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How This 21-Year-Old Grew His Winning Beard Brand | One year ago, life for Paul Lee was very different.
He was studying art at college in the US, and working 9–5 in a restaurant server job. He hated it.
When the restaurant was slow, he’d spend his time reading business books. At home, he’d watch hours of online videos about starting your own business, what it’s like to work at home, and being your own boss. He wanted something more.
“All throughout school, and all throughout my 9–5 jobs, I always felt like I was wasting my time. I was never in control, I was always stuck within a structure, always working for somebody else.”
Since then he’s built his beard grooming ecommerce store, HUSKYBEARD, into a six-figure business. He’s quit his job, quit college, and is thinking of his future in a different way.
Paul’s journey with beards started when he decided to grow one himself. Wanting to do things right, he dove deep into the world of the beard. He learned about trimming techniques, the issues of tangling and dryness that can come with a beard, as well as the importance of proper hydration for your follicles. He mingled with the hairy-faced community on Instagram, finding his way into a group that he discovered were close-knit and wildly passionate about showing off their facial fur.
Seeing The Potential For New Products
The more he learned about beards, the more he saw potential in the market. A slew of beard grooming brands had already made it big, and there was a passionate community who were ready to get behind new products.
While growing a beard might sound simple, I mean, all you do is stop shaving and let the thing start sprouting, it’s actually a little more complicated than that. Often, your hair might grow faster in some spots than others, leaving you with a patchy looking beard.
In situations like this, you might turn to a beard growth product.
And as he discovered when he began looking into the products for himself, there’s a whole lot of snake oil and illegitimate products out there. He found simple vitamin supplements masquerading as beard growing miracles, and other hair growth formulations that while they seemed to get results, came with a slew of nasty side effects.
He saw an opportunity to create a beard growth product that genuinely worked.
A Big Decision: A $10,000 Investment
For the next three months, he poured his time, energy and money into researching a beard growth formula. He spent hundreds of hours reading complex scientific studies on individual ingredients, trying to discover which were legitimately linked to hair growth. He consulted with medical researchers and hair growth companies to analyze his findings and determine if the formulation of ingredients he had put together would work.
Next, he hired cosmetic chemists to help him formulate his product. So far, he’d spent $700 of his saving developing the recipe and consulting with experts. He was excited to keep moving ahead, pushing his product closer and closer to reality.
This, it turned out, was going to be harder than he thought.
The chemists he consulted with told him that to develop his formulation, at a minimum, the first batch would require the production of 1000 units, and would cost him at least $10,000.
This was serious business he was talking and a serious investment for a college student who was currently supporting himself waiting tables. After all, he was new to business and even newer to the world of cosmetics. He remembers nervously considering the decision, thinking “I don’t even know if this is going to sell.”
Still, he felt like he was ready to do it. He wanted to start his own business more than anything and knew running any kind of business carries some risk. “I kept saying to myself “I have to have the courage, I have to spend the $10,000 and hope that it works.’”
He contacted a range of cosmetic legal regulators to speak about his product idea, hoping the conversations would give him the confidence to pull the trigger and invest the $10,000 in his first batch. But instead, their advice wasn’t so positive.
They warned him about the regulatory complications of creating a new product that would be classified as a drug. The FDA’s “New Drug Application” process costs over $2M and can take 4–8 years to process. While he was tempted to skip over the regulatory process, they warned him that the FDA would catch up to him eventually, which would spell seriously bad news.
Confidence shattered and feeling completely deflated, he accepted that it wasn’t going to work.
Discovering the Benefits of Dropshipping
One night, while up late watching videos of entrepreneurs on YouTube, he stumbled on the idea of dropshipping. Clicking through, he discovered more and more stories of successful entrepreneurs who were dropshipping their products. From there, he promptly fell down a rabbit hole of information.
The biggest benefit of dropshipping that he found was that he wouldn’t need to invest in his own inventory. The supplier would hold the stock for him, and he would only pay for it once he made a sale. This felt like a safer and smarter option than investing in $10,000 worth of product that he might not sell.
He wouldn’t have to deal with delivery either, as the supplier would ship the product directly to his customers. With inventory and fulfillment taken care of by the supplier, his main focus would instead be on sourcing and selling the products. The business model made sense for him. He knew could use a range of dropshipped products to test with real customers, before deciding to invest in any inventory.
“I switched my whole business model, from custom formulated products to dropshipping other people’s products.”
He signed up for a Shopify account and installed Oberlo — which allowed him to pull in products from dropshipping suppliers.
The Early Days: Test and Learn
Starting out was tough. With so much to learn he admits, “At the beginning, I was working on it for 10–12 hours a day, just non stop.”
He found that product sourcing was key. “The majority of my time, in the beginning, was going through AliExpress just finding anything that I could sell related to beards.”
Through testing and trials and products that failed to fit the market, he struck gold. He found a ‘winning product’ — one that connected with his target audience. “I advertised it on Facebook and everybody loved it,” he says. From there, he scaled his efforts — focusing on mastering Facebook advertising strategy and building out the HUSKYBEARD brand.
His own beard might not have worked out so well — he’s looking particularly clean shaven on our video chat over Skype — but HUSKYBEARD kept growing. The store kept passing more and more milestones — the first sale, the first $100 sales day, $500 day, $1000 day. He remembers how ecstatic he was at that moment, “Right when I got that $1000 in one day, I just wanted to tell everybody.“
In its first year, HUSKYBEARD generated over $100k in revenue
Things were heating up with the business, and at the point he was making around $3000 a month, he knew he needed to step things up.
So after a couple of months of running HUSKYBEARD, he made a big decision. “I dropped out of college and quit my job. It was pretty drastic,” he laughs.
The Next Stage: Building a Brand and Growing Pains
Paul had always known he wanted to build HUSKYBEARD into a brand. So, he took his most popular products and worked with his supplier to brand the products and supply branded packaging. “I knew that having the logo on the products would definitely help the brand.”
He started to invest in bulk orders of his products, negotiating deals with his suppliers to order lots of 200, and then 500, and then 1000 products at a time. In the beginning, he opted to fulfill the items himself, posting them out from his house. This was a mistake, he admits. “When we first received our inventory, we received 1000 products and we had to ship them all out ourselves. It was just me and my cousin in our house, working all night to get it done.” He remembers the pain of packing and shipping order after order, “It was just a headache, it was terrible. It was just so bad.”
Now, the inventory for HUSKYBEARD is managed by a third-party fulfillment company, who handles the delivery of his orders to his customers all across the world. This is key, he says, and a suggestion he would give to any dropshipper thinking of moving towards managing their own inventory.
And while he never got the chance to develop his beard growth product, all his hours of study didn’t go to waste. He developed his own line of custom formulated Beard Oils, in a range of scents.
Taking a chance on his own product got him noticed too, earning him the praise of one of the best known barbers and beard-havers, George Bruno.
The Biggest Moments: Conquering Black Friday
Looking back, one of his proudest moments was one that required a whole lot of hustle. He was several months into running the brand full time, and Black Friday and Cyber Monday were approaching. He knew he needed to take advantage of the biggest sales weekend of the year. He prepared for 45 days straight, working on strategies to skyrocket his sales. It was nerve-wracking leading up to the weekend, he says, “I had taken a lot of risks, I had borrowed money from business loans and from my grandma.”
In the weeks before to Black Friday, he focused his time on building his mailing list. He knew that getting attention on Black Friday is competitive, so he wanted to make sure his message was going to reach the right audience. For 30 days, he hosted a free product giveaway for his Beard Comb, which helped him collect over 7,000 leads. He took care to nurture the leads with follow up emails full of valuable content like blog articles he’d written about beard care. When the day finally came, he fired off a series of emails to his mailing list, promoting a 20–40% discount offer on some of his best selling products.
The sales report after a wild Black Friday weekend
Throughout the weekend, he watched as the sales poured in. More and more customers clicked through from the emails and purchased items. At the end of the weekend, he had received 210 orders and made over $7,900. “Ka-ching!” his phone kept buzzing with sales notifications. A sigh of relief. The hard work had paid off.
Happy customers share their purchases on social media
So, What’s Next?
Now, Paul is looking to the future beyond beards. He recently listed HUSKYBEARD for sale on the Exchange Marketplace and sold it to another passionate entrepreneur. But he’s not done with business, and has already started another store and is using the same approach to growth as HUSKYBEARD. He’s using the dropshipping method with Oberlo again to test his products in the market. Once he hits another ‘winning product’ he’ll use it to build his next brand. This time around, he’s focused on making it even bigger and wants to grow the business into a major international brand. He’s also now offering aspiring ecommerce entrepreneurs one-on-one consulting and mentoring through his business ECOMSWIFT.
This test-and-learn approach has been key to his success, he says. “Without Oberlo I would not have been able to find winning products and scale at all”. And for anyone else thinking of building a business using the same model, he agrees it’s a great approach, “The opportunity is limitless.”
Like it? Hit that 👏 button to say thanks and help others find this article. | https://medium.com/the-first-step/how-this-21-year-old-grew-his-winning-beard-brand-11170cc48cf5 | ['Venetia Anderson'] | 2018-12-12 13:01:00.784000+00:00 | ['Online Marketing', 'Entrepreneur', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Ecommerce', 'Dropshipping'] |
All you need to know about UI Testing | We all are well aware of the importance of software testing. In our development cycle, we mostly include things like unit testing and integration testing, especially for the back-end code.
But as seen among developers, sometimes testing the front-end code of the application is left behind, especially the UI testing.
I’m not saying that this type of testing is far more important than other ones. UI testing doesn’t replace unit testing or integration testing, but actually, it just completes them.
After all, what the user sees and experiences in order to use the software is a graphical interface.
Why we don’t see more UI Testing then?
UI testing is not very often used by developers and is not very popular for good reasons.
There are some common problems with this:
UI testing can be hard to set up and takes a lot of time
On the interface, things can change up very quickly, thus making the update process of the tests suits a pain
Maintaining these tests can be challenging as well because they become hard to understand over multiple iterations. On top of that, most of the times your UI will work just fine, but your wrong tests will keep failing by throwing false alarms
Even so, sometimes it just takes one bug on the UI like registration button disappearing or not being visible at all, for users to leave the website.
How to make UI testing less painful?
Before we start writing some code, we should clarify a misunderstanding, the one between UI testing and E2E on front end applications.
In a simple example with a to-do list:
a UI Test should verify that each ToDo is visible including the complete or delete buttons if required by the app
or buttons if required by the app an E2E Test should verify that by clicking on these buttons, the specific action takes places
You can read more about it on this post from stack overflow.
As a personal note:
In the end, coding is both objectives as well as subjective, if for your case you think it is better to combine these two types in just one test suite, because is an amount of overlap between them, then go for it, even if it is not highly recommended.
As a solution to our problem, we’ll be looking at 2 different tools: a codebase tool and a codeless base tool.
I. The code
Demo application:
Our demo application is an Angular ToDo like app made up of one single page. The action is pretty straightforward you click on some checkboxes and then you can delete the selected items.
Prerequisites & Common problems and solutions
For UI testing we will use Protractor which is configured by default in any Angular CLI project.
If you want a more hands-on approach you can download the code from this repository.
Install the module
$ npm install
Protractor is a Selenium-based solution and there are some common issues while setting all up for running tests.
Firstly go in your project structure and run the following command
npm run e2e
If this command doesn’t throw any error, this means that everything is working under the hood and no further setup is required.
If you receive an error like this:
Then what you can do it to update the web driver as it follows:
Install protractor globally
npm install protractor -g
2.Inside your project folder run the following command:
webdriver-manager update
Re-run the command again
npm run e2e
If this still doesn’t work then check this GitHub issue and go to the answer posted on Sep 28, 2019. In essence, all you need to do is to update the chrome driver.
Our first test suite
We will cover these test cases in our test application:
The button is initially disabled. If one item is selected then the button becomes enabled
Protractor tests are described in specs that are grouped into suites. The most common framework used to describe those is Jasmine. You can read more about Jasmine on their website.
If you downloaded the code from the repository, the tests should be already inside the e2e folder.
If you want you can delete the file and write the code for yourself.
Note that the file’s name must end with .e2e-spec.ts as is specified inside protactor.conf.ts.
Next inside the new file add the following code:
describe("Notification List", () => { it("The button should be initially disabled", () => {}); it("If an item is selected then the button should become enabled", () => {}); });
describe(..) block is used to group a set of specs into the suite. We will write our page specs inside this function. To describe specs we will use it(…) blocks.
Let’s try to run our test suite now.
Run the following command in your project folder:
npm run e2e
This command translates into ng e2e which will build the latest version of the application, serve the application on the localhost and run our test suite against it.
The output should be as it follows:
Notification List √ The button should be initially disabled √ If an item is selected then the button should become enabled Executed 2 of 2 specs SUCCESS in 0.062 sec. [15:32:24] I/launcher - 0 instance(s) of WebDriver still running [15:32:24] I/launcher - chrome #01 passed
All specs passed because we haven’t provided any logic yet. Let’s start by declaring a global beforeEach(…) hook and navigate to the / URL before each test in our suite.
import { browser } from "protractor"; describe("Notification List", () => { beforeEach(() => { browser.get("/"); }); it("The button should be initially disabled", () => {}); it("If an item is selected then the button should become enabled", () => {}); });
To write our specs we first need to locate elements on the page. We will encapsulate locators for elements inside a class called Page Object.
Create a new file name notification.po.ts with the following code:
import { element, by } from "protractor"; export class NotificationPage { get submitBtn() { return element(by.className("delete-btn")); } get matListOptions() { return element.all(by.tagName("mat-list-option")); } }
We will use this class to get the submit button and all the list options that we have. For the submit button we can use its class to select it and for the list options, we can use the tag value.
Next, let’s complete with the code:
describe("Notification List", () => { let page: NotificationPage; beforeEach(() => { page = new NotificationPage(); browser.get("/"); }); it("The button should be initially disabled", () => { expect(page.submitBtn.isEnabled()).toBeFalsy(); }); it("If an item is selected then the button should become enabled", () => { page.matListOptions.first().click(); expect(page.submitBtn.isEnabled()).toBeTruthy(); }); });
Run the command again to run the tests.
npm run e2e
Quick tips
If you ever need to run your tests inside a Docker container or if you want to run headless, then you can extend the settings of protractor by updating the protractor.conf.js file with the chromeOptions objects as it follows:
capabilities: { browserName: "chrome", chromeOptions: { binary: process.env.CHROME_BIN, args: ["--no-sandbox", "--headless"], }, },
II. The codeless solution
As we said earlier, UI testing can be a pain and for a good reason, and by now you already ask yourself if is any better solution for this.
The answer is yes, there are a couple of other tools that improve the testing process.
One of these is TestCraft, which is a Codeless automated testing Tool builds on top of Selenium and empowered with the help of AI.
For the demo purpose, I will use the hosted version of the application, even though we can configure it to run the tests against directly on our machine by creating a simple tunnel to localhost or a VPN Tunnel.
And run the test which is automatically created by the platform.
TestCraft is build to be used by both technical and nontechnical people, the testing process is as easy as drag and drop.
Our first test was to see if the submit button is disabled when the page first loads. For this, all I need to do is to click on the button and then to select the action I want.
Because it is empowered with an AI, it can record actions to figure out which item has been selected.
All I have to do is to click on the a checkbox in my notifications list and after add the same validation to submit-btn , but this time to see if it is enabled.
If I want a more advanced approach I can remove the break point by clicking on the finish button and go to the canvas.
Conclusion
UI testing is more challenging that other types of testing, but you should choose your favorite solution and start testing. Keep in mind that commonplace problems as a button that doesn’t show on your viewport, because the resolution is too small or you forget to set it as enabled, can lead to serious user experience loss. | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/ui-testing-edad91555577 | [] | 2020-10-17 12:31:30.399000+00:00 | ['GUI', 'Programming', 'Ui Testing', 'QA', 'Automation'] |
What happens when your constants disappear? | It’s common to believe that certain things will remain constant in your life. But after years of living in a city, it is possible to suddenly stand on a street corner devoid of familiar landmarks and quite literally wonder where you are. Gone might be Grandma’s old home, the high-rise where you worked your first job, the pub where you celebrated your twenty-first birthday, the corner bistro with the friendly waiter and the best sticky ribs. Places come laden with memories, with traditions, with routine. It is a shock to learn they can disappear.
Disaster brings change at a pace you are unprepared for. Too much change coming too fast can make you feel brittle and untethered. Disasters can dissolve the everyday ordinary and test your assumptions about yourself and your life. You can be shaken to your core. This is confronting, but normal. As hard as it is, this can be the first step in charting your course to a more examined and intentional life — a process that will take time.
All our lives are based on unconscious assumptions. Disaster can call these assumptions into question. These truths might look like; “I’m a giver of help, not someone who needs it”, or “ If I work hard and follow the rules calamity won’t come my way”.
We all have assumptions about where our lives are heading. With disaster, that trajectory can abruptly change.
©McNaughton & Wills Ltd 2019
We have sat with people who had raised their children in a home infused with memories, expecting to retire and grow old in that comfortable familiarity. Expecting to stay and bear witness to the daily ebbs and flows of their long-known community . Disaster has taken away this away and they now have to move. They ask us, “What will my life be now?”
These questions bring both pain and possibility. Below (and more in the Cards for Calamity) are some tips from us for when you find yourself asking these kinds of big questions.
Tips:
Question yourself but be okay with not having the answers yet.
Know that feeling untethered is normal — it’s often the first step to a more examined and intentional life. This takes time.
is normal — it’s often the first step to a more examined and intentional life. This takes time. It may help to acknowledge that alongside pain, disruption can bring insight.
©Hummingly 2021 | https://medium.com/hummingly/what-happens-when-your-constants-disappear-b35e2c12d57d | ['Hummingly Team'] | 2021-06-17 22:44:45.498000+00:00 | ['Disruption', 'Disaster', 'Change', 'Assumptions'] |
StackHawk’s Free Developer Plan: Application Security Testing for All | Today we are excited to announce the launch of StackHawk’s free Developer Plan. With this launch, engineering teams or individual developers can take ownership of security in the development and delivery of their applications. Read on to learn a bit more about why we are so excited to launch this, or jump right in to sign up for a free account.
Application Security’s New Paradigm
It is no secret that the speed of application delivery has rapidly accelerated over the past decade. Most companies are pushing to production several times per week, or even multiple times per day. Originally, security struggled to keep up, with the dated models of quarterly penetration tests or manual scans by security teams clearly no longer cutting it.
These legacy models were predicated on finding vulnerabilities in production, often awhile after code had been deployed. This is at best, inefficient, and at worst a security issue. Once a vulnerability was found, it then had to navigate internal silos to actually get a fix released.
Modern engineering teams, however, have not only accelerated delivery speed, but have also improved security in the process. Here is how.
Find Vulnerabilities with CI/CD Automation
Companies using modern approaches check for security vulnerabilities on every pull request (or even every commit) in the same way that they run unit tests and integration tests. With automated testing in CI/CD, developers can catch vulnerabilities early in the software development lifecycle, and fix issues while they are still in the context of the code.
After an initial triage of any existing security bugs, application security tooling should at least be configured to break the build if any new high criticality vulnerabilities are identified. This doesn’t mean that every vulnerability should prevent a deploy to production, but that deploy should be done eyes wide open to the risk it presents.
Triage and Initial Risk Decisions Live with Developers
When a vulnerability is found, the developer(s) who were recently working on the application are best equipped to review the finding and make risk-based decisions. Should this block the deploy to production? Can this be added to a backlog and addressed later? Is this low enough risk that it isn’t worth fixing?
The individuals who are intimately involved in creating the application are best equipped as the first-line of defense for these decisions. Internal security teams are undoubtedly called upon for clarification and support (…and are often reviewing historical decisions as well), but modern teams are empowering developers to make these triage decisions themselves.
Fast Developer Fixes
When a security bug requires a fix, the responsibility for the fix squarely lives with the developer who introduced the vulnerability in modern teams. This individual is in the codebase, familiar with the context of the recent vulnerability addition. Not only are they best equipped to implement the fix, but by democratizing this responsibility across the team, no person or team bears the burden of interrupt driven work.
Taking Ownership of Application Security
Ever since we embarked upon building StackHawk, we have been laser focused on building a tool for developers. The market is rife with security tools built for the CISO that no developer wants to use, and these tools typically start at six-figure contracts. StackHawk is different, and we are excited to equip engineers to own the security of their application. This shows up in our product, and with our new free Developer Plan, it also shows up in our pricing.
Now individuals or teams can start running application security tests against their first application for free. There is no longer an excuse not to be looking at the security of your application.
Getting started with StackHawk is easy, with most developers completing their first security test in under 20 minutes. You can get the full details in our docs, but in short it is as simple as building a yaml config, pointing the scanner at your application, and taking a look at the results.
Sign up for a free account and give it a try today! | https://medium.com/@severns/stackhawks-free-developer-plan-application-security-testing-for-all-f3dc177d4b29 | ['Ryan Severns'] | 2020-12-08 13:51:06.291000+00:00 | ['Security', 'Software Testing', 'Application Security', 'Software Development', 'Software Engineering'] |
I Used to Wish I Was a Boy, Now I Am Proud to be a Woman | That was more than 20 years ago, my feistiness then beginning to become a problem for my aunt. She raised my brother and me for a while when my parents separated. She was the epitome of a great Chinese woman: cooking and cleaning, minding the children (there were 5 of us!) and the chores, all the while keeping a mental checklist of things to do in order to keep the family ship running smoothly, never complaining about any of it.
If that was what was meant to be female, then I dreaded growing up. I felt it wasn’t in any of my demeanor. I was loud and bossy, more apt to get hurt or in trouble doing risky things than being prim and proper. I often thought, and maybe even said aloud, that my brother and I should have been born with opposite sexes. Not that he was prim and proper either, but he was more clean and organized (at least at the beginning), generally did as he was told, and played it way safer than I did. Apparently, my brother held the same traditional views too; he lamented before how great it would be if he had an older sister instead, so it’ll be like having a second mom. Well… joke would have been on him if it happened; I’d have turned out to be a lousy mom at that age!
A decade ago, when I jumped off the Stratosphere in Vegas
I understand now there is not a clear cut picture of what it is to be a woman, but at the time, only knew what I was taught. Yes, growing up, I watched American shows on TV, and saw other instances of womanhood, but did not feel like I had a choice. Subsequently, I was very unhappy and conflicted, and thought that if I had been born a boy, life would be so much easier.
In reality, though, was I far off from the truth? From the personal to the professional and everything else in between, women bear a great deal just by virtue of their sex. Let’s start with these two bookends.
The Mental Load
Take my aunt, for example. Her ability to keep track of and plan for the rest of the day and week, things that needed to be done for a household of 12, was just second to none.
Every night before, she had breakfast, lunch, and dinner in mind for the next day. She prepared every meal. Literally once a meal was finished, she’d have to prep for the next one. Sunday was also soup day. She managed to fit in daily floor sweeping, fruit peeling, dish washing (by hand), made sure us kids did both our school homework AND home homework (torture!), and the weekly laundry, cleaning, and mopping. God forbid someone got sick. Somewhere in all of this chaos, she made the mental capacity to note I was growing out of my clothes and needed new ones; that my favorite stuffed toy dog’s head was falling off and she needed to sew it back on; to bring the clothes drying outside back in before it got dark.
Not only is this type of planning borne almost entirely by women, it is also executed almost entirely by them as well, and it wasn’t until I got older was when I realized how exhausting this is. Feminists call this the mental load, and this concept was cheekily captured in a cartoon story, “You Should’ve Asked”, by a French cartoonist named Emma. Emma notes that while men will help with the tasks, it is after the women asked them to, rather than by just them taking the initiative, thereby making it an extra layer of labor.
Unequal Pay and Opportunities
In 2018, American women only made 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 18 percent. While the number might fluctuate depending on sector, it is true across the board of nearly all occupations. From the arts to television, doctors to nonprofits, construction to even babysitting, women are getting less despite putting in the same amount of work or more.
And why is that?
Perhaps Oprah’s early work experience summed it up well, when she asked about the pay disparity between herself and her male co-anchor.
“I was told that because I was a single woman who didn’t have a mortgage and I didn’t have kids, that I was not entitled to earn the same kind of money as the man who was sitting next to me, doing the same thing.”
This was many years ago, but it seems like the idea still persists in different variations today, that the value of a woman is measured by a household. Because the opposite is true as well; women who tend to family also are finding it tough to have equal pay and opportunities. Called the Motherhood Penalty, women are seen as less dependable and invested, and therefore less likely to be hired or promoted. To combat, employers really need to actively take steps to level the workplace for both men and women, so women can have the privilege of fully contributing to the workforce should they choose to.
I really love this, but it applies not only to Filipinos or any group of people, rather every man and woman
Everything Else in Between
And then there’s everything else in between, which is not an exhaustive list. From the most serious issues of sexual abuse/assault/comments at church, the military, educational institutions, the workplace, home, the outdoors, in pictures where one’s just doing her thing, to the more mundane annoyances like mansplaining or telling women to smile more, every part of a woman’s life is much more scrutinized than a man’s. Our bodies and the way we dress, reproductive and life choices, and even whether one chooses to change her name is not ours to fully own.
The Name Tax — Dear Alyne
So in short, my initial thinking of men having it easier may not actually be wrong. But even after all of this, women are still standing, are still strong, and marching on. And this is why I love being a woman.
“We protest, we persevere, we get knocked down, but… still we persist! We prove ourselves again and again and again!” — Oprah’s keynote, Women in the World Summit
I can’t deny the strength of my gender. We bear babies, take care of others physically and emotionally, and in general, bring a softer side to humanity. I am proud of our collective efforts and accomplishments, and our breaking barriers and sacrifices. I love the support and encouragement, friendship and sisterhood. Women live longer, have better relationships, are more in tune with themselves, and run the world. I love the pride women have for womanhood. And most of all, I am humbled by and thank the generation of women before me, and excited for the strides ours will make.
I used to wish I was a boy, now I am proud to be a woman. | https://sunnyh568.medium.com/i-used-to-wish-i-was-a-boy-now-i-am-proud-to-be-a-woman-85a12ae36d75 | [] | 2020-09-08 21:28:45.595000+00:00 | ['Empowering Women', 'Women Empowering Women', 'Women', 'Strength Of A Woman', 'Women Empowerment'] |
Stevens vs Westlake | Texas High School Football Live | Stevens vs Westlake | Texas High School Football Live Ciremai ·Dec 22, 2020
Stevens vs Westlake | Texas High School Football Live
Watch Here Live: http://syehkhambali.sportfb.com/hsfootball.php
Falcons
7–4
Chaparrals
10–0
The Westlake (Austin, TX) varsity football team has a neutral playoff game vs. Stevens (San Antonio, TX) on Saturday, December 26 @ 1p.
Game Details: At Bastrop Memorial Stadium
This game is a part of the “2020 Football State Championships — 2020 Football Conference 6A D1 “ tournament. | https://medium.com/@ciremai585/stevens-vs-westlake-texas-high-school-football-live-abf3c5d6f6a | [] | 2020-12-22 02:47:02.112000+00:00 | ['Texas', 'Austin Coding Academy', 'Austin'] |
The King’s Folly | In a time long forgotten, there lived a King. He wasn’t the wisest King, but he cared for the people he ruled and was rarely cruel.
The King surrounded himself with wise counsel. Although he did not always heed their advice. One example was the stained glass tower.
On a day like many other days, when nothing of great importance was happening, the King decided to go for a ride. The King enjoyed riding in a field that spread out treeless as far as the eye could see. After riding for a while, the King stopped and dismounted. He looked around. In a fit of whimsy, the King decided to build a tower made entirely out of stained glass. It would stand in the exact location he stood and would be a marvel.
Upon returning to the castle, the King called his advisors into the great hall to seek their counsel. After telling them of his plan, the King waited on their response.
The counselors looked at each other in disbelief. The elder counselor then spoke.
“Your Majesty. The idea of a stained glass tower is quite imaginative. But I fear it would be far too fragile to withstand intense weather.”
The King nodded, but did not speak.
Another counselor spoke out.
“Your Highness. What would be the purpose of this tower? Surely it has no defensive or practical use. And it would be painstaking to construct.”
Again, the King nodded, but did not speak.
A third counselor spoke his mind.
“My King. Stained glass is difficult and expensive to make. The cost of such a tower would be high. And the result would be a tower easily destroyed by enemies or nature.”
Once more, the King nodded without speaking.
Despite the counsel of his counselors, the King would not be deterred. So artisans and builders across the land were called into service to construct the tower.
The project required extreme care and took considerable time to complete. But when it was finished, it was a wonder indeed. Sunlight passing through the tower washed the surrounding fields with every imaginable color. People came from far off to see the marvelous sight.
Soon, though, people began calling the tower The King’s Folly, for it was surely a waste of time, money, and stained glass. Locals began wagering on when it would fall. | https://medium.com/mark-starlin-writes/the-kings-folly-bb55009c5603 | ['Mark Starlin'] | 2020-11-20 13:02:02.979000+00:00 | ['Marvel', 'Compassion', 'Fiction', 'Fantasy', 'Counseling'] |
Episode 8: Half the Story | Transcript
LARISSA: Yeah so when I was at Vanderbilt University, I started a fashion blog. I literally just started taking photos outside of my dorm room. I would do everything from going to rent clothes from brands that I liked, to interviewing and just emailing everyone in the fashion industry to try to build some sort of following.
HOST: That’s Larissa May, a former Instagram fashion influencer and, now, founder of non-profit #HalfTheStory.
LARISSA: I started a fashion blog because I had a goal… it also was a really big part of building my career.
HOST: Even during college, Larissa hustled hard to get fashion-world experience. She interned and lived in LA, New York, and Paris. She covered both New York Fashion Week and, as an exchange student, Paris Fashion Week too. She even spent one of her birthdays behind the scenes of a photo shoot with Sophia Bush. And, of course, she captured it all for her social media accounts.
LARISSA: I went back to Vanderbilt and started consulting with a number of brands and sort of built my own social media business when I was in school. I really just had my hands in a lot of different things.
HOST: But even as she was experiencing the glitz and glamour, just beyond the frame of her Instagram-perfect life, things were beginning to fall apart.
LARISSA: I started struggling with mental health, specifically depression and anxiety and a lot of that was related to social media and although I couldn’t get up and go to class and was having suicidal thoughts, I would still get up to take photos for my fashion blog.
HOST: At the beginning of 2018, the UK charity “Education and Employers” released the results of a survey of British school children. They asked 13,000 kids to draw what they wanted to be when they grew up. The top three professions were unsurprising: kids pictured themselves as athletes, teachers, and veterinarians. But the fourth was perhaps a sign of the times: 6 percent wanted to work in social media or online gaming. In fact, the survey found that a career as a professional YouTuber or livestreamer was now more popular than a career as professional musician or actor. Those jobs had fallen to #13 in popularity.
As a career choice, the appeal of becoming a YouTuber or influencer is understandable. Just glance at the profiles of some of the world’s most successful social media stars and the story they tell is one of adventure, fun and glamour.
But, as Larrissa found out, that is not the full picture. In this episode we’ve going to look at what the other half of that story looks like and ask: is social media a viable career? We’ll hear three stories of creators who achieved some level of social media “success” and what they did, or didn’t do, with it.
This is Nevertheless, a podcast about learning in the modern age, and I’m your host Leigh Alexander.
Larissa’s career as a fashion blogger and Instagram influencer lasted four years. By the time she realized that being an influencer wasn’t for her, she had already garnered 15,000 followers and was working with brands like Coach, Rebecca Minkoff, and Teen Vogue.
LARISSA: I had this lightbulb moment when I was at Fashion Week and I had a total anxiety attack that I was really only showing half the story and I wasn’t the only one. It was me, it was peers in the industry, it was also students on the Vanderbilt campus.
HOST: In May this year one of Larrissa’s peers, Elle Mills, posted a video to YouTube.
The video was titled ‘Burnout at 19’.
Other prominent YouTubers such as PewDiePie and Jake Paul have joined Larissa and Elle Mills in discussing their their mental health issues.
LARISSA: I felt that as a result of my own personal struggles, I wanted to find a solution and change the way that we used social media.
HOST: So she shifted her own dreams of working in fashion. She started an Instagram-based movement to tell the side of the story that doesn’t usually make it into the perfect lives portrayed on the platform. She called #HalfTheStory.
LARISSA: #HalfTheStory is a non-profit media platform that encourages you to share a piece of your life that doesn’t normally exist on social media.
HOST: #HalfTheStory’s Instagram feed is full of black-and-white photos of Instagram stars, often holding a phone with the words “#HalfTheStory” on its screen. The idea is that, in the captions, they tell more of their struggles than they would typically reveal.
LARISSA: Success for myself when I was an influencer truly meant success for myself, which means I was getting brand partnerships and I was making money, a lot of money on collaborations and that was something I was manning every week and reaching out to people. And now success for me is success for all and… it’s about changing the conversation for everyone on social media, creating a more connected space, bringing awareness about mental health and actually delivering these resources to individuals around the world.
HOST: Many influencers hope to use their social media followings as a launchpad for bigger pursuits. And that’s kind of what Larissa did, though rather than staying in fashion, she pivoted towards something more personally meaningful.
But what if you wanted to take a more drastic approach and get rid of your platform entirely?
That’s the choice that one musician that had built a following on YouTube made. Her mother, Sara Perkins, tells us the story.
SARA: I’m Sara and I work across digital to project literacy, which is Pearson’s social impact campaign around the global literacy crisis.
HOST: Sara has two daughters, a 12-year-old and a 22-year-old. Both are musicians — and both are navigating their relationships to their careers on social media.
SARA: They’re both active on social media, but in very different ways actually.
What’s really interesting to me is that the 12-year-old is a complete kind of generation Z… digital native, you know, she was born post-smartphones, post- the addictive scrolling interfaces, and the 22-year-old still remembers an analog world, she didn’t have digital in her life until she was much, much older. She’d had a childhood of walking in the park, and watching telly.
HOST: It’s the 22-year-old who decided to get rid of her social media platform. (By the way, we’re purposefully not saying her name, at Sara’s request.)
SARA: The older one has now been working in music for four years since she left school, in fact a little bit before she left school. She started very young and was making or having videos made for her… YouTube was the only format, I suppose. At the time it was pre-Spotify and Soundcloud… so that was a way of her getting her music out there.
HOST And she was successful. She had millions of views on her videos, a record deal with an independent label, and just every sign of continuing to develop her career. But she was also under a lot of pressure.
SARA: She very quickly got the impression that there was an expectation that marketing needed to come from her first, audience building needed to come from her first and foremost, and that record companies needed a huge amount of reassurance that an audience existed before they would invest further. And just instinctively, she’s actually an introvert. You can put her in front of a mic and a piano and she can play to a room full of strangers, but she’s actually an introvert and this idea of having to sell herself and put up pictures of what she was eating for dinner and her cat and her new shoes felt hugely invasive. And yet that’s what the expectation was. That’s what she kept being told.
HOST: Journalist Chris Stokel-Walker has written about social media influencers for publications like Wired, The Guardian, and Bloomberg, and from his reporting, the experience of Sara’s daughter is, unfortunately, common.
Creators are under a lot of pressure, and rather than get easier with success, it gets harder.
CHRIS: Essentially they’ve gained fame and recognition, but with that comes an awful lot of emotional baggage. You have suddenly to feed this algorithm, this black box that nobody really knows how it works. There are a few people who make their living to analyze how it works. They say basically that you need to post at least three videos every week that are 10 or 12 minutes long in order to just stand still on YouTube…the algorithm is kind of a fickle beast that you have to keep feeding.
HOST: But it’s not just the algorithm that needs constant content.
CHRIS: There’s also the fact that you have a fickle audience who generally follow you on the upward path and have a particular vision of what they feel you should be like and how you should present yourself. So if you change in any way at all, then suddenly they kind of wonder why you have. So you’re kind of held in suspended animation, because what brought you to success is what will keep you there, so you have to keep doing the same thing over and over again.
HOST: And that’s hard if you’re essentially growing up on the platform, as Sara’s daughter was doing. She was a teenager when she started putting up videos.
SARA: You can imagine the difference between being a 15-year-old and being a 22-year-old, I guess she suddenly felt, just really uncomfortable with her as a 15-year-old. With where she was at in her musical development and that stuff still being available for public access.
So she suddenly felt very paranoid, wanting to take back that control. It was that whole digital footprint thing we’re always trying to say to kids. About what you put out there is forever and always out there, that’s your public history. And she is a brilliant example of someone deciding that they wanted to eliminate that, which she did overnight.
HOST: So with millions of views and a growing fanbase on YouTube, Sara’s daughter deleted everything. All the videos, all the comments, all the view counts, gone. Sara, of course, understands and empathizes with her daughter’s decision, but is also worried about how the choice will affect her career.
SARA: How is she going to have the same reach and the same outlets for her material? I think that’s something she’s still absolutely struggling with. I think she doesn’t know what the alternative is, other than getting in the back of a transit van, like the good old days, and you know — playing every pub toilet in between here and Land’s End.
HOST: And there isn’t a lot of support.
SARA: She hasn’t come across anyone in the music industry that seems to be considering the mental wellbeing of artists who are quadrupally — just exposed in a way that artists were in the past. I think generally, in the industry across the board, there’s not that understanding of the link, that deep understanding of the link between mental health, wellbeing, feelings, of personal boundaries and stuff. And that link just isn’t really made. There’s just a focus on the commercial viability and a better return on investment, because you have a fanbase prepared to already buy whatever you do, you know? Yeah. I don’t think there is that understanding or that appreciation.
HOST: Meanwhile, as Sara’s older daughter has left YouTube and is trying to forge a new path forward for herself, her youngest wants nothing more than to be allowed onto the platform.
SARA: Meanwhile her little sister, who is obviously in the very early stages of her ambition, is desperate to have a YouTube account. We haven’t given her permission to have one, so she posts regularly on a music profile that she has on Instagram. She has a highly monitored Instagram account where she posts little snippets of songs, but she’s desperate for YouTube account.
HOST: And she’s not alone. But as more and more young people start their own YouTube channels or livestream accounts, it just gets harder. Stokel-Walker explains:
CHRIS: I did a story for Bloomberg earlier this year, which looked at the rise in the number of YouTubers and the number of videos that are posted, because you have to remember the system like linear TV, there’s no, you know, starting at 6:00 AM and finishing at 6:00 AM the next day. This is a massive box of content that keeps getting
bigger and bigger. And so every time you post something, there is a diminishing chance of returns. It’s like playing the lottery, but having more and more people join the game constantly. The odds of success get smaller and smaller as you go through it.
HOST: Earlier this year, a study from a German researcher found that the vast majority of aspiring Youtubers — 96.5 percent — wouldn’t even crack the U.S. poverty line based on their YouTube advertising earnings alone. Even the top three percent of most-viewed channels only brought in about $16,800 per year.
But, then again, it’s important to note that making money is only part of the motivation for many social media creators.
SARA: You know I work in social media, have done for 15 years, so it’s very, very difficult for me to preach, right? and as, as someone that loves the creative arts and who appreciates the idea of, you know, the free distribution direct to consumer, everyone has a chance. Everyone has a voice, you know, it’s not so much mediation by agents, record companies, all the people that can stand in the way of someone getting their art, whatever the form is, out there.
HOST: Sara’s daughters may be navigating their way through the world of Youtube, and both of them were very young when they started. But what if that’s not the case, and you move into social media after an actual career?
That’s the experience of Matt Lees.
MATT: My name is Matt Lees and I run a couple of YouTube channels. “Shut Up & Sit Down” about boardgames and “Cool Ghosts” about videogames. When I approached making videos on YouTube, it was effectively my fourth career. I used to work as a magazine journalist and we had some very basic capture equipment so we could get videos made about videogames, and we started dabbling with that and putting them online, and a couple of them really took off and people really liked the videos I was making. After that I got offered a job to specifically just run a YouTube channel for a videogame outlet and they had about a thousand subscribers on Youtube, and in the space of a year I took them up to about 80,000 but just kind of really dove into it headfirst and had a fantastic time building up an audience and making a lot of fun videos.
HOST: While it was a fun job, Matt quickly began noticing things about his new field that made him more than a little uncomfortable.
MATT: The human brain cannot deal with reading hundreds of comments which are about you, about people you don’t know openly saying what they think about you. We’ve invented all these incredible tools for communication, but I think that when you have these hub networks like this, they just give people such access directly to people. I feel like there’s something fundamentally that we’re just not built for that.
I think the point where I realized something really weird was going on was I remember reading this one comment and then thinking, “Oh I’m really bummed out by that comment, I’m really sad, that’s really got to me.” I felt like it had got under my skin. I had to take myself to one side, and I looked at this guy’s avatar, and his name. And I’m like: “Matt, no, this guy is a literal Nazi.” You know, we’re talking like this guy has got some right wing leanings, he was a Nazi. it was basically Nazi insignia on all of his comments. He was… an actual Nazi. And the fact that my brain was still overriding that and going, yeah, but somebody doesn’t like you, it’s like something here in the way my brain is interacting with this information is fundamentally out of my control to a weird, frightening degree, but also not correct. You know?
HOST But it wasn’t just the personal attacks that bothered Matt.
MATT: This platform is encouraging people to just make videos that get lots of views and the way you do that is basically by being loud and controversial and gaudy.
HOST: But the worst thing? The constant churn of aspiring YouTubers.
MATT: There’s always hundreds of fresh new people wanting to make it on the platform and there’s enough of an appetite that you can have hundreds and thousands of people across the world who are arguably in their own circles, incredibly famous all at once. But I think that it leads to a culture of burnout in the fact that the expectation is that you will constantly keep putting stuff out and keep working hard and keep doing what you’ve asked to do. And when you don’t, when you can’t do it anymore, you’ll be forgotten, and new people will come and take your place.
HOST Matt decided that, to survive on the platform, he needed to make a change.
MATT: I spent a lot of time switching off comments for example, or removing advertising in terms of just being like, it doesn’t matter now whether or not videos are getting lots of views and it doesn’t matter if people are getting a lot of interaction. A lot of that engagement. All this stuff that everybody loves.
HOST Instead of depending on clicks — and on constantly producing content — Matt has found a way to find financial success by producing slowly and for a small, niche audience.
MATT: I was one of the first people to really jump onto a platform called Patreon which has now become much much more widespread, and take a different approach of not trying to produce work that got huge amounts of traffic, but just trying to produce work that a small amount of people liked. And that’s the kind of ethos I’ve tried to continue really. And I try to avoid chasing after numbers and avoid looking at numbers really.
HOST But again, Matt Lees hasn’t had a conventional career. He’s had a lot of life experience.
MATT: I’d already worked in market research, PR, journalism and then video. So I had a much better understanding of the world and a much better understanding of when your work relationship, when your work-life balance was wrong. And I think with lots of people getting into this, when they’re aged 16, 17, it’s just hugely damaging because A) You’re working on your own, and B) Your role models are not good role models and then they might burn out and you might replace them. Then you’ll burn out and be replaced.
HOST: The way that Matt describes the world of social media content sounds like an assembly line of factory workers — except the factory is digital. And when something breaks down on that assembly line, there aren’t really structures in place to deal with it.
CHRIS: When you get very big, you have some support networks, but even then, nothing like TV or films. You’re doing things on a shoestring budget, and you’re required to do all sorts. It’s kind of like five or six jobs in one.
HOST: That was Chris Stokel-Walker, the journalist, again. Larissa, of #HalfTheStory, adds this:
LARISSA: I do think every influencer agency should have some sort of wellness committee that’s really working and checking in on the wellbeing of their talent in the same way that a manager of a model is hopefully checking in on their well-being as well. Because when your social media presence is paying your electricity bill, it’s a lot harder to create boundaries.
HOST: But most of these content creators never get to the point where they are big enough to have agencies or other support. That’s why Matt Lees believes that the problem is bigger.
MATT: I remember there are pop-ups on the backend of YouTube sometimes that say, “Hey, take a break. Hey, don’t work too hard.” Then it’s like, well, yeah, but you’ve literally designed the algorithms on your platform to reward people who put up videos every day.
HOST: This sounds pretty bleak, and if we go back to that original question of, “Is social media a viable career?” it might seem like the answer should be a resounding no.
But… maybe it’s just a matter of finding the right way, moving beyond the internet’s obsession with clicks and with scale. Being more thoughtful about how we use these communication tools to actually serve creators — and not have the creators serve the algorithms and the advertisements.
Because ultimately, Larissa, Matt, and Sara and her daughter may all be concerned — but, they’re also finding ways forward.
CREDITS: Nevertheless is a Storythings production, series producer is Renay Richardson, executive producers are Nathan Martin and Anjali Ramachandran, this episode was produced and written by Eileen Guo, music and sound design by Jason Oberholtzer and Michael Simonelli, supported by Pearson and presented by me Leigh Alexander.
Full transcripts, additional reading and episodes can be found on our website. Subscribe free, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast app.
This week’s unsung hero is Sophie Deen, author of Detective Dot — a book to encourage girls to be curious and code. Sophie is also the founder of Bright Little Labs | https://medium.com/nevertheless-podcast/episode-8-half-the-story-6759a5dfe3aa | [] | 2018-11-29 09:50:49.389000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'YouTube', 'Careers', 'Mental Health', 'Influencers'] |
Can You Trust the Air Quality Data You Are Using? | As awareness of the short and long-term health impacts of exposure to poor air quality increases, more and more people around the world are looking for solutions to help them manage this risk and reduce their exposure to toxic pollution.
Air quality data providers and those intending to use air quality data for commercial or public purposes have a responsibility to understand the information they are using and to ensure it is actually relevant for users turning to their information to make more informed and practical decisions on a daily basis: Decisions like taking an alternative route to work or heading to a different park when the air quality is poor.
Measuring and reporting on air quality is a complex business, but the process of evaluating and understanding the reliability of a data source is arguably even harder.
You may wonder why the air quality data source you use even matters…this is why:
1. Air Pollution Information Has Real-World Consequences for People’s Health
Individuals rely on air quality data to help them make decisions on a daily basis. For sufferers of pre-existing respiratory conditions like Asthma or COPD, the consequences of unreliable information can be devastating. Sufferers of chronic respiratory conditions are particularly vulnerable to all forms of air pollution; research has recently found that exposure to traffic fumes result in 4 million new child asthma cases each year and for the first time in history, a young girl’s cause of death has been linked to illegal levels of air pollution in London.
The rise in demand for pollution information makes sense but in order for people to truly benefit from access data, it needs to be trustworthy and reliable for the application in question. If it’s not, real lives will be put at risk.
2. Outdated Air Quality Information Isn’t Useful Right Now
Few understand how dynamic and fast-changing air quality truly is. Air quality fluctuates on an hourly basis and can show differently at any given time from street to street. In practical terms, this means that if the air quality is poor at 11AM, it won’t help to receive air pollution levels as they were recorded at 4AM, when fewer cars were on the road, less industrial activity was going on, and there were lower levels of harmful Ozone while the sun was down.
3. Coverage Differs Dramatically
Each provider varies dramatically when it comes to the sources they use, the pollutants they measure, and their geographical level of coverage. If the data source you’re turning to only reports information on 1 out of the 6 common air pollutants, do you really want your users to base their decision-making on such an incomplete picture?
Download Our Guide to Evaluating Air Quality Data
To help both the public and businesses understand the differences between air quality data sources, the team at BreezoMeter have created a comprehensive Guide to Evaluating Air Quality Data.
This resource will help you ask the right questions of any air quality data source you plan to use, for yourself, for research, or for a product or marketing campaign. | https://medium.com/@breezometer/can-you-trust-the-air-quality-data-you-are-using-ce84ae6330d | ['Breezometer', 'Environmental Apis For Smart Products'] | 2019-10-27 15:04:01.112000+00:00 | ['Pollution', 'Air Quality', 'Asthma'] |
CONSUMING SHOULD PROMPT ACTION | January 02, 2020
CONSUMING SHOULD PROMPT ACTION
Watch Here: https://www.netflix.com/watch/80994524?trackId=14170289&tctx=0%2C0%2C75c912c3-c609-4f81-bf37-5029b2e7ca53-76290860%2Cbea1f9ab-405b-4e17-9c76-b23f2269edb3_744433X3XX1578014618247%2Cbea1f9ab-405b-4e17-9c76-b23f2269edb3_ROOT
In this world of overachievers and plain old doers, sometimes being a consumer can get a bad rep. Even though it is consumers that allow businesses and especially entrepreneurs to thrive.
You often hear people debate about producer vs consumer. Consumption only becomes a problem if there is too much consuming without producing. Consuming should prompt action eventually.
Take for example, this weekend when I was watching Netflix’s Carole & Tuesday, an anime about two girls and their come up in the music industry. While watching the show I was so intrigued about the world building, characters, and the music.
While taking all that in, I was inspired to make new music that is directly influenced from the show. That’s what being a consumer is about. A person can’t be a producer without someone to consume the content (well they can but it would fall on deaf ears).
I didn’t just consume consume consume, I took something as pure entertainment and allowed it to naturally spark action for me to take.
Now I found a new fav show and made new music, that my listeners are sure to enjoy! (My new album, Gotta Love Where Ya At out Jan. 2020.)
Follow me on twitter @onlyonejaevonn
Visit gettothecorner.com | https://medium.com/@king-dapper-i/consuming-should-prompt-action-13d1ff1d4ce0 | ['Jaevonn Harris'] | 2020-01-03 02:29:33.465000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Anime', 'Music', 'Consumer', 'Producer'] |
HEROES Are Needed! Join Step Hero’s Squad To Win Attractive Rewards | Become one of our Heroes to earn rewards in HERO NFT Treasure Chests
As a HERO, you will bring Step Hero closer to potential users and investors by posting about Step Hero on social channels. Top 30 HEROES with the best performance will receive the reward as HERO NFT Treasure Chests.
Prize Pool
A total of 37 HERO NFT Treasure Chests will be rewarded to Top 30 HEROES with the highest points.
Top 1: 5 HERO NFT Treasure Chests
5 HERO NFT Treasure Chests Top 2: 3 HERO NFT Treasure Chests
3 HERO NFT Treasure Chests Top 3: 2 HERO NFT Treasure Chests
2 HERO NFT Treasure Chests Top 4–30: 1 HERO NFT Treasure Chest
Each Chest has a random HERO NFT Character with the rarity varies from Common to Legendary. The higher the rarity level, the higher value an NFT is in the marketplace.
You can trade the NFTs on HERO NFT Marketplace that will be launched next week. Besides, you can use them to play Step Hero RPG, or upgrade them to get NFTs with higher rarity.
Rules
Your single mission as a HERO is to create posts that shill Step Hero on social media channels, including Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Youtube, and any other social media channel or crypto forums.
Important Requirement: - On each post, you must include the link to Step Hero’s Global Community on Telegram https://t.me/stephero_chat - The content must be original and must not be spam content.
Step-by-step
Join this Telegram Group for HEROES: https://t.me/competitionstephero.
Start creating posts about Step Hero on social media channels.
Collect the links or screenshots to your posts and report in the telegram group
The admins will track your activeness in the group using Combot tool. At the end of the competition, the admin will verify the contents of top 30 users on the “Top Users” section. Spammers or people just doing copy paste without original content will lose spots. Everything will be monitored fairly.
Timeline
From August 17th to August 31st at 23:59:59 UTC.
About Step Hero
Step Hero is the lucrative NFT fantasy-themed RPG game on Binance Smart Chain and Polygon (previously Matic Network).
More than that, it is a comprehensive NFT ecosystem made up of HERO token, HERO collectibles, a fantasy-themed role-playing game with attractive gameplay and a cross-chained NFT marketplace.
Learn more about Step Hero
Website | Telegram channel| Telegram group | Twitter | Medium | Reddit | Facebook | Discord | Youtube
More details about Step Hero: https://whitepaper.stephero.io/
Contract Address: 0xE8176d414560cFE1Bf82Fd73B986823B89E4F545 | https://medium.com/@stephero/heroes-are-needed-join-step-heros-squad-to-win-attractive-rewards-85e1dbd15dad | ['Step Hero'] | 2021-08-17 09:11:18.636000+00:00 | ['Competition', 'Step Hero', 'Nfts'] |
The client-server-peer-to-peer blockchain application | Even though peer-to-peer networks have been around for over 30 years, with the increasing popularity of blockchain, there has been a renewed sense of enthusiasm with respect to the world-wide embrace of peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture. P2P architecture is touted as part of the new “sharing economy,” which is characterized by decentralization, self-determination, inherent trust and profit sharing. While there are benefits, certainly, from self-determination, inherent trust and profit sharing, this article focuses on the role of P2P architecture in the technology stack of the future. Will client-server fade while P2P increases in popularity? What is the role of client-server in future blockchain tech stacks? Client-server architecture will have a significant role in future technology stacks because (1) in some ways, client-server is more efficient, (2) thin clients are desirable, (3) the blockchain public gateway will play a greater and greater role and (4) while Ethereum may be turing complete, it does not provide facilities for indexing, filtering and searching.
The History P2P architecture
In P2P architecture, each system acts as both a client (or node) and a server (information storage). IBM created one of the first P2P systems with the token-ring network. Each system was connected to every other system in the network via a ring typology. In this way, the systems could communicate with each other and share resources. Token ring technology was quickly enhanced by NetBIOS and server message blocks (SMB). SMB via Ethernet allowed direct connections of P2P systems rather than traversing a ring, and this enhancement was a step forward in moving toward a client-server architecture.
The client-server architecture in the form of a LAN manager was first introduced to so that disparate systems (e.g., OS2, Novell Netware and Microsoft Windows systems) could communicate with each other over SMB. SMB via IP (and SMB over TCP/IP) was a further enhancement, and the Common Internet File System (CIFS) with authentication over a LAN manager (or Directory Server) became a networking standard.
In the context of the LAN, client-server was an improvement over P2P in several ways. First, authentication and authorization could be centralized in a server (rather than using local system authentication and authorization). While LAN administrators were needed to manage the network, centralization of authentication and authorization was an improvement in efficiency. Second, file servers were created, backed by RAID controllers and fast networks, and these file servers were more robust and enabled vast numbers of clients. Third, by means of centralization, tracking and monitoring was greatly improved. Access audits could be performed with greater ease. Finally, client-server architecture enabled more complexity, supporting larger networks with thousands of clients, and enabled a greater number of simultaneous transactions. So, in these respects, client-server architecture was an improvement in the efficiency of local area networks.
In the blockchain ecosystem, the trend is toward thin clients.
Just as in the LAN, the trend in the blockchain ecosystem is toward thin clients. Rather than each system acting as both a client (or node) and a server (information storage), a “thin client” only contains enough information to do its job — not the full blockchain ledger. For example, the first Bitcoin wallet (viz., Bitcoin core) downloaded the complete Bitcoin ledger. Thin clients, which did not fully validate all transactions or all blocks, were quickly introduced. These thin clients connected to the Bitcoin P2P network, but they only sent information to the network to verify and to confirm the transactions that are affecting the client’s wallet. In the case of Bitcoin core, the client downloads over 200 GB of data, and the size of the data continues to grow. It is not surprising that the trend is for wallet owners to choose thin clients. Today, the vast majority of Bitcoin wallets are not full nodes; rather, they are thin clients or eWallets.
