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Secrets of Success for Every Book Club | Secrets of Success for Every Book Club
tldr: Talk with your librarians. They have all the good stuff. EveryLibrary Follow Jul 6 · 4 min read
Summer is the time for traveling, outdoor picnics, and plenty of reading. While many may have left reading behind at our local public library’s summer reading challenges as kids and teenagers, reading over the summer is still for everyone. Joining or hosting a book club is one of the best ways to get back into the routine of reading and checking books off your list.
Book clubs these days are fun and exciting with even famous celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon getting involved. Book clubs can be as simple as picking a title, choosing your group, and gathering once a month for discussion. But, librarians can play a large role in enhancing your experience from helping with selection to all sorts of engaging additions to your discussions and readings.
Best Book Recommendations
Librarians have extensive knowledge when it comes to book selection. There are millions of different titles to choose from when selecting your monthly reads and librarians are just the people to help you sort through the options. These suggestions can range from titles that will fit the genre of book your book club is interested in to titles that librarians just can’t wait to share. This makes the process of picking a lot more manageable and less stressful when it comes time to pick a new read.
There are also plenty of online resources librarians have contributed to that you can use to make your book selection. LibraryReads is a list of adult fiction and non-fiction picked out by nationwide library staff on a monthly basis. This list is a collective of any and all library staff who want to submit a recommendation and represents a wide range of titles, new or old. This is a great list because it shows the top books that librarians across the country are currently in love with.
Another useful online resource is Reading Group Choices (RGC) which has been partnering with publishers, bookstores, libraries and authors for almost two decades on enhancing the book club experience. Not only does RGC create annual guides and monthly recommendation lists, they also organize group reading events around the country for readers to join.
Technology Infused Book Club Experiences
Librarians can also play a helpful role in facilitating your book club space at each gathering. Many have been innovative when it comes to meeting up, going the extra step to create virtual spaces for book club members to keep in touch while reading and join in on discussions they can’t physically attend. Librarians have been using all sorts of technology to complement physical book club meetings. A school librarian in Texas used it as a way for students to continue discussion outside of book club meetings or contribute if they miss one. The New York Public Library set up online video conferences so participants could stream meetings live from home. They’ve also been using it as a way to get authors involved by inviting them to online conversations and allowing book club members to interact and ask questions.
Completely online book clubs have also emerged in recent years and librarians have implemented ideas to keep sessions just as engaging as in-person meetings. At Cuyahoga County Public Library, a “Night Owls” live discussion occurs every Thursday evening on social media. This has been a hit with readers and drew in more engagement than the original online discussion board. The library has since created a lunchtime book club session due to its popularity.
Fun Book Clubs Being Held
There is inspiration everywhere when it comes to book clubs and your librarian is just the one to help you find it. For starters, The Library of Congress has a One Book Project where the goal is for each state or city to choose one book and encourage everyone in the vicinity to read it. There are plenty of statewide or city specific readings to choose from and it is a great way to learn from others around you.
Amnesty International’s book club is also informative and engaging. They pair books with real world events and give members a chance to learn about giving back to the community in a way that relates to the book’s topic. Other book clubs focus on specific topics like a one related only to running, one that combines members’ love for books and cocktails, or even book lists inspired by a TV series.
Librarians are the Secret to Your Book Club!
Librarians are the key when it comes to creating your next book club. With so much to explore and less free time in our adult lives, it can take effort to pick books and organize meetings. Not only can you go to them for any and all kinds of information you may need, you should definitely regularly incorporate them into your book club for an enhanced experience. | https://medium.com/everylibrary/secrets-of-success-for-every-book-club-8e2a9e02a7cd | [] | 2021-07-06 15:09:45.245000+00:00 | ['Book Clubs', 'Reading', 'Library', 'Community', 'Librarians'] |
The Gull Anarchy | Poetry
The Gull Anarchy
A poem about a girl and her fight!
Photo by Jack B on Unsplash
How do you make an eagle out of a seagull?
How can you possibly harden her soul?
Those fragile limbs of her will never yield the struggle!
Is she capable of malice?
Can she sail these hurricane clad seas?
Will we ever win with her?
The first day that I stood with my chin up and fears tramped,
I heard these behind me.
I was nervous, tapping my left foot
to march with the rhythm of my heartbeat.
The ships were ready to leave!
I looked back, and the land was narrowing its arcs.
With the first fire, I had to give the command.
For the first time, my voice had that dread.
The vast sea stared me into my eyes and mocked my fright.
She laughed at my composed demeanor.
They doubted my every sigh!
The rifle clenched tightly to my arm, my jaws dictated, “fire!”
The Atlantic was chilly and cruel,
For a girl and her country.
When I jumped higher, the skies fell upon me.
Did I hope for a little more?
Had I bargained for a little less?
The sun was setting in my arms
as I kept rising our flag on their trams.
How do I know, at which point to slow?
They asked for a wish and I demanded a show!
I won hearts and promises and lives.
I won trust and respect and acceptance.
I won leadership and happiness and a second chance.
As I step on that ship every day, I remind myself that
This was a triumph.
The other one may not be.
My palms are still sweaty, my voice still cracks.
I still fill my eyes with grim realities before any war.
The little seagull is still afraid of razor-sharp arrows and tar lad barrels.
But when I will look back to these vast seas,
I will mock them for bending down before me.
I will stamp the sky and the ocean in my heart till the end of my days.
And then let them tell the story.
Of a seagull who fought like an eagle! | https://medium.com/the-pom/the-gull-anarchy-59e63ae951d3 | ['Ria Ghosh'] | 2020-12-21 16:49:32.988000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Poetry On Medium', 'War', 'Poem', 'Female Empowerment'] |
Gamico Presents: Our Q&A Livestream! | Whoa boy! It’s been a crazy time at the Gamico office with the recent launch. We’d like to take the time to thank the roughly EIGHT THOUSAND of you who have made our Closed Beta such a success. We also know that you guys have had a ton of questions about everything with the Gamico Closed Beta, so we want to answer them. All of them.
Check us out on YouTube!
This Friday Tanner and Limbi will be answering your questions live on YouTube for everybody. From 7 P.M. to 8 P.M. Hong Kong Time you’ll have a chance to ask us your burning questions. Not sure about the how Gamico works? Encountered something you wanted clarification on? Want to know our favorite kind of sandwich? This is where you’ll find the answers to all your questions.
Where Do I ask My Questions?
Want to ask your questions ahead of time? Go to our Discord and ask away with #Q&A after your question. We’ll be sure to answer your question live along with all the other questions on YouTube.
Just enter your questions in the comment section and we’ll be sure to answer them as quick as possible. And if we don’t have enough time, we’ll be sure to answer you via DM after the show. Who knows, maybe we’ll go longer than just the hour!
Be sure to follow us on Social Media for all our latest news and announcements.
Facebook — www.facebook.com/GamicoGG
Twitter — www.twitter.com/gamicogg
Instagram — www.instagram.com/gamico.gg/
Discord — https://discord.gg/6fwHtP9 | https://medium.com/@breakthrough_lab/gamico-presents-our-q-a-livestream-29e4c13fe1aa | [] | 2018-10-23 10:48:54.973000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Esport', 'Videogames'] |
Act Now or Forever Destroy the Planet | Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
The Bottom Line
Climate change continues to negatively impact our planet, and it seems that we’re not doing anything about it. If individuals were more educated on the topic, and the severity of it, maybe everyone would do their part and contribute. The first step we need to take as a society is to educate each other and aid one another in understanding climate change. There are barriers that keep people from doing their part to combat climate change, and the number one reason is because they simply do not know how. Perhaps there is a political barrier, as well. We must break through these obstacles and focus on the betterment of our planet.
Let Me Explain
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
Students in a class called Analytics for Design, part of the ID:EA Certificate at Boise State University conducted research on a topic they had passion towards. I focused my research on climate change by conducting interviews, gathering survey results, and analyzing the data I received. The survey was distributed solely to college students, so the data represents responses from the age group born between 1998 and 2001. 77.1% of survey respondents are female and 21.7% are male. Survey responses were gathered through Facebook groups, Twitter feeds, and email.
77.1% of survey participants are female, and 21.7% are male.
Why Climate Change?
I chose to focus on climate change because I understand how crucial it is to protect the earth. Humans have the power to get the world back to where it needs to be. According to NASA, “the current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is extremely likely (greater than 95% probability) to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia.” The concept is often brought up in political atmospheres, even though the climate should not be divided. Educating myself, as well as others, is my overall goal. The following link includes all the research gathered prior to gathering data: https://app.milanote.com/1KuDbJ1LjAzIfe?p=ceY6ZUotbvi. Follow the link to review the primary research, resources, and the initial solution ideas.
Now, the Real Stuff
The main reason survey participants do not make changes in their daily lives to fight against climate change is because they simply do not know how.
One of the barriers to combatting climate change, which was previously mentioned, are political affiliations. 36.1% of survey participants believe that the topic is political. Additionally, 19.3% selected “neutral.” Clearly, this is proven to be an obstacle in protecting the climate.
The majority of survey participants believe that climate change is not discussed enough on college campuses. Education is the first step in fighting global warming, yet it is not talked about.
The majority of survey participants are interested in taking a class on climate change.
So, Where Do We Go From Here?
It seems clear that society is lacking as a whole when it comes to climate education. The topic brings up a sense of discomfort, and is often shut down in conversation. The first step is to normalize the topic. If any change is to be made, if we have any chance of making an impact, then we must begin talking about it. I have created a solution that I believe will not only normalize open discussion, but educate society. My solution design involves requiring a class at all universities on climate change. This would be a 100-level course that freshmen, as well as transfer students, would have to take before moving on to upper-division classes. Mandating a course on climate change will not only teach students about the ongoing issue, but will also force people to discuss it. When the topic is engraved into curriculum, it will likely become less political.
Let’s Wrap It Up
Let’s face it. Clearly, something needs to be done immediately. The earth provides us with so much, and we should be willing to support it, in return. Before we know it, it may be too late to make a difference. We must educate ourselves, admit to our faults, remove the political affiliations, and create change. Our actions, as humans, have the potential to save the climate.
Provided here is my messy data gathered over the past seven weeks.
Please email me at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns. | https://medium.com/@allylackie/act-now-or-forever-destroy-the-planet-5d9a67cf7c5c | ['Ally Lackie'] | 2020-12-10 00:41:46.268000+00:00 | ['Planets', 'Climate Change', 'Earth', 'Climate', 'Education'] |
What Makes a Good Metric? | Over the last nine years, I’ve spent a lot of my time thinking about audience, metrics, culture, and journalism. In that period one thing has remained a constant: a broad sentiment that the metrics we have aren’t good enough. A few years ago at the first Newsgeist Europe, I stood up in defense of page views. It still shocks me how surprising some people found that. It shocks me even more that people still instinctively recoil from a metric that does a simple job well.
The other side of this coin is the restless search for a better metric. Many people across the industry instinctively feel that our data isn’t complete without a number built around our higher ambitions or that captures the quality of a piece or publisher in a way that Reach and Time Spent cannot.
This is entirely understandable, not least because there may well be practical applications for such a measure at the industry level. That’s why Frederic Filloux and my brilliant former colleagues, Graham Tackley and Matt McCallister, have spent so much time and effort attempting to capture concepts like Quality and Impact in metric form. It’s essential that this kind of work happens, and it’s great to see Google’s DNI fund backing it. Working with Matt and Graham on impact, I learned a great deal about the fundamental problems you encounter when trying to nail down something this big and subjective in a way that makes sense.
A key thing to question is the belief that, because one thing can be measured, that another thing must be measured. This principle can lead to vast expense, the creation of aggregated metrics that can obscure detail or the use of proxies that can misinform and result in terrible decisions across an organization. Language is often bent out of shape to bridge the abyss between realism and idealism. Beware naming metrics after the initial aspiration rather than the finished product. Think about, for example, what the term “Unique Users” implies.
All metrics have the capacity to go wrong. Decent culture has to be established around any number to avoid warped behavior.
The simplest example here is around Quality. If you work for an organization set up in good faith to produce quality journalism, along with all the processes, expertise, and structures that entails, do you actually require an internal metric? What damage might it do? If a piece fails to get a very large number of page views, there is no danger that anyone could imply it lacked quality. But what if your metric explicitly claimed to capture it? The question “should this be a metric?” needs to be asked before “how can we build this metric?”
Obviously, all metrics have the capacity to go wrong. Decent culture has to be established around any number to avoid warped behavior. So while page views have many decent qualities, if pursued unchecked and with no editorial constraint, you can end up with abysmal nonsense. That for me is a crucial, but separate, issue.
With a little help from the Twitter hivemind, I began trying to boil down the key qualities of a good metric. I’m thinking here of business-wide metrics that you’d expect an entire organization to be familiar with. (If you were working on short-term or very specific projects, you might relax around some of these characteristics.) In terms of applying the system to the creation or evaluation of metrics, I’d score each characteristic using a traffic-light system and be wary of any metrics with a couple of red indicators, or with no green indicators.
The Five Characteristics of a Good Metric
Relevant
Does it align with core business goals? If you move the number, will it result in positive change?
Measurable
Is the value subjective? Can you define it? Is it possible to technically capture the data?
Actionable
Can you do something positive and impactful with the data?
Reliable
Is the metric technically robust? Will it be relevant in a year? Can it track progress over time?
Readable
Can it be easily misunderstood? Does it require a lot of context? Could it lead to bizarre behaviors? Does it suffer a lag that makes it difficult to evaluate?
In practice, here’s how you might use the above scale to measure median attention time.
A Few Notes and Alternatives
Relevant
This wasn’t originally in my list, but Lucy Kueng, Martin Robbins and others all correctly pointed out the need for it.
Responsive
The excellent Phil Wills made this point: “sometimes metrics are great for taking stock of the situation, but lag changes significantly, which makes them much less helpful for evaluating experiments. Subscription churn would normally fail on this.” I really like this one and am currently trying to decide whether I could legitimately bundle it into Readable as above or whether it needs its own spot.
Readable
Both Anita Zielina and Nathan Good felt that Readable could lose its place on the list, on the grounds that it could fall into Actionable. Anita also felt that Communicable was a separate characteristic. I’ve kept Readable in there because I think it’s essential for a business-wide metric and it’s a little more particular than just Actionable.
Scalable/portable
Laura Oliver and Guardian Audience Editor Peter Martin made interesting points about how flexible a metric is in terms of multiple applications (one of the reasons I like page views is that it can be used to measure pure scale but also internal promotion which is an interesting proxy for editorial value) and also whether it can be used beyond a single organization. I think both these things make a metric much more attractive but possibly aren’t essential.
Progressive
Former Guardian CDO Tanya Cordrey made the case for the ability to “track progress and demonstrate improvement over time.” It’s a point worth underlining but I’m also hoping it’s covered in the list by Reliability.
A Killer Question
The FT’s Robin Kwong has a great tip for anyone thinking about a new metric and the culture it requires around it: Ask yourself how you’d game it. And on a similar theme, David Bauer invokes the always relevant Goodhart’s Law. | https://medium.com/s/story/golden-rules-what-makes-a-good-metric-a96045d7ab24 | ['Chris Moran'] | 2018-09-14 10:11:21.904000+00:00 | ['Metrics', 'Journalism', 'Media', 'Analytics', 'Data'] |
This is your brain on FOMO. | A study by some smart guy called Andrew Przybylski found the condition was most common in those who had unsatisfied psychological needs such as wanting to be loved and respected. So, most of us.
In a society where we’re bombarded with advertising imagery to make sure we’re all super-insecure, it’s the perfect storm for a FOMO epidemic. Get your tinfoil helmets ready, kids!
Illustration: Jason Chatfield
I can’t remember the last time I went out with friends and we didn’t all have to compete for each others’ attention. We’re instantly pitted against the un-winnable battle of a universe of other non-present people who are potentially more interesting. Sometimes it literally takes playing the phone stack game to get us to engage like adult humans.
I’m the guiltiest of my friends of this heinous social disease. I’ve done it for a long time.
Ever since Facebook and Twitter became available on a handheld device, I was that guy checking it for updates. Checking out of wherever I was to be somewhere else. A scorching case of FOMO not seen by the likes of any other early adopters.
Such was the severity, my friends just started excluding me from conversations. What was the point? I was just going to stop half way through and check my phone anyway right? I am also a dork. And who wants to talk to a dork? (Except the Lord)
Trying to hold a conversation with me while I was holding my smartphone was like trying to read bedtime stories to a hyena ripping into a squealing zebra. The amount of patience required not to punch me in the face couldn’t be quantified. The lack of restraint on my part was unfathomably rude.
Nomophobia (which is a thing, sadly) is the chronic, crippling fear of being out of mobile phone contact. Add a hefty dose of FOMO into that equation and you’ve got yourself a serious social problem infecting an entire generation.
This all may sound like I’m being harsh on a seemingly harmless social faux pas, but as I’ve written before in 2010, social media exists on the very requirement of you obsessively needing to check back in and obsessively tap that little red circle to see how many people Liked or commented on your genius photo of a duck wearing a hat.
There are two parts to this:
1.) By Design
Social media sites know exactly what they’re doing. Peoples’ addiction to them is no accident. Facebook has been redesigned more times than Tori Spelling’s chin, but there’s one thing on the user interface that has never changed- that’s the little red circle with a number in it, hovering over a small light blue globe. The small indicator of how many notifications are sitting there, waiting for you to check. There’s a reason they haven’t changed it too – the human brain.
The way the human brain forms habits and addictions based on patterns, and more specifically, through triggers. Triggers are really powerful things. You can use them to your advantage if you want to hack your brain, but if you let them run your subconscious it’s a one-way trip to the above mentioned simpering mess of FOMOsexual.
(I don’t know what the sexual part is. Let’s not think about it. But I will gift you my new favourite word: Infornography. You’re welcome.)
2.) The Greatest Hits.
FOMO is mainly associated with Facebook and Instagram, which provide constant opportunity for comparison of one’s status.
Oddly enough, the majority of people on Facebook and Instagram don’t tend to post photos or check in when they’re doing nothing. They tend to image craft; posting photos of themselves doing fun things, out with friends, eating great food or having heaps of fun at a bar. With Facebook, you’re getting everyone’s Best Of album. Their Greatest Hits. Epic FOMO bait.
What’s the solution?
Solar flare? Wipe out the internet? FOMOs Anonymous?
The first step is stopping the trigger. The next, ideally, is a digital diet to reset your triggers.
I tried a little experiment would recommend you try if you have FOMO issues. I wanted to see if I could extricate myself from the lure of the little red dot for as long as I could. I would see how high I could get that little number before I felt the need to click it. The result? I’m four days in and I’m recognising the desire to click it every time it pops up, but guess what. I haven’t been socially excluded/missed out on anything/died. I am, however, still a dork.
The first part of breaking an addiction is recognising the problem. Then identifying the trigger.
(This is super easy if your addiction is guns.) I’ve still been logging on every now and then, checking on the events panel. I’m still responding to friend requests and DMs, but I haven’t clicked the notification button. It’s up to about 104. The idea that this is somehow heroic strikes me as more and more ridiculous as each day goes on.
FIG 1: DERPAMINE GENERATOR
The link between seeing the red dot, and needing to click/extinguish it is diluting and my brain’s circuitry is rerouting my attention to other things.
I use an app called SelfControl.app for Mac to blacklist Facebook.com and other tempting servers from access on my laptop, effectively blocking social media from my ‘work’ computer altogether. The spike in productivity is astounding. (and sad, really.)
Not to over-simplify neuroscience, but basically the habit-forming pattern is trigger > action > pleasurable response. (Rinse, repeat.) The more you do it, the stronger the habit/addiction becomes (the stronger the neural pathways become). The more reliant on the dopamine drip you get from that pleasurable response, the less control you have over that addiction. It gets a lot more complicated, but them’s the basics.
The interesting thing is once you’ve clicked on the red dot, the pleasure disappears. The idea of having the red indicator with numbers in it ready to click is more pleasurable than the seconds after you’ve clicked it. It’s the same principle of the study of why window shopping is so pleasurable; The desire to buy a thing is more pleasurable than having spent your money and bought the thing.
That’s the scientific reason people buy things they don’t need or can’t afford. The reason people feel like they need the new iPhone. The excitement of the experience of owning it is far greater before you purchase it than after you purchase it. There’s a reason you can’t walk into an Apple store without feeling excited about potentially walking out with one of those shiny new gadgets. It’s experiential marketing, and they’re very good at it.(They also use knolling… KNOLLING!)
There’s a bunch more scientific research as to how Facebook makes you jealous and sad in the New York Times seemingly rehashed the same time each year.
Without getting too far off track, the basic principle of overcoming FOMO and information addiction is
..Sorry I just got distracted by an article about Bees.
What was I saying? | https://medium.com/scotchbook/this-is-your-brain-on-fomo-d89d571b8bc6 | ['Jason Chatfield'] | 2020-03-18 17:38:17.343000+00:00 | ['Fomo', 'Addiction', 'Psychology', 'Tech', 'Apps'] |
Tesla Over The Air Updates, Upgrades, and Microtransactions | One of the most revolutionary ideas Tesla had when creating their vehicles was the ability to continue to improve them via over-the-air (OTA) updates. Never before had an auto manufacturer done this, nor really wanted to. When you historically had purchased a car, that was as good as it would get without investing more money into customizing it yourself. This was to the advantage of the manufacturer as they could then build in new features and abilities with future year models, and try to entice you to upgrade to a whole new car in a few years.
Tesla has disrupted this entire concept. Today, computers are tightly integrated into their vehicles. And as such, it can be improved with new features, better performance, software bug fixes, and increased safety by simply pushing a software update to the car, all for FREE.
Since I bought my Tesla Model 3 in July 2018, it has only gotten better. A shortlist of some of the items that are new since I bought it are:
A Dash Cam that will record what is going on around the car as it is driven and allow you to save the previous 10-minute clips on-demand to a USB drive I insert into the vehicle. Sentry mode uses the same USB drive as the dashcam and will record events that occur around your car while parked. This has been useful in capturing vandals who have damaged or broken into Tesla’s, leading to many arrests. Navigate on Autopilot which is an automated driving feature that guides a car from a highway’s on-ramp to off-ramp, including suggesting and making lane changes, navigating highway interchanges, and taking exits, with driver supervision. And then a later update provided Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control, where the car will monitor traffic signals and take the appropriate action. Video streaming with YouTube, Netflix, and others allows several entertainment options right on the in-car screen. Arcade Games is one that my kids enjoy more than I do. But, it is a great way to keep them entertained when having to wait in the car. Dog Mode allows you to leave your pet in the car and maintain the climate setting so it doesn’t get too hot or cold. A great safety feature for your pet. A total mile range increase from the original 310 miles to 325 for the Model 3 long-range version allows a little extra charge to get to far away destinations. 10% more power for the various Model 3 versions for quicker acceleration and fun. Smart Summons which allows the car to come to you in parking lots within line-of-sight from up to 200 feet away. I have used this feature a few times when out at a restaurant or store when it was raining, to come to save me from getting soaked. It works remarkably well. Improved braking performance as when Consumer Reports had tested the car, they noted a longer braking distance than average from 60–0 and did not give it a recommended rating. Within a week of the report being published Tesla had adjusted it via a software update and asked for it to be re-tested. Consumer Reports did re-test it, showed the braking was improved by nearly 20 feet and they changed their rating to recommended.
The list of new features, fixes, and adjustments continues to grow and continue to be free. To date, since July 2018, I have received 69 over-the-air updates. Which averages to about 1 update every 13 days. Tesla also updates its map data frequently to support changes to roads and routes for navigation. In many cases, other manufacturers charge hundreds of dollars to update the map data each time.
With the success and positive press from the news media by Tesla’s ability to maintain, update, and improve their vehicles with regular over-the-air-updates, other manufacturers are have been watching and planning to do the same. How this will be done and how well remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, consumers will be looking for this moving forward. No longer will it be acceptable to buy a car knowing the day you drive it off the lot that’s as good as it will ever be again.
But, there are also opportunities for these companies to make money with paid upgrades via micro-transactions, not unlike many developers in the gaming software industry. Games have been doing this for many years by offering various in-game boosts, cosmetic options, additional game levels, and more.
Tesla has already started to offer some of these paid upgrades to its customers. In December 2019, Tesla offered its first paid upgrade via their Mobile App for Model 3 Dual Motor owners. For $2,000, they could purchase an Acceleration Boot that would drop the 0–60 mph time by half a second, from 4.4 seconds to 3.9.
Then, in February 2020, Tesla offered an upgrade for Model 3 Short Range and Short Range Plus owners to add Rear Heated Seats for $300.
The options for upgrades are likely to continue by Tesla as they had the foresight to build all their cars with basically the same hardware and internal parts. In lower-spec models, they simply disabled features that are standard on higher-end models, and will begin to offer them as on-demand upgrades. Full Self Driving for $10,000 is also available as an upgrade in the mobile app.
Elon Musk has recently confirmed on Twitter that a Full Self Driving subscription model is coming in 2021. The price of that is not known at the time of writing this article, but it is expected to be more than $100 per month, likely a lot more.
Looking forward, perhaps Tesla will offer more upgrades in the future. Some possible upgrades that Tesla may offer in the mobile app, assuming the hardware exists to support it, are:
Premium Audio upgrade for Short Range and Short Range Plus owners. Break out some of the Full Self Driving features of interest for a lower cost, such as Navigate on Auto-Pilot, Auto Lane Change, Smart Summons, or Auto Park. More games and other entertainment options are also very likely for a small fee.
All indications are that Tesla is working toward offering an App Store in the future, where 3rd party applications could be offered and sold, similar to iPhone and Andriod. This would open up unlimited options and income streams for Tesla and continue enhancing and improving the customer's experience with the vehicle. | https://medium.com/@thunder7ga/tesla-over-the-air-updates-upgrades-and-microtransactions-f2774a039af0 | ['Electric Motoring W Dave Clark'] | 2020-12-23 11:03:12.274000+00:00 | ['Electric Vehicles', 'Electric Car', 'Tesla'] |
What Is a Bear?. A private zoo owner thought he was… | Bradley Gerwig’s relationship with animals is complex. Over the course of his life, they’ve served as sources of income, nutrition, entertainment, and companionship. Some are nuisances; others are worthy prey. Asked if he considers himself an animal lover, he responds with an anecdote about how, as a high school student, he’d wake up at 4 a.m. and milk 40 cows for $20 a week. He’s raised everything from dogs and cats to lemurs and lions, and he’s a skilled hunter, fisher, and trapper. In the past few years, however, Gerwig hasn’t picked up his rifle, partly because of an aging body and partly because of an evolving conscience.
“I don’t have a desire to go out and hunt and kill anymore,” he says, “I’d sooner just take care of an animal.”
It’s a damp December morning, and Gerwig is at his kitchen table, sporting a T-shirt with a dramatic illustration of three bears cast in moonlight. He talks with a gravelly drawl that makes the word “tire” sound like “tar.” His white hair is brushed to the side, and semicircles of dirt line his fingernails. Seated to his right is his wife, Lurline. They rode the bus together in high school but didn’t start dating until their mid-twenties. “I felt sorry for him,” she jokes between sips of Folgers. They married, had some kids, and in the late 1970s built a small zoo on three of their five acres of property. For them, it seemed like a no-brainer. “We like foolin’ with animals, and little kids love seein’ animals,” Gerwig explains.
Opening a zoo in your backyard may sound like an insane, high-liability undertaking, but it’s not that unusual or legally complex. One of the most important steps in the process is obtaining an exhibitor’s license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Doing so requires completing an application and passing an initial inspection to show that you meet the agency’s minimum standards for care and housing. In other words, your fence must be tall enough, and your cages must be locked.
PETA and other animal law experts have for years been sounding the alarm over what they say is a tragically lax permitting process. “The agency automatically renews it once you get it, so it’s really the only hurdle you have to clear,” says Delcianna Winders, vice president and deputy general counsel of captive animal law enforcement at PETA. “It’s a very inexpensive license, and once you have it, it’s pretty much carte blanche. You can violate the law as much and as seriously as you want, and they will still renew your license year after year.”
Of course, not all zoos limit their aspirations to the USDA’s minimum standards. The big, well-known ones, such as the San Diego Zoo and the Bronx Zoo, belong to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), a nonprofit accrediting organization that sets stringent regulations. Many of these institutions have missions of science and conservation at their core and go to great lengths to ensure their animals live in healthy, enriching habitats.
They’re the exceptions. Fewer than 250 zoos worldwide are accredited by the AZA. Meanwhile, more than 2,000 operations in the United States have active USDA exhibitor’s licenses. They range from traveling carnivals to roadside zoos like Gerwig’s, who says he didn’t even know he needed a USDA license until several years after opening up, when an agency inspector showed up one day and told him so. He invested roughly $10,000 to put up new fences and improve his animals’ enclosures and was then legit in the eyes of the federal government.
Arctic foxes, bobcats, coatimundis, lemurs, and, of course, bears followed. “Lions and bears,” Gerwig says, “that’s what the kids wanted to see.”
At no point in time was the zoo meant to be a full-time job or source of income, Gerwig says. Both he and Lurline had steady gigs with the U.S. Postal Service; he also delivered newspapers in the early mornings. The zoo never turned an annual profit, Lurline says, as the costs of feeding dozens of animals always outstripped the modest income generated by admissions. “If you want to call losing money every year a business, then I guess it was a business,” she quips.
Initially, the Gerwigs’ zoo consisted of mostly farm animals — goats, lambs, pheasants, and pigs — and was akin to a petting zoo. There were some picnic benches and a play area for kids in the front yard. Signs on the animals’ pens offered basic information about what they eat and how long they live.
About a year after opening, Gerwig took a few of his animals to a nearby carnival and set up a small display to promote the zoo. There, he says, an acquaintance approached him with a gift: a lion cub stashed in a cardboard box. They plopped the cute ball of tawny fur in Gerwig’s exhibit, and the kids went nuts. It was Gerwig’s first real exposure to the allure of exotic animals, and his zoo would never be the same. The lion, which his kids named Simba despite it being female, ended up becoming a full-time resident in Gerwig’s backyard for the next 18 years.
During that time, Gerwig steadily grew his collection of exotic wildlife. Arctic foxes, bobcats, coatimundis, lemurs, and, of course, bears followed.
“Lions and bears,” Gerwig says, “that’s what the kids wanted to see.” | https://gen.medium.com/how-a-bear-in-a-backyard-in-maryland-triggered-a-national-brawl-over-the-inner-lives-of-animals-bb55ecb69d3d | ['Chris Sweeney'] | 2019-09-27 00:46:28.292000+00:00 | ['Environment', 'Reasonable Doubt', 'Animals', 'Zoo', 'Animal Rights'] |
AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine | Explore the force behind innovation in the medical sector
Over the last few years, the medical sector has experienced a whirlwind of advancement on the technological front and Virtual Reality has proved to be a prominent force.
Today, we will examine four real-life medical applications of the technology, and explore how it has brought immense value to the medical field.
Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease at the University of Cambridge.
A Cambridge University study that was published in the medical journal- Brain, explored how scientists developed and trialled a virtual reality navigation test patients who develop signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Over 525,000 people suffer from the disease in the United Kingdom and this development could have great implications in discovering and monitoring the progress of the disease.
Helping Parkinson’s patients walk at the University of Utah
A study conducted in Utah outlined the effectiveness of building balance in patients suffering from Parkinson’s. The research included the creation of an immersive training experience that provided a controlled environment in which patients could walk.
According to K. Bo Foreman, PT, PhD, and associate professor and director of the Motion Capture Core Facility at the University of Utah, “Participants enjoyed the experience and thought it was fun, not just exercise. They liked the training and challenging themselves without the fear of falling.”
Virtual Reality planned surgery at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital
The hospital in Tampa, Florida utilises 360-degree models that are generated from MRI and CT images.
Trending AR VR Articles:
The technology, which mimics a similar application from an F-16 fighter jet simulation, is employed at the hospital’s cardiac and neurology programs.
Medical training at numerous hospitals around the world
From performing an operation to practising infection control SOPs, a large number of medical facilities around the world have embraced the educational capabilities of virtual reality.
Virtual Reality could very well be the tool that drives the medical sector into the future!
Don’t forget to give us your 👏 ! | https://arvrjourney.com/the-top-virtual-reality-breakthroughs-in-medicine-ethosh-digital-9b922a0ecb3f | ['Tai Moscovich'] | 2020-05-08 16:13:22.934000+00:00 | ['Virtual Reality', 'Medical Training', 'Medical', 'Training', 'VR'] |
A Pre-emptive Epitaph for the Online Dating Platforms | fertile ground for the future of virtual-dating
the only game in town are over. Is outer-space the final frontier?
In pop culture, well-worn trends necessarily die a long and agonizing death, owing to the inability of the masses to get the (timely) message that a thing has run its course. They go out with a whimper. What’s more, the bigger the headache, the bigger the pill, and virtual-dating, is sure to leave a massive hangover. This makes for a lot of wasted energies and investments of time, money, and faith, life, into things that no longer return any profit or joy, if ever they did — to wit, the online (virtual) dating platforms.
“Let’s call the virtual-dating platforms the ‘VD’ platforms. I’m rather fond of that alliteration.
I do believe that the onset of the swipe platforms Tinder and Bumble marked the time when the platforms began signaling imminent demise. For myself, the joining of Facebook with the platforms also inspired their death knell: I didn’t belong to Facebook. Several of them made Facebook membership a prerequisite. That development inspired in me utter disgust for the platforms: they were lame enough already. To superimpose Facebook over them them as unenticing as taking your grandmother along on your dates.
The swiping platforms were a death-knell for the more traditional profile page UXs, like Match and OK Cupid. You’re supposed to read profiles on those sites. The swipes cut to the chase under the premise that first-impressions are everything. Most of us do make presumptions about uncompatibility based on a photo, which might preclude reading the profile page with the photo.
‘But we all have reservations about judging by looks alone. Some are no good at it and others are masterful. Even the best of thin-slicers has his moments.
Soon enough, I became utterly jaded, my faith in humanity and beauty blasted and devastated. Perhaps the writing was on the wall, even in happier times, but I somehow missed it. No, not really. I stuck around like a bad penny on just one or two sites because they were the only game in town. Because in town, people don’t say “good morning,” smile, make furtive glances, wink, whistle, or even acknowledge each other’s existence anymore unless it should be framed by a digital media device.
‘don’t even ‘look’— you’ll have a mob of #metoo ers to reckon with.
All of the above are off the table, outdated, even mistaken for borderline sexual predation. That means there’s a mass shutdown of flirtation or any other social interaction going on IRL that only a monk would celebrate. This marginalization of civility is what inspires single people to give up the hope of ever meeting someone in the flesh, and in response make a Faustian bargain with a VD service. Ironically, with all the millions of single dating profiles to consider, there are far less opportunities online than IRL, and of far better quality.
Long ago I had a tacit suspicion that VD was for losers — a basket of deplorables masquerading as happy and interesting people, full of life and vigor. In some ten-years of online dating, nothing has happened to persuade me otherwise. In fact, I feel the situation has deteriorated. The few women I have dated over the past few years were a distillation of tens of thousands of throw-away profiles that held no appeal, or made me reel in disgust. I took pleasure in telling them“you’re one in ten-thousand.”
“a whole lot of people have simply fell by the wayside, the detritus of the IRL v. virtual-dating unfought war
VD options — once very narrow — now are an endless morass of low-brow, meat-marketing, hypocritical, objectifying, demoralizing VD apps stuffed with fake profiles designed to supplant any natural tendency or motivation to meet people in real life. But the days when the apps used to offer some tiny ray of sunshine are over. Inevitably, the platforms merely provide the foreground for men to endlessly circulate unsolicited pictures of their genitals to hapless women who made the mistake to enrol in VD, but saw or had no other options.
Women recoil from such interactions and as a coping measure hide their public profiles from view — window shopping in secret, without ever really intending on making a purchase. That means, by and large, the better looking profiles are kept hidden from view, and only the tossers remain. For others, a mass failure to launch. At the end of the day, there’s no more meeting of the minds online than there is in the ghost world of everyday life.
“On Bumble, I’m fascinated by the number of interests I get with no follow through. Are they just kicking the tires, ditsy, or even malicious?
My experience growing up is wholly antithetical to the present state of social disconnect, ghosting and ignoring. I used to look at women strangers passing by. I might see a pretty face or in extremely rare instances — an intelligent or interesting one. I might even make eye contact. All of those nuances, of course, are outdated modes of conduct. No one ever looks at anyone else when the social media device is beckoning, and it is whining 24/7 for people’s attentions. Alas, I no longer bother looking for a pretty or interesting face passing by — I cast my eyes to the ground — there are more interesting patterns in the dirty sidewalk than the empty spectres stumbling by the wayside.
It wasn’t always thus. In the early 2000’s, the satire publication The Onion held one of the earliest (and best) spaces for VD. It was called Nerve Personals. It later became OK Cupid, and then was absorbed by Match. Back then, only a trickle of members trolled VD platforms. OKC was a modest, funky, snarky, offbeat outlet as compared to dowdy old Match — still the Old Maid of the meat-platforms. People actually were able or willing to convey clearly their personality in a way that could border on charming.
Back then, VD platforms were still novel — even provincial by today’s Big-Dating Data standards. People rarely admitted to meeting on them. They held a promise and wonder that is utterly non-existent today. I was able to date as many women as I liked, albeit not always the ones I wanted. Despite that, I had a bedding ratio of approximately 15% (see my spreadsheets in post below).
Back to the Onion Personals, cum OK Cupid. OKC was especially interesting because it had a cool interface or dasher, and a blogspace module for any members wishing to post. This blogspace was effectively a hotly contested population contest, but it left room for people to create. In this space, I created a lot of post-divorce angst that was frankly barely readable. But I also posted some fine work.
“Too much innuendo. Too many hangups. Why waste time like that?
The bloggers were an incestuous lot who often partied together — and each blogger knew far too much of one another’s business. This turned ugly for me when the woman I was dating began stalking my dates and posted a character assassination that included every secret I ever shared with her. If she could have, she would have posted a video of my circumcision procedure at birth.
As the years went by, more and more joined the platforms either out of curiosity, desperation, or poor-judgment. It was no longer embarrassing to say you were a member. The platforms Walmartized, and multiplied into the present jumble of scumware that we now are forced to either navigate, or eschew and join a nunnery or monastery. As they multiplied they did not become fruitful, rather they mainstreamed and homogenized to the point of banal loathsomeness. At last, I despise them as I would my worst enemy.
I now loosely subscribe to two platforms. I check them only when a woman vouchsafes an interest — a like, a right swipe, because I am unwilling to waste time looking at women who will neither appeal to nor interest me. But even the likes and right-swipes aren’t so much a show of interest as they are a constant jerk of the chain. The hours I wasted each day when I first joined ten-years ago have waned to a mere ten minutes per week, or none at all. I often forget about them completely.
Part of the reason is that as soon as I log in to a platform, a black-cloud always seems to appear, and I begin to feel depressed, and resentful. The platforms ipso-facto make me feel badly.
The other reality is, and I have quoted it many times in this space: “most people are stupid and ugly” — O. WIlde. For VD, that translates to there simply not being enough quality merchandise on the rack. Anything that looks, sounds, smells like quality or talent is subject to a thorough gauntleting and testosterone laced feeding frenzy accompanied by a tsunami of dick pics that would even make a serial rapist cringe. As one of the Star Wars Force alien crewmen said about the Death Star: “(we) can’t compete with that kind of firepower.”
I heard Prince say about ten-years ago saying the Internet was “over.” It was over, in the sense he meant it. And VD is over in the way I mean it: as we used to say it’s “played,” like a sucka! — and people there get played like suckas. What would he say about VD? I know what he would say to the developers. I quote from his 1999, album the song “DMSR” “y’all can take a bite-a my purple rock — .” Besides, he was too busy posing for Hustler. In the Ice Age of VD, porn never sounded so redeeming!
Speaking of outer-space, I think I will eventually retire there. There may be more potential dates out there than here on this weathered old rock. I would jump at the opportunity, except I would fear running into Elon Musk. Outer-space isn’t big enough for the two of us. Perhaps there I will discover some life form that holds more appeal than what life has offered. | https://medium.com/tosspot/dead-souls-an-epitaph-for-the-online-dating-platforms-7c63dd937bca | ['The Introvert'] | 2019-04-21 20:23:50.677000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Love', 'Humor', 'Online Dating', 'Dating'] |
The Job Interview: How to “Drop the Mic” | Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash
4 Absurd Answers to 4 Interview Questions
As a hiring manager, I have felt the awkwardness and the privilege of being left speechless by an interviewee’s “drop the mic” response to an interview question.
Following, are four interview questions which you’ve probably encountered, examples of how not to answer, and hopefully some useful insight to help you ace your next job interview.
Q: What would you say is your greatest weakness? Firstly, what the interviewer is really asking for is the interviewee to display their ability to give themselves a back-handed compliment. In my experience, this is not a worthwhile interview question and should be avoided. Unfortunately, as the interviewee, you won’t have the option to ‘pass’ without probably passing on the job.
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
A: Given the potential for strength in the universe, I would have to say that my greatest weakness is… my general lack of strength.
In retrospect, this was a brilliant answer. Unfortunately, the answer did not convey anything which related to the position, and I felt that it was inadequate, so I did not give it the consideration it deserved (perhaps an indication of my greatest weakness). My immediate reaction was that this person and I are not on the same wavelength. Over the years, I have often pondered on this answer and the perspective required to produce it. Unfortunately, we did not hire this individual and I was never able to find out.
So, avoid giving answers to questions that will rise above your interviewer’s ability to comprehend. If you’re smarter than them, then level with them. Philosophical and smart alec answers will likely get you nowhere.
Typical “accepted” answers for this question include: (1) I’m too honest; (2) I work too hard resulting in an uneven work-life balance; (3) I have a tendency to take on too much responsibility. These responses are pretty cookie-cutter, so try to be a little more unique. However, in a pinch any of these responses will suffice, but try to add some substance. Provide an example to convey the truth in your response, and by doing so you are increasing the probability that the interviewer will be able to relate to your past experiences.
Q: Where do you see yourself in five years? This question should be asked: Where do you see yourself in your career in five years?
A: On a ranch in Montana.
Bottom line: DON’T do this. If you are confused by the scope of the question, always ask. By asking, you are conveying your proclivity for precision, which is a good thing and may very well impress your interviewer. So, don’t pass up the opportunity to ask your interviewer to clarify a question, but caution: once is enough during the interview. You do not want to condescend to the interviewer.
Q: What do/did you like most about your current/past job? This is a smart question to ask, because it may throw off an interviewee. The interviewer is trying to gauge if you harbor any resentment, are disgruntled, or left on bad terms. While they probably don’t expect that you’ll be 100% honest, they will be watching for your non-verbal cues.
A: I was not expendable.
Believe it or not, this was an answer that I gave to this interview question when I was 18 years old. I had quit my job at a local pizza restaurant two months prior, and my interviewer had expressed how she ate there one week ago and enjoyed her experience, and the pizza. How then, if the restaurant is making customers happy still, is it possible that I was not expendable? I will never forget the look on her face, and how quickly she ended the interview after that moronic answer.
Nearly everyone is expendable. Practice humility and you’ll get much further than I did in your next interview. For example, talk about friendships (non-romantic!!) that developed with your colleagues. Talk about how you still stay in touch. This will convey to your potential employer that you are likeable, possess people skills, emotional intelligence, and the ability to become part of a team. I now routinely use this question in interviews, and it works.
Q: Why should we hire you? This is a common question, and tends to indicate to the interviewee that the interview is about to wrap up, so get your last words in.
A1: If you don’t hire me, you’ll regret it.
I didn’t hire him, and I didn’t regret it. Bottom line: I don’t know what I don’t know, and if you don’t tell me, then I won’t know. You might as well tattoo “un-hirable” on your forehead, because the only thing your interviewer now knows is that if they ask you a question at work, they can expect a pompous disrespectful answer.
A2: I have proprietary information, and if you don’t hire me, it will likely go to your competition.
Again, we didn’t hire this person, and we remained competitive without her. Do NOT…EVER…bribe your hiring manager.
A better way to answer this question is to tell them about yourself personally. If there’s an aspect about the job location, hours, skills required that uniquely appeal to you, let them know. The last thing a hiring manager wants to do is process a job offer to an applicant who is not sincerely interested. This question allows you, the interviewee, to demonstrate your genuine interest, so be genuine. For instance, I was hiring for a position in Italy and in response to this question the applicant told me about their Italian heritage, their love for Italian food and wine, and how he and his family have travelled to Italy twice on vacation and had dreamed of an opportunity like this. We hired him, and in exchange we had an incredibly happy and thankful employee/family.
Or, if there’s a job posting for the position, tell the interviewer that in reviewing the job posting, you understood that the company is looking for an individual that can do (a), (b), etc., and “I have the following experience/knowledge to suit.” This tells the interviewer that you were diligent in fielding jobs for which you believed you were qualified, not simply spraying your CV across the internet.
Lastly, interview your interviewer. An interview will typically end with the interviewer asking you if you have any questions for them. A well planned interview will allot for time at the end in which the interviewer expects to field your questions. Use the time. Interview them. Ask them: (1) How many people are in the department? (2) What is the organizational structure (e.g. departments/divisions, etc.)? (3) What are working hours, overtime, vacation? (4) Will I be expected to travel? (5) What kind of meetings will I be expected to attend/participate in? (5) What do you like about working for XYZ Corp?
Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash
However, avoid questions about salary and benefits. (a) It may turn off the employer, and (b) these topics are typically handled by Human Resources. Instead, wait for the job offer. Then, before accepting, negotiate to get what you want.
Good Luck! | https://medium.com/@bp-swell/the-job-interview-how-to-drop-the-mic-6f9597677a0f | ['Bp Swell'] | 2020-12-14 21:08:22.521000+00:00 | ['Job Search', 'Interview', 'Job Hunting', 'Interview Questions', 'Jobs'] |
One hundred American jobs… | One hundred American jobs…
…that will be lost if immigration reform will pass
It is assumed that regardless of its final shape, if any immigration reform will be implemented, it will mean a surge of number of immigrants allowed to come. Argument against it is that these immigrants will take American jobs and increase unemployment. People who have an understanding of business intuitively know that with greater availability of workers economy expands and creates more new jobs. Studies such as the ones by the Partnership for a New American Economy are just some of many putting solid data behind this reasoning. Immigration reform, if passed, will stimulate economy, and as it is with every instance of progress, it will be a disruption; some jobs will be lost and new will be created. Summary outcome will be positive.
Not for everyone, as some jobs will be lost irreversibly. In particular, jobs of people heavily involved in anti-immigration advocacy. NumbersUSA, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) are among the most recognized influential groups opposing immigration reform. Heritage Foundation, which has broader area of interest, is invested in anti-immigration advocacy as well. The statement by FAIR that they “promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest — more traditional rates of about 300,000 a year” is likely the most representative for this group. For reference, our current legal immigration fluctuates around one million per year. The immigration proposals considered by Congress are vague in defining the levels of future immigration, but one may conclude that about a 10% to 15% increase might occur. Plus, some of the undocumented immigrants might get legal status as well.
On its website FAIR does not tell us why they want only 300,000 immigrants per year. This is the way they see the American tradition. This approach indirectly implies blocking immigration of people who due to their appearance, ethnicity or religion are not “consistent with the national interest;” whatever it might be. In plain language, there is a racial and xenophobic undertone in the anti-immigration rhetoric; despite that they all flatly deny it, and mastered racially neutral phraseology. According to Laird Wilcox who specializes in studying fringe political organizations in the U.S., about 15 to 30 percent of Americans have some racial prejudices. It is enough to form a solid financial and political support for anti-immigration advocacy groups.
Those groups get some genuine support as well from Americans who are just plainly frustrated with a dysfunctional immigration policy and who are manipulated into believing that instead of fixing it, we can get away with practically shutting it down.
Let us imagine something that, based on the current progress on the immigration reform, is hard to imagine — that our politicians negotiate and implement a good immigration policy. Let us put aside what the details of that ideal immigration policy would be, but let us imagine that the number and composition of immigrants coming would stimulate the economy to the point that unemployment will go below 5 percent and most Americans will be earning meaningfully more than before. Let us imagine that new immigrants coming will smoothly integrate into American society, and that somehow illegal immigration will disappear. Let us imagine the unimaginable that finally our politicians develop and implement a policy, in this case an immigration policy that most Americans will be satisfied with.
How will this affect anti-immigration advocacy groups? They will lose grassroots support; they will lose the political clout. Our not working immigration system defines their right to exist. Without it, their leaders, probably about one hundred people within the whole U.S., who for decades made a living off the dysfunctional immigration policy, might lose their jobs. For them, immigration reform is about jobs — their jobs — that will become obsolete as soon as we will have a working immigration policy. Passing any reasonable immigration reform is against particular interests of these organizations and their leaders.
In the struggle to pass immigration reform many people and organizations throw a lot of money in getting their point heard and understood. Much more can be achieved with much less money, by identifying those one hundred leaders of the anti-immigration reform advocacy, and arranging for them another employment. This will make much easier to pass and implement a reasonable immigration policy. | https://hak1010.medium.com/one-hundred-american-jobs-61730a7761ce | ['Henryk A. Kowalczyk'] | 2018-11-17 04:01:47.433000+00:00 | ['Immigration'] |
Joe Rogan Was Wrong About JFK and Secret Societies | Joe Rogan in the “JRE Clips” YouTube video “JFK warned us about secret societies”. This screenshot was taken by the author.
