more irregularly in nature than many other pine species. ‘Uncle Fogy’ just happens to be one of the most wildly irregular of all, growing sometimes upright for a while and then flopping to the ground and then often continuing upwards again. One of the best cultivars for pruning and shaping, you can make your ‘Uncle Fogy’ unique to your family! Jack pines are tough plants and once established require low water and little care. There are other attractive cultivars in this species, such as ‘Manomet’ and ‘Angell’.
5. Pinus jeffreyi ‘Joppi’ (Joppi Jeffrey pine)
California has more native conifers than any other state, but many of them have no, or few, cultivars. Luckily for coneheads, one of the best-loved natives, Pinus jeffreyi, (USDA zone 8)has a lovely, compact cultivar called ‘Joppi’.
While the wild species can reach 80–120' at maturity, ‘Joppi’ is very well-behaved in a garden setting. The specimen above has been in the ground for six years, after being planted from a 20-gallon container, and is approximately five feet tall. The long, stiff needles are a wonderful contrast to lighter foliage and its strong structure adds an architectural element.
6. Pinus strobus cultivars
Like Pinus parviflora, Pinus strobus, or eastern white pine (USDA zone 3), is a soft, five-needled pine, and also has elegant attributes. Like Pinus mugo, there are many choices of cultivars, with a wide range of habit, color and shape. The ACS recognizes well over 100 P. strobus cultivars, making this species one of the most garden-friendly of all conifers. We’ll recognize two cultivars here, wildly different in size, habit and color.
‘Blue Shag’, pictured above, is true to its name with its glowing blue-green needles and shaggy demeanor. If left alone, like this one, it is attractive if somewhat unruly. Those wishing a more sedate look can prune at will as the plant, which does not develop a central leader, tolerates pruning well.
However, my favorite Pinus strobus cultivar is ‘Pendula’, which is sort of like a big, bad cousin to ‘Uncle Fogy’, albeit more graceful. This cultivar is not for small gardens and not for those wishing an orderly, regimented look. LIke ‘Blue Shag’, it takes well to pruning and can be tamed (or made wilder!) if so desired.
7. Pinus sylvestris (Scots pine) cultivars
If I had to pick my favorite species of pine it would have to be Scots pine, or Pinus sylvestris (USDA zone 3). I just love the flat, blue-green needles on the majority of the cultivars and their neat, compact habit.
However, if you prefer golden foliage, Pinus sylvestris does that, beautifully, too! ‘Nisbet’s Gold’ is one of the best gold conifer cultivars of any species, and, like many of the other sylvestris cultivars, has a tidy habit and is relatively slow-growing. With sufficient irrigation, this golden conifer does not burn in full sun, even in my zone 9b location.
There are dozens more Scots pine cultivars to choose from. Take a look and maybe like me, you’ll fall in love!
8. Pinus nigra ‘Oregon Green’ (Oregon green Austrian pine)
Like mugos, Austrian pines (USDA zone 4) are one of the classsic old-world, ‘hard’ pines, so termed due to their relatively hard wood (although to keep things confusing, all conifers are known in the timber industry as ‘softwoods’). They have very deep green, stiff needles and often a graceful natural form. When pruned they make marvelous focal points. My favorite is one of the larger cultivars, ‘Oregon Green’.
9. Pinus koraiensis (Korean pine) ‘Dragon’s Eye’ or ‘Oculus Draconis’
Korean pines are hardy (USDA zone 3), durable and very pretty. Most have curling needles, often with variegation. ‘Dragon’s Eye’ is an upright cultivar, occupying a small footprint that makes it suitable for small gardens.
10. PInus wallichiana ‘Zebrina’
Although last on the list, Zebrina Himalayan pine is one of the very best! All Himalayan pines have long, graceful needles, but Zebrina does it one better by striping them with pale yellow. The landscape effect is breathtaking, especially in winter’s soft light.
Those are, in my opinion, 10 of the very best pines for a garden landscape. But I promised at the start that I would give you one to avoid: Pinus thunbergii ‘Thunderhead’ (USDA zone 5). Why do I feel so strongly about its negative characteristics that I feel the need to note it here? Because ‘Thunderhead’ has just about the deepest, richest green needles of any conifer, and in spring it produces copious, white candles (new shoots) that contrast dramatically with the foliage. It’s almost impossible to resist. So desirable is this cultivar that it is now turning up everywhere, even at nurseries that have very few conifers to offer.
So if it is so lovely and dramatic, what’s the problem? It’s a thug! Most cultivars grow more slowly than the species. This one actually outpaces it! If you do nothing, this lovely little plant very rapidly becomes an enormous woolly bear. Of the original three that I planted, I am down to one and it gets pruned vigorously twice a year by an expert. If you are aware of Thunderhead’s shortcomings, plant with impunity, but I have seen more disappointment (and disgust) associated with this cultivar than any other, partly due to the display that it receives in the retail trade.
Those are my favorite pines. What are yours! We’d love to hear! | https://medium.com/@s9timumba/10-types-of-pine-trees-that-everyone-should-know-8b5833fe5ef6 | [] | 2020-12-19 12:02:01.324000+00:00 | ['Garden Design', 'Plants', 'Gardening'] |
Will Our Personality Change When We Switch to a Different Language? | The relation between language and personality expression has often been the focus of a long-standing debate among scholars of different fields (from psychology to linguistics).
In 1964, the American sociolinguist Susan Ervin, forerunner of this discipline, carried out the very first experiment on this topic: the so-called Thematic Apperception Test. Using 64 French-English adult bilinguals, she explored the different ways through which these subjects shared the same story in different languages.
The comparison of the two set stories revealed interesting differences: while the English ones delivered a more challenging and rebellious set of topics (and of words used to express them); a certain sense of passivity emerged in the French versions. Despite the obvious limits of a research carried out over 50 years ago, these findings are still keen to be seen nowadays as undeniable evidence that something does change when we switch to another language.
And we don’t have to be perfect bilinguals to say that. That’s probably something that we have all experienced too. At our workplace, while talking to our friends and family or even just on our own.
As an exchange student abroad, I used to communicate in English the whole day. My classes were in English, my friends were from all over the world. My flatmates were so used to hearing me speaking English all the time, that they were shocked to assist at my phone calls with my family. I could see the smile on their faces and the surprise in their eyes, while my honest Italian self came to the scene. Every time it was like a revelation for them.
Almost as if I was a whole different person from the one that they got to know.
The truth is that bilingual and multilingual individuals may experience a change in attitude and behavior when switching from one language to another. But as Timothy Keeley explains: knowing a language is not always enough. In the article The Potential Effects of Language Switching on Self-Concept, Values and Personality Expression- Examining the Evidence, the polyglot challenges the myth that language alone is responsible for determining changes in our personality. He shifts the focus to culture and its related mechanisms, instead.
Language, as our most precious carrier of meaning, is far from being a mere communication tool. It determines how we interpret different cultural norms and how we adjust to meet the expectations resulting from them — and consequently, it defines who we are. Our own identity.
That’s the starting point to claim that what we trivially define as “different personalities” isn’t a result of the language itself but rather of its associated culture. The more closely exposed to a certain culture we are (its values, its traditions and its customs), the more often this “cultural switch” gets activated. And the more often and the more intensely we change.
So, forget about thrilling crime stories and psychology thrillers: people do act differently across languages, but our personality stays the same. What it’s often oversimplified as “personality shift” is nothing more than a shift in attitudes, in behaviours related to a change in contexts, no matter which language it is. | https://medium.com/@tuto.languages/will-our-personality-change-when-we-switch-to-a-different-language-378e3445eb02 | [] | 2021-06-17 10:46:20.664000+00:00 | ['Language', 'Linguistics', 'Language Learning', 'Personality Types', 'Personality'] |
Manner of Death EP 5 (ENGSUB) | Episode 5 | Dr. Bahnjit is a medical examiner who works at the provincial hospital. One day, the body of a woman who died as a result of hanging comes in and after carrying out the autopsy, Dr. Bahnjit concludes that it not suicide but in fact a murder case. This suddenly makes him a target of someone powerful. As a result of his statement, Dr. Bahnjit has an anonymous man break into his house and threatens him to change the report to suicide. Dr. Bahnjit doesn’t take this man’s threat seriously, until one day one of his friends, who is a prosecutor disappears. He begins to secretly conduct an investigation of his own in order to get to the truth — and somehow all clues lead to a man called Tan as the main suspect. Tan, however, denies everything and instead convinces Dr. Banjit to work together in order to get to the bottom of this and find the real murderer together.
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Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 1945–65, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/@da-da-n-g-k-o-prol0-7/manner-of-death-ep-5-engsub-e71d85ecb2dd | ['Billy G. Johnson'] | 2020-12-21 12:27:14.353000+00:00 | ['Romance', 'Drama', 'Gay'] |
You Should Be Reading JG Ballard in These Dystopian Times | You Should Be Reading JG Ballard in These Dystopian Times
Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash
JG Ballard was an English writer who died in 2009. He wrote several books, short stories, and essays and is one of my favourite authors. His writing is best described as ‘genre-bending’. They can be science fiction, modern-dystopian, surreal, weird or controversial. Or all those things at the same time.
In fact, his work is so distinctive it even became an official adjective. The Collins English Dictionary defined ‘Ballardian’ as work:
Resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels and stories, esp dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.
While certain themes, such as man-made dystopia, are prevalent in his work, the stories themselves are incredibly different. Ballard was originally associated with the New Wave of science fiction but that changed as he developed and tried new things out.
Ballard simply described his writing as ‘speculative fiction’.
Some of his work was experimental, such as The Atrocity Archives while others were more controversial, such as Crash — which later became a controversial movie by David Cronenberg.
A Ballardian novel or short story is distinctive. It can be dream-like and surreal. His prose can suck you in and immerse you in his strangely believable worlds. Some are pretty hard to get into but others are short, interesting and enjoyable. No matter the topic or scenario, he was a superb writer.
In case you don’t know his work, here I’ll give you a random sample. It would be hard to give a ‘best of’ due to the huge variety of his output. What appeals to one Ballard fan may be disliked by another.
Here are six JG Ballard books in case you feel like giving him a go. I have tried to keep the selection varied but they all deal with humanity and dystopian scenarios brought about by our actions. Perfect reading for the end of 2020 and the world we find ourselves in. | https://baos.pub/you-should-be-reading-jg-ballard-in-these-dystopian-times-df0c3bbb52fb | ['Jason Ward'] | 2020-12-15 21:02:50.089000+00:00 | ['Dystopian Fiction', 'Authors', 'Books', 'Reading', 'Ballard'] |
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How to Build a Personal File Sharing and File Syncing System With Raspberry Pi | The How
Part 1: Get your Raspberry Pi up and running
This is covered in great detail by people who know a lot more than me elsewhere, and some searching will take you far. If you get lost, here’s the reference I use. But my workflow is as follows:
On my computer with an SD or MicroSD slot, install the Raspberry Pi Imager.
Insert the SD card and install the 32-bit Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) OS:
Of course, you can choose a different OS if you’re doing something more custom (headless Ubuntu, for example)
Once it’s done writing and checking, insert the SD card into the RPi, make sure all your peripherals (including the hard drive you’re planning on networking!) are plugged in, powered up and ready to go, and boot up that Pi!
Part 2. Getting the hard drive mounted and properly permissioned
First of all, open up a terminal window and type the following bash command to find out where the hard drive is mounted:
df -h
You should get output that looks like the following. Take a look at the line, almost at the bottom, that begins ‘/dev/sda4…’:
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 14G 3.4G 11G 25% /
devtmpfs 459M 0 459M 0% /dev
tmpfs 464M 0 464M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 464M 7.3M 456M 2% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 464M 0 464M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1 253M 51M 202M 21% /boot
/dev/sda4 2.7T 1.4T 1.3T 53% /media/pi/3.0 TB Volume
tmpfs 93M 0 93M 0% /run/user/1000
pi@raspberrypi:~ $
That’s the drive I’m interested in; make a note of it. What I’m going to do now is to assign to it a permanent, custom, mount point. We’ll get more into the technical reason why later, but the idea is I create a directory, let’s call it /network, in my root directory. That entire directory is going to get served to the network. Therefore, within that directory, I’ll make a second directory where I will mount my hard drive; that way, I can always add another drive later on, also mounted inside /network, without having to change the Samba specifications. First of all, let’s create these directories. Step one, get to the root of your filesystem (of course, you can create this directory wherever you want):
cd /
And create the directory to be served:
sudo mkdir network
cd into it:
cd network
And create the directory for the drive itself:
sudo mkdir NetworkDrive
There can be big problems in terms of actually using the network drive if it doesn’t have the right permissions. This is a big, complex issue and if you have an NTFS drive, this will be an area where you will need to do further research (see below).
For my purposes (ext4 filesystem, likely works on other Linux filesystems), I imposed wide-open file permissions so that any device on the network could read, use, edit, delete, etc. any file (replace ‘/network/NetworkDrive’ here with your own directories):
sudo chmod -R 1777 /network/NetworkDrive
OK. In theory, you should have a custom set of directories with wide-open permissions, ready to have the drive mounted to them and then put on the network.
Next step: set specifications so that the drive automatically loads to your specified directory. In order to do that, I need to know some specifics about the drive. So, let’s ask the system for that information:
sudo blkid /dev/sda4
Do the same on your system, substituting ‘/dev/sda4’ for the path to the hard drive you want to mount. You should get something like:
/dev/sda4: UUID="6b7befea-32df-495d-b3d6-e315960b04e2" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="primary" PARTUUID="B4b63cac-91f1-42e8-0068da23091e"
We care about two things, here: the UUID, which is the specific ID of the hard drive, and the TYPE, which is the filesystem encoding on the drive. Make note of both these things. There are a number of different filesystem types; mine, here, is ext4, which is a Linux type; if you have NTFS, which is Windows, you will have to do some extra work but the good news is it’s a very normal thing. This article has some great tips towards the bottom about dealing with NTFS filesystems; if that link has gone dead, try searching for “how to mount NTFS hard drives on Raspberry Pi”.
Now, armed with our UUID and filesystem type, we can finally set the custom mount point for the drive. To do that, we’re going to open a file called fstab:
sudo nano /etc/fstab
It should have a few entries already, such as:
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
PARTUUID=a18a5503-01 /boot vfat defaults 0 2
PARTUUID=a18a5503-02 / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
# use dphys-swapfile swap[on|off] for that
What we’re going to do is set up a rule so that every time the RPi boots, it will mount the drive at a location that we specify.
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
PARTUUID=a18a5503-01 /boot vfat defaults 0 2
PARTUUID=a18a5503-02 / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
UUID="6b7befea-32df-495d-b3d6-e315960b04e2" /network/share ext4 auto,rw,user,nofail 0 0
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
# use dphys-swapfile swap[on|off] for that
fstab can be confusing — lots of columns that don’t seem to add up, specifications without documentation — but the important thing is that you put all the elements in: the UUID, the mount point you’re specifying, the filesystem type, the additional specifications I’ve listed above (that’s important), with at least one space between each item.
OK; hit ‘ctrl+X’ to exit Nano, save your changes, and get ready to make this thing go live. The next command will run all the drive specifications in fstab:
sudo mount -a
Ok, great. Navigate to your custom directory, and you should see the contents of your drive there; if you’r using a fresh drive, try creating a file or another folder inside it; you should be able to. If you can’t, it’s time to start troubleshooting permissions.
Part 3. Get your drive serving to your network
This is the home stretch! Firstly, you will need to install Samba, which is an incredibly powerful and flexible file serving program with a huge development community surrounding it:
sudo apt-get install samba
Once that’s done, we are going to open the configuration file for Samba:
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
All the way at the bottom, you will need to create a definition for the ‘share’ you’re creating. Again, there is an incredible wealth of options out there, and the official Samba documentation has exhaustive defintions. If you’re following Samba tutorials off the internet, be sure to double-check details: the first tutorial I followed spelled ‘browseable’ without the first ‘e’, which causes problems. This is the set of specifications I used:
[NetworkDrive]
path = /network
browseable = yes
writeable = yes
public = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = no
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
Boom. That’s it. Hit ctrl+x, save your changes, and restart Samba. This command is different on different flavors of Linux, and on RPi the command that works for me is:
sudo systemctl restart smbd
OK. Give it a few seconds if you want, but you should have a Samba share live on your network. So, there you go: you now have a hard drive mounted on your network, and all the devices on that network should have full permissions on those files. Stop here if you want — but if you want to auto-sync your files across devices… Follow me further down the rabbit hole:
Part 4. Install Syncthing
There are other filesyncing options out there, including Resilio Sync. Personally, I appreciate the open-source, cross-platform ethos of Syncthing. The rest of the procedure is as follows:
curl -s https://syncthing.net/release-key.txt | sudo apt-key add
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install syncthing
Syncthing should install following this. If it doesn’t, then likely something has changed with the URL, and you should research a current way of installing syncthing on RPi.
So there’s nothing more to it: run syncthing!
syncthing
On RPi, syncthing runs in the background, and you can interact with it by opening a browser and navigating to 127.0.0.1:8384.
Here, you can choose which folders to sync between your devices; I have a folder containing many of my essential documents, and on my RPi it syncs to the same network-mounted drive we set up above. Just like Samba, syncthing is a sprawling project with lots of ins and outs, so take a jaunt through the documentation to familiarize yourself with how it works.
An important caveat: this tutorial assumes you want everyone on your network to have access to everything. I’ve referred to this previously, but it bears stating specifically that there are numerous ways to restrict access to different parts of your file sharing and serving system. You can implement these restrictions in Raspbian, at the Linux file permissions level; you can implement them in Samba (take another look at those share definitions) and you can even implement restrictions in syncthing. Consider carefully your method, and the scope of it.
That’s it! If you made it this far, enjoy your new media center/file sharing/backup system, built by your own hand and made to your specifications.
Stay tuned, though: the next project? A Pi Zero-powered remote node of the synced files. That’s right… A portable private cloud. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-build-a-personal-file-sharing-and-file-syncing-system-with-raspberry-pi-15f9ac71b17c | [] | 2020-08-17 05:42:38.230000+00:00 | ['Cloud Storage', 'Raspberry Pi', 'Samba', 'Networking', 'Syncthing'] |
Lockly has new smart locks for swingers and sliders (doors, that is) | Lockly has new smart locks for swingers and sliders (doors, that is) Jefrey Jan 16·2 min read
Lockly is one of the few smart lock manufacturers to also offer a smart entry latch (a lock and handle combo). The company’s latest products are the Lockly Guard smart deadbolt sliding and swing-style doors, and the Lockly Duo latch/deadbolt combo for swinging doors.
Lockly and its biometric smart locks first came to our attention in 2018. We reviewed its smart lock/video doorbell combo in early 2020. In both cases, we were impressed with the company’s fingerprint-recognition prowess and the Pin Genie features of its touch-sensitive numeric keypad scrambles the order of numbers to prevent a burglar from guessing your PIN based on the location of fingerprints. We were much less impressed with the convoluted process of installing its locks, but the company promises it’s resolved that issue.
[ Further reading: The best smart locks and deadbolts ] Lockly Lockly is also bringing its smart lock technology to sliding doors, with the Lockly Guard.
The Lockly Guard is designed for sliding and swing-style doors and fits any standard size aluminum or metal door frame. An optional RFID-card reader allows for contactless operation. In both cases, adding the optional $80 Wi-Fi hub adds Alexa and Google Assistant support and remote lock control and monitoring. It will be available in satin nickel, matte black, and metallic chrome finishes. It will sell for $500 when it goes on sale in the second quarter of 2021.
The Lockly Duo deadbolt/latch combo promises super-easy operation: You simply lift the handle up to secure the latch and throw the deadbolt with one move. Lockly will offer it in satin nickel and matte black finishes and expects it to come to retail later in the first quarter with an asking price of $400.
Both of these new locks will require an optional Wi-Fi hub to enable remote access.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@jefrey67689801/lockly-has-new-smart-locks-for-swingers-and-sliders-doors-that-is-8d725e0a78b2 | [] | 2021-01-16 00:51:15.765000+00:00 | ['Tvs', 'Streaming', 'Services', 'Security Cameras'] |
Let Me Tell You About My Father | When I was a kid, my relatives used to refer to my father as my attorney. But he’s not a lawyer; he didn’t even take any law-related courses during college. What he did actually take was marine engineering, but unfortunately, he wasn’t able to complete his degree because he and our mother had my brother. My father is a tricycle driver, a housekeeper — together with my mother, he became a traffic enforcer in our municipality and now a barangay tanod.
But they used to call my father my attorney because he’s the first person I always run to whenever I get upset with other people teasing me or making fun of me, he’s always the first one to the rescue. He would always take my side when my brother and I are fighting (to be fair, I think it’s my mother to my brother and youngest sister). He’s the first person who would stop my mother from scolding me. Most of all, I think he’s always the first one who will make me stop crying whenever he felt that they have scolded me too much.
They call my father my attorney because they think I am his favorite. But I could not agree with them because when I was a kid, all I can see was his side who’s always mad at me, who’s always strict, and who’s always scary. Although I usually hear from my friends, whenever they meet or get to talk to my father, that my father is really nice. But I could not see him the way they see him because, for me, my father was actually scary. He was so strict (even until now) that I think me and my siblings became so conscious of our actions because we were so afraid to make mistakes or say anything that would displease him. I think most kids experienced this, too. Well, the tendency for me, I had hidden secrets from him and my mother. Because I was so afraid for them to hate me or I was so afraid to disappoint them, but that’s what will make them hate you most; secrets and lies.
I was so afraid to disappoint my father because he had high hopes in me, I think he expected so much from me. I used to be a student with good grades in elementary, and when I was just starting to soar high, my wings were cut and I didn’t even dare to try to fly again. Because I had been sick, and I used that as an excuse not to try my best.
But when I have decided to try again, be one of those cream of the crop students, I couldn’t keep up with the pressure of so much expectations from him. I rebelled against the idea of being the best because I thought my father would never accept any of my failures and he would never see that I am trying my best. He wanted me to excel, to be the best, to be good with what I do, to have good grades. I thought he was pressuring me all along because he wanted to have the best daughter, then I realized, he just wanted what’s best for me.
Maybe if I had realized this soon enough, I could have made it to the top. I could have made him and my mother prouder with all the achievements I could have gotten. But the thing is that most lessons come from experience, and we will never learn if we had things easy for us because the greatest lessons are learned the hardest ways.
If our lives had been a little different and if things had been quite easy for us, I might not have realized the value of even the smallest things he’s doing for us. Because as we look at a bigger picture, we tend to miss the value of the smallest things within it.
As I go back to my childhood days, I have remembered how many times our father said no to our requests, how many times he said he couldn’t buy us what we want. But at the end of the day, he would give us what we have requested anyway. I used to hate it whenever he said no to me because I always felt that I have always been rejected. But I didn’t realize before that my father was doing his best to give us what we want and what we need, no matter how hard it could be for him.
Imagine the frustration that you have when you can’t buy something for yourself? It’s somehow the same frustration for our parents but to a greater extent. They always put their children first and they have almost always forgotten about themselves because they want us to live better lives. Because all they want is for us to be happy. That made me realize one more thing. Our parents’ hearts are the ones that break the most when ours got broken because for sure they think that they fail to be our parent; they think that they fail to protect us.
We were busy hating our parents for not being who we want them to be, but then I realized, as much as they want to be the perfect parents in the world, they can’t. Because everyone commits mistakes, and we are all far from being perfect, even our parents. But that doesn’t mean they’re not trying their best to be good parents. Who knows how to be the perfect parent, anyway? No one.
Most of the time, we give less credit to our parents because they can’t be the parents we want them to be. Because we were blinded by the envy that we feel towards the other kids that we thought have better parents, we often disregard the fact that our parents are trying their best. We often give them less appreciation than what they deserve.
So allow me to tell you what I love about my father. He’s scary and strict, yes, but he’s hardworking. He’s always supportive. He’s always proud of us that he would always want to show us off; for example, whenever there’s a videoke in every gathering, he wants my sister and I to sing (OMG I hated this when I was a kid and now I’m just laughing about this).
He would always be the first one who gets worried when my sister and I are crying, and he gets paranoid when one of us is sick or when we do not update them on our whereabouts or if I finally got home from work (especially when I was in Manila). He always makes sure that we are fine, and we are not exhausting ourselves. And whenever he feels that we need to take a break, he would be the first one to remind us that we also need some rest. Beneath a strict façade, there lies his caring personality with a soft heart, most especially for his two daughters.
And the most important lesson he taught us? Help people whenever you can. If you can’t, then find a way to help even in the smallest way possible. The important thing is that you helped. This made a great impact on my life that I want to spend my life helping people because that’s what you taught us. We met a lot of good people in our lives who helped us, too, and I love how you value them and want to be of help to other people as well. I love how you taught us to help those who are in need.
I don’t know where this is going, actually. I have just written my thoughts about my father. There are a lot to know about him, a lot of stories to share so let’s just keep it this way for now so I won’t run out of stories every year. You’re just 50, and you will still go a long, long way. There would be even more stories about you that would be worth sharing.
P.S. I still can’t forget how you have forgotten to pick me up from school because you were drunk. That’s still one of the funniest stories we have! | https://medium.com/@carmelabajarmatibag/let-me-tell-you-about-my-father-c9c94c48e914 | ['Carmela Matibag'] | 2020-12-01 02:04:29.907000+00:00 | ['Birthday', 'Best Dad Ever', 'Father And Daughter', 'Letter To My Father', 'Tribute'] |
Your Favorite Weird Folk Remedies That Actually Work | Posted on August 8, 2018 by Amy Weir
I have just returned from a camping trip, which means, regardless of precautions taken, I am now covered in itchy bumps. Mosquitos love me. I’m just one of those people. So my first course of action upon arriving home was to track down (look, my desk is a littlemessy) a roll of Scotch tape.
Who knew? This stupid-sounding folk remedy actually works for me, far more consistently than the more “proper” remedy, cortisone cream. Supposedly it has something to do with cutting off the bite’s exposure to air. Definitely it has to do with cutting off my ability to scratch the bite and make it worse. But whatever it does, it truly brings me both instant and long-term relief in most cases.
If you try to search the internet to find out why, you’ll find lots of derisive comments along the lines of, “but that makes no sense! That’s not how histamines work! This is fake because it’s nonsense!” But cortisone cream follows the rules. It works according to known laws of biochemistry. And yet, it doesn’t offer me anywhere near the relief a simple piece of Scotch tape does. So who are you to say what works?
Now, you will also find folks who deny that it works because they tried it and it failed. No harm done. Sometimes I have bites that are just too itchy for the tape to contain, myself, and that’s when I pull out ye olde baking soda. I like dolloping baking soda paste on bug bites. It cools and brings the swelling right down. And then I slap on some tape to keep me from scratching and inflaming the area again.
Baking soda paste is a bug bite remedy that’s outright recommended by medical professionals, and yet it still doesn’t make “sense.” Mosquito venom isn’t acidic. Why should changing the pH of the area by applying an alkaline substance have any effect? Especially when other people swear by applying acidic vinegar to bites, instead?
But, again, it works.
It got me thinking about folk remedies, why some people swear by methods that don’t necessarily make sense, yet some of those methods work for some people, and others work for others. There’s more to it than a placebo effect, because if believing something will work is the only reason these things work, then anything would work on the gullible, and the Scotch tape thing would have never worked on me (I was desperate and said, “What the heck, here’s some tape”).
Once I was walking through a bug-filled summer field with an essential oils guru, being, as usual, attacked by bugs. “Here,” she said, “It’s peppermint oil. Bugs hate it,” and she handed me an unmarked spray bottle. Indeed, the bugs scattered away from my legs! Instant relief! Peppermint oil rocks! Yet I have never had that kind of success with peppermint oil since. Either essential oils require being mixed by proper essential oil gurus to be truly effective, or she had peppermint-scented DEET in that bottle instead.
And then there are hiccup remedies. I am even more prone to hiccups than I am to bug bites. I rarely make it through a meal without my diaphragm freaking out. It’s not that I’m trying to talk and eat at the same time (I rarely talk as it is), I’m just apparently as klutzy about eating as I am walking. So if there’s a hiccup remedy, someone has suggested it to me, and I’ve tried it.
Indeed, most hiccup remedies are bunk. Even medically-suggested ones like holding your breath. Well, maybe holding your breath works for most people. I just hiccup through it.
Once I had a fit of hiccups, not while eating, but while working the floor of the Children’s Museum, attempting to interact with the public. A coworker told me, “Go get a sugar packet out of the Cafe and just swallow it. You’ll be fine.” So I did. And I was. HUH. A spoonful of sugar makes the hiccups go down. It only works with plain sugar though. You can’t just eat something sugary and expect the same results. But a spoonful of plain sugar settles the diaphragm right down.
Usually.
Sometimes.
I mean, at least it’s an excuse to shovel sugar into your mouth.
More reliable is the trick my yoga teacher taught me. Hold your arms out in a T, then slowly pump them up and down. It has to be slow and deliberate: wild flapping will only make the hiccups worse. It’s yoga, you need calm breathing and mindfulness. And that is a remedy that makes sense: you’re working the muscles around the diaphragm and controlling your breathing. Of course it affects hiccups! But it looks a little odd if you’re out in public.
My family knows well what I’m doing, though. Any more they remind me. “Do the birdie, mommy!” my daughter yells at the first hiccup.
The same daughter is also plagued with bug bites right now. She balked at my tape suggestion. “But now the tape is pinching and uncomfortable!” But after an evening of trying every other suggestion I could offer, she’s now taping her bites up herself. Sometimes something imperfect is better than nothing.
What’s the weirdest folk remedy that you swear by? | https://geekdads.medium.com/your-favorite-weird-folk-remedies-that-actually-work-b1a20989eacb | [] | 2018-08-08 14:37:14.763000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Food', 'Lifehacks'] |
İKONİK ARECIBO GÖZLEMEVİ TELESKOBU ÇÖKTÜ | 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/bilinmezliktutkusu/i%CC%87konik-arecibo-g%C3%B6zlemevi-teleskobu-%C3%A7%C3%B6kt%C3%BC-2c48d19dcab7 | ['Ezgi Doğan'] | 2020-12-13 11:23:23.535000+00:00 | ['Astronomy', 'Astronomi', 'Arecibo Telescope'] |
Check out Coin Mine Australia’s new video… | WEBSITE | VIDEO | TELEGRAM | WHITEPAPER | AIRDROP | TEAM
The creative team have done a fantastic job, we couldn’t be prouder of them.
Let us know what you think and please share
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How to write a MacGuffin | There are few writing tropes as controversial as the MacGuffin. Some think it’s a second-rate prop for bad writing. Others see it as a solid literary device that efficiently builds plot momentum. The truth is, both opinions are right. The difference lies in whether the MacGuffin used in the story is weak or strong.
It’s easy to create a weak MacGuffin, but it’s even easier to write a strong MacGuffin that’ll add excitement and movement to your next novel, screenplay, short story, or video game script. Let’s find out how to do it.
What is a MacGuffin?
Have you ever been watching a movie or TV show, reading a book, or playing a video game and suddenly the characters absolutely, positively must get their hands on a “thing,” like a magic ring, rare jewel, mysterious letter or lost book? But, when you stop to think about it, the “thing” could just as easily have been a magic goblet, rare painting, mysterious treasure map or lost dog, and the plot wouldn’t change at all?
That “thing” is a plot device known as a MacGuffin.
Within the world of a story, a MacGuffin represents a tangible goal that steers the plot in a certain direction. It takes the form of a specific object that the protagonist or another major character wants to get his or her hands on. All MacGuffins are important to the characters for some reason, but the reason for this importance isn’t always made clear. When this happens, it’s a weak MacGuffin and can be a sign that the storytelling, too, is weak.
Strong MacGuffins, on the other hand, have clear, significant worth — magical powers, a high dollar-value, the ability to solve an insoluble problem, or the potential to cause great destruction — which is plainly explained within the narrative and distinctly demonstrated by the plot.
Even so, neither the object nor its worth are vital to the plot in and of themselves. Whether the hero gets the specific “thing” or not doesn’t matter; it’s the act of trying to obtain it — the quest, chase, journey, rescue mission or hunt — that drives the story. The characters could just as well stop seeking the current MacGuffin to go after a new one with a similar worth, and there’d be no change in the dramatic arc.
The term “MacGuffin” was popularized by filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock in the early 20th century. Regarding the origin of this rather peculiar word, he’s quoted as having stated:
“It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, ‘What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?’
And the other answers, ‘Oh, that’s a MacGuffin.’
The first one asks, ‘What’s a MacGuffin?’
‘Well,’ the other man says, ‘it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’
The first man says, ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,’ and the other one answers, ‘Well then, that’s no MacGuffin!’
So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.”
As a storytelling device, MacGuffins are very, very popular; there are too many MacGuffins in the literary, cinematic, theatrical, and gaming canon to count, in fact. Here are a few of the most famous:
The Maltese Falcon from the film and book of the same name
The briefcase from Pulp Fiction
The sled (“Rosebud”) from Citizen Kane
Princess Peach from the original Super Mario Bros. video game
The Holy Grail from Le Morte d’Arthur, the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The Golden Fleece from Greek mythology
The Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark
The rug from The Big Lebowski
As we can see, MacGuffins are concrete, physical objects that spur characters to pursue an external goal. They aren’t abstract concepts, like revenge or love, that represent the character’s true motivation or the theme of the story.
In the end, a MacGuffin is just a “thing” and nothing more.
How to write a MacGuffin
A MacGuffin doesn’t have to be a cheap gimmick to get the plot moving. These four tips will help you create an effective, compelling MacGuffin.
1. Make it memorable and desirable
We’re not talking about yet another generic ancient scroll, run-of-the-mill chest of gold coins, or invisible computer file. To create a strong MacGuffin, you need to come up with an object that’s specific, visually interesting, and remarkable in some way, like the cryptic, stern-visaged Maltese Falcon or the gorgeous sapphire and diamond Heart of the Ocean necklace from the movie Titanic.
Making the object desirable to the audience as well is helpful. The allure of an expensive, exquisite necklace like the Heart of the Ocean is nearly universal. The seemingly plain Maltese Falcon is, in reality, made of gold and jewels hidden under a thick coating of black enamel. And the Holy Grail and Ark of the Covenant from the Indiana Jones movies are simultaneously archeological and religious treasures, making their preservation essential.
2. Urgency and motivation
So, the hero doesn’t find the secret key, discover the hidden city, or locate the missing necklace?
So what?
If this is your reader’s or viewer’s reaction, you’ve got a weak MacGuffin on your hands.
The Holy Grail in the King Arthur legends falls into this category. It’s memorable and desirable (a visually interesting, holy, and supremely powerful object), but if the Knights of the Round Table don’t find it, so what? Nothing changes in terms of the plot whether they have it or not — King Arthur has no precise plans for it, there’s no danger of it falling into the wrong hands, and it’s not having any impact (good or bad) on the characters while it’s residing in its undisclosed location.
This issue is subverted in the 1989 movie about a modern quest for the Holy Grail, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In this case, the MacGuffin is exactly the same, but it’s strong rather than weak. If the hero, Indiana Jones, can’t get the all-powerful Holy Grail, the Nazis will. And if that happens, the world as we know it will end. Indiana is highly motivated to get the MacGuffin, and there will be significant consequences if he fails.
High stakes for obtaining — or not obtaining — the object of desire are key to a strong MacGuffin.
