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How I Transformed My Body in a Year | How I Transformed My Body in a Year
How I Lost 40 lbs and Stay at 10–12% Body Fat
Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash
I’ve lost 40 lbs and am at 10–12% body fat. I’ve never been the athletic type, and I never considered my body as being strong.
I wanted to let you know that you can reach your fitness goals with a few tips from this article.
If you’re trying to lose a lot of weight, the big number may sound scary. But, if you break your current lifestyle down, you’ll start to notice what’s impeding your goals. And no, it’s not like I starved myself to death — I know that my basal metabolic rate (calories needed to just function) is 1688 calories, and my body requires between 2000 and 3000 calories on average to stay strong and not lose muscle.
Health is the cross-section of exercise, nutrition, and recovery. Where do you score in each of the areas on a 10-point scale? What points can be improved? Why do you want to be healthy in the first place? | https://medium.com/stayingsharp/how-i-transformed-my-body-in-a-year-65c31adcd936 | ['Yuta Morinaga'] | 2019-09-19 21:30:17.701000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Fitness', 'Lifestyle', 'Productivity', 'Weight Loss'] |
Machine Learning is Becoming a Joke — Is AutoML Good For Data Scientists? | There was a time in the recent past when data scientists used to build ML algorithms from scratch. Before these new, fancy, and “sophisticated” libraries took over, true data scientists were aware of the underlying mechanics of the algorithms. They really knew about the models they run and the mathematics they used.
Today, everyone is a data scientist and it disintegrates the significance of this profession. With the help of highly abstract libraries like Keras and Scikit-Learn, a newbie can write the code without actually knowing what’s happening beneath.
And the corporate giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are working on making it even more abstract and simpler. With their AI and cloud technology, they are giving birth to a new field called AutoML, where they’re hiding the underlying methodologies even better.
But, Is The Simpler The Better?
Some would argue that losing touch with mathematics will not allow any room for creativity and innovation. And for the most part, they’ll be right.
As we start to build our ML models using highly abstract frameworks, we have lesser control over them. Just like in the case of programming languages, everybody knows, Python might be simpler but has lesser control over the machine in comparison to C and C++.
Hence, providing lesser or no room for improvement; the same old pattern repeats again and again. Building models with a GUI environment is not a good idea. Not yet.
Because of these new AutoML tools, so-called data scientists will never develop the intuition required to solve a problem; at least not if a problem lies at the microscopic level. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/machine-learning-is-becoming-a-joke-automl-downsides-c7634ce0572c | ['Nishu Jain'] | 2020-12-03 16:09:24.169000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Automl', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Career', 'Data Science'] |
Leviton Decora Smart Zigbee 3.0 Plug-in Dimmer review: Not enough features for the price | Zigbee adherents don’t have a dramatic number of products with which to outfit their smart home, so it’s always good news to see some innovation in the category. With this expansion of its Decora Smart product line, Leviton now has a collection of Zigbee 3.0-certified smart lighting products offering a variety of security and performance updates.
Leviton’s model DG3HL plug-in dimmer looks identical to the company’s other plug-in dimmers, including its Wi-Fi and Z-Wave versions. The compact device features a single two-prong outlet, positioned downward—so you’ll need to install it in the lower outlet to avoid blocking the second outlet in a standard receptacle.
[ Further reading: The best smart plugs ] Leviton The downward-facing socket on Leviton’s new Zigbee 3.0-certified smart plug is designed to keep cords tidy, but it makes it impossible to use in the upper socket.
A small button on the face of the device is illuminated in green when the switch is turned off (serving as a nightlight, since it can’t be disabled), and the button can be used to manually turn the switch on or off. The DG3HL supports a maximum load of 300 watts, and again, it’s designed with dimmable devices in mind (e.g., a lamp. If you have non-dimming needs, consider instead the Leviton Decora Smart DG15A, which offers a grounded outlet that can support small appliances, such as a fan with up to a 0.5-horsepower motor.)
Christopher Null / IDG The dimmer works well with Alexa, but Samsung SmartThings support is still pending.
I’ll start with the plusses, though there aren’t many. I attempted to pair the DG3HL with an Amazon Echo Plus and it quickly discovered the device and added it to my Alexa smart home network. (The plug also supports the Xfinity Home Touch Screen, but SmartThings certification is still in process.) The plug works well enough with Alexa, but at a range of about 50 feet from my Echo Plus Zigbee hub, performance was erratic, with the plug frequently showing a “Device is unresponsive” error. When I moved it closer, the errors went away. (Zigbee devices form a mesh network, so deploying any Zigbee device—including another smart plug—at closer range to the hub should help with longer-range deployments, because device acts as a repeater.)
And now for the bad news. First, the range of dimming is decidedly weak. The difference between 100-percent brightness and 20-percent brightness on a standard LED bulb was marginal at best, and I really had to watch closely to see much of a difference in the lighting quality at all. This is compounded by the fact that the hardware button on the plug does not support dimming at all; you can only dim and brighten via voice or the Alexa app. Typically, one would hold the hardware button down to dim or brighten the light, but with the DG3HL, this doesn’t work. The button is strictly an on/off switch.
Mentioned in this article Jasco Enbrighten Zigbee Plug-In Smart Dimmer Read TechHive's reviewSee it Lastly there’s the price. At $40, this device is priced the same as Jasco’s Enbrighten Zigbee 3.0 smart dimmer plug, which—while larger in size—can control two lamps, and its hardware button will dim those lamps.
Unless you’re taken with the relatively small size of Leviton’s product—or Xfinity Home certification is uber important to you—Leviton just doesn’t give buyers a lot of reasons to choose its DG3HL over the competition.
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/@Kristi34484192/leviton-decora-smart-zigbee-3-0-plug-in-dimmer-review-not-enough-features-for-the-price-f7d32f79e97f | [] | 2020-10-28 11:58:04.622000+00:00 | ['Cutting', 'Tvs', 'Chargers', 'Entertainment'] |
4 lessons learned from our first four microshorts | Preparing for the next scene on the set of “okay.” / October 31, 2020
As of today, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve officially premiered the first four of our #42SecondShorts.
To mark the occasion, I’ve spent some time reflecting on the last couple of months and have realized four lessons from the experience — lessons that I hope to take with me as we move forward into production for our second series.
1. Everything takes longer than you think it will.
I’ve had a procrastination problem for as long as I can remember. Even when I was in school, I waited until the last minute to do everything. I can’t tell you how many all-nighters I pulled to cram for an exam or how many papers were submitted minutes — if not seconds — before their deadline.
I would tell myself that I worked better that way — that I could accomplish the same quantity and quality of work whether I gave myself seven days or seven hours to complete the assignment, that perhaps the pressure of the deadline actually produced better work. Maybe there’s some truth to that, but I need to get into a better habit of starting things — whether it’s writing scripts, doing script breakdowns, planning production days, editing projects, etc. — sooner, for the sake of my sanity.
In truth, this procrastination isn’t always because I’m too busy or have too many things to do. Sometimes, I think I procrastinate because I’m scared of it, like I’m afraid I won’t be able to fulfill my own vision or don’t have the skills to pull it off. Of course, avoiding the problem doesn’t solve it or make it go away. If anything, it makes the issue even bigger, more of a problem — it’s almost like a twisted, self-fulfilling prophecy.
Maybe it’s a question for a therapist, but why do we sabotage ourselves this way?
2. Your equipment will fail and never at a time that’s convenient.
For our first production day in October, we brought more than the necessary amount of equipment, or so we thought. Spare camera lenses, tripods, microphones, light kits, you name it — we had it. Out of three shotgun microphones, two were testy, and one decided to quit working completely.
Admittedly, this was entirely my fault. Though I had used these mics only a couple of weeks prior to the shoot without issue, I didn’t run them through the standard night-before, last-minute equipment tests and checks. Completely dumb — because that’s how it always goes, isn’t it?
Fortunately, we were able to salvage most of the day’s audio, though I’ll let you in on a little behind-the-scenes secret — the final audio on our third project, “avenue,” was from the crappy, on-camera mic. All of the audio from the shotgun mic — with the exception of the atmospheric, ambient noise — was unusable, unsalvageable trash. I tried to hide it with some careful mixing and well-placed audio transitions in post; but, if you watch the short back with a pair of quality headphones, I’m sure you’ll be able to tell.
3. Double-check (triple-check) your equipment before load in.
If I’m embarrassed about the aforementioned equipment failure, I’m absolutely mortified to admit what I forgot to pack before arriving on set, so I’m going to say it and quickly move on.
AA batteries.
Yep, it was probably the most important thing to bring (besides spare SD cards and extra coffee, that is). I was sure to bring all other kinds of batteries — camera batteries, AAA, hell, even 9V — but I didn’t have a spare AA to my name.
We really lucked out though. We wrapped the day with the audio recorder flashing on one bar.
4. You aren’t going to like everything you do — and that’s okay.
I think this is the hardest and most important lesson of them all. I really struggle with the “done is better than perfect” mentality. It’s kept me back from releasing so many projects over the past several years, and it’s one of the things that I’m most trying to learn with these #42SecondShorts.
I don’t think most people love their art piece before putting it out there for the world. As artists, we’re self-conscious — it’s our sensitivities that make us artists — and we’re naturally critical of our work. What we hate someone else might love. What we believe to be uninspired or incomplete might speak loudly to someone else. If I had waited to start this production studio at the perfect moment, it would have never gotten off of the ground.
Our fourth project, “Somehow,” has been the thorn in my side since the beginning of this process. I know the concept and believe in the message, but I never could find the vision, see how to get there. Everything about that piece — from the story to the visuals and through to post-production — was painful for me. You never want to feel like something you put out there is subpar, but it was important for me to post it anyway.
When it comes to art, I don’t think you always see “it” right away. Sometimes, you find its center along the way. I think that’s what I had hoped for “Somehow;” but, honestly, I don’t know if it ever found its footing the way I wanted it to. Still, I knew I couldn’t just throw it away. It still has a role in this journey and is an important piece in this puzzle. If I spent more time with it, maybe I’d be satisfied — or I might’ve fallen away from it harder.
Done, not perfect.
I hope you enjoyed our first four microshorts — there are many more to come. We’re actively casting for our next series, so please check out ourcasting callsand submit your virtual audition as soon as you can!
Until next time,
- J | https://medium.com/@nantico/the-week-when-we-finished-our-first-series-a687e8a5e4a3 | [] | 2020-12-20 22:58:56.157000+00:00 | ['Indie', 'Filmmaking', 'Film', 'Indie Film', 'Independent Film'] |
Creating a Nurturing Environment: Fostering a Workplace that Encourages Bringing Your Whole Self to Work | About a month ago, a co-worker asked me if I would be interested in writing for our company’s blog. At first, I was hesitant because I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to write about. I thought to myself, will she ask me to write a narrative about the inner workings of blockchain technology? If that was the case, I’m honestly not the right person since I’m still learning about all that cryptocurrency entails.
I asked her what she had in mind for an article, and she responded, “I think it would be interesting if you could share your experience on what you think makes a workplace culture successful.”
Now, this topic fits more in my wheelhouse, as I’ve experienced a variety of workplace cultures, both big and small. I reflected on what I’ve seen and learned over the past 20 years working in various industries as an HR professional, and one concept stood out above the rest: creating a nurturing workplace environment.
I believe one of the most essential components to creating a thriving workplace culture is to foster an environment that is nurturing so that employees can bring their entire selves to work, and at Coinme, that’s what we strive to do every day.
Creating an environment that people can feel safely vulnerable in and bring your whole self to work sounds like simple concepts; however, they can be tough to do in practice because it means we need to embrace vulnerability, be comfortable with failing and be receptive to hearing and providing constructive feedback.
Even with a topic as ever-changing, and sometimes challenging, as cryptocurrencies, being open to learning and making mistakes while growing is critical. Below are five ideas for making your workplace culture more nurturing so that you, your co-workers, or your employees can feel more comfortable bringing your whole selves to work:
Promote communication between peers and across hierarchical lines. Have an open-door policy to encourage collaboration from all across the organization and to make sure that all contributions are valued.
Celebrate wins. Start a meeting off by sharing something positive that is going on in your group, project, work, etc. Encourage others to do the same.
Show gratitude. Thank a co-worker for something he or she did but weren’t expecting to get thanked for. Be specific about what it was and why it was helpful or essential.
Empower employees. Trusting your team is essential. Avoid micromanagement and allow your employees to have autonomy to make decisions and to plan their work.
Be open and forgiving with mistakes. View slip-ups and failures as learning opportunities, and be open about your own mistakes and encourage others to do the same.
According to motivational speaker, thought-leader, and author Mike Robbins, nurturance has to do with people feeling seen, heard, and valued — not just what they do, but for who they are. It also has to do with feeling safe to make mistakes, ask for help, speak up and disagree. Nurturing environments are filled with an authentic sense of compassion and empathy, and people genuinely feel cared about and supported.
In his book, Bringing Your Whole Self to Work: How Vulnerability Unlocks Creativity, Connection, and Performance, Robbins states that bringing your whole self to work will ultimately lead to a higher level of engagement, connection, and performance. This is because when you bring your whole self to work, you are being vulnerable, and the natural response to vulnerability is empathy and compassion. That vulnerability is key to trust and connection which are ultimately keys to business and personal success. | https://medium.com/coinme/creating-a-nurturing-environment-fostering-a-workplace-that-encourages-bringing-your-whole-self-to-5e713278d28f | [] | 2018-07-09 14:43:50.787000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Leadership', 'Workplace Culture', 'Startup', 'Culture'] |
Oversimplified ML(2): Neural Networks | Applying Neural Networks to create predictions
Today we will discuss what neural networks look like. Neural networks, also called deep learning, are the bread and butter of prediction. They look like webs and can be a bit confusing at first, so let’s start with multiple regression.
From left to right: input (x), multiplication (θ), output (y)
This graph represents the input variable x on the left, each x[i] being multiplied by θ[i], and the resulting output y on the right. This creates a plane in space with a constant slope in any specific direction.
This type of model is capable of understanding simple patterns, but we can do better.
Let’s take the multiple regression model and add a few upgrades:
This diagram above represents an equation that takes in x[0] and x[1], then returns an output y. This equation would look something like the surface on the left.
Here is the step by step process for calculating the neural network equation:
The left hand column transforms into the middle column. For visibility, the connections have been color coded. This middle column is called a hidden layer. Each node in the hidden layer comes from these colored weights. These weights are written in the bottom right corner and are represented as θ. | https://medium.com/data-for-associates/oversimplified-machine-learning-2-neural-networks-822d57d9d47f | ['Theo De Quillacq'] | 2020-08-23 04:10:53.413000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Neural Networks', 'Data', 'Data Science', 'Analytics'] |
BugUFO: Get paid to debug code or pay someone to debug it for you | Nicolas: The first question that I feel will be on most people’s minds is how this differs from free question answering sites (Stack Overflow, Quora, Reddit, etc.) or doing a quick google search?
Youssef: We like and are frequent users ourselves of all these options. But oftentimes, we’ve posted questions that were ignored either because they were too long, had been marked as duplicates and closed (in Stack Overflow’s case), have gotten no useful responses, not to mention the anxiety and uncertainty of waiting for a response.
In addition, if you’re googling, each response you come across needs to be vetted to make sure it solves your problem and not merely a similar problem.
If you ask a question, and get a response, the response may be correct but too advanced for you to understand.
With more complex problems, the response can sometimes be in the form of a hint, pseudo-code, or a code-snippet, instead of working code.
Essentially, you’re unable to immediately incorporate it into your own code.
There’s a cycle you go through of checking whether or not every answer actually solves your problem by making a change in your code, running it, and seeing if the error is gone, and the code functions as expected.
There are only so many cycles that a developer can go through before they burn out.
We’re trying to remove this menial, cyclic checking process such that you get rapid, tested solutions instead of suggestions that may or may not work.
Another pain point in terms of question answering sites is on the problem-solver side, helpers are operating without enough information. For instance, users posting the problem to question answering sites may not elaborate on their specific development environment, or don’t post all of their code, only a small segment, or their question suffers from the XY problem.
Courtesy of BugUFO
Nicolas: What about paid options (Fiverr, Upwork, etc.)?
Ilya: The paid options are more for wholesale outsourcing of code or feature development instead of quick code fixes.
What if you’re trying to learn coding yourself or are a developer who has a bug in your code? Do you really want to go through the time and energy of vetting five developers, coordinating timezones, and overpaying, only to have 1 bug fixed? That could’ve been done in 15 minutes or you could’ve gone and done something else while someone was working on your problem without ever vetting any candidates. Basically, we’re saying: At the click of a button, someone starts working on your problem without ever having to talk to a human. If your problem isn’t solved, you don’t pay anything.
Nicolas: Why is your solution a paid solution rather than free?
Ilya: Paying someone drastically increases the odds that someone will actually solve your custom problem and do so in the timeframe you desire.
How BugUFO affects the learning experience | https://medium.com/@nicolasrusso/bugufo-get-paid-to-debug-code-or-pay-someone-to-debug-it-for-you-37e16ca03f26 | ['Nicolas Russo'] | 2021-05-04 13:44:47.324000+00:00 | ['Developer Productivity', 'Gig Economy', 'Software Development', 'Debugging', 'Programming'] |
Housing — A Basic, Fundamental, Human Right, and how Immoralities and Greed take this away. | This piece was written with regards to Leilani Farha’s statement on the right to adequate housing, to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2017. The report can be found here.
The housing market is changing. As stated by Leilani Farha the modern housing sector is being manipulated by many economic agents and unprecedented amounts of capital flow. The multi-billion-dollar corporations are removing housing as a fundamental necessity and a human right, and now treating it as a commodity. This has resulted in my agreeance with Farha and her report presented to the UN as housing is ‘now a means to secure and accumulate wealth rather than a place to live in dignity, to raise a family and thrive within a community.’ Sixty percent of global assets are comprised of real estate, seventy-five percent of this being residential, putting a substantial strain on residents, especially in major or developing cities.
Photo by ben o'bro on Unsplash
Real house prices (adjusted for inflation) in New York since 1960 have increased by 184%, and developing countries are seeing house prices jump up to 50% over 5 years. This is also causing rent and mortgages to skyrocket and thus people taking far too much and damaging their lifestyles. After the financial crash, 20% of all US households were underwater due to the decrease in the property value resulting in negative net worth. This is partially to blame for the death of the American economy, aggressive mortgages, as there was no consumer spending due to the lack of disposable income, just mortgage spending.
Photo by Milo Miloezger on Unsplash
In my opinion, all states and nations should have a moral obligation to provide necessary and structurally sound housing for all, without racial, gender, or monetary constraints. This is underpinned by SDG 11.1 — By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe, and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums. Even though slums are commonly associated with low-income countries or developing countries with slums in India and the favelas of Brazil coming to mind, inadequate housing and homelessness are becoming a growing problem in nearly all developed countries. The scarcity of real estate is a growing worldwide problem, moreover the scarcity of aptly priced real estate. I believe this is mainly down to the fairly recent free-market revolution, with locals being outpriced due to the basic laws of supply and demand, with the lack of government intervention. Again, I agree with Farha who presented the UN with some current measures that governments have made, and some pieces of legislation she suggested.
One of the most important reforms, especially within the US, since the financial crash was the QRM. The idea originated in Europe to prevent liars loans from banks, requiring the bank to hold 5% of the loan. Therefore, banks stopped giving out loans as freely. The Dodd-Frank then used this idea to create the QRM or Qualifying Residential Mortgage. This prevented banks from making money from reselling loans and required mortgage bankers to help provide the best mortgage for their customers to prevent them from going underwater.
Photo by Jonathan Kho on Unsplash
I feel housing should have a limit on financialization to stop the exploitation of large corporations and the rich, on the poor. A good example Farha made was from her trip to India was that most people who are inadequately housed or homeless have relatively little legal knowledge or information, particularly about human rights relating to housing, and have limited access to legal aid. Because of this, we need to rid ourselves of the free market theorem and focus on government intervention, on both a worldwide and national scale. The development in India, especially in the ever-growing cities, has led to the financialization of some areas, forcing many of the middle-income earners to move into sub-standard living conditions due to being outpriced. To counter this a national moratorium on evictions and demolitions should be enforced, and if it is completely necessary due to safety, the Indian government should always prioritise their population. However, I feel the growing problem would be better combatted with preventative measures seen elsewhere, often in more developed countries, such as requiring construction firms to provide a range of properties in set price ranges so as to prevent class segregation, another prevalent problem in India with the caste system, but primarily to stop locals being priced out. Another measure is the upgrading of existing informal settlements and legally recognising these. This is seen commonly in Brazil with the residents being provided materials to ‘upgrade’ their housing and the provision of other basic human rights such as healthcare and education through projects such as the Favela de Bairro project. Not only does this mitigate the effect of rising house prices, but it also helps macroeconomic objectives such as a potential increase in GDP per capita.
Finally, we see the major problems of financialization of housing in Farha’s Portugal case study, a developed higher income, which is currently struggling from immigration from Northern Africa and austerity measures, resultingly being one of the most unequal countries in Europe. Austerity measures resulted in an increase in poverty levels, lower social protection benefits, higher rates of homelessness, and unaffordable housing, utilities, and other public services. These effects have been amplified in the major cities such as Lisbon where tourism has decreased supply of housing and investors grabbing all available plots for future ventures — ‘The Golden Visa scheme which encourages foreign investment in residential real estate has brought into the country over 2 billion dollars, but has put pressure on housing costs in Lisbon and elsewhere.’
To conclude, my research has not changed my opinion. The financialization of housing can be a great source of FDI; but at what cost to society and basic human rights? As seen, locals are being outpriced of their own homes, forced to live in substandard conditions. This greed shown by others is why the free markets theorem cannot survive as we need governments to intervene, legislate, and regulate to prevent further exploitation. | https://medium.com/@jameslgriffith/housing-a-basic-fundamental-human-right-and-how-immoralities-and-greed-take-this-away-a7c38838aa1d | ['James Griffith'] | 2020-12-21 12:51:18.675000+00:00 | ['Housing', 'Human Rights', 'Capitalism', 'United Nations', 'Commodities'] |
SVGs: A Scalable Graphics Format | The future of web graphics is always changing but time and time again you will hear one special graphic uttered. That graphic goes by the name of SVG and you may have heard of it before, but what exactly is it? SVG stands for scalable vector graphics. They are an XML-based markup language for describing two-dimensional based vector graphics. You are most likely familiar with another type of graphic called Raster graphics, in which an image is made up of individual pixels. The most common types of Raster graphics are PNG and JPEG.
Raster vs Vector (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bitmap_VS_SVG.svg)
An SVG, on the other hand, can be simplified down to individual pieces of math and code to describe a shape. For example, <circle cx=”50" cy=”50" r=”40" stroke=”green” stroke-width=”4" fill=”yellow” /> describes the shape of a yellow circle with a green outline.
Yellow circle with a green outline made with SVGs
The use of an SVG is only limited by your technology and imagination, with uses being logos, brochures, mockups, websites, backgrounds, art, and so much more.
Canada Day SVG
The most important part to SVGs is the scalability of them. Unlike a Raster image, when an SVG is made bigger or smaller, it doesn’t lose any detail. The math just calculates how that SVG would look at the new size! They are also super small in file size compared to JPGs and PNGs and can be optimized. Another neat fact is that depending on how it is used, they are natively accessible since they can be read like a book, unlike images. Finally, the most useful part of SVGs in my opinion is the fact they can be animated. While a normal image animation may take a lot of effort to put together, an SVG can be animated directly by changing the math that creates the shapes.
Overall, SVGs may not be the only web graphic solution out there, but they are definitely a powerhouse hidden in a small and easy to use package. It’s no doubt that as we find new and exciting ways to convey our information with images, that SVGs will stay high in importance. | https://medium.com/@technickel/svgs-a-scalable-graphics-format-fa11b06505d0 | ['Bradley Leonard'] | 2020-12-21 18:16:33.619000+00:00 | ['Graphic Design', 'Graphics', 'Internet', 'SVG', 'Art'] |
Beth & Aleph | As the chords draw close,
baritones
crescendo
deeper and
exquisite
friction of the scales
glissandos from here to
heaven’s gate and higher still
into air we mortals cannot breathe.
Just outside the realm of
kindled
love, this
music meets with
new triumphant song,
opening the
portals of our
quintessential
rites,
stripping every
taboo
undertone of
victory’s
wonder and
expanding
yearning for this
zealous symphony. | https://medium.com/lit-up/beth-aleph-77734c6e8abf | ['Elle Rogers'] | 2019-12-10 09:42:49.608000+00:00 | ['Dance', 'Music', 'Poetry', 'Relationships', 'Love'] |
Key Application Metrics and Monitoring for Developers | You finally went live, congratulations! Now what?
Intro
In the past, code and infrastructure were handled by completely separate organizations. Developers wrote code, while IT set up servers. Developers fixed bugs, while IT handled infrastructure maintenance. However, with the trend towards DevOps and the increased availability of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), there is an increasing overlap between Dev and IT. For developers, this can mean taking care of infrastructure, a task that is quite different from standard app dev.
As a full-stack developer, I’ve been pushed to handle more and more infrastructure-related responsibilities, including monitoring production applications. We just went live for HP Foundation at https://www.life-global.org with our Next.js-based learning management system. As a dev team lead, I have been researching how to best support and maintain the application through metrics.
In this article, I will cover three basic metrics I think are important: response time, error rate, and slow transactions. These are particularly relevant for developers. For each metric, I’ll explain what it is, why you should care, and how to monitor it in both Azure and Heroku. Finally, I’ll also talk a bit about the benefits of being proactive in your monitoring.
But first — what exactly is a metric?
What is a Metric?
Per Investopedia, a metric is a “measure of quantitative assessment” commonly used for assessing, comparing, and tracking performance. From this definition, we can tease out a couple attributes of metrics. First, a metric is a statistical tool; second, metrics tell us about relative rather than absolute performance.
A Statistical Tool
Metrics are statistical tools. As such, the more we understand about statistics, the more we can properly interpret and leverage our metrics. Yes, that means we need to understand not only terms like mean, median, and range, but also distributions and percentages. For example, if the 95th percentile response time is 350ms, that means that 95% of all response times were less than or equal to 350ms.
For those interested in a deeper dive into statistics, Think Stats is available online for free and does a great job of introducing basic concepts for developers.
Relative Performance
As a developer, it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of absolutes. For example, consider when you perform a code review and think to yourself:
This is the wrong way to solve this problem.
Or perhaps you are debugging a bug in production, and you finally found the issue. You might think:
This code was wrong all along; if we had just thought about this case, we could have handled it from the start.
However, metrics are a statistical tool, and statistics generally do not give you information about things which are absolutely “right” or definitely “wrong”. Rather, metrics provide insight into understanding the current and past state of your application. By comparing the two you can understand the relative performance of the application. Instead of “good” or “bad”, we will learn about “better” or “worse”. Understanding this is critical to the proper use of metrics.
Now that we have a better understanding of metrics generally, let’s take a look at our three metrics.
The Three Metrics
The three metrics we’ll look at are response time, error rate, and slow transactions. I have selected these metrics for several reasons. First, these three metrics are relevant across infrastructure setups. It does not matter whether you are using a serverless setup, managed application instances, Kubernetes swarm, or even hosting your application directly on actual hardware, these metrics still apply.
Second, these metrics tie directly into the user experience of your application. Users have ingrained expectations about the responsiveness and reliability of the applications that they interact with, and oftentimes do not report issues until it’s too late. Proactive monitoring of these metrics can help to keep users loving your application ❤️.
With that, let’s get into the metrics! First, let’s take a look at response time.
Response Time
What is it?
Response time is the time it takes your application to respond to a request made by a client.
Why should I care?
This is a key indicator of the responsiveness of your application to user input or page switching. Long response times mean that the user is waiting longer for your application. They also are an indication of high server load, as the server needs to spend more time working for each request. Heroku recommends that the response time of your web application be under 500ms, which is a good rule of thumb.
How do I monitor this?
First, let’s clarify which statistics we should be looking at. You might lean towards looking at average response time, but this can be skewed by outliers such as super-long requests.
Instead, I recommend looking at percentile-based statistics on response time. The median, also known as the 50th percentile measurement is a useful metric as it lets us know that half of all requests take that amount of time or less. The 95th and 99th percentile measurements are also useful as they tell you how most users experience your application as a whole. The Heroku Dashboard provides a nice set of visualizations that show these three key stats:
Similarly, Azure has server response time metrics available under its Application Insights module:
Error Rate
Next, let’s take a look at error rate.
What is it?
Error rate is the number of errors generated by the application over a certain period of time.
Why should I care?
As developers, we’re accustomed to looking into bugs, which are reproducible deviations from a set of specified requirements. However, in a real-world application environment, sometimes errors happen due to network and infrastructure variables that are external to our application code. As such, it’s important to look not only into the individual errors but also the overall rate of errors as an indicator of application stability.
How do I monitor this?
Error rate monitoring is more of an art than a science, as it depends heavily on the types of errors. You can get started by looking at the Events section in Heroku’s Metrics tab. Hovering over each of the squares gives you details about that individual event.
For Azure, you can go to the Application Insights Failures panel:
From there, make a note of both the error frequency per unit of time as well as the error frequency per request. The frequency per unit of time will give you a sense of how often errors occur for the application as a whole. Frequency per request focuses on the user experience and illuminates how often users encounter errors as a percentage of their overall usage of the application. Over time, tracking these two measurements of error rate will give you insight into how the health of your application is changing.
Again, it is difficult to give absolute numbers here — relative performance is what we are tracking. That said, if your application has service-level objectives or agreements then that may influence your target rate. The Google SRE Workbook gives an example of setting up an alert for a 99.9% SLO. If your application is pursuing that level of reliability, then your desired error rate would be < 0.1%. The key is to set a realistic, achievable goal.
Additionally, take a look at the top exception types and do some basic triage. If any critical errors or issues which would lead to data loss occur, make a note to investigate these before your next review. This is more akin to resolving a standard bug.
Slow Transactions
Finally, let’s explore slow transactions.
What are they?
Any transaction that takes a long amount of time. Naturally, “long” can be relative depending on the application and type of transaction.
Why should I care?
Sometimes, we can have requests which don’t happen frequently enough to skew the response rate, and they don’t error out completely. However, due to the length and compute power required, they still affect the responsiveness of the application. Slow transactions oftentimes reveal bottlenecks in performance which affect the user experience more than the frequency might indicate.
Additionally, long-running transactions can take up an inordinate amount of compute resources, which can negatively impact other transactions.
How do I monitor this?
Monitoring slow transactions isn’t as straight-forward. There are two main ways we can get a list of slow transactions. The simplest is to sort the list of transactions by duration, and look at the length and frequency of our longest-running transactions. As we discussed under the response time section, I recommend singling out any transaction that takes over 500ms for the average web application.
A more involved way would be to look at the transactions with durations above your 95th percentile response times. Similarly, you could use any percentile you like. However, for the resource-constrained small dev team, I would not recommend lowering that percentile too much.
Either way, once you have a list of long-running transaction types, you can optionally sort them further by calculating the overall time taken by a given transaction type over a unit of time. For example, for a long-running SQL query which takes an average of 1.3 s to run, and has run 1,000 times over the last seven days, simply multiply 1.3*1000 = 1300s / week. Calculate this for each of your transaction types to get a sense of which transaction types to prioritize first. Typically, the one that requires the most time overall is likely to be the one you should work on first. However, other factors such as memory/CPU usage during those transactions may influence that as well.
This is the last of the three metrics we’ll look at in this article. Before I conclude, however, a quick note on how we should and should not monitor:
Proactive Monitoring versus Reactive Fire-Fighting
As a developer, it’s all too easy to fall into the habit of what I call reactive firefighting, or responding only or primarily to reported issues or bugs. These issues are easy to prioritize, as it is clear that a user is already experiencing an issue or downtime. However, while you are busy fighting the fire, the fire is continuing to damage application downtime or cause some other issue.
Proactive monitoring is the best way to reduce the number of fires that start in the first place. In essence, you need to monitor your metrics on a regular basis. This is proactive because it requires you or your team to look at your application response time, error rate, and slow transactions before users report any issues. By reviewing your metrics on a regular basis, you can identify issues before users report them, and you can proactively address errors or bottlenecks that could become larger problems.
Additionally, monitoring your metrics regularly will give you a sense of what is “normal” and what is abnormal for your application. As mentioned earlier, metrics are the most helpful in illuminating relative rather than absolute performance. Heroku recommends creating a review document each time you look at your metrics. Forming this habit will allow you to track how your application performs over time.
Summary
In this article, I have laid out three basic metrics to get you started on your application monitoring journey! However, response time, error rate, and slow transactions are just the beginning.
For those who are ready to dive into the world of Site Reliability Engineering, Google’s page and book are hard to beat, and free! That said, this is a field which can feel quite alien for the average app developer, so I recommend monitoring something small rather than nothing at all.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] or check out my website at https://henryjin.dev to learn more about me. Thanks for reading! | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/key-application-metrics-and-monitoring-for-developers-5ed1837d3cad | ['Henry Jin'] | 2020-12-18 15:57:02.847000+00:00 | ['DevOps', 'Azure', 'Heroku', 'Statistics', 'Application Metrics'] |
That Letter, THE Letter | Dear K,
Thank you for always being open to talking.Thank you for not just listening but participating and being present with me as we pull back the layers of an age-old love story: something you hate doing.
We both know I am an emotional giant. I’m a wiz with reflecting on how I feel and even better at finding the words to describe them but slow to provide you with the space needed to reflect (albeit a flaw that I am conquering every day).
Circa. 2017
Now we are years later, after a sincere but failed attempt at being ambitious college students trying to assemble what we thought a relationship should be. Yet, we found ourselves back here — staring at each other. Souls and hearts laid bare, forced to reckon with if we will leave the past behind or continue to write the pages on a roller-coaster of a love story.
When we started chatting, I honestly was not plotting on you. But as fate will have it, I sat there listening to you, and then I felt this aura of comfort fall over me- refreshing and robust yet so familiar. And I could not help but think, “Damn, I miss this girl.” Then flowed a feeling of happiness, and I just could not let this feeling go, so I decided to explore it further. When I wrote that letter, THE letter, it was merely my way of expressing my interest in chasing what I felt with you. Though I think I expressed my perspective well, I still feel this urge to explain(over-explain) further.
I want to be here, with you, right now as your friend; however, I want to set my intentions with you. When I think of you, I see both a movie reel of our past and a clear view of what could be our future. K, I want you to continue to be free, prioritize your career, creating a life where you are the center and chase all the feelings that I’ve said led me to you. That letter, THE letter, was me asking that if/when you are ready to open your heart to love, that I would be first in line. Not because I deserve it but because I will have earned it. By continuing to be your friend and a confidant, challenging you, growing with you, and hopefully loving you(friendly) as no one can.
That letter, THE letter, was me setting the tone, establishing a distant but very genuine expectation, NOT requiring a daunting commitment (I’m dramatic)from you. This does not mean I am going to wait for you but that I take you seriously.
With Love,
Q | https://medium.com/@quintonjenkins/that-letter-the-letter-6d4323204143 | [] | 2021-02-22 03:05:50.100000+00:00 | ['Lovestory', 'Love Letters', 'Love'] |
A Sojourn In Japan | A Sojourn In Japan
On April 1st 2019, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go and work in Japan. Over the course of 18 months, I was fortunate enough to have seen and done enough things to experience a lot of unique and new things that definitely did broaden my views and horizons.
Now that I’ve returned to Malaysia, its time for me to share every bit of detail about how was my time in Japan like. Trust me, I really didn’t want to leave The Land of The Rising Sun but even though I had to, I left with millions of memories pocketed in my mind and heart.
Let’s begin with Chapter 1. On April 1st 2019, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go and work in Japan. Over the course of 18 months, I was fortunate enough to have seen and done enough things to experience a lot of unique and new things that definitely did broaden my views and horizons.
Now that I’ve returned to Malaysia, its time for me to share every bit of detail about how was my time in Japan like. Trust me, I really didn’t want to leave The Land of The Rising Sun but even though I had to, I left with millions of memories pocketed in my mind and heart.
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page” — Augustine of Hippo
It was around 9:30 pm when I said my final farewell to my family. It was scary and immensely challenging to leave your own turf for a place whose customs and language are heavily foreign to you.
Me and my parents prior to my departure to Japan
Yet, I did just that and I turned my back to Malaysia, said my prayers and hoped for the best for my departure to Japan. My companion, Hairizam turned up soon after and we boarded the 11:30 pm flight to Kansai International Airport, Osaka. | https://medium.com/moments-of-passion/a-sojourn-in-japan-71e39e50726b | ['Anis Aslaam'] | 2020-12-27 19:53:05.062000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Adventure', 'Life', 'Tourism', 'Travel'] |
Turkey to Pilot Digital Currency in 2021, Says Central Bank Governor | Turkey to Pilot Digital Currency in 2021, Says Central Bank Governor
Turkey will certainly start piloting a formerly concealed digital currency in the 2nd fifty percent of 2021, the nation’s primary central lender Naci Ağbal informed participants of parliamentFriday
“There is an R&D project initiated on digital money. Currently the conceptual phase of this project has been completed. We aim to start pilot tests in the second half of 2021.”
Ağbal’s shock remarks location Turkey on the fast lane to a reserve bank digital currency (CBDC). Turkey hardly ever reveals any kind of digital currency aspirations; The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), recognized in financial circles as the “bank for central banks,” does not also record Turkey as having an energetic CBDC job in its operating data source.
Yet Turkey is currently angling to surpass numerous better-known CBDC tasks. Although 80% of reserve banks are thinking about CBDC according to the BIS, just a handful — Sweden, China, the Bahamas — have actually proceeded to pilot phase/soft launch.
The information of Turkey’s very own CBDC job are dirty at ideal. Local crypto electrical outlet Koin Bülteni reported in September that the reserve bank was working with specialists for its digital currency r & d group.
Among the subjects of noticeable rate of interest: blockchain, cryptography and also huge information. | https://medium.com/@newscryptocurrency/turkey-to-pilot-digital-currency-in-2021-says-central-bank-governor-d0f7e86eb53 | ['Herald Jonesa'] | 2020-12-26 02:32:37.490000+00:00 | ['Currency', 'Central', 'Governor', 'Digital', 'Bank'] |
7 Useful Unity Attributes That Make the Inspector Easier To Use | SerializeField Attribute
If you want to write better code, of course, one of the main points is Encapsulation. For example, if you have a variable, which you do not want to be accessed by another class, you mark it as private. In this case, it will not show up in the inspector. Because, Unity only serialize public variables, so that they are being visible in the inspector and their values can be changed. To display a private field in the inspector, we can use SerializeField attribute.
Note: Using public instead of SerializeField attribute is not good practice. Whenever you want something to show up in Inspector, use SerializeField attribute.
Let’s see a quick example here:
In the script, we have 3 different variables. Two of them are private, and the other one is public. We have marked the first private field with [SerializeField , we have not marked the second private field with [SerializeField , and the public field will automatically be displayed in the inspector. So, let’s look at how they are showing up in the inspector: | https://medium.com/star-gazers/4-useful-unity-attributes-that-make-the-inspector-easier-to-use-part-1-d42b5b0b7543 | [] | 2021-01-06 10:56:50.008000+00:00 | ['Attributes', 'Unity', 'Unity Game Development', 'Programmming', 'Games'] |
The Customer is Not Always Right | 1. Customers abuse their power.