“He’s talking about secret societies. He’s talking about the military-industrial complex. He’s talking about all of the gears in play that are making money and making war and [deciding] what information people should or shouldn’t have.”
So said Joe Rogan, the infamous podcast personality when recently postulating on the meaning of a speech by President John F. Kennedy. A speech that has been making the rounds in conspiracy circles on the internet. The infamous bit goes as follows:
“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”
Feel chills run down your spine?
Joe Rogan certainly did.
A former president of Kennedy’s renown seeming to confirm everything Special Agent Fox Mulder believed in The X Files? Over a table with a couple of beers that’s a damn good conversation.
In our time of YouTube mystery channels, Ancient Aliens, and conspiracy theory peppered podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, it is easy to jump to the ideas that so often get modern netizens into a tizzy.
Unfortunately, the full speech and its context cut those theories down faster than Donald Trump can tweet.
Kennedy gave the speech on April 27, 1961. It was only in January of that same year that President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, coined the term “military-industrial complex.” That phrase looms large in our minds in this modern era, as do our fear of secret societies. In April of 1961 it had not yet fully taken root in the minds of America.
When secret societies were mentioned in the 1960s the imagination of many, if not most, would turn to communism. Not the Illuminati.
The United States of America was in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, named due to the absence of any physical combat or opposition directly between the two powers. It was a war of ideology and posturing fought through espionage, propaganda, and proxy wars. A conflict that, though it often grew very warm, never became hot due to the imminent threat of Mutually Insured Destruction, a doctrine that promised annihilation should either nation ever put nuclear weapons to use.
The power of the Soviet Union and the communist ideology was spreading around the globe. From 1950 through 1953 the U.S. had been engaged in a very bloody war in Korea in an effort to stop the Communist North, which was backed by China and Russia, from taking the entire Peninsula. In 1959, a man named Fidel Castro led a communist uprising in Cuba, which lies just a hundred miles off the coast of Florida. He was victorious. The United States feared that the Soviets would find an ally in Cuba, vastly extending the reach of the USSR. American intelligence was not wrong, but their plan to counter the threat would prove disastrous.
On April 17, just 10 days prior to the delivery of Kennedy’s speech titled The President and the Press, Cuban refugees that had been trained by the CIA made an attempt to invade Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Their landing and coup attempt would become known simply as the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
Less than 24 hours of gunfire on the beach resulted in the deaths of 114 would-be-rebels and the capture of over 1,100 survivors. It was a disaster. The plan had been inherited from the Eisenhower administration, but the Kennedy administration now sat squarely in the hot seat.
Media leaks were rampant. Public disdain was growing. People were struggling to unite in the face of the invisible threat posed by the Soviets and their ideology. It was difficult to unite a nation in the face of a conflict when they were not aware they were in one. President Kennedy decided it was time to implore the public to understand the gravity of the situation.
His now-famous speech would directly stress the danger being faced by the growth of communist ideology globally. This was evidenced at the beginning of his address by highlighting Karl Marx’s former employment with the New York Herald Tribune as a foreign correspondent. He used this story to at once stress the importance of the press and its many human parts, but to also reveal its destructive power. He warns: “If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him [Karl Marx] more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different.”
In immense contradiction to current popular belief about the message of this speech, Kennedy stated, “I refer, first, to the need for a far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.”
Kennedy goes onto suggest a sort of self-censorship be performed by American newspapers and magazines by publishing content based not only on how newsworthy it was but also on its potential impact on national security.
The monster beneath the bed of this address was the ideology of communism and its Soviet backers; its purpose a call to the American media to take action on censorship to protect military secrets and national interests.
Joe Rogan’s heart would be broken.
Kennedy certainly remained a darling of the media until his untimely death. However, as with everything in our world, nothing is a simple as it first appears. Especially in regards to politics.
It is desperately important in a time where the vast majority of information is spread by heresy that we, as often as we are able, find the source of a matter and its truth, rather than becoming unnecessarily entangled in a conspiracy.
Thankfully, the source of this matter is available for free on the internet. The transcript and audio of the speech, in full, can be found on jfklibrary.org.
I strongly suggest you read it. | https://medium.com/@jakob_68769/joe-rogan-was-wrong-about-jfk-and-secret-societies-af6b76762bee | ['Jakob Krause'] | 2019-12-20 19:20:40.565000+00:00 | ['Podcast', 'Conspiracy Theories', 'History'] |
Writing Belongs to Everyone | Writing Belongs to Everyone
So why let anyone deter you from bringing your ideas to life?
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
How helpful are those listicles outlining why you don’t have what it takes to make it as a writer and why do you even read them?
Why hand over your hard-earned cash to those feeding our collective impostor syndrome and discouraging us?
Look, writing isn’t rocket science and few are those of us who don’t already do it on a daily basis. Do you have a smartphone? Do you use social media? Do you communicate by email? If so, you already have a writing habit, one you keep honing and developing without exerting any particular effort.
Because print is still the leading way our society communicates. Even TED talks have transcripts, don’t they?
If writing is something you feel strongly about, there’s no reason why you too can’t start bringing your ideas to life online. Millions of humans are doing it; seeking to understand one another better is how we build a more tolerant and tolerable world to live in.
Or at least that was Tim Berners-Lee’s idea. | https://asingularstory.medium.com/writing-belongs-to-everyone-afa0e1eb9570 | ['A Singular Story'] | 2019-11-23 05:31:58.063000+00:00 | ['Communication', 'Writing', 'Self', 'Creativity', 'Social Media'] |
How to build a Dashboard in Python! | Let’s take a look at some examples hosted on the plotly gallery.
A Broker Dashboard with live prices
Broker Dashboard
An Uber rides tracking app
Uber Dashboard
The examples are self-explanatory, all the elements can interact with each other, rendering and updating dynamically.
There are many applications for Dash, especially if you are looking for quick implementations.
Let’s see how to code a simple dashboard in practice
The code will be divided into three different parts:
Initializing the App
Give it a layout
Start the server
Start by installing the necessary dependencies:
!pip install dash dash_core_components dash_html_components
Initializing the app
This step is creating a dash object that contains our main app
Give it a layout
We can use plain HTML elements by accessing the dash_html_components in a very intuitive way.
html.H1()
html.Div()
html.P() etc...
Our app content will live inside our main Div, it can contain as many elements as necessary, inside a list. It’s necessary to tell that HTML elements are not the only type of elements.
For more complex renderings such as graphs, drop-downs, input boxes we have to access dash_core_components.
In our basic example, we are going to write an introductory sentence inside our main Div.
Start the server
Set the flag “debug” to have a nice way to display errors on your dashboard, just remember to remove it before deploying it to production :)
The full code | https://medium.com/@jorgelameirasilva/how-to-build-a-dashboard-in-python-7b02ab31570f | ['Jorge Silva'] | 2020-12-04 13:14:35.756000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Dashboard', 'Education'] |
Bait | An Audio Poem
They dangle me out for
the masses, I am bait,
luring money from a vast
demographic keeping the
market wide open.
Exposed to positive COVID-19
patients, advised to self-monitor,
while still working because
yes, money needs to
be made. My life is
Russian roulette, Poker,
Spades, a game to be played.
The highest bidder gets a
new home in Charlotte and
a fifteen percent increase in pay.
My coworker says, "They need
to give you a raise. I feel safe
with you out there screening
patients that enter this building"
and I shake my head at her.
I am empty.
I am hollow.
I am lacking
something that was once
there and I don't know
how to get it back.
A burly man glowers in
my direction, angry at me
for being made to
put on a mask. He shouts
every foul word my way
and I stand my ground, "Sir . . .
In this building, you will
wear a mask or you will
be asked to leave."
I am a fixture in a place
that only wants me around
to keep the doors open,
the crowd happy, and the
team safe. My life, a worm
looped around a hook,
waiting for the biggest fish.
Luckily,
I breathe well underwater.
After all, isn't this
what you do when you
love your job?
Isn't it? | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/bait-3f42e245950 | ['Tre L. Loadholt'] | 2020-06-05 14:15:07.088000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Pandemic', 'Work', 'Love', 'A Cornered Gurl'] |
COVIDrama | For the next 14 days of my quarantine I am reporting on my COVID-19 experiences. Hoping for drama but most likely it’ll just be a lot of sweating.
There is a stigma attached to COVID-19. I debated on starting this blog for good long 12 minutes because I knew that I was exposing my loved ones to public scrutiny but as it is with having an addiction, keeping things secret doesn’t help anyone. And especially with COVID-19.
I’ve wondered how many people are keeping testing positive a secret for the fear of repercussions, judgement, anonymous condemning emails, rumours being spread, having your life thrown under the microscope. The two questions I’ve been hearing over the past two days have been: Where do you think you got it? How did you get it? People ask because they want to know what NOT to do. They want answers so that they can protect themselves. I’ve asked the same question. I too wanted to know where not to go and what not to do. And, in a way, both of those kinds of questions imply that I must’ve done something irresponsible, that I must’ve gone somewhere where it would be easy to catch the virus and done something to bring it on?
I don’t know what to tell you. I left the house for the first time in months. I had a dental surgery more than a week ago and I felt off afterwards, which is a normal part of recovery. I was given painkillers, I was told to rest, my face swelled, I bought Rubik’s cube to distract myself from the discomfort. I had to cancel teaching that week because it was hard to talk, plus I didn’t want my students to see my balloon face because I am vain and Zoom is forever. Other than that, there have been no outings, I mean, except for the underground rave I attended on Friday with 1,200 Germans. I like techno, what can I say. But in all seriousness, that dental escapade was the only time I can think of and those guys were serious about keeping things masked and disinfected because you know, surgery.
Like every hipster malcontent I receive packages from ordering online. I open them with rubber gloves on, I take out stuff, play with it, read it, wonder why I ordered it in the first place. I don’t know what exposure risk that entails but I hope minimal, same with those online groceries. Samuel, my man at Instacart wore rubber gloves judging by the pictures he kept texting me while holding objects that were to replace things the store didn’t have.
My boyfriend works from home. He doesn’t socialize and he moved in temporarily before the lockdown so he no longer travels between our households. Now we are stuck here together and it’s anything if not romantic. Romantic like you’d have two prisoners thrown into the same cell without possibility of parole. We’d sometimes go for walks in desolated parking lots of the EX or by the lake, often in the evening, and it’d be apocalyptically empty. On seeing other human beings, he’d swiftly cross to the other side; I still had to think about doing that but for him it’s a muscle memory. It’s been like this for quite some time, and now we don’t go out at all as of yesterday, we are confined to 500 sq ft and are this as close to murder suicide as it can get, not sure which one of us will snap first. My kid is at his dad’s and for now I will only get to see him on zoom, I will not get to squeeze those velvety, pink cheeks for a while and I miss that.
I know I don’t need to explain forever how we’re handling this but the reason why I’m writing about this — other than the ones I’ve mentioned previously — is because I want to give an honest report of what it’s like when family, and school and social responsibility are all a part of these permutations. I don’t want to be stigmatized for something that was out of my control. And, paradoxically, COVID-19 is anything but an isolation disease. I think that collectively this disease has made us paranoid, suspicious, alarmed. And frustrated with getting no answers from our government or health officials, so we’re all looking for someone to blame. I too want to lash out. I don’t believe I caught this at my dentist’s but there was a small part of me that wanted to send a Karen of an email to them — instead I just let them know I had COVID-19 and that they should probably look into things.
Around the holidays, a woman in my low-rise building chased after me and my son because we entered the vestibule with our masks off. In retrospect, that was somewhat irresponsible, we just weren’t thinking, we were almost home and as we walked up the stairs started to remove all those winter layers… masks included. The woman ran up the stairs after us and screamed well within the earshot of my 11-year-old, “your mother is a selfish c**t!” That was extreme, but I also thought how the pandemic pushes all of us to the brink of sanity, how paralyzed with fear she must’ve been to lose her shit like that. I was shaken up but part of me understood.
Here’s what I can say: whatever you do or don’t do, you might get it. Whether you take the public transit (but don’t), or an Uber (don’t), or go for walks and don’t jump fast enough before bumping into a lady who suddenly stops to scoop poop, you might get it. Whether you order your groceries online or run to the corner store every hour to get more milk duds, you might get it. Whether you see your long-lost cousin at a big fam reunion, or haven’t left the house since March 2020… you might get it. All we can do, really, is minimize the risk, which means staying inside as much as possible, sticking to your bubble, getting tested when you’ve been exposed or feel off… but above all, trying to be kind to one another since, yes, we are all in this together, very much so and no one is more to blame than anyone else (unless you’re a dumb anti-masker, pizza-gate-believer — in that case, really, fuck off and stay off). Being kind and supportive will ensure that the isolation won’t end up isolating you mentally, which is worst of all, when you are sick. | https://medium.com/@chucklesdarkly/covidrama-b0601f0fe9c | ['Chuckles Darkly'] | 2021-02-18 19:14:44.728000+00:00 | ['Kindness', 'Covid Diaries', 'Stigma', 'Karen', 'Isolation'] |
The Boiling Point: Why Your Business Isn’t About You | Copywriting Tips
The Boiling Point: Why Your Business Isn’t About You
I have this kettle.
That I abhor…
It looks cheap with its thin, cloudy aluminum. When a friend last visited, she searched high and low in the cupboards for a vessel to make tea, and when I pointed to the stove she bursts out:
“THAT’S your kettle!?”
I’m almost ashamed to show you this…
Yeah, kettle shame is real.
But, in all honesty, this monstrosity has crossed all lines of civility.
Our last kettle was a chic stainless steel, thick-handled, modern utensil, and quite frankly a pleasure to use.
But, I have kids. And for those of you not familiar with the kind, they ruin things…often. And after one too many falls on our tiled kitchen floors, well, yeah, we sent it packing to the garbage gods.
I put my husband in charge of getting a new one, and he ordered the most utilitarian, wallet-friendly kettle he could find. Because, well, kids.
Side note: I know talking about a tea kettle is probably akin to watching paint dry, but I swear I have a point, so hang tight.
It’s been several months with this thing now, and the more I see and think about it, the more anxious I get. The texture is that of a blackboard, scratch your fingernails along it, and it’s chills city. I mean it; even the thought of touching it gives me the heebie-jeebies.
The top is just a place holder, it doesn’t actually fit, and if I don’t hold it when pouring, I risk serious harm.
Not to harp, but the aluminum is so cool and uninviting, the complete opposite of its intended use. Yeah, it may produce a hot, warming, feel-good beverage, but its mere existence makes me feel like I’m imposing on it.
Don’t get me wrong; this kettle ticks all those boxes that it needs to do. Well, the one…
The worst part of it all is that I adore tea. I love going to specialty shops and picking out exotic blends that give way to the season. The ceremony of preparing it produces all those little brain molecules that make me happy. And the intoxicating smells, flavors, and that first sip after steeping is something I like to savor and cherish.
But, I’m so bogged down by how I feel about the kettle that, sadly, I don’t make nearly as much tea as I used to.
I finally broke down to my husband and confessed my hatred for the kettle.
Husband: “it’s cheap and does the job. I don’t see your point”
Me:
But I do have a point!
While my dear, dear husband is right, it absolutely does its functional job, it fails to hit me where it counts.
I consume less tea because I avoid this kettle within inches of my life. Ok, maybe not that dramatic, but my daily tea ratio is significantly down.
Why?
Because I’m not feeling it.
If it were some charming chrome metal accented kettle, with a pop of color, my experience boiling water would be more pleasant, I would look forward to it, my trips to the bathroom would see significant highs, because I’d be drinking like it’s going out of style.
I tell this story because your brand and your business work in the very same way.
Tea kettles all do the same freaking thing. They boil water; there’s not much else to them, so what they look like shouldn’t be important.
Well, if I did my job telling the story above — we know this to not be true.
If you want to sell yourself, your services, or a product, you need to remember that it’s not about you, it’s all about how you make your audience feel.
When someone opens up their wallet, or their time to you, it’s because you were able to crack their code.
Because at the end of the day, you could just be trying to sell hot water, but if your flimsy aluminum messaging isn’t connecting, you might want to start adding in a touch of stainless steel.
Quick Takeaway For Your Business:
Be This:
Not This:
P.S. If you’re interested in copy that has your audience singing your praises like a whistling tea kettle, hop on a free 30 minute call with me!
Originally published at https://www.sumocreativity.com on November 26, 2020. | https://medium.com/@saranaderi/the-boiling-point-why-your-business-isnt-about-you-e4bcac99c715 | ['Sara Naderi'] | 2020-12-03 18:34:39.709000+00:00 | ['Storytelling For Business', 'Marketing', 'Copywriting', 'Marketing Strategies', 'Copywriting Tips'] |
Northern Roots: What can we learn from places expats live now? | In the second of three articles condensing and quoting some responses to our Northern Roots interviews over the past 12 months with expats originally from Northern Ireland but currently living elsewhere, we look at whether they think they’ll return to Northern Ireland, what could convince them to come back, and what they consider Northern Ireland can learn from the place they live now.
Last time, when we looked at what emigrants think of the Northern Ireland they see in the news and social media, whether they’re hopeful for the future particularly in light of Brexit, they conveyed a pervasive sense of optimism in the abilities and potential of the people of Northern Ireland, rather than a particular group or political party to change things for the better.
As to whether they’ll return, for most this prospect is highly conditional. Diversity and acceptance of difference, women’s rights, infrastructure, and employment opportunities are just some of the issues raised. They seem ready for change, but will politicians here heed their advice? What can or should political leaders be doing here to entice them back? Does there exist a complacency that if they really want to, expats will come back?
From Scotland’s rail infrastructure to bilingual policies in Belgium, there is plenty of food for thought for back home. Some lessons may be more directly applicable than others for Northern Ireland. But one thing is clear: living somewhere else has given our Northern Roots interviewees valuable reflections from the outside looking in. We should listen to their perspectives. Here’s what some of our interviewees have said — in their own words.
“Northern Ireland has huge potential but its people are often let down by its politicians.” “Were Brexit to trigger Irish unity, with huge international support, construction might need some mega projects to compete with where I work now.”
Do you think you will return to Northern Ireland? What could convince you to come back?
Carrie Hynds is in Brighton and Hove, England, and stood as the Liberal Democrat candidate there in last year’s snap general election: “Northern Ireland has huge potential but its people are often let down by its politicians… I am, however, hopeful that now Northern Ireland has had some recent attention on the mainland, we can get into a new era of debate. Labour MP Stella Creasy’s amendment to the Queen’s Speech was huge for me: a Westminster politician gaining huge cross-party support for championing the rights of Northern Irish women. Between that and the increased financial transparency of party funding, there’s a greater sense of normality. We have a real chance of making politics a more attractive area for young Northern Irish people to go into, which in turn will make for a better future for the country.”
Thomas Madill is from east Belfast with family roots in Donaghadee and Monaghan. He works and lives in the deserts of Kuwait as a civil engineer: “People may think I am a Lundy if I say the only thing I think would bring me home is a united Ireland. I have no wish to return to building wee jobs begrudgingly released by the shambles that is Stormont and administered by legions of civil servants. The stress and rewards on this treadmill are not worth it. Were Brexit to trigger Irish unity, with huge international support, construction might need some mega projects to compete with where I work now.”
“Acceptance of culture is a massive thing we could learn. I watched my first Loyal Orange Lodge parade in Liverpool.” “The big lesson I’d take from Scotland is just how good devolution can be if used properly.” “Given that Australia has just held an opinion vote on the topic of same-sex marriage, that would be a good place to start.”
What can Northern Ireland learn from the place you live now?
Danielle Thom from Belfast is in south London: “London is one of the most diverse, most exciting cities in the world. People of all backgrounds, of different races, classes and cultures live alongside one another, mostly peacefully. While it’s far from perfect, and needs to do more to tackle racial and income inequality, I think London could teach Northern Ireland a lesson in embracing diversity and seeing the value of different perspectives.”
Michael McGuigan from Armagh is in Liverpool: “Acceptance of culture is a massive thing we could learn. I watched my first Loyal Orange Lodge parade in Liverpool having been caught off guard on London Road one July morning, and had to admit I was impressed by what they did. The best thing about Scousers is their acceptance of every person who wants to be part of their city. I would love that to be said of Northern Ireland one day.”
Joel Cassells, now contributor to Northern Slant, was in Reading when we interviewed him: “I currently live in Reading and it’s my example of how Northern Ireland should be modelling itself in 2017: a leading multicultural city with a huge tech hub outside of London. This is where a future post-Brexit NI could thrive: a business-facing province, attracting new companies into the country using huge economic incentives, lobbying, trade conferences, whatever it takes to get companies here.”
Shane Greer, in Washington DC, runs Campaigns & Elections, a publishing and events business serving the political campaign industry: “One of the things I love most about the US, and London for that matter, is the embrace of new ideas, the go-get-’em attitude in pursuing those ideas and the acceptance, even celebration, of failures along the way to success. That wasn’t my experience of Northern Ireland, but as the country’s politics normalize and it moves further away from its troubled past, I’m confident we’ll see that change.”
Dave Scott from Lisburn is Director of Nil by Mouth, the campaign to challenge sectarianism in Scotland: “The big lesson I’d take from Scotland is just how good devolution can be if used properly. I can honestly say that even parties I’ve never voted for have pushed through some good ideas which have benefited the country and political engagement with unions, business, charities and wider society is excellent. The Scottish Parliament has been excellent for Scotland and I’d hope that Stormont can be rebooted and start to deliver similar results for people.”
Mo Ruddy from Newry, now in Glasgow: “If I could take one thing to change in Northern Ireland it would be the railway system. Don’t get me wrong, Scotrail come in for just as much if not more criticism as compared to NI Railways/Ulsterbus. It’s the accessibility to go anywhere you want and at a reasonable price without having to spend hours on a bus. The options to travel by rail back home are extremely poor.”
Gareth Brown from Belfast is in Edinburgh, an Associate in a strategic communications and political relations firm: “To its credit, the SNP and the Scottish Government have sought to use devolution to its maximum potential (except on tax, although watch this space). Ministers, MSPs and the civil service embrace outside contributions and seek to build sectoral collaboration when designing and implementing policy. The outcome, generally speaking, is better law-making and better scrutiny of that law-making. I’ve always thought Northern Ireland could do the same if there was a mindset shift in the Northern Ireland Civil Service — although it takes its lead from an Executive *cue tumbleweed*.”
Ciaran Fleming from Craigavon is a Senior Product Consultant at Fintech startup Fenergo in Sydney, Australia: “Given that Australia has just held an opinion vote on the topic of same-sex marriage, that would be a good place to start. At a minimum, the people of the country should be given a voice rather than having to settle for the current abuse of Petitions of Concern.”
Méabh Nic Alastair from Cushendall is now in London: “London is a wonderfully diverse and multicultural city where inclusivity and acceptance are part of the fabric of life here. Each day one can meet people of all class, colours and persuasion, and that you should not fear what you don’t understand. I think especially with the debate around the Irish language — something that is of huge importance to me — NI could learn to be more tolerant and that linguistic diversity is something to be proud of, not to fear. Every day on the tubes, trains, buses, so many different languages are to be heard and it is fascinating. We are bringing our daughter up bilingually, and it is such a norm here in London to do that, yet it is met with distain at home.”
Nathan Stewart is from east Belfast now working in public affairs in Brussels: “One of the main things I do notice every day are the bilingual street signs. Obviously, Northern Ireland has its own reasons to be wary of rolling out bilingualism everywhere but it works pretty well on a practical level here in the Belgian capital. Once you head out into Wallonia or Flanders they mostly go back to French or Dutch anyway, so there’s definitely compromises to be found. I’d love for Northern Ireland to be able to move away from thinking about how things could be bad for us, and think about the good they could be for them. It’s not all zero sum.”
Ruth Foster was studying in Edinburgh: “When I first moved to Edinburgh I was shocked by how open and confident people were in themselves. Throughout my upbringing in Northern Ireland I was taught to be reserved, and that to talk about myself or my achievements is to be boastful and proud. As a result of this we seem to have created a society of low self esteem, as we are afraid to express ourselves out of fear of causing too much of a fuss.” | https://medium.com/northern-slant/northern-roots-what-can-we-learn-from-places-expats-live-now-2ef76f050e10 | ['Connor Daly'] | 2018-08-09 10:28:57.771000+00:00 | ['Northern Slant', 'Interview', 'Connor Daly', 'Expats', 'Northern Roots'] |
Joyous freewheeling books about women who run away from it all | Lately it seems like there’s a glut of TV shows about troubled detectives dealing with their demons, and I’ve watched a lot of them (hello, Scandi Noir!). So many of them feature female victims who have gone for a walk or a hike and come to a grisly end at the hands of a psychopath.
I understand the appeal of writing a story with such stark contrast — youth and innocence meeting sinister darkness. But it bothered me to watch episode after episode of women being punished for just being free or exploring the world. So to set the balance right in my world, I’m making a list of books about women who run away and find all kinds of freedom.
Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner
Lolly Willowes is a single woman who lives with her father and takes care of the house for him. The book is set in the very early 1900s, when society didn’t know what to do with unmarried women and turned them into roles of family caretakers, maiden aunts, and governesses.
When her father dies, her brother’s family moves into the family home and Lolly Willowes spends years looking after his kids. If she feels restless, she represses it and soldiers on, until one day, in her late 40s, she announces that she’s moving into a damp cottage on the edge of the woods, far away from the city. Brushing off her brother’s huffing and puffing about of her virtue and her reputation, Lolly packs up and leaves.
It doesn’t take long to settle in and soon a cranky black kitten becomes her companion. Lolly begins to find real peace in the woods around her cottage, going for long walks, napping on carpets of leaves in shaded glens, eating when she likes, and wearing what she pleases. She falls in with a circle of locals who practice strange night-time rituals and becomes a witch, and the book ends with her meeting a Very Important Person (and no, it’s not Mr. Right).
Having studied literature and feminism, I know that concepts like witches and mad women are so loaded with social context, but I have always loved a witch story! This book (and Lolly) float along so easily, not getting up on any soapboxes to preach but doing exactly what they want — I really enjoyed the light touch that Sylvia Townsend Warner has.
Every page of this book is a love letter to nature, to nature, to the change of seasons and the fall of dusk. If your spirit thrills to misty mornings and rainy days, you’ll respond to the book in the same way.
Ladder of Years, Anne Tyler
Delia Grinstead goes on a beach holiday with her husband and kids and just walks away one day. She sets off in her beach slippers and cover-up and nobody knows where she’s going or why she went. She hitches a ride to a town some distance away and reinvents herself completely, even getting a job and renting a room. All the while, her husband and kids have called the police, run Missing ads in the paper, headed home from the vacation, but Delia doesn’t think about it.
What makes a dutiful wife and mother head off like this and leave her family panicking? A series of events takes place in the days before the beach holiday, but none of them are big enough to warrant a disappearance like this. This book is fascinating because it doesn’t really tell you exactly what she’s thinking when she starts walking.
As a reader, this is fun because while you and Delia know that her husband and kids are worried sick, you’re settling in with Delia into a comfortable new life in an anonymous town. We meet her new friends, see how she manages to get clothes and food and a job, and focus on how life unfolds for her. I don’t want to say any more in case I give away the ending so I’m going to stop here.
Tracks, Robyn Davidson
Robyn Davidson was your average 20-something living a regular urban life in the 1970s in Sydney, working and partying and living away from home. Almost on a whim, she decided to walk across 1700 miles of some of the harshest terrain in the world — the Australian desert.
Robyn quit her job and moved to dusty, dry Queensland where she spent two years working at a camel station so she can learn how to train and manage them. When she is ready and has earned enough to buy her own camels, she sets off on an eight month trek across the desert with only four camels and a dog by her side.
This is a land that is so dry and so inhospitable that camels are the only vehicle that can take a human being across. It is one of the last frontiers left and she endures it all. She survives the fiercest heat, sun-blistered skin, cold nights, the struggle for food and water, the poisonous desert creatures and a lot more.
Of course, when you venture into the last frontier, you are also rewarded by spectacular views that not many have seen. But apart from her evocative descriptions of the breath-taking landscape, some of the most beautiful parts of the book are the days she spends with Mr. Eddie, an older Aboriginal man who walks with her for some parts of her journey, and the evolving friendship (and on-and-off romance) with Rick Smolan, a photographer for National Geographic.
Robyn Davidson writes so evocatively about the timeless nothingness of the desert, about not meeting human beings for weeks, and of her search for loneliness and privacy. But what really stood out to me is how authentic she is as a writer. She isn’t looking for approval or softening her opinions or story to be politically correct. She is nasty sometimes, angry about the intrusion of people who are curious about her journey, and dismissive with questions about why she did it. The journey is something of a pilgrimage to her and she doesn’t want to see or hear what other people are saying about it.
This book has three things going for it — the fact that it’s a true story, that it was covered live by National Geographic in 1977 (check out the stunning photographs here), and that it was turned into a Hollywood movie starring Mia Wasikowska — but the story itself is just breath-taking.
Frenchman’s Creek, Daphne Du Maurier
Lady Dona St. Columb is intelligent, beautiful, and restless. She loves her children, tolerates her pompous husband, but is incredibly bored by her life in 17th century London. She longs to be alone and free of the restrictions and commitments of her social life. She takes her children and the nanny to the family home in Cornwall, citing the kids’ health as an excuse, and leaves her husband to enjoy his drunken parties in the city.
As she leaves the city behind and breathes in the fresh air and sea breeze of Cornwall, she begins to feel free again. For a while, she enjoys solitary rambles in nature, spending time with her children, and living by the schedule of her choosing. She discovers that William, the old housekeeper, is smart and funny, and he discovers that Dona isn’t just a social butterfly, and they become good pals.
Dona begins to hear rumours about pirates using the river near her property for hiding away, and then one day she stumbles upon a French pirate in the woods. Jean-Benoit sees her untameable spirit and her thirst for adventure, and she falls as much in love with him as his promise of a life on the seas.
The reader goes on a wildly satisfying escapade in which Dona wears trousers and pirate shirts, learns to live on a ship, cooks meals on campfires, takes part in a violent attack on another ship, and discovers love and passion with Jean-Benoit — all while maintaining the life of Lady Dona St. Columb, good wife and mother.
When her husband and his crew of friends (including Dona’s ex-lover who is bitter and vengeful) descend upon the house for a short stay, Dona must play the part of modest host who deplores the threat of outlaws and piracy. Things come to a head when the menfolk decide to go on a vigilante hunt and root out those damned pirates, but Daphne Du Maurier handles all the threads of this narrative expertly and brings it together in one big surprise climax.
One of my favourite features of Daphne Du Maurier’s writing is her ability to imbue the landscape or the property in which the story is set with so much personality. It becomes as important as the actual characters, just like Manderley in , or Jamaica Inn in Jamaica Inn. In Frenchman’s Creek, the quiet gardens of Navron House turn it into the retreat Dona needs. In the sunny lawns and shaded creek, she finds a gateway to the biggest adventure of her life.
On my To-Read list for books about runaway women is Where’d You Go, Bernadette? Do you have any more recommendations for me?
This post contains Amazon affiliate links and I may earn a small commission when you click on the links, at no extra cost to you. | https://medium.com/@mishanakhot/joyous-freewheeling-books-about-women-who-run-away-from-it-all-e986c24729cf | ['Mishana Khot'] | 2020-12-26 08:15:22.069000+00:00 | ['Books Recommendation', 'Book Review', 'Book Recommendations', 'Womens Literature', 'Reading'] |
What silly romance movies forget to mention about real romance | Hollywood romance is fine and all, one might point out, if you’re still twelve. Real-life romance has beef to it, it is real, but it doesn’t seem to be for everybody. Too many people these days bail before a real relationship has taken hold, chasing some fantasy version of romance that will never last, simply for superficially good looks, maybe. Chasing for fleeting lust while hoping for lasting love.
Traditional family values have gotten lost in the ever more self-centric world of Instagram accounts and endless selfies promoting perfect bodies and a jet-set lifestyle at the cost of true happiness. People have lost sight of what truly matters in a relationship; love, presence, just being there for each other as a family. The modern woman is screaming in pain: “Please, will someone take care of me, too? My needs… Or is this world gone deaf to another soul’s agony?”
What women want out of a relationship is a man who protects her from emotional hurt and takes care of her basic needs. She doesn’t want gold and diamonds, what she needs is to trust someone to be there for her everyday life. Someone safe to turn to, a reliable man to carry the responsibilities required of a husband and a father. He is a man who feels honored by the role of a husband, not burdened by it. He doesn’t run from his responsibilities but stands firm between the world and his family, always strong and reliable.
She, on the other hand, provides him with love and care. She is his reward for being a real man, they are each others’ pride and joy. She simply wants someone to stick around, she isn’t asking for huge muscles, a chiseled chin, or a full head of hair, all she wants is someone reliable to share her life with. She doesn’t really want a hero, either, just someone to lock the doors at night before bedtime, someone to be there for her and their children.
All she truly asks for is to be seen as the mother of his (future) children, not as some sex bomb with no opinions of her own. She doesn’t want to have to walk around in sexy clothes just to keep him interested in staying, nor does she want to worry about extra pounds of weight that she might collect over the years.
When they are dating, she is turned on by his protectiveness, his quiet and strong manner, and is impressed by his friendly and personable behavior toward her friends. If he would be able to help out her family or friends in any small way, she couldn’t be more proud of him.
He should be introduced to her family before they get too serious, just to get their blessing. Her family must love him, his family must love her because nobody is truly dating for themselves alone, but for their entire family. Marriage combines families together, and such matters must be addressed when dating someone. People marry for their parents and their friends, and harmony must be preserved when introducing new people to a family.
He’ll charm her friends by simply being in their company at times, before understandingly making his exit to meet up with his own friends. Modern women do not want a man to be too clingy, but to have his own friends — preferably not spending every night at the pub, tho, and hopefully not being too much of a stranger to it, either — given that would be a little too pious for today’s standards! One must maintain certain respect in the community, but then again forgiveness is a beautiful thing! At the end of the day, what holds them together is the stick together -attitude, and there’s really NOTHING that could pull them apart! That is why they need the support of the entire family to ensure they stay strong together.
Relationships are much a decision to stay together, and although they both understand that the community’s respect is important, they’d forgive each other ANYTHING, and they’d stick together no matter what. They see relationships as a ‘till death do us part deal, and… Sometimes, rocking the boat is simply fun, telling the truth! Do not set the goals too high to be stressful, but a little boat rocking keeps things fresh and exciting!
Together, they will build a life together, set up a house and a home for their children to grow up in. Add a dog in the yard for extra romance points, but let’s face it — some things add a little too much for the real-life workload. She prefers things traditional enough but simple, and he appreciates her natural ability to keep their home looking nice. However, she will love him for his understanding when the kids make it impossible for her to keep up with her usual home-making standards. Of course, a modern man won’t run from the vacuum cleaner, even though a modern woman can still run from a drill!
Whether she works out of the house or is a stay-at-home mom, her dream come true would be to work together with her husband, side-by-side in a family-owned business. Neither one truly cares what line of business it would be, these are things to negotiate on. It is simply a question of which one of them has the better idea, and both would love to team up and make that into a mutually shared business, as a family.
Some may say they are “too suburbian”, but they love their life meeting friends and family for home-cooked meals and barbeque parties. They love to be surrounded by the people they love, their children, and perhaps a few good, well-acquainted neighbors who understand their way of life. They don’t really want unpleasantness into their lives, there’s truly no need for it, but whatever rebellious teenager they need to raise together, they can rise to the challenge, together as a couple, and as a family.
But idyllic as all this may sound, they are not without the ability to fight for their own space in the family unit. They love to have a good battle here and there, both standing firm to their stance until it’s established who gets the crown this time. They don’t like people who dilly-dally around things and who can’t fight for what they want — how else would you ensure everyone gets their way in a family…? Everyone, well, at least the head of the house, that is!
Not too traditional to believe in female leadership, they do need to establish who rules the rooster in the house, him or her, and they both feel more comfortable knowing which one knows how to do things best. It is difficult to combine the lives of two adult people as it is, so knowing who is the leader helps matters there. Whoever is the second in charge, would do wisely to challenge the leadership with the tough questions every now and again, not to leave the leader alone in their position — while respecting their decisions in the end.
If you believe this is the way relationships should be, please comment. Raise your voice to explain the lost values to those who don’t appreciate your way of thinking. If you are too much of an individual for this, do express how we can help you become a better person.
I joined to Medium today and realized it will require you to have a premium account to read posts on here. I find it unfair and I am not doing this for money. Therefore, I started my own blog instead. I hope you understand my intention is to help, not to tout my own horn. | https://medium.com/@auntie-emma/what-silly-romance-movies-forget-to-mention-about-real-romance-c8f3b8f32fa7 | ['Auntie Emma'] | 2021-07-15 09:01:00.739000+00:00 | ['Romance', 'Marriage', 'Wedding', 'Dating', 'Family'] |
Environmental Considerations During Demolition By Brian Marshall | Demolition may not necessarily mean knocking down the whole building. It may include bringing down walls, rooting out floors, or tearing ceilings. The demolition process releases debris, dust, and other hazardous materials. As a result, they enter the environment and pollute the atmosphere around us. A professional demolition service provider like the crew of Pherian has all the latest tools and technologies. They put the right technique to manage the demolition of the structure safely. Also, they follow all the safety norms and legal parameters. The incorrect use of demolition tools and unsafe sites can cause unplanned collapse of the structure, injuries, and health risks. The demolishers should take care of things like noise, dust, vibrations, toxic exposure, etc. They should not leave any evidence after completion.
Things We Should Take Care Of
Safety should be a prior consideration
Demolition waste forms a major portion of industrial waste. To clarify, demolition waste is heterogeneous. The waste extracted from demolition sites contains a large amount of building materials. Along with this, it also contains a small amount of hazardous substances. To prevent pollution, proper demolition techniques should be used. Before starting demolition work, cloth shields and site covers should be placed. This prevents environmental exposure to dust and debris. These points draw a fine line between wrong and professional demolition services.
The After-Math
The environmental considerations of demolition also include the post-demolition process along with the core process of demolition. This consists of dumping of demolition waste. Usually, demolition waste is dumped into landfills. Although, it can also be sold to construction companies to reuse it. The rest of the waste is broken down and used again in the construction process for laying bases. This is better than duping the waste into landfills. But while we talk about environmental considerations, we should also take care of the transportation of waste. We should transport the waste safely from one site to another. During transit, the demolition crew should cover the waste debris and other material to prevent pollution.
Well planned demolition must consider environment too
Safety measures carried out in every step can make demolition a safer and less harmful process. Also, the crew can extract out useful materials like steel, solid pipes, etc. as whole pieces for reuse before discarding the waste. This can reduce the waste going to the landfills.
Statistics:
In 2018, the land and people of the United States generated 600 million tons of construction and demolition waste debris. Out of this, demolition waste constitutes 90 percent, while the contribution of construction is just 10 percent. From these 600 million tons, the USA directed over 455 million tons of debris towards the next use and sent around 145 million tons to landfills.
Conclusion/Takeaway:
Greetings! This is Brian Marshall, owner of Pherian LLC situated in Tampa, Florida. I was born and bred in America that this country decisively believes in providing progressive and transitional services. Being a part of this transition, I have been into the construction, demolition, and remediation business for years. I realize that the environment is already taking a considerable amount of dangerous toxins. Thinking about those that might be released from a standard building demolition, is startling. So, if you are unsure about the demolition service, contact us.
Greetings! This is Brian Marshall, owner of Pherian LLC situated in Tampa, Florida. I was born and bred in America that this country decisively believes in providing progressive and transitional services. Being a part of this transition, I have been into the construction, demolition, and remediation business for years. I realize that the environment is already taking a considerable amount of dangerous toxins. Thinking about those that might be released from a standard building demolition, is startling. So, if you are unsure about the demolition service, contact us. | https://medium.com/@brianmarshall-tampa/environmental-considerations-during-demolition-by-brian-marshall-66fc9308ccc6 | ['Brian Marshall Tampa'] | 2020-12-29 09:29:19.622000+00:00 | ['Florida', 'Brian Marshall Tampa', 'Environment', 'Demolition', 'Safety'] |
People + Drive = Thrive. Every business and organisation is… | The Key Formula For Business Success
Every business is unique
However every business relies on its people to drive results
So, if every business relies on its people for success, why aren’t all organisations developing more innovators and creative thinkers?
The phenomenal pace of change through the availability of new technologies continues to disrupt the competitive landscape
Slowly, more and more companies are recognising that, if they are to survive in today’s rapidly changing environment, they must nurture their greatest asset (their people) and create agile cultures accepting of new ways of thinking and digital solutions
Without an engaged and effective workforce who are capable of driving change, suboptimal results will continue
Companies must act fast if they are to avoid being usurped by agile newbies
For those organisations slow to respond (or worse, languish in inertia) they will inevitably fail at some point in the future, swallowed up or left behind by the growth of smaller, more tech savvy competitors, who have at their core empowered individuals capitalising on the latest market changing technologies
Employees must be equipped with the tools to bring change to life effectively, to collaborate with ease and seize opportunities at speed
Sustained growth does not happen by accident
Exceptional results do not happen by accident
Collaboration toward a common vision does not happen by accident
These are the outputs of great teams who have learned and implemented the vital skills needed to succeed in today’s evolving business world
Just imagine an organisation where individuals understand how to interact effectively with their virtual and non-virtual peers, confidently harnessing the power of new technologies and embracing each step change
Where each team member is clear on goals and expectations, and how their contribution impacts the delivery of the overall vision
The organisations who invest time, money and energy in developing cohesive and high performing teams who support the development of new ideas and automation will always outperform their competition
Creativity, effective collaboration and the relentless pursuit for better ways of working set great organisations apart from the mediocre
People — Drive = Survive
People + Drive = Thrive | https://medium.com/@jomcdowall1/people-drive-thrive-bc164202e1f0 | ['Jo Mcdowall', 'The Mindful Leader'] | 2020-07-21 13:35:36.779000+00:00 | ['Digital', 'Engagement', 'Leading Change', 'Change Leadership', 'People Development'] |
Why Are Women Still Behind in the Design World? | Fifty-three percent of all graphic designers are women, but only 11% of creative directors are women. We know what you’re thinking: That’s it? 11%? You’re joking. But it’s true. It’s perfectly plausible that a female graphic designer might never work under a female creative director. In fact, 70% of young female creatives say they have never worked under a female creative director.
But does it really matter if your CD is male or female? After all, your boss might never be your favorite person in the world, so does it make a difference if they look like you?
It does. Women in graphic design who have worked for women — like Abbey Kuster-Prokell, creative director at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and Claire Fraze, senior art director at Swift Agency — told us exactly how valuable that experience can be.
“Over the course of my career, I’ve made a conscious effort to only work for strong, uber-talented women,” Kuster-Prokell said. “In most of these roles, I didn’t make as much as some of my friends, but I valued the experience more. Not to discredit my time with male CDs, but it’s the female CDs who have helped to shape not only my career, but who I am.”
“I was a decade into my career before ever experiencing female leadership,” said Fraze. “When I was finally lucky enough to work under an incredible female CD, my self-confidence and growth just skyrocketed. She challenged me as much as she encouraged me and took the time to figure out what motivated me in a way I had not experienced previously.”
Sydney Wisner, founder of the Portland chapter of Ladies, Wine & Design, thinks that cycle of male domination in the industry has been tough to break because of natural biases in hiring.
“Men — yeah, not all men, but that’s not my point — are often intimidated by women with power and women with strong voices and opinions, which means in the hiring process, they are more likely to choose someone who is more agreeable and shares similar values,” Wisner said. “This candidate often ends up being another man, making it nearly impossible for women to climb career ladders all the way to the top.”
Women influence upwards of 80% of consumer spending and 60% of social media sharing. But, if you’ll recall, they only hold 11% of the leadership jobs in graphic design. With 89% of teams being led by men, how can we expect content to accurately represent women — the ones who are the largest influencers of spending and media sharing?
Wisner says, intuitively, that no one knows how to market to women better than women. “If companies really want to be setting themselves up for success,” she said, “they would be putting more relatable people in leadership positions.”
Wisner cites an example of an inspiring company with female leadership: Bumble. Founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd, Bumble puts women first by putting online dating in their hands — only the female in a heterosexual match can initiate a conversation. The app goes above and beyond to make dating a safe space for women.
“Do you think those values would have been installed if Bumble was run by a man?” Wisner asked. “No, it would be another Tinder.”
The typical woman working as a designer earns $44,564 a year, just 73% of the median income of $60,944 for men in the profession. How is that large a pay gap still possible? Can any of these smart women designers help us understand — and if it can’t be explained, can we just get pissed off about it?
“I think women are conditioned not to ask for more — that it would seem greedy or presumptuous,” said Meg Vazquez, creative director at Splice. “My friends in the industry and I are all incredibly open with each other about our experiences asking for raises or title changes, and it’s helped me be so much more comfortable advocating for myself. You’re your best advocate; you can’t trust that anyone else will go to bat for you.”
Fraze added, “It is so disheartening (and enraging) to think that our work, our process, our ideas, our inspiration, and every other thing we give to our work is worth less just because of our gender alone.”
Studies show many women won’t apply for a role until they meet 100% of the hiring criteria, while men will apply with only 50% met. Betti Iannucci, VP of design at Bloomingdale’s, thinks this difference in confidence, specifically a lack of it for women, is culturally induced.
“Men seem to grasp for more even if their reach is not so broad. They try,” Iannucci said. “Women tend to be more constrained in their thinking. It’s an attitude. Which one is right? I think there is learning to do on both sides. Many people get the job and many fail the role they fought so hard for.”
“It’s an advantage to completely meet the criteria for a job listing. That’s the long game,” said Angi Arrington, creative director at Watson Creative. “Frauds are exposed, one way or another. True confidence comes from deep preparation, investment, research, and refinement. True confidence is earned. It can’t be faked. Anything less is bad business. And bad businesses eventually sink.”
“I think it again comes down to societal conditioning,” Vazquez said. “Women and people of color have to work so much harder than the next person to be seen as competent. Because of this I think we’re less likely to apply for positions that we might not think we’re a perfect match for. I remind myself that I should always be punching above my weight class because the person before or after me is definitely doing the same.”
Let’s recap
Women get paid less for the same work and get hired less often for leadership positions, even though they make the majority of consumer decisions. Now you’re going to say there’s nothing we can do about it?
Uh, no. In fact, it’s up to us to step up.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think women do themselves any favors trying to be more like men,” Arrington says. “I say double down on being a woman.” | https://modus.medium.com/why-are-women-still-behind-in-the-design-world-5eb3b56c43f5 | ['Olivia Brown'] | 2020-01-28 16:31:01.221000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Women In Design', 'Workplace Equality', 'Design', 'Career'] |
6E. EUR/USD. 8 JUNE. | Buying scenario in this case is as follows: the nearest support at 1.2177 is held, there are no sales at Monday’s POC (1.2195), the price rotates under the level and then breaks it up. The price goes to 1.2213 and and maybe to 1.2228, though probably Tuesday’s potential is only at 1.2213.
The selling scenario is as follows: the POC of Monday (1.2195) is held, the selling takes place there and the price goes to 1.2167, 1.2160 and 1.2150. The target should be chosen on the basis of the price movement dynamics and the reaction at these levels. Certainly the price can go straight down without entering the POC, but we are not interested in such a scenario, because we want to enter at a maximum profitable price.
*For the pros only* If 1.2177 is held up, if 1.2195 is not sold, and there is a volume in the area between these levels, which the price will hold above, you can carefully buy with the target of 1.2213. In principle, you can try to buy now at 1.2177 with a very short stop and if the price goes up to 1.2195, put the stop to lossless. But this is a gamble, I will not give any official buy signals today, as we are too high.
We sell at 1.2195, if the level will be held and the buying strength will be exhausted, with the aim of 1.2167
Sell at 1.2213 and at 1.2228 with a target of 1.2195
Buy at 1.2133 with the target 1.2160 | https://medium.com/@markethacker/6e-eur-usd-8-june-95a58b38fdce | ['Market Hacker'] | 2021-06-08 05:30:10.895000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Eurusd', 'Forex', 'Invest', 'Futures Trading'] |
Introduction to PyMC3: A Python package for probabilistic programming | Introduction
We often hear something like this on weather forecast programs: the chance of raining tomorrow is 80%. What does that mean? It is often hard to give meaning to this kind of statement, especially from a frequentist perspective: there is no reasonable way to repeat the raining/not raining experiment an infinite (or very big) number of times.
The Bayesian approach provides a solution for this type of statement. The following sentence, taken from the book Probabilistic Programming & Bayesian Methods for Hackers, perfectly summarizes one of the key ideas of the Bayesian perspective.
The Bayesian world-view interprets probability as measure of believability in an event, that is, how confident we are in an event occurring.
In other words, in the Bayesian approach, we can never be absolutely sure about our *beliefs*, but can definitely say how confident we are about the relevant events. Furthermore, as more data is collected, we can become more confident about our beliefs.
As a scientist, I am trained to believe in the data and always be critical about almost everything. Naturally, I find Bayesian inference to be rather intuitive.
However, it is often computationally and conceptually challenging to work with Bayesian inference. Often, a lot of long and complicated mathematical computations are required to get things done. Even as a mathematician, I occasionally find these computations tedious; especially when I need a quick overview of the problem that I want to solve.
Luckily, my mentor Austin Rochford recently introduced me to a wonderful package called PyMC3 that allows us to do numerical Bayesian inference. In this article, I will give a quick introduction to PyMC3 through a concrete example.