In the blockchain ecosystem, the trend is toward public gateways
Similar to thin clients, public gateways allow users to participate in blockchain networks without the cost of having to instantiate a full node (or a system acting as both client and server) on a P2P network. Public gateways are a return to the client-server architecture in the blockchain ecosystem. Public gateways provide the necessary tools for any application (or user) to start reading from and writing to a blockchain immediately, without the need to run the complicated infrastructure of a full node. These gateways expose a blockchain to “zero clients” (not merely thin clients). These zero clients are willing to trust the public gateway for the convenience of merely connecting to a JSON-RPC, REST or websocket endpoint.
Public gateways are typically backed by a server farm of full nodes. The server farm consists of load-balanced groups of full nodes, that can be scaled horizontally to meet demand of thousands of zero clients. The nodes are fully managed by the public gateway provider. In addition to providing the basic security of TLS enabled APIs, public gateways are typically enhanced with middleware to enable advanced routing, caching and tuning based on traffic patterns. Some public gateways are even providing indexing of blockchains in separate data stores so that many of the incoming read requests do not have to read from a full node at all; rather, the requests are served by reading from an index from a separate data store, which greatly improves response times. The client-server architecture of public gateways provides some increased efficiencies and greatly simplify the task of reading from and writing to blockchains.
Reduced complexity is one of the compelling reasons why users have been adopting public gateways, and the cost is trusting a remote public gateway. But, trust is the fabric upon which society is built. And, even when a user is installing a full node, there is still some trust involved. Is it open source software? Then, are you trusting the open source community to vet the code? Or are you auditing the code? Typically, a user will not even check that the downloaded software hashes match the published hashes, much less audit the code. So, even when one is using open-source software to install a full node, there is typically some level of trust involved. And, many users are extending their trust to public gateways in exchange for the reduced complexity of using a zero client.
The examples of public gateways are too numerous to list, but two of the most popular are ConsenSys Media’s Infura and Cloudflare. The popularity of these public gateways are difficult to measure, but MetaMask uses Infura with a zero-client approach, serving over one million installed users. Infura and Cloudflare both provide public gateways for the Ethereum blockchain and the InterPlanetary File system (IPFS). Both public gateways provide free TLS certificates for two-way, mutual TLS, ensuring that any client connected to the gateway is secure from snooping and manipulation. Both public gateways support caching to speed up reads. These public gateways view themselves as bringing client-server architecture to the P2P distributed world and bridging the gap between the traditional web and the new generation of P2P technologies.
While Ethereum may be turing complete, the JSON-RPC API does not provide facilities for indexing, filtering and searching
One potential of Ethereum is to build a complex application completely on the blockchain via smart contracts. While Ethereum may be turing complete, nevertheless, application developers have not had a lot of success in building complex applications using only smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. One of the reasons is that complex applications typically need the ability to do fast searches. Moreover, complex applications need to be able to filter data and return the results with pagination. But, indexing (or enabling fast lookups), filtering and pagination are facilities that are not provided by the Ethereum JSON-RPC API. As a result, application developers tend to provide a parallel storage system along side of the blockchain. The need for a parallel storage system so that data can be indexed, filtered and paginated increases the complexity of blockchain applications and reduces the ability for developers to provide unadulterated P2P systems.
There are many models for building blockchain applications using a parallel storage system. For some, the blockchain remains the single source of truth, and blockchain data is replicated into a parallel storage system, which can be indexed, filtered and paginated. For others, a blockchain is combined with IPFS, and the combination of the blockchain and IPFS form a single source of truth. And, data from both the blockchain and IPFS is replicated into a parallel storage system. For still others, the primary data is stored in a parallel storage system, and this data or metadata is synced with a blockchain. But, regardless of the model, parallel storage systems are used to enable developers to create complex applications, which are backed by a blockchain.
Rather than embracing client-server architecture, many application developers have created novel solutions in an effort to preserve P2P architecture. One such solution is to expose a custom web service on each full node, which is backed by a caching database. In this way, a developer could replicate data from a blockchain or IPFS for the data that is exposed by the custom web service into a caching database to enable fast access to data, filtering and pagination. And, the developer would call one or more custom web services to retrieve the data for an end-user application.
A further enhancement of the above web services architecture is to use a private gateway to federate diverse web services. Rather than calling individual web services that might be spread out over many nodes, the diverse web services can be federated into an API gateway. And, the application developer can call the API gateway (comprised of many web services) to retrieve the data for an end-user application.
Even though there is an effort to preserve the P2P architecture of blockchain-based APIs, the reliance upon an API gateway, in some respects, is a return to client-server architecture. It is interesting to note that public gateways have started to provide indexes to reduce the latency of reads for normal JSON-RPC calls, and some public gateways are providing custom REST and websocket APIs for filtering and pagination. But, whether one is using a private or a public API gateway, the use of a gateway is a return to client-server architecture.
Due to the limits of the Ethereum JSON-RPC API, the use of parallel storage systems and creating custom web services appears to be a necessary step in creating complex end-user applications. Moreover, even with the workarounds to preserve P2P architecture, there tends to be a reliance upon an API gateway to federate web services. So, it appears that client-server architecture will continue to have a significant role in current and possibly future blockchain technology stacks.
In review, in some respects, client-server architecture has offered some improvements and efficiencies to P2P networks. Moreover, there is a trend toward thin clients and zero clients in the blockchain ecosystem. Public gateways are also very popular, and many applications rely on them exclusively. Finally, without indexes, filtering and pagination, it is difficult to build complex applications on the Ethereum blockchain. There are workarounds that enable indexing and filtering, but even these workarounds tend to use the client-server architecture of an API gateway. So, rather than shun the use of client-server architecture, why not embrace it? We should not fear the client-server-P2P blockchain hybrid. Rather, we should embrace it. Will P2P architecture reign supreme over client-server architecture in the near future? Probably not. In the near future, client-server and P2P architectures will coexist in the same ecosystem. | https://medium.com/swlh/the-client-server-peer-to-peer-blockchain-application-78cc893cb54c | ['J. David Mitchell'] | 2019-08-15 18:57:07.521000+00:00 | ['Peer To Peer', 'P2p', 'Software Architecture', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum'] |
Peran Seorang Public Relations terhadap Distraksi Laju Informasi di Masa Pandemi | Nothing last forever. Even the moment you cherish most nor the one you curse again n again. So, be calm. | https://medium.com/@zulaikahu092/peran-seorang-public-relations-terhadap-distraksi-laju-informasi-di-masa-pandemi-6d9118deae33 | [] | 2020-12-26 04:26:12.634000+00:00 | ['Hoax', 'Media Relations', 'Indonesia', 'Public Relations', 'Artikel Bahasa Indonesia'] |
Data Visualization — How it is going to evolve into the future | Did you know that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are being generated each day globally? 90% of all the current global data was generated in the previous 2 years alone. The growing number of Internet-connected devices is rapidly adding to the data generation.
Advanced tools in business intelligence (BI) and data visualization are enabling business stakeholders to collect and analyze the large volume of business data and enabling them to understand complex trends and patterns. Over the past few years, data visualization is becoming more resourceful and proficient in analyzing data and making it useful to non-technical consumers too.
Through the use of an interesting infographic or interactive visuals, data visualization is adopting newer technologies to make itself richer and enriching for consumers. How is data visualization likely to shape how we interact with data in the near future? Here is a closer look.
Virtual and augmented reality
With the unprecedented generation of data, conventional desktop monitors or television screens are likely to be insufficient to represent 2D and even 3D images. With the virtual and augmented reality market estimated to reach a value of $170 billion by the year 2022, these technologies are likely to shape the future world of data analysis and visualization.
With the use of virtual reality (or VR), you can analyze and review data in a 360-degree virtual space. Business presentations are likely to happen in a VR-simulated environment with business executives seated around viewing at a projector screen.
Trending GoBeyond.ai articles:
Smartphone-friendly data visualization
Since the acquisition of the smartphone data visualization company, Mapsense by the technology company, Apple, data visualization for mobile phones is gaining industry importance. The rapid shift of Internet users from the desktop computer to the smartphone is driving this transformation. Visualization charts and dashboards are being for the smaller screen size of the smartphone.
This future trend is ensuring that more users are now able to analyze data and derive useful insights right from their personal smartphones.
Data-driven Journalism
With the growing availability of data and analyzing tools, data-driven journalism by news media companies is likely to increase globally. News stories told with the use of an interesting infographic or statistic map is a great example of using data visualization in the field of journalism. News-related content creators are realizing the potential of data visualization as an effective way of telling a story within a few seconds.
The increasing variety of data sources
Along with the large volumes of data being generated, large corporations are looking for insights from the increasing variety of complex data sources. Among the success parameters for Big data, 69% of corporate executives considered data variety as the most important factor followed by data volume (25%). While finding data is no longer a challenge for most data analysts, the overall quality of data visualization will depend on the quality of the data that is fed into it. This means that data visualizers must evaluate and select the right data sources for visualizing in the future.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
In an age where AI technologies are disrupting major industries, there is no doubt of its impact in the area of data visualization. With traditional dashboards unable to cope up with the increase in complex data representation, AI and machine learning combined with data visualization are now redefining the customer experience. With its natural language processing (NLP) abilities, AI and machine learning are becoming effective in capturing critical insights from business data, thus improving the effectiveness and accuracy of visualized data.
Summary
With the massive increase in volume and variety of data, data visualization technology is evolving at a rapid rate to cope with the evolving business requirements. This article outlines some of the trends in how data visualization is evolving in the near future.
With its extensive expertise in customizing cloud-based data analytics for eCommerce customers, Countants is the right solution provider for implementing projects in cloud analytics and cloud visualization.
Are you looking to leverage the enormous potential of cloud-powered analytics for your eCommerce store? Then it’s the right time to give us a call.
Don’t forget to give us your 👏 ! | https://medium.com/gobeyond-ai/data-visualization-how-it-is-going-to-evolve-into-the-future-cef12a1e4ee4 | [] | 2019-12-11 04:51:46.349000+00:00 | ['Ecommerce Website Design', 'Ecommerce Web Development', 'Ecommerce', 'Data Visualization', 'Ecommerce Solution'] |
#1 Love | It was easy to fall in love with a Larsson — seriously who could resist any one of those boys? And while each them had taken turns featuring as Maya’s adolescent crush, there was only one of them who had been her best friend.
Alex Larsson.
She’d loved him the most, convinced they’d be friends forever. Which might have happened if Maya’s father hadn’t been a shady criminal with a mistress on the side.
Banished from L.A. meant leaving her old life behind, forgetting those perfect Larsson boys and her best friend. And forget about all of them she did. Well, up until her fancy law degree landed her an awesome job back in the city she’d once called home. And boy was she glad to be home.
Oh, and her old BFF? Not only had Alex Larsson gotten a fancy law degree of his own, but he’d turned into the hottest man she’d ever seen. And what she wanted now couldn’t be further from friendship if she tried.
Did she risk tainting the memory of the purest, most amazing relationship of her life for the “possibility” of more?
Yeah, some things are worth the risk.
And Alex Larsson, was one of them
Read more >> http://tiny.cc/1-love | https://medium.com/@blinkguns26/1-love-666b4ce2cc58 | ['Ebooks Store'] | 2019-06-09 10:42:50.840000+00:00 | ['Lovestory', 'Crime', 'Romance', 'Love', 'Stories'] |
Einstein’s Formula for a Happy Life | Einstein’s Formula for a Happy Life
A few days before Einstein twirled into the Reaper’s grim arms, his assistant — Dukas — found him in the hospital bed, “in agony, unable to lift his head.”
Yet on the very next day, a mere 24 hours or so away from his death-day, Einstein “asked Dukas to get him his glasses, papers, and pencil, and he proceeded to jot down a few calculations.”
“He worked as long as he could,” noted biographer Walter Issacson, “and when the pain got too great he went to sleep,” for the final time. Indeed, Einstein died doing the one thing he loved most — working. Ah, circumstances reveal character!
“Genius is one percent inspiration,” said Einstein, “and 99 percent perspiration.” Indeed, it’s not by accident that no one has ever become great by accident. After all, as Einstein once noted: “Only a monomaniac gets what we commonly refer to as results.”
Show me someone great and I’ll show you someone obsessed. Besides, what more is “greatness” than the child of an obsession?
For the above reason, when Einstein was asked for the secret to a happy life, though the questioner expected an answer long and sour, Einstein kept it short and sweet:
“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”
Here lies Einstein’s formula for a happy life. | https://medium.com/mind-cafe/einsteins-formula-for-a-happy-life-b29aff61a9c7 | ['Genius Turner'] | 2020-12-27 12:14:20.610000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Self Improvement', 'Life', 'Self', 'Productivity'] |
Evelyn McHale’s Most Beautiful Suicide | Evelyn McHale’s Most Beautiful Suicide
A photograph taken four minutes after her death has become the most iconic suicide photo in history
A traffic worker working at the intersection of 34th Street and Fifth Avenue saw a white scarf drifting down from the Empire State Building. Seconds later he suddenly heard a big collision and chaos on the road. People swarmed a limousine parked on the sidewalk. On top of that limousine, landed a woman’s body.
Photo by Cathy Williams on Unsplash
The Empire State Building skyscraper project ended in 1931. Behind the grand buildings at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, an estimated 36 people have committed suicide by jumping from the building’s observation deck. Some bodies were stuck in the section that juts out of the building (due to the design of the building which is not straight down), while some bodies were crushed onto the road.
But there was only one that landed on top of a car, in an unusual position. Her body doesn’t look like a suicide. The position and the look on her face look like a sleeping beauty. This is Evelyn McHale, the most beautiful and beautiful suicidal person ever.
Evelyn Francis McHale was an American bookkeeper person who committed suicide by jumping from the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building on May 1, 1947. A photograph taken four minutes after her death by photography student Robert Wiles has become the most iconic suicide photo, also known as the most beautiful suicide.
Evelyn Francis McHale was born on September 20, 1923, in Berkeley, California. She was the sixth of seven children of Vincent and Helen McHale. Around 1930, Evelyn’s parents divorced, sources say, and her mother had mental health problems. Evelyn and her brother then lived with their father.
After finishing high school, Evelyn later joined the Women’s Army Corps and was stationed in Jefferson, Missouri. It was reported that after her service was over, she burned her uniform. It is not known what exactly Evelyn’s motive was to do that.
After World War II, Evelyn moved to Baldwin, New York to live with her brother and brother-in-law. There she worked in finance at a company in Manhattan.
At a New Year’s Eve party in 1945, she met Barry Rhodes. Rhodes was a former student studying at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Rhodes also served in the army and aspired to be an engineer.
The couple had actually planned their wedding at Barry’s brother’s house in Troy, New York, which was planned to take place in June 1947. With the joy of being a bride and marrying a loved one, Evelyn somehow decided to end her life just a month before her wedding.
Evelyn’s high school graduation picture, 1942. Source: codex99
Evelyn McHale’s Suicide Chronology
On April 30, 1947, Evelyn left for Easton. She went to visit her fiancé Barry Rhodes to celebrate her 24th birthday. The next day on Thursday morning, she boarded a train to return to New York City at 7 a.m. on May 1, 1947.
Barry told the media crew who interviewed him that when the two were about to split up, he briefly kissed her and said goodbye. Evelyn seemed happy, normal as ever, nothing at all strange.
No one thought that in the girl’s head there was already a crazy plan. When she arrived at Penn Station around 9 a.m., Evelyn went across the street to the Clinton Hotel where she wrote a suicide note and walked two blocks east. There, the woman then purchased a ticket to the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building.
At 11 a.m., a body landed on the roof of a Cadillac limousine parked about 200 feet west of Fifth Avenue. That body was none other than Evelyn McHale.
People scattered and roared towards the Cadillac. The atmosphere of the traffic flow became chaotic. Four minutes after Evelyn’s body landed on a U.N. limousine parked on the side of the road, a photography student named Robert Wiles ran across the street and took a photo of her. This photo will one day become the most beautiful iconic photo of suicide.
The photo shows Evelyn looking peaceful as if she was just asleep, lying in broken glass and steel. The dead Evelyn was seen holding a pearl necklace with her gloved left hand. Her legs seem neatly crossed. But all around her, shattered glass and metal shards on the roof of the car showed just how powerful the 1,040-foot jump was.
When police arrived at the 1,050-foot observation deck, they found a neatly folded suit and a small handbag belonging to Evelyn placed on the side of the fence. Also found were several family photos and a small notebook that appeared to be her will. The note read:
“I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family — don’t have any service for me or remembrance for me. My fiance asked me to marry him in June. I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me. Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.”
In a note addressed to her sister it was more or less said that she was skeptical of marriage and felt that she could never be a good wife. She also said she wanted her body cremated.
Evelyn’s body was identified by her sister Helen Brenner and according to her wishes on her will, Evelyn’s body was later cremated with no memorial, service, or grave. Her fiancée, Barry, was known to have moved to Florida after the death. He never got married.
Meanwhile, the photo was taken on May 1, 1947, by Robert C. Wiles became very famous. Time magazine even called it the most beautiful suicide. Details of this photo by Robert C. Wiles were published as “Photo This Week” in the May 12, 1947 issue of LIFE Magazine.
After the Wiles photo appeared in LIFE magazine, it was widely republished in several photographic anthologies and became one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century. | https://medium.com/the-crime-scene/evelyn-mchales-most-beautiful-suicide-c01e532d56a4 | ['Alienworkshop'] | 2020-12-23 19:58:02.191000+00:00 | ['Photographer', 'History', 'Photos', 'Suicide', 'Photography'] |
Searching for My Hook | In the current phase of my entrepreneurial journey, I’m asking podcast hosts if I can be a guest on their shows. Most hosts don’t reply, but a few scheduled interviews. When lucky, I’ll receive a rejection email with an explanation.
I want to share three reasons why one podcast host declined to have me as a guest. You might say that he gave me the hook idea.
Podcast host: “You need a marketing hook”
Here’s what happened during the Zoom call with the podcaster:
After getting to know each other, I made my pitch for being a guest, which the podcaster declined for three reasons:
I lack podcast experience. I don’t have a strong social media following. I don’t have a marketing hook.
I thanked him for his feedback and let him know that I’ll schedule another screening after meeting his guest criteria.
I’m confident that I’ll achieve the first two tactical criteria. The third is a bit trickier.
Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash
What’s a marketing hook?
A marketing hook is a meaningful phrase that resonates with your targeted audience. When effective, the hook provokes a level of curiosity and intrigue that drives your prospective audience to want to learn more about your products and services.
Several websites offer tips to create your hook, and some have inspirational examples like these:
Slack: “What it feels like to sit in 25% fewer meetings” (picture of someone sitting on a pink horse with a rainbow and clouds in the background) and “Slack: Make Work Better” Dollar Shave Club: “The Smarter Way to Shave” (in smaller print: “A delightful shave for a few bucks. No Commitments. No Fees. Try the Club.”) heal app: “Get A Doctor to You”
Back to my screening call:
The podcast host didn’t get what I had to offer his listeners other than my leadership books. Without a clear hook that exemplified my uniqueness, he didn’t know how to market the show.
Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash
Do you get why I’m hook-challenged?
How do I reduce what I do to a single, well-defined, and alluring hook? To answer that, let me give you some background about what I do to explain my quandary.
After about sixteen years of managing teams in corporations, I became an entrepreneur and consulted with businesses. While being on my own, I’ve achieved some accomplishments, such as:
Published two leadership books and one about clinical training in medicine
As a Certified Performance Technologist (CPT), clarified performance gaps and underlying root causes so executives could systematically mitigate them
Designed multiple interventions to resolve complex performance gaps and worked with talent development specialists to implement them
Coached executives to communicate effectively with their teams and strengthen how they influenced their organization’s culture
Discovered how HR Business Partners (HRBPs) can become more effective business partners (to be released in a forthcoming whitepaper and book entitled HRBP 3.0)
From this list, do you see a hook? Probably not. At first, I didn’t either, but then I had a conversation with a colleague that changed everything.
How a colleague found my hook
My business practice is founded on evidence-based practices from social-cognitive and constructivist learning theories. When I wrote my leadership books, I leveraged these practices to demystify the meaning of leadership and the underlying principles.
In contrast, I avoid what most authors do, which is rely on labels to discuss leadership. Some example labels are authentic leader, Millenial, introvert/extravert, dominant type, judging/perceiving, colored hats, maverick, spectator, authoritarian, transactional leader, and so on.
Instead, I emphasize leadership behaviors, the intent behind them, and what results by using them consistently.
In his blog, Reconsidering servant leadership, Adam Bryant writes:
“Jargon and buzzwords grow like weeds in the business world, and it’s good to thin them out.”
Our brains are drawn towards using labels to explain why people act the way they do (think about how we make the fundamental attribution error).
In a recent conversation, I explained to a colleague about how I avoid labels. Lightbulb! He discovered my hook: unlabeled leadership.
Photo by ConvertKit on Unsplash
Using my marketing hook
Having a hook is great, but how do you use it?
I’ll use my hook as the basis of a podcast series that I’m starting in January. It will be called the Unlabeled Leadership Podcast. With my guests, we’ll talk about stories that illustrate leadership practices. we’ll uncover the underlying principles, and we’ll discuss how listeners can leverage them. The show will emphasize practicality and application.
One more thing (an afterthought)
After publishing this blog, I listened to Darren Hardy’s podcast episode, Does Servant Leadership Actually Work? (00:09:44). During the episode, Darren goes on a bizarre rant attacking the servant leadership concept. To him, servant leadership is an extreme that diminishes what leadership means and causes dependencies. He then introduces another label, human-centered leadership, and proclaims that this is what people need to practice. He then discusses how you can learn human-centered leadership through his course.
Darren’s podcast illustrates the problem with labeling: what a term means to you can be much different than what it means to me.
About the author
Gary is a Leadership Author, Researcher, Consultant, and Podcast Guest. His latest book, What the Heck Is Leadership and Why Should I Care?, is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook. You can learn more about Gary and his other books at https://www.garyadepaul.com. | https://medium.com/an-idea/searching-for-my-hook-ed14c97d7075 | ['Gary A. Depaul', 'Phd', 'He Him His'] | 2020-11-27 16:04:16.468000+00:00 | ['Small Business Marketing', 'Marketing Tips', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Marketing Trends'] |
A 3-Step Process for Dealing With Difficult Co-Workers | A 3-Step Process for Dealing With Difficult Co-Workers
Identify who annoys you, find out why, and then practice better reactions
Photo by rawpixel.com
At some point in your career, you’ll undoubtedly cross paths with colleagues that irk you. Maybe it’s the presumption that their opinions are the only correct ones on the planet or their blatant brown-nosing to get on the boss’s good side. Perhaps you can’t stand how their arrogance, moodiness, or quick temper puts a damper on the company culture.
Difficult co-workers can high-jack your emotions. They trigger something that causes you to almost act or think irrationally, which isn’t a healthy situation in which you can succeed. You may find that sooner or later your exasperation expands until every little thing that person does makes you want to pull your hair out.
Unfortunately, in the case of annoying co-workers, you can’t simply remove them from your life. Avoiding them around the office or circumventing one-on-one meetings probably won’t work either.
Fortunately, there’s a way to put a positive spin on the situation. One that stems from a counter-intuitive insight about dealing with difficult people. When we discern a quality in someone else that irks us, we can benefit from pausing to examine exactly why we have that reaction and look more closely at what it can teach us about ourselves.
The friction of interacting with an annoying co-worker presents a chance to cultivate essential leadership skills like assertiveness, self-awareness, and confidence. It can provide an unexpected opportunity for personal growth that goes beyond solely testing the limits of your patience.
Try This Three-Step Approach to Deal With Difficult Co-Workers
1. Identify the person that irks you
Amidst a daily pattern of low-grade irritation at a co-worker’s annoying habits and idiosyncrasies, you may not notice exactly how much he or she aggravates you on a deeper, personal level. Think about the co-worker you vent about most often to your friends or family, the one you have interactions with that derail your day or the co-worker you would never want to be stuck in a crowded elevator with. Take the time to identify them.
2. Figure out exactly why this person provokes such resentment
Start by getting specific about your feelings towards this person. Rather than making overblown, blanket statements like “She’s the most annoying person on earth,” identify the emotions provoked.
Irritation?
Insignificance?
Disappointment?
This list can help you find the right words to describe your feelings. Simply labeling the emotions has a soothing cognitive effect that allows you to embrace a solution-focused mindset. Similarly, identify the exact behaviors your co-worker does that frustrate you. Move from “I can’t stand being around him” to “I think it’s really disrespectful when she talks over people in meetings.”
3. Learn to see your reaction as a form of feedback
Use the other person as a mirror. Question what your reaction to that person can teach you about yourself. For instance, consider what this person is modeling for you in a “how not to be” way. Does juxtaposing your co-worker’s chronic forgetfulness with your penchant for organization and systems show you that these are strengths you want to leverage more, spurring a career pivot?
It’s also possible a co-worker’s behavior may trigger fears or insecurities you want to work on. If a colleague annoys you because he’s always stealing the spotlight, consider if it’s touching a concern you have about coming off as cocky if you did the same. Now flip the script: Instead of simmering in the upset, question if learning to do a better job of trumpeting your own achievements is something you want to work on. Then make it a priority to do so.
This strategy of looking in the mirror as it’s referred to in leadership development may seem simple but it’s not always easy. It may bring to light ways in which you’re no longer willing to be mistreated (such as being yelled at or criticized), revealing how you may need to create stronger personal boundaries in relationships, including those with co-workers or your boss. For others, it may touch on vulnerabilities like feeling like a fraud in your job or approval-seeking at the office.
These tricky emotions take bravery and courage to face. Most people spend a lot of time ignoring these challenges, missing out on the ways looking in the mirror can pave the path to lasting personal growth. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/a-3-step-process-for-dealing-with-difficult-co-workers-2a0a5f604262 | ['Melody Wilding'] | 2019-08-12 20:15:32.228000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Management', 'Communication', 'Work', 'Relationships'] |
Untangling knots | So the initial implementation added the new property tax_code_name to the Client model (yes, we are mostly using the Active Record pattern). Instead of a string , we were using a custom TaxCodeName type (we use couchrest_model , so every property is typecasted) that we can evolve in the future with richer behavior.
But we had no instance methods… that was disturbing. Moreover, we did use some class methods from the Client .
— Creating these methods on the Client just to call class methods on TaxCodeName doesn’t feel right — Patricia said.
That was totally true. We had an instance as a property, so why not delegate through that?
It turned out that we needed information about the country to make good decisions about the tax code name. We had the country on the Client so it was the easiest way.
Some brainstorming later we had three other possible implementations.
Putting the country information in our custom type. This was somewhat redundant (we had it on the Client). It also had the risk of it getting out of sync with the country in the Client if the value were updated.
Reading the Client country from the custom type. This is a useful feature that couchrest_model provides and we already used in other places. The main problem is that if the Client updated their country, we would have an invalid combination of country and tax code name.
provides and we already used in other places. The main problem is that if the Client updated their country, we would have an invalid combination of country and tax code name. Updating the tax code property to be a composite object with both tax code name and number. The problem was that we were storing it as a String , so we would need to migrate all our data or do some magic to provide backwards compatibility with existing data.
No obvious best option.
We took a step back. Why was the country important? Could we model the dependency on the country in a different way?
The country was used to scope the tax code name (there is no guarantee that a name is globally unique), but the use case at hand only needed to handle one specific gateway on one specific country!
Right there we found an opportunity to simplify.
We let the code for the gateway handle the transformation from name to id. Since the gateway was already aware of the country, no scoping was needed.
We removed the custom type… the remaining logic (retrieving tax code names given a country) was moved from the type to a repository-like object. The tax_code_name property was now just a String .
property was now just a . Still, the solution was not ideal. We store tax codes in several other models and only having the tax code name on one felt weird. But there was a deadline to meet and the solution was good enough given that we would not be making use of that field event if it existed.
A few UI updates and a few validations to ensure that the property was required for a country and rejected everywhere and the feature was ready to ship to the staging environment.
Even if shipping the first version would have worked, together we found a better option: there is more shared knowledge of the feature and we have some ideas to improve it even more, while still managing to make a quick release.
I’d call that a victory 🙂 | https://medium.com/cabify-product/untangling-knots-982859874eea | ['Abel Muiño'] | 2017-02-15 14:54:31.542000+00:00 | ['Ruby', 'Software Development'] |
Thresholds & Transformations: r3.0 Reviews 2020 & Previews 2021 | By Bill Baue & Ralph Thurm
Thresholds of Transformation represents an apt theme to summarize 2020, as we transition into 2021. The year ended with the sad news that our Steering Board Member Brendan LeBlanc unexpectedly passed across the threshold of mortality, transforming from a vibrant living being into a cherished memory.
We are nurturing Brendan’s legacy by dedicating our first White Paper, From Monocapitalism to Multicapitalism: 21st Century Value Creation (which we are just now releasing) to him, given the key role he played in helping birth it into existence. Here’s what we have to say:
Dedicated to Brendan LeBlanc, who passed away unexpectedly just before this White Paper was released. Brendan was a close friend and colleague who we remember for his keen intelligence and wicked good sense of humor. As a r3.0 Steering Board Member, he championed this White Paper in particular (you wouldn’t have it in your hands now without Brendan’s tireless advocacy) and the work of r3.0 more broadly — particularly our work on Sustainability Context and the Carrying Capacities of the Capitals. Brendan’s fingerprints are all over the famous Paragraph 58 in the International Integrated Reporting Council’s Background Paper on Value Creation, which integrates carrying capacity and thresholds & allocations prominently, and we remember him for his most memorable quote: “The only thing more dangerous than no progress is the illusion of progress.” But ultimately, we remember Brendan for the deep belly laughter he inspired every time we were together. The world is a much better place for his having been here.
In memory of his humor, we share these pictures of Brendan joking around with r3.0 Managing Director Ralph Thurm and Senior Director Bill Baue at the 2016 Sustainable Brands Conference:
The release of the Multicapitalism White Paper has been a long time coming, as Baue explains (quoting David Crosby) in the Author’s Foreword. Indeed, acting in his joint roles as r3.0 Steering Board Member and International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) Ambassador, Brendan started lobbying for this White Paper as a joint project as early as 2017. By Spring of 2018, when Bill met with then-IIRC CEO Richard Howitt (now an r3.0 Steering Board Member) in Boston, Brendan’s advocacy had been sufficiently successful that Richard Howitt commenced the meeting with “you don’t have to pitch me, Bill — I’m already sold!”
Fast forward more than two-and-a-half years, after Richard keynoted on the Paper at 2 r3.0 Conferences and fundraising efforts hit endless roadblocks, when Bill sent the final draft to IIRC, they responded that the paper was “important and provocative.” Too provocative to put their name on it, as it turns out — so rather than ask us to edit out the provocations, IIRC showed respect to the ideas by stepping back for r3.0 to publish the paper on our own. We believe Brendan would be proud of the paper, as it advocates for transcending the illusory progress of Monocapitalism and Impact Valuation and other incrementalist doctrines, and instead advocates for progress with respect to the carrying capacities of the multiple capitals. We hope you enjoy the Paper!
Speaking of carrying capacities, 2020 was, of course, the year of “flattening the curve” within the capacity of the healthcare system. While Covid is predominantly bad news, with almost 77 million cases and almost 1.7 million deaths globally (as of this writing, according to Johns Hopkins), the good news is that it raises awareness of carrying capacities thresholds, as we at r3.0 pointed out in our March 2020 article. Essentially, the healthcare system capacity limits (the dotted line in the left graphic above) exposed by steep Covid curves correspond to such carrying capacity thresholds across the board (as generalized in the 1972 Limits to Growth study in the right graphic above), from climate change to biodiversity loss to living wages to economic and social inequities.
Almost a half-century has passed since Limits to Growth introduced the concept of “overshoot and collapse” when systems transgress carrying capacity limits — which humanity has been doing since then, according to Ecological Footprint data. We at r3.0 have been trying to confront this problem for two decades, and 2020 represents a breakthrough year.
Last week, we launched the “Thresholds of Transformation” project for pilot testing the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development’s Sustainable Development Performance Indicators (see here for our article on the project). More the 40 partners joined us from over 20 organizations in our Kickoff Meeting for piloting the Three Tiered set of Indicators (Tier One = Incrementalist; Tier Two = Contextualized / Thresholds-Based; Tier Three = Transformational). r3.0 will train the companies (and several of our Advocation Partners) to implement the indicators, after which we will analyze the results for UNRISD, who will publish a report and host a Conference to present the results. We at r3.0 consider this a historic event, as the world has been waiting for applying these carrying capacity thresholds across the spectrum for many decades.
r3.0 / UNRISD Thresholds of Transformation Pilot Project Kickoff Call
Speaking of Conferences, we at r3.0 of course pivoted from hosting our Conference in Rotterdam at the Erasmus Pavilion again, to hosting it online (quite successfully, we should add.) You can find link to the videos here and to the presentation decks here. At the Conference, we also released two Blueprints: the Sustainable Finance Blueprint and the Value Cycles Blueprint, with two tracks of the Conference devoted to the themes of Finance & Growth and Value & Circularity.
In addition, the Conference devoted two other tracks to themes around which we are launching Blueprints and other activities in 2021: on the themes of Education & Governance, we soft launched the Educational Transformation Blueprint at the Conference, with Co-Authors Anneloes Smitsman and Joe Brewer speaking; and we will launch the Systemic Governance & Funding Blueprint in 2021.
On the theme of Science & Behavior, r3.0 continues to advance the Global Thresholds & Allocations Council, both at the global level and increasingly at the bioregional level, where Bill is serving as Convener of the Connecticut River Valley Bioregional Collaborative (a member of the global Regenerative Communities Network), which is pursuing a National Science Foundation grant to create a toolkit for bioregional networks to measure and manage carrying capacity thresholds in the energy and food & agriculture systems.
Finally, r3.0 is already gearing up for 2022, when Bill and Ralph will be teaching the Transformation Journey Program in the new Chief Value Officer MBA program that r3.0 Academic Alliance Member Delphine Gibassier is launching at Audencia University. See Bill discuss this in a video here. Delphine has also joined us as a Steering Board Member, as has Will Szal, Board Chair of Regen Network (which is also an Advocation Partner).
The whole team of r3.0 wishes you and your beloved ones a relaxing festive season and a great start into 2021. May it be a year of continued breakthrough towards a regenerative and distributive economy! | https://medium.com/@r3dot0/thresholds-transformations-r3-0-reviews-2020-previews-2021-a23150451dcd | [] | 2020-12-22 11:28:19.910000+00:00 | ['Multicapitalism', 'Sustainability Context', 'Thresholds', 'Allocations', 'Transformation'] |
“You Need To Pick A Side” | My friend became frustrated as he asked me questions about my political views trying to figure out what side I am on and in exasperation he said, “You have to pick a side. You can’t continue to not stand for anything.” And I responded that I stand for the values within the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
We’re so conditioned to think in terms of ‘this or that’ that we often feel uncomfortable with or confused by those who don’t fit into our neat little boxes.
Martin Luther King, Jr was one of those people who didn’t fit into any particular political box. He certainly didn’t come up with his vision for humanity by listening to either the Democrats or Republicans — both sides initially opposed civil rights.
So much of the media goads us into an ‘us vs them’ ‘right vs left’ perspective and uninvestigated it seems to make perfect sense. After all, those people on the other side have such different values than we do — right? It then makes sense to see them as our adversary. To explore any other perspective doesn’t often even cross our minds.
Divisiveness feels empowering. Anger feels like it will eventually get us where we want — and feel we need — to go. Although this ‘us vs them’ approach never really works we hold out hope that next time, surely next time, it will.
This ‘common enemy perspective’ at a certain level makes us feel good not only because we feel we are right but also because we feel those people over there are wrong. It feels enlivening to gather with others who agree with us and who are against those who don’t.
It’s so easy to go with the status quo and become addicted to those voices pitting us against each other and it’s often not so easy to see our way out. Not the way out to the opposite point of view but the way out of all polarizing views. The way out to a completely different kind of view which is not against anyone.
Rather than a ‘common enemy perspective’ it’s possible to see from a ‘common humanity perspective’, which is the view Martin Luther King Jr. held for humanity. He wasn’t against any one— he was against those systems that were unaligned with our common values. His fight for civil rights was not only for black people but for those white people that were caught up in the indignities of systemic racism.
MLK reminded us that we’re at our best when we stand in a circle aligned with our common values rather than on opposite sides pointing fingers. It was the power of his unifying vision for humanity that cut the engine to legal systemic racism and it will be the power of this same vision that will ‘turn our ship ‘round right.’
MLK said, “There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available” — and we are one of those remedies that is readily available.
We, united, are what we are waiting for.
There is really no other way. We just simply can’t move forward divided.
Unified in our common values we are that readily available remedy. | https://medium.com/the-national-discussion/you-need-to-pick-a-side-7ae51bb5bb01 | ['Dhyana Stanley'] | 2020-11-23 13:11:52.458000+00:00 | ['Martin Luther King', 'Politics', 'Unity', 'Peacebuilding', 'Peace'] |
I’ll Gladly Do a Meeting Tuesday for an IPA Today | When I was younger, hard liquor had me blacking out every weekend. People used to ask me what it’s like to blackout, to which I would ask, “What’s it like not to?”
It was bad.
Whenever someone started singing that damn Lil’ John song “Shots,” it was the beginning of the end of my ability to form new memories for the rest of the night.
So, after getting arrested one night for wielding a samurai sword on two police officers, I decided to stop taking shots. The funny thing is, it actually worked. I never blacked out again after that. The not-so-funny thing is, I gradually devolved into a daily beer drinker.
Read more about the whole samurai sword fiasco here:
I’ve come to the conclusion, yet again, that alcohol is bad for me. The problem is, as always, that I can’t stop drinking it on my own. Every time I think I’ve got it under control, reality kicks me in the head.
That’s where I am today. Well, yesterday I was, anyway. Today I went to a meeting. It was part of a deal I struck with my girlfriend. “Let me drink tonight, and I’ll go to a meeting tomorrow,” said my alcohol-possessed alter ego. I felt like a man at the gallows with a noose around his neck, pleading for another day to live. “I’ll do anything you say. Just give me one more day.”
It’s not the first time I made a deal like that, but it is the first time I agreed to go to a meeting. She was worried that I might not follow through considering my spotty record.
But I did.
The fear I felt this morning before heading out to the meeting was a clear indicator that I was about to do something important. That fear is our body’s way of telling us that something new is about to happen. New is scary because it’s unknown.
We want comfortable patterns in our lives because those are the best circumstances for survival. But when you have a yearning to thrive, then fear will walk along the path with you, hand in hand. No victory can be had without the possibility of defeat.
And I must admit, I tasted a bite of victory when I left that meeting today.
So I’ll do my best to guard my sobriety one day at a time. It’s not my first go-around. I’ve gone to meetings before. I’ve been sober before. I’ve even done them both at the same time. The tricky thing is to continue doing it. Here in New Hampshire, there’s beer in every single store. I’m an IPA guy, and those things are everywhere here.
It’s a struggle.
I may have to run a few less errands for a while so I can avoid literally every single place. The more I write, the less I expose myself to temptation. So here I am writing about being sober.
Day 1.
Wish me luck as I hold my nose and take the plunge.
I’m grateful to be here. That’s all I’ve got. Thanks for listening. | https://medium.com/blueinsight/ill-gladly-do-a-meeting-tuesday-for-an-ipa-today-6d766dfda880 | ['Brian Relay'] | 2020-12-05 17:01:16.353000+00:00 | ['Beer', 'Sobriety', 'Meetings', 'Alcohol', 'Blue Insights'] |
The Effects of Polarization on Voter Turnout in United States Presidential Elections | The Effects of Polarization on Voter Turnout in United States Presidential Elections
One of the most compelling ways American citizens can exercise their democratic rights is to vote in elections. Through elections, the people hold the right to influence the direction of the political agenda through a punishment and reward system where the people are accurately represented. If a legislator upholds the people's will, they can be rewarded by winning an election, but if they deny the people’s will, they may be punished by losing. Many countries utilize this idea of representation through elections, but participation varies from country to country (Dahl and Shapiro, 2015; Bumgardner, 2016).
In the United States, there are a variety of factors that affect voter turnout in any election. For instance, high levels of access to political resources, partisan and ideological identification, socioeconomic status, class, and social associations persuade and increase the likelihood of citizens to vote in an election. On the other hand, factors such as residential location, economic hardships, voter ID laws, and registration requirements discourage electoral participation. Moreover, electoral competitiveness, election type, and demographics, such as age, gender, and race, affect electoral participation and voter turnout (FairVote, 2012; Bumgardner, 2016).
Political parties and their polarizing tendencies have historically had a considerable impact on the American electorate. However, in the 1990s, the Democratic and Republican parties’ stances began to diverge. Over the past 25 years, the Democratic Party has shifted to the “left,” which is synonymous with socially liberal policies and economic policies that develop a stronger social safety net. On the other hand, the Republican Party has shifted to the “right” and is synonymous with socially conservative policies and fewer economic regulations. Following this transformation, many Americans began to identify strongly with their party’s primary policy views. As a result, people frequently modified their political preferences to align with the positions of their political party, reinforcing partisan divisions (Political Polarization in the United States). Since party polarization has a strong presence in the average electorate’s political views, is it still a substantial factor in voter turnout in presidential elections?
According to Bumgardner (2016), two primary theories detail the influence polarization has on voter turnout. One theory holds that party polarization is restricted to those who are politically engaged. This theory contends that the electorate, consisting of political elites and the general public, has placed themselves in groups of like-minded people with overlapping policy or ideological stances. As a result, the American electorate consists primarily of moderates. The alternative argument contends that the partisan divide between Democrats and Republicans is not an elite-level phenomenon but extends to the general public. According to this theory, political engagement is a crucial intervening element that impacts public opinion and electoral action. Americans with a high level of political sophistication are prone to adopting elite-level polarization regarding their ideological and policy preferences. This portion of the population nearly always votes for their party’s candidates, and they remain firm about their party’s policy stances. Therefore, if the electorate’s more intelligent members share the same degrees of polarization as elected officials, some electorate benefits from policy consistency and representation.
With both of these hypotheses in mind, data from the 2016 American National Election Studies (ANES) prove that polarization still exists within the electorate and affects voter turnout. By analyzing the difference of how the survey respondents rated the Democrat and Republican parties on a 0–100 scale, it shows that the average electorate in 2016 tended to lean more Democratic than Republican (see figure 1).
Figure 1: 2016 Polarization Based on The Individual Electorate’s Feeling Thermometer (feelings towards the Republican and Democratic Party).
Still, most people (31%) feel relatively neutral about both parties, thus confirming Bumgardner’s (2016) theories (see figure 2).
Figure 2: 2016 Electoral Polarization Breakdown Based on the 2016 ANES Survey Responses.
Although party polarization is still an active part of civic engagement, it only slightly affected the electorate for the 2016 presidential elections. As seen in the 2016 ANES study, out of the 4,270 respondents, 2,887 (76%) stated they voted in the 2016 presidential election (see figure 3).
Figure 3: Voter Turnout in the 2016 November Election Based on the 2016 ANES Survey Responses.
Among those who voted, respondents who identified with a political party were .01% less likely to vote in the 2016 presidential election. The data proved that party polarization was not a significant factor that drove the electorate to vote in the election.
There is a multitude of other factors, such as gender and race, that affect voter turnout rates. However, according to the ANES findings, when analyzed separately, race and gender, similarly to polarization, were not significant factors that affected voter turnout among the average electorate in the 2016 presidential election. Only Hispanics took race into account when considering whether or not to vote. Moreover, when combined with polarization, one might assume that such factors have an increased likelihood of affecting voter turnout rates. However, data shows that the average voter considering polarization, race, and gender combined did not have any significance to voting in the 2016 presidential election.
Understanding the various factors that influence voter turnout help to distinguish attributes that substantially affect elections, especially in political races like the 2020 election. Despite 2020’s unique obstacles to voter registration and voting, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 presidential election had the largest voter turnout of the twenty-first century (Fabina, 2021). According to the Cook Political Report, over 158 million American citizens voted in the 2020 presidential election. In previous years, around half of American citizens eligible to vote voted in presidential elections (Force, 2004). What factors generated this surge in voter turnout rates in the 2020 presidential election? Once data from the 2020 American Election Studies questionnaire is released, further analyses should be done to determine the significance of party polarization among the electorate and whether or not it spiked voter turnout rates in the 2020 presidential election.
Focusing on components like partisan polarization and their effects on voter turnout is essential for anyone interested in election outcomes, especially political candidates and the general public. Voter turnout is a complex concept with various moving parts, where polarization is just one factor that coincides with it. Partisan polarization is not simply a phenomenon of the elite, but it extends to the general public. Politically knowledgeable people already pay close attention to their elected leaders, so polarization is likely to strengthen these voters’ partisan tendencies. Therefore, polarization should have an impact on the voting behavior of moderately informed people. For those less active in the political sphere, partisan polarization alleviates the political divide. These citizens will begin to see the same level of policy alignment as those who align with elites. If elected officials and engaged individuals in the electorate have similar viewpoints, skepticism about the government should be reduced since voters’ policy desires come to fruition.
Furthermore, polarization should stimulate the electorate by allowing individuals to elect representatives who share similar views, increasing the participation of citizens in the electoral process. Understanding this notion enables candidates to determine how much time and effort they need to focus on their party to obtain the maximum votes. As a result, elected officials will be in tune with the interests of the typical voter, which prevents the opportunity for distrust and cynicism in the political system, ultimately increasing individual’s willingness to vote. | https://medium.com/@johnsoncamille555/the-effects-of-polarization-on-voter-turnout-in-united-states-presidential-elections-98a802cf18b4 | ['Camille Johnson'] | 2021-07-28 04:25:44.046000+00:00 | ['2016 Election', 'Politics And Elections', 'Polarization', 'Politics', 'Democratic Party'] |
Live! Tokyo International Film Festival 2021 Livestream; Full Show | ❂ Artist Event : Tokyo International Film Festival
❂ Venue : Tokyo Midtown Hibiya, Tokyo, Japan
❂ Live Streaming Tokyo International Film Festival 2021
Conversation Series at Asia Lounge
The Japan Foundation Asia Center & Tokyo International Film Festival
Marking its second installment since 2020, this year’s Conversation Series will again be advised by the committee members led by filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu. Directors and actors from various countries and regions including Asia will gather at the Asia Lounge to engage in discussion with their Japanese counterparts.
This year’s theme will be “Crossing Borders”. Guests will share their thoughts and sentiments about film and filmmaking in terms of efforts and attempts to transcend borders. The festival will strive to invite as many international guests as possible to Japan so that they can engage in physical conversation and interaction at the Asia Lounge.
The sessions will be broadcast live from the festival venue in Tokyo Midtown Hibiya every day for eight days from October 31st to November 7th. Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/@b.i.m.sa.la.bi.mp.r.o.k/live-tokyo-international-film-festival-2021-livestream-full-show-6b8ac647ece | [] | 2021-10-30 14:00:08.480000+00:00 | ['Festivals', 'Film'] |
PXUC (PIXIU coin)： The world’s only gold cryptocurrency backed by real gold mining areas!！ | Pixiu Mining Corporation(PMC) utilize this meaning to issue PIXIU coin in the form of cryptocurrency, so that more people can make profits by holding stable gold assets. We have the faith that PIXIU coin will become the highest-valued gold cryptocurrency around the world within three years.
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🔎Gold reserves assessment→ Stickel & Associates, an independent geological consultant company, visited mining areas and proposed a resources evaluation report based on the reference of government documents and reports of other geological experts. Meanwhile the test results showed the presence of platinum metal.
🔎Mine asset assessment→ KPMG to analyze the value of mining assets. KPMG LLP issued an analysis report after deducting the total mining cost of $3.335 billion. The estimated asset value is $ 5.447 billion, and the detailed appraisal report is shown in the appendix.
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WELCOME to QUINCY | https://medium.com/@pixiumining/pxuc-pixiu-coin-the-worlds-only-gold-cryptocurrency-backed-by-real-gold-mining-areas-f553e6ec244b | ['Pixiu Mining Corporation'] | 2020-04-24 10:41:51.953000+00:00 | ['Gold', 'Coins', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Mining'] |
Legendary Guide to Content Marketing: Go From “Traffic Zero” to “Content Hero” in One Afternoon | Okay, that’s all about Branding!
But —
As we said, Branding is only half of the equation.
It simply states what content you create and in what way…
Now we gotta explore FOR WHOM do you create content, and WHERE you post it.
The partially filled Brand-Audience diagram
Audience
Deeply knowing your audience is, of course, important for creating Content Strategies… And we’ll get to that later.
But right now, we’re interested in something completely different.
We’re interested in knowing our audience so that we can write like they think.
Huh??
Ok, imagine a public speaker.
An expert will always come to an event at least one hour sooner and mingle with the audience. This allows him or her to get a feeling for the audience: the way they talk, what they find humorous, their beliefs, mannerism, and culture.
For example…
The same speaker might deliver a speech about ethics to high-school students in a different way (using different examples and jokes) than to a local Civic Society… Or even have different mannerisms and energy levels.
See? A completely different performance — with the same content.
The same way you have to “mingle” with your audience to get a better feel for:
What they want Where they want it How they want it served
Nail this, and your audience will instantly vibe with your brand.
Ok, that’s all fine and dandy… but how do you mingle with your audience online?
Let’s explore some ways!
Audience Research
There are so many ways to do customer research it’s easy to get paralyzed.
Don’t overcomplicate!
Remember that even some research will get you ahead of the curve since most marketers don’t do any!!
From State of Marketing Strategy by CoSchedule
I believe that one of the reasons for this is because there’s a lack of clarity about what makes customer research good.
Like… When to stop? What’s good enough?
My rule of thumb is that you’ve done enough research when you start to predict what your audience thinks (feedback, comments, beliefs) with high confidence.
Use this rule with the following 6 research techniques that can be done in one afternoon from the comfort of your desk.
(There are a ton more, of course… But I only picked the most simple and effective ones. You know, the “20% that gives you 80% of the results”. You’d be crazy not to do them.)
Anyway, the techniques are split into two parts…
If you’re just starting out and don’t have an audience
#1 Create a proto-persona
In science we call this making an educated guess.
A proto-persona is simply a persona that you create before you do any research.
(You’ll be surprised at what you can come up with by simply imagining your audience in day to day life.
My favorite is Hubspot’s Make My Persona app. It’s completely free and a great way to kickstart your research. Go try it now!
After a series of 7 steps, this is the final result for Hubspot’s Make My Persona app.
#2 Online Observations
What do people like to talk about the most?
Their problems and experiences!
Here are a few things you can do…
Google for <topic> + forums/communities/review sites Search for groups and hashtags on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram Find popular youtube channels about your topic and check what people are commenting.
You get the point.
But if you’re having a hard time visualizing, I recorded the process for you 😄
Recording of me doing audience research for the Keto topic.
#3 The Obvious Adams Technique
The simplest way to get data from your ideal audience? Reach out and ask them!
Go to social media, register on forums, join subreddits…
Then find people interested in your topic and send them a DM like this:
“Hey <name>! How are you? My name is Mihael and I would love to connect because I’m starting a new blog about <topic> and I saw that <what he or she did related to your topic>. <add a compliment, establish a point of interest>. Anyway, if you have 5 minutes, could you describe to me what’s your biggest problem with <topic> right now? Thanks!”
Easier peasier.
If You Already Have Traffic and Sales
#1 Respond to compliments with “Thanks, but why?”
Andrew Grove, CEO of Intel, often did this when his fans praised his classic book High Output Management.
A highly confidential conversation between a fan and Andrew Groove.
(Use different wording if you’re afraid to look like a goofball.)
Nevertheless, it’s a great way to find out why your audience likes your blog/product/content with a simple habit tweak.
#2 Customer Surveys
Send out a survey in a newsletter to everyone subscribed to your email list.
Ask them…
Who they are
What problem they had
How your content helped them
How they gonna spend their weekend…
Or anything else that you wanna know.
(But not too much or you’ll look like a creep.)
#3 Focus Groups
Similar to Customer Surveys, but goes a step further.
Identify 8 loyal and highly engaged fans. Invite them to join an online discussion about your content (or products) where they’ll more deeply discuss their experiences and give critiques.
If you like working with them you can even pay them to form a “Council of Content Advisors”.
That could be fun.
(Lots of companies would thrive right now if they simply listened to their customers — right, Blizzard?!)
Audience Persona
After you soak up all that juicy information about your audience, it’s time you put it all in one place and create a buyer (or audience) persona!
Hubspot’s definition of a Buyer Persona.
I already mentioned Hubspot’s Make My Persona and I definitely recommend you use it…
But if you wanna make it by hand, here are some questions that will help you out…
How old are they?
What’s their education?
What industry do they work in?
What’s the size of their organization?
What’s their job title?
What are their goals? Personal and Professional?
What are their biggest challenges?
What are their responsibilities?
What tools do they use or need?
How do they gain information for their job?
Where do they hang out online?
By now you know really well who you’re actually talking to when writing and distributing your content.
All that’s left is picking the best platform to do so!
Platform
There’s a TON of places you can be active nowadays…
And that’s precisely why people stopped paying attention! They know they can get top tier information on any platform they fancy.
To win their attention we need to create amazing content that stands out. And the only way to do that is by focusing intensely on only one, maybe two platforms at a time.
You see, each platform is unique. It takes a few months before you get a feeling for how it works and adapt your content so that you get shares and engagement.
So if you’re a one-man-army with limited resources… Definitely don’t be like Gary V and his “100 pieces of content a day” model.
Gary V can execute his Content Philosophy with the help of a huge team.
Just pick one platform and master it.
But…
How do you know which platform to choose?
The safest bet is to go with the one you know your audience loves.
(If you don’t know which one is that go do some more Audience Research.)
Now it might not be your preferred platform… and it might have a content format that you’re NOT naturally good at…
But I encourage you to give it a shot anyway. Even if you suck at that content you can always get better with practice.
Here are some platforms you can try:
Now I just told you the safe way…
But you can also go the risky way, like John Lee Dumas.
A few years ago when podcasting started to bloom, John noticed NO ONE was doing interviews with successful entrepreneurs. Was this low supply indicator of low demand? Or was he first to the market?
John took the risk. He started Entrepreneurs on Fire and after 18 months became a multi-millionaire.
Or he might not have.
That’s the risk of taking the road no one took before.
(If you choose to take the risky route, make sure you do extensive research… Sell the idea before you have the product. Reach out to 200 potential customers and ask them if they like the idea. And if they do, get commitment by asking them to invest $1, lol.)
Content Stamp
FINALLY! We’re defined our brand, audience, and platform.
To keep everything in one place made a spreadsheet like this and fill it out.
The last thing we’re gonna do is sum everything up in one short paragraph… Called the Content Stamp.
Content Stamp has to clearly state your audience, values, calling, delivery, and platform.
Improvise a few variations and check which one you like best. Then polish it until you’re happy with how the paragraph represents your brand.
For example, here’s mine.