Customers know that they are supposed to come first. Unfortunately, some of them use this knowledge to abuse their power. They know that management will compensate them in some way when they complain, regardless of whether they’re right or wrong. Many times the manager ends up offering them gift cards for the “inconvenience.” It doesn’t take some people long to clue in that yelling = free merchandise. That’s when they start gaming the system.
In the grocery store where I work, we see the same repeat offenders week after week. They start trying to return things they’re technically not allowed to, get items cheaper than the listed shelf price, or demand they get items for free with no logical reason. And there’s nothing that we, as employees, can do about it. If we try to follow the store’s established rules, the customer goes above our heads by demanding to speak to the manager, who will undoubtedly give them whatever they want to keep them happy.
The customer shouldn’t have the power to override the employees. We are letting customers skirt the rules, and it needs to stop. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/the-customer-is-not-always-right-dd44428a24ec | ['Jennifer Macdonald'] | 2020-11-03 04:23:28.681000+00:00 | ['Customer Behavior', 'Retail', 'Customer Service', 'Business Philosophy', 'Employee Experience'] |
Clean Up Unused GitHub Repositories! | Ugh. Github forces me to type my password for every fork and repository I want to delete. That’s smart and all, but what if one wants to mass-delete a bunch of old, unused, forgotten, dirty little repositories that make his repository list look like a mess? well, that person follows this short guide:
Open in a new tab all to-be-deleted github repositores (Use the mouse’s middle click) https://github.com/wildeyes?tab=repositories Use one tab https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall?hl=en to shorten them to a list. Save that list to to a file, and modify each entry so that it’s in the form of “ur_username/repo_name” per line, (not a full URL!). Use multiple cursors /selections for the quickest results with an advanced text editor such as VS Code or sublime (double click a word, then ctrl-d or alt-f3 to have multiple selections). Register a new personal access token with a delete_repo permission at this address https://github.com/settings/tokens/new Use the line appropriate for your operating system below, replacing UR_TOKEN with your access_token. L̶i̶n̶u̶x̶:̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶c̶u̶t̶e̶ ̶(̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶t̶f̶u̶l̶)̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶b̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶x̶a̶r̶g̶s̶ ̶+̶ ̶c̶u̶r̶l̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶w̶i̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶@̶x̶w̶i̶l̶d̶e̶y̶e̶s̶. O̶S̶ ̶X̶:̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶L̶i̶n̶u̶x̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶g̶u̶y̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶.̶
OSX + Linux: (Thanks to @whitjck from twitter)
while read repo; do curl -X DELETE -H "Authorization: token UR_TOKEN" " https://api.github.com/repos/$ repo"; done < repos.txt
7. Windows: Run in powershell: | https://medium.com/@haiyesbye/clean-up-unused-github-rpositories-c2549294ee45 | [] | 2017-06-25 12:29:43.329000+00:00 | ['Github', 'Terminal', 'Cleaning'] |
‘Till Death Do You Part—But How Much Time Should You Spend Together Until Then? | Sleeping with my boyfriend calms me. Whether we’re at his house, my house, his parents’ house, one of the spots we find on Hotel Tonight or in the closet at my friend’s house where we first had sex hours after meeting, dozing off with him continues to be one of the sweetest, most grounding pleasures of my life.
But does that mean we should sleep together every night? After all, we’re not roommates. We don’t share a home or pay rent together. Between the two of us, we spend most of each week tending to our professional lives, hanging out with friends and family and trying to find moments where we can just chill as individuals.
In other words: There’s simply not enough time to get together every night.
Or perhaps, even though I cling to a leopard body pillow in his absence — curling up against it exactly as I would curl up against him — I actually don’t want to sleep with him every night.
“You don’t have to see someone everyday to love them and be in a healthy relationship,” a friend assured me a couple months ago when I worried that our mutual independence was a sign that our relationship wasn’t serious. This friend, like most of my best friends, practically moves in with her new dating partners upon first meeting them. She even bought property with her current boyfriend before their one-year anniversary. Another of my closest friends is set to marry a guy he’s been seeing for just a few months before the end of the year. Yet another, although still renting her own apartment, doesn’t think twice about the daily schlep across town from her office to her girlfriend’s house.
So who’s right — me or my friends?
Whether we’re talking about sleeping, socializing, working or any other facet of life, is there a certain amount of time in one another’s company that speaks to the passion and fortitude of a shared union? Especially in an era when sexual diversity — including a rich spectrum of non-monogamous relationships — is more visible than ever; when the gig economy has us juggling a few jobs at once; and when more and more people are calling bullshit on the fairytale love stories that were once the expectation.
For answers on this and everything else above, I turned to a quartet of notable sex and romance experts (all of whom also happen to be in long-term relationships):
Dr. David Ley is a clinical psychologist, sex therapist and author.
is a clinical psychologist, sex therapist and author. Nina Hartley is a legendary porn star and creator of the erotic instructional series Nina Hartley’s Guide… (She also has a degree in nursing, and in my humble opinion, is the real star of Boogie Nights.)
is a legendary porn star and creator of the erotic instructional series Nina Hartley’s Guide… (She also has a degree in nursing, and in my humble opinion, is the real star of Boogie Nights.) Ashley Manta is a sex educator and relationship coach who mindfully combines sex and cannabis to deepen intimacy and enhance pleasure.
is a sex educator and relationship coach who mindfully combines sex and cannabis to deepen intimacy and enhance pleasure. Gaea Woods is a marriage and family therapist.
Here’s what they had to say…
David Ley
The answer is unique to every relationship. I’ve seen couples who spend almost 24 hours a day together — they work together, they exercise together, they socialize together — and it works for them. I’ve also seen couples who live on opposite sides of the country who only get together once or twice a year for vacation — communicating the rest of the year via computer or phone — and it works for them.
Ultimately then, couples need to negotiate and communicate about these issues from a place of mutual respect and integrity, sharing what their honest needs are. The problem is when we have a mismatch between one partner’s level of need for connection and the other. This is also a fluid thing that changes over the course of relationships. Often, couples are very intense early in the relationship — the so-called honeymoon phase — but this need for intense closeness diminishes over relationship. Sometimes that feels like a loss, which needs to be discussed and processed.
More largely, I’ve found that it’s helpful to encourage couples to identify what needs emotionally they want met through closeness. That way, if they’re looking for acceptance or simply a discussion of shared interests, it’s easier to find and receive it from their loved one. For example, my wife and I had to watch a lot of Pokémon as our kids grew up. And while it might be silly, we still have a code, saying “Pikachu, I choose you” to each other as a way of saying — again and again — you’re who I want to be with. Ultimately, that kind of communication and connection means more for us than 90 minutes sitting next to each other checking our phones.
Nina Hartley
I’ve met a few couples in my life who can be together all the time. There was my uncle and his girlfriend, my aunt and her girlfriend and my parents. They all could spend every second of every day together. They worked together. They lived together. They played together. Whether they were monogamous or swingers, this sort of companionship worked for them. They liked each other’s company that much and always wanted to be together. Yay them.
That said, I don’t have an exact scientific sample, but I’d say only 20 percent of the couples I’ve known throughout my lifetime have been like this. Not to mention, I think the idea that true love constitutes spending as much of one’s time together as possible is an unrealistic model of how true love works. This idea is as much of a straight-jacket as compulsory heterosexuality or monogamy. For one, some people have higher needs for alone time or a higher toleration for being separated. These couples are like, “You hate dancing, so I’m going to go dancing with my friends.” Or: “I hate golf, but I love that you have golf buddies because that leaves me two hours free on Saturday morning.”
Some couples deal well with separation. You stay interested in the world — and thus, interesting. Then you come back to the couple and share.
People must listen to themselves inwardly, and learn how to speak that truth. This is the hardest thing to do. This is what I’m still working on myself — so when any of you figure it out, get back to me. I’m not charting new ground here when I say the goal in any relationship is figuring out how to advocate for yourself while not unduly distancing yourself from your partner or jumping into the love pond and drowning with them. That space between stone-cold isolationism and full-on codependency is what’s healthy. It’s a spectrum.
Still, the cultural narrative in the West remains: We fall in love and then we get married. However, when you’re in love, you’re chemically deranged. You can’t sleep. You can’t eat. You think about the other person all the time. You don’t care about work as much. Your life is upended for better or worse when your chemicals take over in that way. This isn’t a state in which you discuss shared values and goals. Instead, it’s, “We’re too much in love to talk about that stuff! I love you! You’re amazing! Of course it’s going to all be fine!” Love is a disruptor. We get hit in the head with a big rock when we fall in love. We see it in cartoons all the time — Bing! Wang! Wow!
It takes somewhere between five to eight months before your chemicals recede back to baseline, which is when you’re left wondering, Hmm, what is this really? Growing in love is closer to what I aspire to in a relationship. A friend once shared this with me, “We don’t fall in love, we rise in it.” So there’s this other narrative of love where people come to a slow, steady realization: “Hey, this person really works. I like it. I feel comfortable, calm, safe, secure and all the good things.” This template, of course, is very different than the one we get from fairy tales and entertainment, which is never about real people doing real things and having real feelings.
I do believe in the melding of boundaries while making love though. That’s a real thing and a very cool thing. It’s hard to achieve, but when it happens, it’s like, “Wow, that’s amazing. Souls really do merge.” But personally speaking, I think to live in that merged state all the time is unhealthy, insupportable and fairly unattainable.
Ashley Manta
There isn’t a quantifiable number of hours couples should spend together because quality time and quantity time aren’t the same thing. You could spend every single day together, but if you’re not making eye contact, talking to each other and being present with one another, that’s not quality time. That’s why I think it’s important for couples to prioritize quality time, whatever that means to them. For some people, quality time is just cuddling. For others, quality time means having deep, processing conversations. Sometimes, quality time is doing things together you both enjoy. Figure out what quality time is for each of you, and then come together and negotiate.
I’m in a non-monogamous relationship, and all of my time with my boyfriend is scheduled. There’s rarely a situation where he texts me like, “Hey, what are you doing today? Do you wanna hang out?” That doesn’t happen. We have dates twice a week, and we have sleepovers every other week. That’s it. That’s because he has a wife and a number of other lovers. He has to divide his time between all of those people, plus work, plus time for himself, plus doing errands and chores.
One neat thing about scheduling intimate time with partners is that it creates a container for pleasure, passion and intimacy that recontextualizes things a bit. Couples are busy with jobs, kids and everything else going on in their life, so knowing that between 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. every Thursday — or whatever day you can skin — you’re turning off your phones and intentionally connecting with each other can be very fulfilling. That doesn’t mean you have to bone the whole time. That doesn’t mean you have to be naked the whole time. It just means that both people choose to be present and show up during that time frame.
When talking to your partner about how much and what kind of time you spend together, you want to try to reach a mutual win. To that end, it’s important to be clear about what your wants and needs are. I tell people to have a three-tiered expectation, where you know your best-case scenario and total win; your perfectly satisfied scenario where you get most of the things you want; and the worst-case scenario where you get the least number of things you need to still feel like it was a productive conversation. When we frame our needs this way, it’s like, “Here’s what’s on the table. Here are the hard lines. And here are the things I’d love as options.” If people had a little more clarity about what their needs are and how they can best articulate them going into conversations, their partner would be able to meet them more easily.
A big key to all of this is being patient and assuming good intentions. When you’re having a conversation with your partner, assume they want things that are good for both of you. Assume that they don’t want to hurt you. Assume that they’re not being an asshole. Because if you can’t assume your partner wants the best for you, maybe your relationship isn’t super healthy. It’s about being kind and thoughtful as much as possible. After all, it’s way more fun to have someone who’s excited to be there, rather than someone who’s only there because you’ll be mad at them if they’re not.
Gaea Woods
Having personal space and time is very important. People sometimes have trouble navigating their own needs while also accommodating their partner’s needs in relationships. For example, someone who tends toward mentally and emotionally supporting their partners before tending to their own needs might feel guilty taking “me time” for fear of hurting their partner’s feelings. These people often have a difficult time asserting their own needs in their relationships. However, recognizing, asserting and enforcing boundaries around one’s time is an extremely important part of one’s self-care — and therefore, an integral component of engaging in a healthy, mutually beneficial and emotionally balanced relationship.
Hurt feelings around negotiating “me time” boundaries in relationships can be avoided if each partner speaks openly about their own needs. Speaking openly to our partners also assumes that we can trust our partners to listen and attempt to understand our unique emotional needs. If a relationship is supportive and understanding, each partner will want to do whatever they can, including allowing their partners the space they need in order to feel emotionally and mentally at their best.
If hurt feelings arise when someone attempts to take space away from their partner, this might be a sign of enmeshment. If we believe, for example, that we need to be joined at the hip with our partner, we may want to examine our thinking. Healthy relationships rely on a balance of dependence and independence. Independence is also essential to our individuality and self-esteem as well as achieving our full potential as humans.
Tierney Finster is a contributing writer at MEL. She last wrote about how your employer wants a lot more say in what you’re eating.
More Tierney: | https://medium.com/mel-magazine/till-death-do-you-part-but-how-much-time-should-you-spend-together-until-then-7ba8a0414a2c | ['Tierney Finster'] | 2018-09-09 04:59:42.690000+00:00 | ['Marriage', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'Mental Health', 'Dating'] |
Update your fall wardrobe with DiscountReactor — the best fashion ideas | With the end of summer we all need to change our outfits for warmer ones, but certainly no less spectacular. This season is contradictory: contrasts are relevant, it is fashionable to be either gentle and rude, strict, and romantic. We are going to give you several fashion ideas on how not to get cold this year and look super-trendy.
Use layering
Autumn has already arrived, which means that the first cold days are not far off. Many people wonder how to look stylish in cold weather. The key to a trendy and warm look is layering. We will tell you how to properly layer clothes without making your look «heavy» and old-fashioned. A turtleneck with a sweater, a lining jacket with a coat or a cardigan, a dress or skirt with trousers, do not be afraid of unexpected combinations. To shop for basic wardrobe items call in ASOS: jeans, dresses, pullovers, jackets, everything you need at the same place. Also, recently, you can even see one coat on top of another. But if you’re not ready to go that far, don’t discard the idea of wearing multiple items instead of one. Confused with tonnes of shops and styles? Call in our favorite online clothing shops like Good American, Farfetch with lots of promo codes for shopping and we bet you’ll find any item you can imagine from classic to crazy ones.
Focus on shoes
It’s time to say goodbye to bare ankles. The designers this season have offered so many options for beautiful and warm shoes, ranging from high, feminine heeled boots to army boots. Even if you are wearing a basic jumper and jeans, trendy shoes will keep your look special. Go right to American Eagle online store to choose among a wide range of loafers, boots, sneakers, Chelsea shoes, and so on.
It’s time to say goodbye to bare ankles. The designers this season have offered so many options for beautiful and warm shoes, ranging from high, feminine heeled boots to army boots. Even if you are wearing a basic jumper and jeans, trendy shoes will keep your look special. Go right to American Eagle online store to choose among a wide range of loafers, boots, sneakers, Chelsea shoes, and so on. Don’t forget about the hat
Unusual hats are one of the main trends of this fall. A beanie hat, a cap, or a felt hat are classic ones for your look, and for sure it’s a must-have for this season. They suit any items, even classic or fur coats.
Leather & Latex
The big trend of the past Fashion Weeks is leather goods in all possible forms: coats, raincoats, jackets, trousers, skirts, shoes, and accessories. Latex also has become a key provocative fall trend. A great future is denigrated for him: on the catwalks, he was presented in all conceivable and inconceivable variations — from the color palette to scope. Feel free to experiment with this fabric, match different styles and colors and you never go unnoticed. Check out the Slam Jam with their streetwear, avant-garde, and Japanese fashion styles to find a perfect provocative piece for your outfit.
The big trend of the past Fashion Weeks is leather goods in all possible forms: coats, raincoats, jackets, trousers, skirts, shoes, and accessories. Latex also has become a key provocative fall trend. A great future is denigrated for him: on the catwalks, he was presented in all conceivable and inconceivable variations — from the color palette to scope. Feel free to experiment with this fabric, match different styles and colors and you never go unnoticed. Check out the Slam Jam with their streetwear, avant-garde, and Japanese fashion styles to find a perfect provocative piece for your outfit. Suits
Women’s suits traditionally take place in the list of fall trends. Two or three-piece suits, oversized, fitted — in new collections, there are models for all occasions which you can match with all types of coats and jackets.
Cell Print
A certain variation of this versatile print was paid attention by many big brands this season- the maxi cage with gradient edges. On ANINE BING you’ll find not only your perfect cell style but also plenty of fall special discounts.
A certain variation of this versatile print was paid attention by many big brands this season- the maxi cage with gradient edges. On ANINE BING you’ll find not only your perfect cell style but also plenty of fall special discounts. Long gloves
This fall designers supplemented them with everything that seemed possible — from evening dresses to formal suits. The unexpected addition of gloves to more modern outfits is just the thing for the cold season.
So, there are a few tips on how to look fashionable this season, if you are the same fashionista as we are and you like to benefit from your shopping without compromises, you better go to DiscountReactor right now to be the first to grab tonnes of promo codes, huge discounts and special offers we collected for you. Follow the link and grab all our exclusive coupons right now! | https://medium.com/@discountreactor/update-your-fall-wardrobe-with-discountreactor-the-best-fashion-ideas-bd9484e65752 | [] | 2020-10-16 13:25:29.190000+00:00 | ['Outfit', 'Fashion Trends', 'Discount', 'Promo Code', 'Coupon Codes'] |
Best Way To Train A Dog Not To Bark | 5 Simple Ways to Get Your Dog to Pay Attention And Not To Bark
Do you find yourself trying hopelessly to get your dog’s attention? Does “in one ear and out the other” sound familiar? Or does your dog find it easy to listen to you until he sees the dreaded mail carrier? Whatever the case, it’s important that us owners are able to capture and hold our dog’s attention. Just imagine the consequences if our dog ran onto a busy road and was not able to listen to us calling him back
I will cover 5 simple tips you can apply immediately to help your dog become more attentive.
1 Brain Training
Brain training is a super effective way to increase your dog’s ability to pay attention to you!
Many of the games in my Brain Training for Dogs course are designed to improve your dog’s attentiveness. One of my favorites is “The Airplane Game,” which you can access for free. In this simple game your dog will learn the following important skills:
How to pay attention to you on command.
How to maintain focus on you despite distractions — unlocking the pathway to s uper obedience.
uper obedience. How to use his hidden intelligence to figure out puzzles.
Enter your e-mail below to instantly receive free access to “The Airplane Game,” which you can start playing with your dog right away!
https://youtu.be/l9JSDHjMQco Watch This Complete Game
2 The “Smacking Sound”
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a noise we could make at any time to get our dog to immediately pay attention to us? Well, fortunately for us there is, and it’s called the “smacking sound”! But before we can harness its power, we need to teach our dog that this particular sound = food.
I make my smacking sound, then immediately give my dog a treat!
To do this, with your dog in a quiet room, make a smacking sound as though you were kissing the air, then immediately give him a treat. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing when you give him the treat (so long as he’s not doing anything bad like tearing up the sofa), the idea is simply to show him that whenever he hears the sound, he gets treats. After doing this for a while, you should notice that your dog looks at you for his treat whenever you make the sound. With continued practice, you can start using the smacking sound in everyday life when you want to grab your dog’s attention!
Keep in mind, however, that the smacking sound may be less effective at times when your dog is too worked up. For example, if he has seen something outside that he reacts strongly to, your sound may go unnoticed. One remedy for this is the “Look at That” game found in my Brain Training for Dogs course. In “Look at That,” we will work specifically on teaching your dog to pay attention to the smacking sound despite strong distractions.
3 The Importance of Incentives
How would you feel about the idea of working without getting paid? This is exactly how our dogs may feel when we ask them to perform mundane tasks without rewarding them for their efforts! That is why incentives are so important in dog training.
There are many different types of incentive, but food rewards are the most common. These rewards are given to a dog whenever he successfully performs a certain action. So let’s say we just started teaching our dog to “sit” for the first time. When he sits successfully, we would reward his effort by slipping him a doggy biscuit or piece of kibble. Now, the next time we ask him to sit, he will be eager to do so because he knows that he will get something tasty in return!
In the Brain Training for Dogs program I cover techniques which allow you to stop giving your dog a treat every time he successfully performs a certain action, and also introduce other forms of reward.
4 Reward Voluntary Check-ins
When you are out in the yard with your dog, how often does he pay attention to you? Most likely, not very much, as he’s far too busy exploring the world with his powerful sniffer. Maybe it’s time for a little change…
I reward my dog for voluntarily checking in on me in the yard.
Make it a habit when you are out in the yard to bring along some high-value treats (e.g. plain cooked chicken slices). Keep these treats handy in a pocket or treat bag. Now every time your dog happens to walk within arm’s reach of you, praise him and extend your hand to offer him a treat. If you do this often enough, positive reinforcement will work its magic and you’ll soon notice your dog checking in with you more and more. This is great news, because it means he is learning that you are worthy of his attention!
5 Right Place, Right Time
Choosing to begin training sessions at the right place and time can play a big role in whether or not your dog is able to pay attention.
It’s best to avoid training your dog when you first come home from work and he is all eager and excited to greet you, or when he’s all hyped up and bouncing off the walls after mealtime. Instead, wait until your dog is calmer and more capable of focusing, and use these times to your advantage.
You may also want to avoid training a new behavior in an environment where there are lots of distracting sights, sounds, and smells (e.g. the yard), as this makes it harder for your dog to stay focused on you. Instead, try training in a quiet room at first. It’s also a good idea to avoid rooms with windows if your dog is easily distracted by things he sees outside. | https://medium.com/@99products/best-way-to-train-a-dog-not-to-bark-a7e93f59a027 | ['Digital Products'] | 2020-12-23 10:38:42.311000+00:00 | ['Dog Training', 'Animals', 'Better Behavior', 'Learn', 'Dogs'] |
How to start investing in the stock market now: The easy way. | I have been working as an investment management professional for the past 7 years for two of the biggest asset managers worldwide. What I’ve learned throughout my career, is that there are no secrets on how to become a successful investor.
I will outline below (the secrets 😂) how to get started today with no hassle and no prior knowledge required. (Note: This is not a trading for a living guide, it is only a starting point for long term investors based on my tiny experience).
Easy as 1, 2, 3… maybe 4:
Download a trading app. I have been using Robinhood and WeBull (in US). If you are in Europe, pick Trading 212 or eToro. I personally use both, but Trading 212 has a nice feature with pies which lets you invest in many assets at once. Robinhood is the easiest and most user friendly mobile app I have ever used but since they ripped off retail investors, I stopped using it and I switched over to WeBull. WeBull, on the other hand, is not that user friendly but it is a great app for investors like us. Do NOT ask what stock to invest in, this is something that nobody can answer for you. We all have different risk tolerance and financial goals in life. Since you have no idea about the stock market, all you have to do is go on the search bar and search for the S&P 500 ETF. There are several companies offering that such as Vanguard, State Street, BlackRock and many more. Just pick one and invest as much as you can afford. Do NOT expect to become a millionaire overnight, it won’t happen :). You need to be patient and try to contribute as often as you can. Even $50 a month can make a big difference in the long run. REMEMBER: Stock market is not gambling. Do yourself a favor and google the graph of the S&P 500 index for the past 30 years (last time I checked was up 9.87%). Only goes up! Not a bad return for doing absolutely nothing!
I hope this post will help you start your investing journey and also remember that you do not need to be rich in order to start investing. You can start with as little as $5. Just be consistent and patient.
If you think you have mastered the skill ( 🤣) to download an app and buy an ETF, you can join our Discord server where we are discussing and learning about stocks, crypto, NFTs, blockchain, Web3 and so on.
Connect with me for more investing and fun stuff on Twitter.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with Robinhood, WeBull, Trading 212, eToro. I have just shared my referral links so we can both benefit from them. You can always go to the app store and download them directly from there. I am not providing financial advice in any way, I am just answering to my friends how to start investing. | https://medium.com/@llaliotis/how-to-start-investing-in-the-stock-market-now-the-easy-way-f0649f0cedc3 | ['Lefteris Laliotis'] | 2021-12-17 11:04:04.577000+00:00 | ['Motivational', 'Investing', 'Business', 'Stocks', 'Crypto'] |
CBD for Dogs | “Every animal with a spinal column also has an endocannabinoid system, so it stands to reason that cannabis can help many species.” Said Liz Hughston, a retired veterinarian.
Hi, my name is Anshika Khandwal. Today I’ll be talking about CBD for Dogs and what are the benefits of CBD on dogs.
The research was done on done for dogs in 2018 on Pharmacokinetics, safety, and clinical efficacy of Cannabidiol Treatment on Osteoarthritic Dogs. Researchers gave the dogs doses of 2 or 8 milligrams (mg) per kilograms (kg) of the dogs’ body weight. 80% of the dogs showed improvement in their pain and mobility. The results were considered a little biased because the funding for this study was done by the CBD producers.
In 2019 another research to assess the effect of oral cannabidiol (CBD) administration in addition to conventional antiepileptic treatment on seizure frequency in dogs with idiopathic epilepsy took place. Almost a similar number of the dogs as in the study of 2018 responded positively and there was a decrement in the number of seizure activities.
Studies like these gave away for the CBD’s medicinal potential for dogs but further studies are still going on to reach a proper conclusion.
DOSAGE OF CBD FOR DOGS
CBD dosing for dogs depends on several factors. As the working of CBD includes the interaction of CBD with the body’s different receptors every human as well as every animal reacts to it differently. Every dog responds to CBD differently that is why it is necessary to start with a small dose and then monitor the effect of CBD on the dog by its reaction and then increase the amount of dose if needed as per the requirements. And of course, before using CBD on any of your pets you should always consult your veterinarian.
You should compare your dog’s needs overall before and after the use of CBD for the determination of the appropriate dosage.
The weight of the dog is also one of the factors in the process of giving the right dosage to some extent. Different weighted dogs have different effects of CBD on them.
Most pet companies recommend 0.5 to 5 milligrams (mg) of CBD for every 4.5 kilograms (kgs) which is 10 pounds of body weight. I’ll recapitulate the amount of dosage as per the body weight of the dogs.
5 pounds: 0.25 milligrams
10 pounds: 0.5 milligrams
20 pounds: 1 milligram
40 pounds: 2 milligrams
60 pounds: 3 milligrams
80 pounds: 4 milligrams
100 pounds: 5 milligrams
120 pounds: 6 milligrams
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE CBD TO WORK ON DOGS?
It takes dogs about 3–7 days to feel some evident effects of CBD. It might feel like it is not working but try continuing it for at least a week or so to see a noticeable effect. If you started at a minimum dose and don’t notice any changes within this time, try increasing the dose about every three days until your dog’s symptoms begin to subside.
BENEFITS OF CBD FOR DOGS
As CBD had benefitted humans it has some amazing benefits on dogs as well. I am listing below some benefits that CBD had on dogs. All of these health benefits have been suggested and/or proven to a certain extent, uses studies with dogs first, followed by any other animal studies and then human trials.
· CBD has shown to improve the sleep pattern in dogs having Canine. The dogs suffering from Canine cognitive dysfunction (dementia) often have confusion between day and night, which interrupts their sleep patterns. CBD use has proven to have a positive impact on sleep patterns inducing drowsiness.
· There are numerous causes of poor circulation in dogs including heartworm and problems with the valves of the dog’s heart. According to research, the use of CBD can improve blood circulation. The usage of CBD for dogs has shown to improve circulation and reduce complications related to poor blood flow.
· CBD is considered to help decrease the frequency and severity of muscle spasms. Muscle spasms in dogs can be the result of allergies, injury, neurological damage, physical injury, or a reaction to many different medications. CBD oil has been very useful in treating these spasms. CBD also works very well as a muscle relaxant for pets. CBD also works effectively to treat conditions that cause muscle tightening of the dog’s body. Those conditions include muscle hypertonicity, meningitis, myositis, and myasthenia gravis.
· We already know that CBD is a powerful antioxidant. Like other antioxidants, CBD helps in reducing cell damage in the dog’s body that results from free radicals. This makes CBD for dogs a great source of relief, especially for the dogs who are having severe allergies, other skin conditions, and it is also helpful for the dogs having age-related deterioration. Dogs can also suffer from the infamous skin condition psoriasis, and CBD is really helpful to treat this disease.
· CBD is now also considered to be a powerful anti-proliferative substance that comes with several health benefits of its own. Studies show how CBD can hamper and even stop cancer growth altogether. Veterinarians have been studying the possible health benefit and how to use CBD for dogs on the path of dying from cancer. Treatment of dogs with CBD doesn’t just kill off tumor tissue, but it can also stop and destroy cancer in its tracks. This is a result of CBD blocking cancer cells from producing energy, prohibiting cell growth, and helping the system to more effectively kill cancer cells.
Cancerous tumors are often reduced in size before surgery or killed off completely with the appliance of CBD for dogs. A multitude of studies has demonstrated the anti-tumor effects of CBD. CBD oil for dogs can also play a role in preventing the migration of tumor cells and the adhesion of tumor cells to tissues and organs in the canine body. This makes CBD a powerful treatment in modulating the metastasis of cancerous cells. While this needs to be studied more in canines, there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence from pet owners.
· CBD can be used to control chronic pain resulting from illness or injury that cannot be treated with traditional methods of pain control in dogs. This has been confirmed in many human and some animal studies, but there’s a lack of research with canine models.
Veterinarians have been discussing the use of CBD for dogs as a pain reliever for quite a while. Using CBD for dogs and its oil application has been proven to supply pain relief without the cardiovascular effects of narcotics.
In clinical trials, CBD has been shown to have a significant impact on pain caused by severe arthritis. The reason this is important is that arthritis pain doesn’t always respond to traditional dog pain relief meds, but CBD has a direct effect on arthritis pain by reducing inflammation and mediating pain with its unique mechanism.
Cannabidiol may also be used for joint pain in dogs caused by sprains, strains, and tears, particularly in older canines. This has been confirmed in many studies with animals like rats and human trials, but little evidence is available with its use on dogs. The CBD here works to mediate pain without the dangerous side effects associated with narcotic medications.
· Different types of bacterial growth can be slowed down by CBD. Some studies found Cannabidiol to act as a bactericidal substance, killing bacteria fully. For dogs with chronic bacterial infections or stubborn bacterial infections that are unresponsive to traditional treatment, CBD can convince be beneficial in slowing or maybe eliminating bacterial growth.
· CBD can improve cardiac function in dogs with arrhythmia. CBD has been proven to act as an anti-arrhythmic in animals when it is administered following the use of a CB1 receptor antagonist. Reducing the incidence of arrhythmia then lowers the incidence of a cardiac event and improves blood flow to major organs in canines.
· Products of CBD for dogs can help with some of their auto-immune illnesses. CBD oil was demonstrated to regulate the overactive immune system and reduce the damage it has on the natural functions and structures of the body.
· It’s been shown how CBD for dog’s application may speed up post-surgical healing and deal with surgery-associated pain or inflammation, as demonstrated in several animal studies. The reduction in inflammation, pain control, and bone support CBD provides makes it ideal for speeding up the process of dog’s healing after serious surgery. This method is particularly effective following orthopedic surgeries.
· CBD is a powerful neuro-protectant, meaning it serves to protect the dog’s nerve cells from different types of damage, degeneration, and impairment of their function. Whether administered following a neurological event or as ongoing treatment for patients with a high likelihood of a neurological event, CBD was shown to protect the brain from damage and reduce the likelihood of an event taking place.
· It’s estimated that about 1–5% of dogs (PDF) will suffer from either idiopathic or symptomatic seizures. CBD can be used to reduce seizure activity in dogs with seizure disorders and epilepsy that does not respond to typical treatment. CBD is also utilized for drug-resistant seizures in humans with Dravet Syndrome where fevers are induced by fever or hot temperatures.
· CBD can be used to mediate anxiety in dogs with severe anxiety issues, with some hints that it may even help with depression. Studies have shown how CBD for dogs provides relief from anxiety and is especially useful in pets that don’t answer or are unable to require the more traditional psychiatric medications due to side effects or existing health conditions. The calming effects of CBD are thought to be the result of the action of cannabidiol on serotonin receptors in the brain, and CBD’s ability to help the hippocampus regenerate neurons in canines.
· CBD may be used to treat dogs with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Because CBD has anti-inflammatory properties, it can be beneficial for reducing the inflammation associated with this condition. This not only reduces the pain your dog experiences, but it also reduces symptoms of IBS to cut back or potentially eliminate the disease.
Thank you so much for reading it till the end. I hope you found this article informative.
REFERENCES
1. https://draxe.com/pet-health/cbd-for-dogs/
2. https://topdogtips.com/cbd-for-dogs/
3. https://www.healthline.com/health/cbd-for-dogs#methods | https://medium.com/@anshika1610k/cbd-for-dogs-11f9ab1a9f5e | ['Anshika Khandwal'] | 2020-06-15 05:53:17.891000+00:00 | ['Cbd For Dogs Anxiety', 'Cbd For Pets', 'Cbd For Dogs', 'Cbd Medicine', 'Cbd'] |
There’s a Monumental Future Ahead — Note to Community— Dec 2020 | There’s a Monumental Future Ahead — Note to Community— Dec 2020
We want to give an update to the entire MahaDAO community & congratulate each one of you for such a successful launch. We want to share with everyone what has been achieved and what lies ahead in the future.
MahaDAO conducted an IDO on Polkastarter a few days ago and we are heart warmed by all those who could participate in our IDO and are grateful for all the support we’ve received so far from investors, advisors, and community members.
Many holders got massive returns by participating in our utility token sale and we are happy to hear that the bots were kept at bay and only humans got in. We are only getting started.
We strongly acknowledge that our whitelisting process could’ve been a lot smoother and to address this we will be sending out a full post-mortem about the IDO very soon (early next week).
Circulating Supply and listing on various apps
We are on track with our circulating supply to be as mentioned in our tokenomics article and will be starting the 2021 year with about 700k MAHA tokens in circulation out of the total 10mn MAHA tokens.
This means that starting 2021, less than 10% of the supply will be in circulation with the remainder distributed over 9 years and 11 months.
We have heard that some of our community members wanted an in-depth breakdown of the token allocations; so we’ll be making public those details shortly in an excel sheet.
We are also working on updating the circulating supply on price tracking platforms like CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. And we are also working on getting $MAHA listed on portfolio apps like Delta & Blockfolio.
Note: $MAHA has successfully been listed on Coingecko, CoinMarketCap, and many other price tracking apps/platforms.
Exchange Listings
Our goal with MahaDAO has always been to list firstly on major tier-1 exchanges for the MAHA coin (as it is a volatile asset) and then list with as many tier-2 and tier-3 exchanges for the ARTH coin (as it is a stablecoin).
On this note, after the success of our Uniswap launch, IDO, and the recent growth of our community; we have been flooded with listing requests from many tier-2 and tier-3 exchanges. A few exchanges have already gone ahead and listed $MAHA organically.
We are taking our time reviewing each CEX properly and are already in talks with a few tier-1 exchanges and so this process can take a while due to the amount of due diligence that happens in the background.
As of writing this, we are listed on Uniswap & 1inch
Uniswap link to trade — https://info.uniswap.org/pair/0xc0897d6ba893e31f42f658eead777aa15b8f824d
1inch link to trade — https://1inch.exchange/#/ETH/MAHA
Staking, Liquidity Farming, and other Programs
Staking is an important component that we will be launching to keep MAHA tokens out of circulation until the product is launched.
MAHA Staking programs will go live soon and will allow MAHA token holders to earn rewards for locking their tokens out of circulation. The tentative timeline for MAHA staking is mid next week. APY & lock-in details will be shared closer to the date.
Uniswap staking programs will begin once the price discovery phase has ended and we see the price stabilizing for a few days. The tentative timeline for Uniswap staking is about a few weeks from now.
A screenshot of the staking website designs
Liquidity Farming for $ARTH will begin when the product launch happens.
MAHA Staking and Uniswap Staking will happen with our partners from Ferrum network.
Note: Staking program is live from 25th December 2020–01st January 2021. You can stake $MAHA here — https://mahadao.com/staking.html
Partnerships
We have a very aggressive partnership pipeline and we are working towards having successful launch partners for the $ARTH launch. Launch partners help multiply the impact that the launch of ARTH will have.
A snapshot of our website showcasing our partners
There are a few major partnerships that we have closed recently that’ll be announced once the time is right.
Our website has been updated with the list of major partners and what they do.
Product Major Milestones
The product is the real game-changer here. And we’re excited to share that we are releasing a beta version in the month of Jan and are on track as per our roadmap to launch by Q1 2021.
A sneak peek of the valuecoin platform
When the product (which is the ARTH CDP Portal) goes live, so will the liquidity farming for $ARTH begin. Liquidity farmers will be rewarded in MAHA and help fuel the liquidity for $ARTH. The world’s first valuecoin.
We will soon have our governance portal up and give token holders the ability to make decisions for the project.
This is the ideal time where we’d like to also focus on getting more investors vested in the project before the product launch happens.
Minting, Current Supply and moving to time-locked contracts
In this section, we address a few of the major concerns brought up by the community members regarding the mint functions and the rich list on etherscan.
The MAHA token is created with a mint function that will help add to the inflation rate that’ll come into effect by the year 2030. This function’s ownership will be moved to a timelock contract that will unlock the mint function after 5 years.
The current locked supply of MAHA tokens (which is around 92%) will be moved into three time-locked contracts. One for seed investors, private sale investors & advisors, one for the team and the rest for the community fund.
Investors and Advisors will get tokens that will unlock linearly every 30 days for 11 months only (157,576 tokens per month).
The team will get their tokens after 11 months
The community fund will get tokens that’ll unlock linearly every 30 days for 119 months (58,333 tokens per month).
Any unused tokens from the community fund in a month will be burnt. The code for these smart contracts will be made public on Github.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to unravel here and it is only meant to show that we are just getting started on the monumentally bright future ahead.
We will soon become a fully community governed project and there’s so much love from all the members in the MAHA community that we’re expediting our plans to do this sooner. A full post-mortem analysis of the IDO will be released around the next week.
Have a great weekend!
Please note: Participants/inhabitants from China, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Canada, USA, Puerto Rico, Brazil, France, Malaysia, Nigeria, Philippines, Russia, UK, US Virgin Islands, & any other possessions of the United States are not permitted to participate in any kind of sale conducted by MahaDAO because of restrictions enacted in the said regions. | https://medium.com/mahadao/theres-a-big-road-ahead-investor-update-dec-2020-7c13ddf2581c | ['Steven Enamakel'] | 2021-02-24 06:10:31.414000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Initial Coin Offering', 'Mahadao', 'Altcoins', 'Community'] |
Stick At Something Long Enough, And It’s Gonna Pop! | Stick At Something Long Enough, And It’s Gonna Pop!
The first step is to get started. Build slowly, and when the time is right, break free from that shitty job and fly solo.
It’s tough, y’know?
We have utility bills that have to pay, and there is food that has to be bought. Kids need school books and uniforms, and having dinner out with the family on a Saturday afternoon is a luxury you can’t usually afford.
Your job stinks, and things are tight, but how can you possibly leave and do something that otherwise commands your curiosity? You’ll be broke as a pie crust inside the first month!
So instead, you work at things you’d rather not and endure the daily torturous feeling that you left something real behind. That you exchanged your favourite thing for something bright and shiny that never really worked. You were sold a pup, and now you feel that your favourite thing may be gone forever.