A concrete example
Let’s assume that we have a coin. We flip it three times and the result is:
[0, 1, 1]
where 0 means that the coin lands in a tail and 1 means that the coin lands in a head. Are we confident in saying that this is a fair coin? In other words, if we let θ be the probability that the coin will return the head, is the evidence strong enough to support the statement that θ=12?
Well, as we do not know anything about the coin other than the result of the above experiment, it is hard to say anything for sure. From the frequentist-perspective, a point estimation for θ would be
While this number makes sense, the frequentist approach does not really provide a certain level of confidence about it. In particular, if we do more trials, we are likely to get different point estimations for θ.
This is where the Bayesian approach could offer some improvement. The idea is simple, as we do not know anything about θ, we can assume that θ could be any value on [0,1]. Mathematically, our prior belief is that θ follows a Uniform(0,1) distribution. For those who need a refresh in maths, the pdf of Uniform(0,1) is given by
We can then use evidence/our observations to update our belief about the distribution of θ.
Let us formally call D to be the evidence (in our case, it is the result of our coin toss.) By the Bayesian rule, the posterior distribution is computed by
where p(D|θ) is the likelihood function, p(θ) is the prior distribution (Uniform(0,1) in this case.) There are two ways to go from here.
The explicit approach
In this particular example, we can do everything by hand. More precisely, given θ, the probability that we get 2 heads out of three coin tosses is given by
By assumption, p(θ)=1. Next, we evaluate the dominator
By some simple algebra, we can see that the above integral is equal to 1/4 and hence
Remark: By the same computation, we can also see that if the prior distribution of θ is a Beta distribution with parameters α,β, i.e p(θ)=B(α,β), and the sample size is N with k of them are head, then the posterior distribution of θ is given by B(α+k,β+N−k). In our case, α=β=1,N=3,k=2.
The numerical approach
In the explicit approach, we are able to explicitly compute the posterior distribution of θ by using conjugate priors. However, sometimes conjugate priors are used for computational simplicity and they might not reflect the reality. Furthermore, it is not always feasible to find conjugate priors.
We can overcome this problem by using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to approximate the posterior distributions. The math here is pretty beautiful but for the sole purpose of this article, we will not dive into it. Instead, we will explain how to implement this method using PyMC3.
To run our codes, we import the following packages.
import pymc3 as pm
import scipy.stats as stats
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
%matplotlib inline
from IPython.core.pylabtools import figsize
First, we need to initiate the prior distribution for θ. In PyMC3, we can do so by the following lines of code.
with pm.Model() as model:
theta=pm.Uniform('theta', lower=0, upper=1)
We then fit our model with the observed data. This can be done by the following lines of code.
occurrences=np.array([1,1,0]) #our observation
with model:
obs=pm.Bernoulli("obs", p, observed=occurrences) #input the observations
step=pm.Metropolis()
trace=pm.sample(18000, step=step)
burned_trace=trace[1000:]
Internally, PyMC3 uses the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm to approximate the posterior distribution. The trace function determines the number of samples withdrawn from the posterior distribution. Finally, as the algorithm might be unstable at the beginning, it is useful to only withdraw samples after a certain period of iterations. That is the purpose of the last line in our code.
We can then plot the histogram of our samples obtained from the posterior distribution and compare it with the true density function.
from IPython.core.pylabtools import figsize
p_true=0.5
figsize(12.5, 4)
plt.title(r"Posterior distribution of $\theta$")
plt.vlines(p_true,0, 2, linestyle='--', label=r"true $\theta$ (unknown)", color='red')
plt.hist(burned_trace["theta"], bins=25, histtype='stepfilled', density=True, color='#348ABD')
x=np.arange(0,1.04,0.04)
plt.plot(x, 12*x*x*(1-x), color='black')
plt.legend()
plt.show()
As we can clearly see, the numerical approximation is pretty close to the true posterior distribution.
What happens if we increase the sample size?
As we mentioned earlier, the more data we get, the more confident we are about the true value of θ. Let us test our hypothesis by a simple simulation.
We will randomly toss a coin 1000 times. We then use PyMC3 to approximate the posterior distribution of θ. We then plot the histogram of samples obtained from this distribution. All of these steps can be done by the following lines of code
N=1000 #the number of samples
occurences=np.random.binomial(1, p=0.5, size=N)
k=occurences.sum() #the number of head #fit the observed data
with pm.Model() as model1:
theta=pm.Uniform('theta', lower=0, upper=1) with model1:
obs=pm.Bernoulli("obs", theta, observed=occurrences)
step=pm.Metropolis()
trace=pm.sample(18000, step=step)
burned_trace1=trace[1000:]
#plot the posterior distribution of theta. p_true=0.5
figsize(12.5, 4)
plt.title(r"Posterior distribution of $\theta for sample size N=1000$")
plt.vlines(p_true,0, 25, linestyle='--', label="true $\theta$ (unknown)", color='red')
plt.hist(burned_trace1["theta"], bins=25, histtype='stepfilled', density=True, color='#348ABD')
plt.legend()
plt.show()
Here is what we get.
As we can see, the posterior distribution is now centered around the true value of θ.
We can estimate θ by taking the mean of our samples.
burned_trace1['theta'].mean() 0.4997847718651745
We see that this is really close to the true answer.
Conclusion
As we can see, PyMC3 performs statistical inference tasks pretty well. Furthermore, it makes probabilistic programming rather painless.
References.
[1] https://github.com/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabilistic-Programming-and-Bayesian-Methods-for-Hackers | https://towardsdatascience.com/introduction-to-pymc3-a-python-package-for-probabilistic-programming-5299278b428 | ['Tung T. Nguyen'] | 2020-08-31 16:37:36.040000+00:00 | ['Pymc3', 'Markov Chain Monte Carlo', 'Probabilistic Programming'] |
California May Become First State to Require Public Universities to Stock Abortion Pills | California May Become First State to Require Public Universities to Stock Abortion Pills
A new California bill would make the state the first to require that all public universities make abortion pills available at student health centers. The bill has already been approved by the state Senate and is currently on its way to the state Assembly. If the bill passes, all California State Universities and University of California campuses would have to carry and offer the abortion pills by January 1, 2022.
College health centers typically offer a wide range of services including immunizations, contraception, mental health services, x-rays, dental and optical services among others. Health center offerings can vary campus to campus as well, with some offering IUD insertions and others not.
Is there sufficient access to abortion pills on student campuses?
One of the organizers behind the bill is Adiba Khan who told CalMatters she helped launch the campaign for the bill after several of her classmates at UC Berkley had trouble obtaining the pills which must be taken during the first ten weeks of pregnancy. After ten weeks, a pill is no longer an option, and more medically invasive procedures are necessary to complete an abortion.
“Most people don’t find out that they’re pregnant until five, six weeks in, so that’s a really short time crunch,” said Khan, who added that often students have to wait a week or more to get an appointment at student health centers.
“Students at UCLA and Berkeley still experience a bad time so just imagine students who are in more secluded areas,” she said. “They have to go through an insane battle to be able to get an abortion.”
While supporters of the bill claim it’s necessary to ensure women’s constitutional rights to abortion pills are not denied simply because of a lack of access, opponents of the bill argue access is not a problem.
“The abortion industry strategically places their facilities close to young women, that demographic, and of course close to universities,” said Anna Arend, Northern California regional coordinator of Students for Life of America, which opposes the bill. “There really is no issue of access. It’s a made-up problem.”
“It’s necessary because it’s a constitutionally protected right, but just because it’s a constitutionally protected right does not mean you have access,” countered state Sen. Connie Leyva who authored the bill.
CalMatters reported that while UC Santa Cruz is only two miles from a Planned Parenthood, UC Davis is over 11 miles away from an abortion-providing clinic. San Diego State is one mile away from a clinic, while CSU Stanislaus is over 14 miles away from a clinic.
Private funding would support the abortion pill initiative.
Funding for the first year of the project will be provided by donations from the Women’s Foundation of California. Private donors and major health advocacy groups have provided the foundation with up to $20 million to fund the service for the first year. The foundation intends to provide both UC and CSU with $200,000 each, and $200,000 to each campus in their system.
It is expected that the funding will be deployed to train campus healthcare providers how to prescribe abortion pills and bill health insurers for the service. Levya said by the second year campuses will be able to cover the costs of the program via insurance reimbursements. | https://medium.com/citizen-truth/california-may-become-first-state-to-require-public-universities-to-stock-abortion-pills-360f97706950 | ['Citizen Truth Staff'] | 2018-08-20 14:17:15.398000+00:00 | ['Abortion For Students', 'Abortion Pills', 'College', 'Abortion Rights', 'Abortion'] |
4 แนวทางช่วย Focus | Experience designer who passion in exploring new business model, new value proposition that will truly become the new innovation | https://medium.com/@pawit-n/4-%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%8A%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%A2-focus-29a16c3d9ceb | ['Pawit Nopparuch'] | 2020-12-24 15:48:42.887000+00:00 | ['Focus', 'Time Management'] |
Deus Absconditus et Otiosa — Atheism, Modernism, Mormonism | “People readily swallow the untested claims of this, that, or the other. It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition. It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there’s a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an omen, and a cat is a mystery, and a pig is a mascot, and a beetle is a scarab, calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India; Dog Anubis and great green-eyed Pasht and all the holy howling Bulls of Bashan; reeling back to the bestial gods of the beginning, escaping into elephants and snakes and crocodiles; and all because you are frightened of four words: He was made Man.” — G. K. Chesterton, The Complete Father Brown Stories (Wordsworth Editions, 2006), 394–395
Before proceeding, it is most important to define one’s terms: in this case, modernism and atheism.
In The True Life, Alain Badiou describes modernity’s dramatic evaporation of the social structures which gave order to the life of the West. The two respective events, according to Badiou, which transitioned boys to men and girls to women were military conscription for males and marriage and childbearing for women. This system held for centuries, if not longer, with obvious strains and flaws: for instance, a woman who had a child out of wedlock had no place in the symbolic order of her society and was thus either exiled, abused, or otherwise disregarded. Conscientious objectors may be something of an equivalent among men. The fact that these individuals were seen as anomalies or threats to the stability of society only serves to emphasize how strongly these institutions were rooted in the cultural soil of the West.
These structures have, by and large, since evaporated, with strange results, according to Badiou. The military and marriage were tantamount to initiation or coming-of-age rituals, signaling to not only society at large but to the participating individual that the latter had transitioned from childhood to adulthood and should thus be treated as such. Thus with the dissolution of these structures comes an odd dissolution of any concrete moment in which a boy may become a man or a girl may become a woman in secular society. Considering this neither a negative nor a positive, Badiou only observes that with the blurring of a previously defined society comes the contemporary sense of being adrift — modernism’s lack of identity, belonging, or purpose. According to Badiou, males are no longer required to enter the military, meaning there is no moment in which they are granted the status of manhood by their culture, leading to a kind of Lost Boys-like perpetual youth; likewise, for females, with the rise of sexual liberation and the decline in frequency of traditional monogamy, girls are seen as always already women, always conferred womanhood and thus never experiencing childhood. Even if one denies Badiou’s division of results among males and females, one cannot deny the modernist experience: the structures of traditional pre-modern societies have mostly collapsed, to the point that they are largely no longer viewed as mandatory, opening up a space of freedom. But not only freedom, but a freedom so absolute that it leads to a kind of existential vertigo. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” writes Søren Kierkegaard; in more modern terms, you can be absolutely anything, and thus all options are equally relevant or desirable, and thus, paralyzed by options and unable to choose, you become nothing really.
Friedrich Nietzsche described a similar phenomenon in The Gay Science, wherein a madman rushes into the city and cries out:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” — Section 125, trans. Walter Kaufmann
The crowd laughs at the fool, until he runs into a church to pray; afterward, the crowd continues their business. Often the most focus is given to the madman who cries “God is dead,” yet little attention is given to his additional point that “we [ourselves] have killed him,” and almost no attention is paid to his conclusion that “we ourselves [must] become gods simply to appear worthy of it.” The point is not simply that traditional religion or theism has mostly died out and that some people simply cannot accept its end, but that the symbolic order which rendered the cosmos itself intelligible and thus manageable for believers has collapsed. Moderns, according to Nietzsche, have generally responded to this collapse in one of two ways: the first is that of the madman, hopeless nostalgic who can only weep at the grave of God; the second, however, is that of the crowd, who meander through the streets with no destination or purpose.
This is Nietzsche’s atheism, properly defined. Rather than to simply say “there is no God,” as if such a phrase were at all self-explanatory, atheism is pure negation — a-theism, the negation or rejection of theism, or normative religion. Atheism need not foreclose on the mythological, or even the supernatural per se, but is instead a negation of the traditional religions that have structured Western societies for the past millennium or more. This is what Nietzsche means when he insists that the world has slipped into nihilism: not that the world has simply sloughed off old superstitions, but that it has broken out of its previous pre-defined patterns of thought and behavior into a dizzying openness; and in that open void, there is no alternative structure waiting to replace the former failed system. Because atheism is simply negation, it has no positive descriptors to add; subtracting theism, it does not then become a religion of its own, but the mere absence thereof. This absence thus begs the question: what, if anything, may come after the death of God?
Modernism and atheism, far from tragedy or triumph, are purely neutral events — perhaps much like the passage from childhood to adulthood — yet that is not to say that they mean nothing. Rather, together, they are the guardians at the gate who open for twenty-first century societies and individuals a world of inexhaustible inexplicability and absolute freedom — which may be two ways of saying the same thing.
Mormonism, too, has not escaped this seismic transition. According to Jana Riess’ The Next Mormons, though the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or LDS Church) has maintained a relatively higher retention rate among its youth relative to other American denominations, youths (gen-X, millennials, gen-Z) are still disaffiliating from the LDS Church at a progressively increasing rate. Opinions also continue to shift from older to younger generations within Mormon culture concerning sex, gender, and sexuality; reliance upon organized religion, authority figures, and hierarchy; certainty concerning doctrines and traditional practices — among other things.
Furthermore, similar shifts into this realm of inexplicability and freedom punctuate Mormon history. After the assassination of Joseph Smith, Mormonism’s founder, Mormonism as a whole threatened to disintegrate as Smith’s followers broke into a number of factions in the greatest succession crisis the Mormon movement has since experienced. Contrary to the views of devout members of any Mormon denomination, and though most surviving Mormons followed Brigham Young to Utah (in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), the initial succession crisis which led to this fragmentation was not simply brought on by the opportunism or narcissism of a few of Smith’s surviving contemporaries. Smith’s sudden murder — foreseen (if at all) by only perhaps a few days, maybe weeks — left no opportunity for him to put into place a definite apparatus to determine who would succeed him. The event of Smith’s death led the Mormons into an undefined space, from which they emerged with a number of contradictory arrangements. This same experience has reoccurred within various Mormon denominations, such as when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ceased plural marriage, when the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ) transitioned to leaders not directly descended from the Smith family, or when the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints witnessed Warren Jeffs’ arrest and imprisonment. Each moment was the dissolution of a previous organizing principle, leading to an open space of possibility, from which emerged not simply one triumphant progression but numerous varying developments.
The least controversial statement one could make about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon denomination with which I identify) is that the majority of its American members err on the side of a general conservatism — politically, socially, economically, etc. Though this is by no means universal among American Mormons, and of course says nothing of the non-American majority of Latter-day Saints, this datum may nonetheless indicate how many modern Mormons have responded to the advent of modernism and atheism: opting for the role of the madman weeping at God’s grave rather than that of the aimless drifters in the streets. Among Latter-day Saints of this persuasion, much of the non-Mormon world and even Mormon culture (especially the elements which contradict or conflict with traditional Mormonism) are usually experienced as the “wickedness of the world” and the “influence of the Adversary” — a broadly conservative perspective with obvious theological effects. However, given that this general conservatism is more of a persona — or even a caricature — of the genuine diversity of Latter-day Saints, within and beyond the LDS Church, one wonders if Mormon culture might have other options in considering how to respond to the questions of modernism and atheism. More pointedly, what would come of Latter-day Saints leaning into this inexplicability and freedom rather than resisting it? What may come of a plural marriage of atheism, modernism, and Mormonism?
One may begin by stating that all human discourse and understanding is ultimately bound by perspective: one experiences nothing that is not mediated through their own nervous system, complied and interpreted by their own brain — experience is most fundamentally subjective. With this in mind, anything one may say, even theologically, will run the risk of being a superficial reification of their own internal lives, a projection of their psychological state onto the universe. For this reason, perhaps one may attempt to reverse the causal flow; rather than speaking theologically about the universe, one may attempt to speak theologically about oneself and their own subjective experience. In this sense, to speak theologically, even in a particularly Mormon context, would be to describe back to oneself and others their present modernist, atheist experience — the experience of feeling the structures which once provided them with order, identity, purpose, and belonging whittle away against the flint wheel of impermanent reality. What is it like to be a Mormon who is, whether they may realize it, already a modernist and an atheist?
In The Phenomenology of Spirit, G.W.F. Hegel describes this subjectivity, positing that “everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject” (trans. A. V. Miller). For Hegel, subjective experience — one’s conscious experience as an individual person — was central and paramount to his philosophy. However, nearly since its publication in 1807, Hegel’s Phenomenology has been — according to some of his latest interpreters — woefully misread.
To understand this misreading, one must turn to Immanuel Kant. Kant’s contribution to Western philosophy was his distinction between a “thing-as-appearance” and a “thing-in-itself”; in other words, Kant described the human subject’s inherent inability to grasp reality in itself, and therefore their reliance upon the limited representations their mind can produce of this or that narrow selection of reality. Ultimately, Kant’s distinction between these two categories is a distinction between two forms of knowing: to believe one possesses the “thing-in-itself” is to deceive oneself into believing one has perceived objective reality, that one’s knowledge is certain and unquestionable; and to understand that one possesses only a “thing-as-appearance,” or a diluted representation of the thing itself, is to recognize the limitations of one’s perceptions, and to scrutinize one’s understanding. The former naively assumes they simply see the world “as it is,” while the latter recognizes that they see the world only “as they are,” mediated by the narrow filter of their senses and mental faculties.
Arthur Schopenhauer, a passionate student of Kant, articulated this view further in The World as Will and Representation. Schopenhauer recognized that the human nervous system can only absorb so much sensory data from the world around it, which the brain then compiles into a working simulation (a virtual reality, if you will) in which the subject lives, moves, and has their very being, so to speak. In other words, Schopenhauer recognized some of the consequences of the fact that the human subject only experiences the “thing-as-appearance” (Vorstellung), never truly accessing the “thing-in-itself” (Wille). He was also a sharp critic of Hegel, the former believing the latter had either misunderstood or outright rejected Kant, describing Hegel’s work as a “pseudo-philosophy” audaciously attempting “to comprehend the history of the world as a planned whole” (Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, vol. 2, trans. E. F. J. Payne [Dover, 1966], 442). According to Schopenhauer, in describing “grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject,” Hegel was subscribing to the very epistemological certainty — the naïve belief in access to the “thing-in-itself” — which Kant had critiqued. Worse yet, he claimed, Hegel had made not only an epistemological statement, but an ontological one: the human subject could perceive any and all things, even things not directly present, as in the pre-Kantian metaphysics of Reason, which could deduce the mysteries of the universe from a contemplative distance alone. And thus for the following two centuries, most commentators read a kind of “amputated” Hegel, to use Todd McGowan’s term: attempting to rescue Hegel from his own apparently embarrassing ontology, numerous commentators reduced him to a philosopher of epistemology or anthropology merely. For nearly 200 years Hegel has been read as a commentator on subjectivity alone, his statements on Being itself having been subtracted.
However, as recently as 1989, with the English publication of The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Zizek has begun a bold re-reading of Hegel — or, perhaps more accurately, a more faithful interpretation of Hegel’s original intent. According to Zizek, Hegel’s equivocation of subjectivity and substance is not a rejection of Kant, but a faithful tracing out of the consequences of Kant’s work. As Kant and Schopenhauer proposed, and as Zizek insists Hegel believed, one never experiences reality-in-itself, only narrow representations thereof; like Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, the subject, a field of consciousness, is a polished surface reflecting back (in warped fashion) its immediate surroundings. In Hegel, subjectivity is experienced as a kind of contradiction between oneself and the external world. Similar to Schopenhauer, Hegel recognizes that the human mind can only represent a narrow portion of its external world back to itself and others. One may compare this limited subjectivity or consciousness to cartography: one explores a given terrain, then distills that experience into a map. The map and the terrain are not the same, and sometimes they can even contradict one another. In this sense, a conscious subject in the world is like a map of the United States hanging on a wall somewhere in the United States. And because consciousness and reality, like a map and its terrain, can be disjointed and out of sync with one another, subjectivity possesses an inherent division or internal fracture — a contradiction. Hegel’s contribution, according to Zizek, was thus not to reject Kant’s epistemology, but to tease out its consequences: if a subject or being arises from and is a part of Being, and if this subject experiences this inherent contradiction within themselves, then something about Being itself must also possess this internal contradiction. What Hegel rejects is not Kantian epistemology but Cartesian dualism, which insists that the human mind is a foreign object in the world. Rather, Hegel proposes, the subject grows out of the world — a being from Being — like a wave from the sea, not inventing this divisive contradiction in its own subjectivity, but bringing with it the division which always already pervades Being itself all the way down. Reality at its most fundamental is fragmented, a contradiction reeling against itself as it continually unfolds into countless different beings and things.
One may read this Hegelian division theologically, as well. In Godhead and the Nothing, Thomas J.J. Altizer proposes that this is in fact the central message of the Christian epic: at the beginning of time, Being — or Godhead, as opposed to God, to use Altizer’s terms — rips itself to pieces in a “primordial sacrifice,” dividing itself in a way which creates not only good but evil, life and death, contentment and horror. Between all things, Altizer states, is an infinite abyss or nihil, the Nothing of Godhead itself, which separates all things: people from themselves, one another, the world — everything. Uniquely, this division is also transposed into God, who also becomes a fragment of the larger Godhead constantly tearing itself to pieces in creation. This primordial sacrifice, eternally ongoing, is recapitulated in various ways by human beings, notably in rituals of division and sacrifice, sometimes even involving the shedding of blood; and ultimately in their own deaths, when they themselves are “ripped to pieces” and cast to the four winds of the world which survives them. In a sense, this is a quasi-Gnostic interpretation of the human condition: while normative Judaism, Christianity, and Islam see Creation and Fall as two distinct events occurring in succession, Gnostic variants of these traditions often describe Creation and Fall as the same event. To be created is to always already be fallen, as, in order to create, Godhead must divide itself from itself.
In the closing chapter of The Puppet and the Dwarf, Zizek describes how deeply this primordial sacrifice or Hegelian contradiction goes by analyzing the narrative of Job, specifically the theological friends who come to “console” him. According to Zizek, Job’s friends represent the typical human response to this fundamental division in themselves and Being itself, and the violence and ignorance (such as their blindness to Job’s profound suffering) which result therefrom. To cope with the chaos of Being, humans construct ideologies through which to interpret the unintelligibility of life: in Job’s case, his friends approach with tightly-defined theological explanations for precisely why he is suffering, and even what he can do to change that; but when Job rejects their explanations, ostensibly “threatening” their existential security, the friends recoil and become enemies, turning on Job. According to Job’s friends, they have simply sought to make sense of the world; in reality, they have sought to explain away the world.
In the end, after Job’s steadfast rejection of his friends’ attempts to explain his suffering by fitting him neatly into their various ideologies, God descends and rejects the explanations offered by Job’s friends, instead endorsing Job himself (cf. Job 42:7). Curiously, however, Job has offered no explanation of his suffering which might compete with the explanations offered by his friends — he has simply rejected any attempt to integrate his experience into their fantasies, ideological or otherwise. However, for Zizek, the question which follows is not so much “how do we cut through fantasy to reality?” but “how does reality produce fantasy at all?”
Following Zizek’s example, one may utilize the three-part psychological structure pioneered by Jacques Lacan of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. Imagine a universe entirely devoid of conscious beings, no one to analyze or evaluate any of its contents — this is the Real. Now plant one conscious human on a desert island in the middle of nowhere, entirely alone, and grant them the discursive thinking natural to a conscious person. They can sense external reality, represent it back to themselves (perception, memory), and respond to those representations (plans) — this is the Imaginary. Add two or three more humans, or a thousand, and together they leverage the Imaginary to create a society and culture with social norms and a status quo, so much so that these collective imaginative structures seem almost as if to take on a life of their own — this is the Symbolic. The Real precedes consciousness and its contents, while the Imaginary is a necessary and involuntary byproduct of consciousness, but the Symbolic is the active principle of consciousness, its attempt to not only perceive but alter its environment — including other conscious subjects who may enter its field of awareness.
In a manner of speaking, while the Real and Imaginary are in themselves natural, the Symbolic is a kind of recoil in response to them, an attempt to beat them back, as it were. The Symbolic is a collective attempt at holding back the trauma of the Real and the Imaginary, whether tragic circumstances or unwanted thoughts and feelings. The Symbolic is the realm of ideology — political, religious, or otherwise — a series of potentially utilitarian fantasies operating by and large unconsciously within the subjects themselves. While the Symbolic is objectively an emergent principle of the Real, the subject typically experiences things the other way around: they believe the Symbolic is an organizing principle around which the Real arranges itself, rather than something the Real itself has produced.
Taking many forms — God, State, Father, Mother; the Big Other guaranteeing meaning and intelligibility — the Symbolic is that element which has largely broken down for the West in the advent of modernity. More precisely, the Symbolic has fractured: once a mostly universal means of structuring one’s experience of the Real, the Symbolic has formed fault lines, delineating nearly irreducible competing factions. These competing factions can be cultural, political, philosophical — any interpretive system, or ideology (to retain Zizek’s term), which creates meaning, order, and manageability in one’s subjective experience. Ideology, unconscious fantasy, is the levee one erects to hold back the traumatic floodwaters of the Real — reality as such. The Symbolic is the theology of Job’s friends, who cannot see the suffering Job for the fact that they are too busy “explaining” him — and one can see myriad correlates throughout the history of Western theism and the institutions of normative religion. Or, to return to Badiou’s examples, one may consider the previously unquestioned and unquestionable customs of military conscription, monogamy, and childbearing, once unconditionally expected of Western society generally. These ideologies are the “God” whose death the madman announces in a panic and which the crowd awkwardly shrugs off. The dreadful point is that the crowd forgets that the Symbolic serves a purpose, while the madman naively presumes the Symbolic is contingent upon something which precedes it — both refuse to face the Real.
For Altizer and Zizek, this tension is illustrated in Jesus Christ, particularly his destitute cry from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34, New Revised Standard Version). In this climax of the crucifixion, God withdrawing from Jesus, one may see modernity itself: the absence of a Big Other to guarantee meaning in one’s suffering, let alone their existence, leaving them in what Zizek calls “the desert of the Real.”
G.K. Chesterton describes this event well:
“When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.” — G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Ignatius, 1995), 145
According to Altizer and Zizek, in proper Hegelian fashion, Christianity extends the contradiction within the subject to God, wherein God becomes alienated from God as any other subject alienated from themselves. In The Monstrosity of Christ, Zizek explains:
“[I]n Freudian-Lacanian terms: Christ is God’s ‘partial object,’ an autonomized organ without a body, as if God picked his eye out of his head and turned it on himself from the outside. We can guess, now, why Hegel insisted on the monstrosity of Christ. “It is therefore crucial to note how the Christian modality of ‘God seeing himself’ has nothing whatsoever to do with the harmonious closed loop of ‘seeing myself seeing,’ of an eye seeing itself and enjoying the sight in this perfect self-mirroring: the turn of the eye toward ‘its’ body presupposes the separation of the eye from the body, and what I see through my externalized/autonomized eye is a perspectival, anamorphically distorted image of myself: Christ is an anamorphosis of God.” — Zizek, Monstrosity of Christ, 82
In this divine absence, or self-division, bereft of a Big Other to guarantee a meaning to his experience (which would ultimately only dissociate him from it), Jesus enters the space of absolute freedom and chooses to lean into the inconvenient and fatal Real. With no Symbolic order gazing over his shoulder, insisting upon or even compelling him to do anything in particular, Jesus may produce an action that is entirely authentically his own — he may receive reality as it is, even in its “antagonism,” and choose for himself how to respond.
Elsewhere in The Monstrosity of Christ, Zizek articulates the ramifications of the crucifixion of Jesus:
“[W]hen people imagine all kinds of deeper meanings [to their experiences] … what really frightens them is that they will lose the transcendent God guaranteeing the meaning of the universe, God as the hidden Master pulling the strings — instead of this, we get a God who abandons this transcendent position and throws himself into his own creation, fully engaging himself in it up to dying, so that we, humans, are left with no higher Power watching over us, just with the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility for the fate of divine creation, and thus of God himself. Are we not still too frightened today to assume all these consequences of the four words [of Chesterton, ‘He was made Man’]? Do those who call themselves ‘Christians’ not prefer to stay with the comfortable image of God sitting up there, benevolently watching over our lives, sending us his son as a token of his love, or, even more comfortably, just with some depersonalized Higher Force? … “Hegel’s underlying premise is that what dies on the Cross is not only God’s earthly representative-incarnation, but the God of beyond itself … “That is to say: what dies on the Cross is precisely the ‘private’ God, the God of our ‘way of life,’ the God who grounds a particular community.” — Zizek, Monstrosity, 25, 29, 295
In a literary vein, this interpretation of the crucifixion of Jesus — of God the Symbolic — may be most clearly seen in Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ, namely the novel’s portrayal of the execution of Jesus. Having spent his prophetic career in a wrestle between his own desires and the call of God, Jesus wishes for nothing more than domestication, to settle down with a woman and raise a family. Upon the cross, he passes out, dreaming that an angel of God has come down, helping him off the cross, telling him that God has seen his devotion and decided not to force Jesus to go through with crucifixion after all. The angel takes Jesus to Mary, the sister of Lazarus, whom he marries and with whom he fathers children; he even marries her sister Martha, expanding their family. Jesus receives everything he ever wanted. However, after a charged encounter with Paul, who preaches a Messiah who was killed for his and all others’ sake, Jesus realizes he has not had his desires fulfilled at all, but that he is only in a dream, and thus still upon the cross, unconscious. Jesus then chooses of his own volition to wake up, to return to consciousness while hanging from the cross, where he cries out in relief — where he surrenders himself to the Real — “into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46, NRSV) — a moment Kazantzakis describes in the closing passage of The Last Temptation:
“Jesus rotated his eyes with anguish, and looked. He was alone. The yard and house, the trees, the village doors, the village itself [where he lived with a family in his dream]— all had disappeared. Nothing remained but stones beneath his feet, stones covered with blood; and lower, farther away, a crowd: thousands of heads in the darkness. “He tried with all his might to discover where he was, who he was and why he felt pain. He wanted to complete his cry, to shout LAMA SABACTHANI. . . . He attempted to move his lips but could not. He grew dizzy and was ready to faint. He seemed to be hurling downward and perishing. “But suddenly, while he was falling and perishing, someone down on the ground must have pitied him, for a reed was held out in front of him, and he felt a sponge soaked in vinegar rest against his lips and nostrils. He breathed in deeply the bitter smell, revived, swelled his breast, looked at the heavens and uttered a heart-rending cry: LAMA SABACTHANI! “Then he immediately inclined his head, exhausted. “He felt terrible pains in his hands, feet and heart. His sight cleared, he saw the crown of thorns, the blood, the cross. Two golden earrings and two rows of sharp, brilliantly white teeth flashed in the darkened sun. He heard a cool, mocking laugh, and rings and teeth vanished. Jesus remained hanging in the air, alone. “His head quivered. Suddenly he remembered where he was, who he was and why he felt pain. A wild, indomitable joy took possession of him. No, no, he was not a coward, a deserter, a traitor. No, he was nailed to the cross. He had stood his ground honorably to the very end; he had kept his word. The moment he cried ELI ELI and fainted, Temptation had captured him for a split second and led him astray. The joys, marriages and children were lies; the decrepit, degraded old men who shouted coward, deserter, traitor at him were lies. All — all were illusions sent by the Devil. His disciples were alive and thriving. They had gone over sea and land and were proclaiming the Good News. Everything had turned out as it should, glory be to God! “He uttered a triumphant cry: IT IS ACCOMPLISHED! “And it was as though he had said: Everything has begun.”
Interpreting Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of Kazantzakis’ novel, Zizek focuses on Jesus’ cry of abandonment to the Big Other who has failed to make sense of his outstanding failure and horrific execution. According to Lacan, God is the Big Other of the Hebrew Bible, the great che vuoi? or “what do you want?” making traumatic yet gripping demands of the people. In Jesus’ destitution, however, he realizes that this Big Other is not the ground of Being but an emergent property of Being, arising from his own mind; not an externality which he asks che vuoi? but something internal to himself. And thus he returns to the Real. In either case, novel or film, one finds not necessarily the historical Jesus upon the cross, but certainly the literary Jesus of Gethsemane who prays “not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42, King James Version; cf. Matthew 26:39, Mark 14:36, John 6:38) — a Jesus who surrenders himself willingly to that which exceeds his control, that which is most real.
This mytheme of the self-sacrificing Jesus parallels Hegel’s own notion of reconciliation. Summarizing Zizek’s own reading of Hegel, Todd McGowan expresses this messianic-Hegelian reconciliation well:
“Hegel doesn’t stop with uncovering contradiction in being that corresponds to contradiction in thought. Instead, he contends that the contradiction in being is even more intractable than the contradiction in thought. Most philosophers view knowledge as a movement from thought to being: thought aspires to the knowledge of being. But Hegel reverses this relationship. Thought has a higher status than being and thus can tell us about the nature of being. Though being has a chronological priority — obviously being is a necessary condition for the emergence of thought — thought has a logical priority because it has a capacity for enduring and reconciling itself with contradiction that being lacks. Being simply succumbs to contradiction without gaining any purchase on it. “Reconciliation is the great achievement of thought. Through the act of reconciliation, thought adopts a different relationship to contradiction than being does. It doesn’t overcome contradiction but grasps its necessity. As Zizek puts it in Less Than Nothing, ‘what Hegel calls “reconciliation” is, at its most basic, a reconciliation with the antagonism.’ [Pg. 951.] Even though antagonism or contradiction acts as a limit or obstacle to thought, thought nonetheless has the ability to grasp this limit as what defines it rather than as what it must surmount in order to realize itself. Spirit is, for Hegel, thought’s capacity to recognize contradiction not simply as an obstacle to overcome but as i[t]s own innermost condition of possibility. Reconciliation marks a triumph through the embrace of the necessity of failure.” — McGowan, “The Insubstantiality of Substance, Or, Why We Should Read Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature,” International Journal of Žižek Studies 8:1 (2014), 13
Finally, with this Hegelian background fully formed, one may propose a radical reinterpretation of Mormonism itself, utilizing the narrative structure of the temple rituals practiced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the initiatory and the endowment:
In the temple, one begins in the time of “pre-existence,” time before time, where they are given a unique name they are not to share with any other — an identity so fundamentally their own that it cannot be expressed to another. In parallel to this antechamber to time, one may read the Mormon narrative of a war in heaven, a primordial fragmentation of the divine family, a war “before the foundation of the world” between not opposing principles but siblings, both children like any other of a God who can only watch as the cosmos begins to fray and fragment. This God, too, joins in the disintegration: in Mormonism, God is a person, composed of “flesh and bones as tangible as” anyone’s (D&C 130:22); God knows the “pains and sicknesses” of finitude on a visceral, physical level, intellectually and experientially (Alma 7:11–13); God is not exempt from the suffering of existence, nor is God aloof from the human condition —even God can weep (Moses 7:48).
From this primeval time before time, one proceeds in the temple’s ritual narrative to the creation of the world, where they encounter a trinity substantially different than that of normative Christianity: rather than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one encounters Elohim (a plural noun in Hebrew), Jehovah (Christ), and Michael or Adam (humanity). Rather than a tight priesthood hierarchy organized by genealogy, one may instead read these three figures in terms of set theory: the proper class Elohim or the Real — the plurality of Godhead or nature tearing itself to pieces — from which emerge, among numerous other sets, Michael the human Imaginary and Jehovah the human Symbolic. Thereafter, Michael-as-Adam is cut off from Elohim and Jehovah in forgetfulness; he is cut off from himself in the division of male and female through sleep; they are cut off from the immortality of changelessness through eating the fruits of finitude and becoming mortal and bearing children distinct from themselves. Ultimately, they find themselves in the “lone and dreary world” of the human condition — the world of Hegelian contradiction all the way down, subject and substance.
Then begins the process of reconciliation, returning to the Elohim from which Adam has become inherently alienated. This is signified through ritual acts such as perfectly unified prayer with others, against whom one must hold no resentment; and an embrace with the Lord through the very veil which separates the Real from even itself — the dividing contradiction running all the way down; Altizer’s nihil ensuring the gaps between beings and things, Zizek’s less than nothing in excess of something and nothing — all while Adam carries the name they received before time began, the name uniquely their own and no other’s.
Additional rituals are then performed: the previously performed rituals, repeated this time in remembrance of the participant’s deceased family and loved ones — by name, with attendant birth and death dates, places of residence, all particular details to testify to this person’s irreducible individuality. Beyond this are sealings, wherein spouses, siblings, children and parents, friends and loved ones, ancestors and descendants, come together in eternal relationships — a Hegelian reconciliation which does not dissolve the differences of each person involved, but honors those differences, even in their “antagonism.”
Finally, every week, Latter-day Saints gather to renew these rituals through one central ceremony — sacrament — wherein bread is ripped to pieces, water is meted into thimble-sized cups, and each person eats and drinks in remembrance of both contradiction and reconciliation. And thus, in narrative and ritual, the fragmented universe holds itself together even in its division, a stained-glass cosmos of multicolor pieces, woven together by the wrought-iron less than nothing.
— — — — — — — — — —
Recommended Reading | https://medium.com/interfaith-now/deus-absconditus-et-otiosa-atheism-modernism-mormonism-5b7a9565a3cf | ['Nathan Smith'] | 2019-12-08 08:40:45.992000+00:00 | ['Atheism', 'Christianity', 'Philosophy', 'Religion', 'Psychology'] |
Load Your Images Faster with the Next-Gen AVIF Format | Images have come to dominate the Internet. Most of today’s websites are comprised of 50 to 80 percent images. Here at Pixboost, our mission is to optimize images, making them as small as possible so that we can serve them to our users as fast as possible.
So we were excited to begin implementing the new image format, AVIF, which is supported in the latest version of Chrome (86), and which will be supported in the next version of Firefox. AVIF also has significant corporate support, in fact it’s championed specifically by Netflix. In this post, I’ll briefly cover the current state of web image formats and then I’ll do a comparison to show how AVIF enables pages to load faster.
Image Types and Formats
There are two fundamental image types: raster and vector.
Vectors are the type you would use to create geometric primitives like lines, circles, rectangles, etc. They are mathematically based so can be scaled to an infinite size. Vectors also support text, so they tend to be used for things like icons and logos. The most popular file format for vectors is SVG, but we won’t be expanding upon that format in this post :).
Raster images on the other hand are made up of pixels (points), with each pixel having its own color. Graphics and photos tend to be raster, and the most popular raster file formats on the web are JPEG and PNG. The JPEG format is good for photos because it compresses them with some quality loss, but significantly reduces file sizes. The PNG format maintains complete quality and supports transparency, but doesn’t reduce file sizes as much. So from a practical perspective, JPEG is used in most cases and PNG is used primarily when transparency is required.
Then there’s WebP, a relatively new format developed about 10 years ago that is now supported by most browsers. Generally speaking, if you convert a JPEG or PNG image to a WebP image, the resulting file size will be 30% smaller and there will be no loss of quality. Nice, right?
However, AVIF, the new kid on the block, pushes the envelope even further for web developers. It compresses images better than WebP with the same quality!
File sizes: AVIF vs WebP vs PNG/JPEG
We ran tests using our clients’ images. We picked 500 of our most popular images and ran them through our /optimise endpoint with the following output formats: the original format (PNG/JPEG), WebP, and finally AVIF.
Here are the results:
In 93% of cases, the AVIF image was smaller than the WebP image
On average, the AVIF image was 47% smaller than the WebP image
The WebP image was smaller than an optimized PNG/JPEG image in 99% of cases
On average, the WebP image was smaller than the PNG/JPEG image by 33%
So from these numbers, we can suggest the following best practices with respect to raster formats on the Web:
Use AVIF if it’s browser supported, else
Use WebP if it’s browser supported, else
Use PNG or JPEG
Let’s take a look at one specific example. Here’s the source image:
But what is the catch? Basically, AVIF is far more expensive to encode. It’s an extremely taxing process with respect to both CPU and memory. Using the same image set as above, we compared the required length of time to optimize images using WebP and AVIF, respectively. To process the 500 total images, it took:
391 seconds to load all of the WebP images
919 seconds to load all of the AVIF images
So that’s 2.5 times as long for AVIF, although the calculation included the time to download the images as well. When we compared just the CPU time to convert the images, we found that it took seven times more CPU time to convert AVIF vs. WebP.
Memory wise, when encoding a 1000x1000 image, the process consumed around 1GB of RAM.
But we also need to keep tooling in mind: it’s still early days for AVIF and so processes haven’t been optimized for it as they have been for WebP (for which it is possible to pick various performance options).
How would I use it?
In HTML, you can do as follows:
Or if you use an image CDN (like Pixboost), it’s as simple as one line:
But if you aren’t using an image CDN, you would need to convert your source image into an AVIF, so let’s have a look at the tools you could use for that.
Tools that support AVIF encoding
As I write this article in November 2020, it’s still early days for AVIF, so there aren’t currently a lot of options for using it.
But here are some of the existing ones:
ImageMagick: AVIF files have been writable since version 7.0.8. If you know Docker, you can use this image that I’m maintaining. ImageMagick has quite a powerful CLI, so you could easily automate AVIF conversion if necessary.
Squoosh is a web app that lets you upload an image and then choose the formats to which you’d like to convert it. It’s quite powerful with a lot of settings, but doesn’t allow you to do batch processing, so you would need to convert each image individually.
Supporting AVIF in the Pixboost Image CDN
Pixboost was one of the first image CDNs to introduce AVIF. Our API doesn’t require you to manually choose an image’s target format, but rather automatically selects the optimal format on a case-by-case basis. So if a client (web browser) supports AVIF, then generally an AVIF will be served. Pixboost uses Accept HTTP header to determine supported formats.
Let’s imagine that you have an image on your website that you currently serve as follows:
To leverage the full power of AVIF with Pixboost, you can simply wrap the source URL like so:
From this moment on, your image will be served in the optimal format!
Note that we currently have two limitations with respect to AVIF files:
Source images cannot be larger than 1024x1024 pixels, which is related to memory consumption. We are working on a solution for this and will have it fixed soon.
Transparent source images aren’t supported at the moment. This was a limitation of ImageMagick, which is used by Pixboost on the backend. ImageMagick actually already merged our pull request related to the issue, though, so we just need to update to the new version on our side. This will be done in the coming weeks.
Conclusion
AVIF is a great addition to the Web, and I think it’ll soon see wide adoption since in most cases, it produces images that are much smaller than the JPEG/PNG/WebP formats. After all, smaller website images allow you to support users with slower Internet connections and also have a positive impact on SEO.
But at the moment adding AVIF support is a bit of a hassle. However, you can avoid the hassle by simply using a third-party service like the Pixboost CDN. By the way, if you’d like to learn more about the AVIF format, I’d highly recommend watching this video by Google engineers: | https://medium.com/pixboost/load-your-images-faster-with-the-next-gen-avif-format-3a0a6d2936eb | ['Dmitry Pokidov'] | 2020-12-03 02:10:42.934000+00:00 | ['Image Cdn', 'Front End Development', 'Wev Development', 'Image Processing'] |
The Most Awesome Paradox Ever (Part I) | Impossible to solve? Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
After a lot of research and programming, your work is finally done: you built an Artificial Superintelligence. Just like Skynet from the Terminator franchise, your ASI starts to “learn at a geometric rate”. In particular, you notice how good it is at understanding human psychology: it predicts human decisions so accurately, it becomes creepy.
On a sunny Saturday, your ASI decides to play a game with you. It places two boxes (box A and box B) on the table in front of you. Box A is opened and you see a thousand dollars inside. Box B, however, is closed, so you don’t know what’s in it. The ASI gives you a choice: you can either get box B only, or get both box A and box B. Then it tells you the twist: it has made a prediction about the choice you will make. If the ASI predicted you pick box B only, it will contain a million dollars. If on the other hand the ASI predicted you will pick both boxes, box B will contain nothing. You know your ASI to be an extremely good predictor. What will you do?
The dilemma above is called Newcomb’s Paradox, after its creator William Newcomb. As it turns out, there is a so-called dominant strategy, and it is picking both boxes. You see, there is either a million or zero dollars in box B. If box B contains a million dollars, choosing only box B will get you a million dollars, but picking both boxes will give you a million plus a thousand dollars. So in this case, picking both boxes wins. If box B contains zero dollars, picking both boxes will still get you a thousand dollars more than picking only box B, because box A always contains a thousand dollars. Picking both boxes wins again! So, it’s an easy decision, right?
Well, no. You see, while the above analysis is perfectly logical, there is another strategy that seems equally valid: assuming the ASI’s prediction is correct (which it in all probability is), there are only two outcomes to this game: either you choose box B and John predicted you would, or you choose box A and B and, again, John predicted you would. Looking at it like this, you either get a million dollars (by picking only box B) or a thousand dollars (by picking both boxes). Clearly, picking only box B wins in this analysis.
It seems there are two perfectly valid but opposing strategies. Discuss your strategy in the comments! | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/the-most-awesome-paradox-ever-part-i-ad17a3135cb9 | ['Hein De Haan'] | 2018-11-27 15:03:44.094000+00:00 | ['Game Theory', 'Paradox', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Choices'] |
Before and after ‘Pong’: a new book traces the rise of video games | In The Comic Book Story of Video Games, due out in a few weeks, the author and the artist present a history of video games that’s knowledgeable and wide-ranging but somewhat eccentric. Initially, Jonathan Hennessey focuses equally on “electronic games and electronic screen displays,” but much of the book covers the highways and byways of computer history, in which he finds that computers, which were “intended only for military, scientific, government, and industry use,” were soon used for games as well: a tennis game, a mouse-in-a-maze game, a billiards game, even a clever text-based game called Colossal Cave Adventure, which used only words on a screen. Much of this will be familiar to anyone who already knows the story of computers, but it’s presented in a rather colorful way. Unfortunately, Hennessey has a strange approach to history: he keeps reminding us that things were different in the past. He frequently points out that early games and game devices lacked color, sound, and music, but he never mentions that early movies also lacked color, sound, and integrated music but nonetheless engaged their audiences. The presentation wanders or jumps about, as if the author is trying to cram things in; the writing as well as the storytelling is often a bit awkward. And Jack McGowan’s illustrations are inventive, often sprinkled with video-game-like characters who watch the proceedings, but they’re sometimes hard to interpret. Still, the book concisely renders a parade of personalities and technical innovations.
The business of video games is big and getting bigger. It apparently generates more revenue than the film business; some people make a living from playing games, and there’s a growing market, called e-sports, for viewing video-game competitions. Yet the field retains something of a cult aspect. General-interest publications often nod to new games and new devices but without nearly as much coverage as TV and films get. You may finish this book and still wonder to some extent what the appeal is. I’ve played a few games myself; the first game to get its own panel in the book, a game of geopolitics called Balance of Power (1985), is one that I played (and may write about someday), and I’ve tried some of the early efforts to bring virtual reality into gaming. Yet even I don’t entirely get the eagerness of players to spend dozens, scores, even hundreds of hours on one game after another. But that’s also true of the time many people devote to playing and/or watching traditional sports. (Surely there are video game widows, though I haven’t heard the term yet, just as there are sports widows.) Hennessey and McGowan’s book pays little attention to the question of why we play what we do, but that’s a subject for other books. What The Comic Book Story of Video Games will give you is a reasonably detailed and insightful survey of how the games themselves reached their present stage of development.
For the record, I read a black-and-white uncorrected proof. | https://medium.com/panel-frame/before-and-after-pong-a-new-book-traces-the-rise-of-video-games-813c8cb56ae9 | ['John E. Branch Jr.'] | 2017-09-05 20:32:03.960000+00:00 | ['Computers', 'Videogames', 'Books'] |
How To Train Your Dog : Brain Training For Dog’s. | Dog Training Tips: Things I’ve Learned During Dog Training
I’ve owned many dogs, throughout my life, but have never known exactly how to train them properly. I based my training on punishment and just couldn’t figure out why that didn’t work that well. But, almost two years ago, I started training my Pavilion for agility competition. She was extremely high-drive and I knew she’d really love it. So, I found a good agility training school and off we went. We’ve been competing, very successfully, for almost a year now and, looking back, I learned so many important things about dog training!
First of all, most trainers require that dogs have completed at least a basic obedience class before proceeding to agility training. This is critical to agility training and, in my opinion, every dog and handler could benefit from a basic obedience class. I learned that I have a food-motivated dog and that she will work her heart out for highly prized treats, not for punishment! There are skills you and your dog will learn, through an obedience class, such as recalls, sit/stays, down/stays, and walking nicely on a leash. Each of…
Dog Training — The Best Method To Train Your Dog Fast Without Touching Them
Reward training is often seen as the most modern method of training a dog, but reward training is probably much older than other methods of dog training. It is possible that reward training for dogs has been around as long as there have been dogs to train. Early humans probably used some informal kind of reward training when taming the wolf pups that eventually evolved into modern dogs.