I write engaging blockbuster posts for entrepreneurs about min-maxing their content & email marketing for optimal ROI. I strive to explain everything in a simple way with lots of case studies and examples.
Keep this in mind whenever you create any piece of content.
We’re moving on to Content Strategies. But first, the Youtube sensation Mr.Beast is gonna show us how to develop a brand to the point that every content goes viral.
CASE STUDY #2: Mr. Beast’s Virality Formula
If Wendy’s taught us about brand-audience fit, then Mr. Beast will teach us how to CONSISTENTLY create content that people share like crazy.
Analyzing his channel I’ve noticed four things he does that you could replicate in your content creation, too.
But before we reveal his secrets, we gotta explore how his brand (and content creation) evolved.
History of Mr. Beast
Mr. Beast brand started in 2013. The content value proposition (what your content is known for) wasn’t anything special. Neither was the execution. Low quality gameplay videos and commentaries, with a few informative videos sprinkled here and there…
They raked in some views, but nothing ground shattering.
After 648 days of experimentation, Mr. Beast struck gold with “How much does Pewdiepie make”. The video didn’t go viral, but it got significantly more views than his regular content.
Note: The video in the picture that got almost 5 million views went viral in 2020, long after his rise to fame.
While mastering content creation around his first viral topic — money, he still invested more than 50% of his efforts towards further experimentation. It took him (again) more than 2 years before he found his second golden nugget… extreme challenges.
Right before the challenge-type content started to explode, he created videos like “Reading The Entire Dictionary In One Sitting” and “Counting To One Mil”… And they went viral — a few million views viral.
After 4 years, Mr. Beast finally got his first big check.
Building an Empire
Even though Mr. Beast‘s videos became talk-of-the-town, at this point everyone with enough time and determination could replicate his videos…
For sure, the execution was admirable… but nothing special.
Instead of splurging his new paychecks on status and fame, Mr. Beast did two things that allowed him to build his content empire.
He reinvested EVERYTHING he made back in content creation. He combined ALL his viral topics into one super-topic.
With the first mover’s advantage, complete dedication, and more than 4 years of experience Mr. Beast started creating videos not many could replicate…
Such as “Buying A House And Tipping It To The Pizza Delivery Guy”. Or featuring influencers and his fanbase to join crazy money-related challenges such as “Last To Take Hands Off $1,000,000 Keeps It”.
Mr. Beast levels of fame. the 50% line represents roughly 300k google searches.
The brand kept evolving for three extra years — finding even more viral topics, sharpening the content value proposition, and upping the production value to MORE than $200k PER VIDEO.
It wasn’t until 2019 (almost 6 years after creating his channel) that he found his winning content template: not partaking, but hosting money-related competitions featuring his friends — usually involving insane challenges.
During this time he discovered 4 secrets keys to viral content that are a part of everything he does.
Four Secrets of a Viral Brand
#1 Viral Giveaways
In 2015, Mr. Beast discovered that people love getting things for free. Since then, all his videos include some element of this topic. Either by blatantly giving out money or by buying and giving away things like private Islands or Lambos.
Here’s another example…
Noah Kagan and other good folks at Sumo.com are also masters at Viral Giveaways. Sure, iPhones raffles are cool… But giving away a $1288 worth of office equipment bundle, lifetime Dropbox subscriptions, or even a fully equipped Tesla Car — that’s something special.
Even though the giveaway item is unique, their success lies in sparking competition by allowing contestants to get more entries if they refer their friends.
This means you don’t have to give away a Tesla and go bankrupt building your audience. You can get a ton of eyeballs by giving away items that your customers want. Like top 20 finance books (valued at ~$300) if you’re a financial advisor.
#2 Lots of Emotions
Mr. Beast documents the reactions of unsuspecting people when he gives them an insane amount of money.
(Like a house to a pizza delivery guy.)
We loooove identifying with that. It’s amazing to see a “hopeless” soul suddenly gets a streak of luck … And has seemingly all problems solved.
We dream to be that person — either the one giving or the one receiving.
So…
If your content, services, or products have clear before and after transformations, simply document the most extreme and inspiring cases and create content around that.
DDP Yoga coached a nearly-disabled war veteran back to full mobility. As of November 2020, this video of Arthur’s Transformation has over 75,208,129 views!!
#3 Feature Your Audience and Industry Influencers
In every of his most successful videos, Mr. Beast features either his friends, famous people, or his fans.
This not only introduces him to new audiences but also creates connection and trust.
For example…
Ben Settle, The Email Wizard, frequently creates content featuring his followers’ thoughtful comments, which encourages his fanbase to stay engaged.
So…
If you’re making blog posts about nutrition, contact 10 nutrition influencers and let them give you a short 100 words answer to a question about the topic. Include the answer in your post.
Not only will they likely share your blog afterward (exposing you to new audiences), your existing readers will trust your brand even more just by associating with these high-profile experts.
#4 Wow factor. Something never done before.
Finally, Mr. Beast pushes his content with crazier and crazier challenges… Employing more and more people… And floors your jaw with his ingenious content ideas on a weekly basis.
There’s simply no telling what he’ll do next week.
Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko.com and the world’s best SEO expert is in a similar boat. He leverages his decade of SEO experience, a team of content creators, and various industry connections to create content not many can compete with.
He recently teamed up with Ahrefs to Analyze 11.8 million Google Search Results and document the findings.
And what can you do?
If you’re experienced and known in the industry then document your techniques and strategies…
But if you’re just starting out then reverse-engineer the techniques and strategies of OTHER world-class companies (or people). Go deep like Chris Von Wilpert and create unmatched content. The market is wide open.
Mr. Beast, The Conclusion
Mr. Beast had a humble beginning. But now, his content empire can’t be overthrown. The Content Value Proposition became so unique and difficult to execute that simply no one can replicate it anymore.
Follow his steps in these three ways…
Ruthless Experimentation — find out or discover what people want. Fierce Reinvestment — every single penny goes back to content creation. Ingenious Combination — viral topics, money, and previous experiences are leveraged to create exceptional content.
If you want to join the content elite, you’ll have to include AT LEAST one virality key in everything you do:
Design Viral Giveaways Make emotional content Feature industry famous people Create something that has never been done before
(Oh, remember Wendy’s from our first Case Study? They do #2, #3, and #4 as well 🙂)
With this in mind it’s time you learn how to craft successful Content Strategies!
Step 2: Content Strategy
Draft phase complete — currently in editing.
Step 3: Research & Outline
Draft phase complete — currently in editing.
Step 4: Content Creation
Draft phase complete — currently in editing.
Step 5: Content Promotion
TBA
Step 6: Content Monetization (Email Marketing)
Draft phase complete — currently in editing. | https://medium.com/21writers/content-marketing-28026d22b239 | ['Mihael Cacic'] | 2020-12-10 13:46:23.071000+00:00 | ['Content Marketing', 'Email Marketing', 'Content Creation', 'Branding', 'Content Distribution'] |
Beliefs: What do I care about? | Chapter 2 of 3, Part 1 of 5
One of my favorite stories about the Holy Prophet (pbuh) goes as follows: A lady once came to the Prophet with her son, and asked him to advice her son not to eat too many sweets. The Prophet asked the pair to return to him in a week — which they did, and then the Prophet comfortably advised the young boy to listen to his mother and not eat too many sweets. The mother then asked the Prophet why he had them return in a week, to which the Prophet replied that he himself enjoyed eating sweets and wanted to use that week to reduce his own consumption of sweets before he could tell the boy to do so.
Honestly, this story blows my mind. The Prophet! The Holy Prophet of God considered his own tastes and preferences to be less important than being able to help someone with sincerity. As if what he likes isn’t that important, and if by changing it he can serve a greater purpose or help someone, then it can easily be changed, no big deal. How dare I call myself flexible when I know of a man who was like this? Compared to him, I’m about as flexible as a rock. If someone was to come to me like that, I’d just be like, “I’d love to help, I really would, but I’m sorry sister, I just can’t…” And secretly I’d be thinking… Ain’t no way I’m giving up my love for sweets to teach some dumb kid.
But it wasn’t about the sweets for the Prophet. It was about the love. If the love could be redirected to something that will serve a greater purpose, then he redirects it. The object of the love beyond God’s love doesn’t matter — things are viewed as either taking him away from that Love or towards. That’s it. If I love, let’s say, sleep, and I love serving God, and my love for serving God in a certain situation negates my love for sleep, then God’s love should outweigh the other love and the other love should just get dropped. Like math. Like there are no feelings, no deep attachments involved, no importance of the human self that chases pleasure. Just run the math, look at the numbers, and execute. It was that easy for him… because his goal was so certain. He knew where he wanted to direct his love and his determination made it easier for him to steer through the fluff. It goes to show the value of the chase for pleasure is next to zero.
I care about passing this test, and while my servitude, or attempt at it, pales (and runs off in a corner and hides and cries) in comparison to the Prophet’s, I want to be able to understand what he is trying to tell me with every move he makes. Every narration of everything he ever did is a message to me, is a hint at how to address life. I want to learn. I care about getting stronger, and being of the people who live in the accordance with the will of God. Because this Will represents, to me, a life of patience, honor, peace, satisfaction, class, kindness, love, dignity, honesty, discipline, togetherness, loyalty, respect. And I want it all.
Sheikh Shomali explains something really interesting in his Islamic Belief Systems lecture series about this; he says that God has no emotions and does not experience “change” in any way. When we “please Him”, we have not changed His state from that of unhappiness to that of happiness, or if we sin we have not changed Him from being happy to unhappy. Because God is unchanging, God is timeless — the concepts of time and space and change do not apply to Him at all in the way they apply to us. And so the Sheikh likens God’s will to the sun, in the sense that the sun will always be there, it will always be shining, and whether you experience the sunshine is either up to you, or any external factors in life. For example, if you go into your home on a sunny day and as a result you do not feel sunshine, that is you choosing not to experience the sunshine, and your not experiencing the sunshine does not change the fact that the sun is still shining. It being night time or it being a cloudy day still does not change the fact that the sun is shining, and it is these finite, temporary, changeable and changing situations that influence our relationship with the sun. The sun, through it all, will remain shining.
So God’s mercy, God’s love, His forgiveness; that is always there, always being showered, and it’s up to us whether we choose to open up to it or reject it. The focus is then on me. The ball is in my court. It’s not so much about what He can do, but what I can do and what I am doing. I care about opening up to His light. I want it. And I want it to want me. What do I need to do to make sure I am always standing under His mercy?
I think I need to let go of the idea of control. From bigger situations like, “I will pursue this career and I will get this job and I will get no less than a six-figure salary and then I will buy this house and if something gets in the way of that I will be very unhappy”, to smaller situations, as small as, “this is my house and I like my kitchen to be organized in this way and this is how I arrange the dishes in the dishwasher and if you do it any other way I will be upset with you or I will eventually change it to the way I like it.” The grip. The grip I have on things in my life. Like Agha Panahiyan says, plan!! Don’t not plan. I should definitely make my life plan, and map out my future, I should just have faith in God alongside it. I just shouldn’t hold on so tightly. So that if things don’t necessarily go my way, I am not dismayed, I do not despair, instead I am so trusting of God and His plans for me that I am ready to jump to the back up plan without being hung up on why my dream plan didn’t work in the first place and then potentially miss out on what was meant to happen for me all along.
I think back to my habits and I am preparing myself for the work that I need to do. I get irritated so easily if something doesn’t go the way I want it to go, for the silliest things. An example that comes to mind is when I’ve just cleaned the sink and done the dishes and five minutes later someone pours out the remains of their coffee into the sink and sets the mug into it and leaves. And I am then greeted by, instead of a shiny sink that I just cleaned, a sink covered in dried coffee stains that I have to scrub off. That irritates me. But who am I to be irritated? Do I hold myself so highly? So worthy of being irritated? Like I have done anything great in my life for me to get irritated. What if, like in Agha Panahiyan’s video, it was a prank, and that they splashed the coffee into the sink on purpose and wanted to see my reaction?
What about all those times I wasted feeling so, so sad over plans that didn’t go my way whereas I could have been preparing for what will happen instead and how I will gracefully accept it? Why do I sulk? Why do I hold grudges? Why do I seek apologies from people who upset me? Who am I to deserve an apology? Who am I to be holding my ego so strongly that I feel I deserve to be unhappy because something wasn’t the way I wanted it to be? What have I accomplished to deserve that right? Nothing. I have accomplished nothing.
Somehow I always convince myself that I am the victim of my circumstance. Out of the three options in the Drama Triangle, I’m definitely the one that plays the victim. I get sad, and I feel wronged. My ego convinces me that life or people are being unfair or harsh towards me, and not understanding me, and so I am innocent and they are at fault. I assure myself of their injustice, so I shift the focus from myself and place the burden of improvement onto that someone else. I reassure myself that it isn’t me who is wrong, and it certainly isn’t me that needs to reflect and change. Because the reality of recognizing everything in me that needs to change is a thousand times more difficult than neatly nudging away the problem.
So I care about letting go. Letting go of control, of the chase for perfection, of the need for validation, of the “i” in happiness. Instead, I want to stand under the sunshine and soak it up. I want to grow like a flower that is desperate to touch the sky — tall, determined, and strong.
When I die, I do not want to be scared. When I’m beneath the ground watching people attending my funeral, I don’t want to beg them to stay. I don’t want to be terrified of being left alone with my deeds, of seeing the ugliness of my actions in life. Instead, I want to die fighting. Fighting my ego, fighting the ultimate war. I want to meet Him with battle scars on my soul, I want to be falling to my knees from the exhaustion, every exclamation of “I” completely shattered, my soul completely surrendered, so that when the angels greet me with the most anticipated salaam, the most peaceful peace, I return myself to them as pure as I was sent off.
And I want their embrace to feel like home.
I can’t do that without pain. So I must befriend pain. I must welcome it, and love it, and thank it… and use it. There’s a reason they’re called growing pains… You just can’t grow without ‘em. | https://medium.com/@ramadhanreflections/beliefs-what-do-i-care-about-b2a8f6c779d6 | ['Ramadhan Reflections'] | 2020-05-06 20:02:47.360000+00:00 | ['Ramadan', 'Reflections', 'Prophet', 'Muslim', 'Islam'] |
The Expat Advantage During COVID-19 | It’s mid-April (I think, I’ve lost track of what day it is), and we’ve been on pseudo lockdown, quarantine, self-isolation or whatever you are calling it in Switzerland for a little over a month. Nothing but grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations are open for business. Wait, I lie — some home and garden shops are allowing online ordering with curbside pick-up or direct delivery to your home. You can also order food delivery services (if you can stay up past midnight to land a delivery slot… this is way tougher than it sounds because my ass likes to be in bed by 10PM), takeout and buy whatever other random things you might need for post-delivery to your doorstep for an exorbitant amount of money. I’ve transitioned my kids to home learning, unwillingly reacquainted myself with the toilet brush and have become a short-order cook — it’s been a steep learning curve. Oh, and add dishwasher to the list of COVID-19 induced mind-numbing goodness because mine just fucking broke. (Yep, I’m totally aware of this being a first world problem. Do not judge me.) But, all in all, it’s not been terrible. Trying at times, yes, but not terrible.
Our family decided to ride the pandemic out in our host country of Switzerland. I’ll admit it’s not a bad place to be during this extraordinary time (as the Swiss government likes to refer to it). We’ve only been residing in Switzerland for about eight months, so we are still transitioning to regular life in der Schweiz — add a pandemic, some self-isolation and a language barrier together, and you’ve got a great cocktail for a major mind fuck. I’ve always known expat life wasn’t for sissies, and this moment in time proves it.
I’m not one of those people who has organized and redesigned their life so that when they eventually emerge from their homes, they will be a completely new person. Good on you if you were able to metamorphose into a mega hustler in the past month, but I’m more of the “we got through the day without any major disasters” sort of lockdown creature. To each their own — everyone locks down differently — no judgment here. Like many others, I’ve been cooking and cleaning like a madwoman because the natives are messy, always hungry and I have a bit of OCD when it comes to dirty floors… NOT because I’m motivated to make my house perfect. Besides, no one is going to see it in a perfect state anyway — so all that extra effort would be wasted. When I do find time to sit at my desk to work, I feel like I can’t concentrate. My mind begins to wander, the dog has to go outside, or I hear “MOM!” shouted from the basement. Most of these tasks and situations are ordinary things, now they feel amplified by sudden modification to routines and extreme usage. So, I’m having to channel my energy a bit differently in order to meet the needs of my family and most importantly, myself. Because if momma’s not happy, nobody is happy.
We have been instructed to social distance and stay home — no groups of five or more (maybe it’s less now, but I seriously have no idea because I haven’t been meeting with my friends), stay two meters apart and don’t loiter or gather in public places. Luckily, the weather during the COVID-19 imprisonment has been fantastic — warm and sunny spring days with cool nights (perfect for sleeping with your windows open). So, I have been craving the outdoors when I’m not supposed to be enjoying it. Fortunately, in Switzerland we are lucky enough to be able to get out of our homes to stretch our legs and breathe in some fresh mountain air as long as we keep our distance from others. I’ve been walking my dogs daily and taking runs on occasion (desperate times call for desperate measures because if you know me, you know I don’t love to run).
While I was out walking my dogs last week, I bumped into a dear friend. As lovely as it was to see her in person and having longed for outside companionship for weeks, our chance meeting felt awkward and alien. She stayed on the edge of the road while I walked in the middle of the street with two meters between us. It was all so weird, but we both knew it was for the common good and I was just happy to be able to have an in-person conversation with someone that wasn’t my husband or at one point lived inside my body. It’s the little things that make lockdown so much more tolerable.
With the weather being so pleasant, and I having no place to go, I started to get an itch to get my hands dirty. Since the home improvement stores are still operating remotely, I had a bunch of flowers, dirt, pots and tools delivered to help make my garden look a little bit more appealing. (I’d sure as hell like to know who took over my mind control because this is not my typical behavior.) I purchased outdoor furniture online and had it delivered to my doorstep. My husband assembled the chairs so that I could sit in the sun, get some vitamin D, sip my rosé and watch my girls play in our garden. I even scraped the weeds growing between the patio pavers to make the dandelion riddled back yard look a little less disheveled. I clearly must be desperate for outdoor activity if I’m resorting to fucking scraping weeds. It had been bothering me for weeks, but I just never found the time to get around to it till now, or maybe I didn’t care enough till the only outdoor space I had was surrounded by eyesores — self-isolation will make you do crazy things. I’m lucky to have this outdoor space as an extension of my home, and I must be nesting in my still fairly new home. It’s allowed me to teach my kids a couple of things and to create something — I forgot how much I enjoy working with my hands.
Since I’m doing my best to #staythefuckhome, I’m only trying to leave the house once a week. I attempt to knock out all my shopping tasks in one go and rid my home of the recycling that, for some reason, has begun to grow in size over the past few weeks. These weekly excursions are blessings with a touch of added anxiety. Going to the shops allows me to feel somewhat carefree and normal for a brief moment. I leave my house, get in my car, roll the windows down and jam out to whatever is playing on the radio — just like before COVID-19 made us all afraid of touching our faces and scared the world would run out of toilet paper.
But, there’s more to my weekly shopping excursion, and this is the aspect of COVID-19 I’m struggling with most during this weird-ass episode in time. Before leaving the house, I have to complete my pre-shopping checklist:
Check our household inventory levels and create a detailed list of every item I might need for the next week (because heaven forbid, we run out of that globally coveted three-ply goodness) Load my car with my mountain of recycling (I’m not going to lie, there might be a lot of extra wine bottles and beer cans) Make sure I’ve got my COVID kit armed and ready for action (ninja mask, disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer).
Then sitting in the parking lot before exiting the haven of my car, I emotionally gear up before ascending on the germ-infested world. I take a deep breath and equip myself mentally to partake in the weirdness that is now the new standard of life — one in one out at the shops, the oh so fashionable surgical masks and the constant aroma of isopropyl alcohol. As I enter the store, I immediately feel like I can’t wait to get the hell out of there — I keep to myself, skip crowded aisles and steer clear of anyone who looks suspiciously ill. I gotta say, my regular trips to the grocery store sound eerily familiar, as I’m so self-conscious of my German language skills that I literally act the same way when there isn’t a risk of catching a virus.
When I complete my errands, I douse my hands with sanitizer and pray to the gods I haven’t missed a spot. I get home and unload the goods into the basement to quarantine non-essential items for three days. Then I stress myself out wiping everything else down with disinfectant wipes and washing the fresh food with vinegar and water. When I finish, my hands feel raw from the hot water that’s scalded my hands during the umpteen times I’ve scrubbed them because I’m worried about cross-polluting something. It’s also the one day a week I intentionally save my shower for later in the day so that I can have a post-shopping decontamination ceremony. At this point, I’m ready for a drink — geez, talk about stressful.
Other than on my shopping days, I’m not exactly struggling with this whole lockdown thing. I thought it would be much more difficult than it’s been so far. I will admit, I do enjoy alone time when it’s on my terms — not necessarily when others tell me to do it. But even that’s not bothering me too much since I know isolating myself and my family is the best way to protect us from this invisible enemy.
Yes, I miss personal interactions with my people, no doubt about that — believe me, I would love to be meeting my friends for a boozy Friday lunch on a sunny terrace in Luzern right about now — but we can’t and yes, it sucks, but it’s okay. Instead, I’m making do with morning bitch sessions via WhatsApp about how much my kids eat (intermittent fasting would be beneficial with regards to the number of dishes needing washing daily especially now that the damn dishwasher is broken), and that dust and dirt will be the death of me if COVID-19 doesn’t get me first. I’ve joined Zoom calls to catch up with friends scattered around the world and I checked in on my parents more frequently to make sure they are doing okay and have ample amounts of food and toilet paper.
It seems most of my people are handling the situation pretty well, some better than others and a few are close to going off the deep end, but I’ve been noticing a trend. My long-term expat friends seem to be sailing through socially distancing and self-isolating themselves from the rest of society. I have no scientific data to prove my findings, but I think they are totally nailing it. If they are anything like me, they are used to being separated from their family and friends, have dealt with numerous bouts of loneliness and are accustomed to using the latest technology to keep in touch with loved ones around the world. Our family has even had to sadly deal with a sudden death and not being able to return home for the funeral of my father-in-law when I was 40 weeks pregnant and living in Geneva. So, I can relate to the those living abroad who have lost a family member due to COVID-19.
Having lived abroad for the past 11 years, I have missed my family and friends every single day of my expat life. Then add the fact that each time I move to a new place (five international moves so far), I leave behind my current ‘normal.’ In essence, everything I know to be ‘normal’ — including stores, activities, people, etc. — is taken away and replaced with another set of new things. This COVID era is scary and uncertain, but I feel like I’m coping with this period of crazy pretty well by utilizing the knowledge I’ve gained from my expat transition experiences.
It’s not like I’m living a life drastically different from eight months ago when I first moved back to Switzerland. This time in space is reminiscent of the beginning of any expat assignment — lots of uncertainty and not much connection to local people, places or things. I’ve been around the block a time or two, and I feel like I’m pretty comfortable with my own company (I mean, duh, I’m so much fun) and the sole companionship of my family since sometimes we are the only ones we have to socialize with during transition times to new locations.
I largely see the connection between self-isolation and the early stages of expat transition in my daughters, who have been TCKs their entire lives. Each time our family replants itself in a new place, the girls rely on each other for friendship and entertainment — not to mention a few shouting matches just for added kicks. My daughters are used to radical, sudden and drastic changes in their environments. Yes, they are bored out of their minds at times during their seclusion and they miss their friends, but this isn’t the first time in their lives they’ve been stuck together. They have lived through moments when the only friend they had was each other, had to make do with the whatever toys and stuff we could scrounge up for entertainment because the TV shows were all in a different language, and they’ve had to have picnics on the floor because we didn’t have any furniture to sit on. At least they have all their personal belongings and can be comfortable during this mandatory confinement behind the closed door of their bedroom.
So, here is my theory…
I believe expats are adaptable creatures who possess an incredible amount of hands-on life experience know-how that has unintentionally helped prepare us for the pandemic’s sudden impact on our world. They are resilient individuals who know what it feels like to be apart from family and friends and are able to overcome hardships like missing major milestones and dealing with devastating circumstances like death while living abroad because sometimes they have no other choice. They are equipped to manage abrupt transition and are familiar with acclimating to a new way of life quickly because they’ve done it before. The expat’s level of adaptability is on point, and they’ve learned early adjustment will make their lives easier to flourish in their new culture later on. And, they are probably able to battle through the loneliness of isolation a little better than the average bear. Every expat endures bouts of loneliness at some point during their time abroad, and I’m sure they have some coping mechanisms in their arsenal to battle through it.
So, if you’re a seasoned expat (or ever were) who currently feels pretty good about your current situation, I hope you’ll reach out to those who might be struggling with this unexpected transition. Offer whatever you can to support them through this tough time — it might be as easy as shooting them a text message (always use good social distancing skills), picking up the phone for them to hear your voice (use the speaker so you don’t put your dirty phone on your face) or dropping off a batch of homemade cookies (just be sure to sanitize the container, please). This situation is new for everyone, but now is a prime opportunity to show the world the hidden talents we have to thrive through transition.
Now is a time when the world needs a little more empathy and kindness. It’s difficult out there right now. If we can help another person, we should without hesitation. I hope these small acts of kindness will help us all see the goodness humanity has to offer and to because we are all in this together but apart. | https://medium.com/@claire_42927/the-expat-advantage-during-covid-19-e9c1338aa32c | ['Claire Hauxwell'] | 2020-04-16 07:34:41.813000+00:00 | ['Expat', 'Expat Life', 'Living Abroad', 'Transitions'] |
Why I’ve never used Redux. Chapter 1: The reasons | First of All, I hate Redux. And there is a lot of reasons why.
Monolithic
When I was using Vue in my projects, I always hate moving my state to Vuex. You always think too much on whether you need this state to be global or not. Also, making another one store module always sounds as a big task, making your decisions even harder.
You need to create a whole module with its state, mutations, actions, then bind everything to your components… and you also have an awful interaction between modules through namespaces, which also uses string-based API (so say goodbye to TS/Flow support)
Here’s an example from an official Vuex documentation:
This is so bad!
The same with Redux. A bit better, but it still sucks.
And the core problem of both libraries is that your state is global. You don’t have “a lot of tiny local stores” but “one monolith with modules”. And that’s why you often don’t want to put something into it
Most of the time, when you say “I need this state to be global”, it isn’t. Because it’s still local, but you need to use it in a couple of components
Monolithic structure also has another problem. You have to use reselect and other stuff to get your data. Just a couple of questions which noone will answer
Why do I need to combine all the states together to then select a small part of it? Why should I keep an eye on state updates, and why my whole app might suddenly re-render when I change the counter?
And you know the answer, why (except React issues)
The answer is — just because. Seriously.
The only OK reason for making your store global is that it’s easier to make SSR support. You can fill the whole state and stringify it in one easy step. But you can do that even with small local stores (will talk about it in my next post)
If I had a couple of small stores, I could use them directly. But with Redux I have to go through the whole state and be sure it’s not being re-rendered by some side-effect
Pseudo-simplicity and different kitchens
Redux also struggles from its “simplicity”.
Nuff said
Because Redux itself doesn’t care on how you’ll use it, there is a lot of libraries to help — redux-thunk , redux-saga , redux-symbiote and even official redux-toolkit . But none of them make it better, none of them solve a ton of boilerplate code and all they do is just the same thing, but a bit different.
I just want to fetch something. WHAT A F***?!
Also, everytime you switch to a new project, you’ll probably see different ways to cook it. Consequently, your codebase has a high chance to become legacy garbage which noone wants to work with.
Creator confirms
And people still use it, continuing to invent new bicycles on top.
Instead of thinking on core concepts and how to make things right, people’re just looking for better oars to paddle easier
Weird API
I always thought that all concepts should be simple-to-use and easy-to-understand. Even if you’re not familiar with programming. We all know about KISS, Occam’s Razor and other beautiful words.
But have you ever thought about how weird is codebase on Redux?
For example, I need to change my counter on button press. So, we have:
Counter (just a number)
Button (you know, those things that we click on)
And action (just make the number bigger)
Without any state managers etc we’d probably make it this way:
Pretty simple and intuitive, right?
Or, using some “abstract” state manager (which I’ll talk in my next post):
A bit different, but still simple and intuitive
What does it look like on Redux:
Alright…
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the purpose of reducers. For example, you can make a reducer which change state on different actions etc.
But this whole thing is monstrous. And you can achieve the same flexibility with less verbosity.
And that is only the beginning. Then you make action constants, action creators, nested reducers… Then you install immer, ImmutableJS etc…
And I’m not even talking about asynchronous actions.
Try to explain Redux to anyone who is not familiar with programming. It’s gonna be a tough time
Conclusion
It might look like nagging but that’s how the reality looks like.
I’m really tired to see all those new jobs on React+Redux stack from year to year, just because “everyone knows Redux”.
And I’m also tired to see all these “brand-new state-managers” that have exactly the same core concepts and flaws.
In the next post I’ll talk about solution to all these problems.
Feel free to say what you think in the comments below. And have a good day! | https://medium.com/@kelin2025/why-ive-never-used-redux-chapter-1-the-reasons-e4ff22e3cee0 | ['Anton Kosykh'] | 2021-01-26 15:17:36.325000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'React', 'Js', 'State Management', 'Redux'] |
Interesting article! | Interesting article! Was considering Udemy content creation but never considered freelancing… may have to take your class to consider that now that I’m retired… | https://medium.com/@jvsibley/interesting-article-8a2a583461d2 | ['Jeffrey V Sibley'] | 2020-12-14 19:21:39.584000+00:00 | ['Content Creation', 'Freelancing'] |
Advance Keras Hyperparameter Tuning with aisaratuners Library | Finally, AI assisting AI!
Photo by Roberta Sorge on Unsplash
Hyperparameter tuning is known to be a time-consuming and computationally expensive process. Even after you have found your optimized parameters, doubt sinks in, shall I try a bit more? The main reason being you are kept in the dark during the process. There was no way to see the big picture, until now. Here, we at AiSara are happy to introduce the state of art “aisaratuners library”, that is up to 10x faster.
AiSara proprietary state of the art algorithm is the secret sauce for the aisaratuners library. aisaratuners uses Latin Hypercube to provide initial sampling and with AiSara Hyperparameter Tuning API utilizing SOTA pattern recognition to reduce the solution space boundaries as it goes along. The reduced search by stages focuses the search faster, and with more accuracy. The analogy is like a satellite system triangulating to find the exact GPS location. The following graphs (patent pending but feel free to republished with citation) illustrate the innovative workflow behind aisaratuners with 3 rounds consisting of 5 trials each.
aisaratuners is very convenient, fast in convergence, and can be used by everyone. For now, it only works with keras, but in our plan to roll it out for other libraries.
aisaratuners library can be used to tune numerical hyperparameters which might include:
learning rate epoch batch size Dropout rate number of layers number of units and filters
To use aisaratuners the user needs to follow the steps below:
1- Install aisaratuners and and import the needed classes
2- Define hyperparameters:
The user needs to define the hyperparameters and their min and max values. In case learning rate is considered, we recommend the user to change the hyperparameter type from the default to “log”.
3- Create keras model:
The user needs to create the model as in the usual way of defining any keras model, just it should be wrapped inside a function which returns the model along with the history as shown below.
keras model for binary classification wrapped in a function where the above list of defined hyperparameters will be tuned
4- Instantiate HpOptimization class and run the optimizer:
The user needs to specify the optimization parameters, number of rounds (solution space reduction) and the number of trials for each round. As a rule of thumb, 3 rounds and 5 trails each is usually sufficient. Yes, that’s right, only 15 trials in total!
The user can then run the optimization using run_opti().
Using plot_opti_results() function, the user can visualize results summary. In this case Y-axis in the plot below shows the accuracy for each round (x-axis). You can see below the accuracy converges quickly with little to no wastage of trials. If one is doing random search, significantly more trials are required to reach a high confidence level of the accuracy.
Maximum Accuracy and Accuracy Distribution at Each Round
Parallel Coordinates Plot Visualizing the Performance of Multiple Runs Over a Set Number of Hyperparameters
Now this is the kicker, for the first time ever, the user can see the whole hyperparameter solution space using plot_search_space() function.
Hyperparameters Solution Space Boundaries at Each Round
The 3D Hyperparameters Solution Space
We invite you to try aisaratuners library for fast and convenient hyperparameter tuning. Also we would like to hear about your experience using aisaratuners, please comment below or email us at [email protected]
Note: aisaratuners is free for private use (also it includes hackathon, Kaggle competitions, teaching materials in paid or free education platforms). For commercial use, please register via RapidApi. | https://medium.com/@aisaradeepwadi/advance-keras-hyperparameter-tuning-with-aisaratuners-library-78c488ab4d6a | [] | 2020-12-28 08:45:06.456000+00:00 | ['Hyperparameter Tuning', 'Keras', 'Model Tuning', 'Aisaratuners', 'Deep Learning'] |
What Cersei Lannister’s Ending Tells Us About Her — And About Ourselves | Cersei Lannister is without a doubt one of the most memorable characters from Game of Thrones. Some people absolutely despise her while at the same time she has a rather large community of fans you can see around the internet — both mostly agree she was one of the better villains in the show’s history. One of her first scenes, in the very first episode, is her condescendingly extending her hand to Ned, to grant him the great privilege of kissing it. Ever since that moment, fans despised her- though in a good way, since she’s a great villain. While her twin brother Jaime also had a rather similar start with the viewers that changed over time, Cersei’s status as a villian remaind intact until the very ending of the show. Sure, she’s had moments of showing her human side throughout the series, and her unbounded love for her children is one of her most defining qualities, but at the end of the day, she’s always someone you don’t root for. She’s an antagonist, and her interests are almost never aligned with the characters that you want to succeed. Even with the Faith militant arc, it was hard to feel sympathy for her because, well, she brought it on herself.
Her acts of villainy continued to accumulate throughout the seasons- from ordering the execution of Sansa’s direwolf, conspiring agains Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark, mentally tormenting Sansa- and the list goes on and on… And that didn’t change at all in the last season. She was the same antagonist she always was, perhaps the endgame villain of the show in the fight for the Iron Throne. In a somewhat hilarious scene in the beginning of the season she sounded very pleased to hear the Army of the Dead have breached the Wall and marching towards Winterfell, she sent an assassin to kill both her ‘traitor’ brothers and finally executed one of the most pure characters in the entire series, just to piss Daenerys off and push her to the edge. “What a fucking bitch. I can’t wait to see her die,” probably everyone said.
But in her final moments, when I expected her to be the defiant lion who doesn’t show weakness, she showed her most human side yet. In some of Lena Headey’s most brilliant showcases of acting, she was terrified. Hysterical. “I don’t want to die…Not like this…” she quivers as the room collapses around her. And in that moment I couldn’t feel happy that “the evil Queen” was finally going to get what she deserved. I felt sad for her. Part of me wanted both her and Jaime to make it out and actually sail to Pentos. Who would have thought? Despite everything that happened in the past eight seasons, I felt sad about the most consistent antagonist of the show meeting her end.
“I want out baby to live”.
The show was able to recreate empathy towards her, which was powerful move to end her story. Something that might sound impossible at first thought. Sure, it might have been ‘fun’ to see some cool dragon action around her death, green wildfire or some violent strangling. But what additional value would that add?
And to be honest it was more shocking that some people were shocked by this. At the end of the day her death was truly in the spirit of Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire. Perhaps far more than Ramsay’s and Walder Frey’s death. Tywin died on a toliet, there’s no hero coming back to vanquish the evil king Joffrey, Drogo got anticlimatic death, Renly was killed by a shadow after we spent half a season building up expectations from his army.
While speaking generally of the destruction of King’s Landing, director Miguel Sapochnik revealed what him and the writers tried to achieve with this episode. While he is mostly referring to the carange at the streets of King’s Landing at large, his insight definitely shed light on the choice of Cersei and Jaime’s death scene as well:
“You wanted this, you wanted this, you wanted this. Here. Is that really what you wanted? I felt like there was this thing of this bloodthirstiness that exists in the fans, for revenge, for this payback that is personified by Dany. I just wanted to get to the core of what that actually means. I wanted people to know how bad death and destruction can be in the safe environment they’re living in. […] it was something that evolved out of the need, or my desire, to not just add to the equation of violence in television, but rather to at least propose, ‘Think about it.’”
Shame.
This ‘twist’ in the writers take on her death scene didn’t just come out of nowhere. As we mentioned before, Cersei sustained her villainous status all throughout the show, however every time her malicious plans did backfire on her it wasn’t a satisfactory moment for the viewers like you would expect, in contrast to Ramsay Bolton’s or Walder Frey’s deaths, for example. During her Walk of Shame, and mainly due to Headey’s masterful Emmy-worthy performance, it was hard not to feel bad for her throughout the entire thing. Even though, this whole Faith Militant was ultimately something she brought on herself, trying to destroy Maergery and the Tyrells, among other things. Same can be said about every time she lost one of her children. Going back even further in time, in season 2 when we thought the Battle of Blackwater is lost for the Lannisters, Cersei’s scene with Tommen on the Throne was rather heartbreaking, and didn’t remotely give us a feeling of catharsis for the defeat of an evil character. I’m not sure who rooted for who while watching that battle for the first time, but when Tywin walked into that room and declared “the war is won!” I couldn’t help but feel this is some sort of triumphant moment, despite the fact the Lannisters just won once again.
“I will keep you safe”
The purpose of Cersei’s character is ultimately to show the futility of revenge. Every time the story punishes Cersei- it doesn’t feel good. Walk of Shame, death of Tommen and Myrcella,… Even watching Cersei being treated as a punching bag in Season 6 was only satisfying at first. Soon you want her to fight back. Personally I entered season 6 actively rooting for her against the High Sparrow. In the end, her death needed a similar tone. We as the audience easily turn into an angry mob, screaming for punishment. And a story, almost always, responds giving us what we want. I don’t know of any person who didn’t want Theon to get comeuppance during Season 2, while aslo being sick to their stomach while that actually happened in Season 3.
It all goes back to that briliant Gandalf’s line from The Lord of the Rings : “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
While Cersei was a hateful and merciless person until the very end, the show doesn’t let the audience revel in her demise. There is no triumph or catharsis in watching her die. No sense that justice has been served. Instead, as she wanders looking for a way out, crying for the imminent death of herself and her unborn child, we are reminded again of her humanity. Not because Cersei particularly deserves it, but because we as an audience are meant to take no joy in human suffering.
The underlying premise of Cersei’s story was never to watch a new Mad Queen, nor to give Jaime a chance to prove his heroism, and while the fandom had been rooting for her to be killed by a hero, the story was always critiquing this impulse. It was always about forcing us to contend with the public appetite for punishment. About following this villainous Queen on her long Walk of Shame as she leads us to question whether this is the kind of justice we believe in. Is this really a better world?
What makes Cersei such a fantastic character, and what separates her from other “villain” characters, is that we consistently witness her suffering. Cersei’s struggles are made clear. Typically, villain characters like Joffrey, Tywin, Ramsay, or Walder generally don’t suffer, and if they do we don’t get a front row seat to it. They are mostly just abusive people who serve as antagonists until the day that they’re overcome and killed. We are never really given a chance to feel much sympathy for them. Yet the audience is meant to get no amusement from Cersei’s comeuppance. It doesn’t feel like poetic justice when it happens to Cersei. Even though Cersei may “deserve” it, her suffering just demonstrates how problematic, sexist, and dehumanizing the structures we are looking at really are.
When we look at her story, it’s filled with instances such as these. Cersei is an active participant in (and takes joy from) the destruction of House Stark, from Bran’s fall, to Ned’s death, to the Red Wedding. Based on the “eye for an eye” principle, Cersei should deserve to suffer the death of her own children, and the destruction of her House. After all, that would be proportional to her crimes right?
But when it happens, it’s never something to feel good about. | https://medium.com/@wethrones/what-cersei-lannisters-ending-tells-us-about-her-and-about-ourselves-c0f999c6e634 | ['We Still Love Game Of Thrones'] | 2020-10-09 23:13:17.208000+00:00 | ['Pop Culture', 'Game of Thrones', 'Entertainment', 'TV', 'A Song Of Ice And Fire'] |
Decoding The Working Of Spot Market | Decoding The Working Of Spot Market
The Indian Transportation industry is continually growing at a CAGR of 15%, with over 7 Million goods vehicles moving around the country, the freight volume has reached 1325 billion ton-km, which is supposed get doubled by 2025. The Indian economy spends almost 14% of its GDP on transportation and logistics, where-as in developed countries the spending is around 6–8%. By nature, the Indian transportation industry remains heavily fragmented, unorganized, and very rough in nature. In order to get a better understanding of the issues in the industry, let us understand how does the day-to-day operations go about and who are the key stakeholders.
In the trucking industry, the spot market plays a pivotal role in deciding the freight charges and who is supposed to service a truckload. No matter how big or small a transporter/broker/fleet owner is, one has to reach out to the spot-market (or colloquially known as Mandi) to fulfill their daily transportation requirements.
The infographic below clearly explains the working of the spot market.
· Shipper — The shipper is the primary owner of the goods, who needs them to be shipped from a location to the destination. At times the goods shipped might have multiple loading and unloading points. The shipper is a retailer, manufacturer, distributor, or some other firm that needs to move goods on a regular basis the likes of ITC, Asian Paints, Patanjali, Tata Steel, etc
· Transporter — The transporter takes the risk (financial/credit) of shipping the goods and it is his responsibility to place the vehicles at the loading point, ensure that the necessary paperwork is done, pay the advance money to the vehicle supplier so that the goods can be shipped. Transporters typically have to pay 80–90% of the charges in advance and the remaining balance payment on the receipt of the proof of delivery and they cannot raise an invoice to the shipper unless they receive a proof-of-delivery, which typically 2–3 weeks from the day the goods are delivered. Once the invoice is submitted, the shipper typically takes 30–60 days to make the payment. So, the role of the transporter is heavily capital dependent.
· Broker — As the name sounds the broker is a trusted “local” liaison who heads the supply side. The broker exists so that a vehicle can be re-routed back to its origin. If anything goes wrong with the vehicle during the transit period, it is the broker’s responsibility to ensure that the vehicle is replaced and the goods are shipped. In India, typically this is a one-man shop that places anywhere between 5–100 vehicles on a day-to-day basis. Broker exists because it's impossible for the transporter/shipper to directly transact with the fleet owner as he is not present locally.
· Fleet Owner– He is the owner of the vehicle and his primary goal is to ensure maximum utilization of the vehicle. For every day the vehicle is un-placed he has to bear the cost. Fleet owners at times approach the transporter directly, however in such cases there is a guarantee of a minimum load from the demand side, and a strict KYC is done by the transporter. The fleet owners are heavily fragmented in India with more than 80% of the fleets are owned by people having less than 10 vehicles, which gives birth to the intermediaries.
Assigning a load to a vehicle is not an easy process, as there are multiple entities involved in the entire transaction, and multiple activities happen in the background before the goods can be dispatched.
The nature of the spot market is such it is heavily time-bounded i.e., a shipper requires a vehicle urgently and reaches out to the transporter who in-turn reaches out to the suppliers in the mandi (brokers and fleet owners) to get the current rates, and since these transactions are bounded by time, this leads to huge price volatility as the demand and supply of goods and vehicles keep changing in a rapid manner
In India, there are multi modes of agreements carried out by shippers to manage dispatch operations. The common approximation in practice is that in India, contractual relationships cover around 30–40% of the market, whereas the spot consists of the remainder. Shippers typically use a combination of multiple types of relationships to manage their truckload operations i.e., fixed/variable contract across one or multiple routes, spot arrangements, and at times their private fleet too (especially for certain kind of items and for certain fixed lanes)
How do spot markets operate?
Typically, in a transport company leads start queuing up at the beginning of the day i.e., the shippers confirm the requirement of truckload movement for the next day. At the same time, the vehicle suppliers get a true check on the inventory of vehicles available as most of the vehicles are done with their unloading and are ready for their next trip. Parallels can be drawn between the spot market and the trading floor at the stock market i.e., they are both governed by demand and supply. Typically, by late afternoon the vehicle availability is made open by the suppliers, and the assignment starts, however, the suppliers hold their cards close to the chest and the assignment does not happen until after a fair round of negotiation on the daily pricing happens. Something as innocuous as multiple phone calls for a specific route can drive the price up drastically as it throws an indication that the demand is high.
All the above activities take place with minimalistic or no technology, at-most emails are used to communicate the prices to shippers and confirmation by them. Because the market is large, fragmented, and unorganized, the truckload assignment has been subjected to a large number of first-generation procurement mechanisms.
Once the load-vehicle assignment is done, the transporters typically have a final check to ensure that the drivers understand the loading point correctly and are on-route. The vehicles typically report at the loading site post-midnight so that they can avoid the local traffic. The subsequent day the vehicles are loaded, the documentation process is completed, and the transporters pay-out the advance money to the vehicle suppliers. In this trade 80–90% of the money is paid out to the vehicle supplier as advance and the rest is paid out on delivery of the goods.
How can technology smoothen the working of the spot market?
There have been numerous attempts made to build a transport/freight exchange that can re-create the spot market in the online world. Moreover, a lot of the shippers have tried to move to electronic modes of managing their truckload operations, however, a handful has been able to move successfully in India. A lot of shippers have used negotiation platforms to assign lanes/routes/volumes to transporters. However, even though the shippers have chosen the online path, the transporters brokers, and fleet owners have to come down to the spot market to fulfill the daily loads (even though the rates are frozen are part of a contractual agreement).
Technology can play a significant role in bringing the spot markets online, however, the following aspects need to be addressed carefully –
· Trust — The transportation industry is very rough in nature and players typically are not comfortable transacting with one another unless they know who they are dealing with. There are issues such as pilferage of money or goods or both at various layers which cannot be determined beforehand. Moreover, the payment cycles are not very great, accompanied by bad debts, which increase the financial liability and can lead to players shutting shops.
· Ease of Use — We are not dealing with some of the most tech-savvy people here. The exchanges need to be simple, provide multi-language support and should bring in ease of doing business and at the same time should potentially grow the business, then only people will adopt the technology. For e.g., a vehicle owner in Gujarat should be able to transact with a shipper in Assam, without being present physically.
· Cut down Intermediaries — This is much needed! There needs to be some cut down in the number of layers involved between the shipper and the receiver, (at times there is a chain of brokers and sub-brokers which leads to additional costs) only then the pricing would be fair and the fleet owners would get true realization for their services.
· Digitize Payment Cycles — Payments is one of the key pain-points of this industry as each invoice processing has to look at multiple touchpoints associated with a trip such as Delivery TAT adherence, goods damaged, detention at loading and unloading point, any fines paid during the trip, which delays the payment cycles considerably. (The transporter has to make an upfront payment at the time of vehicle dispatch).
· Educate — The industry needs to be educated about a lot of issues, such as fleet optimization, road safety measures, timely deliveries, embracing technology, and making the best use of the infrastructure so that the deadhead movement is minimal and there is less idle time. The more a vehicle moves the better it is for the economy!
I strongly believe that technology has a long and major role to play in this field and especially in the Indian context. There is a flurry of start-ups in this space that are attacking the problems from different ends and are trying to make some dents in the landscape and smoothen the operations. However, this is a long marathon and a huge market opportunity, with vast gaps and scope for improvement, whether a reliable and robust transport exchange can be built over the next 5–10 years, only time will tell.
. | https://medium.com/@varunbiyani/decoding-the-working-of-spot-market-ae968c0a225 | ['Varun Biyani'] | 2020-12-11 14:49:44.456000+00:00 | ['Transportation Management', 'Indian Economy', 'Transportation', 'Ftl Full Truck Load', 'Logistics'] |
Overcome The Presentation Nerves | I recently realized that there is something that could play an important role in the presentation design process to support the speaker before and during the presentation — speaker notes. Especially now that nobody has to present in front of an audience, speaker notes can you help you deliver your virtual presentation effectively.
What are the speaker notes and why should you use them?
Depending on the presentation tool that you’re using, it’s usually an option that you need to enable. Once enabled, you’ll see two different versions of your presentation on two different screens — presentation and speaker notes.
While preparing for your presentation, speaker notes help you organize your thoughts. Writing them down helps keep your presentation to time (read more about time management here). During your presentation, you could use them to remain on topic and sometimes display content that is outside of your slides without having to interrupt the flow of your presentation.
I find speaker notes to be great for storytelling because they help you keep a natural flow between your slides and connect them together organically. What’s even more interesting is that you could use the notes to prepare answers for some of the questions you might get asked by your audience. Remember that you don’t always have to put everything on your slides. Sometimes it’s useful to use speaking notes instead.
Finally, speaker notes can come in handy after your presentation. You can use these notes to send an offline version of your presentation afterwards. Read more about speaker notes here.
Our pro-tip of the day for you is . . .
Designed by the author via canva.com
Presentations Pro-Tips
We launched our daily presentations pro-tips exclusively this holidays season. Follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. | https://medium.com/@habusedou/overcome-the-presentation-nerves-9a6626c5039f | ['Heba Abusedou'] | 2021-01-10 23:16:06.468000+00:00 | ['Notes', 'Presentations', 'Design', 'Public Speaking', 'Time Management'] |
7 Ways To “Put Out Fires” Like Firefighters | 7 Ways To “Put Out Fires” Like Firefighters
It’s happened to the best of us. We have our day all planned out. But, just as you’re getting ready to dive-in, a fire breaks out.
Sometimes these are small but inconvenient fires that can be easily extinguished. However, there are also massive fires that can burn hours in your day, week, or even month. If not addressed, they’re going to absolutely decimate your productivity.
But, how can you stop putting out fires every day? Well, take some cues from those who put their lives in danger of battling fires. Here are 7 ways firefighters put out fires.
1. Don’t squander the early morning hours.
When it comes to wildfires, Bill Gabbert, who worked wildland fire for 33 years, suggests that firefighters battle them in the morning. “Experienced firefighters know that large fires are typically most active in the mid-afternoon,” he writes. The reason?
“Solar heating has reached its peak. The ground, vegetation, and air are as hot as they will be all day.” And, it’s common “for firefighters to have to pull back and abandon what they were doing in the afternoon and retreat to a safety zone because the fire threatens to overrun their position.”
“Firelines painstakingly constructed can be lost,” he adds. It’s also “the hottest part of the day, sapping the energy of personnel and reducing their production while putting them at risk of heat-related injuries.”
“All of those factors can result in firefighters being least productive in the mid-afternoon,” Gabbert writes. However, there are times when “firefighters do not arrive at their work assignment on the fireline until mid to late morning. They may have squandered the time of day when the working conditions and the fire behavior were best suited for productive, safe work.”
While not as dangerous as firefighting, a lot of us also squander our mornings. We constantly hit snooze until we have to get out of bed. As a result, we rush to get to work.
A better idea would be to get up earlier and start the day on the right foot. That doesn’t mean you have to wake up at 4 am. It just means giving yourself some extra time to review your goals, priorities, and schedule so that you know what to focus on and address any possible conflicts.
2. Preparation is key.
Another advantage of giving yourself more time in the morning is that you can get to work earlier. In fact, it’s recommended that firefighters should be at their shift at least 30-minutes early.
“Preparation for that big fire begins when you walk through the door,” explains Eric Guida for FireRescue1. “Arriving early allows you to familiarize yourself with the apparatus you are assigned to before that 8:05 a.m. fire call.”
“It will also endear you to the off-going crew by grabbing that end-of-shift call,” he adds. “Start off on the right foot — arrive early. If you are on time, you’re late. If you’re early, you’re on time.”
Moreover, this lets firefighters check their equipment, such as PPE and SCBA, and every nozzle. “Check the rest of the equipment on the engine or truck to make sure it is where you left it the day before,” says Guida.
“If you are there for the first time, check to see where everything is,” he advises. “Knowledge of what is in those cabinets means you have one less thing to worry about when the big one hits.”
For you, you could prepare by planning your ideal week in advance or reviewing your to-do-list every evening. If you have a Zoom call, test everything out so that it starts on time is flawless. And, always put things back where they belong so that you know where they are when needed.
3. Implement a triage system.
“In addition to typical firefighter challenges, firefighters face unique problems, including the evacuation of civilians and animals; hazardous conditions, such as propane tanks, power lines, and hazardous materials; and protecting high-value assets at risk, including homes and businesses,” explains Chief Mike Bryant. “Because of these situations, firefighters must rapidly assess a structure to determine whether or not it can be safely and successfully defended.” For firefighters, this “evaluation process is called structure triage.”
“Structure Triage is the process of inspecting and classifying structures according to their dependability or non-defendability, based on fire behavior, location, construction, and adjacent fuels,” clarifies Chief Bryant.
Chief Bryant goes on to describe a tool developed by CAL FIRE WUI Working Group called S-FACT. It stands for survival, fire environment, access, construction/clearance, time constraints, and stay or go. In short, structure triage helps them identify where their priorities should be.
You probably can’t use the precise model; you also need to know which fire to put out first. Personally, I use a priority box like the famous Eisenhower Matrix where you place all of your to-do-lists items into one of the following quadrants:
Urgent and important. Tasks that you will do immediately.
Important, but not urgent. Tasks that you’ll schedule for later.
Urgent, but not important. Anything that can be delegated to someone else.
Neither urgent nor important. These should be eliminated from your list and schedule.
What happens when there’s a last-minute emergency? Utilize the 2-minute rule. It resembles more of a triage system in that it takes under 2-minutes to complete; you should just do it. If it’s something that could be done by someone else, delegate it to them.
For important, time-consuming actions, schedule it for later. And, if it’s unimportant, drop it.
4. Pass the nozzle.
A “senior man” is a firefighter who leads by example — regardless of their rank or pay. “The Senior Man is someone who not only trains but passes on experience learned in the past and applied to how things are done today using a new technology to their advantage,” writes Chief Patrick Kelly & Battalion Chief Tom Gaeta. “He/she holds that ‘slide tray’ of information in his/her head and is willing to share whenever the situation allows.”
“The Senior Man may pass the nozzle to the probie or talk you through a chimney fire because you’ve never done it,” they add. In other words, they’re a mentor who can prepare officers to become excellent firefighters.
Even if you aren’t in a leadership position, you also need to have some sort of succession plan. That means properly training others and giving them the resources to succeed. And also clearly communicating your expectations.
Most importantly, take the time to show them the ropes, like letting them shadow you and pick your brain during lunch. Since you took them under your wing, you’re confident that they can put any fire out without you. As an added perk, having your trust will strengthen your relationship with them.
5. Surround yourself with good company.
Of course, no matter how much you mentor others, they still need to possess similar traits as those of firefighters. According to firefighters around the country, these include:
Integrity
Physical fitness
Communication
Flexibility and adaptability
Dedication
Team player
Mechanical aptitude
Public image-conscious
Tolerance
Self-sacrifice
I don’t know about you. But, these are the type of people I would want in my support system. Having competent and talented people that I trust means that fires will never sabotage my most important work.
Why? Because I trust them and have all the faith in the world that they have my back. Of course, this goes all the way back to hiring the right team members from the get-go — whether if they’re full-time or freelancers.
In a previous Calendar article, Choncé Maddox suggests that this can be accomplished by:
Hiring on both potential and experience.