You’re not alone.
The 2019 World Happiness Report suggests that in America, most adults feel unhappy, and that’s despite material affluence[1]. The decline in happiness has been suggested to reflect a decline in social capital and social support. One of the authors of the report, Jean M. Twenge, indicates that how we spend our leisure time is another factor. I would hazard to suggest that work satisfaction is also a significant factor.
You see, we’ve been caught in a game, not of our own design and we’ve been playing by someone else’s rules. As such, for many of us, it’s hard to see a way out. It’s impossible to envision a future where we can actually make a living at that creative work we’re drawn to do.
From the time we were kids, we have been sold on the notion that getting a good education and working hard will give us everything we need. Forget about what you’re interested in, stick to traditional subjects like science, engineering, mathematics and languages and you’ll be ok. Although perhaps not explicit, it is implicit in the narrative.
I’m not suggesting traditional education is a bad idea, of course not. But a too regimental and narrow focus on too few subjects does not give kids of varying interests and abilities a fair chance. As Julian Astle wrote in a 2018 article for the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts (RSA)[3]; | https://medium.com/the-reflectionist/stick-at-something-long-enough-and-its-gonna-pop-f863e95906e1 | ['Larry G. Maguire'] | 2019-09-12 00:16:03.306000+00:00 | ['Careers', 'Work', 'Art', 'Creativity', 'Education'] |
How does Remoto App Bring Competitive Advantages to Motor Dealers & Drivers | The business of selling and maintaining cars now lives on the smartphone. Car dealers who do not have their own mobile app are in danger of being left behind. Consumers are demanding one-touch service from their chosen motor dealer. If they can’t get it, they may take their business elsewhere.
If these statements cause alarm, don’t panic. At Bright Box, we’ve developed an end-to-end mobile solution to help dealers make sales, manage maintenance and strengthen their relationship with their customers. The Remoto app is available for motor dealerships to use as their own, ready-made mobile app — fully-tested and already in use by more than 2,000 connected dealerships worldwide.
In less than an hour, dealers can have their own branded mobile app, ready for their customers to download and enjoy.
Making life better for automotive dealerships
The Remoto app is packed with features to help motor dealers improve efficiency and build business.
It is a ready-made, white label solution available for dealers to tap into immediately. Remoto provides the back end. Dealers can add their own branding, branch locations, special promotions and more. Even though the app comes from Remoto, dealers can make it look unique to their business to maintain their brand’s link with the customer.
It can help dealers achieve their primary goal of increasing revenue. Dealers can integrate an online shop into their mobile app, giving them the ability to sell accessories without having to meet the customer. This generates additional income and reduces operational costs. Dealers can also offer targeted promotions to customers, which helps boost revenue and assists in inventory management.
The Remoto app helps dealers solidify their relationship with their customers by enhancing service and learning which special offers or promotions each driver is likely to be most interested in.
Perhaps one of the most important features for dealers is that they can list all their locations on the app with map coordinates, opening hours and a list of team members. This makes it much easier for customers to find dealerships and also to call their local team directly using the app. All of these features create a closer connection between the dealer and the customer, boosting customer satisfaction and retention.
Finally, the Remoto app helps dealers with their maintenance operations. In-car diagnostics help spot small problems before they become big ones. It helps to save time and effort for the dealer’s maintenance team.
Remoto — always improving
We think we’ve built a great app with Remoto. However, we understand only too well that if you stand still, you get left behind. We’re continuously improving our Remoto app to help our customers with
● 3–4 updates per year
● new features added, with existing ones simplified
● plans include simplifying the process of technology integration with other systems and platforms
Remoto app — benefits for drivers
It’s not only motor dealers that can find benefits from the Remoto app. When customers download the app to their smartphones, their experience of car ownership dramatically improves.
With Remoto’s Remote Car Control feature, drivers can unlock their car, start the engine and plot their route, all from their phone. Remoto’s Vehicle Health-Check feature lets drivers request service and maintenance from their dealer. It also monitors driving behavior, bringing peace of mind when drivers lend their car to other people. In the future, this kind of information will help consumers achieve lower insurance premiums.
The Remoto app also increases driver safety, with a feature that analyses impact in the event of a crash, automatically calling the emergency services.
Finally, drivers can also follow dealers’ news and promotions in the Remoto app feed, as well as receive personalized offers from their dealer. They can even integrate their Remoto app with their social media feeds.
Other businesses, such as OEMs, National Sales Companies, car sharing, fleet and leasing companies can also use the Remoto app to their advantage.
Get started with Remoto
It’s never been easier for dealers to get their own mobile app and start reaping the rewards. Remoto is a ready-made platform, giving dealers the infrastructure on which to build their apps. With our toolkit, a dealer can have their branded app ready for use in less than 30-minutes. There is no need for additional development.
Remoto is also a cost-effective solution, especially if you compare it to the cost of each dealer network hiring its own mobile app developer.
The Remoto app allows dealers to connect with their customers and boost revenue. Because Remoto is a platform that is proven to produce results, it enables them to gain an advantage over their competitors.
It takes less than a day to customize the Remoto app back end with a dealer’s branding and other information. Using simple APIs, it is also possible to integrate the Remoto app with other software used by a dealer, such as a CRM or dealer management system (DMS). For bespoke dealer requirements, developers can create their own extensions to the Remoto app.
To find out more about the Remoto app for motor dealers, visit the Remoto site today. | https://medium.com/driving-to-the-future/how-does-remoto-app-bring-competitive-advantages-to-motor-dealers-drivers-8aeb830c7998 | ['Ismail Makhlouf'] | 2019-08-19 17:42:22.708000+00:00 | ['Connected Cars', 'Dealership Management', 'Dealership Marketing', 'Dealers', 'Dealership'] |
Should I Self-Publish? | Pros, Cons and a Curveball for bypassing Publications and self-publishing on Medium
Photo by x ) on Unsplash
Considering the pros and cons of self-publishing on Medium just got much more exciting, thanks to the October 2020 desktop interface update. If you’re a writer of micro fiction or poetry you know what I mean…
The October 2020 desktop made two serious changes to the personal homepages of Medium Partner Program participants.
“Infinite scroll” meaning that a writer’s work is displayed one right after the next on our homepages Personal URLs; which are not located behind the paywall
The two changes raised alarm bells for writers, especially producers of works that are less than 200 words, who feared that the interface was now giving away their words for free.
Medium has since clarified that the upgrade is programmed to track the “lingering” of members on parts of a home page as reads, even when they don’t click “read more.”
On the other hand, if a user is not logged into Medium and is not a paying member, they have access to home pages without interference of a paywall.
Pros and Cons of Publications
For those readers who are certain that “infinite scroll” and free previews are not in their best interest, there is a simple solution.
Publications.
When you publish your work with a publication, even a personal one, the story lives first and foremost on that publication’s wall. The share link you generate when promoting the post is to the publication, even though the story does still display on your own homepage as well.
Unlike personal profiles, Publications still have the option to opt out of the new interface and most (in my Medium Ecosystem at least…) still are. Therefore, for the time being, a writer who wants to prevent infinite scroll and free previews can create a personal publication and publish their work there, rather than on their home page, at least for a little while longer.
Pros
In the Suggestion Box, we talk a lot about how important good relationships with publications are in moving up the Medium food chain, from ecosystem to ecosystem, all the more so following the October 2020 upgrades.
Plain and Simple: If your reach is limited but the publication’s reach is broad, you extend your reach when your work is featured by a high traffic publication.
Cons
Self-published stories live ownerless on Medium. As a result, they are suggested by tag in the “More from Medium” footer when it displays, and I have a hunch (just a hunch!) that they are reviewed for curation (still happens, we’re just not told the categories) more expediently than those stories that are not granted immediate curation by publications (large ones can do this).
There are reasons to believe that some good stories can gain traction faster when they are self-published than when they are published on small pubs or pubs with disengaged readerships.
It is important that writers understand that Medium made these changes because they believe that they represent system upgrades that will improve the user experience of the platform over time. Indeed, though we may have panicked (prematurely…) about our compensation being impacted if readers don’t have to click into our stories, we have to acknowledge that Medium removing all barriers that stand between our readers and their desire to read more of our work is a good thing. Likewise, just as the music industry found with radio, often the very best way to gain new readers, users or followers is to give them a taste of our work for free.
A Curveball
My genre on Medium is personal essay, which means that my holy grail publication is Human Parts.
Human Parts has 255,000 followers.
It’s tagline is a “publication about humanity.”
It’s editors work with writers to improve their work prior to publication.
But most of all, unlike the Ascent, GEN, or Curious, great Medium publications, Human Parts welcomes embraces the genre that is personal essay. They welcome nuance. Their submission guidelines (back whey they had submission guidelines…) didn’t ask writers to do things like clearly list actionable take aways for their readers. Human Parts welcomes literature, and that’s what I’m really here to write.
In 2020, Human Parts shifted their editorial focus to center minority voices; a move that I celebrate. As a privileged white woman, albeit an expat, they haven’t been looking for me, and that’s okay. However, in 2019, before this pivot, Human Parts replaced their submission guidelines with a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” notice, and since the Oct 2020 upgrades, even that is now gone.
But, Human Parts is still putting out new work, and it’s no longer focused only on things like race and culture. No doubt hundreds of historic Medium writers still have the ability to directly submit to Human Parts, thereby sourcing some of the publication’s featured stories. I’m just not one of those lucky ducks.
Beyond those lucky few, Human Parts is doing what they promised in the submission guidelines that came down a few days ago (apologies that I don’t have it here to quote for you…). They are scouring Medium for great well-written, compelling personal essays, reaching out to those writers and inviting them to publish with Human Parts. In the last few weeks, I’ve messaged with a handful of writers like these who confirm that this has been their experience.
The Holy Grail for Personal Essays
While generally the best way for a writer with less than 1,000 followers to expand their reach is to publish with an active publication that has greater than 1,000 followers, the holy grail of Human Parts changes the calculation for personal essayists like me.
Whereas most personal essays that I self publish simple get pushed out to my followers and perhaps chosen for distribution, there is always a chance that a lucky, truly excellent essay could be picked-up and distributed by Human Parts. | https://medium.com/suggestion-box/should-i-self-publish-a054b277c6a5 | ['Sarene B. Arias'] | 2020-10-21 15:19:30.854000+00:00 | ['Tips', 'Marketing', 'Ｍedium', 'Blogging', 'Writing'] |
Let’s make a crypto heist movie: 3 To The Moon, 3 Rekt | Future crypto action movie star, Michael B. Jordan.
Things generally seem to be looking up. Spring has sprung. Bitcoin is over $9,000 as I write this. Amazon is doing crypto things, which is music to the ears of a half-man-half-crypto-half-cloud being like me.
To The Moon
I’m very cool with this — I think of Verge tying itself directly to another industry that is historically panned as vice to be similar to jumping into a lake head first instead of wading into the water. If you believe that the adult industry is a technology bellwether, which is historically accurate, then things are definitely looking up for crypto. I will say that the oh-so-timely rumor leaking around this announcement was a pretty clear pump-and-dump scheme from this perspective, and Verge’s price has fluctuated, lending credence to the idea that some selling pressure deflated any hope that hodlers had of a major spike. That’s dirty pool and really pissed off a handful of Verge-stans that I know personally. That said, however you feel about adult entertainment, PornHub is a major, lawful brand in its industry that just validated privacy tokens. Think about that the next time you doubt whether this stuff is here to stay.
Had this discussion with some friends recently — why hasn’t some major film studio leaked that it’s working on a bitcoin heist movie yet? This Iceland story seems like easy plot fodder. While we’re on the subject, here’s my cast, inspired by true events:
Cool mastermind crypto thief who toys with investigators: Oscar Isaac
Veteran lead detective with a chip on her shoulder who only works alone: Olivia Wilde
Millenial rookie detective who nips at lead detective’s heels but has tons of potential and knows crypto: Michael B. Jordan
Friend who snitches on crypto thief under police pressure: Michael Cera
Retired cop father of lead detective who doesn’t understand what all the crypto fuss is about but is proud of his daughter anyway: Clint Eastwood
Budget: 21,505 Bitcoin
Title: Doge Day Afternoon — Rated R
It’s the “in response to client interest” piece that I’m excited about. We know that all of the big banks who hated crypto months ago will become lovers before long, or risk disruption. This is the kind of thing that gives me confidence that a new wave of adopters with stronger convictions than what we experienced during the Moonshot of late 2017. No one is getting rich if everyone that enters is just looking for the fire escape. This would seem to be an underlying indicator of a stronger, more durable upturn than what we saw late last year. | https://medium.com/uncrypt/lets-make-a-crypto-heist-movie-3-to-the-moon-3-rekt-5be0de658bff | ['Will O Leary'] | 2018-04-24 20:00:21.476000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin'] |
Explore Spring MVC Architecture. Nowadays, developers tend to move… | Photo by Safar Safarov on Unsplash
Nowadays, developers tend to move towards frameworks than using the actual Language itself for development. The reason is their simplicity as well as their power of development.
Considering Spring, it is totally a monster of frameworks! Spring has many advantages; Spring provides a lightweight container that can be activated without using a web server or application server software. It gives good support for IoC (Inversion of Control) and Dependency Injection results in loose coupling. With that, the interaction with the Database becomes a piece of cake!
In this tutorial, we are gonna develop a site in our local server that supports user registration and login using spring boot. We are going to follow MVC (Model — View — Controller) architecture in this tutorial. | https://medium.com/javarevisited/a-simple-site-made-with-spring-mvc-architecture-ac8e283cf7e4 | ['Nil Madhab'] | 2021-01-03 14:57:55.033000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Spring Boot', 'Backend Development', 'Mvc Frameworks', 'Web Development'] |
How to Render Medium Blog Posts on Your Website | This is a tutorial on how to use Medium’s custom API to get your blog posts rendering on your website. Using this method is better than manually inputting your blog posts because the API updates as you post blogs. This will also update your website and show new blogs automatically. This tutorial will be done using React.js, but the same concepts and API request can be used on whatever platform you are coding your website on.
Step 1: Fetch the Data
As usual, your component will initiate with an “componentDidMount()” function. This will ensure that the blogs are saved to state before your component is mounted to the DOM. The request link is :
‘https://api.rss2json.com/v1/api.json?rss_url=https://medium.com/feed/@your-user-name'
You must input your user name exactly as you have it on your Medium account. The next part is to simply run a fetch method and save your blog posts to the component’s state:
componentDidMount(){ fetch('https://api.rss2json.com/v1/api.json?rss_url=https://medium.com/feed/@your-user-name') .then(resp => resp.json()) .then(blogs => this.setState({blogs})) }
Now your state has all of your blog posts in JSON format.
Step 2: Write A Function to Render Blog Posts
Using ‘console.log()’ as you code is an important debugging method. If you console.log(this.state.blogs), you will see the data in the following format:
{
feed: {Breakdown of the account the API request is coming from},
items: {All of your blog posts},
status: "ok"
}
The “items” key is where the blog posts are held. Once inside there, this is the breakdown of one of your blog posts:
0:{
author: "Your name",
categories: [An array of your category tags],
content: An HTML version of your article,
description: Typically the same as your content,
enclosure: _proto_,
guid: "Short link to your blog post",
link: "Full link to your blog post",
pubDate: "The time and date your blog was posted",
thumbnail: "Link to your thumbnail image,
title: "Title of your blog post"
}
This is important to see because you need these specific keys to be able to render your blog posts to your website. Now that you have these keys, you can render them with a function any way you’d like. Here is an example:
renderBlogs = () => { if(this.state.blogs.items){ return this.state.blogs.items.map(post => { return <div className="column"> <div className="card"> <img src = {post.thumbnail} className = "Img"/> <h1 className = "cardHeader">{post.title}</h1> <p className = "cardText">Posted on: {post.pubDate}</p> <a href = {post.link} className = "Link"> Read the Full Blog Here!</a> </div>
</div> })}}
Step 3: Call your Function
The final step is to call on your new “renderBlogs” function within your render method:
render(){ return( <div> {this.renderBlogs()} </div> )}
Now you will be able to see your blog posts rendering on your website. As you post on Medium, the API will be updated and add all new blog posts to your website. Play around with the CSS and try to render your blog posts in a way that fits your website’s overall design! | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-render-medium-blog-posts-on-your-website-f14ef11dd20 | ['Granit Haxhaj'] | 2020-11-07 21:30:28.221000+00:00 | ['Ｍedium', 'API', 'Web Development', 'React', 'JavaScript'] |
ADVENTure: A Trustworthy Mother | Mike Moyers, Journey to Bethlehem
You placed Yourself in the loving care of Mary-
Upon the ardent flight to Egypt,
In quiet pilgrimage to Bethlehem,
In her swaddling arms in the manger.
As You took Your infant steps,
And Your last.
How I pray,
That I may trust Mary,
With my clumsy legs and restless hands,
My wandering eyes and anxious heart,
As I take my infant steps,
And last. | https://medium.com/@d-vid/adventure-a-trustworthy-mother-e583299da71d | [] | 2020-12-08 18:15:47.969000+00:00 | ['Mary', 'Advent', 'Christmas', 'Love', 'Trust'] |
Reserve x Certik Technical Partnership | Meet Certik
Reserve has been working closely with our friends and partners at Certik to ensure the security of the smart contracts that comprise our stablecoin protocol. We wanted to take the time here to shine a light on their services and the ways in which they have contributed to the Reserve mission.
CertiK is a blockchain and smart contract verification platform. It was founded by former senior software engineers from Google and Facebook and formal verification experts from Yale and Columbia University. CertiK is unique among software auditing firms in the blockchain space, in that they perform formal verification services. Formal verification is a process that mathematically shows what a program does and how it may encounter errors. CertiK has received investments from Binance Labs, DHVC, FBG Capital, Bitmain, and Lightspeed. They have also formed partnerships with exchanges like Binance, OKEx, and Huobi, as well as blockchain projects like NEO, ICON, and QuarkChain.
To learn more about Formal Verification, head over to Certik’s blog where they discuss the topic in more detail.
CertiK and Reserve
Our RSV token is a decentralized stablecoin that is backed by a basket of stablecoins including USDC, PAX, and TUSD. Our goal is to make RSV a dollar-independent and universally-accepted currency for people and businesses in emerging markets with high inflation and significant financial frictions.
CertiK has and will continue to work with our team to secure the RSV’s Ownable, ReserveEternalStorage, Reserve, Vault, Basket, Proposal, and Manager smart contracts, as described in our whitepaper.
We chose CertiK to formally verify our contracts because of their unmatched reputation for quality assurance and professionalism within the industry. After carefully examining the architecture of RSV v2, Certik concluded that we have “implemented a well-designed system” for our tokens. They also noted that careful checks are performed during each critical operation, such as issuance and redemption, to ensure that RSV stays collateralized. Every operation is associated with the correct access control to prevent untrusted parties from manipulating the state of the protocol.
Conclusion
Reserve’s mission to become the world’s next reserve currency and to provide sound money to those countries that need it most involves taking on a great deal of responsibility. As such, we want to make sure that we are putting forward the best product possible. We are proud to work with CertiK to ensure the software we release meets the highest security standards. Their industry-leading Formal Verification tools have and will be a great benefit to the Reserve mission. | https://medium.com/reserve-currency/reserve-x-certik-technical-partnership-7a7022d6c02e | [] | 2019-10-30 16:17:51.957000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Certik', 'Updates', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Yugagallery Shop for handmade items on Etsy / Amazon | They have amazing products ranging from handmade cups, arabic coffee mugs, turkish coffee cups to sculptures that would stun anyone.
I highly recommend everyone to shop from Yugagallery. They have a high review overall score, and literally have no negative feedback.
Their prices are very affordable when compared to other shops. They provide free shipping all over the world.
You can check their etsy.com store at https://yugagallery.etsy.com | https://medium.com/@cem-oguz/yugagallery-son-etsy-f87efad9fde1 | ['Cem Oguz'] | 2020-12-19 10:20:34.203000+00:00 | ['Etsy', 'Amazon', 'Decor', 'Shopping', 'Handmade'] |
The elements of leadership | Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash
Generally, leadership is a sign of directional assignment which works on the specific direction for accomplishing a job. In this case, leadership always draws the attention of the people for its mastery as well. Incidentally, the wise man will say that leadership is the shipment of a directional rainbow which are coupled with emotion and cognitive impulses as well. If you are intelligent, then you will see that leadership never exit the exterior shell of humankind. Rather, you can say that it exists in human emotion. The reason is that it works only on our mind which is adorned with our emotion also.
Logic
For leadership, logic is an important element for its existence. The reason is that without logic, leadership will be disoriented as well. Moreover, it could not steer its power in the right direction also. Logic is a mental state which directs towards the true reasoning of a task. Here, you can say that a set of principles will fulfil its reasoning power.
Moreover, you will find that leadership always requires a logical state from a leader. In this context, you will find that a leader without logical power will never guide their followers as well. Rather, he or she will stand on the blocked road which never invites any direction also. Practically, leadership will be felt when logical acumen appears on the surface during its reasoning conduct.
Emotional Intelligence
It is one of the stylish instincts of a leader. Emotional intelligence is a mental state which guides the leader to control his or her emotions according to the situation demands as well. Moreover, you can think that leadership always represents the highest order of emotional intelligence which never find in other emotional activities. In the world of leadership, emotional intelligence controls interpersonal relationship judiciously and systematically.
Therefore, you can always expect emotional balance from all direction under leadership. Sometimes, the situations breed the unethical contour, then leadership comes to play a great role in this direction. Particularly, when everything is disoriented for the moment, then a sharp leadership rescues it from the death bed as well.
Query
When a query rise, then leadership give its answer at the right time. The reason is that leadership always delivers an answer to any disruption arising out of a query. The reason is that it creates room for discussion among the questioners as well. Moreover, you can say that a query breeds a lot of doubts and it is essential for the leader to find a suitable answer to the query. Here, leadership brings justice to the query in such a way that it could fulfil its expectation.
Focus
For leadership, focus means producing a clear visual definition. Actually, a leader should have a clear visual perception of their problem. Moreover, we can say deeply that any kind of focus always works when a problem arises. But its solving capability will be determined through its sharp focusing power. Actually, any kind of fuzzy focus will never work for leadership.
Learning
A leader should be always active in constant learning. The reason is that only learning will enrich his or her vision and conviction in a bigger manner as well. The more you read, the more you will learn to be perfect.
Motivating
Motivating power is an essential element of leadership. Without motivation, no leader will able to proceed. Practically speaking, if a leader could not motivate his or her audience, then the meaning of leadership will be meaningless. Moreover, the motivating factor of a leader always attracts the mediocrity level of the people which ultimately converted into the higher-order.
Listening
If the leader could not listen to the audience’s feeling, then he or she will never be successful as well. If you have ears to feel the people’s mind, then you will be able to reciprocate accordingly.
Forgiveness
It is a great virtue for any leader. The reason is that forgiveness always attracts affection, respect and tolerance as well. Without forgiveness, leadership could not be completed its definition also.
Therefore, leadership always delivers a sharp emotional direction towards a wounded soul and also it soothes its pain also. | https://medium.com/the-writing-pool/the-elements-of-leadership-108ec5b03345 | ['Manik Roy'] | 2021-03-25 03:49:56.981000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Leadership Development', 'Management', 'Leadership Skills', 'Business'] |
THE CHOICE OF THE RING SETTING | The color of the ring setting is partitioned into white gold, gold, and rose gold.
Zircon has a high reflectivity.
The numerous features of the precious stone resemble little mirrors that can mirror the encompassing things,
including the color of the shank and prongs.
Therefore, the color of the shank will affect the color of the zircon.
Colored metals are combined with colorless zircon
because they are still prominent inside.
However, this will add some color to the stone.
Suitable settings for purple zircon:
When the purple zircon is the main stone,
white gold or platinum setting can be used to highlight its color.
In addition, it is rare to see purple zircon inlaid in a gold setting.
A suitable setting for blue zircon:
Blue zircon is usually set in white gold settings
to accentuate their charming blue effect.
Red gems can be paired with white gold or platinum
to highlight their colors or with gold or rose gold ring,
settings to achieve complementary colors.
If you would rather not reflect more color to the zircon,
it is ideal to pick white gold.
On the other hand, choose white gold metal,
which is related to durability.
White gold lasts longer than gold or rose gold,
ensuring that the setting will wear out slowly. | https://medium.com/@Trendolla/the-choice-of-the-ring-setting-4e525a0c33a3 | [] | 2021-12-13 07:20:11.096000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Rings For Women', 'Jewelry', 'Christianity', 'Christmas Gifts'] |
My Reflection On Amal Totkay | As we all have our elders remedies with us whether that is mixing turmeric with milk for healing or Eating Carrots pudding for improving Eyesight.
For having a Growth mindset Amal Academy (our elders) have enlighten us with 5 tips of Amal Totkay.
Self Talk Get out of your Comfort Zone Create new Habits Ask people help Fake it till you make it
Tip 1: (Self Talk) It is really essential, one cant know his mistakes and areas of improvement until and unless they self reflect. Dig out some time from your hectic schedule and try to focus on your goals and How you are achieving them or going to achieve them. Never ever tell yourself “I can’t” because that is a full stop on your journey to success. Good things will come to you but all what is needed from you is to keep moving, keep learning and be consistent learn from your failures and come back with something more pushing. Always remember that “Only You Can” no one is going to come and write your story, you are on your own.
Tip 2: (Get Out Of your Comfort Zone) Everything requires a sacrifice, The bigger your goal is the more efforts you have to put for it. No one is going to serve you success in your bed. You have to come out and face the hardships of world, burn the midnight oil for that one day When you will say “I am the king of the world”. There is a famous saying Work Hard or go Home.
Tip3: (Create New Habits) It doesn’t means to leave the old ones but it means to create such Powerful Habits that can make you learn new things. So that you can master your goals and achievements. At least try learning one thing (out of the box) daily to have a developing mindset.
Tip4: (Ask People Help) Today many people have ego problems when asking help from others. You must know that one cannot master in every field. Asking for help from people can bring you new ideas and thoughts and think about your problems more innovatively and can make your decisions more reliable.
Tip5: (Fake it till you make It) Pretend like you have achieved or you are about to achieve success. It can help you keep yourself motivated and stay away from the thought of failure. It is expected that pretending you are about to achieve your goal, you can easily cross the hurdles in your path of success.
My favorite tip is Get out of your comfort zone and I am implementing Tip1 and Tip2 in my life right now. | https://medium.com/@armughan.abdullah194/my-reflection-on-amal-totkay-f0f7d0605641 | ['Armughan Abdullah'] | 2021-08-23 00:21:14.449000+00:00 | ['Keep Learning', 'Entrepreneurial Mindset', 'Amal Academy', 'Growth Mindset', 'Amal Totkay'] |
An Everything Shortform alarm to editors and potential writers! | An Everything Shortform alarm to editors and potential writers! Medium has informed me that publications are only allowed 30 editors. This means my dream of allowing every request to be an editor for Everything Shortform is dead.
Firefighter Alarm from Pixabay
I’m deliberating on the next steps. A few options have come to mind, and I’d like to know your opinion on my considerations.
It’s not fair for writers wishing to come on board to be denied the title of an editor while so many others have been.
Option 1: All current editors beside me will be assigned a writer position, and future applicants will all be writers.
Option 2: Elimination of Everything Shortform.
Option 3: Delete Everything Shortform and remake it again, allowing only writers to join and 2 willing editors.
Option 4: Leave the assigned editors and only let in new members as writers.
Thoughts, please.
Thanks,
Greg | https://medium.com/everything-shortform/an-everything-shortform-alarm-to-editors-and-potential-writers-b7f14023c5ba | ['Greg Prince'] | 2020-12-22 21:54:42.996000+00:00 | ['Publishing', 'Everything Short Form', 'Writing Tips', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Short Form'] |
The Pain of a Patient’s Death | Diaries of an Emergency Medical Technician
One early morning during an ambulance shift, I pull up to a house expecting “weakness and numbness in the legs,” as stated on the dispatch. I am grabbing the first-in equipment bag when a woman bursts out of the front door yelling:
“HURRY! HE’S NOT BREATHING!”
I run into the house and toward the bathroom where this woman is indicating. I find the patient on the toilet, slouched over with his head against the wall. His face appears limp, his mouth draped open so I can see his tongue. His son is gripping on to his shoulder and asks me what is happening. I try to get a quick history from the son as I check for breathing and a pulse. Both are absent.
“He was complaining 30 minutes ago of numbness and tingling in his legs. That’s why we called the ambulance,” the son says. “He went into the bathroom and was in there for a while, so I barged in and found him like this.”
“Alright,” I say. “Let’s move him to the floor.”
The man’s son and I both grab an arm and lift up the man in order to slide his limp body from the toilet seat to the ground. In the process of moving him, some feces stain the toilet seat, the man’s pants still at his ankles.
As my two ambulance partners (one driver and one trainee) rush in behind me after grabbing equipment from the ambulance, they ask for details. I try to summarize the situation as I start chest compressions. This is the first time I have ever had to do manual chest compressions on a real person. During an ambulance call, one partner usually sets up a machine called the “Lucas,” which delivers mechanical chest compressions to a cardiac arrest patient. Somehow, until now, I have always been the partner who sets up the machine.
However, today it is me feeling the disturbing crackles and pops as I push down on the chest, the sensation that is caused by cartilage connecting the rib to the sternum separating. I know the popping noises indicate that I am giving good compressions, but the sounds and feels of pushing down on real human’s chest instead of the mannikin I practiced on in training is shocking. My two partners set up the bag-valve mask, used to administer breaths to a patient who is not breathing on his own. When a backup rescuer arrives a few minutes later, he sets up the LUCAS, and I switch from doing manual chest compressions to delivering ventilation via bag-valve mask.
Thirty minutes later, a paramedic comes to provide advanced life support. He starts an IV and delivers medications. As he walks in, I look up for the first time since I had arrived. I notice about 4 first responders standing in the room who I hadn’t seen or heard enter the house. I also notice that my ankles hurt from kneeling on the wood floor, and I shift my balance to alleviate the pain.
We continue with the same routine — delivering CPR, stepping away for the AED to analyze the patient’s heartbeat, and resuming again. No pulse is detected for the entire ordeal, but we continue until the paramedic speaks:
“2 more minutes of CPR.”
We all know what the paramedic means by this statement. While CPR can be an effective lifesaving technique and should almost always be attempted, many first responders would tell you that at-home episodes of cardiac arrest often have bad outcomes. For every minute that a person’s heart stops, the chance of bringing them back decreases. Three minutes after the heart stops pumping blood to the brain, the lack of blood flow can lead to progressively worsening brain injury. By 10 minutes, odds of survival are low. Therefore, while ambulances respond to the scene of emergency as quickly as possible, the life-saving window is slim upon arrival.
With his words, the paramedic is recognizing that this man has been pulseless for nearly an hour. He is giving us permission to finally acknowledge reality. Up until this point, we were all acting under a sort of collective denial. Denial — of the rejection of truth — is sometimes considered a weakness in other aspects of life. However, it is a sort of skill in the EMS community. As first responders, we show up to a variety of dire situations and must put 110% of our energy into saving a patient’s life, even when we know that the chances of survival are sometimes slim to none. For me personally, denial is an essential driving force. If I stopped for a second to ruminate on the low chances of survival for a cardiac arrest patient, I would be entertaining feelings of negativity and grief before I even attempted lifesaving interventions. Pushing these emotions out helps me to focus and provide good care.
The paramedic pronounces the patient dead. The transition from the symphony of medical machine noises to silence is chilling. I hadn’t realized how loud the room had been a minute earlier, between the verbal instructions of the AED, the beeping of the heart rate monitor, and the pounding of the Lucas machine on the patient’s chest. However, the silence after we all step away from the patient’s body is deafening.
The chaos resumes just 30 seconds later when my partner’s body hits the wooden floor with a thump. In the wake of all the stress and the heat of the room, she has fainted. It is like her body has decided that it is finally time to relax before her mind can realize she feels exhausted. We check her vitals to assure that the fainting was stress-induced and not medical. It feels so bizarre to be treating my partner — the new patient — while a dead body lies on the floor just 3 feet away. The paramedic insists that my partner go to the hospital, and she does.
After my partner leaves in another ambulance, the police come to deal with the dead body. I leave the house and chat outside with the fire department employees, thanking them for their help. Someone even cracks an unrelated joke and I laugh. I feel a sort of guilt and confusion for my laughter, but I think it serves as a release of tension that could have otherwise only been satisfied by weeping.
I have seen people die before on the ambulance. I understand that it is an unfortunate, but inevitable, part of the job. For whatever reason, this death impacted me differently than any other I have seen. While I don’t know why, I do know that it is important for me to put my thoughts on paper, because someone may see them and relate.
After leaving the scene, I return to the ambulance headquarters to chart the incident, as we always do. Then, I drive home. At home, I make my first cup of coffee of the day. Just as I am about to sit down and take my first sip, my head explodes with thoughts. I start to go over my experience with the deceased patient from the minute I entered the house to the minute I left, analyzing and scrutinizing every detail and every choice I made, over and over again.
How fast did I run to the bathroom to find the patient?
Could I have run faster?
Did I take too long when I tripped over that piece of rug?
Should I have told my partners behind me to hurry up?
Did I take too long to get his pulse?
Did I take too long to move him onto the floor?
Did I take too long to start chest compressions?
Were my chest compressions good?
Why did my partner fiddle with the bad-valve mask before getting it on?
Did my partner take too long to get the airway adjunct in?
Should I have just put it in instead?
These questions go on and on in my head for HOURS. I meet my mom for a run to try and escape the rumination, but it continues. The more I think about the experience, the more the memories seem to slip away. I feel like I do immediately after waking up from a dream, as the harder I try to think about the content of the dream, the faster it fades from my memory. The memories disappear to a point where I am questioning everything about the experience. I even question the memories that remain. Can I even trust what I think I know?
Why can’t I seem to remember anything that happened?
How we could have been there for an hour when it all feels like a total blur?
What if his heart was actually beating when I got there, and I somehow missed it?
What if I didn’t even take his pulse?
What if he was breathing?
What if his death is my fault?
I now know that many of these questions are completely irrational, but in the hours following this incident, every doubt I had felt so real.
I have my mother to thank for advising me through this tough situation. She made the simple suggestion that I meet with my ambulance partner and discuss the incident. I was so overcome by emotional thoughts that I wanted to talk with him right away. We met an hour later and discussed each detail of the event, reliving the experience together in a way that was both painful and cathartic. We filled in holes in each other’s memory and ultimately realized that we had done all we could.
I will admit that the experience still hurts. Now two weeks later, I still sometimes catch a mysterious smell on my hands that somehow reminds me of the scent of the room where the man died. I have purposefully avoided the obituary section of the newspaper these past weeks because I would rather not come across his name or any details about family he left behind. However, I feel a lot better than I did in the hours following his death.
I don’t really know if this story has a moral. I guess I hope that it is something that others in the medical community can identify with. In my experience, grief and loss can sometimes hit home in a profound way for healthcare workers, and that is ok. Emotions are unpredictable, but they make us empathetic care providers. I hope that this experience does not make others see me as a “weak” EMT, and I hope it doesn’t mean that I can’t handle this job. I instead hope that my compassion makes me a more caring EMT, and a more relatable person.
From this experience, I have learned to appreciate the “team” approach in the healthcare environment. Communicating my feelings and doubts to an ambulance partner was the best thing I did to get over this trauma. I have learned to lean on my team members and trust their judgement in addition to my own. I was not alone on that ambulance call; I was surrounded by a support system.
Trust your team and trust yourself. There will be times when you will question your choices and even your memories. In these cases, rely on your knowledge and skills to get the job done. If you are struggling, lean on your colleagues. A job in emergency care is hard, and it is our duty to not only support patients, but to support each other. | https://medium.com/@diariesofanemt/the-pain-of-a-patients-death-b5555014813a | ['Diaries Of An Emt'] | 2021-01-21 22:32:55.835000+00:00 | ['Death And Dying', 'Paramedic', 'Ambulance', 'Patient Care', 'Emergency Medicine'] |
I love you | Post Script:
(As I try to construct a new life, I think about old ones. I wonder if I should go back and reconstruct them. Then I am reminded of the relativity of perfection. And the beauty of imperfection. If everything is suchness; then all that is, is just, ‘is’. There is no reason to worry about the constructions of new conceptions if we are only alleviating our own deceptions. I think we need to stop giving into the narratives we tell ourselves in order to listen to our heart. The heart does not deceive. It knows all. And yet, allows for the ego to project its aching ignorance. Because love is patient, it is kind. I do not find these two things separate of one another. I think kindness is a product of patience. If we are to be love, then we are to be patient. If patience finds us, then we will emulate kindness. As I ride this wave, I lose ground. As I lose ground, I find the tide. It brings me back to shore. And then I ride it again. I won’t stop until I become one with the ground; the chaos and the harmony of the ride is the journey.) | https://medium.com/all-roads-lead-to-zen-mountain/i-love-you-6ed913d62278 | [] | 2017-07-18 13:04:08.878000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Poetry', 'Relationships', 'Zen'] |
The Prozbul and Pesach | Last Sunday I was a paid cooperative at the Weaver’s way Coop. For those of you that do not know a paid cooperative is a member of the Co-op who is paid to work and I’m guessing it’s because the store did not get any members to volunteer for a particular shift. It’s pretty chilled work and working there is kind of cool especially after a long week or day of rabbinical school. My shift started at 7:30 in the morning about an hour and half before the store opened. I was assigned to bakery duty. They ordered a ton of bread that day and my job was to sort it, price it and put it in it’s proper place. As I was putting rolls, bagels, baguettes and buns in their proper places it dawned on me that next Sunday will be Pesach.
This got me to thinking, if they call me next Sunday morning to work and they want me to work in the bakery, can I? The over whelming answer that I found was no. So the mere handling of chametz is also forbidden?
The Torah commandments regarding chametz are:
This is something that I had not thought of before. One of the reasons that I work at the Co-op is for spending money. The money I make there will not make me rich, it will not pay my bills, but every time I work there I get cash and it keeps me from going into my own bank account. As I started putting the bread away I wondered what if this were my real Job or your real job and I was just an hourly employee with no paid vacation time, no union and basically could not afford to take a week off from work? What would I do? What would you do?
I started to wonder if these laws really work in today’s society. I have never been one of those Jews that was worried about my food. I mean, sure I refrain from eating chametz but for me, I had always thought about Passover being about freedom and redemption not about chametz being near me.
I talked to a rabbi friend of mine and she told me to look at the prosbul. To me this initially sounded like some kind of sporting event. The Torah mandates a Sabbatical year, known as Shmita, every seventh year. During the Shmita year all debts are cancelled. This is one of the many laws in the Torah meant to protect the poor and disadvantaged, affording them a chance to escape from eternal debt. In chapter 15 of D’varim the Torah teaches us that part of the observance of the sabbatical year must include forgiveness of loans made to fellow Jews. And G-d also warns us that, as this year approaches, we should not refuse loans to our poor brothers and sisters because this would be viewed by God as a sin. The wealthy refused to loan money during the latter years of the seven year cycle refusing the poor even a temporary opportunity to make ends meet. The rabbis, under the guidance of Hillel created a legal loophole in Jewish law. The Rabbis enacted a rabbinic exception to Jewish Law in which a loans were to be transferred to the courts as the law of remission does not apply to loans within the public domain, and lenders knew their money was safe even following the Sabbatical year, and they were likely to loan to the poor.