Many principles of modern reward training date back many decades. However, what is called reward training today has only enjoyed is remarkable popularity for the past 10 or 15 years.
Many reward training enthusiasts are less enthusiastic about other methods of dog training, such as the traditional leash and collar method. However, the best approach to training any individual dog is often a combination of leash/collar training and reward training.
In addition, a training method that works perfectly for one dog may be totally inappropriate for another, and vice versa. Some dogs respond wonderfully to reward training and not at all to leash and collar training, while others respond…
Finding a good dog training professional:
With so many people advertising in the field of professional dog training today, trying to determine who’s truly qualified to look after your dog can be overwhelming. What to look for when choosing a professional to help you with dog training :
6 easy ways to find a good dog training professional:
1) A good reputation, ask around and get recommendations from your vet, other dog owners, or local kennel clubs.
2) Experience. — Inquire about their background, i.e. number of years experience.
3)A genuine love of and devotion to dogs.
4) Extensive and up to date knowledge. Dedicated trainers keep themselves updated by attending dog training and animal behavior courses, conferences, seminars and workshops.
5) Their training methodology and handling skills. A good trainer first concern should be the dogs well-being.
6) Memberships with reputable associations, organizations and training clubs.
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General dog obedience tips:
Training should be a positive and enjoyable experience for both you and your dog. If you are not in the right mood for training, don’t even begin…. Dog Training — Discover What Training Is The Best Way And Foundation To Accomplish Many Types Of Dog Training
There are many styles of dog training, and finding the one that works best for you is important for creating a dog that is a talented, loyal and faithful member of the family. All successful methods of dog training work to reinforce the relationship between dog and handler, and the foundation of any successful training program is getting the respect of the dog. Fortunately, dogs are wired by nature to seek out leaders, and to follow the direction of those leaders.
Both leash/collar training and reward training have been around for a very long time, and they have proven their effectiveness over time. The type of training that works best will vary from dog to dog, and from breed to breed. It is important to remember that each breed of dog has its own unique qualities, reinforced by hundreds of years of selective breeding.
The leash and training collar is the most basic piece of equipment used in training a dog. Using the lead and training collar properly is vital to successful dog training. The training collar is designed to…
>>>>Click Here For Best Way To Train Your Dog<<<<
DISCLAIMER: note that i will receive commission when purchases are made through the links in this article… | https://medium.com/@komerfarooqahmed/how-to-train-your-dog-to-come-b8ae2010b99a | [] | 2021-01-09 20:58:54.312000+00:00 | ['Dog Training', 'Dog Behaviour Training', 'Dog Training Methods', 'Dog Training Online', 'Dogs'] |
Create GIFs Using Your Xcode Simulator With Mimiq | Create GIFs Using Your Xcode Simulator With Mimiq
An easy, open-source way to share Simulator GIFs with your team
The Mimiq logo
Not all companies have the process of delivering products from development to production, but most of them have a method to showcase what they did and review it together before entering the production. Most companies will use Pull Request or Merge Request as a way to do that. It is known as a code review.
Code reviews are crucial for most teams. They help teams coordinate and streamline code quality across the team.
One thing to make the code review experience better is a pull request that invites peers to review, helping them understand the context of the pull request better. One thing to achieve is using GIFs for context. As an iOS Developer, the GIF will be around what features we work on and how it behaves on the new version.
From the above description, that’s the reason why I created mimiq. Mimiq is an application to help record your Xcode Simulator as a GIF. It’s pretty straightforward. Just select what simulator you want to record, record, and stop it. | https://medium.com/better-programming/create-gifs-using-your-xcode-simulator-with-mimiq-581607a6a776 | ['Wendy Liga'] | 2020-05-18 10:55:01.725000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'Xcode', 'Swift', 'Programming', 'Mobile'] |
Binary Numbers and Memory | Binary is the bases of the technology we use today, from your favorite stereo to the thing you are reading this off of today. Most things contain a computer, and therefore also contain binary that controls it. “Binary is a base 2 number system invented by Gottfried Leibniz that is made up of only two numbers: 0 and 1.”(Computer Hope). It is the state of high or low voltage that tells our computers what to do.
But it didn’t start off this way. A trip down memory road shows us that binary used to be a much more mechanical operation. Using switches and levers to determine if something was on or off. And it wasn’t the only of it’s kind, with other signal readers reading up to 10 different variety of signals. The problem with base 10 signals, however, was the shortage of power. If the machine was getting an overflow of power or too little, these signals could be easily confused or mixed up. So creating a simple on and off mechanism made it easy to differentiate the given signals. Making binary our first choice of operations.
Then was the creation of logic gates. People were experimenting with different and new ways to solve operations as quickly as possible, and with the creation of boolean algebra by George Boole in the 1840s, technicians, and scientists sought to find better ways to control these logic gates. With operations like and, or, xor, and not, we could now give our circuits the rules we needed to do more advanced operations (storyofmathimatics.com). Many years later creating many of the same operations we use in programming today!
#!python3.7 # defines variables hello and world to True (1) and False (0) hello = True world = False # If hello and world are both True, return True if hello and world: return True # If hello or world are True, return True. This opperation includes # xor which states that if only one is true, then turn on. Which is #different from or which looks for at least one operation to be true elif hello or world: return True # if hello is not the same as world, return True elif hello is not world: return True
This led to the inventions of machines like the IBM100, where you used punch cards to order tasks and operations. The holes in the punch card would determine if the signal was on or off (one or zero), in the 1950s. However, these were again mechanical and had to be repaired almost every day. But without discoveries like these, we might not have the technology we have today. As it shaped our future. (IBM)
Our logic gates became even more complex, with combinations of and, not, and xor gates. Our technology shrank, and the replacement of mechanical parts for electric ones brought forth the creation of the ALU (Arithmetic and Logic Unit), and circuit boards. These used our logic gates, and bits that carried over data. Each one and zero being a bit. Hence why things were called 8-bit and 16-bit, and later called bytes.
It doesn’t make much sense to do so many operations without having a place to store it. So using what’s called a D-Type Flip-Flop circuit, that takes advantage of our logic gates, creates a way to temporarily store data. But this only stores a single byte. So by adding more of these register circuits together, we can hold more data. Thus creating our first RAM (Random Accessing Memory). This memory also needed a clock to interpret new states of on or off. hence why the ‘D’ in D-type Flip-Flop stands for Delay, and why clock circuits were invented (101 Computing).
The ALU, RAM, Clock, all connected threw our circuit board leads to the invention of the heart of our computer, known as the CPU (Component Processing Unit). This Unit was comprised of many built-in instructions that would make use of our ALU and RAM, to run programs. And the amazing part is, this entire process is still comprised of just ones and zeros! The CPU can only fetch, get, encode/decode and execute problems after using addresses, which tell it what, and where to do this in memory. The first CPU created into a single circuit was the first Intel Processor! The 4004 Intel processor! Going an outstanding 740 kilohertz, or 740,000 cycles per second. But despite this speed, it is nothing compared to the technology we have today.
Some people will even overclock their CPU, adjusting the speed of the clock to try and get it to run even faster! But this typically leads to overheating and melts your components. However, on the other side of this is underclocking. This is very useful when your computer wants to go to sleep and can cool off by running slower when you step away from your computer.
But I go off on a tangent. The main importance here is that all these creations and inventions are built off the logic of Binary. It creates a way to run operations must faster than a human, and even store more memory than ever imaginable. We can see this in our Hard drives, SSDs (Solid State Drives), and thumb drives. As it writes and fetches our saved pictures. And it’s still advancing as servers and clouds store our data for us. | https://medium.com/swlh/binary-numbers-and-memory-51a29705bb0f | ['Anthony S. Protho'] | 2020-05-13 20:23:05.892000+00:00 | ['Binary', 'Circuit', 'Computer Science', 'Memory', 'Code'] |
The Library | Review of “Becoming” | Among nearly every list of must-reads I came across Becoming, by Michelle Obama; the autobiography of Michelle’s life. I’ve never read a memoir, but after seeing this book listed so frequently I decided to check it out. Literally, I checked it out of the library, after the other 46 people in front of me on the wait list were done with it!
The book was worth the wait, it had me laughing out loud from the very beginning all through to the end when she describes leaving the White House. It’s not heavy on the politics, as readers will learn Michelle (ironically) isn’t a fan of “big” politics. She is however, a big fan of empowering the youth, prioritizing education, and looking out for those who may otherwise be overlooked.
What I love about her story is that it’s very relatable to readers, especially women. She describes struggles with balancing her career path, raising children, taking care of herself, and her marriage. As a Princeton and Harvard Graduate, born and raised on the South side of Chicago, Michelle discusses the importance of over coming adversity. She is first African-American First Lady and is blazing trails and setting the bar high.
Have you read Becoming? If so, what did you enjoy most about her story? Are there any other memoirs y’all recommend reading?
~Cait | https://medium.com/@caitscollections/the-library-review-of-becoming-e6a3367ea6c8 | ["Cait'S Collections"] | 2020-12-27 22:34:19.025000+00:00 | ['Memoir', 'Book Review', 'Becoming', 'Michelle Obama', 'Readinglist'] |
Basic DataFrame Transformations in PySpark | Basic DataFrame Transformations in PySpark
If you joined us last time, you should have some working knowledge of how to get started with PySpark by using a Databricks notebook. Armed with that knowledge, we can now start playing with real data.
For most of the time we spend in PySpark, we’ll likely be working with Spark DataFrames: this is our bread and butter for data manipulation in Spark. For this exercise, we’ll attempt to execute an elementary string of transformations to get a feel for what the middle portion of an ETL pipeline looks like (also known as the “transform” part 😁).
Loading Up Some Data
As usual, I’ll be loading up some sample data from our best friend, Google BigQuery. The example data I’ll be using is a public dataset from BigQuery: the results of the MLB 2016 postseason:
2016 MLB postseason games from BigQuery.
We’ll export this data to a CSV. Next, we’ll import this data into Databricks the same way as last time. Now we can get started messing with data.
Simple Data Transformations
First things first, we need to load this data into a DataFrame:
# File location and type
file_location = "/FileStore/tables/results_20190428_181010-cc606.csv"
file_type = "csv" # CSV options
infer_schema = "true"
first_row_is_header = "true"
delimiter = "," # The applied options are for CSV files. For other file types, these will be ignored.
df = spark.read.format(file_type) \
.option("inferSchema", infer_schema) \
.option("header", first_row_is_header) \
.option("sep", delimiter) \
.load(file_location) display(df)
Nothing new so far! Of course, we should store this data as a table for future use:
# Create a view or table permanent_table_name = "baseball_2016_postseason"
df.write.format("parquet").saveAsTable(permanent_table_name)
Before going any further, we need to decide what we actually want to do with this data (I’d hope that under normal circumstances, this is the first thing we do)! Let’s get a quick look at what we’re working with, by using print(df.info()) :
root
|-- gameId: string (nullable = true)
|-- seasonId: string (nullable = true)
|-- seasonType: string (nullable = true)
|-- year: integer (nullable = true)
|-- startTime: string (nullable = true)
|-- gameStatus: string (nullable = true)
|-- attendance: integer (nullable = true)
|-- dayNight: string (nullable = true)
|-- duration: string (nullable = true)
|-- durationMinutes: integer (nullable = true)
|-- awayTeamId: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayTeamName: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeTeamId: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeTeamName: string (nullable = true)
|-- venueId: string (nullable = true)
|-- venueName: string (nullable = true)
|-- venueSurface: string (nullable = true)
|-- venueCapacity: integer (nullable = true)
|-- venueCity: string (nullable = true)
|-- venueState: string (nullable = true)
|-- venueZip: integer (nullable = true)
|-- venueMarket: string (nullable = true)
|-- venueOutfieldDistances: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFinalRuns: integer (nullable = true)
|-- homeFinalHits: integer (nullable = true)
|-- homeFinalErrors: integer (nullable = true)
|-- awayFinalRuns: integer (nullable = true)
|-- awayFinalHits: integer (nullable = true)
|-- awayFinalErrors: integer (nullable = true)
|-- homeFinalRunsForInning: integer (nullable = true)
|-- awayFinalRunsForInning: integer (nullable = true)
|-- inningNumber: integer (nullable = true)
|-- inningHalf: string (nullable = true)
|-- inningEventType: string (nullable = true)
|-- inningHalfEventSequenceNumber: integer (nullable = true)
|-- description: string (nullable = true)
|-- atBatEventType: string (nullable = true)
|-- atBatEventSequenceNumber: integer (nullable = true)
|-- createdAt: string (nullable = true)
|-- updatedAt: string (nullable = true)
|-- status: string (nullable = true)
|-- outcomeId: string (nullable = true)
|-- outcomeDescription: string (nullable = true)
|-- hitterId: string (nullable = true)
|-- hitterLastName: string (nullable = true)
|-- hitterFirstName: string (nullable = true)
|-- hitterWeight: integer (nullable = true)
|-- hitterHeight: integer (nullable = true)
|-- hitterBatHand: string (nullable = true)
|-- pitcherId: string (nullable = true)
|-- pitcherFirstName: string (nullable = true)
|-- pitcherLastName: string (nullable = true)
|-- pitcherThrowHand: string (nullable = true)
|-- pitchType: string (nullable = true)
|-- pitchTypeDescription: string (nullable = true)
|-- pitchSpeed: integer (nullable = true)
|-- pitchZone: integer (nullable = true)
|-- pitcherPitchCount: integer (nullable = true)
|-- hitterPitchCount: integer (nullable = true)
|-- hitLocation: integer (nullable = true)
|-- hitType: string (nullable = true)
|-- startingBalls: integer (nullable = true)
|-- startingStrikes: integer (nullable = true)
|-- startingOuts: integer (nullable = true)
|-- balls: integer (nullable = true)
|-- strikes: integer (nullable = true)
|-- outs: integer (nullable = true)
|-- rob0_start: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob0_end: integer (nullable = true)
|-- rob0_isOut: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob0_outcomeId: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob0_outcomeDescription: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob1_start: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob1_end: integer (nullable = true)
|-- rob1_isOut: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob1_outcomeId: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob1_outcomeDescription: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob2_start: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob2_end: integer (nullable = true)
|-- rob2_isOut: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob2_outcomeId: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob2_outcomeDescription: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob3_start: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob3_end: integer (nullable = true)
|-- rob3_isOut: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob3_outcomeId: string (nullable = true)
|-- rob3_outcomeDescription: string (nullable = true)
|-- is_ab: integer (nullable = true)
|-- is_ab_over: integer (nullable = true)
|-- is_hit: integer (nullable = true)
|-- is_on_base: integer (nullable = true)
|-- is_bunt: integer (nullable = true)
|-- is_bunt_shown: integer (nullable = true)
|-- is_double_play: integer (nullable = true)
|-- is_triple_play: integer (nullable = true)
|-- is_wild_pitch: integer (nullable = true)
|-- is_passed_ball: integer (nullable = true)
|-- homeCurrentTotalRuns: integer (nullable = true)
|-- awayCurrentTotalRuns: integer (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder1: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder2: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder3: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder4: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder5: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder6: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder7: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder8: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder9: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder10: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder11: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayFielder12: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayBatter1: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayBatter2: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayBatter3: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayBatter4: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayBatter5: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayBatter6: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayBatter7: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayBatter8: string (nullable = true)
|-- awayBatter9: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder1: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder2: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder3: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder4: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder5: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder6: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder7: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder8: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder9: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder10: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder11: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeFielder12: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeBatter1: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeBatter2: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeBatter3: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeBatter4: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeBatter5: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeBatter6: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeBatter7: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeBatter8: string (nullable = true)
|-- homeBatter9: string (nullable = true)
|-- lineupTeamId: string (nullable = true)
|-- lineupPlayerId: string (nullable = true)
|-- lineupPosition: integer (nullable = true)
|-- lineupOrder: integer (nullable = true)
Holy hell, that’s a lot of columns! Let’s see what exactly these columns are doing with display(df) :
A preview of our baseball dataset.
You’ll notice that there are multiple duplicates for gameId in our results. It turns out our dataset isn't just giving us the results of MLB games - it's giving us the result of every score in every game. That's a lot of data!
Let’s say we only care about the outcome of entire games, as opposed to every score. That seems reasonable. First things first, let’s rid ourselves of all these extra columns:
specific_columns_df = df.select("gameId",
"awayTeamName",
"homeTeamName",
"durationMinutes",
"homeFinalRuns",
"awayFinalRuns") display(specific_columns_df)
This will give us columns which are only relevant to entire games, as opposed to every score. But wait, we still have separate rows for every game! Let’s make sure our dataset only has a single record per game:
dropped_df = specific_columns_df.dropDuplicates(subset = ['gameId']) display(dropped_df)
A quick comparison:
print('Original column count = ', specific_columns_df.count()) print('Dropped column count = ', dropped_df.count()) Original column count = 8676
Dropped column count = 28
We’ve gone from 8676 records to 28… that sounds more reasonable.
User-Defined Functions
What if we want to transform our data in a less predictable way, like by creating our own customizations? Is that so much much to ask? It isn’t, but it’s significantly more difficult/convoluted than, say, Pandas. Optimizing code for speed at runtime sure is a bitch.
Custom transformations in PySpark can happen via User-Defined Functions (also known as udfs). As you may imagine, a user-defined function is just a function we create ourselves and apply to our DataFrame (think of Pandas’ .apply() ).
To user udfs, we need to import udf from pyspark.sql.functions , as well as any other imports we'll be using within that UDF. Furthermore, we'll need to import the type of data we're expecting to be returned from our function:
from pyspark.sql.functions import udf, array
from pyspark.sql.types import StringType
We’re importing array because we're going to compare two values in an array we pass, with value 1 being the value in our DataFrame's homeFinalRuns column, and value 2 being awayFinalRuns . We're also importing StringType , because we'll be returning the name of the team which wins:
from pyspark.sql.functions import udf, array
from pyspark.sql.types import StringType determine_winner_udf = udf(lambda arr: arr[2] if arr[0] > arr[1] else arr[3], StringType()) df_with_winner = dropped_df.withColumn("winner", determine_winner_udf(array('homeFinalRuns', 'awayFinalRuns', 'homeTeamName', 'awayTeamName')))
display(df_with_winner)
It isn’t beautiful, but it gets the job done. For each row in our DataFrame, we pass 4 values:
The home team score.
The away team score.
The home team name.
The away team name.
Our udf, determine_winner_udf , determines a winner from the first two array values. Depending on who wins, our lambda returns the home team name (arr[2]) or the away team name (arr[3]).
Let’s see what we’ve got:
Postseason games with an added “winner” column.
Visualizing the Results
It seems like we’ve got what we wanted! We now have a dataset which can tell us the winningest team in the 2016 post-season (kind of: we’re using a limited dataset, but whatever). How can we visualize this data? Why, with the Databricks built-in plot options, of course! Each time we use display() to show our DataFrame, we can modify the plot options to show us a chart representing our data, as opposed to a table:
Databricks plot options.
From the chart-looking dropdown, select bar chart. Next, check out the plot options button which results in this modal:
Modifying our plot options to show us winning teams.
I’ve messed with the settings to show us a distribution of wins above. We aggregate by COUNT , thus counting the number of instances where the winner column contains each of the team names involved.
A Moment of Reflection
You’ve done great, young Padawan. We took a real-life instance of some data we wanted to change, and we changed it: all in PySpark.
As you’ve probably noticed, working with PySpark isn’t at all like working in pure-Python alternatives for modifying data. Sure, we’re writing code in Python, but as we implement explicit type-setting and navigate user-defined functions, it becomes painfully evident that we’re using an API that hooks into a Java application. On the bright side, we’ve built a respectable string of transformations which can occur across multiple nodes without writing a single line of Scala (or worse yet, Java).
When we consider the scalability, speed, and power of what we’ve just built, the little quirks don’t seem so bad anymore. | https://hackingandslacking.com/basic-dataframe-transformations-in-pyspark-d2734a0d2b57 | ['Todd Birchard'] | 2019-06-07 02:39:11.141000+00:00 | ['Etl', 'Pyspark', 'Apache Spark', 'Python', 'Data Engineering'] |
10 weight-loss strategies Weight loss fast | 10 weight-loss strategies Weight loss fast
People can lose weight and keep it off by following a few simple measures. The following are some of them.
1. Consume a wide variety of colorful, nutrient-dense meals.
The human diet should be built around nutritious meals and snacks. Ensure that each meal has 50 percent fruits and vegetables, 25 percent whole grains, and 25 percent protein as an easy method to develop a meal plan. A daily fiber intake of 25–30 grams (g) is recommended.
Remove trans fats from your diet and limit your intake of saturated fats, which has been linked to an increased risk of coronary heart disease.
Instead, people can eat unsaturated fats like monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA).
The following foods are both healthy and nutrient-dense:
fresh fruits and vegetables
fish
legumes
nuts
seeds
whole grains, such as brown rice and oatmeal
Foods to avoid eating include:
foods with added oils, butter, and sugar
fatty red or processed meats
baked goods
bagels
white bread
processed foods
In rare situations, eliminating specific foods from one’s diet can result in a deficiency in essential vitamins and minerals. A nutritionist, dietician, or other healthcare experts healthcare expert can help a person receive enough nutrients while on a diet.
2. Maintain a diet and weight diary
When it comes to losing weight, self-monitoring is crucial. Every piece of food that people consume each day can be recorded using a paper diary, mobile app, or dedicated website. They can track their improvement by keeping a weekly weight log.
Those who can track their progress in modest steps and recognize tangible improvements are far more likely to stick to a weight-loss plan.
A BMI calculator can also be used to keep track of one’s weight and height.
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3. Work out and engage in regular physical activity.
Physical and mental health both benefit from regular exercise. For successful weight loss, increasing the frequency of physical activity in a disciplined and deliberate manner is typically critical.
It is best to do one hour of moderate physical activity every day, such as brisk walking. If one hour per day is not feasible, the Mayo Clinic recommends aiming for a minimum of 150 minutes each week.
People who are not normally physically active should progressively increase the amount of exercise they undertake and the intensity with which they do it. This is the most long-term strategy for ensuring that regular exercise becomes a part of their daily routine.
People may benefit from keeping track of their physical activity in the same way that tracking meals might help them lose weight mentally. There are a plethora of free mobile applications available that track a person’s calorie balance once they log their diet and exercise.
If the prospect of a full workout intimidates someone who has never exercised before, they can start by undertaking the following exercises to boost their fitness levels:
taking the stairs
raking leaves
walking a dog
gardening
dancing
playing outdoor games
parking farther away from a building entrance
Individuals with minimal risk of coronary heart disease are unlikely to need a medical evaluation before beginning an exercise program.
Some patients, such as those with diabetes, may benefit from a prior medical examination. Anyone who isn’t sure how much exercise is safe should consult a doctor.
4. Get rid of all liquid calories.
Drinking sugar-sweetened soda, tea, juice, or wine can add up to hundreds of calories every day. These are referred to as “empty calories” since they supply more energy without providing any nutritious value.
Unless a smoothie is being consumed to substitute a meal, people should stick to water, unsweetened tea, or coffee. Water with a dash of fresh lemon or orange can be flavorful.
Dehydration should not be confused with hunger. A glass of water can typically satisfy hunger pangs between scheduled meal times.
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5. Keep track of how many servings you’re making and how much you’re eating.
Weight gain can occur when you consume too much of any food, even low-calorie veggies.
As a result, consumers should avoid guessing at serving sizes or eating straight from the package. Using measuring cups and serving size recommendations is preferable.
Overestimating and the possibility of eating a larger-than-necessary portion result from guessing.
When dining out, the following size comparisons can help you keep track of your food intake:
three-fourths of a cup is a golf ball
one-half of a cup is a tennis ball
1 cup is a baseball
1 ounce (oz) of nuts is a loose handful
1 teaspoon is 1 playing die
1 tablespoon is a thumb tip
3 oz of meat is a deck of cards
1 slice is a DVD
These measurements are approximate, but they can assist a person in controlling their food consumption when the proper equipment is unavailable.
6. Eat slowly and deliberately.
Many people benefit from mindful eating, which entails paying attention to why, how, when, where, and what they eat.
A direct result of growing more in tune with one’s body is making healthier dietary choices.
People who practice mindful eating eat more slowly and savor their meals, focusing on the flavor. Allowing a meal to last 20 minutes helps the body to register all satiety signals.
It’s crucial to focus on feeling satisfied rather than full after a meal and to remember that many “100% natural” or low-fat items aren’t always the healthiest option.
People might also think about the following questions before choosing a meal:
Is it a good “value” for the calorie cost?
Will it provide satiety?
Are the ingredients healthful?
If it has a label, how much fat and sodium does it contain?
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7. Controlling stimuli and cues.
Many social and environmental variables could lead to overeating. Some people are more likely to overeat while watching television, for example. Others find it difficult to pass a dish of candies to another person without having a bite.
People might think of methods to adapt their routine to limit these triggers by being mindful of what may prompt the impulse to nibble on empty calories.
8. Plan and prepare.
More significant weight loss can be achieved by stocking a kitchen with diet-friendly items and making disciplined meal plans.
People who want to lose weight or keep it off should purge their kitchens of processed or junk foods and stock up on supplies for quick, healthy meals. This will help you avoid impulsive, unplanned, and irresponsible eating.
Making meal choices ahead of time before going to social events or restaurants might help make the process go more smoothly.
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9. Seek out social assistance.
Pin it to Pinterest Having a strong social network might help you stay motivated.
A successful weight loss journey necessitates embracing the support of loved ones.
Some people like to invite friends or family members to join them, while others prefer to discuss their progress through social media.
Other sources of assistance could include:
a positive social network
group or individual counseling
exercise clubs or partners
employee-assistance programs at work
10. Maintain a positive outlook.
Weight loss is a gradual process, and if the pounds do not come off as quickly as expected, a person may become disheartened.
When it comes to sticking to a weight reduction or maintenance program, some days will be more difficult than others. When self-change appears to be too difficult, a successful weight-loss program demands the individual to persevere and not give up.
Some people may need to reset their objectives, possibly by changing their exercise patterns or lowering the total number of calories they want to consume.
The most important thing is to maintain a positive attitude and persevere in conquering the obstacles to weight loss achievement.
People who want to lose weight don’t have to stick to a strict diet plan like Slimming World or Atkins. To establish a negative energy balance, they should focus on consuming extra calories and moving more.
Weight loss is mostly based on lowering total calorie consumption rather than altering the carbohydrate, fat, and protein balances in the diet.
A 5–10 percent reduction in body weight over 6 months is an acceptable weight loss target to begin noticing health benefits.
Most people can reach this aim by lowering their total daily calorie consumption to between 1,000 and 1,600 calories.
A daily diet of fewer than 1,000 calories will not give enough nutrients.
Because humans consume less energy at lower body weight, the rate of weight loss normally slows after 6 months of dieting, and body weight tends to plateau. The best strategy to avoid regaining lost weight is to stick to a weight management program that includes healthy eating habits and regular physical activity.
Prescription weight-loss drugs may benefit those with a BMI of 30 or above who do not have obesity-related health concerns. These may also be appropriate for persons with obesity-related disorders who have a BMI of 27 or higher.
However, medications should only be used to supplement the above lifestyle changes. Surgical therapy is a possibility if attempts to lose weight have failed and a person’s BMI has reached 40 or higher.
NOTE: This article contains(Affiliate Link) and will be made accordingly if you click on any of these links and purchase any of the products I receive a small commission. support us. Thank you. | https://medium.com/@womenshealth369/10-weight-loss-strategies-weight-loss-fast-127317d97a9 | ["Women'S Health"] | 2021-12-27 18:10:40.889000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss', 'Health', 'Fitness', 'Weightloss Foods', 'Weight Loss Tips'] |
My Grandmother and Her Paper Cranes | Throughout the years, I became fluent at folding paper cranes. I’d mindlessly pick a piece of paper and start folding one out of boredom. It became almost like therapy for me. Inhale, exhale, one fold at a time.
One day, Oma told me that her ikebana students alongside herself were going to fold 1,000 paper cranes for an art exhibition held by the Japan Foundation in Jakarta. Back then, I was oblivious of its significance. I thought, Wow 1,000 for real? There’s no way they are going to count it one by one. But the next day, we started folding 10, 50, 90… paper cranes until my bedroom became a pool of folded coloured papers. I was completely distracted by the number of paper cranes we needed to fold that I may have missed it when oma told us the story behind the 1,000 paper cranes. All I knew growing up was that the paper crane was something good. Like, very good. It-can-make-someone’s-day good. Or, even, it-can-bring-the-world-together good. I remember getting in trouble with my parents, and my response as a child was to fold a paper crane to apologise. At school, I’ve also tried making tiny paper cranes and left it in random places. I thought if someone would find it, it’ll make their day for sure.
Oma eventually passed away in 2018. It was pretty sudden, but we were ready at that point. Many of her students throughout the years came and brought flowers, but they also brought a huge box filled with paper cranes. We ended up placing some next to her during the funeral. It was a bittersweet moment. I felt so much peace and pain that day.
This was more than two years ago, and I never thought I’d lose another grandmother this early in life. | https://medium.com/@v-asya/my-grandmother-and-her-paper-cranes-a24f94c5b47b | [] | 2021-03-22 05:21:04.995000+00:00 | ['Japan', 'Childhood', 'Family', 'Family History', 'Culture'] |
The Real Reason Americans Aren’t Quarantining | Early in the pandemic, some states other than Hawaii did try to enforce their quarantine rules, arresting a handful of people after they were spotted by a neighbor or a police officer. But these crackdowns dropped off as case numbers swelled and public-health authorities struggled to keep up.
Public-health departments are reluctant to seem like bad cops — or cops at all. After the pandemic, they will have to persuade teens to wear condoms and hippies to get flu shots. Theirs is a soft power, and they’ve been hesitant to throw the book at quarantine breakers. Actual police officers, meanwhile, have bigger priorities than watching people sneak off to Target.
Hawaii created its quarantine law as a travel quarantine, stopping everyone at the airport. These types of quarantines are logistically easier to implement — they don’t require contact tracers — than medical quarantines, in which the state orders a certain individual to stay in isolation. They’re also subject to different legal rules: To medically quarantine a given person in many states, authorities have to issue a court order, not simply call and encourage them to isolate. “We’ve had a lot more nudges than real, enforceable orders,” says Wendy Parmet, a law professor at Northeastern University.
Hawaii is also unique in that it has no land borders with other states. In most states, stopping people at the border is impossible because people regularly cross state lines for work and other essential activities. “Imagine trying to actually enforce an interstate quarantine in the New York metro area. You can’t do it,” Parmet told me. Supposed state travel restrictions, she said, “are somewhat sad acts of desperation based on the lack of federal policy.”
Some other countries have imposed much tougher travel restrictions and quarantine policies. At one point, Greeks were required to text authorities to explain why they needed to go out. Norway quarantined its own citizens under threat of a fine or imprisonment. Most foreigners still can’t fly to Vietnam. All these countries have lower death rates from COVID-19 than the U.S.
Hawaii’s effort has been boosted by a unique citizen activist group called Kapu Breakers. Made up of 6,700 Hawaii residents and led by a former newscaster named Angela Keen, the group tracks down tourists who might be breaking quarantine, then forwards their information to law enforcement. In addition to scouring social media, they rely on tips from hotel concierges, taxi drivers, and others who could have contact with tourists who might be breaking kapu, or “sacred laws.”
Keen believes that Hawaii residents are on such high alert because of long-ago pandemics that came to the islands and killed large percentages of the population. “Generations of stories you hear, from great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, that the pandemics nearly killed off Native Hawaiians,” she told me. “So there is a great fear here of outsiders coming in and bringing it with them.” In the past century and a half, thousands of people, mostly Hawaiians, died of Hansen’s disease — known informally as leprosy — at Kalaupapa, Hawaii’s most infamous quarantine.
On the mainland, states cite a combination of COVID-19 denial, logistical hurdles, and funding and personnel shortages to explain why they haven’t been willing or able to enforce quarantines. One problem is the scofflaws: Some people stay inside for three or four days, then decide, “I’m bored with staying home,” Brenton Nesemeier, the field-services director for the North Dakota Health Department, told me. The health department sends people who are supposed to quarantine daily email surveys, but beyond that, it doesn’t do much to ensure that either infected people or their close contacts stay home for the entire quarantine period. About 40 to 50 percent of North Dakotans who come in close contact with infected people do not complete their quarantine, Nesemeier estimated.
Some states can’t quarantine people, because they have too many cases to trace. New Hampshire said in mid-November that it would stop conducting contact tracing for all new COVID-19 cases. In North Dakota, Nesemeier said the health department doesn’t have the manpower to reach out to close contacts of people who test positive. Instead, it relies on North Dakotans who have COVID-19 to call their own contacts. This system creates a new set of problems: The call might never happen, or the person on the other end of the line might not take a “stay home” suggestion from Uncle Roy very seriously.
Even if a North Dakotan wants to do the right thing, she might not be able to without going hungry or losing her job. Grocery delivery isn’t available in parts of the large and rural state. And because so many residents are considered essential workers, many employers ask close contacts to come into work even if they’ve been exposed to the virus.
In fact, many COVID-exposed Americans who want to stay home and quarantine have an intractable problem: Their bosses won’t let them. Unlike the tourists traveling to Hawaii, most Americans aren’t attempting some sort of pandemic vacation right now — they have to work. (Hawaii’s essential workers, too, might have to go out in public when they prefer to stay home.) Public-health officials in several states have said that some people are neglecting to quarantine because they won’t get paid if they don’t go to work. “We hear people say, ‘I have to work; I have to have my income,’” says Ray Przybelski, the director of the Portage County Health and Human Services Department in Wisconsin.
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act granted paid leave to recover from COVID-19 to many Americans. But the law doesn’t cover everyone: Large companies aren’t included, and small companies can claim an exemption. Because of these exemptions, only 47 percent of private-sector workers have guaranteed access to coronavirus-related sick leave, according to an analysis by the liberal Center for American Progress. The U.S. is the only country out of 193 nations to exclude workers from sick-leave benefits based on the size of the company they work for, according to a recent UCLA study.
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Conflicts over remote work and leave are the most common type of COVID-19 employment litigation in the U.S., according to a database compiled by the law firm Fisher Phillips. “We don’t really pay people to stay at home to quarantine,” Polly Price, a global-health professor at Emory University, says. But that’s exactly the problem: In a study in Israel, people were more likely to quarantine after exposure to COVID-19 if they were paid during their isolation.
Months into the pandemic, half of Americans didn’t know they might have the right to stay home with pay if they contracted the coronavirus. And even if they did, employers might have pressured them to come to work if they were no longer showing symptoms, says Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow on paid-leave policy at the New America Foundation. These protections expire at the end of December, setting up what Shabo calls a “public-health crisis.”
Employees are complaining about being forced back to work, but to no apparent avail. Through November 22, more than 600 people have filed complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration mentioning issues at their workplace involving coronavirus quarantine, according to data from the Department of Labor. “After testing positive, employees are being scheduled and expected to work as long as they don’t show symptoms and [are] not placed in quarantine,” a worker at a Georgia taco restaurant complained in July. OSHA has formally inspected just 11 of the employers in these incidents. “Under the Trump administration, OSHA decided to do almost no enforcement,” says Debbie Berkowitz, the worker-health-and-safety program director at the National Employment Law Project. (In an email, a Department of Labor spokesperson said, “The claim that OSHA is not taking enforcement actions is patently false. OSHA is committed to protecting America’s workers during the pandemic, and has been working around the clock to that end.”)
America’s laissez-faire federal pandemic response has, in effect, treated each state like its own country. States have been responsible for their own restrictions and their own personal protective equipment and their own nursing-home protection plans. When it comes time to isolate sick people, though, it becomes painfully clear that states aren’t countries. Wisconsin can’t stop Iowans from driving into it. North Dakota doesn’t have enough health workers to trace all of its infected citizens. The governor can’t help you when your employer is — legally — dragging you back into the office.
Hawaii was an independent country before the U.S. annexed it and turned it into a state. And the reason Hawaii has been so ruthlessly effective at quarantine is that it in some ways still acts as its own country with its own border controls. The strategy has paid off: The state consistently has some of the lowest case numbers in the nation. As with so many other pandemic rules, Americans might not like quarantine, but it works. | https://medium.com/@amjadsabri/the-real-reason-americans-arent-quarantining-8b375c2084c4 | ['Amjad Sabri'] | 2020-12-18 00:43:05.203000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Bus', 'Quarantine', 'Public Health', 'Travel'] |
Happy Workers Day. | Happy Workers Day.
I support Goal 8- that we build a world where people are not just in jobs but have decent jobs.
I believe in the dignity of labour and that all jobs are worthy of respect.
I align with God's word that " he that does not work should not eat" and that a "workman is worthy of his wages".
I believe that work is a calling and the way we partner with God to make a better world and also contribute to society.
I believe that our political leaders should obey the #Nigerian constitution that says that...
" The State shall direct its policy towards ensuring that-
(a) all citizens, without discrimination on any group whatsoever, have the opportunity for securing adequate means of #livelihood as well as adequate opportunity to secure suitable #employment;
(b) conditions of #work are #just and #humane, and that there are adequate facilities for leisure and for social, religious and cultural life;
(c) the #health, #safety and #welfare of all persons in #employment are safeguarded and not endangered or abused;"
That's what our constitution says about our rights to employment.
We need jobs.
We need decent jobs for us.
I pray that all unemployed Nigerians get jobs... Decent jobs to be particular.
I pray that those that are currently employed but have a thirst to get a better job get those jobs quickly.
I pray that we build a nation where we create decent jobs easily, quickly and efficiently.
Happy Workers Day | https://medium.com/@afawehinmi2/happy-workers-day-5dea926d0243 | ['Abayomi Fawehinmi'] | 2020-05-02 01:34:06.153000+00:00 | ['Decent Jobs', 'Jobs', 'Employment'] |
Quantum Computing — Our Optimized Future | Quantum Computing — Our Optimized Future
In 1994, Peter Shor, a mathematician, developed a quantum algorithm to find prime factors of large numbers so efficiently that it is beyond the best classical algorithm present today.
Essentially both quantum and classical computers try to solve problems, but they use a different way to get the answers by manipulating the data. A standard computer uses digital bits of 0s and 1s, while quantum computers use qubits. A qubit can take any value between 0 and 1. A quantum computer has the power to solve problems that classical computers are not capable of by entangling the qubits. For example, a quantum computer can crack today’s most common security systems — such as 128-bit AES encryption — in seconds. It would take millions of years for a supercomputer to perform the same task.
The US NIST(National Institute of Standards and Technology) has claimed that it will be able to crack existing public-key infrastructure like 128-bit AES encryption by 2029. If this happens then it will make the businesses and governments improve their conventional network security using quantum-key cryptography. With every new innovation, the opportunity to make money is always there. According to HPCwire, the new market for quantum computing could be worth $830mn+ by 2024.
Google last year claimed that it has 53 superconducting qubits Sycamore processor that was able to verify a set of numbers was randomly distributed in just 200 seconds. It also claimed that if the processing would have been performed on IBM’s Summit machine, the most powerful supercomputer, it would have taken 10,000 years. This is a remarkable breakthrough in the quantum computing industry and paves the way forward. We can say that Google had reached a significant milestone towards realizing the immense promise of quantum computers.
If we take a look back in 1945, ENIAC — the first general-purpose digital computer — was released and it could do a task in 30 seconds that a human could do in 20 hours. We have come so far today that our super-advanced classical devices are no longer with vacuum tubes and vast sizes. The devices are compact, portable, and easy to use as today’s quantum computers will be from those in 50 years’ time.
I can’t wait to see the future of quantum computing. Are you excited? | https://medium.com/@dhruvjain99/quantum-computing-our-optimized-future-be1d0f472f6a | ['Dhruv Jain'] | 2021-06-17 14:33:09.416000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Quantum Computing', 'Future', 'Technology', 'Admiration'] |
2020 Campus Placements (SDE) Experience: 8 Tips Post 6 Offer Letters | Photo by fauxels from Pexels
Campus placements, during a worldwide pandemic, were always going to be interesting. Back in April-May 2020, I was reading about how to clear SDE interviews. 6 months on, I’ve received offers from every company I interviewed for, both on and off-campus.
The past 6 months for me have broken many myths about SDE interviews, college placement cells, and India’s job market in general. I’ll go ahead and list some important things I noticed straight away:
Competitive programming is helpful but not necessary.
That said, Hackerrank and Leetcode are an absolute must. Spend at least 4 months brushing up on problem-solving. I love Leetcode, my approach was pretty simple. I’d pick a data structure or algorithm for a week and solve the relevant Leetcode questions. Repeat.
Hackerrank’s playlist on Algorithms and Data Structures was a great way to start as well.
GeeksforGeeks is a great resource for quantitative aptitude questions and interview experiences. I’m not a big fan of their problem-solving platform.
2. Your interviews will likely begin and end with your resume, create a resume that gives your interviewer information that you want him/her to know, even boast about the things you are good at and expect to be tested on them. Be confident. If you can steer an interview towards your strengths, you’re winning the battle.
3. Mastery of at least one subject is essential, that is, you should know more than your interviewer. For me, research work in soft-computing ensured that I had at least one domain that I specialized in. Furthermore, have a “favorite subject”. It’s a common question that interviewers ask to trap you.
4. Data structures and algorithms aside, Operating Systems, DBMS will also play a major role, at least for on-campus interviews. These are the subjects that differentiate between a CS graduate and a Bootcamp developer.
5. CGPA certainly matters, but anything above a CGPA of 8 becomes redundant. On the other hand, if you wish to pursue post-graduation in CS outside India, the higher your CGPA the better.
6. Technical competence is important. But without communication skills, you’ll never be able to show what you can do. Work on your body language and communication. Express your ideas precisely, avoid too much jargon or “buzz-words” so to say. It displays a lack of understanding. Instead, approach your answers with simplicity.
7. Mass recruiters might be the first to hire you. Do not get satisfied under any circumstance. An offer letter early might feel good, but you’ll certainly regret it later. The tougher an interview process, the more confident you can be about the company and about the importance given to competence.
8. University placement cells are like vultures. Ironically, these placement officers do not have your interests in mind. The only thing that matters to them is somehow getting everyone placed. Please research on companies you interview for. Have they been laying-off during Covid-19? Reviews of Glassdoors and a quick look-up on Linkedin will help as well. | https://medium.com/lakshya-tyagi/2020-campus-placements-sde-experience-8-tips-post-6-offer-letters-2a7c90732da5 | ['Lakshya Tyagi'] | 2020-12-04 05:53:05.414000+00:00 | ['Interview Tips', 'Recruiting', 'University', 'Software Engineering', 'Interview'] |
Product Management: 22 Tools and Methods | Over the last 15 years, I’ve gathered many “ways of working” as I was looking for the best methodologies to make my products work.
They say a product manager is a never ending education and knowledge seeking. Yet, I gathered the main tools used by leading product managers over the years.
As I see it, practicing those tools as much as possible can make our products the best
1.Research — is our way of examining what problem we want to solve, how many people have such a difficulty, how many would like to use or purchase a certain product that will give them a solution or relief for this need.
2.Initiate an idea — is the initial thinking, creation and characterization of the product that we want to initiate. This is the stage where we will define what our product actually does.
3. The Art of Asking “Why?” — is our tool to ask and answer why you need such a product, what you will use, what will happen if there is no such product. Like “Devil’s Advocate”, this is also our way of understanding the difficulties and objections that will arise from customers and how our product will solve them.
4.Competitive research — Designed to better understand competing products, strategies, features, messages, visibility, and marketing. So that we can differentiate our product from the other products in a certain category.
5.Product market fit — is a process in which we examine what is missing in our product in order to adapt to an existing business need or to a specific market. Or alternatively — to which market can our product fit in its current form. These are two opposite approaches and it is necessary to test the suitability for our type of organization and product.
6.Product scoping — is the stage where we organize all the created ideas or improve our existing product, and then sort them into categories and treat the problem, sooner rather than later. What will bring immediate and real value and what can’t wait for the sequel, because it is not accurate to the product goals we have set at the moment.
7.Pricing and evaluation estimates — is the stage in which the cost of the product, project, development, infrastructure, implementation, training and other resources will be estimated.
8.Setting goals — is the stage where we decide where the product should go, what results it should achieve, how many customers it should attract or in what quantitative and measurable way they will use a particular feature.
9.I prefer not to try to translate the phrase ROAD MAP — it is a process where we decide what stages we will promote the product, how many features will come in the first version, what capabilities we must have by the end of the current year, whether all features will be ready in time for customer X , What is the plan for the coming quarter or next year.
10. Product design — is the stage where product managers turn a short idea or initial requirement into a requirement document; it is the process by which we understand the system blocks, the business components and the connection between them. This is the stage where we detail as much as possible what developers need to develop. This is a whole world that I will try to describe later in the variety of tools and methods for characterization.
11. User Experience / UX Characterization — is the stage where we turn a business requirement from a concept into a “screens tree”, to the definition of the functional use, to a screen drawing, and clicks that will make the product easier to use and more loved by our users.
12. Micro Copy — is the stage in which the language that the system “speaks”; it is characterized and written: The buttons, the messages, the errors and the gestures.
13. Graphic design / UI — is the stage where we pass on our requirements and screens to designers who will illuminate our product in colors, shapes, looks and sensations, Look & Feel.
14. Development and Accompaniment Development — This is the stage where we pass on the requirements to the developers, monitor the progress of the development, we are attentive to the development needs and ask questions that fax the progress. We are available for questions, refinements and make changes and corrections as needed.
15. Quality / QA testing — is the stage where the organization (usually software testers) makes sure that the product we have developed is developed as required by the characterization. Product managers are required to assist in prioritizing bugs (malfunctions), marking those without which we will not be able to go live and those with whom we can live at this stage. Some bugs generate immediate or future new requirements.
16. User testing — is the stage where we test the product via the control group of our real users — we make sure that the product we have developed achieves the results we expected, we test the user experience, speed of use, ease of use and their desire to use our product again.
17. Greenlight / GO NO GO — is one of the last stages in the product cycle, it is a crucial stage where we gather to make a decision, whether our product is ready to be exposed to the world or not. This meeting is usually conducted by the product managers, together with marketing people, developers. testers present the current state of the product, what works and what is not enough, explain the business value that the version will bring in its current form, and at the end make a decision.
18. Pilot — is the period when our product is in the air, it runs alone but at an experimental stage or for a certain part of the customers. We will usually limit this period in time and clear goals; at the end of this period we will decide if and how we proceed from here. This is a step that all the factors in the system have a great attention to updates from customers to respond quickly.
19. TTT / Train the trainers — This is the stage where product managers pass on all the knowledge they have to the operators, instructors, technical reporters or any body that passes the information on to customers or users.
20. Launch / Go live — is the final stage of our cycle, in which we celebrate the full birth of the product / feature. But even after that, attention to the product is required.
21. Implementation / Implementation — is the stage where the organization widely supports the escalation of the product to the air, in complex products some require unique settings for each customer, in different countries or for different needs, other complex products require training at the customer, webinars, instructional videos, presentations and lectures.
22. Analysis and Reporting — is the stage where we seek to see the user data and usability to determine whether the product has achieved the goals we set for it. If the product met its goals maybe we could have set a higher threshold; now we can examine requirements for further. And if the product did not meet the goals we set, we will examine the reasons and make the necessary adjustments until it meets them.
Looks like we’ve done?, hell no! 😊
A good product manager will not be able to rest.
As dedicated parents, we are always with the finger on the pulse. The process starts from the beginning with every feature, every change, and every product.
The process can be long, the tools are various and the tasks are complex. However, it is better for us to plan the way, examine the investment that lies ahead, and develop only after planning. If we run fast, sometimes we find that our product may not be used as is, or partially used or different from what we planned.
This is a list of the “professional” methodologies and working methods, remember that product management also has quite a few unique soft skills (i’ll leave it for a future post)
Want us to do this process together?
Do you want the product or organization to fit a unique process according to your needs?
I’m here for you | https://medium.com/@sisolutions/product-management-22-tools-and-methods-6c60c1b1739b | ['Yaniv Nisim Siso'] | 2020-12-22 17:29:56.249000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'Product Development', 'Product Management', 'Project Management', 'Productivity'] |
Routing in SwiftUI | 1. Router With Trigger Views
Presenting view
The presenting view is initialized with a router that knows how to navigate to the presented view. The router provides a trigger view that, being inserted, can perform the desired navigation in response to user interactions.
Using PresentingRouterProtocol instead of the actual router class allows us to change the navigation logic easily and to initialize the PresentingView with a mock router for tests.
We should wrap the router property with @StateObject (available from iOS 14). This is because the navigation state resides in a router, and the view should update on the state changes. Also, in contrast to @ObservedObject , this wrapper avoids recreating a router every time the owner view is updated. It’s crucial for our implementation of push navigation based on NavigationLink .
Router protocols
There are two protocols. The first one is used by routers that can navigate to other views.
NavigationState will be implemented as a structure in subclasses. It’ll contain state variables for all possible navigation routes. binding is a convenient function used to get bindings for the existing state variables.
The other protocol is used for routers of views that were presented modally or pushed on a navigation view. It allows us to navigate back.
Usually, routers will conform to both the PresentingRouter and the PresentedRouter protocol.