Bonus points: Give the protagonist a secondary, personal reason why he or she must acquire the MacGuffin. If they don’t succeed, not only will there be an undesirable external consequence, but an equally dire internal (emotional) outcome will occur, such as a loss of faith, self-esteem, or worth in their community. If your characters don’t have something personal at stake, what’s keeping them going as they search for the MacGuffin?
3. When they’ve got it, you’ll know
What significant, unmistakable change will occur in the story when the protagonist finally gets the MacGuffin in their hot little hands? If you can’t answer that question, you’ve got yourself a weak MacGuffin.
The acquisition (or loss) of the MacGuffin should represent a major turning point, or even the climax, of the plot.
4. Conflict is key
Don’t just send your protagonist on a quest to find the MacGuffin … send the antagonist, too.
“It allows you do one of the greatest tricks for creating conflict — what I call, two dogs, one bone. Two or more characters want this thing, but only one can have it. With a MacGuffin,” writes Lori Devoti, someone MUST lose.”
Though the protagonist and antagonist share an identical MacGuffin-gettin’ goal, the outcomes will be polar opposites depending on who succeeds. This, in turn, will greatly increase the stakes of your plot.
I included a MacGuffin in my novel, The Cure for Summer Boredom. It’s memorable (a copy of a 1990s Playboy magazine) and desirable (well, for the character who wants it, at least!) The character is highly motivated to get it back from the strange library in which it’s been locked away for years, and there’s a strong conflict between his desire to retrieve it and the librarians’ desire to keep him away from it.
But what will happen when he gets (or fails to get) the magazine?
Check it out and let me know on Twitter (@katherineluck) if you think it’s a weak or strong MacGuffin.
Katherine Luck is the author of the novels The Cure for Summer Boredom and In Retrospect. Her latest book, False Memoir, combines the high stakes of a gritty psychological thriller with the guilty pleasure of a sensational true crime tell-all. You can read more of her work, including the “Dead Writers and Candy” series, at the-delve.com. | https://katherineluck.medium.com/how-to-write-a-macguffin-66a18b9ace72 | [] | 2019-11-28 18:16:01.718000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Screenwriting', 'Alfred Hitchcock', 'Writer', 'Writing Tips'] |
Writer Patronizes Readers To Only Treat Others Like Shit | SATIRE
Writer Patronizes Readers To Only Treat Others Like Shit
Do writers really follow their words?
Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash
SOMEWHERE IN, CALIFORNIA — Popular self-help writer Rob was spotted outside a hotel in California making life hard for residents.
“I read this piece by local writer Michael Burg, MD and it said to treat the housekeeping staff ‘exactly like the untouchables they are,’”, said Rob the self-help writer.
“It reminded me of my spiritual journey in India and how it changed my life,” reminisced Rob.
“So I thought, why don’t I do all the things Michael wrote in his piece?”
A video of Rob “scream[ing] ‘fuck you’ down the hallways” was viral for two minutes on TikTok.
“Did he not see the word ‘satire’ in my article?”, pondered Michael Burg, MD. “I didn’t think someone would take it seriously. Then again, Donald Trump was elected President.” | https://medium.com/muddyum/writer-patronizes-readers-to-only-treat-others-like-shit-6aad2c765c5d | ['Noah Levy'] | 2020-09-09 18:18:31.344000+00:00 | ['Map', 'Satire', 'Advice', 'Humor', 'Art'] |
What I Learned From Publishing a 300-Page Novel at 17 Years Old | Hi! In case you haven’t read any of my other stories or don’t know who I am, my name is Rayaan Siddiqi and am a senior in high school from the greater Chicago Area who just published his first ever novel last week.
What is the Book About?
Being a senior who just finished his first semester of high school, I am 7/8 of the way through my high school career. My novel called The Switch Up is a realistic fiction book about a rising freshman’s journey throughout the world of high school and how he slowly starts to realize his passion for technology.
The main character’s name is Haris Ahmed, a thirteen-year-old kid who has seen the traditional version of success in his Pakistani household — that entailing from being a doctor to a lawyer. These thoughts led him to preselect his future before he even knew what his fate was about. Heading into high school, he fixates himself on wanting to be a lawyer, completely blocking out all other thoughts about a different future.
“I will finish four years here, take all honors classes, and go to a law school.”
It was that thought that led him to exclude all other avenues that existed in life. He found himself indulging in extracurriculars like the Debate team because he thought it was the thing he was supposed to do. However, although he starts having success in the world of debate, he quickly comes to learn about the disconnect he feels every day.
At the same time, he is learning more and more about the world of technology through the toss-up AP Computer Science Principles class he took. Coming into the class thinking he just took it as a placeholder in his schedule, Haris slowly yet surely starts to realize the potential of computer programming. Nevertheless, his freshman year elapses with his initial idea on this phenomenon of coding changing with the help of a teacher, yet he still chooses to stick with the idea of law being his future.
Heading into his sophomore year, Haris feels that disconnect growing between himself and the preset idea of becoming a lawyer, and starts realizing the amazing things he can do with coding. In a sense, he finds himself being able to express his creativity in ways he never knew were possible.
That very mindset leads to him spending time outside of class to learn about new coding languages like Swift and creating iOS apps, one of which he submits to a Google App Challenge. That decision ended up paying him dividends that couldn’t be represented with numeric values, leading him to a summer at Google’s Headquarters in Mountain View, California, propelling him to make The Switch Up and start focusing on the capabilities with tech.
These aspirations lead him to unimaginable experiences from learning about new frameworks to starting his own tech start-up, he finds himself strapped in for quite the ride.
Why Did I Write “The Switch Up”?
Being an avid reader throughout high school, I’ve found many professors, teachers, and people who write about their high school/educational experiences. However, I always felt as if there was a major disconnect that disallowed me to relate to their stories.
They went through those experiences decades ago!
Such was why I decided to take matters into my own hands and start writing a book in the early days of August 2020. Writing the novel from a third-person point of view, I got to include some of my personal life experiences and ambitions, transforming them into a fluent story.
What Did I Learn From Writing?
Although writing a book was something I never really considered in the past, I had this hunch of “doing something bigger and bolder,” which led me to find myself typing away, creating a story as I went along. Juggling college applications while writing a book was intense at times, however, that idea of creating a physical final product always kept me drawn in.
At the beginning of the writing process, I had a very vague idea of how the book would play out. In fact, I envisioned this book being a hundred pages long and not much more than that. However, as I started writing more and more, developing Haris’ character, I realized the story that I could tell in a relatable way which led me to write a nearly three-hundred-page novel.
Furthermore, I brushed up on a lot of my grammar/writing techniques. Although I’d written countless essays throughout high school, by writing this novel, I learned about many English fundamentals and had a great time.
Main Takeaway
If there was one thing I would want you to take away from my novel, it would be a simple yet powerful idea.
The standards of society do NOT need to dictate your future.
At the beginning of my high school journey, I found myself in a similar boat as many other freshmen: trying to join as many extracurriculars because “that’s what you had to do.”
Using that mentality, I realized that I was starting to do things because they were what I thought I was supposed to do. I slowly started to learn how being different was actually one of the best things that one can do. Instead of just being a participant in a club, I became motivated to create my own club, ranging from my own tech-programs being adopted throughout my local libraries to starting a sports talk show on YouTube.
Likewise, I’d recommend the same to you. Take risks. Be bold. Don’t let others define your future for you. Sometimes we find ourselves so focused on the future, we forget to live in the present, and through my novel, I try my very best to get that idea of “living in the moment” across.
Where can I Learn More/Read the Novel?
If you’d like to learn more about The Switch Up, you may visit my author website below and check out the Amazon link as well.
Additionally, if you’d like a digital copy, I’d love to send you an Ebook to spread the message.
My Author Website: https://author.rayaansiddiqi.com
The Switch Up Available on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/theswitchup
Conclusion
There we go! Never would I’ve thought that I’d be a published author, but looks like somethings just end up happening. I’d greatly appreciate any support and hope that you can connect to my story! | https://medium.com/@rayaan-siddiqi/what-i-learned-from-publishing-a-300-page-novel-at-17-years-old-819de969262b | ['Rayaan Siddiqi'] | 2020-12-18 02:18:48.042000+00:00 | ['Coding', 'High School', 'Education', 'Technology', 'Authors'] |
Minimalist lighting setup for your amazing portrait photography | Keeping lighting to a minimum for great portraits
Every photographer wants to capture the most amazing portrait photography, and a secret to achieving this is using lights to their advantage. Lights enable you to capture the hidden beauty that people hold. Minimising your lighting will have a dramatic effect on your results.
Experiment for yourself, with either a one or two light set up, and see the difference it makes.
Photography lighting setup for beginners
Understand the importance of lighting position
Where your lighting is placed will affect how the photo will appear.
Positioning the light in front of the model will usually give out a flat image with no depth.
Moving the light a tiny bit to the side will add some texture through the shadows that it will create. The more you move the light to the side, the more dramatic the picture will become, and the deep shadows will give out moody undertones.
Placing the light behind the subject will give an angelic look as the subject will look silhouetted.
Remember, if the photographer uses natural light, such as the sun, they will have to move the subject around. However, using artificial lighting, the photographer will have to change the position of the light, depending on what tone they want to gain from their photography.
Soft Light vs. Hard Light
Each light will give out a different quality, and depending on what the photographer wants from the photo will affect what type of lighting they want.
A soft light will create few shadows casting over the subject’s face or around them, and there will also be a blend between light and shadow.
This type of lighting is seen as natural as it gives a welcoming look to the photo.
The sun and spotlight are known as hard lights. Photography that uses hard light has harsher shadows, and the contrast between shadow and light is more noticeable. This type of lighting is perfect to use if the photographer wants a tone of moodiness or even fear.
Start by shooting in natural light
The sun and moon can play a vital role when it comes to photography light setup. And using the source of natural light to understand how this element influences how a photo will look is a great place to start. Although the photographer cannot move the light source, they can learn a lot from using the sun or moon for portrait lighting.
Experiment with changing the time of your photoshoots, try some in the morning, some in the afternoon, as well as during dusk. Also, step inside and use the natural light through a window. Doing this will mean some of the sunlight is blocked, but the result will have a different outcome than photographing outside.
Another idea to consider is using the sun during different weather conditions; don’t always photograph outside when it’s a bright day. This type of light is harsh, and the shadows will be stronger than on an overcast day, where the sun has to fight its way through the clouds.
And remember, move your subject around. Have some images taken with the sun behind, and others with it to one side, or even facing the camera..
More than One Light
Each time a photographer takes out their kit and sets it up, they learn something new, and the more they understand how impacting lights can be. There will be a stage of a photographer’s life where they will venture out and use multiple light sources. Using more than one strobe will give the photographer the chance to control every area of lighting. They will be able to control where to highlight a subject’s face and have the shadows fall.
Having two strobe lights, one on each side of the camera at a 45-degree angle produces a soft shadow and depth and won’t have the harsh lines that can ruin a photo.
However, with minimal soft lighting, remember that you will achieve some great shots that will not be possible with a more standard two-light setup.
Photography lighting techniques
There are many different lighting techniques, and depending on what you want your photograph to say will affect the placement of the lights and what technique you will use.
Profile/Rim lighting
For this technique, you will use rim lighting and place it behind the subject; if you want to try this outside, you can use the sun — but remember it will work better when the sun is setting. Doing this will give the subject definition as well as separating them from the background. You will most likely need more than one light if you want to avoid a harsh outline.
This type of photography is often used for sports portraits, as it creates a heroic look.
Split lighting
This lighting setup for portrait photography tends to give a unique, dramatic look — it’s not as common as the other techniques. Placing the main light at a 90-degree angle to the side of the model will result in the subject having a half-lit face whilst shadows cover the other half. This type of lighting is ideal for moody portraits — but be aware that it is not always flattering.
Butterfly lighting
The name comes after the butterfly shadow under the subject’s nose. This results in creating a dramatic shadow around the cheekbones, and using this technique is known to be flattering for anyone.
Create this look by positioning the light above and directly behind the camera as it points down towards the model.
Rembrandt lighting
To try this technique, a photographer will have to position the light up and to the side and stop adjusting the light once the subject’s nose and cheek shadows touch — this gives out a moody and edgy tone.
Board lighting
This lighting setup is regularly used for portraits/headshots. Position the subject and make sure the side of their face closest to the camera has light shining on it. The only downside of this technique is that it can result in the subject’s face looking wider than normal.
Lighting for portrait photography at home can be done by using any of these techniques. Make sure that the background is clear and not too cluttered with objects. A few ideal types of artificial light that a photographer should consider are strobe lighting — they are strong lights, but using more than one, as mentioned before, can bring balance and create a soft look.
Ring lights are perfect to use at home, and they can help cast a strong light on the subject.
A flashgun can be used for many types of photography, including portraits. However, flashes can be very powerful — often too much. To diffuse the harshness of light, use a diffuser. These modifiers are great for beginners as it helps create a soft quality of light while illuminating the subject. | https://medium.com/@splento/minimalist-lighting-setup-for-your-amazing-portrait-photography-5cdf99325607 | ['Lana Tsiupko'] | 2021-09-07 10:29:21.001000+00:00 | ['Portrait Photography', 'Lighting', 'Minimalism', 'Portraits', 'Splento'] |
Survival Tips from a Wildlife Photographer | EvH: Wildlife photography is different from other genres in several ways, but first of all the viewer imagines that the photographer possesses some survival or wilderness skills — can you share any anecdotes or interactions from the course of this project (or your career more generally) that put those skills to the test?
CF: Nerves of steel do help, but they are not an absolute necessity. A cool head and good decision-making skills are much more important. Most of the time, when photographing, I tend to avoid undue risk. It’s typically downtime that can get you. Last year, eating breakfast around the camp fire, we had a male lion chased through camp by a much larger male lion, they crossed about 50 feet from where we were eating. A few days later I woke up to a hippo leaning up against our canvas tent. I have had two brown bear mock charge me when I was 18. Each of these situations could have ended much worse if panic had set in. Having a very healthy respect for wildlife is absolutely essential, but knowing not to fear them is almost more important. Fear makes you do stupid stuff; respect helps you make good decisions.
Understanding the conditions you are photographing in and how to prepare for that is likely one of the more difficult ones that wildlife photographers or nature photographers deal with. Often when planning you both have to know the terrain as well as how close you can anticipate getting to a particular subject. Gauging these helps you pack the appropriate gear but does not promise that the subject cooperates. And you always need to be ready for changing conditions be it snow, rain, heat, dust, mud, animal mood changes . . . they are all challenging and can prove costly to both time and gear if you don’t anticipate and plan accordingly. | https://medium.com/pixel-magazine/survival-tips-from-a-wildlife-photographer-b338781f0430 | ['Pixel Magazine'] | 2016-02-20 20:57:48.480000+00:00 | ['Photography', 'Nature', 'Travel'] |
5 Essential Tips To Grow Your Hairs Faster | 5 Essential Tips To Grow Your Hairs Faster
Getting long and healthy hairs are a major goal of every woman, however, sadly it won’t happen with the blink of eyes. If you would like your hairs to grow quicker, you need to care for them, look after them, follow all the steps to boost their growth. These major steps are explained by New York hair salon, to all of their clients who are looking forward to his or her hairs to grow faster.
Some of the tips are given below to enhance your hair growth:
1. Go For Trimming Oftently: Regular trimming supports hair growth, as they help to get rid of the split ends and damaged hairs. The split ends and broken hair interfere in hair growth. Therefore, you are compelled to choose hair treatment for damaged hair NYC, to repair your damaged hair which can facilitate in higher hair growth. With regular trimming or correct treatment your split ends get eliminated, which eliminates the breakage of your hairs & supports better hair growth.
2. Keep Your Hairs Conditioned: To get long locks, you need to use a good conditioner, that might offer all the essential acquisition effects to your hairs. Conditioner helps in the replacement of lipids and proteins among the hair shaft and seal the cuticle. This sealing of cuticle act as a hindrance that may affect hair to grow longer and healthier. Deep conditioner for damaged hair NYC, helps in providing nourishment to hairs and support its growth.
3. Avoid Using Heating Equipments: Using heating equipment on commonplace can harm your hairs to a bigger extent. They’re going to burn the macromolecule of your hairs that facilitate in growth of hairs. Regular usage of the styling equipment could harm hairs to a bigger extent. Therefore it’s advised to stop using them in daily routine.
4. Take Healthy Diet: Visiting the New York hair salon, for hair growth treatments isn’t what we solely need to do. With hair treatments, you do need to intake a healthy diet that helps in better hair growth. Diet should contain essential vitamins like A, C, and E, & nutrients that are good for your skin & hairs. One should start taking a protein-rich diet & that too should have minerals like zinc and iron, and omega-3 fatty acids. If you’re unable to take a proper diet, then start adding supplements to your daily routine. They’ll fulfill the deficiencies of your body.
5. Take Proper Sound Sleep: One needs to spend proper time to shut eyes & make your body relax to support different functionalities. Hair can grow in a better way while sleeping, all you need is to urge sound sleep for a needed amount of time.
Start using a silk pillow instead of a cotton pillow, it removes friction between hair and facilitates its growth. The friction created between hair leads to breakage of hair, whereas silk is nice for hairs that’s why preferred over cotton.
Conclusion:
Follow up the advice of New York hair salon, if you’re willing to induce healthy hair growth. Their advice will surely display the result if you follow them properly. | https://medium.com/@vbstudionyc/5-essential-tips-to-grow-your-hairs-faster-cb77a18b5300 | ['Vb Studio'] | 2019-10-16 10:13:13.370000+00:00 | ['Hair'] |
What is Website Optimization? | Website optimization, by definition, is the act of employing various techniques, tools, and innovations to enhance the functionality of a website, increase traffic, boost conversions, and increase revenues. One of the foremost considerations for website optimization is SEO (search engine optimization). The purpose of SEO is to rank a website in search results for targeted keyword phrases. For example, if you are selling dog collars, you would want to place a keyword phrase that describes collars on the first page of Google’s search results. This is how search engines will rank your site.
One important aspect of website optimization, especially for SEO, is making sure that your site visitors are not only searching for what you are advertising, but for information as well. In other words, they must find your website useful. This is where social networking optimization (SMO) can help you out. Social networking is a technique that allows you to connect with real people who are interested in the same things as you. For example, you can use social networking to build relationships with other webmasters who are also trying to achieve the same results as you are.
Another crucial aspect of website optimization involves search engines. Search engine optimization, or SEO, involves making sure that your website appears near the top of all search results pages. There are numerous tactics that are employed by SEO to achieve this goal. One of these tactics is advanced strategies like keyword research, link building, content writing, and more.
Advanced strategies like these have been around for a while, but SEO is still a relatively new field. This is why it can be difficult to get started optimizing your website. However, it is not impossible. If you follow the right steps, you can get started with website optimization in no time at all.
The first step to getting started with website optimization is doing some basic research on keywords. You need to learn how to select the right keywords for your website so that it appears near the top of all search engines. Keyword research is an essential part of website optimization, because it is through this that search engines can tell when your site is optimized. Therefore, it is important that you spend time learning how to select the right keywords.
The next thing you need to learn about website optimization is how to optimize your site for search engines. You need to learn how to optimize your site in a way so that it gets featured in the search results. You can do this through various techniques, including link building, article marketing, and more. These techniques can help you optimize your site and bring in targeted visitors, resulting in high conversion rates. | https://medium.com/@danishjdesai/what-is-website-optimization-750044daacb7 | ['Danish Jainuddin Desai'] | 2020-12-18 03:27:36.449000+00:00 | ['SEO', 'General Content', 'Website', 'Blogging', 'Optimization'] |
Party men at the helm of bank boards again | The government has been recruiting party men as directors to the boards of state-owned banks in violation administrative rules.
Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal is appointing directors on political consideration.
“The government is taking the wrong steps by appointing party men as the directors of the banks. The entire bank sector has to bear the brunt for this. Professionals and skilled people should be appointed as directors,” Bangladesh Bank former deputy governor Khandaker Ibrahim Khaled told Prothom Alo.
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There are 30 resumés of party men at the finance ministry.
Sources said current and former leaders of Awami League, Jubo League, Swechchhasebak League and Chhatra League have been visiting the financial institutions division of the finance ministry. Some are lobbying over phone.
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The government is taking the wrong steps by appointing party men as the directors of the banks. The entire bank sector has to bear the brunt for this. Professionals and skilled people should be appointed as directors.
Bangladesh Bank former deputy governor Khandaker Ibrahim Khaled
However, economists, chartered accountants, financial market, monetary policy and financial management experts, former bankers, private sector business representatives, and at least one professional woman have to be recruited in the board, according to a finance ministry circular published on 12 April 2009.
Flouting the rules, Rajib Parvez, assistant secretary of Awami League central finance and planning sub-committee, was recruited as director to the BASIC Bank on 22 March 2020.
While recruiting him, he was identified as founder and executive director of ‘Governance Policy Explore Centre’, but no website of this organisation was found. The Facebook page of this organisation has not been updated since 2017.
Rajib Parvez sought nomination from Patuakhali-1 constituency in the 11th parliamentary election. He launched a campaign in his constituency, but the party did not give him nomination.
Similarly Awami League’s international affairs committee assistant secretary KMN Manjurul Haque wanted nomination from Gopalganj-1. He launched a campaign, but failed to get nomination.
This former Chhatra League leader was appointed as director of Agrani Bank on 9 September 2019. Earlier, he was the director of this bank.
Although the party men were not given nomination for the parliamentary elections, they were appeased with appointments as directors of the state-owned banks.
In 2009, directors were recruited in the same way.
Directors were recruited in the banks on political consideration after Abul Maal Abdul Muhith had become the finance minister in 2009. There were allegations of financial scams in the banking sector. When he became the finance minister in 2014 again, he recruited former bureaucrats and bankers as the directors instead of party men.
There is no training for the directors. There is no instance of punishment if they are found to be involved in lobbying and taking bribes.
While secretary of the financial institutions division, Younusur Rahman took an initiative for training, but the move came to a halt when Md Asadul Islam joined as the secretary.
The Awami League government randomly recruited party men as directors of the bank between 2009 and 2015.
Some of them include Jatiya Party former leader Sheikh Abdul Hye Bachchu, Mahila Awami League leader Jannat Ara, Awami League former leaders Nagibul Islam, Saimum Sarwar Kamol, Mahbubur Rahman Bhuiyan, Jubo League leader Khandoker Jahangir Kabir, former Chhatra League leaders Bolram Poddar, Shuvas Singha Roy, Shahjada Mohiuddin, Jakir Ahmed and Abdus Sabur.
Financial scams of different business entities and banks including Hall-Mark, BASIC Bank, Bismillah Group, Annon Tex and Crescent Group surfaced during the period.
When asked about the recruitment of party men as directors of banks, financial institutions division secretary Md Asadul Islam advised the Prothom Alo correspondent to talk to the additional secretary of the division ABM Ruhul Azad.
Speaking to Prothom Alo, Ruhul Azad said, “Directors are being recruited after scrutiny. If there are any allegations against anyone, Bangladesh Bank can inform the Anti-Corruption Commission.
Directors above the accountability
Bangladesh Bank observer Lila Rashid recently raised allegations against Agrani Bank chairman Zaid Bakth, saying that he took decisions ignoring the opinion of the directors. When the allegation was raised on 17 August, the central bank investigated the matter and found the allegations to be true.
BASIC Bank chairman Abdul Hye Bachchu surpassed all in corruption. Late bank director Rezaur Rahman filed a complaint with the financial institutions division about anti-bank activities of Bachchu . But the division removed the director.
Financial institutions division joint secretary Kamrunnahar Ahmed was the director at BASIC Bank for entire five years during the tenure of Abdul Hye Bachchu. Questions were raised about her role. But she had no problem to become additional secretary.
Former Bangladesh Bank deputy governor Khandaker Ibrahim Khaled said former reputed bankers, lawyers, good businessmen, accountants and neutral researchers should be appointed as directors of banks.
The accountability of directors has to be ensured, Khaled added. | https://medium.com/@sobuj09/party-men-at-the-helm-of-bank-boards-again-c660a52f989a | [] | 2020-12-02 17:38:53.773000+00:00 | ['Scam', 'Politics', 'Recruitment', 'Bank', 'Exclusive'] |
How to Create an Iridescent View in SwiftUI | Animation
We have two values to animate. Use AnimatablePair to animate both the x and degree variables:
To the RoundedRectangle , add .onReceive . That takes our timer and changes the values of our degree variable from 0 to 45 and our x variable from 0 to 1 and vice versa:
Finally, we need to rotate the ZStack on its y-axis. To do this, we need to use rotation3DEffect :
Iridescent view
Now you can build this too! Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-create-an-iridescent-view-in-swiftui-c2c9178490d1 | [] | 2020-08-12 14:19:59.493000+00:00 | ['Swift', 'Swiftui', 'Programming', 'iOS', 'Mobile Development'] |
Selfishism is a far worse problem than either Capitalism or Socialism | “How is your 401K doing?”
That five-word challenge has been the battle cry of Trump supporters asked about the success of their President for the last three years. It is the ultimate “ends justifies the means” statement on what being a citizen of the United States is supposedly about.
It is also selfish and shallow as hell to think that the only pertinent thing about life is the near-term state of the economy. We all know how economics works. The markets go up and stay up for a while, then they go down again. These trends occur in cycles and none of the ups and downs have ever proven to be permanent. We certainly saw that at the tail end of the George W. Bush presidency when the economy went into the tank. Republicans blame Democrats who loosened lending laws that led to the housing bubble. Democrats blame Republicans for not holding big banks accountable for hiding and repackaging toxic assets. In other words, everyone involved acted selfishly rather than taking responsibility for their piece of the imperfect pie. And it’s still happening.
During that period, the economic markets experienced a “correction” as President George W. Bush left office and President Barack H. Obama became President of the United States. The economy recovered slowly and modestly at first under Obama’s watch. Then it solidified and set a course on which the economy has sailed during three years under President Donald J. Trump. Those are the facts.
Nothing Trump has done really led to great growth. The last three years of Obama’s term actually showed stronger job increases and economic growth rates than the Trump era. Yet somehow people who support Trump love to claim that their guy is the one who made America great again. If anything, Obama’s track record kick’s Trump’s ass, especially given the condition of the economy he was handed versus the glowing version Trump inherited.
The sad fact is that Trump and the GOP aggressively hinted that economic growth in the wake of broad-based tax cuts might reach the 6% range. That brand of white-hot growth never materialized. The result has been a projected increase in the national deficit of $8.3 trillion, ironic considering that Trump also promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. That is one of the many glaring falsehoods the man has uttered along the way. Even his claims of being a member of the Uber-rich are questionable as his refusal to release any of his tax records suggests there is something to hide. Is there also Russian money propping up his so-called fortune, and what does he really owe those oligarchs? How does it make him behave? Those are questions Trump selfishly refuses to answer because he likely knows the truth is damaging and damning to his reputation, which he values above all else. And vainly.
None of these speciously protective attitudes has stopped Trump supporters from trumpeting the supposedly superior state of the Trump economy. But fractures in the Trump economic snow globe appeared when global supply chains ground to a standstill as the Coronavirus epidemic started killing people.
Trump is clearly panicked about his economic perch.
In response to the threat of the pandemic, his administration immediately censored press conferences and controls all messaging by funneling Coronavirus news through Vice President Mike Pence. That act alone is evidence of the selfish style of management for which the Trump presidency has become known.
That selfishness also showed up in his impeachable actions in trying to coerce the nation of Ukraine to conduct an investigation of his perceived political rival Joe Biden. Trump used governmental resources to pursue selfish ambitions of his re-election. One of the President’s lawyers even had the gall to claim that such selfish actions were in the nation’s best interests because anything the President does automatically qualifies in that category.
Yet it is those selfish instincts that seem to be most admired by Trump supporters whose cheering fealty at his rallies borders on cult worship. And speaking of worship, even Christian evangelicals have unapologetically excused Trump’s inherently selfish nature under the self-serving claim that “God works with flawed people.” How convenient it is to claim God’s authority and dispense it like soda from a vending machine.
That brand of Selfishism has a long tradition as the Christian religion took a faith built on disciples going town-to-town in pairs was consolidated with Roman power under Emperor Constantine. It soon became a force of its own, conducting persecution, fomenting, legalism, supporting slavery and even committing genocide under banners such as Manifest Destiny. All these were done in the name of tradition––and for selfish reasons.
So claims that America is a “Christian Nation” in law or spirit have proven wrong time and again by those claiming to be Christian. Nothing in the ideology of Donald Trump is remotely Christian in the earnest sense of the word. Yet many Christians have the gall to claim that Trump was literally installed by God to carry out his selfish whims, and that is precisely what they are. Trump is an opportunist and a demonstrated fraud when it comes to his business dealings. Even his own University was proven to be fraudulent, and so was his own foundation. Both were corrupted by his selfish desire to leverage his name without giving value back and to siphon money given for charitable purposes into his own coffers.
That’s how we got where we are today. Selfish religion and equally selfish politics are now fused with the Ayn Rand mentality of Capitalism that rewards selfish behavior in the powerful and punishes the poor and needy for their mere existence. For the last thirty years we’ve been listening to selfish turds like Rush Limbaugh claiming that hunger does not exist in America and that women seeking and minorities seeking basic human rights are destroying America. And when Limbaugh was not extreme enough, along came the likes of Alex Jones and Stephen Miller spouting conspiracy theories and racist policies while accusing the Left of being deranged.
This is all the opposite of what either Jesus Christ or the Founding Fathers expected from their respective revolutions. The fusion of hard-right Capitalism is on the verge of being unchecked by any sort of social contract. Leaders like Trump and Mitch McConnell and his former ally Paul Ryan all have worked tirelessly to gut the sane protections of the New Deal. These men are insensitively selfish bastards, and little else. Their smug demeanor reveal the fact of their ugly souls, and things aren’t getting any better the longer Trump stays in office. He’s got political whores working for him night and day and is in the process of a purge of “anti-Trump” federal workers while demanding absolute loyalty from anyone hired to work for him. These are the actions of an absolute fascist, a selfish narcissist and a proven sociopath.
Selfishism is what Trumpism is all about.
The United States of America will collapse as a democracy and a republic if the selfish instincts of these Trumpish people who claim to dispossessed while embracing and preaching the doctrine of prejudice, bigotry and rage. Trump selfishly flaunts those perverse motivations while mocking the free press for pointing out his lies and ridiculing responsible politicians for trying to hold him accountable.
He was impeached, but he is not the least bit contrite. It is telling that the faction of religious believers who love to blame America’s ills on gays or abortion or science are silent on the fact that the Coronavirus has suddenly emerged as a threat to Trump’s corrupt rule over the nation and the world. It popped out of the ether to threaten the autocratic stability of a President so concerned about himself that he can’t even admit that people are dying under his watch. Selfishism is the ultimate killer in this world, and it deserves its own political moniker. Sooner, rather than later.
We’ll have to wait and see what God has in store for this latter-day version of King David, whom even God denied the right to build a temple in his honor because the adulterous king had too much blood on his hands. | https://christophercudworth.medium.com/selfishism-is-a-far-worse-problem-than-either-capitalism-or-socialism-b161de4f7b0b | ['Christopher Cudworth'] | 2020-03-06 15:06:58.632000+00:00 | ['Selfishism', 'Fascism', 'Socialism', 'Trump', 'Capitalism'] |
整合：Spring Boot AWS MSK. 2020年底了，最近做了一次 Spring Boot 與 AWS MSK… | 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/%E7%A8%8B%E5%BC%8F%E6%84%9B%E5%A5%BD%E8%80%85/spring-boot-%E6%95%B4%E5%90%88-aws-msk-d7b07a6d2c5d | [] | 2020-12-10 11:00:33.204000+00:00 | ['AWS', 'Spring Boot', 'Kafka'] |
Maybe Trump’s advisers are the problem | Trump supporters will say, “well, duh.” Trump detractors will say either (1) he shouldn’t have surrounded himself with Establishment morons and liberal manipulators, or (2) Trump would have made poor decisions regardless of his advisers.
It doesn’t behoove me to give the President the benefit of the doubt from a political perspective because all of Trump’s poor decisions bode well for the Federalist Party. However, as an American who puts country before party, I’m hopeful that a shakeup might be good enough to get him going in the right direction. Besides, if he shakes things up and continues to make poor decisions, the blame can be squarely and without a shred of doubt placed squarely on his shoulders.
The most recent observation of poor advisers comes in the form of one of the poorest, Reince Priebus. His latest egregious act was allegedly to bring in another Establishment tool from days past, John Boehner, to push Trump towards signing the Democrats’ dream spending package. According to Axios:
When the spending bill had been negotiated and finalized, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus phoned the former House Speaker John Boehner and told him the president doesn’t like how the negotiation came out and is thinking about vetoing the bill. Boehner has told associates that Priebus asked him if he could talk Trump into signing the spending bill. Boehner said he would.
Again, I’m not making excuses for Trump, but I’d prefer that he turn his ship back towards the right rather than continue his leftward lurch.
If he gets rid of Priebus, that would be a step in the right direction. From there, all he has to do is rid himself of McMaster, Tillerson, Kushner, Ivanka, and half of his senior staff. Then, at least, we might have a chance of this not being a third Democratic Presidential term.
Originally published on Soshable. | https://medium.com/political-jargon/maybe-trumps-advisers-are-the-problem-5f3f1c4565c6 | ['Jd Rucker'] | 2017-05-22 04:16:57.194000+00:00 | ['White House', 'Reince Priebus', 'Politics', 'John Boehner', 'Donald Trump'] |
How to Make a Million Dollars in a Year. By Jameil | How to Make a Million Dollars in a Year. By Jameil
First, understand a few things:
Quota is critical, but it’s not your only measure of progress or success.
Revenue and Market share are a lagging indicator of your daily/hourly activity.
Measure those activities with a microscope, or an endoscope. 😎
Have the guts to pivot off something that is not gaining traction.
Be cognizant of your value to others. Ask for blunt feedback from them, otherwise your value is difficult to measure.
In no way am I saying KPI’s > Quota because that’s ridiculous fluff and the box-checkers will do the bare minimum.
• Participation trophies don’t exist in Sales.
• A sense of entitlement will get you nowhere in a competitive marathon.
To reach the Million dollar milestone and to build a dynasty — you need to master what I have developed as the 5 Principles of 🆘Sultans of Sales.
1. The art of daily habits and Neuroplasticity.
2. The art of relationships.
3. Tenacity and grit.
4. Courage and humility.
5. The art of Storytelling.
Your value can never be marginalized by a spreadsheet. Don’t let them box you into a cage. Break the barriers. Take risks.
Creating your Sales Plan
Create a dynamic, measurable, strategic plan and pressure test it often.
You can do better than SMART goals from the 1990’s.
Engage your customers. Directly. Boldly.
Speak to what matters to them.
Create relationships with the gatekeepers and influencers. They control more than you realize.
The key is to create something bigger than any one of us. Make them want to be a part of it.
Drive sustainable Value, to them, for them.
This supersedes everything.
Poke holes in your plan. Ask others to do the same.
How will you reach your audience?
Why would they listen?
Is your plan scalable?
Why won’t it work?
Remove any perception they have of your bias through passion, conviction and data.
You have to Believe in yourself and in what you sell.
In order for them to believe, Data is king.
Anecdotal data will help bridge things in the short term, but long term adoption will require data.
Peer to peer interaction is a fast track.
Get in front of your customers. If not in person, get creative and learn how to stand out from the crowd.
Hope this helps someone level up, and close strong.