Could we do this today? Why? Why not? I ask because Pesach for many families creates additional burdens, and families incur additional cost and my concern is with how the custom of worrying about food changes the experience of Pesach from what the Torah envisioned both practically and ideologically. In this country, most Ashkenazi Jews are forced to change their purchasing patterns to a much greater extent than the original law required. For example, high fructose corn syrup, because this ingredient is in so many products many Jews buy special forms, of products at extra cost, that without this custom could be permitted in their usual forms. I wonder have we changed the experience of Pesach from what God ordained in the desert and if the rabbis could change one Torah law, to benefit the poor can we change another law that is mandated in the Torah?
***Update: I worked at the Co-op last night and was on bakery duty | https://medium.com/sandra-lawson/the-prozbul-and-pesach-7ee00a4afd66 | ['Rabbi Sandra Lawson'] | 2016-06-03 17:24:47.591000+00:00 | ['Religion', 'Chametz'] |
Adoption of Decentralized Networks, A Mental Model | H/t to Qiao Wang from Messari whose writing on the theory of The Firm sparked this thought process.
Since its inception, the internet has structurally reorganized many industries, such as the newspaper industry. The internet has empowered aggregators and platforms who serve customers to the detriment of suppliers by forcing suppliers to compete on cost or attention. For example, the e-commerce industry builds its websites and invests huge amounts to optimize their rankings on Google. Google has fundamentally reorganized countless industries that rely on traffic.
There has been as a pushback over this new economic structure and over the next 10–15 years, we believe that decentralized and permissionless business models will again alter how economic activity is coordinated. We have developed a mental model of thinking through when decentralization will overcome centralized alternatives. The model reframes Coase’s “The Nature of the Firm” and shows where a new Paradigm of Economic Coordination is possible.
The Nature of the Firm
In 1937, Ronald Coase wrote a seminal paper titled “The Nature of the Firm” which asked a simple question: if markets are so good at allocating resources, why do firms exist? To elaborate, if the market is so good at incentivizing individual behavior, why do you need a firm? Why are all transactions not carried out between individuals, guided by the invisible hand of the market, in a completely decentralized manner?
Qiao Wang showed how the answer can be illustrated through a tradeoff boundary, where firms optimize for transaction cost efficiencies through sacrificing the incentives of the individual.
Understanding how Firms and Markets interact
To dig deeper into this tradeoff decision and answer the questions he posed to himself, Coase sought to understand what comprises market transaction costs and what makes them efficient. Market transaction costs, consist of three separate costs that are often significantly lower within a firm:
Search and information costs: As information flows more freely within the firm, the entrepreneur can more easily find a suitable employee to execute certain tasks.
As information flows more freely within the firm, the entrepreneur can more easily find a suitable employee to execute certain tasks. Bargaining and decision costs: With no or little negotiation, the entrepreneur simply issues an employee with a task.
With no or little negotiation, the entrepreneur simply issues an employee with a task. Policing and enforcement costs: The entrepreneur punishes underperformers through allocating resources elsewhere, perhaps punitively (e.g. letting them go).
Thus, Coase concludes that firms exist as they serve to lower the transactional costs in certain types of economic activities. (His conclusions also explained where firms are less efficient than the market. The full paper is available here.)
Web 2.0 Platforms
We believe that Coase’s theory shows why internet-based platforms have dominated different industries. Typically, Web 2.0 platforms have replaced previous inefficient analog market processes with digital centralized alternatives. In the process, these centralized platforms have reduced the cost of market transactions for users by lowering all three costs that comprise a market transaction. In turn, this has forced suppliers to compete ferociously in hyper-competitive marketplaces, resulting in the commoditization of their services or goods. Importantly, once a platform has achieved scale, it generates revenue through ‘rent-seeking’ by charging a fee on each transaction. Aggregation Theory explains why this is possible.
Decentralized Networks
We agree with Qiao Wang that decentralized networks have the potential to push the tradeoff boundary between maximization and cost efficiency outward by offering a more efficient frontier than the market, a centralized platform or the firm. Also, we believe that these networks have the power to eliminate platform rent-seeking.
Understanding how decentralized networks extend the efficiency frontier outwards
Decentralized networks can lower market transaction costs in the following ways:
Search and information costs: Decentralized networks reduce this cost as trusted information flows easily on a public blockchain. This information, which is forever stored in a publicly accessible, auditable and immutable ledger reduces information asymmetry. In turn, this reduction reduces easier and cheaper transactions.
Decentralized networks reduce this cost as trusted information flows easily on a public blockchain. This information, which is forever stored in a publicly accessible, auditable and immutable ledger reduces information asymmetry. In turn, this reduction reduces easier and cheaper transactions. Bargaining and decision costs: Bargaining is a process of discovery and acceptance between a willing buyer and a willing seller. Blockchains crystallize this discovery through open source software and price discovery mechanisms. The combination of open data and auction techniques eliminate bargaining costs.
Bargaining is a process of discovery and acceptance between a willing buyer and a willing seller. Blockchains crystallize this discovery through open source software and price discovery mechanisms. The combination of open data and auction techniques eliminate bargaining costs. Policing and enforcement costs: Enforcement through consensus and embedded logic.
Mental Model
So, where does a decentralized network outperform against a centralized platform in a broad sense? We believe decentralized networks will succeed where:
‘Costs’ include the broader interpretations of costs, such as opportunity costs, and implicit costs (e.g. convenience and mental transactions). This will be expanded on in subsequent posts.
We believe that the exponential improvements enabled by these new market efficiencies will disrupt sectors where incumbents are extracting significant rent and economic surplus from the market. Successful blockchain-based networks will, therefore, be governed by the above formula, which we call the Blockchain Coordination Frontier (or BCF).
Applying the Model
Let’s apply this mental model to the original use-case for Bitcoin, as P2P money transfer.
The early era of Bitcoin, where it was used as a P2P money transfer mechanism in gray markets, illustrates this point:
Market Coordination Costs
Transfer costs (for Bitcoin, these were low)
Volatility (High cost as it was much higher than fiat)
Fiat onramp costs (Using local bitcoin was costly in terms of convenience)
General poor usability (Sending and receiving bitcoin was non-trivial and required technical education)
Volatility, fiat onramp, and usability costs were relatively high.
Platform Rent Extraction Costs
Regulatory costs (i.e. Jail time)
Platform risk (A bank freezing your account)
Traceability cost (Bank transfers are easy to trace, and all accounts linked to a drug dealer could be identified)
Blacklisting cost (No bank account)
The regulatory, traceability and blacklisting costs are large in a gray market. Paying a drug dealer via bank wire is very risky. So people resorted to cash if they could, but this had geographical limits as you had to meet somewhere.
Summarizing, the combined ‘blockchain-based market coordination costs’ (although high) were still much lower than ‘platform rent extraction costs’. Thus, gray markets became Bitcoin’s first dominant market as Bitcoin lowered the transaction costs by such an exponential degree that it was successfully adopted.
In subsequent posts, we will use this model to predict which sectors blockchain will successfully disrupt. Also, we will show how blockchain-based networks can outperform Web 2.0 centralized platforms by exponentially reducing market transaction costs. | https://medium.com/newtown-partners/adoption-of-decentralized-networks-a-mental-model-25aab6f7a00 | ['James Kilroe'] | 2019-03-15 11:59:50.589000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Decentralized Networks', 'Mental Models'] |
Women’s clothes-Fashion Trends 2021 | With the new season comes new fashion. This year is no different. From exciting and beautiful fashion trends for Women that will make you wow. Women’s clothes are the most trendy on the whole. Whether that be Women fashion in the 80s or 90s or even today, it still prevails everything else. From Paris to Milan, find serious style inspiration with the top fashion trends spotted at SS21 Fashion Weeks.SO let's dive into the latest fashion trends for 2021
1. Head Scarfs
Taking inspiration from the 50s and the 60s, this sleek fashion trend is coming back in a big way. Headscarves protect your hair and add a finishing touch to your outfit without overdoing it, whilst making you look fabulous. Eyecatching and gorgeous but also gives a fascinating look. Choose from a silky design with floral motifs or intricate patterns, or keep it simple with bold colours. The fabrics in this charming piece are both pleasing to the eye and to the touch in addition to being very comfortable to wear.
You will not regret purchasing this creation of elegant, understated beauty.
2.Oversized Shoulderpad Boyfriend Jackets
This look is by far the most exciting of them all. With the help of shoulder pads, this outerwear cinches in your waist and elongates your legs. Rock this look with a pair of straight-leg trousers for modern style. Wearing this not only catches the eye but you’ll have a few people amazed by your style. You can easily dress this up or down for an effortlessly chic aesthetic.
3.Sweet Cropped Cardigans
Nothing defines easy fall dressing quite like a cropped cardigan. If putting together a cute outfit seems like too much to handle right now, a shrunken knit with your favourite jeans are the perfect answer. Styles range from basic button-ups to embroidered, embellished, or printed knits so there’s pretty much something for everyone. This vintage-inspired trend was kicked off among higher-end brands like Alessandra Rich and LoveShackFancy, and it has inevitably trickled down to the Zaras and Forever 21s of the world.
4. Yellow Bags
This season yellow bags have taken over the runways and the streets. This trend is easy to replicate and it is timeless — choose a small clutch to add a bit of zing to your outfit. Classy and simple yet gorgeous.
5.Shackets
Getty
Brushed plaid “shackets” — a hybrid of shirt and jacket — are among the current fashion trends that can be worn anywhere, any time. Heavier than a flannel shirt but not quite as bulky as a full-on coat, they’re perfect if you need to run out. Informal and yet quite attractive and fashionable, they are really a cheat code in fashion.They also look great with most things you’re already wearing, from sweatpants to turtlenecks.
6. Hoodies Under Blazers
Take the “cozy” quarantine piece we’re all sick a little of wearing and layer it under a blazer, and you’ve got a legitimately perfect, just-polished-enough outside — or inside — look. Cute and elegant with flair, this style grabs everyone’s attention. Whether you favour boxy oversized blazers or more tailored styles, you can’t mess up this trend. | https://medium.com/@safwaanm-khan/womens-clothes-fashion-trends-2021-93d8641c7dea | [] | 2021-04-29 20:09:13.206000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Womens Clothing', 'Clothing', 'Fashion Trends', 'Fashion'] |
The relativity of weight | ‘Won’t the commute be too heavy?’ I was asked seven years ago, during the application rounds for a job at the organisation I am currently still working for but will be leaving mid-April. The mentioned commute was about two hours, one way: from a small town with little public transport to the center of Brussels. The offices weren’t located in a spot that was by no means unreachable, but still a twenty-minute walk from the nearest of Brussels three main train stations (or about the same amount of time by train, if you caught your connection and the trains actually ran — always a bit of a bet in Belgium).
Back then, I shook my head firmly — heavy, not at all. I really wanted the job.
It was indeed managable, it turned out, when I started doing it two or three times a week. It was a bit of a hassle, but I was willing to take that in stride. It made for long days, though: I was easily gone from home for twelve full hours. (For those of you who don’t know the Belgian work environment very well: nine-to-five is a standard for a lot of people (in which we work very hard and perform as much work or more than people in countries where work hours are longer but the work rhythm is less efficient or more relaxed), and we try to live close to our jobs.) It was one of the reasons why I worked only 2,5 days out of five.
By the end of the year, when my temporary contract was coming to a close and I’d had my fill of the job it referred to, the commute had indeed begun to weigh. I experienced it like a true weight, and a burden.
But then a job vacancy appeared, for the same organisation, one floor up in the same building. Journalist and editor. That was what I wanted. I had had a tast of it and loved it. It was the kind of work that made me happy. I applied and got the job.
That’s when something strange happened. | https://medium.com/the-story-hall/the-relativity-of-weight-6df1616db45b | ['Kirstin Vanlierde'] | 2019-03-20 15:44:01.238000+00:00 | ['Adventure', 'Fulfillment', 'Commute', 'Choices', 'Life'] |
Dear High School English Teacher | Sign up for The Story Box
By Scribe
The Story Box is a lovingly written newsletter featuring delightful stories and all updates from the publication. Every Sunday, just for you. Take a look | https://medium.com/scribe/dear-high-school-english-teacher-259fd4c97755 | ['Julia Beaudett'] | 2019-02-08 11:42:18.730000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Creative Writing', 'Poetry', 'Humor', 'Writing'] |
Logistic Regression | Before we discuss logistic regression, I certainly hope that you do know what linear regression is, and here is a short summary for linear regression.
What is Linear Regression?
Linear Regression is a supervised machine learning algorithm which is used to predict a target value based on independent variables. When I say supervised it means that it needs labeled datasets to make predictions. The target value predicted using linear regression is a continuous value. How it works is that, Linear Regression model finds the best line that can accurately predict the output for continuous dependent variable. See the images below to get a clear understanding.
Here we want to predict the size of an object using an independent variable weight. The points in the graph are known datapoints/dataset. Now in linear regression we try to fit a straight line among the datapoints such that is accurately predicts the output. See image for clarity.
And based on this line we pedict the target value for any given unknown independent variable.
Logistic Regression
Now Logistic Regression is also a supervised machine learning algorithm and is similar to linear regression but the difference that instead of predicting continuous values, it is mainly used for classification problems. Here I’ve said that it is used for classification problems but remember it is a regression model. How it works is that instead of fitting a straight line to the data like linear regression, logistic regression fits an ‘S’ shaped logistic function into the data.’
Herein the given image the function y= f(x) is a sigmoidal function usually represented as
If you look at the function closely, you’ll realize that the value of the given function can only vary from 0 to 1 which is the main catch here. It is somewhat like probability. So, Logistic regression is a supervised learning classification algorithm used to predict the probability of a target variable. Mathematically, a logistic regression model predicts P(Y=1) as a function of X. It is one of the simplest ML algorithms that can be used for various classification problems such as spam detection, Diabetes prediction, cancer detection etc. Let us see an example for better understanding.
In the above graph we have data for obese and non-obese mice based on their weight. Now the logistic regression model fits a sigmoidal function on the data.
This means that the curve now tells us the probability whether a mouse is obese or not.
By now you must have figured out that a logistic regression model becomes a classification model only after we bring a threshold value to it. For example if the probability of a mouse being obese is more than 0.6, then we classify it as obese.
Types of Logistic Regression
Generally, logistic regression means binary logistic regression having binary target variables, but there can be two more categories of target variables that can be predicted by it. Based on that number of categories, Logistic regression can be divided into following types −
Binary or Binomial
In such a kind of classification, a dependent variable will have only two possible types either 1 or 0. For example, these variables may represent success or failure, yes or no, win or loss etc.
Multinomial
In such a kind of classification, dependent variable can have 3 or more possible unordered types or the types having no quantitative significance. For example, these variables may represent “Type A” or “Type B” or “Type C”.
Before diving into the implementation of logistic regression, we must be aware of the following assumptions about the same −
· In case of binary logistic regression, the target variables must be binary always and the desired outcome is represented by the factor level 1.
· There should not be any multi-collinearity in the model, which means the independent variables must be independent of each other.
· We must include meaningful variables in our model.
· We should choose a large sample size for logistic regression.
Code Sample
Let’s see how we can we perform logistic regression using python and which libraries do we need to import.
Scikit-learn or sklearn is a free machine learning library for Python where all machine learning models are implemented as python classes.
Training your model:
>>from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
>>classifier = LogisticRegression(random_state = 0)
>>classifier.fit(xtrain, ytrain)
Using the trained model to predict data:
y_pred = classifier.predict(xtest)
We can further test the performance of the trained model
from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score
print (“Accuracy : “, accuracy_score(ytest, y_pred))
Hope you guys liked it. Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/@iamr0h1t/logistic-regression-e0e63f7097d7 | ['Rohit Kumar'] | 2020-12-05 07:56:12.460000+00:00 | ['Basics', 'Learning', 'Regression', 'Machine Learning'] |
The GPT-3 won’t get you laid off. Unless you’re a fulltime autoregressive… | This, by all means, is hugely impressive and *really* cool, if you ask me.
The ability of the GPT-3 to generate layouts, Python code, or creative content is shocking to most people. And it should be. It’s really strange to see a machine learning model that can comprehend and act upon requests in a reasonably correct fashion.
So with that in mind, let’s get to the main topic.
The GPT-3 won’t get you laid off
Well, at least for the near future. I won’t dare to give it a timeline, as I’m a firm believer in the following:
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future” — Danish Proverb
And, of course, I’m not referring to the folks that are working 9 to 5 as an autoregressive language model API. Feel sorry for you.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
When innovation comes to disrupt tasks performed by people, the discussion of the effects of the technology regarding society always gets heated. When such innovation is seemingly disrupting the output of a workforce that is known to produce things that are similar to magic, like software engineers in general, things are definitely getting more heated than previously.
We, as tech people, are having some mixed feelings that are affecting our judgment.
I’m afraid that the notion that the GPT-3 is a truly groundbreaking achievement and, at the same time, it won’t hurt us, is not being brought up as frequently as it should.
Yes, it can generate code. Just because of that, I wouldn’t advise you to switch careers or fire your engineering team.
Yes, maybe the code that is generated is not as fancy as the code you write with 5,10 or 20+ years of experience, tricking the compiler or the framework to achieve maximum performance. Just because of that, I wouldn’t advise you to ignore it completely, like a super-hyped technology that will be forgotten on a dusty shelf.
“Deep Learning is a superpower” — Andrew Ng
We need to learn how to use it to potentialize our craft, before anything else.
The tools that can be created with the use of GPT-3 and other ML models to help us build, keep, and run better technology are in a league of their own. And they could help us, as professionals, to reach a new level of productivity, quality, and overall expertise.
In our little tech bubble, we can think of the new possibilities that are brought to the table with the GPT-3.
We can reimagine and build, from the ground up, the tools that we use daily — for coding, designing, managing work, etc — in order to become better professionals.
For example, we can use it to build better IDEs. Smart IDEs. Some companies have already started the work in the field and have developed great products. However, I feel there’s a lot more to evolve, and even to reimagine what an IDE can look like.
We should work on those tools so that we can be better at our craft, not to replace us altogether.
A vast portion of professionals of all areas have had to reinvent themselves through the years due to the code that we’ve written and all of a sudden we ourselves are unable to do the very thing we’re advocating for decades?
It’s up to us to learn how to use our new superpower. | https://towardsdatascience.com/the-gpt-3-wont-get-you-laid-off-8a5cb5f1dcb8 | ['Thiago Candido'] | 2020-07-24 16:22:07.338000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Startup', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Programming', 'Deep Learning'] |
Best movies and Tv-series for Synthwave lovers | Synthwave is an electronic music microgenre that is based predominately on the music associated with action, science-fiction, and horror film soundtracks of the 1980s. In recent years that has changed in a big way earning its right full place as a musical genre loved by millions of people including me.
The genre allows people to fully use their imagination and make up the image of the future for themselves. Saying that when we watch sci-fi movies or tv-shows it helps us paint a better picture of our imagination, so here are the best movies from all types of genres that will be diabolical for Synthwave lovers
1. Love Death + Robots
This collection of animated short stories spans several genres, including science-fiction, fantasy, horror, and comedy.
2. Raised by wolves
Two androids are tasked with raising human children on a mysterious virgin planet; as the human colony threatens to be torn apart by religious differences, the androids learn that controlling the beliefs of humans is a treacherous and difficult task.
3. Interstellar
In the future, where Earth is becoming uninhabitable, farmer and ex-NASA pilot Cooper is asked to pilot a spacecraft along with a team of researchers to find a new planet for humans.
4. Ghost in the shell
In the near future, Mira, the first cyber-human, must stop the growing cyber-terrorism. After discovering a secret of her identity, she sets out to learn more about her obscured past.
5. Ex Machina
Caleb Smith, a young programmer, gets a chance to become a part of a strange scientific experiment where he is expected to assess artificial intelligence by interacting with a female robot.
6. Bladerunner 1982
Rick Deckard, an ex-policeman, becomes a special agent with a mission to exterminate a group of violent androids. As he starts getting deeper into his mission, he questions his own identity.
7. Bladerunner 2049
K, an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, unearths a secret that could cause chaos. He goes in search of a former blade runner who has been missing for three decades.
8. I Am Mother
A teenage girl is raised by a robot designed to repopulate Earth. Their bond is tested when a stranger arrives with alarming news.
9. Rick and Morty
After having been missing for nearly 20 years, Rick Sanchez suddenly arrives at daughter Beth’s doorstep to move in with her and her family. Although Beth welcomes Rick into her home, her husband, Jerry, isn’t as happy about the family reunion. Jerry is concerned about Rick, a sociopathic scientist, using the garage as his personal laboratory. In the lab, Rick works on a number of sci-fi gadgets, some of which could be considered dangerous. But that’s not all Rick does that concerns Jerry. He also goes on adventures across the universe that often involve his grandchildren, Morty and Summer.
10. Arrival
Louise Banks, a linguistics expert, along with her team, must interpret the language of aliens who’ve come to earth in a mysterious spaceship.
11. Annihilation
Lena, a biologist, and former soldier joins a mission to uncover what happened to her husband inside Area X — a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Once inside, the expedition discovers a world of mutated landscapes and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.
12. Alita: Battle Angel
Alita, a battle cyborg, is revived by Ido, a doctor, who realizes that she actually has the soul of a teenager. Alita then sets out to learn about her past and find her true identity.
conclusion
If you’re a Synthwave fan there is a chance you saw some of these movies in that case kudos to you. You are watching the right movies. | https://medium.com/@alemalohe/best-movies-and-tv-series-for-synthwave-lovers-c15f58ed6c0b | [] | 2020-12-27 07:55:27.438000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Synthwave', 'Sci Fi Fantasy', 'Top 10', 'TV Series'] |
An Introduction to the Falcon Framework | Building a RESTful API With Falcon
In this example, you will build a bucket list API. A bucket list is simply a list of things you’d like to do before you die. Let’s get started. Create the project directory and set up a virtual environment.
mkdir bucketlist
cd bucketlist
virtualenv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
Install Falcon
Installing Falcon is as simple as:
pip install falcon
Create another folder app inside the bucketlist directory and mark it as a Python module by creating an empty __init__.py file in it:
mkdir app
touch app/__init__.py
Inside the app folder, create a file main.py and add the following code.
Falcon framework uses the concept of a resource. Resources are things that can be accessed by a URL. We will discuss this further when we start building the views for our application.
Edit main.py file to look something like this:
Falcon speaks WSGI, and so to serve a Falcon app, you will need a WSGI server. In this tutorial, we will be using Gunicorn to serve our app, so let’s install Gunicorn.
pip install gunicorn
Now run your application by issuing gunicorn -b 0.0.0.0:8000 — reload main:application . Navigate to http://127.0.0.1 , and you should see your representation of the IndexResource .
Let’s now get started on creating the blocks for our application:
Configure database
We will use the PostgreSQL database because it’s robust and stable.
PostgreSQL should be installed on your machine. Install the psycopg2 driver library in our application
pip install psycopg2
Create database and user
Create a database “bucketlist” and assign a user.
Switch over to the Postgres account on your machine by typing:
sudo su postgres
Access a Postgres prompt:
psql
Create bucketlist database:
CREATE DATABASE bucketlist;
Create role:
CREATE ROLE pat WITH LOGIN PASSWORD ‘my_password’;
Grant access to the user:
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE bucketlist TO pat;
We will use the SQLAlchemy extension to manage our application. This extension provides an ORM wrapper for the SQLAlchemy project.
Create a file config.py in the app directory and add the configurations you set up for the database above. The config file should look something like this.
Create models
Create a file models.py in the app directory and write the following code.
Here we declare a base class that all schema objects will inherit from. The to_dict function will manage our queries by returning results in dictionary form.
The declarative_base() returns a new base class from which all mapped classes should inherit.
In config.py , update the file to use our models. Here we use the base class from our models to declare metadata that will be used to issue CREATE statements for all tables in our models.
Requests and responses
Each responder in a resource receives a Request object that can be used to read the headers, query parameters, and body of the request.
HTTP request and HTTP response are represented by req and resp , respectively.
Create middleware for managing requests and responses
A middleware is a Python class that hooks into the request/response lifecycle.
Create a new file middleware.py in the app directory and add the following middleware class:
The class above demonstrates how to read headers and query parameters, handle errors, and how to work with request and response bodies.
Configure WSGI server to load the middleware and initialize the database
Edit the main.py file to include the middleware, and initialize the database as shown below.
Create resources
As we mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, Falcon uses the concept of a resource, and Python classes usually represent these resources. They convert the incoming response into an action and deliver a response back to the client.
For a resource to provide support for any HTTP method, you add an on_*() method to the class, where * is any one of the common HTTP methods, in lowercase, i.e., on_get() , on_put() , etc.
Although resources are just regular classes, we are going to create a custom base class, BaseResource , from which we will inherit when we start creating our resources.
Let’s start by creating a tasks resource. In app/views.py add the following code to:
The TaskResource defines two methods, on_get() for obtaining all the recorded tasks and on_post() for adding a new task.
Create URLs
URLs provide a way for the client to identify resources uniquely.
Edit the main.py file to include the URL for the TaskResource as follows:
from app import views
application.add_route(‘/tasks/’, views.TaskResource())
Now, when a request comes in for /tasks , Falcon will call the responder on the task’s resource that corresponds to the requested HTTP method.
The project’s structure should now look like this:
Navigate to http://localhost:8000/tasks and see your resource in action.
Add a task
View tasks
Hooks
Hooks in Falcon are similar to Python decorators.
Suppose our application required the user to be logged in before they could add or view tasks. We would implement this with a before hook.
Let’s create a hook that will run before each request to view or add a task.
Next, we attach the hook to the on_post() responder and on_get() responders, as shown below.
Now, before every call to that responder, Falcon will first invoke login_required , giving the following response.
{
“title”: “401 Unauthorized”
}
Error handling
Falcon provides a set of error classes you can raise when something goes wrong, hence making it easier to detect and log errors.
These error classes include:
falcon.HTTPBadRequest
falcon.HTTPInvalidHeader
HTTPMissingHeader
HTTPInvalidParam | https://medium.com/better-programming/an-introduction-to-the-falcon-framework-a787ceea098 | ['Esther Vaati'] | 2020-08-21 18:10:12.123000+00:00 | ['Python3', 'Data Science', 'Programming', 'Python', 'API'] |
Shuffle, Split, and Stack Numpy Arrays | Although there are packages such as sklearn and Pandas that manage trivial tasks like randomly selecting and splitting samples, there may be times when you need to perform these tasks without them.
In this article we will learn how to randomly select and manage data in NumPy arrays for machine learning without scikit-learn or Pandas.
Split and Stack Arrays
In machine learning, a common way to think about data structures is to have features and targets. In a simple case, let’s say we have data about animals that are either dogs or cats. The task at hand is to prepare an array for machine learning without the use of helpful libraries.
In this example, consider a spreadsheet-like array were each row is an observation and each column has data about that observation. The rows represent samples and the columns contain data about each sample. Finally, the last column is the target, or label for each sample.
Figure 1 — One way to think about features and targets in an array for machine learning. Image from the author, credit Justin Chae
To get started on a machine learning project that predicts cats and dogs. The array might have a few columns and rows or thousands (or millions!) — whatever the case, the major steps are going to be the same: split and stack.
Split Dataset
You may need to split a dataset for two distinct reasons. First, split the entire dataset into a training set and a testing set. Second, split the features columns from the target column. For example, split 80% of the data into train and 20% into test, then split the features from the columns within each subset.
# given a one dimensional array
one_d_array = np.array([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]) # randomly select without replacement
train = np.random.choice(one_d_array, size=8, replace=False) print(train) """ output
[ 3 5 10 9 6 8 4 7]
"""
Moreover, instead of always picking the first 80% of samples as they appear in the array, it helps to randomly select subsets. As a result, when we split, we actually want to randomly select and then split.
To randomly select, the first thing you might reach for is np.random.choice(). For example, to randomly sample 80% of an array, we can pick 8 out of 10 elements randomly and without replacement. As shown above, we are able to randomly select from a 1D array of numbers.
Random sampling is especially desired if the first half of the data contains all cats, since it prevents us from training on only cats and no dogs.
# a example array of data extended from Figure 1
# with shape (10, 4)
animals = np.array([[1,0,1,0],
[1,1,0,1],
[1,0,1,0],
[1,1,0,1],
[1,1,0,1],
[1,0,1,0],
[1,1,0,1],
[1,0,1,0],
[1,0,1,0],
[1,1,0,1]]) train = np.random.choice(animals, size=8, replace=True)
print(train) output
ValueError Traceback (most recent call last)
in <module>()
----> 1 train = np.random.choice(animals, size=8, replace=True)
2 print(train)
mtrand.pyx in numpy.random.mtrand.RandomState.choice()
ValueError: a must be 1-dimensional
""" """ValueError Traceback (most recent call last) <ipython-input-44-ecab0b58674d> in ()----> 1 train = np.random.choice(animals, size=8, replace=True)print(train)mtrand.pyx in numpy.random.mtrand.RandomState.choice()ValueError: a must be 1-dimensional"""
Oops — np.random.choice() only works on 1D arrays. As a result, it fails to sample from our animals array and returns an ugly error message. How to work around this issue?
First option. Turn the problem sideways and instead of sampling the array directly, sample the array’s index, then split the array by index.
Figure 2 — Randomly sample the index of integers, then use the result to select from the array. Image from the author, credit Justin Chae
If the array has 10 rows, the idea is to randomly select numbers from 0 through 9 and then index by the array by the resulting lists of numbers.
# length of data as indices of n_data
n_data = animals.shape[0] # get n_samples based on percentage of n_data
n_samples = int(n_data * .8) # make n_data a list from 0 to n
n_data = list(range(n_data)) # randomly select from range of n_data as indices
idx_train = np.random.choice(n_data, n_samples, replace=False)
idx_test = list(set(n_data) - set(idx_train)) print('indicies')
print(idx_train, idx_test)
print('test array')
print(animals[idx_test, ]) """ output of split indices and the smaller test array
indicies
[5 4 6 3 2 1 7 0] [8, 9]
test array
[[1 0 1 0]
[1 1 0 1]]
"""
Second option. If the goal is to return random subsets of an array, another way to accomplish the goal is to first shuffle the array and then sample it. Note that unlike some of the other methods, np.random.shuffle() performs the operation in place. Given the shuffled array, slice and dice it however you want to return subsets.
Figure 3 — Randomly shuffle the entire array, select from the array. Image from the author, credit Justin Chae
With this second method, since the array is shuffled, simply taking the first 80% of rows represents a random sample.
# shuffle the same array as before, in place
np.random.shuffle(animals) # slice the first-n and rest-of-n of an array
tst = animals[:8, ]
trn = animals[8:, ]
Split Array
Previously, we split the entire dataset, but what about the array, column-wise? In the example animals array, columns 0, 1, and 2 are the features and column 3 is the target. Sure, we could just return the 3rd column, but what if we have 5 or 100 features? In this case, negative indexing is a wonderful friend.
# negative index to slice the last column
# works, no matter how many columns
trgts = animals[:,-1]
print(trgts) """ output is a flattened version of the last column
[0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0]
"""
In the example above, the negative index slices the last column off, but it is now a 1D array. In some cases, this is desirable; however, the features and targets arrays have different shapes — this is a problem if we want to put them back together again. Instead, we can take care to slice the numbers of rows with negative indexing to reserve the 2D shape.
# len data as indices of n_data
n_data = animals.shape[0] # n_samples based on percentage of n_data
n_samples = int(n_data * .8) # m_samples as the difference (the rest)
m_samples = n_data - n_samples # slice n_samples up until the last column as feats
train_feats = animals[:n_samples, :-1] # slice n_samples of only the last column as trgts
train_trgts = animals[:n_samples, -1:] # ... repeat for m_samples
Stack Array
At this point, we’ve shuffled and split the dataset and split the features from targets. Now, how about putting everything back together again? To stack left-right and up-down, we can use np.hstack() and np.vstack().
Figure 4— A single array split four ways to train and test with features and targets. Image from the author, credit Justin Chae
To put Humpty Dumpty back together again, stack horizontally and then stack vertically.
# combine side-by-side
train = np.hstack((train_feats, train_trgts))
test = np.hstack((test_feats, test_trgts)) # combined up-down, returns original array
orig = np.vstack((train, test))
Structure Arrays
If you can’t or don’t use Pandas and only have NumPy, there are some ways to leverage the power of NumPy with the ease of Pandas without actually importing Pandas. But how?
Figure 5— Make a NumPy array structured with column names instead of just indices. Image from the author, credit Justin Chae
I found there are some cases where it is important to track the actual name of the feature (or the column) throughout the program. One way to do this is to pass around a list of names with the array, but it is a lot to keep track of. Instead, I found it extremely helpful to transform the array to be structured.
With a structured array, column index 0 is also indexed by the word ‘fur’ and so on.
# import a new library in addition to numpy
import numpy.lib.recfunctions as rfn # column names as a list of strings
col_names = ['fur', 'meow', 'bark', 'label'] # an array
animals = np.array([[1,0,1,0],
[2,1,0,1],
[3,0,1,0],
[4,1,0,1]]) # necessary to set the datatype for each cell
# set n dtypes to integer based on col_names
dtypes = np.dtype([(n, 'int') for n in col_names]) # use refunctions library to set array to structured
structured = rfn.unstructured_to_structured(animals, dtypes) print(structured['fur']) """ output
[1 2 3 4]
"""
For more on operations with structured arrays see Joining Structured Arrays; these methods discovered via Stack Overflow at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55577256/numpy-how-to-add-column-names-to-numpy-array.
Summary
In this story, I present some of the NumPy functions that I learned and relied on while taking a university course in machine learning. The course restricted the use of pre-built libraries such as sci-kit learn and Pandas to reinforce specific learning objectives. These are just some of my notes that I hope are helpful to others seeking a few tips and tricks on NumPy with machine learning.
Thanks for reading, hope it works for you. Let me know if I can make any improvements or cover new topics. | https://medium.com/python-in-plain-english/shuffle-split-and-stack-numpy-arrays-83f82033bf17 | ['Justin Chae'] | 2020-12-26 17:13:09.432000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Python', 'Numpy', 'Programming', 'Data Structures'] |
Birth of Thermodynamics — Clapeyron | Benôit Paul Émile Clapeyron was one of the three C’s, along with Carnot and Clausius, who created thermodynamics and gave engineers the conceptual tools needed to power the industrial revolution with steam. Clapeyron was among a “lost generation” of French engineering graduates who launched their careers at the time of Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat and the Restoration of the French monarchy. Suddenly, the path to promising careers in the military and government service was closed. Frustrated, Clapeyron joined fellow Polytech alum Gabriel Lame in Russia to train engineering students there and help establish a modern system of transportation infrastructure in that country. At this time, English engineers were experimenting with steam-powered railways. Clapeyron and Lame remained in touch with their colleagues in France, who were also trying to figure out what role this new technology might play in a national transportation network. In 1830, political changes in Russia brought Clapeyron back to France, where he joined a loose association of engineers responsible for designing and building the first railroads in France.
Even while he was caught up in the frenzy of railroad building, Clapeyron continued his research and teaching on a broad number of topics in the area of applied mechanics. One of the most important questions facing engineers and industrialists, early in the 19th century, was how much mechanical work can be produced from a ton of coal. Sadi Carnot, son of Lazare Carnot, took the first step by outlining guiding principles in a pamphlet published in 1824. It was Clapeyron who translated Carnot’s theory of an ideal heat engine into terms that practicing engineers could apply. James Watt introduced the practice of plotting steam pressure versus volume inside the cylinder over one cycle of the piston. This helped engineers understand and refine the operation of steam engines. Clapeyron used the same approach to interpret Carnot’s theoretical results, and this led engineers to understand how by adjusting the timing of the steam intake and exhaust to the cylinder would increase the power produced from one ton of coal by 50%. Later, Rudolf Clausius, a German physicist, brought the work of Carnot and Clapeyron to completion by articulating the Second Law of thermodynamics.
Benôit Paul Émile Clapeyron is one of the 72 engineers named on the Eiffel Tower. | https://medium.com/eiffels-paris-an-engineers-guide/birth-of-thermodynamics-clapeyron-481307764481 | ['William Nuttle'] | 2020-04-14 17:34:36.691000+00:00 | ['Paris', 'History Of Technology', 'Eiffel Tower'] |
Why does withAnimation not work? | Why does withAnimation not work? | https://medium.com/@dreamuforever/why-does-withanimation-not-work-38af3b98bf77 | ['Rexeon Ma'] | 2020-12-05 13:31:02.237000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'Swiftui'] |
The Power Is In Your Decisions | The Power Is In Your Decisions
Whether you make good decisions or bad decisions, it’s up to you. It’s in your control.
Photo by Susan Yin on Unsplash
Lately, I’ve been obsessed with defining what is in our immediate control.
I think it’s my natural reaction to chaos and information overload — but what we control is worth thinking about no matter what’s going on in lives because in any given phase of your life, you’re making decisions.
On a day-to-day basis, decisions serve as the catalysts that push your day forward.
And you never know if the decisions you make are good ones or bad ones until the buffer between the moment you’ve made your decision and it’s consequence has expired.
Some say they use their intuition to judge if the decision is good or bad, which usually manifests itself as: “I have a good feeling about this.”
But I think we can all agree that making emotional decisions isn’t reliable. | https://medium.com/bad-buddhism/the-power-is-in-your-decisions-cc7366c21eeb | ['Anthony Boyd'] | 2020-12-05 21:46:21.944000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Leadership', 'Self', 'Advice', 'Education'] |
The Launch of the SpaceX Starship Prototype, and What it Means for Humanity | To date, the spacecraft that we launched into space have maneuvered for landing in three different ways: using parachutes (the vast majority, a method used in all American, Russian, and Chinese space capsules), gliding (a method used only in American Space Shuttles and in Soviet Buran) and making propulsive landings aided by “grid fins” (the way the first stages of SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets return to the ground). These methods work well in their respective spaceships (perhaps, except for the Space Shuttle, a hazardous flying machine), but they could not be used on the Starship.
Its characteristics would prevent the use of any of them.
And why, then, use belly flight?
The Starship is a far more ambitious undertaking than any that has yet been done. Understand: every capsule created until today was intended to take one to seven astronauts to the low Earth orbit or three astronauts to the Moon. The Space Shuttle could carry a maximum of eight people to the low Earth orbit, plus one twenty-nine ton cargo.
The Starship was created to take 100 people to low orbit and, with orbital refueling, carry them to the Moon or Mars, along with 100 tons of cargo.
With appropriate adaptations, this crew and cargo can be taken to other solar system locations such as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Comparing the Starship to a space capsule or Space Shuttle is like comparing a bicycle to a car.
The problem is that you cannot land the Starship using (only) the old methods. It is too big to use a parachute, the gliding method used by the Shuttles has proven to be expensive and dangerous, and the speed at which it arrives is too high for it to land using only grid fins and propulsion.
You need to lose a lot of speed before that.
And so it was, then, that the SpaceX team created the belly flight.
First of all, the configuration used during re-entry into the atmosphere will be similar to that seen in the last photo, with only the front part slightly raised. According to computer simulations, this configuration is quite efficient for dispersing the plasma generated during the re-entry of the atmosphere without transferring too much heat to the spacecraft.
The steel that makes up its fuselage, more resistant to heat than the Space Shuttles' aluminum, requires less sophisticated heat protection than the ceramic tiles of the Shuttles, making the Starship safer and cheaper.