Router implementation
A router conforming to PresentingRouterProtocol should be able to navigate to the details view. So its navigationState should contain a variable for this route.
The presentDetails function uses the binding function from the NavigatingRouter protocol extension to provide access to the corresponding state variable, both to the router of the destination view and to the returning trigger view. The destination router will use this binding for dismissing. And the trigger view will use the binding to trigger navigation.
Trigger views
A router returns trigger views that perform actual navigation in response to user actions. We’ll review only two of the most useful types of trigger views, although there can be more of them. Both take a content view and transform it into a resulting button that can navigate to the specified destination view.
The first one is SheetButton , used in the example above. It implements modal navigation with the SwiftUI .sheet modifier.
The second one is NavigationButton . It provides push navigation implemented with the NavigationLink inside.
We use the NavigationLink initializer with the isActive binding here since we want to keep the navigation state in a router.
Having the same initialization parameters in SheetButton and NavigationButton makes it easy to change the type of navigation from modal presentation to push navigation — and vice versa.
BasePresentedRouter class
Dismissing functionality is very common. So we’ll also introduce a simple base router class.
Presented view
The details view can only be presented and doesn’t perform any other kind of navigation. Because of this, we’ll use the base BasePresentedRouter router without subclassing here.
We can declare the router property without a wrapper in PresentedView because we use it only for dismissing, so the view doesn’t need to listen to the router’s state changes.
We hide the view when the user taps on its text. | https://medium.com/better-programming/routing-in-swiftui-1dc87b7a47c7 | ['Ihor Vovk'] | 2020-10-22 15:58:31.540000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Swiftui', 'Xcode', 'Mobile', 'Swift'] |
Technology for Kids: 10 Great Apps for your Smart Kids | If you know your kids love spending time staring at screens on smartphones, tablets, and computers than books, you need to make that downtime educational for them. Check out these apps that can teach children of all ages a lot more than a game of Candy Crush — and might even inspire them to learn and live better.
1. FLOW FREE; FREE
Flow Free
Want your children to be puzzle smart when all they want to do is play games? Introduce them to Flow Free. The flow free app is recommended to children ages 5 and older. The objective is to connect dots of the same color by drawing ‘pipes’ between them such that the entire grid is occupied by pipes, this game is good for kids who need help with Flexibility and Planning.
Find it: iOS, Andriod
2. TODO MATH; FREE
Todo Math
It’s no secret that starting early makes it easier to learn math, but things get even easier with a fun app like Todo Math. Kids can learn numbers, counting, and addition and subtraction to 99 as well as multiplication using Todo Math app. They can learn 1-to-1 correspondence and practice correctly writing numerals by tracing. Plus, this app is a wonderfully easy-to-use math app designed to help kids of all abilities practice math. It uses visuals, auditory prompts, and purposeful touch!
Find it: iOS, Android
3. SPELLING STAGE; FREE
Spelling Stage
There’s no better way to beef up learning skills than by playing games! This app, that makes spelling practice as much fun as it can be! With a paid subscription, it offers a wide range of words that will be suitable for everyone from preschoolers through adults and makes a great practice tool for an amazing array of situations.
Find it: iOS
4. LIGHTBOT: CODE HOUR; FREE
LightBot
It’s hard to learn programming languages, but LightBot does its best. Code Hour is a programming puzzle game- a game whose game mechanics require using programming logic to solve levels. This short teaser is meant to introduce players to programming who may have little to no experience. Anyone, anywhere, all-ages can play, have fun and learn real programming logic!.
Find it: iOS, Android
5. EPIC, FREE
Epic
Epic! is the Leading Digital Library for Kids 12 & Under. The free educator version of Epic! is for use in the classroom or school library between 6am-4pm Monday through Friday. For use at home, students should be using the home version of Epic! Epic! streams books to your device or web account as you read, so there is no waiting for an entire book to download. You can download books to read offline at any time..
Find it: Website
6. SCIENCE360; FREE
Science360
Science360 is a wonderful app for kids to learn science. It provides the latest science videos from scientists, colleges and universities, science and engineering centers, the National Science Foundation, and more. Amazing free app sparks imagination and learning. For Kids Age 8+.
Find it: iOS
7. CLASSDOJO; FREE
ClassDojo
Upgrade their digital schooling. The free app ClassDojo helps teachers in all kinds of classrooms encourage students and engage parents. To make sure every student can benefit, it’s important that ClassDojo is always free for the entire teacher community.
Find it: iOS, Android
8. DRAGONBOX; $4.99
DragonBox
DragonBox Algebra 5+ Is perfect for giving young children a head start in mathematics and algebra. Children as young as five can easily begin to grasp the basic processes involved in solving linear equations without even realizing that they are learning. The game is intuitive, engaging and fun, allowing anyone to learn the basics of algebra at his or her own pace.
Find it: iOS, Android
9. ELEVATE LABS; $5
Elevate Labs
Elevate is a brain training app designed to help you stay sharp, build confidence, and boost productivity. Elevate helps keep its training sessions fresh with 16 free games that change daily. Train with 35+ games that are designed to boost productivity, earning power, and self-confidence in skills like math, reading, writing, speaking and listening.
Find it: Andriod
10. CHESS.COM; FREE
Chess.com
Not all learning apps should be completely separate from the classroom — that’s where Chess.com comes in. The app offers children a fun and convenient way to learn how to play chess. When we learn the rules of chess and start playing, we just enjoy the process of playing, that’s all!
Find it: Website | https://medium.com/tckzone-blog/technology-for-kids-10-great-apps-for-your-smart-kids-256434143636 | ['Oluwadamilola Soyombo'] | 2019-10-16 20:30:20.300000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Education', 'Kids', 'Apps', 'Kidsthatcode'] |
How I made a 30% ROI on Pandemic investments | The second everything came crashing down March 16,2020 I, much like everyone else, did not know what would happen to all of my money. Do I hold on and save every dollar I can? Or invest it when rates are low and shoot my shot.
Well… I did the latter and it’s about to let me go to grad school- for free. How? INDEX FUNDS. These accounts let you invest in the total stock market or portions of it you just let compound interest do it’s thing.
I started by investing a good chunk of money in Vanguard’s VTI account the day it crashed to next to nothing. VTI is an ETF (exchange-traded fund) that encompasses over 3,500 individual shares, including the S&P 500. Historically, it has always done slightly better than the stock market so I thought to give it a try. Over time, I have been adding money in $500 increments whenever I had the extra cash. It’s always better to invest smaller chunks at different rates than a large chunk at one time. Your ROI will be higher, we can talk about that in a different article.
In the past 9 months, I was able to get a 30% return on the money I put in. 30% is pretty darn good. For those of you who are new to the investment world, real estate brings in about 6–8% a year (depending on where you live), the stock market gains about 10% and high -yield savings accounts only give you 2–3% back in interest. 30% is virtually unheard of. From March 2020 to now, I turned $3,570.00 to $4687.79. And this is just the start. If this trend continues, I can pay off my Master’s program with free money.
If I continue investing these small amounts, my money will triple in the next 10 years according to this chart below.
If you have the funds, I strongly urge you to chuck it in the Vanguard VTI. Continue to invest it in monthly, quarterly or any time it works for your budget. Consistency and patience is key. You’ll thank me when you are sitting in hundreds of thousands of dollars when you retire. | https://medium.com/@mollypatel/how-i-made-a-30-roi-on-pandemic-investments-c2f8a09a24bf | ['Molly Patel'] | 2020-12-21 03:40:08.484000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Pandemic', 'Index Funds', 'Investing', 'Retirement'] |
I’m Like The Ocean | Photo of Flose LaPierre, John D. MacArthur Beach State Park
The ocean is new with every moment. Like that, I am new. With 2021 ahead, I honor myself for:
Embracing my desires
Letting go of old ideas of God/Spirit/Universe
Accepting my body for her functionality
Eating more colors
Creating like a child
Stripping down ‘cuz I feel like it
Getting outdoors every day
Learning to grow food
Establishing Write to Heal
Seeing the best of me through Jesse’s eyes
Allowing marriage to evolve me
Feeling all the feels
Exercising the power of good
Setting boundaries
Accepting others’ boundaries even when I don’t understand them
Following my alignment
Gossiping less
and acknowledging that I am made for good
What do you honor yourself for? | https://medium.com/weeds-wildflowers/im-like-the-ocean-6201ef8cc472 | ['Flose Lapierre'] | 2020-12-19 02:30:03.004000+00:00 | ['Poetry Writing', 'Poetry', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Reflections', 'Self'] |
SEO Consulting Services and Advertisement/Marketing Agencies | For any leading agency for advertisement, it is mandatory to undertake and excel in the project’s optimization on all relevant platforms i.e., search engines. Although to the advertisement agencies of smaller scale, it remains moot to do so, in order to expand the wings and projects in the superficially indirect modes, it is important to upkeep with the SEO consulting services as well.
Why is it important?
To understand the importance of the services pertaining to SEO with regard to the working of any advertisement and marketing agency, it is important to understand the general layout, even if in simple terms.
Any agency is approached by a customer or potential client so that his product, website, services, or any such other thing, can land on his client’s vision or screen. To achieve such a purpose, he approaches the agency to come up with the idea to reproduce the features and characters of his services, etc., and throw it in the market to create a fresh nudge and reproduce, in consequence, the image of the business and its offerings.
Now, the agency undertakes the responsibility to boost such offerings of their client to achieve the client’s goals for him. They will design electronic posts, banners, and whatever else falls within the scope of the arrangement. However, in today’s world, it has become quite relevant that the online and electronic presence remains prevalent and for such reasons e-support to such offering is pivotal.
To overcome such shortcomings and discrepancies to the future desired, the first and foremost requirement becomes the ranking of the product’s URL or of the website; as the first thing which engages the consumer or a user is the website’s rank on a search engine. You are most likely to click and use the first or second website you find on the search engine then you are to a link found on the 30th, 40th, or even 4th page of the engine being used.
This would increase not only the reach of the client’s offerings across the board while maintaining a long-term impact instead of the turn of a few days or a month, but this would increase the profit margins of the respective marketing or advertisement agency exponentially as well, all while ensuring the better results.
This, in my opinion, is the better and greatly far-sighted option to engage with and in, this not only guarantees the sustainability of the already undergoing inline and physical advertisement activities of the agency but expand the network of their work and industry to a whole another level. | https://medium.com/@hnixonharry/seo-consulting-services-and-advertisement-marketing-agencies-54f09b805b91 | ['Harry H. Nixon'] | 2020-12-23 15:10:06.943000+00:00 | ['Consulting', 'Marketing', 'SEO', 'Advertising', 'Seo Services'] |
Affiliate Marketing For Beginners — What You Need To Know? | In making money online, affiliate marketing is a skill-based approach, anyone could learn that. It is one of those segments of the online world, that doesn’t require any degree or formal education.
Learn affiliate marketing at ShoutUniversity.
Want to understand what is Affiliate marketing? Keep reading to learn everything about this popular passive income method.
My Journey with affiliate marketing started in 2008 when I accidentally read about it on a discussion forum. I was surprised to know how something so simple and powerful is not taught in college or very few talks about it.
With this guide, my aim is to help you understand affiliate marketing, so you can apply this technique in any field you are in to make money.
Before, you embark on the journey of understanding affiliate marketing, let me show you the possibilities of affiliate marketing.
Here is a screenshot of one of the affiliate program that I promote:
The above one took about 2 years to accomplish.
And here is another one:
This one was outcome of 2 and half years.
However, the real question is:
How did I achieve this kind of result, and can you do it too?
Well, the key here is your zeal to learn, and how badly you want to live a free life.
I have accomplished all this working only 6–8 hours a day on things that I like. Not even a single day of my online career, has felt like pressure or something I didnot wanted to do.
The only thing that create a differentiator is, I didnot cheat my way up. Those 6–8 hours of work was complete dedication, and based on my 10 years of experience, I could definitely say:
Anyone with decent IQ could start making $3000–4000 within 6–8 months by regular practicing every day for 2 hours.
How to do this?
Well, We will dwell into details, and more technicalities of affiliate marketing as we move ahead in this free course, but for now, lets learn the basics.
Before that…
If this is your first time here at ShoutMeLoud, you should know that…
In the last 11 years, ShoutMeLoud has inspired millions of lives around the globe to help them earn passive income via blogging and affiliate marketing.
It would not have been possible if I took the risk of living my day job to pursue my passion. When I think about this, I find it amazing as for how my life unfolded when I took the courage of starting something of my own. I feel this is something you, and others individual should try once to go beyond our limitations.
The only caveat is, this is not something you will read in academics books or a point of discussion with friends over drinks. This is one of those skills that you learn yourself by reading a guide like this or watching YouTube videos like this.
With this Affiliate marketing guide, I want to provide you all the details about:
Basics of Affiliate marketing
How Affiliate marketing works
How to get started with Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing Terminologies
This is your go-to guide and you should bookmark this one along with all linked articles to master the art of affiliate marketing.
If you are someone who likes to read everything in the book format, you can purchase our affiliate marketing handbook from our store as well.
Alright, let’s get started.
What is affiliate marketing and how does it work?
Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing wherein you refer someone to any online product and when that person buys the product based on your recommendation, you receive a commission.
Every big company like Amazon, Apple, Google have an affiliate program, which is free to join by any individual across the globe. If you didnot knew about this, then pay close attention to rest of this guide, my friend, you are about to discover one of the most interesting aspect of making money from home.
This commission varies from $1 to $10,000 depending on what product you are promoting.
Here is how affiliate marketing works in 4 simple steps:
You join an affiliate program (Here is a list to get started) You pick a product to promote (You will get a unique affiliate link) You share the link via Social media, Blog, YouTube videos, Facebook ads or any other form When someone makes a purchase, you earn a handsome affiliate commission.
The below infographic will help you understand the lifecycle of affiliate marketing:
So, in simple words:
Any companies that sell products online, offers an affiliate program, which is free to join. It is as simple as creating an online profile.
You can simply sign up for the program and get your unique tracking link. Now, whenever you are writing about their product, you can simply use this special tracking affiliate link to recommend the company’s site. If your readers/traffic buys anything by clicking your affiliate link, you will get a commission.
Is it as easy as it sounds?
Yes, and no!
Yes, because of 2 reasons:
Joining an affiliate program Getting paid
Is super easy. Thanks to advancement in digital marketing, and services like PayPal and Payoneer, this all is automated.
The tough part is, how badly you want this.
To become successful in affiliate marketing, you need to train regularly (Daily). Think of this as learning to play cricket, and the only way you get better by showing up every day on the ground.
And then there is another part, as we gain more responsibilities in life like (job, kids, parents, spouce, weekend parties), we find it hard to dedicate time for acquiring learning new skills.
This is where the question comes:
How badly you want this? How badly you need this?
If your want or need falls in “unsure” segment, take a 360 view of life, and ask what is that you have to lose and what are the possible gains.
If dedicating 1–2 hours a day for few months could give you financial freedom for life, it doesnot sound like a bad deal.
Moreover, it is proven method that works!
Moving on…
Also, see:
How to Start Affiliate marketing for beginners:
You can get started with Affiliate marketing in many ways.
Here are a few that you can pick from:
Start a blog in a targeted niche and use it to promote a product. This is by far the chepest and easiest way to start an affiliate marketing business. For example: Start a blog about Women shoes, Work from home products, and so on.
Buy traffic from PPC sites like Google, Facebook, Quora and drive traffic to affiliate products or services. This is called PPC marketing, and those who have taken a basic course of digital marketing, could understand it better. For rest, give it a little time and you will understand this.
Create a YouTube channel and promote products.
Create an email list by creating a mini-website. An example if Finshots
Start a Podcast and recommend products.
Here are steps to get started with affiliate marketing via your blog:
This is just a rough highlight, as we move ahead in this free course, you will understand everything in greater depth and length to create your own affiliate marketing system.
Start a blog Select a profitable industry and then pick a niche for your blog Choose the affiliate products that you can promote Create content around those products Drive traffic to your website/affiliate post Use email-marketing services to capture email of visitors Create email-sequence to automate the funnel (We will discuss this in details soon) Focus on driving more traffic and repeating the process.
The reason blogging is one of the most effective ways to get started with affiliate marketing is because it requires minimum investment and you can learn everything around it in no time. From here on, what really matters it how much dedication, time and smart work you put in to grow your affiliate business.
Affiliate marketing terminologies:
Here are some of the common terms associated with affiliate marketing:
Affiliates: Publishers like you and me who are using affiliate program links to promote and make sales.
Publishers like you and me who are using affiliate program links to promote and make sales. Affiliate marketplace: There are many marketplaces like Shareasale, CJ, and Clickbank. These work as central databases for affiliate programs in different niches.
There are many marketplaces like Shareasale, CJ, and Clickbank. These work as central databases for affiliate programs in different niches. Affiliate software: Software used by companies to create an affiliate program for their product.
Software used by companies to create an affiliate program for their product. Affiliate link: Special tracking link offered by your affiliate program to track the progress of your affiliate promotion.
Special tracking link offered by your affiliate program to track the progress of your affiliate promotion. Affiliate ID: Similar to the affiliate link, but many affiliate programs offer a unique ID which you can add to any page of the product site.
Similar to the affiliate link, but many affiliate programs offer a unique ID which you can add to any page of the product site. Payment mode: Different affiliate programs offer different methods of payment.
Different affiliate programs offer different methods of payment. Affiliate Manager/OPM: Many companies have dedicated affiliate managers to help publishers earn more by giving them optimization tips.
Many companies have dedicated affiliate managers to help publishers earn more by giving them optimization tips. Commission percentage/amount: The amount or percentage you will be receiving in affiliate income from every sale.
The amount or percentage you will be receiving in affiliate income from every sale. 2-tier affiliate marketing: This is a great way of making money from an affiliate program. With this method, you recommend that others join affiliate programs, and you receive a commission when a sub-affiliate makes a sale (similar to MLM or multi-level marketing). This income is also known as a sub-affiliate commission.
This is a great way of making money from an affiliate program. With this method, you recommend that others join affiliate programs, and you receive a commission when a sub-affiliate makes a sale (similar to MLM or multi-level marketing). This income is also known as a Landing pages: A unique product sales or demo page used for the purpose of increasing sales. Most of the programs that you will be promoting have many landing pages, and you can run A/B testing to see which pages convert best for you.
A unique product sales or demo page used for the purpose of increasing sales. Most of the programs that you will be promoting have many landing pages, and you can run A/B testing to see which pages convert best for you. Custom affiliate income/account: Unlike a generic affiliate account, many companies offer custom affiliate income to people making the most affiliate sales for them.
Unlike a generic affiliate account, many companies offer custom affiliate income to people making the most affiliate sales for them. Link clocking: Most of the affiliate tracking links are ugly. Using a link clocking technique like URL shorteners, Thirsty Affiliates, etc., you can turn ugly links into links that can be read and understood by your readers.
Most of the affiliate tracking links are ugly. Using a link clocking technique like URL shorteners, Thirsty Affiliates, etc., you can turn ugly links into links that can be read and understood by your readers. Custom coupons: Many programs allow affiliates to create custom coupons which are also used to track sales. Custom discount coupons help you to increase affiliate sales as well.
For companies offering an affiliate program, this is one of the best ways to receive free promotion, thus saving substantially on advertising.
For example, whenever you see coupons or discount links, most of the time these are affiliate links, and when you make a purchase, webmasters make money.
Every affiliate program has a set TOS.
For example, payout condition, cookie policy and so on.
Let me explain cookie policy as it’s intermediate level topic but will give you an idea about the possibilities of affiliate marketing.
Many of the affiliate product offer 30–150 days cookie period, which means that if a visitor clicks your affiliate link to land on an affiliate product, now even if they don’t buy anything immediately, but re-visit the site in next 30–150 days, you will earn an affiliate commission.
How to find new Affiliate Program to join?
Finding a new affiliate program is challenging, and if you do it right, you will increase your chances of earning huge.
Here are a few ways to find new affiliate programs:
Affiliate Network and marketing platform: There are affiliate networks and marketplaces that would help you find new affiliate programs.
Affiliatizer: This is a chrome addon that would help you find the new affiliate program.
Competitor analysis: Analyze the top websites in the niche you are targeting, and make a list of affiliate products they promote. This will help you find high value and profitable affiliate products.
I have also published a long list of affiliate programs that is worth looking at:
Moving on…
Affiliate Marketing: FAQ
At this point, you should have a basic understanding of what affiliate marketing is and how it works.
Now, let me answer some of the common questions asked by webmasters and marketers about affiliate marketing:
How do I find an affiliate link for any product?
Not all companies offer an affiliate program, of course, but for those that do offer affiliate programs, you can check their website for related information. When searching, be sure to check the company’s FAQ page if they have one.
Another way to find this information is to do a simple Google search. For example, one could place the following phrase into Google Search: “(product name) + affiliate program”. (Replace “product name” with the name of the product you are promoting.) There is an interesting chrome addon called Affilitizer is available which makes this process easy.
This should bring you to a landing page. Many companies use an affiliate marketplace like ShareASale, CJ, or Clickbank. These arefree to use and you can create a free account.
How do I find new products to promote?
Affiliate marketplaces such as those mentioned above are the best places to start your affiliate marketing research. You can browse your niche and see the top performing affiliate programs.
Alternatively, you can keep an eye on blogs in your niche and see which products they are promoting and what methods they are using.
Affiliate marketing and AdSense: Can we use both?
Yes, you can use both as affiliate marketing does not violate any AdSense TOS. In fact, for me, affiliate marketing works better than Adsense, and that is one reason you see fewer AdSense ads here at ShoutMeLoud.
How do I get started with Affiliate marketing?
Here at ShoutMeLoud, I and many guest authors have covered some of the best guides to help you to understand in depth about getting started, and some of the pros and cons.
Read: How to start an Affiliate marketing business
Here is a list from our affiliate marketing archive which will help you to get started:
I would also highly recommend you purchase ShoutMeLoud’s The Affiliate Marketing eBook. This a comprehensive guide on getting started with affiliate marketing.
Update: ShoutUniversity Affiliate video course is live (New). Available at introductory price of $69 (Regular price $299)
I hope this beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing will help you get started. If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask me in the comments section below.
Be sure to join ShoutMeLoud email newsletter to get more similar tips and updates. If you find this article informative, do share it with your friends! | https://medium.com/shoutmeloud/affiliate-marketing-for-beginners-what-you-need-to-know-7dea787085b1 | ['Harsh Agrawal'] | 2020-09-25 18:17:09.381000+00:00 | ['Affiliate', 'Beginners Guide', 'Shoutmeloud', 'Affiliate Marketing', 'Harsh Agrawal'] |
ElectrumSV Paymail Roadmap | Why ElectrumSV does not have Paymail support yet, and what needs to be done to get us there.
Is it much further Papa Smurf?
I do not claim to be a Bitcoin expert, just one developer of a Bitcoin-based application. If something is misguided or wrong, please point it out. That would be the main benefit for me, for writing this article.
I won’t mention that this article is probably boring, because that would predispose you to interpreting it as boring. Boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring boring. Read on if you want to know the details of what we have to do to get Paymail integrated!
The initial plan
When the news came that Paymail was going to be launched at CoinGeek Toronto, the plan was to try and get it done before then. We currently have two branches, our unstable development branch and our stable branch. The development for the Paymail feature was started in our stable branch, as the development one includes some more extensive changes I did not want to have to deal with in order to get Paymail out in the short-term.
Differences from other wallets
When people say, “I’m developing a Paymail host.” I ask them who is going to use it. You may wonder what I mean.
Consider this, Moneybutton is a wallet service, Handcash is a wallet service and Centbee is a wallet service. They provide commercial trusted and quality services on behalf of their wallet users. This involves servers, and knowledge of their users payment addresses and generally enhancing the user’s experience as an internet-based service. They can and likely do have a database of the addresses that have been generated on a user’s behalf, and easily build and integrate a Paymail service on top of it
ElectrumSV is itself your own independent wallet service. It is an application and has no servers. It can never host your Paymail itself. A Paymail host for an ElectrumSV wallet would require uploading the method of generating addresses for an ElectrumSV user, and likely require ElectrumSV to connect and synchronise in order to provide a quality experience. This isn’t bad, it’s just quite different from the hosting Paymail for a specific commercial wallet service, as the above businesses would do.
So who is going to use the Paymail host Jolene Bloggs write? Not those businesses, that would create a lot of work that would distract from providing the already excellent experiences they already do. Not ElectrumSV, as she has no idea how we are going to generate addresses for our users, and we don’t want to have to integrate and support everyone else’s way of generating addresses until the end of time! That would create a huge amount of work for us, we have to do it the best way for us to work well, and reduce ongoing demands on our time.
Let’s move on and consider it Jolene’s problem.
Finding the right address
The user interface work was pretty much done before the CoinGeek conference. I also implemented the core of the server infrastructure for the Paymail hosting ElectrumSV will provide. What wasn’t done, and what I decided couldn’t be done in the stable branch, was the work to integrate the addresses the Paymail host gives out, so that ElectrumSV can monitor them.
In theory, I could just take an ElectrumSV wallet’s master public key, and give it to our Paymail host. Then it could generate the same addresses as the wallet itself, and the wallet would monitor the addresses the Paymail host gives out the same way it monitors the addresses the wallet itself gives out.
But my belief is that this is a terrible idea. The key problem is that this locks in address reuse. If you don’t know, Uncle Craig tells us that address reuse is bad, you can go and read his writings or the writings of others to find out why. I agree, and we’re not going to support it. ElectrumSV has no way of knowing what addresses the Paymail host is giving out, and the Paymail host has no way of knowing what addresses ElectrumSV gives out. So nothing prevents either of them from giving out the same addresses. We can do better.
It doesn’t matter how we do it better, it comes down to ElectrumSV monitoring and using it’s own sequence of addresses, and assigning a second sequence of addresses for Paymail to give out. Then ElectrumSV can monitor and spend from these, but not give them out. However, ElectrumSV wallet internals limit each wallet to one type of wallet functionality. It can be an ElectrumSV wallet, it can be a watch only wallet of your yours.org or moneybutton.com wallet, it can be a multi-signature wallet and so on. But it cannot contain one of each of these. And this is the core problem, going into the future we want ElectrumSV to be one wallet with all your different keys inside it, and different accounts for each key, and even for separated fund accounts.
A wallet will contain a lot of accounts if the user wants.
Putting it simply, for the purposes of Paymail your wallet would contain two accounts. The default one when you created it, and the Paymail account you add. Each would have it’s own extended private key. And going forward we’d extend the account concept as a basic element of ElectrumSV’s future.
Because the source code in the development branch and the stable branch differ so much, if we did this in the stable branch we’d have to completely redo it in the development branch. It’d create more than twice the work. The best thing to do is just discard the concept of doing it in the short term in the stable branch, and move forward doing the infrastructure for the account system we need and will have to do anyway in the development branch.
So where does that leave us?
The roadmap to Paymail support at this time is:
Refactor our wallet and key support to allow a wallet to contain multiple accounts and keys. When someone creates a Paymail identity in the ElectrumSV wallet, add it as a second account. Initially the user will copy the identity to give to the ElectrumSV Paymail host. They will paste it into a form on the website, and the host will parse it. Extend the ElectrumSV Paymail host to be production ready. Stabilise a release from the development branch.
What then?
We, the ElectrumSV developers, may not be offering Bitcoin SV Paymail hosting. We may however be offering testnet and scaling testnet Paymail hosting.
The reason for this is that providing a secure internet service is a lot of work that adds to our obligations, and takes away from the time we have available to actually work on ElectrumSV. The other more handsome mobile and web-based wallets already have secured and trusted services, and that is what they do well.
I think it’s in our users best interests for us to provide trusted hosting for them, but whether it will be possible for us to do so without being too expensive attention-wise, is unknown at this time. Whether we do or not, if there are trusted businesses in the BSV eco-system who implement our hosting model, I believe it is in our users interests that we list alongside or in lieu of any service we do or do not provide.
Comments below! Or on the most excellent Metanet.ICU slack, or Unwriter’s also excellent slack. | https://medium.com/@roger-taylor/electrumsv-paymail-roadmap-17bee8ea46f8 | ['Roger Taylor'] | 2019-06-07 07:19:48.294000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin Sv', 'Electrumsv', 'Bitcoin Wallet', 'Bitcoin'] |
The Terrifying World of Benadryl Addiction | The Terrifying World of Benadryl Addiction
It’s not uncommon to completely lose touch with reality, forgetting they swallowed the pills, forgetting where they are, and even forgetting who they are. Seizures. Lifelike hallucinations. Psychosis. Coma. Death.
Photo by Pavel Krugley on Unsplash
“First thing I want to say, I hate DPH. I think DPH is horrible. I took DPH because I wanted to mentally hurt myself. I will never take DPH again,” a user posted to the r/DPH subreddit as a preface to his experience taking 1200 milligrams of DPH — shortened form of diphenhydramine, or more commonly, Benadryl — during a suicide attempt. He took two entire boxes of Benadryl, which is around 50 to 100 times the therapeutic dose. By the time I spoke to him a month after his post, he had gone back on this reassurance and said he now found himself “hooked” on Benadryl.
“It has this unsettling and inherent darkness that I’ve never experienced with any other drug,” mentioned one user with years of heavy Benadryl dependence. With trip reports detailing walls covered in spiders, shadowy ghost figures skulking around their bedrooms, and pets melting in their owner’s arms, DPH possesses a unique ability to cause almost wholly nightmarish trips, transporting the user to a world reminiscent of the Silent Hill franchise. While in this delirium, the user often can’t tell where reality ends and the drug begins. It’s not uncommon to completely lose touch with reality, forgetting they swallowed the pills, forgetting where they are, and even forgetting who they are. Seizures. Lifelike hallucinations. Psychosis. Coma. Death. Doctors have noted the often inconsistent but often deadly serious symptoms of antihistamine overdose.
Photo via Reddit screenshot
DPH, once an obscure high, has risen in popularity due to social media personalities and its spread on social media. For instance, the “Benadryl challenge” on TikTok sees users down massive amounts of Benadryl and record the experience for their followers. Often the drug’s most common users are teenagers and other young adults without access to traditional recreational drugs, and Benadryl’s over-the-counter availability placates any of their health concerns. After all, if it comes from a Walgreens shelf, how bad can it be?
The DPH community on Reddit is a popular forum for recreational Benadryl users. While some brag with photos of hundreds of pills laid out, similar to how traditional drug dealers might post their hauls, most adamantly tell new users to stay far away from this drug. DPH addicts are a dime a dozen here, often lamenting the drug and how it has ruined their life, relationships, and brain health, whilst remaining in the throes of their addiction.
Is the brain damage permanent? Did the drugs break my brain? Questions plaguing the subreddit in between posts about trip reports, dosage questions, and memes. Others make posts warning about their use exacerbating their mental health problems, from depression to borderline personality disorder, to one user waking up in a mental hospital after a DPH binge. The teenager constantly felt intense paranoia and was unable to stop experiencing tactile and visual hallucinations. Others report brain fog, suicidal ideation, heart issues, memory problems, and vision and hearing loss. The lives of these users — many of them teenagers in already vulnerable situations — make Requiem for a Dream look like Sesame Street.
“I’m honestly quite sad how many people, especially teens, are taking this drug recreationally. I don’t want anyone else to have to experience the pure agony, terror, and confusion DPH has caused me,” infamously wrote one user of the Reddit forum. The user is believed to have fatally overdosed, after publicly and bluntly speaking about their addiction on the board for months. According to their comments, they started taking DPH in 2019 as a legal and cheap alternative to LSD and quickly became addicted as their physical and mental health deteriorated. On several experiences, medics rushed them to the hospital after seizures while shopping; they drove to work while on 2000 mg and described swerving to avoid hitting hallucinations; and had several stays in the cardiac intensive care unit. Their last post was a photo of 276 pink Benadryl pills — 6900 milligrams or 172 to 276 times the recommended dose. Responding to concerned users on the board, this person replied “6.9g may be the dose that finally frees me.”
Many users on Reddit discuss the adverse neurological effects they’ve suffered from DPH abuse, yet there have been nearly no studies on the effects of heavy Benadryl addiction on a young person’s brain. However, overdosing on Benadryl isn’t a new phenomenon in medical journals.
In another case reported by researchers, a distraught 14-year-old girl swallowed 150 capsules, each containing 50 mg of diphenhydramine. She quickly fell unconscious and experienced seizures. Despite aggressive and speedy treatment, doctors declared her brain dead the following day after detecting no cerebral blood flow. Fatal doses for children can be as low as 500 mg, while the fatal dose for adults is generally considered to be between 20 to 40 mg/kg.
Addiction, regardless of the drug, regularly ravages the user’s life in catastrophic ways but few substances are as wholly negative and all-consuming as recreational Benadryl. While substances like mushrooms, LSD, and even cannabis in some areas remain illegal, some young and vulnerable users resort to over-the-counter drugs that prove ruinous for their physical and mental health.
Those pushed to obscure highs like DPH might get some relief next year, at least for those in Oregon. Starting February 1, 2021, Oregon’s drug decriminalization law takes effect and drug users will no longer be arrested for possessing small amounts of illegal substances. Instead of a prison sentence, small possession charges will be punished with only a small fee similar to a traffic ticket. Under this new law, Oregon drug users won’t be pushed into the prison system and instead can get the help they need. Hopefully, this will allow local drug users to make safer choices. If you’d like to help the drug decriminalization effort nationwide, research drug decriminalization and its intersections with prison reform. By starting the conversation in your friend circle, these issues will become less stigmatized. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/the-terrifying-world-of-benadryl-addiction-7595d2b6501b | ['Raisa Nastukova'] | 2020-12-16 21:57:34.693000+00:00 | ['Drugs', 'Addiction', 'Reddit', 'Trends', 'Mental Health'] |
Trimming Eyelashes | For J.D. Harms
Forward midnight
Wrinkles o’clock
Former hairstylist
Former self
Late time, lost
Found minefield
Vapor on the mirror
Trying to pull
Trying to style
Swinging a baby
Adult’s cradle
Back in time
Cooking cucumbers
Can’t do that
Craving a cut
A lil touch
A sprinkle of gut
Hair pulling
Eyebrows fading
Life in ING
Progressive depressive
Einstein seizure of brilliance
First aid kit salad
No space for justice
Cracking codes
Looking away
Flickering lights
Actually closing opening
Eyes, legs, mouths
Too wide, to hide
Swinging a soul
Roller-toddler
Until the very end
The end of no return
Eyelashes
Hold on tight
I blink twice
In one second
Can’t miss a thing
Gotta trim
Gotta steam
Gotta train to catch
Gotta train to jump
Gotta jump to catch
Gotta a look
Gotta a look
Prince Junior
Purple tears
Deep rain
Christmas eve
Filthy music I hear
Sleep or party
How to steer
A former self
A former hair
Turned white
Turned fear
Turned near
Turned me
Turned over
Over and over
Getting over
Overcoming
It ain't over ‘til it’s over
Homecoming
Homemaking
Ownmaking
Ownbaking
Ohbabying
Ohbegging
Oh oh oh
I think I know
Now it’s time
To let go
And let it grow
Grass clipping
Me just me
Getting older
Former lifestyle
Falling hairstyle
Flailing chest
To catch a breath
But sneering
To nothing
Alive
Not needing to trim to steer to style a damn thing but being former future Whatever
Stylish soul
Future self
Funky shelf
Rent is high
I jump off
Next door girl
Adores high floors
Watermelon sugar low
We flush the sugar
Adding salt
And licking
Bushy eyelids | https://medium.com/@cormoranlee/trimming-eyelashes-9e9dd24645b8 | ['Cormoran Lee'] | 2020-12-25 20:39:23.327000+00:00 | ['Self Talk', 'Depression', 'Mental Health', 'Free Verse', 'Self'] |
2. List-Based Collections | -
2. 1. Array
Contiguous area of memory consisting of equal-size elements indexed by contiguous integers.
Adding values
You can add elements to the end of an array using the append method.
// create a empty array of integers
var numbers: [Int] = [] for i in 1...5 {
numbers.append(i)
print(numbers)
// [1]
// [1, 2]
// [1, 2, 3]
// [1, 2, 3, 4]
// [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
} print(numbers)
// [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
To insert an item into the array at a specified index, call the array’s insert(at:) method.
var numbers: [Int] = [1, 2, 3] numbers.insert(0, at: 0) // numbers will be [0, 1, 2, 3]
numbers.insert(9, at: 1) // numbers will be [0, 9, 1, 2, 3]
You can also append another array using the += operator.
var numbers: [Int] = [1, 2, 3] numbers += [4, 5, 6] // numbers will be [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] // or just one value
numbers += [7] // numbers will be [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
Removing Values
To remove an item from a specific index call the remove(at:) method.
var numbers: [Int] = [1, 2, 3] numbers.remove(at: 0) // numbers will be [2, 3]
Multi Dimensional Array
// Create a two-dimensional array with nested brackets.
var points: [[Int]] = [[10, 20], [30, 40]] // Access all individual elements.
print(points[0][0])
print(points[0][1])
print(points[1][0])
print(points[1][1]) / / append an item to one of the arrays
points [1].append(50) print(points)
2. 2. Linked List
The definition of Linked List is a data structure that stores data in such a way that each node has data and pointers and is connected in a single line.
The types of Linked List are as follows
- Singly Linked List
- Doubly Linked List
- Circular Linked List
Features of Linked List The common characteristics of the basic list data structure are as follows.
- List data structures store data side by side. It does not prevent storing duplicate data.
- Basic Principles of Linked Lists Dynamically allocate structure variables one at a time and link them as needed.
public class Node {
var value: String
init(value: String) {
self.value = value
}
var next: Node?
weak var previous: Node?
} public class LinkedList {
fileprivate var head: Node?
private var tail: Node?
public var isEmpty: Bool {
return head == nil
}
public var first: Node? {
return head
}
public var last: Node? {
return tail
}
public func append(value: String) {
let newNode = Node(value: value) if let tailNode = tail {
newNode.previous = tailNode
tailNode.next = newNode
}
else {
head = newNode
}
tail = newNode
}
public func nodeAt(index: Int) -> Node? {
if index >= 0 {
var node = head
var i = index
while node != nil {
if i == 0 { return node }
i -= 1
node = node!.next
}
}
return nil
}
public func remove(node: Node) -> String {
let prev = node.previous
let next = node.next
if let prev = prev {
prev.next = next
} else {
head = next
}
next?.previous = prev
if next == nil {
tail = prev
} node.previous = nil
node.next = nil return node.value
}
public func removeAll() {
head = nil
tail = nil
} public var description: String {
var text = "["
var node = head
while node != nil {
text += "\(node!.value)"
node = node!.next
if node != nil { text += ", " }
}
return text + "]"
}
}
2. 3. Stack
The data that is inserted later is first subtracted and processed.
Push and Pop in the same direction: behind the array
LIFO: Last In First Out
Application: Function, recursive call
struct Stack {
fileprivate var array: [String] = []
mutating func push(_ element: String) {
array.append(element)
} mutating func pop() -> String? {
return array.popLast()
} func peek() -> String? {
return array.last
}
}
2. 4. Queue/Dequeue
First, the inserted data is first subtracted and processed.
Insert and delete different directions.
Enqueue: Behind array
Dequeue: before array
FIFO: First In First Out
public struct Queue {
fileprivate var list = LinkedList<Int>()
public mutating func enqueue(_ element: Int) {
list.append(value: element)
}
public mutating func dequeue() -> Int? {
guard !list.isEmpty, let element = list.first else { return nil }
list.remove(node: element)
return element.value
}
public func peek() -> Int? {
return list.first?.value
}
public func description() -> String {
var result = "["
var i = 0
while (true) {
let node = list.nodeAt(index: i)!
result = result + String(node.value)
if (node.next == nil) { break } else { result += "," }
i += 1
}
return result + "]"
}
}
2. 5. Priority Queue
Insert (x): Insert new element x (Enqueue)
func insert(_ x:Int,_ n:Int){
data.append(x)
var size = n+1
while (size>1 && data[size/2] < data[size]){
let temp = data[size]
data[size] = data[size/2]
data[size/2] = temp
size = size/2
}
}
Extract_Max (): Deletes and returns the element with the highest priority value (Dequeue) | https://medium.com/journey-to-tech-company/2-list-based-collections-fa813f981ffe | ['Yohan Hyunsung Yi'] | 2018-05-16 21:20:09.508000+00:00 | ['Swift', 'Programming', 'iOS', 'Swift Programming', 'Algorithms'] |
Remembering Billy DeMars | The Phillies family suffered another loss on Thursday with the passing of former coach Billy DeMars.
DeMars coached for 13 years with the Phillies, serving as the hitting coach for three straight National League East title winners (1976–78) and the first World Series champions in franchise history (1980).
“Billy DeMars was the ultimate ‘baseball man,’” former Phillies broadcaster Chris Wheeler said. “That’s a guy who lives the game 24/7. Billy was a valued member of the Phillies organization as a major league coach and later as a minor league instructor.”
Image for post
Phillies statement on the passing of Billy DeMars.
DeMars was a baseball lifer. The Brooklyn native was selected in the Rule 5 draft by the Philadelphia Athletics in 1947. He played a season in Philadelphia and two for the St. Louis Browns before moving into coaching.
Before coaching in the majors, DeMars spent 11 seasons as a manager in the Baltimore Orioles minor league system. One pitcher he coached was former Phillies President and General Manager, Pat Gillick.
DeMars coached under six different Phillies managers and became a player favorite. After the Phillies, he coached for the Montreal Expos and Cincinnati Reds at the request of Pete Rose.
“Pete Rose thought Billy was the best he’d ever known,” Wheeler said. “Billy was a tireless worker who always was ready to go to the batting cages and work with players.”
Image for post
Phillies utility player Del Unser knew he could count on DeMars, even in the most high-stakes situations.
Just before the first pitch of the fifth and final game of the 1980 National League Championship Series at the Astrodome, Unser didn’t feel right. To shake out the nerves and break out of his funk, he wanted more work in the hitting cage, despite how close they were to starting the elimination game. He sought out DeMars.
“He said ‘What? Why do you want to do that now?’” Unser said. “He laughed, but then we went down there and got to work.”
The extra reps ended up being monumental. With new confidence, Unser came up as a pinch hitter in the eighth inning and hit an RBI single, capping a three-run comeback in the inning that chased Nolan Ryan out of the game. Unser went on to be a World Series hero as well.
“It was huge,” Unser said. “We still laugh about it years afterwards.”
DeMars retired to Clearwater, Florida. He remained close with the Phillies organization and frequently visited the Carpenter Complex to help mentor young hitters.
“We spoke last August on his 95th birthday and planned on dinner when I got to town in January,” Wheeler said. “During that conversation little had changed. He wanted to talk baseball, especially Phillies baseball.”
— Beyond the Bell contributor Graham Foley | https://medium.com/@joemorrisonanjayy/remembering-billy-demars-d546bdda9f5f | ['Joemor Rison Anjayy'] | 2020-12-11 06:41:54.080000+00:00 | ['SEO', 'Biography', 'Politics', 'Health', 'Social Media'] |
Sundown In America | The United States of America: Honestly, who even knows anymore? In the immediate aftermath of the First Presidential Debate, CNN’s resident RBF Jake Tapper snarked, “That was a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck.” Judging from the overbearing reactions from brain-damaged tweeters, the general sentiment around this bleak shitshow is that it was, in fact, a bleak shitshow. I’m not sure what people were expecting out of a wretched incontinent-off featuring two demented, fossilized mutants repping the catty nonsense that boomers slurp out of the cable news gravy hose. Was this supposed to be an epic duel of highfalutin rhetoric and grandiloquent visions? It’s not as if MAGA chuds support Donald Trump because they double-checked Politifact to verify his detailed plans to erect a 2000-mile-long rape-defense barrier and finagle the Mexican government to finance it. And what normal people call Joe Biden’s visible senility is what Democrats call electability. Maybe the dream was that something would finally fracture the edifice, like Biden’s teeth falling out or one of them soiling themselves on air. Here’s the deal: This debate was bound to degenerate an unrelenting volley of irate, sundowning jibberish between a psychotic melting creamsicle and a doddering husk who has the oratory style of a slinky you have to keep pushing down the stairs.
Make America Great Again versus C’mon, man!? A leafblower versus a wind chime. Every excruciating moment beautifully captured where we are as a nation — a functionally failed state that experienced a shortage of cotton masks and sanitary wipes a month into a pandemic counteroffensive. Questions about a Supreme Court Justice nomination plunged into tendentious soliloquies about our busted healthcare system, each interrupting one another before the previous half-answer sputtered to completion. Trump did his best to primate-stomp on the debate format, answering COVID-related inquiries with bluff and bluster and spittle and sozzle, swaying oddly and doing accordion things with his hands; then he’d go on the rest of the night bloviating and lying and picking weird food fights. This president is incapable of expressing anything other than whatever urge or anxiety is currently troubling his damp and roiling essence. Trump did dial back the Bannon-scented comic-book-villain dada of his inaugural address and leaned into casual Nazism — but instead of Hugo Boss, it’s with Bonobos. Biden immediately, deftly called out his opponent’s rat-a-tat-tat unsubtle dogwhistles, insisting they won’t work because it’s no longer the 1950s. (Apparently, the former veep hasn’t gandered at Tucker Carlson’s ratings.)
It is not BREAKING NEWS, at this point, to point out that Trump is constitutionally incapable of doing any of the important and urgent things required of him as president. There is no leadership of any kind from the apex of government, and while it’s hard to say what the Democrats are doing, exactly, “leadership” surely isn’t the right word. Biden froze and stammered and stuttered when asked about packing the courts or eliminating the filibuster, and wouldn’t commit to either, or really anything other than uttering the five talking points recorded into the Teddy Ruxpin cassette tape inside his pudding brain. As the federal government lurches further toward authoritarianism to entrench the Republican’s disproportionate minority rule, the best Joe Biden — he is the Democratic Party, after all — can muster is simulating gravitas and vaguely gesturing at more tactical retreats, all while calling himself “the reasonable one.” Get out and vote! Call your Senator! Democratic governance is an ongoing sludge of grim pragmatism that’s wholly insufficient in addressing America’s manifold disasters, so instead, they plant their flag in decadent and supreme symbolism.
There is no depth to Donald Trump’s character. He has spent the last four years showing America he’s as every bit as selfish, shameless, ignorant, dyspeptic, bellicose, and self-aggrandizing as he was during his opening salvos about Mexican rapists and playing drone-strike whack-a-mole at wherever the Radical Islamic Terrorism P.O. box is. In both unsurprising and queasily jarring fashion, a sitting president who offered a mealymouthed condemnation of literal Nazis after Charlottesville also froze and equivocated and told a violent far-right street gang to “stand back and stand by” when asked in no uncertain terms to renounce white supremacy. And after a long, strange campaign against mail-in ballots, Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses. He’s up to his eyes in balls. So what he has done, and will continue to do until November, is bring his few blunt tools — unflagging hyperaggression, a knack for pushing on bruises, shoving others into traffic, and a blank and wild antipathy for other people — to bear when defending his record, hoping that it results in compelling enough television to keep him in power. Biden is a guy who TiVos shows just so he can rewatch the commercials.
In a perverse way, Trump is the perfect businessman to run the flubby end-stage of the American empire: He doesn’t make anything, he doesn’t generate revenue, but he’s worth billions because he says so. Three days ago, the New York Times revealed that the faux-rich-guy “had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.” Turns out, a man who has spent his entire life stiffing people also worms his way through tax loopholes. Biden is the ideal griever-in-chief as both Pax Americana and his fizzing brain reach their sad collapse. His candidacy is a fond reflection on all the good times while Democrats slowly shift from denial to acceptance in the Kübler-Ross cycle regarding this nation’s destiny. Of course, neither option involves rationally assessing our problems and offering sober, commensurate solutions.
America is a sales culture and we want a salesman to peddle some ambient flimflam that semi-articulates why they’re best suited to be the protagonist of this decaying, dying nation. After decades of news flurries including titillating half-truth bombshells and compulsive warnings and panic-switch flips, this country may be deeply partisan enough where none of last night’s crankfest actually matters outside of treacherous spectacle value and running through the motions of pretending America still operates as a superficial democracy. Our horizons have been beaten away by hegemonic propaganda, hurtling with anodyne and sanitized phrasings that justify the rule of the entrenched managerial class — a patina of logic cloaking a high-mass death machine that prevents people from thinking about how the present order is insane and bloodthirsty and cruel in ways it doesn’t have to be. Whether out of instinct or inertia, we keep eating it up.
Moderator Chris Wallace said he wouldn’t assume the role of fact-checker prior to the debate, as if a third-party calling out Trump’s incoherent riffraff under the national gaze would finally vanquish the Orange One. Republicans have reached the point of pure mental surrender to the will of Trump because they monomaniacally want Roe v. Wade overturned, no matter how debased or shameless the cost. Winning Democalypse 2020 will be based on the strength and plausibility of each candidate’s falsities, or at least their confidence in bullshitting their base. Everything in politics these days is euphemistic and focused-tested into meaninglessness. Biden fibs about his progressive credentials — in the final primary showdown between him and Bernie Sanders, he flatly lied about not wanting to slash Social Security and still cruised to overwhelming victory. Trump does the kind of lying that Republicans love because it pisses off the libs; Biden stans admire his lying because it makes the effort of trying to sound honest. Running Joe Biden is the political equivalent of paying $750 in federal taxes.