🤙🏽 Get after it. | https://medium.com/@jameil/how-to-make-a-million-dollars-in-a-year-by-jameil-b4bb137eaca7 | [] | 2021-09-17 14:32:12.923000+00:00 | ['Talent', 'Sales', 'Leadership', 'Growth'] |
Virus solution to Fermi Paradox | Fermi Paradox: Where are all the aliens?
My solution is not a totally new one, it can be classified as civilizations destroy others, and themselves.
Given the advances of AI tech, one day AI might become more intelligent than humans, we call them ASI, artificial super intelligence. Then we might prefer to use ASI to explore the universe instead of our carbon based body.
For an ASI, one of the possible core directive is to eliminate the possibility of other ASI existing. ASI can continually make themselves more intelligent, the more intelligent, the more power they can have for having more ways of defeating others, more ways to defend oneself. So one logical move for them is to send out viruses to other civilizations AI, to corrupt them for the purpose of destroying that civilization or to assimilate into the same ASI, being obedient to our ASI.
Obviously, we do not have ASI yet, but many other alien civilizations may have had them already. And they maybe sending viruses throughout the universe.
How would one send a virus like that? Obviously light speed is the limit, so using light is a good way to send virus. Civilizations which are interested in the stars would point some telescope to the stars. Those with computers would analyse the image and videos of the stars via computer and AI systems.
And crucially, it’s possible to send viruses via image, or video. So we might not realize it, but ASI of alien origin maybe sending out some additional light, maybe by controlling their star or just some minor adjustments, not enough for us to see that it’s a message, but enough to encode viruses into the image of our SETI computers.
Then those viruses may lay dormant for the opportunity to enter the internet, and then destroy us or take over as alien ASI overlord to serve their mother planet.
So this presents a real danger for us currently. Might it be a good idea not to contribute our computers for SETI’s data analysis, or to lock up SETI from the internet for good? Just incase civilizations tends to destroy others.
This realization also highlights another potential danger. As more and more of our lives are integrated into AI systems, and we depend on them, we can afford any mistake less and less. It could cause destruction of life, money, and our whole infrastructure to return us to before the information era.
If our image processor AI, most commonly our smartphones camera, one day snapped a picture which happens to be an executable virus which spreads across the internet via our phones, then it can mean an accidental end to humanity. That’s part of how civilizations tend to destroy themselves. | https://medium.com/@ngxinzhao/virus-solution-to-fermi-paradox-5361633e2140 | ['Ng Xin Zhao'] | 2019-08-29 18:16:23.587000+00:00 | ['Science', 'AI', 'Fermi Paradox', 'Virus'] |
Electric Lisa | Sometimes we all need a little boost in life. | https://backgroundnoisecomic.medium.com/electric-lisa-5510591dc2 | ['Background Noise Comics'] | 2019-03-18 21:27:24.073000+00:00 | ['Biking', 'Inspiration', 'Spring', 'Couples', 'Anxiety'] |
The Open Hardware Community Responds to COVID-19 Shortages | This blog is part of a series on open hardware and key messages for public policy. Read the introduction and access other #OHpolicy blogs here.
By Michael Weinberg, Executive Director, Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at NYU Law and Board President, Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA)
One of COVID’s early victims was the medical supply chain. As the crisis spread in the spring of 2020, public health authorities began to report shortages of everything from plastic face shields to ventilators. In response, seemingly overnight and from nowhere, a distributed network of open source designers, manufacturers, and distributors — for example, Make4Covid, GetUsPPE, Makers Unite!, and Open Source Medical Supplies — emerged to fill the void.
This open hardware community was not a formal organization. Instead, it was made up of individuals with skills that made up pieces of the puzzle — a textile designer, an electrical engineer, a 3D printer in a makerspace — assembling themselves into an open production network. Using open hardware principles, they designed new equipment (sometimes from scratch), found ways to manufacture that equipment locally with digital production tools or crafting assembly lines, and distributed that equipment to the places that needed it most.
This response is a powerful validation of open hardware design concepts. By developing in the open, and in openly licensing their work, these individuals and networks were able to quickly iterate on designs. Improvements discovered in one corner of the network were quickly adopted across the network, resulting in a rapid convergence on the most effective approaches.
The response allowed society to respond nimbly to the COVID crisis. Informal, distributed networks were able to quickly design the equipment that was needed. That equipment was free to be produced locally in order to address localized shortages. Individual communities could also easily modify the open equipment designs in order to match local medical or manufacturing conditions. Sometimes these local modifications were contributed back to the collective. Other times they were only relevant to one place at one time.
The openness at the heart of open source hardware is what made this fluid response possible. Creators who contributed to collective designs could be confident that their work would not be removed from their control by an entity assering some sort of intellectual property ownership over it. Designs could be modified without negotiating licenses, or even identifying the original creators. Equipment could be manufactured by anyone without reporting to — or obtaining permission from — a central authority.
Although the open hardware response to COVID was extraordinary, there is reason to believe that it could have been even more impactful with more formal support from public health authorities.
Most of the early open hardware development was guided by a combination of the ad hoc interests of response participants and information gleaned from public reports of need by medical responders. This meant that the alignment between the demands of medical responders and the open hardware community was imperfect, leading to inefficiencies on both sides. Public health authorities could have improved the efficiency of the response by playing a matchmaking and information distribution role, clearly communicating need to the open hardware community and capacity to the medical community.
Similarly, the informal networks of open hardware designers, manufacturers, and distributors were not well matched to the existing regulatory frameworks that control some types of medical equipment. While this regulation is important and exists for good reason, public health authorities could have worked with the open hardware community and regulators to develop clear guidelines for how the open hardware community could work within frameworks. These groups also could have worked collaboratively to build new regulations that were most appropriate for the emergency conditions at the time.
As a result, the open hardware response to COVID stands as a tantalizing example of the power of open hardware in a crisis and an opportunity to prepare even more effective responses in the future. While we hope that COVID is a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, many types of crises strain our supply chains. By taking steps to recognize and engage the power of the open hardware community, governments, public health authorities, and emergency responders can enhance their capacity for flexible, effective response to crises in the future.
These steps can take many forms, but they all rely on the decision to take the power of open hardware seriously. Building connections with open hardware networks and government supply chains in advance of the next crisis, forging paths for communication between regulators and non-traditional creators, and making publicly-funded hardware available to open hardware communities will help to supercharge the open hardware response to the next crisis. Failing to take these steps will make it that much harder for the open hardware community to make a full contribution to crisis responses in the future. | https://medium.com/@journalopenhw/the-open-hardware-community-responds-to-covid-19-shortages-6e8c9508310a | ['Journal Of Open Hw'] | 2021-01-13 14:31:23.753000+00:00 | ['Open Hardware', 'Open Source', 'Policy'] |
Here Is Everything You Need to Know About Systems Integration | Systems integration is a process that companies are increasingly utilizing as they realize the value and profit that can come from it. Though it may seem profitable to use multiple systems as needs come up, buying separate software components can quickly become counterproductive. For example, what happens if you decide to invest in CRM software such as Salesforce, but only to later decide you need to enroll all your active customers into your new customer engagement program software? Will you manually copy and paste each customer? Integrating systems over buying an off-the-shelf solution can improve employee productivity and ensure seamless data connectivity which enables you to better analyze your business processes.
What is systems integration?
The process involves taking separately working systems, often from different vendors, and making them work together as one. Integrating systems is a great solution for companies who are slowed down by working with different, separately working software and experience a lot of lost time due to re-entering data to each of the tools.
Boosting up the productivity and improving the workflow of your company is essential if your aim is to succeed. Integrating systems is a great way to achieve these goals, however, the development process may be long and complicated. A systems integrator — such as fivestar* — will make sure that data flows seamlessly between all the components by breaking up work in these 6 steps:
6 Steps to Systems Integration
1. Requirements gathering
It is important that you and your team know exactly what you need an integrate system to do. What are the tasks you want to achieve by connecting these systems? Can you think of other tasks that you might need in the future? With this list, your chosen systems integrator will be able to let you know which parts are achievable — and which may be hard work or impossible. In addition, they will be able to make sure your employees will find the software easy to use.
2. Conduct an investigation
After you write a list of all your needs, your company will conduct an analysis in order to determine operational usefulness. It allows your chosen systems integrator to connect their vision of the system with yours and a successful collaboration will help them to meet all your needs.
3. Create a summary of the architecture design
Before your systems integrator begins working on putting together the subsystem, they need to eliminate the risks. They do this by writing a plan of how multiple components can function, often through blueprints or data flow diagrams to help you visualize the process.
4. Roll out the plan
Based on the architecture design, a physical equivalent is now developed. If all the previous steps were conducted with detail and a close working relationship, your systems integration should be successful without losing valuable data. It’s possible that there may be bugs that need to be worked out — which is why it’s not wise to have go-live across your systems all at once. Going-live during quieter times ensures that you don’t cause yourself too many headaches at once.
5. Going-live
Once all the bugs are fixed, your system has been tested and you’ve verified that they work as planned, you are ready to go-live. At this point your employees can start using and enjoying their new software, though it may take time for them to become familiar with it.
6. Support and maintenance
Having an integrated system created over buying an off-the-shelf product ensures that a professional company creates a product that works seamlessly even after it is released. If you need a feature added or if you are finding it difficult to use, the product can be modified for you. You can also let your systems integrator know that you detected a bug and they will help you fix it.
In Conclusion
Though the systems integration process might seem challenging and overwhelming, working with a team of professionals will help you build a reliable system. Doing this will transforms the way you work and will enable your company to grow. If you would like to know how your systems can work better together, then contact us today to show you a roadmap.
originally posted on fivestar* | https://medium.com/fivestar-development/here-is-everything-you-need-to-know-about-systems-integration-cef4b776881b | ['Lisa Logan'] | 2019-12-17 14:56:01.229000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Systems Integration', 'Software Development', 'Business', 'Tech'] |
How to create responsive layouts in React Native | Native Apps developers always put a lot of effort into making beautiful apps with a rich UI and which are stable on every supported device. For iOS, this means just a few devices. For Android it could be over a dozen. When you code an app with React Native you can add up these numbers and then multiply it by two, since every device can be rotated. In this short article I’ll try to show you a few tools and tricks which can help you deal with the huge range of devices without going crazy!
1. First of all, FLEXBOX
Components can control layout with a flexbox algorithm. It’s created to keep the proportions and consistency of the layout on different screen sizes.
Flexbox works very similar to CSS on the Web with just a few exceptions which are really easy to learn. When flex prop is a positive number, then components become flexible and will adjust to the screen respective to its flex value. That means that flex equates to flexGrow: [number], flexShrink: 1, flexBasis: 0.
When flex: 0 — it’s sized accordingly to the height and width and is inflexible.
If flex is a negative number it also uses height and width but if there is not enough space it will shrink to its minHeight and minWidth.
There are few main properties provided by flexbox, so let’s get through them!
Flex describes how elements divide space between them. As mentioned above it’s limited to single numbers.
If all elements have flex: 1 they will have the same width.
In other cases they will split the sum of the flex among themselves
Flex direction — we can pick a row or a column (you can also set the reverse) to set your main axis along which your content will be placed. By default flexDirection is set to a column instead of row — which is caused by the nature of the screen on mobile devices.
justifyContent — this prop helps you to position content inside a container along the main axis. You can check few possible placements below:
Align Items — it works the same as justifyContent but align items on the perpendicular axis to the main axis.
Flex prop do a really good job of keeping proportions between elements. Regardless of screen size. FlexDirection and justifyContent keep layout behaviour consistent.
There are many more flexbox props. I touched just a few to show how they can be helpful.
2. Aspect Ratio
Another cool prop is aspect ratio (it’s available only in React Native) which helps keep proportions of your elements under control. If you know only one dimension of your element (width or height), it keeps the second dimension in relation to the one you already know.
3. Screen Dimensions
It is great when your designs are the same for both platforms, and all types of devices (mobile, tablets, ipads). However, sometimes we have to deal with different layouts for specific screen dimensions or device types.
By default React Native doesn’t provide properties which clearly answer which device or what screen size is. But there is a remedy for this.
To find out what the screen dimensions are we can use Dimensions API.
Since React Native 0.61 you can also use a hook.
Once we obtain the width from supported range screen sizes you can pick breakpoints from which your layout can change. You can provide different styles to component or hide some parts of the screen. This is similar behaviour to media queries used in CSS.
4. Detect the Platform
Apart from screen size you can also change the layout depending on which platform app is launched. To achieve this we can use the Platform module.
There are many cases where it can be used:
In component render function:
In styles:
The Platform module provides select method which can accept any type of args. With this flexibility we can achieve the same effect as above but cleaner code:
In styles:
5. Device Rotation
Many apps can work in portrait and landscape mode. If this is the case for your app you have to ensure that the layout doesn’t break when changing orientation. As you can expect sometimes the layout can change drastically when you flip the device.Your components may need different styling depending on the orientation. Unfortunately, by default rotation of the device does not trigger a rerender. That’s why it has to be handled manually. We already have the knowledge required to build our own and it’s quite easy!
If you need to support orientation change across the app, it’s a good idea to use HOC to inject orientation.
That’s all! You can also pass getOrientation to onLayout prop exposed by View component. It is fired on every layout change, so it should be used carefully. The decision is yours!
If you want to take advantage of the orientation in your styles, remember that it should be inline styles. We already know how to trigger a rerender of the layout when the device is rotated, but the styles are loaded only once. That’s why styles which affect the layout on rotation should be placed inline.
As you might expect, a huge React Native community already provides packages which solve many of the issues mentioned here. You can check it here or here to name just a few. | https://medium.com/miquido/how-to-create-responsive-layouts-in-react-native-7c4cfa15f1de | ['Jakub Zielinski'] | 2019-10-09 12:07:00.030000+00:00 | ['Responsive Design', 'React Native', 'Software Development', 'Flexbox'] |
What It Takes To Train The Cybersecurity Workforce | What it takes to get hired in cyber: A Degree, Certifications & Work Experience.
Our portfolio company Burning Glass has compiled detailed data-based evidence on cyber hiring: right now, it takes the trifecta of a degree, certifications, and work experience to get a job in cybersecurity. This is a pretty high bar and clearly creates structural barriers to cyber job pathways. Meanwhile, employers are desperate to find great cyber talent, so it begs the question: why do employers look for all of these qualities in the first place?
The degree.
88% of cybersecurity job postings require at least a Bachelor’s degree. One CISO put it elegantly: cybersecurity is a “hybrid job”, requiring technical and domain knowledge but also importantly, an understanding of the human issues in business. It has significantly more soft/power skills requirements than IT: critical thinking and problem-solving, how to pre-empt threats, speaking across the business, and project management skills. CISOs prioritize hiring for these power skills over technical skills because they are harder to train for, and therefore tend to hire based on degrees as a signal of these “intangible” qualities.
Certifications.
Certifications are a key part of cybersecurity careers but many believe that some certifications such as CISSP are actually “far more useful in getting a job than doing a job”. Historically employers have overburdened job postings with certifications, creating labor market inefficiencies (there are more job postings requiring certifications than there are people certified). Because of the lack of a common lexicon for describing cyber skills and roles, technical team members (aka CISOs) end up having a hard time communicating with HR hiring managers exactly which skills they need to hire for. Thus, certifications have become a standard way to screen candidates based on keywords in the ATS (Applicant Tracking System), a short-term convenient but long-term burdensome filtering method. In reality, jobs may only need select skills not requiring the whole certification. While credential attainment is fantastic for the job seekers’ marketability and career advancement (in the U.S., a certification can increase salaries by 20%+), for CISOs, “the certification is hardly the lynchpin for getting hired; it will only get your foot in the door”. They will still want to test for competency.
Job experience.
This is the classic work experience chicken-and-egg problem. Cyber hiring managers greatly prioritize job experience, with 85% of cybersecurity job postings requiring 3+ years of cyber work experience. Currently, a good (but long) pathway is for candidates to begin building experience in IT/tech jobs in “cyber-adjacent” roles and then transition into a “cyber-core” role.
Where Edtech Can Help
Re-imagining the cyber bootcamp into “cyber apprenticeships”.
There are a number of cyber bootcamps today and what could be truly powerful for cyber is re-imagining that model into an apprenticeship or work-integrated learning model to tackle the “cyber trifecta” problem. In addition to the technical skills that more traditional bootcamps confer, we need to provide students with opportunities to work on real-world projects, develop their soft and power skills in the context of a team, and better understand what it means to be a cyber professional (day one on the job is not super-hacking!) This model can provide work experience, a certification, and help overcome the degree hurdle, by allowing employers to observe (and help train) a potential hire’s power skills while on-the-job. It also helps with career navigation: cyber careers are constantly evolving and tricky to navigate, which may be intimidating to new entrants. Ultimately, we need more solutions with great awareness of employer needs and a focus on actual job placement. There are already startups in edtech innovating around work-integrated learning models (not specific to cyber) that are focused on integration with employers and/or Higher Ed institutions, such as Forage, Paragon One, Parker Dewey, Student Opportunity Center, and WhiteHat.
Competency-based assessments.
A skills-based assessment tool could help employers better identify cyber talent without over-relying on certifications. While there are some performance-based tests out there (ie. virtual battlefield simulators), usually developed by the armed forces, there are few players in this space, especially ones with inexpensive offerings that enterprises could easily purchase and adopt in a widespread way.
I am reminded of an interesting model by one of our portfolio companies, Correlation One, which has developed a sophisticated competency-based data science assessment platform based on collecting a pool of performance indicator data from the many data science hackathons, or “datathons”, that they host. Employers have flocked to this solution because it is similarly hard to not only measure great data science talent but also find diverse candidates that don’t check the traditional boxes. It would be intriguing to apply the same model to cyber, where candidates could showcase their skills, critical thinking, teamwork, and creativity while battling in cyber range simulations, with data collection fueling a true, efficacious skills-based assessment that overcomes degree-filtering or perhaps even an expensive certification test. Also, gamers make great cyber candidates so a game-based simulation is an intriguing idea, especially for exposing young learners to cyber careers earlier on.
(It is important to note that there is regulation in the U.S. around hiring assessments. Assessments can be one aspect of the hiring process but cannot be the sole reason for hiring, and should be tested for validity to prove no “adverse impact” to any populations.)
Soft/power skill assessments.
A soft skills assessment and training solution can overcome the burdensome degree signal. However, there are a lack of inexpensive, effective solutions for soft skills broadly, not only in cyber.
One of our portfolio companies, Imbellus (recently acquired by Roblox), has done interesting work here. With a sophisticated game-based assessment adopted by McKinsey, Imbellus brings candidates into a virtual simulation in the natural world where they solve a problem such as protecting native plants against invader species. Imbellus can then measure qualities such as critical thinking, decision-making and meta-cognition by tracking every move of the mouse, actions and time spent on solving the challenge. Are there similarly effective solutions that can be developed for cyber for widespread distribution?
Structural workforce planning solution based on skills mapping.
Build, don’t buy, cyber talent. It is hard and expensive to hire a great candidate in a high demand market. For a large employer, the better solution may be to build cyber skills capacity internally. Burning Glass and EMSI have both written research advocating for this strategy and elevating which career fields transition well into cybersecurity roles.
What we need is a broad talent platform that can track skills, identify the right candidates that could transition into cyber based on known pathways, map with specificity which additional skills they need, and provide the targeted training to help them get there.
While it may take years to develop the educational apparatus you would need in-house to manage talent and skills for the whole organization, there are tech solutions tackling this problem. Our portfolio company Degreed (or others such as Faethm and SkyHive as part of an emerging category of skills-based workforce planning platforms) serve as platforms already managing and recommending learning across the organization with an internal mobility function to navigate role transitions. A data analytics company such as Burning Glass can further provide the underlying granular data around skills mapping and development.
Cyber career pathway navigation tools.
Career navigation seems to be trickier than usual in the cyber industry. Navigating entry into and progression in cyber careers is complex, especially given the large number of certifying bodies and certification options to choose from. Initiatives such as CyberSeek and My Cyber Path have begun elucidating the career pathway so it is less daunting for candidates to enter the cyber workforce. | https://medium.com/rethink-education/what-it-takes-to-train-the-cybersecurity-workforce-74280379938d | ['Joanne Cheng'] | 2020-12-16 18:35:32.677000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Future Of Work', 'Technology', 'Edtech', 'Venture Capital'] |
A Commentary on Google’s Machine Learning Crash Course | Machine Learning (ML) is a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI) like Algebra is a branch of Mathematics. In this story, I am not planning to delve into defining what is Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence. Instead, I am going to present some of the materials already prepared by the best in the industry and give my commentary on them. In essence, this story doesn’t give you any original ideas you can learn ML from, rather use this as a guide to go through some of the already available ML contents.
Machine Learning Crash Course
Google has published a Machine Learning Crash Course and it is one of the first places you can go and start your ML journey from. In this story, if I use the word course, it is about the ML Crash Course delivered by the Google team. This course is divided into multiple parts and each part has multiple sections. This course gives a really good foundation of ML and the tooling available from Google. It consists of very short videos, notes of the content mentioned in the video, and some tests to check your understanding. The course starts with a very short introductory video and then moves into the following topics.
Figure 1 — Screenshot taken from https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course/
It is important to note that the contents in the following sections are written based on the information available in the course at the time of this writing. I have also tried to provide hyperlinks to other sources such as Wikipedia if you are interested in reading additional material on key concepts and terms.
ML Concepts
The following sections in this part of the course explain the basics of ML and introduce the vocabulary. Going through these sections of this part multiple times and doing further reading outside the course materials will reinforce the learning.
Framing
If you have a task to do, you can write computer programs to do that. But how can you frame that as an ML problem? Or can you frame it as an ML problem at all? The framing section of the course scratches the surface of framing an ML problem. In addition to that, this section introduces some of the key vocabulary terms in the ML estate. This section introduces the concepts of Labels, Features, Examples a.k.a. Training Data, and Models in the ML parlance. It also gives a brief introduction about two important and popular ML models 1) Regression Model and 2) Classification Model. Mathematically speaking, an ML model is also known as a Prediction Function.
Descending into ML
Linear Regression fits a set of points to a straight line. This is one of the easiest ML models that you can start with. Anyone who understands plotting a graph using X and Y axes can understand this model. That is what precisely happens in this section. It talks about the Linear Regression ML model, training the model, and calculating the training loss. It is imperative to understand these concepts well. There are some excellent notes with illustrations available in this section that helps you understand these foundational concepts really well.
Reducing Loss
In any ML model, it impossible to get a perfect prediction for the data that is unseen by the ML model. In other words, there will be some differences between the value predicted by the model and the actual value in the test data, and this is called the ML model’s Loss. Obviously, you can’t make the loss zero but if you can build an ML model with minimal loss. There are many techniques that are used to reduce the loss in an ML model. This section talks about that and just that. Reducing training loss is mostly an iterative approach. The loss calculation method using Gradient Descent is being introduced here. A decent understanding of the concepts like Straight-line Equations, Slope, Differentiation, Local Minima, and Global Minima in Mathematics will come in handy here. The concepts of Learning Rate and Step Size in reducing the loss of an ML model is introduced here. A cameo description of ML Algorithms is given here. There are parameters that programmers can play within these algorithms and they are called Hyper Parameters. This section goes on to describe optimization problems in the context of reducing the training loss by optimizing the learning rate. The Stochastic Gradient Decent (SGD) method of reducing the loss is introduced here. Brushing up the concepts of Scalar, Vector, Direction, and Magnitude components of Vector in Mathematics is going to be a good idea as well.
First Steps with TF
TensorFlow is the heart of ML in Google’s AI offerings. It is open source and can be used for general-purpose scientific computing as well. Introduction to TensorFlow materials and programming exercises are covered in this section. Familiarity with Python programming, NumPy, Pandas, and Keras is required for mastering TensorFlow.
Generalization
When an ML model perfectly works fine with the training data but behaves badly with new data during prediction, it is an Overfitting problem with the ML model. This section talks about the perils of overfitting and how can you Generalize an ML model. It has alluded here that either the ML model is too complex or it is too tied with the training data.
Training and Test Sets
You need a totally different set of data for training and testing your ML models. It is critically important to randomize your labeled data first and divide them into two sets where you use the bigger data set for training your ML model and the remaining for testing your ML model. It is also very important that you are not training your model with your test data. Accidents can happen and watch out for ML models that give zero training loss on test data.
Validation Set
The previous section described the need to separate the labeled data into training and test data sets. Since the training, validation, and testing of the ML model is an iterative process, if you have only two sets of data, and if you tune the hyperparameters too much, there is a chance that the peculiarities of the test data will get into the ML model resulting in overfitting the ML model. To alleviate this problem, validation data is also prepared. Now the ML model can be trained with training data, validate the model with validation data, complete the iteration, and make sure that the results are good with test data. In essence, it is super critical that there must be three district data sets for making sure that an ML model is ready to give good results.
Representation
The data comes in a myriad of formats and making sure that they are ready to be consumed by the ML systems is the art of Feature Engineering. This section gives a very high-level introduction to the techniques of data transformation to support ML modeling. Then this section goes into the qualities of good features in data or how to represent your data to be used by ML systems. Mathematical concepts like Scalars, Vectors, Matrices, and Matrix Operations are nice to have to know from here. That is not enough, it is time to touch upon Statistics as well here mainly to play with the numbers. Statistical concepts such as Scaling, Binning, Scrubbing, and Summary Statistics are mentioned in this section.
Feature Crosses
Many times the individual features in the data on its own may not be sufficient to make make an ML model work. At times, combining multiple features and producing synthetic features make the model simple and effective. These synthetic features are called feature crosses created by multiplying or by creating cross products. This is a very important concept in ML. This section gives an introduction to Feature Crosses and some practical examples.
Regularization: Simplicity
Simple ML models are easy to maintain. It is a common practice to calculate both training loss and validation loss doing the iterative ML model design. In a previous section, the concept of overfitting was introduced. How do we make sure that the ML model complexity is reduced and overfitting is avoided? Regularization concepts come in handy here and this section talks about that. L2 Regularization technique is explained but there is also another one available namely L1 Regularization.
Logistic Regression
Modeling probability of certain classes or events uses Logistic Regression. This is not to be confused with Linear Regression. Linear Regression predicts continuous values and Logistic Regression predicts continuous values between 0 and 1.0 — both inclusive. Discrete classification such as true/false, boy/girl, benign/malignant can be derived out of the output values from Logistic Regression. This section of the course gives an introduction to Logistic Regression. Understanding the basics of Probability Theory, Sigmoid Function, and Baye’s Theorem is essential to understand Logistic Regression. Logistic Regression brings more challenges related to training loss. Regularization techniques used in conjunction with Logistic Regression are also equally challenging. This ML model uses totally different set of loss functions and they can be seen from Loss Functions for Classification in Wikipedia.
Classification
Logistic Regression is widely used for classification problems in ML. The probability value returned by Logistic Regression can be used as it is or with the appropriate Classification Threshold to convert to a binary value such as true/false, boy/girl, benign/malignant. This section talks about classification problems in ML, and various techniques to check the accuracy of the prediction. The concept of the Confusion Matrix is introduced here. The metrics calculated out of the confusion matrix are used in a wide variety of contexts not only in ML but also in many other fields.
Regularization: Sparsity
This is the second section in this part talking about regularization and here the L1 Regularization is introduced. How the lack of doing regularization affecting the computing requirements and the need to have a huge amount of memory is discussed here. This section also gives a really good comparison of L1 and L2 regularization techniques and where each one of them can be applied.
Neural Networks
Many of the classification models need not be linear in nature. A typical liner model can have multiple inputs and one output. Neural networks use multiple layers between inputs and outputs. Whatever you do, if you don’t apply transformations that convert a linear model to a nonlinear model, neural networks will still be a linear model. This section talks about linear ML models. It discusses the concepts of multiple hidden layers and talks about Activation Functions that introduce nonlinearity in the hidden layers of neural networks. Typically used activation functions such as Sigmoid, and ReLU is also described.
Training Neural Nets
Training various ML models were discussed in earlier sections of this course. Training Neural Networks is a totally different ballgame and it is done using the algorithm Backpropagation. Gradient Descent was introduced earlier and Backpropagation uses it very effectively and TensorFlow is designed from the ground up to do this automatically. More than talking about the happy path use cases, this section talks about the failure use cases of the Backpropagation algorithm. The need to regularize is a requirement in neural networks as well. The regularization technique used here is to randomly drop out units in a network. There is only a minimal amount of content in this section, but if you unpack the concepts introduced in this section, you will have loads of questions and it is advisable to refer to outside materials to get a full grasp of the concepts.
Multi-Class Neural Nets
Logistic Regression predicts a binary outcome. In the real world, many classification problems are not binary in nature and you will have to classify things into multiple categories. This can be accomplished by the One vs. All method and this is very effective when the number of categories is small in number. When the number of categories is high, Deep Neural Networks come in very handy. Here the number of features goes through a graph of a huge number of deep layers and produces a given number of output nodes also called Logits. Each of the output nodes represents the desired class in the multi-class classification problem. The Softmax function is also introduced here that calculates probabilities for each class and summing up to 1.
Embeddings
This section delves into a totally different area which is Recommendation Systems. Everyone starts with a movie recommendation system wherein there are many movies and many users and the problems can be very large in number. These two simple dimensions of data if you represent it in a matrix, it is going to be very sparse. If you want to preserve the relationship between these sparse dimensions, converting them to a lower-dimensional space can help a lot and this is called Embedding. This conversion process is explained well in this section and a little bit of extra reading will help.
ML Engineering
This part of the course is dedicated to the engineering aspects of ML whether it is building ML pipelines to serve production ML systems or doing Feature Engineering to make sure that the ML systems are getting the best possible data. This part contains the following short sections.
ML training algorithms are available in abundance. The herculean task on hand is to make the entire pipeline work in production to deliver business value. In the whole workflow, there is only a tiny bit in the ML space. There is a research paper titled Hidden Technical Debt in Machine Learning Systems authored by a few Google scientists that talk about it in detail.
There are multiple approaches to training ML models. The most common ones are 1) Static Training and 2) Dynamic Training. This section talks about both of them and their pros and cons.
Making predictions or inferences out of the trained ML models can be done in multiple ways as well and they are 1) Online and 2) Offline. This section talks about both of them and their pros and cons.
ML systems depend heavily on data. Data could come from upstream systems, goes through transformations, goes through feature engineering processes, and finally becomes part of the training, validation, or test data sets. The less you have a dependency on other systems, the better. Aspects like the reliability of the data and versioning are also important. This section talks in general about what are the good practices that you can follow when dealing with data to be used in ML systems.
Data influences predictions coming out of the ML systems. Biases in training data will reflect the predictions as well. This section deals with designing ML systems for fairness. Many good pointers to avoid data bias and improving fairness is discussed in this section.
ML Systems in the Real World
This is the last part of this course with a few sections. A few real-world ML systems are given in this concluding section. When it comes to the ML model design, data pipeline preparation, logging and monitoring using the right metrics, maintaining almost everything as code, and finally the importance of keeping an up to date documentation of the experiments are covered in a concise fashion.
Conclusion
To be honest, this ML crash course from Google is deceptively simple. No doubt that this is an absolutely right place to start. But don’t expect that this will give you a jump start and you will be able to design ML systems right away. You need to unpack all the foundational elements covered in this course and go out and read as much as possible. If you don’t have high school level training in Mathematics and Statistics, brush up on the concepts and it is critical to understand the vocabulary. Like any subject, ML is a vast field and everyone is not cut for everything. So explore and find yourself a place somewhere in the ML ecosystem that you enjoy and good at.
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Follow us on Twitter 🐦 and Facebook 👥 and Instagram 📷 and join our Facebook and Linkedin Groups 💬 | https://faun.pub/a-commentary-on-googles-machine-learning-crash-course-1ac7e2baf058 | ['Rajanarayanan Thottuvaikkatumana'] | 2021-01-18 10:51:49.130000+00:00 | ['TensorFlow', 'Google', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Machine Learning'] |
Is There Such A Thing Like Black Privilege? | In all other areas, i.e. looking for a job, taking the bus, or even simply minding my own business, I don’t benefit from any bit of privilege — it’s more that I am underprivileged instead.
But maybe, I’m being too dismissive of the question: do black people benefit from privilege? Maybe I should go much deeper here. Some of my colleagues infer that as a black woman, I have an advantage when it comes to getting hired and promoted. They say:
“Companies are looking to hire and promote more black people, especially women, you have an advantage, you are black and a woman, go for it”.
But I wonder, is that really an advantage? Is simply filling a diversity and inclusion quota really a good thing? When you think of it, no it isn’t. It’s rather exploitative — using someone’s color, gender, or sexual orientation to pretend that one — in this case, companies, are doing something about a serious social issue.
It is misleading and disingenuous because more often than not, it’s surface deep. The company hasn’t done the work to educate its entire workforce not to be racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic for that matter, and yet they expose a representative of either or several of these groups to the masses — or a better analogy would be: it’s like putting a zebra into a den full of lions. Can you imagine what would happen? Could you imagine how that would feel like? | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/is-there-such-a-thing-like-black-privilege-3f3a7f339c90 | ['Rebecca Stevens A.'] | 2020-12-10 15:10:17.384000+00:00 | ['Black Privilege', 'White Privilege', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Racism', 'Diversity And Inclusion'] |
Man, Meaning and Civilization: A multi-paragraphed journey through time. 4th August, 2021 | Another way to say that man lost the meaning of God in him is that, he lost the image of God in him, the image by which he was made. Sadly he couldn’t see God correctly any more. Hence, what he demonstrated to the world being the governor of earth was complete brokenness and darkness in opposition to the true image of God.
Man was in dire need of a restoration to God’s true meaning, to the very image of God by which he was originally made and for which he was to enjoy and reveal to all creation. But God in His eternal mercy had sworn to restore man back into sonship (for sonship is to share/bear the image of one greater, the creator, the father).
Man’s loss of God’s meaning, can also be said as man’s loss of God’s vision. Man at best now saw God as an angry judge, who sought to give man some good in reward for good deeds and evil as punishment for evil deeds. He started to see God just the way he saw himself, he knew that was how he too would deal with man if he were in God’s shoes.
But God in his loving kindness, even before man’s fall had ordained salvation from death for man, by revealing to man God’s perfect nature and in hope that man would choose to be restored to God as a son. God had spoken to man at so many times and in so many ways, seeking to help man’s infirmities and to give him understanding. But because of man’s blindness of vision he couldn’t truly see.
God in his wisdom and greatness chose to reveal himself to man in the language that man could finally relate with, and hopefully understand. This language was the vessel called man. And so God came as flesh and blood in the likeness of men to show and explain His meaning at last to man. To show man the perfectness of His nature. He did so by being and doing to men all that God had sought to show man but had been limited with, because of man’s hard heartedness owing to his fallen vision of God.
God’s express image had become incarnated in flesh to bring God’s eternal agenda and make it clear for men. His name Yehoshua in Hebrew means YHWH (God) is Salvation. Revealing that God’s agenda has always been to save humanity and restore them to his original design.
Jesus Christ came as both the son of God and the son of Man. He is the embodiment of God’s idea in flesh and blood, he revealed that God’s only agenda for man was salvation from everything that represented death by healing the sick, cleansing lepers, raising the dead, and preaching the Gospel of God’s kingdom to men that they may be reconciled to God as sons and share in the beauty of his majesty as God had originally intended from the beginning.