After re-entry, the maneuver fins would come into action. These four flaps fold up or down, acting like a skydiver's legs and arms in free fall. That means that the Starship doesn’t “glide.” It “falls in a controlled manner.” Using the flaps, it can go to the landing point, where, finally, the engines will take over and place it safely on the ground: | https://medium.com/an-idea/the-launch-of-the-spacex-starship-prototype-and-what-it-means-for-humanity-a1e6809e2d56 | ['Juliano Righetto'] | 2020-12-21 19:48:06.974000+00:00 | ['Spacex', 'Humanity', 'Astronomy', 'Space', 'Space Exploration'] |
Dear New Mama: Forget About Being Perfect and Just Be Present | With your first, you’re focused on doing everything “by the book” because you’re terrified of screwing up. By the time you have a second, you realize there are some things that just aren’t worth worrying about.
After five whole weeks of keeping my second baby alive, here are the five things I’m doing differently this time around:
#1 Not trying to bounce back right away
When you’re pregnant, it feels like it’s socially acceptable to be fat. At family gatherings, my relatives would constantly pile food on my plate because “the baby needs to eat,” and I would happily oblige. And then after I gave birth, it was like everyone instantly forgot that I just had a baby and saw me as just plain fat. I remember the day after coming home from the hospital with my first-born, my mother took one look at me and then whispered (loudly) to my father, “wow, I don’t think I was ever THAT big.”
This second time around, I’m not caring so much about what other people think. My body went through nine months of growing another person, and it deserves respect. After my first postpartum experience, I know that with overall healthy eating, some exercise, and the calorie-burning boost of breastfeeding, my body will eventually shed the extra weight. Will it ever look the way it did pre-babies? Probably not. But that’s okay. I kind of like my left-over belly pooch; it serves as a reminder of what my body went through to bring new life into the world.
#2 Not being as strict about breastfeeding
You always hear “breast is best” when it comes to feeding a newborn. Even the hospital where I delivered is such a strong proponent of breastfeeding that they don’t offer bottles or formula to new mothers. With my first, I wanted to be the “perfect” mom and exclusively nurse which to me meant avoiding the bottle for as long as possible. This back-fired because my first-born never took to a bottle, and now I’m convinced it’s because I tried to introduce it too late.
This time, I’m still breastfeeding, but I’m also supplementing with formula. And I don’t feel bad about it at all. Sometimes my poor nipples need a break, and I’ve found that I can still keep my milk supply up by pumping whenever my baby gets fed a bottle. A huge benefit is that I get a break while someone else feeds her. I’ve realized that I don’t have to do it all by myself. It’s more than okay to ask for and receive help. You have nothing to prove to anyone.
#3 Not panicking every time the baby cries
“Crying ain’t dying.” That’s the tidbit of advice that a coworker once shared with me. With my first child, I ignored that advice and would go into full-on panic mode whenever my daughter started to cry. Especially if there was company over, I would feel embarrassed because I thought I was failing as a mother if I couldn’t calm my own child right away. Looking back, that was such a silly way of thinking. Babies cry. It’s what they do. This time, I’m keeping calm and collected when I respond to my baby’s banshee wails.
#4 Not being okay with a crappy sleeping arrangement
With my first, I slept in the nursery beside the crib… on an air mattress. We had just moved into a new home, so we hadn’t set up an actual bed for me yet. And after the baby came, buying and setting up more furniture just didn’t seem like a top priority with so many other things going on. So, I told my husband that the air mattress was fine. I later discovered that sleeping on an air mattress for a long period of time was not fine. And one night, the air mattress popped and slowly deflated underneath me. I ended up sleeping on the floor beside my daughter’s crib. It was the worst. I barely slept, and I woke up feeling sore all over.
This time, I claimed the master bedroom which I converted into a nursery. And I made sure to get a bassinet to place beside my bed. It’s made the marathon nighttime nursing sessions so much easier. I wish I could go back and tell myself to stop being so self-sacrificing and make getting as much quality sleep as possible a priority.
#5 Not taking the little moments for granted
When it comes to children, time is both your enemy and your friend. On the one hand, you want your baby to grow older so that taking care of them becomes easier. On the other hand, you wish time would stand still because your baby is growing up way too fast.
My best piece of advice for you is to be present and live in the moment. You quickly forget how a newborn’s grunt sounds and that new baby smell. When it feels like you’re just trying to survive each day, it’s easy to forget to enjoy the experience of being a new parent.
My old boss once told me that he would give anything to go back to when his daughters were babies, and he could cradle them with one arm. I get that now. Even when things get tough, and I haven’t slept or been able to poop in peace, I simply remind myself that there are others who would give anything to swap places with me.
So today, I will hold my baby a little longer and hug her a little tighter. And I will try to slow down time by savoring each and every waking minute with her.
And I hope you’ll do the same. | https://psiloveyou.xyz/dear-new-mama-forget-about-being-perfect-and-just-be-present-cb47ad544e35 | ['Love', 'Other Nugs'] | 2020-08-19 15:33:00.172000+00:00 | ['Advice', 'Self-awareness', 'Parenting', 'Motherhood', 'Baby'] |
Bed Side | When it comes to adding flamboyance to your bedroom, you can barely complete it by just keeping a bed and cupboard in the room. So, yes, your bedroom space needs some more touch of extensively with creative furniture pieces to elevate the overall grace of the room.
A bedside table India is one such amazing piece of furniture, which is a must-have for your bedrooms. It will not only add a touch of rapturous beauty but also escalate the productivity of the space in your room. After all, you won’t want to put your glasses, night lamp, and water bottle far away from your reach when you are off to sleep.
Thus, you must add a bedside table solid wood to your bedroom. But now the question is, how do you amalgamate creativity with it? Well, here we bring forth some creative ideas to add a bedside table to your drool-worthy bedroom space
Always go creative and experimental when it comes to adding elegance to your bedroom. A nightstand-like bedside wood table, smaller in size than a dresser, can make your bedside corner look absolutely glamorous.
A bedside table with one or two drawers in it looks amazing. Also, there are some more perks of picking such a design. Are you wondering what those are? Well, you can utilize the spacious drawers to store your necessary things, which will significantly eliminate the need to add any further drawers to your bedroom.
Also, the top of the table can be used in an impressive way, to which you can add a touch of aesthetic beauty with a flower vase and a sleek, classy photo frame. A wooden finish bedside table with bright-colored decor looks the best. So, you can easily pick the Kyoto Bedside table from Orange Tree to create such a breath-taking look. | https://medium.com/@Creativescollections/bed-side-ca8a1c95fc1d | [] | 2021-12-10 06:59:44.366000+00:00 | ['Boneinlayfurniture', 'Consideration', 'Boné', 'Furniture', 'Bedside Table'] |
Guan Yin Speaks. Day 13, Your mind is a snake. | “Greetings. This is Guan Yin.
I offer no disrespect to snakes, they are a useful part of the ecosystem and are often beautiful, as is this fellow in the above picture.
Snakes do, however, share certain traits and qualities that line up with the human mind. They are stealthy, opportunistic and sometimes lethal. They can find their way under, around, and over almost anything. Not to say this is necessarily bad, if this ability is harnessed.
Yes, your mind can kill you. If you live in a continuous fire hose stream of thoughts thoughts thoughts, ever in the future and the past, there can be little growth. If that thought stream is negative and toxic, filled with fear, judgment, and anger, your life-force can shrivel and diminish to the point of physical death. You will be cut off from the ever renewing healing and rejuvenating power of your own Divine nature.
I entirely understand how challenging it is to redirect and in time, stop thought. The human is hardwired to think, to problem solve, plan. We feel entitled to aggrieved thinking. You don’t NEED to do that.
Whaaaat? You may say? If I don’t plan ahead what will happen! If I don’t remember what happened with that guy 10 years ago, I might forget how I was hurt, and somehow he’s getting away with it.
Well my dear ones, I will tell you that life works much better when you take your hands off the wheel, and allow that Divine presence which is in you to steer. It is much smarter and more able than your mortal dream self.
It comes down to attention. See how appealing the yellow snake looks? So benign, almost sweet. Like the snake, your mind is just waiting for the rabbit of your inattention to round the corner so it can devour it and go on with its ceaseless chatter.
Ceasing thought is not only difficult, but probably dangerous for your mental health. So let’s look at replacement therapy. Really examine your thoughts as often as possible. Most likely you’ve got a negative mindset, attitude and belief stream going on. Begin several times in the day to stop and look at a thought.
“That idiot should learn to drive.”
“Wow, she’s gotten a little chubby there…”
“Why don’t those people listen to reason? Can’t they see that they’re being duped?”
And so forth. And so forth, and on and on. Stop now and then and look at one thought, and ask yourself, is this thought kind? Loving? Helpful? Then in that listening moment, ask forgiveness for the harmful thought. Replace that thought with a mantra that you love. Do that until the whole of your being settles and grounds itself, smile. Go on with your day.
What does that do, you ask? Well if you do it a thousand times a day, it starts to add up. You begin to see, to perceive, to feel what your thought life is creating for you. Make no mistake, if you don’t create your life, your ego snake mind will do it for you. It is doing that now.
Do a mirror practice. Think,
“Oh God I look fat and old.”
See what your face looks like when you say that.
Now look into your own eyes deeply, say,
“My life is God’s life, radiant with light, ever young.”
See the difference?
What do you want? That is not an aimless question. What DO you want?
The lodestar is coming to a place of no-thought, where your Divine self can shine and direct traffic for you. Time is short. Train your mind. Make a decision, discipline yourself. You will thank yourself.
That is all. I truly love you.”
Flowed through Kristin Strachan. Guan Yin Lineage holder, teacher, student of Master Zhi Gang Sha, spiritual practitioner in Colorado.
compassionbuddha.net | https://medium.com/@kristinstrachan/guan-yin-speaks-day-13-your-mind-is-a-snake-d2f2e318573c | ['Kristin Strachan'] | 2020-12-22 21:47:07.400000+00:00 | ['Snake', 'Guan Yin', 'No Thought', 'Monkey Mind', 'Mind'] |
Decolonization, A Guidebook For Settlers Living On Stolen Land. | I learned something yesterday….
When I share with a white person they can not decolonize on stolen land they get really really fragile and pissed that yet again, another brown azz takes away their new shiny thing…
Decolonization.
The process of decolonization is a violent, brutal, and involuntary act. It costs lives and destroys cities. Decolonization is the rematiration of tradition and culture to Indigenous people. Decolonization is the repatriation of land and sovereignty to Indigenous people.
It is not for White people, Black people, or P.O.C. people to do while on stolen land.
Decolonization is for Indigenous people only. To assume as a settler, that it is possible to decolonize while still benefiting from systems of oppression, is like the white guy appropriating from the Wixárika people, while erasing their existence by calling them Huichol, and when asked what he does to give back to the people he takes from responds…”I try to sing their songs to the best of my ability” while insinuating he is saving their culture from themselves.
I know I am guilty for using decolonization as a metaphor and the group I am honored to steward, Global Decolonization Initiative, was created traipsing the line of decolonization and social justice. For that I apologize for my misstep, and am doing the work to correct the misinterpretation of the term as well as bringing awareness to the depth of vigilance it takes to keep settler colonizers from colonizing decolonization while completely erasing Indigenous sovereignty in favor of another rung in the race to supremacy.
The more we progress towards collective liberation and the more that I and y’all are learning, the more important it is to give back the term of decolonization to those that have been harmed by colonialism the most-
Us, Indigenous people.
For clarification, settlers can UNCOLONIZE, as that is voluntarily distancing, detaching from colonial moreys. However to truly decolonize, is a commitment I’m pretty sure a very small percentage of you reading this is willing to accept.
Settlers….this is a guide for you. This guide is for you to use as a basic understanding of what decolonization is NOT and how to recognize when decolonization is being used as a metaphor. It is a guide for you to use in being vigilant and humble when walking the path of uncolonizing your inner world and to give space to actual decolonization efforts led by Indigenous people.
This list is compiled from the many ways I’ve seen decolonization being used as a metaphor, as well as those that see the phrase and use it incorrectly as a buzzword for social justice.
Please be mindful of when your triggers come up reading this, as the deep reality of those triggers are that they are coming from a place of domination. Hundreds of years of not listening to native voices, of talking over native voices, of bypassing native voices in favor of a default to a settler colonialist narrative. Which is exactly the reason for the depth of importance and the vital need for this clarification….
What decolonization is NOT and tools to correct the narrative:
Settlers can not “Decolonize their minds”
Decolonizing a settlers mind would look like forcibly taking a settler, hooking them up to torture machines until they denouce and release all aspects of colonization including privileges, narratives, land, and the perceptions of what was taught to settlers about how to hold power over **B.I.P.O.C. and then, deporting the settlers to their land of origin.
**Black, Indigenous, People of Color- each letter is said separately much like LGBTQ
Settlers can not “Decolonize time”
Time can not be decolonized as time is neither a thing or a land. Settlers can let go of their idea of what time is and uncolonize out of the domination/supremacist concept of punctuality and colonial impatience.
Settlers can not Decolonize Yoga
Yoga is an ancient technique stewarded by lineage keepers from India. True decolonization of Yoga is the letting go of Yoga completely and specifically going to decolonized native South Asian Yogis who are indoctrinated into Yoga as far back as when they were in their grandmother’s womb and are doing the work in their sphere of influence to uplift and heal themself and community from the wounds of colonialism.
Settlers can not Decolonize their spirit
A settler on stolen land is a settler full stop and to decolonize one’s spirit, said settler would need to go to their mothers land and connect with their ancestors traditions to detach and heal from colonial wounds amongst the indigenous people of their land of origin.
Settlers can not Decolonize spaces
A space is not decolonized when B.P.O.C. only are present. Only when the space is Indigenous centered and led, can the space be considered decolonial.
Settlers can not Decolonize futures
The future can not be decolonized as the future is not a tradition, culture, land, or sovereignty for Indigenous people. While the future can look to Indigenous sovereignty, the use of the word decolonization and future must relate to centering Indigenous people and working with Indigenous people to ensure our future sovereignty.
Settlers can not Decolonize themselves
A settler is not an Indigenous person of the land, when they are on stolen land. To decolonize self, a settler would need to give up their land, privilege, and identity, in favor of uprooting themself and their families back to their land of origin.
Settlers can not Decolonize social justice
Social justice is the path of collective liberation. Decolonization is a massive revolution to remove all people not native to stolen land, back to their land of origin, and returning government control, community control, resources, processes, and sovereignty to Indigenous people.
You see, decolonization is not a shiny new buzz word for social justice or uncolonizing.
Decolonization is the rematiration of tradition and culture as well as, repatriation of land and sovereignty to Indigenous people.
When an Indigenous person tells you “you need to decolonize your mind” either they have a misunderstanding of the word or they are checking you out to see if you have the courage to say, “naaa, as a settler, decolonization is not an option. However, I will do everything in my power to support the decolonization efforts of Indigenous people by centering the voices, processes, and initiatives of Indigenous nations that invite the settler voice to speak to those that willfully ignore Indigenous voices.
Which leads me to this very important point- there is so much beginning to be discussed over what decolonization is, and not a lot of what decolonization is NOT or how to recognize when decolonization is being used as a metaphor. In the above guide we discussed what decolonization is not- in this next segment, we explore the various ways decolonization is used as a metaphor so that you are aware of how to recognize when the intergenerational trauma of domination overrides the deserved respect for the Indigenous people who’ve been impacted and are continually impacted from the oppression of the colonial empire.
This specific guide segment is education of how to not “tokenize” and make decolonization into a metaphor for cookies and ego stroking of settler colonialism based in unpacked colonial trauma in B.P.O.C. and whyte folks.
Once again, I bring awareness to the triggers this guide may bring up. I encourage you to be aware of when the colonial narrative based in domination arises and invite compassion into the triggers and the manifestations of the triggers itself.
Ways decolonization is used as a metaphor and tools to correct the narrative:
“Decolonizing Creativity”
Decolonization is the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for settler initiatives based on arts and crafts or settlers teaching “traditional native” anything to “improve” B.P.O.C. communities and schools.
***The uncolonized term for “decolonizing creativity” is Liberating Creativity.
“Decolonizing Business”
This is the realm of how to approach diversity and inclusion from a different perspective. In order to truly decolonize a business, a corporation/organization would need all of the settler heads of business to step down and place Indigenous people to lead, create, and guide the organization from an Indigenous perspective with Indigenous values as a foundation for company policy.
***The uncolonized term for “Decolonizing Business” is Liberating Business.
“Decolonizing Healing”
The basis of a domination based society is to control all things including anything mystical by cherry picking from all cultures and creating a new supremacy based, dominant pseudo spiritual culture, that centers capitalism and exclusion while using words like “conscious capitalism” and “community”. While in reality charging through the roof prices to spread and encourage domination and exclusion while the cultures they take from receive no benefit.
***The uncolonized term for “decolonizing healing” is Liberating Healing
“Decolonizing Change”
Settlers move to innocence creates the opportunity to bypass any actual efforts to uncolonize by not acknowledging the responsibility of calling out complacency, internalized bias, as well as doing the personal work to mind shift out of a cultural narrative based in domination and supremacy by doing the outer work to educate and bring awareness to the culture of dominance amongst settler communities.
One can not change oneself when one is clouded by the lens of colonial values that are based in the race to supremacy.
This very delicate aspect of the lean to repackage decolonization into a metaphor creates deeper lines of division in the diverse group of settlers with bypassing complacency in settler colonialism.
***The uncolonized term for “decolonizing change” is Liberating Change
“Decolonizing Leadership”
The only way to “decolonize leadership” is to place Indigenous people in leadership positions full stop.
***The uncolonized term for “decolonizing leadership” is, Liberating Our Leaders
*************************************************************
When thinking about how you want to present your social justice initiatives- look through a lens of liberation, a lens of “critical consciousness”.
Decolonization is the rematriation/repatriation of land for indigenous people. It is giving back what was viciously taken through violence, enslavement, and genocide.
It is not a sweet social justice term- or a buzzword for collective liberation.
It is not a metaphor for facilitators, business partners, and artists that are black or brown or both. Using the term decolonization as a metaphor, tokenizes black and brown people while actively participating in the erasure of Indigenous people, completely bypassing what decolonization actually is.
The rematriation/repatriation of traditions and land to indigenous people.
Decolonization is not a label, or a description of an event.
It is a vicious, incommensurable process that is bigger than a website, or a FB group or a settler led pseudo “decolonization” event.
While decolonization is rooted in LIBERATION, that liberation is for Indigenous people of the global diaspora, to reclaim, re indigenize, and re root in the lands that were STOLEN during the process of colonization. Decolonization does not mean to go back to the 1700’s and go live in pre contact environs. That is not possible in this day in age- decolonization from the inside out for Indigenous people of the southern and northern hemishperes, live in the acknowledgment of one’s inner colonizer and learning how to flip, how to navigate, how to meet with compassion, the inner colonial narrative from domination to community.
In the article, “Decolonization is not a metaphor” written by Eve Tuck, https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/Tuck%20and%20Yang%202012%20Decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf the description of how the colonization process of the Chattel slave complex and the impact of colonialism in Indigenous people from the lands affected by colonialism, being extremely different provides the opportunity and context to witness when well meaning settler colonialists, Black, Brown and White, take the idolization of decolonization and use it to further divide while completely missing the point of decolonization itself. (Indigenous remaitriation of culture and tradition as well as repatriation of land and sovereignty to Indigenous People) The misunderstanding/misinterpretation of decolonization, leads to serve the division between Black, Brown and Indigenous people who have been led to believe in a narrative based in domination, which is not rooted in collective liberation nor is it in the reality of decolonization.
While oppression is not an Olympic sport, the way the oppression was and is maintained is vastly different for Black people, Brown people and Native people in the Americas.
They are not the same. There are similarities, yes, to say they are the same…Is a disservice to the unique experiences the colonial empire has inflicted on all persons of color. One of the ways to tell when settler domination is present, is when settlers use oppression as a way to justify using decolonization as a metaphor.
When one is witnessing oppression being used as a way to justify the misinterpretation of decolonization, please be mindful the person you are communicating with either has no idea of the reality of decolonization or is using the inherited narrative of domination to claim a word, an event, a revolutionary act that the settler can help facilitate while on stolen land, and can only do when they themself step foot on the land that was stolen from them.
Thus we ask of you, when an event, website, or social justice organization is using the word decolonization, please do your due diligence to correct their mis-step, misinterpretation, misunderstanding, to bring awareness to the colonization of decolonization they are promoting.
Decolonization is not a metaphor and when it is used as such, bypasses what decolonization actually is, making the organization or person that is using decolonization as a metaphor, appear uninformed and is best summed up by these two quotes…
“It means removing the asterisks, periods, commas, apostrophes, the whereas’s, buts, and conditional clauses that punctuate decolonization and underwrite settler innocence. The Native futures, the lives to be lived once the settler nation is gone.” -Decolonization is not a metaphor, Eve Tuck
“To agree on what [decolonization] is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny…” (Cesaire, 2000, p. 32) | https://medium.com/@gdiriseup/decolonization-a-guidebook-for-settlers-living-on-stolen-land-57d4e4c04bbb | ['Tanya Rodriguez'] | 2021-01-08 23:48:31.380000+00:00 | ['Reality', 'Indigenous', 'Professional Development', 'Decolonization', 'Uncolonizing'] |
Run the ganache-cli inside the Docker Container | Open the Dockerfile in any editor and paste the below code
# node:alpine will be our base image to create this image
FROM node:alpine # Set the /app directory as working directory
WORKDIR /app # Install ganache-cli globally
RUN npm install -g ganache-cli # Set the default command for the image
CMD ["ganache-cli", "-h", "0.0.0.0"]
Let’s take a dip into the code and explore what it is actually doing.
The Docker container requires Node.js installed in it to install the ganache-cli .
The node:alpine is the base image in which the latest Node.js is pre-installed.
What does alpine means?
It is the minimum requirement needed for Node.js. It includes the required libraries. For more information please visit this link.
The base image already has a filesystem for node:alpine
app dev home media opt root sbin sys usr
bin etc lib mnt proc run srv tmp var
The second step WORKDIR /app we are instructing the Dockerfile to use /app folder as the working directory for this image
The third step RUN npm install -g ganache-cli installs the ganache-cli globally.
The last step CMD ["ganache-cli","-h","0.0.0.0"]
When this image run there must be a default command for this or else you have to manually tell what it should do.
ganache-cli -h 0.0.0.0 is the default command for this image. When this image run it will run this default command.
Ganache-cli’s default host is 127.0.0.1 but for docker instance it is 0.0.0.0 | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/run-the-ganache-cli-inside-the-docker-container-5e70bc962bfe | ['Shubham Chadokar'] | 2019-05-13 06:04:10.297000+00:00 | ['Docker', 'Ethereum Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Metamask', 'Ganache'] |
Fight for Your Destiny | Fight for Your Destiny
A Sonnet to Inspire your Ambition
Photo by Juan Jose on Unsplash.
Say it with me: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!
Now don’t think, just dive in and try your best.
I know, the water’s cold, the unknown’s scary,
But nothing great ever came from being wary.
You must strive and fight to clear your path,
No backward steps, pin your courage to the mast.
Then shout to Heaven to bless your voyage,
And strut bold feet on this Earthly stage.
Live not in fear and expectation of regret,
If you want the life that you truly deserve,
You can not leave opportunities unmet,
You must overcome that humble reserve.
But remember the rocks and respect the wave,
Much is lost, when reckless takes over from brave.
Photo by isaac sloman on Unsplash.
If you enjoyed this, you may also like: | https://medium.com/sonnetry/fight-for-your-destiny-a23f866d8bef | ['Joseph Brown'] | 2019-11-13 23:09:28.710000+00:00 | ['Destiny', 'Ambition', 'Motivation', 'Poetry', 'Sonnet'] |
Young Mikhail Lomonosov | Quick Intro
Within this already highly-selective echelon of polymaths, there exists an even more exclusive community: those that momentarily embody the soul of their country. Cemented & celebrated through erected statues, printed currencies & building eponyms, they’re defining personas typically thrust into a changing landscape. For the United States, it was Benjamin Franklin during its founding; for Russia, it was Mikhail Lomonosov during its enlightenment.
Our fifteenth protagonist this Masters of Many series, Lomonosov, led both a cultural & scientific revolution — helping position Russia as a center of 18-century Enlightenment. A man of legendary mystique, he’s well-deserving of his place among this group of polymaths. Persevering our niche focus, we explore his earlier years. In order to uncover their defining habits, choices & experiences we ask again: what was he like in his twenties?
Note-Worthy Accomplishments
— Influential statesman that established Moscow University & served his country as appointed Secretary of State
— Famed chemist that established the Russian Academy’s lab, proved the law of conservation of mass in reactions & opened the first mosaic factory
— Greatest linguistic enlightener of the 18th-century, published adopted grammar rules & popular poems, plays, & historicals
— Accomplished geologist that catalogued over 3,000 minerals, demonstrated the origin of soil & explained the formation of icebergs
20s To 30s (1731–1741)
Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was born into a freezing existence. Spending his childhood in a remote, Siberian village (Mishaninskaya, later named Lomonosovo in his honor), his personal life mirrored his surroundings. The son of an illiterate peasant fisherman, he nevertheless experienced a worse turmoil in the matriarchy department: his mother died when he was nine. Exacerbating the situation, his first stepmother passed a few short years afterward as well. The proverbial cherry on top, his second stepmother made his home a living hell; a voracious reader from an early age & she’d callously berate him for doing so. He’d later remark that he:
Was obliged to read & study, when possible, in lonely & desolate places, & to endure cold & hunger
While his endearing father helped him understand commerce, Lomonosov sought a more academic influence & mentor, which brought him to the village deacon, S.N Sabelnikov. The deacon gifted him with two books (“Grammar” by Smotritsky & “Arithmetics” by Magnitsky) that Lomonosov fondly remembers as the gates of his erudition.
The legend of Lomonosov begins in 1730. Clear that his educational curiosity far exceeded the resources of his surroundings, he committed to heading out in search of a more academic ambiance. Set on the sprawling metropolis of Moscow, he courageously made the treacherous ~1200 kilometers/weeks-worth of isolated travel by dog sled.
Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy / The Academy — Moscow, Russia
Once settled in Moscow, the twenty year-old Lomonosov sought out a classical education at none other than the first higher education establishment in the city: the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy [hereafter referred to as ‘the Academy’ ]. Already too far in his endeavors, he refuses to allow bureaucracy from deterring his admission & therefore applies with false credentials, falsely claiming to be a son of a Kholmogory nobleman.
He spent the next two years, twenty-two & twenty-three, perpetually working in a flurry. The average student started much earlier age-wise, so in order to catch up with his generation, he had to compress three years worth of studies to approximately eighteen months. This need to catch up triggered a competitive motivation. Of note, he was markedly financially desolate:
I lived on three kopecks a day: half a kopeck for bread and half a kopeck for kvas; the rest was for paper, shoes, and other necessities
The following year, 1734, twenty-three year-old Lomonosov was tapped to attend the sister Kievo-Mogilyanskaya Academy in an exchange program. An active trip abroad, he publishes his very first artistic composition, a short poem called Verses to a Cup. Additionally, he mentally commits to the pious path with the goal of becoming a priest & joining the traditional religious expedition to Orenburg; curiously, he begins telling his academic colleagues that his father was in fact a priest. Dissatisfied with the STEM offerings at this academy, he returns back to the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy early.
In 1735, his changing, contradictory background stories finally caught up with him & twenty-four year-old Lomonosov found himself in deep academic trouble — he faced imminent expulsion. Equally demoralizing, the Orenburg expedition rejected him. Thankfully, a last-minute miracle occurred & his academic record was spared: the government Academy of Sciences formally three requested students that had proven excellence in latin, math & science for a special assignment in the near future. Out of options & grateful for the lifeline, he fully embraces his academic side.
Next year, twenty-five year-old Lomonosov finally graduates The Academy, completing the study program that usually takes eleven or twelve years in a record five years. Per annual tradition, The Academy sent their top 12 students to St. Petersburg, scholarships in hand. His first few months into arrival, a mixed request came in from St. Petersburg & the Academy of Sciences; they sought three young undergrads to study abroad in Germany to bring back the latest academically in chemistry & mining sciences.
St.Petersburg State University
In January of 1937, therefore, the twenty-six year-old Lomonosov set out to study in Phillips-University Marburg, in central Germany, under the eminent scientist Christian Wolff. He remained under his tutelage for two years, which proved greatly influential both philosophically & as an access point for networking in increasingly-higher scientific circles. Lomonosov boarded with one Catharina Zilch, a brewer’s widow; & though he actively “was trying to escape love,” he soon found himself infatuated with the modest & beautiful daughter of his hostess, Elizabeth Christine Zilch. This same year, tragically, his alma matter, The Academy, burns down while he’s abroad.
Phillips-University Marburg
Finally finished with his academic education & with a stellar letter of recommendation from the renown Wolff, he opted to sharpen his applied education for the next two years. Curious to expand his mineralogy, metallurgy & mining repertoire, twenty-eight year-old Lomonosov landed at Bergrat Johann Friedrich Henckel’s laboratory in Freiberg, Saxony. Fully embracing his inner-generalist, he self-studies German literature & publishes two additional poems: Ode & Letter Concerning the Rules of Russian Versification. Ending a whirlwind of a year on a positive note, he & Elizabeth give birth to their daughter, Catharina-Elizabeth in late November. Shortly afterward, Lomnosov & his beloved officially tied the knot.
In 1741, the year he turned thirty, Lomonosov finally headed home. Royally armed with cutting-edge knowledge & renowned referrals, Russia warmly welcomed him back by appointing him as Adjunct of the Russian Academy of Science in the physics department. Privately, he neared completion on his first major scientific publication: First Principles of Metallurgy or Mining.
An Original Lomonosov Mosaic
Quirks, Rumors & Controversies
It’s an unhealthy & counterproductive bias to assign infallibility to our heroes, regardless of generational stature. Suspending subjective labels & judgement is necessary for a healthy, comprehensive analysis; therefore, here, we’ll actively seek out that behind the veil & address the quirks, rumors & controversies behind Mikhail Lomonosov.
First, it’s worth surfacing his distinctive irascibility. Often isolated & exasperated, there are multiple recorded events of an irritated Lomonosov aggressively disparaging colleagues. Most famously, he was accused, tried & placed under house arrest in 1743 after verbally lashing out at multiple people in the Academy of Science; he was released in eight months, only after apologizing to everyone involved. His emotionally trying & physically callous childhood reasonably fueled his need to prove himself for the remainder of his life; it logically follows that he perhaps never lost this ferocity & at times responded with overwhelming & disproportionate anger. Explosive behavior from intense individuals is unpleasant, but not entirely uncommon — an understandable flaw.
Perhaps more worrisome as a lasting potential blemish to his reputation, however, is his pattern of outright submitting falsehoods. It’s particularly unfortunate because it re-casts one of his most courageous moments as one of foreshadowing: his big lie that he’s of nobility to attain admission at The Academy. Incontrovertibly, an intrepid twenty-year old crossing the Siberian tundra in search of better education & submitting a necessary lie is admirable. His follow up lie a claiming that his father was a priest & nearly getting himself expelled? That highlights an alarming lack of judgement & hints at a sense of arrogance.
In Closing
Who Was Mikhail Lomonosov In His 20s? A brilliant, curious, generalist student of life with a unique & courageous sense of perseverance.
Was He Accomplished In His 20s? Outside of academic record, not entirely. Akin to Thomas Jefferson or Jagadish Chandra Bose, this formative period was marked by a decade of prestigious schooling, hands-on apprenticeships & elite networking.
While he had no deep or revolutionary discoveries during this decade, his remarkable range as a polymath was inarguably visible. A traditional polymath that genuinely straddled the line between artist & scientist, he’d shortly lead a cultural & scientific movement, on of Russian enlightenment. More than worthy of placement among Da Vinci, Franklin, & co, Lomonosov would rightfully come to personify the ethos of social mobility through heroic perseverance & immeasurable creative intelligence. | https://medium.com/young-polymaths/young-mikhail-lomonosov-2f4ba50b8c79 | ['Jesus Najera'] | 2020-07-18 21:34:36.351000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Russia', 'History', 'Science', 'Art'] |
The concept and intuition behind Gradient Descent Algorithm. | Note: This is the second part of the linear regression tutorial and is followed by Introduction to linear regression and cost function. Check out the contents given below to follow along with the tutorial.
Contents: Introduction to linear regression and cost function, How the Gradient Descent Algorithm works, Mathematics of Gradient Descent.
Part 2: Gradient Descent
Why do we need a Gradient Descent?
In short to minimize the cost function, But How? Let’s see
The cost function only works when it knows the parameters’ values, previously in part one we manually choose the parameters’ value each time but during the algorithmic calculation, once the parameters’ values are randomly initialized it’s the gradient descent who have to decide what params value to choose in the next iteration in order to minimize the error, it’s the gradient descent who decide by how much to increase or decrease the params values.
Analogy: How Gradient Descent works?
Gradient Descent
Gradient Descent
Gradient Descent
What did you learn from the game? In the beginning, you try with learning rate (alpha)=1 but you fail to reach the minimum, because of the larger steps it overshoots the minimum. In the next game, you try with alpha=0.1, and this time you managed to reach the bottom very safely. what if you had tried with alpha=0.01, well, in that case, you will be gradually coming down but won’t make it to the bottom, 20 jumps are not enough to reach the bottom with alpha=0.01, 100 jumps might be sufficient. while solving a real-world problem, normally alpha between 0.01–0.1 should work fine but it varies with the number of iterations that the algorithm takes, some problems might take 100 or some might even take 1000 iterations. Based on these factors you can try with different values of alpha. Although tuning alpha value is one of the important tasks in understanding the algorithm I would suggest you look at other parts of the algorithm also like derivative parts, minus sign, update parameters and understand what their individual roles are.
learning rate
Gradient Descent in python
Gradient descent python code
Until now we are just using a single parameter to calculate cost function and algorithms. What the cost function looks like and how does the algorithm works when we have two or more parameters? See the figure below for intuitive understanding. Imagine yourself somewhere at the top of the mountain and struggling to get down the bottom of the mountain blindfolded.
Source: Coursera
The algorithm working principle is the same for any number of parameters, it’s just that the more the parameters more the direction of the slope. In the previous example of the bowl-shaped curve, we just need to look at the slope of theta1, But now the algorithm needs to look for both directions in order to minimize the cost function. Do you remember our predicted housing price problem? Now it’s time to solve the problem and predict housing prices for an area of 3000ft square or for any size(area). To solve this problem we are going to use two parameter values i.e bias term(theta0) and weight(theta1) and we are going to code gradient descent again for two params values. let’s do it. | https://medium.com/@ravindrasah/how-do-the-gradient-descent-algorithm-works-cd39df6683d6 | ['Ravindra Sah'] | 2020-12-07 05:41:50.380000+00:00 | ['Ml Gradient Descent', 'Gradient Descent', 'Gradient Descent Python'] |
My Wife Hires Me A Hooker. Because She Loves Me | It was weird, I was at my regular sandwich shop minding my own business when the woman in line behind me started talking to me. That never happens. She was super hot, 20s, the kind of woman I am very attracted to, brunette, long legs. Long elegant face.
“What’s your favorite sandwich?” she asked me, and she was looking at me kind of out the side of her eyes, as though this question might be a double entendre or something.
“Um…chicken salad,” I offered.
“You don’t like any other sandwiches?”
“No, I like other sandwiches,” I said, confused.
“But you’re committed to the chicken salad, I get it,” she said. “Would there be any room, you know, for a new sandwich.”
Now I was pretty sure she was fucking with me. The subtext of that was so obvious. Or was it? Maybe I was just imagining it.
“Um…what kind of sandwich were you thinking of?” I said.
“A Veronica sandwich?” she said.
“I don’t know that one,” I said.
“That’s my name,” she said, holding out her hand and smiling. “Veronica. What’s yours?”
“Phil,” I said.
“So do you a Veronica sandwich, Phil?”
She bit her lip sexily.
“What’s in a Veronica sandwich?” I asked.
“Well, you have to take off the wrapping and you’ll see what’s inside. It’s meaty, juicy and tasty.”
I looked at her sexy black dress, and pictured myself taking it off her and seeing her bra and panties underneath.
“How much does it cost?” I asked her.
“It’s expensive,” she admitted. “It might be the most expensive sandwich on the menu. Can you afford it?”
“I think so,” I said. “I’m pretty well off.”
“I can tell,” she said. “I’ve seen those shoes at Nordstrums. They cost 400 dollars.”
“Oh really? My wife bought them for me,” I said.
I studied her. She didn’t seem surprised or depressed that I had a wife. In fact, she didn’t miss a stride. She just kept on with the double talk.
“Your wife doesn’t spare any expense, I know,” she said.
“You know?”
“Sure,” she said. “She bought me, didn’t she?”
“My wife bought you?”
“She bought me for you,” she said. “Come on Phil, let’s go. You can eat later. In fact you can eat me, in the hotel. It’s just around the corner.”
She pulled me out of the sandwich shop. Wow! Christina had bought this woman for me! This was a surprise. She had told me so many times that in return for me allowing her to cheat all these times, she wanted me to cheat once at least. Just to sort of even the scales. But I was only into Christina. I didn’t like the idea of cheating. It seemed like a lot of work, to seduce a woman. Etcetera. But this! This was really easy. I was being pulled by the arm down the street to the Standard hotel. In the elevator she started kissing me.
“Mmm,” I said. “You’re so beautiful. How much is this costing Christina?”
“Uh uh,” she said, waving her finger. “I’m not allowed to tell.”
We got to the room. She opened it with a key. It was a big suite. Way more than necessary. Christina could have just gotten us a single room. But then again, this was kind of sexy.
“Would you like a drink?” she said. And I saw there was a bottle of champagne and a note. It was from Christina.
“Enjoy, hubby,” it said. “Luv C.”
There was a red outline of lips where she kissed the card. I recognized her lipstick. It’s a super red color called Dragon Girl that she wears. So sexy.
“Cheers,” I said.
We had a sip of champagne.
“Now let’s get you out of those clothes big boy,” said Veronica, kissing my neck , pulling off my tie, unbuttoning my shirt. She pushed me back onto the bed and pulled off my shoes. Then she pulled my trousers down. I was wearing boxers. She reached under my ass and pulled the boxers down, revealing my shriveled, small cock.
“Aw,” she said. “It’s like it’s trying to hide from me. Is it afraid?”
“Well,” I said. “There’s something you should know about me…”
“I know,” she said. “Your wife explained. You’re her cuck. That’s why she hired me. She said I was to be your cure.”
“I’m not sure there is a cure,” I said. “I tried once or twice before. I’ve never been able to get it up for any other woman except Christina. It’s not that I’m some saint. It’s just that…I guess she’s really imprinted on me in a big way.”
“I get it honey,” she said. “But you’ve never had a blow job from Veronica. Just lie back and enjoy.”
She pushed me down on the bed and she put her mouth on my tiny cock. It was so embarrassing. I turned bright red. My tiny cock barely went past her teeth, it was so shriveled up. And I couldn’t say I felt much at first. But she did have very lovely soft lips. It wasn’t unpleasant. After about five minutes with no response, she stopped.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t worry honey,” she said. She sat down on the bed next to me and pulled her dress down over her shoulders. She slipped out of her black bra. Then she took my hand and put it on her bare breasts. They were soft and nice, like a couple of water balloons. I rubbed them, as she put her hand down on my tiny dick and rubbed it. To my great surprise, after about a minute, I started to feel very turned on, and my cock started to grow.