I’ve been told I’m a cynic because I articulate the very observable reality that America is broken and soul pulverizing and pyrotechnically fucked — and both parties are either too blatantly corrupt or too manifestly incompetent to alter this trajectory. I understand the importance of booting Trump from office, that ineffectual liberalism is preferable to the dimestore Julius Streichers the Republicans trot out. I GET IT — mostly because it’s an obvious take that would net you a B-minus on a PoliSci 101 assignment. Last night, though, has only reinforced my suspicion that the real nihilism lies in the belief that America’s political possibilities are limited by conventional Democratic electoralism; where the pool of voters is fixed and the only thing the Blue Team can do is draft an army of snake oil salesmen who otherwise consult for Dracula Associates, and they narrowly cast tiny fragments of suburban, white, upper-middle-class normies to win wafer-thin majorities that’ll hold for a few years until they’re overthrown by rampaging reactionaries, thus leading to continued grinding immiseration. That is a view that offers no hope or possibility for any sort of change.
Maybe, in a way, the edifice was fractured. Neither emperor has any clothes, or even knows how to dress themselves, for that matter. Last night was a confused, random ejaculation of circular words and stutters around nothing because both candidates are at the stage of most people’s lives where they’re hopped up on prescription drugs and wander into traffic. They are the figureheads of unsettled psychic energy and placeholders for the profoundly rotten systems around them. The great hope is that such a grotesque burlesque is alarming enough to catalyze some positive change. This is what an apocalyptic moment is, provoking a visceral disgust, absolutely and always as gruesome as it is permitted to become. | https://relatablebrand.medium.com/sundown-in-america-4cc6f0fa32f7 | ['Sam Corey'] | 2020-11-28 20:09:41.341000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Donald Trump', 'Joe Biden', 'Election 2020', 'Humor'] |
Salesforce Launches Sales Cloud To Help Businesses Track The Lifecycle Of Revenue | Salesforce Launches Sales Cloud To Help Businesses Track The Lifecycle Of Revenue Sweta Dey Jan 22·2 min read
Salesforce introduced Revenue Cloud, another cloud product intended to give organizations a comprehensive perspective on their income cycle and launch new income streams.
“We are assisting organizations with quickening development, regardless of whether that implies filling the holes of lost revenue or multiplying down on the sector of your business that is progressing admirably,” Salesforce said in a blog. “Regardless of the multifaceted nature of your deals, plan of action, or revenue measures, Revenue Cloud can be the single source of truth for client value-based information.”
Revenue Cloud is essential for the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem and joins the abilities from the organization’s current CPQ and Billing, Partner Relationship Management (PRM), and B2B Commerce items into a solitary contribution. Consumer Asset Lifecycle Management, Multi-Cloud Billing, and the CPQ-B2B Commerce connector are all recent deals.
Multi-Cloud Billing relies on Vlocity tech, which Salesforce purchased in June 2020 and this has been renamed Salesforce Industries since then. Multi-Cloud Billing pulls from the business explicit cloud arrangements offered by Salesforce Industries to help organizations assemble new income streams by overseeing charging and installments inside a solitary framework. Income Cloud likewise contains Quick Starts intended to help organizations launch new revenue streams.
Customer Asset Lifecycle Management gives a visual dashboard that can help organizations track KPIs, similar to customer lifetime value, net income maintenance, and month to month repeating revenue continuously in real-time. Organizations can see a difference in client data, for example, purchases, contract corrections, and open balances.
Utilizing the CPQ-B2B Commerce connector, organizations can modify their advanced retail facade and trucks. Clients can add items or administrations to their shopping basket and afterward contact salespeople on the off chance that they have questions. What’s more, the framework will likewise give salesmen definite customer data, for example, existing item history and online collaborations.
Revenue Cloud is the most recent expansion to Salesforce’s specific cloud contributions. Recently the product as-a-administration organization reported Work.com to support businesses and governments respond to COVID-19, Salesforce Anywhere to strengthen collaborative activities and alerts for meetings, and Einstein Call Coaching to upgrade the labor force.
For Salesforce Cloud integrations visit here | https://medium.com/@sweta-dey/salesforce-launches-sales-cloud-to-help-businesses-track-the-lifecycle-of-revenue-8908e2b4bb82 | ['Sweta Dey'] | 2021-01-22 05:08:16.482000+00:00 | ['Salesforce Sales Cloud', 'Salesforce Revenue Cloud', 'Salesforce', 'Sales'] |
Case study: How Domino’s can improve their delivery experience | 1. Is there a consistent internal visual design standard for all interface elements?
Issue 1: There is no internal visual standard for CTAs. Their position, size, text style, shape and background colour are incosistent.
The CTA position, size and style are incosistent
Issue 2: The product uses the visual style of default system elements (components, buttons, pop-ups, fields, map, fonts and more). The UI design doesn’t show the unique personality and style that the Domino’s brand is famous for.
2. Is there a consistent internal interaction design standard for all interface elements?
Issue 1: There is no internal interaction standard for CTAs. Buttons with the same style and expected behaviour interact differently — opening a new page, showing a pop-up or expanding additional input field. This adds uncertainty and makes it difficult for users to build behaviour habits within the product.
Issue 2: The buttons “Register” / “Log in” before login are in the same position and style as the “Choose a delivery method” options after log in. This is not a logical and consistent experience and might mislead users to think they are seeing the same “Register” / “Log in” buttons even after being logged in.
The position of login/signup and delivery options might mislead users
3. Is the product following established external UI conventions?
Issue 1: Most of the product CTAs are very small in size, making it difficult to tap on them. That results in frustration and might lead to reduced ease of use. For example, Apple says that CTAs in mobile UI should be at least 44Х44 pixels, while Microsoft recommends 34Х26 pixels.
Issue 2: Labels are placed inside the actual field entry, having them just disappear once the user starts typing. This interaction adds more cognitive load and puts too much on the user’s short term memory. Labels must offer guidance to users and aim to leave no room for interpretation in the entry fields. When it comes to the labels and placeholders in your app, they still need to abide by the general guidelines of form design: they need to be helpful, precise and objective.
The field entry labels disappear once the user starts typing
Issue 3: Combining the delivery details, shopping cart, recommendations, additional options and payment details in one mobile page leads to a long scroll, frustration and shopping cart abandonment. When they’re ready to buy, users shouldn’t be burdened with complicated and hard to understand lengthy checkouts. Instead, they need a laser-focused user experience that helps them do what they came to do. A progress indicator is especially important for visitors on-the-go who are looking to checkout quickly. A feature like this often makes the process less overwhelming as it can both identify how far long the customer is in the process as well as how much further they still need to go. | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/heuristic-analysis-of-dominos-pizza-bulgaria-mobile-app-a-ux-case-study-78489ec72f77 | ['Elisey Kolev'] | 2021-04-19 23:38:36.883000+00:00 | ['Usability', 'UX', 'Case Study', 'User Interface', 'Food Delivery App'] |
Learn how to master groupby function in Python now | Learn how to master groupby function in Python now
GroupBy in Pandas is way more sophisticated and powerful than groupby in SQL.
Photo by Maxwell Nelson on Unsplash
One popular feature in the Pandas package is groupby function. I believe that almost everyone using Pandas before must use groupby function also. It is so popular because it provides summarized but detailed results efficiently. As described by the doc of Pandas package,
By “group by” we are referring to a process involving one or more of the following steps: Splitting the data into groups based on some criteria. Applying a function to each group independently. Combining the results into a data structure. [1]
There is also a groupby function in SQL. Therefore for someone experienced in SQL, learning groupby function in Python is not a difficult thing. But the thing is groupby in Pandas can perform way more analysis than in SQL and this makes groupby in Pandas a common but essential function.
The reason that groupby in Pandas is more powerful is because of the second step “Applying”. In SQL, most actions in “Applying” steps are statistically related, like min, max, count, etc. However, in Pandas, “Applying” can perform much more.
From the doc of Pandas,
In the apply step, we might wish to one of the following: Aggregation: compute a summary statistic (or statistics) for each group. Transformation: perform some group-specific computations and return a like-indexed object. Filtration: discard some groups, according to a group-wise computation that evaluates True or False. [1]
In this article, I will cover some groupby applications. These applications do not only show me the insights from the data but also help me identify my next move on analyzing the data.
Let’s begin.
The data used in this article is “student-por.csv” in “Student Alcohol Consumption” from Kaggle. You can download the data from this link. | https://towardsdatascience.com/learn-how-to-master-groupby-function-in-python-now-4620dd463224 | ['Wy Fok'] | 2020-05-01 15:39:01.779000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Pandas', 'Beginner'] |
How to break regression | (Photo illustration by Pew Research Center and iStock.com/Eshma)
Regression models are a cornerstone of modern social science. They’re at the heart of efforts to estimate causal relationships between variables in a multivariate environment and are the basic building blocks of many machine learning models. Yet social scientists can run into a lot of situations where regression models break.
Famed social psychologist Richard Nisbett recently argued that regression analysis is so misused and misunderstood that analyses based on multiple regression “are often somewhere between meaningless and quite damaging.” (He was mainly talking about cases in which researchers publish correlational results that are covered in the media as causal statements about the world.)
Below, I’ll walk through some of the potential pitfalls you might encounter when you fire up your favorite statistical software package and run regressions. Specifically, I’ll be using simulation in R as an educational tool to help you better understand the ways in which regressions can break.
Using simulations to unpack regression
The idea of using R simulations to help understand regression models was inspired by Ben Ogorek’s post on regression confounders and collider bias.
The great thing about using simulation in this way is that you control the world that generates your data. The code I’ll introduce below represents the true data-generating process, since I’m using R’s random number generators to simulate the data. In real life, of course, we only have the data we observe, and we don’t really know how the data-generating process works unless we have a solid theory (like Newtonian physics or evolution) where the system of relevant variables and causal relationships is well understood and to which there is really no analogous phenomenon in social science.
What I’ll do here is create a dataset based on two random standard normal variables by simulating them using the rnorm() function, which draws random values from a normal distribution with mean 0 and standard deviation 1, unless you specify otherwise. I’ll create a functional relationship between y and x such that a 1 unit increase in x will be associated with a .4 unit increase in y.
Notice that the model estimates the functional relationship between x and y that I simulated quite well. The plot looks like this:
What about omitted variables? Our machinery actually still works if there is another factor causing y, as long as it is uncorrelated with x.
The dreaded omitted variable bias
Omitted variable bias (OVB) is much feared, and judging by the top internet search results, not well understood. Some top sources say it occurs when “an important” variable is missing or when a variable that “is correlated” with both x and y is missing. I even found a university econometrics course that defined OVB this way.
But neither of those definitions are quite right. OVB occurs when a variable that causes y is missing from the model (and is correlated with x). Let’s call that variable w. Because w is in play when we consider the causal relationship between x and y, it’s often referred to as “endogenous” or a “confounding variable.”
The example below first demonstrates that w, our confounding variable, will bias our results if we fail to include it in our model. The next two examples are essentially a re-telling of the post I mentioned above on collider bias, but emphasizing slightly different points.
There it is: classic omitted variable bias. We only observed x, and the influence of the omitted variable w was attributed to x in our model. If you re-rerun the regression with w in the model, you no longer get biased estimates.
Note that the regression errors, also known as residuals, are correlated with w:
Now, recall above that I wrote that it’s wrong to say that OVB occurs when our omitted variable is correlated with both x and y. And yet w, x and w and y are all correlated in this first example:
So why can’t we just say that OVB occurs when our omitted variable is correlated with both x and y? As the next example will show, correlation isn’t enough — w needs to cause both x and y. We can easily imagine a case in which we don’t have causality but we still see this kind of correlation — when x and y both cause w.
Let’s make this a little more concrete. Suppose we care about the effect of news media consumption (x) on voter turnout (y). One factor that some researchers think may cause both news media consumption and turnout is political interest (w). If we only measure media consumption and voter turnout, political interest is likely to confound our estimates.
But another school of thought from social psychology — along the lines of self-perception theory and cognitive dissonance — suggests that the causality could be reversed: Voting behavior might be mostly determined by other factors, and casting a ballot might prompt us to be more interested in political developments in the future. Similarly, watching the news might prompt us to become more interested in politics. Let’s suppose that second school of thought is right. If so, our simulated data will look like this:
As you can see, all factors are again correlated with each other. But this time, if we only include x (media consumption) and y (turnout) in the equation, we get the correct estimate:
What makes defining omitted variable bias based on correlation so dangerous is that if we now include w (political interest), we will get a different kind of bias — what’s called collider bias or endogenous selection bias.
Simpson’s paradox
Simpson’s paradox often occurs in social science (and medicine, too) when you pool data instead of conditioning it on group membership (i.e., adding it as a factor in your regression model).
Suppose that, all other things being equal, consuming media causes a slight shift in policy preferences toward the left. But, on average, Republicans consume more news than non-Republicans. And we know that generally Republicans have much more right-leaning preferences.
If we just measure media consumption and policy preferences without including Republicans in the model, we’ll actually estimate that the effect goes in the direction opposite of the true causal effect.
The estimate goes in the opposite direction of the true effect! Here’s what the plot looks like:
To resolve this paradox, we need to add a factor in the model that indicates whether or not a respondent is a Republican. Adding that factor lets us estimate separate slopes for Republicans and non-Republicans. Note that this is not like estimating an interaction term, where two explanatory variables are multiplied together. It’s not that the slopes are different, we just need to estimate separate ones for Republicans and non-Republicans.
Here’s what the plot looks like:
Correlated errors
Another cardinal sin — and one that we should worry a lot about because it often arises from social desirability bias in survey responses — is the phenomenon of correlated errors. This example is inspired by Vavreck (2007).
Here, self-reported turnout and media consumption are caused by a combination of social desirability bias and true turnout and true consumption, respectively:
Let’s compare the estimated effect sizes of the self-reported data and the “true” data:
The self-reported data is biased toward over-estimating the effect size, a very dangerous problem. How could we fix this? Well, one way is to actually measure social desirability and include it in the model:
Note that this while most people think about social desirability as being a problem related to measurement error, it is essentially the same problem as omitted variable bias, as described above.
It’s important to remember that omitted variable bias and correlated errors are just two potential problems with regression analysis. Regression models are also not immune to issues associated with low levels of statistical power, the failure to account for the influence of extreme values, and heteroskedasticity, among others. But by simulating the data-generating process, researchers can get a good sense of some of the more common ways in which statistical models might depart from reality.
Solomon Messing is the former director of Data Labs at Pew Research Center. | https://medium.com/pew-research-center-decoded/how-to-break-regression-f48230f0ca68 | ['Solomon Messing'] | 2019-11-21 22:52:22.551000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Methodology', 'Regression'] |
Tale Of Dog’s Tail | Had you ever heard of the tale of a dog’s tail? It is much like our thinking mind.
How? You may ask.
No matter how long you keep a dog's tail inside a pipe, as soon as you remove the tail from the pipe, it twists back to its original shape; it can never be straightened.
And so is the case with our thinking mind. No matter what you feed it with, it can only display pain creating tendencies.
Feed it with teachings of kindness, acceptance, compassion, vulnerability; it would still sing the same song (music) with different words. All those beautiful ideas become another way to be aggressive.
When the message of kindness is provided, “ I want to be more kind,” it says “I am kinder than the other guy”.
Same with compassion. “I should have been more compassionate,” it says “Be compassionate you loser”.
“Shit, I did not accept myself enough that’s why I suffered,” it says “ I am afraid I might not be able to accept that. I suck at this”.
“I must be vulnerable. I must push myself to be more vulnerable,” it says, without any reflection of the very irony in it.
When we are hijacked by the mind — everything, every new trick, every tool in our bag — becomes another way for the mind to bite its own tail, like a dog biting its own tail and wondering where the pain comes from. We are mostly blissfully unaware of how the mind inflicts pain on the host (body).
Perhaps we might still try hard enough, and hopefully, later come in terms with its helplessness and learn to leave it alone, to live sanely or not. :) | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/tale-of-dogs-tail-f18c48a3781a | ['Pretheesh Presannan'] | 2020-10-09 06:48:42.412000+00:00 | ['Nonfiction', 'Mind', 'Mental Health', 'Humor', 'Spiritual Secrets'] |
States, Observation and Action Spaces in Reinforcement Learning | Photo by Ciprian Pardău on Unsplash
This write-up discusses two concepts in context of Reinforcement Learning:
Difference between State Spaces and Observation Spaces. State/ Observation Space & Action Space representation in OpenAI Gym.
A. Outline of Reinforcement Learning (RL)
Typical Reinforcement Learning (RL) Setup
Fig 1. A typical RL setup, showing essential components and terms.
The above diagram introduces a typical setup of the RL paradigm. An Agent’s (e.g. the yellow robot) goal is to learn the best possible way to perform a certain task in an Environment. The agent tries to achieve that task by taking actions (e.g. move left, right or stop) as suggested by a strategy (or Policy). So after it performs that specific action the agent observes the state of the environment (Observation) and a goodness score (or Reward) based on its last action. These feedback information are then utilized by the RL algorithm to upgrade/ improve the existing strategy (or policy), for better performance in the future. An agent can learn to play and win strategy games, e.g. Pacman (from Atari games), in which case the Pacman is an agent and the gaming construct is the environment. Following is an example (MountainCar-v0) from OpenAI Gym classical control environments. OpenAI Gym, is a toolkit that provides various examples/ environments to develop and evaluate RL algorithms. For details on installation and use of OpenAI Gym you can refer to these handy resources here & here.
About MountainCar-v0 : A car is on a one-dimensional track, positioned between two “mountains”. The goal is to drive up the mountain on the right; however, the car’s engine is not strong enough to scale the mountain in a single pass. Therefore, the only way to succeed is to drive back and forth to build up momentum. Lets connect the general RL terms learnt till now, in the context of this simple environment.
Fig 2. MountainCar-v0 Environment setup from OpenAI gym Classic Control
Agent: the under-actuated car . Observation: here the observation space in a vector [car position, car velocity]. Since this is a one dimensional problem, with a car moving on a curve like feature, its location is given by a continuous value between [-1.2,0.6] and the velocity is a bounded continuous value between [-0.07,0.07]. Reward: reward functions for these type of simulated environments are already built- in the environment code and in this case generates a reward = -1 for any transition from any state and reward=+100 when the agent reaches the objective (the flag). Action: the action space is discrete in this case and given as [Left, Neutral, Right]. Episode: A number of state and action sequence (~1000 in this case), along which the agent tries tries to complete the objective before re initiating . A trajectory may be defined as a part of a full episode and so every trajectory may not be a full episode.
So far we have learnt that a RL algorithm helps optimize/ improve a given policy while maximizing a given objective (i.e. the RL objective). The RL objective can be given as follows:
Fig 3. The RL objective
For an trajectory/ episode (τ) of length t = 1 to T, the cumulative reward (also called the Return ) calculated over all the state transitions over that length , is considered as the performance measure of that episode. The RL objective is that we need find the optimal policy parameter vector (φ*) that maximizes the expectation of the cumulative reward taken over all possible episodes. If the policy (which is a mapping between states and actions) is described as a probability distribution then φ represents the parameters (i.e.φ is the parameter vector) describing the policy. If the distribution is modeled using a neural network then φ represents the network weights.
B. How different are states and observation ?
The MDP and POMDP perspective:
Certain important terms. State: describes the state of the world or environment completely, e.g. a robot might have states like joint angles, velocity, position as the states defining it.
Complete Observation: when the agent is able to observe the complete state information that defines the status of the environment/ world after the agent has acted out a certain action, in it.
Partial Observation: when the agent is able to observe only partial information regarding the state of the environment.
Set of all States or the State Space can be considered same as the Observation space if the environment is completely observable (and without noise ). These completely observable RL cases are defined using the Markov Decision Process (MDP) framework.
Fig 3. MDP and POMDP describing a typical RL setup.
As seen in the above illustration a MDP consists of 4 components < S,A,T,R> and they together can define any typical RL problem. The state space S is a set of all the states that the agent can transition to and action space A is a set of all actions the agent can act out in a certain environment. There are also Partial Observable cases, where the agent is unable to observe the complete state information of the environment. These cases are defined using Partially Observable MDP (POMDP). Here observation is introduced assuming the agent can see/sense/record only partial information of the environment states. The agent keeps an internal belief state, b, that summarizes its experience. The agent uses a state estimator, SE, for updating the belief state b, based on the last action. the current observation and the previous belief state.
2. Overlapping perspective of observation and state spaces :
The state space and observation space may as well overlap most importantly for the sake of convenience as in cases of most RL toy & simulated problems/ environments. The Gym environments are modeled as POMDPs (paper), which justifies using of the term ‘observation’ instead of ‘state’ and also essentially imply that the Gym environment is partially observed by the agent. But Gym does not provide any information regarding the actual or complete state space of any environment. So ultimately the observation space becomes a vector of all the states Gym uses to model an environment. Hence it might in a way appear like a MDP. Observation wrappers (check here) have been used to extend OpenAI Gym environments and turn them into truly Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (e.g. here). Wrappers allows one to add functionality to environments, such as modifying observations, rewards and actions.
C. State/ Observation Spaces and Action Spaces
Fig 4. Example of Environments with Discrete and Continuous State and Action Spaces from OpenAI Gym
In most simulated environments/ test-beds/ toy problems the State space is equivalent to Observation spaces, as shown in above illustration. Both the state/observation and action spaces comes in both varieties (i.e. Discrete and Continuous). In the simplest of examples states/ observation constitutes only the position of the agent but with more complex and higher dimensional examples state/ observation space may constitute additional information (e.g. angular velocity, horizontal speed, position of joints etc.) or complex visual information like RGB matrix of observed pixel values e.g. in Gym Arcade games. In the GridWorld environment in Fig 4, the agent starts from the ‘start’ and uses RL ALgorithm ( based on Value Iteration, Policy Optimization etc. ) to reach the +1 rewarding box. The episode ends in case the agent reaches goal and obtains +1 reward or it reaches the -1 goal where it is rewarded -1. At every time step the agent is allowed to choose from a set of actions (the Action Space A) = [Right, Left, Up, Down] 𝝐 A. The decision on which action to take is either decided by a calculated value (e.g. in Value Iteration) or an iteratively evaluated and updated state-action mapping i.e. the Policy (e.g. in Policy Iteration). The next state resulting from an action by the agent is decided by the environment ( or its model/ the transition Probability ( T = p(s’|s,a) 𝝐 S )) (see Fig 3). The MountainCarContinuous-v0 environment, has a 2D state/ observation vector = [car position, car velocity], both these quantities are continuous in following ranges position = (-1.2,0.6), velocity = (-0.07, 0.07). The action space is 1D and consists of a continuous acceleration term, in the range = (-1,0,1.0).
D. State/ Observation Space and Action Space representation in Gym
I will briefly introduce the State/Observation and Action space representation in Gym platform. There are an ever increasing number of environments for developing and evaluating RL algorithms in OpenAI gym. Here & here you can find an exhaustive listing of available environments and their action and observation space information. Action and observation space information is very crucial for evaluation of Rl algorithms since many RL algorithms are developed only for specific type of State/ Observation and Action spaces. For example the DDPG algorithm can only be applied to environments with continuous action space, while the PPO algorithm can be used for environments with either discrete or continuous action spaces.
1. OpenAI Gym Toolkit- brief overview
The OpenAI Gym is a toolkit that serves as a test-bed for evaluating and comparing RL algorithms on various test problems called environment. | https://medium.com/swlh/states-observation-and-action-spaces-in-reinforcement-learning-569a30a8d2a1 | [] | 2020-05-05 07:02:22.952000+00:00 | ['Reinforcement Learning', 'State Space', 'Observation Space', 'Openai Gym', 'Action Space'] |
What Is The Purpose Of Hardware Prototyping? | An early prototype of the VodaSafe AquaEye
Do you have an innovative concept for a connected device? Here’s why hardware prototyping is integral to the product development process and the success of your project.
Written by Madison Reid, Content Creator at MistyWest
What is Hardware Prototyping?
When MistyWest was approached by VodaSafe prior to developing the AquaEye, founder Carlyn Loncaric had a proof-of-concept (POC) and a goal: to develop a life-saving piece of technology that can quickly scan underwater to locate drowning victims. Through iterative prototyping, our engineering team was able to develop a hand-held device that made novel use of ultrasonic sensor technology in only a few months.
The purpose of hardware prototyping is to answer questions, ranging from technical unknowns to getting a better understanding of your end-users and/or market. In the case of VodaSafe, the success of the AquaEye not only depended on the ultrasonic technology but on ensuring that the device could withstand the outdoor elements while being usable by lifeguards swimming in open waters.
MistyWest’s prototype of the AquaEye for VodaSafe
Hardware prototyping enables our engineers to learn about the technical challenges while our clients learn more about their users. Without field testing, user experience research, and some reverse engineering, the success of the AquaEye would have been at risk, leaving our client with an invention that would require more funding and development to fully satisfy all the product requirements.
It can be tempting to forgo the initial expenses of prototyping and immediately search for an end solution, but the long-term cost benefits far outweigh the risks of developing a product that doesn’t meet your users’ needs. Having an innovative concept for a connected device is not enough to produce a successful invention; you will need to conduct research and testing, and confront potential breakthroughs (and setbacks) as they arise.
MistyWest’s Product Development Roadmap
Prototyping in the Product Development Cycle
The MistyWest Product Development Roadmap is broken down into 3 Stages: Ideation, Prototyping and Productization
After the initial Ideation and research are complete, our clients have an idea of the user story behind their concept, and the questions they need to seek answers to in order to achieve their value proposition. We begin the Prototyping stage, which can roughly be split into its own 2 segments: Alpha prototyping and Beta prototyping, though there can be multiple iterations of each prototype.
Alpha prototyping examines the core functionality, look and feel of the proposed device in a controlled environment to demonstrate what the end product is capable of doing. If you are considering different features for your device and don’t know if your users will prefer one feature over the other, then this is when you should be getting those answers.
The conceptual design phase of hardware prototyping is where the question “What will it look and feel like?” is asked — this is followed by the creation of a user experience prototype (or “looks-like prototype”). The alpha prototype is subjected to usability testing to see if it meets the basic UX requirements, and the user story is refined until the device is ready for engineering design.
The engineering design phase integrates the hardware and firmware components needed to create a functional prototype that can be subjected to functional testing. This will determine how well the device functions relative to consumer expectations, and once again, more iterations may be required depending on the results of testing. From an engineer’s perspective, functional testing helps answer key questions about how the next prototype should be designed to increase performance and decrease cost.
After your prototypes have answered your most pressing questions and and cost evaluation are complete, the outputs of the prototyping exercise are integrated into what will form your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). With your MVP as a guide, you can now develop a beta prototype to examine the performance and receive valuable customer feedback through field testing.
Considerations while hardware prototyping
There will always be trade-offs in hardware engineering — you want to build a product fast and cheap that’s good quality? You can have some of these traits, but you may end up sacrificing another. Developing a product that won’t quickly become obsolete may not be cheap, and developing a product that can’t be easily replicated by a competitor may not be fast.
The prototyping stage can take months (or even years) to complete. Towards the onset of product development, you can reduce risk, make better design decisions, and better meet the performance and cost requirements by asking yourself some of the following questions:
What does our speed-to-market need to be?
What is the trajectory of progress for product development, performance and cost?
What aspects of our designs are novel and can be patented?
How much money do we need to raise, and what should we be spending our product development money on?
The more features you add to your intelligent connected prototype, and the more complex it is electronically, the slower your speed-to-market and the longer it takes to get to Productization. These complex features will likely influence your design decisions because if one of those fails, it impedes your ability to test the other features.
Another consideration is that your hardware prototype can also be used to advertise and market the product, determine the size of customer demand, and start attracting initial buyers via crowdsourcing; our longest running client TZOA successfully raised funds with an Indiegogo campaign for their initial product offering of a wearable particle monitor for measuring indoor air quality (IAQ). After several device iterations, customer feedback, and feature refinement, TZOA have evolved their offering to the Haven IAQ intelligent central air monitoring system, with its own product line and ecosystem.
TZOA’s Haven IAQ intelligent central air monitoring system
Conclusion
Hardware prototyping is an iterative, multidisciplinary journey that may consider different hardware components, firmware requirements, or industrial design considerations, but it is always necessary in order to learn something new that will help you achieve your business’s value proposition.
Are you developing a connected device that will require prototyping? Send us an email at [email protected] and let’s talk about bringing your concept to life. | https://medium.com/mistywest/what-is-the-purpose-of-hardware-prototyping-c9eea2e64cd8 | [] | 2020-12-17 21:34:25.606000+00:00 | ['Iot Development', 'Prototyping', 'Product Development', 'Hardware Prototype', 'Connected Devices'] |
Managing Your Own Investments Vs. Paying a “Professional” | Is paying someone else to manage your money worth it?
By Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Many investors hire “professionals” to manage their funds for them. In most cases, these professionals simply place their client’s money into one of their handful of generic portfolios based on the client’s profile. They will ask the client a few questions to get a feel for their risk and return expectations and then charge them 1% to 3% of their total portfolio per year to invest their money into these generic portfolios. What is the problem with this? With minimal time and effort, most people can achieve superior risk-adjusted returns by investing their money into ETFs or Mutual Funds themselves than by paying someone to manage their money for them.
Money management techniques may seem overwhelming. Many people use this justification to convince themselves that hiring someone else to manage their money is worth the time saved. They think of investing similar to how they view plumbing, for example. You’d hire a plumber to fix your pipes because it not your area of expertise.
So shouldn’t you also hire an investment professional to manage your money? It is my opinion that it is far easier and less time consuming to outperform the professionals after fees by investing in index funds than it would be to learn how to do your own plumbing. I am going to work towards debunking this commonly held perception that you need to be financially savvy enough or that you need to have a certain amount of knowledge to create your own portfolio.
Research shows that the vast majority of active investment funds (managed by the professionals in question) have consistently underperformed the passive indexes over the last ten years. That means, by simply taking 5 minutes to invest your money in an S&P 500 ETF (like IVV, for example), you would end up with more money than had you’d relied on the vast majority of the active investment professionals who benchmark themselves against the S&P 500 index.
The actively managed approach places a heavy reliance on the skills and expertise of the fund managers and their teams, whereas the index-based approach is a simple buy-and-hold ETFs and mutual funds strategy. If we are to look at the historical data, your fund manager likely is not as consistent as their sales pitch would suggest.
Depending on the study, index-funds have historically beat actively managed portfolios between 56% and 83% of the time. Studies have consistently shown that actively managed funds, on average, underperform their benchmarked market indices after fees. As a result, we have seen a massive shift away from active funds and into passive funds.
By Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
The Benefits of Doing It On Your Own
A passive investment strategy is easy to follow. While investing your money may seem intimidating and overwhelming, if you invest in the index- funds, it can be quite easy and approachable. An index fund will simply achieve the returns of the market index it is tracking. An investment in an index-fund displays a belief in the market itself, not necessarily a belief in any individual company. Many investors that have limited knowledge are fine using simple tools for their investment decisions.
In 2012, a British paper known as the observer conducted a contest between three parties to select stocks within the FTSE all-share index. The teams were a group of professional money managers, a group of school children, and a cat.
The professional managers used their decade’s old investment strategies and their traditional stock-picking methods, and the cat selected its stocks by throwing its favorite toy on a grid of numbers that were allocated to different companies.
The cat won the contest. While this is nothing more than anecdotal evidence, it is a good example of how sheer random guesses can often outperform high fee-charging professional money managers.
Warren Buffet entered into a 10-year bet with Protégé Partners that they could not beat the market returns of the S&P 500 index. Protégé Partners are professional money managers who actively managed their funds with the goal of outperforming the index.
Over the course of the experiment, Buffet’s investment in the S&P 500 index rose 85.4%. Protégé Partners only managed to increase their portfolio value by 22%. Meaning Buffet achieved nearly four times the returns by doing virtually nothing.
It is surprisingly easy to create your own portfolio by investing in index funds. And historically, doing just that would have outperformed the vast majority of “professionals” looking to charge you 1% to 3% per year to manage your money. If you’d like help in creating your own ETF portfolio, feel free to check out our free ETF Portfolio Builder. | https://themakingofamillionaire.com/managing-your-own-investments-vs-paying-a-professional-2d36b5f90826 | ["Ryan O'Connell"] | 2020-12-15 15:04:16.554000+00:00 | ['Financial Planning', 'Money', 'Investment', 'Investing', 'Finance'] |
Fuck Off 2020: A DIY New Year’s Ritual | A ritual of burning and renewal that harnesses the power of ancient rites to extinguish the dumpster fire of 2020 and make way for a better year ahead.
The end of 2020 is finally here! And to say “Fuck Off” to the year that fundamentally broke the bonds of humanity on a global scale, we welcome you to: Fuck Off 2020: A DIY New Year’s Ritual.
This ritual harnesses the powers of ancient rites to ceremoniously extinguish the dumpster fire of 2020 while renewing social and cosmic energies for a 2021 worthy of last year’s pain.
All of the rites contained herein are based on actual rituals from ancient cultures. The rituals selected all have come from practices surrounding the marking of a new year. These can be found in almost every culture. And though traditional dates vary widely depending on climate, geography, agriculture, location, etc, the one thing they do share is a central purpose of enacting order for a prosperous future. Performing these rites puts you in close kinship with a shared, global ancestry whose wisdom comes from centuries of experience.
These thousands of years of collective human practice, along with you, might just be able to help us finally shed this fetid year and begin the process of renewal we’re all hungry for. Don’t let us down! 2021 is on you.
Download the Fuck Off 2020 ritual HERE.
Participants: 1+
Length: 1.5 hrs.
(Approximate length; varies based on number of participants.)
Date: Between 12/26 and 12/31.
(The most auspicious day would be New Year’s Eve.)
Hour: After dusk.
(Most cultures have an idea of a “witching hour” where the veil between the material and spiritual world becomes most thin. While different cultures believe this hour occurs at different times, most everyone agrees that the period between sunset and sunrise is rife with magical potential.)
BONUS: The ritual above is a cut-down version of a longer Fuck Off 2020 ritual. For those of you bold enough of heart, and rich enough of time, the complete Fuck Off 2020 can be found HERE. | https://medium.com/@grackle/fuck-off-2020-a-diy-new-years-ritual-7c8758b0e1c1 | [] | 2020-12-22 20:04:51.468000+00:00 | ['Ritual', '2020', 'Experience', 'New Year', 'Holidays'] |
Automated, Static, re-ip of GCP Windows VM | Problem statement
Let’s set the scene here. You have an instance that has been configured to use a static IP address in a GCP region. Your DR strategy is to create an image of the instance in the production region and restore it in the DR region. Production and DR subnets are different.
When you come to create an instance from this image, during simulation of a DR event (hopefully it’s a simulation) you find that to your horror, the instance cannot communicate on the network, since it is set to the original static ip address which is outside of the range of the subnet on which it has been restored.
There are many topics this raises that I will not go into in any depth here.
Please use DHCP so the Cloud platform can take over the allocation of IP addresses, even “static” ones. Is creating an image the appropriate backup methodology?
How do we solve this?
instances on GCP have a “Guest Environment”. These are installed by default on all of the Google-provided public images. The guest environment is a set of scripts, daemons, and binaries that read the content of the metadata server to make a VM run properly on Compute Engine. A metadata server is a communication channel for transferring information from a client to the guest operating system.
Here is a link to more information about the Guest Environment. We are going to use the metadata server extensively to pass required metrics into the VM to facilitate the process of switching to a new static IP address.
You can dig deeper into the code if you like. Here is a link to the github repo that contains the windows code which is mainly in powershell. It contains callable functions that you can leverage for accessing the windows registry, the file system and GCP libraries such as the Runtime Configurator. The Runtime Configurator is also a topic for a different article, but it helps you synchronize the deployment of your environment, so that all dependencies are in place as the next wave of infrastructure is being created.
Back to the task at hand. How does any of this help us deploy an instance with a new static IP? GCP allows for startup scripts to be run, when a machine starts up, documented very nicely here. They can be provided in the cloud console, gcloud command-line tool or the REST API.
They can be passed in:
Directly As a path to a file in Google Cloud Storage As a path to a local file
Here is a table explaining the when and how:
Use Powershell for its richness, and you need it to run after sysprep completes, so the metadata key that will be entered to identify the script is windows-startup-script-ps1. This will point to a local Powershell file, that will be executed as elevated administrator on the first boot. It would run on every subsequent boot so you need to remove it from the metadata server after the first and only execution.
Getting parameters to the script
To set up the instance with a new IP address you need to provide the following:
IPAddress
Gateway
To pass them into the script that will run as admin on startup, put them in metadata.
Adding metadata to the instance
Explanation of the gcloud command
We are using gcloud beta, so we can create an instance directly from a machine image
We are passing in the IP and gateway
The metadata-from-file parameter is looking for a local file on the instance on which you are running gcloud. The path can be relative to where your working directory.
Note: You can also add any random metadata to a running instance using the following command:
This is not covered in this article, but you could add the script to a running instance, reboot, and it would change its ip address.
Accessing Instance Metadata from the Script
You need to get the metadata for “ipaddr” and “gateway” out in the script “windows-set-static.ps1”.
The commands to get these values out of metadata in the powershell script are as follows :
Note: 169.254.169.254 is the address of the local metadata server that is installed with the guest environment.
The command to remove the script from the instance metadata is (done at the end to prevent subsequent execution:
The Powershell Script
The script can be found here: link
The instance starts up with the original ip address, on a subnet on which it cannot communicate. To fix this you need to:
Enable DHCP so it refreshes the NIC with a local IP address and Gateway
Set the Adapter back to static
Add the new network address with the new ip address and gateway
Set the new gateway to also be the DNS Server address (You could pass this in as another piece of metadata)
The commands in Powershell to achieve these goals are:
Set-NetIPInterface
New-NetIPAddress
Get-NetRoute
Remove-NetRoute
Set-DNSClientServerAddress
This has shown itself to be a good approach in my environment, but in yours, many things could be different and as such this article does not claim to be a definitive solution to the problem. It outlines one possible approach that has worked for me. | https://medium.com/google-cloud/automated-static-re-ip-of-gcp-windows-vm-a30821b629f5 | ['Barry Searle'] | 2021-05-04 11:18:11.630000+00:00 | ['Disaster Recovery', 'Gcp', 'Windows', 'Networking'] |
What’s THE BEST Fitness Advice For The Long Haul? | I was reading a thread on Reddit where people were sharing the best advice they had recieved ‘regarding remaining healthy and fit for as long as possible?’. I really liked the thread of positivity so I want to share a few of the most popular answers, and share my thoughts on them.
Photo by Frame Harirak on Unsplash
“The bottom line is that if your exercise — whatever it is — is legitimately fun and rewarding you’ll be much more likely to stick with it, and you’ll be more willing to adapt your diet and lifestyle to get better at it. If it feels like a chore you’re setting yourself up to fail.”
I’m sure everyone has tried one sport and loved it — but tried another sport and hated it. Maybe your friend dragged you to their favourite group exercise class and you just felt like you didn’t belong? Everyone has their own thing, and that’s great! However, what isn’t great is not even trying to find what you love doing. Regardless of your opinions on the best way to workout, humans are suppose to be active. We can’t stop our bodies from atrophying overtime — so your only choice is if you’re willing to enjoy the window that you have to be active. Oh and btw, exercise & healthy foods slow down the rate in which you atrophy. At some level we have little control over what we’ll look like at 60, but we do have control over how we will feel then.
“Something is better than nothing. You/your workouts don’t have to be perfect or ‘optimal’. Be consistent. Use your body.”
This point is so relevant to working out. Every single client of mine has been taught the morning CARs routine. Each morning you take each joint through a full pain free range of motion. Nothing too crazy — nothing too intense. Part of learning to move better or maintaining how well you move is sheer practice and repetition. Depending on your previous exercise history — moving each joint in a full pain free range of motion might feel very awkward and new. Some ranges will feel stiff, sore or your body might not even know how to move in some end ranges.In cases like that — STILL DO YOUR MORNING ROUTINE.
A poor morning routine is still better than no morning routine. Don’t misinterpret the above statement though. Overtime we train in a way where their morning routine will look better, but at the beginning it doesn’t matter. In the beginning it’s a self exploration of learning how your body moves in space. So don’t get caught up in thinking it has to be perfect to do something at all.
Photo by Peter Conlan on Unsplash
“Find your why — why do you want to be healthy? Do you want to be able to play with your kids as you get older? Compete in or continue enjoying sports? Do you want to stave off the potential pain and suffering of leading a sedentary life as you age? First, find your why. Keep that why active in your mind.”
Very few people start a new routine, sport, etc. ‘just because’. There is always a why. Why are you doing these physio exercises? Maybe back pain. Why are you changing your diet? Maybe to improve your blood pressure. Why are you playing hockey? You work up a sweat while having fun with friends.
“If you can’t find time to exercise and take care of yourself, you’ll have to find time to be ill.” Free translation from what a high school acquaintance which whom I ever barely talked, posted on Facebook… but it hit me as incredibly wise and truthful.”
This one falls under the category of tough love. Newton’s third law states: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It would make sense if you chose to be active — you’ll reap the benefits. On the flip side if you chose to live a sedentary life — your quality of life will reflect that. I do want to acknowledge there are people who live with chronic pain or have medical complications that may have no choice but to be less active. For those individuals I have zero judgment towards you. You will just have to accept smaller victories. Instead of working towards a goal like a half marathon you’ll have to chose a goal that’s relative to your ability. However, for the many of us that are fortunate enough to be in good enough health — the choice is yours.
Photo by John Moeses Bauan on Unsplash
It wasn’t advice at all. I met a 92 year old man and his 87 year old wife at a friends family dinner. He was able to move around well, smart as heck, and he drove home after dinner and I wasn’t scared for him or anyone else. His wife was just as “normal”. I asked him what his secret was. He said “nothing special. Been swing dancing since I was in my 20s”. Him and his wife did it together. My partner and I started Taekwondo a couple weeks later, and we began working out at home in August. Both of us are in the best shape we’ve ever been in (both in our 30s). I refuse to be crippled when I’m older. I refuse to have health problems because I failed to do what my body needs in order to be healthy.
I don’t need to add anything to this point. I just thought it was a beautiful example of how living a healthy lifestyle can improve your quality of life long term. We can all learn something from that married couple. | https://medium.com/@juhajuppi/whats-the-best-fitness-advice-for-the-long-haul-4623a4047e3 | ['Juha Juppi'] | 2020-11-27 14:37:19.493000+00:00 | ['Reddit', 'Fitness Tips', 'Habit Building', 'Healthy Lifestyle', 'Advice'] |
The Creative Life Is Not For The Faint Of Heart | Being a creative person sucks sometimes.
“Running a start-up is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss.” -Elon Musk
I know Elon was talking about running a start-up there, but I think the same principle can be applied to creatives in general.
I think a lot of us get lost in the tales of massive success from writers like Jeff Goins and Michelle Schroeder.
We get so lost that we never contemplate what life is actually like for THEM.
Do they have any more security than we do?
Did they hit a point in their career where all they had to do was basically hit a button to create money?
I don’t know, but I do know this… | https://medium.com/the-mission/im-warning-you-the-creative-life-is-not-for-the-faint-of-heart-f68b327e7205 | ['Tom Kuegler'] | 2018-03-23 12:39:42.946000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Life Lessons', 'Writing', 'Creativity', 'Life'] |
Deep description of life | Exploit opportunities or regret
Everyone in the world has his own unique personality, and everyone has good and bad sides. Also, each person has a soulmate in someplace in the globe, he/she might and might not find.
I have been in so many situations in my life in which I freeze for a minute, and remember the whole situation in a flash and being shocked, not believing what really happened.
The reason why I am writing today, is because of a video on Instagram I have watched a few months ago, and It was kind of an opportunity I took advantage of, and what happened next, changed my life completely. I can say that it becomes something very important to me right now. It can make me feel super happy, and at other times I suffer from insomnia and anxiety because of it.
The point is, sometimes we pass through some small situations and opportunities in life, it cost us a small decision, either we take it and change our life forever, or leave it, stay the same and regret it for the rest of our lives.
Every action we start is the end of another action, and each action is the consequence of another one. This is simply, LIFE.
I believe that everything in life happens for a reason. But we are the ones who are responsible for the results follow these reasons. In the end, the results are the things that count.
Sometimes we meet people, make friends, being in relationships, work, travel, study, start a new life aboard. In some cases we choose right, but in others, our choices lead us to a very deep hurt that would destroy our lives completely. Choose your options wisely.
Further, life is all about starting new journeys, It is like a game, you start a new level, either you win and move forward or die over and over, and stuck at the same level.
Everyone was born in this life to live this journey. It is true that it is different from one another, in addition, some people born in difficult circumstances or surrounded by the wrong people. However, year by year, you grow up and become mature enough to know what is right and what is wrong. One time you fall, the next time you stand up. one day you lose, the other day you win. Never give up and always remember that opportunities come to each of us only once, So do not lose your chance to live the life you want.
“Every little action of the a common day makes or unmakes a character. ”- Oscar Wild
I heard this quote in a film once, and deeply touched my heart. It made me think a lot about life. It is truly small actions we make every day that direct our lives.
I got my chance to change my life, which I will talk about it very soon, stay tone, follow, and clap. | https://medium.com/@hala-haitham1312/deep-description-of-life-343efc8ded30 | ['Hala Haitham'] | 2020-04-23 09:13:28.157000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Experience', 'Opportunity', 'Motivation', 'Life'] |
Love Unplugged, part 2 | by Rocky Glenn
Questions are interesting things, especially those that give you pause and make you think about something you’ve never considered before. That’s exactly what the following question is. It was posed to me by a minister years ago and I’ve never forgotten the way it made me stop for consideration. Here it is:
“If fine china and dinnerware is supposed to be reserved for important people, why do we only utilize it when we entertain guests? Are the guests more important and matter to us more than the family who reside under the same roof?”
While this question could easily be answered with practicalities and conveniences, it presents the idea of why are we often guilty of not giving our families the best of us: the best of our time, the best of our attention, the best of our love. After all, our families are the ones who truly see us unplugged. Staying with this musical analogy, when we put on the facade of our “best” for others, we are essentially musicians using amplification, distortion, effects, and sound modifications to make the acoustic sound of who we really are into something we assume they will find pleasing. Pondering this idea is what prompted me to slow down and examine what love really is and begin this whole series on 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 on, what is considered the day of love, Valentine’s Day. (See Love Amplified.)
For a detailed look at 1 Corinthians 13:4, see Love Unplugged, part 1.
1 Corinthians 13:5–6 from The Amplified Bible: It is not rude; it is not self-seeking, it is not provoked [nor overly sensitive and easily angered]; it does not take into account a wrong endured. It does not rejoice at injustice, but rejoices with the truth [when right and truth prevail].
Love is not rude. To be rude is to be ill-mannered, impolite, discourteous, uncivil, and ill-behaved. Quite simply put, as translated in the NIV, love does not dishonor others. Love respects others and never dishonors them.
Love is not self-seeking. Love is not selfish. Love does not think about itself and does not demand its own way. Love does not ask, “What’s in it for me?”
Love is not provoked [nor overly sensitive and easily angered]. Depending on your personal perspective, one of the greatest (or worst!) things about marriage is learning how to push your spouse’s buttons! There’s nothing that feels so liberating as a justified retaliation for a supposed wrong endured by the one you cherish most . . . of course, that’s also the quickest to ensure you go to bed angry at each other and possibly go days without speaking!! Love resists the urge for “button-pushing.” Suffice it to say that in our nearly twenty years as Mr. and Mrs., refusing to provoke each other and forfeiting sensitivity is not something that has come easily to us but thankfully it occurs at a far, far greater frequency than once upon a time. To know how to truly provoke another and refuse to do so is love. This point actually displays how truly vulnerable love is. C. S. Lewis says it this way, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” According to Peter in 1 Peter 4:8, love covers a multitude of sins.
Love does not take into account a wrong endured. Combining the four versions of this scripture pictured above let’s describe this one as love keeps no record of being wronged because it thinks no evil and is not resentful. You will never hear love ask, “What about me?”
Love does not rejoice at injustice, but rejoices with the truth [when right and truth prevail]. There is no evil in love. There is no part of love that enjoys evil. Love grows in truth and dwells in truth. I’ve heard it said that the only reason for dishonesty is fear of not being loved if the truth is known. However, love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear (1 John 1:18).
I pray you are enjoying the practical applications of love we are exploring together. Once again, this is not something we can do on our own. We love each other because He first loved us. | https://medium.com/@donewthreligion/love-unplugged-part-2-d4ecf6d52a20 | ['Done With Religion'] | 2019-10-13 19:56:39.002000+00:00 | ['Acceptance', 'Love Of God', 'Love', 'Christian Living'] |
Morpheus Labs’ Third Update Frequency on Github | The nature of our blockchain solution is different from public blockchain projects — we are a “for-profit” company that is generating revenues from clients and intends to bolster our token ecosystem with increased business activity.
Here’s our third Update Frequency of Morpheus Labs. Once again, we would like to assure our community that our private platform repositories are being updated on a consistent basis, and there is thorough due diligence progress followed for every partner that we work with.
Below are some of the statistics that we can share from our GitHub progress;
Morpheus Labs Blockchain Platform-as-a-Service GitHub Statistics Main Figures:
Total Lines of Code: 168,769
Total Commits: 9791 | https://medium.com/morpheus-labs/morpheus-labs-third-update-frequency-on-github-2dc3fe452617 | ['Morpheus Labs Team'] | 2020-12-04 10:03:24.568000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Blockchain', 'Technology'] |
Is it Blasphemous for a Pagan to Love God? | Jesus is a swell dude, but what about God?