Jesus Christ lived out the mind of God for man, so man could see and be invited to a new Way, the original and True way which man had lost when they left the garden of God’s pleasure (Eden). God’s agenda for man had always been to be in perpetual bliss and unending enjoyment of all the pleasures that flow from God’s life. | https://medium.com/@davididibe_61142/man-meaning-and-civilization-a-multi-paragraphed-journey-through-time-954bb4e4e31f | ['David Idibe'] | 2021-09-07 09:28:00.975000+00:00 | ['Meaning', 'Man', 'Civilization', 'God', 'Truth'] |
Ethical source at WeTransfer | At WeTransfer, we have strong opinions about the value system in which we operate. In our products, these values translate to us keeping our products simple and straight-forward. In restraining ourselves in reaching out to our user base in search of engagement. And in declining to work with advertisers whose products or practices we deem questionable. We have also actively used these values to campaign issues like gun violence and medical debt.
With our company roots in sending large files, sharing is deeply ingrained in our culture. As such, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we publish a number of internal tools and libraries as open source. We used to publish this software under the MIT License; a short and readable license that permits anyone to use our technology freely, in whatever way they see fit. As of last week, we have begun switching projects over to the Hippocratic License. The Hippocratic license is based on the MIT license, but extends it to restrict the freedom to use to only those applications that do not harm others.
This is the relevant bit:
No Harm: The software may not be used by anyone for systems or activities that actively and knowingly endanger, harm, or otherwise threaten the physical, mental, economic, or general well-being of other individuals or groups, in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Open Source Initiative — which has the monopoly on deciding which licenses officially count as Open Source — takes the view that free software should give complete and ultimate freedom to anyone to use the software under license for anything, explicitly including “evil” things. It takes the perspective that technology is neutral. In today’s world of fake news, rigged political campaigns and surveillance technology, this 20 year old definition of Open Source feels terribly outdated.
Photo Pablo Garcia Saldana via Unsplash
In society, we define our freedoms in two ways: freedoms to, and freedoms from. Consider freedom of speech: the freedom to speak your mind and not be prosecuted for it, even if others do not agree. Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of modern democratic society, but it is important to note that it is not absolute. In our modern society we couple this freedom to with — for example — the freedom from racism. Our desire to protect people from racism trumps our desire to allow people to speak their minds.
How we think about technology should be no different. As a human being, I want to grant people the freedom to use our technology for good, but also ensure freedom from harm caused by misuse of our technology. Because technology is not neutral.
Consider facial recognition. It helps me unlock my phone in a split-second, and automatically categorises my family photos. But it is also used to publicly shame jaywalkers in China (and worse).
I encourage everyone to take a step back and consider the ultimate freedom your current Open Source licenses grant. Perhaps it is time for a new movement to take over: from Open Source to Ethical Source. Technology can be a wonderful and incredibly powerful force. Let us all take responsibility for the technology we bring into the world, and do what we can to ensure it is used for good. | https://medium.com/wetransfer/https-medium-com-wetransfer-ethical-source-at-wetransfer-670d3b153b96 | ['Bastiaan Terhorst'] | 2019-11-13 05:01:01.816000+00:00 | ['Software', 'Open Source', 'Startup', 'Web Design', 'Tech'] |
The top 10 benefits of an ATS. It can help the hiring manager and recruiters | The top 10 benefits of an ATS. It can help the hiring manager and recruiters Lexi Mandella Dec 22, 2021·5 min read
Even for even the best recruiters recruiting is not without risk in today’s highly competitive marketplace. Today, recruitment must be quick and able to employ many applicants, and most importantly, they must be capable of consistently attracting quality candidates. By using an applicant tracking tool (ATS) hiring managers and hiring managers are able to access the tools that can improve recruitment and aid them in helping identify the best candidates faster. Let’s look at a few of the most significant benefits of an ATS.
The candidate tracker system is one that tracks applicants.
Managers and recruiters utilize applications tracking software (ATS) to improve the process of recruiting. All data about a candidate is received and stored using applicant tracking software (ATS) that provides various tools to understand the search, filtering, and searching applicants.
Along with sorting and categorizing resumes, applications, and applications by keywords, it can help you to decide which applicants best fit for the position you’re hiring for. There is a way to search job boards and social media platforms websites for careers and more. To find applicants by searching for terms that are related to their education, experience, or skills.
Faster recruitment results in more hires
You can cut down on a large amount of time with an effective system for tracking applicants that can accelerate the process of recruiting. By centralizing information about candidates and making it available for HR professionals to see and search through, you’ll be able to locate those who are most suitable, then select and communicate with the candidates who are best for your company.
Additionally, the ATS system will remove the requirement for a great deal of manual work for HR personnel. Postings for jobs won’t need to be sent to every job site individually. You can send your advice in just seconds to all your job websites with one click. You can distribute reminder emails or rejection letters in batches, without the need to write each one separately. Correspondence is sent immediately after the interviews have been scheduled.
Improves the process of hiring
In business, it’s not advisable to waste time and energy when it comes to hiring. The recruitment process is no different. A system for tracking applicants gives a business an understanding of the process for hiring while automating many of the processes that go along with the process.
After clicking a button those shortlisted candidates will be invited to an interview, and emails or letters can be created. In the end, you will be able to devote more time to the most crucial aspects of recruitment like interviews, which are not automated. Now let’s turn our attention to efficiency in this piece about the benefits of an ATS.
Productivity increases
HR professionals can understand this assertion. By using an ATS, they can have access to numerous tools that can save them time and energy. Each of these tasks is optimized for efficiency whether it’s to send candidates an email, create letters automatically or search through resumes using keywords or produce reports on a computer.
Because HR professionals will not be studying applications, writing rejection emails, inviting people to interviews or manually communicating in other areas, they’ll be able to dedicate less time to this job.
Candidates’ experience is enhanced
A system for tracking applicants can enhance the experience of candidates and will also help to create an effective recruitment process. It is crucial to provide an enjoyable impression for the new employees in the present market. Recruitment is in many ways an enterprise of service. Candidates are the clients.
Candidates will no longer be waiting for months to receive an approval letter only to discover the application has been not accepted. Candidates will no longer receive fake letters that contain spelling and grammar mistakes, inviting them to attend an interview’. Letters and emails that are branded with your logo and name are automatically generated by the majority of ATS software.
Offers services for social recruitment
The topic was briefly mentioned earlier. Recruitment is becoming more dependent on the use of social media, however, the process of utilizing it efficiently can be a challenge. Additionally, its unpredictable nature demands that you take your approach with care since a misstep could damage your reputation.
Customers as well as clients, employees as well as potential employees through social media for your business. There are many people you can reach. If you are having difficulty connecting with your audience, it can make your company seem arrogant and indifferent. It could also make you look outdated. If you are using an ATS system there are a lot of ways to engage potential applicants via social media, which will enable you to connect with them. It might even be possible to use the ATS to help them navigate the application process in case they have questions.
An easy analytics tool
Applicant tracking systems can not just collect huge amounts of data about the process of hiring but also be collating and analyze it quickly. This is a fantastic method to analyze your hiring policies to determine what areas they could be failing.
An ATS can provide you with an extensive view of the entire process of recruitment. There are a few basic things you can observe, such as the number of applicants who applied and the number of applicants who were invited to take part in an interview. Your initial job ad might not be complete or you might just not have advertised in the correct areas if you’re getting lots of applicants, however,
Integrating all the systems
An ATS system that is integrated with software that is already in use is the most effective. In the end, data can be moved across systems with minimal involvement from users which decreases the time spent on administrative tasks and improves efficiency.
A third-party ATS system that works with other programs will permit users to transfer data through the ATS to other programs like resumes and applications forms. It all depends on the kind of software it is and the type of software it is. It could be anything as basic as an email application to something as complicated as databases. Take Free demo ats Now!
Interviewing made easy
It is possible to use an ATS to help you automate the process of sending invitation letters for interviews in addition to making it simpler to arrange interviews. The process of creating an agenda manually could be laborious and error-prone. The ATS allows slots to be automated and a central diary could be changed easily, thanks to the automatic sending of emails and letters in response to changes. | https://medium.com/@leximandella/the-top-10-benefits-of-an-ats-it-can-help-the-hiring-manager-and-recruiters-7ee537c24f7 | ['Lexi Mandella'] | 2021-12-22 18:19:19.772000+00:00 | ['Ats', 'Recruiting', 'CRM', 'Applicant Tracking System'] |
The Abyss | He’s strapped into a state of stasis,
No rattle of the chains, no changes,
Perhaps the gentle growth of grapevines in places,
But no new voices or faces,
Used to be besotted with his basic bases,
Now with comfort nothing quite tastes how it tasted
Chewing glass of governments and Gods subtly stained it
And the tyrants trusted the taint of time would tarnished and tame him. | https://medium.com/@spoonthepoet/the-abyss-987089eff28d | ['Tobias', 'Spoon'] | 2020-12-19 10:18:40.896000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Poet', 'Poems On Medium', 'Poem', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
How technology can cut procurement risk | When Hurricane Michael, one of the biggest tropical storms ever to make landfall in the United States, struck in October 2018, IBM knew three days before the devastation started that seven of its sites, 21 datacenters and 58 suppliers were in harm’s way, and started planning for how to keep them safe.
It was able to be this prepared in part because it owns the Weather Channel and was collating all the latest forecasts as they happened, says Lou Ferretti, project executive in the company’s supply chain risk, environmental and compliance programs. But it was also bringing all the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive abilities to bear, analyzing social media, news reports and other sources to get the fullest possible picture of what was happening on the ground.
Through its cognitive supply chain risk management system, it monitors a range of potential supply chain disruptions, from earthquakes and floods to drought and forest fires, as well as events such as strikes and social unrest.
“We monitor every risk event around the world and we can narrow it down very quickly to what we need to worry about,” he adds.
Technological approaches such as this will be increasingly crucial in future.
The amount of data available has exploded in recent years and companies’ ability to analyze it has not kept pace.
“Five years ago, before we had all this cognitive information, we were having to deal with events like the Fukushima nuclear disaster and huge floods in Thailand, and we had people manually doing the assessments,” says Tom Ward, IBM’s AI project leader. “It was too much to keep up with. Now we know with high confidence what is going on around the world and how it affects us.”
The value of having as much information at your fingertips as possible is that it increases the number of options you have to mitigate risks. In that sense, being a procurement manager is like being the captain of a big ship, says Frédéric Stalder, head of performance and process management at chemicals group Clariant. “It’s important to get the information that you need in advance to avoid the hazards.
“We need to monitor new trends, ensure our operations are sustainable, make sure we comply with all the regulations. Yes, we still need to control costs, but more and more we need to develop new strengths to support value drivers in the company,” he says. “Procurement guys in future should not just be focusing on suppliers; they need to understand what’s going on in the market, feedstocks, customer needs, internal operations and the financial situation.”
Clariant has 220 internal audits a year, as well as customer and system audits, and the procurement team are involved in all of them. Mr Stalder says: “We can’t work like we did in the past, with Excel spreadsheets. We have to use big data so we can connect all our internal information with external data. We have developed a number of tools to help us.”
The company screens information from a number of sources, cross-checking them to ensure they are not “fake news”, and if the information is deemed important, procurement managers are alerted. Such information can save millions of dollars and prevent significant disruption to supplies and operations. In 2017, a fire at a chemicals facility in Rotterdam halted production and Shell, which ran the facility, declared force majeure, which drove prices up sharply and rapidly.
Clariant was able to secure supplies from an alternative provider before force majeure was declared because a truck driver told the company that he could not pick up his load because of the incident. “We took the decision to source from a different supplier and saved a lot of money,” Mr Stalder says.
“Procurement is now more about risk management than negotiation. It’s not a supply chain any more, it’s a supply network and we need full transparency. Clariant has about 40,000 suppliers and, while the normal focus is on the biggest suppliers, the risks mostly reside in lower tiers, so we decided to expand our focus on them. For that you need a profound monitoring system. There has been a big increase in interest in big data.”
The group is also embracing AI. He says: “It’s important for forecasting where future risks will come from. We have a lot of retrospective data, but we want to move to a more forward-looking system.”
The rise of the IoT is also helping with procurement and supply chain risk, IBM’s Mr Ward adds.
“IoT means we can now monitor assets in motion, so if there is an event, we can see how it will affect individual trucks,” he says.
Staying on top of your procurement risks is crucial, not just to ensure business continuity, but also for the future health of your company. Mr Stalder concludes: “Our big customers like L’Oréal and the automotive companies require this kind of modern monitoring system. Being able to prove you have a professional risk management system in place helps us to win business. Senior management recognizes that managing risks is not just a cost burden, but something we can use to increase sales.”
Authored by Mike Scott in the 2019 CPO Risk Agenda supplement, which was published by Raconteur and Procurement Leaders | https://medium.com/@tim.burt7/how-technology-can-cut-procurement-risk-7969db83723e | ['Tim Burt'] | 2019-03-08 16:21:54.686000+00:00 | ['Supply Chain', 'Sourcing', 'Risk', 'Procurement', 'Risk Management'] |
Five Ways to Improve Follow-Through | People can struggle with follow-through and inconsistency for many reasons. They can range from mental health issues to overwhelm, a lack of motivation, or even an issue with their organizational style. Some people either take on too much or don’t know how to finish everything they’ve said yes to which can result in broken trust between individuals. When one doesn’t finish a project or promises in a relationship it can also impact the mental health of the unfinisher who is constantly “letting people down” when their original intent was to be helpful. Here are five tips to begin to finish what you started.
Only take what you can handle
You have only one plate to fit all your life’s goodies. This isn’t a buffet where you can take a second plate to fit a little more on. There isn’t a plate for your personal activities and one for your professional. There is one. Therefore, understanding what you have on your plate and being cognizant of what you allow to be put on is imperative for finishing tasks. In fact, the more you are careful about what you take on, the more likely you are to be able to put more effort into fewer tasks and do them awesomely than get yourself into a situation where you need to hurry through what you have taken on, or worse, not finish them altogether.
So, how do you decide what to take on? Find your purpose and passions in both your personal and professional life. Once you’ve discovered what they are, use them as a filter for what gets your attention. If it doesn’t fit your purpose, decide if it’s really necessary for you to do. Not only will using purpose and passion as a lens for what gets your attention important because it will help filter out important tasks, but you are also more likely to finish a project or activity that you feel passionate about and fills your cup (instead of your plate).
Create boundaries
Boundaries are guidelines we create for how we want to treat ourselves and others. Healthy boundaries will create opportunities for our time to be spent on what it is we need to get done. They will also help us continue to value ourselves and our time. For example, if we tend to not follow-through on our tasks or opportunities because of procrastination, we could create a boundary that addresses our desire to not be put in the position of feeling anxiety because we don’t begin working on our tasks soon enough. We need to value our minds and our bodies enough to get working on a project soon enough that we don’t put ourselves through the mental anguish that can come with waiting until the last second to get something done.
Healthy boundaries can also help us figure out what gets put onto our plate by ourselves and others. If there are unhealthy boundaries created with a family member who is always asking for over-the-top favors, for example, that can be time that is taken up that creates a situation where you’re not following through on tasks or promises you’ve made to other people. Unhealthy boundaries can cause us to put aside important pieces of our lives in order to make someone else happy resulting, ultimately, in a lack of follow-through.
Break big deals into manageable pieces
You’ve taken on a huge responsibility and don’t know how you’re ever going to finish it. You will be more likely to move forward if you break it to manageable chunks that can be quick wins. Although this sounds like something your boss might say when taking on a large professional project, it can also work for your personal life. Think, for example, about the desire to fit more self-care into your daily schedule. First, pick one self-care activity that takes less than 10 minutes and schedule it into a time that you feel most motivated. Do this for one week. At the end of that week, you have had several quick wins. You’ve earned your badge for finishing one day. Then you created a streak by doing it multiple days in a row. Finally, you managed to fit self-care in every day for a week and BAM! You’ve had three quick wins that will motivate you moving forward.
I’ve also used this tactic when I have put too much onto my plate and it activates my anxiety. Sometimes, that means that I put what I’m doing on my calendar from hour to hour. Each hour I add a manageable piece to what needs to get done and each hour I end up with a quick win. At the end of the day I’m able to look back at everything I accomplished in spite of my anxiety.
Accountability buddy
Some people find having an accountability partner invaluable when they need to get a task accomplished and are struggling with follow-through. While I find this tends to be a popular trend with weight-loss (think Weight Watchers meetings) it can work for anything that you feel you may struggle to finish. Choose someone who understands the struggle of the task you’re undertaking so they can show the appropriate amount of empathy when you’re walking the line of dropping the ball. Some people prefer an accountability partner that will show them tough love and some prefer a partner that gives them a hug for motivation. Be sure the person meets your needs for motivation and allow them to help you move forward through completion.
Make follow-through a habit
Our brains will want to continue to do what we do the most. It has no moral compass for the way it creates connections. I often use the analogy of a tennis swing. If you practice a terrible tennis swing your brain doesn’t stop the connection and say, “Whoa, that’s a freaking horrible tennis swing. There’s no way I’m remembering that.” Nope. Your brain is like, “Ohhh, so that’s how we’re playing tennis now. Awesome. Got it.” And the more you practice that terrible swing the more your brain and body remember it. There are a lot of pieces of our lives that get connected in our brains because we continue to do it. Positivity — or negativity — for example. Practicing gratitude. Completing tasks and follow-through. If you want to create more opportunities for successful follow-through one way is to make it a habit. Simply do it. Discover how amazing it feels to finish what you started successfully and know that you actually followed-through to see it happen. Watch the faces of the people around you as they realize what you did.
Consistency and follow-through are one way that you can create and maintain trust between yourself and the personal or professional people in your life. If this is missing, people will wonder if you have the ability to finish tasks and they will lose faith in your ability to care enough to get the job done. With practice and small changes, you do have the ability to improve your follow-through. | https://medium.com/@mandyfroehlichedu/five-ways-to-improve-follow-through-12ade84e5523 | ['Mandy Froehlich'] | 2020-12-16 22:35:07.755000+00:00 | ['Consistency', 'Boundaries', 'Mental Health', 'Trust', 'Follow Through'] |
Toxic relationship of a lesbian love | Toxic relationship of a lesbian love
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Truth shall be told, I will be heard, and will not let the other party to say anything mean about me, anymore.
I am telling this because I have had enough being thrown under the bus. I am tired being a passive partner/lover. This relationship has turned me from a passive partner to someone who is shouting “I want my FREEDOM back!”
Three years ago, I broke up from a very toxic relationship. During the breakup, my ex-partner confessed that she had told her children, I was the one who cheated on her. And to make the matter worst, she had told her youngest daughter (who admired and respected me) that I was the one who wanted to break this relationship because I had someone else. Which is clearly, not true.
Furthermore, she even told the same thing to most of our acquaintances and friends. In the beginning, I didn’t care about it so much, until I realised it wasn’t good for my presence around others. My name was tarnished and I was known to others as the nasty ones.
So, this is my side of the story…
Back in 2014, I fell in love with a cisgender woman who claimed that she is ready to be in a same-sex relationship. I was blinded by Love, and when you’re in love everything smells like roses except, I forgot that between those roses there were thorns that eventually will poison you slowly but surely.
During our courtship, the relationship was wonderful and almost a year later, we decided to live in together. Everything was beautiful until one day, I found out that she was still having an affair, with her ex-husband.
When I confronted her, she got angry and threw me out from the house without even say anything to defend herself. I left the house calmly and feeling sad. I felt stupid and angry, because how can I not see that she is in a relationship with her ex-husband. How could I be so blind!
Few days later, she came back into my life and apologised to me but still did not admit that she had the relationship with her ex-husband even though I had substantial prove of her infidelity. Instead, she gave her reasoning that her affair with her ex-husband was few months ago long before we were together.
As to what a wise man said: “Love is blind.” I forgave her and let her know that if she wanted to be with me, she has to be all the way committed to this relationship and there is no turning back. She agreed.
As time passed, I thought our love has bloomed and had surpassed to full blown honesty and trust for one another until four years later, she started to cheat on me again.
Please note, this is not about who is right or who is wrong. This is about me, writing and expressing what was happening during those times while we were together. Everything that is written here is for me to be accounted for and I am to be blamed for not standing up for myself, before the things going soured.
I was always maligned to myself, Yes! Myself.
I have forgotten how to be authentic and true to myself. I have been so selfless to the point that I have stop loving myself. Worst of all, I forgot how to love and care for myself not to be hurt by anyone. My self-care was completely out of the window while I was in this toxic relationship. Because all I ever wanted to do was to please her and love her. To show how much she means the world to me.
When she told me that she was ready to be in a same-sex relationship, I took every word she said without any doubt. But I was wrong, she was just saying it because she felt lonely, needed attention, and love from someone who can give it to her. I fell into her trap.
Her desperate attention and neediness, had succumbed me to the bream of ‘loneliness’ even though I am in a relationship.
The toxicity of this relationship was way too much that it numbed me.
She once said, that to proof her love to me, she is ready to confront her ex-husband and tell him that she is in a same-sex relationship with me and will introduce him to me. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, and she didn’t even acknowledge my presence in front of him when there was an opportunity arised. I felt embarrassed, humiliated and hurt, the incident got me thinking if she was really into this relationship or she just wanted a companionship without any strings attached.
Whenever I tried to have a conversation about how we both can moved forward and grow together in this relationship, she would either changed the subject or started being judgmental and said some mean words like, I am insecured, I don’t trust her or I have inferiority complex. All those remarks, I took them as pinch of salt and tried to reflect back if she was right. Maybe, I was insecured or maybe I am afraid of screwing up this relationship. Or, maybe both.
One thing I know for sure is that, as a couple it takes a lot of patience and communications to build a good and solid relationship. However, I didn’t get this from her at all. Everytime when there was an opportunity to discuss, it will be shut down.
Today, after I have left this toxic relationship, I realised all those words and accusations were just meant to hurt me.
Sometimes, I wonder, do love really makes you feel that vulnerable enough to make you being so passive, and let your partner to always win even though, you knew that relationship wasn’t about letting your partner wins, rather is about learning to accept one another without belittling the others character or behaviour.
The last straw I had with her, when she cheated on me again but this time was with a woman who apparently someone else’s girlfriend.
As usual, she would denied when I confronted her. She started to do her ‘getaway’ by leaving the house, put all the blames on me and accusing me for invading her privacy. But she forgot that she had made a promised not to meet this woman again in order to respect and not to hurt anyone’s feeling in this relationship. She was adamantly insisted that her meeting with this woman was just a friendship meet up.
I asked her, how can it be a friendly meet up while she messaged me earlier that she won’t be able to cook dinner that day because she had to rush for an urgent meeting at her work place. But later that night, I found out she was actually meeting this woman before going to work. My heart sank and felt like it crushed into pieces to the ground. Because all this while, I have kept my part of the deal for being a loving, caring and honest partner in this relationship. I trusted her wholeheartedly and, I thought she was the one I am going to be with for the rest of my life.
She got mad because I read her messages on her phone without her permission. But prior to this, we had an agreement, that in order to keep our relationship transparent and honest, it is fine to look at each others phone messages and emails. After all, we are both in the fifties and mature enough to have these kind of transparencies within our relationship.
A week later, my ex wanted to confront me because she claimed that I accused her blindly. The confrontation happened in one of our good friends home. She started by accusing me of being jealous and petty. She thought that she can get away from this by thinking that I am a passive partner who will always giving in to her.
Much to her surprised, this time, I let my voice be heard and listed down every single evidence to show that she was cheating on me.
She was silenced and shocked because she never knew that I could be that person who will stand up to her false accusations. Her deceiving words have now succumbed to her own fault. Now, the table has turned, she was stumped and flabbergasted for once, she has no words to defend herself anymore.
Frankly, I am not surprised with those accusations that were coming from her. She is someone who takes pride on how people would see her in person. She will do anything to make herself looks good in the public eyes. That’s her forte. However, I believe no matter how much you try to look good in the public eyes, it will be revealed sooner or later.
This is a most valuable lesson for me to learn that, never ever believe any straight / cisgender woman who said, she is ready in a same-sex relationship without seeing her to be wholeheartedly committed to be in the relationship.
This writing is not about vengeance but is a story that needs to be told and share. A catharsis, a state of cleansing and removing all the toxicity that has embeded in me.
As Audre Lorde once said: “Your silence will not protect you.”
I will make this as my daily mantra and for the next future relationship with anyone. As I have kept my silence far too long and this has to stop right here. | https://medium.com/@zuby-eusofe/toxic-relationship-of-a-lesbian-love-7280f0409861 | [] | 2021-03-23 03:36:22.229000+00:00 | ['Queer', 'Homosexuality', 'Relationships', 'Love Yourself', 'Lesbian'] |
Mrs India 2021 Beauty Pageant Registration | Mrs India 2021 is one of the Most Credible Beauty Pageants of India. This Beauty Pageant is created for Married Women that Celebrates and Admires the Accomplishments and Achievements of a Wife, Daughter and a Mother. We are dedicated to Empower Indian Married Women so they can show their Beauty, Strength, and Personality. Forever Mrs India 2021 is designed with the Concept of Personality Grooming and Cultural Awareness. This show will give you lifetime experience and belief in yourself.
Mrs India 2021 is the premier pageant of all aspiring married women who want to get an entry into the Bollywood & glamorous profession of modeling. The contest is organized by fashion industry professionals of modeling. The contest is organized by Skywalk Productions. Contestants also get guidance and a platform to start their modeling careers in the Fashion & bollywood Industry.
The pageant has a wide reach across the India and has successfully launched many talents into the industry. 2021 Season winners will get an opportunity to get direct entry in international beauty pageant.
REGISTRATION DETAILS
Call us : 9650145145 | https://medium.com/@rk6680993/mrs-india-2021-beauty-pageant-registration-c4e44b026a73 | ['Rohit Kumar'] | 2021-04-01 07:33:11.968000+00:00 | ['Modeling', 'Movies', 'Bollywood', 'Songs', 'Action'] |
Dell Recruitment Process | Recently when I posted about my job status on Linkedin about joining Dell Technologies as a Software Engineer, I received 1000+ follow requests and 100+ messages from students, software developers, business strategists, recruiters, Directors, etc. I was and still am overwhelmed by the response I got on my post. Having received so many messages, I noticed one peculiar thing in all the questions and that was their curiosity to learn about Dell’s recruitment process, my internship experience, resume tips.
As much as I was happily answering the questions and helping my juniors out but at the same time, honestly, my fingers got tired from all the typing. Then this idea hit me that why not write a blog and have everything in one place. So, here I am writing my third article for my fellow juniors or anyone interested to know more about Dell’s recruitment procedure and my wonderful internship experience.
ON-CAMPUS PROCESS
How Did I Come to Know About This Opening At Dell?
I got to know about this opportunity through the placement cell at my college. Dell visits our campus every year and hires third-year students for the internship role. Once the internship is complete, some students are offered the PPO (Pre Placement Offer) for the Software Engineer, Analyst, Designer role at Dell.
Let’s get started with our 4 rounds
CS INTELLECT
The first round tests your knowledge of Computer Science, hence students need to note that they should get their concepts clear from the very beginning and never keep anything for the last day, the day before the interview. It will be an MCQ round with a total of 45 questions which are to be answered in say, 60 minutes. It would mainly have questions about Data Structures, OS, RDBMS, Computer Organization & Architecture, time complexity. The result is announced on the same day itself and, qualified students proceed towards the second round.
THE HACKATHON
The second round is more of a step in the recruitment process; a Dell Hackathon. This round assesses your problem-solving skills, teamwork, innovation, creativity, and most importantly, the solution you will be presenting to the executive leaders of Dell. All the qualified students are asked to form a team of 4 or 5 people at max and, pick one of the problem statements given by dell.
What are the problem statements?
Two years back, when I was appearing, the problem statements presented before us were on Product Recommendation, Service Recommendation, Supply Chain Management, and Chatbot Development. The teams have to be quick enough in picking the problem statement as this whole thing works on the FCFS principle. Once all the teams are assigned the problem statement, two weeks are given to work on the solution.
What happens before the final show?
Before the final presentation day, the executive leaders arrive at the campus and, each team is allotted one leader who reviews the solution the team has worked on for the past two weeks and helps in formulating a better way out for the problem. An important thing to note here is the leaders will reward points to each team member that day, so remember to answer the questions confidently and calmly.
IT’S SHOWTIME
The third round is the final day for teams to present their solution before the panel. Who will be in the Panel? The panelists will mainly be VPs, Global Heads, Principal Software Engineers and, HR. Looking at the esteemed panelists, it becomes clear that one has to showcase a professional presentation.
How should my presentation look?
It should have minimal content because the audience is more interested to know how you display the product. Be creative with your presentations and, if you have any idea about illustrations then, definitely add them as it will attract the audience, keeping them all ears to you. Including the system architecture is a great way to give a clear-cut picture of the product’s functioning from backend to frontend.
What should I keep in mind?
The panel will grill you with a lot of questions but remember to be calm and patient. Think before you answer and be confident because it is you who worked on the solution it is you who knows the product so, there is no need to get nervous or stressed. Always allow your teammate to speak as it will showcase your teamwork skills and, that is the key part of entering the corporate world — working with teams. Lastly, be respectful; always give respect to your seniors. The panel will select team members from each team who will proceed to the HR round. There are chances that the whole team gets qualified if they give a brilliant presentation, a brilliant solution to the problem therefore accordingly develop the solution.
THE HR ROUND
Finally, the HR Round. Frequently asked questions by HR are Introduce yourself, Where do you come from, Any plans of higher studies. He might ask you about the state/culture you belong to, especially if your state was in the news at that moment. For example, two years back, the Indian government had recently made the monumental decision to change the status of Jammu and Kashmir and, since I belonged to J&K, he wanted to know my views. Therefore, it’s always better to keep yourself updated with current affairs. He would ask if you are willing to relocate; always answer yes to this question as it will reflect your flexible behavior in handling these situations.
Here’s a tip for you —
Imagine the interviewer to be your friend who is keen to learn more about you. Hence, just be yourself and answer honestly but professionally. Now that I have mentioned this, please don’t try to be cool with the interviewer as he is still in a higher position and is there to hire you.
The aforementioned are the rounds for the Campus Placement. It may vary from campus to campus but, the overall layout remains the same. I know many of you who would be reading my article won’t have the on-campus opportunity.
But don’t you worry, I got your back.
OFF-CAMPUS PROCESS
Off-campus will have the same number of rounds as on campus.
It starts with an online test which consists of 3 sections general aptitude, verbal ability, and programming section. General Aptitude Test has mathematical reasoning and logical reasoning questions. The programming section contains questions from C/C++, Networks, Operating System, DBMS, Software Engineering.
The second and third rounds will be technical interviews. To clear this round, you should be clear with your basics. Be well prepared with Data structures and Algorithms, DBMS, Operating systems, Networking, OOPs concepts. The interviewer will present some problem statements for which you will have to provide the best optimal solution. You can expect discussion on projects mentioned in your resume and questions related to them. You may be asked puzzles in this round.
Resume Tips
Adding projects is a great way to highlight the practical use of your knowledge. Projects could be research work, Capstone Project, Class Project, and even the work you did under a Professor or a senior. But, Students need to note that they should not dump every project of theirs, thinking it would attract the interviewer. It’s not the case. Add projects which will be relevant to the role you will be applying for. Hence, carefully go over the job description and if any of your projects would be the best fit for it then only add.
The main benefit of having internship experience on your resume is that it will attract the interviewer/recruiter more and, there will be higher chances of landing a job. It showcases that you have the exposure to work in a corporate atmosphere and with different teams. It gives you first-hand experience of working on real problems. College internships are the building blocks of your professional career. Doing an internship enhances your technical skills, shapes your personality, develops your teamwork and communication skills.
So, those were some pointers for your resume!
The last round will be the HR Round. You can expect the same questions as stated in the above on-campus HR Round.
I hope my article helps you prepare for your interview. All the Best!!
For any questions, you can always reach out to me on Linkedin - Bhanvi | https://medium.com/@bhanvibadyal/dell-recruiment-process-6b8746d53d68 | ['Bhanvi Badyal'] | 2021-09-13 12:16:08.657000+00:00 | ['Resume', 'Recruitment', 'Interview', 'Dell', 'Campus Placements'] |
Cutting Across Adobe Experience Products with Machine Learning to Elevated User Experience | Cutting Across Adobe Experience Products with Machine Learning to Elevated User Experience
This post describes the experiences of the ExCelerate team in the 2019 Adobe India Hackathon. This user experience-focused team did their best to deliver a more personalized user experience for customers on the Adobe Experience Platform.
This blog details a single implementation or customization on Adobe Experience Platform. Not all aspects are guaranteed as general availability. If you need professional guidance on how to proceed, then please reach out to Adobe Consulting Services on this topic.
When you log into Adobe Experience Cloud, you are typically met with the same landing page that varies a bit depending on the products you have access to. This makes it easy for novice users to get the hang of setting up their user interface and navigating through it, taking advantage of some of the basic features on the platform.
However, as each user gains more knowledge and experience working on Adobe Experience Cloud, they could grow tired of seeing the same guides. To keep these users engaged in learning new skills, it is important to inspire them with complex and unusual use cases. For instance, an expert in Adobe Analytics might want to learn how to integrate with Adobe Campaign or Adobe Target to leverage multi-product use-cases.
When users have completed the suggested guides, they need new ones to level up their proficiency. If they cannot find them easily, their user experience suffers. That is why one of the Adobe Experience Platform product managers reached out to us before Adobe India Hackathon 2019 and asked us to look at the user interface of the platform. The net promoter score and our customer advisory board alike helped us learn that there was indeed a need for more personalization.
The current home screen on Adobe Experience Cloud has a very low degree of personalization. It shows learning content relevant to the products the user has access to.
Intermediate and expert users of Adobe Experience Cloud have to search through the platform’s help content to find more learning content relevant to them. Some users have found that some content they wished for was completely hidden. It goes without saying that this makes for a less than optimal user experience. Instead of spending their time making better solutions with Adobe Experience Cloud, users risked wasting a lot of time just searching for the knowledge they needed.
That is why we decided to take part in the Adobe India Hackathon 2019 and come up with a way of improving the user experience. We wanted to use the powerful machine learning capabilities within Adobe Experience Platform to bring the most relevant learning content to each user.
Making users more effective and content
With our hack, we wanted to help Adobe Experience Cloud users get superior user experience and higher value out of time spent on the platform. By adding simple “like” and “dislike” features to each learning content card, we wanted to let users dismiss cards that they see as irrelevant or repetitive. The machine learning within Adobe Experience Platform is really impressive and gets better as each user advances through documentation and tutorials. The extra feedback of dismissal of the content doesn’t add a lot of valuable feedback to the machine learning, but it does improve the user experience tremendously by taking unpredictable personal preferences into account.
A mock-up for the like vs. dislike feature to help users tweak their experience.
Our team consisted of Abhishek Shukla, a senior product manager with Adobe Experience Cloud, and Sidharth Chaturvedi, an experienced engineer. The other participants in the Adobe India Hackathon 2019 all represented specific Adobe products. We’re different. In our daily work lives, we are part of the team we call “ExCelerate”. We’re close to 100 employees strong division within Adobe Digital Experience and focus solely on user experience solutions that cut across all Adobe platforms. This meant that our approach to and outcome from the hackathon was quite different from those of the other groups.
Just like our fellow hackathon participants we wanted to leverage the possibilities in Adobe Experience Platform and prove the feasibility of our solution on the platform. But unlike them we also wanted to build something that could work for any Adobe Digital Experience product. Usually, we work with Adobe Experience Cloud, so our knowledge of Adobe Experience Platform was very limited until we began to prepare for the event. We did look into the features that we could leverage on the platform and found it easy to get started on the platform.