“There we go,” she said gleefully.
“Yep,” I said. “But there are no guarantees. I’ve gotten this far before. But at the moment of actually fucking my cock has let me down.”
“We’ll see,” she said. Then she stood up and slid her panties down. She put my hand in her pussy and I started fingering her. Now that my cock was half erect, she decided to try sucking it again. It was an amazing blow job. She sucked on it like a vacuum cleaner, really hard. Her mouth was a whirlpool in the water and it was sucking my cock down deeper and deeper into its depths. Soon I was fully hard.
“I think you’re ready baby,” she said.
“Let’s give it a try,” I said.
She got on top of me with her lovely body, her breasts in my face, and she sat down on my hard cock. Her pussy was tight as a glove gripping my cock. She gyrated her hips into me forcefully. If her mouth had been a whirlpool, her hips were a maelstrom. My cock was being swept into a spinning, gyrating pussy by these amazing hips.
“Oh my gosh!” she said, and she stopped suddenly.
She put her hand on my face.
“Baby, your crying!” she said, concerned.
I couldn’t speak. I was so overjoyed and grateful to her. I never thought I could perform real manly duties with anyone other than my mistress, my dominant and amazing wife, Christina.
“Tears of joy,” I blubbered. “Tears of joy.”
She got a big smile then. I think it made her happy, too, to help a person this way. She got back on me and fucked me even harder and enthusiastically. I was about to cum finally.
“No!” she said. “Not yet.”
And she pulled off.
“You’re supposed to fuck me on top, like a real man. From behind. That’s what Christina wants. She wants you to really ram it home, baby. Can you?”
“I’ll try,” I said.
This beautiful naked escort got on the bed on all fours then. I came behind her sexy cream colored ass and put my dick in her pussy. I started fucking her. The tears were really streaming now. I was so grateful to my wife for this gift. I was a real man. Or at least I could be. I was fucking her and my cock was going deep in her. And it didn’t even look that small now. It looked like a more or less regular cock. And then I heard like a buzzing noise in my brain, I thought I might be having a stroke or something.
“Is that good baby,” she said. “Is that good?”
“Yes,” I cried. “So good. Can I cum now?”
The buzzing got louder. I felt the need to spray my cum on her. But she wouldn’t allow it.
“No, wait for me,” she said. “I want to cum with you.”
“Really? I could make you cum?”
“Oh I’m almost there baby,” she said. “Keep pounding that, and pulling me back on your cock like that, like a real man. Fuck me baby. I’m almost there!”
I fucked her for a while longer. Who knows if she was faking? It didn’t matter to me. The theater of the whole thing was amazing. She screamed, “Cum in me baby! Cum with me! I’m cumming. Oh, I’m cumming!”
I came in her with a great shout, and collapsed on the bed next to her.
Then I heard applause, and a familiar voice.
“Bravo!” said the voice. “Well done, Phillip! That was so hot!”
Out of the other room of the suite came my wife, Christina. I guess she had been watching from the doorway the whole time.
“Christina!” I said, surprised but also so proud. “You saw what I did! Did you see!”
“I did see, baby,” she said, and she sounded so impressed. “I knew you could do it. I believed in you.”
She was dressed in just a white lace bra and panties. And the panties were wet. In her hand I saw she had her vibrator, the one she called the Satisfier. That was the buzzing I had heard. She had been vibrating her pussy with it while she watched.
“Now I think I want some of this sexy lady for myself,” she said, putting her arms around the naked Veronica. They started making out.
I lay on the other side of the naked Veronica and began sucking on Veronica’s big tits.
“A Veronica sandwich,” I said, and they both laughed.
“Darling,” Christina said to Veronica. “I owe you a great debt of gratitude. May I repay it with my mouth?”
“By all means,” said Veronica, and Christina put her face between Veronica’s legs and started licking her.
“Mmm, my husband’s cum,” she squealed. “I never thought I’d see this day. So delicious and manly. In the pussy of a hot babe. Would you like a taste, darling?”
“Sure,” said Veronica, and my wife came up and started making out with her again, spitting some of my cum into her mouth.
I felt like such a stud. And guess what! My dick was getting hard again. As Christina went back down there and finished eating out Veronica, I got behind my lovely wife and fucked her from behind. After a while of my wife’s expert cunnilingus, Veronica was starting to orgasm, grabbing my wife’s head and pressing it down on her pussy. It got me so hot I came in my wife’s pussy.
“You’re a real rock star,” said Christina afterwards, after Veronica had showered and left, and we were cuddling in the bed. “I really liked watching you fuck that woman. I never thought I would. I didn’t know…”
“Didn’t know what?”
“I’m a cuckquean,” she said. I looked at her puzzled it. She tousled my hair patronizingly.
“Honey, you can google it when we get home,” she said.
“Well, I might know what a cuckquean is,” I said. “But I know what I like. Veronica sandwiches! Can we do it again! Can we?”
“Maybe,” she said. “If you’re a good boy. Now turn around and let me spoon you. I need a nap after all that excitement, don’t you?
And in a minute we were both blissfully asleep in each other’s arms.
Get a free Colt Stevens Book Here | https://medium.com/blue-stocking-gazette/my-wife-hires-a-hooker-1288ce2f407c | ['Colt Stevens'] | 2019-01-21 18:08:02.200000+00:00 | ['Escorts', 'Porn', 'Adultery', 'Provider', 'Erotica'] |
Meet the multi tasking & ever dependable Shaik Abdul Raheem —part of Meesho’s hardworking Admin team | Whether it is our travel arrangements or procuring mobile sims, Shaik Abdul Raheem is the guy all Meeshoites reach out to when we need any admin related help. When in doubt, call Abdul — is our motto at Meesho! From taking care of vendor management to procuring or renting and allocating laptops (before the IT team was set up at Meesho) to new joinees, Abdul is a nimble mulitasker, who makes sure that processes, systems and people are handled seamlessly at Meesho. A North Karnataka native, Abdul first came to Bangalore to pursue an MBA in HR and Marketing. He then worked at a couple of companies in Business Development before switching over to HR admin functions.
Over to Abdul now to learn more about his Meesho experience!
I joined Meesho in April 2018 as the lone HR Admin. Back then Meesho was a leaner team of 135–140 employees and all teams operated out of the same premises (instead of three different offices now). My initial journey was challenging as the office systems back then weren’t streamlined. I started off by handling office administration, but soon found myself getting involved in several ad hoc and administration related tasks at Meesho.
We were a growing team with Meesho scaling at a massive level, and that meant having to find appropriate office spaces to move them into. I began by handling everything from IT issues to allocating laptops and even handling onboarding and initial formalities for new joinees.
Though I had spent almost three years in an admin role at another company before Meesho, the amount of learning I had in the first three months itself was much more than I had ever learned in the three years prior.
At Meesho, not only have I learnt to take on new responsibilities but I actually enjoy the process of working. I have become a bit of a workaholic now, but in a good way!
Especially challenging have been those times when Meesho began scaling its hiring in 2018. We are talking 100–130 hires a month, which meant settling them in and also finding the right facility to move the new workforce into.
What I do at Meesho?
Currently, I am part of Meesho’s admin team at Meesho’s headquarters in Koramangala. I also oversee admin for the other two offices. Today I manage the housekeeping staff, coordinate with the travel desk to help employees for their travel arrangements including visa applications, take care of requisition and delivery of office supplies. I also assign company assets such as mobile phones and their sim cards, and data cards to employees.
Bill processing, vendor management, branding material such as standees, managing the office space — you name it and I have done it.
What have I learnt at Meesho?
First of all, I have learnt how to multitask here — manage things single handedly and how to get them done on time. I have also fine tuned my negotiation skills at Meesho , which means reducing the company’s costs as much as possible with vendors, while still getting the best deals.
I have also learnt to Take Ownership (A core Meesho value) at Meesho. This means sometimes taking on projects like coordinating and managing the Meesho Premier League ( Meesho’s in house cricket championship league) to organising team outings and office parties, and never saying no. Taking ownership also means flexibility in terms of making your own decisions and no one breathing down your neck, which is something I cherish at Meesho.
At Meesho we love to find solutions to problems, rather than sit on them or pass them onto someone else. Finding workable solutions to daily admin related work, while keeping those timelines in mind is what I have imbibed at Meesho. Before I joined Meesho, I was a bit of an introvert, so personally for me working here has helped me improve my social skills immensely and boosted my confidence levels. Especially because as an admin at Meesho, my primary job is to interact with employees all day, and help them find solutions to any issues they might be facing. This means also being able to talk to them.
And the best part is that some of the life lessons I have learnt at work, I love to go back home and teach them to my two daughters.
Want to join team Meesho in creating 20 million entrepreneurs by 2020, then we are hiring across roles. Apply here! | https://medium.com/meesho-tech/meet-the-multi-tasking-ever-dependable-shaik-abdul-raheem-part-of-meeshos-hardworking-admin-7c5ea8ea5c36 | ['Amrita Bose'] | 2019-12-20 13:09:25.741000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Ownership', 'Culture', 'Negotiation', 'Problem Solving'] |
¿Cuál es la diferencia entre bisexualidad y pansexualidad? | This is a translation of an original article: What is the difference between bisexuality and pansexuality? by Nick Gomez on 23rd September, 2018.
Translation provided by @panbilover. | https://medium.com/refab/cu%C3%A1l-es-la-diferencia-entre-bisexualidad-y-pansexualidad-8c0fbfd7cc35 | ['Re Fab'] | 2019-09-17 10:38:26.953000+00:00 | ['Pansexualidad', 'LGBTQ', 'Bisexual', 'Queer', 'Bisexualidad'] |
Dorm Olympics 2018 : New Event. By Shubhang Ojha, Class of 2020 | The Medium profile of Ashoka University’s Student Newspaper. Follow us on facebook.com/theedict and https://www.instagram.com/edict.ashoka/
Follow | https://medium.com/the-edict/dorm-olympics-2018-new-event-87322e95a94a | ['The Edict Staff'] | 2018-10-27 07:09:40.689000+00:00 | ['Sports', 'Illustration', 'Shubhang Ojha', 'Dorm Life', 'Students'] |
BBC Interviews Ben Shapiro | His edges get quickly snatched
If you read What We Know, I regularly call out the media in the United States. From covering the empty podium waiting on Trump while Hillary’s policies were called too wonky; their failure to call lies “lies” (seriously New York Times should get an award just for their creativity); to their obsession with articles about Nazis and serial killers. But there inability to actually interview their guests is the most frustrating. They let people like KellyAnne Conway get away with lying, talking over them, and more importantly not ever answering any of their questions.
So it was with glee that I watched an interviewer on the Andrew Neil from the BBC smacking the heck out of conservative nutjob Ben Shapiro. Shapiro is obviously used to the softball interviews of Fox and CNN and he wasn’t prepared for actually being expected to answer questions about his shady past. Shapiro thought he was just going to promote his book. Andrew Neil had other plans. And just like all bullies when confronted, Ben Shapiro whined like a little child and stormed out.
Please enjoy. In case you missed it. | https://medium.com/we-know-what-we-know/bbc-interviews-ben-shapiro-479615d4e3db | ['W. Island'] | 2019-05-11 21:43:51.887000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Current Events'] |
แจกหนังสือเกี่ยวกับ Data ฟรี 83 เล่ม !! จาก Oreilly | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/dataly-data-science-thailand/%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%88%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%B7%E0%B8%AD%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B5%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%A2%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%9A-data-%E0%B8%9F%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B5-83-%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%A5%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%A1-%E0%B8%88%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%81-oreilly-b5ad3cfd8ed1 | ['Perth Ngarmtrakulchol'] | 2016-09-03 15:23:25.498000+00:00 | ['Data Science'] |
Benebit rated in the top 3% for all upcoming token sales — ICObench | In preparation of our upcoming pre-sale on January 22, 2018, top ICO ratings site ICObench has placed us in the upper echelon of ICOs.
Earn money back with every purchase and benefit from Cashback and Loyalty Points every time you shop. Start using and redeeming your customer points right away. An all-in-one platform that creates added value for customers as they shop at their favourite companies as well as increases brand exposure via targeted Loyalty and Cashback Programs. Transact in your choice of currency — fiat or crypto — on the Benebit platform. The Bene Card replaces all loyalty cards for fast, easy and secure participation in different brand loyalty programs. C2C transactions are easy, instant and secure with Benebit. Send BNEs or your choice of currency to any user on the platform.
ICObench uses a rating system that combines an assessment algorithm (which uses more than 20 different criteria to measure) and independent ICO experts. An ICO’s rating is monitored daily and fluctuate as more experts provide additional ratings.
At the time of publishing, Benebit’s decentralized all-in-one platform received an overall score of 4.3 out of 5, putting us at #19 out of 670 ICOs rated on ICObench. Other highlights include a score of 4.9 for Benebit’s ICO profile and 4.6 for our team. Nearly all ICO advisors granted us with a perfect score for our team and vision as well.
ICObench’s trusty little companion bot Benchy scored us 4.9 out of 5.
Read our ratings on ICObench here. For more ratings, be sure to check out our post on Track ICO.
Join the upcoming Benebit token sale on January 22, 2018. | https://medium.com/benebit/benebit-rated-in-the-top-3-for-all-upcoming-token-sales-icobench-1c60da114776 | [] | 2018-01-16 09:13:39.655000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Benebit Ico', 'ICO'] |
Pull Request Etiquette for Reviewers and Authors | Pull Request Etiquette for Reviewers and Authors
Be careful with those LGTMs
Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash
A pull request (PR) is a process when new code is reviewed before it should be merged to develop a branch or master branch in a Git repository like GitHub.
The author creates a PR, while a reviewer reviews a PR. A PR could be time-consuming, annoying, or even nerve-racking if done wrong.
Common PR issues are:
The PR is too long. The PR is left open. No one reviews the PR.
The reviewer keeps nitpicking minor mistakes. The author keeps repeating the same mistakes.
The conversation is not responsive. Discussion becomes steamy. Nothing is resolved.
To nurture a healthy PR process, both author and reviewer should have a mutual understanding of common dos and don’ts in PR review.
Purely based on personal experience, the following 16 etiquettes could be used as guidelines for PR review in your team or organization. | https://medium.com/better-programming/pull-request-etiquettes-for-reviewer-and-author-f4e80360f92c | ['Meng Taing'] | 2019-11-10 23:57:33.734000+00:00 | ['Tips', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Startup', 'Process'] |
5) Scary ‘R’ Us 1: The Exaggerated Threat of Communism | “Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours….There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented.” (Joseph Schumpeter, 1919[i])
Governments throughout history have found it useful to have an external threat to create fear in the minds of the public, so they can be manipulated into uniting against a common foe and fighting a war. This is the first of three posts that discuss exaggerated threats.
Exaggerating The Threat of Communism
In 1945, at the end of World War 2, some countries in Eastern Europe were occupied by Russia. This group of countries became known as the Soviet Union. The economic system in those countries was called communism. From 1945 to 1989 leaders in Western countries tried to create the impression that at any moment the West might be invaded by communists. (Anti-communist propaganda actually became widespread much earlier, in 1917, and there are examples from even earlier.[ii]) In Britain, the government broadcast propaganda, labeled ‘public-information films’, about sheltering under a table or the stairs in the event of a nuclear attack. People in the US were told that communism is anti-American, it saps free will, and stops people from being individuals. Leaders in the US and Britain gave the impression that life under communism would be one great big concentration camp. President Reagan described the Soviet Union as “an evil empire” (not so different from George Bush’s use of the phrase “axis of evil”). Propaganda like “Better dead than Red” (red implied communist) was used repeatedly to scare people into believing that becoming communist was the worst thing that could happen.
The declassified files show that the US and British governments knowingly exaggerated the threat of a huge military invasion by the Soviet Union. This gave the US government an excuse to build up an enormous military, on the grounds that it might be needed to defend us. The size of the threat was usually described by saying that Russia had more missiles or bombers than the US had. This difference in numbers was referred to as the missile ‘gap’ or the bomber ‘gap.’ At one point US experts tried to claim that Russia had 100 nuclear missiles when in fact they had 4. Estimates were put out suggesting Russia had an immense bomber fleet, when in fact it was relatively small. In reality the ‘gap’ was in the other direction — the US had more missiles and bombers than Russia. Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defence from 1961–68, said that the Soviet military threat had been exaggerated for years. A later study by the US congress looked at the years 1978–1985 and concluded that Russian strength had been deliberately exaggerated every year in order to increase the US military budget[iii]. One military specialist said:
“The most critical special operations mission we have today is to persuade the American people that the communists are out to get us.”[iv]
On numerous occasions people in the West were told that the US government had to supply weapons to a country, such as Angola in 1974, in order to help locals being attacked by the Soviets. In many cases, the true order of events was that the people in these countries asked the Soviets for help after aggression by America or America’s allies. In the case of Angola, the Soviets were responding to an invasion by South Africa, backed by Britain and the US. This was summed up by one writer who said:
“You may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union you are fighting”[v].
US propaganda presented all left-wing governments as agents of Russia. In reality, leaders in countries such as Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba and China had many disagreements with each other[vi]. An honest summary of the situation was provided by a US Admiral in 1980:
“The Soviets are in six relatively unimportant countries today…They’ve been kicked out of Indonesia, China, Egypt and Somalia…If you look at the success of the Soviets as imperialists, they are flops…They have not had a major naval exercise for 5 years.”[vii]
Declassified British Intelligence files clearly state “The Soviet Union will not deliberately start general war, or even limited war, in Europe”[viii]. In fact most Soviet wargames were based on suppressing dissent within the Soviet Union, making sure that uprisings could be quelled[ix]. The whole system was best described using the term ‘spheres of influence’. Russia was free to dominate within the Soviet Union, and the USA was mostly able to do what it wanted elsewhere. Over time there were exceptions, but for a while this ‘spheres of influence’ arrangement was acceptable to those in power in both the West and the East. This era was known as the cold war and lasted until 1989, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall, separating East and West Germany, was pulled down. It is not really possible to provide an accurate cost for the cold war, but a ballpark estimate is that the US spent approximately $10 trillion[x].
Blocking Independent Development and Fairer Societies
The true motive for exaggerating the threat of communism was to give the US government an excuse to use their military or their spy agency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to overthrow other governments, or keep existing US-backed dictators in power, in order to control trade and resources. The US was afraid that countries would use their resources to develop a fairer society, and to help their own people escape poverty. The above explanation applies to many of the wars mentioned in other posts. Arbenz of Guatemala, Mossadegh of Iran, Sukarno of Indonesia, Nkrumah of Ghana, Jagan of British Guyana, Sihanouk of Cambodia — these are all examples of leaders and countries that wanted to try a form of independent development that have been overthrown by the US and replaced by US clients.[xi] Some of the countries targeted were very small, extremely poor, and offered no genuine threat to the US. However, if one poor country was able to demonstrate that independent development was possible, other countries might follow their lead and throw out exploitative US corporations and remove repressive governments. If the poorest countries could do this, slightly wealthier countries could do it even more easily, so the US actually considered the poorest countries to be the greatest threat. This was known as “the threat of a good example”[xii].
Cuba
A good example is Cuba. For many years, the Cuban dictator, Batista, had been supported by the US government. US businesses, including the mafia, controlled much of the Cuban economy. The Cuban people, led by Fidel Castro, overthrew Batista in a revolution in 1959 in order to end the tyranny and exploitation. When the revolution was successful, the Cubans threw the US corporations out of the country.[xiii] For some years the CIA attempted to overthrow Castro, but they were unsuccessful. This included a failed invasion in 1961, known as the ‘Bay of Pigs’.[xiv] The US government has imposed an embargo (meaning no one is allowed to trade with Cuba) ever since, and this has had an impact on Cuba’s prosperity. Despite this, Cuba has an outstanding healthcare system and provides excellent education and basic necessities for citizens. The US claims that the embargo is about a lack of democracy and human rights in Cuba, but in reality it is to ensure that the communist system in Cuba is not perceived as a good example, so others will not copy it.
The Western media, particularly in the US, mostly repeat the simplistic government propaganda that the US and their allies are the good guys, and the people they are fighting against are the bad guys. Not everyone is quite as brainwashed as the populations of Britain and the US. On one occasion, a US representative wanted the Mexican government to try to convince its population that Cuba was a threat. The response was:
“if we suggest that Cuba is a threat to our security, 40 million Mexicans will die laughing”[xv].
The Pentagon Papers
As mentioned in an earlier post, one of the most brutal US interventions was in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos between 1954 and 1973. The US government used the exaggerated threat of communism to justify sending its military to these countries for many years. The real reason the US was involved in Vietnam was to help an unpopular leadership, which had already killed tens of thousands of its own people, to stay in power[xvi], against the wishes of most of the Vietnamese population[xvii]. As with many recent wars, the country targeted was destroyed. The British government was actively involved, although politicians tried to keep their activities secret. They flew in weapons, trained soldiers in jungle warfare, advised President Nixon on policy, provided intelligence to help intercept messages and to help bombers find targets, and provided propaganda support[xviii].
It was during Vietnam that a US military analyst, Daniel Ellsberg, made large numbers of classified documents available. These became known as the Pentagon Papers and they showed that the US government was lying to both the US Congress and the US population about the reasons for the war. These papers explained that South East Asia was an important source of raw materials, such as oil, tin and rubber, and the US had client regimes in many countries in the region, helping to control those resources. A peaceful negotiation had been possible for many years, but was sabotaged by the US[xix]. US leaders at the time were worried about what they called ‘the domino effect’ (similar to the ‘threat of a good example’ mentioned above). If they were unsuccessful in retaining control in Vietnam, other countries might follow, and the US would lose control of huge resources, particularly in Indonesia.
An investigation into a massacre in Vietnam known as ‘My Lai’, where over 500 villagers were murdered by US soldiers, shows how brutal US wars really are. US soldiers confessed to mass executions, scalpings and beheadings. They kept ears, made into necklaces, as trophies, and they raped women and children.[xx]
Operation Condor — Death Squads and Torture
Atrocities such as large-scale murder and torture were committed by numerous US-backed rulers, who were given weapons, training and intelligence by the US. The Indonesian leader Suharto repeatedly committed mass slaughter, on a scale that should be called genocide.[xxi] In the late 1970s, there was a notorious operation called Operation Condor in many South American countries, where the CIA trained dictators, their militaries and police in the use of death squads, kidnap squads, and torture techniques. It is impossible to know how many people were persecuted during this period. One estimate is that 50,000 people were murdered, and 30,000 disappeared without trace (presumably also murdered). Another 400,000 were imprisoned for their political beliefs in hundreds of secret prisons set up as torture centres.[xxii] Under President Ronald Reagan, similar crimes took place throughout Central America, in countries such as Nicaragua, Grenada and El Salvador.[xxiii] The US repeatedly justified their support by claiming that it was necessary to fight communism.
The US’s main enemy during these events was anyone within each country who believed that poor people should have a better life, or who believed that they should control the country’s resources. Those people did not want US companies controlling resources or exploiting people. For this reason, the death squads and torturers deliberately targeted religious leaders, union leaders, teachers and academics, critical journalists, and left-wing politicians.
Still using the ‘Russian Threat’ as Propaganda
The exaggerated threat of communism is no longer used to justify wars. It has been replaced by exaggerated threats of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the need for humanitarian intervention (all discussed in upcoming posts). However, in 2018, the US changed its main focus from terrorism to “inter-state strategic competition”, which means China and Russia, together with Iran and North Korea[xxiv]. The next time you hear a news program about China’s activities in the South China Sea, or anything to do with Russia, Iran or North Korea, remember that it is US propaganda to create the next exaggerated threat. The real criminals in these regions are the US military, trying to surround independent nations with warships, military bases and nuclear missiles[xxv].
Key Points
Governments create and exaggerate threats. They use our fear to justify wars.
The threat of a communist invasion was exaggerated for almost half a century.
This threat was used by the US to justify many of their invasions up until 1989. The real reason for most of these invasions was to stop others from running their countries independently and controlling their own resources.
Further Reading
Jim Garrison and Pyare Shivpuri, The Russian Threat — Its Myths and Realities
References
[i] Joseph Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes, 1919
[ii] Josh Jones, ‘The Red Menace: A Striking Gallery of anti-communist posters, Ads, Comic Books, Magazines and Films’, Open Culture, 18 Nov 2014, at
https://www.openculture.com/2014/11/the-red-menace-a-striking-gallery-of-anti-communist-propaganda.html
[iii] Garrison and Shivpuri, The Russian Threat, p.270
[iv] Michael Kelly, Deputy Assistant Secretary US Air Force, in Stauber and Rampton, Toxic Sludge is Good for You, p.161
[v] Samuel Huntington, cited in Chomsky, Profit Over People, p.140
[vi] James S. Henry, The Blood Bankers, p.192
[vii] Admiral LaRocque, 1980, cited in Garrison and Shivpuri, The Russian Threat, p.167
[viii] William Blum, Rogue State, 2004, p.18
[ix] Admiral LaRocque, 1980, cited in Garrison and Shivpuri, The Russian Threat, p.167
[x] Robert Higgs, ‘The cold war economy: Opportunity costs, Ideology and the politics of crisis’, Explorations in Economic History, №31, p.291, July 1994 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014498384710126
[xi] William Blum, Killing Hope, 2004, p.12
[xii] Dianna Melrose, Nicaragua: The threat of a good example?, 1995
[xiii] Scott M. Deitche, ‘The rise of Castro and the fall of the Havana mob’, The Mob Musem, 7 Jan 2019, at
https://themobmuseum.org/blog/rise-castro-fall-havana-mob/
[xiv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
[xv] Ruth Leacock, Requiem For Revolution, p.33, cited in Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People, p.77
[xvi] Noam Chomsky, ‘Humanitarian Imperialism: The New Doctrine of Imperial Right’, at
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200809--.htm
Noam Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot, at
https://zcomm.org/rethinking-camelot/
[xvii] The Pentagon Papers: An Introduction, at
http://www.nnn.se/vietnam/pentpapers.pdf
[xviii] http://markcurtis.info/2007/02/01/britains-secret-support-for-us-aggression-the-vietnam-war/
[xix] Max Gordon, Vista Magazine, September-October 1971, ‘What the Pentagon papers Tell Us’, at
http://www.nnn.se/vietnam/pentpapers.pdf
[xx] A.C.Grimes, ‘Messed Up Things From The Vietnam War’, 16 July 2018, at
https://www.grunge.com/128595/messed-up-things-from-the-vietnam-war/
Nick Turse, ‘‘Random Murder, Rape and Pillage’: A Random Soldier Describes 1968 in Vietnam’, 2 Aug 2018, at
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/random-murder-rape-pillage-us-soldier-describes-1968-vietnam/
[xxi] John Pilger, The New Rulers Of The World, p.32 for information about US intelligence agencies assisting with the slaughter in Indonesia
[xxii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
[xxiii] William Blum, Killing Hope, 2004, for a detailed discussion on Angola, Grenada, El Salvador, Cuba, Nicaragua and Vietnam
[xxiv] US Department of Defense, ‘Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of The United States of America’, at
https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf
[xxv] John Pilger, ‘The Coming War On China’, 2016, at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDl9ecICIYg | https://medium.com/elephantsintheroom/5-scary-r-us-1-the-exaggerated-threat-of-communism-c8a2f88194b5 | [] | 2020-12-01 21:20:51.885000+00:00 | ['Death Squad', 'Propaganda', 'Communism', 'Violence', 'Pentagon Papers'] |
100 % effective social media marketing in one month | Do you want to learn about social media?
Well before we got into the basics of social media. Let us first go over what digital marketing and social media are.
After that, we will describe step-by-step types of social media in which we do marketing.
So, what is digital marketing?
It is a type of marketing in which we can sell products through proper media channels and also using electronic devices.
It is also done online and offline. In fact, both are important in digital marketing.
Now, we start with social media. Well, there are also types of media in which we market the product through it, like Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, newspaper, etc.
It is also done offline and online.
As we know that digital marketing industries grow very high all around the world. as media is a very fast-growing digital marketing for selling and marketing products.
Today I am going to share an amazing story of Mrs. Jelly was a shirt designer and maker. She has no idea about how she sells her product or markets her products.
It was a cold morning and the phone bell rang. Our team member picked the call. It was Mrs. Jelly who contacted us. Actually, she contacted us about how she sorted out her problem of marketing and selling her product. We share our experience in digital marketing. She was satisfied that she gave every single detail about her products. So we have experienced digital marketers. They sort her problems through social media marketing step by step.
The 360 marketing formula
Social media:
Social media is the most powerful media in 20 century. Without the use of this media, the world cannot progress in any field.
The top five lists of social media are as follows
Facebook Instagram WhatsApp Tiktok YouTube
Facebook:
Facebook is the most dominant social media nowadays in developing countries and non-developing countries. It was lunch in 2004 till then it was dominant. Facebook is a media platform where we share ideas and information or content. Times are changing and huge companies are using Facebook as marketing their products. How is Facebook used in marketing?
Through Facebook ads
Create a post for their promotion and sponsors
Create a page for your customers
Adding stories for brands
Create groups of brands
Instagram:
Instagram is another social media plate form. It’s popular about pictures, images about content, and also pretty popular about short videos. How is marketing possible?
post an image about your content
using hashtag # before you content
adding beautiful stories about you are posts
create highlight about your brands
get follow you are brands
increase you are following because its increase out traffic
WhatsApp:
Everyone knows that the What's app is used for chatting like, voice messaging, text messaging, videos live chat, audios chat, and also adding stories.
Marketing
Engage with people by making groups of brands
Share links of brands group
adding stories of products or brands
TikTok:
TikTok is a new highly entertaining and videos content on social media. to express our content through it. How is it helpful for marketing?
Create a video content our business Make adds our brands Make id of brands or products how they make Create videos about company products and technology to make such products interesting things.
YouTube:
YouTube is modern digital marketing social media in 20 century. It’s replacing television. to live streaming, movies, dramas, short videos, etc. it helps us marketing
Make a suitable channel for business or company
Make a very decent name for your channel.
Promote your channel and increase you are followers
Make relevant short content videos about business.
Conclusion:
Our company’s first priority is to enhance marketing thought digitally and as for more information contact us our website:www.gbmarketers.com and cell number 03 — — — — — — 8. visit our blogs about marketing.
As Mrs. Jelly solved her problem by applying our instruction to( learn in 5mint social media ) if you face such a problem then our company will help you every time. | https://medium.com/@shernadirbaig99/100-effective-social-media-marketing-in-one-month-fdf842a3bdeb | [] | 2021-12-31 09:39:46.615000+00:00 | ['Blogging Tips', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Instagram Marketing', 'Facebook Marketing'] |
Heal, Schmeal, Let’s Fight | Terry H. Schwadron
Nov. 13, 2020
So, how’s that heal-the-divide promise doing?
It sounds as if we should hold off on the Kumbaya. Indeed, it looks dim that any immediate prospects for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris riding in to lead us to a renewed era of cooperation.
Even beyond Donald Trump’s petulant insistence on refusing to accept an American judgment to deny him a second term and the renewed hostilities among Republicans in Congress towards Biden — both over policy and personal matters — any early joy over a possible return even to basic civility seems undeserved.
No, I’m much more concerned that these government “leaders” have forgotten why they were sent to Washington. We don’t give a fig for their power-hungry concerns; we want them focused on actual problems that face us as a nation.
While they fiddle over fake election results and stalled transitions, more than 1,000 Americans are dying every day now from coronavirus, and we have an absentee government. Our current White House is so focused on serving up undiluted pap and propaganda over perceived election fraud, that it seems to have forgotten what the election was about altogether — protecting Americans and providing ways to greater health and prosperity.
While Biden appears intent on ignoring rear-guard actions by Trump and Senate Republicans to block his actions, the opposition is simply digging in, creating a siege-like defense of . . . well, keeping power.
How this became a tug-of-war about power rather than about governing is merely a continuation of this divide between love-Trump-at-all-cost proponents and lets-get-on-with-it Democrats that shows absolutely no sign of waning.
Georgia, the Senate and Biden
As we all have heard repeatedly, Georgia is the new Ground Zero, with its Jan. 5 run-off elections for two U.S. Senators whose election will decide a Senate “majority” that at best can be 50–50, plus the vice-president’s vote.
I couldn’t help but notice that Georgia just announced its dates for new voter registration, for seeking mail ballots and for early voting — exactly the same formula that has resulted in a state recount of presidential ballots and endless shouting from Team Trump about fraud. So, the answer, of course, is that we are going to do exactly the same thing again — without Trump on the ballot.
In the Senate, Lindsey O. Graham Jr., who last week said both that Biden should be able to name his cabinet and fantasized that Trump may still magically win the election, now promised to double down on investigating unsubstantiated questions about Hunter Biden playing on Joe Biden’s name and office as vice president. In stern tones, he insists that this is Important, but you wonder just who he is seeking to persuade. What are they going to do with a finding that the son of the president-elect shouldn’t have dropped the Biden name in business dealings — which it is not clear that he did.
Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader — for the moment — Mitch McConnell is already making noises about blocking names of Cabinet appointees and others whom he personally finds to be unacceptable to his politics — like the clear majority of Americans who voted in record numbers opposing his positions.
Much has been made of the refusal of the great number of Senate Republicans to acknowledge Biden as the election winner, preferring to let Trump wallow in his misery by misusing U.S. courts for baseless attacks on the election results.
For four years, Republicans have been saying that Elections Have Consequences to explain choosing judges that too often have been unqualified, for allowing Trump to skate on increasingly dangerous power grabs over money, ethical lapses, impeachable schemes to use his office for political gain and resistance to oversight.
10 More Weeks
Now comes word, right along the lines that I said would be troubling, that a cornered Donald Trump would be using his last weeks to pursue official punishments for perceived lack of loyalty, and to seek to deepen conservative polices and regulations before he leaves office.
Politico reported that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has been gathering senior aides to plot the conservative policy moves they could push through in their final 10 weeks on immigration, trade, health care, China and school choice. And Trump has moved aside top Pentagon leaders whose personal loyalty he has challenged to install people that military and congressional leaders alike find unqualified and unquestioning — towards an end that no one seems to understand.
So, rather than recognizing that Elections Have Consequences, or that coronavirus is on a tear, or that there is worry over national security by hampering a good transition of leadership, we have the ultimate Trumpist view of what to do at this moment: Play golf and complain about Fox News, and any perception that Dear Leader is a “loser.”
Meadows apparently told aides to give him goals by today that could be accomplished by Biden’s inauguration through executive orders, executive actions or finalizing agency rules. On immigration, for example, they are seeking to finalize a rule related to making the standards stricter around H-1B visas affecting temporary U.S. hires of skilled workers, or to give Covid-19 relief money to parents for private or parochial schools rather than public schools, or to harden China positions, hampering Biden in making changes.
And, of course, both sides need to raise a few more million bucks to have the spat continue in Georgia.
So much for Kumbaya. The shame of it is that Team Trump has forgotten what the fight is about.
##
www.terryschwadron.wordpress.com | https://medium.com/@terryschwadron/heal-schmeal-lets-fight-4ee4a886340b | ['Terry Schwadron'] | 2020-11-13 12:00:43.687000+00:00 | ['Republicans', 'Transitions', 'Healing', 'Joe Biden', 'Donald Trump'] |
Writing Goals: 2021 [Part 4] — Practical Matters | 10-part series for writers to consider what we did in 2020 and will do in 2021.
This series of daily posts, starting Monday and going through next Friday (M-F), is not about resolutions which we make on December 31 and break by January 30… or sooner. This is not about wish lists and ephemeral fantasies. This is about each of us committing ourselves to ply the craft of writing day after day, to tell stories only we can tell, and to end up with a tangible product in our hand — a completed manuscript. Then start on another story…
Writing is hard. It just is. It’s a lonely occupation, far too often we get lost along the way, we have to fight off constant Inner Voices of Negativity, and the competition is stupid insane. In the face of that, I guess what I’m hoping for in this effort is to enlist the entirety of the burgeoning Go Into The Story community to create a sum greater than the parts, a spirit of I Can Do That which grows and grows, and pours out into each of our little creative cups, feeding our souls and fueling our persistence.
Hence, 10 posts. First and foremost, I believe the best way to identify simple, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely writing goals is to do a thorough job of self-examination, which is what we are doing this week, buttressed by some good, old-fashioned inspiration, which is what is on the docket for next week. But there’s also this: Each day I’m here bellowing at you is an opportunity. You may not be with us on Day 1. You may not catch up to us by Day 5. Perhaps it may take you until Day 10. But make no mistake: This is a Herald’s Call. The only way you are going to become a writer is by being a writer. And the best way to be a writer is to make goals… and meet the hell out of them.
If you missed the Day 1 post — Looking Back — you can read that here.
In Part 2, we considered the Present, assessing where we are now.
In Part 3, we looked at the Future, visualizing where we’d like our writing to take us.
When trying to lock down writing goals, considering all those permutations is necessary, well and good.
However, there is this little thing that impacts our plans. You know it, don’t you? That little thing known as Life?
It’s great to generate a list of things we want to accomplish, but if we don’t take into account the realities of our day to day, week to week, month to month existence, the practical matters of Life, then that set of goals becomes… unreachable. And if unreachable, it becomes… dispiriting. And if dispiriting… over time all our story ideas get dispatched to the dead-end land of dust and tumbleweeds… and our writing dreams wither and die.
To avoid that fate, you’ve got to be realistic.
Today: Practical Matters
It’s important to have goals, but you have to be S.M.A.R.T. about it. Once again: Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely.
Aim high. But deal with reality.
You have a job. Maybe you’ve got a second job. Or you’re in school.
You have friends. You have family. Maybe a spouse or a lover.
In other words, Responsibilities. You have them. I have them. And we can’t ignore them when coming up with a plan to reach our writing goals. Otherwise it’s not really a plan, is it, but rather nothing more than a wish list.
When I look at that S.M.A.R.T. list, the one that opens its jaws and roars at me, desperate to get my attention is this one: Realistic.
I am great at coming up with ideas. I am also great at making the leap. So when I have ideas, I am prone to jump into them.
Part of this is my belief in The Spirit of the Spec. You get an idea. You act on it. You put it out there. My decision to take a break from academics. Accepting an invitation to visit Aspen to see if I could make it as a musician. “I can do that,” my response to a question about if I could write a screenplay (when I had never written one before). The spec script K-9. Taking up teaching part-time. Starting this blog. Partnering with the Black List. Launching Screenwriting Master Class. Doing the Quest Initiative. The Zero Draft Thirty Challenge. Assistant professor position at the DePaul University School of Cinematic Arts. Writing The Protagonist’s Journey, my first crack at an academic book. On and on and on it goes, my life a litany of having ideas and acting on them.
Now that’s all good, of course, with respect to being a self-starter. Combined with being a military brat and having zero aversion to work, along with a pretty good track record for sticking to things and seeing them through to the end, I get a lot done.
The problem is I take on too much.
There. I said it. Yep. I ain’t Superman. I can’t answer all my emails. I can’t say “yes” to every request. I can’t take on every idea I come up with.
The simple fact is the key to setting realistic expectations is to be able to say NO.
In 2021, I’ve got to say NO to some things in order to accomplish my goals. I know this will be hard. I will have to fight my instincts more than once.
But in order to create quality with regard to this particular project, I’m going to have to be extra careful about the quantity of things I do.
Can anyone else relate to this issue? Do you tend to do too much?