Hiring from diverse backgrounds.
Considering references and previous work samples.
Scheduling trial work.
Not rushing the hiring process and taking your time.
Offering fair pay.
6. Create a firewall.
I’m not talking about securing your devices — which you still should totally do. Rather, this firewall is the “fire-resistant barrier used to prevent the spread of fire for a prescribed period of time.”
Let’s say that throughout the day, you’re constantly interrupted by people stopping by your workspace — or blowing up your phone. If this becomes unbearable, then you need to install buffers. It could be as simple as placing a “Do Not Disturb” sign or your closed door to hiring a virtual assistant to handle calls and emails.
Another benefit of a virtual assistant is that they’re essentially your calendar’s gatekeeper. That means they will plan your schedule and share your availability with others. And, if something unexpected does pop-up, they can determine the level of urgency for you.
7. Preempt fires in the first place.
Don’t just sit back and wait for a fire to become unmanageable. Take steps to avoid them in the first place. Examples include electrical grounding during construction, not burning fires when it’s dry and windy, and investing in a fireproof safe to protect important documents.
As for you, you could back-up vital documents on the cloud. You could also learn from past mistakes, asking for feedback, and considering hypotheticals. Data analysis could also be used in identifying and anticipating problems in processes or workflows.
However, despite your best efforts, the unexpected is always lurking around the corner. As such, I’ve found that the best way to tackle this is by leaving some blank spots in your calendar.
How you do this is up to you. For some, they may tack-on additional time to a task. For instance, if something takes them an hour, they’ll block out an hour and a half. The idea is that they have 30-minutes to spare just in case. But, that may backfire thanks to Parkinson’s Law.
Personally, I leave blank spots in my calendar. For example, I might not schedule anything from 1 pm to 2 pm. That block can be used to attend to fires or shuffle my schedule around to be more flexible. | https://medium.com/calendar/7-ways-to-put-out-fires-like-firefighters-c3b81324bbc5 | ['John Rampton'] | 2020-12-22 18:12:19.044000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Business', 'Life'] |
Hilma af Klint: Visualizing the Spirit World | The art world has been knocked off its feet by Hilma af Klint. Shaken by a completely unknown woman artist who, 69 years after her death, challenges the historic timeline and authorship of abstract painting. af Klint’s work is bright, bold, often monumental in scale, and decidedly non-representative in nature. Her paintings flatten 2-dimensional space in a way that pre-dates Wassily Kandinsky and the modernists by a few years that has initiated a debate about who invented abstract painting.
Hilma af Klint in her studio in 1895
It gets even more interesting —shortly after graduating with honors from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Sweeden, Hilma af Klint rejected her formal training in favor of Spiritualism and joined Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society in 1889. There she met four other like-minded women and founded “The Five” in 1896. The group held spiritual séances, regularly communicating with spirits, taking detailed notes and practiced automatic drawing.
Then in 1904, after eight years of esoteric training with “The Five”, Hilma af Klint was instructed by the spirit world to carry out a major assignment: a series of works called the “Paintings for the Temple.” This ambitious vision from beyond was to be a series of paintings installed in a specially designed spiral temple that would facilitate spiritual meditation on the transcendent reality beyond the physical world. This astral plane commission would occupy af Klint for the next nine years.
Hilma af Klint, “The Ten Largest, №4, Youth”, 1907
For the rest of her life, af Klint’s metaphysical research would continue, often extending into semi-scientific visual research, but she never truly exhibited or shared her work with the world. She led a quiet life, largely spent inwardly focused on her mediumistic artwork. When she died in 1944, she left a huge archive of 1,300 paintings and 125 notebooks to her nephew Erik af Klint, a naval officer. She left a note that explicitly stated that her work could not be exhibited until 20 years after her death and that the collection could never be split up.
Now, 74 years after her death, the Guggenheim Museum hosts “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future” now on view in NYC until April 23rd, 2019. The first major exhibition of her work in the United States, it’s being hailed as one of the most globally important exhibitions of the decade with preeminent critics lining up to heap praise on af Klint’s fascinating story and newfound place in art history.
Hilma af Klint “Evolution, №15, Group IV, The Seven-pointed Stars”, 1908
Abstraction vs Visualization
My interest in af Klint’s work is to explore her relation to scientific visualization. Many voices in the art world are claiming that af Klint’s works represent the “first” abstract paintings, but I think they are jumping to the wrong conclusion. I think her motivation was actually to visualize spiritual concepts. They see this as presaging abstract expressionism when really it’s part of a movement toward diagramming the immaterial world. The two concepts are very different.
Wassily Kandinsky, “Composition IV”, 1911 link
Abstraction in the visual arts is the practice of focusing on the elements of the work of art itself. We see this in Kandinsky’s focus on color and line as a means to themselves, Mondrian’s gridded compositions, Picasso’s fracturing of the picture plane, and Pollack’s dripping paint. The elements that comprise a painting are the focus of the work, aesthetics the outcome. In 1911, Kandinsky himself refers to the work “Composition IV” as “The relation of the light, delicate and cold to the sharp movement (war) makes the main contrast in the picture.”
Of course, abstraction (or formalism) isn't meaningless either. We know each of the artists above folded additional layers of meaning into their work: Kandinsky’s synesthetic conversion of music, Mondrian’s graphic analogies to the city, Picasso’s inspiration from the invention of the X-ray and Pollack’s interest in the mandala.
Visualization, on the other hand, is entirely different.
The 19th-century was filled with invention. Not only was the term visualization invented in 1883, but various types of visualization shaped how the sciences were presented to the world. Mendeleev’s invention of the periodic table in 1869 was represented in the form of a chart. Tales of mechanical innovation were initially spread by illustration, then by black and white photographs.
A Russian periodic table based on Dmitri Mendeleev’s original, 1869
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term ‘visualization’ as “depicting the formation of mental images of things not actually present in sight.” In Orit Halpern’s great book “Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945” he elaborates:
“Visualization slowly mutated from the description of human psychological processes to the larger terrain of rendering practices by machines, scientific instrumentation, and numeric measures. Most important, visualization came to define bringing that which is not already present into sight… Visualizations are about making the inhuman, that which is beyond or outside sensory recognition, relatable to the human being.”
Scientific illustration and Theosophical Visualization
Seeing as the Theosophical Society was an organization formed to advance the “study and elucidation of Occultism” and “encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science.” It only makes sense that the Spiritualists would incorporate the language of scientific visualization when transcribing the astral plane. Curator Iris Müller-Westermann explains: “You have to understand this was the age when natural sciences went beyond the visible: Heinrich Hertz discovered electromagnetic waves [in 1886], Wilhelm Röntgen invented the x-ray [in 1895].”
The Line of Grace from “The Principles of Light and Color” link
One of the best examples of this study can be found in Edwin D. Babbitt, whose 1878 book “The Principles of Light and Color: The Harmonic Laws Of The Universe, The Etherio-Atomic Philosophy Of Force, Chromo Chemistry, Chromo Therapeutics, And The General Philosophy Of The Fine Forces, Together With Numerous Discoveries And Practical Applications.” With a title like that, it’s no wonder Klint was a fan.
“Unity” from “The Principles of Light and Color” link
Babbitt’s first chapter “Harmonic Laws of the Universe”, is essentially a spiritualist translation of scientific theory that spans biology, physics, sociology, and architecture. Each discipline is described using largely artistic terms such as light, shade, and hue and contextualized with similar looking examples. “Unity” is seen in the forms of snowflakes, microsomes, and geometric diagrams. “Gradiation or Progression” “may be seen in the forms of many grasses, leaves, flowers, shells, streams, etc. is called the line of grace, named also by Hogarth, and is a spiral. It is seen in the climbing of vines as they encircle a tree, in many seashells.”
Snowflakes photographed by Wilson Bentley (1902) link
The Theosophical exploration of scientific illustration quickly became entangled with astral visualization. The first photographs of snowflakes became indirect evidence of sublime symmetry. The diagrammed veins of a leaf used to underscore the profundity of divine computation.
af Klint was born into an educated home; her father was a military officer, her two brothers were scientists and she held a life-long interest in Botany. “The Harmonic Laws of the Universe” clearly had an important influence on af Klint, its changing focus from macro to micro evident in many of Klint’s paintings. We see a botanical line in af Klint’s paintings that represent “a parallel world with unities within unities.” Flowers become dimensions become cells become natural forces at play on human consciousness. | https://medium.com/nightingale/hilma-af-klint-visualizing-the-spirit-world-bb54781d9beb | ['Jason Forrest'] | 2019-02-15 10:03:17.633000+00:00 | ['Contemporary Art', 'Spirituality', 'Painting', 'Data Visualization', 'Art'] |
FL DEO “A JOKE but no ones laughing” | I know millions of Americans, including millions here in the state of FL, have been impacted by this years’ social & economic issues; Putting many of us on a path we couldn’t of planned for or anticipated.. record unemployment, evictions & govt bailouts to name a few. Despite everything our federal govt did to bridge the gap the states were ‘left manning the gates’ so to say.
I was unemployed in March of this year in the State of FL. I was unable to get into the system for several weeks due to system issues that continue to plague the DOE system also know at “CONNECT”. This system has been documented as being intentionally designed to dissuade individuals from using the system & to reject more than it approves. Due to this kind of system, which I feel is a violation of rights & civil liberties, especially when a catastrophe like COVID 19 happens & leaves a large percentage of the states’ working class out of work and seeking assistance.
I am writing to get as many people to join this cause I want to see how many other Floridians are being negatively impacted by the DEO as I have been and continue to be still to this day trying to get back payments & now trying to claim weeks since early Oct 2020. I would like to start to contact attorney’s and work on building a pool of “victims” to try and bring a class action lawsuit against the State of FL DEO for failing to assist us in a timely manner & also for not being able to offer us any answers; if you have called the customer assistance line you know what I mean. They answer all questions with “I’m sorry I can’t answer that”; “I’m sorry we don’t have any time frame for this”; “I’m sorry there is unfortunately no one who can answer your questions.” Who or what is running our unemployment system in FL? Why can’t anyone answer our basic questions? Who’s paying their wages to hide from the public and not answer our legitimate questions????
If you want to comment or add your story please do. Please we all need to start raising our voices before they will hear us or have to answer us. | https://medium.com/@edpessenda8290/fl-unemployment-a-joke-but-no-ones-laughing-9742cc1196c3 | [] | 2020-11-16 22:19:43.708000+00:00 | ['Fl Unemployment', 'Unemployment', 'Deo', 'Florida', 'Connect'] |
Building Communities of Practice at FARFETCH | By Hugo Froes, Product Ops Lead
Companies evolve and grow. Practices become more complex and harder to handle. At FARFETCH we noticed like minded people coming together to discuss or even tackle some of those issues. In some cases we saw how the work done by those communities could feed back into the teams and become part of their day to day work.
Taking a cue from Emily Webber on Communities of Practice (CoP), we started exploring how we could bring more people together. People that have a common interest on a certain topic and how we could best support them.
This article explores how we built guidelines and resources for anyone interested in starting a community within FARFETCH. How we support those communities when needed, but leave them alone when they’re ready.
We hope that others can take from what we’ve learnt and use/adapt to build similar communities within their own company.
Building a Common Language
One of the first things we felt the need to do was define the categories of CoP so that they may be more easily identifiable for those outside that community.
These definitions are particular to the way we have approached communities and are only a guideline. At any time, as a CoP evolves, they can move into another category or divide into two or more communities.
Communities of Practice (CoP)
Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
The term ‘Community of Practice’ (or CoP) is one of the most common names given to these types of communities, which is why we use CoP as our umbrella term. And so, we’ve established that for us internally a Community of Practice, just by existing, automatically falls into this category.
Guilds
More formal than a CoP, a Guild has a strong fixed objective, which often has repercussions within the company and teams. Often associated with working towards strong standards of practice and/or aligning objectives across business units.
Work Groups
More integrated with work being done within teams, Work Groups have a direct impact on the company. Usually evolving from a CoP or supporting a Guild, the members of the Work Group are looking at the topic on a ground level. They have Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) associated with this work and it’s part of their objectives.
Clinics
The company has grown very quickly in the last few years and there are many challenges in scaling all the teams to their optimal size. How can some of those teams support all those other teams, without having to grow to an unmanageable size?
That’s where we’ve found clinics are useful. Usually, a fixed session that is added to the calendar of everyone that might benefit most from feedback or input from a specific discipline. During these sessions, someone can ask for advice for what to do next or feedback on whether they are on the right track.
Depending on which clinic it is, the advice will be geared towards that subject matter and hopefully helps participants understand what steps to take next.
The User Experience Research clinic, User Interface clinic and Experimentation clinic are examples of some of the existing clinics at Farfetch.
Guiding principles
100% open to everyone
And we mean everyone. Everyone who wants to be part of the conversation may join. If someone feels they can either contribute or be able to extract value from the community for themselves, they may join.
The communities are not exclusive, members only groups.
One of the easiest ways to determine whether you really do have a CoP rather than a different form of regular meeting is to ask whether you’d be happy having anyone from the company drop in and observe if they were interested.
Global first
Our company is spread across various geographical locations, but we don’t want that to limit participation. In fact, we encourage the communities to diversify and gain a richer amount of knowledge contribution.
We still want to improve the way communities interact across time zones as well, thus removing even more barriers.
Everyone has something to contribute
All voices are valid and should be heard. Even the least experienced or people from other areas of expertise have something to contribute.
If someone hasn’t said anything in an entire session, encourage their participation by asking their opinion on something you know they have knowledge about.
Respect each others’ perspective and experience
An open mind is key to achieving great results. We strongly encourage active listening and an openness to try and understand the perspective of others as a way to expand our own ideas.
If someone else’s idea seems strange or out of place, first try and understand the perspective and context. If however, the contribution seems misplaced, try to be encouraging and suggest that it’s a very valid point to remember for later discussion, but it might be a bit off topic in the current discussion.
Share ideas and opinions in confidence
Building on the above principle, one of the most important things about the communities is creating a safe space where everyone feels their opinion can be voiced without judgment and we expect everyone to make an effort to adhere to that ideal.
If someone seems less confident, don’t forget to give some encouraging feedback when they contribute, and if some feedback is needed, that it should be constructive.
Build community knowledge wherever you can.
Communities are incredible and there is nothing better than a group of people sitting down and discussing a topic they love. The big question is what to do with what is discussed? How do you build on ideas until they are mature enough? How does the value of the communities reach those outside the community?
At FARFETCH, we’ve created an open and transparent space on confluence, where every community can both record or access what is being done.
We want the communities to work together. To learn from each other. This space is open to every Farfetcher and we encourage open sharing.
Avoid absolutist positions
Communities are about sharing and learning. We feel that absolutist points of view will be a blocker to a healthy continuous growth.
Assume that there are other ways of looking at an issue. Every idea or solution might make sense in the now or with what the current members in the community know, but in a few months it might change.
Supporting the communities
Guild of Communities
As a support mechanism, we created a Guild of Communities. A small group of people who are passionate about CoPs and who can focus on developing the resources and guidelines for the communities.
The Guild works as facilitators. Helping the communities to get off the ground, connecting to the right people and identifying opportunities.
We also made it clear that the Guild is not meant to run the communities and will not dictate how the communities collaborate and approach the practice they want to improve.
Single hub for everything
One of the first questions we were asked was where do these communities live, since they aren’t owned by any team or business unit?
As mentioned above, we created a Confluence space exclusively for the communities of practice. Within that space, we added all the content and resources available, as well as templates for the CoPs to create their own sub-section.
We now see communities recording everything they discuss and create within those spaces. They may also explore other existing communities to identify opportunities to collaborate or learn from each other.
Where to next?
Much like the way we allow the communities to be created and grow fairly organically we also don’t define a success metric for the specific communities unless they want it.
We measure the success of the communities by the number of initiatives that are developed by these communities, which make their way into the practices of the teams. In how the team members continuously extract the value they themselves expect from that community.
When do we suggest ending a community? When all those involved feel the community no longer makes sense. When the vision each person has of that community isn’t aligned with what the community has become.
Participants should always extract value and for that reason we hope to start helping them set personal OKRs attached to the work they do within the community, giving them the time to contribute positively.
More than anything, we want to give the communities the space and support they need to thrive, extract value and evolve in the direction they need to. | https://medium.com/farfetch-tech-blog/building-communities-of-practice-at-farfetch-96359a7fb781 | ['Farfetch Tech'] | 2020-11-19 09:28:28.882000+00:00 | ['Communities Of Practice', 'Collaboration', 'Community', 'Product', 'Technology'] |
Coinnmonks crypto writers telegram group | “Everything has to be educational in Coinmonks world”
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Coinmonks’ crypto writer group is strictly only for coinmonks contributors (writers). You can invite any contributor who is ready with his/her article and want to contribute on Coinmonks. (Ping me adding some would help)
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1- As We publish lot of articles daily, we see a gap that many times writers write on same topic when there is already an awesome write up exist on that Topic. particularly in case of coding tutorials. We can collectively help in suggesting better topics which can help to learn more and go deeper in tech or crypto economics.
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Either comment on the post or leave a private note on this draft. “Double click on anywhere and click on right most symbol when pop comes”.
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Economics
Bitcoin | https://medium.com/coinmonks/coinnmonks-crypto-writers-telegram-group-f56b4621af0a | ['Gaurav Agrawal'] | 2020-08-31 17:46:18.077000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Bitcoin', 'Programming', 'Ethereum'] |
The Value of Information, as a Means to an End or an End Itself | This blog was written by Courntey Tolmie (R4D) and originally published for the Transparency and Accountability Initiative in September 2013.
If you ask any partner in any low- or middle-income country whether absenteeism or drug stockouts or quality of services are a problem, the answer you are likely to receive (with little hesitation) is ‘yes’. That response may be based on extensive quantitative analyses, but more likely it is just common knowledge.
This raises the question of what is the value of gathering information about service delivery and spending problems. If everyone knows that the problem already exists, then why do CSOs spend time and resources monitoring whether teachers show up to class or the satisfaction of a community with its health service or the quality of supplies available for social services?
We asked these questions of fifteen CSOs working on transparency and accountability worldwide. Specifically: Did you gather primary data from facilities or civil servants? And why gather this data? Why not just start with advocacy to improve accountability?
Was gathering primary data necessary?
Only one of the fifteen organizations that we spoke with chose not to gather primary data on service delivery and spending problems — and they had interesting reasons for making this decision to which we will return. The fourteen organizations that did collect primary data all reported that they felt it was necessary before beginning their projects, and that they still held this opinion after completing their work.
But their reasons for gathering primary data were quite diverse:
Data was not available at the local level (India).
The problems may be commonly known, but they are not quantified. And policymakers wanted hard data to back advocacy (Uganda).
Everyone knows the problems, but there is not reliable information about the reasons for them (Argentina).
Data may be available, but no one believes what is being put out by the government (India).
There is information on regulations, but not on implementation (Indonesia).
This wide range of reasons for collecting data suggests two things. First, collecting primary data is at least perceived as a necessary part of any successful transparency and accountability intervention. And second, different ‘transparency problems’ lend themselves to different types of data collection and different theories of change. Even the same service delivery problem that lends itself to the same type of intervention (say, an absenteeism study) suggests different triggers, opportunities, and roadblocks for translating transparency into accountability — something critical to consider before proposing a one-size-fits-all solution to a common development problem.
What about existing data?
Despite these problems with government data, all of the partners also reported that they used secondary data. In some cases, the goal was triangulation — comparing what the government reported with what seemed to be happening on the ground. In other cases, the partners needed some initial information regarding disbursement channels or school rosters before primary data could be useful — or even feasible to collect.
How does all of this work with a transparent government? A closed government? A country with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)? With a sample of just fifteen organizations, it is hard to make any generalizations about access to information in different environments. But a few themes did emerge which practitioners and researchers and donors should consider when designing and undertaking these types of interventions.
First, we sometimes think about transparency as just the availability of information. But most of the organizations we spoke to referred (directly or implicitly) to the issues of push transparency versus pull transparency. Not one of the organizations we spoke to found that all of the data that they needed from the government had been pushed into the public sphere. Instead, CSOs had to use their contacts in government or employ FOIA requests to pull the information they needed from the government. While this may seem like a minor point, it is worth noting that these organizations are all credible organizations working at the national level. A community-based organization or a citizen group would face many more challenges in getting data, even in an open political environment.
Second, even in countries with Freedom of Information legislation, many partners chose either to use other channels to get access to government data, or to drop their requests altogether. We worked with one organization in southern Africa that employed a FOIA request at the beginning of a grant period, and eighteen months later was still waiting for a response. Organizations cited delays in data, questionable quality of data, and other issues as reasons why they needed to employ different strategies in their transparency and accountability work. These issues affect the assumptions and actions built into a CSO’s theory of change.
Then again, sometimes problems with Freedom of Information legislation compel an organization to shift its goals and its intended impact entirely. Of the fifteen organizations we interviewed, one decided not to use any primary data. This Indian CSO had seen in many past projects that community-based organizations did not have access to the information they needed to advocate for better spending on health and education. And so they decided to focus on one question — can communities get basic information on social sector spending and services to be able to better advocate for improvements? Without collecting any firsthand data, they documented what information they were able to get — and what they could not gain access to. The result of the project was valuable information about where the system was broken and trigger points where accountability work could begin to improve access to information. | https://medium.com/challenges-to-democracy/the-value-of-information-as-a-means-to-an-end-or-an-end-itself-d1abf1e327a2 | ['Harvard Ash Center'] | 2018-07-05 19:12:51.349000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Transparency', 'Open Data', 'Accountability'] |
EOS Review: How Does Its 5% Yearly Inflation Work? | EOS Block Reward
For the rewards, EOS’s DPoS operates differently.
The Proof of Work(PoW) and Proof of Stake(PoS) mechanisms provide a more immediate reward system.
For example, in Bitcoin, the miners earn their block rewards immediately after they add a block to the blockchain.
But for EOS, it has an inbuilt inflation system that increases its overall supply by 5% every year.
These extra coins are distributed thus:
I will further explain the image below.
The 5% inflation of EOS per year is divide into 2 parts:
1% for the producers
4% for Savings
The main reasons for this distribution style are to ensure that
Producers are sufficiently paid for their services. No one receives less such that it cannot cover costs. Everyone who qualifies must get a minimum per day payment. This is to make sure that the big whales who have no intention of producing blocks do not attempt to earn illegally.
See further explanation on that below.
How The 1% For Producers Is Shared
You will remember that I mentioned that there are 21 block producers, right?
Now there are other producers who gained some votes from the election but not enough to be among the 21 selected ones.
You might be wondering why I am bringing this up now. You will find out in a bit.
Now the 1% that is meant for the producers is further divided into 2 parts:
0.25% for Block Rewards
0.75% for Vote Rewards
Now all the block producers are entitled to the 0.25% block reward. This is shared in proportion to the number of blocks they validated.
For the 0.75% vote rewards, they are shared for the 21 block producers and the rest of the standby producers according to the number of votes they have.
But for this to happen, these have to be in place:
The producers who get the reward must qualify for at least 100 EOS tokens
The vote rewards have to go out at once daily
This is how 1% out of the 5% is shared.
Now I hear you say; What about the 4%?
Yeah, I didn’t forget that. Let’s go see about that below.
What Happens To The Remaining 4%?
As seen in the image above, the remaining 4% will be kept as savings. It will be allocated to the future worker proposal system.
Now that’s a lot of EOS flying around considering that in the first year, there will be 50,000,000 extra coins (considering the initial 1 billion coins).
What this sum will be used for depends greatly on what the EOS community decides.
That’s all about the reward.
Next, we will check out the exchanges where you can buy EOS.
Keep reading.
Top Exchanges To Buy/Sell EOS
The reputable exchanges where you can buy/sell EOS are:
Binance Coinbase OKEX Coindirect Changelly HitBTC Gate.io
Find details about them below.
1. Binance
Binance (coined from Binary + Finance) is a cryptocurrency exchange that was founded in July 2017 by Changpeng Zhao.
This exchange aims to improve the future of crypto finance by allowing its users to make payments in cryptocurrencies and other supported methods.
The supported currencies include BTC, EOS, IOTA, ETH, and over 100 others.
Read Review Visit Binance
2. Coinbase
Coinbase is one of the oldest and biggest names in the crypto space.
It started off in 2012 as a Bitcoin broker exchange but now offers more services and supports more coins.
It provides support for up to 90 countries and 3889 coins including, BTC, EOS, ETH, etc.
Read Review Visit Coinbase
3. OKEX
OKEX is a multi-currency exchange that was founded in 2014.
It allows its users to purchase up to 188 cryptos including, BTC, EOS, USDT, IOTA, BCH, XRP, TRX, ETH, and LTC, which can be bought with your local fiat.
For payment, it provides an array of options for its users.
Read Review Visit OKEX
4. Coindirect
This exchange was launched in 2017 and provides the following services:
Buy/Sell
Wallet
Convert
It provides support for up to 40 coins(EOS inclusive).
Coindirect services are available in 24 countries and have up to 4 payments options available.
Read Review Visit Coindirect
5. Changelly
Changelly is a non custodial exchange that was launched in 2015.
This exchange allows you to buy, sell, and swap cryptos seamlessly.
It provides support for more than 140 coins, among which is EOS, BTC, ETH, etc.
Read Review Visit Changelly
6. HitBTC
HitBTC is an advanced cryptocurrency exchange that was founded in 2013.
Based in Hong Kong, the platform offers its users tools and features with high reliability to trade with.
It supports EOS, BTC, ETH, etc., and has up to 800 crypto trading pairs.
Yet to Review Visit HitBTC
7. Gate.io
Gate.io is a trading platform that is operated by Gate Tech. Inc. and was launched in 2013.
It provides its users the opportunity of trading both Spot and Futures in one place.
The platform provides support for up to 500 coins.
Yet to ReviewVisit Gate.io
Now we have the exchanges listed, the next step is to find out where to store your EOS when you purchase them from these exchanges.
Keep reading.
Where Can I Store My EOS? — EOS Wallets
The wallets where you can store your EOS include:
1. Trezor Model T
Trezor Model T is a hardware wallet that stores your private keys offline.
It is manufactured by Satoshi Labs and is an upgrade to the Trezor One wallet.
It provides support for up to 1000 coins, including BTC, EOS, ETH, XRP, XMR, etc.
You can get one for 149EUR and can store, buy/sell, and send/receive EOS from this wallet.
2. Ledger
Ledger hardware wallets are created by a French company called Ledger which started in 2014.
It uses a unique technology called BOLOS (Blockchain Open Ledger Operating System) for creating its wallets.
Both Nano S and Nano X supports the sending and receiving of EOS and other coins.
Ledger Nano S sells for 63.03EUR, while that of Nano X is 125.10EUR.
3. Exodus
Exodus is the very first multi-asset desktop wallet but is now available in mobile versions (Android and iOS).
Some of its features include live charts and portfolio, built-in exchange, and 24/7 human support.
Exodus provides support for more than 100 coins, including EOS, BTC, TRX, etc.
4. Freewallet
Freewallet is a mobile EOS wallet that allows you to store, send, and receive EOS.
Its security features include:
fingerprint log in
2FA
pin code lock
email confirmation for each transaction
daily and weekly withdrawal limits
Of all the 127 supported coins, you can top-up your balance with any coin, and it will be converted to EOS automatically.
5. Guarda
Guarda is another non-custodial wallet for storing EOS and other coins(about 1000).
For convenience, you have this wallet in desktop, web, and mobile versions.
As an added function, Guarda has a built-in exchange where you can buy/sell cryptos for fiat.
6. SimplEOS
This wallet is made solely for the EOS network.
EOS Rio made SimplEOS with a security and transparency philosophy.
It is a desktop application compatible with the most popular operating systems, and it’s available on Github to be audited by the community.
Other wallets to store EOS include im Token, Scatter, etc.
There you have the EOS wallets. I will go ahead and compare EOS with its counterpart Ethereum.
See the comparison below. | https://medium.com/the-capital/eos-review-how-does-its-5-yearly-inflation-work-790174178667 | ['Nigeria Bitcoin Community'] | 2021-02-22 23:51:03.282000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Eos', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum'] |
Evolution of Computer Viruses | A computer virus is a type of malicious software that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code. When this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be “infected” with a computer virus. Computer viruses have been plaguing individuals, organizations and government agencies for the past 40 years. Evolving over time, these viruses have kept pace with the newest advances in technology.
The very first computer virus came into existence in the early ’80s, termed as the Creeper virus. An entire program(termed as the reaper program) was designed by information security professionals to prevent it from copying itself into systems and halting the ability to process. Later on, in the early ’90s, a high school student programmed the first personal computer virus, The Elk Cloner. It spread through a floppy disk, attached to a computer game for the Apple DOS system. The Elk Cloner is considered the first major computer virus outbreak in history, primarily because the public was not educated or familiar with the concept of viruses.
In 1986, the first virus to specifically attack PCs via the DOS system was recorded. The virus, known as The Brain or the Pakistani Flu, was created by two brothers from Pakistan, Basit Farooq Alvi and Amjad Farooq Alvi; in later years, the brothers would claim they designed the program as a security mechanism to protect other software from piracy. The Brain virus was essentially harmless; it was floppy disk-based and worked by increasing its code volume each time the host program was run. The result was floppy disks would fill up and be rendered unusable, though to the user it would appear like little or nothing was stored on the disk. No permanent damage was done.
Prior to 1988, most computer viruses were just annoyances and relatively harmless. However, in 1988, the first truly dangerous computer virus, called the Festering Hate virus, was released infecting Apple operating systems. Instead of just stalling computer function, this virus infected every file on the hard drive, floppy disks, and memory drives and eventually destroyed all files. In 1989, a new kind of virus, called the Ghostball, became the first threat to capture certain user information. Then in 1991, the first devastating virus was discovered. The Michelangelo computer virus was a hidden virus that only attacked computers on March 6th, Michelangelo’s birthday. On March 6th it would wipe the user’s hard drive.
In 2000, a Filipino computer science student created the ILOVEYOU worm that infected millions of Microsoft operating systems within a few hours of its release. In 2003, the SQL Slammer worm spread so quickly that is caused the internet to crash within 15 minutes of its release. The Fizzer virus was the first virus that attempted to make money. It infected a computer to use it as a host to send spam, primarily through e-mail. It also spread through KaZaA shares and would download updates from Geocities websites while simultaneously listening for commands on IRC and AIM.
One of the fastest growing viruses for its time was the Code Red virus which utilized buffer overflow to spread. This virus cost billions of dollars in damage, and only affected a certain type of Microsoft web server application. In 2007, a Trojan virus named Zeus attacked windows programs and became one of the first viruses to capture banking information by tracking keystrokes. In the month of November 2008, the Conficker virus was discovered, it is known to have infected over 15 million server systems worldwide, including servers in the French navy, UK ministry of defence, Norwegian police and other large government organizations. In 2012, a virus named Flame became one of the first pieces of malware to be involved in cyber espionage. Flame is a malware that attacks computers using Microsoft Windows. A report released by Budapest University’s crySyS lab termed it as the most complex malware ever found. Flame is capable of recording Skype conversations, audio, keyboard activity, network traffic, and screenshots.
Removing a virus and undoing the damage it causes to your computer can be more stressful than preventing attack by using a strong anti-virus program that can detect malware as well as Trojans, worms and viruses and also eliminate them before replication. Effective anti-viruses are available which help to detect and remove viruses that may attack your computer. | https://medium.com/@eraiitk/evolution-of-computer-viruses-73a61d3ea5e2 | [] | 2019-08-28 14:28:02.846000+00:00 | ['Virus', 'Computer Virus', 'Antivirus', 'Security'] |
10 Free Courses to learn Cloud Computing For Beginners in 2021 | 10 Free Courses to learn Cloud Computing For Beginners in 2021
My favorite free online courses to learn Cloud Computing for beginners with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform from Udemy, Coursera, Edureka, and Youtube javinpaul Follow Apr 9 · 12 min read
image_credit — udemy
Hello there, if you want to learn Cloud computing in 2021 (which is really great!!) and looking for the best free resources like online courses to kick start your Cloud Computing journey then you have come to the right place. Earlier, I have shared free courses to learn AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, and today, I am going to share free Cloud Computing courses for beginners.
Cloud Computing provides access to computing resources like CPU, storage, networking, security, analytics, and other software platforms over the internet and allows anyone to deploy applications to take advantage of these services on an on-demand basis at a much lower cost due to economies of scale.
This easier access to computing resources is powering innovation and more and more companies are moving to Cloud. Ultimately, everyone wants to focus on their business leaving infrastructure and computing to someone like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to manage, who can certainly do a better job.
Cloud Computing is an essential skill for the modern developer as most of the new development is happening on Cloud and will happen in the cloud.
If you are not familiar with how the cloud works and with essential Cloud concepts and terminology like IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, compute, storage, network, etc then you are at risk of left behind.
It’s imperative now for every IT professional to learn Cloud computing, its more important for full-stack developers, system administrator, DevOps engineer and other people who work closely with Infrastructure and code but equally important for a project manager, solution architect, business analytics and salespeople, and that’s where these free cloud computing courses will help you.
If you are still now sure what is Cloud computing then just think of it as Amazon or Microsoft’s Computer where you run your application. It’s the provider’s data center that you rent for running your services.
In more technical term, Cloud computing is the combination of the software and hardware offered by companies such as Amazon web service ( AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure to host the files and data for a company that wants to deploy their solutions or online services and can use that data anywhere anytime.
Cloud computing engineers are highly in-demand and you literally learn these skills of running cloud computing managing them, securing your data, and much more only by taking some online courses on platforms such as Udemy, Coursera, Pluralsight, edX, and more. This article has come up with the best free courses to learn cloud computing in 2021 so stay tuned.
Btw, if you are a Java developer who wants to learn more about Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing from a Java developer perspective, then I also recommend you to join Distributed Systems & Cloud Computing with Java course by Michael Pogrebinsky on Udemy. It’s not free but you can get it for just $9.9 on Udemy sale.
10 Free Online Courses to learn Cloud Computing (AWS, GCP, and Azure) in 2021
Without wasting any more of your time, here is a list of free online courses to learn Cloud computing in 2021. The list includes courses to learn Cloud Computing with AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure, three of the most popular cloud platform.
These free courses are picked from Udemy, Coursera, and Pluralsight. They are created by experts and made free for educational and marketing purposes, while they are not very comprehensive, they are very good for beginners to start learning essential Cloud Computing concepts and how cloud computing works in general.
Let’s start this list with the amazon AWS course which is considered the most popular cloud service provider used among big companies such as Netflix, Linkedin, and Twitch. This free course has almost 3 hours of video content and more than 5k enrollment.
The course starts with an introduction to AWS services and then moves to the practical lessons where you will learn how to create an EC2 instance used to host your web application. Then you will learn about the S3 cloud storage where you put your files and data in the cloud.
You will also learn managing users and groups, configuring the cloud infrastructure, using amazon SES to send emails, and more.
Here is the link to join this course — Cloud Computing With Amazon Web Services | https://medium.com/javarevisited/10-free-courses-to-learn-cloud-computing-for-beginners-4f3cd984ddb1 | [] | 2021-06-19 11:00:01.625000+00:00 | ['Cloud Computing', 'AWS', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Free', 'Azure'] |
We Are All Missionary Disciples | For those who may be unfamiliar, missionary discipleship is a term made popular by Pope Francis, especially in his encyclical, Evangelium Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel).
In paragraph 120 of his encyclical, Pope Francis writes:
“In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church, or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization.”
What this means is that each and every one of us — EVERY baptized man and woman, regardless of whether you have any position in the Church, and regardless of your level of instruction in the faith, is an agent of evangelization.
You, me, and every person around us, is called to spread the Good News that Jesus is Lord and Savior of the world. That every person is loved beyond measure by God and has been made in His image and likeness. That all of us are uniquely made and have aparticular vocation in this world for which God created us especially for, but that our highest calling is to become holy men and women — saints — who are immersedin the life of the Blessed Trinity. That every person who professes Jesus as Lord has been redeemed by His sacrifice on the cross, in which death and sin has been conquered for all time, and ensuring that anyone who says yes to the Heavenly Father’s invitation will then spend eternity with Him in heaven rejoicing atthe Heavenly Banquet Table.
This is the Good News we are called to share.
And where are we called to evangelize? Pope Francis tells us in paragraph #23:
“In fidelity to the example of the Master, it is vitally important for the Church today to go forth and preach the Gospel to all: to all places, on all occasions, without hesitation, reluctance or fear. The joy of the Gospel is for all people: no one can be excluded.”
It is this need to preach and share the Gospel everywhere thatbrings home the reality that everyone is called to be a missionary disciple. Sharing the Good News is not merely for “professionals” — like priests and religious — to be about while the rest of the us lay faithful sit by passively.
The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized.
Every one of us is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization. Anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love.
In fact, it is our very experience of God’s love, rather than how much catechetical training we might have, that makes us powerful and profound witnesses to others of God’s saving love and mercy.
THIS is a message that our world desperately needs to hear.
Pope Francis exhorts everyone of the faithful to claim our rightful place in the efforts to evangelize.He writes:
“Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are “disciples” and “missionaries,” but rather that we are always “missionary disciples.” If we are not convinced, let us look at those first disciples, who, immediately after encountering the gaze of Jesus, went forth to proclaim Him joyfully: “We have found the Messiah!” (John 1:41). The Samaritan woman became a missionary immediately after speaking with Jesus and many Samaritans come to believe in Him “because of the woman’s testimony” (John 4:39). So too, Saint Paul, after his encounter with Jesus Christ, “immediately proclaimed Jesus” (Acts 9:20).
So as we prepare to begin Lent this Wednesday, I challenge each of you to consider how you might grow closer to Jesus and experience His love more deeply during this sacred time, so that you are strengthened to go out and bring others to Jesus so they can experience His love, too.
By our baptism, we are ALL missionary disciples. So what are you waiting for?
For more posts like this, as well as information and updates on Christina’s ministry, writing, and current online course offerings, got to: www.christinasemmens.com | https://medium.com/@christinasemmens/we-are-all-missionary-disciples-d81168a13c57 | ['Christina Semmens'] | 2019-03-21 18:06:00.831000+00:00 | ['Discipleship', 'Christianity', 'Christian Living', 'Evangelization'] |
How theator Built a Continuous Training Framework To Scale up Its Surgical Intelligence Platform | Performing surgery is largely about decision making. As Dr. Frank Spencer put it in 1978, “A skillfully performed operation is about 75% decision making and 25% dexterity”. Five decades later, and the surgical field is finally — albeit gradually — implementing advances in data science and AI to enhance surgeons’ ability to make the best decisions in the operating room. That’s where theator comes in: the company is re-imagining surgery with a Surgical Intelligence platform that leverages highly advanced AI, specifically machine learning and computer vision technology, to analyze every step, event, milestone, and critical junction of surgical procedures — significantly boosting surgeons’ overall performance.
The platform’s video-based analysis takes lengthy surgical operation videos and extracts meaningful information from them while maintaining patient privacy, providing surgeons with highlight reels of key moments in an operation, enhanced by annotations. This quantitative visualization of past surgeries not only enables surgeons to improve their craft from operation to operation, but it also informs surgical best practices for future procedures.
How did we make it possible? Automation was critical. As our R&D team expanded, we began to realize that we were spending too much time manually running model training and focusing on DevOps tasks, and not enough time dedicated to core product development. That’s when we realized that running all of these processes manually was infeasible and automating training pipelines was an absolute must. Now, when new data comes in, it’s immediately processed and fed directly into training pipelines — speeding up workflow, minimizing human error, and freeing up our research team for more important tasks.
Here are the ins and outs of our automation process.
From Software to Data Science Domain
At theator, our strong engineering culture complements our core research principles and practices. In order to automate our training pipelines, we decided to borrow the “nightly build” concept from SW engineering, adapting it to the deep learning domain. The idea, in short, was to build a full continuous integration (CI)/ delivery (CD)/ training (CT) pipeline.
This automated pipeline trains and tests multiple models at night — as the name “nightly build” implies. It includes pipelines that generate several models chained together and manages multiple parallel pipelines that run concurrently with multiple procedure types. Experiments that pass the bar are placed in a deployment pipeline, which ultimately delivers the models to the end-users for inference.
Lastly, after annotation refinements, a feedback loop is created to collect inference data and integrate it with existing training datasets for improvement and continuous training (CT).
High-level view of framework design
Building the automation was complex since there were multiple moving parts, all of which needed to be integrated together. We also faced challenges regarding ease and cost of computation, setup, maintenance, and more, and it became increasingly clear that minimizing these challenges meant choosing the optimal tools for the job. We mainly focused on selecting two core tools, i.e. the framework of choice, and the platform or toolchain on top of which our research and deployment pipeline automation was built, end to end.
We chose PyTorch as our main ML/DL framework for both research exploration and production inference. The models we typically develop at theator are a combination of state-of-the-art methods — tailored for the surgical domain — and modules developed in-house. Since our research team stays up-to-date regarding relevant computer vision publication releases, we frequently explore new techniques related to the field. Integrating new ideas with our proprietary modules — and exploring their impact — requires a flexible framework: one that enables fast experimental iterations of sub-components of the training flow, e.g., new network architecture or a novel layer structure. We identified PyTorch as the best framework to deliver the flexibility that we needed. With PyTorch we can easily disassemble and reassemble the parts we want to focus on and it provides frictionless top to bottom debugging capabilities — from the data loading parts through their tensor representations, down to the network’s gradients during the learning process.
We chose Allegro Trains for the underlying platform or toolchain. The key selling point for us was the fact that Allegro Trains provides most of the critical pieces needed in a highly integrated toolchain, including experiment management, data and metadata management, ML-Ops, orchestration, and automation components. It also has additional bonuses like optimizing the physical data flow for training and more.
The Control Plane
Because we manage multiple use cases — and new data coming in typically correlates with one or more of those use cases — training multiple models concurrently is inevitable. Doing so with separate models, however, also incurs high operational costs driven by extensive cycles and reduced researcher focus. Our researchers and engineers knew that they needed a single control plane to manage these multiple concurrent processes. To accomplish this effectively, we began using an advanced feature of Allegro Trains that enables us to set up master controller apps which — among other things — manipulate multiple, complex pipelines concurrently. The feature can orchestrate an unlimited number of concurrent pipelines, spread across various datasets and machines, on-prem or in the cloud.
We set up our master controller to automatically run experiments, change configuration files with the correct data and model configuration, and then launch the experiment on remote machines. Our researchers complete a “recipe file” and the pipeline controller takes it from there.
Master Controller
The Workflow in a Nutshell
Let’s dive a bit into our R&D pipeline and explore the setup.
The first step was to create a version of the data from the various video sources: these build upon the original training video sets and other videos, coming in periodically from active medical centers in deployment, that are annotated and added to the training sets.
To accomplish this, we set up a data management solution which included:
Versioning of datasets
Queryable datasets
Ability to mix and match datasets
Balance datasets
Optimized data loading
We chose Allegro Trains because all of these capabilities are included out-of-the-box in their enterprise data management solution. Using their system, we’re able to organize our datasets in a queryable structure, monitor incoming data, and automatically trigger the training pipeline periodically — or when events such as when data doubles, or we receive incoming data from a new source. This is the CI aspect of our solution.
A particularly helpful feature of Allegro Trains is that it also tracks the machines’ status for utilization and models’ status for performance. Live tracking of model performance provides our researchers with quick insights that can shorten training times or lead to new research avenues. At the same time, machine observability enables them to maximize the utilization of our hardware. Correlating between an experiment’s behavior and machine utilization provides another debugging capability layer — therefore, combining these two features multiplies their impact.
On the data handling side, during training and inference, a surgical video that took hours to complete is represented as a huge 4D tensor. This makes it difficult to digest and process sequentially, out of the box. We’ve written customized data loading functionalities — based on PyTorch video handling modules — to develop our internal surgical vision models. Wrapping them with PyTorch data distribution and data parallelism has helped us achieve significant and essential acceleration in training and running experiments.
Training Pipeline View
When it’s Time to Deploy
Having already covered the heavy load of automating the training of deployment-ready models, let’s now discuss the deployment aspect of our solution.
Since we run a live production platform (which has a continual feedback loop that enables retraining) we had to close the loop between creating and refining training models, and quickly deploy them — sometimes deploying multiple models at once. This problem is further complicated by the fact that pipelines may contain multiple models, and swapping models for better-performing alternatives might actually diminish the entire pipeline’s performance.
To mitigate this risk, we built a regression test pipeline that simulates production-like environments and tests the model on real field-data. This step, combined with Allegro Trains’ comparison dashboard, allows us to be confident in our pipeline and grants a “seal of approval” for models to be deployed into production. Finally, deploying models as part of the production base-code is quickly achieved with PyTorch, which enables robust and stable production-ready APIs that translates into fast surgical video analysis of new procedures curated from the operating room at inference time. This is the CD part of the solution.
Wrapping it all up
Having built this framework to automate and manage our entire process, from model development to deployment to continuous training for model improvement, we’ve evolved from a company that relied on traditional ML practices to a fully automated, scalable organization. Along the way, we’ve saved our researchers and engineers countless hours by allowing them to focus on where the true value-add lies. With this reduction in training time and costs, we’re now able to double down on our ultimate goal of perfecting and delivering better models for our end users. | https://medium.com/pytorch/how-theator-built-a-continuous-training-framework-to-scale-up-its-surgical-intelligence-platform-b5135e3229fd | ['Omri Bar'] | 2020-12-17 17:30:18.205000+00:00 | ['Computer Vision', 'Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Devops And Mlops', 'Surgical Intelligence'] |
Reviewing the TensorFlow Decision Forests library | Reviewing the TensorFlow Decision Forests library
Thanks to https://undraw.co/illustrations for providing free illustrations
In their paper, Tabular Data: Deep Learning is Not All You Need, the authors argue that while deep learning methods have shown tremendous success in the image and text domains, traditional tree-based methods like XGBoost still continue to shine when it comes to tabular data. The authors examined Tabnet, Neural Oblivious Decision Ensembles (NODE), DNF-Net, and 1D-CNN deep learning models and compared their performance on eleven datasets with XGBoost.
Tabular Data: Deep Learning is Not All You Need | source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.03253.pdf
This is an important paper in the sense that it reiterates that deep learning may not be the silver bullet for solving all machine learning problems. On the other hand, tree-based algorithms have been shown to perform at par or even outperform neural networks for tabular data while being simple to use and comprehend.
And there is good news for people who like to work with tree-based models. A few months back, the TensorFlow Decision Forests, aka TF-DF library, was open-sourced by Google. In this article, we’ll understand what TF-DF is and how it could be helpful for us. | https://towardsdatascience.com/reviewing-the-tensorflow-decision-forests-library-1ecf50ae00c3 | ['Parul Pandey'] | 2021-09-08 21:40:58.131000+00:00 | ['Random Forest', 'Decision Tree', 'Data Science', 'TensorFlow', 'Machine Learning'] |
Lowered Expectations | Random Encounters
It needs to be stated that throughout my travels — and especially while I was wearing my Trans identifying T-shirt — absolutely NO ONE misgendered or confronted me. I utilized restrooms in all the airports I visited (Will Rogers, Dallas International, Pittsburgh International, and Denver International) completely without incident. Often times, the restrooms were packed with lines forming inside to access the next available stall. In one instance at the Denver airport, a woman even chatted me up about my tattoo while waiting for a stall.
As I flew from Dallas to Pittsburgh I was seated next to a very nice woman who chatted with me pretty much the entire flight. She took no issue with my gender identity, and we even discussed it over the course of the flight. When we landed we gave one another a hug and continued on with our travels.
You can’t miss this monster on your way to get your luggage at Pittsburgh International Airport.
The day following my father’s funeral I had plans to meet an old friend who I hadn’t seen in 15 years; I would also get to meet her husband for the first time as well. We met up for dinner at the Olive Garden on Peach Street in Erie. The place was crowded, but there was immediate seating available in the bar area; we opted for that instead of waiting. During the course of dinner, a waitress who wasn’t even serving us came by several times. Initially the chatter was about the pain of my tattoo, when she returned the second time it was to declare that I was her new BFF; the third time she came back she continued to dote on my tattoo and referred to me as a “Warrior Princess.” Before leaving she offered me a hug; I gladly accepted.
After dinner, my friends and I paid a visit to Presque Isle to watch the sunset.
On the Sunday that I was scheduled to fly home, I made my way to the breakfast area at my hotel. My usual morning routine would consist of catching up on social media and reading news while I eat breakfast. So I’m there doing just that; it’s early, the place isn’t too busy, and there are plenty of open tables. As I am minding my own business, a man who was probably in his mid-late 50’s came to my table and asked to sit with me. I agreed; if for no reason other than pure curiosity. I figured the conversation would move in one of two directions; either my tattoo or the context of the t-shirt. I couldn’t help but want to know where this was headed.
The man introduced himself as Joey. He said he likes to hear about people’s journeys, and that as he looked around the room he figured I was the most interesting person there. Of course he said in the same breath that no one asks about his journey, and I proceeded to do just that. He was 30+ years in recovery from alcohol and drugs, and he worked with youth who were struggling with addiction. I don’t know what had brought him to Erie, but I know he lived in Pittsburgh, and was a bricklayer by profession. He shared a tragic and inspiring story about his son who was able to make significant strides after suffering a traumatic brain injury. He also told me how happy he was to be a grandfather even though his daughter had gotten pregnant under less than ideal circumstances. I saw this man embrace the tragedy and triumphs of his life and really see nothing but the good in the entirety of the experience.
Joey did his share while exalting Jesus at the same time, but I think we were on the same page. I told him the only parts of the Bible I could ever relate to were the bits printed in red (‘Living Bibles’ are printed with Jesus’ words in red); he agreed. He said he couldn’t quote a single verse from the Bible, but sincerely believed in Christ’s words.
As it was, he’d sought me to hear my story, and so I indulged him. I could tell he was oblivious to the difficulties of being Trans. I spoke to him about hormone replacement, Trans athletes, the abhorrent suicide statistics, and how some people fall on addictions to cope with their gender identity. The latter of which was something we could both definitely relate to (addictions that is). The conversation was good, I think we both took something away from it. We wished each other well, and went on about our lives.
When I had gotten to my gate on Sunday my plane was still about 45 minutes from take-off and boarding hadn’t begun. I went to a bar next to the gate and ordered a “Stacy’s Mom IPA”. Just seconds after placing that order a man comes up the the bar; has some quick chatter about my tattoo, then he quickly places an order for a double shot of whiskey and a beer. In the same breath, he told the bartender that my beer was on him. He said his name is Tom, but all this friends called him Tommy. I told him my name, and we exchange “nice-to meet yas”. Of course I said “nice to meet you Tommy” and he responded, “you called me Tommy, that means we’re friends!”
Tommy and I bantered for a bit, more tattoo talk, and I indulged him in taking a photo (or 3). As it turns out, he’s on the same flight to Denver as me. He’s 6'5" tall, and is bucking for an exit row because he needs the leg room. I am a lower number in our boarding group, and he asks me to grab the exit row for him. Ironically that wasn’t really necessary, since he was right behind me going on the plane. But we both made our way to the exit row, and enjoyed the extra 4 inches of leg room — WOOT! We didn’t talk much on the plane but when we landed, Tommy wished me well and we went our separate ways.
Once I’d gotten to Denver, I had several hours to kill. By now my breakfast had worn off and I was starting to get a bit hangry. I take a stroll up and down the concourse looking at my options for eats. After about 20 minutes I go into a restaurant and bar called The Great Divide. The place is packed, and the only place for me is on the far side of the bar right next to the kitchen. It’s a weird seating because it’s a half table that’s mounted on the bar. The bartender is a fella named Christopher who is probably in his 30’s. I order a “Titan IPA” and a burger, then jump back to all the social media and news that my conversation with Joey had kept me from this morning. Eventually I have a second Titan.
In between helping other customers, Christopher engages me in small talk. I overhear that they’re about out of CO2 and that no one has bothered to call AirGas for a delivery. This will surely make their customers a bit irritable. I quip about how it must be a pain in the ass to make a delivery at an airport. I tell Christopher that I occasionally have to make a delivery to an Air Force base, and that has taught me that security can be a real time-suck.
Eventually Christopher asked me where I’m going. I explain I’m on a return flight from my father’s funeral. He offers his condolences, and says his own dad passed a couple years prior. As I finish my meal, and ask for the check he asks if he can give me a beer. I opt to cut myself off, but he says he’s going to do something. When he hands me my check I can see he’s applied a 25% ‘airport employee discount.’ I am taken back by his generosity, but I pretty much gave it back — with more — in the form of a tip. I sign my ticket and leave. I hadn’t been out of the restaurant for more than a minute when Christopher caught up with me. He asked if he could offer me a hug. I happily accepted. Never in my life have I hugged a total stranger with such enthusiasm. I hope he knows what that small kindness meant to me, and it was the icing on the cake when it comes to proving that humanity can still be pretty friggin awesome! | https://medium.com/the-transition-transmission/lowered-expectations-651a673a1563 | ['Kira Wertz'] | 2019-07-24 11:12:27.152000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Travel', 'Life Lessons', 'Family', 'Transgender'] |
EVOLUTION OF PR | How PR has changed??
If we compare the changes in PR then it has drastically changed in a very short time span, but the changes have came in techniques only.
Earlier, PR was not actually recognized with so much importance, companies at that time has not much focus on this thing, but if we compared it with today than public relation has become one of the most important tool for the existence of business in the society.
PR is all about how well any business or company is able to maintain a constant contact with their potential clients, in order to develop goodwill in their eyes. There are lots of methods to enhance public relations.
If i talk about what has changed then definitely lots of things has changed before and now, i had made some pointers to establish a clear comparison.
Earlier PR was not that much hot topic, as people were doing at that time also but they were not actually aware with the basics. But now PR has got a special place in the market, different companies has opened as a PR agency for providing this service. Earlier PR was done at higher cost as it requires great amount to get famous but now social media has got so much power that it’s become very easy to get viral in seconds only. Earlier marketers were not able track the performance reports but nowadays it’s become very easy to track the latest updates of the performance with high tech metrics and analytic tools.
So, these are the some basic comparisons that gives a glimpse that how PR has evolved.
I would like to elaborate about one most popular PR agency to derive more clear picture in front of you all.
PUBLICITY MANTRA is the Lucknow situated PR agency, that is performing very well with the techniques of digital marketing. They are using extraordinary techniques to excel in the field of providing PR services to the clients.
Publicity Mantra is the company, whose name itself derives the essence of PR and developing goodwill among the general public. It’s main focus on doing the publicity of the different types of industry like health and communications, hospitality industries, education sector, hotels and various other brands.
They use various types of tricks and methods to help out the other industries in enhancing their goodwill among the general public, like using press release, media actions, social media marketing, content writing and various other modes of promotion.
At last i just want to convey that PR has evolved the way people starting knowing it, it is not something new came in the market, it’s just the methods and techniques came with increasing demands and needs of the public and to fulfill that competition has been increased to a great level. Thus that competition lead to the evolution of PR. | https://medium.com/@at020298/evolution-of-pr-dd8f2f797198 | ['Ayush Tripathi'] | 2021-04-09 20:24:41.550000+00:00 | ['Inbound Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Public Relations', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Publicity'] |
LifeSpeak serves Canada’s 100 Best Employers | The winners of the Canada’s Top 100 Employers award were announced last week. Congratulations to all our friends at:
3M Canada Company
Air Canada
Alberta Health Services / AHS
BC Public Service
Bell Canada
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories Ltd.