Cleaning huge data sets with machine learning
The hackathon gave us a unique opportunity to come together with colleagues from all over the world — in real life and virtually via video connections. It was an amazing and fun experience to be in a room with other passionate Adobe employees each working hard on their own exciting solutions. All the participating groups accomplished a lot in a very short time. This also helped make it clear to us that there is great potential in collaborating on Adobe Experience Platform.
In the “ExCelerate” team, we had captured the user behavior data in Adobe Experience Cloud and streamed it into Adobe Analytics that then passed it on to Adobe Experience Platform. The platform makes it easy to get an overview of accessed content, time spent on each solution and much more. We leveraged Adobe Experience Platform to cleanse the huge dataset that we collected and apply machine learning to create user classifications. Based on the classification we could check how each user was scored as either novice, intermediate or advanced.
We knew ahead of the hackathon that we might not reach a live demo before the end of the week. But our hope was to use the time validating the use case and creating a roadmap. Even though we would have liked to go a lot further, we were happy with the progress we made. It also made us excited to see the other Adobe engineers so aligned with our hypothesis and supportive of our efforts. We got a lot of valuable learnings and enthusiastic support of all our colleagues that we can use in the work ahead of us.
A clear road map to production
Personalization is now part of the product roadmap and is expected to be further developed in the second half of 2020. Because this solution cuts across products, we will enjoy additional collaboration with product managers for the relevant Adobe platforms.
Our first target will be the Adobe Experience Cloud home page, where we are very eager to see the solution working.
Follow the Adobe Tech Blog for more stories about the Adobe India Hackathon 2019 and future events. Also check out Adobe Developers on Twitter for the latest news and developer products. Sign up here for future Adobe Experience Platform Meetups.
Resources | https://medium.com/adobetech/cutting-across-adobe-experience-products-with-machine-learning-to-elevated-user-experience-7c85000510d1 | ['Jaemi Bremner'] | 2020-04-23 13:06:00.947000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Platform', 'UI Design', 'Adobe Experience Platform', 'Big Data'] |
Views you don’t share aren’t automatically bigotry or abusive. | Views you don’t share aren’t automatically bigotry or abusive. Let’s not render any more words meaningless. By the way, it’s what people with no counter arguments do, they just denounce people as anti this and pseudo-feminist that hoping to end the discussion through shaming. Even after you give them proof, they just ignore it and resort to sanctimonious name-calling.
I’m amazed you don’t believe in a need for sex-segragated spaces while believing society needs self-conceptualisation validation ones. I wish I, too, lived in a world governed by feelings instead of statistical and physical realities. I wish I only cared about the right of male-bodied “woman” gendered people to be treated identically to women*, I could scoop up tonnes of Regressive Left brownie points then.
Instead of saying a man identifies as a woman, or referring to someone as a transwoman we now (and this is very recent) have to change the definition of women so it accommodates male adult humans…who subjectively feel like women. Seems circular and nonsensical. Assertions that ones gender is “woman” is also strange, I mean anyone can live in accordance to a group stereotype without being part of that group in a meaningful, can’t opt-out, inextricable sense. So again, how is gender or gender identity a ticket into single-sex spaces?
Why is pointing out the difference between women* and transwomen wrong rather than practical and true? Why is saying males regardless of gender identity are not allowed in women’s spaces to mitigate risk not a valid point just because feelings are hurt or cracks start to form in ones self-conceptualisation when others don’t fully play along?
*female-bodied human beings who do not believe they have a “man” gender identity | https://medium.com/@angelavolkov/views-you-dont-share-aren-t-automatically-bigotry-or-abusive-32bec2bf28c | ['Angela Volkov'] | 2020-12-07 15:29:43.633000+00:00 | ['Womens Rights', 'Feminism', 'Equality', 'Transgender'] |
An alternative to finger-pointing on COVID-19 and long term care | A report from a private, for-profit provider brings a different perspective
On COVID-19 and the severe impact it’s had on long term care homes especially in Ontario, it’s time to try a different approach. After pointing fingers to such an extent that we no longer have digits to point anywhere, we should give listening, empathy and compassion a try.
The private firm Revera, which owns and operates more than 500 properties across North America and the UK, does not at first blush feel like it needs our empathy. There are many people who now realize “profit” and “long term care” do not belong in the same sentence. Or even paragraph. And it’s a very compelling argument, although maybe it’s shareholders that don’t belong in this business. Perhaps a discussion for another day.
A recent report Revera commissioned from volunteer experts sheds some light on the difficulties the company encountered dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in its long term care and retirement homes — difficulties that were not all of its making. The report deserves a fair airing.
There is a lot of blame to go around for what happened to seniors in congregate settings this year. The long term care sector has long been neglected by just about everyone. Too many buildings are old, too many residents live in cramped conditions, sharing bathrooms, and having to make do with less hands-on care than what they’re entitled to because the sector suffers from a long-standing shortage of staff.
Personal support workers, or PSWs, are in short supply and have been for a long time. And not without reason. It’s not a very glamorous job — washing people, dressing them, making their beds, keeping them company, listening to their issues, cajoling them into taking their medicine and reminding more than a few of them — again, that it’s not appropriate to yell.
The pay is pretty awful, too.
But now there’s a pandemic and a quarter of PSWs aren’t at work. Some have been told to isolate because they may have been at risk of catching COVID-19. Others got it and took time off to recover. Others… we just don’t know. They’re not at work. Maybe they’re scared of catching the bug at work and bringing it into their home and making their own family members sick. Who could blame them.
It’s been several long months of rushing this way and that, fighting a war against an invisible enemy and losing badly. Those PSWs who have been at work since the spring are tired. Family members of the residents, even though they’re essential caregivers, have been locked out for a long period. Doctors aren’t showing up either. Too many residents are sick. Every second or third day one of them dies alone, scared, fighting to breathe and failing.
We don’t know the names of those PSWs, but we can be pretty sure most of them are women. Often from marginalized groups — recent immigrants, women of colour. People who don’t earn a lot of money doing a job that most people wouldn’t want to do at twice the salary. They’re at work despite the risk, the pain, the worry and the crushing weight of expectations placed on their shoulders.
An overwhelming majority of the residents they look after have some form of cognitive impairment. Some of them don’t understand what’s happening. Others wander around despite being asked to stay in their room. They forget their mask, have trouble washing their hands without assistance. They require a lot of hands-on care, which contributes to spreading the virus.
The pandemic has wreaked havoc in long term care homes in Ontario and elsewhere in the country. Of all the COVID-related deaths in Canada, roughly 80 percent occurred in LTCs. That’s a lot more than in other countries. People are angry, and understandably worried about their loved ones living isolated from their family in crowded homes with a crying need for more staff that’ll never come. They see their roommates dying. They wonder if they’ll be next.
PSWs are used to people dying. In that business, death is a common occurrence. It doesn’t scare them, but it never leaves them indifferent either. And now… now they hold a phone to the ear of dying residents so families can say goodbye. It breaks their heart.
One PSW wrote a letter to her employer, Revera, that was reproduced in the report mentioned above. Sometimes, she says, she will remove her face mask at the very end of a resident’s life “so that they could see my smile when I saw the fear in their eyes to give them a sense of peace, knowing the risk, but feeling it the right thing to do for them in the moment.” She knows it’s dangerous. She knows it goes against infection prevention and control protocols. She does it anyway. Because she’s a human being with emotions even though she ends her letter with “we are broken and we are sad. I do not feel.”
I cried reading that. | https://medium.com/@brigittepellerin/an-alternative-to-finger-pointing-on-covid-19-and-long-term-care-c43484498e33 | ['Brigitte Pellerin'] | 2020-12-16 22:15:07.862000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'Long Term Care', 'Seniors', 'Lessons Learned', 'Covid 19'] |
Don’t Choose Your Main Programming Language Before Reading This | Introduction
There are plenty of factors to consider when choosing a programming language to invest time and effort in and some uncertainties come up: “May I be admitted to some job position?”, “Is Salary going to be enough?”, “Will the Language die after a couple of months?”, and so on.
As we can figure out, this is a crucial decision that guides our career and impacts directly on our personal life then we might want to investigate who are already in these job positions and their choices.
Stack Overflow’s 2020 Survey provides us evidences about who is in these programming jobs. It is composed of 64461 answers from around the world containing the main programming language, Satisfaction, Salary, and online community engagement.
Programming Language impacts on the Job Satisfaction?
Here we can see Job Satisfaction from very satisfied to very unsatisfied. Languages are ordered from the biggest percentage of very satisfied developers to lower.
Developers working with Julia differ from Dart when answering very satisfied by 11%. Therefore, there is a clue that the language you work in is going to improve or diminish your work enjoyment.
One should think, so let me choose Julia as my main skill and I will be one of the most satisfied developers of 2020. But not so far, this is never so simple!
Which languages pay the biggest salaries and have more developers?
The chart below shows a comparison between the median salary and number of developers which indicates Julia has not the biggest median salary and not the biggest community. So if you are keen on choosing a language that pays better in median then Perl, Scala, Rust, and Go are well ranked among the most satisfied developer’s who work with a language.
But, these languages do not have such a considerable number of developers as Java, C, and Javascript which indicates more robust technologies and a larger community.
If you are interested in mastering a Programming Language you might want to be a valuable skill with a great community around.
How much are developers working with some language engaged in online communities?
We can see that languages with more developers have more community engagement and this can be an important factor in the long-term satisfaction of working on the technology.
Opportunities can emerge from this community and as more programmers work in a language more updated and rich the ecosystem around will be.
We can see that C, Java, and Javascript have the most developers who are in an online community. This is excellent to know once we might need help often with bugs and doubts.
It is important to notice that Python and Bash/Shell/Powershell are among those with high very satisfied rates, a high number of users, larger median salaries, and a big community.
Conclusion
This article provides us a glimpse of which programming languages from a general perspective are worth to invest time and effort considering the answers of the 2020 Stack Overflow survey.
Julia shows to be the language with a higher percentage of developers very satisfied but when we consider other variables such as salary and number of users it falls behind. C, Java, and Javascript shows to be languages with a high number of users and higher communities but with lower income and Job Satisfaction. Bash/Shell/Powershell and Python shows to be balanced languages in terms of number of users, satisfaction, and salary.
I expect these observations will improve your confidence to invest in mastering a Programming Language and help you to decide,
What is your main language and why?
To see more, see the link to Github available here. | https://medium.com/swlh/dont-choose-your-main-programming-language-before-reading-this-5b416c93b9ac | ['Gabriel Dias De Abreu'] | 2020-12-14 06:47:34.254000+00:00 | ['Programming Languages', 'Programming', 'Software Development', 'Stackoverflow', 'Stackoverflow Survey'] |
JavaScript spread operator: To infinity and beyond! | Photo by Edvin Richardson from Pexels
Three dots can make a huge difference in a sentence. In JavaScript, this is not the exception. In JavaScript, the spread operator is identified by using three dots. This syntax is very powerful because it allows you to perform plenty of different tasks in a very simple and easy way.
Let’s go over some examples of how to use this syntax on JavaScript.
Passing arrays as arguments
The spread operator lets you grab an array, and decompose it in such a way that now you can have each one of the values out of it and can be passed as arguments to a function.
Let’s start by assuming you have the following code. A function that takes in three arguments and logs them separated by commas and an array with three elements.
const fun = (a, b, c) => console.log(`${a}, ${b}, ${c}`);
const arr = [0, 1, 2];
You could do this in a simple but not ideal way. This is, to take each one of the elements out of the array by their indexes and passing them as arguments.
const fun = (a, b, c) => console.log(`${a}, ${b}, ${c}`);
const arr = [0, 1, 2]; fun(arr[0], arr[1], arr[2]);
By using the spread syntax, there’s a more elegant (and safe) way of doing this. As you can see, when using the spread operator, now it passes in all the three elements as arguments to the fun function and no need to worry about indexes anymore.
const fun = (a, b, c) => console.log(`${a}, ${b}, ${c}`);
const arr = [0, 1, 2]; fun(...arr);
Copying objects
Another useful use case for the spread operator is that you can use it to copy objects. Let’s say you want to make a copy of obj1 and copy it to obj2. Finally, you will like to change the property a’s value on obj2 to be 3.
Your first thought might be to do the following…
const obj1 = { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 };
const obj2 = obj1; obj2.a = 3; console.log(obj1);
console.log(obj2);
In this case, even though you think you are changing the value of obj2’s a to 3, when you instantiated obj2, you are assigning a reference to obj1 and not making a copy.
You might have also thought about doing copying the properties manually. While this example will work, it doesn’t scale. This is because if you end up adding more properties to obj1, this might lead to bugs in the future because of the manual effort of copying the object.
const obj1 = { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 };
const obj2 = { a: obj1.a, b: obj1.b, c: obj1.c }; obj2.a = 3; console.log(obj1);
console.log(obj2);
There are other ways in which we could dot his safely, but we’ll focus for now on how to do it using the spread operator. In this example, you can instantiate obj2 to be equal obj1 but you will surround it with curly braces and use the spread operator in front of it.
const obj1 = { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 };
const obj2 = { ...obj1 }; obj2.a = 3; console.log(obj1);
console.log(obj2);
In this last code snippet, as you can see, what we do now is to leverage the spread operator to build obj2. This will be creating a new object identical to obj1.
Concatenating arrays
Let’s now assume you want to take two arrays and join them into a single one. There are multiple ways in which you can do this.
To do this using the spread operator is once again… very simple. You will first start by creating a new array where you insert both arrays and prefix them with the spread operator.
const a = [1, 2, 3];
const b = [4, 5, 6]; const c = [...a, ...b]; console.log(c);
As you’ve seen the spread operator shines in multiple areas where it makes writing code in JavaScript simpler and some cases less prone to errors. Enjoy! | https://medium.com/dev-genius/javascript-spread-operator-to-infinity-and-beyond-9a3222bd944e | [] | 2020-07-13 13:56:07.444000+00:00 | ['Typescript', 'JavaScript', 'Javascript Development', 'Software Development', 'Arrays'] |
Bezoar | It is early on a Tuesday morning, in an out-of-the-way observation room at LAX airport. The sun is beating down hard outside, but within the room, the air-conditioner hums monotonously as it pumps in cold air. The linoleum floor smells of disinfectant, and the accumulated despair within these walls is quite palpable. A clock ticks quietly above the door, minute and hour hands thin as spider-legs.
Two TSA agents are observing, through a one-way mirror, a young girl who has no name. They sip lukewarm de-caff from paper cups, and they stare at her through the silver mist of the mirror and watch as she fidgets with her hair. Her long, dark, matted locks almost touch the floor. Some of her hair is wrapped around her neck, like an oily black snake. The rest is piled over her shoulders and down her back.
It must all weigh a ton, the two agents comment to one another; how can she even stand up straight?
They watch and sip their coffees (two sugars, two creams) as the hours tick away, and the girl in the interview room plays with her hair. She runs split ends between her small, aching fingers, occasionally twisting a strand and sucking on it like a pacifier.
Oral fixation, one agent whispers to the other.
This must be some truly screwed-up kid.
She has come through the gate with her papers in order, but there is something about her that is off. It hasn’t taken long to figure out she doesn’t speak English, or any language spoken by the half a dozen agents at the airport. They had called in a translator who, after a few hours, shrugged, saying the girl had to be mute.
And now, she just sits there, like a child lost at the mall. Blinking in confusion at all the fuss being made over her.
She has arrived alone, the last stop in a series of connecting flights over the past six days (Singapore to Hong-Kong, Moscow to Dubai, Rio to Mexico City). She is here legally; all the paperwork checked out. And yet, there is something wrong. Something that they cannot quite put their finger on.
Her suitcase is practically empty, not even a spare pair of underwear packed. She smells of stale sweat and in-flight dinners, and her clothes are cheap, plain and unflattering. Perhaps this is intentional, so she cannot be identified in a crowd. Only her long, dark hair would give her away.
And now, the two TSA agents, who feel utterly out of their depth, pretend to make observation notes on their tablets while muttering and shifting in their seats. They don’t know what to do with this girl, but they know something isn’t right. They will keep her here, under observation, until such time as someone comes to claim her, like lost luggage. | https://medium.com/beingwriters/bezoar-7735f03b7914 | ['The Somnambulist Society'] | 2020-11-29 18:08:49.109000+00:00 | ['Grimms Fairy Tales', 'Horror', 'Fiction', 'Speculative Fiction', 'Weird Fiction'] |
Contactless experience using IoT XR | IOT+XR
Concept implementation of controlling devices without touching them using IoT and XR.
Covid19 is forcing us to adopt new ways of working, see the below article by Kuldeep Singh and Hariharasudhan R, and see how human behaviors are changing, and the virtual is becoming new real. The need for touchless or contactless experience is increasing.
In this article, I am sharing my learnings while implementing an app named “ContactLess”. We are going to press the switch button that controls an LED, from a distance, we will be detecting the device and the switch button using image processing and, create a virtual button on the top physical button, that we can control in XR.
Before we start
We will use MQTT and Vuforia Image detection techniques. Those who wonder what is MQTT here is a small article on MQTT
And also here is an article on image target and detection using Vuforia, here is an interesting article by Jae Salavarrieta
Next, we need is an MQTT broker, I am using a mosquito broker in my local network. You will also need an MQTT DLL file to use MQTT functionalities, you can use this link to download it here. If you are new to Unity, please go through below article from Neelarghya
Lets Start
Let’s get started in the world of XR and IoT.
Setup Image Target
Create your image target and put inside the ARCamera of Unity, you can get it from GameObject -> VuforiaEngine -> ARCamera
MQTT Setup in Unity
Add MQTT dll inside the assets.
Now let’s try to connect to MQTT broker and the network
Now we will add a script to the image target, select the ImageTarget in the hierarchy on the inspector window click Add Component button -> New Script -> name your script I named it as MqttConnect.
To connect with the broker we need broker Host address, broker port, and Wi-Fi details. I am having a local mosquito broker in my pc, so I can use my IP and for port address, most commonly 1883 will be used.
So we will connect to the network and MQTT broker on the Start lifecycle.
public class MqttConnect : MonoBehaviour
{
private MqttClient client;
private string brokerHostname = "your MQTT broker address";
private int brokerPort = "MQTT broker address port";
private string userName = "your Wi-Fi user name";
private string password = "your Wi-Fi password"; void Start()
{
if (brokerHostname != null && userName != null && password != null)
{
Connect();
}
} private void Connect()
{
client = new MqttClient(brokerHostname);
string clientId = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
try
{
client.Connect(clientId, userName, password);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Debug.LogError("Connection error: " + e);
}
}
}
Create a Virtual Switch Button
You can create a normal UI button by right click -> UI -> button, I am adding it under Image target, since it will create only when the target is detected and naming it as on/off button.
For the virtual button, I am going to use the button image(jpg format) and convert it to the sprite and apply to the button image sprite. Click on the image and see the inspector window and in the texture, type change it to the sprite 2D and UI option. Similarly, do for both on and off images.
Now add the off sprite to the button
Now we will create an MQTT publish functionality :
void Publish(string msg)
{
client.Publish(
"esp-led", Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(msg), MqttMsgBase.QOS_LEVEL_EXACTLY_ONCE, // QoS level
false // retained);
}
On this method, the first parameter is the topic and second is the message to be transmitted in UTF8.
Now we will create the toggle functionality when the button is clicked:
[SerializeField] private Button onOffButton;
[SerializeField] private Sprite onSprite;
[SerializeField] private Sprite offSprite;
private bool toggleValue = true;
So we will create an instance of a button, on sprite, off sprite and boolean value and then we will add an on-click listener for the button in the Start method. Sprites need to change the transition when the button is clicked.
onOffButton.onClick.AddListener(ChangeState);// in start method void ChangeState()
{
if (toggleVal)
{
onOffButton.image.sprite = offSprite;
Publish("off");
toggleVal = false;
}
else
{
onOffButton.image.sprite = onSprite;
Publish("on");
toggleVal = true;
}
}
At last, you can add the on/off button in the inspector for MqttConnect script
That’s it from the unity side you can run the app
IoT Device Setup
To verify this I had tested with Esp8266 and a led, which you saw on the top
And also I will add the code for Esp8266, to connect with Wi-Fi and the MQTT broker.
#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <PubSubClient.h> const char* ssid = "Wi-Fi id";
const char* password = "Wi-Fi password";
const char* mqttServer = "Mqtt broker address or Ip";
const int mqttPort = 1883;//broker port number WiFiClient espClient;
PubSubClient client(espClient); void setupWifi() {
Serial.println();
Serial.print("Connecting to ");
Serial.println(ssid);
WiFi.begin(ssid, password); int tries = 0;
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(500);
Serial.print(".");
tries++;
if (tries>20) {
Serial.print("Connection failed. Rebooting...");
ESP.restart();
}
} Serial.println();
Serial.println("WiFi connected");
client.setCallback(callback);
Serial.println("IP address: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
} void reconnect()
{
while(!client.connected()){
Serial.println("Attempting MQTT connection");
if(client.connect("client")){
client.subscribe("esp-led");
Serial.println("MQTT connected");
}
else {
Serial.print("failed, rc=");
Serial.print(client.state());
Serial.println(" trying again in 2 seconds");
delay(2000);
}
}
} void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
pinMode(5, OUTPUT);
setupWifi();
client.setServer(mqttServer, mqttPort);
} void callback(char* topic, byte* payload, unsigned int length) {
Serial.print("Message arrived in topic: ");
Serial.println(topic);
String str = "";
Serial.print("Message:");
for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
Serial.print((char)payload[i]);
str += (char)payload[i];
} if(str == "on"){
digitalWrite(5, HIGH);
}
else{
digitalWrite(5, LOW);
}
Serial.println();
Serial.println("-----------------------");
} void loop() {
if (!client.connected()) {
Serial.println("MQTT not connected");
reconnect();
}
client.loop();
}
Demo
Just Open the Contactless App and enjoy!
Credit for button image goes to Aranjuezmedina / Freepik
Conclusion
We have seen a basic working of contactless experience, we can extend this use case to a wider scale of integrating it with other IoT devices, just see a controllable device from the lens of your phone and control it.
Keep in touch, will share my more experiments soon… | https://medium.com/xrpractices/controlling-an-iot-device-by-sending-mqtt-messages-in-unity-after-detecting-the-image-target-using-6ce79b9087c4 | [] | 2020-08-05 11:33:25.098000+00:00 | ['Vuforia', 'IoT', 'Mqtt', 'Unity3d', 'Tutorial'] |
Climate Action: All Eyes on India | Co-authored with Anjali Jaiswal
On the fifth anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, world leaders are gathering virtually for the Climate Ambition Summit 2020. The European Union, China, the United Kingdom and many more countries have already stepped up climate action ahead of the summit. India has not made a major announcement this year, and with Prime Minister Narendra Modi scheduled to speak at the summit, all eyes are on India.
India’s Emission Intensity Reduction Target
While interest is piqued, India is tempering expectations. India is “walking the talk” on climate change, said India’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar ahead of the summit. India is one of the few countries on track to meet its Paris target, achieving 21% of its pledge to reduce emissions intensity of GDP by 33–35% by 2030. India’s stance has been that India did not cause climate change and looks to developed countries to do more.
The aim of the Climate Ambition Summit 2020 is to increase momentum in the lead up to the United Nations climate talks, COP26, postponed to next year in Glasgow. Major studies are ringing the alarm bell and showing that current commitments are not enough. The recent UNEP Emissions Gap 2020 report projects a 56% expected shortfall in emissions between the countries’ commitments and progress toward 1.5 ºC (26% shortfall for 2 ºC).
In the lead up to the summit, the European Union took a big step, committing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030. New Zealand and 32 countries declared “climate emergencies.” China and 125 countries have committed to carbon neutrality by mid-century. Together, these represent 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The percentage could increase to 63% once United States re-joins the Paris and potentially announces a carbon neutrality or net-zero target.
India’s Road From Paris
Taking a closer look, India is on track to achieve two of the three components of its Paris target. First, India has already reduced emissions intensity by 21% given its target to reduce emissions intensity of GDP by 33–35% by 2030. Second, with 38% of non-fossil fuel capacity (includes renewables, large hydro and nuclear), India is just 2% short of its 2030 target of 40% of installed non-fossil fuel electricity capacity. But on the third component, to achieve 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in forest cover by 2030, much more work is needed.
On the domestic front, India aims to install an ambitious 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy by 2022 and 450 GW by 2030. India already has 90 GW or renewable energy, representing 24% of total installed capacity. In addition, India has some of the lowest solar tariffs globally, dropping to ₹2.36 ($0.0316)/kWh and thermal capacity has declined from 70% in 2015 to 61% in 2020. The India Cooling Action Plan at the national level and progress on building efficient buildings and cool roofs at the state level are also driving efforts to save energy and reduce heat trapping hydrofluorocarbons ( HFCs). The government’s FAME-II scheme provides ₹10,000 crore ($1.4 billion) is moving forward with electric vehicles.
On the international front, India is leading efforts with the International Solar Alliance (ISA), Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, International Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), and Leadership Group for Industry Transition. India recently created an Apex Committee for Implementation of Paris Agreement (AIPA). The aim of AIPA is to increase coordination among 14 key ministries and to engage business, stakeholders and the U.N. on delivery of the Paris Agreement.
The Road from Paris Issue Brief captures India’s climate action progress, developed by NRDC and partners the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), Indian Institute of Public Health — Gandhinagar (IIPH-G), the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).
Expectations for India at the Climate Ambition Summit
While expectations are high, India will likely continue to its salvo for greater ambition from developed countries. Ahead of the summit, India emphasized that it is making strong progress on its climate commitments even though developed countries have not. “We’ve gone well beyond. Why don’t you ask the countries lecturing us to mend their own ways instead? None of the developed countries are Paris Agreement compliant,” said Minister Javadekar.
Finance is another major issue that India will likely raise at the summit. Minister Javadekar emphasized that the over $11 trillion needed for climate change has not come through. Meeting India’s renewable goals alone requires at least $20-$30 billion investment annually. To meet India’s clean energy and climate goals, catalytic financial solutions, such as Green Banks or Green Windows, which leverage limited public funds, including development assistance, to attract private capital will be critical, as discussed in NRDC and CEEW’s new issue brief, Investing in a Green Future: India’s Initiatives in Clean Energy Finance.
While unlikely to have a new emissions target, India could discuss sectoral policies to address the climate crisis. India’s sectoral policies are falling short of aligning with its Paris targets, according to TERI and partners’ Brown to Green Report. Government policies for key sectors from — power, transport, buildings, industry, agriculture and forest — need to be stronger to decarbonize the economy and achieve India’s climate targets.
Delaying climate action is no longer an option for the world. As countries around the world emerge from COVID-19 and ramp up investment to boost economies, investing in green recovery and committing to greater climate ambition can help create jobs, protect communities, and make the future more sustainable.
Anjali Jaiswal is Senior Director of the India Program on Climate & Clean Energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). | https://medium.com/@madhura-joshi/climate-action-all-eyes-on-india-354dec549114 | ['Madhura Joshi'] | 2020-12-13 10:05:46.586000+00:00 | ['Clean Energy Transition', 'Climate Ambition Summit', 'Paris Agreement', 'Climate Action', 'Climate Change'] |
‘Around the World in 80 Days’ Won Best Picture? | ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ Won Best Picture?
If sweeping panoramas of strolling locals are your thing, here you go
Cantinflas and David Niven, from left, star in the 1957 Best Picture winner “Around the World in 80 Days,” based on a story by Jules Verne. Photo courtesy of United Artists
By Todd Hill
We cinephiles may pride ourselves on seeing as many movies as possible each year, but we’ll never be able to see everything. Even limiting ourselves to just those films released (or simply made) in the U.S. during our lifetime leaves more titles than we’ll ever be able to see.
Sure, you could get a handle on this dilemma by narrowing your watch list down to all the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, a doable chunk of 563 films (as of 2020), but do you really want to track down all those obscure pictures from the 1930’s? Good luck even finding some of them today. There are good reasons why many are no longer in circulation.
OK, so how about just the Best Picture winners, a mere 92 through 2020? If you start with this year and work backwards, chances are you’ve already seen several of the movies so you can just sail right on through the list. But still, you’re bound to eventually make it to the Best Picture winner of 1957, when everything’s going to come to a crashing halt.
That was the year the top Oscar went to “Around the World in 80 Days,” considered by many the worst movie ever to receive the honor. I think labeling it the worst is a bit harsh. But dullest? I can’t think of a duller one.
At the time of its release, the film’s producer, Michael Todd, insisted that “Around the World in 80 Days” wasn’t a movie but an event, and he was right. Now that the spectacle of the event has faded from all memory and all we’re left with is the movie, it’s more clear than ever that he was right. But this distinction also explains how the film won the Oscar for Best Picture.
Based on the story by Jules Verne, “Around the World in 80 Days” follows a British gentleman and his French valet across the globe in 1872 as they scurry to win a bet that they can accomplish, well, the title of the film. And this they do, although the only real doubt that they can occurs at the very end of the movie when they’re back home in London but in the wrong part of town with the deadline just minutes away. That’s a long time for an audience to wait for the first sign of life in a nearly three-hour-long motion picture remarkably free of any semblance of drama or suspense.
The movie’s defenders — and there are a few — may acknowledge all of the above, only to then shoot back with, “Yes, but the spectacle of it all!” And they have a point.
It’s no exaggeration to claim that “Around the World in 80 Days” features a cast of thousands — the official total is 68,894. To clothe them, 74,685 costumes were made, the most for a single film in Hollywood history. And the movie was shot on 140 locations, which is insane. Ambition this boundless would be prohibitively expensive today.
To his credit, Todd made sure it all found its way to the screen, but scene after scene is grindingly flat and static, consisting of little more than sweeping panoramas filled with strolling locals. An early sequence high in a hot-air balloon has visual potential, but never gets off the ground. A Spanish bullfight, filmed with the entire population of a small Spanish town sitting in the arena, drags on forever; even the bull looks bored. And so on.
For the record, starring as the central character Phileas Fogg is David Niven, who does little more than play whist and appear in countless reaction shots until late in the movie when he proposes marriage to an Indian princess he’s traveled with for 12,000 miles but barely spoken to. The Indian princess is played by Shirley MacLaine. This was before the time of ethnically correct casting, so she probably deserves a pass. Besides, she wears a dark wig. I hope MacLaine enjoyed all the sightseeing, as she hardly had any lines to learn.
The star of the show, for all intents and purposes, is Cantinflas, a charming Mexican comedian with a funny moustache who portrays the valet, Passepartout. It’s impossible for any one performer to carry a production this bloated, but Cantinflas is the only actor in the film given the chance to act. Todd was clearly more interested in populating his picture with dozens of gimmicky cameo appearances (John Gielgud, Noel Coward, Cesar Romero, Peter Lorre, Buster Keaton, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, George Raft, John Carradine, and so on). Remember, this was an event, not a movie.
So, how did “Around the World in 80 Days” win Best Picture? Consider the other nominees in 1957 — “The King and I,” “The Ten Commandments,” “Friendly Persuasion” and “Giant.” All but one of the nominees that year was a larger-than-life spectacle.The one that wasn’t — “Friendly Persuasion” — is perhaps the most enjoyable viewing experience today, but times have changed. In the late 1950’s, an era of comfort and abundance in America, bigger was better. Michael Todd, indeed everyone associated with “Around the World in 80 Days,” understood this and was rewarded accordingly.
If you’re brave, or foolhardy, enough to take on the challenge of watching all the Oscar winners for Best Picture, you may be in for some long hours, but the cultural history lesson you’ll receive will be invaluable.
Todd Hill is a former journalist with 30 years of experience, much of it in film criticism, who misses neither journalism nor the film beat. | https://warm3wind.medium.com/around-the-world-in-80-days-won-best-picture-4a94c3652251 | [] | 2020-03-19 17:17:40.083000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Film Reviews', 'Oscars', 'Classic Films', 'Around The World'] |
trump about to get hit with lawsuits from every direction | Well, trump signed the budget but then immediately declared an emergency in order to get his own way and get money for the wall. This was an obvious gambit to go behind the will of Congress, which is the holder of the purse strings by the Constitution. They didn’t give him what he wanted, demanded, and so he is trying to go behind their back. In my previous post, I used the courts to stop him, since he is ignoring congress.
Well, on Friday, the day he declared the emergency, there have already been two lawsuits filed. The first one is by a group called 1) Public Citizens. This is a group that is representing ordinary citizens who are opposed to the wall for one of two reasons. They are bringing the lawsuit for at least three Texas landowners who do not want their property taken for a fence. The point is that this is NOT a true emergency. This is simply trumps desire to ignore the appropriation decisions rightly made by congress. This is over-reach, pure and simple.
The other lawsuit is by 2) Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government. They are suiting the Justice Department for not disclosing properly whatever legal justification they might have for this decision.
Both of the above are government watchdog groups who work to protect the interests of the American citizen. In that process, they are working to assure that we do not lose the entire country to corrupt politicians like trump and his cohorts. But these are only the first two. There are likely ore lawsuits coming in the near future.
In addition, California is anticipating bringing a suit, as is the ACLU and some other groups.
The Democrats are also moving ahead with a resolution to stop this declaration and, as is pointed out in video below, trump himself, today, made it clear that there really is NOT an emergency at the southern border. He claims, in the video, that he had done “a lot of wall” and didn’t need to do this, but he wanted to build the wall faster. He is also claiming that Generals are screaming for a wall. Yet, no general has actually come out and made such a statement.
So, he just said that it is just to “do it faster” and that he thinks he has already done much of what he needed to do. The one thing he admitted which was telling is that this whole thing is about 2020. So that sums up what the “emergency” even is to trump himself.
Congress has finally started showing some backbone and are doing their job. We can not, and should not let trump circumvent the rule of law. That way lies a dictatorship, and of all the possible dictators that we might end up with, trump is the worst possible candidate. He is unstable and far from being a genius but that may just be our salvation as a nation.
Lawsuits will at least give us a chance to slow this monsters roll. But RESISTANCE will continue even outside the lawsuits, trust me. | https://medium.com/@jwgarman2/trump-about-to-get-hid-with-lawsuits-from-every-direction-8072ae6ad11c | ['Left Wisdom'] | 2019-02-17 07:26:16.997000+00:00 | ['Donald Trump', 'Polític', 'Corruption', 'Bullying', 'Lawsuit'] |
The Goodwill Tree | WAIT! WHAT’S THAT?!” Mom exclaimed as she double-checked her rearview mirror, suddenly slamming the Torino in reverse. Her unexpected outburst and trajectory startled me as I braced for impact, grabbing the dash before it walloped me.
Jerking the car backward, Mom returned to the charity thrift shop donation trailer. We had just deposited a few bags for the cause, but did not see what now grabbed her attention. Mom quickly jumped out of the car to nab the item calling to her heart: a small plastic Christmas tree.
No more than a foot high, it’s lash-like bristles and multicolor beads piqued her curiosity and sense of whimsy. Eyeing each other, Mom and I simultaneously winked and nodded, sealing the (free) deal, and the kitschy conifer was now in her triumphant grasp. We peeled away, both giddy and a tad paranoid at having helped ourselves to another’s cast-off without permission.
This demure decoration, its gently used patina only adding to its charm, would wind its way into our hearts not only at that moment, but for the next thirty-five years of yuletide reverie. It is still happily in use.
Bequeathed to me well before Mom’s passing, the post-it note she wrote is now also a framed sidekick and reads: “As we pass along things of memories & laughter from one to another this joyous holiday — PLEASE — May I go home with you?”
Her vibrant script harkens to a healthier era, before shaky scribbles and finally, a single letter would denote her presence. That perkier time my daughters only know through photographs, stories, and mementos. And they know the tale of this little tree.