I’ve prayed to Him a few times since that day. I’ve asked for help from His people. Sometimes I ask for his blessings upon my faith. Sometimes I ask him about death.
He never answers — not directly. But through this development in my life, I’ve accepted that I do believe in God. I just don’t worship Him. I love His religion, but I don’t practice it. (Although I have entertained the idea of Christo-paganism.)
Why does it matter, though? If I’m content in my path, why do I care about religious figures not connected to my own religion?
The truth is, sometimes I wish I were a Christian. Is that weird? This is a more recent development in my religious life, so even I’m not entirely sure. It feels weird to think about it. But deep down, I know that what I truly crave is stability and validation. Every time I find myself falling short with my faith, I wonder if I could perform it better as a Christian.
Have you ever been the outcast? Desperate to be “normal” so that everything was a little bit easier? Who cares about the hardships that come with it, so long as people stop pointing their finger at you?
I think that’s how I feel sometimes. I think that’s why I love God.
Even after a lifetime of paganism, I ache for it to be as ‘normal’ as monotheism in the Western World. Despite the mechanics of Christianity, I do find it to be a good, wholesome faith. One that paves a pretty path for people to live by.
I lay down the bricks of my worship as I go. Paganism is such a secular path that nobody can tell me how to do it the right way. I have to find out on my own, and I often become exhausted from the work I have to put into it.
For once, I think I’d like being told what to do. How to worship. Follow a ritual that I didn’t create. God could give me those things — He offers them to me.
But I refuse.
Such is my path, and I intend to keep it regardless of the circumstances and the exhausting work. So, I will continue to love Him — but from afar. I will continue to build my faith and struggle through my worship.
I have a lot to learn from God even if I’m not a Christian. I hope He continues to teach me. | https://medium.com/polytheist-problems/is-it-blasphemous-for-a-pagan-to-love-god-db27fc423175 | ['Eraes Ellis'] | 2019-12-17 19:40:55.826000+00:00 | ['Paganism', 'Religion', 'Self', 'Christianity', 'Worship'] |
Kohler expands its smart home line with the decadent Infinity Experience soaking tub | Kohler expands its smart home line with the decadent Infinity Experience soaking tub Naomi Jan 15·4 min read
Kohler has been expanding its presence in the smart home space since 2018, and the plumbing fixture manufacturer introduced several new products at CES this year, including its Stillness Bath line of Japanese-style soaking tubs, capped by the Infinity Experience.
If you’re remodeling your bathroom and have a healthy budget, Kohler’s Stillness Bath freestanding tubs promise to deliver a spa-like experience complete with aromatherapy and full-spectrum lighting options. The 48x48-inch tubs are a little more than two feet deep and fill from the bottom up. Kohler demonstrated its top-of-the-line Infinity Experience for us (you can see the video at the top of this story).
[ Further reading: A smart home guide for beginners ]An Experience Tower fixture mounted on one side of the tub can be filled with essential oils—e.g., lavender or peppermint—which is dispensed in atmospheric fog that floats over the water. The water overflows over the edge of the tub into a Hinoki wood moat, where the water is reheated and pumped back into the tub. Lighting in the moat bathes the outer wall of the tub in user-defined colors. (Japanese custom is to bathe in a shower and soak in a hot tub afterward.)
Kohler Modeled after classic Japanese baths, Kohler’s sophisticated Infinity Experience soaking tub features an infinity edge, a fog emitter, an aromatherapy diffuser, and other high-tech features.
The Stillness Bath line range includes the $6,198 Soak, available in May; the $8,698 Smart Soak, available in July; the $10,998 Experience, also available in July; and the $15,998 Infinity Experience shown in the video, which will be available in October.
Kohler also showed a new line of touchless bathroom faucets, which promise to reduce the spread of bacteria and germs by eliminating the need to touch the fixture during your bathroom routine. One model will have a touchless puck that mounts to the countertop. Waving your hand over the puck will turn the water on, and a second wave will turn it off. A second puck on the opposite side of the faucet will control the temperature, but it will not be touchless. Kohler also plans to release a second model where the touch sensor is mounted to the top of the faucet neck itself. This design will have a rotary dial on top of the faucet for setting the water temperature.
Kohler With Kohler’s touchless bathroom concept, you’ll never need to touch a surface. Faucets, digital shower controls, a shower head with an integrated smart speaker, and a toilet (not shown here) can all be operated with gestures or voice commands.
These are meant to be DIY retrofits that any homeowner can install. Unlike the Crue touchless kitchen faucet Kohler introduced at CES in 2018 (also shown in the video), these bathroom faucets will not be voice controllable. Kohler expects to ship the bathroom faucets in December, but has not announced pricing.
Mentioned in this article Phyn Plus Smart Water Assistant + Shutoff (with professional installation) Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $699.00See it Kohler is expanding its line of touchless toilets with two mainstream models and a new entry-level intelligent toilet. The $1,000 San Souci and Tresham, and the $600 Reach and Corbelle models will be available in March. These toilets have integrated sensors in their otherwise conventional handles that flush the toilet when you wave your hand over them. The technology is powered by AA batteries, eliminating the need to have a power outlet in the vicinity of the toilet, which most homes don’t have.
Kohler The Kohler Innate is the least expensive model in the company’s Intelligent Toilet line at $3,100.
Kohler’s Innate Intelligent Toilet delivers many of the smart home features of Kohler’s higher-end toilets in a somewhat more mainstream price: $3,100. It’s also designed to deliver a touchless experience, but it’s equipped with a sensor that automatically lifts its lid as you approach and closes it after you walk away. It comes complete with a heated seat and an integrated bidet and blow dryer. A discrete remote control that mounts to the wall next to the toilet lets you select the seat temperature as well as bidet functions such as water temperature, spray wand position, and dryer operation.
While you will need an electrical outlet nearby to power the toilet, Kohler says any homeowner comfortable with replacing a toilet should be able to install the Innate themselves. Kohler has developed a special trapway for its one- and two-piece skirted toilets that fits over the top of the toilet trap in the floor and then the toilet bolts to that. The Innate Intelligent Toilet will be available in June.
Kohler Kohler’s touchless toilets flush with a wave of your hand over the lever.
Finally, Kohler announced a new partnership with Phyn in which the company will offer co-branded versions of Phyn’s existing products. Our Phyn review ran in 2019. This device monitors your main water supply line for drops in pressure that would indicate a leak and can automatically turn off your water supply to prevent catastrophic damage. A second less-expensive model that mounts underneath a sink omits the shut-off feature. Kohler says it will offer a co-branded version of this product for $300 and a co-branded model with shut-off capabilities for $500, both of which will be available in June.
Updated shortly after publication when Kohler informed us they had moved the availability date of its co-branded Phyn smart shut-off valve from December to June.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@naomi70285501/kohler-expands-its-smart-home-line-with-the-decadent-infinity-experience-soaking-tub-c65c6503de0b | [] | 2021-01-15 09:42:35.201000+00:00 | ['Connected Home', 'Cord', 'Tvs'] |
Expanding West Coast Resilience | At One Concern we have a vision of planetary scale resilience, where everyone lives in a safe, sustainable and equitable world. This is our north star and our guiding ambition, but we aren’t naive about what it will take to achieve it.
We are painfully aware that the world we inhabit is rife with disaster and hardship. Here in the United States, 2017 was the most expensive year for natural disasters in the country’s history, with a total cost of more than $300 billion. The West Coast alone suffered a staggering $20 billion in damage. Tragically, 59 people in California lost their lives and thousands more up and down the coast had their livelihoods disrupted.
However, in the face of these sobering statistics, we know that a commitment to resilience can and will save human lives and livelihoods. That’s what motivates me and my team here at One Concern. To us, nothing is larger than life. That’s why we are working so hard to help communities build a web of resilience up and down the West Coast.
A Web of Resilience — Today Cupertino, Tomorrow Your City?
This is why we are so excited that the city of Cupertino, home of Apple, has decided to partner with us to become the newest member of a West Coast resilience network — with more communities preparing to join in the coming weeks
(L-R) Nicole Hu, One Concern CTO | Ahmad Wani, One Concern CEO | Cupertino Mayor Darcy Paul at the January 31, 2018 State of the City Address
“I commend Mr Wani and Ms Hu for their concern and dedication… efforts like theirs are critical in ensuring that we are prepared as we can be in emergency situations … You can imagine how powerful [One Concern’s technology] could be in a situation where you’re trying to prepare. Where you’re trying to drill and respond” ~ Cupertino Mayor Darcy Paul
Through our application of benevolent AI and a combination of human expertise, science and deep learning, we are empowering cities like Cupertino, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Woodside and Portola Valley with insights that help the dedicated emergency response professionals and public servants in these communities better prepare for, mitigate against, respond to and recover from natural disasters.
We are so proud to be working with our partners in these communities and are honored by the solemn trust they have placed in us. This is only the beginning though.
We will be adding new partners to our expanding web of resilience over the coming weeks and months. Not only cities and towns, but also civic organizations and private companies, all of which comprise a deeply interconnected resilience ecosystem.
Each new partner will have the opportunity to share their experience and expertise across the system; leveraging the expertise of each individual member to increase the network’s strength for the benefit of all.
The work of building a more resilient West Coast starts now. Come join us!
~ Ahmad Wani
Co-founder and CEO, One Concern
www.oneconcern.com | https://medium.com/one-concern/expanding-west-coast-resilience-4cbdbb210897 | ['One Concern'] | 2018-02-01 20:14:53.297000+00:00 | ['Resilience', 'West Coast', 'Cupertino', 'Natural Disasters', 'AI'] |
Lesson 20: The State Pattern | The pattern belongs to the behavioral category of the design patterns.
Idea
Allow an object to alter its behavior when its internal state changes. The object will appear to change its class.
Explanation
Wikipedia says:
The state pattern is a behavioral software design pattern that allows an object to alter its behavior when its internal state changes.
In plain words:
With the state pattern, it’s possible for an object to change its behavior at runtime without resorting to conditional statements and thus improve maintainability.
Class Diagram
The class diagram will be:
Example
The task:
Let’s consider to create a context that can change its states based on executed commands.
Let’s define a state specification:
public interface State {
void execute(final Context context, final String command);
}
We need to define a context:
final class Context {
private State state;
public Context() {
state = new Offline();
}
void setState(final State state) {
this.state = state;
}
String getState() {
return state.getClass().getSimpleName();
}
public void execute(final String command) {
state.execute(this, command);
}
}
Let’s create different states (i.e. online, offline, Paused):
final class Online implements State {
@Override
public void execute(final Context context, final String command) {
if ("pause".equals(command)) {
context.setState(new Paused());
} else if ("stop".equals(command)) {
context.setState(new Offline());
}
}
} final class Offline implements State {
@Override
public void execute(final Context context, final String command) {
if ("start".equals(command)) {
context.setState(new Online());
}
}
} public class Paused implements State {
@Override
public void execute(final Context context, final String command) {
if ("start".equals(command)) {
context.setState(new Online());
} else if ("stop".equals(command)) {
context.setState(new Offline());
}
}
}
And then it can be used as:
final var context = new Context();
assertEquals("Offline", context.getState());
context.execute("start");
assertEquals("Online", context.getState());
context.execute("pause");
assertEquals("Paused", context.getState());
context.execute("stop");
assertEquals("Offline", context.getState());
More Examples
Links | https://medium.com/it-lessons/lesson-20-the-state-pattern-1900f7c3dcf9 | ['Andrey Karazhev'] | 2020-12-02 13:38:48.048000+00:00 | ['Tutorial', 'Design Patterns', 'State Pattern'] |
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newjobalart.com has made significant efforts to present accurate and well founded information on this Regularly Latest Job Updated Portal. However, the portal does not take any legal responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of the information published herein. This website for information only that published here with noble intentions for academic purposes. newjobalart.com is not a recruitment agency or govt job website of any Government or non-government organisation or department and not providing any online offline form filled-up, fees collection, etc. It helps you to get all information about jobs, results, examinations, etc. in government and non-government sector and Department. Please review our Privacy Policy and Disclaimer for more details. | https://medium.com/@anbinetindia/job-alert-9a50b28e8a76 | [] | 2020-12-21 14:12:47.170000+00:00 | ['Job Vacancy', 'Recruitment', 'New Job Alert', 'Job Alert', 'Newjobalart'] |
Why Barack Obama Doesn’t Like Ice Cream Anymore | Obama talking about his first job got me thinking about ice cream, and my first job myself. I worked as a stocker at Walmart on the 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift on the “booster team,” which was meant to assist the stockers in the morning shift and people who worked the night shift. I worked the job before college, and a friend of mine had just started working at Walmart and told me to apply. He was working in the Lawn and Garden section of the store and told me:
“This is the easiest job ever. I don’t do anything.”
Unfortunately, I did not get assigned to Lawn and Garden. The job itself, in retrospect, was a necessary stepping stone. Minimum wage in New York in 2015 was still $8.75, and Walmart paid me $9 an hour. I thought that was a joke for an entry-level salary, but I had to work my way through college at Emory University in Georgia, and I was paid even less the next four years.
The work itself was boring and monotonous, and in the early stages, I had significant hiccups. But there were a lot of people who came onto the job either around the same time as me or way after me, and I made friends with a couple who showed me the ropes. Mainly, that meant knowing what food, detergent, or soft drinks went where, and what shelves to put different items on.
I always remember that my least favorite items to stock were detergents (they’re heavy). We would have to bring pile jacks from the back of the Walmart to the aisles, and I don’t know what other people’s experiences were, but it ended up being a job that taught many life lessons. I remember thinking it was a bit sexist that whenever the guys in the back of the store needed help unloading items from the truck, they would pull all the men off the booster team, but not the women, but we laughed that off. The work day was long, and that portion of the day would only last 30 minutes.
My first job at Walmart taught me that the work day is a marathon and not a sprint. During my first couple days on the job, I would try to conquer the world by storm and be an ultra-productive machine who got more stocked than anybody else. And I did — for two hours. I would even be arrogant enough to think I could skip my allotted 15-minute breaks. Although I wasn’t allotted to be a customer service representative, there is a substantial difference between telling someone where to find the baking soda versus leading them to the aisle with the baking soda. When I felt under pressure, I would do the former rather than the latter, putting productivity above people.
What I failed to realize was that I was working nine-hour shifts, and it would have been better to play it like the tortoise than the hare — slow and steady wins the race. By pacing myself throughout the day, I was able to get more done, not feel so frantic needing to get everything done all at once. The work day at Walmart, just like a work day as a teacher, is a marathon, not a sprint.
I also remember thinking that my job wasn’t bad personally, but couldn’t imagine working at the company for years, or even decades. On my first day getting paid, myself and Paul, a man who was laid off after decades working as a printer, were shown a “training” video. The premise of the video was the corrupt nature of unions and about how if you were suspected of being in a union, you would be in trouble. The video advocated an open door policy where if you had a dispute, you could go directly to your supervisor. I eventually found this video on YouTube, where an associate says at the end:
“I don’t like giving my signature to anyone, much less unions who spend so much time trying to hurt my company.”
I was baffled at the video, and then I turned to Paul, who was shaking his head and cursing at the video right in front of our would-be supervisor. He expressed that he wouldn’t have been able to buy his house had he not been supported by the printers’ union. In my summer at Walmart, Paul and I would learn the ropes together, but I would always feel a level of guilt that I was leaving to go to college so soon. I still don’t know what he’s doing today.
Based on all the pay scale papers I saw in the break room, apparently, your salary increased by 40 to 60 cents per year, depending on how a supervisor assessed your performance. However, as the minimum wage kept increasing on a state level, people who’d been at Walmart longer than me said their pay increases were not consistent with the minimum wage. For example, if minimum wage was $7 and you got a raise to $7.60 after one year at Walmart, a rise in minimum wage to $8 would keep your salary at only $8. It seemed like there was no “raise” in that scenario, and it seemed like an awfully convenient loophole for the company.
The people I worked with were awfully kind, resilient, and helpful. I worked with a lot of people only a couple years older than me, but one person who was especially helpful as a mentor was Jake. Jake looked like he was in a bike gang and always had an American flag bandana on his head. Coming back to the facility from my breaks, I would frequently see Jake smoking outside the store.
Jake worked the night shift, and we had an overlap between 10 to 11 p.m., and he would compliment me on how hard I was working and the job I was doing. He showed me a couple of trade secrets on how to work faster with less effort, and then talked to me and another worker about his life and his time at Walmart for the full hour we worked together. He told us he used to bike, but didn’t anymore. While we worked together, if I was too short to get something on a shelf without a ladder, he would do it for me. If we had to stock cans, which we had to do often, he would usually help me stock half of them, cutting the time needed by half.
I would eventually hear from the grapevine that Jake was homeless, and slept in his truck. Someone told me he survived off Chef Boyardee cans that he heated up in the break room. While I thought that comment was insensitive, I saw Jake at the store even when he wasn’t working, and frequently saw him hanging out in the back of his truck in the side parking lot of the building. I never asked him about his living situation since I didn’t feel like it was my place.
Eventually, I would fly to Atlanta and go on to college. But Walmart would leave me with a lot of life lessons about work and workplace cultures. First, I learned that everyone is in it together. When everyone supports each other and pitches in to help each other, everyone’s job becomes a lot easier. I would impart the same spirit of solidarity that people like Jake gave to me to mentor new people for any job I was in. Even people I barely interacted with, like cashiers or people who worked in electronics, would direct me in the early days where I didn’t know where to find anything. When I worked at my college gym, I spent some time as a supervisor, and I always helped attendants with folding towels, doing laundry, and more. We would have some long days, but at least we were in it together.
Now, as a teacher, the theme that we’re all in this together is even more important to internalize, especially during a pandemic. To any beginning teacher, prioritizing your relationship with the school’s secretary or custodian makes your job so much easier. In my case, all were at the school for a long time, and all had relationships with the students over the years we could only dream to have as new teachers. I also noticed the days became torturous if any of them were out — schools often cannot run without a secretary or custodian. In a lot of ways, if either were sick, the school would fall apart with phone calls going unanswered or the hallways looking like an absolute mess. Also, having a problem with your secretary is the number one way to have a terrible time as a teacher.
I think a lot about politics, and with my left-wing beliefs in a welfare state and a much greater social safety net, I wish entry-level jobs paid more, especially with so many people breaking their back to earn $7.25 an hour. But everyone still had to work and show up regardless of what the government and politicians decide to do — and I realized one thing above all else: relationships supersede politics.
How you treat people you interact with every day says much more about you than what you post on Twitter. I didn’t know the political beliefs of people like Jake and Paul. But based on what they said about Obama and Obamacare, I can assume they didn’t like him nor Democrats that much, which fundamentally opposed my own beliefs.
I also had to reckon with the fact that they were good, hard-working, and genuinely kind people who dropped everything to help a co-worker who needed it. They helped me when I needed it. They dropped everything to help a customer if they needed it.
I don’t miss my first job that much, but I do miss my co-workers and the biggest lesson they taught me: that loving your neighbor means treating everyone as human first, everything else second. And I want to thank Obama’s reminiscing about working at Baskin Robbins for making me remember that. | https://medium.com/publishous/why-barack-obama-doesnt-like-ice-cream-anymore-920a311d40b6 | ['Ryan Fan'] | 2020-12-23 22:38:08.430000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Self', 'Culture', 'Society', 'Politics'] |
Spring Always Comes | This week in Manitoba, we’re in the last throes of winter. The biting wind somehow seems much colder in March, when spring should be closer, than it does in January. It’s at this point every winter where a certain hopelessness can set in. Will spring ever arrive? After several months of cold, it’s tough to see light at the end of the tunnel.
Like Narnia, it feels like it will always be winter (and never Christmas!).
And yet we know that spring will, indeed, arrive. Because it comes every year.
We all go through “dead of winter” seasons, whether it be a personal or family difficulty, or while you’re working on a difficult project.
It’s important to remember in these seasons that one day you’ll look back and feel like spring’s arrival was inevitable. Though it feels like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, you’ll walk into the bright springtime sunshine eventually, if you keep going.
Because spring must come. It always does. | https://medium.com/cracks-in-the-pavement/spring-always-comes-f2d40a051233 | ['Brent Manke'] | 2017-03-09 21:58:37.173000+00:00 | ['Hope', 'Poetry', 'Perseverance', 'Winter', 'Life'] |
Trump Pardons Are Peak GOP | Trump’s Pardons Are Peak GOP
“The party of law and order” is a brutal myth
If there’s one thing we have learned the past four years, it’s that the modern Republican Party is often the exact opposite of what its leaders claim to be.
Lowering the deficit and national debt? Spend trillions on COVID-19 relief. Invest in our national infrastructure? We’re still waiting for infrastructure week. Responsible governance? Use national security briefings to adjust your investment strategy for personal self-enrichment. Claim you’re standing strong against a foreign regime? Refuse to help the victims of said regime:
Rampant Republican hypocrisy existed long before Donald Trump seized control over the party. The past four years have enhanced these absurdities, bringing into crisp focus the foggier parts of what the GOP has become.
Perhaps the most egregious example is the Republican Party constantly claiming they stand for “law and order.” 2020 especially showed us how untrue this is. As I’ve mentioned previously:
In a disastrous New York Times op-ed, Tom Cotton called for the military to be unleashed on mostly peaceful protesters. Mike Lee believes — wrongly — that a non-Republican majority will lead to tyranny, so democracy has to be bad and we can’t have one. Mitch McConnell refused to allow hundreds of bills passed by the House to even see the light of day on the Senate floor.
Calling for U.S. troops to commit mass atrocities against America citizens and refusing to allow laws to be put up for a vote is the exact of opposite of being pro law and order.
Over the past few days, Trump has taken this hypocrisy to its logical conclusion, issuing pardon after pardon to a wide array of people, including loyalists and U.S. military contractors who committed war crimes. All this does is further clarify what we already knew.
These pardons claim that corruption is fine, as long as you’re a Republican or worship Trump
Controversial pardons are nothing new, but the ones Trump is doling out are especially shameful. As the New York Times notes, over half of the pardons don’t even meet the Justice Department’s guidelines for consideration.
This is the GOP’s law and order hypocrisy taken to the extremes. People who broke laws that led to a meltdown in order are being given a pass. Outside of Trump following through on his own suggestion that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, it can’t get more outrageous than this.
A large majority of congressional Republicans were thrilled to stand by Trump’s attempts to steal the election. Now they are mostly silent as the power of the pardon is being used to further erode law and order.
Trump will soon be out of office, but it’s doubtful he will exit public life. He will still be around — hovering loudly in the background like a drunk wedding guest ruining the reception — reminding congressional Republicans that committing crimes and embracing corruption are just fine, as long as it’s to their benefit.
Set against the backdrop of our broader political landscape, this is one more sign that our country’s challenges are not centered around right versus left. They revolve around the very idea of democracy itself, and if we should remain one. That reality shows how far off the rails the GOP has gone.
All that’s left to do is roll up our sleeves and get to work against it. | https://medium.com/bigger-picture/trumps-pardons-are-peak-gop-7e40b26c8223 | ['Mark C. Hackett'] | 2020-12-26 15:06:43.242000+00:00 | ['Republican Party', 'Society', 'Politics', 'Government', '2020'] |
Kid Safety — A Step-by-Step Guide to Childproofing Your Home | Sadly, these safety risks tend to escalate as your child gets older. You might think you’d be able to relax once your little one has learnt pick themselves up from a fall, or started moving around without pulling on bookcases for support.
But studies actually show that toddlers between 2–5 are just as prone to household injuries. Particularly drive way injuries, or incidents involving water.
So, what are you — as a responsible and caring parent — supposed to do? Round-the-clock surveillance is unachievable, and you need to give your little one some freedom to explore so we’d recommend focusing on preventing common accidents by:
Identifying all of the major safety risks
Removing any potential hazards
Rearranging or securing furniture to reduce the risk of common accidents
In this article, we’re going to walk you through the common safety risks and show you how to safely childproof your home. We’ll start with some case studies that highlight the biggest dangers, then work our way through the house room by room; discussing common hazards and explaining how to protect your little one. | https://medium.com/@thewifechoice/kid-safety-a-step-by-step-guide-to-childproofing-your-home-ba5d142424e1 | [] | 2019-04-11 08:43:10.430000+00:00 | ['Child Protection', 'Baby', 'Parenting'] |
What is ROC? | The ROC-AUC score is used to find out the accuracy of the classifier.
ROC stands for Receiver Operating Characteristic. It’s is a type of curve. We draw the ROC curve to visualize the performance of the binary classifier. The ROC curve is a 2-D curve. It’s x axis represents the False Positive Rate (FPR) and its y axis represents the True Positive Rate (TPR). TPR is also known as sensitivity, and FPR is also known as specificity (SPC). You can refer to the following equations for FPR and TPR.
TPR = True Positive / Number of positive samples = TP / P FPR = False Positive / Number of negative samples = FP / N = 1 — SPC
For any binary classifier, if the predicted probability is ≥ 0.5, then it will get the class label X, and if the predicted probability is < 0.5, then it will get the class label Y. This happens by default in most binary classifiers. This cut-off value of the predicted probability is called the threshold value for predictions. For all possible threshold values, FPR and TPR have been calculated. This FPR and TPR is an x,y value pair for us. So, for all possible threshold values, we get the x,y value pairs, and when we put the points on an ROC graph, it will generate the ROC curve. If your classifier perfectly separates the two classes, then the ROC curve will hug the upper-right corner of the graph. If the classifier performance is based on some randomness, then the ROC curve will align more to the diagonal of the ROC curve. Refer to the following figure:
ROC curve for different classification scores
In the preceding figure, the leftmost ROC curve is for the perfect classifier. The graph in the center shows the classifier with better accuracy in real-world problems. The classifier that is very random in its guess is shown in the rightmost graph. When we draw an ROC curve, how can we quantify it? In order to answer that question, we will introduce AUC. Our next article will talk about the AUC.
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Reference: ML Solutions | https://medium.com/acing-ai/what-is-roc-8397d491d791 | ['Vimarsh Karbhari'] | 2019-03-26 13:56:02.120000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Interview', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Data'] |
Randomized Algorithms: how to tackle the Contention Resolution Problem | Randomized algorithms are very important in the field of theoretical computing science as well as real-world applications. For a lot of problems, to get a deterministic answer, a function that always returns the same answer given the same input is computationally heavy and can’t be solved in polynomial time.
When we introduce some randomness along with the input, we expect to have a more efficient time complexity. Or we expect to have a ratio of the optimal solution with a good upper bound on the number of iterations it will take to get that solution.
These algorithms are often trivial to come up with. But it is much more complex to analyze and prove the running time/correctness. It is worth noting that there is a difference between probabilistic analysis and analysis of randomized algorithms. In probabilistic analysis we give the algorithm an input assumed to be from a probability distribution. Whereas in the randomized algorithm we add a random number(s) to the input. The following images should show the distinction. Images are from Stanford lecture slides.
In this article, I will go through the contention resolution problem from Algorithm Design by Kleinberg and Tardos.
Contention Resolution
The problem is there are n processors that share a single database D and the time is divided into k discrete intervals. The database serves at most 1 processor at a time.
Goal: Divide the rounds among the n processors in an equitable fashion.
Keep in mind there is no communication between the processors of any sort to plan out when to access the database. If every processor keeps repeatedly trying to access D at the same time then the database will be locked out, serving 0 processors. Not ideal. By randomizing the sequence of access attempts from the processors we can “smooth out” the contention, avoiding lockouts.
Events
We need to specify some events and the probabilities associated with them.
Think about what is happening here, a processor i is trying to access D at time t. Let that be our first event.
E1 = A[i, t]: P[i] (process i) attempts to access D at round t
This event has a compliment, the process not attempting to access at round t.
E1^ = A[i, t]^: P[i] doesn’t attempt to access D at round t
Let A[i, t] have a probability of it occurring be p and since all individual probabilities in a sample space S = {E1, E1^} add up to 1, we have a probability of A[i,t]^ be 1-p.
Pr[A[i,t]] = p | Pr[A[i,t]^] = 1-p
After attempting to access the database, one of two things happens for process P[i]: it either succeeds or it doesn’t.
E2 = S[i,t]: P[i] succeeds in accessing D at round t E2^ = S[i,t]^: P[i] doesn’t succeed in accessing D at round t
Success only happens when P[i] is attempting to access D and all other processes aren’t. This is an intersection of events E1 for all the processes.
S[i,t] = A[i,t] ∩ (∩j≠i A[j,t]^)
The probability of S[i,t] is, therefore, the probability of A[i,t] multiplied with the product of A[j,t]^ complement events.
Pr[S[i,t]] = Pr[A[i,t]] * ∏j≠i Pr[A[j,t]^] = p(1-p)^(n-1)
Remember derivatives? They equal 0 at minimums or maximums. Let f(p) = p(1-p)^(n-1) then the derivative of f(p) is
f’(p) = (1-p)^(n-1)- (n-1)*p*(1-p)^n-2
The obvious values that make this equation equal 0 are 0 and 1. When p = 0, none of the processes are attempting to access the database. When it equals 1 then all the processes are attempting at the same time. Both situations are ones we are not interested in. The only other value is when p = 1/n.
Set p = 1/n and we get
Pr[S[i,t]] = 1/n(1–1/n)^(n-1)
From calculus, there are two facts we will use.
(1–1/n)^n converges monotonically from 1/4 up to 1/e (1–1/n)^n-1 converges monotonically from 1/2 down to 1/e
So we see there is an asymptotic bound we can use.
1/n(1–1/n)^(n-1) converges monotonically from (≤) 1/2 *1/n down to (≥) 1/e*1/n
1/en ≤ Pr[S[i,t]] ≤ 1/2n
The prior is asymptotically equal to O(1/n)
Another event, failures…
E3 = F[i,t]: denotes the “failure event” of P[i] not succeeding accesses to D in any rounds from 1 to t
That is equivalent to specifying the intersection of events, S[i,r]^ (no success) for r = 1…t
This eventually helps the probability of F[i,t] become a nice commutable math equation as the probability of the intersection of events is the product of the individual event probabilities.
Pr[F[i,t]] = Pr[⋂r=1.to.t (S[i,r]^)] = ∏r=1.to.t(Pr[S[i,r]^]) =
(1-p(1-p)^(n-1))^t
Pr[S[i,t]] = p(1-p)^(n-1), S[i,t]^ = 1-Pr[S[i,t]]
Remember the calculus convergence properties we saw earlier? We use them here to get
Pr[F[i,t]] = (1-p(1-p)^(n-1))^t = (1–1/n(1–1/n)^(n-1))^t ≤ (1–1/en)^t
p = 1/n because each of the n processors has an equal probability of attempting to access the database at time t
Now let us take a look at parameter t.
If we set t = ceiling(en) to make sure it is an integer, we get
Pr[F[i,t]] ≤ (1–1/en)^ceiling(en) ≤ (1–1/en)^en ≤ 1/e
This bound tells us that the probability of a process i not succeeding in its attempts from rounds 1 to ceiling(en) is upper-bounded by 1/e, independent of n.
Set t = ceiling(en)*(c*ln(n)) then we have
Pr[F[i,t]] ≤ (1–1/en)^t ≤ ((1–1/en)^ceiling(en))^(c*ln(n)) ≤ (1/e)^c*ln(n) ≤ 1/n^c = n^-c
One last event… our goal is to have the processes succeed as many rounds as possible. In other words if, say,
E4 = F[t]: denotes the event of the protocol failing after t rounds then we would like to minimize t here to maximize the number of rounds it succeeds.
F[t] essentially occurs if and only if one of F[i,t] occurs, only takes one process failing to say the protocol has failed. This is therefore the union of events F[i,t] for processes i = 1…n.
F[t] = ⋃i=1.to.n(F[i,t])
Union Bound
The prior is hard to compute exactly because the events F[i,t] are not independent. The easy solution is bound to them as if they are all independent.
Given events E1, … En, we have Pr[⋃i=1.to.n(Ei)] ≤ ∑i=1.to.n(Pr[Ei])
Pr[F[t]] ≤ ∑i=1.to.n(Pr[F[i,t]])
Recall when t = ceiling(en)*c*ln(n) gives an upper bound on Pr[F[i,t]] ≤ n^-c
Let c = 2 and we have Pr[F[t]] ≤ ∑i=1.to.n(n^(-2)) = n*n^(-2) = 1/n
What is the probability that all the processes succeed at accessing D at least once within the t = 2*ceiling(en)*ln(n) rounds?
Take the complement of F[t], F[t]^ and arrive at a probability
1–1/n.
Wrapping up
This was quite a lengthy analysis, and most analyses for randomized algorithms are. It is essentially a trade-off, as the algorithms are easier to design and understand than complex deterministic algorithms that are computationally heavy arriving at the correct solution. With randomized algorithms, we are willing to accept some small error with the luxury of efficiency.
Thank you for reading. I am new to the blogging game, so any feedback would be appreciated. | https://medium.com/free-code-camp/randomized-algorithms-part-1-d89986bb685b | ['Chad Malla'] | 2019-05-07 16:36:15.800000+00:00 | ['Algorithms', 'Mathematics', 'Tech', 'Computer Science', 'Programming'] |
Axiom Of The Empty Set | A list without any items in it is still a list, I must insist. Just like a box without anything in it is still a box, or a Smurf village without any Smurfs (Smurves?) is still a frickin Smurf villiage..
But not according to the W3C, apparently. File this one under Rant Of The Day: none of the standard XHTML doctypes acknowledge the existance of the empty list.
<!ELEMENT ul (li)+>
That is, neither the <ul></ul> or the <ul/> representations are valid XHTML. This seems pretty broken to me at first glance, although I’m certianly willing to hear a rebuttal if anyone has one. Even if you don’t think it’s busted, it certainly adds complication to a very common web dev scenario…
So we have a list of resources in our view and there’s a good possibility that our list is empty. We want to be able to display that list, and have a button on the page that lets me add new items to the list with a little Ajax love so that we don’t have to reload the page. If we can represent an empty list in the page, it’s simple: we can just render :update in Rails…
render :update do |page|
page.insert_html(:bottom, :my_list, "<li>#{item}</li>")
end
The code above assumes that there’s a DOM ID ‘my\_list’ that has 0 or more elements. But since XHTML won’t let us represent a 0-element list, the obvious thing to do is to bake some extra smarts into the update code.
Now it’s the job of the update to determine if a list exists, and if not to create it, but only for the special one-off case of the zero element list? Yuck, bleh. No thanks. This is probably what most people do, but it just strikes me as putting too much intelligence into something that’s supposed to be pretty dumb.
The alternate solution listed here also qualifies as a hack, no bones about it. But, at least in my opinion, it’s a somewhat more elegant hack than what was described above. File under simple Workaround Of The Day:
<ul id="list_things">
<li class="invisible" style="display: none"/>
</ul>
Note that the W3C does support empty list item elements :-). Thanks to azta for the suggestion. | https://medium.com/zerosum-dot-org/axiom-of-the-empty-set-5c128448df2b | ['Nick Plante'] | 2017-12-03 23:06:44.854000+00:00 | ['W3c', 'HTML', 'Web Standards'] |
Why Ruby hashes with default values are dangerous | Ruby hashes are simple yet powerful data structures every Ruby-developer uses about ten times a day. Setting default values with the Hash.new constructor feels intuitive and makes developers’ lives even easier. But overusing this language feature can lead to some surprises down the line — lots of fun debugging.
My journey into Ruby hashes and their default values started with the following code (this is the simplified version):
values_by_type = Hash.new(){[]}
some_values_list = [1, 2, 1, 2, 3] some_values_list.each do |value|
type = 1
# some logic is omitted if !values_by_type[type].include?(value)
values_by_type[type] << value
# put something to database
end
end # some usage of values_by_type hash
p values_by_type[1]
Of course, this piece of code isn’t great, but we’ll focus on resolving the main issues, not rewriting the whole thing. Our goal is to understand why it isn’t working properly.
This code saves everything in the database correctly but the resulting hash is empty. An experienced (or just attentive) Ruby developer will quickly detect the issue — changing Hash.new(){[]} to Hash.new([]) resolves the problem. But why?
We’ll dive deeper into the Hash.new method later, for now let’s just look at a couple of examples, which can be easily repeated in irb.
# Example 1. hash with a simple default value
> h1 = Hash.new(1) # => {}
> h1[1] # => 1
> h1[2] # => 1
> h1[1] += 1 # => 2
> h1[2] # => 1
> h1 # => {1=>2} # Example 2. hash with array as a default value
> h2 = Hash.new([]) # => {}
> h2[1] # => []
> h2[2] # => []
> h2[1] << 'x' # => ["x"]
> h2[1] # => ["x"]
> h2 # => {} # Example 3. hash with block provided
> h3 = Hash.new(){ [] } # => {}
> h3[1] # => []
> h3[1] << 'x' # => ["x"]
> h3[1] # => []
> h3 # => {}
> h3[1] = ['x'] # => ["x"]
> h3[1] # => ["x"]
> h3 # => {1=>["x"]}
Looks a bit confusing, but lets try to understand the logic behind it.
First, let’s define why the third example can’t work (and doesn’t make sense). The correct usage of Hash.new with the block is:
Hash.new { |hash, key| hash[key] = [] }
This example will help us understand the issue.
Another hint — if you haven’t left irb yet run the following code:
> h2[3] # => ["x"]
Hmm, the puzzle begins to add up.
Ruby hashes have the following structure:
A default value passed to the hash constructor, via either argument or block, is saved in the IFNONE structure. The only difference between the default value and the default block is that the RHASH_PROC_DEFAULT flag is only set for the block.
When you’re trying to get the value from the hash, it invokes code that looks something like this (originally written in C, not Ruby):
def [](key)
value = st_table.fetch(key)
return value unless value.nil? get_default(key)
end def get_default(key)
if ifnone && RHASH_PROC_DEFAULT
ifnone.call(self, key)
else
ifnone
end
end
Returning to our examples — modifying a value in the hash with a default array, h2[1] << ‘x’, didn’t update the value in the ST Table, it updated the default value for the whole hash. And asking the hash for another key not presented in the ST Table will return the same default object, already modified.
In my opinion, this is exactly the point — the hash returns the default object, not the default value. And as we know, objects in Ruby are modifiable.
The only question left is why modifying the value with default number h1[1] += 1 didn’t modify it for the h1[2]? I think, the answer is pretty obvious, isn’t it?
Conclusion
I don’t expect this small article about the hashes’ inner structure to be extremely useful, but we can probably extract the following advice from it:
Try to use the simplest possible values for hash defaults. Use the Hash.new { |hash, key| hash[key] = … } form. It’s the clearest and a customizable way to set default value.
Of course, everything written here is covered in ruby documentation, but who really reads it attentively and isn’t it so much fun to discover stuff deep within Ruby internals.
Links | https://oleg0potapov.medium.com/why-ruby-hashes-with-default-values-are-dangerous-df7f03533b55 | ['Oleg Potapov'] | 2020-09-04 14:26:36.229000+00:00 | ['Ruby', 'Default Value', 'Hash'] |
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Email Blast to International Radio Stations | https://medium.com/shabazz-publication/get-music-promotion-for-under-1-with-our-music-team-d6f141f62143 | ['Shabazz Publication'] | 2017-02-22 23:26:42.842000+00:00 | ['Music Business', 'Advice', 'Music', 'Tips', 'Streaming'] |
What keeps Mekong women from accessing open data? | Gender inequality underscores the lives of women all over the world. At the Open Development Initiative, we wanted to understand how this impacted women in the Mekong countries of Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, and Vietnam (CLMV) in their access to open data. In 2019, we conducted and completed a study on this topic, the results of which have now been published on Open Development Mekong.
Photo by Tomáš Malík on Unsplash. Freely licensed on Unsplash.
Even though each of the CLMV countries is unique, women across the region experienced similar barriers. These were:
Poor institutional support for increasing access to information; Deeply entrenched and as-yet unaddressed gendered cultural norms; and Lack of true leadership and inclusivity
You can read the regional report, which includes briefs on each of the countries, here.
“If computer use is available, men and sons are given first priority to have access to the internet” — Myanmar
The realities of the women we spoke to were shaped by gendered expectations about who they should be, how they should act, and what they should do. This was the undercurrent to almost all access issues, whether in regard to data and digital literacy, physical technology, and more. Cultural norms are the magnifying glass for any other institutional, socioeconomic, or societal barriers.
The women we spoke to were mostly urban and educated — and they were also more likely to understand how to access data and information, and its importance. A lack of physical information and communications technology infrastructure in rural areas adds to the difficulty. Even so, this is no match for an institutional culture that limits the channels of access to data, and a data ecosystem that is not very inclusive. When data just isn’t being made available, there’s no way to access it. And for the data that is being made available, it’s not that accessible for people in CLMV. A gap in language is just one example.
“If you know English then a whole world is open for you, but if you’re only speaking Khmer then you’re very limited.” — Cambodia
These systemic issues are not easily changed. Open data principles are not the cure-all. True change toward gender equality will require intersectional thinking beyond the business-as-usual scenario, and a true commitment to inclusivity. Government support is necessary, and addressing the need for truly universal infrastructure is a high priority. Women and the open data sector would benefit from systemic change in regard to information sharing and gender, alongside supporting broad access to digital tools, skills, and information. Meaningful inclusivity, through the provision of information in relevant languages and a broad range of formats, alongside the prioritization of marginalized communities such as through data sovereignty, is necessary.
Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash. Licensed freely on Unsplash.
Mekong women want trustworthy, reliable data and information sources to use to push for gender equality. The Open Development Initiative’s Mekong Women in Open Data research is intended to support those pushing for an equitable data landscape in the Mekong Region.
Read more here. | https://medium.com/opendevelopmentmekong/what-keeps-mekong-women-from-accessing-open-data-bcc480556d3a | ['Od Mekong'] | 2020-11-20 06:23:02.045000+00:00 | ['Gender', 'Mekong', 'Open Data'] |
Understanding Machine Translation Quality: A Review | Today we live in a world where machine translation (MT) is pervasive, and increasingly a necessary tool for any global enterprise that seeks to understand, communicate and share information with a global customer base.
It is estimated by experts that trillions of words are being translated daily with the aid of the many “free” generic public MT portals worldwide.
This is the first in a series of posts that will explore the issue of MT Quality in some depth, with several goals:
Explain why MT quality measurement is necessary,
Share best practices,
Expose common misconceptions,
Understand what matters for enterprise and professional use.
While much has been written on this subject already, it has not seemed to have reduced the amount of misunderstanding and confusion around this subject. Thus, there is value in continued elucidation to ensure that greater clarity and understanding are achieved.
So let’s begin.
Machine Translation (MT) or Automated Translation is a process when computer software “translates” text from one language to another without human involvement.
There are ten or more public MT portals available to do this in the modern era, and additionally, many private MT offerings are available to the modern enterprise to address their large-scale language translation needs. For this reason, the modern global enterprise needs an understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the many offerings available in the marketplace.
Ideally, the “best” MT system would be identified by a team of competent translators who would run a diverse range of relevant content through the MT system after establishing a structured and repeatable evaluation process. This is slow, expensive, and difficult, even if only a small sample of 250 sentences is evaluated.
Thus, automated measurements that attempt to score translation adequacy, fluency, precision, and recall have to be used. They attempt to do what is best done by competent humans. This is done by comparing MT output to a human translation in what is called a Reference Test set. These reference sets cannot provide all the possible ways a source sentence could be correctly translated. Thus, these scoring methodologies are always an approximation of what a competent human assessment would determine, and can sometimes be wrong or misleading.
Thus, identifying the “best MT” solution is not easily done. Consider the cost of evaluating ten different systems on twenty different language combinations with a human team versus automated scores. Even though it is possible to rank MT systems based on scores like BLEU and hLepor, they do not represent production performance. The scores are a snapshot of an ever-changing scene. If you change the angle or the focus the results would change.
A score is not a stable and permanent rating for an MT system. There is no single, magic MT solution that does a perfect job on every document or piece of content or language combination. Thus, the selection of MT systems for production use based on these scores can often be sub-optimal or simply wrong.
Additionally, MT technology is not static: the models are constantly being improved and evolving, and what was true yesterday in quality comparisons may not be true tomorrow.
For these reasons, understanding how the data, algorithms, and human processes around the technology interact is usually more important than any comparison snapshot.
In fact, building expertise and close collaboration with a few MT providers is likely to yield better ROI and business outcomes than jumping from system to system based on transient and outdated quality score-based comparisons.
Two primary groups have an ongoing and continuing interest in measuring MT quality. They are:
MT developers Enterprise buyers and LSPs
They have very different needs and objectives and it is useful to understand why this is so.
Measurements that may make sense for developers can often be of little or no value to enterprise buyers and vice versa.
MT Developers
MT developers typically work on one model at a time, e.g.: English-to-French. They will repeatedly add and remove data from a training set, then measure the impact to eventually determine the optimal data needed.
They may also modify parameters on the training algorithms used, or change algorithms altogether, and then experiment further to find the best data/algorithm combinations using instant scoring metrics like BLEU, TER, hLepor, ChrF, Edit Distance, and Comet.
While such metrics are useful to developers, they should not be used to cross-compare systems, and have to be used with great care. The quality scores from several (data/algorithm) combinations are calculated by comparing MT output from each of these systems (models) to a Human Reference translation of the same evaluation test data. The highest scoring system is usually considered the best one.
In summary, MT developers use automatically calculated scores that attempt to mathematically summarize overall precision, recall, adequacy, and fluency characteristics of an MT system into a numeric score, This is done to identify the best English-to-French system, as stated in our example, that they can build with available data and computing resources.
However, a professional human assessment may often differ from what these scores say.
In recent years, Neural MT (NMT) models have exposed that using these automated scoring metrics in isolation can lead to sub-optimal choices. Increasingly, human evaluators are also engaged to ensure that there is a correlation between automatically calculated scores and human assessments.
This is because the scores are not always reliable, and human rankings can differ considerably from score-based rankings. Thus, the quality measurement process is expensive, slow, and prone to many procedural errors, and sometimes even deceptive tactics.
Some MT developers test on training data which can result in misleadingly high scores. (I know of a few who do this!) The optimization process described above is essentially how the large public MT portals develop their generic systems, where the primary focus is on acquiring the right data, using the best algorithms, and getting the highest (BLEU) or lowest (TER) scores.
Enterprise Buyers and LSPs
Enterprise Buyers and LSPs usually have different needs and objectives. They are more likely to be interested in understanding which English-to-French system is the “best” among five or more commercially available MT systems under consideration.
Using automated scores like BLEU, hLepor and TER do not make as much sense in this context. The typical enterprise/LSP is also additionally interested in understanding which system can be “best” modified to learn enterprise terminology and language style.
Optimization around enterprise content and subject domain matters much more, and a comparison of generic (stock) systems can often be useless in the considered professional use context. Many forget that many business problems require a combination of both MT and human translation to achieve the required level of output quality. Thus, a tightly linked human-in-the-loop (HITL) process to drive MT performance improvements has increasingly become a key requirement for most enterprise MT use cases.
Third-party consultants have compared generic (stock or uncustomized) engines and ranked MT solutions using a variety of test sets that may or may not be relevant to a buyer. These rankings are then often being used to dynamically select different MT systems for different languages, but it is possible and even likely, that they are making sub-optimal choices.
The ease, speed, and cost of tuning and adapting a generic (stock) MT system to enterprise content, terminology, and language style matter much more in this context, and comparisons should only be made after determining this aspect.
However, as generic system comparisons are much easier and less costly to do, TMS systems and middleware that allow MT system selection using these generic evaluation test data scores, often make choices based on irrelevant and outdated data and can thus be sub-optimal. This is a primary reason that so many LSP systems perform so poorly and why MT is so underutilized in this sector.
While NMT continues to gain momentum as the average water level keeps rising, there is still a great deal of naivete and ignorance in the professional translation community about MT quality assessment and MT best practices in general. The enterprise/LSP use of MT is much more demanding in terms of focused accuracy and sophistication in techniques, practices, and deployment variability, and few LSPs are capable or willing to make the investments needed to achieve ongoing competence as the state-of-the-art (SOTA) continues to evolve.
1) Google has the “best” MT systems
This is one of the most widely held misconceptions. While Google does have excellent generic systems and broad language coverage, it is not accurate to say that they are always the best.
Google MT is complicated and expensive to customize for enterprise use cases, and there are significant data privacy and data control issues to be navigated. Also, because Google has so much data underlying their MT systems, they are not easily customized by the relatively meager data volumes that most enterprises or LSPs have available. DeepL is often a favorite of translators but also has limited customization and adaptation options.
ModernMT is a dynamically adaptive, and continuously learning breakthrough neural MT system. As it is possibly the only MT system that learns and improves with every instance of corrective feedback in real-time, a comparative snapshot based on a static system is even less useful.
A properly implemented ModernMT system will improve rapidly with corrective feedback, and easily outperform generic systems on the enterprise-specific content that matters most. Enterprise needs are more varied, and rapid adaptability, data security, and easy integration into enterprise IT infrastructure typically matter most.
2) MT Quality ratings are static & permanent
MT systems managed and maintained by experts are updated frequently and thus snapshot comparisons are only true for a single test set at a point in time. These scores are a very rough historical proxy for overall system quality and capability, and deeper engagement is needed to better understand system capabilities.
For example, to make proper assessments with ModernMT, it is necessary to actively provide corrective feedback to see the system improve exactly on the content that you are most actively translating now. If multiple editors concurrently provide feedback, ModernMT will improve even faster. These score-based rankings do not tell you how responsive and adaptive an MT system is to your unique data.