CIBC
Export Development Canada
Irving Oil
Ivanhoé Cambridge Inc.
Keyera Corp.
Labatt Brewing Company Limited
NAV CANADA
Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP
Royal Bank of Canada
SAP Canada Inc.
TD Bank Group
Government of Yukon
It’s an honor for us to serve the employees who work at these outstanding organizations and their family members. If you’d like to learn how we can help your staff thrive, book a walk-through today. | https://medium.com/lifespeak/lifespeak-serves-canadas-100-best-employers-8ed51c277fd3 | ['Lifespeak Inc.'] | 2018-11-12 16:06:40.532000+00:00 | ['Employee Experience', 'Employee Engagement', 'Workplace', 'Work', 'Employer Branding'] |
How to Get the Perfect Front Door for your Dream Home | When asked what is the most important thing in this world for you, apart from your family, friends and of course your pet animal (because they are not things) what would be your answer? Well, when it comes to material possessions, for most people it is their house, the one that they have spent years in planning about and have certainly sacrificed on various things to save enough for that one dream home. There is no harm in loving things, especially when it comes to your house because that is the place which you share with the most important people in your life. Whether you live with your parents, or are a parent of yourself and in the phase of raising a family of your own, we all have certain dreams and ideas about how our house should be which is completely fine. However, where to start with? Yes, you guessed it; it always starts with entrance, i.e. the front door!
When it comes to home doors, we always have this need of enhancing them in one way or the other. The best way to enhance your front entry is to get an iron door installed. There are a bunch of reasons as to why iron doors manage to keep up with their image in the market and how their qualities do not let anyone think about any other possible options. If you have heard of them or experienced it by looking at your neighbor’s entry door, you probably are thinking about enhancing your front gate too. We have good news for you, this is certainly the best time to do it; the weather supports your decision. The reason behind saying this is the fact that getting an iron door installed can be best done during summers, you certainly do not want to get any outdoor renovation done during winters; it just requires a lot more effort and energy from both your side and the labors.
If that is not enough, here is another valid reason for getting an iron door for your entrance: Iron doors are famous for their ability to fit in. No matter what type of an entrance you have or what style you prefer, iron doors will adjust according to your needs. You can get your customized iron door exactly the way you want. It comes in different sizes, different shapes, various colors and a range of unique designs. It’s up to you; if you want you can choose from the numerous options available both in single and double sized doors or if you prefer picking all the minute details of you iron door to have the perfect aesthetic, you can opt for customized doors.
Whatever your decision is, once you have decided for sure, just go for it. You have got the best quality, best designs, and above all, the perfect season to get it done as well, what is left to wait for now? We hope that you get exactly what you are looking for and that your dream home has the perfect entrance! | https://medium.com/@irondoorgate/how-to-get-the-perfect-front-door-for-your-dream-home-705703589cf8 | ['Door Gate Depot - Wrought Iron Doors Los Angeles'] | 2019-03-21 17:47:51.579000+00:00 | ['Iron Doors', 'Iron Doors Dallas', 'Wrought Iron Doors', 'Iron Doors Nevada', 'Home Improvement'] |
The Dangers of Writing About the Apocalypse | A couple of years ago I wrote the first 65,000 words of a post-apocalyptic novel: a version of our future where a great many of us, globally, died from a virus, and then nearly all the rest died in the grim aftermath: from cold, illness, starvation, suicide, fire, random violence, and more. It was a grim future, made survivable for a few, in part, by the swiftness and the thoroughness of the illness, which left some food still on many supermarket shelves, gas at gas stations, and most roads largely clear — at least of vehicles.
The biggest challenge for me as a writer has been to understand what would work and what wouldn’t. Research taught me that GPS, for example, would not. That technology requires human adjustments to hold the satellites in place. Sure hope you have access to maps! Gas would be ok for a while, but not more than maybe a year and a half, and of course you’ve got to get it out of the underground tanks at the gas stations without power. Solar energy would work, of course, so a smart and well-equipped group could actually use computers, and PlayStations, and even solar-powered water pumps and heaters. Running water and hot showers — yes!
The Internet would be done for, though. Can you even imagine that? We’ve reached a point where even essential reference books are only accessible online. And cell phones are out, too, without all the systems operating in the background. Water treatment would be a thing of the past, too. Until my band of survivors make their way out of the city and find a place with a well, collecting rainwater is an essential part of life. As long as that pump keeps working and the well doesn’t silt up.
I also made a point of studying labels in grocery stores, to understand what products would still be edible a year to 18 months after the end. The answer is, not that many. And the stuff that’s expired? Is it just stale or actually dangerous? I have something of a solution for that — my group of travelers eats in batches, ensuring that no more than half of the group eats the same foods for each meal. That way, unless something really goes wrong, there’s always someone to handle guard duty and the like. And they cook stuff hard, to kill as many bacteria as possible. Sounds tasty, huh?
And of course, there are no more vegetables or fruits to buy. No fresh meat. No dairy, including cheese, though canned milk and those containers of powdery parmesan are ok, when they can find it. No more crackers or cereals, but oatmeal is good, depending on the packaging. Oils and most nuts are fine. Flour and sugar, generally being on lower shelves, are often ruined by mice or bugs or moisture. Do you know how much time, effort, and money grocery stores put into pest management? It’s a lot, so most products shelved in paper or cardboard or plastic bags are a loss. Canned goods, like soups and vegetables, are mostly ok, for a while longer. Canned tuna, sardines, and Vienna sausages? You bet. All the herbs and spices they could ever want, too, though the taste will gradually dull and distort with every passing month. Some more so than others.
Of course, every store is different. Some shelves, and some whole stores, are well picked over by the time they break in. The fading stench of long-thawed frozen foods and rotted meat and produce is usually still present. Roofs leak, often, and sometimes collapse. Rats and birds and mice have taken over some stores. Bugs, too, and sometimes larger animals. And so forth.
The trouble is, I spent a lot of time thinking about this. It became an obsession for a while, and then it became a habit. It reached the point where I’d evaluate an area for its suitability as a camp when I was out, or look to see if any of the stores would be useful. I’d feel alienated from my life, sometimes — thinking that none of it would matter once the apocalypse came. None of it would have meaning or value. Why even bother paying for two years on my car registration now? Better to wait and see.
And what sorts of properties would be easy to guard and defend? A remote farm? A warehouse? A hospital or prison, maybe? There are pros and cons to each, but the key is: which would be empty when you got there? Getting bodies and their associated stench out of a place is a nightmare. A school, maybe: one with lots of rooms and a big kitchen, showers, and fields encircled with lockable fences. Can’t have anyone, or anything, getting at the crops.
A field of young corn plants in Charles City, VA.
Crops? Yeah, any apocalypse novel ought to also be a farming novel, because that food will only last so long. I mean, you know there’s a warehouse somewhere in the lower 48 filled to the gills with freeze-dried emergency rations, or MREs, or maybe camping meals in lightweight pouches, but how are you gonna find it? Yeah, that’s right: the Internet is down. And when was the last time you saw a phone book, even assuming it would be in there? You could search every building in a whole city for stockpiles of food, and maybe not find more than a whole lot of corpses, dust, and expired reject food in the cabinets. Plus, you know some of those preppers have booby traps.
So yeah, stop and grab some gardening implements and seeds next time your band of survivors is walking or driving past a Lowe’s or an Ace Hardware Store. Get some books about gardening from a local library, and maybe see if you can corral some cows — they’re great for fertilizer. Then think long and hard about irrigation, because you need to grow enough to last you through winter whether the rain comes or not. And also? Better learn how to can those vegetables you’re growing. Pick up some ammo, too, because you’ll have to defend your crops from the other band of survivors who live two towns over and are too lazy and shiftless too grow their own damn crops.
OR, you could maybe take a deep breath and remember: the world probably isn’t going to end any time soon. And if it does, you’re more than likely going to be one of the zombies and not one of the people escaping town in an RV, or whatever. In which case, you won’t have to worry about a thing. Comforting, isn’t it?
So, all things considered, you might want to skip writing about the apocalypse. If you do it, it will more than likely be with you for quite a while. And finding yourself in the middle of a pandemic doesn’t help one little bit — though the experience will definitely help me when I’m revising my novel. There are a whole lot of things about our responses to a pandemic that I could never have imagined — and that you would never have believed if I had.
Stay healthy, my friends! | https://medium.com/@meriahva/the-dangers-of-writing-about-the-apocalypse-ad18a9911e91 | ['Meriah Crawford'] | 2021-07-21 04:46:01.223000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Survival', 'Zombies', 'Apocalypse', 'Farming'] |
Thinking Generatively | Bayesian Inference is based on generative thinking
In the Machine Learning domain, we often find ourselves in the pursuit of inferring a functional relationship between the attribute variable(s) (i.e. features or simply, input data: x) and its associated response (i.e. the target variable: y). Being able to learn this relationship allows one to build a model that can predict a response, given any set of such attribute variables (i.e. the test data).
A response y being modelled using attribute x
The usual suspect
Scrambling towards the drawing board, we quickly think of defining a loss function with an intention of minimising the said loss using whatever means necessary (pun un-intended), essentially translating a learning problem into a problem of optimisation, hoping that our model is able to learn a function good enough to potentially discriminate likeable and not-so-likeable content. This is considered as a discriminative modelling approach. In this article, however, I intend to walk you through a different approach: a generative one.
It is quite difficult to generate the absolute correct recommendation for any user as there is a multitude of factors that might be at play, like the user’s time constraints at that moment, her mood? or even a gut feeling? Wait.. it’s getting way too complex!
Recently, I have come to appreciate an approach to modelling which involves actually inferring that functional relationship by thinking generatively. Goal? we wish to model the process that generated the data (likeable content in this case) in the first place. Although it’s not possible (practically) to come up with a model to generate the exact data, the ability to think generatively is quite useful as I shall now explain.
A Need for Modelling Errors
A simple Linear Regression model
Consider a simple linear regression model (see figure) with the best fit line as a result of minimising the loss. Going back to our discriminative approach, we see that even though the assumption of a linear relationship between x and y does capture the general trend, there are deviations (sometimes considerable) between our model (i.e. the red line) and observed data points. The intuition we’re trying to develop here is that if we know these deviations or errors are going to be present (remember that it is the best fit line after all), it does make a fair case for us to build them into our model, in trying to think generatively! Fret not! We can call on our dear friend, statistics to incorporate this variability into our model using a ‘random variable’.
Intending for the reader to appreciate the intuition of thinking generatively, bear with me as I skim over the mathematical details and abstract certain caveats (definitely incurring the wrath of the more mathematically inclined).
Response y modelled generatively using additive errors sampled from a normal distribution
Our generative model with (purposely) modelled errors, looks like this after incorporating the deviations through a random variable, ‘ϵ’ for each of our n input data points. Starting simple, we assume that the errors (i.e. the epsilons) are independent and are sampled from a Gaussian (or Normal) distribution with zero mean and a variance v. Owing to the random component, we now look to maximise the likelihood of our data in the following manner to obtain the optimal parameter estimate for w:
Dataset Likelihood: likelihood of the joint density over all responses in our dataset
We look to find the values for w and v that maximise the likelihood, L or for mathematically tractable reasons, maximise the Log-likelihood. Interestingly maximising the likelihood and minimising the loss (using least squares for example) in the discriminative approach, gives the same exact optimal value for our parameter w, when the error terms are sampled from a normal distribution. Being able to estimate an optimal value of the variance: v, which basically controls the distribution of these errors, allows us to predict a range of values as opposed to an exact answer as in a discriminative model; here, a smaller range (of values) would suggest a higher level of certainty in our prediction whereas this range would be large if we are less certain about the result.
Conclusively, the benefit of thinking generatively, using this likelihood approach, is that it confers us with the ability to quantify uncertainty in our estimates and hence (more importantly) in our predictions. Crucially, it allows us to steer away from exact predictions (like in the discriminative model) which will most certainly be (close enough but still) wrong, towards a ranged interval: y ± v; where ‘y’ is the predicted response and ‘v’ is a control parameter of the chosen error distribution.
It is absolutely not necessary to sample our errors from a normal distribution (it can be any distribution like the Beta or Binomial distribution), or to even have an additive error; that was intended to keep the mathematics straightforward for the sake of this article. For an in-depth understanding, please refer to the book titled, ‘A first course in Machine Learning’ by S. Roger and M. Girolami, which was the inspiration for this article!
Hi! I am Anwesh. Pursuing a Masters at the Computer Vision lab at TU Delft, I am learning to appreciate the math and the following intuition behind machine learning models. I have come across some really cool ideas, which I would love to share. Stay tuned for upcoming articles and you can learn more about my projects on my website. Appreciate your support!
References:
Simon Rogers and Mark Girolami. 2016. A First Course in Machine Learning, Second Edition (2nd. ed.). Chapman & Hall/CRC.
Image taken from: https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/blog/2016/06/bayesian-statistics-beginners-simple-english/ | https://medium.com/swlh/thinking-generatively-c0bce13dd3e6 | ['Anwesh Marwade'] | 2020-11-17 10:34:25.908000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Bayesian Inference', 'Data Science', 'Statistical Learning', 'Machine Learning'] |
Part 2 of Critique of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Efficacy and Safety Trials | Part 2 of Critique of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Efficacy and Safety Trials
Exposing the claim of symptom prevention as totally unsupported by the studies
First, the public needs to understand that neither Pfizer nor Moderna claim that their vaccines prevent infection. Instead, they claim that their vaccines are 95% effective at preventing illness. In other words, the claim is if you get infected, there is a strong likelihood that you will not get sick. Sounds great. Does the data support the claim?
It is generally accepted that 20% of Covid-19 infections are asymptomatic without any intervention. 95% efficacy indicates to the consumer that 95% of infections would be asymptomatic. How can a study that only tests the few participants who self-report symptoms do more than ASSUME that there are thousands more asymptomatic infected persons in the vaccinated group than in the control group? What is the reasonable basis for this assumption? Why not remove the need for assumption by testing?
I posed the following question on Quora:
The answers would be comical if this were a laughing matter. A couple of hours ago I received this answer among the total of 4 answers received, which mirrors much of the responses I have received from my immediate family who so want to believe we have turned the corner that they throw logic out the window:
In order to make sure the illness is caught, you would need to test every patient every week. Pfizer had 44,000 subjects. 44,000 x 15 weeks = 660,000 tests. Now keep in mind how many different companies are testing vaccines, and we don’t know which ones will work. We could have used up 20 million tests just on the vaccine trials. This would have required federal approval, and would pull tests away from hospitals and from people trying to know whether they should self-isolate. Also, it takes time for the participants to have their swabs taken. It takes time for the medical professionals to collect them. For 44,000 people, every week. Instead, they asked patients to report their symptoms, and if the subject had symptoms, then they did a test. So no one was counted if they weren’t positive for COVID-19, but some asymptomatic cases were undoubtedly missed, for both the vaccine and placebo groups. That is why they are accurately describing their vaccine as preventing illness rather than claiming it prevents infection. In the short term, finding something which prevents illness and doesn’t harm people is the priority. Now that we know which vaccines are the most promising, we can put more resources into them and learn more. The most key questions are, do the vaccines prevent transmission to other people, and how long does immunity last. The answers to those questions will decide which vaccines we keep using long term, and which ones are immediate stopgaps.
Let’s parse and take apart this answer together:
In order to make sure the illness is caught, you would need to test every patient every week. Pfizer had 44,000 subjects. 44,000 x 15 weeks = 660,000 tests.
Ummm, yeah, so what? During the same 15 week period between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 tests PER DAY were administered in the United States.
660,000 / (15 x7) = 6,286 tests per day. Clearly, well within Pfizer’s, Moderna’s and the CDC’s resources for the vaccine discovery effort likened to the Manhattan Project and named Operation Warp Speed.
Now keep in mind how many different companies are testing vaccines, and we don’t know which ones will work. We could have used up 20 million tests just on the vaccine trials.
I have no idea how she gets the 20 million test figure, but again — so what? Approximately 158,000,000 tests were administered across the US during the terms of the studies.
This would have required federal approval, and would pull tests away from hospitals and from people trying to know whether they should self-isolate.
Ooooh, federal approval, how would a study that requires federal approval get federal approval???!!! That statement is right out of an MLM playbook — “How to legally deceive the consumer with obfuscations and diversions.” Oh my, yes, how can we risk diverting assets from the tremendously important self-quarantine analysis in favor of the unimportant vaccine trials?
This makes me sick.
That is why they are accurately describing their vaccine as preventing illness rather than claiming it prevents infection.
I already debunked that.
In the short term, finding something which prevents illness and doesn’t harm people is the priority.
I agree. Let’s keep looking for that please. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE EVERYONE CONTINUE TO WEAR MASKS AND PRACTICE SAFE-DISTANCE-SOCIALIZING.
I wrote yesterday that the failure to test was an intentional design flaw. This answer and the rationalizations for the intent that do not begin to hold water, seem to prove my point — the intent was to deceive. Perhaps with good motive, but deceiving the public about the vaccine is immoral — impure and simple. | https://medium.com/illumination/part-2-of-critique-of-phizers-and-moderna-s-efficacy-and-safety-trials-646b55deaf69 | ['Yohanan Gregorius'] | 2020-12-22 15:32:41.697000+00:00 | ['Vaccines', 'Moderna', 'Pfizer', 'Clinical Trials'] |
Q&Archives: Shaping the City with the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development | For those who might be unfamiliar with NYC Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), can you give us a quick introduction to the agency?
Jonathan: Sure thing — the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s mission is to promote promotes the quality and affordability of the city’s housing and the strength and diversity of its neighborhoods. It primarily does this by preserving affordable housing, financing new affordable housing and enforcing the Housing Code.
The agency was founded in 1978, but our archive goes all the way back to 1960 and includes photos from previous agencies. So all-in-all it’s an amazing collection: you start before the advent of large-scale Urban Renewal and catch glimpses of streetscapes that no longer exist. You see a bleaker period of abandonment and decay in the 1970s and 80s when NYC was in a state of crisis. Finally, you get to the City’s rebound, as abandoned buildings were restored and empty lots filled in with new homes. Along the way, there are lots of remarkable tenant portraits, and a few totally random images mixed in, like Mayor Koch standing on a ladder painting a sculpture of a big red apple!
The photos were all out of sight for decades until the Department of Records (DORIS) digitized them a couple of years back. Since then, we’ve really enjoyed partnering with DORIS & Urban Archive to share them with the public and shed light on NYC’s housing history. | https://medium.com/urban-archive/q-archives-shaping-the-city-with-the-nyc-department-of-housing-preservation-and-development-15421f58a2d3 | ['Sam Addeo'] | 2020-09-03 20:46:22.402000+00:00 | ['History', 'Technology', 'Housing', 'Maps', 'NYC'] |
Django Basics for a Beginner | Django Architecture
Django follows the MVT or Model View Template architecture which is based on the MVC or Model View Controller architecture. The main difference between these two is that Django itself takes care of the controller part.
MVC stands for Model View Controller. It is used for developing the web applications, where we break the code into various segments. Here we have 3 segments — model, view and a controller.
Model — Model is used for storing and maintaining your data. It is the backend where your database is defined.
Views — In Django templates, views are in html. View is all about the presentation and it is not at all aware of the backend. Whatever the user is seeing, it is referred to a view.
Controller — Controller is a business logic which will interact with the model and the view.
Now that we have understood MVC, lets learn about Django MVT pattern.
MVT stands for Model View Template. In MVT, there is a predefined template for user interface. Let’s take an example, say you want to write several static html forms like hello user1, hello user2 and so on. With template, you will be having only one file that prints hello along with the variable name. Now this variable will be substituted in that particular template using some jinja logic. That’s the magic of template, you don’t need to rewrite the code again n again!
Now you might be wondering where is the controller?
In the case of MVT, Django itself takes care of the controller part, it’s inbuilt.
That is, it’s probably the framework itself: the machinery that sends a request to the appropriate view, according to the Django URL configuration.
So, in the case of Django, this is what each component is doing:
The MODEL helps to handle database. It is a data access layer, which contains the required fields and behaviors of the data you’re storing. There’s hardly an application without a database. A model is a Python class, and it does not know anything about other Django layers. Models help developers to create, read, update, and delete objects (CRUD operations) in the original database. Also, they hold business logic, custom methods, properties, and other things related to data manipulation.
helps to handle database. It is a data access layer, which contains the required fields and behaviors of the data you’re storing. There’s hardly an application without a database. A model is a Python class, and it does not know anything about other Django layers. Models help developers to create, read, update, and delete objects (CRUD operations) in the original database. Also, they hold business logic, custom methods, properties, and other things related to data manipulation. The VIEW is used to execute the business logic and interact with a model to carry data and renders a template. The view fetches data from a model. Then, it either gives each template access to specific data to be displayed, or it processes data beforehand. It accepts HTTP requests, applies business logic provided by Python classes and methods, and provides HTTP responses to the client requests.
is used to execute the business logic and interact with a model to carry data and renders a template. The view fetches data from a model. Then, it either gives each template access to specific data to be displayed, or it processes data beforehand. It accepts HTTP requests, applies business logic provided by Python classes and methods, and provides HTTP responses to the client requests. The TEMPLATE is a presentation layer that handles the User Interface part completely. These are files with HTML code, which is used to render data. The contents of these files can be static or dynamic. A template is used only to present data since there’s no business logic in it.
A “view” is the Python callback function for a particular URL, because that callback function describes which data is presented. Furthermore, it’s sensible to separate content from presentation — which is where templates come in. In Django, a “view” describes which data is presented, but a view normally delegates to a template, which describes how the data is presented. The ‘controller’ here is Django itself which sends the request to the appropriate view in accordance with the specified URL. This is why Django is referred to as MTV rather than MVC architecture.
The developer provides the model, the view, and the template, then maps it to a URL, and Django does the magic, to serve it to the user.
In short, a web application has data, layout, and logic. The model will work with the data, the view will work with the logic, and the template will work with the layout. | https://medium.com/@humble_bee/django-basics-for-a-beginner-5d864e6aa084 | [] | 2020-02-01 18:37:45.861000+00:00 | ['Django', 'Python Web Developer', 'Website Design', 'Python', 'Web Development'] |
Export data from elasticsearch to mysql with Apache Spark | Elasticsearch is a search engine based on the Lucene library. It provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema-free JSON documents. MySQL is an open-source relational database management system. Apache Spark is an open-source distributed general-purpose cluster-computing framework. Spark provides an interface for programming entire clusters with implicit data parallelism and fault tolerance.
Ok, now, you know these 3 things 👊 let’s play with it!
Here the use case:
“I have a ton of data in elasticsearch, with nested structure, and I want to export it into MySQL, of course, as fast as possible”
Why Spark?
Spark supports elasticsearch and MySQL very easily (just a plugin as a JAR file to provide)
Spark divides the work as stages/tasks, so it can work in parallel, with elasticsearch as the input, the “parallel unit” will be a shard, Spark will read data of all shards in the same time (1 task = 1 shard)
Spark can create MySQL schema for you! as a good developer, you are lazy, and always looking for automatic stuff, cool!
Spark can understand Python, Java or Scala
Apache Zeppelin
One more (very cool) techno is Apache Zeppelin:
Web-based notebook that enables data-driven,
interactive data analytics and collaborative documents with SQL, Scala and more.
Spark is seamlessly integrated, so we are gonna use Zep’ as a note book to write our tiny Spark (Scala) program.
The (Scala) code
Read elasticsearch data
Here we got a DataFrame from “clicks” index:
2. Flatten schema
Elasticsearch speaks JSON, it loves nested structure, whereas MySQL does not. So we must flat our data schema:
3. Write to MySQL | https://medium.com/@thomasdecaux/export-data-from-elasticsearch-to-mysql-with-apache-spark-37e1e3d3ac3a | ['Thomas Decaux'] | 2020-02-20 17:54:36.734000+00:00 | ['Spark', 'Elasticsearch'] |
Exclusive breastfeeding outreach program in India | Around 1.2 million infants die during their neo-natal period in India every year. Neo-natal period refers to first 28 days after birth. Although there are many causes associated with these deaths, one major cause is due to lack of nutrition for the child’s development. After birth, first form of nutrition is through breast milk of the new mother. WHO states that breastmilk can reduce the risks of infant death by 14 fold. Breastmilk is widely available and affordable source of nutrition for the child in their first six months of life. Yet less than half of infants are exclusively breastfed for the first six months across the country.
World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) encourages breastfeeding to improve nutritional value in new born children and promote it through various strategies across the globe. Researchers also observed many short and long term benefits of breastfeeding not only on individual level but also regional and national scales. At individual level, the breastfed child is less prone to diseases as it improves their immunity, which in turn helps in development of a healthy society in future. Today’s healthy child will be a tomorrow’s active citizen who can improve the future of the region and the nation too.
Despite recognising many benefits of breastfeeding there are many challenges in modern society to increase the rate of breastfeeding among infants and new mothers. In the past, there was a lack of easy alternatives to breast milk and therefore mothers were forced to breastfeed their children. But now-a-days due to presence of many alternatives, people are easily going for those such as formula milk.
The causes of shifting to alternative bottled milk to feed infants in modern society are: Bottled milk becomes an easier option for child as it’s easier to suck, in this modern world where mothers are working continuously without any maternity leaves, leave them with no option to feed their child during the working hours thus forcing them to adapt to alternatives, some other issues like lack of spaces specified for breastfeeding in public places also leave mothers with an option to opt out of breastfeeding. These above causes are mostly specified to urban regions, whereas in rural regions, the main cause of decline in breastfeeding is due to traditional practices such as feeding child with cow milk and honey which the rural people strongly believe to be more nutritious.
Indian government recognising the importance of breastfeeding, started campaigns to bring changes in its citizen’s attitude towards breastfeeding. Some of these campaigns involve educating parents about the importance of breastfeeding in improving their child’s health. The outreach programs through community workers and mass media are commonly used. Through these programs, the government tries bringing behavioural changes in parents towards breastfeeding and reduce the infant deaths across country. | https://medium.com/@ratnabysani19/exclusive-breastfeeding-outreach-program-in-india-914947601185 | ['Ratna Priya Bysani'] | 2019-10-24 15:10:53.871000+00:00 | ['India', 'Community Outreach', 'Breastfeeding'] |
Editor’s Pick: Dipping Into the Portfolio of Another of Illumination’s Poets | Editor’s Pick: Dipping Into the Portfolio of Another of Illumination’s Poets
Photo by Rick L on Unsplash
This is the fourth of my series of reviews of regular contributors of poetry to Illumination. The image I chose shows an explosion of fresh colours and I think you will agree after reading some of Dr. Preeti Singh’s work that it is a fitting tribute. Her focus on every day objects bring us refreshing and intimate descriptions with an emphasis on joy. I certainly find her work uplifting.
Here is her homage to the rose, a flower that is an international emblem of love.
A Rose is a Beauty of Nature — ILLUMINATION — Medium
A haiku on the theme of home. It is wonderful how so few words can cause you to stop in your tracks and momentarily reset your emotions.
The Abandoned Child — ILLUMINATION — Medium
Colour features brightly in this muse on the subject of the exotic male peacock, strutting his stuff.
The Peacock is a Proud Champion — ILLUMINATION — Medium | https://medium.com/illumination/editors-pick-dipping-into-the-portfolio-of-another-of-illumination-s-poets-569b17aed07f | [] | 2020-11-22 10:31:55.456000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Poetry', 'Illumination', 'Colors', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
How Toughened Glass Fits Perfectly Into Modern Office Design | With open workplace design rising in demand, there’s now a need to get inventive for those who are still holding on to their aspiration for privacy and safety. These days commercial designers are increasingly adding toughened glass panels London & partitions into workplace interior design for many important reasons. Let’s talk about why toughened glass has turned out to be a favourite office design feature.
Durable & Flexible:
Toughened glass panels, which are largely being used in London, are quite versatile because of the thickness and toughness of the glass. They provide the strength & durability to resist wear, tear and direct impact in a busy workplace environment. Therefore toughened glass systems allows designers to push the limitation of office design by offering flexibility and functionality. For instance, designers can make use of toughened glass to build walk-on glass floors and also include it in a workplace furniture design, shelving and kitchen facades, table tops and another type of partitions and/ or office dividers.
Disperse Natural Light Without Compromising Security:
Letting natural light into your office is critical to improving the well-being of your staff. Unfortunately, lack of natural lighting is one of the major issues found in workplace design.
In tall buildings, designers also face security dilemmas on external facade glazing. Apart of required transparency of the glass windows, glass panes must be strong enough to resist any human or nature created impact against the glass. This is where toughened glass windows play a big part by maximising the dispersion of natural light and offering support to endure heavy impact, alleviating security worries in tall office buildings.
It does not deter from aesthetics:
Many people believe that the extra strength & durability of toughened glass will associate to a heavy look, but this is not a case. Toughened glass can look exactly the same as standard glass and also be curved, tinted and shaped to make a significant input into any office design in London.
Maximise Privacy And Security:
Glass wall partitions may also offer a private space within a busy office environment when used with intermediate laminate (patterned or frosted styles) between toughened glass panes. Laminated toughened glass partitions are quite effective at providing sound proofing & can henceforth produce a more secure workspace. In case of cracking the glass will not fall apart but will keep providing secure partition.
Find Your Professionals:
Are you planning to add toughened glass to your selected office design project? Kova Partitions is here to offer expert advice & assistance in selecting toughened glass products for your upcoming design project. Get in touch with our team now to discuss your specific project requirements. | https://medium.com/@alexyolechnovic.online/how-toughened-glass-fits-perfectly-into-modern-office-design-4a1c7bf486c4 | ['Kova Partitions'] | 2019-02-07 05:01:55.071000+00:00 | ['Interior Design'] |
Tackle Today: S.M.A.R.T. Goal Setting | Tackle Trading | ≈ Have you used this process? ≈
Traders,
As we head towards the holidays and the end of the year, it is a good time to start thinking about your goals for 2021. Setting goals using the S.M.A.R.T. methodology will put you in a better position to reach them. If goals are not reachable, they are not worth making.
S.M.A.R.T.
Specific = What details do you want to accomplish?
Measurable = How will you evaluate whether you have accomplished your goal?
Attainable = Goals must be something you can reach
Relevant = Make Goals that are important to you and your lifestyle.
Time-Bound = Make sure that you have a time set as a ‘deadline’ to work towards.
If you go through the process of writing down your goals, and look at them often, this will help you decide what is important for you to achieve, provide motivation for yourself and builds self-confidence when you reach them.
#TeamTackle
Chart of the Day
UUP — US Dollar ETF Weekly Candlestick Chart
The dollar continues it’s bearish downtrend after Jerome Powell and the Fed indicated their dovish policies will remain in place.
Video of the day Trade Masters Webinar Replay
If you missed last night’s webinar with Coach Mark, Tyler and Gino, catch the replay here.
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All investing and trading in the securities market involves a high degree of risk. Any decisions to place trades in the financial markets, including trading in stocks, options or other financial instruments, is a personal decision that should only be made after conducting thorough independent research, including a personal risk and financial assessment, and prior consultation with the user’s investment, legal, tax and accounting advisers, to determine whether such trading or investment is appropriate for that user. | https://medium.com/@tackletrading/tackle-today-s-m-a-r-t-goal-setting-tackle-trading-2dd18d5ce6a3 | ['Tackle Trading'] | 2020-12-22 18:35:52.045000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Tackle Trading', 'Stocks', 'Investing', 'Stock Market'] |
Exploring Ideas of Life, Death, Consciousness, and AI | The idea of death is scary to most people. The uncertainty of whether there will be an afterlife and the potential for eternal darkness is frightening to many, but my writing may ease this anxiety and actually make you excited for the future.
A large amount of our known universe is composed of particles. We ourselves are composed of these particles along with the bed I’m currently sitting on, the beach I just ran on, the Earth that we live on, the star we orbit around, etc. Everything is composed of these particles, but in a different combination. That’s why the same particles can create something that’s living or nonliving, conscious or not conscious.
There has been a raging philosophical debate for all of human history of what consciousness actually is, but let’s simplify it by saying that something is conscious if it’s able to observe and react to its reality. So under this definition, a plant would be conscious since it’s able to react to an outside disturbance such as a shift in the angle of sunlight, but a rock would not be conscious since we have not found if it has the ability to observe or react to anything in its reality. We’re conscious since we’re able to see and react to our reality (to simplify, our ‘reality’ is what we observe).
So the idea I’m getting at is that the same particles (protons, neutrons, electrons, etc.) can form something that is conscious or not conscious, simply based on its composition and combination. The particles that we’re composed of have composed many other things before us, whether it’s a plant or dirt or a rock or an asteroid or a star. The particles that we’re made of have created other objects in the past, except with a different combination and in a different quantity (think about it).
Now, I keep on emphasizing consciousness and combination, but why? Because we’re simply another combination of particles in the long history of our known universe, but the only difference now is that we can observe those particles. So basically, with us and any other conscious being, these particles are just observing themselves (think about it. Your eyes are made of protons, electrons, and neutrons, and you’re able to look at your feet, which are also made out of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Hence, the particles are quite literally observing themselves). In the future, the particles that we’re composed of will combine with other particles to create other things whether it’s a plant that’s then eaten by a bunny, which is then excreted and used as a natural fertilizer for the food of a chimpanzee. And then after Earth is destroyed, those particles will be flung out and help in creating a new planet or asteroid or star or black hole or whatever else there may be. And this cycle will continue.
So if you think about this deeply again: we’re simply another combination of particles in the vast expanse of space and time, but the only difference is that we’re actually able to observe space and time. Basically, the only difference between our combination of particles and a non-conscious combination of particles is that our combination is able to learn and comprehend every combination of particles (it’s crazy to think about, I know).
So although people may view their ‘life’ as short and finite, I view us as eternal. When we ‘die’, the particles that have combined to create us will combine with other particles to create other stuff in the future, including other conscious beings. For instance, as I said earlier, when we decompose, the particles that were once a part of us will create other life whether it’s a plant, bunny, or intelligent being. We are eternal, except in this iteration of particles, we can actually observe the universe and the particles that create us. And that is something that we should celebrate. The fact that we’re able to observe the universe that we’re a part of is amazing, and when we ‘die’, our eternal being is continually cycled throughout the cosmos.
Now, let’s go even deeper into the idea of consciousness. The same particles that create us, conscious beings, can create other conscious beings. For instance, right now you could be made up of the same particles that made up a T-Rex in the past. So based on that, we might be able to say that consciousness is not transferred between singular particles. And in the future, the particles that currently create us might combine to create other conscious beings whether it’s at our level of intelligence or not. This could mean that consciousness is simply defined by a certain combination of particles.
So let’s go even deeper, shall we? With the emergence of artificial intelligence and Neuralink specifically, we come to the idea of storing consciousness. With Neuralink implanted in someone’s head, it can measure metrics such as brain wave frequencies, which can be used for many tasks whether it’s treating neurobiological diseases or playing an immersive, action movie-inspired dream in your sleep. As the Neuralink would continue to store data of a person’s brain metrics, what if it can then learn to model their thinking. What if Neuralink can learn to model someone’s consciousness! What if we could do this for someone like Elon Musk, who’s constantly teeming with new, innovative ideas. What if we can model a person’s consciousness and from that model, creativity can emerge. Think about it. What if years after Elon’s human ‘death’, the AI that’s modeling his brain can continue creating ideas like he currently does whether it’s for Tesla, Boring, SpaceX, etc. (what if this model of Elon’s consciousness can take over as CEO of his ever-expanding portfolio of companies). And then, what if the AI could learn to think of ‘better’ ideas, which can then create new AI that can create even ‘better’ ideas (and the cycle would continue).
So now, another question arises. Would you be able to experience yourself as ‘you’ if some technology were able to ‘store’ your consciousness? If consciousness is simply a combination of particles it could potentially be like a barcode that can point to a specific consciousness (think about it. A specific ‘barcode’, or combination of particles, would always be pointing to the same consciousness). So if we could store Elon’s consciousness, he could experience and react to the universe through the AI itself long after his human ‘death’. This is obviously speculation and there is much more to be discovered, but it’s something that we can and should continue to think about and explore.
‘What is consciousness ‘and ‘how can we model it’ are a couple of big questions that we may or may not ever be able to find a consensus on. But let me pose another question. AI will continue to advance, probably at a level of intelligence greater than that of us (although this will take a relatively long time). If it’s possible for us to create AI more intelligent than us, then we know that this AI can then create an AI even more intelligent than itself, and so on. So knowing this, can we potentially create (or lead to the creation of) a super-intelligent, conscious AI that can transcend physical boundaries, existing in just the form of energy? Wait a minute. This is essentially the same wording that people use when describing God — a transcendent, all-knowing being that is not hindered by physical boundaries! What if we can create a being of this sort through continued progress in AI and consciousness. What if this human-transcendent creation can now go on to create another universe with its own funky parameters such as zero-gravity and really anything else we can or can’t imagine. What if our universe is a product of this exact process. An ancient civilization led to the creation of a transcendent being that had the ability to create our universe, and then in turn, our form of life.
What if this is the end goal of humanity. To create an eternal being that, too, can create, and leave a lasting impression of our existence in the seemingly lonely expanse of our universe. | https://medium.com/@mihir-bharti/exploring-ideas-of-life-death-consciousness-and-ai-862aba34b849 | ['Mihir Bharti'] | 2021-02-17 08:13:28.531000+00:00 | ['Death', 'Thoughts', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Life', 'Consciousness'] |
Sharing, Caring, and the Complications of Sequencing a Baby’s Genome | When a newborn’s genome is sequenced, should some results be withheld?
Learn more about the BabySeq Project.
By Robert C. Green
If genome sequencing can warn us of future disease risks, allowing the opportunity for intervention before symptoms appear, it stands to reason that the earlier you obtain it, the more you will benefit. And if earlier is better, wouldn’t newborn genome sequencing make sense?
It very well might. A simple “heel stick” newborn genetic screening test, covering over 30 conditions, is already required by law in the U.S. and many other countries. Genome sequencing goes much further, searching for thousands of additional conditions and expanding options for early intervention. This could be especially important for childhood diseases, or any condition where preventive steps can begin at a young age.
Not all conditions fit that description, though. What happens if a newborn’s sequencing results include a risk variant for an adult-onset condition? What does it mean for that child, and for other adults in that child’s family — some of whom might unknowingly share the same variant?
We have some complications to work out before newborn genome sequencing becomes common practice. The BabySeq Project, a randomized clinical trial with more than 300 participating families (parents with newborn babies), is working on these questions, examining how to integrate genomics safely and effectively into pediatric medicine.
A recent paper in Pediatrics highlights a difficult case we encountered in the BabySeq Project in which an actionable adult-onset condition was detected in a newborn’s genome sequencing. The lab team discovered that a newborn in the study carried a pathogenic BRCA2 variant unequivocally associated with a significantly increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer in women and some increased risk of other cancers in both men and women. The baby, who had been placed in the cardiac ICU with underlying medical problems that genome sequencing did not explain, passed away.
The study team realized that one of the baby’s parents was carrying the variant without knowing. And the team faced the decision of whether — and if so, how — to share that information with the parents.
The original protocol did not help us. In designing the BabySeq Project, we had had concerns about including adult-onset conditions and had decided to focus on potential benefits to the child only. The FDA, with some oversight of our proposed study, also had concerns about sharing adult-onset conditions, and in the original protocol, we had agreed to return only pediatric-onset conditions to the participating families.
Yet when this newborn’s results included the BRCA2 variant, we felt the family should have the option to receive the result. The child’s parents had not reported an elevated family risk of cancer, so we had reason to believe that if the mother also carried the BRCA2 variant, she may not have known it. Providing her this information could save her life.
We initiated a series of conversations, then formal communications, with our Institutional Review Board, and later with the FDA, both of whom agreed that the information should not be withheld. Next, without referring to any particular findings in their family, we gave the parents the option to receive their child’s results for adult-onset conditions, and both said they would like to receive them. Study geneticists and their family doctor shared the results in person. Upon hearing the BRCA2 result, the mother realized she had several more distant relatives with a history of breast or ovarian cancer. She scheduled a follow-up at a cancer genetics clinic, where she discovered that she carried the BRCA2 variant as well.
Ethical standards in newborn screening, and in pediatrics more generally, revolve around considering the child’s best interest. As we had previously anticipated, when it comes to revealing genetic variants that predict adult-onset conditions, the “best interest” standard reminds us to consider the child’s autonomy, allowing them to make their own decisions as adults about what they do and don’t want to know. However, when an adult-onset variant is likely to have been inherited from a parent, and when learning that variant may save a parent’s life — as is very much the case with BRCA2 — it is self-evident that providing information that could save a parent’s life is also in the child’s best interest.
Robert C. Green, M.D., M.P.H., is a medical geneticist and physician-scientist who directs the G2P Research Program in translational genomics and health outcomes in the Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School. Follow him on Twitter at @RobertCGreen. | https://medium.com/@genomes2people/sharing-caring-and-the-complications-of-sequencing-a-babys-genome-2d7d3669ba4d | [] | 2019-05-21 12:42:56.122000+00:00 | ['Newborn', 'Cancer', 'Genomics', 'Medical Ethics', 'Pediatrics'] |
End To End Python Implementation Of Finding Optimised Efficient Investment Portfolios | End To End Python Implementation Of Finding Optimised Efficient Investment Portfolios
Explaining How To Build The Efficient Investment Portfolios From Start To End
One of the milestones of the investment management application was to implement an end to end solution that starts by fetching company stock prices and builds a set of efficient and optimum portfolios using optimisation routines.
This article will demonstrate how to achieve it.
Please read FinTechExplained disclaimer. This application is based on my opinions and they could be wrong. Always seek advice from a professional financial advisor before investing your money. This article aims to explain portfolio optimisation concept at an abstract level and it should not be considered as an investment advice.
1. Article Aim
This article will document the following key points:
The Theory Of Efficient Frontier The Process Flow Of The End To End Solution Implementation in Python Path Of The Complete Code Next Steps
2. The Theory Of Efficient Frontier
We hear the term “efficient frontier” quite a lot but what does it mean exactly? And what is the Modern Portfolio Theory all about?
Burton G Malkiel expressed it in a perfect manner:
“The theory provides a firm foundation for the intuition that you should not put all your eggs in one basket and shows investors how to combine securities to minimize risk” (Burton G. Malkiel).
Key Note: Never put all of your eggs in one basket. Make sure you diversify!
Photo by Diggity Marketing on Unsplash
Let’s consider you have $10'000 of cash available and you are interested in investing it.
Your aim is to invest the money for a year.
Like any rational investor, you expect the final amount in a years time to be higher than the $10'000 amount you want to invest.
The last thing you want is to lose the $10'000 you started your investment with.
So far, so good!
Key Note: I am a strong believer in maintaining focus when we are attempting to reach a goal. And the key to meet that goal is to adapt swiftly to the changing environment.
Read this article if you want to gain an understanding of investment management:
Photo by Samuele Errico Piccarini on Unsplash
2.1 Understanding Risk-Return Relationship
There are many investment options available, such as buying a T-bill or company shares, etc. Some of the investment options are riskier than the others because they attract us to gain higher returns.
Hence, the point to note is that there exists a risk-return trade-off. As an investor, our sole aim might be to invest in the least risky investment option that yields the highest return.
If we buy a number of assets such as shares of different companies then the total risk of the portfolio can be reduced due to diversification. This means that an investor can reduce the total risk and increase the return by mixing assets with different proportions. This is due to the fact that the assets can be correlated with each other and combining them together can reduce the risk. Hence it lets us produce a good portfolio.
This brings the question: What Is A Good Portfolio?
A good portfolio is more than a long list of good stocks and bonds. It is a balanced whole, providing the investor with protections and opportunities with respect to a wide range of contingencies. — Harry Markowitz
The Modern Portfolio Theory of Nobel prize winner, Harry Markowitz can be implemented by using optimisation routines.
Photo by Will Tribe on Unsplash
3. The 7 Steps Of Efficient Frontier Process
Before I present the end-to-end implementation of the solution, I wanted to highlight a key technical note here. The core of the architecture of this application revolves around just one concept:
When the application runs, it produces a large amount of data such as stock prices, their returns, covariance matrix, portfolios and their allocations along with their risk, return and Sharpe ratio. The Python code saves all of the required data in an Excel spreadsheet. It’s located is specified in the settings file.
We need to perform the following 7 steps:
The three stages of seven steps
The first stage (steps 1–3) is to calculate the daily returns of our stocks. The second stage is step 4 whereby we need to optimise the allocations to retrieve the best portfolio for each of our target returns. The last stage is about using the allocations to calculate the risk and return and plot the portfolios.
Photo by Ion Şipilov on Unsplash
4. Starting The Implementation In 3 Stages
This section will document the Python code with an explanation of how I have implemented the solution.
The following packages are required to support the application:
Pandas: for data manipulation
Numpy: for calculations
Matplotlib: for charting
SciPy: for optimisation
4.1 First Step Is To Fetch The Stock Prices
We built a component that fetched the historical stock prices:
end_date = settings.get_end_date()
start_date = settings.get_start_date(end_date)
closing_prices = price_extractor.get_prices(settings.PriceEvent, start_date, end_date) #plot stock prices & save data to a file
cp.plot_prices(closing_prices)
fr.save_to_file(closing_prices, 'StockPrices')
The stock prices are time-series data.
This is the snapshot of the data. The code stored the data in the StockPrices sheet of the excel spreadsheet as shown below.
As you can see, we are unable to compare ZM with SYMC because the stock prices are of different magnitude. Hence, we need to compute the returns to standardise the stock prices.
4.2 We Need To Generate The Returns From The Prices
We need to compute their geometric returns by calculating the following equation:
The returns are generated so that we can standardise the stock prices and compare them.
returns = settings.DailyAssetsReturnsFunction(closing_prices, settings.ReturnType) #plot stock prices & save data to a file
cp.plot_returns(returns)
fr.save_to_file(returns, 'Returns')
The returns are time-series data. This is the snapshot of the data which is stored in the Returns sheet of the excel spreadsheet as shown below.
4.3 Asset Expected Mean Returns And Covariance Matrix
There are essentially two steps involved:
expected_returns = settings.AssetsExpectedReturnsFunction(returns)
covariance = settings.AssetsCovarianceFunction(returns)
#Plot & Save covariance to file
cp.plot_correlation_matrix(returns)
fr.save_to_file(covariance, 'Covariances')
The first step is to compute a single number to represent the returns of the assets.
One of the most common ways to represent the returns as a singl number is to compute the mean of the returns which is known as the expected mean returns.
To compute the asset expected mean return, we need the mean of the returns of each stock calculated as:
From the asset returns, we can compute the portfolio returns. The assets within the portfolio have been allocated a proportion of the total investment amount. As an instance, the portfolio might hold 40% of asset ABC and 60% of asset DEF.
Note: Are historical returns the right choice? Should we instead generate different measures? I will implement a superior application in the future that demonstrates how we can implement time-weighted returns instead.
2. The second step is about generating the Covariance Matrix from the asset returns
The code then prepares the covariance matrix:
The covariance matrix is stored in the Covariances sheet of the Excel spreadsheet as shown below:
The volatility of the portfolio is the risk of the portfolio. The volatility is computed by calculating the standard deviation of the returns of each stock along with the covariance between each pair of the stocks by using this formula:
Volatility in this instance is the standard deviation i.e. the total risk of the portfolio.
Standard deviation measures the dispersion of the values around the mean.
4.4 Now Important Point: The Monte-Carlo Simulation & The Efficient Portfolios Line
Let’s first generate 100’000+ portfolios via Monte Carlo simulation first. The allocations will be generated randomly.
This technique relies upon the theory that as we generate a portfolio a large number of times, we will eventually reach the formation of the true optimum portfolio. Remember, here the generation of a portfolio implies randomly generating the allocations (weights).
This article demonstrates the Monte-Carlo simulation in detail:
If we plot the risk and return for each of the portfolios on a chart then we will see an arch line at the top of the portfolios.
This yellow line is essentially pointing at the portfolios that are the most efficient. This line is known as the efficient frontier.
The efficient frontier is a set of portfolios that give us the highest return for the lowest possible risk.
Every other portfolio that does not reside on the efficient frontier is not as efficient because it offers the same return as a portfolio on the efficient frontier but by taking a higher risk.
Any other portfolio is therefore inferior to the portfolios on the efficient frontier. As a result, we can literally ignore the portfolios that are not on the efficient frontier line.
Executing Monte-Carlo Simulator:
portfolios_allocations_df = mcs.generate_portfolios(expected_returns, covariance, settings.RiskFreeRate) portfolio_risk_return_ratio_df = portfolios_allocation_mapper.map_to_risk_return_ratios(portfolios_allocations_df)
The portfolios are stored in the MonteCarloPortfolios sheet of the Excel spreadsheet as shown below:
5. The Key Step — Portfolio Optimisation
Now let’s produce an optimum portfolio by running the optimisation techniques.
We are going to use the SciPy package. The scipy.optimize module, within the SciPy package, offers a variety of optimisation algorithms. The module includes un/constrained algorithms, global optimisation routines, least-squares minimisation, scalar and multivariate minimisers etc.
It offers Newton-Krylov, Newton Conjugate Gradient, SLSQP, curve fit and dual annealing algorithms amongst others.
5.1 SciPy minimize function
There is a minimize function within the scipy.optimize module that performs the minimisation of a scalar function of one or more variables. The minimize function makes it easier for us to execute the required algorithm on an objective function.
The signature of the method is:
scipy.optimize.minimize(fun, x0, args=(), method=None, jac=None, hess=None, hessp=None, bounds=None, constraints=(), tol=None, callback=None, options=None)[source] funx0args=()method=Nonejac=Nonehess=Nonehessp=Nonebounds=Noneconstraints=()tol=Nonecallback=Noneoptions=None
The key arguments are:
fun: This is the objective function which we want to minimise. In our case, our portfolio is composed of a number of assets. We want to find the allocation of each asset that gives us the least amount of risk. The first parameter of the function is the 1-D array of allocations. We can also pass in a tuple of other parameters to the function too.
This is the objective function which we want to minimise. In our case, our portfolio is composed of a number of assets. We want to find the allocation of each asset that gives us the least amount of risk. The first parameter of the function is the 1-D array of allocations. We can also pass in a tuple of other parameters to the function too. x0 : This is the initial guess. We can assign a value of 1/number of assets, as the initial value of x.
: This is the initial guess. We can assign a value of 1/number of assets, as the initial value of x. args : This is a tuple that can contain the extra optional arguments. As an instance, if our target risk function takes in the covariance matrix then we can pass it in the args tuple.
: This is a tuple that can contain the extra optional arguments. As an instance, if our target risk function takes in the covariance matrix then we can pass it in the args tuple. method : This is a string argument where we can pass in the algorithm name such as SLSQP
: This is a string argument where we can pass in the algorithm name such as SLSQP constraints : This is where we will pass in the constraints such as the sum of allocations should be 1.
: This is where we will pass in the constraints such as the sum of allocations should be 1. bounds: These are essentially the minimum and maximum pairs of each element in x. As an instance, we can indicate that we don’t want the value of allocation to be negative implying that we don’t want to sell an asset.
5.2 Portfolio Optimisation Routine
To perform constrained minimisation for multivariate scalar functions, we can use the minimize function with the SLSQP algorithm.
SLSQP stands for Sequential Least SQuares Programming.
def solve(self, x0, constraints, bounds, covariance):
return minimize(self.__risk_function, x0,
args=(covariance), method='SLSQP',
#prints covergence msgs
options={'disp': True},
constraints=constraints,
bounds=bounds)
5.3 Initial Guess And Bounds
We specified an initial guess of an equal proportion portfolio and a lower bound of 0 along with an upper bound of 1 on each of the allocations.
x0 = np.ones(self.__portfolio_size) * (1.0 / self.__portfolio_size)
bounds = ((0, 1),) * (self.__portfolio_size)
5.4 Constraints
We also specified the constraints. The idea is to minimise a function of x subject to functions of constraints. The constraints can be linear and non-linear. They are defined as dictionaries.
There are two constrains:
Constraints on the allocations are added which ensure that we maximise return Constraints are added to ensure that the sum of the allocations is 1.
Now the optimiser has to produce a portfolio with minimum risk within the bounds that are subject to these constraints.
The keys of the dictionary of each constraint include:
type: This specifies the type of constraints such as ineq (inequality) or eq (equality). If you have an equality constraint such as:
A + B = C then it will be represented as A+B-C
def con():
return A + B - C
It would be equality ( type='eq' ) constraint, where you make a function that must equal zero:
def con(t):
return A + B - C
If you have an inequality constraint such as:
A + B ≥ C then it will be represented as A+B-C
def con():
return A + B - C
It would be an inequality ( type='ineq' ) constraint, where you make a function that must be greater than C:
def con(t):
return A + B - C
fun: The function of the constraint such as the sum of allocations of assets in the portfolio should be equal to 1.
constraints=[] constraints.append({'type': 'eq', 'fun': lambda inputs: 1.0 - np.sum(inputs)})
constraints.append({'type': 'eq', 'args': (returns,),
'fun': lambda allocations, returns:
my_return - self.__return_function(returns, allocations)})
5.5 Execution Of Portfolio Optimiser
optimiser = obj_factory.get_optimiser(targets, len(expected_returns.index))
portfolios_allocations_df = optimiser.generate_portfolios(expected_returns, covariance, settings.RiskFreeRate)
portfolio_risk_return_ratio_df = portfolios_allocation_mapper.map_to_risk_return_ratios(portfolios_allocations_df) #plot efficient frontiers
cp.plot_efficient_frontier(portfolio_risk_return_ratio_df)
cp.show_plots() #save data
print('7. Saving Data')
fr.save_to_file(portfolios_allocations_df, 'OptimisationPortfolios')
fr.close()
We specified a list of our target returns.
def get_my_targets():
return np.arange(0, 1.5, 0.05)
For each of the returns, the optimiser ran the optimisation routine and produced the most optimum and best portfolios which are known as the efficient frontier.
For each target, it returned the most optimum portfolio. The array of allocations are the weights (proportions) of the assets which make up the portfolio for each of our target return
The red line above is the efficient frontier. These are the optimised target portfolios.
6. Complete Code
The complete code is uploaded on GitHub
7. Next Steps:
We have a long way to go but we are getting there! The next set of steps is about:
Adding superior measures to calculate the return Enhanced risk metrics to calculate the risk of the portfolio Implementing a forward-looking correlation matrix Allocation of weights to the actual amount Company extractor to fetch us the right companies and enriching additional information such as sector, volume, ratings etc Adding additional constraints on the sector, currency, ratings, etc Appropriate allocations by units of shares
8. Notes Worth Mentioning
We need to consider transaction costs.
Additionally, we need to remember that the past does not always dictate the future accurately.
The risk and return measures are not superior and have many flaws. We need to explore other measures such as weighted average returns and expected shortfall risk measures along with forward looking covariance matrix.