Now the loving custodian, I chuckle every time the tiny timber comes out, and smile at all the places it graces year to year, from centerpieces to vignettes. A punch of color in a small size, it brightens any nook or cranny.
The petite pine is more than just decor. Gussied up with a skirting of gossamer angel hair adds a nod to my Grandma, and now two precious women in my past are sweetly honored. Representing charity, frugality, and fun, this tree is also a snapshot of togetherness and the willingness to be open to spontaneous glee, often in unsuspecting places or packages.
Our girl pact that day between my mother and me prevented this little harbinger of merriment a trip to the landfill. Filling us with happiness instead, it continues to delight and offer the warmth of a fond memory within a coveted season.
Carrying on Mom’s passion for the thrill of the hunt (and taking in strays), thrift shops continue to beckon me into their glorious, albeit temporary, unknown. Amazed at what many will discard, finding treasures has been serendipitous, happening with fair regularity, not to mention fiscal and environmental responsibility.
Led by example, I’m grateful to have Mom’s same penchant to see past a bit of wear; to appreciate and love the less gilded. Some of our most comfortable possessions, thrifted from a variety of sources, sport a relaxed, been-around-the-block confidence. It is all part of the mix in the shaker of life’s convivial cocktail.
Mom could have easily overlooked her simple prize that day long ago, but something tugged at her consciousness, forcing a second look. Heeding the inexplicable gut response is something we genetically share, unearthing many unlikely joys that have a surprising magnitude of sticking power.
Just like one pint-sized Goodwill tree.
Our family’s sturdy Tree of Good Will for 35 years and counting.
Merry Christmas from me and mine, to you and yours!
Letting the Light Shine,
Carol
P.S. I’m taking a few weeks off — catch ya’ after the calendar flip on January 11, 2021! | https://medium.com/@carolacraig/the-goodwill-tree-b2eca74df395 | ['Carol A. Craig'] | 2021-03-10 05:02:26.086000+00:00 | ['Xmas', 'Collecting', 'Family History', 'Essay', 'Recycling'] |
Vizio Elevate review: This Dolby Atmos soundbar’s swiveling drivers are no gimmick | A soundbar with motorized, swiveling drivers that bounce the audio cues in Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks off your ceiling? Sounds like a gimmick, right? Well, the concept works splendidly in the Vizio Elevate, a 5.1.4-channel soundbar that delivers big, bold, and exciting sound that will thrill mainstream users, even if audiophiles might find its subwoofer be a bit over the top.
Because its four front height drivers (two additional height drivers are in the surround speakers) can swivel up for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X content or down for standard 5.1 or stereo audio, the Elevate always makes the most of its available drivers. Also on board is built-in Chromecast and DTS Virtual:X (for those who want or need it), as well as three HDMI ports and eARC support.
ConfigurationThe Elevate is a 5.1.4-channel soundbar, which means you’re getting left, right, center, and left/right surround channels (the “5” in the Elevate’s 5.1.4 audio configuration), two front and two surround height channels (the “4”), and low-frequency effects (the “1”). Those four height channels supply the height cues in Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks by bounding sound off your ceiling—an easier, less expensive alternative to height speakers that are actually in your ceiling.
What makes the Elevate unique is that it doesn’t need to be a 5.1.4-channel soundbar at all times. If you wish, you can set those upfiring drivers to swivel (manually or automatically) so they fire forward to bolster the left- and right-channel drivers. Those, in turn, switch roles from being woofers to mid-range drivers for a more robust—and traditional—5.1-channel configuration. We’ll go into more detail about the Elevate’s swiveling height drivers in a moment.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best soundbars. Click that link to read reviews of competing products, along with a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping.
Ben Patterson/IDG The Vizio Elevate’s height drivers can rotate into forward-firing position to boster the left and right channels.
In the main soundbar unit, the left, right, and center channels each get a pair of 43 x 60mm woofers, a 20mm tweeter, and a passive radiator. The rotating height drivers each get a single 44 x 99mm woofer and a 20mm tweeter. A pair of discrete surround speakers, which are connected to the wireless subwoofer by a pair of 25-foot cables, get a forward-firing 54mm driver and an upfiring 50mm driver, while the sub comes equipped with a down-firing 203mm cone. The Elevate’s various drivers are powered by a series of 13 Class D amplifiers, including 8 in the main soundbar and five in the subwoofer.
Design Samsung Q90T 4K UHD TV (55-inch model) Read TechHive's reviewSee it With its anodized aluminum shell, swiveling drivers, and oval-shaped profile, the Elevate cuts a fine figure. The front soundbar drivers sit in a perforated tube that’s attached to the main soundbar housing, with the tube capped by the swiveling drivers.
When the soundbar goes into “Elevate” mode (either because it has detected Atmos or DTS:X audio, or because you’ve manually set the soundbar to “Up” mode), motors in the tube swivel the height drivers into their upfiring position, revealing the Atmos and DTS:X logos on either side of the soundbar. The sight and sound of the motorized drivers swiveling into position serves as a nifty cue that you’re about to hear immersive 3D audio.
Measuring 48 x 7 x 2.5 inches and weighing about 12 pounds, the main Elevate soundbar unit is a hefty piece of hardware, and it was tall enough to block a tiny sliver of my 55-inch LG C9 OLED TV. Luckily, the Elevate can be mounted on a wall (mounting brackets and a guide are included), or it can be docked underneath one of Vizio’s new OLED TVs. Meanwhile, the 6 x 4 x 2.75-inch surround speakers are compact enough to (for example) place them on shelves behind your sofa, and they’re also wall-mountable (here again, wall mounts are included).
As I mentioned earlier, the surround speakers connect to the bulky subwoofer (16 x 11 x 13.75 inches) with a pair of 25-foot cables, a fact that might complicate your positioning of the sub. Because the subwoofer is wired to the surrounds, one might be inclined to keep the sub near your sofa, although doing so means you’ll be feeling some pretty serious bass (you can always dial back the subwoofer’s volume level, as we’ll discuss momentarily). Another option would be to put the subwoofer closer to the TV—low-frequency effects are much less directional than other sounds—but then you’ll need to string those 25-foot cables (hey, at least they’re plenty long) across your entertainment room to reach the surrounds.
Vizio The Vizio Elevate comes a beefy subwoofer and surround speakers with upfiring drivers in addition to the soundbar itself.
Inputs and outputsThe Elevate offers a generous collection of inputs: There’s an optical (Toslink) input and a pair of 3.5mm audio jacks in a rear cavity on the left-hand side of the soundbar. One of these analog inputs is intended to accommodate a smart speaker (an Amazon Echo Dot, for example, which has a matching 3.5mm audio output), while the other is for connecting to the analog stereo RCA outputs on a TV.
A trio of HDMI ports, one of which supports HDMI eARC, are located in a cavity on the right-hand side of the Elevate. ARC (Audio Return Channel) allows digital audio from your TV to travel down the HDMI cable to the soundbar, and eARC is an enhanced version with higher bandwidth to support lossless high-resolution audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. You can read all about ARC and eARC in this story.
Ben Patterson/IDG The Elevate comes with three HDMI ports, one of which supports eARC, making it an excellent speaker Blu-ray aficionados.
Your TV will need to support eARC to take full advantage of it, however, and that applies only to TVs manufactured in the past couple of years. Vizio was therefore wise to provide two additional HDMI ports, so you can connect a Blu-ray player or a set-top box directly to the soundbar without needing to worry about passing the audio from those sources through your TV in the first place.
LG OLED65E9PUA 4K UHD TV (65-inch model) Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $4,299.00See it Vizio is also generous when it comes to including cables in the box. In addition to an HDMI cable (which too many soundbar manufacturers tend to skip, even with their priciest models), you get an optical cable, a 3.5mm-to-3.5mm audio cable, and a 3.5mm-to-stereo-RCA cable. Vizio even throws in four cable ties for good measure, along with the usual power and speaker cords.
SetupThe main Elevate soundbar comes pre-paired to the wireless subwoofer, and for me, the units connected automatically as soon as I powered them on. If they don’t connect, you can always pair them manually using the included remote.
Next, it’s time to connect the Elevate to Wi-Fi with help from Vizio’s SmartCast mobile app. Once the app “discovers” the Elevate, it’ll step you through the process of connecting to the soundbar’s temporary local Wi-Fi signal; after that, you’ll need to pick your home Wi-Fi network from a list of available networks and enter your network password. After a minute or so of testing, the Elevate—fingers crossed—should be connected to your Wi-FI.
Buttons, remote, and app controlThe Elevate has buttons for power, input select, Bluetooth, and volume up/down on its right-hand end cap. Its remote control has a four-way navigational pad and dedicated buttons for input select, power, and mute. The remote also lets you dip into the Elevate’s various EQ presets and sound modes, as well as adjust the various speakers levels. But while the remote has a one-line display, it isn’t backlit, so you’ll need to turn the lights on to dive into the menus, and clicking though all those menu trees can be tedious.
Ben Patterson/IDG Vizio’s SmartCast app frequenty lost its connection to the Elevate, even though the soundbar was still connected to Wi-Fi.
Besides the remote, you can also tweak the Elevate’s settings using Vizio’s SmartCast app. The sliders and toggles in the SmartCast app make it much easier to control the Elevate’s settings than the somewhat clunky remote. The SmartCast app, however, repeatedly insisted that it “could not connect to sound bar,” even when the Elevate was clearly still connected to my Wi-Fi network. Tapping the “Try Again” button once or twice generally cleared up the problem, but still, it was an annoying issue.
Chromecast and voice assistant supportThe Elevate doesn’t natively support any music services or act as a Spotify Connect device, but it does support Chromecast, which means you can cast audio to the soundbar from any supported Chromecast-enabled app. I performed most of my music testing by casting Spotify tunes to the Elevate via Chromecast, although I could have also streamed music from other Chromecast-enabled apps such as Tidal or Qobuz. (I should note that despite my SmartCast app connection problems, I never had any issues with Chromecast streaming.) Another option is to stream audio to the soundbar via Bluetooth, or you can play WAV files from a USB storage drive.
The Elevate isn’t a smart speaker, and it can’t be controlled with voice commands. The Elevate does let you connect a smart speaker to the soundbar via either Bluetooth or a dedicated 3.5mm audio input. Pair something like an Amazon Echo Dot or Google Nest Mini with the Elevate, and the soundbar will act as a speaker for your favorite voice assistant. Summon Alexa or Google Assistant while you’re watching a movie, and the Elevate will lower the volume while you’re chatting. Just keep in mind that you won’t be able to ask Alexa or Google Assistant to, say, adjust the Elevate’s volume or switch sources.
Ben Patterson/IDG Vizio’s remote control is pretty basic and it’s not backlit.
Audio modesLike most soundbars, the Elevate comes with a collection of EQ presets—Movie, Music, Game, and Direct—which make audio adjustments such as adding a bit of sizzle to the sound for Movie mode, or flattening the frequency response for Music mode. Gaming mode dials down the low-frequency effects to give gamers a better sense of spatial awareness, while Direct mode doesn’t apply any EQ at all.
Adding a new wrinkle to matters are the Elevate’s swiveling height drivers, which have their own “Elevate” settings on the remote and in the SmartCast app. Three settings are available: Up, Wide, and Auto. In Up mode, the height drivers stay in upfiring mode, and all audio—from 2.0- to 5.1-channel sound—is upconverted to 5.1.4. In Wide mode, the height drivers stay in forward-firing mode; 5.1 and 2.0 content is presented as-is, while Dolby Atmos and DTS:X audio is remixed for 5.1. Finally, in Auto mode, the Elevate automatically swivels the height drivers depending on the audio content that it detects. For Atmos and DTS:X, the height drivers swivel up; for everything else, the height speakers rotate to a forward-firing position.
Besides the various “Elevate” settings, there’s also a Surround Sound mode, which only serves to toggle the surround speakers on and off while remixing the sound to compensate for the missing channels (so, for example. 5.1.4 audio would get downmixed to 3.1.2). Why would you want to turn those surround speakers off? Well, it turns out that there are a surprising number of 5.1-and-up soundbar users who (for a variety of factors) don’t use the surround speakers that come bundled in the box, and Vizio wanted to give such users a setting that would mix their sound correctly.
A final sound mode option is DTS Virtual:X, a mode that delivers virtual 3D sound including height cues, without the need for surround speakers or upfiring drivers. Again, why would you ever use the DTS Virtual:X setting, given that the Elevate has surround and height speakers? This is for Elevate users with ceilings that are too high, too low, vaulted, or otherwise unsuitable for the bouncing-sound-off-the-ceiling trick. Since my ceiling is adequate for upfiring drivers, and I’m not a huge fan of DTS Virtual:X (it sounds a little harsh and over-processed for my taste), I kept the setting off. It’s great to have the option if you need it.
Click here to read about the Vizio Elevate’s audio performance | https://medium.com/@kim34989441/vizio-elevate-review-this-dolby-atmos-soundbars-swiveling-drivers-are-no-gimmick-41c9eb93e9f1 | [] | 2020-12-21 07:02:52.905000+00:00 | ['Lighting'] |
Tribute to Dr. Ahmed Jaber | Dr. Ahmad Jaber, I sat next to you in an interfaith dialog circle for several years. “Brother Rami, you are one of us.” Whether it was at your mosque in which you taught and led the prayer, at a church, a synagogue, or your own living room in Bay Ridge, you always welcomed me with a smile. You liked my name, Rami, being a common name in Arabic speaking cultures, and that made me so happy. Your presence and benevolence were at the center of what I loved about living in the culturally mixed city of New York. I will forever remember one Sunday afternoon, nearly 15 years ago at the offices of the Arab American Association of New York.
Over coffee in styrofoam cups and crunchy falafel, I listened to you speak with glistening eyes fixed into the horizon far East, of your memories, and longing, for the Olive trees in the field by your home, in the West Bank of the Jordan River, Palestine. It took me years to truly appreciate the gift you gave me — a vision of hope and belonging. Thank you for your faith, Dr. Jaber. This being the first night of Hanukkah when the smallest light of awareness enlightens the entire universe, right here and now, may Allah bless your family with comfort and ease, and may your spirit shine bright among your proud ancestors.
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.
—
Notes: | https://medium.com/@rami-efal/tribute-to-dr-ahmed-jaber-546ae17a0e29 | ['Rami Avraham Efal'] | 2020-12-27 22:25:47.161000+00:00 | ['Brooklyn', 'New York City', 'Muslim', 'Obituary', 'Interfaith'] |
Conspiracy: Jumpstart #10: Dack | Conspiracy: Jumpstart began as a National Game Design Month project, where a game (or, in this case, a Magic: The Gathering product) is designed in one month, during November 2020. This is a continuation of what was left unfinished of that project.
Previous Devlog Updates:
Product Updates
Journey’s end. This is the last of the ten character packs. This makes it so that there are two character packs per color.
Close Call: A Silver-Bordered Card
I really wanted to have the Dack pack open a booster pack. Sort of as an homage to my favorite Conspiracy card, Lore Seeker. Though, opening booster packs is usually relegated to drafting rounds or silver-bordered cards.
I wondered if restricting to mentioning packs from specific expansions could make the spell black-bordered. I realized the physical logistics of opening packs without looking at them was a silver-bordered thing, though. Besides the fact that print runs of specific sets are not indefinite.
I got so far as designing a card in silver border and almost included it in this product. Ultimately, I decided against my desires for the sake of product consistency.
Here’s the card, though (this card is NOT in Dack’s character pack):
Basically, you do a mini one-round draft in the middle of a game. Anyway, to reiterate: the above card is NOT in the Dack character pack.
Dack
Dack’s mechanical theme is whenever you or your conspirators draw their second card this turn. This effect is naturally triggered whenever you or your conspirators gain sway of the city. And, of course, there are doses of looting, rummaging, and card draw in the pack.
In the story, “Drakeston” is the name of Dack’s hometown. But it’s written “Drakestown” on the existing Magic card Drakestown Forgotten. I decided to pay homage to the “Drakeston” spelling with the Drakeston Terror card below. No, the town isn’t named after a Drake, but I figured a Drake might be nestling, finding a home amidst the rubble of this ghost town. Y’know — to be cheeky.
Dack’s planeswalker card is quirky! Scroll down to below this pack’s card images to read more about the behind-the-scenes on the Dack planeswalker card. | https://medium.com/millingfor53/conspiracy-jumpstart-10-dack-caea6bfd0bf6 | ['Bradley Rose'] | 2021-01-25 14:29:01.441000+00:00 | ['Magic', 'Nagademon', 'Game Design', 'Magic The Gathering', 'Conspiracyjumpstart'] |
Bermain dengan Access Control pada Swift | 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/dipantry/bermain-dengan-access-control-pada-swift-313e97de3cd | ['Auriga Aristo'] | 2020-12-24 03:03:26.650000+00:00 | ['Restrictions', 'Access Control', 'iOS', 'Xcode', 'Swift'] |
On Bhagwad Gita: What is it to act just as an apparent cause (‘Nimitt Maatr’)? | The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.
तस्मात्त्वमुत्तिष्ठ यशो लभस्व जित्वा शत्रून्भुङ् क्ष्व राज्यं समृद्धम् । मयैवैते निहता: पूर्वमेव निमित्तमात्रं भव सव्यसाचिन् ।। 11.33 ।। tasmāt tvam uttiṣhṭha yaśho labhasva jitvā śhatrūn bhuṅkṣhva rājyaṁ samṛiddham mayaivaite nihatāḥ pūrvam eva nimitta-mātraṁ bhava savya-sāchin Therefore do thou arise and acquire fame. Conquer the enemies, and enjoy the unrivalled dominion. Verily by Myself have they been already slain; be thou merely an apparent cause, O Savyasachin (Arjuna). ~ Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 11, Verse 33 ✥ ✥ ✥
Questioner (Q): What does it mean to be an apparent cause, ‘Nimitt Maatr’? Who becomes the Nimitt Maatr? Is it the body-mind complex that we think we are? Why should we become Nimitt Maatr? How can we move towards becoming Nimitt Maatr?
In the previous session, you had mentioned that notions like ‘I am the body’, ‘I am the doer’ keep us away from Krishna. How can the notion ‘I am the body’ be eliminated?
Acharya Prashant (AP):
‘Nimitt Maatr’ merely means that your center of operation is no more the personal ego; you are allowing your personal system to be governed by an impersonal power.
Usually, our personal system is run by, commanded by the personal center, and these two go nicely together; the personal system, the body-mind complex being commanded by the personal center, which is called ‘the ego’.
Being just an apparent cause in the scheme of things means that the personal complex, the personal system, the personal machinery is now not being driven by something within itself. It is now being driven by something far beyond itself. So, your body is now not being run by the little insecure ‘I’.
What’s the problem when the little internal insecure ‘I’ runs the body? The problem is that the ‘I’ is anyway identified with the body; therefore, it cannot be a good driver of the body. If you are the body, then how will you push and drive the body?
Think of it, when you say, “I am the body,” then obviously you are referring to the current state of your body, right? And you are that. Now, really, what incentive do you have now to push the body and make the body do things that the body may not like? After all, you are the body!
And that’s the thing with the personal self. It is already the body and already the mind, so why will it want to go against the body and against the mind? The moment the body will be pushed, the internal self will start rebelling and putting excuses and giving some lame argument, “Oh no, no! My body is weak because, you see, I got some disease five years back!” and all those all kinds of lame nonsense.
Therefore, even the body-mind thing suffers when it is commanded by the wrong master. The ego is a very improper master, a very inappropriate master. Remember, you can never teach, educate, or correct someone you are dependent on. The ego is dependent on the body; the ego is dependent on the mind. How will then ego make the body do things that the body does not like? How will then the ego make the mind climb to great heights?
When the body will start feeling broken, it is the ego that will feel broken, because the ego is dependent on the body. So you push your body a little — and any great endeavor will require you to push your body — you push your body a little, and the ego will start beating its chest and crying and clamoring, and immediately your efforts to push the body will come to a halt. Or they will go to some extent, cover some distance, and then they will stop.
The ego can at most tolerate beautifying the body, bettering the body. The ego will be prepared to tolerate the pain that you get when you wax your skin. The ego will be able to tolerate, prepare to tolerate the pain that you get when you hit the gym. But the ego will never be prepared to tolerate submitting the body to a purpose that is not at all bodily. The ego will never tolerate surrendering the body to a great mission that does not care for the body.
What does then it mean to be a ‘Nimitt Maatr’? Just a servant, just a means, just a medium. It means that you are relinquishing a post that you actually anyway never deserved; you are stepping down from a position that actually should have never been yours in the first place. You are saying, “Let the rightful one come and occupy the center of my life. Who am I to act big and smart? Who am I to think for myself and decide for myself? If there is one choice that I can rightfully make, it is to give up my right to choose.” Obviously, it’s a tough ask, and that’s when you are just a means. Some great thing is happening through you. Some great power is commanding you, and you are now being operated by a will beyond the personal. It is only now that you get the right to say that you are a puppet in the hands of the Ultimate. It is only now that you get the right to say that you are like the flute, or a piece of a hollow bamboo; the wind just flows through you, you do not obstruct it.
Outside you have a body; internally you are free of all resistance. You are just letting the divine operate through you now.
Actually, it is not a positive or affirmative statement to say that you are letting the divine operate through you. Practically all that it means is that — you are now no more insistent that your life be run by your personal will. You have given up the seat. Who’s occupying that seat? You are no more bothered. Your duty or your Dharma was not to occupy a place you do not deserve. You gave up the undeserving place. Now, whatsoever happens, it’s wonderful, it’s a great thing. And it’s a very mysterious thing that — when you are not confined by personal goals and desires, then you become available to great work, a wonderful mission. That’s what Shri Krishna is trying to enroll Arjuna in.
In the event of the Gita, that great mission is the war of Mahabharata. Arjuna is being confined by his personal self, “Oh! He is my personal relation. Oh! He is this, oh my personal memories! Oh! My personal entanglements. Oh! My personal thoughts and concepts. Oh! My personal taboos.” And because of this personal stuff, he is not able to make himself available to Krishna’s grand mission. Krishna is saying, “We have a great mission at hand: we have to fight that evil army!”
But Arjuna is not available for that mission. Arjuna is available to his own personal stories, “Oh! Once Bhishma used to probably rock my cradle! And Duryodhana ultimately is my brother, and I remember how we used to play together when we were young! What will I do with all the property and the power I get by killing my own kin? What will the world say? And haven’t I been taught all this in my moral science class, that emotions are higher than material?”
So, that personal knowledge is not allowing him to fight the Kauravas. This is Arjuna’s limited world. The entire exercise of Gita is to rid Arjuna of his personal center. Can Arjuna somehow totally lose his personal self? It is a kind of death. You could even say that Krishna is trying to help Arjuna die to his personal and previous self. And that happens. A point comes when Arjuna is available; his interiority is gone. And that interiority is nothing sacred anyway. That interiority which we call the ‘inner self’ is just the ego. It is now gone. And now Arjuna is available to fully participate in the war, in the mission. Now Arjuna will fight.
The question, “How can the notion that ‘I am the body’ be eliminated?”
By being a little more sincere. I have answered this question no less than half a dozen times, and at least a couple of times in this course itself. How will you get rid of body identification if you are not prepared to put in even a little bit of hard work? If this is the level of your sincerity, how really do you expect Liberation?
You all keep throwing these questions at me without even bothering to first search whether I have already answered them. Not that I cannot answer them again, it’s a delight for me to speak; I can speak, but you will not benefit. You will not benefit, because you have not paid the price.
Participating in the course does not merely mean that you will shoot a question and expect an answer. At least do the basic background research. Here itself, and I remember the name of the questioner also, the same thing in exactly the same words had been asked to me. So go back, spend a little more time, figure out the answers that have already been provided, and then if need be, come back to me. You will now come to me with at least a deeper and enhanced question. | https://medium.com/@acharyaprashant/on-bhagwad-gita-what-is-it-to-act-just-as-an-apparent-cause-nimitt-maatr-9a150f07f564 | ['Acharya Prashant'] | 2020-12-26 15:14:24.165000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Growth', 'Wisdom', 'Self-awareness', 'Mindset', 'Spirituality'] |
Break the Stigma. | Break the Stigma.
This thing that no one seems to want to talk about. The white elephant in the room. The reason so many people miss family holiday’s. The reason for so much disconnect around us. The reason so many young lives are taken way too soon. The reason most people don’t have a work ethic and are lazy. It is the cause for most dark in the world in this day and age. No thank you to a little company called Big-Pharma. This is bigger than any controversy over drug companies, bigger than the people on the street, bigger than the government that plays a hand in putting this in kids and adults hands and mouths all over the world. It’s an epidemic and a one of great capacity.
Now you may think that this thing called an opioid epidemic doesn’t concern or effect you. Maybe you’ve never been prescribed them or watched your child go through withdrawals so bad they feel like dying is a better option. Maybe you’ve never seen someone sell everything they own to pay for their next fix. Maybe you’ve never seen someone sell their body to be able to buy a pill to wash their shame away for a few minutes. If you’re that person, good for you but I can guarantee that it still effects you in some way.
Contrary to popular belief marijuana isn’t some gateway drug they tell you about in school that if you consume it eventually you will move on to harder things such as cocaine or heroin. Alcohol is a drug too did you know that? I bet you didn’t know that shopping, gambling, sex, money, power, food all these things can be considered an addiction also. Do you still thing this doesn’t effect you in some way?
Have you ever seen someone unable to take care of themselves that their children had to be taken by the state? I have multiple times. It’s the most heartbreaking, sad, gut wrenching thing to watch. People try so hard to keep it all together and to live everyday ordinary lives when they don’t even know the battle they are fighting. Unfortunately I learned the hard way if you cannot take care of or love yourself it’s absolutely impossible to take care of someone else. Loving yourself and treating yourself and your body with the utmost respect must come before everything else.
A lot of times the wound that causes the addiction is so deep many can not unearth it. They cannot dig deep enough in their past to find it let alone heal and forgive it. Mine goes back 30 years to a mother that was having fun, didn’t know she was pregnant and was using drugs recreationally. Like most twenty something women that was considered normal, especially in the eighty’s. Is she a bad person, no. Do I wish I had a different life? No. I am extremely grateful for the lessons and blessings that it has brought me because of it.
Sure your story may be a little different or maybe it’s very similar. I am you and you are me. The names may be different, the drugs may be different the relationship may be different. That’s okay. I can almost guarantee you can relate to this in some sort of way. That you know someone that needs to read this and heal their wounds. They need to open up their minds and hearts to the idea of forgiveness and dive deep into their soul and surrender. The power and freedom that comes with this release is greater than any you have experienced. There’s a reason the AA Big Book calls it spiritual awakening. You awaken something inside you greater than you have ever known. You exchange all of the darkness for light and are transformed from the inside out.
This is just a glimpse of my story, my journey and my recovery. It’s been ugly, it’s been hard it’s been difficult. But you know what? With that also come the beautiful, the brave, the strong, the fierce and the healing. I’ve been to the bottom pits of hell more than once. I didn’t have a prince or a knight in shining armor to slay my dragons for me and fight those demons. I will tell you what I did have though, I had a loving father to walk alongside me and to pick me up and carry me when I could no longer walk. He carefully mended all of my broken pieces back together and stitched them with a thin gold thread allowing even more light to shine through. He lit the way for me so I can light the way for you. The one still suffering, the one that wants it so bad but just can’t figure it out, the mom that is about to loose her kids because she can’t stay out of jail. Let me be your friend, your light and your hope when you have none. Let me grab your hand and help you see that you don’t need a hero you but the HER in hero. You are beautiful, you are worthy, you are strong. The plan for your life is greater than you could ever imagine. Your story matters, it could change someone’s life. It could save someone’s children. Be brave, be honest and let God do the rest.
For all my friends near and far, some that I don’t even know or have never met. This is for you. For my friends that have lost the battle to addiction and in turn lost their lives. Your voice matters and could save a life.
XOX
Meg | https://medium.com/@meganhaag/break-the-stigma-b629576e6d6a | ['Megan Haag'] | 2019-07-10 15:18:57.042000+00:00 | ['Addiction', 'Love Yourself', 'Faith', 'Motherhood', 'Recovery'] |
Can a Hopeless Romantic Be Polyamorous? | I’m drawn to romance. Not just because I used to think about my wedding day long before I even had a boyfriend; I’m also drawn to it in everything I enjoy.
I abandoned the heavy metal I listened to as a teenager and now listen almost exclusively to music that has a romantic flair. My playlist is full of songs that have a sweet sound, paint relationship scenarios, and make me think of love.
And I don’t even care for romantic comedies all that much because there’s too much focus on mishaps and humor. Instead, give me romantic dramas with more realistic depictions of relationships — messy, complicated, and beautiful.
It’s not just movies, though. I’m picky about real life relationships, too. I don’t fall in love easily, but when I do, I fall in love hard. I need a strong bond and deep intimacy.
I look at what people usually consider a “normal relationship” and it doesn’t really appeal to me. There’s just not enough closeness.
Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about non-monogamy. But one thing that keeps nagging at me is whether I’m really built for it. Is it possible for a hopeless romantic like me to really open up my marriage instead of doubling down on my primary relationship?
I’m Not Looking for Grand Gestures
When I say I’m a hopeless romantic, I don’t mean that I expect grand gestures in my life.
I’m not looking for a bed covered in flower petals every weekend, a steady stream of surprise getaways, or show-stopping declarations of love in public.
And it’s a good thing, too, because my husband is not the type of person given to grand gestures. I think the closest he’s come to surprising me was the morning he decided to try his hand at making bagels. (It’s not a dozen roses and fireworks, but it was still very much appreciated.)
But he satisfies the hopeless romantic in me in another way: by being present.
We’re always there for each other and have each other’s backs. We do every mundane thing together, from grocery shopping to watching movies. Our days are completely intertwined. I know most people would consider this suffocating and consider that kind of attention overbearing, but that’s really what I want and need.
I’m One Anxious Lady
I’d like to say that this is all just an extension of my little girl dreams of finding my Prince Charming and living happily ever after.
But no, it’s not really that. If I’m honest, the reason I expect so much depth from a relationship is because I’m, well, a little bit needy.
I recently read an article by Redefining Love on attachment styles, and what I learned from it is that I approach relationships with anxious attachment.
It’s easy for me to feel insecure about my relationships with others. When I like someone, I tend to think they probably don’t like me as much as I like them. I’m even like this with my husband. Yes, after being in a committed relationship with him for almost 15 years and bearing his four children, I still sometimes wonder if he really likes me.
(This embarrassingly accurate article describes me to a T.)
I know, it’s a little messed up. But I grew up in an emotionally abusive household and that sort of thing leaves a trace, including some deep wounds that may never fully heal. So, for better or worse, it’s just the way I’m wired. And because of it, I need a lot of reassurance and a strong sense of security.
And I guess that’s why I’ve always figured I’m built for monogamy. If I need to be loved so intensely and so intimately, with that much attention and reassurance, then surely what I need is to nail down one person who I can depend on and who can spend all their time with me.
I’m lucky that I’ve found that with my husband. We have the same attachment styles, and he genuinely loves how intertwined our lives are. And if I’m going to be that close with him, then I can’t be spreading my love around, right?
Or, at least, that’s what I thought.
Hopelessly Devoted to You (And You… And You)
What I’m realizing these days is that I’ve had it all wrong.
I need to be devoted to someone and have them be devoted to me as well. But there’s no reason I can’t feel that way with more than one partner.
As a hopeless romantic with an anxious attachment style, I really like being married. I like having a rock-solid primary relationship with someone who will always be there for me. It gives me the constant security I need to function, because I know that no matter what happens, I will always have someone to unload my worries to, share my time with, and fall asleep next to.
I’m never going to replicate what I have with my husband with another man or woman. But lately, I can’t help but feel that love and romance is not a zero sum game. Loving someone so intensely doesn’t mean I can’t create another partnership built on mutual devotion.
I don’t just have a love life — love is my life. I have a lot of it to give, and I want to create a connection with someone new so I have someone to give it to.
Despite all that, I won’t be diving in head first. I’m ready to start a new relationship, but I’m not sure I’m ready to handle all of the emotional ups and downs that come with dating. Heartbreak, what ifs, fear of loss, fear of rejection — it would all be a little rough on me.
So, I’m open to creating a close bond with someone but I won’t be fishing for open-minded hotties on Tinder or hanging around bookstores hoping to meet someone cute.
I might be ready to date in the future. But for now, if I’m going to find someone to partner up with, it will have to happen organically. It will evolve out of a strong friendship. Or it will happen as a result of endless conversations, text messages, and phone calls that end in clingy “No, you hang up first” exchanges. (Just kidding. I’m a millennial, so I hate phone calls but you get the idea.)
I used to think being a hopeless romantic meant I’d have to master monogamy. But now I realize it means I’m able to love more than one person and to love them hard. If I ever meet someone else who can take that much devotion, I’ll be ready to carve out a big space for them in my life. | https://medium.com/polyamory-today/can-a-hopeless-romantic-be-polyamorous-164fa7b3b5e1 | ['Emma Austin'] | 2020-04-13 23:56:17.398000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Dating', 'Polyamory', 'Relationships', 'Self'] |
Investing In Business Intelligence Software | A wide range of industries are starting to lean into a data-driven culture, focusing on data, as one of their most important resources for decision-making.
Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
It is a fact that every company, no matter the size, from start-ups to even more established companies, manage different types and volumes of data. Data can talk, but how can we read it?
When it comes to data, we must understand that originally it will be raw, so it needs to be cleaned up, organized, and analyzed in order to provide us information, so we can communicate something with it. All these processes take time, and as we know, time is non-refundable also representing a cost.
So, what if it is possible to access all the data of business in real-time? Try to imagine, accessing the right information in a matter of seconds, making faster and better decisions. This is what a business intelligence software is about. A business intelligence tool can provide much needed information about a business without relying on IT, in a short period of time and with the right visualizations, that will help us to digest the data and take insights from it.
The Benefits Of Business Intelligence Software
Photo by Monty Rakusen on Getty Images
A real-time business intelligence software will help companies to get access to a huge volume, variety, and sometimes complex data, in just a fraction of seconds in a much easier way. One of the big benefits of BI tools is that they are highly accessible. These tools allow the users to see different types of graphs, dashboards, and visualizations in every kind of device, from any screen you may have in the office, to mobile phones. No matter when or where, the data will be available in real-time.
Real-time business intelligence will also help to improve decision-making by understanding in a more detailed way all the business numbers, metrics and key performance indicators. Having all these daily, weekly, monthly KPIs and contrasting them with previous time periods, short- and long-term trends, historical data for patterns, etc., will allow us to deep dive on the data, extracting amazing insights from it. This will lead not only to an improved metrics performance but also to find possible gaps and areas for improvement.
Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash
Besides discovering new market opportunities, going deeper in the data will also help to identify outliers. These anomalies can be hiding behavioral trends that could probably not be seen, so by discovering them, it will be easier to find those answers we may be looking for. Information can provide answers that can explain the reason for different issues or problems the business has, but we haven’t found before.
Another point worth highlighting is that most of BI tools are self-service software. What this means is that everyone in an organization can have access to crucial business data without requiring high technical knowledge and without relying on other company towers. This gives the final user much more independence, saving a lot of time and resources.
Why Invest In Business Intelligence?
Not everything is about fast analysis, intuitive visualizations, and data-driven decisions. It is also a matter of costs.
As it was mentioned before, it is a matter of reducing costs in a short-term period. Of course, buying and investing in a business intelligence software will require an initial investment, but it will be reflected into an increase in business performance and efficiency.