TMS systems that switch to different MT systems via API for each language are of dubious value since selections are often based on static and outdated scores. Best practices recommend that efforts to improve an MT systems adaptation to enterprise content, domain, and language style yield higher value than using MT system selection based on embedded scores built into TMS systems and middleware.
3) MT quality ratings for all use cases are the same.
The MT quality discussion needs to evolve beyond targeting linguistic perfection as the final goal, or comparison of BLEU, TER, or hLepor scores, and proximity to human translation.
It is more important to measure the business impact and make more customer-relevant content multilingual across global digital interactions at scale. While it is always good to get as close to human translation quality as possible, this is simply not possible with the huge volumes of content that are being translated today.
There is evidence now that shows that for many eCommerce use scenarios, even gist translations that contain egregious linguistic errors can produce a positive business impact. In information triage scenarios typical in eDiscovery (litigation, pharmacovigilance, national security surveillance) the translation needs to be accurate on key search parameters but not on all the text. Translation of user-generated content (UGC) is invaluable to improving and understanding the customer experience and is also a primary influence on new purchase activity. None of these scenarios require perfect linguistic quality MT output, to have a positive business impact and drive successful customer engagement.
4) The linguistic quality of MT output is the only way to assess the “best” MT system.
The linguistic quality of MT output is only one of several critical criteria needed for robust evaluation for an enterprise/LSP buyer. Enterprise requirements like the ease and speed of customization to enterprise domain, data security and privacy, production MT system deployment options, integration into enterprise IT infrastructure, overall MT system manageability, and control also need to be considered.
Given that MT is rapidly becoming an essential tool for a globally agile enterprise, we need new ways to measure the quality and value of MT in global CX scenarios. In the scenarios where MT enables better communication, information sharing, and understanding of customer concerns on a global scale, we need new ways to measure success. A closer examination of business impact reveals that the metrics that matter the most would be:
Increased global digital presence and footprint
Enhanced global communication and collaboration
Rapid response in all global customer service/support scenarios
Productivity improvement in localization use cases to enable more content to be delivered at higher quality
Improved conversion rates in eCommerce
And ultimately the measure that matters at the executive level is the measurably improved customer experience of every customer in the world. This is often more a result of process and deployment excellence than the reported semantic similarity scores of any individual MT system.
The reality today is that increasingly larger volumes of content are being translated and used with minimal or no post-editing. The highest impact MT use cases may only post-edit a tiny fraction of the content they translate and distribute.
However, much of the discussion in the industry today still focuses on post-editing efficiency and quality estimation processes that assume all the content will be post-edited.
It is time for a new approach that easily enables tens of millions of words to be translated daily, in continuously learning MT systems that improve by the day and enable new communication, understanding, and collaboration with globally distributed stakeholders.
This is a reprint of a post I wrote and already published here with some minor formatting changes made for emphasis. It is the first of a series of ongoing posts that will be published at that site and also shared here if it seems appropriate. For those who may seek or insist that I maintain a truly objective viewpoint, I should warn you that these posts will reflect my current understanding that ModernMT is truly a superior MT implementation for enterprise MT use. I will stress this often in future posts as I have not seen a better deployment of MT technology for professional business translation in the 15 years I have been involved with Enterprise MT.
============== | https://medium.com/@kvashee/understanding-machine-translation-quality-a-review-2ee0700a6286 | ['K Vashee'] | 2021-12-31 01:12:02.462000+00:00 | ['Translation', 'Machine Learning', 'Machine Translation', 'Machine Intelligence'] |
we have lift off. It was just another average day of… | Photo by Steven Weeks on Unsplash
He stood above me and his head blocked out the entirety of the sun, giving him a look one wouldn’t hesitate to deem prophetic. Next, he was crouching next to me and I could see all of his face and thought of much younger than I had perceived. His wrinkles were yet to reach the depths of the wise sages you see in the movies and his cheeks had a red glow to them. He handed me a small vile and He told me to drink it, actually, more like, i just drank it, as if some invisible force was coursing through my veins, my hand had grabbed the vile and my lips touched the small, glass opening that was no bigger than a perfume bottle. I could feel a cool liquid enter my mouth and I tried to suck on it like a baby would its mothers nipple but the opening was too small and my lips got sucked into the small opening. I looked back at him and then realized I couldn’t look away, not even if I tried. His eyes held fast my attention to the point I felt like a puppet who harmoniously danced with its strings. For a moment it felt as if i could look away, but before my head could make a move i was once again trapped in his gaze like a cacoon.
It was just another average day of sunshine and hanging out at the park. This morning, my bagel with cream cheese was no different from yesterdays and my heavy cream whipped with espresso tasted the same in its ritualistic cup. The same shit smell wafted up from the same white toilet bowl I decorate each morning and my morning read lay just a few more pages further than yesterdays.
I’ve seen him here before. Multiple times in fact. He walks the park perimeter as if lost in thought. One time I hung up my hammock near the sidewalk and watched him pass by more times than my fingers could manage, the bold red of converse sneakers covered his feet and drew one’s attention to the frayed cut off blue jeans hanging just above his knees. He walked the pace of a group of subourbon house wife walkers, but he had a goofy step that made it seem like if he wanted to he could walk on water.
I had called up my mother and we talked for over an hour that morning. It was a talk of both death and that which is immortal and I told her a wave of love was approaching but she couldn’t hear over the flash bangs used to subdue the rioters on the news channel she was watching. I was reminded of a story I had heard about how Jesus Christ’s mummified body had been stolen from its hiding place underneath the vatican. The thief smuggled it into the pacific northwest in a wooden box disguised as a piece of art for a famous collector. With heavy consideration it was meditated upon. Were this to leak out and into the masses the implications would surely cause ripples in the fabric of human existence, so much so a team of seamstress’ may be called upon to restitch a new pattern to which we may choose to live by. It was decided to dispose of the body, apparently there is a time and a place for everything…
My gaze remained upon his eyes until i peeked too far over the edge and fell into the black holes that expelled his being. I felt paralyzed, and it was not scary that i could not move any of my limbs because i felt time itself had paused this material existence. I saw myself laying on the ground and then i thought how weird it was that i was not that which lay before me. I then danced with what i thought was the venerable looking man kneeling beside the body that is no longer my own. He led me though a dance with which i felt like i were the keys of a piano being played during a mozart piece, and it felt like each key played would jump from the piano for a brief second and dance with the keys that had just been played before they themselves fell back into the piano. He led the dance and i fell into his wake and he was powerful like a black hole in which his gravitational pull did all the moving for me and all i had to do was absolutely nothing.
I began to feel as if a smooth piece of silk was being dragged across my face and then my temples on both sides of my head seemed to grow and then shrink in sync with the rhythm of my heart beat. The blackness evaporated from my vision in all directions as if it were just a black hole and that black hole had a reverse button that had been pushed. Another splash of water danced about my face and with my hand I wiped it off like I would after removing my head from under the shower head. He asked me if I was alright and I became very confused and focused my gaze upon his face eventually finding his eyes looking back at me. Except they weren’t looking at me, they were smirking at me, like they had just told a joke and realized the punch line went right over your head. He helped me to my feet and patted some dirt off of my back and i saw him looking at a large tree root protruding above the ground a couple feet away and he said,
“That damn root has been tripping people up all week”.
The Vessel: Write about a ship or other vehicle that can take you somewhere different from where you are now.
He stood above me and his head blocked out the entirety of the sun, giving him a look one wouldn’t hesitate to deem prophetic. Next, he was crouching next to me and I could see all of his face and thought of much younger than I had perceived. His wrinkles were yet to reach the depths of the wise sages you see in the movies and his cheeks had a red glow to them. He handed me a small vile and He told me to drink it, actually, more like, i just drank it, as if some invisible force was coursing through my veins, my hand had grabbed the vile and my lips touched the small, glass opening that was no bigger than a perfume bottle. I could feel a cool liquid enter my mouth and I tried to suck on it like a baby would its mothers nipple but the opening was too small and my lips got sucked into the small opening. I looked back at him and then realized I couldn’t look away, not even if I tried. His eyes held fast my attention to the point I felt like a puppet who harmoniously danced with its strings. For a moment it felt as if i could look away, but before my head could make a move i was once again trapped in his gaze like a cacoon.
It was just another average day of sunshine and hanging out at the park. This morning, my bagel with cream cheese was no different from yesterdays and my heavy cream whipped with espresso tasted the same in its ritualistic cup. The same shit smell wafted up from the same white toilet bowl I decorate each morning and my morning read lay just a few more pages further than yesterdays.
I’ve seen him here before. Multiple times in fact. He walks the park perimeter as if lost in thought. One time I hung up my hammock near the sidewalk and watched him pass by more times than my fingers could manage, the bold red of converse sneakers covered his feet and drew one’s attention to the frayed cut off blue jeans hanging just above his knees. He walked the pace of a group of subourbon house wife walkers, but he had a goofy step that made it seem like if he wanted to he could walk on water.
I had called up my mother and we talked for over an hour that morning. It was a talk of both death and that which is immortal and I told her a wave of love was approaching but she couldn’t hear over the flash bangs used to subdue the rioters on the news channel she was watching. I was reminded of a story I had heard about how Jesus Christ’s mummified body had been stolen from its hiding place underneath the vatican. The thief smuggled it into the pacific northwest in a wooden box disguised as a piece of art for a famous collector. With heavy consideration it was meditated upon. Were this to leak out and into the masses the implications would surely cause ripples in the fabric of human existence, so much so a team of seamstress’ may be called upon to restitch a new pattern to which we may choose to live by. It was decided to dispose of the body, apparently there is a time and a place for everything…
My gaze remained upon his eyes until i peeked too far over the edge and fell into the black holes that expelled his being. I felt paralyzed, and it was not scary that i could not move any of my limbs because i felt time itself had paused this material existence. I saw myself laying on the ground and then i thought how weird it was that i was not that which lay before me. I then danced with what i thought was the venerable looking man kneeling beside the body that is no longer my own. He led me though a dance with which i felt like i were the keys of a piano being played during a mozart piece, and it felt like each key played would jump from the piano for a brief second and dance with the keys that had just been played before they themselves fell back into the piano. He led the dance and i fell into his wake and he was powerful like a black hole in which his gravitational pull did all the moving for me and all i had to do was absolutely nothing.
I began to feel as if a smooth piece of silk was being dragged across my face and then my temples on both sides of my head seemed to grow and then shrink in sync with the rhythm of my heart beat. The blackness evaporated from my vision in all directions as if it were just a black hole and that black hole had a reverse button that had been pushed. Another splash of water danced about my face and with my hand I wiped it off like I would after removing my head from under the shower head. He asked me if I was alright and I became very confused and focused my gaze upon his face eventually finding his eyes looking back at me. Except they weren’t looking at me, they were smirking at me, like they had just told a joke and realized the punch line went right over your head. He helped me to my feet and patted some dirt off of my back and i saw him looking at a large tree root protruding above the ground a couple feet away and he said,
“That damn root has been tripping people up all week”. | https://medium.com/@mattmgee/he-stood-above-me-and-his-head-blocked-out-the-entirety-of-the-sun-giving-him-a-look-one-wouldnt-f33189c30a3f | ['Matt Gerber'] | 2020-11-24 21:15:00.267000+00:00 | ['Trippy', 'Consciousness', 'Hallucinations', 'Short Fiction', 'Short Read'] |
More Ways to Iterate Through JavaScript Arrays | Photo by Andy Chilton on Unsplash
There’re many ways to do things with JavaScript. For instance, there’re lots of ways to iterate through the items of an array.
In this article, we’ll look at several ways we can iterate through a JavaScript array.
The While Loop
The while loop is a loop that’s fast. And we only need the run condition to run the loop.
For instance, we can use it to loop through an array as follows:
const arr = [1, 2, 3]
let i = 0;
while (i < arr.length) {
console.log(arr[i]);
i++;
}
In the code above, we have a while loop with the initial index defined outside as i .
Then in the while loop, we defined the run condition as i < arr.length , so it’ll run if i is less than arr.length .
Then inside the loop body, we log the items from arr by its index, and then increment i by 1 at the end of the loop.
The Do-while Loop
The do...while loop runs the first iteration regardless of the condition. Then at the end of each iteration, it’ll check the run condition to see if it’s still satisfied.
If it is, then it’ll continue with the next iteration. Otherwise, it’ll stop. For instance, we can loop through an array as follows:
const arr = [1, 2, 3]
let i = 0;
do {
console.log(arr[i]);
i++;
}
while (i < arr.length)
In the code above, we have:
do {
console.log(arr[i]);
i++;
}
Which iterates through the entries by accessing the arr ‘s entry via index i , then i is incremented by 1.
Next, it checks the condition in the while loop.
Then it moves on to the next iteration until i < arr.length returns false .
Array.prototype.map
The array instance’s map method is for mapping each array entry into a new value as specified by the callback function.
The callback takes up to 3 parameters. The first is the current item, which is required. The 2nd and 3rd are the current array index and original array respectively.
The callback returns a value derived from the current item.
It can also take an optional 2nd argument to set the value of this inside the callback.
For instance, if we want to add 1 to each number in the array, we can write:
const arr = [1, 2, 3].map(a => a + 1);
In the code above, we have a => a + 1 , which is used to add 1 to a , which is the current item being processed.
Therefore, we get [2, 3, 4] as the value of arr .
We can pass in a value for this in the callback and use it as follows:
const arr = [1, 2, 3].map(function(a) {
return a + this.num;
}, {
num: 1
});
In the code above, we have:
{
num: 1
}
which is set as the value of this . Then this.num is 1 as we specified in the object. So we get the same result as the previous example.
map doesn’t mutate the original array. It returns a new one with the mapped values.
Photo by Athena Lam on Unsplash
Array.prototype.filter
The array instance’s filter method returns a new array that meets the condition returned in the callback.
The callback takes up to 3 parameters. The first is the current item, which is required. The 2nd and 3rd are the current array index and original array respectively.
The callback returns a value derived from the current item.
It can also take an optional 2nd argument to set the value of this inside the callback.
For instance, we can get a new array with all the entries that are bigger than 1 as follows:
const arr = [1, 2, 3].filter(a => a > 1);
In the code above, we called filter with a => a > 1 to only take entries that are bigger than 1 from the array it’s called on and put it in the returned array.
Then we get that arr is [2, 3] .
To pass in a value of this and use it, we can write:
const arr = [1, 2, 3].filter(function(a) {
return a > this.min;
}, {
min: 1
});
Since we assigned this inside the callback to:
{
min: 1
}
this.min will be 1, so we get the same result as in the previous example.
Conclusion
We can use the while and do...while loop to loop through items until the given run condition is no longer true.
The array instance’s map method is used to map each entry of an array to a different value. The mapped values are returned in a new array. | https://medium.com/swlh/more-ways-to-iterate-through-javascript-arrays-a1ff7cc46c3b | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2020-05-16 17:09:25.179000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Web Development'] |
5 Tips Before Starting Your First Deep Learning Image Classification Project with Keras | 5 Tips Before Starting Your First Deep Learning Image Classification Project with Keras John Lawless Follow Dec 7 · 5 min read
An illustration of a typical CNN used in image classification
Deep learning applications in image classification have shown very impressive results in recent years, with advances rapidly happening all the time. They are being applied in many fields, such as: security and facial recognition, diagnostic support in medical imaging, and the development of driverless car technologies. This makes deep learning an increasingly valuable skill set for data scientists to be familiar with. If you have worked extensively with data, and especially if you have built neural networks before and are familiar with keras, but have not attempted a thorough image classification project before, this article is for you!
Much of how an image classification project is conducted is similar to how we might model any set of features to classify a target. However, if you have not worked extensively with imaging data, here are a few tips to keep in mind before actually modeling on your data that can help your project move along more smoothly.
Manage your expectations on the data
Fine tuning the perfect combination of layers and hyperparameters in a convolutional neural network can be a challenge. It is helpful to keep in mind what kind of challenges you will expect to see in your data before getting started. For example, what are the classes you are trying to identify? Are you easily able to identify the classes on your own? Building a model that identifies the difference between classes you can easily differentiate, such as dogs and cats, is likely to be less challenging than a model that has to identify very subtle changes, such as a positive finding in an x ray image, which the untrained eye may not be qualified to identify. This little bit of intuition can help set you up with an expectation of how deep your model may have to be, how long it may take to train, and what sort of benchmarks to expect in early model attempts.
Collect a large amount of data
If your goal is to train a model from scratch that can be put into production to classify similar images in the future, be prepared to collect a large library of images. With image classification, 5,000 images — or even 50,000 images — is often not an overly large dataset to train a model on, particularly in more difficult to identify classes. Truly comprehensive trained models are often trained on hundreds of thousands, or even over a million, images, in order to find weights that lead to highly accurate and generalizable results. This can be daunting on many levels. Image acquisition will obviously be a difficult task, but such a large number of files will also lead to challenges in finding sufficient storage, processing power, and training times. It is not unheard of for such deep learning models to take days or even weeks to properly train.
Having said all of this, if you find that this is too challenging to be realistically accomplished with the resources and time you have alloted for a project, don’t stop reading and give up yet! There are a few more tips that can make a good project possible, even with a relatively small amount of data.
Consider applying Transfer Learning in your model
If collecting massive numbers of images if beyond the scope of your realistic expectations, transfer learning can still yield good results. Keras applications are a series of pre trained models that can be imported directly into your workspace to implement a base model. The best part is that you can import model weights that were trained on ImageNet, which has pre trained these models on millions of random images. You can include the dense layers, or only the convolutional layers, adding your own dense layers at the end for yourself (for example, if you are trying to predict a different number of classes). By freezing the weights of the imported model, you can ensure that your project will use strong feature extraction, even if you only have access to a small amount of data. This is important in transfer learning, as you do not actually want to update the weights that ImageNet has already created for you, but use them for the purpose of feature extraction to benefit your current model.
Utilize Keras’ Image Data Preprocessing
Keras’ Image Data Preprocessing is a very helpful tool that any data scientist planning to use Keras for image classification should be familiar with. Creating a master array of all images in your project script will likely be impossible to create, given the size and memory constraints of such a task (or at least be prohibitively long in runtime to create), and this tool helps to get around this issue.
By using the Imagedatagenerator from this module, you can create a generator object that will let you read in image objects batch by batch, resize them (if needed) appropriately for your neural network inputs, and separate them by classes (or apply classes from a dataframe column). These generators can then pass your data into your convolutional neural network batch by batch, allowing you to run models on massive amounts of data even if you do not have a large RAM allowance to hold the entirety of the data at once.
More than this, this keras generator can do data augmentation on the fly. One of the best methods of regularization (the prevention of overfitting) with image classification models involves altering your images before passing them into the model — adjusting their brightness, flipping them horizontally or vertically, rotating them, zooming in and out, etc. By doing this, your model is less likely to overfit on the same images as they pass through the model in subsequent epochs. Normally, you would have to create new files that alter your original image files in order to accomplish this, but your keras generator will randomly do this for you without the need to create new files.
Utilize model checkpoints and saved model format
Even if you decide to employ transfer learning in your project, the reality is that achieving optimal accuracy could still require many hours, or beyond, of training time. If your computer crashes, or your remote kernel is disconnected, at any point during this process, your entire model could be lost, requiring you to start over.
Keras’ callback module (the same module that allows you to implement early stopping) has a modelcheckpoint import that allows you to save the weights of your model after every epoch, or, if preferred, after a set number of batches have passed per epoch. It also contains an argument that allows you to only save the weights if there is an improvement in accuracy, or a decrease in the loss metric. Should the worst happen and your computer crash 9/10 of the way into training, all is not lost!
Most models, such as those built in sklearn, can be “pickled,” saving the model as a file that can be imported into other scripts, or used in flask, streamline, or other sources for web deployment. This can technically also be used in keras, but best practice for keras models is using keras’ saved model format. This allows you to save your trained model as a file once you have it optimized to your liking and are ready to deploy.
Understanding these tools before starting a project can help save a lot of hardships, headaches, and struggles as you get started with your first image classification project, and help you get past error messages and into modeling sooner, and with hopefully greater success. Happy fitting! | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/5-tips-before-starting-your-first-deep-learning-image-classification-project-with-keras-f07d2fb13edc | ['John Lawless'] | 2020-12-10 16:06:09.987000+00:00 | ['Image Classification', 'Convolutional Network', 'Keras'] |
For 8-Hours My Life Became an Episode of SpongeBob | The more I grow up the more my life becomes an episode of SpongeBob.
No, not the ones where the main characters play in an imaginary box or spend the afternoon jellyfishing. My life is becoming one of the tragic episodes of Spongebob.
Thankfully, tragedy can be hilarious if it isn’t happening to you.
Don’t believe me? Well, if tragedy weren’t funny “America’s Funniest Home Videos” wouldn’t have run for 31 seasons and the guys from the show “Jackass” would likely stop punching Steve-O in the balls so many times.
As adults, sharing our tragedies is how we cope and subsequently laugh at them. And this is why SpongeBob works for all ages.
One second you’re watching a sponge and his aquatic friends go on a silly adventure, and the next, that same sponge is giving his best friend a cake that says: “Sorry About the Scabies.”
So, at my own expense here’s a great story of how I ended up in Rock Bottom — *ahem* I mean Queens, New York at 2 AM. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/for-8-hours-my-life-became-an-episode-of-spongebob-f51b34660e3b | ['Isaiah Mccall'] | 2020-09-26 07:06:03.365000+00:00 | ['New York', 'Spongebob', 'Self', 'Storytelling', 'Television'] |
Derren Brown on faith-healing and hypnosis | What causes ecstatic experiences — God, society, neurology, our own expectations…or all of the above? I spent the last few years trying to answer this question. During that search, I joined a charismatic Christian church and converted to Christianity after a powerful, full-bodied ‘holy spirit encounter’, which I wrote about here. Sadly my Christian faith dissipated and I wondered to what extent my Holy Spirit experience was the product of crowd contagion or mass hypnosis. I discussed this topic with Derren Brown, the world-famous hypnotist and mentalist. He grew up as a Pentecostalist, then rejected Christianity to become a hypnotist, but he has interesting views on the power of faith healing.
You were Christian when you were a child?
Yes. I went to a Crusaders Class when I was six or seven. A teacher who I really liked said ‘do you want to come along?’, and I was too young to think that was weird, I thought that was what everyone did. My family wasn’t religious, and I had one Christian friend, so there was never any cultural pressure. As a teenager, I went to church called the New Life Christian Centre in Croydon, a big happy-clappy church. I became more sceptical while I was at Bristol University, partly because I became fascinated by hypnosis, which my church friends deeply disapproved of. They thought it was from the Devil. I thought ‘if the human mind is the pinnacle of God’s creation, why is exploring it bad?’ I also became more sceptical of New Age things like Tarot or psychics, which my church literally demonized, so that made me sceptical of the church too. And I went on a ‘Christian gay cure’ course — sort of a basic psychology course — and it didn’t work. So all this made me more sceptical.
Did you ever have a ‘Holy Spirit encounter’?
A photo from a New Life service
No not really. I had a lot of scepticism towards those kinds of charismatic services. I think this is quite common among people who attend those services. Talking in tongues, for example — it was quite evident, if you were at all intelligent and not just hyper-suggestible and caught up in the whole thing, that there was a lot of crowd manipulation going on. There would be a point in the service when the Holy Spirit was moving through everybody, and every week the same woman stood up and talked in tongues. And then someone else stood up and offered an interpretation, which was largely a series of general statements, you know ‘the door is open…revival is coming’. It was always the same people, and the tongues always sounded the same. It became a bit comical. One time, we were told we were all going to be given the gift of tongues, so we all stood up, and the pastor said, ‘just start making a noise. That’s tongues. If a little voice tells you this is stupid, that’s the Devil.’ It seemed so blatantly manipulative.
Do you think charismatic churches are doing some form of hypnotic suggestion?
Yes, I do. But it’s complicated. It’s difficult to pin down what hypnosis is. In a show, for example, you have a wide range of experiences in the audience. At the end of my shows, I used to make myself invisible [to hypnotized participants on stage], then I’d move a chair through the air. And the participants would all react, jump back, and so on. Later in the show, I’d often get those people back up, and say ‘what were you experiencing?’ And you’d get a range of experiences. Perhaps a third would say ‘I could see you were there, but it was very easy to go along with it and sort of play-act’. Then you’d get a middle third who would say ‘looking back on it, of course you were moving it, but at the time, I really believed you weren’t there, and was just focusing on the chair’. And then you get people at the upper extreme saying ‘no idea what you’re talking about, I assumed you moved the chair with wires’. They couldn’t believe I was there at all. And you never quite know if they’re just saying that, to appear the most hypnotized.
It’s so difficult to tie down what hypnosis is — there’s a lot of work asking if hypnosis is just role-playing. A famous example is that you can hypnotise people to eat an onion as if it was a juicy apple. It looks very impressive. But I was talking about this to Andy, the director of my stage shows, and he said ‘I bet I can do that without being hypnotized’. And he went to a fridge, took out an onion and took a big bite. And all that is, is another motivating factor, another story you’re telling yourself.
He enjoyed it? He didn’t wince?
No, he was fine. He was trying to prove a point, and that gave him a different motivating story. Even the things that look terribly impressive — people being operated on, for example — it looks amazing, but when you break it down to what layer of skin actually feels pain, actually, once you’re removing organs, it’s a bit uncomfortable but not actually painful.
So in a religious meeting, there might be that whole range — people who are completely swept up, and people who are sort of going along with it, ‘as if’ it was true. As a sort of co-created fantasy.
Yes. You’re there, you’re having a really good time, you’re with a bunch of like-minded people…
And the Holy Spirit is after all a sign of God’s love and favour.
Yes, but I think plenty of people are a bit scepticial about some of that. I find that most intelligent people who also happen to be Christian probably sense that a lot of it is a bit of a scam, stage-craft, crowd manipulation. But it’s sort of ingrained and difficult to object to.
Do you think hypnotism or suggestibility plays a big role in religion in general?
Audiences at rock concerts can exhibit some of the trance or mania aspects of religious revivals, as in this example of ‘Beatle-mania’
It depends. There is a range of human experiences clustered around belief, suggestion, the stories we tell ourselves. Those experiences might include hypnosis in alternative therapy, or placebo responses, or religious experiences, or charismatic revivals, or rock concerts — it’s just a range. The trouble with going ‘is that just hypnosis?’ is that it’s difficult to define what hypnosis is. It’s like defining a magic trick. I think of magic as a short-hand for an experience you have, and you know the magician isn’t actually doing magic but the magician gives you an experience, and you know what to call it, and that makes sense and gives him a role. With hypnosis, there’s a similar thing going on — there’s a certain context, with a guy who’s called a hypnotist, and it’s done with the familiar tropes of hypnotism, and it’s recognized as such. But actually it’s a short-hand for quite different things — if you go to a hypnotist to stop smoking, if you’re trying to get on top of your unconscious processes, that’s quite different to going to on stage and being persuaded to dance like a ballerina. If someone’s hyper-suggestible, they may respond to both, but it’s difficult to lump the experiences together.
Can one really provoke a religious experience in an atheist with an NLP session? I mean, can one brainwash people to do or believe things almost against their will?
Well, I did that in a show. I found a highly suggestible person. It’s not like you can just walk down the road and make that happen. A TV show like that is a specific context, it doesn’t necessarily reflect the conditions of real life.
Tell me about your experiences with faith healing in your show, Miracle.
In the second half of the show, I say ‘we’re going to do some faith healing, and I will heal you’. This is a sceptical audience, but I say ‘you’ve just got to go with it, you’re obviously not the right audience for this, you’re not primed for it, and it’s OK to be sceptical and even repulsed by it, but beneath all that, there are some aspects that are useful, so if you go with me on this, it has the power to profoundly change how you feel, emotionally and physically’. And the show progresses in the way that those healings do — I offer out the Holy Spirit, as it were, but I don’t talk about it in religious language initially, it starts off secular. So I throw out this adrenaline experience — adrenaline heals pain. That’s why faith-healing only ever heals functional conditions that respond to pain relief, no one’s arm ever grows back.
Does it work?
The first shock was that it worked at all. Not only does the healing work, but I’ve also ‘slayed’ people, so they’re falling down [when people pass out in charismatic churches it’s called being ‘slain in the Holy Spirit’]. Some shows are better than others, but essentially it’s working as a mechanism even with a sceptical audience. It’s difficult to quantify the effect. But I’ve had a couple of tweets, people jokingly saying ‘well, my condition is back again, so much for that haha’. I tell people, this will stick with some of you, and for others it won’t. But also I’ve had letters from people saying ‘I don’t know what you did, I understand it isn’t faith-healing, but this condition is still gone and I feel amazing’. Someone on stage had a series of strokes when she was very young and had never been able to feel the left-side of her body. And now she could. One guy said he had terrible psoriasis, his arm was covered with it, and within five minutes, that was gone. One of the stage-crew has a teenage daughter who suffered from depression, and she’s been really helped by it. So sometimes it’s been quite transformative.
You can watch a clip of Derren ‘curing’ a woman of blindness in the show here.
How does it work?
The way I see it is that William James thing, acting ‘as if’. You give yourself permission to act ‘as if’ a thing isn’t a problem. There’s this story you tell yourself every day — ‘I’ve got a bad back and it’s a thing I live with’. The healing stops that story in its tracks, makes you stop and question it.
Like a religious conversion?
Yeah, a bit. There’s an adrenalin lift as you get on stage, and there are other people around you talking about it. Even if it is only a temporary thing, it’s a glimpse out of that story.
What about people getting ‘slain in the spirit’?
It’s not with quite the vigour and hysteria you see at revival services. Sometimes people are just complying with it. But sometimes their eyes roll back, they start shaking a bit. Sometimes people can’t stop shaking. I always imagine that people are sort of playing along, it’s just a sort of unconscious playing along. But then you see things that people wouldn’t know to play along to do. Sometimes people pass out and are out for the whole of the second half of the show.
Given some of these remarkable results, do you think hypnosis should be used more in the NHS?
I think what we need is a more people-oriented medicine — finding a softer, more caring middle-ground, without endorsing treatments that are claiming to do something they’re not. Let’s say you see your GP for your allocated six minutes, and he says ‘relax and take it easy’, you’ll feel ignored. If you have an hour with an alternative therapist, they’re taking an interest in you, sympathizing with you, there’s a ritual to it. Even if they’re essentially still saying ‘relax and take it easy’, it’s more likely to work. You feel like you’ve had attention paid to you. That’s what’s key: the bed-side manner. I never really recommend people see a hypnotist for smoking. If they are suggestible, it’s amazing, it’s like a magic pill. But for 50% of people it’s a waste of time.
OK, on a different note, how did you get into Stoic philosophy, and how have you found it helpful?
It started with Montaigne, who kept mentioning Stoic writers. So that made me pursue the Stoics, and I discovered a love of the Hellenistic philosophical world, and the Stoics in particular. I realized that it chimed with what I already felt was important and true. For example, when I was at university and afterwards, I had zero ambition. I was doing hypnosis and magic because it was a fun way to spend the day. I had no desire to get on TV or anything. It was a very ‘in the moment’ thing. So that chimed with the Stoic idea of focusing on the present moment and not getting attached to ambition or reputation. Then I gradually discovered new things in Stoicism, and it shaped my character in new ways. That led to me wanting to write a book on these things, it’s such a different voice to mainstream culture.
What’s the best thing you’ve learned about happiness in your research?
I think it’s the clarity of Epictetus’ maxim that you’re only in control of your thoughts and actions, and everything else you can let go. For me, that’s become a mantra. If something is frustrating you, what side of the line is it on? Obviously, it’s always on the side of things I can’t control. And then you can go, ‘it’s fine’ and let go. It makes me feel like a kid when it’s Saturday and you realize you don’t have to go to school. It’s just a very visceral feeling of relief. For example, things that your partner does that annoy you or get under your skin, you realize it’s actually fine, you don’t have to try and change them.
Do fame and wealth really not make you happy?
Well, we know there’s a watershed moment at around £40K where you’re comfortable and money is not a trouble, after that you don’t get much happier with more money. The people who aren’t happy with fame and wealth are the ones who are always chasing the next big thing and who have quite addictive personalities. There’s not a moment when you become successful. And it’s never permanent. Your goal just moves a bit further on. As for the fame thing…everything gets more extreme. The nice things become nicer — you get to travel first class, you can book tables in nice restaurants more easily. But the horrible stuff becomes much worse — you might have stuff about your private life written in newspapers, and you think everyone is thinking about it. You get stalkers, or people who just hate you, or mentally disturbed people who are out to destroy you. So I think it balances out.
You seem to have a very strong work ethic. What motivates you?
I never feel particularly motivated. Motivation is one of those words which people use when they feel they don’t have it and they sense it in others. I’m actually very lazy. I love it when there’s nothing in my diary. I go on tour because I love doing it, and it lets me live like I did in Bristol — I get my days free, so I can sit, read and write in coffee shops, and in the evenings I go out and do a show which makes me feel amazing even if I’ve had a bad day. If I’m sitting and writing, that feels very good to me. And going and doing a show is also hugely enjoyable, and there’s a lot of adrenaline. So all in all, that’s a lovely day, who wouldn’t want to do that.
You can watch Miracle on Netflix here and on Four on Demand here
For an alternative perspective, here’s an interview I did with Nicky Gumbel, head of the evangelical Alpha course, where he gives his take on religious experiences.
Here is another interview about hypnosis, faith and healing, with the medical professor Paul Dieppe.
My adventures with ecstatic experiences are told in The Art of Losing Control.
And you can explore my writing on Stoicism, which Derren quotes in his book Happy, in my first book Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, which is now also available on audiobook.
Finally, you can sign up for my free weekly newsletter here. | https://julesevans.medium.com/derren-brown-on-faith-healing-and-hypnosis-c2b77ba61a52 | ['Jules Evans'] | 2020-11-03 11:27:29.688000+00:00 | ['Hypnosis', 'Psychology', 'Holy Spirit', 'Church', 'Religion'] |
How I made the switch to AI research | In 2015, I wanted to help with AI research, but taking the first steps felt daunting. I’d graduated from MIT then spent eight years building web startups. I’d put in my 10,000 hours, gotten funding from Y Combinator and grown a company to thirty people. Moving to research felt like starting over in my career. Was it really a good idea to throw away years of work?
A friend told me about South Park Commons (SPC), a new space for people who were taking the first steps on a new path, and introduced me to Ruchi, the founder. Ruchi is super impressive, she was one of the earliest Facebook engineers, and had founded and sold a successful company. She also has a high-bandwidth and disarmingly direct communication style that I found refreshing.
Over lunch, Ruchi described South Park Commons as a community in which everyone is starting over. Starting over is in fact the main thing that unifies the group. For example, two current Commons members are Jason, the maintainer of a popular open-source project Quill, who’s been learning to do enterprise sales, and Malcolm, a successful infrastructure engineer who’s starting a fund Strong Atomics to invest in nuclear fusion companies.
I joined South Park Commons, blocked off three months to see if I could make progress, and made a plan to teach myself machine learning. Several other SPC members were interested in the space, so we started going through a curriculum of courses and organized a paper reading group. As soon as I got over the fear and took the plunge, things got vastly easier. Six months of focused work later, I had a position at OpenAI. | https://medium.com/south-park-commons/how-i-made-the-switch-to-ai-research-b053b402608 | ['South Park Commons'] | 2017-08-03 16:49:23.029000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Naturallanguageprocessing', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning'] |
Four Potential NBA Draft Second-Round Sleepers | That’s a swing of over +27 Net Rating per 100 possessions for Paul Reed. Put another way, Reed was worth more than a full point extra every four times DePaul went up and down the court with him out there. When he left, the offensive rating plummeted from 107 to 90 while the defense fell apart, from 101 to 112. And don’t forget, Reed wasn’t even supposed to be the star of this team — Romeo Weems was the #53 RSCI recruit but struggled through a rough freshman year, leaving Reed to carry the Blue Demons.
Reed made a serious impact on both ends for DePaul, but he should be especially impactful on the defensive end in the NBA. Take a look at DePaul’s Four Factors defensively with Reed on the court:
The EFG% leaps out. DePaul opponents shot over 7% worse effective field goal percentage with Reed out there on defense, and nearly 7% true shooting as well. The offense was 6% EFG better with Reed out there, so that’s a net of +13% EFG with Reed.
Notice all the green on that bottom line, especially in contrast with the previous years. Reed took a serious step forward this year. DePaul was better on defense at every level with Reed. They also allowed fewer assisted buckets. Reed wasn’t just blocking shots. He was taking away some looks completely and affecting many others.
Using the Pivot Analysis database, we can find NBA player comps for draft prospects with a similar size and defensive profile as Reed. The names are a who’s who of no-name NBA weakside defenders and playmakers:
Andre Roberson
Chris Boucher
D.J. Stephens
Gary Clark
Kyle O’Quinn
There are no stars on that list. Just a whole lot of really good defense and guys that stuck around the league a long time because their defense was always valuable. Paul Reed will stick around, too. | https://medium.com/sportsraid/2020-nba-draft-second-round-sleepers-pivot-analysis-paul-reed-killian-tillie-desmond-bane-malachi-flynn-8b00a9e9f74f | ['Brandon Anderson'] | 2020-11-17 15:38:41.080000+00:00 | ['NBA Draft', 'Television', 'Sports', 'NBA', 'Future'] |
Your Body is a Temple. | I was inspired to take my first yoga class because of my eating disorder.
Yoga was a practice for me to continue 𝙥𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 my body + myself for 𝙚𝙭𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜.
Learning to respect my body,
Learning to honor my body,
Learning to cherish my body,
Learning to celebrate my body,
Took me yeaaaaaarrrrrrrssssss. Literally.
Age 5: earliest memories of shame/hatred towards myself
Age 10: eating disorder began
Age 18: first yoga class
Age 23: began honoring my body as a temple
I remember having a conversation with my grandma who is 83. She was talking about how she didn’t want to eat a piece of cake because she might gain weight. That’s when it really struck me. I didn’t want to be 83 and worrying about my body. I didn’t want to spend my entire lifetime loathing myself.
That moment, in combination with a few key others, really struck me. I decided that wasn’t going to be my life or my future. I was going to heal the pattern now. In a world that thrives off of self-hatred I was going to be radical. I was going to not only accept my body, I was going to love my body.
Learning to love your body is one of the most important things you will 𝙀𝙑𝙀𝙍 do.
Your body is the home of your Soul.
Your body is a temple.
Your body is sacred.
Your body is an 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣 of Source.
Your body IS the journey.
Our consciousness is 𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭.
Your body is only for 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 lifetime.
The journey of life is the journey of your body.
𝙎𝙏𝙊𝙋 𝙁𝙄𝙂𝙃𝙏𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙔𝙊𝙐.
Stop using your precious energy on self-destruction.
𝘾𝙃𝙊𝙊𝙎𝙀 𝙏𝙊 𝙇𝙊𝙑𝙀 𝙔𝙊𝙐.
Embrace your body as a portal of Divinity.
Embrace your body as a conduit of pleasure.
Embrace your body as a tool of purpose.
Experiencing your body as a sacred temple is devotion to Divinity.
What are you devoted to?
x Serena
@serenavamoroso
PS — learn to LOVEEEEE your body, all of her, in Feminine Magnetism. DM for info. | https://medium.com/@serenavamoroso/your-body-is-a-temple-b10fc0487ea6 | ['Serena V Amoroso'] | 2020-12-18 17:42:31.468000+00:00 | ['Body Positive', 'Embodiment', 'Mental Health Awareness', 'Eating Disorders', 'Body Image'] |
Our True Nature — Part II. How We Use It To Control It | Our True Nature — Part II
How We Use It To Control It
Our True Nature — Part I talks about our need to personally benefit in an overt, subtle or sub-conscious way before we will take action. This story talks about how our true nature is used to control us for the greater good.
Our unique ability for abstract thinking allows us to dominate all other species. It also controls our uniquely violent selves for the greater good.
At risk of oversimplifying let’s say that of the nine known human species, homo-sapiens have a keen ability for abstract thinking. We quickly learned to cooperate, plan, strategize, manipulate and deceive and this became our ultimate weapon to eliminate all natural predators including the other eight competing human species.
Left with no effective population control our need for resources quickly led to the formation of civilizations. Made possible by our unique ability for abstract thinking we could visualize greater benefits when cooperating as members of a larger collective. Even if it came at the cost of some or all of our own personal freedoms. It was an easy sell where the promise of safety and comfort outweighed the desire and uncertainty of surviving on our own.
In 3000 BC Sumerian Mesopotamia set the stage for civilizations today by imposing hierarchical roles. There was the pharaoh at the top. Then the few who made up the privileged classes. These were family and friends of the pharaoh who enjoyed the most rights, power and wealth. Peasants and slaves made up the majority and abided by the rules dictated by the ruling classes. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
Taxes, slavery, objectification, exploitation were the foundations civilizations were built on. In Mesopotamia all women and slaves were possessions, objects that were owned. Women who worked in higher classes were paid half what men got for the same work. Those caught not following the pharaohs rules were cast out or killed. Success of any civilization and society relies on our abstract thinking to impose control and balance between our self-serving nature and the greater good.
Civilized humanity is an undeniably miraculous experiment and a delicate balancing act. It’s not a perfect solution — there’s no shortage of historical and current human atrocities as proof. Even so, it’s a brilliant system that almost always keeps our violent, me-first, me-at-all-costs, me-me-me nature from running amok by using that very human nature.
It’s easy to take our unique ability of abstract thinking for granted. Perhaps an ironical result of the very gift we’ve been given. Without it you wouldn’t be reading this, or anything else. In fact, we’d have none of the inventions, comforts, technologies we take for granted today. We’d be living in caves trying to survive a barbarically hostile world one day at a time.
Today we go to jobs we hate, have to socialize with people we wish we didn’t, pay taxes, buy gifts for Christmas we can’t afford. Sometimes we wish we could step off the treadmill, escape civilization and society for a while. It seems these things that make our lives so superior are also the easiest to take for granted.
I’m choosing to be more grateful for the controls imposed on our human nature and how much we’ve all benefited as a result. Grateful too for the gift of abstract thinking that gives me hope and faith in the greater good. I’m trying not to take it so much for granted. After all, it’s the reason I have a bed to get out of in the morning. | https://medium.com/blueinsight/our-true-nature-part-ii-c2a892d368df | ['Happy Wanderer'] | 2020-12-27 15:48:34.262000+00:00 | ['Humanity', 'Human Nature', 'Self', 'Blue Insights', 'Society'] |
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🦋 TELEVISION 🦋
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 191s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 1915s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 150s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3451513, 3451513 and 3334. Since 115, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 150s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-115s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 115s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 115s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 150s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 150s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 115s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
🦋 OVERVIEW 🦋
A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues.
Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault.
In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare Your Honor, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, Your Honor’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being.
Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant. | https://medium.com/@emilly-j/exclusive-your-honor-season-1-eps-2-full-series-2c0ac88377c7 | ['Emilly J'] | 2020-12-12 04:53:40.978000+00:00 | ['TV Series', 'Drama', 'Crime', 'Thriller', 'Startup'] |
Bet on Yourself | Thoughts on entrepreneurship and building
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
One month ago, I announced the launch of a new venture, Volley Solutions (which I describe at the end of this article). It has been a whirlwind, with more interest and traction than even expected.
In the future, I will write about the science and art of decision-making.
This post is about the entrepreneurial process and the need for builders.
Mixed emotions
Pursuing this venture has been a dream of mine for a long time, so the feeling is bittersweet, so much so that I have had to balance the emotions of wishing that I had pursued the idea years ago, with the excitement of “betting on myself” and seeing the vision come to fruition.
It’s much more sweet than bitter though. In fact, I think that we are all supposed to be much more forward-looking in our orientation towards business and life, instead of living in regret for days gone by.
The windshield and the rearview mirror are proportioned for a reason.
We must focus our attention on what lies ahead. Even if the rearview mirror seems clearer than what is on the distant horizon.
The importance of building
Marc Andreessen of the investment firm Andreessen Horowitz recently wrote an essay called It’s Time to Build. Well worth the read / listen.
Marc argues that we as a society have effectively chosen not to build.
That beyond lacking foresight and failing to imagine the future… we haven’t executed in a manner that we are capable of. He cites examples in healthcare, financial services, housing, urban development, education, manufacturing, and transportation.
“Our nation and our civilization were built on production, on building.” — Marc Andreessen
Marc’s essay is a sweeping but constructive critique. It is a wake-up call to entrepreneurs and builders.
Giving your “yes”
When my wife and I agreed to help start a non-profit some ten years ago, we didn’t fully realize what we were getting ourselves in to. We certainly understood that we would need to relocate from Chicago, where all of our family and decades of friends lived, to the front range of Colorado. We knew that our schedules would be even crazier, given that we were going to be volunteering dozens of hours per week beyond our day jobs.
But we only recently realized that we were teaching our children what it really meant to commit to something by giving our “yes” and then standing behind it. In doing so, we would have to say “no” to many other things. But with any commitment comes new opportunity… and great freedom.
We have been free to choose our own adventure ever since then. People regularly comment that they are surprised we uprooted our family for “no good reason” to help start a new organization, and surprised that we continue to be willing to take on new roles involving new unknowns.
We simply respond that every organization was started by someone. None of them just grew out of the ground. If pressed, we explain that being open to accepting risks has allowed us to be involved in numerous startups that have successfully exited, which in turn have allowed us to place bigger bets. | https://medium.com/humancentered/bet-on-yourself-e9696ee4dd20 | ['Matt Brady'] | 2021-01-21 01:47:56.072000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Risk', 'Building'] |
Explore San Francisco via Alaska Airlines Reservations | San Francisco is the excitement, cultural and economic center of Northern California. Founded by Spanish settlers in 1776, the city is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The city became famous in 1849 as the home of the California Gold Rush and was then the largest city on the west coast. A popular city for tourists, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic architecture and landmarks. Discover the beauty of this unique city on a budget, book your tickets through Alaska Airlines Reservations and take advantage of exciting offers at the time of booking.
Golden Gate Bridge
The world-famous Golden Gate Bridge is the symbol of this city. This wonderful 1.7-mile building connects San Francisco with Marin County and points further north. The bridge opens just before dawn and closes every night. The bridge was originally completed in 1937 and its gates are opened every day for the public to appreciate its beauty. After walking, don’t forget to visit the small museum on the southern side of San Francisco. In the museum, you can learn more about the bridge, including some interesting facts and history. You will also find a gift shop, snack bar and small restaurant on the same side.
San Francisco’s Chinatown
One of the oldest Chinatowns outside of Asia. is San Francisco Chinatown,Many of the Chinese who founded here the trader or migrant workers who work in the transcontinental railroad or as miners during the gold hunter. This scenic part of the city is located mainly on Grant Avenue, from Bush to Broadway. This place is suitable for dining, shopping, entertainment and more.
Alcatraz Island
One of the most famous attractions in Alcatraz Island. This old prison complex originally opened as a US military fort in the mid-1850s. It became a military prison in early 1900 and a safer federal prison in 1934. Visitors can easily recognize many of the prisoners who spent their time at The Rock. Most notable are Al Capone, Robert Stroud and Machine Gun Kelly. However, the prison closed the door in 1963. It reopened in 1973 for a public tour. Tickets to visit Alcatraz include a round-trip ferry to the island, a self-guided audio tour, and the opportunity to explore several other buildings. | https://medium.com/@eflightoreservations/explore-san-francisco-via-alaska-airlines-reservations-54bd8798355c | [] | 2020-11-27 08:15:43.442000+00:00 | ['San Francisco', 'Alaska Airlines'] |
Three mobile eCommerce design tips to improve UX | Expectations of mobile shoppers are different from that of desktop users.
60% of mobile shoppers say they face at least one problem while browsing within the last 12 months. They mostly encounter that:
Websites are too slow (73%)
Crashed, froze, or received an error (51%)
Didn’t perform as expected (45%)
Simply wasn’t available (38%)
Providing a better user experience on mobile websites is therefore critical to retain customers. Here three mobile eCommerce tips to improve UX:
Consider showing a search icon on the homepage or, if possible, a full search bar. If users can find a search option easily, usage can increase by 13% on mobile, and overall conversion increases by 41% on mobile when combined with a clear call to action or category navigation. Customers are quick to abandon websites due to poor search experiences, and studies have found that 80% of users will leave your website if they aren’t satisfied with the search results.
Many brands force customers to hover when zooming on their website. This is another pitfall of designing your site as a desktop-first experience. When this is translated to a mobile experience, users are frustrated since there is no such thing as hovering on touchscreens. Instead. let the user choose to zoom into an image with a button or pinch-to-zoom option.
Once customers navigate to your product pages, it’s important to reiterate that sense of urgency we touched upon earlier. Such elements can include free shipping, special offers, or easy returns that clearly demonstrate your brand’s value proposition. These elements should be positioned close to urgent call-to-action (CTA) options like “add to cart” buttons to help increase conversions. Websites with this type of value proposition on their product detail pages see a conversion improvement of 17%, and this simple yet effective strategy won’t require much effort to pull off, either.
To learn more of such quick tips for designing mobile experiences, read this blog. | https://medium.com/@heyadityapatel/three-mobile-ecommerce-design-tips-to-improve-ux-fa886a515a4 | ['Aditya Patel'] | 2021-06-17 11:02:40.677000+00:00 | ['Ecommerce', 'Mobile Ux', 'User Experience', 'Mobile Website Design', 'Ui Ux Design'] |
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