We need to start considering the factor models.
9. Summary
This article documented the following sections:
The Theory Of Efficient Frontier The Process Flow Of The End To End Solution Implementation in Python Path Of The Complete Code Next Steps
If you are interested in the next phases then please let me know. Also, let me know if you have any other ideas. | https://medium.com/fintechexplained/end-to-end-python-implementation-of-finding-optimised-efficient-investment-portfolios-8d12693f537d | ['Farhad Malik'] | 2019-11-27 11:48:34.389000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Finance', 'Fintech', 'Programming', 'Python'] |
How I am Learning to Be Enough | If some people are emotional eaters, I am an emotional spender. If things are going bad, I often think, “What the hell? I’m already in deep, why not get a little deeper?”
I mention this because like so many other people these days, I am questioning what it means to have enough and be enough in my life.
My closet these days seems pretty bare.
My home does not have a ton of tchotchkes or art for that matter.
I have saved only the books that “spark joy.”
I regularly edit what I own.
I will not say I haven’t spent money on non-necessities — as I try and get out of a financial conundrum — but I have tried to limit purchases.
When I finally broke down a few weeks ago and purchased some new underwear and socks to replace all the holey and worn out pairs, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was making the right decision.
If you are like me, you may have made so many “wrong” decisions you have trouble knowing when you are being sensible. I can rationalize almost any purchase or decision, which means when it is time to make a decision or to choose something I need, I can’t help but question myself.
Funny, isn’t it. At one time I would willy-nilly toss money at a fancy purse, but now buying a new pair of socks or replacing worn-out shoes causes me anxiety. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/how-i-am-learning-to-be-enough-908d7b544d7a | ['Mary Ann Lopez'] | 2020-02-29 13:01:02.789000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Self Improvement', 'Personal Growth', 'Self', 'Personal Development'] |
5 Christmas Myths, Not Found in the Nativity Story | I’m often asked to explain the history behind a holiday or the origin of a popular tradition. Is it based on history, tradition, or legend? The best historical sources we have on the birth of Jesus are found in two of the Gospel accounts in the New Testament. Matthew was a companion of Jesus during his ministry. Luke was not. Instead, he was a companion of Paul during his journeys. Still, Luke shows a detailed knowledge of primary sources, appearing to have spoken directly to Jesus’ mother Mary, perhaps during his travels while she was living in Ephesus with the Apostle John. Luke’s account contains much more detail and is four times longer than Matthew’s. Below are 5 Myths frequently associated with our celebration of Christmas, which are not actually found in the Nativity story. Here’s a fresh look at what the sources say.
Myth 1: Farm animals at the birth
Christmas plays and pageants feature them. Creche scenes display them: ox, donkey, lobster, Ewoks… but especially ox and donkey. However, the Nativity story makes no mention of them. While the second chapter of Luke says that Mary laid her baby in a manger, and the angel tells the shepherds that they would find the “babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger,” there is no mention of farm animals. Perhaps a shepherd brought a lamb, but there’s no specific mention of ox and donkey.
Where do we get these two animals?
Old Testament
The prophet Isaiah in Chapter 1:3 recounts his vision:
The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib;
but Israel does not know, my people does not understand.”
Early Church
It is in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew that we find the first mention of an ox and a donkey being part of the nativity scene with Jesus. By the way, this is also one of the sources that promoted the idea of a young Mary and a much older Joseph.
This pseudepigraphical Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew was written around 600 years after the birth of Jesus and is falsely attributed to Matthew, the follower of Jesus. It’s not considered canon but apocryphal and is one of the “infancy gospels” writings that tell the story of Jesus as a child. This book summarized some of the other infancy gospels, including the pseudepigraphical Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of James (both dated some 200 years after Jesus).
Medieval
When St. Francis petitioned the Pope to allow him to hold a special mass on Christmas Eve with a creche in Greccio in 1223. Francis directed:
“I wish in full reality to awaken the remembrance of the child as he was born in Bethlehem and of all the hardship he had to endure in his childhood. I wish to see with my bodily eyes what it meant to lie in a manger and sleep on hay, between an ox and an ass.”
Myth 2: Three Kings of Orient
We all know the song that begins, “We Three Kings of Orient are…” Great song, poor history.
We don’t know how many there were, but the conjecture is three gifts — gold, frankincense, and myrrh — means three givers, right? Some accounts place the number at three, but earlier traditions describe as many as a dozen in the caravan.
Nothing in the Nativity story suggests they’re kings. The word used to describe them is Magi, from the Greek word magoi, the plural of magos, where we get the word magic. The word is usually translated wise men or scholars. They were specialists in a variety of disciplines like medicine, religion, astronomy, and astrology.
“The Orient” typically means far east, but the Nativity story says they came from “the East,” which could be from Arabia to Media and Persia, but not further east.
Myth 3: Magi at the Birth
Were the Magi at the birth of Jesus? The Nativity story of Luke does not mention them. The Gospel of Matthew does but places them in Jerusalem and Bethlehem some time within two years after the birth.
Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. (Matthew 2:7)
Based on this knowledge King Herod the Great after the Magi went to Bethlehem
…. sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. (Matthew 2:16)
By the way, the Magi visited the family at a house (oikos), not a manger.
Myth 4: Born in a Stable
Was Jesus born in a stable? The Nativity story says that he was laid in a manger, a feeding bin where animal feed was placed, but nowhere does it say it’s in a stable.
Why do we think it’s a stable?
The account in Luke tells us there was “no room at the inn.” The Greek word for room is topos (space,) not a room. The word for inn in the original Greek is kataluma, which could have been a multi-room lodging place for travelers, but Luke might have used pandocheion, a better Greek word for the local commercial Holiday Inn. Instead, this word kataluma is often used throughout the Bible for a guest room. Indeed, it’s the same word used for the upper room in a private residence for the Last Supper Passover meal.
Mangers are found in stables. But not only in stables or barns. In the Middle East, up until recent times, sometimes they were found in houses. Two thousand years ago, in simple village homes in Palestine, it was common for a home to have a single-family room or a side guest room as well. The guest room would be either attached or on the roof, as described in I Kings 17. The main room or family room would be for eating and sleeping.
At the end of that family room next to the door, a few feet lower than the rest of the floor or partially blocked off, would be an area designated as an animal stall for the family donkey, cow, or sheep to be taken in at night for safety or warmth. This would have been true from the time of David 3,000 years ago until the middle of the 1900s. This area may have been set into the side of a hill, or a cave or grotto (see: creche). In this area, or into the floor of the family room would have been placed a manger from which the animals could feed. The animals would be taken outside during the day.
Indeed, there may have been an ox and donkey! But it’s not stated explicitly in the narrative.
Myth 5: Angels Singing
Did the heavenly host sing “Glory to God in the Highest?”
Luke tells how shepherds watching their flocks by night in Bethlehem were told by an angel, “the tidings of great joy.” Picture Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas reciting the passage:
And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.
Not singing, but saying. By the way, the Latin for the last line is:
Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis
In the Christian tradition, this is known as the Greater Doxology or the Angelic Hymn.
Johann Sebastian Bach turned it into song in his cantata Gloria in Excelsis Deo
turned it into song in his cantata Gloria in Excelsis Deo Handel’s Messiah XIV. Recit: There were Shepherds sets up the Chorus Glory to God
But the Nativity account does not describe the angels singing it. And none of the angels were named Harold.
However, here’s what I think. Usually, when angels appear in the Bible, people are struck with fear. Except for Mary and Joseph. But these shepherds were. I suspect if I were to hear a multitude of the heavenly hosts speaking to me, it would be indescribable, awesome, fearsome. I would not be able to describe it in any way other than singing.
Gloria in Excel sheets Deo
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com
If you enjoyed this article, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the news feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader or your email. | https://billpetro.medium.com/5-christmas-myths-not-found-in-the-nativity-story-9a2e77b69c39 | ['Bill Petro'] | 2019-12-16 16:59:54.810000+00:00 | ['History', 'Historyoftheholidays', 'Christmas', 'Holidays', 'Humor'] |
How Desk Research Leads to B2B Sales and Marketing Success | Desk-research for B2B
B2B sales is a whole new ball game, and at times can feel almost impossible. What worked in the past might not work anymore. Preparation is what will set you apart from others.
B2B Sales and Marketing teams cannot succeed without a key element in the form of ‘insight’ distilled from all the information available in this universe. And, to your surprise, simple desk research can unlock huge value for your B2B selling and marketing efforts.
Abraham Lincoln once said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” It is pretty much evident that task preparation is just as crucial as task execution.
As a person working in the B2B space for a few years now, I cannot agree more on the value that one piece of insight can add. And, at times be a game-changer when chasing must-win deals.
Simple desk research helps alleviate the biggest problem facing B2B Marketers which is the problem of data and insights. The plethora of up-to-date account data and insights available at your fingertips through the internet means that simple secondary research can be the solution for your data and insights problems.
Desk-Research for B2B Sales and Marketing Success
Desk Research delivers precise insights for your targeted B2B campaigns
Everything collected through desk-based research is delivered with precision. This is due to the advantages that human intelligence offers in terms of research. We as humans are able to analyze and synthesize insights through secondary research to ultimately deliver at precision.
Whatever insights collected through research is delivered at precision as well at scale, something which current sales intelligence software simply cannot provide. Research proves to be extremely useful in building tons of personalized content that will help to drive traffic and engagement.
Moreover, B2B marketers need to create a segmented content marketing strategy with different goals for different content.
Desk Research delivers highly relevant insights to fuel your B2B account engagement
Desk Research powered by human intelligence uncovers highly relevant i nsights to fuel your outreach and engagement with your B2B accounts. Whatever insights collected through Desk Research is highly relevant to your targeted B2B marketing initiatives and can be quickly leveraged into your outreach.
To ensure the effectiveness of your targeted marketing strategy, insights on the firmographics, technographics, key executives, and the industry they operate in are provided through Desk Research.
2020 ABM Benchmark Study revealed the growing importance of account-level research for deeper insights for a focused revenue generation to measure ROI.
Let’s explore how desk-research has helped B2B sales and marketing teams
For one of our clients, a multinational tech company providing solutions to simplify communications and collaboration, we helped them with accurate insight into their top 70 enterprise accounts. What we did for them was: develop a comprehensive insight on each target account with a focus on the client’s pipeline and priorities.
In return, sales and marketing were able to align their strategies and were able to hyper-personalized their marketing campaigns. Since, the deliverables uncovered major business priorities, key challenges, and technology stack including previously unrevealed insight around cloud and technology transformation. All information delivered was done taking a nuanced desk-research approach.
We’ve added some of our reports on the website for anyone who wants to take a look at how detailed or nuanced our reports are. Please feel free to go through our reports here.
Conclusion
Desk Research can be the answer to the biggest problem facing B2B marketers which is the problem of data and insights. A structured desk research process in place that satisfies the essential insight requirements helps you find precise and highly relevant insights for your targeted B2B marketing program.
However, what you need to understand is that your ABM campaign needs to be supported not with generic insights, but with customized insights that go a long way in supporting your team with crafting compelling industry-specific messaging towards target audience. | https://medium.com/businessbrainz/how-desk-research-leads-to-b2b-sales-and-marketing-success-e9840b0a6674 | ['Business Brainz'] | 2021-03-21 07:45:37.836000+00:00 | ['Desk Research', 'Account Based Marketing', 'B2b Marketing', 'B2B', 'Account Based Sales'] |
Why use Starname instead of PayPal.me and other direct payment solutions? | How to get paid easily?
This is the core problem we are looking at.
Many players have developed solutions to make it easy to pay and get paid.
Some like PayPal removed complexity from bank account number and bank transfer by paying to an email or a phone number in 1 click.
Others like BitPay allowed payers to pay with crypto and merchants could receive crypto or fiat on their traditional account, opening the use of crypto for traditional accounts.
However, these solutions are from the centralised past: a middleman is helping you to get paid and take a fee from YOUR money in the process. They offer more flexibility than a traditional bank, but still:
receiving money through PayPal.me might cost you fixed fees + over 4.9% of the amount transferred, especially when it comes to international payments! And settlement might be long , depending on bank transfer on which it is relying, not available in all countries in the world.
of the amount transferred, especially when it comes to international payments! And , depending on bank transfer on which it is relying, not available in all countries in the world. receiving bitcoin through BitPay will cost you 1% of the amount transferred, without counting hidden fees in the conversion into fiat if you choose to settle in fiat.
In addition, these centralised companies are required to run KYC/KYB on you, so you need to provide them with all your private and personal information and bank account details.
We understand and support the fact that KYC/KYB needs to be done to fight against money laundering, but doing it every time you need to sign up for a new financial service like exchange or payment becomes really burdening (fortunately there is some work done on portable identity for KYC/KYB done as we speak and we are looking forward to sovereign identity!).
We believe that these centralised payments solutions were a great improvement over just a bank account number and bank transfer, and it is now time to look at the full power of blockchain: real peer to peer transaction without any middleman (and therefore no need for KYC/KYB), instant worldwide payment, and no intermediary fee ever.
This is where the Starname Profile comes in
Starname is a decentralised identity, allowing you to get paid and receive any crypto easily from anyone.
Starname is fully decentralised and can be integrated into any app. At the moment it is still fresh, and the first app that we have developed is the Starname Profile on starname.me.
Some examples of profiles are like freelancer *lauren, the (not official) *guardian for donation, musician *carlosjobim or gift pool tracy*happybirthday.
What is the Starname Profile bringing ?
Being fully decentralised, the starname profile brings many benefits that classic centralised solutions will never be able to provide:
you don’t need to give your ID or any bank or personal details to set it up;
to set it up; you are in control of the addresses the payments are being sent to (directly to your wallet or crypto exchange account to convert to fiat, if you wish);
of the addresses the payments are being sent to (directly to your wallet or crypto exchange account to convert to fiat, if you wish); you can select to receive any cryptocurrency and digital asset , not just ETH, BTC, LTC or USDC usually accepted by centralised applications; (and soon from classic credit card as well, automatically converted into your favorite crypto);
, not just ETH, BTC, LTC or USDC usually accepted by centralised applications; (and soon from classic credit card as well, automatically converted into your favorite crypto); you can get paid from anywhere in the world instantly;
in the world instantly; you can make it verified with Twitter to prevent impersonation;
to prevent impersonation; you don’t depend on a middleman for your payments (not even Starname); no one can prevents the payment to proceed.
for your payments (not even Starname); no one can prevents the payment to proceed. and most importantly since we are talking about money and payment: 0 commission fees always.
In other words, you are really in control of any crypto payment sent to you. The profile itself is decentralised on a blockchain so that you don’t depend on anyone else to control it. This means that it will never get blocked because a middleman decides to hold on on your payments.
Get started today — get your profile on starname.me. | https://medium.com/iov-internet-of-values/why-use-starname-instead-of-paypal-me-and-other-direct-payment-solutions-8969a64d8a6e | ['Benjamin Simatos'] | 2020-12-17 20:59:08.091000+00:00 | ['Payments', 'Cryptocurrency', 'PayPal', 'Starname', 'Bitcoin'] |
গিট (Git) এবং গিটহাব (Github):Part-1 | Passionate about programming and working towards B.Sc. in Information and Communication Technology at Islamic University, Bangladesh. | https://medium.com/@monayemislam/%E0%A6%97%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%9F-git-%E0%A6%8F%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%82-%E0%A6%97%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%9F%E0%A6%B9%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%AC-github-part-1-b90135e5dae2 | ['Monayem Islam'] | 2020-12-17 11:34:02.471000+00:00 | ['গিট', 'Git', 'Github', 'গিটহাব'] |
Let me Walk | Let me walk you through my pain
It is a very hot afternoon out here
And the rivers have closed their doors
Our dreams are in the hands of bad nights
Our dreams are in the hands of a mad country which we love so much.
But I blame the rappers that said
We could touch the sky and the baddest whores
I blame fathers who were brave enough to think
Educating us and eradicating us, were not the same
I blame Gods who never had parents
I blame devils that do not invent
I blame African chiefs that sold their people
And slaves that owned Bibles
This thing i write has no form!
It becomes a dirge when it's time to be
It becomes John Keats, when the hideous shadows of men, rise from the grave
While more youth return
By suicide or which ever means be,
I too, will return.
But now, loneliness no-girl-wants-usness
Is essential for the win
This ma vim no go die
Dragons utilized all their chances and
Man is glad man will be free chale
Moriah Mills got us
So we’re in good hands chale
We’re in good hands chale | https://medium.com/@kbearthur/let-me-walk-993d16397082 | ['Kojo Omar'] | 2021-03-07 07:44:32.925000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Poet', 'Poetry On Medium', 'African Literature', 'Poetry'] |
Almost Every Man I Know Is Falling Apart Because of Social Distancing | Almost Every Man I Know Is Falling Apart Because of Social Distancing
Men tend to experience depression in ways tailor made to leave us hanging in a pandemic.
By Jerónimo Roure
There’s no getting around it. This winter is already horrible, and it’s going to get worse.
Not sure how much more I can take. The constant death, the social isolation, the widespread unemployment, the closing of my favorite small businesses.
What’s hardest, though, is watching people I love struggle. Seeing them cope in unhealthy ways. Worrying about their increased drinking and drugging, their fake “I’m fine’s”, their unraveling relationships, their closing off and going inward.
Sometimes it’s like I’m all that’s keeping them from jumping into a black hole.
Sometimes I just want to shake them, yelling “Wake the fuck up!”
Sometimes I’m annoyed that it seems like no one’s helping me help them.
Sometimes I’m pissed at the government for leaving so many of my friends and neighbors hanging.
Sometimes I beg the Universe for mercy. I’ve got a regular meditation practice, a therapist, a good job, a stable family, and plenty of close friends. And I’m barely staying halfway sane.
Sometimes I want someone to hold me and pet my hair and tell me everything’s going to be alright.
Mostly, I’m exhausted. We’re in the middle of this thing, and who knows when it ends?
The men in my life are struggling the most
What I’ve come to notice is that my friends who are struggling the most are men.
This is not to say that others aren’t struggling too. It’s just that men tend to experience depression in ways tailor made to leave us hanging in a pandemic.
We often hide our vulnerability in fear of being less “manly.” We tend to have more “shoulder-to-shoulder” interactions — like playing or watching sports — than deep, connected, face-to-face friendships. We tend to avoid doing anything that would make us seem “needy.”
This causes all the toxic shit that gives so many men a bad rap: isolation, emotional numbness, angry outbursts, binge drinking.
No wonder some 80 percent of people who die of suicide in the U.S. are men.
This isn’t to say that men deserve attention more than anyone else. Women have been taking care of men’s emotional needs — without acknowledgement, without reciprocity, without pay — for way too long.
I’m just saying most of the men in my life are depressed right now. And I don’t know what to do.
You are not alone
I also wanted you to know that if it feels like you’re holding everyone else up right now, you’re not alone. I see you.
Maybe the Serenity Prayer will resonate with you like it does with me?
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
If the word “God” turns you off, just take it out.
The point is, I can’t save my friends. What I can do is make sure they know that I’m here for them, that I’m curious how they’re doing, and that they aren’t “weak” for struggling during the biggest crisis of our lifetimes.
Everything else, I just have to let go of. There’s no way around it. Maybe letting go just isn’t supposed to feel good. | https://medium.com/wholistique/almost-every-man-i-know-is-falling-apart-because-of-social-distancing-da5ef6f34b88 | ['Jeremy Mohler'] | 2020-12-10 16:09:18.456000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Self-awareness', 'Self', 'Coronavirus', 'Psychology'] |
On Coming to Terms With Being Trans | On Coming to Terms With Being Trans
Source: Lena Balk at Unsplash.com
I've been out as a trans woman now for a meagre fourteen months. Now, I don't know it that means I'm beyond the period when I could safely be described as 'babytrans', but despite it only being a tad over a year I've learned so very much, so very quickly. I was 48 when I came out. I have older trans siblings, for sure. Men, women, and non-binary peeps who came out at a later age even than I, but I think most would consider 48 quite the ripe age for such a monumental revelation about oneself. What can I say, I'm a late bloomer?
If only it were that simple.
Cis-sexist societal norms mean that for trans folx every day is an exercise in conversion therapy. That's not butthurt hyperbole. I knew that I 'wanted' to be a girl certainly as early as six, but perhaps even before that. However, even at that tender age I was already used to the ubiquity of lines like 'Boys don't do that' and 'No, Christopher, that's for girls'. *
Thereafter all of society, my family, my friends, the media, everyone and everything, every organisation I dealt with repeated those lines that underlined their expectation of my role. A role that proceeded directly from a brief glance at my genitalia at birth. It's absurd when you put it like that, huh? But there it is. 48 years of being forced to behave in ways that never felt natural because of what was between my legs.
Problem is, our sense of self does not reside in our generative organs. I didn't consider who I was extending from my groin, but society certainly did. My penis meant I was a 'boy'. I would wear boy clothes. I would do boy things. I would pursue boy interests. I would grow to be a man. And I would damned well respect the lines. The lines, never to be transgressed, between the genders. And respect them I tried. But when someone's identity calls so strongly to other forms of expression, of being, how are we to resist?!
As an aside, from my current perspective, I find it beyond laughable that we so rigidly police gender lines, see for example the meltdown (on those right of centre politically, it might be noted) when Harry Styles was pictured in Vogue wearing a variety of really quite fetching dresses. Take a chill pill. If western civilisation was so fragile the soviets would have been sporting frocks long ago...
October 2019 was when I realised I was transgender. Some five years after the so-called 'Transgender Tipping Point' (thanks for bloody nothing, Time). Trends had nothing to do with it. Increased media visibility had no bearing on me. I don't doubt that for many such increased representation can be catalytic, but that moment had long passed for me. I grew up with endless sitcoms with the idea of a man dressing as a woman being such an endless punchline. With Ace Ventura, and Silence of the Lambs. Those things were not as helpful as one might expect back then.
So why then? If external forces were insufficient to move me what did? How does one come to terms with being transgender?
I can't speak for the entire trans community but I gently suggest that, at whatever age it happens, there's a simple point where it's the only conclusion that fits. It becomes inescapable. An individual Transgender Tipping Point, one might say.
For myself, it happened with the merging of two separate events. A crossdressing friend (now also out as a trans woman and a close trans sister to me) asked of my history with gender variance and being a writer, rather than simply answer the question succinctly on social media, I wrote 10,000 words of autobiography. In doing so I jarred loose decades old memories that I'd buried because I had no rationalisation to offer. My going to work in a wedding dress? Fine. That was for charity. My dressing as a hooker that time? Also fine, it was a costume party after all. But walking my friends dogs, while she was away, fully dressed as a woman at the age of 18? Not so easy to explain. Hell, I couldn't even claim the motive of it being a kink because there was no sexual element to it whatsoever.
The other thing that occurred with pinpoint synchronicity was that I went out for the first time, since that occasion thirty years prior, presenting as a woman. And it was...fine. More than in fact. The simple realisation that I could actually interact with society at large presenting as a woman was an apocalypse. I felt gender euphoria for the first time that day. And when the experiment ended and I had to go back to being 'him' I finally understood gender dysphoria. I was crushed. The pangs in my chest were real, deeply visceral. I'd not known a pain of the like.
As I talked to my friend the next day, a sort of debrief, we discussed my autobiography and mid-conversation it hit me. 'I'm trans'. Quickly followed by 'Oh fuck!' as I realised what this might mean for my life, for my twenty year marriage. Fuck indeed. (Be assured, dear reader, that both my life and marriage are surviving, nay thriving, through my transition).
So for me, it was two things that caused me to come to terms with being trans. One was a catalytic event, something out of the ordinary. And the other was merely acknowledging the weight of evidence I'd accumulated over a lifetime yet buried because cisnormative society insisted I do so. Evidence that ubiquitously yelled that I'm transgender.
Honestly I'm embarrassed now that it took so long for me to come to terms with myself. Recently I started to transcribe some of my earliest fiction attempts from thirty plus years ago and there, in more stories than not, was a central theme of people coming to terms with not being who they thought they were. Duh! I should have, could have known a lot sooner. And of course I regret not transitioning at 18. And why wouldn't I regret that? I've missed out on three decades of living with a comfort I now fully embrace living as a woman. But, better late than never eh?
And that's the point really. Being transgender has massive implications for one's life. It's naturally something we resist, egged on by a cissexist society. And trust me, seeing Laverne Cox in Orange is the New Black was never going to be enough to 'convert' someone to thinking they were trans, not without a hell of a lot else in their life pointing in that direction already. When that evidence builds to a point of decision varies for every trans person. As the saying goes 'If you've met one trans person, you've met one trans person'.
So when's the right time to come to terms with being transgender? When you come to terms with it. And not a moment sooner. | https://medium.com/prismnpen/on-coming-to-terms-with-being-trans-cbe8f2ed75ca | ['Mrs. Capricious'] | 2020-12-20 13:02:54.051000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Autobiography', 'Transgender', 'Coming Out', 'Creative Non Fiction'] |
An explosive history of the bomber jacket | An explosive history of the bomber jacket LUKA Follow Mar 18 · 3 min read
You’re flying solo over Europe, on a mission to neutralize Nazi targets. It’s the middle of the night, you’re 30,000 feet above the ground, and it is absolutely freezing. But it’s okay, because you’re wearing a jacket designed by the US military specifically for this situation.
Today’s bomber jacket is a hybrid of flight jackets worn by American pilots in the world wars and the even older letterman jacket, a prize possession of Harvard baseball players in the Civil War era.
After over a century of endowing its owners with implicit status and swagger, the bomber jacket was reappropriated by working class youth culture in the UK and, from there, freed to be worn by practically anyone. In the 2010s, everybody from Emma Roberts to Justin Bieber to Barack Obama was wearing a bomber jacket, and it hasn’t lost any of its momentum.
Modern bomber jackets aren’t quite gonna cut it at 30,000 feet anymore, but they are perfect for spring and fall. Wear one with a t-shirt, or over a couple of layers and add a scarf — the bomber is light, versatile, and even to this day it imparts some of that fighter-pilot swagger.
We’ve included a range of bombers, from Ralph Lauren’s sophisticated varsity jacket to a few of Fresh Hoods’ wild designs.
1. Ralph Lauren Purple Label Drayton Varsity Bomber Jacket
2. Messi Reversible Bomber Jacket
3. Marcus Worksmen Bomber Jacket
4. Kiton Reversible Suede Bomber Jacket
5. Urban Society American Bomber Jacket
6. Fresh Hoods Drip Bomber Jacket
7. Fresh Hoods Paint Bomber Jacket
8. Fresh Hoods Antique Flowers Bomber Jacket | https://medium.com/heyluka/an-explosive-history-of-the-bomber-jacket-9a4a0ec45e9c | [] | 2021-03-18 22:24:54.019000+00:00 | ['Bomber Jacket', 'Style', 'Fashion', 'Menswear', 'Mens Fashion'] |
Jessica Smith’s Boost Metabolism + Muscle | Jessica Smith’s Boost Metabolism + Muscle
Oh, when will workout videos blend with Netflix?
Photo from Jessica Smith’s Boost Metabolism+Muscle workout on her website.
I’m excited to review this workout because it is the first new workout I’m buying after 4 months! I’m humbled and honored to be graduating from “Walk On” to “Walk Strong”.
These are workouts with dumbbells and they need a mat, too. Get over it. Not all workouts can be accomplished without these.
I used 1 kilo dumbbells throughout the workouts, as I’m starting small. I followed the modifier, Debbie. She’s Jessica Smith’a mom, and often it is what Debbie says that keeps me going.
“When in doubt; walk it out”
So when I’m hesitating at the kettle, making a cup of tea I neither want not need, I recall that and start to do a Jessica Mile workout. I have a few, many of which are prop-free, standing only workouts, which I do on days when the clinic or the kitchen has kept me really busy.
Each workout has a moving mantra that appeals when you’re sweating and primed for the positivity. It doesn’t make you cringe, it HELPS, OK? Photo from Jessica Smith Digital Library.
Your legs may feel like Jello after this workout, but they’ll still carry you through the day
The camaraderie between the mom and daughter makes me smile. I lost my mom, 2015, when she was just 65, and doing Jessica’s workout makes me feel closer to my own mother.
When I was browsing the website looking to see what workout to buy, there was one which was a bit cheaper than the others, which are all around $15. One of then was $14.
The $14 workout, with Jessica Smith in the middle, with mom-daughter pair Andrea and Asha behind her. Jessica is pointing towards Asha, the daughter. Photo from Walking for Wellness, Weight Loss and Energy.
The background artists in this workout are a mom and daughter pair. I could imagine Jessica looking at the great vibrations between the mom and daughter pair behind her as she shot that workout, and how she would have progressed from looking at them, and then approaching her own mom to convince her to do the workouts.
This is the lower body workout which gives you Jello legs. Photo from Jessica Smith Fitness Library.
Maybe Debbie would have needed some training to do the workouts at first? Debbie’s lunges are often deeper than mine, though she’s older than I am. Maybe Jessica convinced her, maybe she stirred her mom awake, taking her for early morning runs and getting her fit enough to be able to film a workout like this one.
This is the total body workout which is also keeps the heart pumping faster throughout the workout. Photo from Jessica Smith Fitness Library.
I imagined the behind-the-scenes banter between the two, because their joviality spills over into my life everyday. Most of the workouts I do in a week are Jessica’s, and it was nice to think of the two of them bonding over the workouts and planning the costumes and moves.
Apart from the fitness instructor certification, I think Jessica is also deeply religious. We all need a little religion and detachment in our lives, and the casual way in which Jessica and Debbie sling a little contentment at us is very welcome.
In this workout she also says that corsets are from the 18th century! Yay. She’s making us move from left ankle to right shoulder as she says this, and she’s helping us build a “natural corset”. Every workout, it is hard to let it keep on playing, to follow along and do the moves. This is not an episode of Downton Abbey, it is a workout we have to make ourselves do, and little things in the video make it easier to start.
The move in the Total Body Focus where so ended up lying on the floor, not getting up at all. Photo from Jessica Smith Fitness Library.
Jessica calls this “practice for sitting up” and she does SO MANY of them. As does Debbie! This is a kind and practical way of improving the core muscles without straining the lower back. I loved this, and the way she popped this in.
You can count upon Jessica to improve strength, stamina, agility, flexibility and balance. The five parameters of fitness. Yes. Also, you see a small nod towards some neglected muscles, so after each workout, you feel a wee bit satisfied that you’ve taken care of your body for the day.
I’ve done a lot of mindless plodding taking long circular walks. This is my prediction: we won’t stop at workout videos.
Workout videos and Netflix shows will blend, have a story and an agenda to make us work out, with jokes written by the punchline writers of Friends.
We’ll have mixtures of trainers, like Hell For Leather Jillian Michaels, religious Leslie Sansone, mommy and daughter pair Jessica and Debbie, Yoga guru Shilpa Shetty and the British pilot and American fitness trainer Rebecca Louise.
Maybe these girls will get together and make a TV show that will entertain us as we work along to it. Hallelujah! | https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/jessica-smiths-boost-metabolism-muscle-e4cc832e14d6 | ['Tooth Truth Roopa Vikesh'] | 2020-12-23 22:48:29.714000+00:00 | ['Fitness', 'Strength Training', 'Nonfiction', 'Jessica Smith', 'Health'] |
Media Literacy: The Other Vaccine | Media Literacy: The Other Vaccine
Four reasons media literacy is an important tool for supporting a free press USAID Follow Apr 28 · 5 min read
“Don’t let COVID tear us apart again.” This graphic is part of a campaign currently being developed by USAID for the Government of Georgia to counter disinformation around COVID-19 vaccination. / USAID
In recent years, there has been growing attention around the vulnerability of press freedom as an institution. From authoritarian governments working to control internet access and content to malign actors waging disinformation campaigns, fact-based, independent reporting has been under attack.
Some cynics are quick to dismiss today’s media landscape as irrevocably partisan, corrupt, and flooded by disinformation. But this view ignores what economists like Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz argue — that information is a public good. That is, journalism’s watchdog role performs a necessary public function of monitoring and accountability, and provides knowledge needed for the population to live healthy, productive, informed lives.
The rise of digital media has helped make information manipulation both more sophisticated and widespread. But, just as most people would not merely accept a broken system when it comes to the power grid, education, or public health, society should not view the media ecosystem as beyond repair. Instead, just like these other social goods, citizens are entitled to transparent, fact-based journalism.
The theme of this year’s World Press Freedom Day is “Information as a Public Good.” Around the world, USAID bolsters press freedom as a cornerstone of a healthy democracy. One key tool in our media development toolbox: media literacy.
1. Media literacy builds critical thinking, digital savvy, and a demand for a free press
From June 2018 to May 2019, the Stanford History Education Group administered an assessment of a national sample of high school students in the United States, gauging students’ ability to evaluate digital sources on the open internet. The results — if they can be summarized in a word — are troubling: Two-thirds of students couldn’t tell the difference between news stories and ads.
Strengthening critical thinking skills is foundational to teaching media literacy. With these skills, news consumers — that’s everyone! — are better able to verify information, separate fact from fiction, create and share fact-based content themselves, and evaluate media in all its forms. With an emphasis on explaining the media’s watchdog role and the critical function it plays in a healthy democracy, media literacy programs also build a deeper understanding of and demand for a free press. Importantly, media literacy also pulls back the curtain to expose how media manipulation works and flows, particularly in the digital environment. For example, in Moldova, USAID’s MEDIA-M program works with partners like the Independent Journalism Center and trolless.com to not only expose disinformation and the threat it poses to civil discourse, but to explain how it works, including tactics like “false amplification” and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
Media education on wheels: USAID encourages citizens of Moldova to use critical thinking and multiple sources to stay informed and avoid manipulation. / USAID/Moldova
2. Media literacy can be adapted to all learners, in any “classroom”
The media environment is constantly evolving, and people of all age groups and walks of life require the skills necessary to keep up. The good news is that media literacy programs continue to shift as well, aiming to reach more and more people. While media literacy traditionally has been taught in schools, often as part of civic education, experts note that this skill set should be integrated across all subjects, including math and science, as well as outside of the traditional classroom in informal settings.
USAID-linked programs have been pioneering this approach across Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In Armenia, the Media Initiatives Center, a long-time USAID partner, runs the Media.am platform, which monitors how the media reports on topics of public interest and educates consumers on how the industry should work, employing new, creative techniques, including games, traveling and online interactive exhibits, and storytelling. In Ukraine, libraries have become major venues for media literacy work. In 2015, IREX first piloted its Learn2Discern program through support from the Government of Canada using the network of libraries strengthened under a USAID and Bill & Melinda Gates-funded program, among other community institutions, for building resilience to the growing challenge of disinformation.
3. Tracking impact is difficult, but research shows results
Demonstrating definitive, long-term impacts of media literacy programming is challenging, but experts in the field are working to expand and improve studies that make the case for the effectiveness of this tool. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, studies show that USAID youth-focused projects that link media literacy with emotional literacy and inter-ethnic empathy are generating positive momentum on intergroup cohesion and the ability of communities to negotiate deep-seated ethnic and political tensions. And in Indonesia, the use of memes, viral videos, and explainers targeting audiences identified as already consuming socially harmful disinformation has positively impacted these users’ ability to assess the credibility of online information, according to a forthcoming article in the Harvard Misinformation Review.
A coordination meeting of civil society and media professionals partnering with USAID to counter disinformation in Georgia. / USAID
4. The Takeaway: Media literacy is one tool in the toolbox, not the solution
While media literacy is a flexible instrument able to reach diverse audiences, from youth to adults, and journalists to government officials, it is not a silver bullet. This approach exists within a larger ecosystem of development programming working to strengthen information integrity as a whole. Media literacy programming must operate alongside efforts to strengthen independent media and investigative journalism, and to establish the legal enabling environment that safeguards a free press, including platform accountability and internet governance initiatives. It also requires supporting whole-of-society approaches, like USAID’s program in Georgia, where we collaborate with government, civil society, and trusted policy-shaping partners to holistically address the threat of disinformation.
Be it short-term, long-term, formal, informal, or aimed at students, influencers, judges, or sports figures, media literacy is a critical tool to build resilience against the infodemic that often accompanies elections, health emergencies, disasters, and more.
It’s waterproofing against the firehose of falsehood. It’s the noise-cancelling headphones for when malign actors are practicing censorship through noise. It’s the other vaccine for the other pandemic. | https://medium.com/usaid-2030/media-literacy-the-other-vaccine-2098b6ef721 | [] | 2021-04-28 16:44:04.916000+00:00 | ['International Development', 'Media Literacy', 'Misinformation', 'Covid 19', 'World Press Freedom Day'] |
The Age of the Algorithm | (Published initially on August 26th, 2016)
“Technology” is a funny word, extremely malleable: we tend to recognize as technology only the most recent artifacts of human progress. In a more than purely metaphorical sense, technology is what appears in the world after we graduate. We call the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon technology-based firms because the last great economic and social revolution hinged on the internet, but almost two centuries ago trains were all the novelty, and the technology firms of these age made huge fortunes covering the rolling plains of the Far West with a network of railroads among indian fights and bandit robberies, immortalized in John Wayne’s movies. Boilers over wheels replacing horses and carriages. Startups are technological because that allows to compete with the establishment.
What technology provides to a startup is, mainly, scalability. This is relevant not only since startups routinely lack the deep pockets of a fully grown business and must achieve a lot with very limited resources, but also because frequently a startup’s winning strategy relies on offering a superior product at an inferior price, yet marginally profitable, and quickly obtain the economies of scale that effectively create a de-facto monopoly. There are many ways to compete, but really few to win. The best way I ever heard to summarize it is in the candid words of Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric and professor at MIT: “do it first, do it cheaper, do it better or go home”.
We have a classic example in Google: Sergei Brin and Larry Page created the company around PageRank, their thesis’ algorithm to automatically classify a website’s relevance and thus facilitate internet search. Infinitely more scalable that the technology used by the incumbents of the time: rooms full of clerks constantly browsing and manually classifying the information.
Interestingly in 1998 Google offered to sell their technology for 1 million dollars because the founders preferred to continue studies at Stanford, but both AltaVista and Yahoo declined the outrageous offer. Yahoo had yet another opportunity to acquire Google in 2002, but the agreement fell apart after weeks of hard negotiations because Terry Semel, then Yahoo’s CEO, faltered at the clearly exaggerated 5 billion dollar price tag.
As I write these lines at the beginning of September, 2016, Google and its parent organization Alphabet have a market capitalization in excess of 500 billion dollars. This is a humongous level of value creation. Meanwhile, in July this same year it was announced that Yahoo reached an agreement to sell its internet properties to Verizon for 4.83 billion dollars. It is worth remembering that in 2008 Microsoft bid 44.6 billion dollars for all of Yahoo’s businesses. That, dear readers, is value destruction.
An algorithm defeated an entire industry, and this fact has been often repeated since distributed computation is at the spearhead of technology. AirBnb, Uber y Taskrabbit are today’s reference companies worldwide, followed by a myriad of startups pursuing more specific market opportunities in sharing economy, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Through digital marketplaces that automatize the exchange of services among individuals, again technology allows reaching that scalability that makes possible the disruption of an established industry.
Then, what does future hold for us? We already know that predictions are only reliable when performed backwards, but it is likely that the next great technological revolution will come from the world of artificial intelligence (AI), the set of methodologies that strive to replicate human cognitive processes in machines.
Here we have an interesting blind spot: as we mentioned above technology is all that’s new in the world, but AI is veiled with the magical halo with which we tend to dress everything that surrounds matters of the human mind. Rodney Brooks, professor of AI at MIT, refers to it as the AI effect: “When we finally manage to understand a piece we say ‘Oh! That is just computation’ and we leave as AI only the unsolved problems”. We should be aware that elements of AI have been for years “infiltrating” our daily experience, often in rather subtle ways: the simple ability to automatically tag friends in pictures, the kind interactivity of a virtual assistant, the cunning behavior of an enemy inside of one of our favorite computer games.
Now both technical advances in fields like deep learning and the availability of massive amounts of data with varying levels of structure (what is usually known as big data) will allow us to perform automated analysis in areas of human activity that just a few years earlier required a high level of domain-specific knowledge and were thus confined to the hardly scalable niches of the expert and the consulting boutique.
An example that is close home: smart algorithms endow us at Ágora EAFI to automate the tedious task of analyzing and classifying fundamental company information not about a single firm, but thousands of them, unearthing relevant patterns without the need for hiring rooms full of technical analysts, the associated costs and headaches. Another example that I find really interesting is Descartes Labs, a startup based in USA that employs machine learning algorithms applied over pictures taken via low orbit satellites in order to more precisely predict crop yields. While the method employed by the department of agriculture (USDA), consisting of asking the farmers around the country, produces one estimate each month, Descartes Labs updates its own each two days. Imagine using that privileged information to speculate in the market with futures. Big deal.
And beyond? If the advances in biotechnology are up to our expectations, then maybe the algorithm will become flesh. But please stop me here before my philosophical knack runs wild and I bore you even more. Cheers and talk again soon! | https://medium.com/algonaut/the-age-of-the-algorithm-60f9b3125991 | ['Isaac De La Peña'] | 2019-06-24 10:02:29.776000+00:00 | ['Startups', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology', 'Innovation', 'AI'] |
The Problem With Mutable Types As Default Values in Functions in Python | Mutable and Immutable Objects
For those who don’t know, I will try to explain the concept of mutable and immutable objects in very simple terms.
Mutable objects are those which can be changed after creation. In Python, dictionaries are examples of mutable objects.
In the code snippet above, we have created a list and changed the item at index 2 . It ran without any problems because lists are mutable in Python.
Immutable objects are those which cannot be changed after creation. In Python, tuples are examples of immutable types.
In the code snippet above, we have created a string and are trying to change the item at index 1 . We got an error because strings are immutable.
Now that we understand how to write functions with default values and the concept of mutable objects, we will try to understand the problem with immutable types as default values.
For this demonstration, I will write a simple function that takes two arguments, appends the first argument to the second, and prints the second argument.
Now we will test this function.
As we can see from the code snippet above, when we provide the value for argument b , the function works fine. We start to see problems when we don’t provide the value for argument b because in the later function calls, the default value is no longer an empty list.
The problem is that each default value is evaluated when the function is defined — usually when the module is loaded — and the default values become attributes of the function object. So if a default value is a mutable object and you change it, the change will affect every future call of the function.
We can see the default values by checking the __defaults__ attribute of the function.
So, how can we avoid this problem?
There is a very simple fix for this. Whenever you need to use mutable types as the default value for an argument, use None as the default value.
Now, we can see that our function is working properly.
I hope this post will improve your understanding of functions. | https://medium.com/better-programming/the-problem-with-mutable-types-as-default-values-in-functions-in-python-81ca88ff4d91 | ['Diwakar Singh Parmar'] | 2020-02-06 20:59:20.579000+00:00 | ['Python Programming', 'Python3', 'Programming', 'Python', 'Devop'] |
Engagement Makeup | You must be on the hunt for the best engagement makeup artist for your engagement. If you want to get engaged you have to look amazing on this day and if you are the one who hasn’t appointed a makeup artist yet, here is the latest engagement makeup done by me. | https://medium.com/themagicalbrushes/engagement-makeup-2f0fbdbc13cc | ['Hritika Aggarwal'] | 2020-12-26 07:58:38.295000+00:00 | ['Makeup Artist', 'Fashion', 'Makeup', 'Engagement', 'Beauty'] |
What Penny Stocks Should You Buy Today? 5 Stocks To Watch Right Now | Penny Stocks To Watch Before Next Week
In the past few weeks, we have seen a great amount of bullish interest in penny stocks. Specifically, there are a few key markets that have seen more bullish growth than others. First, we have biotech penny stocks. These companies have experienced growth in the past six months due to the COVID pandemic. On December 10th, Pfizer Inc. ( PFE Stock Report) announced that the FDA recommended approval for its vaccine candidate for emergency use.
This is a big step and something that was only announced at the end of the day. With this, we could see a new wave of bullish interest in certain stocks today. Next on the list, we have EV penny and renewable energy penny stocks. While these may seem like very different categories, they have traded with a high degree of correlation to one another in the past few months.
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In addition to speculation surrounding the future of EV cars, the election of Joe Biden means the U.S. will move toward renewable energy in the next decade or so. This is one of the top reasons that investors have been paying attention to both EV and renewable energy stocks. Lastly, we have other epicenter penny stocks such as hospitality and biopharmaceutical stocks. For some context, an epicenter penny stock is any company that has been adversely affected by the pandemic. With so many penny stocks to watch right now, here are a few names to watch on Friday. Will they be the best penny stocks to buy right now? You decide.
Penny Stocks To Buy [or avoid]:
Penny Stocks to Buy [or avoid]: aTyr Pharma Inc.
aTyr Pharma Inc. Is one of the biggest gainers that we saw on December 10th. During the day, shares of LIFE stock at one point were up by as much as 71%. At EOD, LIFE stock finished with around 21% in gains. One of the main reasons that it has seen so much bullish interest is for its participation in the COVID niche. The company is currently working on its drug candidate known as ATYR1923, for clinical trials in patients with coronavirus. CEO of the company, Sanjay Shukla, stated that “throughout the third quarter, we remained focused on our clinical program for our lead therapeutic candidate, ATYR1923. We now have three active clinical trials as part of this program. Most notably, we have completed enrollment in our Phase 2 trial in COVID-19 patients with severe respiratory complications.”
While a vaccine rollout has yet to occur in the U.S., on Thursday, the FDA finally approved Pfizer’s vaccine candidate for emergency use. Because of this, many biotech penny stocks with correlations to COVID, shot up in value during intraday trading. Investors should note that these companies do tend to trade highly off of speculation.
Penny Stocks to Buy [or avoid]: Dynavax Technologies Corporation
Dynavax Technologies Corporation is another biotech company that saw positive momentum during trading on Thursday, December 10th. While it only shot up by a modest 4%, shares of DVAX are up by almost 20% in the past month. On Thursday, the company announced that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has offered a positive opinion on the companies Marketing Authorization Application. This application involves its drug known as HEPLISAV-B, which is utilized in the treatment of Hepatitis B. Ryan Spencer, CEO of the company stated that “hepatitis B is a highly infectious and potentially deadly virus with increasing infection rates, and over 250 million people infected worldwide. Thankfully, it can be prevented with effective vaccination.”
In addition to this, the company is working on collaborations right now to produce adjuvanted vaccines for COVID-19. This seems to be the main explanation behind the company’s big jump on Thursday. With cases continuing to rise around the world, it seems as though there is a large focus on biotech penny stocks.
[Read More] 4 Energy Penny Stocks to Buy Under $4 In December 2020
When looking for a biotech penny stock to watch, investors should consider the company’s participation in the market as well as what plans it has for the future. One thing to note is that this virus will not be a huge threat forever. And if investors want to be long on a given penny stock, they should make sure to understand that company’s long term plans. With Pfizer’s vaccine seeing approval after hours, the focus remains on biotech penny stocks.
Penny Stocks to Buy [or avoid]: Kintara Therapeutics Inc.
Kintara Therapeutics Inc. is a Californian based biotech company working on a wide range of treatments for various types of cancer. The company currently has two Phase-3 ready therapeutics that will go into use in areas of unmet medical needs. The two drugs known as VAL-083 and REM-001 work to provide an alternative type of chemotherapy that can be much more targeted than traditional ones. In addition to this, the company is working on creating a proprietary platform that will allow for localized cancer treatments alongside its REM-001 therapy. Last month, the company announced its Q1 2021 fiscal results as well as a corporate update.
During the quarter, the company stated that it was able to raise $25 million through a private placement. With this, it ended the quarter with roughly $22 million in cash and cash equivalents. During the quarter, the company spent around $16 million on new research and developments expenditures. This led to it reporting a loss of around $19.5 million or around $1.33 per share. While this loss is definitely concerning, the potential for biotech penny stocks seems to be in the long term. If it is able to gain approval for the drugs in its pipeline, investors could consider Kintara Therapeutics to be a penny stock to watch.
Penny Stocks to Buy [or avoid]: Progenity Inc.
Progenity Inc. is one of the larger gainers of the day, pulling in around 12% by EOD. Progenity Inc. operates as a major biotechnology company working on the development and commercialization of molecular testing products. This includes medical devices as well as precision medicine tools. On Tuesday of this week, the company announced that it has closed on an offering of $85,525,000 in senior notes. This includes a $10,525,000 principal amount which will be partially exercised prior to the larger amount. The company also announced during the day that it had completed an underwritten public offering of around 7.6 million shares of common stock. It did this at a price of $3.27 per share.
All of this fundraising should together bring in around $110 million in capital. This capital will be put to use on research and development fees as well as for tests regarding its products. While it does offer testing for other illnesses, the company has also moved into the COVID testing market. It states that it is now offering high-quality PCR testing for those who need results quickly. With this, it has gained a correlation to many other leading biotech penny stocks. Considering the announcement from Pfizer coming after hours on Thursday, companies like Progenity Inc. could see more popularity in the coming weeks.
Penny Stocks to Buy [or avoid]: Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc. rounds out this list of penny stocks. Should it be one to buy or totally avoid? I’ll let you decide that one. However, if you look at the penny stock’s chart you should notice a very aggressive move that has been made this month. The company received an upgrade from Citigroup earlier this week. The firm gave the biotech company a boost to “Buy” from a previous “Neutral” rating. It also adjusted its price target from $2.10 to $6; a significant upgrade.
[Read More] Hot Penny Stocks On Robinhood For Your 2021 Watch List
While momentum has continued this week, Friday’s premarket news has lit another fire under the penny stock. Lexicon announced receipt of Fast Track Designation from the FDA for its LX9211 treatment. The company’s LX9211 is targeting diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain. Furthermore, the treatment is being prepared for a second Phase 2 clinical trial in post-herpetic neuralgia. The company’s also enrolling patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain in a Phase 2 study for proof of concept with LX9211.
This Fast Track Designation gives Lexicon the ability to gain expedited review of LX9211 from the FDA. The idea is to bring novel treatments targeting unmet needs to the market sooner. “The FDA’s Fast Track designation of LX9211 reflects the serious unmet medical need of people suffering from diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain,” said Praveen Tyle, Ph.D., executive vice president of research and development. | https://medium.com/@joesirianni/what-penny-stocks-should-you-buy-today-5-stocks-to-watch-right-now-f0235bbd487e | ['Joe Sirianni'] | 2020-12-11 14:41:37.927000+00:00 | ['Penny Stocks', 'Stocks', 'Investing', 'Investing And Trading', 'Stock Market'] |
Don’t Give Me That Excuse: “I Don’t Know What to Write” | A topic that repeatedly comes up during discussions is how most writers are capable to write hundreds of articles when others find it challenging to write just one article.
What most individuals don’t realize is that a goldmine of information is at their fingertips. I’m talking about the internet. It’s a place where information on any topic can be found. And the best part of it all is that most of the work has already been done for you.
Today, more than ever before, the internet has become the major source for new content. With that also comes the problem that with so much new content uploaded each day, someone most likely has already covered on the subject that you want to write about. However, all is not lost. Your job is to do more research on that subject and improve upon it in your own words. You should never plagiarize someone else’s work.
The following are a few examples that could help you improve upon similar content:
Look the article over and see what it is trying to tell you
Take down notes of what you think might contribute to the article
Compare your notes with the article and see what areas have not been covered
These are just three examples to follow to help get your creative juices to flow. It’s always easier to write about a topic you have some knowledge of or are interested in. However, that being said, that’s not always possible.
So, where do you go to find the information on that topic? You can start by using the online search engines, it’s still the easiest way to navigate the internet.
Here are the top 5 search engines:
Google
Bing
Yahoo
Ask
Yandex
Besides search engines, there are lots of other informative resources such as article directories. These directories can provide you with an unlimited amount of ideas on hundreds of topics. Once you come up with some interesting topics, do a search of what has been already covered.
Discussion groups provide another wealth of information and ideas on any topic.
There’s no need to create one thousand word articles. An article containing five hundred words or fewer that is well written and informative is all you need to make your point. The important thing to remember is that you want content that is useful to the reader.
Here are five of the best forums where you can find information and ask questions. These forums allow you to find topics and also ask questions.
Reddit
Quora
Stack Overflow
GamesSpot
Final Thoughts
Also, don’t forget to browse the daily news websites for daily updates. Staying on top of the latest updates can help you with more topics to write about.
Once you have found a topic you want to write about, reflect upon what you want your article to accomplish. What do you want to let the reader know? Once you have answered these questions, you’ll be creating articles that people want to read in no time. | https://medium.com/@tonydezenzio/dont-give-me-that-excuse-i-don-t-know-what-to-write-9701b08c8bdb | ['Anthony Dezenzio'] | 2020-12-10 22:24:05.976000+00:00 | ['Writing Tips', 'How To', 'Writers On Medium', 'Writers On Writing', 'Writers Block'] |
DHS Agents are Kidnapping Portlanders — Here’s How to Help | Image courtesy of KATU.com
What’s Going On?
Since at least July 14th, 2020, unnamed and unidentified federal agents have been grabbing Portland Oregon citizens off the street and taking them to undisclosed locations in unmarked vehicles. This is an illegal and unconstitutional action, one which has been condemned by Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. US
Attorney for the Oregon District Billy Williams has requested an investigation to be opened, and the ACLU is suing the Department of Homeland Security for constitutional violation.
Why Is This So Important?
This is important for multiple reasons. First, it is a violation of our constitutional rights. Second, it sets an extremely dangerous precedent in which DHS is militarized against American citizens. Third, because these illegal actors are not using any identifying information, it is impossible to tell who is truly a federal agent and who is a reactionary counter-protester who is looking to kidnap or harm those they disagree with. If we let this slide in Portland, it will be implemented everywhere, including your city.
What Can We Do About It?
While our representatives are doing what they can to protect our fellow citizens, we can do something too. We have it on good authority that these illegal actors are currently staying at the Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront property. If we can disrupt their housing, we can help to disrupt the illegal kidnapping of Portlanders off the streets. Follow these 5
steps to make a difference!
This PDF is being circulated on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #BoycottMarriott. Read through and do the same! For more information, contact [email protected]. | https://medium.com/@Vi_LaBianca/dhs-agents-are-kidnapping-portlanders-heres-how-to-help-5e8200c2770d | ['Vi La Bianca'] | 2020-07-19 03:00:13.201000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'Homeland Security', 'Portland', 'Trump Administration', 'Activism'] |
How a Plastic Stick Holds Power over the Largest Studios in Hollywood | How a Plastic Stick Holds Power over the Largest Studios in Hollywood
The entire world has switched to streaming. The most talked about and highly praised shows aren’t even accessible on cable. When it comes to that, the average person is usually focused on what apps to download and shows to watch… but what about the platform you are using itself? As entertainment giants like Disney, Netflix, and NBCUniversal all spend billions on their own streaming services, none of them actually have a way of getting their content in front of viewers. That’s where streaming device Roku comes in, think of them as a gatekeeper to everyones eyes… that’s a lot of power.