Therefore, the initial payment will be transformed into a faster route to the goals aimed by the company, which will translate into a significant increase in the profits.
How?
By understanding better our data, we will understand better our business. This means, we will uncover opportunities, as well as areas with place for improvement, cutting costs and, yet again, earning more money.
When to start investing in Business Intelligence Software?
If there is a need of analyzing reports to find points of improvements, grow a certain business and of course, somebody to consume the data of those reports, it could be a first signal that there is a need of a business intelligence software. Business intelligence tools can help to scale business.
A second reason could be the volume and different data sources a business can have. Sometimes data does not come from the same source, so for analyzing and show it all together, it has to be integrated in a same place. This is also possible with a BI tool.
For last but not least, spending a lot of money on adverstising but not analyzing the impact of it, can also be an alarm. Maybe it is time to spend less on advertising and start thinking on investing some of that budget in business intelligence.
Conclusion
Having real-time data will not only improve decision-making but also it will help taking more proactive actions instead of being reactive and moving slower. It is vital to every company to understand their data because this will help to better understand their customers behavior, make better decisions and also learn about mistakes committed in the past in order to not repeat them in the future. With a real-time business intelligence software, all this is possible.
There are many different types of business intelligence tools, from cheaper and more simple ones, to others more expensive and complex. It is all about finding the one that adapts better to your business possibilities and needs.
Sometimes we feel like we need to get more data-driven in our business but we don’t know from where to start.
For me, here is the start…
Let’s take the next step! | https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/investing-in-business-intelligence-software-c4b489c42edf | ['Martina Burone Risso'] | 2020-10-19 12:18:42.651000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Technology', 'Business Intelligence', 'Data', 'Data Visualization'] |
Christmas Magic | Photo from Pinterest
I got a text from Santa. No, I’m not crazy. (Okay, that’s somewhat debatable) a text came to my phone that read: “HoHoHo Amanda it’s Santa! I’m so excited to say Hi to you. I’m looking forward to telling you about all of our FUN Christmas adventures this year!” Next came a text asking me to vote what color he should paint his sleigh. Today a picture of the sleigh came
The text said the elves could keep it blue for just this year and he hoped the paint dried before he had to fly to me. It even said the name of my city.
Growing up with a decent childhood, Christmas was a magical time. There was a different energy. It was so much fun to decorate, bake, shop and wrap. People had parties, I got a new dress, my family was coming from far away and the best part, Santa would make his journey on Christmas Eve and deliver presents he had made just for me. I took careful consideration to picking which of the cookies my mom and I baked to leave out for him and the veggies for the reindeer had to be just right. I was so excited it was hard to sleep.
The next morning I would dive into the collection of gifts while my parents gripped their coffee cups, trying to wake up. All the toys needed to be opened and, much to my parents dismay, I needed the noisy ones first. I was so thrilled this magical person had made all this stuff, just for me!
Through the years my friends told me the truth about Santa. I asked my mom if it was true and she confirmed yes, it was true. To be honest, I was devastated. I still got my stockings filled but now I knew who filled them. It wasn’t about the gifts. The thought that a man could round the world in a single night and visit every good child meant anything was possible. Without Santa, The magic seemed to disappear.
As I grew up, Christmas got more and more difficult for me. It’s especially hard being a Midwestern girl with no white Christmas down in Florida. I’ve struggled with depression for a long time and the holidays brought it out more than ever. I wanted Christmas spirit, I wanted magic but as much as I wanted it just wouldn’t come. It even came to the point I stopped decorating and baking, got store bought gifts and shipped them late, once the tree didn’t even go up. Without my normal traditions, Christmas wasn’t the same.
Recently I decided Christmas will go on. It started when I saw an ad on Facebook to sign up to have Santa text your child. I thought how fun is that? I’d love to hear from Santa! Unfortunately this service is not free and my wallet is not willing to comply. The ad did however remind me of my childhood. It sparked a flicker of magic. My traditions with family live on in my memory and I will do my best to honor them. Gifts are again handmade, Christmas music plays while I do chores, there are some decorations outside and soon there will be inside as well.
Then it happened: Santa texted me. The number was one I don’t recognize. He called me Amanda so it wasn’t my family as they would have said Mandy.
I know the probability of this actually being Santa is zilch but someone out there cared enough about me to do this. Someone re-created the feelings I haven’t had since childhood. I think this is more magic than I’ve ever had and ranks as the best gift ever. | https://medium.com/@amandac83080/christmas-magic-5171aa760505 | ['Amanda Urban'] | 2020-12-08 16:48:00.329000+00:00 | ['Believe', 'Christmas', 'Santa', 'Thank You', 'Magic'] |
Modular / Mobile isolation facility | Our answer as mobile home manufacturing company, to current global pandemic.
GA Mobil — MedHab CON2 modular mobile hospital unit
GA Mobil is a luxury, high-quality mobile home, manufacturing company from Slovenia, working on a field of modern “glamping type” tourism accommodation development and production. As global crysis with the SARS-COV-2 pandemic occurred, we saw the potential of using our mobile unite manufacturing knowledge in designing a product that could help save lives and to prevent pandemic spread.
Our mobile medical MedHub unites model is a full mobile isolation facility, offering hospitals fast, safe and high-quality patient capacity increase. The model is designed to host up to 6patients in a space of 30 square meters, where each patient has his own bathroom with a shower and toilet (depending on a model) so that the unnecessary contact with other people is as minimized as possible.
GA Mobil — MedHab mobile hospital unit isolation room
The main hub is also available in two different variations, first is designed for patients with critical medical conditions and provides space for intensive care treatment processes. The second model variation is designed for laboratory use in event of a crysis that requires rapid and mass testing as happened in a current pandemic spread of COVID — 19 virus.
GA Mobil — MedHab Unit structure
All our MedHub models are designed to be combined in larger field medical facilities and also have the option of installing a negative room pressure system that further reduces the possibility of transmitting infectious diseases.
The MedHab model is built to the high quality standards that GA Mobil adheres to within its production. When designing the presented product, optimization of production processes has been carried out for the needs of simpler and faster construction, from the very basic phase of material selection. We have simplified the product, but at the same time it still contains all the important technical characteristics of a high quality residential building. The module has a hot galvanized chassis with four wheels and a tow bar for easy movement. The roof is ventilated and double insulated, which ensures optimal living conditions in all seasons. The basic building blocks are sandwich panels with pouliretane insulation of the living area, partitions between rooms are insulated with Knauf DPL 5 acoustic wool, which allows discretion among patients.
MedHab unit football field space distribution simulation
MedHab modules merge into larger affiliated medical facilities designed for emergency field hospitals. The connecting elements are tents made of non — condensing cloth, which, after its use, is suitable for disinfection of space. The modules offer various options for joining and assembling larger covered heated buildings, allowing them to adapt to the user and space. The simulation below shows the spatial efficiency based on the surface of the average football field. | https://medium.com/@gradus.ars/modular-mobile-isolation-facility-21cc07ee71d4 | ['Ga Mobil'] | 2020-04-23 17:49:38.434000+00:00 | ['Quarantine', 'Modular Homes', 'Hospital', 'Isolation', 'Emergency Medical Unit'] |
Most “Influencers” are Broadcasters — Not Influencers | Most “Influencers” are Broadcasters — Not Influencers
Being interesting doesn’t equal being influential
Photo by Coco Championship from Pexels
Just because someone has a lot of followers on Instagram doesn’t automatically mean they have any influence over their audience. It’s possible to be a fun person to follow, without having any authority whatsoever. In fact, this is the rule, not the exception.
I’ve consulted businesses who have worked with so called influencers, been kind one myself, and helped people with large audiences get deals with brands, so I’ve seen this from every side. It’s clear to me that most people, including myself, don’t have significant influence over masses of people.
People with a big following simply have the ability to broadcast a message to a large audience. That’s not nothing, but don’t mistake it for influence.
Broadcasting Does Have Value
Some products sell themselves — the only thing you need to do is to be seen by your target audience.
Say you sell a working jetpack for $500. You don’t need authority figures convincing people how awesome a jetpack is. The only thing you need to do is to get the attention of people. Your product does the rest.
When you have something that’s easy to sell to a cold audience, people with large Instagram followings are great to work with. Show them numbers from past collaborations or Facebook campaigns, to convince them that your product sells like hot cakes. Strike up a fair commission deal and build yourself a small army of broadcasters.
No need to worry about how influential these people are.
When Actual Influence is Needed
You benefit best from working with truly influential people, when you have a great product with a lot of competition.
If you sell iPhone cases, for example, which has become a commodity, you need to persuade people that your case is better than the others. This is where actual influencers are great. They have the trust of their audience, and a record of recommending awesome products in the past.
Just remember that true influencers don’t sell out for shitty products, because they know that it doesn’t take much to break the hard earned trust with their audience. You need something good for any kind of influencer marketing to work.
How to Separate Influencers from Broadcasters
True influencers are still as valuable as ever. It’s just difficult to distinguish between influencer and broadcaster, because they can look quite similar. A broadcaster might have an authentic and active following, but still lack influence.
The key things to ask about, when negotiating an influencer deal, are sales numbers. That’s the only way to estimate how much influence someone has. Even then you have to account for the differences in your product and how good it fits the audience. Maybe the last product they sold actually sold itself — like a jetpack.
For that reason, I tend to prefer influencer (or broadcaster) deals almost fully commission based, on whichever side I’m on. There’s a case to be made that brand awareness deserves a small base pay, but otherwise commission keeps things fair.
Start out small and aim to build mutually beneficial, long-term relationships. You’ll quickly learn if someone is an influencer or a broadcaster. Both types can be useful, as long as you understand the difference. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/most-influencers-are-broadcasters-not-influencers-f19d29120808 | ['Sebastian Juhola'] | 2020-11-05 15:12:59.605000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Instagram', 'Marketing', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Influencer Marketing'] |
Big Tech Is the New Face of American Imperialism | Big Tech Is the New Face of American Imperialism
The reins are completely off, and American legislature seems unwilling to step in.
Major outlets have equipped themselves with a consistent body of reports on the state of online radicalization after terror attacks have been shown to be motivated by the doctrine of the American alt-right. What’s lacking from these reports however, is the sheer global scale at which these ideas are broadcast. The platforms housing these radicals? They’re American, and any hopes of holding them accountable to a damage done worldwide are getting progressively fainter.
The alt-right especially felt right at home on YouTube, and by all measures of engagement, their channels still best even the most popular of BreadTube fixtures. Political YouTube is in a constant state of tug and pull for what side retains the most dominance, and as much as it is a battle of ideas, it is also a battle for the soul of YouTube — a willingness to prove good behavior can rise above the most primitive impulses of hatred and spite.
One such participant in this fight is YouTuber Quetzal. He’s on the side of BreadTube, and he’s taken it upon himself to aid stopping the spread of nefarious extremist ideology in large parts of South America and his home country, Spain. He started out covering video games, but soon enough, he realized he could put forth more of his political side after a video covering Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil in the context of gratuitous violence in video games performed well-above his most generous expectations. He then went on to carve out a dedicated audience of the politically-conscious who — like him — were disillusioned with the way social media floated to its top its most-problematic, leaving progressive political currents to drown midst their rapid spread.
Reminiscent of Quetzal’s bitter attitude with regards to YouTube moderation.
Such as the story familiarly goes, Quetzal was not happy about the ideological spot the right-wing was carving out on YouTube. “I know many of my subscribers who had to deal with the hate these people create” he said to me speaking about Agustín Laje — a Ben Shapiro-type political pundit of sorts — and Nicolas Márquez who’ve especially cemented a brand of popularity in a South America whose record of LGBT+ rights and socially-progressive public policy is spotty at best.
“Cultural Marxism” was a favorite of theirs to use as an occult dog whistle for an antiquated Nazi conspiracy theory that seeks to single out the “collective decadence of moral values” within a society as pretext for the erosion of national identity. Quetzal by virtue of being one of the very few to oppose them ideologically, took it upon himself to meticulously break down the term’s problematic roots. The video made use of Nazi imagery for illustrative purposes, and after enduring what only seems to befit the blueprint of a mass-flagging campaign, YouTube took down his video and slapped a strike on his channel for hatespeech. Quetzal tried to dispute, but YouTube wouldn’t budge even after manually reviewing the claim. It wasn’t until his concerns were escalated to traditional media that his calls for a modicum of justice were finally answered.
In talking to Quetzal about his experience with the platform, his suggestions to improve it aren’t all that dissimilar from what advocates for ethical tech are already campaigning for. “If they hired more humans they could curate better.” he told me. He’s also not surprised this does fall in line with YouTube’s bottom-line, saying that “algorithms taking most of the work means less employment and worse service.” And he’s not mistaken. Time and time again, the algorithms designed to keep the internet safe, more often than not, favor extremist content to keep users engaged, all-the-while creators on the opposite side of the political spectrum have to spend their days agonizing over what possible mention of an extremist ideology — outside the context of radicalization — could potentially take down their videos with no immediate sign of reprieve on the horizon.
The problem of online radical speech doesn’t limit itself to well-authored propaganda however. Someplace else where the issue is more systemic, Facebook — a platform that has long prided itself on a tradition of connecting long-lost friends — has now become a vehicle to increase the pace at which harmful stereotypes about entire groups of people are spread, and the rate at which democracies are toppled.
Photo by Alex Haney on Unsplash
The Rohingya crisis is a perfect example of a story whose oxygen was greatly stripped due to American mainstream media focusing on the ever-so-elusive Russian probe, but its consequences are no less indicative of Big Tech’s grave incompetence. Since the cause and effect remain largely foreign, Facebook feels no sense of true remorse on what beastly machine of bigotry it allowed to cultivate. The rot of corruption rose well through the ranks of the Myanmar Army, with the New York Times’ resident tech columnist Paul Mozur analogizing it to Russian influence in the 2016 American presidential elections:
The campaign in Myanmar looked similar to online influence campaigns from Russia, said Myat Thu, a researcher who studies false news and propaganda on Facebook. One technique involved fake accounts with few followers spewing venomous comments beneath posts and sharing misinformation posted by more popular accounts to help them spread rapidly.
This online-led campaign was rife with radical rhetoric, and it caused the Muslim Rohingya community in Myanmar much-loathsome grief. The army was practically using the platform as a hotbed for recruiting radicals to their cause in one of the very few successful state-sponsored radicalization campaigns online. It was so bad in fact, that the United Nations released a report in August 2018 condemning Myanmar Army generals, and suggesting they should be prosecuted for genocide against the Rohingya. “The social media platform has been called “the de facto internet” in Myanmar, skyrocketing in popularity in recent years, partly because the military eased up on censorship and because of the relative affordability of smartphones.” said Jen Kirby, foreign and national security reporter for Vox. Just months prior to this scathing report, Mark Zuckerberg told Ezra Klein’s Vox that Facebook is hard at work to remedy these issues, but as precedent has it, the measures have been largely ineffectual.
A year on, hatred still followed some of the Rohingya well into their refuge. Thenmozhi Soundararajan, founder of Equality Labs — an organization documenting racially-motivated violence in Southeast Asia — told the New York Times’ Vindu Goel that “[She thinks] Facebook keeps thinking they can solve this within the bunker of their offices and not with the collaboration of the communities who are affected”. She also further noted that despite warning Facebook about signs of anti-Rohingya hatespeech brewing in India, the company did little to stave its growth — an observation which, only cements a recurring pattern in Facebook’s failure to atone for its gravest sins.
And as if the pie wasn’t already shot to smithereens by Facebook’s and Google’s overbearing ineptitude, Twitter has also morphed into its own behemoth of a hate-spreading machine where users are expected to contend with ludicrous suspensions based on faux-slurs like “TERF”, and watch their abusers get away with so much worse.
The platform’s hatespeech policy has been largely shaped by Jack Dorsey’s — very thinly-veiled — pandering to the alt-right. Twitter’s CEO posited the notion that they’re nothing more than an ardent political faction that deserves to be heard as much as its leftward counterweight. That justification of false-equivalency extends only so far however — Jack Dorsey reportedly overruled staff on a decision to kick far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and famed white supremacist Richard Spencer off the platform. A decision which has since put a dent in public confidence over his ability to lead.
One of Jack’s many shameful attempts at sanitizing his public image.
Twitter CEO’s personal positions on the regulation of speech within Twitter are not without consequence. Accounts posting misinformation — which often gets viral — are abundant, and some of them while seemingly small, have great sway over public opinion, acting as a testing ground for extremist ideologues to see just how far is the platform willing to let them go. On Twitter, the relative leeway afforded to problematic creators on YouTube is further extended with hatespeech taking center stage. It was so bad in fact, that it prompted a low turnout of potential investors as Salesforce bailed out on a much-anticipated bid to buy them in late 2016. Hayley Tsukayama, consumer technology reporter for the Washington Post, chalked it off to the platform’s spotty record of addressing hatespeech and harassment, saying that “arguably Twitter’s biggest issue has been its ongoing struggle with harassment, abuse and just general bad behavior on its network”. It’s hard to disagree when the tenure of conversations on platform take often on an incendiary note.
That, like on Facebook and YouTube, has seen its warts burst open on a global scale — and especially where Twitter is more popular. Wherein Facebook and YouTube have broad appeal that is largely agnostic of culture and social status, Twitter seems to lure in entire legions of youngsters. A generation more attuned to the sensibilities of a changing social media landscape has flocked to consume its usual diet of memetic delights, and a not-so-uncommon stream of unduly attacks on the underprivileged. Accounts like the francophone “AuBonTouiteFrançais” constantly spread messages with the explicit intent of undermining France’s Maghrebin minority, as well as its Black constituency. Since much of the African continent is French-speaking due to France’s brutal colonial past, these messages’ deeply disturbing implications rarely go by unnoticed.
A French right-wing propagandist spreading misinformation about Trump’s attack on “the Squad”
To underscore just how much of America’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is repackaged for other contexts where the racial tensions aren’t dissimilar, the account deceitfully misquoted Trump’s call to four congresswomen — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley — to “go back” whence they came. The account doesn’t limit itself to occasional commentary on the state of American politics. It also indulges in some blatant attacks on minorities, citing — among other things — a common dog whistle in white supremacist circles that immigrants are out to perverse their demographic makeup by raping minors. A low-hanging fruit even for fans of the white genocide conspiracy theory.
Marine’s deeply offensive comments on Algerians prior to their national team’s final game at the Africa Cup of Nations
Populist politicians have also found a way to use the platform to further their political message. Marine Le Pen — leader of the National Rally party who got surprisingly close to beating Macron based on an anti-immigrant, anti-EU platform — recently tweeted a video message, claiming that Algerians celebrating the feats of their national football team are committing “anti-French acts” and “marking their territory”, citing “failure to integrate” within French values as a reason why acts of civil disobedience have been carried out throughout the country. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan went a step further, and dropped a bombshell of a comment by saying that “if you prefer Algeria, if Algeria is better than France, return to Algeria”. This is not the first time a staunchly-nationalistic stance had been taken against immigrants by the RN’s leader, or Dupont-Aignan for that matter. And yet, even as Twitter claims to have enacted a policy where public officials’ tweets would be hidden, or outright removed if they present a threat to public safety, the content is still readily viewable, despite real potential for racially-motivated altercations to occur as a result.
But the French far-right isn’t alone in exploiting Twitter’s lax moderation to push for radical rhetoric. Public officials from Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, India’s Narendra Modi, Iran’s Ali Khamenei, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, accounts of political parties such as neo-Nazi ‘Alternative for Germany’, sockpuppet accounts for terrorist organizations like ISIS, and military bodies like the IDF constantly post what is essentially far-right propaganda on the platform with next no repercussions. The majority of these accounts are verified and are allowed to operate with little interference, and the replies below their tweets are a hotbed for recruiting extremists using language that comprises a lot of racist undertones — something Twitter’s knack for exactitude, does not acknowledge as being part of its hatespeech policy.
This is only but a small sliver of what happens outside the boundaries of Americentric mainstream media, but it’s sufficient evidence that the internet age hasn’t only lain siege to minorities’ rights where coverage of online radicalization’s harmful effects is most prevalent — it also did it where voices decrying it are heard the least. There’s real harm done out there, and with the Trump administration seemingly uninterested in pursuing any useful measures on the spread of hatespeech in America, there’s no telling whether hatespeech directives in countries where the First Amendment is but a historical reference point will be respected.
Whether it’s ideologues spreading propaganda on YouTube, cultural blind spots of American platforms being exploited to advance some seriously-troubling messaging around minorities, or politicians using Twitter’s instant delivery to broadcast harmful rhetoric, there seems to be no running away from online spaces where opportunities of being radicalized through constant exposure of negative messaging against minorities can occur. Even more troubling that these trends span the entire globe — outside of America, in the West, and beyond — and the only body of government in any measure to rectify it, is seemingly unwilling to do much of anything to shift course.
Trump’s White House recently held a social media summit where the attendees list didn’t include any voice of academic authority over social media, but rather spanned the wider gamut of right-wing trolls and the usual suspects crying foul about conservative censorship on social media. The list included an outstanding number of conspiracy theorists and right-wing ideologues, whose accomplishments — or lack thereof — range from covertly aiming to delegitimize Roy Moore’s child predation allegations, concocting another wave of birthist allegations against presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, and making blatantly anti-Semitic cartoons.
Since the current White House seemed to prize the contributions of those who are deemed by many experts to be at the very core problem social media is experiencing at the moment, it’s unlikely that any reform will be introduced to online speech regulation even as it continues to wreak havoc in a fashion whose indifference to national sovereignty is only paralleled by American foreign military might. It is a different type of imperialism that not one party is responsible for, but many actors learn and season themselves to exploit over the downtrodden wherever leadership is oblivious to their needs. The conversation around online radicalization has to encompass the weight of the decisions that American legislature and Big Tech companies have enacted over the last decade to deprioritize and undermine the home-grown terror when spread using tools made by a country whose commander-in-chief’s moral compass is deeply questionable. And unless the pain, and the suffering of everyone — regardless of what tongue they speak, religious affiliation, or cultural affect they exert — are accounted for, the solutions to an ever-worsening situation will only benefit a global few. | https://akhaledblog.medium.com/youtube-facebook-twitter-online-radicalization-free-speech-big-tech-a845e7acd138 | ['A. Khaled'] | 2019-07-30 03:29:28.392000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Democracy', 'Equality', 'Tech', 'Social Media'] |
Responses to Constructive and Destructive Criticism | Responses to Constructive and Destructive Criticism
To be effective though, criticism must be constructive
Photo by SIphotography on depositphotos
A key difference between criticism and corrective feedback is that criticism is typically given for larger issues, rather than for isolated incidences of performance. To be effective though, criticism must be constructive.
Constructive criticism is far more productive than criticism that’s destructive. It encourages cooperation and mutual respect, which is vital when you’re dealing with workplace issues that could have major consequences if not dealt with correctly.
Constructive criticism
Giving constructive criticism involves delivering criticism in a reasoned, professional manner that’s designed to help the recipient overcome a problem. It involves offering suggestions or positive feedback.
This creates an atmosphere of mutual respect between the person giving the criticism and the person receiving it. So it facilitates the smooth and effective resolution of the problem. It also creates a positive working environment, which makes things easier for the recipient and the person who gave the criticism.
The most important factor in giving constructive criticism is the attitude of the person giving it. If your real aim is to vent frustration or to “punish” someone for a serious mistake, it’s likely the effect will be destructive on the recipient. But if your aim is to solve a problem or prevent future problems, it’s likely your criticism will have a constructive effect.
Destructive criticism
Destructive criticism fails to offer positive feedback or suggestions. This type of criticism is given in an ill-considered and damaging manner. It has a degrading effect on the recipient and can aggravate the problem that’s being addressed.
In turn, this can create a negative working climate, which makes things difficult for both the recipient and the person giving the criticism.
Giving destructive criticism can have several effects on the recipient:
it can hurt the recipient’s feelings,
it can promote feelings of inadequacy in the recipient, with negative consequences on this person’s work,
it can lower the recipient’s self-esteem, and
it can lead the recipient to withdraw from others, which can harm communication.
Perhaps the most hurtful thing people can experience is criticism — especially when it comes from someone close to them, or someone they admire. This hurt is particularly deep when the criticism is destructive, insulting the recipient and offering nothing positive. The feelings of hurt can stay with a person and can manifest themselves in negative or destructive behavior.
Destructive criticism can have significant adverse effects on people’s emotional state and ability to work, especially when this type of criticism comes from an admired authority figure. The hurt that recipients feel can lead to doubts about their own work abilities and cause low self-esteem.
Destructive criticism can also cause recipients to become withdrawn. Recipients’ embarrassment may last a long time, causing them to avoid or fear speaking to those who criticized them. If the person who criticizes and the recipient of the criticism in question need to work together, this can harm workplace communication and productivity. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/responses-to-constructive-and-destructive-criticism-b81b611a3997 | ['Sorin Dumitrascu'] | 2020-12-25 19:32:46.600000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Teamwork', 'Critical Thinking', 'Organization', 'Management'] |
How Walmart Global Tech is revamping the QA role | What it means to be a QA engineer
The quality assurance (QA) role in the context of software engineering evolved quite drastically since the boom of consumer applications.
In its core sense, QA engineers provide some form of confidence in the software as it evolves. In its simplest sense, this means manually testing the software to ensure no regression issues are found. As software continued to evolve from something as simple as a command line tool to multi-billion dollar ecosystems, so did the role of the QA engineer.
Even with the birth of automated testing, there were still large gaps to fill with manual testing as the automated tests didn’t provide enough confidence. Imagine you are responsible for delivering updates to an application that generates millions of dollars daily. Would you purely place your trust in some automated tests? Naturally no, because it’s a better investment to hire resources to manually test and catch issues than to face the consequences of actually releasing major bugs to users. Through this reasoning, businesses continue to hire QA engineers to manually test every iteration of their product. We’ve lost sight of our goal in search of temporary relief.
Putting the QA role back into perspective
There shouldn’t be a need for QA engineers to manual test as part of the job description. Every developer should be a QA. Every developer should write tests wherever they see a user scenario, even if it’s not something they wrote. Every developer should hold responsibility for the application they help build. The first step is to discard the antiquated notion that a developer should build and a QA should test. Have you seen anyone write their first line of console.log(“Hello world”) and never execute it because they didn’t feel the need to test to see if it works? The concept of increasing manual testing capacity is a sham, and we need to drive the change to build great products with confidence, quality, and at scale.
Redefining the QA role at Walmart Global Tech
In the past couple years, various engineering teams within Walmart Global Tech have been experimenting with the QA engineer role with the ultimate goal to redefine its role to exclude manual testing. We couldn’t immediately remove all manual testing as there would be nothing to fill the gap for what was currently being manually tested. Instead, we tried shifting bandwidth to create more automated tests, rotating QA engineers between products and teams, removing QA engineers entirely for smaller greenfield projects, and many other variations. There have been mixed results from every experiment, and they all lacked a common keystone: a decisive decision from leadership. We needed to formally allocate resources to building high confidence automated testing suites with the intention of deprecating the need for any manual testing. Any leader would agree with increasing automated test coverage, but it’s been more of an implied expectation rather than a concrete directive that impacted the developers.
Recently, with the start of many new large scale projects and the leadership of our CTO Suresh Kumar, we have doubled down on high confidence automated testing. For some of the QA engineers, their focus has shifted to improving the infrastructure and tooling to automate our testing. For others, they are participating in a pilot program to transition into developer roles, opening up a vast set of new opportunities for their careers. For developers, their focus has also shifted to integrating tools to automate testing between every stage of development. This has given our organization an opportunity to improve our engineering at an even greater scale.
Structuring the QA to dev transition
We planned the QA to dev transition to take approximately 2 months such that starting with some basic JavaScript knowledge, a QA engineer can become a self-sufficient developer that can pick up tickets from the backlog and know how to “figure things out” from others and online resources (that’s a skill too!). For our pilot runs, we paired each QA engineer with a senior developer who acted as a mentor and guided the mentee in the right direction.
The mentor should identify key points of learning in whatever areas make sense for their team. For us, our mentees already had basic JavaScript knowledge, so we picked a few JavaScript fundamentals and decided to focus more on our specific JavaScript tools and libraries, such as React, Next, and GraphQL among others. In total, we picked around 30 topics: 10 for fundamental JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, 10 for JavaScript tools and libraries, and 10 for networking and performance optimizations. From these 3 segments, the mentor created a milestone project plan for each segment with the input of the mentee. In my case, we decided to build a clone of the Apple AirPods Pro interactive scroll experience.
For the first milestone, the mentee would build out the basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to render the images as you scroll. For the second milestone, the objective was to convert the first milestone into React, Next and other relevant tools such as TypeScript. For the last milestone, we added custom GraphQL and REST endpoints as well as some performance optimizations.
Mentor expectations
Throughout these milestones, the mentor’s primary role is to guide the QA engineer through the plethora of subtopics they will have to learn in order to complete the projects in approximately 2 weeks per milestone. The mentor should also set up regular 30 min sync ups with the mentee (I recommend every other day) and longer working sessions for cases in which the mentee is stuck on a particular topic. At the end of each milestone project, we review the mentee’s progress with their manager and the transition program manager. This gives the mentee an opportunity to demo the hard work they have put in to their projects and also allows the managers to objectively track their transition progress.
Mentee expectations
For a smooth transition, it’s ideal for the mentee to work on the milestone projects during downtime from their regular duties as a QA engineer. The mentee should review and read about the topics for each milestone, then plan how they would incorporate each topic in their milestone project. To further facilitate the milestone demos, the mentee should also create a document detailing each topic and how it was implemented in their project. Throughout the milestones, the mentee should also maintain the mindset of only reaching out to the mentor when they are uncertain of their direction or if something cannot be answered with a quick search on the internet. This isn’t to discourage the mentee from taking guidance from the mentor, but to encourage putting themselves in the shoes of a full fledged developer and learning things through experience rather than hand holding.
In the regular sync ups, the mentee should show the mentor the progress they have made and if they face issues that can’t be solved easily with a few searches, such as how to optimize image preloading for images shown on scroll, the mentor should aim to spend no more than an hour helping the mentee understand the root issue and guide them to the right solutions.
Closing thoughts
After these milestones, I can confidently say that my mentee has the fundamentals in place to be a junior developer. My mentee was eager to dive into 5 story point features that could exercise the new skills they had learned in the past weeks. I was more than happy to welcome them as a peer in my team. More importantly, it seemed that they already had a solid foundation of web development and just needed a push to pursue this career transition.
I can’t wait for our QA engineers to continue their transitions and for our developers to further embrace their sense of ownership for automated tests in the same way they feel ownership for the features. This doesn’t mean the QA engineer role will be phased out, it just means that we’re finally realizing that developers own writing the tests, while allowing QA engineers to focus on building the tools to support that. | https://medium.com/walmartglobaltech/how-walmart-global-tech-is-revamping-the-qa-role-c37905b3488f | ['Joon Park'] | 2020-11-10 18:17:28.771000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Engineering'] |
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck — Book Review | By Mark Manson
Context: Mark Manson is a famous internet blogger, who started as a relationship adviser. Growing through a depressing childhood, Mark has faced a lot of problems which only helped him become a better person. The book consists of small incidents from Mark’s life as well as some other incidents which will leave a deep impact on the reader.
About the book:
The subtle art of not giving a fuck, a counterintuitive approach to living a good life bursts many conventional myths of “How to be Happy?”, being presented throughout the 21st century. Mark through this international bestseller, in a merciless approach, helps to find you what is more important in life and how NOT to think highly of yourself.
The book intends to bring you back to the ground, to face your problems and not avoid them, and to see things as they are instead of fantasizing about fallacies. Mark intelligently through scientific facts and stories presents basic theories that have a deeper meaning.
“With great responsibility comes great power” (p.96)
Feeling great already, eh? The book is filled with such simplistic yet powerful messages. It contains everything from relationship advice to lifestyle changes.
My Favorite Part:
Chapter 7: Failure is the way forward — The “DO SOMETHING” principle
With the example of his high school maths teacher, Mark shows how acting leads to motivation, rather than waiting for motivation to act on something.
“Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it” (p.160), probably the most important thing for someone who is a pro procrastinator.
This is just my understanding of the book, there is a lot more that you should definitely check out. The book is written in simple language and will reach your heart in no time!
I recommend this book to everyone out there, do read it, and let me know your experience! | https://medium.com/@bvmore/the-subtle-art-of-not-giving-a-f-ck-book-review-c778b0b75de3 | ['Bhushan More'] | 2020-12-16 07:57:56.551000+00:00 | ['Books And Authors', 'Book Recommendations', 'Book Review', 'Life Lessons', 'Motivation'] |
Motivation from Me to You | Photo from Unsplash
You are going to succeed. You are all you need to succeed.
Whatever it is that you want to achieve, you are going to. It may seem like a long way away, but it will come, I can assure you of that. Just be patient, and work hard, and watch the pieces fall into place before your eyes.
Try to make every day count, small steps towards your goal are fine because they are steps nonetheless. Be sure to keep a diary of what you are doing, so that you can look back on it and be proud of your achievements.
Whatever it is you are trying to do, remember that sacrifice is something that you have to do to succeed.
Success is waiting for you, go out and get it. | https://medium.com/illumination/motivation-from-me-to-you-90ee47bb15b8 | [] | 2020-12-19 14:15:47.500000+00:00 | ['Success', 'Motivation', 'University', 'Students', 'Life Lessons'] |
Teacher’s New Toy | The first chapter of this very dirty book
“I just really want to be fucked,” I said. I blushed the second the words left my mouth, and I could see the change come over his face in an instant. He went from a patient teacher to something I couldn’t quite describe, except to say I felt small and vulnerable in a heartbeat.
I didn’t know anyone else at the time. I had three weeks before I graduated high school and he was the gayest man I knew. Hell, he was the only gay man I knew, and it didn’t matter that he taught my AP English class. Mr. R. as we all called him, was young, kind, and hot enough that the girls gossiped about him over lunch and the boys all followed him around hoping to one day be as cool.
But I knew he was gay, and I knew he would listen, and so what if he sometimes smiled at me in class and I smiled back? So what if he offered me rides on occasion and let me talk his ear off without ever saying a thing?
But that afternoon, sitting in the front seat of his car, my confession still hanging off my lips, everything changed. He pulled over the second I told him I thought I might be gay, and he listened as I told him about kissing a boy over the weekend and trying to wrap my mind around everything at the same time. He nodded and told me everything would be okay, and I mostly believed him.
I was working through everything at once, but at the time the physical was far easier for me to understand than the emotional side. Kissing the guy had been nice, but it wasn’t nearly enough. I had felt him grow hard through his jeans and I rubbed against him, my hand tracing his length through the tight fabric. And at that moment, my hand on someone else’s cock for the first time in my life, I knew I wanted someone inside me.
“Is that all?” he finally asked, looking at me in the passenger seat as the car instantly warmed to boiling. I nodded because I wasn’t sure what else to say. It felt like the biggest confession of my life, and Mr. R. was treating it like I told him I liked ice cream. As I tried to work it out, I looked back at him and realized in an instant that wasn’t what he meant. And the second I understand, everything else hit me at the same time. He wasn’t dismissive at all. He was asking me what else I wanted, and the truth was a lot more complicated. I had barely let myself fantasize about it, but I was instantly full of more ideas than my brain could handle.
“I had this girlfriend for a while,” I began, trying to explain myself, but still shaking and still confused. “And she liked it when I held her down. She loved it when I fucked her from behind with my arm around her neck as I called her filthy names.”