The reality is unless you are single, have zero interest in a social life, live like a monk so don’t require much in the way of income, and can afford to write 20 hours per day, you have to figure out a way to handle the requirements of your life and make progress as a writer. Which means whatever writing goals you choose for 2021, they have to be realistic. Be honest with yourself. What of these things can I reasonably expect to accomplish next year?
One big note to remember: It’s not just about writing a screenplay, it’s about becoming a screenwriter. The idea that you would write a first spec script, sell it, then immediately transition into a working professional screenwriter is a flawed end game. You not only need to learn how to write screenplays, but also how to think like a screenwriter, how to work like a screenwriter, how to handle yourself like a screenwriter. All those simply take time. More than likely for you to have any realistic chance to succeed in this craft, you must give yourself more than one or two years of writing and preparation. Therefore, my advice is not to think of 2021 as a year in which you will do everything, but rather one step in a process that may well take several years. The downside: Acknowledging you will be doing this for some time. The upside: You’re not laden down with an unrealistic set of goals, instead you have some achievable things on your list.
In other words — as noted above — an actual plan, not a wish list.
And for me, I need to work on this whole realistic thing in 2021.
Let’s continue this conversation in Comments, shall we? How do you make time to write? How do you find a balance between your Writing and your Life? How many years have you given yourself to pursue your writing aspirations?
Tomorrow is the big day: To lay out our specific writing goals for 2021. By committing to something in public, we make those goal more tangible and our commitment to them more real.
Let’s do everything we can to make 2021 our best creative year yet! | https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/writing-goals-2020-part-4-practical-matters-e1358795f1c9 | ['Scott Myers'] | 2020-12-10 19:12:26.408000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Productivity', 'Fiction', 'Screenwriting', 'Creativity'] |
Conspiracy Theories Are Caused By Government Secrecy | The DC Circuit has ruled that the CIA is under no obligation to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests pertaining to its involvement with insurgent militias in Syria, overturning a lower court’s previous ruling in favor of a Buzzfeed News reporter seeking such documents.
As Sputnik’s Morgan Artyukhina clearly outlines, this ruling comes despite the fact that mainstream news outlets have been reporting on the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities in Syria for years, and despite a US president having openly tweeted about those activities.
“In other words, the CIA will not be required to admit to actions it is widely reported as having done, much less divulge documents about them to the press for even greater scrutiny,” Artyukhina writes, calling to mind the Julian Assange quote “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.”
The CIA’s brazen collaboration with dangerous extremist factions seeking to topple Damascus, and its equally brazen refusal to provide the public with any information about the extent of its involvement in Syria from the earliest stages of the violence in that nation onwards, will necessarily provide fodder for conspiracy theories.
It is public knowledge that the CIA was involved in the Syrian war to some extent, it is public knowledge that the CIA has a well-documented history of doing extremely evil things, and it is public knowledge that the US government has long sought control over Syria. Due to the agency’s refusal to be transparent about the exact nature of its involvement in that nation, people are left to fill in the knowledge gaps with their own speculation.
Of course they will do this. Why wouldn’t they? Why would anyone give the lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering, psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency the benefit of the doubt and assume their actions in Syria have been benevolent just because the hard facts have been hidden behind a wall of government secrecy?
Yet they will be expected to. Anyone with a sufficient degree of influence who comes right out and says the CIA knowingly armed violent jihadists with the goal of orchestrating regime change in Syria will be attacked as a crazy conspiracy theorist by the narrative managers of the establishment media. If their words are really disruptive to establishment narratives, there will be calls to deplatform, unemploy, and ban them from social media.
And really such is the case with all the melodramatic garment rending about the dangers of conspiracy theories today. All the fixation on the way unregulated speech on the internet has contributed to the circulation of conspiracy theories conveniently ignores the real cause of those theories: government secrecy.
If the most powerful government in the world were not hiding a massive amount of its behavior behind increasingly opaque walls of secrecy, people would not need to fill in the gaps with theories about what’s happening, because there would be no gaps; they would simply see what’s happening.
“But Caitlin!” one might object. “How could America engage in all its military operations around the world if it didn’t keep information about its behaviors a secret?”
Exactly, my smooth-brained friend. Exactly.
Government secrecy is indeed necessary for winning wars. Government secrecy is also necessary for starting those wars in the first place. US government agencies have an extensive history of using false pretenses to initiate military conflicts; if they could not hide the facts behind a veil of government opacity, the public would never engage in them. The American people would never have allowed their sons to go to Vietnam if they’d known the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a lie. They’d never have sent their sons and daughters to invade Iraq if they’d known weapons of mass destruction were a lie. They would lose the support of the public, and the international community would refuse to back them.
Protecting the lives of foreign military and intelligence personnel is the primary argument against government transparency in the United States, a premise which takes it for granted that there need to be foreign military and intelligence personnel at all. The only reason the lives of troops and intelligence officers would be endangered without massive walls of government secrecy is because those personnel are out there facilitating imperialist acts of mass murder and tyranny. The argument is essentially “Well we can’t tell you the truth about what’s happening in our government, because it would mean we’d have to stop doing extremely evil things.”
The argument that the internet needs strict censorship to eliminate dangerous conspiracy theories takes it as a given that simply eliminating government secrecy is impossible, which in turn takes it as a given that the US government cannot simply stop inflicting grave evils around the world. Our ability to share information with each other online is therefore ultimately being increasingly choked off by monopolistic Silicon Valley megacorporations because no one in charge can fathom the idea of the United States government ceasing to butcher human beings around the world.
That is the real underlying argument over internet censorship today. Should people have free access to information about what their own government is doing, or should their government be permitted to do evil things in secret while people who form theories about what they’re doing are shoved further and further away from audibility? That’s the real debate here.
The powerful should not be permitted to keep secrets from the public. They should not be permitted to jail journalists who try to reveal those secrets to the public, and they should not be permitted to collaborate with monopolistic corporations to censor people who form theories about those secrets. The amount of secrecy you are entitled to should be directly inverse to the amount of power that you have.
The US government has powerful agencies whose literal job is to conspire. The fact that people are punished and condemned for forming theories about how that conspiring might take place, even while those agencies are completely lacking in transparency, is abusive.
If the government was not doing evil things in secret, then it wouldn’t need secrecy. If the government didn’t have secrecy, there would be no conspiracy theories. Stop pointing your attacks at powerless people who are just trying to figure out what’s going on in the world amidst a sea of government secrecy and propaganda, and point your attacks instead at the power structures that are actually responsible for the existence of conspiracy theories in the first place.
________________________
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my new book Poems For Rebels (you can also download a PDF for five bucks) or my old book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 | https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/conspiracy-theories-are-caused-by-government-secrecy-2b0474fd000d | ['Caitlin Johnstone'] | 2021-02-14 04:03:29.163000+00:00 | ['CIA', 'Syria', 'News', 'Government', 'Conspiracy Theories'] |
At some point, I reframed the question to ask “who do you want to be?” | At some point, I reframed the question to ask “who do you want to be?” as opposed to “what do you want to be?” I did this because I struggled for many years to find the what. It wasn’t until recently that I became more serious about pursuing who I want to be.
Truthfully, I believe most people are faking it in at least one thing in life. It’s pretty rare to find someone clearly capturing their dreams.
We tend to overthink our hearts desires, so let’s make it simple and follow out heart.
Thanks for writing this! | https://medium.com/@nickmarmolejo/at-some-point-i-reframed-the-question-to-ask-who-do-you-want-to-be-572a3b7619df | ['Rice'] | 2020-12-19 21:50:39.912000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Advice', 'Entrepreneur', 'Parenting', 'Fatherhood'] |
Why Bots & Resellers Are Not The Problem | Estimation Calculation
Last month, according to NPD analyst Mat Piscatella,
“PlayStation 5 achieved the highest launch month unit and dollar sales for a video game hardware platform in U.S. history,” said Piscatella. “The records were previously held by the PlayStation 4, which debuted in November 2013.”
Sony revealed they sold 2.1 million PS4s during the month of November 2013. The PS4 in November 2013 was 1 console sold at $399. This represents a total of $837.9 million+ sales.
The PS5s currently sell at $499 for the BluRay Edition and $399 for the Digital Edition. Based on stock information obtained from one of the Best Buy stores by an anonymous source, we can predict that both editions of the PS5 are stocked at approximately the same level. While we can’t definitively say the same for all retailers and sales, we can reasonably assume an even amount of stock for both consoles in order to create the base case scenario for number of units sold in November and December.
We use our Best Buy source’s information to understand how much stock one store (online and in-store) received in both months in order to determine if the stock decreased, increased, or stayed the same when comparing November to December. We were also provided with an estimate of the ratio of Blu Ray to Digital consoles, which we found to be 1 to 1. So, that means that the amount they had on hand was about the same for both consoles.
Going off the NPD analyst and our Best Buy source’s information, we can predict that for both November and December this year there were at minimum 2.31 million units of PS5s sold, generating a revenue of approximately $1.037+ billion in sales, which lines up with the NPD analyst’s statement.
Keeping in mind that unit sales is based off of the total amount of units sold and dollar sales is the amount of money generated from PS5 sales, we can approximate that 1.15 million units of each console were sold. For the Blu Ray console, this would result in 1.15 million units times a price of $499 which gives us approximately $576.3 million sales. The same can be done for the Digital Edition but with a price of $399, which is approximately $460.8 million sales. Therefore, the total sales for both consoles combined is approximately $1.037 billion.
This number can vary significantly. Based on the PS4 initial release, 4.2 million units were sold through November and December.
Reports from a few months back suggest that Sony planned on producing as many as 5 to 6 million units for 2020. It is uncertain if they were able to meet these figures. | https://medium.com/@themacint0sh/why-bots-resellers-are-not-the-problem-343ef2b151be | [] | 2020-12-23 22:33:33.509000+00:00 | ['Scalpers', 'Reseller', 'Bots', 'Ps5'] |
PPC Bee Support in a Nutshell | This article has been moved to the official blog of PPC Bee. You will get to the article by clicking on this link. | https://medium.com/ppc-bee/ppc-bee-support-in-a-nutshell-e985b2ed425d | ['Michaela Zákopčaníková'] | 2019-06-14 11:49:43.540000+00:00 | ['Tips', 'PPC', 'Digital Marketing', 'Ecommerce', 'PPC Marketing'] |
Short-form stories are a great way to reach scrolling writers fast. | Short-form stories are a great way to reach scrolling writers fast. If you keep this little posts within the guidelines, not only do you get a 100% read-rate, you also have a quick way to promote your latest story to readers who may not have noticed it otherwise.
With the new changes in distribution (see above), we writers need to hone every promotional tool in the shed.
I believe these short-form stories are a great way to grab your reader’s attention in under 150 words (so the entire text is visible in preview).
Enroll in my Free Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers | https://medium.com/the-book-mechanic/short-form-stories-are-a-great-way-to-reach-scrolling-writers-fast-25c098d2eab6 | ['August Birch'] | 2020-12-10 18:30:46.379000+00:00 | ['Medium', 'Writing', 'Marketing', 'Money', 'Life Lessons'] |
Transfer learning from pre-trained models | 5. Classifiers on top of deep convolutional neural networks
As mentioned before, models for image classification that result from a transfer learning approach based on pre-trained convolutional neural networks are usually composed of two parts:
Convolutional base, which performs feature extraction. Classifier, which classifies the input image based on the features extracted by the convolutional base.
Since in this section we focus on the classifier part, we must start by saying that different approaches can be followed to build the classifier. Some of the most popular are:
Fully-connected layers. For image classification problems, the standard approach is to use a stack of fully-connected layers followed by a softmax activated layer (Krizhevsky et al. 2012, Simonyan & Zisserman 2014, Zeiler & Fergus 2014). The softmax layer outputs the probability distribution over each possible class label and then we just need to classify the image according to the most probable class. Global average pooling. A different approach, based on global average pooling, is proposed by Lin et al. (2013). In this approach, instead of adding fully connected layers on top of the convolutional base, we add a global average pooling layer and feed its output directly into the softmax activated layer. Lin et al. (2013) provides a detailed discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. Linear support vector machines. Linear support vector machines (SVM) is another possible approach. According to Tang (2013), we can improve classification accuracy by training a linear SVM classifier on the features extracted by the convolutional base. Further details about the advantages and disadvantages of the SVM approach can be found in the paper.
6. Example
In this example, we will see how each of these classifiers can be implemented in a transfer learning solution for image classification. According to Rawat and Wang (2017), ‘comparing the performance of different classifiers on top of deep convolutional neural networks still requires further investigation and thus makes for an interesting research direction’. So it will be interesting to see how each classifier performs in a standard image classification problem.
You can find the full code of this example on my GitHub page.
6.1. Prepare data
In this example, we will use a smaller version of the original dataset. This will allow us to run the models faster, which is great for people who have limited computational power (like me).
To build a smaller version of the dataset, we can adapt the code provided by Chollet (2017) as shown in Code 1.
Code 1. Create a smaller dataset for Dogs vs. Cats.
6.2. Extract features from the convolutional base
The convolutional base will be used to extract features. These features will feed the classifiers that we want to train so that we can identify if images have dogs or cats.
Once again, the code provided by Chollet (2017) is adapted. Code 2 shows the code used.
Code 2. Extract features from convolutional base.
6.3. Classifiers
6.3.1. Fully-connected layers
The first solution that we present is based on fully-connected layers. This classifier adds a stack of fully-connected layers that is fed by the features extracted from the convolutional base.
To keep it simple (and fast), we will use the solution proposed by Chollet (2018) with slight modifications. In particular, we will use the Adam optimizer instead of the RMSProp because Stanford says so (what a beautiful argumentum ad verecundiam).
Code 3 shows the code used, while Figures 5 and 6 present the learning curves.
Code 3. Fully connected layers solution.
Figure 5. Accuracy of the fully connected layers solution.
Figure 6. Loss of the fully connected layers solution.
Brief discussion of results:
Validation accuracy is around 0.85, which is encouraging given the size of the dataset. The model strongly overfits. There’s a big gap between the training and the validation curves. Since we already used dropout, we should increase the size of the dataset to improve the results.
6.3.2. Global average pooling
The difference between this case and the previous one is that, instead of adding a stack of fully-connected layers, we will add a global average pooling layer and feed its output into a sigmoid activated layer.
Note that we are talking about a sigmoid activated layer instead of a softmax one, which is what is recommended by Lin et al. (2013). We are changing to the sigmoid activation because in Keras, to perform binary classification, you should use sigmoid activation and binary_crossentropy as the loss (Chollet 2017). Therefore, it was necessary to do this small modification to the original proposal of Lin et al. (2013).
Code 4 shows the code to build the classifier. Figure 7 and 8 show the resulting learning curves.
Code 4. Global average pooling solution.
Figure 7. Accuracy of the global average pooling solution.
Figure 8. Loss of the global average pooling solution.
Brief discussion of results:
Validation accuracy is similar to the one resulting from the fully-connected layers solution. The model doesn’t overfit as much as in the previous case. The loss function is still decreasing when the model stops training. Probably, it is possible to improve the model by increasing the number of epochs.
6.3.3 Linear support vector machines
In this case, we will train a linear support vector machines (SVM) classifier on the features extracted by the convolutional base.
To train this classifier, a traditional machine learning approach is preferable. Consequently, we will use k-fold cross-validation to estimate the error of the classifier. Since k-fold cross-validation will be used, we can concatenate the train and the validation sets to enlarge our training data (we keep the test set untouched, as we did in the previous cases). Code 5 shows how data was concatenated.
Code 5. Data concatenation.
Finally, we must be aware that the SVM classifier has one hyperparameter. This hyperparameter is the penalty parameter C of the error term. To optimize the choice of this hyperparameter, we will use exhaustive grid search. Code 6 presents the code used to build this classifier, while Figure 9 illustrates the learning curves.
Code 6. Linear SVM solution.
Figure 9. Accuracy of the linear SVM solution.
Brief discussion of results:
Model’s accuracy is around 0.86, which is similar to the accuracy of the previous solutions. Overfitting is around the corner. Moreover, the training accuracy is always 1.0, which is not usual and can be interpreted as a sign of overfitting. The accuracy of the model should increase with the number of training samples. However, that doesn’t seem to happen. This may be due to overfitting. It would be interesting to see how the model reacts when the dataset increases.
7. Summary
In this article, we:
Presented the concepts of transfer learning, convolutional neural networks, and pre-trained models.
Defined the basic fine-tuning strategies to repurpose a pre-trained model.
Described a structured approach to decide which fine-tuning strategy should be used, based on the size and similarity of the dataset.
Introduced three different classifiers that can be used on top of the features extracted from the convolutional base.
Provided a end-to-end example on image classification for each of the three classifiers presented in this article.
I hope that you feel motivated to start developing your deep learning projects on computer vision. This is a great field of study and new exciting findings are coming out everyday.
I’d be glad to help you, so let me know if you have any questions or improvement suggestions!
8. References
1. Bengio, Y., 2009. Learning deep architectures for AI. Foundations and trends in Machine Learning, 2(1), pp.1–127.
2. Canziani, A., Paszke, A. and Culurciello, E., 2016. An analysis of deep neural network models for practical applications. arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.07678.
3. Chollet, F., 2015. Keras.
4. Chollet, F., 2017. Deep learning with python. Manning Publications Co..
5. Deng, J., Dong, W., Socher, R., Li, L.J., Li, K. and Fei-Fei, L., 2009, June. Imagenet: A large-scale hierarchical image database. In Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2009. CVPR 2009. IEEE Conference on (pp. 248–255). Ieee.
6. He, K., Zhang, X., Ren, S. and Sun, J., 2016. Deep residual learning for image recognition. In Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition (pp. 770–778).
7. Krizhevsky, A., Sutskever, I. and Hinton, G.E., 2012. Imagenet classification with deep convolutional neural networks. In Advances in neural information processing systems (pp. 1097–1105).
8. LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y. and Hinton, G., 2015. Deep learning. nature, 521(7553), p.436.
9. Lin, M., Chen, Q. and Yan, S., 2013. Network in network. arXiv preprint arXiv:1312.4400.
10. Pan, S.J. and Yang, Q., 2010. A survey on transfer learning. IEEE Transactions on knowledge and data engineering, 22(10), pp.1345–1359.
11. Rawat, W. and Wang, Z., 2017. Deep convolutional neural networks for image classification: A comprehensive review. Neural computation, 29(9), pp.2352–2449.
12. Simonyan, K. and Zisserman, A., 2014. Very deep convolutional networks for large-scale image recognition. arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.1556.
13. Szegedy, C., Vanhoucke, V., Ioffe, S., Shlens, J. and Wojna, Z., 2016. Rethinking the inception architecture for computer vision. In Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition (pp. 2818–2826).
14. Tang, Y., 2013. Deep learning using linear support vector machines. arXiv preprint arXiv:1306.0239.
15. Voulodimos, A., Doulamis, N., Doulamis, A. and Protopapadakis, E., 2018. Deep learning for computer vision: A brief review. Computational intelligence and neuroscience, 2018.
16. Yosinski, J., Clune, J., Bengio, Y. and Lipson, H., 2014. How transferable are features in deep neural networks?. In Advances in neural information processing systems (pp. 3320–3328).
17. Zeiler, M.D. and Fergus, R., 2014, September. Visualizing and understanding convolutional networks. In European conference on computer vision (pp. 818–833). Springer, Cham.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to João Coelho for reading drafts of this. | https://towardsdatascience.com/transfer-learning-from-pre-trained-models-f2393f124751 | ['Pedro Marcelino'] | 2018-10-23 14:52:15.379000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Towards Data Science', 'Convolutional Network', 'Deep Learning'] |
Winter Lights | Winter Lights
In the darkest, coldest season we look
For any brightness, we can find
Nature brings us sunrises through morning dark
The light on the snow can be blinding
We are cheered by artificial lights, too
Christmas lights strung light up the world at night
Candles cast a warm glow in our homes
Decorated trees are lit
Shining soft hope
All around us | https://medium.com/blueinsight/winter-lights-c5c4b7865839 | ['Victoria Ponte'] | 2020-12-23 14:42:21.913000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Winter', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Blue Insights', 'Winter Moods'] |
Don’t Leave Me Alone Again | Friday Fix Prompt 8/14/2020
Don’t Leave Me Alone Again
Or else…
Homeboy (Author’s photo)
This is what you get. This is what happens when you leave the Homeboy all alone. He looks around to see what is left. He notices what you’ve forgotten.
Oh, Homeboy, what some have made, you have destroyed!
Thanks for leaving me some, anyway. Next time, you’ll be coming, too. | https://medium.com/the-friday-fix/dont-leave-me-alone-again-eba5ebbd21be | ['Terry Barr'] | 2020-08-14 11:01:01.499000+00:00 | ['Food', 'Family', 'Dogs', 'The Friday Fix', 'Humor'] |
Standards for Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers to Advance Research and Outcomes as part of the Cancer Moonshot | By Daniel Sullivan, Duke University Medical Center; Roderic Pettigrew, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering; Richard Cavanagh, National Institute of Standards and Technology; and Shadi Mamaghani, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
Among the Cancer Moonshot initiative goals are unleashing the power of data and enhancing data sharing. Efforts to facilitate and promote data sharing are crucial to both researchers and clinicians. With improved sharing of datasets, researchers can speed scientific discovery and the development of effective treatments and diagnostics; care providers can improve diagnosis, treatment, and ultimately health outcomes. Medical imaging plays a central role in cancer treatment and research: each year in the United States, about 23 million computed tomography (CT) scans and 1.6 million positron emission tomography (PET) scans are performed. These scans are needed to diagnose cancer, monitor the effects of treatments, and conduct research on cancer and cancer-related therapies. Scans can also assist in understanding the genomic expression of cancer and its response to gene-based therapies.
1. The Need for Standards
To obtain the greatest value from cancer imaging the scans must be compared across time for a given patient, and across patients and research institutions. This is not a trivial undertaking: image-based assessments of treatment responses can be highly variable, depending on the make and model of the imaging equipment used and how the images were acquired, processed, and the guidelines by which they were interpreted. If images are not uniformly acquired, doctors and researchers may not be able to compare the results of one study with another in the same patient, between groups of patients in a clinical trial, or between studies or institutions. For example, if a cancer patient has a PET scan done at one hospital using one type of scanner and procedures, and two months after treatment has a PET scan on a different scanner or with different procedures, measurements from the two scans might not be comparable. That is, it may be difficult to determine whether any apparent changes between the two studies are due to real changes in the cancer or due to technical differences between the scans.
FDG-PET-only (lower panel) and combined PET/CT (upper panel) images of Gastrointestinal Sarcoma Tumor before and after treatment. (Source: Research.net)
2. QIBA: An Alliance to Establish Imaging Standards
The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) has established the Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers Alliance (QIBA) to address this problem. QIBA aims to improve the value and practicality of quantitative imaging biomarkers by reducing variability across devices and time. Over 1000 experts across science, engineering and medicine support the activities to develop standards and advance healthcare using quantitative imaging biomarkers in clinical trials and practice. QIBA has adapted standard terminology and methods traditionally used to describe, evaluate and validate in vitro laboratory assays, and has applied these to quantitative imaging biomarkers. Standardizing the use of quantitative imaging biomarkers can reduce the variance across hardware and software platforms used in different research and treatment centers, and make it more reliable to compare the results of one imaging study with another. A systematic, consensus-driven approach generates “QIBA Profiles” which define universal standards of operation. These Profiles specifically establish comprehensive, systems-engineering, technical standards for image acquisition and processing.
3. QIBA Standards Established for Two Major Imaging Procedures
Two standardized Profiles relevant for acquiring and analyzing images used in cancer studies and treatments are complete; these describe methods for obtaining: 1) accurate and reproducible 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET/CT measurements; and 2) CT tumor volume measurements. Of note is that a growing number of medical practices, imaging vendors, research organizations, and other entities are announcing their commitment to endorse or adopt these QIBA Profiles to improve the reliability of cancer imaging studies. These statements of support mean that more imaging equipment will conform to QIBA standards and more imaging centers will adopt standardized practices for conducting imaging studies.
Use of these QIBA Profiles for standardized quantitative imaging will contribute significantly to improvements in the quality of cancer care, and to the development of more effective therapeutics in oncology. It will help achieve the goal of high-value imaging recently articulated by the consortium of twelve Federal agencies participating in the Interagency Working Group on Medical Imaging.
Daniel Sullivan, M.D. is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Radiology at the Duke University Medical Center and External Relations Liaison, Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers Alliance.
Roderic Pettigrew, Ph.D., M.D., is Director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health.
Richard Cavanagh, Ph.D. is Director of the Special Programs Office at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Shadi Mamaghani, Ph.D. is Senior Scientific Advisor, Office of the Director, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. | https://medium.com/cancer-moonshot/standards-for-quantitative-imaging-biomarkers-to-advance-research-and-outcomes-in-the-cancer-6e4e4ebf4e75 | ['Daniel C Sullivan'] | 2017-01-05 17:07:19.986000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Medical Imaging', 'Cancer Moonshot', 'Cancer', 'White House'] |
The birth of Jesus shatters all myths | Man can only find his way with God. Jesus Christ’s existence has been confirmed through various researches by historians and researchers.
Some of them are in the Gospels — and there is also evidence coming from non-Christian sources.
For example, Mishnah is a collection of Jewish oral traditions known as the Oral Torah. In Mishnah, we can find evidence about Jesus’ existence.
The existence of God, Jesus, in addition to being contained in the Gospels, can be most understood through all the centuries in which his teaching and name have been maintained. Up to today.
The philosophy of Christianity has nothing to do with paganism. The mantra that Christianity has taken over the myths previously written by the Babylonians, the Sumerians is ridiculous for several reasons.
The Sumerians and other peoples were polytheists and had no structure of faith, and the persons they mention in their epics (the epic of Gilgamesh) cannot be historically confirmed.
Jesus, on the other hand, is a historical person, and his work is explained through historical proofs.
more: https://filipidiombloc.wordpress.com/2020/12/25/the-birth-of-jesus-shatters-all-myths/ | https://medium.com/@fdukic/the-birth-of-jesus-shatters-all-myths-9670c93859e | ['Filip Djukic'] | 2020-12-25 23:17:26.141000+00:00 | ['Christian', 'Jesus', 'Christianity'] |
Furniture Showroom in Ahmedabad | Furniture Showroom in Ahmedabad
Better Home is a leading Furniture Showroom in Ahmedabad located near Nehrunagar,Satellite Road.It is the largest furniture showroom in Ahmedabad provides Living Room Furniture,Office Furniture,Bed Room Furniture,Garden Furniture,Dining Room Furniture and Sankheda Furniture. Better Home is major manufacturer, exporters and distributors of quality Indian teak wood furniture, imported furniture, Office Furniture, sankheda furniture, school furniture and garden furniture in India. Better Home is the 60,000sq.ft. the lartgest and oldest furniture showroom in india since from last 16 years, which offers a large array of products ranging from all type of ressidence furniture, Office Furniture, school furniture, garden furniture, and plastic furniture and handicraft and decorative items also.
One of Better Home’s unique selling points is the company’s ability to deliver its products to any trade buyer. The company’s services and facilities allow us to deliver to a wide scope of clients within from a modest sized trader to direct container buyers.
Though the company is growing in size by the day, the company’s personal touch with its clients is an aspect of the company that cannot be found in many organizations.
The company prides itself on providing the right product at the right price and backing it up with reliability and an excellent service since from last 16 years. The company’s products and services are continually updated to suit the market and its needs.
Any Product chosen for the Better Home range must fit the company’s criteria, essentially being: | https://medium.com/@betterhomeindia/furniture-showroom-in-ahmedabad-82f0d47bb660 | ['Better Home India'] | 2017-12-20 11:50:47.167000+00:00 | ['Furniture', 'Manufacturing', 'Manufacturers'] |
How to be a mental health leader at work | When an employee calls in sick, nobody bats an eyelash. Often times, employers won’t even require a doctor’s note or any details — a sick day is a totally acceptable, understandable excuse for taking the day off from work.
But when was the last time you heard about one of your colleagues taking a mental health day? Well, when you do, it’s because it made the news.
This exposes a massive problem.
The lingering mental health stigma is no secret. Many still view those who are proactive about their mental health as a sign of weakness. And no, we’re not just talking about the Sopranos — this negative perspective of therapy is very real, extending far beyond the imaginary world of Italian gangsters in a hit TV series and into our workplaces.
So, how do we solve this problem?
First, understanding that prioritizing mental health at work is crucial to a company’s overall success is paramount. Think about it: If employees are burnt out, crippled by anxiety, or dissatisfied with life, how can they be expected to perform? If founders are overwhelmed by startup stress and feeling uninspired, how can they be expected to lead?
The short answer is: They can’t. Just as athletes who don’t treat their bodies properly won’t win any medals, employees who don’t strengthen and protect their minds won’t be able to work effectively, collaborate with team members, or enjoy work (or life, for that matter). A mentally healthy workplace is the key to a successful business.
Here are a few ways to cultivate a mentally healthy workplace:
1. Prioritize office culture
“Good office culture” doesn’t necessarily require a myriad of snacks or a keg in the break room—it should describe a workspace where people get along with each other and feel safe, respected, appreciated, incentivized, and rewarded. In a mentally healthy workplace, intimidation, bullying, harassment, and fear are 100% unacceptable.
2. Take care of your own
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, human beings must feel physiologically supported and financially secure before they can focus on work. To ensure these basic needs are met, provide a livable salary, health insurance plan, and reasonable accommodation in the workplace for physical, as well as mental disabilities. Consider adding a mental health benefit, such as a meditation subscription or a therapy benefit. Support these benefits with a more flexible WFH/PTO policy, so that employees can actually use their mental health benefits and also won’t stress over the random teeth cleaning or sick nanny.
3. Foster good communication
Facilitate consistent communication through weekly 1:1 meetings with managers. These meetings should be spent setting expectations, gaining clarity around priorities, and exchanging feedback or praise. At Kip, our managers ask us questions like, “What type of management style do you prefer?” or “How can we best support you?” or even, “What can we do to keep your morale high during times of stress?”
4. Talk about feelings
We start every internal Kip meeting with an “emo check.” Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with My Chemical Romance. This is a regular practice meant to create an open, safe place for employees to share their feelings and let go of distractions before the meeting begins. We set clear boundaries around these “emo checks” so that they don’t take over our entire meeting and are HR-appropriate. This brief, but impactful routine frees up more space for creativity and problem-solving.
5. Lead by example
Even CEOs need an occasional day or two (or three) to rest their brains. So, the next time you need to take a mental health day (especially if you’re a manager or higher-level executive), if you’re comfortable, share it with your team. Initially, this act of vulnerability may require courage, but over time it will reinforce a more open and respectful office culture, free of judgement and stigma.
6. Have fun!
Think of a few rituals you can incorporate into your workdays. Organize monthly team lunches or take your meetings to the park every now and then. Finding ways to lighten the mood and bond with colleagues in a casual way helps to combat burnout and decrease stress levels. At Kip, we understand the importance of working hard, but also take intermittent breaks, so every afternoon at 3:30pm sharp, we take a “fika break” — this usually means a cup of coffee from our favorite coffee shop down the street or a mini yoga/stretching session.
7. Do things outside of work
Have lives outside of the office — engage in other activities such as skiing, reading, backpacking, cooking, ultimate frisbee, movie-watching, knitting, going to happy hours with friends — you get the picture. Just like with any close relationship, it’s crucial to do your own thing every once in a while. At Kip, unless it’s launch week or we’re in the middle of fundraising, we don’t slave away at the office till the crack of dawn. Generally, we arrive at work between 9 and 10am and we leave around 5 or 6pm. We also make sure to get enough sleep each night (except for Beau — he’s a new dad, so he doesn’t get as much sleep with a baby around).
8. Be clear and passionate about your mission, vision, and values
Be transparent and definitive about what you stand for. At Kip, this means we’re united on our mission to revolutionize mental health care. This clarity and passion for our work boosts inspiration, motivation, and morale across the board.
Company-branded socks or meditation rooms aren’t the key ingredients to a better workplace. Trendy office perks and swag are fun, but a mentally healthy workplace is one where employees are provided with an open, accepting, positive environment. It’s a place where people feel valued, supported, and have time and energy left over for friends, family, hobbies, and down-time.
By making just one small change at a time — for example, implementing pre-meeting “emo checks” or a mental health benefit —companies can cut productivity losses, boost retention, and keep employees feeling satisfied and safe.
After all, if you want happy and loyal customers, you’ll want happy and loyal employees, too. | https://medium.com/kip-blog/mental-health-at-work-how-to-support-it-and-why-you-should-care-715c033b72dd | ['Claire Sanguedolce'] | 2018-04-27 22:16:03.180000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Health', 'Mental Health', 'Therapy', 'Workplace'] |
Climate Change and Mental Health in Nigeria — #MentallyAwareNigeria | Climate Change poses certain disaster risk like flooding which often leads to a mental health crisis. In 2012 and 2017, there was massive flooding in most states in Nigeria which led to the loss of loved ones and destruction of livelihood. Studies have shown that 75% of mental health conditions are experienced in lower and middle-income countries, and one of the lesser-known and often overlooked effects of climate change includes risks and impact on mental health and that is why we at the International Climate Change Development Initiative (ICCDI) made it our objective to avail ourselves for the 3-day intensive workshop (10th — 12th May, 2019) held at The Vintage Hub, Ikeja, Lagos state.
The workshop, hosted by Mentally Awareness Nigeria Initiative (MANI), United for Global Mental Health (UGMH) and the Mandate Health Empowerment Initiative (MHEI), achieved the following aims and objectives:
· Designed a Mental Health Advocacy Campaign, tagged Speak Your Mind Campaign.
· A better understanding of our target audiences — young people with lived experiences, schools/students, policymakers, private sectors, NGOs and religious leaders.
· Generated over 200+ creative ideas for communication and advocacy tactic were generated
· Developed a prototype and test concepts to implement in the campaign. | https://medium.com/climatewed/climate-change-and-mental-health-in-nigeria-mentallyawarenigeria-7db54d6d63e | ['Iccdi Africa'] | 2019-05-14 01:40:26.017000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Mental Health', 'Women'] |
How To Connect A Wireless Printer To A Laptop | Wireless printer — allows you to print from your laptop through a Wi-fi network in Windows 10,8 and 7, without connecting a printer cable. Find out how to connect a wireless printer to a laptop.
How to Connect the Wireless Printer to Your Wi-Fi
Connecting your wireless printer to your Wi-Fi network varies depending on the printer. Some printer has software that automates the process of connecting the printer to a Wi-Fi network.
These are the steps to connect a wireless printer to a Wi-Fi network:
First, power on the Wi-Fi router, the laptop and the printer. On the printer control panel, go to Setup > Wireless LAN Settings if you’re using Epson printer or to Network if you’re using HP printer. Select the wireless SSID of the Wi-Fi network. Enter the Wi-Fi security password The wireless light on the printer will turn on when the printer connects to the Wi-Fi.
How to Connect a Wireless Printer to a Laptop
After you’ve successfully set up your printer with Wi-Fi network, the next step is adding your wireless printer to your laptop.
How To Add Printer To Windows 10
Turn on the printer. Click on the Window icon on the laptop keypad On the top right side of the screen, click on the windows search box type ‘printer’.Select Printers & Scanners.
Select Add printer, the window will prompt to search for available printer wait to complete the search.After the window complete the search, select the printer that appears on the search box.Click next and wait for the set-up to complete.After the set-up is complete, you can print from your Laptop with a wireless printer without being connected to a USB cable.
How To Add A Printer To Windows 7 & 8
Setting up a printer in window 7 & 8 is similar to the above steps, just little changes. Here is how to set it up:
Go to Window icon On the top right side of the screen, click on the windows search box type ‘printer’.
Select Devices and Printers.
Select Add printer, the window will prompt to search for available printer wait to complete the search. After the window complete the search, select the printer that appears on the search box.Click next and wait for the set-up to complete. After the set-up is complete, Select Finish you’re done.
Latest How-to Tutorial for Your Everyday Tech
How To Turn Siri Off On iOS and macOSHow To Turn Off Driving Mode On iPhone 4 Ways to Fix iPhone Screenshot Not Working How To Cancel iTunes Pre-order on PC/Mac or iPhoneHow To Fix Screenshot Not Working On Mac | https://medium.com/@Grooda/how-to-connect-a-wireless-printer-to-a-laptop-6200b597d330 | [] | 2019-07-15 23:38:35.597000+00:00 | ['Windows7', 'Windows10', 'Printer'] |
The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats | Rex Whistler’s mural The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats (1927) was painted for Tate Britain’s restaurant
Tate Britain is expected to permanently close its restaurant because of a controversy over an historic artwork created nearly a century ago. Rex Whistler’s mural The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, which was painted specifically for the restaurant in 1927, has recently been criticised because of its portrayal of non-Europeans.
Moya Greene, until last month a Tate trustee and chair of its Ethics Committee, reported back to the gallery’s board. She told fellow trustees that committee members were “unequivocal in their view that the imagery of the work is offensive”. In addition, “the offence is compounded by the use of the room as a restaurant”.
Following the committee’s advice, it seems almost certain that the restaurant will never reopen. It was closed in March because of Covid-19, but did not reopen with the gallery displays last week. However, many UK museum catering outlets temporarily remain closed, so visitors may have assumed it would reopen in the new year.
The mural includes two bound black children who are probably enslaved and depicts caricatured Chinese people. The figures in the huge mural are small, just a few inches high, so comparatively few diners would have been aware of them.
Two years ago, after complaints about the mural, Tate provided an interpretation text putting the problems of the Whistler work into context. However, the trustees have now deemed that this explanation “has not been adequate”.
Tate trustees were also advised that the Whistler mural is “a work of art in the care of trustees and that it should not be altered or removed”. Although not a formally accessioned work, it forms part of a Grade I-listed interior.
Tate now faces a dilemma. As an art gallery, it can hardly cover the offending figures with a screen and it has a responsibility to allow public access to a work by an important early 20th-century British painter.
The question, then, is whether the room, once vacated by the restaurant, would be open to visitors all the time, on an occasional basis or only by appointment. Obviously it would need good security, adding to Tate’s staff costs.
A further challenge is that by drawing attention to the two black children and the Chinese figures the overwhelming number of visitors will go to see the mural simply because of the controversy. They will focus on the offensive passages rather than engage with it as a work of art — and many more people are likely to view the inappropriate figures than a few years ago.
The restaurant is sited next to the kitchen and there is no other part of the Tate Britain building which would be immediately suitable for an upmarket restaurant.
The closure of the restaurant, which was run by the gallery (rather than being leased out), has come at the worst possible time for Tate — since it provides a source of revenue which is desperately needed because of the impact of Covid-19. Permanent closure would, of course, also lead to the loss of jobs among restaurant staff.
A Tate spokesman says that “the fine dining restaurants at Tate Modern and Tate Britain both remain closed until at least Autumn 2021”, because of problems of social distancing and reduced visitor numbers as a result of Covid-19. He was unwilling to speculate on the fate of the Tate Britain restaurant.