Roku has established themselves as the #1 streaming platform in the United States, with about 52 million users and roughly 40% penetration into all US broadband households, they are the top force in the streaming device space. Their growth has been fueled even further by the pandemic, where streaming, as we all know, has really become the only option for entertainment. According to Roku’s shareholder reports, streaming hours in Q2 2020 were recorded at 14.6 billion hours — up from 8.8 billion hours just one year earlier. This shows in their eye-popping stock performance as well, currently trading at roughly $330 per share (reported on 12/11/20)— up 467% since their low in March.
Roku has intelligently positioned themselves to be a dominate and lasting platform, so that every major entertainment studio has to bow down and kiss the ring.
Roku CEO Anthony Wood with his arcade game collection (photographed by Ryan Young)
Roku is a platform that monetizes entertainment companies streaming applications. They are pretty much the app store for your TV. They don’t mess around with original content — yet. They have nailed the engineering in their devices to create a perfect user interface anyone can use and love, thats their thing.
The way deals are structured with Roku and entertainment companies varies, but the standard terms for partner channels include 20% of subscription fees and 30% of ad inventory. Not bad. The continuation of growth for Roku is highly probable as well. As more studios release and then fight for their streaming services to become number one, the competition only increases Roku’s revenue — it is not cheap to be a front page advertisement on the Roku home screen or have a branded button on every remote.
As an example of their power, just this year, AT&T’s WarnerMedia released the new HBO streaming service: HBO Max. Roku and WarnerMedia were unable to come to terms and the service has yet to be added on Roku’s platform. Out of frustration from failed negotiations, AT&T CEO John Stankey publicly called out all major streaming device makers (Apple, Amazon, and Roku) at the WSJ Live Tech event for creating what he called “bottlenecks” that stop innovation in entertainment, he stated that these companies have “market power above and beyond what’s reasonable for innovation”.
Without HBO Max having been on Roku, their launch has been an utter failure, resulting in a quick reshuffle of the WarnerMedia management team. On the other hand, Disney worked smoothly with Roku for their launch of Disney+. In an interview with IndieWire, Tedd Cittadine, Roku’s head of content distribution, says that Disney is an example of “companies that get it… When they launched Disney+, they took over the entire home screen and our UI back in November — it was all branded Disney+”. The partnership between the two companies created great success for Disney+, where over 60 million subscribers signed up in just the first ten months. Comparing the launch of the Roku-less HBO Max versus Disney+ proves how crucial creating a partnership with the device owning companies is today. So for now and the foreseeable future, Roku remains firmly ensconced upon the Iron Throne.
UPDATE (12/17/20): Roku and WarnerMedia reached a deal on Wednesday for HBO Max to be added on Roku Thursday. This comes just in time before the debut of Warner Bros’ highly anticipated “Wonder Woman 1984”, which will be available on HBO Max to stream on Christmas day — as well as the 17 more films to come in 2021. WarnerMedia shocked the industry when they announced that Warner Bros’ full 2021 film slate will stream on HBO Max the same day the movies hit theaters. News of the agreement sent Roku’s stock soaring, it hit $352.12 (+11.7%) in Thursday early morning trading before winding back down to its close of $329.48 — likely due to profit taking. The agreement raises expectations for a strong future in Roku performance. | https://medium.com/@oliverjmontgomery/how-a-plastic-stick-holds-power-over-the-largest-studios-in-hollywood-b045254b9970 | ['Oliver J. Montgomery'] | 2020-12-18 03:33:46.498000+00:00 | ['Roku', 'Hollywood', 'Disney', 'Streaming', 'Hbo Max'] |
Solidity: Playing With Strings | Solidity: Playing With Strings
Photo by Martim Braz on Unsplash.
Strings of characters represent the very heart of every programming language because, you know, computers often interact with humans. For this reason, handling strings is one of the first functionalities developed in any language. Furthermore, the first test traditionally prints the string “Hello, world!”
Solidity is not an exception. It has native support for strings, but still, their use is not complete like in high-level languages such as JavaScript, Python, or Java. For instance, out of the box, Solidity does not offer a native way of comparing or concatenating strings. However, the documentation offers a valid solution for both functions that rely on abi.encodePacked() (we’ll talk about it later) to compare two strings:
keccak256(abi.encodePacked(s1)) == keccak256(abi.encodePacked(s2))
And to concatenate two strings:
abi.encodePacked(s1, s2)
To better understand the inner mechanics of these two simple functions, as usual, we will use a simple toy implementation:
As usual, you can comfortably play with it by using Remix. Once it is compiled, you will be able to invoke the two methods right from the interface:
The interface to invoke the methods.
Calling the two methods will sign a transaction containing an invocation to the method passing the arguments. The output of the transaction is displayed in the console windows following the execution of the string concatenation (to fully display the results, remember to click on the small arrow on the right):
Execution of the ‘concatenate’ method.
At the core of these two simple implementations is the function abi.encodePacked() , which performs a tight packing of the variables passed as arguments. In the following figure (taken from the documentation), you can see how the bits of each of the arguments are simply concatenated in the output:
An example of how the arguments passed to encodePacked are actually packed.
An interesting point in this encoding is that it is inherently ambiguous so there is no way of decoding it. In the following code, we simply test this ambiguity by comparing the encoding of two sets of different strings. With the in-place packing, the two invocations will return the exact sequence of bytes because both invocations will return the string "aab" without considering the different length of the input strings: | https://betterprogramming.pub/solidity-playing-with-strings-aca62d118ae5 | ['Rosario De Chiara'] | 2020-09-28 16:24:36.280000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Solidity', 'Ethereum', 'Hashing', 'Programming'] |
Managing Transboundary Wastewater | Managing Transboundary Wastewater
Amer with his son Mohammed. Amer is one of the villagers that benefited from the Transboundary Wastewater Management project, implemented by UNDP with support from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. His house is now connected to a wastewater network. © UNDP/PAPP
“The situation was unhealthy, costly and hazardous at times”. Amer Kittani is a Palestinian farmer and an interior designer living with his extended family at An Nazlah al Gharbya village near Tulkarem in the West Bank. Amer started noticing underlying infrastructure when he settled back at his hometown, after working abroad right after graduating from university.
“It took me a couple of weeks to realize the infrastructure problems in my village, particularly in old buildings like my family’s house”. Amer loved his family home, but the poor infrastructure required them to manually empty the sewage cesspit at regular intervals. “The cesspit was very old and not well built. It constantly required us to empty it. The process did not only affect our health and well-being, but was also very exhausting financially”.
Mohamed, Amer son’s son playing foot ball in the garden. He was not allowed to play outside before because of the cesspit in the house
“We are a big family; I live with my wife and son, along with my mother and younger brother. The sewage cesspit was a big problem for us. It would often flood and smell bad. Apart from the inconvenience, it posed a tremendous health risk and a big threat for my son and the other children in the neighbourhood. The still water attracted insects, rodents and diseases, in addition to flooding during”, Amer explains. This challenge had forced the family to take adaptive measures, that ranged from raising cats around the house to repel any unwelcomed guests, to setting a standing appointment with a pumping truck every Thursday.
“This issue did not only affect our physical and mental well-being; the financial implications were also great. We faced a monthly fixed charge of US$200, more during winter. This was not only my case, but the case of most of the village residents”, Amer add. “I remember the excitement and relief when we heard about the installation of new collection networks in the village. People were happy that they will finally live in a healthier and cleaner sanitary environment, and of course scratch those monthly costs away”.
Mysa, Amer’s mother is looking after her plants in the garden
Amer sees the newly installed collection system as “an enhanced quality of life”. “The collection system provided a healthier space for our children to grow in, a cleaner space, and a garden to enjoy as we please. We now can host guests and feasts in confidence, knowing that we will not be disturbed by the smell, and Mohammed — my son — can wander around the garden and explore without the health risks that come with the cesspit”.
“We all are very happy with the new system, but I think my mother is the one that has benefited the most, as she lives on the ground floor”. The smell and constant flooding had forced Maysa, Amer’s mother, to change many of her daily habits. Now she can enjoy her morning coffee, take care of her flowers and plants and bake pastries in the garden.
“It does not matter how I feel; whether it is sadness, joy or anger, I turn to my garden for comfort. I look after my plants and observe my flowers, play with my grandson, meet with loved ones and sometimes even serve dinner outside. These small activities grant me patience and serenity. Installing the collection system allows for that enjoyment. Days pass by more peacefully now”, Maysa explains.
UNDP, in partnership with the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) was able to improve transboundary wastewater management and control. Wastewater collection networks and two pumping stations were established connecting the targeted communities, flow measurement systems were installed in five border areas, the capacities of the targeted municipalities were developed in wastewater management, and finally support was provided to the PWA in monitoring the quantities of transboundary wastewater.
Mysa, Amer’s mother is playing with her grandson in the garden. He family now is connected to a wastewater network
Building on the progress achieved in enhancing wastewater pollution control in these areas, the Kingdom of the Netherlands provided an additional US$5 million to expand this project to reach Attil, Hebron and Beit Jala cities of the West Bank, benefiting around 8,200 by 2023.
Amer looks forward to the day were wastewater collection and treatment plants are available across the country, not only to enhance the quality of lives for Palestinians, but he also sees it as a developmental opportunity and a way to save the environment. “As a Palestinian farmer with regional experience, I think we should look at wastewater as a resource rather than a challenge. We should invest in water treatment plants, as they would provide an excellent source of water for the Palestinian agriculture sector”. | https://medium.com/@UNDPArabic/managing-transboundary-wastewater-3fad5c1a93a2 | ['البرنامج الإنمائي'] | 2020-11-16 06:43:08.877000+00:00 | ['Palestine', 'Clean Water'] |
Writing Tips: How to Organize a Sociology Paper | When I started as a sociology grad student, I was a seasoned writer but a novice at sociology and at academic writing. To be honest, I was pretty lousy at both. It’s taken me a while to get up to speed. Here are some tips I’ve picked up along the way, using an example of Harry Potter.
Let’s say my paper is about gender dynamics in the Harry Potter book series. I notice that femininity is often portrayed in a negative light, and the masculinity is portrayed as superior. This is a concept called androcentrism: “gender-based prejudice: the granting of higher status, respect, value, reward, and power to the masculine compared to the feminine” (Wade and Ferree p. 119). This is true in both male and female characters in the book, but I decide that there is so much to say just about women and girls that I’ll focus only on them.
Chronological Storytelling: An easier but usually less effective way to write your paper
One option for writing my paper is simply by telling the story of Harry Potter, in order, and making comments about the women along the way:
Harry Potter’s parents were killed by Voldemort but somehow he miraculously survived. He is taken in by his aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, who abuse him and lie to him about his parents and magic. At age 11, he finds out he is a wizard from Hagrid. He gets his supplies at Diagon Alley and goes to Hogwarts.
At this point, I’ve already recapped quite a bit of plot without having anything much to say about androcentrism or a negative portrayal of femininity. I might comment on the introduction of Mrs. Weasley and Ginny on the train platform, but at that point the reader doesn’t know yet that Mrs. Weasley will become like an adopted mother to Harry, or that he will one day marry Ginny. We have no idea that Mrs. Weasley will be portrayed as a nagging shrew with poor boundaries, or that Ginny will be so strong or so sporty as she grows up.
It’s not really until the reader meets Hermione that there is something to comment on. Hermione likes to follow rules and push others to do so as well. She’s a bit bossy and often called “shrill.” She’s a know-it-all, and she’s pretty annoying until after the troll incident at Halloween (and sometimes after that too). She’s not much of a girly-girl, although she’s almost entirely ignorant about Quidditch, and she does dress up nicely for the Yule Ball in book 4. In book 5, she acts almost as an emotional translator for the boys, using her feminine powers of empathy to understand how Cho feels and explain it to Harry and Ron, who can’t believe that one person could feel so much at once or that another person could understand it. But Hermione doesn’t do all of that immediately in book one, so if we’re going chronologically, we’ll just have a few comments here and there about each female character we meet in the order that we meet them, and the ideas in the paper will be disorganized.
It’s easier to write your paper this way because you can simply go in order of the story you know and then comment on what you observe as you go. However, you generally end up with poorer organization than a differently structured paper, and you take up a lot of space simply telling a story that has little to do with sociology.
Sometimes I find it helpful to start writing my paper this way just to get started. Then I can edit or re-write it from there to put it into a format that is more difficult to write but better organized and more analytical. Writing chronologically is not a bad way to start, but be prepared to edit heavily or to even toss out your initial draft and rewrite it if you start out this way.
Another Way: Organize Your Paper by Characters
Another option could be to organize the paper by writing about a few different characters. If I was going for an essay with three body paragraphs, I might choose to have a paragraph on Hermione, one on Mrs. Weasley, and one on Umbridge. But what about Ginny?
Maybe I could do groups of characters: Evil Women (Mrs. Dursley, Bellatrix Lestrange, & Dolores Umbridge), Hogwarts Students (Hermione, Ginny, Cho, Luna, Lavender), and Good Adults (Mrs. Weasley, Tonks, Lily Potter, Prof. MacGonagall).
Again, my paper is supposed to be about ideas — about the idea that this series shows androcentrism in women and girls — and not about the characters themselves. Organizing it around characters makes it hard to focus on the ideas. It will be tempting to describe who the characters are and what they do instead of the concepts they illustrate. I might end up repeating the same point several times over — like if I point out that Umbridge is highly feminine and bad and then later also point out that Lavender’s femininity is portrayed badly too, or if I point out that Hermione is a nag and later say the same thing about Mrs Weasley. It would be better to make the point that sometimes women are shown as nags, giving Hermione and Mrs. Weasley as examples, and that the most feminine characters are shown negatively, giving Umbrige and Lavender as examples, and have those be the ideas to organize the paper around.
A Better Way: Organize Your Paper By Ideas
I sat down and brainstormed themes I noticed on how women and femininity are portrayed in Harry Potter:
Rowling portrays femininity as a negative trait in her most feminine characters, Umbridge and Lavender. This is also perhaps the case for Parvati and Trelawney. Rowling’s stronger female characters tend to be less feminine and no-nonsense like MacGonagall or Sprout. Sometimes women are portrayed as shrewish and with bad boundaries, especially in the case of Hermione and Mrs Weasley but also in the case of the librarian and perhaps even Madam Pomfrey. Fleur Delacour, the very feminine and only female Tri-Wizard Champion is portrayed as much less fierce than the men she competes against and later takes on what appears to be a housewife role once married to Bill. Harry falls for two female Quiddich players and he attributes Ginny’s lack of tearfulness to her growing up with five brothers. Often female characters cry while men hold back tears, comfort the women, or look away from one another to hide their emotions. The one way in which femininity is portrayed in a positive light is when mothers are nurturing, like Lily Potter or Mrs. Weasley (sometimes).
In this case, you can see that I am not going in chronological order, nor am I telling the story at all. I’m hardly even providing examples. Right now, these are just notes for myself.
I decide to pick out some ideas and organize them:
Feminine traits often are viewed as negative, particularly when Umbridge practically weaponizes them or when Lavender is a one-dimensional character who can’t relate to her boyfriend enough to form a real relationship with him. Fleur is even shown negatively to some extent.
Femininity is portrayed most positively when women are shown as loving mother figures (Lily Potter, Mrs. Weasley) or objects of male lust or love (Madam Rosmerta, Cho, Ginny, Fleur).
Lack of femininity is often portrayed positively (Ginny’s lack of tearfulness in book 7, for example, or Hermione not being a girly-girl, or MacGonagall being a strong leader but not too feminine).
Sometimes women who are more outspoken are imbued with negative traits (shrewishness, nagging, bad boundaries, bossiness, shrillness) instead of being portrayed more positively as leaders. However, sometimes women are shown as effective leaders in a more positive, no-nonsense, not overly feminine way (MacGonagall).
Masculine traits in women are often viewed as superior (being tough, brave, sporty, willing to break rules, Hermione socking Draco Malfoy in the face or responding to his taunting with a snappy comeback like in Book 4 when she makes a comment about Mad-Eye turning him into a ferret, Ginny being ballsy like Fred and George in book 5)
This can help me come up with a thesis statement and organize the paper. The overall trend is one of androcentrism in women, in which masculine traits are shown as more valuable than feminine traits. Then the paragraphs in the paper can emphasize the points above, one at a time, illustrating each with examples.
Notice that the point is that I am focusing on social theory more than story and plot. The story and the plot aren’t totally irrelevant, but I am going to write about them in order to support an idea about how society in the Wizarding World is structured.
Let’s say I kick off the paper with an introduction that defines androcentrism and makes it clear that this paper is going to show that JK Rowling portrays androcentrism in her women characters, both by devaluing femininity and valuing masculinity. I might wish to make it clear that androcentrism runs throughout characters of all genders, but this particular paper will focus solely on the women. Or I could just not mention men and write only about women.
Then I get to my first point. Remember the focus is not on the story of Harry Potter, or even on describing a specific character, but an idea: Femininity is often portrayed negatively in Harry Potter. If I have any good sociological literature to cite to explain this concept further or to provide context or evidence that this devaluing femininity is not limited to JK Rowling and Harry Potter alone, and tells how it fits into our society as a a whole, I should include that too. Then I must illustrate this with examples from the book.
Here’s one way to write out the first point from the list above:
The most decidedly feminine characters in Harry Potter are without a doubt Dolores Umbridge and Lavender Brown, and, to a lesser extent, Parvati Patil and Sybil Trelawney. Each of these women is portrayed negatively, and sometimes their femininity is clearly a cause of their undesirability. Umbridge, a Ministry of Magic official who temporarily takes a job at Hogwarts in Book 5, practically weaponizes femininity as a tool of evil. Although she is not a Death Eater, she is cruel, calculating, power-hungry, and unfair. She wears bows on her head, decorates her office with lace, doilies, and pictures of kittens, and often gives a “girlish” laugh, particularly when she is doing something cruel. Although she is evil, she is also extraordinarily ineffective at magic. Lavender Brown, a classmate of Harry Potter, shows a more benign but immature and out-of-touch femininity when she dates Ron Weasley in book 6. Their relationship is based solely on “snogging” and not of true emotional closeness, and she is unable to understand Ron at all — so much that she gives him the embarrassing nickname “Won-Won” and a ridiculous girly necklace he will never wear for Christmas. She and her best friend Parvati are duped into believing that Sybil Trelawney, the fraudulent professor of Divination, is truly able to see the future. While Trelawney is not the most feminine character in the book, her classroom is described as extremely feminine, smelling of perfume and containing poufs and teacups. She is shown as foolish and incompetent, yet unaware of her own failures. In each of these cases, the characters’ femininity is portrayed in a negative light. In the fight against Voldemort that plays out over all seven books, none of these figures ever play a significant role, with the exception of the participation of Lavender and Trelawney in the final battle at the end of the series.
This version explains clearly that one way in which the books show androcentrism in women is by devaluing femininity. It provides specific examples, and it explains who each character it names is and enough of the plot for the reader to understand the point being made. It begins and ends by emphasizing the main point, that these femininity is shown as a bad thing, and that the most feminine female characters are portrayed negatively.
For the most part, even someone not very familiar with Harry Potter would be able to read and understand this. However, it doesn’t provide extra plot details or information about characters beyond what is necessary. It assumes the reader understands who Harry Potter and Voldemort are, what a Death Eater is, and that it’s a seven book series about Harry Potter’s fight against Voldemort.
The point of this essay is not who Harry Potter is, or what happened in the books, and it doesn’t solely focus on a single female character like Hermione. It’s very clearly on illustrating a social phenomenon (androcentrism) and on making the case that androcentrism appears in the Harry Potter books. It shows this by examining many of the major female characters and comparing and contrasting them to one another.
It still leaves out some characters. A minor character that could go into the example of “femininity as bad” is Hepzibah Smith in Book 6. She’s an extremely minor character who appears briefly before Voldemort kills her, and she’s both very feminine and very foolish. In this case, I feel like what I wrote makes its point well enough without bringing her up, and adding a sentence or two on Hepzibah Smith would add to the length of my essay without contributing new ideas.
Notice how much I wrote before I actually wrote the draft above. I was unable to come up with that draft off the top of my head. First, I had to brainstorm some ideas, organize them, and come up with a thesis statement and major points to support my thesis statement. Then once I did that, I could write out the first of my supporting points and select examples to illustrate it with.
It’s more work up front to structure your paper based around ideas like this, but there’s a pay-off when you are able to do it. Although it requires extra planning and brainstorming up front, once you begin writing, your paper will be much easier to write. When I knew I was writing a few paragraphs on how JK Rowling portrays femininity as bad in Harry Potter, and I knew which characters best demonstrated that, it was very easy to write it up. Hopefully the extra work up front gave me a big enough pay off that I did less work later and I wrote a better paper overall.
Sources:
Wade, Lisa and Myra Marx Ferree. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions.
Rowling, JK. Harry Potter Books 1–7. | https://medium.com/@jillrichardson_55829/writing-tips-how-to-organize-a-sociology-paper-b562175c1681 | ['Jill Richardson'] | 2019-12-24 19:04:31.932000+00:00 | ['Writing Tips', 'Academic Writing', 'Writing', 'Harry Potter', 'Sociology'] |
Case study: Online banking application redesign | Case study: Online banking application redesign
I struggled with making the decision to write this case study mainly to avoid any controversy that may arise due to reasons I will explain below.
I was a former “Service Ambassador (SA)” at Fidelity bank and my role entailed onboarding walk-in customers at the branch level on the electronic channels (which include the mobile application) and helping these customers resolve any issues relating to these platforms.
Without going into too many details, this role enabled me to see how customers STRUGGLED with using the mobile application even from the onboarding process. Now, bear in mind that a lot of the issues faced cannot be resolved solely by even the best UX designer, and anyone who banks in Nigeria knows the “network issues” are pervasive and almost impossible to avoid.
I was hesitant to write this because, since I left the bank a few months ago, I have noticed that improvements are being made to the interface of the app, but I doubt that the insights of the Service Ambassadors who interact closely with the users of the app have actually been taken into consideration. I will urge Fidelity Bank to give more consideration to the requests, complaints, recommendations and valuable insights that these SAs bring to the table based on their first-hand experience with what amounts to a vast amount of “user testing” in UX design lingo.
Needless to say, the UX problems I will attempt to resolve are drawn from my nearly 2 years experience basically hand-holding customers while they tried to register and/or transact using the app.
In fact, it was my time at the bank that led me to delve into product design with the goal of using the valuable experience and the first-hand insights into customers pains, wants and behaviours, leveraging same to create better user experience on digital platforms.
Launch Screen
I really don’t have much to say here except that I feel that the background image is a little outdated and could do with some sprucing up with a more abstract image. I also changed the font of the slogan to look more contemporary and made the copy sound more refreshing and direct.
Log in Screen
Often times, new users will see the log in screen and would not be sure what to do next. The screen is jumbled and fails to offer clarity and clear direction, causing the user to be confused.
So I tried to give clear and direct instructions, made the screen less cluttered, and implemented a better visual hierarchy. This makes it easier for new users to figure out what to do to self-register, change their pin, enable biometric authentication etc
I positioned the ‘Log In’ card lower on the screen (slightly towards the middle of the screen) to improve usability so that users will be able to type better and more accurately without having to readjust their hand placement as would be required if they had to type at the top of the screen.
I observed that users seemed not to notice the switch to enable biometric (which in fact, has a low contrast to the background and is not clearly visible), as customers would still walk into the branch to ask how to do that. So, I added a tick box towards the left (a tried and tested heuristic technique), while also adding the fingerprint icon as a visual aid.
Another issue that majority of users struggled with relates to the password. This led to users frequently getting locked out of their online banking, and many, abandoning the app altogether.
The main issues are:
The password parameters are identical to that used on Apple iCloud and are rather complex for the average user, causing them to forget the password very frequently. If I had a dollar (about N500) for every customer that lamented as to why they couldn’t just use a pin instead I’d surely be at least N500,000 richer today lol. Because of this, I changed the password field to a 4-digit pin to improve accessibility.
Even users who are very tech savvy experience difficulties in entering the password correctly since they cannot see what it is they are typing and this is why I added the option for the user to be able to view the pin before they attempt to login. This would be really instrumental in ensuring that users don’t repeatedly mistype their password and end up being locked out of their internet banking profile due to the high security measures implemented by the bank.
Finally, I moved the ‘new user registration’ from the far bottom (where many users would not easily locate it) and placed it below the log in card to improve the information architecture of the log-in screen.
This is because in recent times, the bank, like many others has placed a lot of focus on on-boarding its customers on its electronic platforms so it is important for this feature to be more prominent on the screen.
I will conclude the case study here for today as I want to keep this detailed but short. However, I’ll be making this a series of posts to conclude with some other screens I feel could be better designed.
The aim of this case study is not to throw shade at the bank as I know they have invested heavily in their electronic channels, but to simply put my knowledge to good use by highlighting how the bank could create a far better user experience for their customers.
This is my first detailed UX case study and I would really appreciate your feedback, suggestions and comments. Thanks for your time. | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/fidelity-bank-online-banking-application-redesign-540e56094ed0 | ['Iwalola Sobowale'] | 2020-12-22 03:09:05.293000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Product Design', 'Redesign', 'Product', 'Banking'] |
The Birth of Gothic Camp: Beckford’s Vathek (1786) | Odilon Redon, “The Hideous Cyclops” (1883)
William Beckford’s Vathek, An Arabian Tale (1786) is perhaps the most bizarre response to Europe’s love affair with all things ‘Oriental’ in the eighteenth-century. The age witnessed a rich immigration of Eastern art and culture, as evidenced by figures such as Mary Elizabeth Wortley Montagu, who ‘smuggled’ in her letters on Turkish society and customs after a two-year stay in 1716–1718. Once the letters were finally published in 1762, the market had already been established by the French translation of an Arabic classic, The Thousand and One Nights. Antoine Galland’s translation, Les Mille et une nuits (1704–1717), quickly became a bestseller, reaching eighty editions by 1800 and finding their way into many distinguished bookshelves (even Mozart owned a copy).
It is no coincidence that Beckford’s own addition to the Nights — a contemporary reviewer claimed it was the one-thousand and second tale — was originally written in French, and then meticulously translated for the English public. French not only allowed him to commune with the Tales in the ‘original,’ but gave him a certain editorial distance from his own prose, allowing him to indulge in aberrant tropes with irony and a knowing wink.
The plot is simple and hardly does justice to the sheer gusto of the prose, which is both ridiculous and sublime (often in the same sentence). The great potentate, Vathek, is visited by a strange Indian who gives him exotic gifts, including swords with arcane writing upon them. However, when the Indian refuses to indulge Vathek’s whims, he disappears without decoding the text. Vathek is then stricken with ceaseless thirst and given a single means of deliverance: he must appease the “Giaour” (the Indian) by sacrificing fifty of the kingdom’s most beautiful children to his appetite. Vathek doesn’t think twice, and holds a sporting competition for the best and brightest to secure their parents’ permission.
However, the Giaour reneges on his promise, not only devouring the children, but withholding the promised key that opens a subterranean chamber of wonders. After escaping the parents’ wrath with the help of his mother (the evil sorcerer, Carathis), Vathek mounts an expedition to find the Giaour and make atonement. Along the way, he battles wild animals, meets fantastic dwarves, and becomes smitten with the daughter of a powerful emir, Nouronihar (who shares his wicked delight in torturing her underlings). Despite the emir’s best efforts to keep them apart, Vathek and Nouronihar escape to find the Giaour, who with some misgivings allows them to enter the temple of Eblis and learn the true secrets of eternity. However, eternity is hardly what they expected, as they merely find a room crowded with people writhing in agony, clutching hearts which now burn with an endless flame. Despite his Faustus-like appeals for mercy, Vathek is denied Mahomet’s deliverance, who abandons them to the enslavement of Eblis.
Understandably, Vathek sits uneasily amidst the other English ‘Oriental’ fictions of the period, such as Johnson’s Rasselas (1759), Hawkeworth’s Almoran and Hamet (1761) or Sheridan’s The History of Nourjahad (1767). Though Beckford seems more attuned to the culture than his predecessors, his work is just as contrived and ‘romantic,’ at least in the Gothic sense of the word. Indeed, Walpole’s famous novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764) provided the blueprint for Beckford’s tale of gothic mayhem and heightened sensibility. For unlike Johnson, who only pays lip-service to local customs, Beckford relishes the seraglios, eunuchs, and slave-girls as a decadent four-course meal. Every sentence of the work seems a source of intense joy for the author, who savors in obsessive alliteration and grotesque imagery. If he often loses sight of the story, it is because these digressions are the story; he wants the reader to lose him/herself in the pages of the novel like the twisting corridors of a haunted mansion.
This is less surprising when we remember that Beckford more or less lived in a haunted mansion — or at least a building that bore a passing resemblance to those featured in The Castle of Otranto and The Mysteries of Udolpho. Fonthill Abbey, the ancestral seat he refashioned according to his literary bent, boasted twelve miles of walls, a 276 foot tower (which later collapsed), and a sultan-like storehouse of art and antiquities. He also reportedly hosted reenactments of his favorite stories and novels among his friends, and if we believe the legends, the entire plot of Vathek itself. Additionally, Beckford was dogged by the shadow of scandal (though married, he had scandalous relations with young men) and devoted his life to travel and the discovery of esoteric knowledge. Compare this to Vathek’s own ambition to “know every thing; even sciences that did not exist.” So this begs the question, how should we ready the inspired hodgepodge he left to posterity: as an autobiographical cipher or a parody of Gothic/Oriental excess?
From the first paragraph, he offers a clue through his grotesque description of Vathek’s anger: “when he was angry, one of his eyes became so terrible, that no person could bear to behold it; and the wretch upon whom it was fixed, instantly fell backwards, and sometimes expired.” The qualification “sometimes expired” is delightfully bathetic, and suggests that the Gothic terror is to be taken with a pinch of salt — or a glance back at Walpole. The first third of the work can be read as a virtuoso display of every Oriental trope in the literature: elaborate feasts, exotic names, fearful rituals, and overwhelming sensuality.
Whether by accident or design, Beckford seems to reduce the Arabic landscape (at least, as seen through English eyes) to a single perspective: appetite. The story is a virtual ode to eating, drinking, and all manner of tactile sensations. Beckford never misses an opportunity to describe the dishes being served to tickle Vathek’s depraved palette, or the endless ways he tortures his subjects and enemies. The most obvious example of this is when the Indian merchant is kicked and beaten by Vathek and a team of underlings: “being both short and plump, [the Indian] collected himself into a ball, and rolled around on all sides, at the blows of his assailants…while the Caliph, pursuing him closer than the rest, bestowed as many kicks as he possibly could.” The image of the caliph and his henchmen playing football throughout the palace with a “plump” Indian is the humor of nightmare, a joke made in the ultimate bad taste.
Throughout the book, a pornographic sense of violence seems on the verge of derailing the narrative. Slave girls pinch eunuchs to death and Vathek’s mother proclaims her “taste for dead bodies, and every thing like mummy” — a particularly gruesome pun. And while Beckford avoids depictions of sex, the dark prospect of rapine lurks in every corner, as when Vathek warns his guards that “You see how enormous [the Indian’s] performances are in every way; what would be the consequence should he get at my wives!” (Jacks 38). This is just after the Indian has downed countless bottles of wine and half the food on the table; clearly, one appetite is the same as another, and in this world, both people and animals are despoiled with abandon. We are put in mind of the masquerade parties at Fonthill Abbey, where Beckford played sultan to his friends’ eunuchs and slaves.
This sense of burlesque looms large in the work, as Robert Mack points out in his Introduction to Oriental Tales: “Homosexual writers are at home in the oriental tale, as are female authors; it is a place to be free of the restrictions of the mundane realism tied to the demands of the market-place and the goings on of ‘real’ society.” However seriously we take this story itself, there is an gleeful sense of play in the work, where flagellation wars with flatulence in a single paragraph. Like the seraglio itself, Beckford sequesters his darkest desires and most fervid fantasies within the confines of the Arabian Nights, with enough jokes and moral wisdom to remind the reader that it’s all in good fun — and bad taste.
If the mix of fantasy and farce is a precursor to Romanticism, so, too, is the most innovative aspect of the work: the dense, scholarly footnotes that accompany the text. The casual mention of genii in the story (a term which was already well-known to English readers by 1786) receives a veritable dissertation in the notes, claiming, “It is asserted, and not without plausible reasons, that the words Genn, Ginn, Genius, Genie, Gian, Gigas, Giant, Geant proceed from the same themes…as if these supernatural agents had been an early production of the earth, long before Adam was modelled [sic] out from a lump of it.”
Strangely, these footnotes were not assembled by Beckford, but a clergyman friend, Samuel Henley, to accompany the English translation. Though he may have had pretensions of being an Orientalist, Henley was curiously tone deaf to literature or the aims of a popular novelist. Ignoring the gothic extravaganza of the plot, Henley insisted on seeing the work as “an ‘illustrative’ social-historical document, from which commentators such as himself might expect ‘great assistance.’ ” The notion that a work like Vathek could contribute to the ethnographic study of Arabic culture is either a testament to Henley’s naiveté or the primitive state of contemporary scholarship. Despite his earnest efforts, the notes fail to convince or add anything but a level of absurdity — indeed, incredulity — to the novel.
If Henley failed to read Vathek in the proper light, then we should ask the same of Beckford: was he sincerely impressed by Henley’s pedantry? After all, he insisted on seeing the footnotes as an integral part of the text, even after the two had a reported falling-out. The notes do put us in mind of similar Gothic formulas before and since, notably Walpole’s original framing of The Castle of Otranto as a work discovered in the library of an old English family, and “translated by William Marshal, Gent., from the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto.” A true Gothic text is always a meta-text, meaning the package is as important as the story itself, hence the love of frame narratives and letters. Clearly Beckford wanted to write an Oriental fantasy with the veneer of old scholarship, not unlike the ‘world building’ prized in modern fantasy novels. If nothing else, the footnotes are like the words “based upon a true story” that precedes a horror movie, and makes the terror more distressingly palpable.
We also see a distinct family resemblance to Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), which contains its share of scholarly glosses, some of them obscuring the poem itself (and betraying the same kind of Orientalist lore). Though Coleridge enjoyed the ruse of antiquity, he chiefly employed them as a satiric commentary on the genre itself. The Gothic pursuit of verisimilitude belied its role as fiction and entertainment; so Coleridge added glosses that threatened to demystify the experience of Romantic poetry. Surely Coleridge had Henley’s notes in mind, particularly the following passage, when he tries to defend Beckford’s use of an astrolabe: “It may, however, be remarked, to go no higher, than Sinesius, bishop of Ptolemais, invented one in the fifth century; and that Carathis was not only herself a Greek, but also cultivated those sciences which the good Mussulmans of her time all held in abhorrence” (Jack 117). Beckford and Coleridge must have been splitting their sides.
Should we read Vathek as little more than a calculated lampoon to upset the Enlightenment pretensions of his peers, and indulge in some old-fashioned debauchery? If so, how do we account for the presence of Mahomet in the story, who watches silently — and disapprovingly — of Vathek’s actions? Beckford never intends the reader to sympathize with the caliph or be moved by his plight. Multiple layers of grotesquerie and humor provide a distancing effect, so that nothing seems real or vital; the story unfolds like a puppet show of Dr. Faustus, with no doubt of his final damnation. After all, when Vathek finally attains his forbidden knowledge, the narrator informs us, “Almost at the same instance, the same voice announced to the Caliph, Nouronihar, the four princes, and the princess, the awful, and the irrecoverable decree. Their hearts immediately took fire, and they, at once, lost the most precious gift of heaven: — HOPE.”
By ending the story with lost hope and the judgment of heaven, Beckford may have simply been bowing to the conventions of the genre; even Walpole punishes the evil Lord Manfred in Otranto. Or is Beckford condemning his own actions and reckless pursuit of knowledge and pleasure wherever they might be found? Was the story — like another veiled autobiographical work, The Vision (1777) — a way of working out his demons in print? Unfortunately, Henley’s notes shed no light on this interpretation, perhaps the very reason he preferred to bury his head in scholarship. The story remains like the mysterious smile of the sphinx, universal, yet untranslatable, awaiting its Rosetta Stone to reveal the face of the author inside. | https://joshuagrasso-58239.medium.com/the-birth-of-gothic-camp-beckfords-vathek-1786-d9ec7fbe36a2 | ['Joshua Grasso'] | 2019-01-12 19:46:22.727000+00:00 | ['Arabian Nights', 'Gothic', 'Orientalism', 'Gothic Literature', 'Literature'] |
The Hidden Costs of Firmware Flashing | First of all, the debugging/programming hardware. ST products are famously paired with the ST-Link series of debuggers; the most common ST-Link V2 comes for 20 € on Mouser, but a knock-off can be found on Aliexpress for prices as low as 1.50 $.
Cheap, but effective
For Microchip products, it’s a different story. Their go-to debugger is the relatively new ICD-4, and the toy costs up to 240 €— quite an investment.
They also offer a more affordable option in the form of the PIC-kit 4: just under 50 €. Still twice as much as the ST counterpart.
Recently, they also released a super-cheap alternative, the Microchip SNAP, but it’s so bare bones (not even a case) I wouldn’t recommend it for a professional setting.
When choosing between those two options, you already have an up front difference of ~30 € in costs for every production unit, which can become even more if you are unlucky. In my experience Microchip programmers are very delicate constructs, and we break at least a couple per year just from normal usage. Also, their device support is often incomplete: it’s not uncommon to find out the the newest processors are not supported by some versions of the debugging tools, forcing you to buy a second one.
For now I’ve only listed one-time kickstarting costs, which are easily covered by the first profits. It sucks, but it’s no big deal. The real problem kicks in when you start flashing your custom boards.
Time is Money
By looking at two similar project I realized Microchip programmers are unbelievably slow at their supposed job. I compared the flashing time of two ELF files about the same size (~100 KB each): one for the PIC24FJ128, the other for a STM32F030.
The results? While my ST-Link V2 is done in a mere 8 seconds delay, the ICD3 needs 25 seconds to finish. That’s a three fold difference. This means that anyone assigned to the task of preparing products to be delivered will cost you thrice as much, weighing heavily on the returns.
As a side note — the actual flashing time is more or less the same, about 5 seconds for both. The problem is MPLABX (Microchip’s development environment) takes 20 damn seconds to handshake with the device. I am unsure about what the hell they are chit chatting about, but apparently it’s so important you have to waste a third of a minute on it.
This means that it took me a minimum of one and an half hours to program 200 PIC24 boards, while I could have been done in just 30 minutes if the product mounted an STM32 counterpart.
This is already a sizeable increase, but it’s not over yet. When handling big orders it is appropriate to build a somewhat automated setup to save as much time as possible; while this is generally achievable for most manufacturers, Microchip seems to make a statement in how you should take things slowly.
Zero Flexibility
ST Microelectronics has the simplest possible approach to develop firmware for their products. Any ARM compiler will do to create a binary image, and then they distribute a command line tool to flash it. This is also paired with a complex Code Generator (STMCubeMx) and IDE, but you are not forced to use those.
Unfortunately MPLABX does not allow to time the flashing procedure.
In this way it is fairly easy to setup a flashing workstation from any small device running Linux (looking at you, Raspberry Pi) and a touch display. You can even build a continuous integration system with an headless Jenkins server connected to a protoboard: the changes pushed to the Git repository are automatically tested and validated on real hardware.
This is simply not possible with a PIC family microcontroller. The only way to develop firmware in Microchip’s world is to use their infamous MPLABX IDE, complete with obsolete GUI and long running bugs. There is just no other option to flash a PIC MCU than to use a full blown personal computer, start up a session and painstaikingly flash each device by hand.
If you really need an automated procedure you can implement a custom bootloader for your application, but guess what? | https://medium.com/swlh/the-hidden-costs-of-firmware-flashing-c2d3dde09628 | ['Mattia Maldini'] | 2020-02-05 21:52:17.943000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Comparison', 'Embedded Systems', 'Hidden Cost', 'Product Design'] |
Design systems: the perfect opportunity for the integration of accessibility | Design systems: the perfect opportunity for the integration of accessibility
Creating an application that meets the accessibility standards is tough, but we don’t have a choice anymore. It is our responsibility to make sure our products can be used by all users, not just morally, but often legally as well. Considering accessibility as part of your design system is a good starting point. How? Read on! Tim Scheffer Follow Nov 19, 2020 · 7 min read
15% of the world’s population experience some form of disability, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This number grows every day as the global population ages. A lot of these people need to use assistive technology to navigate websites and other digital products and experience a clear mismatch between how they use their tools and how interfaces are designed. Recent studies found that less than 2% of homepages meet standard level AA WCAG 2.1 accessibility requirements, which is the general standard of web accessibility.
Assistive technology comes in many shapes and forms: screen readers that read an interface out aloud, zoom software that enlarges elements, or simply using only a keyboard to navigate instead of a mouse. The reasons for using them also vary wildly, ranging from efficiency or personal preference to mobility disabilities.
Design systems are the perfect opportunity to build accessibility and inclusion into your component libraries, both from a code repository perspective as well as from a UI/UX design perspective. Seeing accessibility as an integrated part of the process, rather than ‘something that we need to check’ when the project is at its end, is something that we’re seeing more and more of nowadays.
Example of an assistive tool to use the computer
Incorporating accessibility starts at the component level
When you want to incorporate accessibility into design systems there are two major considerations: usability and compatibility. We need to be able to provide for both in a design system.
Usability is not only the experience you have when you operate an interface to get a task done, but it’s also the flow of the application, and how you navigate and understand it as a user. Compatibility has to do with how the assistive tools interact with the interfaces and systems. This is outside the control of the users and can be limited by the operating system and/or the type of assistive tools they use. Usability and compatibility play out at several levels of the design system, but it all starts at the individual component level.
Example of components from a design system
However, it’s crucial to keep in mind that if individual components may have built-in accessibility, it doesn’t necessarily mean the user flows at the page level will be accessible. Designers and developers need to consider how components fit into layouts. Having a clear navigation structure and using semantic code helps, but it’s also important for designers and developers to have more context for when they use components. For example, if you have a set of forms, you need to have instructions about the descriptive header for each form. You need to have criteria related to the context you’re using the component in.
Testing and tools ensure success
To ensure that components and page-level flows are accessible, you’ll need to test them. There are three main ways of testing your work. First, you should do manual testing while you’re in the process of creating or developing components. Second, use automated testing, and third, which arguably is the most important, is testing with users.
There are several tools that designers and developers can use during their work for quick testing. Here are a few ways that enable designers to test while designing: | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/design-systems-the-perfect-opportunity-for-the-integration-of-accessibility-cf1927c24840 | ['Tim Scheffer'] | 2020-11-24 05:12:48.728000+00:00 | ['Resources', 'UX', 'Accessibility', 'WCAG', 'Design Systems'] |
Gabriel Cabezas (Cello ’13) | Portrait by illustrator Kirsten George
Interviewed by Ali King
Director, Marketing and Business Development
Curtis Institute of Music
December 7, 2020
AK: Where are you holding this Zoom call with me today?
GC: New York City. I’ve lived here for about five years. I love it a lot even though it’s of course gone through some changes this year.
AK: It seems like you’re staying busy despite the pandemic. Duende is one of your projects that I’m curious to hear more about.
GC: I have a lot of interests and get bored easily! With Duende it’s a meandering story, but I got involved playing a Live Connections show in Philly the year after I graduated from Curtis. Mary Javian, Curtis’s Chair of Career Studies, had curated a concert that I was in with a dancer, Chloe Perkes, and a composer, Alyssa Weinberg. Over the years the three of us have put on a few evening-length productions in Philly, and with Curtis’s Ensemble 20/21. We were supposed to be working on a residency at the Performance Garage this year, which unfortunately didn’t happen. We’re interested in building some video collaborations with original music, but Chloe is currently pregnant, so things are a bit on hold for now.
AK: As a cofounder of the group, what other roles do you play besides cellist?
GC: Whenever you venture out onto your own and try to make something, it requires a certain fluidity. I tend to do more of the nuts-and-bolts scheduling of rehearsals since I’m usually involved in them. Otherwise, the administrative work is pretty equally distributed.
AK: What have you learned about marketing projects like Duende with a small team?
GC: I think classical musicians might be the most unfairly maligned when it comes to having to market our own work. Because I’ve worked a lot in other genres, I’ve seen that those musicians tend to have more support than classical musicians do. This idea that as freelancers we’re supposed to be a one-person business is limiting. I wish there were better resources available for people who understand and are good at marketing to partner with classical musicians to help us identify what will sell or how to spin it.
AK: Is social media your primary marketing channel? I see some Curtis alumni really embracing being their own promoters and treating followers very much as an extension of their audience.
GC: I’m comfortable with it but posting on social media for my projects is usually retroactive; I kind of need someone telling me to do it. There are certain aesthetics and formats of social media storytelling that are popular, but I tend to gravitate towards narratives that are stranger and more personal.
AK: Along the lines of marketing, how does YMusic, an ensemble you’re a part of, utilize Patreon?
GC: YMusic as an entity has been around longer than I’ve been involved with it. It first began with the goal of creating readymade instrumentation for singers and songwriters, and from there inspired other people to write music for the ensemble. In the last three years we started writing our own music, right around the time we started working with Paul Simon. All six of the ensemble members went to conservatories, but none of us had a degree in composition so it was a bit daunting at first. We started to build a musical language and style, and now have written about ten pieces together. When COVID-19 hit, we wondered how we’d continue writing remotely and knew we needed accountability measures. I think we defined our own metrics of success with Patreon. It was less about earning revenue and more about a structure to stay connected with our audience, along with deadlines to keep producing. By the time we can meet in person again, we will have created a decent amount of high-quality content that we can use for the album we’re building towards and its promotion.
AK: Tell me about working on and recording Lost Coast with Curtis alumna Gabriella Smith.
GC: Gabriella and I were the same year at Curtis, and I remember when we met during orientation freshman year. Since then we’ve been good friends and always wanted to make music together. I became fascinated by her compositional process as she got more comfortable working with music notation software, and especially her mockups. Lost Coast is an album of her music that blends voices, percussion, and strings. It tracks a journey, a musical hike, and is a collection of little tableaus. We recorded it in two sessions last year with Bedroom Community in Iceland. The first time was during the endless light of summer, and the second was near the winter solstice in December. Maybe it’s confirmation bias, but I hear that atmospheric split on certain tracks.
AK: What’s next for the album?
GC: We’re working on a release date; it’s mixed but not mastered. We’re going to have a cool video premiere led by videographer Darian Thomas in early 2021 as part of The Great Northern Festival, which usually takes place in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. The album will be available in the usual digital channels.
AK: How can Curtis foster lasting relationships with its alumni?
GC: I love the idea of staying connected with Curtis. Our musical world is small, so there’s a natural amount of intersection we can expect with each other. There are so many surprising alumni stories — people who are doing unexpected things and even leaving music. I’m big into food culture and was reading an interview about Alexander Smalls, who I had no idea went to Curtis! When you’re at Curtis it’s easy to feel really secure in the way that you think your life is going to go; it would be gratifying as an alumnus to see Curtis help students open up any assumptions about their career early on, while still allowing them to focus on their craft. | https://medium.com/@curtisinstitute/gabriel-cabezas-cello-13-ed9387738230 | ['Curtis Young Alumni Voices'] | 2021-02-01 00:11:42.985000+00:00 | ['Multimedia', 'New York City', 'Cello', 'Patreon', 'Collaboration'] |
The Park | Autumn had its moments. It was almost Summers perfect goodbye and Winters perfect hello. The day had enough cold to love the wrap of a scarf and enjoy the warmth of a knitted sweater.
The large black coffee in my paper cup kept my hands warm and able to move as the chilly breeze around tried its best to hold them in a frozen jail. It felt good to be in and amongst this world.
In reality, it was a summers day…the heat was probably making me sweat as I sat cross-legged and still in that dark room.
So the chill of this day made for a refreshing moment of escape from an otherwise hot and bothersome reality.
These visits were always soothing in their own twisted way, and whether I liked it or not made for a swift reality check, even when I didn’t need it.
You would think that I would be sick of it by now, but visiting this moment every day, for the last 10 years made the rest of reality float on by without much hurt. That might be because I had become numb to the exposure of anything that might seem sad or frustrating…or maybe I hadn’t experienced anything as heartbreaking as I had on that Autumn day.
The reddish-brown leaves were falling onto a grass made even greener by the soft dew that coated it. There was rain before this morning, probably a slight shower that had coated the concrete in a dark grey and made the bark off the big trees turn to a wet black. The clouds overhead hid a blue sky, with the sun peeping every so often, trying its best to add its warmth and dry the wet world beneath it.
There was no one else at the park…not anyone besides the young, laughing family of three.
The woman in the deep red coat was sitting down, her legs outstretched, her brown hair spilling from under a black beanie…her smile was shining even under slowly changing grey day, and the soft laughs that spilt from her mouth seemed to fit right into the calls of small birds in the trees overhead.
Her attention was to her husband not 10 feet from her. He was ladled in a black knit sweater and dark blue jeans, chasing a young boy similarly dressed, with a small football in his hands.
They both had matching, black, messy hair… both had the same laugh and both had the same laughing eyes. The young boy did not, however, have the soft stubble that coated his father’s chin, that would come later in life.
The boys smile, however, was his mothers and as he darted and dodged his fathers tackling arms, it shone and bounced off the world, just like hers did.
It never really made sense how children somehow managed to mirror both of their parents…it must’ve been a wonder for that woman to sit there and watch her husband chase a tiny version of themselves.
The man was getting tired…he would stop and heave as he lost his breath…most of it was probably still in the air as his son managed to pull energy out of his youthfulness and run circles around him.
But it wasn’t long before his father caught him, grabbing him by the waist and picking him up, throwing him softly in the air and catching him just as delicately.
He picked him up and swung him off his shoulder as he marched back to his wife, before plopping the young boy onto his mother lap.
She wrestled the small football from his grasp and grabbed him by the cheeks as her husband softly dropped to the ground and onto the picnic blanket under them.
I watched from a distance as the smell of the coffee in my hands was blown into my nostrils.
It was a welcome change from the world around me, keeping me rooted and reminding me of what was real and what wasn’t.
This, although a real time, was not the reality of today…this was all in my mind, and I had to know this, or else risk being drawn into something that would eventually torture and twist my existence.
It wasn’t often I paid close attention to the details…maybe I was, in fact, becoming used to the story that was to take place. The shock, horror and sadness that made even this happy moment almost unbearable…maybe what was to come was chiselled so hard into my mind that whatever spirit was left from this moment had withered, becoming nothing more than a scar.
It wasn’t often that I sat and pondered what was happening, most times I would watch from a distance and let the events roll, remembering fondly the happy little snippets of what was in front of me… or else zoning out completely, allowing them to unfold… becoming unaware of the once emotional turmoil that used to come so frequently.
It was odd how times change, how being exposed to it somehow numbed even the most emotional of people…
I visited this moment in time every day for the last 10 years…even I had to admit the toll it took on my life outside of this.
It was ten minutes of what I once perceived as torture…but it was also 10 minutes that once cursed the rest of my existence.
The nightmare, however, stopped a long time ago….I couldn’t get those autumn leaves out of my head. They floated in and out, rustling against my face, obscuring my vision.
Their beauty taunted a memory that was intended to be a happy time.
Instead, it only brought the sad reminder, with tired eyes and a heavy heart, that it was the last time I’d ever see them again.
Parents don’t just come and go, they never just leave or die or vanish from existence.
They stick around.. they dwell in memories and in moments…in sparks of reality, in pleasant dreams and resisted nightmares.
I couldn’t hide that it sucked that I was forced to remember this day. Not the days where we were crowded around a birthday cake in a small home…not with the summer sun on our shoulders and sand beneath our toes…not with the nights we spent huddled in my bed, my Fathers words echoing a bedtime story…the soft stroke of my Mothers hands as she ran them through my hair.
But, even so, it’s hard to bring up those times without this singular day….the day they died.
That autumn day that was spent laughing and talking, hugging and holding hands…waiting for our car to suddenly get hit by an oncoming truck…swerving off the road and wrapping itself around that tree.
I couldn’t explain what it was like, watching the last moments I would spend with them before they died. It wasn’t loss…it wasn’t sadness either. It wasn’t anger or hatred or frustration.
I guess the numbness could explain it… but I think it was more.
I think it was because over time it was understood that most orphans didn’t even get a good moment or a happy memory to hold onto. Most had abusive mothers or absent fathers. Most had just pure shit to hold onto as a mum or dad.
Not me though.
The one thing I had more than anything was that I would never know what it was like to have bad parents.
I watched my younger self lying on my father’s chest, next to the head of my mother.
She was whispering something as we all watched the grey clouds overhead change into a fluffy white.
The sun, now whispering its own hello as the morning morphed into midday.
I couldn’t remember what she was saying…all I could remember was her voice…it was soft and warm and matched her smile.
I remembered my dads chest rhythmically moving up and down with each breath…His slow snore as he snoozed with the weight of his family on top of him.
A blanket of the two most important things in his life…a smile etching itself on his lips as he too became mesmerised by my mother’s voice.
I liked watching the clouds then…
I liked watching them whilst hearing her… whilst being protected by him.
I didn’t know where they were right now but I did know that if heaven existed that it might’ve been this moment.
The three of us laying there waiting for the day to end…waiting for something to pull us away.
It was nice.
That’s all I could say.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t shed a tear anymore…because I was blessed with knowing that at least…with everything else that would happen after….the ambulance pulling their bodies away, the policeman trying his best to warm the shock out of my body with a blanket…the friends and relatives that tried their best to make me feel a sense of family after…that at least I had this.
The brief young moments, that had etched their signature into the mind of a 5-year-old child.
As I watched the three of us there…with no anger or frustration, sadness or happiness…I couldn’t help but let the warm ball of gratitude well up and rise up to the back of my eyes… slowly easing away the numbness that came with tragedy.
To think I visited this moment every day….to think I had that at least…to think that the next 10 years would bring incomprehensible sadness and loneliness…I guess that’s why being back here every day, to that time at the park, under those Autumn leaves on an overcast day…soaking in whatever sun that could shine and watching sad grey clouds turn to happy white ones…why it mattered…
It wasn’t a curse…not really anyway….just a memory in time that should never be forgotten. | https://medium.com/@nickinalexander/the-park-b6f2241c13c | ['Nickin Alexander'] | 2021-09-12 02:43:30.239000+00:00 | ['Short Fiction', 'Narrative', 'Family', 'Love', 'Short Story'] |
The Spare is the Heir | The Spare is the Heir
Photo by CBS News
In general, the second sons of British monarchs have a pretty sweet life, enjoying all the royal perks with far less responsibility. The spares aren’t destined for the throne so they’re free to pursue personal happiness (to a certain extent, anyway). Aside from ribbon cutting, tree planting, and balcony waving, their royal duties are pretty limited.
That is, until their big brothers die or marry an American divorcee. Then shit gets really real, really fast.
This happens more often than you’d think, but here are the three that I find most fascinating.
King Henry VIII
Photo by The Royal Family
Born on June 28, 1491, England’s most famous monarch was never supposed to be king. His older brother, Arthur, was heir to the Tudor throne. Prince Henry’s future was in the Church. Or so everyone thought.
When teenage Arthur married the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, it sparked a chain of events that would change England forever.