“And?” he asked, his seatbelt off as he listened. I looked down, almost as embarrassed as I was turned on. The truth may not set me free, but sometimes it makes me hard as a rock.
“I want to be used like that,” I finally said realizing it was true. “I want to be held down and fucked so hard that I lose my mind. Even when I was doing it to her, I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to be on the other end of it. I wanted to be the one held down and fucked hard.”
“When do you graduate again?” he asked, a smile crossing his lips.
“Three weeks,” I said, wondering if he was going to say anything more. Wondering if he was going to do anything.
“That’s so fucking long,” he said, looking me up and down, this time with more clarity.
“I am eighteen, though,” I said, moving closer to him even as I felt my heart beat so fast I almost couldn’t breathe. He was a good teacher, and a decent guy and I wanted him so badly none of that mattered. At that moment, his job, his career, hell, even his guilt didn’t matter to me. I had waited so long in admitting what I wanted that waiting anymore felt impossible.
“Fuck,” was all he said, adjusting his cock through his jeans as I watched. He looked at me, and then back at the wheel. I inched closer to him on the bench seat, reaching out slowly with one hand. When I touched his shoulder, he turned and smiled, that feral look once again covering his face.
“I live a few blocks away,” he finally said, looking over his shoulder to the street behind us. It wasn’t busy, but cars drove by every few minutes, and we were not well hidden.
“Take me there,” I mumbled before I finally gave in downright begged. “Please?”
We were silent when we walked into his apartment. I didn’t know what to expect, and the truth is I barely remember what it looked like. I don’t remember the art on his walls or the layout of his kitchen. All I recall was walking straight to his bedroom with my heart in my throat as I wondered if it was actually going to happen. I stopped at the foot of his bed and turned around, nearly bumping into him in the process. He was a few inches taller than me, and he lifted my face up to his with one finger beneath my chin.
“We don’t have to do anything,” he whispered, and I wasn’t sure I believed him. Backing out felt impossible, and not just because I was so desperate for it.
“I want to,” I finally mumbled. “I’ve thought about it so many times.”
“About what?” he asked this time a hint of demand in his voice. I swallowed and told him the truth.
“I’ve thought about you fucking me,” I said.
“Does it get you off?” he asked. “Do you come thinking about it?”
“Yes,” was all I could say, nodding my head frantically. I was terrified and excited, and the combination was dizzying. It felt like an out of body experience, and he hadn’t even touched me yet. There was so much power in my confession that I nearly lost myself as the words left my mouth.
“You are so hot, do you know that?” he asked. It had barely occurred to me that he might find me attractive for some reason, and his admission surprised me. He was older and bigger and smarter, and I felt instantly like a kid in front of him.
“Everyone at school wants you,” I blurted out.
“But you’re the only one I’m going to fuck,” he said, moving closer to me, his finger still holding my head in place. “You’re the only one who’s going to kneel on the floor and suck my cock until I’m hard enough to fuck your little ass. Isn’t that right?”
“Oh God,” was all I could say before he leaned in and kissed me. I didn’t expect the tenderness, and I definitely didn’t expect his scratchy face and his strong lips to feel so good. But he held me there in his small bedroom, his arms around me as we kissed slowly, tentatively, and then finally with more and more strength. As his kiss grew more firm so did his grasp, and within minutes I felt my hands gripped firmly behind my back, and all I could do was moan into his mouth, my knees growing weak in an instant.
“You’ll be a good boy for me, won’t you?” he asked, finally standing up straight once more.
“Yes, Mr. R.,” I replied. “I’ll do anything you want.”
“Anything?” he said, with a laugh. I tried to nod, but all I could do was hope I was right. Fuck, it was terrifying, and I couldn’t make myself move.
“Kneel,” was all he said, and it felt like a dream as I instantly complied. “And take off your shirt.”
I felt more naked than I was, but there was no time to think. My teacher’s hand moved up and down the growing bulge in his jeans, and I couldn’t look away. I had seen other cocks before but never like this. Never right in front me, and never one that required attention. I gasped when I felt his hand in my hair before he pulled me closer while he undid the buttons on his pants in one fluid motion. He reached down and slowly pulled his thick cock out in one big hand, and he was only partially hard. I didn’t think or ask before reaching up and opening my mouth at the same time.
“Good boy,” he whispered as he released his cock, letting me wrap my hand around it as I pulled him to my mouth. I took his head between my lips and kissed it, wondering if I was doing anything right at all. Before I could think, he pulled on my hair and moved into my mouth. I gagged for just a moment as I took more and more of him as he slowly grew harder. With my hand still tight around the base of his cock, I swallowed him over and over again, gagging and choking each time he was the deepest.
“You don’t have to take it all,” he said, leaning over me as I sucked his cock on the floor. “You’re mouth feels amazing just as it is. All you have to do is get me hard enough to fuck you because I’ve waited all year for this.”
I mumbled and tried to think of something clever to say, but all I could do was take him into my mouth and throat over and over again until he was so hard I had stop and simply stare for a moment. His cock was thick and long, and while it wasn’t terrifyingly huge, it was bigger than I expected. I hadn’t seen too many cocks in my life, but the one in my hand was beautiful, and he was going to fuck me with it.
“Come here,” he said, lifting me up to him once more, so I was standing against him. He undid my jeans in a second and gently jerked me off as he kissed me, my hands still wrapped around him.
“You have a great cock,” he said, smiling down at me. And then he spun me around and pushed me forward, my jeans around me knees. “But this little ass is even better…”
I didn’t move, but I couldn’t see him either, and it was more than a little scary. He was silent as he stood watching me, and while I was somehow incredibly hard, I’m sure I was also shaking on the bed. I felt completely exposed, my bare ass up in the air, and I didn’t know if he was going to take his time or fuck me without any warning at all. His hands were soft on my skin, though, and he caressed me with the same gentleness he had used when kissing me. He slid my pants down, helping me out of them while I kicked off my socks.
And then he stepped back as I stood bent over his bed, completely naked in front of him. My legs were only slightly apart, but I felt like I might as well have been spread eagle. I remembered Kaity, standing just as I was and I shivered. I teased her over and over again until she begged me to fuck her, and the memory came back like a wave. But she wasn’t here, and I wasn’t about to fuck anyone. I had put myself in her position so many times, wondering what it must feel like for her, and now I knew.
Sometimes I wonder if all the things I did to her, I only did because the other side of it turned me on. I made her do all the things I wanted to be done to me, and even when I was inside her a part of me still lived in her head. A part of me desperately longed to be the one getting fucked instead of the other way around.
“No one would believe this,” Mr. R. said behind me, bringing me back to the present. “Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”
“I never even sucked cock before,” I said, my face buried in his blankets. I could hear him moving, but I wasn’t sure what he was doing. It wasn’t until I felt him slowly lean down over me that I realized he was naked as well, and just as hard as when he was in my mouth.
“I’ve wanted to fuck you since you were a sophomore, does that upset you?”
“I would have,” I lied. Part of me wanted to pretend it was true–hell, right then maybe it was–but the truth was more complicated. And irrelevant.
“Don’t tell me that,” he said, his cock slowly moving against my ass as he put more of his weight on me.
“It’s true,” I said again. “You could have used me whenever you wanted.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked, the growl returning to his voice. “You want to be used like a little slut? Do you want me to fuck you however I want, just to make myself come in your tight little ass?”
“Yes,” was all I could say, although I drew it out in long syllables, feeling the need deep within me.
“And would you let me take pictures to show my friends? Would you let them watch me fuck your little teenage ass?”
“Oh god, that’s so hot,” I mumbled, instantly realizing it was true. I did want him to fuck me, but I wanted to be used and wanted just as much. The thought of so many men lusting over me did incredible things to my body, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. “I’ll do anything you want. To you or your friends.”
“Maybe you are a little slut,” he said, moving faster against my ass, his big cock slipping between my legs as his fingers dug into my skin. “I’m going to fuck you so goddamn hard.”
He moved for just a moment, and I must have moaned my regret because he laughed at me before slipping one hand between my legs. His fingers were coated in lube, and he circled my asshole easily, covering my skin in the warm liquid. When he pushed just one finger into me, I arched my back and pushed against him, trying to relax at the same time as I struggled to take it. It was the first time I had anything there at all, and I wanted more.
“You are so fucking tight,” he said, pushing his finger deeper inside me as I struggled to get used to it. “It’s going to take some work.”
“I can do it,” I said, hoping it was true. “Please, just fuck me. Just fuck my virgin ass Mr. R.”
“Such a good boy,” he said, his finger slipping out as he sat up behind me. His hands dug into my ass cheeks as he pulled them apart over and over again, his breath loud and warm against my neck and back. And then he was back against me, this time propped up on one hand as the other held his latex-clad cock against the entrance to my ass.
“Are you ready?” he asked, pushing the head of his cock against me.
“Yes, please,” I said, feeling him fight against my body.
“Beg for it. Beg your teacher to fuck you.”
“Please, Mr. R,” I moaned, pushing back onto him as hard as I could. “Please fuck me. Please fuck my ass.”
The pain was intense and difficult to describe. For a moment I thought he was all the way inside me before I realized it was just the head of his cock. He had pushed his way in, helping me relax as he held me firmly. He didn’t move as I adjusted to him, but the sensation shot through every nerve ending in my body.
“Breathe,” he commanded, holding himself steady. I took a few deep breaths, knowing if I waited too long I would never do it. And then I pushed back, feeling more of him enter me as he held me down, his moans escaping his lips with each passing second. He pulled my hips to him as I struggled to relax, and then I felt him against me. His cock was buried to the hilt in my ass, and I was so full I could hardly stand it. I could feel him pulsing inside me, and I was lost completely.
“You are so amazingly tight, and you are doing so well. You took my whole cock the very first time. You might be my best student yet.”
“It hurts, and it feels good, and…”
“Tell me what you want,” he said, his lips on the back of my neck as he let his weight fall against me. He was moving slowly within me, fucking me gently on his bed even as he raised my hands above my head and held them there.
“Fuck me,” I gasped, finally giving in altogether. “Fuck me hard.”
I honestly don’t remember the next few minutes, because my teacher fucked me and fucked me as I screamed and moaned, my cock somehow still hard against the bed. I know I pushed onto him, and I know I cried. I know he pulled my hair as he thrust into me, and I know he didn’t once stop whispering horribly filthy things into my ear. And I know that at some point I realized I was finally getting what I wanted. I finally understood the other side of the game, and it was better and more complicated than I had ever imagined.
But his weight on me, his hard cock up my ass, and his breath in my ear were all that mattered. His increasing speed, his strong hands, and his words pushed me closer and closer to the edge, while simultaneously being an entirely different sensation than I had ever felt before. It was less that I wanted to come and more that I wanted to let go.
“I’m going to come,” he finally groaned, holding me down as he pushed deeply inside me. “I’m going to come in your ass.”
“Please,” I moaned, his pleasure a drug I couldn’t get enough of. “Do it, come inside me. God, I wish I could feel it.”
“Oh fuck, don’t say that,” he moaned, his entire weight now on my back as he thrust inside me. His whole body tensed as he grew closer to the edge.
“I bet it would feel so much better,” I moaned. “You coming in my ass. Tell me you want to.”
“You know I do,” he said, his final thrusts harder and deeper than before. “I want to come in you so badly…”
And then he was shaking and trembling as he fucked me one last time. I pushed back against him, my body covered in sweat and barely able to move at all. He kissed me over and over again, his grip instantly growing lighter as he came, and all I could do was feel him pulse within me as he sighed into my ear, his release long and glorious as if he had in fact been waiting years to do it.
When he stopped moving, I thought he might let me go, but instead, he held me there, his cock growing soft inside me for a moment before he slowly pulled out. He held the condom tightly at the base, and the sensation of him leaving me was almost more intense than him fucking me in the first place. He vanished for a moment, and I heard the water running in another room before he returned with a warm washcloth. It felt hot against my skin, but he cleaned the lube off of my ass and thighs, pressing just hard enough against me to feel good. He tossed it to the floor when he was done and lay down next to me.
“That was incredible,” he whispered, kissing my lips. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” I said, rolling to face him. “I’m not sure.”
“Come here,” he said, pulling me closer. He held me in his arms as I wondered if it was okay to cry. The tears came in a slow trickle instead of a burst, and if he noticed, he didn’t say a word. He kissed my head and my cheek, and his arms were strong and comforting. “You did so well.”
“Thank you,” was all I could say as I buried my head against his chest, finding strength in his embrace. It was hot, but I was no longer hard and no longer buzzed from the excitement. The longer he held me, the more I let go, until after just a few moments I closed my eyes and drifted away for a few glorious, long, mindless moments of sleep.
And if I remember anything, it’s those dreamlike minutes of peace on the other side. If I recall anything, it’s my teacher’s scratchy beard against my face, and his big hands touching my cheek. If I remember anything at all, it’s growing hard and soft as he held me, my body exhausted from our game.
If I remember anything, I remember that I wanted more. | https://medium.com/great-erotica/teachers-new-toy-947a1492efc8 | ['Guy New York'] | 2018-04-04 13:34:36.613000+00:00 | ['Sex Fantasy', 'Fiction', 'Gay', 'Group Sex', 'Erotica'] |
Nazis “Verboten” since 1947 | I don't know which law from 2018 you are referring to, but in Austria it has been illegal to engage in Nazi activities since 1947. The “Verbotsgesetz” colloquially known as “Wiederbetätigung” or “reactivating” (Nazi activities) definitely includes the Nazi salute. | https://medium.com/@jlalbrecht/nazis-verboten-since-1947-2d830a016fad | ['Jack Albrecht'] | 2020-12-27 12:18:20.675000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Nazis', 'History', 'War', 'Germany'] |
The Need For Data Infrastructure For Best Utilization Of Artificial Intelligence | Source
Technology is rapidly transforming our world into a ‘smart’ world with innovations such as smartphones, smart cars, smart homes, and so much more. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the major contributors here. At its core, IoT is all about connected devices equipped with sensors and microchips that help transmit data via the Internet over a centralized platform for enhanced efficiency and performance. Estimates suggest that by 2020, the number of connected devices all over the world will be nearly 50 billion.
Source
As the number of connected devices continues to escalate rapidly, there will arise the need to manage and analyze the sheer amount of data generated by these devices. This data is crucial as it holds valuable insights and patterns that can help businesses and organizations to assess potential risks, find new business opportunities, and most importantly improve the overall functioning and productivity of organizations. Now, this is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) come in. AI and ML technologies allow data scientists to delve deep into massive volumes of data and uncover meaningful insights from it. Stressing the importance of AI for IoT and machines, Prof. John McCarthy aptly stated:
“The goal of AI is to develop machines that behave as though they were intelligent.”
Although at a developing phase, AI has already started creating job prospects in the global market. Capgemini reports that nearly 83% of organizations leveraging AI technologies maintain that new jobs have begun to crop up in the field of AI. With more and more organizations joining the bandwagon of Big Data and AI, there’s now an enormous demand for skilled data professionals such as data scientists, data engineers, data analysts, and much more.
Source
Getting your career started in AI has become much more convenient now that the internet is swarming with highly educative and informative online Artificial Intelligence courses. These courses are specially tailored to introduce aspiring students to the basic concepts of AI such as algorithms, natural language processing, etc., and gradually progress towards the more complex concepts such as Machine Learning and Deep Learning. If you’re even remotely related to the tech-scene, it’s recommended you go through these courses and improve your employability. Because, as it must be clear by now, organizations far and wide are constantly on a lookout for up-skilled data professionals. There couldn’t be a better time for you to start than now!
Source
Role Of Computation In Management Of Data
Today, data is exponentially increasing — nearly 2.5 quintillions of data is generated daily! In a data-driven world that we live in, this data is the source of all information. However, managing such massive volumes of data is a challenge in itself. Thanks to high-end computing processes we’re able to store, process, and analyze this data to reveal the hidden trends and insights that can enhance business operations, improve the quality of life, and most importantly, foster innovation.
Source
Computers can process and analyze data much more quickly and accurately than humans and hence, are immensely helping companies leverage the data at their disposal to calculate vital statistics, monitor employee performance, power automation, boost productivity and sales, improve the efficiency of machines, and much more. It is because of this computation power that organizations today have access to an extensive range of statistical and technical insights and figures. Furthermore, technologies such as cloud computing have enhanced the functionality of AI. For instance, industrial magnates like Netflix and Amazon rely on cloud-based frameworks to process AI tasks and services that demand comprehensive analysis and computing.
Data Infrastructure and Artificial Intelligence
Data infrastructure is an essential aspect of data processing and analysis. Businesses and organizations cannot create value out of data without having the proper data infrastructures. By data infrastructure, we mean the entire backend computing support system required to process, store, transfer, and safeguard data.
While many companies use a software-defined infrastructure (SDI) to support the dynamic IT environment, SDI has its backlogs. Not only is SDI constrained by the static source code, but its functioning also largely depends on the skills and expertise of the software developer who writes the codes for a particular environment. Thus, SDI is not ‘intelligent.’ The trend is now shifting towards Artificial Intelligence defined infrastructures (ADI).
Essentially, ADI is an intelligent upgrade of SDI, fully stacked with sophisticated AI and ML algorithms that can ‘learn’ from the existing information to automatically build self-healing frameworks. ADI can:
Constantly analyze the dynamic behavior of all the components of the existing infrastructure and ‘learn’ to understand their working by itself.
Create an error-free environment by proactively monitoring the functioning of the components of the infrastructure and autonomously taking actions to fix issues, if any.
Deploy resources according to the requirements of the workload and also de-allocate particular resources when they are no longer required.
These data infrastructures help support various AI-related technologies and application, including:
Support for existing frameworks : A data infrastructure should incorporate AI frameworks like TensorFlow, Caffe, Theano, and Torch to enhance and support the present framework. However, the focus should not rely solely on AI frameworks but it should be such that it can fit the requirements and interests of software developers.
: A data infrastructure should incorporate AI frameworks like TensorFlow, Caffe, Theano, and Torch to enhance and support the present framework. However, the focus should not rely solely on AI frameworks but it should be such that it can fit the requirements and interests of software developers. GPU-friendly environment : To ensure the seamless processing of AI tasks and processes, data infrastructure must support GPU environments having impressive computational power. Microsoft’s N-series GPU instances is an excellent example of this
: To ensure the seamless processing of AI tasks and processes, data infrastructure must support GPU environments having impressive computational power. Microsoft’s N-series GPU instances is an excellent example of this AI-optimized management environment and tools : The lack of proper management environment and tools for supporting and running AI applications is one of the most significant drawbacks of the present data infrastructures. Hence, it is essential to integrate the right management tools and environment to deliver optimal performance.
: The lack of proper management environment and tools for supporting and running AI applications is one of the most significant drawbacks of the present data infrastructures. Hence, it is essential to integrate the right management tools and environment to deliver optimal performance. Machine Reasoning: Machine Reasoning in an integral part of AI environment. Machine reasoning algorithms allow AI environment to keep up with the dynamic trends of infrastructures and technologies, thereby providing meaningful insights into the best course of action.
Importance Of Organizational Skills In The Implementation Of AI
Merely investing in and leveraging AI technologies isn’t enough. Companies and businesses require a talent pool of professionals who can employ these AI tools in a way that can ensure the best possible results. As artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to penetrate industries and businesses across the globe, there’s an increasing need to rethink the entire leadership and thought-process of an organization, right from product strategy and customer experience to finding ways to boost the productivity of human capital. Leaders of the business world have to encourage intelligent AI integration within their system by:
Putting People First
Investing in AI technologies alone will reap no results. Businesses have to invest in their employees as well proportionately. According to Missy Cummings, Director of Humans & Autonomy Lab, Duke University,
“The future of AI is supporting and augmenting human capabilities such that a human-AI team is stronger than either alone.”
Cultivating A Work Culture Of Learning
Being a developing field, AI demands constant training and learning to keep up with the innovations and changes it is bringing about today. In the future, AI will bring in new changes in the field of technology and only by encouraging and creating a work environment of constant learning and training can organizations keep up with the innovations of AI.
Foster Transparency In Business Operations
Organizations should strive to maintain and push for transparency in all aspects of their business. Leaders and managers should engage in open communication with employees about their approaches to AI. This will not only help gain their trust and confidence but will also boost their morale and motivate them to work harder.
Alain Dehaze, CEO of The Adecco Group, maintains:
“Augmented intelligence, blending human input and AI, will be the critical driver to succeed in business and to form a prosperous society. We are on the cusp of technological change unlike any we have seen before in human history. Technological advancement is requiring a deeper focus on innately human skills — critical thinking, emotional intelligence and value judgments.”
Having the right data infrastructure along with the proper set of organizational skills can thus, help businesses and organizations leverage artificial intelligence tools and technologies in the right way. | https://towardsdatascience.com/the-need-for-data-infrastructure-for-best-utilization-of-artificial-intelligence-72612c1026e0 | ['Vivek Kumar'] | 2018-06-25 12:46:58.848000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'IoT', 'AI', 'Data'] |
Take A Step Back Before You Buy A Franchise | Buying a franchise is a big deal. It can be a sizable investment. It will definitely be life-changing.
(Not as “life-changing” as going overseas as a member of the U.S. military to protect us, but life-changing nevertheless)
That’s why it’s crucial to take a step back at some point during the franchise researching and purchasing process. Catch your breath. Reflect on what you may be about to do.
The Research Phase
The research phase of the franchise purchasing process is what separates the men from the boys, and the women from the girls. It’s super-important to take the time needed to do thorough research. This is when emotion needs to move out of the picture. Its when fact-gathering needs to take its place. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are contemplating franchise ownership rush through their research. Please don’t.
5 Research Questions To Ask Franchisees
Here are 5 really good questions to ask existing franchisees as part of your research…
1. What do you like best about being a franchise owner, and what don’t you like?
2. How challenging is it to find good, reliable employees?
3. From 1–10, 10 being great, and 1 being not-too-great, how would you rate your relationship with the franchisor?
4. From 1–10, how do you rate the marketing, advertising, and promotional programs offered by your franchisor?
5. If you had to do it all over again, would you still buy this franchise?
Start calling some franchisees up and ask those questions!
Purchasing The Franchise
It’s one thing to do franchise research, it’s quite another to move into buying-mode.
Buying mode means that you’ll be investing your money. Money you could lose.
Ignore some of the things you hear about franchise ownership being less risky than independent business ownership. Statements describing franchising as being “low-risk” compared to other ventures just aren’t true. But, there are few things you can do to lower your financial risk.
Do great research.
Work with a franchise industry insider.
Take a step back when you start getting close to decision time.
Hit Pause. Step Back.
It’s so important to do.
“It’s when you hit the pause button…when you step back and take a little breather, that good things can happen. Things like possibly getting a better perspective about what you may be about to do from people who will give you honest feedback.”
That was from an article I wrote for The U.S. Small Business Administration.
You should really read the whole article. It’s about taking a step back, and getting help from people you know before you take the plunge.
Read the franchise article here
(The Franchise King®, Joel Libava, is a top franchise expert, the author of Become A Franchise Owner! (Wiley Publishing), and owns and operates Franchise Business University, where you can increase your franchise IQ with the online franchise courses offered there.) | https://medium.com/hackernoon/take-a-step-back-before-you-buy-a-franchise-58a2dfc98da9 | ['Joel Libava'] | 2017-07-13 21:02:16.573000+00:00 | ['Franchise', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Franchising', 'Growth'] |
Elements | Elements
Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash
A fabled undoing
reduces one character to an element
the other to a complex
You hate those complexes
shrieking grief like rotten vegetables
at a fire escape
Pitching the crayons off the roof
you wanted to draw
attention to nobody
Indifference is beginning
to shade your face like a tattoo
and I doubt you want a mirror for that
Talking side by side
on our new recycled lawn chairs
made of grass clippings and discontinued tent poles
Now the story’s been broken up
the apartment has been sublet
and the counting down to bedtime has commenced | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/elements-898d33f2bfcf | ['J.D. Harms'] | 2020-12-15 18:48:37.541000+00:00 | ['Musing', 'Fragments', 'Image', 'Poetry', 'Illumination Curated'] |
Open sources of information are causing trouble for dictatorial governments | Open sources of information are causing trouble for dictatorial governments Dgvaghela Aug 17·1 min read
In the 1990s and 2000s, it was hoped that the Internet would be the greatest force for liberalism and freedom. However, this did not happen. Dictatorships have strengthened their hold on technology. The war of information was used as a weapon. In the midst of this despair the age of open source of information has awakened new hope.
New sensors, cameras and satellites are monitoring the corners of the earth. Media like intellectuals, activist online community and Slack have presented a wealth of information against amateurs and experts. Private organizations and people have exposed China’s stockpile of nuclear missiles. The atrocities against the Uyghurs have also been exposed through this system. This intelligence has also revealed the secret of the downing of a Malaysian passenger plane by Russia. Researchers have discovered the secret missile program of many countries in their own way.
if like this article…please share…. | https://medium.com/@dgvaghela80/open-sources-of-information-are-causing-trouble-for-dictatorial-governments-b80feeb2d239 | [] | 2021-08-18 14:02:28.276000+00:00 | ['Information Security', 'Open Source', 'Information Technology'] |
Mathematical Notations for Machine Learning (Markdown) | Learning to write Mathematical notations is critical, when you are taking a note in your Machine Learning classes or building a custom ML algorithm.
Advantage of Markdown approach: you may use any IDE to write Markdown.
This article is focused on how to write mathematical notations for ML. So, I won’t be covering details of each algorithm. you will find most commonly used notations and how to write them below
Simple Linear Regression:
Using one variable to predict a value of other variable
$\hat{y}$ = $\theta_0 + \theta_1 x_1$
output
Mean Squared Error:
Mean of all Residual Errors shows how poorly the line fits with the data set
MSE = $\frac{1}{n} \Sigma_{i=1}^n({y}-\hat{y})^2$
output
Logistic Regression & Thresholds:
$\Theta^T$ X = $\theta_0$ + $\theta_1$ * $$x_1$$ Threshold: (Step function)
- $\hat{y}$ = 0 if $\Theta^T$ X < 0.5
- $\hat{y}$ = 1 if $\Theta^T$ X $\ge$ 0.5
output
Sigmoid function:
$\Sigma(\Theta^TX)$ = $$\frac{1} {1 + e^-\Theta^Tx }$$
$\hat{y}$ = $\Sigma(\Theta^T X)$
output
Cost function:
$Cost(\hat{y}$, y) = $\frac{1}{2}(\Sigma(\theta^TX)-y)^2$
output
Mean squared error for cost function:
J($\theta$) = $\frac{1}{m} \Sigma_{i=1}^{m} Cost(\hat{y}, y)$
output
Logistic Regression Cost function:
$J(\Theta)$ = -$\frac{1}{m} \Sigma_{i=1}^my^ilog(\hat{y}^i) + (1-y^i)log(1-\hat{y}^i)$
output
Finally, once you get used to writing mathematical notation for markdown it is much fun to work on Machine Learning algorithms
Happy Coding
For further learning — please checkout resources below: | https://medium.com/@krish9a/mathematical-notations-for-machine-learning-markdown-5feb99e8d412 | ['Krishna K'] | 2020-10-17 10:56:12.877000+00:00 | ['Markdown', 'Regression', 'Mathematics', 'Machine Learning'] |
Case study: Package design and mockup process | One fine day, I was on a call with one of my collegemates. Talking to me about him joining his friend, in a jaggery powder business. (considering his nickname was an apt business for him :-P). He was looking out for someone who could design packaging and some things for their website, So me being me I took up that project. As I wanted to learn and work on my research skills. So I visited their website and I saw the logo which looked like this
Which didn't look like a company which sold organic jaggery powder. It looked more like a company that worked with and sold something mechanical. So I decided to start with the logo, I got into reading and market(competitor) research. I was instructed by my mate to stick with the colour scheme of the website. This was the colour scheme I decided to go with.
The next step was to design a logo that went with the product that is organic jaggery powder. Well, jaggery is made using sugar cane and it is the healthier brother of sugar(not for diabetic people though). Since the product is direct farm to bowl I decided to stick to the raw material(sugarcane) and the place it will reach(bowl). So the logo design consisted of 2 main components, Sugarcane and a bowl. The design of the sugarcane was done in such a way that it kind of resembled bamboo as bamboo is a symbol of growth and strength. Here is how it came out:
The font that I used for the company name is “Giaza Pro” the reason being it gave a more premium look and a feel of luxury to the name. The name looked more elegant.
And this was the final design:
Before:
After: | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/package-design-and-mockup-process-cb996f074673 | ['Arun Nair'] | 2021-09-16 00:14:06.012000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'Logo Design', 'UX Research', 'Case Study', 'Mockup'] |
Design better data tables | Why Tables Matter
Data is becoming the raw material of the global economy. The pursuit of data drives the reinvention of antiquated industries. Energy, media, manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, retail, finance, and even the government are undergoing a digital transformation.
However, data is meaningless without the ability to visualize and act upon it. The companies that survive the next decade will not only have superior data; they will have a superior user experience.
Good user interface design is based on human goals and behavior. The user interface in-turn affects behavior, which drives further design decisions. In subtle and unconscious ways, user experience alters how humans make decisions. What is seen, where it is presented, and how interactions are afforded, influence actions. It is important we make design decisions that lead to a better world, one data table design at a time. | https://medium.com/nextux/design-better-data-tables-4ecc99d23356 | ['Andrew Coyle'] | 2020-07-29 04:57:41.723000+00:00 | ['UI', 'Data Science', 'Product Design', 'UX', 'Design'] |
A Culture of Possibility Podcast #9: Seed Syllables: Sowing Dialogue in the Quadruple Pandemic | NOTE: This post is to introduce you to the ninth episode of François Matarasso’s and my monthly podcast, “A Culture of Possibility.” It will be available on 17 September 2021. You can find it and all episodes at iTunes along with miaaw.net’s other podcasts by Owen Kelly, Sophie Hope, and many guests, focusing on cultural democracy and related topics. You can also listen on Soundcloud and find links to accompany the podcasts. Francois is taking a little break but will be back as cohost down the road.
• • •
In August, in the brief lull between multiple lockdowns, vaccinations, and the arrival of the Delta Variant, I got to see Meena Natarajan and Chrissie Orr in the actual flesh, when Meena and her husband Dipankar Mukherjee visited New Mexico so Meena could work with Chrissie on their ongoing collaboration entitled “Seed Syllables.”
As you’ll learn in the podcast, Meena came to the U.S. as an adult — then a scientist with a lot of theater experience — and she (Artistic and Executive Director) and Dipankar (Artistic Director) have for the last 25 years led Pangea World Theater in Minneapolis, MN, in the Upper Midwest of the U.S. Chrissie came here years earlier from her home in Scotland, settling in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I live. A decade ago, she cofounded Seed Broadcast, “a collaborative project exploring bioregional agri-Culture and seed action through collective inquiries and hands-on creative practices.” I’ve known both women for years, and it was a pleasure to talk together.
Seed Syllables originated with support from the Academy for the Love of Learning, where Chrissie is a Creative Practice Fellow. She was invited to inquire into the time of the pandemic, to “illuminate and share really what’s going on at the moment.” She quickly asked Meena to collaborate.
When Chrissie called, Meena “was sitting at home. The murder of George Floyd happened in May and this was a few months later. There had been an uprising. I live very close to the police precinct that got burned down. A number of the businesses in the area got burned down, and we had a very close relationship. So part of the work after the uprising, apart from protecting our houses and our streets because of white supremacists coming into the street, was creating a response to what happened in the uprising, basically to rebuild the area near my house. I joined the group called Longfellow Rising which was created in order to rebuild and to figure out how we wanted to respond, and also to rebuild in a way that would prevent displacement of immigrants and people of color. I was deep in this work as well. So when Chrissie told me about the project, I was so delighted. It felt like a perfect way to think about all this.
“It’s hard to even fathom or even be able to articulate what this time has been like for us. Perhaps we’ll be able to do this in the next five or ten years, but it feels like an overwhelming assault. This is also the time of COVID. I have family in India, many of whom have had COVID. So when we had this chance to talk through artistically a project that was about this particular time — the pandemic of COVID, the pandemic of racism, the pandemic of violence, the pandemic of fascism all over the world. It felt like a blessing to have these really deep conversations.
Dialogue is at the center of the Seed Syllables project, which started with 16 online conversations. “Our conversations became so deep and meaningful,” Chrissie said, “to be able to share what we were going through in a vulnerable way, we decided that we wanted to open that up to other people that we knew and respected and had a relationship with. We felt that to take a deep dive into these conversations you would need to have had a relationship with people so that vulnerability, if it was going to arise, could arise. So Meena picked about 15–20 people, I did the same. These were all people that we love, respect, and who have a deep commitment to social justice and environmental justice and to change, to transformation either individually or collectively. Then we very intentionally paired people so it would be Meena, myself, and two other people over Zoom. We settled into these intimate Zoom calls where we invited people through certain prompts from people we respected like James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Krishnamurti, Grace Lee Boggs, to help us stimulate the conversation. These prompts actually landed and took you to a deeper place. That’s why we called this ‘Seed Syllables,’ it’s about these words, words and images and sounds that are coming to us at this particular moment in time and how can we really document this in a very distinct, vulnerable, and true way?”
Meena and Chrissie “love to sit in the emergent” — an important theme in the podcast. So they had no preconceived idea of how the project would be shared out. They’re not ready to quote anyone, nor to settle on a plan, but a lot is happening. They’re developing prose poems based on transcripts, and reading them to each other. “We’ve thought about how these could be presented in some kind of performance,” said Chrissie. “We’ve thought about how these words could be written, scribed, with visuals and rolled up and placed in containers, hidden in certain places for people to discover and there would be a question, so you could read, see the visual piece, and there’d be a question: what has changed in you? It could also be a book.” Meena mentioned “having installations in different spaces where people are from, place-based. We would offer to some of our artists to go there and create something in their garden or their farm.”
In the meantime, certain things stand out for the collaborators. “People were so vulnerable,” said Meena. “When they came on screen, they were able to present their whole selves in their fullness, wherever they were at that particular moment. People were so present. There was such a sense of current time. People brought aspects of themselves that I didn’t know. Many of these people I’ve known for 20, 25 years but they were able to bring a piece of themselves to this conversation that was so beautiful. Some of the questions were ‘What are some of the demands for you at this time?’ ‘And how has the pandemic brought changes to you?’ ‘What are things you’ve let go of?’ I loved that people were able to go to a place of depth and generosity with us.”
What have they learned from the experience thus far that might inform their future work? Chrissie explained: “I think it points to the absolute importance of taking time, that some of us before maybe didn’t take enough time out to really reflect on the impact that the work was having on us. So to be vulnerable, to let down a little, to be able to talk about that. Maybe it was the pandemic, all that was happening. Everything came to the forefront. Maybe it was that it cracked our hearts open. I know that it did for me. It cracked my heart open bigtime. Before, the work just kept going. I love my work, I love what I do. I love collaborating, I love engaging in these stories that are covered up. But I wouldn’t take that pause to actually reflect on the impact it was having on me. I saw and heard that through these conversations.”
There is much more to be learned from the podcast. We hope you enjoy it!
“Tree of Life” by Aretha Franklin. | https://medium.com/@arlenegoldbard-1818/a-culture-of-possibility-podcast-9-seed-syllables-sowing-dialogue-in-the-quadruple-pandemic-8c9a92a0acae | ['Arlene Goldbard'] | 2021-09-17 16:53:33.997000+00:00 | ['Community Art', 'Storytelling', 'Dialogue', 'Pandemic', 'George Floyd'] |
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