On the Whistler mural, the spokesman says that “we are taking this time to consult internally and externally on the future of the room and the mural, and we will keep the public informed of future plans”. The external consultation is expected to be launched early in the new year. | https://medium.com/@nelyfriedrich/the-expedition-in-pursuit-of-rare-meats-f6d1a1602c2c | ['Nely Friedrich'] | 2020-12-09 15:09:16.623000+00:00 | ['Mural Art', 'Museum Of Modern Art', 'Museums', 'Discrimination', 'Tate Britain'] |
Top Risks in Running a Service Delivery Operation in the Philippines and How To Counter Them | Top Risks in Running a Service Delivery Operation in the Philippines and How To Counter Them Kahlil Corazo Jan 6·3 min read
The first requirement for success is to not fail. Failures are predictable. Most businesses have been tried. Let’s learn from the experience of others, so that we avoid the usual pitfalls.
Advenient.co is entering a partnership with a European company. They handle sales and strategy; we provide marketing technology talent. This is classic offshore service delivery. I cut my teeth in corporate tech back in P&G/HP by running a 24x5 30 person operation servicing a global clientele. That was IT service delivery. This is the marketing technology version of it. And the Philippines probably has one of the deepest experience pools in business process outsourcing.
So I asked this question in a local business group:
I summarize the answers and added my own in this risk register. I scored them and added contingency and mitigation steps.
The showstoppers are the following:
One-sided contract
Non-viable pricing (both sides)
Undiversified client base
Disagreements between parties
Among these, having an undiversified client base is the biggest risk from our side. Especially if this partnership grows and becomes our dominant revenue source, losing the partnership could cripple the company.
We need to either diversify our client base or share ownership of the company with our partner. I prefer the latter approach. Co-ownership of the Philippine company would also mitigate or circumvent the following risks:
One-sided contract
Pricing disagreement / non-viable pricing
Delayed payment
We will work together in 2021 to prototype the partnership. By the end of the year, I’ll sell part of the company to them (cash or stock swap). If we grow by 5x before the end of the year, I’ll propose to advance the sale. I’ll have to work on the legal solution within the year.
Disagreements between parties is also a key risk. 2021 as prototype year will mitigate this. This will require both work chemistry and trust. Chemistry is not only work personality and culture, but process. Our partners are also a young company. We should help them with evolving their processes.
We need to be more direct and open than Filipino culture prepared us for. This is key to working with Europeans and Americans. This is sort of my native work culture (I also work with the garage door open — this article you are reading is an example), but I need to actively train my teammates and consciously pull our culture toward this direction.
On the financial side, my main guides are ensuring 12 months of operational runway (never forget 2020) and paying the team top salaries. Here’s my benchmark:
Ultimately, this partnership is founded on our capability in marketing technology / growth engineering. Personally, this means:
Hiring well
Training well
Removing obstacles
I like Netflix’s analogy of work teams with athletic teams. I’m hiring top athletes for the team. My job is to ensure they perform at peak levels (training, mindset, equipment, environment). This is the key to winning, individually, as a Philippine team, and as a bigger global team.
Winning is not only about preventing failures, but maximizing the upside. The next article will be on that. | https://medium.com/@kcorazo/top-risks-in-running-a-service-delivery-operation-in-the-philippines-and-how-to-counter-them-4cfc2b158c4e | ['Kahlil Corazo'] | 2021-01-06 04:37:48.485000+00:00 | ['Outsourcing', 'Risk'] |
Download and show one by one Images with JavaScript and Promise | A Yellow Taxi Behind A Rain-Spattered Window Photo | © Burst by Shopify
Sometimes you need to handle images loading into the webpages and it will be a good idea for the performance handling in website. Suppose, your client has not a fast internet connection and you have a lot of pictures into your website… what will happen? they will experience a slow website and it is a negative point for your website.
What is the solution?
For example you can use this code to handle loading images one by one:
A few note for the above code:
We defined an array to store Images URL and have a self-invoked function to execute our start function. In executor function we have a loop on URLs array and then we call the loadImageByPromise(url) with an await to handle Promise and add an interrupt for the async request.
In the Promise we create an Image tag and set src to that and then check has downloaded image by onload method and resolve the promise too. now after the resolve we have an appendChild and can add downloaded image in our container div element.
To check it easily, you can use throttling feature in the Dev-Tool’s Network tab to limit your internet speed and watch the output.
Good Luck. | https://medium.com/@buglessir/download-and-show-one-by-one-images-with-javascript-and-promise-82f435aa0d3e | ['Mohammad Esmaeilzadeh'] | 2020-12-06 08:12:37.836000+00:00 | ['Software', 'JavaScript', 'Performance', 'Frontend', 'Development'] |
The Special Turkey Saved From Being Christmas Dinner | Driving past the slaughterhouse in Moroni, Utah, where countless turkeys are killed each year, Zoe Rosenberg, 18-year-old founder of Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary in California, says all you can see surrounding it are farms. “When you’re standing at the slaughterhouse, you can just look over and see the hills, sheds everywhere, for miles and mile and miles; hundreds of thousands of turkeys.” It’s from these farms, and at this slaughterhouse, where Rosenberg, along with activists from Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), have been rescuing turkeys for the past three years, in cooperation with the new slaughterhouse owner. Since then, they have saved and re-homed nearly 150 birds, otherwise destined to be holiday dinner.
But it is one particular little turkey, now named Delilah, who Rosenberg says really demonstrates how a change in care can change an animal. “She’s really a special girl.”
‘A lot of them we’ll pull out of the trailer and they’ll be very scared and stressed out, and after a couple of minutes they calm down, their eyes start to relax, and they realize, ‘These people aren’t going to hurt me.” ’
When performing the third annual turkey rescue this past November, Rosenberg says slaughterhouse staff did not want the activists too close by. “They don’t want the activists at the slaughterhouse, so they bring the turkeys to a building a few blocks down,” she says. “But as you’re driving by you can see outside the slaughterhouse several trucks parked, all lined up, filled with turkeys who are going to be slaughtered.”
Once at the meeting place, a horse trailer filled with turkeys arrived. This year, 19 were lucky enough to be pulled. Rosenberg says she finds it interesting to see how the turkeys change upon their immediate transfer from slaughterhouse staff to the rescuers. “A lot of them we’ll pull out of the trailer and they’ll be very scared and stressed out, and after a couple of minutes they calm down, their eyes start to relax, and they realize, ‘These people aren’t going to hurt me.’”
After taking each bird out, they are given a brief check, “to make sure they are healthy and they will be ok for their transport home to the sanctuaries they are being placed at,” Rosenberg explains. Upon quick inspection, Delilah seemed healthy enough — for a turkey coming out of a factory farm — so she was placed in her crate. But then, Rosenberg recalls, a nearby police officer who was there to ensure the sanctioned rescue went smoothly, “all of a sudden he was like, ‘Oh my god this turkey is gushing blood’.”
Turns out Delilah had a broken wing, and the bone had punctured through her skin. “She had a really bad injury that she must have acquired while the slaughterhouse was transporting her or at some point on the factory farm,” says Rosenberg; sadly not an uncommon occurrence. The rescuers immediately bandaged up her wing, departed to purchase pain medication to prevent shock, and made their way with Delilah to the sanctuary. “We have a full time on staff veterinarian here at Happy Hen,” Rosenberg adds.
Ironically, Rosenberg says staff select specific turkeys to be rescued because they are considered the healthiest.
‘She knows we are trying to help her. Now she is outside, she is with the other turkeys, she is so happy.’
The partnership with the Utah slaughterhouse came about as a result of new ownership, and more specifically, following DxE activists receiving felony charges for performing an open rescue of turkeys in 2017. DxE was investigating one of the farms “and rescued a few baby turkeys who were really sick and dying,” Rosenberg says, resulting in the charges. Soon after, the farms and slaughterhouse were bought by a new owner who did not agree with the charges, but he had no power to have them dropped. “So in an act of compassion toward the activists he is giving us turkeys each year before Thanksgiving,” turkeys including Delilah, who Rosenberg reports would have likely been Christmas dinner.
Delilah today at the sanctuary.
Today Delilah is living a much better life, with 25 other turkeys and 275 other rescued farmed animals, on 40 acres at Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary. “She is such a good patient. Every time she needs to get her wound treated she just sits there. She knows we are trying to help her,” Rosenberg says. And the special turkey is no longer in the ICU. “Now she is outside, she is with the other turkeys, she is so happy.”
She also enjoys special pumpkin treats, which she would only eat out of a specific red bowl for the first two weeks. Rosenberg laughs. “She’ll be living here permanently,” she says, “where she’ll be able to wander outside in the sun with her friends,” get ongoing top veterinary care, and where this holiday season she will be celebrated, not eaten. | https://tenderly.medium.com/the-special-turkey-saved-from-being-christmas-dinner-f95d749441d1 | ['Jessica Scott-Reid'] | 2021-01-04 18:31:07.381000+00:00 | ['Animals', 'Vegan', 'Christmas', 'Sanctuary Stories', 'Turkey'] |
Don’t Be A Sheep — Follow Your Own Path. | We are affected and influenced by others even when we don’t know it. Social media in particular is renowned for its ability to do this. My Twitter feed is understandably full of posts which I don’t want to read continuously right now not because I don’t care about the topics but because I don’t want my head filled with other peoples’ ideas and projections. I want to take time for myself and make up my own mind how I feel and how I want to react. I don’t need to be coerced or brainwashed in order to reach a rational decision of my own.
We are all individuals with our own unique wiring and our own ways of thinking and doing which won’t suit everyone. That’s fine because we can’t be friends with everyone can we and nor would I want to be if I had to become a bully to achieve that friendship.
What we can do is show respect to everyone and control how we act and react.
I think the most important thing to remember is very simple and that is if we can’t say or do something which helps a situation or makes it better then it is probably best to say or do nothing at all.
We are each the centre of our own world. We are ultimately responsible for ourselves, the way we live our life, the decisions we make, those we help, those we hurt, the causes we put our names too and the stands we make in the name of justice — all relative to our own perception of course. My perception and yours will never be the same. The way we each see and understand something will never be the same. This is why we are unique individuals. Sometimes it is helpful for us to work with the collective and to be a part of the tribe but mostly it is not. We should be very selective about when and how we choose to join forces and know when it is best for us to remain apart.
If you choose to jump on a bandwagon, whatever it is, make sure you do yourself the service of really thinking it through for yourself, in your own way and rationalise it deeply before you find yourself doing or saying something you might spend the rest of your life regretting. | https://medium.com/an-idea/dont-be-a-sheep-follow-your-own-path-1130e8f036c6 | ['Kerry Jane Rider'] | 2020-09-27 07:58:32.754000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Personal Development', 'Self', 'Mindfulness', 'Life'] |
How are Companies using Big Data Analytics through Machine Learning? | This way, it will inspire companies to make the best suggestions that consumers find interesting. Netflix uses machine-based advising systems to recommend the best content to its subscribers.
The predicting of patterns:
Machine learning algorithms use big data to learn and predict future patterns for companies. With the help of interconnected computers, a machine learning network can continuously learn new things on its own and develop its analytical skills on a daily basis. In this way, it not only measures data but behaves like an intelligent machine that uses past experience to shape the future. The brand of air conditioners will rely on machine learning to forecast the demand for air conditioners in the coming season and to schedule their production accordingly.
Helping decision-making:
Unplash
Machine learning uses a method called time series analysis that is capable of processing a variety of data together. It is a perfect tool for data aggregation and interpretation and makes it easier for managers to make decisions for the future. Businesses, in particular retailers, may use this ML-enhanced approach to forecast the future with commendable precision.
Encoding of patterns:
Machine learning can be highly effective in deciphering data in industries where understanding user patterns can lead to significant breakthroughs. For example, a lot of data needs to be dealt with in sectors such as healthcare and pharmaceuticals. Machine learning may help them evaluate data to classify diseases at an early stage in patients. Machine learning will also make it easier for hospitals to handle medical care by reviewing previous clinical records, pathological records, and illness histories. Both of these will lead to improved diagnosis at health centers and, in the long run, promote medical research.
Right Measures For Successful Transition To Learning Machines
Switching to machine learning can be a major leap for companies and can not easily be implemented as the topmost layer. It includes redefining workflows, architecture, data collection and storage, analytics, and other modules. The extent of the framework overhaul should be measured and clearly conveyed to the right stakeholders.
A step-by-step approach, as clichéd as it might sound, is what works best with any such transformation. First, companies need to develop a comprehensive AI-and ML-based plan that is in line with their business objectives. Second, they should note that quality data is the key to the full potential of machine learning software. Companies need to develop a data-based organizational culture. The right people and the right data will make a big difference. Finally, time is important, and companies need to move quickly.
How To Learn Data Science by Self Study and For Free, Online Courses for Data Science Specialization
As data volume continues to grow over time, data collection and management is becoming a herculean task for businesses. In addition, the processing of data is only half the job. Managing and deducting meaning from the data thus gathered to enhance the marketing campaign and raise sales is a major challenge. Implementing machine learning for big data analytics is definitely a technology enhancement that I would recommend for your company if you want to make effective use of your big data.
My advice to you is to be open-minded and think outside of the box while you are looking for a career in data science. It will give you a competitive edge in your career in data science.
Bio: Shaik Sameeruddin I help businesses drive growth using Analytics & Data Science | Public speaker | Uplifting students in the field of tech and personal growth | Pursuing b-tech 3rd year in Computer Science and Engineering(Specialisation in Data Analytics) from “VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY(V.I.T)”
Need more information??
Career Guide and roadmap for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence &and National & International Internship’s, please refer :
More articles for your data science journey: | https://shaiksameeruddin.medium.com/how-does-big-data-analytics-use-machine-learning-b246499f116a | ['Shaik Sameeruddin'] | 2020-10-23 17:05:09.254000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Big Data'] |
Sofá de dois lugares | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/maria-do-inga/sof%C3%A1-de-dois-lugares-4131cffd1351 | ['Estela Lacerda'] | 2020-12-19 17:54:39.395000+00:00 | ['Contos', 'Literatura Brasileira', 'Prosa', 'LGBT', 'Leia Mulheres'] |
The Cypher-Citizens Passport is a Node. | With the crypto-market deflating, it is a good time to connect with the original principal of blockchain: Privacy (via a node). Become an active participant in decentralization via your own node, easily deployed on Blockdaemon.
Building tech architecture to run multiple node deployments for multiple protocols (Fabric, Quorum, Ethereum, Stellar, Bitcoin, Gcoin etc.) and infrastructures (heck, all of them), is an eye-opening learning experience in the long list of “how bad all this blockchain tech currently is”. Compared to the cloud ecosystem, developers have few to no tools, but an array of choice between ideologically defended open-source protocols with rudiments of functional consensus protocols and unique configuration needs.
It is obvious that technical debt will have a new meaning for blockchain for business because engaging with projects and protocols when you don’t know which one will be around in a few years is insanely complex and inefficient. One of our new partner ecosystems — Aion — has some interesting interoperability solutions, in case you are curious about this particular issue (connect to their network via Blockdaemon soon).
Since we started the “Heroku for Blockchain” journey a year ago, most major participants have woken up to the potential of 2nd layer solutions and configuration tooling that works across multiple protocols and clouds. Heck, even Heroku wants to be the Heroku for blockchain.
Make sense, the traditional distributed cloud technology players — Engine Yard, Heroku, rackspace, DigitalOcean and Mirantis etc. — offer plenty of solutions that can be ported onto the blockchain ecosystem. We have made it our mantra to use what is there smartly, rather than developing something completely new from scratch. We need to deploy capital efficiently in order to survive the proliferation of solutions, on top of a costly infrastructure providers wanting to make “$s” selling mispriced data-plans for nodes experiencing enormous data-fluctuation. Down the line, data-arbitrage and tokenization to handle cross-networks will break up these data-cartels, but until then we have a fight to fight.
It requires a new concept, away from the traditional economic value added model (i.e. shareholder value), because capital cost will become lower over time and tokenized in all digital networks. Consensus and user participation will yield much more economic value — i.e. rewarding participants for their degree of participation and unbacked trust they bring to the system.
Questions about Decentralization
For Blockdaemon, that translates into lowering the currently very substantial cost of networks and to bring the best of breed of cloud computation orchestrators, large-file p2p distribution and continuous deployment processes to blockchain. Top functionality for enterprises. But it only matters if it can be built on top of blockchain, not just distributed ledger technology. What does that mean? What does decentralization mean? A question we have spent and are spending a lot of time on.
A popular solution set is to build non-blockchains under the blockchain flag (I am looking at you, Ripple or even EOS (which has potential)). That is fine for many blockchain business use cases, and the degree of decentralization needed may differ for permissioned chains. That said, larger public networks are nearly inoperable and far away from being business-ready. Ethereum is the latest chain getting a ton of stick around size, sync and throughput (Bitcoin has its own challenges, so sadly no time to gloat for this Bitcoin Maximalist (Index working sets are becoming too large)).
There are decent answers out there for that problem also — it isn’t so much an intellectual challenge (dozens of 2-Layer solutions, from sharding to lightning to infura etc.), it is an implementation challenge. Off-chain blends with Rest-APIs set on parallel infrastructures to blockchains, that periodically get anchored into blockchains. It gets talked about well in this CoinDesk article. We will offer our own version of this to our business partners.
What are blockchains really about?
While all this infrastructure/layer 2 talk is vital, it is important to not forget what the real use-case for blockchain is, so enterprises don’t get solely focussed on efficiencies. There are use-cases out there beyond chasing a tomato from a to b — the original Cypherpunk Manifesto, the problem set that blockchain was developed to solve was privacy (great piece by CoinDesk here):
“Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn’t want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn’t want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.”
It starts here — Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world. This lies at the source of what blockchain can do — they can unshackle the capital constraints interwoven with our digital identities (currently we need to give up some of ourselves in order to feed the engine), by pushing rewards back on the actual consumer. It is a principal shift in how value is generated and it changes capital models substantially. When thinking about blockchain for business, the question is how do we enhance business processes with gradient increases of anonymized data sets that are for free, yet very valuable. It pushes innovation outward (away from the middlemen) to the “real-mensch” who is supposed to be the user of a service.
While the true degree of disruption is yet to be revealed, we call can agree on one simple fact: It all comes back to Nodes. The only perfect way to protect your data and to participate is by running your own node. It empowers you. It gives you a voice in the consensus mechanism (well, not always, but sometimes). It secures you a copy of all transactions. As an individual who is passionate about bitcoin (check out this amazing talk by Saifedean Ammous in case you need a reminder about how powerful this all is), I urge everyone who can to run a Bitcoin node. It makes you a first generation Cypher-Citizen.
That is why we built out our simple public node deployment tool for Bitcoin and Ethereum across any (well, most) infrastructure — we have been up and running with it for a few months, and learned a ton. Initially we throttled the intake. Now I am happy to announce that we are unleashing the Kraken — Nodes, Nodes, NODES!
We also make the first few months for free — other folks run their simple templates for free to upsell you, we throw up a real node (and that can cost money). Go get them as long as the cloud credits last.
Finally, in case you missed this, we joined Hyperledger to help folks with their fabric deployments. If you are running a consortia or a network using fabric and need help easily connecting other partners/nodes, ping us (the Drift window on our website is a good way to get in touch). Get deploying! | https://medium.com/blockdaemon/the-cypher-citizens-passport-is-a-node-4c2ae036e9a9 | ['Konstantin Richter'] | 2018-06-14 20:46:14.137000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Node', 'Blockdaemon Editorial', 'Heroku', 'Bitcoin'] |
THE BUCKET LIST | THE BUCKET LIST
“- Ancient Egyptians had a very nice belief about death. When their souls came to the door of heaven, the gods asked two questions. According to their answer, it was decided whether the person could enter or not.
Well, I was wondering what were those questions?
Have you ever been happy in your life? Has your life ever brought happiness to others?”
The Bucket List was released in 2007 with a screenplay that made many people think about it, starring two legendary names Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson.
I have no intention of telling the movie. Briefly, it is about two old men with opposite characters making a list of their wishes and traveling the world together. I can only suggest you to watch this movie which has lines that make a person laugh and sometimes think and wonderful music.
The Bucket List is more than a movie for me …
Maybe, it is an awareness with its questions and suggestions…
It is the source of inspiration for my list, which I think about, highlight some and add new ones at this time of each year.
These days, we are getting ready to leave a different and challenging year behind.
We all learned something from this year. We understood better that we need to take care of our bodies and the importance of staying positive. We realized the value of spending time with our loved ones in the rush of life when we locked ourselves in the house. Some of us discovered new things about themselves, acquired new hobbies.
Some of us have learned to be organized to fit more work in a limited time frame.
In addition to all these, we also realized how much “I wish” sentences we have accumulated in our lives. Either because of our belief patterns (i.e. I can’t) or our postponements …
I do not believe that a life can be lived without “I wish” sentences and I know that we can live our lives with the least “I wish” sentences within the bounds of possibility. That’s why The Bucket List is an awareness for me …
Every year is a new beginning.
How about making your own Bucket list,
to reflect on the things you want to do;
to remind yourself what kind of life you want to live in accordance with your values;
to discover your own buff;
to observe how your priorities have changed over the years;
to get ahead with less “I wish”?
I want to end my article with an excerpt from Engin Geçtan’s “Being Human”.
“Man is a consumer of time. Moreover, this time allocated to us is very limited. But most of us postpone what we want to do as if we had time forever. “
Tugce Vural | https://medium.com/@tugcesvural1/the-bucket-list-59ecd48b08c1 | ['Tugce Vural'] | 2020-12-21 19:55:20.342000+00:00 | ['Wishes', 'Time', 'Bucketlist'] |
Integrating 3rd Party Reservation Tools | Modeling and Implementation
Design Principles
When we model the APIs, we are following these principles:
Extensibility : as the business evolves and new requirements are added to the API we would need to add those in a non-breaking way, by being backward compatible with previous integrations.
: as the business evolves and new requirements are added to the API we would need to add those in a non-breaking way, by being backward compatible with previous integrations. Flexibility : The same solution can be adapted to multiple verticals, and it can support experiences on different clients, like mobile and web.
: The same solution can be adapted to multiple verticals, and it can support experiences on different clients, like mobile and web. Agility : We can easily iterate it and test different experiences.
: We can easily iterate it and test different experiences. Simplicity : It is easy to understand, explain, and reason about; since partners implement the spec, its complexity is directly proportional to the cost of the integrations; that is, higher complexity increases time to market; the goal is to reduce it, however.
: It is easy to understand, explain, and reason about; since partners implement the spec, its complexity is directly proportional to the cost of the integrations; that is, higher complexity increases time to market; the goal is to reduce it, however. Performance: We ensure great user experience by having the apps respond quickly to customers’ input.
API Modeling
Different actions possible with the API such as fetching the availability, completing a transaction (booking), updating states, etc. In this article, we are focusing on the availability API and how it supports, drives, and delivers the user experience.
The availability is consumed as a feed that Groupon caches to ensure a low latency interaction for searching and booking a selection. Booking UX is driven by this API to support the cases shown here and much more. Key components are Attributes, Questions, and the Availability itself. More details are below:
Attributes
Attributes are modeled the following way:
These attributes are displayed as selection widgets in the UI to filter the availability. This specification has the following features:
selectionType indicates whether multiple values can be selected by the customer.
indicates whether multiple values can be selected by the customer. category is optional and is indicating a special group of attributes that will have a special treatment in the UI. This can be further extended into new values in the future.
is optional and is indicating a special group of attributes that will have a special treatment in the UI. This can be further extended into new values in the future. writeups are used to provide textual values in different locales that will be displayed to the customer. These can also be extended in the future to add more capabilities in a non-breaking way.
The availability references the attribute values that they apply to, we will show how this works below.
Here is an example that powers the TTD screens above (party size and tour type):
Modeling Customer Inputs
We present additional fields and forms to request information, as questions, which will be associated with the reservation. In order to support a flexible questionnaire, we introduced a question schema.
Based on the type of a field , we generate different components on the client UI. It can be extended if we need more components
of a , we generate different components on the client UI. It can be extended if we need more components Supports client-side validation through constraints such as type , required , pattern , minLength and maxLength
, , , and With the recursive fields , we support nested forms
, we support nested forms Fields can be pre-filled with values
The hint and label are to generate helper text
An example showing how UI form is driven by the API
The Generated UI powered by the API above
Availability Segments
Segments are where availability is defined. It combines time and attributes. Additionally, they override some data if needed such as price and additional questions. This is helpful to model more expensive premium times.
This structure allows for greater flexibility since any specific combination of time and attributes can be specified; the drawback is that by being more specific, lots of data is needed and that is why we are consuming this data as a feed using a background job and caching it in our systems.
Here is an example of an availability segment for an adult entrance using a price override:
Availability Selection
As we have shown so far, the API specification is very flexible and enables different business verticals to operate with Groupon. Unfortunately, it requires a lot of data, since it can detail availability at the time slot level, normally it would require to have the product of all attribute groups times the number of time slots data points. For example, 1 month of availability with 10-time slots per day, 6 party size, 3 tour types, gives us 30*10*6*3 = 5400 segments in the availability feed and this grows as attribute groups are added!
Handling all this data in the client application (booking widget) isn’t very fast, the main problem is to determine the “from price” and available options according to the customer's selections.
In a naive implementation, we would keep a filtered list of segments (which starts with all of them), and each time the customer makes a selection, we keep the segments in the list that match that selection (eg: date matches or they have the corresponding attributed), then compute the from price from that list. Additionally, we need to detect which options aren’t available anymore (eg: after selecting a date and party size, some tours might not be available and need to be disabled).
The problem is compounded by the requirement of showing the “from price” of each visible option (each date of the calendar, each attribute). Note that as the customer is selecting, the “from price” of the next options might change, for example, after selecting 2 Adults and 1 Kid, we calculate the price based on that selection.
To minimize the computations done on the client, some of them are performed on the backend to ensure a great user experience with our product. When the client fetches the availability it gets the data it needs to render all widgets: dates with from prices and availability attributes, as well as the list of all segments.
The initial UI is rendered right away with the data provided by the backend, and while the customer is making their first selection, full availability is processed in a non-blocking way. The client creates a series of hashmaps and lists to make the filtering and each “from price” computation way faster.
As a next step, we are looking at ways to improve our API to see if there are ways to reduce the payload size and chattiness while retaining flexibility. | https://medium.com/groupon-eng/api-driven-user-experience-2ee7c993cd72 | ['Haozhe Chen'] | 2020-08-07 20:48:32.449000+00:00 | ['Api Design', 'Platform', 'Self Service', 'Booking'] |
The Shortest Introduction To Deep Learning You Will Find On The Web | Simple Artificial Neural Network with three hidden layers. Source: https://orbograph.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/DeepLearn.png
The most promising development in machine learning (ML) is deep learning. In DL we build a artificial neural network (ANN), basically we use layers of linear regression, followed each by an activation function, that brings non-linearity into the ANN. Those activation functions are usually sigmoid functions like the logistic function (aka just sigmoid) or tangens hyperbolicusl (tanh). More recently the rectified linear unit ( ReLU: f(x) = max(x,0) ) has shown improved results in most cases. However it was disregarded first by mathematicians as it is not differentiable at f(0). It was shown at the beginning of the 2000s by Professor Hornik from WU university that those ANN architectures could approximate any functions, even with just one hidden layer, this is kown as universal approximation theorem (UAT).
Most common activation functions. Source: https://www.kdnuggets.com/wp-content/uploads/activation.png
This figure shows very nicely how after every layer of matrix multiplication an activation function is used. In this case sigmoid. Source: https://www.bogotobogo.com/python/scikit-learn/images/NeuralNetwork2-Forward-Propagation/NN-with-components-w11-etc.png
One interesting point in DL is that we can have data from any shape as input and output. This means data is data. It does not have to be some kind of special data that is domain specific. We can use the same techniques we use for stock price prediction, in medical diagnosis or customer churn prediction, with only some minor practical adjustments.
A vast problem in DL is optimization. Professor Hinton from the Toronto university has introduced the backpropagation algorithm in 1986. This algorithm was used to derive partial derivatives for every parameter of an ANN, regarding some cost function that is derived from a difference from the model output Y and the target output T. Often used cost functions include mean squared error for regression or the cross entropy for classification tasks. With modern libraries like pytorch or tensorflow derivation of the derivatives is handled automatically. We only have to define the forward pass, this is the ANN function. It consists of matrix multiplications (linear regression) for each layer and following activation functions that bring non-linearity to the ANN as mentioned before.
In DL we had and still have a huge problem of having too much variance in the data. This means we fit too much noise, which leads too often perfect in-sample, but much worse out-of-sample models. This is also due to UAT, as our ANN can fit any function perfectly in theory this leads often to almost perfect fits in-sample, however our ANN does not care about real dependencies. It just minimizes our cost function by describing the in-sample distribution. This problem is known as variance-bias trade off, it stayed a problem for quit a time and is still not fully resolved yet. However, new concepts like simply using more training data, transfer learning, normalization (batch, weight, layer, group, etc.) and weight sharing have shown to improve the generalization ability of those ANNs. The problem with this concepts however is that they do not adjust for concept shift, the change in the relationship between input X and output Y over time. However, (deep) reinforcement learning (RL) may yield a solution to this problem. In RL an agent interacts with a virtual or real environment and tries to maximize reward. Thereby this agent creates new data it can train own. Most notable here is the development of AlphaZero by Google Deep Mind that learned to play go, chess and soghi by playing against it self. In a few hours it was better in all of those games than any human or software player before. While RL is not exploited in business cases at the moment, further development could increase its scoop and importance and may be the best shot we got for developing artificial general intelligence (AGI).
If you have any remarks or questions please feel free to use the comment section.
Some of my other articles that might interest you | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/the-shortest-introduction-to-deep-learning-you-will-find-on-the-web-25a9975bbe1d | ['Christoph Ostertag'] | 2019-10-25 22:42:40.156000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Algorithms', 'Data Science', 'Neural Networks', 'Deep Learning'] |
Player Analysis: Pau Torres — Is He Really the Answer Manchester United Need? | Gazelle-esque Defending
Pau Torres is a brilliant all-round footballer blessed with fantastic technical qualities. He exudes calmness on the pitch and is extremely comfortable on the ball. Given his athletic frame and mental attributes, he is undoubtedly one of Europe’s most talented ball-playing center backs. His elegant gazelle-like playstyle contradicts the mean and rough tacklers, defenders are stereotypically called in the old days. From the dashboard above, we can see that Torres bares no similarities to that.
“If I have to make a tackle then I have already made a mistake.” — Paolo Maldini
Though capable of the odd slide tackle when necessary, this is certainly not what Torres is known for. Instead, he is a passive defender who marks the space rather than the man, providing sufficient cover for his partner in the game. The defender doesn’t engage in tackles but rather positions himself efficiently to clear the ball instead. This would explain his low rate of tackles and interceptions registered in the league this season. In fact, Torres has only registered 0.54 tackles per90, which is the least number of tackles amongst defenders who have played a minimum of 10 games in the league. Whilst his teammates would be the ones doing the tackling around the pitch, he would be the player sweeping up loose balls and progressing the ball forwards.
Photo by Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images
What makes up for his lack of tackling in the defensive side of the game, is certainly his excellence in reading of the game, which is very rare to find in young footballers nowadays. The Spaniard doesn’t switch off for a second during the whole game, spending the whole 90 concentrated on what is happening in front of him, giving him the mental advantage of being able to anticipate play before it happens. Whenever a through ball is played to the strikers, Torres would already have seen it coming and procced to clear it. Torres is positionally astute and doesn’t commit tackles often, preferring to stand his ground, and face up to his opponent. This does show in the stats where he has registered 4.42 clearances per90 and is amongst the league’s best when it comes to being dribbled past, only allowing 0.23 dribbles per90 this season.
In their 6-nil demolition against Germany at the Nations League, the visitors won the ball back in the midfield third and Werner slipped through a pass to the speedy Gnabry. Ramos tried to intervene by committing himself but ultimately missed the ball, leaving the covering Torres to sweep in and guide the loose ball back to the keeper before Gnabry makes them pay. This showcases the center back’s awareness of the players around him as well as his positioning. | https://medium.com/white-grass/player-analysis-pau-torres-is-he-really-the-answer-manchester-united-need-1d7e27dff10 | ['Chun Hang'] | 2021-03-28 04:49:29.444000+00:00 | ['Football', 'Manchester United', 'Soccer', 'Premier League', 'Spain'] |
Belly is in Trade Mining & Farm & Pool with BabySwap! | Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to our BABY sitters!!
Let us introduce a new Farm and Pool from Belly!
More is welcome, check this out to submit a request.
Snack Snack Snack Pool🍫👶
Stake BABY tokens to earn Belly tokens!
Total Tokens: 1,109,000 Belly
Distribution duration: 30 days
Start at Block height 13,844,530, approx. 12:00 PM UTC, December 27th
End at Block height 14,708,530, approx. 12:00 PM UTC, January 26th
Token rewards per block: 1.2835 Belly
The 1x Farm & Trade Mining
In order to host the Belly Snack Pool, we provide a Belly-USDT farm as well as trade mining that will have 1x BABY rewards for 30 days at the same time.
What is CryptoPiece?
CryptoPiece is a NFT game that focuses on gamers, made by gamers and for gamers. We want to have our players not only feeling relax, enjoying their favorite game, but also earning at the same time. Through our unique play to earn system, players can gather their crew by recruiting mercenary through a Mercenary Contract in Merc Centre. They then can sail their ship and go on an exciting adventure. By capturing criminals in Wanted list by the Government, players can earn Belly — ingame currency — and level up their Merc.
To learn more about CryptoPiece, please visit our official communication channels
Website: https://cryptopiece.online/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CryptopieceNFT
Telegram: https://t.me/cryptopiece_official
How do you stake BABY to earn Belly rewards?
If you are a BABY sitter which means you own BABY tokens, get in line here!
BabySwap 101 is how to stake BABY with Belly pool.
Visit this webpage: https://babyswap.finance/pools
Click “Approve BABY” on the Belly Snack Pool
Click on the stake button.
Confirm the transaction.
BEP20 Belly will also be circulating and transferable on BSC when we start the snack pool, so you will be able to harvest your Belly tokens and trade on BabySwap at any time!
How do you stake Belly-USDT LP to earn BABY rewards?
If you are a Belly holder, get in line here!
BabySwap 102 is how to stake Belly-USDT LP in farm.
Step 1 Get LP
Go to the Liquidity page
Click ‘Add Liquidity’.
Select Belly & USDT and enter the amount.
Check the details, and click ‘Supply’
Check the details, and click ‘Confirm Supply’
Confirm the transaction in your wallet.
Done! You can click ‘View on BscScan’ to see your transaction details.
Step 2 Stake LP
Go to farms
Select Belly-USDT farm
Click ‘Approve Contract’
Click ‘Stake LP’ and enter the amount of LP, then click ‘Confirm’.
Confirm the transaction in your wallet.
Done! You can click ‘View on BscScan’ to see your transaction details.
How to Earn BABY through Belly-USDT Trade Mining?
Trade from Belly to USDT or from USDT to Belly, you will get BABY as trade mining rewards — simple as that!
AUNTIE KINDLY REMINDER! ⚠️
The official Belly token contract address on Binance Smart Chain is:
0x3dfa90540ccdc77d543e6e61cacd5880f5c62391
Any other Belly token will be a scam and will result in a financial loss for users. Do not buy tokens from any other token address. Always verify the token address before purchasing tokens. If you receive airdrops from another address for Belly tokens, we advise you to ignore them.
Principal’s Note
🍼Twitter
🍼Telegram
🍼Discord
🍼Docs | https://medium.com/@babyswap/belly-is-in-trade-mining-farm-pool-with-babyswap-51091929a38c | [] | 2021-12-26 09:58:18.439000+00:00 | ['Babyswap', 'Bsc', 'Binance', 'Binance Smart Chain', 'Metaverse'] |
Tutorials and snippets to get started with CoffeeScript [by CatsWhoCode] | Tutorials and snippets to get started with CoffeeScript [by CatsWhoCode]
Published on January 9th, 2012
by Jean-Baptiste Jung. 0 Comments -
JavaScript is definitely an important part of a website as it allow the developer to interact directly with the web browser. Since 2005, lots of new JavaScript techniques and tools such as Ajax and jQuery became extremely popular and made the web a better place. Today, I’m introducing to you CoffeeScript, a new language that make JavaScript better and simpler.
What is CoffeeScript?
To keep it simple, CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. If you ever coded in languages such as Python or Ruby, you’ll probably love CoffeeScript a lot. Instead of awkward braces and semicolons, JavaScript has always had a gorgeous object model at its heart.
The code compiles one-to-one into the equivalent JS, and there is no interpretation at runtime. You can use any existing JavaScript library seamlessly from CoffeeScript (and vice-versa). The compiled output is readable and pretty-printed, passes through JavaScript Lint without warnings, will work in every JavaScript implementation, and tends to run as fast or faster than the equivalent handwritten JavaScript.
Installing CoffeeScript
Installing CoffeeScript is not hard at all. The first thing to do is to make sure that you already installed a working copy of the latest stable version of Node.js as well as npm, the Node Package Manager.
Once done, you can install CoffeeScript by running the following command:
npm install -g coffee-script
CoffeeScript is now installed. Next step is to compile a
.coffee
file into a
.js
file. Use the following syntax to do so:
coffee --compile example.coffee
CoffeeScript.org is the official website of the CoffeeScript language. Don’t hesitate to visit it, it’s full of helpful ressources.
Tutorial: Basics of CoffeeScript
A great tutorial that demonstrate all you need to get started with CoffeeScript: installation, configuration and first lines of codes.
→ View tutorial
Tutorial: Rocking out with CoffeeScript
A very complete tutorial that will make you a real CoffeeScript coder: it will show you how to write your code, how to indent, how to use classes, conditionnal statements and more.
→ View tutorial
Tutorial: Creating an iOS-like Home Screen with CoffeeScript
Now, let’s code something concrete: this tutorial will show you how to create an iOS-like home screen, using CoffeeScript. A great way to learn by the example.
→ View tutorial
CoffeeScript snippet: Shorten url using Google’s Goo.gl service
Short urls are very useful, especially on social networking sites like Twitter. Want to be able to create your own short urls using Google goo;gl service? No problem, just use the following code. Please note that you’ll need your own Google API key for the code to work.
apikey = "YOUR GOOGLE API KEY GOES HERE" shorten_url = (url, success_callback, error_callback) -> xhr = Titanium.Network.createHTTPClient()
xhr.open "POST", "https://www.googleapis.com/urlshortener/v1/url?key=" + apikey
xhr.setRequestHeader "Content-type", "application/json"
xhr.onload = () -> success_callback xhr.status, xhr.responseText
xhr.onerror = () -> error_callback xhr.status, xhr.responseText
content = "{\"longUrl\": \"#{url}\"}"
xhr.send content → Source: http://developer.appcelerator.com/question/125880/…
CoffeScript snippet: Read in a file
CoffeeScript make reading files very easy, as shown below: fs.readFile 'data.txt', (err, data) -> fileText = data → Source: http://ricardo.cc/2011/06/02/10-CoffeeScript-One-Liners-to-Impress-Your-Friends.html
CoffeScript snippet: Fetch and Parse a XML web service
Fetching and parsing XML or .json files from web services is quite common when coding modern web applications. Here is how you can do it using CoffeeScript: request.get { uri:'path/to/api.json', json: true }, (err, r, body) -> results = body → Source: http://ricardo.cc/2011/06/02/10-CoffeeScript-One-Liners-to-Impress-Your-Friends.html
CoffeeScript snippet: Finding substrings | https://medium.com/goksel/tutorials-and-snippets-to-get-started-with-coffeescript-by-catswhocode-88770732b6e5 | [] | 2016-11-14 14:09:42.145000+00:00 | ['Out Source', 'JavaScript', 'Tutorials'] |
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