As the daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile, Catherine was quite a catch. King Henry VII busted his arse to arrange a union between his heir Arthur and Princess Catherine. The marriage would cement an alliance with Spain and put England on the map politically.
The frail Arthur died just five months after his wedding at age 15, temporarily putting the kibosh on all of Henry VII’s big plans. But there was no way the king would abandon his plans to woo the Spanish over a little thing like the death of his son. He had too much sweat equity invested to even consider it.
Henry VII proposed that his new heir, the charismatic and handsome Prince Henry, marry his brother’s widow. Henry and Catherine actually liked each other and were enthusiastic about the match. The king jerked them both around while he bargained with Catherine’s parentals. Terms were finally agreed on and the Papal dispensation to wed was duly granted. Henry married Catherine of Aragon on June 11, 1509.
Over twenty years of marriage and all Queen Catherine produced for living offspring was a crummy girl. Henry needed a son, preferably a castle full of them. Catherine dropped the ball, so Henry kicked her to the curb.
Anne Boleyn may have influenced his decision, but the king was already planning to ditch Catherine, Anne, or no Anne.
The Tudor dynasty died out with Anne Boleyn’s girl Elizabeth who became England’s greatest Queen. Yeah, up yours, daddy.
George V
Photo by British Heritage
Born on June 3, 1865, George V was the second son of Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), and his wife, Alexandra of Denmark. He was very close to his older brother Albert, second in line to the throne (known as “Eddy” in the family, and “That “Creepy Looking Weirdo” to everyone else). The two boys were inseparable as youngsters.
The heir Eddy eventually moved on to Trinity College, while George, as the “spare,” was off to the Royal Navy. Then Eddy up and died suddenly of influenza in 1892, leaving George next in line to the throne after his father. He left the Navy and was given the title Duke of York, a seat in the House of Lords, and a crash course in British politics.
In 1893, he married his deceased brother’s fiancé (deja vu!) Victoria Mary of Teck, a no-nonsense German princess from the impoverished royal House of Teck. May (as she was known to family and friends) had been hand-picked by Queen Victoria to marry the oddly proportioned and none-too-bright Prince Eddy. It wasn’t an ideal scenario for May, but she considered it her patriotic duty to wed Eddy Collars and Cuffs, and duty came first.
Much to her family’s relief, George took a shine to her (he always referred to her as his “Darling May”). In short order, the couple produced a family of five boys and one girl.
Then came a war. A big one.
World War I may have had the appearance of a family feud to the outside world, but King George V never let the fact that Germany’s Kaiser and Russia’s Czar were his cousins take precedence over the welfare of his people and the safety of the Crown. His cousin Nicky, the Czar of Russia, was executed by the Bolsheviks because George couldn’t and wouldn’t risk the ire of his subjects by offering the Romanovs asylum.
George V and Queen Mary invented the House of Windsor by ditching their German surname and adopting the name of England’s most iconic castle. They set the duty-bound, family-oriented bar for the Royal Family to live up to, with only sporadic success.
George VI
Photo by express.co.uk
George VI was the third King to rule the UK during the year 1936. His father, George V, died in January and was succeeded by his eldest son, “David,” the Prince of Wales, who became Edward VIII. The new king had always been wildly popular with the people and sincerely returned their affection. But it turned out that the love of his subjects paled in comparison to the love of Wallis Simpson.
This was no mere dalliance, much to the consternation of the Royal Family. David insisted he’d found his soulmate in the twice-married, twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson. Nothing, and no one, could dissuade him from marrying Mrs. Simpson.
King Edward VIII’s decision to bounce was the biggest Royal crisis of the 20th century. David’s abdication and Bertie's unexpected ascension changed the Royal Family forever, both publically and privately. There was incredible bitterness and hurt on both sides.
Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother openly despised David and “That Woman.” Her vitriol increased further when her husband, George VI, died far too young at 56. The Queen Mother was convinced that the immense stress of unexpected kingship shortened his life considerably. But, in the interest of full disclosure, we must point out that Bertie smoked like a chimney. Did the stress of getting stuck with the “Top Job” lead to his chain-smoking? Or would it have become a deeply ingrained habit regardless of the Abdication? Does it even matter? Probably not. The ending was already written.
The Monarch and the future monarchs. Photo by the Royal Family
After George VI died, his young daughter, Elizabeth, was crowned in 1953 at 27. Far younger than everyone had hoped. Elizabeth II is the longest-reigning monarch in Great Britain’s history, beating her great-great-grandmother Victoria’s record. | https://historyofyesterday.com/the-spare-is-the-heir-baf9a86a38a0 | ['Kathy Copeland Padden'] | 2021-07-14 08:02:35.860000+00:00 | ['Royalty', 'Culture', 'History', 'Tradition', 'British History'] |
What Algorithms Know About You Based on Your Grocery Cart | What Algorithms Know About You Based on Your Grocery Cart
And more strange tales from the Wild West of data
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
Anyone who has ever visited Jones Beach on Long Island, New York, will have driven under a series of bridges on their way to the ocean. These bridges, primarily built to filter people on and off the highway, have an unusual feature. As they gently arc over the traffic, they hang extraordinarily low, sometimes leaving as few as nine feet of clearance from the tarmac.
There’s a reason for this strange design. In the 1920s, Robert Moses, a powerful urban planner in New York, was keen to keep his newly finished, award-winning state park at Jones Beach the preserve of white and wealthy Americans. Knowing that his preferred clientele would travel to the beach in their private cars, while people from poor black neighborhoods would get there by bus, Moses deliberately tried to limit access by building hundreds of low-lying bridges along the highway. Too low for the 12-foot buses to pass under.
Racist bridges aren’t the only inanimate objects that have had quiet, clandestine control over people. History is littered with examples of objects and inventions with a power beyond their professed purpose. Sometimes it’s deliberately and maliciously factored into their design, but at other times, it’s a result of thoughtless omissions.
Modern inventions are no different. Just ask the residents of Scunthorpe, in the north of England, who were blocked from opening AOL accounts after the internet giant created a new profanity filter that objected to the name of their town. Or Chukwuemeka Afigbo, the Nigerian man who discovered an automatic hand-soap dispenser that perfectly released soap whenever his white friend placed their hand under the machine but refused to acknowledge his darker skin. Or Mark Zuckerberg, who, when writing the code for Facebook in his dorm room in Harvard in 2004, would never have imagined his creation would go on to be accused of helping manipulate votes in elections around the globe.
Behind each of these inventions is an algorithm. The invisible pieces of code that form the gears and cogs of the modern machine age, algorithms have given the world everything from social media feeds to search engines and satellite navigation to music recommendation systems. They are as much a part of our modern infrastructure as bridges, buildings, and factories ever were. Algorithms have learned our likes and dislikes; they tell us what to watch, what to read, and who to date. And all the while, they have the hidden power to slowly and subtly change how we live as humans.
Put simply, an algorithm is just series of logical steps that take you from some input to some output. In theory, a cake recipe counts as an algorithm. The ingredients are the input; the cake is the output. Normally, however, when people use the word “algorithm,” they tend to be describing a recipe that happens within a computer. The output can take on a variety of forms, but the ingredients are almost always our data.
Supermarkets were among the first to recognize the value of our data. Early in the days of online shopping, British supermarket Tesco introduced a feature known as “My Favourites,” in which any items that were bought using the store’s loyalty card would appear prominently when the customer logged on to the Tesco website. Shortly after the launch of the feature, one woman contacted Tesco to complain that her data was wrong. She’d been shopping online and saw condoms among her list of “My Favourites.” They couldn’t be her husband’s, she explained, because he didn’t use them. At her request, the Tesco analysts looked into the data and discovered that her list was accurate. Rather than be the cause of a marital rift, however, they took the diplomatic decision to apologize for “corrupted data” and remove the offending items from her favorites. It was an important lesson: Shopping isn’t just what we buy. Groceries are personal.
By now, some quarter-century after the launch of the first supermarket loyalty cards, the algorithms retailers use can burrow into our data and uncover the most remarkable insights about who we are and what our future holds for us.
About a year ago, I got chatting to the chief data officer of a company that sells insurance. They had access to the full details of people’s shopping habits via a supermarket loyalty scheme. In their analysis, they discovered that home cooks were less likely to make claims on their home insurance and were therefore more profitable. It’s a finding that makes good intuitive sense. There probably isn’t much crossover between the group of people who are willing to invest time, effort, and money into creating an elaborate dish from scratch and the group who would let their children play football in the house.
But how did the analysts know which shoppers were home cooks? Well, a few items in someone’s basket were linked to low claim rates. The most significant item, the chief data officer told me—the one that gives you away as a responsible, house-proud person more than any other—was fresh fennel.
This is the reason companies are so hungry for our data. Every time you shop online, every time you sign up for a newsletter, or register on a website, or enquire about a new car, or fill out a warranty card, or buy a new home, or register to vote — you are unwittingly handing over a small clue as to who you are and how you behave. Behind the scenes, a data broker — the multibillion-dollar companies most of us have never heard of — will combine all that data, cross-reference the different pieces of information, and then create a single detailed file on virtually every single one of us: a data profile of our digital shadow.
Many of the insights they have on us are inferred. A subscription to Wired might imply that you’re interested in technology; a firearms license might imply that you’re interested in hunting. But the amount they can tell is staggering: whether you’ve had an abortion, whether your parents are divorced, whether you are a rape victim, your opinions on gun control, your projected sexual orientation, your real sexual orientation, and your gullibility.
It’s a system that, thanks to either thoughtless omission or deliberate design, has the potential to be exploitative. It means payday lenders can directly target people with bad credit ratings; betting ads can be directed to people who frequent gambling websites. And there are concerns about this kind of data profiling being used in an exclusionary way: motorbike enthusiasts being deemed to have a risky hobby or people who eat sugar-free sweets being flagged as diabetic and turned down for insurance as a result. A study from 2015 demonstrated that Google was serving far fewer ads for high-paying executive jobs to women who were surfing the web than to men. And after one African-American Harvard professor learned that Googling her own name returned ads targeting people with a criminal record (and as a result was forced to prove to a potential employer that she’d never been in trouble with the police), she began researching the ads delivered to different ethnic groups. She discovered that searches for “black-sounding names” were disproportionately likely to be linked to ads containing the word “arrest” (for example, “Have you been arrested?”) than those with “white-sounding names.”
There is also the unintended negative side of this great modern invention. When Heidi Waterhouse lost a much-wanted pregnancy, she unsubscribed from all the weekly emails updating her on her baby’s growth, telling her which fruit the fetus now matched in size. She unsubscribed from all the mailing lists and wish lists she had signed up for in eager anticipation of the birth. But, as she told an audience of developers at a conference in 2018, there was no power on earth that could unsubscribe her from the pregnancy ads that followed her around the internet. This digital shadow of a pregnancy continued to circulate alone, without the mother or the baby. “Nobody who built that system thought of that consequence,” Waterhouse explained.
We’ve led ourselves down a path that is difficult to turn back from. But it’s important to be aware of the potential dangers of collecting these vast, interconnected data sets in the first place. One of the dystopian repercussions of an application for these rich, interconnected data sets sounds like it belongs in the popular Netflix show Black Mirror, but it exists in reality.
It’s known as Sesame Credit, a citizen scoring system used by the Chinese government.
Imagine every piece of information that a data broker might have on you collapsed down into a single score. Everything goes into it. Your credit history, your mobile phone number, your address — the usual stuff. But also all your day-to-day behavior. Your social media posts, the data from your ride-hailing app, even records from your online matchmaking service. The result is a single number between 350 and 950 points. Li Yingyun, the company’s technology director, explained, “Someone who plays video games for 10 hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person. Someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility.”
If you’re Chinese, these scores matter. If your rating is above 600 points, you can take out a special credit card. More than 666 and you’ll be rewarded with a higher credit limit. Those with scores above 650 can hire a car without a deposit and use a VIP lane at the Beijing airport. Anyone above 750 can apply for a fast-tracked visa to Europe.
It’s all fun and games now, while the scheme is voluntary. But in 2020, when the citizen scoring system becomes mandatory, people with low scores stand to feel the repercussions in every aspect of their lives. The government’s own document on the system outlines examples of punishments that could be meted out to anyone deemed disobedient: “Restrictions on leaving the borders, restrictions on the purchase of… property, travelling on aircraft, on tourism and holidays or staying in star-ranked hotels.” It also warns that in the case of “gravely trust-breaking subjects,” it will “guide commercial banks… to limit their provision of loans, sales insurance, and other such services.” Loyalty is praised. Breaking trust is punished.
As Rogier Creemers, an academic specializing in Chinese law and governance at the Van Vollenhoven Institute at Leiden University, puts it, “The best way to understand it is as a sort of bastard love child of a loyalty scheme.”
I don’t have much comfort to offer in the case of Sesame Credit, but I don’t want to fill you completely with doom and gloom, either. There are glimmers of hope. However grim the journey ahead appears, there are signs that the tide is slowly turning. Many in the data science community have known about and objected to the exploitation of people’s information for profit for quite some time. But until the furor over Cambridge Analytica, these issues hadn’t drawn sustained, international front-page attention. When that scandal broke, in early 2018, the general public saw for the first time how algorithms are silently harvesting their data and acknowledged that, without oversight or regulation, it could have dramatic repercussions.
And regulation is coming. If you live in the EU, a new piece of legislation called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) should, in theory, mean companies can no longer be allowed to store your data without an explicit purpose. That doesn’t necessarily mean the end of these kinds of practices, however. For one thing, we often don’t pay attention to the T&Cs when we’re clicking around online, so we may find ourselves consenting without realizing. But the tech companies are increasingly on our side: Apple has built “intelligent tracking prevention” into its Safari browser. Firefox has done the same. Facebook is severing ties with its data brokers. Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and many more countries have all pushed through GDPR- like legislation. Europe might be ahead of the curve, but there is a global trend that is heading in the right direction.
Still, we would do well to remember that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. As the law catches up and the battle between corporate profits and social good plays out, we need to be careful not to be lulled into a false sense of privacy.
If data is the new gold, then we’ve been living in the Wild West. But I’m optimistic that — for many of us — the worst will soon be behind us. | https://onezero.medium.com/what-algorithms-know-about-you-based-on-your-grocery-cart-b364e0ba545c | ['Hannah Fry'] | 2019-08-28 02:03:50.599000+00:00 | ['Data', 'Supermarkets', 'Data Science', 'Algorithms', 'Book Excerpts'] |
America’s First Villian: Benedict Arnold | Reading time: 5 minutes and 9 seconds
Benedict Arnold was a ship merchant when the Revolutionary War began in 1775. He joined the growing army outside Boston and distinguished himself through acts of intelligence and bravery. Some of Arnold’s military accomplishments include the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, the battle of Ridgefield, the siege of Fort Stanwix and actions during the battle of Saratoga. In the last battle, Arnold suffered leg injuries that halted his combat career for several years. Because of Arnold’s military accomplishments, he was promoted to the position of Major General.
In June of 1178, the British withdrew occupation of Philadelphia, and General George Washington appointed Arnold military commander of the city. As soon as Arnold got this power, he began to capitalize financially on it. Arnold was less than qualified for this position and frankly over his head, but he was close with General Washington and thus got vital appointments.
Arnold lived lavishly in Philadelphia and was prominent on the social scene. Arnold met Peggy Shippen, who was the daughter of a British loyalist who still did business with the British as the war was going on. Before being courted by Arnold, Peggy was courted by British Major John Andre during the British occupation of Philadelphia. Arnold and Peggy married on April 8, 1779. Peggy and her friends had found methods of staying in contact with past British lovers across the battle lines despite military bans on such communication.
Arnold had an extraordinarily ambitious and jealous personality. He was also greedy and a spendthrift and was heavily in debt to London financiers. Arnold was distrusted and disliked by military officials on both sides of the war. General Washington was one of the few people who genuinely liked Arnold, but Arnold thought Washington had betrayed him, Because of politics and Arnold’s personality, he was passed over for higher military positions numerous times.
Why did Arnold think Washington betrayed him? Well while Arnold was in charge of Philly, he was accused by Philly officials of using his authority to make a profit, which he totally was and was court marshaled for it. General Washington gave him the lightest of reprimand, which was a letter written by Washington debunking Arnold’s actions. Because of this, Arnold thought Washington betrayed him. Arnold was quite the sensitive fellow, right?
John Andre, while also being a Major in the British army, was also head of the British espionage system. Because of his relationship with Peggy, he encouraged her to get Arnold to give vital info to the British. Peggy egged on Arnold and also collaborated in his treason. Peggy was mainly a courier passing along letters from Arnold to Andre, who was in New York City.
An essential fact to remember is that Arnold was giving information to the British before his Court Marshall hearing! These Arnolds ain’t loyal, ill tell you. By July of 1779, Arnold was supplying the British with troop locations and strengths as well as passing on the site of supply depots. Arnold wasn’t doing all of this for free of course. Arnold was negotiating a compensation package for himself for all his excellent intel. Arnold first offer was $ 10,000 and indemnification of his losses.
Phillip Schuyler, a General with the Continental army, approached Arnold about giving him command of West Point. West Point was a strategic Military base along the Hudson River Valley. The British were very keen on having control of Westpoint. Arnold seeing a chance to negotiate for more money, now asked for $ 20,000 and indemnification of his losses. In exchange, Arnold was supposed to give up the total surrender of Westpoint. Arnold took control of Westpoint and also reached an agreement with the British for $ 20,000. (straight cash homie) Arnold immediately began weakening Westpoint’s defense and military strength. Arnold and Andre met in September of that year, where Arnold handed Andre Plans to take over West Point. On Andres trip back to NYC, his ship was attacked, and he was forced to get back to NYC on land. While Andre was making his way to NYC, he was caught by continental army militiamen, and the papers between him and Arnold were discovered.
Arnold was set to have breakfast with General Washington when he got word that Andre was captured, more importantly, he also found out that his correspondence with Andre was captured too. Arnold immediately left and fled to NYC. Arnold wrote a letter to Washington asking for him to give safe passage to Peggy to go to her family in Philly, Washington obliged. (unaware of Peggy’s actions in the treason). Washington offered a trade to the British. Washington would give Andre back to the British in exchange for Arnold, (and a 1780 first round draft pick j/k). General Clinton, who was in charge of the British military operations in America, refused the offer ( the first round pick was too rich for his blood ) and Andre was hanged by the Continental Army. Washington then sent men into NYC to try to capture Arnold, but he was able to escape to Virginia. Arnold officially switched sides and was now a Brigadier General in the British Army. The British only paid him $ 6,315, and a pension because well, Arnold’s plan failed. Arnold led a British army into a few battles with the continental and has some success, but his new side never fully trusted him because well he was just fighting for the other side a few months ago.
Arnold was never given an important military command with the British. Arnold eventually moved his family to London, where he found no job and a mixture of contempt and admiration. Arnold then moved his family to Canada where he reentered the shipping business, Arnold was even more disliked in Canada than London, and he had to return to London. When the war between France and England started (again!), Arnold tried to reenter Military service, he was rebuffed. Arnolds shipping ventures eventually failed, and he died in 1801, virtually unknown.
Mistakes Were Made:
The name Benedict Arnold lives in infamy in American History as synonymous with the word “traitor.” Benedict’s name was even dropped in Ice Cube’s diss record to N.W.A “No Vaseline.” Some Historians say Arnold simply married wrong and that’s what led to his betrayal of his country. Though Peggy did play a part in Arnold becoming a traitor, I think it was more a perfect storm of events i.e., Arnold being passed over for promotion, Arnold severely injuring his leg in battle, Arnold’s ambition and wanting to live the good life, his enormous debt to the British, all of that led to his becoming a traitor.
The saying, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” perfectly sums up Arnold’s situation. Arnold, being disgruntled, instead of just quitting and leaving the Continental Army, tried to play both sides and unsurprisingly got caught. Arnold didn’t or couldn’t foresee that going to the British, though probably his only option at the time, limited his future actions. The British never fully accepted him, and he was held in contempt by a lot of folks. Arnold could never go back to his home country and died as a nobody, far from the grand ambitions Arnold had when he was a general in the Continental Army. Who knows if Arnold had stayed, we might be talking about him as one of the founding fathers, a member of Washington’s cabinet, hell even a famous Broadway play may be named after him. Instead, I’m writing about Arnold as America’s first villain, principally because he was focused on the short term issue of a money grab and couldn’t foresee how his actions would destroy him and his families legacy. Arnold wanted his cake and eat it too, and mainly got neither. | https://marlon-mosley.medium.com/americas-first-villian-benedict-arnold-b9225095f2f2 | ['Marlon Mosley'] | 2019-07-07 18:07:26.310000+00:00 | ['History'] |
My 2020 Life Journey | As soon as we all came to know that nationwide lockdown was implemented. I was happy because I was going to be at home for a long time.
In my head, I was in my bed with my laptop binging series eating, and having fun. I don't have to go to college and give that massive assignment.
On the other hand, I was equally scared because my father has to go to his duty every day during covid, I was afraid that he can get an infection.
But by god's grace, he is very even he had to move out and work.
Initially, I was just waking up late, eat, watching youtube, or Netflix. most of the days were wasted by doing nothing.
But one day I saw a post where that girl started earning just by writing and living her dreams.
After reading that I was like I also want to earn money not going anywhere but by working from home.
I then started to search multiple sources on how to start writing and start earning.
After some research, the information was not organized which's why I got bored and left the idea.
Then I got the idea to learn photo editing, I also started learning but got bored again.
But on a fine day, I was laying on my bed and just thinking about what should I do to make me happy and earn as well.
Started research for work that will pay me by working at home and leave my dream.
I want to travel while working. Work will be done and travel as well.
Fun, isn't it?
Secondly, I also learned a good number of dishes to prepare which made me realize I enjoy cooking letting people eat it.
In a lockdown, my friends and I were distributing some ration kits to the people who were suffering most during lockdown.
It was a scary scenario when saw the street since childhood that was populated every single day with thousands of people but the streets were vacant not a single person.
I've learned that a helping hand can make your life way easier. The thing that you are cursing now will matter the most when you miss it. just like I miss my college now.
But the lockdown was a life-changing experience. | https://medium.com/@yashbhagat18/my-2020-life-journey-e846383d6743 | [] | 2020-12-05 18:42:56.527000+00:00 | ['Learning', 'Journey', 'Life Lessons', 'Save The World', 'Lockdown'] |
Using service blueprints to design better workshops | Using service blueprints to design better workshops
I teach other people to use service blueprints to design services, so why am I not using it to design my own workshop service?
Last year, I left my peaceful full-time job, became a freelance design consultant, and eventually, among other things, had found myself designing and delivering workshops on design thinking, customer journey mapping, and service design. At a certain point, I was asked to curate a short four-day course, which meant thinking through everything from overall curriculum to daily agenda and roles of invited lecturers and tutors.
List are confusing, maps are clear and awesome!
Having never done this before, I started planning the whole thing by writing down a bulleted list. I had seen other people do it that way and naturally assumed that it was the way to go. Turns out that planning a four-day event was a little bit more complicated than it sounded (what a surprise!) and, after the first couple of iterations, I realized that something wasn’t working. There were too many things to grasp — interconnected student activities, teachers’ actions, and artifacts to produce. A bulleted list was simply not enough for that. That was the moment when I thought, “Hey, the course that I’m working on is actually a service! I teach other people to use service blueprints to design services, so why am I not using one here?!”
Rows represent students actions, artifacts, outcomes and teachers actions
I really like the anatomy of a service blueprint by Adaptive Path, which they explain in their awesome guide. I use it as a starting point for all my projects and adjust as I go. So did I here working on my course blueprint, I first mapped out the “Action” row — class & student activities across 4 days. Then one by one I filled in service moment columns — “Staff actions”, i.e. what teachers were to do during each activity; and “Touchpoints” — i.e. which artifacts, such as templates, we needed to facilitate the activities and which outcomes would be produced by students.
Columns represent service moments — i.e. students’ and teachers’ actions and resulting outcomes at any one moment of a time
It worked like a charm — a complete picture of the intended experience came together, which is kind of like the point of service blueprinting, right? I had the visualization of the program end-to-end, which I could easily communicate, discuss with, and update everyone involved in bringing it to live. The invited teachers could see the parts they were responsible for and understand how they contributed to the greater whole. Finally, I had a complete list of the artifacts (e.g., slide decks, templates, posters) that needed to be produced.
Four-day workshop service blueprint
Since then, whenever I have to prepare a workshop, I jump right into the realtimeboard and get mapping! | https://uxdesign.cc/using-service-blueprints-to-design-better-workshops-fcb7be2afdae | ['Nick Komarov'] | 2017-11-23 03:32:34.082000+00:00 | ['Service Blueprint', 'Workshop', 'Service Design', 'UX', 'Customer Journey Map'] |
JWT authorization in a microservices gateway | In a recent article, we set up an API gateway with microservices for an eCommerce enterprise. FusionAuth handled our centralized authentication and then we passed user details for authorization to the microservices.
In this article, we’ll build on the example project from that article, focusing on tightening up security by implementing JSON Web Token (JWT) authorization. This is a critical security concern because we don’t want to allow just any application to call our microservices. You may want to re-read the Centralized Authentication with a Microservices Gateway post to refresh your memory. And we’ve created a new sample project with updated source code based on this article.
Even though we’re allowing public access to the Product Catalog, we still want that traffic to come through our gateway application. That will ensure centralized access to our Product Catalog, and our microservices will be more protected.
So here’s what we’ll do:
Add the jsonwebtoken package to our gateway and microservices.
package to our gateway and microservices. Utilize FusionAuth’s HMAC default signing key to create signed JWTs for the gateway to pass to the microservices.
Add roles to this JWT if the user is present.
Decode that JWT in each of the microservices, using the same signing key, to verif the request.
This JWT will take the place of the API key used to ensure only the gateway accesses these services. Because it is a JWT, it can contain additional information for the microservices.
JWT Authorization
JWTs are a standardized method for securely passing claims between two parties, allowing that information to be verified by the recipient. We’re going to use them for the purpose of authorization (authorizing the gateway to access the microservices) as well as passing information (user claims, such as role membership).
If you are going to make the code changes, clone the example project, otherwise feel free to follow along conceptually.
In your gateway application, install jsonwebtoken :
npm install jsonwebtoken
Next we’ll head over to FusionAuth to get our key for signing the JWT.
Signing the JWT using FusionAuth’s key
By signing JWTs using FusionAuth’s default signing key, we’re effectively limiting access to applications that have the key, thus allowing private microservices to ensure the incoming message is from a trusted caller: the gateway.
Because we control all the microservices, we’ll use a symmetric signing algorithm, such as HMAC. We could also use a public/private key signing algorithm, such as RSA, which would be less performant but wouldn’t require us to share a secret between the signer of the JWT and its consumers.
To access your FusionAuth default signing key, go to Settings > Key Master, click on the magnifying glass next to the key with the name “Default signing key”, then reveal it and copy the value of the “Secret”.
Now we add this value as a variable to the gateway application (in /routes/index.js ) and require the jsonwebtoken library.
In production applications, avoid storing secrets in code. Instead, use a separate secrets store and obtain the secret from that store at runtime. Below we illustrate how to pull this value from an environment variable, which is a good option for some deployment environments.
// ...
const jwtSigningKey = '[Default Signing Key]';
const jwt = require('jsonwebtoken');
// ...
Next, we’ll add a function at the end of that file to get the gateway Bearer token which will then be forwarded to the microservices. In this case, we are setting the token to expire in ten minutes. This is a common duration of the JWT, but you may want to reduce it for security concerns, as described in FusionAuth’s article on Revoking JWTs & JWT Expiration.
// ...
function getGatewayBearerToken(req) {
// Recall that we put the User in the session in the previous post, but they might not be logged in so protect this code
// from a null User.
var user = req.session.user;
var token = jwt.sign({ data: req.url, roles: user !== null ? user.registrations[0].roles : null }, jwtSigningKey, { expiresIn: '10m', subject: 'gateway', issuer: req.get('host') });
return 'Bearer ' + token;
}
// ...
getGatewayBearerToken() creates a bearer token valid for ten minutes and utilizes our public signing key. It’s how we will provide secure, general access between the gateway and any microservices which don’t require any further authorization. All this JWT is guaranteeing is that the request for the API came through the gateway.
Gateway Router Integration
For the Product Catalog routes, we’ll use getGatewayBearerToken() to prepare the Bearer token and attach it to the authorization header.
router.get('/products', function(req, res, next) {
const bearerToken = getGatewayBearerToken(req);
const options = {
url: `${productUrl}/products`,
headers: { authorization: bearerToken }
};
request(options).pipe(res);
});
Let’s update one other route in the API Gateway. This is the protected route that requires the user to be logged in and authenticated. We will pass a Bearer token that contains roles down to the microservices:
// ...
/* PRODUCT INVENTORY ROUTES */
// The checkAuthentication function was defined in our last post and it ensures that the user is logged in or redirects
// them to FusionAuth to login.
router.get('/branches/:id/products', checkAuthentication, function(req, res, next) {
const bearerToken = getGatewayBearerToken(req);
const options = {
url: `http://localhost:3002/branches/${req.params.id}/products`,
headers: { authorization: bearerToken }
};
request(options).pipe(res);
});
// ...
You can see that this code is nearly identical to the code for /products above. Since both APIs in the Gateway create a JWT and pass it down to the Microservices, they use the same method to authenticate and authorize API calls. Having everything be the same in the API Gateway is definitely a good thing and we could even extract the JWT creation code out to a middleware at some point.
Microservice JWT Integration
We’re now ready for the microservices to handle the Bearer token passed in the header. As each microservice will need to handle the tokens in the same way, it makes sense to create a package utility that can be shared by each microservice. For example, here’s the flow of a request to the Product Catalog:
Authorization Middleware
Here we’ll just cover the contents of the utility, as the package creation is a little out of scope for this article. For convenience, we’ve included this in a shared folder in the sample project.
const jwt = require('jsonwebtoken'); module.exports = function(options) {
return function(req, res, next) {
try {
const authorization = req.headers.authorization;
if (!authorization) {
console.log('Authorization header missing. Denying request.')
handleUnauthorized(res, options);
return;
} const bearer = authorization.split(' ');
if (!bearer || bearer.length != 2) {
console.log('Bearer header value malformed. Denying request.')
handleUnauthorized(res, options);
return;
} token = bearer[1];
if (!token) {
console.log('Token not provided. Denying request.')
handleUnauthorized(res, options);
return;
} const decoded_token = jwt.verify(token, options.jwtSigningKey);
req.roles = decoded_token.roles; // These could be null if the user isn't logged in } catch(err) {
console.error(err);
handleUnauthorized(res, options);
return;
} next();
}
}; function handleUnauthorized(res, options) {
if (options.loginRedirectUrl) {
res.redirect(options.loginRedirectUrl)
}
else {
res.status(401).json({
status: 401,
message: 'UNAUTHORIZED'
})
}
}
We’re exporting a function that looks for the Authorization header key coming from the gateway. It goes through the following steps:
Find the authorization header Split the value it finds (giving us Bearer and the token) Grab the token portion Verify and decode the token using the jwtSigningKey
If all those steps are successful, we’ll end up with a decoded token. And if there were roles included, they will be added to req . For any errors in the process, the handleUnauthorized function will redirect to the login page and/or respond with a 401: UNAUTHORIZED .
Why do we care about roles? For correct authorization in the Product Inventory service, we want to ensure a request is made with the correct role. We’ll explore that after we examine the Product Catalog integration.
Product Catalog Integration
We have our authorizationMiddleware in place, and it’s pretty simple to integrate it into the Product Catalog microservice (in app.js ):
const { JWT_SIGNING_KEY, LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL } = process.env;
var authorizationMiddleware = require('authorization-middleware'); // assuming it's packaged under that name // ...
app.use(authorizationMiddleware({ jwtSigningKey: JWT_SIGNING_KEY, loginRedirectUrl: LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL }));
app.use('/', indexRouter);
//...
Note that we’re using the authorizationMiddleware prior to the indexRouter , which will ensure the middleware is applied to all our routes.
Remember that we’re using the jwtSigningKey to verify the JWT has been signed with the FusionAuth default signing key. Above, we manually pasted the string in, but here we’ve implemented it as an environment variable. This is better than hard-coding the key in code.
In your local environment, you can add your JWT_SIGNING_KEY to your bash_profile or export it to your environment:
export JWT_SIGNING_KEY=[Default Signing Key]
Make sure you restart your microservices after you’ve set this environment variable.
Product Inventory Integration
The Product Inventory service endpoint, /branches/:id/product has role-based access. Previously we were pulling that from a FusionAuth generated JWT, but let’s pull it from the JWT created in the gateway now. Here’s the flow of a request to the Product Inventory.
Authorization Middleware
Follow the same steps above for adding the authorizationMiddleware to app.js , but do so in the Product Inventory service. Then we’ll just need to slightly modify the routes/index.js file:
//...
router.get('/branches/:id/products', function(req, res, next) {
const roles = req.roles; // this used to be req.headers.roles if (roles && roles.includes('admin')) {
res.json(`Products for branch #${req.params.id}`);
} else {
res.redirect(403, 'http://localhost:3000');
return;
}
});
//...
We’re making this change, in getting roles from req.headers.roles to req.roles , because our authorizationMiddleware takes the decoded token and puts the roles object onto req . That’s all we need to do in the Product Inventory service.
We’ll need to complete one more step in order to allow admin access to the Product Inventory route. In FusionAuth, click on “Applications”, then the “Manage Roles” icon on the Gateway application. Add a new role called “admin”.
Then click on “Users”, find the user you created, and under the “Registrations” tab, click the “Edit” icon on the Gateway application. Check the box next to “admin” and save. This grants the “admin” role to this user.
The next time you log in to FusionAuth and access the /branches/:id/products route, you will be authorized and receive the expected response from the Product Inventory service.
If we needed to have multiple tenants, each with a different set of users, we’d want to add a tenant under the “Tenants” tab and create an application within that tenant. However, for this example, let’s keep everything in a single tenant.
Go further
While this tutorial explains how to integrate JWT based authorization into your microservices environment, there are additional steps you could take to make the application better.
Extract all secrets to environment variables or a secrets manager.
Instead of using the shared HMAC secret, use a public/private key pair with the RSA algorithm to ensure you don’t need to share any secrets. In this case, you’ll want to have FusionAuth generate all the JWTs, so set up an anonymous user to allow access for the public APIs.
Benchmark the difference for multiple invocations with JWT auth and the API key used previously to understand the performance implications.
Conclusion
We’ve successfully implemented JWT authorization. Every microservice is stateless and uses a JWT to ensure access is authorized. This is more complex but more flexible than the previous posts use of API keys. FusionAuth’s default signing key and the simplicity of working with JWTs made this a pretty straightforward means by which to add a layer of security to our gateway and microservices.
Happy coding! | https://medium.com/@fusionauth/jwt-authorization-in-a-microservices-gateway-c685548e942b | [] | 2020-11-20 23:50:15.733000+00:00 | ['Jwt Token', 'Authentication', 'Auth', 'Microservices'] |
Effective Way to Get Changed Rows in ADF BC API | Did you ever wondered how to get all changed rows in the transaction, without iterating through entire row set? It turns out to be pretty simple with ADF BC API method — getAllEntityInstancesIterator, which is invoked for Entity Definition attached to current VO.
Method works well — it returns changed rows from different row set pages, not only from the current. In my experiment, I changed couple of rows in the first page:
And couple of rows in 5th page. Also I removed row and created one:
Method returns information about all changed rows, as well as deleted and new:
Example of getAllEntityInstancesIterator method usage in VO Impl class. This method helps to get all changed rows in current transaction, very handy:
Sample application source code is available on GitHub. | https://medium.com/oracledevs/effective-way-to-get-changed-rows-in-adf-bc-api-94a861840044 | ['Andrej Baranovskij'] | 2018-05-30 03:09:39.138000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Oracle Adf', 'Oracle'] |
RightMesh 2018: Year in Review | 2018 was a year of tremendous growth for the RightMesh team!
We wanted to take a moment to summarize some of our highlights over the past 12 months. Let’s take a look at what we accomplished together:
January
Successful Early Allocation Round: In January, we were thrilled to announce the successful completion of our Early Allocation round of the TGE in which $18M USD was filled in under a week.
ConsenSys: RightMesh was accepted into the ConsenSys-led Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition.
Tech Demo — Decentralized Clock Synchronization: As new applications are developed on RightMesh it will be necessary for some of the apps to coordinate their actions in the time domain, such as an app that tracks events in time. The demo below shows devices using a time synchronization algorithm to sync clocks of peers connected to our mesh network, without GPS or another 3rd party.
Clock synchronization demo with RightMesh
Our team of mentors and support at nwHacks 2018
nwHacks: 24 hours, 666 hackers and 114 projects submitted… needless to say that nwHacks 2018 was an utter success. The weekend kicked off with RightMesh CTO, Dr. Jason Ernst, teaching a workshop on ‘How to Build a Mesh Networking App Using RightMesh’. We saw a quick uptake of 49 developers performing 2,000 RightMesh compiles on our library. This was a great testing opportunity for the platform and a great event to be part of.
February
RightMesh Acquires Piperchain: Piperchain was the first decentralized application for World Villages, a stealth startup created by Lucien Loiseau and former Open Garden Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Micha Benoliel. With the acquisition, Dr. Loiseau, who holds a Ph.D. in the field of wireless mesh networks, joined the RightMesh team as our Lead Mesh Networking Scientist. At the same time, Micha Benoliel joined the company as an Advisor to the RightMesh project.
Tech Demo — ERC20 tokens exchanged for data: Dr. David Wang demoed how when a phone joins the mesh, it automatically creates an outgoing micropayment channel to the superpeer and an incoming channel from the superpeer. This means it could operate as either a buyer or a seller of data.
ERC20 Token Exchanged for Tokens Demo
Successful Pre-Allocation Round: Our pre-allocation round of our TGE was successfully subscribed in just 8 minutes and 4 seconds.
meshIM: We announced the launch of the Alpha meshIM, a peer-to-peer app for users to message one another within a local mesh network when there is no access to cell service or data available.
Universal Connectivity Alliance: We partnered with Althea and BlockMesh to form the Universal Connectivity Alliance. Through the combination of hardware and software solutions, and working towards interoperability of connectivity solutions, our three companies aim to provide universal internet access through innovative mesh networking technology and other technological innovations.
March
Melissa and Brianna at the Impact Hub in Johannesburg
Africa Blockchain Week: Director of Corporate Strategy, Melissa Quinn, and Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, attended Africa Blockchain Week in South Africa. While there, they attended multiple conferences and events and made great connections with a number of companies, holding productive meeting with Wala, Yes Bank, BlockMesh (to discuss next steps for the Universal Connectivity Alliance), FluffyPony aka Riccardo Spagni, ConsenSys, and IXO Foundation.
White Paper V.5: Our dev team published the most recent technical white paper. Read it here.
Tech Demo — Live uRaiden Channel Updates on RM Wallet Between Two Distinct Mobile MeshNets: This time we wanted to go a couple of steps forward and show you how the token balances are adjusted live on the devices after a transaction. In the demo, you can see that when a mobile phone purchases data, the channel balance adjusts, and the UI on the wallet is updated to correspond to this so users of RightMesh apps can see in real-time how many tokens they have spent purchasing data.
Live uRaiden Channel Updates on RM Wallet Between Two Distinct Mobile MeshNets
TokenFest: Our Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, attended TokenFest in San Francisco. The two-day networking event focused on the business and technology of tokenization. Brianna spoke on ‘Overcoming Blockchain Connectivity and Usability Issues.’
TokenFest 2018
Superpeer Testing: The Superpeer was successfully tested on 15 devices at the same time. Every phone was able to see all other devices, as shown in the photo below.
Superpeer Demo
Women of Silicon Valley: Our Director of Corporate Strategy, Melissa Quinn spoke on ‘Global Connectivity, Equality and Technology’ at the Women of Silicon Valley conference. She was joined by Rachel Cheng, Senior Software Developer for the RightMesh project.
World Blockchain Summit: Across the globe, RightMesh project Co-Founder and COO, Chris Jensen, attended the World Blockchain Summit in Nairobi, Kenya. He met with our Community Manager, Obiefuna Chima Ezenwugo (Obi) and made him an official Nodebody!
While in Kenya, Chris also met with Zack Matere, the inventor of the Leo Network of Community Notice Boards — spoiler, he became our first Ambassador later in the year!
Left: Melissa and Rachel at Women in Tech Series (San Francisco), Right: Obi and Chris in Nairobi
April
Cryptopalooza: Dr. Jason Ernst, CTO of the RightMesh project, spoke to a sold out crowd in San Francisco at Cryptopalooza — A Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Summit. Jason discussed the technical aspects of mesh networking and RightMesh.
Dr. Jason Ernst Presenting at Cryptopalooza
CryptoChicks Conference and Hackathon: Our team had an excellent time at CryptoChicks in Toronto, a conference with the mission to grow the economic, professional and leadership potential of women in blockchain technologies. Brianna MacNeil spoke on a panel on ‘Building a Blockchain Business: Idea to Enterprise’ and RightMesh Developers, Rachel and Sri, presented a workshop on ‘Building Mesh Applications’.
The team coming together to discuss app development in Dhaka
Global Collaboration: The tech teams from Singapore, Canada and Bangladesh came together in the Dhaka, Bangladesh office to discuss the RightMesh project development. RightMesh project CTO, Dr. Jason Ernst held a workshop on mesh networking followed by a tutorial and discussion on payment channels for the team. Our Lead Mesh Networking Scientist, Dr. Lucien Loiseau delivered a great presentation on DTN’s that also sparked a lively discussion.
Dana, Nir and Brea in Geneva
UN eCommerce Week: RightMesh project CCO, Dana Harvey and Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, joined discussions in Geneva on the development opportunities and challenges associated with the evolving digital economy. Dana and Brea had the opportunity to meet up with our advisor, Nir Kshetri and with Michael Hanley, head of Digital Communications at the World Economic Forum to discuss connectivity as a first step for global economic inclusion.
Global Inclusion Blockchain Conference: Further south in Singapore, John Lyotier, RightMesh project CEO, spoke on a panel about ‘Inclusive Blockchain and Fintech’ alongside Mr. Steve Leonard from SGInnovate, Mr. Duscan Stojanovic from True Global Ventures and Debbie Watkins from Fern Software. This two-day bilingual conference also covered macroeconomics, finance & investment, regulation, and technical matters related to blockchain.
May
Tech Demo — Superpeer: Our team conducted a Superpeer demo, showing how we can connect multiple local meshes into one giant mesh to connect different parts of the world. The demo showed two local meshes, one in Bangladesh and one in Canada, connected to a Superpeer and transmitting messages in real time across the globe. The demo only illustrated two local meshes connecting, but with the Superpeer, we will be able to connect multiple meshes across the globe.
Blockchain Week New York: RightMesh project Co-Founders, John Lyotier and Chris Jensen, joined Brianna MacNeil in New York to attend New York Blockchain Week — including Ethereal Summit and Consensus 2018. With over 250 speakers and 8000 attendees, the conferences brought the entire blockchain community together. Our team had an amazing time meeting some of our early contributors, advisors, and other passionate entrepreneurs from around the globe.
AiDecentralized: RightMesh project CTO, Dr. Jason Ernst and Marketing and Events Manager, Amber McLennan, attended AiDecentralized in Toronto, Canada. AiDecentralized is an ACM Global Initiative that brings 870,000 AI Practitioners from across the world together with 280,000 Blockchainers and Cryptographers. Dr. Jason Ernst spoke on a technical panel on alongside Ben Goertzel from SingularityNET.io (who would become our future partner), Barry Rowe of WhoKnows Inc, Russell Verteeten of ConsenSys Canada and Adam Gravitis of TodaQ.
Adam Gravitis, Ben Goertzel, Jason Ernst, Barry Rowe and Rusell Verteeten.
Successful Completion of TGE: We were beyond excited to announce the successful completion of our Crowd Contribution, the final round of the TGE!
The round was structured into two days. During the first 24 hours, to allow maximum participation, RightMesh imposed a low individual cap per contributor. This ensured that all whitelisted participants who desired to participate were assured of receiving tokens on this date. After 24 hours, the cap was lifted to allow for larger contributions.
Tech Demo — RightMesh Offline Multi-Hop: This demo showcases offline communication between five mobile devices using mesh networking technology. In the video, a RightMesh-enabled Android app called Ripple demonstrates data transferring from a source device to a destination device by changing the colour on the screen of each device the data passes through. The demo shows Sachin, our Mobile API/ SDK Developer, sending a message from one end of the mesh to the other.
RightMesh Offline Multi-hop Demo
June
Social Impact Tour: Our Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, attended BSIC Conference, The Impact Summit, and the Inaugural Blockchain for Impact Summit at the UN. Between the three, Brea was a speaker and hackathon judge. While at BSIC she met up with RightMesh advisor, Micha Benoliel.
Advisor Mohamed Elkasstawi: Our team was thrilled to announce that Mohamed Elkasstawi, the founding partner of zk Capital, joined the RightMesh team as an advisor.
Corporate Retreat: Our team in Canada attended a corporate retreat at Loon Lake. While there, the team did a deep dive into our process, people, product, platform, place, performance and purpose. We also set corporate and team goals that would guide us through rapid growth.
From Left: Dr. Jason Ernst, Dr. Jeronimo Castrillon, Dr. Donald Knuth and Dr. Julie Williamson
ACM Reception: RightMesh project CTO, Dr. Jason Ernst, attended the ACM Council Meeting and Reception in San Francisco over the weekend. With over 100,000 members, the ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society.
Dr. Ernst was recognized by the practitioners board for his talk and panel spot at AiDecentralized which has received more than 20 million unique views world-wide! Dr. Ernst also received appreciation from the ACM Sig Governing board and a letter from the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for the ACM-FCA initiative he helped craft on “Including Negative Side Effects in Research”.
Dogecon: RightMesh was excited to participate in Dogecon in Vancouver, Canada. The event was truly a celebration of the social layer of crypto culture, filled with dance parties, embracing memes and tweetstorms, rap shows, and of course Doges. John Lyotier, spoke on a panel on Values within Crypto Currency, while our Manager of Global Partnerships, Brianna MacNeil, spoke on the ‘State of Global Connectivity’.
Brianna speaking at the State of the Doge Address
July
Token Economics Model: We had a great session reviewing the token economics model with the RightMesh project Advisor on Economics, Data Science & Algorithms, Rogayeh Tabrizi in July. We analyzed the different decisions users can take on role, price, and effort to maximize utility from the network which set us up well for future planning.
Released our Lessons Learned on ICO Governance: The filing of the “exempt distribution reports” with the BCSC officially concluded the RightMesh TGE process, meaning we had emerged from an intense period of regulatory uncertainty. Because of this regulatory uncertainty, we had to ensure we fully complied with Canadian securities law to give the RightMesh TGE a better chance at being successful and withstanding regulatory scrutiny at a later date.
Completing this process also meant we are finally at liberty to provide greater clarity on the pausing of the RightMesh TGE as first announced on March 26, 2018 and its subsequent restarting with the public distribution on May 30/31, 2018 and the unlocking of the tokens on June 29, 2018.
Simon and Melissa at Korea Blockchain Week
Korea Blockchain Week: Our Director of Corporate Strategy, Melissa and CFO, Simon, traveled to Seoul to attend Korea Blockchain Week. They attended multiple events while there, but the stand out was the Beyond Blocks Conference. At the conference, it became clear that the community in Asia is keen to build relationships and collaborate on scaling the industry. People were most interested in use cases of technology and how the tokens flow.
August
Technical Roadmap Released: Our team recognized the need for faster mainnet deployment and released a detailed technical roadmap for the next 6–8 months.
Dr. Jason Ernst Accepted into Forbes Technology Council: We were very proud to announce that Dr. Jason Ernst, RightMesh Co-founder and CTO, had been accepted into Forbes Technology Council — an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs, and technology executives.
Indigenous Mapping Workshop: Our SDK Developer, Keefer Rourke, alongside Dr. Dan Gillis spoke at the Indigenous Mapping Workshop in Montreal. The four-day conference discussed a variety of geospatial tools and networking solutions, including RightMesh and their current work with the community of Rigolet on the eNuk app. Keefer and Dan hosted a successful workshop on ‘Identifying Problems RightMesh can Solve’ and spoke on ‘eNuk: using mesh technology to support climate change monitoring’.
September
Decent Documentary: The RightMesh team partnered with the Refugium Foundation to participate in their upcoming documentary, “Decent — How Blockchain Can Change the World.” The film plans to feature real-life use cases of Distributed Ledger Technology which offer solutions to societal issues ranging from a lack of internet connectivity to aiding refugees. Decent will be one of the first documentaries to explore how blockchain companies like RightMesh can have a massive social impact and benefit real people every day.
OSLO Freedom Forum: RightMesh CPO, Saju Abraham, and Marketing and Events Specialist, Amber McLennan, traveled to New York to attend the Oslo Freedom Forum. This event brought together the world’s bravest activists and dissidents to meet with leaders from technology, business, fashion, philanthropy, music, and art.
Saju and Amber with the team from ConsenSys at the OSLO Freedom Forum
RightMesh exhibited at the interactive expo alongside the team at ConsenSys, Hala, and Truepic. With over 1,200 attendees the expo was an excellent opportunity to meet with other social impact projects, activists, and influencers who are interested in use cases for our platform.
Annual Hackathon: Our office in Khulna, Bangladesh hosted their annual Hackathon for 2018. Cross-departmental teams of five worked to tackle challenges faced in the transportation, education or healthcare sectors — or challenges faced by global refugees — over a 24 hour period.
October
CEBIT ASEAN: Operations Manager, Ayesha Siddika, was selected by ITC SheTrades to be a delegate at CEBIT ASEAN in Thailand. Hosted by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Thailand, CEBIT ASEAN brings together technology and business leaders from diverse industries to discuss collaboration and innovation.
Ayesha at CEBIT ASEAN
SXSW: Out of thousands of submissions, RightMesh CEO, John Lyotier, along with Senior Advisor of MIT Media Lab, Michael Casey, CEO of Mattereum, Vinay Gupta, and a representative from Colendi, will be speaking on ‘Combating Global Poverty on the Blockchain.’
Tenta Partnership: We announced a new integration partnership with Tenta. Tenta is a private and secure crypto browser project that is joining us in our mission to get more individuals online, especially in areas that are underserved or lacking proper infrastructure.
November
MITACS: In November, RightMesh’s parent company, Left, and the School of Computer Science at the University of Guelph, announced a $2.13M collaboration with Mitacs to support the development of RightMesh.
The project, the largest-ever in partnership with the School of Computer Science, has been recognized by the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and the Honourable Navdeep Singh Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development in Canada.
Press Conference to announce $2.13M Mitacs partnership: Chris Jensen (Co-founder), Mike Morden (Mayor-Elect, Maple Ridge), Dr. Jason Ernst (CTO), Katzie Nation Representative, Dan Ruimy (Member of Parliament), John Lyotier (Co-founder), Nic Durish (student), Dr. Dan Gillis (Primary Investigator, University of Guelph), Jennifer Wilkie (CTO, Mitacs), Dana Harvey (CCO)
Canada’s Top 100: RightMesh parent company, Left, was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers on Mediacorp Canada Inc.’s 2019 list.
Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 and 500: Left, the parent company of RightMesh, ranked 16th on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50™ list in Canada and 101st on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ list in North America.
Bluzelle Partnership: We announced that RightMesh’s mobile mesh networking and Bluzelle’s swarm storage will combine to seamlessly provide a decentralized platform providing connectivity and database storage for Dapps. As a proof of concept, RightMesh will be integrating Bluzelle’s swarm storage into some in-house developed apps.
Asia Roadshow: Our team went on a roadshow through Seoul, Ho Chi Minh City, and Singapore for Asia Blockchain Week. The purpose of the trip was to expand our network in Asia, conduct partnership meetings, and grow our existing communities there.
Our team hosting a meetup in Vietnam
December
Ambassador Program: We announced the launch of the RightMesh Ambassador program to help spread RightMesh’s mission and grow our ecosystem all around the world.
Our first RightMesh Ambassador is Zack Matere. Zack is driven by his personal mission to connect local populations in Africa with the internet. In 2009, as a rural farmer, Zack made the audacious decision to bring relevant information, news, and connectivity to his community by riding into the nearest town each week, accessing the internet, printing off as much relevant information as possible, and posting it on a network of wooden noticeboards in his village market centre.
LaBitConf: RightMesh CTO, Dr. Jason Ernst, and Community Development Manager, Jose Ortega, ventured down to Santiago, Chile to attend LaBitConf 2019, the biggest blockchain conference in Latin America.
Africa eCommerce Week: RightMesh Ambassador, zack matere, attended the Africa eCommerce Week in Nairobi, Kenya. Jointly organized by the African and European Union, and hosted by the government of Kenya. The event had over 2000 attendees and was a fantastic opportunity to meet with Ministers, senior government representatives, the private sector, civil society and international organizations.
IITA: We signed an MoU with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) for the design, development, and testing of a mobile application that will allow smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to capture and share data about crop disease without using Internet or mobile data.
Partnerships
Featured Press
We’ve had a lot of great press coverage this year with features in over 90 articles. | https://medium.com/rightmesh/rightmesh-2018-year-in-review-b02a2ee669cb | ['Amber Mclennan'] | 2018-12-30 05:36:39.551000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Wireless Mesh Network', 'Mesh Networks', 'Rmweeklyupdate', 'Bitcoin'] |
These 5 emerging startup hubs in Asia may soon outpace Silicon Valley | Written by Liza Mazurina for EDGE196.
Despite the deterring conditions of Covid-19, many startup harbors in Asia continue to flourish. Here are 5 emerging startup hubs in Asia you should know about.
In the past few years, the region of Asia has become known as an outspoken leader in the movement of technological revival. One year ago, the Asia-Pacific region was the primary global destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) for the first time, with more than one-third share of global investment flow. And, even though the unending struggle with the pandemic is heavily pressing the economy, Asia still leads the race of the digital transformation in the world — beating Silicon Valley.
Because Asia is well-known for its growing layer of the tech-savvy middle class, local incentive schemes, and long-term growth potential these reasons have made this region attractive for all types of investors. Additionally, technological development in Asia has helped the region to withstand the worst times of the Covid-19 pandemic. After all, it took only 2–3 weeks to come up with an AI-based Covid test system, and the already well-prepared digitization scene allowed to accommodate the increased demand for work-from-home apps and home delivery services, as McKinsey says.
Now, Asia houses a few tech-advanced hubs that nurture the love for technology and accommodate both talented entrepreneurs and investors willing to push the innovation wheel forward. EDGE196 makes a valuable contribution to this list by providing startup ecosystem players money, mentorship, and market access. EDGE196’s startup ecosystem provides a great starting ground for everyone aspiring for higher success.
Right now, let’s have a look at 5 emerging startup hubs in Asia aiming to become the next Silicon Valley. | https://medium.com/@edge196/these-5-emerging-startup-hubs-in-asia-may-soon-outpace-silicon-valley-ebde53843ee7 | [] | 2020-12-15 22:21:33.741000+00:00 | ['Asia', 'Emerging Startup Hubs', 'Business Strategy', 'Investment', 'Silicon Valley'] |
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